by Devon Monk
Rave Reviews for
Devon Monk’s Age of Steam Series
TIN SWIFT
“Action and romance combine with a deft precision that will keep readers turning pages—and anxiously awaiting the next volume.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Monk flawlessly blends fantasy, steampunk, and Western in this fantastic series.”
—SciFiChick.com
“An exhilarating adventure thriller that grips the audience.…Fans will want to soar with the crew of the Swift as they struggle to survive the pact made by two evil essences.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
DEAD IRON
“Featuring a cursed hero, fabulous secondary characters, a world torn between machines and magic, and a plot that hooks your interest from the very first chapter, Dead Iron is a must read.”
—New York Times bestselling author Keri Arthur
“A relentless Western and a gritty steampunk, bound together by wicked magic. The action is superb, the stakes are sky-high, and the passion runs wild. Who knew cowboys and gears could be this much fun? Devon Monk rocks—her unique setting and powerful characters aren’t to be missed!”
—New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews
“A novel and interesting take on the steampunk tropes, with generous nods to other genres, and plenty of odd but human characters and Mad Science.”
—New York Times bestselling author S. M. Stirling
“Werewolves, witches, and creatures of both flesh and metal clash in a scarred land stitched together with iron rails—a steampunk world so real I could almost smell the grease and hear the gears grind. Beautifully written and brilliantly imagined, Devon Monk is at her best with Dead Iron.”
—New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent
“A magical steampunk history of the Pacific Northwest…this is a magnificent tale of Edenic mountains, steam-powered assassins, deathless love, and transformation. Fast-paced, tricksy, turning from one extreme to another, the reader will be drawn ever deeper into the ticking, dripping iron heart of this story.”
—Jay Lake, award-winning author of Green
“Powerful and action-packed, Monk’s pacing is hypnotic, sending the reader into a Wild West that is as wired as it is weird. Keenly crafted characters and a deftly depicted landscape make this an absolute must read for fans of either Monk or steampunk.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The mix of magic and steampunk worked very well.…Curses, magic, werewolves, zombies, and the Strange…they were all fascinating.”
—Fiction Vixen
“The steam age America that Monk has created for this series is ingenious.…The Old West world is harsh and beautiful and the steam devices plentiful and fascinating.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
“Monk’s entrance into steampunk is a tour de force.”
—Romantic Times (top pick)
“Monk has crafted a brilliant and gritty world rife with elements drawn from steampunk, blended with dark fantasy and a glint of glamour. She…enmeshes the reader in a fantasy adventure that keeps them on the edge of their seat, up all night, unable to sleep until the fates of the main characters are determined.”
—Fresh Fiction
BOOKS BY DEVON MONK
THE ALLIE BECKSTROM SERIES
Magic to the Bone
Magic in the Blood
Magic in the Shadows
Magic on the Storm
Magic at the Gate
Magic on the Hunt
Magic on the Line
Magic Without Mercy
Magic for a Price
THE AGE OF STEAM
Dead Iron
Tin Swift
Cold Copper
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Devon Monk, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Monk, Devon.
Cold copper: the age of steam/Devon Monk.
p. cm
ISBN: 978-1-101-61359-7
1. Bounty hunters—Fiction. 2. Werewolves—Fiction. 3. Steampunk fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.O5293C65 2013
813’.6—dc23 2013001054
Designed by Elke Sigal
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
For my family
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Here we are at the third book in the Age of Steam series, and I have a lot of thanking to do. Thank you to my terrific agent, Miriam Kriss, for your wise and understanding counsel. Thank you to my extraordinary editor, Anne Sowards, for helping me make this book the best it could be. My gratitude goes out to the fantastic artist Cliff Nielsen, whose stunning work has flawlessly captured my world. To the many awesome people within Penguin who have gone above and beyond to make this book beautiful and strong, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I want to give a huge thank-you to my brilliant first reader Dean Woods for all your input, questions, and insight. You’re amazing. To my first reader Dejsha Knight, thank you so much for all your support, last-minute late-night reads, and helpful conversations.
Also, a big thank-you to my wonderful family and friends for all your encouragement and help along the way. I couldn’t do this without you. To my husband, Russ, and sons, Kameron and Konner, thank you for being the best part of my life. I love you.
Last, but not nearly least, I want to thank you, dear readers, for giving me the chance to share this world and these people with you once again.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Ch
apter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Epilogue
About the Author
There were plenty of good ways to die. Cedar Hunt wiped ice off his face and pushed through the deep snow, leaning against the wind. Some people said drowning wasn’t bad; others said hanging was a peaceful way to go. But he had decided real quick that dying in the teeth of a blizzard wasn’t any way to lay a soul to rest.
Cold just made him angry and anger fueled his determination to keep right on living.
“Mr. Hunt,” Miss Dupuis called over the howl of the wind. “A river, I believe.”
He looked back at the people following him as he broke trail through the drifts. Miss Sophie Dupuis was an acquaintance of the Madder brothers.
She looked like a French diplomat but was part of a secretive group of people who, as far as he could reckon, spent most their time taking the law into their own hands to try to rid the land of the Strange, those unholy creatures from myth and legend intent on killing good folk.
But now there was an even greater threat than the Strange. The Holder—a strange-worked weapon made of seven ancient metals—was scattered across this land.
Cedar had seen the destruction even just one piece of it had caused. It wiped out a town of people, left their bodies as playthings for the Strange, and nearly killed his friend Rose Small.
The remaining pieces of the device would do the same or worse. And if they fell into the wrong hands, they could bring the United States, and all within it, to its knees.
His instinct for the Holder’s whereabouts had sent them north out of Kansas, heading up to Des Moines. But this snowstorm had fouled his senses.
“Which way?” he called out to Miss Dupuis.
She adjusted the compass in her hand and pointed west. They’d been hoping to catch a direction toward civilization for hours now, and following a river was their best hope of doing so.
Behind her loomed the Madder brothers’ wagon, pulled by a team of mules. Alun Madder sat the driver’s seat. A miner and deviser by trade, he was a bear of a man: heavy coat, wide-brimmed hat, messy curls of hair, and beard adding to the wild look of him. Even in the pounding snow, he kept his pipe hot, pulling cherry red coals from the bowl.
His two brothers, Bryn and Cadoc, were behind the wagon, pushing when the mules weren’t enough to pull the sleds they had rigged up beneath the wheels. In the back of the wagon, out of sight, was the woman Cedar loved, the witch Mae Lindson. His brother Wil, who carried the same Pawnee curse as Cedar and currently wore a wolf’s shape because of it, was also in the wagon.
The wind thrashed harder, picking up snow and ice. Cedar shivered under the onslaught.
If Mae Lindson hadn’t cast a spell of warmth on his hands and feet every few hours, he knew he’d have lost his fingers and toes yesterday.
It had taken Mae several attempts to find a way to bind warmth to skin without scorching flesh. He figured he’d carry the scars on the back of his wrists for years to come, but didn’t regret a moment of the pain.
Because of her, they might make it to shelter. If shelter could be found.
One thing was certain: there was no turning around now. It was well past midday, and the path behind was blocked by fallen trees and piles of snow. The mules and horses struggled with every passing hour.
They were running out of daylight and running out of time.
Cedar tipped his head so he could see up from beneath the brim of his hat to where Miss Dupuis pointed. Nothing but snow and hills ahead, though he thought he could make out a downward slope.
“Are you sure?” he called back over the wind’s howl.
“Yes. If the maps are correct, there should be a river there.” Miss Dupuis’s voice quavered. She was shaking even though she wore a long wool coat over her several layers of skirts, kidskin gloves, a rabbit-skin muff, and a rabbit-skin shawl across her shoulders. Her hair was tucked up beneath a woolen cap covered in a heavy layer of white that would not melt.
The compass in her hand burned a bloody red and let off enough heat to stay the snow from its surface. She’d shown him the contraption the Madders had devised—a combination of sextant and compass housed in an enameled case filled with sand that could be heated to keep the user’s hands warm.
Now she tucked her palms into the furred hand warmer to keep her gloved fingers from freezing.
Miss Dupuis had refused the warming spell from Mae, knowing that every time Mae cast the spell, it drained Mae’s strength.
“You should return to the wagon,” Cedar said.
“Not yet. I’ll watch for lights, town, rail. If we come on the river and follow the banks, we should see a town.”
Cedar didn’t waste breath arguing. Truth was, he could use a second set of eyes in all this white. “Shout if you see the river. I’d rather not find it by falling through the ice.”
He adjusted his course west, every step sinking into snow up to his knees, despite the snowshoes he’d strung together out of strips of leather and willow. He’d fashioned the shoes a week ago, when he and Wil had first felt the weather taking a shift toward the worse.
Neither of them had expected this storm.
“Where you think you’re going now, Mr. Hunt?” Alun Madder hollered from the seat of the wagon.
“Des Moines!” Cedar had been telling him that the city should be the nearest shelter for two days, but the Madders refused to believe him. Refused almost to admit Des Moines was a city that existed in the world at all.
He didn’t know what nonsense they had in those stubborn heads of theirs, but ignoring a town didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Alun let out a hard whistle and pulled the mules up short. Even Miss Dupuis’s horse jerked at the sound and stopped, head drooping, grateful for the rest.
Alun lifted a lantern to better see through the snow, and sunset light slapped across his round, weathered face, revealing a beard white from snow, a bulbous nose stuck in the center of his close-set features, and glass-sharp eyes looking out from beneath bushy brows.
Quick tempered and quirky natured, Alun Madder was the eldest of the brothers. The blowing snow turned him into a ghoulish figure, as if the face of death itself was peering out at Cedar through a casing of ice.
“We will not stop in Des Moines,” Alun said flatly.
Cedar was pretty sure that was the first time the miner had actually spoken the name of the town. But he didn’t care to point it out. He didn’t care in the least if the Madders acknowledged that the town existed.
“We will, or we won’t last the night.” Cedar spaced his words like hammer strikes. “The mules are near dead. The horse too. We won’t last long enough to dig our own graves. We stop in Des Moines.”
“I say otherwise,” Alun yelled. “And so do my brothers.”
As if called to battle, the other two Madder brothers strode through the snow alongside the stopped wagon, both carrying geared-up shotguns against palms and shoulders.
Near freezing to death did a lot of odd things to a man’s sense of reason. It was said some went raving mad, tore their clothes off, and ran through the snow naked while their blood turned to ice.
Maybe the cold had frozen up the Madder brothers’ brains.
Maybe Cedar didn’t give a damn about that.
“Do not stand against me, Alun Madder, and think you will win,” Cedar said. “And do not think I will stand here and waste time fighting you instead of finding our path to salvation. If you have some device or matic you’ve bolted together that can change the weather or give us speed, I’ll wait for you to bring it out here; otherwise I am go
ing to find that city.”
“A city of devils,” Alun said.
“Good. I expect they’ll keep the fires warm.”
Alun scowled and returned to puffing smoke out of his pipe.
That was answer enough.
Cedar turned his back on the brothers and their guns and pushed through the snow down the next slope.
They could shoot him in the back for all he cared. He wasn’t going to stand still in the middle of a blizzard and argue his heartbeats away.
After what seemed a long time, the mules let out hoarse brays, and the crunching hiss of the wagon’s sled runners scraped through the snow behind him again.
Good. They were still following him.
The spell of warmth around him gradually wore away and the cold sank through skin down to bone. Hands, face, and feet went numb, but he pushed on.
It seemed all the world was ice and death. There was nothing but putting each foot down, one after another, breaking through to solid ground for the horse behind him, who left a path for the mules and wagon.