Page 68 of Stealing Tink

I ignore him, searching the room anyway.

Finally, when I find nothing, I hold out my palm.

“What is it that you want?” he asks, but I don’t have time to explain.

So I grab his jacket and slip my hand into the inside pocket. His lips flicker ever so slightly at my touch, but I ignore him. Finding a leather pouch, I yank it out and open it, revealing a set of lock picks, then start working on the first faerie’s lock. It takes me several minutes, the seconds measured by the tapping of the Nomad’s foot.

Finally, her chains come free and clatter to the floor. I start on the next one.

“Tink,” the Nomad says, his voice a warning. “At this rate, it’s going to take you hours to let them all go. We don’t have hours. Truth be told, we don’t even really have minutes.”

I don’t want him to be right. Can’t stand for him to be right. Not when I can feel in the numbness of my wings what these girls have gone through. Who knows for how many years, and for how many years longer they might suffer if I leave them? Will they spend more of their lives as prisoners than they ever did free?

But the Nomad is right.

We don’t have time to release all of them. I don’t even really have time to unlatch another set of bonds, not just for our sake, but for theirs as well.

We’ll be at the train station before I can get all of them undone, and even then there’s always the chance the Company comes through to check on them before then.

I rush to the Nomad and search through his pockets.

“Are you intending on making a habit of that?” he asks, sounding perfectly content with the idea.

I pull out the notepad and quill and get to writing.

I press the note into the hand of the one faerie I managed to unbind, shaking her softly. Her eyes flutter open and look as if they might close again, so I shake her harder. She startles, confused, but I press a finger to my lips.

Then I hold the note up in front of her face. At first, I worry she can’t read, but her eyes scan it deftly.

She nods, then looks down at her unbound wrists, tears filling her eyes as she whispers, “There are several of us who used to earn our bread by breaking into houses,” she says. “I’ll release those first. They can help with the others.”

I turn to the Nomad and sign, More.

He makes a face that to me, looks as if he’s trying to decide whether to lie about the number of lock picks currently on his person. Instead, he rolls his eyes, groans, and produces five more sets, handing them to the faerie.

“Thank you,” she whispers, but the Nomad has no patience for accepting her gratitude.

“Come on, then,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “Before you forget what we came here to do.”

CHAPTER 29

In the next car, we find the walls lined not with faeries but with crates.

The Nomad pries one open with his bare hands, the nails creaking. Even before I catch a glimpse of the faerie dust, an effervescent glow peeks through the crack in the crate.

The Nomad looks inside, and his face tightens with disappointment. “Well, this is going to be a problem,” he mutters, almost to himself.

What’s wrong? I sign.

“See for yourself.”

I pad over as the train rumbles across the tracks. When I peer over the edge, I recognize immediately what’s wrong.

The faerie dust doesn’t look like the commercial stuff they use for lamps. The grains are too irregular for that. It’s unrefined. Exactly what Lars said we didn’t need.

I glance at the Nomad, though I’m not sure what for. Direction, I suppose, though it unsettles me to admit that to myself.

“We’ll just have to search the rest of the train,” he says. “Surely it’s just in another car.”