Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

“Then how do you explain the storm she summoned—or the sparks the Tester’s touch and Test elicited? How, Rowen?”

He shook his head, hair flopping into his eyes again. “I don’t know. Yet. Maybe these things happen. Maybe there was another Weather Witch there that they somehow overlooked but it appeared Jordan was the likeliest candidate. Maybe it’s really me! Or maybe,” he said, leaning down to be on eye level with her, “maybe it’s you.”

She hopped back from him as quickly as if he’d belched. “Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous!”

He descended onto the first step.

“She is gone, Rowen,” Catrina insisted. “And we are both better for it. Now you have a better chance at raising your rank.”

He turned and looked at her, his eyes the coolest blue yet. “What do you mean?”

“Be honest with yourself, Rowen. You were pursuing Jordan because you want to step up—not for any other reason. You’re a social climber like the rest of us. You never wanted Jordan—and why would you—she’s as petty as she is pretty—”

He bounded back up the stairs and touched his nose to hers. “Stop now before I stop you.”

Her mouth opened. And closed wordlessly.

“She is our friend.”

“She was a poor substitute for what a real friend should be and you know it,” Catrina challenged. “She whined, she worried, she put herself first—even to our detriment. Showcasing herself the way she did! That you cannot deny. But now she’ll understand what it is to be last. She will be better for being humbled.”

Rowen’s eyes were mere slits. “If I ever find that you are connected to her family’s ruin…”

“Rowen! You are insane! Why—”

“It sounds like you have plenty of why.”

“We both do—and so do most people in this city, if you’re honest with yourself. But what could I possibly have done to make a Tester get a wrong reading? The proof is in the pudding.”

“Only if Cook makes it with sufficient alcohol,” Rowen snapped. “This will be corrected. You’ll see. Jordan is innocent.” Without another word he stomped his way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Philadelphia

Chloe scurried around John, patting at him and rearranging the cloth covering the burden he carried. “No, not over your shoulder, cradle her—it. Cradle it,” she said, adjusting the long thin shape wrapped in blankets and a quilt and held awkwardly in John’s arms. “We must be quick.”

John nodded, following Chloe’s bobbing candle as she moved quickly down the back hallway to the servant’s quarters. It was the original stone house that the Astraeas built on the Hill and it had been, at one time, quite the talk of the town with its hundreds of flat field stones arranged and mortared on edge to create a multitude of different patterns and designs—at the house’s eastern end an eagle and shield still fit into the upper wall, constructed from the stones’ edges. But each generation had different taste and it was not long at all, considering the life span of a well-maintained house, before the Astraeas constructed another house on the Hill overlooking the poorer neighborhoods of the Below and handed the original building over to their ever-growing staff of servants. Then the inevitable happened. The new house was not exactly what a particular generation wanted, but, having no more space for building unless they tore up the gardens and fountains that helped define the estate, they built a home connecting the two previous ones.

The Astraea estate had, at that juncture, become a challenge to the sensibilities of all who loved the simple stoic face and well-balanced proportions of Georgian architecture. If there was anything those of rank could say to belittle the Astraeas, it was that their home was a “unique” construction.

At least that was all they could say to belittle the Astraeas before tonight.

It was through that weaving structure that Lady Astraea’s most faithful servants carried their ladyship, swaddled in fabric, from her home and chambers into their own with its faintly warped wooden floors. Down one hall and a set of narrow stairs they went by flickering candlelight, casting grotesque shadows all the way.

“Out the back,” Chloe whispered, opening the door for John and his burden after giving a quick glance around.

The rain had departed with Jordan and now the sparse lantern light along the streets reflected back in puddles and slick spots on the walkways and bricks that made up the streets in the grander parts of Philadelphia.

Tomorrow all the crystals in the house would be removed and redistributed and the fall from grace would be all but complete for members of the Astraea household. Their last chance was if Jordan couldn’t be Made. But that seemed tragically unlikely.

Already cut off from stormlight and stormpower, their choices of transportation were limited. The carriage did not run without sufficient stormpower and neither of them was allowed near the single family horse, a beast kept as a courtesy in the same stable as Burchette kept the city’s military-grade steeds. “Old Sir at the Bilibin House been working on a special machine. Looks a mite like a carriage but with a chimney and stove on it.”

Chloe spared him a glance. “How does anything that has a chimney and stove on it look like a carriage?”

He snorted. “Has wheels, Miss Chloe. Quite the contraption.”

“Ah.” She stopped short, staring long and hard at him. “Could we take Old Sir’s contraption, you think?”

John laughed. “No, Miss Chloe. I think not. All the thing does now is belch smoke and spin gears—soon its wheels will spin, too, Old Sir says. But I don’t rightly know. I think all that smoke’s poisoned his brain.”

“A carriage run by smoke?”

“More rightly steam, Miss. Run by steam. Imagine what such a thing might mean.”

Chloe’s mind was doing just that—imagining. Imagining the freedom a new power source would bring, a world with no stormlights or stormcells or Weather Witches. Why, steam was produced so easily … Lady Burchette could have powered the entire city with the steam rolling out of her ears as she was encouraged to leave the Astraea household! “No use to dwell on such nonsense,” she finally said. “Such a thing’s certain not to work and dreams and fancies never got people nowhere quick feet couldn’t.” She looked at Lady Astraea being carried so tightly and raised a finger. “Hold one moment.” Hitching the hem of her skirt into her waistband to keep it from sopping up water, she dodged away to the large greenhouse that lorded over the estate’s gardens. She returned a few minutes later, grunting as she pushed a wheelbarrow. “Here. Gently now. Place it in here.”

John did as he was bade and Chloe arranged her cape over the top of her ladyship’s body before they made the bumping descent down the Hill’s long slate staircase and into the more frantically paced center of the city and the Below.

The quiet and stiffly proper feel of the Hill on nearly any evening was juxtaposed with the lively bustle that greeted them at its base. People jostled each other on the streets as they jockeyed for position, a steady stream of them heading to the Night Market, scents of fried dough and smoking meats thick and welcome in the close press of flesh.

“We going to the Market, Miss?” John asked, his eyes on the crowd.

Chloe shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said. “What I wouldn’t give to be there eating delicious foods and watching the wildest of entertainment instead of…”

Beside the Night Market’s main entrance a cat did a merry jig for a man holding a hoop he lit on fire. The cat gave a shrill cry before bouncing through the burning ring, landing atop a tall hat that it tipped over to collect coins tossed from the clapping crowd.

Chloe’s voice picked up again. “Our job is an important one. Come now.” She slipped her hand beneath his elbow and urged him to bring the wheelbarrow more quickly, finding a twisting path through the press of people.

Through the mass of humanity they went, weaving a path beneath old Bendicott Bridge, where ragged-looking men around campfires raised haunted faces and watched them scurry past.

“This feels ill to me, Miss,” John confided, quickening his pace. “There is darkness here that goes beyond nightfall.”

Chloe too lengthened her stride, her jaw tight.

“Who were those men?” John asked, casting a glance over his shoulder.

“Survivors.”

“It don’t look like that’s much surviving going on under that there bridge…”

“Survivors of the war.”

“This war? The Wildkin War?”

“No, the other war,” she corrected softly. “1812. Those men fought to keep us free, John. You saw the one missing his leg?”

“No, ma’am. Saw the one missing his arm, though. And the one with the bandana over an eye.”

“Those are our good veterans,” she said. “That is their fine reward for fighting in our stead so that we might go on serving tea and biscuits for the lords and ladies of the Hill.” She paused at a crossroad, rubbing her chin. She looked up one street and down the other. Here the houses were even smaller than in the Below, each only the tiniest bit wider than a single door and stacked so high in shambles of architecture that one might easily imagine an entire block tumbling down like so many dominoes.

“The Burn Quarter,” John realized.

“Yes.”

The one place the city watchmen, constables, and fire companies had orders to let burn if ever it caught fire. And, as the fire companies had aligned with the gangs, the likelihood a place would burn while they fought each other was high. Still, the Burn Quarter was the one place they could find the particular skill they sought.