Weather Witch

“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