Chapter 1
The ceiling bled again. Finn lay on his mattress, watching the brown stain above his head spread into a shape that looked like a fist, or maybe a country he would never visit. The air in the dormitory tasted of rust and the sour breath of eleven boys who had slept in their clothes because the heating had died three winters ago and no one had ever come to bury it. He counted the shapes under the grey blankets. One, two, three, four. Jem was snoring with his mouth open, a thread of saliva catching the light from the barred window. Mouse was not snoring. Finn pushed himself up on his elbows. The floorboards bit his feet with a cold that felt personal.
Mouse was curled into a ball no bigger than a sack of laundry. Finn touched the boy's forehead. The heat there was silent and wrong.
"Hey," Finn whispered. "Hey, breathe."
Mouse breathed, but it came in shallow sips, like a dog drinking from a puddle. Finn pulled his own blanket—thinner than a lie—and laid it over Mouse. Jem stirred.
"Is he bad?" Jem asked.
"Bad enough," Finn said.
Bess was already awake. She sat on the edge of her cot, braiding her hair with fingers red from scrubbing floors the night before. She looked at Finn, then at Mouse, and shook her head once. That meant don't let them see .
The bell rang. Not a bell, really, but a piece of iron pipe Mrs. Halloway struck with a wrench. The sound entered through your teeth and sat behind your eyes. Boys groaned, rolled, stood. Finn pulled Mouse upright. The small boy's knees buckled.
"Walk," Finn said. "Just walk. I'll hold you."
They went down the narrow stairs in a line that smelled of cabbage water and the pink soap that stripped your skin raw. The dining hall was a basement with one bulb swinging from a cord. Mrs. Halloway stood at the head of the long table, her body a black rectangle against the peeling plaster. She did not eat with them. She watched.
Finn lowered Mouse onto the bench. The breakfast was porridge the color of wet cardboard, served in bowls that had cracks you had to avoid with your spoon. Finn ate fast. He always ate fast because slow eaters had their bowls taken away halfway through. When Mrs. Halloway turned to shout at a boy who had spilled his water, Finn slipped his own bread—if you could call it bread—into Mouse's hand under the table. Mouse's fingers closed around it like a secret.
But Mrs. Halloway had eyes in the back of her hatred. She stopped mid-sentence. The room went still except for the swinging bulb.
"Finnegan," she said. She never called him Finn. "Stand."
He stood. Mouse's hand was empty now, but the crumbs on the bench betrayed him. Or maybe they betrayed Mouse. It was always hard to tell who the trap was for.
"You fed him," she said. It was not a question. "You think charity makes you big? Makes you a man?"
"No, ma'am," Finn said. He looked at her chin, not her eyes. Looking at her eyes was a mistake boys only made once.
"He's sick," she said. "Sick boys go to the ward. You know the ward."
Finn knew the ward. It was a room at the end of the east corridor where the windows were painted white and the door had a lock. Boys went in coughing and came out quiet, carried away in the morning before the others woke up. No one asked where.
"He's not sick," Finn said. "He's tired."
Mrs. Halloway smiled. It was a thin movement, a crack in ice. She walked down the length of the table, her heels clicking like a clock counting down something you didn't want to reach. She stopped in front of Finn. She smelled of camphor and the peppermint she sucked to hide the gin.
"Tomorrow," she said, loud enough for the whole room to hear, "a gentleman is visiting from the county. He wants a boy. Thirteen. Strong. Useful." She looked at Finn's shoulders, which had grown broad from hauling coal and scrubbing stone. "Clean," she added. "No sick boys. No thieves. No boys who think they are smarter than their betters."
She turned away. The room exhaled. Finn sat down. His hands were steady, which surprised him. Under the table, Bess found his knee and pressed her thumb into the bone, hard. It was the only comfort she knew how to give.
Mouse leaned against Finn's shoulder. The boy was burning.
"You're not going," Mouse whispered.
Finn looked at the fist-shaped stain on the ceiling of his mind. "None of us are," he said. But he did not know if that was a promise or a lie, and the porridge sat in his stomach like wet sand, and the bulb kept swinging, and somewhere outside the barred window, a bird was singing a song that sounded like a door opening somewhere far away.
