Cold night, he thought. His breath was just about steaming on the air, and the chill was creeping into his bones; it sunk into him like it hadn’t when he was alive, drenching all his joints in ice and making him sluggish and rickety. Maybe it’d been the salty breeze in Old Rose, but it had never felt this cold in the middle of Vortas before. Then again, maybe it was Vauquelin, and maybe it was the long hours at the factory. He felt like if he stood up for another half-second, he’d snap like a bunch of dry old twigs. But there was still farther to walk – and he was shepherding a little boch, red-nosed and bleary-eyed and clinging to his arm in a way that made his back protest. Sniffling and shuddering and begging to be carried, even though they both knew that Anatole wasn’t strong enough for that.
How, he thought to himself for what must have been the thirtieth time, did I get myself into this one? Thomas Cooke, you mung, you’re getting soft. You deserve whatever’s going to happen to you the second this gitgka opens the door.
Still, it didn’t feel as if he had much to lose.
When the sickly kid Brent had started working at the mill, Tom hadn’t paid him much heed. There was some camaraderie among the ladies, but nobody was about to throw a soiree when they got off work; even if they’d had the time and money for that kind of leisure, Tom reckoned they wouldn’t have invited him to their dinners. Urchins were always drifting in and out, hollow-eyed, working until (he assumed) they couldn’t anymore. He knew this like the back of his hand, knew that when he was a boch, he’d have ended up in a factory or a work-house if Carlisle hadn’t hired him on. It’d always seemed to Tom that there were too many children in the world – they were always slipping through cracks in the pavement – but if Marleigh’d taught him anything growing up, it was that the world weeded out the weak. In some ways, he’d always prided himself on being strong enough to weather whatever life threw at him. He’d dodged death enough times, that was sure.
Until he finally did die, leastways. But you couldn’t take death personal, same as you couldn’t take it personal that the sick and the old without means fell by the wayside, slipped through the cracks. You couldn’t take it personal that the world had cracks. People died; life was short. You were lucky if you made it to adulthood, and even luckier if you made something of yourself while you were at it. It wasn’t Tom’s responsibility whether anybody else – or anybody else’s boch – lived or died.
In theory, at any rate.
He felt his heart flutter and jump like a guttering candle, the chilly air making each breath feel like a blow to the chest. In a rush of dizzy anxiety, he pulled Brent closer to himself, wrapped his arm around the boch’s shoulder. Glanced around. Long, dark streets, the shapes of cats winding through the shadows with their threadbare coats glistening in the sparse lamplight like silverfish. Brent stumbled over a loose stone and caught himself on Tom’s coat, jarring his injured hand in the process and letting out a ragged yelp.
“Great Lady,” growled Tom under his breath, wincing at the sound. “We’re almost there, ye chen? Look, up ahead.” He pointed out into the cold, misty dark with a trembling hand. A pair of frightened, red-rimmed eyes followed his finger. “See ’em? They ent far. You can make it, can’t you? We ent gone all this way for nothin’?”
“Epaemo,” whispered the boch. “Epaemo.”
“Stop talkin’ nonsense, ye chen? It’s no trouble to me. But you gotta be brave.” He took Brent by the shoulders, stooped down, looked him in the eye. Let his voice get low, as low as he could make it go, which was very low indeed; he enunciated each word. “Do you understand? You got to behave yourself around this rosh, and maybe she’ll help you find someplace to go that isn’t the streets. I don’t know what’ll happen. But you got to be brave, brave as you ever been, and quiet and good as a mouse in a grandfather clock.”
Brent nodded.
Tom waved a bony finger. “And no more fiddlin’ with the splint. Leave it alone.”
“If you’d just used some voo to—”
“Can’t,” snapped Tom, pulling the kid along again. They stumbled through the dark streets, keeping to the shadows, Tom keeping his eyes out for sharp things in the dark. “Ask me again an’ I’ll—” He coughed, lungs rattling. “I don’t know. Just close your head an’ come on, kid.”
“I miss Daoa.”
“I’ll bet you do. Great Lady, I’ll bet you do.”
Among the Painted Ladies, it was even quieter. In the narrow sliver of sky between the rooftops, Tom could see a scattering of stars, guttering in and out of the clouds. In the shadows between the lamplights, he squinted for the building he’d been told to look out for: it couldn’t be that hard to find a bright pink house, he reckoned, but all the houses here were colorful, and it was dark, and he felt like he’d slipped into a fever dream. His back was twinging more and more by the minute with the boch hanging off him, and the thundering in his head was starting back up, never content to leave him alone.
He was limping by the time he’d found the little pink house, damp with cold sweat gathering in his palms. His heart was still hammering, but he clattered to a halt, and the boch gave him a curious look. He swallowed thickly, swallowed glass.
“Is that it?” asked Brent. “Can’t we go in?”
Tom didn’t say anything.
“It clockin’ hurts! An’ I’m cold!”
“Lady,” breathed Tom. “Sack it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just damned –” She was an old lady, by all accounts – what could she do to hurt him? And what did it matter, anyway? As long as he got the kid in safely, what did it matter what happened? He patted Brent on the back, trying to be reassuring even though his hand was trembling with a violence. “Come on.”
The two of them struggled up to the door, breathing heavily. Brent was picking at the bandages around his hand again, but Tom didn’t have the time – or the mental energy – to do ought about it. Instead, he raised his own hand and banged on the door, wincing at the sound. A well-fed patch tabby peered around a corner at some distance, hungry eyes glittering in the distant lamplight. Tom hoped somebody was home.