Sisters' Fate (23 page)

I’ve walked half a dozen blocks when I encounter the first fire. Two city blocks lie smoking, reduced to rubble. A line of firemen directs water from three steaming fire engines onto the ashes, trying to prevent the sparks from reigniting. One block has been utterly flattened, so much that I can’t tell what the buildings once were. In the second block, a row of brick chimneys still remains—and at the nearest corner, one brick edifice, toothless and eerie without its windows and doors.

How many fires were set? How many lives have already been lost? I hasten my pace, heedless of the pain in my arm and the now constant throbbing of my skull. I pray that down by the river, the firemen and the witches are working together peacefully. What if I was wrong and the people don’t want our help?

I’m three blocks nearer the river, walking up Bramble Hill, when I hear an explosion. People around me scream and point wildly, and I follow their fingers just in time to see the great wooden water tower at the top of the hill crack wide open and water flood out.

The way it breaks—that isn’t the work of firemen. That’s magic.

As I get nearer, the gutters run with water and my boots sink in the mud of the streets. Bramble Hill is the highest elevation in the river district, just before the streets slope down toward the river. Several ramshackle tenement buildings sat right below the water tower on overgrown lots choked with weeds. On our Sisterly missions to the poor, Mei and Alice and I visited families in some of those buildings. Two and three generations lived crammed together in little two-room flats with no heat and rags stuffed into the cracked windowpanes to keep out the wind. Now the buildings are nothing but charred, blackened wood. Smoke pours off the remains and water rushes downhill, flooding several more blocks.

At the bottom of the hill, several buildings are in states of partial collapse. People hang out second-story windows and climb onto porch roofs, crying for rescue. I spot Vi’s father, Robert, shouldering his way into a small clapboard house. Vi and two other witches stand in the street next to a wagon, and as I watch, two toddlers float off a porch roof, away from their astonished mother, and safely into the back of the wagon.

No one objects to the witchery. No one attacks the girls openly doing magic in the street. I pause for a moment, warring with my conscience, but it seems as though Vi and the others are doing well enough. The fire here has been quenched. I hurry on.

As I near River Street, the scene takes on an increasingly nightmarish cast. Two hulking warehouses, several blocks apart, are on fire. Sparks arc out over the river like fireflies. Flaming bits of docks bob on the water alongside pieces of ruined ships. Down the street in each direction, fire brigades pass buckets and fire engines hiss, but these blocks in the middle seem to have been abandoned.

Even from across River Street, the smoke is choking, and the heat makes it feel like June instead of December. As I near the intersection with Seventy-Second, my heart pounds. The fire has already eaten away at the entire block of shipping offices and taverns and the inn. I watch, coughing, as a roof collapses with a shower of sparks.

This is where the Golden Hart was.

A girl dashes past, dressed in the black cloak of the Sisterhood. Her hood is down, and I recognize the fuzzy black braids wound around her head. “Daisy?”

Daisy Reed—Bekah’s older sister—whirls at the sound of my voice. “Cate?”

I join her, lengthening my stride to match hers. Daisy was part of the Harwood mission. She would know Finn by sight. “My father was staying down here at the Golden Hart, and my—Finn came to warn him. Do you know if everyone got out of these buildings in time?”

“I think so. Rilla and some of the others tried to stop the fire here, but it was impossible. That was a lumberyard, and it went right up.” Daisy gestures to the smoldering lot between this block and the warehouse ahead, then jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “I saw Finn with a group of Brothers working for the fire brigade. The fire’s been contained down by the train depot; we’re all moving this way.”

“There are Brothers down here helping?” I ask, astonished, and Daisy nods. At least Finn is all right. I proceed to the next worry. “Have you seen Tess?”

Daisy shakes her head. “Maybe she’s with Bekah and Lucy. I’m going to look for Bekah now. They were paired up with Sister Gretchen, but I heard Gretchen got shot by a guard.”

We’re passing the second warehouse. The roof has collapsed; flames leap from the debris and have spread to the shipyard in the next block. Out on the river, ships in various stages of construction have been set loose. There is a terrible beauty in the flaming skeletons of those still on the dry docks.

Across the street, a row of witches—Sister Mélisande, old Sister Edith, and two of the governesses—stand with their hands linked as they direct the wind out to sea instead of inland. Firemen train their hoses on the tenement houses across River Street from the shipyard. The bucket brigade is hard at work, scooping water near the docks. And at the end of the longest pier, two figures gesture angrily. One is Elena, and the other—

Even this far away, I can make out Inez’s hawkish profile.

The image of Maura, lying pale and broken beneath the rubble, flashes through my mind.

I barrel toward Inez.

CHAPTER

21

IF I STILL HARBORED ANY DOUBTS ABOUT
whether I am capable of murder, they are dismissed.

I would use the strength of my own arms or any magic at my disposal to do it. I don’t care if all of New London witnesses Inez’s death at my hands.

I push past the men filling buckets at the edge of the river. The clatter of my boots on the long wooden pier is lost in the shouts of the fire brigade and the roar of the flames and the hiss of the hoses.

I’m still three yards away when magic explodes from my body. Inez staggers back toward the edge of the pier and the six-foot drop to the water below. At the last moment, she catches herself on a wooden piling and turns. When she sees me, her brown eyes go wide with shock, but she recovers quickly.

“This is all your fault,” she seethes, and her ability to playact, to manipulate the situation, hardens my resolve. “Exposing us like this? How
dare
you take such a step without consulting me.”

“How dare
you
act as though you didn’t try to have my own sister murder me!” I shout.

Elena freezes, then swipes black curls away from her face. “Maura?”

Pain seizes through me at the sound of her name, at the knowledge that I won’t ever call it and hear her respond. Such a small thing. “Tess.”

Inez turns to Elena. “This is nonsense. Tess has been unstable. Everyone’s seen that. She’s going mad, like Brenna Elliott. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“Liar.” I push her backward again, but this time she anticipates my attack and doesn’t move. “Lucy told me the truth. You threatened her into tormenting Tess. Then, when you’d convinced Tess she was going mad, you compelled her to kill me. Aren’t you the one who’s been saying she’s a
child
? She’s twelve years old!”

Elena folds her arms over her chest. Despite her tiny stature, she radiates power. “Is this true?”

Inez throws up her hands. “Cate has been a liability from the moment she set foot in the convent. Tess had a vision she would kill her sister. It was inevitable. The prophecies are never false.”

“But oracles can be mistaken.” Tess has crept up behind us. I spin around, establishing a wary distance, but her storm-cloud eyes are hers again. Right now they’re wide with wonderment. “You were so still, Cate. You didn’t move when I called you. I thought you were dead. It was just like my vision; I thought I’d killed you.” She reaches out, as if to reassure herself I’m not a ghost, and I let her touch me.

“No.” My voice chokes a little, thinking of Maura, how she saved me. “I’m alive.”

Tess whirls on Inez, her blond curls flying out behind her. “Stay out of my head, Inez,” she hisses. “I can feel you poking around, looking for a way in. I will never attack my sister again. If you know what’s good for you, neither will you.”

Inez’s mouth twists. “Listen to the child! Do you think I’m frightened of you? You were so easy to manipulate. So easily frightened. So
weak.
”

“Weak?” Tess frowns, and quick as that, Inez tumbles backward with a splash.

She paddles frantically to keep herself above the waves, but each time she reaches toward the dock, the waves push her back and Tess dunks her and she comes up choking.

“I could keep this up for
days,
” Tess says, and there’s something new and vengeful in her voice. “I daresay your arms would give out before my magic does.”

“Tess,” Elena reproaches.

Inez’s chin has sunk below the water now, the weight of her boots and heavy skirts and cloak pulling her down. Elena steps toward the edge of the pier and kneels.

“She doesn’t deserve your help,” I warn.

Elena ignores me, stretching a hand down to Inez. “It’s terrible, what she tried to do to you. To both of you. But you can’t
drown
her.”

“Can’t we?” I cast, and Elena sprawls backward on the dock. “I think I could, actually.”

Inez uses the momentary distraction to clamber back onto the pier. She is dripping and panting, her brown hair plastered over her chiseled cheekbones, but her brown eyes are narrowed and unafraid. Around us, the wind kicks up. The flames in the shipyard leap higher. Sparks scatter into the sky.

“I haven’t lost yet.” Inez sneers. “I might not lead the Sisterhood directly, but Maura will be my voice. She’s a very tractable girl, your—”

“Don’t say her name.” I break two pilings and send them flying toward Inez from either side. They seem to hesitate in the air before her, then rocket back toward me. She’s quick; I’ll give her that. But so am I. I cast, batting them aside, and they clatter to the dock and roll into the river.

“Where is Maura?” Tess grabs my sleeve. “Cate,
where is Maura?
”

“She’s dead,” I say, my voice brittle. Nearby, the skeleton of a great schooner collapses into the water. The pier beneath us rocks.

Elena flinches as though someone has dealt her a bodily blow.
“How?”

Tess’s shoulders hunch; her hands press over her mouth. “No. I never meant—but you’re here. You’re all right. Maura can’t—”

“I watched her die.” I stalk toward Inez. Behind her, one of the remaining pilings begins to smolder. “You swore to Maura on your husband’s grave that you wouldn’t hurt Tess. How do you reconcile that?”

Inez reaches for the ivory brooch at her throat. “I am sorry about your sister. She was a clever witch. But I made an older oath to avenge him.”

I focus on the high neck of Inez’s black dress, peeking out from beneath her cloak, and the cold glint of ivory there. I cast, and the brooch rips from Inez’s bodice and arcs into the river. Inez cries out—a high, eerie shriek like a trapped animal.

I am unmoved.

“Jump in after it,” I suggest.

She turns to me, eyes narrowed over her hawkish nose. The wind shifts. The bucket brigade and the firemen begin to move back, but before they get clear, the buildings of the shipyard collapse. Several men are trapped beneath the flaming wreckage. Debris whips across River Street, sailing over the heads of the witches and firemen. The roofs of the tenement buildings begin to billow black smoke.

“This entire district will go up in flames, and the Brotherhood with it,” Inez vows. I can understand her better now than I ever have before. There is a part of me that could stand back and watch everything burn and revel in the destruction. My sister is dead. Why should the world go on turning?

“We won’t be hunted anymore,” Inez continues. “Soon we’ll be the ones everyone fears.”

“No,” Tess says, and the last section of the pier snaps, separating Inez from the rest of us. Tess’s face is unforgiving, implacable.

“Elena!” Inez reaches out as the dock tilts crazily beneath her. “You’ve always been an ambitious girl, you—”

“I loved her,” Elena interrupts. She turns her back on Inez, tears falling over her cheeks. “I let ambition ruin that.”

Inez turns to Tess. “You don’t want to be a murderer.”

“No,” Tess agrees. She hesitates—just for a moment—and hope lights up Inez’s face. But then Tess casts, and Inez stumbles back into the flaming piling. Her wet skirts begin to smoke, and she shrieks and slaps at them with her gloved hands. The pilings snap, leaving the dock unmoored, and she’s thrown off balance. She topples into the river, surrounded by jagged, charred bits of wood.

“I don’t want to be a murderer, but you made me one,” Tess says. Inez thrashes for a moment, her black cloak and skirts ballooning out around her. Tess reaches for my hand. “I think the Lord would forgive me this.”

Inez stops thrashing and seems to go still. Immobilized, she bobs there for a moment. Then she sinks like a stone beneath the dark water.

• • •

“Did—did Maura suffer, do you think?” Elena asks.

“No,” I lie, remembering her tears. I wrap my good arm around Elena’s waist. “She was very peaceful, at the end. Like she was going to sleep. And some of her last words were about you. She told me she was wrong about Inez, but that I was wrong about you—that you were good. That you made her want to be better.”

Elena cries harder. “She was good, too. I know she made some terrible mistakes, but—”

“None of that matters now.” I find that I mean it. Maura was no saint, but she was my sister, and in the end she saved me. None of the dozens of ways we hurt each other—big or small—will be what I remember her by.

Tess is crying, too. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

I look down at her. “I love you, and so did she. We both knew that wasn’t you.”

Tess hangs her head, blond curls obscuring her face. “I should have told you about my vision. I was so confused—I thought I was going mad, and I didn’t want you to know. I never once suspected that
Lucy
—and I couldn’t imagine ever hurting you, but the prophecy—oh!” The realization hits her then. “I thought we could change it. I wanted us to be able to change it.”

“I know.” I let go of Elena and pull Tess toward me, patting her back, wincing at the stinging of my mangled palm.

“We should get you to the infirmary,” Elena says, noticing my makeshift sling. “Mei’s set up a nursing station in a park a few blocks east.”

“Help!” Our heads snap up at Rilla’s shout. I scan the burning shipyard and those still fighting the flames at the tenements, but I don’t see her anywhere. She must be using the amplification trick I used on Finn at the hospital. Was that only this afternoon? It feels a year ago. “Help needed immediately at Seventy-Seventh and River, at the city orphanage.”

I frown. “Surely they’ve evacuated all the children?” That’s only three blocks from the fire. “We should go see what we can do.”

“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to go to the infirmary first?” Elena asks. I shake my head and she sighs. “Stubborn. Just like your sister that way.”

We all smile through our tears, and the three of us dash up the pier and through the street littered with bits of ash and wood and other debris from the shipyard. The three blocks between the tenements and the orphanage are filled with working-class housing that won’t provide much resistance to the flames. The fire engines have moved down the street. Some of the firemen are injured—they’ve got cuts and scrapes across their sooty faces, and wet cloths wrapped around burns on their arms and hands—but they keep working. Some wear handkerchiefs wrapped around the lower halves of their faces to make breathing through the smoke easier.

Rilla stands in the street before a five-story brick building with a silver plaque out front declaring it the
NEW LONDON CITY ORPHANAGE #3
. She’s directing firemen and bucket brigaders and witches alike to go into the building.

She gives a quick smile when she sees us. “Thank heavens you’re here! Brother Coulter—the headmaster—he’s locked the children in their rooms.”

“Why?” Tess demands.

“Because witches are out here and he thinks we mean to eat them,” Rilla says crisply. She throws up her hands. “Really, he’d rather see them burn than come down into the street with us. We thought they’d been evacuated ages ago, but a fireman went to make sure and—never mind. We’ve got to get them out is the thing. We’ve got witches unlocking the doors and firemen and bucket brigaders knocking them down.”

I eye the orange flames and billowing black smoke headed this way. “Is there time for all that?” I remember the children that Vi floated to safety above the floodwaters. “Could they jump out the windows if we help them down?”

“I’ll buy you as much time as I can.” Tess is squinting up at the night sky. “Can you get me higher? Up on the roof, maybe?”

“Absolutely not!” I’ve lost one sister tonight. I can’t lose two.

“I’m not letting hundreds of children die because I’m too cowardly to put myself in harm’s way,” Tess snaps.

“Cate.” Finn appears at my good arm. A group of Brothers follows him, and for a moment my heart pounds with fear. Are they here to try to arrest us all,
now
? “What can we do to help?”

“See if there’s a way to get Tess up on the roof so she can get a better view of the fire and try to hold it off until the children are out,” Rilla commands. “Can you and the Brothers do that?”

“Sure.” A lanky blond man with a green silk cravat wrapped around his sooty face nods and charges into the building. “Let’s go, gentlemen!”

Tess follows them, but I hang back. “Those are all Brothers?”

Finn gives me a sheepish grin. “Your father and I went to two of the inns where most of us are housed during the council meeting. Lots of men wanted to help when they heard how bad things were getting and how badly we needed more manpower. The rest are fighting the fire a few blocks over.”

I’m stunned—and a little ashamed of myself for it. Of course not all Brothers would sit back and cackle in glee while the river district burnt. They can’t all be monsters.

“They aren’t—?” I swallow. “They don’t object to our magic?”

“Not right now.” Finn shrugs. “Or if they do, they’re not saying so.”

“Cate, I need you,” Rilla says.

“Go. I’ll look after Tess,” Finn promises.

Rilla amplifies her voice again. “Children! Children inside the orphanage, look out the west windows. Can you see me?” Small faces press against the windowpanes, and she waves at them with a freckled grin. “Don’t be frightened. There are firemen coming to help you. And the witches are helping, too. Don’t pay any mind to what silly Brother Coulter told you. Those of you on the fifth floor—we want you to open your windows. Can you do that?” A few windows inch up tentatively. “Open them farther. All the way! Now, I want to see, who’s the bravest person on the fifth floor? I want you to lean out the window and wave at me.”

Immediately, a girl with blond pigtails leans out one window in the south wing, waving, and in the north wing, a dark-haired boy flaps both hands. Elena and I dash beneath their windows and wave back. “Hmm. I don’t know which of you is braver,” Rilla muses. “Let’s find out. These are my friends Cate and Elena. If you jump, they’ll use their magic to help you land safely. Haven’t you always wondered what it would be like to fly? Whoever jumps first wins.”

The boy hesitates. It must sound positively mad, asking them to jump five stories and trust witches—whom they’ve no doubt been taught to hate and fear—to catch them. But the pigtailed girl pushes her window up and climbs onto the wide windowsill. She wears a navy dress and white pinafore and she can’t be more than ten. “Here I come!” she shouts.