teeth.
Stevenson raised his head and a chill raced over Bran’s arms when he realized what the Councilman’s gaze had come to rest on.
Sybil’s fragile skull.
Stevenson’s tone of voice changed, frustration falling away and, although Bran could not see his expression, he was certain he now spoke through a smile. “For the sake of your family,” Stevenson said, “I would continue being the Maker, if I were you. Such a dramatic upheaval as you suggest can be especially hard … on a child.”
“Are you threatening me?” Bran asked, his voice thin, eyes dangerous.
Stevenson turned to face him. “Threatening? Why, no. I am merely suggesting—strongly—as I did to Councilman Braga before his untimely disappearance that you reconsider what might happen if things around here changed too much. Perhaps with a good night’s sleep and a bottle of bitters you might find you still have the stomach for this work after all.”
Jordan folded the paper star and tucked it back up her sleeve not far from where Rowen’s heart was pinned, and, standing, waited by her Tank’s door. The watchman shuffled by on his rounds, pausing at her door. There was a clatter as he adjusted the things on the tray. “I have no care to know what it is you do to have curried the Maker’s favor enough to give you a proper tea, but I sure as Hell wish you’d give it a rest.” He fumbled with the keys and she envisioned him balancing the tray, teapot, and teacup between his hip and the door like any good servant would when struggling so.
With a grunt he opened the door and Jordan took the tray from him with one hand and a gracious nod while slipping the folded star into the void the door’s handle needed to connect with in order to give a proper lock.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, jostling the tray so that tea spilled and soaked the watchman as he struggled to catch pot, cup, and saucer all at once. “How horribly clumsy of me … so very sorry…”
He righted the tray and its contents and scrambled back from the door cursing. The door slammed shut and Jordan heard him storm away.
“Take your chance now,” Caleb urged. “While he’s gone. Take your chance!”
“I’ll bring you with me,” she said, slipping out her door to stand outside his.
“No. There’s no time for such foolishness. Grab his cloak and throw it over your chain to make it look like you’re carrying something. But go,” he urged. “This is your chance. Run with it!”
Exasperated, she did as he ordered, promising, “I’ll come back for you!”
The door at the end of the hall closed behind her and she never heard him say, “No, you won’t.”
She pounded her way down the stairs and burst out the bottom door and onto the main square of Holgate before the watchmen spotted her and neatly brought her down.
“I promised I would come back for you,” she announced to Caleb, moping as the watchman threw her back into her Tank and slammed the door, this time making sure the lock held.
“Although I find your willingness to keep your word awe-inspiring, I did not quite imagine it happening like this,” Caleb admitted.
They said nothing else to each other then because after such a defeat there was truly nothing to say.
It was not long before the Maker summoned her.
“You realize what this means?” Bran asked.
Jordan looked away, unwilling to answer.
“I cannot trust you. Now I must chain you to your Tank’s floor. I wanted so badly to avoid this,” he said, spitting the words out. “I wanted so badly to avoid
“How do I explain to Meggie what I must now do to you?”
“Meggie?” It was the first time he’d dropped his guard enough to name his daughter. “Tell her the truth,” she suggested, raising her chin as he strapped her to the boards. “Tell her that you are a cruel man who has nothing but dark designs.” She screwed her face up, eyes squeezed tight, and braced herself for his inevitable retaliation.
Finally she opened her eyes and relaxed her jaw.
He stood a few feet away. Silent. His eyes seemed fixed on the floor as if he’d suddenly discovered some great secret about its construction. No hand was raised against her, no tool was poised to bite into her flesh. “I wish things were different,” he muttered.
“You are certainly not alone in that wish,” she scoffed.
He puffed out a deep breath and stepped forward to check that she was cinched tight. “But we are both the products of our environment and our parentage—whatever yours might be,” he added. “And so we must do some unpleasant things from time to time to get by. Sometimes we have no choice.”
Then he did a new variation of her treatment. Still she remained Grounded and unMade. When the Wardens finally came to take her away, she was crying.
Bran stumbled to a bucket in the laboratory’s corner and, crouching before it, watched everything he’d eaten earlier in the day rush back out the same way it had been put in.
Jordan was an aching lump in her Tank. Today the sunlight was not enough to lighten her mood and being surrounded by the same grim walls was far from inspirational. Her right hand flopped out, limp, on her lap, wrapped in a hasty bandage that had soaked through with a stinking salve. “To heal the burn,” the Maker had promised.
The burn he had given her with the brand.
Even blind with pain she hadn’t produced a mist or a drizzle.
The Maker had said she must have a tremendous will to continue to hold out so fiercely.
Pain was her constant companion now. Long gone was her naive belief that Weather Witches were just a segment of society that worked hard for their living, a segment of society that had some small control over their destinies. Maybe no one had choices.
Further gone was her halfhearted hope Weather Witches held some modicum of respect from society.
Hope was no longer a word she recognized.
There was a flutter of sound at her windowsill and a shadow fell across Jordan, marring the crisply split beams of light that divided her curled form in slices cut by the bars that kept her from the outside. She stirred, raising her head off her knees. Something had changed. She looked toward the morning’s light and the thing that now blocked part of it.
A hawk paced the stone sill, its tail feathers and wing tips brushing the bars in a soft and rhythmic way that reminded Jordan of the lightest touch of Rowen’s fingers across the strings of the guitar he’d shown her once. It was beautiful, this hawk—large and covered with feathers full of various shades of brown, cream, and red. It turned and cocked its head, looking at her. A beak the color of old butter and tipped with ebony hooked cruelly between two golden eyes that glinted as brightly as her mother’s favorite earrings right after a good polishing. Its pupils were broad and dark, black pits marring its shining eyes, and Jordan shivered but unwrapped her arms from around her legs and slowly pulled her feet beneath her so that she could crouch there.
Hearing something, the hawk hopped, turning its back to her.
What was it like, Jordan wondered, to have such freedom and power you could soar through the sky, wind ruffling your feathers? Did it tickle your skin—the pull of air on your feathers? Did it make your eyes tear as the wind whipped past? What did eyes like that see from high in the heavens?
Carefully she stood.
The bird cocked its head.
Something interesting in the courtyard so many stories below or had it spotted something in one of the trees lining the lake that fascinated it?
She took a step forward.
And another step forward, quietly closing the distance between the bird and herself.
It gave another little hop, excited by whatever it had spied. Then it froze and only the faint breeze that always twisted around the tower and through her Tank gave it the appearance of life, teasing the edges of its feathers.
