Weather Witch (30 page)

By the time he reached Holgate Jordan would already be gone. If he ever reached Holgate. His chance at a happily ever after was slim at best and his chance of being a hero? Worse.

He dragged himself back up to his feet and held onto the tree. He had to take desperate measures. He had to find Ransom. Or Silver. Or both.

And he might just have to do the thing he’d never dreamed of doing—ask for directions.

Damn it all!

Holgate

There was something about a child and spreading kindness that did not sit well with Bran and his title of Maker, so he summoned Councilman Stevenson to his laboratory to conclude business. “I have not the stomach for this job anymore,” Bran admitted, his gaze traveling over the Councilman’s head to rest on the sightless skull in its makeshift place of honor—the skull belonging to the child who reminded him so much of the little girl who now frequently shadowed his steps. The same little girl that looked up at him with worshipful eyes and suggested he try patience above pain.

“And precisely what do you mean by that?”

“I mean…” Bran looked down, his brow pinching together over the narrow bridge of his nose. “I cannot be your Maker any longer.”

The Councilman hopped back, shaking his head in surprise. “You cannot…?” Again he shook his head. “I fail to see how you have come to believe that you have a choice in such matters.”

“Of course I have a choice. I have a family now. I must make this choice for their good as much as my own. Perhaps more for theirs than mine.”

“A family?” the Councilman chortled, holding his stomach with one hand. “You have a bastard daughter by a whore and a maid warming your bed until you tighten your purse strings or she finds someone more interesting.” He shook his head, still laughing. “A
family
?”

Bran crossed his arms over his chest and spread his feet in a broader stance. “I will Make no more Conductors.”

“Then who do you think will? Who will provide our most valuable energy resource except you? Who will power our lights and our carriages and our airships?”

“There is talk of a better power source: steam,” Bran suggested.

The Councilman’s head snaked forward.
“Steam?”

“Yes. Steam.”

Lord Stevenson raked a hand through his thinning hair. “Do you have any idea of how a change to steam—only a possibility of power, truly—would change our entire society? Can you fathom what such a thing might mean?”

“It might mean that Councilman Braga was right. It might mean revolution,” Bran said matter-of-factly.

Stevenson snorted. “My
God
.” He turned his back to Bran, smacked his palms onto the countertop, and lowered his head, rolling it back and forth on his thin neck. “And you would do this because you no longer have the stomach for your family’s line of work?”

“And because of my
family,
” Bran said, grating the word out from between his teeth.

Stevenson raised his head and a chill raced over Bran’s arms when he realized what the Councilman’s gaze had come to rest on.

Sybil’s fragile skull.

Stevenson’s tone of voice changed, frustration falling away and, although Bran could not see his expression, he was certain he now spoke through a smile. “For the sake of your family,” Stevenson said, “I would continue being the Maker, if I were you. Such a dramatic upheaval as you suggest can be especially hard … on a child.”

“Are you threatening me?” Bran asked, his voice thin, eyes dangerous.

Stevenson turned to face him. “Threatening? Why, no. I am merely suggesting—strongly—as I did to Councilman Braga before his untimely disappearance that you reconsider what might happen if things around here changed too much. Perhaps with a good night’s sleep and a bottle of bitters you might find you still have the stomach for this work after all.”

*   *   *

Jordan folded the paper star and tucked it back up her sleeve not far from where Rowen’s heart was pinned, and, standing, waited by her Tank’s door. The watchman shuffled by on his rounds, pausing at her door. There was a clatter as he adjusted the things on the tray. “I have no care to know what it is you do to have curried the Maker’s favor enough to give you a proper tea, but I sure as Hell wish you’d give it a rest.” He fumbled with the keys and she envisioned him balancing the tray, teapot, and teacup between his hip and the door like any good servant would when struggling so.

With a grunt he opened the door and Jordan took the tray from him with one hand and a gracious nod while slipping the folded star into the void the door’s handle needed to connect with in order to give a proper lock.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, jostling the tray so that tea spilled and soaked the watchman as he struggled to catch pot, cup, and saucer all at once. “How horribly clumsy of me … so very sorry…”

He righted the tray and its contents and scrambled back from the door cursing. The door slammed shut and Jordan heard him storm away.

“Take your chance now,” Caleb urged. “While he’s gone. Take your chance!”

“I’ll bring you with me,” she said, slipping out her door to stand outside his.

“No. There’s no time for such foolishness. Grab his cloak and throw it over your chain to make it look like you’re carrying something. But go,” he urged. “This is your chance. Run with it!”

Exasperated, she did as he ordered, promising, “I’ll come back for you!”

The door at the end of the hall closed behind her and she never heard him say, “No, you won’t.”

She pounded her way down the stairs and burst out the bottom door and onto the main square of Holgate before the watchmen spotted her and neatly brought her down.

“I promised I would come back for you,” she announced to Caleb, moping as the watchman threw her back into her Tank and slammed the door, this time making sure the lock held.

“Although I find your willingness to keep your word awe-inspiring, I did not quite imagine it happening like this,” Caleb admitted.

They said nothing else to each other then because after such a defeat there was truly nothing to say.

It was not long before the Maker summoned her.

“You realize what this means?” Bran asked.

Jordan looked away, unwilling to answer.

“I cannot trust you. Now I must chain you to your Tank’s floor. I wanted so badly to avoid this,” he said, spitting the words out. “I wanted so badly to avoid
all
of this,” he said, the words somehow about far more than chaining Jordan and distrusting her.

“How do I explain to Meggie what I must now do to you?”

“Meggie?” It was the first time he’d dropped his guard enough to name his daughter. “Tell her the truth,” she suggested, raising her chin as he strapped her to the boards. “Tell her that you are a cruel man who has nothing but dark designs.” She screwed her face up, eyes squeezed tight, and braced herself for his inevitable retaliation.

Finally she opened her eyes and relaxed her jaw.

He stood a few feet away. Silent. His eyes seemed fixed on the floor as if he’d suddenly discovered some great secret about its construction. No hand was raised against her, no tool was poised to bite into her flesh. “I wish things were different,” he muttered.

“You are certainly not alone in that wish,” she scoffed.

He puffed out a deep breath and stepped forward to check that she was cinched tight. “But we are both the products of our environment and our parentage—whatever yours might be,” he added. “And so we must do some unpleasant things from time to time to get by. Sometimes we have no choice.”

Then he did a new variation of her treatment. Still she remained Grounded and unMade. When the Wardens finally came to take her away, she was crying.

Bran stumbled to a bucket in the laboratory’s corner and, crouching before it, watched everything he’d eaten earlier in the day rush back out the same way it had been put in.

*   *   *

Jordan was an aching lump in her Tank. Today the sunlight was not enough to lighten her mood and being surrounded by the same grim walls was far from inspirational. Her right hand flopped out, limp, on her lap, wrapped in a hasty bandage that had soaked through with a stinking salve. “To heal the burn,” the Maker had promised.

The burn he had given her with the brand.

Even blind with pain she hadn’t produced a mist or a drizzle.

The Maker had said she must have a tremendous will to continue to hold out so fiercely.

Pain was her constant companion now. Long gone was her naïve belief that Weather Witches were just a segment of society that worked hard for their living, a segment of society that had some small control over their destinies. Maybe no one had choices.

Further gone was her halfhearted hope Weather Witches held some modicum of respect from society.

Hope was no longer a word she recognized.

There was a flutter of sound at her windowsill and a shadow fell across Jordan, marring the crisply split beams of light that divided her curled form in slices cut by the bars that kept her from the outside. She stirred, raising her head off her knees. Something had changed. She looked toward the morning’s light and the thing that now blocked part of it.

A hawk paced the stone sill, its tail feathers and wing tips brushing the bars in a soft and rhythmic way that reminded Jordan of the lightest touch of Rowen’s fingers across the strings of the guitar he’d shown her once. It was beautiful, this hawk—large and covered with feathers full of various shades of brown, cream, and red. It turned and cocked its head, looking at her. A beak the color of old butter and tipped with ebony hooked cruelly between two golden eyes that glinted as brightly as her mother’s favorite earrings right after a good polishing. Its pupils were broad and dark, black pits marring its shining eyes, and Jordan shivered but unwrapped her arms from around her legs and slowly pulled her feet beneath her so that she could crouch there.

Hearing something, the hawk hopped, turning its back to her.

What was it like, Jordan wondered, to have such freedom and power you could soar through the sky, wind ruffling your feathers? Did it tickle your skin—the pull of air on your feathers? Did it make your eyes tear as the wind whipped past? What did eyes like that see from high in the heavens?

Carefully she stood.

The bird cocked its head.

Something interesting in the courtyard so many stories below or had it spotted something in one of the trees lining the lake that fascinated it?

She took a step forward.

And another step forward, quietly closing the distance between the bird and herself.

It gave another little hop, excited by whatever it had spied. Then it froze and only the faint breeze that always twisted around the tower and through her Tank gave it the appearance of life, teasing the edges of its feathers.

What were those feathers like when stroked against the skin—could you feel freedom in their touch? Did they carry the sensation of rising winds as easily as the winds carried their owner? Her hand stretched out, fingers open and trembling at the question and the desire that now tingled at their tips.

Straw crackled beneath her foot and the hawk’s head spun, its eyes widening and glinting, seeing her so close. With a shriek it leaped off the sill, plummeting. Jordan’s heart dropped into her stomach and she lurched forward the last few feet, hands wrapping around the bars as she pressed her face between them and watched the bird throw its wings open—the movement audible—and slowly, lazily loop over the crowd below before beating its wings and climbing, rising above the shop rooftops and up above the wall that hemmed in Holgate and kept it from the bridge, the lake, and the outside world.

From freedom.

The hawk soared over the wall and shrieked again as it headed out over the water and teased the treetops with its wing tips.

She sighed.

To have that freedom … She’d never had that. Society did not allow for a young lady to just … go anywhere or do anything on her own. Even her time with Rowen had been chaperoned.

Mostly.

She smiled and remembered.

*   *   *

Rowen had stolen her away one morning. It all seemed so innocent.

One moment they were seated in the parlor sipping tea and munching on delicately crafted watercress sandwiches and then Rowen (who delighted in balancing his cup and saucer on his knee) had broken them both, sending their chaperone scurrying for a mop. He stood then, grinned in that devilish way that was only Rowen’s, set her cup and saucer aside, and, grabbing her by the wrist, tugged her out the back door and into the glassed-in rooms where the thick-scented exotic plants thrived.

“Quickly now,” he urged, his smile so deep it dimpled. He took the lead, his hand slipping down her wrist to grasp her hand. “And quietly,” he added, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze.

What could she do but follow, her heart racing and the most insane smile stretching her lips?

Out the back of the glass and steel building they’d gone, Rowen tugging her along and only glancing back twice to make sure he wasn’t going too fast for a companion in heels and a tightly cinched corset.

But each time he looked back he’d snared her with those changeable eyes of his and she’d quickened her pace. Because wherever he was leading she wanted to go. In Jordan’s book, Rowen was synonymous with adventure.

They’d raced through the gardens dotting the Astraea estate’s back lawn and into the hedge-maze, Rowen guiding her through with such accuracy it seemed he’d often made the trip blindfolded. Or in the dead of night, like Jordan had several times when she had needed to clear her head.

Out the back of the hedge-maze they went, only pausing at the very edge of her family’s property—the edge with the walled lip that overlooked the Below so dramatically it made her clutch his arm and close her eyes a moment to quell her sense of vertigo.

The Astraea holdings had been built as high into the granite face of the Hill as anyone could get and was nicknamed “the Aerie” for more than one reason.

Rowen had grinned down at her, his eyes lingering on the way she held his arm so tightly before he slid his fingers under hers, pried them free, and wrapped them into his hand. He gave her hand a little squeeze and said something.