Shannon Delany - Thunderstruck

Light was fading from the sky when the first raindrops of a typical Philadelphia Tuesday evening began to dampen the tight salt-and-pepper curls covering John’s head. Looking up, he squinted against the summoned rain clouds and wiped his palm across his forehead. He had fallen behind with his outside work—there could be no arguing that.

Philadelphia, like many cities in the young United States, had a regulated schedule of rainy and dry weather and of light and dark, all thanks to the Weather Witch at the city’s Hub.

A few minutes remained before the drizzle became heavier and stuck his clothing to his skin, so he brushed his hands off and gathered the shovel and trowel from the narrow garden bed outside the Astraea estate’s imposing wall. Throughout the city people would be hurrying indoors, servants closing windows, the wealthy members of the Hill settling down for an evening meal.

The clatter and hiss of a carriage’s wheels skipping across damp cobblestones drew his gaze, and John watched a pair of pale horses pulling a fancy wagon down the street. The driver sat hunched, hat’s brim pulled low over his eyes. The stormlit streetlights reflected off the barrel of a gun in his lap, and John squinted against the growing dark and damp to better see. Two men rode clinging to the back corners of the carriage, heads above its roof, hats forced low to battle the rising breeze.

The carriage paused at the nearest intersection and John glimpsed the rack on the wagon’s back, usually where additional luggage was secured.

But not this evening.

This evening, rather than carpetbags or trunks, there was one long bundle tied tight with fabric and rope.

John recognized the thing by its shape and size, and when the carriage turned to take the road to the Below, he hurried inside the Astraea gates and into the nearest door. Inside the servants’ quarters, he propped the shovel and trowel against a wall, paying no mind to the dirt that dropped off their edges, making a mess of the floor.

A quick right turn down the hall and he passed through another door, stumbling out the building’s back and onto the darkening lawn. The grass slick beneath the worn soles of his shoes, still he made his way through the hedgemaze with practiced ease. He paused a moment at the edge of the Astraeas’ expansive yard, perched on the highest of many slate steps, a dizzying distance above the faint and flickering lights of the city’s most dangerous neighborhood—the Burn Quarter of the Below.

The only place the rival fire companies would rather see burn than saved—because even the most reprehensible gang members understood some people were irredeemable.

In the distance, John watched the carriage make its slow descent on the main road, weaving past neighborhoods of declining value on its way down the Hill.

His knees twinged in pain as he jogged down the long flight of steps, wiping his eyes and flicking water off his face as the storm overhead thickened. He splashed through deepening puddles, water soaking his feet and weighing down the hems of his pants legs.

The carriage turned. If they both continued on their paths they would meet in front of the alley, not far from the slate stairway’s bottom step. John hurried, emerging from the alley just behind the carriage.

The carriage turned abruptly, rattling down the road leading to the water’s edge, and John maintained his pace, eyes fixed on the object wrapped and still in the vehicle’s rack. The horses snorted, bucking in their traces. No horse willingly neared briny water—not with the threat of hungry Merrow lurking by any salty shore.

The driver pulled the horses to a stop and lashed the reins down before sliding from his seat, gun gripped tightly in his hands.

The rain grew heavier; the images before John blurred and swam. His back pinned flat to the wall of the nearest building, he stayed under the roof’s narrow overhang and in the thickest shadow possible, catching his breath and all the time thinking he should turn back.

Go home.

What was he but an old man with aching knees? What he’d done recently, helping Reanimate a wealthy woman who tried to take her own life, and now this—racing through the rain and shadows—such adventures belonged to younger men.

From the carriage’s corners the men jumped down, handily untying the bundle hitched to the rack. They hurled it to the ground and it landed with a sickening thud .

Long, light-colored hair fell free of the fabric.

John stiffened.

It was a woman’s body.

And she was handled with such indifference it was clear they had no interest in Reanimation.

But what they planned to do with her instead …

He had no idea.

One door of the carriage swung open and a tall man stepped out—a man frequently featured in the city paper.

Councilman Loftkin.

“Keep watch,” Loftkin told the driver.

The man shook his head, adjusting his hat’s brim so water poured off it. “Ain’t no one in his right mind coming outta his home on a Tuesday evening.”

Sheltered in the shadows, and wicking up water, John would not disagree.

“Grab the girl.” Loftkin pointed inside the carriage.

The men reached in and snared the last member of their party. There was cursing and shouting. It took both men, grunting, to drag a very-much-alive girl out and toss her to the rain-glossed ground.

John gasped, recognizing the girl, as well.

Cynda. She had worked in the Astraea household until young Lady Jordan was taken to be Made into a Weather Witch. With the family’s subsequent fall from power, most servants moved to other households—Cynda determined to make a fresh start.

As one man unrolled the fabric from the corpse, the other hefted Cynda, forcing her to look Loftkin in the eye.

Behind the trio, the first man pulled a knife and went to work on the dead girl’s body, contemplating his every cut as the driver stood silent nearby, watching.

Fighting the swimming sickness in his gut, John crept forward to better hear and see.

“You will stay the night here,” Loftkin explained to Cynda. “In the morning you will scream, and, panicked, tell people Merrow attacked you and your friend.”

Cynda shook her head miserably.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, Loftkin shook her until her head lolled. “You will .”

“They’ll never believe me …”

The man with the knife stood, a strip of bloody fabric in his fist. Striding over, he thrust it into Cynda’s shaking hand. “ Make them believe.”

Loftkin stooped, his face and Cynda’s nearly touching. “If you do not obey—do not succeed —I will arrange for you a meeting with the very same man your friend saw last. We shall see how it goes for you .”

The men climbed back aboard the carriage, the driver turning the horses once more toward the Hill. Left by the mutilated corpse of her friend, Cynda sobbed, and John looked on, thunderstruck.

To be awake is to be alive .

—Henry David Thoreau Aboard the Airship Artemesia

Borne high above the world of the Grounded population, a breeze whisked around the brightly painted and carved body of the great airship Artemesia . It danced across her figurehead’s wild feminine face, tracing along her shoulders and open arms to race up the broad balloon and painted wings at her back. Up the breeze scurried, cresting the great netted balloon to come Topside. Skimming the pockmarked surface of the deck, it teased around the hem of ship’s Conductor Jordan Astraea’s blue dress, leaving it fluttering in its wake. Jordan seemed not to notice, resting her head against the broad chest of the handsome blond sporting questionable-looking facial hair.