He considered. “Dangerous. What you have, and your old man—the knack for elemental enchantment, messing with fire and iron—that ain’t usual, and we heretic types know not to cross what’s unusual. No future in it.”
I looked at my hands. Even here in the parlor, where there was no clockwork to speak of beyond the door hinges and the shutters, I could feel the Weird under my fingers, resonating with the iron that ran in my blood. For the first time my hands were terribly alien to me, the hands of a stranger who commanded eldritch, unearthly forces.
“I suppose I better go put things right with Cal before he takes a runner,” I muttered. The thought that I had to talk my best friend out of betraying us galled me.
“I’ll go out for a smoke,” Dean said. “I’ll be within hollering distance if he gets sassy.”
He kissed me on the top of my head before he went out and I tried not to feel guilty at the magnetic pull as my Weird responded to his touch.
“Cal?” I went from parlor to billiard room to kitchen, finding not hide nor hair. “Cal, where are you?” If he’d already gone, I’d have to go after him, and I didn’t relish that scene.
“He went out for a walk,” Bethina said. She had her sleeves rolled up and was working a white lump of bread dough on a butcher board. “Said he needed air. Looked fit to pop.”
“That’s my fault,” I sighed. Rational or not, I’d upset Cal, and that, I did feel terrible about.
Bethina stopped kneading and brushed her hands. She left ghostly prints down her apron front. “Can I ask you something, miss? And expect honesty in return?”
“As honest as I can be,” I said, wondering what fresh hell I was in for. I went to the icebox and opened it, picking out nothing. My stomach was far too troubled for hunger, and there was nothing edible inside anyway.
“Do you fancy Cal?”
I lost my grip on the chrome handle in my surprise, and the icebox slammed shut. “Do I …” It was a fair question. Cal was noble, true and innocent. Dean wasn’t any of those things. But Cal saw the worst in me, and I couldn’t go back to what he thought I should be. Not now that I had opened the way to a world I’d thought was only my mother’s stories with the Weird and with the Folk.
“Miss?” Bethina stood very still, as if she were waiting for a slap. “I’d like an answer. Please.”
“No. Not that way,” I said. “Not in the way that he wants.”
“He’s your friend, though, miss,” Bethina insisted. “He’s loyal to you, and he thinks you’re pretty. He said.”
I threw up my hands. I’d figured Cal might have a crush, but I’d been careful not to give him hope. “It doesn’t work that way in real life, Bethina. I know what he wants and I don’t want the same. I’m sorry.”
Bethina’s face fell. “Well, I—I do care for Cal. In the way he wants. He’s just like Sir Percival, in the King Arthur tales.”
“And I thought I read too many books,” I murmured. I’d never thought like Bethina and normal girls did. Boys didn’t look at me and I had no time for them. Dean was the first one to talk to me like I wasn’t beneath him or just stupid. Even Cal talked down to me at times. He’d been raised to, in a respectable household with respectable people. Dean was the only boy I’d met who was like me.
Bethina folded, like someone had cut her strings. “You don’t think someone like me is worth him.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think anything of the sort.” Bethina would be good for Cal. She was steady and sweet and practical and she’d keep him with his feet on the ground. “Just tell him,” I said to Bethina. “We don’t get much time as it is, and we waste too much of it wondering.”
“You’re smart, miss,” Bethina said. “So much it’s spooky.”
“I frighten even myself,” I assured her, and went out the kitchen door to find Cal.
Cal wasn’t hard to track—he’d gone directly to the cemetery and was sitting on the gate, letting it swing back and forth while he perched on the top bar, his heels hooked in the scrollwork.
“Aren’t you worried more ghouls might come?” I said when I was a few feet away—just speaking distance. I’d never felt awkward in front of Cal before, and it sat as a stone in my throat.
“They wouldn’t want me,” Cal grumbled. “I’m not a big side of beef like your friend in there. I’m only scraps.”
I had been prepared to be contrite, but my annoyance came back at his complaining tone. “Listen to yourself, Cal!” I snapped. “I’m sorry that you thought we were something we’re not. I’m sorry. You’re my friend and I never wanted to hurt you.”
“Maybe not,” Cal said. “But you did it.” The gate swung under his weight, imitating the voices of the circling crows.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sat on a pile of leaves against the fence and tucked my skirt under my knees. We both looked at the pond and the slowly dying season. I didn’t want to meet Cal’s eyes in that moment and see his answer.
He propped his chin in his hands. “You’re not who I thought you were, Aoife. I got a lot of guff for being friendly with a girl who carries the necrovirus. And when Conrad went mad in front of everyone—”
“I’m not responsible for Conrad’s madness,” I said. It stung that he’d use that against me after all. “But neither was he. I won’t abandon my brother, Cal. Blood is blood and friendship is friendship. It doesn’t have to end just because we’ve changed.”
“You’re not the Aoife Grayson I met on the first day of classes,” Cal said. “She asked to borrow my pen. She helped me pass calculus. She was a good girl, a proper girl. You’re not her.”
A long moment passed while we watched leaves fall and float on the glassy surface of the pond beyond the cemetery walls.
“No,” I agreed. “I’m not.” I looked at Cal again. “I’m scared to tell you how much I’m not, Cal. I want to, but I’m scared of what you’ll do.”
“Scared?” He swiped his hands through his hair. “Aoife, you have nothing to be scared of from me. That Dean, he’s the problem. He’ll lead you astray and you’ll never find your way back.”
“Cal,” I said quietly, knowing there was only one thing I could say to stem his anger. “I don’t like what’s gone between us, and if I tell you something to make things right, you have to promise me that you’ll stop ripping on Dean and really listen.”
“Fine,” he said after a long time. “But don’t expect me to like it.”
He was hurt, that much was evident, and I tried not to let his hard tone and hard eyes sting too much. “My father used enchantments,” I said. “Not fakery and sleight of hand. Real power that science can’t explain. He communicated with creatures from beyond this world. I can do the same thing.”
“That’s the necrovirus talking for you,” Cal said, too quickly. The words put a blade in me, low down, in the stomach, and started a fury that, after my encounters with Tremaine, was becoming familiar.
“Dammit. I’m not crazy, Cal, and I’ll prove it to you.” I held out my hand. “You have anything mechanical on you?”
He shrugged. “Just my portable aether tube and my multitool.”
“The tube,” I said. “Give it to me.”
“Aoife, don’t embarrass yourself,” he said. “The virus has made you see things. Enchantment isn’t possible. All of the great minds have proved that. The Proctors tell us—”
“You don’t really believe I’m only infected,” I cut him off, folding my arms. “Or you wouldn’t still be here. I think you want to believe, Cal.” Just like Nerissa wanted to believe there was something beyond the dreary horror of the madhouse. Just like I wanted to believe our family wasn’t doomed and like all of the so-called heretics the Proctors chased wanted to believe in something beyond cold, hard rational thought, prison bars and raven spies.
I took the tube, the bits of copper and glass and aether that I’d taken for granted a week ago, with its enamel dial and thin tuning wires running along the inside of the glass, where the
cloudy aether swirled, breathing like a sleeping animal.
I could feel the machine slither under my skin. The copper and the dial and the wire binding everything together. The aether prickled my Weird, like static electricity when I touched metal in the cold of winter.
My eyes fluttered closed. I saw all the components in my mind, the switch that sparked the aether to life with a static charge, the wires that reached out into the fathomless distances of the fabric of the universe to receive the signal beamed from one tube to another.
I knew the pressure now, the fullness. The machine coming into my mind, my Weird sliding out to the machine.
The tube came to life in my hands, and a sportscaster broke the afternoon quiet. “It’s the windup … the pitch … strike one for Susce, in a surprising performance.”
“Maybe this is the year for the Sox,” I said. “The curse can’t last forever.”
Cal stared at the tube, at me. “How’d you do that?”
“I told you, Cal,” I said. I pushed at the tuner, the small black slide on the side of the device. The station changed, big band music, the NBC comedy hour, back to baseball. “Take it,” I said, handing it to him. “See that I’m not just doing one of Conrad’s tricks.”
He accepted the tube with stiff fingers, and when it was in his grasp I pushed the static away from my mind, sending it back into the switch.
The tube shut off. Cal started. “Aoife. This is …”
“Unbelievable?” I offered. “Yeah. But there it is.”
“So back there, in the tunnel?” He dropped the tube into the leaves like it was a vial full of necrotic blood.
“Me,” I said quietly.
“The airship crash?”
“Cal, don’t be stupid. The Proctors caused that by blowing big holes in the Belle.” I picked up one of the leaves, a perfect skeleton, and stared at the pond through it.
Cal moved from the gate, standing between me and the water, twitching like I’d just covered him in ants. “This is … this is bad, Aoife.”
I crushed the leaf between my palms. “It’s me, Cal. You wanted to know.”
The gate creaked, and long shadows crept from beneath the trees and the headstones before Cal spoke again. “You’re my only friend, you know. Those guys back at the School aren’t my friends. I can’t tell them anything the way I do you. After Conrad … you’re it.”
“I still want to be it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have got on at the Academy without you, Cal. Without someone to talk to, a friend …” I stood up and brushed myself off. “I know you’re angry, but I’m afraid that’s all I can offer. You can stay and we can try it, or you can go home and turn me in.”
“Jeez, Aoife,” Cal sighed. “I’d never turn you in. Not to the Proctors.”
For all of his moods, Cal was honest to a fault. He wouldn’t turn me in. I reached for his hand, but he tugged it away. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it, even though my hand was hanging in midair like a fool’s. My face went warm again, Tremaine’s bruises turning rosy.
Cal shrugged. “It’s nothing. But I have something to say, if we’re still friends. That Dean … he’s bad news, Aoife. Conrad would slap sense into you if he saw what I saw.”
“I’m going inside,” I said, holding up a hand to end the diatribe I sensed in my future. “It’s cold and I have a lot of practice to do.”
Cal climbed back onto the gate as I walked away. The hinges spoke in the gathering dark, a dirge for something that we’d both lost.
The Cursebreaker
DEAN WAS STANDING in the shadow of the kitchen door when I returned, squinting into the sunset as he blew smoke into bird shapes that flew up and away around his head.
“Everything square?” he asked, flicking his ember into the damp grass.
“I don’t know about square,” I said, the look Cal had given me in the parlor still chafing. “But he’s not running to the Proctors.”
Dean nodded once. “Good.”
I reached forward and pushed the locks of hair from his eyes, smoothing them back into place. Dean leaned into the touch like a cat. “You’ve got soft hands, princess. Soft clever hands.”
“You’d get a lot further if you complimented my brains,” I teased. Dean straightened up from the wall and followed me inside.
“Oh, I plan to. I’m just taking my time so I can compliment everything the way it deserves.” Dean’s grin grew wider at my flush.
I’d never had that much male attention before, aside from stares and whispers, and I shied away from Dean’s searching gaze. “I need to not think about Cal for a while,” I told him.
“You and me both, princess.” Dean trailed me into the library. I knew where I needed to go before I put my hand on the switch, knew the only thing that could truly erase a rotten scene with someone I cared for.
“What do you say we take a look at that stuff we found in the workshop?” I asked.
A portable aether lantern threw more light on the workshop, and I set it on the dusty worktable while I perused the shelves.
Dean put on the goggles, tested them out by staring at the dead specimens under the glass. “This is boss. You know you can see through cloth with these lenses?”
I flipped a hand at him as he turned his gaze on me and waggled his eyebrows. “Stop teasing. You cannot.”
Dean pointed at the gun-shaped thing I’d examined before Tremaine had taken us into the Thorn Land. “Think it’s a disintegrator ray? Heard the Crimson Guard have them. Maybe we can aim it at that pale bastard Tremaine and solve all of our problems.”
I picked it up, feeling the heft of brass and mahogany in the stock. I looked down the silver sight at the end, behind the aether bulb on the tip. “I think this is an invigorator,” I said to Dean. “I’ve seen them in the Engine, when we’d study there.” This one was homemade, nothing like the square, blunt steel tools that the Engine workers used. Still, I’d never had the chance to use one and I ran my hands over it slowly, memorizing the machine.
“Yeah?” Dean said. “What’s it invigorate?”
“It’s for cutting steel and brass and things,” I said. “It can freeze or melt—the barrel vibrates the aether at such a frequency that it can go through all sorts of things.” I’d always wanted to use one, but girls weren’t allowed.
“Neat,” Dean approved. With the goggles, he looked back toward the dim library. “These things can even see in the dark.”
I set the invigorator gently back on the shelf. No use in cutting a me-sized hole in the side of Graystone if my finger slipped. “Too bad I can’t see Tremaine and his cursed hexenring sneaking up on me with them,” I muttered. I examined the diving helmet—it was attached to a bulbous bladder that leaked air when I squeezed it. The scrubbers attached at the front would recirculate the air for as long as the bladder fed it fresh oxygen. A dial on the side of the bladder went from zero to one hour. How I wished for time to explore the workshop at my leisure, but I knew I had none. It was a vast disappointment—exploring the workshop was my idea of a perfect afternoon. Machines made sense when nothing else did.
“It’s a real shame,” Dean said, “that you ever had to meet him. This right here”—he brandished the goggles—“this is magic. Machines, what you can do with them. That’s the truth of it.”
“Tremaine doesn’t feel the same as you,” I said, feeling the weight of the enchanted blue glass he’d given me in my pocket. I hadn’t wanted to leave it anywhere Bethina might snoop. “He thinks I’m so magic I can break a curse all the Folk can’t.”
In the old times, the shining times, Tremaine’s remembered voice whispered in my ear, we would gather at the Winnowing Stone and harness its great bounty to awaken the sleepers from their curse.
“But no magic born of Thorn can break the enchantment,” I whispered in answer.
Dean frowned at me. “You talking to me, princess?”
“No, I …” I pointed at the goggles in his hand. “What you just said.”
“I
t’s the plain truth, kid. Forget all of the Folk’s hand waving. You’ve got a gift with your Weird, for machines.” Dean shoved the goggles back onto his forehead. I could see his eyes once again.
“Tremaine said that no magic in the Thorn Land could break the curse,” I said. Which made me wonder what sort of thing had set it in the first place. I decided it was better not to think about. “They use stones and enchantments, but they don’t have this.” I set the helmet on the worktable with a crash. “They don’t live in the Iron Land. They don’t have our machines. Tremaine said my Weird could break the curse. My Weird.”
“Aoife,” Dean started, “what are you—”
“Machines,” I said as my idea took form, gained speed. Machines were my only true affinity, for as long as I could remember. The thing the Folk didn’t have, the thing only the Iron Land, my world, did. “Tremaine said nothing in Thorn could break the curse. What does Thorn not have?”
“Sense of humor?” Dean said.
“Engines,” I whispered. “It doesn’t have a power like the Engines.”
Of course, I could be wrong. Machines could have nothing to do with breaking the curse. But it was all I had, all I’d ever had. Just my mind and clever hands and an instinct for what made things work.
If I could repair a chronometer, I might be able to break a curse the same way.
“Aoife, I don’t like this,” Dean said. “What if it doesn’t work?”
I pulled the brass bell from my pocket and held it in my palm for a moment, feeling my pulse beat against it. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t have any more mundane concerns like staying alive. That was certain. “Don’t worry,” I lied to Dean. “I know what I’m doing.”
When the world settled around me again, Tremaine was standing before me. We were in the same spot near the lily field, in the same night I’d left, or a different one. I was learning time held little meaning in the Thorn Land.
I didn’t wait for Tremaine’s invitation this time, merely grabbed hold of his cool, papery hand and stepped through the hexenring.
The Iron Thorn Page 30
