The Iron Thorn

Too many problems. My mind was starting to become disorderly again, like during the one memorable and horrific occasion when I’d tried to take Fanciful Maths. Numbers outside of engineering work were messy, imprecise, theoretical as fairy stories. Only mechanics made sense.

I turned to the single problem I could solve—the footprints. The shelves were solid, and the books were books, not disguised springs and levers that would show me Graystone’s secret places.

I chewed on my lip. “There’s got to be something behind this wall. People don’t just disappear.”

“People,” Cal agreed. I quirked an eyebrow.

“Surely Cal Daulton, most rational of all the Master Builder’s faithful, doesn’t cotton with spirits and vapors.”

Cal huffed through his nose. “Yeah. Rational as the day is long, me.”

I got down on my knees, dust tickling my nostrils, and ran my hands over the aged, rippled boards. The floor was solid and heavy with wax, but my fingers picked out an impression the size of my foot.

I put my hand over the spot and pressed down.

The door in the wall opened bereft of any trappings. No shrieking hinges, no breath of tombstone air chill on my face, not even a solitary cobweb. The section of the bookshelves rolled back on soundless hinges, a brass wheel-and-arm assembly pulling the philosopher’s books into a hidden pocket of wall. I nudged Cal until he raised the lamp, and peered cautiously into the space.

Within sat a passage made of raw boards and beams, and a warped staircase leading down. I beckoned to Cal. “Come on.”

“Are you nuts?” He backed up. “You don’t know what’s down there. This whole gear-forsaken mountain is overrun with viral critters and you want to go down some hidey-hole?”

With two years of our friendship at my back, I knew how to work on Cal. I put my hands on my hips. “Why, I’d say you’re scared.”

His forehead furrowed. “I’m not.”

“Fearless adventurer Cal, scared of a little dark and dank. What will the guys at the School ever say about this?” Without another word, I turned and walked ahead, leaving him to follow or be left alone in the library, with the eerie, intermittent heartbeat of that awful clock.

After three steps, Cal rushed after me, sticking to my shoulder like a burr. “And who would be there to look after you if I stayed behind?”

“Dean?” I suggested. Cal made a rude noise.

“The less said about that greaser, the better. He’s no kind of gentleman.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m no kind of lady.” We came to the bottom of the stairs and another inconspicuous door. This door wasn’t hidden or locked, and opened at my approach, like the doors of the library. I theorized about the mechanism that allowed such a slick illusion—some kind of weight-sensitive plate, rigged to a pulley system, or a motion-sensing system that triggered when our shadows passed in front of the pinhole in the wall.

We stood in the doorway, an invitation into yet another expanse of blackness. As before, I stepped forward into the dark, and someone screamed.

“Cal!” I thumped him on the arm in reflexive alarm. “Shine the lantern!”

“You’re trespassers!” the voice shrieked. A projectile from the darkness—a woman’s shoe—narrowly missed Cal’s head. “I’m not infected! Get out!”

“Whoa there, miss!” he shouted. “There’s no call to get violent!”

The other shoe flew and I ducked. “Hey!” I snapped at the voice. “Cut that out!”

Silence while the ghostly lantern beam swept the dark room beyond the door. The aether glow picked up stone floors, a vast porcelain sink and pump, an icebox of polished mahogany.

“What’s your name?” I said to the shadows. I felt confident doing so, sure that viral creatures most likely wouldn’t resort to throwing scuffed-up leather pumps at us.

“None of your beeswax!”

Considering it was my father’s house, I privately thought it was very much my beeswax, but I wasn’t about to argue with a stranger hiding in a kitchen, pelting me with footwear.

I gave the rest of the room a cursory glance while trying to discern the voice’s source. A dead fire gave its last gasp in the grate, shooting embers to leave black streaks on the hearth. A single chair sat before it, a book draped over the arm. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A banned text. A text on the Bonfire List, the compilation of all books the Proctors thought rated burning. I’d choked on the smoke as a little girl, while Conrad held my hand to keep us well clear of the mob standing around the conflagration in Banishment Square.

“Is that your book?” I said. There was a shuffle and a sniffle. I fixed on the sound—beyond the sink and before the icebox.

“You can’t pin nothing on me. That there was in the library when I came. I never read a word of it. Just like the pictures.”

I picked up my first real live heretical book and turned it over. A crocheted bookmark, the kind of thing I’d had to waste hours on in Home Life classes, nestled thick in the pages.

The book looked very ordinary—it was a cheap edition, bound in scratchy paper, and a little ink came away on my fingers when I traced the first line of the page. “ ‘The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” ’ ”

“Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” I asked the shadow voice.

“It’s a mad tea party,” said the shadow. “Riddles without answer, ’less you’re a mad one too.” A pause, and the voice dipped, like it was shy of quoting the text. “The Cheshire Cat says it—‘We’re all mad here.’ ”

While she rambled, I let her voice guide me, and locked my fingers around the plump arm of the voice’s owner. The girl in my grip squealed. She didn’t sound a day over graduation age at the Academy, and terrified.

“Take your hands off! That ain’t ladylike!”

I gave her a shake. “That’s quite enough of that. Who are you?”

Copper-pot curls bounced and her chubby face flushed. “The nerve of you, playing handsy with me! Think you’d never had a lesson in manners in all your life!”

“Okay, okay,” Cal said, training the lantern on us. “Settle down, the both of you.”

“Who are you?” I ignored Cal. “Why are you in my father’s house?” My words came out with more ice coating them than I’d intended. Perhaps it was the shadows, or the book, or my throbbing shoulder. Perhaps I was simply wrung out of patience for foolish girls and their foolish games.

“I work here, don’t I!” the girl snapped. “I’m the chambermaid. Who in blue heaven are you?”

That stopped my indignation cold. Of course such a great house would have servants. Of course I seemed like a trespasser to this girl.

“Aoife Grayson,” I managed. My own flush crept up my face. “I’m Mr. Grayson’s daughter.”

The chambermaid screwed up a frown. “Well, I’ve never heard of you.”

I let go of her arm and stepped away. Of course she hadn’t. My father had no use for me.

“Where has everyone gone?” Cal said. “The other servants? Mr. Grayson?”

“They …” The chambermaid shuddered. Her round face went paler than dead under Cal’s lantern. “They …”

“What’s your name?” I amended, as shivers racked her frame.

“Bethina,” she quavered. “Bethina Constance Perivale.”

“I’m Aoife,” I said again. “This is Cal, and we and our friend are searching for my brother, Conrad. He’d be a bit older than me, and taller. Black hair and blue eyes. He was here … have you seen him?”

Bethina’s eyes, the shade of a Coca-Cola bottle shot through with sun, went wide. “Mr. Conrad? You’re his sister?”

“Yes. And I desperately need to find him, Bethina. Can you help me?”

Bethina’s face crumbled, moisture shine rising like dew on her cheeks as her eyes filled. “It were a terrible thing. Terrible, terrible thing what happened to Mr. Conrad.”

Even though my throat tightened with dread, I felt through my pockets for a handkerchief and held it out. The small dingy flag dangled limply between us before Bethina snatched it and gave a great heaving snort into its folds.