Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 2 of 24

The moaning circled Celeste's tree and pressed against the walls. Cold seeped through the wood. The gears in her walls slowed and groaned. Frost crawled up the totem in her hands. The spirits she had called wanted the bloom inside it, and they were close enough now to take it. She needed a ward, and she needed it before the walls gave way. Her books offered nothing strong enough. She knew only one place that sold what she needed. Celeste wrapped the totem in oilcloth and pushed out into the fog. Her cane sank in the mud. She followed the black water to the market barge, its lanterns swinging under a striped canopy. Stalls crowded the deck. Behind a curtain sold the things no honest trader would name aloud. She had bought from that back stall before. A warding charm strong enough to hold the dead cost more coin than she carried. A man blocked the ramp. He wore a rice hat and a red robe stitched with gold. Captain Zhou Ming steered cargo down this river, and he had refused her passage twice before, when the Guild watched him too closely. He looked at the bundle under her arm. "You brought that here," he said. "The whole barge feels cold." "I need a ward," Celeste said. "I can't pay in coin." Zhou Ming did not move. "Then you can't buy one." Behind her, the fog thickened. A lantern shattered. Vendors grabbed their stalls as a wind with no source tore through the canopy. The spirits had followed her across the water. "They came for this," Celeste said. She unwrapped the totem. Its grooves glowed faint blue. "If it breaks here, it breaks over your barge." Zhou Ming watched a crate slide across the frosted deck. He made his choice fast. "The stall. Go." He pulled the curtain aside himself. Inside, an old woman pressed a bundle of bone and iron thread into Celeste's hands. Not coin, the woman said, but a debt. Celeste agreed. She smeared blood from her thumb across the charm and hung it on the totem's neck. The ward caught. A ring of pale light spread from the bone. The cold snapped back. The wind died. The moaning dropped to a low hum, no longer clawing, only waiting. The spirits still filled the fog, but they could not touch the bloom now. Celeste's arms shook. The ward held them off, but it did not bind them. It only bought time. Zhou Ming stood at the ramp, watching the frost melt off his deck. "Take it away from my river," he said. "And whatever you owe that stall, pay it before the locks close." Celeste tightened the oilcloth. The charm would fade. She still had to learn to command what she had called, or the next surge would tear through wood and bone alike.