The new girl arrived on a day the sky wept ash—a byproduct of the Headmaster's latest penance, burning storybooks in the courtyard. Lila watched from the coal chute as the girl stepped from the butcher's cart, her boots split at the seams, her hair a nest of copper defiance. She carried no doll, no postcard, only a tin pail sloshing with something that smelled of clover and decay.
"Name?" barked Sister Agnes.
"Brigitte." Not Child 128. Brigitte.
Lila filed this first act of rebellion in her mental ledger.
They assigned Brigitte to the washhouse, its cauldrons perpetually belching steam. Lila found her there at dusk, scrubbing bloodstains from the Headmaster's shirts.
"You stare like a gutted fish," Brigitte said, not turning. Her hands were raw, but her voice held a blade's edge. "What d'you want?"
The pail, Lila noted. It sat beneath the washboard, leaking amber.
"Honey," Brigitte said, catching her gaze. "Stole it from a hive near the river. Guards'll bolt a door for sweets, but rats'll chew through iron for it."
Lila stiffened. Too clever. Too bold.
Brigitte grinned, a flash of crooked incisors. "Mother taught me to read stains," she said, wringing out a cassock. "Wine, ink, sin." From her apron, she produced a ledger page—salvaged from the Headmaster's trash—smeared with molasses and numbers.
"Code," Brigitte said. "Shipments."
Lila's pulse quickened. "Warm it, dip the page. Secrets rise."
They huddled in the larder, candle clutched between them. The honey, heated to syrupy gold, revealed inked words beneath the molasses:
MORGAN – 12 – QUEBEC – PAID IN FULL
Lila's finger traced the 12. Twelfth shipment. Twelfth child.
The Ratcatcher:
Trust, Lila decided, was a threadbare coat—better to shrug it off than drown in its false warmth. Yet Brigitte's honey pooled useful. Together, they mapped:
Every 47 days, a carriage collected two children "for pious apprenticeships."
The Headmaster corresponded with a Rev. J. Morgan of Montreal
The Honey Trick worked on Sister Margot's desk drawer. Inside: a key stamped R.R. – Portside. Railroad? River?
But honey drew more than secrets.
Ashes and Veils:
Rev. J. Morgan's censer swung like a pendulum of doom, its incense choking the chapel air. His jowls trembled with each thunderous decree:
"For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."
"THE ROAD OF HEAVEN TREADED ON THORNS AND WEEDS!"
"An eye for an eye would make a worm in time. Vengeance is of the Lord," Rev. J. Morgan said.
"THE LORD SHALL SAVE THOSE WHO BELIEVE!" The orphans chanted back, their voices brittle as dried reeds. Their mouths moved in pious unison, eyes darting to the altar's honey-drenched figs—forbidden, save for the clergy. Brigitte's fingers clawed into Lila's arm as the Reverend spat Ezekiel's wrath.
"Do you believe?" she hissed, her breath sour with lentil gruel. "An eye for an eye, or—"
"Graves," Lila murmured, her stolen watch pressed its gears into her wrist beneath the long sleeve. "Vengeance digs two. One for your foe, one for your soul."
Brigitte flinched as Sister Everline's birch rod cracked the pew behind them. The Reverend bowed seven times to the blistered Christ statue, his vestments straining over a paunch fed on sacramental wine. When he raised the host—a mold-speckled wafer—the orphans moaned like specters. Even hunger, it seemed, could be ritualized.
"BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART!"
The chosen children stood, sleeves swallowing their stickbone arms. Lila's dress hung looser than most, but three months of apple cores stolen during kitchen penance had padded her hips enough to pass for viable. Marketable.
Child 09 lounged at the procession's helm, golden and bare-armed. No sleeves to hide his coltish limbs, no scars to explain his provenance. Heat rippled off him, cruel as the August sun.
Foreigner, they seethed.
Hybrid.
Damnèd.
Sister Everline draped Lila's shoulders in a moth-eaten shawl. "Mind your tongue today," she warned, fingers lingering too long on the watch's bulge. "Visitors prefer their charity... unblemished."
Outside, St Agatha's gates yawned open. Thirteen children shuffled toward the town square, where the Cameramen awaited with camphor and cameras.
Lila let her sleeve slip—just enough—to catch the sun on the watch.
The Carriage of Fools:
The carriages lurched forward, their axles shrieking like souls mid-exorcism. Two skeletal mares—ribs protruding like cathedral buttresses—dragged them past St. Agatha's iron gates. Brigitte clawed the splintered bench, her knuckles whitening as the orphanage shrank to a tumor on the horizon. "D'you think they'll feed us rats or roaches this time?" she whispered.
"Community service," Child 09 drawled, flipping a silver coin across his knuckles. The coin blurred—flick, flick—catching the sun like a heliograph. "They'll dress us in linen, paint our cheeks with beet juice. Snap a photo for the Montreal Gazette: Orphans Renewed by Christian Charity!"
Brigitte glared. "And the horses? The carriages? Why starve us if they've coin for gilt wheels?"
"Because hands," he smirked, nodding at Lila's scarred palms, "are cheaper to replace than horses."
The carriage hit a stone. Brigitte slipped, skull grazing the window frame. Child 09 and Lila swayed like marionettes, their bodies fluent in betrayal's physics.
Lila's wrist burned where Child 09 pressed the dollar—crinkled, sour with camphor. His whisper sank into her pores: "Sernet Square. Red-haired baker. Say you're from the Ghost River."
Brigitte snorted. "Where'd you steal a dollar, princeling? Sell your boots?"
"Borrowed," he corrected, leaning into Lila's shoulder. His breath reeked of stolen peppermints. "From the Headmaster's private collection."
Outside, the road unraveled through burned wheat fields, past villages gutted by consumption. A one-eyed mare stared back at Lila, its milky gaze unspooling memories: Elise, screaming as they hauled her toward a similar carriage. A man in a magistrate's wig, smiling as he bit a gold coin for teeth marks.