by Devon Monk
He took his time riding to the blacksmith’s shop. Other than the constant clack and clamber of the matics working the rail, and the occasional rattle of the smaller town-bound matics and tickers clicking through the simple chores of shucking corn or milling grain, the day was strangely absent of the sound of hammer and anvil. With the rail come to town, the blacksmith hired on a dozen men for repair and forging of the peculiar hex-headed spikes, bolts, screws, and fishplates the dandy LeFel required to hold the rail together.
That sort of work, and the added business in the saloon, bordello, and mercantile, had done the town some good too.
But there was no sound from the forge this morning. No sound since the blacksmith’s boy had gone missing.
Cedar dismounted in front of the shop and hitched his horse. Shop was quiet as a boneyard. There was no heat radiating from the place, only a damp smell of oil, metal, and coal. The shush of water and clack of chains from the water tower a few yards off suddenly seemed too loud in the absence of the hammer.
Cedar walked into the open shop, expecting it to be empty. It nearly was. Only Mr. Robert Gregor was there, leaning both arms on the worktable, a bottle of whiskey at his elbow, his back turned from the light.
“We’re closed today,” he said to the sound of Cedar’s boots on the packed dirt.
“Mr. Gregor, I’m here to offer you my services.”
Mr. Gregor did not stir.
“I’m here for your son,” Cedar said.
“My son is dead.” Mr. Gregor turned, a tin cup in his hand, and squinted against the morning light. “Unless you are a preacher or a gravedigger, you’ll do me no good.” He took a long swallow out of the cup, then drew it down, empty. He twisted and refilled the cup. The bottle was well over half gone, though the sun hadn’t half climbed the sky yet.
“Are you a preacher, Mr. Hunt?” he demanded. “A man of God?”
Cedar shook his head. “Just a hunter, Mr. Gregor. I didn’t know your boy had been found. Last I heard, he’d gone missing.” He tipped his hat. “I’ll leave you with my condolences.”
“Didn’t say he’s been found.” Mr. Gregor straightened and took a few steps forward, looking like a man hoping to eventuate the conversation with his fists. “Gone the night into the wilds. We searched as far as he could have run. Farther. Spent the day and the night searching. No sign of him. Not a scent, a scrap, a sound. He’s gone. My Elbert . . .” Mr. Gregor clenched the cup, but did not bring it back to his lips. He swallowed several times, choking his sorrow down, his face red, his eyes fevered.
There was no worse heartache than losing a child.
“Children have a way of enduring,” Cedar said, “of holding on when there’s scarce hope left to hold. Your son’s a strong boy. I’d like to look for him, just the same.”
“Why? Are you thinking a foolish man in his grief will be parted from his money? That you can plank me for a week’s pay?”
“No, sir. I’m not asking you to pay. For all I don’t mingle, I understand the death of a child, the pain of it.” Cedar stopped, surprised at how hard that was to admit. He had spoken so little of his loss. Not even to his own brother. “If there’s a chance I can find your son, or his body for burial, then my services are yours.”
Mr. Gregor gave him a long look.
“A son?” Mr. Gregor asked.
“Daughter,” Cedar said. It was more than he’d shared with anyone in the last four years, and there was no more he would say about it.
Again the long look. Finally Mr. Gregor said, “I’ll show you his window. We looked for tracks, for . . . blood.”
Cedar waited as the blacksmith paced out of the shop, then followed. The man was a good hand taller than Cedar, thick in the shoulders and arms. He stank of whiskey and sweat, but his stride was even and strong as he led the way around the back of the shop and to the house beside it, which, with the second floor above, comprised the Gregors’ home.
Two tall, thin glass windows were fitted upon the ground floor of the house, with a taller, thinner window centered above them beneath the peaked roof on the second floor. The rest of the house, with a proper porch and a plot of garden gone to seed, spread off to their right. Mr. Gregor stopped between the bottom-floor windows.
White lace curtains, likely brought in from England, were closed behind the glass panes. The windows began about waist-high and rose a good way above Cedar’s head. The wooden sills were recently whitewashed, clean and unmarked.
“Which one?” Cedar asked.
Mr. Gregor stabbed one finger in the air. “Attic.”
Cedar craned his neck, then took a few steps back to get a look at the second-story window. Narrower than the two windows below, it was built in the same manner: strong wooden casing, double-hung sash, no broken panes.
“Boy’s four, five?” Cedar asked.
“Four this winter.”
“Ever opened the window on his own?”
“No. It stays locked and he is . . . was . . . too little to reach. But he’s always been curious. Head in the clouds, stars in his eyes. Easy to wander. And such stories he’d tell . . .” He swallowed, his words too thin to carry the weight of his voice.
Cedar studied the lengths of dark clapboard above and below the window, looking for marks or scraping of ladder or rope. Even with his sharpened vision, nothing seemed disturbed.
He studied the ground a few strides away from the window, out where the boy would have landed if he took a fall. He knelt, fingered the hard soil. The blacksmith was right. There was no sign of blood or scuffle. He glanced back up at the window, reckoning the angle of fall. This was where Elbert would have landed and yet there was no sign of an impact.
“You sure he didn’t wander out the door?”
The blacksmith shook his head, wild red hair jostling. “Lock’s set up too high. I make sure it’s in place every evening. Had to unlock the door before I went out looking for him in the morning.”
Cedar stood, dusted his hands, and walked across the dried grass and patch of dirt toward the house again. Leaning in close to the wall, he stood between the lower windows and craned his neck to look up. From this perspective he could see the bottom of the sill. Two thumb-sized holes were burned into the wood.
Cedar pressed his hand against the wall to get a better angle.
A vibration tickled across his palm like sunlight over a cold limb. He held his breath. Within the space of three heartbeats, he heard music. Distant, sour, pipe and strings. Not music of this world. That vibration, that song, was the mark of the Strange.
The Strange had been here. Left a trace of music in the wood, though it was a faint mark that would soon fade. If Cedar hadn’t just been bound by moonlight, he wouldn’t have sensed it at all.
The child hadn’t fallen out of the window. He’d been taken by the Strange.
The porch door opened and Mr. Gregor’s wife stepped out. She was a tiny plump woman with dark curls in a storm around her head.
“Robert?” She caught sight of the two men, then walked across the yard to stand next to her husband. Her head reached only as high as the blacksmith’s chest, and she held a dishrag in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there. He could tell she’d been cooking, likely for the funeral. And crying.
“Good day, Mr. Hunt,” she said, looking at the rag in her hand, and nothing else.
“Mrs. Gregor.” He nodded.
“Will you be by for the service?”
“I don’t believe I will, ma’am. I have business that, regretfully, will keep me.”
“Yes,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard his reply. “I understand.” She stepped closer to her husband, but did not look away from her hands.
“Now, Hannah,” Mr. Gregor said, “Mr. Hunt’s a tracker. He’s going to do what he can for us.”
She inhaled a quick breath, a spark of hope flushing her cheeks as she looked up at her husband.
“To find him. For the burial,” the blacksmith said gently.
Mrs. Gregor made a soft sob, and clutched her husband’s shirtsleeve. She tipped her head down again, hiding her tears.
“I’ll do what I can,” Cedar said. He planned to look for more than the boy’s body. He planned to find him whole and breathing, and return him to his parents. He didn’t tell them that the Strange were likely involved. He wasn’t even sure these God-fearing folk believed in the Strange.
There was a chance, pale as it was, that the Strange had swept off with Elbert for folly designed to keep him alive, though he’d ask no odds on it.
“You have my word I’ll do all I can.”
Mrs. Gregor pressed her face into her husband’s sleeve, weeping openly now. The blacksmith wrapped his arms around her like a bear with a cub. He turned his back on Cedar, protecting his wife’s privacy.
“I’m obliged to you, Mr. Hunt. Now, if you’ll excuse us.” He walked with his wife, shushing her muffled sobs as he guided her back to the house.
Cedar knew better than to give either of them false hope when the Strange were involved. He had tangled with the Strange before. The curse the god harnessed him with meant he could sense them most times. Worse, they seemed to be drawn to him like a needle pointing north. And though the god had compelled him to hunt the Strange, at every full moon, Cedar fought that urge and chained himself down, denying the god’s will.
He’d be no one’s pawn, man or god, cursed or otherwise.
But now his sense of the Strange would aid in finding the boy, though he’d need more than a keen eye to track them in time. More than just his instincts and luck. He’d need tools. And if those tools were made of the metal beneath the ground on which the Strange walked, all the better.
Silver was best. Which was his first bit of luck. He happened to know three men who had silver at their disposal, and who might have a passing acquaintance with the ways of the Strange.
Cedar strode back around the building, unhitched his horse, and swung into the saddle. The water tower clacked, splashed, then gave out a three-tone pipe-organ whistle, like a chorus of steam angels hollering for all their might. Daylight was burning. He’d need to work quickly if he wanted to find the boy before night took his soul again, and still have time to ask the widow Lindson what she could do to break his curse.
He turned north and set Flint at a lope to the mountains and the Madder brothers’ mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jeb Lindson had learned that night was better for walking, even though the dark made it hard to see. So he had walked through the night. One foot up, one foot down, forward, forward. No matter the dark. No matter the blood dripping from his fingertips, or the rattle of the dragonfly’s wing shivering in his chest, working like a bellows to keep his heart beating.
He had a man to kill. A man who killed him three times. A man who intended to hurt his Mae. Jeb knew that monster, that Shard LeFel, was a devil in a coat of hair and bone.
So Jeb kept walking. Walking to find the devil. Walking to keep Mae safe.
Mae. His beautiful Mae. Jeb paused, closed his eyes for some time, though the wind blew cold, tugging on the tatters of his shirt, and the night shifted with hungry creatures catching the scent of him.
He worked hard to remember her face, her lips, her laughter. Finally pictured her, as on their wedding day, the scent of honeysuckle in her hair, the sweetness of strawberries upon her lips as they kissed beneath white lace in the morning light.
Mae. His love. His wife. Until death did them part. He’d made that vow. Given that kiss to seal his heart, life, and soul to her. Forever. And she had given him her heart, life, and soul. Forever.
He opened his eyes. “Forever.” Jeb went on walking again, one foot, one foot, through the night, the hangman’s noose still around his neck dragging the ground behind him.
By and by, dawn pushed birdsong and watery light down from the hills. Daylight, even weak at dawn’s break, was too strong, too hot, for him.
The light burned where it touched his flesh and smoke rose in soft, foglike wisps. Jeb moaned.
Burning was not good. No, not good at all. Burning only ate up what strength he had.
And he needed his strength. All the strength in his bones and soul.
He had a devil to kill.
He stood for a long while, smoke lifting from his skin, as he thought things through. Finally, it came to him. The light was hot, but shadows were cool. Shadows were slices of night stretching out across the day. He needed the night, so he needed the shadows. He looked around. He was still in the forest where plenty of shadows clung to trees and stone. He walked toward a shadow beneath a tree and sighed as the damp wing of night covered him.
His skin cooled, the smoke thinning until it was gone. He waited, because he knew he should. Long enough for his flesh to be as whole as it could be. Long enough for his brain to think out how to get to that next patch of shadow. Because there was more than a need to see Mae moving him on. There was hatred, hot and pounding. There was a killing to be done.
Jeb took a step, but noticed a bird perched on a branch just above his head. The bird clicked and warbled.
It was a pretty thing—copper head wide and round with bright, emerald eyes and a brass beak. It cooed, owllike, and clattered its wings.
Jeb stared at it. It stared back.
That was no bird. No, not at all. Birds didn’t have clamps for feet. Birds didn’t tick. Birds didn’t tock.
That was the devil’s toy. Shard LeFel had devised it to look for him, spy on him.
Jeb licked his lips.
He caught up the owl with hands too fast for a dead man. Then squeezed. It was easy to see how the bird fit together—a mite easier to see how to bust it apart.
The bird scratched and bit, nipping flesh off the thick of his hand. He held tight. There was something inside the bird that kept it alive. Not steam like any other matic he’d ever seen—the bird wasn’t hot enough, though there was a coal and a small portion of water running through it. Something more than springs, more than clockwork. Something strong. All his life he’d known the best way to figure out how something came together was to tear it apart.
Jeb squeezed the bird in one hand, keeping the wings tucked tight, the tiny tick in its breast growing faster. He ran his fingers over its head feeling for the seam. Easy as a thumbnail through an apple skin, he split the weld on its face. The bird’s head hinged open.
Inside that metal skull was more metal, fine gears and cogs that would make a watchmaker drool. But it wasn’t just a tightened spring that made the owl tick. He pried open the back of the bird.
The innards looked like a watch, tightly coiled and geared, layers of things that ticked, pumped, spun. But there in the center of the copper and brass was a glass vial. Filled with an unearthly green light. Glim.
This matic wasn’t fueled by steam alone. Something more fired it—the rarest thing of all—glim. Not a good magic, sweet magic, earth-and-home magic like his Mae’s magic, glim was something else altogether. They said it was harvested by airships from the top of the sky, filtered, and trapped in glass to be sold to only the richest men. Jeb had never seen it, and never in his life had enough money or land to sell for even an ounce of it.
But it was a wondrous discovery that the most scientific of minds had put to use. Glim enhanced all that it touched. Made a piece of coal burn twice as long, made a crop yield three times its fruit, and, it was rumored, could even give a man a long, long life.
This glim must have come from whatever dark hole Shard LeFel had crawled himself out of.
Jeb smiled. He was hungry for that. For the glim that fueled an undead thing. Powerful hungry.
This he understood. This he could destroy. So easy.
He tore the ticker apart and broke the vial with his teeth. He sucked up the glim, taking it down like corn whiskey, and licking his lips for more.
It tasted good, the glim in that matic’s brain. It filled him. Warmed him. Made him stronger. Fueled him too, just like it fueled the undead owl.
He dropped the ticker, which fell in a clank of copper and brass amid the brush and pine needles. Then he started walking again. A little faster than before.
And for the first time since he died, Jeb Lindson laughed.
CHAPTER SIX
Shard LeFel enjoyed his luxuries. He saw no need to be in anything but the finest comfort at all times. His train carriage was adorned in gold and rare woods, precious jewels set in the rococo arched ceiling of the long, wide living car that dripped with crystal gas-lamp chandeliers, wall sconces, and tapestries. Mirrors, murals, and reliefs depicted scenes from a much older earth where creatures of myth feasted upon pleasures, and his kind—the Ele and the Strange—walked the land as gods.
LeFel was not mortal by choice. Banished by his brother, the king, to this mortal land, he had been trapped here for three hundred years. And though he was immortal in his land, here, in this savage place, time chewed upon his soul and flesh like a dog tearing through meat. He was dying, becoming more and more frail no matter what concoctions or devices he employed to slow time’s cruel hammer.
The beat of his death drummed ever nearer. When the full moon waned in just two days, he would die. Unless he returned to the immortal realm.
But he had not spent his exile brooding over his circumstance. He had spent it investigating the ways of cheating his sentence, and, thusly, his death. His long life had been devoted to finding a way to return to his own lands, so he could live forever, and mete his revenge upon his brother. That one clear goal had guided him through the decades with a hard desire, and had, in its own way, afforded him yet more pleasures.
He was well schooled in the kept knowledge of magic, and well versed in both the wild and gentle sciences.
And he, a highborn Ele, had befriended the lowly Strange.
A most unusual happenstance. And one he had used to his best advantage.
In trade for their knowledge he had given the Strange a promise: he would lay the dead iron down, cutting paths to guide the Strange across the land so they could slake their hunger on the nightmares and pain of mortals, and walk as men.