The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [29]
“The Babbage became the Night Bridge,” Dean said. “Don’t ask me to explain all that existential beatnik stuff, about memory and manifest will, ’cause I can’t, but what I know is that the Night Bridge is here when I need it, because I can find it.”
“If you expect me to believe that we’re crossing out of Lovecraft on some ghost bridge,” I started, drawing myself up severely like Mrs. Fortune, “you’re patently crazy.”
“Boss design,” Cal said. “But is it sound?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “It wasn’t sound in ’twenty-nine, was it? Babbage didn’t account for the wind drag and … I can’t believe I’m even explaining this. That is not the Babbage. It’s a trick.”
It had to be. According to the laws of the Rationalists, the bridge was impossible.
“No trick,” Dean said. “And it’s sound enough for your footsteps, Miss Aoife. I promise you.” He beckoned when he reached another set of steps, spiraling upward toward the span. “Come on. Now that we’ve seen it, we can’t very well not cross it.”
“Let me guess—I’ll be cursed by the ghost of faulty engineering?” I said as we started up, to the bridge bed. Sarcasm wasn’t befitting a young lady, but I had to say something or I’d be too terrified to go another step. I couldn’t be seeing what I was seeing. And yet I was walking it, feeling the frozen iron of the span under my hand, crossing a bridge that existed only in memory.
“Now the Night Bridge has seen you, too,” Dean said, “and if you turned back, it could keep your soul forever.”
I shivered, tucking my hand back into my pocket.
“People don’t have souls,” Cal interjected. “That’s blasphemy.”
“Do us a favor, cowboy,” Dean said. “If you have the urge to call blasphemy again on this trip … don’t.”
Cal’s lip curled back, but I grabbed his hand. “It’s not worth it. We need his help.” I didn’t believe in souls the way the Rationalists explained them, but something was keeping this bridge hidden—keeping it in existence—and it wasn’t engineering.
Cal growled in his throat. “I don’t like him, Aoife. He’s a heretic, and he’s common besides.”
I stopped in my tracks, shoving a finger into Cal’s chest. “Why is he common, Cal?” I demanded. “Because he’s poor? Because he doesn’t have a family? Because he’s not like you?”
He backed away from my prodding. “Aoife, I didn’t mean …”
I dropped my hand and placed myself equidistant between Cal and Dean, in the orbit of neither. “Leave it. I don’t want to talk about it. With either of you,” I added when Dean’s ears pricked. I put my attention on the bridge. It could still be a trick. Mirrors, or a modification to Mr. Edison’s light-lantern.
The stairs ended at a dilapidated tollbooth at the beginning of the span. Through cracks and holes the size of my body in the roadbed, I could see down to the water. My stomach flipped. I had no fear of heights, but a healthy one of drowning.
From where I stood, I watched the span sway in the light wind, groaning and shuddering down to its base deep below the riverbed. I looked upward, at the towers moving. Bony fingers clawing at a cloud-streaked sky, trying to peel back the vapor to the stars. I shook my head at Dean. “This is unsafe. We need to turn back.” I didn’t care any longer if it was a trick or … something not a trick. I simply didn’t want to step foot on it.
Dean lifted his shoulders. “Told you already, Miss Aoife—too late.”
With a creak, the tollbooth window swung open. I jumped inside my coat. A brass face topped by a ragged cap and a brass arm encased in the tatters of a city worker’s uniform swung forth, nearly nose to nose with me. “Toll, pleassssse.”
Dean reached inside his white T-shirt and pulled out a worn iron key on a chain. “Just a traveler, friend.”
The automaton’s eyes flashed with a blue spark and it cranked its hand backward to pull aside the tatty blue uniform jacket hiding the rusted ribs beneath. A keyhole sat in place of a heart.
“Pleasssse insert youuuur passsss … key,” the automaton creaked. The voice box wound slow, and every syllable