The Iron Thorn

29 The Flight of the Crow

“MY BROTHER’S DEAD,” I whispered after twenty heartbeats. “The Proctors shot him in the back.”

Once the words flew from my lips, the truth slammed into me, a weight I could never shake off. I fell to my knees, grit and old dirt digging in through my stockings, and I shook, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Oh, princess.” Dean knelt and hugged me again. I sobbed, wretched sounds ripping from my throat, as a knife of memory twisted deep in my stomach. I would never see Conrad again. Never tell him that I knew he wasn’t mad. Never tell him that I understood why he’d run away.

I could never tell him I forgave him.

I had wasted my time on the Weird, on Dean, on relishing my own freedom. I had let Conrad fall and I hadn’t been there to hold out my hand.

“Bethina said he was alive last she saw him,” Dean whispered. “That those shadow folk took him. Nothing about being shot. The Folk lie, Aoife. They’re already a lie to most rational people, so why shouldn’t they lie to you?”

“I don’t …,” I managed. “I don’t think he was lying.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Dean said. “Nothing in this life is ever certain, doll.”

I had lost my tears, and my eyes stung, swollen and gritty. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow,” I muttered. “Doesn’t matter that he lied to start. I made my bargain. I have to go back to the city, Dean.” Before Tremaine could unleash his particular brand of sadism on everyone else I cared for. Even if I’d lost Conrad already, I could still lose Dean and Cal. And then I couldn’t go on.

Dean helped me to my feet, gently. I was fragile now, a thing that needed to be cosseted. I despised myself in that moment.

“That’s a dangerous proposition. You saw what the Proctors do to heretics who fly across their radar.” Dean rubbed out my tears, tried to clean my face off, but I couldn’t stop more tears from coming.

“I have to,” I repeated. “I have to go back.” Words had lost their weight, their usefulness. Words hadn’t kept Conrad from a bullet in his back, alone on a cold stone street.

“All right,” Dean said. “All right. We’ll work it out. We can talk about it.”

I let him lead me down the ladder and out of the library, feeling adrift as if I were floating in a vast new sea, a sea of sorrow. I had no anchor and no weight. I could float forever.

Bethina and Cal sat at the kitchen table, cards arrayed between them. Bethina slapped her hand down, victory in her grin. “Gin.”

Cal sighed and threw his cards down. “This isn’t normal. You’re some kind of cardsharp, missy. You belong back in the old days in Dodge City.”

“Kid,” Dean said. Cal turned and saw me, and his eyes widened.

“What did you do to her?”

“Shut your trap. She’s had a bad shock,” Dean said. “Bethina, you have any hot tea?”

She pushed back, scattering their rummy game. “Sure enough. Just brewed a pot.”

“With something stronger, if you have it,” Dean said. “For a chaser.”

Bethina pumped water into the chipped enamel kettle and hung it on a hook over the fireplace. “Mr. Grayson kept some whiskey in his desk in the library.”

Dean sat me in a chair and left. He had a half-full bottle of amber when he returned. I couldn’t muster the words to say anything, to do anything except sit and stare.

Cal watched us with a sharp frown. “Aoife, what in the Builder’s name happened? You look like someone walked over your grave.”

“Conrad’s dead,” I whispered. It wasn’t any easier to say, but if possible, the words tasted more bitter.

Cal slumped, like a scarecrow with all of its stuffing pulled out. “How?”

Dean accepted the cup of tea Bethina handed him, added a jigger from the bottle and put it in my hands. “Drink,” he said. “It’ll keep you upright.”

“I’m not sure she should be drinking at a time like this,” Cal said.

Dean sat with the bottle in his hands. “Cowboy, if this isn’t the time for drinking, there ain’t no time at all.”

“We have to go back to Lovecraft,” I said. “We have to go today.”

“Aoife, that’s suicide,” Cal told me. “You said so yourself.”

“That was before,” I said. The tea was terrible, bitter black tea leaves and whiskey combined to burn my throat and tongue, but it calmed the constant waves of vertigo. “Before I made the deal with the Folk.”

“What are you talking about?” Cal edged his chair back. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Dammit, Cal!” I slapped my hand against the table. The playing cards jumped. “This is not the time! And I’m not crazy! Your life and Bethina’s and Dean’s too … they’re all in this balance, so for once, Cal, listen to me.”

“All right, fine.” Cal made a gesture of surrender. “I’m listening.”

I told Dean, Cal and Bethina about Tremaine, my first visit to the Thorn Land, the task he’d set upon me. I told him about how I intended to go home, to the Engine, and try to awaken the queens with my Weird.

I did not tell them how my Weird reacted to even the slightest touch. To feel the Engine flowing through me, the vast and breathless power of its pistons and gears … what would that power do?

I didn’t think about it, and I didn’t say it. I kept my tale short and sparse, because talking about the Folk left a foul taste on my tongue.

When I was finished, Dean gave a low whistle. “That’s a burden to lay on you, Aoife. True enough.”

“It’s … unbelievable,” Cal said. “And impossible.”

“Impossible just means they ain’t thought of a name for it yet,” Dean answered. “What it is, is dangerous.”

“I’m going back,” I told them. “With or without all of you.” I was decided. I had never been so decided before.

“I’m just telling it like it is,” Dean said. “Think on the danger before you go running back into the iron jaws of that place, will you? For me?”

“You saw what can happen,” I said. “Tremaine isn’t a good person, but I made a bargain. My family has a history with the Folk, and I have the Weird, and it means I have the history now. The duty.”

I stood up. The tea had flushed me, warmed me, and dulled the ache of losing Conrad. I had to move now, before I became a cripple again.

“You can help me or you can stay here. I won’t blame you either way. But I’m going back to Lovecraft.”

The Peter Pan jitney depot on the outskirts of Arkham was pockmarked with rust, chrome rubbed off, glass shattered. No one else sat on the damp bench inside the shelter. I was the only one, the old carpetbag I’d found in the wardrobe stuffed with my school clothes and my father’s journal, plus the invigorator and Tremaine’s goggles.

I hadn’t taken much. I wore the sturdy boots and woolen coat and the red dress. I didn’t need anything else.

In the end, I’d elected to leave early in the morning, silent and alone. Cal and Dean needn’t be part of this. It was my bargain to uphold and my burden to bear.

I’d slept not at all. I kept thinking of Conrad, of how it was all gone now—the smile, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand on my shoulder. His simple tricks, the last, anguished glimpse of him before he dropped the knife and ran from my dormitory room.

I had to pack it away and move on because I wasn’t a simple schoolgirl any longer, one who had the luxury of flinging herself across her bed and crying.

I had a duty. My father had lost his brother too. He hadn’t let it stop him. I wouldn’t be the weak link in the Grayson bloodline.

The crows flapped overhead, one alighting on the shelter’s roof. It cocked its head, danced to the left, stared at me with its glass bead eyes.

“Why don’t you go fly back to Tremaine and tell him I’m doing as he asks?” I snapped at it.

“She wouldn’t.” Dean’s voice startled me, his appearance out of the ever-present fog like a camera lens clicking.

I kicked at the carpetbag with my toe. It was indescribably ugly, great orange cabbage roses on a hunter green background. “How can you know?”

“The crows don’t serve the Folk.” Dean sat next to me and performed the ritual of tapping and lighting a Lucky. He clicked his lighter shut and nodded to the crow. “They’re psychopomps. Guardians protecting the ways between the lands. Iron, Mist and Thorn, they all got doorways.”

“I don’t see why they’re always bothering me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dean took a drag. “Then why are you at the jitney stop, sweetheart?”

I shot him a glare. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

He picked up my hand and pressed his lips against the back, the briefest of touches, but it shattered the fragile dam I’d built around the events of the previous day. I moved into his arms silently, and let his body warm mine while the fog swirled.

“You’re alone?” I said.

“Nah.” Dean exhaled. Tobacco smoke made a halo around our heads. “The kid’s coming too. I left him with time to say goodbye to Bethina.”

“Good. I hope he goes back to her when this is over.” I checked the schedule for the dozenth time. There were still quarters of hours yet before any jitney would come, but my stomach was throbbing with nerves.

“I know you’re not scared, not you.” Dean’s heartbeat was steady, steady as a clock. “So what are you? I know something’s up after that scene about your brother.”

“I’m angry,” I said. “I’m angry that I know nothing about my family and that those Proctor bastards shot Conrad, and I’m angry there’s nothing I can do about any of it except take orders from that pale bastard.” I crumpled the schedule and tossed it into the road. “That’s all my life’s been, Dean. Doing what I’m told.”

Dean dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his boot. “I made you something.”

“Oh really?” I grumbled, not in the mood to be cheered up. “Have you taken up knitting in all of your spare time?”

Dean pressed a folded scrap of vellum into my hand. “That’s what folks in my part of the underworld call a geas.”

The scrap was folded on itself eight times, inked with a circle and a cross. “Dean …” I flinched as it prickled on my palm. “Dean, did you go snooping in the witch’s alphabet? You used it?”

“No!” Dean exclaimed forcefully. “I told you, I can’t do that sort of thing.”

“Then how?” I demanded, fed up with his denials. I wasn’t dumb. “You said you didn’t have a Weird, just a knack. Either you’re lying or snooping.”

Dean heaved a sigh. “Those the only two options you can come up with, eh? I’m either a liar or a spy?”

“Or both,” I shot back. “Dean Harrison, tell me what is going on this instant. And take this.” I thrust the paper at him. I wasn’t prepared to bear any more secrets for anyone else.

“A geas is a powerful enchantment,” Dean said. “It can steal your free will and your breath in the same moment. You shouldn’t give it back lightly.”

“I expect fibbing from Cal,” I said, getting angry he’d try to flummox me with a silly trick. “But I’d think you, at least, would be straight with me.”

“I am being straight with you!” Dean shouted. All around us, the crows took flight. “I made that. Made it for you, and nobody but. I didn’t need a musty book to tell me how, either.”

“You said you didn’t have a gift,” I gritted. “So either you lied, or you didn’t trust me.”

Dean jumped up as well and met me, our gazes inches apart. “You’re right, okay?” His face bore two spots of red and his chest was heaving with angry breaths. “I’m not like you, but I do have something. Did it occur to you that maybe I’m not as thrilled about it as you are? That maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth?”

That put the damper on the flaming spout of anger boiling in me. “Dean … I didn’t mean it like that.”

“For your edification, princess, my mother taught me that geas,” he said, voice rough as sandpaper. “She stuck around just long enough to teach me to find north. Find lost things. Bind the truth. Nothing like your great gift”—the way he said it was like a slap—“but enough so that I could get by with one foot in Iron and the other foot somewhere else.”

“I didn’t know your mother taught you,” I said, suddenly feeling very small. Dean thought I found him common. I was just as bad as the horrid Uptown brats in Lovecraft. “Was she … a witch, like?”

“She wasn’t a damn witch,” Dean snarled. “A witch is a faker who gets hunted down and burned alive by Proctors. She was better than that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, too quiet because I was embarrassed. “I was wrong to accuse you.”

“Aoife,” Dean said, and the pain in his voice broke me from my own moment of shame, “I’m not mad at you. But … I ain’t told you the truth. And I owe you that.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, even though I desperately wanted to know Dean’s secret. “I didn’t expect to get your life story when I hired you.”

“It’s different now,” Dean said. He stepped forward, cupped my chin and kissed me softly. I cocked my head.

“What was that for?”

“Because when I’ve said my tale, I might not get the chance again.” His gaze darted from me to the road and the trees and back. I’d never seen Dean nervous before now, never mind scared. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I reached out and smoothed down the lapel of his leather jacket. “Just tell me.”

“You weren’t wrong,” Dean said. “My mother wasn’t a child of men, Aoife. She was something else.”

I pulled back, suddenly mindful of Tremaine’s tales of places outside the Thorn Land, places that spawned things like the mist, the corpse-drinkers. “I don’t understand.”

“She was an Erlkin,” Dean said. “No word for it in English. The People of the Mists, they’re called, ruled by the Wytch King. The shadow-mirror of the Folk.”

In the new light of his words, Dean’s elfin ways and his peculiar skills with direction and finding, his miles-deep eyes came together, and when I looked again, the boy I’d hired in the Rustworks stared back at me, changed into something otherworldly. He didn’t frighten me, though. If anything, I wanted to kiss him again even more badly.

“Please, Aoife,” he whispered. “Don’t you bolt on me. When my old man kicked, I decided I’d rather be a heretic than a—a half-breed. And I’ve been living underground ever since. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

“Are there many of you?” I said. It was the only question that came to mind. “Have the Folk been coming here all this time and having children like you?”

“I am not from the Thorn Land,” Dean snarled. “The Folk enslaved the Erlkin at the start of everything. We may have bowed to them, but we ain’t broken.”

“Tremaine called you something,” I remembered. “ ‘Greaseblood.’ ”

“That’s their word.” Dean’s eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them, thunderheads and lightning in his gaze. “Not ours. It’s what they call us when we work in their silver mines and their foundries. I’m an Erlkin, and I’m not shamed by it.”

He stood with his fists curled, like he expected someone to challenge him on the point. I waited for a horrid transformation, for the noxious mist to curl in around us and steal me away, but Dean just stayed where he was, looking like he wanted to pick a fight with the shadows.

“I wish you’d told me,” I said. “At least after we saw Tremaine. He made me think that everything outside the Thorn Land, in the mist, was vile, and I”—I swallowed down the lump of shame—“I was scared of you for a moment.”

“I guess I handled that like a rat,” Dean said. “And I’m sorry. You and me … we’re new. The truth is new.”

“I guess you won’t be coming back with me,” I said. “Seeing how you feel about the Folk, and me being bound with them.”

Dean started to speak, but I held up a hand. “I understand, Dean. It’s too much to ask.” I got my carpetbag and stepped out of the shelter. The fog was ready to welcome me, as it always was.

“Aoife.” Dean ran to catch up with me. “You really think after what I just told you, I’m going to walk away?”

“I would,” I admitted, “if I were you. I wouldn’t do a thing for the people that hurt my mother. She’s my mother. I have to look out for her.”

“Our mothers are real different, then,” Dean muttered. “Mine was no prize. I’m proud to be Erlkin, but I ain’t proud to be her son. No”—he shook his head—“I’m going with you, because I know that you can never trust the Folk. A bargain with them is a glove full of thorns. No way you go alone.”

“And the geas?” I was still holding the knot of paper. It still prickled and crackled in my palm.

“That geas binds the recipient to the truth,” Dean said. “I was thinking you could use it on Tremaine.” He folded my fingers around the enchantment. “He’ll call you back after the bargain is done. Probably to gloat. Set a flame to that slip of paper, and a lie couldn’t crawl past his lips if it had turbines and a tailwind.”

“I know you think it’s a bad idea,” I said, secreting the geas in my coat pocket, “but honestly, the Folk haven’t had a good turn either. Someone cursed them, killed their entire world.”

“You’re sure?” Dean’s mouth flattened to a thin line of skepticism. “The Folk have a slippery grip on the truth, at best. I wouldn’t be sorry if their whole land of oak, ash and thorn crumbled up into nothing and blew away.”

I patted the journal, inside the carpetbag. “I’m sure.” Even as I half-lied, my father’s words came back to me. But maybe he hadn’t listened to the truth. My father was hard and certain of everything. And he used the Folk as much as they used him. His Weird wasn’t mine, and I had Cal to consider as well.

A rumble grew from the mist, and twin lanterns pierced the fog like the great eyes of the Old Ones.

The jitney hissed to a stop, steam escaping the vents and tracks chewing up the gravel road. The driver cranked the door open.

“The cowboy better get a move on,” Dean said as he helped me up the steps. “Otherwise he’ll be waiting for the next jitney with no one but ghouls for company.”

“I’m here!” Cal came flapping down the shoulder of the road, hauling his schoolbag in his wake like a ferry towing a rowboat. “I’m coming!”

The driver looked at all of us. “Where are your parents, girlie?” he demanded.

“Back in the city,” I answered without skipping a beat. “My mother will be waiting for us.”

“I don’t like your look,” the driver told Dean. “No trouble on the bus. I’ll toss you off and I’ve got a nightstick to do it with.”

“I’ll behave like I’m in the Builder’s chapel,” Dean said. The driver glared.

“And I don’t like your smart mouth. Go to the back, sit down and shut up.”

He stopped me with an arm. “That’ll be three-fifty apiece, girlie. For my good nature.”

“Three dollars?” I looked up at the posted fares: LOVECRAFT—$1, POINTS SOUTH—$2.50, NEW AMSTERDAM PORT AUTHORITY—$3.

“Or I could always call the truant officer up here in Arkham,” he said with a grin that dripped venom. “Have him speak to the Proctors about three kids running around the country when they should be in school.”

“You shyster …” Cal started for the driver, but I got between them.

“Cal, it’s fine.” I pulled out eleven dollars from my money roll and shoved it into the fare slot. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.” To the driver I said, “Keep the change, pal,” with a sneer worthy of Dean. He punched my tickets and handed them over, still grinning.

“You’re cute when you’re mad, girlie. You should sit up front by me.”

I darted away from his grasp and followed Dean to the last row of seats. “Why are normal people such scum?” I growled.

“Because scum floats,” Dean answered. He slouched, his hair in his eyes, and glared at any passenger who stared too long at our trio. Cal fussed himself into the seat ahead of me, nearly too tall for the space under the luggage rack.

“Plain highway robbery. I should report him to the jitney company.”

The driver put his fat hands on the levers and spun the steam dial to full, and the coach lurched forward, rattling over the road. I listened to the thrum of the gears and they soothed my Weird, speaking to it and warming it in steam. It still sat uneasy inside my head, but it no longer felt as if it would split my skull.

“We have more important things to worry about,” I said.

“Like what?” Cal demanded, still in high dudgeon. I wiped condensation away from the window and made a small pane to watch the country pass. I would do as Tremaine asked and then I would be free, and I could avenge Conrad, find my father and give him back the job of Gateminder.

I looked back at Cal. “Like how we’re going to gain entrance to the Engineworks.”

We sat in silence until the jitney came off the mountain and was rolling along the broader road through the valley, all conversation of the other passengers drowned in the hiss of steam and the clank of the track.

I’d let the idea grow and germinate in my mind while I’d lain awake the night before. It was a welcome relief from the niggling fear that Tremaine’s lie about Conrad had been only the first of many.

I laid out my plan for Dean and Cal.

“There are plenty of vents under the city,” I said. “And some go out to the river.” I rattled the devices secreted inside my carpetbag. “We can wait until low tide and we can use this to go down to the vent. We can use the invigorator to get through the guard lattice and then we’ll be in the Engineworks.”

“Aoife, the river’s got to be near freezing,” Cal said.

I’d also thought of the contingency plan. “We’ll go to the Academy first. The Expedition Club has cold-water diving suits.” Marcos Langostrian was president of the club, and I’d take a distinct pleasure in using his silly diving suit to infiltrate the Engine.

“That might work,” Cal said slowly. Dean shook his head.

“Dangerous. Just like I said before.”

“It will work.” I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched the mountains turn to hills and the hills turn to frozen fields. “It has to.”