Cyril half-followed him, settling between two soft stumps where branches had decayed away. He watched the boy—his nephew—scrape through the frozen leaf mold for a few minutes before he said, “Except you.”

Stephen looked up from a handful of tacks. “What?”

“Nobody wants to know me, except you.”

“Obviously you didn’t want to do whatever it was.” His scorn and confidence were the kind people generally lost after the world kicked them in the teeth a time or two.

“How do you know that?”

“There are all kinds of people who did what the Ospies told them and hated it.” Shrapnel held carefully in one hand, Stephen climbed up onto the log beside Cyril. “Mummy, for one. When she was in Porachis … I was little, but even I knew something wasn’t right. She doesn’t talk about it much. She and Dad, both: backed into a corner so they’d do what the Ospies wanted. And I know there’s kids at school whose parents are the same. Folk try to keep it quiet: Nobody wants to end up like you.”

It was not the answer he had been expecting, and it hamstrung him.

“It makes them feel good to see you shamed.” Stephen was speaking to the jagged pieces in his palm now, pushing them around with his finger. “Because they can tell themselves they’re not that bad after all. Which means you must have done something awful.”

Breathing hurt—the icy air scoured his lungs, and his ribs felt as though a vice had closed around them.

“It’s going to come out anyway,” said Stephen, young and smart and terribly matter-of-fact. “On the wireless and all. Why don’t you tell me now? Like you’d want me to hear it.”

Playing for time, Cyril held out his hand and made a give it gesture. Stephen looked perplexed for a moment, then poured the slurry of copper and tacks and forest floor from his cupped palm into Cyril’s.

The threatening edges and keen cold points of metal focused him. No one else was going to teach Stephen about these things. And Cyril knew how hard it was to learn in the field; experience imparted its lessons well, but its methods could be brutal.

“All right,” he said, closing a loose fist over the remnants of their blast. “I will.”

The cold kept him brief, cutting the story down to its most essential parts. But that, he realized as he told it, was how he would have wanted Stephen to hear it first: facts unvarnished by opinion. He’d already proven he was capable of forming his own.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN