The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [44]
“Cal, that’s disgusting. She’d dead!”
“They’re bird wings,” said Cal, his fingers traveling back to the spot like it was magnetized. He licked his lips. “You know, pirates used to get swallows tattooed on their skin. To help them find land again. Birds find land.”
“That’s no swallow’s wing,” Dean said, his expression darkening like thunderheads. “Now, she’s shuffled loose this here mortal coil and I don’t love the plan of getting roasted when the hydrogen blows, so let’s get into gear.” He kicked the hatch free at last. “We hoof it, we can still make Arkham by dawn. Proctors probably think we all died in this bang-up.”
Cal still crouched by Alouette. “Raven’s wings,” he said. “Only Proctors can wear a raven’s mark.…”
Professor Swan’s bleating about us turning in fellow students with contraband books and things like tarot cards or Ouija boards—heretical items—unspooled again in my head, along with one of his interminable lanternreels. How We Fight! Joining the Bureau of Proctors.
“She’s a spy.” The word tasted sour. All of the heretics I’d seen burned and hauled away to Ravenhouse, all of the eyes of the clockwork ravens watching, and there were still people who sold out neighbors and friends and even family to the Proctors.
Evil, that was heretics if you listened to the Proctors. Wanton carriers of necrovirus. Breeders of things like the nightjar.
My mother.
“You think she spied on witches?” Cal frowned.
“Open your eyes, Calvin. She was spying on us. She probably radioed her pals at Ravenhouse the minute we came on board.”
Finding the hold of the Belle very small and hot, all at once, I clambered over wreckage to the hatch.
“But”—Cal panted after me—“Proctors only go undercover to spy on traitors. Foreigners and stuff.”
I lashed my head around. “You don’t get it, do you, Cal? You ran away with a heretic and with me. We are traitors to the Proctors, and the Proctors keep their eyes inward. Nobody cares about some far-off country. They watch us. They burn us. They spy and they kill and they stamp on lives with those horrible shiny jackboots they wear.”
Cal just stared at me, fiddling with the buckles on his camp bag. “You know what they tell us, Aoife. We’d all be dead if it weren’t for the Proctors. Professor Swan says—”
“Oh, grow up, Cal! Think a thought that the Proctors didn’t give you for once!” I snapped and took off at a march. We’d landed in a field, the grass and its frost veil knee high. I struggled on, school shoes and school stockings woeful against the frigid gloom.
Dean ran and caught up with me. “Whoa, there. Pump your brakes, kiddo.”
“I’m sorry.” I was already shamefaced, burning with humiliation. Young ladies didn’t lecture and they certainly didn’t shout. “That was rude.”
“Don’t care if the kid riled you,” Dean said. “Hell, he’d rile most anyone spent more than a hot minute with him. I can’t have you running off, is all. This isn’t the city. No Proctors keeping the critters out.”
“I don’t care,” I hissed, fierce as a wounded cat. “Let them digest me.” I was practically mad anyway. What harm would it do the world if I wasn’t in it?
Dean looked at the dark ground rippling with cold mist, to the high moon slashed with clouds, the bleak barren humps of the Berkshire Mountains beyond, and the ink stain of forest between us and them. “If it’s all the same, Miss Aoife, I’d rather keep you alive.”
I let a stanza of footsteps pass without speaking, my shoes breaking through the frost with a sound like grinding teeth.
“How far to Arkham?” I said at length. It seemed the most inoffensive topic at the moment.
“Four hours walking. Maybe a little more. We’ll set eyes on your old man’s house by dawn.” Dean yawned and stretched, popping his back like a cat. “Stay awake. Don’t let the cold get its teeth into you.”
“The Proctors will send out dogs and men to the crash site,” Cal piped up. “To be sure.” He was hopping along, and I slowed and offered him my arm. Cal didn’t know how cruel he could be sometimes, with his parroting of the Proctors and by listening to