Weather Witch (31 page)

At the time she hadn’t heard what he said and for weeks after, when she remembered that moment, she tried to convince herself that the loss of his words meant nothing since she could read so much in his face. But now, her hand aching and her head pounding, she wanted nothing more than to know what words his lips had formed at that instance a heartbeat before he led her through a narrow break in the hedges at the wall’s edge and onto a set of stone steps she had never even known existed.

They stood on a winding slate stairway, above what suddenly seemed to be the rest of the world as all of the Below spread out in a rambling and colorful variety of houses and shops of different shapes and sizes. They were so far up it seemed the Below was nothing but a set of odd miniatures designed for a wealthy child’s dollhouse.

There was no banister to hold, no place to stop and rest during the long descent, and she hesitated there, looking back over her shoulder toward the safety and manicured simplicity of life on her family’s estate.

But his hand touched her face, turning her back to look at him. “Don’t look back,” he whispered. “Forward. Onward.” He seemed such the bold adventurer then, standing like a mountain king with the backdrop of an entire wild kingdom behind him.

She could do nothing but follow.

Down the stairs they went, her knees wobbling by the time they reached the bottom.

“Next time you must give me fair warning,” she had scolded, “so that I might wear more sensible shoes.”

“Next time?” he asked, one eyebrow arching rakishly. “You are already imagining a next time?”

She blushed so hard her face stung with heat. “I do own sensible shoes,” she said in answer.

“I’m sure you do,” he replied. “Here.” He tugged on her hand and drew her into the back of an alley.

She tripped after him and fell against him, her hands grabbing at him so that she kept her balance.

His arm wrapped around her instinctually, holding her close until she regained her balance.

But she never truly had regained it after being held so tightly against him.

There in the shade of the buildings stacked around them as awkwardly as toy blocks, Jordan first heard Rowen’s heart beat and felt the strength of him just beneath the comfort of his slightly soft frame. He became synonymous with adventure and safety all at once.

“My head is spinning,” she had whispered.

“We took the stairs too fast,” he apologized. “I did not want us to be spotted before you’d had a bit of an adventure…”

She drew back from him then and maintained a more respectable distance between them.

He smiled and said, “Come now. There are a few spots I would take you before we must make our ascent.”

“You have done this before?” It was a stupid question. Of course he had, how else would he know about the slate stairs?

But instead of saying anything sharp or hurtful, Rowen winked at her. “Here.” He grabbed her hand and wrapped it around his arm. “It will be safer if they believe we are officially together. There will be fewer questions asked. The Below is not the finest place for a woman unescorted.”

“Oh. Of course,” she agreed. She rested her other hand on the top of his forearm as she had seen her mother do with her father.

“Try to keep your eyes in your head,” he suggested. “Best to appear we are well versed in the neighborhood although we obviously do not belong to it.”

She nodded and made a conscious effort.

It was tremendously difficult not to gawk, though, especially when they stepped out of the alley and onto the main street. It was crowded with colorful shops, and windows were stuffed with displays of wares from different lands and painted with gilt and silver paint using words like
New, Improved, Startling, From the Orient, Unique!

Tiny automatons puttered in circles in one shop window and wriggling puppies filled another. Hanging in the next were a variety of meats—smoked hams squeezed tight in netting, sausages in long skins, whole roasted ducks, chickens, and rabbits, dark, gutted, and strung up for display with a shelf of cheeses below them, waxed or wrapped in paper, with flesh white as the moon, yellow as the sun, and dark as tanned leather.

They paused at a flower shop, a young girl with a basket full of wildflowers standing before it to shout to passersby. Rowen pulled out a coin and gave it to the child, who did a dainty curtsy and passed a bundle of flowers to Jordan with a grin that surprised Jordan with the child’s lack of front teeth. The child giggled and began to bellow about her wares again.

Jordan sniffed at her gift and gave Rowen a smile before returning her hand to its place on his arm, now with the bouquet pressed and perfuming the air between them.

They wandered down the main street, pausing before windows and tables stacked with assorted wares, commenting quietly about the large carved wooden signs that stuck out from second stories on heavy metal supports and wasted no time on words but spoke to a less literate crowd. The cobbler’s shop was represented by a sign in the shape of a shoe, the baker’s sign was in the shape of a steaming loaf of bread, and the tavern on the corner had a spotted dog with an assortment of empty pewter mugs chained upside down beneath it so they clanged together and drew attention in any breeze.

But the doorway Rowen dragged her through had no sign that she could see and it took a moment for Jordan’s eyes to adjust to the dim lighting inside.

Behind a workbench an older man was bent over something small that shimmered and threw back the light he had tilted to focus on it. He wore a strange assortment of glass lenses over his eyes and reached up to tug one aside and then cranked an adjustment on the contraption’s other side, making one of his eyes appear amazingly large in comparison to his other.

A chime sounded behind them and the man looked up, blinked, and then readjusted the lenses, sliding most of them up and to the side so that it seemed he had as many eyes as an insect. “Well hello, milady,” he said, rising to his feet only to bow. Then he noticed Rowen and laughed, dodging around his workbench to shake his hand. “How long has it been?” he asked, looking Rowen up and down.

“Almost since you broke with the family.”

The man rolled his eyes. “You have an awkward way of expressing yourself for a nephew of mine,” he muttered.

Jordan blinked. “Nephew?”

The man looked at her, his eyes crinkling when he smiled. “Our dear Rowen is a bit of a man of mystery, is he?”

Rowen simply smiled and puffed out his chest. “Jordan, this is my uncle, Nicholas Burchette. He and Father had a bit of a falling out some years ago over the family holdings and rather than battle it out in Council Court as most of our rank do, he decided to cut all ties with the family and move to the Below to set himself up as a craftsman.”

“To be fair, it was not your father who instigated the issues, it was your mother.”

“It always is,” Rowen agreed darkly.

“And I already had the skills of a craftsman and had already served my required military time, so rather than lodge a proper complaint and drag my own family before Council, I did the truly noble thing and removed myself from nobility.” He shrugged. “I have never looked back.”

Rowen looked at Jordan and nodded. “As it should be.”

“And now you—” Jordan took in the shop’s interior for the first time. The place was lined with tiny shelves and hundreds of clocks and timepieces chattered and ticked along, some in eggs decorated with cut and colored glass, some giving life to pocketwatches that were chained to their shelves, and some mechanisms in wooden boxes that looked like miniature cottages. And some … She stepped forward to investigate the thing under the workbench’s bright light. “Is that a ring?”

“Yes. My newest project.” He slipped between the counters and her, excusing himself, and lifted the thing up, holding it between his index finger and thumb, so it was more readily viewed. Rowen stepped forward and all three of them pressed their faces close to the thing that was only the size of the stone in Lady Vanmoer’s anniversary ring. It was a metal ball perched on a narrow band with a tiny bump on its top.

Jordan squinted at it. “Would it not be heavy on one’s hand?”

Nicholas smiled at her and pressed the tiny bump on its top. There was a click and the ball split into three equal petals, opening to reveal a tiny timepiece no larger than a pearl.

Jordan’s head snapped up and she looked at Nicholas. “That is truly remarkable. However did you…?”

He smiled and shook the ring once, and the petals closed. “I use very small tools and remarkable magnification.” He set the ring down on a tiny pillow and stepped back. “Many years ago I had the great fortune of meeting a man (much my senior) who worked on a device much relied upon in your own household. A Russian.”

Jordan tilted her head, considering. “The elevator?”

“The same,” Nicholas responded. “Ivan Kulabin. He had a gift for mechanics and showed me a few things. And shared some amazing things far more tangible than his knowledge.”

She took a moment to admire the tiny tools spread casually around his workbench’s surface. They sparkled, gleaming there, tips and edges like tiny fingers or blades—

*   *   *

The pleasant memory was ripped away and Jordan whimpered at the thought of the glimmering tools. They could make so much beauty and wonder or wreak such cruel havoc …

Where was Rowen? Her good hand reached into her sleeve and she was briefly reassured by Rowen’s heart hidden there. She lowered her head and bit her lower lip. How much longer until the Maker gave up and realized she was no Witch? How long could she continue without breaking?

It was more than the torture, she realized, touching the fresh wound tenderly. It was the exhaustion that wore at her the most. The worry and fear. The Maker seemed never to follow a schedule. There was truly no time one might feel safe—no time she might simply let down her guard.

She glanced toward the door and the small window in it, assuring herself that no one was watching before she tugged on the heart-shaped pin, pulling it free.

The pin’s back sported a blade akin in shape to a long slender nail.

She slid its tip beneath her manacle and turned it experimentally to see if its point might cut the leather. She winced realizing it would, but not before it cut her, too. She dragged it back out from between her wrist and the restraining cuff and set it on her lap. Then she looked at the lock on her cuff and grabbed the pin again, prodding its tip into the locking mechanism and wiggling it. But, long as it seemed, it still was too short for the lock.

Her head snapped up and she looked at the lock on her Tank’s door. The keyhole was much different than that of her cuff’s. Quietly she slid over to the door, and on her knees in her ruined party dress she carefully slid the pin’s tip into the lock’s hole. She heard it make contact with something inside and her breath caught. She fell onto her rump in surprise. It might be possible.

If she could somehow slip off the cuff …

… then out the door and to the gate …

And what then, she wondered, standing to go to her window. She wouldn’t get far dressed as she was and on foot. She knew that much now. She would need transportation to take her away from Holgate. A horse, a carriage, hidden in a wagon or … Her eyes lifted to the other broad tower marking the horizon of Holgate and making it a truly unique silhouette standing stark against the horizon.

The Western Tower was tall but squat in comparison to the tower holding the Tanks and the Maker’s rooftop laboratory.

And projecting out of the uppermost story of the Western Tower was a heavily reinforced balcony upon which cabled tethers extended to waiting airships. Everyone had heard tales of scoundrels stealing away on an airship or a Cutter—stowaways.

Granted, most of the stories ended badly, but she was not facing a happily ever after if she remained here either, she knew. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, perhaps? She shrugged and considered. Perhaps it could work. Trying it—trying
something
—was at least far better than waiting around for her destiny to be assigned to her. In this she had a choice.

She pressed her face to the bars, watched the goings-on of the Grounded with more fascination than she’d ever spared anything but her clothing and her hair, and set her mind to plot out an escape plan. As soon as she could find a way to escape from her cuffs.

She could do this, she thought. She could rescue herself or die trying. And if she succeeded perhaps she could return to rescue the others. She swallowed hard and forced down the fact she really would prefer someone else doing the rescuing.

She was, after all, a lady held prisoner in a tower …

Was such a rescue not exactly the sort of mission heroes aspired to succeed at? Where then was her hero? Where was Rowen? Did he simply no longer care a whit about her?

Her good hand wrapped around the bars and she steeled herself against the idea that the one young man she had taken a vague fancy to no longer desired her company.

And that she would need to become her own hero and never again wait on rescue.

Chapter Seventeen

A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

En Route to Holgate

Rowen was still having little luck with the horses. He had seen them both a distance away as they grazed together, but they wanted no part of him—especially Silver with his battered and still bloody sides. Ransom seemed less concerned with Rowen’s occasional attempts at approaching them, but given the choice of indulging in lush summer grass or being ridden into danger?

For a hungry horse there was no choice to be made.

A bird alighted on a tree branch nearby and, appraising Rowen with a cock of its head and a quick glance from its beady black eyes, determined he was no threat and so puffed out its fluffy breast and began to warble a tune.

Rowen sighed and sank down against the tree trunk.

When he’d been a child he’d heard stories—nursery tales and lullabies of places the birds sang nothing except a single note. Of a place where there was no song in the world except a single prophecy of such dark sacrifice it leeched all the music from people’s souls. Of a time all dreams and nightmares came from a mystical dreamland tree that became poisoned and started to tear apart the world with a dark magick that brought nightmares to life. But the magick was defeated by a young man—Marnum—a hero who found that music was the earliest magick and reintroduced it to their world. A hero.