Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven

by Mercedes Lackey

  They exchanged a sober glance. “Do you really?” asked Nan.

  “I won’t be putting words in the Master’s mouth, nor thoughts in his head, but I do believe that is where his plans are tending,” Robin replied shrewdly.

  “But—clothing—the birds—” faltered Sarah.

  “Explaining our staying to the squire,” Nan added glumly. “That could be… difficult… and I don’t know that we’d be welcome here.”

  “Ah, now… the explaining part? Not so hard as all that.” Puck grinned. “You may have your morals and misgivings, but I’m Puck, and I do as I like. If you can’t come up with a simple way to stay, I shall make all smooth. You just wait until you know whether you are to go or stay, and the next time the old man takes his hounds out for a stroll, there’ll be a bit of a wind and a scattering of leaves, and it will be that you are welcome as welcome to stay, always were, for as long as you please, and Lord Alderscroft is ever so grateful that he’s leasing the cottage to you. And he himself will be ever so pleased to have the rents in the winter.”

  “Which he will be,” Nan said dryly. “Or rather, his wife will be. The other day, Delyth said over tea that she was going to miss the extra income. Not in so many words, because that would hardly be polite or correct, but…”

  “Well, she gets the rent of the cottage as pin-money, and the squire asks no questions of how it’s spent,” Sarah giggled. “But oh, the hats! I am not sure I want to be responsible for the creation of more of them!”

  Squire’s wife had a weakness for hats, and a lack of taste that was as strong as her weakness, and the two of them broke into a fit of the laughter they had not given vent to when the hats had been displayed for their admiration. Puck looked at them in bewilderment, then shrugged.

  “Look you,” he said finally. “You be getting an answer with some backing to it from yon Lodge-Master. You’ll be giving the Selch an education in what must be done so that interfering man-milliner you lot call a constable don’t make trouble for them.”

  His tone was so sour, Nan looked at him in surprise. He made a face. “That mortal meddler makes me so bitter I’ll have to eat more jam to sweeten my temper,” he said, and suited the deed to the word, spooning it onto his plate and eating it as if it was a bit of pudding. “I don’t like him, my creatures don’t like him, and my people don’t like him.”

  “Village doesn’t like him and Squire doesn’t like him, either,” Nan offered. “He wanted Squire to build him a jail, the cheek! Squire told him he could have a jail built out of his own pocket; jails were none of his business, nor did he intend them to be his business, even though he’s the magistrate here. He told the man that Clogwyn had never needed a jail until now, and he still saw no good reason for there to be one. Then he told Squire he’d got the money from his chief, but it wasn’t enough for a whole jail, so he wanted to put a cell at the back of the cottage! Squire told him no, but it seems he had to let it happen. Oh! He was hot!”

  Squire had, in fact, taken most of a week to cool down again, for most of the cottages in the village actually belonged to him, and he leased them on long terms. The only thing that mollified him was his wife pointing out that once Constable Ewynnog had been sent packing, the room could be turned into something useful. That would make it a two-room cottage instead of a single room, and the fact that the police had been forced to pay for the new room eased his temper the rest of the way.

  “Well, he’s been tossing harmless old drunks in there overnight,” Puck said crossly. “Which nobody likes, not the drunks, not the wives of the drunks, and not the neighbors, who get to hear the drunk shouting until he falls asleep. If he was any good at being a constable, he’d simply see ’em to their own doorstep and no harm done. What he’s about, I don’t know. It’s a sad day when a man can’t walk home drunk from a pub without being molested and thrown into a bare cell.”

  “I think I know what he’s doing—or thinks he’s doing,” Sarah said, surprising both Nan and Puck. “I think he’s been sent here to find subversives and anarchists, and he thinks if he listens to drunks in their cups, he’ll hear something useful. Why he should keep doing it after he doesn’t, though… I can only think it’s because he’s horribly stupid.”

  Puck snorted, and pointed his chin at the drawer in which they kept their letter-writing gear. “You go write to your Lodge Master, make sure he knows there could be some hardship here over-winter and you’ll be needing some extra help if he wants you to stay, then borrow the squire’s trap, take the letter to Criccieth and post it yourself. That’ll be the fastest way. You make it sound urgent enough, you should get a quick answer. If he brings you home, well, you leave the Prothero maid to me; I’ll keep her out of trouble. Unlike the Sea-Ward, I know a raven from a writing-desk, and I come and go and look and know in the mortal realm.” He laid a finger alongside his nose. “There’s always her sailor idea, or she might get accepted into the Selch clan, and then we can say they’ve gone to America.”

  “And if he bids us stay?” Nan asked, anxiously. “There are still so many problems—”

  “Then it’ll be on him to make it no hardship on you.” Puck nodded with authority. “If I don’t misjudge, you twain are comfortable here? You’re liking this place?”

  Nan, child of the London streets, would never have dreamed this could be so, but she nodded. “It’s peaceful. It’s easy to get books and things, and really, I don’t miss shopping. It’s rather lovely to be playing house like this when there’s a maid coming over to do all the rough work. It might get difficult when winter comes, if there are a lot of bad storms, but if we don’t absolutely have to go out every day, and the cottage can keep warm, I think I’d like being all cozy and reading and sleeping late. I’m even learning how to cook things I had no notion of. I don’t miss London. I thought I would, but I don’t.”

  “I miss the music,” Sarah said wistfully. “And the plays and museums and operas and things… but we didn’t get to go out to plays or operas that often, and the Welsh do sing so beautifully!”

  Puck laughed, reached out, and ruffled their hair as he used to do when they were children. Nan supposed that to him, they still were children… she hated to think how old he was. “Oh, ask yon Selch to be singing!” he exclaimed. “Or Daffyd Prothero. You’ll not miss the fat geese in London with their caterwauling through their noses. Every Brunnhilde I’ve ever seen would have crushed her horse beneath her, I trow! Now let’s put this in motion, while things can still be done.”

  Nan had not mentioned the Selch Rhodri as one of the things that kept her here, even though it had become quite obvious that, as Sarah had claimed, he fancied her. For one thing, while she did enjoy his attention, she was not at all certain he actually meant it, not in the way that Idwal meant his attentions to Mari. For another… she was not, absolutely not, going to give up the exciting and fulfilling life that Lord Alderscroft offered. Especially not for a half-human creature who, while he was handsome and exotic and had very charming ways, was not much of a person you would think of as a husband. What could he bring to such a union? That he could turn into a seal and she would never lack for fish… that would be useful if she were like Mari, a fisherman’s daughter and content with that, but she had plans, and she didn’t want to change them. This life had been all very well for—oh, say—a year. But for the rest of her life? No. Then she would miss London, but more than that, she would go mad without something to do—just as she and Sarah had nearly gone mad trying to think of what they could do with their lives before Lord A had made his offer.

  Perhaps she was being too practical, but better that than have her head in the clouds. An early life where she was the one who found her own food, more often than not, had made something of a hard shell inside her. She never wanted to go hungry again, and she would do anything honest and decent to make sure she wasn’t going to. She wanted to know that she was doing more than just existing. And if that meant sacrificing romance to practicality, well, she’d shed a te
ar and do it.

  And about being practical—she went to the drawer and got the pen, the ink and the paper. Puck was right; they had better start making arrangements while there was still time to do things. “Here,” she said, handing pen and paper to Sarah. “You write what you think is important, I’ll do the same; that way, we won’t miss anything.”

  Sarah nodded, and they both bent their heads over the table and got to work. One thing was certain; they had to make sure that these were letters Lord Alderscroft could not in any way misinterpret or ignore.

  “He’s watching us again,” said Mari, not looking up from her peas. She had a whole bushel of the dried pods, and was shelling them into a rough burlap bag. Not a pleasant task, even when done out of doors, but at least Idwal was giving her lessons while she did it. It was too bad; it was a lovely day, difficult to tell that autumn was coming on fast, with a strong breeze that picked up the bits of dried pea-pod and carried them away as she rubbed the peas briskly between her palms. When she finished these, there were beans to do next, the same way. She sat on that bit of wood; Idwal sat facing her, cross-legged on the earth. He made a pleasant thing to rest her eyes on.

  Rhodri had taken to going out with her da, not only cutting his fishing time in half, but bringing up things from the sea-bed Daffyd would never have gotten himself. Mussels in plenty, which were usually hers to gather, and clams, but also oysters and whelks, which lived deeper. Spider crabs, which Daffyd had thought were pests until Rhodri showed him how to cook them and how good they were. Idwal’s lessons bored him; he’d rather be out fishing. The shellfish weren’t something you could sell, for anyone along the coast here could easily forage as much as he liked just by being willing to go out into wretched cold water at low tide, and Daffyd didn’t want to compete with the lads who sold them in Criccieth, but they made a lovely addition to their normal fare. Mari usually had too much to do to go shellfishing on her own too often.

  “Well, that constable won’t be seeing me,” Idwal said firmly, shaking his hair back. “Nor Rhodri, when he comes in with your father.” The Selch used Water Elementals as messengers as casually as a Clogwyn housewife sent one of her children on an errand. A moment after he said that, a seabird flew down and landed on the sand next to them, looked at him in a penetrating way, then flew off. That was Rhodri sorted.

  “What on earth can he be wanting?” Idwal asked, clearly bewildered. “Surely he’s satisfied himself that you’re not one of those—what did you call them? anti-christs?”

  “Anarchists,” she said. “Which I can’t make head nor tail of.” She had studied all of the old newspapers she could get her hands on—well, everyone in the village was doing the same, since Daffyd had gone about imparting his favorite theory about why the constable was here in the first place—and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why he was looking for anarchists here. The miners inland weren’t striking because they were anarchists; they just wanted more safety and a decent wage instead of working like slaveys and dying like rats in a hole. And there was no one striking here in Clogwyn, anyway! Furthermore, unless someone was hiding a rogue cousin somewhere in their family tree, no one in Clogwyn was even distantly related to the miners. Clogwyn and Criccieth had been towns that lived by the sea as long as they had existed. And rough and hard as a fisherman’s work was, there wasn’t one of them that would trade it for the sunless hell of a miner’s life, no matter how much it paid. Never had the twain of mine and sea even met. The miners might go to Criccieth on holiday, if they could scrape the money together, but they wouldn’t bother to go to Clogwyn; there was nothing for them to do there, unless all they wanted to do was forage for shellfish, laver, and samphire, cook on the beach, and stuff themselves. Which they could do, and she supposed there might be some that did, but then they would have to find somewhere to stay, for the only place there was to rent was Gower Cottage. And Gower Cottage was more than a miner could afford, even if the squire would let it to him, which, of course, he wouldn’t.

  Constable Ewynnog was up on the hill; the very same hill and the same patch of gorse that Nan and Sarah had hidden in to watch her and the Selch before they had finally come down openly. He had a spyglass, and thought he was concealed. And so he would have been, had the Water Elementals not taken it as their duty to warn her when he was there, just as they had when Nan and Sarah had watched her.

  “He is a very foolish man,” Idwal said severely, in tones that said this man is a bloody fool, and I wouldn’t trust him to know which end of a cow to milk.

  Idwal was teaching her one of the tricks of going invisible, which in the easiest case wasn’t actually going invisible at all, as it turned out, but more a case of convincing someone’s mind that you weren’t there. That was simplicity itself for the Tylwyth Teg. No one expected to see them. For Mari, however, it could be a deal harder, especially when she was somewhere that she was supposed to be. There was no way, for instance, that she would ever convince the constable that she wasn’t right here at the cottage. He expected to see her here, and so he would, no matter how hard she worked at trying to convince him otherwise.

  Still, it would be very useful if she was somewhere else she didn’t normally go… in the village, say. And once she had mastered this, Idwal said she could learn the trick of truly going invisible.

  “I think he just wants to find someone he can put trouble on,” she said, as she always did. It was an automatic answer by now. Her father had said so over and over, and she didn’t see any reason to doubt his reasoning.

  “But why? Why would he want to do such a thing? Isn’t that counter to the law? And isn’t he supposed to be the enforcer of the law? That is why he is supposed to be here, is it not?” Idwal didn’t usually care about such things; like the other Selch, he was here for Mari, and dismissed other land-dwellers without a second thought. But it was clear that this behavior on the part of Constable Ewynnog bothered him. Idwal was genuinely puzzled, and that made her look a little more closely at her own answer. And at what she knew about the constable.

  “Well… he’s just a human, and a not very nice human at that,” she said. “People aren’t much different than Selch; when they take on a position, they don’t always do as they’re supposed to in it. If you ask me, and if you ask half the village I’d say, the answer would be that he went for the job of being a constable because he’s a bully.” She rubbed more pea-pods between her hands and the peas fell down into the bag while the flecks of pod blew away like odd-colored snow. “He isn’t in it to represent the law; he’s in it to be able to make people do things whether they want to or not. And he thinks he can especially bully me, because when he comes to talk to me I act like I’m feared of him.” Had that been a mistake? She thought about how Nan had been with the man, for her friend had described their single encounter and the outcome. How she had stood up to him, how the squire’s dog had protected her, and how she had made him back down and leave her and Sarah alone. Certainly the wretch had never bothered Nan a second time.

  But Nan is not from here; she’s from farther inland, closer to the border, closer to being English. And she’s almost gentry. And the squire won’t let the constable meddle with someone on his land, she reminded herself. And besides all that, Nan has a lord who looks out for her and Sarah. I don’t. No, as much of a nuisance as it was, he never would have backed down if she had stood up for herself, and she likely would have just stirred up more trouble for herself and her father. What kind of trouble she didn’t know—but then, she wasn’t a constable, and she didn’t know what mischief he could work if he was minded to.

  “I don’t think he’s as able to bully people in the village,” she continued. “Because they all stick together when he tries.” She thought some more.

  “I still cannot fathom why he would be looking for troublesome persons here, where they do not exist,” Idwal objected. “Why doesn’t he look elsewhere? Looking for these anarchists in the village and here is like looking for a rose on the s
eabed. You cannot find something that simply is not there, no matter how hard you look.”

  “I think he was sent here a-purpose, and so does Da,” she reminded him. “The people that he has to take orders from don’t know Clogwyn from Criccieth or Criccieth from Cardiff.”

  Idwal considered this. “But shouldn’t he tell them?”

  “Would they even listen?” she asked in return. “Would Gethin listen if you told him this bargain with the Protheros is more unfair to a girl than a boy-child?”

  Idwal considered that. “Probably not. And Gethin is sometimes reasonable. He does listen when the clan speaks with one voice.”

  Mari truly hated to be so… objective. But Idwal had taught her, over the summer, that an Elemental Master must truly be able to see every side of a problem, because the answer might be hidden somewhere he might not otherwise think to look.

  I wonder if all his questions now are a test?

  “Oh! It grates on me like sand to say this! But though he’s a bully, he could be getting bullied by the men who rule him,” she said reluctantly. “And if they were hard enough about their orders, and threatened him with losing his place if he doesn’t find troublemakers, it would make him want to find whatever he thinks might appease them. It might even be he has those he fears, who’ll make things hard for him or even get him dismissed if he doesn’t find someone.” That left a bad taste in her mouth. She didn’t like to think of the bully as also being bullied, but—

  But there it was: Idwal had told her, and schooled her, that of all things, a magician must be honest. For if she was not, it would taint her magic, and the Elementals would not trust her. And if they did not trust her, they would not help her. And if they did not help her, she would find herself tempted to force them.