Strange.
A gunshot rang out. Loud. Close. Two more followed.
LeFel and the men working the rail looked toward the sound, toward the other side of the rail track. The crew boss, a one-eyed Norwegian who was as wide as he was tall and as merciless as LeFel himself, rode the tinder cart, keeping a high watch over the workers and matics. He turned and swung his shotgun toward the thick undergrowth beyond the rail.
The three Madder brothers stumbled out of the brush, rifles in their hands. All three men were so drunk they couldn’t walk a straight line if their feet were tied to it.
A hare was flushed out of the brush in front of them. It dashed to cover while the brothers hollered. One of them took another wild shot at the animal and hit the side of a pony-sized matic hauling a cart of water, the bullet ricocheting like a snapped piano string.
Rose’s horse spooked and reared, tangling bridle and reins in the tree. “I’m sorry, Mr. LeFel,” she said as she hurried away to her horse. “I do think I’d best be heading home. Perhaps I can stay for tea another time?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. Just swung up into the saddle and turned her horse east, away from him, the rail, and the Madder brothers as quickly as she could.
LeFel snarled in irritation. He had barely had a taste of her. Rose Small was a question he wanted answers to. Especially since the Madders seemed to have gone out of their way to show up just as he was sitting down with her. Perhaps, he thought, she was connected to the brothers. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
The brothers had been a thorn in his side for years. He didn’t know what their drunken game was today, but he knew they would not come out here, to the rail, to his place of power, on a whim.
They wanted the Holder and they suspected he had it. But they did not know where he kept it hidden, nor that he had devised a door for it to fit upon. It was particularly satisfying that it was here, right beneath their noses, and yet they could not see it nor do him harm without fear of letting the device loose in the world. For if it was freed, the Strange-worked metals would bring about destruction to the land, and the people who stumbled upon it. Worked within each metal was a curse. Depending upon where the metal lodged, plague would spread, the undead would rise, and insanity would claim the minds of reasonable men. Left alone in the world, the Holder was sure poison, and would bring about bloodshed, blight, and war.
He had his finger on the trigger of a gun that could do more than kill a man—it could demolish this new land. Such a sweet dilemma the Madders found themselves in: unable to call his bluff for fear of destroying the very land and people they protected.
The crew boss yelled at the men to get back to their shovels and irons, then strode over to the Madders and yelled at them to take their guns and leave before he dragged them back to town behind a wagon.
The Madders laughed, patted one another on the back, and seemed to finally get it through their thick, drunken skulls that they were outnumbered.
Mr. Shunt arrived at LeFel’s elbow, a shadow sliding upon shadow, the silver tray and tea balanced on his fingertips.
“Tea, Lord LeFel?” Mr. Shunt asked.
“Yes, Mr. Shunt. Tea.” LeFel settled onto one of the chairs and watched the brothers stumble back into the dirt and brush, singing a tawdry song.
Mr. Shunt poured tea from a kettle made of gold, the aroma of flowers and honey filling the air.
“They can hunt their hare. They can play the fools,” LeFel murmured. He brought the tea to his lips, and glanced back the way Rose Small had gone. “They can snoop, they can pry, but they’ll never find the treasure I have beneath lock and key. This game is still mine. And before two days are out, I will drown them in their own blood.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rose eased her horse down out of a trot as soon as she was over the hill and well out of Mr. LeFel’s sight.
The voices whispered to her as they always did. Trees saying they were trees, growing upward and digging deep, settling in for the season’s turn. Plants underfoot calling out a breathy little song of root and wind and long days burning short.
Rose turned them a deaf ear insomuch as she could. She’d always been able to hear the thinking of living things. Over the years, she’d tried to make it stop. Not much seemed to help. The living world had a hundred and a half things it thought needed to be said, though most of it was just the babble of growing and dying.
Wearing the locket helped quiet the ruckus some. So did keeping her hands busy making and devising.
She knew it was crazy to say she could hear things. She’d told her father about it once when she was just about six. He’d beaten her soundly, then kept her on her knees for three and a half days, praying for a saved soul.
Though it pained her, she’d lied to him straight to his face and said all that praying had done the trick, and the voices were gone. He’d told her to tend to her chores that had languished while she was atoning for her sin. And then he’d never smiled at her again.
Somehow, Mrs. Dunken caught wind of what she’d been on her knees for—likely Mrs. Small had told her. Then the whole town knew it. Knew she was crazy.
No one had looked at her the same since, no matter how hard she’d tried to hide her strangeness.
Too wild, they said. Touched in the head. A pity she’d never amount to anything. A pity she hadn’t died young. No wonder her mama left her on a doorstep.
Now, at the ripe age of seventeen, it was clear she was unmarriageable.
Rose tipped her face up and blew out the breath she’d been holding, trying to push some of the old pain away. Yes, she’d wanted a husband and children. Once. But that life wasn’t ever coming her way.
She’d lost it the day she told her daddy she wasn’t like other children.
It was the blacksmith, Mr. Gregor, who had taken her in. Let her sit at his bench and watch him work metal over fire so hot, it took her breath away.
She didn’t hear the metal like she heard living things. But she seemed to understand it better, the way it could be dug up, melted, hammered, and molded. She would sometimes stop still in whatever she was doing, caught by the realization of how a brace could change the power a matic could muster, or how an extra wheel, a shorter chain, or bits never put together before could make something different. Something new. Something worthwhile and good.
Some women were clever with thread and cloth. Some with cooking and gardens. Rose was clever with metal, spring, and cog.
Next spring, she planned on leaving. She’d take what money she’d tucked back for herself, and she’d ride until she found a place in this wide world where she could make things, turn things, devise things, no matter that she was a woman. Maybe she’d come up with a medical device, something that helped the lame walk again. Maybe she’d find a way to catch the light of a star and stick it in a jar for the kitchen table. Maybe she’d devise an airship powered by nothing but a song.
One thing was for sure: she refused to die out her days here, pitied, scorned, and alone. She even had a hope, though it was small and wan, that she might stumble across kin. That there was family out there somewhere, who knew the color of her mother’s eyes, and had once heard her father’s laughter. That there was family who knew her real name.
The matics puffed again, a loud thump of air pounding down. Rose wished she’d thought of bringing a coat or shawl. Even though there was still heat in the day, that Mr. LeFel sucked all the warmth out of a person.
He was clever; that was clear. He was charming and breathtakingly handsome. But he had the feel about him of a snake hidden in reeds. The strangest thing was that all the trees and plants and growing things went dead silent around him.
She’d never seen that happen before. Not once in all her years with all the folk who had stopped through her
