worry
The Lugger feels oddly bleak without Gracie and Renny. It’s still not dark. I crunch through one of the leftover pastries.
The place grows so quiet, Kit’s not needed at the bar, even with Gracie and Renny out. We gather the washing they hung in the courtyard earlier. They take most of their heavy things to the laundry up the road, but they still do bits and pieces here.
Our morning in the forest feels a lifetime ago.
“Kalqitlan.” I say his full name slowly, like dropping a pebble in a still pond, the syllables rippling out around us. He drops a handful of pegs into the bucket at our feet and looks at me. “Tell me what the Reedstones are plotting. No more games, please.”
He shakes his head and resumes pulling dishcloths down. I wait.
“Glister Reedstone and the Artist are old friends.”
I let that sink in.
But he says nothing more.
I unpeg the corner of a sheet. Snap, creak. More ripples fan out around us. The parts clunk into place.
“Oh, Mora, you’re such a good drawer,” I say, voice shrill. “Mora, I know, just draw me a quick plan of the branders’ station. Well done, Mora.” I stick the peg on his arm, hoping it pinches.
“Ow.” He plucks it off.
“Admit it, they want you helping to break him out.”
“I admit it.”
A jailbreak. Fraught with danger.
The Reedstones want to save the Artist. Their friend. Blithe Even Ronbor.
I think of him in that cell, pale and bruised but still spirited. He tried to fight back. He forged people’s records, bought them time – bought it at his own cost. They’ll make him pay the ultimate price, Lovemore and all her cronies, because he stuck two fingers up at them and wouldn’t play their game. Because Venor wants to make an example of him. To show us all that fighting back won’t be tolerated.
“I want to help too,” I tell Kit.
“Why?”
Because you caught me when I fell, and I’m still here. Because Venor thinks he’s won. Burning books and melting statues and chopping heads off like a madman.
Because boys I’ve no quarrel with think they can just chuck me in the river and branders can squeeze me like a bit of meat.
Because I’m not property of the bloody Glassworks like another Clomper.
Because I want to be an artist too. And people should be able to be artists or musicians or whatever they want. People should be able to do so much more in this short, miserable life.
I didn’t survive the Cull just to waste away serving these people who took everything from me. I’m tired of being their good little repayer. Yes, mister. Yes, missus. Right away.
Because I am a person. And I want to be brave, even if I’m not. I’m not even brave enough to say a quarter of that.
“He helped people. He would’ve helped us. We can save him, and mess up Venor’s stupid show at the Hexagon. This is about more than one man. This is about showing them – showing them all – that we count.”
“You don’t have to save everyone, Mor,” Kit says, soft and sad and obvious.
He’s right, of course. Who have I saved? I couldn’t save Char, or Enca, or Eben, or Pa. I couldn’t save Ma, two years before they came to smash everything to bits. Have we saved Zako? He’s still holed up somewhere, with a bounty on his head.
“I want to try,” I say, shaking the stiffness out of an apron.
“You both look very serious!” Felicity coos, coming in from the outside entrance to the courtyard. Her eyes are sharp. Thank goodness we’ve been talking in Crozoni.
She flops down on the bench wrapped around the plane tree with her legs stretched out, crossed at the heels. “Oh, these shoes are murder.”
“Have they shut it down already?” I ask.
“It was being broken up as I left. Peacefully though – at least it seemed that way.” She leans forward, bending to retrieve a pair of half-buried copper-framed glasses out of the detritus – fluffy seed balls and twigs and old leaves – littering the unpaved bit of ground near the bench.
“Hello! Someone’s lost their glasses,” she says.
I freeze.
I recognize those glasses. Zako must have lost them when he was haring down the tree.
“Any takers?” Felicity holds them up to the light. “Oh. Filthy lenses.” I leave the washing-gathering to sit next to her. The glass is smudged with rather small-looking fingerprints.
They must have bounced right under the bench to be spared a wash in the rain.
“Let me see?” I pinch them off her. “I don’t recognize them. The ammedown shops have bucketfuls of these. Maybe … maybe a patron lost them here.”
“Do many patrons come through here?”
She’s right. Hardly any of them come this way or try to go through the kitchen. It’s staff territory.
“I’ll put them in the kitchen in case someone comes asking.” Kit ignores her question, taking them from my hands and dropping them smoothly into a pocket.
Felicity watches his face with a strange expression before she pushes herself up off the bench. She looks back down at me. “Is that pastry on your chin?”
“Probably.”
“I hope you’ve left me some!”
“Help yourself.” Kit gives her his most winning grin as he opens the kitchen door. “There’s some on that tray.” He shuts the door quietly.
“Fuck’s sake,” he groans, slumping on to the bench beside me.
“She won’t realize.” My palms are sweating.
He puffs out a quiet sigh, head tilted back to the sunset spiralling down flaking stairways of branches.
I can’t think what to do next. My mind is blank. Well, I can think about what we did under another tree, a pine tree. I can think about his mouth on me. Desire descends like a swarm of bees. I swat the thought away. I have a million more important things to be thinking about.
Shadow kisses the ridges of his brows, the hinge of his jaw. He looks so careworn, dappled by light, propped against dappled bark. I’ve a sudden awful vision of him somewhere the light can’t reach, somewhere even the night’s softness never falls, a dim windowless cell, a harsh lantern without, casting the suffocating bars on to his skin. A shadow tattoo. A cage.
The Artist is in a cage like that.
Do Kit and the Reedstones have a chance of saving him? Or is he as good as dead already? Is Kit as good as dead too? Are all of us?
No. I feel a fury coiling up my spine, burning away the fog in my brain. Kit’s alive – we survived. We survive.
Mister S opens the kitchen door, steps down to the courtyard with a lantern that grows the dark.
And Gracie and Renny are back, boiling over with news of the vigil.
“The branders broke it up,” Renny tells us. “Magistrate’s orders. Five of the clerks wouldn’t budge. Branders took them away. Disobedience. Going to the drunk tank.”
“Poor things,” Gracie says. “Not a nice place to be sober. But they loved the pastries! Wanted more. I might have done a nice bit of business for us – said we’d bring them to the Registry in the week; the clerks will buy them at lunchtime – save them going out to get something. They only get a short break. Said they’d fetch a krunan each easily.”
Mister S raises his eyebrows. “You’ve been busy,” he says.
“They don’t cost a quarter of that in the ingredients and the baking,” Renny adds.
“We can make a small fortune,” Gracie decides. “We can do jam ones too. And cheese with the potatoes. Bit of green onion, black ale… Can’t we?” She wiggles her empty basket at Mister S. He never says no to her.
I snag a few of the last fish pastries and sneak back in the gathering dark to Opal Alley, before Ruzi starts to worry.