The Iron Thorn (9 page)

Before I could snap back at him, the Nash creaked as someone sat down next to me. “You know, Dorlock, I’m impressed.
Behoove
is a big word for you.”

I turned to stare at the stranger and met his eyes. They were silver. His smile was crooked, and his hair was long, swept back with a rash of comb tracks. The stranger’s hand was firm and ridged when he took mine and shook it. “Dean. Dean Harrison. And you might be?”

I opened my mouth, shut it. I didn’t quite know what to make of the stranger, except that he didn’t seem to care for Dorlock any more than I did, and his hand was warm.

“I might—” I started.

“She
might
be with me.” Cal reappeared, irritably juggling his camp duffel and two helpings of takeaway. I watched Dean tilt his head back and look up to Cal’s considerable knobby-kneed height.

“Sorry, brother. I didn’t know she was spoken for.”

“Oh, for the sake of all His gears,” I huffed at Cal. Of all the times for Cal’s tough act, this was the absolute worst. I shook Dean’s hand in return. “I apologize for my friend’s manners. I’m Aoife Grayson.”

Dean’s eyes and smile were both slow, but there was nothing dumb about them. He took the seconds to memorize everything about my face. I’d seen the same look on master engineers, contemplating a new device or problem. Dean took me in, and he smiled. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Aoife.”

I returned the smile, writ much smaller. Boys—men—weren’t in the habit of smiling at me. I was odd, and I knew it. The few smiles before Dean’s had lead to pranks, but when I looked Dean in the eye, his pupils just grew wider.

Cal grumbled, his face turning colors. “Aoife. We need to go with Mr. Dorlock.”

Dorlock himself had turned a plummy shade of purple, huge hands clenching and unclenching like they wanted for a neck. “Harrison, you little ratlick, what are you doing yakking to my clients? They hired me fair and square—go poach somebody else’s hire, vulture.”

“Like I was about to bend your girl’s ear on,” Dean said. “You don’t want Dorlock, miss. He pays the barter boys down here to talk him a good game, and he poses the part, but it’s all fancy. Man will have you chumming a ghoul nest inside an hour if you go with him.”

“Guttersnipe!” Dorlock roared, raising his fist to Dean. “They chose
me
. Market rule says free hires to all. The sweetheart here and her companion want to go underground, and underground they’ll go.” He didn’t have the false face of a kind old uncle any longer. Rage had turned him crimson.

“Never knows when to shut his yap, either,” Dean muttered, standing up. His full height was a head shorter than Cal, but Dean was broad and solid where Cal was still disappearing inside his school clothes. Dean’s face wasn’t but a year or two older than mine, but it held a spark of wickedness, a blade-edge of worldly knowledge that a person could only light by seeing too much, too soon. Conrad had the same look. I didn’t trust Dean, but I was starting to like him.

“Listen, Dorlock,” Dean said. “I’m being a pal and giving you a chance to walk away dignified-like.”

Dorlock’s nostrils flared. “Or?”

This time, Dean’s smile wasn’t slow and it wasn’t warm.
“Or,” Dean said, “I can show your shame to these nice Uptown folk. You choose.”

I stepped back to stand by Cal in anticipation of a blow or a knife between the two. Dean had to be crazy, mouthing off to someone the size of Dorlock.

“You runt,” Dorlock panted, a vein in his temple throbbing like a swollen river. “What do you mean, poaching on this sweet little thing?” He reached for me again, my hair, my cheek, and I swatted at him again. It was like fending off an ungainly octopus.

“She’s a little young for you, don’t you think?” Dean drawled. “By decades or so?”

I took another step back, this one involuntary.

Dorlock let out a yell and pulled a length of pipe with a wrapped handle from his belt. Dean reached into the pocket of his leather coat and brought out a palm-sized black lacquer tube. “You know that saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight?” he asked Dorlock. “Same principle applies, old man. Don’t think I won’t show steel just because we’re in market grounds.”

“They hired
me
,” Dorlock rumbled. “You’re just a huckster, kiddo, not worth my time to spit on.” He turned to me with a smile revealing one missing front tooth. “Come on, lassie. Come away from that trash now and we’ll go down under and on to the country like you wanted.”

Dean moved just a bit, so that his body was between Dorlock and me. It was an artful move, executed like a dance. “All right, hard road is your road, old man.” He gestured, his leather jacket creaking. “Show her your arm, Dorlock. Show off a little for us here.”

Dorlock fell silent. “You,” he said to me. “Come on
now.
”

“No,” I said, shrinking away from his grasp. “If I’m paying you fifty dollars, you can show your arm.”

Dorlock sneered. “I don’t need the whingeing of a spoiled schoolgirl,” he said. “Or a deadbeat doper boy who doesn’t know his north from his south.”

“North,” Dean said, pointing over Dorlock’s shoulder. “True iron in my blood. What’s in yours?”

“I think you better show us your arm, mister,” Cal said. “See what this guy’s on about.”

Dorlock balled up his fist, but Dean caught it and turned Dorlock’s great fleshy slab outward. Three straight lines were burned into the skin, puckered and red with trapped infection. Cal grimaced. I didn’t want to move closer, but at the same time I couldn’t resist staring at the pus-filled wounds. They were wide as my wrist, weeping and hideous.

“What
are
those?” I asked.

“Those, boys and girls, are ghoul kisses,” Dean said. “Comes from the acid on their tongues, when they lay them against you to claim ownership. This fat bastard has a deal with one of the dens downside in the sewer, to deliver fresh meat when he’s able.” He released Dorlock and folded his arms. “Ain’t that right, tubby?”

I stared at Dorlock, feeling sour creep up the back of my tongue. I’d been ready to hand over my money to a man who’d sell us for meat. Conrad would have seen this. All I’d done was nearly gotten Cal and myself eaten.

Dorlock’s stomach jiggled with fury, and he let out a roar. Dean stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Spare me! Free hires within market bounds, Dorlock, you said it yourself. You want to debate the law, we can take it
to the old spider-lady who keeps the books.” He winked at me. “Nice old gal. Bites the head off of you if the verdict don’t come down on your side. Figuratively speaking.”

There was a long, razor-sharp moment between the four of us, and then Dorlock swore. “It’s your funeral, stupid girl. Next time you trust a pretty face I hope it’s a springheel jack waiting underneath.”

He stomped back to his tent, and Dean flipped the black cylinder one last time before he shoved it back into his pocket. “So, it seems you folks are in need of a guide.”

“Y-yes,” I managed. I sounded like a child who’d been caught out of bed, and I cleared my throat. “I mean, we are. Still.”

Cal scoffed. “And let me guess—you’re the answer to our plight?”

Dean passed a hand over his hair, putting the slick strands that Dorlock had mussed back in place. “I’m a bit of a tradejack, and guiding is one of my trades. I don’t need to advertise because I’m good. And I sure won’t charge you any fifty dollars.”

“Was Dorlock really going to feed us to ghouls?” I asked him, the blue tent now crouched like a poison mushroom. It seemed like the sort of thing you’d read in a Proctor manual, something that was supposed to scare us into behaving.

“Sweetheart, your white flesh would be their filet mignon,” said Dean. I flinched. Cal glared.

“Watch your language, fella. That’s a young lady you’re talking to.”

“Word of advice, kid,” said Dean. “This may be the Wild West down here, but you ain’t a cowboy. You’re not even a boy in a cowboy suit.”

“Cal,” I said sharply when a lean, angry look came over his face. “Why don’t you make sure we have all of our supplies before we head out?” It was for his own good—Dean was twice his heft and carrying a knife, but Cal wasn’t the type to consider mathematical odds.

“I’m not leaving you alone with
him,
” he told me, pointing at Dean.

“She’s snug as a bug with me, brother.” Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule breaking and breathlessness. I decided to be interested in the laces on my shoes rather than risk turning red.

“I’m not your brother,” Cal grumbled, but he found a space to open his duffel and check out his supplies. I did the same with my book bag.

“So, Miss Aoife,” said Dean. “I guess now’s a decent time to tell me what’s on the other end of this skedaddle.”

Oh, nothing much. Just a plan to find my mad brother and rescue him from a danger he may or may not actually be in. I settled for the abbreviated version.

“My father’s house. In Arkham.” I counted the number of pens and pencils in my satchel, refolded all of my spare clothes and tried to look like I knew what I was doing.

“Woman of few words,” Dean said. “I like that. Here’s the deal, pretty one: I get half when we’re clear of the city and half when I deliver you safe and sound and without any Proctors crawling all over you. Dig?”

“How much?” I said, bracing myself for a price even worse than Dorlock’s. I’d learned one thing at least in the Nightfall Market, and that was nothing came free or easy.

Dean lifted his shoulder. His leathers and grease-spotted denim were as far from my idea of a guide as I probably
was from Dean’s idea of an adventurer, but in an odd way we fit. Neither what the other thought we should be. I rather thought we complemented each other.

“Bargains are different for everyone,” Dean said. “From some I take a lot and some nothing they’ll miss at all. You’ll know when it’s time to pay up.”

I thought of Dorlock’s hand on me, and shivered. But Dean had intervened, and he hadn’t tried to con me out of my money, either.

Conrad would be decisive, show that he wasn’t worried. I gave a nod. “All right.”

“Good,” Dean agreed. “For now, we gotta shake a leg if we want to be out of raven’s sight by sunrise.” He whistled to Cal. “Saddle up, cowboy! The Night Bridge is waitin’ for us and the earth is turning fast.”

Across the Night Bridge

W
E FOLLOWED
D
EAN
away from the pipe fire, away from the music and the light. I never thought I’d regret leaving the Nightfall Market, but as the noise faded, my apprehension swelled.

The groan and creak of the ice on the Erebus River grew loud as we approached the embankment, like two giants shouting at each other.

“What kind of backwards way are you taking us?” Cal demanded. I wondered too—there was nothing on the other side of the river but the foundry, and the road was patrolled by Proctors.

Dean stopped at a set of steps slick with ice and river water. The river rushed below our feet, beneath a walkway bolted to the bulwark with flimsy rivets oozing rust. I could look down through the gaps and see black, freezing nothing waiting to swallow me whole.

“I’m taking you out,” Dean said. “What you wanted, ain’t
it?” His engineer’s boots, leather over steel toes and hobnail soles, clanked on the metal as he descended the stairs.

Cal grabbed my arm and slowed my steps, so we fell paces behind Dean. “I don’t trust him, Aoife. He could be leading us right into a trap.”

I concentrated on placing my feet on the icy steps. The water whispered to me as it swept along the ancient embankment and the old sewer lines that emptied out at the base of Derleth Street. A ghoul could practically reach up and touch the sole of my foot, we were so far down.

“If I wanted to trap you,” Dean yelled back, “I would have turned right instead of left back at the Rustworks fence.” His roughened voice was loud enough to echo from the opposite bank of the river.

Even in the cold, my face flushed. I gave Cal a censuring glance. This wasn’t one of his adventures—if he made Dean cross, we’d be at the mercy of the Proctors. Or something worse.

I fell into step behind Dean, careful not to slip and pitch myself over the walkway into the water. “Why? What’s right instead of left?”

“Right is the old submersible launch. Ran the Hunleys and the diesel subs down to Cape Cod during the war. Nowadays, the mill workers come from Lowell and snatch pretty little girls like yourself to work your fingers to the bone on the assembly lines and in the mills.” He tilted his head to Cal. “Him, they’d just put a shank in his skinny gut and leave him to freeze to death on the riverbank.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said quietly.

Dean shrugged. “Now you do, miss.”

“I can handle myself,” Cal huffed. “And you’re going to find out if you keep up the lip.”

“How much farther?” I said, attempting to keep things peaceable.

“Not far now,” Dean said. “The Night Bridge is just up and around the bend. It’s always waiting for travelers who need it, and for those who don’t … well.” He jerked his thumb over the rail, toward the black and rushing river.

“That sounds like something my brother would say,” I murmured without thinking. Dean cocked his head.