Dead Iron

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rose eased her horse down out of a trot as soon as she was over the hill and well out of Mr. LeFel’s sight.

The voices whispered to her as they always did. Trees saying they were trees, growing upward and digging deep, settling in for the season’s turn. Plants underfoot calling out a breathy little song of root and wind and long days burning short.

Rose turned them a deaf ear insomuch as she could. She’d always been able to hear the thinking of living things. Over the years, she’d tried to make it stop. Not much seemed to help. The living world had a hundred and a half things it thought needed to be said, though most of it was just the babble of growing and dying.

Wearing the locket helped quiet the ruckus some. So did keeping her hands busy making and devising.

She knew it was crazy to say she could hear things. She’d told her father about it once when she was just about six. He’d beaten her soundly, then kept her on her knees for three and a half days, praying for a saved soul.

Though it pained her, she’d lied to him straight to his face and said all that praying had done the trick, and the voices were gone. He’d told her to tend to her chores that had languished while she was atoning for her sin. And then he’d never smiled at her again.

Somehow, Mrs. Dunken caught wind of what she’d been on her knees for—likely Mrs. Small had told her. Then the whole town knew it. Knew she was crazy.

No one had looked at her the same since, no matter how hard she’d tried to hide her strangeness.

Too wild, they said. Touched in the head. A pity she’d never amount to anything. A pity she hadn’t died young. No wonder her mama left her on a doorstep.

Now, at the ripe age of seventeen, it was clear she was unmarriageable.

Rose tipped her face up and blew out the breath she’d been holding, trying to push some of the old pain away. Yes, she’d wanted a husband and children. Once. But that life wasn’t ever coming her way.

She’d lost it the day she told her daddy she wasn’t like other children.

It was the blacksmith, Mr. Gregor, who had taken her in. Let her sit at his bench and watch him work metal over fire so hot, it took her breath away.

She didn’t hear the metal like she heard living things. But she seemed to understand it better, the way it could be dug up, melted, hammered, and molded. She would sometimes stop still in whatever she was doing, caught by the realization of how a brace could change the power a matic could muster, or how an extra wheel, a shorter chain, or bits never put together before could make something different. Something new. Something worthwhile and good.

Some women were clever with thread and cloth. Some with cooking and gardens. Rose was clever with metal, spring, and cog.

Next spring, she planned on leaving. She’d take what money she’d tucked back for herself, and she’d ride until she found a place in this wide world where she could make things, turn things, devise things, no matter that she was a woman. Maybe she’d come up with a medical device, something that helped the lame walk again. Maybe she’d find a way to catch the light of a star and stick it in a jar for the kitchen table. Maybe she’d devise an airship powered by nothing but a song.

One thing was for sure: she refused to die out her days here, pitied, scorned, and alone. She even had a hope, though it was small and wan, that she might stumble across kin. That there was family out there somewhere, who knew the color of her mother’s eyes, and had once heard her father’s laughter. That there was family who knew her real name.

The matics puffed again, a loud thump of air pounding down. Rose wished she’d thought of bringing a coat or shawl. Even though there was still heat in the day, that Mr. LeFel sucked all the warmth out of a person.

He was clever; that was clear. He was charming and breathtakingly handsome. But he had the feel about him of a snake hidden in reeds. The strangest thing was that all the trees and plants and growing things went dead silent around him.

She’d never seen that happen before. Not once in all her years with all the folk who had stopped through her parents’ shop. Living things didn’t stop living just because a man walked by.

Unless that man was Mr. Shard LeFel.

Rose rubbed at her arms to take the chill out of her skin. Whatever sort of man he was, she wanted nothing more than to be away from him. She’d done her part and delivered the papers. If luck was with her, she wouldn’t need to be anywhere near that man for a long, long while.