The Iron Thorn (41 page)

“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.”

“It’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
.

“Look at you, so spirited.” Tremaine straightened his collar and sleeves. “I take that to mean you have good news for me.”

“I’ve found your cursebreaker,” I lied, but I knew by now I could do it convincingly enough. Tremaine nodded encouragement.

“No need to build to it. Spit out your plan, child.”

My hands were trembling so violently I thought that I might break my fingers, but I curled up my fists and looked Tremaine in his fathomless, soulless eyes. “Before that, I need something from you. Right this moment.”

Tremaine’s lips twitched in irritation. “Very well. Say it.”

I exhaled, my breath steaming in the chill air. All at once, I didn’t want to know. But I pressed on. “Tell me about my brother.”

Tremaine looked away from me, sighing. “All the secrets of the Folk at your fingertips and you’re still harping about that boy.”

“Either you hold up your end of the bargain, or I’m going to walk,” I said. “And your queen will sleep forever, until the world rots away around her.” I folded my arms. “My brother. Where is he?”

“I told you, I find this new attitude of yours distasteful,” Tremaine said. “But the Folk keep their bargains.” He folded his arms, bracers clanking dully like coffin lids. “Your brother is dead, Aoife.”

My heart stopped. “No …” The word slid out past the wire that strung itself around my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak except to blurt out, “That’s a lie.”

“He fell to the Proctors in Arkham Village,” Tremaine said, placing a hand on the back of my neck. “I sent him back, as I sent you, so that he might help me release my queen and the Summer Queen by consulting your father’s library. He was not as adept at evasion as you appear to be.”

“He can’t be.” I felt as if everything inside of me had frozen. Conrad. Dead. I thought of the last time I’d seen him.
I’d never imagined it would truly be the end. “He can’t …,” I tried again. “Bethina said shadows took him away.…”

“The chambermaid? The blithering girl who can’t see the end of her own nose, who fears the sight of us so much that she makes up stories about ghosts in moonlight? You trust her word above mine?”

“Tell me …” I shut my eyes, unable to stand the sight of Tremaine’s sharp diamond face for another moment. “Tell me how he died.”

“You don’t need to know that, child,” Tremaine sighed. “You don’t need more nightmares.”

“Tell me!”
My shout echoed off the glass coffins and the hills beyond, like a faraway bell.

“He was shot in the back running down a village street,” Tremaine said. “My strix owls couldn’t stay long. Arkham is bound in iron and we do not know where they took his body. A pauper’s funeral, I imagine, and then the crematory furnace to burn off any memory of their crime. Is that good enough for you, Aoife?”

The world slid sideways. “You’re lying.” He had to be lying. Conrad’s end couldn’t be so simple.

Conrad had to be alive.

“You know that I would not,” Tremaine said. “You know that’s what happened, child, because you know your brother. I wish he had survived, truly. He was an intelligent and respectful boy. Very much not like you.”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I didn’t want to believe that Conrad was gone, but there wasn’t a hard certainty, just soft, slithering doubt taking up residence in my heart.

“I’ve given you a task,” Tremaine said. “Now you give me your half.”

When I didn’t speak, he clapped his hands in my face. Once, sharp. Like the gunshot that had taken Conrad away from me.

“Aoife,” Tremaine growled. “Focus. What will break my curse?”

“I think …,” I started, and then couldn’t continue.

Tremaine’s lip curled, and he placed his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t think, child. Know. Thinking won’t help me.”

“The Engine,” I said numbly. “The Lovecraft Engine. Thorn doesn’t have Engines or anything like them, you said it yourself. I can use my Weird. Send the power that the Lovecraft Engine generates into Thorn. Use it to wake up your precious queens.” My will to defy Tremaine had run out. I felt as hollow as one of the Proctors’ ravens, just a mess of gears and metal on the inside. No feeling. No will.

Tremaine, for his part, patted my cheek. “Good child. I knew you’d be the one. Of course, I’ll be far more excited when you succeed.” He took my elbow and guided me back into the
hexenring
. “May you have fair weather and a following sea in your task, Aoife Grayson. You know what will happen if you fail me. Your brother may be gone, but Dean and Cal are still alive, I take it? They will still bleed if you force me to find them?”

I just shrugged. It didn’t matter any longer. Nothing did.

Conrad was dead.

“And there’s your mother,” Tremaine mused as the
hexenring
took me. “So alone, in that madhouse. So many other screams to cover hers up …”

I tried belatedly to reach for Tremaine again, to demand that he leave Nerissa and Dean and Cal alone, that I’d do
his work even though he’d tricked me, had known Conrad was dead. Had known from the moment he took me in the orchard.

Too slow, I touched nothing. A sob wrenched from my throat.

“Aoife.” Dean’s face blurred back into view, lines at his mouth and eyes. “Dammit, I hate it when you just blink out like that.” He examined me more closely and his jaw set. “You look awful. What’d he do to you?”

I tried to speak, but all that came out was a soft, broken sound. I fell against Dean and he wrapped his arms around me to save me from falling. My tears were silent, but they soaked my face and the fabric of Dean’s shirt. All I saw was white as I clung to Dean, and all I felt was a widening black pit where my insides used to be.

The Flight of the Crow

“M
Y BROTHER’S DEAD,”
I whispered after twenty heartbeats. “The Proctors shot him in the back.”

Once the words flew from my lips, the truth slammed into me, a weight I could never shake off. I fell to my knees, grit and old dirt digging in through my stockings, and I shook, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Oh, princess.” Dean knelt and hugged me again. I sobbed, wretched sounds ripping from my throat, as a knife of memory twisted deep in my stomach. I would never see Conrad again. Never tell him that I knew he wasn’t mad. Never tell him that I understood why he’d run away.

I could never tell him I forgave him.

I had wasted my time on the Weird, on Dean, on relishing my own freedom. I had let Conrad fall and I hadn’t been there to hold out my hand.

“Bethina said he was alive last she saw him,” Dean
whispered. “That those shadow folk took him. Nothing about being shot. The Folk lie, Aoife. They’re already a lie to most rational people, so why shouldn’t they lie to you?”

“I don’t …,” I managed. “I don’t think he was lying.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Dean said. “Nothing in this life is ever certain, doll.”

I had lost my tears, and my eyes stung, swollen and gritty. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow,” I muttered. “Doesn’t matter that he lied to start. I made my bargain. I have to go back to the city, Dean.” Before Tremaine could unleash his particular brand of sadism on everyone else I cared for. Even if I’d lost Conrad already, I could still lose Dean and Cal. And then I couldn’t go on.

Dean helped me to my feet, gently. I was fragile now, a thing that needed to be cosseted. I despised myself in that moment.