Dead Iron

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Shard LeFel looked out upon the people who hung on his every word. They were hopeful, angry, vengeful. They wanted what he told them they wanted: revenge upon the witch who had hurt one of their young, who had damaged one of their innocents.

“In these modern times, we have laws and jails,” Shard LeFel said to the people gathered by torchlight and lamplight outside the church. “But there is an older law, an older reckoning, that bids us to tend to our own. To protect our own. And to punish those who are wicked and vile even—no, especially—when they are among us.”

A murmur rose up from the crowd.

“I would not presume to tell you good people what it is you must do. This is your town, your laws, your home. But justice must be done.”

There was a pause. LeFel watched, calmly waiting to see who would strike the tinder he’d so carefully prepared, and set it ablaze.

“Burn her!” It came from the back of the crowd. From Mrs. Dunken’s boy Henry. And his cry was picked up, carried by each voice, until it became a chant.

“Burn her!” the crowd cried. “Burn the witch!”

LeFel tugged at the lace at his cuff and then rested the tip of his jewel-encrusted cane upon the ground. Mr. Shunt sidled up beside him, silent as death’s gaze.

“The wick is caught,” LeFel said to the Strange while watching the sheriff and Henry Dunken make out their plans of surrounding the witch’s cottage, and calling her out to stand trial.

“We’ll approach her and give her the chance to turn herself in,” Sheriff Wilke said. “I want you all to understand we’re not going to raise a gallows tonight. There will be a trial. Justice will be served.”

“But if she resists,” Henry said above the rise of voices, “we’ll burn her out. I won’t stand idly by while she does her devil’s magic. Nor shall she harm another man, woman, or child of this town!”

“And now,” LeFel said quietly, “we shall watch the fire I’ve set in these mortals do that which even you failed me in, Mr. Shunt.”

Mr. Shunt said nothing. He folded his bony fingers together, each one clacking against the other, metal upon metal, bone on bone, as if wishing for a neck to break between them. “Yes, Lord LeFel,” he murmured.

The townsfolk assembled in the street, men gathering horses and wagons, guns, and torches while the women all rushed off with Mrs. Gregor to tend and fuss over her and the Strange Elbert.

Shard LeFel stood in the shadows, mostly forgotten, as he intended. He would let them ride forth and smoke the witch out. And he would be waiting, near enough that he could snatch her out of their hands. He would take her. And kill her for his own purposes—her and the wolf and the real little boy—to turn the tumbler and locks and open the door to his land.

And if the townsfolk turned their rage on him . . . well, he would simply let Mr. Shunt take care of that.

Cedar Hunt ignored the weeping pain of the wound in his side, ignored his hungry belly, ignored the night that called him toward the rail, called him to find Strange, any Strange, to kill.

He ran despite the limp it caused him, toward the witch’s house, toward the wallow of trees in front of her property. There, he would find the dying scent of his brother. There he would find the scent of the Strange who had taken him, who may have killed him. There he would track the Strange who was going to fall beneath his fang and claw.

The wind brought him the scent of fire and wood and oil burning. He heard the rise of voices, felt the rumble of wagon wheels and horses coming from the town behind him. He stopped on a ridge that looked over the town. Orange and yellow globs of light marched down Hallelujah’s main street. Torches. Heading out toward the witch’s house. Heading out toward the stand of trees.

The beast in him twisted his hold. Hunt. Kill.

Cedar pushed against the urge. Why would the people of Hallelujah be out in the night, burning torches, riding through the darkness? Were they headed to the trees? Were they looking for the same Strange as he?

Muddled by the wolf’s need to hunt Strange, Cedar could not think through why the town was rising in the night. But he knew they would destroy his brother’s trail if they tromped through the forest before he got there.

Cedar started down the ridge, and ran, faster than the men, faster than the horses, faster than the torches of Hallelujah, to catch the scent of his brother’s murderer.

Mae Lindson had waited the full day for Cedar Hunt to keep his word. But now it was well into night, and clear he wasn’t coming back to her.

Just a short while ago, while she was outside pumping water, her mule, Prudence, had plodded up and stopped at the corral gate, wanting to be let in for water and food. Bundled on the saddle were Jeb’s clothes and a spare set that must belong to Mr. Hunt. Strangely, his canteen, goggles, and guns were also with the supplies. Or perhaps not strangely. Now that the moon was on the rise, she guessed his curse would be in bloom, and he was traveling the night as a wolf, not a man.

Which left the finding of Mr. Shunt and the killing of him in her hands alone.

“Do as you please, Mr. Hunt,” Mae said as she tended Prudence, removing her saddle, and brushing her down. “I have a killer to find.” Mae finished caring for the mule, keeping the Madders’ shotgun in one hand, the Colt tucked in her belt, and an eye out for anything stirring in the shadows.

The night was full of natural noises—animals and insects skittering about in the underbrush. A restless wind tugged from the northwest, and for a brief moment, she thought she smelled smoke on the breeze, but otherwise the night was quiet.

Mae resaddled the mule and took Cedar Hunt’s clothes and gear off the saddle. She had left her supplies for hunting Mr. Shunt back in her house, though she had already banked the fire and locked the cupboards tight. While it wasn’t a common thing to head out on a hunt in the middle of the night, she knew her time was nearly up. The pull of the coven’s voices stabbed at her like claws in her lungs, insistent now. She would have to be heading east, likely by tomorrow. If not, she’d fall too ill to make the return.

But before she left this pocket of the West, she would see Jeb’s killer dead at her feet.

Mae patted Prudence’s side. “Won’t be a minute more, girl. I’ll gather my things.”

She strode back to the house, the moonlight doing some good to light her path. She would use the Madders’ gun to kill Shunt, full charge. The other times she’d used it against him, it hadn’t been ready. Which would mean she’d have to charge the gun before she spotted her target.

She paused at her back door. A chill pricked her skin, even through her heavy coat.

Not a breath of Mr. Shunt. Not a shift of a shadow, nor a glint of his coal-lit eyes. He was not here, but something in the night made her uneasy. Even Prudence snorted.

Mae tipped her head, listening, waiting for a hint of what was tickling at the back of her spine. But the night was silent.

Mae pulled together everything she could take with her without hitching the wagon. A satchel of food, herbs, clothes. She did not want to leave her spinning wheel behind and hoped once she had killed Shunt, she could return for it before heading east.

She buckled and tied the satchels closed and slung them over her shoulder. With one last look at her home, she hefted the shotgun and headed toward the door. Time to head off to the rail and see if that dandy Mr. Shard LeFel had his man Mr. Shunt nearby.

But before she could open the door, a sound drifted through the night—voices, horses, carts. It sounded like the entire town of Hallelujah was taking to the road, striking out into the night.

She risked a glance out her front shutter.

Torches, dozens, maybe near a hundred, came marching through the forest and the field, burning holes in the darkness. Horses, carts, and wagons rattled across the rocky field headed straight for her home, headed straight for her. And the huffing chug of an engine behind the mob filled the air with steam and heat.

Fear plucked her pulse. The wooden whimsies lining the room rattled and trembled even though her house was still as a tomb.

“Mrs. Jeb Lindson,” a man’s voice yelled out. She knew that voice. It was Sheriff Wilke. “You’re to come out of your house and stand trial for the harm you’ve done to the boy Elbert Gregor, and for the witchcraft you have practiced here in the town of Hallelujah.”

Mae pressed her gloved fingertips against her lips. Through the crack in her shutter she could see all the men of town, men whom Jeb had worked for, men who had sold her goods, men whose wives had bought blankets and lace from her with a nod and a smile.

She might not live within the town, but she’d never once thought she had made an enemy of the people.

And then she caught the burnish of copper and brass, brightened by the orange torchlight, glinting hard in the pale moonlight.

A ticker—a matic made of iron, brass, bolts, and piston-driven wheels with smokestacks at its rounded carriage top coughing up plumes of white—rolled to a stop at the back of the crowd. And within that device, sitting as if on a throne, was Mr. Shard LeFel. Behind him, his man, Mr. Shunt.

Her heartbeat slammed in her chest and a high-pitched ring of panic filled her ears. The shotgun didn’t have enough range to shoot him from here, and if it did—even if she got a shot off—the townsfolk would open fire on her. They’d carried their torches and hatred out this far. She knew they weren’t going to go home until her blood was spilled.

Somehow she had to get to Mr. Shunt.

“We know you’re in there, Mrs. Lindson,” the sheriff yelled out again. “You’ll spare yourself a lot of hardship if you just turn yourself over now.”

They’d throw her in shackles, beat her unconscious. The fear of magic ran thick in the New World. Even the rumor of it had gotten more than one of the sisterhood hanged.

It would be suicide to walk out into that mob, no matter how much she’d like to put a bullet through Mr. Shunt’s head.

She ran to the back door. Maybe they hadn’t made it around the house yet. Maybe she could still get to Prudence and run, then follow Mr. Shunt at a safe distance until the opportunity to end his life presented itself.

She cracked open the door.

The door flew out of her hand. A man grabbed her wrist. She bit back a yell and swung the gun just as her captor ducked back.

“This way if you want to live,” Alun Madder said. “And mind that you don’t use that priceless shotgun as a cudgel, Mrs. Lindson.” He didn’t wait for her reply. Holding tight to her wrist, he jogged out across the back of the property between the house and the shed, then farther out yet.

“Stop,” she said, “let go of me!”

“Keep your voice down. We have a way out of here that mob can’t follow.”

Three stones in her field suddenly stood up to become the other two Madder brothers and Rose Small.

At the sight of Rose, Mae didn’t know if she should be relieved or terrified.

“We have to get you out of town,” Rose Small said. “They mean to burn your house. They mean to kill you. Hang you.”

“But I’ve done nothing. Nothing.” One of the brothers, Bryn Madder, she thought, draped a rough blanket over her shoulders.

“Pull it into a hood over that sunlight hair of yours,” he said as they all ran across the field. “It soaks in shadow and repels the moonlight.”

“They’ll overtake us,” Mae said. “They have mounts that will travel the fields much faster than we run.”

“We’re not traveling the fields,” Alun Madder said. He slowed from a run into a brisk walk. “The tunnel is just ahead.”

Rose Small slipped up beside Mae. “Don’t worry; we’ll get you safe and away and on the road by sunrise.”

“On the road?” Mae said. “No. I’m not leaving. I’m not done taking care of my own business with this town.”

The crowd roared.

Mae glanced back over her shoulder. A low glow was rising, flames licking up the walls of her house, burning through the home she and Jeb had built with their own hands. Burning her life away.

They had taken it from her, the last of her life with her husband. All the things he had carved on long winter nights, the quilts she’d made for their bed, all their memories, all the time—their life—gone.

“Here we are,” Alun Madder said. “Mind the ladder—it’s a bit uneven.”

Mae heard his boots tap out a muffled echo down wooden stairs as he descended into whatever tunnel they’d decided to dig. But she had no plans to run away. Her husband’s murderer was on the other side of those flames. Her husband’s murderer was in that matic that squatted and huffed like an iron buffalo on the other side of this field. And if this blanket could keep her hidden in the night, she planned on using it to get her close enough to put a bullet through his brain.

She took a step, but Rose Small caught her hand again. “You can’t go back,” Rose said. “Mrs. Lindson, Mae, come on with us now, please. We have to go. All of us, or we’ll be dead.”

A shadow ran low to the ground, fast, slick in the night, darting across the field toward the flames. For a moment, the light from the fire caught it in silhouette, a wolf with a silver chain around its neck.

Cedar Hunt. He was running toward the fire, toward the flame, toward the mob.

Mae took another step. Rose Small tugged her harder. “You can’t go back.” Her voice was high and harshed by fear. “Please.”

And then the Madder brothers were there, Bryn and Cadoc, blocking her path. “You must trust us, Mrs. Lindson,” Bryn Madder said. “If it’s revenge you seek, you’d be better for it without walking through fire first.”

“Now,” Cadoc Madder said.

A cry rose up in the crowd. Gunshot exploded the still night air. And the matic, the great metal beast carrying Mr. Shard LeFel and his man, Mr. Shunt, turned toward the open field. Turned as if it could see Mae and Rose and the Madders. Then it huffed, steam punching the air like a percussion of thunder, and huffed again. Even at this distance, Mae could see it lurch forward and begin racing their way, a nightmare beast scenting a blood trail.

Mae turned and ran down the ladder, Rose, Bryn, and Cadoc behind her. At the base, holding the ladder steady, stood A lun Madder.

“Quick, now, quick,” he said. As soon as the last in line, Cadoc, had lowered his head beneath ground level, Alun turned what looked like a valve wheel set on the wall—the same sort of wheel she had seen them use at the door to their mine. The roof of the tunnel above the ladder closed in, a stone piece set on rails rolling quickly into place.

Bryn and Cadoc Madder made fast work of folding the blankets they had been wearing and stuffing them into their satchels strapped across their chests and hanging at their waists. Then Bryn Madder lit a candle and Cadoc Madder lit two lanterns that were pegged on the wall, handing one lantern to Rose Small.

“Here.” Rose gave the lantern to Mae. The lantern was a green glass globe caught all round in silver vines and leaves, so that it looked to be a glowing flower. Oil wick inside, it was a beautiful device, and made with a master metalsmith’s fine hand. Not what she’d expect rough miners to stock in case of emergencies such as this.

The tunnel was tall and wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Here and there along the wall were crates and sacks covered with heavy canvas. Wooden crossbeams and bracers were set off down the tunnel at a steady distance, holding the earth above, while straight down the middle of the ceiling, supported by the wooden beams, rested a single rail.

She hadn’t a clue what the rail was in place for and could not believe how many supplies the Madders had stashed away. A veritable storehouse this close to her home and she’d never once suspected the tunnel was here.

“You’ll want a sling.” Alun Madder pulled the canvas cover from the pile of gear by the ladder and started digging through the odds and bits.

“Sling?” Mae said.

“Sling.” Alun pulled what looked like an unattached rope swing out of the pile. “Netted bottom here is the sling part. That you’ll sit upon. These”—he strung out the two heavy ropes that looped together through an iron hook—“you’ll attach to the eye loop there.” He pointed upward.

Mae lifted the globe and could just make out several metal loops hanging from the iron rail above them.

“Why?”

Rose Small took the sling from Alun and handed it to Mae. “It’s quite a lot of fun, if a little breezy.”

“Fun?” Mae asked. “Swinging in a tunnel?”

“Not swinging,” Alun Madder said. “Soaring.” He produced a sling from the pack on his back, then hooked it into an eye loop. “Mind that you keep your feet tucked on the corners or you might break an ankle. Or worse.” He stood in front of the sling, hands on the rope just as if he were a child ready to get a push on a swing. But as he walked backward to the ladder, the hook and eye above him clacked like a chain tightening a spring.

“I’ll see you at the first junction. We’ll have to switch lines there.” He sat down in the sling, which lowered slightly under his weight, then lifted his feet. The spring device above shot him forward so fast, Mae sucked in a breath at the gush of wind that filled the tunnel.

The light from Alun Madder’s lantern swung across the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, showing a good, long, straight shot, before suddenly the light whipped left and was swallowed by darkness.

“Quick,” Rose Small said. “It’s safe enough. I rode it most of the way from town.” She took a sling out of her pack and shook it out, righting the ropes and seat. That she left on the ground and instead snatched up Mae’s sling. “Just mind to keep your skirts tamped tight and tuck your feet on that corner.” She hooked the eye loop, and held the seat of the sling out for Mae.

“Latch the lantern here.” Rose used a leather thong sewn into the rope to secure the globe near Mae’s shoulder. The lantern tossed up enough light to catch on the clever wheels and gears that were attached like a miniature cart above the rail, the eye loop hook directly below it.

“Where does the tunnel lead?”

Rose Small shrugged. “Don’t know that it matters so long as it’s away from that mob who want you burned. They think you did witchcraft on Elbert.”

“They found Elbert?” Mae asked.

“That devil LeFel brought in a boy who looks like Elbert,” Rose Small hedged.

“The Strange,” Mae breathed.

“You know about them?” Rose Small’s words came out in a tumble of relief.

“Yes, I do,” Mae said. “Too well.”

“Hurry up now, ladies,” Bryn Madder said. “We need to be out from under their feet before they realize we’ve gone.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Rose said, holding up her own sling and smiling.

“Just walk backward toward me, Mrs. Lindson,” Bryn Madder said. “When you lift your feet, you’ll swing down the line and go it strong.”

Mae held tight to the ropes and walked backward. It wasn’t difficult to pull the rope back. She kept a good hold on the shotgun in her left hand, her heart pounding.

“That’s good, now,” Bryn Madder said. “Sit back and hold on to your bonnet.”

Mae sat. Then she lifted her feet. The sling shot forward at a remarkable speed. She held tight to the ropes, surprised at how smoothly the wheel device above drove down the rails.

Other than the occasional crate or sack stacked along the wall, Mae had no good handle on distance, but knew she must have gone far enough that she heard the twang of another sling being shot behind her. She twisted to see who it was, but in the darkness and shadows thrown against the walls and ceiling, she couldn’t make out much.

With no horizon, sun, or moon, she couldn’t say which direction she was going, but knew the corner must be just ahead. She tucked her feet, just as the lantern slapped light across a wall dead ahead of her.

The sling rocked up to the right, sending Mae’s feet precariously close to the wall before sliding down the left curve of the tunnel. Mae suddenly worried how she was supposed to stop the sling. She didn’t see a brake line or any other slowing device.

Then the ground, the entire tunnel, shook. At first, just a tremble. She wondered if it was her imagination. Then the shaking grew stronger and stronger. Something huge, something heavy, moved above them.

“That’s a matic,” Alun Madder called from somewhere down the tunnel ahead of her. “And Shard LeFel. Hurry. Hurry!”

Mae didn’t know how she could hurry any more. The tunnel walls rushed past at a dizzying pace. It felt as if the track would never end.

Rocks pelted down in dusty plumes, battering her shoulders and legs. The ceiling shook rocks and clods of dirt like a rusted sieve. It was hard to see through all the dust kicked up. Hard to breathe. For a brief, wild moment, she wondered if she should jump.

And then the tunnel exploded. The force of the concussion knocked Mae off her sling and tumbled her to the ground. Rock and dirt collapsed and filled the tunnel ahead with rubble, cutting off their route.

A huge metal hand reached down into the hole that had been punched through the tunnel ceiling. No—not a hand. It was a steam hammer, five metal pistons pounding down like great metal fingers, each attached by rods and tubes and wheels to a hunk of metal—the matic’s arm—somewhere above the ceiling.

“Back!” Alun Madder was on his feet. He threw off the sling and ran. “Turn around!”

Mae spun, a thick cloud of dirt and stone sucking all the air out of the tunnel. Rose, Cadoc, and Bryn had all been knocked out of their slings too. Bryn Madder and Rose were both running behind Alun Madder, but Cadoc stood there, calm as a prophet watching the doom come calling, while Mae ran past him.

“LeFel,” he said.

“Run, run!” Rose Small pushed past Bryn, pushed past Alun.

The floor lifted, held there for what felt like an eternity, then fell. Hard.

Rose Small, ahead of them, lifted, fell. Mae was battered to the ground. She landed on her hands and knees as all the world broke apart. A five-fingered wall of iron sheered the sky from the earth.

There was too much noise: the thunderous pounding of iron and steam, the pulverizing of rock and dirt, the Madder brothers cursing up a blue streak.

And Rose Small, screaming.

Mae scrabbled up out of the dirt that threatened to bury her, swimming free, digging free, up and up toward air. She broke out just as the Madder brothers pulled up through the hole where the ceiling had been.

“Rose, Rose!” Mae called. She blinked away the light—too much moonlight and firelight after the soft underground lanterns. And finally her vision fell to focus.

Rose Small stood in front of the giant matic that was nearly as tall as a house. The hammer contraption that had busted apart the tunnel was retracting slowly, folding like an elbow alongside the main body of the device.

High above, perched in the matic on his throne, was Mr. Shard LeFel, his gloved fingertips holding brass levers as if they were reins. Mr. Shunt, too tall, too thin, a shadow with bloody eyes, stood in front of the matic, pressing a knife to Rose Small’s throat.

“Give me the witch,” Shard LeFel said, his voice carrying over the chug and hiss of the matic’s engine, “or Mr. Shunt will rip this girl apart.”