Rose walked to the edge, tucked her skirt back into her belt so the ruffles wouldn’t be in her way, then crouched and eased her foot down to the first rung.
It took more effort with one bad arm, but Rose knew how to climb a ladder and did so swiftly.
Once her boots were on solid ground, she took several deep breaths to steady her heartbeat. She had never minded flying. Falling, she didn’t enjoy.
“Come, now, Miss Small,” Alun called as he started down a dark alleyway at a slow lope. “We’re almost there.”
“Where?” she asked as she tried a few faster steps and mercifully found that her arm could bear the jostling.
“Edge of town. Beyond that if you’re willing.”
“Willing? To find the children?” she asked.
“Yes, that. Which we can do if you make us a promise.”
The alleyway opened up onto the unpaved road that cut across the north end of town.
“Brother Bryn?” Alun asked.
Bryn flipped the spread of lenses up and away from the monocle, then snicked them into place, one by one.
“Promise?” Rose asked. “Why do you need a promise from me? You’ve already promised Father Kyne you’ll find the children, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes, that promise remains exactly as he stated it. We are not to leave the city until we find the lost children. It’s a problem.”
“A puzzle,” Cadoc said distractedly.
“A predicament,” Bryn added.
“And we Madders have discovered, over time, that even the most devious problems are quickly solved by a simple promise,” Alun said.
“Right,” Rose said. “Just as this Small knows that no promise is simple when it’s made with a Madder.”
Bryn laughed and Cadoc chuckled.
Alun gave her a wide smile and a wink. “You are a clever girl, Rose Small.”
“It’s there,” Bryn said. “A hollow, the Strange pocket, on the other side of those trees.”
“Can you tell if there are children within it?”
“No.”
“It will be our risk then. Do you see that stand of trees, Rose Small?” Alun asked.
“Of course.”
“On the other side is our best guess of where the lost children of this city might be held.”
“All right,” she said. “Why aren’t we going there right now?”
“Because this,” he pointed at the side of the road beneath his feet, “is where the city ends.”
Rose stared at the road, then looked back to Alun. “I don’t understand.”
“We are bound to not leave the city until we find the lost children.”
“You are locked here? By a promise?”
“It is an old promise,” Alun said.
“Made of blood,” Bryn added.
“Sealed in faith,” Cadoc said.
“Unbreakable,” Alun finished. “So we’ll need another promise, from you, Rose Small.”
“Will it help us find the children so we can all leave this place?”
“Yes.”
“Will it do any harm to the people I care for?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“Your word,” Cadoc began.
“Your blood,” Bryn added.
“Your body,” Alun finished.
Cedar shifted his grip on the ax, set his feet, and swung at the icy river.
The ghost children cried and screamed, reaching for the ice, reaching for the ax blade as if it alone could pull them free.
He swung the ax again.
Again.
The river cracked. The children slapped and pounded at the ice.
And then the ice broke free.
Wil dove into the water, narrowly missing the blade of the ax as he did so.
Cedar swore, then swung the ax one last time to bury it in the ice. Diving into the river was easy. Getting out was going to be much more difficult. The ax would serve as something solid to grip so they could pull themselves up.
Cedar bent and reached down for the child who floated just beneath the surface, eyes wide and blank, staring at the sky. But as soon as Cedar’s hand closed around the boy’s arm, the boy was gone, as if he were made of nothing but water and light.
They weren’t real. They might sound like the children, and they might look like the children, but they were ghosts, spirits. Perhaps nothing more than disembodied souls.
Cedar took no time to ponder the situation further. He held his breath and dove into the river after Wil.
Blackness, complete except for the ghostly light of the sobbing children.
Silence, unbroken except for the sound of grief.
Even with Mae’s spell around him, he could feel the pressure of cold around him, as if he pressed bare skin against a window while winter raged on the other side.
He kicked toward the river’s bottom, working against the current, knowing he’d have to find the hole he’d chipped in the ice if he wanted to breathe again.
The Holder was here; he knew it was. He could hear the unsprung sour melody of it coiling through the water from all directions. Calling him on.
There was no light to show him where the Holder lay. There was only the sound of it, the feel of it. He shifted left and kicked harder, downward.
He didn’t know where Wil was in the water, but Wil’s instincts were as good as or better than Cedar’s here in the dark and cold. Cedar stretched his fingers forward, feeling grassy dirt and stones, odd and slick, their rough, cutting surfaces dragging at his palms as he scoured the river.
The Holder was here. It had to be here.
But he didn’t know the shape of it, didn’t know exactly the size of it. It could be as small as a pea.
He was blindly grasping for something he’d never had a clear look at, underwater, in the darkness, in the dead of winter.
He searched for the Holder, and he searched for more. The drowned bodies of children should be here. They might have been killed. Thrown in this river or lured into it by the Holder. That might be the reason their ghosts lingered around this place.
His lungs clenched in pain. There were no dead bodies. Not that he could see or feel.
He needed air. Now. Cedar kicked upward, searching for a spear of light through the hole. Spotted it, upriver farther.
He pushed through the water, kicking hard, the glim green ghostly children swimming alongside him, tugging on his arms and legs with insubstantial hands, begging him not to leave them to this watery death.
The light was there, just ahead of him. Wil was swimming too, moving toward that hole, moving toward the promise of air.
And then the warmth spell broke.
The cold of the river hit him as hard as a train at full throttle. The pain of it, the overwhelming ice of it, slammed into his chest, driving all the air out of him. He struggled not to inhale. Not to fill his lungs with the water.
Wil struggled too, thrashing, mouth open, wolf eyes wild with panic.
Cedar’s muscles screwed tight, arms and legs unwilling to move.
He pushed to lift his arms. It took all his strength to force his feet to kick.
Wil was not doing as well. His movements became weaker and weaker, and he began to sink.
Cedar pushed up to him, grabbed him by a front leg, and swam to the oval of light.
He grappled at the edge of ice with a hand and arm he could not feel, pulling his head and Wil’s above water.
He inhaled. The air sliced through his lungs, and his heart stuttered.
Too cold. They had been in that water too long. Much too long.
And they had failed. Had failed to find the Holder. Failed to bring this nightmare to an end.
The world drained down to darkness, but he kept moving, until finally his hand hit the buried ax. He wrapped numb fingers around the haft, then pulled, heaving himself and Wil out of the river in bits and lengths until they were both lying half-frozen and shivering on the windswept ic
e.
He blinked, the blackness took him, blinked again, and was coughing, every muscle in his body knotted in pain.
Slowly, too slowly, thoughts formed again. He needed heat. Needed to get out of the wind. Was Wil alive? Where was Mae?
And through those thoughts came the knowledge that someone was speaking. Someone had been speaking for some time. A man’s voice.
Mayor Vosbrough.
“I thought I’d made it clear that this city belongs to me. I locked your friends, the Madders, away. I warned you quite clearly at breakfast.
“I thought you, Mae Lindson, a witch of your… reputation—now don’t look so surprised; the sisters have told me about you and I am impressed with your work. Still, I thought you would understand just how strongly I feel about keeping my city safe, and in my control. Didn’t Sister Adaline explain how this new world operates? The rich own the witches. Well, certain rich. And I am that certain rich. I own you, Mrs. Lindson. And it’s high time you behave accordingly.”
“Do not come any closer,” Mae said.
“Or what will you do, Mrs. Lindson? Cast a spell against me? Do you even know who I am? Do you even know the things I have done right beneath your notice?”
“I don’t have to use a spell, Mayor Vosbrough. I have a gun.”
Cedar knew he had to help her. Had to turn his head, see where the mayor was, see how many men he had with him. Had to fight. But it was all he could do to draw in each breath.
“You think you can shoot me?” The mayor chuckled. “That is very confident of you.”
“I said step away, Mayor Vosbrough.” Mae did not sound frightened. But then, she had faced down nightmares and Strange in equal portion. She was made of steel in the face of fire.
“Maybe,” the mayor said in a hard, cold tone, “you should step away. Witch.”
Cedar pushed up, moving on instinct alone, unable to feel his body. He somehow got to his knees, and looked around him.
Wil lay still on the ice, a short distance away. How had they gotten so far from each other? He was too still, though Cedar saw his chest rise once and fall. Breathing, but barely.
Mae stood on the riverbank, just downstream from him and Wil. She’d pushed her hat off her head, and stood with her rifle aimed at Mayor Vosbrough.
The mayor was dressed in rich green velvet, a black fur coat, a top hat, and fine black leather gloves.
Cedar recognized those gloves. Vosbrough had done something to him, hurt him, wearing those gloves. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Was it just his memory of Father Kyne being beaten filling his mind?
Beside Vosbrough stood some kind of strange matic. It looked like a headless man, taller at the shoulder than Vosbrough’s head, and wider to match. On its back was a tank wrapped in tubes and hoses that draped over its shoulder and strapped to its arm. Those hoses and wires were wound tightly between small glass tubes filled with colored liquids.
And in the center of its leathery chest was a copper contraption with a glass orb marking the direct heart of it.
Cedar blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing. For he knew, without a doubt, that inside that glass orb wrapped in copper and glowing with green glim light was a Strange. Was the Strange trapped in that monstrosity, or there willingly?
“Put your gun down, witch,” Vosbrough said. “This is only a small portion of the weapons at my disposal. Weapons my family has devised and tested. This is only a small portion of the great advances we will use to bend the world to our favor. You have a choice. Be a part of this new age, the Vosbrough Age, or be crushed under the wheels of our domination. Choose your side.”
Cedar tried to call out to her, to tell her to put the gun down so Vosbrough wouldn’t shoot, but nothing more than a groan escaped his lips.
But Mae was already bending to set her gun on the ground at her feet.
“Is that your pet, witch? I didn’t expect him to be breathing after that fall into the river. Although I do wonder why you are out here so intent on killing yourselves.”
“We are looking for the children who have gone missing,” Mae said. “Something you and your men should be doing.”
“Why? They are just casualties in our struggle with the Strange. We need the Strange for our devices, so we draw them here.”
“That was the sound of horns in the night?” Mae asked.
“Yes. A device, a generator, calls the Strange, and a netgun in the hands of my men traps them. When transferred into these batteries and mixed with glim, the Strange have remarkable, and powerful, properties.” He tapped the glass globe in the center of the headless matic. The Strange there jerked away from his touch.
“It is the perfect use for the Strange. We harvest and harness them. With the Strange under our control, the witches at our service, and a nearly unlimited supply of glim and gold, the war is won before it even begins. We will own and rule this land and any other that suits our fancy. You, Mrs. Lindson, are looking at your new king.”
“I am looking at a dead man,” she said quietly. “And a fool.”
She lifted her hands, whispering the words to a spell.
Cedar struggled up onto his feet—and fell. The cold, the pain, dragged at him as surely as a weight around his neck.
Mae didn’t turn toward him. He didn’t know if she could even hear him trying to call her name.
Vosbrough pressed something that looked like a telegraph key at his belt, tapping out a message, and the headless, bloodless creature fueled by Strange and glim raised its weapon at Mae and fired.
Captain Hink’s head felt like a swarm of bees had taken up hiving there. He’d gotten hit in the head, along with more than a few good thumps in the side, during that jail brawl. He’d lost blood and the lump on the back of his noggin was making him see double between blinks.
In any normal circumstance after a brawl like that, he’d hit the sky, hole up a while, and drink away the pain until the world straightened out again.
But he was without his ship, without booze, and stuck in a dying man’s church. He was also the last chance Rose Small, the Madders, the Hunt brothers, and Mae had to grab up the Holder and finish off finding the young folk.
He’d told Rose to go. He told her he’d be fine. And he supposed that was true. For as long as their ammunition held out.
“So what weapons do we have left?” he asked.
Miss Dupuis and Mr. Wicks, who apparently had been in the middle of a conversation, both looked over at him.
“We’re surrounded, correct?” he asked as he walked to the back windows and looked out.
“What supplies do we have to fight with?”
“Who said we have decided to fight?” Miss Dupuis said.
“And who said you are the one to make the decisions around here?” Wicks asked.
“I was a captain in the war,” Hink said.
“I am your superior,” Wicks said. “Is there another language in which you’d rather I say that, and in which you might understand? Pirate, perhaps? Or fists?”
“Guns,” Hink said, ignoring his yatter and talking to Miss Dupuis instead. “How many do we have, how many do they have?”
“Father Kyne doesn’t appear to own anything but a hunting rifle. I have my gun, Wicks has his, and you have yours.”
“Bullets?”
She shook her head. “We have two sticks of dynamite, though. We can make a stand, but we won’t win a firefight.”
“This is Sheriff Burchell,” the man yelled. “We’ve given you time to put your guns down, walk out, and turn yourselves in so that justice can be done. If we don’t see every man and woman out here on the ground in front of us in one minute, we will be forced to take care of this in a much less civilized manner.”
“How many men out there?”
Wicks pulled off his glasses and wiped a clean white cloth over the lenses. “Sheriff and his deputy, and the posse they rounded up. Perhaps thirty men, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Dupuis?”
?
??At least that, yes.”
“Sounds good to me,” Hink said.
“Do you have a plan?” Miss Dupuis asked.
“Of course I have a plan,” Hink said as he pulled his gun and strode out of the kitchen toward the front of the building. “Keep shooting until I run out of bullets.”
“Mr. Alun Madder,” Rose said, her good hand sliding down to her gun, “you must know that I respect you and your brothers for those fine deviser minds of yours. And I certainly can understand when a brain slips a cog and goes off to wander down a whimsical path. But you will never have my body as a bargain for your gain. Never.”
Alun regarded her through sharp eyes. “Rose Small, I find myself becoming more and more fond of you as time goes by. I agree. Your body is your own. Perhaps I misspoke.”
She kept her hand on her gun. She knew that the Madders used words like a watchmaker used tools: precisely and with intention.
“Then respeak yourself, Mr. Madder. Clearly.”
“We come from…old blood, we Madders. Blood that stretches back for more days and years than people have numbers for. We are uncommon men, and we walk the earth by choice, for reasons of our own. Old blood brings with it certain advantages. You’ve seen only the barest hint of the things we know, the things we can do.”
He paused, and Rose was glad for it. She found it hard to breathe when he was speaking. Alun Madder and both of his brothers were miners, devisers, and brawlers. But sometimes, in the rare moments when the flame of their humanity was uncovered and let burn free, they were more than just three men: they were a force, a unit, brothers like none she had known. And when one of them intended to use words to capture your attention, even breathing seemed an unnecessary distraction.
“The reason I tell you these things, things I do not willingly explain to most men,” he continued, “is because you too are of uncommon blood, Rose Small.”
He waited, they all waited, as if they were listening for the first call of a bird to signal the dawn.
“You think I’m like you?” she asked.
“Not think. Know.”
“You think we’re…kin?”
Alun hitched one shoulder in a shrug, but his eyes were steady, unreadable. “There are stranger things that have happened in this world.”