Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (7 page)

I
N MY DREAM
, I was still alone. But this time, the skyline of Lovecraft had faded into the distance, and I saw it like a mirage on the horizon, shimmering. I stood in a room, the floor inlaid with silver, a star map of constellations I had never before laid eyes on. Alien stars, from an alien sky.

Before me stood a figure twice as tall as I, only a shadow, smooth and without feature. I stayed still, unsure of my footing in the dream. I always felt only vaguely attached to my dream-body, as if my mind were floating free in the void of outer space and my body were waiting back on Earth.

Behind the figure, a great gear rose, half of it above the platform on which we stood. Above us, a hundred skies turned by, sunrises and sunsets, skylines and the blackness of space. And in those skies things twisted and writhed, great tentacles of darkness coming down to merge and mingle with the shadow figure before me.

I found I could speak, which wasn’t always the case in
these madness dreams—for that was surely what this was, brought on by the iron of Windhaven. “Where am I?”

The figure stared back impassively. I knew he was staring, despite his lack of eyes or any features at all. I could feel his gaze, hot and penetrating. Beyond him, beyond the gear and the platform, the skies spun faster. They were more than skies now—it was as if we were inside a giant dome and lanternreels in the thousands and millions were projected onto the glass sides.

“Where am I?” I asked again.

The figure reached out a hand. It was fathomless, black smoke in the shape of a human thing, and I felt cold emanate from the shadow as it drew closer to me. The tentacles writhed faster, lashing, and from all around us came a great moaning, which vibrated the dome to its core and came up through my feet into my bones.

Who are you?
the figure hissed.
Why did you come here?

“You tell me,” I whispered, my lips barely able to move from the frozen air of the dream and my own fear. This felt too strong, too real, to be purely a result of the iron around me. The madness was getting worse. I was starting to believe my own dreams. I dug my fingers into my palms, but in this dream place, I felt no pain. That didn’t soothe my worries any.

“I don’t know where
here
is,” I said. The great gear behind the figure began to turn, and as it did the tentacles retreated, the black figures floating in the skies shrinking away. In my ears, and through the dome, a thousand screams echoed.

You shouldn’t be here
, the figure told me.
This isn’t your dream. This isn’t a dream at all
.

Then, as if I’d fallen from a great height, I snapped awake.

*  *  *

My head was throbbing, and it was dark in the room when I opened my eyes. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, and then it all came back to me. I slumped against the pillow. My clothes, none too clean to start, were soaked with sweat. That had been a bad one. Usually my encroaching madness didn’t talk back to me in my dreams.

I fumbled around until I found the aether lamp above the bed and turned the valve, the blue glow filling the tiny room. I took the uniform the Erlkin had left for me and stripped out of my filthy skirt and sweater, all the way down to nothing. I took my underthings into the water closet and ran hot water into the basin, washing them and leaving them on the towel bar to dry. While they dripped I stepped into the copper stall and let the trickle from the pipe above wash the grime off my skin.

The Erlkin didn’t skimp on amenities for their guests, and I wrapped a fluffy Turkish towel around myself and a smaller one around my damp hair in an effort to keep it from blowing up like a thundercloud.

I looked out the porthole again, but there was nothing now except night, a row of running lights on the hull streaming away from me like fireflies in the blackness.

When the hatch rattled again, I shrieked and spun, pulling the towel up to my chin. “Who’s there!” I demanded, casting around for something to throw or prod the intruder with.

“Whoa, princess,” Dean said, ducking through the hatch and shutting it. “Shhh. Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Dean,” I breathed in relief. Dean took in the scene, and me. Wrapped in a towel.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“Do you knock?” I demanded, tightening my grip on the towel.

A slow smile grew on Dean’s face. “Don’t make a habit of it.” He cleared his throat, making a visible effort to keep his eyes fastened on my face. “This isn’t exactly going to convince me to start, you know.”

“You’re terrible,” I said, trying to collect the clothes the Erlkin had left for me and slide into the water closet, while at the same time hiding the warmth his stare brought to my cheeks.

Dean smiled wider. “Isn’t that why you like me so much?”

“Right now I’m not sure I like you at all,” I teased, shutting the door but for a crack, so Dean and I could still talk.

“You sure riled my mother,” he said, his shadow falling across the opening. I unfolded the clothes—brown pants with a wealth of pockets and a plain white high-collared shirt and dust-colored uniform jacket. They were patched and smelled of a cedar chest, but they fit when I slipped them on, and they were clean. By my standards lately, bliss.

“I don’t think she liked me very much,” I said, opening the door again. “Or at all.” I met his eyes. “Did you say something to her about Conrad and me? Is she going to let us go? I’m not angry, if you did. I understand she’s your mother, but I need to know.” Needed to know that Dean was as loyal as I’d always thought, and that he wasn’t the reason I was locked up in Windhaven with Shard looking for an excuse to jettison me out a hatch.

Dean was a good liar. He had eyes the color of silvery thunderheads, changeable and unpredictable and impossible to truly fathom. But he’d never lied to me. Not when it mattered.

“Course I didn’t, princess,” he said easily. “My mother is just sneaky that way—I could never put anything past her either. She’s also calculating, and she’s not dumb. She’ll realize you’re not a Fae spy and your brother isn’t a criminal. She’s our best tracker and the captain of Windhaven—she answers to the Wytch King only. She and a few other generals are just under him in terms of who bosses around the rest of the Erlkin. Everything will be all right once she gets her nose back into joint.”

He couldn’t even look at me when he said it. Well, I supposed there was a first time for everything—first kiss, first touch against bare skin, first lie. At least I could hope the part about him not ratting us out was true. I thought it probably was—Dean hadn’t seemed overly fond of his mother when we’d talked about her, and I certainly didn’t tell my mother everything. Or anything, because it didn’t matter to Nerissa in her madness anyway.

When I didn’t reply at once, Dean put his index finger under my chin and raised my face to his. “Hey. You believe me, don’t you, princess?”

“Sure,” I lied right back, amazed at how easily it came to my tongue. “It’ll all get straightened out, I guess.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Dean said with a forced joviality that wasn’t like him. Dean didn’t smile when there was no reason to smile, and he didn’t lie to me—except now. Before I could decide whether to confront him or hold off until I’d discovered a sure way out of this flying iron
hellhole, Dean drew me into his arms and pressed his lips to mine. “It’ll be okay, Aoife,” he murmured against my mouth. “I promise, all right? No matter what happens, I’ve got you.”

I kissed him back, because even when I was frustrated and wary, Dean had an effect on me I couldn’t fully explain. He made me light-headed and dizzy, wanting nothing but to taste him and keep tasting him until I’d had my fill. He made me need him, with his taste and his scent and his beautiful eyes, and I realized I had to just not think about what had happened for a few minutes and be with him.

Outside in the corridor, footsteps and voices stopped us from doing more than lying back on the narrow bunk. “I’m going to bug out. I really don’t want to play the scene with my mother if she catches me in here.” He looked for a moment as if he’d kiss me again, but then he rolled off the bed and stood, the usual edgy tension stringing back into his body. “I’ll see you later, Aoife.”

“Dean,” I said, as he put his hand on the hatch. “Tell me the truth. What’s going to happen to Conrad and me?”

Dean raised his shoulders, and I could tell that he was done stretching the truth. “It’s not good, Aoife. The Fae and the Fae-blooded don’t have any friends here.” His eyes darkened. “But I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll take Windhaven to the ground first.”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” I said as he spun the hatch open. We both jumped when we were confronted with Skip’s ever-sneering face.

“Well, look at you, Nails,” he said. “Still sniffing around the henhouse, are ya, even though the bird’s been naughty?”

“Go jump off a high spire,” Dean snapped. “I can talk to Aoife any time I want.”

I blushed, sure Skip could tell exactly what had been happening before Dean opened the door. His smirk didn’t argue with my assumption.

“You sure can,” he said, “but you’ll be doing it during an audience with the king.” Skip reached past Dean and grabbed me. I yanked against him reflexively and I fought the urge to punch him.

Skip overpowered me easily, giving a laugh when Dean snarled at him. “Come on,
princess
,” he said in a pitch-perfect mockery of Dean’s voice. “The Wytch King wants to speak with you.”

He dragged me off by the arm before either Dean or I could object, and all I could see when I looked back were Dean’s worried eyes, cloudy and uneasy as wind-driven storm clouds.

After a nerve-racking minute, Dean caught up with us. My feet barely touched the metal plates that comprised the floors of Windhaven. Skip’s stride was long and quick, and my arm burned where he grabbed it. “You’re a lucky little human,” he told me. “One of the few to ever lay eyes on the Wytch King.”

I managed to keep my voice steady, though I was terrified beyond belief. Even Dean had seemed afraid of the Wytch King when he’d finally told me the truth about being half Erlkin and about his people, and Dean wasn’t afraid of anything, that I could see. “What does he want with me?”

“I imagine you interest him,” Skip said. “Or he’s hungry. Erlkin like live meat.” He grinned at me, every tooth like a carving knife.

“Stop it,” Dean growled from behind us. “Right this redhot second.” He pried Skip’s viselike grip off my arm and slid his hand into mine. “The Wytch King doesn’t eat people,” he said to me.

I squeezed his hand. Whatever would happen between us, at least he was here now. I was relieved—without Dean, with my exhaustion and the weight of memory constantly on me, I was about an inch from being a blubbering mess.

“You used to be a lot more fun, Nails,” Skip muttered as we mounted a broad set of steps. The double doors at the top were flanked by two Erlkin in uniform sporting shock rifles.

“And you used to be a lot less of a jerk,” Dean muttered back.

The doors swung back of their own accord, and I was distracted from the imminent fistfight between Dean and Skip by what lay beyond. I’d been expecting a throne room, the sort of thing Cal’s fantasy-story heroes like Conan and Lancelot would enter, hair flowing and swords gleaming. Some grand hall covered in silk from floor to ceiling and emblazoned with noble crests.

Instead, the room was bare, containing only a broad metal table and a long swath of black velvet curtains covering the back part of the vast, echoing chamber.

The Wytch King himself sat in a swivel chair with his back to us, pale hands with pale fingers tapping against the dark, rough leather of his chair. He turned to face us, and I felt my stomach drop as if Windhaven had plummeted from the sky.

The Wytch King’s gaze was silver and pupil-less, glossed over with a mercury sheen that seemed to slip and slither
across the surface of his eyes. His lips were black, and his teeth were filed to sharp points. He wore a high-necked black uniform that looked eerily like those the officers among the Proctors wore. He sniffed the air with flattened nostrils, and those silver eyes locked on me. They were the same color as Dean’s, but where Dean’s burned with life and warmth, the Wytch King might as well have been made from clockwork.

I felt a million things in that moment—fear, disgust, the urge to scream. Those were the initial tidal wave of panic, and then my engineer’s brain kicked in. The logical, impassive side that didn’t get scared or confused. I tried to assess how much danger I was actually in, and what I could do to get myself out of it.
Not much
, came the rapid answer, which started the panic all over again.

“Sir,” Skip said. “The human girl.”

The Wytch King stood, extended his hand to me, and smiled. “Hello, Aoife. I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

I looked at the hand, the nails blackened at the edges with some foreign substance I couldn’t identify. I recoiled at the thought of touching him, but I knew I couldn’t risk angering the Erlkin further. I put my hand in his and gripped it firmly.

His fist closed around mine like a bear trap, and while I struggled, all my fantasies of being resolute and a good ambassador for the Iron Land slipped from my mind and were replaced with the same low-frequency hum of panic that had been present since I’d left my father’s home.

“You aren’t soft,” he said. “Your hands are calloused. Not what I’d expect from a Fae spy.”

“I’m not a spy!” I said hotly, nearly at a shout. Skip’s hand dropped to his weapon and I turned my eyes on him, raising my voice to a real yell. “You want to shoot me, you pasty-faced freak?” I yelled. “Go ahead. Go ahead and do it so you can tell your friends how you stopped the dangerous Fae spy who hasn’t done a thing except try to stay alive.”

I ripped my hand from the Wytch King’s grasp, and his nails left tracks of blood across my palm. My chest was heaving, my vision was tunneled in black, and I could hear my heartbeat roaring in my ears. I didn’t even realize I’d balled up my fists and started for Skip until Dean caught me and spun me into his arms.