Holding the curling paper stacked between her fingers and thumbs, she read them, then read them again.
And again.
This was not good.
She tucked the slips of paper up her sleeve and unwrapped a ribbon from around her head. Easing back to the owls, she wrapped the ribbon around the rail and threaded it through their leg bands. Knotting the ribbon, she securely tethered the trio.
They would not carry their message any further, instead she would carry it to the Wandering Wallace.
She ran a hand over the nearest owl’s head and made her way to the elevator. With a stomp, she summoned it and rode it down to the Wandering Wallace’s level.
He came to his door, masked again, now a raven, black and iridescent feathers and purple, black, and blue ribbons trained back from his brow and trailing down onto his shoulders and into a thick, short cape.
Perhaps not masked again, but still. Perhaps he was always masked.
“What?” he asked, inserting his fingers into the eyeholes to rub the bridge of his nose.
“Owls have landed Topside.”
“Owls.”
“The Wildkin are making their way north. An army of them,” she whispered. “It’s war.”
“We are so close … But war …”
“We dare not wait any longer. We must make our move now. March now. The Council will still be in their chambers. They do not dismiss on rain days until the skies clear and the downpour stops. They would not risk their outfits getting damp.”
“Gather the troops, don the masks,” he agreed. “We do this now.”
***
Aboard the Artemesia
The Artemesia had turned madhouse as the final frantic preparations for revolution were made. Still, in the thick of things, Rowen paused before her, goggles hanging around his neck like some heavy, exotic necklace, the pod he and Jack had taken before into Philadelphia modified with an open cockpit and sitting with its nose hanging off the edge of the deck, a gun bolted to a swivel post inside.
Jack was buckling up, but Rowen—he was watching Jordan with a focus that made her shift her weight from foot to foot. “We will land and unite our human troops with the mechs and march on the Council. I will not see you again for …”
“ … a while,” she agreed. “Perhaps at the Council. Perhaps north of here. When at war,” she added. She blinked and put words to the fear she felt. “Perhaps not again.”
“No,” he insisted. “We may not see each other for a while, but we will see each other again. I will not lose you again and you will never be free of me,” he promised, stepping forward. His boot brushed the side of her foot and he slowly reached his hands out to her and rested them lightly on her waist.
The weight of his hands, the size of them, the warmth of them—she felt it even through the fabric of her dress. It was a touch and a moment so intimate it made what she could feel through her clouds pale in comparison. Her heart hammered in her chest and, licking her lips, she looked away from those changeable eyes of his, focusing instead on his broad shoulders. “You will find me again?” she asked so softly he leaned in to better hear.
“Yes. And I will not wait nearly as long this time.” He pulled her a hairsbreadth closer to him, but even such a small move—in a presence so large as Rowen’s–made it hard for her to breathe. “But you must promise me something as well …”
Jack cleared his throat.
“What would you have me promise?” she asked, slipping her hands up to rest on his shoulders. She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes.
His voice deeper, thicker, he said, “That you stay smart and stay safe. As you once told me, take no unnecessary risks. Do nothing in which the cost outweighs the reward.”
“Is that all you require? That on the eve of revolution I look out for myself more than for others?”
He groaned and his hands walked around her waist until they rested on the small of her back. “I am a selfish man, Jordan. A needy man. And no, that is not all I need of you before I go. There is one last thing, Jordan Astraea of the grand airship Artemesia.”
She could not help herself but the edge of her mouth curled up, cutting into her cheek to create a dimpled smile. “And what would that be?”
Jack cleared his throat again. More loudly.
Out of the corner of her eyes, Jordan spotted Evie moving toward the pod and Jack. She paused by the open cockpit, watching him with a soft smile on her face.
“Just one, little thing,” Rowen guaranteed.
Jack cleared his throat so loudly it seemed he’d swallowed a growling dog. But the sound was squelched when Evie leaned into the cockpit and kissed him. Hard.
Jordan blinked and returned her gaze to Rowen, her eyes resting on his chin. “What?” she whispered, feeling the answer deep inside her. Her stomach somersaulted and her toes flexed against the cool wooden boards of the deck.
And when he kissed her she only rebelled for half a heartbeat, fighting the swell of panic with the authority of logic. This was Rowen. Rowen who had done his best to defend even the memory of her honor. Rowen who had journeyed to free her and in the process lost his best friend since childhood. Rowen, her far too willing but always too late hero.
Opening her eyes, she let Rowen’s image push back the ghost of a far lesser man like sunlight forcing back shadow. And she kissed him back, melting against the firm press of his lips and running her fingers up his neck to slide into his thick blond hair.
She let him pull her closer so her body crushed against his and she struggled to catch her breath, and finally pulled back, watching Rowen’s half-closed and glittering eyes.
Evie had stepped back from Jack, and Jordan realized that all eyes on Topside were pinned to her.
Everyone was smiling.
She blushed fiercely, stammering out, “You had better go. And now.” Her fingers slipped back down his neck, and he shivered. Her hand rested on his chest, palm flat, and she was reassured as his heart thudded as rapidly as hers.
“Yes,” he rasped. He took her hand in his and swept it to his lips, giving it a gentle kiss before releasing it. “I will see you again. And soon. I swear it.”
Then he loped across the deck, slipped into the cockpit, and buckled the belts around his body. He pulled his goggles into place before reaching out to the swivel gun mounted above Jack’s headrest.
Stache, Marion, and the Wandering Wallace stepped over to the pod’s back and, counting to three, shoved it overboard. For a moment it whistled, shooting straight down, and then the noise of the wings popping open reached Topside and Jordan breathed again.
Topside on the Artemesia began to empty as many of the rebels vaulted over the makeshift crosswalk to the Tempest. When the last of that crew was aboard the two ships separated, Evie taking back her command to land the smaller ship and release the army of automatons waiting inside it.
***
Aboard the Tempest
There was a dull crunch as Evie set the Tempest down near the Western Tower. She winced and ran a soothing hand over the ship’s rail. “I’ll make sure you’re all patched up and right as rain,” she assured it. “Soon.”
The mechs waited at the bottom of the ship, just inside the doors and standing in neat rows, their arms at their sides, their eyes glowing nearly as strongly as the soul stones in their chests.
The ship’s door opened with a groan, slapping against the wet grass beneath it and under cover of graying and drizzling skies, the mechs marched forward, their orders clear. They would meet Jack, Rowen, and his friends at the crest of the Hill. Not far from the Astraea estate.
***
Philadelphia
The mechs making their slow and steady progress toward the Council, the Wandering Wallace’s small band headed for the Hub. With no sense of ceremony, Stache kicked down the back door and the group of them pressed into the hallway, rushing forward to face the hanging man.
“What are you doing here?” the Hub cried.
&nbs
p; “Delivering the first of many doses of truth,” the Wandering Wallace said from behind Stache, Evie, Marion, and Tsu.
“No one is to be here anymore,” the Hub growled. “Leave before I summon the guards.”
But Stache and Marion moved aside and Evie leaned tight against a wall, allowing the Wandering Wallace to step between them and forward, into the spotlight. Such as it was.
Evie and Tsu lingered in the hallway, Stache and Marion skirting the Hub and moving down the hall behind him to secure the other door. Or deal with the guards more directly. It did not truly matter.
“You are free,” the Wandering Wallace announced. “The Council, the newspapers—they have lied to keep you and your kind enslaved. But that time is at an end.” He reached up to cut one of the man’s many hanging cords.
“No, you mustn’t,” the Hub cried. “No, not again … the children …”
“There are no children,” the Wandering Wallace soothed, “there haven’t been in years.”
“No,” the Hub insisted, whimpering. “The newspapers … the boy was so badly scarred …”
“Yes,” the Wandering Wallace agreed. “He was scarred in a purposefully set fire more than a decade ago. And he survived—in part to the lights and power your kind kept lit. But not the aid of proper doctors or nurses. The lights that saved him led him into the Night Market where a beautiful violinist took him in, healed him, and made him her son. But that boy is grown. And he is ready to change the world and free the Witches.”
“No,” the Hub insisted, his eyes sparkling. “The stories … ?”
“Are recycled,” the Wandering Wallace said.
“And the boy?”
“Stands here before you,” the Wandering Wallace stated, slipping off his mask and hood to reveal his damaged face, “a man scarred but well. Very much alive. A man who has come to release you from slavery.” He gave the first cord a twist and popped it free, then he slipped his arm around the waist of the dangling man.
“You are he the child in the old paper—Wallace?”
“Yes.” He undid the next cord, and the next, accepting more and more of the older man’s weight as his own as more of his supports—and his tethers—were pulled loose.
“Stop,” the Hub still insisted, and the Wandering Wallace paused, looking into his lined and weary face.
“Why?”
“Leave me hang here,” he said, shifting away and grappling with the remaining coils and chords. He wrapped one arm around a section of them and reclaimed some of his weight from the Wandering Wallace. “Let me leave in my own way. Let me make them deal with what’s left of me.”
“And what will you … ?”
“Let me go. Step away and cover your eyes,” the Hub commanded, and the Wandering Wallace knew from his tone that now was not the time to question. He covered his eyes but the blast of white light shooting free of the Hub’s flesh bled through the narrow spaces between the Wandering Wallace’s fingers, making him hiss and hunch against the biting glare.
A boom shook the small building and hundreds of small popping noises blended together inside and out like a mad chorus of crickets.
The lights throughout the grand city of Philadelphia winked out and, taking his hands away from his face, the Wandering Wallace knew the Hub was dead.
And Philadelphia was utterly blind and drenched on the night of his revolution.
The Wandering Wallace slid a small light free of his sleeve, one of few dozen he had Jordan fill with enough power to light one’s path. Evie held another, as did Stache, Marion, and Tsu. The enemy might be kept in the dark, but the Wandering Wallace’s people were prepared for anything.
He hoped.
He tugged the hood back on, adjusting the eyeholes in the mask so his vision was clear and sharp—the way any good revolutionary’s vision should be on the night he’d change the world.
***
Philadelphia
They left the Hub quickly, the guards unconscious, the doors wide open, and a third of the cords that connected the man who had given the Hub its life and power cut so no one else could quickly and easily take his place.
They ran until they found a carriage and, when they could not persuade the driver to hand over the reins peaceably, they hit him and left him curled by the road. Such were the sacrifices made during revolution.
One of Jordan’s special lights hitched to the front of the horse’s harness, they pressed hard for the Hill and the Council’s chambers, the rain a veil, the air thick with the tangy scent of minerals. Behind them the sound of confused voices rose and spread as people realized there was no regular stormlight left glowing in the city.
The Wandering Wallace pressed the beak of his raven’s mask to the nearest of the carriage’s windows and peered out at the dark streets, only the gloss of rain-slicked cobbles and bricks reflecting light back at them. The carriage slowed, Marion picking his away along roads he wandered as a child—roads, much different in the dark. The Wandering Wallace curled his hand around the Grounding bar hanging above the windows and chanted, “Faster, faster,” as if that was all that was required to get them to the Council’s chambers.
Tsu leaned against his back, combing her fingers through the feathers and ribbons adorning his hood.
He closed his eyes and tried to relax beneath her gentle touch—tried not to think of the fox lying asleep in his cabin—the fox who was his Wildkin wife in every way but the legal ones. The fox who would likely never return to her human form and would never be able to act as his intermediary with the Wildkin who were now amassing their forces and swimming north along the coast.
The fox named Miyakitsu who held his heart and had been the beginnings of the doppelgänger who now rested against him, more comfortable than he felt he would ever be in her presence. She was, in nearly every way, an exact replica of Miyakitsu. Except for her memories and her knowledge of how she came into existence. Sometimes lies were the fairest tales to tell, he thought.
They turned up the sloping road that wound around the face of the Hill, and the buildings spread out, thin alleys first and then narrow swatches of yard and grass between them. Water pelted the windows and pulled the images of buildings down in long, tearful streaks, and he sighed.
The carriage faltered by the graveyard, grinding nearly to a halt before he heard the rattle of reins and the muttering of Marion. The wheels hissed through thin puddles and the carriage picked up speed, horses trotting, as if either Marion knew this road best of all or as if something dogged their heels. The Wandering Wallace sat up and listened. No noise of another carriage or cart came from the road behind them, no sound of more horses’ hooves or men shouting at the realization revolution had arrived.
He switched seats, moving to the padded bench across the aisle from Tsu, and peered out the windows on the carriage’s other side, looking down the hill and into the Below.
Down the Hill and toward the waterfront and the glinting waves beyond.
Although there were no stormlights, it seemed the Below was coming to life with torches—smudges of orange light glowed on his running window.
The Below was not legally connected to the Hub’s power. The Below did not legally have access to city light and power.
But few things in the Below happened legally.
And the people living there were often the first to know when something had gone wrong.
And the first to speak out against anything that seemed a slight.
They were his mob-in-the-making. The flesh, bone, and very vocal backup for his mech army. If all went according to plan they would march on the Hill and be encountered by Rowen, his friends, and the mechs.
Jordan would make her presence known and, believing the Stormbringer prophecy, they would unite beneath her.
He hoped.
If they didn’t all kill each other first, they would march on the Council and meet him shortly after he had persuaded the Councilmen to step down.
Without bloodshed.
; He hung his head, resting it in his hands. So much depended on complete strangers—people he had never met and surely did not trust.
But he did not trust anyone easily.
“Soon,” Tsu assured, leaning across the aisle to wrap her slender fingers around his wrist.
He pulled back from the window and clapped his hands around both of hers, letting his gaze travel up her body and land on the mask obscuring her face. The ornate lace mask she had fashioned—like those she’d made for each of the other women and even one for little Meggie—made her features seem even more foreign—even more beautifully mysterious. He sighed. “I believe it is time to set the next stage of our plan into motion.”
He pulled a small box out of the waistcoat he had decided to wear on this most special of evenings. It was said one should dress to impress and he had taken every related precaution. He would most certainly leave a lasting impression on the Councilmen.
And the entire city of Philadelphia.
At the very least.
He opened the box and withdrew a finely wrought pocket watch etched with curling vines and flowers. He attached the chain to one of his mother-of-pearl buttons and, holding it between he and Tsu, he opened it.
It was no ordinary pocket watch.
As he was no ordinary revolutionary.
If there could be such a thing.
The center of the clock’s face was set with a large, flat ruby and the brass hands issuing from it lay still on the clock’s face, awaiting his command. He pulled in a deep breath and, winding the watch tight, he set the hands and pressed down on the knob once, twice, three times.
He let out his breath, unaware he’d been holding it.
The carriage leveled out and he glanced through the window, shifting from one side of the carriage to the other as they made a final turn toward the Council.
A mile at most was left before his mettle would be tested. He watched the houses all along the final leg of their journey, waiting to see a door open. Waiting to see an important and well-dressed woman exiting …
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