Dead Iron

by Devon Monk

  “I wasn’t speaking of the locket.”

  Her eyes widened as his words sank in. But instead of falling for his sweet words, she took a step backward, her hand falling to the pocket hidden in her skirt. He wondered what she kept there. From the beat of her heart, he’d assume it was a gun.

  “That envelope has the papers I was asked to bring to you,” she said with a nod. “I’m sure my mother and father are looking forward to your reply. I’d better be on my way. Good day, Mr. LeFel.”

  “Oh, come, now.” LeFel smoothly caught her elbow before she could walk off, effectively keeping the gun out of her reach. “Won’t you have a cup of tea with me before you go, Miss Small?”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “Surely, your parents wouldn’t think poorly of a few moments indulging my humble hospitality. I so rarely find time to socialize with the fine ladies of Hallelujah, what with all the work I must do to see that the rail is completed. We shall sit there”—he pointed at a distance toward the trees and away from the rail—“beneath the canopy my man Mr. Shunt has erected, and oversee this fine morning. Mr. Shunt, fetch our tea.”

  Mr. Shunt bowed, and slipped silently up the stairs to the train carriage.

  Rose looked after Mr. Shunt, then back at LeFel. He could tell she was sorting her options, looking for a way out. Fear had taken the sun out of her smile and he savored the shadow of her distress.

  “You are too generous, Mr. LeFel,” she finally said. “I’d be happy to sit awhile. A cup of tea would be very welcome, thank you.”

  “This way, then, my dear.” He stretched his arm, pointing toward the red silk canopy set at the edge of trees not far from his train carriage. Rose kept a tight hold on her horse’s reins, her other hand tucked in the pocket of her dress. Bits of metal and wood jingled quietly at her touch. Perhaps she did not carry a gun.

  They made their way across the dirt and grass, her horse following quietly behind her.

  “I was unaware you were orphaned,” LeFel began, probing for her pain. “Did the Smalls know your parents?”

  “No one knew my parents,” she said steadily, as if she’d been repeating this statement all her life. “It’s assumed my father was likely killed in the war. And my mother couldn’t care for me. Plenty of speculation as to why that was.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “Such a tragic state of things, the war.” They had reached the silk canopy, where two red and gold tapestried chairs sat beside a marble and wrought iron table.

  Rose led her horse over to the nearest tree and wrapped the reins over a low branch. LeFel pulled a chair out for her and waited.

  Rose walked back to him and paused beside the chair. He could see the fear in her, could see the hard line of her back as she fought not to run. That fear tasted sweeter to him than any rare wine. What was it about this woman that burned so bright within? It was more than the locket. There was something about her. Something Strange.

  Sit, my little bird, he thought. Drink at my table so I can better see your delicate bones.

  A gunshot rang out. Loud. Close. Two more followed.

  LeFel and the men working the rail looked toward the sound, toward the other side of the rail track. The crew boss, a one-eyed Norwegian who was as wide as he was tall and as merciless as LeFel himself, rode the tinder cart, keeping a high watch over the workers and matics. He turned and swung his shotgun toward the thick undergrowth beyond the rail.

  The three Madder brothers stumbled out of the brush, rifles in their hands. All three men were so drunk they couldn’t walk a straight line if their feet were tied to it.

  A hare was flushed out of the brush in front of them. It dashed to cover while the brothers hollered. One of them took another wild shot at the animal and hit the side of a pony-sized matic hauling a cart of water, the bullet ricocheting like a snapped piano string.

  Rose’s horse spooked and reared, tangling bridle and reins in the tree. “I’m sorry, Mr. LeFel,” she said as she hurried away to her horse. “I do think I’d best be heading home. Perhaps I can stay for tea another time?”

  She didn’t wait for his answer. Just swung up into the saddle and turned her horse east, away from him, the rail, and the Madder brothers as quickly as she could.

  LeFel snarled in irritation. He had barely had a taste of her. Rose Small was a question he wanted answers to. Especially since the Madders seemed to have gone out of their way to show up just as he was sitting down with her. Perhaps, he thought, she was connected to the brothers. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

  The brothers had been a thorn in his side for years. He didn’t know what their drunken game was today, but he knew they would not come out here, to the rail, to his place of power, on a whim.

  They wanted the Holder and they suspected he had it. But they did not know where he kept it hidden, nor that he had devised a door for it to fit upon. It was particularly satisfying that it was here, right beneath their noses, and yet they could not see it nor do him harm without fear of letting the device loose in the world. For if it was freed, the Strange-worked metals would bring about destruction to the land, and the people who stumbled upon it. Worked within each metal was a curse. Depending upon where the metal lodged, plague would spread, the undead would rise, and insanity would claim the minds of reasonable men. Left alone in the world, the Holder was sure poison, and would bring about bloodshed, blight, and war.

  He had his finger on the trigger of a gun that could do more than kill a man—it could demolish this new land. Such a sweet dilemma the Madders found themselves in: unable to call his bluff for fear of destroying the very land and people they protected.

  The crew boss yelled at the men to get back to their shovels and irons, then strode over to the Madders and yelled at them to take their guns and leave before he dragged them back to town behind a wagon.

  The Madders laughed, patted one another on the back, and seemed to finally get it through their thick, drunken skulls that they were outnumbered.

  Mr. Shunt arrived at LeFel’s elbow, a shadow sliding upon shadow, the silver tray and tea balanced on his fingertips.

  “Tea, Lord LeFel?” Mr. Shunt asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Shunt. Tea.” LeFel settled onto one of the chairs and watched the brothers stumble back into the dirt and brush, singing a tawdry song.

  Mr. Shunt poured tea from a kettle made of gold, the aroma of flowers and honey filling the air.

  “They can hunt their hare. They can play the fools,” LeFel murmured. He brought the tea to his lips, and glanced back the way Rose Small had gone. “They can snoop, they can pry, but they’ll never find the treasure I have beneath lock and key. This game is still mine. And before two days are out, I will drown them in their own blood.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rose eased her horse down out of a trot as soon as she was over the hill and well out of Mr. LeFel’s sight.

  The voices whispered to her as they always did. Trees saying they were trees, growing upward and digging deep, settling in for the season’s turn. Plants underfoot calling out a breathy little song of root and wind and long days burning short.

  Rose turned them a deaf ear insomuch as she could. She’d always been able to hear the thinking of living things. Over the years, she’d tried to make it stop. Not much seemed to help. The living world had a hundred and a half things it thought needed to be said, though most of it was just the babble of growing and dying.

  Wearing the locket helped quiet the ruckus some. So did keeping her hands busy making and devising.

  She knew it was crazy to say she could hear things. She’d told her father about it once when she was just about six. He’d beaten her soundly, then kept her on her knees for three and a half days, praying for a saved soul.

  Though it pained her, she’d lied to him straight to his face and said all that praying had done the trick, and the voices were gone. He’d told her to tend to her chores that had languished while she was atoning for her sin. And then he’d never smiled
at her again.

  Somehow, Mrs. Dunken caught wind of what she’d been on her knees for—likely Mrs. Small had told her. Then the whole town knew it. Knew she was crazy.

  No one had looked at her the same since, no matter how hard she’d tried to hide her strangeness.

  Too wild, they said. Touched in the head. A pity she’d never amount to anything. A pity she hadn’t died young. No wonder her mama left her on a doorstep.

  Now, at the ripe age of seventeen, it was clear she was unmarriageable.

  Rose tipped her face up and blew out the breath she’d been holding, trying to push some of the old pain away. Yes, she’d wanted a husband and children. Once. But that life wasn’t ever coming her way.

  She’d lost it the day she told her daddy she wasn’t like other children.

  It was the blacksmith, Mr. Gregor, who had taken her in. Let her sit at his bench and watch him work metal over fire so hot, it took her breath away.

  She didn’t hear the metal like she heard living things. But she seemed to understand it better, the way it could be dug up, melted, hammered, and molded. She would sometimes stop still in whatever she was doing, caught by the realization of how a brace could change the power a matic could muster, or how an extra wheel, a shorter chain, or bits never put together before could make something different. Something new. Something worthwhile and good.

  Some women were clever with thread and cloth. Some with cooking and gardens. Rose was clever with metal, spring, and cog.

  Next spring, she planned on leaving. She’d take what money she’d tucked back for herself, and she’d ride until she found a place in this wide world where she could make things, turn things, devise things, no matter that she was a woman. Maybe she’d come up with a medical device, something that helped the lame walk again. Maybe she’d find a way to catch the light of a star and stick it in a jar for the kitchen table. Maybe she’d devise an airship powered by nothing but a song.

  One thing was for sure: she refused to die out her days here, pitied, scorned, and alone. She even had a hope, though it was small and wan, that she might stumble across kin. That there was family out there somewhere, who knew the color of her mother’s eyes, and had once heard her father’s laughter. That there was family who knew her real name.

  The matics puffed again, a loud thump of air pounding down. Rose wished she’d thought of bringing a coat or shawl. Even though there was still heat in the day, that Mr. LeFel sucked all the warmth out of a person.

  He was clever; that was clear. He was charming and breathtakingly handsome. But he had the feel about him of a snake hidden in reeds. The strangest thing was that all the trees and plants and growing things went dead silent around him.

  She’d never seen that happen before. Not once in all her years with all the folk who had stopped through her parents’ shop. Living things didn’t stop living just because a man walked by.

  Unless that man was Mr. Shard LeFel.

  Rose rubbed at her arms to take the chill out of her skin. Whatever sort of man he was, she wanted nothing more than to be away from him. She’d done her part and delivered the papers. If luck was with her, she wouldn’t need to be anywhere near that man for a long, long while.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mae didn’t have much time. By the new moon, she’d be headed back to the coven, whether she wanted to or not. She’d vowed her life to Jeb, and those vows bound them together stronger than anything else on this earth. But now that he was dead, other vows, older vows, were tightening down on her, digging in like a thousand small fingers, and dragging her home.

  She paced the floor of her cottage, restless, already feeling the need to turn east. Cedar Hunt had refused to help her. Unless he changed his mind, she would have to find her husband’s killer on her own. And soon.

  It wasn’t just the vows that would force her home. It was the coven’s magic.

  Mae picked up a bowl of water that had sat in the moonlight, and walked with it to the hearth. Most magic could not be used for curse, for darkness, for pain. But in her hands, magic always followed a darker path.

  The sisters refused to believe magic could be used for evil things. Mae wanted to believe that too. But when she called upon magic, it changed in her hands. And pain was always the way of it.

  She’d done her level best to use it for good. Dark spells to speed the death of an animal who suffered. Dark spells to curse vermin so they wouldn’t enter the garden. With time and practice she had found a way she could use magic as a binding between two things. Health to a bone, ease to a soul. Love to a heart. These were all good things, healing things. But it didn’t take much for a binding, even the kindest of them, to become a curse.

  And so she’d learned how to break bindings, untie vows, end curses, and stop magic from answering a prayer. It was not an easy thing to do. But she had practiced and learned.

  The sisters were frightened of her and how magic bloomed dark in her hands. Though they never said it, she saw it in their eyes.

  They had insisted she bind herself to the soil beneath the coven before she was even thirteen. And she’d done it, used her blood, and the blood of the strongest witch among them, to make it a binding that even she could not break. That binding was a rope around her foot, and if ever there was too much hate in her heart, or if ever she used magic for too dark an end, she would have no choice but to return to that soil so that the sisters could cleanse her of the darkness in her soul.

  No matter what was in her way.

  No matter her grief.

  No matter if she wanted to stay in the home she and her husband had built, stay in the land where her love had died.

  She had to return.

  Mae absently wiped away the tear caught on the edge of her cheekbone. She knelt and placed the bowl in front of the heart of her home, the heart of the life she and Jeb had built together.

  A small, bright fire crackled there, flames from the hickory burning clean and sweet.

  To find him, she’d need a direction. Jeb had asked for work with the rail man, but he had turned him down—Mae had been there and seen firsthand how poorly Mr. Shard LeFel treated her husband. It had made her angry, but Jeb bore it like it was no matter. But when Jeb heard a rancher out in Idaho was looking for hands to drive cattle across to Oregon City, he’d gone to see if the rancher would take him on.

  He should have been home more than a month ago.

  She drew a strand of wool out of her pocket, twined with a thread of her hair. At the base of the string was her wedding ring.

  She had been sixteen when Jeb Lindson came walking through town on his way out west. She’d fallen in love with him from the first time she set eyes on him, heard his warm laughter, his kind words. She became his lover that winter, and his wife that spring.

  And those vows, to love him and keep him, until death did them part, were the strongest and truest she had ever spoken. Those vows had overtaken even her ties to the coven’s soil.

  Jeb and she headed west to Oregon, with hopes of a quiet farming life on fertile ground beneath the shelter of the mountains.

  It was a good life for seven years. Then something changed. Darkness crept across the land like a shadow cast by the railroad.

  In that shadow, as mile after mile of iron was laid down, something Strange grew stronger and stronger.

  And now her husband was dead. Fallen under that creeping shadow.

  Mae drew the back of her hand across her cheek, wiping the last of her tears away. Crying would do her no good.

  She could not see the future, but there were always hints, like scents in the wind that could send her down the right path to see that her husband’s killer was dead and buried.

  She let her wedding ring dangle from the string. The weight of the ring guided the wool in a lazy swing. Nothing yet decided, no direction for her to follow. She concentrated on her question. Should she search north or south?

  The wool continued to circle.

  Wooden trinkets on the s
helves around the room clicked and cooed, as wind from the window propped open on the back of a wooden rabbit swirled into the house, stirring and stroking the devices lovingly carved by Jeb. One little carving set with copper springs and wooden cogs was a pipe of sorts, fashioned in the shape of two squat miners standing in a wooden river. The wind slipped in through the pipe’s mouth hole, strong enough to push the miners up, giving out a birdlike warble as they rose and fell. That in turn shifted the cog, moving slots of the river slowly up and down, changing the tune like a slide whistle.

  Mae glanced up at the toy. A much more delicate reed chime hung next to the whistle, yet the wind had not stirred the chime, choosing instead to make the miners dance.

  Was that her direction? Miners? The Madder brothers mined the mountains to the north.

  Should she go to the brothers and seek their help?

  The wool across her fingertips shifted, and swung a new arc. North and south.

  North. To the Madders.

  She held her ring still against her heart for a breath or two. She had another question to ask. Would Mr. Hunt agree to her offer and come to her before nightfall?

  She released the ring, and it settled into a counterclockwise spin. The answer was no.

  Mae closed her eyes. She had hoped he would agree to her offer. Had hoped his hunting skills would make finding the killer quick.

  She had seen the curse that lay coiled within him, but could not tell the exact nature of it unless he allowed her to use magic on him. He was a chained man, an angry man. But had refused to take the key she’d offered to put in his hand, and she did not know why.

  Mae opened her eyes. She didn’t need the hunter. She would find her husband’s killer on her own and deal with him on her own. No matter how long that took.

  The Madder brothers were said to be devisers, though no one in town had seen their contraptions. Likely they had weapons and tools suited for hunting.

  She stood and dusted her skirt, then placed her ring back on her finger. A gust of wind, cold as winter’s heart, rushed into the room. She gasped as it bit through the homespun of her dress and flew into the hearth, toppling the bowl over and tearing the flame apart so quickly, it smothered out. So thoroughly was the wood snuffed, not even smoke rose up the flue.