Dead Iron

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Shard LeFel rarely slept. He had found no use for nights spent dreaming of death.

But tonight he was more restless than most. He waited outside the rail carriage, pacing the length of the observation platform, waiting for the return of the tickers he had sent to bring him Jeb Lindson’s head.

The night was calm, a summer breeze mewling through the treetops. LeFel could feel his life ticking away like water through his hands. It was terrifying, this slow descent into death. If his brother only knew what he had cursed him to suffer.

Three hundred years of dying.

He’d torture him slowly for that, over months, at the least. Years, if he could.

The waning moon was tomorrow. It would be his last day alive, his last waning moon whose light would guide his return home. After three hundred years of searching, devising, making, and breaking, it came down to a mere twenty-four hours. If he didn’t open the door before dawn, he would succumb to the sleep eternal.

The last component necessary to open the door out of this mortal world was the witch. And she was just moments away from being his. And now, knowing she was close, her magic nearly in his hands, LeFel could not hold still. Instead, he paced, the thunk of his heel and the tap of his cane metronome to his urgency, his need.

With his curse broken, the door open, the rails hammered down, he could fulfill his promise to the Strange and set them free from their pockets and nooks and nightmares. He would be their king, giving to them bolts and wire and steam to make whole their bodies. He would set them free to travel the iron rails laid down from shore to shore. Free to feed on mortal fear, blood, and marrow.

His brother had done all he could to stop the Strange from entering the mortal world, from supping on the humans here. But Shard would give the dark ones their desire. The mortals would die, Strange sicknesses, Strange blights, plagues, and madness, until the humans were erased from the land.

Shard would watch the fattening of the Strange with glee. He knew what it was to be a despised shadow. He knew what it was to be feared, hated, imprisoned. He understood hunger so very, very well now. That knowledge was a gift his brother had unknowingly given to him.

It was time for the Strange to hunger no more.

It was time for his death to end.

It was time to use the witch for his own desires.

The hulking frames of his rail matics, devices that pounded, ripped, hauled, and hammered, rested like slumbering metal giants along the edge of the forest. Shadowed except for where the rising moonlight rubbed iron and steel to a mercury shine.

The men who worked the rail were either in town drinking and carousing or else sleeping in the tent town up the rail nearly a mile or so.

He had seen nothing of the Madder brothers since earlier in the day, which suited him fine.

The brothers were part of the king’s guard—he was sure of it. They hunted the Holder, and had stayed only a step behind him all these years, traveling faster through their underground tunnels and mines than he could on iron and wheel. They might suspect he had the Holder kept safely under lock and key, but they could not know that he had all parts of it assembled, could not know that he had it here, in his keeping, nor that he intended to use it this waning moon.

He was certain they did not know what else he possessed in the other two railcars: his menagerie of matics, and the door forged between worlds.

LeFel chuckled. It had been a game well played. He had trumped their moves, one for one, always a step ahead. Three hundred years among mortals had taught him nuances of deceit that had kept the king’s best hunters, best devisers, best guards, stumbling behind his trail like blind fools.

The air suddenly washed cold, carrying ice and fogging LeFel’s exhaled breath.

LeFel looked down into the darkness.

Mr. Shunt stood at the step at the bottom of the train-car platform, his face tipped up, lost in shadows even though the moon poured full upon him. The strong stink of oil and blood and burned flesh hung about him like a pall. He had been undone again. Mr. Shunt’s uncanny ability to stitch himself up, no matter how much he was taken apart, was one of his more useful attributes.

“Why have you returned to me, Mr. Shunt?” LeFel asked. “Do you carry the witch in the corners of your cap?”

“No, Lord LeFel,” Mr. Shunt whispered, his voice rusty. “The witch is in her house, at her hearth. Beyond my reach.”

“It. Is. One. Small. Thing,” LeFel said, biting off each word as if it were poison. “One small mortal!” He inhaled, exhaled, but still anger shook him. “A frail woman. Are you so weak that you cannot reach in and take her?”

“The dead man.” Mr. Shunt’s voice was just above a growl. “The tie between them—the magic—still holds her safe.”

LeFel held very still though rage tore at his reason like a storm.

“Perhaps aligning my interests with you was a mistake, bogeyman.”

Mr. Shunt jerked as if the words struck him flat across the face. But he wisely held his tongue, and narrowed his eyes as he watched LeFel pace.

Finally, LeFel came upon a second plan. “Since your arm is too short to reach her, we shall dig her out with a twig. Come,” LeFel ordered.

He turned and opened the door, striding into a dark interior striped by moonlight. He knew the Strange would follow. He had all the things Mr. Shunt most craved—the door, the Holder, the key, and power.

The boy slept on a cot to the left of the train car. Even asleep, he held his breath until Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt passed him by.

Through the inner door, and into the largest section of the carriage, Mr. Shunt trailed Shard LeFel, a silent shadow. Here the wolf was kept. A creature of night, it stared at LeFel, copper eyes glowing. There was too much intelligence in those eyes, too much hatred.

LeFel struck the wolf with the cane as he walked by and the beast snarled. But it was not the beast that he needed. No. He needed something of dirt, of earth, of stone. Something of cog and wire and bone. Not here. Not in this carriage.

Only Strangework would do.

He stormed through the outer door and into the boiler car, where his remaining half-dozen matics hunkered, chained and waiting. Even though the steam had long ago cooled, the matics shifted as he entered, the spark of glim in each of them powering muzzles and heads to rise, ready to do his bidding.

LeFel paused and considered each metal creature. Which should he destroy to power his needs? Not the strongest, a hulking manshaped creature half-bent to fit within the car, piston hammers for arms. Not the swiftest, two beasts the size of dogs constructed of steel pounded so thin, you could see the shadow of the gears slowly ticking behind their curved ribs and knife-filled jaws. Not the deadliest, a heavily armored tractor with two self-loading, pivoted mitrailleuse barrels holding enough loaded cartridges to fire more than two thousand shots in under fifteen minutes.

No, it would need be either the rabbit-sized ticker suited for scouting or the whiskey-barreled self-propelled battle mace.

“Mr. Shunt, disembowel the small ticker, and take from it what you need.”

“Yes, Lord LeFel.” Mr. Shunt swiftly caught up the rabbit-sized ticker in his hands, and put to use his wickedly sharp fingers.

LeFel did not stop to watch. He strode straight down the center of the carriage, not looking right or left at the metal creatures that shifted closer to the shadows, then were as still as gravestones. He opened the outer door and crossed to the final car coupled to his train.

One witch, one human, one dead man, would not stand in the way of his immortality, his revenge.

He pulled a key from a chain in his waistcoat and unlocked the door. He threw the door open. There were no windows in this carriage. There was just the one door. No other cracks for anything large or small to enter or exit.

Shard LeFel stepped into the room and Mr. Shunt scuttled in, latching the door tight behind him and throwing the room into complete darkness.

“Light, Mr. Shunt,” LeFel barked.

Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, steel scraping flint, and caught fire to an oil-drenched wick of a lantern he plucked from the wall.

Mr. Shunt held that lantern high, the golden light washing over the room like a silken veil.

The room was spartan, shockingly so when compared with the other two carriages. Walls were lined with worktables, benches, drawers, crates, and shelves of iron and wood. Tools glittered, hung above the workbenches, tools that could pry, vise, weld, rivet. No curved edges, no rich trappings, no comforts here. This room was a place of extrapolation, of bending metal to the fevered dreams of the mind. A place of devising in a way most uncommon.

In each of three corners of the room stood a creature of bolt and gear and bone. Similar to Mr. Shunt, the creatures wore long woolen coats, layers of gray lace, tatters, and high collars and hats that covered their faces. They seemed nothing more than beggars hung to rot, but they were more. Much more.

They were Strange come into the Strangework bodies Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt had devised for them. Fueled by blood and glim, they did not move, did not breathe, did not make a sound as LeFel and Mr. Shunt moved about the room. They were still as death itself. Only their eyes betrayed their true state, burning through the darkness and following LeFel’s and Mr. Shunt’s every move.

The Strangework had sworn to stand guard to the one precious thing in the room.

In the exact center of the floor was a platform. And upon that platform lay a closed black door the size of a coffin. That door did not lead to the ground outside the train car. That door, when pried by a blood key and moonlight, would take him home, and remain open, a hidden opening to this world, rolling on the dead iron tracks across the land.

LeFel strode to the wall and hooked the crook of his cane into one of the lower cupboard doors, pulling it open. Just enough lamplight fell upon the contents to make out the shape. A wooden coffin. No larger than a small child. Just the size that would fit the blacksmith’s boy within.

LeFel rested his cane against the open cupboard door and drew the coffin out with both hands. He carried it a short ways to a worktable and placed it on top.

Mr. Shunt craned his long neck to better see over LeFel’s shoulder. Even the Strangework guards in the corners stirred in anticipation.

LeFel thumbed the latches and pushed open the lid.

Inside the coffin was a swaddled form, the size of a small child. LeFel removed the swaddling cloth away from the figure. Within the blanket was a gnarled, twisted piece of wood. The bark was papery as madrone, showing just peeks of pale wood beneath the peeling exterior. Three bones, perhaps each a joint of a human pinkie, were placed upon the wood, and all around it were gears, springs, levers, and wheels.

Once the blanket had been removed, LeFel spoke. “This, I will leave to you, Mr. Shunt. Prove to me again your worth.”

Mr. Shunt drifted forward to stand next to LeFel. “The pleasure will be mine.” He extended one long arm, spindly fingers wrapping around the chunk of wood.

LeFel smiled while Mr. Shunt worked a matter of devising he’d seen only the Strange attempt. By and by under Mr. Shunt’s quick fingers, the bark shed away from the heart of the wood. Leaving behind something soft, something malleable.

It took no time for Mr. Shunt to carve the wood into the likeness he wanted. Eyes, nose, mouth, curve of cheek, and hollow of neck. Arms, body, legs. It was fine work and LeFel savored the mastery of each slice, gouge, and cut.

Then when the carving was done, when it was clear even in the watery lamplight that a child lay within that coffin, Mr. Shunt dug in his pockets, and leaned forward to open several small drawers, withdrawing more gears, springs, and bolts, more bone, tendon, and bits of flesh floating in liquid-filled jars.

These he plied to the wood, hooking with steel, sewing with copper threads, running pulleys of sinew for joints, and bits of bone hammered in place like nails. For the Strange to walk this land heavy enough to leave footprints behind, they needed more than a doorway. They needed gears, blood, and flesh. Strangework.

“Blood?” LeFel asked as he watched Mr. Shunt’s devising.

Mr. Shunt turned his head to stare at LeFel, eyes wide and red. “Yours, perhaps?” he whispered.

LeFel scowled at Mr. Shunt’s naked desire. “You forget yourself, Strange,” he said. “My blood is not in our contract.”

“Yes, lord,” Mr. Shunt said. “Of course, lord.” He bowed, but his eyes did not lower. “What blood pleases you?”

“The dreamer’s will do.” He withdrew the small vial of the boy’s blood he had taken earlier.

Mr. Shunt smiled, his teeth a ragged line of ivory blades. He took the vial, twisted the cork free with his teeth, and dripped the blood over the gears and flesh and heart of the wooden child, liquid splattering like a dark stain.

Then Mr. Shunt pulled a tiny vial of glim from his cuff pocket. The glim glowed like a green star upon his palm. This, he placed delicately into the slit in the child’s chest, resting it carefully among copper wires and springs. He unstitched a thread from his own face, and sewed the glim up tight. He spoke a litany of words, old words, snake soft, clucking and catching in rhythm as each stitch joined flesh and fiber and cog.

When Mr. Shunt was done, he bit the string in two, setting the glim-fed gears into motion.

At the snap of thread, the creature in the coffin shuddered, then opened its eyes.

The Strangework in the corners of the room inhaled, and that smallest movement shifted the tubes that bound them at ankles and wrists to the doorway itself.

The stock, the changeling, the Strange, looked exactly like the blacksmith’s boy, looked just like the little dreamer. Except when it smiled. Then its eyes were as old as the gravewood and flesh of which it was made.

LeFel picked up his cane. “To catch the witch, we must catch her heart.” He considered the changeling with a critical eye. “The boy should show some hardships, wandering for days in the wilds; don’t you agree, Mr. Shunt?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Shunt breathed. He dragged thumbs across the boy’s cheek, leaving behind a bruising welt.

The Strangework laughed. “More,” it said.

Mr. Shunt tugged at its hair, nicked its ear, tore the shirt it appeared to be wearing—a shirt that looked exactly like the shirt the blacksmith’s boy wore. The more Mr. Shunt nipped and scraped, cut and clipped, the more the changeling laughed.

“Enough,” LeFel finally said. Then, to the boy, “You will lure the witch from her home.”

The changeling nodded, somber as an undertaker.

“Bring the witch to where Mr. Shunt waits for her.”

The changeling nodded again, then hopped out of the coffin, landing spryly on his feet.

That was no child standing in the middle of the floor. Even though it was the perfect image of the boy, from tousled hair to scuffed feet.

“See that she thinks you the lost child. Weep for her, laugh for her. Fear for her,” LeFel said. “And do not fail me.”

LeFel turned to Mr. Shunt. “You will take the dog with you to catch up the witch. I will not have this night end without the witch at my feet.”

Mr. Shunt bowed again and clicked his tongue. The changeling skipped up beside him. Mr. Shunt glided toward the door, the changeling at his heels, tearing holes in its shirtsleeves, pinching its own arms while it hummed a soft song to itself.

And then the Strange and the flesh and gear boy were out the door and gone.

Shard LeFel carefully placed all the shavings that had fallen from the making of the boy, all the splinters of bone, wood, and metal, into the swaddling, then tied it in a tight knot. This dark devising was best not to be left where even a stray breeze could stir it. He closed the coffin, set the latches, and returned the whole thing to the cupboard.

Shard LeFel walked over to the black coffin door in the center of the room. He dared run a single finger over the edge of the door, constructed by the Strange, bathed in the blood of a hundred sacrifices. He dared dream again of the moment he had waited three hundred years for. Death of the wolf, the boy, and the witch would open this door beneath the waning moon, and the Holder would see that his passage was clear.

He would be home.

Soon. So soon he could taste the need for it on the back of his throat.

He lifted his finger away from the door and instead pulled a silk kerchief out of his cuff. He wiped the kerchief over his lips, again and again, trying to blot up the hunger, the need.

“Soon,” he breathed. He turned and hooked the lantern with his cane, then slipped out of the carriage, locking the door, and his only way home, behind him.