Mrs. Vautrin took Henry home after breakfast.
He led her past the bakery and up the narrow steps, carrying an empty sack she had found in the kitchen. The woman who rented them their room was waiting outside. She gave Mrs. Vautrin a key and said there was no hurry about the furniture. Henry went in before either of them could ask him anything.
His mother's shirt still hung beside the stove.
He had remembered it being there, but the sight of it stopped him. One sleeve had folded over the line. Below it, the firewood was stacked neatly against the wall, enough for several more evenings.
Mrs. Vautrin remained by the door while he opened the shutters. Light reached the table, the three chairs, and the curtain that divided his bed from the rest of the room. Nothing had been moved.
Henry began with his clothes. He knew exactly which ones were his, and folding them gave him something to do. The stockings went into the bottom of the sack. Then his spare shirt, his winter coat, and the little cloth bag in which his mother kept the buttons that came off his clothes.
On the shelf above the stove lay his father's folding rule.
He took it down. The wooden sections opened stiffly, their markings darkened by years of dirty fingers. His father had shown him how to measure the window frame with it. Henry had been disappointed to discover that the result was the same every time.
He folded it and put it inside his coat.
"What about theirs?" he asked.
Mrs. Vautrin came farther into the room.
"We can bring their clothes. There's room to store a box downstairs."
Henry looked at the sack. It had seemed large when it was empty.
"I don't want them given away."
"Then they won't be given away."
They found a wooden box beneath the bed. Mrs. Vautrin packed it while Henry moved around the room, choosing things and setting them on the table. His mother's sewing tin. The cup with the chipped handle. A ragged scarf he had never seen his father wear, though he always refused to throw it out.
Soon the box was full. Henry stood beside it, searching for something he might have missed.
"We can come back," Mrs. Vautrin said.
He nodded, but took his time closing the shutters. He wanted to remember the room properly. Yesterday, he would have been able to walk through it in the dark. Now he was afraid of forgetting the shape of a chair.
At the orphanage, Mrs. Vautrin cleared a space for the box. Henry carried his sack upstairs and put the folding rule beneath his pillow.
His parents were buried the following morning. Ms. Aparo met them at the cemetery and stayed until it was over. There were a few people from the construction crews, men and women Henry recognized without knowing their names. One woman told him his mother had spoken about him often. He wanted to ask what she had said, but by the time he found the words, she had stepped away.
That evening, he asked Mrs. Vautrin when he could return to work.
"Tomorrow, if you want to."
He did.
Mr. Besson kept his tools in a yard behind a shuttered shop. By the time Henry arrived with Nadir, several workers were already waiting beside the gate.
The older boy from the orphanage landing stood among them. His shoes were clean again. He had a narrow face, brown hair combed flat with water, and sleeves rolled neatly above his elbows.
"That's Ivo," Nadir said. "He's doing the market with us."
Ivo glanced at Henry.
"Does Besson know?"
"Mrs. Vautrin sent him."
Before Ivo could answer, the shop door opened. Mr. Besson emerged with a ledger tucked beneath his arm and a ring of keys in his hand. He was a broad man whose beard grew farther down one side of his face than the other. Henry had spent years wondering whether he knew.
"Wells." Besson stopped in front of him. "You're back."
"Yes, sir."
"I've had the letter."
Henry waited.
Besson turned a key in the gate. "Cloth market until noon. The three of you. Grates, gutters, and the passage behind the stalls. Then report here."
He handed out tools and moved on to the others. Henry took his usual broom from its place beside the shed. A new strip of cloth had been wound around the cracked handle.
"That was me," Nadir said. "It was catching my hand."
Henry ran his thumb over the binding.
"You can leave it on," Nadir added.
"I was going to."
They crossed Rocheforte while the shops were opening. Deliveries crowded the lower streets: carts of timber, sacks of charcoal, baskets covered with damp cloth. Above them, pale new houses climbed toward the heights. Henry could make out workers on their scaffolds, small against the unfinished walls.
At the cloth market, Ivo took charge of the handcart while Nadir fetched buckets. Henry went behind the stalls and found the board covering the smaller drain.
The stallholder objected before Henry touched it.
"I've only just set those out."
Three baskets stood on the board. Henry pointed to the dark water seeping beneath his stall.
"It'll reach the cloth again."
The man looked down, swore under his breath, and began lifting the baskets. Henry held the edge of the board while Ivo drew it aside. Beneath it, a mat of straw and scraps of fabric had collected over the grate.
They cleared it in a few minutes. Water pulled through the opening with a thick sucking sound. Out in the passage, Nadir raised a hand as the standing puddle began to shrink.
Henry set the board back with a gap along one edge. The stallholder watched him do it and said nothing.
For the rest of the morning, they worked their way down the passage. Henry knew where the paving dipped and which grates could be lifted. Ivo was stronger and could push the loaded cart without stopping on the slope. Nadir talked to the stallholders, persuaded two to lend them buckets, and returned from the third with an apple that he cut into uneven pieces.
When they reached the stone water trough, Ivo climbed onto its rim to clear leaves from the supply channel. He leaned far enough over that Henry stopped sweeping.
One palm rested flat against the wall. It stayed there as Ivo stretched for the last of the leaves, his weight pulling away from the stone.
"How are you doing that?" Henry asked.
"My talent."
Ivo stepped down and opened his hand. There was no hook or strap, only a pale patch where the skin had pressed against the wall.
"[Grip]."
"What level?" Nadir asked.
"Four."
Henry studied the hand before Ivo closed it.
"What was it like before?"
"It barely kept my knife from slipping. It changed after I killed a Feral."
Nadir put down his brush. "By yourself?"
"With my father."
"What was it?"
"I don't know. It had got into a cellar." Ivo picked up his bucket. "He held it down."
Neither of them asked another question about his father.
Henry returned to sweeping. His own skill had never changed. He could call its name to mind as easily as his own, but he had spent enough evenings bent over dust and sand to know what it could do. He had never been offered anything to kill.
"What's yours?" Ivo asked him.
"[Lift]."
Ivo looked toward the full buckets.
"I can't lift those."
"How much?"
"Hardly anything."
Henry kept sweeping. After a moment, Ivo picked up the buckets himself.
They were washing the tools when a slayer wagon came through the market.
Henry heard it before he saw it: iron wheels against the paving, followed by a man calling for the passage to be cleared. The stallholder hurried his baskets out of the way. Even Ivo put down his brush.
Two armed men walked beside the wagon. A woman sat on the driver's bench with one arm bound against her chest. The canvas over the load had come loose at a corner, exposing something dark and jointed.
At first Henry thought it was a root. Then the wagon jolted, and a foot struck the sideboard.
It had six narrow toes. Each ended in a curved black nail, long enough to reach around the wood. Farther up, the leg bent twice before disappearing beneath the canvas.
Henry stepped closer to Nadir without taking his eyes off it.
"What rank?" Ivo called.
One of the men glanced at them.
"Feral."
Nadir watched the wagon pass. "That's the lowest?"
"Yes."
The man pulled the loose canvas down and tucked it beneath a strap.
Henry could still see the shape of the foot pressing against it. He had heard stories about beasts that tore through gates and swallowed whole patrols, but those stories had never supplied anything so definite as six toes striking a wooden board.
The woman on the bench shifted her injured arm. Henry wanted to ask where they had found it, and whether there had been others. The wagon was already turning out of the market.
Ivo followed it as far as the corner.
"Leave it," Nadir called. "We have to get back."
"I know."
But he watched until it disappeared.
Besson inspected their tools when they returned. He checked beneath the cart, ran a finger around the rim of a bucket, and made a mark in his ledger.
"Better," he said. "The market keeper says the water's gone."
"Henry knew where the other drain was," Nadir told him.
"He should. He's cleared it often enough."
Henry was satisfied with that. Besson would have said considerably more if the water had remained.
The supervisor turned a page.
"There's extra work in three days. The slayers' receiving yard needs clearing. Straw, old packing, wash-water channels. Two places. Ivo and Nadir."
Nadir straightened. "What's the pay?"
"Twice your usual rate for the day. Be here before the first bell."
Henry looked from Besson to the other boys.
"What about the market?"
"You'll do it. The heavy clearing is finished."
Besson shut the ledger and began assigning their afternoon streets. Nadir was listening closely, still holding the handle of the cart. Ivo had already put his tools away.
As they left the yard, Henry caught up with Nadir.
"Are you going?"
"Of course."
"I thought we were doing the market together."
"We are. It's one day." Nadir glanced at him. "Double pay, Henry."
Henry knew what that meant. He would have taken it too. Still, he had liked working with someone who knew his name without having to read it from a list.
He shifted the broom to his other shoulder.
"Tell me what it's like in there."
"I will."
Ahead of them, Ivo turned toward the upper streets. He had heard the exchange, but his mind was on the receiving yard. That was where the slayers brought their catches and collected equipment before setting out on patrol. Working there would put him close enough to speak to somebody.
He had been waiting months for that chance. He would clean every channel Besson gave him, and when he was finished, he would find out who hired the boys who carried the weapons.