The door shut behind them and introductions were accomplished with the efficiency of men on the run.
“One of the Burchettes?”
Rowen nodded. “The youngest of Gregor’s sons.”
“Hmph!” Frederick said. “That’s quite a coup for someone like me to host someone like you.”
“Well,” Jonathan said slowly, “it might cause a coup if you tell anyone, as we are on the run from the law.”
“Oh.”
Some people might have reached for a chair, given such news, and Jonathan was quite certain that some of high social standing would have swooned at the mention. But not Frederick. He said, “Well do tell,” and stoked the fire in his small stove to start the water for a proper cup of tea.
Over tea in the small but generously decorated cottage that stood between the woods and the meadow, Rowen Burchette, Sixth of the Nine, and Jonathan Smithson, his manservant and faithful friend, related their tale to Jonathan’s second cousin, who nodded and asked, “Might I use your adventure as inspiration for a story I am writing? Ah, yes,” Frederick said with a wink as he tipped the teapot to refill his own cup. “I fear you have found yourself in the company of the lowest of the low: an author!” He laughed then, and Rowen glanced to Jonathan for some clue as to how to react.
Jonathan was smiling. “Will you publish our adventures yourself then?” he suggested, playing along.
“Do what Poe did recently? Self-publish?” He shook his head and grinned. “No, cousin, I want to be remembered!”
“So you’re still writing for the penny dreadfuls?”
Frederick let out an exasperated groan. “I wish they’d stop calling them that, but it does garner the public’s attention. So much about writing is marketing nowadays. But I must say that dreadful is not the most accurate description of them if you are writing for them. The publishing world is like anything else: not nearly so awful if it pays you.” He took a long sip of his tea and said from the side of his cup, “So may I fictionalize and immortalize you two in prose as bold young adventuring heroes, one golden-haired and one dark?”
The pair exchanged a glance and, shrugging, agreed.
“Excellent!” Frederick raised his tea cup, saying, “A toast to tea—the great social lubricant!”
“What of wine?” Rowan asked, raising his cup.
“We’ll have no whining here,” Frederick said, laughing.
“Then include in our toast ale for what ails you…?” Rowen returned with a grin.
Jonathan shook his head and, raising his cup, tapped it to the others. “A toast to adventures that end happily and authors who write their characters with kindness!”
“Hear, hear!” they agreed, and for a brief while it seemed they were men starting a grand adventure, not men on the run from the law. In that way it was far easier to settle in for the night—imagining what lay ahead rather than all that had been left behind.
Holgate
The whirring of gears woke him as much as the feel of something tightening around his neck like a noose. Breath burning in his throat, Bran clawed at his attacker, fingers slipping past its grasp. He got a grip on it, prying at fingers so strong they felt like this midnight marauder had a skeleton of steel. His tongue managed a curse when his hand started to bleed, cut. Fabric ripped and he heard a creak and snap of metal. Finally freed, he threw his attacker—much lighter than he imagined!—threw him so far he heard the body slam against the far wall and slip down to land limp on the floor, the humming of parts louder, a gear grinding against another. He flipped the switch on the nearest stormlight and held it before him partly for the sake of illumination and partly because it had enough weight to serve as a defensive weapon.
From the other room a small voice sounded, still thick with sleep.
“Go back to sleep, Meggie,” Bran urged.
“Papá?” she whispered. “Somebunny?” The ropes supporting her mattress creaked and Bran recognized the sound of small feet approaching.
He swung the lantern, letting the light cascade across her form briefly before, as she rubbed her eyes clear of sleep, he raised the light to illuminate the thing that had attacked him as he slept.
The thing that was always with his daughter and a gift from his ex-lover.
“Somebunny?” Meggie whispered.
They stared at the broken doll, its movements jerky and faltering as its voice growled out the most haunting rendition of the country’s motto that Bran had ever heard.
“A place for all, a place for all, a plaaaa—”
“What did you do to her?” Meggie cried, reaching for the doll.
But Bran snatched it up first, turned his back to his sobbing daughter, and ripped the mechanical spine from its soft fabric body, knocking free the glowing soul stone wedged in its grinding, cog-encircled heart. Dropping the doll to the floor, Bran ignored the gasp of his daughter and stomped his way to the horn that hung on the wall by the crank, crystal, and flywheel.
A sleep-deprived Maude was talking to him soon over the contraption and she was at his apartment door shortly thereafter, a look of horror on her face.
But, instead of coddling him and the cut on his hand that he had hastily bandaged, she went first to Meggie, and, pulling her into her lap, freed the limp doll from her arms. “Hush now, princess, hush,” she soothed. “We’ll fix her up all right and good—never you fear.” She wrapped the child and doll in her arms, giving both a reassuring squeeze. Maude spared Bran a look that softened immediately.
The metal skeleton was still on the floor where he’d dropped it and their gazes both fell to it.
“I didn’t realize it was an automaton,” Bran murmured.
“It was just a toy. A doll. Harmless.”
“Powered by a soul stone.” Bran flexed his bandaged hand. “The trader you got it from, the one who gave you such a good deal, did he ask who the doll was for?”
Her mouth moved, the single word working its way out slowly. “Yes.”
“Did you not think that odd?” He stared at the doll, avoiding the troubled eyes of his daughter.
“I thought he was being curious. Friendly.”
“Who did you say the doll was for?”
“The Maker’s daughter.”
Bran nodded. “I’ll need his name, of course.”
“Of course,” she agreed.
He crouched before Meggie, but she twisted away, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of looking in her face. He groaned and glanced at Maude for help. She simply nodded encouragement.
“We’ll have Somebunny fixed up with proper springs and gears, fine mechanics, a right good windup toy for my child. Or no mechanics at all. Either choice is safer than a doll powered by a soul stone.”
Meggie wiped her nose with her sleeve and looked up at her father. She held Somebunny tighter, bits of flax stuffing falling to the floor. There was fire in Meggie’s eyes, balanced with a touch of fear.
“Come now, my sweet,” Maude coaxed, scooting the child off her lap so she could stand up. “In we go. I’ll get Somebunny fixed up right as rain.”
Bran stopped her. “Right as rain? Try again, please.”
Maude swallowed. “Good as new,” she corrected herself, her voice soft.
“Much better.”
* * *
Even inside her new prison cell amidst the Making Tanks, Jordan’s world remained dark, dank, dripping, and grim, the sun only slowly crawling its way over the eastern hills. The tower’s stones bit into her back now that she’d discarded her boned corset, but still she leaned against the wall, pressed into it to feel something as she watched a swatch of sky change colors between the bars on her small single window. The stars slowly winked out as the black of night was infused with colors that reminded her of a bruise lightening as it healed.
She tugged at the leather manacle on her wrist, running a finger along its edge and wiggling it partway under the itching thing. She shifted and her tether’s chain rustled in the straw. How recently had s
he been offended by having straw for sitting and sleeping? And yet now she was thankful the straw here was cleaner than that in the Reckoning Tanks. Grabbing a piece of straw from the bedding that littered her floor, she slipped it between the flesh of her wrist and the bulk of the cuff and wiggled it around, finally sighing, her head rolling back on her neck when its tip connected with whatever itched her. A look of fierce focus crossed her face as she dug the straw underneath the cuff, moving it back and forth frantically, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in a most unladylike fashion.
She froze, realizing, and, slipping her tongue back to its proper place behind her teeth, slowly withdrew the straw and set it aside. She patted the cuff with her right hand, rubbing it like she might polish a very large and unsightly bracelet. Flaring her fingers out, she noted the tiny notches in her previously perfect nails. And the dirt beneath them. She set to work, slipping a nail from one hand beneath a nail on the other and working with fierce determination to worry each finger clean again. The itching of the straw was relentless, bits of the stuff getting caught in her stockings so she finally tugged them off, leaving them by her shoes. Satisfied, she smoothed her skirt over her legs, tugging its hem down so that it almost covered her ankles as it should, even with her knees drawn up nearly to her chin.
And where was Rowen, she wondered. Was he sleeping off a headache from another party she’d missed? Was he readying for a hunt with his friends? Or was today a day he would find his way to the gentleman’s club and talk politics and sip wine? Could she even see Philadelphia from her spot in the tower?
She sighed. Did it really matter where Rowen was anymore? Surely if her whereabouts didn’t matter to him, his shouldn’t matter to her. Besides, now she’d been accused of witchery he outranked her. She was untouchable, utterly unwanted. It should not surprise her that Rowen would not ride to her rescue—he had better things to do now that she was out of play. He was a highly eligible bachelor in search of a rank-raising woman and she no longer fit that description.
Still she stood at the window, her fingers wrapped around the bars, her face pressed between them, feeling the heart on her sleeve, and she wondered.
The sound of metal scraping along metal grated in her ears and Jordan said, “What is that?”
A voice growled out from just on the other side of her wall and she scrambled away from it, her metal links rattling between her wrists. “Morning bell.”
Jordan spun when another voice, this one thin and high and most definitely of the female persuasion asked, “Bell?” with as much embittered irony as Jordan had ever heard packed into such a small word.
She went to her knees, briefly mindful of the straw and dust grinding beneath the golden fabric of her dress, but her curiosity won out and she pressed close to the wall, searching the dim area with probing fingers.
“We calls it the morning bell,” the female voice at her back explained, “as ’tis kinder than what it truly is. Gots to find a bit of kindness somewheres, you know?”
Footsteps echoed in the hall running between the Tanks, and Jordan tried to focus. Heavy boots … two pairs.
“And what’s the morning bell for?” Jordan’s fingertips swept an opening and she pressed her face close to the seam between floor and wall where a small hole was—just the width and length of a single stone.
Jordan squinted into the blackness of the hole, pressing close to it. “Is it for breakfast?”
Laughter echoed harshly in her ears. “Ain’t she just the optimist?”
“Optimist? Fresh meat is all she is.”
“Do we not get breakfast, then?”
“Not all of us.”
“And not anything most’d dare to qualify as worthy of breaking your fast.”
“So what is it then—this morning bell?”
A door clanged open and there was shouting, the sound of an argument and the noise of a scuffle.
The noise became so loud, the words so fierce, Jordan shrank in against herself, her eyes wide.
“Breakfast she asks us,” the voice from the hole directly before her said with a wistful tone that twisted in on itself and became a grim snicker. “It’s certainly not that. The Maker—he calls it exercise. Count yourself lucky if you never experience it firsthand.”
Philadelphia
“The Kruse family?” the old man asked, looking up from a spot where he leaned against a large planter. He squinted up at Marion, keeping the much taller man in a position to best block the rising sun. “You mean old Francis Kruse, his wife Sarah, and his boys?”
Marion nodded. If there was one thing he’d learned from his travels it was that if you wanted the most complete story about anything, you found the oldest man nearby to ask.
“You must not be following the ways of our world, son,” the man said. “You know their eldest—a lad by the name of Marion was found to be a Witch? They were Harboring.” He shook his head sadly and leaned forward to rest his chin on his gnarled hands as they gripped the top of his cane. “Pity. Nice folks. Handsome family. Still astounds me that things are as they are. Imagine what possibilities our world has if only the Maker, the Witches, Wardens, Wraiths, and Reanimators joined forces…”
Marion cleared his throat, determined to steer the old man from such fancies and back to the conversation at hand. “I heard about the eldest,” Marion said, careful to keep his voice steady and his tone relaxed.
“Then you know what happened next.”
“I don’t. Tell me where I might find them?”
“Halfway up the Hill.”
“Truly?” Marion raised his gaze to trace the territory of the Hill’s slope. They must have survived the disgrace better than he thought if they were that distance above the Below. “Do you think they’d be there now?” he asked.
“I daresay they never leave,” the man muttered, smacking his lips together in thought.
“What?”
“Surely you know the story—everyone knows what happened next.”
“I’m not exactly everyone … Tell it true.”
“Shortly after the eldest was taken away for witchery—it was a day of celebration there, if memory serves—not unlike the recent problem at the Astraea estate…”
“Fine, yes—a day of celebration. Go on.”
“Actually—is that today’s paper?”
“Yesterday’s.”
“Here, then.” He grabbed a newspaper resting by his hip and waved it in Marion’s direction. “Page three. The writer tells it far better than an old man might.”
“Thank you,” Marion muttered as he grabbed the newspaper and turned to head back up the Hill, his eyes distracted between trying to scan the printed text and find the place his family now called their own.
He paused on the roadside not far from a stand of houses that all nearly leaned one upon the other but still managed somehow to have individual yards at their bases. Ahead the trees and buildings gave way for a clearing enclosed by a twisting metal gate. On its other side more houses sprouted up, straighter in stature, though no taller than their companions slightly down the Hill.
He froze when he saw it—the headline naming his household—and the article beginning with the name of his family’s most faithful servant and the woman who kissed his scrapes and sang him songs. The woman who fed him biscuits and sneaked him sweetmeats. His nanny, Chloe.
Chloe Erendell has been convicted by Council Court for the ruthless murders of the Kruse family five years ago and is scheduled to hang until dead Wednesday hence.
He had barely gotten to a spot to sit down when his knees gave in under the weight of reality. Murdered? His eyes squeezed shut and he was reduced to nothing but a rocking lump of humanity at the roadside as he struggled to make sense of news he should have known years earlier. Forcing his eyes open, he plunged one finger into the pages and shoved them flat on the ground to better read them through his blurring vision. At the roadside on his hands and knees he was suddenly as broken as a cruel child’s toy. br />
Spots of moisture appeared on the pages below him and he snorted and sucked air so harshly through his nose it rattled with snot. He raked his sleeve across his eyes, equally as angry as he was confused. Why now?
He hadn’t cried in years. He had trained himself out of it, regardless of what method the Maker had tried. Coaxing with the cat? Nothing. The brand? Not a noise did Marion utter. He had curled it all inside, stomped down the pain and the cruelty and packed it around his heart cold as the ice that crawled free from his fingertips.
He jerked back, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking at the ground near where his left hand had rested—and the way the grass began to discolor and wilt. He needed to get up. To move away from the evidence.
He stood shakily, clutching the paper before him to obscure his face. He took a step and then another until he found himself standing across the road from the twisting iron gate—
—and the tombstones dotting its plot, halfway up the Hill. His shoulders slumped and his face fell again. The man hadn’t lied. This would be where they were now and they certainly never left … He glanced up and down the road and strode across it, pushing the gate aside to step within.
It was oddly quiet there in the negligible shade of the few remaining trees that stood as silent witness to the dead. He wandered the rows of graves, knees weak, not quite sure what to expect and certainly unsure where to find them. They were in a small section slightly down the Hill and tucked away near an old pine. Needles covered their grave beds like a coppery quilt and sap had dried in glistening beads and long slow tears on his mother’s headstone.
He dropped again, realizing.
There would be no more sitting at her feet and reading boisterous stories. There would be no more moments spent telling tales at bedtime or learning the good and proper way to sip tea before a lady. There would no longer be any niceties in his life. Or in theirs. They had all been stolen away when he had been discovered. His mother and father’s graves flanked that of his little brother and he silently read the inscription on each and found them to be good and accurate if not too simple. How could you boil down any one life to only a few words carved into stone? There was so much more to a life …