“You said, bring us alongside, and I took the appropriate steps to bring us alongside.”
Unimpressed, she turned her attention back to Rowen, cocked a hip and raised an eyebrow. “I do believe you are assuming things again due to our occupation.”
“Right,” Rowen said, folding his arms over his chest. “Of course. Because of your occupation.”
“We cannot help it if, subconsciously, you are still not keen on being allied with—”
“—liberally aligned traders,” Rowen said, though he knew them for what they were: pirates.
She smiled. “Our intention was not to captain a second ship—captaining one is work enough. But we did need to get creative when you changed our timeline by being discovered in the Hill King’s Cavern. We are used to traveling with wanted men, Rowen Burchette,” Evie said, putting an emphasis on his surname, “but not someone wanted by so many different people for such high prices.”
By the ship’s controls, movement and discussion ceased. Out of the corner of his eye, Rowen noted Caleb and Jordan watching him from the corners of theirs.
Spotted in the open, the Fennec foxes were chased by a laughing Meggie.
Rowen lowered his voice. “It was never my desire to draw such attention—or trouble—to myself. You both know I have had only one goal since being taken forcibly by your crew in Holgate.” He stared openly at Jordan, raising his volume, and said, “There was only one thing—one person, one goal—on my mind the entire time I was with you.”
Jordan turned away, fiddling with the ship’s controls.
“I did everything I could to reach that goal. I never intended to be kidnapped.”
“You throw that in our faces all the time,” Evie said, again winking at Ginger Jack, “as if it was a bad thing. Imagine how dull—how drab—the last few weeks of your life would have been without being a part of the Tempest’s crew.”
“Drab,” Rowen muttered, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I could do dull or drab. Both at the same time, in fact.”
“Pish-posh,” Evie scolded. “Adventure makes the man far more than any clothing does.”
Rowen adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves. “That is a good thing, considering my current selection of clothing.”
The Wandering Wallace approached, his slender form top-heavy beneath the rhinoceros’s head he wore. No matter what face he hid his own behind, Rowen recognized him by his body language—his grace and poise. The Wandering Wallace had headlined Jordan’s disastrous birthday party. He moved like a prowling panther—elegant, sleek, and dangerous, his beautiful Oriental companion a shadow at his back.
“Wandering Wallace,” Rowen greeted.
The Wandering Wallace had taught Rowen basic sleight of hand for Jordan’s party—a skill that had come particularly in handy when Rowen slipped Jordan the birthday gift he’d commissioned for her: a brass heart pin engraved with the words Be brave.
Be brave were words he’d used to encourage her to try things beyond what she’d been taught was proper—like sneaking into Philadelphia’s most dangerous (and exciting) neighborhood known as the Below. Like slipping out into the Astraea family hedgemaze high on the top of the Hill late at night to meet him beneath the moon and the stars.
Be brave were their watchwords, as much a part of their personal language as right as rain was part of the rebel vernacular.
The Wandering Wallace dipped his chin, his well-polished rhino horn glinting. “We meet again, Rowen,” he said. “We live in a small, small world, do we not?”
“It seems you are a more integral piece of my world than I suspected,” Rowen countered.
“It is a distinct possibility now I see your companions.” He looked at the stormlights on posts surrounding the dais and maintaining the feel of daylight inside the manufactured storm cradling their ship. He addressed Evie. “Evening is falling. Shall we discuss business?”
The elevator made one more descent, the Topside deck cleared of human debris.
Ginger Jack was already seated at the table, tinkering with odds and ends of mechanisms he’d pillaged. He was already at work, determined to fix at least one of the damaged lightships.
The foxes zipped around his chair, whining.
Evie pulled a chair over for herself, turning it so she straddled its back, her arms crossed. “Might we include the Conductor in our discussion?” Spotting the circling foxes, she reached down and grabbed one, settling the snapping beast in her lap.
“Call her Jordan,” a tall, dark-haired man said as he joined them. “Or better yet,” his expression stayed strict as that on anyone Rowen had seen—except his mother; no one’s expression was as sour as hers when Rowen disappointed her—”call her Lady Astraea.”
Rowen rolled his lips together. As much as he did not like any other man suggesting how someone should refer to Jordan, at least this man referred to her with respect and encouraged others to do the same. That he could respect. That he could even like.
Evie smiled up at the tall brunette, stroking the annoyed fox so firmly its oversized ears flopped. Slowly its snarl faded. “And you are … her agent?”
The man pushed dark curls back from his eyes. “No. Merely someone who believes in respect and equality. She is far more than a title or a rank.”
“A dissenter,” Ginger Jack said, not looking up. He pulled his hands back from the metal bits and watched them move without his help. Halfheartedly involved in conversation, he nodded to himself.
“You are not?” the other man asked.
Jack shrugged. “My actions speak more clearly than any label.” He stood, gazing at heaps of parts still scattered across the deck. Stepping away, he chose one that appeared promising, and rifled through it until he’d found something interesting.
“Marion Kruse,” the man introduced himself.
The name yanked Rowen’s attention back from his friend’s scavenging. “House Kruse?” Everyone in Philadelphia knew the tragic tale of House Kruse’s fall. A Weather Witch dragged away from a birthday party and a poisoning that killed the remaining family—perpetrated by a household servant. The family name was rife with scandal. And Rowen had hunted with Lord Kruse and his eldest boy.
A boy evidently grown to manhood and now standing before him, dark hair falling into troubled gray eyes.
Marion gave him so sharp a look Rowen shut his mouth. Some topics were not his to address.
“Bring the Conductor—young Lady Astraea—over,” the Wandering Wallace instructed Rowen.
“I’ll fetch her,” Marion offered.
The Wandering Wallace raised his hand. “No. Rowen.”
Marion squinted at the blond next to him. “Rowen … Burchette? It’s been years …”
Rowen blew out a sigh and stalked off to again try addressing Jordan and Caleb.
Behind him he heard more chairs get righted, wooden feet scraping across the battered deck planks. He left the noise and the intermingled scents and focused on the sound of his own feet clomping across the deck toward the girl who openly chose the company of a different man.
He paused a few feet from them, noting how comfortable Caleb was by her side. And how calm, safe, and secure she seemed to feel in his presence.
And how their hands slipped together, fingers entwining.
Rowen wondered briefly why he was surprised. He’d expected this. No, not this exactly—he’d expected she’d have given up on him, that she’d have been wounded by his lack of success in rescuing her. Perhaps that she’d thought he’d decided not to come and find her.
He hadn’t expected that she would have found someone to replace him. But Caleb and Jordan were so ensconced in conversation they did not hear him approach.
“Did the Maker do this to you?” Jordan asked, her fingers moving so lightly across Caleb’s damaged cheek Rowen paused abruptly and looked away.
“No,” he murmured. “It comes from a different torturer, a different time. Sometimes it seems a different lifetime.”
“Ma
ny of my memories are like that, too. Distant. I want to run away, Caleb,” she confessed desperately. “Run and never come back. Leave all this—all these problems to someone else. I want to go somewhere quiet. A place where there is only nature. Only nature and time.”
Caleb glanced at the ship’s ornate controls. “I fear there’s no easy escape for any of us. Especially not you,” he told Jordan. “You control a huge airship filled to the brim with dissenters and those thinking dissenters should be destroyed. They call you Stormbringer.”
Jordan looked down.
“The name matters not,” Caleb said. “Still you are one of the few truly capable of changing things for our people—you cannot abandon our kind now. Not when we are so close to having a chance for change.”
“We aren’t all of the same kind,” Jordan protested. “Your kind, his kind,” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder toward Marion, “those kind are not my kind at all? I am an anomaly proving any one of us can be your kind if broken.”
Rowen stepped more slowly, desperate not to draw attention to his proximity while they confided in each other, but even more desperate to know all that was being confided.
“You are not a Witch?”
“I should not have been able to be Made a Witch,” she corrected. “I am the exception to a rule—an exception that proves the rule has been wrong all along. I am living proof that each and every one of us can be Made, each of us has storms brewing within. Making has nothing to do with heritage and everything to do with being broken. Every person alive makes as good a slave as a lord or lady—I am the living proof of that.”
“Then you must stay the course, tell this truth, and bring equality. You are the key to changing the path of history with this revelation.”
“What else might you tell me, Caleb?”
Caleb paused. “That whoever else knows the truth of this is in great danger. If it is desired that we are kept down—in our place—you are the key showing that no one’s place is carved in stone. That is a very messy sort of thinking for those in government to allow the public. You bear a dangerous truth—the type that shifts paradigms.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That is the true definition of the Stormbringer, I think. You are in great danger, my dear,” Caleb confirmed. “But now you are faced with an equally great choice: run or face down destiny?”
“What if running is my destiny?”
A board whined beneath Rowen’s weight and Caleb faced him.
Glancing down, Rowen cleared his throat.
They released hands—no, Caleb released Jordan’s hand. Jordan’s fingers sought Caleb’s once more, crawling up the tips of his to interlock again.
“Yes,” Caleb coaxed, leaning slightly forward, a smile sliding up one side of his face.
Rowen focused on Jordan’s face instead. On the scar that crawled along her neck and cheek, blossoming like some exotic and angry flower and yet unable to detract from her beauty. It simply gave her beauty another layer.
She glared at him before looking away.
“They request your presence,” Rowen said, his breath tight in his chest.
She looked behind her, at the mechanisms controlling key aspects of the ship she Conducted.
She waited.
“Jordan,” Rowen said.
She closed her eyes and stayed still.
“Jordan,” Caleb whispered, and Jordan’s eyes fluttered open and she nodded, her eyes never meeting Rowen’s as Caleb led her to the table. Rowen trailed quietly behind until pride overtook him and he lengthened his stride, coming up beside Caleb.
The wind toyed with Jordan, playing around her dress’s hem and spinning around her body to ruffle her short, dark hair. It rumbled across the deck like a playful puppy.
And then it snared the wanted poster from where Rowen had tucked it in his belt, tossing it to the deck where it rolled and fluttered before Caleb.
Caleb scooped it up, and Rowen swallowed hard, extending his hand for it and hoping it wasn’t unrolled.
Without giving it a glance, Caleb smacked it into Rowen’s upturned palm and continued on his way.
Rowen wrapped his fingers cruelly around the poster, rolling it tighter and no longer trusting it to his belt. But holding it started him thinking, as he worried the poster in his grip. If Jordan wanted escape—a way to be gone from the life she’d been forced into—perhaps Rowen could finance such a thing whether his parents had disowned him or not. The money from his wanted poster might not buy a huge house or the trappings she was born into—nor all she truly deserved …
But perhaps she had lower standards now.
And if he gave the bulk of money to the revolution as he promised Evie, would the Tempest’s captain blame him if he kept something for his efforts—for the risk to life and limb he took in the process?
He didn’t think she would begrudge him that. So, his eyes on Jordan as everyone arranged themselves around the table, his mind stumbled through a plan to somehow weave revolution into his happily ever after.
He knew they might yet have it all.
***
Philadelphia
The falling rain silenced and soaked Philadelphia’s Below, crawling into John’s bones, carrying a chill. He clamped his teeth together to keep them from rattling and bent low, hissing to the girl still stooped and sopping wet. “Cynda!”
Her head came up and she scrabbled back farther from the water’s edge.
He called her name again and she whipped around, her eyes slits as she peered toward the shadow holding him. “‘Tis John,” he said, stepping away from the building at his back so she could make out his form more easily. Light filtered out from a few nearby windows, yielding patches where vision was easier in the downpour.
Recognizing him, Cynda leaped to her feet and ran at him. John spread his arms for a hug, surprised when she shoved him back into shadow. Breath puffed out of him as he slammed into the wall. “Stay in the shadows,” Cynda urged. “They left a gunman who makes rounds. It’s not safe for you here, John.”
“You will not make me leave you, child.”
She shook her head and hugged herself, looking back up and down the strip of stones and wood that ran along the waterway. “The rain should start to lessen soon, don’t you think?” she asked as she stepped away from him.
“Sure enough. Round ‘bout another hour or so,” he said to her back.
“That’s when they’ll come for her,” she said. “The blood mixing in the water—it calls them. That’s what they say …”
“They’ll not devour her,” he fumed, fists hard at his sides, the complaints of an old man distant at the idea of such injustice.
“No, they won’t,” she agreed, spinning back to look at him, her eyes large and mournful. “But John, they aren’t like we’ve been taught,” she said, her voice cracking. “Not at all.” Then she went back to her assigned position and knelt there, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking.
Chapter Three
America, thou, half-brother of the world; With something good and bad of every land.
—Philip James Bailey
Aboard the Airship Artemesia
Bran’s head snapped up when the Wandering Wallace announced, “There is a method to this madness.” The Wandering Wallace took a seat at the table’s head.
There were a dozen places Bran would rather be, and judging from the dull expressions on his companions’ faces, he was not alone. They were all exhausted.
“We must make sure that we proceed swiftly but with caution. A nearly indestructible army works at my request, subduing any physical opposition. Its necessity will be short lived, and at the end of its usefulness many of its members will be retired.”
“Will be retired,” Jordan said softly in Caleb’s direction.
Evie’s gaze flicked to Jordan and then Jack before returning to the Wandering Wallace.
They knew something he was not privy to.
Jack continued playing with
whatever the thing was he tinkered with—a collection of small bottles and hoses now. The tiny automaton he’d quickly crafted earlier waddled around the table, its form between that of a beetle and a tiny bear. Bran leaned over the table and partly around Marion to better watch Jack work while they all listened to the Wandering Wallace.
Jack’s hands worked deftly, his fingers spinning a diminutive screwdriver as he pulled pieces out of a modest pile of odds and ends and, assembling the bits seemingly at random, turned the piece over. It was somewhat larger than his hand and an odd-looking conglomerate of the wreckage from the Wraiths’ earlier attack.
Ignoring Jordan’s commentary on his word choice, the Wandering Wallace said, “We’ll be in Philadelphia in a few days if we encourage Lady Astraea to be swift.”
“Please remember that Lady Astraea,” she stressed, continuing, “must keep her energy level high in order to make a quick retreat should your plan fail. Supposing I am the main route of escape.”
The Wandering Wallace nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, it is true that you are many things, including a means of escape.”
“Then do not push me too hard nor too fast,” Jordan suggested. “I carry the weight of two ships now.”
Evie shifted position, kicking her booted heels onto the table’s edge, drawling, “And you do it marvelously.” She picked at the lace edging one of her voluminous sleeves. “I, for one, appreciate the lack of strain on my ship, and the fact I will have a fully stocked steam engine to fly us out of harm’s way should we need it. The Tempest is far faster if we must needs beat a hasty retreat.”
Jordan glared at her.
The Wandering Wallace smacked his palms flat on the table. “We will not need an escape plan as we will not fail. But we do need to reach our destination before the people of Salem spread word too far that we have missed our docking appointment and it is realized that an entire liner has gone missing.”
Bran cleared his throat. “We should send Salem a message telling them that we are delayed. That should help.”
“A good idea indeed,” the Wandering Wallace agreed. “We shall do so tomorrow.”
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