The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [162]
“In that case,” Dean said, “allow the master of misdirection to thrill and astound you once again.”
He grabbed hold of a passing worker. “Hey, buddy, what’s the word?”
“Huh?” The worker tried to back away, but Dean balled up his fist. “I saw you looking at my girl last night at Donnelly’s! She’s high-class, friend! She goes to the Academy! Grease monkeys like you got no business eyeballing that!”
The worker, young as Cal or me, swung his tin lunch box at Dean. “Screw off, chucklehead!” The lunch box connected with the side of Dean’s head, and even though it was protected by his fire hood he doubled over, selling the effect.
Attracted by the noise, the Proctor left his post. I turned around and put my hand against the vent lock, asking my Weird for one last favor.
After a stab against the inside of my forehead, the lock clicked, and I pulled the hatch open and stepped in. A small platform for my feet preceded a ladder and a long, black drop.
I started down, and after a moment a shadow flashed. Dean appeared, and mounted the ladder after me.
“Are you all right?” I whispered.
“Clocked me,” he said. “Bleeding a little. Going to have a scar. Should make me look dangerous.”
“As if you need any help with that,” I murmured, relieved he was all right.
We climbed down in the dark, quiet. I wanted to enjoy these last minutes with Dean.
At the bottom, I pulled the plan I had sketched from under my fire suit. “Light?” I said. Dean handed me his lighter. I checked the route, for the hundredth or thousandth time, I couldn’t be sure.
I checked what I’d drawn against the goggles. Only one hatch here, in the depths of the Engineworks, was shielded with lead sheeting, just a black blank patch in the gaze of the schema goggles. I pointed at it, flipping them onto my forehead. “There.”
We opened the hatch, and I went first once again, bracing myself to find Proctors, arrest, Grey Draven himself waiting for me on the other side.
Instead, we were alone, the mechanics and the chief engineer absent from their posts. I decided to count it as luck. I had no sense of time—they could all be having a birthday party or simply a lunch break for all I knew. I was just glad I didn’t have to trip the pressure alarm and fight my way through chaos after all.
The four-chambered heart of the Engine hummed just out of view around the iron blasting walls, and I mounted the spiraling iron steps that rose from the venting floor to concentric walkways about the heart of the works. And looking down, into the center of them …
The Engine was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The great gears turned on their planetary assembly, and the aether within the Engine’s four glass hearts burned, creating the heat that drove the city. My Weird thudded violently at contact with the only kind of machine on earth that could harness steam and aether together to create a power that could crack the world in half.
Only the four great Engines held that power.
And I was about to steal it.
The Kindly Folk’s Bargain
I LOOKED BACK to Dean as we crested the highest catwalk. I needed his calm face and storm cloud eyes, even hidden behind a hood. The Engine sang to me slowly, and I drew its enchantment around me, warm and close and humming with so much power my head went light.
When I looked away from Dean, Tremaine was there instead.
“Aoife. You have arrived at the heart of all things.”
The Engine sound faded around me, the foreign air of another time reaching me through my mask, and I saw only a frail, rust-bitten skeleton where my feet should be resting on solid metal. The Engine itself groaned and shuddered, in death throes of grinding gears and pistons. The aether in its four gigantic globes was a sickly violet. Above and far away, air-raid Klaxons wailed. This wasn’t happening—I was being shown something, something I’d only glimpsed in the shoggoth’s dream before now.
“Where are we?” I said, my stomach dropping in concert with the shaking