Chapter Thirty-Two. Tinman
THIRTY-TWO
Tinman
With a kitchen blade still sunk into the flesh of my shoulder, I have to brace my boot on the inn’s doorjamb to get enough leverage to pull my axe from the wood.
Except the first wrench on the handle sends a hot wave of pain through my body so acute, I nearly double over and vomit.
A trail of blood runs down my chest, down my stomach, soaking into the thick knit of my shirt.
The wound is going to need stitches and I’m going to need a drink.
The axe can wait.
Behind me, the stairs of the inn creak loudly beneath the weight of several winged monkeys.
Faos appears in the flickering light of the strung lanterns. There’s a scrap of fabric caught in his hand.
“Her scent on it?” I ask him, nodding at the fabric.
His sharp teeth clack together as he nods. “Faint, but I can track it.”
“Good. She can’t have gotten far.”
Faos lets out a shrill cry and his soldiers fall in line behind him. He tears the fabric into several strips and hands them off.
The monkeys bring the remnants to their large, flat noses and inhale.
“Remember, Faos, we need her alive.”
He growls, the animalistic sound rumbling in his chest. “I know the mission, Tinman. I don’t need you to remind me.”
At the counter, I spot an abandoned bottle of West whisky. With a grunt, I reach over, nabbing the liquor, and yanking the cork out with my teeth.
“Question, Faos. Who do you think is in charge here?” I say around the cork. “You or me?”
“Neither,” he answers. “We are both at the West’s mercy, aren’t we, Tinman?”
I spit the cork and it bounces across the floor, disappearing beneath a table.
I hate that he’s right.
If he and I weren’t two sides of the same coin, I think we’d get along like brothers. Hell, I like him more than I like my middle brother, so I’d happily replace him with a winged monkey.
“Just … find her. But wait for me when you do.”
He growls again and his soldiers square up around him, sensing the ripple of energy on the air.
Faos isn’t magic, exactly, but he does wield a fair amount of control over his soldiers based on primal instinct alone.
If he’s ordering a fight, they’re fighting.
Doesn’t matter who the target is. Doesn’t matter if it’s the heartless Tinman or the Great and Powerful Wizard or the entire animal kingdom.
The only one they aren’t fighting is the Witch of the West. Because of the charmed mask. But I have my theories about that.
“On me,” Faos orders.
They follow behind him, marching out of the inn in a line.
In the heavy darkness of night and cursed skies, the monkeys are only shadowed silhouettes against the golden burn of the streetlights. I watch Faos point, giving orders. They’re fanning out, covering as much ground as possible.
When he’s done, his soldiers take to the air, their massive wings kicking up a swirl of dust before disappearing into the sky.
“Girl,” I call.
The East Ender hiccups in surprise. She’s hiding in the shadows between the dining room and the kitchen.
“I need a needle, thread, a clean cloth, and more alcohol.”
She doesn’t move.
“Now,” I bark, and she lurches into action.
I take down another swill of whisky, trying to ignore the burning call of Oil.
Everything is starting to hurt. Every joint is achy, every muscle tight and raw.
Not for the first time, I’m asking myself how much Oil is too much Oil. If this pull will be the last one if I give in.
There’s always more Oil to buy, to shoot straight into my veins.
But I am not immortal.
Someday I will reach a point where the temptation will lead me astray, when the addiction will finally get the best of me.
Today is not that day though. Not if I want to retrieve the girl and save Gabriel.
Once he’s free, I don’t give a fuck what happens.
None of this fucking matters.
I hate all these people.
I right one of the chairs that got knocked over in the fighting and take a seat by the fire. The log on the stone hearth is crackling with flames.
In the kitchen, pots and pans are knocking around as the girl searches for the supplies.
I lean back in the chair, spread my legs out, close my eyes, and breathe.
And behind my eyes, I see her.
Dorothy.
When I said her name, the look on her face …
Shock. Terror.
What kind of name is Dorothy anyway?
Who the fuck is this girl?
She appears in the Ends in a house that drops from the sky. She somehow manages to kill a Cardinal Witch with a kitchen blade and her bare hands, something no one, not even the wizard, has been able to achieve.
She makes her way into the Hollow, then defies logic and escapes my blade.
No one escapes me. I never fucking miss.
She had help.
Alarm bells are ringing in my head.
It was a man who stabbed me. And I suspect it was the innkeeper who ferried them away into the night.
So now I wait.
And get drunk while I wait.
I upend the bottle and send the last of the West whisky sliding down my throat.
The girl returns with the required supplies.
She sets a battered pan on the table and pulls out several rags.
The first one, emerald like the city, opens to reveal a set of needles of differing lengths and thicknesses.
The second rag is damp on one end, dry on the other.
There’s a spool of black thread and one amber vial.
“What’s that?” I ask, nodding at the vial.
“Antiseptic,” she answers like it should be obvious. “Alcohol.”
“I wanted alcohol I can drink.”
She stares at me, and the dancing flame light paints her round face in strokes of red and orange.
Every time I look at this Ender, she reminds me of someone. But I can never put my finger on who.
I hold up the empty bottle of whisky and give it a shake.
She frowns, but makes her way around the counter, fetching me a second bottle, this one of Southern mead. She hands it to me.
“I hate honey wine.”
“That’s all that was left.”
With a grumble, I tear off the wrapping, then stuff the bottle between my legs so I can wrestle the cork from the tapered neck with my good arm. It comes out with a loud thwap.
The air is immediately perfumed with honey and my stomach rolls.
I don’t hate the taste of mead. I hate what it reminds me of.
Bringing the bottle up, I take a tentative sip.
The honeyed spice blooms on my tongue and I am a boy again, deep in the South, mourning a dead father and running from a mother with sharp claws.
I set the bottle down.
I am empty inside and yet anger still stains the void like a film.
“Can I see?” The girl nods at my shoulder.
I wave her on. Pain will clear my head.
With a pair of shears, the girl cuts away the tattered fabric of my shirt, exposing the knife and the wound it’s jammed into.
“That’s deep.” She makes a face.
“Yes.”
“I can’t … I don’t know … I’m not a doctor.”
“And?”
“I can’t.”
My impatience festers. “Every second you stall is another second lost. Do you want to tell the Witch of the West we lost Dorothy Gale because you couldn’t stomach a little blood?”
The girl pales. “No.” Then, “It’s not a little. It’s a lot.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
Instinct has me pulling the bottle back over. I take another swig from it. My stomach churns.
“I only ever cleaned surface wounds for Delphine. Nothing like this.”
My head is starting to swim from the alcohol. My nerves are buzzy with warmth. The pain is only a phantom ache now. “Pull the knife out. Straight up. Don’t wiggle it. Don’t rock it. Straight. Up.”
She nods solemnly at me.
“Once it’s out, hold the cloth to it to slow the bleeding. Then we’ll reassess.”
“Okay.”
I sink lower in the chair, putting me closer to her height. Compared to me, she’s a tiny thing, barely half as tall. She’s trembling, eyes wide and glassy.
“Don’t fuck this up,” I tell her.
My words break through some of her apprehension.
She huffs out a breath at me. “Are you always this—” She cuts herself off, eyes wide. “I’m sorry.”
“No. Please. Do go on.”
The fire snaps behind me.
“You’re just … unpleasant. Is it because you were stabbed or because you’re always like this?”
For the first time in a very long time, I have the urge to laugh. The sound trembles on the back of my tongue. I bite it back. “I am always this pleasant. Stabbed or not.”
She frowns at me.
I plant my free hand on the table, fingers curled over the edge, bracing myself.
Chin wobbling, she wraps both hands around the wooden hilt of the blade.
“Remember,” I say, “straight up by—”
She yanks the knife out.
“—fuck.”
I groan and rock forward as blood gushes from the wound and pain sizzles through my body. I should have taken a hit of Oil. Why the fuck didn’t I dose? Because it thins the blood. That would have been stupid. This is the better plan. But fuck all, it fucking hurts.
“Are you okay?” The girl’s voice is shrill and far away. My head is ringing. The knife clatters to the wooden table.
I’m seeing double so I slam my eyes shut and suck in a breath.
I’m going to kill the man who stabbed me. I’m going to gut him open and tie a bow around his neck with his intestines.
Who the fuck was he anyway? I’m never taken by surprise. Not like this.
A thread of unease winds its way up my spine.
But no. No. I’m not jumping to conclusions. Yet.
“What do I do?” Cleo hops from one foot to the other.
“Cloth,” I choke out, and she presses it to the wound, sopping up the blood and sending a fresh wave of pain down my back.
We remain like that for several long, silent minutes, me hunched over, sucking in air, her standing beside me silently waiting.
“Okay,” I tell her.
“Okay?”
“Start stitching.”
She pulls the cloth away. The blood isn’t so much free-flowing as it is a trickle now. Good sign.
Cleo tosses the cloth to the table and then threads the needle with shaking, bloodstained hands. Once she has a knot on the end of the thread, I nod at the table’s centerpiece—a wreath of pine boughs with a flickering candle in the center.
“Through the flame to sterilize it.”
She does as I ask.
With a grimace, I shift on the chair and drag over the antiseptic, popping off its top so I can splash the liquid over my shoulder.
My vision goes white from the burn, but it fades quickly.
“Ready?” Cleo asks.
I give her a nod.
When she puts the needle to my flesh she doesn’t hesitate now, and her movements are quick and deft, her stitches clean and tight. As she works, she hums to herself. I know the tune immediately, but it takes me several seconds to realize it’s one I haven’t heard in a long time.
“That’s a summoning song.”
Cleo stops shy of one stitch. “You know it?”
“Yes.”
“I … it was one of the only songs I knew. Sometimes I would hum myself to sleep with it. Delphine heard me one time and punished me for it.”
“Why?”
“She said we didn’t want to accidentally summon a Cardinal God.”
I snort. “The gods are gone. They’re not coming back.”
She pauses before the final stitch to look at me. “You don’t think so?”
“Why would they? We’re all insufferable.”
She turns back to the wound and closes it up with one more run of thread. “I don’t believe that. They’ll come back someday.”
“Not if the wizard has anything to say about it.”
“What do you mean?” She ties off the thread.
“Nothing. Just that … his ego is bigger than the Emerald City. He wouldn’t stand for being the lesser of the powerful beings.”
“But the sky … the impassable desert … you really think that will never be fixed?”
“Again, not if the wizard can help it.”
“But why?”
I sigh. “Because. That’s the world we live in, a world run by narcissistic witches and an egotistical wizard who will never give up their power. Now find me a new shirt.”
She frowns at me like she wants to argue, like she wants to believe.
I almost envy her and the hope she clings to. Hope is a powerful drug.
“Go,” I say, quieter now, and she darts off upstairs.
I light a cigarette, fill my lungs with smoke. I can hear her on the upper floor pulling open drawers, riffling through closets.
I hang my head back and take another hit.
I get a flash of Dorothy behind my eyes. Dark hair. Bright eyes. Red lips.
She seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to see her.
There is something about all this that tastes like ash on my tongue. Like I’m chasing a mirage. Like something is missing or not adding up.
But the more I poke at it, the less I care. Having no heart has its benefits, but this is not one. I want to care. If something is afoul, I want to care enough to find out what. But apathy quickly settles in, stealing my motivation.
I don’t care about a fucking thing.
The girl returns a few moments later with a black shirt. It’s a waffle knit with three buttons at the collar.
My movements are slow and careful. It takes me several minutes to get into the shirt. I’m fucking exhausted by the end of it.
I plop back into the chair and retrieve my dosing kit from my pants pocket. I roll up one sleeve to expose the crook of my elbow, then take the rubber band first, tying off a vein.
The girl watches me.
I give the vein a tap so it swells in the light.
I always travel with two vials of pure Oil and a diluted concoction in a canteen that can be drunk. The diluted kind is just to take the edge off. It’s not enough to keep my body running.
Right now I need the pure Oil and I need it straight into my veins.
I can already feel my metal arm growing stiff. If I wait too much longer, I’ll be locked up, unable to move while the world spins.
It’s a fate I avoid at all costs.
Vial in one hand, I jam the needle into the wax top and pull back on the plunger. Dark liquid fills up the glass barrel. I’m tempted to overdose to deal with the pain of the stab wound, but think better of it. I’m going after Dorothy. I will find her. And when I do, I need to be fully in control.
Finding the vein is easy and when I press down on the plunger, the Oil hits me like a cyclone, rocking me back.
Immediate fucking relief.
A fuzzy warmth fills my veins.
The aches and pains in my body disappear.
The nausea abates.
I hang my head, giving in to the feeling …
… the flood of euphoria.