Cold Copper aos-3

by Devon Monk

  “Yes.” She got busy putting that together and Rose looked up at Hink.

  “You’ve got a bullet wound open and bleeding, and broken ribs. Someone also appears to have decided to tenderize all the meat on your bones. It’s a mess, Lee. And you’ll do as I say so that I can see it all doesn’t go to rot and kill you.”

  “Pleased to see you so concerned for my welfare,” he said.

  “Of course I’m concerned. Not much use for a boilerman if there isn’t a captain to fly the ship.”

  He grunted and then slouched back a bit and stared at the door. He was breathing with a hitch, and his skin was hot to the touch, though he shivered. Fever, for certain. Not a good sign.

  Rose lost herself to cleaning his wounds and trying not to make him flinch. Miss Dupuis proved to be invaluable, and handed her fresh water, wraps, and compresses just as she needed them. Even Thomas was helpful in finding a shirt from Father Kyne’s things that fit Hink well enough.

  Once she was sure she had done everything she could think of, she helped him put his coat back on.

  He was shivering still. “Rose,” he said.

  “Mmm?”

  “You still have that copper bit on you?”

  “Yes.” She’d wanted to take it out of her shirt ever since they’d fled the jail, but there hadn’t been time.

  “Good. Give it to Mr. Wicks. He’ll get it in the hands of someone who might know what to do with it.”

  “We can do that. You and I can do that.”

  “I’d rather cover our bets.”

  “You’re not going to die, Lee Hink.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure if he was going to say something else, but right then, the Madders strolled into the kitchen.

  “You up for this dance, Captain?” Alun asked Hink.

  “Still got my boots on, don’t I?” he answered calmly.

  “Do we have a plan?” Rose asked.

  “We?” Alun helped himself to a hunk of cheese from the round Cedar had brought out, then poured himself a cup of the plain tea brewing on the stove. “I think we might have several plans.”

  “And what would those be?” Miss Dupuis asked.

  Alun had a mouthful, so Bryn picked up the conversation. “Cedar Hunt, of course, will retrieve the Holder. We Madders will search for the lost children, and the rest of you.” He narrowed his eyes, as if working hard to see just who he had fallen in league with.

  “Mr. Thomas Wicks!” Bryn declared. “It’s been a year or two, hasn’t it?”

  “Or five.”

  “Just so. Did you decide which side of the law suited your needs?”

  “The right side, Mr. Madder. I am the Chief Territorial United States Marshal now, appointed by the president himself.”

  “Why, that puts you”—he turned and made a show of looking at Captain Hink—“in a position directly above our good captain here, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Wicks said, giving Hink a look. “It does.”

  Alun slurped his tea. “Would love to know what the chief territorial marshal is doing in this town. Some kind of trouble you’re following, Mr. Wicks?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then we’ll leave you to it.” Alun handed his tea to Cadoc, who had finished off a chunk of bread, and swigged the tea to chase it.

  “Mr. Hunt,” Alun said as Cedar walked into the room. “It’s time you bring us the Holder. We are done waiting.”

  “Under ice,” Cedar said.

  Rose glanced up at the hoarseness of his voice. He looked like he’d gained a year in just the few moments since she’d last seen him. She’d seen pain age a man like that, but not so quickly.

  Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and he held his shoulders back and to the side as if any other position just set off more pain.

  Wil, beside him, walked carefully. He too looked to be in pain, but not nearly as bad as Cedar.

  “Aye, Mr. Hunt. So you’ve said,” Alun agreed. “You’ll find a way to draw it up from that river and quickly, before the life you’re giving to Father Kyne gets in the way of your promise to us.”

  “Unless you have a device that can do that for me, Mr. Madder,” Cedar said, his voice little more than a low rumble in the room, “then the Holder stays right where it is until spring melt.”

  “I’ll do it,” Mae said.

  Alun’s eyes went wide, and he leaned so he could see around Cedar to Mae standing in the doorway.

  “I can…there are spells that might bind it. Cedar, I’ll go with you and Wil. We will find a way to retrieve the Holder.”

  “Good,” Alun said. “It’s all settled then.”

  “Settled? How?” Cedar moved across the room—slowly, Rose noted—and poured himself a cup of hot water.

  “You, Wil, and Mae will retrieve the Holder,” Alun said. “Brothers Bryn and Cadoc and I will search for the children, which is what we’ve promised, and the others will do”—he waved his hand dismissively—“whatever it is they choose to do.”

  “We know where the children are,” Cedar said after he took a long drink.

  “What’s that you say?” Bryn Madder asked.

  “The children,” Cadoc echoed. “Where have you found them?”

  “There’s a stand of woods just east a ways. The road past the tinker’s shop leads to it after a fact. About a half mile in, there’s a tumble of stones with a small opening. A Strange pocket. Wil went into that tumble and saw the children sleeping—he thought they were sleeping—in a chamber beneath those stones.”

  “Outside of town?” Alun asked.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Alun and the other two Madders all nodded once at the same time. “Done,” they said. Then they buckled coats and pressed hats tighter over bushy hair.

  “Farewell to you, one and all,” Cadoc Madder said.

  He stepped out the door and Bryn simply gave a half salute, half wave and was out on the heels of his brother.

  Alun was last to leave. He paused at the door. “Rose,” he said. “Hurry up now; there isn’t time to waste.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “We’ll need a spare pair of hands. And you’re just the person for it. Grab your coat. We’ll be waiting in the wagon.”

  Rose looked over at Cedar, who gave her a shrug, then at Hink, who was still slouching in the chair.

  “I should stay with you. Mae told me children were missing,” she said, “and it’s part of a promise between the Madders and Father Kyne, but I don’t know how I’m going to be any good in finding them.”

  “If the Madders find the children,” Hink said, “and they’re alive, do you think they’re going to follow those old coots back to town? I’d say the children might take comfort in a woman being there.”

  “But if I leave, leave you…”

  He raised his eyebrow. “Rose Small. Go find that horizon and stop worrying about me. I’m in the middle of a church with plenty of people and plenty of guns. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Father Kyne and fellow fugitives,” a voice bellowed from the front of the church. “This is Sheriff Burchell. I’ve got all my lawmen and half the town out here. We know you’re in there. We have the church surrounded. Come out with your hands up, or we will burn this place down.”

  “Well,” Wicks said, putting on his bowler hat and pulling a gun out of the satchel he carried, “that could possibly go wrong.”

  29

  Cedar knew the sheriff wasn’t intending to negotiate with them. Half the people in the room, including the Madder brothers, had fought their way out from behind his city’s bars. He was most likely hoping they’d walk out, hands up, so he could shoot them in cold blood and not have to worry about stringing the gallows.

  Alun held the back door open for Rose. “Now’s the time to decide. Wagon’s rolling.”

  Rose grabbed her coat and rushed across the room. She must want to say good-bye to Mae and Mr. Hunt. She must want to sa
y good-bye to Hink. But the entire kitchen was in a jumble of people hurrying up to either run for the back door or take a stand.

  “What about Father Kyne?” Mae asked as she snatched up a cloth tied around a bundle of herbs for her spell casting.

  “We’ll stay with him.” Miss Dupuis walked into the kitchen with her rifle and sidearm. “We’ll protect him.”

  “I’ll stay with you, Miss Dupuis,” Mr. Wicks said. “See if I can talk some sense into the men out there. Either with words or bullets. Whichever seems to get more results.”

  “Go,” Hink said as he stood. He wavered a bit and planted his palm on the table to keep himself steady. “Get the children. Get the Holder. Get whatever it is we need so we can get the hell out of here. We’ll be fine.” Then he added a little more gently, “I’ll be fine, Rose. Go.”

  Cedar wondered if she heard the good-bye in his tone.

  Cedar strode to the door and put his hand on Rose’s shoulder. She pressed her lips together, then let out a breath. And with that look of determination she often wore, she turned and ran after Alun Madder, who was already on the slowly rolling wagon, his hand held down for her to catch. As soon as Rose was safely up in the wagon, Bryn Madder snapped the reins and set the horses to galloping. Straight at three mounted lawmen who stepped out from behind the barn to stop them.

  Cedar knew what the Madders were doing. They were causing a distraction so he, Mae, and Wil could reach the barn, the horses, and hurry out to the river.

  Mae had her gun drawn and so did Cedar as they made a run for the barn. The sheriff had been stretching the truth a bit. The church wasn’t completely surrounded, and there were no other men around the barn.

  The horses inside the barn were saddled. He didn’t know who had taken the time to see to it, other than maybe Miss Dupuis and Mr. Wicks. Whoever it was, he silently thanked them. There was an ax hanging on the wall, and he took that before swinging up into the saddle. Mae was already astride her horse.

  Then they rode as quickly and quietly as they could out of the barn and across the field through spindly trees and shadows, Wil leading a winding path to the river.

  Cedar was breathing hard. Everything was more difficult with the tie between him and Father Kyne. He felt Father Kyne’s pain, felt the draining weariness of his wounds as if they were his own. And the aches and pains he’d been enduring since he came to town felt even worse. Wil felt Kyne’s pain too, but seemed to tolerate it much better than he did.

  Cedar could bear this pain for a few hours, maybe for a day or two if he could spend them in a sickbed, but if Kyne didn’t begin to mend or heal in that time, Mae would have to break the spell. Cedar felt a need to repay the debt of Kyne carrying their curse, but both of them, or all three of them, dying wouldn’t do the world a bit of good.

  They urged the horses into a slow lope, following Wil as he carved a path through trees and brush toward the river.

  The crack of gunfire broke across the cloud-heavy sky. Then return fire rolled out.

  “The church,” Mae said.

  Cedar nodded. Leaving Hink, Miss Dupuis, and Wicks back to guard Father Kyne was really no more than a gunfight waiting to happen. They’d be wise to surrender. As far as he knew, the three of them weren’t on the mayor’s hanging list.

  Even though he wasn’t a praying man, he found himself wishing there was more he could do, more any of them could do, to turn that fight in their favor.

  The gunshots were constant, then became more sporadic, but did not cease.

  Wil, panting, stopped short of the river, which lay on the other side of a thin line of trees. He lifted his head and looked up at Cedar.

  “Is this the place?” Mae asked.

  Cedar dismounted, throwing the horse’s reins over a low branch and drawing the shotgun out of the saddle holster.

  “River’s just that way,” he said. “It rushes between two rocks, but is iced full over.”

  “And you are sure the Holder is beneath it?”

  “I am sure. And there’s more. When we came out this way last night, following that Strange, it stood on top of the ice, pointed at the river, and said one word: ‘help.’”

  Mae frowned. “So you think it wants the Holder too?”

  “I don’t know what it wants. I don’t know what help a Strange thinks I’d be willing to offer. But it wasn’t the call of the Holder that brought me to the river. We followed the Strange, and as soon as we were near the river, we could hear the voices of children.”

  Mae had dismounted and was in the middle of tying her horse to a bush. She looked up at Cedar, startled.

  “Children? But Wil said he saw them sleeping in the old mine shaft.”

  “Strange like to play with a man’s mind. Show him roads off the edges of cliffs, show him lights down the bottom of ravines, or promise him his heart’s desire and deliver nothing but smoke.”

  “So you don’t think the children are really here? You think the Strange somehow made you imagine their voices?”

  “I don’t know. It makes the most sense.”

  “Do you hear them now?”

  Cedar pushed the pain away and listened with ears sharper than any man’s. Wind scrubbed through sticks, birds and beasts in the forest searched for food, the city clattered and clamored behind them, while far-off trains whistled and airship fans rose and fell. Plenty of noise in the silence of the day.

  But no children crying. No voices calling out. No sorrow.

  “I don’t hear them,” he said. “I don’t even hear the Holder. But I know it’s here.”

  “Then let’s go get it.” Mae settled her satchel across her shoulders. It was filled with herbs and other small tokens to help focus her spell craft.

  She had also made sure to holster a gun at her hips, and when she looked up at Cedar, he reached out and brushed the hair away from her cheek.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “I will be. Is the binding too much?”

  “It’s bearable.” It wasn’t a lie. Yet. “Do you think it’s helping him?”

  “More than I expected,” she said. “I’m not practiced enough with what bindings and vows can do. I’ve spent too many years without using spells, and now that I am free of the coven…” Her words drifted off. Cedar knew that in some ways she regretted leaving the sisters. The coven had been her home, her sanctuary for most of her younger life. If Jeb Lindson hadn’t wandered through their fields and led her heart all the way to the wedding aisle, Mae would likely still be living her life with the women in Kansas.

  “. . .now that I am free of the coven’s restrictions and rules,” she continued, “I am finding magic useful for so many things.”

  “I would have never survived the blizzard before we came into town without your warmth,” he said. When she tipped a smile at him for how exactly that sounded, he smiled back. “Also,” he clarified, “without your spells that bound warmth to my bones.”

  “I’m just happy we…” She shook her head. “I’m just happy. And it’s been a while since I could say that.”

  Cedar nodded. He felt the same.

  But time was slipping away. He walked down the rough path to the river, Wil sliding, like a shadow, beside him.

  The wind went dead, though there was nothing to block it. Wil growled softly and stopped well before they left the edge of the trees.

  Cedar felt it too.

  “Witchcraft,” Mae said. She stood at Cedar’s left.

  “A spell?” he asked. “Can you tell what kind?”

  He shouldn’t be surprised to find spell work in the area, though he was certain this spell had not been in place just last night.

  “I’m not sure. It’s powerful. Whoever cast it is very practiced in the arts.”

  She pressed her fingers on his sleeve as he took a step forward. “Why? Why would someone cast a spell over this section of this river?”

  “Is it made for repelling people from this road? From this river?”

  “Yes
, and more than that. Can you feel the…well, it’s sort of a deeper rooting that runs beneath the road too. That line of stones?” She pointed at the row of small stones carefully set front to back in a straight line blocking the way to the river. “If we walk over those stones, or disturb them in any way, we’ll let whoever cast this know that their spell has been disturbed.”

  “We need to reach the river.” Cedar rolled possibilities through his mind. “Unless you can draw the Holder up from the bottom?”

  “With a spell?” Mae shook her head. “I could call it to itself, bind it to its own if it were broken, but to just call it free—I do not have that power.”

  “You could bind it to me,” Cedar said. “And we could break it.”

  “No.”

  He had been studying the icy water, but at her tone, looked down at her.

  “I bound one piece of the Holder to Rose, and she is forever changed because of it. If I bound a weapon of such Strangework to you…” She pressed her lips together and shook her head again.

  “Then we’ll have to go in after it.”

  “Diving in that river will kill you.”

  “Not if you cast a spell of warmth around me.”

  Wil walked up and gently put his mouth around Cedar’s wrist.

  “Warmth around us. Wil and I will dive for it.”

  “Wil doesn’t even have thumbs,” Mae said.

  “But he senses the Holder differently than I do. If I can’t find it in that dark, he’ll be able to lead me to it.”

  Another round of gunfire echoed in the distance.

  “Mae,” he said. “We are all running out of time.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes. I’ll do it. Give me a moment.” She dug in her satchel and tucked several small items into her palm. He knew that whenever she could she’d been gathering tokens that represented the elements of earth, air, water, and fire—things like unstruck matches, stones, and an odd assortment of cotton threads, buckles, bones, and buttons.

  “I’ll need you both to hold very still. I am going to ask the warmth to wrap you as one.”

  Wil leaned a little closer to Cedar and Cedar knelt down so he was of the same general size as the wolf.