Broken Guns

Putting fast distance between themselves and the Prince and Rose in the lamp-lit streets of Canalcourt was surprisingly easy. Ezra knew the city like a lover’s body, and he pulled them through twisting streets and tiny alleys, through doorways and side lanes that Emmerich might never had looked twice at. He tried not to focus on how warm and oddly strong Ezra’s hand felt in his, but instead on how that hand was the only thing left he had to rely on.

Allister had governed his life for the last five years, and now that supportive prison was gone. Just—gone. Allister was dead and the men that Emmerich had spent years with were likely trying to do the same to him. It hardly felt possible.

Perhaps ten minutes in all had passed since the first shots had rung out in the brothel, yet it felt like hours. When Ezra pulled them to a stop near a flickering lamppost to drop the pillowslip to the cobbles, lean over his knees and catch his breath, Emmerich could only slump wordlessly against the post and stare.

Ezra’s dark hair was tousled back off his forehead, his face flushed and sweating. His braces had both fallen off his shoulders and trailed as dark loops against his hips, and somehow a button of his shirt had come undone. He braced himself against the corner of the building and panted against the back of his wrist, clutching at the muscles below his ribs. Emmerich switched his gaze to the shoddy masonry of the building on the opposite corner while he got his own wind back, breathing carefully through the cramping pains in his sides.

They had come to a broken part of the city, where the buildings were rotten and sway-backed, jumbles of wood and brick and plaster leaning into each other. The hour was late, and there was no one on this tiny crooked street but the two of them. The mud was thick on the ground, swallowing what excuse for paving there had once been. The gutter ran thick and vile. No gaslamps had been installed here, and the only light came from a few flickering candles lit inside dingy glass boxes, and the patched windows of some of the buildings. He was sure they hadn’t crossed the river, into the truly dangerous parts of the city that even Emmerich was loath to travel into, but they were certainly at the edges of the slums. Sevengate, likely, or the Borrows.

A hand caught at his wrist, and Emmerich turned to meet Ezra’s frantic face, pinched and pale in the faint light.

“Are we all right?” Ezra said, for one moment looking only like a scared young boy, and nothing like the glint-eyed grinning thief who had looked at a chest full of dangerous money and said I know what I’m doing. “Tell me we’re all right, Emery.”

“We’re all right,” Emmerich said. And, to prove it, he reached out and clasped his hand over Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra’s hand jerked up and closed over his fingers, clutching hard. He was shaking. Emmerich took a step closer, until his arm was fully bent up between his chest and Ezra’s shoulder, the only thing keeping them apart.

“Fehlt dir was?” Emmerich said, quietly. Ezra nodded, leaning in towards him a bit.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I only—no, I’m fine.”

He drew in a breath and straightened up, and Emmerich let his hand fall off Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra dragged the sleeve of his shirt—both of which had come unrolled and now fell past his knuckles—across his forehead, and gave Emmerich a faint smile.

“It could have been a worse night,” Emmerich said then, and Ezra gaped at him.

“How so?”

“Well.” Emmerich reached over and thumbed one of the other boy’s fallen braces back into place, laying it smooth against his shoulder. “We could’ve disliked each other.”

“That’s the truth,” Ezra said, slipping the other brace back up at the same time. Emmerich bit down on his tongue, realizing the oddness of what he’d done only now, after he had already done it. From the way Ezra was looking at him, he’d noticed it too.

And then, Ezra reached out and tugged Emmerich’s rumpled collar firmly back into place, straightening it and finishing by giving Emmerich a light slap in the neck. Then he grinned, unexpectedly, and Emmerich pulled himself together fast enough to return it.

“We have to watch out for each other, now,” Ezra said, still smiling, but his eyes hard and serious. “We’ll never get out of this alive, if we don’t.”

“I know.” And Emmerich knew, fully and fool-heartedly, that he was already prepared to trust Ezra with his life. It was stupid, ridiculous—he knew nothing about this boy and his friendliness could be nothing but an act, calculated to gain trust and then exploit it.

But then again, Ezra could have already shot Emmerich three times over when he’d had both pistols, or taken the pillowslip and run into the night while Emmerich was climbing down a whorehouse wall, and he hadn’t done that either. He hadn’t given any reason yet for Emmerich not to trust him. So it was the only thing he could do.

“So where do we go?” Emmerich said, aloud but mostly to himself.

“Well,” Ezra said. He was looking towards the corner end of the street, to a wattle-and-daub building with a sloping roof, a few of the thick-paned windows lit up by golden light. The creaking wooden sign hung over the door marked it as some sort of lodging, and a fairly run-down one at that.

“As good as anything,” Emmerich said, and Ezra nodded and grasped at the top of the pillowslip again. They crept across the filthy, stinking street until they were beneath the eaves of the inn, in the wash of thick, yellow light that came through the grimy glass windows. Ezra reached for the door at once, and Emmerich caught his elbow and held him back.

“We can’t both go in,” he said, and Ezra frowned at him.

“Why not?”

Emmerich lifted his eyebrows slightly, and made a small gesture between them. Reminding him that they were both male, one of them unusually young and striking, both of them still flushed and tousled from their run through the city, and carrying a bulging pillowslip. Asking for a single room together like this might rouse some suspicion, or at least remembrance of them by an innkeeper. And they ought to be keeping as unmemorable as possible.

“Oh,” Ezra said. He rubbed at one eye with the knuckle of his thumb and glanced away. “Right, of course. I’ll do it then.”

“I’ll stay here,” Emmerich said, putting one hand to the twisted top of the pillowslip.

Ezra looked at him for a moment, a hard gaze that Emmerich matched. Ezra had already shown that he was in this for all that it was and could be trusted, when Emmerich had dropped a fortune down to him in the dark. Now it was his turn to show that he was just as involved, just as reliable. He wanted Ezra to be able to trust him, just as much as he did Ezra already.

“All right,” Ezra said. He smoothed down his dark hair again, arranging it neatly over his forehead, and drew in a steady breath. Then he pulled open the door to the inn. Yellow light spilled out around his shoulders for a brief moment, gleaming across his hair, and then he disappeared inside. Emmerich twisted the cloth of the pillowslip tight around his fingers, leaned against the rough wall, and waited. After a moment or two he could hear mumbled, muted talk through the wall; Ezra’s, and a creakier and older male voice. Somebody laughed. There came the familiar sound of coins clinking against wood, and footsteps across old floorboards and up squeaking stairs.

Emmerich began to feel quite exposed standing there on the open street, gripping at a sack of stolen money and with the hazy glow of the windows illuminating him so nicely. He went around into the narrow space between the inn and the building beside it, their roof edges nearly touching above the alleyway. He was less noticeable here. It was past midnight and damp fog was beginning to creep round the gutters and corners, blotting out the road.

After several minutes’ time, Emmerich heard a creaking sound from somewhere high above him. He turned upwards, squinting into the dark. A window on the second floor had been pushed open, and a shadow leaned out of the unlit room and waved.

“Hey!” Ezra’s whispered voice floated down to him, echoing against the stones. “Can you climb up?”

Emmerich held up the pillowslip and shook it; not with this.

“Scheiße,” Ezra said. “Wait there.” He ducked back through the window, melting back into shadows.

Emmerich chuckled quietly; apparently he was rubbing off on Ezra too much already. His accent was still terrible, but the language complemented his voice. With practice, Emmerich was sure, he would nearly sound natural at it.

“Here!” A long whip-like object suddenly flew down from the window. Emmerich held his hand up, catching the tangling ends of Ezra’s braces around his arm.

“Tie it up, then toss it here,” Ezra whispered down, and Emmerich knelt and did exactly that. The pillowslip was too full to close off the top in any satisfactory way, so instead he wrapped the braces around it like a parcel and tied it firmly off.

It took several tries, and Ezra nearly toppled himself out of the window by leaning forward too far, but finally Emmerich managed to throw the pillowslip high enough for Ezra to snag it with his fingers, grab it, and pull it through the window. Emmerich was only glad the street was dark and most of the surrounding buildings had no lights on in the windows, and that no one was likely to see this astonishingly suspicious behavior.

“Your turn,” Ezra whispered down, appearing at the window again. “Can you make it?”

“I’ll find out,” Emmerich said, and reached for the wooden crossbeams.

Climbing up was quite a lot more difficult than climbing down. His belt and holster weighed him down and seemed to catch on every jutting edge of the building, and he wished he’d thought to toss those up to Ezra as well before trying. The rough walls didn’t give much purchase, but he could wedge the toes of his boots into the spaces where the wooden cross-beams met and push himself up that way. till, he was relying most on the strength of his grip and his arms, which were fortunately suitable for the task.

It was still a long climb, and by the time he reached the sill of the uppermost window he was sweating and straining with effort. Ezra caught his arms and pulled him in through the window, sending both of them staggering back against a wooden bed frame. The room was small enough that the length of the bed nearly stretched from wall to window. The ceiling sloped upwards from the window, thick with beams; an attic room.

“I’m finished climbing buildings for today,” Emmerich muttered, untangling himself from Ezra and steadying them both. Ezra just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Emmerich shut the window again, wedging the wooden frames into firm place. There was no latch, but the climb had been difficult enough that it was unlikely anyone would be coming in after them that way.

Emmerich turned back to the room. It was small, grubby, everything in greyish wood. There was a layer of grit on the floor, dusty heavy in the air. The smell of the street still lingered inside; not as strong, but just as foul. The ceiling swayed inwards in places where it wasn’t supported by beams. A half-melted candle in a fixture on the wall was the only light. Ezra was busy shoving a rough wooden lowboy in front of the door. It was the only other piece of furniture there beside the bed. The small, single bed.

Of course, Emmerich thought, trying to look anywhere in the room but at it. Ezra had been a single man requesting a room. A single man needed only a single bed. The pillowslip tied up with Ezra’s braces rested innocently in the center of it, the sides straining with the money they had just stolen.

Ezra seemed not to be bothered by the bed in the slightest. He was now moving around the walls, just as he had at the brothel, tracing his hands over them. Emmerich had thought it had just been a strange quirk when he’d seen him do it before—now he realized what it was. Familiarizing himself with the place. Checking for hidden things, like the door he’d found; peep-holes, panels, hidden features. It was smart, smarter than Emmerich had ever been.

“There could still be men after us,” Emmerich said, and Ezra drew in a thin breath through his nose, pausing with his fingertips on the wall.

“There are men after us,” he said. “Well, shifts for sleep then, I reckon. As there’s only one bed anyway.”

“Who goes first?” Emmerich said. He didn’t care much for admitting that he was unlikely to even last an hour; he was exhausted and shaking and his head ached. He doubted sleep would come easily, but the prospect of fighting it was an unhappy one. Ezra looked much the same, and seemed to become aware of it as they looked at each other.

“Well, fuck,” Ezra said, and the word in his refined voice even sounded strange and out of place. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing.

“Well,” Emmerich said. “We could,” he gestured, vaguely, at the single lumpy browned mattress on the wood frame. Ezra kept looking at him, a slight crease in his forehead. Puzzled, not understanding.

“We could—“ Emmerich said, hand-waving uselessly again and starting to feel perverse for even thinking the idea, let alone suggesting it.

For the quickest second, a look that was something like pure terror flashed over Ezra’s face. But as soon as Emmerich blinked, the expression had changed into a wry, amused smile.

“Sleep back-to-back, you mean,” he said.

“Neither of us is fit for much else right now,” Emmerich said. “There’s only one door, and there’s a lowboy in front of it. If anyone tries to get in by way of that window, we’ll hear them long before. We should be safe enough.”

Ezra kept looking at him for a long, fairly uneasy moment. Then he said, “All right.”

“All right,” Emmerich said in turn. Still, the feeling between them was uncomfortable and tense. Emmerich was about to take the suggestion back and volunteer for first watch and a few uncomfortable hours of forced vigilance, when Ezra dropped down on the edge of the bed and began to take his boots off. The mattress huffed dust into the air and Ezra coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. Looking at it, Emmerich almost would have preferred the stained and sprung bed back at the brothel.

He also wasn’t sure how undressed Ezra was going to get, and even if they were to be sleeping in the same bed he felt he shouldn’t be watching quite so intently. He turned his back to Ezra and began unbuckling his holster and belt. It made him think back, to the beginning of the night, when he’d drawn his pistol on Ezra simply because he was nervous, been insistent on watching a papered-over section of wall that would clearly never be a threat.

“I can’t believe I was so worried about a door,” he muttered, and at his back, Ezra laughed. And then kept laughing, a breathless and helpless sound that was nothing like Emmerich had heard from him yet. When he turned, Ezra had pressed the heels of his hands to his face and was shaking with mirth. Emmerich found there was nothing to do but join him.

He hadn’t laughed in what seemed like ages, and it felt good. Loosened something that had been tight and rusted in his chest, relieved pressure that let him breathe again. He wasn’t even sure what they were laughing about—the door, the entire night itself, but they both understood it in an unspoken implicit way.

When Emmerich then sat down on the bed beside Ezra to remove his own boots, things felt far less strained between them. Ezra’s shoulder was warm against his and the boy still smelled like spice and tobacco, now hidden under the lingering scent of gunpowder and the rotten air of the rookeries.

“So you said,” Ezra spoke then, “at the brothel, that the right hands were running things now. I suppose you meant Staard and Clavel, then.”

“Clavel, yes. I don’t know Staard,” Emmerich said. “Was he the man that was with you—the ginger?”

Ezra nodded. “Johan Staard,” he said. “He was to Kegg what Clavel was to Allister. Second to everything.”

“It was him and Clavel I saw downstairs, in the middle of it all. Whatever they have planned, it’s their doing.”

“Not so surprising,” Ezra said. “Only that they seemed to have planned it together.”

“And that all the others knew of it, but us.”

They caught gazes, and simply looked at each other until Emmerich cleared his throat and leaned away and then rose to his feet, reaching to his belt to unbuckle the holster and heavy pistol from his waist. From the corner of his eye he watched Ezra catch at the pillowslip of stolen money and drag it off the edge of the bed, then push it beneath the frame with the heel of his foot. Then he stretched himself out on the far side of the bed, facing the wall. Emmerich left his holster on lowboy in front of the door, but kept the bulldog with him. Ezra still had his own pistol with him in the bed as well, up near the pillow.

Emmerich took a breath, closed his eyes and set his shoulders. Then he pinched out the candle on the wall and crept back to the bed in the dark.

He had learned—trained himself really, over seven years—to sleep lightly. So lightly that sometimes the sounds of his own breathing could wake him. He trusted his own reflexes, the natural instincts of his body to come awake if anything happened around him. And the bulldog lay, barrel pointed door-wards, just by his hand. If the door or windows so much as creaked in their frames, his body would be up and ready before his mind was fully awake.

Ezra wasn’t quite pressed against him in the bed; there was room enough to avoid that with both of them lying on their sides, but Emmerich could feel the heat from the boy’s body taunting at him. It had just been so long since Emmerich had been this intimately near to anyone, and he was sure that was the cause of most of this. To Ezra, he was only here as the other man caught in an accident of betrayal, fate shackling them together. Emmerich had to get control of himself, because he could kill them both if he wasn’t focused, if he allowed Ezra to distract him. They weren’t out of this yet.

Sleep was a long time in coming.

#

Emmerich woke up into dusty morning sunlight and the bitter, hard smell of tobacco. He hadn’t had a smoke in months, Allister’s pay wasn’t enough to cover such personal amenities. He’d as good as quit because of it, but the old familiar smell alone was enough to drag him, tauntingly, to the edge of waking. And what he saw over the end of the bed was enough to drive him hard into full consciousness.

Ezra was sitting in the window ledge, one leg drawn up and the other stretched out at a long, lean angle. His hair was rumpled and raked to one side, his oversized shirt entirely unbuttoned in front, the sleeves rolled up. Light came in through the slats in the shutters behind him. He held a thinly rolled cigarette between his thumb and middle finger, the smoke and morning sunlight hazing around his sharp profile in a golden glow.

Emmerich felt his breath catch and stutter in his throat for a reason other than the cloying smoke, and a raging heat churned through him. The boy was beautiful, and he wasn’t even trying. It was hardly fair. If they were going to be relying on each other from now on, they were going to have to lay some ground rules for proper behavior. Such as Ezra needing to stay fully dressed at all times. And never, ever smoking, because as the boy lifted the cigarette to bow-shaped lips and gently sucked just so, Emmerich had to grip his hands into the mattress and swallow down a small, helpless groan.

He wasn’t as successful as he’d thought, as Ezra shook himself a little and glanced at him.

“Morgen,” he said, giving Emmerich a half-wave with the cigarette, dragging a trail of gleaming white smoke through the air. “We seem to still be alive.”

“We do,” Emmerich said, trying not to sound as strangled as he felt. Ezra stood up off the window ledge, the open front of his shirt falling straight around his narrow waist. He had a thin trail of dark hair leading up from below the waistline of his trousers to his navel, and Emmerich was not looking at it. Not at all. Nor was he looking at the lean line of muscle at Ezra’s chest, or the way a falling path of light dipped along his collarbone and throat, or the round pink edge of one of his nipples, showing just under the edge of the shirt.

Whether he felt Emmerich’s eyes on him or the movement was a coincidence, Ezra suddenly closed his shirt up at the throat and did up most of the buttons. Emmerich didn’t allow himself to look away, instead holding Ezra’s gaze as though he had every right to watch him dress or undress. And he did, if Ezra was going to do it right in front of him. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but Ezra’s face looked pinker under the floating motes in the hazy light.

Ezra also became very fascinated by the window shutters while Emmerich used the chamber pot beneath the bed. The smell of his cigarette was everywhere in the room now and there was a drawing in Emmerich’s throat, that same desire that had been slowly awakening itself since the night before. There were too many things that this boy had, which Emmerich couldn’t take.

When he was done, he sat down on the edge of the bed and Ezra came to sit near him. The streets of the rookery were waking up around them, and from all around Emmerich could hear noises of the slums, clanging and hollering and squalling below, shouts of children and men and women. Leaving here, unnoticed, with a large sack of money was going to be much more difficult than it had been the night prior. And they ought to leave soon, Emmerich thought distantly, watching Ezra lift the cigarette to his mouth again.

“You had that tobacco on you yesterday?” he asked, and Ezra laughed and shook his head.

“Got it off the proprietor when I arranged for the room,” he said. “Thought I might have need of it.”

“May I—?” Emmerich asked, swallowing against the words sticking in his throat. He gestured instead, and Ezra amiably passed him a small sack of tobacco and rolling paper from his pocket. With shaking hands, Emmerich managed to get one done well enough on his third attempt.

Ezra was watching him, a smile teasing at the edge of his mouth. “Out of practice?”

“You could say,” Emmerich said. His mouth was so dry that he could barely wet the paper, and had to try several times at it.

When Ezra leaned close, striking a match for him and holding it near, Emmerich took the brief moment to study his face in profile. The boy wasn’t even old enough to grow a proper beard—there were only a few sparse hairs on his upper lip and the edges of his jaw. His eyes were lighter than Emmerich had thought, blue or even grey in the light, large for his face.

Emmerich leaned away again, and took a moment to savor the feeling of the bitter smoke coiling deep into his body. They sat in silence for a while, Ezra teasing at the shrinking end of his own cigarette and both of them consumed in their own their own thoughts.

“We ought to think about what to do now,” Emmerich said eventually, and Ezra pulled a hand through his hair.

“Honestly, my plan stopped at surviving the night,” he said, then offered Emmerich one of his wide, boyish grins. “But if you’ve suggestions, I’m all for hearing them.”

Emmerich leaned forward over his knees, clasping his hands together and knocking them against his chin. “We’ve got a small fortune in that pillowslip and we can’t just stroll through the city with it like that,” he said, after a moment. “And we can bet Staard and Clavel won’t just let us go with it.”

“And we don’t know if they’re working together now or if they separated after they...after it was done,” Ezra said, scratching at the back of his neck. He took his hand away and looked at it, then dug his fingers back into his hair. “They’d not have expected the money to run away on them. They might have to work together now.”

The same way we do. “Because nobody in their right mind climbs out a second-story window with a pillowslip full of already stolen money,” Emmerich said. “Until we know better, we assume they’re working together.”

“Right,” Ezra said, with a nod. “That means any people they deal with regularly are out—we can’t go to them.”

“That’s most everyone in the damned city,” Emmerich said, and Ezra bared his teeth a little.

“There has to be someone,” he said. “Give me a little time, I’ll think of one. I’m afraid I’m still…reeling a bit, right now.”

“I know,” Emmerich said. When he dropped his hand, it somehow landed on Ezra’s knee. “It doesn’t…seem that it happened.”

“We’ve a pillowslip full of money to prove that it did,” Ezra said with a laugh that sounded only partly forced. He didn’t seem to mind Emmerich’s hand on his leg at all. “Speaking of, I think we ought to look at it. Didn’t get much of a chance last night. We don’t even know if it’s true or counterfeit.”

“For Kegg and Allister to be killed over it, I only assumed it was true,” Emmerich said. He also didn’t know how to tell a falsely printed banknote from a real one, himself. He assumed Ezra must.

Ezra had put the pillowslip beneath the bed the night before, and now he got to his knees to retrieve it, tossing the sack up onto the bed beside Emmerich. It was still tied up with Ezra’s braces and Emmerich had done a fair job with his knots the night before, as it took both of them picking at them to loosen it. Some part of Emmerich wanted to see the pillowslip upturned and all the banknotes poured out across the bed, if only to see how real it was, but Ezra only reached into the top and drew out a single stack of banded-together notes. Almost disappointing.

Ezra passed a few of the notes to Emmerich and then spent a few minutes peering closely at the ones he held, running his fingers along the surface and edges and seeming to look for things in particular. Emmerich squinted at the ones in his hand, but the only thing he could tell from them was that he held the equivalent of ten currens, more than he had ever seen or touched in his entire life.

“They look true enough to me,” Ezra said at least, and Emmerich nodded vaguely and made no conclusive agreement. Ezra stuffed the banknotes back in the pillowslip and stood, dragging his nails along his hairline and above his ear. “I swear,” he said then, and itched more vigorously at the back of his hair, “if I got another damn fleet of insects nesting on me again from this hovel, I’ll—“

“You’ll what?” Emmerich said, and laughed.

“Speak with the management,” Ezra said. He gave his neck another swipe with his nails, then gave Emmerich a crooked smile. “I oughtn’t complain. I’m not dead, at least,” he said. “And I’ve got you.”

“Right,” Emmerich said, as his whole stomach started a slow, contented burn. No one had ever considered him a true asset before, and as pleased as that made him, it was now also a responsibility he needed to uphold. He had a strong desire to not disappoint Ezra. It would eventually happen, but he would delay the moment as long as he could.

He watched the boy cross the room to the door and begin to shove the lowboy away from it. Only one reason for doing that, and they hadn’t even discussed leaving yet.

“Where are you going?” said Emmerich.

“To find a washroom, or at the very least a pump,” Ezra said. “I itch nearly everywhere.”

“Right,” Emmerich said, and Ezra hesitated only a moment before throwing the bolt back and going out the door. He dragged it shut behind him and when it closed completely, Emmerich dropped his face to his hands and cradled his head, breathing out. It would be all right, he told himself, twisting his fingers into his hair. Eventually, all of it would be all right. This thing with the money, with Allister and Kegg, with Ezra—it would all have to work out. One way or another.

It seemed like barely a minute had passed before he heard footsteps and fumbling outside the room. Then Ezra stumbled back inside, swung the door shut, threw the bolt, scooped Emmerich’s holster and belt off the lowboy and threw it at him.

“We’ve got to leave,” he said, as Emmerich lurched upwards and caught the leather holder against his chest. “Right now.”

“Ezra, what—“

“Men downstairs. I don’t recognize them, but they’re clearly asking about us. Even if that innkeeper tells them that one young man came here very late last night, they’ll be up here, and fast.”

“God,” Emmerich said heavily, but already fixing the belt around his waist. “How did they find us already?”

“It’s not as though there was anything subtle about last night,” Ezra said. “I’m sure it’s already gone through the downmarket that we stole the money—there’s likely a price on our heads for it. Any number of people could have seen us running in this direction, they’ve probably tried all the inns they could find.”

“I reckon we’ll go out the same way I came in,” said Emmerich, and Ezra threw him a grin.

“More or less,” he said, and went across the floor to the window. He tugged at the wooden shutters until they sprang open. A belch of cold, rotten air came in along with the clamor of the streets below.

Ezra climbed onto the sill and stood up outside the window, so that he was only visible from the thighs down. Emmerich thought he ought to grab onto him somehow, hold him steady—there was a long drop below him, after all—but before he could try, Ezra’s legs kicked upwards and clambered over the top of the window. Emmerich grabbed the sill and leaned out himself, twisting round in time to see the last of Ezra’s boots disappearing over the roof edge.

“Ezra!” he hissed, and after some scuffling and creaking of wood, Ezra’s face leaned back over the eaves.

“What are you do—“ Emmerich started, but Ezra rode over him.

“The bag!” he said, and stuck an arm down. “Quick!”

Emmerich had nearly forgotten it, somehow, even though it was the entire reason they were here at all. But as he started after it he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, heading up.

“Scheiße,” he muttered, and went across to the lowboy instead, throwing his hip against it and shoving it back in front of the door. The footsteps were somewhere around the first story by now and, Emmerich thought, gaining speed. The whole building shook under the assault.

Emmerich dove to one knee beside the bed frame, made a hasty knot back into Ezra’s braces around the pillowslip, and grabbed it up into his arms. His pistol was still on the bed, half beneath the blanket. He snatched it as he staggered to his feet, forcing it back into the holster at his side.

Something pounded against the other side of the door. The latch rattled, hard. Then there was a clicking of keys, and the bolt turned in the lock. Emmerich stumbled back, clutching the pillowslip.

“Emmerich!” Ezra’s voice came through the window, a desperate little whisper. “Come on!”

Emmerich lurched over to the window, the door rattling back and forth between the frame and the back of the lowboy, its wooden feet shrieking against the floor as they were shoved, bit by bit, away from the door. Ezra grabbed the pillowslip as soon as Emmerich hoisted it up, and dragged it upwards out of sight. Then his hand shot down again. Emmerich caught Ezra’s arm and was half-lifted out of the window, catching and pushing himself off any surface he could touch.

Once they were together on the sloping roof, they crouched silently, not daring to move or breathe as the lowboy was finally shoved away from the door and several pairs of footsteps tumbled into the room beneath them. They were forced to brace their weight on the crossbeams, which could creak and groan beneath them at any moment and fully give them away. They could hear mumbled voices below, male, but not loud or clear enough to pick out words. From the sound of them, they were not pleased to discover the room empty.

Neither Ezra or Emmerich had a coat, and they huddled near to each other, touching shoulders, long after the voices and footsteps had left the room beneath them. Emmerich even got his arm up around Ezra’s back without feeling too forward. Ezra had only pressed closer to him, his face hidden in his folded arms. Whoever the men where, no one had thought to look upwards for them. For the moment, they were safe.

Above them, the day was already darkening, the brief morning sunshine giving way to petulant clouds and a chill wind. Dark hulls of missionary ships sailed far above their heads, the flare of their fuel ballasts gleaming through the low clouds. Emmerich watched them cut across the grey sky with a sense of nostalgic speculating. He had considered for a while, back when he had still lived with his family in Kaiserreich, about taking the Order tests, becoming part of a missionary crew. But he had none of the required talents, and heights didn’t agree with him. Still, sometimes, he wondered. What would be now, if he had.

Eventually, without words, he and Ezra drew apart from each other and got to their feet. Emmerich reached for the pillowslip this time, as Ezra had been the one carrying it all of the night before. They caught eyes for a moment, before Ezra gave him a wary smile and turned to climb up towards the center of the roof. Apparently, this was to be their departing path of travel.

They snuck away over rooftops, climbing along crooked chimneys and picking their way across crumbling eves until they were many streets away from the inn, out of the rookery and deeper into the city proper again, and feeling only just a bit safer for it. Below them the streets were crowded with more and more people, voices and sounds and smells carrying clearly up to them as they picked along the wind-swept roofs. Carriages clattered along the cobblestones, some horse-drawn and others puttering along on their own, puffing fat clouds of steam and jolting on their rickety frames. Jerry-carts, Emmerich thought was the term, hesitant little contraptions that were rather new in the city. He more often saw them broken down along curbsides than moving.

Looking down at the city from the rooftops was a new and strange perspective for him. Most of the time he felt lost here, trampled and swallowed up beneath the thousands of people who had no reason to look twice at a poor immigrant boy and wouldn’t care if they came upon him dying in a gutter. Even thieves and outlaws saw themselves as more than him. Despite having lived here for nearly ten years, he was still seen as an outsider to most everyone. But here on the rooftops all of that seemed less important, and he felt a strange peace at Ezra’s side.

They were on the roofs above the busy avenue of Tourneyfair Street before they climbed down again, using a wide oven chimney and an empty clothesline that had been strung across an alley. Three streets to the south was Little Faire, the poor district in which Emmerich rented a small musty room above a chemist’s shop for three copper pegs a week. He had a few belongings there still, but knew it would be unwise to go back, now or ever.

“Emery, what are you looking at?” Ezra said near his ear, and Emmerich realized he’d been staring out of the mouth of the alley and clenching the end of the clothesline hard in one fist.

“I lived down that way,” he said, pointing, and Ezra put a hand to his shoulder.

“You’re not thinking—“

“No, of course not. What’s to go back there for? Clothing, a few trinkets. It’s nothing I need.”

Ezra squeezed his shoulder. The sky was low and dark above them, pressing down upon the whole of the city. Cold wind whistled through the alley around them and whipped their meager clothes against their bodies, and Ezra shivered and stepped closer.

“So. Where to now?” Emmerich said, and Ezra made a sound in his throat.

“I was only thinking of getting far from where we were,” he said. “Were you having a more precise idea?”

“I was thinking of the last place they’ll ever look for us,” Emmerich said, and a slow smile crept across Ezra’s face.

“All right,” he said.

#

Half a toll later they were back on the same street that housed the Prince and Rose, now conspicuously closed down, its windows darkened and a sign hung out front that simply read ‘Not Today’. Ezra had once again led them through side-streets, back alleys, ways through the city’s outskirts and edges that Emmerich had never known. But Ezra had never left the ‘shores, maybe even never left this city, and Emmerich was only appreciative of his familiarity with it.

They took shelter in the dark corner of a different public house down the row, the wealth of stolen money now in two large leather satchels wedged down between their feet. They had bought the bags on two separate streets at two separate times, along with a pair of coats that kept off the rain that had finally begun to fall. The streets outside were slick with water, muddy puddles cutting between cobblestones, a grey mist rising from the ground. Men and women dashed about in the streets, running between eves and alleyways to wait out the downpour.

Both Emmerich and Ezra had a pint before them and a game pie. It was possibly the best meal Emmerich had had in weeks. Ezra had paid, as he had paid for the room and the tobacco and the two satchels. He was not using the stolen banknotes, all of it was coming from his own pocket. Emmerich didn’t want to inquire as to how much money Ezra had in all, but already it was twice the amount of what Emmerich had in his own possession.

They spoke few words to each other, yet the silence between them was not unfriendly. Emmerich was keeping his ears open to any talk around them of trades gone badly, of betrayers and mutineers, or of stolen money, but there was none. A few mentions of the peculiar closing of the Prince and Rose, but none of these men seemed the downmarket type—most had ducked into the tavern to wait out the rain. At the table beside him, Ezra seemed to be listening for the same sort of thing.

When the rain let up and they had been dawdling at their table for quite some time and making their presence far too lasting, they slipped back on to the rain-washed streets and moved on. The Prince and Rose sat near squarely in the center of Pennygrand, and by another unspoken agreement Emmerich and Ezra did not stray from that part of the city. The search for them would likely be spreading outwards with the brothel as a center, especially now that they had doubled back from the rockeries, their trail would not be easily followed.

Pennygrand was a union of all types, grown up between where the slums, the poor districts and the middling districts converged, bordering on all of them and catering to an entire mix of the inhabitants of the city. It changed fluidly from street to street; thieves and beggars roamed only blocks over from respectable shops and the slightly more affluent society of Canalcourt. Emmerich and Ezra clung to the areas further from the rookeries and poor districts—the occasional constable patrolled this area, yet Emmerich would have rather seen one of their cross-marked helmets than a man from the downmarket who might recognize them.

They had stayed off the main streets, ducking into shops when they could and spending as little time in one spot as possible. The heavy satchels at their sides felt like a waving banner to what they were carrying, but no one passing them ever spared them a second glance. There was one moment when Ezra had wheeled them suddenly around a corner, yanked Emmerich to the wall and pressed them close together in the shadows. Standing like that, Emmerich had felt Ezra’s heart pounding against his and he had stayed as still as he could, hardly breathing. Ezra had been peering hard at the passersby in the street, hands twisted in Emmerich’s coat, until he had suddenly stepped away again.

“I thought I saw—” he’d said, his chest still rising and falling with rapid breaths. “Sorry. It wasn’t. I’m sorry for—I’m sorry.”

“Better careful than caught,” Emmerich had told him, and Ezra had only looked embarrassed and hadn’t allowed Emmerich to catch his eye for at least an hour afterwards.

Nightfall found them in another public house and inn near to the edge of Little Faire again. Despite the cautions they had taken all day, beyond the close escape that morning there had been nothing that had even hinted they were being pursued. The day had been so uneventful as to become almost suspicious, as if what was coming for them was only biding its time.

They rented a room again for the night—Ezra had gone and done it, the money coming from his pocket, before Emmerich could do anything to the contrary—and they naturally found themselves in another small cramped room with only one tiny bed.

This time, Ezra only laughed to see it. “We are going to be familiar with each other by the time we’re through this adventure,” he said, stripping comfortably out of his coat and tossing it upon a hanger on the wall.

Emmerich laughed as well, and pushed aside all the heated thoughts that instantly came to him about how he could become familiar with Ezra. And he had been doing so well until now; gone nearly all day without his mind taking such fantasies. Still, he had survived one night with no mishap, and surely a second wouldn’t be that much more difficult.

#

“I’ve thought of someone,” Ezra said the next morning, as he and Emmerich dressed and rolled the last bit of tobacco between them. “He wasn’t one of Kegg’s men; didn’t really deal with him. Maybe he can help us.”

“You trust him?”

“He has no loyalty to anyone in the downmarket, he only has assets that Kegg would pay to use. I think it’s worth seeing about.”

“All right,” Emmerich said. He had no ideas himself and was hard-pressed to come up with any to counter this one. Ezra was far from a fool, and if there was one of them that wouldn’t get them killed it was likely to be him.

They set off as quick as they could manage, quitting the inn and Pennygrand entirely, heading south towards the river. Ezra’s idea was leading them towards the edge of the industry districts, where buildings became square and stout and solid, built of hearty brick. There were factories here, canneries and foundries and cotton mills and potteries, clustering together in wide blocks before the river. Gritty blackish smoke from chimneys hung above the roofs here instead of the grey wisps of hearth fires and cooking ovens. The taste of the briny water was on the wind, and beyond the great distant shapes of the slipways were the masts of ships, the ones that were still built for the water and not the air. The smell was not as bad here as the slums, but there was a texture to the air that made his eyes burn and his skin itch. Emmerich thought they must be in Bottleplate or Gaskets End, but with all of the backstreets Ezra followed it was hard to know precisely.

Finally Ezra turned them down an alley and brought them down steps to a door set below the street level. It was locked, and there was no answer to their knocks, so Emmerich got out his tool kit from his boot again and set to work. Within minutes they were climbing up wooden stairs in a narrow corridor towards a door above. It was strangely silent here, when Emmerich had expected they would be coming into the noise and clamor of some type of factory.

They came through the door into a large cluttered floor of machinery and paper. Rows and rows of large metalworks lined the long workroom floor. Tall windows lined the walls of the warehouse floor, papered over with brown panes to cull the amount of light coming in. There were several long table of rough wood under the windows, holding all manner of objects Emmerich didn’t recognize. The room was silent, empty, only dull light seeping through the windows and playing over the silent machines.

“A printing house?” said Emmerich, and Ezra lifted one shoulder.

“It’s quite legal,” he said. “The owner is on the level, mostly. He knows me, as well—at least, he did a year ago. Though I’m not sure—“ Ezra glanced around the empty floor, frowning. “There’s no one here.”

“Well,” Emmerich said, as Ezra began walking slowly forward down the aisle made between the tables and the machines. “It’s—“

“Luca!” Ezra suddenly shouted down the length of the workroom, and Emmerich winced at the sound echoing through the machinery. “Luca Carvone!”

“Mein Gott, Ezra, bitte,” Emmerich muttered, grabbing the boy’s wrist. “Sei leise!”

A door opened and slammed shut from somewhere deep in the workroom, and Ezra took a step forward, shaking Emmerich’s hand from him. Footsteps were moving deep within the printers, coming towards them, and Ezra was going ahead to meet them without even seeing who it was. It was all Emmerich could do to not grab him back. But the figure that finally stepped out from between the machines didn’t look all that dangerous.

Luca Carvone was a tall, warm-skinned man with dark waves of hair pulled together at the back of his neck with a bit of cloth. He was not overly young, but neither was he aged; no more than twoscore years at a guess. Emmerich had never seen him before, never heard his name, and wasn’t exactly sure how he could be of help. Or if he could be trusted.

But he greeted Ezra like a brother, drawing him into a warm embrace when they reached each other and kissing his cheeks. Emmerich wasn’t sure if what he saw on Ezra’s face was a blush or not, and it was gone by the time the two men pulled apart.

“Anche per me è bello rivederti,” Ezra muttered, in a language Emmerich didn’t know. Luca said something longer and quicker back—presumably in the same—and slung his arm around Ezra’s shoulders, tucking the boy close against his side. The flush in Ezra’s face was unmistakable now.

“Why aren’t the printers running, Luca?” he said, gesturing to the silent and unmanned machines.

“Ezra, amico mio, it is Sunday,” said Luca. “Only the churches and whores are open today.”

Ezra went even pinker at the words, though Emmerich himself laughed. That seemed to call Luca’s attention to him for the first time, and he tilted his head in a questionable fashion, jostling Ezra beneath his arm.

“And who is your friend here?” he asked. “Another of Kegg’s?”

“Ah,” Ezra said, stepping away from the man’s side, towards the windows. “Actually, Luca, that’s the reason we’ve come. There’s—“

It was only a stroke of luck that allowed Emmerich to turn at the very moment that Luca drew something off of a platform of one of the printing machines, and see the gleam of light off of a metal edge. He was too far away to do anything but cry out.

“Ezra!”

The word had barely left his mouth before Ezra was already twisting to the side, pivoting right and bringing his arm up. There was a small blade in his hand— Emmerich again hadn’t seen where it had come from, let alone remembered Ezra had it at all—and it clashed and ground against the edge of Carvone’s knife.

“Luca!” Ezra shouted, throwing the man’s arm back and staggering away. “Have you fucking lost it?”

But Luca only recovered his balance and swung again, and by this time Emmerich found himself racing down the length of the workroom towards them, throwing the satchel off his shoulder and to the side. He was too slow and too bad an aim with his pistol to trust it would do him any good, but he reached beneath his coat to his holster as he ran. Ezra seemed to be holding his own, but mostly in ducking and twisting out of the reach of Luca’s much larger knife.

Emmerich didn’t have the agile physical ability that Ezra seemed to, but he had speed and weight and a good angle. Luca went down under the brunt of his shoulder, bone ramming into soft organs and driving the man hard to the floor. Luca grunted and scrabbled under him, gasping hard for breath. The knife clattered away across the floor. Emmerich twisted his fingers into the man’s long hair and yanked his head back, baring his throat. He pushed the barrel of the bulldog up under Luca’s chin, into the soft triangle of flesh between his jawbones.

“Keine Bewegung,” he snarled, realized he’d used the wrong language in his excitement, and tried again. “Don’t move.” Luca squirmed beneath him anyway, and Emmerich pulled back the hammer in warning.

“Em—Emery—don’t,” Ezra panted from somewhere nearby. Keeping the bulldog jammed up under Luca’s chin, Emmerich glanced over. Ezra was dragging himself up by the corner of a worktable, his face pale but set. He was gripping his upper arm, and bright blood seeped through a long slash in his shirt and coat and oozed under his fingers. “I’m all right.”

Emmerich’s heart was still thudding against his chest, rushing in his ears. “Wirklich?”

Ezra nodded, moving his fingers against his arm. “It’s not bad.”

Emmerich still didn’t let go of Luca, but he eased the bulldog down a little. Luca swallowed against the tip of the barrel and his wide, dark eyes flicked back and forth.

“You can let him up,” Ezra said. “If you don’t do that again,” he added to Luca, who nodded as much as the firm metal of the pistol barrel allowed him. Emmerich lifted away, getting to his feet and keeping the bulldog hefted at his hip, still obviously pointed Luca’s way. He made no move to help Luca, and after a moment the man dragged himself up and leaned over his knees.

“Who is your attack dog, Ezra?” Luca said, wincing and touching his fingers to the back of his head, then gently to the underside of his throat. His hair now hung loosely around his face, having come undone in the scuffle.

“He’s called Emmerich,” Ezra said shortly. “And he’s the only man I can trust, because you’ve apparently been paid off. Who was it? Staard or Clavel? Or both of them?”

“Who does it matter,” Luca said. He sounded sullen and embarrassed, and Emmerich wasn’t certain if it was because he had been bested or because he was regretting the attack at all. Ezra clearly had no plans to hurt the man in return. “Everyone knows what you’ve done.”

“What, taking the money?” Ezra said. He was still gripping his wounded arm and looking pale, and Emmerich moved to his side. “I know it’s quite a lot, but that’s no reason for you—“

“No,” Luca said, his expression strange. “Killing Allister and Kegg.”

There was silence in the workroom for a long moment.

“Us killing—” Ezra said. “Luca, who told you that?”

“Scheiße,” Emmerich muttered. He thought he understood already. His and Ezra’s flight from the brothel—with all the money, no less—had given the men who had lead the mutiny a perfect scapegoat. Word would be spreading quickly in the downmarket—as it had obviously already reached Luca—that they were the turncoats. Who had killed Kegg and Allister. Maybe that had been the plan the entire time. Clavel and Staard certainly hadn’t given much of a chase when he and Ezra had fled the Prince and Rose. Perhaps they had let them flee, only to later rouse the entire underworkings of the city against them.

Ezra seemed to have realized it as well himself, as Luca hadn’t yet answered him. He caught Emmerich’s eyes, his face pale. His arm was still bleeding, but his grip on it had loosened, and blood was blossoming up the sleeve of his coat.

“It wasn’t us,” he said. “No, it wasn’t us.”

“Do you have the money?” Luca said, and Ezra winced.

“Yes, but—they would have killed us anyway! You don’t understand—it’s not how it seems.”

When Luca didn’t reply, Emmerich lost interest in him for the moment and turned to Ezra instead, reaching for his injured arm. “Let me see that.”

“Ah, ah—no, it’s not that bad—“

“You’re right. Stop whinging.”

Ezra chuckled, but his arm was shaking. The wound was long but shallow, and Emmerich was sure Ezra was in the right about it not being very bad, but he had no experience with this sort of thing. It seemed like there was quite a lot of blood.

“You’ll need something for it,” Luca said, from where he was still sitting on the floor. “I’ve some iodine, if you’ll let me get it.”

Ezra nodded, and Luca got up off the floor and moved away, disappearing in the same direction he’d come from behind the printers.

“Are we sure we can trust him?” Emmerich said quietly, when the man was out of sight, and Ezra took a breath before answering.

“No,” he said. “But what choice have we got?”

#

Only minutes later they were back in a small, cluttered room that came off the main workroom—some sort of office, with a desk and several wood cabinets, all of them littered with papers and metal contraptions. There were no windows here, only oil lamps, and the room smelt strongly of chemical fumes. They had brought the two satchels in with them, and though Luca could clearly guess what was inside them, he’d said nothing.

Instead he’d brought them a brown glass bottle with a curling paper label, a bowl of water, and a thin linen shirt that was easily torn into strips, and left them alone. Now Ezra sat on a corner of the desk while Emmerich sat in the chair, carefully sliding Ezra’s coat off and then his shirt from his left side, peeling off the blood-stained fabric that had begun to dry and stick to his arm. He cleaned the blood carefully off Ezra’s skin first with the water from the bowl, turning it all a rosy pink. Then he wrung out the cloth, wet it again with the sharp-smelling contents of the glass bottle. Ezra hissed and flinched and curved away when it was pressed again his arm, and dug his fingers into Emmerich’s shoulder.

“Shh,” Emmerich said softly, before he could think better of it. Ezra passed him a quick glance, but it was only appreciative. He made no more noise for the rest of Emmerich’s careful but clumsy tending to, and at the end of it he even squeezed Emmerich’s hand, briefly, before pulling away and lowering himself from the desk. He slipped his sleeve back over his arm, the linen bandages showing under the bloodied gash in the fabric. Ezra inspected the gash across his coat sleeve—clearly ruined now—with a frown, but said nothing.

A sound at the door made them both look up. Luca had returned, and was watching them from the doorway. Emmerich nearly upset the bowl of pink-tinged water, but Ezra seemed unruffled. He put a hand down and Emmerich took it, letting the boy take him from the chair. They stood side by side and Ezra kept his hand locked around Emmerich’s wrist, though Emmerich wasn’t trying awfully hard to pull away.

“They’ve already spoken to you,” Ezra said to Luca, and it was hardly a question. The man’s silence was enough of an answer. “What—exactly—did they tell you?”

“To—“ Luca swallowed, and glanced between them, “to keep at least one of you alive. Preferably—“ his eyes went to Emmerich for just an instant longer.

“To be able to bring them the money,” Ezra said.

“There is a reward for either of you,” Luca said, dark eyes now focused to Ezra. “More for you dead, and Emmerich alive.”

“Why would they rather have me alive,” Emmerich muttered, mostly to himself. But Ezra heard it, and answered.

“Because you were lower in Allister’s circle,” Ezra said. “They’ll figure they can intimidate or bribe you into cooperation. And they likely think that it was my idea to run with the money—and that you’re just following my lead.”

I am, Emmerich almost said, but held back. It had been Ezra’s idea to take the money, to flee, and he had gone with it because the only other option had looked to be getting killed. But now he was thinking that either way, no matter what they had done, they would have been accused of the deaths of Allister and Kegg. It was just a stroke of luck on Staard and Clavel’s parts that they had also taken the money and escaped, and made themselves look twice as guilty.

But he didn’t want Ezra to think it was his fault, that this could have been avoided if Emmerich hadn’t followed him, or that Emmerich regretted following him. So he reached out and caught Ezra’s arm, squeezing firmly. Ezra’s bones felt light and oddly fragile through his warm skin, because his shirt had slipped to the side and Emmerich had ended up taking hold of his bare shoulder. But Ezra didn’t seem to mind; his hand flew up and closed over Emmerich’s, gripping back hard.

“They’re going to kill us both anyway,” Ezra said. He looked young again, thin and delicate in his brown linen shirt, dark hair in his eyes.

Emmerich nodded. “Most likely.”

Ezra shivered. “What do we do?”

“We stop running,” Emmerich said, “and kill them first.”