Cold Copper aos-3 Read online

  “I do not share their confidence, and don’t like them risking our supplies.” Cedar started off toward the wagon, and caught himself just before his knees gave out.

  He was tired. More than that, he was exhausted. Mae was right. He couldn’t go on much longer.

  It wasn’t just the walking. It wasn’t just the cold. The moon was coming up soon, and it would be full. But if the beast took him over in this state, and ran through the night chasing and killing Strange, Cedar would wake in the morning, naked, more than exhausted, and lost in the blizzard.

  Wil, standing in front of Cedar, glanced back at him. The intelligence and concern in his brother’s eyes were clear.

  “Fine,” Cedar said. “I’m fine. I’ll be better if the Madders don’t fall through that damn ice with everything we have.”

  Cedar took another step. Satisfied he wouldn’t fall, he kept moving.

  Mae walked beside him. He didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away when she slipped her hand into his. They walked, together, hand in hand, through the blizzard toward the wagon.

  The wagon and mules, urged forward by Cadoc and Alun Madder, tipped onto the slope and made a rather quick journey down the bank.

  Mae gasped, but the whole lot of them—man, beast, and contraption—came to a full and surprisingly easy stop several feet away from the bank of the river itself.

  Miss Dupuis, who stood beside her horse at the top of the bank, just shook her head at Bryn Madder’s whoop of excitement. “They enjoy this,” she said. “I believe they truly enjoy this.”

  “Come on down!” Bryn Madder yelled. “The water’s fit as a fiddle!”

  Miss Dupuis hesitated. “Do you trust their judgment?” she asked Cedar.

  “Doesn’t matter if I trust them,” Cedar said, already making his way down the hill, and helping Mae to make hers. “Right now, we have to rely on them. In my experience, they’ve never been the sort of men overly interested in reaching their graves early.”

  After another, probably sensible, moment or two of doubt, Miss Dupuis left the horse, who was too tired to wander off, and started down the slope too. Cedar saw to it Mae had her footing on the ice. She made her way over to the wagon, where Alun Madder was waiting, his hand extended for her.

  Cedar turned and met Miss Dupuis halfway up the hill and helped her down.

  A Strange reached out of the snow and slapped at her. It tugged a lock of her dark hair out from under her hat, pulling enough to hurt.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  Cedar took a swat at the thing and it disappeared, as insubstantial as air.

  “They are thick here, aren’t they?” She lifted her skirts to step over a twisted root.

  “The Strange?” Even though he and Miss Dupuis had been traveling together for some time now, and had even fought the Strange together, he often forgot that she too could see the creatures.

  She couldn’t kill them, although some of the weapons the Madders and other devisers had made could hold, slow, and harm the Strange. As far as Cedar knew, only he and his brother Wil, both tied to the Pawnee curse, could kill the Strange.

  Two men against an entire country full of ghouls and bogeys. Two men cursed to kill them all.

  It was madness. A task they could never fulfill. The Strange were growing in this country, more and more each day.

  “I can see them,” she said. “Do you see them now, Mr. Hunt? You and Wil?”

  “Yes,” Cedar said. “The storm is lousy with them. I’ve never seen so many in such a small area.”

  “Poor weather doesn’t usually bring them out,” she said. “Most Strange prefer rain and lightning storms, if they’re to be in bad weather. Not blizzards.”

  “Oh?” Cedar asked, extending his hand to help steady her.

  “We’ve studied them, Mr. Hunt. We of the Guard. We know some few things about their ways.”

  “Was there a chance you might want to fill me in on your knowledge of the Strange? Knowledge of the Guard for that matter. The Madders talk in riddles whenever I ask questions.”

  “I had hoped there would be time to speak of such matters on this trip, but…” She shrugged. “Everything has been difficult.”

  “Perhaps when we reach Des Moines,” he said, “you and I could spend more time together.”

  Miss Dupuis glanced up at him through her thick snow-heavy lashes. The expression on her face was part surprise and something more. Something like pleasure. “I would like that very much, Mr. Hunt. To spend time with you.”

  Then she took the last few steps with him to the edge of the ice.

  Mae, who was helping the Madders lead the mules onto a platform they’d lowered from the back of wagon, glanced over at him. Miss Dupuis released his hand like she’d been caught cheating at parlor games. She tipped her chin up just a fraction and waited for Mae’s reaction.

  Mae frowned, then went back to work.

  “Bring the horse, will you, Mr. Hunt?” Alun called from the rear of the wagon. “We’ve got room for him too. And a long way to go.”

  “Shouldn’t be long to reach Des Moines,” Cedar said.

  “We’ll go where the winds take us,” Alun said. “Find a smaller town to wait out the storm. Trust me, it will be for the better.”

  He’d just told Miss Dupuis trust didn’t matter. But there was something about the three Madders’ avoidance of Des Moines that wasn’t adding up. Still, they’d saved his life more than once, even though they’d made sure he was owing to them for their favor.

  “Find us shelter and you’ll have no argument out of me,” Cedar said. Then he turned and, with Wil beside him, climbed back up the bank to fetch the horse.

  2

  Rose Small tucked her head against the spit of rain brushing down the roofs of Hays City, and avoided a steam cart full of barley rattling down the street. A little bad weather couldn’t keep the people of this Kansas town from their work, chores, and errands.

  Nor would a little bad weather keep her from running down that low-life, cheating son of a grease licker Captain Lee Hink.

  It was eight in the morning, and the corner baker had already sold out of the day’s bread. A storm was on the horizon and creeping close with the promise of rain. Folk were hurrying with their necessities, business, and trade, all that hustle giving the town the feel of a kicked beehive.

  The sweet faraway clang from off north a ways, where the blacksmith was bending horseshoes and rims for the steam carts, called her heart like a church bell ringing for service. The noises of the city just proved the whole town was open for business.

  And so was Sweet Annie’s Saloon.

  Three nights this week. Three nights Hink had gone off to “see to a few matters” or “pick up some parts for the Swift” or “check on the crew in town.”

  She had stayed behind at the farm owned by a coven of witches who had taken them all in when they’d nearly crashed the Swift trying to bring Mae Lindson back to the sisters. The coven had been happy to see Mae, Cedar Hunt, Wil, the Madder brothers, and Miss Dupuis leave the property in search of the Holder, but she, Captain Hink, and his crew had stayed behind to repair the Swift.

  Hink had grown more and more restless and made up lies and excuses to go to town, while she nodded and smiled and believed him, just like the backwoods bumpkin he knew she was.

  He’d even had the nerve to bring her back a wallpaper flower, cleverly folded and perfumed like a red velvet rose. He’d said it had come in on the rail all the way from France. He said he’d bought it up when he saw it because it reminded him of her.

  She’d loved it. It had been the first time in her life a man had bought a pretty thing just for her. She’d been wearing it on her bonnet and scarves for weeks.

  She’d even been so delighted by his gift that she had kissed him for it.

  Kissed him. More than once.

  And she’d made him something in return: a little compass on a chain that would always point toward a matching little compass she wore on a ch
ain. It had taken some doing to make the two devices point only and ever toward each other, but she’d traded work at the watchmaker in town for access to his instruments after hours.

  The compasses were the finest things she’d ever devised. And they’d cost her almost every cent she’d earned in the last two months.

  But now she knew the truth.

  He could try to wrap his lies up in pretty paper roses all he wanted, but she wasn’t falling for them again. Sweet Annie’s was more than a saloon; it was also a bordello.

  Two nights ago, he’d gone into town for some boiler tubing for the Swift’s new guns, and hadn’t come home.

  One of the younger sisters in the coven mentioned she’d seen him step into Sweet Annie’s while she was at the post office picking up the coven’s letters. Said he’d been clutching a half-empty whiskey bottle and was half out of his shirt, his arm around some plump raven-haired girl of the line.

  It wasn’t like they’d taken vows. It wasn’t like he’d ever said she was his only one, or that he’d told her she was special. Still, she thought they had a beginning that was headed somewhere. She thought that somewhere might be love.

  He’d told her she was beautiful.

  He’d told her he didn’t want to live without her.

  He’d given her a rose.

  Which she’d been sure to stuff in the pocket of her overalls this morning so she could throw it in his cheating face.

  Rose paused and stomped the snow and mud off her work boots, tipped back the flat cap she kept her hair tucked up into, then shoved open the painted red door to Sweet Annie’s.

  She stepped in and got a face full of stink—alcohol, lavender, kerosene, wood fire, leather, and linseed overpowered by tobacco, sweat, and perfume. She clenched her teeth against the smell, straining it through her teeth as she inhaled.

  This was what betrayal smelled like.

  A man at the piano against one wall played out the strains of “Long, Long Ago,” sweet and sad.

  The decor was done up nicer than she’d expected: wood ceiling polished to a dark shine, walls covered in paper with cream and gold designs. Tables set out to one side were in good repair, crowded with fellows playing cards and dice and women looking on.

  The bar itself was honey-colored oak, and so high-shined you could see the reflection of the men who stood around it, boots propped on the brass foot rail with matching spittoons at their heels. Someone had gone and hung up a red, white, and blue star banner in loops across the back of the bar, and the gaslight chandeliers gave off a cheery halo of light, while the Franklin stove at the far end of the room on the wall between two closed doors kept the whole place warm.

  There were three sorts of people in the room: workingmen who had already dealt with livestock for the day, there to drink away the weather until they could tend fields or see to their evening work; travelers with shiny shoes cooling their heels, stuck until they could strike out west for more temperate lands; and the employees of the place—a bartender and six saloon girls. Out of sight in the back rooms would be the other ladies who worked there, the sort who took a man’s money in exchange for a certain kind of attention.

  The saloon girls were dressed in the prettiest finery Rose had ever seen.

  Feathers adorned their hats, and their bright silk corsets and skirts were covered in tassels and sequins. All of the dresses—if you could call them that—were worn cut in such a way a man didn’t have to imagine what kind of woman was under the layers. The hem of their skirts were so high, you couldn’t help but see their stockings, all the way up to the knee.

  They were rouged, coal-eyed, and…and pretty, with hair done up in curls and shiny pins and flowers.

  Rose was suddenly very aware of her grease-stained overalls, her heavy, square man’s coat and boyish flat cap with her hair tucked up. She didn’t look a thing like these women. Wasn’t even in their league when it came to pretty.

  And right there, sitting at a table near the corner of the room with a woman on his lap, was Captain Lee Hink. Hat off, sun-pale hair mussed up, he hadn’t shaved for a day at least. He was a strong man and a tall man, and had just the sort of rakish swagger to him that made women swoon.

  He saw her stopped just inside the door. He didn’t smile, didn’t move a muscle. His eyebrows, however, lifted up into his uncombed hair, shifting the black patch over one eye.

  While she had been busy studying the saloon, every single person in that place had turned to look at her, as shocked as if a three-headed mule had come strolling in.

  Women weren’t allowed in the saloon. Not a woman in boy’s clothing. Not even a proper woman.

  But Rose wasn’t a proper woman. She was an angry woman.

  And she was angry at that man.

  “You can’t be in here, miss,” the bartender called out from behind the bar. “No women allowed.”

  Rose ignored him and stomped across the room, gunning straight for Hink.

  The corner of his mouth cupped a smile, and just as quickly poured it out into a frown, though that damn eye of his twinkled with mirth.

  “Mr. Hink, I need to have words with you.” Rose stopped in such a way that most of the table was between her and that painted vixen on his lap.

  “Don’t think this is the sort of place for you, darlin’,” he said. “Why don’t you run on home now like a good girl?”

  The vixen giggled and leaned her head down a little closer to Hink’s ear, all the while giving Rose the kind of look that was usually reserved for buying cattle at auction.

  “Run on home?” she asked. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Lee Hink,” Rose said with as steady a voice as she could muster. “But if you think for one minute I’m going to do anything you ask me to do, ever again, you are sore mistaken.”

  “Now, Rose…”

  Rose reached into her pocket, and couldn’t help but be pleased when Hink twitched.

  He was darn right to twitch. She carried all sorts of trinkets and more than a few weapons in the pockets of the length wool coat.

  But today, right now, all she pulled out of her pocket was the paper rose he had given her.

  “I won’t accept false gifts from sweet-talking men like you.”

  She tossed the fragile velvet and paper rose at his feet.

  “Rose,” he said almost softly, as if the air had come out of him.

  She shook her head. No honey words would change her mind. He’d been carousing while she was rebuilding his ship, refitting the boiler and setting the new guns. He didn’t care a whit for her feelings. He only wanted her devising skills.

  She turned and walked across the saloon floor and straight on out the door. The door hadn’t even clicked shut before the piano man started playing again, and one of the women laughed.

  She kept right on walking. It was cold out, Rose knew that. But she didn’t feel the wind, didn’t hear the clatter and racket of people making their way along the wide dirt streets with horse, wagon, carriage, and the grumbling steamer carts.

  All she could hear was the echo of Hink’s voice saying her name. Saying it like he was trying to catch up a fleeting thing.

  Too late. It was too late. He wanted a life of drinking to soothe the anger of losing his eye and crashing his airship. If he wanted a life with a woman full of ruffles on his lap, then he could have it. She had other things planned. Greater things.

  And she was the kind of woman most likely to be wearing goggles or men’s trousers rather than ruffles and perfume.

  Maybe they weren’t made for each other after all.

  It was time to be moving on. She’d sold just enough devices through the watch shop; she’d have money for a train ticket east. Straight through to Chicago, then on to New York City. She wanted that, wanted to shake this town and the coven soil from her boots and get on with seeing the wonder this wide world could bring.

  But she hadn’t planned on seeing it alone. Her best friend, Mae Lindson, was gone with Cedar Hunt, the Madders, and
Miss Dupuis, looking for the next bit of the Holder.

  She knew what they were doing was important work—the ache in her shoulder and terrible scar where the tin scrap of the last piece of the Holder lodged in her flesh reminded her daily of what that dangerous device could do. She was glad they were hunting for it before it brought plague, madness, and destruction to all it touched.

  And now she wished she’d gone along with them instead of staying here with the witches at the coven and, most especially, with that no good, cheating air pirate Captain Lee Hink.

  “Out of the way!” A set of hands—no, a whole body: hands, arms, and the rest—slammed into her all in one motion and sent her spinning down to the ground.

  She braced for the fall, throwing hands out in front of her, but instead two hands quickly moved around her waist and stopped her fall.

  Suddenly finding herself suspended an inch or two off the road, Rose watched as her cap took a tumble in the wind and rolled down to the corner of the sidewalk.

  “Please excuse my manners,” a man’s soft tenor said. “I am terribly sorry for our collision. I’m going to hoist you up on your feet now, if you’ll pardon my handling of your overcoat.”

  Rose nodded, wondering if she was about to be pickpocketed by the most polite thief she’d ever met.

  The man shifted his grip so that he stood close against her, then lifted. In a moment, she was standing, and for a tick or two longer than that, the man held her with his fingers resting lightly on the top of her hips and all the rest of his body pressed against her back.

  Rose had spent most her life in Hallelujah avoiding the sort of men who manhandled women. She knew how to break free of a man’s embrace, knew how to hurt a man, in both polite and less-genteel ways.

  But she found herself wishing he might just turn into some kind of fairy-tale prince, come to save her from that airship pirate, come to put the happy back into her ever after.

  “Are you recovered, miss?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “Yes, I am.” She finally stepped away and turned so she could properly thank him.