Nightfall Market you’re as jumpy as if you’re juggling aether tubes.”
“You’re not?” I said, incredulous, as we started for the gates. “Scared, I mean.” The Academy was brick banded in iron fencing to keep out viral creatures, and spiked with finials along the fence’s top to keep students bent on mischief in. The iron spikes’ jagged shadows breathed out cold when we approached.
“I’m a young man set out on a great adventure,” Cal said. “The way I see it, the least that can happen is I have a story to tell the guys when I get back.”
“
When
. Aren’t you the optimist,” I teased.
“You did save me from the nightjar,” Cal said with a smile. “I feel my chances of coming back to school with all of my fingers and toes are better than average.”
I knew that fighting off viral creatures was unladylike at best, but to have Cal’s praise warmed me a bit, even though my extremities and nose were still numb. It made me feel that maybe this wasn’t a doomed idea, that we could find the Nightfall Market, find Conrad and manage to come back again. Never mind that I’d never heard anything but thirdhand rumors of how to find the place, and the Proctors were eager to deny its existence at every turn. Something they couldn’t shut down and couldn’t even find was a grave embarrassment to law and order.
When we reached the gate, a plump ex-Proctor sat in the security officer’s hut, and he stepped out to stop us. Before he could shout at us for being out of doors without permission, I held up the shirt. “Mrs. Fortune said I might be let out to go to the China Laundry.” I practiced my poor-ward-of-the-city look again.
The guard examined us. “Just you,” he said. “You, boy—stay in.”
“Oh no,” I said, couching the protest as alarm. A regular girl would be terrified to leave the safety of the Academy after dark. “She was very firm that I have an escort.”
“Old Fussbudget Fortune ain’t his head of house,” said the guard. “He stays.”
“But—” Cal started. The guard rattled his nightstick against the post.
“You deaf, kid? Get back to supper and leave me be.”
The old lump was clearly immune to my charms, so I switched to the other sort of false face I knew—the snooty Academy student with no time for the help. “Could you just open the gate and let me launder my
only
blouse?” I snapped, trying to adopt the tone of Marcos Langostrianor Cecelia. The guard grunted, but he took the keys off his belt and walked over to the bars.
“Get ready,” I murmured to Cal, slipping my gloved palm into his. His hand was cool and thin, and when I squeezed I could feel all his small bones.
The gate opened, and I started walking, Cal pulled with me. The officer gawped. “You there! Student out of bounds!”
“Dammit to the deep, anyway,” Cal said. He just stood there, and I jerked him with me.
“Run, idiot!”
We made an odd pair fleeing down Cornish Lane, past closed-up shops and slumbering vendor carts. Cal loped along, stumbling over his own feet. I put my head down and ran as if all the ghouls of Lovecraft’s sewers were on my heels.
At the intersection of Cornish and Occidental, I could still hear the shriek of the officer’s whistle, and I ran harder. Cal gasped like the faulty bellows in the machine shop. “Maybe … we … should … go … back.”
“And then what?” I shouted as we took a hard left, pelting past the colorful Romany shacks of Troubadour Road, toward the train tracks and the bridge.
“I don’t”—Cal sucked in a lungful of the night air—“I don’t know, but this is a terrible … terrible … idea!”
We crossed the tracks, like a frontier border in their cold iron gleam under the moonlight. I twisted my ankle in the gravel as we stumbled down the other side of the embankment, and then Joseph Strauss’s marvelous bridge was in front of us, leading across the river and into the maze of the foundry complex.
We
“You’re not?” I said, incredulous, as we started for the gates. “Scared, I mean.” The Academy was brick banded in iron fencing to keep out viral creatures, and spiked with finials along the fence’s top to keep students bent on mischief in. The iron spikes’ jagged shadows breathed out cold when we approached.
“I’m a young man set out on a great adventure,” Cal said. “The way I see it, the least that can happen is I have a story to tell the guys when I get back.”
“
When
. Aren’t you the optimist,” I teased.
“You did save me from the nightjar,” Cal said with a smile. “I feel my chances of coming back to school with all of my fingers and toes are better than average.”
I knew that fighting off viral creatures was unladylike at best, but to have Cal’s praise warmed me a bit, even though my extremities and nose were still numb. It made me feel that maybe this wasn’t a doomed idea, that we could find the Nightfall Market, find Conrad and manage to come back again. Never mind that I’d never heard anything but thirdhand rumors of how to find the place, and the Proctors were eager to deny its existence at every turn. Something they couldn’t shut down and couldn’t even find was a grave embarrassment to law and order.
When we reached the gate, a plump ex-Proctor sat in the security officer’s hut, and he stepped out to stop us. Before he could shout at us for being out of doors without permission, I held up the shirt. “Mrs. Fortune said I might be let out to go to the China Laundry.” I practiced my poor-ward-of-the-city look again.
The guard examined us. “Just you,” he said. “You, boy—stay in.”
“Oh no,” I said, couching the protest as alarm. A regular girl would be terrified to leave the safety of the Academy after dark. “She was very firm that I have an escort.”
“Old Fussbudget Fortune ain’t his head of house,” said the guard. “He stays.”
“But—” Cal started. The guard rattled his nightstick against the post.
“You deaf, kid? Get back to supper and leave me be.”
The old lump was clearly immune to my charms, so I switched to the other sort of false face I knew—the snooty Academy student with no time for the help. “Could you just open the gate and let me launder my
only
blouse?” I snapped, trying to adopt the tone of Marcos Langostrianor Cecelia. The guard grunted, but he took the keys off his belt and walked over to the bars.
“Get ready,” I murmured to Cal, slipping my gloved palm into his. His hand was cool and thin, and when I squeezed I could feel all his small bones.
The gate opened, and I started walking, Cal pulled with me. The officer gawped. “You there! Student out of bounds!”
“Dammit to the deep, anyway,” Cal said. He just stood there, and I jerked him with me.
“Run, idiot!”
We made an odd pair fleeing down Cornish Lane, past closed-up shops and slumbering vendor carts. Cal loped along, stumbling over his own feet. I put my head down and ran as if all the ghouls of Lovecraft’s sewers were on my heels.
At the intersection of Cornish and Occidental, I could still hear the shriek of the officer’s whistle, and I ran harder. Cal gasped like the faulty bellows in the machine shop. “Maybe … we … should … go … back.”
“And then what?” I shouted as we took a hard left, pelting past the colorful Romany shacks of Troubadour Road, toward the train tracks and the bridge.
“I don’t”—Cal sucked in a lungful of the night air—“I don’t know, but this is a terrible … terrible … idea!”
We crossed the tracks, like a frontier border in their cold iron gleam under the moonlight. I twisted my ankle in the gravel as we stumbled down the other side of the embankment, and then Joseph Strauss’s marvelous bridge was in front of us, leading across the river and into the maze of the foundry complex.
We
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