Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 14 of 24

The reservoir solved one problem and revealed another. Celeste could hold a hundred spirits now. But the dead she needed were not close. They lingered in the far reaches of Everblack—drowned men in the swamp lake, bones under old wrecks, ghosts pinned to graves miles across the fog. Her totem pulled only what came near. She had no way to reach the rest before the fleet arrived. She stood in her cottage, deep inside the living bayou tree, and stared at the reservoir. Gears turned slow on the walls. Time was turning faster. She needed a hand that could go where she could not. Celeste crossed to the workbench and lifted a cloth. Under it sat her mechanical crow. Brass plates lined its dark wings. Tiny gears clicked in its neck. One glass eye glowed green. She had built it years ago and tested it once with borrowed spirits. They had steered it too hard and nearly snapped its wings. She had not trusted it since. Now she had no choice. Celeste set the crow beside the totem. She threaded a strand of ghost-silver wire from the totem's core into the crow's chest. The green eye brightened. She spoke low. "You carry my reach. You do not fly free." She fed three spirits from the reservoir into the wire, not the crow's whole body—only its wings and eye. The bird jerked. Its beak snapped once. Then it settled. Celeste raised two fingers. The crow lifted from the bench, hovered, and turned toward the window. It obeyed. The finesse she'd added to the totem held the spirits steady inside it. She sent it out through the round window into the fog. Through the ghost-silver she felt what it felt. She saw the swamp lake below, gray and still. She guided the crow down to a sunken wreck. Cold pressure rose from the water—dead men, bound to the hull for decades. Celeste reached through the crow and the totem together. The reservoir drank them in, one after another, patient and full. No strain. No overload. All day the crow flew Everblack's far reaches. It found graves in the marsh. It found bones under fallen trees. Each time, Celeste pulled the spirits home into the brass drum. By dusk the reservoir hummed heavy and cold. She had gathered more dead in one day than in the past month. The crow returned and landed on the bench. Its wings folded. The green eye dimmed as she drew the spirits back out of it. Celeste set her hand on the warm brass drum. It was nearly full. She had solved the distance. She had reached the scattered dead at last. But a full reservoir was a rich prize. If the fleet took her cottage, they would not just take a totem now. They would take an army of the dead, ready to be bound. The race had changed. She had to finish before they came.