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carriage stopped a few times at intersections. After Draper Street, the voices diminished considerably. Sev heard an odd grinding of metal as the carriage pulled off again. When Kettlebent’s transport stopped once more, the vehicle sat outside of Fervis’s Auto-Cobblery and the only person who disembarked was Mr. Kettlebent with his odd lurching gate.
    Sev only waited a moment before he slipped around the side and peered in the window. He gasped at the sight before him—an empty carriage. No phony foreman. No child slaves. Sev had been with them the entire time, and they hadn’t exited. Where were they?
    His gasp had drawn the driver’s notice, who challenged him. “Oy,” the little man called in his squeaky voice. “What’re ye doin’ back there?” Worried, Sev dashed quickly from his perch to avoid the driver’s scrutiny, cursing himself for letting Kettlebent get away.
    When he made it safely away from the carriage and the driver, he paused, panting heavily. What next? He decided his safest course of action at this point would be to slip away and hope the driver hadn’t made the connection between the two encounters.
    Sev wandered the alleys of Blackside, his mind reeling. None of this makes any sense , he thought as he walked the cobbled streets among the factories. He was a block from Fervis’s when he decided to double back and see if Kettlebent remained. His heart pounded as he neared the Auto-Cobblery. If Fervis or any of his men caught Sev snooping around, they wouldn’t call the authorities. They’d mete out their own justice. His body probably wouldn’t even be found. He scrambled up the side of the building across the street. The roof offered a perfect view of the window in Fervis’s office on the second floor of the mansion attached to the factory. Sev could see Fervis’s big desk but no sign of the man or Kettlebent.
    “Damn.” Sev slammed his fist on the edge of the roof. He’d decided to leave, convinced he’d missed the dark stranger, when Fervis appeared behind the desk. Sev ducked down when Kettlebent folded his strange frame into the chair across from Fervis. Sev didn’t know if he was visible to the men in the room, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Fervis produced a wooden case filled with cigars and offered it to Kettlebent, who waved them away. That didn’t stop Fervis from lighting one up. The two men spoke animatedly before Fervis stood and turned to the window with a sour look on his face, the eye Sev had ruined covered by a patch. Kettlebent held up a finger, and whatever the dark stranger said sent Fervis into a rage. Kettlebent jumped out of his seat, and Sev could tell that the two men were arguing, though he couldn’t hear their words.
    Kettlebent slammed his fist onto Fervis’s desk, smashing the cigar box to splinters. Sev gasped at the strength behind that blow. The display gave Fervis pause as well. The weasel reached into his desk and produced a turret pistol that Sev recognized all too well. Kettlebent jabbed an accusing finger at the industrialist. Fervis kept the gun leveled at the dark man and pressed a red plunger on his desk. In no time, two large foremen appeared on either side of Kettlebent. They grabbed him, and he shrugged them off like they were clinging children before storming from the room. Fervis took a large puff on his cigar and returned the gun to its drawer as he waved his men out.
    Sev shook his head, turning away from the edge of the roof. Far from answering his questions, the little scene he’d just witnessed only complicated things. If these men were working together to traffic child slaves, why were they fighting now? Money, probably , Sev thought. Fervis, Kettlebent, Pointy Beard, and Madame Beauchamps: it seemed to Sev that all the adults in Blackside were in league, committing some atrocity against the youth population. The young man sat on the cold roof alone with his confused thoughts, trying to decide what his next move would