The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) Read Free

else he’d ever owned: on a whim, or so he’d thought at the time. In retrospect, the idea might’ve already been brewing, bubbling on a back burner where he hadn’t noticed it yet.
    He reached underneath the mattress, to a spot where the fabric covering had rubbed itself threadbare against the slats that held it above the floor. Feeling around with his left hand, he retrieved a small bag he’d stitched together from strips of a burlap bag that once held horse feed. Now it held other things, things he didn’t particularly want found, or taken away.
    He added this pouch to the stash on the bed and tied up the corners of the blanket. The blanket wasn’t really his to commandeer, but that wouldn’t stop him. The Home was throwing him out, wasn’t it? He figured that meant that the muttering nuns and the cadaverous priest practically owed him. How could they expect a young man to make his way through life with nothing but the clothes on his back? The least they could do is give him a blanket.
    Slipping his hand inside the makeshift bag’s loops, he lifted it off the bed and slung it over one shoulder. It wasn’t heavy.
    He stopped in the doorway and glared for the last time into the room he’d called “home” for more than fifteen years. He saw nothing, and he felt little more than that. Possibly a twinge, some tweak of memory or sentiment that should’ve been burned out of operation ages ago.
    More likely, it was a tiny jolt of worry. Not that Rector liked the idea of worrying any better than he liked the idea of nostalgia, but the last of his sap would take care of it. All he needed was a safe, quiet place to fire up the last of the precious powder, and then he’d be free again for … Another few hours at most, he thought sadly. Need to go see Harry. This won’t be enough .
    But first things first.
    Into the hall he crept, pausing by the stairs to loosely, hastily tie his boots so they wouldn’t flap against the floor. Down the stairs he climbed, listening with every step for the sound of swishing nun robes or insomniac priest grumblings. Hearing nothing, he descended to the first floor.
    A candle stub squatted invitingly on the end table near Father Harris’s favorite reading chair beside the fireplace in the main room. Rector collected the stub and rifled through his makeshift bag to find his matches. He lit the candle and carried it with him, guarding the little flame with the cup of his hand as he went.
    Tiptoeing into the kitchen, he gently pushed the swinging door aside. He wondered if there was any soup, dried up for boiling and mixing. Even if it wasn’t anything he wanted to eat, he might be able to barter with it later. And honestly, he wasn’t picky. When food was around, he ate it. Whatever it was.
    The pantry wasn’t much to write home about. It was never stocked to overflowing, but it never went empty, either. Someone in some big church far away saw to it that the little outposts and Homes and sanctuaries like these were kept in the bare essentials of food and medicine. It wasn’t a lot—any fool could see this was no prosperous private hospital or sanatorium for rich people—but it was enough to make Rector understand why so many folks took up places in the church, regardless. Daily bread was daily bread, and hardly anybody leftover from the city that used to be Seattle had enough to go around.
    “They owe me,” he murmured as he scanned the pantry’s contents.
    They owed him that loaf of bread wrapped in a dish towel. It hadn’t even hardened into a stone-crusted brick yet, so this was a lucky find indeed. They owed him a bag of raisins, too, and jar of pickles, and some oatmeal. They might’ve owed him more, but a half-heard noise from upstairs startled Rector into cutting short his plunder.
    Were those footsteps? Or merely the ordinary creaks and groans of the rickety wood building? Rector blew out the candle, closed his eyes, and prayed that it was only a small earthquake