Patch's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The bell rang again above them. Bella flinched. Patch tapped the compass hard against his paw. The needle stayed stuck, quivering like it wanted to point everywhere at once. "It's not reading air anymore," Patch said. "It's reading them." "My school." Bella wiped her nose on her sleeve. "They'll send someone through the walls. Faster than the nanny thing. Sorry. That's not helpful. I'm just saying." Patch looked back the way they'd come. Steam hissed from a low grate. He thought of the toy shop far above — the woman with the patched coat who gave him this compass, who said the pipes shift with the furnaces. If the compass couldn't read air, they had to read air themselves. He knelt and put his paw flat on the brick floor. Warm. He moved along the wall, paw sliding. Cold patch. Colder. A seam in the mortar leaked a thin draft against his fur. "Here. Fresh air behind this one." Bella crouched beside him. She pressed her palm to the brick and nodded. "That's up. That goes up." Patch drew his sword. He worked the tip into the mortar seam and levered. Grit fell. He worked the next brick. His shoulders burned. Bella pulled loose bricks free with both hands and stacked them quietly against the wall. She was crying again but her hands stayed steady. "Almost," she whispered around nothing — the pacifier was gone, lost back in the hall. "Almost, almost." A brick gave. Cold air rushed through. Patch smelled coal smoke and, under it, a hint of the upper city — bread, wet stone, a horse somewhere. Real air. He pulled two more bricks. The gap was bear-sized. Witch-sized if she squeezed. "You first," he said. "Patch." She grabbed his cloak. "The bell. If they come down and I'm gone, they follow the thread. There's still a thread. I can feel it in my ankle now. They moved it." He stared at her. "Another one." "They always have another one." He pushed her toward the gap. "Then we cut it up top where I can see. Go." She went. Her robe caught, tore, went through. Patch grabbed the compass and the sword and climbed after her. They came out in a low brick shaft. A slit of grey daylight showed at the top. A rusted ladder ran up the wall. Not the toy shop. Not the woman with the patched coat. But up. Sky-up. Bella sat on the shaft floor and lifted the hem of her robe. A red thread was knotted around her ankle, warm and pulsing like a small heart. Above them, in the daylight, a shadow moved across the slit and stopped. Someone was already waiting at the top of the ladder. Patch tightened his grip on the sword. "Stay behind me. We climb anyway."