“Am I all right?” His voice is joyous, but there is an edge to it Thomas does not like. “Never better.” Charlie leans his weight into him, pushes Thomas back a step. “You should take a drag.”

There is something to Charlie’s eyes as he turns his attention from Thomas to Livia. Something lewd, suggestive: so unlike Charlie that for a moment he is as though transformed.

“Or you should, little Miss Prim. It’d do you a world of good.”

Charlie moves the cigarette back up to his lips. Thomas slaps it out of his hand before he can inhale. Next he knows Charlie has pushed him into the wall. The strength of it surprises Thomas, knocks the wind out of him: an unfettered Charlie, his strong young body free of restraint. Three heartbeats they stand eye to eye.

Then the real Charlie returns. There is no other phrase for it. It’s his kindness, his patience, rising up again through his features. They settle around the eyes, inflect the curve of his mouth. Within another second they are followed by shame. Charlie bends to the still-burning cigarette, pinches the tip then crumples it in his fist. Livia is watching him.

“That’s like throwing away pure gold.”

But Charlie’s mind is elsewhere.

“I didn’t smoke,” he says.

Even as he speaks a shiver goes through him. He reaches inside his shirt and his hand comes back stained. It isn’t Soot and it isn’t Smoke but something in between: a black, oily smear that oozes a fine stream. Then, the very next moment, it is as though it catches fire, and in the blink of an eye, Charlie’s hand emits a tar-black breath of Smoke. The Soot that forms is a fine white ash. It scatters by his feet like flakes of chalk.

“Like pure gold,” Thomas repeats. “These cigarettes are expensive?”

Livia nods. “So I am told.”

“Who makes them? The same people that make sweets?”

She shakes her head. “No. Sweets are a government monopoly. It used to be held jointly by three or four families, before the Spencers bought it up. These”—she stabs a finger in the direction of Charlie’s fist—“are illegal. Officially they don’t even exist. Nobody knows where they are made. Or how.”

“The Spencers own the sweets monopoly?”

Thomas would like to hear more about this, but Charlie talks over him, his voice bewildered, struggling to make sense of things.

“It was like London,” he says. “Like a fever. Only it didn’t come from the outside. It came from within.” He shudders, lays his palm on his throat, as though the infection were stuck there, poisoning his breath.

“But why?” he asks, still in the same panicked tone. “Why would anyone pay money to buy Smoke? It makes no sense.”

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