He glanced behind him towards the farmhouse. "I'm not sure if they'd be frightened or excited to know the source of those rumors is standing on their front lawn talking to their uncle."
"I'd prefer if they didn't know anything," I said.
He frowned. "I certainly hope you weren't implying that I might tell them."
"No, not at all," I said. "The truth is that I'm worried, because it seems magic is here to stay. It's going to get much worse, Simon. Much, much worse."
"Is that why you came? To warn me?" he asked.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I'd come for a lot of reasons. To gather allies. To explain what had happened. But mostly, if I was being honest, I wanted to see Simon Snyder. He was an uncomplicated man in a complicated world. With the tangled mess of prophecies seething in my head like a nest of spiders waiting to burst out and cover the world in webs, I desired something simple, easy.
But to call the Warden simple was to mislead myself. He was an honest man, one of the few I'd ever met. He had that strength of American purpose, that self-assured belief that all would work out.
Yet, he wasn't simple. He'd taken the news about prophecies and magic better than I had.
Maybe that's what I was looking for. Everything going on inside my skull felt like I was living with a dozen boisterous extended family members who'd come for an unexpected and lengthy visit.
"I came because...I wanted to...wanted to let you know we would need your help," I said.
He eyed me suspiciously. "What kind of help?"
"I don't know yet. Like I said, the world has gotten more complicated. Magic, and the creatures wielding it, are invading our realm. We're going to have to work together to keep it back," I said.
"We can keep it back?"
"No, that's not right. We can't keep it back. But we can figure out how to keep it from overwhelming us."
Simon hefted the axe onto his shoulder. "So I'm just supposed to wait for you to let me know when I can be of use?"
He was still hurt from my earlier comment.
"We need your help, Temple Franklin and I. I'll try to be more forthcoming next time. The Gamayun tied my hands with the prophecies," I said.
"As you wish, Katerina. I will help when you call, but don't wait until the last moment to let me know what's going on. If I'm going to support this, you can't leave me in the dark," he said.
"Deal," I said with a nod, turning to climb back into my steam carriage.
"Katerina," said Simon.
I stopped with my hand on the door. "Yes, Simon?"
"Did you burn down the Magdelen House?" he asked.
My hand went straight to my mouth. "Not directly, but essentially, I was the cause of it."
"Thank you for your honesty. I just needed to know if I should continue the investigation. Someone claimed they saw a flying witch in a cauldron—"
"Mortar."
"Fine, mortar, so I thought it might be you," he said.
I climbed back into the vehicle, the thwack of axe blows signaling that Simon had resumed his wood chopping.
I'd promised him a lot of things I hoped I was going to be able to uphold. Dealing with magic seemed to have a way of breaking promises.
I was about to turn my steam carriage towards home, but remembered another stop I needed to make. It was hard to believe I'd forgotten about it this long, but I'd been inside, penning my memoirs. And this time, Aught had strict instructions to only print pamphlets that I had expressly authorized. We didn't want a repeat of the previous mistake.
Once I returned to Philadelphia from the outskirts on this frigid January morning, I turned the steam carriage towards my next destination as a half-dozen military airships performed maneuvers over the Delaware River.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I shouldn't have expected it to be there. Its mistress had been banished from this world. There was nothing but an empty lot where the Bone House had sat.
I'd already driven past the original location for her little hospital. Nothing but weeds and rocks now. I asked a few neighbors about the Bone House, but none seemed to remember that a building had been at the location for the autumn. They remembered the Bone House, and the helpful Rowan Blade who performed miracles for the poor folk, but claimed the shop had been in a different location.
It shouldn't have been a surprise, but I'd hoped to have a chance to investigate her abode, discover what magic allowed it to move like that.
I strolled around the empty lot with my hands shoved into the fur muff at my waist. The air was sharp, making my nose and eyes ache. In the street, the snow was trampled and dirty, mixed with coal dust and horse manure and turning into a brown slush, while the lot remained relatively pristine. Nothing suggested that a building had sat in this location.
Both Rowan Blade and Morwen Hightower had shops capable of moving around the city and then disappearing completely. How I wished the roles between the two mercenaries had been reversed, then things might have happened much differently.
Though we'd crossed blades and stood on opposing sides, I sorely missed Rowan. She was a killer, and had set in motion the plot that might have felled the city, but she had a streak of good in her too. Or at least, I hoped she did.
"Katerina Dashkova," said a voice from the street.
It was a woman from the Women's Brigade. Her hair was threaded with more gray, turning her widow's peak into a severe point. Myna was her name.
"Madam," I said.
"Young lady, we have not received your application at the Council of Free Speech," she said.
Young lady? I almost laughed in her face, remembering at the last moment that I looked half her age, despite being her senior by twenty years or so.
"I am no longer in the printing business. The Patriot Letters entered bankruptcy with the bank," I said.
I'd only just received the letter the day before. At first, it'd angered me, but then I realized it was to my advantage to not be visible to the community. Better to practice my pamphleteering in secret.
"Praise the Creator then, for putting you in your proper place," she said piously.
A vicious retort readied itself on my tongue, but I remembered the old newspaper hanging on her wall. I'd verbally flayed better foes for less, but it seemed inappropriate at this time. Especially because we were looking for allies in Philadelphia, or at least not looking to make new enemies.
"You've lost a husband, haven't you?" I asked.
She scowled so hard I thought her face might fall off. "What gives you the right to spy on me?"
"I did not spy," I said, nodding to the band of simple gold on her finger. "I lost a husband too. I understand how much it hurts."
Myna didn't know how to act, stomping in the snow a few times, before eventually giving up. Her eyes were glassy.
"Though it was twenty years ago, I still mourn him," she said, her lower lip trembling.
"My apologies, Madam," I said. "It never grows easier."
"Not at all," said Myna, nodding distantly.
She opened her mouth to speak, another barb on her lips, but she gave up and merely wandered off, muttering, "Good day, Madam," beneath her breath.
I gave myself high marks for the encounter, wishing Catherine could have seen my restraint. It was something I'd never been able to master, usually forging ahead in my arrogance, using my wit like a deadly rapier, skewering friend and foe alike.
An old bird could change her feathers, or at least a feather. Maybe it was the prophecies that had changed me. I felt them always now. As if my mind were a dry forest, and smoke hovered in the air, but no fire. The fire would come soon enough and when it did, it would burn the whole forest down, but not yet.
That evening, I wore my warmest furs, the clothes I might have worn on a trip to Siberia. I took the cauldron (or mortar as I reminded myself) high into the sky, above the few clouds that graced the night.
The moon was dark and the stars splattered the sky with light. Though I'd opened on
ly as many fruits as were in that dome, it felt as though the prophecies numbered as many as the stars above, each one pulsing in my head.
Stars. Prophecies. Universes.
It was all almost too much to comprehend. And here I was at the center of the tangled Gordian knot.
What did that make me?
A bird is known by its flight.
My father’s words echoed through the years.
I was exactly what the Gamayun had called me.
Princess. Exile. Thief. Traveler.
Prophecy Eater. Teller of Tales.
All these were true, and more, but still some answer eluded me.
Beneath the cauldron, the clouds had parted, revealing the coppery glow of Philadelphia.
In the past, I'd felt an objective distance from the city, wondering always if I must flee. That feeling was gone now, banished. If I'd been looking for a home, I'd found it.
I'd made my stand against Rowan, placing my fate squarely with America.
Doubt about my role in the Transcendent Society was gone. They could not deny me now.
Which meant that this was my home now, truly, completely.
Though it'd been difficult thus far, the next step would be infinitely more difficult.
Gather allies.
After that, who knew? There would be more challenges ahead. A thousand lifetimes’ worth of prophecies in my head, waiting to unravel, and at the end: a choice.
But that felt a long time from now, so long that it would probably never come.
So I had to be ready. Master the magic. Learn what I could.
Nothing would be the same anymore.
I just wished I knew what was next. I was ready, my skin bristling with anticipation.
What was going to happen?
What challenges were going to unfold anew?
Somewhere far below me, a raven cawed in the night.
An answer, perhaps?
###
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Also by Thomas K. Carpenter
THE DIGITAL SEA TRILOGY
The Digital Sea
The Godhead Machine
Neochrome Aurora
GAMERS TRILOGY
GAMERS
FRAGS
CODERS
ALEXANDRIAN SAGA
Fires of Alexandria
Heirs of Alexandria
Legacy of Alexandria
Warmachines of Alexandria
Empire of Alexandria
Voyage of Alexandria
Goddess of Alexandria
MIRROR SHARDS ANTHOLOGY
Mirror Shards: Volume One
Mirror Shards: Volume Two
THE DASHKOVA MEMOIRS
Revolutionary Magic
A Cauldron of Secrets
Birds of Prophecy
The Franklin Deception
Nightfell Games
The Queen of Dreams
Dragons of Siberia
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas K. Carpenter resides near St. Louis with his wife Rachel and their two children. When he’s not busy writing his next book, he’s playing soccer in the yard with his kids or getting beat by his wife at cards. He keeps a regular blog and can be found on twitter under @thomaskcarpente.
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Birds of Prophecy (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 3) Page 19
