Laura winked at her. “Why muddle through when you might dance through it instead?”
“Who has ever made a life for themselves by dancing through their existence? Oh.” She waved a hand at herself. “I must sit down. I do not feel quite … myself.”
He pulled out his journal and let the pages flop open to the day’s date, the cover’s brass-tipped corners tapping against his desk as the book’s spine settled and flattened. The Tanks were nearly full again, even though there would be the inevitable shuffle from the Reckoning Tanks to the Making Tanks. Still, there was never anything quite like a full house …
Not far from his feet Meg played with the doll she called Somebunny.
Bran scoured the day’s pages, his finger skimming over his notes as he searched for the information he felt certain he had overlooked.
His finger went back to the page’s top and he paused at one name in particular. Astraea. Why did that name seem so very familiar? He rose and stepped to one of the library’s many bookshelves, bumping his fingers across each spine as he read their titles aloud.
“Ah.” He stopped, pulled one out and opened it. The interior was lined with marbleized paper and the spine was trimmed in gilt design and lettering.
The Astraea Family
The Astraeas trace a long and distinguished history of landholdings and titles back to the Old World and at the time of the Cleansing boarded a ship to the New World not due to political or religious reasons as many did but rather for the good of economic and territorial expansion. Having holdings in India where they own several hundred acres of tea plantations, and sugar cane plantations in the West Indies, the only thing the Astraeas lack is a suitable number of male heirs, the last generation yielding only Morgan Astraea, the only direct male family survivor of the Fever that swept the region. Losing his mother, his father, his elder brother, and one of his three sisters, Morgan became a risk-taker in business, and, at nineteen, swept up many entrepreneurial opportunities that the deaths of others left behind (expanding local holdings so they included two taverns, a clockmaker’s shop, a modiste’s shop, a haberdashery, two tea houses, and rumored holdings in the Below).
Morgan married Cynthia Wallsingham, the youngest daughter of Albertus Wallsingham (holder of the Wallsingham estates) after a three-year courtship, rumor being that he waited so long to see that her elder sisters bore children readily. Cynthia bore him three children nearly one on top of the other and all of them girls. The three, Morgana, Loretta, and Jordan, were taught the skills required of young ladies of standing including flirting and courting, embroidery and needlepoint, dance, music, and polite conversation. Morgana married up, Loretta married laterally, and Jordan, as of this edition, has yet to come of age.
The Astraea Holdings
Theirs is one of the oldest and grandest houses on the Hill. Three and three-quarters stories high and an architect’s nightmare, the house ambles across three acres, the original structure being built of fieldstone in a seemingly haphazard fashion, long flat stones jigsawed together in herringbone patterns creating a busy-ness of design that was at once striking and enough of an oddity that the last generation of Astraeas decided—rather than living in a stone spectacle—that section of the estate would house their growing multitude of servants. As a result, the servants are one of the best housed in all of Philadelphia, that too being a distinguishing oddity—and a costly one.
The interior of the house includes such luxuries as dumbwaiters, summoning bells, running water, decorative molding, wainscoting and chair rails, the first elevator in the New World, stormlighting—
At the mention of stormlighting Bran snorted. “Not anymore; one can be certain they have been reduced to using candles now.”
—proper paint, and wallpapers and boasts multiple water closets, a warming kitchen, true kitchen, parlor, sitting room, living room, den, dining room, and six spacious bedrooms.
They were rich. Powerful. They had a nice house and a grand estate. That was not enough for them to be of note in Bran’s head, and certainly not in his book. He tapped the open pages, thinking. When he was a boy he had spent time in Philadelphia. Might he have heard of the Astraeas then or met them? Something was definitely prodding him.
He stood, stretched again, returned that book to its shelf, and sought out another smaller and more worn tome. He had always kept journals—it was one of the more peculiar things about his nature and one of the things his father had hated most about his bookish son.
“You will never discover the real world if you always have your nose tucked twixt the pages of a book,” he’d told him.
But the world his father spoke of discovering was not one Bran had wanted to partake of. He had not wanted to be a party to war. He had no desire to meet painted women when he was only twelve and hear unsavory stories of his mother’s death when he was far younger. He had been a boy in love with his imagination and, according to his father, frivolous pursuits.
But he had not been allowed to remain frivolous for long.
When had it been? His twelfth year they stayed in Philadelphia. He flipped through the journal, pausing twice to stroke his fingers along a sketch of a bird and a boyish doodle of a turtle. His journals were once alive with such things and he’d spent many a day flat on his stomach observing the mysterious realms of ants and salamanders and spiders. Worlds within worlds fascinated him.
Then.
Before he became a Maker.
He found an entry from the fourteenth of August.
He paused and reread the names. Aha! That at least made sense as to why the name struck a chord with him.
Had that been it, then? He had met Jordan Astraea when they were both children and been a witness to her odd affinity even then? Or was there something else?
The library’s shutters rattled. Meggie’s head snapped up and she clutched Somebunny to her.
Bran stood, patted Meggie’s soft curls, and returned that book as well to his shelf.
Returning to his desk, he spun sharply around, seeing someone reflected in his lantern’s glass. No one was there. A chill raced over him and for a moment he was as chilled as he’d been trying to put Sybil’s skull to rest. He shook himself.
He was a man of science. Such things were easily explained away if one only sought the truth.
