Jonathan snorted. “You might disagree with your current sentiment if you spend more time with Miss Jordan. Unchaperoned.”
Rowen blinked and then burst out laughing. “Perhaps!”
They didn’t hear, see, or smell it until it was on top of Jonathan, its broad flipper hands catching his head and twisting his neck with a crunch so loud Silver bolted as Jonathan crumpled to the ground, the Merrow sinking down with him.
Rowen shouted and fired a shot, but the Merrow sprang away, using its slick tail as a coil and propelling itself after Silver as he streaked into the woods.
Ransom’s nostrils flared, ears flattening against his skull as his lips pulled back from his bright white teeth. Rowen reloaded and watched the tree line as he stumbled over bits of river debris on his way to Jonathan. He didn’t dare go to his knees, didn’t dare turn his back to either the woods or the water as he crouched to check his friend for signs of life.
It took but a moment.
“Damn it!” Rowen shouted, rising. “Damn it all to Hell—it’s not supposed to happen this way!” He headed into the woods, hunting for the Merrow that couldn’t be too far ahead. He stopped, hearing noise behind him.
Ransom blew a burst of hot air out his nose, nearly baking Rowen’s face.
“Didn’t want to be left behind, did you?” Rowen asked, sparing a quick touch for the horse. “Me neither.” He stepped to his steed’s side and climbed into the saddle, mindful of the loaded pistol. “Let’s us go and see just where our slimy little friend got to, shall we? I have a bullet with his name on it.” He nudged Ransom forward with his heels, watching for any signs of either horse or the Merrow’s passage. Plants bent a different way than the rest or stems or branches broken—all were telltale signs of movement. As was the sudden noise of a terrified horse’s scream.
Rowen kicked Ransom forward and the horse barely even flicked an ear at being commanded into danger instead of being directed away from it. They plunged through the brush and thin briars lining the already torn pathway, bolting toward the source of the sound.
Ahead of them Silver stood and stamped, his eyes rolling and head lowered, focusing on something low to the ground and obscured by the bushes before them. They crashed through the last bit of brush and came to a sliding stop beside the horse, their haunches touching.
Silver broke free of his staring contest with the Merrow for a moment and Rowen lowered his pistol and took a shot.
The Merrow squealed and flew backward through the brambles as fast as if the bullet carried it. This time they tracked it the whole way from the noise alone and Rowen struggled to reload his gun as Ransom carried him after the beast to finish it off, leaving Silver back in the thicket. He would avenge his best friend, escort the damsel, and put things to rights in Philadelphia.
Blackpowder spilled from Rowen’s powder flask and his wadding was a sloppy job at best. But he dropped in the lead and rammed it home and was ready when they burst back to the river’s edge.
At least he had thought himself ready.
At the water’s edge three more Merrow crouched, petting and cooing to soothe their wounded comrade as they stuffed his wound with the gooey growth that always tangled Rowen’s line when he dared to go down to the Below’s dockside and fish.
They looked up at him, sitting there on top of his beautiful horse, and they gnashed their impossibly large teeth, drooling.
“Damn it,” Rowen repeated, letting Ransom dance backward beneath him. “I am fairly certain this is also not supposed to happen … I want my damned happily ever after!” He reached down and loosened the sword at his side and then, refocusing on his gun, took aim and fired.
The blow knocked a Merrow back into the water in a splash of blood. Something moved just below the surface, causing ripples and then another ripple, and another, as spines circled the rising blood in the river and then, in a furious fit of splashing water and high-pitched wailing the waters frothed with foam and blood as the Merrow tore each other apart.
Ransom carried Rowen another long slow step backward as Rowen reloaded and fired.
The Merrow shifted, anticipating his shot, but the ramrod sliced through one of them, launched from the pistol’s barrel in Rowen’s haste, and flew like a spear into the water beyond as the bullet went wide and grazed the other.
The remaining Merrow snapped their jaws together, teeth clicking wetly as saliva dripped and they scurried forward, propelled by their coiling and then stretching tails. They leaped at Ransom and Rowen swung his pistol like a club, connecting with a sickening sound with the skull of one of the Merrow and knocking it to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.
Distantly Rowen wondered if they’d drag that one down into the swirling waters for a fleshy feast, too, and he cursed and freed his sword, slashing wildly as the Merrow dug claws into Ransom’s flank and he squealed like a hog at slaughter.
He bucked and Rowen flew from the saddle, landing hard. Catching his breath and climbing to his feet, Rowen watched the prize stallion whip his spine so loosely that it seemed he had no bones in his back at all. His adversaries flew free of him, unable to maintain a grip with tail, tooth, or claw and Ransom spun on his hooves and, with one quick look at Rowen, bolted back into the dry cover of the woods they’d just come from.
Rowen stood his ground, slashing out with his blade and retreating into the woods the way Ransom had gone, his eyes on the snarling and still advancing Merrow, his last glimpse of the best friend he’d ever had the lifeless body at the river’s edge, the waters lapping at his side.
Far past the fringe of the forest, nearer to its light-dappled heart, the Merrow gave up the chase and slunk back to the relative safety of the river. They’d slip downstream soon, seeking saltier water.
When he was certain they intended no ambush, Rowen bent over to catch his breath, his sword quivering in his grip. He willed himself to release the weapon and watched it fall to the ground with detached interest. He set down his pistol and began to rub feeling back into his right hand. He crouched by his weapons, stretching and flexing and checking himself for wounds. His beautiful pants were ruined now, covered in dirt, Merrow slime, and blood. He tugged a small briar branch out of one leg and winced as the thorns pulled out.
But beyond all the small indignities of battle—the dirt, the grime, and the blood—was the loss.
He turned back toward the distant river and the place where Jonathan had gone down.
If he’d had any doubt before about going swiftly to Holgate to find Jordan, it was as gone as Jonathan’s life. Jordan was his last remaining close friend. Jonathan had not abandoned Rowen in the time of his greatest need, so neither would he abandon her in hers.
“Damn it,” he repeated for good measure. He stood, shook out each of his limbs, and rolled his head to stretch out the pinch of tension in his neck. He rubbed his face, surprised when his fingers came away damp. “Damn it,” he said again, this time the words but a whisper. He picked up his sword once more, slipped the empty pistol into his belt, and peered up through the overlapping canopy of thick leaves to try and find the sun. He decided he would again match his path to its own once he recovered the horses.
Holgate
Caleb’s voice surprised Jordan. “You do not feel her there? With you?”
Jordan shook her head, confused. “I truly do not know what you mean … There is no one here with me.”
“Sybil is,” Caleb insisted. “You may not see her, but she remains. In the walls and in the water. She is a part of this place. She is rooted here.”
Jordan shivered. “A ghost?”
“The spirit of a little girl,” he corrected. “I might become a ghost someday, but she? She is Rusalka.”
Jordan tested the word on her tongue, rolling its foreign sound in her mouth. “Rusalka? What is that?”
“It is the spirit of a murdered girl bound forever to water.”
“How could that be?” Jordan’s finger traced the chink of mortar running between th
e weeping stones. “If she was a murdered Witch … would she not be tied to a soul stone? Not water?”
Caleb grew quiet a moment. “Why not both? I still feel her. Part of her remains there. I am certain. She was sweet. Just a scrap of humanity. Taken too soon from this world. Not I. For me the end comes not soon enough.”
The Warden slammed Jordan’s door open and grabbed the chain hanging between her leather shackles. At the top of the Eastern Tower, Jordan next saw the child who had called her an abomination as the Maker prepared to do the less than gentle parts of his job. The child carried a floppy-eared toy that seemed somehow less substantial than previous. The little girl looked at her with wide eyes and handed the Maker a bowl of some food and piece of bread so fresh and warm Jordan could smell it from where she stood with the Warden, eyeing the boards, the straps running across them, and the table that held a roll of dark-colored cloth.
Her mouth watered the tiniest bit but her stomach grumbled so loudly in response to the scent and sight of freshly baked bread that the Maker even turned to look at her.
“The pretty lady is hungry,” Meg said, tugging gently at her father’s shirt. “Do you have any to spare her?”
He looked at her as if it was the oddest thing anyone had ever suggested to him. “What a very sweet girl you are, Meggie. But you must remember what she is. Yes, she looks like a pretty lady, but … she is a powerful monster under that smooth skin of hers. An abomination,” he reminded. “Now run along.”
“Yes, Papá,” she agreed. “I think I will visit Maude first for a drink. I am parched.”
“Go then, little dove,” Bran said. “Have a care on the stairs—I will meet you in the library in less than an hour.”
She nodded and he helped her through the door and watched as she started her descent before he closed the door once more.
“She is an interesting child, do you not agree?” he asked Jordan as he approached her with the bread and bowl. “If I follow her suggestion, give you this piece of bread, could we dispense with the unpleasantness and shoot straight to you calling up a storm?” He picked up the bread and held it before her face. “It is fresh. And warm…”
“I cannot. I am no Witch,” Jordan protested. Her wounded finger flinched, curling toward her palm in response to his nearness.
“Not even for a nice piece of bread? Can you smell it over the stink of the Tanks and your magick?”
Her nostrils flared involuntarily. “Yes, I smell it,” she whispered, her eyes reflecting back the frantic hunger that threatened to crawl up from her stomach and out of her throat. “But I cannot call a storm. I have no magick.”
The Warden strapped her to the boards.
Bran shook his head. “I wish you would stop repeating such nonsense.” He set the bowl down on his table and unrolled the cloth that held all the instruments of his particular trade. He picked up a scalpel and bit into the bread. “Oh. It is delicious,” he said around a bite of the stuff. “And so, so very soft…” He crossed to her side and looked her straight in the eyes as he said, “Just like a lady’s flesh.”
And then he made her scream.
Philadelphia
All the way up the Hill Marion left signs of his passing. Small patches of wilting grass marked his every footstep and the air became unseasonably cool wherever he passed. His breath came out in frosty puffs as he pushed on to the Council’s chambers and then, standing before the doors, he hesitated.
Yes, he could clear Chloe’s name. Yes, he could prove her innocence, make an ass of the Council Court and … and name himself as witness. Put himself at the scene of the supposed crime, thereby admitting his true identity.
Showing that he was the son that was taken for witchery, the one Witch that had escaped Holgate.
If they tortured Witches to Make them, what might they do to a Witch who had escaped and wreaked wintry havoc? His fingers flexed at his sides. They had stolen him from the family their laws had ruined. He should have died that night beside his parents and his little brother but instead the Council and their Weather Workers had taken and tortured him. Made a monster of him. What more could they do to him that they hadn’t done already?
What could they still do to hurt him? What was left for them to take that they hadn’t already ruined? He should have died that night five years ago. Why had destiny spared him then? If the Council discovered him now, killed him now, at least he’d die knowing he saved one person who was important to him. And, if God was just (if there was a God), perhaps he’d be reunited in Heaven with his family. He decided he had nothing left to lose and the rescue of Chloe—even if it meant a much sooner heavenly reunion with his parents and little brother—was quite the gain.
He squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and climbed the last set of stairs into the Council’s main hall. Automatons shifted along the walls, watching him as he moved toward a central desk and a reassuringly human watchman. “I am here to speak to the Council Court and present them with new evidence.”
The watchman looked up at him. “The Council is adjourned for the day to oversee the administration of justice.”
Marion’s brow creased. “But I have new evidence that can clear the accused named in the case of Chloe Erendell.”
“Oh.” The watchman’s mouth dropped open and he looked over his shoulder to the broad expanse of doors and large windows overseeing the Council’s broad courtyard.
And that was when Marion saw them—a crush of bodies all turned to watch something ahead of them. “No,” he whispered, realizing. “No. The paper says Wednesday hence…”
“Yes,” the watchman yelled at his back as he sprinted across the room’s length, “they confused the dates—the paper was very apologetic—we usually have more spectators for a noon hanging—quite the event…”
Marion was at the doors and shoving through them, pushing past people when he could not slide between them and shouting—always shouting, “Stop! Stop!”
But the crowd was cheering and laughing and there was no more place for him to run and so he made his way to the one tree in the courtyard and shimmied up its trunk just high enough to see the gallows and the hooded figure in a simple shift who stood there, noose about her neck, dark hands and feet bare, her head bowed as she gave her final confession. There stood his nanny, his last connection to a more innocent time, and he knew then just what he still had to lose.
He screamed her name, cried out her innocence again and again, and snow billowed out from his mouth but was whisked away with his words by the breeze and evaporated in the day’s heat and the crowd’s fierce haze of human musk.
The floor beneath Chloe’s feet dropped away and she fell toward the ground—only stopped by the sudden tightening of the rope round her neck. Her feet kicked out a moment and Marion gasped, ramming his knuckles into his mouth to keep from crying out to her—or anyone again.
Then she was still.
And he was all alone in the world.
This time for certain and for good.
The cold seeped out of him, cruel and deadly, burrowing into the tree that held him in the same insidious way the cold clutched his heart, so that, after the crowd drifted apart and Marion finally climbed down from its branches, only then did the tree’s leaves begin to curl and blacken along the edges. Only then did the cold begin to kill it from the inside out—the same way the cold was killing its young master.
Chapter Sixteen
Everybody talks about the weather,
but nobody does anything about it.
—MARK TWAIN
Holgate
That night Meggie again awoke to soaked sheets, a wet gown, and a perplexed Maude. Maude had decided to sleep on the floor at her side, as cramped and uncomfortable as it was, although Meggie had innocently suggested Maude share her papá’s bed as it was so big and he was quite alone in it every night. “And a spot of warmth and kindness never hurt a soul, my mother used to say,” Meggie said loudly enough that Bran couldn’t help but hear it.
> “A spot of kindness, yes?” Maude said with a smile. “Such things do quite frequently help situations one might think beyond help…” She sighed. “Quite alone in it every night, is he?” Maude had asked.
“Most certainly so,” Meggie quipped. “And I think I know why,” she said with a solemn nod.
“Oh you do, do you?” Maude asked, tucking her in after one last story. It was harder than ever to get her to go to sleep now that every night she had a friend staying over.
“Yes. It is the snoring,” Meggie said sagely. “It is a dreadful racket,” she disdained. “It sounds like an elephant trying to blow its nose!”
“I heard that,” Bran called from the other room, sending both the girls into a wild fit of giggles.
“A rabid elephant blowing his nose,” Meggie squeaked defiantly.
“Oh, is that so?” he bellowed, racing toward them, a grin on his face. He jumped onto the bed and bounced Meggie so hard she was lifted into the air and gave a little scream. But she dissolved into laughter again when she landed and snuggled back down into her pillow, dragging the covers up around her ears to better ignore her father’s silliness.
A tickle battle then erupted between the two and Bran attacked, shouting, “Come here, you! You’re a soft little thing, aren’t you?”
Meggie squealed between giggles, “A lady should be soft!”
Bran froze on the bed, arms outstretched, body stiff but rocking to the swaying of the mattress beneath his feet. The smile fell from his lips and shadows hardened his expression. He swallowed hard. Something in his chest tightened and he turned to look past the girls. To the door.
But Meggie pounced on him, knocking him onto her bed and knocking whatever dark thought had been in his head right out with her relentless joy. Maude just sat on the floor beside the bed, watching and marveling at how free Bran was now with the child—how very different—how young he seemed when it was just the three of them together.