Chapter 10
The Smith mansion was a flat-faced, eyeless stone fortress.
Gray, rectangular, unmoving, and unchanging.
The wind rarely came to the Smith home. There was nothing interesting about a flat, four-sided building with no spires to slide down, no gutters to bang or whistle through, and no marble bas-reliefs to weave over and stroke.
The Bard mansion was fun, with its dramatically dizzying heights.
The Clark home had catacombs and the nearby church bells and the sycamore ghost tree.
The Ward mansion on Fifth Avenue had—once had—the boy with his sunlit room, the dog-eared paperbacks the wind loved to whir the pages of, and a cup of strongly scented black tea never quite finished.
Even Hell Gate was fun, with its crowded corridors and the grotesques on the roof that the wind poked and prodded laughingly.
But the Smith mansion? There was nothing interesting about a flat, unadorned building.
There was nothing in nature like it. Even mountain cliffsides had crags and caverns and cracks for the wind to zip through.
But this mansion was only a flat, unadorned thing.
It was like the wolflike one: single-minded and stoic.
Hard and unyielding. He’d been that way even in death.
The wind had never understood the Smiths, it hadn’t understood the wolflike one, and it understood the solange-eyed one even less.
For the length of southern Manhattan, across the river, and up the edge of Queens, the wind had blustered and blown at the man, urging him away from the Smiths and their hard, unyielding home.
Once, it gusted so hard it threw the hat off a passing man and kicked it down the sidewalk.
It tossed newspaper and plastic bags in the air and blew them in a whirlwind, but the man wouldn’t listen.
“I know you’re worried,” the man said in his soothing, melodic voice, “but I have to do this.”
Worried? The wind didn’t worry. It never worried. It shoved the man, and he chuckled.
Across the street, the gray stone mansion was bathed half in shadow and half in sunlight. The sun was high in the sky, leaking wavy heat over the city in suffocating waves. The wind blew over the man, brushing aside the sweat on his brow.
Usually, when the sun hit stone, it dazzled, reflecting specks of quartz and clusters of pyrite.
But the gray stone stayed dull and lifeless.
The wind shivered, remembering the bitter smoke taste of the solange-eyed one.
Cruelty had twisted him. The wind didn’t want the man to step inside that flat, coffin-shaped home.
It moaned.
The man sighed. “You’re right. Perhaps they will try to kill me.
All the same, they’ve invited me to discuss a truce.
I have to speak with Wolfgang’s son. I have to tell him about Viola.
I’ve seen a million ways she dies, and only one way she survives.
What? You didn’t think there was even one way?
You have no faith in me.” The man laughed as the wind shoved him again, but then he sobered.
“Do you remember the glade? I went back last night. It was the same.”
Was he surprised? Of course it was the same. Deep, forested places didn’t change as quickly as humans expected them to.
“I expect I’ll be okay,” he said, looking both ways and waiting for a taxi to pass.
He started across the wide, shadowed street, weaving between slow-moving cars.
The wind skipped after him, dodging bumpers and spinning past wheels.
“I’ve survived enough traps to know how to handle myself.
Besides, they’re puppies compared to Wolf, and I’m the Ward. What can they do?”
The wind huffed. He hadn’t seen the battle-hardened brother shove the boy off the cliff. He hadn’t seen the twisted cruelty of the solange-eyed one.
The wind knew what they could do. It understood that the brighter a man’s light, the darker his shadow. If his branches reached to heaven, then his roots reached to hell.
But the man, unlike the boy, never listened to the wind. Instead, the man had been ordering the wind about ever since he was a child. The wind did not take orders. If it happened to do what the man wanted, it was merely a coincidence.
The only thing the wind did on request was keep a secret. The wind kept all the man’s secrets.
Don’t go inside.
The man stood at the foreboding entry and craned his neck to look up the flat stone front.
“It will be fine. But if not . . .” He turned and stared at the jagged-toothed leaves of the silver linden.
The wind rustled the leaves, making them shake and tremble.
“If not . . . Wolf’s waiting for me. He’ll be there to greet me.
Wolf always keeps his promises, so I know he’ll find me.
So . . .”—the man cleared his throat—“if, for some reason, I don’t come out, please remind Uliea to eat.
She often gets lost in her head and forgets.
Tell her, if she’s looking for the shortbread, she mistakenly put it in the dishwasher, and her blue dress is at the dry cleaners.
And . . .”—he turned from the leaves, and the wind inched closer—“tell Jacob . . . if something happens, tell Jacob to take care of his mother and his sister. Tell him he knows what to do.”
The wind stilled.
It lost all its air and fell like a giant rock to the ground. It lay on the sidewalk, stunned. Then it swirled and spun in a wild circle.
The boy?
The boy?
It picked up litter and dirt and flung them about.
The man smiled. “What? You thought my son was dead? No, I haven’t seen him. How do I know he’s alive? Do you really think a secondborn Smith could kill my son? You have no faith. He’s out there somewhere. You just have to find him.”
But . . .
The wind shrieked as the man knocked on the Smiths’ door. It gusted, asking a hundred questions, all ending in, Where? But the man didn’t answer. He only smiled at the wind’s gusting.
The door was flung wide, and the battle-hardened brother loomed over the man. “Hello,” he said, his scent steel-hard. “Come in.”
The man stepped inside, and the battle-hardened one slammed the door. The wind ran into it and shuddered at the vibration. Rude. Rude, battle-hardened, cliff-tossing, steel-like Smith.
It slipped inside through the crack under the door and raced after the man and the steel-hardened one.
“. . . on the roof,” the battle-hardened brother said. “He’s eager to discuss a truce.”
“As am I,” the man said, his eyes moving quickly.
They climbed the stairs, moving at a rapid pace. They were already many winding flights up and nearing the door to the rooftop. The wind was dizzy, chasing them spiraling flight after spiraling flight.
The man and the battle-hardened one were speaking in low voices, but it was hard to concentrate with the repetition of the boy, the boy drumming through its spirit.
Oh, the boy!
Was the man right? Was the boy still alive?
This Smith hadn’t killed him?
The wind sang happily as the battle-hardened one opened the door to the rooftop.
The wind rushed out before the man and slid over an iron railing, splashing into a golden bath of sunshine.
It wrapped itself in the glittering cobwebs of sunlight and bounded free to land on the quick kiss of a butterfly’s wing. The world was a joyful, wondrous place.
A hawk’s shadow passed overhead, its keer a wildly free, inviting sound. The wind could grasp its outstretched wings and glide through the city. It could find the boy!
The wind spun toward the man, eager to tell him its plan.
Only, the man wasn’t where the wind thought he would be.
It shrieked and swirled about.
The solange-eyed one stood at the stony edge of the rooftop. He was dressed in wrath, his expression a thundercloud. He smelled of Furtig, smoke, and fire. The wind screamed.
“Welcome,” the solange-eyed one said, his voice full of thunder. “Thank you for coming. I believe we have a lot to discuss.”
The man had stepped too close to the solange-eyed one. He’d moved too quickly for the wind to warn him.
“Thank you for the invitation. But I didn’t come for a truce. I came to warn you about my dau—”
The wind screamed. It shoved at the battle-hardened brother. But punching the battle-hardened man was just like ramming into the flat-faced fortress. What could the wind do against a solid stone wall?
The man turned, lifting his hand, a rope of illusion ready. But the fire sword was already made.
The man was surprised. Why? Hadn’t the wind warned him? Hadn’t he acknowledged it was a trap?
The surprise was what killed him.
The wind shoved at the fire sword, but the cold blue fire only sliced through it. It couldn’t slow the vengeful arch.
It shrieked as the sword cut through the man’s neck. It pushed at the gaping wound and tried to hold the man up. But what could the wind do? It had no hands to stop the leak of blood from a body. It had no form to save a human from violent death.
The wind caught the man—tried to rock him gently as he fell.
He was thinking of his friend, the wolflike, steel-sharp Smith.
As he took his last wind-like breath, the man’s eyes filled with the look he had whenever he thought of all the days they’d had together.
He’d strung them together in a book in his mind and took them out and thumbed through them whenever he felt lonely.
He’d once told the wolflike one he loved him better than he loved anyone else in the world.
He’d loved him his whole life. The wind, knowing love, recognized the deep well of it in the man’s eyes.
Then the man’s heart shuddered.
His spirit fled his body as quickly as a bird taking flight after the startled violence of a gunshot. The wind screamed as the man’s shell fell to the concrete ground.
The man was gone. He was a cloud, brushed out of the sky, leaving an empty expanse.
The man was gone. The wolflike one was gone. The fawn-like girl was gone. The wind was the only one left with all their secrets.
By now, the man was in death’s tunnel, his spirit flying toward the wolflike one. Then, together, they would go.
The wind roared. It howled and shoved at the battle-hardened brother. It tried to rip the fire sword from his hands.
The brother stared grimly at the man. “By your heart’s blood, my father is avenged.”
“Darin—”
“It’s done,” the battle-hardened brother said. “The son is dead. The father is dead. The wife is lost in her own mind. Our father is avenged.”
He shoved past the solange-eyed one and lifted the man’s shell. The wind pushed at him. What did he want? What was he doing?
The battle-hardened one twisted his hand and conjured a flying machine. He hid it in illusion and closed its grip around the man. Then he pushed it into the air, blowing it westward, toward the river.
The two Smiths stood on the roof like two soldiers atop the castle ramparts. They stared after the wind as it rushed next to the flying machine. It was a whirring helicopter with a clawed grip, holding the man aloft.
The wind spun with the blades, frantically shoving and rocking the machine.
The man.
The man.
The boy?
The—
The machine stopped and hovered outside an old stone mansion in southern Manhattan. There was a churchyard nearby, a centuries-old cemetery, and a ghost tree. There were parchment scented catacombs beneath it and conjurers waiting for the man’s answer.
The machine’s shadow fell over the old musty glass solarium at the southwest corner of the mansion.
The claws opened. The wind screamed as the man’s body tumbled through the sky and smashed through the domed glass.
It rained in shards, driving into the solarium in a violent glass rainstorm.
The wind slammed to the ground, a bullet, a knife, a weapon, alongside the man.
It lay moaning on the checkered tile floor, crumpled against the man’s body. The last of his blood leaked in a slow wave across the cold floor.
The Clarks would find the man. The wind stirred the glass shards and sifted through the tinkling, blood-soaked song. The Clarks would find the man.
However, the wind would find the boy.