Devon Monk - Dead Iron

“Maybe not. But I think it’s something that needs to be heard.”

Mae walked over to her spinning wheel and dragged her hands over the blankets in the basket. She didn’t want to give this secret words to cling to. Didn’t want to give it shape to fill. Even words—no, especially words—carried magic.

“I am particularly gifted to using magic with vows, bindings, and curses. It’s not approved. It is not even the correct way to guide magic. But it is the way of me.”

“Must be that,” Cedar said as if talking about magic in this civilized world were commonplace. “Though I still don’t know why Mr. Shunt would want to harm you. Maybe he’s doing Shard LeFel’s bidding. Maybe it’s Mr. LeFel who wants what you have.”

“I don’t see as how that can be. I don’t think I’ve seen Mr. LeFel but once since he’s come to town.”

“Once is enough when a man sees what he wants.” Cedar said it slowly, softly, his gaze holding her. He hesitated, as if he would say more, then cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of boots I could borrow?”

“I should.” Mae oddly found it a little difficult to breathe. There was something about Mr. Hunt. Being near him caught her up in most confusing ways. “Let me go fetch them. Then will you be leaving?”

“I’ll follow the trail of the boy’s blood. See if I can find Wil. See if I can find Elbert.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said over her shoulder.

Nothing but silence filled the room. Mae found Jeb’s old boots near the bed. They had holes in the sides, and might be too big for Cedar’s feet, but she had spare socks he could use to take up the difference.

As soon as she stepped back out into the main room, he stopped pacing and slanted a look at her. “No, you most certainly will not.” It was a commanding voice. A stern, lecturing voice.

Mae ignored it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a lawyer, Mr. Hunt. Declaring your opinions as if they were fact.” She held out the old boots and socks for him.

He scowled. “A teacher,” he said.

Mae smiled. “I’ll be going with you. That shotgun is the only thing I’ve seen that can stop Mr. Shunt in his tracks. Not that it kills him, no, he snaps and pulls and stitches himself back together again as easily as he falls apart.” She swallowed hard at the memory of him. “He’s not made of the natural world.”

“Not this natural world, at least,” Cedar said. “Which is all the more reason you should stay here where it’s safe.”

“There is no safe place for me.” Mae didn’t mean it to come out quite so plainly, but there it was. So long as she was a witch in this God-fearing land, with Strange things that crept through pockets of shadow and cozied up to nightmares, she would be pointed to as different, and killed for her ways.

“Mrs. Lindson,” Cedar tried, then, “Mae.”

She looked up at her name, surprised.

“Listen to me. To reason. I know you can stand on your own. You’ve proved you have a strong spine. But first I’ll be headed back to the Madders to reclaim my weapons and clothes. There’s no need for both of us to deal with the three brothers. Their doors too easily turn to walls. I owe them favors I’d never promise another man. If you hold tight here, with the gun at hand, then when I return, well before nightfall, we can set out together to track the boy and the Strange that killed your man.”

Mae had had enough of men promising her they would take care of things a man should, and then return for her as a man should. She’d had enough of men going away and not coming home.

“I’ll be back for you soon,” Cedar said. “I give you my word.”

Mae looked him straight in the eye. “That’s what my husband told me, Mr. Hunt. And now he’s dead.”

Cedar took a breath, and let it out slowly. He walked over to the door and opened it wide, letting in the clean promise of daylight. He paused there, one foot in her home, the other out in the afternoon light, his eyes scanning the horizon before he turned back toward her.

“That may be true,” he said gently, “but I am not your husband, Mrs. Lindson.” He moved to close the door.

Mae spoke up. “Take the mule. She’s out back. You can just point her toward my house when you’re done. She, I’m certain of, will find her way home.”

Cedar nodded, just the quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Thank you, Mrs. Lindson, I’ll do just that.” Then he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Rose Small rubbed the soft cloth over the top of the pew, the honey smell of wax filling the still air of the empty church.

Cleaning every scrap of wood in the building wasn’t her idea of a way to spend an evening as nice as this one, the dusk still clinging to the warmth of sunlight before autumn shook the heat and leaves off the land.

But her folks had heard about her walk last night. Likely from Henry Dunken’s gossipy mother. So Rose was here in the church, as she would be every night this week, contemplating her inexcusable behavior beneath God’s watchful eyes. Offering up to Him elbowgrease tithing for her sins.

At least here in the church she was left in peace to think her own thoughts away from her mother’s angry tirades, away from the women who shook their heads in pity at her, and the men who thought she didn’t notice how they looked at her like she was a broken thing they could use if they wanted.

Oh, she’d seen the letters her folks had written up, asking about eligible men in the nearby towns. She’d more than seen them—she’d volunteered to put them in the mail, and thrown them down the privy hole instead.

The thought of tying herself down to this little town and only ever seeing the sun pull up over the same horizon for the rest of her life near about gave her hives.

She wanted to explore the world, wanted to see what amazing gadgets and tickers and inventions chugged along between the high buildings in the old states, or pressed wide, round backs against the sky, steering the winds across the ocean to far-off lands, or harvesting the rare glim. She wanted to touch those things, make those things.

She wanted to fly. And wanted to do so much more.

When Rose was six, she’d insisted she wanted to be a blacksmith and a deviser when she grew up. She’d heard her father make the blacksmith, Mr. Gregor, promise he’d never put a hammer in Rose’s hand.

And he hadn’t. Though he’d let her pump the bellows and mind the coals and fetch his tools, all the while talking to her of what he was doing and why. Rose figured she knew more about metal and the making of it than a whole university of books and thinkers.

She’d done her devising in secret, hidden in her pockets, hidden beneath her bed where no one ever looked. Little trinkets, little tickers. When her mother had discovered the thimble bird Rose had made when she was nine, she’d demanded to know if Rose had been devising, doing the work allowed only to men.

Rose had told her Mr. Gregor made it. Told her it was a gift to the family and that she’d kept it in her room because she liked it so.

She hadn’t counted on her mother marching her by the arm down to the blacksmith’s shop. Hadn’t counted on her demanding the truth of the story from Mr. Gregor.

And she sure enough hadn’t counted on Mr. Gregor telling her mother, without a bat of a lash, that Rose’s story was true and that he had indeed devised the bird and given it as a gift.

But whatever thin warmth she had felt from her mother froze away over the next few years. Rose knew her mother wanted her married off so that she was no longer a problem to hide or to mind.