“Just a watch, you say?” he asked.
Bryn answered. “So much as. Broken when we found it. Not much of a timepiece if it can’t tell a man the time.” He shrugged.
Alun was still smiling. “Enjoy your time, Cedar Hunt,” he said. “Don’t forget our striker. Come on now, Bryn.” He punched Bryn on the shoulder—a hit that would have staggered a much bigger man, though Bryn barely seemed to notice—and the two of them started back into town.
Their brother, Cadoc Madder, lingered behind as Alun and Bryn angled south toward the saloon and the boardinghouse, whose rooms hadn’t been full since the gold rush. Next to that stood the bordello that had never needed to worry about an empty bed now that the rail, and its workers, had come to town.
Cadoc, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke.
“If you ever want to know what else the stones say, about . . . things and such . . . you know where to fetch us up.”
“Didn’t figure your rocks were quite so conversational,” Cedar said.
Cadoc rolled his tongue around in his mouth, pushing out his bottom lip, then his top, as if washing the grit off his words before using them.
“The railroad is coming. Can you hear it, Mr. Hunt? Crawling this way on hammers and iron. Breathing out its stink and steam. Thing like that brings change to a place, to a people. There’ll be more metal above the ground than below soon.
“Leaves a hollow that needs filling. Scars more than stone deep.” He paused and studied Cedar a little closer. “But then, you know about the things that can change a land, or a man, I reckon. You and your brother.”
Sweat slicked under Cedar’s hatband. He didn’t know what Cadoc knew about Wil. About the change. The curse. Didn’t even know how the Madders could know. Cedar had not spoken of his brother in nearly three years.
The wind laid a phantom hand between his shoulders, pressing there, telling him it was time to move on, move away, move west. Before his past caught up with him again.
Before there was blood.
But it was Cadoc who left, rambling down the street to join his brothers, not one of them with a care to look back at Cedar.
Cedar fought the urge to go after them, to force them to explain the watch, and what they knew of his brother’s death. To tell him why the metal was warm as spilled blood.
Instead he stood there, a sack of flour on his shoulder, his fist clenched around the only thing of his brother’s that remained, while the Madders bulled down the street through the crowd, looking like they’d welcome a brawl just for laughs.
He’d come back later with the striker. He’d see if their talk was crazy, or if they knew something more. Something true. By then he’d have a firm hold on his anger and his hunger. By then he’d be less likely to do them permanent harm.
And he would find out just exactly what their rocks had said about his brother.
Cedar took a deep breath, trying to calm the beast within him.
In the distance, the pump and chug of the steam matics working the rail set a drumbeat as the brown jug whistle sounded out lonely and hollow, like dreams coming this way to die.
He crossed the road to the trail that led to his cabin up in the hills. He’d cook up some coffee, fry up some bread, and have a meal before the moon rose. After the moon set, he’d hunt for the boy.
Because that was what a man did. And Cedar intended to remain a man for as long as he could.
CHAPTER TWO
I
t had been years since Mae Lindson called on the old ways. She promised Jeb she wouldn’t use them anymore. Not out here, so far west, where there was no coven to hide her. It was enough trouble, he had said, for a man of color to marry a white woman. Telling people she was a witch would only bring them quicker to their doorstep with torches in their hands and hanging in their eyes.
But it had been three months. Three months waiting for him to come home. She was done waiting. Done wondering if he would ever come home to her. When she made a vow, it could never be unbroken—so was the way of her magic within the sisterhood. She had vowed her heart and soul unto this man, until death did them part. That vow, that promise, should have guided him home to her by now.
She pushed the basket of dirt sprinkled with rose hips and wormwood closer to the hearth where the light of the rising moon would soon find it. The fire was crackling hot and strong enough to burn on to morning.
The whistle and pop of the steam matics working the lines had quieted since nightfall. All the world of man had quieted. Now was the time for magic.
Mae glanced at her door. A strong bolt made of brass and springs held it tight. That, Jeb had given her as a wedding gift. He had fashioned it with his own hands, as he had fashioned all the other beautiful things of wood and brass that filled the shelves alongside her pots and dishes and herbs and books. Just as he had fashioned her spinning wheel and her loom. He was never without a gear or fancy to carve, but only ever showed his creations to her.
Still, the bundle of protective herbs wrapped along dried grapevines and rowan above the door did as much to keep her safe as Jeb’s bolts and devices. Herbs and spells to keep the Strange at bay.
She pulled her shawl close around her shoulders and knelt next to the basket of dirt. The people of town were beginning to whisper about her. When she walked to town to trade her weaving for supplies, people talked. Said her husband had long left her. Said he was dead.
But they were wrong. She still heard him, heard her husband’s voice in the night, calling her name.
Mae rolled up her left sleeve, exposing her wrist and forearm, strong from tending the field, strong from tending the sheep and chickens. She placed her fingers in the basket of dirt and stirred, fingers splayed, counterclockwise. The dirt warmed slowly, soaking up the heat from the hearthstones. She hummed, settling into the feel of this soil beneath her hands, between her fingers, and breathed in the scent rising off the soil—of summer giving its life away to autumn.
She sang the song slowly, words forming the spell that would find Jeb. Little matics and tickers on the shelf hummed along with her, echoing to the notes of their tuning.
“My hand touching this soil, this soil touching all soil. All soil beneath my hand. All soil I know. The heartbeat, the soul of two who have vowed until death do us part. Jeb Lindson, husband, lover, soul.”
She closed her eyes, held her breath. Pushed away the awareness of the wind outside the door, pushed away the sound of the fire scratching across the wood. Pushed away everything except the one clear need to feel Jeb’s heartbeat, somewhere, anywhere, in this world of soil and stone.
After a long, long moment, there, beneath her palm, she felt a slow thump.
Never before had one man been so difficult to kill. Mr. Shard LeFel watched with detached interest while Jeb Lindson balanced on one good leg and one bad ankle on top of a bucket. The rope around the man’s neck was thick and strong. So was the limb of the oak over which it was thrown.
Plenty strong enough to bear the weight of the man, even though he was twice the size of LeFel and the opposite of him in every way. LeFel’s silver white skin rivaled alabaster, his features so fine and fair, artists and admirers begged to paint his likeness. His hair was moon yellow, left long and sleek with a black ribbon holding it back from his high, white lace collar.
He wore no facial hair, nor powders, and dressed in the finest clothes, no matter the occasion. Suit, tails, and top hat from Paris, black gloves from Versailles, and one of his favorite vanities: a blackened and curved cane, carved from the breastbone of an African elephant, and plied tip to tip with catches of gold, silver, and deep, fire-filled rubies.
But even if all those things were stripped of him, it would still be his eyes that held him apart from any other man. Glacier blue, heavily lidded, they drew people to him witless and wanting, as if they had suddenly seen their dreams come alive and breathing.
It had proved a useful thing. In many pleasurable ways.
The big man atop the bucket shifted again, his unbound hands reaching into the night as if the shadows could aid him. He was stone dark, skin and hair and eyes, his wide hands blistered and calloused from a life of toil, his trousers and plaid shirt torn and stained—even before the five bullets ripped holes through his coat—directly over his heart, which continued to stubbornly, slowly beat.
LeFel had killed him twice. Once with a knife, a rotting scar he bore at his neck. Once with a gun, the small bullet holes in his coat belying the amount of lead burrowed in the meat of his chest. Each time, LeFel had watched his servant, Mr. Shunt, bury the big man. Each time, Jeb Lindson had found a way to crawl out of his grave and go walking.
Not much of a man left to him, really. Still, something drove him. Away from death and toward the living world. A heart like his, a soul that strong, was rare.
And it was a great inconvenience to LeFel’s plans.
LeFel glanced at the canopy of limbs above them. The moon would be up soon, full and strong. Strong enough to make sure Jeb Lindson stayed dead this time.
“Please . . .” The big man’s voice scraped low, ragged. Too much the same as it had been in life.
“You beg?” LeFel tapped the toe of his Italian boot against the wood bucket the big man stood upon. Not hard enough for the bucket to shift. Just hard enough for the hollow thunk to make his eyes go wide. It reminded him he was about to die. Again.
LeFel smiled. It was a lovely thing to see that even in death there was still fear.
Mr. Shunt, waiting at the edge of shadows, shifted, the satin and wool of his coat hissing like snakes against his heels. Too tall, too thin, Mr. Shunt kept his face hidden beneath the brim of his stovepipe hat that seemed latched to his head as if stitched there, and his turned-up black collar. His eyes, if ever they were seen, evoked fear, showing just what kind of creature lurked within the layers of silk. A very Strange man, indeed.
Next to Mr. Shunt crouched a wolf. Common as scrub brush, that wolf was Shard LeFel’s newest and most useful toy. It wore a collar of LeFel’s own devising—brass and copper with crystal and carved gears—and a leash, which Mr. Shunt held in the crook of one finger.
Next to the wolf stood a small barefoot boy. No more than four years old, the child wore nothing but his bed shirt. His skin was death pale, his hair a shock of red. He made no sound, nor did he seem to see the world around him. He gazed off in a middle distance as if still walking his dreams, untouched by the night, or the cold, or his company.
“What do you beg for, dead man?” LeFel mused. “What is there left to you? Not life. Only a mockery of that rattles in your chest. What sweet dream pulls you from the smothering rest eternal?”
“Mae . . .” The single word fell from his swollen lips like a prayer. “My Mae.”
LeFel frowned. “The witch?” He rapped the bucket with his toe again. “She has lied to you, sung you sweet falsities. You thought her magic was yours to keep, but I alone shall have it. Not even the vow she cast between you, the binding of your love, will hold her safe from my
needs
.” He kicked the bucket hard enough it shifted.
Jeb swayed, but stubbornly held his balance on his battered legs.
“There are things I require in this world. Isn’t that true, Mr. Shunt?”
Mr. Shunt chuckled, the sound of dry bones rattling.
“And when my brother saw to it I was exiled to these foul lands, for nothing more than killing his only heir, I had thought myself without recourse. But he did not know, could not know, the beauty of turned metal. Could not know the power harnessed in steam, could not know the primitive magic inherent in this land, nor the most
interesting
abilities of those who devise.
“And he certainly could not know that others of our . . . kind . . . would find each of these things pleasing as a midsummer feast.”
Mr. Shunt chuckled again. The wolf at his feet laid his ears back and bared teeth at the sound. The child did not seem to hear.
“You could have given in to me, Mr. Lindson. But you refused. Even in death. And now you, my poor dark man, stand like a mountain in my way. Stand like a mountain between myself and your beautiful living wife.” He aimed another blow at the bucket, but allowed only the softest tap of his boot.
“Mountains cannot stop me. I have hammered iron and silver across this land. I have broken every mountain that refused my harness.”
Jeb, silent, stared at him with a gaze that held too much hatred for a dead man.
“Just as I shall harness Mae—”
“Mae . . . ,” Jeb echoed. “My Mae . . .”
LeFel snarled. “She is mine!”
He slammed his boot into the bucket, shoving it sideways. Jeb rocked, the rope against the tree limb creaking beneath the strain.
Mr. Shunt sucked in a hopeful breath.
But Jeb somehow remained standing, silent, hatred in his eyes. LeFel stepped back, pulled a bit of perfumed silk and lace from his coat sleeve, and wiped his lips in a circle, over and over again, the motion soothing, calming.
All would be well. He would kill this mortal man correctly this time. He would kill him so the tie of magic binding him to his wife would be broken, so Jeb Lindson could not return to his wife, could not lay claim to her soul, her life, or the magic at her hands. The binding that held them together, and kept Mae’s magic out of LeFel’s reach, would be broken.
“You,” LeFel said, his voice shaking, but calm, “are a very lucky man, Mr. Lindson. You still have a small time left to breathe this air. To gaze upon this land. To ponder the life that is no longer yours before I take it from you a third time. Your death awaits the rise of the waxing moon. Poetic for a third and final death, don’t you agree, Mr. Shunt?”
“Sweet as a lullaby,” Mr. Shunt whispered, placing his hand gently on the child’s head.