Read Online The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge - Free Book Online Page A

reputations, accompanied by bandits and vagrants of the type popular with sensationalwriters. But in actuality, an old pipe fire from a house long ago made wreckage was open to the air, and vendors had set up grills and kettles over the flame. The smell was oaky, earthy, a good cut of meat rubbed with spices. My stomach burbled at the scent, and I was reminded that I’d had to miss supper to come here.
    “Books!” A boy in a checkered cap and an outdated newsie coat, half again as old as I was, shoved himself into my path, chest puffed like a bullfrog’s. “Spell books! Charmed paper! Never needs erasin’! Tinctures! Good for what ails you!” He squinted into my face. “Not much, by the look of it. Face like an angel on you, girlie.”
    “I don’t have any money,” I returned. “You can save your pitch for some superstitious twit who does.”
    “Ain’t no superstitions for sale here, miss,” he chimed back. “All of my charms ’er one hundred percent gen-nu-wine. I’ve got magics in my pen and a witch in my kitchen.”
    “Magic’s not real,” I said. “If you’re so smart, you should know that.” I was trying to seem like someone who wasn’t easily conned, but my voice sounded small against the chatter of the market.
    “Sure, an’ if you really believe that you’d be home in bed.” The kid wrinkled up his nose at me. “I could tell you where to buy a hairbrush instead, maybe. You need it.”
    “Say,” Cal intervened, before I could make a move to strangle the little brat. “Where’s a guy find a guide around here?”
    The boy spat in the dirt near Cal’s feet. “Piss off, townie. I look like I give out help to Proctor-lovers?”
    Cal swiped at him. “You don’t know anything, you little rat.…”
    I fished in my pocket for a half-dollar and held it up. The boy’s eyes gleamed to match. “What’s your name?” I said.
    “Tavis. Thought you said you didn’t have any scratch?”
    I made a second half-dollar join the first. Conrad had liked sleight of hand, though the Proctors frowned on something so close to what heretics considered magic. Tavis was practically panting. “We need a guide out of Lovecraft,” I said. “All the way to Arkham. I have money for that, and you seem like you know how things work around here. Or do you have a big mouth and nothing else?”
    The first thing you learned in the School of Engines—if you want to understand how something works, ask the one who does the dirty job. Gear scrubbers and steam ventors and their foreman were in the pits. They knew their Engine intimately.
    “I do, at that,” Tavis said. He pointed past the pipe fire to a blue tent. “You want old Dorlock back there. He’s a guide, best damn guide in the Rustworks. He could guide steam back into water. He could—”
    I held up a hand, and dropped the two coins into his. I wondered what a pair of silvers bought in the Nightfall Market, besides bad manners from a shyster kid. “That’s fine. And for the record, I like my hair this way.” Truly, I hated it and toyed with chopping it into a modern style daily, but like I said, sometimes I don’t know when to leave it. Besides, I had a feeling Dorlock wasn’t as easily put in his place, and it might well be my last chance to feel in control of things tonight—or ever. Once I found Conrad, I’d have to face running off. I might be expelled. I didn’t think beyond that, because beyond expulsion was a cell in theCatacombs, shock therapy to burn the madness out of me and finally, a place next to my mother. If I lived.
    “Sure there isn’t,” Tavis snorted, brandishing his worn wares again. “And hey, townie,” he said to Cal as we started into the crowd. “You watch your girl. She’s got an edge of the pale on her, that one, and it’s like honey in a beehive down here.”
    I shuddered, feeling like something rotten had touched me. Cal rolled his eyes. “Stupid little runt.”
    “You mean, you don’t feel the urge to be my