by Devon Monk
Other things moved along with him in the night. Animals going about their hunting and scratching. Some pausing to watch as he shambled by. They didn’t come too close, so Jeb paid them no never mind.
Pretty soon he heard something more than animals moving. Pretty soon he heard the hiss, the pump, and the clatter of matics. Matics coming closer. Coming toward him. He stopped and listened while the wind hushed itself up high in the trees. Could be the matics were set out in the night to work the land. Maybe for a farmer. Maybe for a logger. Maybe for a rancher.
He’d seen matics, seemed a long stretch of time ago. Matics working something more than fields. Iron. Laying down dead iron for the steam engines. A rail. They’d been building a rail. He could not recall which way that rail had fallen. He thought and thought, but no memory filled that hole.
Jeb looked to the sky, the hangman’s rope around his neck shifting across his back. He squinted to make out the stars through the juniper branches. He could not remember which star set the sky north. Could not remember much about the land he walked across, or the sky he labored under.
He was not much of a man left.
But the dragonfly wings fluttering against the silver box somehow dug deep down into his heart reminded him of one thing. He was set upon finding Shard LeFel. And once he did so, he was going to tear him apart.
The huff and hiss of steam escaping through metal vents filled the night. Might be the matics that worked for Shard LeFel laying down that rail.
Jeb cocked his head toward the sound. To his left. That was where the sound came from. That was the way he’d go.
A flash of brass out in the scrub brought his attention back down from the spangled sky.
A matic tromped out from behind a bush. Big as a horse and black as coal, it had spindle legs, four sets of two that all seemed to work independent of the others to keep it upright. The water tank hung down from the back of the long boiler body of the thing, and the chimney at the front had been worked into a horselike head with no eyes. Steam poured out of its gaping mouth. Brass pipes and valves and a ruby red whirring centrifugal governor stuck up out of the beast’s riveted back like a porcupine’s quills. And all across the side of it were six piston-driven arms, each ending in a thresher blade. Looked like a thing made to stomp a man to death, then mince his bones for bread.
It paused, huffing, six arms clacking, six blades clicking. The wind shifted, pushing at Jeb’s back, and taking his scent right as you please to the matic.
The matic swiveled its misshapen head and stared straight at him—if it’d had eyes. Then it screamed—the sound of metal on metal—and a plume of thick white steam poured on out of its mouth to swirl around its head. It took straight aim and charged him.
Jeb grabbed hold of a thick bough and tore it from the tree. Splinters sprayed over the dry ground. He’d been a strong man in life, and dying, each time he’d done it, had made him stronger. He hefted the branch across his shoulder like a baseball bat. The legs, he thought. First the legs, then the pressure valve there at the neck. Arms next, if he had to, then head.
The matic was almost on him. The heat from it stung Jeb’s nostrils. The huff and clamor clogged up the strangely silent air.
Jeb stood his ground, no fear in his heart. He’d come back from death so many times, fear didn’t have a hold in him no more. But hate . . . Well, hate he’d give all the room it needed.
Jeb swung high to block the blades and arms, then low and hard, taking out the first two legs. The matic’s momentum sent it tumbling to the ground. Three sets of legs scrambled to lift it back up, while three sets of arms sliced at Jeb.
A blade cut his shoulder, drawing blood.
Jeb roared and swung again. The pressure valve just behind the thing’s head popped. Steam screeched in a wild, blasting stream, but the valve didn’t fly off.
Before the thing could fully right itself, Jeb took one more swing, this time at the head.
The branch broke; the head dented. The matic pushed up on its legs and threw Jeb to one side.
Jeb stumbled to catch his balance on his broken ankle, even though the rope around his neck dragged at him and slapped his boots.
The ticker paused, the steam still screaming out of it as it worked to balance without a set of legs to stand on. It didn’t pause for long.
Jeb had to take it down and keep it down this time. He opened and closed his hands, wishing he had some kind of weapon to beat it with.
Maybe he could get to the tree and pull off another branch. He took a step and the rope around his neck struck against his boot again, near enough to trip him.
Jeb stopped. The rope. He had himself a weapon all along.
The matic wasn’t moving quickly yet. In a tick, it’d be within stomping range; it’d be within mincing range, all six arms aimed to take Jeb’s head off.
Jeb tugged at the rope at his neck. His fingers were thick and slow to work the knot, forcing it to loosen as he stumbled toward the tree.
The matic found speed in its footing and lunged.
Jeb tugged the knot free. He ducked the first slice and pulled the rope off over his head. The matic reared up, threshers slicing down, one after the other, tight and close in mechanical precision. Jeb scrabbled back and threw the rope up round the matic’s arms, pinning them tightly together.
The matic jerked back, tightening the knot set in the rope. Jeb slung the rope over the meat of his shoulder and heaved to.
The metal beast dug back against the pull. Without its front legs it was heavy, unbalanced. The matic’s back legs slipped in the loose soil. Jeb heaved again. It toppled, boiler gouging ruts into the hard ground as Jeb yelled out his rage, dragging the monstrous device a dozen paces, before dropping the rope and turning.
Jeb threw himself on the beast and grabbed at a valve with his left hand. He didn’t care that it was so hot metal burned the flesh off his palm. He squeezed and tore it apart.
Steam released in a gout of wet heat. Jeb jerked away, out of the way of the steam, out of the way of the matic that thrashed like a fish tossed ashore, trying to right itself. He scooped up the rope, and took hold of the lowest arm at the joint. Then he leaned back with all his weight. Metal twisted and screamed as the ball popped free of the socket.
Just like ripping legs off a crawdad. Jeb plucked off the next arm, rods and gears twisting, snapping. Then he ripped off another.
The matic clacked and shook, running out of steam, running out of fire, legs driving like pistons, digging deeper into the soil.
Jeb dropped the rope and the thresher arms and reached for what was left of the head. There was glim in there, he could smell it, could taste it. More of it in that head than in the whole little owl ticker he’d ate.
Insatiable hunger washed over him. He didn’t care if he had to walk into a storm of bullets or an army of knives to get at that glim. He would do anything to drink it down.
He got both hands around the head and twisted. Metal buckled under the strain, but the welds held. He squeezed harder, set his good foot against the boiler, and heaved backward, wrenching the head clean off.
He stumbled and fell flat on his back. If he’d been alive, it would have taken him a minute to get his lungs working again. But he didn’t need for air, as such, anymore. Shard LeFel had seen to that. He sat and ran his fingers over the rivets and along the seams that held the head together. Then he pulled the head apart, his fingers strong, stronger than any living man’s.
Suspended by wires and balanced among cogs was a glass vial filled with the same sort of green light he’d found inside the owl.
That glim would fuel him. Make him stronger.
Jeb pulled the vial out of the metal shell surrounding it, and shoved it into his mouth. He bit down hard, molars breaking glass.
The vial shattered. Not quite liquid, not quite gas, the glim filled his mouth with a hot, sweet juice. The burn warmed him all the way down his gullet, and set the dragonfly in his chest fluttering faster. He felt
stronger. Much stronger. And the glim did some good to power the dragonfly too.
The devil’s devices might be tough to crack, but the sweet inside was worth the trouble. Without the vial, the matic rattled like an unbalanced flywheel, the clatter inside it slowing, the steam cooling, until it lay still, a lump of useless metal, cold unto dying.
Jeb brushed the bits of glass off his tongue and smacked his lips. He stared at the matic a while or two. He had to get moving, had to get walking again. Where there was one matic, there would likely be more. Enough to slake his hunger. A dead man didn’t need food to fill his belly. He needed glim to fuel his brain.
He pushed back up on his feet. His hand wasn’t working as well and his shoulder seemed out of joint. Fighting the matic did him harm, but that would not stop him from finding LeFel. Would not stop him from returning to Mae. He took a few steps more—then a thought came to him. He should take himself a weapon.
The rope was a good weapon, so he took the rope. The matic’s arms were strong and long and sharp like a scythe, so he took two of those too, hooking them over his shoulders.
Satisfied, he started walking. Toward the rail. Toward the end of Shard LeFel’s life. Toward his Mae.
He made it quite a ways. Up off the scrabble of stone. Up onto a path through scrub that reached as high as his chest. Far enough his shoulder found its way back into the socket. Far enough the thin forest gave way to rolling hills with very few trees. He took the easiest path—along a tumble of boulders to one side that became a sheer rock wall on the other. The rail was out there. And he aimed to find it.
By and by, as he worked his way slowly through the dark, he heard them.
Matics. Clattering over the ground, thumping, skittering over the stones. They were coming. Coming for him. More than one. More than two.
He looked out far as he could see. There, through the scrub, cresting over the hill and pouring down toward him. Matics. He counted up to four, but more kept coming. So he stopped counting. Jeb found himself a stone to put at his back with plenty of room in front of him for swinging. He tugged the thresher arms off from over his shoulders and stood his ground.
Two of the matics spotted him. He licked his lips, already hungry for the sweetness in their heads.
The matics rushed.
Jeb Lindson smiled.
Then he started killing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Shard LeFel rarely slept. He had found no use for nights spent dreaming of death.
But tonight he was more restless than most. He waited outside the rail carriage, pacing the length of the observation platform, waiting for the return of the tickers he had sent to bring him Jeb Lindson’s head.
The night was calm, a summer breeze mewling through the treetops. LeFel could feel his life ticking away like water through his hands. It was terrifying, this slow descent into death. If his brother only knew what he had cursed him to suffer.
Three hundred years of dying.
He’d torture him slowly for that, over months, at the least. Years, if he could.
The waning moon was tomorrow. It would be his last day alive, his last waning moon whose light would guide his return home. After three hundred years of searching, devising, making, and breaking, it came down to a mere twenty-four hours. If he didn’t open the door before dawn, he would succumb to the sleep eternal.
The last component necessary to open the door out of this mortal world was the witch. And she was just moments away from being his. And now, knowing she was close, her magic nearly in his hands, LeFel could not hold still. Instead, he paced, the thunk of his heel and the tap of his cane metronome to his urgency, his need.
With his curse broken, the door open, the rails hammered down, he could fulfill his promise to the Strange and set them free from their pockets and nooks and nightmares. He would be their king, giving to them bolts and wire and steam to make whole their bodies. He would set them free to travel the iron rails laid down from shore to shore. Free to feed on mortal fear, blood, and marrow.
His brother had done all he could to stop the Strange from entering the mortal world, from supping on the humans here. But Shard would give the dark ones their desire. The mortals would die, Strange sicknesses, Strange blights, plagues, and madness, until the humans were erased from the land.
Shard would watch the fattening of the Strange with glee. He knew what it was to be a despised shadow. He knew what it was to be feared, hated, imprisoned. He understood hunger so very, very well now. That knowledge was a gift his brother had unknowingly given to him.
It was time for the Strange to hunger no more.
It was time for his death to end.
It was time to use the witch for his own desires.
The hulking frames of his rail matics, devices that pounded, ripped, hauled, and hammered, rested like slumbering metal giants along the edge of the forest. Shadowed except for where the rising moonlight rubbed iron and steel to a mercury shine.
The men who worked the rail were either in town drinking and carousing or else sleeping in the tent town up the rail nearly a mile or so.
He had seen nothing of the Madder brothers since earlier in the day, which suited him fine.
The brothers were part of the king’s guard—he was sure of it. They hunted the Holder, and had stayed only a step behind him all these years, traveling faster through their underground tunnels and mines than he could on iron and wheel. They might suspect he had the Holder kept safely under lock and key, but they could not know that he had all parts of it assembled, could not know that he had it here, in his keeping, nor that he intended to use it this waning moon.
He was certain they did not know what else he possessed in the other two railcars: his menagerie of matics, and the door forged between worlds.
LeFel chuckled. It had been a game well played. He had trumped their moves, one for one, always a step ahead. Three hundred years among mortals had taught him nuances of deceit that had kept the king’s best hunters, best devisers, best guards, stumbling behind his trail like blind fools.
The air suddenly washed cold, carrying ice and fogging LeFel’s exhaled breath.
LeFel looked down into the darkness.
Mr. Shunt stood at the step at the bottom of the train-car platform, his face tipped up, lost in shadows even though the moon poured full upon him. The strong stink of oil and blood and burned flesh hung about him like a pall. He had been undone again. Mr. Shunt’s uncanny ability to stitch himself up, no matter how much he was taken apart, was one of his more useful attributes.
“Why have you returned to me, Mr. Shunt?” LeFel asked. “Do you carry the witch in the corners of your cap?”
“No, Lord LeFel,” Mr. Shunt whispered, his voice rusty. “The witch is in her house, at her hearth. Beyond my reach.”
“It. Is. One. Small. Thing,” LeFel said, biting off each word as if it were poison. “One small mortal!” He inhaled, exhaled, but still anger shook him. “A frail woman. Are you so weak that you cannot reach in and take her?”
“The dead man.” Mr. Shunt’s voice was just above a growl. “The tie between them—the magic—still holds her safe.”
LeFel held very still though rage tore at his reason like a storm.
“Perhaps aligning my interests with you was a mistake, bogeyman.”
Mr. Shunt jerked as if the words struck him flat across the face. But he wisely held his tongue, and narrowed his eyes as he watched LeFel pace.
Finally, LeFel came upon a second plan. “Since your arm is too short to reach her, we shall dig her out with a twig. Come,” LeFel ordered.
He turned and opened the door, striding into a dark interior striped by moonlight. He knew the Strange would follow. He had all the things Mr. Shunt most craved—the door, the Holder, the key, and power.
The boy slept on a cot to the left of the train car. Even asleep, he held his breath until Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt passed him by.
Through the inner door, and into the largest secti
on of the carriage, Mr. Shunt trailed Shard LeFel, a silent shadow. Here the wolf was kept. A creature of night, it stared at LeFel, copper eyes glowing. There was too much intelligence in those eyes, too much hatred.
LeFel struck the wolf with the cane as he walked by and the beast snarled. But it was not the beast that he needed. No. He needed something of dirt, of earth, of stone. Something of cog and wire and bone. Not here. Not in this carriage.
Only Strangework would do.
He stormed through the outer door and into the boiler car, where his remaining half-dozen matics hunkered, chained and waiting. Even though the steam had long ago cooled, the matics shifted as he entered, the spark of glim in each of them powering muzzles and heads to rise, ready to do his bidding.
LeFel paused and considered each metal creature. Which should he destroy to power his needs? Not the strongest, a hulking manshaped creature half-bent to fit within the car, piston hammers for arms. Not the swiftest, two beasts the size of dogs constructed of steel pounded so thin, you could see the shadow of the gears slowly ticking behind their curved ribs and knife-filled jaws. Not the deadliest, a heavily armored tractor with two self-loading, pivoted mitrailleuse barrels holding enough loaded cartridges to fire more than two thousand shots in under fifteen minutes.
No, it would need be either the rabbit-sized ticker suited for scouting or the whiskey-barreled self-propelled battle mace.
“Mr. Shunt, disembowel the small ticker, and take from it what you need.”
“Yes, Lord LeFel.” Mr. Shunt swiftly caught up the rabbit-sized ticker in his hands, and put to use his wickedly sharp fingers.
LeFel did not stop to watch. He strode straight down the center of the carriage, not looking right or left at the metal creatures that shifted closer to the shadows, then were as still as gravestones. He opened the outer door and crossed to the final car coupled to his train.
One witch, one human, one dead man, would not stand in the way of his immortality, his revenge.
He pulled a key from a chain in his waistcoat and unlocked the door. He threw the door open. There were no windows in this carriage. There was just the one door. No other cracks for anything large or small to enter or exit.