Thunderstruck

  Meggie snarled and stomped again, her eyes never leaving his fan.

  A breeze stirred around her tiny feet, making the hem of her dainty dress wiggle.

  “Or,” the Wandering Wallace drew the fan through his hand whispering coolly, “I hate you?”

  The breeze grew, wind twirling around her and pulling her wispy pale hair up and out on her head.

  “Or,” he opened and closed the fan quickly, “you are mean!”

  Maude’s hand tightened on Bran’s arm.

  The bag that was never far from him, the bag with Sybil’s tiny skull inside, began to twitch.

  This was a test.

  Bran shifted, ready to stand and stop whatever the Wandering Wallace was attempting, but Maude held him.

  “Let it play out,” she urged.

  A snarl rose out of Meggie, merging with the wind and then, with a rumble, the wind reached out and tore the fan from the Wandering Wallace’s clever hands and thrust it into Meggie’s hand, beside the smaller, less elegant one.

  Meggie gasped, looking from it to the Wandering Wallace and back again.

  The bag grew still as the skull inside it should have always been and Bran felt Maude’s body pressed to his, muscles tight in anticipation and wonder.

  By the ship’s wheel, Jordan Astraea, Stormbringer, frowned and turned her back to them all. She ran a hand through her short dark hair and stood for a moment as if stuck in thought. Then she seemed to shake it off and reached out to the ship’s large wooden wheel, and adjusted it.

  But inside the Wandering Wallace’s mask’s mouth, Bran glimpsed the curl of a smile, and his gut grew heavy as his heart fell into it.

  There would be no hiding Meggie’s powers until she learned some self-control.

  ***

  Aboard the Artemesia

  No message birds came that day but Jordan assuaged the crew’s fears by pointing out the depth of the cloud cover she’d cast. Sorry to deceive them, all she had to do to get past the sorrow was remember how delighted the Wandering Wallace looked when he realized Meggie’s abilities.

  No one should go through what she had, of that Jordan was certain. Surely not a child. So she had edged them away from the course the Wandering Wallace wanted and kept the clouds thick and the wind at their back strong.

  They would arrive at another port soon—one away from Philadelphia and any risk of the Maker being recognized. One where the Maker, his lover Maude, and little Meggie might start fresh. Then Jordan promised herself she would turn the ship southeast.

  And go to war.

  With Meggie hidden among the Grounded population.

  It was as she sat with them, dining—tasting everything—that the clouds ripped apart.

  The pod was not as graceful landing aboard the liner as it had been leaving the other one, Jack and Rowen scraping a long stretch of the deck. Jordan minded not a bit how gouged the wood looked—it could be repaired. But seeing Rowen emerge—she stopped eating (which seemed to surprise Caleb and the others as much as when she’d ravenously started).

  She wiped her fingers on a linen and stood.

  Not a word got past her lips before Jack burst from the pod, shouting, “Why the hell are you so far west? Have you decided Pittsburgh is the way to go rather than Philadelphia?”

  Jordan froze, her heart stampeding in circles through her chest.

  She set down the napkin.

  The Wandering Wallace leaped to his feet, chair falling back with a clatter, and he stared at them both in equal shock.

  “Oh, shite,” Jack whispered, “she’s taken you off course without you knowing.”

  The Wandering Wallace leaped across the table, grabbing a knife and a Weather Worker’s lead and shouting, “Correct our course!” as he grabbed for her.

  She knocked him back with a sharp wind, lightning menacing in the clouds above so brightly it seemed the ship sat directly beneath the noonday sun.

  The Wandering Wallace paused then, watching her.

  She licked her lips, glaring at him and daring him to stop her.

  Rowen asked, “Why?”

  Jordan faced him, words at the ready.

  But the Wandering Wallace jumped and got the collar around her neck. A clasp clicked shut by her jaw and the world fell away from her. Standing dazed, knees weak, vision blurred, her skeleton seemed only as strong as a thick pudding.

  The lightning overhead flickered and failed. The world tumbled in to crush them in darkness and for a moment everything was still. Everything was hushed.

  Then the clouds peeled away from them and sunlight speared through and illuminated the awful truth: they were falling.

  Everyone grabbed for a railing, a post, the ship’s wheel, even the chair still bolted grimly to the deck—anything to keep from flying free from the deck.

  The Wandering Wallace wrapped his legs around the post holding the ship’s huge crystal heart in place and held tight to Jordan’s lead.

  “Evie!” Rowen shouted.

  Evie, one arm wrapped around a railing, flung out her other its fingers flaring out, and her head bent back as she called clouds to the falling ship.

  To both of the falling ships.

  Struggling against the natural desires of gravity she slowed them.

  Jordan blinked, everything before her in muted colors, movement slow, the world wobbling. Even so, she knew slowing two falling airships was much different than flying them.

  “I cannot. Not both!” Evie cried, her eyes wide.

  “Cut the Tempest free!” the Wandering Wallace shouted.

  But, her hat gone and her red hair flying up like a fiery tornado, Evie shrieked, “Never!”

  Meggie, strangely calm in Maude’s heavy arms, looked at Jordan, pinning the ship’s Conductor down with her brilliant eyes. Somebunny clutched tight, its ears waving wildly by her own, Meggie said to the Wandering Wallace, “Let Jordan go.”

  Evie screamed her agreement. “If you intend to make Philadelphia—if you intend to live—unleash her!”

  “Damn it!” the Wandering Wallace shouted, “The child, Meggie … dear poppet,” he tried. “You could …”

  Jordan managed one word from her thick-feeling tongue: “No.”

  The Wandering Wallace screamed, too, frustration ripping the words into meaningless syllables. There was a click and the collar fell away from her neck again.

  She was solid, she was whole, and she was angry.

  Thrusting both her hands up, Jordan clamped down on the drifting clouds and threw them under the bellies of both ships. There was a whine and a booming groan shook the heavens and the Artemesia and Tempest shuddered to a stop, slapping the rest of them against the deck before the ships hung in midair, like the most pregnant of pauses.

  Jordan looked at each of their startled faces. “The child,” she began, her voice shaking. “And the Maker and his woman—they should not go into Philadelphia. He will be recognized. She will be taken …” Words failed and furrowing her brow she looked down at the pitted and scarred deck. She laced her fingers together before her and stared at them, her lips pressing together before she worked the last of her explanation between them, “I cannot let that happen.”

  Bran pulled Meggie and Maude to him. Tilting his head, he squinted at Jordan. “You would risk the success of the revolution—for us?”

  “For her,” Jordan clarified, looking at Meggie. “I am no captain in this revolution. Revolution will come when it must, my involvement changes nothing.”

  The Wandering Wallace shook his head but Jordan put her hand up.

  “But as the captain of this ship I can change a few lives.”

  Rowen grunted. “You do not give yourself enough credit. Leave them aboard the Artemesia under heavy guard. We will make sure they are safe.”

  She studied his face, the faint worry line between his eyebrows that was a recent addition, the promise in the set of his jaw. She nodded. “I trust you.”

  Something flashed in his eyes and she looked awa
y.

  The next word caught in her throat. “Philadelphia?” she asked softly.

  “Philadelphia,” came the stern reply from the Wandering Wallace.

  With a grunt she shoved past him. “You will not take the city as yours alone,” she hissed. “You will share power.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You heard him. You all heard him,” she said. “Hold him to it.” She stepped to her dais, adjusted the ship’s wheel, and announced, “To Philadelphia.”

  ***

  Aboard the Artemesia

  The next day the birds again found them at noon.

  It was as they soared just outside Philadelphia, Jack and Rowen reworking their pod and rebuilding a few of the smaller lightships that had attacked them a week ago, that the Wandering Wallace let loose with a lengthy string of curses that ruffled the feathers of the nearest birds.

  Miyakitsu was immediately at his side, her necklace and bracelets sparkling.

  “What is it?” Jordan asked, seeing he held a slip of parchment in his hands. The government supported news stories.

  He shoved it into her hands.

  “Young Terrence Malloy was found burned nearly to death as the result of playing with a steam-controlled cat. His house a complete loss, both parents dead, the boy is doomed to be a social pariah with scarring covering both face and body …” Jordan swallowed hard. “Poor boy,” she whispered. “Do you know him?”

  The Wandering Wallace shook his head. “After a fashion,” he whispered. “I would wager there is no Terrence Malloy.”

  “What?”

  Rowen and Jack set aside their tools, and the rest set down their diversions, too, to see what the fuss was all about.

  “Ten years ago I was that boy. Only it was not the cat’s fault. It was the man who came to collect the cat. By force. He set everything on fire as my parents slept upstairs. I lost everything. Everything,” he repeated. “And now they are recycling the story to keep the populace in fear …”

  Rowen cleared his throat. “It is not so simple.”

  The Wandering Wallace asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Does it say anything else?” Rowen asked Jordan.

  “Due to the heroic efforts of doctors and nurses at the hospital, the boy lives, powered by stormcell mechanisms.”

  Rowen looked down. Then he began to explain the Hub and his motivation to keep powering the city, all for the sake of suffering fictional children.

  This time when the Wandering Wallace let loose with obscenities, he included words in languages Jordan had never heard.

  Perhaps because sometimes there were not the right curses in just one, she supposed.

  Watching him storm away, Miyakitsu at his side, the others drifted back to what they had been doing before until Jack announced, “I think it’s time we train everyone in more advanced fighting.”

  There were nods all around, and Jack and Evie spent the next twenty minutes working with everyone Topside.

  And then, getting more serious yet, Jack called for Stache to run them through additional moves.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

  —Karl Marx

  Aboard the Artemesia

  They stood there a long moment, hands on the rails of the Artemesia’s bow, looking down on the city of Philadelphia as they tested their masks, slipping them on and adjusting the ribbons that held them in place.

  To Bran they looked more like the attendees of some slightly out-of-fashion soirée than the instigators of revolution, but perhaps on the eve of the Boston Tea Party someone had had a similar thought. And that had all turned out well.

  Except for one man who was knocked unconscious.

  And except for King George becoming so outraged he passed the Coercive Acts.

  Which led to the War for Independence.

  In which approximately 100,000 men between both sides wound up either dead or wounded …

  Yes. Bran drew down a breath.

  Yes. That had all turned out very well …

  The sun was lowering over the western hills and lights were beginning to rise in the homes and storefronts all the way from the docks, where wary fisherman and warehouse workers unloading lumber ships prepared to work late into the night, through the sprawling Below, where soon raucous laughter and drunkenness would spark parties, and up the Hill that sparkled like a carefully coiffed and classically constructed beacon to high society.

  “For all its faults,” Jordan whispered, “this is my city. Be gentle with it,” she implored the Wandering Wallace.

  But Bran could see his eyes were fixed on a spot near the foot of the large hill—on a building draped with wires and cables and crowned with more wires and tall metal posts than any other.

  The Hub.

  “This is how it begins,” the Wandering Wallace said, his voice softening.

  “Yes, and it must be now,” Jordan specified, removing her mask once more. She pointed to the clouds gathering at nearly the same altitude as their ships to begin the scheduled city rains. “As in most large cities, rain is scheduled. We are graced with cloud cover.”

  “Are not modern sensibilities wonderful?” Marion rolled his eyes.

  “There were advantages to knowing when rain would fall,” Rowen murmured. “No romantic strolls were ever ruined.”

  Maude shook her head. “Did you never get caught in spring rain with a lover?” she asked. “Or surprised by the booming of thunder which made your heart skip?”

  Rowen shook his head.

  “Jumped in puddles as a child?”

  They all looked at her.

  “Or kissed in a summer rain burst?”

  They were mute, watching her.

  She laughed at them. “Was I the only one raised near the Fringe—where weather did not abide anyone’s wishes or act according to any man’s design?”

  Bran took her hand, enjoying the warmth of her touching him. For a moment he was transported—no longer standing Topside on the brink of revolution—he was somewhere even grander, and she was all he saw. This was it, he realized, this was being moved by emotion—being lifted by love. “You must show me all of that,” he said.

  She beamed at him and squeezed his hand.

  “Take me to him,” the Wandering Wallace said, his voice thin.

  Miyakitsu slipped an arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder, cooing.

  “Take me to the Hub,” the Wandering Wallace insisted. “We will start this revolution with a strong dose of truth.”

  Jordan nodded. “A novel idea. So we will dock; you will ride to the Hub with Stache, Miyakitsu, Evie, and Marion; Rowen and Jack will fly ahead then meet the human allies as the army of mechs marches from the landing point,” she took a breath and then added, “the Maker, Maude, and Meggie will remain under guard here; and Caleb and I will keep the home fires burning?”

  The Wandering Wallace nodded. “Until I call for you. We will march as one to the Council. And your parents will be there.”

  Jordan raised her head, surprise in her eyes.

  Rowen reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. Not Caleb. Rowen. And she let his hand stay and reached her own up, capping his with it. She held his hand that way, so tightly her fingers ached.

  Nearby, Caleb smiled.

  “Do we need our fans and finery yet?” the small voice of Meggie asked.

  The raven’s head turned to her. “Not yet, darling child. Once we secure the city, make things right with the Wildkin, and are safe … Then we shall have a grand celebration,” he assured, leaning over to tweak her nose so that she tittered with laughter. “And you ladies will need fans, finery, and fabulously feathered hats.”

  “And you men?” she squealed.

  “We shall dress in our most colorful waistcoats, our sleekest jackets, and tallest hats. We will polish our boots and pocket watches and practice our dancing.”

  “And I may attend
?” Meggie asked.

  “Of course! You and Somebunny will receive a beautifully handcut invitation,” he assured. “Everyone who has helped shall attend!”

  Meggie cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered, “But I have an early bedtime.”

  “Perhaps, this once,” the Wandering Wallace said, “your mama and papa would allow you to stay up—overthrowing an unjust government is cause for later bedtimes.”

  Bran lowered his head, preferring the view of the city sparkling below to the man spinning out tales for his daughter’s delight. “Count not your chickens before they are hatched.”

  “These chickens will not only hatch but they will fly like eagles,” the Wandering Wallace promised.

  Jordan pulled the clouds together, stitched them up tight, and brought the ships in to land under the cover of falling darkness, knowing the city lay blind on this night with rain so regularly scheduled.

  ***

  Aboard the Artemesia

  After the others disappeared belowdecks to ready for attack, Jordan remained Topside, easing the ships closer to a docking point. She stood at the bow of the ship, looking over its edge and down onto the city through a narrow hole she’d pierced in the cloud cover.

  Nearly as blind to the city as it was to her approach with the press of dark storm clouds between them, Jordan proceeded forward by feel, feeling the tallest spires and rooflines brush her cloud cover as a cat might identify its surroundings with its whiskers.

  Clock towers, bell towers, the tips of turret rooms and high-set balconies, her most outlying clouds teased past them all, and combed through the Hub’s lower stormclouds. She felt each teasing touch and knew each place the way water learned a building’s architecture by raining over it and dripping into every crack and crevice.

  She shivered as they burst through the heavy veil of her clouds, screeching, wings churning the air with a sound like thunder. And Jordan knew them instantly, feather by feather. She swallowed and approached the perching owls, her jaw set, stride determined. Reaching out to each and, slipping the key ring off her hip, she opened the canisters attached to their legs and withdrew the messages.