Devon Monk - Dead Iron

“Think it might yet be ours,” Bryn said. “And our concern to boot.”

“I’ve had enough,” Cedar said. “There’s deals been made and word been given. I’m as good as my word to settle my debt. Give the watch back.”

Bryn took a step away, shaking his head. “You’ve done something to it we couldn’t. Way I see it, the neighborly thing is to let us take it apart, see what moves it.”

“Way I see it,” Cedar said low, “is you’ll give me back what’s mine, or I’ll break your jaw.”

That did it. The brothers, grinning and always hankering for a fight, were on him. His gun was knocked out of his hand, as fists meant for breaking stone slammed into his head, his ribs, his stomach. Their laughter filled the chamber.

Cedar swung, connected. Swung again. Pulled his hunting knife from his belt, sliced through air, snagged the edge of cloth, hit flesh. A flash of light filled the cavern as one of the brothers set off a charge. Cedar blinked, trying to clear his vision.

A hand caught his wrist, twisted. Yanked his wrist up behind his back.

Cedar yelled. Another fist, then too many to count, rained down. A boot slammed into his chest. He fell back. He could just make out Alun’s face as he dropped on him, a knee pushing all the air out of his lungs.

The brothers gave one hard cheer, Bryn and Cadoc holding down his arms and legs and utilizing rope they must have stashed in their coats to bind his boots and wrists.

“Didn’t realize you wanted to get in a scuffle with us, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “Not over something as small as a watch. Brother Bryn was just ribbing you. The watch is yours. We Madders are true to our word too. But now I’m hard curious as to why you’d be willing to come to blows over it, and why, exactly, your blood seems to have fixed it up, when all our skills did it no good.”

Alun Madder grinned big enough to split his head in half. “I believe we’re inviting you to extend your stay with us awhile.” He wiped the blood off his mouth with his sleeve, then gave Cedar a mostly somber look. “With my apologies.” He pounded a fist across Cedar’s jaw.

The blow hit so hard, sparks filled Cedar’s vision as the brothers’ laughter filled his ears.

He tasted blood even before his head snapped back and hit the stone floor. His ears rang, and blood ran down the back of his neck mixing with the dirt.

Cedar struggled to stay conscious. He didn’t know what would happen if he passed out. Didn’t know if the beast that lingered just beneath his skin would break free, moonlight or no moonlight, to tear the brothers apart, or if he would simply fall unconscious.

The Madders finished binding his feet, legs, arms, then picked him up as if he were no more than a suckling pig trussed up on a pole. They dropped him into a chair.

“Now.” Alun licked blood from his split lip and rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s see what, exactly, you’re made of, Mr. Hunt.”

Shard LeFel carried a lantern hooked on the end of his dark, curved cane. The blacksmith’s boy stumbled along beside him, holding the hem of LeFel’s coat as they walked the enclosed split between the two train carriages to the boiler car. The boy was slow-eyed, dreaming on his feet, caught in the drugs LeFel had forced upon him, unable to think or speak. Not that it mattered for what LeFel intended to do to him.

He pulled open the door, which he never locked. The only man who had ever tried to steal from this carriage left the rails in a meat bag. His blood still stained the wooden stairs.

At night the shuffling, clicks, and huffs of steam from the windowless carriage rattled out beyond the walls as the things he kept inside stirred, restless. Pipes from this car ran to the other two cars set here on the rail spur, and the steam in those pipes kept LeFel’s living quarters and private bath heated.

LeFel and the boy stepped inside. Even though the sun was in the sky, the interior of the boiler car was dark as a grave. He raised the lantern, but shadows hung heavy and thick, unmoved by the sweep of light.

“Wake, my sweet. Wake, my beasts. Wake and do your king’s bidding.” LeFel walked deeper into the room, placing the lantern on a small table to the right of the door. The boy followed.

LeFel pressed down on the boy’s shoulder. “You will sit here, child. And dream.” The boy dragged one hand down the wall as he folded upon the floor, curling up like an infant, his thumb tucked in his mouth.

So fragile, these human young, LeFel mused. So unable to defend themselves.

He walked away from the child and over to a heavy handle that jutted up to shoulder height from the floor. Made of black iron and brass, the contraption looked like a pump for water except for the gears and woven pulleys that ran from its joints up to the walls, wrapping among the pipes and valves and yet more gears and pulleys that flowed over the entire inside of the carriage like a fishing net made of metal.

LeFel drew his black silk gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He detested manual labor, but waking his menagerie gave its own reward. He pumped the handle at a steady pace, allowing the complicated system of pulleys and gears to warm. Bellows pushed air through pipes down into the burner in the underbelly of the train car, fanning the coals there, and setting water to boil, then steam to push through smaller pipes—steam that pushed levers and spun wheels.

The lantern on the table reflected glints of brass, silver, ruby, diamond from the shadows.

Creatures stirred in that darkness. Creatures shifted and creaked and moaned, filling the carriage with their hot, wet exhales.

Metal creatures. Gears and steam. Matics. From all corners of the world, created by all manner of men’s hands to do his bidding.

Pipes fastened to the walls of the carriage groaned and clicked. It didn’t take long before that power was pumped into the matics, giving the tick to the shuffling beasts’ hearts.

When the moaning and stirring was replaced by the huffing chug and tapping metrics of matics under full power, Shard LeFel flipped the wall toggle on the gas lanterns, bathing the entire space in light.

Metal creatures pivoted toward him. They had no eyes with which to see, but they each contained a drop of glim mixed with a handful of powdered chemicals—a mix LeFel had stumbled across years ago. The mix of chemicals and glim gave the creatures a curious sort of awareness—not intelligence, but just enough rudimentary thinking skills to imprint upon them their single function: to kill.

They were not quite alive, and he preferred them that way. Killing machines with no room for remorse or reluctance were very useful to a man of his ambitions.

The matics had been constructed over the last two hundred years. Built by men he rewarded richly by giving them a quick death at Mr. Shunt’s discretion. Mr. Shunt did not always kill immediately. Some of the men had lived for years before Mr. Shunt found them and paid them a most final visit. Still, LeFel had been assured their deaths were swift, if not entirely painless.

Looking upon his servants set fire to LeFel’s pride. This collection, this zoo, this army, suited a king, a conqueror.

One creature was made of metals and riches from the Celestial Empire, ivory and gold, inset with jade and rubies and the jewels of an ancient emperor’s crown. Another beast was pieced together with thick welds, hard steel torn from the narrow veins of the distant mountains of Germany and forged by the fire of volcanoes.

Hulking monstrosities creaked at every joint, wielding hammers and pistons for arms, threshers for hands. Delicate tickers sculpted to resemble animals and birds, some so detailed to the natural world, they would be accepted by the creatures they imitated. Warped, twisted globs of metal, misshapen heads and gears, leather-accordioned bellows, potbelly burners, and great hinged chest-plate furnaces—they were matics, tickers, horrors made of steel.