We went no further than a few steps down the street together, when I sensed a small movement at my side. Glancing over, I saw the boy sneaking his hand into my satchel. Immediately I threw him off me, taking hold of my knife in the pocket I had concealed into my skirt long ago, much to Father's dismay.

"Ugh? What's all this?" He looked in dismay at the papers and random tidbits in the bag, too busy focusing on that to notice as I nervously crept up with the knife. "Really not a single useful-" He finally glanced up at me, inches away from his face.

"What? Wait! Don't use that! Here, I'll give it back. Nothing good in there anyway." He tossed it in front of him before raising up his hands.

"You ruffian. Really trying to cabbage me in broad daylight." I huffed in annoyance, crossing my arms. "Really, I ought to take you down to the authorities."

"Says the girl who just tried to murder me." He rolled his eyes. "Besides, you were running from something so I'm pretty sure we both don't want them involved. You let me leave, I let you leave, nobody tells the Mits and we're all good."

He was right. If I ran to get them, they could recognize me from earlier, and then my father's sending me off would have been in vain. Taking hold of the satchel, I started walking back to the main street. Perhaps I could find someone else who would actually try to help a young lady in need.

"Wait!" The boy called, although I'm not sure why I stopped to listen to him. "You actually do need help, don't you? Honestly, I almost feel bad if that's everything you own." He pointed to the bag. "With those clothes and no money, you're not that much better off than us. If you still want to..." He seemed to hesitate for a moment. "I guess I could take you to my hideout, if you don't murder me and my other 'ruffians'."

"It would be 'my other ruffians and I'," I corrected him.

"Ah come off it. You coming or what?" I truly didn't want to follow a thief into some off-color part of town filled with other, uneducated criminals, but he did have a point. I wasn't much better, and I still had my knife and chloroform. I could protect myself, should anything turn sour.

"Fine. I'll come with you."

"Great choice. Name's Oliver by the way." He took my hand with his own scrawny one and shook it like I was a man.

"... Evangeline."

"Alright then Eva, come with me." I hated that he had the nerve to shorten my name, as if it was too much of a bother to finish it. Just who did he think he was? And yet, I followed him down one grimy sidestreet to another, trying to keep up with his slick speed.

"Here we are. Home sweet home." Oliver gestured to what appeared to be a shack, knocked over from a storm, covered with a few brown tarps. "Trust me. It looks larger on the inside."

I ducked down to fit under the doorway, and was suddenly surrounded by at least ten children, dirty and raggedy. Oliver removed his brown tweed cap and patchy jacket before announcing, "Hello boys. I've brought us a guest tonight. Her name is Eva!"

"Evangeline."

"I don't care what her name is," a young boy, certainly no older than eleven, then pouted, crossing his arms. "Did you get us some food?"

"Um, no. Not exactly," Oliver looked away, which I found odd, as he had been so confident before.

"Great. So nothing to eat and another person to feed. And she's a girl." The boy marched up to me defiantly. "You better stay out of my room." And with that, him and a good number of the other boys left, leaving only one small girl with a stuffed rabbit behind. She limped towards Oliver, and it took me a moment to realize that she was missing an eye, just like her doll.

"Did you get me anything Oliver?" She asked hopefully. He shook his head. "Aw that's okay. I still love you." She opened her arms to wrap her frail frame around Oliver's ankle. He ruffled her hair gently, before trying to walk further into the shack, lifting up each other step extra high as if to give the girl a small ride.

"Come on Eva. There's got to be some extra supplies in the back."

I followed him, attempting to duck out of the way of drips from the ceiling or muck on the floor. The place truly was a thieves' hovel, and yet, the girl clinging so lovingly to Oliver's leg didn't appear to be any sort of riff-raff.

"Where are you from?" I tried to ask her, bending down to meet her level, or at least as best as I could in my tight corset.

"I'm from here!" she answered excitedly, her one eye closing as she smiled. "Where are you from?"

"That is an excellent question Sophie," Oliver commented, digging through the bare cupboards that held more spiders than anything that one could eat. "Where are you from? You're certainly not from the streets with the way you talk and dress."

I huffed at his definitely in a way my father would have entirely disapproved of. How rude to ask someone you just met where they reside. Well, I'd prove to him that I was not from these parts. That I deserved respect. "I'm from the Fosters' Trinkets shop on eleventh street."

"Oh. You mean the place that was just closed for it's secret Heartsmithing business?" Oliver mused as he peeked one eye over his shoulder at me, and my no doubt terrified face. "So you are a criminal." He laughed. It was not out of spite, nor menace, but a sound of triumph. "Though... I've never heard of a girl being a Heartsmith before."

"That's because I'm not." I pondered for a moment on how much information to give him. My father was already arrested, and there was no way that he could turn me into the authorities with his background. Was there anything more that I could lose? "It was my father. I only really maintained the shop front."

"So you wouldn't know anything on how to smith someone else's heart?" He had finally managed to find a spare apple, and placed it on the one spot on the table before me that wasn't molding.

"Well, I didn't say that, but why? Do you want me to smith your own, in hopes of marrying better?" It wouldn't be surprising for someone of his status. If his heart matched that of a girl in a higher class, he could live in a much better environment, all without any effort.

"Ah no," he stuttered, and I noticed that his hand drifted the rub the nape of his bandaged neck. I wonder whatever happened to require such, I thought before he continued. "It would be for Sophie here." The young girl waved up at me.

"She's a bit too young to worry about soulmates," I answered abruptly. Truly, a girl no older than the age of five. Whatever was he thinking, to put her through surgery.

"No, not for that... Sophie, why don't you go play with the others for a bit?" Oliver nudged her gently off his boot, and she limped slowly out of the room, calling to the others to wait for her.

"I'm sure a lady that lives on the fairer side of town wouldn't know this, but to people like us, hearts are more for keeping us alive and ticking than for love."

"She appears to be moving as best she can. Heartsmithing can't fix whatever is the matter with her leg. Nor eye," I pointed out. I wasn't entirely sure where Oliver was going with this.

"No," Oliver replied quickly, and it seemed to me that he was beginning to become agitated. "Most of us here worked in factories for years. I'm not asking you to fix fingers or eyes. I'm asking you to replace the bits of their hearts that are beginning to rust from breathing all those fumes. Sophie's received the worst out of all of us, and can barely wind her up some nights. Please," he begged, his bright green eyes shining like a cat's in the low lighting. "Can't you help her? I'll get you all the supplies I can offer."

"I... don't know." I knew that the bag had a few spare heart pieces that my father hadn't had the time to remove whilst filling it with what little he had given me, but whether those parts were compatible with her's, I had no clue. "Do you have her key?"

"Oh, yes. I have it here-" he muttered, almost to himself, digging his hand deep into his trouser's pocket. From there he pulled out a large ring, filled with key after key. Copper... Aluminum... Plenty of tin and nickel, they all dangled against each other, chiming in the moonlight slowly growing from the hole in the ceiling. I noticed that quite a number of keys had an X carved into their handles, seemingly from a rock. From them all, I noticed one sparkling silver key. He picked it out from the rest, placing it before me. "Do you have anything, anything at all?"

I dug through the bag dutifully, but all I could find were a few brass sprockets and bronze capillaries. The common phenomenon of heart pieces was always that the rarer pieces, like gold and silver, were the ones that were most often used, being as they were the kind of customers able to afford our services. Thus, we had plenty of common parts, but silver was often out of stock as soon as the graveyard robbers could deliver them.

"Is she really a Silverheart? I wouldn't have expected someone of that high a ranking to live in such a... circumstance," I finally concluded, trying my absolute best to not insult the home of the one boy not put off at my father's true profession, nor my knowledge of it.

"Yes. I just found her thrown out of a hatter's factory one day, sitting on the steps and crying. Nobody knows where she comes from, and the same machine that crushed her leg clocked her on the head enough for her not to even know herself. She was too lame for any family to want to accept her, Silverheart or not, so I just brought her here with the rest of the boys."

"I truly am sorry Oliver, but I don't have any of the pieces I need, for her, or myself." I looked up at his face, so youthful. So full of equal parts of hope and disappointment, and something about it all made me feel more at ease. "I am on a search myself for the last few pieces for my own heart, so I don't have any extra to offer."

His face then lit up once again. "I could come with then! You probably won't believe me after how awfully I failed with you, but I daresay I'm an excellent nabber. We could get pieces for Sophie along with your own!"

"Oh, that's a lovely offer, but I'm afraid..." I hesitated. It was a fact that I could barely handle the thought of, but then again, I had explained everything else so far, without so much as a raised eyebrow from him. Perhaps he would understand.

"The pieces I need no doubt are still owned by those very much alive. This isn't an act of nabbing another Heartsmith. It's assassination."