She arranged the tinder and coaxed a fire to life, humming softly as she did. The humming became enunciated, the words growing clear.
No storm that ever strikes
Shall leave me helpless and afraid
And if darkness lingers heavy
I’ll be fearless and brave
But if ever I am wary
If ever I am scared
I will listen to the wind
For the answer’s always there
The sun burns like an ember
The air is cool and calm
But nothing lasts forever
In this world you must take on
The ground will shake and tremble
As the clouds divide
Rivers flood the land
Lightning parts the sky
When there is no one there to guide you
And no one there to help
Your courage is the key
To freeing yourself
“What is that?” Lady Astraea’s question stopped her.
“What, milady?”
“That tune?”
“Ah, it is called ‘Reeling.’ A play on words, if I am correct. My good father used to sing it to me as he dandled me on his knee. I think I might someday sing it to my own wee one, God grace me with one,” she said with a smile.
Laura picked up the song where she had left off, singing,
The sun burns like an ember
The air is cool and calm
But nothing lasts forever
In this world we must take on
The ground will shake and tremble
As the clouds divide
Rivers flood the land
And lightning parts the sky
When there is no one there to guide you
And no one there to help
Your courage is the key
To freeing yourself
“I remember that song. Though singing of storms is … unseemly stuff. Lower ranks and Witches only, that.” Lady Astraea’s eyes narrowed. “How old are you, girl?”
“Seventeen.”
“And do you have a fellow?”
Laura blushed. “There is a lad who is courting me.”
“Ah, good. Does he treat you well? And you he?”
“Yes, milady. Quite so.” The girl took a rush from the metal container hanging on the wall and lit its tip to start the candles. The room shined with both stormlight and flame. Still not comparable to daylight, but fine nonetheless.
Lady Astraea smoothed her skirts. “Good, good. You may be about your business. You may lock me in for safekeeping.”
“Oh.” Laura blinked. “But…”
“I do not require a nanny. I am simply going to occupy myself here. Read a bit by the fire. Perhaps knit. I will not allow anyone in unless it is Chloe, Cynda, or Lionel.”
Laura ducked her head and bent her knees in a curtsy. “Of course, milady. That sounds fine and good to me.” She pursed her lips and glanced about the room. “Ah,” she said, remembering the poker. “Certainly Chloe would ask me to bring this along…”
Lady Astraea nodded. “Of course. Precautions should be taken so that no one does anything rash.”
Laura smiled. “Yes, milady.” She headed to the door, pausing to address her employer once more. “May I say, milady, it has always been a wondrous treat to serve within your employ. I do so love your family.” Again she curtsied, this time slipping out the door and shutting it.
There was a heartbeat before the key clicked into the lock and the tumblers turned and Lady Astraea knew she was safely ensconced inside. She waited until she heard the girl’s footsteps retreat down the hallway before she pulled out her yarn and began to knit.
To work on a sweater her husband would likely sooner burn than wear.
She muffled a cry in the mesh of knits and purls and, clearing her throat, pulled back up, straight and proud as ever a woman of the Fifth of the Nine could be. For a moment she sat perfectly still but for the slight rise and fall of her chest and the rapid pulse fluttering along her neck.
Haltingly she continued the same song Laura had begun. “No storm that ever strikes, Shall leave me helpless and afraid, And if darkness lingers heavy, I’ll be fearless and brave…”
Then, as memories overtook her and she remembered the words, her confidence grew and so did her volume—just loud enough to make the room feel a little less empty.
The stormlights flickered and for a moment Lady Astraea felt a darkness as black as her now-ruined silhouette. “Be brave,” she whispered before resuming the song as the light returned.
The stormlights died. For a moment Lady Astraea lost her voice. If the Weather Workers had shared their condemnation and it had reached the Hub then everyone knew. Gossip spread faster than storm clouds.
“When there is no one there to guide you, And no one there to help…”
The fire crackled and popped in the fireplace but it seemed so distant—so small in the gathering darkness.
Lady Astraea picked up the song where she had left off and slid the knitting needles free of the sweater she was so close to completing, examining them in the pulsating firelight. In the adjoining room she heard her husband slam a door. Something shattered against their shared wall. He cursed. And then, cursing again, he added her name into the mix. The tips of the knitting needles glowed, wicked and sharp, and she set the sweater on her lap and knew then what she must do.
“Your courage is the key
To freeing yourself…”
Clenching her jaw and gritting her teeth, she did the thing more easily than she had expected. It was true. Nothing was merrier than the light of a fire.
The needles clattered onto the floor and she curled atop her bed, holding her husband’s sweater to her chest as she watched the struggling flame go from spark to ember. “Ashes to ashes,” she whispered.
* * *
The poker was added to the pile of dangerous implements in the kitchen and Chloe looked up, surprised there was one she’d somehow overlooked. Her eyes widened when she saw Laura step away from the pile. “Why are you not with her ladyship?”
The girl shrugged and Chloe grabbed a candle, curling her free fingers in her skirts to hike them above her ankles. She headed toward Lady Astraea’s chambers at a jog, the girl close behind.
“She insisted she was fine. Had me lock her inside. Insisted she was going to read and knit.”
Pulling her skirts beyond her knees, Chloe doubled her speed, calling over her shoulder, “The key—give me the key!”
Laura raced up to her, handing her the key as they arrived at the door. “Milady?” Chloe shouted, dropping her skirts and thrusting the candle at her companion. “Milady?!”
The key rattled in the lock and she twisted it, shoving the door open with her shoulder and bursting in on the scene.
The fire was naught but glowing embers, one candle out, the other flickering sadly to cast a pall across a small patch of the room—barely catching the butt end of the knitting needles.
Chloe took a deep breath and another step into the room. “Milady?” she asked, her voice catching.
In the darkness something dripped.
The light from the candle crept over the floor and Chloe snatched it back, holding it before her like some magickal wand, color edging shadow back as light reclaimed the bed’s edge and the sleek tips of the knitting needles, obscured in a pool of something dark … something that leeched from the quilt’s hem, dropping onto the floor at a pace far slower than that of Chloe’s thudding heart.
One last step forward and the story of the sad and nearly silent scene was made clear.
Laura dodged out of the room and dropped to all fours, gagging in the hall.
“Oh, milady,” Chloe whispered, seeing the woman’s body, so much like sleeping, but with long gashes down her forearms where she’d opened her own wrists with the knitting needles.
Chloe set the candle on the bedside table and felt for heat, a pulse, some sign o
f life, as she pulled a ribbon from her lady’s hair and, tearing it into two equal strips, bound up her lady’s wrists.
It might yet be enough.
If she hurried.
Closing the door behind her, Chloe turned the lock and grabbed Laura by the back of her apron to hoist her to her feet. “Now. You’ll do exactly as I say.” Her voice cracked again. “You’ll clean up this mess. Starting with the mess you just made.” She pointed to the weeping pile of vomit that oozed across the hall floor.
Then she had her skirts in her hands again and was running back to Lionel—if for no reason other than to know where he was so she could better avoid him as she did the next dark thing that needed doing. In the service of the Astraea family for five years already, Chloe was not ready to face the rest of her life without them. Not yet. Not quite so soon. She had lost her first family far too early—she would do whatever it took to keep this family together. Her familiarity with the house’s layout made it nearly no problem to run in the dark back the way she’d come—nearly no problem.
She slammed into him at top speed, the solid mass of his body enough to throw her onto her rump. “John?” she asked as he reached down for her hand, begging her pardon.
“Yes, Miss Chloe. Is John.”
“Perfect. I need you to help me carry something heavy. And we need to make haste.”
“I can make haste, Miss Chloe.”
“That’s what I am counting on. This way. And no questions, you understand?”
She glimpsed just enough of his dark form in the shadows to see his head full of tight salt and pepper curls nod in agreement and once more she hiked up her cumbersome skirts and hurried back to Lady Astraea’s chambers.
* * *
Rowen stomped his way up the large stairs leading to his family’s main porch and would have thrown open the door in a dramatic fashion had not the servants stolen the opportunity by opening the doors quite politely in advance and even bowing to their young master.
It infuriated him even more—the fact he could not throw an appropriately sized tantrum on his family’s estate because they were too well taken care of by servants who bent and scraped to his mother’s every wish. He turned and watched her hurry up the stairs, her parasol bobbing as she took each step. Ridiculous to carry a parasol at night, but Mother wished not to muss her bonnet in the wet.
“Rowen, be a dear and—” She held out her parasol, its top damp from water still dripping from rooftops.
He took it from her without a word. And seethed a bit more at his automatic reaction.
She cleared her throat and a butler appeared to help her remove her jacket. “It is simply dreadful out,” she said with a disdainful sniffle.
“And the party, madam? How was it?” the butler, a young man only a half-dozen years older than Rowen, asked, glancing at Rowen although he addressed Lady Burchette.
Rowen puffed out a sigh and shook his head.
“Let us never speak of that event—or that family—ever again, Jonathan,” Lady Burchette said simply.
The butler’s eyebrows shot up, but Rowen turned away, unable to do anything, unwilling to say any more. Rowen stalked away.
“Master Rowen,” Jonathan called, “your coat and hat, young sir—”
“Oh, let him be. Poor thing,” his mother said. “He nearly ruined his entire life tonight. Over a girl. Can you imagine?”
Jonathan pressed his lips together in a firm line and shook his head no. A poor liar, he was not caught because Lady Burchette was uninterested in anything about servants’ lives. They lived to serve. How important or interesting could their existence possibly be?
Rowen threw his hat to Jonathan.
“Boy,” Rowen’s father called. “Join me in the study for a drink.”
Rowen blew out a sigh, shook his head, blond hair flying, and stomped away. Down the main hallway he went, past the portraits of his ancestors and the picture of his entire family standing together—the picture in which his mother tersely proclaimed Rowen showed too many teeth—men were meant to be stoic, not funny.
He paused before the picture, examining his face perfected in paint. It was not a bad likeness, though his jaw was a bit stronger in reality and the artist had somehow missed the too-obvious dimple in his chin. His upper lip looked oddly long because his mother had insisted the artist paint over his grin.
His father looked suitably stoic. Or cowed. Rowen was never sure which.
But the painter was rumored to be the finest in the city—and one of the best in the entire region. He had quite the reputation and that mattered far more than accuracy. Lady Burchette had even said once Rowen obtained Jordan’s promise she would arrange to have her included in a brand-new sitting.
His mother had promised Jordan would be as much a part of their family as Rowen felt he was a part of hers.
And now?
It was all ruined.
He growled out his frustration, his hands snapping forward to grab the picture by its frame and dash it onto the floor where he could better dance on his mother’s face. Once she had called Cynthia Astraea her “best of best friends.” And yet she had abandoned her—believed the Tester and accepted the worst of all rumors …
She had not defended her in her time of need.
His fingers tightened on the frame. Just a small move to lift it off the hook and …
“It is a fine portrait.”
He jumped, hands clamping down on the picture in surprise and pulling it free from the wall.
Catrina blinked in surprise.
Rowen swallowed a groan. “Would you”—leave me the hell alone for a while, for once? He stretched his lips into a smile—“like to see it closer?”
She tilted her head. Weighing the scene with glittering eyes. “Why yes,” she said, stepping over so that she stood tucked up into the curve of his side, her skirts pressing against his hip, her shoulder warm against him. “Oh. Wait,” she said, and she ducked under his arm to stand between him and the portrait in his hands.
The change in position was unsettling. Her skirts brushed the front of his trousers and her perfume filled the small space between them. Then she spun in the circle formed by his arms and the huge portrait and managed to press her bodice—was something that low cut truly the fashion of the day? he wondered—against his chest. “Remarkable,” she whispered, batting her eyelashes, her nose nearly at his chin as she looked up at him from beneath lacy lashes.
She leaned in, stretched up …
Rowen belched and she shrieked, engulfed in a scent that surely clashed with the bouquet of her perfume.
Straining his shoulder with the weight of the picture, Rowen’s right hand released it to allow Catrina some distance. He turned back to the wall and hung the portrait again. He belched again. “Yes. Nearly as remarkable as the cucumber sandwiches I had at the Astraea estate—they keep”—he belched once more and rapped on his chest with a fist as he turned back to face her—“talking to me.”
“Oh, Rowen,” Catrina said, pulling her fan free to move the offensive air away. “Whatever would your mother say?”
“She would say, ‘Dear heavens, Rowen, have you not yet managed to come to grips that your innards are not capable of appropriately processing cucumbers?’” He shrugged. “I will surely spend more than my fair amount of time in the water closet as a result.”
Catrina wrinkled her nose.
“And God help whoever attempts to use it after me—I can curl your hair without pins or presses,” he said, pressing his lips into a firm line and nodding with an expression frighteningly akin to pride.
Catrina fanned faster. “Rowen, that is highly inappropriate talk—offensive talk—to share with a lady.”
“Then perhaps you’d better go, because I do not feel a desire to be tremendously proper on this eve.”
“Oh. I see.”
Rowen turned to head down the hall. She had not moved farther, so he determined it was up to him to put greater distance between them. But o
nly a few feet toward his next destination he heard the clatter of her heels as she raced to catch up.
“Perhaps just this once I might be a bit improper, too,” she suggested with a wink.
Inwardly he groaned and instead of turning left at the next intersection of hallways, he turned right, pausing at the top of a set of stairs.
“Excellent well,” he said, sounding far heartier than the shadows in his eyes proved him to be. “Let’s get drunk.”
Catrina startled at the suggestion, stepping back from the top of the stairs and eyeing Rowen in disbelief. “Get drunk? Imbibe?”
“Imbibe our asses off,” he clarified.
Her eyes shot wide open. “Why, Rowen … Such language.”
“I’m ranked Sixth of the Nine. We imbibe. We smoke. We curse. Jordan understood that.”
She opened and closed her fan again and again. “Well, Jordan had reason to understand such behaviors, considering the taint of her blood.”
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Do not speak that way about Jordan. You know her better than anyone. You were her friend first. You introduced us—”
“And I am so awfully sorry for that, Rowen. I nearly brought you to your ruin because I made a poor choice of a friend.”
“No. Do not do that. Jordan isn’t perfect.”
“Wasn’t perfect,” Catrina corrected.
“Why are you putting her in past tense? She’s not dead.”
“She must be to us,” Catrina said with a discerning pout. “What is your family’s motto?”
“Justice foremost.”
“And that is what this is, dear Rowen. Swift and terrible justice, but justice nonetheless. Imagine if she had been allowed to continue unfettered? What a danger to society might she have become? We have enough problems with the Frost Giant lurking about the streets, but a full Weather Witch?”
Blinking at her, he wrapped his fingers around the staircase’s broad wooden banister so he wouldn’t wrap them around her slender neck. “They are wrong. Jordan is no Weather Witch and they will discover their mistake soon enough and make things right.”
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