Spymaster

by Margaret Weis

  The energetic Amelia was often away from home, conducting interviews, doing investigative research, attending late-night sessions in the House of Nobles or rallies held by various groups in support of various causes devoted to the solving of various problems. As far as Kate could tell, the solutions involved mobs taking to the streets and breaking shop windows. When Amelia was home, she was busy writing more stories about Captain Kate and her Dragon Corsairs to satisfy the wants of an adoring public.

  Kate was soon bored. She traveled to the shipyard to check on the progress of the work on Victorie, only to find she wasn’t needed or wanted. The shipbuilders and crafters knew their business and Olaf was there to keep an eye on them.

  She had been hoping to renew her acquaintance with Captain Northrop, but according to Sir Henry, Alan was away with the Expeditionary Fleet sailing the Strait de Domcaido near Estara.

  “You should visit Barwich Manor,” Miss Amelia said one morning. “You have been talking about going for days now. You have the money to pay for the journey. And you promised you would find a home for Dalgren.”

  “I do need to go,” Kate said. “It occurred to me that an old abandoned limestone mine near the manor would make a good dragon dwelling.”

  “Then what is stopping you?” Miss Amelia asked, fixing Kate with a shrewd look over the top of her spectacles.

  “I’m stopping me,” Kate admitted. “And I don’t know why. I have spent so many years longing for my home, dreaming of the day I could go back and yet, now that I can, I feel a strange sort of dread come over me.”

  “Perfectly understandable, Captain,” Miss Amelia said. “You fear the ghosts.”

  “Ghosts!” Kate laughed. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Miss Amelia.”

  “They are quite fashionable these days. Every noble house has a lady in white who goes tromping about the parapets at night wringing her hands and terrifying the servants. But that wasn’t the sort of ghost I meant. I mean ghosts of your past.”

  “There are no ghosts of any kind in Barwich Manor,” said Kate. “My mother would have given them notice, sent them away like ill-mannered servants. But you are right. I have the time and I have the money and I do need to find someplace for Dalgren to live.”

  Kate traveled the hundred miles to Barwich by post chaise, reveling in the fact that she could afford the luxury. She could afford new clothes, too. Olaf had been scandalized at the thought of Kate going about Haever in her slops.

  “At least dress like a lady, if you can’t act like one,” he had told her.

  Kate still found women’s clothing restrictive and uncomfortable. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself, however, especially going back home. She wore a plain gray skirt, cut full so that she could walk without tripping, a demure jacket and blouse, and a hat with a heavy veil. Kate didn’t think anyone in the town would recognize her after all these years, but she didn’t want to take the chance. The last thing she wanted was to hear someone gush over how much she looked like her mother. Kate adamantly refused to wear petticoats, never mind what Mrs. Ridgeway had to say about them.

  Gazing out the window of the coach, she remembered the last time she had been on this road. She had been leaving her home, not going to it. Morgan had received word of his wife’s death and come back to take his little daughter to live with him on board his ship. As they rode together from Barwich to Haever on a horse he had hired for the journey, Morgan tried to cheer her by making up outlandish stories about the people they met on the road.

  “You see that man coming toward us, the one with the basket?” Morgan had whispered. “He has two heads. He wears one and carries the other in the basket. He puts on the second head at night and goes to the palace to visit the queen.”

  “Papa, those are just cabbages in the basket,” Kate had protested, laughing.

  “And how do you know your own head isn’t a cabbage?” Morgan had teased.

  Kate had worried about that for days. She smiled at the memory, then sighed.

  The town of Barwich had grown in the last twenty years. A small company was weaving strong, magic-free ropes, supplying shipyards and hoping to soon secure a naval contract. The company had attracted workers and their families, who had money to spend. Kate was pleased, if astonished, to see the prosperous aspect of the shops on the main street.

  She hired a pony cart to take her to Barwich Manor, telling the hostler she would do the driving and she would need the cart for several days. He looked at her oddly. Kate remembered him and she was afraid, even with the veil, that he remembered her. She paid well enough for him to keep his questions to himself, however.

  Barwich Manor was located about ten miles southeast of the town. She drove the cart over the road that led to the estate, meeting almost no one on the way, for few people had reason to come to this part of the countryside. The road extended on past Barwich Manor to an old limestone quarry, but it had been abandoned for years. Kate stopped the pony at the head of the long drive leading to the gates of the manor before she had courage enough to drive on.

  The lane was lined with chestnut trees. The gardener had once pruned the trees, made certain they were all the same height, with no leaf out of place. Now they had been neglected, allowed to run wild. Their boughs overspread the lane, so that it was dappled with shadow and splashes of sunlight. As Kate drove beneath the stone arches of the gate, her heart beat so rapidly she found it hard to breathe.

  When the manor came into view Kate stopped the pony to sit and gaze at it. The once neatly trimmed lawn looked like a hayfield; the flower beds were choked with weeds. The circular drive had almost disappeared. And yet, she was home. Kate wiped away her tears, clucked to the pony, and drove toward the house.

  Sir Henry had given her the keys, which he had obtained from the bank. Kate took the pony to what remained of the stables. She unhitched him from the cart, rubbed him down, pumped water from the old well, then turned him out into a pasture to graze.

  Gripping the keys tightly, she walked around the manor from the back to the front. Barwich Manor was built in the H shape that had been popular about two hundred years ago. The house was rectangular and stubbornly symmetrical, with wings on either side that flanked the central part of the house, forming the crossbar of the “H.”

  Gables and turrets, fanciful chimneys, and flying buttresses were the fashion these days. Barwich Manor had none of these and was therefore considered old-fashioned, stodgy, and ugly. At least that’s what the estate agent told her, offering that as the excuse for not being able to sell it.

  Kate thought the manor was beautiful.

  The bank had padlocked the front door. She removed the padlock, pushed on the door, and, gathering her courage, entered the house for the first time since she had walked out eighteen years ago.

  She stopped just inside the entry hall. She knew then what Miss Amelia had meant.

  “I am the ghost,” Kate murmured.

  The entry hall had been named the Marble Hall for the black-and-white-checkered marble floor that was now uniformly gray beneath a layer of dust. Cobwebs hung in place of the oil paintings of her noble ancestors that had once adorned the wood-paneled walls.

  Kate stood in the hall and for a moment her heart failed her. She could not do this. She had made a mistake. She would ride away and never come back.

  “Nonsense,” she said out loud, daring the ghosts to challenge her. “This is a house. My house. No one lives here, including the past.”

  She walked through the house, going from the Marble Hall into the great parlor. From there, she entered the drawing room, the dining room, and the library. Her mother having sold the books, the library shelves were empty. She ascended the grand staircase to the barren bedchambers, the empty schoolroom. She visited the chapel, which was at the back of the house on the southeast side. The old marble altar was still there. Her mother probably would have sold it, but it was so heavy Kate doubted if even Dalgren could shift it. In every room, she confronted the ghosts
of her childhood and gave them notice to pack up and depart.

  Finally, she walked out back to the old mausoleum, which stood beneath oak trees that had been saplings when it was built. Her mother rested inside, sharing the silence and the darkness with the bones of their ancestors. Kate laid some wildflowers she had picked on the steps leading to the iron door. She did not enter. She had said good-bye to her mother long ago.

  She needed a place to sleep and she did not want to sleep in her old room, which was crowded with ghosts who apparently were not going to leave without a fight. She left them alone and took the back staircase to the servants’ quarters, located on the southwest side of the house.

  The servants lived apart from the main area of the house, since servants were supposed to come and go unnoticed. The kitchen was a large two-story room at the back, with a huge fireplace. Kate had often played in the kitchen. When her mother had grown ill, the servants had taken care of the lonely little girl.

  Some of the furniture still remained in the servants’ hall, for the simple fact that it had not been worth selling. Kate unpacked the supplies she had brought with her, changed into her slops, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work to remove eighteen years of dust, starting with the kitchen.

  By the time she had finished cleaning, darkness had fallen. She ate a simple meal and slept in a cot in a room that had once been occupied by the cook. Kate was exhausted and slept soundly, undisturbed by any wandering spirits.

  She spent the next day going over the house, inspecting it, making note of what needed to be repaired. The magical constructs were the most critical. Magic had been used in every phase of construction, from strengthening the massive walls to protecting both interior and exterior against fire and water damage. The assault on magic by the Bottom Dwellers had left many fine houses in Freya damaged past repair.

  Kate studied the magical constructs on the walls, and although she knew nothing about masonry constructs, she could tell from her experience with contramagic on board her ship whether the damage was extensive or could be reversed. Fortunately Barwich Manor had been designed by unimaginative architects and builders, who had chosen solid construction as opposed to magical flights of fancy. Such houses were “built with more magic than sense,” her mother had said, referring to walls made of crystal or delicate, soaring stained-glass spires.

  Most of the damage to the magical constructs on the building had been caused by neglect, not by the destructive effects of contramagic. The magic could be repaired, but the cost of hiring masonry crafters and carpenter crafters would be almost beyond reckoning. And that was only to repair the magic. The physical damage was more extensive. Many of the leaded windows were broken, and a leak in the roof had ruined much of the oak paneling in the rooms on the upper floor. One of the chimneys was crumbling. All the chimneys needed sweeping. The ornamental molding in every room needed replacing. And that was just the beginning.

  When Kate’s list covered both sides of four sheets of paper, she stopped writing.

  Discouraged, she sat on the bottom stair of the great staircase and gazed at the Marble Hall with its festoon of cobwebs and cracks running up the walls. She was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task she had set for herself. The house had seemed perfect to a six-year-old child. She now saw the manor as her mother must have seen it—cracked and broken—and Kate understood why her mother had given up.

  Fight for your dreams, Lieutenant de Guichen had told her. Never sound retreat.

  “But what if the fight is hopeless and retreat the only option?” Kate asked herself.

  Her mother had retreated, finally losing the battle to madness and death. Kate stood up and brushed the dust off her slops. Giving up was not in her nature.

  “This is my home,” she said again. “Mine.”

  Poking around in the attic, she came across some relics of her childhood, including a dilapidated hobbyhorse and an old convex mirror. The mirror had been a gift to her mother from Morgan on one of his rare visits home. Kate had loved it, for when he hung it on the wall, the bulging mirror showed parts of the room that an ordinary flat mirror would have left hidden.

  Morgan claimed such mirrors brought luck to a house. Her mother had called it the “witch’s eye” and said its distorted view of the room made her flesh crawl. After Morgan had left, her mother had ordered the mirror relegated to the attic.

  Kate dusted off the mirror and carried it downstairs. She had decided to hang it in the Marble Hall. The mirror didn’t belong there. It would look very small and insignificant in the immense room, but she didn’t mind. The mirror was a symbol of hope.

  She propped open the front door to let in the fresh air and fading sunlight. She had found a hammer and some nails in the storage room and she chose a place on the wall in the center of the hall. Driving a nail into the wood, she carefully hung the mirror and then stepped back to admire the effect, smiling to see the vast Marble Hall shrink to the size of the mirror.

  “Thus may all my problems shrink,” Kate said, laughing.

  Her laughter abruptly stopped. Inside the mirror, she saw the distorted reflection of a strange man walk through the open door and into the hall.

  Kate assumed he was a tramp.

  “How dare you barge in here? Get out—”

  And then she recognized Trubgek. She was so startled, she couldn’t move or speak. She felt paralyzed, like the time he had used his magic on her, except that he hadn’t touched her or said a word. She tried to ask him what he was doing here, but failed. She could only stare at him.

  Trubgek stood staring at her. He was wearing the same leather jerkin he had worn the last time she saw him. He had the same empty eyes. He looked as if he had simply walked across a street, but he hadn’t. He had traveled hundreds of miles to find her.

  Kate cleared her throat. “What do you want, Trubgek?”

  “Coreg asked me to check up on you,” he answered in his lifeless voice. “Make certain you had not forgotten about your agreement with him.”

  Kate stood silent, thinking. She had dismissed Coreg from her thoughts. Out of sight, out of mind. She had assured herself the dragon posed no threat. He would never go to the trouble of seeking her out in a faraway country. Apparently she had been wrong. Now was the time to take a stand, to say what she should have said back in the Aligoes.

  “I did not agree to work for your master,” Kate stated. “I am sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. Thank Coreg for his offer, but I must refuse.”

  Trubgek said nothing. He walked over and placed his hand, palm flat, on the wall.

  Kate was perplexed. Perhaps the man was mad.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she demanded.

  A tremor ran through the house, as though it shivered. The tremors continued, growing stronger. The floor shook. The walls shuddered. Dust cascaded down from the ceiling, filling the room with a choking cloud. Plaster crashed to the floor. Kate heard a crash from a far room and another somewhere else. The mirror fell off the wall and shattered at her feet.

  Kate staggered and had to cling to the wall for support.

  “Stop!” she gasped. “Stop! Please!”

  The shaking continued a moment longer, long enough for Kate to think the house was going to collapse.

  Trubgek removed his hand from the wall and the shaking stopped. The house settled, creaking and groaning. He glanced at the broken mirror.

  “Seven years’ bad luck,” he remarked.

  “I’ll do it,” Kate mumbled, between fits of coughing.

  “Do what?” Trubgek asked.

  Kate glared at him and coughed.

  “Tell Coreg if he has a job for me, I’ll … think about it. That’s the best I can do. My work for Sir Henry comes first.”

  Trubgek gazed at her, unblinking; then he shrugged, turned, and walked out the door.

  Kate stood staring at the spot where he had been standing. He had come and gone so suddenly she began to wonder if she had imagined him. The creaking tim
bers and slowly settling dust and chunks of plaster proved he had been all too real. Sagging back weakly against the wall, she looked around at the destruction in awe.

  She had never seen or heard of any human with the magical power to cause massive walls to shake and huge wooden beams to tremble at the touch of a hand. Kate didn’t scare easily, but she had known gut-twisting terror in those horrible few moments when she had feared her house was going to fall down on top of her.

  Kate ran to the door, trying to avoid stepping on shards of the broken mirror.

  “How did you work such magic?” she yelled at Trubgek’s retreating back. “No sigils, no constructs! No human can craft magic like that.”

  Trubgek kept walking and did not respond.

  “Dragon magic!” Kate shouted at him. “Coreg taught you dragon magic! But how did he do it? It’s not possible for humans to learn dragon magic!”

  Trubgek stopped. He stood long moments, as though deciding whether or not answer. Finally, slowly, he turned to face her.

  “Enough pain and anything is possible,” he said. His empty eyes flickered. “Remember that.”

  He continued down the drive. Kate shivered and remained standing in the doorway until he had disappeared from sight. Then she shut the entry door, locked it, and then traced a magical construct on the lock.

  The spell was simple. Trubgek would likely make short work of such crude magic, but it made her feel more secure.

  She sank down on the bottom stair of the grand staircase and stared into the darkness, wondering what to do.

  Coreg had boasted his reach was long, but Kate had never imagined it was this long—that he could reach into her dream.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A month had passed since Phillip had made his dramatic arrival in Estara. He had recovered from the bullet wound and was now enrolled at the Royal Military Academy.