The Iron Thorn

Cal whistled. “You could lock somebody up like Attica in this place.”

“Or lock something out,” Dean muttered. “I don’t much care for locks, tell you the truth. We in the Rustworks spend a lot of time thinking about cold iron on our legs and stripes on our shoulders in some Proctor work camp.”

Entranced as I was, I waved him off. “The whole house is clockwork. The whole house is knitted together with these gears, and this is where one can make Graystone do whatever it likes.” The feat of constructing a clockwork house was something that a student at the School of Clockworks could only dream about. The assembly to cobble an entire structure together, to calibrate and time it so that it ran smooth and soundlessly, and then to bring it all into the central mechanism of the clock and the controls … the amount of time and care the clockmaker who built the house must have invested boggled my conception of mechanics.

My father hadn’t built it—it was much older, Victorian in style—but he must have known about it. He lived in this clockwork marvel.

And it was mine to learn and to control, and only mine. My father had left and in doing so left me the iron bones of Graystone, sleeping and waiting for me to wake them. Until he came back. If he did.

“Well,” Cal said. “We should test it out. See what it can really do. I mean, for our own safety.” His eyes were bright and I could see that his fingers were twitching, itching to touch the controls of the clockwork as much as my own were.

“Sure,” I said, giving him a small smile. “How about you stay here and try out the dials? Dean and I can explore.” There would be no more talk of leaving once Cal got his hands on the panel. And I could show him I didn’t begrudge him wanting to go home by letting him play with the house’s mechanics.

Cal’s jaw jumped once at the mention of Dean, but only once. “Watch out for the traps,” he said. “All these switches have the setting.”

“She’s in good hands,” Dean told him, ushering me from the library.

I removed my elbow from his grasp. “I’m not in anyone’s hands at the moment.”

Dean’s back stiffened for a heartbeat, but then he gave me a nod. “My mistake.”

“It’s not a …” But I stopped myself before I became an even bigger fool. I wasn’t shying away from Dean because I wanted to. I was staying away from him because he was dangerous to me in the same way as an aether flame—bright, hypnotizing and hot enough to burn. I was here to find Conrad, get him out of danger and then go home. Not to let a boy fill my head with dreams and ideas that I could have if I didn’t go mad, if I had been born to a different family. No matter how much I wanted to see how he was different from the boys I knew. And I did want to, but I resigned myself to only wanting.

“Hey.” Dean called me into the back parlor. “Think now we can get the wireless working?” He pointed to the old-fashioned console, its tubes set into ruby and emerald glass, the gas inside them drifting lazily back and forth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “This thing is museum quality. Cal!” I shouted. “Turn the aether switch on!”

After a moment, the crystals that passed heat through the aether and made it active began to glow, and when I turned the glass needle along the spectrum dial, a voice scraped out of the ancient phono horn.

“You’re listening to WKPS, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and this is Dirk DeVille with the news. The President issued a statement today regarding the ongoing necrovirus research purportedly conducted in secret Crimson Guard laboratories, calling it blatant heretical aggression against the United States—”

Dean spun the needle along the spectrum. “Sorry. Listening to that guy’s voice is like putting a rivet into my own head.” The studio audience for The Larry Lovett Show laughed back at Dean.

I spun the dial again. Music crackled faintly, a phonograph that was half static.

Dean’s mouth quirked. “Finally, something we can both agree on.”

“Aoife, are you going to hang around in there all day?” Cal called. “I want to see what this thing can do!”

“All right, Cal,” I shouted back, reaching to turn off the wireless. Dean stopped me.

“Leave it. I like a little music when I’m alone with a pretty girl.”

I’m sure the blush I felt showed in my face. Dean kept sending me hurtling off balance. I’d never met someone who spoke as freely as he did. Especially about me. “You’re not alone with me, Dean, and I’m hardly the sort of girl someone like you finds pretty.”

Dean pushed a piece of hair away from my eyes. “Why don’t you let me decide that?”

I ducked away from his touch. I knew damn well I was a smart girl, not a pretty one. Boys at home told Cecelia she was pretty constantly, and she let them take advantage constantly. Not me.

“I should go check the rest of the house,” I murmured. “Make sure there’s nothing dangerous in here.”

Getting to my feet, I stumbled over my own boots as I backed away from Dean, but he just smiled. “You check the upstairs,” I said. “I’ll go to the cellar and make sure the boiler isn’t … er …”

“Overheating?” Dean prompted.

Could I make this moment any worse?

“Yes,” I replied meekly.

“Sure thing,” Dean said, standing and brushing the dust from his dungarees. “I’ll call out if I see anything.”

His easy smile told me that he didn’t take offense at my awkwardness, but I felt restless as I walked from room to room. Windows and doors opened and shut by themselves at the merest touch of my foot on the threshold. Iron grates rolled over the windows to protect Graystone’s residents from the outside world, but at the flick of a switch, the ceiling of the front parlor rolled back to reveal a rotating display of the night sky, wrought in silver, brass and glass against deep blue velveteen clouds. There were spikes that rose out of the fence around the outer edge of the drive and front gardens, and a phonopiano in the conservatory that played itself while a pair of brass dancers turned atop its keys to a Brahms waltz.

Finally, Graystone had exhausted its wonders and all that remained was the mundane task of checking the newly reinstated boiler for leaks.

“Cal, I’m going to the cellar,” I shouted. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

“Be careful!” he shouted back. “The cellar is the last of the switches on the board, and then I’d say this place is ready for action!”

I found the cellar door off the kitchen and Bethina watched me skeptically when I grasped the handle to go down. “You be careful, miss. Those bootleggers left weak spots and covered holes all over the place down there.”

“Bethina, I’m not a child,” I told her. Cal had already fussed over me. One surrogate parent per day was my limit.

“All right, then,” she grumbled. “But if you fall down a hole and get devoured by a nightjar, it will be no fault of mine.”

“Thank you for that, Bethina,” I said, and descended the creaking, winding stairs. Graystone’s cellars were damp and shadowed, but a row of aether globes strung along the ceiling with wire lit a path to the ancient boiler. The foundations of the house were far older than the stately stone and brick above, rough-hewn rocks set into the bowl of the earth. The floor was dirt, packed by what had to be centuries of footsteps.

I checked the boiler, an ancient but sound Potsdam model, imported from Europe. The pressure was normal and hot water was flowing through a nest of pipes, hissing in the dark of the cellar. It sounded like the shoggoth’s voice in my mind, and I drew back quickly, knocking my head against one of the low-hanging aether globes.

In the swinging blue light, I saw the edge of a bricked-up hole in the foundation. Bethina hadn’t been telling tales about bootleggers, after all.

The hiss of the boiler grew louder, more insistent, and my shoulder began to throb as I stared at the dip in the wall. Conrad had read me a story once, from one of Nerissa’s few, dog-eared books. The story was called “The Cask of Amontillado.” A man was walled up in a cellar, lured with the promise of the sweetest wine he had ever tasted.

The boiler clanked and shuddered as Bethina opened the steam tap in the kitchen, and I retreated up the stairs, a bit quicker than my pride would have liked.

I found Cal at the switch panel and smoothed my hands down my dress to stop their quivering. My momentary scare in the cellar had retreated, and now I just felt silly. Graystone wasn’t my house, but I felt at home here, more than I had anywhere else so far in my life. Graystone wasn’t going to hurt me. Gears and clockwork