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  Tin Swift

  ( The Age of Steam - 2 )

  Devon Monk

  IN STEAM AGE AMERICA, MEN, MONSTERS, MACHINES, AND MAGIC BATTLE TO CLAIM THE SAME SCRAP OF EARTH AND SKY. IN THIS CHAOS, ONE MAN FIGHTS TO HOLD ON TO HIS HUMANITY—AND HIS HONOR...

  Life on the frontier is full of deceit and danger, but bounty hunter Cedar Hunt is a man whose word is his bond. Cursed with becoming a beast every full moon, Cedar once believed his destiny was to be alone. But now, Cedar finds himself saddled with a group of refugees, including the brother he once thought lost.

  Keeping his companions alive is proving to be no easy task, in part because of the promise he made to the unpredictable Madder brothers—three miners who know the secret mechanisms of the Strange. To fulfill his pledge, Cedar must hunt a powerful weapon known as the Holder—a search that takes him deep into the savage underbelly of the young country and high into the killing glim-field skies defended by desperate men and deadly ships.

  But the battles he faces are just a glimmer of a growing war stirring the country. To keep his word Cedar must navigate betrayal, lies, and treacherous alliances, risking everything to save the lives of those he has come to hold dear...

  Tin Swift

  (The second book in the Age of Steam series)

  A novel by Devon Monk

  For my family

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people have given their time and talent to make this book a reality. I want to thank my wonderful agent, Miriam Kriss, for your support and enthusiasm. Thank you to my extraordinary editor, Anne Sowards, for your keen insight and amazing ability to say just the right thing at just the right time. My unflagging gratitude goes out to the fabulous artist Cliff Nielsen for bringing Cedar to life and giving the Swift her chance to shine. Big thanks also to editorial assistant Katherine Sherbo and publicists Rosanne Romanello and Brady McReynolds. To the many people within Penguin who have gone above and beyond to make this book beautiful and strong, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  While this book was a lot of fun to write, it also took some elbow grease to pull it all together. I want to give a very special thank-you to my brother and brainstorming partner, Dean Woods, for checking in on me every week no matter what, and always asking to read more. I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through the first draft sane without you. You’re my hero.

  As always, my love and gratitude to Dejsha Knight for your thoughtfulness and support, and for saying this one (so far) is your favorite. Also, a big thank-you to my wonderful family and friends for all your encouragement and help along the way. I couldn’t do this without you. To my husband, Russ, and sons, Kameron and Konner: you guys are the best. Thank you for helping me make my dreams come true and for letting me be a part of your life. I love you.

  Last, but not nearly least, I want to thank you, dear readers, for giving me the chance to share this world and these people with you once again.

  TIN SWIFT

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cedar Hunt stared down at his blood-covered hands. Glossy and dark, fresh and plentiful, the blood dripped between his fingers, slicking his arms and snicking to the dirt between his boots. More than just covering his hands, the blood tasted sweet and thick on his tongue and coated his throat as he swallowed.

  Not the blood of a beast, the blood of a man.

  “That’s enough now, Mr. Hunt,” a woman’s voice said, steady and low.

  He looked up. Realized he stood beneath a sparse forest canopy, evening light dabbing gold across branches and leaves.

  Dabbing gold across Rose Small too. She had on her bonnet, the tips of her hair swinging just above her shoulders to catch that dusky sunlight and wear it in shades of amber. Though shadows lay low over her face, her blue eyes shone through like a sun-filled sky. But her mouth, so often curved in a smile, was tucked down in a tight frown.

  She motioned with the shotgun held low at her hip. She didn’t have her long-shot goggles on. Didn’t have to. Cedar was only a few paces in front of her.

  “I’d sure prefer it if I didn’t have to shoot you tonight, Mr. Hunt, but by God and glim I will.”

  “Rose?” Cedar whispered.

  Why was the girl pointing that gun at him? They’d been traveling together more than a full month across Oregon and were just into Idaho, he, Rose Small, the widow witch Mae Lindson, his cursed brother, Wil, and the three Madder brothers. He hadn’t once come to his senses with any of them standing at arms against him. Not even when the moon had taken him full into his curse.

  “Glad you’ve a mind for talking, Mr. Hunt,” Rose said. “Even better your ears are working.” She lifted the gun. “But I’ll still plug you if you don’t step away from that man and head back into the wagon.”

  He’d known what he had done the moment he’d seen blood on his hands, tasted it on his lips. He’d killed a man. In daylight.

  And he’d done it as a man, not a beast, with no thrall of the moon to blame his actions upon.

  He looked down. The dead man wasn’t very large nor very young. He had the look and the smell of someone who spent most his days riding and hunting bounties on men’s heads and most his nights gambling away the noose money.

  “Who?” he rasped.

  “I’d ask his name,” Rose said, “but don’t think he’ll say. He broke into our camp and tried to kill a few of us, Mae included. You…” Her voice faded off. Then she sort of huffed a chuckle. “Never saw a thing like it. And I’ve seen things. Strange things.”

  Mae. Of course. He’d never stand idle if she was in danger. But to lose his mind to this kind of rage was not at all like him.

  “Did I change?” Cedar couldn’t remember the wolf coming upon him. Couldn’t remember sliding down that slick, hot stroke of pleasure to stretch into the fur and claws of the beast that the Pawnee gods had cursed him to wear on the three days of full moon.

  Reason left him when the beast was in control and his thoughts reduced to hunger, hunt, and killing the Strange. He searched his memory for how the dead man had come to be broken, his blood pouring down Cedar’s throat.

  Nothing came clear.

  “You didn’t change,” Rose said. “Not in skin anyway. But I’m not sure how much of a man’s mind you were in possession of. Didn’t use a gun to kill him, Mr. Hunt. You used your bare hands. Broke him once and just kept right on breaking him.”

  She paused to let that soak in good.

  “So,” she said brightly, “now you need to be moving on. We want you locked up in the wagon for safekeeping. Yours and ours.
”

  Cedar took one last look at the man. “Someone should search his body. See if he carried a reason to be following us. He was following us, wasn’t he?”

  “The Madders said maybe for a week or so. They’re off seeing if he had company.” Rose started walking, her boots crunching through the dry autumn underbrush.

  Cedar started walking too, staying well ahead of her trigger finger.

  “Don’t know as to why he thought killing us was worth the effort,” she said. “We don’t have much to steal. We aren’t causing any trouble.”

  Then she grinned. “You don’t suppose we’ve gotten famous, do you? Maybe someone heard how we took apart Shard LeFel and his matics? Wrote us up in a newspaper somewhere?”

  “Folk are rarely hunted for their good deeds,” Cedar said. “I don’t think we’re famous.”

  Sure, he had mistakes in his past that might put a price on his head. But Rose had never been outside of the little town of Hallelujah, Oregon, until now. Mae Lindson might be a witch, but she wasn’t the sort of person to go about causing harm.

  The Madder brothers were a mystery when it came to their moral standings and past deeds. They liked to spin tales fantastical of things they’d done, places they’d been, but none of those yarns pointed clearly to shady doings.

  “Could be nothing to do with us,” he finally said. He rubbed his thumb over his lips, wiping away the blood there, and resisted the urge to lick it off his fingers.

  Core-deep inside him, the beast shifted, letting him know it was still hungry. If there was no Strange blood to spill, it seemed just as happy with the blood of a man.

  He straightened his shoulders against the chill of dread that slipped down his spine.

  The beast was growing stronger. Hungrier.

  “So he was just desperate?”

  “Could be,” Cedar said. “Saw an opportunity to plunder his way westward. Plenty of folk do it.”

  “Land pirates?” Rose sounded excited about the prospect.

  She’d seen violence. Killed without a flinch men and Strange creatures that crawled up out of nightmares. But even death and much darker happenstances hadn’t been able to shake Rose Small’s sense of wonder in the world.

  Cedar hadn’t yet seen a thing that could dim her spirit.

  “Just a rustler, more like.” He paused. Turned to her. “We should search him.”

  Rose hesitated. Cedar gave her time to look him straight in the eyes. She held his wild gaze and measured his sanity.

  Looking at him like that, when the beast was so near the surface of his reasoning, was something most people couldn’t do.

  But then, Rose had a bit of the wild in her too. Wasn’t a metal she couldn’t shape or a device she couldn’t jigger with her fast-thinking mind and clever fingers.

  “Not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Hunt,” she said. “It’s just…” Her mouth tugged a crooked frown. “You tore him apart. With your hands.”

  “Rose,” he said softly, resisting the urge to put his hands behind his back, where she wouldn’t see the blood. As if that could hide his sins from her. “Whatever happened, it’s done.”

  She bit her bottom lip and those springtime eyes searched him like she was peering through the shutter of his soul. “I’ll keep the gun where it is, just the same.”

  Cedar walked back to the body. He glanced at the surrounding forest. Didn’t see anything out of place. Well, except for the dead man. Not many bugs had found him yet, so it’d been just a few minutes at most since he’d killed him.

  Snapped his neck, to be precise.

  Cedar knelt and turned the man so he could study his face. A heavy black beard spread chin to temple. All his unwhiskered skin seemed to be covered in grime. His eyes were rolled back in his head and blood dripped a line out the corner of his mouth. Cedar picked up each of his hands. All the fingers were still attached, calluses and scars where you’d expect them to be on a man who rode the range.

  He’d carried two guns, one thrown off in the brush about ten feet east, the other still in the holster. The weapons weren’t nothing fancy, but they were well tended. He’d been good with his guns.

  Not good enough to draw more than one before Cedar had killed him.

  With his bare hands.

  Cedar searched pockets, coat, and shirt. Handkerchief, tobacco pouch, rolling paper, and a knife. Not a lot else. Not a single coin on him, not a scrap of a letter, not a photo of a loved one.

  “You done pawing that fellow to death?” The voice was so near him, Cedar started.

  Alun Madder, the oldest of the brothers, crouched down on his heels near Cedar. Cedar was not a small man, but Alun took him on width.

  Built like bull buffalos, the Madder brothers were all heavily bearded, wide-jawed, and accustomed to a life of mining, drinking, and brawling. When they weren’t fighting, they had an uncanny knack with metal, matics, and odd devices.

  Cedar owed them a favor for helping him find his brother, who he had thought was long dead. They’d been true to their part of the bargain, and so he was holding true to his.

  Riding east to return Mae to her witch sisterhood before her ties to them and the magic of the coven sent her clean insane. Riding east so maybe those same witches could break the Pawnee curse Cedar and his brother carried. Rose, he supposed, was just looking to see the world wide, though he knew she cared for Mae and wanted to see her set to rights.

  And on the way he would uphold his promise to hunt for the Holder, a device made of seven ancient metals cobbled together into a weapon of great power.

  The Madders said even uncobbled, the Holder could cause ruin, rot, destruction.

  If that was true, then the brothers’ priority of gathering it up—wherever it was the pieces had landed—and getting it out of the hands of the innocent was a worthwhile cause.

  “You’re of a quiet mood, all of a sudden,” Alun Madder said. “This man someone you know?”

  Cedar pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and wiped his bloody palms and arms until they were mostly clean. He shook his head. “You?”

  The miner had a blue kerchief tied tight over his head, but wore no hat. His gaze was on the dead man. “No soul I’ve ever known. Looks to be a drifter. Found his horse back a ways in the forest.”

  “Bring it. We can use a fresh mount.”

  “Already done, Mr. Hunt. I’m not the sort to leave a useful thing”—he gave Cedar a pointed look—“or creature behind. No matter how it falls into my hands.” He pushed on his knees to stand and peered down over his thick dark beard.

  “As Miss Small was saying, we’d like you locked in the wagon now. Night’s coming. We’d rather you weren’t out roaming. And besides”—he walked off toward camp—“the witch says she has an idea for easing that curse of yours.”

  A pang of hope snarled Cedar’s gut. “She said she couldn’t break the curse unless she had the sisterhood, and days to do it.”

  “Said otherwise just before you wandered off,” Rose said.

  “So she’s talking?” Cedar stood.

  “Oh, she’s been talking nonstop since we set camp. Just don’t know who she’s been talking to.”

  Cedar followed Alun through the trees to the clearing. There was a little more light here beyond the reach of branch and shadow. The grass was tall and silk-yellow around the stones, bent to the wind, and hushing away at every stray breeze. They’d had the luck of clear weather, but any day now the skies would change.

  Storms were coming down from the north Cascade Mountains and Bitterroot Range. Strong enough to bury them in snow. Strong enough to swell little creeks into hungry rivers and trails into muddy bogs. They’d a plan to skirt the bottom of the mountain range and reach Fort Boise, Idaho, by the next week. Now he was just hoping they’d make it far enough into the Idaho Territory by nightfall to reach Vicinity. If the rains hit hard, they’d be locked flat in their tracks for the whole of winter.

  Alun strolled over to the hulking wagon he and his brothe
rs drove. The drafts that pulled for them were off a ways grazing. So too the other horses, with a new little roan among them. The dead man’s mount. Theirs now.

  “Keep going, Mr. Hunt,” Rose said from behind, the gun still at her hip. He’d like to tell her she was being overly cautious, but that wasn’t true.

  More than once he’d pulled up out of a dream of hunt and kill and blood, only to find himself sitting in his saddle, his horse spooking and the other folk in the group asking him what he was stopped and listening for.

  He’d told them nothing. But that wasn’t true. The beast inside him wanted out. It was making sure it could be heard.

  He knew what the Pawnee had planted in his soul and knew how to keep it caged.

  Until today.

  Mae paced near the fire they’d set between the Madders’ wagon and the women’s tent. She had a handful of plucked grasses and was braiding them together as she walked and muttered.

  Less sane every day that went by. The coven of witches she’d once belonged to was calling her home, and taking away bits of her mind the longer it took her to get to them. He didn’t understand witches. Didn’t understand why her vows to the coven meant now that her husband was dead, they could drag her to madness unless she returned to them.

  But he knew cruelty when he saw it.

  “Look who I found just out in the trees, Mrs. Lindson,” Rose called out.

  Mae turned and studied him across the fire. She seemed to be made of sunset there against the sky. The red firelight burnished her pale skin and yellow hair, catching sparks in her inscrutable eyes, and drawing dusty shadows across her soft lips.

  Cedar’s pulse kicked up a beat. Since his wife’s death, he’d thought he’d never be shed of the pain of grief. Never have reason to feel again.

  Until he’d met the widow Mae Lindson.

  “I’m gonna take him to the wagon now,” Rose said. “And when you’re of a mind—”

  “No.” Mae drew her hand up to smooth her dress, discovered the grasses, and frowned. She let the grasses drop from her fingers. When she looked back up at him, it was with an ounce more clarity.