The Iron Thorn

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Some of it is from memory, but I think we can use it to get in.”

  “Not bad,” Dean said, examining the sketch. “Of course, there’s the small matter of getting out again.”

  For once, I was on sure footing and had an answer for him. After weeks of drifting anchorless, it made me a bit giddy. “We can trip the pressure alarms in the Engineworks,” I said. “There will be an evacuation. It happened once when I was doing field study. People scrambling everywhere, no order. Nobody will notice us.” A pressure vent could fling shards of Engine, gears and rods at hundreds of PSI in every direction. Another way a ventor could die. Anyone caught in the line of fire looked like they’d been in the path of a war Engine. If I went to the heart of the Engine, I’d be going the opposite way from everyone else and could be unobserved, hopefully for as long as I needed to use my Weird. If I could do what I’d claimed to Tremaine. Right now it was a theory, and I knew I could be very, very wrong. But I couldn’t be scared. Cal’s and Dean’s futures and my own were riding on me being strong, stronger than even my father.

  I could be. I had to be.

  “I can get a message to Captain Harry to get us out of the city once we go topside,” Dean said, “but up until then … it’s up to you to make this work, princess.”

  “Don’t worry.” I elbowed him. “I’m the brains of the operation, remember?”

  Dean leaned down and kissed me, and I still wasn’t used to the weightlessness it brought on. He helped me fly for a moment, and I slid my hands under his jacket, so I could touch cotton and skin. “That’s not what I meant. If this goes badly …,” he said.

  I touched my finger to his lips. “If it goes badly … I’m glad I met you, Dean.”

  We sat quietly after that, watching the ghoul pups play with a doll among the piles of junk in the corners of the nest, stalking and killing the crude human shape over and over. It didn’t get darker or lighter under the city, but when night closed in, I curled in my hammock and dreamed, of a burning city and falling stars.

  I woke, frantic and alone. My mother stood over me, in her nightgown, a man’s cardigan and bare feet. Her expression twisted up, the one that came when she wanted me so badly to believe her and knew I wouldn’t, because she was crazy.

  “You shouldn’t have walked in the lily field, Aoife.”

  “You’re not real,” I said. My mother reached out and slapped me. It stung.

  “I warned you! I warned you, daughter. The dead girls dance on the ashes of the world and we will all weep for what they do.”

  I held my cheek where it stung. “You are mad, Mother.”

  “And what do you think seeing me makes you?”

  When I came awake into actuality, where the world was real and solid, I was screaming. Dean grabbed me, caught me as I fell from the hammock.

  “Aoife, what is it?”

  “I saw …” My teeth chattered so hard they stole my speech and my thoughts were racing faster than my tongue could form words anyway. “My mother,” I managed. “She was here.”

  “There’s no one here,” Dean said gently. “No one but me.”

  Cal crept in from the nests. The fires were low and I knew that this was what passed for night under the earth. Cal’s face fell. “It’s the madness dream? You’re still having it.”

  “At least you’re not saying necrovirus any longer.” I half-smiled.

  “No need.” Cal’s tongue flicked in and out. “All a lie, isn’t it? You don’t know how it stuck in my craw pretending to be scared of the Proctor’s fable. Ghul weren’t made by any virus. We’ve always been here, under the skin of your world.”

  “It’s no comfort, the lie,” I said. “My family does go mad, no matter what causes it. I feel like there’s an abyss in front of me, and a wind at my back.…”

  “Aoife.” Cal wrapped his long, skeletal arms around himself. “No matter what happens, you’ll be Aoife. I’ll come visit you in the madhouse, if that’s what it takes, but I won’t desert you. I’ll learn a new boy-shape. Draven will never catch me.”

  “Why can’t I just go back?” I whispered, ignoring his attempts at comfort. “Erase all of this and go be a student whose biggest problem was a schematic she couldn’t draw?”

  “Because,” Dean said, “then you’d lose everything you’ve gained since. Truth, magic. Even the real face of your obnoxious little friend here.”

  “You’re calling me obnoxious,” Cal huffed. “If you could only hear yourself.”

  I managed a laugh. “At least some things haven’t changed.”

  “I’m still the Cal you knew,” he said. “I know you don’t trust me, but underneath I’m the same. I’ll go to the Engineworks with you. If I don’t make it, or the Proctors grab me again—”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said, moving away from Dean and straightening up. “You won’t be coming.”

  Cal sighed. “I’m not working for Draven anymore. I swear it.”

  “I mean,” I said, “we need someone to meet the airship. To come for us if Dean and I get caught again.” I gave Cal a smile, a whole one, even though it was purely meant to make him cooperate. I guessed I had learned a thing or two from Dean. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have looking out for me.” And if Cal did decide that his loyalties lay elsewhere, at least we wouldn’t be together in the Engine when he did.

  Dean stayed when Cal crept back to his nest. “I can stay,” he said. “If you want me.”

  I moved and made room for him in the hammock. I wanted Dean to stay, badly. I never, I realized, wanted him to leave again. “Please.”

  Dean slipped out of his leather jacket and his heavy boots and settled next to me, letting me sink back into the comfort of his chest, wrapping his arm around my waist and resting his chin on the top of my head. His breath ruffled my hair. I stayed still, afraid I might break our comfortable silence like a soap bubble.

  Dean spoke, eventually. “Dreams, huh?” he whispered in my ear. “Bad ones?”

  “The worst imaginable,” I said. “Ever since I was a little girl.”

  “Well,” Dean said softly. “I’m here now. Any bad’s going to have to get through me.” He ran his fingers down my cheek, over my neck and arm, and then kissed the back of my neck before settling his head onto the pillow. “Sweet dreams, princess.”

  I knew that no one, not even Dean, could keep the dreams at bay, but I allowed myself to think he might, until I fell back into a fitful, smoke-tinged sleep.

  I woke alone, shivering in the chill of a dead fire. Ashes blew softly across the hearth, as if subterranean snow had fallen while I slept.

  “Dean?” I whispered, scrubbing vision back into my eyes. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in the crook of the hammock, but I had slept soundly and long. Light fell from somewhere far above, in bars and crosses across the rough earthen floor.

  “He went to smoke a cigarette,” Toby’s guttural voice piped from the corner of the hearth. “I don’t understand why you breathe the smoke in willingly. Your city is covered in it.”

  “We all have our vices,” I said. Toby grinned at me, his bluish fur almost silver in the early light.

  “I said I’d watch you so you didn’t turn into breakfast. Although I am hungry.”

  I swung myself down from the hammock, planting my feet with a thud. “We both know you’re not going to do anything of the kind as long as Cal’s around, so why don’t you shove a sock in it?”

  Toby laughed. I was beginning to see subtle differences in the ghouls—Cal was slight and skinny no matter what shape he was in, while Toby was larger, darker. Tanner’s voice had been nightmarish, but Toby’s and Cal’s were strange in a way that made me want to listen.

  “I sorta see why Carver decided to protect his meat friend,” he said. “You’re not like a human. You’re more like one of us.”

  “I wish that were true,” I said, and meant it. If I could fight and hunt, if I were something to be afraid of, none of this misfortune would have happe
ned.

  Toby drew something out from behind his back, awkward as any human boy. “Carver said you lost your kit in Ravenhouse. I know humans need things. Even though they just clank and clack, hanging from your bones.” He shoved the object into my hand.

  I gasped when I saw Tremaine’s blue goggles. “Where did you get these?”

  Toby grinned at me. “Those men following you and Carver and the Erlkin. Some of us went back, went hunting. The fat one had them on his belt.”

  Quinn. I’d be lying if I said I was sorry.

  I slid them over my eyes and looked at the nest. Toby appeared wavy and insubstantial, only his bones showing clearly. His ghoul spine with its cruel curve that made him able to spring and twist in midair, the long jaw full of teeth, and the knifelike claws.

  All around me, the underworld revealed itself, disused pipe and tunnel running off in every direction, a drain that dribbled overhead directly to the river, and the broken, branching chimney that vented the ghoul’s hearth.

  Toby panted, itching behind his blunt ear with one long claw as I slid the goggles onto my forehead. “So it’s a fair bargain, yes? For saving Carver’s life?”

  “Yes, Toby,” I said. “More than fair. Thank you.” I tried Tremaine’s goggles again. “Now I know what it’s like to be Dean—to see everything that’s hidden.”

  Dean poked his head from the nest tunnel to the outside. “I hear my name?”

  “Dean!” I waved the goggles at him. “Look what Toby found.”

  He took a glance through the lenses and just as quickly jerked the mask off. “That’s Folk trickery. Splits my head in two.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But they’ll help us get down the vent tunnel. I can watch for the steam, and time it.”

  “Assuming we get through that grate,” Dean said.

  Toby extended his claws with the sound of daggers being drawn. “Leave that to us.”

  In the Engineworks

  CAL AND TOBY went into the hearth pipe in the lead, Toby loping easily on all fours and Cal in his boy skin, walking upright. Dean stayed with me. I was relieved that Cal seemed to have stopped sniping at Dean. It was clear in hindsight why—Dean represented everything Draven was trying to keep me from.

  Cal’s clothes now were rags, an old Engineworks jersey and pants tattered about the hem. His feet stayed bare.

  “I figured this might make it a little easier for you,” he told me.

  “Don’t worry about sparing me,” I said. “Toby’s already laboring under the impression he owes me something for saving your life.”

  “You did,” Cal said shortly. “Not in Ravenhouse, but before. You made me realize I didn’t have to be afraid of Draven.”

  “Cal …” I’d never find someone as loyal as Cal again. That I knew, in an immutable bone-deep sense.

  “I’ll let you into the vent, and we’ll be even.” Cal flashed me a smile, and I saw that he hadn’t bothered to hide his ghoul teeth.

  “If she comes back, you two can skip merrily over the ground. If not, someone will have a fine supper.” Toby chuckled to himself and climbed up to walk on the ceiling.

  I took the pedestrian route, sticking near Dean and Cal. Tremaine’s goggles dangled from my hand, and across my back I’d strapped a small pack that bore the partially chewed-away logo of the Lovecraft Academy Expedition Club circa 1933, clearly a year where they didn’t teach student members not to go wandering around old sewer mains.

  I’d taken only tools and a little water, for rehydrating after Dean and I had gone through the steam. No books, no pens, no paper. Only Dean’s geas, tucked up tight under the wrist of my jumper.

  “You haven’t said much since last night,” Dean said.

  I shrugged. “Not much to say.” The dream of my mother lingered, like a corpse’s touch against my skin, a spot of chill that no amount of steam heat could erase. You shouldn’t have walked in the lily field.

  “How long do you have?” Dean said.

  “Six days. I was born at four a.m. Six days and four hours.”

  Dean fingered a Lucky but didn’t light it. “You might be spared, you know.”

  “I won’t be,” I said shortly. “Because life’s not fair.” On this point, I was sure.

  Dean spread his hands. “I don’t—”

  “We find out there is no necrovirus and my family is still mad,” I said. “So clearly, I will be too. And now I’m even further from knowing why.”

  Dean took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “I ain’t good at words, Aoife. I made my living with my blood and my boots and my fists, and I’m not a poet.”

  His hands gripped more tightly, but I didn’t try to wriggle away even though he was hurting me a little. He was the only thing in the tunnel that was really solid.

  “I’m not running,” he said simply. “I’ve seen what can happen and I’m not scared. You may be mad and you may not be, Aoife, but you’re stuck with me. I ain’t run from a problem yet and I’m not about to start with you.”

  He released me, and walked on. I wished I could be as brave as Dean. I wished I could be as loyal as Cal. But I was only me, and that was going to have to be enough for what was ahead.

  “Dean.” I caught up with him, my feet echoing in the empty pipes. “I know,” I told him. “I know that you won’t leave.”

  He nodded, some of the knots slipping from his posture. “Good,” he said. “Then we’re square. You’ve paid your part of the bargain and I’ve held up mine.”

  “No more bargains,” I said as we reached the guard grate and came to a halt. “Just Aoife and Dean from now on, all right?”

  He smiled, brushing a thumb down my cheek. “I like the sound of that.”

  Toby tugged at the grate ineffectually, his claws shrieking over the rusted iron. “Carver, don’t just stand there catching flies. Give me a hand.”

  I slipped on the blue glass goggles while Cal crouched. His skin rippled, bones with it, like his skin was sand and his insides were the ocean, pushing and re-forming it. He grunted as he became ghoul, the only hint of the pain that must rack him whenever he twisted his bones and skin into the shape of what he despised.

  I wondered how long Cal had been passing as a human, how often he’d ventured over ground to find medicine or food.

  How long Draven had tortured him the first time, until he agreed to spy on me.

  Someday, I vowed, as I searched the vent and its connected discharge pipes for a hint of the next jet of steam, I would see Grey Draven again. And I would take back my father’s book and make him answer for all that he’d done to those I cared about.

  The vent fell away with a clang, and Toby stuck his finger in his mouth. “I broke one of my claws clean off.”

  “Now who’s the baby?” Cal asked him.

  “Quiet!” I snapped. I could see the steam, moving like a phantom through the discharge pipes, gathering speed like a spectral hurricane. “It’s coming,” I whispered.

  “What’s that mean for us?” Dean said.

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “It means we have to run. Now.”

  “Aoife!” Cal shouted as we ducked through the opening the ghouls had made. His voice was lost in the roar of the gathering vent jet, but I think he was telling me to be careful.

  * * *

  Dean and I ran through steam, and it took me back to running through the mist with Tremaine. Just as it had been then, I risked being stolen away, not by the corpse-drinkers or the other things that lingered in the fog but by the molten jets of steam from the Engine that even now throbbed under my feet.

  The goggles showed me the encroaching vent, the access hatch we needed to reach before the heat exploded into the tunnel.

  It was so very far away. My breath jabbed in and out of my chest like a pickax, and my heart throbbed in time with the Engine. Dean’s damp, hot hand was the only thing I felt besides the blinding pain of sprinting.

  “Hatch!” I managed to gasp. “Open it and get
through before … before …”

  Dean grasped my meaning and caught the hatch wheel with his full weight, attempting and failing to spin it open. “It’s rusted shut!” he shouted.

  The floor shook in earnest now, and my hair started to curl up as the humidity and heat rose. Every pipe I could see through the goggles was full, dancing with the ghosts of steam.

  I grabbed the wheel, my hands over Dean’s, but it was impossible to budge.

  “Open it! I know you can!” Dean screamed above the whine of venting steam. This time, I didn’t argue with him about the Weird. I pressed my forehead against the hatch, focused on the wheel, the machine within. Light exploded in front of my eyes like a sulfur bulb on a camera, and then I fell.

  For an awful moment, I thought I was back in the Thorn Land, but the floor was hard steel and there was shrieking steam just outside the hatch as we tumbled through.

  I watched Dean give the wheel a hard twist, shutting us off from the vent pipe. He was panting, sopping wet with sweat running down his face like tears. “Let’s never have a close one like that again.”

  My breath didn’t want to come back, my throat fighting it with the tightness of near death. “I … no. Let’s not …,” I managed.

  Dean cast around the small iron room. “Where in the cold starry hell are we?”

  I lifted the goggles from my eyes and examined our surroundings. Heavy treated-canvas suits hung in orderly rows, along with hoods that were a grim and greasy parody of the Proctors’ uniforms. The opposite wall held axes and pressure scissors, the large blades used to free a man crushed under the sort of metal wreckage that happened when rods threw and boilers exploded.

  “It’s the fire room,” I said. “The accident brigade can suit up in here. It’s completely iron like a submersible—if there’s a fire or an explosion they can still go rescue the survivors.”

  Dean lifted one of the fire suits from its hook and held it to his chest experimentally. “Whatcha think? About my size?”

  I could breathe a bit easier, so I joined him, taking down the smallest suit. I still swam in it when I pulled it on, but now I appeared as a short, squat, genderless Engine worker rather than a slight and out-of-place teenage girl.