The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [68]
Dean shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Secrets are my stock-in-trade.”
I gave Dean a small smile, a genuine one. I hadn’t felt much like smiling since I’d gotten Conrad’s letter, but Dean made it a little easier. “Maybe you should try a bit harder.”
The clock hands flipped over on ten o’clock, and the chime drowned out any secret I might have been tempted to slip into Dean’s grasp.
“That’s something,” Dean said when the sonorous tolling had ended. At least it didn’t make my head spin anymore. “I know my way around a jitney engine, but this …” He smiled. “You’re a bright penny, kid.”
I wiped the grease from my hands with my toolkit’s supply of rags, watching in satisfaction as the clock spun on with nary a hitch. “You can call me Aoife, you know.” Not that I minded very much being called princess.
Before Dean replied, a great rumbling like a waking beast began under our feet. Dean’s eyes snapped wide. “What on scorched earth is that?”
The books on the shelves vibrated, as if they were itching to shed their covers and fly away. I grabbed hold of a shelf to keep my footing, and Dean reached for me as well. “I don’t know,” I shouted over the rumbling. From far off, I heard crockery falling and Bethina give a scream. What had I done now?
“Aoife?” Cal stumbled into the library on the bucking floorboards. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” I didn’t, truly, and my panic rose along with the rumbling from under the floor, as if we were standing in the bowels of the Lovecraft Engine, chambers turning at full capacity and pressure building without a relief valve.
Then, abruptly as it had come upon us, the rumbling ceased and a section of wall above my father’s writing desk rolled back, soundless as the servant’s passage to the kitchen. But this was smaller and older, clearly built into the house at conception. It hid a brass panel, half as tall as I was and twice as wide. Dials and switches, valves and an antique static board using glass breakers filled the tiny recess in the library wall.
I approached it, wondering at the artfulness of the construction even as I felt trepidation build. Hidden rooms and hidden panels that controlled hidden things never boded well.
Dean let out a breath, his fists uncurling. “That’s a new one. What d’you suppose it’s for?”
“I have no idea,” I said. The panel reminded me of the controls on the Berkshire Belle, except these were older, more archaic, and there were a lot more switches and keys than a simple airship flight board.
“Don’t touch it!” Cal cried when I took a step toward it. I cast a glare back at him.
“Cal, it’s brass and wood. It’s not going to grow teeth.” I was cautious, but not scared. Machines were what I was good at.
I approached the hidden panel with its rows of switches labeled with painfully neat, handwritten placards: Library, Front Hall and Cellar Traps among at least a dozen others, all in an orderly, masculine hand on yellowed vellum squares.
Conrad had told me to fix the clock and in doing so I’d revealed Graystone’s secret heart. Conrad had vanished before he could perform whatever task he needed this panel for himself. But he’d had the forethought to send me the letter, to hide the note. He knew I’d come if he asked.
What I knew ever since that awful day in my dormitory room a year ago came true when I realized that Conrad had been planning for me to come here, to carry on where he couldn’t.
My brother wasn’t mad.
And if he wasn’t mad, then he was in a world of trouble.
The Iron Bones
DEAN JOINED ME at the panel, examining the controls. “Slick setup. Dare you to press one of those switches.” He reached for the closest lever, marked Kitchen.
“Don’t,” I said. For some reason I couldn’t define, I wanted to be first. It was my father’s house, my father’s device, and I wanted to be the one to discover how it worked.
Bethina peered around the library door. “Miss, what was that awful racket? Are we safe?”
“For the time being,” I murmured, touching each dial. Every facet of