The Iron Thorn

“Nothing,” I said as I wiggled the pin in his locks. “Don’t say anything. I just had to tell someone before I exploded.”

“So if there’s no virus”—Dean gave a long breath of relief as his shackles came loose, and rubbed his raw wrists—“what’s wrong with your old lady and your brother?”

I turned to the door, laying my cheek against the metal, caressing the lock and the handle with my Weird. “I don’t know,” I told Dean. “But something is making us mad, and I aim to find out what.” I had always known that Nerissa’s behavior and her hallucinations and my dreams weren’t normal, never mind my own brother coming at me with a knife. There was still something in our blood. But now, at least, there might be a real cure.

The lock popped and the door swung open before me. The Weird was quiet in this place encased in iron, easier to control. I flinched as my nose began to leak blood again. My vision slurred left and right as I stumbled along the wall with Dean.

“We need to find Cal,” I gasped. “Draven said … he said for the Proctors to torture him.…”

I became aware that Dean was no longer behind me.

“I don’t think we’re going to get far on that plan, princess,” he said, and I turned to watch him put up his hands. My stomach plummeted. We’d been so close.

“Nice to see you again.” Quinn was flanked by two other Proctors, and they were all armed. He shouldered his weapon and snatched me by the arm. “Be a good little girl this time,” he whispered. He dragged me away from Dean and down flights of stairs, until dripping water and mold told me I was deep beneath the earth. We spilled into a hallway containing a row of iron doors lit only by a series of aether lanterns hung from crossbeams.

“We’re below the riverbed,” Quinn told me as he unlocked the nearest door. “Unless you’ve got gills, you’re ours for good.”

He tossed me into the cell and the door shut behind me. I shouted and screamed and pounded on the door, but it did no good. Once more, I was alone in the dark.

33 Escape from Ravenhouse

I LAY IN the dark for a long time, on cold stone, listening to water drip and things slither in the dark. Rats scuttled in and out of my view, through a drain in the floor trickling filthy water from the cell into the new sewers. I wondered if this blackness and the foul, eldritch caress of damp river air would be the last things I saw and felt before I was executed or lost to madness.

I thought about what Draven had said, that he meant to use me to lure my father back to Lovecraft. I thought about the fact that nearly the entire world believed the most elaborate of lies.

I wondered how many other heretics had gone to the castigator knowing what I knew.

At last, when I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts for another moment, a second door rolled back from a nether part of the cell, letting in light and sound and two more forms, both of whom hit the floor with a thump and a curse from the Proctor herding them.

“Who’s there?” A man’s voice, from the corner. I curled myself up, putting my back to a wall, trying to get as far away from the invisible rasp as possible. Who’d been dumped in here with me? I had a feeling they might be worse than the Proctors.

“Who are you?” Something ran over my foot and I kicked at it.

“Aoife?”

I squinted into the dimness of the cell. “Dean?”

A hand reached out and felt for mine, and I grabbed it. “Oh, Dean. You’re all right.” I had never been more glad of anything in my life. Alone, I might make it out alive, but knowing that Dean’s life rested with me as well redoubled my resolve.

“Of course I am, kid,” he whispered. “You never doubted me, did you?”

“Did they hurt you?” I demanded. “I can’t see you.” I reached out and felt for Dean’s face, and he caught my hands and pressed them against his cheek.

“I’m in one piece, at least,” he murmured. “It’s going to be all right, Aoife.”

“Cal,” I said, seized with panic again. “Where’s Cal?”

Dean went quiet. I stood up, slowly, feeling my way along the wall. “Dean. Where’s Cal?”

“You can’t get marginal on me, Aoife,” he said. “But they brought us in at the same time. He’s in here.” There was a shuffle and a click, and Dean’s lighter flamed to life.

The light illuminated Cal’s body, and I let out a small cry, which I trapped with my hands. My empty stomach rebelled for the hundredth time that day and I choked, the sight before me grotesque and unbearable.

Dean leaned forward, cupping the flame with his hands. “Looked pretty rough when they brought us in here. He didn’t say anything.”

Cal’s face was a welter of bruises, his right eye swollen shut and his lower lip split. Bruises on his wrists mapped where he’d been tied with something sharp and elastic, and his shirt had blood on it.

“Oh, please no …,” I whispered. “Cal, Cal, Cal.” I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t move except to roll away from me, toward the wall.

“Why would they do that?” I said. I wanted to hit something, and I banged my fists against the cell door, over and over, wishing it were the Proctor who’d beaten my friend. Dean grabbed my hands, pinned them at my side.

“I don’t know why, Aoife, and there doesn’t have to be a reason. The situation is, they beat him bad and he’s going to kick off if we don’t do something.”

Dean had bruises too, when I looked closer. I touched the cut on his cheekbone, twin lines of red. He flinched. “It’s nothing. Just standard heavy work. Letting me know they weren’t fooling around.”

“Cal’s not a criminal,” I said. “They had no reason … Draven just needs me.”

“These people don’t need much of a reason for anything, Aoife,” Dean said. “They need you, sure. Us, they’ll keep here until they need more bodies for the castigator. Then … we’ll be broiled beef.”

“Stop saying that,” I ordered, my last reserve of will close to snapping. I could put on a brave face, but sooner or later my true one would show and I’d be in a heap. “I almost got out of here, and there will be another chance.”

“Not to piss on the parade,” Dean said, “but all the Rustworks knows: you end up in Ravenhouse, you end, full stop.” He held the lighter over me while I felt Cal’s pulse and checked his eyes, the basic first aid all engineers had to know in case of an accident on the job.

I never imagined using it like this.

“You can’t give up on me,” I said to Dean. I was scared, so scared my fingers were vibrating, but more than that I was angry. Angrier than I’d ever been. Draven’s lies were the reason we were down here, not through any fault of ours. “If you give up,” I told Dean, “then I’m going to break into a million pieces.”

Dean frowned as the lighter flickered, flame lowering. “Bad news, kid. We’re going to be in the dark for the rest of this party.” He shut the lid of the lighter. “But I’m here, Aoife. I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”

“Thank you,” I said softly. “I need you, Dean.”

He nodded, squeezing my shoulder in the dimness. “Figure I need you too. You are the brains of the operation, after all.”

I rolled Cal onto his back and felt him over. He groaned when I touched his ribs, his chest. “He might have gotten something crushed internally,” I said. “He needs a doctor.”

“And I need a drink,” Dean said. “I figure Cal and I have the same chance at both. We should wrap his ribs, at least for comfort. I busted one during a pit fight in Jamestown and it hurt like knives.”

“Pit fighting?” I was talking so that my mind wouldn’t run away, chattering like I was at one of Mrs. Fortune’s inane tea parties, to keep from the ugly reality of my situation. “Who would have guessed an upstanding boy like you would enjoy such a pastime?”

“Never tell an Irishman three sheets to the wind that he’s got a pretty sister,” Dean said. “Sound advice.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I murmured as I ripped open Cal’s shirt, buttons flying, and extricated his long arms