Soul Singer_Iron Souls, Book Two

by Becca Andre

  “What if he has next of kin who are looking for him?” Zach gestured at the dead man.

  “He’s been dead a while,” Grayson answered.

  “You mean, he’s been soulless a while,” Briar clarified.

  “Yes.” He gripped the man by the feet and dragged him toward the trees.

  She gave Zach a nod, and after an uncertain glance at Grayson, he hurried away.

  Intent on his task, Grayson didn’t watch him go. Briar followed him several yards into the trees until he dropped his burden.

  “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she asked.

  Grayson unbuttoned his waistcoat. “Yes.”

  She watched him a moment. “I’ll play for you once we finish here.” She still didn’t understand why her playing the fiddle helped him, but it did. It seemed to drive away the coldness of the ferromancer and return his humanity.

  “That isn’t necessary.” He shrugged off his waistcoat.

  She held out a hand, and he passed it to her, his gold watch weighing it down.

  “I’ll play for you,” she told him. “You’re not going to wander around my boat as Mr. Cold and Indifferent. The crew is uncertain enough about you.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “No, it won’t. I’m captain, and that means I look out for the welfare of my crew.” She took a step closer. “I’m not going to take advantage of whatever Uncle Liam made me do. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  “All the more reason for you not to mess with what you don’t understand.”

  “I know enough. Besides, I’m the one who has to bare my soul.”

  His cool gaze held hers, and she fought off a shiver. When he was like this, he was so different from the man she knew.

  “Captain?” Zach called out to her.

  “Over here,” she answered.

  Grayson turned his attention to rolling up his sleeves. A moment later, Zach and Jimmy joined them.

  “Ben’s watching the mules,” Zach told her. She suspected Zach had given his teenage brother that task to keep him from seeing this.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy muttered upon seeing the dead man.

  “I know.” She patted Jimmy’s arm, glad Eli hadn’t joined them. He didn’t do well around blood and gore.

  “I’m going to leave you boys to this grisly task and go tune my fiddle.”

  “Your fiddle?” Jimmy asked.

  “Mr. Martel is going to need some cheering.” She waved a hand at him. “Otherwise, he’s not going to be much of a conversationalist.”

  “Ah.” Jimmy’s gaze shifted to Grayson. They had all witnessed his colder moments.

  “I’ll take your watch and waistcoat back to the boat,” she told Grayson. “Come to my cabin when you finish. I’ll play for you while you prepare lunch.”

  “As you command.”

  She hesitated, wanting to ask if that really had been a command, but she didn’t want to discuss that in front of Zach and Jimmy.

  Settling for a nod, she turned and headed back to the boat.

  “Another ferromancer is after him?” Eli demanded when Briar told him what had happened.

  “After him, no. Apparently, he was just delivering an invitation from Solon. Andrew said Solon was planning some big party that Andrew was funding. I hope that means my cousin got the money and will now leave us alone.”

  “That would be nice.” Eli eyed her. “What are your plans, Miss Briar, after we deliver the ferromancer to Cleveland?”

  “I thought I’d buy a new boat and…burn this one.” The thought made her sick. This boat had been her home almost her entire life.

  “You’re keeping Mr. Martel’s money?”

  Grayson had given her close to two thousand dollars—enough money to buy a new boat. “He said the money came from Andrew.” Grayson had been going to build locomotives for Andrew’s new business—before Solon had shown up and made Andrew soulless.

  “I don’t like you beholden to some ferromancer.”

  “He gave me the money.” She didn’t feel like arguing this with him. “Since we’re stopped, I thought we might as well have lunch.”

  “On top of that man’s grave?”

  “No, on the boat.”

  Eli frowned.

  “Don’t be superstitious. Besides, Grayson said he’d been dead a while. If he haunts somewhere, maybe he’ll haunt the place where he died.”

  Eli didn’t look reassured. “What about that other ferromancer?”

  “We travel at four miles an hour. If he wanted us, we’d be just as vulnerable sitting here as moving.”

  The frown on Eli’s face didn’t lift.

  “Set up for lunch, and I’ll go get things started.”

  “You’re cooking?” Eli’s eyes widened in alarm. “Shouldn’t you wait for Mr. Martel?”

  “Now you’re willing to have him around. We’re having sandwiches,” she added before he could protest. “I can handle that.”

  “If we end up with a haunting, it’s on you.”

  “So be it. I accept full responsibility.” Rolling her eyes, she opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder into her cabin. At the moment, ghosts were the least of her worries.

  The fire Grayson had lit in the stove for breakfast had gone out, but the cabin hadn’t cooled much—even with the windows open. The midday meal was often something that didn’t require the stove, but it would need to be lit this afternoon to prepare the evening meal.

  Would it be any cooler the further north they went? She had heard about huge amounts of snow on the lake in the winter. Would the summers be milder?

  Musing on these questions, she turned her attention to slicing the summer sausage and bread. She tried to focus on these mundane thoughts of the weather, but her mind kept drifting back to the ferromancer on the towpath. Was he an example of what it meant to devolve? What did that mean—besides having more visible metal? She wanted to learn more, but she didn’t want to ask Grayson.

  She had lunch ready when he stepped through the door from the cargo hold.

  “I take it the deed is done?” she asked when he didn’t speak. Dirt streaked his white shirt, though the glint of water on his hands suggested that he had washed up. They kept soap and a basin by the rain barrel for that purpose.

  “It is done,” Grayson agreed in his unaffected monotone. He walked to the table and dropped to a knee to pull out his trunk. With four crewmen who weren’t family, the boat’s bow cabin—the bunkhouse—was full, so she let him store his trunk here.

  Grayson selected a clean shirt and placed it on the table. Without comment, he rose to his feet and unbuttoned his shirt.

  She started to speak, to tease him about just making himself at home, but remained silent. In his current state, he wouldn’t get the joke, or he would give her a stiff answer.

  He shrugged off his soiled shirt, and since she was a little behind him, his back was to her. Oblong silver disks, reminding her uncomfortably of rivets, ran down his spine. Contoured, overlapping plates of the same bright metal overlaid his shoulder blades, or maybe even replaced them. Was it just her imagination, or did they encompass a larger area than the last time she had seen his back? Yesterday.

  She moved closer to the table. In front of him now, she eyed his bare chest, but saw no more metal. It left the sole blemish—a livid red scar down the center of his sternum—glaringly visible.

  He looked up, his cool eyes meeting hers.

  Embarrassed, she reached past him to her open fiddle case lying on the table. The instrument was tuned and the bow rosined.

  “I’ve got lunch ready,” she told him. “Let’s take care of this so I can feed the crew. I don’t want them to mutiny.”

  “You don’t need to do t
his.” He pulled on his clean shirt.

  “Yes, I do.” She drew the bow across the strings, creating a long, quivering note.

  Grayson buttoned his shirt, his nimble fingers working their way up from the bottom.

  She launched into a series of scales, trying to find the music within her. Grayson had told Liam that she was a soul singer, a talent reserved for the ferra, the females of the ferromancer race. Briar didn’t know where she had come by such a talent since, as far as she knew, her parents had been human.

  Grayson’s fingers stilled, and he bowed his head. That’s when she realized that she’d stopped playing scales and had begun an original composition. This was how it worked. She had to play from her heart, from her soul, to help him.

  She imagined herself reaching out to him. She shared her…humanity, trying to drive back the inhuman within him. The alien…thing she saw looking out at her through his eyes. How she longed to stop this process that clearly terrified him.

  Her thoughts returned to the other ferromancer. The devolved one. It broke her heart to imagine Grayson ending that way. The world would miss his wit, his boyish enthusiasm over his inventions, and most of all, his smile. Would this amputation he planned to get in Cleveland help? And the bigger question: if he hadn’t met her, would he still have these concerns?

  He had been willing to die rather than let Solon force his final casting on him, the event that kicked off his devolvement. Then she’d been forced to take his construct, though she didn’t fully understand why he found that so upsetting. She would never use the connection for ill.

  She continued to play, trying to find answers where there were none. How could she ever make any of this right?

  “Briar.” Grayson’s voice broke into her jumbled thoughts. “That’s enough.”

  His words pulled her back to the moment. No, not just his words, his tone. The cadence, the inflection. She had done it. He was human again.

  “Or something like,” he amended.

  As it had in the past, it seemed he heard her music as clear as he heard her words.

  She pulled the bow from the strings, allowing the final note to carry.

  Grayson stood before her, his shirt buttoned to his waist, leaving the scar on his chest visible.

  He lifted a hand to her face and she stilled. It wasn’t until he wiped her cheek that she realized she’d been crying while she played.

  She bowed her head, embarrassed. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to show him her soul? Now he got to see her bawling like a little girl.

  “None of this is your fault,” he said.

  She choked on a sob.

  “Come here.” His arms came around her, and to her surprise, he pulled her into a hug.

  She tensed, but the relief that his words brought relaxed her, and she slumped against him—though with her fiddle in one hand and her bow in the other, she couldn’t hug him back.

  “The ferra force us to create a construct to delay our casting, but it doesn’t prevent it.”

  “Why delay it?”

  “Otherwise, a ferromancer would go into his final casting at puberty and devolve much more quickly.”

  She leaned back to stare up at him.

  “At least, that’s what I’ve been told,” he added.

  Her gaze fell to the scar down the center of his chest, visible through his open shirt. The scar he received when his heart had been taken from him and used to give Lock…life.

  She transferred her bow to the hand that held the fiddle, and in morbid fascination, reached up to run her fingers over the raised, pink flesh.

  Grayson sucked in a breath.

  She pulled her hand away. “Does that bother you?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “I usually gasp when a woman caresses my bare chest.”

  “Usually? Do women caress your bare chest often?”

  “Not as often as I would like.”

  “Hm. You did miss your opportunity to visit your English twit while we were in Columbus.”

  “I did. But truth be told, she was probably too straight-laced for this sort of thing.”

  “You’re implying that I’m not?” She lifted her chin.

  “You have no laces. You wear a waistcoat.”

  “Yes, I do.” She held his gaze.

  He grinned, a mischievous twinkle lighting his eyes. The coldness was gone as if it never existed.

  His expression sobered as he watched her, then his gaze dipped to her mouth.

  Her pulse kicked. Was he thinking about kissing her? He’d made it clear that he wanted to be finished with her, and yet—

  A knock at the door was followed by a rattle of the knob. “Captain?” Eli called out.

  Grayson took a step back, and Briar spun to face the door, suddenly feeling like she was twelve again and Eli had caught her in some mischief.

  “Sounded like you were done in here,” Eli said as he stepped into the room.

  “Yes.” Briar turned away to place her fiddle in its case. The notion that the others could hear her playing bothered her. Did they hear her soul the way Grayson did?

  “Table’s set up.” Eli frowned at Grayson, though Grayson didn’t see it. He had turned his attention back to his shirt buttons.

  “Thank you,” she said to Eli. “The bread and meat are sliced if you’d like to carry them out.”

  He continued to frown at Grayson. “I reckon it worked?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Mr. Martel is amiable once more.”

  Grayson looked up, amusement shining in his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Rose. I am once more in your debt.”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  He just smiled and retrieved his waistcoat from the spare bunk where she’d laid it.

  “I’ll carry out the meal,” he continued as he pulled on the waistcoat. “Least I can do since you performed my duties.”

  “Then hop to it,” she said, trying for some semblance of normalcy.

  He gave her a graceful bow, then moved over to collect the baskets she had already packed. Humming softly, he left the cabin.

  She closed the fiddle case and placed it on its shelf. When she turned, she found Eli watching her. Rather than fret about it, she decided to just ask. “What do you hear when I play for him?”

  “I didn’t recognize the tune.”

  She studied him, trying to decide if he was being evasive.

  “What is it?” His expression was perplexed. “Should I have recognized it?” No, he wasn’t being evasive.

  “It was a tune I made up.”

  His brows lifted. “Sometimes, I wonder if your talents are wasted on this boat.”

  “I don’t want to be anything else.” Her frustration turned to anger. “This is the life I want. The life I’m fighting for.” And messing up.

  “What’s wrong, Miss Briar?” He moved closer. “You can always talk to me, you know?”

  “I know.” She also knew he was wrong. She couldn’t talk to him about any of this.

  “You want me to beat up the ferromancer for you?”

  She couldn’t help but smile at the hint of hope in his voice. “I don’t need you to beat up Mr. Martel. I’ll beat him up myself if there’s a need.”

  A brief smile touched Eli’s sun-darkened face before he sobered. “But he does trouble you.”

  “Not in a malicious manner. It’s more of a mental puzzle. I wish I could figure out how to…help him.”

  “You got a good heart, Miss Briar. I know his troubles wear on you, but he ain’t human. There’s nothing to be done for that.”

  She frowned, not willing to accept that—even if Grayson had suggested as much.

  “You just have to let this go. You’ve done all you
can for the man—taking him to Cleveland and everything.”

  She wanted to argue that she felt there was more she could do, but Eli wouldn’t humor her. He wanted to be free of Grayson.

  “You just hear music when I play for him?” she asked instead.

  “Yes,” he answered, his tone hesitant. “Why do you keep asking about that?”

  “I’m trying to puzzle out why it helps him. How does my playing return his humanity?” And how did he understand every note as if she had spoken to him?

  “You play really well. I know it makes me happy to hear you play.” His face might have blushed beneath his tan. “The rest of the crew, too,” he hurried to add.

  “Thank you.” At least it didn’t seem that everyone was hearing her soul.

  “Let’s go eat.” Eli shifted his weight from foot to foot, perhaps anxious to get up there before there were only crumbs left.

  She smiled. “All right. Then we can leave before that ghost takes up residence.”

  Eli’s forehead wrinkled in concern, and he hurried for the door.

  They docked in Newark early in the afternoon. Briar sent Zach to the toll office to pay their fees. Should there be any wanted posters up, she hoped Zach could talk them out of another run-in with law enforcement. She didn’t understand the particulars, but when Grayson had repaired Zach’s damaged voice box, he had given him a new ability. Zach could make people believe what he said—even if it was a total lie.

  Grayson and Jimmy had walked over to the farmers market to restock their stores. Grayson had been saying something about a cobbler, though she hadn’t been paying close attention. She had been studying the docks, on the lookout for policemen. So far, she hadn’t seen any.

  When Eli complained about her wearing a hole in the deck with her pacing, she retreated to her cabin. She had cleaned it earlier that morning, so with nothing else to do, she pulled Uncle Charlie’s old trunk from beneath her bed and went through it. She hoped to find another map or travel logs from his trips along the northern part of the canal, but she soon became distracted by some paraphernalia from her childhood.