ago.”
He could still feel something under that ash and char, just as strong as it had been a night ago, two nights, whatever. A piece of iron called to him. Old iron, old beyond anything he’d felt before, and that included Roman iron.
And it was hurt.
Iron didn’t usually cry out like that, even to him. He could walk past steel-framed buildings every day and barely feel all those tons. Even touching the metal or tasting it, like the nail, he needed to really pay attention to get something out of it. He had to heat iron, hammer it, forge it, want to make it into something, to get a good conversation going.
“Are you going to shoot me if I come inside?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Probably not.”
He ducked under the yellow tape and followed his nose through a side door splintered ajar by fire axes, into the sodden lye-smell of ash and char. The floor thumped solid under his cane, stone or tile—he’d been in burned-out buildings before and knew they sometimes hid nasty surprises, shells of a floor or wall that looked whole and sound but just wanted a touch to collapse into black empty hollows behind. He didn’t know that Ms. Detective el Hajj would let him walk into a death-trap, but he wouldn’t put it past her. Most likely, though, she needed to spill his blood with her own hands. An “accident” wouldn’t satisfy her honor.
The iron cry for help pulled him toward the rear, where pulpit and choir would sit in a Christian church, the focus of the sanctuary, the worst damage of the fire. He thumped along, step by step, testing each bit of floor before he trusted it. Even natural fires could skip and concentrate within a matter of a few feet.
He found the remains of a cabinet of some kind, quality woodwork, even a smith could tell a skilled craftsman had put a lot of work and pride into that. Further proof of something unnatural about this fire. It shouldn’t have survived at all, that close to the heart of the fire, even damaged as it was.
In the still-damp ash, under charred boards, he found a hexagram—the six-pointed star known as the Star of David or the Seal of Solomon—forged thick and the width and height of his joined palms. He found two of them, as if they had ornamented matching cabinet doors. One felt normal to him, just wrought iron, maybe the same age as the nail. The other . . .
The other one was old. One point of it had cracked. Had been cracked, judging by the feel, by some outside force, and it wasn’t heat, wasn’t the building burning down around it. This was wrought iron, not cast iron, tough instead of brittle. It could take heat and the quenching cold of the fire hoses.
It knew him, knew his skills. It wanted him to fix it. It needed him to fix it, it was important, something dark and dire would happen that he couldn’t see, couldn’t understand, if he didn’t take this seal back to his forge and make it whole—
“Drop it!”
She had her cannon out and pointed at his heart. Gripped in one hand, rested on the cast around her other, steady, the huge bore swallowing light. She stood between him and the door.
She didn’t understand. “I have to repair this. It holds the worlds apart. It seals the way.”
The words came from the iron, not from him. He couldn’t say how or why. He didn’t know what they meant.
“Drop it. Nobody takes evidence from my crime scene.”
V
Possessive young lady, calling it her crime scene.
He studied her face, harsh and concentrated over the gun-sights. No, not young. Crow’s feet at her eyes as she scowled. More, indefinable, a sense of weight, of having seen more than a few years. Forties, he guessed, maybe as old as fifty, from all the humans he’d seen grow and fade. So fast.
He didn’t drop the star. That would have been rude, after it had spoken to him.
He bent over and laid it back in the mold it had formed for itself by settling into the bed of damp gray ash, careful to fit the edges and points exactly as he’d found
He could still feel something under that ash and char, just as strong as it had been a night ago, two nights, whatever. A piece of iron called to him. Old iron, old beyond anything he’d felt before, and that included Roman iron.
And it was hurt.
Iron didn’t usually cry out like that, even to him. He could walk past steel-framed buildings every day and barely feel all those tons. Even touching the metal or tasting it, like the nail, he needed to really pay attention to get something out of it. He had to heat iron, hammer it, forge it, want to make it into something, to get a good conversation going.
“Are you going to shoot me if I come inside?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Probably not.”
He ducked under the yellow tape and followed his nose through a side door splintered ajar by fire axes, into the sodden lye-smell of ash and char. The floor thumped solid under his cane, stone or tile—he’d been in burned-out buildings before and knew they sometimes hid nasty surprises, shells of a floor or wall that looked whole and sound but just wanted a touch to collapse into black empty hollows behind. He didn’t know that Ms. Detective el Hajj would let him walk into a death-trap, but he wouldn’t put it past her. Most likely, though, she needed to spill his blood with her own hands. An “accident” wouldn’t satisfy her honor.
The iron cry for help pulled him toward the rear, where pulpit and choir would sit in a Christian church, the focus of the sanctuary, the worst damage of the fire. He thumped along, step by step, testing each bit of floor before he trusted it. Even natural fires could skip and concentrate within a matter of a few feet.
He found the remains of a cabinet of some kind, quality woodwork, even a smith could tell a skilled craftsman had put a lot of work and pride into that. Further proof of something unnatural about this fire. It shouldn’t have survived at all, that close to the heart of the fire, even damaged as it was.
In the still-damp ash, under charred boards, he found a hexagram—the six-pointed star known as the Star of David or the Seal of Solomon—forged thick and the width and height of his joined palms. He found two of them, as if they had ornamented matching cabinet doors. One felt normal to him, just wrought iron, maybe the same age as the nail. The other . . .
The other one was old. One point of it had cracked. Had been cracked, judging by the feel, by some outside force, and it wasn’t heat, wasn’t the building burning down around it. This was wrought iron, not cast iron, tough instead of brittle. It could take heat and the quenching cold of the fire hoses.
It knew him, knew his skills. It wanted him to fix it. It needed him to fix it, it was important, something dark and dire would happen that he couldn’t see, couldn’t understand, if he didn’t take this seal back to his forge and make it whole—
“Drop it!”
She had her cannon out and pointed at his heart. Gripped in one hand, rested on the cast around her other, steady, the huge bore swallowing light. She stood between him and the door.
She didn’t understand. “I have to repair this. It holds the worlds apart. It seals the way.”
The words came from the iron, not from him. He couldn’t say how or why. He didn’t know what they meant.
“Drop it. Nobody takes evidence from my crime scene.”
V
Possessive young lady, calling it her crime scene.
He studied her face, harsh and concentrated over the gun-sights. No, not young. Crow’s feet at her eyes as she scowled. More, indefinable, a sense of weight, of having seen more than a few years. Forties, he guessed, maybe as old as fifty, from all the humans he’d seen grow and fade. So fast.
He didn’t drop the star. That would have been rude, after it had spoken to him.
He bent over and laid it back in the mold it had formed for itself by settling into the bed of damp gray ash, careful to fit the edges and points exactly as he’d found
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