The boy slept on a cot to the left of the train car. Even asleep, he held his breath until Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt passed him by.
Through the inner door, and into the largest section of the carriage, Mr. Shunt trailed Shard LeFel, a silent shadow. Here the wolf was kept. A creature of night, it stared at LeFel, copper eyes glowing. There was too much intelligence in those eyes, too much hatred.
LeFel struck the wolf with the cane as he walked by and the beast snarled. But it was not the beast that he needed. No. He needed something of dirt, of earth, of stone. Something of cog and wire and bone. Not here. Not in this carriage.
Only Strangework would do.
He stormed through the outer door and into the boiler car, where his remaining half-dozen matics hunkered, chained and waiting. Even though the steam had long ago cooled, the matics shifted as he entered, the spark of glim in each of them powering muzzles and heads to rise, ready to do his bidding.
LeFel paused and considered each metal creature. Which should he destroy to power his needs? Not the strongest, a hulking manshaped creature half-bent to fit within the car, piston hammers for arms. Not the swiftest, two beasts the size of dogs constructed of steel pounded so thin, you could see the shadow of the gears slowly ticking behind their curved ribs and knife-filled jaws. Not the deadliest, a heavily armored tractor with two self-loading, pivoted mitrailleuse barrels holding enough loaded cartridges to fire more than two thousand shots in under fifteen minutes.
No, it would need be either the rabbit-sized ticker suited for scouting or the whiskey-barreled self-propelled battle mace.
“Mr. Shunt, disembowel the small ticker, and take from it what you need.”
“Yes, Lord LeFel.” Mr. Shunt swiftly caught up the rabbit-sized ticker in his hands, and put to use his wickedly sharp fingers.
LeFel did not stop to watch. He strode straight down the center of the carriage, not looking right or left at the metal creatures that shifted closer to the shadows, then were as still as gravestones. He opened the outer door and crossed to the final car coupled to his train.
One witch, one human, one dead man, would not stand in the way of his immortality, his revenge.
He pulled a key from a chain in his waistcoat and unlocked the door. He threw the door open. There were no windows in this carriage. There was just the one door. No other cracks for anything large or small to enter or exit.
Shard LeFel stepped into the room and Mr. Shunt scuttled in, latching the door tight behind him and throwing the room into complete darkness.
“Light, Mr. Shunt,” LeFel barked.
Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, steel scraping flint, and caught fire to an oil-drenched wick of a lantern he plucked from the wall.
Mr. Shunt held that lantern high, the golden light washing over the room like a silken veil.
The room was spartan, shockingly so when compared with the other two carriages. Walls were lined with worktables, benches, drawers, crates, and shelves of iron and wood. Tools glittered, hung above the workbenches, tools that could pry, vise, weld, rivet. No curved edges, no rich trappings, no comforts here. This room was a place of extrapolation, of bending metal to the fevered dreams of the mind. A place of devising in a way most uncommon.
In each of three corners of the room stood a creature of bolt and gear and bone. Similar to Mr. Shunt, the creatures wore long woolen coats, layers of gray lace, tatters, and high collars and hats that covered their faces. They seemed nothing more than beggars hung to rot, but they were more. Much more.
They were Strange come into the Strangework bodies Shard LeFel and Mr. Shunt had devised for them. Fueled by blood and glim, they did not move, did not breathe, did not make a sound as LeFel and Mr. Shunt moved about the room. They were still as death itself. Only their eyes betrayed their true state, burning through the darkness and following LeFel’s and Mr. Shunt’s every move.
The Strangework had sworn to stand guard to the one precious thing in the room.
In the exact center of the floor was a platform. And upon that platform lay a closed black door the size of a coffin. That door did not lead to the ground outside the train car. That door, when pried by a blood key and moonlight, would take him home, and remain open, a hidden opening to this world, rolling on the dead iron tracks across the land.
LeFel strode to the wall and hooked the crook of his cane into one of the lower cupboard doors, pulling it open. Just enough lamplight fell upon the contents to make out the shape. A wooden coffin. No larger than a small child. Just the size that would fit the blacksmith’s boy within.
LeFel rested his cane against the open cupboard door and drew the coffin out with both hands. He carried it a short ways to a worktable and placed it on top.
Mr. Shunt craned his long neck to better see over LeFel’s shoulder. Even the Strangework guards in the corners stirred in anticipation.
LeFel thumbed the latches and pushed open the lid.
Inside the coffin was a swaddled form, the size of a small child. LeFel removed the swaddling cloth away from the figure. Within the blanket was a gnarled, twisted piece of wood. The bark was papery as madrone, showing just peeks of pale wood beneath the peeling exterior. Three bones, perhaps each a joint of a human pinkie, were placed upon the wood, and all around it were gears, springs, levers, and wheels.
Once the blanket had been removed, LeFel spoke. “This, I will leave to you, Mr. Shunt. Prove to me again your worth.”
Mr. Shunt drifted forward to stand next to LeFel. “The pleasure will be mine.” He extended one long arm, spindly fingers wrapping around the chunk of wood.
LeFel smiled while Mr. Shunt worked a matter of devising he’d seen only the Strange attempt. By and by under Mr. Shunt’s quick fingers, the bark shed away from the heart of the wood. Leaving behind something soft, something malleable.
It took no time for Mr. Shunt to carve the wood into the likeness he wanted. Eyes, nose, mouth, curve of cheek, and hollow of neck. Arms, body, legs. It was fine work and LeFel savored the mastery of each slice, gouge, and cut.
Then when the carving was done, when it was clear even in the watery lamplight that a child lay within that coffin, Mr. Shunt dug in his pockets, and leaned forward to open several small drawers, withdrawing more gears, springs, and bolts, more bone, tendon, and bits of flesh floating in liquid-filled jars.
These he plied to the wood, hooking with steel, sewing with copper threads, running pulleys of sinew for joints, and bits of bone hammered in place like nails. For the Strange to walk this land heavy enough to leave footprints behind, they needed more than a doorway. They needed gears, blood, and flesh. Strangework.
“Blood?” LeFel asked as he watched Mr. Shunt’s devising.
Mr. Shunt turned his head to stare at LeFel, eyes wide and red. “Yours, perhaps?” he whispered.
LeFel scowled at Mr. Shunt’s naked desire. “You forget yourself, Strange,” he said. “My blood is not in our contract.”
“Yes, lord,” Mr. Shunt said. “Of course, lord.” He bowed, but his eyes did not lower. “What blood pleases you?”
“The dreamer’s will do.” He withdrew the small vial of the boy’s blood he had taken earlier.
Mr. Shunt smiled, his teeth a ragged line of ivory blades. He took the vial, twisted the cork free with his teeth, and dripped the blood over the gears and flesh and heart of the wooden child, liquid splattering like a dark stain.
Then Mr. Shunt pulled a tiny vial of glim from his cuff pocket. The glim glowed like a green star upon his palm. This, he placed delicately into the slit in the child’s chest, resting it carefully among copper wires and springs. He unstitched a thread from his own face, and sewed the glim up tight. He spoke a litany of words, old words, snake soft, clucking and catching in rhythm as each stitch joined flesh and fiber and cog.