Cold Copper: The Age of Steam (4 page)

It would be the perfect cover for a thief, but she knew by the weight in her pockets that he wasn’t that either.

“Apology accepted,” she said. “It was my fault as much as yours. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Rose glanced up at the street to see exactly where her wandering feet had taken her.

Hardware store, tinsmith, tailor, but not the shops familiar to her.

She’d walked most this town, coming in to pick up necessaries for the witches of the coven, and more often than that, to linger at the blacksmith’s or talk to the elder Mr. Travis, who spent most his time repairing watches while his sons and grandsons minded the shop and customers.

But she wasn’t on the side of town she knew best.

“I’m not sure I know quite where I am, to tell you the truth,” she said.

“Oh?” He looked up and down the street, and at the rambling townsfolk, horses, and buggies, as if trying to get his bearings himself. “We are just east of Bucker’s Run, I believe.”

The man had a deep blue canvas-covered book in his hand, which he used to point at the shingled cottage and hitching post behind them a bit. “That’s Old Miss Bucker’s place, if you’re of the curiosity.”

Rose scowled. “There’d never be enough curiosity in me to want to know about Miss Bucker’s place or any other place of such negotiable affections, thank you very much,” she said archly.

The man frowned, his eyebrows dunking down to the tops of his glasses. “I’m not sure I understand why you wouldn’t want—oh,” he said. Then, a little louder, “Oh! No, I assure you, ma’am, Miss Bucker isn’t a…isn’t one of those…Why, it’s not…It is a lending library.”

He held up the book as if to prove the use of the place, and she noticed that his cheeks had gone a high color. “I would never, I assure you upon my honor, I would never suggest a woman with your obvious”—he swallowed hard and stepped back just a bit so he could gesture toward her—“qualities would be interested in a place of ill repute.”

The poor man was tying his cinch in knots, trying to secure her favorable perception of him while defending her honor. It was…sweet.

“Please, Mr.… ?” she said.

“Wicks,” he supplied. “Thomas Wicks, at your service.” He gave her a small bow.

Rose smiled again. Such manners on this man, she wondered where he’d been raised. “I am surely sorry for my hasty and poor estimation of you, Mr. Thomas Wicks,” she said. “I’m afraid you haven’t caught me at my best.”

“That collision of ours may have jumbled us both a bit,” he said. “Miss… ?”

“Small,” she said. “Rose Small.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. “Might I accompany you back to roads more familiar?”

Rose looked around again. A steamer cart chugged down the half-frozen street, high walls painted with DIRKSON’S CELLAR ICE across the side.

The weather was taking a turn for the worse, and that stone-colored sky was about to dump more than rain over the town. She wasn’t the only person who knew it. All the folk on the street were rushing to get business done, and get back to warmth and walls before the storm hit.

Everyone was in a hurry except one figure—a man. He stood on the corner of the street, his broad shoulders leaned against the wood
telegraph pole there, his hands in the pockets of his long leather duster, and his head tipped down so his eye patch was shadowed by the brim of his hat.

But from out of that shadow, his remaining eye, blue as a heartbreak, shone.

She would recognize that man anywhere, in any town, for the rest of her living days: Captain Lee Hink.

He knew she saw him, and still he stood there, watching her as she talked with a very handsome, educated man.

He had followed her. She didn’t know why. Maybe just to tell her she was wrong. Maybe to tell her more hurtful things, like he never wanted to see her again.

She’d had enough hurt for one day. She just couldn’t talk to him right now.

“Miss Small?” Mr. Wicks said. “Is something the matter?”

“No,” she said, turning to give him her best smile. “Nothing at all. If you wouldn’t mind terribly, I’d love to see the library.”

His face lit up. “It would be my pleasure.” He held out his arm for her and she took it.

Just as they reached the door, Rose glanced over her shoulder. Captain Hink strode away into the storm, a paper rose falling from his fingers into the muddy street behind him.

C
edar Hunt never once doubted that the Madders were crazy. He had no need for them to prove it to him so thoroughly again.

The miner brothers laughed and hollered at one another as the mule-drawn wagon-turned-ship set sail to catch the punishing wind of the blizzard and barrel down the frozen river.

To turn a wagon into an ice-fairing vessel was a genius bit of thinking. But to sail the whole thing faster than a horse at full gallop upon a frozen river in a blizzard they could barely see through was the kind of madness reserved for those who live very short, albeit colorful, lives.

Cedar sat in the driver’s seat of the wagon, holding tension in the ropes to the port sail, his goggles keeping the stinging snow out of his eyes, but not doing much else to help him see through the blinding white. Alun Madder sat on the far side of the seat, minding the starboard sail. Cadoc Madder sat between them, holding the reins not for mules but for the steering contraption they’d made. All of them were taking orders from the middle brother, Bryn, who sat atop the wagon with a compass in one hand and lantern in the other, yelling out commands.

Mae Lindson and Miss Dupuis were in the back of the wagon. Mae had cast a binding of calm over the two mules and one horse that stood on the wooden platform being dragged behind the back of the wagon. Just to be sure the animals didn’t panic and harm themselves, they’d
also blindfolded them. The combination of witchcraft, blindfolds, and exhaustion of the last week of travel insured the beasts remained docile.

“Bend in the river, west five degrees,” Bryn yelled out.

“West five degrees!” Alun Madder said.

Cedar and Alun both leaned hard on the sails, muscling them into trim to slow the wagon. Cadoc pulled hard on the rudder near his foot, sending their mad craft skidding to the west.

They made the corner without tipping, let the sails loose, angled to catch the wind, and picked up at top speed smoothly.

“Spent some time sailing, Mr. Hunt?” Alun Madder yelled as they successfully completed the maneuver.

“Enough,” Cedar yelled back.

“Thin ice, starboard!” Bryn bellowed. Cedar didn’t know how they’d made a device that could predict the depth of the ice. Bryn Madder’s rushed explanation, while they’d been attaching the rods with springs at the ends so they stretched in different directions beneath the wagon, about how different sounds of ice thickness were akin to thumping a ripe gourd to check for hollowness didn’t do much to clear things up either.

Cedar hated trusting his life to other men’s wild-hair ideas. But they’d been shooting across the ice for near an hour now, and had stayed on a solid path.

Cadoc pulled on the rudder again, adjusted course to guide the wagon to the thickest ice in the center of the river.

The river took a soft push to the right, then left again, snaking a path between the trees. The rise and fall of hills became visible and were gone as they flashed past them.

The wind shifted, slowed. The wagon slowed too as they came round the bend, all the rattling and clattering of the vessel quieting some as the trees on either side of the river bent in closer.

“Go on now,” Alun muttered. “Go on.”

Cadoc, next to Cedar, leaned forward as if urging the wagon to pick up speed.

Cedar glanced up at Bryn. Every fold of his coat and hat was covered in snow, the goggles over his eyes reflecting bloodred in the yellow glow of the lantern in his hand.

Tense. These men sensed a danger ahead of them Cedar did not feel. They wanted the wind, wanted speed to escape whatever was ahead.

He inhaled, exhaled, scenting for the Strange. Yes, the Strange were close, but not as close as they had been before Cedar had set sail on this ice trundler. The Strange were not the danger the Madders were trying to outrun.

His ears were good under normal circumstances, and now, with the full moon just a day off, they were even sharper. He didn’t hear anything other than the push of wind in trees farther off, the shifting of the ice beneath the sleds and the crack and muffled
thump
of branches breaking beneath the weight of snow in the distance.

“What is it?” Cedar asked.

“Nothing,” Alun snapped. “Can’t you find us a breeze on that compass of yours, brother Bryn?”

“Might have to fashion ourselves our own gale,” Bryn said.

“No wind will take us far enough away,” Cadoc said in a soft tone most often reserved for storytellers. “The wind is gone and has left a song made of strings, knotted notes that tie and bind. We gave our word. Our word drags like an anchor.”

“There are more important things than an old promise,” Alun said loud enough to be heard a half mile away. “The Holder comes before anything, or anyone else.”

“We gave our word, and with it our right to choose,” Cadoc said even more quietly.

“Our word can be upheld another day,” Alun said. “The world is in danger. The Holder, even now, is poisoning rivers, fields, cities. The longer the Holder is unfound, the more of this land it will destroy. We will not set one foot in that town. Not before the Holder’s found.”

Cadoc turned enough in his seat so he could look at Alun. He raised one finger, as if pointing to the heavens.

A sweet song rose on the chill stillness of the night, a flute-pipe of notes that seemed so near Cedar glanced in all directions to be sure the player wasn’t hiding in the muted darkness and falling white around them.

Wil was back in the wagon with Mae and Miss Dupuis. He whined softly at the sorrowful song.

The tune tumbled to its end, repeating the last five notes slowly. All three Madders turned, as if pulled by the same string, to face west.

Then Cadoc spoke. “I have given my word, and I will keep it.”

“No,” Alun said.

“A Madder’s vow cannot be broken,” Bryn said from above them.

“We move on,” Alun growled.

“I will stay,” Cadoc said.

“I will stay,” Bryn said.

Cedar had heard the brothers argue before, usually loudly with fists and threats and insults. But this was serious, the tension between them hard-edged. Something very important, or very dangerous, rode on this decision. A decision Alun Madder appeared to be on the losing side of.

“Our promise is not easily given,” Cadoc said. “It is nearly impossible to earn the Madders’ oath, the Madders’ favor. But once given, it cannot be broken. Especially not by us, Brother Alun.”

Alun swore one hard, burning word. Then he rubbed his mittened hand over his beard, scraping away snow and ice. His gaze searched the shadows around them as if he had lost something valuable.

“We knew this day would come,” Bryn said.

“Aye.” Alun sighed. “We did. This will be the last of it. No man there will have another promise from me. But on this old vow, they will collect. And it will be the last time I set foot in this devil’s town.”

“It will be the last time any of us set foot in this devil’s town,” Cadoc said. “He, I am sure, will see to it.”

“He?” Cedar asked. “Who?”

“The devil,” Cadoc said.

The wind picked up again and snow sifted down like flour through a sieve. The wagon scuttled onward, crawled along as fast as a man could walk.

Ahead a glimmer of gold sparked and burned brightly, perhaps a lantern on the west edge of the bank.

“Just a ways now,” Bryn said. “Catch the wind’s march, boys. We’ll be to land soon.”

Cedar adjusted the sail, and so did Alun. Just as Bryn had said, the wind drew them smoothly, slowly, as if dreading the journey, while Cadoc steered them toward the ever-brightening light.

Soon Cedar could make out its source.

A man in a full cloak with a wide, heavy hood sat on a horse on a rise over the bank. He held an oversized lantern, mirrored to enhance its flame. The light threw shadows against his face so thick, Cedar couldn’t make out a single angle of his features.

“Trim the sails,” Bryn said. “This is our stop.”

“Do you know that man?” Cedar asked as the wagon came to a creaking stop, sleds skiffing over the ragged ice at the river’s edge and riding up to settle in the snow on the bank.

“No,” Alun said. “We knew his family, I expect.”

“Ho, stranger,” Bryn called out. “What town lies beyond this bank?”

“Des Moines,” the man answered, his accent pressing hard on the spaces between the words. “Where do you fare from?”

“Long away and better days.” Alun jumped down out of the driver’s seat and lashed the ropes of the sail tight so the wagon didn’t go wandering off onto the ice again.

“Was it your song playing?” Cadoc Madder stepped onto the snowy ground too and saw to resetting the hitch so the mules could pull the wagon on land again.

“It was the song of my father, and his before him,” the man said.

“Father’s, eh?” Alun asked. “I suppose it has been some years since we were last through. We’ll need shelter for the night and a place for the animals out of the storm.”

“Yes,” the stranger said. “Follow me.”

It didn’t take long to get the animals situated to pull the wagon. Mae released the calming spell, and the mules and horse all seemed a little spooked to find themselves in the middle of a snowstorm.

With some pushing, pulling, coaxing, and cussing, they managed to get the wagon up the bank and onto a road.

*   *   *

It was well and dark now and the only light came from the lantern the man carried, the lanterns on the wagons, and the occasional flickering behind the thick glass of the houses they passed.

The streets of Des Moines rambled between haphazard structures built with the hurried signs of sudden growth now that the railroad joining the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers had come through town. That, along with the mines of coal, lead, and a rare vein of copper, had put the city’s star on the map.

The town was quiet beneath the snow. Houses gave way to warehouses, shops, and brick buildings. Now and again a shout broke the night, a gunshot cracked, or the rattle of laughter and piano reminded Cedar of this city’s restless state.

Des Moines had grown dense with the people who had settled here for years. Now more were coming through, building businesses, clearing land for farms, working the mines, and seeing to the shipping of grains, cattle, devices, and other goods between the east and west.

The railroad and telegraphs that connected this great land had been a boon to the town and had given it enough spunk to build tall buildings, airship fields, and foundries.

It was a city now. Called itself the capital of Iowa.

Cedar thought it might be the sort of town Rose Small was hoping
to see one day: full of busy and bustle, fed by all the new ideas coming on rails from the east. He wished, for a moment, that she might be here with them. Then the wind scraped across his exposed skin and he was glad she was safe and warm back in the Kansas coven.

They turned down a street lined by unlit lamps, then left that street for another, and finally came to a winding lane.

Cedar rolled his shoulders. The press of people sleeping just behind the tall walls was a palpable weight on his nerves. Dawn would come too soon. By moonrise tomorrow, he’d be full under the hold of the Pawnee curse and in the body of a beast.

Hungry for Strange blood.

The Madders hadn’t said a single word as they traveled the streets; neither had their host, who led them down the lane.

In short time, a structure rose at the end of the path.

A single candle in a high arched window flickered in the framework building. Above that rose a blocky bell tower with a simple cross atop it. A church. From the look of it, a very old but well-kept house of worship.

The rider took them past the building to a barn that was larger than the church by half. He dismounted and motioned them forward into the shelter.

The barn wasn’t large enough for the wagon, but there was a generous lean-to, beneath which the wagon would be shielded from the worst of the weather.

Their host led his horse into the barn and they followed.

“There are stalls for your animals here.” The man pushed the wide hood of his cloak away, revealing black hair smoothed back from his wide forehead and tied in a single braid that fell at least halfway down his back. He had the tanned skin and carved angles to his face that spoke clearly of native descent. And yet, he wore a modern man’s clothing. At his neck hung a simple silver cross.

An Indian preacher? Cedar didn’t think he’d ever heard of such a thing.

“Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “Please see to the mules and our host’s horse. We have business to conduct with Father Kyne here. I assume there’s room in the church?”

The native man nodded. “Find your welcome. I will follow in a moment.”

Alun strode out of the barn, impatience clipping his step. “Brothers,” he said. “Let’s get this done with.”

Bryn and Cadoc turned heel and followed him.

Wil was waiting in the shadows. As soon as the Madders had passed by, he slipped into the barn.

Mae and Miss Dupuis led the mules and horse toward stalls, all of the animals too tired to care about the unfamiliar surroundings.

“They’re in a hurry,” Mae said. “Do you know why?”