Chapter Fifteen Patrick
Patrick paced interminably.
He willed himself to conceive any viable plan. He heard boots on the floorboards beyond his door and wondered if it was Theo returning. Was there any hope in the man at all? Or was he tucked in bed, sleeping off the guilt?
Patrick had siphoned idium from the remaining terranium and stored the vials in his pockets, downing one for himself. He beat at his own forehead, breathed too rapidly. Think, he berated himself. Think.
But the hours disintegrated, and soon there was light dawning beyond the window, illuminating the stained glass God in all His bare glory. Patrick threw the remnants of the terranium ore at His face. The window didn’t even scratch.
Nina would be beaten today, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. There were no more deals to be made, no strategies at play. He was locked inside this room with nothing but terranium and God.
He was useless. Horribly mortal and weak, to have let this unfold beyond his control. And whatever Nina’s transgressions, he wondered if he had failed her in more ways than she had failed him.
She had traded his name and his town to free her mother, and he’d traded her freedom for his own means. She’d been his captive before she’d been his partner.
She’d pleaded once, and he hadn’t listened.
He’d used her for her medium, just as Theo said.
And now she would pay for a truce that had been bargained over her unconscious body.
Patrick knelt, and the contents of his stomach climbed his throat and spilled out. He heaved until his stomach was empty.
This is what needs to happen, son, his father had told him. She’d want it for us, if she’s truly on our side.
“Fuck,” Patrick cursed. He wanted a blade. A gun. He felt the desperate urge to fire in any direction. And he thought he understood then, how she’d been able to betray him to save her mother. How could he fault her, when he’d kill through ranks of beating hearts to get to her?
He spent those final hours feeling the way he had as a boy, his mother lying prone in her bed, fading with gray fever. He’d been as useless then.
In a last spasm of desperation, Patrick threw his fists into the stained glass window, his knuckles breaking. But the glass remained intact, another reminder that Patrick was an ant of this world.
In this mania, Patrick lost his sense of time. He spent long moments with his head in his hands, heart thundering. He looked to see how high the sun had climbed. Was it already over, or was Nina on her way now to that city square, the population of Artisanal Belavere gathering to watch?
Then, when the sun seemed at its highest, a crumb of mercy.
The bolts of the door slid back. The hinges creaked.
Theodore slunk in with mottled cheeks, oscillating eyes, and closed the door carefully behind him. There was a wildness about him, a determination.
Patrick leapt to his feet.
“I—God almighty,” Theo said, seeming to steel himself. From the inside of his robe, he pulled a bundle of navy and threw it to Patrick. “Put this on. We’re leaving.”
Patrick hesitated for only a second, but Theo, who yesterday was gaunt and shamed to silence, was now feverishly awake. Patrick’s blood sprinted. He unraveled the Artisan robe and donned it. “Is there still time?”
“Time enough,” Theo muttered, and he held out his hand. “There’s a guard outside the door. I’ve got about ten seconds before he comes in to check on me. I need idium.”
Patrick rummaged in his pocket and came up with a trembling vial. He was out of schemes. He could only follow.
Theo pulled the cork and swallowed the ink in one gulp, shivering as it went down. It only took seconds for idium to meld with one’s bloodstream.
“Come on,” Theo hissed, already backing toward the door. “And be quiet.”
Patrick rushed forward.
Theo took a singular breath, wrapped his hand around the handle, and opened the door to a baffled guard, who looked between the two men with dawning realization. In his hand was an uncorked bottle of finest brandy, which he’d evidently been drinking from.
He raised his baton with wide eyes.
But Theo raised one of his hands, and whatever shout the guard meant to emit stuck in his throat.
Instead, a bubble of brandy spluttered from the man’s lips, dribbling down his chin. The guard coughed, the baton fell to the carpeted floor, and his hand gripped at his own throat before he stumbled back into the wall and fell, unconscious.
Theo released a shaky breath. “We have to hurry,” he said. “Follow me.”
Theo led Patrick to the end of the corridor, where a servants’ passage waited beyond a nondescript white door. A hideously narrow staircase spiraled endlessly into the dark, and they raced down the spine of it, Patrick’s heart thundering against his rib cage. “Where is she?”
“In a coach, headed for the city center,” Theo panted.
“I had to wait for her and my father to be clear of the building. He took half the guards with him.” He finally pushed through another door, barreling into a basement kitchen currently occupied by only one Craftsman, stirring the contents of a large steel pot.
He looked up from beneath hooded eyes as they raced around the benches and boilers, apparently unsurprised to see them.
Theo slipped a handful of coins into the cook’s waiting palm as they passed, then led Patrick to an exit.
They pushed their way into the cellar stairwell, daylight ahead, and scurried headlong up them and onto a drive—the very same passage Patrick had once pulled Nina into, daring her to sneak into the National Artisan House.
Only now, there were overhanging sycamore trees above, and one lone horseless wagon before it, the driver’s seat occupied by none other than John Colson.
Theodore’s face paled at the sight. “I told you to steal a horse from the stable!” he hissed.
But Patrick’s father, dressed in the same navy blue as Patrick, only donned a driver’s bowler and pulled it low over his eyes. “Don’t need one,” he said.
Patrick smiled. He felt the first shivers of hope returning.
“Hand it over, son,” John said, grinning.
And Patrick jumped into the back of the wagon, pulled a vial of ink forth, and gripped his father’s waiting hand with it.
Theodore’s forehead creased. “You’re a wood Mason?”
“The very best, kid,” John grunted. “Get in the fuckin’ wagon.”
Theodore clambered in. John downed the idium, tilting his face to the sun as though seeing it for the first time. Then, groaning in satisfaction, he looked over his shoulder to Patrick.
“Let’s go get your lady.” He winked.
He threw a blanket of burlap over Theodore and Patrick both, and as the wagon began trundling precariously down the drive, the two men lay curled, just barely out of sight, their breaths swarming in the close space.