Chapter Thirty-Six Patrick
Patrick felt a wave of homesickness so acute he had to clamp his eyes shut.
In truth, it might also have been the air in the tunnels.
They were fleeing in the exact opposite direction of Kenton Hill. And the farther south they traveled, the more detached he felt from home, from his brothers and mother. He’d never been gone this long. Worry wheedled in. Voices in his head told him he couldn’t be sure they were even alive.
It would have been enough to send him back if it weren’t for the fear of it.
Fear of seeing it half reduced. Anytime the urge to steal home swarmed him, he would try to imagine the view from the surrounding hills and how different it would look now, and the feeling was swallowed by the urgency to find the fucking Seam.
He would be returning with nothing if he couldn’t return with a plan, with a fix.
When he did return, he would be filled to the brim with idium, with enough in surplus to give to every man and woman in Kenton.
Let the House come then. Let them breathe fire and spray bullets.
Let them shake as Kenton returned in kind.
The next time he stepped foot in Kenton Hill, he’d make it the most formidable parish in the world.
He was filthy, covered in mud and Theo’s blood.
One endless night and day in the tunnels.
They walked as far as Theo could be carried before surrendering to the ground, resting, then rising to do the same again.
Nina and Polly weren’t accustomed to walking the tunnels in the dark, and between John and Patrick, Theo’s deadweight had quickly become encumbering.
When they set him down for the night, the relief was immense.
Nina slept opposite Patrick, sitting upright. He held his sickness at bay by listening to her breaths. Farther away, Polly curled in on herself. Theo was slumped against his own part of the wall, his side as well bandaged as they could manage with the sleeves of Patrick’s shirt.
John rested beside him, though Patrick knew he was awake. He heard the quiet pop of his lips as he spoke to himself, the same way he had when Patrick was a boy. Always scheming, strategizing.
Odd to have him so close again. To be able to ask one of the many questions that had banked up in his mind over the last two years. Now, he found little to say.
Patrick had imagined their reunion would feel like surrender. Like mercy. Instead, he felt heavier now than he ever had.
“You haven’t asked Polly to send a scribble to Ma,” Patrick murmured, only just loud enough for John to hear it. Not loud enough to stir Nina from her dreams. She slept so seldom it worried him.
He felt John shift, turn to peer at him through the dark. “You say somethin’, son?”
“You haven’t asked the Scribbler to send a message to Ma,” Patrick repeated.
There was a moment’s hesitation. “There a question in that?” John uttered eventually. “Ain’t much business of yours, Patty. For all you know, I’ve sent her a bloody sonnet.”
“Have you?”
His hands rose and fell, slapping the dirt. “We’ve been a bit preoccupied, son. I ain’t thought much about love notes.”
But that wasn’t his way, Patrick knew. Always there had been notes.
He’d left them under her water glass beside their bed.
On the stovetop, in the heel of her boot.
One day, you’ll have a castle, love, they’d say.
Soon, we’ll have it all. A lifetime ago, his mother had seen those notes and smiled shyly.
Later, she’d squeezed her eyes shut, like she was praying for patience, and the note was tucked in her housecoat.
By the time Patrick was an adult, she’d walk right by, refusing to read them at all.
“It’s been more than two years,” Patrick rumbled. “Two years she’s gone without a word from you. Now we’ve got a Scribbler at our disposal. You’d think a man in your shoes would have sent a message.”
John shuffled. “Watch your tone, son.”
“She’s your wife,” Patrick growled, his volume climbing. His eyes slid in the dark to Nina, but she didn’t stir. In whispers, he said, “What man worth a damn neglects to send word to his wife and sons?”
John groaned, scrubbed at his face wearily. “You’re young, Pat,” he said slowly. There was a warning in it. “You don’t know yet how marriage works. But your ma does. She knows there’s things more important than love notes and fuckin’ poems.”
He tipped his head back to the wall again. Crossed his arms over his chest as though the matter were closed. “And you’ll mind your mouth when you speak to me of your mother, son. You hear me? ’Fore I knock your teeth out.”
The same hollow threats from Patrick’s childhood.
He’d never followed through on a single one of them.
“You haven’t asked about them,” Patrick continued.
“Gunner or Don. Two years, and you ain’t got the wherewithal to ask.
” He looked over at Nina. Not his family, not his at all.
Still, he heard her slow breaths draw into her chest and said, “If I had a wife waitin’ somewhere, there ain’t a thing I’d think about more. ”
To that, John said nothing.
“I took the liberty of havin’ Polly write to Ma and the boys,” Patrick said now. “I told ’em you were alive and well. It’s a mite of what they deserve.” Then he turned away, unable to think of his father, of his mother and brothers and Kenton Hill a moment longer.
The tunnel came up into a stinking culvert, as far from Hoaklin and Kenton Hill as one could get without crossing the Gyser River.
Lavnonshire had somehow evaded the grasp of winter.
It remained humid, the air thick as soup, gulls still swooping lazy circles over the sea.
It was a lean-to town, structures half-rotted unfolding to the cliffs, the streets narrow and uneven.
When the wind rolled in off the ocean, it would pick up stray cats, discarded rubbish and blow them down the lanes, but as much as it battered the walls of Lavnonshire, they never folded.
The mortar between bricks was mostly eroded.
Everything smelled of salt and fish innards.
An interminable roar harried the ramparts and the cliffs, drowning out the drawls of fish mongers.
Lavnonshire hardly changed. It seemed condemned to churn with the ocean it bordered. Not even a war could halt it.
Theo came out of the tunnel looking ashen. He held his side as though he were holding in his organs, the bandage bled through. Patrick and Nina held most of the man’s weight, but with every step, Theo grew more tight-lipped, more drawn.
“Where are we?” Nina asked, blinking into the assault of light.
But it wasn’t Patrick or John who answered her. It was Polly.
“Lavnonshire,” she said breathlessly.
Patrick recalled, from some cavity of his memory, that she’d professed to have been raised here.
It made sense, he supposed. Lavnonshire was a strange collection of Crafters and lower-ranked Artisans.
He frowned. “In case you’ve got ideas of visitin’ old friends, I’d remind you there ain’t any ships left in Lavnonshire that still leave the dock. ”
Polly raised an eyebrow. “There are no old friends,” she assured him. “Just a mother and father who’d be embarrassed to see me darken their doorstep.”
Patrick heaved Theo onward. “Why? Did you send an army after them, too?”
Polly looked off to the distant rooftops. “I’m not exactly a prized Artisan daughter,” she said. “I was supposed to return home with accolades, not a dismissal.”
Accolades, status, social repute—the things of value to an Artisan. Perhaps the mines weren’t the worst fate one could face in the Trench.
“Where to now?” Nina asked, taking up Theo’s other side.
He groaned as she lifted his arm over her shoulder.
The culvert emptied out into a dust yard, weary-eyed Crafters picking out metals and bones left to burn in hearths.
It was astonishing what some tried to burn.
The poorest Crafters sold the bones to glue factories.
The fabric could be washed and reused. The metals melted down and traded in.
Dust yards were only good for scraps, for meetings of a dark nature. For hiding.
There were several gaunt Crafters here. They barely paid the group any mind as they passed. One kept their business to themselves in a dust yard.
Ahead of them, though, was the thrum of Lavnonshire, and it would be full of infantry and police watching the docks, ensuring the fishermen strayed no farther than the immediate coastline.
“There’s no Union-owned establishments here,” Patrick grunted, heaving Theo along.
“What about Leethrow’s?” John asked, turning abruptly. Leethrow was a butcher and a neutral. He’d given over the deed without much persuasion back when Patrick was still green. He still remembered his father striding in and holding a meat hook to the man’s eye.
“He’s in the wind,” Patrick responded. “Scarpered two years ago.” Right around the time John had been captured.
John cursed. “Slippery little weasel, ain’t he?”
Patrick didn’t argue. The man had been paid handsomely every month for his indenture, but had also brought two daughters into the shop each day. It was likely he’d valued their safety over money.
“I have an idea,” Nina said now. The sun had turned her hair golden, her cheeks distractingly pink. “Though there’s no telling if it will be safe.” She grimaced and looked directly at Theo, and he at her. A silent message seemed to pass between them.
Patrick felt something primal rise up and bare its teeth.
“Mrs. Trunk?” Theo asked.
It was a name that meant nothing to Patrick, but Nina nodded.
“Who is Mrs. Trunk?” Polly asked.
“When we were apprentices, Professor Dumley used to bring us both here. ‘Field work,’ he’d call it. Sometimes, we’d stay with… an acquaintance of his. An antiques shop proprietor.”
Patrick gritted his teeth. “Is she a swank?”
Nina hesitated. “A Mason.”
“No,” Patrick said immediately. “We’ll figure somethin’ else out.”