Chapter Twelve Patrick
The guards brought Patrick along to what was once Tanner’s quarters— a mistake.
The second he entered and laid eyes on Lord Shop, he sought to wrap his bound hands around the new Right Honorable Lord’s thin neck and squeeze the life from it. As it was, the soldiers were prepared, and Patrick scuffled fruitlessly.
“He’s rabid, my lord!” one guard panted, wrapping his arm around Patrick’s throat. “We ought to put ’im behind a locked door.”
“No,” Lord Shop said, standing behind the ornately carved oak desk as though it had been his all along. He fingered the whorls on the wood grain with one finger, but his eyes were on the clock. “He’ll tire himself soon.”
“You fuckin’ son of a bitch!” Patrick roared, rearing back. His head connected with a guard’s. More howling. “I’ll kill you!”
“But then you’d have no authority with which to negotiate, would you, Mr. Colson?” Lord Shop said. “Calm yourself.”
But Patrick was seething. “Where is she?”
“Having her arm tended to by our staff, receiving blood, resting.”
A voice rose from the corner, from a figure Patrick hadn’t noticed until that moment.
“This conversation can wait until tomorrow,” Theodore said. “Nina should be here for it.” He leaned against a wall as though he wished to melt into it. His arms were crossed, his expression hollow.
“You little shit,” Patrick hissed at him. “What the fuck did you do?” He tried once more to shake free his guards. He’d kill both Theo and his father; he’d never salivated for a revolver more. He imagined it in his grip, his palm collapsing around the cool metal, trigger on the pad of his finger.
Theodore only looked at him though the husk of himself.
“For efficiency, we’ll wait for the rest of our party to arrive before discussions begin, Mr. Colson. This conversation is long overdue.” He straightened his lapels, smoothed his oily hair, took a teacup from the desk and sipped at its rim. “Kilmartin? More tea, I think. Perhaps some sandwiches.”
The guard to Patrick’s left hesitated. “Sir?” He glanced questioningly at Patrick.
“Oh, do not mind Mr. Colson. He is not a stupid man.” Lord Shop sat on the high-backed chair behind the desk and lifted a small pistol from the inside of his robes. He turned the barrel to Patrick. “I’m sure he’ll comport himself like a man of business.”
Kilmartin nodded, releasing his grip on Patrick warily.
“Ridgeback, stand outside the door, if you please.”
The arm wrapped around Patrick’s neck fell away. Footsteps retreated.
And Patrick took a step in Lord Shop’s direction.
The pistol hammer clicked. “Ah, ah, now,” Lord Shop tsked. “Be wise, boy. I was promised you were the astute sort.”
Patrick eyed the small pistol as though it were more an irritant than a threat. He nodded at it. “I shot rats in alleys with a gun bigger than that when I was a boy. You ever shot anythin’ before, swank?”
The lord didn’t answer. He only leaned back in his chair and sighed.
At that moment, the door opened once more. In filed John, his eyes finding the lord’s pistol immediately. He was followed by a maid, a silver platter of sandwiches balanced in her hands.
John looked warily to Patrick. “Go easy, son,” he said redundantly. “Haste never wrought no reward.”
Patrick heard the warning. The man had perfected a language of sorts with his sons. His words turned to a kind of poetry when there was something delicate to convey among close ears.
But Patrick paid it little mind. He saw red. “What was promised to the Craftsman who pulled the lever?” he spat at Lord Shop. For it was clear that Rose Harrow was never meant to live.
To his credit, the lord did not smirk. Patrick doubted there was a mite of humor in him. He was cold all the way through.
Well, so was Patrick.
“Idium,” the lord said blankly. “Which I’ll require you to siphon, of course.”
Patrick gritted his teeth. “Why Nina?” he asked, pulling at his own hair. “I was willin’.”
“A couple of reasons,” Lord Shop said. “The first is that Miss Clarke—”
“Harrow.”
“Miss Harrow, then, was exceedingly prejudiced against the House. I had hoped that taking Tanner’s life might sate her bitterness and leave her more sympathetic toward…
new management.” The lord placed the gun down before him, steepling his hands atop the desk, and to hell if the bastard didn’t look like he belonged there, in a politician’s seat.
Patrick growled, “You had her kin killed.”
“Nina has had almost no contact with her mother in the past two decades,” Shop said prosaically. “In fact, I was concerned her mother’s death might not be motivation enough. I’m glad to be wrong.”
“You used her,” Patrick said, and it was so dark, so thick with violence, that Lord Shop picked up his little gun once more.
“She is an Artisan. Our value is measured by how useful we can be. And Miss Harrow is a most useful individual indeed. You, of all people, should agree. Did you not use the girl long before I?”
And Patrick saw Nina once more, coming toward him through that tunnel with a sack over her face with Scottie and Otto. Shame washed in over his anger.
She used me, too.
Lord Shop sighed as though the debate bored him. Patrick wondered how long he had plotted to take what was Tanner’s.
“Miss Harrow was simply the best candidate. I cannot have the other ministers catch wind of my involvement. Honestly, I was surprised you believed I would allow my own son to undertake something as base as killing.” His nose wrinkled slightly.
“Nevertheless, I do apologize for the deception. I realize that lying to you does not foster a promising partnership, but it was made clear to me that you hold a certain… affection for the earth Charmer.” He waved a hand dismissively, as though affection were a symptom of the weak.
“I could not afford for you to intervene. You are, as most are in the brink, unpredictable. If I had allowed another Artisan to be Tanner’s killer, they’d be hung.
There would be no believable reason for me to stop their execution.
But Nina? She is the earth Charmer. No lord or lady in this house will deny the necessity of her survival in these trying times.
It will come as no shock when I grant her pardon. ”
Patrick glared at Theo, who now looked sickly. Good. “You agreed to this plan?” he demanded, hate sliding into the words. Patrick should have shot him the first time they’d met.
Theo didn’t answer, but he at least summoned the courage to look Patrick in the eye. What Patrick saw there was pitiful.
“Theo understands that pragmatics must come before emotion,” Lord Shop interjected. “The girl will live. Her wounds will heal, and Tanner is dead. This is what matters.”
Patrick imagined a bullet boring into the lord’s skull, pitting a hole between his eyes. It quelled the clench in his knuckles. “It should have been me,” he said, the muscles in his chest aching. “I’m their Alchemist. They can’t have me killed, either.”
“Ah, but how would it look then, if I proceeded to cut bargains and show sympathies to you and your family, to the towns in the brink? What successor to a murdered Head of House would grant the killer favors?”
“A crooked one,” John interjected gruffly, taking a sandwich from the tea table.
“Precisely,” Lord Shop agreed. “And I do plan to uphold our deal, Mr. Colson. Your father has told me many things about your mother. Your brothers, too. I can ensure they are protected. Provided for.”
“We’d live like bloody royalty, Patty,” John said, crumbs tumbling from his lips.
Patrick looked now to his father: his flushed cheeks, the spark in his eye. He had the look of a man on the cusp of something big.
“You knew,” Patrick accused, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “You knew they’d do this.”
“Aye,” John muttered, unapologetic. “That woman on the noose weren’t long for this world anyway, Pat.”
Patrick felt sick with rage.
“My offer, Mr. Colson, is to make your father governing lord of the brink towns. You as well, if you wish it. You will ensure that thoughts of rebellion are diluted, proclaim that the House of Lords has agreed to a fair solution. You will call a ceasefire, as will I, and if it is successful, then the spoils of Idia’s Seam will be distributed throughout Belavere Trench. ”
“I want it quantified,” John said around a mouth full of bread. “How much for the brink?”
“Fifty percent of the bluff, thirty of the idium,” Shop said.
John shook his head. “Ninety percent of the population live in the brink. We ain’t gonna settle for half the bluff.”
“Sixty percent of the bluff,” Shop amended.
“Sixty-five. And half the ink.”
“Sixty-five of the bluff, and forty percent of the idium. And your family heading the bluff distribution to each parish. You will also select yourselves those children who will attend the siphoning ceremony, so long as their family has no previous criminal activity.”
John scoffed. “That’s a shallow pool. Might as well give up our share.”
“Petty crimes excluded,” Shop allowed, bowing his head slightly. “As well as crimes related to this war.”
“Deal,” John grunted. He spat in his palm and stomped over to the desk, lifting his hand for the lord to shake.
Lord Shop stared at it for several moments, then pulled a piece of parchment from his robe. He passed it to John and gestured to the quill and ink pot waiting atop the desk. “I took the liberty of having an agreement scribbled.”
Patrick frowned. “Before knowing the terms?”
The first hint of mirth touched the corner of Shop’s mouth. “I also took the liberty of estimating. I’m rarely wrong.”
He enjoys this, thought Patrick.
The lord stood and pulled his robes closed. “I will need your signature as well, Mr. Colson.”
Patrick shook his head, feeling as though he were hurtling over the edge of a cliff. “No.” He paced across the room, trying furiously to think. “I told you I would make no agreements until you gave me proof of the seam. And I need proof that Nina… that she’s come to no permanent injury.”