Chapter Thirty-Four Patrick
This is mad,” Theo said, his voice trembling. But he helped push the barricade away from the door, his breaths coming in large gusts.
Patrick couldn’t contest it. Beyond those doors were several ranks of approaching soldiers.
“How many bullets you got left, Patty?” John asked, his face pressed to a gap between the wooden boards on a high window.
“Just the one.”
“I’ve three,” John counted, rolling the barrel. “Here they come. Five on horses. Thirty all up, I reckon. Forty at most. They’re goin’ door to door.”
“They don’t know it’s us,” Patrick said in response. “If they did, there’d be more.”
“Then why have they come?” Theo asked.
“Because they think a few angry Trent Crafters killed their coppers and a Scribbler, Teddy.” How oblivious he was to the ministrations of his own House.
“Holy god. I can’t kill them all,” Theo said, his head shaking back and forth. “They’ve been ordered here. Most will have families. It isn’t right.” He was beginning to shake, to lose his grip.
Patrick grabbed his collar in his hand and pulled him close, felt the button at Theo’s throat pop.
“Sharpen up, Teddy,” he said. There was command in his voice.
Theo paled. “They’ll aim to shoot at anythin’ that moves.
They won’t stop to ask what family you’ve got waitin’ at home.
Won’t think of the right and wrong in it.
They’ll open fire, and you’ll be dead on the ground before you can wave your white flag. And so will she.”
Together they glanced at Nina, who was peeking through a window.
Patrick watched how Theo’s eyes seemed to stick to her. “Use the river—”
“I don’t need your instruction on my medium, Colson.”
“Do it as soon as they’re in reach,” Patrick said in undertones. “Before they have a chance to recognize her. Please.”
Finally, Theo’s gaze turned away from Nina, surprise coloring his expression to hear Patrick plead with him.
“This is the side you chose. You chose her,” Patrick said, though he hated to say it. “And you’ll watch her die or be captured tonight unless you do this.”
“They’re here,” Nina called, backing away from the window, her eyes wild now. “Patrick?”
He clapped Theo on either shoulder, so hard his teeth rattled. “If there’s any worldly way to prove yourself to her,” he said in desperation. “It’s this.”
He watched Theo galvanize, his pupils dilating, eclipsing. The stalk of his neck cocked. A deep exhale rattled from his chest. A soldier’s last breath before the first spray of bullets.
Lord, Patrick thought. Let us survive this.
“Do it now, Theo.”
Theo went to the window. Patrick saw the way his eyes shuttered to what was in front of him, all senses honed elsewhere, to the frigid river that slunk behind the factory.
Patrick heard the calls and whistles of the soldiers beyond the door, felt the clutch of tension in the air, heard the first rolls of thunder—not from the sky, but from something closer. Something monstrous. Patrick stepped toward the boarded windows, peered through the slats.
“Be ready to run,” he told the rest. “When I say.”
Here were the soldiers, weary from their trek through the snow.
Trading flasks and cigarettes that sputtered out in the wind.
Bayonets slung over their shoulders as they cupped their hands around their mouths to warm them.
The horses clopped sleepily, necks bent against the snow belting against them, the generals atop shouting orders.
The foot soldiers broke down doors where they were bid.
Three men stalked sullenly toward the factory, their eyes tracking over its dark silhouette.
Three feet from the heavy doors, they halted.
Patrick saw it in their eyes when they realized the roaring was not wind. He saw terror distort their faces as the sky seemed to fall atop them.
The freezing water fell in heavy sheets, toppling the soldiers from their horses and crushing them.
“Go!” Patrick pushed through the heavy doors.
John shot three who stirred in the snow, spitting and trying to rise. Patrick shot another as he reached for his bayonet, and their bullets were spent.
Theo held the rest hostage in the stillest water Patrick had ever seen. It blanketed them as if a spring had suddenly appeared in the middle of the main street, its surface already icing over in the cold. The bodies beneath it did not move, either too broken or already dead.
Theo’s hands were raised in front of him, his brow furrowed in intensity. The wind lashed in, but he seemed impervious to it. “Run!” he said.
Patrick took Nina’s arm, John took Polly’s, and they took off without Theo, running through the snow. The only remaining tunnel was to the south, in the farming pasture behind the loggers. It might as well have been on another continent. The terrain made them slow.
They hadn’t made it more than a few yards before a door burst open into the street and two soldiers in full regalia appeared, stomping out into the night, halting abruptly when they saw the group pounding toward them.
“Fuck,” Patrick muttered, and lifted his pistol, though there were no bullets to fire, only the hope of the con. He pulled Nina behind him as they hastened to lift their bayonets.
“Halt!” they called. “Stay where you are.”
John pulled Polly in front of him as a shield.
“Hello, boys,” Patrick said carefully, eyes flickering between them. “You can let us pass, or we can trade bullets. Which will it be?”
Behind them, cut logs rose very slowly from a mound of firewood, snow sliding gently away. Patrick didn’t look at them as they rose silently into the night, waiting over the soldiers’ heads.
But there was the matter of the loaded guns pointed at them, fingers already wrapping the triggers, reflexively pulled on a flinch.
Patrick glanced once at his father.
“Drop your weapons!” shouted one of the men, his voice carrying, probably in hopes it would reach his comrades.
“They can’t hear you,” Patrick said. “They’re dead.”
The men looked at one another. “Bullshit.”
Theo stumbled up then, sweating and panting. Every breath seemed to pain him. Patrick didn’t spare him a glance. “Get ’em all, Teddy?”
“Y—yes,” he said shakily. He was likely moments from vomiting.
“Well, there you have it, boys,” Patrick said. “Last ones standin’. That’s got to be worth a medal, eh? Let us pass, and you might just collect it.”
“She’s Artisan,” one soldier said suddenly, his eyes landing on Polly, whose forearm hosted a red, puckered brand on her dark skin. The soldier regripped his weapon, looking through the scope of his rifle, muzzle trained on John.
“And that one…” the other soldier was looking over Patrick’s shoulder at Nina, eyes narrowing. Patrick moved in front of her.
“The Alchemist?” Patrick said. “That’d be me.”
That served to draw their attention, at least.
“Patrick Colson,” he said, empty gun still lifted. “It’s a pleasure.”
Likely this contingent had come through the cold expecting a fightless raid. Perhaps a few bottles of whiskey on someone’s shelf to pilfer. Home by morning.
“How would you two like an even bigger medal, eh?” Patrick felt for Nina behind him and pushed her toward Theo. He stepped forward, let his gun swing loose on his finger. He held his hands up in surrender. “You can take me right up to National House yourselves.”
It was their only choice. That, or shoot him, which would get them hanged. They weren’t Artisans, after all.
Patrick saw opportunity gleam in their eyes.
But still, their guns didn’t move. “Can’t take us all in yourselves, though,” he pointed out.
“We’d outmuscle you, wouldn’t we? Better odds if there’s two on one.
Tell my friends to be on their way.” Patrick dropped his revolver to the snow and waited for them to deliberate. He prayed they were fools.
Eventually, the one closest to Patrick nodded to himself, readjusted his footing and stood taller.
“Yeah,” he said, his shoulders rolling back.
“Yeah, all right. We’ll take just you.” He jutted his chin at the others.
The log waiting over his head hovered precariously. “The rest of you, get walkin’.”
Slowly, they did so, Theo with Nina behind him, John with Polly in front, and Patrick would wait until the bayonets were drawn away from their group and trained only on him. John would let them fall. Patrick would duck the bullets.
“Patrick?” Nina said, edging away from Theo, ignoring his insistent tugs.
Patrick groaned internally. Keep walkin’, Scurry girl.
“Hang on,” grunted the second soldier, recognition dawning. He looked between Patrick and Nina, some uncompromised part of his mind quicker than the rest of him. “Wait. Is that… That’s the earth Charmer!” he said, jaw swinging open. His bayonet lifted at her torso.
And Patrick was too far away.
The logs fell.
A shot rang out.
The soldiers struck the snow, knees first, then faces. The backs of their skulls caved in.
And next to Patrick lay another body, its stomach blooming red beneath clothing.