The Iron Thorn (34 page)

“He’s got a shine for you, miss,” Bethina said. “And with the way you fight like cats and dogs, might I assume that it goes both ways?”

“You might not,” I sniffed. “And you’re being …” What was it the snooty characters in the lanterns said? “Entirely too familiar,” I finished, with the requisite disapproving eyebrow.

“Apologies, miss,” Bethina said, though she didn’t seem sorry. “I didn’t mean to jabber at you. I just wanted to give you this.”

She reached under her apron and drew a battered notebook from her dress pocket. It was small, the type that would be carried in my uniform were I at school to work problems and jot down notes while I walked to and fro from classes.

“What is this?” I said. The book’s black leather cover bore no marking.

“It was in Mr. Grayson’s personal things after he went away,” Bethina said. “I think he forgot to take it.”

I took the book and thumbed the dog-eared, coffee-stained pages. Something new. Something that could help
me out of this mess. Bethina had actually come through. I tightened my grasp on the book. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” I said.

“Don’t, miss.” Bethina shrugged. “Most city girls with your breeding, they’d take me for a bumpkin and boss me about. You just talk to me. I appreciate it.”

The notebook was nearly full, tight sentences almost too small to read. “Why not give it to Conrad?” I asked. “He was looking for the same things I was.”

Bethina’s smile fell away. “Mr. Conrad got taken before I could tell him any of this.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask …” I paused, wondering if I really wanted to know. “How did he seem before he left? Archibald … my dad?” The last words of his witch’s alphabet burned in my mind.
Do not seek me. Save yourselves
. Had he thought I might actually read those words, before he left? Had he thought of me ever, besides putting my name at the top of the entry?

“Like I told before, frantic,” Bethina said. “Never seen him scared before that. He was a gentleman but he weren’t no dandy, your pop.” She put her chin on her fist. “It was like he’d done something wrong, you follow? Like he were a heretic and the whole Bureau of Heresy was coming for him.”

“Worse,” I muttered, thinking of Tremaine.

“Maybe that will help,” Bethina said, tapping the notebook. “He were always scribbling in it, when he’d be up and about the house. I can’t make hide nor hair of the coding he put his words into, but you’re a bright one, miss. Good luck.”

She started back to the hatch and I stole another look at
the notebook. The cramped writing swam before my eyes and became clearly legible. I blinked, and the type was gibberish again.

The notebook was enchanted like the witch’s alphabet. “Thank you, Bethina,” I said. “Really. I’d like to be alone with this, if you don’t mind. To … er … think.”

She bobbed her head. “Yes, miss. And if I may … I just know you’re the kind of daughter Mr. Grayson’d hold his head up to have.”

Well, that made one of us.

The ladder creaked, and she was gone. I shut the hatch, agonizing while it rolled its slow way into place, and then opened the notebook and stared at the writing while I waited for my father’s memory to appear.

It didn’t take long for the silvery images to fade the real world around me, graying my vision like rain and fog through window glass.

My father wasn’t young in this memory, but his hair was still dark and he was sans spectacles. He sat thoughtfully in his armchair, tapping his fountain pen against his bottom lip. I did the same thing when I was stuck on a calculation or a persnickety mechanical problem.

After a moment, my father scribbled something in his notebook.
Conspirators? Who? Why?

I’d stayed nearly motionless before, lest I disturb the enchantment and break up the reel of memory, but this time I spoke. My voice came out a papery whisper.

“Um … excuse me?”

My father continued to scribble, a lock of hair falling into his face. He hadn’t shaved and he wasn’t wearing a collar or a vest. Deep silver-gray crescents painted themselves
under his eyes, and he scratched absently at the cleft in his chin.

“There isn’t a lick of sense in this,” he grumbled.

“Archibald,” I said, louder, when his image didn’t vanish. “Father?”

Memory-Archie’s head snapped up. “You can see me?”

“Of course,” I said, after a moment of silence at the shock of getting his attention. “I found your journal.”

“The witch’s alphabet?” Archie dropped his notebook and scrabbled for it. “Star and sun, do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in reading that thing?”

“I don’t know how to say this,” I began, deciding to keep on course even though his proclamations of danger threw me off balance. “But do you … do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do. You’re my daughter. Aoife.” My father rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll be honest—I’d hoped to never see you. But here you are.”

“I …” My voice hitched without my accord at his disappointment in putting eyes on me. “I’m sorry—no, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry. I need to know something.”

My father sighed, his silvery image fluttering like a hand had passed through the lantern projector’s light stream. “You want to know about the cursed queens. And why I didn’t take Tremaine’s infernal bargain.”

I felt my eyes go wide, but composed myself even though a thousand questions were fighting for space in my mind. I bit down on them. “Yes,” I said. “Tremaine says that I’m the cursebreaker, but … I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to break the curse.”

My father stood, tucking his notebook into the sagging
breast pocket of his jacket. “You look like your mother,” he said. “I always imagined you’d take after me. Guess that’s why I’m not a fortune-teller.”

He did think about me. At least once. My stomach stopped flipping over. He did know who I was. I was still knotted up and terrified over my confrontation with Tremaine, but at that moment I could have sprouted clockwork wings and flown. “I have your eyes,” I murmured. “At least, that’s what Nerissa always says.”

“Aoife.” My father reached out, and his fingers brushed my shoulder and passed through me like a ghost in a beam of light. “You have to understand I didn’t give you up willingly. It was for—”

“For my own good?” The words ripped from me and I jabbed my finger into the memory’s face, all attempts to appear demure and well bred flying out the window at his words. “Do you have any idea what I’ve endured in the name of my own good? You made Conrad and me orphans, so please don’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that you were being altruistic.” I flung up my hands, my face heating and my voice rising. “
None
of this is for my own good,
Dad.
”

The memory held up its hands. “You’ll believe what you’ll believe, Aoife. Think me cruel if you want, but trust me when I say that the Folk are dangerous to a man, and that Tremaine is worse than most.”

“Just tell me how to break the curse,” I grumbled, “and I won’t bother you any longer.” I’d waited my entire life for this moment, and though I knew the enchantment wasn’t my father in flesh, it was close enough. The crushing feeling on my chest was one I knew well enough that I wasn’t
surprised by its presence, even in the wake of my elation. Nerissa had disappointed me innumerable times. I
had
been stupid to think that my father would be different.

“You can’t break the curse,” my father said impatiently. “No one can. The magic laid on the queens is like nothing else in either the Thorn Land or the Iron one.” He slashed his hand across his chest. “I don’t know Tremaine’s motive for setting us the task, but it isn’t anything good. Forget about trying. You’ll only get hurt.”

“Choice is a luxury I don’t have,” I said, holding myself straight as if I were being castigated by Professor Swan. “Conrad’s missing and Tremaine knows where he is. So,
Father
, are you going to help me or not?”

He pressed a hand against his forehead and then paced away from me, like the library above was too small to contain even his memory. “No one among me and my kind knows who set the curse against the Folk. No one knows why and no one knows how. Even the Iron Codex has been no help, the pooling of all our knowledge for two hundred and fifty years. With that dearth of information, feel free to do your best with Tremaine’s task. It’s impossible. He’s setting you up to fail, Aoife.”

“Why?” I demanded with confusion. “He wants his queen awake—he told me.”

“Tremaine would as soon have the Winter throne for himself,” my father scoffed. “And to have a Gateminder in his pocket, when you inevitably can’t fulfill your end of the bargain—he could travel in the Iron Land free as we do.”

All of what he said made a certain, sickening sort of sense, but it didn’t change the fact that I had to find
Conrad. Even though he’d begged me not to come after him, I couldn’t leave my brother to the Folk. Knowing now how my father felt, Conrad was all I had.

“I’m doing it” was what I voiced.

“Aoife, dammit. There are things I can’t explain to you, but know that the curse cannot be broken. To try is to fail.” He reached for me again, but I backed away. My father’s face fell. “Please, Aoife,” he said softly. “Just go home.”

I slapped the notebook shut, and the silver memory shattered into a million dancing motes before it vanished into the shadow of the library above.

“This is my home now,” I whispered, but my father was gone.

I stayed where I was for a few moments, feeling sick with disappointment and confusion. My father wasn’t going to help me. He didn’t even want to speak with me.

There was a knocking on the ladder, and I swiped at my watering eyes and opened the hatch. Sniveling wasn’t going to break Tremaine’s curse or get Conrad back.

Dean stood at the foot of the ladder, rolling a cigarette between his forefinger and thumb. I shoved the notebook into my pocket and climbed down.

Dean examined me.

“You look upset.” No pet names this time. No doubt he was sick to death of my antics and broody moods, just like Cal.

“I am upset,” I ground shortly. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk or think or do anything
but ball up my fist and hit something, but if I do that I’m unladylike, so I guess I’ll just go try on some dresses or put up my hair until the urge passes.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose. “Let’s you and me take a walk,” he said.

“I don’t want to walk,” I snarled. “I don’t need to be protected.”

“No, you don’t,” Dean said. His calm was maddening when matched with my rage. “But I want to walk, and I want you to walk with me, so before you take my head off again, consider that you don’t have to say a word.” He flashed me his grin. “I hate mouthy broads, you know.”

The tightness in my chest eased, a fraction. “You said you wanted to hear what really happened when I disappeared.” I went to the panel and shut up the library above. “That still true?”

“So true it squeaks,” Dean said. He put the cigarette in his mouth and tipped his head toward the door. “Come on. I’ve been listening to the cowboy smack over pancakes for the last half hour. I’d swear that kid was a rot-gut if I didn’t know better.”

I crinkled my nose. Rot-guts were gluttonous globs of used-to-be people who hid in dark damp places when the virus overtook them and ate anything they could. Tin, garbage, human flesh. It was all the same when the necrovirus was riding your bloodstream.

“No,” I told Dean. “He’s not. He just eats like one.”

Dean nudged my elbow. “Come on. Walking. You and me.”

I followed him outside, not wanting to admit how much I liked the sound of just Dean and me, together.

The Miskatonic Woods

“I
F IT’S A
long story, we should go out on one of these woodland trails,” Dean said after we reached the foot of the drive and he’d smoked his Lucky Strike down to the nub. “Get ourselves some privacy.”

“What about the ghouls?” I said. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Hey, now,” Dean said. “You’re with me, Dean Harrison. Finest guide east of the Mississippi and north of the Carolinas. And right now Dean Harrison wants to go somewhere where he doesn’t have to listen to anyone talk about baseball or wonder if their shoes make their ankles look fat.”

“You’re terrible,” I said. “Bethina’s a good girl.”

“Never was too interested in the good ones,” Dean said. “The sinful ones are more fun.”

“We’ll go,” I decided. I wouldn’t have agreed even a day ago, but after the horrible scene with the notebook I was feeling downright impulsive. I had to get out of Graystone
before I screamed. It was my father’s house, and I knew now that I wasn’t welcome there.

The ever-present fog lay light, and I even caught a bar of sunlight as we walked down the narrow country road switchbacked into the side of the mountain before turning off onto a trail that snaked away into the bare-branched forest like any of the paths in Nerissa’s tales.

The crows watched us from their perches in the naked trees, eyes like glass.

“They never leave,” I said. “They just stay around the house. It’s eerie.”

“Corvids are smart birds,” Dean said. “They stick where there’s food and shelter and where nobody sprays buckshot at ’em. They watch and wait with the best.”