Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

He paused on the roadside not far from a stand of houses that all nearly leaned one upon the other but still managed somehow to have individual yards at their bases. Ahead the trees and buildings gave way for a clearing enclosed by a twisting metal gate. On its other side more houses sprouted up, straighter in stature, though no taller than their companions slightly down the Hill.

He froze when he saw it—the headline naming his household—and the article beginning with the name of his family’s most faithful servant and the woman who kissed his scrapes and sang him songs. The woman who fed him biscuits and sneaked him sweetmeats. His nanny, Chloe.

Chloe Erendell has been convicted by Council Court for the ruthless murders of the Kruse family five years ago and is scheduled to hang until dead Wednesday hence.

He had barely gotten to a spot to sit down when his knees gave in under the weight of reality. Murdered? His eyes squeezed shut and he was reduced to nothing but a rocking lump of humanity at the roadside as he struggled to make sense of news he should have known years earlier. Forcing his eyes open, he plunged one finger into the pages and shoved them flat on the ground to better read them through his blurring vision. At the roadside on his hands and knees he was suddenly as broken as a cruel child’s toy.

Spots of moisture appeared on the pages below him and he snorted and sucked air so harshly through his nose it rattled with snot. He raked his sleeve across his eyes, equally as angry as he was confused. Why now?

He hadn’t cried in years. He had trained himself out of it, regardless of what method the Maker had tried. Coaxing with the cat? Nothing. The brand? Not a noise did Marion utter. He had curled it all inside, stomped down the pain and the cruelty and packed it around his heart cold as the ice that crawled free from his fingertips.

He jerked back, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking at the ground near where his left hand had rested—and the way the grass began to discolor and wilt. He needed to get up. To move away from the evidence.

He stood shakily, clutching the paper before him to obscure his face. He took a step and then another until he found himself standing across the road from the twisting iron gate—

—and the tombstones dotting its plot, halfway up the Hill. His shoulders slumped and his face fell again. The man hadn’t lied. This would be where they were now and they certainly never left … He glanced up and down the road and strode across it, pushing the gate aside to step within.

It was oddly quiet there in the negligible shade of the few remaining trees that stood as silent witness to the dead. He wandered the rows of graves, knees weak, not quite sure what to expect and certainly unsure where to find them. They were in a small section slightly down the Hill and tucked away near an old pine. Needles covered their grave beds like a coppery quilt and sap had dried in glistening beads and long slow tears on his mother’s headstone.

He dropped again, realizing.

There would be no more sitting at her feet and reading boisterous stories. There would be no more moments spent telling tales at bedtime or learning the good and proper way to sip tea before a lady. There would no longer be any niceties in his life. Or in theirs. They had all been stolen away when he had been discovered. His mother and father’s graves flanked that of his little brother and he silently read the inscription on each and found them to be good and accurate if not too simple. How could you boil down any one life to only a few words carved into stone? There was so much more to a life …

He puffed out a sigh and adjusted his position so that he sat between his mother’s headstone and his brother’s. He tucked his legs up under him and he opened the newspaper gingerly, returning to the tearstained story. Slowly, and in little more than a pitched whisper out of reverence for the place, he read aloud.

On the second of July, five years past, servants discovered the

He swallowed hard and continued.

bloated bodies of Francis Kruse and his wife, Sarah, and remaining son, Harold. It was quickly ascertained by the investigating force that poison had been used, leaves purported to be mint being poisonous instead. By the time watchmen arrived on the scene most of the servants had disappeared, including the aforementioned “Chloe,” recently having accepted the name Erendell, which hampered the ongoing investigation. Chloe Erendell was discovered trying to sneak into the Astraea household recently, the evening Jordan of House Astraea was taken in for witchery, her parents also found guilty of Harboring. Discovered, Chloe Erendell was brought before Council Court and, although pleading innocent, was found guilty on all charges in a remarkably fast and efficient trial headed up by Lord Vanmoer. As a result of her guilt, the servant is sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead Wednesday hence.

Marion set the paper on his lap and swallowed hard, his throat tight and scratchy around the lump lodged in it. Poison leaves? It made no sense.

Certainly Chloe had reason to be angry with Marion’s father—he had used the girl ill when she probably knew no better and then lopped off her ear in a fit of his infamous rage. But Chloe loved his family—Marion knew that as much as he knew rain only fell up if you forced it to. There was something wrong about all this. His stomach pitched under his ribs and he ignored the most obvious wrongs marked by gravestones. He could do nothing for his family.

But Chloe. If he might yet help her … He stood, bracing himself between the two tombstones. He looked at the place his hand rested on his brother’s headstone and, yanking himself up straight, realized that he knew about the leaves. He had watched his little brother gather something that day and tear it into tiny, unrecognizable bits to make the batter better.

It was not Chloe’s fault. He was a witness to her innocence! He vaulted forward, dashing down the aisle of graves and out the gate. He rushed up the road, fighting gravity’s downward pull with every long and rhythmic stretch of his legs.

He crested the Hill, huffing and puffing, determination pushing him onward past the burn in his side and the burn in his lungs and pressing him toward destiny.

The Road from Philadelphia

Rowen and Jonathan set out early the next morning, heading still farther from the negligible town. Frederick had agreed with them—“Perhaps more time and distance and then, if young Lady Astraea is truly found innocent of all witchery and allowed to come home…” He had paused, the worry clear in his eyes. “Then might you return as the prodigal son and reclaim the lifestyle you came from. But until then,” he said sadly, “it is best to avoid most everyone. People talk. And if a reward is offered…”

So they turned their backs and their horses’ buttocks to Philadelphia and continued on until they came to a tavern. Jonathan dismounted and tied Silver up while Rowen stared down at him in disbelief.

“Follow me,” Jonathan requested.

Rowen nodded, joining him. “Why not? As they said at Jordan’s party, I am no great leader of men.”

Jonathan shrugged. “You led me on this particular adventure.”

“Somehow that makes me feel no better.”

Just inside the tavern’s door, Rowen froze, his eyes darting from side to side. He’d hoped such a brief stop so early in their race from the city meant they’d outrun any unwanted attentions, but that was before he noticed two posters hanging on the wall. The one to his left announced a manhunt for the murderer Rowen Albertus Burchette, while the one to his right included an artist’s illustrated rendering of a short-nosed, broad-foreheaded, thick-necked version of him from shoulders up and in stark black ink.

He was not sure which to be more offended by, the one revealing his middle name to the world or the one that claimed a “faithful reproduction of a murderer’s image.”

He motioned to Jonathan with his chin. The same chin now covered in an unappealing scruff. If he’d had access to a proper razor and strap he’d do the thing himself, bringing his face back to a proper cleanliness instead of allowing his sideburns to crawl toward his chin.

Jonathan frowned, running his hand across his own stubble, pulling thumb and forefinger together at the end of his jaw in a thoughtful gesture before striding forward to the bar.

Rowen blinked. Then, throwing his shoulders back, he followed, standing at Jonathan’s side.

“A bit of your house ale for my friend and me,” Jonathan requested of the flat-faced man behind the bar. He pulled out a coin and tapped its edge on the wood.

The man swept the coin into his meaty palm and filled two tankards, setting them down with a clank before the two younger men.

Jonathan took a long sip of his ale. “Any news of import?”

Rowen nearly spit his ale out when the bartender hooked a thumb in the direction of the posters.

“Riders came through here this morning, putting those up and asking questions. Two fellows, one of decent breeding, are on the run. Seems the ugly one”—he pointed to the image of Rowen—”shot a man of higher rank.” The bartender leaned across the bar, saying, “Probably told he was ugly as the south end of a north-facing mule.” He nodded, lips pursed in a smug smile.

Jonathan laughed. “He is one ugly bastard.”

Rowen’s face colored at the comment.