Weather Witch (26 page)

She froze, realizing, and, slipping her tongue back to its proper place behind her teeth, slowly withdrew the straw and set it aside. She patted the cuff with her right hand, rubbing it like she might polish a very large and unsightly bracelet. Flaring her fingers out, she noted the tiny notches in her previously perfect nails. And the dirt beneath them. She set to work, slipping a nail from one hand beneath a nail on the other and working with fierce determination to worry each finger clean again. The itching of the straw was relentless, bits of the stuff getting caught in her stockings so she finally tugged them off, leaving them by her shoes. Satisfied, she smoothed her skirt over her legs, tugging its hem down so that it almost covered her ankles as it should, even with her knees drawn up nearly to her chin.

And where was Rowen, she wondered. Was he sleeping off a headache from another party she’d missed? Was he readying for a hunt with his friends? Or was today a day he would find his way to the gentleman’s club and talk politics and sip wine? Could she even see Philadelphia from her spot in the tower?

She sighed. Did it really matter where Rowen was anymore? Surely if her whereabouts didn’t matter to him, his shouldn’t matter to her. Besides, now she’d been accused of witchery he outranked her. She was untouchable, utterly unwanted. It should not surprise her that Rowen would not ride to her rescue—he had better things to do now that she was out of play. He was a highly eligible bachelor in search of a rank-raising woman and she no longer fit that description.

Still she stood at the window, her fingers wrapped around the bars, her face pressed between them, feeling the heart on her sleeve, and she wondered.

The sound of metal scraping along metal grated in her ears and Jordan said, “What is that?”

A voice growled out from just on the other side of her wall and she scrambled away from it, her metal links rattling between her wrists. “Morning bell.”

Jordan spun when another voice, this one thin and high and most definitely of the female persuasion asked, “
Bell?
” with as much embittered irony as Jordan had ever heard packed into such a small word.

She went to her knees, briefly mindful of the straw and dust grinding beneath the golden fabric of her dress, but her curiosity won out and she pressed close to the wall, searching the dim area with probing fingers.

“We calls it the morning bell,” the female voice at her back explained, “as ’tis kinder than what it truly is. Gots to find a bit of kindness somewheres, you know?”

Footsteps echoed in the hall running between the Tanks, and Jordan tried to focus. Heavy boots … two pairs.

“And what’s the morning bell for?” Jordan’s fingertips swept an opening and she pressed her face close to the seam between floor and wall where a small hole was—just the width and length of a single stone.

Jordan squinted into the blackness of the hole, pressing close to it. “Is it for breakfast?”

Laughter echoed harshly in her ears. “Ain’t she just the optimist?”

“Optimist? Fresh meat is all she is.”

“Do we not get breakfast, then?”

“Not all of us.”

“And not anything most’d dare to qualify as worthy of breaking your fast.”

“So what is it then—this
morning bell
?”

A door clanged open and there was shouting, the sound of an argument and the noise of a scuffle.

The noise became so loud, the words so fierce, Jordan shrank in against herself, her eyes wide.

“
Breakfast
she asks us,” the voice from the hole directly before her said with a wistful tone that twisted in on itself and became a grim snicker. “It’s certainly not that. The Maker—he calls it
exercise
. Count yourself lucky if you never experience it firsthand.”

Philadelphia

“The Kruse family?” the old man asked, looking up from a spot where he leaned against a large planter. He squinted up at Marion, keeping the much taller man in a position to best block the rising sun. “You mean old Francis Kruse, his wife Sarah, and his boys?”

Marion nodded. If there was one thing he’d learned from his travels it was that if you wanted the most complete story about anything, you found the oldest man nearby to ask.

“You must not be following the ways of our world, son,” the man said. “You know their eldest—a lad by the name of Marion was found to be a Witch? They were Harboring.” He shook his head sadly and leaned forward to rest his chin on his gnarled hands as they gripped the top of his cane. “Pity. Nice folks. Handsome family. Still astounds me that things are as they are. Imagine what possibilities our world has if only the Maker, the Witches, Wardens, Wraiths, and Reanimators joined forces…”

Marion cleared his throat, determined to steer the old man from such fancies and back to the conversation at hand. “I heard about the eldest,” Marion said, careful to keep his voice steady and his tone relaxed.

“Then you know what happened next.”

“I don’t. Tell me where I might find them?”

“Halfway up the Hill.”

“Truly?” Marion raised his gaze to trace the territory of the Hill’s slope. They must have survived the disgrace better than he thought if they were that distance above the Below. “Do you think they’d be there now?” he asked.

“I daresay they never leave,” the man muttered, smacking his lips together in thought.

“What?”

“Surely you know the story—everyone knows what happened next.”

“I’m not exactly everyone … Tell it true.”

“Shortly after the eldest was taken away for witchery—it was a day of celebration there, if memory serves—not unlike the recent problem at the Astraea estate…”

“Fine, yes—a day of celebration. Go on.”

“Actually—is that today’s paper?”

“Yesterday’s.”

“Here, then.” He grabbed a newspaper resting by his hip and waved it in Marion’s direction. “Page three. The writer tells it far better than an old man might.”

“Thank you,” Marion muttered as he grabbed the newspaper and turned to head back up the Hill, his eyes distracted between trying to scan the printed text and find the place his family now called their own.

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.

Chapter Fifteen

Ill news travels fast.

—ERASMUS

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.