Jonathan was in the far corner perusing dusty bottles when Rowen found him.
“I think this is the best choice tonight,” Jonathan said, holding a bottle out for Rowen’s inspection.
Rowen shrugged. “Anything will do.”
“Excellent well. I’ll fetch us some water.”
“Ha.” The single syllable fell from Rowen’s lips, clearly illustrating his lack of humor at the thought. “Anything but water.”
“That is what I feared, young sir,” Jonathan muttered, uncorking the bottle with a move that came from good training as a potential sommelier, and a long year of watching Rowen drink in order to make sure Rowen never drank too much.
“Stop with the young sir, Jonathan. We are friends and no one is here to judge, are they?”
“No,” Jonathan agreed. “There is certainly no one who will disturb us here and certainly not at this hour. I made quite certain your father’s nightcap was delivered in advance. The family is well tended.” Slowly he poured the drink.
Alcohol was common in the city. Although ale was the norm, many enjoyed wine as well. The other choices were coffee and tea, but the effects of Rowen having too much of either sometimes worried Jonathan more. Rowen on ale was a joking troublemaker, Rowen on wine was calm and sloppy. Rowen on coffee was Rowen as a jittery mess, and tea was not much different. And gathering what he had of Rowen’s earlier situation, Jonathan made the very conscious decision that tonight Rowen would be calm and sloppy.
Rowen raised his glass to Jonathan in salute. “You tend to us quite well, friend.” Without breathing, he downed the first glass and presented it for a refill.
Jonathan poured a refill and let Rowen talk. And Jonathan poured him another and let him worry and wonder aloud about Jordan’s situation—few other than Weather Workers knew what truly became of Weather Witches. By the time they had finished their second bottle (with Jonathan only having half of a single glass) Rowen was a blithering idiot. But he was a calm blithering idiot.
Jonathan helped him up from where he’d slid down against one of the household’s untapped casks, brushed him off, and looped his arm over Jonathan’s own shoulders to help him back the way he’d come, and then to his chambers. Jonathan opened the door, letting Rowen stumble to the bed where he pulled off his friend and master’s boots, hauled the latter third of him onto the bed to better match the arrangement of the already unconscious upper two-thirds, and left him there, pulling the door shut so that he might sleep it off.
It was more difficult sneaking back into the Astraea estate than sneaking out, Chloe realized, standing face-to-face with Lionel and a few additional members of the household staff.
Decidedly larger members.
“What are you doing out unescorted on an evening filled with so much family tragedy?” He cast a wicked shadow on the wall behind him, lit only by the candle he held between them.
“There are things that must yet be done that I did not wish to bother you with,” Chloe admitted, wringing her hands.
“I fear I see guilt in your actions.”
“No. I am guilty of nothing but perhaps caring too much.”
“I spoke to the kitcheneers about your previous household.”
Chloe stiffened.
“I have put the bits together. I now know the truth.”
“No one knows the truth of that,” she said, her voice falling away to nothing before she recovered. “This present darkness”—she waved at the thick black pooling around them—“does not compare.”
“I’d imagine not. At least not yet. And it is my intention to keep it that way. You will not do to the Astraeas what you did to the Kruses.”
Her jaw dropped at the accusation. “I did nothing to the Kruses!”
“Both parents and the remaining boy dead … only hours after the eldest was taken in for witchery.” He stepped forward. “That’s why you always wear your hair in such a peculiar fashion—with a cloth binding some of it back—to hide what he did to you in retaliation.” He tore the bandana off her head then, sweeping her hair back to reveal the place where a whole ear should have been and showing the stump left after a single sword slice had cut much of it away.
“There is the only proof I need,” he muttered, his tone mixing disappointment with disgust. He let her hair drop back down. “Take her.”
Rough hands clasped her arms and she panicked at their grip in the darkness, thrashing and flailing her arms.
One thought persisted as she swore her innocence time and again—she had to retrieve Lady Astraea’s soul—what good was reanimation if one was doomed to wander soulless? “No!” she screamed, fighting her captors. She pulled, she pushed, she stomped her feet on theirs until they cursed and tried to hold her while dancing away.
“Enough of this,” Lionel ordered. She pleaded with her eyes when her voice clawed her throat.
He shook his head, his mouth downturned, and he brought the heavy brass candlestick down on her head and she flopped, limp, into the men’s arms.
En Route to Holgate
The world outside Jordan’s window whipped past in a series of darkening blurs, drops of water rolling across the glass as air whistled around the carriage and they sped beyond the boundaries of the city’s streets. And beyond the city’s walls.
Without stormlight the only light came from the moon and a sprinkling of stars high above. No stormlights meant no houses, and no houses meant they were beyond civilization and, more importantly, it meant Jordan was alone with her captors. Hoping to spot some sort of home or farm she wiggled as close to the window as she could without being anywhere near the Warden seated between her and it. It was not easy to do.
The carriage’s clattering wheels threw water up in occasional arcing sprays, surprising those seated inside as much as the four Wraiths clinging to the carriage’s corners. Stalwart against both the wind and weather they relished, tails of their long coats snapping against the windows like specters knocking for entrance with barely existent fists, the Wraiths rode.
Jordan curled in on herself, her eyes wide, stomach troubled as she peered out the window. Never had she been so far from home or so out of sorts. Never had she wondered so fiercely what everyone in her household was doing.
Without her.
She screamed, jumping back when the veiled face of a Wraith appeared at the window, peering inside and rapping on the glass. It growled something to the men inside, long gloved fingers moving in a distinct pattern mimicked by the watching Wardens, and turned away, pointing.
The wind tore at the Wraith, its image little more than the silhouette of a filled frock coat and top hat until the wind blew its veil back and Jordan screamed anew. A distended head faced her through the glass, features dented and wrinkled. Wisps of patchy white hair flew wild over ridges above strangely rounded eyes set on either side of a nose with a bridge that was too narrow and a base too flat …
It grinned, teeth sharp and thin as a cat’s fangs peeking out from between nearly nonexistent lips. For a moment it struggled with the hat and veil, but giving up it rolled back up and out of her sight, leaving Jordan a sobbing mess.
“There, there,” the Tester said, eyebrows aloft as he examined his hands with great interest. “That particular deformity only happens to some magickers. Who knows what might happen to you?”