by Devon Monk
He searched for the Holder, and he searched for more. The drowned bodies of children should be here. They might have been killed. Thrown in this river or lured into it by the Holder. That might be the reason their ghosts lingered around this place.
His lungs clenched in pain. There were no dead bodies. Not that he could see or feel.
He needed air. Now. Cedar kicked upward, searching for a spear of light through the hole. Spotted it, upriver farther.
He pushed through the water, kicking hard, the glim green ghostly children swimming alongside him, tugging on his arms and legs with insubstantial hands, begging him not to leave them to this watery death.
The light was there, just ahead of him. Wil was swimming too, moving toward that hole, moving toward the promise of air.
And then the warmth spell broke.
The cold of the river hit him as hard as a train at full throttle. The pain of it, the overwhelming ice of it, slammed into his chest, driving all the air out of him. He struggled not to inhale. Not to fill his lungs with the water.
Wil struggled too, thrashing, mouth open, wolf eyes wild with panic.
Cedar’s muscles screwed tight, arms and legs unwilling to move.
He pushed to lift his arms. It took all his strength to force his feet to kick.
Wil was not doing as well. His movements became weaker and weaker, and he began to sink.
Cedar pushed up to him, grabbed him by a front leg, and swam to the oval of light.
He grappled at the edge of ice with a hand and arm he could not feel, pulling his head and Wil’s above water.
He inhaled. The air sliced through his lungs, and his heart stuttered.
Too cold. They had been in that water too long. Much too long.
And they had failed. Had failed to find the Holder. Failed to bring this nightmare to an end.
The world drained down to darkness, but he kept moving, until finally his hand hit the buried ax. He wrapped numb fingers around the haft, then pulled, heaving himself and Wil out of the river in bits and lengths until they were both lying half-frozen and shivering on the windswept ice.
He blinked, the blackness took him, blinked again, and was coughing, every muscle in his body knotted in pain.
Slowly, too slowly, thoughts formed again. He needed heat. Needed to get out of the wind. Was Wil alive? Where was Mae?
And through those thoughts came the knowledge that someone was speaking. Someone had been speaking for some time. A man’s voice.
Mayor Vosbrough.
“I thought I’d made it clear that this city belongs to me. I locked your friends, the Madders, away. I warned you quite clearly at breakfast.
“I thought you, Mae Lindson, a witch of your… reputation—now don’t look so surprised; the sisters have told me about you and I am impressed with your work. Still, I thought you would understand just how strongly I feel about keeping my city safe, and in my control. Didn’t Sister Adaline explain how this new world operates? The rich own the witches. Well, certain rich. And I am that certain rich. I own you, Mrs. Lindson. And it’s high time you behave accordingly.”
“Do not come any closer,” Mae said.
“Or what will you do, Mrs. Lindson? Cast a spell against me? Do you even know who I am? Do you even know the things I have done right beneath your notice?”
“I don’t have to use a spell, Mayor Vosbrough. I have a gun.”
Cedar knew he had to help her. Had to turn his head, see where the mayor was, see how many men he had with him. Had to fight. But it was all he could do to draw in each breath.
“You think you can shoot me?” The mayor chuckled. “That is very confident of you.”
“I said step away, Mayor Vosbrough.” Mae did not sound frightened. But then, she had faced down nightmares and Strange in equal portion. She was made of steel in the face of fire.
“Maybe,” the mayor said in a hard, cold tone, “you should step away. Witch.”
Cedar pushed up, moving on instinct alone, unable to feel his body. He somehow got to his knees, and looked around him.
Wil lay still on the ice, a short distance away. How had they gotten so far from each other? He was too still, though Cedar saw his chest rise once and fall. Breathing, but barely.
Mae stood on the riverbank, just downstream from him and Wil. She’d pushed her hat off her head, and stood with her rifle aimed at Mayor Vosbrough.
The mayor was dressed in rich green velvet, a black fur coat, a top hat, and fine black leather gloves.
Cedar recognized those gloves. Vosbrough had done something to him, hurt him, wearing those gloves. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Was it just his memory of Father Kyne being beaten filling his mind?
Beside Vosbrough stood some kind of strange matic. It looked like a headless man, taller at the shoulder than Vosbrough’s head, and wider to match. On its back was a tank wrapped in tubes and hoses that draped over its shoulder and strapped to its arm. Those hoses and wires were wound tightly between small glass tubes filled with colored liquids.
And in the center of its leathery chest was a copper contraption with a glass orb marking the direct heart of it.
Cedar blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing. For he knew, without a doubt, that inside that glass orb wrapped in copper and glowing with green glim light was a Strange. Was the Strange trapped in that monstrosity, or there willingly?
“Put your gun down, witch,” Vosbrough said. “This is only a small portion of the weapons at my disposal. Weapons my family has devised and tested. This is only a small portion of the great advances we will use to bend the world to our favor. You have a choice. Be a part of this new age, the Vosbrough Age, or be crushed under the wheels of our domination. Choose your side.”
Cedar tried to call out to her, to tell her to put the gun down so Vosbrough wouldn’t shoot, but nothing more than a groan escaped his lips.
But Mae was already bending to set her gun on the ground at her feet.
“Is that your pet, witch? I didn’t expect him to be breathing after that fall into the river. Although I do wonder why you are out here so intent on killing yourselves.”
“We are looking for the children who have gone missing,” Mae said. “Something you and your men should be doing.”
“Why? They are just casualties in our struggle with the Strange. We need the Strange for our devices, so we draw them here.”
“That was the sound of horns in the night?” Mae asked.
“Yes. A device, a generator, calls the Strange, and a netgun in the hands of my men traps them. When transferred into these batteries and mixed with glim, the Strange have remarkable, and powerful, properties.” He tapped the glass globe in the center of the headless matic. The Strange there jerked away from his touch.
“It is the perfect use for the Strange. We harvest and harness them. With the Strange under our control, the witches at our service, and a nearly unlimited supply of glim and gold, the war is won before it even begins. We will own and rule this land and any other that suits our fancy. You, Mrs. Lindson, are looking at your new king.”
“I am looking at a dead man,” she said quietly. “And a fool.”
She lifted her hands, whispering the words to a spell.
Cedar struggled up onto his feet—and fell. The cold, the pain, dragged at him as surely as a weight around his neck.
Mae didn’t turn toward him. He didn’t know if she could even hear him trying to call her name.
Vosbrough pressed something that looked like a telegraph key at his belt, tapping out a message, and the headless, bloodless creature fueled by Strange and glim raised its weapon at Mae and fired.
32
Captain Hink’s head felt like a swarm of bees had taken up hiving there. He’d gotten hit in the head, along with more than a few good thumps in the side, during that jail brawl. He’d lost blood and the lump on the back of his noggin was making him see double between blinks.
In any normal circumstance
after a brawl like that, he’d hit the sky, hole up a while, and drink away the pain until the world straightened out again.
But he was without his ship, without booze, and stuck in a dying man’s church. He was also the last chance Rose Small, the Madders, the Hunt brothers, and Mae had to grab up the Holder and finish off finding the young folk.
He’d told Rose to go. He told her he’d be fine. And he supposed that was true. For as long as their ammunition held out.
“So what weapons do we have left?” he asked.
Miss Dupuis and Mr. Wicks, who apparently had been in the middle of a conversation, both looked over at him.
“We’re surrounded, correct?” he asked as he walked to the back windows and looked out.
“What supplies do we have to fight with?”
“Who said we have decided to fight?” Miss Dupuis said.
“And who said you are the one to make the decisions around here?” Wicks asked.
“I was a captain in the war,” Hink said.
“I am your superior,” Wicks said. “Is there another language in which you’d rather I say that, and in which you might understand? Pirate, perhaps? Or fists?”
“Guns,” Hink said, ignoring his yatter and talking to Miss Dupuis instead. “How many do we have, how many do they have?”
“Father Kyne doesn’t appear to own anything but a hunting rifle. I have my gun, Wicks has his, and you have yours.”
“Bullets?”
She shook her head. “We have two sticks of dynamite, though. We can make a stand, but we won’t win a firefight.”
“This is Sheriff Burchell,” the man yelled. “We’ve given you time to put your guns down, walk out, and turn yourselves in so that justice can be done. If we don’t see every man and woman out here on the ground in front of us in one minute, we will be forced to take care of this in a much less civilized manner.”
“How many men out there?”
Wicks pulled off his glasses and wiped a clean white cloth over the lenses. “Sheriff and his deputy, and the posse they rounded up. Perhaps thirty men, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Dupuis?”
“At least that, yes.”
“Sounds good to me,” Hink said.
“Do you have a plan?” Miss Dupuis asked.
“Of course I have a plan,” Hink said as he pulled his gun and strode out of the kitchen toward the front of the building. “Keep shooting until I run out of bullets.”
33
“Mr. Alun Madder,” Rose said, her good hand sliding down to her gun, “you must know that I respect you and your brothers for those fine deviser minds of yours. And I certainly can understand when a brain slips a cog and goes off to wander down a whimsical path. But you will never have my body as a bargain for your gain. Never.”
Alun regarded her through sharp eyes. “Rose Small, I find myself becoming more and more fond of you as time goes by. I agree. Your body is your own. Perhaps I misspoke.”
She kept her hand on her gun. She knew that the Madders used words like a watchmaker used tools: precisely and with intention.
“Then respeak yourself, Mr. Madder. Clearly.”
“We come from…old blood, we Madders. Blood that stretches back for more days and years than people have numbers for. We are uncommon men, and we walk the earth by choice, for reasons of our own. Old blood brings with it certain advantages. You’ve seen only the barest hint of the things we know, the things we can do.”
He paused, and Rose was glad for it. She found it hard to breathe when he was speaking. Alun Madder and both of his brothers were miners, devisers, and brawlers. But sometimes, in the rare moments when the flame of their humanity was uncovered and let burn free, they were more than just three men: they were a force, a unit, brothers like none she had known. And when one of them intended to use words to capture your attention, even breathing seemed an unnecessary distraction.
“The reason I tell you these things, things I do not willingly explain to most men,” he continued, “is because you too are of uncommon blood, Rose Small.”
He waited, they all waited, as if they were listening for the first call of a bird to signal the dawn.
“You think I’m like you?” she asked.
“Not think. Know.”
“You think we’re…kin?”
Alun hitched one shoulder in a shrug, but his eyes were steady, unreadable. “There are stranger things that have happened in this world.”
Brothers Bryn and Cadoc both chuckled.
“We can’t know,” Rose said. “You can’t know. Unless there are records?”
“None that we have. None that we’ve seen. But we have blood. And so do you. That’s all we need today.”
“For what?”
“To find the children.” He frowned just a little. “You have been listening to me, haven’t you?”
She ignored that. “How will blood do any good in finding them?”
“Just blood alone wouldn’t, but when the word is added, a promise”—he nodded once—“that is the thing that can change the winds.”
“Mr. Madder,” Rose said. “I am not a slow thinker, but your words don’t mean a thing to me.”
“It’s the promise and blood,” Cadoc said, “that will give us reach. Our feet are tied, bound to this side of the road. Our lives are tied to the promise of finding the children. We alone, Madder blood, must find the children to be released from the promise. If anyone else finds them, we will remain, locked to this city.”
“Unless Father Kyne kicks off,” Bryn noted.
Cadoc nodded at that. “His death will release the promise. But that is not what we want. We want to fulfill our promise, bring closure to our word given to his father’s father. To do that, we need you, Rose. Blood of our blood, in some curious manner. You will be our hands and our feet. You will reach the children since we cannot.”
“The practicalities of it,” Bryn picked up, “are simple. You vow to us to join in our promise to rescue the children and fulfill our debt to the Kyne family. A drop of your blood mingled with ours on a rope or wire”—he pulled a thin length of copper wire on a spool out of the pack at his side—“this wire, will be enough to stretch our reach, carry our blood and our promise.”
“Wire?” she asked, wondering where and when he’d had the chance to steal it.
“Each of us will keep hold of it,” Alun said. “And linked by it, we’ll stand as far on the other side of this road as we can, the wire carrying our promise to span the distance, just like a cable carries the dash and dot of words down the line. You’ll have the wire around your wrist or waist. If there’s any luck left for us, the wire will hold long enough, far enough, that you’ll be able to find the children in that tumble of rocks through those trees, and bring them back right along this string between us, to the city proper.”
“What if…if they aren’t alive?” Rose asked.
“Then we’ll carry them home, one by one, and give them their rest,” Alun said.
Rose knew the promise was keeping the Madders here in town. And she knew Father Kyne might not even make it another day or two without Mae’s witchcraft to help him heal. But missing children struck at her heart like a heavy stone. She had no children of her own, but she was an orphan. She knew what it was like to be lost. Knew what it was like to lose home and family.
She could only imagine how frightened the children must be. And how their parents must worry.
“How many?” Rose asked. “Children? How many are lost?”
“Father Kyne says a hundred or more,” Alun said.
“A hundred?” Rose brushed the hair from her face with the back of her good hand. “How can we carry a hundred children home?”
“Let’s find them first,” Alun said. “Then we’ll devise a way to help them. Are we agreed, Rose Small? Is there to be a promise between us?”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I’ll give you my word and blood. For the children.”
“Well, then, let us seal our words to it,” A
lun said. “Brothers?”
Bryn and Cadoc stepped up close until they were all standing in a circle at compass points: Rose east, Cadoc west, and Alun and Bryn at north and south, respectively.
“This we enter as four and exit as one,” Alun said soberly. “This bond of our word, this bond of our blood.”
The three brothers simultaneously drew knives from their pockets and in the same motion, nicked the thick of their left thumbs. Blood welled there.
“Rose,” Alun said.
She offered her hand in the center of the circle. Bryn, straight across from her, placed his hand flat behind hers, then nicked her pinky. “Thumbs are useful, and you have only the one to spare right now,” he said, pointing the knife at her arm in a sling.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Our blood seals our word, and our word is this,” Alun said. “From this day onward, we are bound together. Until our promise is fulfilled, until the lost children of Des Moines are found and returned to the city. I, Alun, so swear.”
The brothers intoned, “So I swear.”
Rose said, “I, Rose Small, so swear.”
Bryn held the coil of wire in the center, and each brother grasped it, thumbs smearing a drop of blood on the rough twist. Rose added her hand, and her blood.
“Good,” Alun said. “Now that’s out of the way, let’s forward.”
Rose hadn’t felt anything change. When Mae cast spells, she could at least sense the magic in the air, or sometimes something more subtle, like a change of temperature or a honey scent. But for all the world, it seemed like the speech and blood and wire business hadn’t done anything to change her or make her feel owing to the Madders in any way.
“Is that it?”
“Is that what?” Alun asked.
“The, uh, promise?”
“We all agreed, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but I just thought. Well, when Mae uses magic it’s different.”
“Ah, there’s your mistake, Rose Small. It isn’t witchcraft that holds a promise to bones. It’s a much older magic than that.”