John eyed the shelves suspiciously. “Seems you maintain a lot of details.”
“John, my friend, it’s nearly time to make a choice. Life or death.”
He blinked. “Miss Chloe believes Miss Jordan would be devastated if’n her mama ain’t home when she returns.”
“Returns? Weather Witches don’t—”
“Miss Jordan’s no Witch. Well, no Weather Witch at least.” He coughed. “I meant no disrespect, sir.”
“I doubt your Miss Jordan would be offended. I doubt,” he whispered to the corpse on his table, “that Miss Jordan is worried about anything other than saving her own skin right now.” He straightened and put his hands behind his back. “Your decision, dear John.” He swayed on his feet, a little bob, but a merry movement.
“Life,” John said haltingly. “Now I choose a stone?”
“Yes, make a good choice.”
He edged toward the shelves, mindful of his mass and the multitude of tiny crystals. Each label stood by its crystal like an elegantly handwritten name card at dinner and John grimaced. “I…”
“You what?”
“I don’t see so well.”
“As long as you’re careful you can pick up each card for closer examination.” The Reanimator went back to what he was doing.
John stayed perfectly still. “I don’t read so well,” he admitted after a lengthy pause.
“Ah. Then I understand your hesitancy.” He stepped to the side of the shelves. “If she was a religious woman, I have a nun who was caught in a compromising position, so to speak. Or … a woman who was a gifted hunter … a healer … a teacher … an artist—oh, no, I most certainly wouldn’t advise that—they’re nothing but trouble … Or you can do it the old-fashioned way, John.”
“The old-fashioned way?”
“Yes. Stick your hand out over the stones palm down, close your eyes, and try to see which one feels right for her ladyship.”
“That sounds simple enough.”
“And as Ockham himself would say, oft time the simplest answer is the best.”
John nodded and reached out his hand, turning it over as he’d been directed. “I should feel something?”
“Close your eyes,” the Reanimator reminded.
John pursed his lips and closed his eyes, slowly dragging his hand through the air inches above the crystals. “I don’t know—” He stopped and his brow furrowed. He tilted his head. “Yes,” he said. “Something here…” He opened his eyes. “This one.” He pointed.
The Reanimator plucked a card from the shelf. “Ah. A very good choice.”
“What does it say?”
After a moment’s hesitation he cleared his throat and read, “Lady Caroline of House Amalthea. A fine and noble lady of good breeding and manners with a kind heart and fine disposition.” He slipped the card back onto the shelf and picked up the crystal. “Sounds lovely, yes?”
John nodded. “It sounds much like her ladyship.”
“Excellent well. You may stay at this point or you may leave for a bit—it makes no never mind to me.” He shrugged. “But the rest might seem a bit gruesome if you are not familiar with the work I do. And I do not intend to shock anyone.” He froze a moment before giving a little laugh. “Well, I don’t intend to shock you.” He motioned toward the door. “You may at least wish to turn around again for this part…”
John turned obediently toward the door and, in the space of a single heartbeat, the Reanimator had swapped out the crystal’s card, stepped back to her ladyship and, carefully drawing back the edge of her bodice’s top, he made a slight incision before inserting the crystal John had chosen. “One moment more,” he suggested, and, grabbing a small jar from the shelf, popped it open and swabbed a fingertip inside. He smeared the same fingertip across the underside of the incision he’d just made. He pushed the edges of flesh back together, pressing on the small lump he’d created to seal the space shut.
“You may turn about safely now, John.” The Reanimator handed the jar of salve to John. He set different stones around her ladyship’s body. Reaching beneath the table, he withdrew a container with a wide corked top. Opening it, he daubed a bit of salve smelling of cinnamon on the woman’s tongue, saying, “The process is both ceremony and science as much as…” He tugged out a copper coin and, opening her mouth, placed it on her tongue. “… catalyst and coin.”
He winked at John and reached toward the ceiling, uncurling a wire tucked among the exposed rafters. He laid it so its end was pinned between her ladyship’s tongue and the coin. “Now we wait … Have you ever seen examples of my work walking around our fair city before?”
“I seldom leave the Astraea estate. I am kept busy tending the grounds and moving wine casks and—”
“Have you ever seen one of the parties you work so diligently to arrange?”
“Yes. Sometimes I work security. When the Vanmoer family comes to visit—came to visit,” he corrected. “They will surely return—when things are put to rights.”
“Hmm.” He paused and glanced at the servant. “When things are put to rights?” The Reanimator nodded and picked up a strand of crystals, which he looped around Lady Astraea’s wrist. Another he linked around her throat. One more wrist, both ankles, and he replaced her earrings as well, handing John her original ones. “Well. If and when the Vanmoer family returns for a party you will then surely see an example of one of my finest works,” the Reanimator said. He glanced at the nearest clock. “Not long now…”
“A member of the Vanmoer family?” John balked.
“Yes,” the Reanimator said. “One of their most memorable members, really. They have many excellent reasons not to part from him too soon.” The hands ticked closer to a large mark on the clockface and John realized what they waited for. “We very nearly have it…”
The Reanimator stepped back. “Now, I must warn you. She will act strange as a result of blood loss and … well, being dead, for a few hours. It will take a day or more for her to get her appetite back. It is best most times if you put them into a room, close them up there, and check on them in little ways. If she wonders why she cannot remember certain things, explain that she felt ill and was given a sleeping draught, and memory loss occasionally occurs. I expect your partner can handle the finer points of such subterfuge.”
“Surely,” John agreed.
The bell in the square sounded and every crystal glowed brighter with the wave of light that poured from the Pulse, and they squinted against the flash.
A spark traveled the length of the wire and connected with Lady Astraea’s tongue.
She convulsed.
A long moment passed as both men watched the woman, and the Reanimator reached down to sweep her tongue clean of wire, coin, and most of the jelly-like salve.
She coughed and struggled to speak, her tongue buzzing and thick. “Where am I?” she finally managed. Her hand fluttered to her throat and the Reanimator helped her sit.
Handing her a cup of water he looked at John and nodded as if to say, This is all perfectly normal.
She looked over the cup’s rim at him as she sipped. “Thank you … Now where am I?”
“Asleep, milady. Having the strangest dream of your life. Or of two lifetimes…” he muttered.
“Dreaming…?” She cast a worried glance about the room, her eyes widening and narrowing at odd intervals as her gaze fell upon certain strange things cluttering the space. “I daresay this hovel is more nightmare than dream.” She paused to lick her lips, eyebrows drawing together. “I feel…”
“Woozy? John?”
She nodded and tumbled forward into her servant’s ready arms.
“All perfectly normal. She’ll sleep now for hours, perhaps a day or two. Certainly long enough to wrap her back up, carry her home, and deposit her in her chambers. Then let your partner do the rest. Presuming she’s still alive.” He shrugged and held out a hand for payment.
John weighed the bag of silver he carried and, handing it ov
er, adjusted his grip on her ladyship to lay her back down and wrap her back up. “Thirty pieces, as requested.”
John had the sense that the Reanimator’s natural smile matched that of the mask. “Excellent well. Get her home, take good care of her, and keep the crystals near her at all times. Make sure her body servant knows … something … They should not even be removed for bathing.”
“I will have to lie,” John said.
“Not so much lie as fabricate a newly acceptable truth. Why worry over it, John? Politicians do the same on a daily basis.”
John grunted. “I am no great leader of men.”
“Neither are most politicians.” He waved John and the sleeping Lady Astraea, once again wrapped snugly in cloth, toward the door. “Ah! Do not forget this.” He handed the card to John.
John tucked the card carefully into his trouser pocket. “And if there is a problem?”
“I do not stay long in one place. Find me—if you can.”
The door slammed shut, bolts sliding home.
John grunted, mumbling to himself and the well-wrapped Lady Astraea, “I am a hunter. I do that on a regular basis.”
John set her ladyship into the wheelbarrow and began the return trip up the Hill.
The bumping and backward walk ascending the steps to the Hill was more a struggle than a stroll, what with the drowsing Lady Astraea as his luggage. But, big as he was, he muscled through, keeping well to the shadows, and was unquestioned the whole way home.
En Route to Holgate
The carriage came to a creaking stop at the edge of something that—by the dimly lit, rough-hewn sign—considered itself a town. Jordan sniffed and, looking between the bars on her window, surveyed a swipe of land so dark it blended into the night sky. Two tilting lightposts flanked a walkway and glimmered with stormlights.
An inn slumped behind them, dull and dusty as the road running before it and as worn and weary as Jordan felt. She squinted, focusing. Nothing about it seemed at the correct angle, its door sunken into a threshold that had been dug out to compensate. The few windows lining the front wall were bowed and looked ready to pop under the sagging weight of the walls.
“It’s not much,” the Councilman admitted with a shake of his head, his tone nearly apologetic, “but”—he sneered at Jordan around his next words—“but it’s far more than a Weather Witch deserves.” His fingers enclosed her arm and he pulled her forward. “And it’s far better than you’ll have until you’re truly and rightly Made.”
Jordan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m no Witch,” Jordan protested. “I cannot be Made. When you see that … When you all realize that—”
He yanked her around to face him, drawing her close. “When we all see that you can’t be Made, that the Tester was wrong? What do you think will happen then, Jordan of the House Astraea, who once ranked Fifth of the Nine?”
“You will be—” But she froze, seeing something in the pinched features of his face that made bitterness and amusement bedfellows.
“—sorry?” he whispered, his nose brushing past hers, his breath washing over her face until all she smelled was remnants of the food he’d last devoured. “You think we’ll be sorry? You think everything will go back to how it was, before House Astraea fell?” He gave her arm a firm shake and again began to drag her forward. “There is no going back, so you had better hope you can be Made. Because to have chosen you wrongly would bring shame to the Council. And the Council is not fond of shame. You have heard of the scandal surrounding past Councilman Braga?”
She swallowed. “Yes. The scandal broke and he disappeared. Ran from the shame.”
The Tester even laughed, saying, “Is that what they say up on the Hill? That old Braga ran away?” He laughed again, shaking all the way from his head to his gut at the idea. “He might have tried to run. Briefly.” He looked introspective, as if caught in the grip of memory. “But from what I saw of his corpse, he didn’t get far.”
Jordan sucked in a deep breath. “They murdered him?”
The Councilman spoke up. “It seems so harsh when you say it that way. Murdered. We like to think of it as removing an obstacle to continued political success. A high-ranking Witch that cannot be Made … Now that is quite an obstacle. If you catch my meaning.”
Jordan looked down at the mismatched slabs of slate making up the awkward walkway and forced her feet forward.
She was not a Witch, so she would die.
And if she was a Witch …
She looked at the sky, wondering how many Conductors powered airships right now, how many were in service to the Council, making sure the upper ranks’ wine and silks and slippers arrived on time. Were the Weather Witches truly Conductors—did they have any control in their lives or were they glorified slaves?
She was shoved into the tavern’s dim interior. The room fell silent, its few occupants setting down their food or drink to stare unabashedly at the strangers. Once again the center of attention, flanked as she was by Wardens and Wraiths, Jordan swept one hand down her rich gold skirting and frowned—it was already beginning to show wear even though the metallic embroidery still sparkled in the lantern light.
Tipping her chin up with pride, she set her lips into her most practiced pout.
The Councilman shoved her into the gloved hands of a Wraith.
Jordan shivered, trying to look beyond the dark veil that hid a face full of horrors under the brim of a fashionable hat.
“We require three rooms,” Councilman Stevenson ordered the man behind the bar. “The Wardens will precede us to Holgate.”
Dismissed, the Wardens stepped outside. A vicious wind rose up, shaking the building, and Jordan pulled free of her captor long enough to push her cheek to the nearest window and watch the Wardens be whisked into the sky and fly away, their bodies nearly swallowed up by the clouds they called.
The barkeep glanced at them, set down the tankard he was toweling out with the cleanest bit of his apron, and called, “Sersha!”
A mouse of a girl slipped out of the kitchen and glanced from him to them.
“Three rooms,” he instructed.
She nodded. “Come along.”
They passed through the main hall and into a narrow hallway that opened only for stairs and a slender ground-level door.
“Up we go,” the girl encouraged, beginning her ascent after lifting her skirts high enough to flash the entire group with her pale ankles and calves.
The move was not lost on the Wraiths, Councilman, or Tester. The stairs cracked and popped beneath them and Jordan clutched the worn railing with nervous fingers as she lifted the hem of her own dress—only far enough she wouldn’t die tripping over it. Not above her ankles.
Never above her ankles. And certainly not high enough to show her calves.
Even a young lady accused of witchery had to maintain some sense of decorum.
Dust danced in flurrying designs across the warped floorboards as the girl led them to the second floor and Jordan wasn’t sure whether to be dismayed or delighted. Few visitors meant the place had less patrons of an ill-reputed variety, which Jordan hoped meant things were less worn.
Sersha paused before a door and pushed it open. A spider scrambled off a web the door broke, tumbling to the ground and scurrying away as Jordan bolted backward and bumped into a Wraith.
Its snarl jolted her forward and she stomped on the spider herself—the crunch of its exoskeleton audible beneath her shoe. She shuddered.
Seeing the door open and the girl light the shabby space with her lantern did nothing to alleviate Jordan’s trembling. Dust motes spiraled down in the musty-smelling room. “There’s no”—she looked over the small space quickly—“no window.”
“You do not need a window and we do not need to worry about your possible escape,” Councilman Stevenson said. He pointed. “Go. Sleep if you can. Wraiths will wait outside your door, so do not even imagine an escape.”
He pushed her forward and slammed the door, locking her in.
And occupied.
A few minutes passed before her stomach settled enough for her to realize she was hungry. She had watched Rowen eat at the party and now her stomach rumbled deep beneath the many layers of her clothing.
Seated on the edge of the bed, it groaned beneath even her weight, ropes stretching and rubbing beneath the lumpy thing that served as mattress. There was no pillow and the quilt left for her was moth-eaten. She rose and turned, for a long moment staring at the bed.
It took her a while to realize she was waiting for someone to appear and fix things: the bed, the room …
Her life …
No one did.
Resigned, Jordan pulled the quilt free and shook the thing out, coughing on the dust that tickled her nose and lodged in her throat.
At least the dust was no longer on the bed.
A soft sound escaped her throat—not quite a whimper, but not far from it either.
The paper star from her party made her arm itch and, reaching up to pull it free of her sleeve, her fingers encountered the gift Rowen had given her. She flushed at the memory of his kiss. Quite the distraction! Her fingertips explored the gift: it was cold. Made of metal. And …
She fumbled with the lace it was hidden in, trying to work it free enough that she could finally see it. There, pinned to her sleeve, was a domed and detailed brass heart.
She ran her finger over its shining surface and smiled despite everything. Bringing it as close to her face as her flexibility and fashion allowed, she examined it closely. Along the edge was an elegant engraving. A script of some sort. She squinted to bring it better into focus.
Be brave.
She eased onto the bed, hands clenched so tight her knuckles whitened in her lap. There was nothing to do but sleep and be hungry. And brave. Only she couldn’t imagine sleeping. It wasn’t so much the here as the now that kept exhaustion from taking her. Her nerves jangled from being stolen from her household and the journey in the carriage thus far had done nothing to quell them.
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