The Iron Thorn (50 page)

All around me, the underworld revealed itself, disused pipe and tunnel running off in every direction, a drain that dribbled overhead directly to the river, and the broken, branching chimney that vented the ghoul’s hearth.

Toby panted, itching behind his blunt ear with one long claw as I slid the goggles onto my forehead.
“So it’s a fair bargain, yes? For saving Carver’s life?”

“Yes, Toby,” I said. “More than fair. Thank you.” I tried Tremaine’s goggles again. “Now I know what it’s like to be Dean—to see everything that’s hidden.”

Dean poked his head from the nest tunnel to the outside. “I hear my name?”

“Dean!” I waved the goggles at him. “Look what Toby found.”

He took a glance through the lenses and just as quickly jerked the mask off. “That’s Folk trickery. Splits my head in two.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But they’ll help us get down the vent tunnel. I can watch for the steam, and time it.”

“Assuming we get through that grate,” Dean said.

Toby extended his claws with the sound of daggers being drawn.
“Leave that to us.”

In the Engineworks

C
AL AND TOBY
went into the hearth pipe in the lead, Toby loping easily on all fours and Cal in his boy skin, walking upright. Dean stayed with me. I was relieved that Cal seemed to have stopped sniping at Dean. It was clear in hindsight why—Dean represented everything Draven was trying to keep me from.

Cal’s clothes now were rags, an old Engineworks jersey and pants tattered about the hem. His feet stayed bare.

“I figured this might make it a little easier for you,” he told me.

“Don’t worry about sparing me,” I said. “Toby’s already laboring under the impression he owes me something for saving your life.”

“You did,” Cal said shortly. “Not in Ravenhouse, but before. You made me realize I didn’t have to be afraid of Draven.”

“Cal …” I’d never find someone as loyal as Cal again. That I knew, in an immutable bone-deep sense.

“I’ll let you into the vent, and we’ll be even.” Cal flashed me a smile, and I saw that he hadn’t bothered to hide his ghoul teeth.

“If she comes back, you two can skip merrily over the ground. If not, someone will have a fine supper.”
Toby chuckled to himself and climbed up to walk on the ceiling.

I took the pedestrian route, sticking near Dean and Cal. Tremaine’s goggles dangled from my hand, and across my back I’d strapped a small pack that bore the partially chewed-away logo of the Lovecraft Academy Expedition Club circa 1933, clearly a year where they didn’t teach student members not to go wandering around old sewer mains.

I’d taken only tools and a little water, for rehydrating after Dean and I had gone through the steam. No books, no pens, no paper. Only Dean’s geas, tucked up tight under the wrist of my jumper.

“You haven’t said much since last night,” Dean said.

I shrugged. “Not much to say.” The dream of my mother lingered, like a corpse’s touch against my skin, a spot of chill that no amount of steam heat could erase.
You shouldn’t have walked in the lily field
.

“How long do you have?” Dean said.

“Six days. I was born at four a.m. Six days and four hours.”

Dean fingered a Lucky but didn’t light it. “You might be spared, you know.”

“I won’t be,” I said shortly. “Because life’s not fair.” On this point, I was sure.

Dean spread his hands. “I don’t—”

“We find out there is no necrovirus and my family is still mad,” I said. “So clearly, I will be too. And now I’m even further from knowing why.”

Dean took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “I ain’t good at words, Aoife. I made my living with my blood and my boots and my fists, and I’m not a poet.”

His hands gripped more tightly, but I didn’t try to wriggle away even though he was hurting me a little. He was the only thing in the tunnel that was really solid.

“I’m not running,” he said simply. “I’ve seen what can happen and I’m not scared. You may be mad and you may not be, Aoife, but you’re stuck with me. I ain’t run from a problem yet and I’m not about to start with you.”

He released me, and walked on. I wished I could be as brave as Dean. I wished I could be as loyal as Cal. But I was only me, and that was going to have to be enough for what was ahead.

“Dean.” I caught up with him, my feet echoing in the empty pipes. “I know,” I told him. “I know that you won’t leave.”

He nodded, some of the knots slipping from his posture. “Good,” he said. “Then we’re square. You’ve paid your part of the bargain and I’ve held up mine.”

“No more bargains,” I said as we reached the guard grate and came to a halt. “Just Aoife and Dean from now on, all right?”

He smiled, brushing a thumb down my cheek. “I like the sound of that.”

Toby tugged at the grate ineffectually, his claws shrieking over the rusted iron.
“Carver, don’t just stand there catching flies. Give me a hand.”

I slipped on the blue glass goggles while Cal crouched. His skin rippled, bones with it, like his skin was sand and his insides were the ocean, pushing and re-forming it. He grunted as he became ghoul, the only hint of the pain that must rack him whenever he twisted his bones and skin into the shape of what he despised.

I wondered how long Cal had been passing as a human, how often he’d ventured over ground to find medicine or food.

How long Draven had tortured him the first time, until he agreed to spy on me.

Someday, I vowed, as I searched the vent and its connected discharge pipes for a hint of the next jet of steam, I would see Grey Draven again. And I would take back my father’s book and make him answer for all that he’d done to those I cared about.

The vent fell away with a clang, and Toby stuck his finger in his mouth.
“I broke one of my claws clean off.”

“Now who’s the baby?” Cal asked him.

“Quiet!” I snapped. I could see the steam, moving like a phantom through the discharge pipes, gathering speed like a spectral hurricane. “It’s coming,” I whispered.

“What’s that mean for us?” Dean said.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “It means we have to run. Now.”

“Aoife!” Cal shouted as we ducked through the opening the ghouls had made. His voice was lost in the roar of the gathering vent jet, but I think he was telling me to be careful.

*   *   *

Dean and I ran through steam, and it took me back to running through the mist with Tremaine. Just as it had been then, I risked being stolen away, not by the corpse-drinkers or the other things that lingered in the fog but by the molten jets of steam from the Engine that even now throbbed under my feet.

The goggles showed me the encroaching vent, the access hatch we needed to reach before the heat exploded into the tunnel.

It was so very far away. My breath jabbed in and out of my chest like a pickax, and my heart throbbed in time with the Engine. Dean’s damp, hot hand was the only thing I felt besides the blinding pain of sprinting.

“Hatch!” I managed to gasp. “Open it and get through before … before …”

Dean grasped my meaning and caught the hatch wheel with his full weight, attempting and failing to spin it open. “It’s rusted shut!” he shouted.

The floor shook in earnest now, and my hair started to curl up as the humidity and heat rose. Every pipe I could see through the goggles was full, dancing with the ghosts of steam.

I grabbed the wheel, my hands over Dean’s, but it was impossible to budge.

“Open it! I know you can!” Dean screamed above the whine of venting steam. This time, I didn’t argue with him about the Weird. I pressed my forehead against the hatch, focused on the wheel, the machine within. Light exploded in front of my eyes like a sulfur bulb on a camera, and then I fell.

For an awful moment, I thought I was back in the Thorn Land, but the floor was hard steel and there was shrieking steam just outside the hatch as we tumbled through.

I watched Dean give the wheel a hard twist, shutting us off from the vent pipe. He was panting, sopping wet with sweat running down his face like tears. “Let’s never have a close one like that again.”

My breath didn’t want to come back, my throat fighting it with the tightness of near death. “I … no. Let’s not …,” I managed.

Dean cast around the small iron room. “Where in the cold starry hell are we?”

I lifted the goggles from my eyes and examined our surroundings. Heavy treated-canvas suits hung in orderly rows, along with hoods that were a grim and greasy parody of the Proctors’ uniforms. The opposite wall held axes and pressure scissors, the large blades used to free a man crushed under the sort of metal wreckage that happened when rods threw and boilers exploded.

“It’s the fire room,” I said. “The accident brigade can suit up in here. It’s completely iron like a submersible—if there’s a fire or an explosion they can still go rescue the survivors.”

Dean lifted one of the fire suits from its hook and held it to his chest experimentally. “Whatcha think? About my size?”

I could breathe a bit easier, so I joined him, taking down the smallest suit. I still swam in it when I pulled it on, but now I appeared as a short, squat, genderless Engine worker rather than a slight and out-of-place teenage girl.

The goggles back over my eyes and the hood over my head caused Aoife Grayson to cease. I was anonymous, the very thing I’d wished for most of my life.

“I’ll go first,” I told Dean. “Just follow me. If someone stops us, say we’re doing a routine safety inspection.”

“And they’ll buy that?” Dean frowned.

“Dean, when you work at a job as miserable as a steam ventor’s, routine safety is the only thing keeping you from boiling alive,” I said. “Trust me. This will work.”

There is a sound to an Engine, the particular hiss and clank of steam and gears that is like no other sound on earth. It’s a heartbeat more than a machine, and it pulsed and thrummed through my feet, so that I felt it from my toes to the top of my head.

The Engine was alive, and my Weird snaked out, reached into the vast and complex chambers of its heart, nearly burned up in the great mechanical organ that gave aether, steam and life to Lovecraft.

I gasped and Dean gripped my arm. “Keep it straight, doll. You went all funny.”

Day workers passing gave us a curious glance, but no more. The entire outer Engineworks was a hive, full of engineers and control operators and foremen, entrances and exits guarded by bored Proctors who yawned or stared into space.

Only the best mechanics were allowed into the works themselves. A steel hatch manned by a Proctor saw to that.

Under all of my fear and anxiety, all of the chatter
around me, the Engine sang. It was a siren song, and I felt my focus slipping again.

“Aoife!” Dean gave me a sharp shake, and I knew I’d begun to wander not just in mind. “You have the plan, girl. Tell me where we need to go.”

“Main ventilation,” I said. “There.” The man-sized vent was in plain sight of the Proctor, but the goggles showed me the clear path to the inner workings of the Engine. I chewed my lip. “Hang it. We need a distraction.”

“In that case,” Dean said, “allow the master of misdirection to thrill and astound you once again.”

He grabbed hold of a passing worker. “Hey, buddy, what’s the word?”

“Huh?” The worker tried to back away, but Dean balled up his fist. “I saw you looking at my girl last night at Donnelly’s! She’s high-class, friend! She goes to the Academy! Grease monkeys like you got no business eyeballing that!”

The worker, young as Cal or me, swung his tin lunch box at Dean. “Screw off, chucklehead!” The lunch box connected with the side of Dean’s head, and even though it was protected by his fire hood he doubled over, selling the effect.

Attracted by the noise, the Proctor left his post. I turned around and put my hand against the vent lock, asking my Weird for one last favor.

After a stab against the inside of my forehead, the lock clicked, and I pulled the hatch open and stepped in. A small platform for my feet preceded a ladder and a long, black drop.

I started down, and after a moment a shadow flashed. Dean appeared, and mounted the ladder after me.

“Are you all right?” I whispered.

“Clocked me,” he said. “Bleeding a little. Going to have a scar. Should make me look dangerous.”

“As if you need any help with that,” I murmured, relieved he was all right.

We climbed down in the dark, quiet. I wanted to enjoy these last minutes with Dean.

At the bottom, I pulled the plan I had sketched from under my fire suit. “Light?” I said. Dean handed me his lighter. I checked the route, for the hundredth or thousandth time, I couldn’t be sure.

I checked what I’d drawn against the goggles. Only one hatch here, in the depths of the Engineworks, was shielded with lead sheeting, just a black blank patch in the gaze of the schema goggles. I pointed at it, flipping them onto my forehead. “There.”

We opened the hatch, and I went first once again, bracing myself to find Proctors, arrest, Grey Draven himself waiting for me on the other side.

Instead, we were alone, the mechanics and the chief engineer absent from their posts. I decided to count it as luck. I had no sense of time—they could all be having a birthday party or simply a lunch break for all I knew. I was just glad I didn’t have to trip the pressure alarm and fight my way through chaos after all.