Dead Iron

CHAPTER FIVE

Jeb Lindson had learned that night was better for walking, even though the dark made it hard to see. So he had walked through the night. One foot up, one foot down, forward, forward. No matter the dark. No matter the blood dripping from his fingertips, or the rattle of the dragonfly’s wing shivering in his chest, working like a bellows to keep his heart beating.

He had a man to kill. A man who killed him three times. A man who intended to hurt his Mae. Jeb knew that monster, that Shard LeFel, was a devil in a coat of hair and bone.

So Jeb kept walking. Walking to find the devil. Walking to keep Mae safe.

Mae. His beautiful Mae. Jeb paused, closed his eyes for some time, though the wind blew cold, tugging on the tatters of his shirt, and the night shifted with hungry creatures catching the scent of him.

He worked hard to remember her face, her lips, her laughter. Finally pictured her, as on their wedding day, the scent of honeysuckle in her hair, the sweetness of strawberries upon her lips as they kissed beneath white lace in the morning light.

Mae. His love. His wife. Until death did them part. He’d made that vow. Given that kiss to seal his heart, life, and soul to her. Forever. And she had given him her heart, life, and soul. Forever.

He opened his eyes. “Forever.” Jeb went on walking again, one foot, one foot, through the night, the hangman’s noose still around his neck dragging the ground behind him.

By and by, dawn pushed birdsong and watery light down from the hills. Daylight, even weak at dawn’s break, was too strong, too hot, for him.

The light burned where it touched his flesh and smoke rose in soft, foglike wisps. Jeb moaned.

Burning was not good. No, not good at all. Burning only ate up what strength he had.

And he needed his strength. All the strength in his bones and soul.

He had a devil to kill.

He stood for a long while, smoke lifting from his skin, as he thought things through. Finally, it came to him. The light was hot, but shadows were cool. Shadows were slices of night stretching out across the day. He needed the night, so he needed the shadows. He looked around. He was still in the forest where plenty of shadows clung to trees and stone. He walked toward a shadow beneath a tree and sighed as the damp wing of night covered him.

His skin cooled, the smoke thinning until it was gone. He waited, because he knew he should. Long enough for his flesh to be as whole as it could be. Long enough for his brain to think out how to get to that next patch of shadow. Because there was more than a need to see Mae moving him on. There was hatred, hot and pounding. There was a killing to be done.

Jeb took a step, but noticed a bird perched on a branch just above his head. The bird clicked and warbled.

It was a pretty thing—copper head wide and round with bright, emerald eyes and a brass beak. It cooed, owllike, and clattered its wings.

Jeb stared at it. It stared back.

That was no bird. No, not at all. Birds didn’t have clamps for feet. Birds didn’t tick. Birds didn’t tock.

That was the devil’s toy. Shard LeFel had devised it to look for him, spy on him.

Jeb licked his lips.

He caught up the owl with hands too fast for a dead man. Then squeezed. It was easy to see how the bird fit together—a mite easier to see how to bust it apart.

The bird scratched and bit, nipping flesh off the thick of his hand. He held tight. There was something inside the bird that kept it alive. Not steam like any other matic he’d ever seen—the bird wasn’t hot enough, though there was a coal and a small portion of water running through it. Something more than springs, more than clockwork. Something strong. All his life he’d known the best way to figure out how something came together was to tear it apart.

Jeb squeezed the bird in one hand, keeping the wings tucked tight, the tiny tick in its breast growing faster. He ran his fingers over its head feeling for the seam. Easy as a thumbnail through an apple skin, he split the weld on its face. The bird’s head hinged open.

Inside that metal skull was more metal, fine gears and cogs that would make a watchmaker drool. But it wasn’t just a tightened spring that made the owl tick. He pried open the back of the bird.

The innards looked like a watch, tightly coiled and geared, layers of things that ticked, pumped, spun. But there in the center of the copper and brass was a glass vial. Filled with an unearthly green light. Glim.

This matic wasn’t fueled by steam alone. Something more fired it—the rarest thing of all—glim. Not a good magic, sweet magic, earth-and-home magic like his Mae’s magic, glim was something else altogether. They said it was harvested by airships from the top of the sky, filtered, and trapped in glass to be sold to only the richest men. Jeb had never seen it, and never in his life had enough money or land to sell for even an ounce of it.

But it was a wondrous discovery that the most scientific of minds had put to use. Glim enhanced all that it touched. Made a piece of coal burn twice as long, made a crop yield three times its fruit, and, it was rumored, could even give a man a long, long life.

This glim must have come from whatever dark hole Shard LeFel had crawled himself out of.

Jeb smiled. He was hungry for that. For the glim that fueled an undead thing. Powerful hungry.

This he understood. This he could destroy. So easy.

He tore the ticker apart and broke the vial with his teeth. He sucked up the glim, taking it down like corn whiskey, and licking his lips for more.

It tasted good, the glim in that matic’s brain. It filled him. Warmed him. Made him stronger. Fueled him too, just like it fueled the undead owl.

He dropped the ticker, which fell in a clank of copper and brass amid the brush and pine needles. Then he started walking again. A little faster than before.

And for the first time since he died, Jeb Lindson laughed.