Stormbringer

by Shannon Delany

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “That at least is some small victory. What says Gregor Burchette of this new development, as the horse was under his watch?”

  The watchman cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “And I quote: Well, that is an interesting bit of news.”

  Stevenson sighed. “Intriguing. I shall make my way to the Maker’s apartments and judge the situation for myself.”

  The watchman nodded, taking a long, slow step back and out of the doorway.

  “Not so fast!” the Tester said. “You had best take a force of watchmen with you, Councilman. To,” he laughed, “guard against,” he sputtered, “demonic butterflies!” He snorted, shifting the sound into a clearing of his throat. “They might … viciously … bring color into your drab existence!”

  Philadelphia

  John straightened, hearing Lady Astraea in the doorway. He turned to face her and rubbed his hand across his forehead.

  Laura stepped closer to him—or perhaps farther from her … He wasn’t quite sure how to judge.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Lady Astraea asked, her eyes scanning the room and her servants’ faces.

  “Well, milady,” John began, the words coming slowly, “we’s in need of another lantern down in the library. Seems one’s been broke and Laura and I, well, we recalled that you don’t bother with reading up here no more so we thought, if we could just find an extra lantern up here, we might replace the other, set it up with a candle, too, and keep the library lookin’ mighty fine.”

  Lady Astraea’s eyes narrowed. “A lantern in the library broke, you say?”

  “Yes’m, I do,” John said with the most earnest nod a lying man might muster. He had never been one to lie but it seemed that was all he did now—as if one lie grew into another and another, always rolling and growing like a snowball starting down a snowy winter slope on the Hill and rocketing toward the Burn Quarter.

  Lady Astraea reached up and rubbed her gown’s low neckline, not far from her heart, and her expression changed, softening. “Well, John, as I have never known you to lie, I will gladly give you one of my finer lanterns…”

  She glanced around the room, and, her eyes settling on one, she scooped it up and handed it to him. “I do hope this serves the purpose.”

  “Yes’m, milady, ’tis most fine and will look right well in the library—begging your pardon for disturbing you with such a trifle.” He gave a little bow and stepped around her and into the hall.

  “Just a note for the future, John,” her ladyship said. “It is highly improper for a lady to return to her room and find a man in it unexpectedly. Mind it does not happen again.”

  “Yes, milady. I shall mind, never you fear.”

  She smiled at him and for a moment it was truly his lady who smiled out at him. He smiled back.

  Laura curtseyed to her ladyship and slipped into the hallway, too, walking a brief distance with John. When he was certain they were beyond anyone else’s hearing, he said to her, “’Tis not there, Laura. The soul stone is most certainly gone. And…” He paused in the hallway to look her in the face. “… as much as I hate to cast aspersions on our lady…”

  Laura leaned toward him, setting a hand on his arm that she quickly pulled back, remembering her place. “Yes, John? Tell it true.”

  “I’d swear to you that there was another lantern or two in her room before this.”

  Laura nodded. “So it’s worse than we feared? Our lady is not our lady, does not act like the lady named on that card of yours should, and our true lady’s soul stone is … gone?”

  “I fear so.”

  “Oh, John … This is bad. You must find the Reanimator.”

  He dropped his head. “I shall go there shortly,” he promised. “There’s just one thing I must do first.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Do what you must,” Laura agreed.

  They parted ways and he walked to the library. Surrounded by shelf after shelf of books—in an entire room filled for the pursuit of knowledge and truth—he looked at the lanterns. They were beautiful. Carefully crafted. They lit the search for knowledge nearly as much as the books they illuminated did. And they were not merely lights, but pieces of art that hours of a craftsman’s life had been traded away for in their making.

  His stomach twisted and soured.

  Setting Lady Astraea’s lamp down, for a moment he let himself truly consider the ramifications of their actions. Of the danger they were all still in. Of the lies he’d told already and the ones he’d likely need to tell in the future.

  He was surely and most definitely damned.

  With that thought in mind he reached out to a lantern and discovered smashing it was not as hard as he expected.

  He set the other in its place and cleaned up the broken bits of the first, his mind seething at what circumstances had brought him to.

  With blind purpose in his heart, he strode from the house in search of the Reanimator.

  Aboard the Tempest

  His hand still resting on one of the many cannons in the Aft Gundeck, Rowen closed his eyes a moment before he looked at Elizabeth. “I need to find Jordan,” he insisted. “I need to get to her—rescue her.”

  “It’s not that easy, love,” she said, reaching out and taking him by the arm again.

  “Important things are seldom easy to do.”

  She led him back out of the room and down a winding set of stairs. Together they slipped through a narrow, twisting hallway where sculptured brass hands held stormlight lanterns away from striped walls. Up another staircase, down a new hall. When they again stopped, this time in a hallway lined with brightly-painted doors, Rowen felt utterly lost within the maze of the ship’s belly.

  They stood silent, regarding each other, outside a bright green and yellow door hung with garish golden hinges. She pressed her lips together until they were merely thin pink lines. The crow’s-feet that crinkled at the edge of her eyes were a memory and she looked older, lines showing on her face that he hadn’t noticed before. Still beautiful, with high cheekbones and a bold nose, she seemed suddenly tired.

  With her right hand pressed to the door, she examined the floor between them and the narrow rug that ran this particular hall’s length. She dug at the fibers of the rug with the toe of one boot. She sighed. “The men holding your Jordan? They will have guards and guns,” she said, again meeting his eyes. “They will keep her at all costs, protecting her as staunchly as their kind guard a Hub. Especially with so many rumors of the prophecy.”

  “The prophecy?”

  Elizabeth blinked. “Of course you wouldn’t know … Prophecy, rumor … It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. It is said a great Witch—the Stormbringer—will rise and unite all the ranks and bring even an end to the Wildkin War.”

  Rowen snorted.

  “As unlikely as it sounds it is far more likely than the government uniting us and ending the war.”

  “I’ll agree to that, at least,” Rowen said. “You think they believe Jordan’s the one the prophecy was written about?”

  “It doesn’t matter if they think she is or not. Witches are more than mere Witches now. The right one could be a symbol to unify the masses, and no government wants anyone unifying their people other than them, Rowen. They’ll give no thought to killing you. And anyone with you.”

  “They are enslaving her—making her nothing but a piece of some airborne transport,” he protested.

  “It could be far worse. She is on a liner—a passenger ship. At least she didn’t pull cargo duty.” Elizabeth looked away, swallowing.

  “It is still enslavement. They are making her a human cog in their sick machine…”

  She rested a hand on his arm and this time when she looked at him a fire sizzled, flashing copper in the depths of her eyes. “As they have made many others as they prepare them to receive Lightning’s Kiss.”

  He shook off her hand. “What is that?” he asked. “Lightning’s Kiss?”
<
br />   She leaned forward to slip a slender chain out from her blouse’s neckline. A key glimmered on its end. Placing it in the door’s lock, she gave it a twist. “I will tell you everything I know,” she promised. “And I will let you go if that is what you wish—but after you know what I know. Only … promise me one thing in return.”

  “For my freedom and the chance at winning hers I’ll promise you anything.”

  “Then promise that you will maintain an open mind and consider that perhaps Fate placed you here on more than a temporary basis.” She shoved through the door, leading him. Stormlights came on in a rising glow and he was temporarily astonished at what he saw. She patted his arm again. “I will send for you in the morning. There is nothing else to be done tonight but worry. Or live for yourself.”

  She disappeared out the door and down the hall, leaving Rowen to his quarters.

  Philadelphia

  Councilman Loftkin was in a rare joyful mood. “What great fortune we got you, Councilman Yokum. The law is a bit loose about these things—nearly anyone of rank four or better could have slid into old Astraea’s position on the Council if he’d been nearby and expressed an interest—we really must fix that for the future.”

  The younger man sputtered, “Surely not anyone…”

  “Truly—this republic is quite loose about elections. The idea so many may vote is frightening when you consider the lack of education of the masses.” Loftkin paused, looking at Councilman Yokum. “Did you really think politics was more than being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people?” He ran a hand through his graying hair, adding, “And having a dashing smile. I daresay that’s why no ugly man will gain true power here. It is our kind who should lead.”

  “Are those beliefs not the reasons we broke from England?”

  Loftkin snorted. “Is that what they say now? Is that what you young ones believe?” He shook his head. “That is a highly romanticized notion! Why no, of course not. We did not establish this government this way so we’d avoid being like them. We made it this way so we’d avoid being led by them. At the heart of the matter, we broke with them because our families all those years ago knew King George was an ass and that we could govern better.”

  Aboard the Artemesia

  Jordan woke in her small cabin to a throbbing headache and a thirst that dried her throat to the point of rattling. A modest lantern lit the room through a stormcell, allowing her to see a few feet in any direction from its glowing case.

  Another lantern nearby housed a double-terminated quartz crystal that New Yorkers called “Herkimer diamonds”—a double-terminated crystal allowing the capture of power such as hers. She could provide a steadier, brighter light with her own energy—if she focused and harnessed it.

  She prowled the small room, touching the sparse items placed there: a cup and pitcher of water, two lanterns, a basin for washing and a few accompanying rags, the bed with one thin pillow and a thinner blanket. She grabbed the cup and filled it, downing the contents, refilling and emptying it again. Hanging across the foot of the bed lay the tattered ball gown her best friend Catrina ordered for her seventeenth birthday party. Webbed underneath with thin metal thread that conducted energy, the gown allowed Jordan to be accused of witchery.

  She retained the butterfly-wing pendant—a frequent reminder of her inability to break free—and the grimy but still precious paper star, but the thing that never left her sight—more appropriately the thing she never let far from her touch—was the brass heart pin Rowen Burchette gave her as a parting gift at her ill-fated birthday party. That present nearly earned her escape from the dreaded Tanks of Holgate.

  She shouldn’t have been able to be Made into a Witch, but she broke under pain and exhaustion and the knowledge that the precious little girl Meggie, the Maker’s own daughter, was a Witch in need of Making.

  The idea of the little girl being hurt as Jordan had been broke something in her like a boot crushing a dry twig.

  She wandered to the small window. Outside the sky sparked and rumbled, tiny veins of lightning bursting into flickering existence and vanishing. Brilliance faded to near-black again and again like hope being snuffed out over and over.

  It was disheartening.

  Disgusting.

  She snatched up the dress, her lip curling as she wadded it and paused, holding it balled in her arms and seeing the wounds marring her hands and arms—wounds still healing from her Making. Her skin had been nearly flawless—never so porcelain nor fine as Catrina’s, but it had been free of cuts and scrapes and puncture wounds before she’d been dragged from her home on Philadelphia’s Hill and ruined. Her mouth opened and a noise burbled up from somewhere deep inside her—a strangled cry like she’d heard a beast in a menagerie make when, panicked, it ruined its face against the bars of its manmade prison.

  She’d been known for her hospitality—the Astraeas being known for their lavish parties—and her looks. Now, her family fallen from grace, and her body battered, she had nothing.

  Nothing but hate and hurt.

  Nothing but pain and disappointment.

  She hurled the dress at the window with a shriek and watched it slide down the glass and crumple on the floor, a once fine ball gown with no belle to wear it.

  She stepped across it, her bare feet twisting into its folds and crushing it beneath her toes as she pressed her palms and face to the window.

  She had nothing.

  Nothing but potential—crumpled and twisted far worse in her aching gut than the dress beneath her feet.

  The Maker triggered her only once. She’d called in a storm that dogged the one drawn to Meggie. It should have been impossible to Make her. Weather Witches were born years before they were Made. Everyone said Witch bloodlines bore a taint traceable through family and tied to intermingling lower ranks.

  Or so they’d believed. That was one reason their society held so rigidly to established ranks. Everyone was born into a set level and although one might move rank through marriage—or lose it through the scandal of Harboring—ranks were established and firm.

  Slaves and Witches were the whipping boys (sometimes quite literally) lining society’s bottom level.

  Jordan Astraea tumbled quickly from her well-regarded rank of Fifth of the Nine to Witch and took her entire family, including her father, Councilman Morgan Astraea, down with her. Their name ruined, their power was gone. If she had been taken away a little more than a year earlier, the additional drama and shame would have been avoided. She would have been forever lost to her family, but she would not have brought them down. If a Witch was discovered before sixteen, the family was generally not found to be Harboring, but by sixteen a Witch’s powers manifested. Someone would have noticed and that someone should have told.

  Whoever plotted to bring down the Astraea family (there must have been a plot, of that Jordan was certain) had waited for the perfect time.

  The moment a Witch was discovered, he or she was turned over to a Ring of Wraiths or a set of Wardens. A Tester removed any doubt, doing the thing for which they were named.

  Testing.

  Jordan flinched at the memory of the first time anyone had intentionally hurt her.

  At least that she knew of.

  Her hand had only recently lost all trace of her Test wound. Many other marks—from a variety of different implements—took its place.

  The greatest wounds couldn’t be found on her flesh but marred her heart and soul—wounds that made her wonder how her family fared since her false imprisonment. Were they still living on Philadelphia’s grandest piece of real estate, the Hill, or had they been forced into the dark and grim neighborhoods of the Below? Were they just one more bit of living insulation keeping the wealthy politicians from the war against the water-dwelling Wildkin?

  What of her sisters? Had the fact they were older and already married—not even in attendance at her seventeenth birthday party—had that saved them from the fall?

  The dress
had come from Catrina (who had been closer to her than her own blood sisters) and been a carefully constructed cage conducting all the things that made a Weather Witch test true. But why would Catrina commission a dress to harm her? It was designed and manufactured by the odd little seamstress in the city, a woman who was as creative as she was churlish.

  Did it matter who brought them down? Down they went. And if society and social protocol had anything to do with it, they would be kept down permanently.

  The Councilman had been right—never had a Witch gone home having been found innocent. If there had been such a Witch, he or she would never have lived to have their story heard. An embarrassment to the Council, murder would have been the best way to avoid scandal.

  Jordan knew what she was: an anomaly able to shake the very foundations of a society built firmly on the bent backs of others. Societies crumbled when bent backs straightened and people stood unified.

  Or such a society might be bolstered by hardworking people’s well-worn hands—bolstered and puzzled back together in a fresh, new way.

  Her head ached with possibility.

  She rubbed it, massaging and gently probing the spot the captain had hit her with the tankard. A small lump had risen. She went to the dented and beaten box serving as her armoire and reached into its back, pulling free the folded paper star. Tentatively she unfolded it, running her finger along each crease to better mark in her mind the moments it was created.

  Little good remained of that party besides the star. The evening’s entertainer, the Wandering Wallace, told how Betsy Ross faced down the men of the early American government when they told her the use of perfect five-pointed stars on the nation’s flag was too difficult.

  She merrily proved them wrong, folding a piece of paper and cutting an example much the way the Wandering Wallace had. Without any tools but a pair of scissors.

  It flew in the face of reason, an affront to their expectations. And some might have said that a woman—a woman!—proving the gentlemen of the American government were wrong was disrespectful, too.

  Jordan stared out the window, wanting to be the same as Ross, her mind swirling like the clouds, to fly in the face of established reason. Maybe she should shake society to its foundations and be brave enough to free herself.