Free Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden by Caitlin Kittredge Page A

it, move her to a holding cell.”
    “Yes, Commander,” said the Erlkin, and moved for me. Before she could close her hands around my arm, an alarm began to whoop from the flight console.
    “Commander!” the pilot shouted. “Contact on the aether waves! Bearing one-zero-two!”
    “Show me,” Shard said tensely. The Erlkin she’d snapped at darted back to her station.
    “This ping,” said the pilot, pointing to a radio screen. A large, wavering blob appeared and disappeared under the stroke of the aether detector. “Huge.” She flipped another switch. “And closing in fast.”
    I felt the fear return, smooth and cold as an iron ball in my stomach. Whatever was out there in the fog, I knew from the prickles all over my exposed skin that it wasn’t going to be a friendly encounter.
    “We’re being hailed!” another Erlkin at the side console shouted.
    “Put it through the aethervox,” said Shard. A moment of static blanketed all other sound, and then a voice I thought I’d only hear again in my nightmares barked out of the cloth-covered speakers mounted at the apex of the glass bubble.
    “This is Grey Draven, Director of the Bureau of Proctors. You are an enemy vessel, carrying fugitives. You are ordered to heave to and surrender any wanted criminals on board.”
    I froze. I couldn’t have moved for anything in the world, no longer able to pretend that Draven wouldn’t find me. Before I’d spoken to the Wytch King, I’d fervently hoped that Draven had died, like so many in Lovecraft, when the Engine was destroyed. Failing that, I’d simply hoped to runforever and never have to look at his face again. But he was out there, in the fog, inexorable, and I was never going to escape.
    Draven, while he was alive, was never going to leave me be.
    Shard cut her gaze to me, then shoved the radio operator out of the way and depressed the return switch, a finely wrought ebony knob. “You’re out of your depth, Mr. Draven. The Proctors don’t rule here, and no humans are wanted by the likes of you once you cross the borders of the Mists. Go home.”
    “I know you have her.” Draven’s voice was precise and flat as a scalpel blade. “Don’t play games with me, you goblin bitch.”
    I watched Shard’s back stiffen, but she was all calm as she responded. “Go home, Mr. Draven. I don’t know how you got to the Mists, but leave. There’s nothing for you here.”
    Draven laughed. “I came through the Gates, of course. The gates Miss Grayson so kindly ripped asunder when she destroyed the Engine in my city.” A pause, while Shard turned to stare at me. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t tell you that,” Draven purred. “That she’s the reason for all of this misery. That with her unnatural talents, she sent a pulse of power from the Engine to the Gates so great that it shattered the very fabric between our worlds and all the others, that she destroyed countless innocent lives, that she’s a traitor to her kind, prey to the honeyed words of the Fae.”
    Shard took a step toward me, another. Her eyes weren’t flat now. She’d been proven right. I was nothing but a criminal, something foul that had contaminated her little flyingworld. I was in deep trouble, and began to consider where I could run to. Nowhere good.
    “Commander,” said the pilot. “We have visual contact.”
    Shard let her gaze wander from me, and we both stared as a dirigible hove out of the mists. It was the largest I had ever seen, a zeppelin with its rigid balloon painted matte black and embossed with the gold seal of the Proctors, raven’s wings stamped just underneath the gear and sickle, the symbol of the Master Builder, the false god Draven and his kind had created to replace magic and religion.
    The dirigible was running red lanterns, a color aether took on when it was treated with other chemicals to burn brighter or hotter or longer. The hull was silver and looked like the body of a beast that lived deep under the ocean and only