Weather Witch

The door slammed shut, bolts sliding home.

John grunted, mumbling to himself and the well-wrapped Lady Astraea, “I am a hunter. I do that on a regular basis.”

John set her ladyship into the wheelbarrow and began the return trip up the Hill.

The bumping and backward walk ascending the steps to the Hill was more a struggle than a stroll, what with the drowsing Lady Astraea as his luggage. But, big as he was, he muscled through, keeping well to the shadows, and was unquestioned the whole way home.

En Route to Holgate

The carriage came to a creaking stop at the edge of something that—by the dimly lit, rough-hewn sign— considered itself a town. Jordan sniffed and, looking between the bars on her window, surveyed a swipe of land so dark it blended into the night sky. Two tilting lightposts flanked a walkway and glimmered with stormlights.

An inn slumped behind them, dull and dusty as the road running before it and as worn and weary as Jordan felt. She squinted, focusing. Nothing about it seemed at the correct angle, its door sunken into a threshold that had been dug out to compensate. The few windows lining the front wall were bowed and looked ready to pop under the sagging weight of the walls.

“It’s not much,” the Councilman admitted with a shake of his head, his tone nearly apologetic, “but”—he sneered at Jordan around his next words—“but it’s far more than a Weather Witch deserves.” His fingers enclosed her arm and he pulled her forward. “And it’s far better than you’ll have until you’re truly and rightly Made.”

Jordan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m no Witch,” Jordan protested. “I cannot be Made. When you see that … When you all realize that—”

He yanked her around to face him, drawing her close. “When we all see that you can’t be Made, that the Tester was wrong? What do you think will happen then, Jordan of the House Astraea, who once ranked Fifth of the Nine?”

“You will be—” But she froze, seeing something in the pinched features of his face that made bitterness and amusement bedfellows.

“—sorry?” he whispered, his nose brushing past hers, his breath washing over her face until all she smelled was remnants of the food he’d last devoured. “You think we’ll be sorry? You think everything will go back to how it was, before House Astraea fell?” He gave her arm a firm shake and again began to drag her forward. “There is no going back, so you had better hope you can be Made. Because to have chosen you wrongly would bring shame to the Council. And the Council is not fond of shame. You have heard of the scandal surrounding past Councilman Braga?”

She swallowed. “Yes. The scandal broke and he disappeared. Ran from the shame.”

The Tester even laughed, saying, “Is that what they say up on the Hill? That old Braga ran away?” He laughed again, shaking all the way from his head to his gut at the idea. “He might have tried to run. Briefly.” He looked introspective, as if caught in the grip of memory. “But from what I saw of his corpse, he didn’t get far.”

Jordan sucked in a deep breath. “They murdered him?”

The Councilman spoke up. “It seems so harsh when you say it that way. Murdered. We like to think of it as removing an obstacle to continued political success. A high-ranking Witch that cannot be Made … Now that is quite an obstacle. If you catch my meaning.”

Jordan looked down at the mismatched slabs of slate making up the awkward walkway and forced her feet forward.

She was not a Witch, so she would die.

And if she was a Witch …

She looked at the sky, wondering how many Conductors powered airships right now, how many were in service to the Council, making sure the upper ranks’ wine and silks and slippers arrived on time. Were the Weather Witches truly Conductors—did they have any control in their lives or were they glorified slaves?

She was shoved into the tavern’s dim interior. The room fell silent, its few occupants setting down their food or drink to stare unabashedly at the strangers. Once again the center of attention, flanked as she was by Wardens and Wraiths, Jordan swept one hand down her rich gold skirting and frowned—it was already beginning to show wear even though the metallic embroidery still sparkled in the lantern light.

Tipping her chin up with pride, she set her lips into her most practiced pout.

The Councilman shoved her into the gloved hands of a Wraith.

Jordan shivered, trying to look beyond the dark veil that hid a face full of horrors under the brim of a fashionable hat.

“We require three rooms,” Councilman Stevenson ordered the man behind the bar. “The Wardens will precede us to Holgate.”

Dismissed, the Wardens stepped outside. A vicious wind rose up, shaking the building, and Jordan pulled free of her captor long enough to push her cheek to the nearest window and watch the Wardens be whisked into the sky and fly away, their bodies nearly swallowed up by the clouds they called.

The barkeep glanced at them, set down the tankard he was toweling out with the cleanest bit of his apron, and called, “Sersha!”

A mouse of a girl slipped out of the kitchen and glanced from him to them.

“Three rooms,” he instructed.

She nodded. “Come along.”

They passed through the main hall and into a narrow hallway that opened only for stairs and a slender ground-level door.

“Up we go,” the girl encouraged, beginning her ascent after lifting her skirts high enough to flash the entire group with her pale ankles and calves.

The move was not lost on the Wraiths, Councilman, or Tester. The stairs cracked and popped beneath them and Jordan clutched the worn railing with nervous fingers as she lifted the hem of her own dress—only far enough she wouldn’t die tripping over it. Not above her ankles.

Never above her ankles. And certainly not high enough to show her calves.

Even a young lady accused of witchery had to maintain some sense of decorum.

Dust danced in flurrying designs across the warped floorboards as the girl led them to the second floor and Jordan wasn’t sure whether to be dismayed or delighted. Few visitors meant the place had less patrons of an ill- reputed variety, which Jordan hoped meant things were less worn.

Sersha paused before a door and pushed it open. A spider scrambled off a web the door broke, tumbling to the ground and scurrying away as Jordan bolted backward and bumped into a Wraith.

Its snarl jolted her forward and she stomped on the spider herself—the crunch of its exoskeleton audible beneath her shoe. She shuddered.

Seeing the door open and the girl light the shabby space with her lantern did nothing to alleviate Jordan’s trembling. Dust motes spiraled down in the musty-smelling room. “There’s no”—she looked over the small space quickly—“no window.”

“You do not need a window and we do not need to worry about your possible escape,” Councilman Stevenson said. He pointed. “Go. Sleep if you can. Wraiths will wait outside your door, so do not even imagine an escape.”

He pushed her forward and slammed the door, locking her in.

She heard them move down the hall, leaving her with the muffled sounds of Sersha explaining the rooms, the click of doors closing, and the scraping and settling noises of stools or chairs being positioned outside her door.

And occupied.

A few minutes passed before her stomach settled enough for her to realize she was hungry. She had watched Rowen eat at the party and now her stomach rumbled deep beneath the many layers of her clothing.

Seated on the edge of the bed, it groaned beneath even her weight, ropes stretching and rubbing beneath