om muttered under his breath, grit-toothed, “‘s what I fuckin’ said, toff,” but the drum of the rain fair swallowed it up. Hadn’t meant for it to be heard, anyway; wasn’t like it’d’ve got through that pretty skull to wherever the pina brain was. Wasn’t sure what else he expected of the sort of man who proudly called himself an object.
There was something flooding mesmerizing about that voice, though. More the way he talked than what he said, the way the fancy words spilled out of him all pretty-like, like they was at some dazzling party up the Court and not slumming it in Voedale. The laugh’d made the back of his neck prickle pleasantly.
For whatever else he was, he was keeping up well enough. A flood of rainwater slanting from a nearby awning’d caught him on one side, and he hadn’t missed a beat. His dark hair was slick and glistening, his narrow face still ghost-white in the night. The occasional light spilling out of a window or a street-lamp caught the edge of a blue eye, glinting. Vigilant as he was, Tom kept watching him sidelong, studying his sharp, delicate profile.
He raised one heavy eyebrow when Ewing began again.
He was wheezing with laughter, then, snorting through the rain. It was a good minute or so after Ewing’d done that he stopped, and then snorted again, like it hadn’t got finished washing over him.
A dancer’d been funny enough, as it was no doubt intended to be – he could hold his own in a gkacha, but this toff wouldn’t’ve considered that dancing, anyway – and there was something about the way he’d drawled day laborer in that flooding accent.
But the last one really took it. “Right on the ging, Ewin’,” he replied cheerfully, “that’s what I am.”
They crossed a broader thoroughfare; the rain was still pouring down, running in filthy rivulets along the curb. They was in the Cat’s Paw, now, Tom knew, and he could hear the sound of some benny caoja a street or so over, always just out of sight. Much as he didn’t care what Ewing got himself into, he reckoned running afoul of pirates was the last thing his toffin erse needed.
They took the back ways – some just alleyways, where the buildings pressed so close together overhead no rain got through but what ran stinking in the streets. They got narrower and narrower as they went, and the stones slicker and slicker.
Now, he kept one eye to the windows on either side, to the rotting makeshift boards under which beggars huddled for warmth. It was on an empty clothesline he saw it, first: a blue phosphor lamp whose glass was smeared charcoal. He was just able to make out the symbol through the mist, bleary-eyed and sobering up; he grinned. They’d changed the way again, but them that Ipadi trusted knew how to find it. He hoped Ipadi still trusted him after the incident in Bethas, anyway. Time to find out.
A mechanic. Nothing of it touched his face, nothing of what he felt; and what he felt burned brief – cold – settled where it’d settled for years now, a painful knot below his heart.
“Engines,” he mused, tilting his head to look again at Ewing; there was more than just amusement in his smile, and in the way his eyes swept up and down the drenched toff, studying him in the light from the lantern. “Should’ve known. I know the hands of a mechanic, Ewin’,” he said, as if casually, and shrugged. “Deft hands, oes? Hands as know the ins and outs of heavy machinery.” He pronounced the words carefully, clicking his tongue.
He went left where the alleyway split into two; he quickened his pace, stalking through the dripping dark. He thought, and thought. Too fucking sober, that he couldn’t keep himself thinking about all this shit, turning it over. He walked faster. Ne burn scarring on those hands, ne pina cuts and scrapes and burns as he remembered.
Cold. Tom barked with laughter, feeling another spur of anger.
With another big shrug, he wrestled off his mant coat, damp on the outside but warm and dry on the inside, even if the lining’d seen better days. He tossed it at Ewing, grinning.
“Worked on many engines, toff?” he called back, catching sight of another blue lantern in a second-story window, this time with a different symbol. He could just make it out through the cracked, dirty glass. “Always wondered what it’s like, wi’ all that heat an’ pressure.” He bit off the words.