Devon Monk - Cold Copper

The crack of gunfire broke across the cloud-heavy sky. Then return fire rolled out.

“The church,” Mae said.

Cedar nodded. Leaving Hink, Miss Dupuis, and Wicks back to guard Father Kyne was really no more than a gunfight waiting to happen. They’d be wise to surrender. As far as he knew, the three of them weren’t on the mayor’s hanging list.

Even though he wasn’t a praying man, he found himself wishing there was more he could do, more any of them could do, to turn that fight in their favor.

The gunshots were constant, then became more sporadic, but did not cease.

Wil, panting, stopped short of the river, which lay on the other side of a thin line of trees. He lifted his head and looked up at Cedar.

“Is this the place?” Mae asked.

Cedar dismounted, throwing the horse’s reins over a low branch and drawing the shotgun out of the saddle holster.

“River’s just that way,” he said. “It rushes between two rocks, but is iced full over.”

“And you are sure the Holder is beneath it?”

“I am sure. And there’s more. When we came out this way last night, following that Strange, it stood on top of the ice, pointed at the river, and said one word: ‘help.’”

Mae frowned. “So you think it wants the Holder too?”

“I don’t know what it wants. I don’t know what help a Strange thinks I’d be willing to offer. But it wasn’t the call of the Holder that brought me to the river. We followed the Strange, and as soon as we were near the river, we could hear the voices of children.”

Mae had dismounted and was in the middle of tying her horse to a bush. She looked up at Cedar, startled.

“Children? But Wil said he saw them sleeping in the old mine shaft.”

“Strange like to play with a man’s mind. Show him roads off the edges of cliffs, show him lights down the bottom of ravines, or promise him his heart’s desire and deliver nothing but smoke.”

“So you don’t think the children are really here? You think the Strange somehow made you imagine their voices?”

“I don’t know. It makes the most sense.”

“Do you hear them now?”

Cedar pushed the pain away and listened with ears sharper than any man’s. Wind scrubbed through sticks, birds and beasts in the forest searched for food, the city clattered and clamored behind them, while far-off trains whistled and airship fans rose and fell. Plenty of noise in the silence of the day.

But no children crying. No voices calling out. No sorrow.

“I don’t hear them,” he said. “I don’t even hear the Holder. But I know it’s here.”

“Then let’s go get it.” Mae settled her satchel across her shoulders. It was filled with herbs and other small tokens to help focus her spell craft.

She had also made sure to holster a gun at her hips, and when she looked up at Cedar, he reached out and brushed the hair away from her cheek.

“Be careful,” he said.

“I will be. Is the binding too much?”

“It’s bearable.” It wasn’t a lie. Yet. “Do you think it’s helping him?”

“More than I expected,” she said. “I’m not practiced enough with what bindings and vows can do. I’ve spent too many years without using spells, and now that I am free of the coven…” Her words drifted off. Cedar knew that in some ways she regretted leaving the sisters. The coven had been her home, her sanctuary for most of her younger life. If Jeb Lindson hadn’t wandered through their fields and led her heart all the way to the wedding aisle, Mae would likely still be living her life with the women in Kansas.

“. . .now that I am free of the coven’s restrictions and rules,” she continued, “I am finding magic useful for so many things.”

“I would have never survived the blizzard before we came into town without your warmth,” he said. When she tipped a smile at him for how exactly that sounded, he smiled back. “Also,” he clarified, “without your spells that bound warmth to my bones.”

“I’m just happy we…” She shook her head. “I’m just happy. And it’s been a while since I could say that.”

Cedar nodded. He felt the same.

But time was slipping away. He walked down the rough path to the river, Wil sliding, like a shadow, beside him.

The wind went dead, though there was nothing to block it. Wil growled softly and stopped well before they left the edge of the trees.

Cedar felt it too.

“Witchcraft,” Mae said. She stood at Cedar’s left.

“A spell?” he asked. “Can you tell what kind?”

He shouldn’t be surprised to find spell work in the area, though he was certain this spell had not been in place just last night.

“I’m not sure. It’s powerful. Whoever cast it is very practiced in the arts.”

She pressed her fingers on his sleeve as he took a step forward. “Why? Why would someone cast a spell over this section of this river?”

“Is it made for repelling people from this road? From this river?”

“Yes, and more than that. Can you feel the…well, it’s sort of a deeper rooting that runs beneath the road too. That line of stones?” She pointed at the row of small stones carefully set front to back in a straight line blocking the way to the river. “If we walk over those stones, or disturb them in any way, we’ll let whoever cast this know that their spell has been disturbed.”

“We need to reach the river.” Cedar rolled possibilities through his mind. “Unless you can draw the Holder up from the bottom?”

“With a spell?” Mae shook her head. “I could call it to itself, bind it to its own if it were broken, but to just call it free—I do not have that power.”

“You could bind it to me,” Cedar said. “And we could break it.”

“No.”

He had been studying the icy water, but at her tone, looked down at her.

“I bound one piece of the Holder to Rose, and she is forever changed because of it. If I bound a weapon of such Strangework to you…” She pressed her lips together and shook her head again.

“Then we’ll have to go in after it.”

“Diving in that river will kill you.”

“Not if you cast a spell of warmth around me.”

Wil walked up and gently put his mouth around Cedar’s wrist.

“Warmth around us. Wil and I will dive for it.”

“Wil doesn’t even have thumbs,” Mae said.

“But he senses the Holder differently than I do. If I can’t find it in that dark, he’ll be able to lead me to it.”

Another round of gunfire echoed in the distance.

“Mae,” he said. “We are all running out of time.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. I’ll do it. Give me a moment.” She dug in her satchel and tucked several small items into her palm. He knew that whenever she could she’d been gathering tokens that represented the elements of earth, air, water, and fire—things like unstruck matches, stones, and an odd assortment of cotton threads, buckles, bones, and buttons.

“I’ll need you both to hold very still. I am going to ask the warmth to wrap you as one.”

Wil leaned a little closer to Cedar and Cedar knelt down so he was of the same general size as the wolf.

Mae cast the spell, and just as it had when they were forging through the blizzard, it settled around him like a heavy, hot blanket. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but since he was about to dive into an ice-covered river, he was happy for the weight of the spell and its protective heat.

They just might survive this dive.

“You’ll need to do it quickly,” Mae said. “One dive and right back up. The spell won’t last long for both of you.”

Cedar stood, and took half a step, leaning over Mae. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her full against his body.