Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn

Light. Nightjars hated light, their skin photosensitized by the virus. My scrabbling fingers found my portable aether tube, filled with the blue marvel of Mr. Edison’s gas, charged only enough to listen to scratchy music or receive the latest reports on protest activity so I could avoid spots where the Proctors were tangling with rioters in the city. It couldn’t even pick up the serial plays Cal loved from the big antennae in New Amsterdam. But it would be enough, I hoped.

“Cal,” I said sharply. “You better move.” He blinked, but he did as I said. I cocked my arm and threw the aether tube straight at the pavement. The brass housing flew apart and the electric coil sparked. The tube itself exploded, shards of treated glass flying everywhere as the gas inside struggled to escape. I’d watched aether reactions before on lanternreels, huge ones that the government detonated in the desert, but this close, even a small wisp of gas was like a bomb. “Cover your eyes!” I cried, and threw myself against the alley wall.

The aether let out a whump when it made contact with the oxygen in the air and blue flame blossomed, glowing like a lightning strike for a few seconds before the reaction gasped away, leaving the scent of burnt paper.

The nightjar began to scream. It wasn’t anything like the bell-tone voice from before. This was harsh, guttural and hungry.

Cal got me up, tugged me by the hand. “We should go now.” I clung to his bony fingers and let him pull me away. My feet refused to work, my knees wouldn’t bend, but somehow I ran.

I looked back once to see the nightjar writhing on the ground, great swaths of skin flaking off into the air as the last bits of the aether danced above it on the breeze.

I didn’t need to see any more. I caught up with Cal, and we ran for the Academy.

WE REACHED THE head of Dunwich Lane and turned onto Storm Avenue before I realized I was still shaking. The gates of the Academy weren’t far, but I stopped and leaned against a lamppost.

Cal tilted his head. “Aoife, you hurt?” He fumbled in his satchel. “I’ve got my first-aid kit somewhere in here … had a valve-fitting lab earlier today.”

“I … I …” I wrapped my arms around myself, even though I had on a peacoat and my uniform jumper beneath it. I was freezing. It felt like death had put a hand on my cheek, put the chill inside me down to my bones, even though the Rationalists taught there was no death, only an end. A period on a sentence, and a blank page.

“I just want to go inside,” I said, unable to take Cal’s anxious expression. Cal was an advanced worrywart. In the two years I’d known him, he never got any less skittish.

“All right,” Cal said. He offered his elbow and I took it, just grateful to hide my shaking legs. I’d never seen a viral creature so close. Madwomen like my mother were one thing, merely infected. A thing fully mutated by the necrovirus from a person with a consciousness and a face into an inhuman nightjar was quite another. The smell of it lingered, like I’d fallen asleep in a nightmare garden.

The gates of the Academy loomed up from the low river fog, and we passed underneath the gear and the rule, the insignia of the Master Builder. The ever-present sign that watched us everywhere, from the stonework of our dormitories and the badges on our uniforms to the arch of the Rationalist chapel at the edge of the grounds. The sign of reason, a ward against the necrovirus and the heretics, that all rational citizens of Lovecraft who followed the Master Builder’s tenets adhered to.

Cal looked at the dining hall, still lit, and sighed. “I guess it’s useless to try and pretend we’re just late.”

Mrs. Fortune proved him right by flying out the hall’s double doors, her long wool skirt and cape flapping behind her. “Aoife! Aoife Grayson, where on Galileo’s round earth have you been?”

Mr. Hesse was hard on her heels. “Daulton, front and center. You know you’re past curfew.” Mr. Hesse was as sharp as Mrs. Fortune was round, and they stood like an odd couple in the lights of the dining hall.

“Aoife, you’re filthy and you stink like a whore’s perfume,” Mrs. Fortune said. I was still chilled but I felt my cheeks heat in humiliation—and in relief that she hadn’t pried at me further. “Go to your room and wash up,” she continued. “You’ll get no supper as punishment.”

No supper might as well have been a warm embrace. If Mrs. Fortune found out I’d been in Old Town and had contact with a viral creature, I could be expelled.

Mr. Hesse cleared his throat loudly, and Fortune favored him with a raised eyebrow. Mrs. Fortune had climbed mountains and trekked Africa as a girl, before she’d landed here. Few crossed her. “What is it, Herbert?” she demanded. I waited. Hesse was notorious for handing out canings and detentions. He was also far more suspicious that we were all misbehaving at all times than Mrs. Fortune. I drew a breath, held it.

“Well?” Mrs. Fortune asked him.

“The girl was wandering the city after six bells, doing stone knows what, and you’re merely withholding a meal?” Hesse said. To punctuate his opinion of my punishment he snapped, “Daulton, the quadrangle. Now. Stand at attention until I come for you.” Standing in formation on the quad didn’t seem unpleasant, on the surface, until you’d be standing at attention, perfectly still, for hours in the cold. Marcos Langostrian had lost a small toe last year from frostbite after he’d been outside all night. He’d deserved it, the little worm, but I felt a pang for Cal as Mr. Hesse glared at him.

Cal heaved a sigh. “See you tomorrow, Aoife. And thank you for … er … before. You’re pretty great.” He set off at a jog for the quad. Hesse peered at me through his glasses. The thick Bakelite frames were too big for his face and made him look even mousier.

“What was he thanking you for, Grayson? Did you lift your skirt for him on the way home? I know you city wards and how you operate, especially the ones with mothers in a—”

“ Mister Hesse,” Mrs. Fortune said in a voice that could have stripped gears. “Thank you for your assistance. Aoife, go on to your room. Don’t you and the unfortunate Mr. Daulton have an exam tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, glad it was mostly dark and Hesse couldn’t see that he’d made me turn colors. I’d learned a long time ago that shouting and fighting over my mother or my reputation just made things worse, and talking sass to a Head of House, well … it didn’t bear thinking about after the trouble I was already in.

It didn’t mean that the thought didn’t spring to mind, to wipe Mr. Hesse’s superior smirk from his mouth. He thought he knew me. The entire Academy thought they had the blueprint of Aoife Grayson, city ward and madwoman’s daughter.

They didn’t know a thing.

“Off you go, then. You’ve been dismissed.” Fortune made a shooing motion with her hands. I trudged to the girls’ dormitory, mounting the four flights of stairs to the second-year floor, tucked beneath the garrets of the old place. The Lovecraft Academy of Arts and Engines was built from several stately homes and their assorted outbuildings, and the girl’s dorm had been a stable. In the summer you could still smell hay and horses up under the eaves. It reminded me of a ghost, a tiny connection to a past that had no necrovirus, no madhouses and no Aoife Grayson, charity student.

My small desk, with its whirlwind of blueprint paper, engineering textbooks and class notes, should have been my destination, but instead I curled up on my bed. Studying wasn’t something that would happen tonight, not after what had transpired with my mother, and with Cal. The iron bedsprings groaned, but I ignored them and rolled on my side, facing the low wall where the ceiling joined. My roommate, Cecelia, was at choir practice for the Hallows’ Eve recital, and aside from the gentle hiss of the aether lamp I was alone.