“Are you sure?” Cedar asked. “Finding them shouldn’t be this simple.”
“I know.” Wil walked back over to his horse, shaking his hands out as if shedding water. “You really can’t see that?”
“No.”
“So?” Wil asked. “What do you reckon?”
“It’s a trail. A trail the children walked. One ribbon for each child, pouring out of the heart of this city.”
“That’s…convenient,” Wil said. “So you think the Strange made these trails? To lure us?”
“Possibly,” Cedar said.
“We’re going to follow them, aren’t we?”
“We shouldn’t.”
Wil’s eyes crinkled up to make room for his grin. “It is the only trail. If it’s a trap, let’s spring it and move on to the next.” Wil clicked his tongue and urged his horse down the road following the lines of light.
Mae brought the wagon up beside Cedar. “He’s always so full of fire,” she said, not unkindly.
“That he is,” Cedar agreed. “And it has often burned him. He says there’s a clear trail that the children, many, many children followed this way. We’re going to follow it.”
“You sound concerned.”
“I can’t see it, and he can. I know Wil and I perceive the Strange differently, but”—he peered at the road, and at the city ahead of them—“I see nothing of the Strange. At all. Even though it is the full moon.”
“Maybe it’s the spell we cast?” Mae offered.
Cedar shrugged. “And to find a trail lit up bright as a torch and nearly on our doorstep? It’s too easy.”
“You think it’s a trap?”
“It seems likely to be.”
“And Wil?”
“Like you said, he’s filled with fire.”
“So are you,” Mae said. “You just keep a closer mind on the draft.”
Cedar smiled, then set his horse after his brother.
They followed the road in relative silence, the only sounds coming from the city itself and the occasional high drone of airships landing in the field north of town. They passed no more than a handful of souls, a worker coming in on foot from the coal mines, a cart leaving town to farms and fields more distant.
Other than that, it was as if the town were intent on making itself deserted, hidden from what it knew roamed the night.
Wil kept a running report on the trail. It took a sharp turn, looped into a muddled knot, and strung in ragged tatters down a single street into town.
“I’m beginning to think there might be a wild goose at the end of this chase,” Wil said with a grin.
“You’re the one who wanted to spring the trap,” Cedar reminded him. “You know the Strange. They’ll lead a man down a twisted road, then right off the edge of a mountain, if they can catch his eye with a shining light.”
“This doesn’t look like no will-o’-the-wisp,” Wil noted.
“I know,” Cedar said. “That’s why we’re still following it.”
The street widened and grew toothy with cobblestones. One thing the city did well was keep the roads mostly free of ice and snow. But it was full dark now; there would be no need to have workers clearing the roads if there wasn’t going to be anyone using them.
They reached an intersection and Cedar pulled his horse to a stop.
A sound was rising, far off and high, but not in the sky and not carried by the wind. It was growing louder and louder from the earth beneath his feet. Loud enough his and Wil’s horses both whickered and fidgeted, unsettled.
Cedar dismounted, pressed his hand against his horse’s neck to calm him, then knelt, spreading his fingers out across the street.
The sound wasn’t anything he’d heard before. It rumbled, but also hissed and crackled like lightning snapping the sky. And behind it all was a single chord of notes, the trumpet of some great beast.
Something—something big—was beneath the city.
And it was moving, growling, waking up.
“Tell me you hear that,” Cedar said.
“I do,” Wil said.
“Mae, do you hear anything unusual?” Cedar asked.
“No.” She paused, then said, “Yes, like a horn of some kind?”
“Yes,” Cedar said. “If you can hear it, then it’s not a Strange song.”
“Which I couldn’t be happier about,” Wil said. “Their songs lead to dances that last for the rest of your days. Hate to wear out these boots. I’ve barely worn them in.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Cedar said. “They wouldn’t dance you to death. The Strange only like pretty men.”
Wil let out a loud laugh and Cedar couldn’t help but join him. He’d missed his brother. Missed his laugh. Even though this was not the best of their times, it was still time together. Valuable. And the longer they spent hunting Strange or, hell, the Holder across these states, the more of a chance they’d have to pay on their promises, break the curse for good, and make their days their own again.
He was looking forward to many long years together with his brother. And with Mae.
“It sounds like gears to me,” Cedar said. “It might be the generator we saw in the copper mine.”
“But why would it make this sound? What could it be powering?” Wil asked.
“I don’t know,” Cedar said.
“Huh,” Wil said. “Maybe they know.”
Cedar glanced up at his brother. He was looking west, down the road that jagged between brick and wooden buildings, and beyond that, the fields, forests, and river.
“Who?”
Wil glanced at him, worried. “The Strange. You don’t see them? There’s”—Wil paused—“dozens. Ghostly, but real. Well, real as they get without bodies to possess. Tall as chimney stacks and thin as thread, short and squat like toads.”
“I hear them howling, screaming,” Cedar said. “But I can’t see them.”
“That’s…” Wil lost his voice for a moment, swallowed the words back into place and tried again. “Not right. Something’s wrong with them. Something’s very wrong with the Strange.”
“Talk to me, Wil.”
“They’re coming this way fast. Real fast.”
“Mae, keep tight hold of the mules,” Cedar said. His own horse was dancing and snorting, trying to bolt. Cedar tightened his grip on the reins, but didn’t even try to swing up into the saddle.
The curse that Father Kyne was holding fell around him like an icy cloak. His vision split again. He saw the room where Father Kyne was standing. And watched as he strode through the church and into the night air. He felt the push of the beast, urging Father Kyne out into the night. Needing to kill the Strange. Needing to hunt and run.
“Get out of the way, you damn fool!” a man’s voice yelled.
Cedar blinked and it seemed that the entire world came burning back around him with singular heat and color and light. The vision of Father Kyne was gone.
“Something wrong with your ears?” the man yelled again.
Cedar peered down the other end of the street behind him. Seven men stood in the street, wearing dark-lensed goggles, heavy leather coats and boots, and overlarge gloves more suited to smelting metal. They held wide-muzzled shotguns equipped with copper tubes that connected to a box, which was slung over their shoulders like bulky canteens.
A soft green fire licked around the edges of those copper tubes. Glim. Those guns were powered by glim.
“Mr. Hunt?” a familiar voice asked. “Is that you?”
Cedar recognized the figure driving the steam carriage at the back of the line of men. It was Sheriff Burchell. He also wore goggles, a heavy coat, and a thick scarf around his neck. He carried a slightly different version of the copper-box gun, this one slender with a bayonet fixed at the end.
“I’d move aside, Mr. Hunt. There’s trouble in the air tonight, and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of our guns.”