The boat was nearly empty at that hour. People dozed in the stuffy cabin or ate whatever dinner they’d packed, ham rolls and insulated flasks of coffee balanced on their laps.
Unable to sleep, Wylan had left the heat of the cabin and walked to the prow of the boat. The winter air was cold and smelled of the slaughter-houses on the outskirts of the city. It turned Wylan’s stomach, but soon the lights would fade and they’d be in the open country. He was sorry they weren’t traveling by day. He would have liked to see the windmills keeping watch over their fields, the sheep grazing in their pastures. He sighed, shivering in his coat, and adjusted the strap of his satchel. He should try to rest. Maybe he could wake up early and watch the sunrise.
When he turned, Prior and Miggson were standing behind him.
“Sorry,” Wylan said. “I—” And then Prior’s hands were tight around his throat.
Wylan gasped—or he tried to; the sound that came from him was barely a croak. He clawed at Prior’s wrists, but the man’s grip was like iron, the pressure relentless. He was big enough that Wylan could feel himself being lifted slightly as Prior pushed him against the railing.
Prior’s face was dispassionate, nearly bored, and Wylan understood then that he would never reach the school in Belendt. He’d never been meant to. There was no secretary. No account in his name. No one was expecting his arrival. The supposed enrollment papers in his pocket might say anything at all. Wylan hadn’t even bothered to try to read them. He was going to disappear, just as his father had always wanted, and he’d hired these men to do the job. His father who had read him to sleep at night, who’d brought him sweet mallow tea and honeycomb when he’d been sick with lung fever. As long as it takes people to forget I had a son. His father was going to erase him from the ledger, a mistaken calculation, a cost that could be expunged. The tally would be made right.
Black spots filled Wylan’s vision. He thought he could hear music.
“You there! What’s going on?”
The voice seemed to come from a great distance. Prior’s grip loosened very slightly. Wylan’s toes made contact with the deck of the boat.
“Nothing at all,” said Miggson, turning to face the stranger. “We just caught this fellow looking through the other passengers’ belongings.”
Wylan made a choked sound.
“Shall I … shall I fetch the stadwatch then? There are two officers in the cabin.”
“We’ve already alerted the captain,” said Miggson. “We’ll be dropping him at the stadwatch post at the next stop.”
“Well, I’m glad you fellows were being so vigilant.” The man turned to go.
The boat lurched slightly. Wylan wasn’t going to wait to see what happened next. He shoved against Prior with all his might—then, before he could lose his nerve, he dove over the side of the boat and into the murky canal.
He swam with every bit of speed he could muster. He was still dizzy and his throat ached badly. To his shock, he heard another splash and knew one of the men had dived in after him. If Wylan showed up somewhere still breathing, Miggson and Prior probably wouldn’t get paid.
He changed his stroke, making as little noise as possible, and forced himself to think. Instead of heading straight to the side of the canal the way his freezing body longed to, he dove under a nearby market barge and came up on its other side, swimming along with it, using it as cover. The dead weight of his satchel pulled hard at his shoulders, but he couldn’t make himself relinquish it. My things , he thought nonsensically, my flute . He didn’t stop, not even when his breathing grew ragged and his limbs started to turn numb. He forced himself to drive onward, to put as much distance as he could between himself and his father’s thugs.
But eventually, his strength started to give out and he realized he was doing more thrashing than swimming. If he didn’t get to shore, he would drown. He paddled toward the shadows of a bridge and dragged himself from the canal, then huddled, soaked and shaking in the icy cold. His bruised throat scraped each time he swallowed, and he was terrified that every splash he heard was Prior coming to finish the job.
He needed to make some kind of plan, but it was hard to form whole thoughts. He checked his trouser pockets. He still had the kruge his father had given him tucked safely away. Though the cash was wet through, it was perfectly good for spending. But where was Wylan supposed to go? He didn’t have enough money to get out of the city, and if his father sent men looking for him, he’d be easily tracked. He needed to get somewhere safe, someplace his father wouldn’t think to look. His limbs felt weighted with lead, the cold giving way to fatigue. He was afraid that if he let himself close his eyes, he wouldn’t have the will to open them again.
In the end, he’d simply started walking. He wandered north through the city, away from the slaughter houses, past a quiet residential area where lesser tradesmen lived, then onward, the streets becoming more crooked and more narrow, until the houses seemed to crowd in on him. Despite the late hour, there were lights in every window and shop front. Music spilled out of run-down cafés, and he glimpsed bodies pressed up against each other in the alleys.
“Someone dunk you, lad?” called an old man with a shortage of teeth from a stoop.
“I’ll give him a good dunking!” crowed a woman leaning on the stairs.
He was in the Barrel. Wylan had lived his whole life in Ketterdam, but he’d never come here. He’d never been allowed to. He’d never wanted to. His father called it a “filthy den of vice and blasphemy” and “the shame of the city.” Wylan knew it was a warren of dark streets and hidden passages. A place where locals donned costumes and performed unseemly acts, where foreigners crowded the thoroughfares seeking vile entertainments, where people came and went like tides. The perfect place to disappear.
And it had been—until the day the first of his father’s letters had arrived.
With a start, Wylan realized Jesper was pulling at his sleeve. “This is our stop, merchling. Look lively.”
Wylan hurried after him. They disembarked at the empty dock at Olendaal and walked up the embankment to a sleepy village road.
Jesper looked around. “This place reminds me of home. Fields as far as the eye can see, quiet broken by nothing but the hum of bees, fresh air.” He shuddered. “Disgusting.”
As they walked, Jesper helped him gather wildflowers from the side of the road. By the time they’d made it to the main street, he had a respectable little bunch.
“I guess we need to find a way to the quarry?” Jesper said.
Wylan coughed. “No we don’t, just a general store.”
“But you told Kaz the mineral—”
“It’s present in all kinds of paints and enamels. I wanted to make sure I had a reason to go to Olendaal.”
“Wylan Van Eck, you lied to Kaz Brekker .” Jesper clutched a hand to his chest. “And you got away with it! Do you give lessons?”
Wylan felt ridiculously pleased—until he thought about Kaz finding out. Then he felt a little like the first time he’d tried brandy and ended up spewing his dinner all over his own shoes.
They located a general store halfway up the main street, and it took them only a few moments to purchase what they needed. On the way out, a man loading up a wagon exchanged a wave with them. “You boys looking for work?” he asked skeptically. “Neither of you looks up to a full day in the field.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Jesper. “We signed on to do some work out near Saint Hilde.”
Wylan waited, nervous, but the man just nodded. “You doing repairs at the hospital?”
“Yup,” Jesper said easily.
“Your friend there don’t talk much.”
“Shu,” said Jesper with a shrug.
The older man gave some kind of grunt in agreement and said, “Hop on in. I’m going out to the quarry. I can take you to the gates. What are the flowers for?”
“He has a sweetheart out near Saint Hilde.”
“Some sweetheart.”
“I’ll say. He has terrible taste in women.”