He turned and stuck a hand between the curtains, only pausing briefly when the Wandering Wallace admitted, “I like his spunk,” and then, more loudly, “Do find me when you realize I’m correct!”
The curtains opened and closed and Marion stalked away.
Aboard the Tempest
Jack put his hands on his hips. “Now. Your turn. This Jordan Astraea. You love her.”
Rowen smacked his hands together and looked toward the ceiling. Pulling in a deep breath he admitted, “It’s worse than all that—I think I’ve loved her for a while. At least a year or two. Maybe more.”
“And you never told her, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t. I’m not stupid.”
Jack laughed. “And now you find yourself aboard a fine trading vessel and she is…?”
Rowen sucked his lips in and narrowed his gaze. “Aboard another airship.”
“Oh, that is good. And do you think she knows how you feel?”
“I don’t think so. But women are strange. I’d never admit it to one of them, but I think occasionally they might know things about us sooner than we know ourselves.”
“Never again say that aloud. It’s nearly treasonous.” Jack laughed.
Rowen’s brow furrowed, creases threatening to fold it in half. “It may not matter now, though—what she knows or doesn’t. I wasn’t there when she needed me most.”
“Oh.”
“She might think I gave up on her. She might hate me.”
“You might be correct.” Jack rubbed his chin. “And how does that change your goal of finding her?”
“It doesn’t,” Rowen said with a sigh. “Nothing will change the fact that I need to get to her.”
Jack nodded. “You, good knight, seem to have embarked upon the most difficult of quests. Perhaps we’d best hope you are not destined to play Don Quixote in this mission of yours.”
“I have heard of that one. Would that not make you Sancho Panza?”
Jack snorted. “I think not. But I would say that tragic love story of yours is worth the sharing of another secret of mine.”
“Excellent.” Rowen slapped a palm down on one of the wooden boxes. “Just what’s in these crates? They’re so heavy it’s like I’m carrying corpses.”
Jack paled a moment. “That is quite a secret you wish to be made privy to. I’ll give you a chance to choose a different secret for me to share. For your own safety.”
Rowen’s expression changed, his focus and intensity narrowing down to hold only Jack and the crates within his view. “For my own safety.”
“Aye. There are things aboard trade ships such as ours that are better not known. Sometimes it is the identities of the crew members—”
Rowen fought to school his features as Jack continued.
“—sometimes it is the cargo.”
“I want to know.”
“If things go wrong, you’ll be hanged.”
“I expect that is frequently the case for all crew members aboard a—trading ship. If things go wrong there, hangings happen.”
“Yes. Hangings happen.”
“But, if I’m to take such a risk, I want to know for what crime I’d be hanged.”
Jack blinked once at him and let the word drop out of his mouth to stand like a wall between them: “Treason.”
Aboard the Artemesia
“You,” Marion demanded, pointing to Bran when he threw wide their cabin’s door and strode in, slamming it behind him. “You are what’s wrong with the system. It was through your Making that everything has broken.” He stormed across the room, tendrils of fog trailing coldly behind him. “It is only right that you fix things.”
Bran blinked. “Meggie and Maude,” he said flatly, “to the other room.”
Maude only paused briefly, hearing the intensity in his voice. She scooped Meggie up and carried her to the far smaller second room, closing the door behind her.
“Fix it,” Marion whispered hoarsely, making his approach. “You are part of the reason the system broke. I want to believe it can be fixed. I want to believe it can all be done bloodlessly.”
Bran paled and swallowed hard. “Why now?”
Marion looked away, shaking his head, dark curls trembling.
“Marion … why are you asking now—why now?”
“I want this to all just go away,” he confessed. “You, the girls, the Making … I want it to end. You said there were ways, honest, upright, and legal ways that I could change things. Ways I might fix the system.”
“There are…”
“Then tell me and tell me quick, because I need to do whatever I can to make things better.”
Bran pointed to a chair and Marion dragged it over.
Quickly Bran walked him through the bits he knew about the government and the harsh reality that, as a man with no rank and few funds, Marion had little chance of achieving his goals. “You are Marion Kruse—unranked, ruined. They will not even let you run for office.”
“Then I shall be someone else.”
Bran shook his head. “You cannot deny who you are.”
“You dare say that when you are as determined to leave your past behind as I?”
“They will want documents—a proper and untainted pedigree showing you are of Fifth of the Nine or better,” Bran stressed.
“I will provide them with all they want,” Marion promised. “And they will be unable to deny my right to make a grab for power.” He was insistent, determined. There was no stopping a man who was both those things and married them to his vision. “I must find the Wandering Wallace.”
Aboard the Tempest
Rowen smacked his lips together at the word. He hadn’t realized how thirsty moving crates made him. “Treason,” he said. “That is most certainly a hanging offense.”
“Most certainly.” Jack laced his fingers before him and sucked in a deep breath that he released slowly. “So. What secret would you prefer to know in light of that?”
Rowen looked down. “None.”
Jack’s hands swung loose and he said, “Good enough then. Well. I had better return to that warren of tunnels we call engineering.”
“We had a deal,” Rowen said sharply.
Jack turned back to him. “Yes. Yes, we did. And you said you wanted no other secret to be told to you.”
“Precisely. I still want the one you feel is most dangerous.”
“Oh.” Jack tapped his fingers across the lid of the crate between them. He nodded to himself. “You didn’t tell the captain how I—I mean, you didn’t tell her that lie about how I supposedly feel about her…” He heaved out a sigh. “I made a promise and I’ll keep it. But this means you are one of three aboard that know what cargo we carry.”
He reached into his waistcoat’s pocket, following the chain that dipped into it, and withdrew his pocketwatch. He tugged further on the chain and pulled out an unremarkable-looking key.
He looked back at Rowen.
Rowen stepped back from the crate, and came around to its front to wait beside Ginger Jack.
“You can still tell me you don’t want to know…”
Rowen’s voice caught in his throat. “I try not to lie.”
Jack inserted the key and turned it. The box’s surface, seemingly solid, broke into separate and spinning bits, pulling free of each other and rotating until they had spun counter-clockwise a quarter of the way around the keyhole. There was a rattle and a click and the lid released just a hairsbreadth from the rest of the box. “You are certain?”
Rowen simply said, “Show me what’s in the damned box already.”
“Two things wrapped in one body: revolution and equal rights.” He raised the lid and Rowen stared at the thing inside. Calling it a corpse was a fine assessment, because indeed the thing inside was bent up into itself—folded—but distinctly possessed arms, legs, a head … And rather than the porcelain and breakable automatons the Council had in Philadelphia thanks to a savvy contract with ceramists, these automat
ons were sporting shells of—he tapped a finger against a breastplate—thin steel.
He raised his head and looked at all the crates of a similar design and origin—crates capable of holding the same exact cargo.
“It’s an army,” he whispered.
Jack merely nodded.
Rowen’s eyes fell again to the breastplate and the socket there, which was so obviously missing a key component. “All they need is a stormcell…”
Ginger Jack slowly closed the box and withdrew the key, allowing the mechanism to click, clatter, and lock once more. “That is why we are headed north to Bangor. To meet someone carrying something even better: soul stones.”
Chapter Eleven
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Aboard the Artemesia
Led to Topside, Jordan was tethered to the dais not far from the Conductor. Mouse sniffled, rubbing his runny nose with his sleeve, and grunted something at her before walking away. “What?” she asked the Conductor.
He glanced at her, continuing to work his way through the stations that marked the ship’s controls. “He has instructed you to pay close attention and learn all you can from me. And he said it so politely,” he added, sarcasm tightening his words.
For the next hour the Conductor worked and Jordan watched, learning nearly nothing.
Meggie came up to Topside with Maude and the two sat a distance away, playing jacks. Jordan was certain the child listened and watched the ship’s workings, too.
Jordan felt more likely to learn from the child than her actual teacher. Finally she cleared her throat, asking, “Why keep us aloft? If you want your freedom could you not…?”
The Conductor paused, amused. “Do something drastic? Leave? Crash the ship?” He smiled. “The man at my back is getting nervous from such talk, yes?”
Jordan glanced at the sniper, who now stood, adjusting his gun’s barrel to more tightly keep Anil in his sights.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“He need not worry. I will keep this ship aloft for as long as I am able.”
“But why?”
His brow wrinkled and without looking, he reached out and turned a nearby dial. “Because they have a power over me.”
“What power is that?”
“They have my wife and my son.”
“So fly the ship to them. Rescue them,” she challenged.
“You are so young. So naive.” He said the last word wistfully. From his mouth it came as praise rather than insult. “Rescue—”
“—never comes,” Jordan said, looking down.
“No. Not never,” Anil whispered. “Sometimes it comes late. Sometimes it is the one waiting on rescue who must rescue herself,” he confided. “But in this case—rescue is pointless. They are aboard this ship. They are as safe as I keep the Artemesia.”
“But—”
“For four hours every day—if the conditions are right and I have filled the crystal to its brim with energy—I may visit them. I set the rudder, adjust the wings for glide, and then I may leave.”
“But you haven’t left your post once that I know of.”
“No. I have been informed that I am not allowed to see them again until your training is complete.”
“But…”
“It is what it is,” he said.
“What it is is unfair,” Jordan said, standing.
“Do nothing rash, Jordan,” Anil asked. “This is the way of things. I obey and by that, keep my family safe. It is love for my family alone that keeps me a lamb rather than a lion. Love hamstrings hate.”
She blew out a long puff of air. “I will abide by your wishes. But, if having me trained faster means allowing you to see your wife and son sooner, teach me everything. And teach me now,” she added.
He grinned at her and, pointing, he began. “This is a near duplicate of Admiral Fitzroy’s Storm Glass.”
The big glass tube was filled with clear liquid; crystals like snowflakes and frost pulled free of glass. Large, flaky crystals floated at the top of the stuff.
“See their size and where in the glass they float? That is how we want them to look to maintain the present storm.” He dropped his hands to his sides and focused his gaze on the storm glass. “The easiest way to call a storm is through the glass. Imagine moving the crystals and they will move.”
The crystals shifted position, falling through the liquid to become a thread of floating bits running through the storm glass’s center, and a wind rolled across the deck. The clouds began to clear.
“Now,” he said, “you try. Imagine coaxing the crystals back to the top…”
Jordan stared at the storm glass, willing the crystals to move, but they hung dead in the center, still, though the wind ran the length of the deck. She pressed her lips together and she squinted.
She scowled.
They budged not a bit.
“Better push her into glide,” he suggested, pointing to a lever nearly as long as Jordan was tall. “Shove it forward to pop the wings.”
She pushed and pulled, but the lever stayed as still as the crystals.
The Conductor peered at her and with a single glance from his eyes the crystals rose to the top once more and the clouds closed in. He sighed. “This may prove difficult,” he admitted. “You aren’t much like most of us, are you?” He returned to singing his strange songs to the storm glass and clouds overhead.
She flopped into a seated position, glaring at the storm glass. She could not rescue herself and she could not rescue him either. What good was a Witch with no ready power?
Aboard the Tempest
If it was to come to rebellion—or war—Rowen wanted to be at Jordan’s side. So in the midst of a friendly discussion with Ginger Jack he reached out with a sly left hook and dropped his friend like a bag of grain. Taking the key from around Jack’s neck, he returned to the pods and slipped inside one. He sank into the leather-bound seat, pulling belts across himself to buckle in for safety as Jack had suggested.
He stared at the windows ahead of him and the Tempest’s hull just beside. Resting his hand on the lever marked Release, he took a breath.
Rowen closed his eyes, sighing. What would he do when he pulled the lever? Where would he go? How would he free Jordan if he found her?
With a groan, he leaned forward, resting his folded arms and forehead on the console. He had no strategy, no resources, no support, and no chance of success. He undid the buckles and stepped out of the pod, returning things to just the way they were before he’d opened the door.
Evie paused in the hall outside, her eyes falling to Jack’s key in his hand. She nodded. “I believe it is time you and I had a talk about Conducting. And if you still wish to go to her after you know this, I will help you once we meet our contact in Bangor. But be warned, Rowen—the girl you last saw will not be the same one you find Conducting an airship. She will be changed.”
“I am not the same boy she last saw, either,” he confessed. “We have both changed—for better or worse is yet to be seen. Tell me everything you know. Tell it true.”
So Evie did. She told him what it was like to Conduct a ship and to want to crash and kill all aboard just to end the enslavement. She told him of cargo ships and cruisers and great liners like the Artemesia. She told him of ruined rescues and Burned Out Witches. And what it was like to be Made. The one thing she did not tell him was how she knew so much.
But he didn’t need to ask, watching the light leave her eyes while she told him everything—he knew.
When she finally fell silent, nothing left to share but her sorrow for his loss of Jordan, she asked what he had decided.
“I will find her. Do my best to free her,” he insisted. “No one should be treated like that, not as you were.”
She snorted and took him to her quarters, where she returned his sword and gave him a pouch of coins “for the adventure yet to come,” she assured him
.
Then she stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed his hairy cheek, saying, “Boy, you’d best be cutting that mess off before you find your Jordan. She might not recognize you otherwise.” And she handed him the things he’d wanted but not dared to ask for—a razor and fine mirror to shave by. “And find Jack before he wakes and goes looking for you,” she added with a wink.
Philadelphia
They sat across the table from each other in the Hollindale household, sipping their drinks and watching each move the other made. Catrina adjusted her hand, flexing her fingers in the light.
The ruby in her ring sparked like an angry bloodshot eye and she set down her cup, holding her hand out to showcase the glittering jewel. “This remarkable ring is the most astonishing gift anyone has ever given me. Do tell me what inspired you to give such a thing to me, Uncle Gerald.”
He slugged back the whiskey at hand and, smiling, said, “You inspire me in many ways, niece. Enjoy the ring.”
“I will, oh, I will,” she assured him. “It is just that I have seen a similar ring.”
He blinked.
“It seems it is such a lovely ring that every current Councilman’s wife has been gifted with one.”
He licked his lips and poured another drink. “Is that so?”
“Yes, it most certainly is.”
Gerald swallowed the drink, wishing it burned more hotly—that it heated his mind and not just his entrails.
“So,” Catrina continued, “the real question is this, Uncle Gerald: where did you find the money to purchase so many ruby rings? Have you been watering down your wine?”
Gerald choked. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, brown hair falling into his eyes. When he looked back up at her, he was grinning. “No, niece. Never that.”
Aboard the Tempest
The clouds Evie cast as a precaution parted, the big ship’s wings adjusting, light streaming into the windows of the airship, and the captain looped her arm around Rowen’s and dragged him to the nearest bank of them. “There she is,” Evie announced, “the town of Bangor. Not much to look at yet, started by lumberjacks and built on their stories as much as their industry,” she said with a smile. “But it’s beautiful in its own way. And filled with creative potential. And that’s why we call it home.”
Stormbringer Page 20
