Weather Witch

by Shannon Delany

  The Wardens made quick work of it, taking her shawl, plucking her bracelets and even the fan off her hip.

  The man giving orders looked up from behind a desk where he tallied the objects she’d come in with. “Gloves, too,” he reminded a moment before the Wardens peeled them off her arms. “Leave the necklace.”

  Jordan would have worried about the proceedings were she not certain everything would be handed back (in a most apologetic manner) momentarily. Besides, she still had her butterfly wing necklace, the paper star, and Rowen’s heart to remind her of who she was.

  The man behind the desk could not have been more than a dozen years her senior. Golden-haired, he had barely looked up from where he was scrawling notes in a journal when Jordan had entered the room flanked by two Wardens. She gathered her wits, gave a disdainful little sniff and a rattle of the leather manacles and metal links connecting them that they’d again placed her in for her appearance.

  A towheaded little girl appeared from behind him, sipping from a cup, a stuffed toy with long ears tucked in the crook of her elbow. She blinked at Jordan. And then she smiled.

  “Go on,” the man urged the child. “I need to return to my work.”

  The child looked back at him. “Is she a—a—abom…?”

  “Abomination?” Bran said, matter-of-factly. “Yes, little love, she is, so steer clear.”

  The child’s eyes grew wide and she obeyed, giving Jordan and her Wardens wide berth.

  Bran looked up at Jordan then, brow wrinkling. “Name?”

  Be brave.

  “It doesn’t matter, as you will not need to enter it in whatever that book of yours is,” she assured. “I am no Weather Witch. I cannot be Made.”

  Bran drew in a deep breath and tapped his pen against the inkwell’s lip. “Name?”

  “Are you deaf or daft?” Jordan retorted. “I am no Witch. I cannot be Made. You must set this horrible situation to rights before we have a problem.”

  Bran’s eyebrows rose on his forehead and his mouth turned up at its very ends. But his expression hardened. “Do you know how many times I hear that on a Reckoning Day?” he asked, stepping around his desk to better make clear that he was the dominant force in the room. The pen still in his hand dripped once on his boot, leaving a mark like a black teardrop. He was unfazed. “Cooperate and things will go easier on you.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Hold her.”

  The Wardens clamped their hands around her arms and dragged her closer to him.

  “Name,” he repeated.

  She opened her mouth to refuse him again, but saw something spark in his eyes and thought better of it. “Jordan of House Astraea,” she whispered.

  He stepped back around and brought his journal forward. “City?”

  She again tried to protest and was again shut down by a look from his sharp golden eyes. “Philadelphia,” she replied.

  “Excellent well. And”—he dipped the nib of his pen into the ink and tapped it off again—“when did you first discover your affinity for weather and storms?”

  “I have no affinity for either,” she said, her tone sharp.

  He shook his head. “Why do they never simply admit to the fact?” he asked the Wardens.

  They remained mute as was their nature.

  “If you only admitted to being what you are we could move along with the process. And it would go ever so much more gently.”

  “But I have no…”

  Putting on a pair of gloves, he slid open a drawer in his desk and withdrew a long needle. “No worries about infection. It is freshly cleaned and as sterile as anything in Holgate gets.” He walked back to where she stood, pinned in place by the cruel grips of the Wardens, their fingers looped into the links binding the manacles and pressed into her flesh. “Now tell me what I need to know or I Reckon we’ll get it out of you the hard way.”

  “No,” she whispered, struggling. “I can’t … I’m not…”

  “Jordan of House Astraea, ranked Fifth of the Nine, your rank is forfeit, your life is ours, our pleasure your duty, and that duty a great one.” He grabbed her right hand and turned it over so that her palm was face up. It trembled like a frightened animal, independent of Jordan’s will. “Say the words,” he urged.

  But her brows arched over the delicate bridge of her nose and she shook her head as tears welled up at the edges of her eyes.

  He sighed and dug the needle into the tip of her finger until she screamed. Sparks flared all along the beautiful embroidery of her dress, and danced across her bare skin as she screamed again.

  “Thank you,” Bran whispered, tugging the needle free. He held the journal open before her. “Please sign.”

  Whimpering, she asked, “A pen?”

  He chuckled and grabbed her bleeding finger. “Not necessary. Sign with your internal ink, please.”

  Quivering, she signed his book in blood.

  “You may take the Witch away.”

  And although she had walked proudly to her Reckoning, Jordan of House Astraea, Fifth of the Nine, had to be dragged most of the way back to her Tank.

  The moment they dumped her inside and slammed her door shut, she plunged her bleeding fingertip into her mouth. Tears ran down her face and filled her mouth so that around her white and perfect teeth the tastes of saltwater and blood mingled.

  Such a seemingly small pain, and yet it was as if something within her had died.

  Philadelphia

  The stormcells glittered along Lady Astraea’s neckline, like three dozen stars strung together. Laura swallowed hard, watching the way her ladyship reached a trembling hand toward the fine collar of crystals. “Why do I not remember this necklace?” Lady Astraea asked the servant girl, her eyes catching on her reflection. “And these bracelets … truly, is one on each wrist a necessity? It seems quite garish. Especially over long gloves…” She reached for the clasp of one to undo it, but Laura’s hand was on her own, the girl’s voice thin but insistent.

  “Milady, it is quite in keeping with the style in France. I do recall you mentioning having read so in one of the more popular journals before you ordered your own,” Laura assured. “I believe you said the style now is all a matter of balance of design. Which, I may only presume, is why even your shoes are thusly adorned.”

  Lady Astraea raised her skirts modestly and stuck out the toe of one shoe for examination. “That seems quite wasteful. Who will ever see my shoes? I have not once danced a dance so immodest as to show off my feet and certainly never”—she blew out a little puff of air—“my ankles, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Perhaps milady might yet find something about which to kick up her heels,” Laura suggested, carefully adjusting the smaller crystals threaded throughout her ladyship’s hair.

  “I truly doubt I will have much of anything to celebrate now that my daughter is stolen and my good name is sullied.”

  “They might yet make amends,” Laura whispered.

  Lady Astraea snorted at the idea. “The Council? Make amends? You are so very young, dear, aren’t you?”

  Laura blushed. “If by young you mean naïve … I suppose so, milady. But I have discovered much to assuage my naïveté in just these past few days. And much of it is far less than I ever wished to discover.”

  “Life is full of disappointments,” Lady Astraea agreed, rubbing slowly at her gloved wrists. “But it is still life—still something we are expected to muddle through.”

  Laura winked at her. “Why muddle through when you might dance through it instead?”

  “Who has ever made a life for themselves by dancing through their existence? Oh.” She waved a hand at herself. “I must sit down. I do not feel quite … myself.”

  Holgate

  He pulled out his journal and let the pages flop open to the day’s date, the cover’s brass-tipped corners tapping against his desk as the book’s spine settled and flattened. The Tanks were nearly full again, even though ther
e would be the inevitable shuffle from the Reckoning Tanks to the Making Tanks. Still, there was never anything quite like a full house …

  Not far from his feet Meg played with the doll she called Somebunny.

  Bran scoured the day’s pages, his finger skimming over his notes as he searched for the information he felt certain he had overlooked.

  Received Today for Reckoning:

  1 female…17…..Philadelphia….House Astraea….Jordan

  2 males..5 and 18..German Towne..…House Merridale.…Patrick and Hussong

  1 female……12..…Amity…..…House Jerard.………Sophia

  1 male…23……New Baltimore…..House Ravendale…..Christian

  7 males and females…4 through 9…Boston and Surrounding….Houses Martin, Arran, O’Connor, Sampson, Smith, Fenstermacher, and Andreia

  His finger went back to the page’s top and he paused at one name in particular. Astraea. Why did that name seem so very familiar? He rose and stepped to one of the library’s many bookshelves, bumping his fingers across each spine as he read their titles aloud.

  “Ah.” He stopped, pulled one out and opened it. The interior was lined with marbleized paper and the spine was trimmed in gilt design and lettering. “The Hill Families of Philadelphia.” He paged through it carefully until he found the Astraea entry. Walking back to his seat, he sat and propped his heels on the edge of his desk and leaned back, beginning to read.

  The Astraea Family

  The Astraeas trace a long and distinguished history of landholdings and titles back to the Old World and at the time of the Cleansing boarded a ship to the New World not due to political or religious reasons as many did but rather for the good of economic and territorial expansion. Having holdings in India where they own several hundred acres of tea plantations, and sugar cane plantations in the West Indies, the only thing the Astraeas lack is a suitable number of male heirs, the last generation yielding only Morgan Astraea, the only direct male family survivor of the Fever that swept the region. Losing his mother, his father, his elder brother, and one of his three sisters, Morgan became a risk-taker in business, and, at nineteen, swept up many entrepreneurial opportunities that the deaths of others left behind (expanding local holdings so they included two taverns, a clockmaker’s shop, a modiste’s shop, a haberdashery, two tea houses, and rumored holdings in the Below).

  Morgan married Cynthia Wallsingham, the youngest daughter of Albertus Wallsingham (holder of the Wallsingham estates) after a three-year courtship, rumor being that he waited so long to see that her elder sisters bore children readily. Cynthia bore him three children nearly one on top of the other and all of them girls. The three, Morgana, Loretta, and Jordan, were taught the skills required of young ladies of standing including flirting and courting, embroidery and needlepoint, dance, music, and polite conversation. Morgana married up, Loretta married laterally, and Jordan, as of this edition, has yet to come of age.

  The Astraea Holdings

  Theirs is one of the oldest and grandest houses on the Hill. Three and three-quarters stories high and an architect’s nightmare, the house ambles across three acres, the original structure being built of fieldstone in a seemingly haphazard fashion, long flat stones jigsawed together in herringbone patterns creating a busy-ness of design that was at once striking and enough of an oddity that the last generation of Astraeas decided—rather than living in a stone spectacle—that section of the estate would house their growing multitude of servants. As a result, the servants are one of the best housed in all of Philadelphia, that too being a distinguishing oddity—and a costly one.

  The interior of the house includes such luxuries as dumbwaiters, summoning bells, running water, decorative molding, wainscoting and chair rails, the first elevator in the New World, stormlighting—

  At the mention of stormlighting Bran snorted. “Not anymore; one can be certain they have been reduced to using candles now.”

  —proper paint, and wallpapers and boasts multiple water closets, a warming kitchen, true kitchen, parlor, sitting room, living room, den, dining room, and six spacious bedrooms.

  They were rich. Powerful. They had a nice house and a grand estate. That was not enough for them to be of note in Bran’s head, and certainly not in his book. He tapped the open pages, thinking. When he was a boy he had spent time in Philadelphia. Might he have heard of the Astraeas then or met them? Something was definitely prodding him.

  He stood, stretched again, returned that book to its shelf, and sought out another smaller and more worn tome. He had always kept journals—it was one of the more peculiar things about his nature and one of the things his father had hated most about his bookish son.

  “You will never discover the real world if you always have your nose tucked twixt the pages of a book,” he’d told him.

  But the world his father spoke of discovering was not one Bran had wanted to partake of. He had not wanted to be a party to war. He had no desire to meet painted women when he was only twelve and hear unsavory stories of his mother’s death when he was far younger. He had been a boy in love with his imagination and, according to his father, frivolous pursuits.

  But he had not been allowed to remain frivolous for long.

  When had it been? His twelfth year they stayed in Philadelphia. He flipped through the journal, pausing twice to stroke his fingers along a sketch of a bird and a boyish doodle of a turtle. His journals were once alive with such things and he’d spent many a day flat on his stomach observing the mysterious realms of ants and salamanders and spiders. Worlds within worlds fascinated him.

  Then.

  Before he became a Maker.

  He found an entry from the fourteenth of August.

  There are many children in Philadelphia now, some live here year round and some only come in for the spring and summer festivals. Today I was introduced to the Hill families Burchette, Hollindale, and Astraea.

  He paused and reread the names. Aha! That at least made sense as to why the name struck a chord with him.

  We had a merry afternoon playing hide and seek and Ring Around the Rosie although I, being much their elder, was required to watch them more than participate with them. All was well until two of the little girls got into an argument. There was screaming, yelling, crying, and hair pulling, and then the strangest thing happened—a thing I dare not tell my father due to the tender age of the children and my father’s less than tender nature. In the midst of the fighting an unscheduled wind blew up and whipped ’bout us until we tumbled to the ground, I sheltering the children with my own mortal coil. The wind died down and the screaming and fighting abated. I was mystified. They might have been terrified if only they knew enough to wonder about what I now wonder about.

  Had that been it, then? He had met Jordan Astraea when they were both children and been a witness to her odd affinity even then? Or was there something else?

  The library’s shutters rattled. Meggie’s head snapped up and she clutched Somebunny to her.

  Bran stood, patted Meggie’s soft curls, and returned that book as well to his shelf.

  Returning to his desk, he spun sharply around, seeing someone reflected in his lantern’s glass. No one was there. A chill raced over him and for a moment he was as chilled as he’d been trying to put Sybil’s skull to rest. He shook himself.

  He was a man of science. Such things were easily explained away if one only sought the truth.

  Again at his desk, he opened a shallow drawer and moved a few things out of it. With a quick look to Meg to be certain she was occupied, he slid open the drawer’s false bottom and pulled another journal free. Turning to a blank page, he wrote the day’s date and began his daily entry with, “All things do come full circle and there is, in fact, no escape from the past.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Society is no comfort

  To one not sociable.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  On the Road from Philadelphia

  Rowen was stiff and dusty from th
e road when the cottage Jonathan promised came into view. With renewed energy he gave a little push with his heels into Ransom’s sides and the horse picked up the pace, Silver’s head bobbing along at his hip.

  Jonathan pulled Silver ahead of Rowen once more and only pulled the horse to a stop when they were as close to the cottage as they could get.

  Herbs and flowers rioted across a modest fenced yard around which a few sheep wandered, grazing. They looked up at the horses with mild interest and then returned to clipping down any greenery on the wild side of the fence. Rowen and Jonathan looped their horses’ reins round one of the fence’s posts and Jonathan lifted the small bolt that kept a wooden gate shut and slipped into the yard to knock on the door.

  “Do we know how near the closest water is?” Rowen asked, his back to the fence and his eyes on the woods and the meadow both.

  “Far enough it’d be a struggle for them to get this far inland,” Jonathan said. He knocked on the door but the answering shout came from around back.

  A broad man sporting an equally broad hat came around the cottage and gave them both a long, appraising look before he laughed and shouted, “Jonathan! Well, I had no idea you would so soon take me up on my offer to revisit my home. What has it been? Merely two years?”

  “Three, Frederick, three,” Jonathan replied, smiling.

  “Too long either way. What a pleasant surprise.” He reached over and surprised Jonathan with a bear hug before signaling Rowen to join them inside the yard.

  “The horses?” Rowen asked, his eyes roaming.

  “They will be quite fine as long as they do not run away. I will fetch them each a bucket of water in a moment. First, though, come inside, both of you.”