The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [156]
The ghouls had collected a vast store of lost things, and Toby showed me the nest where most of it was kept. “It’s all here,” he said. “Meat keep the strangest things, and they throw even stranger things away.”
I beckoned to Dean. “We need to find some climbing gear. Something to make a harness and crampons from.”
Dean cocked an eyebrow. “I know you’re not talking about climbing down that thing, kid. You’ll roast.”
“Not if we can vent this chimney,” I said. “Ventors work in the pipes every day. I can certainly make one trip.”
Dean uncovered a length of sturdy rope, and I found a pair of golf shoes roughly the same age as I was. “These’ll do,” I said.
“Well, find a pair for me, too,” Dean said. I blinked at him, already pulling the spikes off the bottom of the shoes.
“Whatever for?”
“If you think you’re going down there alone all on the spur of the moment, you’re cracked,” Dean said. “We’ve already gotten sucked into a ghoul nest—I’d hate to see what else is down here.”
I gave Dean a small smile. Him coming with me meant I’d come back. Dean could always find his way back. I clung to the sentiment as I found a toolkit with most of the tools missing. A few minute’s work had fashioned the golf spikes and some wire into a serviceable pair of crampons, which I strapped to new shoes I found amid the mess.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t turn around now.
My only adventure into a steam pipe had come the previous year, when the chief ventor of the Engineworks took us into the bowels of the Engine, one by one. I’d never forgotten the roar, the oppressive heat and the weight of the water in the air as we journeyed as close as an unprotected person could come. As I lowered myself down the side of the steam pipe, the heat stippling my skin with moisture, I thanked every ventor I’d known at the School for their wisdom.
“You all right down there?” Dean shouted.
My foot found the bottom of the pipe’s junction, and I tugged on the rope. “Yes! Come down.”
Dean lowered himself until he landed next to me, panting. We’d both stripped down to our bottom layer: I to my dress and stockings, Dean to his white T-shirt. His hair hung lank, while mine became like a thundercloud in the humidity.
“If the Proctors are wrong, and there is a heaven … this is definitely hell,” he said, swiping his hand over his face.
“The Proctors are wrong,” I said, sure of that if nothing else. “So very, very wrong about so much.”
We crouched to make our way down the pipe, until it widened, and a grate blocked our path. The sign hanging from the mesh had nearly rusted away, but the flared symbol, like a blooming flower, was familiar from our first-year safety lectures.
I snatched Dean’s arm. “Get back.”
“Why—” he started, but was drowned out by a great rumbling. A moment later a jet of concentrated steam shot along the pipe, heating the mesh so that it glowed.
“It vents up,” I said. “Direct from the Engine to aboveground.”
Dean whistled. “Well, we sure aren’t getting in that way.”
“If we can’t go in through the river then we have no choice,” I said. “This is the only way into the Engineworks besides the front gate, and we’re sure as hell not getting in that way.” I tugged at Dean’s hand. “Let’s go back. I need to ask Cal exactly where we are relative to the Engine and make some sketches.” And get out of the heat before I collapsed into a puddle. I never would have made it as a ventor.
The climb back into the ghoul nest was far harder than the climb out, now that I was tired and wrung of moisture. Dean had to pull me out and onto the soft floor of the nest. Cal hovered where he’d obviously been waiting since we’d gone, claws flexing in and out. “Stop breathing so hard!” he ordered me. “You sound like prey!”
I concentrated on bringing my heartbeat and breath back under control. Dean found a scrap of burlap and blotted some of the sweat and grit from my face.
“That