Cold Copper: The Age of Steam (18 page)

Nothing. He mounted up and headed back to town.

Nightfall was only a few hours off. He’d need to be under Mae’s spell, or under chains, before moonrise. If not, he’d be hunting Strange and, in his current frame of mind, killing people too, beginning with the mayor.

The wind, pushing cold down his spine, was thick with the scent of Strange.

Why had the Strange asked for his help? That was something he’d never seen before.

It made him wonder, for the first time, what sort of thing the Strange would fear.

R
ose hadn’t even gone through half the freight before she found a cutting torch and rigged it so she could catch a fire to the tip. She’d
tried opening the doors, of course, but when the airship had lifted
the car, it had done something to lock the doors from the outside.

She braced herself as best she could with all the swaying and then burned out a square hole in each of the doors at the ends of the train car.

The cold air that howled in through those holes was lung robbing, but if she squinted against it, she could see that they were being carried over hills and plains. Now and then she saw a river snake by.

She was going to share her observation with Hink, but he’d fallen asleep, likely trying to outrun the pain of his wound.

As day filtered into evening, Rose settled down too, putting a blanket she had found in a crate over Hink and wrapping up in one herself. But instead of sleeping, she set out bits and pieces of the puppets to see if she could fathom what they could do.

The puppet pieces fit together well enough, screwing in and hinging. She could make a roughly man-sized thing with feet, legs that included hinged knees, arms with all the bendy parts, a torso, and a neck. It had one hand with fully articulated fingers. She didn’t know where the head was, and couldn’t tell if it was intended to have one.

Also, there was that hole in the middle of the chest that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, with its copper band binding the cavity’s edge. Yes, one of those copper devices fit the hole, but how exactly did it power the thing? She’d assumed steam or maybe oil, but there was no evidence of either.

Plus, she hadn’t found another of those glass-and-copper devices, just the broken one that Hink had in his pocket.

It would have to do.

Rose got up and took the few steps over to Hink.

She gently lifted the edge of his blanket and pushed his coat to the side. First, she checked to see if there was more blood from his wound than there should be. No, the handkerchief was soaked through but there was no blood on the floor beside him and he didn’t seem to be leaking from anywhere else.

A wash of relief overtook her, and for a moment she just sat there, looking at his sleeping face. He didn’t seem so worried and sullen when he slept, although pain pulled tight at the edge of his good eye and even at the corner of his eye patch.

“If you’re waiting for a good time to kiss me, I’d say now should work,” he said without opening his eyes.

“I thought you were asleep,” Rose said.

“I was. Then you pulled near everything off me.” Hink opened his eye and gave her half a smile. “You weren’t going to pickpocket me, now, were you?”

“No!” she said too quickly. “Of course not.”

“Rose Small.” He shook his head, that grin growing wider. “You
were
going to pat my pockets. What are you after?”

“Nothing. I only came over here to check on your injury.”

“For a girl so clever with her hands, you don’t lie well. Go on now. Tell me. What were you after?”

“The copper device.”

“Why?”

“After I cut a hole in the doors I got bored and started piecing things together.”

“You cut holes in the doors?”

She nodded. “Can’t tell where we’re going though. Just snow-covered trees, fields, and a river or two.”

He straightened a bit and grunted at the movement. Then he pulled a compass out of his pocket. “Let’s find out before we’re all out of daylight.”

“I’d like to bind that wound.”

“Do you have anything to bind it with?”

She pulled the strips of cotton she’d made out of a table linen she’d found in the crate.

“All right, let me get out of this coat.”

She helped him take off his heavy outercoat; then with unspoken agreement, he stripped down to his undershirt too.

He shivered while Rose replaced the bloody handkerchief with a clean square of cloth, then wrapped his ribs, knotting the whole thing tightly enough to keep the wound closed. Or so she hoped.

“How’s that feel?”

“Tight,” he said. Then, “Fine. It should hold, and that’s good. Now let’s see where we are.”

He got up to his feet with only a whispered swearword, then took a step. Finding himself steady, he shrugged back into his overshirt. When he was done, Rose handed him his coat and he pulled that on too, though she noticed he was breathing a little heavily by that point.

“Maybe you should rest,” she said.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s see what we can see.” He walked over to the hole in the door, stepping around the puppet she’d pieced together. “That’s what you’ve been fiddling with?”

“It’s got my curiosity in a twist,” she said. “So? See anything familiar?”

“I’d say…” He paused, looked away from the hole to the compass
in his hand, then back out the hole again. “We’re headed northwest by the lay of the sun. Still toward Iowa, by my estimation. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Why?”

“Can you hear it?” He paused. “The fans changed speed. We’ll be on the ground before sunset, which”—he looked back out the door again—“will be in about two hours. Should be long enough.”

“For what?”

“To see what that device on the floor can do.” He drew out the glass-and-copper contraption and handed it to her.

Rose almost pulled her hand away.

Hink caught her slight hesitation and paused with the battery balanced over his palm. “Problem?”

“No. None.” She held her hand out again.

“Rose. Tell me true.”

“I don’t like touching it.”

“Because?”

“It…I can hear it in my head.”

The silence that stretched out made her wish she’d told him that some other way. It sounded like something a crazy woman would say. And she’d been accused of being odd, strange, mad, for much of her life. She could handle people judging her, but she wasn’t sure she could handle Hink thinking she was…frail in that way.

“Like a thought? A voice?” he asked. Not judging. Not yet. But not exactly believing her either.

“Never mind.” She forced a short laugh. “I’m just being silly. Let me take that and see if it fits.…”

“Rose.” A gentle reproach. “I told you you’re the only woman who brings the truth out in me. I’d be pleased if you’d answer me truthfully. How can you hear this in your head?”

She swallowed hard to get the dry out of her throat. Then she told him something she’d never admitted to anyone. “When I was little, when I was
first learning to talk, I used to tell my mother that I could hear the plants. That they said they were happy with sunlight, or water, or bugs. I told her I could hear the trees and flowers, and if I listened carefully, moss.”

“Moss?”

“It’s the quietest.”

He didn’t say anything else. Waiting. Waiting for her to continue proving she was tetched in the head.

“By the time I was seven, people in town were talking. I was adopted, which made me strange, and I was talking to trees. You can imagine how well that went over.

“I stopped telling my mother what the plants were saying. Stopped…just stopped talking about all of it. I found my way to Mr. Gregor’s shop. The metal there in his blacksmith shop didn’t talk to me. But my hands seemed to know what to do with it. How to make it change from a lump, or a cog, or a spring, into something wonderful. Something just as vital as the plants and other living things. It was still strange for a girl to spend her time in the blacksmith shop, but my mother allowed it for a while. Then she didn’t even allow that.”

Rose had hoped she could end her story there, but he was still waiting, as if he knew she wasn’t done yet.

Good glim. Why did she have to hook up with a man who paid so damn much attention to a person? Wicks would have likely been bored by her story by now, and suggesting a book on botany or some such thing.

“I never stopped hearing green things talking about dirt, bugs, the weather. It’s just a pleasant chatter in the background, like always being in a slightly crowded room.

“Only ever since I got hurt, since the tin bit of the Holder hit me, I don’t think I’ve heard growing things. But when I put my hands on that…on that cold copper, it speaks to me in an overwhelming sort of way. Saying what it can do, saying what it might have been made for, like too many pictures rolling through my head all at once.”

“Does it hurt you?” he asked.

“It’s not painful, no. Just…just strange. I don’t like it as much as I like hearing from plants. They’re so simple in their needs and functions. This…that thing is very complicated.”

“So what did it tell you it can do?”

“Power something, store something, trap something. It’s copper and glass, obviously, but it’s more. I think…I think there might be glim worked into that metal.”

Hink nodded slowly. Odd thing was, that didn’t seem to surprise him. “We’ve heard, well, I’ve heard that could be true. That someone may be working metal with glim. And glim-worked metal doesn’t behave like other metal.”

“Who have you heard that from?” she asked.

“The doves.”

This time he waited for her reaction. She realized she wasn’t as angry about it anymore. A spy network among those women made a lot of sense when she thought about it. Even with the…temptation present. “What have they heard it can do, glim metal?”

“That’s the thing. No one’s talking about what it can do. There are rumors, but nothing’s been confirmed. And the rumors say it’s best used as a weapon. A weapon that can be used to bring this country to its knees.”

“That’s a big weapon,” Rose said.

“Or many small ones. Maybe say roughly the size of a man that can be shipped in parts in a railcar, then pieced together at every destination the rail, boats, or airships can reach.”

Rose glanced at the puppet man she had constructed on the floor. Headless, it looked like some kind of gruesome toy.

“Do you think that’s what that is?” she asked. “A weapon?”

“One way to find out.” He lifted the copper device again. “Have you figured out exactly how it powers with this thing?”

“No. I have ideas, but…” She made up her mind. “Let me do it. If I see pictures of what it’s made for, or what it can do, maybe that will help us figure it out.”

“Are you sure, Rose?”

She nodded. “Won’t be the first time I’ve heard funny things in my head. I can handle that.”

Hink reluctantly rested the copper and glass in her hand. The cold and weight of it still surprised her. And then, just like before, a rush of knowing about the thing thrashed across her thoughts. Power, holding, storing, feeding, and other things: how it was made, pounded flat of cold copper and bound to glim by…something slippery there. She got the image of herbs and hands and…

“Witches!” she exhaled.

“Rose?” Hink put his hand on top of the copper piece, ready to pull it away. The noise from the device dampened down, like a plucked string with a palm over it.

“Witches. I think the glim was bound to the metal by witches. Oh, God. Do you think that was why Margaret was delivering the crates? Do you think they made this?”

“Hold on now, hold on. Are you sure it’s a spell?”

“No. Yes. I mean, when I pick this up, I sense hands and voices and herbs. A sort of mixing up of the things I consider unique to the coven. I’m not sure it’s a spell put on glim and metal to make them bind, but I’m sure the witches are involved.”

“Can you tell who?” he asked.

Rose shook her head. “But the night before I left the coven I heard some of the sisters talking. Saying witches shouldn’t choose sides in a war. Saying they shouldn’t be involved in curses. Maybe it’s not the same thing. Maybe it’s not this.” She held up the device. “But it might be. You haven’t heard of the witches being involved in the homunculus thing have you?”

“There has been some whispering of deals made between different covens across the country and people who are involved in movements for and against the government. Covens choosing sides.”

“Sides for what?”

“You know how Alabaster Saint was raising a force to see that the glim trade funneled through him to someone above him so they could start up a new war? I’m beginning to believe Alabaster Saint was just the tip of that sword. There are people who want this government overthrown. People who know just how vulnerable the United States is right now, since the war.”

“Is it that serious?”

“Much more. Anything else you can tell me about that?” He nodded at the copper device.

She considered the device in her hand. “I don’t get the impression this is all that needs to be together for that”—she pointed at the puppet on the floor—“to work yet. It seems to be missing something; some part of what it does isn’t here yet.”

“Think we can get some power into that thing on the floor now that it’s all together?” he asked.

“Without repairing the glass, I don’t think so. Maybe if we patch it, though. Is there any oilskin around here? Glue?”

“I’ll look.” Hink checked the labels on crates, broke open half a dozen, and finally found waxed parchment and glue.

Rose cut a piece of parchment to the correct size to patch the glass, then glued it in place.

Hink walked over to the puppet and groaned a little as he knelt next to it. “So what a ways do you think we should fit it this time?”