Chapter Thirty-Six Patrick #2
“She’s harmless, Patrick,” Nina said, panting under the weight of Theo. “A society outcast. And she liked us.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. He doubted there was nary a person alive who’d met Nina and not fallen for her. “It ain’t enough.”
But Nina pinched her eyes closed in frustration. There was mud smeared into her hair. A cut on her cheek, sweat glistened over her brow, and he was suddenly suffused with guilt.
“Trust me, Patrick. She couldn’t raise the alarm even if she wanted to.”
He frowned warily. “And why’s that?”
“She’s mute,” Theodore grunted, looking as though he might pass out at any moment.
“It don’t mean she can’t flounce down the street wavin’ her hands over her head,” John grunted. “She’ll turn you over the moment she recognizes you.”
“I’m not sure she’ll think much of it,” Nina muttered, her voice turning reluctant. “Mrs. Trunk isn’t… all there.”
Patrick stared at her. “She’s a lunatic?”
“Not a lunatic,” Nina said indignantly. “But she’s getting on in years, and she’s a recluse. She doesn’t care much for society.”
“I imagine not,” John muttered. “Can’t fuckin’ speak, can she?”
Nina glared at him. “Have you got a better idea?”
“None,” John said, then looked to Patrick. “Gotta stop somewhere, son. The Charmer ain’t gonna last the night unless he’s seen to.”
Even as he said it, Theo’s head fell forward, his face collapsing in pain.
Patrick sighed and looked at Theo. It’d be simpler to leave him here to recover, to continue on without stopping, but one glance at Nina told him it wasn’t a question. He’d gone and saved her life, after all.
“Lead the way,” he said to Nina, taking Theo’s full weight from her. “And keep your head down.”
The walk was treacherous. Lavnonshire was littered in open market stalls and street vendors selling their haul of cod and crab.
Patrick put his cap over Nina’s head and pulled it low over her brow.
He closed Theo’s coat to hide the bloody bandages as they weaved down the streets, closer and closer to the ramparts.
A row of shop fronts clustered perilously close to the cliffside, sewn together like a patch quilt.
Theo’s weight was starting to hinder him when, thankfully, Nina came to a stop. Her eyes trailed over a grimy door, bulging shopwindows so filled with lime and salt they were impossible to see through. The sign dangling precariously from the roof guttering said TRUNK ANTIQUES AND ODDITIES.
There was a claustrophobia about it, even from the street. It was too narrow, too tall, the competing shops either side pulverizing it.
“Waitin’ on an invitation?” John asked Nina.
She turned on him and Patrick, eyes steeled. “No threats,” she said. “No guns.”
John clicked his tongue. “We ain’t in the habit of shootin’ old ladies, darlin’.”
When they stepped through the shop’s door, the sound of the sea was swallowed, replaced by the kind of unbearable hum Patrick only ever experienced when a hundred fathoms beneath ground. Polly let the door shut behind her, and the tinny bell rattled overhead.
Its windows were cluttered top to bottom with art, hat stands, newspapers, books, cat cages, embroidered cushions, lamps, vases, empty wine bottles, candlestick holders, rat traps, and, strangely, a miner’s pick.
There were few places to stand, all available room having been taken up by some piece of dusty furniture. Shelves crowded the walls, and even the ceiling was cluttered with hanging pots and cages and cookware. Patrick couldn’t think of a place less Artisanal if they were in Kenton Hill.
He grinned.
They each took off their hats, relaxed their shoulders with a groan. Even if the general of the fucking Lords’ Army were to look through a window at that moment, they’d see naught but towers of junk.
“Mrs. Trunk?” Nina called out carefully, turning to pass her hips through piles of newspapers and a cello. “Hello?”
From behind a fort of books came someone so short as to appear a child, but was on closer inspection a frightfully old woman with dark skin and thinning hair.
She licked her gums, took her spectacles off, and rubbed them against her blouse. Her chin quivered as she peered at them all. After a moment, Patrick realized that she was speaking to herself in silence. Her lips forming words they couldn’t hear.
She came around her piles and stacks in a practiced way, her squat form somehow avoiding any obstacle, until she came before Nina. She looked at her as though she were a collectible to peruse, picking up her hands and turning them over to see their backs, pulling on her curls to test their spring.
Then she smiled, patted Nina’s cheek.
“Hello, Mrs. Trunk,” Nina said warmly, smiling back.
Patrick felt punched through by that smile. She’d used it on him once or twice. He doubted there were many with hearts and eyes who could refuse it, Mrs. Trunk included.
The old woman’s eyes then swept to the rest of them, not stopping until they found Theo, propped between Patrick and John, recognition dawning.
“We’re sorry to call on you without an invitation,” Nina said to her. “But I’m afraid we had no choice. Theo is… injured,” Nina said.
Mrs. Trunk patted her cheek again. There was a shake to her hands. She wore a gentleman’s dinner jacket and dungarees—hardly swank fashion—and if it wasn’t for the piano that started playing of its own accord in a dusty corner, Patrick might have thought her a Craftswoman.
Except that the keys trilled suddenly in a strange and complicated ascension of notes. It made John spin and lift a pistol from his coat, made Polly duck and cover her head.
But it only made Nina smile.
Patrick watched the dark wooden keys settle back into place and frowned at them.
“Mrs. Trunk is a wood Mason,” Nina offered.
At that, the piano warbled again. One solitary, piercing tone, as though to affirm.
“She uses the piano to speak.”
Mrs. Trunk’s lips moved soundlessly. She moved to a chair overturned and took it by its legs. With precarious movements she righted it on the floor and pointed abruptly to Theo. The piano sang again.
“I think she wants to see Theo’s injury,” Nina offered, and Mrs. Trunk nodded brusquely.
Theo groaned as he sank onto the chair, but he had the wherewithal to nod his head to Mrs. Trunk—the perfect gentleman. “Pleasure to see you again,” he said through gritted teeth.
Mrs. Trunk unwrapped the sodden bandage, shook her head in reproach, her lips moving, piano playing in double time, the tone somber, as though she were giving them a tongue lashing.
Without warning, she went shuffling off into the maze of junk.
“Lord,” John said in her absence. “Ain’t a single marble left, eh? Complete nutter.”
“Mind your manners,” Nina said, eyes stuck on the weeping sore on Theo’s side. His head was hung back over the chair, his eyes closed. He drew deep, deliberate breaths through his nose.
“Well, she ain’t a threat, that’s for certain,” John continued on, going to an old wall clock discarded on the floor and picking it up, turning it over to view its cogs. “We ought to take advantage if we can. Lay low for a few days or more, let the Scribbler work on the translations.”
Patrick was already shaking his head. “We haven’t got time.
The longer we sit still, the more likely it is we’re caught.
” Patrick felt that screw wind itself tighter.
“We need to find the Seam. I need to return to Kenton.” He felt it like fingers clamped around his windpipe. Every day, his dread compounded.
“Theo can’t travel like this,” Nina said, her eyes roaming over the man, brow furrowed.
At the sound of her voice, Theo’s eyes opened. They caught hers.
Patrick heard bones break, the spray of blood.
He swallowed. “Then he ought to stay here.” He said it with deliberate slowness.
He wanted her to hear the sense in it. To bring this juvenile bond to an end.
“He can stay in the care of Mrs. Trunk, and we’ll carry on to Hoaklin as planned.
Polly can translate on the route. Then we head straight for the Seam. ”
Nina turned her head to Patrick, and he thought her expression was laced with apology.
His stomach fell.
“We can’t leave him here.”
“Don’t make much sense to drag him along any further,” John interceded.
But Nina paid him no mind. She stepped closer to Patrick, her hands balling the way they did when she was scared. Was she afraid of him?
“He followed your orders with those men. He killed them for us, and he took a bullet to save me,” she said. It was damningly soft. “I—I can’t just abandon him.”
Over Nina’s shoulder, Theo’s eyes became star-bright. His shoulders lifted just a fraction.
Patrick let the air pent up in his tired lungs go and swallowed a stream of vitriol that wasn’t intended for her.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll stay.” Lord, but he was loathe to.
Loathe to be sitting still while his broken parish stitched itself back together and the Lords’ Army circled in on them and somewhere in the Trench, miles of terranium sat waiting for the taking.
“Thank you,” Nina said, and back she went. Back to Theo and his shining eyes, his wound—visible proof of his loyalty to her. She watched over Mrs. Trunk, who had returned with a carpet bag clinking with medical supplies and begun to pull out foul-smelling antiseptic and yellowing gauze.
Patrick couldn’t stand here another moment watching. He went to the piano with his jaw sticking. He rounded precariously stacked pots and a chest of men’s boots with his nails digging into his palms.
The standing piano was made of Sitka spruce, he guessed, its keys unsurfaced.
Atop each key was a letter, or sometimes a word.
Patrick saw a Yes, No, and oddly, the word Bastard.
Each of these was etched into the wood in neat script, no doubt by Mrs. Trunk herself.
Patrick ran his fingers across them. They came away dusty.