Hammer and Bone

By Kirby Crow

Carnival mystics. Zombie tribes. Bad magic in the Bayou. Mage-princes, alien cities, and soul-stealing priests. The grim monsters in the worlds of these dark, speculative tales are true horrors, but it's the people you should fear the most.
People like Michel, a boy pining for his best friend, Ray. But a presence in the swamp calls Michel to avenge another lost love, and he must decide which summons to answer. Or Angelo, a prescient cop who denies his visions until they endanger the man he loves. Or Bellew, an overseer in a shantytown of criminals sheltering a revenant and feeding it from their ranks.

From ruined lands of steam and iron, to haunted Southern forests, to brutal city streets where hope and damnation flow from the same spring, only a few stubborn souls possess the heart to challenge evil on its own terms. Some wield magic, some turn to rage or even love, but the ones left standing will survive only if they find the courage to carve their own paths to freedom.

Even if it means carving through flesh.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bonecamp
• Release date: Apr 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386415077

Kirby Crow

Kirby Crow worked as an entertainment editor and ghostwriter for several years before happily giving it up to bake brownies, read yaoi, play video games, and write her own novels. Whenever she isn't slaying Orcs or flying a battleship for the glory of the Amarr Empire, she can be found in the kitchen, her vegetable garden, or busy writing her next book.Kirby is a winner of the EPIC Award (Best Horror Novel) and the Rainbow Award (Best LGBT Novel). She is the author of the bestselling "Scarlet and the White Wolf" series of fantasy novels.Her published novels and works are:Prisoner of the RavenScarlet and the White Wolf 1: The Pedlar and the Bandit KingScarlet and the White Wolf 2: Mariner's LuckScarlet and the White Wolf 3: The Land of NightAngels of the DeepCircuit TheoryHammer and BonePoison ApplesScarlet and the White Wolf 4: The King of ForeverMalachite: Book 1 of the Paladin CycleMeridian (Mirror Series #1)Windward (Mirror Series #2)Scarlet and the White Wolf 5: The Temple RoadChimeraThe Art of FireFor upcoming news of her future novels, visit http://KirbyCrow.com

Book preview

The purest evil lives in the hearts of men.

Carnival mystics. Zombie tribes. Bad magic in the Bayou. Mage-princes, alien cities, and soul-stealing priests. The grim monsters in the worlds of these dark, speculative tales are true horrors, but it’s the people you should fear the most.

People like Michel, a boy pining for his best friend, Ray. But a presence in the swamp calls Michel to avenge another lost love, and he must decide which summons to answer. Or Angelo, a prescient cop who denies his visions until they endanger the man he loves. Or Bellew, an overseer in a shantytown of criminals sheltering a revenant and feeding it from their ranks.

From ruined lands of steam and iron, to haunted Southern forests, to brutal city streets where hope and damnation flow from the same spring, only a few stubborn souls possess the heart to challenge evil on its own terms. Some wield magic, some turn to rage or even love, but the ones left standing will survive only if they find the courage to carve their own paths to freedom.

Even if it means carving through flesh.

Crank

BELLEW PAUSED IN THE crooked shade of a deformed hemlock pine. His bare heels sank into lichen as he gazed over the field of tombstones, a few upright, most listing drunkenly to the side. A fine rain fell on the bonecamp, soft as rabbit fur. He tilted his head back and inhaled the scent of wet pine, letting the damp soothe his blistered lips.

He had intended to wait for the man there, in the green shadows, cloaked as he was in the sickly yellow light of the cloudy false dawn. It was never fully dawn in Shatter. Not anymore. The old men told tales of a bright sun lifting over the horizon, burning away mist and shadows. No one saw the sun until noon, now. The shadows were here to stay.

Bellew was a child of his times: knock-kneed from standing twelve hours a day before a Walczyk coil, his wrists swollen from turning the crank at Hull Mill, eyes seared and lungs scarred from phosphorous fumes. His hair was a snarl of black ropes smashed under a battered leather coachman’s hat left to him by his father. His skin was brown as oak, and his black eyes were so deeply shadowed with blue hollows that he appeared forever bruised and beaten. He was a wraith of the factories, skinny and tall, with a wobbling gait that broadcast his deformed legs.

There were thousands like Bellew in Shatter, the people of electricity, called simply cranks. They were too poor to train for an apprenticeship at a gentler trade and too ignorant to know their lives were worth more than turning a hand crank of copper wires all day. Thousands labored so that the few graced by a higher god could eat their boiled peas and mashed potatoes off pottery plates by the soft glow of a phossy-bulb. Bellew was no exception. Life wasn’t fair.

That was a truism like nobody enters the Foundry twice and apples don’t fall far from the tree, and he accepted it without thinking much about it. He didn’t need to. When his mother fell into the melter core and his father switched drinking for just being gone, he’d stopped hoping for fair and settled for survival. He’d watched his little brother and his older sister go off north to the crank mills in Farhaven and Lowridge, and he’d gotten the customary letter of condolence and a free meal at the commissary when they died. He’d barely known his brother, and his sister used to fly at him with her fists, but he was glad of the meals anyway.

He had choices, of course. There were pinchpricks who ate better and slept cleaner, but filling the hours in between those luxuries with servicing the wants of a body other than his own felt too much like a dirtier version of his present job. He could have indentured himself to the lifters and learned the cutpurse trade, or there were the slavers or the black marketeers. All things considered, he figured his best chance was at the mills, but only if he stood out. Surviving was standing out.

Life wasn’t fair. Bellew knew this and knew still that it was all the life he had, fair or not. He loved it as fierce as the pretty, fortunate children in the steel towers far away from the pit bosses of the crank mills loved theirs. He just loved it differently.

He heard a growl and turned his head to the north, following the hazy trail through the dim light. A dog loped behind a crypt, mangy in spots, with fangs the size of nails.

He ignored it, knowing the cur was half-blind. Most dogs were since the chemist plant exploded upriver, but there were dogs and there were dogs.

Bellew wondered if this was one of the bold curs who would hunt you by scent and harry you into the ground by fear and bluff, but the dog paused to pull his lips back and sniff the air, then wisely moved on. He would find no timid prey here.

Bellew’s hand relaxed from the cramping grip he had on his knife, and he rested his back on the pine, feigning a calm he did not feel. The letter pinned to the door of his sleeping cell had read noon, but noon was indeterminate, and the scribe he’d hired to read the letter could have been lying about it all. His empty stomach rumbled an echo to the departing cur, and his swollen knees shook.

You Bell?

He turned, his shoulders prickling with warning. Bellew, he corrected. Only his mother had called him Bell.

The black woman was wrapped in a leather alchemy cloak that the pit bosses wore in the crank mills. That made him wary. She was very tall, lanky with broad shoulders made for swinging axe or shovel, and wore a brimmed leather hat secured with a twist of rope under her chin. Her eyes were clouded green, and her graying hair was bound in a frizzled bun at the nape of her neck. An indented scar like a silver crescent marked her lower lip, and a black circle and stripe was tattooed under her left eye.

He hadn’t expected a woman. What’s your name?

No questions, she snapped. You know that. Call me Notch if you have to call me something.

The last thing in the world he wanted to do was make her mad. She was at least an underboss, well on her way to being helmer. Her right hand bore a thick callus in the curved pad between thumb and index, evidence of long use with a straight-handled implement, maybe a whip or a knife. He revised his prediction of her future to brass cat. Her face tats said she was Midnight Crew.

Notch, Bellew nodded, trying it out. Suits ya.

She snorted and swiped at her trim nose with her leather sleeve. They tell me you’re good material. Are you?

Bellew sensed that much hung on his answer. I’m fifteen. I’ve been four years on the crank line, and I ain’t dead yet. You tell me.

It was rank challenge, and he knew that he’d won a shot when her milky-green eyes glinted in appreciation.

Notch put her hands on her hips. Sassy one, ain’t you? Lots of little punks like you piss their pants when they meet the Undertaker. Still . . . four years. Notch looked him up and down and whistled low. Might be you’re some use, after all.

A full-grown male laborer on the crank line was lucky to last two years. Three years marked a talent for survival, and four was almost unheard of. For a boy to endure so long was legendary.

Notch stared hard a moment more, as if guessing his likeliness to last an unholy five years at the crank. She turned and set her boots in the direction of the pines, heading off.

This way, she called back.

He trotted after her and caught up, casting her sly looks, much like the bonecamp dog.

Don’t cut your eyes at me, son. Notch ducked under a hemlock limb, and her hat dislodged several tiny pinecones that pattered in their wake like rain. "Nothing to gawk at here.

If your eyes see tomorrow . . . well then . . . that might change."

What do I—

"Save your questions for her."

Their boots crushed a carpet of pallid green and yellow leaves, dotted randomly with vivid crimson maple leaves like a trail of blood. Bellew stepped on a dried, canoe-shaped magnolia leaf the size of his hand. It cracked sharply in the silence, and Notch glanced at him with her mouth pinched closed.

Bellew ducked his head and watched his feet more carefully. The air smelled of the musty creek and caustic chemicals from the tannery down the river, and he caught the flinty dryness of the crank mill mixed with the oily murk of lubricants and garbage, rust and rotting wood. Hull Mill was a mile off and the tannery even closer, but when they came to the stone bridge, he halted with the instinct of lifelong habit.

Notch walked on a few paces before she sighed and came back for him. You ain’t never been this far into Midnight turf before?

He shook his head.

She pointed to a stand of oaks to the north, beyond the arched bridge that spanned the little creek. The lines of a towering brick and mortar structure rose behind the trees. There it is.

The Foundry, he breathed. His chest felt funny, like there were ropes around it. It was hard to talk louder than a whisper. He looked up at Notch. Will you walk me there?

Her big hand landed on his shoulder. Have to, she grunted. Without, they’d shoot you.

THEY got past the guard posts with no trouble. Even if she weren’t known, Notch’s tats were all they needed to see. The gun-toting men in the high timber stands waved them on, and Notch’s hand was firm on his shoulder, pushing him down the weedy path.

It was hushed and dim inside the Foundry. The air smelled of oil-smoke, and dust coated the bricks under his feet. They left a trail of prints under the open archway. He had always imagined this place full of dark whispers and movement, peopled by underbosses, helmers, wheelmen, and the scurrying messengers called squibs.

Where is everybody? Bellew jumped when his voice echoed back at him.

Notch chuckled, the first sound he had heard from her that didn’t scare him.

They’ve been and gone, son.

Nobody enters the Foundry twice. The Undertaker was in here somewhere, maybe deep in that shadow where the light couldn’t reach, waiting. It only came out at night, never in the day. It never went past the front doors. It never went outside. The Undertaker waited for Shatter to come to it, and it was never disappointed. The crews made sure of that. There was always a new recruit, always some dog looking to move up, looking to get fed, and willing to pass the gauntlet of midnight and nightmare to get there.

Bellew shivered inside his thin coat, and he pulled the leather top hat from his head reluctantly. He held the dripping hide between his hands and let his fingers traverse the shape of the brim, around and around.

Stop fidgeting. Notch took his shoulders and turned him to face her. She stooped a little to look him in the eye. Her expression was smooth and hard at the same time, almost blank, as if she had taken a trowel to her center and scraped everything down. You got a choice now, son. You either stay here the night, or you walk out that door. If you leave, you won’t see me again. There won’t be another letter nailed to your door. No one else will come calling, and you can go on with your life just like it was. Understand?

He understood her perfectly. You mean I’m free to die here now or die back at the crank.

The brim of Notch’s hat dipped as she nodded. Death’s the only sure thing in life. If you’re lucky, you get to choose how and some of what’s in between. You’ve survived four years at the crank. Midnight Crew only takes the lucky ones, and we never promote a crank. Do you know why? Bellew shook his head.

Turn for turn. If you grow up getting beat, likely that’s what you’ll be wanting to give back to the world soon as you get a chance. An underboss has a lotta opportunity to cause damage. There ain’t no profit in that for us. Notch squeezed his shoulders before she released him. You need an edge to get by in this world. I think you got that. Be careful you don’t cut your throat with it.

Notch turned away from him. He watched her leave until she was framed straight and dark in the rounded doorway with the sun around her, like a needle piercing an open eye. Midnight Crew.

Bellew knew if he ran to her to escape, it would be the last distance he ever crossed in this world. He turned his back on her and faced the emptiness of the Foundry.

Well, he said in a voice that seemed too small for the space around him. I’m here. Come on then, if you’re coming.

FOUR years later, Bellew stood on the platform of grated iron suspended over the sea of workers, giving a sharp eye to the fifth line. The highdeck platform was the domain of the underbosses, a moveable iron structure suspended on cables that floated like a bird of prey over the crank lines. There were five levels in the crank mill, and Bellew and twenty-six other underbosses were responsible for third floor. A constant hum like a hive of disturbed bees rose from the floor, along with the discordant creaks of some three thousand cranks.

At nineteen, he was taller than most men in Shatter. All six feet and two inches of him poured into a leather alchemy cloak, mostly muscle and long bones. His legs would never be perfect, but they had straightened out well enough. Notch liked to say that his growth spurt after joining Midnight Crew was the best advertisement for them since Cray Manders, who everyone called Big Crazy. He wasn’t quite that big, but whereas Big Crazy cackled and made a stir, Bellew was a walking sphinx. He laughed at nothing, spoke little, and smiled only for Roben, and then only when they were alone.

Fifth had been giving him slack lately. Roben blamed the sudden influx of female workers. The survivors of Lowridge had been shipped down to Shatter after the fire, most of them women and girls. There’d been a story about an underboss who’d rallied the men and boys to try to save the trapped workers on the first floor. He’d died, of course, along with most of the rescuers, but the name of Charl Knox was a legend in Shatter now. The new hands in from Lowridge had looked up at Bellew with that same worship blossoming in their eyes. At least in the beginning. He’d soon convinced them he was no savior. Charl Knox could keep his legend, and much good it would do him in his ashy grave. Bellew had his edge.

Fat Smitty, the pit boss, was due to make his rounds. Bellew consulted the metal panel of output gauges affixed to his platform before turning and giving Roben a signal. Roben gave him a pained look, but took the controls and lowered the highdeck ladder. Roben uncoiled his underboss whip and vanished between the stalls. Bellew heard the whip cracking intermittently above the dissonant roar, but the screams were barely audible.

Roben climbed back up, coiling the whip and slipping it into the hook at his waist. Bad business, Roben signed to him in their shorthand vocabulary of hand signals. Normal speech was impossible on the highdeck.

Bellew shrugged. The whip won you no friends on the floor, but then, nothing would. An underboss couldn’t afford friends, not even with other bosses. Roben was an exception, not the rule.

The day wore on. The shift changed at four in the afternoon, and a wheelman made his way through the stalls to cull the cranks who wouldn’t last a second shift without falling into the machinery. The night underbosses could pick up the slack with a swing crew. Fat Smitty, who was pudgy but not really fat, made his rounds and frowned at Bellew’s output gauges. Smitty scribbled marks on his ledger and went away, leaving Bellew short-tempered the rest of the afternoon.

During shift change, there was a lull of comparative quiet, and Bellew’s gauges dipped to zero. Ten minutes later they were still down. He stared at their glass faces, arms crossed over his chest. It was wet outside and cold, and the cranks were sluggish. With all the rebuilding going on in Lowridge, rations were slow to make their way south. Cranks went hungry and the black market prospered. He’d already lost twelve girls to the slavers, and another fifteen of the boys had been shanghaied. When would it end?

The longer Roben took to get the cranks in place, the longer those gauges stayed low.

It ends when you’re dead. It was Notch’s voice in his brain. She’d shepherded him those first few months after the Foundry, got him into training for squib. Two years learning the floor, then it was on to wheelman, then underboss in record time. He might even be pit boss one day.

Roben came back to the platform and nudged his shoulder, and Bellew pressed his knee into the lever that sounded the whistle. Cranks began turning, and his gauges came alive. When amperage reached nominal and the noise had tuned back up to its comforting lunacy, Bellew signaled his relief, Timas, to take over.

Timas was the night boss from Blackfish Crew. He was a scrawny, short man in his thirties with a skinny black beard. Timas was a failed thief, former slaver, and erstwhile black marketeer. He’d tried on dark professions like some men tried on boots. Notch had hired him on as a Blackfish marker six months ago. She hadn’t wanted to, but a marker was a debt and had to be honored between crews. She’d put Timas on the floor as underboss, and he seemed to shine with a whip in his hand. Third floor always cranked more watts at night, which made Bellew a deadly enemy of Timas.

Blackfish was calling in a lot of markers lately. He wondered if another gang war was coming, if Blackfish had decided the brothels were too close to their pier or if Red Fang wanted a bigger piece of the docks. He hoped not. He didn’t object to killing, but it was a distraction.

Roben pushed past Timas on the stairs and bumped his shoulder hard. Timas cursed at him, the obscenities lost in the air, his mouth working to no detectable sound, and Bellew laughed at him.

Once they were outside the Hull walls, Roben lit two cigarettes and passed one to him. You’re gonna have to kill him soon, Roben murmured, glancing around.

I know it. Killing allied crew was a delicate matter. If there was bad blood between him and one of their own, he could speak to Notch and have it done with. Timas would just go walking one night and never come back, but with a truce in force between Midnight and Blackfish, no blood could be spilled, and he didn’t know anyone in Blackfish who mattered. Notch’s orders: Never get chummy with outsider crew. Have a drink once a month, shake on a deal, but never make them your friend. It’s tougher to knife a friend.

Bellew