But, even so young, she had a gift for discovering the little things that either pulled men together or divided them. It was a precious and necessary family trait when one held her social standing. “I know this as well as I know my own name,” she snapped. Moon-white gloves appeared long enough to tug the deep hood of her Kinsale cloak farther down, swallowing any hint of her face in shadow. A ruby flashed on one finger before her hands disappeared once more into rich folds of velvet.

The Councilman’s gaze flicked from the mysterious lady to the fluttering light of the smoke-stained lanterns near the alley’s entrance. “One might suppose you, too, are a Witch—the way the wind cries when you are angered…”

“One might suppose,” she quipped, the breeze playing with the heavy velvet hem, “that such words would be considered treasonous considering my rank. Go to the Astraea estate this evening. The Witch will be there, as I’ve said.”

Light stuttered across his sharp features and he nodded. Shrinking against a fresh chill, he pulled his tall hat’s brim lower over his brow. “And who—?”

She held her hand up, silencing him. “Bring a Tester. He will know the Witch easily enough.”

He waited in silence with the watchmen—with no Weather Wraiths currently in Philadelphia proper he had settled for using simple men—until the lady disappeared from the alley and the sounds of a carriage rattling across cobblestones told of her departure.

He did not need her surname to guess her rank. From the noise on the street he knew her carriage was horse-drawn by a single, calm steed, like the carefully tended cavalry’s or the privately owned ones barely afforded in the city—not like the wild-eyed and panicky survivors of Merrow attacks. A steed such as hers would have been well protected, stabled, and that took significant money.

She was at least a member of the Fourth of the Nine and that was good enough for him.

Finding another Weather Witch at the Astraea estate meant further lessening old Morgan Astraea’s influence by casting doubt on the high-ranking Councilman. He’d do anything to peel one of Astraea’s fingers back from the reins he held, anything that would put himself a step closer to achieving his goals.

“We must hurry. Call in the nearest Tester and a Ring of Wraiths. There will be some nearby Gathering. If we are to do this we must do it well and professionally.”

A watchman split from their group, jogging to obediently do his duty.

The dying light of sunset streaked across the public’s promised clear sky, illuminating the fat-bellied airships hanging overhead as they awaited instructions for their coast into the Eastern Mountain Port. It would be a clear night for docking cargo, with rain scheduled to fall on Tuesdays and alternating Fridays only.

Lord Stevenson reached up to his hatband to adjust a metal and glass contraption nestled there, bringing its system of lenses and scopes over the hat’s brim and down to sit on the bridge of his nose. Blinking as he rolled a finger across a small brass gear by one of the two scopes, he flipped through a series of tiny lenses, watching the atmosphere high above him come into sharp focus. Faint and feathery disruptions overhead manifested as wisps of clouds, which slowly edged their way across the evening sky, pulling in from all directions to draw together above Philadelphia’s most desirable real estate: the Hill.

And remarkably near the Astraea estate, which sat at the Hill’s crest like the king of the stone-faced mountain.


Holgate

The newspaper folded near Bran’s elbow was a distinct temptation with its headline of Unseasonable Frosts Frustrate Philadelphia. Bran ran the back of his hand across his forehead and tried to focus on the books lying open before him. A Genealogy of Witches, Wardens, and Wraiths was heavy enough reading, but writing the blasted thing? Even worse. He tapped his pen’s steel nib to clear it of ink and set it down.

But the only way to track the Weather Witches was through their lineage—family lines meant much as magicking was one of the traits passed to one’s offspring. Whereas one might attribute a propensity for headaches to pale blue-eyed people living in very sunny climes, connecting physical traits to witchery was not so simple.

Were brown-eyed brunettes more likely to trigger and demonstrate witchery than green-eyed blondes? Statistically speaking, no. But redheads … gingers … they were fiery in more ways than one.

He blew on the page and tenderly lifted its corner, lingering on the memory of a redheaded girl from his hometown. More trouble than he had ever expected. He grinned, but, catching himself, squashed the expression and refocused on his task.

Gingers and anyone from Galeyn Turell’s line seemed particularly prone to witchery. It was as they said: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Luckily, all Weather Witches manifested their affinity for magicking before the age of sixteen.

His desk lantern’s brilliance ebbed, its glass panes reflecting equal amounts of shadow and light. He leaned forward to inspect it. The glowing double-terminated crystal powering its interior seemed constricted, producing only a soft, wavering glow. He glanced at the lanterns lining his library walls. The fire hazard of candles and brief monopoly of gas had been replaced years ago in most of the country by stormlight and their energy source: stormcells, tiny crystals that held power and eased it out slowly.

But even that technology was not without flaws. It did have a distinctly human origin.

His room still radiated a soft white light, each stormcell bright and steady except for the one on his desk.

The one that mattered most.

He shook his head and picked up the set of bone keys resting on his desk’s corner. A Maker should be afforded plenty of light for his work.

He snatched up a smaller journal and opened it, running one finger down a list of names and times. Someone was not doing what they needed to … Ah. His finger stopped on the name of a freshly Made girl.

Age six and recently Gathered from Boston.

Most people would expect little from a child—yes, a sense of decorum and proper etiquette, of course that, but usually they had another year or two before they were thrust into some form of necessary employment. But Witches were different little beasts. Age was of far less importance than proper training.

Witches Burned Out. Best to train them up, Make them, and pull all the power from them as quickly as one could—harness the energy before it dissipated—before they died, leaving only one final stormcell, one specially colored crystal, their soul stone, behind.

This child was too young—too newly Made—to be Fading. Either she wasn’t trying or she wasn’t Drawing Down enough.

He pushed his chair back, picked up the lantern, hung the keys on his belt, and grabbed his small journal. Tank Five. Best go and deal with the problem now rather than suffer the consequences of not solving it later.

Out the door and along the narrow hall he went. Down seven flights of stairs. That was the real headache of maintaining rooms in the Eastern Tower’s upper apartments—traveling so far up and down just to reach the Holding Tanks. At the eighth floor’s landing he peered through the narrow strip of smudged glass at eye level and, steeling himself, opened the heavy wood and iron door. He paused there, nose stinging at the thick scents of chamber pots, old hay, sweating rocks, and perspiring people.

The Tanks were worse than any stable he’d ever been in, especially in the crawling heat of late summer, and the Tanks Witches stayed in before their Reckoning? Not a thought he liked to dwell on. Night only faintly dulled the rankness stabbing his sinuses and left him a little less dizzy than day. Frankly, had there been no problem with any Witch, he would never venture down to the Tanks. But he was the Maker and a Maker’s reputation was built on his successes.

Or destroyed through his failures.

But, he had made enough changes in his system since the escape of the Kruse boy.

He raised the nearly dead lantern, its rectangular glass panes shimmering more from other lanterns’ lights than its own power. He slipped on a pair of thick gloves hanging by the door with a snap of rubber, feeling them fall into a proper and clinging fit.

Bran tugged out his journal and found the girl’s name. He called, “Sybil! Sybil, do you hear me?”

A moan drifted to his ears.

His lantern flickered in response.

He stood before her door in an instant, his hand fumbling through the bone keys. He found the one he needed and popped the door open. In the dark cell the child lay flopped like a rag doll in the straw of her bedding. Moonlight streamed through the bars in the only outside-facing window on Floor Eight and he scrambled forward, reaching a tentative hand toward her forehead.

Fever could spread like western wildfire in the Tanks and wipe clean an entire season of Witches before racing through the compound, murdering the Grounded populace, too. Even through the gloves, the touch of her flesh reassured Bran there was not enough heat to prove fever. He shifted his hand, clamping it more tightly to her brow.

There was barely enough heat to prove life.

Sybil’s flesh was cold as the water in the claustrophobic cell’s corner bucket. Bran stretched the distance and dragged the sloshing wooden pail to him with a grunt. “You aren’t drinking,” he muttered, noting the volume of water remaining. “You can’t Draw Down if you don’t drink. And you can’t Light Up if you don’t Draw Down. Sit,” he demanded, grabbing her arm in an effort to right her.