“I bound one piece of the Holder to Rose, and she is forever changed because of it. If I bound a weapon of such Strangework to you…” She pressed her lips together and shook her head again.
“Then we’ll have to go in after it.”
“Diving in that river will kill you.”
“Not if you cast a spell of warmth around me.”
Wil walked up and gently put his mouth around Cedar’s wrist.
“Warmth around us. Wil and I will dive for it.”
“Wil doesn’t even have thumbs,” Mae said.
“But he senses the Holder differently than I do. If I can’t find it in that dark, he’ll be able to lead me to it.”
Another round of gunfire echoed in the distance.
“Mae,” he said. “We are all running out of time.”
She closed her eyes. “Yes. I’ll do it. Give me a moment.” She dug in her satchel and tucked several small items into her palm. He knew that whenever she could she’d been gathering tokens that represented the elements of earth, air, water, and fire—things like unstruck matches, stones, and an odd assortment of cotton threads, buckles, bones, and buttons.
“I’ll need you both to hold very still. I am going to ask the warmth to wrap you as one.”
Wil leaned a little closer to Cedar and Cedar knelt down so he was of the same general size as the wolf.
Mae cast the spell, and just as it had when they were forging through the blizzard, it settled around him like a heavy, hot blanket. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but since he was about to dive into an ice-covered river, he was happy for the weight of the spell and its protective heat.
They just might survive this dive.
“You’ll need to do it quickly,” Mae said. “One dive and right back up. The spell won’t last long for both of you.”
Cedar stood, and took half a step, leaning over Mae. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her full against his body.
The spell surrounding him felt of her, smelled of her perfume. It even tasted of her.
It made him want her.
She reached up and kissed him. He had intended it to be a gentle kiss, but she was fierce, clinging to him, knowing, as he knew, what a very slim chance it was that he and Wil would survive this.
Wil growled.
Children’s voices rose around them, sighing, crying, sobbing. And behind that sound was the eerie ring of the Holder. Calling. Calling Cedar and Wil down to their deaths, just as it had called the children.
Mae pulled back, and so did he.
“I need to…” Cedar started.
“Yes,” Mae licked her lips to catch the last of the taste of him on her tongue. “You should.”
“I’m coming back,” he said.
“I know.” And then she gave him a look of faith that he’d never known before. She believed he’d find the Holder. With her spell, with Wil.
He wasn’t about to disappoint her.
Cedar shrugged out of his coat and hat, and carried them, along with his shotgun and the ax, over to the river. He left all his clothes and his boots on, but even in just his shirtsleeves, winter could not touch him through Mae’s spell. He glanced up and down river, then crossed over the line of stones.
There was no sound, no shadow movement in the forest, no gunmen. It appeared as if there was no warning attached to the stones, as Mae had worried there would be.
It could be another trick. Stones stacked in a line by the Strange to make a man think there was magic there.
To keep him and Wil from the Holder.
Cedar bent, loosened the laces on his boots, then left them beside the river, his coat and hat and gun all stacked with them. He held the ax loosely in his hand.
Wil’s ears were up as he searched the ice covering the river. They’d need to go in directly above the Holder, dive straight down, catch it up, and pull back onto the bank fast.
A man couldn’t live long in that water. Not more than a handful of minutes. But there would be enough time to dive to the bottom if the river wasn’t too deep. There would be enough time to find the Holder.
Cedar walked upriver just a bit, toward the rush of water pushing between the huge stones on either bank. The heat of Mae’s spell was beginning to make him sweat, as was the tie of pain with Father Kyne.
Wil paused, then took a step onto the ice. Cedar tipped his head, listening for the children’s cries, but more than that, listening for the music from the Holder.
He stepped out on the river in his stockinged feet, following Wil.
His brother took just a few steps downriver and then stopped closer to the far side of the river than the side Mae waited upon.
Cedar agreed. The Holder was here, beneath his feet, calling. Calling for their death.
And when he looked down, between the bare ice spread out under a dusting of snow, he could see the children, trapped beneath the ice like shadowy ghosts, pounding and clawing at the ice above them.
Screaming to live. Begging to be free.
Chapter Thirty
Rose held on tight as the wagon rumbled down the road at top speed. Bryn was driving and let out a whoop when anyone got in their way on the street. He was not slowing down, no matter who or what was in his way, a fact that was quickly proved out by all the cussing and swearing going on around them.
“You want to put this on, Miss Small.” Bryn handed her a leather harness.
“What for?”
“For our escape,” he shouted.
She hesitated, then wrapped the harness around her ribs and latched it in place with several snaps. It fit tight as a corset, with just enough room for breathing.
While Bryn was busy trying to keep at least two of the wheels on solid ground, Alun and Cadoc crawled down the side of the wagon, facing the back of it, each carrying a gun.
“What are you doing?” Rose yelled from the bench beside Bryn.
“Taking care of this like we should have when we first rolled into town,” Alun yelled. “Ready, brother Cadoc?”
“Days ago,” he yelled back.
They already had their guns drawn, but instead of shooting, they both tucked a finger into their pockets and threw something at the riders closing in behind them.
“One!” Alun yelled.
It wasn’t dynamite, but whatever they lobbed on the street kicked up enough light that Rose went half blind, even in the full light of day.
She’d seen the Madders use those light tricks before. They’d told her it was glim mixed with a few other things, in small, corked bottles. When the bottles were shook up good and hard, say like when they hit cobblestone and shattered, the mixture of glim turned into a light that would blind the sun.
As if that weren’t enough, they started shooting at their pursuers.
“Two!” Cadoc yelled back.
“And…three!” they both said.
Bryn let go of the reins. “Hold on to your hat!” he said.
Rose grabbed hold of the brim of her hat just as Alun, Cadoc, and Bryn all fired their guns straight up in the air.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. Before Bryn could explain, she’d figured it out.
He wasn’t shooting bullets into the empty sky; he was shooting a grappling hook, straight up at the cabled airship above them. A cabled airship that was zipping faster than a gallop over the tops of the buildings, the cable buzzing down the street rail line, and hooking hard down a side street.
This was madness.
She took a breath and held it.
Bryn slipped one arm around her through the harness loops across her back. His other arm was buckled at wrist, arm, and shoulder and attached to the leather strap around his ribs and to the grappling-hook rope.
Three hooks hit their targets with the distant sound of knuckles rapping hollow logs.
She was yanked up out of the wagon so fast and hard she lost her breath completely.