Cold Copper: The Age of Steam

  Feathers adorned their hats, and their bright silk corsets and skirts were covered in tassels and sequins. All of the dresses—if you could call them that—were worn cut in such a way a man didn’t have to imagine what kind of woman was under the layers. The hem of their skirts were so high, you couldn’t help but see their stockings, all the way up to the knee.

  They were rouged, coal-eyed, and…and pretty, with hair done up in curls and shiny pins and flowers.

  Rose was suddenly very aware of her grease-stained overalls, her heavy, square man’s coat and boyish flat cap with her hair tucked up. She didn’t look a thing like these women. Wasn’t even in their league when it came to pretty.

  And right there, sitting at a table near the corner of the room with a woman on his lap, was Captain Lee Hink. Hat off, sun-pale hair mussed up, he hadn’t shaved for a day at least. He was a strong man and a tall man, and had just the sort of rakish swagger to him that made women swoon.

  He saw her stopped just inside the door. He didn’t smile, didn’t move a muscle. His eyebrows, however, lifted up into his uncombed hair, shifting the black patch over one eye.

  While she had been busy studying the saloon, every single person in that place had turned to look at her, as shocked as if a three-headed mule had come strolling in.

  Women weren’t allowed in the saloon. Not a woman in boy’s clothing. Not even a proper woman.

  But Rose wasn’t a proper woman. She was an angry woman.

  And she was angry at that man.

  “You can’t be in here, miss,” the bartender called out from behind the bar. “No women allowed.”

  Rose ignored him and stomped across the room, gunning straight for Hink.

  The corner of his mouth cupped a smile, and just as quickly poured it out into a frown, though that damn eye of his twinkled with mirth.

  “Mr. Hink, I need to have words with you.” Rose stopped in such a way that most of the table was between her and that painted vixen on his lap.

  “Don’t think this is the sort of place for you, darlin’,” he said. “Why don’t you run on home now like a good girl?”

  The vixen giggled and leaned her head down a little closer to Hink’s ear, all the while giving Rose the kind of look that was usually reserved for buying cattle at auction.

  “Run on home?” she asked. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Lee Hink,” Rose said with as steady a voice as she could muster. “But if you think for one minute I’m going to do anything you ask me to do, ever again, you are sore mistaken.”

  “Now, Rose…”

  Rose reached into her pocket, and couldn’t help but be pleased when Hink twitched.

  He was darn right to twitch. She carried all sorts of trinkets and more than a few weapons in the pockets of the length wool coat.

  But today, right now, all she pulled out of her pocket was the paper rose he had given her.

  “I won’t accept false gifts from sweet-talking men like you.”

  She tossed the fragile velvet and paper rose at his feet.

  “Rose,” he said almost softly, as if the air had come out of him.

  She shook her head. No honey words would change her mind. He’d been carousing while she was rebuilding his ship, refitting the boiler and setting the new guns. He didn’t care a whit for her feelings. He only wanted her devising skills.

  She turned and walked across the saloon floor and straight on out the door. The door hadn’t even clicked shut before the piano man started playing again, and one of the women laughed.

  She kept right on walking. It was cold out, Rose knew that. But she didn’t feel the wind, didn’t hear the clatter and racket of people making their way along the wide dirt streets with horse, wagon, carriage, and the grumbling steamer carts.

  All she could hear was the echo of Hink’s voice saying her name. Saying it like he was trying to catch up a fleeting thing.

  Too late. It was too late. He wanted a life of drinking to soothe the anger of losing his eye and crashing his airship. If he wanted a life with a woman full of ruffles on his lap, then he could have it. She had other things planned. Greater things.

  And she was the kind of woman most likely to be wearing goggles or men’s trousers rather than ruffles and perfume.

  Maybe they weren’t made for each other after all.

  It was time to be moving on. She’d sold just enough devices through the watch shop; she’d have money for a train ticket east. Straight through to Chicago, then on to New York City. She wanted that, wanted to shake this town and the coven soil from her boots and get on with seeing the wonder this wide world could bring.

  But she hadn’t planned on seeing it alone. Her best friend, Mae Lindson, was gone with Cedar Hunt, the Madders, and Miss Dupuis, looking for the next bit of the Holder.

  She knew what they were doing was important work—the ache in her shoulder and terrible scar where the tin scrap of the last piece of the Holder lodged in her flesh reminded her daily of what that dangerous device could do. She was glad they were hunting for it before it brought plague, madness, and destruction to all it touched.

  And now she wished she’d gone along with them instead of staying here with the witches at the coven and, most especially, with that no good, cheating air pirate Captain Lee Hink.

  “Out of the way!” A set of hands—no, a whole body: hands, arms, and the rest—slammed into her all in one motion and sent her spinning down to the ground.

  She braced for the fall, throwing hands out in front of her, but instead two hands quickly moved around her waist and stopped her fall.

  Suddenly finding herself suspended an inch or two off the road, Rose watched as her cap took a tumble in the wind and rolled down to the corner of the sidewalk.

  “Please excuse my manners,” a man’s soft tenor said. “I am terribly sorry for our collision. I’m going to hoist you up on your feet now, if you’ll pardon my handling of your overcoat.”

  Rose nodded, wondering if she was about to be pickpocketed by the most polite thief she’d ever met.

  The man shifted his grip so that he stood close against her, then lifted. In a moment, she was standing, and for a tick or two longer than that, the man held her with his fingers resting lightly on the top of her hips and all the rest of his body pressed against her back.

  Rose had spent most her life in Hallelujah avoiding the sort of men who manhandled women. She knew how to break free of a man’s embrace, knew how to hurt a man, in both polite and less-genteel ways.

  But she found herself wishing he might just turn into some kind of fairy-tale prince, come to save her from that airship pirate, come to put the happy back into her ever after.

  “Are you recovered, miss?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “Yes, I am.” She finally stepped away and turned so she could properly thank him.

  That nice voice of his went with a smooth shaved face, sharp jaw, and an elegant sort of arc to his cheekbones and nose. He wore spectacles, gold-wire circles that couldn’t contain his wide and startling green eyes. The man also had on a bowler hat that didn’t quite cover the brown bangs swept across his forehead.

  He wasn’t much taller than her, and had a trim, thin build.

  “Excellent,” he said with a smile. “I must apologize. Wearing that…fashion, I mistakenly took you to be a…well, one look at your face and I would have known. I certainly don’t want to make a reputation of running down lovely ladies.”

  Flattery, mostly. Rose knew what it was, knew how men used it. But his smile didn’t have that kind of hook behind it. He looked nice, sincere, a little flustered by nearly running her over.

  It would be the perfect cover for a thief, but she knew by the weight in her pockets that he wasn’t that either.

  “Apology accepted,” she said. “It was my fault as much as yours. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Rose glanced up at the street to see exactly where her wandering feet had taken her.

  Hardware store, tinsmith, ta
ilor, but not the shops familiar to her.

  She’d walked most this town, coming in to pick up necessaries for the witches of the coven, and more often than that, to linger at the blacksmith’s or talk to the elder Mr. Travis, who spent most his time repairing watches while his sons and grandsons minded the shop and customers.

  But she wasn’t on the side of town she knew best.

  “I’m not sure I know quite where I am, to tell you the truth,” she said.

  “Oh?” He looked up and down the street, and at the rambling townsfolk, horses, and buggies, as if trying to get his bearings himself. “We are just east of Bucker’s Run, I believe.”

  The man had a deep blue canvas-covered book in his hand, which he used to point at the shingled cottage and hitching post behind them a bit. “That’s Old Miss Bucker’s place, if you’re of the curiosity.”

  Rose scowled. “There’d never be enough curiosity in me to want to know about Miss Bucker’s place or any other place of such negotiable affections, thank you very much,” she said archly.

  The man frowned, his eyebrows dunking down to the tops of his glasses. “I’m not sure I understand why you wouldn’t want—oh,” he said. Then, a little louder, “Oh! No, I assure you, ma’am, Miss Bucker isn’t a…isn’t one of those…Why, it’s not…It is a lending library.”

  He held up the book as if to prove the use of the place, and she noticed that his cheeks had gone a high color. “I would never, I assure you upon my honor, I would never suggest a woman with your obvious”—he swallowed hard and stepped back just a bit so he could gesture toward her—“qualities would be interested in a place of ill repute.”

  The poor man was tying his cinch in knots, trying to secure her favorable perception of him while defending her honor. It was…sweet.

  “Please, Mr.… ?” she said.

  “Wicks,” he supplied. “Thomas Wicks, at your service.” He gave her a small bow.

  Rose smiled again. Such manners on this man, she wondered where he’d been raised. “I am surely sorry for my hasty and poor estimation of you, Mr. Thomas Wicks,” she said. “I’m afraid you haven’t caught me at my best.”

  “That collision of ours may have jumbled us both a bit,” he said. “Miss… ?”

  “Small,” she said. “Rose Small.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. “Might I accompany you back to roads more familiar?”

  Rose looked around again. A steamer cart chugged down the half-frozen street, high walls painted with DIRKSON’S CELLAR ICE across the side.

  The weather was taking a turn for the worse, and that stone-colored sky was about to dump more than rain over the town. She wasn’t the only person who knew it. All the folk on the street were rushing to get business done, and get back to warmth and walls before the storm hit.

  Everyone was in a hurry except one figure—a man. He stood on the corner of the street, his broad shoulders leaned against the wood telegraph pole there, his hands in the pockets of his long leather duster, and his head tipped down so his eye patch was shadowed by the brim of his hat.

  But from out of that shadow, his remaining eye, blue as a heartbreak, shone.

  She would recognize that man anywhere, in any town, for the rest of her living days: Captain Lee Hink.

  He knew she saw him, and still he stood there, watching her as she talked with a very handsome, educated man.

  He had followed her. She didn’t know why. Maybe just to tell her she was wrong. Maybe to tell her more hurtful things, like he never wanted to see her again.

  She’d had enough hurt for one day. She just couldn’t talk to him right now.

  “Miss Small?” Mr. Wicks said. “Is something the matter?”

  “No,” she said, turning to give him her best smile. “Nothing at all. If you wouldn’t mind terribly, I’d love to see the library.”

  His face lit up. “It would be my pleasure.” He held out his arm for her and she took it.

  Just as they reached the door, Rose glanced over her shoulder. Captain Hink strode away into the storm, a paper rose falling from his fingers into the muddy street behind him.

  Cedar Hunt never once doubted that the Madders were crazy. He had no need for them to prove it to him so thoroughly again.

  The miner brothers laughed and hollered at one another as the mule-drawn wagon-turned-ship set sail to catch the punishing wind of the blizzard and barrel down the frozen river.

  To turn a wagon into an ice-fairing vessel was a genius bit of thinking. But to sail the whole thing faster than a horse at full gallop upon a frozen river in a blizzard they could barely see through was the kind of madness reserved for those who live very short, albeit colorful, lives.

  Cedar sat in the driver’s seat of the wagon, holding tension in the ropes to the port sail, his goggles keeping the stinging snow out of his eyes, but not doing much else to help him see through the blinding white. Alun Madder sat on the far side of the seat, minding the starboard sail. Cadoc Madder sat between them, holding the reins not for mules but for the steering contraption they’d made. All of them were taking orders from the middle brother, Bryn, who sat atop the wagon with a compass in one hand and lantern in the other, yelling out commands.

  Mae Lindson and Miss Dupuis were in the back of the wagon. Mae had cast a binding of calm over the two mules and one horse that stood on the wooden platform being dragged behind the back of the wagon. Just to be sure the animals didn’t panic and harm themselves, they’d also blindfolded them. The combination of witchcraft, blindfolds, and exhaustion of the last week of travel insured the beasts remained docile.

  “Bend in the river, west five degrees,” Bryn yelled out.

  “West five degrees!” Alun Madder said.

  Cedar and Alun both leaned hard on the sails, muscling them into trim to slow the wagon. Cadoc pulled hard on the rudder near his foot, sending their mad craft skidding to the west.

  They made the corner without tipping, let the sails loose, angled to catch the wind, and picked up at top speed smoothly.

  “Spent some time sailing, Mr. Hunt?” Alun Madder yelled as they successfully completed the maneuver.

  “Enough,” Cedar yelled back.

  “Thin ice, starboard!” Bryn bellowed. Cedar didn’t know how they’d made a device that could predict the depth of the ice. Bryn Madder’s rushed explanation, while they’d been attaching the rods with springs at the ends so they stretched in different directions beneath the wagon, about how different sounds of ice thickness were akin to thumping a ripe gourd to check for hollowness didn’t do much to clear things up either.

  Cedar hated trusting his life to other men’s wild-hair ideas. But they’d been shooting across the ice for near an hour now, and had stayed on a solid path.

  Cadoc pulled on the rudder again, adjusted course to guide the wagon to the thickest ice in the center of the river.

  The river took a soft push to the right, then left again, snaking a path between the trees. The rise and fall of hills became visible and were gone as they flashed past them.

  The wind shifted, slowed. The wagon slowed too as they came round the bend, all the rattling and clattering of the vessel quieting some as the trees on either side of the river bent in closer.

  “Go on now,” Alun muttered. “Go on.”

  Cadoc, next to Cedar, leaned forward as if urging the wagon to pick up speed.

  Cedar glanced up at Bryn. Every fold of his coat and hat was covered in snow, the goggles over his eyes reflecting bloodred in the yellow glow of the lantern in his hand.

  Tense. These men sensed a danger ahead of them Cedar did not feel. They wanted the wind, wanted speed to escape whatever was ahead.

  He inhaled, exhaled, scenting for the Strange. Yes, the Strange were close, but not as close as they had been before Cedar had set sail on this ice trundler. The Strange were not the danger the Madders were trying to outrun.

  His ears were good under normal circumstances, and now, with the full moon just
a day off, they were even sharper. He didn’t hear anything other than the push of wind in trees farther off, the shifting of the ice beneath the sleds and the crack and muffled thump of branches breaking beneath the weight of snow in the distance.

  “What is it?” Cedar asked.

  “Nothing,” Alun snapped. “Can’t you find us a breeze on that compass of yours, brother Bryn?”

  “Might have to fashion ourselves our own gale,” Bryn said.

  “No wind will take us far enough away,” Cadoc said in a soft tone most often reserved for storytellers. “The wind is gone and has left a song made of strings, knotted notes that tie and bind. We gave our word. Our word drags like an anchor.”

  “There are more important things than an old promise,” Alun said loud enough to be heard a half mile away. “The Holder comes before anything, or anyone else.”

  “We gave our word, and with it our right to choose,” Cadoc said even more quietly.

  “Our word can be upheld another day,” Alun said. “The world is in danger. The Holder, even now, is poisoning rivers, fields, cities. The longer the Holder is unfound, the more of this land it will destroy. We will not set one foot in that town. Not before the Holder’s found.”

  Cadoc turned enough in his seat so he could look at Alun. He raised one finger, as if pointing to the heavens.

  A sweet song rose on the chill stillness of the night, a flute-pipe of notes that seemed so near Cedar glanced in all directions to be sure the player wasn’t hiding in the muted darkness and falling white around them.

  Wil was back in the wagon with Mae and Miss Dupuis. He whined softly at the sorrowful song.

  The tune tumbled to its end, repeating the last five notes slowly. All three Madders turned, as if pulled by the same string, to face west.

  Then Cadoc spoke. “I have given my word, and I will keep it.”

  “No,” Alun said.

  “A Madder’s vow cannot be broken,” Bryn said from above them.

  “We move on,” Alun growled.

  “I will stay,” Cadoc said.

  “I will stay,” Bryn said.

  Cedar had heard the brothers argue before, usually loudly with fists and threats and insults. But this was serious, the tension between them hard-edged. Something very important, or very dangerous, rode on this decision. A decision Alun Madder appeared to be on the losing side of.