Steamsworn (Steamborn Series Book 3) (26 page)

“At falling?” Alice asked. “I’ve always been fast at that.”

Drakkar released a quiet laugh.

“How long until Cage and the others get here?” Jacob asked.

“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” Samuel said. “Mary took it slow, but we still beat them here by quite a bit. That gives us time to find the old entrance.”

“Is it actually in the cemetery?” Alice asked. Smith landed on the stone beside Drakkar.

Samuel nodded. “This wasn’t always a cemetery. Before they built the base on the cliffside, most of the barracks were here. After the Deadlands War, things changed.”

Smith stepped to the old rusted gate. “A mild way of putting it.” He ran his fingers across the chain.

“I don’t suppose you have a lockpick?” Samuel asked. “I guess we could scale it.”

Smith threw one of the levers beneath his sleeve, reached out, and tore the chain from the gate. “I am never without a lockpick.” The iron links clattered onto the stone when Smith let go.

Samuel stepped past the tinker and said, “I guess not.”

“We will wait here,” George said from behind them.

“No,” Gladys said. “I want to see the station.”

“We will, Princess, but here we may see things Mary cannot—our enemies hidden in the shadows or windows. Things that could keep our friends safe.”

Gladys frowned, but George had clearly won her over with that logic. “Fine, fine. I’ll setup over there by the reflecting pool.”

Jacob followed her gaze and found a small rectangular pool set into the cemetery grounds. Above it stood a wide marble platform with benches and railings carved from a dark stone. The Midstream cloaks would almost vanish against that background.

“An excellent vantage point, Princess. I will watch from the east. Be wary, and watch for Cage.”

Jacob followed behind Smith as everyone crossed the cemetery gates. Alice stayed close, and if Jacob was being honest, that made him happy.

“How far into the grounds is it?” Drakkar asked.

“It’s below the old iron tower.” Samuel said, pointing to the northeast.

“The bell tower?” Drakkar asked.

“Yes.”

The sun was almost gone by the time they reached the old bell tower. Something ran past them in the low shrubs, chittering and clacking as it went. Jacob shivered in the shadowed darkness of the cemetery.

“Okay, it’s a little creepy here.”

“Not as bad as the catacombs in Ancora,” Alice said.

“Not yet,” Samuel said.

“You’ve never been in the catacombs,” Alice said.

“I was down there with you and Charles and Jacob, if my memory isn’t shot.

“Those weren’t the catacombs,” Alice said. “That was the old station and the old tunnels. You didn’t see the dead.”

Jacob’s mind flashed back to that darkness, the whispers and scuttling things that passed them unseen, and the voice of the Butcher. The man who’d caused so much pain, so much death, and he’d been so close.

“We should have killed him then,” Jacob whispered.

“What?” Alice asked. “You mean the Butcher in the catacombs? We didn’t even know it was him. Besides, we didn’t have any weapons.”

Samuel muttered and walked around the bell tower for the second time. “I know it’s here, dammit. We used the old station for a training exercise. Captain got us all excited like we were taking leave in Dauschen, but it was just more training.”

“Do you need a lantern?” Smith asked, interrupting the Spider Knight’s complaints.

“No, no, it’s right here,” he said as he traced a square with his arms. “This is the door, but I can’t find the catch to release it.” He pressed on a series of bricks that formed the pattern of a bell on the side of the tower. “I thought it was in one of these old bricks …” Samuel banged his fist on the mosaic and something clicked.

Samuel leaned onto the brick just to the left of the middle, and it sank slightly into the wall. Something loud and metallic slid and clanged inside the tower. Samuel pushed on the door, and the hinges squealed as the darkness inside came up to meet them. A small trail of ancient cobwebs fluttered out into the night on the stale air, thick as a rope.

“We’re going into
that?
” Jacob asked, staring into an abyss.

“Please,” Alice said. “It can’t be any worse than the Widow Makers beneath Ancora.

“She’s not wrong about that,” Samuel said. The Spider Knight reached out and grabbed the web. “It’s still tacky, but it’s a fairly old web.” He clicked the igniter on a lantern and lit the interior of the bell tower. “Oh, those are Jumper webs.” He pointed to a cluster of looping webs that were almost as beautiful as they were terrifying. “Look at the curves and the thick tunnels of silk.”

“Is that supposed to make us feel better?” Drakkar asked, clearly not excited at the prospect of navigating the old webs.

“You don’t have many Jumpers around Cave, do you?”

The guardian shook his head.

“Jumpers avoid Widow Makers. If you have Jumpers, you don’t have Widow Makers. It’s a very good sign.”

Drakkar took a deep breath. “So be it. Lanterns out?”

“Only shielded lanterns,” Samuel said as he patted the thick glass globe on his own light. “You hit a dry web with an open flame, and we won’t have to worry about what’s waiting down below.”

Samuel swept his light around the tower and stepped onto the staircase. “There’s enough silk in here to braid a thousand belts, Smith.”

The tinker reached out and snagged the silk that rose and fell slightly in the breeze. “It is aged well enough to be woven. If we survive this battle, I may have to return. This would be costly material in Bollwerk.”

Samuel nodded and started down the tight spiral that vanished beneath the old stone floor. “I haven’t seen any spiders, but keep your guard up. I know those are Jumper webs, but the lack of spiders is somewhat worrisome.”

“Somewhat worrisome?” Jacob muttered as he stepped into the shadowy bell tower. The wind whistled through the small windows near the top of the belfry, almost an echo of the hinges that squeaked behind him.

Samuel’s light began to fade down the stone staircase. Alice slid around Jacob and hurried down the steps to catch up to the others. Something brushed against Jacob’s neck. He shivered and hurried down the stairs to catch Alice.

“It was only a web,” Drakkar said from behind him.

Jacob kept one hand on the wall of the staircase, and the other on Alice’s shoulder. She reached up intermittently to squeeze his fingers. This was not a place either of them wanted to be. The room opened wide near the end of the staircase, the stone spiral looked like a cylinder behind them, draped with spider silk. The dead air left the old silk to fall like curtains, lifeless and unmoving.

Something whispered at the back of Jacob’s mind, an awful memory of Widow Makers dropping from shadowed heights in the caverns beneath Ancora. Adrenaline spiked and he shivered as his heart slammed against his ribcage. It was too dark, too quiet, too small, something terrible was going to happen.

“Spiders,” Alice whispered.

Every fiber of Jacob’s being told him to run, but there was nowhere to go.

Alice grabbed his wrist and pointed to a bulky shadow tucked behind the edge of the staircase.

“Looks like,” Samuel said. He pushed his way into the darkness, clearing the webs as he made his way around the bottom of the stairs. His lantern caught on two carcasses as he reached the far side of the room. The Spider Knight pushed on one of the legs and it shattered.

“They’ve been dead for months. I doubt we’ll see any Carrion Worms.” He rubbed his fingers together and frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Jacob asked.

Samuel glanced up. “It’s nothing.”

Samuel sighed. “I just hope nothing’s happened to Bessie. With what we heard about the Lowlands … I just hope she’s okay.”

The Spider Knight frowned and held his lantern up. The light flowed over three iron doors, each set an equal distance from the other. “What?”

Jacob glanced behind him. Drakkar watched the staircase.

“What is it?” Smith asked.

“I don’t remember there being three doors.”

“How long since you have been here?” Smith asked.

“Three years? Maybe four?”

“A man can forget things in a few years.” Smith reached out and yanked on the nearest handle. “This one is locked.”

Samuel tried the far door. It moved slightly before the deadbolt caught and clanged against the iron frame. He moved to the center door. The hinges screamed, shedding rust and debris from years of slumber. “I guess we’ll go this way.”

“What is behind the other doors?” Drakkar asked. He stepped off the bottom of the staircase, joining the rest of the group.

“Stop stop stop,” Jacob hissed, throwing his hands out to the sides. “Did you hear that?”

Everyone fell silent, straining to hear. It came again. A quiet exhalation and then the scrabbling of a hundred legs.

“We’re not alone,” Samuel said. “The sooner we get out of here the better.” He stepped around Smith and slipped into the corridor behind the middle door. Jacob followed the dim glow of Samuel’s lantern up ahead while Drakkar brought up the rear.

The path took a sharp turn to the right, and it felt like they were walking on a downward slope. Jacob felt some minor relief when the corridor stayed clear of webs. Immaculate, if dusty, tiled floors led them forward, and old brass railings made for firm handholds in the walls.

The hall opened into a wide trapezoid shape, and Samuel slowed his pace. “This is it. This I remember. The left gate used to be the exit ramp, but it was collapsed last time I was here. The right will take us to the old platform.”

A hinge cracked open on the rusted iron gate.

“Careful,” Smith said. He reached out and shook the floor-to-ceiling construct. “This is ready to fall. He held the gate open while the others walked through.

Jacob squinted into the darkness beyond Samuel’s lantern. Jacob couldn’t see any more webs nearby, so he clicked the igniter on his lantern and hooked it onto his vest.

“Gods …” Drakkar said. “What happened here?”

There were railcars, no one could argue with that, but something had thrown two of the cars off the track and smashed them into another train.

Smith held up his lantern and ran it over the iron and steel carnage laid out in front of them. “Over there, in the corner. Looks like two cars are still seated on the track.”

“Samuel,” Alice said, “that wall looks like it’s twenty feet tall and reinforced with almost as much iron as wood.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” The Spider Knight blew out a breath and cursed.

“Let us take a closer look,” Smith said. “Look along the top. The wall is already twisted. I do not think it will take much to knock it down.”

“To knock it down without damaging the tracks will be the true test,” Drakkar said.

Smith glanced up at the ceiling and then clicked the transmitter on his collar. “Mary, do you read?”

A tinny, static-laced response came back. “I can barely hear you.”

“Do not let Cage enter the bell tower. There are bugs in the tunnels.”

“Understood. Alternatives?”

“If we are able to drop the wall, you can setup the landing lines to use for rappelling.”

“I’ll get George to help. Watch yourself.”

“What now?” Samuel asked.

“Now?” Smith said as he turned to the Spider Knight. “Now we need bombs.”

J
acob frowned at
the boiler on the fourth intact railcar they’d passed. A large hole marred the side of it, wide enough to stick his arm through. He glanced up at Alice and shook his head. “This one’s hopeless. We don’t have anything to patch that.”

“What about switching it out with another one?” Her voice echoed around the station, mixing with the distant voices of the others.

“It’d work, sure, but I’d guess those boilers weigh about seven hundred pounds dry.”

Alice glanced over at the wall. “Smith might be able to move it.”

“Maybe. Let’s check the last two. I don’t want to bother him while he’s setting those charges. One bad angle and we’ll be walking to Ancora. At least we found a couple fuel bars in this one.” He let the foot-long bars of slow-burning fuel clatter onto the deck.

Alice held out her hand while Jacob dusted his palms off. He grabbed her hand, and she used the leverage to help hoist him out of the engine room.

“That’s a tiny space for an engine,” Alice said.

Jacob looked back into the hole in the floor. “More like an engine closet.”

Alice let out a tiny laugh. “Come on. One of these things has to be working.”

They made their way down the dusty tracks until the next car loomed up beside them. Jacob let Alice climb up the ladder first and tried not to stare. He shook his head and tried to focus on the task at hand. It wasn’t the first time the thought of her in that white shift had snuck back into his thoughts.

Alice pulled up the iron access panel near the front of the railcar. “Jacob, this one looks good.”

He stepped up beside her and followed the lantern light around its path inside. “It looks really good. Let me hop down and take a look. We have two more to check after this.”

“Give me some good news for a change, huh?”

Jacob looked up at Alice and smiled.

*     *     *