The manor full of sleeping children was soothing and daunting all at once; he no longer felt quite so lonely, but the weight of responsibility was heavy. At least it weighed down the sick feeling inside him, and stifled some of his fear. He wondered where Derie and Charles were, how they were faring in the pandemonium. This was not a part of the plan. He did not know what to do next.
The Wall was very high. Anything could be happening beyond it. Anything.
* * *
The children stayed through the next day. Taking turns with Canty, the older girls each marshaled one of the younger ones and began cleaning the manor from top to bottom. Nate told them, repeatedly, that they didn’t have to do it—in fact, it made him uncomfortable, having them poking innocently into the corners of Arkady’s decadent old life—but Bindy ignored his protests. “Gives the littles something to do,” she said. “Better than having them sit around fretting.” In truth, he was glad of the distraction. Retying aprons and cutting slices of bread and butter kept him busy, too. The idea that Judah might be dead, and he wouldn’t know, was nearly driving him mad.
Charles arrived just after nightfall on the second night, barefoot and bedraggled. The guards were still on duty in front so he came to the back door, like Bindy’s family had. Nate hadn’t seen him in weeks. He was shocked at the change in his old friend: the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes. Charles’s chin was covered with a bronze haze of stubble and there was a sizeable bruise under his left eye. He carried nothing with him, not even the satchel he’d brought over the Barriers. “Lady Maryle’s dead,” he said.
Rina, who had been spooning potato soup into Canty’s mouth, froze when she heard this, her face bright and vengeful. “Wait, Charles,” Nate said, and pulled him into the parlor.
Charles barely seemed to notice the interruption. “Set fire to the manor, with everyone in it. Said she couldn’t bear to lose a single thing more, not one thread of tapestry. Gainell and her sister and I made it out. But they couldn’t get the old woman to move.” Charles’s eyes were haunted. “I couldn’t help her. Her own daughters couldn’t help her. She was too big for us to carry out. We barely made it ourselves. There was a crowd outside and I ran. We all did.”
“Maybe you should have run faster,” Nate said, nodding toward the bruise on Charles’s face.
Charles blinked without comprehension. Then, remembering, he touched the bruise. “Oh. That. I cut through the Bazaar. Stupid. Of course they were looting it. Fortunately for me, a better courtier came along. Not fortunate for him, poor bastard. Although if he were poor, and a bastard, he might have had better luck.” A high, nervous giggle escaped him. “The Seneschal’s arrested the heads of all the best families, you know. It’s the ones in the middle they’re stringing up. Figures, doesn’t it? We worked for five generations to bring Elban down, and practically the moment we get here, he’s deposed.”
“The power is still bound,” Nate said. “We’re not done yet.”
“You might not be, but I am,” Charles said. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and disappeared into Arkady’s bedroom. Nate bit back his anger—Charles had abandoned his satchel and Lady Maryle, but saved his drug—and let him go.
The rest of that night was no quieter than the one before. The dead courtier still lay where he’d fallen across the Square. The weather was warm. Nate knew the body would soon start to rot.
On the third day, Nora came to get her children, walking confidently past the guards to the front door as if she’d done so a thousand times before. She wore a white sash across her chest, bound in brown embroidery that looked hastily done. Nate made tea.
“I thank you for taking in my children, but they’ll be safe enough now,” she said, and pointed to her sash. “I’m on the worker’s committee for Paper. Nobody will bother us.”
“Rina mentioned the committee,” Nate said. “What does it do?”
“Everything. Factories always ran this city, you know. Only difference will be that now the money’s actually going to the people who work in them, instead of some courtier’s pocket. Managers know the running of the factories better than the courtiers ever did, anyway.” She called out to the children, and the manor was suddenly full of the sounds of running