Chapter Eighteen Nina
In the first dregs of daylight, we drifted into Morland canals.
Our narrow boat was not followed or intercepted by any other vessel along the way, but I did not voice this strangeness. The canal network was an ever-expanding web of junctions. Perhaps the authorities thought it a waste of time to try and track us down.
I was growing sicker with every sway of the boat, and I suspected fever would take hold soon. The flesh above my bandage was rosy and swollen—the bandage itself still damp with canal water.
I was on the deck as we passed the first Morland buildings.
They competed for the skyline, towering above on rickety foundations.
Floors and floors of iron rail steps and thin windows.
Morland was an ancient province, densely populated, and much like Belavere City, beloved for its fine architecture.
Still, the Artisans preferred to only visit, rather than reside in Morland. The surrounding canals carried a smell up to even the highest of floors, the lanes were too tight, the cobbles buried under layers of dirt, and the churches upstaged by less pious enterprise.
Gambling dens monopolized much of the city’s commerce. It was a place where the rich came to play, while the Crafters served and picked at the stray pennies.
I had traveled to Morland twice before. Once with my Artisan class, to visit the relics, and once under a different name, when I’d laundered clothes in the basement of a shiny hotel. Even the latter felt like lifetimes ago.
I’d spent the remainder of the night on deck, watching the quiet water and listening to John hum his songs in a state of disconnect. Several times I cried, and he didn’t seem to mind.
“My Patty seems quite taken with you,” he commented near dawn, when I’d finally wrung myself dry.
I swallowed. “Not any longer.” It stung to say it.
John grunted a laugh, shook his head. “You know, he nearly lost his own ma when he was a boy.”
I looked over at him, curiosity finding a way through the anguish.
“Terrible times. I was away on business. Came home to find me sons hoverin’ at my wife’s bedside. Gray fever. Damn near took her, too. Have you yet met my wife?”
I nodded, Tess’s tired face floating to mind.
“She’s a force to be reckoned with,” John said, shaking his head. “Bet she gave you the hard word once she saw those stars in Pat’s eyes.”
“She threatened to shoot me.”
John chuckled. “Don’t mind her. She’s threatened to shoot me more times than I can count. Never does it.”
“She thinks you’re dead,” I told him. It was blunt, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to care. “She was sure of it.”
“Ah, well. Take more than a House of swanks to finish me.”
“I suppose she’ll be relieved to know she was wrong.”
John spat into the canal. “You know, miss. I don’t know that relief is the word for it. She was always unhappy to see me go, but she was just as mad when I came home again. I imagine she’ll slug me on sight.” He smiled fondly. “Deservedly, mind you.”
Whether or not he looked forward to this was unclear. Like Patrick, John was difficult to read, and like Donny, everything was buried in humor.
“Why don’t you go wake the others,” John said as we drifted closer to the silhouette of Morland. He pulled on the air with relish, unencumbered by a night spent awake and upright.
“Why Morland?” I asked him. “You must be desperate for home.”
But if John Colson was desperate, it seemed to be for those towering oblong buildings rising up around us, and not for Kenton.
“Business first,” he said, pulling on the till.
“What business?”
“The Union’s.” He seemed to savor the word. “What other?”
Soon enough, the narrow boat was bumping gently against the pylons, and Theo and Patrick came up—Patrick stiff-jawed, and Theo gaunt—all of us surveying the docks for signs of danger.
But that was the thing about Morland: Every square foot was too full, too busy. No man glanced toward another, and everyone minded their own—an unwritten code.
Babies cried and chickens flapped indignantly within cages, and the sheer volume of bodies alighting and boarding boats was unfathomable.
No one seemed to question the appearance of our mostly empty vessel.
As soon as the narrow boat docked, people waiting on the jetty clambered onto the deck, not much caring whether I was bumped into the water in my negligence to move out of the way.
A hand took mine as though by instinct, and I saw Patrick beside me. He found a gap in the throng and pulled me into it, pushing against shoulders until we spilled out the other side. John and Theo followed quickly behind us.
The whole of Morland wailed and throbbed and perspired ahead. It seemed to invade a person, stopping up the ears and throat. My skin already felt covered in an inexplicable residue.
I’d forgotten how much I hated Morland.
John winked at me, and I recoiled. “Come on, then,” he shouted above the din.
Patrick and I held hands only as long as it seemed necessary. As soon as we entered the thoroughfare his fingers left mine, and I tucked my hands away in the pockets of my stolen robe.
The lanes of Morland were despairingly narrow, weaving uphill.
Stall upon stall lined the street, their vendors screaming the names of wares to the oblivious traffic.
John led the way up the steep incline, and I managed to slip behind Patrick.
That way, I didn’t have to think about his fingers glancing mine or what it meant.
“Where are we going?” I asked, for it seemed we were certainly heading somewhere.
“Perhaps we ought to find a hotel?” Theo suggested from over my shoulder.
“Or perhaps we ought to part ways here, Teddy,” Patrick said without looking back. “I’ve got no desire to be within spittin’ distance of you.”
“Ah, let him tag along, son,” John said. “He’ll be swallowed up like a stray in this place.”
At that moment, a Crafter woman heavily adorned in glass jewels struck Theo on the shoulder with a tattered book. “IDIA WILL REDEEM YOU!” she shrieked, then blew a handful of white powder in his face. “PRAYER WILL CLEANSE YOU!”
Theo coughed and staggered backward. “Ah! Fuck,” he uttered, then quickened his step.
“Ain’t up to me whether he stays,” Patrick said, cutting a path through a queue of people. He nodded to me. “It’s up to her.”
I skipped a step, stumbling.
In truth, I had imagined we were all to part ways from here.
I’d felt a sense of it creeping up with every passing minute.
Patrick pulled ahead of me, and I was sure that at any moment, he would disappear into the throng, turn a corner and vanish.
He’d broken me out of Belavere City, but surely his charity wouldn’t extend beyond that.
He wouldn’t want me or Theo anywhere near Kenton.
Morland, I’d figured, was where we would divide.
But we walked on, and he didn’t bid me away, didn’t melt into the crowd. In fact, he turned to catch sight of me every so often, ensuring I hadn’t fallen too far behind. Not meeting my eye but not letting me out of his sight for long.
I did not give my clumsy heart permission to hope. I could not afford to hope for him.
I’d ruined us, hadn’t I? And men like Patrick Colson didn’t forgive.
Perhaps it would be better if I once more slipped into the cracks of the Trench and disappeared, and I could have done it, right there on that winding incline. I could step back into the crowd and erase myself.
The only thing stopping me walked just slightly ahead.
We reached the summit of the hill and turned down interminable corners until I felt dizzy, but Patrick and his father continued to lead us with intention, some invisible beacon guiding them, and I did not have the energy to question it.
We finally halted outside a skinny building with a blood red door. The sign swinging from the awning read THE MISTRESS in flaking gold paint. It was otherwise nondescript, made from the same clay as the buildings at either side, eaves kissing.
The inside was another world entirely.
A narrow entrance hall stretched before us, thickly papered in deepest red and impeded with frame after frame of themeless art: a banana tree, the citadel in Belavere City, a fisherman, two naked men intertwined, a parrot. The floor was thickly carpeted and stifling.
Nailed to the ceiling, oddly, was a selection of different-sized mirrors.
Two doors waited ahead, one labeled MANAGEMENT, and before I could ask what kind of hotel this was, an elaborately dressed man came sweeping out of it, arms out in welcome.
He wore a black satin cloak with a crudely cut hem.
The tails were frayed. His suit underneath was a contrast of patterns—a purple waistcoat embellished in roses, pinstriped pants, a satin shirt that was perhaps once white, but was now yellow.
Three long exotic feathers hung from the hoop at his earlobe, and these, too, appeared tired and crumpled.
But his shoes were polished, his black goatee was shaped precisely, and he stood with the air of a man who could sell snake oil to the most stubborn of skeptics, his smile wide and glinting.
It fell abruptly, however, at the sight of John and Patrick in his hallway.
“Meester Colson?” he said with strange inflection. It was impossible to know which Colson he meant. His eyes slipped back and forth between the two. He pulled his glossy cloak around his torso, as though for privacy. “A-hem, excuse me, gentlemen. I was not expecting you.”
“We need rooms, Tamir,” Patrick said without preamble. “Four of ’em.”
The man named Tamir hesitated, his many-ringed fingers steepling together clumsily. “I—erm, I may not have the vacancy—”
“Best you start evictin’ folks, then,” John quipped, peering closely at the painting of the naked men.
“I…” Tamir stumbled. “Might I suggest you inquire at The Ferryman Inn? They have an exceptional view—”
“Last I checked, Tamir, we don’t own The Ferryman Inn,” Patrick said. His exhaustion seemed to give way to menace. “Own every bed in this place, though. Includin’ the one you’re sleepin’ in.”
Tamir flushed.