Stormbringer

by Shannon Delany

  He yanked the gag out of her mouth. “Answer me!”

  “No,” she whispered.

  Lightning flared across the sky again, thrashing against the body of the boat like an eager dog trying to reach its master.

  Captain Kerdin threw her back to the floor. “In all my years I’ve never seen anything like that … Lightning hunting you. That lightning hungers for you.” He laughed. “You are truly something unique, Jordan Astraea. More wanted than you know. When lightning finally takes you, will its kiss strengthen you or make you Wraith or Warden? Or might you become something else? New and different.” Still laughing, he left her, locking her cabin again.

  Herkimer Port

  After most of the crowd had loaded into carriages and carts and the trunks and boxes the Wandering Wallace and Miyakitsu had been leaning so comfortably against were taken, they settled together in a happy heap, his rump on the wood of the dock, her rump on his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck, and his feet in the first fallen and crumpling leaves signaling autumn’s eventual arrival. Her toes pointed and poked at the carpetbag at their side as she smiled into the masked face of the man she once again remembered she loved.

  Caught up staring into each other’s eyes, it took a moment for them to realize they were being watched by a man carrying a leather bag the size of a small pumpkin.

  The Wandering Wallace shifted Miyakitsu on his lap and peered up at the man with curiosity.

  “You’re he, yes?” the man asked, looking around to assure himself no one else was nearby before returning his gaze with some doubt to the mask. “You are … a mule?”

  The Wandering Wallace laughed. “Some might say donkey and many would merrily take the opportunity to call me an ass, but all three work and are at times quite fitting. Today though it seems I am destined to be mostly mule.” He eyed the leather bag. “And you are searching for—”

  The man paused, his lips pursed, taking in the full spectacle of the pair of them for the first time. “—a Reanimator.”

  “Very good,” the Wandering Wallace replied.

  The man said, “Strange how all your type goes masked.”

  “How better to go than masked as bandits, we sly few who steal life away from death. We sly few … and the odd assortment of street entertainers, gypsies, and yes, your standard thieves, too,” Wallace corrected with a shrug. “It is not as if a mask or other physical trapping defines a person or their station.” He tilted his head. “Besides, nearly everyone has either badges or calling cards. Where’s the fun in being like the majority? Let the minority go masked.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed further. “Robert said that these must needs reach you.”

  The Wandering Wallace stuck his hand out for the bag and the man set it in his palm. “Each is whole, sorted and labeled?”

  The man nodded but stopped himself partway through the move. “Most, not all.”

  The Wandering Wallace shook his head. “So I must needs contact a Reader?”

  “For a scant handful,” the man said, taking his hat off and gripping it before his chest with both hands. “Some were only recently procured…”

  Wallace reached his free finger and thumb through the mask’s eye holes and rubbed around the bridge of his nose. “Recently procured through…?”

  “There was a fever outbreak in Utica and you know how it is … the regular folk … they don’t know how the stormcells work.”

  “So after they died you helped—”

  “—clean the homes. As good Christian folk help each other in a time of sorrow and need,” he justified. He rallied, becoming defensive. “We only help ourselves to the soul stones, that’s all. And all for the good of the cause.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Wandering Wallace agreed flatly. “All for the good of the cause. After all, what is a little theft when what you’re working up to is a full-scale coup d’etat? Some little things must be sacrificed along the way.”

  Miyakitsu turned to pet the donkey’s long silk mane with a tender hand.

  “And now I’ve done my bit…?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” The Wandering Wallace grabbed Miyakitsu by the waist and, moving her aside, rose to his feet, scooping up the carpetbag. “Take us to the one in need.”

  The man became fully animated then, pressing his hat flat to his head and motioning them along to the edge of the packed-dirt path that led down the face of the mountain. A horse waited in traces for them, its long reins loose as it tugged at the grass now going from bright green to dull at the cool top of the mountain. On the seat of the carriage a man dozed, his arms resting on a handsome rifle in his lap.

  Their leader shouted at him, startling both horse and gunman. “Keith, you good-for-nothing lug-a-bed! Look lively!”

  The man glared at him with eyes so large they were owl-like. “For heaven’s sake, Terrence, there’s no need to rouse me when we’re so far up the mountain. Only springs up here. Not like a Merrow or pooka’s gonna slither his way through the rocks underground just to squeeze out a mountain spring and eat your face!” he added with a wild shake of his open hands.

  “Quite true,” Wallace added, opening the carriage door for Miyakitsu. “They are not interested in faces at all, much preferring throats and guts instead,” he quipped, hopping inside after his lady and tugging the door shut behind them. “Comfortable, Peaches?” he asked as he slid an arm around her shoulders and snuggled her close. “A little nervous, mayhaps?”

  She burrowed her nose into the crook of his neck and murmured.

  “Well, love, so am I. But. We’re a crafty pair. And remember. With Merrow and other Wildkin, it’s not necessarily the fastest, the strongest, nor the smartest that survives, but it almost never is the dumbest nor the slowest. So. I do believe we have a leg up on our hosts.” He put a thumb under her chin and lifted it away from him enough that he could glimpse her eyes. “Besides. The footman carries a Remington rifle being so near Ilion, I’d wager, and the horse is calm. They usually know if something is amiss.”

  The other man climbed up beside the gunman and with a crack of the reins the horse began the trek down the hillside and into the bustling town of Herkimer.

  The house they stopped before was somewhat bigger than the Wandering Wallace’s temporary abode in the Burn Quarter of Philadelphia, and didn’t lean quite as far to one side. It was simple construction.

  The Wandering Wallace glanced up and down the street. Here there was no laughter, no song, no children playing—no signs of life were evident in the neighborhood at all. He wrapped Miyakitsu more tightly against him and made his way quickly into the house.

  He stopped just inside the door, all the humor draining from him.

  The body was already laid out on a table in the parlor, the area clean and neat and devoid of any troublesome elements. Like additional witnesses and cats. Cats were quite the distraction for Miyakitsu. Cats and squirrels.

  All the appropriate precautions had been taken, but still he dragged his feet forward, because unlike most of the bodies he worked on, this one was quite small.

  A child.

  It was Miyakitsu who roused him from his sorrow. She tugged on his arm, inclining her head the faintest bit. Without words she reminded him of his duty—of the oath he swore to her every morning soon after she began to trust him and well before she forgot his very existence again. “To save and to serve.”

  Swallowing hard, he stepped to the table and set down his carpetbag, opening it wide. Withdrawing his apron, gloves, and a length of wire, he asked only the most pertinent questions and quickly set about the task of bringing the dead child back to some semblance of life.

  Chapter Ten

  The man that lays his hand upon a woman,

  Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch

  Whom ’twere gross flattery to name a coward.

  —JOHN TOBIN

  Aboard the Artemesia

  The wound on Jordan’s upper arm had quickly become nothing but a punctured and angry bru
ise, now just the most visible reminder of the first time the captain had forced himself on her. It would not be much longer until it was entirely gone, nothing but a violent memory he did his best to relive every time he entered her room, locked the door behind him, and pushed her around until she gave up.

  Until she submitted.

  Some things were inevitable and some battles ceased to be worth fighting. She fingered the heart pin that still rested in the folds of her sleeve. It was a cold reminder that some hearts were impregnable. Some hearts were too hard to pierce and could only be reforged in the heat of a fire. She slipped it free of her sleeve, squeezing it as hard as she could between her fingers.

  If only her heart were as hard as Rowen’s.

  Funny, the way she thought of this small, shiny, metal heart as Rowen’s, as if he’d given her something more substantial than a decorative pin. As if he’d given her his heart. His heart. But it was far from the truth. She touched her neck. It was sore from the captain’s hands wrapping round it as they had today. She rubbed it gently, wondering if it, too, would bruise.

  When he bruised her arm he gave her a new blue dress with longer sleeves. Better to hide the truth. What would he give her if her neck bruised? A scarf? A collar-style necklace? How many ways could you hide physical damage?

  Mental damage was so much simpler to obscure.

  A Weather Witch was considered unstable by his or her nature. Storms were summoned and released through the wildness of a Witch’s passionate nature. She rolled the heart between her palms, walking slowly to the window.

  She cranked it open wide enough to dump the water in her basin and pitcher. She could let the heart slip free and plummet to the ground … To set it free as she’d set free her hopes that Rowen would come to her rescue. She reached one hand out, opening her fingers so she glimpsed the sheen of the heart still within her grasp.

  As she snaked her hand between the window’s frame and its glass the wind tore at her, whipping around the ship and slipping through her fingers to tease at the heart—to pull it free from her itself and cast it into the clouds.

  She closed her eyes. She could do it: let him go. Let go of hope. Here she was a prisoner on a floating island with nowhere to run. She couldn’t just unlock the door, go down some stairs, burst onto a city street and disappear into a crowd. There was only so far someone could run on an airship before they were caught.

  She could let Rowen go. She hated him anyhow. He had been her one hope—her friend who had grown into something more. But he had abandoned her as his parents and nearly every party guest had abandoned her family.

  Her fingers curled tightly around the heart and she squeezed it so hard it bit into her skin and dug into her palm like the last thing it was willing to do was go. She gasped seeing the blood well up between her fingers and, pulling her hand and the heart back inside, turned her back on the darkening clouds beyond her window. She slid down the wall, her back against its cool surface, the heart clutched in her bloody hand.

  Pulling her knees up to her chin, she rested her elbow atop them, her hand opening, the bloody heart nestled there, smeared with red. Her hand had looked like this before, when she was being Made.

  But the hurt had been different.

  Outside the window spots of rain pelted the glass, the pitter-patter of drops splashing enough that tiny bits of them spattered inside the open window, chilling her.

  She plucked the heart from her hand and tugged open the back of it so the sharp part of the pin stuck out. It was a sharp little blade. She knew from using it before in the Tanks. She brushed its tip against the flesh of her wrist, feeling it tickle.

  She ran it along the length of her arm, appreciating a sensation so soft and foreign compared to the captain’s rough touch. So light, so gentle, so … She pressed down on it, watching it raise a red path in its wake … so unlike her reality.

  She picked it up and moved it back to her wrist, repeating the action, but pressing harder.

  She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth to worry it between her teeth—to gnaw and chew on it.

  To feel something.

  The heart dug in, blood rising up—just a few drops. Horrified, she dropped the pin to the floor and stared at the slowly weeping beads like tiny red dewdrops springing from her flesh.

  This was real. It was pain, but a pain she controlled, a pain she could summon, a sensation to remind her there was something within her grasp—some bit of her existence she steered.

  She picked the heart back up, wiping it off on her skirt. It gleamed brighter now. She pressed a thumb on her weeping wound, smearing the blood across her skin. Such a bright red against such a soft white.

  She leaned back, letting her head loll against the wall, and closed her eyes, letting the tiny wound weep.

  Holgate

  Standing stunned and stiff in the sunlight of the main square, dressed in tattered and filthy clothing, the survivors of Holgate’s Tanks hailed from all ranks, all backgrounds, and were all yet unMade.

  The Wraiths and Wardens drifted around the ragtag group’s edges, driving them closer together. People who had been touched by no one but their torturer for weeks or even months were forced into human contact.

  It was inevitable that someone would snap out a shout.

  “Why have you released us? Why round us up?” the boy with the scarred fingers demanded. “If you’ve freed us, then truly free us. Play no more games. We were all once the same.”

  The Wraiths screeched, raising bony hands to the sky. One stepped to the center, and spoke in a high-pitched and keening voice. “Freed you to give you purpose. You will find true freedom soon. But first—you will fight!” it wailed, words weaving up and into the air. On a middle finger ruby ring flashed and flared.

  Aboard the Tempest

  “You know she’s nothing but the most beautiful tangle of trouble a man can possibly encounter,” Ginger Jack said, the words causing Rowen to straighten. The words by themselves seemed an insult, but their delivery—he eyed Ginger Jack carefully.

  Rowen hooked his fingers into his belt and chuckled, glancing toward where Evie stood, a distance farther down the cargo bay.

  “What?”

  “You’re moonstruck.”

  Ginger Jack’s brows pulled tight together. “Moo—”

  Rowen’s brows raised in challenge. “—nstruck,” he finished.

  “What?” Ginger Jack demanded, turning from staring aghast at Rowen to the back of the pirate captain where Rowen’s smirking gaze rested. “The—the captain? You think I like the captain?!”

  Smug, Rowen dropped his gaze to Jack. “No. I most certainly do not think you like her. I know you love her.”

  Jack widened his stance. “Those are fighting words,” he said, stunned.

  Rowen chuckled again and, resting a huge hand on Jack’s face, moved him, sputtering, aside as Rowen walked past him.

  Jack looked anxiously from Rowen to the captain he was fast approaching. He jogged after him, pawing at his arm. “Just what precisely do you think you’re doing—other than apologizing for this obvious mistake in judgment you’ve made…”

  Rowen glanced down at him, not even shortening his stride. One side of his mouth pressed deeper into his cheek and he laughed at the other man from his eyes. “I am merely going to do what any good man would do when faced with a similar situation. You may come or stay—your choice. But what must needs be done must needs be done.”

  Jack paled a shade or two from his normally ruddy complexion. “You had best not do what I think you are setting to be about … friend…”

  “Perhaps what I am setting to be about is precisely that thing that should have been handled a good while ago and I am precisely the man to handle the issue.”

  “Oh my god, Rowen … If you…” Jack kept up with Rowen’s long strides, staying directly beside him, turned toward the larger man. He sped his pace, getting in front of Rowen and walking backwards.

  Rowen’s gaze flicked f
rom the captain to him and back again. “If I what?” Rowen teased.

  “If you tell her—” His eyes were wide. “I’ll deny it—every bit—”

  The air puffed out of him when he slammed into her, and it was only her fist on his collar that kept Jack from falling to his knees.

  A grin threatened to split Rowen’s face in two.

  The captain was significantly less amused. “Deny what?” she boomed out, dragging Jack by the collar so he was no longer sandwiched between Evie and Rowen.

  Jack swallowed hard, faced with her obvious dissatisfaction. “Deny that I told him the truth of your ancestry.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his chin up, spotlighting the red-gold patch of hair he had carefully cultivated at its end.

  She noted it, a brief smile ghosting over her lips, and said with a huff, “You know I told you that in the strictest of confidence. Imagine how I would be judged if every scalawag aboard knew!”

  Rowen snapped straight up. “I am not just any scalawag,” he grumbled.

  She slapped a hand lightly against his cheek, sparing him a quick look. “Of course not, darling,” she soothed. “You’re a very special scalawag.”

  Jack snorted. “Aye, he is special. You should have seen him try to change the cog on the aft burners!”

  She puffed out a breath in amused exasperation. “I can only imagine!”

  “Wait—what?” Rowen demanded, realizing how things had suddenly turned on him.

  They both looked back at him, laughing in unison.

  “He’s a giant,” she mused. “I have wondered how easily one could shove an entire tree trunk into such tight tunnels as you must work. Do you have to grease him up before you send him in? Perhaps attach a rope to his ankle so you can pull him free if he gets wedged tight?”

  Jack bent over, laughing, and slapped his knee. “I’d need to call in an entire team of workers to extricate him if he got stuck! It would be the strangest tug-of-war ever!”

  “Well, then, let’s try to not put a square peg in places only a round peg should go,” she said with a smile. She leaned over, resting an arm on Jack’s shoulders.