Stormbringer

by Shannon Delany

  He scrambled up into the hammock and settled there as it swayed gently, pulling the blanket over himself. Glancing at the lanterns, he yawned again. Whether they were on or off he would sleep like the dead.

  Philadelphia

  It was a good thing the dead slept. John made the sign of the cross at the thought, but it was true—he no longer thought of Lady Astraea as being alive. Yes, her body still functioned—seemed normal as ever other than the slight change in her coloring. But Lady Astraea—the Lady Astraea he had been hired by and had come to know—no longer lived in that body.

  He shuffled down the slate stairs that wound from the top of Philadelphia’s Hill down the side of it, past real estate of continually decreasing value, descending into the dark and dirty depths of the Below.

  The Night Market sprawled out across the candle- and torchlit streets, the music of violins and drums joining with raucous laughter and rolling out to fill the spaces between the slanting and awkward-looking buildings. The Night Market was an assault to the senses: firedancers puffed flames into the air, dancers made bejeweled bras and coin belts glitter and tinkle like a thousand tiny bells, the scents of flesh, food, and flame thickening the air.

  The Night Market was one of the greatest temptations a man could face. In his case, it was a temptation he always somehow avoided.

  He pushed his way past it—even more determined to be beyond the mass of staggering and rollicking people than he had been the night he rolled Lady Astraea’s body into the Burn Quarter in a wheelbarrow.

  He walked quickly, head down, eyes darting to avoid meeting anyone else’s. There were places in the world where direct contact was considered disrespectful, and disrespect could be deadly. He coughed, realizing that in that way the Hill and the Below were much the same.

  He passed beneath the bridge where the wounded veterans warmed themselves with dimming campfires and bottles of drink and continued to the worst of all the Philadelphia neighborhoods—the place even the gangs hesitated to claim—the place the fire companies had decided to let burn if a fire started there.

  It was not long until he found the house again. He opened the gate and walked into the small yard with its rambling and wayward plants wandering their way across the walkway. He paused on the threshold. Something was different. No skull hung under the eaves with sparkling stormlight eyes. He reached out to rap on the door but it opened beneath his hand and he called out, “Hello?” as he stepped inside.

  There was no answer and no lights. He held up the small lantern he carried, raising it high enough that its light fell across the entire room. This was where they had laid the body out and where the Reanimator brought Lady Astraea back to life. And there—he swung the lantern so the light focused on the room’s far wall with row after row of shelves.

  Empty shelves.

  No papers, no stormlights or soul stones, none of the trappings of the Reanimator. He was gone. And it appeared he was not going to return. At least not for some time.

  John scrubbed a hand over his short, tight salt-and-pepper curls, faced with a decision. Hunt the Reanimator now or return to his place on the Hill and guard the Astraea household from its own now-foreign lady? With a groan, he left the house and turned his face toward the Hill.

  Aboard the Artemesia

  The Wandering Wallace returned from Topside immediately after singing his lullabye. Exploring the liner’s shops and intricately designed ins-and-outs held no interest for him. The only thing he cared for awaited him inside his cabin.

  Miyakitsu sat on their bed, feet tucked up beneath her, and looked up at him, smiling.

  He stood in the doorway, hands tucked behind his back. “I have something to show you,” he whispered, giving Miyakitsu a lighthearted wink in direct opposition to the way he actually felt. “But only if you trust me.” He paused, watching her. “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, almond-shaped eyes wide.

  “Do you remember our most important rule?”

  Again the slow nod came.

  “And what is that? Tell it true.”

  Her eyes roamed their modest room and landed on the thing that might as well have been the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, it was so forbidden to her. She spoke, her voice the caress of a warm spring breeze, gentle and welcome, and something she kept for him. “Never, never, open the trunk.”

  “That’s my girl,” the Wandering Wallace whispered, setting his hands on either side of her moon-shaped face to draw her in closer. “Such an amazingly good girl you are.” He went to the well-adorned and oddly painted trunk, scooting around it so his back was to the wall and his face—his eyes—and the top of the trunk’s lid faced her.

  She folded her hands on her lap and sat primly, eyes on the ceiling, gaze far from the trunk’s lid.

  He grunted and with a few light touches the gears that made up the trunk’s unique locking mechanism adjusted and allowed him to heft the lid open. He always paused a moment once the lid was up, paused to remember the things Miyakitsu would never recall. If he was lucky. He looked at the body in the trunk, lying cinched in place by a few well-designed belts and buckles, dormant, dead by some estimations, her ebony hair a cascade of black water shrouding a face that appeared to be sleeping. Beside her was his daguerreotype’s developing box and the stormlight crystal collection that animated her. The most unique soul stone in the world lay among what looked like a fistful of broken glass strung into a half-dozen strands near her cheek.

  Reaching in he moved aside a few items of clothing, withdrawing a small pillow that helped brace her for travel. Bruises, bumps, or scrapes were unacceptable, especially for a Fetch.

  Miyakitsu sat on the bed, uninterested in what he was doing and Tsu slept in her box. He pulled out both the developing box and a smaller box, and holding them stacked high in one hand, used the other to secure the lid to the trunk.

  This was the hardest part—other than the lies—and he grunted as he lowered the lid back into place, closing Tsu in once more.

  Miyakitsu twitched on the bed, tempted to help him with closing the trunk, but he gave her a stern look and she settled once again, her hands folding, her knees together, ankles crossed.

  The trunk’s lock went through its standard relay of clicks and snaps and a small bell rang, signaling the lock’s success.

  He let out a breath and crossed the room to sit beside her, resting the dark blue satin box on his knees.

  “Everyone likes a gift from time to time, you’d agree?” the Wandering Wallace asked, slipping the mask off his face to rub at the area beneath his eyes.

  She adjusted her gaze from where it had been pinned to the ceiling to rest on him.

  His eyes creased at their edges, a smile on his lips, and he knew the scars that covered a swath of his face barely adjusted, his appearance much like a damaged wax doll.

  She stared at him a moment, then the edges of her eyes crinkled and she returned her gaze to the box, which he opened to reveal a selection of glimmering ruby rings. She touched the velvet beside each one, counting slowly and carefully. “Seven, my love.”

  “Seven? Still so many…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And so many families already gifted with them. Thirteen out. Seven left. Elections coming too soon, too soon…” he murmured.

  “Three of the seven are aboard?” She cooed out the question and shifted toward him. Her long slender fingers closed the box’s lid and she slid it onto the nearby table.

  “Yes. And if we keep up the ruse of enjoying the captain’s company for dinner we might gift him with one.”

  “What of the Maker?” She pressed her body against his side, her supple curves fitting into his lean lines.

  “What of him?” the Wandering Wallace asked, blinking. “He was not even expected on this journey of ours.”

  “Gifted him…?”

  The Wandering Wallace straightened beside her, his eyes locked with hers. “Gift the Maker with such a ring?” He laughed and Miyakitsu’s mouth slipp
ed into a smile. “You clever, clever beast, you!” he exclaimed. “Taking the fight to the man himself. Bringing the solution back round to the problem!” He nodded, steepling his fingers together before his nose and peering over them at her. “So which name on our list do we remove so there are enough rings to go round?”

  She ran a finger from his forehead to his chin, her touch feather-soft. “Such a large decision,” she said. She yawned and he glimpsed the beast inside her, the fox she was always a heartbeat from being, all flesh, fur, teeth, claw, and wilderness dressed up in the skin of his wife. “Some decisions are best when slept upon,” she whispered, leaning into him once more. She gave him a soft, lingering kiss and her slanted eyes, with the forests and pools of Japan reflected in their depths, closed beneath a thick fringe of eyelashes.

  She scooted closer to him, a beautiful dark-haired angel from a foreign land, and he knew he would give her anything: his heart, his soul …

  “What if I told you we are going to take over the world? At least the New World…”

  Yes, he would give her the world.

  Her hand slipped down his arm, into his hand and she tugged him down on top of her.

  He did not bother feigning resistance.

  Chapter Six

  Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

  —HORACE MANN

  Aboard the Artemesia

  The Wandering Wallace sensed the dawn though he could not see it from any window on the airship due to the thick bank of clouds holding them aloft.

  Exhaustion would eventually take him. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. There was little a revolutionary could guarantee except for an early grave and a gnawing exhaustion only kept at bay by the fire in his gut that shouted at him to change the world. He yawned, but fought down the feeling, swallowing it up and watching as Miyakitsu stirred in her sleep.

  A fitful night, one moment she was Miyakitsu, human, soft and supple, lying like the embodiment of temptation at his side in only her silk robe, and then she whimpered, dissolving away into her fox form, thick midnight pelt a cool tickle against his flesh. She had not flashed in and out of her forms so frequently since … He struggled to remember and nearly laughed at the dichotomy of it all.

  Him—the one struggling to remember!

  The sad truth was she hadn’t acted this way since they first boarded the ship and left her home country and past far behind. The only things they’d brought with them were his trunk, his clothing, a few scant possessions he’d obtained on his strange quest, and her clothing, such that it was. She owned three kimonos, one for dress and two for everyday, a set of sandals that he felt impeded her keeping a reasonable pace, several pairs of socks that she was meticulous in keeping, and a delicate hand-carved comb. Easy enough to pack.

  Few on board the Cutter they rode back then cared about their marital status. She was foreign, he was odd, and the crew just tried to make certain they all—or at least most of them—survived the voyage through Merrow-infested waters. On such a journey few people cared who kept company with whom in the wee hours of the morning.

  It was as freeing as it was terrifying.

  They stayed to the ship’s center whenever on deck and watched every porthole and spot that needed plugging—and there were more than a few aboard that leaky Cutter. Merrow had never been known to tear straight into the bowels of a boat, but there was much about the Merrow none of them knew. So the Wandering Wallace kept her close and by day she was a beautiful young woman that cared only for his company and by night she was his pet fox.

  On that ship he obtained his prize possession and learned how to use it. A technology only in its early and experimental stages, a premade camera obscura for the making of a daguerreotype was expensive to obtain and difficult to keep, but it was there and then that he had obtained his first image of the two of them together.

  It was a modern miracle—proof of them together that went on beyond her falling asleep and him falling out of her memory. Tangible proof that she was happy with him—pictorial proof she was loved by him and he loved her back.

  She stirred in her sleep and the small dark fox elongated, her flesh swallowing fur and her body stretching to fill the kimono. She yawned and he thought, as he so often did, that her teeth were just the faintest bit sharper first thing in the morning.

  She rolled onto her left shoulder—always her left shoulder, he knew, and jumped up in the bed, feeling something hard beneath her arm.

  She grabbed it, held it in her hand, and tilted her head. It was framed in copper with a thin protective sheet of mica covering the image within. An image of … She wrinkled her nose and peered at the picture. A man in a funny mask stood beside a young woman with long black hair. She straightened further and he knew even from the body language he saw sitting behind her that she was not sure.

  Look up, he willed her, look up …

  The light glinting off the glass caught her eye and she peered at the long-handled mirror that hung from the ceiling, suspended and slowly turning, one face carved metal and one—

  —her own.

  She grabbed the mirror, inspecting her reflection as if seeing it for the first time. It was all at once so familiar a scene and yet so unsettling that his stomach dropped. Would it be today that she no longer even knew herself? Would this be the morning he would never recover from?

  She held the mirror in one hand and the daguerreotype in the other, doing a careful side-by-side comparison. Then her gaze fell onto the mask from the picture, sitting as he always left it by her bedside.

  It was the same one in the picture. She saw another picture by the bedside and another. There was a stack of them she flipped through, frames clicking against each other. They chronicled their time together, showing him sporting each of his masks—each of the ones that he left displayed around whatever room they called their own on any given night.

  She fumbled through the photographs, her curiosity in control until she came to the last one. The image only he and she were meant to see.

  The face only they would ever share.

  She gasped, seeing the truth there in stark black-and-white.

  But it could never be said that foxes were not crafty—that foxes were not clever—and he hoped she knew the truth by reading it in his eyes. That was all that mattered. No scars, no marks could change the truth she saw all over again for the very first time each morning in that first photograph.

  The truth of his love for her.

  She always turned so slowly. Every morning it was the same. A slow and graceful pivot on the bed, barely disturbing the thin covers, as she followed the path of the masks, finally coming face-to-face with the man behind them.

  The expression on her face said it all: I should remember you. The pictures prove that. But I cannot. Why can I not remember something so happy? So good?

  Questions washed across her features in waves of varying degree and she reached a soft hand out to his battered and burned cheek. With one tender touch all his fear and hate from that night so long ago disappeared.

  It was as if he was never found as a child with a steam contraption he refused to see burned and destroyed. It was as if he had never lost his mother and father in the ensuing blaze and never been taken in by the people of the Night Market who taught him many skills …

  As if he never had been pushed to want nothing more than vengeance.

  Beneath her ministrations he was whole again.

  And each morning, like he had done so many times, he seated her beside him and told her his favorite tales as a magician—the tales of the potent magick making up their relationship and binding them together.

  Aboard the Artemesia

  Jordan woke in darkness, her lantern out, only the faint flicker of lightning in the clouds surrounding the Artemesia giving a pulsating glow to the room’s interior. The sky outside was as thick and claustrophobic
as her head felt.

  Her brain pounded against her skull, the memory of the blow to the back of it a distant ache. Her head felt thick with the sizzle of fire. She licked her lips, hearing them rasp together like paper, her mouth sticky with the last bit of moisture. She swallowed, her throat threatening to close. Gasping, Jordan stretched out across the floor, her hand reaching blindly toward the stand on which was balanced both pitcher and cup.

  Her fingers traced a path up the stand’s leg and found the cool curve of the pitcher, wrapping tight around its handle. She pulled it toward her but it fell, her arm’s muscles rubbery—barely strong enough to stop it from tumbling to the ground and shattering. She brought it down to the floor with a teeth-rattling thump, glad the thing was so sturdily built.

  Reaching for the cup when a flare of lightning briefly lit her room, she knocked it down and heard it hit and roll away. Her hand walked across the floor trying to find it, but she swallowed again, fighting to peel her dry tongue off the roof of her mouth. Sitting, she dragged the pitcher to her and hefted it, her lips searching out its edge.

  She tilted it only far enough for the water to tease against her mouth and she let the cool liquid spill into her. She had no idea how long she sat drinking—she wondered if she had even bothered to breathe—only that the pitcher was empty and still her tongue felt like a desert was spread across its top.

  A drop of water rested at the corner of her lips and her tongue darted out to guide it in as well.

  She rose, making her unsteady way to the door. Leaning against it, she pounded with her fist, shouting, “Water!” She coughed the word out, stroked a hand down her neck, and tried again. “Water!” she demanded, pounding and kicking at the door.

  She ran the back of her hand across her forehead. She was not fevered so why did she feel such a thirst? Why did her head feel like a thousand bees hummed inside her skull?

  Her hand dropped from the door, fist uncurling. A memory, like a shadow, floated behind her eyes and filled her ears. She remembered the sound of rain falling hard against her window. The invasive scent of minerals and moisture. Of wind whipping clouds into fresh shapes and lightning jabbing like accusatory fingers across the sky.