Devon Monk - Dead Iron

Rose blinked and tried to swallow that all down. “Help me? Why?”

Alun grinned and it was a wicked thing. “If for no other reason than to make that whoreson LeFel squirm.”

“I don’t throw my lots in with strangers,” Rose said.

“We give you our word.” Alun extended his hand.

“Our word and honor,” Bryn added, placing his hand alongside Alun’s.

“Word, honor, and protection,” Cadoc said, leaning in to add his hand to the brothers’, so that their hands were offered, palm to back to palm, toward her.

Rose supposed it wasn’t a safe thing to accept the promise of men who were likely mad. But then, folk thought the same thing about her, and they were wrong. “You’ll help me save Mrs. Lindson?” she asked.

“Aye, girl,” Alun said. “That and more.”

“And what will you expect me to pay?”

Alun nodded approvingly. “Your answer to our question. And a favor.”

The sound of the town rising up and making ready made Rose glance over her shoulder. She half expected to see men riding with torches and guns. No more time to think this through. She had made her decision.

Rose shook their hands. “Done.”

“Can you?” Cadoc asked.

“Can I what?” Rose said.

“See the Strange?”

Rose looked into his eyes. He was patient, waiting, as if he had all of time for her answer.

“Yes,” she said in a rush. “I can. Mostly. But that doesn’t matter now. I need to warn Mae Lindson.”

“No horse, no mount, no wings,” Bryn mused. “You’ll not get there fast enough with those feet of yours.” He gave her a sly look. “You weren’t figuring to procure a horse from the livery, were you?”

Rose felt the blush fire her cheeks. “There’s no other way I can get to her place fast enough.”

“We’ve ways,” Alun said. “Come this way, lass. We’ve a shortcut.”

Alun rambled off into the dark, moonlight sliding over him and setting him to burnish as if he were made of steel. He waved his hand over his shoulder. “Now, girl. There’s not much time.”

Rose started off after Alun, his brothers following behind her. This was madness, following three crazy devisers into the brush, alone, in the night. “This shortcut will take us to Mae Lindson’s house?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alun’s voice floated back to her through shadows cast by trees and the stretch of chimneys and walls of the town. “But first, we’ll need weapons.”

He stopped by a large boulder and Rose stopped behind him. They were on the edge of the town where scrub rolled up and away across the rocky hill. Alun looked over at her. “We trust you’ll keep this secret minded,” he said.

“Is that the favor I owe you?”

Alun’s eyebrows shot up, and then he laughed, loud and bellyfull. “You’ve got wit, for sure. No, that’s not the favor proper. That favor we’ll come to terms on after we take care of your friend. But I have your word?”

“Yes.” Rose was about willing to promise anything if the brothers would hurry this up. She was losing far more time than she was gaining.

“Good.” Alun pulled a lever, cleverly hidden at the base of the boulder, and the boulder itself rolled aside, clunking and grinding as if unused, dragged on pulleys beneath the ground.

Cadoc and Bryn struck flint and steel to candles they produced from within the voluminous pockets of their coats, and Alun did the same. In the wan candlelight, Rose could see a wooden ladder leading down deep into the earth.

Alun walked to the edge of the hole and started down. “Hurry on, girl. These tunnels will take us quickly to your friend’s side.”

Rose looked away from the fall of his candlelight sinking deeper and deeper, looked instead at the brothers Bryn and Cadoc.

Bryn said, “We have supplies hidden in the tunnels. And have mapped a route that will take us to the Lindsons’ farm. You’ll see no harm at our hands, Miss Small.” He gestured toward the mouth of the tunnel. “After you.”

Rose took one last deep breath of clean air and nodded. Then she started down the stairs into the heart of the world.

Shard LeFel looked out upon the people who hung on his every word. They were hopeful, angry, vengeful. They wanted what he told them they wanted: revenge upon the witch who had hurt one of their young, who had damaged one of their innocents.

“In these modern times, we have laws and jails,” Shard LeFel said to the people gathered by torchlight and lamplight outside the church. “But there is an older law, an older reckoning, that bids us to tend to our own. To protect our own. And to punish those who are wicked and vile even—no, especially—when they are among us.”

A murmur rose up from the crowd.

“I would not presume to tell you good people what it is you must do. This is your town, your laws, your home. But justice must be done.”

There was a pause. LeFel watched, calmly waiting to see who would strike the tinder he’d so carefully prepared, and set it ablaze.

“Burn her!” It came from the back of the crowd. From Mrs. Dunken’s boy Henry. And his cry was picked up, carried by each voice, until it became a chant.

“Burn her!” the crowd cried. “Burn the witch!”

LeFel tugged at the lace at his cuff and then rested the tip of his jewel-encrusted cane upon the ground. Mr. Shunt sidled up beside him, silent as death’s gaze.

“The wick is caught,” LeFel said to the Strange while watching the sheriff and Henry Dunken make out their plans of surrounding the witch’s cottage, and calling her out to stand trial.

“We’ll approach her and give her the chance to turn herself in,” Sheriff Wilke said. “I want you all to understand we’re not going to raise a gallows tonight. There will be a trial. Justice will be served.”

“But if she resists,” Henry said above the rise of voices, “we’ll burn her out. I won’t stand idly by while she does her devil’s magic. Nor shall she harm another man, woman, or child of this town!”

“And now,” LeFel said quietly, “we shall watch the fire I’ve set in these mortals do that which even you failed me in, Mr. Shunt.”

Mr. Shunt said nothing. He folded his bony fingers together, each one clacking against the other, metal upon metal, bone on bone, as if wishing for a neck to break between them. “Yes, Lord LeFel,” he murmured.

The townsfolk assembled in the street, men gathering horses and wagons, guns, and torches while the women all rushed off with Mrs. Gregor to tend and fuss over her and the Strange Elbert.

Shard LeFel stood in the shadows, mostly forgotten, as he intended. He would let them ride forth and smoke the witch out. And he would be waiting, near enough that he could snatch her out of their hands. He would take her. And kill her for his own purposes—her and the wolf and the real little boy—to turn the tumbler and locks and open the door to his land.

And if the townsfolk turned their rage on him . . . well, he would simply let Mr. Shunt take care of that.

Cedar Hunt ignored the weeping pain of the wound in his side, ignored his hungry belly, ignored the night that called him toward the rail, called him to find Strange, any Strange, to kill.

He ran despite the limp it caused him, toward the witch’s house, toward the wallow of trees in front of her property. There, he would find the dying scent of his brother. There he would find the scent of the Strange who had taken him, who may have killed him. There he would track the Strange who was going to fall beneath his fang and claw.

The wind brought him the scent of fire and wood and oil burning. He heard the rise of voices, felt the rumble of wagon wheels and horses coming from the town behind him. He stopped on a ridge that looked over the town. Orange and yellow globs of light marched down Hallelujah’s main street. Torches. Heading out toward the witch’s house. Heading out toward the stand of trees.