The Sisters of Reckoning

by Charlotte Nicole Davis

  Then, beneath the sounds of the city and the hush of the river and the hum of the voltric powerlines overhead, a low, mournful chorus of wails echoed from deep inside the bellies of the endless tenement buildings.

  The hair on the back of Aster’s neck stood on end, a chill shooting through her veins.

  Vengeants?

  Here?

  Vengeants could be born anywhere, she knew, but outside the Scab they were extremely rare. This many in one neighborhood wasn’t a coincidence—it meant enough people had lived out their lives here in such suffering that their spirits had been too angry to move on and had turned violent after death. Which meant, of course, folks here would only suffer that much more, living as they did in fear of their dead. Vengeants were a problem that grew in magnitudes. That was how the Scab had become overrun.

  When had things gotten this bad in Northrock?

  And now McClennon wants to start building welcome houses up here, too?

  Aster’s gut churned with slick, oily panic. She had not had to worry about vengeants in months. She didn’t even have so much as an iron horseshoe on her for protection.

  She had to find that mill.

  Aster continued creeping through the shadows, weaving up and down the darkened streets, her favor aching. Breaking into the welcome house, escaping the fire, fleeing across the city … she struggled to remember the last time she had been this exhausted. If someone—or something—appeared and attacked her now, she doubted she would have the strength to fight back.

  At last she came across a massive, burnt-out building crouching in the darkness, its smokestacks collapsing in on themselves, its windows gleaming with broken glass. She could just make out the words CAIN’S CLOTHIERS under the silvered light of the moon. Hope sprang in Aster’s chest. Her gaze fell to the building’s entrance.

  And there, gliding towards her on translucent, batlike wings, its skeletal hands outstretched, its skull bristling with antlers and fangs …

  Aster’s heart fell to her stomach, a whimper escaping her lips as she stumbled backwards away from the vengeant. Her hands flew up to cover her face instinctively. Her eyes squeezed shut—

  BANG!

  A gunshot cracked through the night.

  Aster opened her eyes. The vengeant was turning tail and flying away with a squeal, its gossamer form smoking where it’d been sprayed with iron shot. The silhouette of a young woman stood in the now-open doorway, holding a smoking shotgun. She swung the barrel of the weapon around to point it at Aster.

  “Keep walking, stranger,” she called out. “We don’t want any trouble from the living, either.”

  “No trouble,” Aster promised, her voice trembling. She swallowed and fought to overcome the terror that had seized her. “I—I’m looking for someone named Cora. She’s a young woman, short, with straight, dark hair. Last we spoke she told me she lived in an old mill around here.”

  The girl lowered her gun, if only slightly. “Who’s asking?”

  Aster hesitated. She would not give her identity away to a stranger.

  “The Scabber girl she helped last year, the one she took to Tom Wells’s mansion,” Aster said after a moment.

  The girl swore under her breath. “Another ripping stray. Look, I’ll tell her, but it’s your ass if you’re lying.”

  “Thank you—” Aster breathed, stepping towards her.

  “Aht, aht.” The girl jabbed the gun in her face. “You wait out here.”

  She disappeared into the mill. Aster wet her lips, looking over her shoulder anxiously, the base of her neck humming with dread. If the vengeants came back, she was running inside, and damn the consequences.

  The minutes ticked by. Then, movement. Someone was coming back. Aster squinted, her eyes straining in the dark—

  Cora.

  Aster felt a flood of relief. She ripped her dustkerchief down.

  “Cora! It’s me—it’s Aster—the girl you helped last year. Do you remember me? Please…” She trailed off, exhausted. “I need your help again.”

  “Aster.” Cora spread her hands in welcome, smiling bright against the dark. “Something told me I hadn’t seen the last of you.”

  * * *

  The inside of the mill was drafty and damp, with warped wooden floors, holes in the ceiling, and broken-down machinery hulking in the dark like the skeletons of mythic beasts. Cora and her friends had set up a kind of makeshift tent city on the abandoned work floor, lit by the cherry-red glow of fires burning at the bottom of rusted metal storage drums. Cora’s friends, most of them dustbloods near Aster and Cora’s age but some only half as old, slept uneasily on the ground, while the few still awake shot curious glances at the pair of them.

  Under the circumstances, Aster felt like she’d just walked into a room at one of Northrock’s finest inns.

  “Really, Cora, I can’t think you enough for this,” Aster repeated, wrapping her shoulders with the blanket Cora had provided her and sipping a mug of tea. Aster had trusted her enough to tell her the truth about the welcome house fire and the lockdown—this was twice now that Cora had saved her, after all, and she had not gone to the law after the first time. Still, Aster left out any mention of the Lady Ghosts, Violet, or the wild alliance with Derrick McClennon. Those were not her secrets to tell.

  “Anything for one of the Green Creek girls, especially now that you burned down that damned welcome house,” Cora insisted. Her bobbed black hair framed her ivory face, her dark, upswept eyes glinting with admiration. She held a fistful of red licorice whips in her hand, short fingers poking out of fingerless leather gloves, and she offered one to Aster as if it were a cigar. Aster accepted it hesitantly. “McClennon said you were dead, but I knew better,” Cora went on. “Any story a politician pushes that hard has to be a lie. But it wasn’t until I started reading about it all in the papers, you know, that I put together who you were. If I’d’ve known when we met, I wouldn’t have taken your shine.”

  “I don’t have much to give you this time,” Aster admitted.

  “Keep it. You need it more than we do right now.”

  Aster nodded gratefully and took a bite of the licorice, the burst of sweetness making her mouth water. After the night she’d had, it was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. Aster’s mind flashed with the memory of the vengeant fleeing, its pained cries splitting the night, and she shivered.

  “Your friend saved my ass back there,” Aster said quietly, the weight of her gratitude turning to sudden weariness.

  Cora’s eyes met hers. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “I just don’t know how I can ever repay you all.”

  “Not every good thing need come at a cost, Aster. Put it out of your mind.”

  Aster sighed, taking another long swallow of tea. It soothed her throat, still raw from breathing in smoke. “What are vengeants even doing in Northrock? I thought I’d left all that behind in the Scab.”

  The grin slipped from Cora’s face. “So did we. But things have been rough in the industrial district lately. The landmaster family that owns most of the businesses down here, the Cains, have been cutting wages now that there’s so many folks desperate for work. So there’s a lot of bad feeling between the poor fairblood folks who have always lived here and the freed dustbloods who’ve started moving in over the past generation. There was a law a while back, you see, that offered dustblood men forgiveness of their families’ debts if they served in the army. So we’re seeing those families settle in cities like Northrock now.”

  Aster grimaced. She knew the law. The Reckoning preyed on dustblood men just as ravenously as it did the women, and she’d met far too many of those men at the welcome house. She didn’t understand them, didn’t understand how they could take up arms for the same country that had stolen everything from their ancestors and now treated them like vermin. At least toiling away in the mines was honest work.

  But if it really had bought their families freedom …

  She was in no place
to judge. She’d do anything for her family, too. She already had.

  “With so many of our folks moving in, it’s been harder for the fairbloods to find work, and they resent having to live in the same neighborhood as the likes of us, too,” Cora continued. “There’s been harsh words, there’s been … violence. Turf wars and acts of terror. Especially in the past few months. You and your friends caused quite a stir when you ripped your way through the Scab, I won’t lie. It’s got all the fairbloods on edge. There was even a bombing in one of our churches last week. And we’re starting to see the effects of it all beyond the Veil. This has never been an easy place to live, but now…”

  Now there are vengeants, Aster thought.

  She felt like she’d aged ten years in the last ten minutes. She set her cup down and rubbed her eyes. “Ripping hell. Things were supposed to be better here.”

  Cora scoffed. “They are. And what does that tell you?”

  Aster hung her head. There was a part of her that wanted to blame herself for the role she’d played in making things worse, but she pushed the thought away roughly. Vengeants were made over the course of lifetimes, not a few bad months. This storm had been brewing since before she’d even been born. And it was the landmasters’ fault. They were the ones who hoarded all the shine and left everyone else fighting for scraps. Why should the poor fairbloods take out their anger on their dustblood neighbors, who had nothing?

  “I reckon they just want to make sure we remember our place,” Cora answered when Aster asked her. “No one wants to be on the bottom. The rich kick down the poor, the men kick down the women, the fairbloods kick down the dustbloods … and so on. Nothing changes.”

  But Aster refused to accept that. McClennon knew they were capable of changing things. He was afraid of them. She had seen it in the increased security at his rally. She saw it now with the citywide lockdown. The landmasters couldn’t afford to let a bunch of Good Luck Girls take what they were owed. They were at the very bottom of the pile—if they shifted, the whole thing came crashing down.

  “Anyway, don’t let it worry you too much. You’ll be safe enough with us,” Cora continued. “We protect each other here, from the living and the dead alike.”

  “But the law—” Aster began.

  “Is the least of our worries. They’ll almost certainly search this old mill, more than once, I reckon, but there are places we can hide you when the time comes. You’re not the first we’ve had to protect from them. You stay here just as long as you need.”

  Aster sighed. “Thank you,” she said, her chest suddenly tight. She blinked back tears.

  Cora just smiled at her. “It’s like I said—anything for a Green Creek girl. You all changed things for folks like us. It gave people courage, hearing about you standing up to all those rich bastards. McClennon was a fool to tell the world you were dead. He went and made a martyr of you. Now everyone and their brother’s looking to pick up where you left off. And the way things are going up here, with the welcome house, and the vengeants, and the fairblood retaliation … that kind of inspiration is exactly what we need.”

  A flicker of warmth grew in Aster’s chest at Cora’s words, chasing away the chill that had seeped into her bones.

  “But if you’re so hell-bent on paying me back, Aster, there’s one favor I’ll ask of you.”

  “Anything,” Aster promised.

  “You send that son of a bitch to meet the dead.”

  8

  The lockdown lasted for two weeks.

  Even with help from Cora and the other dustbloods, it was a near thing. The law ambushed the mill three separate times, turning the tent city over in their search and threatening to rough up anyone who resisted. Aster hid in a crawl space above the old main office along with two hotfoots—dustblood runaways—who had no guarants and would have been sent back to the Scab if discovered. Anger ate away at her as she lay there in the cramped, cobwebbed darkness, her hot breath filling the space, splinters biting into the palms of her hands. She listened to the sounds of chaos below, utterly helpless. She still couldn’t help feeling responsible, and she resented it. She’d only done what she’d had to by burning down that welcome house … hadn’t she?

  When the lockdown finally lifted, it was with overwhelming relief that Aster said her goodbyes to Cora and her friends, thanking them for having risked their lives to shelter her for so long. Cora gave Aster a horse and some licorice whips for the road, bidding her to wander well. Then Aster left the mill and fled the city.

  After two weeks of living rough, Aster was weaker than she’d been in months, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes from crossing as she galloped down the road back to the Graveyard. She’d never imagined, when she set out to Northrock to find Violet, that it would take this long for her to return. The peace and solitude of the Lady Ghosts’ hideout would be a welcome respite.

  Assuming, of course, that Priscilla was still willing to take Aster back.

  Aster reached the mines by nightfall, dismounting and leaving the horse tied up outside before descending underground. Her footsteps echoed down the length of the tunnel, splashing through shallow puddles, sending rocks clattering in the dark. Every little noise made her jump. She was on edge, dreading the upcoming confrontation with the Lady Ghosts.

  She’d had more than enough time to think about this, and she still had no idea what she was going to do if they turned her away.

  The slope leveled out as Aster came to the base of the mineshaft, where two Ladies stood guard with pistols at their hips. One of them was Raven, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, a bored expression on her face. Her golden brown eyes flashed with surprise at the sight of Aster.

  “Raven,” Aster exhaled. It’d been so long since she’d seen her that she couldn’t help letting slip an exhausted smile.

  “By the Veil, Aster, you took your sweet time. Just where the hell have you been?” Raven demanded.

  Aster furrowed her brow in confusion. Didn’t they all know by now? Wouldn’t it have been in the papers? She’d asked Raven to cover for her, true, but surely that lie would have fallen apart once they’d seen the news about the welcome house and the lockdown. They’d have all guessed what she’d done.

  “It’s … a long story, Ray,” Aster dodged. “Look, I need to talk to Priscilla. Is she in?”

  The other guard, an older redheaded woman named Dinah, answered for her, her own eyes lit up with excitement at Aster’s return. “Priscilla’s in some kind of meeting right now.”

  “Who with?” Aster’s asked.

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Raven answered. “She and the other captains were very hush-hush about it. Must be one of their government contacts.”

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt—” Aster said hastily. Anything to put this off.

  “No, no! Go, she’ll insist that you see her immediately, Aster,” Dinah retorted. “We were all of us fearing the worst.”

  Aster hesitated, and Raven sighed, stepping off the wall. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Please,” Aster said, relieved she hadn’t had to ask. She knew Priscilla was not Mother Fleur, knew Priscilla would not hurt her, no matter how upset she got. But still, it would be easier with a friend by her side.

  If there was one thing Aster had learned in Northrock, it was that she couldn’t do any of this alone.

  Raven looked to Dinah for permission, and Dinah nodded.

  “Go on—I can handle the rest of the shift.”

  “Thank you,” Aster and Raven said at the same time.

  They made their way through the tunnels towards the captain’s quarters in heavy silence, Raven glancing at Aster every few steps like she’d seen a ghost.

  “What?” Aster asked finally.

  “What do you mean, what? Did you ever find Violet? Why didn’t she come back with you? What were you doing out there for two damn weeks? I told Priscilla you’d gone into town on a supply run. She thought we’d lost you.” Raven loo
ked away. “So did I.”

  Aster stopped. They’d reached the captain’s quarters, and she could hear the muffled sound of voices coming from the other side of the door. It sounded like there were a lot of them. Who was Priscilla even meeting with?

  “I’m sorry, Raven. I did a reckless thing, and I stand by it, but Priscilla may never forgive me when I tell her. But I hope she can, and I hope you can, too—I never meant to cause you all any heartache.”

  “So … you are going to tell her, then? Whatever it is?” Raven asked.

  Aster swallowed and nodded. I guess I am.

  It was time to get this over with. She opened the heavy wooden door, wincing at the low groan of its rusted hinges.

  And there, standing on the other side, was Zee.

  And Tansy. And Mallow. And—

  “Clementine?” Aster’s voice cracked as she spoke. Everything else seemed to fall away. She stood rooted to the spot as her friends—her family—turned to face her.

  The last time Aster had seen Zee, he had been wearing his grubby rangeman’s denims and a work shirt stiff with sweat, his brown skin chapped from the unrelenting wind and the sun of the Scab. Now he wore black slacks and a patterned vest over a crisp white dress shirt, his curly hair slicked back with pomade like a city boy’s. His dark eyes crinkled up with a smile as his surprise turned to delight.

  Mallow was dressed more casually, with new blue denims and a brown leather jacket. An intricately-patterned headband wrapped around her forehead and her short black hair. Her sleeves were rolled up over her bronzed forearms, her face lit up with a mischievous expression. Tansy stood by her side in a sky blue dress, her long blond hair twisted into a single plait draped over her shoulder. Fewer freckles dusted her white skin now that she was living up north, and she carried herself confidently, her shoulders thrown back and her green eyes held level. She and Mallow seemed more at ease with each other than Aster had ever seen them.