Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

  “No. We’ll be coming back on the evening run.”

  The man grunted as though speaking required more effort than he cared to expend.

  Master Stebbins pulled a pocket watch out of his trousers pocket and snapped it open. “Hope it’s on time,” he muttered.

  He led Kyla and Marta to two benches placed opposite each other. He sat in one and they sat together on the other, their chain stretching across the distance between.

  “Dabney,” Marta said conversationally. “That’s where the orphanage is. So we’re going for the baby. And I’d guess you haven’t informed your customer. Maybe you think you can cut a better deal with someone else? Or do you plan to use the books’ secrets yourself?”

  He frowned and his hand clenched the chain more tightly. “I am an honest man. She,” he inclined his head toward Kyla, “says we must exchange the child for the book, so getting the child is step one of our quest, a step my client has no need to be involved in.”

  Marta’s curled lip and arched eyebrows expressed scornful disbelief. The girl clearly thought Master Stebbins intended to betray the book buyer. She was probably right. Maybe he believed the missing book would teach him the secret of mage power. A planned betrayal would explain his nervousness and stealth, so Marta’s fears for herself might be unfounded, but it wasn’t wise to bait him. Kyla wanted nothing troublesome to happen until he led her to Claid. Then they would have to find a way to escape.

  Kyla leaned her head against the bench’s high wooden back and wondered about this place. She recalled being asked if she had come to this town on the train. What kind of conveyance was it? She hoped they wouldn’t have to ride on the back of some animal. Their chains would make that difficult. She longed to question Marta about it but didn’t want to expose her ignorance to Master Stebbins. Marta didn’t seem worried, so probably they would ride in a carriage drawn by horses or other beasts.

  A low rumble followed by whistles like shalkor shrieks interrupted her thoughts. A rumble grew louder until it shook the building. The noise of the metal monster! Why did no one else seem alarmed? A bell clanged, and Master Stebbins stood and pulled the chain, bringing Kyla and Marta to their feet.

  Kyla stifled a scream when Master Stebbins said, “That’s our train,” and headed for a platform outside the building, pulling her and Marta with him. Seeing the iron beast thunder to a stop beside the platform, Kyla held back. She stared at the huge black creature belching steam and smoke. Was that a train? They were going to ride that horror? Her stomach knotted; her legs refused to move.

  Master Stebbins yanked on the chain. “Come along! Hurry!” he shouted over the din, his voice rife with impatience.

  The other people in the waiting room had risen and were heading for the platform, heedless of any danger.

  Marta regarded her curiously. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Haven’t you ever seen a train?”

  “I’ve seen one,” Kyla said, resisting Master Stebbins’ tugs on the chain. “I didn’t know what it was. How do you ride it?”

  “In the passenger car. It’s noisy, but it’s faster than a horse and buggy.”

  “Get along, girl,” Master Stebbins ordered, his face reddening. “You’re drawing attention.”

  Kyla didn’t want to move. Marta took her hand and helped Master Stebbins draw her through the door onto the platform, where the snorting, hissing train made conversation impossible. She watched others climb up onto a step and, with no sign of fear, enter an open door in a long closed wagon with a straight line of small windows along the side. Faces peered out the windows, smiling and waving.

  So they would ride in this wagon pulled by the iron beast. She moved toward it more confidently. No one else seemed to fear this thing, so it must be under firm control.

  Kyla gazed at the creature and saw two men in a kind of box up behind the long snout. They must be the drivers. They looked so ordinary!

  Master Stebbins tugged her forward, forced her to step up after him onto the wooden floor of the wagon, with Marta following behind, cutting off retreat. A man in a blue-and-white striped uniform examined the paper strips Master Stebbins had bought at the counter. He used a scissorslike device to punch a small hole in each paper, handed them back to Master Stebbins, and motioned him on.

  A line of wooden benches, back to back and bolted to the floor, ran down the middle of the car and faced the windows. The other passengers had already taken seats and were staring uneasily at Kyla and Marta’s chains and shackles. When Master Stebbins prodded them to a space where they could sit together, passengers near them rose and moved away, leaving a wide empty space on either side of them.

  They had scarcely settled onto the hard benches when with a loud squeal the wagon lurched into motion. At intervals in front of the benches, metal poles ran from floor to ceiling, and Kyla followed her seatmates’ example in grabbing hold of one and hanging on while the train swayed and shook.

  The other passengers chatted cheerfully at the top of their voices, but Kyla could only clutch the pole and brace herself against the bone-jarring jolts. Neither the ferebeast ride nor her last wild flight on the wind had terrified her so. She stared at the cinders flying past the windows and at the trees and fields and occasional house that winked by. How could the creature maintain such speed?

  As time passed and the uncomfortable journey continued, she gathered her courage and asked, “Master Stebbins, the men who drive this beast can control it, can’t they? Are they its makers?”

  He frowned. “What are you talking about, girl?”

  “This train,” she said.

  Marta leaned forward and spoke across Master Stebbins. “It’s a machine, Kyla. Like the sewing machines. It runs on steam.” Marta imparted the knowledge boastfully. “The men on the locomotive keep the fire hot in the boiler by shoveling on fresh coal. The steam drives gears that turn shafts and make the wheels go around. Same way we turned the sewing machine wheel and kept the needle going up and down. It’s only a big machine.”

  Ignoring Master Stebbins’ disgusted look, Kyla sat back and digested Marta’s information. Not a monster. A machine like the sewing machines. A manmade thing, a soulless object, neither created nor sustained by magic.

  She gazed thoughtfully at the finger into which she had driven the needle. More than a week later it remained a bit swollen and painful to touch. If a small apparatus like the sewing machine could inflict such damage, what could one the size of this—locomotive, Marta had called it—do if the operators became distracted or were not highly skilled?

  Kyla felt relieved to know she was not at the mercy of a monster imbued with the kind of magical life Alair had given to Dannel and to his housekeeper. Still, it was disquieting to ride in a wagon pulled by a machine as prone to error as the men who operated it. Recalling how often she’d operated the sewing machine in a mindless haze, she imagined the locomotive operators doing the same. She compared the mindstealers’ evil practice of adding the stolen minds to their central mind to increase their mental power to these people’s practice of building mindless machines and diminishing themselves by sharing their minds with their creations.

  It seemed that Rim Canyon not only kept the mindstealers in Noster Valley; it also kept these terrible machines out.

  She had heard Matron and the women refer to this land as Arucadi. She knew little more of it: not its size, its boundaries, or its features. Of the customs of its people she knew only what she’d witnessed and experienced in Line’s End. Until today she’d imagined the area to be small on no basis other than a conviction that the wickedness she’d encountered didn’t deserve to be widespread. As the train hurtled onward, the suspicion grew that this land might be much larger than her familiar valley.

  An onslaught of homesickness increased her misery. She had no wish to be forever an exile in this land where the wind had neither color nor speech and machines replaced magic.

  After churning through a long stretch of desolate country, the train began to pa
ss farms and orchards. Its frantic rush slowed; its whistle shrieked; its bell clanged.

  “We’re coming into Dabney,” Master Stebbins announced.

  The train stopped next to a building like the one in Line’s End. As soon as they’d stepped off, Master Stebbins herded Kyla and Marta through and away from the station. He led them through the streets of the town with less stealth but with the same haste he had imposed on them in Line’s End.

  “We have to hurry to make the evening train back,” he explained.

  Kyla didn’t object. The weather had turned cold, and her muslin dress offered little protection from the chill wind.

  “You planning on feeding us at all?” Marta demanded. “I’m hungry.”

  “We’ll get the baby first,” he said. “I don’t know how long that will take. If we have time afterwards, we’ll eat.”

  Too shaken from the journey to want food, Kyla was glad to postpone the meal. She could scarcely contain her eagerness to see Claid. All she could think of was what they might have done to him and in what condition she would find him.

  One worry—whether they would be willing to release him—Master Stebbins clearly shared. “You’re only here to identify the child,” he told her. “You’re to remain quiet except for that and let me do all the negotiating. They’ll want an outrageous sum to surrender him, and I’ll have to bargain. Don’t interfere.”

  She nodded, but an icy dread gripped her. What if Master Stebbins refused to pay the price? She would not leave without Claid no matter what crimes she had to commit to get him.

  Dabney was larger than Line’s End and less shabby. Its streets were busier, filled with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. Once she jumped awkwardly aside, hauling Marta with her, to avoid a collision with a young man balanced precariously on a narrow two-wheeled contraption. She noticed other such vehicles, which their riders propelled by operating wooden treadles with their feet. It was hazardous having to dodge this traffic while hobbled to Marta.

  When Master Stebbins led them at last to a large red-brick building and announced that they’d reached the orphanage, Kyla could scarcely contain her joy at their safe arrival.

  A flight of stone steps led to the front door, embellished with a weighty brass knocker. Master Stebbins made liberal use of the knocker. A woman in a lace cap and full-skirted dress of rust-brown print opened the door and peered out at them. “Are you expected?” she asked, frowning.

  “I didn’t make an appointment, but I’ve come about one of the children. The infant that was sent here from Line’s End a few months ago while its poor mother was confined to the women’s workhouse. I’ve taken the woman as my indentured servant,” he lifted the chain as if to confirm his words, “and I’m interested in acquiring the baby as well.”

  “You want to take that baby?” The woman’s frown transformed into a wide smile. She threw the door open wide. “Come in out of the cold. Warm yourselves before the fire. I’m Mother Hannah. I’ll fetch the child at once.”

  She hustled them into a large sitting room where a fire crackled in a generous fireplace. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said to Master Stebbins, ignoring Kyla and Marta. “I’ll not be a minute.”

  “She seems uncommonly eager to give the child up,” Master Stebbins observed when Mother Hannah left the room. “I fear she thinks to obtain a high price for him. Remember to let me do all the talking.”

  Kyla did not answer. Mother Hannah returned quickly, panting as though she’d run the whole way. The child she carried in her arms was no infant but a boy of between one and two years. Kyla was ready to protest that this was not the baby she’d lost scarcely three months ago, when Mother Hannah set the child on the floor. With a squeal of glee he tottered across the room to Kyla and wrapped his arms around her legs. “Kywa,” he said.

  She bent and gazed into his face. The baby’s eyes had been blue; this child’s were a deep jade. When one eye closed in a saucy wink, her doubts vanished. “This is Claid,” she said to Master Stebbins.

  Mother Hannah clapped her hands in delight. “I was afraid you wouldn’t recognize him. He’s grown so since he came.” Her hands went to her hips; her forehead puckered. “I never saw a baby change so fast. Nor one that ate so much. Unnatural, it is.”

  So. That meant that even as an infant Claid had not been entirely helpless; he retained some measure of magical power. Kyla didn’t know whether to feel angry or relieved by that revelation.

  Master Stebbins cleared his throat. “I’m sure, my good woman, since you’re eager to be rid of him, you’ll be willing to take this other indentured servant of mine in exchange,” —he indicated Marta— “and waive any additional payment.”

  So that was his plan! “No!” Kyla protested. “That was not our agreement. You have no right—”

  “Silence, girl!” Master Stebbins gave a yank on her chain that nearly pulled her off her feet. “You have no say in the matter.” Then to Mother Hannah, “Madam, I’ll make no other offer. Take it or keep the child.”

  “Lying bastard,” Marta said, white-faced.

  “I do have a say, if you expect my help.” Kyla spoke defiantly, though fear of losing Claid and being returned to the workhouse tore at her gut.

  Casting a hard glare at Kyla, Master Stebbins said, “What price had you intended, Mother Hannah?”

  “No price. I ask for nothing but a promise not to bring him back,” the woman said.

  “We promise,” Kyla said hastily, lifting Claid into her arms with a jangle of her chains.

  “You promise nothing,” Master Stebbins told Kyla. To Mother Hannah he said, “Madam, don’t spar with me. Name the price.”

  “I ask no price,” the woman fairly screamed. “Keep your servant, take the cursed urchin, and be gone.” She ran at them, flapping her arms and shooing them toward the exit, then dashing around them to open the door and shove them outside.

  On the street, Master Stebbins turned to Kyla, his glasses tilted awkwardly from the haste of their departure. “How dare you defy me like that! You’ve earned a good beating—both of you.”

  Claid let out a piercing wail that attracted stares from passersby. A carriage slowed and a dignified man in a top hat peered out in concern. Kyla caught the child up into her arms, where he continued to wail.

  “Calm the child I’ll pardon the offense, since the matter turned out well,” Master Stebbins said hastily.

  “No thanks to you,” Marta said. “You tried to betray us. If Kyla hadn’t—”

  “I owe you nothing,” he snapped. “It would have been no betrayal to leave you in a good position. I have every right to transfer the indenture.”

  Baby Claid pointed a finger at Master Stebbins. “Bad,” he pronounced.

  Kyla had to fight to repress a giggle. Marta grinned. “Smart kid,” she said.

  “Humph.” Master Stebbins adjusted his spectacles. “I’m very afraid I’ve been made the victim of a monstrous deception. I believe that woman tricked us, though how you could be in collusion with her I can’t imagine. I distinctly recall your saying the child was only a few weeks old.”

  Guessing that Master Stebbins knew little of babies and their normal rate of growth, Kyla said, “I told you the child was a few weeks old when he was taken from me. Naturally, he’s grown in the months since then. Mother Hannah dealt with you honestly, Master Stebbins, and so have we. This is the right child.”

  “It had better be.” With a suspicious sniff Master Stebbins turned and led the way back through town to the station.

  Walking beside Kyla, Marta, too, eyed the child with misgiving until he favored her with a sunny smile, reached over, and patted her cheek. “Good,” he said.

  Marta grinned. “He’s a sharp little guy, isn’t he? May I carry him for a bit?”

  Kyla handed him over. As he cooed and beamed, the girl’s sharp features softened, and her eyes lost their predatory glint.

  “Pretty,” Claid said, and gave Marta a big hug.

  Her de
lighted laugh brought Master Stebbins whirling around, his pinched face exuding fresh suspicion, but he saw nothing more alarming than his servants playing with the child.

  “Hung’y,” Claid declared.

  “Master Stebbins, you said you’d get us something to eat,” Marta reminded their master. “We didn’t stay long at the orphanage, so we ought to have plenty of time.”

  He nodded and resumed his brisk pace. “The inn next to the station serves meals. We’ll eat something while we wait for the train.”

  He kept his word. The inn’s dining room was empty due to the early hour. They sat around a table near a window from which they could watch the tracks in case the train should arrive ahead of schedule, an event Master Stebbins declared unlikely. He ordered roast pork and biscuits. When the platter was set before him, he served himself a generous portion and pushed the remainder toward Kyla and Marta.

  “Where do we go to retrieve the book?” he demanded as he began to eat. “Perhaps we should do that before returning to Line’s End. We can’t exchange the child for the book soon enough to please me.”

  “The book is not in a place we can reach by train,” Kyla answered, juggling Claid in her lap. “We’ll have to go to Line’s End and prepare for a long journey on foot.”

  She did not intend to try to lead Master Stebbins across Rim Canyon, but she meant to have him outfit her and Marta for the trip. Once they set out and were well away from Line’s End, they would have to find some way to escape from the shopkeeper.

  “You’re positive you can find this place?” Master Stebbins asked.

  Kyla merely nodded, but Marta said, “It’s a bit late to doubt her, isn’t it?”

  He glared at her, then turned and stared out the window, leaving Kyla and Marta free to eat and talk.

  Kyla fed Claid a biscuit dipped in gravy and let him slide off her lap to play on the floor at her feet. He tugged at the shackle and chain on her ankle, swung the chain, traced it across to the shackle on Marta’s ankle and back to hers.

  Remembering her thoughts during the train ride, she asked Marta, “Tell me about this land. What’s it like?”