rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a black tattoo of a club on the underside of his arm, like the card suit. It was small, halfway between his wrist and elbow. “I’m an Iron.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with...the terminology.” Though, even as she said it, Enne realized it did sound familiar. Something she had read in the section about the North Side. Admittedly, she’d skipped most of those parts. The North Side’s reputation was so dirty, even its chapters in her guidebook looked a little bit stained.
The boy leaned down a second time. The whiteboots watched them from the end of the block, and Shark kept one hand on his gun. “You’re lost, missy. And walking straight into some muck. So take my advice: ditch your trunk, and scram. Playing nice is the same as losing in this city.” Before she could adequately digest what he’d said, he whispered, “Three, two, one.”
He took off.
Behind her, Shark and Cigar shoved their way toward her, cursing and knocking travelers aside. Enne whimpered, terrified, yet loath to abandon all her possessions.
But the decision took only a moment. She was lost, and the boy knew Mr. Glaisyer, Enne’s only connection to finding Lourdes. Maybe Mr. Glaisyer could explain the misunderstanding between the whiteboots and her mother. Maybe he possessed the key to those locked doors. And besides, possessions could be replaced.
She dropped her trunk, yanked up the hem of her skirt, and sprinted after the boy.
He ran two blocks past the end of the harbor before turning down an alley. Wheezing, she forced her legs to move faster. Her heels clicked loudly with each step, and sweat dampened her forehead and undersleeves. Enne couldn’t remember the last time she’d run. This behavior must’ve breached every one of Lourdes’s rules.
The boy slipped down another alley up ahead, while Enne trailed fifty paces behind. What if she lost him? For every step she made, he’d already made three. He clearly had some sort of speed talent, which explained why his features were so angular—like he’d been made to be aerodynamic. She passed a pawnshop and an outdoor grocer, but no one looked twice at her, as if a girl fleeing from the authorities was a common morning occurrence in New Reynes. Maybe it was.
The next alley had no streetlights, and thanks to the black clouds and towering buildings, she could hardly see where her feet landed. Soon the noises of the main street—the motorcars, the shouting, the traffic whistles—disappeared, and it became eerily quiet. Only their footsteps remained. Enne’s heart pounded so hard, she felt the beats in her back.
The buildings here looked different, too. In the harbor, the shipping houses were made of a weathered white stone—the kind her guidebook described as characteristic of the city. But the architecture around her now was gothic and black, full of spires and archways and wrought iron. Everything was sharp, a place designed to cut. To draw blood. It was the kind of dark where shadows didn’t exist. Wherever she was...she shouldn’t be here.
She turned a corner and found the boy waiting for her. He stood at the doorway of a house with boarded windows and shriveled ivy crawling up its gutters. He grabbed her by her blazer and jerked her inside. She crashed to the wooden floor.
They were in a dusty, unused kitchen. Two panels on the ceiling flickered with murky light.
The boy bent over her. “So, why are you looking for Pup?”
Enne scrambled to her feet and smoothed out her dress, hyperaware of how inappropriate their situation was. They were alone in goodness knows where. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t even know what he wanted.
What had she done?
No emotions, no fear, she thought. She smiled and adjusted her posture, but that couldn’t have made much of an impression, panting and sweating as she was.
“Well, I’m actually looking for my mother, Lourdes Alfero,” Enne explained. “She mentioned Mr. Glaisyer to me in a letter. She said he’d be glad to help.”
“I never knew Pup to be glad to help anyone,” he said darkly. “Sure you got the right man?”
Dread blossomed in her like black ink soaking through paper. Could there have been some other mistake? “I believe so,” she replied meekly. “How are you acquainted with him?”
“Acquainted?” he echoed. With his thick New Reynes accent, he didn’t pronounce the t. It reminded Enne that she was awfully far away from home.
“How do you know Mr. Glaisyer?” she asked.
“Everyone does,” he answered. “He’s the lord.”
Footsteps thudded down a staircase, and two others entered the kitchen. The first was another boy, also about Enne’s age. He had a soldier’s look to him: broad shoulders, a shirt too tight for his muscular build and an expression like he was never much surprised about anything—that, or he didn’t care. Black-and-white tattoos covered his arms, some disappearing into his sleeve, snaking up his neck. Among them were two small ones, the only ones with color: a red J on one arm, and a diamond on the next, in the same places as the first boy’s. He wore his trousers cuffed and his blond hair slicked back underneath a newsboy cap.
Like a gangster, she thought. She took a step closer to the door.
The other person was a girl, maybe thirteen years old. She had golden skin and thick black hair, which was cut bobbed and jagged. She wore men’s clothes that were several sizes too large and a pair of ruby earrings that Enne imagined she’d stolen. On the underside of her forearms, just like the boys, she had two tattoos: a black spade on the left, a five on the right.
The boys met each other’s eyes sternly. “Where’ve you been, Chez?” the soldier one demanded. “And where—” his eyes wandered over to Enne “—did you find a missy like this?”
“Near Tropps Street. She was wandering around...an easy target, really—”
“You’re a bad liar,” the soldier one said. “You’ve been pickpocketing near the harbor again. You know Levi has business with the whiteboot captain. Business worth a lot more than a few volts in some tourist’s pocket.”
Enne perked up at the mention of Levi. So they both knew him.
“Then where’s my paycheck, Jac?” Chez growled. “Where’s her paycheck?” He gestured toward the girl. When the soldier boy—Jac—didn’t respond, Chez added, “I found this missy asking the whiteboots about Pup—I mean, about Levi. Levi and some other person. Then they started tailing her.” Chez took a switchblade out of his pocket and flipped it between his knuckles—deftly, expertly. Enne’s mouth dried, and she hugged her purse to her side. “She’s kinda thick.”
Jac tugged at his cap and nodded at Enne, who tried not to appear nervous. From his build, Enne guessed he had a strength talent. If he grabbed her, she wouldn’t be able to escape. And if she ran, Chez would catch her.
They all knew Levi Glaisyer, but something was wrong. Without knowing why, she felt trapped. Fifty minutes in the city, and she’d already made a dangerous mistake.
Jac stepped closer to Enne and stared at her with such intensity that, if not for years of etiquette training, would’ve made her drop her gaze to the floor. Lost or not, strength and speed talents or not, she refused to let them know they intimidated her.
