by Devon Monk
“Mr. Hunt!” Alun yelled. “A word with you, please.”
Cedar swung out the side of the wagon again. Only this time his gun was loaded.
“You think maybe the Holder’s closer to us now?” Alun asked, completely nonplussed by the gun pointed at his head.
“Move this cart and get us out of town,” Cedar said. “All the way out of town.”
“So we’re close, you think?”
Cadoc Madder cocked back that big shotgun of his and casually aimed it at Cedar’s chest. Bryn, atop his horse, had on his shooting goggles. His rifle, also aimed at Cedar, rested across the saddle.
Cedar could kill one, but not three before he was taken down.
“That explosion you heard a while back?” Cedar said. “The one that blew a house apart? Rose and I were in that house when it happened. She’s injured, Mr. Madder, and I’m not going to argue away her life.”
“Then tell us where the Holder is,” Alun said. “Don’t know why we can’t impress upon you how important it is that we find it.”
“More important that a young woman’s life?”
Alun sighed and nodded. “Aye, Mr. Hunt,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid so.”
All three brothers looked more like battle-hardened warriors than crazy miners out on a lark. He’d seen them get this look about them before. Where they suddenly seemed much older, much wiser, and much more world-weary.
“It wasn’t the Strange that killed these people,” Alun said. “It was the Holder. Or a piece of it at least. We think tin.”
“One piece of the Holder—”
“Tin piece,” Bryn corrected.
“—killed this entire town?” Cedar finished.
He knew the Holder was a weapon that could do a lot of harm. But this?
“And its poison will spread,” Cadoc said softly. “To the forest, to the streams, poisoning, destroying. Then it will reach the next town. And do the same again.”
It was a terrifying thought. That a single piece of tin could poison a land. He didn’t know if they were telling the truth, but it was clear there was no arguing them out of their hunt.
He put his boot on the edge of the wheel, then dropped down to the ground, landing in the mud. “This way.”
He stalked off down the street, following the call in his bones. The wagon rattled along behind him, and Bryn urged his horse up close so he could pace Cedar.
Wasn’t hard to find the building where the pull was coming from. It was only about five buildings down from where the Madders had stopped.
“That’s it.” He pointed at the square adobe and brick building. It wasn’t a house. It was the jail.
“Isn’t that something?” Bryn asked. “The jail.”
“Might be in a safe,” Cedar said.
Bryn tipped his head so he could look at Cedar through his good left eye. “Probably isn’t locked up tight. Most folk don’t know the value of it when they see it. Could just as much be down the privy hole.”
Cedar hadn’t thought about that. The Madders knew the Holder was a weapon whether in all seven of its parts, or connected to make it whole. But since each of the pieces had flown off on its own, just one bit of it wouldn’t look threatening enough, or likely valuable enough, to note. Well, maybe the bits made of gold, silver, or copper would turn a person’s attention, but not the plainer pieces of tin, iron, or lead.
“This the place?” Alun asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He set the brake, then kicked free the coupling on the horses, separating them from the wagon. The gear between the wagon and the horses fell to the ground with a squish and thump, and the horses whickered and jostled forward a bit. They were unhooked from the wagon, but still harnessed to each other.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cedar said.
“Taking care of our needs, Mr. Hunt.” Alun swung down off the wagon and landed with enough force to shoot mud up to his elbows. “We need the Holder. If it’s here, we get it, and all leave town together.”
“Mr. Hunt?” Mae said. “Are we stopping now?”
Cedar walked up to Alun and grabbed his shirt. “If Rose dies because of this stop, I’ll dig out your guts with my hunting knife. Understand?”
“The day that you and I come to cross odds won’t end in both of us breathing,” Alun said without an ounce of fear. “Is that day today, Mr. Hunt?”
“When that day comes,” Cedar said, “you won’t have a chance to ask me, Mr. Madder.” He took a step back. “Re-hitch the horses. Now.” He turned toward the jail and strode to the door.
It opened easily. Seemed the whole of the town had been left unlocked when the Holder had killed them all.
He placed his palm on the wood of the doorframe. The echo of Mr. Shunt lifted beneath his fingers. Shunt had been here. The song was stronger than he’d felt before, which meant Mr. Shunt had spent some time here. Maybe a day, maybe three.
Bryn sauntered in behind him with a lantern and the big open room shot full of light.
In that light was a wide desk. And on top of that desk were fist-sized clumps of flesh, several piles of bones sorted by size, and a wide, bloody stain blooming out dark across the wooden floor.
“Think this is where the Holder’s hid up?” Bryn asked, as if a desk full of body parts wasn’t anything of note.
“That way.” Cedar pointed toward the hall. Bryn started off and the lantern light stretched bars of shadows across the ceiling. The jail cells must be down there.
“Here we are now,” Alun said, coming up behind him. Only it wasn’t just one pair of boots Cedar heard crossing the floor.
He turned. Alun was carrying Rose and Cadoc was helping guide Mae, who looked near exhausted on her feet, into the room.
“What are you doing?” Cedar said.
“Giving the witch what she needs to tend to Rose,” Alun said. “You didn’t tell me she’d been struck by a piece of the Holder, Mr. Hunt. If you had, I would have given a stronger ear to your complaints earlier.”
“The Holder?”
Alun laid Rose down on a cot by the wall.
He shook his head slowly. “She should have died from this wound by now. Even a sliver of the Holder will strip a mortal soul from the body easy as shucking corn. There’s something more to our Miss Rose Small,” he said with something close to pride in his voice. “I think she’s got a bit of the old blood in her.”
“Old blood?” Mae asked. “What old blood, Mr. Madder?” She had allowed Cadoc Madder to help her sit on a chair near the foot of the cot.
All of them were mostly ignoring the gore-covered desk.
“The sort of blood that still flows in the veins of a few people who walk this land. Rare. A gift from the El.”
“El? A people like the Strange?” Mae said.
“As much as light is like shadow, I suppose,” Alun said. “There isn’t much crossing of their kind to this world, but sometimes, sometimes. Makes me a tad more curious as to who, exactly, her parentage is.”
“Will it do anything to help her endure the wound?” Mae asked.
“Oh, I think it will indeed,” Alun said. “But we’ll need to get that key out of her. Even someone with her strength can’t hold up a fight against the Holder for long.”
“Can we cut it out?” Cedar asked.
“No. Once a strangeworked thing hooks into mortal flesh, it begins to consume, to spread and devour. But if we can find the piece of the Holder this key came off of, then it will call to itself. Like a magnet to steel. The pieces weren’t meant to be changed or altered or broken to bits. But someone has found a way to break this much off. This key. That,” Alun said, “is a problem, Mr. Hunt. A grave problem.”
“Cadoc,” Cedar said, “you can put some water on to boil for Mae.”
“Yes,” Mae said, perking up. “Hot water. It will help. And I’ll need my herb satchel.”
Cadoc Madder frowned. “Your satchel, Mrs. Lindson?”
“Canvas thing
she keeps at hand,” Alun said. “It’s likely in the wagon. See to fetching it, will you, brother Cadoc? Mr. Hunt and I will see if the Holder might be found in these walls.”
“Her bag of blessings,” Cadoc Madder said as he walked to the door. “I know it.” He opened the door a crack and looked outside. “Not even a soul to scrape together among them,” he noted. “No souls to fly. No wings to rise.” Then, shotgun in hand, he went out into the night.
Mae strode to the stove in the corner of the room. “I’ll need a kettle, or a pot,” she said more to herself than anyone in the room. She pulled the kettle from the back of the stove and checked the flue. There was a pile of kindling in the wood box and Mae stoked the stove, then took the box of matches off the shelf pegged to the wall.
“Mrs. Lindson,” Cedar said, “Cadoc Madder will be right back inside and Alun, Bryn, and I won’t be far off. If you need anything, call.”
She nodded and nodded. “I’m coming. As quickly as I can.”
She wasn’t talking to him.
“Mae,” he said a little quieter, but stepping closer, “did you hear me?”
She blinked hard, then looked up at him. For a moment her eyes were filled with a wild panic, and he could tell her heart was beating fast. She was afraid.
“Mr. Hunt,” she said as if just noticing him. She glanced quickly at the room, her eyes pausing on Rose. Her hand flew up to the tatting shuttle she wore on a string, almost like a talisman, around her neck. That touch seemed to calm her, and a bit of color came back to her pale cheeks.
“I’ll be fine. I am fine,” she said, correcting herself. “It wouldn’t matter if I was out of my mind or not. I know the herbs. I can tend to Rose.”
“The undead are not far in the night,” Cedar said. “Keep your gun ready.”
“You’ll be in the building?”
“Yes.”
She placed her hand on his arm and Cedar caught his breath at her touch.
“Don’t look so concerned, Mr. Hunt. I’m well. Well enough. Find the Holder, if it’s here. And hurry.”
The three windows of the jail, two set high on either side of the door, the other set high on the other side of the stove, were shuttered. Suddenly, those shutters buckled inward, slammed by something heavy from the outside.
Hands.
Cadoc Madder’s blunderbuss fired three roaring shots, but that didn’t stop the pounding on the shutters.
The undead were out there, close, and they were impatient to be inside.
“Put your spurs to it, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “I’ll hold here.”
One of the window shutters near the door burst open, hands and arms reaching into the room. Alun strode over to Mae.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Lindson.” He opened the firebox and pulled out a piece of kindling. Then he pulled a bottle from inside his coat pocket and lit the cloth hanging out of it. He stormed across the room toward the door, but looked over his shoulder at Cedar.
“What are you waiting for? I don’t believe the Holder’s in this room, now, is it?”
“No,” Cedar said.
“Well, then.” Alun made the shoo-shoo motion with both hands, the flaming wick and kindling stick crackling with small sooty sparks. “On with it.”
Cedar jogged across the room toward the hall of cells.
“Fire, brother Cadoc!” Alun yelled.
Cedar was in the mouth of the hallway, and glanced back.
The muddy miner cocked his arm and let the lit bottle fly. It hit hands, arms, and then a huge flare of an explosion seared gold against the night.
Alun laughed and ran to the window. He pushed the scorched shutters together, then put his shoulder to them and pulled another bottle out of his pocket.
Crazy. Plain crazy.
And so was he for traveling with the brothers. Next time, if there was a next time, Cedar would think twice about the promises he made them.
A lantern at the end of the hall washed Bryn Madder in peach light, the stone wall behind him darkened with soot.
“Haven’t seen it in crook nor cranny,” Bryn said, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead. “You still say it’s in here someways?”
“Or was here,” Cedar said. “If it’s gone, it’s left a strong scent behind.”
Three cells. Seemed a bit overkill for a town this size. But since Vicinity wasn’t that far off the trail leading folk to settle, mine, or otherwise stake their claim out west, he supposed there were times when all three cells might be in use.
The cell doors were open. Another explosion roared out just beyond the walls, and Cedar hurried into the first cell, dragging the fingers of his left hand along the metal bars, listening for the song of the Holder.
“You’re a trusting sort of man.” Bryn chuckled as he sauntered toward the open door.
“Nope,” Cedar said. “Just well prepared.” He eased his gun out of his holster and nodded at Bryn.
Bryn grinned, and stopped in his tracks. In the low light of the lantern, his clouded right eye shone gold. “Indeed you are, Mr. Hunt. But you must know that locking you away here would hardly do us any good.”
“I don’t know the minds of any of you Madders, for how often you change them,” Cedar said. “Nor am I certain how you define what is good for any of us.”
He paced out of that cell, then into the second one, running his fingers again along the bars. Listening for the song of the Strange, listening for the song of the Holder.
Nothing in this cell. Cedar walked into the last cell.
“We define good in the common way, I suppose,” Bryn said. “There’s a great good that needs doing in these times. And we’re men to see that it gets done.”
“Reclaiming the Holder?” Cedar asked.
“That. And more.”
“Not sure I’m comfortable putting the Holder in your hands.” Cedar ran his fingertips along the bar. “No offense, Mr. Madder.”
“None taken,” Bryn said much too cheerfully. “It’s one of the reasons we are so enamored with you, Mr. Hunt. You are a man of rare morals who sees these things with different eyes.”
“Not sure I follow your logic.”
“You have made a promise to return a device made of seven pieces—each piece a powerful weapon in its own right, and the pieces together even more devastating. Yet you hesitate in handing it over, not because you want to use the weapon but because you worry that others will.”
Bryn sucked on his teeth, while the clatter of another explosion roared out from beyond the walls. “That says something about you, Mr. Hunt. Honorable things.”
“Don’t know that it’s honorable,” Cedar said. “Just plain sense.”
“The kind of sense that makes for a well-thought man.”
Another gunshot roared out, and Alun’s voice could be heard over the din. “Are you near done, Mr. Hunt? Brother Bryn? Or should I find myself some bigger bombs?”
“Near on,” Bryn shouted out. “It’s a cold trail, isn’t it?”
Cedar nodded and walked out of the cell. He took a few extra steps to the stone wall at the end of the hall, a wall burned by fire. “Wonder why there’s a burn mark here? Not a convenient place to start a flame.”
He pressed his fingers against the dark smudge of soot on the wall.
A shock ran through him like lightning striking near his boots. The Holder had been here, and burned here. And over the shock of that knowledge rolled the distant song of Mr. Shunt.
Cedar glanced up. There was a fist-sized hole in the roof. He didn’t know how it was possible to propel a chunk of metal through the sky to land a state away, but he was sure a piece of the Holder had burned its way through the roof and landed where he was standing.
“It landed here,” he said. “And someone must have picked it up.”
“Time’s up, gentlemen,” Alun called out. “Load your guns.”
“It’s gone?” Bryn said.
There was a rising noise outside, something that sounded like a matic thumping with
full throttle steam just on the edge of Cedar’s hearing. He’d heard that kind of noise before, but couldn’t place it. A train? A steam wagon?
“It’s gone.”
“And you’re sure?” Bryn stared at the hole in the roof.
“Yes.”
“Well, then.” Bryn pulled his rifle. “Let’s go find out where it went.”
Bryn jogged down the hall. Cedar followed.
Alun and Cadoc Madder were stationed in front of the broken windows on either side of the door, which was about to be pounded down.
Cadoc Madder shot grapeshot blasts into the faces of the unalives who were trying to clamber through the window to the left of the door.
“So nice of you gents to join us,” Alun yelled as he uncorked a bottle with his teeth and splashed it over the faces and hands of people trying to shove their way in through the window to the right of the door. The shutter was burned and busted into splinters on the floor at Alun’s feet, along with four or five unfortunate, and very dead, bodies.
“You find our Holder, Mr. Hunt?” he asked as he waved the burning kindling at the undead at the window, setting hair and skin on fire and sending them lurching back a step or two.
“Saw where it burned through the roof. It was here, landed here, likely a month ago.” Cedar strode over to Mae, who had Rose semi-awake and sitting and was trying to wrap a long strip of cloth around her chest to hold down a thick, wet-herb-smelling compress.
“See any indication of where it got off to?”
That tickling at the edge of Cedar’s hearing was still rising, growing louder, coming closer. A steam engine pushing hard. But not a train.
“No.” Cedar shot the man trying to wedge himself through the window near the stove.
“No idea at all?” Alun asked, taking aim with his shotgun and unbraining three people for his effort.
“Can it walk on its own?”
“It cannot,” Alun said.
“So someone took it,” Cedar said. “We get the women the hell away from Vicinity, then I’ll hunt it down.”
Mae finished buttoning Rose’s dress and pulled her coat closed. “The women can stand on their own feet.” She helped Rose up, and pulled her gun.
Rose looked ghastly pale, but she licked her lips and nodded. Mae’s attention had done her some good, but she certainly wasn’t up to fighting the undead mob outside.