by Devon Monk
Mae cast the spell, and just as it had when they were forging through the blizzard, it settled around him like a heavy, hot blanket. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but since he was about to dive into an ice-covered river, he was happy for the weight of the spell and its protective heat.
They just might survive this dive.
“You’ll need to do it quickly,” Mae said. “One dive and right back up. The spell won’t last long for both of you.”
Cedar stood, and took half a step, leaning over Mae. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her full against his body.
The spell surrounding him felt of her, smelled of her perfume. It even tasted of her.
It made him want her.
She reached up and kissed him. He had intended it to be a gentle kiss, but she was fierce, clinging to him, knowing, as he knew, what a very slim chance it was that he and Wil would survive this.
Wil growled.
Children’s voices rose around them, sighing, crying, sobbing. And behind that sound was the eerie ring of the Holder. Calling. Calling Cedar and Wil down to their deaths, just as it had called the children.
Mae pulled back, and so did he.
“I need to…” Cedar started.
“Yes,” Mae licked her lips to catch the last of the taste of him on her tongue. “You should.”
“I’m coming back,” he said.
“I know.” And then she gave him a look of faith that he’d never known before. She believed he’d find the Holder. With her spell, with Wil.
He wasn’t about to disappoint her.
Cedar shrugged out of his coat and hat, and carried them, along with his shotgun and the ax, over to the river. He left all his clothes and his boots on, but even in just his shirtsleeves, winter could not touch him through Mae’s spell. He glanced up and down river, then crossed over the line of stones.
There was no sound, no shadow movement in the forest, no gunmen. It appeared as if there was no warning attached to the stones, as Mae had worried there would be.
It could be another trick. Stones stacked in a line by the Strange to make a man think there was magic there.
To keep him and Wil from the Holder.
Cedar bent, loosened the laces on his boots, then left them beside the river, his coat and hat and gun all stacked with them. He held the ax loosely in his hand.
Wil’s ears were up as he searched the ice covering the river. They’d need to go in directly above the Holder, dive straight down, catch it up, and pull back onto the bank fast.
A man couldn’t live long in that water. Not more than a handful of minutes. But there would be enough time to dive to the bottom if the river wasn’t too deep. There would be enough time to find the Holder.
Cedar walked upriver just a bit, toward the rush of water pushing between the huge stones on either bank. The heat of Mae’s spell was beginning to make him sweat, as was the tie of pain with Father Kyne.
Wil paused, then took a step onto the ice. Cedar tipped his head, listening for the children’s cries, but more than that, listening for the music from the Holder.
He stepped out on the river in his stockinged feet, following Wil.
His brother took just a few steps downriver and then stopped closer to the far side of the river than the side Mae waited upon.
Cedar agreed. The Holder was here, beneath his feet, calling. Calling for their death.
And when he looked down, between the bare ice spread out under a dusting of snow, he could see the children, trapped beneath the ice like shadowy ghosts, pounding and clawing at the ice above them.
Screaming to live. Begging to be free.
30
Rose held on tight as the wagon rumbled down the road at top speed. Bryn was driving and let out a whoop when anyone got in their way on the street. He was not slowing down, no matter who or what was in his way, a fact that was quickly proved out by all the cussing and swearing going on around them.
“You want to put this on, Miss Small.” Bryn handed her a leather harness.
“What for?”
“For our escape,” he shouted.
She hesitated, then wrapped the harness around her ribs and latched it in place with several snaps. It fit tight as a corset, with just enough room for breathing.
While Bryn was busy trying to keep at least two of the wheels on solid ground, Alun and Cadoc crawled down the side of the wagon, facing the back of it, each carrying a gun.
“What are you doing?” Rose yelled from the bench beside Bryn.
“Taking care of this like we should have when we first rolled into town,” Alun yelled. “Ready, brother Cadoc?”
“Days ago,” he yelled back.
They already had their guns drawn, but instead of shooting, they both tucked a finger into their pockets and threw something at the riders closing in behind them.
“One!” Alun yelled.
It wasn’t dynamite, but whatever they lobbed on the street kicked up enough light that Rose went half blind, even in the full light of day.
She’d seen the Madders use those light tricks before. They’d told her it was glim mixed with a few other things, in small, corked bottles. When the bottles were shook up good and hard, say like when they hit cobblestone and shattered, the mixture of glim turned into a light that would blind the sun.
As if that weren’t enough, they started shooting at their pursuers.
“Two!” Cadoc yelled back.
“And…three!” they both said.
Bryn let go of the reins. “Hold on to your hat!” he said.
Rose grabbed hold of the brim of her hat just as Alun, Cadoc, and Bryn all fired their guns straight up in the air.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. Before Bryn could explain, she’d figured it out.
He wasn’t shooting bullets into the empty sky; he was shooting a grappling hook, straight up at the cabled airship above them. A cabled airship that was zipping faster than a gallop over the tops of the buildings, the cable buzzing down the street rail line, and hooking hard down a side street.
This was madness.
She took a breath and held it.
Bryn slipped one arm around her through the harness loops across her back. His other arm was buckled at wrist, arm, and shoulder and attached to the leather strap around his ribs and to the grappling-hook rope.
Three hooks hit their targets with the distant sound of knuckles rapping hollow logs.
She was yanked up out of the wagon so fast and hard she lost her breath completely.
The Madders did not whoop and holler as they usually did during death-defying stunts such as these. Bryn was, however, grinning like a cat in a bird’s nest, and so were Alun and Cadoc, who dangled from their own grappling ropes not far from them.
Rose was pressed against Bryn’s side, locked there. She squinted her eyes against the icy wind to see where the airship was dragging them.
They were dashed away from the wagon and the chase below at an alarming speed. And since they had exited so quickly, the horses kept running a good block or so farther into town before slowing down.
Blinded, and expecting gunfire, the lawmen had followed a little more cautiously, but had not seen them fly free from the wagon. And she knew the weight of four people wouldn’t do much to make the airship fly any differently. Not with the load of cargo roped below its envelope, and the cable doing part of the work to push the airship to its intended drop point.
The airship sped nicely above even the tallest of the city’s buildings, ensuring it wouldn’t get buffeted by a stray wind into a chimney or spire.
But the Madders’ ropes were so long, they dangled between buildings, about five stories up from the ground. No one looked up, except a dog or two that barked. Everyone in the city was too busy rushing, and too used to simply stepping aside for the cable as it passed to notice anything amiss.
“How do we get down?” Rose asked.
“You might not want to know, Miss Small.”
“I
most certainly—”
“Now!” Alun yelled.
Bryn glanced up and shifted his grip on the gun.
Shifting his grip actually caused a cutting device to snap the rope.
Rose grabbed Bryn’s arm tighter as they fell.
A flat rooftop was coming up fast. Too fast. She didn’t know if they’d hit it, or if the force of breaking the rope while they were being towed by the airship cable would mean they had overshot the roof completely and would fall to their deaths in the street.
“Out!” Bryn yelled as he pushed her away just a bit.
Rose readied herself for the landing. Just like falling out of a tree. Just like falling off a fence. Just like falling off a cut rope from the bottom of a cable airship.
She hit the roof on feet, then knees, lost all contact and rolled, caught by Bryn’s larger mass and momentum until she lost track of which side of her was up and which was down.
Pain shot through her arm, and she screamed.
Then the world stopped.
And she was still on it.
The airship fans faded away off to her left. She opened her eyes.
She was lying flat on her back, scuffed, bleeding, and sore, her stupid skirts untucked from her belt again.
A shadow moved next to her: Bryn, pushing up on hands and knees and shaking his head to try and clear it. Somehow he had unhooked his arm from the harness that bound them together in enough time that they fell separately and landed, mostly, whole.
“Miss Small?” Bryn asked in a dusty voice. He coughed, tried again, “Rose, dear?”
Dear? In all the time she’d known the Madders, she’d never heard one of them address her with such familiarity.
“Is she all right?” Alun asked from farther off. “Is she breathing?” He was concerned. Truly concerned.
On the one hand, it warmed her heart to hear the Madders’ worry for her. On the other hand she had knocked her noggin pretty hard. She could just be imagining their concern.
“I’m fit as a fine,” she slurred. That wasn’t right, was it? Fine as wine? Fiddle fine? “Whatever is fine, I’m that,” she said.
She blinked several times to get the focus back into her eyes. Sky up there, heavy with unspilled snow. Then a round, bearded face with a round nose and round eyes that were clearly narrowed in pain.
Alun Madder bent down over her.
“Rose, are you all in one piece?” he asked.
“I am. I think.” She moved to sit and yelped again.
“What is it?” Alun asked.
“Her arm,” Cadoc said from far enough away she didn’t know how he had guessed at her injury.
“Can you bind it, brother Cadoc?” Alun asked.
“No,” Rose said. “It’s…”
But then Cadoc was there, helping her sit. And then Cadoc gently took her arm in his big, wide calloused hands, as if lifting a bird’s broken wing.
She whimpered, but he was as careful as could be, assessing the break. He withdrew two smooth wooden dowels from inside his coat, steadied her arm with both sticks, wrapped a length of cloth around it all, then used a wider, soft cloth that smelled of lemon balm to sling her arm against her chest.
“Now, you will not want to move your arm, Rose Small,” he said kindly. “Well, you may want to move it but you should not. There is healing that must be done, bones that must latch and clasp and mend. It has been a fine arm for you. It will be a fine arm again. If you let it rest. If you let it heal.”
“Thank you,” she said, still feeling a little woozy.
“Always happy to help one of our own.”
He was standing and walking away before she could really get her thoughts in order about that statement. She was one of their own? How?
“How much farther?” Alun asked.
Rose glanced over at Alun and Bryn, who were standing at the edge of the rooftop.
“Just there.” Bryn adjusted the monocle over his eye, then pointed. “Far as we’ll go.”
“It will have to be good enough, then,” Alun said. “Do you have your breath, Miss Small?”
“I can walk.” She proved it by strolling over to them.
“I hope you’ll consider a jog or two,” he said as he pointed to the iron ladder that clung to the edge of the building, “once we hit the ground.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rose said.
Bryn nodded, and started down the ladder.
“You next, Miss Small,” Alun said.
Rose walked to the edge, tucked her skirt back into her belt so the ruffles wouldn’t be in her way, then crouched and eased her foot down to the first rung.
It took more effort with one bad arm, but Rose knew how to climb a ladder and did so swiftly.
Once her boots were on solid ground, she took several deep breaths to steady her heartbeat. She had never minded flying. Falling, she didn’t enjoy.
“Come, now, Miss Small,” Alun called as he started down a dark alleyway at a slow lope. “We’re almost there.”
“Where?” she asked as she tried a few faster steps and mercifully found that her arm could bear the jostling.
“Edge of town. Beyond that if you’re willing.”
“Willing? To find the children?” she asked.
“Yes, that. Which we can do if you make us a promise.”
The alleyway opened up onto the unpaved road that cut across the north end of town.
“Brother Bryn?” Alun asked.
Bryn flipped the spread of lenses up and away from the monocle, then snicked them into place, one by one.
“Promise?” Rose asked. “Why do you need a promise from me? You’ve already promised Father Kyne you’ll find the children, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes, that promise remains exactly as he stated it. We are not to leave the city until we find the lost children. It’s a problem.”
“A puzzle,” Cadoc said distractedly.
“A predicament,” Bryn added.
“And we Madders have discovered, over time, that even the most devious problems are quickly solved by a simple promise,” Alun said.
“Right,” Rose said. “Just as this Small knows that no promise is simple when it’s made with a Madder.”
Bryn laughed and Cadoc chuckled.
Alun gave her a wide smile and a wink. “You are a clever girl, Rose Small.”
“It’s there,” Bryn said. “A hollow, the Strange pocket, on the other side of those trees.”
“Can you tell if there are children within it?”
“No.”
“It will be our risk then. Do you see that stand of trees, Rose Small?” Alun asked.
“Of course.”
“On the other side is our best guess of where the lost children of this city might be held.”
“All right,” she said. “Why aren’t we going there right now?”
“Because this,” he pointed at the side of the road beneath his feet, “is where the city ends.”
Rose stared at the road, then looked back to Alun. “I don’t understand.”
“We are bound to not leave the city until we find the lost children.”
“You are locked here? By a promise?”
“It is an old promise,” Alun said.
“Made of blood,” Bryn added.
“Sealed in faith,” Cadoc said.
“Unbreakable,” Alun finished. “So we’ll need another promise, from you, Rose Small.”
“Will it help us find the children so we can all leave this place?”
“Yes.”
“Will it do any harm to the people I care for?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“Your word,” Cadoc began.
“Your blood,” Bryn added.
“Your body,” Alun finished.
31
Cedar shifted his grip on the ax, set his feet, and swung at the icy river.
The ghost children cried and screamed, reaching for the ice, reaching for the ax blade a
s if it alone could pull them free.
He swung the ax again.
Again.
The river cracked. The children slapped and pounded at the ice.
And then the ice broke free.
Wil dove into the water, narrowly missing the blade of the ax as he did so.
Cedar swore, then swung the ax one last time to bury it in the ice. Diving into the river was easy. Getting out was going to be much more difficult. The ax would serve as something solid to grip so they could pull themselves up.
Cedar bent and reached down for the child who floated just beneath the surface, eyes wide and blank, staring at the sky. But as soon as Cedar’s hand closed around the boy’s arm, the boy was gone, as if he were made of nothing but water and light.
They weren’t real. They might sound like the children, and they might look like the children, but they were ghosts, spirits. Perhaps nothing more than disembodied souls.
Cedar took no time to ponder the situation further. He held his breath and dove into the river after Wil.
Blackness, complete except for the ghostly light of the sobbing children.
Silence, unbroken except for the sound of grief.
Even with Mae’s spell around him, he could feel the pressure of cold around him, as if he pressed bare skin against a window while winter raged on the other side.
He kicked toward the river’s bottom, working against the current, knowing he’d have to find the hole he’d chipped in the ice if he wanted to breathe again.
The Holder was here; he knew it was. He could hear the unsprung sour melody of it coiling through the water from all directions. Calling him on.
There was no light to show him where the Holder lay. There was only the sound of it, the feel of it. He shifted left and kicked harder, downward.
He didn’t know where Wil was in the water, but Wil’s instincts were as good as or better than Cedar’s here in the dark and cold. Cedar stretched his fingers forward, feeling grassy dirt and stones, odd and slick, their rough, cutting surfaces dragging at his palms as he scoured the river.
The Holder was here. It had to be here.
But he didn’t know the shape of it, didn’t know exactly the size of it. It could be as small as a pea.
He was blindly grasping for something he’d never had a clear look at, underwater, in the darkness, in the dead of winter.
