Dead Iron: The Age of Steam

by Devon Monk

  “The dead man has risen from his grave. He walks again, our Mr. Jeb Lindson. You will find him. You will tear him apart into so many pieces there won’t be two bones left to go walking.”

  He strode back to the boy and pulled him by the scruff of his shirt up onto his feet. “Are you awake, whelp? Are you enjoying your dreams?” He drew a thin knife from his coat and sliced the thick of the boy’s thumb. The child whimpered, his eyes pupil-dark and wide with shock. LeFel caught up the drops of blood in a small glass vial. The matics would need mortal blood to understand the hunt. This child’s would have to do.

  The matics sensed the blood. They drew closer, tugging on their chains.

  LeFel clamped his hand around the boy’s wrist to steady him. If the boy fell to the floor now, the beasts would destroy him and carve out his bones. LeFel lifted his dark curved cane and caught it up in the ropes that hung in loops across the ceiling.

  “This is the blood of a mortal. This blood is upon the dragonfly that drives the wings of one man’s heart. Find the dead man with the dragonfly in his chest and kill him.” The boy’s blood dripped upon the wooden slats of the floor, and the matics lifted heads, snouts, mandibles, vents, to absorb the scent of it carried by the steam.

  “Find this blood. Do not return to me until you have ground the dead man’s body to mulch. But bring me his head. Whole.” He yanked the ceiling ropes with the cane, loosening the pilot knot, then thunked the base of the cane into the floor at his boot. The knots untied, clamps released, and bindings—some metal, some magnetic, some fiber—unbound, fell away in shushing coils upon the wooden floor. A dozen matics, just half of his menagerie, large and small, were free.

  Hungry, lumbering, slick and quick, the matics could fill their steam bellies with blood just as easily as with water—and they had done so over the years. Evidence of that could be seen in the blackened blood rust staining the joints of neck and chest and jaws.

  They circled the boy, brushing against him to smell, to record, to savor the blood of the child who helped bind metal to a dead man’s flesh. The rest of the matics, still trapped by chain and steel along the walls, moaned softly and shifted against their shackles.

  LeFel released the boy, who swayed on his feet but did not fall, eyes lost in the middle of a nightmare, tears streaming his face, as the free matics touched and stroked and sniffed and plucked, scenting, tasting, recording him.

  LeFel strode to the center of the carriage and opened the trapdoor in the floor. “Now,” he commanded. “Hunt the dead man.”

  The army of cogs, jointed limbs, razor jaws, and glittering gears dragged away from the boy, then skulked past LeFel. They slipped through the trapdoor in one step, or skittered down the iron ladder to the ground, then away, out from beneath the carriage, unseen by the rail workers, silent as ghosts.

  The stink of steam and oil and coal hitting the cooler air of the afternoon lifted up through the trapdoor and filled the carriage. LeFel pulled the lever, closing the trapdoor. The other matics cooed, moaned, reached toward the lever. Hungry for blood. They waited, huffing, clacking. Waited to kill for him.

  “Today is not your day to serve. I am loath to waste two centuries of my collection on one dead man. But your day to feast will come. Soon.”

  He strolled back to the boy and looked down at him, silent a moment. He wondered how much longer the boy would last. Wondered when the horrors would finally break his mind. “Does your hand hurt, my child?”

  The boy did not answer. He stood, shaking, as if chilled, or perhaps in shock. LeFel needed the boy to endure only a day more. Just until the waning moon.

  LeFel placed his fingertips on the child’s back. “Sleep will solve all your ills, little maker. Sleep will make this world fade away and bring to you the soothing world of dreams.”

  The boy finally blinked and took a deep, stuttering breath. He closed his eyes and leaned against LeFel’s coat, his fist caught tight in his sleeve.

  “Follow me,” LeFel murmured, “follow me to dreaming.” LeFel placed his hand between the boy’s shoulders and propelled him along with him.

  Before they left the carriage, he snatched up the lantern with the crook of his cane, leaving his creations hunkered in darkness again.

  Outside, LeFel paused. It was difficult to see the movement in the dappled shadow and light of the forest, but he had a keen eye. He smiled as his tickers, his slaves, his children of destruction, ran smooth and quick, faster than living beasts, faster than steam and metal should move, spreading like a plague, hunting for a dead man—hunting for the only thing that stood between him and the witch.

  “And when they are done with you, Mr. Jeb Lindson, not even the witch will recognize your bones.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mae Lindson rode down the mountain, her mule, Prudence, slow and surefooted through the loose shale path. She glanced over her shoulder again, scanning the ridge for Cedar Hunt. She had thought he was leaving and had hoped to ride with him awhile. Not to convince him to help her—she’d given up on that. He’d made up his mind, and told her no twice. She was sure there wasn’t anything she could do to change that.

  But Cedar Hunt ranged the mountains and hills tracking cougar, wolf, bear. She intended to ask if he’d seen any sign of her husband. But since he wasn’t riding out, she’d just have to find the killer her own way.

  Her mule settled into a plodding pace, head down. It would take more than a few hours to reach her cottage. And by the time she provisioned, it’d be too late in the day to set out to hunt the killer. It would have to be tomorrow, then. Tonight, she would pack supplies, tend the goats, and cast a scrying spell to lead her in the right direction.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough to start her journey.

  She thought about riding through town again and buying supplies, but she had all she needed at home. Still, Rose’s smile and the promise of the rhubarb pie almost made her head into town for no other excuse. It had been a sure comfort to see a friendly face. But instinct told her the night would come on too quickly, and she had best be tucked up tight in her home before it fell.

  Even though the day was still warm, she shivered. The Madder brothers had some strangeness about them. She was sure of that. It wasn’t witchcraft. When she put her fingers on Alun Madder’s arm, she had felt like she was touching the deep roots of the mountains themselves. And then, when she had offered her skills to him, she had felt a power in his presence, an authority about him.

  Finding Cedar Hunt mixed up with the brothers was a surprise. Mr. Hunt kept to himself almost as much as she and Jeb did. She’d never thought him to have dealings with the brothers who were known for brawling, drinking, and driving hard bargains. What, she wondered, would send Cedar up the mountains today, asking the brothers’ favor?

  Perhaps she and he both had problems that required the brothers’ particular abilities.

  Even though she hadn’t let on back in the mine, the shotgun was a magnificent piece of genius. If it worked half as well as it appeared to be built, it was a very powerful weapon indeed. But she didn’t dare fire it to get accustomed to how it performed. Five bullets meant she would have no more than five chances to end the killer’s life.

  She had bundled the gun in a blanket and lashed it to the back of her saddle. The shells were safely tucked in her saddle pack. But even though the shotgun was safely behind her, she wasn’t unarmed. A woman traveling alone, even near town, or perhaps especially, was most likely to draw trouble. Therefore, Mae kept a Colt in the saddle holster near her knee.

  By the time Mae reached the outskirts of town, the day was burning down to evening. She decided to take the route through the fields outside town, rather than navigating the roads that would be traveled by the rail workers coming into town to gamble and drink.

  Prudence seemed to walk slower each mile they covered and it was closing in on dusk by the time she had put Hallelujah far behind her. Mae pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders, feeling more than darknes
s closing down with the ebbing light.

  The field and hill were interrupted ahead by a wallow, where a dense stand of fir stood between Hallelujah and her home.

  Mae guided her mule into the forest, where dusk had already taken claim, stretching the shadows, cooling the air. As she rode through the trees, Mae felt something else, felt something following her. She shifted in the saddle and looked all around, but could not catch more than a slide of movement at the edges of her vision. No ground nesters rustling, the birds, the animals in the forest were strangely silent, as if they too knew something dangerous moved between the trees.

  A cool stroke like a finger against bone sent a shiver down her spine.

  “Witch.” The word was breathed and seemed to come from all around her.

  Mae’s heart jumped.

  The shotgun might be tied behind her, but her Colt was in the saddle holster near her knee. She pulled the handgun and put her heels to Prudence, urging her to break into a trot.

  The mule jolted through a few steps, then settled back into her numbing plod. No matter how Mae wanted to hurry, the mule would not.

  “Witch.”

  Not her sisters. No, their call was dulcet tones. This voice hissed, scratched, scrabbled through the air.

  Whatever that was, the voice, the follower, was danger. She scanned the ground, the underbrush, the shadows of the trees around her, ahead and behind. With every slow step closer to her cottage, the forest was swallowed deeper and deeper into darkness.

  A rattling behind her, a scattering of leaves. She turned. Nothing but shadows.

  Then one of the shadows behind her moved. The shadow was a man standing, watching her, his long, thin hands folded. Tall, he was stretched taller by the stovepipe hat upon his head. His black coat brushed the ground, the large collar hiding his neck and face, so that all she could see of his features were his eyes. And his eyes burned red.

  “Who—,” Mae started, but the man was gone.

  She clicked her tongue and urged Prudence faster. “Get on now,” she said. “Get on up.”

  This time the mule worked up to a jarring trot, then stumbled into a lope. The tree line was just ahead. Beyond that was a sky with more light than the forest, a field, and the safety of her home.

  Mae leaned forward, keeping her heels to the mule. “Get up, Prudence, get up.” She guided Prudence through the brush and trees, hooves churning the soft needles and loam, the mule’s breath coming out in snorts. Mae’s pulse ran faster than the mule’s hoofbeats, pounding in fear.

  That man hadn’t walked away, nor had he hid himself. He had simply disappeared as if he were made of nothing but shadows.

  She had seen spirits, and she had seen the things magic could do, but she had never seen such a Strange thing here, in this world, walking in the last light of day. Whoever he was, he had not come calling with gentle intentions.

  The edge of the forest and pale evening light were just a few strides away. Light might not stop the man, but escaping the shadows of the forest would make him easier to see.

  There. There—she was almost through the trees.

  A hand grabbed for her reins, cold as stone and sharp as knives. Mae lifted her gun and fired, just as Prudence reared back.

  The wind lifted, a hard breeze that shoved branches aside, letting a stream of light into the trees. Mae watched, horrified, as the man sidestepped the bullet as if it were a feather driven by a lazy wind. Then he was on her, long arms reaching up to her elbows, oily fingers catching at her shawl and skirt and skin, scratching, hooking, dragging.

  Mae held her seat and fired point-blank at his face.

  The man recoiled, knocked back, bent back, but still on his feet as if his boots were glued to the earth, long fingers of one hand securing his hat to his head. And then, as Mae raised her gun to fire again, he fell apart.

  Like grain emptying a silo, or water from a tower, it was as if the pin had been removed from the undercarriage of his skeleton, and he crumpled, first from his boots, then dissolving downward in a rush that clattered and clanked like old chains. His hat was the last thing to hit the ground, falling into a dark smudge of shadow where just a moment ago flesh and bones had stood.

  Mae swore and put her heel to the mule.

  That man, that thing, was dead. It had to be dead. But that did not stop her flight.

  Prudence jumped into a gallop through the trees, out of the forest, and into air fresh and clean with light. Her cottage was not far. The mule did not slow, headed toward the corral. They made quick work across the field. Mae glanced over her shoulder again and again, scanning the shadows, her gun at the ready, wind pricking tears from her eyes. Nothing followed, no man, no beast, no shade, no Strange.

  She guided Prudence to the small corral and dismounted with the gun in her left hand. She unlatched the gate and led the mule inside the split-wood fence. Her hands shook as she removed the saddle and bridle, fingers slippery with fear that made even old Prudence tremble.

  She soothed her, patting her neck before taking the bridle off over her head. Hooking bridle over the saddle, she hurried into the small shed with Prudence’s tack propped against her right hip. It might be dead, but she didn’t know if more of its kind were out upon the land. She wanted the safety of her home, her hearth.

  “Witch.” The whisper scratched against the shed’s roof and scattered on the wind.

  Mae untied the shotgun from the saddle and pulled the box of shells out of the pouch. Keeping her Colt within reach, she loaded the gun, levering open the chamber and sliding in the shells, slick, heavy, and cold, with trembling fingers.

  “Yes,” she said to the empty shed, to the empty air. “And who do I have the pleasure”—she levered in another bullet—“of addressing?”

  No answer, other than the wind creaking through the shed.

  “Oh, now, don’t be shy.” Mae fit the last bullet and raised the gun hip high. “If you have some business with me, let’s have it done now.”

  Nothing, not even the wind, moved. The only sound was her own blood pounding in her chest, thrumming in her ears. She had never felt a creature as dark as that man in the forest. The Madders had said the shotgun would kill any man, woman, or child. And they said it might kill any other Strange creature in this land.

  Might be time to find out just how true their word was.

  She thumbed the lever that snapped hard against brass, setting the gears in motion. The gun emitted a low thrum. While the mechanism warmed, she picked up her Colt. Ordinary bullets didn’t need any preparation.

  There were scant magical protections on the shed, blessings to ease the snow and gentle the wind. The strongest protections against the Strange were within her cottage. Across the open yard, where she’d be exposed to whatever was out there.

  Mae took a deep breath and said a prayer. Then she walked out of the shed, the revolver cocked and ready.

  She strained to hear any stray sound, strained to catch movements, shadows. Not even a mouse shifted in the straw.

  She hurried, her gaze on the front of her house, still a distance ahead. No porch or railing—Jeb had laid a wooden walk beneath the threshold of the door to stomp the mud from his boots before he entered their home.

  Mae ran for those boards, ran for her door, ran for her home.

  A rumble of thunder rolled beneath her feet. It was not an earthquake. Something beneath the ground paced her, scraping its back against the sod and pushing soil and grasses up to trip her feet.

  She didn’t slow, didn’t pause. She ran, lurching over the uneven ground. Just a few more feet, a few more steps. Thunder rolled, lifting the soil like an ocean wave and crashing dirt and rock and grass into the front of her home like a swell breaking against stone cliffs.

  Mae flung her arms wide. The wooden walk caught her, and held steady beneath her feet as she stretched out for the door and yanked it open. She stumbled into the room backward, Colt aimed at the field and forest.

  The same man, same creat
ure, filled the doorway, his long, long arm catching at the door, his long, long fingers clicking on the doorjamb.

  He should be dead. She’d seen him fall into pieces. And yet he stood before her, put back together again.

  Mae took no time to question. She fired the Colt.

  The man shattered into pieces outside her door. Just as he had in the forest.

  Then he rebuilt himself. She caught a glimpse of too many hands beneath his coat, fingers, arms, and oily mandibles clicking into place with the flash of gears, piston rods, and ropy tendons strung tight between pulleys, until he once again stood before her in the shape of a man.

  Nightmare. Ghoul. Bogeyman. The Strange.

  “You may not enter my home.” Mae fired the Colt again, aiming for his chest this time. The creature staggered back one step, but he did not fall apart.

  There was no blood on his coat. There was just a bullet hole and a shine of bent brass where his heart should be.

  He sucked his teeth, making a tsk, tsk sound, and then pulled on the door so hard it snapped the bottom hinges, sending splinters of wood flying.

  Mae stepped back and lifted the shotgun to her shoulder, sighting between the copper tubes and the glass vials that had now begun to glow an odd green light.

  Only five bullets. All the bullets in the world. It was likely she’d need all five to kill the man who killed her Jeb. But it was also likely she needed to practice her aim on this creature first.

  She aimed for his head. The hum of the gun was so high only a dog could hear it, but she wasn’t sure if the needle showed a full charge. No time to wait. She took a breath, braced for the recoil. Before she could fire, the creature put one foot across her threshold and screamed, pulling his foot away.

  The wooden trinkets in the room echoed the creature’s shouts, as if his scream triggered them to life.

  Jeb’s gifts to her held their own kind of protection. She had always known that. Mae could feel their protection falling like a spiderweb down the edges of the room, digging deep into the wooden floor, holding her safe inside, and holding that creature, that Strange, outside.