Chapter One: Patrick CHAPTER ONE PATRICK
Kenton Hill miners were made of songs, one sung most often.
This was saved for the weary hours just before the whistle sounded and the men were hauled back up the shaft. In Patrick’s first years belowground, his father would whisper it to him when Patrick’s knees buckled, when his bones protested, when mud weighed him down.
Till the light comes, Patty, he’d say. Till the lights come on up top, down we go.
On the days when the second-shift miners were deathly tired, the song became just one murmured verse, repeated like a vow. Till the light comes.
It moved their feet to the end of each shift, tempted unwilling bodies into the shafts, and indeed, light found them. Morning breaking. They spilled out into the day.
Now, the song seemed like a threat. He rather hoped light never found him again.
In Margarite’s tunnel, Patrick’s shoulder beat its own pulse. His legs had begun to quake—from the blood loss, he suspected.
The bleeding had stopped, but the bullet remained buried somewhere in the sinew, and every so often he found his focus drifting, his view slipping sideways.
The tunnel in each direction was filled with soldiers wearing Artisan navy. The Lords’ infantry. They staggered along with their own weeping sores. The soldier at Patrick’s elbow was trying valiantly to hold his own brow together, but it was intent on streaming like a geyser.
All around them, the tunnel groaned.
This seemed of no consequence to anyone but Patrick. The soldiers continued onward, following the bobbing lanterns held aloft on the ends of bayonets. They journeyed farther and farther from Kenton Hill, water seeping from weep holes, insects and rats skittering between their feet, fathoms of earth suspended above them, speaking to them.
It was clear none of these men had spent much time beneath ground. If they had, their eyes would flit from wall to wall. They’d swallow dryly. Their balls would lodge in their stomachs and take all their valor with it.
Instead, they marched, carrying Patrick in tow, onward until the light came, unlettered to the language of tunnels.
Patrick sorely hoped the light never found them. He hoped they’d all be crushed under tons of dirt, hoped Belavere Trench would be left with one less army, one less Alchemist.
Should’ve put a bullet in your head when you had the chance, Patrick told himself.
The tunnel seemed to turn sideways again, his legs gave way, and the soldier at his arm grunted and cursed.
Patrick became vaguely aware of earth against his nostrils, soft mud cradling him on all sides.
“Patrick?” came a familiar voice. There were hands at his face, then on his shoulder. He winced. “Patrick, you have to get up!”
It was a voice both ugly and beautiful to him. Pain invaded again.
“Watch yourself, Charmer. Get away from him.”
“Patrick? Open your eyes.”
He wished he hadn’t. He wanted very much to never glimpse her again. But a soldier crouched nearby with a lantern, and it haloed around her face as she hovered over him, her brow pinched and lined, the hazel of her eyes still prominent even shot through with blood. Her hair had pulled free and turned wild, long tangled curls falling into her face. Her muddy fingers were coursing up his neck, settling warmly against his jaw.
He detested the blood racing beneath her touch.
“Patrick?” she said again, relief blooming across her face.
“Sink… it,” he grunted. “Please.”
Tears drowned the hazel. “I can’t,” she whispered, her desperation nearly tangible.
But it was not for him, he now knew. Not for Kenton. Just for herself.
“Then get away from me.” He turned his head out of her grasp, managed to roll onto his stomach. Two soldiers took him beneath his arms and hauled him to standing. He cried out in pain.
After that, he couldn’t discern if his feet moved of his own accord or if he was being dragged by the men flanking him. The tunnel Nina had carved stretched onward, the dead end looming closer, and he listened to the sounds of her labored breath behind him, the earth’s taunts, the grunting of the soldiers. He watched the images that plagued his mind of crumbling rooftops and screaming children. Whistling bullets and living fire, bouncing from house to house.
He pictured Kenton Hill, smoldering until the light came and then long after.
And he refused to ever picture Nina Harrow again.
