Weather Witch

by Shannon Delany

  She hopped back from him as quickly as if he’d belched. “Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous!”

  He descended onto the first step.

  “She is gone, Rowen,” Catrina insisted. “And we are both better for it. Now you have a better chance at raising your rank.”

  He turned and looked at her, his eyes the coolest blue yet. “What do you mean?”

  “Be honest with yourself, Rowen. You were pursuing Jordan because you want to step up—not for any other reason. You’re a social climber like the rest of us. You never wanted Jordan—and why would you—she’s as petty as she is pretty—”

  He bounded back up the stairs and touched his nose to hers. “Stop now before I stop you.”

  Her mouth opened. And closed wordlessly.

  “She is our friend.”

  “She was a poor substitute for what a real friend should be and you know it,” Catrina challenged. “She whined, she worried, she put herself first—even to our detriment. Showcasing herself the way she did! That you cannot deny. But now she’ll understand what it is to be last. She will be better for being humbled.”

  Rowen’s eyes were mere slits. “If I ever find that you are connected to her family’s ruin…”

  “Rowen! You are insane! Why—”

  “It sounds like you have plenty of why.”

  “We both do—and so do most people in this city, if you’re honest with yourself. But what could I possibly have done to make a Tester get a wrong reading? The proof is in the pudding.”

  “Only if Cook makes it with sufficient alcohol,” Rowen snapped. “This will be corrected. You’ll see. Jordan is innocent.” Without another word he stomped his way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Chapter Six

  Why fear death? Death is only a beautiful adventure.

  —CHARLES FROHMAN

  Philadelphia

  Chloe scurried around John, patting at him and rearranging the cloth covering the burden he carried. “No, not over your shoulder, cradle her—it. Cradle it,” she said, adjusting the long thin shape wrapped in blankets and a quilt and held awkwardly in John’s arms. “We must be quick.”

  John nodded, following Chloe’s bobbing candle as she moved quickly down the back hallway to the servant’s quarters. It was the original stone house that the Astraeas built on the Hill and it had been, at one time, quite the talk of the town with its hundreds of flat field stones arranged and mortared on edge to create a multitude of different patterns and designs—at the house’s eastern end an eagle and shield still fit into the upper wall, constructed from the stones’ edges. But each generation had different taste and it was not long at all, considering the life span of a well-maintained house, before the Astraeas constructed another house on the Hill overlooking the poorer neighborhoods of the Below and handed the original building over to their ever-growing staff of servants. Then the inevitable happened. The new house was not exactly what a particular generation wanted, but, having no more space for building unless they tore up the gardens and fountains that helped define the estate, they built a home connecting the two previous ones.

  The Astraea estate had, at that juncture, become a challenge to the sensibilities of all who loved the simple stoic face and well-balanced proportions of Georgian architecture. If there was anything those of rank could say to belittle the Astraeas, it was that their home was a “unique” construction.

  At least that was all they could say to belittle the Astraeas before tonight.

  It was through that weaving structure that Lady Astraea’s most faithful servants carried their ladyship, swaddled in fabric, from her home and chambers into their own with its faintly warped wooden floors. Down one hall and a set of narrow stairs they went by flickering candlelight, casting grotesque shadows all the way.

  “Out the back,” Chloe whispered, opening the door for John and his burden after giving a quick glance around.

  The rain had departed with Jordan and now the sparse lantern light along the streets reflected back in puddles and slick spots on the walkways and bricks that made up the streets in the grander parts of Philadelphia.

  Tomorrow all the crystals in the house would be removed and redistributed and the fall from grace would be all but complete for members of the Astraea household. Their last chance was if Jordan couldn’t be Made. But that seemed tragically unlikely.

  Already cut off from stormlight and stormpower, their choices of transportation were limited. The carriage did not run without sufficient stormpower and neither of them was allowed near the single family horse, a beast kept as a courtesy in the same stable as Burchette kept the city’s military-grade steeds. “Old Sir at the Bilibin House been working on a special machine. Looks a mite like a carriage but with a chimney and stove on it.”

  Chloe spared him a glance. “How does anything that has a chimney and stove on it look like a carriage?”

  He snorted. “Has wheels, Miss Chloe. Quite the contraption.”

  “Ah.” She stopped short, staring long and hard at him. “Could we take Old Sir’s contraption, you think?”

  John laughed. “No, Miss Chloe. I think not. All the thing does now is belch smoke and spin gears—soon its wheels will spin, too, Old Sir says. But I don’t rightly know. I think all that smoke’s poisoned his brain.”

  “A carriage run by smoke?”

  “More rightly steam, Miss. Run by steam. Imagine what such a thing might mean.”

  Chloe’s mind was doing just that—imagining. Imagining the freedom a new power source would bring, a world with no stormlights or stormcells or Weather Witches. Why, steam was produced so easily … Lady Burchette could have powered the entire city with the steam rolling out of her ears as she was encouraged to leave the Astraea household! “No use to dwell on such nonsense,” she finally said. “Such a thing’s certain not to work and dreams and fancies never got people nowhere quick feet couldn’t.” She looked at Lady Astraea being carried so tightly and raised a finger. “Hold one moment.” Hitching the hem of her skirt into her waistband to keep it from sopping up water, she dodged away to the large greenhouse that lorded over the estate’s gardens. She returned a few minutes later, grunting as she pushed a wheelbarrow. “Here. Gently now. Place it in here.”

  John did as he was bade and Chloe arranged her cape over the top of her ladyship’s body before they made the bumping descent down the Hill’s long slate staircase and into the more frantically paced center of the city and the Below.

  The quiet and stiffly proper feel of the Hill on nearly any evening was juxtaposed with the lively bustle that greeted them at its base. People jostled each other on the streets as they jockeyed for position, a steady stream of them heading to the Night Market, scents of fried dough and smoking meats thick and welcome in the close press of flesh.

  “We going to the Market, Miss?” John asked, his eyes on the crowd.

  Chloe shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said. “What I wouldn’t give to be there eating delicious foods and watching the wildest of entertainment instead of…”

  Beside the Night Market’s main entrance a cat did a merry jig for a man holding a hoop he lit on fire. The cat gave a shrill cry before bouncing through the burning ring, landing atop a tall hat that it tipped over to collect coins tossed from the clapping crowd.

  Chloe’s voice picked up again. “Our job is an important one. Come now.” She slipped her hand beneath his elbow and urged him to bring the wheelbarrow more quickly, finding a twisting path through the press of people.

  Through the mass of humanity they went, weaving a path beneath old Bendicott Bridge, where ragged-looking men around campfires raised haunted faces and watched them scurry past.

  “This feels ill to me, Miss,” John confided, quickening his pace. “There is darkness here that goes beyond nightfall.”

  Chloe too lengthened her stride, her jaw tight.

  “Who were those men?” John asked, casting a glance over his shoulder.

  “Survivors.”<
br />
  “It don’t look like that’s much surviving going on under that there bridge…”

  “Survivors of the war.”

  “This war? The Wildkin War?”

  “No, the other war,” she corrected softly. “1812. Those men fought to keep us free, John. You saw the one missing his leg?”

  “No, ma’am. Saw the one missing his arm, though. And the one with the bandana over an eye.”

  “Those are our good veterans,” she said. “That is their fine reward for fighting in our stead so that we might go on serving tea and biscuits for the lords and ladies of the Hill.” She paused at a crossroad, rubbing her chin. She looked up one street and down the other. Here the houses were even smaller than in the Below, each only the tiniest bit wider than a single door and stacked so high in shambles of architecture that one might easily imagine an entire block tumbling down like so many dominoes.

  “The Burn Quarter,” John realized.

  “Yes.”

  The one place the city watchmen, constables, and fire companies had orders to let burn if ever it caught fire. And, as the fire companies had aligned with the gangs, the likelihood a place would burn while they fought each other was high. Still, the Burn Quarter was the one place they could find the particular skill they sought.

  A forbidden skill.

  “Miss, this be the place of—”

  “Hold the course, John. Steady now. What we do is for the good of our family.”

  “No good comes from such places,” he muttered.

  A cat screeched like it was being murdered and Chloe thought perhaps that was the truth of the thing. She touched her hip, feeling the little kitchen knife she always carried nestled in one pocket. Small comfort, that, probably only good for a poke or two. Only enough to make a thing angry.

  Still, small assurance was better than none at all.

  She counted the rambling houses with an outstretched and bobbing finger and paused, pointing to the single house sporting a fence and gate. The one spot in the awkward block with a yard, odd though it seemed. “That one.”

  John swallowed so hard Chloe heard it. Running her fingers along the wheelbarrow’s lip, she pressed forward, toward the house … seeking some confirmation she had the right spot.

  John found it first. “’Neath the roof’s edge … Be that a skull with stormlight eyes?”

  Her answer sounded through the softest of breaths. “Yes.”

  “Lord, Lord,” John murmured, looking in distress at the bundle between them, realization slow to dawn. “But … Lord almighty.” He scrubbed a hand over his hoary head. “Miss Chloe, this man…” John shook his head. “This man be a…” Still the words eluded him. He groaned. “A bad sort. Takin’ money and grantin’ life—and not a life like any of us might reckon is worth livin’, neither.”

  “A person’s life is not for me to judge. Not its quality, nor its nature, nor its worthiness of being. Nor is it mine to judge who is good and who is bad,” Chloe insisted. “Be it as the Bible charges, Judge not—”

  “—lest thee be judged?” John asked. “Surely I wish not to be the first to cast stones, Miss Chloe, though I daresay I built my house not of glass but on the Rock. Still…” He eyed the house, puckering his lips. “I feel safe volunteering that the good Lord may judge me as critically as I might judge this man whose services you wish to contract.”

  But, although Chloe heard him, she listened to none of his words of warning. Instead her senses focused on the look of the entire place, from its shaggy and overgrown exterior yard to the way the slats in the fence slanted first one way and then the other like a mouthful of broken teeth. “This is home to a Reanimator.”

  “Is a place without love,” John whispered. “Look it. No love for the land—how we ’spect there’s love for life here?”

  The moon slid out from behind the last remaining clouds and threw a glow about the place.

  “Hush,” Chloe demanded, slipping past him to undo the gate and enter the yard. Plants snagged in Chloe’s skirts as vines crawled from one of the rolling and uneven walkway’s sides to its other. Behind her, John hefted the lady and followed.

  Chloe tripped over the tilted threshold, her raised fist slamming prematurely onto the door’s rough surface and cutting her knuckles.

  “Bad omen, that,” John said. “Blood calls to blood.”

  “What does that even mean?” Chloe asked, but the door opened suddenly and she balked—coming face-to-face with a leering mask. The man who wore it was tall, slim, and graceful.

  From the holes designating the mask’s eyes, the Reanimator glanced at them both, peering at the shape held in John’s big hands. Then he looked up and down the street beyond.

  Chloe dug her voice out of the pit of her stomach and asked, “You the Reanimator?”

  He snorted as if she’d delivered a surprising smack. “Some call me that. In dark alleys and under bridges and in taverns, I suppose.”

  “I got your name from none of those—”

  He stepped back, hugging the shadows. “My name? You got my name?”

  Chloe shook her head. “No, good sir—I mean your location. Technically.”

  His exhale was amplified behind the mask’s comically painted lips. “Come in,” he said with a slow nod. He waited until they were inside, looked outside once more, and remained silent until the door was shut behind them and latched with two bolts. Only then did he speak again. “Who is it and when did it die?”

  John spoke up, anger tinting his voice. “She is—”

  But Chloe put a hand on his arm and silenced him. “She is a lady who passed barely an hour ago.”

  “What lady?”

  “Why should it matter?” Chloe pressed. “She is a lady and she is dead—does not time matter in affairs of this sort?”

  He squinted at her, his eyes shadowed beneath the mask. “Yes, yes. Time certainly matters. Bring her here,” he said, motioning to a table. He immediately reached out to unwrap the body, but Chloe slapped his hand away.

  “I apologize,” she said, voice wavering. “But she is a lady. This much I will do.” With reverent and shaking hands she pulled away the first blanket. And then unfolded the second. She glanced at John. “She’d not want anyone to see her this way,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Just I never turned my back on our lady afore,” he said, thick eyebrows rising. “Never would mean her no disrespect.”

  “I know, John. Surely she’d know, too. But…”

  He nodded again and turned his back as, hesitantly, Chloe untucked and unrolled the quilt so her lady’s face was once more exposed to the air.

  Something small, dark, and furred raced into the room, whining and circling the Reanimator’s feet.

  John and Chloe jumped.

  “Black magick!” John cried, making the sign of the cross.

  The thing took flight, landing in the Reanimator’s arms and licking the face beneath the mask.

  “Not black magick,” the Reanimator said with a laugh, stroking a hand down the black beast’s back. “Merely my dearest companion—a true vixen.”

  Her broad, plush tail flipped about like a fine dust brush and with a whimper she hopped back down and slunk back into the shadows. “Although black magick is highly profitable, it is not what I practice,” he assured. “There is enough risk with real magick and science—things go wrong and doppelgängers and fetches get born…” He shook his head. “Reveal your lady.”

  Chloe dropped the quilt’s edge and retreated, her hand going to her mouth. To see her so still … She knew she was dead. She knew it. But the shock of seeing death so plainly shadowing her ladyship’s features, making her seem sallow, so incomplete …

  The man wandered around the table, leaning over to examine her more closely. “And precisely how…?”

  “Her wrists,” Chloe stammered, her hand rubbing at her own wrist, stunned.

  “Ah. I see, I see.” He shook his head. “No. I need to see. Unwrap her fully, please.”r />
  Chloe did.

  After a long time of him doing seemingly nothing but staring at the ragged tears in her forearms, he untied the ribbons on her wrists and announced, “I can bring her back. I will need to repair some structural damage first.” He motioned to her butchered veins. “But it is nothing I haven’t managed before. Given a little time and a great deal of luck, I’ll have her right as rain.” He stuck his hand out. “Hand me her soul.”

  John’s eyes flew wide open and, turning, he stuttered, “H-h-her soul?!”

  The man’s grinning mask tilted as he appraised his guests. “You do not have her soul?” He looked from one of them to the other and back again, his gaze settling on Chloe.

  “How does one even…?” she began, but her voice fell away to nothing.

  “Amateurs. The soul or spirit is energy—not unlike that inside your common stormcells and stormlights. When a person dies, especially in a traumatic fashion, their soul wings away because, being power, it is attracted to power, even residual sources and especially tumultuous sources of it. What stormlight was closest to her when she died?”

  “They were all dead.”

  He straightened sharply. “Ah. Lady Astraea.”

  Chloe clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide.

  “Word travels fast whenever the Weather Workers arrive. There will be a stormlight near her body’s location that will still have the faintest of glows to it. It will shine with a color and hum without the power of the Hub. Bring me that stormlight with the crystal intact and I might revive her to nearly her natural state.”

  “Nearly her natural state?” Chloe asked.

  “This is science. And science is an imperfect art. But frequently improving. Hurry now.”

  Both servants turned toward the door, but Chloe grabbed John. “No. You have your keys. Stay with her. Guard her,” she whispered, looking at the strange man. “I’ll feel better if you do.”