Chapter Three Patrick #2
“Yes,” Tanner nodded, as though he could see right through to Patrick’s skeleton, every nick and fracture there. Every weakness.
“Women have long been man’s ruin.”
Patrick slid sideways, unable to hold his spine straight another moment. His temple sought the cold tile.
“I need an Alchemist, Mr. Colson. Quite badly.” He went to nudge the sack of terranium with his shoe. “You have the burden of being the only living man who might be able to siphon idium from whatever sad stores of rock remain.”
“And if I don’t?” Patrick murmured. He could not be sure the words did not blend.
Tanner’s footsteps gathered in his ears. He was suddenly close enough for Patrick to spit on. “Then hundreds of years of Artisan tradition will be no longer.”
“Never cared much for swank traditions.”
“Those born in the brink rarely do. But they care a great deal about bluff, do they not?”
Patrick felt as though his head were being incised, but his eyes opened, and he peered at Tanner, now leering somewhere above.
Tanner clicked his tongue. “My commander relayed all manner of information about the Kenton Hill raids. My men found your guns, your grenades. They even found your family’s inn, Mr. Colson, its kitchen filled with shelves of bluff. Quite a trove.”
Patrick’s eyes flashed. Burning bile coursed his throat.
“It is all now in my possession, of course,” Tanner continued. “The bluff will be meted out fairly, to those in dire need of it here in the city. As for those wounded members of your Union… well, I imagine they will not fare well if you decide to be selfish in this time of need.”
“Fuck you,” Patrick said.
“Would you deny the continent hope, Mr. Colson? All those sick children and elders? Would you see your own kin without any bluff to heal them from their battle injuries?”
The Tess Colson of the past roared to mind, coughing and spitting and failing on her bed, his father tipping vial after vial past her lips.
“Your reluctance will kill them,” Tanner said.
“There is no escaping what now must be accepted. Your revolution has failed, Mr. Colson.” Tanner paced with his hands behind his back.
“The Miners Union has scattered, and your hometown is abandoned. If you continue to resist, more people will suffer. Meanwhile, I’ll be forced to take more unsavory measures.
It shouldn’t be hard to find a blind man—Donny, is that his name?
And the brother who was gravely wounded…
Gunner, I believe. Perhaps I could bring them here—”
“I bet your Artisans turn to water when you threaten their families,” Patrick said, weariness beginning to overcome him. “Bet you love to see ’em cower at your feet, eh? Cryin’ and pissin’ themselves?”
Tanner’s eyes narrowed, his hands opened and closed.
“Yeah,” Patrick murmured, coughing painfully.
“It’s made you lazy. Uncreative.” Tanner’s eyes flashed, a nerve plucked.
“You go ahead and bring my brothers here,” Patrick smiled at the thought.
“Though I’ll warn you, you ought to double your guard.
Craftsmen don’t bother quiverin’ when you threaten ’em.
They just go about cuttin’. Savages, the lot of ’em. ”
Tanner turned quickly purple, a vein in his temple thickening. After a few beats of silence, he said, as though he were spitting rocks, “And if I was to be more creative with our earth Charmer?”
Patrick’s humor vanished.
“Perhaps I could take a leaf from your book, Colson. What would a gangster do? Pull teeth? Take fingers? Would you be persuaded then?”
The sack on the floor quivered. Patrick willed his mind to grasp the rocks within, to pulverize Tanner’s brain with them. But his mind was a sieve. The sack fell still quickly.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Tanner said, his eyes sticking to the sack. “But fear not, Mr. Colson. There are others with whom I might find my creative release.”
And through the film of fatigue, Patrick saw the guards step aside, and over the threshold came a man with his hands bound behind him, chestnut hair silver-streaked and receding at the temples.
He had sun-damaged skin, yellow teeth, an overgrown beard, and the same muddy brown eyes as Gunner Colson.
“Dad,” Patrick said, and it came out in an exhale, a gust.
John Colson’s eyes watered, his lips mashed together as though to pinch off sensation.
A guard raised a long, polished baton, and it cracked soundly over the back of John Colson’s head.
They left him there on the floor, his legs kicked aside as the guards closed him in.
Some part of Patrick’s mind noted it was clever indeed, to have his father’s skull bleed rivers onto the tiles while he sat idle by a bag of terranium. What better way to force his hand?
Patrick turned over his father, grasped his slack face in his hand, somehow here, somehow warm and alive, after everything.
“Dad,” he called, shook him, pressed his fingertips to his neck, cupped the gash at his crown as though it might stem the tide.
John Colson’s eyes rolled beneath the lids. He gasped a few times. It was frighteningly shallow. Horribly infrequent.
And there was really no question, then, about what should be done. It would only need to be just enough bluff. For his father, not for Tanner. It wasn’t surrender. John Colson would never forgive him for that.
With the last vestiges of his strength, Patrick pulled a jagged piece of black ore from the sack and inspected it against the light, squinting, seeing double.
He held it up to the window, compared it with another, then another, until he found one without the blueish hue at its center—black as hell, all the way through.
He found the fissure in the rock that would split it in two.
The point of separation had to be precise, or the bluff within was ruined.
He went to those leering shelves, pulled down a single vial, then held the lump of ore over it.
He felt along its ridges with his calloused fingertips, then closed his eyes.
When terranium was split correctly, it was musical, like glass—a high-pitched crack. It sang now as Patrick separated two perfect pieces, no shards or fragments coming free.
The ink spilled out, untainted, dripping into the vial, onto the lip of the counter, onto his shoes. Just enough. That was all he needed.
He felt consciousness leave him the moment he tipped the vial to John Colson’s gaping mouth.
Then there was only fire in his shoulder, ink on his hands, a ringing in his mind like a cathedral bell, swinging back and forth.
He dreamed of his kid brothers screaming down a yellow hill, lit firecrackers in their hands, grass stalks sighing, their father pointing at the clouds marching across the heavens, promising something existed beyond them.