by memory, avoiding the one warped floorboard that squeaked against the joists. The crack at the base of the prisoner’s door flickered from within. He paused and heard the S’s of a rush of whispered words.
He didn’t bother with the key. The lock was disengaged—he could feel it—so he raised the gun and held his breath and opened the door abruptly.
A candle on the floor showed the Maimer in his chair. Molly held the knife that Pitt had left behind. She removed it from the Maimer’s throat and dropped it in surprise. It wasn’t the gun she seemed to fear, or even Tom’s reaction, but the loss of what had brought her there—the loss of some advantage.
She had been crying but contained herself and backed toward the corner. The Maimer wasn’t cut. He smiled in relief, but his eyes looked frightened and his cheek flesh twitched. The door had moved the candle flame; shadows grew and shifted. Molly’s face seemed to pulse, her tears lightly glistened, and her wide-open eyes had their own clear fire.
Tom stepped toward her, kicking the candle in distraction and grabbing her arm in the dark. Molly pulled away. He didn’t want a struggle with the Maimer right beside them so he backed toward the door and said, “Downstairs. Now.”
Once he had her out of the room, he locked the door a second time—lot of ruddy good the first time had done—and led her down the stairs as quietly as he could. Molly stepped on every loose board along the way, including the third-to-last step with its low, mournful groan.
He sat her at a table in the middle of the taproom. Nabby’s door opened in the shadows off the kitchen.
“Only me,” Tom said.
Nabby mumbled and retreated.
He stirred the embers in the hearth, lit a taper, and ignited a whale-oil lantern hanging from a rafter. The light was pure and gentle, like a touch of summer dawn. Molly watched the flame, distant but alert, her illuminated face seeming younger in the glow but older in expression. She was difficult to read.
He put a kettle in the hearth and ground smoak behind the bar. The nuts were tough to pulverize and Tom muscled in, using so much force he almost bent the grinder’s handle. It was a violent sound but yielded fluffy powder in the box, which he spooned into cups and stirred with boiling water. Molly didn’t move when he set a cup before her, and he stood a minute longer, looking down at her and breathing in the aromatic steam.
Then he sat and held her hand, both gentle and direct. She was hot beneath his palm.
“Drink,” he said.
He squeezed her hand. She sighed and took a sip.
It might have been Elkinaki firewater, to judge by her wince. That was everyone’s reaction to a first taste of smoak—its bitter-rich, cinnamony, burnt-black flavor—but he’d bet a silver plate she would crave it ever after. Molly put it down and looked considerably sharper. Her breath intermingled with the fragrance of the smoak and made a spice so potent that his skin began to tingle.
“You’re good at picking locks,” he said.
“I learned it growing up.”
“With other people’s locks?”
“No, at home,” Molly said.
Tom released her hand and drank his smoak, leaning back.
“Tell me about that.”
“Not now.”
“You want to reconsider,” Tom said. “Because I know it ain’t your memory that’s keeping you from talking. I already think the worst, and I don’t want to. I truly don’t.”
The lantern just behind him threw his shadow on her bosom, darkening the leaf-print pattern of her gown.
“You know him,” Tom said.
“I’ve seen him before.”
“He’s seen you, too.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Molly tremored when she spoke but looked defensively resolved, like a person loath to fight finally putting up her fists. “In Grayport,” she said.
“You lived there?”
She nodded.
“With your brother,” Tom said.
Molly gripped her cup. Her eyes shone brightly, not as if to cry but rather as if her feelings had been heated, like an oil. Tom leaned against the table. They were close, knee to knee.
“You’re trying to decide if you should trust me,” Tom said. “Here’s how it is. You haven’t got a choice. Keeping secrets anymore ain’t a God-given right.”
Molly clamped her lips and didn’t speak for half a minute. Then her shoulders drooped, her face collapsed, and out the story came.
Chapter Seventeen
Molly and Nicholas disembarked the Cleaver on a cold November afternoon, having traveled from the warm Bruntish summer to the first light snow of Florian autumn.
Grayport, the oldest city on the continent, stood against the