Weather Witch (11 page)

His mother had promised Jordan would be as much a part of their family as Rowen felt he was a part of hers.

And now?

It was all ruined.

He growled out his frustration, his hands snapping forward to grab the picture by its frame and dash it onto the floor where he could better dance on his mother’s face. Once she had called Cynthia Astraea her “best of best friends.” And yet she had abandoned her—believed the Tester and accepted the worst of all rumors …

She had not defended her in her time of need.

His fingers tightened on the frame. Just a small move to lift it off the hook and …

“It is a fine portrait.”

He jumped, hands clamping down on the picture in surprise and pulling it free from the wall.

Catrina blinked in surprise.

Rowen swallowed a groan. “Would you”—
leave me the hell alone for a while, for once?
He stretched his lips into a smile—“like to see it closer?”

She tilted her head. Weighing the scene with glittering eyes. “Why yes,” she said, stepping over so that she stood tucked up into the curve of his side, her skirts pressing against his hip, her shoulder warm against him. “Oh. Wait,” she said, and she ducked under his arm to stand between him and the portrait in his hands.

The change in position was unsettling. Her skirts brushed the front of his trousers and her perfume filled the small space between them. Then she spun in the circle formed by his arms and the huge portrait and managed to press her bodice—
was something that low cut truly the fashion of the day?
he wondered—against his chest. “Remarkable,” she whispered, batting her eyelashes, her nose nearly at his chin as she looked up at him from beneath lacy lashes.

She leaned in, stretched up …

Rowen belched and she shrieked, engulfed in a scent that surely clashed with the bouquet of her perfume.

Straining his shoulder with the weight of the picture, Rowen’s right hand released it to allow Catrina some distance. He turned back to the wall and hung the portrait again. He belched again. “Yes. Nearly as remarkable as the cucumber sandwiches I had at the Astraea estate—they keep”—he belched once more and rapped on his chest with a fist as he turned back to face her—“talking to me.”

“Oh, Rowen,” Catrina said, pulling her fan free to move the offensive air away. “Whatever would your mother say?”

“She would say, ‘Dear heavens, Rowen, have you not yet managed to come to grips that your innards are not capable of appropriately processing cucumbers?’” He shrugged. “I will surely spend more than my fair amount of time in the water closet as a result.”

Catrina wrinkled her nose.

“And God help whoever attempts to use it after me—I can curl your hair without pins or presses,” he said, pressing his lips into a firm line and nodding with an expression frighteningly akin to pride.

Catrina fanned faster. “Rowen, that is highly inappropriate talk—
offensive
talk—to share with a lady.”

“Then perhaps you’d better go, because I do not feel a desire to be tremendously proper on this eve.”

“Oh. I see.”

Rowen turned to head down the hall. She had not moved farther, so he determined it was up to him to put greater distance between them. But only a few feet toward his next destination he heard the clatter of her heels as she raced to catch up.

“Perhaps just this once I might be a bit improper, too,” she suggested with a wink.

Inwardly he groaned and instead of turning left at the next intersection of hallways, he turned right, pausing at the top of a set of stairs.

“Excellent well,” he said, sounding far heartier than the shadows in his eyes proved him to be. “Let’s get drunk.”

Catrina startled at the suggestion, stepping back from the top of the stairs and eyeing Rowen in disbelief. “Get drunk?
Imbibe?
”

“Imbibe our asses off,” he clarified.

Her eyes shot wide open. “Why, Rowen … Such language.”

“I’m ranked Sixth of the Nine. We imbibe. We smoke. We curse. Jordan understood that.”

She opened and closed her fan again and again. “Well, Jordan had reason to understand such behaviors, considering the taint of her blood.”

“Do not.”

“Do not what?”

“Do not speak that way about Jordan. You know her better than anyone. You were her friend first. You introduced us—”

“And I am so awfully sorry for that, Rowen. I nearly brought you to your ruin because I made a poor choice of a friend.”

“No. Do
not
do that. Jordan isn’t perfect.”

“
Wasn’t
perfect,” Catrina corrected.

“Why are you putting her in past tense? She’s not dead.”

“She must be to
us,
” Catrina said with a discerning pout. “What is your family’s motto?”

“Justice foremost.”

“And that is what this is, dear Rowen. Swift and terrible justice, but justice nonetheless. Imagine if she had been allowed to continue unfettered? What a danger to society might she have become? We have enough problems with the Frost Giant lurking about the streets, but a full Weather Witch?”

Blinking at her, he wrapped his fingers around the staircase’s broad wooden banister so he wouldn’t wrap them around her slender neck. “They are wrong. Jordan is no Weather Witch and they will discover their mistake soon enough and make things right.”

“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.

Chapter Six

Why fear death? Death is only a beautiful adventure.

—CHARLES FROHMAN

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?”