Stormbringer
Page 26
“I hope you are correct,” Marion said, wrapping his arms gently around her as well.
“I apologize for ruining your political aspirations, good Lord Kruse,” Jordan called, “but I am afraid we will not make port at Salem.”
Startled, Marion stood silent.
“We,” Jordan clarified, looking at Marion, “are going home.”
The Wandering Wallace laughed. “To Philadelphia? How fortuitous! That is precisely where we need to be as well.”
The top edges of the three elevator walls pierced the deck and inside stood Jeremiah and Stache. A broad grin on Jeremiah’s chocolate-colored face made even the most tentative among them smile in response. “The ship is ours,” he reported.
“Excellent,” the Wandering Wallace shouted, grabbing Meggie’s hand to tug it into the air as if she were a boxer who’d just won a fight.
“But something is approaching.”
“Another ship?” Jordan asked.
Before Jeremiah could get the words out, the Weather Workers punctured the Artemesia’s cloud cover and rained down on them.
Chapter Fourteen
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Philadelphia
A Ring of Wraiths, a handful of Wardens, and one dour-looking Tester stood in Councilman Yokum’s doorway. He straightened, eyes weighing them. Realizing at that moment he had made his choice, he had stuck to his guns and stood with his vote against Councilman Loftkin and now he would pay.
Now Yokum would lose everything.
Voting his conscience would cost him.
He nodded, looking at his butler, stoic as ever. “Fetch our newest maid,” he said.
The girl was marched out from the hallway by the pantry and she dug her heels in the moment she saw them waiting for her. “No. No, mister,” she insisted, looking to Yokum for support. “I’m no—”
He shook his head and pressed his lips together. “How old exactly are you, child?” With her soft and rounded face and her flat hips and chest he had presumed her to be fourteen at most. But he knew reality would show her to be older. He braced himself for the truth.
“Seventeen and three-quarters.”
“Of course,” he muttered.
A few of the servants had already begun to sneak toward the door and others had gone missing—likely packing their belongings. No one lingered once a household had fallen from grace. Unless you were a member of the faithful skeleton crew still employed at the Astraea household. Yokum had not yet earned such loyalty. He had acquired the Kruse house (and seemingly all the figurative ghosts that went with such a purchase) inexpensively enough. Now he would lose it all.
Perhaps some things, like a man’s honor, simply came at too high a cost for someone striving to live cheaply.
Aboard the Artemesia
The Weather Workers burst through the Artemesia’s cloud cover like spears through fresh bread, tearing apart the atmosphere as they descended on flying machines of a design so strange the crew Topside on the Artemesia were stunned to silence. Big enough to hold three people, and each with a Warden or Wraith as driver, the open-topped ships came.
They made one swooping pass and disappeared back into the cloud cover on Topside’s far end.
“What do I do?” Jordan shouted, eyes searching for signs of their return. “What do they want?”
Everyone turned to look at Bran. The Maker. The one whose life’s work had ruined so many. He clutched a chair to keep standing and, catching his breath, stumbled across the deck toward Jordan. “Don’t watch for them,” he suggested, “listen. The machines make noise as they near. Keep us as far from the noise as you can.”
She pressed her lips together and concentrated on sound. She reached out to the ship—closed her eyes and reached into and around the ship, using it and the storm to feel out the vibration of the lightships’ noise before they were upon them again. She turned the ship’s bow away from the noise and toward Philadelphia in a weaving pattern, and pushed the ship faster.
“Draw Down,” Bran demanded, handing her the nearest tankard.
She sucked the liquid down and shook her head. “Water only.”
Bran motioned to the others and they checked the goblets and tankards and brought her all they could.
The lightships burst from cover again, too small and fast against a cumbersome liner-class vessel.
“I cannot,” Jordan apologized. “We must stand and defend…” She closed her eyes a moment. “Ah! Step lively, all,” she snapped. “I am about to try something new…”
Bran opened his stance to steady himself as Jordan reached a hand into the swirling darkness not far overhead, spreading her fingers wide. Lightning snapped and arced between her fingertips and she drew her arm back and threw the living ball of light toward the first lightship she saw.
The fireball smacked into the ship, sending it careening back into the clouds, listing to one side as it limped into retreat.
“Clear the clouds, extend the wings full-out for a glide, and give us a chance to shoot the bastards down,” Stache yelled from his place by the elevator, watching wisps of moisture float haphazardly across the deck.
Bran nodded. “I find myself partial to that idea…”
The lightships burst through again, spotting him. Six ships circled the Maker and the Conductor, buzzing close in recognition before zipping away again.
“This is it,” Stache said, raising the gun he carried and sighting along the end of its barrel. “They’ll take him this time if they can!”
They returned so fast Stache barely finished his sentence. One lightship zipped between Jordan and Bran, a hand reaching down, blade glinting, to slash at the Maker.
Jordan gasped, recognizing the hand.
It was strange the things one remembered about someone when you’d never seen them face-to-face.
A single, scarred hand told much about its owner.
“Caleb,” she whispered.
Jeremiah handed a gun to Marion, but he would not touch it and turned away. The Wandering Wallace accepted it in his stead, saying, “Sometimes the thing you wish never to do is precisely what needs doing.”
“Eyes steady, sight, and shoot when you’ve a clean target,” Stache commanded.
They were a gathering of statues, watching the tunnel of sky in which their ship rode. Then they heard them—the sound of an entire hive of bees descending.
Jordan slung out one arm and wiped the sky clean of clouds as she threw all her weight behind a lever. It ratcheted its way forward, the Artemesia’s wings popping into their most sustaining glide position.
The lightships buzzed in and zipped away to a greater distance, gaining a higher altitude, seeing their advantage stolen away.
“Oh. Oh, no,” Jordan whispered, clearly seeing the Weather Workers in their fine cloaks or tailed coats and sharp hats steering the lightships with young men and women riding behind them—dirty and ragged and probably still wearing the clothes they were Gathered in. Jordan looked at Marion, shouting, “They’re our people! From Holgate’s Tanks—the unMade! They are our people!”
“Don’t shoot!” Marion roared as a lightship soared overhead, circling.
The knife in the unMade’s hand glittered and Jordan mouthed, “No—” even as Caleb dropped from the lightship with nothing but Bran filling his eyes—
—and was caught by one ankle by the Wraith steering. “Heeee must liiiive,” it snarled.
Caleb arched his back, swinging his body up, and sinking his knife just deep enough in the Wraith’s hand that it shrieked and let go. He fell, tumbling toward the dais and Bran Marshall.
Jordan jumped in front of Bran, knocked him to the wooden floor, and screamed the only thing that might make Caleb pause. Turning her head away, she threw her hands up as a shield against the impact of the boy and his knife—
—but it never came.
Jordan blinked and turned her face back to the threat that
hung, suspended in a cushion of air ten feet above her.
Caleb squinted at her. “Take the tea?” he repeated, confused. He blinked and whispered her name. “Jordan?”
She nodded.
The soft expression on his high cheekbones and perfectly sculpted jaw hardened and he looked as if his gaze would pierce her if his knife could not. “Let me finish what I came to do. Let me mark him up the way he marked me.” His hands trembled with a rage he struggled to keep in enough control that he could still speak.
The first time she had ever seen Caleb’s face, she gasped. A network of scars made his flesh a grim patchwork.
“No,” she whispered. “We should not fight each other.”
“Then don’t fight me,” he said with a laugh. “Set me down and let me take him. Let him pay for what he’s done to us. To all of us!”
Above their heads the lightships hummed, circling.
“No,” she insisted, the word softer now.
“You would save the man who ruined us?” He swung his arms and kicked his feet, but gained nothing.
Meggie broke free of Miyakitsu’s grasp at their place near the ship’s intercom and raced to Jordan and her papá’s side. “Leave them alone!” she shouted into the sky. She stomped her tiny foot for emphasis and the clouds snapped back, becoming nearly impenetrable as Caleb was hurled to the deck a half-dozen feet away.
Caleb dropped the knife and scrambled backwards, away from them all as lightships plummeted all around them, slamming into the Topside deck and throwing some riders to the floor, pinning others beneath wreckage.
The Wraiths crawled forward, watching the child with the platinum-colored curls as much as the bold Conductor who toyed with the lightning snapping between her fingers. The air smelled of lightning and rain, but the day stank of prophecy.
Aboard the Tempest
“I see it, I see it,” Evie murmured as she lowered the spyglass. Never had she seen such before, though. The way the clouds fizzled away and then slammed back into existence around the ship they approached, like a huge black box smacking shut its lid on a toy. “Most powerful Conductor I’ve ever seen,” she muttered, eyeing Ginger Jack.
“You’ve heard the prophecy,” Jack said.
Rowen nodded. “At the Hill King’s Cavern. It seems a very popular theory among—liberally aligned traders.”
“What if it’s more than a theory?” Jack asked grimly. “What if we’re about to meet with Destiny himself? What if that ship holds the future? What if that there’s the Stormbringer?”
“It might give us the greatest weapon to use against the Council…” Evie whispered.
Rowen shook his head. “It might not come to all that.”
Evie leaned into the horn and said, “Bring us alongside, boys—and try not to get us killed in the fireworks.”
They raced forward, straight for the heart of the storm.
Philadelphia
In the Council, Loftkin instructed the leading men of Philadelphia’s military. “Yes, yes, of course kill as many of the bloody Merrow as you can,” he said, his expression droll. “The seas are teeming with them.”
“What if we find the seas no longer teem with the Merrow threat? That the tide of the war (if one might pardon the expression) has turned in our favor? Do we kill them with the same fervor?” The leader of the country’s air force asked.
Nearby, Gregor Burchette, proudly representing both the local militia and the army, rubbed his hands together and kept his eyes fixed and cool on the Council.
The Council whose membership seemed to change with the wind—only a few members staying through both Hell and high water.
“Yes, of course. Kill all of the bastards,” Loftkin snapped. “They are our enemy.”
“And when we run out of this enemy?” Councilman Mendelheim wondered aloud. “What happens when our superior firepower and technology brings this war to a bloody end? What then?”
Councilman Loftkin said with a sneer, “What you really want to ask is, once the Wildkin threat is ended, how do we continue to galvanize our people into one cohesive country? With such a diverse population of immigrants, how can we possibly and accurately bear the title of the ‘United States’? The good news is that we were wondering that shortly after the war began all those long years ago.” He stood, smoothing his cravat and straightening his waistcoat. “But a good war … and yes, every politician worth his salt knows there are such things as good wars—a fruitful war—can last for decades, generations! If you are wise enough to pull the puppet’s strings at the right times—and not too hard.”
Gregor Burchette swallowed hard.
“So the threat of abolitionists pulling the fabric of our country apart…?” a Councilman to Loftkin’s left muttered.
“No threat at all so long as the Wildkin threaten,” Loftkin answered with a grin that made Gregor’s gut flip.
“And if there is a sudden peace between the Wildkin and we brave Americans? If they beg a truce?”
The grin became sly and dark. “You do what we did some years ago. Kill the peace bringers and send the adults’ pieces back to their leaders. Take the wee babe they brought along and stuff the thing. Put it on display like a tattooed woman and let it tour the country so everyone can see just how horrible the creatures look when out of the briny deep long enough. Let our people judge their intent based on their looks. Tensions rise. The war goes on—appears insanely rejuvenated—as a result. Our citizens are horrified when the Wildkin react in kind, the belief they are savages incapable of being trusted is renewed, the focus on problems on the Fringe and not within our borders is renewed, and the status quo maintained.”
Gregor cleared his throat. “Why not be honest with our citizens?”
Councilman Loftkin nearly choked. “Be honest with our citizens?” He shook his head. “I have to continually remind myself how young you are in the face of politics.” He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin and took another long sip of tea before continuing. “We are the elite. The educated few standing atop a mountain of savages that wear similar faces to our own. They do not have the knowledge, nor the inclination nor ability to obtain the necessary knowledge to comprehend the way in which a government must function to succeed. The moment you remove the threat of the Wildkin, our savage citizens will look for something—or someone—else to tear apart. It may be their neighbors or, God forbid, it may be us. We are a judgmental species, regardless of what the Bible warns of judging others. We find fault in each other far more readily than we find it in ourselves. If you study the human species, you will discover that our favorite pastime is raising someone up to better tear them down. Consider how far you and I might fall if we give the mob a chance.”
Mendelheim nodded. “So we keep the war going and the more obvious threat supercedes the supposed threat the abolitionists claim slavery is.”
“Slavery and the rank system,” Loftkin agreed. “How they hate that. But it works well.”
“For us,” Councilman Mendelheim said.
Councilman Loftkin picked up his teacup and peered over its rim at Mendelheim. “Does anyone else matter as much as we do?”
Aboard the Artemesia
Jordan felt its approach in the air before she saw it through the haze of clouds. Another ship was cutting through their airspace and angling up alongside them.
“Below deck,” the Wandering Wallace shouted, “get everyone below deck until we identify them…”
Maude grabbed Meggie and Miyakitsu and headed for the elevator as the first grappling hooks flew, snaring banisters and railings and dragging the dinner table a few feet before it overturned, glassware and fine china shattering.
“Identify them?” Jordan shouted. “What if they are more of the same?” she asked, looking at the broken lightships and the Weather Workers and unMade who still struggled to untangle themselves from the wreckage, all under the watchful eyes of the Wandering Wallace, Stache, and Jeremiah.
And their guns.
“Maybe they are not,” the Wandering Wallace said.
Jordan glared at him. They were under attack again. They might be taken prisoner this time. Or worse.
And there was no rescue coming.
There never was.
Unless it came through her.
“Ready your weapons,” Jordan demanded.
“Be at ease,” the Wandering Wallace urged, looking over his shoulder in an attempt to identify the ship.
Jordan reached into the sky, drawing the lightning to her hands and turning it between her palms, solidifying it.
The fireball glowed and snapped, making her fingers twitch, and Jordan dropped her left hand, rolling her right shoulder back, and hurled the ball of light at the neighboring ship.
It landed, skidding and popping its way across their deck and leaving a trail of fire in its wake.
Jordan leaned over and fought to catch her breath, licking her lips.
The fireball hadn’t stopped them.
They were boarding.
Aboard the Artemesia
Leaping from one airship to another could not even steal Rowen’s breath away as much as the sight of the woman at the ship’s helm did. Tall and slim, she stood at the wheel. The lightning threw fleeting shadows over her, flashes of its bold white light played across the tips of her short hair creating an ethereal nimbus.
He landed in a heaving heap on the deck of the Artemesia. The deck was littered with small aircraft—not pods like the Tempest sported, but something else.
Something mostly smoking and broken.
Behind him he heard Evie and Ginger Jack talking in oddly congratulatory tones, but he paid them no mind and strode forward, his gait lengthening to allow him to cross the deck in only a few paces.
Swallowing hard, he stood before the woman at the ship’s wheel and the child standing nearby. Jordan raised her hand, her face contorting in a snarl, lightning falling from her fingertips and sizzling on the wood floor.