The Iron Thorn Read Free Page B

for a few seconds before the reaction gasped away, leaving the scent of burnt paper.
    The nightjar began to scream. It wasn’t anything like the bell-tone voice from before. This was harsh, guttural and hungry.
    Cal got me up, tugged me by the hand. “We should go now.” I clung to his bony fingers and let him pull me away. My feet refused to work, my knees wouldn’t bend, but somehow I ran.
    I looked back once to see the nightjar writhing on the ground, great swaths of skin flaking off into the air as the last bits of the aether danced above it on the breeze.
    I didn’t need to see any more. I caught up with Cal, and we ran for the Academy.

The School of Engines
    W E REACHED THE head of Dunwich Lane and turned onto Storm Avenue before I realized I was still shaking. The gates of the Academy weren’t far, but I stopped and leaned against a lamppost.
    Cal tilted his head. “Aoife, you hurt?” He fumbled in his satchel. “I’ve got my first-aid kit somewhere in here … had a valve-fitting lab earlier today.”
    “I … I …” I wrapped my arms around myself, even though I had on a peacoat and my uniform jumper beneath it. I was freezing. It felt like death had put a hand on my cheek, put the chill inside me down to my bones, even though the Rationalists taught there was no death, only an end. A period on a sentence, and a blank page.
    “I just want to go inside,” I said, unable to take Cal’s anxious expression. Cal was an advanced worrywart. In the two years I’d known him, he never got any less skittish.
    “All right,” Cal said. He offered his elbow and I tookit, just grateful to hide my shaking legs. I’d never seen a viral creature so close. Madwomen like my mother were one thing, merely infected. A thing fully mutated by the necrovirus from a person with a consciousness and a face into an inhuman nightjar was quite another. The smell of it lingered, like I’d fallen asleep in a nightmare garden.
    The gates of the Academy loomed up from the low river fog, and we passed underneath the gear and the rule, the insignia of the Master Builder. The ever-present sign that watched us everywhere, from the stonework of our dormitories and the badges on our uniforms to the arch of the Rationalist chapel at the edge of the grounds. The sign of reason, a ward against the necrovirus and the heretics, that all rational citizens of Lovecraft who followed the Master Builder’s tenets adhered to.
    Cal looked at the dining hall, still lit, and sighed. “I guess it’s useless to try and pretend we’re just late.”
    Mrs. Fortune proved him right by flying out the hall’s double doors, her long wool skirt and cape flapping behind her. “Aoife! Aoife Grayson, where on Galileo’s round earth have you been?”
    Mr. Hesse was hard on her heels. “Daulton, front and center. You know you’re past curfew.” Mr. Hesse was as sharp as Mrs. Fortune was round, and they stood like an odd couple in the lights of the dining hall.
    “Aoife, you’re filthy and you stink like a whore’s perfume,” Mrs. Fortune said. I was still chilled but I felt my cheeks heat in humiliation—and in relief that she hadn’t pried at me further. “Go to your room and wash up,” she continued. “You’ll get no supper as punishment.”
    No supper might as well have been a warm embrace. IfMrs. Fortune found out I’d been in Old Town and had contact with a viral creature, I could be expelled.
    Mr. Hesse cleared his throat loudly, and Fortune favored him with a raised eyebrow. Mrs. Fortune had climbed mountains and trekked Africa as a girl, before she’d landed here. Few crossed her. “What is it, Herbert?” she demanded. I waited. Hesse was notorious for handing out canings and detentions. He was also far more suspicious that we were all misbehaving at all times than Mrs. Fortune. I drew a breath, held it.
    “Well?” Mrs. Fortune asked him.
    “The girl was wandering the city after six bells, doing stone knows what, and you’re