Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She should see about getting some more warm clothes, if Longbourne got as snowy as everyone said. Definitely one of those wool cloaks, some heavier trousers and thick socks, maybe a hat and scarf. Josephine had some nice cloaks displayed this week, and there was a tailor who might accept trade in kind for the rest. Should she learn to knit? No, she’d probably make as much a mess of it as she did with needlework—

  She stopped in the middle of the road and looked up at the sky, feeling pinpoints of cold melt on her face. Here she was within days of completing her mission and she was planning a winter in Longbourne. A winter at home.

  The knowledge had crept up on her slowly, a thought at a time, until Longbourne had gone from being foreign, to familiar, to comfortable, to beloved. Home, she thought again, and it warmed her as much as Ben’s smile. She hoped her mission would be complete before the snows fell, but she wouldn’t feel sorry if it wasn’t. This isn’t your home, her annoying inner voice told her, home is ballrooms and salons full of glittering people and flirting in carriages, but she ignored it and set off down the road again. That was the Princess’s home. This was hers.

  She stopped in at Josephine’s shop and came out the proud owner of a thick, voluminous wool cloak in pearly gray, with a deep hood and a silk lining. It was like wearing a self-heating blanket. Suppose you could make such a Device? No one had ever cased a Device in anything but metal or wood, but she didn’t think it was impossible. She’d have to look into that more seriously. She might have all winter to do it.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was hard to make herself go back to the fort the next day, fearing that Morgan might get her alone again, hating the tedium of the work and the oppressiveness of the fort. She took her time over breakfast, dawdled talking to Ben and to Eleanor, chatted with Maida when she picked up her dinner, and made her walk up the road into more of a stroll. The storm clouds still threatened, but the wind had died down and she felt less chilly than the day before.

  She closed her fingers around the iron key that weighed her pocket down and remembered why she was actually going to the fort. Today she would try to investigate the other storage towers. Somewhere, there had to be whatever contraband Harroden had sent. It was almost funny that the Baron was responsible for giving her the freedom to engineer his downfall.

  The fort looked different that morning; she realized, as she approached, there were no guards at the gate, and the gate itself stood open. Her first thought was The Ruskalder have invaded, then she laughed at herself. She would definitely have noticed if Ruskalder warriors were loose in Barony Steepridge. Still, she slowed her steps and listened. Everything seemed too quiet, even for Thorsten Keep, which usually sounded like a sullen bear grumbling its way toward hibernation.

  When she entered the fort, she saw a few soldiers milling around, not nearly as many as usual and none of them spruce and well-kempt. They were all moving faster than usual, which still meant a gait barely faster than a walk, but none of them paid any more attention to her than before.

  She walked to the keep without being stopped by any of the soldiers, though the two men standing beside the door did glance at her briefly and dismiss her as not a threat. She entered, feeling unease prickle the back of her neck. “—deal with that at once,” she heard the Baron say. “Everything can advance.”

  “Yes, milord,” said another man, whose voice was husky, as if he spent a lot of time coughing.

  Telaine eased the door most of the way shut, or tried to; it slipped from her fingertips and shut loudly enough to make both men stop speaking. She cursed, silently, then hurried forward before the Baron could suspect her of eavesdropping. She regretted that lost opportunity.

  The Baron stood near the table next to one of the slovenly soldiers, who was standing as much at attention as she’d ever seen any of them do. He had untidy, too-long blond hair and had removed the stiff collar of his uniform. That was one point on which she was in sympathy with the man; Jeffy had complained often of how the high collar dug into his chin, and how he wished the service would do away with it.

  The Baron didn’t seem upset by her interruption. “You should go home today, Miss Bricker,” he said. “There’s been a terrible accident and the fort is rather unsettled at the moment. I’m afraid Captain Clarke is dead.”

  Telaine gasped. She’d rather liked the man, from what little she’d known of him. “What happened, milord?”

  “He fell off the wall during the midnight watch and broke his neck. Some of the soldiers say he looked drunk. I wouldn’t have thought it of Clarke, myself.”

  Telaine thought the chances of Clarke being drunk on duty were about the same as her voluntarily submitting to Morgan’s embraces. She regarded the Baron more closely. His voice sounded unhappy and distressed, but his face was impassive, as if he were reporting on the tragedy from a great distance. “I’m so sorry to hear it, milord,” she said. “If it’s not impertinent for me to ask, who will replace him?”

  The Baron gestured at the soldier. “This is Lieutenant—I should say, Captain Jackson. He was Clarke’s second and has sadly received a promotion under tragic circumstances.” Jackson nodded at Telaine. He didn’t look as if he thought her worthy of his attention.

  “As I say, it’s perhaps better if you continue your work tomorrow,” the Baron said. The gesture he made in her direction made it clear this was an order rather than a request. Telaine left quickly.

  On her way back to Longbourne, she thought about the Baron’s face when he’d spoken of Clarke. She remembered what he’d said to the captain only the day before…something about not having to worry about transferring away good men anymore? That phrase struck her as sinister now. She had no doubt the Baron was capable of killing someone who was in his way. Had Clarke become too much of a hindrance to the Baron’s plans, whatever they were?

  And now “everything can advance,” the Baron had said. If he hadn’t specifically instructed her to leave, and in the new captain’s hearing, she’d have turned around that minute and taken advantage of the disorder to snoop in the storage towers. As it was, disobeying a man who’d arranged a fatal accident for someone didn’t seem like a good survival strategy.

  ***

  The fort was still disorganized when Telaine returned the next day. Clarke might not have been able to control the men, but he’d kept some level of order. This new captain either was less competent (almost certainly true) or less interested (also probably true), but either way, she again felt invisible as she entered the gate, despite the men standing on guard there.

  She decided to do some work and get a feel for the activity in the fort before trying to get into the storage towers. By now she could disassemble the guns without looking and could almost make the repairs the same way. She worked, and observed, and thought. There were no regular patterns to the soldiers’ movement, no marching drills or patrols. That would be a problem.

  On the other hand, the soldiers who passed close to her work space either glanced at her with a total lack of interest, or didn’t look at her at all. After Morgan’s sexually aggressive behavior, their disinterest was welcome. And it might mean they wouldn’t pay much attention to where she went.

  She finished three weapons and decided to test the waters. She strolled out of the storage tower and ambled down the long row of towers to the right of the outer gate. She kept her eyes focused on the ground, or the walls, and carefully did not meet the eyes of any soldier who passed her. Continued lack of interest. There were only five towers on this side of the fort; beyond these the log wall continued until it met, as she’d guessed, the mountainside.

  She walked all the way to the end, turned around, and came back. This time, when she reached the end tower, she stopped and tried her key in the lock, making an informed guess about the laziness of Thorsten Keep’s designer. It turned stiffly. Heaven must be on her side.

  She opened the door and went inside, deliberately not looking around. This was where instinct worked against you. It
was always tempting to see if you were observed when you were going someplace you shouldn’t. But that kind of movement drew attention to you the way boldness, and the air of being somewhere you were allowed to be, did not.

  The crates inside, like the ones in her tower, had had their nails removed so their lids came off easily. The word BLANKETS was stenciled on every box. She removed the lid of one and found, to her surprise, that it actually was full of blankets. She felt down inside it, moved a couple of crates and searched inside those as well. All were entirely full of scratchy, gray wool blankets. She replaced everything and left the tower, relocking it.

  Well. That was unexpected. So some of the shipments were legitimate goods. She hoped she wouldn’t have to search every tower to find the contraband she was looking for.

  She went back and worked on a few more guns. Establishing a pattern was also key. Staying still and waiting for a break in activity only made you more obvious when you did start to move. She went back and forth between her legitimate work and her sneaking, but still found nothing illicit.

  One tower had crates of mail shirts, oiled and wrapped individually, standard military issue if somewhat outdated. The Ruskalder didn’t use projectile weapons, so maybe on the frontier the shirts were still useful. Rations, clothing, more rations, more guns, boxes and boxes of bullet wheels, one tower holding perishable items—this one was in frequent use, so she had to observe it from a distance and hope what she wanted wasn’t there.

  She packed up a crate of newly repaired weapons and took a moment to rearrange everything, working weapons here, broken weapons there. The task left her sweaty despite the chill in the air, and she removed her coat and draped it on the stack of finished work. Only a few more towers to investigate, and she hadn’t found anything more incriminating than a couple of bottles of good brandy mixed in with the rations, mislabeled, probably on purpose.

  She pushed strands of hair out of her face and took a minute to re-braid her hair. Then she continued her exploring. It was getting dark. This might have to be the last one.

  This tower again held boxes supposedly containing blankets. Telaine frowned as, once again, she found nothing but blankets. Could the secret shipments be so mundane? She put everything back the way it was supposed to be.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here, Miss Bricker.”

  She spun around. Morgan. Her heart raced as if it alone could propel her out of the tower, out of danger, but he had her trapped against a pile of crates, his tall, broad-shouldered body filling the doorway. His face was in shadow, but she could see the dark arch of his brows outlined on his pale face. Acting innocent wasn’t going to help her this time. She tried it anyway.

  “You caught me,” she said with a wry smile, holding up the iron key. “I found out this opens all the towers, and I couldn’t resist taking a peek.”

  “Somehow I think milord Baron won’t accept that as an excuse.” He took a step toward her. She felt that feline smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “I wonder what he’ll do if I tell him where I found his pet Deviser?”

  Telaine couldn’t think of anything to say. She hadn’t spent eight years charming the noblemen of Tremontane without knowing how to tell when charm simply wouldn’t work. This was one of those times. And begging Morgan for anything would be suicidal. She took a step back and her foot bumped the nearest crate.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. A secret you and I can share.” Another step closer. She couldn’t go any farther back. “But you know, don’t you, that it’s a secret with a price.”

  “What price?” She managed to keep her voice steady.

  Now that he was no longer backlit by the watery evening light from the doorway, she could see his face clearly, his pointed, cruel smile, and it terrified her. “A kiss,” he said. “Only a kiss.”

  Remember the game he likes to play. First awareness, then fear, then submission. And then he has you. It was past time for pretending not to understand; he needed to see her fear. That wouldn’t be hard. She had started to shake from his nearness. “One kiss?” she asked, letting her voice tremble. She gripped the edge of the crate she was backed up against to keep her hands from shaking as well.

  He stepped close, only inches separating them. “one kiss.”

  Before she could register the lie in his voice, before she could scramble away, his hand was behind her head and his lips were fastened on hers, hard and hungry. She whimpered, unable to control herself, and he put his other arm around her waist and pulled her close enough to feel every inch of his body pressed against hers.

  Terrified, she pushed ineffectually at his shoulders. He released her, grabbed her hands and pulled them down to her sides. “Fighting back entitles me to another kiss,” he whispered.

  He pushed her back against the crates, making her cry out as an edge cut into the base of her spine, then took both her wrists in one hand and slid his free hand up her waist, her torso, up until his hand covered her breast. She struggled like a panicked animal in a cage as he kissed her forehead gently, in a parody of tenderness, then squeezed her breast and chuckled as she cried out again.

  “Don’t fight me,” he murmured in her ear. “We both know this is what you want.” His hand moved from her breast to the front of her trousers, and now she fought with every ounce of strength she had. Everything she’d ever learned about fighting, every technique of self-defense, went out of her head in her panic. She tried to kick Morgan or knee him or anything that would get her away from him, but he leaned against her, pinioning her lower body while his hand worked at the buttons of her trousers.

  “No—” she screamed, but his mouth was on hers again, hard and pitiless, and mindlessly she struck out the only way left to her, sinking her teeth into his lower lip and biting until blood flowed.

  He jerked away, released her hands and struck her hard across the face, making her bite the inside of her cheek. The taste of his blood mingled with the taste of her own. Morgan stepped backward, pressing the back of his hand to his bleeding mouth. He was breathing heavily, but his face had returned to his usual mocking expression.

  “Afraid, but still a fighter,” he said. “You’re not ready, after all.” He bowed to her. “I look forward to our next encounter.” He backed out of the tower, bowed again, and vanished.

  Telaine shook so hard she couldn’t control herself. It’s the cold, just the cold, she told herself. A wonder her inner voice never echoed with the lies it told her. She touched her cheek; it was sore and hot and puffy. It took her several tries to refasten the buttons he’d—she remembered the feel of his hands tugging at them and had to sit down to keep from passing out, her hand clutching the front of her trousers together.

  Then she wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her breast as if she could rub out the memory of his touch, and waited for the shaking to subside enough that she could return to her tower and retrieve her coat. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. She saw Morgan in every shadow. Wrapped in her coat, she hurried down the mountain in the gathering dusk.

  She couldn’t keep herself from reliving memories, Morgan’s hands, his lips on hers, until she was shaking again from more than the cold. She clenched her fists and made herself think about what she’d discovered. Storage rooms full of exactly what they were supposed to be full of. A fort full of slovenly troops—no, that was wrong, a fort barely staffed by slovenly troops. Captain Clarke killed because he was in the Baron’s way hard lips, hands pulling her too close—

  The whole time she’d been in Longbourne, she’d never seen a single soldier come through town on his way to the fort. Mistake with paperwork or not, they were sending soldiers away and not replacing them a hand, squeezing her—

  Why did they need so many supplies if the fort wasn’t even half full? Hardy’s information told her the fort was supposed to have three hundred men, but based on what she’d seen there was barely a fifth that many stationed there. That was ridiculous. They had enough weapons and supplies sto
red to outfit an army.

  An army.

  Telaine stopped, her heart now pounding for a different reason. Enough to outfit an army that wasn’t there. At a fort sitting across the only pass from Ruskald through the mountains, a back way into the kingdom.

  He’s not a smuggler. He’s a traitor. He’s going to let the Ruskalder in, arm them, and set them loose on Tremontane.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Telaine began to run, tripped in the growing darkness, then slowed as reason asserted itself. She couldn’t get the message through until tomorrow at the earliest, when Abel Roberts drove into Ellismere. She shouldn’t get herself killed tripping over things in the dark before then, because she was the only person aside from the Baron and Jackson and probably Morgan (don’t think about him!) who knew what the Baron planned.

  She walked quickly down the road to Longbourne, lost in thought. The snows would be here soon. The Baron couldn’t implement his plan before then, because the Ruskalder army would be stuck in the valley until the main pass cleared in spring. That gave her an advantage.

  She didn’t know how long it took Thorsten Pass to clear, but if she got the message to her uncle in time, he could have the army ready to march up the mountain and make the fort defensible before the Ruskalder came. Thorsten Pass had a northern exposure, and the main pass faced south; the army would have plenty of time.

  She wished she could fly down the mountain to Ellismere, break into the telecoder office and send her message right now, today, this instant. Waiting until daybreak was torture. Riding in silence with Abel would be torture.

  “Lainie! There you are!” Jack Taylor called out, startling her. She’d been so preoccupied she hadn’t realized she’d entered Longbourne and walked all the way down the main street to the tavern. “You’ve got to need a drink, long day of work like you’ve had. Come on in.”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” she began. Socializing after what she’d learned, after what Morgan had done to her, seemed impossible. She wanted to crawl into her warm bed and hide.