John nodded. “It sounds much like her ladyship.”

“Excellent well. You may stay at this point or you may leave for a bit—it makes no never mind to me.” He shrugged. “But the rest might seem a bit gruesome if you are not familiar with the work I do. And I do not intend to shock anyone.” He froze a moment before giving a little laugh. “Well, I don’t intend to shock you.” He motioned toward the door. “You may at least wish to turn around again for this part…”

John turned obediently toward the door and, in the space of a single heartbeat, the Reanimator had swapped out the crystal’s card, stepped back to her ladyship and, carefully drawing back the edge of her bodice’s top, he made a slight incision before inserting the crystal John had chosen. “One moment more,” he suggested, and, grabbing a small jar from the shelf, popped it open and swabbed a fingertip inside. He smeared the same fingertip across the underside of the incision he’d just made. He pushed the edges of flesh back together, pressing on the small lump he’d created to seal the space shut.

“You may turn about safely now, John.” The Reanimator handed the jar of salve to John. He set different stones around her ladyship’s body. Reaching beneath the table, he withdrew a container with a wide corked top. Opening it, he daubed a bit of salve smelling of cinnamon on the woman’s tongue, saying, “The process is both ceremony and science as much as…” He tugged out a copper coin and, opening her mouth, placed it on her tongue. “… catalyst and coin.”

He winked at John and reached toward the ceiling, uncurling a wire tucked among the exposed rafters. He laid it so its end was pinned between her ladyship’s tongue and the coin. “Now we wait … Have you ever seen examples of my work walking around our fair city before?”

“I seldom leave the Astraea estate. I am kept busy tending the grounds and moving wine casks and—”

“Have you ever seen one of the parties you work so diligently to arrange?”

“Yes. Sometimes I work security. When the Vanmoer family comes to visit—came to visit,” he corrected. “They will surely return—when things are put to rights.”

“Hmm.” He paused and glanced at the servant. “When things are put to rights?” The Reanimator nodded and picked up a strand of crystals, which he looped around Lady Astraea’s wrist. Another he linked around her throat. One more wrist, both ankles, and he replaced her earrings as well, handing John her original ones. “Well. If and when the Vanmoer family returns for a party you will then surely see an example of one of my finest works,” the Reanimator said. He glanced at the nearest clock. “Not long now…”

“A member of the Vanmoer family?” John balked.

“Yes,” the Reanimator said. “One of their most memorable members, really. They have many excellent reasons not to part from him too soon.” The hands ticked closer to a large mark on the clockface and John realized what they waited for. “We very nearly have it…”

The Reanimator stepped back. “Now, I must warn you. She will act strange as a result of blood loss and … well, being dead, for a few hours. It will take a day or more for her to get her appetite back. It is best most times if you put them into a room, close them up there, and check on them in little ways. If she wonders why she cannot remember certain things, explain that she felt ill and was given a sleeping draught, and memory loss occasionally occurs. I expect your partner can handle the finer points of such subterfuge.”

“Surely,” John agreed.

The bell in the square sounded and every crystal glowed brighter with the wave of light that poured from the Pulse, and they squinted against the flash.

A spark traveled the length of the wire and connected with Lady Astraea’s tongue.

She convulsed.

A long moment passed as both men watched the woman, and the Reanimator reached down to sweep her tongue clean of wire, coin, and most of the jelly-like salve.

She coughed and struggled to speak, her tongue buzzing and thick. “Where am I?” she finally managed. Her hand fluttered to her throat and the Reanimator helped her sit.

Handing her a cup of water he looked at John and nodded as if to say, This is all perfectly normal.

She looked over the cup’s rim at him as she sipped. “Thank you … Now where am I?”

“Asleep, milady. Having the strangest dream of your life. Or of two lifetimes…” he muttered.

“Dreaming…?” She cast a worried glance about the room, her eyes widening and narrowing at odd intervals as her gaze fell upon certain strange things cluttering the space. “I daresay this hovel is more nightmare than dream.” She paused to lick her lips, eyebrows drawing together. “I feel…”

“Woozy? John?”

She nodded and tumbled forward into her servant’s ready arms.

“All perfectly normal. She’ll sleep now for hours, perhaps a day or two. Certainly long enough to wrap her back up, carry her home, and deposit her in her chambers. Then let your partner do the rest. Presuming she’s still alive.” He shrugged and held out a hand for payment.

John weighed the bag of silver he carried and, handing it over, adjusted his grip on her ladyship to lay her back down and wrap her back up. “Thirty pieces, as requested.”

John had the sense that the Reanimator’s natural smile matched that of the mask. “Excellent well. Get her home, take good care of her, and keep the crystals near her at all times. Make sure her body servant knows … something … They should not even be removed for bathing.”

“I will have to lie,” John said.

“Not so much lie as fabricate a newly acceptable truth. Why worry over it, John? Politicians do the same on a daily basis.”

John grunted. “I am no great leader of men.”

“Neither are most politicians.” He waved John and the sleeping Lady Astraea, once again wrapped snugly in cloth, toward the door. “Ah! Do not forget this.” He handed the card to John.

John tucked the card carefully into his trouser pocket. “And if there is a problem?”

“I do not stay long in one place. Find me—if you can.”

The door slammed shut, bolts sliding home.

John grunted, mumbling to himself and the well-wrapped Lady Astraea, “I am a hunter. I do that on a regular basis.”

John set her ladyship into the wheelbarrow and began the return trip up the Hill.

The bumping and backward walk ascending the steps to the Hill was more a struggle than a stroll, what with the drowsing Lady Astraea as his luggage. But, big as he was, he muscled through, keeping well to the shadows, and was unquestioned the whole way home.


En Route to Holgate

The carriage came to a creaking stop at the edge of something that—by the dimly lit, rough-hewn sign—considered itself a town. Jordan sniffed and, looking between the bars on her window, surveyed a swipe of land so dark it blended into the night sky. Two tilting lightposts flanked a walkway and glimmered with stormlights.

An inn slumped behind them, dull and dusty as the road running before it and as worn and weary as Jordan felt. She squinted, focusing. Nothing about it seemed at the correct angle, its door sunken into a threshold that had been dug out to compensate. The few windows lining the front wall were bowed and looked ready to pop under the sagging weight of the walls.

“It’s not much,” the Councilman admitted with a shake of his head, his tone nearly apologetic, “but”—he sneered at Jordan around his next words—“but it’s far more than a Weather Witch deserves.” His fingers enclosed her arm and he pulled her forward. “And it’s far better than you’ll have until you’re truly and rightly Made.”

Jordan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m no Witch,” Jordan protested. “I cannot be Made. When you see that … When you all realize that—”

He yanked her around to face him, drawing her close. “When we all see that you can’t be Made, that the Tester was wrong? What do you think will happen then, Jordan of the House Astraea, who once ranked Fifth of the Nine?”

“You will be—” But she froze, seeing something in the pinched features of his face that made bitterness and amusement bedfellows.

“—sorry?” he whispered, his nose brushing past hers, his breath washing over her face until all she smelled was remnants of the food he’d last devoured. “You think we’ll be sorry? You think everything will go back to how it was, before House Astraea fell?” He gave her arm a firm shake and again began to drag her forward. “There is no going back, so you had better hope you can be Made. Because to have chosen you wrongly would bring shame to the Council. And the Council is not fond of shame. You have heard of the scandal surrounding past Councilman Braga?”

She swallowed. “Yes. The scandal broke and he disappeared. Ran from the shame.”

The Tester even laughed, saying, “Is that what they say up on the Hill? That old Braga ran away?” He laughed again, shaking all the way from his head to his gut at the idea. “He might have tried to run. Briefly.” He looked introspective, as if caught in the grip of memory. “But from what I saw of his corpse, he didn’t get far.”

Jordan sucked in a deep breath. “They murdered him?”

The Councilman spoke up. “It seems so harsh when you say it that way. Murdered. We like to think of it as removing an obstacle to continued political success. A high-ranking Witch that cannot be Made … Now that is quite an obstacle. If you catch my meaning.”

Jordan looked down at the mismatched slabs of slate making up the awkward walkway and forced her feet forward.

She was not a Witch, so she would die.