“You’ll have it,” Patrick said, with a confidence plucked from the sky. “I’ll ensure it comes. And in the meantime, I assume there are at least a few coppers here who remained.”
Edith wiped her hands down her front, fingers shaking. “They evacuated before the army got here. A few came sauntering back in once the fires died out.” She looked once more to those bodies lined neatly on the slope of the ravine, and her eyes turned hard, bitter. “They’re holed up in the trading post with a few cases of port, last I saw.”
John and Patrick traded glances.
“We’ll pay ’em a short visit,” John assured her. “In return, we need to hunker down a night or two.”
Edith nodded her assent. “I need to go and help the rest,” she muttered, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She turned and used whatever vestiges of strength remained to drag herself inside.
At first, we five remained, but the snow had begun to fall, and the air bit at our skin, and the wall of corpses became impossible to look at.
“We’ve earned a bit of rest,” John said decidedly, somberly. “We’ll recoup for a bit.” He pulled a flask from his pocket and took a thorough swig. He held it out to Theo as he passed. “Here, kid. That’ll pump the blood.”
Theo accepted it and turned his eyes away gratefully, and Polly followed. They needed no other prompt to flee from the dead.
“No rest for you, swank,” John said to Polly, slapping the Stewards’ book against her sternum. “While we’re here, you’ve got some readin’ to do.”
Polly pressed a retort between her lips and followed the men inside.
Then it was only Patrick and me, too disturbed to look away from the line of shrouds.
“Nina,” Patrick said, and he said it as though it were a lifeline. His throat bobbed. He didn’t dare look at me.
I watched the valleys of his expression, the reds in his eyes straining. What was once startingly blue now appeared a bleak gray. “I don’t want to ask—”
“You’re not asking, Patrick. I’m just doing it.”
His gaze was torturous.
I made to move around him toward that first sheet. Something stopped me.
Patrick’s hand taking mine. Not pulling, but simply holding it for a moment, his rough fingers encasing my own.
I looked back to find his eyes had closed. He breathed through his mouth in great puffs, gripped onto me like he was clinging to a ledge.
I waited there, unmoving, watching parts of him crack, then knit themselves back together.
A lark cried. His eyelids snapped open. Our hands retracted.
He watched there in the cold while I worked, his hair dusted in snow as I buried the bodies, the earth giving way beneath each and swallowing them whole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEPATRICK
In the first cold squalls of night, Patrick and his father left Bleaker’s Textiles.
They adjusted their coats, their hats, eyes pinched against the cold, and stepped out onto the vacant road, boots sinking as they went. Farther into town, a lone chimney sent curling smoke skyward. Without speaking, they walked in its direction.
Three coppers, Edith had told them. Sent, no doubt, to ensure the post, the police house, and the swank residences weren’t looted. After all, those buildings were Artisan-owned.
“What will you do?” Nina had asked him, watching him pull on warmer attire, no doubt from some dead lad’s wardrobe.
He’d watched the flecks in her eyes distend. “Better I don’t put words to it.”
“You’ll kill them?”
“Yes.”
“I want to come,” she said to John and Patrick both.
