Chapter Sixty-Two Nina
John was as bold and encompassing as ever, thrusting himself into Donny’s midst and heaving him off his feet, colliding with a wide-eyed Gunner like he was returning from a trip. “My boys!” he said over and over. “Pick your jaw up, lad. You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”
I wondered if the Colsons had ever been apart for longer than a day in their lives, or if the spirals of their genes were so intertwined they were not many people, but one. They came crushing back together like thunderclaps.
Around the corner came Scottie, looking nervous, and a quiet Theo, three shades paler than I remembered him and gaunt with exhaustion.
My mind reeled. “Theo?” I said, more surprised to see him than I was to see any of them. For the third time in my life, I’d believed we had parted ways for good.
And I knew that I’d told him to leave, and that there were things severed between us that couldn’t be fixed, but without thinking, I went to him and embraced him.
His arms encircled me just as fiercely.
“Lord,” I said wetly, some well of emotion I couldn’t identify leaking through. “Just can’t shake you, can I?”
“I’m persistent,” he said weakly, his whole frame leaning into me. “You’ve got to give me that, at least?”
Gunner shook his head, incredulity giving way to a smile so wide his beard crackled like burning paper. “Can’t hardly believe it,” he laughed, eyes traveling over his father like he was a mirage. “Patty sent that scribble, but we didn’t dare hope it were true.”
John laughed and locked Gunner’s neck in the crook of his arm. The two of them seemed so alike. Reflections. “Didn’t I tell you I’d be back, eh?”
“You’re a fair bit late,” said Tess, who was standing apart from the reunions. Her face was more thunderous than I’d ever seen it.
She looked between me and John as though she couldn’t decide which of us she found more detestable, and I realized that Theo’s hand still rested on my shoulder. I disentangled myself quickly.
John smiled toward his wife, but I thought there was something strained about it. Something wary. “Hello, darlin’,” he said tentatively.
Her eyebrows lifted. “You fuckin’ dare?” she asked, shrapnel in it.
The Colson brothers grew still and quiet, confusion brewing. Patrick, however, only sighed and sagged.
Scottie smacked his lips together and cleared his throat. “Well,” he interjected, just as it seemed tensions would snap. “As much as I don’t mind standin’ with the rats in the gutters, we oughta find some sort of cover, eh? Before we’re pinched.”
Patrick was looking between his parents as though watching an approaching disaster. “We’ve got a place,” he said. “A couple of rooms above the pub.”
“It needs to be somewhere private, Pat,” Tess pressed. “Away from anyone who might be listenin’.”
And what other place was there to retreat to in Scurry, with ears that had long ago stopped listening?
Patrick and John took my father upstairs and put him away like a coat, tucking him into the bedroom and shutting the door behind him. He’d hardly lifted his head when we arrived. Someone had left him with a bottle of liquor while we were away—John, I suspected.
In the kitchen, animosity thickened. Tess had been given a chair to sit in, but she’d refused it, opting instead to lean against the counter. She watched me with a contempt I could not fault her for.
“I warned you, girl,” she said to me, finally. “I warned you I would pull the trigger myself, didn’t I?”
I was grateful she’d said anything at all. Better than the silent contemplation. Better than the group of us, standing in the too-small space and choking on unspoken wrath.
I nodded.
She tsked bitterly. “If you were smarter, you’d have scarpered while you could.” She eyed me with open loathing. Gunner and Donny did the same.
Hot shame flooded me, but I knew better than to let my chin droop. “If it helps,” I told her, “I love your son.”
“Then he’s cursed,” Tess said coldly. “And I’ll be aggrieved enough for the both of us.”
I didn’t much blame her.
Patrick and John returned to a tension so fraught it crackled in the air. Patrick seemed to ready himself for something. “Right,” he said. “Tell me the trouble.”
Scottie straightened and adjusted his belt. “There’s been some developments, Pat—”
“Not you,” Patrick said blankly. His eyes were on Theo. “I got a feelin’ this story comes from the dead man.” It was said with no malice, no heat.
Theodore exhaled in a gust. “Did you find the Seam?” he asked, eyes turning from Patrick to me.
I hesitated. Nodded.
Theodore inhaled sharply. “And is it now exposed?”
Patrick carefully watched the emotions playing across Theo’s face. “Yes.”
The room seemed to withdraw, shrink.
“Idia save us,” Theodore said, the stalk of his neck falling. He ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “You have to bury it,” he said. “As soon as you can. Tonight!”
“What?” I blurted, frowning at the fear in his face, the dread pulsing from him. “Why?”
“Because any moment, my father is coming on a train,” said Theodore urgently. “He’ll be bringing an army with him.”
Patrick’s expression was neutral. “We’re well aware,” he said. “But he’s too late. By the time he figures out where to go, we’ll have already taken control of the Seam. If Polly is dead, then—”
“She’s alive, Pat,” Donny said. “She’s banged up, but she’ll live. Teddy brought her to Kenton.”
I let out a breath of relief I couldn’t make sense of. I turned my eyes to Theo. “She’s all right?”
He nodded. And what were the odds, that they’d both made it out? That the train had crashed at all? “You derailed it,” I guessed. “Over the marsh?”
He nodded again, slower this time.
His father could have died in that crash. He and Polly might have, too. My throat tightened. “Does your father know where we are?”
He shook his head. “I can’t know for sure, but he seemed confident that he’d soon learn, Nina.
It was like he meant it to play out this way exactly.
He wanted you to find the Seam. He wanted you to dig it up.
That’s why he let you and Patrick go back at the library.
He’s only waiting to hear word of your whereabouts.
The way he was talking, he’s got ears and eyes everywhere.
” Theo looked to Patrick. “For all we know, his army is sitting on a stalled train in the next parish, waiting to funnel in and take control of the Seam.”
“It ain’t a fight we’re ready for, Patty,” Gunner interjected. “We’d lose. Badly.”
Patrick didn’t look away. Not even to me, who stood with my heart lodged in my throat, feeling as though a wire had been tripped, the seconds ticking down.
“It was a swindle, Pat,” Gunner said somberly, grasping his brother’s shoulder. “That bastard needed an earth Charmer to dig up the terranium for him. After that, Nina becomes expendable. And the House will string you up and take you back to the city.”
Patrick looked at his brother darkly. Then he went to retrieve the coal bag he’d left by the door. He hefted it up and set it down on my father’s kitchen table, making the timber legs groan. Terranium ore tumbled out.
A breath shuddered through the house.
“There’s enough for every man and woman in the brink down there,” Patrick muttered. “Enough in here for every Crafter in Scurry.” He looked more violent than he ever had. “Let them come.”
“Patty, it won’t be enough!”
“Then we’ll call on our comrades from Dunnitch and Dorser. Put out the call all the way to Baymouth if we have to!” Patrick looked to each of them. To his father, who said nothing. “The revolution is here. Everything we’ve prepared for. It’s now.”
Donny looked stricken, eyes shaking in their sockets. He spoke with apology. “Patty… we’ve lost the comrades in Dunnitch and Dorser.”
“In Hesson, too,” Gunner added. “And Trent.”
John swore softly.
My breath abated.
“What?” Patrick uttered, stepping forward, swelling to twice his size. “How?”
“It’s winter, Pat,” Donny pleaded. “And we had no bluff to trade with—”
“We give ’em coal when we can’t give ’em bluff,” Patrick gritted out.
“There weren’t enough coal by half with the eastern mine buried and half the miners dead or injured. We tried to hold ’em at bay, Patty, I swear it! But they were insistent that you owed them. They kept mentionin’ debts to be repaid.”
Patrick ran his fingers tightly through his hair, lips moving as they did when he was consulting with himself. “Fuck,” he said once. Then he kicked a chair. “Fuck!”
“The newspapers haven’t helped, son,” Tess said. “There’s been doubt. Discord.”
“I’ve got the bloody rock here in my hands,” Patrick said to himself, his voice reduced to cinders and smoke. “We’ve got the fuckin’ Seam beneath us. I feel it!”
“It was a good shot, Pat,” Donny said, voice paper-thin. “But we can’t win.”
“That train ain’t here yet,” Patrick muttered. “They ain’t here yet.” He looked out the window as though he expected to see the enemy thundering down the lane.
“But they will be, Pat!” Theo reiterated, trying to break through his reverie.
He put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, but he was shoved aside.
Theo set his jaw and tried again. “They’re coming, Pat.
At any moment. And if the Seam is uncovered, there won’t be enough Crafters in Scurry to fend them off. Our only hope is to bury it again!”
Patrick paced the kitchen. John stayed mysteriously quiet, watching the conversation unfold.
“I’ll siphon all night,” Patrick said through his teeth. “We’ll distribute to every willin’ Crafter in Scurry by morning.”
“That train could arrive at any moment, Pat—”
“Gunner and Donny will go to the Seam. They’ll bring up as much rock as they can carry—”
“Enough.” It was his mother whose voice seemed to reach him when no other could. The word was spoken softly, sadly, eyes glossing over, connecting with Patrick’s and communicating something no one else could read. “Enough, son,” she said. “I’m not askin’ you this time. I’m tellin’ you.”
Patrick locked onto his mother’s gaze, something devastating falling over him.