Tin Swift

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Hink came awake strapped to a table beneath the stretch of a canvas tent. On the one hand he was glad to have missed the fun of being packed like fresh kill out of the ship and into wherever it was that he was now.

On the other, the first real fingers of horror were sliding down his skin along with his cold sweat.

He didn’t know where he was, but he was bound, and General Alabaster Saint was likely on his way.

They’d taken the gag off. That was something. But then, he knew Alabaster liked to hear a man beg.

The sound of boot soles over stone and dirt somewhere off over his right shoulder caught his attention.

He turned his head that way.

A tall man in a long coat and stovepipe hat stood in the corner of the room with a doctor’s bag open on the table in front of him. He was drawing knives, saws, and clamps out of the bag, inspecting them, before setting them down in a neat, straight row.

Even though Hink didn’t say anything, the man paused, and swiveled his head so that his eyes, lost in shadows of the hat and scarf around his neck, fixed on him.

“You,” he breathed, a strange sound that made the word seem foreign on his lips. “Have touched the witch.”

Hink had no idea what the hell he was talking about and opened his mouth to say so.

The man skittered across the room. Fast. So fast that Hink didn’t have time to close his mouth before the man was above him, his fingers stuck between Hink’s teeth, prying his jaws open.

Hink yelled a bit, trying to shake the man’s fingers free from his mouth, but the man just clamped his other hand down over Hink’s forehead and pressed down to hold him still.

Then the man leaned in so close, Hink felt the spiderweb tickle of his scarf brush against his cheek. Something inside that man was ticking, clicking like a cog with a broken tooth. Whatever it was that kept that man together, it wasn’t of God’s design.

He was Strange. Like Mr. Hunt had said the other men were. Made of bits, made of something rotting, something ticking.

The man ratcheted Hink’s mouth open a little more, then placed his face so near Hink’s lips that Hink could taste his moist, hot exhale. The man sniffed at Hink’s mouth, then inhaled deeply.

“You are sweet with her,” he cooed. “Sweet with her magic.” He lifted away just enough to peer down into his eyes. “Shall I bleed her magic out of you?”

“Mr. Shunt,” a voice said from somewhere near Hink’s boots. “Step away from my prisoner.”

Hink knew that voice. General Alabaster Saint.

Mr. Shunt held still, making his decision. Then he slipped his fingers out of Hink’s mouth, revoltingly slow, stroking the inside of his cheek, the side of his tongue and finally his lip as he pulled his fingers away. He straightened and licked Hink’s spittle from his fingertips.

“Your prisoner,” Mr. Shunt said. “And the witch? My witch. Where is my witch?”

“I have ships out looking,” Alabaster said as he paced nearer, but not near enough Hink could see him yet. “You’ll have your witch soon enough. And the heads of the hunter and wolf. For now, leave me.”

“Will he scream?” Shunt asked.

“Yes,” General Alabaster Saint said, stepping up nice and close now, so Hink could see him, and his two eyes, one flat brown, the other the color of old tin, but both of them working. “He will.”

Shunt gave the Saint a nod and Hink heard him retreat to the corner of the room but didn’t hear him leave. Of course his heart was pounding so hard in his ears, he was surprised he could even hear the Saint’s words.

“After all these years gone past,” the Saint said, “you and I are finally at the table of negotiation.”

Hink kept his mouth shut. He knew he wasn’t getting out of this in one piece.

“Nothing to say?” the Saint asked. “As I recall, you always had a smart mouth. Testified against me on every charge. Had me dismissed from my command, from the army. Dishonored. All for trading weapons, profiteering, and disobeying orders of retreat. So many things you had to say about my character then. And now? Silence.

“Perhaps you fully realize your situation. You know I intend to make you pay for all you have taken from me, Mr. Cage.”

“Marshal,” he said.

“Marshal Cage,” the general agreed. “The president’s man. Charged to speak with his law and act on his honor. When you die, Mr. Cage—for I am going to kill you—it will almost be as if I am killing the president himself. Such pleasure.”

“What about that spook?” Hink asked. “You his man now?”

The general pulled his pipe out of his pocket and tamped tobacco into it with his thumb. “You talk too much. Assume too much. You think I’m threatening you, when I am simply stating facts. I’m going to kill you, Cage. But not before you beg at my feet.”

“The witch,” Mr. Shunt whispered from the corner.

The general’s eyes flashed with anger.

He and the abomination didn’t get along. Good. That might be something Hink could use to his advantage. And if he survived this—not damn likely, but still, he wasn’t the kind of man who gave up—he’d want as much information on the general’s plans as he could get.

“I require silence from all my subordinates, Mr. Shunt,” the general warned.

Mr. Shunt folded his fingers together. They made an eerie clacking sound, as if he was more metal and bone than flesh and blood.

“I require the witch,” Shunt said, quiet as a beast stalking prey.

“If,” the general replied, his voice rising, “you will not fall in line, then you will be escorted out. This is my land, my rule. Do you understand?”

There was a pause. Hink had tried his bindings while the men postured, but there was no slack in them. Alabaster’s men knew how to keep prisoners kept.

“I understand every piece of you,” Mr. Shunt said.

It was a threat. Hink held his breath, waiting for weapons to be drawn. Hoping they would be.

“Then you understand my need to destroy this filth,” the general said.

To Hink’s surprise, Mr. Shunt gave a sort of hissing laugh. “Yes.”

Whatever hope Hink had of finding a way out of this hell was crushed with that one small word.

Alabaster paced away. Hink could just make out the table forge in the corner of the room. It smelled hot.

“You took my men, Mr. Cage,” the general said. “You took my rank. You took my career, and my eye.” There was a pause while he scraped coals, and then there was the pop of his lips sucking flame into the pipe tobacco.

“I never forget those who die for me,” he said, “and I never forgive those who don’t.”

The scrape of metal tongs stirring coals filled the tent.

“So now you have a choice, Mr. Cage.”

Hink strained to hear anything beyond the tent, anything that would tell him where he was. But all he heard was the scratching of something metal stirred in the hot coals, the puff of Alabaster’s pipe, the tick and click of Mr. Shunt, and the rush of the wind outside.

“Do you want me to dig your eye out of your skull?” General Saint asked.

He turned and paced over to Hink, standing above him. “Or do you want to do it yourself, Marshal Cage?”

Sweat rolled down Hink’s neck and he swallowed hard. The general gripped a pair of tongs in his hand. Clamped in those tongs was Hink’s tin badge. It was red-hot, the wicked points of the star dusty white and smoking.

Hink had no weapon, no plan. He’d told his crew to run and they damn well better have run. He was tied down in his enemy’s parlor.

There was no bargaining with the Saint. No forgiveness and no negotiation. Hink knew the general wasn’t offering him a choice so much as just wanting to watch him squirm.

“How about your man, Mr. Shunt?” Hink asked. “Aren’t you going to offer him a go at me?”

“This is between you and me,” the general said.

“Then hand me that poker,” Hink said. “And you’ll have my answer.”

The general puffed on his pipe and smoke curled up around his head, like some kind of devil come elbowing up out of hell.

“I disapprove of your tone, Marshal.” The Saint leaned over him. The heat from the poker lashed a hot shadow over his face. “Struggle. It will make this all the more memorable for me.”

Hink was breathing hard. He clenched his teeth, steeling himself for the pain.

“I’m going to push this through your eye. Then I’m going to stir it in the coals and push it through your other eye. After that, we’ll see how long you can stay alive while I cut off every other part of you, bit by bit.

“But first, let me make it clear to the world just whose man you are.” The general pressed the hot star into the center of Hink’s forehead.

Hink screamed as his skin crisped and burned, pain flaying his nerves.

The Saint removed the star and turned to place it back in the coals.

Blood dripped down into Hink’s ears and eyes, and the rancid smell of burned hair and meat choked his throat.

“Marshal Cage,” the general said, puffing on his pipe. “Now no one will forget exactly who and what you are.”

Just past the rattle of his own heartbeat, the Saint’s words, and the sizzling metal dropping wet into the coals, Hink heard a sound. It was the hum of an engine in the sky.

He knew that engine. He could feel that ship in his blood.

The Swift. She was coming for him.

The general turned with the star in tongs again. “Now, I will have your eyes.”

Hink smiled up at the Saint. “Go to hell.”

“After you, Marshal Cage.” General Alabaster Saint clamped his teeth on the stem of his pipe and then stabbed the poker down.

Hink screamed as agony burst through him and swallowed him whole.