“You may take the Witch away.”
And although she had walked proudly to her Reckoning, Jordan of House Astraea, Fifth of the Nine, had to be dragged most of the way back to her Tank.
The moment they dumped her inside and slammed her door shut, she plunged her bleeding fingertip into her mouth. Tears ran down her face and filled her mouth so that around her white and perfect teeth the tastes of saltwater and blood mingled.
Such a seemingly small pain, and yet it was as if something within her had died.
Philadelphia
The stormcells glittered along Lady Astraea’s neckline, like three dozen stars strung together. Laura swallowed hard, watching the way her ladyship reached a trembling hand toward the fine collar of crystals. “Why do I not remember this necklace?” Lady Astraea asked the servant girl, her eyes catching on her reflection. “And these bracelets … truly, is one on each wrist a necessity? It seems quite garish. Especially over long gloves…” She reached for the clasp of one to undo it, but Laura’s hand was on her own, the girl’s voice thin but insistent.
“Milady, it is quite in keeping with the style in France. I do recall you mentioning having read so in one of the more popular journals before you ordered your own,” Laura assured. “I believe you said the style now is all a matter of balance of design. Which, I may only presume, is why even your shoes are thusly adorned.”
Lady Astraea raised her skirts modestly and stuck out the toe of one shoe for examination. “That seems quite wasteful. Who will ever see my shoes? I have not once danced a dance so immodest as to show off my feet and certainly never”—she blew out a little puff of air—“my ankles, for heaven’s sake.”
“Perhaps milady might yet find something about which to kick up her heels,” Laura suggested, carefully adjusting the smaller crystals threaded throughout her ladyship’s hair.
“I truly doubt I will have much of anything to celebrate now that my daughter is stolen and my good name is sullied.”
“They might yet make amends,” Laura whispered.
Lady Astraea snorted at the idea. “The Council? Make amends? You are so very young, dear, aren’t you?”
Laura blushed. “If by young you mean naïve … I suppose so, milady. But I have discovered much to assuage my naïveté in just these past few days. And much of it is far less than I ever wished to discover.”
“Life is full of disappointments,” Lady Astraea agreed, rubbing slowly at her gloved wrists. “But it is still life—still something we are expected to muddle through.”
Laura winked at her. “Why muddle through when you might dance through it instead?”
“Who has ever made a life for themselves by dancing through their existence? Oh.” She waved a hand at herself. “I must sit down. I do not feel quite … myself.”
Holgate
He pulled out his journal and let the pages flop open to the day’s date, the cover’s brass-tipped corners tapping against his desk as the book’s spine settled and flattened. The Tanks were nearly full again, even though there would be the inevitable shuffle from the Reckoning Tanks to the Making Tanks. Still, there was never anything quite like a full house …
Not far from his feet Meg played with the doll she called Somebunny.
Bran scoured the day’s pages, his finger skimming over his notes as he searched for the information he felt certain he had overlooked.
Received Today for Reckoning:
1 female…17…..Philadelphia….House Astraea….Jordan
2 males..5 and 18..German Towne..…House Merridale.…Patrick and Hussong
1 female……12..…Amity…..…House Jerard.………Sophia
1 male…23……New Baltimore…..House Ravendale…..Christian
7 males and females…4 through 9…Boston and Surrounding….Houses Martin, Arran, O’Connor, Sampson, Smith, Fenstermacher, and Andreia
His finger went back to the page’s top and he paused at one name in particular. Astraea. Why did that name seem so very familiar? He rose and stepped to one of the library’s many bookshelves, bumping his fingers across each spine as he read their titles aloud.
“Ah.” He stopped, pulled one out and opened it. The interior was lined with marbleized paper and the spine was trimmed in gilt design and lettering. “The Hill Families of Philadelphia.” He paged through it carefully until he found the Astraea entry. Walking back to his seat, he sat and propped his heels on the edge of his desk and leaned back, beginning to read.
The Astraea Family
The Astraeas trace a long and distinguished history of landholdings and titles back to the Old World and at the time of the Cleansing boarded a ship to the New World not due to political or religious reasons as many did but rather for the good of economic and territorial expansion. Having holdings in India where they own several hundred acres of tea plantations, and sugar cane plantations in the West Indies, the only thing the Astraeas lack is a suitable number of male heirs, the last generation yielding only Morgan Astraea, the only direct male family survivor of the Fever that swept the region. Losing his mother, his father, his elder brother, and one of his three sisters, Morgan became a risk-taker in business, and, at nineteen, swept up many entrepreneurial opportunities that the deaths of others left behind (expanding local holdings so they included two taverns, a clockmaker’s shop, a modiste’s shop, a haberdashery, two tea houses, and rumored holdings in the Below).
Morgan married Cynthia Wallsingham, the youngest daughter of Albertus Wallsingham (holder of the Wallsingham estates) after a three-year courtship, rumor being that he waited so long to see that her elder sisters bore children readily. Cynthia bore him three children nearly one on top of the other and all of them girls. The three, Morgana, Loretta, and Jordan, were taught the skills required of young ladies of standing including flirting and courting, embroidery and needlepoint, dance, music, and polite conversation. Morgana married up, Loretta married laterally, and Jordan, as of this edition, has yet to come of age.
The Astraea Holdings
Theirs is one of the oldest and grandest houses on the Hill. Three and three-quarters stories high and an architect’s nightmare, the house ambles across three acres, the original structure being built of fieldstone in a seemingly haphazard fashion, long flat stones jigsawed together in herringbone patterns creating a busy-ness of design that was at once striking and enough of an oddity that the last generation of Astraeas decided—rather than living in a stone spectacle—that section of the estate would house their growing multitude of servants. As a result, the servants are one of the best housed in all of Philadelphia, that too being a distinguishing oddity—and a costly one.
The interior of the house includes such luxuries as dumbwaiters, summoning bells, running water, decorative molding, wainscoting and chair rails, the first elevator in the New World, stormlighting—
At the mention of stormlighting Bran snorted. “Not anymore; one can be certain they have been reduced to using candles now.”
—proper paint, and wallpapers and boasts multiple water closets, a warming kitchen, true kitchen, parlor, sitting room, living room, den, dining room, and six spacious bedrooms.
They were rich. Powerful. They had a nice house and a grand estate. That was not enough for them to be of note in Bran’s head, and certainly not in his book. He tapped the open pages, thinking. When he was a boy he had spent time in Philadelphia. Might he have heard of the Astraeas then or met them? Something was definitely prodding him.