Julian was downplaying his role in the future they were building. For all his arrogant behavior, he didn’t seem to understand how important he was. His plans and his vision had to be protected. The world needed Julian, and I needed him, too. I didn’t think he was ready to hear that, though.
Ezra put his hand on Julian’s thigh, nothing provocative in his gaze. All I could see there was understanding. “We’ll keep her safe, Julian. Soon, you’ll be able to work alongside her.”
“It will be easier together,” Julian said, something in his voice relenting—making a little space for hope. “We’ll make headway much faster. The more we can accomplish, the more leverage we’ll have to show the world that radiance isn’t the only path forward. That stopping the wasting doesn’t mean sacrificing industry itself.”
I exchanged a brief look with Ezra and found him mirroring my relief. This was Julian at his best—grounded in his convictions.
“It feels strange to be returning to Sterling City,” I admitted. For the first time since I’d left, I almost missed the hulking cacophony of it. I could practically taste the grit and grease, the familiar stink of the river. “We’ll be in arm’s reach of the House.”
“We never have to go back there,” Julian said quietly. “They can’t take away what we believe.”
I dropped my head against his shoulder, letting his words wash over me. Only a week ago, I’d believed in Progress. I’d believed in my calling. Now I felt scrubbed raw and new, a tender leaf unfurling in the spring.
Julian was narrowly focused on debuting his alternative to radiance, but that didn’t mean we’d avoid the House forever. The other Children of Industry deserved to feel the way I did now. Awakened. Somehow, I’d reach them and open their eyes. I’d give every last one of them the chance to think for themselves, from the wide-eyed first years to the Generators in the catacombs.
It wasn’t the power of the House that made me anxious about returning to Sterling City. It was the magnitude of my rage toward what they’d done to all of us, to the world. Even now, it simmered inside me, molten fury waiting to be released. I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left of me if I let that happen.
“Wait,” I said, following the winding path of my thoughts to a concerning conclusion. “Sterling City is massive.”
Ezra blinked his eyes open sleepily. “Even I know that.”
“How will we ever find Nikola?” I asked.
Julian let out a weary sigh. “Unfortunately, I know precisely where she’ll be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Two days by coach and three by crowded train later, I could scarcely stand my own smell, and I never wanted to hear a wheel or a machine or any sort of cacophony again in my entire life. So, when we came to stand beneath the hand-painted sign at a gambling hall in Sterling City, with rancid smoke and the sour scent of spilled ale pouring from the open door, all I could ask was “Here?Are you sure?”
Sterling City shivered around me, a metropolis without rest. I’d never been to this district before. Flickering lamps shone down on us, each connected to ribbony conduction cables. The Far Bank had been the last district to have its lighting upgraded from gaslights to radiance lamps. Now that we were here, and my boots were sticking to the filthy cobblestones at my feet, I could imagine why.
My gaze drifted from the sign that readBIG T TAVERNto a column of posters pasted to the brick beside the door. They advertised card tournaments and dance revues and medicinal elixirs. One simply depicted clowns lined up to view the Hall of Radiance at the Continental Exposition. “That’s evocative,” I murmured appreciatively.
Regardless of the fascinating art on display, I wanted Julian to be wrong about Nikola’s whereabouts. I wanted her to reside in a lovely manicured garden somewhere. Or even better, in a large room in a clean boarding house where I could order a bath and borrow her downy mattress for a very, very long nap.
“I love gambling,” Ezra said unhelpfully.
“Not on my tab, you don’t.” Julian walked into the blueish cloud of smoke, and we had no choice but to follow.
Loud music and louder voices assaulted me, a thick noise reminiscent of the dining hall on the rare times when we’d been allowed to play during our first years at the House. Ezra’s fingers wrapped around my upper arm when a man with a spittle-stained beard leaned back in his chair and made a sound somewhere between the yowl of a cat and the howl of a dog—his wormy blue eyes locked onto mine.
“Come sit on my lap,” he called, patting himself suggestively.
I wrenched myself from Ezra’s grip and lurched toward the man. For a heartbeat, his eyes widened with delight. Then my small hands wrapped around his bristly throat and twisted into his greasy hair, and I let him feel the radiance skittering around my fingers. I tightened my grip. This was delicate work. Good, easy work.
The smell of burning flesh rose between us, but it was lost in the rest—the vomit and perfume and rancid food and pipe smoke. He made no sound at first, only a frantic whine. Then his throat vibrated with a panicked cry.
“Do I make you warm?” I asked with a wide smile, enjoying his gurgling scream until Julian and Ezra dragged me away.
“I wasn’t finished,” I protested weakly, craning back to watch the man fall out of his chair and seize on the ground, patting frantically at the blistering, raw bruises on his throat. No one paid him any attention. He was another senseless drunk in a room nearly too packed to see across.
“You are vicious,” Ezra observed mildly.
“Try not to have us thrown out,” Julian muttered.
“Surely we’re in agreement that my actions were justified,” I said breathlessly, all lit up inside with a surge of fear and rage and vengeance that made my skin tingle. They herded me between them, both so annoyingly tall that they blocked most of my view of the crowd that we pressed through.
Ezra shook his head with a rueful grin that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. He was looking all around, surveying the mob of people as if expecting someone to lunge at us.
