Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She pulled away from him, gently, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “We can’t do this,” she said. “We have to stop.”

  Ben blinked at her. Then he closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. “I told you I couldn’t be a gentleman in here.”

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t exactly being gentlemanly either.”

  He let go of her, but took her hand and kissed it. “I love you, Lainie. And I want to do this right.”

  “So do I.” She was so close to being done. Go down the mountain in the morning, send her message, then…anything was possible. “At least we’re not Trey and Blythe, going at it like weasels.” Telaine drew her knees up to her chest and sat with her back against the arm of the sofa. She so badly wanted to tell him all her secrets, not to lie to him about anything. Not lying. There was something she could tell him, something more dangerous than the simpler truth of being a princess and a spy. Maybe giving him that secret would make her feel less guilty about the ones she had to keep.

  “Ben,” she said, “what do you think about inherent magic?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That supposed to fit into this conversation?”

  “I want to tell you something.” She described her ability, clasping her hands tight to stop their trembling, and watched his face grow still. “I haven’t exactly put my life in your hands, telling you this,” she said, “but it’s still a dangerous secret. I trust you more than anyone. I hope I’m not wrong.”

  Ben said, “I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Only once. When you promised not to go after Morgan.”

  “That. Yes. And you knew I was lying and didn’t say anything.”

  “How could I?”

  “True. You couldn’t.” He moved to sit closer to her. “Must be an uncomfortable thing, hearing the lies people tell.”

  “Sometimes. Mostly it’s refreshing to know people don’t lie to me often. And it can be a warning. Morgan lies to me all the time.”

  “Morgan,” he breathed, clenching his fist. She laid her hand on his.

  “Let it go for now,” she said. “We’ll find a solution.”

  “Together. Not you trying to do it all yourself.”

  “I promise. No lies.”

  He laid his free hand on her cheek. “Thanks for trusting me with that.”

  She smiled, feeling peace fill her. “Will you walk me home?”

  “Seems like a gentlemanly thing to do.”

  They parted at Aunt Weaver’s door with a single kiss. Considering what they’d been doing only minutes before, Telaine thought, it was more than enough.

  ***

  Telaine woke with the feeling she’d overslept. The light had a strange quality to it. Abel, she thought, I’ve missed him, and she leaped out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could, deciding to forgo breakfast rather than miss this opportunity.

  She threw open the back door and was stunned at what she saw. Snow blanketed the yard, piled high on the roofs of the sheds, weighed down the pine tree that grew behind the outhouse. It was at least six inches deep across the yard and drifted more than a foot high against the sheds. Snow lay across her toes where it had dropped off the open door. It was more snow than she’d seen in one place, ever. More snow than fell all winter long in Aurilien.

  She closed the door and went back upstairs, threw open her window and ducked away from a pile of snow that dropped off the window frame past her head. An uninterrupted carpet of snow had unfurled the entire length and breadth of the main street. A gap in the lowering clouds above let through a beam that turned a patch of the carpet to diamonds.

  There were no paths, no indication that Abel had left yet. She might still make it. She dashed back downstairs and into the weaving room, where Aunt Weaver worked the loom alone. “Do you think Abel’s left for Ellismere yet?” she demanded.

  Aunt Weaver gave her a look that said Telaine was demented. “Abel’s not going anywhere,” she said. “First big storm of the year. The pass is closed until spring.”

  WINTER

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Trapped in Longbourne for the winter. Telaine paced her room, cursing herself for not being faster. If she’d found out the Baron’s plan a week ago, she would have been down the mountain before the snow fell and her uncle could prepare to defend against the invaders. Now he and the army would have to scramble to catch up, and suppose Thorsten Pass cleared before the main pass did?

  She flung herself on her bed and beat the mattress with her fists. She couldn’t stop thinking about what an army of Ruskalder would do to defenseless Longbourne.

  “Don’t see why you’re so upset,” Aunt Weaver said from the doorway. “Seems like you get your wish.”

  Telaine rolled over. “What wish?”

  “An excuse to stay here longer,” Aunt Weaver said. “Not hard to see what you was thinking.”

  “I have a job to do, Aunt Weaver,” Telaine said. She almost told her about the invasion, but stopped herself before the words poured out. It wasn’t fair to burden her with the knowledge when she wasn’t an agent herself, however good a confidante she’d turned out to be. “I can’t afford to be stuck here all winter. Doesn’t anyone go down the mountain? Skis, or snowshoes?”

  “Passes are worse than the valley,” Aunt Weaver said. “You could try it, but you’d walk right over the edge and they’d find your bones at the bottom of the mountain come spring. Might as well enjoy your… bad luck.” She turned and left Telaine staring after her, feeling guilty all over again as if her secret wish to spend the winter in Longbourne had caused this calamity.

  She looked out her window again. A few people were in the street now, shoveling out pathways in front of their doors. The snow was deep enough that the paths looked like sunken ditches; the roads were clearly impassable. She wondered how many of those wagons she’d seen coming up and down the pass all summer were trapped here for the duration, too.

  She tromped downstairs and began making breakfast. Aunt Weaver was right; there was nothing she could do about it, and she wouldn’t make the winter pass more quickly by punishing herself for getting what she wanted.

  After breakfast she took a turn with the shovel, awkwardly carving out a path that joined up with Verity Hansen’s tailor shop next door. Michael, Verity’s young apprentice, helped her dig the last few paces.

  “You’ll love it here in the winter, Miss Bricker,” he said, wiping his streaming red nose with his gloved hand. “The quarry and the sawmill shut down, so everybody’s got their family home and ready to play. The kids get into these ditches and have snowball fights after school, and sometimes the grownups join in too. Last year I saw Mister Fuller dunk Scottie Albright in the snow headfirst when Scottie hit him in the face with a snowball!”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun for Scottie.”

  “Mister Fuller gave him a piece of licorice after. It was all in fun.”

  Telaine planted the shovel in the snow and leaned on it. “I’ve never made a snowball in my life.”

  “Happen you’ll learn quickly. You’ll want to be able to fight back.”

  It took Telaine a few days to learn to relax and enjoy herself. It helped that so many of her friends were on holiday thanks to the quarry and mill shutting down. Though they all seemed to have seasonal jobs in Longbourne, they also had plenty of time for fun down at the tavern, and Telaine could usually find good company there.

  Eleanor, whose job didn’t let up because of the season, always had time to chat over the laundry tubs, and Ben…what a difference being in love made. Now he made time in the middle of the day to go walking with her, hand in hand through the snow, trying to drown one another by knocking loads of snow off the trees and kissing under the dark-needled branches.

  Telaine’s only worry was Morgan. She stayed in Longbourne for a week, defying the Baron’s instructions about mending the weapons, panic gripping her throat whenever she thought about going back to the fort. But although soldiers still came
to the tavern occasionally, Morgan never appeared.

  Eventually Telaine mastered her fear, strapped on a pair of snowshoes and staggered and fumbled her way to the fort. After a few off-handed inquiries, she learned Morgan hadn’t been there all week. She repaired a few weapons and made her escape. He was probably holed up in the manor with the Baron, she thought. She hoped he was too preoccupied to think of her.

  But the Baron summoned her to the manor nine days after the pass closed for a minor repair to his music box Device, and Morgan wasn’t there either. She didn’t quite dare to ask the Baron about him, but she was beginning to suspect Morgan wasn’t in the valley at all. If the Baron had sent him down Thorsten Pass on some errand to the Ruskalder, he would have been trapped by the storm as thoroughly as she was. She had a moment’s worry about what part Morgan’s absence might play in the Baron’s scheme, what could be so important that the Baron had sent him down Thorsten Pass after full dark, but it was buried under her profound relief that he couldn’t assault her again.

  She used the snow as an excuse not to go to the fort often; the knowledge that she was repairing guns the Ruskalder intended to turn on Tremontane made her wish she’d lied about the possibility that they could be fixed. Would the Ruskalder even consent to use them? She’d heard their aversion to using projectile weapons was a religious one and a longstanding tradition. The Baron must be confident about convincing them otherwise to stockpile so many of the Devices. Even so, putting any weapons into their hands made her angry.

  Winter in Longbourne was so different from winter in Aurilien, where she would have gone to parties and concerts every night and paid visits every day. Few people in Longbourne had Devices and even fewer needed them repaired, and she had no other hobbies, so between that and her decreased employment at the fort, she was frequently bored.

  She wandered around the house so much Aunt Weaver finally said, “If you’ve got nothing else to do, happen you should think about your Wintersmeet gifts. Never too early to worry about those.”

  The Longbourne tradition of exchanging gifts personally made by the giver made Telaine uncomfortable. She only had one talent—well, only one she could share—and how was she supposed to make gifts with the few materials she had left? She had little but her sack of spare parts, and she couldn’t exactly go to people’s homes asking for things they might want turned into Devices. Holidays were so challenging. She thought of the Wintersmeet ball held at the palace, everyone dressed in white and silver, dancing away the last and longest night of the year, and felt little sorrow at missing it.

  On one of their midday walks, Ben said, “Watch this.” He pointed at a burl on a nearby tree, whipped his arm around, and suddenly the burl had sprung a small knife. Ben waded over to get it.

  “I had no idea you could do that,” Telaine said.

  “Only do it in winter. Keeps me warm and my eye sharp.” He threw the knife again. “Wish I’d brought more of ’em.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “You planning to go hunting?”

  “Just the trees. It’s such a graceful thing.”

  Ben retrieved the knife again and handed it to her. “Stand like this…and then hold the knife like this. Then it’s a quick overarm movement, so.”

  The knife flew a few feet and disappeared into the snow. They looked at each other. “I see a flaw in this plan,” Telaine said. She dug around until she found the knife.

  “Happen we can find a less snowy place,” Ben said. “Figured out your plan was to get my arms around you, anyway.”

  “I didn’t think I needed a plan for that. Weasel. No, don’t!”

  The lesson continued after Telaine shook the snow out of her shirt.

  ***

  The laundry was so comfortable in winter, warm and muggy and perfect for sitting and chatting. Too bad Eleanor had more than sitting and chatting on her mind. “I think this is a bad idea,” Telaine said. She waved her knitting needles. “I told you I’m no good at sewing.”

  “This is knitting, not sewing, and if you can turn wire and eyelets into a tent of lights, happen you can learn to turn a skein of yarn into a scarf,” Eleanor said. She rearranged Telaine’s grip on the needles. “Now, you remember the difference between knit and purl? This is knit one, purl one—”

  The door flew open. “Baron’s riding into town,” Ben said. “Alone.”

  Telaine leaped to her feet, dropped her needles and several stitches, and followed Ben out the door. The Baron approached on his indifferent gray, glancing around with no sign of interest in his surroundings. A weight lifted from her shoulders. If the Baron himself was here, it meant his usual errand runner was not in the valley. Suddenly the long months of winter seemed like a Wintersmeet gift.

  “Miss Bricker,” the Baron called out while he was still several feet away. Telaine made her bow. “Excellent. My dear, I have a challenge for you. Would you mind accompanying me to the manor?” He did not make it sound like an invitation.

  “Of course, milord,” Telaine said, bobbing another little bow. “Give me a moment to fetch my tools.”

  She sped through the ditches to Aunt Weaver’s house. He hadn’t chastised her for not having finished the work at the fort, so maybe he didn’t know about it. Or maybe he was waiting to get her alone before unleashing his fury on her. Either way, she didn’t have much choice; if she refused to go with him, it was impossible to say how he might react, and he might decide to take out his anger on an innocent person.

  When she returned, clutching her roll of tools, the Baron took her up behind him and trotted away without mentioning the fort, or the guns, or Morgan. Telaine looked back over her shoulder at Ben, who stood in the road with his fists clenched. He’d probably follow her if she didn’t return by nightfall. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for that, or afraid.

  The Baron was silent the whole way to the manor, and continued silent after they were safely inside out of the cold. He escorted her down one of the hallways. “I assume you can repair a clock?” he said.

  “Certainly, milord.”

  “I don’t like how the one in the library is running. And I dislike the sound.”

  “The…sound, milord?”

  “The sound it makes when it strikes the hour. It’s tinny. I want a more full-bodied sound.”

  “I’m not sure the sound is created by a Device, milord, but I’ll do my best.”

  “And your best is always excellent.”

  He led her to the library, which she had not yet seen. It about the same size as the Baron’s study, with bookshelves much more delicate than those in the study lining the walls. The books looked as if they were actually read as opposed to being décor, which gave the room a homey feeling the study lacked. Some comfortable reading chairs sat near a fireplace in which a lively yellow fire burned steadily, with Devices hanging low to illuminate pages better than the fire would. Ladders on rails, elegant constructions of ash and gilt, gave access to the upper shelves.

  A round clock almost three feet in diameter hung crookedly on one wall, well above the shelves nearest it. Thick glass distorted the numbers on its face and made the hands, which looked like they might weigh a pound each, seem bent enough to scratch the glass. Telaine looked at it in dismay.

  “What’s the matter, young lady?”

  “It’s…rather high, milord.”

  “You can reach it by way of the ladders, or so i’m told.” Telaine looked at him narrowly. Personal knowledge of how the ladders worked seemed an unlikely thing to lie about.

  He showed her a Device that slid up and down one handrail of each ladder so she could take it with her as she ascended. “This controls the ladder’s lateral movement, but each ladder has its own guiderail, so its area of movement is limited. I believe that ladder travels beneath the clock.” Telaine climbed the ladder, sliding the Device with her, and pushed buttons until she was centered under the clock. It was still a foot out of her reach.

  “Climb to the top step,” the
Baron suggested. Was he trying to kill her? She steadied herself, reached up, and gently lifted the clock from the wall. The ladder swayed, and she froze, heart pounding, until it steadied. Then she carefully descended, releasing a breath she hadn’t known she’d held when her feet touched the solid floor.

  “I suppose I can do this on the floor, if I move the chairs, milord,” she said. The Baron himself dragged the chairs to either side of the fireplace and sat down in one of them. Apparently this was to be a repair with an audience.

  She turned the clock onto its face and took it apart. Fine-tuning the Device took a while, because there were no obvious problems and she had to search carefully before deciding there was nothing wrong with it, whatever the Baron said. She settled for making a show of repairing it, then turned to the problem of the bell.

  It did sound tinny, she thought, lifting the clapper and letting it strike, but…what was this? Someone had wedged a penny between the two bells. When she removed it, and tried the clapper again, it rang out sweetly. She palmed the penny and said nothing about it. If the Baron had sunk to sabotaging his Devices to get her out here, he was even more bored than she was. With Morgan gone, the only person he could socialize with was his pet Deviser.

  “Does that sound better, milord?” she said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  The Baron smiled. “Much better.”

  She reassembled the clock, then hesitated. “I think it might be wise for milord’s servants to replace the clock. They’d know better than me how to hang it right.”

  The Baron nodded. “Wise indeed, Miss Bricker. Will you join me for dinner?”

  Telaine wanted nothing less than to eat with this man, but she said, “Thank you for the invitation, milord.” It was hard to reconcile this genial man with the murderer of Captain Clarke. No doubt he would continue to call on her, and she would bet his summons would always coincide with dinner. But she had no choice but to accept, if she wanted to avoid drawing his anger.