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.
The spell surrounding him felt of her, smelled of her perfume. It even tasted of her.
It made him want her.
She reached up and kissed him. He had intended it to be a gentle kiss, but she was fierce, clinging to him, knowing, as he knew, what a very slim chance it was that he and Wil would survive this.
Wil growled.
Children’s voices rose around them, sighing, crying, sobbing. And behind that sound was the eerie ring of the Holder. Calling. Calling Cedar and Wil down to their deaths, just as it had called the children.
Mae pulled back, and so did he.
“I need to…” Cedar started.
“Yes,” Mae licked her lips to catch the last of the taste of him on her tongue. “You should.”
“I’m coming back,” he said.
“I know.” And then she gave him a look of faith that he’d never known before. She believed he’d find the Holder. With her spell, with Wil.
He wasn’t about to disappoint her.
Cedar shrugged out of his coat and hat, and carried them, along with his shotgun and the ax, over to the river. He left all his clothes and his boots on, but even in just his shirtsleeves, winter could not touch him through Mae’s spell. He glanced up and down river, then crossed over the line of stones.
There was no sound, no shadow movement in the forest, no gunmen. It appeared as if there was no warning attached to the stones, as Mae had worried there would be.
It could be another trick. Stones stacked in a line by the Strange to make a man think there was magic there.
To keep him and Wil from the Holder.
Cedar bent, loosened the laces on his boots, then left them beside the river, his coat and hat and gun all
stacked with them. He held the ax loosely in his hand.
Wil’s ears were up as he searched the ice covering the river. They’d need to go in directly above the Holder, dive straight down, catch it up, and pull back onto the bank fast.
A man couldn’t live long in that water. Not more than a handful of minutes. But there would be enough time to dive to the bottom if the river wasn’t too deep. There would be enough time to find the Holder.
Cedar walked upriver just a bit, toward the rush of water pushing between the huge stones on either bank. The heat of Mae’s spell was beginning to make him sweat, as was the tie of pain with Father Kyne.
Wil paused, then took a step onto the ice. Cedar tipped his head, listening for the children’s cries, but more than that, listening for the music from the Holder.
He stepped out on the river in his stockinged feet, following Wil.
His brother took just a few steps downriver and then stopped closer to the far side of the river than the side Mae waited upon.
Cedar agreed. The Holder was here, beneath his feet, calling. Calling for their death.
And when he looked down, between the bare ice spread out under a dusting of snow, he could see the children, trapped beneath the ice like shadowy ghosts, pounding and clawing at the ice above them.
Screaming to live. Begging to be free.
Rose held on tight as the wagon rumbled down the road at top speed. Bryn was driving and let out a whoop when anyone got in their way on the street. He was not slowing down, no matter who or what was in his way, a fact that was quickly proved out by all the cussing and swearing going on around them.
“You want to put this on, Miss Small.” Bryn handed her a leather harness.
“What for?”
“For our escape,” he shouted.
She hesitated, then wrapped the harness around her ribs and latched it in place with several snaps. It fit tight as a corset, with just enough room for breathing.
While Bryn was busy trying to keep at least two of the wheels on solid ground, Alun and Cadoc crawled down the side of the wagon, facing the back of it, each carrying a gun.
“What are you doing?” Rose yelled from the bench beside Bryn.
“Taking care of this like we should have when we first rolled into town,” Alun yelled. “Ready, brother Cadoc?”
“Days ago,” he yelled back.
They already had their guns drawn, but instead of shooting, they both tucked a finger into their pockets and threw something at the riders closing in behind them.
“One!” Alun yelled.
It wasn’t dynamite, but whatever they lobbed on the street kicked up enough light that Rose went half blind, even in the full light of day.
She’d seen the Madders use those light tricks before. They’d told her it was glim mixed with a few other things, in small, corked bottles. When the bottles were shook up good and hard, say like when they hit cobblestone and shattered, the mixture of glim turned into a light that would blind the sun.
As if that weren’t enough, they started shooting at their pursuers.
“Two!” Cadoc yelled back.
“And…three!” they both said.
Bryn let go of the reins. “Hold on to your hat!” he said.
Rose grabbed hold of the brim of her hat just as Alun, Cadoc, and Bryn all fired their guns straight up in the air.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. Before Bryn could explain, she’d figured it out.
He wasn’t shooting bullets into the empty sky; he was shooting a grappling hook, straight up at the cabled airship above them. A cabled airship that was zipping faster than a gallop over the tops of the buildings, the cable buzzing down the street rail line, and hooking hard down a side street.
This was madness.
She took a breath and held it.
Bryn slipped one arm around her through the harness loops across her back. His other arm was buckled at wrist, arm, and shoulder and attached to the leather strap around his ribs and to the grappling-hook rope.
Three hooks hit their targets with the distant sound of knuckles rapping hollow logs.
She was yanked up out of the wagon so fast and hard she lost her breath completely.
The Madders did not whoop and holler as they usually did during death-defying stunts such as these. Bryn was, however, grinning like a cat in a bird’s nest, and so were Alun and Cadoc, who dangled from their own grappling ropes not far from them.
Rose was pressed against Bryn’s side, locked there. She squinted her eyes against the icy wind to see where the airship was dragging them.
They were dashed away from the wagon and the chase below at an alarming speed. And since they had exited so quickly, the horses kept running a good block or so farther into town before slowing down.
Blinded, and expecting gunfire, the lawmen had followed a little more cautiously, but had not seen them fly free from the wagon. And she knew the weight of four people wouldn’t do much to make the airship fly any differently. Not with the load of cargo roped below its envelope, and the cable doing part of the work to push the airship to its intended drop point.
The airship sped nicely above even the tallest of the city’s buildings, ensuring it wouldn’t get buffeted by a stray wind into a chimney or spire.
But the Madders’ ropes were so long, they dangled between buildings, about five stories up from the ground. No one looked up, except a dog or two that barked. Everyone in the city was too busy rushing, and too used to simply stepping aside for the cable as it passed to notice anything amiss.
“How do we get down?” Rose asked.
“You might not want to know, Miss Small.”
“I most certainly—”
“Now!” Alun yelled.
Bryn glanced up and shifted his grip on the gun.
Shifting his grip actually caused a cutting device to snap the rope.
Rose grabbed Bryn’s arm tighter as they fell.
A flat rooftop was coming up fast. Too fast. She didn’t know if they’d hit it, or if the force of breaking the rope while they were being towed by the airship cable would mean they had overshot the roof completely and would fall to their deaths in the street.
“Out!” Bryn yelled as he pushed her away just a bit.
Rose readied herself for the landing. Just like falling out of a tree. Just like falling off a fence. Just like falling off a cut rope from the bottom of a cable airship.
She hit the roof on feet, then knees, lost all contact and rolled, caught by Bryn’s larger mass and momentum until she lost track of which side of her was up and which was down.
Pain shot through her arm, and she screamed.
Then the world stopped.
And she was still on it.
The airship fans faded away off to her left. She opened her eyes.
She was lying flat on her back, scuffed, bleeding, and sore, her stupid skirts untucked from her belt again.
A shadow moved next to her: Bryn, pushing up on hands and knees and shaking his head to try and clear it. Somehow he had unhooked his arm from the harness that bound them together in enough time that they fell separately and landed, mostly, whole.
“Miss Small?” Bryn asked in a dusty voice. He coughed, tried again, “Rose, dear?”
Dear? In all the time she’d known the Madders, she’d never heard one of them address her with such familiarity.
“Is she all right?” Alun asked from farther off. “Is she breathing?” He was concerned. Truly concerned.
On the one hand, it warmed her heart to hear the Madders’ worry for her. On the other hand she had knocked her noggin pretty hard. She could just be imagining their concern.
“I’m fit as a fine,” she slurred. That wasn’t right, was it? Fine as wine? Fiddle fine? “Whatever is fine, I’m that,” she said.
She blinked several times to get the focus back into her eyes. Sky up there, heavy with unspilled snow. Then a round, bearded face with a round nose and round eyes that were clearly narrowed in
pain.
Alun Madder bent down over her.
“Rose, are you all in one piece?” he asked.
“I am. I think.” She moved to sit and yelped again.
“What is it?” Alun asked.
“Her arm,” Cadoc said from far enough away she didn’t know how he had guessed at her injury.
“Can you bind it, brother Cadoc?” Alun asked.
“No,” Rose said. “It’s…”
But then Cadoc was there, helping her sit. And then Cadoc gently took her arm in his big, wide calloused hands, as if lifting a bird’s broken wing.
She whimpered, but he was as careful as could be, assessing the break. He withdrew two smooth wooden dowels from inside his coat, steadied her arm with both sticks, wrapped a length of cloth around it all, then used a wider, soft cloth that smelled of lemon balm to sling her arm against her chest.
“Now, you will not want to move your arm, Rose Small,” he said kindly. “Well, you may want to move it but you should not. There is healing that must be done, bones that must latch and clasp and mend. It has been a fine arm for you. It will be a fine arm again. If you let it rest. If you let it heal.”
“Thank you,” she said, still feeling a little woozy.
“Always happy to help one of our own.”
He was standing and walking away before she could really get her thoughts in order about that statement. She was one of their own? How?
“How much farther?” Alun asked.
Rose glanced over at Alun and Bryn, who were standing at the edge of the rooftop.
“Just there.” Bryn adjusted the monocle over his eye, then pointed. “Far as we’ll go.”
“It will have to be good enough, then,” Alun said. “Do you have your breath, Miss Small?”
“I can walk.” She proved it by strolling over to them.
“I hope you’ll consider a jog or two,” he said as he pointed to the iron ladder that clung to the edge of the building, “once we hit the ground.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rose said.
Bryn nodded, and started down the ladder.
“You next, Miss Small,” Alun said.