Devon Monk - Cold Copper

“Nothing. I only came over here to check on your injury.”

“For a girl so clever with her hands, you don’t lie well. Go on now. Tell me. What were you after?”

“The copper device.”

“Why?”

“After I cut a hole in the doors I got bored and started piecing things together.”

“You cut holes in the doors?”

She nodded. “Can’t tell where we’re going though. Just snow-covered trees, fields, and a river or two.”

He straightened a bit and grunted at the movement. Then he pulled a compass out of his pocket. “Let’s find out before we’re all out of daylight.”

“I’d like to bind that wound.”

“Do you have anything to bind it with?”

She pulled the strips of cotton she’d made out of a table linen she’d found in the crate.

“All right, let me get out of this coat.”

She helped him take off his heavy outercoat; then with unspoken agreement, he stripped down to his undershirt too.

He shivered while Rose replaced the bloody handkerchief with a clean square of cloth, then wrapped his ribs, knotting the whole thing tightly enough to keep the wound closed. Or so she hoped.

“How’s that feel?”

“Tight,” he said. Then, “Fine. It should hold, and that’s good. Now let’s see where we are.”

He got up to his feet with only a whispered swearword, then took a step. Finding himself steady, he shrugged back into his overshirt. When he was done, Rose handed him his coat and he pulled that on too, though she noticed he was breathing a little heavily by that point.

“Maybe you should rest,” she said.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s see what we can see.” He walked over to the hole in the door, stepping around the puppet she’d pieced together. “That’s what you’ve been fiddling with?”

“It’s got my curiosity in a twist,” she said. “So? See anything familiar?”

“I’d say…” He paused, looked away from the hole to the compass in his hand, then back out the hole again. “We’re headed northwest by the lay of the sun. Still toward Iowa, by my estimation. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Why?”

“Can you hear it?” He paused. “The fans changed speed. We’ll be on the ground before sunset, which”—he looked back out the door again—“will be in about two hours. Should be long enough.”

“For what?”

“To see what that device on the floor can do.” He drew out the glass-and-copper contraption and handed it to her.

Rose almost pulled her hand away.

Hink caught her slight hesitation and paused with the battery balanced over his palm. “Problem?”

“No. None.” She held her hand out again.

“Rose. Tell me true.”

“I don’t like touching it.”

“Because?”

“It…I can hear it in my head.”

The silence that stretched out made her wish she’d told him that some other way. It sounded like something a crazy woman would say. And she’d been accused of being odd, strange, mad, for much of her life. She could handle people judging her, but she wasn’t sure she could handle Hink thinking she was…frail in that way.

“Like a thought? A voice?” he asked. Not judging. Not yet. But not exactly believing her either.

“Never mind.” She forced a short laugh. “I’m just being silly. Let me take that and see if it fits.…”

“Rose.” A gentle reproach. “I told you you’re the only woman who brings the truth out in me. I’d be pleased if you’d answer me truthfully. How can you hear this in your head?”

She swallowed hard to get the dry out of her throat. Then she told him something she’d never admitted to anyone. “When I was little, when I was first learning to talk, I used to tell my mother that I could hear the plants. That they said they were happy with sunlight, or water, or bugs. I told her I could hear the trees and flowers, and if I listened carefully, moss.”

“Moss?”

“It’s the quietest.”

He didn’t say anything else. Waiting. Waiting for her to continue proving she was tetched in the head.

“By the time I was seven, people in town were talking. I was adopted, which made me strange, and I was talking to trees. You can imagine how well that went over.

“I stopped telling my mother what the plants were saying. Stopped…just stopped talking about all of it. I found my way to Mr. Gregor’s shop. The metal there in his blacksmith shop didn’t talk to me. But my hands seemed to know what to do with it. How to make it change from a lump, or a cog, or a spring, into something wonderful. Something just as vital as the plants and other living things. It was still strange for a girl to spend her time in the blacksmith shop, but my mother allowed it for a while. Then she didn’t even allow that.”

Rose had hoped she could end her story there, but he was still waiting, as if he knew she wasn’t done yet.

Good glim. Why did she have to hook up with a man who paid so damn much attention to a person? Wicks would have likely been bored by her story by now, and suggesting a book on botany or some such thing.

“I never stopped hearing green things talking about dirt, bugs, the weather. It’s just a pleasant chatter in the background, like always being in a slightly crowded room.

“Only ever since I got hurt, since the tin bit of the Holder hit me, I don’t think I’ve heard growing things. But when I put my hands on that…on that cold copper, it speaks to me in an overwhelming sort of way. Saying what it can do, saying what it might have been made for, like too many pictures rolling through my head all at once.”

“Does it hurt you?” he asked.

“It’s not painful, no. Just…just strange. I don’t like it as much as I like hearing from plants. They’re so simple in their needs and functions. This…that thing is very complicated.”

“So what did it tell you it can do?”

“Power something, store something, trap something. It’s copper and glass, obviously, but it’s more. I think…I think there might be glim worked into that metal.”

Hink nodded slowly. Odd thing was, that didn’t seem to surprise him. “We’ve heard, well, I’ve heard that could be true. That someone may be working metal with glim. And glim-worked metal doesn’t behave like other metal.”

“Who have you heard that from?” she asked.

“The doves.”

This time he waited for her reaction. She realized she wasn’t as angry about it anymore. A spy network among those women made a lot of sense when she thought about it. Even with the…temptation present. “What have they heard it can do, glim metal?”

“That’s the thing. No one’s talking about what it can do. There are rumors, but nothing’s been confirmed. And the rumors say it’s best used as a weapon. A weapon that can be used to bring this country to its knees.”

“That’s a big weapon,” Rose said.

“Or many small ones. Maybe say roughly the size of a man that can be shipped in parts in a railcar, then pieced together at every destination the rail, boats, or airships can reach.”

Rose glanced at the puppet man she had constructed on the floor. Headless, it looked like some kind of gruesome toy.

“Do you think that’s what that is?” she asked. “A weapon?”

“One way to find out.” He lifted the copper device again. “Have you figured out exactly how it powers with this thing?”

“No. I have ideas, but…” She made up her mind. “Let me do it. If I see pictures of what it’s made for, or what it can do, maybe that will help us figure it out.”

“Are you sure, Rose?”

She nodded. “Won’t be the first time I’ve heard funny things in my head. I can handle that.”

Hink reluctantly rested the copper and glass in her hand. The cold and weight of it still surprised her. And then, just like before, a rush of knowing about the thing thrashed across her thoughts. Power, holding, storing, feeding, and other things: how it was made, pounded flat of cold copper and bound to glim by…something slippery there. She got the image of herbs and hands and…