Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Renfrew! But how do you know we can trust him?”

“I don’t. But he was Baron Naylor’s student, back in the day. And he is the one who told me that I was sick with Smoke. If we are right — if that cage in the laboratory is meant for me because of what is growing in me — then, Charlie, I need to know what it is for . Otherwise, I am making choices in the dark. And I am sick of doing that.”

Charlie wishes he could tell his friend that he is wrong. That Renfrew won’t know a thing; that he will treat him as the errant schoolboy he is, scold him, lock him in a schoolroom, and make him scrub the floors in penance. But in his mind’s eye he sees him again, the Master of Smoke and Ethics, sitting in the coach back from Oxford, quietly talking to Thomas. Renfrew knows. Something. Many things.

Perhaps he can be persuaded to tell them.

“In that case,” Charlie says, looking calmly at his friend. “We will all go.”

But Thomas won’t have it.

“Too risky. After all, we don’t know whose side he is on. For all we know he is mixed up in this and working with Lady Naylor. If she is, in fact, our enemy. We need to split up. To make sure someone is there, in London. In case Renfrew detains me. Someone who knows , and can act as a witness.”

Again Thomas’s reasoning is sound. And again, Charlie draws a different conclusion.

“Then I will go.” He goes on speaking over Thomas’s murmur of protest. “If you are right — about the cage, about the Smoke in you, all of it — then it’s you who is important. Not me. So I will go.”

Still Thomas tries to argue, rises from the ground, anger in his voice, his whole body shaking with exhaustion.

It’s Livia who shuts him up.

“You can’t go,” she says to him. “Not by yourself. You’d never make it. Someone would have to come and be your nurse. So no matter what you do, you will put one of us at risk.” She speaks very calmly, dispassionately, reciting the facts.

“I don’t know this Master Renfrew, nor would I easily be able to find him. And you require an attendant. So either we all go and risk our hides. Or none of us goes. Or Charlie goes, and bears the consequences of your decision.”

She looks from one boy to the other as though weighing them up. It is, to Charlie, an uncomfortable glance.

“You have to make up your mind, Mr. Argyle.”

She adds it quietly, sadly, as though she knows he already has.

ф

They say good-bye once they have arranged a meeting place and time. It’s easy. There is only one place in London both boys are sure they will find. Execution square; at the foot of the scaffold. Three meeting times a day, dawn, noon, and dusk: starting lunchtime tomorrow. It’s the earliest they can imagine Charlie can make it to London. He will have to sleep at the school. Or on the road.

It is best if they don’t enter the train depot together. Whoever is looking for them, is looking for three scions of their gentry, two youths and a girl. There may be leaflets out for all they know, eyes at every train station. But they won’t be interested in a dirty tramp in stolen clothes; nor in a pit girl and her companion. Or so they hope. Charlie is to go first. A head start of three hours. Enough time not to connect the one stranger with the other two. And for Thomas to rest.

Before he goes, Charlie steps over to Livia. Thomas looks away, immerses himself in the study of his boots. Giving them privacy. Even so, saying good-bye is not easy. They don’t know how to. They have never touched each other in daylight.

In the end it is Charlie who extends his hand. Livia takes it shyly. They may have been strangers, meeting at a dinner party, only they don’t let go at once but stand there, her hand small between his fingers. Charlie considers kissing her palm. But she pulls it away before he has raised it even halfway to his mouth.

“Too dirty,” she whispers, staring at her black little hand in disgust. “Be careful, Charlie.”

“And you.”

Then it’s Thomas’s turn. Charlie walks over to him, crouches down where he is sitting on the ground.

“Look after her, will you? For me.”

Thomas nods but his look is gaunt. There is a fear there Charlie cannot fathom.

“It’s I who should be going,” Thomas says after a while.

“We decided. It makes sense.”

Thomas shrugs. “Be careful what you say to Renfrew. Don’t give away too much.”

“I will only say what I can. We gave Lady Naylor our word. Not to speak of certain things. She may be a rebel, or a villain. But our word is our word.”

Then he hugs his friend, turns, and leaves.

ф

Charlie need not have worried that he would stand out in the little hamlet that serves as a loading station. There are plenty of strange men milling in the street, dressed in a wide variety of costumes and rarely very clean. Women, too, young and old, and a gaggle of urchins pelting one another with rocks. Workers, traders, unemployed miners. A dandy without boots dragging a donkey by its bridle. A hulking Scot in a greatcoat shouting drunken swear words at the sky, his accent bending every vowel. A consumptive woman, thin as a rail, selling charred, bone-studded meats from a grill she has set up by the side of the road. A beggar dressed in little more than a shift, flashing the stumps of his legs at every passerby.

Where there are people, there is sin. Charlie is shocked when he catches the first whiff of Smoke. It’s been a week since he has smelled it. As he draws closer to the train station, clouds of Smoke become more obvious, drift on the wind, dusting the buildings in Soot. He breathes it in and feels himself grow irritable. It is hard, in this world, not to walk around with clenched fists.

Securing passage to Oxford is surprisingly simple. A man on the platform has made a business of it: selling tickets for a berth on the freight train. He operates out in the open, from behind a little table, just like a normal ticket seller. A group of men are in his employ, one more disreputable-looking than the next. They walk up and down the platform, discouraging customers who think they can just leap on a train without paying. “We’re conductors,” one of them keeps shouting. “No tick’t and you pays yer fare in teeth.” He himself is missing most of the latter item along with the better part of the lower jaw. It looks like it has been sliced off with a knife.

Like Thomas, Charlie lost his portmanteau along with the rest of his luggage when they ran from the ambush. Livia never brought a purse in the first place. Consequently, the only money they have between them are the few pennies Mr. Mosley gave them early that morning, counting them out into Charlie’s dirty hands.

“Won’t get far without,” he told them when they tried to refuse.

They divided the money evenly before splitting up, reasoning that Charlie had two trains to catch to Thomas and Livia’s one. Now that he faces the ticket seller, Charlie worries that it won’t be enough and holds the coins on his open palm.

“How much. .?”

The man looks at him, snorts, and swipes the lot. Only then does he ask, “Where to?”

“Oxford.”

“‘Ohx-fjord,’” the man imitates his accent. “Posh boy, eh? Runaway son of a burgher, is that it? Didn’t take to the cane. Or fell in love, what, with a lass that wasn’t suitable. Suited you though, eh?” He makes a gesture of such obscenity that Charlie finds himself blushing to the roots of his hair. “Ah, you should’ve left with fuller pockets, son. Never mind, you’re in luck. Train due in an hour. Any of the last five wagons. The doors’ll be open. If the stationmaster catches you, in Oxford like, say you’re travelling express. Won’t give you any trouble, he won’t, the man’s well paid.”