Stormbringer

by Shannon Delany

  Unsettled by her unseemly display, Rowen (with his vast quantities of time running wild with the lads and his adventures into Philadelphia’s Below to explore a world beneath his rank) slapped a hand over his eyes, knowing there were things one did not get involved with.

  Certainly not when sober.

  He groaned. This had been a disaster from the start. The loss of Jordan, the trouble with Catrina, the drunken argument that led to the duel in which he surprised himself (and many others) by not being the participant lying dead on the field.

  He slid his hands back down to his sides, keeping his eyes closed. Perhaps the biggest disaster had been letting his family servant and dear friend, Jonathan, be his second at the duel. They were both made criminals the moment Rowen had fired his gun.

  But Jonathan believed Rowen had the stuff of heroes—the stuff of legends—hidden somewhere within him. He believed Rowen’s true worth would be shown, but only when tested.

  Jonathan had never been wrong before.

  Evidently it only took being wrong once to wind up dead alongside some anonymous river, the victim of a Merrow attack.

  Rowen knew little beyond what was expected of him. He never bothered with anything other than meeting everyone’s expectations: use your strengths (he was handsome), marry up if possible (he had Jordan as a viable option until recently), be loyal to your rank and enter military service (his enlistment date approached too soon for his liking). But that was all.

  Meeting the basic expectations meant one born of a good household prospered.

  The irony was being born Sixth of the Nine, a military rank, he knew he was no hero, no fighter, no leader of men. He’d heard it said by men who were all those amazing things. He could keep the troops laughing, they claimed, but he’d never lead them.

  He was as good as cannon fodder.

  The woman tapped her foot and, opening his eyes, he saw her lips twitch in his direction, pointing up into a smile. “Elizabeth,” she said by way of introduction. “And, you, what was it?”

  “My name matters not one whit, as I shall not be staying aboard.”

  The smile fell from her face and her lips tightened. “You will stay aboard until I see fit to release you. This is my world, my kingdom, my realm, and you—”

  “—are your serf?” he asked with a snort.

  Changing the sound of only one letter, and only slightly, she replied with a smirk, “You may certainly serve me.”

  Rowen snorted and scratched at his beard.

  “Give up your name, lad, or I’ll have the naming of you myself,” she warned. “And you might be a pretty thing beneath that mangled mess of facial hair, but if I name you something less than flattering, I guarantee it will stick whilst you’re aboard the Tempest. Perhaps even after you leave. Ask Wee Willy Winky if you doubt me.”

  She touched the tip of her index finger to her lips and rolled her eyes up, beginning the process of assigning him a new name.

  Wee Willy Winky? Well, at least that name was taken … But she seemed the inventive type and he did not like that at all.

  He groaned, admitting, “Rowen.”

  “Aye, Rowen…” A grin split her face. “See there, lad, how difficult is it to go along rather than be headstrong? There is a time stubbornness serves, that I guarantee. But stubbornness best serves man—and by man, I mean mankind, which of course includes the fairer sex,” she added as disclaimer, “but, as I was saying: stubbornness best serves man in matters of either love or war.”

  Rowen grunted.

  “Now be a dear, will you? I need all of these crates—” She strode across the narrow space not occupied by the boxes filling the bay, and rested a hand on a substantial stack of them. “—moved over to…” She paced a few feet and tapped her foot. “… here.” She widened her stance and tapped her right foot definitively. “Not here,” then slid it back, tapping once more, “but here. And the sooner the better, of course.”

  He looked at her blankly, rubbed his ragged mess of a beard, blinked once, and turned back to the window.

  She tapped her foot again, resting one fist on an outthrust hip. “Darling,” she cooed, “you appear absolutely stunned!”

  “It isn’t every day I get kidnapped by a crazy bitch to work on a pirate ship.”

  “Such language,” she said, scowling. “You will certainly need to mind us better than that. I shall not suffer to hear any aboard referred to by that term.” She shook her head. “We are most certainly not a pirate ship, nor a pirate vessel … nor a brigand’s boat … none of those things. We are a trading vessel,” she specified. “We are traders (the latter sound being a ‘d,’ not a ‘t,’ mind the distinction well). We are purveyors of fine goods and the occasional provider of unique services.” She paused, fanning out her fingers to examine her nails. “We operate under strict guidelines and within the boundaries of important legal codes and laws. Just not all of the legal codes and laws the government might like us to observe…”

  He blinked at her again. “I did not fathom pirate being the most offensive term in my sentence.”

  She shrugged. “What is it I’ve heard said: when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck…?”

  Rowen pawed at one ear, and, raising his chin, tried once more. “It is even less often, I daresay, that I find myself kidnapped by traders.”

  “More appropriately, you were shanghaied by traders. Or crimped by a captain. Or impressed.”

  Rowen snorted, “And yet I am not impressed by being impressed.”

  Elizabeth clucked her tongue and said, “Darling, you must go adventuring more frequently.”

  His brow lowered, combining with his already prominent jaw in what he hoped was an intimidating mix.

  She winked at him and sprang forward, grabbing his arm to tow him away from the window. He stood still as granite. “Whatever is wrong with you?” she laughed. “I saved you from the Holgate watchmen—”

  “—you kidnapped me,” he reminded her.

  “Technically, we call it something else … Remember? Shanghaied.”

  “And you expect what—gratitude?”

  “Perhaps rather than gratitude you should simply give me less attitude than the watchmen hunting you deserved, eh?” She cocked her head, eyes sharp as flint. “Exactly what were they hunting you for? They seemed quite determined pounding on that door.” She pursed her lips, watching him. “What is your crime, Rowen?”

  He turned away to watch Jordan’s ship slip into a haze that grew, thickening on the other side of the window.

  “There are crimes not even I will tolerate aboard ship…” She dropped his arm. “Have you hurt a child?” she asked, her voice thin. “I’ll gut a man for that.” Her hand dropped to a spot on her belt behind the flask.

  Rowen Albertus Burchette, unarmed, recognized the threat as it went from words to potential action.

  “Tell it true, lad,” she said, squinting. “I’ll know in my heart if you’re lying.”

  “No,” he replied. “I would never hurt a child.”

  Her eyes roved over each feature of his face, making his heart hammer beneath her scrutiny. Her hand fell back to her side, her shoulders dropped, and her lips slid back into something just shy of a smile. “Good. Not that at least.” She nodded, urging, “Come, come. This,” she waved at the crates, “can all wait a bit longer.”

  “That was the only crime you wanted to ask about? What about stealing, cheating at cards…” He swallowed, avoiding the one crime that damned him.

  Murder.

  “No,” she said. “Little else matters. But harming a child is like cutting off a rose’s bloom before a bud’s yet sprouted. Other crimes are too frequently understandable. We all run from something whether we’re in the air or one of the Grounded population.” She shrugged. “Besides, the truth will out. Now come. I would not be a proper hostess if I did not show you more of the ship on your first day.”

  “So you a
re a hostess. On a fine trading vessel.” He rolled his eyes, taking in the room. His tone proved him to be less than impressed.

  “I’ve brought you aboard the most talked-about ship in our fleet and I am ready to make you privy to many of her secrets out of courtesy—and the fact I could gut you in a heartbeat should you prove less than amiable.” The smile never left her lips even as she threatened him. “And yet…”

  He shook his head.

  “You care not—”

  “—not one whit,” he agreed. “I was supposed to be on that ship.” He jabbed a finger in the direction the Artemesia had disappeared in.

  “No, you were not,” she returned, her tone flat. “You are precisely where you are supposed to be at this moment in time. Everything happens for a reason, and for some reason you were not fated to be aboard that ship—at least not now.” She crossed her arms and stared at him with a fierce focus.

  He twitched, looking away.

  “I thought as much. For some reason Fate is keeping you from that ship right now. You must allow Fate to do its work.”

  “Wait. You’re a pirate but…”

  “Trader.” She said it more slowly, rolling out the r at its end as if instructing a child in the word’s pronunciation for the first time. “A liberally aligned trader. What? We—”

  “—liberally aligned traders—” he inserted for her.

  She mock-curtsied, turning up her fingers at her sides and bending her knees. “We cannot believe in predestination? You suppose our kind to be the guiding light and standard for all free will and liberty, is that it?” She snorted. “You probably think I’m some Robin Hood and my crew’s my merry men. Well, I’m no one’s hero,” she corrected, arching her eyebrows. “I take from the rich—so I might someday be rich. And my crew?” She looked toward the door in the ceiling at the bay’s far end and the stairs disappearing into it. “They are mostly surly. They are only merry when they are quite drunk. And then only before the vomiting ensues. So. Buck up,” she demanded, a true smile coloring her tone. “Life is short, choices are made for us, and the best we can do is roll with the punches. Perhaps avoid a few punches landing on our face if Fate feels kind.”

  He heaved out a groan, glancing away. Wisps of white edged around the window, transforming the haze into a gently rolling fog.

  The captain … hostess … Elizabeth, he finally decided, pulled out her flask again and took a few quick gulps of whatever liquid resided within.

  It was bound to be sturdy stuff to satisfy such a woman’s thirst. She recapped it, shoved it back into its carrier on her low-slung belt, and reached for his arm once more.

  Outside the window the fog boiled up into dense clouds, drawing tight against the Tempest’s body.

  The Artemesia was gone, enveloped in the weather its own Conductor cast, and camouflaged against the late-afternoon sky.

  Feeling her hand warm on his arm, Rowen did not twist away; he no longer protested. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Fate or Destiny dragged him from Jordan even though he had come so close. Perhaps his life as a ranking gentleman on the way to military service and a future of security—a future that included Jordan—was already over. He had, after all, seen his best friend murdered and killed a man and several of the Wildkin’s Merrow on the way to this very moment.

  Jordan most likely hated him. He had failed her by not mounting a timely (or successful) rescue. Why would she want him now?

  Things could never go back to what they had been before with the money and the parties and so much promise ahead of him. There was no returning to life as he’d known it when he was simply another cog fitting comfortably in the wheel of Philadelphia’s wealthiest society, the social ranks living high on the Hill.

  Holgate

  Hearing a knock at his door, Councilman Stevenson set down his teacup. He took his time rising from the comfort of his sofa, having decided to take his supper in his personal apartments again, though his gut warned him he should be eating with the other men involved in Weather Working. He should be seated at the high table in the main hall watching the Wardens, Wraiths, and Testers interact, and more importantly, listening to the rumors.

  He should be playing this most dangerous of social games.

  But he wanted none of the drama, none of the posturing and positioning. He wanted to go home to Philadelphia, to be more involved in the Council. But going home meant returning to his new and young wife, so he stayed in Holgate and frequently dined alone. He opened the door to glare at the watchman disrupting his solitude.

  The large man looked down to meet Stevenson’s eyes, a ragged scar marking his face in the space between hairline and beard. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.

  “Well,” the Councilman demanded. “Why are you interrupting me?”

  “I bring news, my lord. News from Philadelphia.”

  Stevenson’s right eyebrow quirked. “Good or bad news?”

  The watchman’s jaw went slack, his mouth a vacant space between both beard and mustache. “I—”

  “Good God,” Stevenson muttered. “It’s subjective, one supposes.” He growled and the larger man stepped back. “Tell it true. What is this news from Philadelphia?”

  “Your stallion?”

  Stevenson blinked.

  “King’s Ransom?”

  “Yesss.” Stevenson drew the word out. “My stallion, King’s Ransom, who is in the care of the military stables under the control of Gregor Burchette, is…” He tilted his head and leaned in, trying to draw the information out of him.

  “… gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He has been stolen.” The watchman stepped back.

  “What?!” Stevenson hopped back as well, his fingers darting into his hair as he tried to keep his brain from bursting out of his skull. “King’s Ransom has been stolen?”

  “Yes, my lord. Along with one other horse.”

  Stevenson released his hair and rubbed his forehead instead. “I care nothing for any other horse. King’s Ransom is … was…”

  King’s Ransom was the only reason he married his new wife. King’s Ransom was the best bit of her dowry. King’s Ransom was the reason he tolerated her simpering existence and returned to Philadelphia as often as he did.

  “King’s Ransom has been stolen,” the watchman repeated.

  “How could things get any worse?” Stevenson rubbed his forehead. “And what precisely is Gregor Burchette doing to find the horse thief?”

  “Lord Burchette has given his assurance that all his men are watching out for the thief and that you will surely receive the justice you deserve.”

  “Good enough! We all eventually get our just deserts.” Closing the door, he muttered once more, “How could things get any worse?”

  Aboard the Artemesia

  Shuffled aboard the Artemesia, Bran had kept a careful eye on his daughter Meggie as well as on Marion Kruse, the only escaped Weather Witch, whose hand wrapped tightly around Meggie’s upper arm. Bran and his lover, Maude, followed with quiet caution, knowing the man who controlled the little girl’s fate controlled them all.

  It seemed to take so little for a Witch to brew a storm: concentration, passion, moisture in the air connecting with the moisture in their body—and it took so much less for a Made Weather Witch, like Marion, to call one element of the weather and cast it.

  Anywhere.

  Any Weather Witch in living memory Bran Made was quite a commodity.

  And quite a liability.

  There were reasons Witches were kept under tight government control.

  Could they call a storm to dampen rebellious spirits? A simple task used in the May Nativist riots! Bring the rain on only certain days, at certain times, and for preset durations to optimize crop production? Of course. Feed the power of the weather itself into double-terminated quartz storm crystals to act as batteries for everything from lights to hot running water? Yes!

  Toss lightning into a government building in protest?

&
nbsp; Destroy crops by withholding rain from a region?

  Drown an entire town?

  Yes.

  There were a multitude of reasons to maintain Witches, and even more reasons to maintain control over Witches.

  Marion Kruse had a more subtle ability than gathering thundering storm clouds. He had a keen understanding of cold. Bran bet the Philadelphia newspapers had nicknamed him the Frost Giant—a man who killed prize-winning roses and most recently a tree near the Council’s gallows—killed with a cold that grew from the inside out.

  Bran’s gaze remained pinned on his kidnapper’s hand. Marion could summon a cold so powerful it would freeze the child’s heart in her chest. So Bran and Maude kept their heads down and their voices silent. There was no way to win against your abductor if winning meant losing your recently discovered daughter.

  Nearby, a masked man, his face hidden beneath the finely wrought carved and painted leather face of a gazelle, horns sweeping out behind him, paused. He brought with him a large and well-adorned trunk on wheels, a carpetbag and two boxes strapped between atop it. At his feet a fox the black of a starless night stopped, her tail curling around his legs.

  Even as the crowd pushed their way through the Artemesia’s hold toward the grand staircase and their cabins beyond, the masked man was noticeable.

  An authoritative voice said, “Come now.” Everyone in the liner’s bottom level turned toward the speaker, who fell silent and forced a smile when he realized he had been noticed. By a row of windows facing another docked ship the captain stood, his hand on Jordan Astraea’s arm much the same way Marion Kruse’s hand kept hold of Meggie.

  The bag at Bran’s side quivered, and, licking lips gone suddenly dry, he slipped a hand into the bag, past his journals, and rested his palm on its curved contents. Sybil’s skull remained cool beneath his touch but Meggie jerked up straighter, pale blond curls quivering.

  She turned and looked at him. “Papá?” she asked.

  He leaned over, whispering into the crown of her head, “What is it, little dove?”