The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [34]
“All right, then,” Dean said, touching the flame to the tip. “Lemme know if you decide not to be good, miss.”
I gave him what I could of a thankful smile before I crouched next to Cal, taking in his flushed face and shallow breaths. He looked like poor Ned Connors had, after Ned chopped off his little finger in a drill press during Machine Shop. I moved Cal’s hair, soaked with freezing sweat, off his forehead. “How’s the ankle?”
“Awful,” he said. He kicked off his boxy school shoe and pulled down his argyle sock. I winced at the sight of the swelling around the joint. I had barely passed our first-aid course—to treat the burns, breaks and slashes associated with work in the Engine—but I gingerly prodded Cal’s foot, and he yelped.
“Quiet!” Dean commanded. “You think the foundry doesn’t have its own bits of mean metal rolling around after dark?”
I considered being stuck here overnight, and our chances of escape in the light of day. Even with the raven patrols, the night was our only friend right now. I bit my lip, looking at Cal. “We’re just going to have to wait until we get to Arkham,” I told him. “I’ll find you a surgeon or a hospice there, I promise. Can you walk at all?”
Cal pressed his lips together. “I can try, if you help me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “But we have to keep moving.” I reached for him, tried to lever us into some kind of duet.
“I’m your guide, full stop,” Dean said quickly. “Don’t expect me to get in on that dance.”
“Nobody asked you to dance with anyone,” I snapped, helping Cal up. My shoulders protested the weight, but I let him lean on me. “Just do what I’m paying you for.” Dean Harrison might not be a heretic in the sense the Proctors understood the word, but he was certainly no gentleman.
Dean dropped his Lucky Strike and ground it under his boot. “Aye, aye, Miss Aoife.” He rolled the door back without another word and stuck his head out. “All clear.”
The narrow avenue between the long steel sheds before us rippled with fog, the aether lamps nailed to poles on each building face spitting in the moisture. In the distance I heard the whine of gears and saw a pair of blue lamplike eyes riding through the fog. I shivered, not just because of the wind on my sweat-scrimmed skin. The automatons of the foundry reminded me too much right now of everything I’d left in Lovecraft—nightjars, madmen, the looming turn of the year since Conrad had gone away. The feeling hadn’t left me that this journey into the wilds of Arkham was all a terrible mistake, and we weren’t even off the foundry grounds. There were worse things waiting for me outside the city gates than madness. Ghouls, roadside bandits, and the specter of heresy that my brother represented. If I came back from Arkham alive, I wouldn’t just be a potential infected—I’d be condemned as a heretic.
If I left the city, I might never be able to come back. Conrad had to have known when he sent the letter. He needed my help enough for me to risk it.
Or he was mad, and I was following him, the infection dropping my guard, making me take risks. Follow criminals. Act irrationally.
I rubbed the scar under my jaw with my free hand. My other was around Cal’s waist, fingers pressed between his ribs. “Thanks, Aoife,” he whispered. “But maybe we can just forget this bit when I tell the guys about our trip?”
He smiled at me, and I managed to smile back through my effort of supporting half his weight. “Whatever you say, Cal. You’re the hero of that story.”
Dean whistled low from up ahead. “Back gate,” he said. “Locked, though.” He extended his palm to me. “Got a hairpin you can spare, miss?”
I pulled the bobby pin out of the left side of my regulation bun and handed it to him. Dean bent it open with his teeth and worked on the padlock. It popped with an irritable creak. I wished misbehavior came as easily to me, with as few compunctions. The