“Can’t imagine anything I’d like more. What are you giving me for Wintersmeet?”
“What makes you think I’m giving you anything? Oh—” Ben had seized her around the waist and kissed her until she was breathless. “Oh,” she repeated, “I guess I’d better think of something.”
“You should, because I’ve already made yours,” Ben said.
She kissed him once more, then went back to Aunt Weaver’s. But once she was in her room, she found she couldn’t concentrate on her Wintersmeet gifts. Instead she fretted over ways to delay the earth mover construction.
She almost didn’t have to pretend; the Device was genuinely complex, and bulky, and the courtyard of the fort an inconvenient place to assemble it. It had taken the slovenly and uninterested soldiers most of two days just to clear a space that would allow her to lay out all seven pieces at once. There was a storm coming that Eleanor said was one of the big ones. That would be another two or three days wasted. And Wintersmeet was fast approaching, which would give her another three days, at least, when the Baron couldn’t possibly expect her to work, if only because the soldiers insisted on time off as well. Every day counted.
The problem was, she could only work so slowly before the Baron, who had watched her work so often, realized what she was doing. Delay wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to sabotage it instead. That was more dangerous; the Baron would believe almost anything she told him about how long the project would take, but he would be unlikely to believe continual failure. Even if he didn’t suspect sabotage, he might fly into a rage at her for the Device’s breaking down.
She hoped once she started assembling the pieces, a strategy would suggest itself. Or…could she tell him it had been damaged in transit? It was plausible—but he’d probably expect her to repair the damage anyway. As a last resort, she could simply refuse to work on it. She wondered if she was willing to let the Baron hurt or kill her as the price of keeping the Ruskalder out of Tremontane.
She went to the fort every day while Ben was working on the tools, interfering in the building of the shelter as much as she dared without infuriating the soldiers. Bad enough they were lazy; she didn’t need them antagonistic as well. But it gave the Baron the illusion she was accomplishing something, or would have if he’d been there. She’d expected him to hover, had come up with excuses that would get him out of her way, but he hadn’t been to the fort since he’d showed her the earth mover. That made her uneasy. Why had he waited nearly a month after the pass closed to call her in for this?
Finally, the tools were finished, the skies were clear, and she couldn’t delay any longer. She packed her new tools into a large canvas bag procured from Mister Fuller and trudged up the valley. The novelty of the snow had worn off, particularly now that most of it had melted and what remained was slushy and soaked through her boots to her thick wool socks.
The day was overcast, though Aunt Weaver had assured her no snow would fall before tomorrow morning. Being trapped at the fort for two or three days was one of Telaine’s nightmares, even if the soldiers seemed disinclined to attack her.
Within her canvas shelter, she looked at the seven large pieces, laid out in roughly the places they would occupy in the finished product. A steel plow, two shining silvery wings swooping back from a sharp nose, ten feet across at its widest point and about eight feet tall. Two assemblies of small wheels constrained by tracks of iron, segmented for smooth propulsion by the wheels over any terrain the earth mover might encounter. Two complicated cylindrical sections like giant steel barrels, seven feet in diameter, containing more than four-fifths of the unimbued Devices and gears that propelled the thing. A smaller cylinder containing a pile of spheres, unimbued motive forces, which the earth mover would burn through almost as rapidly as it tore through earth. And, most innovative of all, a bulbous capsule with a hatch on the top that, if Telaine could manage it, would hold the Device’s own source for re-imbuing the motive forces as they were drained. In its assembled state, the earth mover would look much like a snub-nosed wasp, or a mosquito with a stubby silver proboscis.
Harroden might at least have included assembly instructions, she thought irritably. She heaved the smaller pieces back into the boxes, rolled the cylinders to each side, and examined the nose by walking around it. Four soldiers had tried to lift it out of its crate without success before Telaine suggested taking the crate apart around it. She’d worked out that one function of the motive force was to lift the nose just enough off the ground that it wouldn’t drag and flip the whole Device end over end.
She knelt down behind it and reached inside, feeling around for the copper wires that would connect it to the next section. They were as thick as her pinky finger and had a slick surface. One of them had come loose from its coupling; sighing, she reattached it. As tempting as it was to begin sabotaging the thing now, she needed to find a part that might reasonably fail and would be complex enough to justify her overlooking it. The nose, simple and straightforward, was not the place to look.
She poked her head inside the cylinders containing the gears and realized that though they looked identical, there were tiny but key differences between them. This was more like it. Suppressing a grin, she began attaching the wrong cylinder to the nose. She’d “discover” the mistake later, make a lot of noise about how stupid she was, and “fix” the thing. One more delaying tactic. She was afraid it wouldn’t be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Telaine received an early Wintersmeet gift when a fortuitous snow storm came down on Longbourne two days before Wintersmeet, giving her an extra day’s holiday from her unwelcome task. Most businesses had given up the pretense that anyone was working. Eleanor told people their laundry could wait a few days, and besides, no one was paying attention to clothes this time of year.
Ben shut down the forge and joined a snowball fight with a handful of young men and women, shouting at Telaine to participate, pelting her with snowballs until she retaliated with a few lumpy ones of her own. Snowball fights were another of the many things she’d never done before coming to Longbourne. Snowball fights, cooking her own food, drinking beer, falling in love.
Disgusted by her inadequate snowballs, Ben tackled her and rubbed her face with snow until she squealed, then kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. Definitely another thing she’d never done before.
Aunt Weaver sent the apprentices home early on the day before Wintersmeet Eve. “Happen you don’t know our Wintersmeet customs,” she said.
“Don’t see how I could know, Aunt Weaver,” Telaine said, rolling her eyes.
“No need to be disrespectful. Thought you wanted to be told things now ’stead of working ’em out for yourself.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Weaver. Please continue.”
“Uppity girl. Well. Tomorrow we clean house. Gets us ready to start a new year, see.”
“I do. That’s…interesting. I like it.”
“Well, I don’t so much like cleaning, but it’s good and symbolic. Wintersmeet Eve is for families. We eat together and think about the ones who ain’t with us.”
Telaine thought of Ben, alone in his house. “That would be sad if you didn’t have any other family around.”
“That’s up to you. Then Wintersmeet day you visit with all your friends and exchange gifts. I take it you have gifts?” Aunt Weaver sounded as if she questioned Telaine’s Wintersmeet spirit.
“I’ve made gifts for everyone. Aunt Weaver, what if someone gives me a gift and I don’t have one for them?”
“They won’t take offense. Wintersmeet gifts is like a thank you for doing something that mattered to the person giving the gift. Sometimes you do more for a person than they do for you. Sometimes it’s the other way around. But mostly you know who’s giving to you.”
“That’s good.”
“Wintersmeet night is for big gatherings. Your young man leads the chorals down at the tavern. Figure you’ll want to be there. Lots of parties and people goin’ from one t
o the other.”
“It sounds beautiful. Far nicer than—”
“Don’t say what I know you’re goin’ to say. Not even in here. Don’t even think it.”
“I thought you told me not to get too attached to Longbourne.”
“Too late for that. Might as well embrace it.” Aunt Weaver paused, then added, in a quieter voice, “Happen you’ve got a plan for all that.”
Telaine hadn’t thought about it. She had to go back to Aurilien eventually, but what would she do after that? She didn’t have a plan, but it sounded like Aunt Weaver thought she needed one. Perhaps she was right. Could she come back to Longbourne after this was over? It was a daring thought, and one that unsettled her. Something to think about some other day.
The next day they cleaned more thoroughly than Telaine had thought possible. Sweeping and mopping the weaving room, dusting the sitting room and creating great pale clouds that merely settled back on the furniture. Aunt Weaver made Telaine go outside and wave the broom around the rafters of the outhouse, sweeping out cobwebs that drifted around her like strands of gray, sticky clouds.
It left Telaine feeling exhausted, but Aunt Weaver seemed unaffected as she moved around the kitchen making supper. The smell of hot pork roast and buttery mashed potatoes filled the air. “Happen you’d like to get that candle off the high shelf,” Aunt Weaver said, and Telaine climbed the step stool and reached up for a fat silver candle in an iron casing. It had been lit many times before, the wax melting down the sides and over the metal holder, smooth and shiny.
Aunt Weaver produced fine china place settings and silverware and a couple of wine glasses, then, even more surprisingly, a bottle of good wine. She served them both, sat down, poured the wine, and picked up her knife and fork. “Happy Wintersmeet, niece,” she said.
“Happy Wintersmeet, aunt,” Telaine replied.
They ate in silence, and then Telaine cleared the dishes while Aunt Weaver lit the candle. “Family joins us,” she said when Telaine sat down again. It sounded like ritual, one Telaine didn’t know. “Family binds us. We leave one family to join another. However far we go, family draws us back.” She put her hand around the candle, below the dripping wax. “You put your hand over mine,” Aunt Weaver said. Telaine did so.
Aunt Weaver closed her eyes. “You never knew your grandpapa,” she said in a quiet voice. “He died before you were born, died too young. I’d grieved for him already when I left, because Zara North died and left him behind, but I didn’t know I still had it in me to miss my little brother when he died.”
She smiled, her eyes still closed. “He was a brilliant, joyful man. When he was young he cared too much for what other people thought and didn’t have the sense to know whose opinions he ought care for. But brilliant and joyful. No question what your grandmama saw in him, though they had a rocky road to travel. Wish I’d been there to see them reach the end.”
She fell silent, and Telaine sensed it was her turn. “I never knew my mother,” she said. She gazed at the candle flame, trying to see images from the past. “She died of lung fever when I was not quite three. But my father was my whole world when I was a child. When she died, he took me to live in the forest he loved so much. I grew up wild and unschooled, without knowing anything but surviving through winter and summer.
“He taught me a lot of things I forgot, later, growing up in the palace. It was like losing a piece of him every time I tried to remember how to tickle fish, or find my way by the stars—I was so young to learn any of that, and maybe he was denying me my mother’s heritage, but I think he loved her so much he couldn’t bear the places where she’d been. And then he got sick, and I think he knew he was dying, because he brought me back to the palace before the end. I…” She broke off, cleared her throat. “I’ve never quite forgiven him for leaving me.”
They sat in silence, hand over hand, watching the warm silver wax slide and drip over their fingers to the table, waiting for midnight. There was no clock in the kitchen, but there was no mistaking the moment when the lines of power shifted their alignment in response to the solstice, filling Telaine with a rush of energy.
She could feel her connections to Aunt Weaver and Uncle Jeffrey and Aunt Imogen and her cousins for three seconds, and she knew they could feel her presence too. This was how Uncle Jeffrey felt, all the time. She tightened her hand over Aunt Weaver’s. She must have been so lonely, all those years…
Aunt Weaver moved her hand away and Telaine pulled back as well. “That’s for our dead,” she said. “Now for our living.”
“I don’t understand.”
Aunt Weaver sat back in her chair. “Been gone a long time,” she said. “Young Jeffrey was no more than two when I left. I resent this magic that keeps me young because I ain’t seen you all grow up. Same magic makes it so I can’t have children of my own. Certain sure I couldn’t have stayed, but if I could… I want to know my family. Tell me.”
Telaine’s mind went blank. “Ah…Uncle and Aunt Imogen, they don’t look like they ought be a match,” she said. “Uncle is all about politics and Aunt Imo loves her horses. And I think Uncle is a little afraid of them. Horses. But then you hear them talking and, I don’t know, they don’t just finish each other’s sentences, they have whole conversations where you can’t hear them say anything. We’ve never talked about it, but I can’t imagine she doesn’t know what his inherent magic is. They don’t keep things from each other. That’s the kind of marriage I want.”
Memories started flowing in from the back corners of her mind. “Julia and I are like sisters. She’s near my same age and she helped me get through the first months after my father died. She doesn’t use her beauty like a weapon, like I—like the Princess does, and I wish I could be like her. Jeffy, well, he might as well be Uncle’s twin in body as well as name…”
She talked herself hoarse into the dim reaches of night, Aunt Weaver listening silently, and cried because she hadn’t known how much she missed her family until that evening. She would have to go back to them. As much as she loved Longbourne, she couldn’t stay away from her family.
She talked until the candle burned all the way down and flickered out, then the two of them went to their beds. When she was certain Aunt Weaver was asleep, Telaine went silently down the stairs with her bundle of tools and put together a Wintersmeet gift she knew would catch her aunt’s eye.
***
“Lainie Bricker! You come down here right now!”
Telaine bounded down the steps, wearing her most innocent expression. “Yes, Aunt Weaver?”
“You want to explain this?” Aunt Weaver pointed at the sink.
“It appears to be a tap, Aunt Weaver.”
“And what is this?”
Telaine made a big show of examining it. “I believe it’s a Device for heating water as it comes out of the tap.” It was her best creation yet, a slim cuff of brass that slipped over the tap, with fine silver threads on the underside and a motive force the size of a button below the handle.
“I know I told you I don’t want these Devices in my home. Certain sure I told you this before.”
“You did tell me. Specifically you told me you don’t like depending on things that might break down and be unfixable because of there being no Deviser around. And I agree that even though I’m here now, I won’t be here for good.”
“And yet there’s a Device sittin’ on my spigot bold as the brass it’s made of.”
“That’s right. Now here’s what I’m thinking. This Device is totally separate from your faucet. You don’t want to use it, it’s just a pretty ornament on the tap. If you do want to use it, you turn both handles and adjust the water to be as hot or cold as you please.”
When Aunt Weaver opened her mouth to object, Telaine overrode her with, “And I know you have to accept a Wintersmeet gift in the spirit it’s intended, and I intend this to pay you back for your hospitality. Plus I want to wash my hair in warm water. So there you are.”
Aunt Weaver turn
ed the handle of her old faucet. She turned the Device handle and ran her fingers under the water. “I still have my own ways—”
“—And they’ve always been good enough for you. Maybe this could be a new way for the new year. Happy Wintersmeet, aunt.”
Aunt Weaver began to laugh. Telaine had never heard her laugh before. “You know all you had to do to wash your hair in warm water is boil it and mix it with cold.”
Telaine’s mouth dropped open. “I never—Aunt Weaver, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wanted to see how clever you were. But I guess you’re clever in other ways.” She touched the handle of the Device. “If I didn’t credit it before, I now know you’re definitely my family,” she said. “When you get back to Aurilien, tell your grandmama I said tell you the story of how she became Royal Librarian. Certain sure you’ll appreciate it.”
She held out a pile of knitted fabric in dark green. “Noticed you favor this color,” she said. “Spun, dyed, and knitted here.”
Telaine unfolded the pile. It was a soft wool scarf. “I love it,” she said, and wrapped it around her neck. It hung to her waist. “Thanks, aunt.”
Aunt Weaver brushed aside her thanks. “Get dressed and I’ll make flat cakes,” she said. “You young people all want to get out and give your gifts first thing before the shine’s worn off the new day.”
Telaine hadn’t finished her meal when someone knocked at the back door. Liam. “Happy Wintersmeet, Lainie,” he said, and held out a beautifully carved box that fit into her palm. She opened the box and saw it was lined with dark green silk. Apparently it was her signature color.
“I didn’t know you could do this,” she said.
“You’ll know well enough by winter’s end,” he said. “I go a bit stir crazy and start carving things until I’ve got dozens of ’em. Then I sell ’em at the spring fair. You’ll see a lot of people doing that. Mistress Adderly does about a hundred of these embroidered pincushions. Don’t know how anyone could use that many pincushions.”
Agent of the Crown Page 26
