“What, and risk an infection?” Cal fumbled in his knapsack. “Hold it, Aoife. I’ve got a plaster.”
“Cal,” I sighed. “You remind me of Mrs. Fortune sometimes.”
Dean’s mouth curled up at that. He stepped past the tollbooth, onto the bridge. The wire grating beneath our feet bounced and creaked as we advanced, and I unwillingly flashed on the images of the twisted span after the collapse, suspension cables flapping in the wind like tangled hair.
As we walked, the holes grew wider, until finally we were just walking on the mesh used by Babbage to under-sling the roadbed, a thin half-inch of wire keeping us out of the river. I looked back at Cal and saw that his face had gone sheet white with an undertone that matched his thatch of hair.
“Come on,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. We don’t weigh that much.”
He looked at me, looked at Dean, and then stepped forward, his jaw twitching. He ignored my hand and shoved his own into the pockets of his car coat. “Let’s just get across, okay?”
I pulled my hand back to my side, a small pain with it. Cal had never refused my help before. At least my bleeding had stopped and I didn’t appear to be branded a heretic for it. Not like the five-pointed stars and crosses and sutra wheels the Proctors told us to watch out for, because a mark like that was the first sign. Heretics believed in gods, in magic, and carried their marks. A rational person knew there was no need of such decoration.
Dean walked with me, Cal a little behind, and together we crept across the span, over dark water and cracking ice. When we’d passed under the halfway mark, the Gothic arch that Babbage had proudly declared the gateway to New England, Dean spoke. “So, Miss Aoife. Arkham. What’s a city girl want with that worm-eaten little town?”
I didn’t answer for a moment that stretched long and thin, listening to our feet clang against the span.
“Something that’s none of my business?” Dean guessed. “That’s usually the way. But the more I know, the quicker I can get you to your Point B.”
“I have a brother,” I said. “His name is Conrad.” I glanced back at Cal, trudging a few paces behind with his eyes glued to his feet. “He needs my help,” I told Dean. “In Arkham.”
“Answer me straight, Miss Aoife, and I won’t bother you again,” Dean said. “Are you in trouble?” He held up a hand, long knobby fingers spreading like spider legs. “I’m not talking sneaking out of school, lifting a pack of cigarettes, and going out to the jitney races. I’m talking bad trouble. Bloody trouble.”
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“You want to tell me the truth on this one, Miss Aoife. If it’s trouble that can get me beat up or buried six feet under, and you don’t fess up, your guide might be disinclined to pull your fat out of said trouble. Catch my meaning?” Dean’s face looked like it had when he’d confronted Dorlock—perfectly pleasant, except in his eyes. They were hard like stone and my chest went tight in response. I didn’t want Dean looking at me like that.
“There’s no trouble,” I said, and even managed a smile. Up until Conrad’s birthday, I’d never made a habit of lying. My mother babbled endlessly about things that weren’t there and couldn’t exist. I preferred to keep on solid ground. After Conrad came at me with the knife, I lied out of necessity, to keep the eyes of the school and the Proctors turned away from me.
Those had all been small lies, more voids of truth than falsehoods. I looked Dean in the eye. “I’m not in trouble,” I repeated. “Not yet, anyway.”
He loosed a small chuckle. “All right, miss. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Now I should get to ask you something,” I said. Dean shoved his hands into his pockets.
“I don’t know about that, sweetness. I think you’re much smarter than I am.”
Behind us, Cal gave a snort. “Isn’t that the truth.”
“Why do you do this sort of thing?” I said, before Cal could get a nose full of Dean’s fist. “Smuggling people in and out of Lovecraft, I mean. It seems, well … dangerous, for starters.”
“About the only thing I’m suited for,” Dean said. “My old man wore out his bones as a gear monkey in the Rustworks, and my brother got himself killed in Korea a few years back. Got no money, got no family. Nothing but this talent of mine to get folks where they need to be. It’s a rambling life, but it’s mine.”
“What about your mother?” Cal said. “Surely even you have one.”
Dean fixed Cal with his hard stare. “Don’t bring up my mother unless you want me to talk some crap about yours.”
There was a sentiment I could take to heart, and shame over interrogating Dean heated my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to pry,” I told him. “I just wanted to know a little bit about you, seeing as you’re taking us so far and—”
His head whipped skyward. “Button your lip, Miss Aoife.”
I followed the finger he touched to his mouth, up and up through the black bones of the Night Bridge. We were in the darkness between the embankments of Lovecraft and the glow and burn of the foundry beyond. Wind whipped my hair into a fury of knots; over the wind, the whirr of wings carried on frozen air.
“Raven patrol,” Dean said. “Flying out from Ravenhouse.”
“They’ll see us,” Cal hissed, instantly panicked. “The Proctors will take us into custody and lock us up in the Catacombs and—”
“Is there any shelter on the bridge?” I demanded in the loudest whisper I could manage. The hum grew louder, filled the air and drowned out the ice.
“Not unless you’re gonna swing down among the pilings like a river rat,” Dean murmured.
“What are we supposed to do?” Cal shoved his hands through his hair. “We’re sitting ducks. We’re totally exposed!”
I started when Dean grabbed my hand. “We hoof it.” He tugged and I stumbled. “Run!” he elaborated when Cal stood, wavering between us and the way back to Lovecraft.
“Move it, Cal!” I shouted, silence forgotten. Avoiding capture mattered more than detection. Besides, nothing escaped the notice of the ravens.
Dean’s loping stride easily outmatched mine, and sharp pain shot up my arm as he dragged me along, our feet pounding on the span.
They could not drown out the sound of wings.
I knew that I shouldn’t look back, that I should tuck in and run like my life depended on it, because it did, but I couldn’t help turning my head to see what was coming.
The raven’s feathers gleamed liquid black in the cold starlight. Their eyes blazed with yellow aether, burning up the night sky like a flock of sparks. Their beaks were glass and their talons were sets of tiny gears and rods that clacked and grasped as they swooped in a low V over the river. Their feathers were hammered aluminum, painted black, and their innards were marvels of clockwork that printed everything their burning eyes saw onto tiny lanternreels.
A raven, unlike an automaton, could see, and if it marked a heretic, it could fly back to Ravenhouse and croak to its masters from its metal throat. The whirr of their gears and the hiss of their aether flames drowned out everything, even my own heartbeat.
“Not but a hundred steps,” Dean panted. “Then we’ll be in the foundry. Those spy birds can’t spy through steel.”
I dug down, my feet clanging against the grate, my school bag slapping my hip, breath scissoring its way in and out of my lungs. Cal trailed us, his limbs flying in every direction as panic caught his feet and took him to ground.
“Cal!” I whirled, and my wrist wrenched in Dean’s grasp. He stumbled in turn, cursing.
“What in the blue hell are you doing, kid?”
I covered the two steps back to Cal, as the faint ghostly lamps atop the span of the Night Bridge winked out, one by one, covered by dusky wings.
“My ankle,” Cal moaned. “I think I broke it.”
“Aoife, we need to go,” Dean snapped, his panic creeping up to his eyes. “If I get caught and dragged to Ravenhouse, it’s curtains for the whole trio, you get me?”