In the entry, I found my schoolbag where Cal had flung it when we made our frantic entry into Graystone. I dug through my possessions—now largely mildewed and mud-spattered—and found my toolkit. Straightening my spine, I went to the library again and, just as before, the double doors slid open at my approach. Ice danced up my skin, into my blood like electricity and aether.
Hearing a curse from the rear parlor, I backed away gratefully and retraced my steps down the portrait hall. I wasn’t ready to brave the library again just yet.
In the parlor, Cal was poking a desultory fire. I watched him for a moment, his long limbs bunched up like a new foal’s, cursing and red-faced as the twists of paper under the worm-eaten wood sputtered and refused to light.
“Thought you’d be halfway home by now,” I said at last. Cal leaped up.
“Aoife.” He eyed the full length of my body, for a good few seconds, eyes darkening. “You look … different. Those aren’t your clothes.”
“My uniform is a lost cause,” I said. “This was in the wardrobe.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Cal worried the poker. “I’ve heard it’s bad luck to wear other people’s clothes.”
I touched the comb in my hair. “What would your professors say, they heard you taking stock in superstition like that? Besides, I like these and that’s a stupid rumor.”
“It’s, well. The dress is very bright. Red, like a Crimson Guard flag.” Cal struck another match and cursed when the flame came too close to his fingers.
“I’ll be in the library,” I sighed. “And for future reference, girls might not be flattered to have you compare their attire to the symbol of a national enemy.”
“Aoife, I wanted to say I’m sorry …,” Cal rushed, and then sighed, composing his face and standing. “I’m sorry about what I said to you last night. I don’t believe that you’re naive.”
“But you do think I’m wrong about Conrad?” I should simply accept Cal’s apology and let things be right between us. The space where I’d kept Cal’s friendship was bruised and smarting this morning, after the shouting match we’d endured, but I wouldn’t abandon my brother either. Not even in words.
“I don’t want us to fight,” Cal said. “Can’t we just agree that we’ll go home tomorrow? He’s not here, Aoife.”
I drew myself up, the dress falling about my legs making me feel older, taller. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to find where he’s gone.”
“Aoife, be reasonable …,” Cal started, but I walked away from his words. Cal and I had been friends ever since we’d both been without a partner for our first tour of the School of Engines, but lately we sat at odds over everything, our conversations going in unfamiliar directions that twisted them into something angry with jagged edges.
Losing my only friend over my family sat poorly, like something rotten and too large in my gut. If I had no Cal, then right now I’d have no one.
To distract myself from my thoughts, which were swirling off in a black direction indeed, I went back to the library, brushing past the doors like I had nothing to worry over.
Conrad had told me to fix the clock, and I would use machines and math to soothe my troubles.
The clock waited at the far end of the long high room, pendulum twitching at random like a rat’s tail. I knelt before it and opened the case, staring into the wicked, sharpened gears.
“I’ll fix you,” I said. “If you’ll let me.”
For a moment, nothing happened and then the gears turned faster, pendulum lashing like the shoggoth’s tentacles.
“I’m not going to break anything,” I promised the clock. “Please. I have to fix you.” Was this the first sign of madness? Talking to inanimate machines? Perhaps I was only mad if I got a reply.
I reached slowly toward the clock’s case, even though sticking my hand inside the whirl of gears with the way they spun would result in me losing a crop of fingers. “Conrad told me,” I whispered. “I have to fix it. I have to fix you.”
My fingertips tingled, and my head echoed as the clock began to chime; I felt as if a pipe fire had sparked to life in my chest. My entire body ran fever-hot, and dampness broke out under the silk of my dress. The dancing snare of static spread up my arm, all through me, and the tolling of the clock became a single reverberation, splitting my skull in half.
I shrieked. “Stop!”
Quickly as it had ramped up at my appearance, every gear within the clockwork ground to a halt, fine metal shavings raining to the bottom of the case as gears fouled themselves against one another’s filed teeth.
I waited for a moment, the idea that the clock had stopped on my command ludicrous even to my mind, but the mechanism was still. As if it were waiting.
I reached into the case, mindful of my cut thumb and bruised knuckles. Every sharp edge of the clock’s innards was hungry, and I exhaled shakily as I felt edges and ridges catch on my skin. If the clock started again it would take my fingers off, but Conrad had told me to fix it, and I didn’t see another way to do it.
Trying to recall what I knew about clockwork from our basic class in gearworking the previous year, I loosened and reset each gear that had slipped out of sync, and tugged on the clock’s weight to start it ticking again. It groaned in protest and still ticked out of time.
Dean stopped in the double doorway, shrugging into his leather jacket. “I’m going out for a smoke, miss. You want to tag along, or …” He came closer, crouching to unzip my toolkit and examine it. “Looks like you’re busy.”
“The ticking,” I lied. “It keeps me awake at night.”
“I dunno, princess,” Dean said as I tugged at a stuck gear. “Can you really fix this old thing?”
“The timing is fouled,” I said, finding a useless lump where the master gears should be. “It looks like I need to strip and recalibrate the entire assembly to get it working properly.”
Dean grinned. “Need any help?”
I laid out the first gear and its bolt on the carpet, and noted its position in the clock case. “What happened to your smoke?”
Dean handed me a wrench as I fumbled for it, body half in the clock case. “Smoke’ll keep.”
The job of recalibrating a large and complex assembly like the one in the library would be a thing even for a skilled clockmaker, and Dean and I were both cursing and grease-covered by the time we’d emptied the case of gears, bolts and rods. Gutless and silent, the clock appeared as a skeleton rather than a beast, and I felt a flush of shame that I’d ever been afraid of it.
Cleaning and reassembling the clock took a bit less time than getting it apart, though only a bit, and Dean and I were tired enough to work in silence. It was companionable in its own way, he carefully cleaning the gears and handing them to me, me placing them back into the clock. The clock itself was far more complex than any I’d encountered, even the scientific chronometer in the School of Engines that had six faces and kept times for the whole of the world at once. This had any number of gear parings that attached to rods planted far back in the wall, which were attached to other assemblies that I couldn’t see. This had to be why doors opened by themselves and why I could hear the clock ticking even on the other side of the house.
“You and your brother,” Dean said at length, breaking the silence. “Thick as thieves, I take it.”
“We took care of each other,” I allowed. “He’s … he was my only family.” Lying on my side and tilting my head backward into the case to reach the last gear, I put it in place and twisted the bolt to hold it steady, before gently pressing it into place with its companions. “There,” I said. “Let’s wind it and see what we’ve got.”
“Pretty boss scar you got there.” I jumped when Dean’s fingers brushed my neck. “Didn’t see it till now. You’re always looking at your feet.”
I jerked away from Dean’s touch and stood to open the glass door of the clock face. “We have to wind it,” I repeated, resolute that I wasn’t going to blush, cry or show any reaction whatsoever to De
an seeing my scar. It wasn’t any of his concern. It wasn’t any of my concern what he thought of it.
“So you’re not going to spill how it got there?” Dean pulled a mock pout. “Hardly seems fair. You know everything about me.”
“I find that hard to believe, Dean.” I wound the clock key. It was stiff but turned smoothly, with none of the hitches in the gears that I’d first encountered.
“You know plenty,” Dean said. “You know that my name’s Dean Harrison, that I’m a heretic but a hell of a charming guy, I smoke Luckies and I don’t much care for onion rings.”
I laughed, hoping Dean had let the scar go at mild curiosity. “That last part, I didn’t know.” The key wound tight, and I stepped back, shutting the glass over the sinister paintings on the clock face.
“Now you,” Dean coaxed. “Come on. What’s your favorite lantern flick? Favorite record? Preferred flavor for a milk shake?”
I watched the gears of the clock whirr to life. “You don’t get my secrets that easily, remember?”
Dean shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Secrets are my stock-in-trade.”
I gave Dean a small smile, a genuine one. I hadn’t felt much like smiling since I’d gotten Conrad’s letter, but Dean made it a little easier. “Maybe you should try a bit harder.”
The clock hands flipped over on ten o’clock, and the chime drowned out any secret I might have been tempted to slip into Dean’s grasp.
“That’s something,” Dean said when the sonorous tolling had ended. At least it didn’t make my head spin anymore. “I know my way around a jitney engine, but this …” He smiled. “You’re a bright penny, kid.”
I wiped the grease from my hands with my toolkit’s supply of rags, watching in satisfaction as the clock spun on with nary a hitch. “You can call me Aoife, you know.” Not that I minded very much being called princess.
Before Dean replied, a great rumbling like a waking beast began under our feet. Dean’s eyes snapped wide. “What on scorched earth is that?”
The books on the shelves vibrated, as if they were itching to shed their covers and fly away. I grabbed hold of a shelf to keep my footing, and Dean reached for me as well. “I don’t know,” I shouted over the rumbling. From far off, I heard crockery falling and Bethina give a scream. What had I done now?
“Aoife?” Cal stumbled into the library on the bucking floorboards. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” I didn’t, truly, and my panic rose along with the rumbling from under the floor, as if we were standing in the bowels of the Lovecraft Engine, chambers turning at full capacity and pressure building without a relief valve.
Then, abruptly as it had come upon us, the rumbling ceased and a section of wall above my father’s writing desk rolled back, soundless as the servant’s passage to the kitchen. But this was smaller and older, clearly built into the house at conception. It hid a brass panel, half as tall as I was and twice as wide. Dials and switches, valves and an antique static board using glass breakers filled the tiny recess in the library wall.
I approached it, wondering at the artfulness of the construction even as I felt trepidation build. Hidden rooms and hidden panels that controlled hidden things never boded well.
Dean let out a breath, his fists uncurling. “That’s a new one. What d’you suppose it’s for?”
“I have no idea,” I said. The panel reminded me of the controls on the Berkshire Belle, except these were older, more archaic, and there were a lot more switches and keys than a simple airship flight board.
“Don’t touch it!” Cal cried when I took a step toward it. I cast a glare back at him.
“Cal, it’s brass and wood. It’s not going to grow teeth.” I was cautious, but not scared. Machines were what I was good at.
I approached the hidden panel with its rows of switches labeled with painfully neat, handwritten placards: Library, Front Hall and Cellar Traps among at least a dozen others, all in an orderly, masculine hand on yellowed vellum squares.
Conrad had told me to fix the clock and in doing so I’d revealed Graystone’s secret heart. Conrad had vanished before he could perform whatever task he needed this panel for himself. But he’d had the forethought to send me the letter, to hide the note. He knew I’d come if he asked.
What I knew ever since that awful day in my dormitory room a year ago came true when I realized that Conrad had been planning for me to come here, to carry on where he couldn’t.
My brother wasn’t mad.
And if he wasn’t mad, then he was in a world of trouble.
The Iron Bones
DEAN JOINED ME at the panel, examining the controls. “Slick setup. Dare you to press one of those switches.” He reached for the closest lever, marked Kitchen.
“Don’t,” I said. For some reason I couldn’t define, I wanted to be first. It was my father’s house, my father’s device, and I wanted to be the one to discover how it worked.
Bethina peered around the library door. “Miss, what was that awful racket? Are we safe?”
“For the time being,” I murmured, touching each dial. Every facet of Graystone somehow connected to these antique controls.
“Awful shaking and shivering,” Bethina continued. “Like the Great Old Ones returned from the stars. My mum was raised in a Star Convent, and she told me—”
“That’s all mumbo jumbo,” Cal told her. “This is engineering.”
“Flash work, too,” Dean said. “I don’t think Bethina’s that far off, cowboy. This thing Miss Aoife woke up ain’t just cold metal and gears. Houses have blood and gristle and bone, just like a person. Houses have souls.”
Cal jerked a thumb at me, at Dean. “Aoife, are you going to let him just babble heresy all day long?”
I rather liked Dean’s heresy. Graystone was like a living thing, old and dessicated, but alive still.
“Give it up,” I told Cal. “Let’s see if we can piece these controls together.”
At the top of the row of knobs, there was a dial marked Front Hall. “For what it’s worth, Dean,” I continued, “I don’t think you’re just speaking heresy.” Because Graystone did talk. It had warned me away like a wounded animal; when I’d fixed the clock, it had come into the open and showed me its face. Graystone wasn’t like any house I’d ever stepped foot in, and I knew that it had more secrets to give up, secrets that would lead me to my brother.
I put my hand on the dial. “I’m just going to turn it on and see what happens. If anything harmful was in the workings, it would have gone off when I fixed the clock.” Giving what I hoped was a reassuring nod—because in reality, I had no idea what would happen—I ran my fingers over the row of knobs, then settled back on Front Hall. If something in Graystone’s bones was malicious, the front entry was far enough away that we’d probably be safe.
“So you said, miss. I’m having no business with that thing,” Bethina said, scuttling away. Cal backed off too. Dean stayed where he was, hands in his pockets. His pale storm-sky eyes were implacable as thunderheads.
The Front Hall dial was inlaid with tiny darts of onyx, pointing to the four stations of the compass, labeled in stamped brass with Open, Shut, Lock and Trap. Lock was engaged, and the dial was sticky when I tried to turn it. There was a squeak of rust as I put force behind the motion, and then the dial came free and flew all the way to the left, to Open.
A cool wind rushed over my cheek and blew back my hair, darting from the entry along with a flock of oak leaves. Cal hurried to the library door and peered into the front hall. “Door’s open,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be a shoggoth’s uncle.”
“Cal, please don’t talk about shoggoths,” I said. I read the rest of the dials. Master Bedchamber, Attic, Widow’s Walk, Crypts. Lastly, on its own at the bottom of the panel was a pure ivory dial with a large black spot of onyx in the center. Lockdown.
Lockdown sat bookended by two valve dials that connoted pressure of some kind. PSI, wrought in proper brass script under the glassed-in d
ials, most likely meant steam. It was, I thought, probably an elaborate setup for a simple water and boiler shutoff. Even the stately homes that made up Lovecraft Academy had two large valve wheels, deep underground in their basements where the boilers resided.
“I think it’s just a setup for the mains,” Cal said, voicing my thought. “And maybe a release for the doors. Kinda frilly for that sort of work. And why plunk it in the library where the Master Builder and everyone can see it?”
“It’s an old house,” I said. “I guess they built things differently in those days.” My disappointment at the ordinary nature of the hidden panel was vast, and I stroked the controls once more. It looked like it should be able to fly to the red planet and back, like the vessels the Crimson Guard were rumored to have.
“If it is only shutoffs,” I said, “why link it to the clock? Why hide it so you can only open it by turning the clock-hands to ten?”
“This place doesn’t make any sense,” Cal grumbled. “It’s all passages and shoddy layouts. It’d never pass muster with city architects.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I whispered. The panel vibrated under my fingers, and a little static from the circuits pricked me. Graystone was still talking to me.
I turned Front Hall to Shut. The door slammed with a whirr of gears. “Maybe these aren’t just shutoffs and door locks.” I turned the dial to Lock. The door locks snapped into place along with a pair of iron rods that extended on rotating arms to lock in an embrace, securing the doors.
I turned the dial to Trap. There was a shriek of little-used, rusted metal from outside and then a great clang, like someone had slammed a metal coffin lid into place over the whole of the house. The crows took flight outside the library windows with a chorus of caws, their black silk wings flickering in the pale sunlight.
“Eyes of the Old Ones,” Cal exclaimed, peering out the front library window. “Aoife, you have to see this.”
I joined him and saw that a pair of iron plates had slid into place over the front doors of the mansion, knitted together at the seam with a series of spikes like the jaws of a Venus flytrap that would imprison any intruder trying to break the locks.
The Iron Thorn Page 16
