Mr. Shard LeFel.”
They gathered their gear, and Alun pressed a modified Winchester rifle into Rose’s hands. “As a thank-you. For the use of the glim,” he said.
She nodded and turned to one side to sight the gun.
“You’ll want these.” Bryn pulled a pair of glasses out of his pocket—well, more like modified goggles, thin brass out to the edges and wide round lenses, clear, set in permanently, with a tiny brass loupe over the right-hand corner of each lens. A spray of other colored lenses fanned off on one side.
Rose put the goggles on her forehead. “I don’t know that I understand this gun,” she said as they strode up the track. “Or these glasses.”
“Each lens is for a different distance,” Bryn said. “There’s a small tube there by your left ear.”
Rose reached up and touched the side of the goggle.
“There’s a retractable clamp on the barrel. Connect the two, and the brass loupe will show you your target.”
Rose slid the goggles over her eyes and connected the tubes. Nothing seemed to happen.
“It’s powered by pumping in a round,” Bryn said.
Rose stopped, and Bryn stopped with her, though Alun and Cadoc kept walking, their boots crunching in the gravel, their heads turned up to watch the moon more than their feet.
Bryn handed her a box of bullets from his pocket, and she loaded a single shell. The lever load snapped the bullet into place and the brass loupe on the goggles shifted to the lowest corner.
She raised the rifle to her shoulder and looked out along it. The brass loupe shifted smoothly like oil on water to show her exactly where her bullet would strike: rock, tree, leaf.
“Isn’t that glimsweet?” Rose said. She lowered the gun and pulled the goggles back up to her forehead.
“Thank you.”
“Wouldn’t want you injured in this fight, Miss Small. You’re a right special woman to survive traveling twixt- wise as we just did.”
“Survive?” Rose asked, surprised. “Think that would have killed us?”
“There’s not anything in this world without risk,” he said. “Especially untested devices.”
Rose shook her head. “I’m sure I agree with you there, Mr. Madder.” She hefted the gun. “But I enjoyed every second of it.”
A crashing squeal of metal on metal ground into the night behind them, coming up the tracks as if something huge was being dragged. If LeFel’s matic was coming from ahead of them, Rose had no idea what sort of thing was coming up from behind.
“Don’t dally,” Alun yelled back to them, jumping to one side of the track, and still jogging while he navigated a way through the bushes. “Sounds like the fun’s just beginning.”
Bryn turned and jogged to catch up with his brothers, and after a moment’s hesitation, and a moment’s prayer, Rose did the same.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cedar Hunt stalked the perimeter of the dozen or so tents and cook pits of the workers in Shard LeFel’s employ. Unlike most railmen, who brought a crew of stragglers and ruffians to work the rail, LeFel had only a handful of men he brought along, and had hired up another handful or two of men from the town. For the rest of the rail work, he used his matics and tickers.
The men were sleeping, vulnerable, lying quiet and easy for the kill. The cook fires had gone to ash and smoke. No sentries watched over the rail. Even the matics were powered down, cold, silent, unmoving sculptures of iron and leather and oil made supple by moonlight.
It would be easy to kill the men. But it was not men Cedar hunted. It was the Strange. And the tuning fork that whispered against his heart said the Strange were close.
Cedar had to find Wil, dead or alive. Had to find the boy, Elbert, dead or alive. And he had to kill Mr. Shunt. He may not have been able to save Mae Lindson, a sorrow that made him want to keen, but he had made her promises, and he would see them through.
Mr. Shunt would likely return to the three railcars on the track, down a ways from the men’s tents and matics. Cedar headed that way. He didn’t know why a man like Shard LeFel needed three cars, but he had a suspicion. One car to live in, maybe one car to work in. And likely one car to hold his prisoners in.
Cedar slipped through the darkness to the railcars on the spur off the main rail, staying in shadow, silent as the moonlight.
He crept to the first car and sniffed at the underbody. Death and Strange. There were things, Strange things, in this car just waiting to be killed. But the tuning fork did not hum louder. There might be Strange within the car, but it was not the one Strange who had taken Elbert. And that Strange was the one he would kill. First.
It took everything he had not to give in to the beast’s need to kill. He pulled against the urge, tamped it down, and sniffed at the car again. Something skittered in the three corners of the car, dragging long tails or ropes behind, and then was still. He could not find the boy or his brother’s scent in the death and blood and oil above him.
There might be prisoners in this car, but they were not Elbert or Wil.
He moved on to the next car. It stank of oil and steam and burned metal. Faintly, he caught the scent of the boy’s blood. Old. No other smell of him. And still no smell of his brother. The tuning fork remained quiet.
The last car was filled with scents. The heavy, moldy pall of Mr. Shunt filled his nose. Cedar stifled a growl and licked his muzzle. Mr. Shunt had been there, but he was not there now. He could not kill him, tear him apart, dig out the bits of him that made him tick. There was no movement, no talking, no signs that Mr. Shunt and Shard LeFel had returned to the car.
Other odors filled the air—Shard LeFel’s rich cologne, meat, liquor, metals, old wood.
The smell of Elbert was in that car—the musky milk scent of a child deeply sleeping, strong and alive. Cedar’s heart quickened with hope. If that was true, he had a chance to save Elbert, to bring the child back to his father alive.
All he had to do was find a way into the railcar. He sniffed along the edge of the car, looking for a trap, a latch, a door in. And then he caught the scent of his brother.
Wil. Here. Above him. Wounded. The rot of infection was already tainting the smell of his blood. But it was new blood. It was not the smell of death. Wil still breathed.
Cedar wanted to howl with joy, but that joy was short-lived. To save his brother, he had to get into the car. It was not flesh that stood in his way; it was wood and metal, latch and hinge, things that took a man’s hands, a man’s fingers.
All the claw in the world would do him no good.
The ground shook. The matic Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt rode was coming closer. Cedar hunkered down beneath the edge of the car. Shard LeFel’s matic huffed across the ground. It rolled up the ridge and would be at the rail any minute.
Cedar waited. Waited for Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt to walk up the stairs and open the doors. And once they opened the doors, he would no longer need them, or their hands.
The steam-powered matic huffed nearer and nearer.
Over that noise, Cedar could just make out the sound of men shifting in their tents.
No. Men would not slake his thirst. He wanted the Strange. He wanted the Strange who took Elbert and hurt Wil. He wanted Mr. Shunt. Dead.
No other creature moved. Not even those who were inside the carriage above him. It was as if the whole of the world held its breath.
The matic grew louder until Cedar’s teeth rattled from the vibration of it. It stopped next to the tracks in front of the first car Cedar had investigated. A hiss of steam expelled in a roll of heat; then the huffing slowed and slowed, like a heart losing the will to beat.
