Devon Monk - Dead Iron

She let her wedding ring dangle from the string. The weight of the ring guided the wool in a lazy swing. Nothing yet decided, no direction for her to follow. She concentrated on her question. Should she search north or south?

The wool continued to circle.

Wooden trinkets on the shelves around the room clicked and cooed, as wind from the window propped open on the back of a wooden rabbit swirled into the house, stirring and stroking the devices lovingly carved by Jeb. One little carving set with copper springs and wooden cogs was a pipe of sorts, fashioned in the shape of two squat miners standing in a wooden river. The wind slipped in through the pipe’s mouth hole, strong enough to push the miners up, giving out a birdlike warble as they rose and fell. That in turn shifted the cog, moving slots of the river slowly up and down, changing the tune like a slide whistle.

Mae glanced up at the toy. A much more delicate reed chime hung next to the whistle, yet the wind had not stirred the chime, choosing instead to make the miners dance.

Was that her direction? Miners? The Madder brothers mined the mountains to the north.

Should she go to the brothers and seek their help?

The wool across her fingertips shifted, and swung a new arc. North and south.

North. To the Madders.

She held her ring still against her heart for a breath or two. She had another question to ask. Would Mr. Hunt agree to her offer and come to her before nightfall?

She released the ring, and it settled into a counterclockwise spin. The answer was no.

Mae closed her eyes. She had hoped he would agree to her offer. Had hoped his hunting skills would make finding the killer quick.

She had seen the curse that lay coiled within him, but could not tell the exact nature of it unless he allowed her to use magic on him. He was a chained man, an angry man. But had refused to take the key she’d offered to put in his hand, and she did not know why.

Mae opened her eyes. She didn’t need the hunter. She would find her husband’s killer on her own and deal with him on her own. No matter how long that took.

The Madder brothers were said to be devisers, though no one in town had seen their contraptions. Likely they had weapons and tools suited for hunting.

She stood and dusted her skirt, then placed her ring back on her finger. A gust of wind, cold as winter’s heart, rushed into the room. She gasped as it bit through the homespun of her dress and flew into the hearth, toppling the bowl over and tearing the flame apart so quickly, it smothered out. So thoroughly was the wood snuffed, not even smoke rose up the flue.

Mae stared at the hearth and the overturned bowl. It was a dark sign, an omen of death, of Strange things.

Mae shut the window. So be it. She aimed to see Jeb’s murderer dead and buried. No matter how shadowed the path that would lead her down. She’d walk through death and more to make the killer pay.

She pulled her shawl off the hook, and tied her bonnet beneath her chin. Wooden clicks and clatter from wings and windmills and chimes hung about the house, stirred in the still air. If Jeb had carved words into those trinkets, they’d be whispering warnings to her.

“I mean to find his killer,” she said quietly to the small bits of wood and metal, to the memory of Jeb within them. “And there is nothing that will stand in my way.”

But all her anger wouldn’t kill a man. She’d need a weapon. The omen warned it might be more than a man she hunted. It might be the Strange.

Mae paused at the door, then turned back to her sewing basket. She took up the delicate double-moon tatting shuttle Jeb had given her on a chain as a courting gift. It was a good-luck token, carved by his hand and inlaid with thin silver vines and gold leaves. It was the most valuable thing she owned. She didn’t want to offer it up in trade to the Madders, but she would if she had to.

The knot of grief in her chest spread out and dug hard into her ribs. She took a deep breath and refused to cry a single tear more. Jeb was gone. His love, his warmth, ended. Now she had rage to keep her warm.

She folded the shuttle carefully within a bit of silk stitched at each corner with thread she’d spun in starlight, then soaked in rosemary. It wasn’t much, certainly not a weapon that could be used against the killer. But it was valuable. She hoped, if necessary, it would be a good item to trade for the Madder brothers’ help. If not, then she had coin in her bank safety box they might find fitting barter for a device that could kill a man or monster.

Her home was silent, not a click or whir from any corner. No longer filled with the sound of her spinning wheel and Jeb’s singing set to the tick of his carving knife over wood, or the hot iron and crimps as he bent metal. It was silent as the grave. Dead as her heart.

She pulled the anger and rage closer. If death was her only life now, she would embrace it. She strode out into the morning light, pulling the door hard behind her.

Cedar made good time over the flats past town, then around Powder Keg Bluff. The wind was at his back, and what clouds came up with dawn burned away as the day went on. He’d been by the brothers’ mine before, but not too close. The Madders made no secret of the trips and alarms they’d put in place to remind anyone who wandered their way of just how valuable they held their privacy. Rumors said they had gun-wielding matics that could take a man down at a hundred yards without a single finger touching a trigger.

Cedar didn’t know whether that was true, and hadn’t found a need strong enough to test the fate of a person arriving unannounced at the Madders’ mine.

Until now.

He pulled up a good half mile from the mine, swung down out of the saddle, and swigged a mouthful of water from his canteen before pulling his crystal-sighted Walker out of his saddle holster. He drew his goggles up from around his neck. The enhanced-distance lens might do him some good. He stayed on the ground, less of a target out here with scant tree cover, and pulled his goggles over his eyes, tipping the brim of his hat to angle a bit of shade over his vision. With a roll of his finger over the brass gear at the side of the goggles, he adjusted his vision to high magnification. He could also slip down a thin slice of ruby, which gave a man an edge on seeing in the night, or shutter the goggles with slit brass, which made sight in the glare of sun on snow more bearable.

He’d purchased these from a watch deviser outside Chicago—the same man he’d bought his brother’s watch from.

Animal trails led up the mountain, but the mine entrance and the area around it was covered by scrub. He paid particular attention to the stones stacked up in a tumble from where the mountain had shaken them loose. Looked for the telltale glint of metal among the rocks, searching for guns or tickers.

Not a flash of brass, not a copper glow. If the Madder brothers had guns or matics guarding the mine, they weren’t visible from this angle.

Course, if he was wanting to keep an entryway undisturbed, he’d keep his guns hidden too.

Cedar swung back up into the saddle and headed toward the mine. He pushed the goggles up on his forehead, the cut beneath his kerchief healed to an itchy ache. If the brothers were so set to keep folk out, they’d likely known he was there a mile ago, and closing in.

The raw call of a red-tailed hawk filled the air and beetles chirred like cogs rattling against a tin cup. The only other sounds were the steady clomp of hooves beneath him and the creak of the saddle.

The terrain started into an upward slope, loose shale deep enough that Flint was buried fetlock-deep into the rocks, each step akin to a slog through water. The shale tumbled and chattered like broken pottery down the slope, kicking up enough dust that Cedar could taste it at the back of his throat.