by Jeff Wheeler
“An investigation?” Lady Maren pressed.
“Yes, the Ministry of Law is investigating their relationship. There are rumors that Seraphin Fitzempress is illegitimate. I don’t know what to think myself, but it seems highly unlikely. I must say, the way they’ve kept their daughter isolated is appalling. They scarcely ever allow her to leave the house.”
“That’s strong language, Vice Admiral,” Lady Maren said with a tone of teasing.
“My apologies, Maren. I’ve long felt sympathy for the princess. Her lack of affinity for the Mysteries is likely a result of her parents’ silent war. They have used her as a shuttlecock. It’s deplorable.”
“So what happens now? What is the latest you have heard?”
Fitzroy grunted. “Honestly? It’s likely a ploy by the Ministry of Law to seize power. Durrant is an ambitious man. He’s defending Seraphin’s rights. The prince regent will not be able to cast his wife and heir aside without compelling evidence. This thing could rage on for years, which would shift the power back to the Law. There could be a new prime minister called before the winter snows.”
Cettie felt a little light-headed from using her newfound power, but she was grateful for it. She knew hardly anything about the princess, but what she’d heard made her feel compassion for the Fitzempress girl. Though their backgrounds couldn’t be more different, she knew what it was to feel isolated and cut off from the wider world. Her entire childhood had been spent that way.
“I’m grateful you made it home safely, my love,” Lady Maren said, reaching for Fitzroy’s hand and squeezing it. “Cettie said you’d be home today. I haven’t seen her all morning.”
“Mrs. Pullman said she wasn’t feeling well,” Fitzroy said. “That she’s been attending to Cettie’s needs personally. How considerate she always is. She knew I’d be worried about her. I hope she’s not too unwell?”
“She’s in the doorway, Papa,” Anna said, pointing.
Their eyes turned to her, and Cettie felt as if she’d been caught eavesdropping. Fitzroy’s face brightened immediately when he saw her, but she came in slowly, hands behind her back. She felt like crying and didn’t know what she should say or do.
“She does look pale,” Lady Maren said as Cettie approached them.
“She does indeed,” Fitzroy said, coming down to sit on the couch next to his wife. “Mrs. Pullman said you started sleeping in her rooms again after Anna’s night terrors returned.”
It was true. Cettie bit her lip. She nodded, saying nothing.
“Are you feeling better this afternoon?” Lady Maren asked.
Cettie brightened a bit and nodded. “Much better, thank you.”
“Well, it may storm again,” Fitzroy said. “The Hardings are settling in Dolcoath. It is quite an adjustment for them. Sir Jordan has lived a soldier’s life and a gentleman’s, but now his work is more strenuous. He’s working in the mines as an overseer under Mr. Savage. The position is temporary. I hope I do not have to close down the mines.”
“Is it as bad as that?” Lady Maren whispered, her tone suddenly grave.
Fitzroy shrugged, looking anxious. “A silver mine that produces globs of quicksilver is not very profitable. I sent for an expert from the Ministry of Wind to advise me about the mine. He’s very busy, though, and cannot come for several weeks. We’ll know more then.”
“But then the winter will be here,” Lady Maren said with concern.
He patted her shoulder. “We have ample funds to last past the winter, my dear. Closing the mines will save in costs, but I’d rather not sell the lands quite yet. There may be something we just don’t know yet. Serge is doing all that he can.” He gave Anna a hug and a kiss on her cheek before standing. “I’ll be in my study until dinner.” Then he bent to kiss Lady Maren’s hair.
She smiled up at him. “I’m glad you are back. We’ve needed you.”
Fitzroy smiled with pleasure and started to leave. But he stopped and extended his elbow to Cettie. “Would you join me?”
Gratefully, she accepted it and followed him back to the study.
When they arrived, he bent over the glass tube and started counting the ticks under his breath. “Have you still been measuring them, Cettie Saeed?” he asked with a wry smile.
“I have,” she answered shyly. Her log was sitting on the table, and she pushed it toward him. “I think I know what is making the quicksilver move.”
“Oh really?” he asked with genuine curiosity. He opened to the last page, where she had written her note from the day before. Bending his head closer, he observed the page. His expression gradually changed as he stared at her words.
He chuckled under his breath, looking dismissive for a moment. Then he caught himself, and his lips pressed firmly together. He flipped back for several pages. His brows knit together, and she stared at him, hoping that he wouldn’t make fun of her. Perhaps he had already tried her idea and knew it was wrong.
Fitzroy tapped his bottom lip with a long finger. He was silent for a long while. Then she felt it, the subtle pulse in the room. There was something happening inside Fitzroy. Some feeling that she, too, was sharing. He glanced at her serious face, her eyes boring into his. Believe me, she wanted to say.
His lips pursed. “It’s so tempting,” he said in a soft, clear voice. “To want to dismiss this. Every instinct screams that it’s preposterous.” He reached down and tapped the page. “Not what you’ve written. But that you could have written it. I’ve prided myself these many years for being more open-minded than others.” He let out a deep sigh. “Why does part of me want to reject this? There is a little war happening inside my mind at this moment. This very moment.” He turned and looked at her, giving her a curious stare.
“I don’t know why,” she answered. “But I think what I found is true. Only I didn’t find it. I think the truth found me.”
He cocked his head at her and slowly nodded. Then he glanced back down at the open book. She could see from his fidgeting that his hands were bothering him again.
“Cettie, do you know why one of the Mysteries is called the Mysteries of Wind?”
She shook her head no.
“Because it asks the age-old question—where does the wind come from? You cannot see the wind. It is invisible. But you can see its effect on the treetops, on water, on your hair.” He smiled and tousled hers. “You cannot see it, but you can feel it. You know the wind is real because of the evidence of it. But no one has ever been able to explain where it comes from or what it is. There are stories, legends more likely, that there are celestial beings who control the winds of the earth. They unstopper their vials and unleash the winds for a time. Then they stopper the vials again, and the wind ceases. That isn’t true, of course, but it is what our race came up with to try and explain the unexplainable.”
He squinted at the tick marks on the glass orb. “When the quicksilver goes down, it means there will be a storm.” He rubbed his chin and stared at the table. “What you are inferring, then, Cettie, is that there is a force that we cannot see that pushes down on the quicksilver. It is invisible. It is inside the glass tube, just as it is pressing down on us in this very room. How would we test this new truth?”
Excitement sprang up inside Cettie. Something she had done had been helpful. She blinked quickly. “I could keep counting the tick marks each day, and when the level of quicksilver changes, we could see if the weather changes too.”
“Naturally,” he answered. “We will be doing precisely that. But I’m trying to think of a way we could test it sooner—without waiting for the next storm to arrive.”
“We could go to a storm?” Cettie suggested. “And bring the tube with us?”
Fitzroy grinned and snapped his fingers. “Precisely! Grab your cloak.”
Fitzroy had chosen to use his zephyr because of the speed and quickness of the flight. He wore his heavy coat and his gloves as protection from the cold wind. The zephyr sped away from Fog Willows, and Cettie’s stomach thrilled with
the motion, her cloak whipping behind her. She gripped the railing with one hand and held up the glass vial with the quicksilver with the other. Fitzroy piloted the zephyr himself, and they lurched into the sky.
As soon as they were a good distance from Fog Willows, she opened her mouth to speak, eager to tell him about Mrs. Pullman’s true nature. But her throat seized shut just as it had before. It frightened her that Mrs. Pullman’s power over her extended far beyond the walls of Fog Willows. Somehow Mrs. Pullman had put something inside of Cettie herself that forbade her to speak of her mistreatment. Certainly this had happened to other servants as well, which was how Mrs. Pullman had managed to stay in power for so long.
She would have to find another way.
As the sky ship sped away from the manor, Cettie kept glancing back at the tube and then noticed that it had already changed. The slight bumpiness of the journey made it difficult to count, but she did so.
“It’s already changing!” she called to him against the keening wind.
“Let’s try lower, then!” Fitzroy shouted back. She felt a pulse of power come from his direction, and then the zephyr began to descend. The air was cold and clear, and the wind chilled her face and ears. Her hair streamed behind her.
She gripped the glass tube hard and watched as the quicksilver changed before her eyes. “It’s going down farther still!”
The zephyr swooped down until it was parallel with the valley floor. A river churned beneath them. Cettie saw a small hamlet ahead and feared they would strike the houses’ chimneys if they went much lower.
Fitzroy aimed for a farmer’s meadow and brought the zephyr down so low they could jump out onto the grass. There he stopped.
“What is the reading?” he asked her.
She counted it and then told him.
“Even lower than at Fog Willows,” he said. “Write it down. Clover Valley Hamlet. Then the number.”
Cettie quickly scribbled down the note.
“Up from here!” Fitzroy said. As soon as they boarded, he went to the helm, and suddenly the zephyr shot straight into the air, lifting away from the meadow with a rush. The craft rattled and shook with the motion, and Cettie had to grip the railing again to steady herself.
Fitzroy laughed. “She’s not used to going straight up! I’m glad we’re doing this before dinner. Some people can’t abide the sensation of rising and dropping.”
When they reached a certain distance, he stopped the zephyr midair. “Mark the measurement, Cettie Saeed!” he called. The wind was much stronger now.
“It’s the same as when we left!” she answered after making the count.
“Is it, now?” he said with jubilation, and started to laugh heartily. “Let’s go higher up!”
Again the zephyr lurched vertically, pressing Cettie harder against the floor. It did feel as if a giant hand were pressing her down. Queasiness filled her stomach, but she kept her gaze riveted on the glass tube, watching as the quicksilver quivered and rose.
“It’s rising!” she shouted with giddy excitement.
“Are you getting cold? I want to go higher.”
“Go higher, then,” she called back. Her cheeks and nose were feeling the effects of the drop in temperature. But the sky ship raced still higher. Breathing became more and more difficult. They were much higher than Fog Willows now, and her lungs were burning. The zephyr halted. The winds were so loud she couldn’t hear Fitzroy calling to her, but his arms were gesturing for her to count again.
She did so and tried to write it down, but her fingers were so cold they were cramping. Breathing was painful.
After she finally managed to scribble down the number, she nodded to Fitzroy, and the zephyr started plunging like a stone. Her stomach rose into her throat as they plummeted, and she let out her air in a joyful scream. She began to float off the floor of the zephyr, almost like Raj Sarin could do merely by taking a breath. Her stomach flipped and flopped and squeezed, and her chest felt like it was full of flapping birds all caged at once. The descent slowed, and she felt the press of the floor again. Then the zephyr settled to a stop in the sky.
She gripped the railing, breathing much easier now.
“Sorry if I terrified you,” Fitzroy said apologetically. “I haven’t done these maneuvers since the Ministry of War. A sky ship can go any direction the pilot intends, but it’s dangerous going too high. There is no air left to breathe.”
“I felt that,” Cettie gasped, trembling with the thrill. “How high have you flown?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Higher than that—to the point where the whole crew needs to hold their breath. It’s easier to surprise an enemy coming from above than from below.”
“I would imagine so,” she replied. “The higher we went, the more the quicksilver rose. There are many ticks in between the low point and the high point.”
Fitzroy folded his arms. “So the level of the quicksilver changes depending on altitude. That makes sense. Fog Willows is moored at a consistent height. It takes much more effort to move her than it does a zephyr, which is why this is the best way for us to test your theory. We will measure it at different times of day at different elevations. It may be a combination of factors. I think, Cettie, that you may have uncovered a truth about the wind that has been hidden for thousands of years. The change in the quicksilver must reveal when the wind is shifting. And when it shifts, it brings storms.”
She felt her cheeks tingling with blood again. “I didn’t discover it myself. Without your equipment, without your teaching, I would never have even tried.”
“I appreciate your modesty, Cettie. I’ve heard that all the great strokes of genius came as an idea out of nothing. An observation suddenly catching afire in the imagination. There is a source of truth greater than ourselves. I think it chose to teach you because you were open and willing to listen. I may have been too proud.”
She doubted that was true.
“What does it mean, Fitzroy? What would happen if we could know of a storm before it comes?” she asked with excitement.
The wind raked through his graying hair. “It means, my dear, that it may well be possible to predict when storms will come and go. Do you know how useful the Ministry of War would find this knowledge? How it would benefit the Ministry of Law in terms of trade? Do you imagine how many lives it could save?”
CHAPTER THIRTY–ONE
STORM GLASS
The following weeks were some of the happiest Cettie had ever known. Her breakthrough had enlivened Fitzroy. It was the kind of discovery that happened once in a century, if that. She knew she couldn’t have done it on her own. But it felt as though fate or some strange happenstance had brought the two of them together.
The implications of the discovery needed to be tested before Fitzroy would risk sharing it with the prime minister. And he would need to share it with him carefully so that the prime minister could not steal the findings and claim them as his own. So, with Cettie as his assistant, Fitzroy began to set up glass tubes in various locations—in his brother-in-law’s house in the City, in Dolcoath, in each of his vessels, and in the homes of colleagues whom he knew and trusted. At several times during the day, he arranged for servants to count the number of ticks at each of these stations and send them to him at Fog Willows to record and study. This was done through a means of communication that was apparently one of the Mysteries.
They needed to come up with a name for the contraption they were inventing as it went through several iterations in order to make it more portable and easier to read and count. In the end, it was Cettie who named the device. Storm glass. Fitzroy thought it a splendid suggestion.
The first test of its accuracy happened at the Dolcoath mines. The readings on the quicksilver at the various stations would change every few days, but not always at the same time. Distance, both vertical and horizontal, played a factor. But one day the level dropped sharply at Dolcoath, even though the skies were clear at Fog Willows. Fitzroy sent a warning to Mr. Sav
age and Sir Jordan that a storm was coming. Then, one by one, all the storm-glass stations began to signal the approach. Cettie watched the windows anxiously for signs of clouds. The wind picked up and blew the weathercock around. The clouds appeared in the horizon by late afternoon the next day. Cettie reported the change to Fitzroy at once, and he grinned at her as the distant storm approached Fog Willows with jagged bursts of lightning.
It was a magnificent storm, with booming thunder that shook the walls of the floating manor. All the servants had been ordered inside to hunker down in preparation for it. All the sky ships were grounded because of it, and Cettie felt safe and secure inside the manor, even though she still slept in the garret above Mrs. Pullman’s room. She was willing to stay there so long as Anna wouldn’t be tormented. The storm glass in the City never registered the presence of the storm, and it died out before reaching the populous location.
Then all the stations returned to normal, and the skies cleared up again.
Fitzroy reviewed the records afterward, and together they used a chart to map out the approach and duration of the storm. At every station, the advent of the storm had been predicted by the falling of the quicksilver in the glass tubes.
“It’s unmistakable,” Fitzroy said in awe as Cettie leaned forward, her chin on her wrists. He used a strange pincerlike device to measure the distances between the locations on the map he pored over. He folded his arms, shaking his head slowly. “There is a warning every time. And did you notice how deeply it fell? I think the faster and more pronounced the drop, the more violent or long-lasting the storm may be.”
“What did Mr. Savage say about the storm after it was through?” Cettie asked.