The Iron Thorn

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “I didn’t know your mother taught you,” I said, suddenly feeling very small. Dean thought I found him common. I was just as bad as the horrid Uptown brats in Lovecraft. “Was she … a witch, like?”

  “She wasn’t a damn witch,” Dean snarled. “A witch is a faker who gets hunted down and burned alive by Proctors. She was better than that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, too quiet because I was embarrassed. “I was wrong to accuse you.”

  “Aoife,” Dean said, and the pain in his voice broke me from my own moment of shame, “I’m not mad at you. But … I ain’t told you the truth. And I owe you that.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, even though I desperately wanted to know Dean’s secret. “I didn’t expect to get your life story when I hired you.”

  “It’s different now,” Dean said. He stepped forward, cupped my chin and kissed me softly. I cocked my head.

  “What was that for?”

  “Because when I’ve said my tale, I might not get the chance again.” His gaze darted from me to the road and the trees and back. I’d never seen Dean nervous before now, never mind scared. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  I reached out and smoothed down the lapel of his leather jacket. “Just tell me.”

  “You weren’t wrong,” Dean said. “My mother wasn’t a child of men, Aoife. She was something else.”

  I pulled back, suddenly mindful of Tremaine’s tales of places outside the Thorn Land, places that spawned things like the mist, the corpse-drinkers. “I don’t understand.”

  “She was an Erlkin,” Dean said. “No word for it in English. The People of the Mists, they’re called, ruled by the Wytch King. The shadow-mirror of the Folk.”

  In the new light of his words, Dean’s elfin ways and his peculiar skills with direction and finding, his miles-deep eyes came together, and when I looked again, the boy I’d hired in the Rustworks stared back at me, changed into something otherworldly. He didn’t frighten me, though. If anything, I wanted to kiss him again even more badly.

  “Please, Aoife,” he whispered. “Don’t you bolt on me. When my old man kicked, I decided I’d rather be a heretic than a—a half-breed. And I’ve been living underground ever since. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “Are there many of you?” I said. It was the only question that came to mind. “Have the Folk been coming here all this time and having children like you?”

  “I am not from the Thorn Land,” Dean snarled. “The Folk enslaved the Erlkin at the start of everything. We may have bowed to them, but we ain’t broken.”

  “Tremaine called you something,” I remembered. “ ‘Greaseblood.’ ”

  “That’s their word.” Dean’s eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them, thunderheads and lightning in his gaze. “Not ours. It’s what they call us when we work in their silver mines and their foundries. I’m an Erlkin, and I’m not shamed by it.”

  He stood with his fists curled, like he expected someone to challenge him on the point. I waited for a horrid transformation, for the noxious mist to curl in around us and steal me away, but Dean just stayed where he was, looking like he wanted to pick a fight with the shadows.

  “I wish you’d told me,” I said. “At least after we saw Tremaine. He made me think that everything outside the Thorn Land, in the mist, was vile, and I”—I swallowed down the lump of shame—“I was scared of you for a moment.”

  “I guess I handled that like a rat,” Dean said. “And I’m sorry. You and me … we’re new. The truth is new.”

  “I guess you won’t be coming back with me,” I said. “Seeing how you feel about the Folk, and me being bound with them.”

  Dean started to speak, but I held up a hand. “I understand, Dean. It’s too much to ask.” I got my carpetbag and stepped out of the shelter. The fog was ready to welcome me, as it always was.

  “Aoife.” Dean ran to catch up with me. “You really think after what I just told you, I’m going to walk away?”

  “I would,” I admitted, “if I were you. I wouldn’t do a thing for the people that hurt my mother. She’s my mother. I have to look out for her.”

  “Our mothers are real different, then,” Dean muttered. “Mine was no prize. I’m proud to be Erlkin, but I ain’t proud to be her son. No”—he shook his head—“I’m going with you, because I know that you can never trust the Folk. A bargain with them is a glove full of thorns. No way you go alone.”

  “And the geas?” I was still holding the knot of paper. It still prickled and crackled in my palm.

  “That geas binds the recipient to the truth,” Dean said. “I was thinking you could use it on Tremaine.” He folded my fingers around the enchantment. “He’ll call you back after the bargain is done. Probably to gloat. Set a flame to that slip of paper, and a lie couldn’t crawl past his lips if it had turbines and a tailwind.”

  “I know you think it’s a bad idea,” I said, secreting the geas in my coat pocket, “but honestly, the Folk haven’t had a good turn either. Someone cursed them, killed their entire world.”

  “You’re sure?” Dean’s mouth flattened to a thin line of skepticism. “The Folk have a slippery grip on the truth, at best. I wouldn’t be sorry if their whole land of oak, ash and thorn crumbled up into nothing and blew away.”

  I patted the journal, inside the carpetbag. “I’m sure.” Even as I half-lied, my father’s words came back to me. But maybe he hadn’t listened to the truth. My father was hard and certain of everything. And he used the Folk as much as they used him. His Weird wasn’t mine, and I had Cal to consider as well.

  A rumble grew from the mist, and twin lanterns pierced the fog like the great eyes of the Old Ones.

  The jitney hissed to a stop, steam escaping the vents and tracks chewing up the gravel road. The driver cranked the door open.

  “The cowboy better get a move on,” Dean said as he helped me up the steps. “Otherwise he’ll be waiting for the next jitney with no one but ghouls for company.”

  “I’m here!” Cal came flapping down the shoulder of the road, hauling his schoolbag in his wake like a ferry towing a rowboat. “I’m coming!”

  The driver looked at all of us. “Where are your parents, girlie?” he demanded.

  “Back in the city,” I answered without skipping a beat. “My mother will be waiting for us.”

  “I don’t like your look,” the driver told Dean. “No trouble on the bus. I’ll toss you off and I’ve got a nightstick to do it with.”

  “I’ll behave like I’m in the Builder’s chapel,” Dean said. The driver glared.

  “And I don’t like your smart mouth. Go to the back, sit down and shut up.”

  He stopped me with an arm. “That’ll be three-fifty apiece, girlie. For my good nature.”

  “Three dollars?” I looked up at the posted fares: LOVECRAFT—$1, POINTS SOUTH—$2.50, NEW AMSTERDAM PORT AUTHORITY—$3.

  “Or I could always call the truant officer up here in Arkham,” he said with a grin that dripped venom. “Have him speak to the Proctors about three kids running around the country when they should be in school.”

  “You shyster …” Cal started for the driver, but I got between them.

  “Cal, it’s fine.” I pulled out eleven dollars from my money roll and shoved it into the fare slot. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.” To the driver I said, “Keep the change, pal,” with a sneer worthy of Dean. He punched my tickets and handed them over, still grinning.

  “You’re cute when you’re mad, girlie. You should sit up front by me.”

  I darted away from his grasp and followed Dean to the last row of seats. “Why are normal people such scum?” I growled.

  “Because scum floats,” Dean answered. He slouched, his hair in his eyes, and glared at any passenger who stared too long at our trio. Cal fussed himself into the seat ahead of me, nearly too tall for the space under the luggage rack.

  “Plain highway robbery. I should report him to the jitney company.”

  The
driver put his fat hands on the levers and spun the steam dial to full, and the coach lurched forward, rattling over the road. I listened to the thrum of the gears and they soothed my Weird, speaking to it and warming it in steam. It still sat uneasy inside my head, but it no longer felt as if it would split my skull.

  “We have more important things to worry about,” I said.

  “Like what?” Cal demanded, still in high dudgeon. I wiped condensation away from the window and made a small pane to watch the country pass. I would do as Tremaine asked and then I would be free, and I could avenge Conrad, find my father and give him back the job of Gateminder.

  I looked back at Cal. “Like how we’re going to gain entrance to the Engineworks.”

  We sat in silence until the jitney came off the mountain and was rolling along the broader road through the valley, all conversation of the other passengers drowned in the hiss of steam and the clank of the track.

  I’d let the idea grow and germinate in my mind while I’d lain awake the night before. It was a welcome relief from the niggling fear that Tremaine’s lie about Conrad had been only the first of many.

  I laid out my plan for Dean and Cal.

  “There are plenty of vents under the city,” I said. “And some go out to the river.” I rattled the devices secreted inside my carpetbag. “We can wait until low tide and we can use this to go down to the vent. We can use the invigorator to get through the guard lattice and then we’ll be in the Engineworks.”

  “Aoife, the river’s got to be near freezing,” Cal said.

  I’d also thought of the contingency plan. “We’ll go to the Academy first. The Expedition Club has cold-water diving suits.” Marcos Langostrian was president of the club, and I’d take a distinct pleasure in using his silly diving suit to infiltrate the Engine.

  “That might work,” Cal said slowly. Dean shook his head.

  “Dangerous. Just like I said before.”

  “It will work.” I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched the mountains turn to hills and the hills turn to frozen fields. “It has to.”

  The Secret of the Steam

  LOVECRAFT APPEARED OUT of the dark and mist-wrapped day like the skeleton of a great beast, resting on the riverside, phantom breath rising from the foundry chimneys.

  Though it had been little more than a week since I’d left, seeing the familiar spires and rooftops was like returning after a journey of immeasurable distance and time.

  As we bumped through the streets, I saw lamps flicker to life and steam vent from far below into the cold, ghost dragons dancing on the wind. The Engine was power, and its great heart turned day and night, creating the steam that powered the aether generators, the jitney lines and everything else in the city.

  From our class visits to the Engine, I knew that it was guarded, by Proctors no less. Unless a worker possessed of identification came to the gates, visitors would be turned away at best or shot at worst. The Engine was buried hundreds of feet below the streets, and the vent tunnels to the surface were welded shut and patrolled regularly.

  All of this I’d learned in Civil Engineering. No one tampered with the Engine. It was the heart of the city.

  And I was going to rip it out.

  The jitney ground into the depot on lower Miskatonic Avenue, stabling itself next to a dozen similar steel-and-steam bodies. The driver didn’t spring the doors, though, and I peered out the window. Dean joined me, hand on my shoulder. “Something’s wrong,” he murmured.

  “Sorry, folks.” The driver’s slimy voice oozed out of the phono above my head. “Official security alert. We gotta stay put for an inspection before I can let you off.”

  Groans and complaints sounded, but after grumbling, the passengers settled and went back to their magazines and newspapers. A girl a few seats ahead of me took out a compact and started to fix her lipstick. How in the frozen hell could she be so calm?

  Because she wasn’t a fugitive, I realized. She was normal. I had never wanted to be normal so badly.

  “Inspection?” Cal cracked his knuckles one after the other, a tic he didn’t seem to notice. “That’s bad news, Aoife. These aren’t podunk Proctor recruits like they’ve got in Arkham.”

  The bus door hissed open and Dean growled, “Cool it. They’re here.”

  From the outside, I caught the wail of Klaxons and the scent of acrid smoke from grinding gears. That wasn’t normal, unless there was a riot. My stomach knotted. A riot was all we needed.

  Two Proctors in black tunics and black caps stepped onto the jitney, their gold wings gleaming on their breasts like shields.

  “Everyone keep your seat,” the Proctor in the lead shouted. “Keep quiet, and produce your identification when asked.”

  “Is it heretics?” the girl with the compact said. “Are they in the city? Are we safe?”

  “What did I just tell you?” the Proctor snarled. He stomped down the center aisle, jackboots shaking the entire jitney, and held out a hand. “Identification.”

  The Proctor was tall and thin, the sleeves of his tunic flapping, much like the ravens his agency employed. His nose even hooked, beaklike, below small pinched eyes.

  Muttering, the girl fished through her purse. “Don’t have to treat a person surly just because some crazies lit a few jitneys on fire.” She had a drawl, and enough brunette curls to give a reel starlet a run for her money. I imagined she’d been going to New Amsterdam to give Broadway a try and somehow ended up in the grim iron claws of Lovecraft.

  “This isn’t a joke!” the Proctor barked. “Give me your papers!”

  It wasn’t normal, even for a Proctor, to behave so. Something was wrong in Lovecraft.

  Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes as she rummaged frantically through her ditty bag for her identification.

  “There’s a lot of them out there,” Dean said, nudging me to look out the bubble window. The Proctors were arrayed in a loose ring around the jitney depot, more of them than I’d ever seen in one place except for Banishment Square.

  The smoke and the wailing Klaxons came into place for me. From burning buildings, from a riot started by Dean’s people in the Rustworks, or for one of a thousand other reasons that people had to hate the Proctors.

  Like someone whose brother had been shot by them.

  I knew then that there was no chance we were getting off this jitney. Cal’s and my papers were only good as students of the School, within city limits. And if Dean had ever had papers, he didn’t have them now.

  We weren’t going back to the Academy to steal Marcos’s diving suit. We weren’t getting into the Engineworks. The only place any of our trio was going was the castigator if they caught us out when we tried to run.

  Heretics didn’t receive mercy. Only those who turned themselves in had a chance to have their case heard before a tribunal of Proctors. It was a joke, but it was better than the alternatives presented.

  I stood up. Dean grabbed my wrist. “The hell are you doing?”

  “Aoife!” Cal hissed. “Sit down!”

  I looked them both in the eye. “You need to trust me,” I told Dean. “And I’m so very sorry.”

  The Proctor was staring at me when I looked back into his hooded face. I steadied my shaking legs and stepped forward, holding out my wrists. “My name is Aoife Grayson,” I said to him. “I think you’re looking for me.”

  The handcuffs rubbing my wrists were heavy, hand-forged bands with skeleton locks. I tried to slip my thumb under the cuff to scratch my opposite arm, but they were clamped tight.

  “Stop that,” said the Proctor sitting across from me. The windowless jitney bounced up Northern Avenue. I’d turned us in to avoid a chase, to avoid being caught. To save Cal and Dean the worst of what the Proctors could offer—at least, I hoped so. The jitney slowed as we approached the end of the street. The Ave terminated at Banishment Square, and above the bricks, Ravenhouse lurked.

  The Catacombs lived beneath. I was at the end of the line.

  �
�What happened to my friends?” I said. “The boys I was with?”

  “Be quiet,” said the Proctor. “No speaking until interrogation.”

  The jitney rattled to a stop and the doors cranked open. The Proctor gripped my arm, not hard, but firm. He knew and I knew who was in charge here. “Out. Watch your head.”

  The officers who worked in Ravenhouse wore plain black suits, not the double-buttoned uniform tunic of street agents. One checked a booking sheet while the other, a woman in a sharp jacket and pencil skirt, patted me down. The Proctor who’d arrested me at the depot tossed them the carpetbag.

  “She had that with her.”

  “Search it,” the officer said to her mate. “File it.”

  “Hang on,” said the one reading the sheet. “You need to see this.” He held out the clipboard. “She’s been flagged. Grayson, Aoife.”

  I knew I should be truly terrified—if I was flagged, I was on par with the worst Crimson Guard fugitive—but a tiny thrill went through me. The Proctors thought I was dangerous. Maybe I could turn that to my favor.

  The trio bowed their heads over the paper, and then one fixed me with bright eyes. “She’s a person of highest interest.” He shoved the clipboard at the female officer. “We need to get her up to Mr. Draven’s office.”

  I started. Grey Draven was Head of the City. His picture was in all of the Academy’s classrooms. He oversaw the Proctors. He might as well be the Master Builder himself.

  “Walk.” The officer’s grip wasn’t just firm this time. It hurt, and it would leave bruises come tomorrow.

  An Audience with Draven

  INSIDE THE WORKINGS of Ravenhouse, I was buzzed through a series of gates, from the plain tile entrance with the booking clerk sitting underneath a spitting aether lamp reading True Confessions magazine, to cement stairwells, higher and higher with just the Proctor’s breathing and my own heartbeat for accompaniment.

  Grey Draven. The Head of the City. Equaled only by the other three City Heads, of New Amsterdam and San Francisco and Chicago. We’d all seen the picture in the newspaper of Draven with the President. All the Proctors in Lovecraft reported to him. He wasn’t just powerful in the city—Draven was an offshoot of the immutable will of the Bureau of Heresy, which his father, Rupert Draven, had helped found.