Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (5 page)

I put aside the way his touch made my thoughts jiggle out of alignment. It wasn’t the time for crushes and weak knees, even if I wanted nothing more than to have everything be right again, and my biggest concern to be what to wear on a date with Dean, a real one with no Proctors and
no specter of their lie. I raised my voice instead and spoke to Skip.

“Where are we going?”

“Windhaven,” he said. “And to get to Windhaven, we’re going to fly.”

The Dance of the Air

W
E WALKED PERHAPS
half a mile, to a clearing down a gravel path off the main road. Skip and his friends kept in tight formation around us. I found it a bit ludicrous—they had no idea who the real threat was. Conrad, presumably, had a Weird like I did, some kind of elemental magic that allowed the Graysons to conjure wind and flame and everything in between. But he had never shown it to me, and I hadn’t brought it up.

It’d be much better if Skip kept thinking of Conrad as criminal but basically harmless, just a stupid human overstepping his bounds. This goal in mind, I walked with my head down, the same ache in my feet that had been there all day twinging in my worn-out boots.

“There’s going to be a weight issue,” said Skip’s short friend. “The dirigible wasn’t built for nine. Or more like ten, including the portly dame.”

“Excuse you!” Bethina snapped. “I’m not an ounce overweight!”

“You’re too heavy for the sky,” Skip said bluntly. “That’s just simple math.”

“Better than being a walking cadaver, like some of us,” I piped up. Skip looked at me, then at Dean.

“Keep a gag on your girlfriend, Deano, unless you want me to do it for you.”

Dean looked at me and, no doubt seeing the murder in my eyes, brushed his hand against mine. “Not the time,” he muttered.

I took a deep breath and then leaned a bit closer to him, so that the sides of our hands stayed in contact as we walked. Dean caught my eye again and gave me a sideways smile.

“You three can walk back to the pickup zone,” Skip told the other Erlkin. “I’ll stay with the prisoner.”

“That’s fifteen miles!” his friend protested.

“You don’t like it, go live in the woods with the slipstreamers,” Skip snapped. “You have your orders.”

We came within range of the dirigible, and surprise made me stop and stare. Far from the metal-walled zeppelins I was accustomed to, the Erlkin’s dirigible looked like it shouldn’t fly at all. It consisted only of a metal cage slung under a balloon with bronze-colored ribs holding it in place, the red skin of the balloon rising and falling like the sides of a sentient creature.

The cage looked delicate, the wire thin and woven intricately, and Skip opened the retractable door with a crank handle. “Get in,” he ordered, shoving Conrad. My brother
fell to the floor of the cage, and Skip kicked him hard in the gut.

“Hey!” I shouted, lunging for Skip. Dean grabbed me by the sweater and yanked me back.

“
No
, Aoife,” he hissed through gritted teeth. I struggled against him for a moment before going still. I’d always had a temper, and it was coming out more and more now that I didn’t have the admonition to be a “proper young lady” hanging over me, as I’d had at the Academy. I gave Skip the worst look I could muster, but I smoothed my hands over my skirt and stood down.

“I’m fine,” I told Dean. “He’s not worth it.”

“You’re a firecracker,” Skip sneered. “Time was, Dean knew just what to do with a girl like you.”

I crouched next to Conrad, cradling his head in my lap as Skip got Cal and Bethina on board and reeled in his mooring lines. “Bastard,” I said to him, stroking my brother’s hair. Seeing Conrad hurt brought back the old feelings, the feelings of the girl who’d do anything for her strong, loyal brother. Conrad coughed weakly.

“I’m fine, Aoife,” he said. “We’ll get this fixed. Just a misunderstanding.”

Once we’d all boarded, the craft rose from the forest floor with a bump. I looked at the ground drifting away below my feet and tried to focus on the construction of the Erlkin’s craft to still my temper and the fear that once we reached Windhaven, we’d be in even worse trouble. The cage was made of fine silver mesh and iron bones that echoed in the wind, giving an empty
bong
when I tapped my knuckle against it. Hollow bones, like a bird’s, light and strong. The Erlkin were better engineers than the Fae, that
was for sure. The Fae feared anything with moving parts, treated it like it was some object from beyond reason if it mimicked their magic in any way.

Except I was in an iron cage, and even now I could feel it pressing on my mind, stirring in my blood and bringing on light-headed fits.

I tried to breathe, to think of orderly numbers and figures, the physics that allowed us to rise from the ground and drift above the treetops. Tried not to think of my dreams or my mother, as impossible as that might be.

“How far?” I asked Dean.

“Not much longer,” he announced. “The faithful of the fold never venture too far from Windhaven. Isn’t that right, Skip?”

Skip said nothing, just kept his hand lightly on the rudder of the dirigible, until we were far enough off the ground that all I could see were the tops of trees, rising through the fog like the blackened fingers of dead hands.

“Not far now,” Skip said, but his tone didn’t fill me with hope.

When Windhaven came into view, it wasn’t a sight that anything in my life, including my visit to the Thorn Land, the home of the Fae, had prepared me for.

The fog parted like the sea before the prow of an old-fashioned ship, and I saw gleaming towers of iron suspended high above the ground.

The distinctive burnt-paper scent of aether reached my nostrils, and as Windhaven got larger, I realized it wasn’t merely suspended—the entire city was flying along before
us, moving above the Mists like a great raven casting its shadow across the ground. Iron didn’t poison the Erlkin, I knew—Dean had been just fine spending his life in an iron city surrounded by machines. Good for Dean and the Erlkin. Bad for Conrad and me. My stomach dipped along with the craft.

As we drew closer, I saw that Windhaven’s structures were built on an oval platform supported at the thinnest and widest points by giant fans whirring so loudly that even now, hundreds of yards off, they overwhelmed my ears. At the base of the city a giant aether globe hung by flexible cables, supplying Windhaven with light and communications. It looked small as a marble, or a twinkling star in a vast sky, against the grand scale of the flying city.

A mass of radio aerials flew from the highest tower at the apex of the buildings, which were largely curved but didn’t look as if they’d come together in any particular order. It was, for lack of a better description, a flying scrapyard, albeit one held aloft by engineering that made me dizzy with its genius.

I saw a cluster of spindly docking arms radiating from the back of the flying structure, in the dead spot for drag near one of the giant fans. Some were already occupied by crimson-sailed dirigibles similar to ours. Skip steered us toward an empty berth.

The arm extended toward us, long, flexible cables seeking out the iron ribs of the balloon.

“Magnets,” I said to Cal, analyzing how everything worked out of habit. We’d both been students at the School of Engines before I’d found out he was actually a ghoul and I was actually, in the eyes of the Proctors, an abomination.

“It’s boss,” he murmured, distractedly keeping one hand on Bethina’s where it clutched his arm in a death grip.

The magnets clamped on and reeled us in, safe against the docking arm. A thin ladder that looked like it couldn’t support even its own weight locked onto the outside of the dirigible’s cage.

“I’m not climbing that,” Bethina said instantly.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Skip said shortly. “Once the city climbs up to night flying altitude, the temperature will drop enough that you should freeze to death in an hour or two. You probably won’t feel a thing.”

Cal put his hand on Bethina’s shoulder. His stringy body was vibrating, and I could tell it was taking everything he had not to change and launch himself at Skip’s throat.

I was thinking it would be a toss-up who clocked Skip first—Cal or me.

“Come on,” Cal soothed Bethina. “It’ll be okay. I’ll be right behind you.” He opened the door and helped her out onto the ladder. She was sheet white, her knuckles the color of bone where she held on to the metal, and I didn’t envy her. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I had plenty of other fears to fill that void, and being so close to iron was making every one of them stir and raise their heads.

Skip turned to Conrad and pulled a key on a flexible chain from his belt. “I’m going to unlock you to climb up. There are more of us at the top than you could hope to overpower, and if you pull anything you’re going off the side.” He smacked the cage for emphasis, and it rattled. “It’s a long way down.”

“You can lay off the lanternreel-villain talk,” Conrad told him. “I’ll be a good boy.”

Skip curled his lip and looked at Dean. “And what about you, Nails? You going to be a good boy?”

“Doubt it,” Dean told him. “Never managed it before.”

Skip snorted before he manhandled Conrad onto the ladder and followed him up.

Dean helped me out, his hand warm on mine even though the breeze whipping along the docking stations was icy cold. “Why does he call you Nails?” I asked.

“Long story,” Dean said. “Not one I’m going to waste time telling, either.”

I looked up the ladder at the dark, arched mouth of the entrance to Windhaven. The lump of fear in my chest hadn’t dissolved, and in fact felt like it had grown. “Is this in any way a good idea?”

“No,” Dean said. “Probably the opposite, as a matter of fact, but I don’t see that we’ve got much of a choice on this one.”

I didn’t either, so up I went. As we climbed, we went from breathless open space to a tiny tunnel. Skip was waiting at the top of the ladder, snapping the cuffs back on Conrad, and as soon as we were all on our feet on the platform, we marched down the tunnel to a hatch leading to Windhaven proper, marked with a symbol in the shape of a wheel and spokes with wings attached.

More Erlkin dressed in uniforms like Skip’s waited at the hatch, and he handed Conrad off to them before turning to me. “We’ll keep your friends in holding until we determine their status. You too. Nails, you’re free to go.” He gave Dean a look I couldn’t identify. Not anger, not contempt, but not pleasure, either. “I’m sure Shard will want to see you.”

An Erlkin even taller than Skip took my arm. “You come with me, girlie.”

I glanced back at Dean as they led me away. I was smart enough to know that I had to stay calm and passive with this many edgy Erlkin around, so I didn’t fight, but it was hard to take my eyes off Dean. Dean was constant, and he was safety. Separated from him, I didn’t know how long I could hold off the madness dreams. Besides, I didn’t want to leave him and the gleam of his silver eyes, the blush that sat on his lips, full for a boy’s, and the feeling of his strong hands gripping mine.

Dean didn’t look at me. He was staring into the middle distance, and I could tell he was seeing something I couldn’t see at all.

I didn’t get to view much of Windhaven as the Erlkin marched me to my cell. They kept me belowdecks, and we passed through a series of hatches lit by spitting aether globes, the walls pitted with rust and painted with more of the strange pictograms like the wheel-shaped symbol that marked the entry. I reasoned it was the Erlkin language, and these must be shorthand for directions to the various levels of the city-ship. I tucked them away in my memory to write out and puzzle over later. I was good at symbols and riddles, and the sooner I didn’t have to rely on an Erlkin to translate, the sooner I’d be able to escape Windhaven if I had to.

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I had the bad feeling it was going to, and rapidly. The Erlkin didn’t seem
overly friendly now, when they thought Conrad and I were only human. Who knew what would happen if they ferreted out our secret?

The cell wasn’t nearly as cell-like as the one the Proctors had shoved me in when they’d caught me, after I’d escaped Lovecraft. It was more like a deserted classroom, plain metal tables with stenotypes arranged around the perimeter of the room, and a chalkboard with numbers—latitude and longitude—written on it. It looked as if the room’s rightful occupants had just stepped out.

The Erlkin pulled out a chair for me and sat me in it with a hard push. He dropped my bag next to me, after searching it and removing my engineer’s toolkit and anything else I could use to escape. Luckily he didn’t find my notebook, which I’d tucked away in a hidden pocket.

“Stay put,” he said. “Someone will be in after a while.”

“How specific,” I muttered. “Will it be before my hair turns gray?”

The Erlkin sneered at me and closed the hatch. I heard a rumble and saw the rods at the top and bottom lock into place. It would take a blast to dislodge the door now. I was stuck in here until they decided to let me out. If they ever did. Unless I used my Weird.

I had discovered in Lovecraft that I could move machines, that they responded to my blood as my blood responded to iron. But to use my Weird was to invite pounding headaches, hallucinations and nosebleeds. I drummed my fingers against the nearest desk. The Erlkin hadn’t actually hurt anyone yet. I had to save my strength for when we were really in danger. Being on the run had taught me that, if nothing else.