Cold Copper

Chapter Thirty-three

“Mr. Alun Madder,” Rose said, her good hand sliding down to her gun, “you must know that I respect you and your brothers for those fine deviser minds of yours. And I certainly can understand when a brain slips a cog and goes off to wander down a whimsical path. But you will never have my body as a bargain for your gain. Never.”

Alun regarded her through sharp eyes. “Rose Small, I find myself becoming more and more fond of you as time goes by. I agree. Your body is your own. Perhaps I misspoke.”

She kept her hand on her gun. She knew that the Madders used words like a watchmaker used tools: precisely and with intention.

“Then respeak yourself, Mr. Madder. Clearly.”

“We come from…old blood, we Madders. Blood that stretches back for more days and years than people have numbers for. We are uncommon men, and we walk the earth by choice, for reasons of our own. Old blood brings with it certain advantages. You’ve seen only the barest hint of the things we know, the things we can do.”

He paused, and Rose was glad for it. She found it hard to breathe when he was speaking. Alun Madder and both of his brothers were miners, devisers, and brawlers. But sometimes, in the rare moments when the flame of their humanity was uncovered and let burn free, they were more than just three men: they were a force, a unit, brothers like none she had known. And when one of them intended to use words to capture your attention, even breathing seemed an unnecessary distraction.

“The reason I tell you these things, things I do not willingly explain to most men,” he continued, “is because you too are of uncommon blood, Rose Small.”

He waited, they all waited, as if they were listening for the first call of a bird to signal the dawn.

“You think I’m like you?” she asked.

“Not think. Know.”

“You think we’re…kin?”

Alun hitched one shoulder in a shrug, but his eyes were steady, unreadable. “There are stranger things that have happened in this world.”

Brothers Bryn and Cadoc both chuckled.

“We can’t know,” Rose said. “You can’t know. Unless there are records?”

“None that we have. None that we’ve seen. But we have blood. And so do you. That’s all we need today.”

“For what?”

“To find the children.” He frowned just a little. “You have been listening to me, haven’t you?”

She ignored that. “How will blood do any good in finding them?”

“Just blood alone wouldn’t, but when the word is added, a promise”—he nodded once—“that is the thing that can change the winds.”

“Mr. Madder,” Rose said. “I am not a slow thinker, but your words don’t mean a thing to me.”

“It’s the promise and blood,” Cadoc said, “that will give us reach. Our feet are tied, bound to this side of the road. Our lives are tied to the promise of finding the children. We alone, Madder blood, must find the children to be released from the promise. If anyone else finds them, we will remain, locked to this city.”

“Unless Father Kyne kicks off,” Bryn noted.

Cadoc nodded at that. “His death will release the promise. But that is not what we want. We want to fulfill our promise, bring closure to our word given to his father’s father. To do that, we need you, Rose. Blood of our blood, in some curious manner. You will be our hands and our feet. You will reach the children since we cannot.”

“The practicalities of it,” Bryn picked up, “are simple. You vow to us to join in our promise to rescue the children and fulfill our debt to the Kyne family. A drop of your blood mingled with ours on a rope or wire”—he pulled a thin length of copper wire on a spool out of the pack at his side—“this wire, will be enough to stretch our reach, carry our blood and our promise.”

“Wire?” she asked, wondering where and when he’d had the chance to steal it.

“Each of us will keep hold of it,” Alun said. “And linked by it, we’ll stand as far on the other side of this road as we can, the wire carrying our promise to span the distance, just like a cable carries the dash and dot of words down the line. You’ll have the wire around your wrist or waist. If there’s any luck left for us, the wire will hold long enough, far enough, that you’ll be able to find the children in that tumble of rocks through those trees, and bring them back right along this string between us, to the city proper.”

“What if…if they aren’t alive?” Rose asked.

“Then we’ll carry them home, one by one, and give them their rest,” Alun said.

Rose knew the promise was keeping the Madders here in town. And she knew Father Kyne might not even make it another day or two without Mae’s witchcraft to help him heal. But missing children struck at her heart like a heavy stone. She had no children of her own, but she was an orphan. She knew what it was like to be lost. Knew what it was like to lose home and family.

She could only imagine how frightened the children must be. And how their parents must worry.

“How many?” Rose asked. “Children? How many are lost?”

“Father Kyne says a hundred or more,” Alun said.

“A hundred?” Rose brushed the hair from her face with the back of her good hand. “How can we carry a hundred children home?”

“Let’s find them first,” Alun said. “Then we’ll devise a way to help them. Are we agreed, Rose Small? Is there to be a promise between us?”

“Yes,” Rose said. “I’ll give you my word and blood. For the children.”

“Well, then, let us seal our words to it,” Alun said. “Brothers?”

Bryn and Cadoc stepped up close until they were all standing in a circle at compass points: Rose east, Cadoc west, and Alun and Bryn at north and south, respectively.

“This we enter as four and exit as one,” Alun said soberly. “This bond of our word, this bond of our blood.”

The three brothers simultaneously drew knives from their pockets and in the same motion, nicked the thick of their left thumbs. Blood welled there.

“Rose,” Alun said.

She offered her hand in the center of the circle. Bryn, straight across from her, placed his hand flat behind hers, then nicked her pinky. “Thumbs are useful, and you have only the one to spare right now,” he said, pointing the knife at her arm in a sling.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Our blood seals our word, and our word is this,” Alun said. “From this day onward, we are bound together. Until our promise is fulfilled, until the lost children of Des Moines are found and returned to the city. I, Alun, so swear.”

The brothers intoned, “So I swear.”

Rose said, “I, Rose Small, so swear.”

Bryn held the coil of wire in the center, and each brother grasped it, thumbs smearing a drop of blood on the rough twist. Rose added her hand, and her blood.

“Good,” Alun said. “Now that’s out of the way, let’s forward.”

Rose hadn’t felt anything change. When Mae cast spells, she could at least sense the magic in the air, or sometimes something more subtle, like a change of temperature or a honey scent. But for all the world, it seemed like the speech and blood and wire business hadn’t done anything to change her or make her feel owing to the Madders in any way.

“Is that it?”

“Is that what?” Alun asked.

“The, uh, promise?”

“We all agreed, didn’t we?”

“Yes, but I just thought. Well, when Mae uses magic it’s different.”

“Ah, there’s your mistake, Rose Small. It isn’t witchcraft that holds a promise to bones. It’s a much older magic than that.”

“Magic?”

“Superstition, soul, the will of the mind, magic.” He waved his hand. “Men have plenty of names for the things they can’t explain. None of them quite right, and none of them matter. All that matters is what we know is promised between us. Because that is our truth now, and that truth will have to do. Here. Let me tie this about your wrist.”

He quickly twisted the end of the copper wire into a bracelet of sorts, his thick fingers cleverly bending the latch into the shape of a rosebud, and all the rest of the bracelet into a leafed stem.

“That’s beautiful,” Rose said.

Alun grunted and made sure the bracelet was latched securely. “Just because we’re in a hurry doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do things right.”

“Now what?” Rose asked.

“Do you have a gun on you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Keep it. There are still men out looking for us, though I think we gave them a good slip. Airships.” He shook his head. “Lovely invention. Now, we’ll each walk as far as we can.”

Cadoc took the spool from Bryn’s hands and stood with the toes of his boots touching the side of the road where the city ended.

Bryn and Alun each put a hand on the line between Rose and Cadoc.

“Rose,” Alun said. “Please walk across the road.”

Rose did so, and Alun and Bryn walked with her.

Bryn chuckled. “This will do, brother. Nicely.”

“Then let’s do it faster,” Alun said. “Miss Small, straight to that stand of trees. Quickly now.”

Rose picked up the pace and Alun and Bryn jogged right behind her, holding the unspooling wire. They were just at the line of trees when Bryn grunted as if he’d hit a brick wall.

Rose looked back.

“That’s as far,” Bryn said, already in a sweat, “that the bond will stretch between Cadoc and me. Go on.”

“But—”

“We go on,” Alun said.

Rose could tell by how he was walking that he too was in pain. But if the Madders were willing to spread the distance and the pain between them, then she was inclined to do her part too.

The forest opened into a clearing. Mr. Hunt had said the stones that held the children were just beyond.

She realized Alun was no longer following her and glanced back at him. He stood, copper wire clenched in his hands, feet spread as if bearing a heavy weight or pain.

“Go on. Should be beyond the trees,” he said.

Rose nodded. She continued through the trees.

The farther she walked away from Alun, the more her legs, her back, and arms began to hurt. It was a slow-growing pain, but it was a real pain. And each step she took away from the town where the Madders were bound—where she was bound too now that their blood and oaths had mingled—caused that pain to sharpen.

Just on the other side of the trees was a stone hill. A small opening in the hill was clearly visible, but it was only large enough for someone her size or smaller to slip through. She didn’t know how Wil had crawled in there. Certainly, the burly Madders would not be able to clamber through that crack.

“I see the rocks,” Rose called. “I see the opening.”

“That must be it. Do you see children?”

“Not yet.” Rose walked closer to the cave, every step like needles beneath her feet.

“Can you see them?”

“Wait.” Rose ducked and turned sideways and slipped into the small opening. She didn’t go any farther, catching her breath against the pain that was crawling down arms and legs, and clenching at her chest, and waiting for her eyes and the darkness to make amends.

“Rose?” Alun’s voice was muffled by the layers of stone, but plenty clear enough for her to hear him. “Do you see the children?”

She did. But she could not find her voice to answer him.

The small entryway opened into a wide, high-ceilinged cavern just below. And the floor of that cavern was covered by children, all of them old enough to be walking, but none of them over ten or eleven years of age. They lay one to the next, like carefully placed tiles in a great mosaic. At least a hundred children. All of them unmoving. All of them made of stone.