“Rowen has some important contacts,” Evie volunteered.
Rowen swallowed. “Yes. It is true.”
“Have you been in contact with these contacts?” the Wandering Wallace asked.
“I have spoken to two,” Rowen confirmed.
Jordan’s eyebrows rose, and she leaned across the table, staring at him more directly than since he’d boarded the Artemesia. His throat grew tight. The Wandering Wallace asked, “And who are these contacts you have?”
“Kenneth Lorrington and Chadwick Skellish.” Jordan gave a small nod, and Rowen continued, saying, “They have promised to gather more friends with military experience.”
“More sober friends?” Jordan asked, her expression flat.
“Sober enough to do what must needs be done.”
Jordan pulled her chair back up. She again sat beside Caleb and leaned back, pulling out of Rowen’s view.
Rowen saw the tips of her slender fingers as she drummed softly on the tabletop. He stood. “That brings me to what my next task should be,” he said. “I should go to Philadelphia in advance and organize my contacts.”
Evie cleared her throat. “Into the viper’s nest? And alone? I think not.”
“The viper’s nest?” Jordan asked.
“He hasn’t told you?” Evie asked, doing her best to blink innocently. “He’s a wanted man—and wanted for more than just simple companionship.”
“Wanted?”
“Dear Rowen killed a man.”
“What?” Jordan jumped back to her feet. “You did what?”
“I dueled over your honor. I won …” The words came out weak, sheepishly.
She reached across Caleb and slapped Rowen. Hard.
“What the hell?” He held his cheek and stared at her, his jaw hanging loose. “What was that for?”
Jordan blinked several times and swallowed before addressing him. “That was for dueling.”
“I was defending your honor!”
“Yes. And as noble a concept as that is …” She rolled her eyes up and stared at the sky. Lightning sparkled above them. She drew a deep breath and eased it out slowly. “As noble a concept as that is,” she repeated, “you could have been hurt. Or killed.” She dropped her gaze hastily, her eyes shrouded beneath her lashes. “I will not stomach you doing any such fool thing again,” she whispered. “I will not suffer losing you, Rowen Albertus Burchette.” She raised her chin, but would not meet his eyes. “Not again.”
“Ah, but dear, sweet lady,” the Wandering Wallace cooed, watching them, “we will soon be marching to revolution. He must act as such dangerous moments dictate. Do not tie his hands so much he cannot defend himself.”
She proclaimed, “I would never.” She looked at Rowen and let out a weary sigh. “But take no unnecessary chances,” she commanded. “Make no foolhardy choices.” She hung her head. “Take no risks that outweigh the rewards,” she said so softly he barely heard her.
Rowen stood there, mute. Stunned.
Jordan turned on her heel and walked away from the table, lengthening her stride in a way more warrior than woman. Rubbing his aching jaw, Rowen still enjoyed watching her walk away.
She threw her weight behind the lever on the Conductor’s dais, hauling it back, snapping the Artemesia’s wings in close and reaching her hands out to pull at the distant clouds, drawing them tighter to maintain the ship’s buoyancy.
Chapter Five
Full lasting is the song, though he, the singer, passes.
—George Meredith
Aboard the Artemesia
At mid-morning the Wandering Wallace approached Jordan, saying, “Bring the ships down at noon. Not to land, of course, but to an altitude so the birds can land.”
Jordan looked at him, raising one eyebrow.
“I may be creative, but even I cannot continue making up the headlines. That level of dishonesty requires government involvement.”
Jordan’s eyebrows jumped. “Making up … ?”
He waved a hand at her in a trifling way. “Yes. I can be fairly certain most of the things I’ve said have happened, but I would prefer working from reality—even if it has been censored and twisted by the government.”
Jordan gawked at him.
He cocked his head, the feathers on his peacock’s mask rippling with color. “I cannot imagine you did not notice … But then you did have many things on your mind, I suppose,” he said, glancing at the way the surrounding clouds dimmed slightly. “Every noon liners of this class descend to a lower altitude to allow messenger birds to roost. We provide them feed and water and open the container tied to their foot to read the headlines. If we must, we add to the news before sending the birds on their way.”
Jordan squinted at him. “At noon?”
“Yes. At noon. Unless there is real trouble and then they dispatch the owls or eagles when they must.”
Shortly before noon, Jordan began the slow descent of both the Artemesia and Tempest as the rest of the group gathered at the dining table. She had set the ships to glide and barely taken her seat for the midday meal when it began.
Birds of all shapes, colors, and sizes popped through the cloud cover, skimming the deck’s surface before setting down on a narrow railing by the airship’s bow, each bird sidestepping to a particular spot.
Meggie clapped her hands at the aerial display. “Splendid!” she said as a hawk descended in a smart spiral, its wing tips nearly grazing the smaller birds who shifted, tittering nervously at its approach.
There were birds of all varieties, Jordan noticed, spotting pigeons, sparrows, blue jays, ravens, cardinals, bluebirds, and a selection of hawks settling on the narrow rail to preen and await their promised food.
The Wandering Wallace stood, shoving a bit of bread into the mouth of the peacock mask he wore. “Shall we see what news they bring?”
Meggie jumped up, an emphatic, “Yes!” bursting out of her mouth.
Jordan took a quick sip of water and set down her tankard, standing with the Wandering Wallace and Rowen.
Caleb set down his napkin and, rising, followed Jordan and the rest of them. Together they crossed the deck to where the birds roosted.
Jeremiah, once only the ship’s powder monkey, arrived on deck, led by a servant girl who had previously proven her allegiance to the Wandering Wallace. Quietly Jeremiah showed her how to feed each bird. He paused to address Jordan as he approached a blue jay. “You should have a special key on a ring,” he said.
Jordan dug into the pleats of her dress and withdrew the key ring, saying, “I retrieved it,” with a shrug, and flipping through the heavy iron keys, she paused on a very small and ornate one that looked more like a small charm for a bracelet than the key to a door.
“That’s the one.” Jeremiah slipped the key free of the ring and placed his left wrist in front of the blue jay, slowly pressing it into the bird’s breast so it stepped up onto his arm with the soft jingle of a bell. Cocking its head it watched Jordan with beady eyes. Jeremiah untied a small metal canister lashed to the bird’s leg with leather. On the bird’s other leg was tied a bell.
Jeremiah untied the container and, inserting the key, opened it and slipped out a long, curled slip of paper. Setting the jay back on his perch, Jeremiah unrolled the paper and held it out.
The Wandering Wallace reached for it but Jeremiah passed it to Jordan. “It is your ship, therefore it is your mail.”
Jordan turned her back on the Wandering Wallace, unwinding the paper between her fingers and thumbs and tugging it taut.
She read the small script carefully and when she was certain she could share its contents with a man as potentially powerful—or dangerous—as the Wandering Wallace, she read aloud, “Philadelphia Councilman Cowden Yokum has been found guilty of Harboring and imprisoned at Eastern Penitentiary.”
“Interesting,” the Wandering Wallace said, reaching up to stroke the blue jay’s beak like any other man might stroke his beard. “He sounds most worthy of a visit.”
***
Philadelphia
Todd’s feet kicked out and back where he sat on the plush divan in the parlor of the Lorrington household, staring up with wide eyes at the oddly high ceiling. George reached out and took his son’s hand, passing him another biscuit.
Todd ate eagerly, crumbs spilling down his front, which George plucked off of him and placed in his own crumbled napkin.
Across the room from the awkward and shabby pair sat a long-legged man with narrow, bloodshot eyes. Whereas some might have been sipping tea this morning, Kenneth Lorrington raised a glass to his ever-present butler, saying, “Hair of the dog.”
Whatever the dog’s hair was, George thought, it smelled as foul as it smelled powerful.
Lorrington slugged it back, squeezed his eyes closed, and finally, opening them, managed something like a smile. “I have been told,” he waved the empty glass in his butler’s direction, “that you have things I would like to hear in light of the fall of the Astraea family and the dastardly behavior,” at these words the smile became genuine, “of Rowen Burchette.”
George opened his mouth to begin but Lorrington waved him quiet, adding, “I should make you aware, I have very recently spoken to Burchette. It is possible I already know what you do.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but you do not,” George said. “And before I divulge these secrets I must have some assurance of my son’s and my safety. We will need a place to stay.”
Lorrington nodded gravely. “And what skills do you have besides telling secrets you were evidently meant to keep? Can you dust, mop, mend broken things?” he mused.
“Frankly, sir, I am in the business of breaking things more than fixing them.”
Lorrington squinted at him. “Do you break things and then set fires, good man?”
George swallowed hard. “Yes, sir, I fear I do.”
“Ah. I am familiar with your handiwork.” He held his glass out for a refill, slugging the liquid back and then grimacing. “Coffee next,” he specified to the butler as he shifted in his seat. The butler lowered his head. “Well, if I can say nothing else of you, you are quite thorough at what you do.”
“But I am not so old that I cannot learn new ways.”
Lorrington’s fuzzy gaze landed on George’s boy. “A good thing.” He set down his glass and stuck out his hand, receiving a coffee cup. His gaze never left Todd. “Let me guess: he is a Witch.”
George gasped but Lorrington chuckled. “Why else would anyone but rebels care what you do? Why else go to the lengths they have to control you? Why else would you run to a friend of Jordan Astraea’s beau? Yes, you know things, but.” He took a long sip of coffee, smiling over the cup’s edge at his butler. “It is a good thing I keep the kitchen staff in beans, I see—such prompt service.”
“Brews nearly all day long, sir,” the butler mused. “Allows me to keep alert to your needs.”
“Good, good.” He looked at Todd again, though he addressed George. “You and the boy will be kept on as staff here. You will not question me or my family and you will keep your head down.”
“And the fact he is coming into power … ?”
“I will need more coffee before I can answer that. Now. Tell me a secret.”
George glanced at the butler and scanned the room once before drawing a deep breath and leaning in to say, “Councilman Loftkin is tripling the number of patrols of men like me and beginning to plan troop movements.”
“Do tell …”
“He has maps and charts all over his desk. And tin soldiers populate them. He is planning something.”
Lorrington kicked back in his embroidered chair. “Well luckily, so are we. It appears we will be mustering men, Scottin,” Lorrington told the butler before he returned his attention to George. “Good man, do tell me more.”
So, handing Todd another biscuit, George told Kenneth Lorrington everything he knew.
***
Aboard the Artemesia
Watching Jordan, Bran marveled at how accurate her touch had become and how quickly she had learned so much.
Meggie rose from where Miyakitsu and Maude now sat—talking?—Bran could never be sure as it seemed the beautiful young Oriental girl never said anything to anyone but the Wandering Wallace. At least he presumed she spoke to the Wandering Wallace—he could not imagine any relationship in which words never passed. His daughter moved across the dais to where Jordan, her face as dark as the clouds she called, Conducted the huge liner. Meggie set a tiny hand on Jordan’s skirt and gave a tug.
Jordan looked down, her face brightening. The darkness of the clouds overhead softened, but their thickness and power never changed. Meggie petted Jordan’s skirt a moment and then turned toward Bran and the diners. He’d seen that look before.
The look of a child with a sudden idea.
She skipped across the deck to him and tucked her hands behind her back, swaying up and back on her tiptoes. The move was one he should have grinned at—a move of pure joy a father should have reveled in—but instead he remembered the last time she’d skipped—the day of the ship’s true overthrow.
The day she’d whistled with the Wandering Wallace and they’d all heard people screaming, thrown from balconies and windows for not going along with the ship’s takeover.
A literal overthrow.
He had reasonable difficulty and a strange sense of foreboding sweep over him at the sight of her bobbing merrily before him.
As if she understood, she stopped mid-bob and pressed her rosebud lips together a moment before speaking. “Miss Jordan keeps calling angry storms,” she said in a voice distinctly tattletale.
Bran stooped over to look into her glowing eyes. He swept dainty curls back from her forehead and nodded. “I know, little dove. What do you expect me to do about it?”
“You know the most about Witches … Can you not teach her a better way? A happier way?”
“Oh,” he said in a whisper. “I do not think I dare try teach Miss Jordan anything ever again,” he said. “She and I … I would not blame her for not wanting to listen to me. I was horribly cruel to her.” He swallowed hard, fighting back the memory of the tools, and the blood, and the pain he had inflicted to Make her a Witch. It amazed him she had not hurled him overboard, pushed by a gust of wind.
Even now her eyes were on him, watching him with cruel disinterest. When, briefly, her gaze fell to Meggie, the whole of her attitude changed and she was no longer hateful, but just a teenage girl.
A wounded teenage girl.
“Anil said Jordan should sing out her storms—call them with love and joy.”
Rowen and Jack had frozen in the midst of their discourse. Rowen gave a snort. “Sing out her storms?” He shook his head. “I doubt you’ll have much luck with that,” he confided. “I frequently tried to get Jordan to sing—anything—she never would. Not a ballad, not a bawdy tune, nothing.”
Meggie appraised Rowen. “Do you sing?”
“Not well, but with great gusto,” he said.
“Perhaps that was why she did not sing,” Meggie suggested.
Rowen snorted again.
“Papa, might someone attempt to fetch the violinist in hopes Miss Jordan might be inspired to sing?”
“Sing with a violin?” Jack scoffed. “A guitar is what you want for singing. Everyone enjoys singing with a guitar! Some even claim a man holding a guitar is more attractive to ladies.” He looked at Evie. “Shall I play a ditty for you, darling?”
She laughed, but the smile hung on to the corners of her eyes long after the sound faded away. “You do have a guitar, don’t you, Jack?”
“Of course I do. In the Tempest with the rest of my prizes. Traded to get a fine Martin, I did—none better.”
“Shall we let the child see if her theory is correct or if Rowen knows our Conductor best?”
Jack slapped his hands together. “That’s a fine plan. I shall fetch my guitar and we will have a right good sing-along at young Lady Astraea
’s feet.”
Jack walked across the Topside deck toward where the Tempest was tethered, Jordan taking special care so the two great airships did not touch.
Bran imagined such work taxed her still-developing skills further, and gave him yet another way to judge her aptitude as her skill set grew at a startling speed.
Jack turned back to look at Rowen. “Come along, lad,” he instructed with a tone so full of authority it seemed he was Rowen’s senior by at least a decade, when in reality they might have a half-dozen years between them.
Rowen shrugged, pausing long enough to tousle Meggie’s hair and shoot a gaze at Bran that was filled with daggers, then he followed the much shorter man.
It was Meggie, Bran realized, smiling down at her. They loved his daughter so they allowed him to live.
So far.
Because no one wanted to take away a child’s parent if it seemed he at least did right by her.
Meggie trembled, tilting her head the other direction, her bright eyes taking on the strange and distant look he’d seen more often than he’d hoped. A look that showed Meggie was not quite herself, that the spirit of Sybil was nearing the surface of her consciousness once more. If Sybil was so near again—so often—Bran knew as no one else did he was not doing right by his daughter at all.
They needed to land, give Sybil’s skull the respectful burial it deserved before the frighteningly vocal ghost girl shared more than her pleasant memories with his darling daughter—before Sybil shared memories of torture at his very hands with the little girl he loved the most—his dear little dove.
***
Philadelphia
It was when Lady Cynthia Astraea woke that she seemed to reconnect with her true self, as if something lingered in her body—some bit of soul or spirit not ready to be whisked away to Heaven, Hell, or the crystal prison of a soul stone. It was as her ladyship napped that two of the Astraea household servants—two of the very few who remained after the family fell from social grace—John and Laura, decided to again rifle through her room in hopes of finding the missing soul stone.