He considered sharing this unhappy conclusion with Zeke or Houjin, or even Mercy Lynch—since she was so keen to hear all about sap and its effects—but he wasn’t certain he could stick with the resolution, if in fact this was a resolution at all. He didn’t know. He’d never made one before.

All he knew was that he’d gone a stretch without sap and he was thinking clearer than he had in a very long time, and feeling better than when he’d been on the outside—persistent Blight gas be damned. He was hungry more often than not, but he’d always been hungry outside—and now he knew where to find food, and no one would swat him with a belt if they caught him taking any. He was tired, but he’d often been tired before, and now he had a place to sleep that he didn’t share with anyone else. Maybe it didn’t lock, and maybe it didn’t belong to him in any concrete way apart from possession being so much of the law down here, but it was his and no one was fighting him for it.

If he were to try his luck at the Station, he might find the population less accommodating, or more competitive, which was his true worry. Bishop had suggested that the Station would be filled with men more like himself, inclined to crime, drug use, and cheating behavior, and that sounded tricky. It was easier, he suspected, to be the only person of his sort. Better a big fish in a small pond.

But when he looked around the tiny, dingy, dark, and utilitarian room … it did not feel much different from the orphanage. It felt like a lateral move, and not a step up. Even if it was his, and his alone.

He was mulling this over when he heard a violent clatter and a keening, simpering sound that made his ears want to close up. He hopped to his feet and poked his head out into the hall, and there he saw Angeline wrestling with something that was too large for her to easily carry.

When she saw him, she smiled and set her burden down with a grunt. “Red!” she exclaimed, panting roughly as she caught her breath. “Come give me a hand with this, would you?”

“What … what is it?” he asked, coming closer only because she was so unafraid—and it wouldn’t do for him to cringe away like a coward.

“Silly boy—it’s the cage we set out the other day. And inside it…” She drew aside a moth-eaten blanket that’d been covering the cage. “I’ve got Zeke’s fox.”