Weather Witch (25 page)

At the mention of stormlighting Bran snorted. “Not anymore; one can be certain they have been reduced to using candles now.”

—proper paint, and wallpapers and boasts multiple water closets, a warming kitchen, true kitchen, parlor, sitting room, living room, den, dining room, and six spacious bedrooms.

They were rich. Powerful. They had a nice house and a grand estate. That was not enough for them to be of note in Bran’s head, and certainly not in his book. He tapped the open pages, thinking. When he was a boy he had spent time in Philadelphia. Might he have heard of the Astraeas then or met them? Something was definitely prodding him.

He stood, stretched again, returned that book to its shelf, and sought out another smaller and more worn tome. He had always kept journals—it was one of the more peculiar things about his nature and one of the things his father had hated most about his bookish son.

“You will never discover the real world if you always have your nose tucked twixt the pages of a book,” he’d told him.

But the world his father spoke of discovering was not one Bran had wanted to partake of. He had not wanted to be a party to war. He had no desire to meet painted women when he was only twelve and hear unsavory stories of his mother’s death when he was far younger. He had been a boy in love with his imagination and, according to his father, frivolous pursuits.

But he had not been allowed to remain frivolous for long.

When had it been? His twelfth year they stayed in Philadelphia. He flipped through the journal, pausing twice to stroke his fingers along a sketch of a bird and a boyish doodle of a turtle. His journals were once alive with such things and he’d spent many a day flat on his stomach observing the mysterious realms of ants and salamanders and spiders. Worlds within worlds fascinated him.

Then.

Before he became a Maker.

He found an entry from the fourteenth of August.

There are many children in Philadelphia now, some live here year round and some only come in for the spring and summer festivals. Today I was introduced to the Hill families Burchette, Hollindale, and Astraea.

He paused and reread the names. Aha! That at least made sense as to why the name struck a chord with him.

We had a merry afternoon playing hide and seek and Ring Around the Rosie although I, being much their elder, was required to watch them more than participate with them. All was well until two of the little girls got into an argument. There was screaming, yelling, crying, and hair pulling, and then the strangest thing happened—a thing I dare not tell my father due to the tender age of the children and my father’s less than tender nature. In the midst of the fighting an unscheduled wind blew up and whipped ’bout us until we tumbled to the ground, I sheltering the children with my own mortal coil. The wind died down and the screaming and fighting abated. I was mystified. They might have been terrified if only they knew enough to wonder about what I now wonder about.

Had that been it, then? He had met Jordan Astraea when they were both children and been a witness to her odd affinity even then? Or was there something else?

The library’s shutters rattled. Meggie’s head snapped up and she clutched Somebunny to her.

Bran stood, patted Meggie’s soft curls, and returned that book as well to his shelf.

Returning to his desk, he spun sharply around, seeing someone reflected in his lantern’s glass. No one was there. A chill raced over him and for a moment he was as chilled as he’d been trying to put Sybil’s skull to rest. He shook himself.

He was a man of science. Such things were easily explained away if one only sought the truth.

Again at his desk, he opened a shallow drawer and moved a few things out of it. With a quick look to Meg to be certain she was occupied, he slid open the drawer’s false bottom and pulled another journal free. Turning to a blank page, he wrote the day’s date and began his daily entry with,
“All things do come full circle and there is, in fact, no escape from the past.”

Chapter Fourteen

Society is no comfort

To one not sociable.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

On the Road from Philadelphia

Rowen was stiff and dusty from the road when the cottage Jonathan promised came into view. With renewed energy he gave a little push with his heels into Ransom’s sides and the horse picked up the pace, Silver’s head bobbing along at his hip.

Jonathan pulled Silver ahead of Rowen once more and only pulled the horse to a stop when they were as close to the cottage as they could get.

Herbs and flowers rioted across a modest fenced yard around which a few sheep wandered, grazing. They looked up at the horses with mild interest and then returned to clipping down any greenery on the wild side of the fence. Rowen and Jonathan looped their horses’ reins round one of the fence’s posts and Jonathan lifted the small bolt that kept a wooden gate shut and slipped into the yard to knock on the door.

“Do we know how near the closest water is?” Rowen asked, his back to the fence and his eyes on the woods and the meadow both.

“Far enough it’d be a struggle for them to get this far inland,” Jonathan said. He knocked on the door but the answering shout came from around back.

A broad man sporting an equally broad hat came around the cottage and gave them both a long, appraising look before he laughed and shouted, “Jonathan! Well, I had no idea you would so soon take me up on my offer to revisit my home. What has it been? Merely two years?”

“Three, Frederick, three,” Jonathan replied, smiling.

“Too long either way. What a pleasant surprise.” He reached over and surprised Jonathan with a bear hug before signaling Rowen to join them inside the yard.

“The horses?” Rowen asked, his eyes roaming.

“They will be quite fine as long as they do not run away. I will fetch them each a bucket of water in a moment. First, though, come inside, both of you.”

The door shut behind them and introductions were accomplished with the efficiency of men on the run.

“One of the Burchettes?”

Rowen nodded. “The youngest of Gregor’s sons.”

“Hmph!” Frederick said. “That’s quite a coup for someone like me to host someone like you.”

“Well,” Jonathan said slowly, “it might cause a coup if you tell anyone, as we are on the run from the law.”

“Oh.”

Some people might have reached for a chair, given such news, and Jonathan was quite certain that some of high social standing would have swooned at the mention. But not Frederick. He said, “Well do tell,” and stoked the fire in his small stove to start the water for a proper cup of tea.

Over tea in the small but generously decorated cottage that stood between the woods and the meadow, Rowen Burchette, Sixth of the Nine, and Jonathan Smithson, his manservant and faithful friend, related their tale to Jonathan’s second cousin, who nodded and asked, “Might I use your adventure as inspiration for a story I am writing? Ah, yes,” Frederick said with a wink as he tipped the teapot to refill his own cup. “I fear you have found yourself in the company of the lowest of the low: an author!” He laughed then, and Rowen glanced to Jonathan for some clue as to how to react.

Jonathan was smiling. “Will you publish our adventures yourself then?” he suggested, playing along.

“Do what Poe did recently? Self-publish?” He shook his head and grinned. “No, cousin, I want to be remembered!”

“So you’re still writing for the penny dreadfuls?”

Frederick let out an exasperated groan. “I wish they’d stop calling them that, but it does garner the public’s attention. So much about writing is marketing nowadays. But I must say that
dreadful
is not the most accurate description of them if you are writing for them. The publishing world is like anything else: not nearly so awful if it pays you.” He took a long sip of his tea and said from the side of his cup, “So may I fictionalize and immortalize you two in prose as bold young adventuring heroes, one golden-haired and one dark?”

The pair exchanged a glance and, shrugging, agreed.

“Excellent!” Frederick raised his tea cup, saying, “A toast to tea—the great social lubricant!”

“What of wine?” Rowan asked, raising his cup.

“We’ll have no whining here,” Frederick said, laughing.

“Then include in our toast
ale
for what ails you…?” Rowen returned with a grin.

Jonathan shook his head and, raising his cup, tapped it to the others. “A toast to adventures that end happily and authors who write their characters with kindness!”

“Hear, hear!” they agreed, and for a brief while it seemed they were men starting a grand adventure, not men on the run from the law. In that way it was far easier to settle in for the night—imagining what lay ahead rather than all that had been left behind.

Holgate

The whirring of gears woke him as much as the feel of something tightening around his neck like a noose. Breath burning in his throat, Bran clawed at his attacker, fingers slipping past its grasp. He got a grip on it, prying at fingers so strong they felt like this midnight marauder had a skeleton of steel. His tongue managed a curse when his hand started to bleed, cut. Fabric ripped and he heard a creak and snap of metal. Finally freed, he threw his attacker—much lighter than he imagined!—threw him so far he heard the body slam against the far wall and slip down to land limp on the floor, the humming of parts louder, a gear grinding against another. He flipped the switch on the nearest stormlight and held it before him partly for the sake of illumination and partly because it had enough weight to serve as a defensive weapon.

From the other room a small voice sounded, still thick with sleep.

“Go back to sleep, Meggie,” Bran urged.

“Papá?” she whispered. “Somebunny?” The ropes supporting her mattress creaked and Bran recognized the sound of small feet approaching.

He swung the lantern, letting the light cascade across her form briefly before, as she rubbed her eyes clear of sleep, he raised the light to illuminate the thing that had attacked him as he slept.

The thing that was always with his daughter and a gift from his ex-lover.

“Somebunny?” Meggie whispered.

They stared at the broken doll, its movements jerky and faltering as its voice growled out the most haunting rendition of the country’s motto that Bran had ever heard.

“A place for all, a place for all, a plaaaa—”

“What did you do to her?” Meggie cried, reaching for the doll.

But Bran snatched it up first, turned his back to his sobbing daughter, and ripped the mechanical spine from its soft fabric body, knocking free the glowing soul stone wedged in its grinding, cog-encircled heart. Dropping the doll to the floor, Bran ignored the gasp of his daughter and stomped his way to the horn that hung on the wall by the crank, crystal, and flywheel.

A sleep-deprived Maude was talking to him soon over the contraption and she was at his apartment door shortly thereafter, a look of horror on her face.

But, instead of coddling him and the cut on his hand that he had hastily bandaged, she went first to Meggie, and, pulling her into her lap, freed the limp doll from her arms. “Hush now, princess, hush,” she soothed. “We’ll fix her up all right and good—never you fear.” She wrapped the child and doll in her arms, giving both a reassuring squeeze. Maude spared Bran a look that softened immediately.

The metal skeleton was still on the floor where he’d dropped it and their gazes both fell to it.

“I didn’t realize it was an automaton,” Bran murmured.

“It was just a toy. A doll. Harmless.”

“Powered by a soul stone.” Bran flexed his bandaged hand. “The trader you got it from, the one who gave you such a good deal, did he ask who the doll was for?”

Her mouth moved, the single word working its way out slowly. “Yes.”

“Did you not think that odd?” He stared at the doll, avoiding the troubled eyes of his daughter.

“I thought he was being curious. Friendly.”

“Who did you say the doll was for?”

“The Maker’s daughter.”

Bran nodded. “I’ll need his name, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

He crouched before Meggie, but she twisted away, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of looking in her face. He groaned and glanced at Maude for help. She simply nodded encouragement.

“We’ll have Somebunny fixed up with proper springs and gears, fine mechanics, a right good windup toy for my child. Or no mechanics at all. Either choice is safer than a doll powered by a soul stone.”

Meggie wiped her nose with her sleeve and looked up at her father. She held Somebunny tighter, bits of flax stuffing falling to the floor. There was fire in Meggie’s eyes, balanced with a touch of fear.

“Come now, my sweet,” Maude coaxed, scooting the child off her lap so she could stand up. “In we go. I’ll get Somebunny fixed up right as rain.”

Bran stopped her. “Right as rain? Try again, please.”

Maude swallowed. “Good as new,” she corrected herself, her voice soft.

“Much better.”

*   *   *

Even inside her new prison cell amidst the Making Tanks, Jordan’s world remained dark, dank, dripping, and grim, the sun only slowly crawling its way over the eastern hills. The tower’s stones bit into her back now that she’d discarded her boned corset, but still she leaned against the wall, pressed into it to feel something as she watched a swatch of sky change colors between the bars on her small single window. The stars slowly winked out as the black of night was infused with colors that reminded her of a bruise lightening as it healed.

She tugged at the leather manacle on her wrist, running a finger along its edge and wiggling it partway under the itching thing. She shifted and her tether’s chain rustled in the straw. How recently had she been offended by having straw for sitting and sleeping? And yet now she was thankful the straw here was cleaner than that in the Reckoning Tanks. Grabbing a piece of straw from the bedding that littered her floor, she slipped it between the flesh of her wrist and the bulk of the cuff and wiggled it around, finally sighing, her head rolling back on her neck when its tip connected with whatever itched her. A look of fierce focus crossed her face as she dug the straw underneath the cuff, moving it back and forth frantically, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in a most unladylike fashion.