Weather Witch

by Shannon Delany

  Maude smiled, and as she grabbed Meggie’s other hand they started down the cobblestone roadway, swinging her between them so she squealed as her feet left the ground.

  * * *

  The hawk was back and Jordan watched as it crept across the broad sill of her barred window, its tail scraping the stone and then thudding softly against each bar as it walked the length of the ledge. Jordan pulled herself to her feet and quietly stalked the distance to the window. She had never wanted to touch a hawk so badly. Her father had a few hunting hawks at the estate (another reason it bore the nickname “the Aerie”), but she had never bothered with them. They ate dead chicks and brought down bunnies and smaller birds with cold eyes, sharp beaks, and cruel talons. They were predators and Jordan more frequently identified with prey.

  But this one was quiet and curious, fascinated by the world below Jordan’s window, and likewise she was fascinated by the way it stalked from so high above. She was tantalizingly close to it when a link of her chain changed positions and clanked—and the bird shot into the air with a cry and a popping out of its wings that was so fast a feather came free and fell into Jordan’s Tank, floating lazily back and forth until it settled on the straw. Reaching out to retrieve it, she saw something sparkle under the straw. She picked up the quill, tapping its end against her fingertip, before she slowly slid the straw away from the drain grate centered in a depression in her floor. Looking into its iron slits, she again caught the reflection of something inside.

  She set the quill down and took off her pin again. With a grunt, she dug the pin’s back all around the drain, slowly freeing the thing from the rust and grime cementing it in place. It screeched as she removed it, but the prize inside was worth the worry.

  Victorious, she withdrew a tiny crystal.

  It glowed blue, growing brighter when it rested in her hand. She slid it into the top of her bodice and, replacing the grill, retrieved the quill once more.

  She crouched in the corner out of view of any passing watchman and inserted the quill’s tip into the lock on her cuff. It certainly fit …

  She wiggled it around and heard a click when she applied a bit of pressure to the right spot and the cuff’s lock sprang open. The first cuff dropped to the Tank’s floor. She started work on the second cuff’s lock but the lock was not as easy to trigger and although she tried again and again, each time trying a slightly different angle and a slightly different pressure, she nearly cried when the quill made a crunching noise and split along its length.

  She wanted to tell Caleb what she was working at, but the sound of his snoring kept her quiet.

  She pulled the broken thing out—it was no stronger than a thick piece of straw now—and certainly no more useful. One cuff open and one hand free … She quietly maneuvered the loose cuff and the chain through the iron ring bolted to her cell’s floor and stood up, freer in her cell than she had been for a while.

  She swept the straw aside with her foot and stooped to retrieve her pin. She waited until the watchman walked by on his hourly tour of the Tanks and then she crouched before her door’s lock and wiggled the pin’s sharp tip into its opening.

  A wiggle, a turn, a click, and the lock reacted.

  For the longest moment she remained crouched there with her face by the lock, completely stunned by her success. Finally she slipped on her shoes, stood and gave the door a little tug. It moved. The door was unlocked—open. She was free and if she made it far enough this time, she could return for the others. She looped the chain around her free arm and pulled one side of her skirt up to obscure it in the folds of the fabric and, truly opening the door now, she slid out into the hall and bolted for the door at its far end.

  En Route to Holgate

  Rowen had allowed the horses one break, during which he had finally gotten his hands on Silver. He adjusted all the straps and buckles and rubbed the horse while reassuring it with soft words and firm hands. Looping Silver’s reins around his saddle horn, he kicked Ransom into action, a feeling growing in his gut that soon, very soon, he would see Jordan.

  With that thought in mind he set the horses into a gallop and lowered his body over Ransom’s back and neck, making them as sleek a shape as possible for cutting through the air.

  Holgate

  She burst through the door and took the stairs at a dead run, leaping over them two at a time. The feeling of freedom—the exhilaration of escape—overrode every bit of discomfort she felt and the moment she burst out the tower’s lowest door and stumbled into the bustling and shop-lined street of Holgate’s eastern side she sucked in a breath that seemed sweeter than any she had ever taken before. It was only a short distance from the street to the Western Tower and then a climb up even more stairs than she’d come down to make it to the top …

  Her eyes traveled the length of the tower to where an airship floated, tethered as tight as they dared, at the edge of the jutting balcony.

  She steeled herself and sprinted across the street.

  That was when she heard them.

  “Witch on the run!” someone shouted, and an alarm bell rang.

  Jordan doubled her speed but suddenly every face turned toward her was fierce and cruel—nowhere did she see a speck of compassion. Men she hadn’t even noticed before reached out to grab and hold her—she shook free of them, but her skirt dropped and the chain fell loose and she was running as much as dragging—

  And then she saw the Maker and his little girl. The child’s mouth stood as wide open as Jordan had left her cell door standing, the child’s eyes wide.

  A whip lashed out, wrapping round her waist and pulling her off her feet. The men had her. The Maker was shouting and the little girl was running and she grabbed Jordan’s chain, screaming, “Don’t hurt her!”

  And then there was a bolt of light and everyone was suddenly flat on the ground. Sparks ran across Jordan’s chain and made her gown glitter with light.

  Stunned, Jordan tried to stagger to her feet.

  But the Maker had his gloves on and took the chain from his daughter’s hands.

  “Don’t let them hurt her, Papá,” the child pleaded. “She is so scared…”

  He looked from the one to the other of them. “I know, Meggie,” he whispered, “but she is as the Witches are—an abomination.” And from the look on his face Jordan knew that any previous doubt he might have had was gone.

  * * *

  She tumbled out of the doorway and onto the tower top’s stone floor. Her foot caught up in her own skirting, she landed hard on her hands, jarring every bit of her.

  “I cannot believe it,” the Maker exclaimed. “I do not know what to think when it comes to you, Miss Jordan Astraea.” He paced by her, his shoulders slumped and his back bent, hands twisting in one another before him as he thought. “The very moment I am truly doubting that you are a Weather Witch—that you can be a Conductor, you Light Up faster and brighter than a Councilman at a cocktail party! I was ready to admit I was wrong … I was ready to give up on you, accept you as Grounded…” He turned and faced her and the sun framed him so harshly she had to look away. “What am I to believe now? I thought for a while that you were right—that I was wrong, that somehow—for some godforsaken reason—the Maker had managed to torture an innocent member of the Grounded. Do you know how that made me feel?”

  “I hope it made you sick,” she hissed.

  He straightened. “It did!”

  “I am Grounded,” she said.

  “The same words, but you showed a far different reality out there on the street. So do it again. Do it now. Admit what you are once and for all and let us end this farce!”

  “I am Grounded,” she spat out the words. “I do not know why what happened out there did happen out there.”

  “Admit what you are and we can move past the Making. I can get you out of here tomorrow. On that airship.” He pointed to the bulbous thing tethered to the Western Tower. “They need a new Conductor and can train you to the finer points of the job.
Imagine. Being out of the Tanks. Being the captain of your own ship.”

  “A Conductor’s no more the captain than a maid is the head Councilman,” she snapped. Lying there on the floor, she tried to get her feet free of her skirts. The right one had no trouble and she rolled onto her back and sat up, seeing her shoe peek out from under her hem.

  He nodded once. Slowly. “But still it is better than the Tanks. So admit your true nature. Tell it true.”

  “Tell it true? I am Grounded.” But her right foot … She shook it, but it would not come free. She pressed with it and heard stitches snap and gave a little start, immediately stopping the action. Her lips turned down at their ends and she bit the lower one, worrying it between her teeth. She did not want to ruin what might be the last dress she was given by popping stitches in a place that would surely not allow her a needle and thread. Bending, she reached forward to flip her skirts up and see the problem, but she froze, her hands curled above the hem.

  The door opened and Meg stepped out onto the tower’s top.

  The Maker looked at his daughter. “I do not think you will want to be here for this,” he advised her. “The lady insists she is Grounded.”

  “Then let her go.”

  He blinked at her. “Oh, Meggie. You are so young and so innocent. She is not Grounded, little dove. You saw what she did on the street.” He turned back to Jordan and muttered, “Even if she was Grounded, I couldn’t let her go.”

  Jordan swallowed and tugged the fabric of her skirt back, immediately seeing the issue. Her heel was snared in a web of the same beautiful thread that ran throughout her ball gown. Light winked off the metallic thread and she curled over her leg to untangle her shoe.

  Her foot freed, she hesitated, fingers tracing the intricate work she would have never appreciated had she not looked beneath her skirts.

  “Papá, you are the Maker. You can do whatever you wish,” Meg insisted.

  “Hush, Meggie. Nothing is quite so simple as all that.” He looked at the blades. “I would have to make you disappear to save my reputation,” he explained slowly to Jordan. “Only it’s not just my reputation I’d be saving—I have others to watch out for now, you see. I am a provider—a family man.”

  Meg was beside him, holding his shirtsleeve, but Jordan paid them little mind, listening halfheartedly. How such a sweet child could be the offspring of a monster like the Maker … But the strange threads running like a spider’s web caught her attention again.

  Why would anyone invest such time and attention to detail … Such money (for she knew metal spun into thread was no cheap purchase) … all for something no one would ever glimpse or appreciate?

  The web ran everywhere her skirt did. And it was fine—nearly soft—not something like a hoop that added body and support to a dress. She popped up straight for a moment, eyes darting as her mind chased a thought as doggedly as a terrier after a rat.

  “Besides, how else would you explain away all the potential anomalies then? What? You have demonstrated witchery at your birthday party—twice, at the Reckoning and just now on the streets of Holgate. That seems rather damning to me…”

  “No,” she whispered. “Think on the science of it—you are a man of science…” She slipped her right hand up her left sleeve, flipping the remaining ruffle as she went. Intriguing. The ruffle was simple cloth—granted, a high-class weave and thread count that created a supple fall of fabric, but … Her fingers reached higher.

  She barely kept from giving a little shout at her discovery when her fingertips brushed the same netting lining her sleeves as lined her skirting. But why?

  “We must all be men of science here in the New World,” he pointed out.

  “What if there was another Weather Witch present at each of those moments?” she asked. “What if I was mistaken for being something I am not?”

  “Accidents happen,” Meggie said with a slow and solemn nod.

  “Accidents…” The Maker shook his head. “No. How? If there was another, we would have to find it. Gather it in and do whatever I must do to Make it. But…” He ran his hands through his hair and shook it out. “How? How?” he demanded, and Jordan scooted away, more frightened of him now than she had been before. “By some strange transference of power? That is the only imaginable way … No. Highly unlikely at best.” Still he paced, his hair becoming wilder and his face more frightening with every turn he made. “There are no people around you who have been in each place. It would mean the involvement of at least one additional Witch. It would mean there is one loose in Philadelphia and one loose here.”

  “Yes. Perhaps,” Jordan whispered, her voice soft with desperation. “Think on it. At the Reckoning the Wardens held both my body and my chain … Are they not Witches, twisted as they now might be?”

  The Maker paused and stared at her. “Yes.”

  “Could they not have transferred a charge … if excited? What Makes a Witch?”

  “Heritage and the proper trigger. Most frequently pain.”

  “Must pain always be physical?” Jordan whispered. “Is not emotion as powerful as physical pain? Perhaps even more powerful?”

  He dropped suddenly into a crouch before her and she drew back in fear. “Yes, I guess so. But pain can be regulated. It teaches control. The metal of the chain…” His head tilted, his eyes searching her face for some clue. “But the party…”

  “Was emotionally charged,” Jordan said, recalling the debates, the entertainment, all of it.

  Meg came forward and stood between them, her small hand on her father’s shoulder.

  “A Witch had been found once before in my household; could there not be another lurking? Leaving us unawares?”

  He rubbed a heavy hand from his chin up his jaw and snarled his fingers into his own hair again. “The chain conducting I can fathom. But…” His gaze raked over her, examining her body language but finally falling frozen on her underskirt.

  Jordan blushed and flipped the fabric back down.

  “No,” he said, grabbing the hem and throwing it back so fiercely Jordan and Meggie both gave a shout of protest. “This is the dress you wore at the party?”

  “And ever since, minus my corset and stockings. And shawl,” Jordan mumbled, barely keeping herself from smacking his hand—it was unnervingly close to her thigh.

  “What is this web?” he demanded, tugging at it. “It is not even attached”—he turned it to examine the artistry of the decorative front—“to the design. It is no clever method of uniformly working the back of someone’s embroidery handiwork.” He ran his hands roughly up the outside of the rest of the skirt and the side of her bodice, saying, “It is something entirely separate, something designed to nearly encase you in a shroud of metal … In a cage of conductive material. Expensive conductive material…” His expression shifted from one of horror to one of wild wonder. “Someone must hate you with a finely burning passion,” he concluded, flipping her skirts back down and staring at the wall, his mind puzzling things together. “Someone connected to this dress.”

  “It was a gift from my very best friend,” she said.

  His eyebrows rose simultaneously.

  “My very best friend,” Jordan repeated. “But it was crafted by a strange little woman from the Below…”

  On one of the most special days of her life as a young lady she had worn a very special gown—so special she hadn’t even realized … A gift from her very best friend.

  A gift designed by a most peculiar modiste with a reputation for churlishness and oddity. Jordan jumped to her feet. It was the modiste! She had planned things out to bring her family down by first destroying both Jordan’s and her mother’s reputations.

  Meg clasped her hands together and her face lit as if fired from within as she hopped from foot to foot. “See? Accidents happen! The lady is a lady, not a Witch.”

  Jordan’s heart soared in her chest, exhaustion turning to elation. She was Grounded. She had been a victim of some other Weather Witch, but she
was Grounded. Her mother’s name might yet be restored and the Astraeas returned to their appropriate rank.

  The Maker winced at the oversimplification. “So you are not an abomination…?” He smirked. Standing, he rested his hands on his hips. The smile fell away from his face. “But you are a failure. And I can have none of those to my name. I have no choice.”

  It seemed a most frighteningly desperate apology.

  “I will never say a word…”

  “Yes. Yes you would. You are bred to a certain standard. Your type talk if only to complain and bring down those around you.”

  “No,” she insisted. “Release me and I will find my family and move us all quietly away. We will live out our days in solitude in the countryside and I will never ask nor want for more than this—just my freedom…” Her heart, so briefly flying with relief, tumbled into her stomach.

  “Papá, please,” Meg asked, slowly realizing that not being a Witch could also be bad.

  “It would be so much easier if you were a Witch … and there is the little matter of this morning’s strange display of magicking…”

  Jordan threw her hands into the air. “I am Grounded! There must have been another Witch there.”

  “He would have needed to be touching you or your dress or chain.”

  “He or…” Jordan’s eyes widened and she turned slowly to the little girl still standing between them both. The little girl with big, soft eyes who wanted nothing more than for Jordan to go free and for her papá to be blameless—who wanted nothing more than for everyone to be happy. And the word tumbled out to damn and doom them all in far different ways. “… she.” And then Jordan felt it—a pain so sharp it had to be heartbreak.

  Meggie gasped, hands flying up to clap over her mouth, her tiny heart-shaped face stretched and stunned. Her eyes went from Jordan to her papá and then to the board with its thick restraining belts and buckles and finally her gaze fell upon the array of her papá’s sharp tools that she cleaned daily—tools she never asked about, never dared to wonder aloud about what he used them for or why they always came to her sticky and covered with a red so dark it was brown …