Weather Witch

Chapter One

There life is supremely easy for men.

No snow is there, nor ever heavy winter storm, nor rain.

—HOMER

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1844

The darkness of the alley rivaled the intent blackening the hooded woman’s words.

As surely as dusk had fallen on Philadelphia, so too did it seem one of the city’s great families would also fall.

“Are you most certain?” asked the woman’s companion, a man of perhaps forty years. He snatched at his rioting hat as a breeze sliced down the alley, making both watchmen and lantern light shiver in its wake. He cursed the need to meet in such a place—one of the few alleys where the substandard candlelit lanterns were still required. Gas lines were too great (and volatile) a temptation for this neighborhood’s inhabitants and too much a hassle elsewhere. And, while stormlight illuminated most of the city, no such technology was wasted here.

No one of Lord Stevenson’s rank wished to be caught dead in the Below. And caught dead was certainly a possibility in this neighborhood considering the turf disputes between the Blood Tubs and Moyamensing Killers. “To storm such an estate on the Hill and be wrong … And on the night of young Lady Jordan Astraea’s seventeenth natal celebration…”

The watchmen shifted at his words, woolen coats rustling as they raised their gazes toward the estate balanced on the mountain above. The Hill was the safest realty in Philadelphia.

When the Wildkin War had pushed the residents of what was briefly called Society Hill up Philadelphia’s slopes and away from the hungry lapping of the waters (and the hungrier things swimming within their depths) the Astraeas had been the first family to stake a claim. Now there was no returning to the first properties the great families had owned. The recent influx of immigrants had turned the area’s elegant original homes into squalid tenements and boardinghouses. Not that the wealthy would want to return with the water so dangerously close.

The hesitancy of the lord’s words ill matched his desires to move against the Astraeas, and the young woman knew it. She had been careful selecting this Council member and contacting him through subtle means. His grudge against the Astraea family was long-standing, though most had forgotten it.

But, even so young, she had a gift for discovering the little things that either pulled men together or divided them. It was a precious and necessary family trait when one held her social standing. “I know this as well as I know my own name,” she snapped. Moon-white gloves appeared long enough to tug the deep hood of her Kinsale cloak farther down, swallowing any hint of her face in shadow. A ruby flashed on one finger before her hands disappeared once more into rich folds of velvet.

The Councilman’s gaze flicked from the mysterious lady to the fluttering light of the smoke-stained lanterns near the alley’s entrance. “One might suppose you, too, are a Witch—the way the wind cries when you are angered…”

“One might suppose,” she quipped, the breeze playing with the heavy velvet hem, “that such words would be considered treasonous considering my rank. Go to the Astraea estate this evening. The Witch will be there, as I’ve said.”

Light stuttered across his sharp features and he nodded. Shrinking against a fresh chill, he pulled his tall hat’s brim lower over his brow. “And who—?”

She held her hand up, silencing him. “Bring a Tester. He will know the Witch easily enough.”

He waited in silence with the watchmen—with no Weather Wraiths currently in Philadelphia proper he had settled for using simple men—until the lady disappeared from the alley and the sounds of a carriage rattling across cobblestones told of her departure.

He did not need her surname to guess her rank. From the noise on the street he knew her carriage was horse-drawn by a single, calm steed, like the carefully tended cavalry’s or the privately owned ones barely afforded in the city—not like the wild-eyed and panicky survivors of Merrow attacks. A steed such as hers would have been well protected, stabled, and that took significant money.

She was at least a member of the Fourth of the Nine and that was good enough for him.

Finding another Weather Witch at the Astraea estate meant further lessening old Morgan Astraea’s influence by casting doubt on the high-ranking Councilman. He’d do anything to peel one of Astraea’s fingers back from the reins he held, anything that would put himself a step closer to achieving his goals.

“We must hurry. Call in the nearest Tester and a Ring of Wraiths. There will be some nearby Gathering. If we are to do this we must do it well and professionally.”

A watchman split from their group, jogging to obediently do his duty.

The dying light of sunset streaked across the public’s promised clear sky, illuminating the fat-bellied airships hanging overhead as they awaited instructions for their coast into the Eastern Mountain Port. It would be a clear night for docking cargo, with rain scheduled to fall on Tuesdays and alternating Fridays only.

Lord Stevenson reached up to his hatband to adjust a metal and glass contraption nestled there, bringing its system of lenses and scopes over the hat’s brim and down to sit on the bridge of his nose. Blinking as he rolled a finger across a small brass gear by one of the two scopes, he flipped through a series of tiny lenses, watching the atmosphere high above him come into sharp focus. Faint and feathery disruptions overhead manifested as wisps of clouds, which slowly edged their way across the evening sky, pulling in from all directions to draw together above Philadelphia’s most desirable real estate: the Hill.

And remarkably near the Astraea estate, which sat at the Hill’s crest like the king of the stone-faced mountain.

Holgate

The newspaper folded near Bran’s elbow was a distinct temptation with its headline of Unseasonable Frosts Frustrate Philadelphia. Bran ran the back of his hand across his forehead and tried to focus on the books lying open before him. A Genealogy of Witches, Wardens, and Wraiths was heavy enough reading, but writing the blasted thing? Even worse. He tapped his pen’s steel nib to clear it of ink and set it down.

But the only way to track the Weather Witches was through their lineage—family lines meant much as magicking was one of the traits passed to one’s offspring. Whereas one might attribute a propensity for headaches to pale blue-eyed people living in very sunny climes, connecting physical traits to witchery was not so simple.

Were brown-eyed brunettes more likely to trigger and demonstrate witchery than green-eyed blondes? Statistically speaking, no. But redheads … gingers … they were fiery in more ways than one.

He blew on the page and tenderly lifted its corner, lingering on the memory of a redheaded girl from his hometown. More trouble than he had ever expected. He grinned, but, catching himself, squashed the expression and refocused on his task.

Gingers and anyone from Galeyn Turell’s line seemed particularly prone to witchery. It was as they said: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Luckily, all Weather Witches manifested their affinity for magicking before the age of sixteen.

His desk lantern’s brilliance ebbed, its glass panes reflecting equal amounts of shadow and light. He leaned forward to inspect it. The glowing double-terminated crystal powering its interior seemed constricted, producing only a soft, wavering glow. He glanced at the lanterns lining his library walls. The fire hazard of candles and brief monopoly of gas had been replaced years ago in most of the country by stormlight and their energy source: stormcells, tiny crystals that held power and eased it out slowly.

But even that technology was not without flaws. It did have a distinctly human origin.