Chapter Sixteen Nina #2
And he led me back down the lane, the faces above tracking our path, until the shadows of an alley bore down on us and the cobbles turned to dirt.
We sprinted through stagnant black puddles, through the grimy underbelly of the city, through a skinny maze of steaming drains and houseless Crafters, who barely lifted their chins to watch us pass.
I stumbled often and Patrick caught me twice, his voice insistent.
“A little farther,” he said. “Come on, just a little farther.”
At the end of an alley so narrow we could barely squeeze through, Patrick came to a sudden standstill. Heavy footfalls approached from behind, and I turned, panicked, only to find the man who was surely John Colson thundering in our direction, a radiant smile of triumph splitting his face in two.
He winked at me and put his index finger to his lips.
Ahead was a wide dock, filled with waiting passengers dressed for long travel. Narrow boats stuttered to their pylons and waited for passengers to alight and board. Gray-faced Crafters smoked and manned the steering wheels in long coats and wool caps.
A policeman bellowed names of destinations from the dock, funneling the harried crowd into their prospective queues, his mustache quivering with every shout.
“Shit,” Patrick hissed, and reached back with his arm toward me, as though he could push me out of sight.
“Coppers fuckin’ everywhere, Patty boy,” John said, pulling his bowler low over his eyes. “Look there.” He nodded to the left, where three more policemen huddled over a lighter, smoking their pipes apathetically and leaning against the brick.
“He said he’d be here,” Patrick said through his teeth, his forehead glistening with exertion. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Who?” I asked.
“We gotta move, Pat,” John said over my shoulder. “Won’t be long before the cavalry comes chargin’ in.”
“I know,” Patrick said.
“We’ve got minutes, Pat. Now or never.”
“I know!” Patrick cinched his eyes closed and muttered to himself, as though a private consultation were occurring, then turned to look at his father and me both.
He took the bowler from his father’s head and pulled it low over my own, then pulled the navy cloak from his shoulders and threw it around me, pulling the collar up high over my hair.
“They’ll recognize Nina before they recognize us,” he said to his father. “Distract them, if it comes to it.”
John Colson nodded. “At all costs, my boy. No more time to lose.”
“Stick as close to me as you can get,” Patrick said. “And keep your hands hidden.”
We walked out of the alley and into the chaos of the dock with John in front, and me tucked so tightly into Patrick’s side I could feel every breath, every heartbeat.
He slung an arm around my shoulder, and it served to hide half my face.
He looked about in a casual way—just another weary traveler awaiting their fare.
“Baymouth on four!” shouted the copper. “Morland on three!”
“Morland,” Patrick repeated, and his father nodded once.
But pylon three was crowded with those coppers smoking their pipes and watching the crowd. “Patrick. The police—”
“Morland,” he said again. “It has to be Morland.”
I swallowed dryly and buried my head farther into the recess of him. I didn’t pray. I simply held my breath.
We shuffled into line, the coppers not a foot from my back, so close their conversation was easy to overhear. The tobacco in their pipes wafted over my hat.
“… begged him to trade shifts with me. What I wouldn’t give for a little entertainment,” one said. Then came the sound of his spit hitting the dock.
“Not me, I’m squeamish,” said another. “If I’m to see a woman’s back I’d rather it not be whipped to tatters.”
I stiffened. My tongue seemed to swell in my mouth.
“Still,” said the remaining, this voice younger. “As good a reason as any for a little sport, wouldn’t you say?”
The first grunted a laugh. “What’s your bet?”
“Fifty shillin’s she can stay on her knees for the first ten lashes.”
“Naw. It’ll be lights out before the second. Swank skin’s as thin as they come.”
Patrick seemed to seize beside me. His feet cemented to the dock.
“Heard she ain’t well bred, though,” the coppers continued, voices damningly loud. “From Sommerland or some such. Might’ve given her a bit of grit at least.”
There was a low whistle. “If a Sommerland girl is good for somethin’, it’s bein’ on her knees.”
Harsh laughter carried on the cold air, and Patrick, oblivious to my nudging, turned.
“Don’t,” I whispered to him.
There was now a notable space in the queue before us, waiting to be filled, but Patrick seemed incapacitated, his fists balling, eyes sparking, and I watched in horror as one of the police looked up to meet his eye, jutting his chin toward him.
“Oy!” the man called, pipe slipping from his lips. “Move along there!”
“Patrick,” I intoned, desperate now, but Patrick seemed possessed, as though the violence of the past week had only now caught up to him, and his blood couldn’t cool. His chest filled.
“I said, get movin’!” the copper emphasized, stepping past his chums and shooing Patrick as though he were a man who could be shooed. “Or get out of the fuckin’ way.”
But Patrick stepped toward the man with intent, dropping his hold on me, and it only served to raise alarm in the others, who widened their eyes.
And before Patrick’s punch landed, I watched recognition dawn across their faces.
First of me, dressed strangely in a bowler and a minister’s cloak, hands shackled and frantically grasping for Patrick’s winding arm. Then for Patrick himself, who by now must have been pictured in bulletins throughout the city.
His fist came down on the copper’s face like a hammer, blood erupting from a split in the man’s eyebrow, his knees buckling, and Patrick caught his collar and wound his arm back again, then again.
Before his colleagues could react, the man was bludgeoned and limp, and Patrick was rearing for a fourth blow.
They wielded their batons, catching Patrick’s back and shoulder, and he barely seemed to register their attempts.
The crowd dispersed around them, men and women backing away from the chaos with shrieks and clutched throats.
More police were funneling onto the dock—whether summoned by the racket or sent by Lord Shop, it couldn’t be known, but in they came, shoving would-be passengers out of the way, black helmets bouncing above the sea of people, closer and closer.
Suddenly John was there, pushing Nina back behind him, wielding his blade and pulling a copper off Patrick by his collar, and I watched him jam the knife into the man’s shoulder, and retract it just as fast.
Gunshots next, from no particular direction, and I dropped to all fours with the rest of the crowd. Shrieks rent the air. I heard my named called, the false one. “Get Clarke!” they bellowed. “Hold your fire! That’s the Alchemist!”