So with every move, he made his body tell a story of having something that surely a horse would want.
Ransom looked up, still working grass around the bit of his bridle to chew it. He tilted his head and ambled over to investigate and as his velvet-soft nose brushed Rowen’s empty palm, Rowen slid his other hand along the stallion’s cheek and wrapped his fingers around the bridle’s leather straps.
Ransom blew out a hot puff of air and shook his head to rattle his dragging reins but conceded to his capture. Rowen worked his way around his steed then, never fully releasing him and carefully tightening everything from small buckle to girth strap. “I promise a proper stall tonight,” he said, “but now we have a mission to complete and a lady to rescue. Surely you can broach no argument in that regard.” He climbed into the saddle and encouraged Ransom into an easy walk, glancing over his shoulder from time to time at Silver.
Silver stayed with them, only a few lengths behind and tearing at grass as he went.
In the saddle Rowen nodded in time to Ransom’s pace and eyed the position of the sun. He nudged Ransom and they moved into a trot, Silver still keeping pace.
Also En Route to Holgate
Marion’s travel, hidden in an oversized carriage, even hidden among the baggage, was far faster and on a far straighter route of main roads than the winding path to Holgate that Rowen’s solitary journey had required of him. Marion tried to get comfortable, pinned as he was between two trunks and a fabric bag that smelled of cat urine. It was no easy task and finally he gave up on that least important bit of his mission, abandoning comfort for the assurance of not being discovered.
So he bounced along, cramped but invigorated by the fact that he was moving ever faster toward completing the cycle of his destiny. That if he did this one thing, if he ended things where they had truly begun, perhaps he—and others like him—might then be free of the tyranny of their enslavement as Weather Witches. And perhaps no more children would be snatched from their parents and no more lives would be ruined for the sake of the minority’s luxury and their fear.
Holgate
Shortly after breakfast Bran and Meggie met Maude outside the kitchens. She was tidying her hair as best she could and taking off the broad apron that protected most of her outfit from the normal hazards of cooking large quantities of food in a space shared with a dozen other people. She folded the apron and set it on a stack with others to be laundered. “You should not be down here,” she said to Bran. “It is not a proper place for a Maker or a wee lady—now that she has better.”
“You stay on your side and I stay on mine?” Bran asked.
His dimples were obvious and Maude grinned a response.
“Let us go out into the town,” Maude suggested. “The weather—”
“Will be perfection for viewing an airship docking,” Bran assured. “I have seen to it.”
They left the interior of Holgate’s mightiest structure and blinked against the brightness of the sun.
“Gorgeous,” Maude said.
High above them and to their west an airship was in view, its back a long egg-shaped balloon with long frame and fabric wings on either side and a rudder like a fish’s tail. Its belly was a large enclosed basket woven out of glass and metal.
“There,” Bran said, leaning over to be closer to Meg’s perspective. “The basket holds all the cargo and most of the people,” he explained. “The big balloon above it helps to keep it floating in the sky when the Conductor can no longer do it.”
“Why would a Conductor not…”
Bran’s expression darkened. “Sometimes they simply cannot. Or, rarely, they will not. But that almost never happens.”
Meg nodded, watching the lumbering beast of a balloon slowly drift toward the tower.
People stood silhouetted at the balcony’s edge, cables tied about their bodies and linked to the side of the building. In their hands they held cables of another sort, just as heavy-looking and also linked to the tower’s fat wall, but at multiple spots. Those on the balcony leaned forward as others leaned out of the balloon’s basket and tossed tethers toward the balcony. They were caught and looped around yet another tether point and the airship slowly turned so that its snout faced them and it sidled up to the balcony.
The waiting people holding the cables launched themselves at the massive ship, reaching up and out to grab the rope net holding the balloon and basket more fully together. They climbed as quick as monkeys, hauling themselves ever higher on the ship until they clamped their cables to the netting’s top and leaped the impossible distance back down onto the balcony.
Meg clapped her hands together and did a little dance. “Oh, Papá, that was amazing.”
He grabbed one of her hands and, swinging her arm with his, started them walking down the row of shops.
Maude looked at him suspiciously. “Don’t you have work to do on the tower top?”
“I changed my schedule. That can all wait.”
She rounded on him. “I do not recall you ever deviating from your schedule before.”
His eyes rolled heavenward as he thought about it. “That would be because I never have. But it is a beautiful day.”
“And?”
“And I would like to at least spend the morning with two of the loveliest women in Holgate.”
“And?”
“And,” he said, and sighed, shaking his head at her, “I need a little time away to think upon a particular situation. An issue that may actually be an anomaly of sorts.”
Meggie peered up at him and tested out the word herself, “A-mom-molly?”
He tapped her nose. “Anomaly. It means something very much out of the ordinary.”
Maude nodded. “And this anomaly may be a very bad thing?”
“Bad enough. But let’s not dwell on that now,” he said. “Let us search out some fun—perhaps purchase a fresh croissant, some tea, and jam and sit at the café…”
Maude smiled, and as she grabbed Meggie’s other hand they started down the cobblestone roadway, swinging her between them so she squealed as her feet left the ground.
The hawk was back and Jordan watched as it crept across the broad sill of her barred window, its tail scraping the stone and then thudding softly against each bar as it walked the length of the ledge. Jordan pulled herself to her feet and quietly stalked the distance to the window. She had never wanted to touch a hawk so badly. Her father had a few hunting hawks at the estate (another reason it bore the nickname “the Aerie”), but she had never bothered with them. They ate dead chicks and brought down bunnies and smaller birds with cold eyes, sharp beaks, and cruel talons. They were predators and Jordan more frequently identified with prey.
But this one was quiet and curious, fascinated by the world below Jordan’s window, and likewise she was fascinated by the way it stalked from so high above. She was tantalizingly close to it when a link of her chain changed positions and clanked—and the bird shot into the air with a cry and a popping out of its wings that was so fast a feather came free and fell into Jordan’s Tank, floating lazily back and forth until it settled on the straw. Reaching out to retrieve it, she saw something sparkle under the straw. She picked up the quill, tapping its end against her fingertip, before she slowly slid the straw away from the drain grate centered in a depression in her floor. Looking into its iron slits, she again caught the reflection of something inside.
She set the quill down and took off her pin again. With a grunt, she dug the pin’s back all around the drain, slowly freeing the thing from the rust and grime cementing it in place. It screeched as she removed it, but the prize inside was worth the worry.