The Twisting

by Laurel Wanrow

  Mary Clare sighed. “To complete three lessons and correct their actions that resulted in the death of a packmate.”

  That ache of loss simmered anew in Annmar. Even with the little she knew of their packs, she realized that the person who died must have been a close friend. How terrible for them. “You mean it was their fault the person died?”

  “No, Riv said the death was an accident.” Mary Clare wrinkled her nose. “But they were the alpha and beta of the pack, so they’re held responsible. Their Elders used old spells for the gildan, binding them with their own shed blood. It’s the kind of creepy old Basin doings my granny tells in stories that I thought were just tales. But I’ve touched Riv’s piercing.” Mary Clare pointed to her belly. “It’s real.”

  The image of Daeryn naked flashed in Annmar’s mind. Yes, a curling silver piece had been on his belly the night he was bitten. She’d forgotten it beside the startling view of his male anatomy.

  “It’s seriously in there, solid, like a stuck splinter. Rivley says until he and Dae learn the lessons, it won’t come out. Problem is, their Elders make them decipher the meanings behind the lessons. Until they do, they’re stuck with each other.” Mary Clare’s face held a sour look.

  “Is that what you two argue about?”

  “Yes,” snapped Mary Clare, then she frowned. “Mostly. There are other things, but I’ve told Riv he should make Daeryn work on it. I pushed him enough that I figured out I better not bring it up again. That was our biggest row a year ago. We don’t talk about their gildan anymore.”

  “I assume you’ve never asked Daeryn about it? Or encouraged him to work with Rivley to get it resolved?”

  Mary Clare snorted. “And get my throat torn out? Daeryn barely said two nice words to me before you became ill.”

  Apparently, they were on better terms now. That would make her friendship with both easier. “So Daeryn and Rivley are not pack now?”

  “Not after leaving their home in Rockbridge. But a gildan is stronger than a pack mark connection, so giving one permission—to enter your room, for instance—gives the other permission.”

  Annmar rested her head back in her chair. She’d never have given Daeryn the permission she’d given Rivley. Not after seeing him with Maraquin in his bed, even if she had been a wolf. This spun things around in the most confusing way. Daeryn had been the gentleman she thought only Rivley was. But could she trust Daeryn?

  “Stop thinking about it so much.” Mary Clare gripped Annmar’s knee. “This emotional turmoil won’t get you anywhere.”

  Annmar glanced down, but by this point in their friendship, she could guess what she’d see: Her redheaded friend’s face was just as twisted into worry as her own must be. The Knack Mary Clare kept hidden from nearly everyone else conveyed others’ feelings. Oh, dear, considering tending to Annmar had fallen mostly to Mary Clare, the sensitive girl probably had worked herself into a state these last few days. Having Daeryn’s help until Miriam was allowed to enter must have been a relief.

  “You can rescind the permission, you know,” Mary Clare said. “Just hold your doorknob and say, ‘I deny Rivley and Daeryn permission to enter my room.’”

  Fortunately, that same experience with emotions had also given Mary Clare years of practical exposure to solutions.

  “Please, would you forgive me for not trying to keep Daeryn out?” Mary Clare asked.

  Her new friend might be headstrong, but was a dear. “Yes, and I also thank you. I’m feeling so much better due to your help. Just…I suppose it’s my upbringing. I’m uncomfortable that he was here when I was unaware.”

  “Yes,” Mary Clare said slowly. “I suppose growing up in Derby was quite different for you than for us in the Basin. Since moving to Derby, my sister Mary Alice writes us about the Outside habits she and her beau have to adjust to.” Mary Clare bit her lip. “And she mentioned most people have white skin. Is it Daeryn’s brown skin that you don’t—”

  “No.” Lord forbid, how could she suggest that? Annmar shook her head. “Mother didn’t hold with English opinion. I suspect coming from the Basin had something to do with that. Skin color makes no difference to me.”

  “I didn’t think so, but figured I’d ask.”

  Annmar clasped her hand. “It’s because I’ve never courted. Outside, you just wouldn’t do…any of this without being betrothed, and likely not until marriage. Even as part of the working class, we wanted to avoid wagging tongues.”

  “Do you like Daeryn?” Mary Clare squeezed her hand.

  A heat traveled over her for the second time today. She swallowed and nodded.

  Mary Clare smiled. “Then what does it matter? You would have gotten to this point sooner or later.” She stood and brushed off her bib-and-brace. “Give the boy a hug some time and see if you like it as much as snuggling his polecat form.”

  Annmar gasped. “Really?”

  “Really.” Mary Clare laughed. “It’s just a hug. Not sex. No one around here will think it’s anything, except a friendly gesture. Heck, you’ve been in Rivley’s arms as often as I have lately.”

  That was different. Rivley had offered her comfort after she’d seen Daeryn in the compromising position. An arm to escort her around Market Day. Shielded her from Old Terry’s strange doings. All perfectly reasonable—oh. For Blighted Basin. Lord forbid, those incidents would never be excused in Derby. Young women simply did not behave that way with men. Even friends. There, she’d never allowed herself to be compromised for fear of her name being ruined. Here, no one thought twice. And neither had she. “Yes,” she mumbled.

  Mary Clare raised her hands and gave a shrug. “Are you hungry?” She waved to the tray she’d brought. “It’s only applesauce and potatoes. But I think you’re up to something more substantial. How about changing and coming down to the dining room?”

  Daeryn would be at dinner. A hug would be most improper…but she could speak with him. Annmar smiled. “Let’s do it.”

  chapter SIX

  By the time Annmar rounded the last steps of her staircase, her head was spiraling like the stairs. Between that and the unusually dim lighting in the bunkhouse’s ground floor, she clutched Mary Clare’s supporting arm.

  “It’s that corset,” Mary Clare hissed. “I should never have allowed you to dress in your city clothes.”

  But Annmar had to. Despite the cumbersome layers under her gown, she couldn’t face wearing the bib-and-brace today. She wanted to feel normal, though now it seemed that might have been a wishful dream.

  “Rest on one of the crates.” Mary Clare steered her off the last step of the staircase that was part of Annmar’s room barrier and into the dark storage bay—and promptly halted. “Why are the doors closed?”

  Strange. The two big doors usually stood open. The faint light coming down her stairs was the only illumination, and not enough to walk safely around the farm machinery. From the darkness of the mechanic’s workshop on the other side of the building shone a yellow-green glow. The odd light shifted and turned, brightening into two discs—no, eyes—in a huge head.

  What wild monster—

  They shrank back, but the beast must have spied them. It started across the open space, and Annmar’s knees gave out. Mary Clare yanked Annmar upright, tugging her backward with a vise-like grip.

  Green-yellow eyes stared without blinking, and the beast raised a shadowy limb toward them. “Well, well, well. You two have arrived just in time.”

  Mary Clare stammered, “M-master Brightwell?”

  “Yes, indeed, Miss Pemberton.”

  The beastly figure resolved into a man wearing a bizarre helmet with glimmering eyeholes but, indeed, Master Brightwell’s broad, brown nose and gray, bushy eyebrows came into view as he stepped closer. Thank heavens.

  “Didn’t scare you, did I?”

  “Mercy…no,” Annmar murmured.

  “I’m in need of a helper.”

  “Help you, sir? M-my eyes are already green,” said Mary Clare, her grip
loosening to just supporting Annmar.

  Master Brightwell laughed, his real eyes sparkling behind the green-yellow glow of his helmet’s eyeholes. “This device doesn’t change your eyes. It’s a natural lighting system I’ve derived using luciferin. With our diurnal workers needed in the fields at night, I’m adjusting the invention to help the workers see in the dark.”

  Annmar’s calming heart sped up again. “What happened to the night team?”

  “They’re fine,” Mary Clare said quickly. “Just…things aren’t going well.” She explained the guards’ continuing battles against the onslaught of pests and how they’d started using Master Brightwell’s stunners. “Miz Gere’s appealed to the townsfolk to help. My family and I are asking friends.”

  Annmar’s stomach tensed at the awful news, yet her previous employer, Mrs. Rennet, had never let her inventor clients’ hopes be dashed. She always found something positive to note about the machines they brought to her for advertisement, and urged her illustrators to do the same. This night viewer had to work, because Wellspring had to beat these gobblers, as Mary Clare called the pests.

  “These stunners sound so clever, stopping the gobblers from biting people,” Annmar said. “That’s working, and this invention will let even more people help.”

  She meant it. Master Brightwell had so many curious ideas, ones she’d love to speak with him about, like how he came up with putting doodems in his machines. In fact now, as her eyes adjusted, she saw the familiar blue lights appear at Master Brightwell’s temples. “You have mechanics running this,” she said.

  “Exactly, Miss Masterson.” Master Brightwell nodded. “Two of my miniatures. Their spring mechanisms will power my Luci-viewer through the night.” He lifted the helmet. “Would you give it a try and answer a few questions?”

  For a second, neither of them moved, but as strange as this might be, Annmar did want to help in any way she could. With a slight hesitation, she stepped forward.

  Mary Clare’s grip tightened on her arm. “Pardon me, sir, but how far along is your experiment? Annmar has already suffered one injury to her head.”

  Disappointment washed through her, but Mary Clare was correct. She couldn’t aggravate her healing, no matter how interesting the machine. She squeezed Mary Clare’s hand in thanks.

  “Let me assure you, the Luci-viewer is perfectly safe. These miniature engines do nothing more than feed a stream of air over a gram of luciferin that I’ve mixed with a daub”—he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, indicating the size of a coin—“of Basin coal.”

  “Ick,” Mary Clare said. “That stuff?” She turned to Annmar. “You probably haven’t had the pleasure, and be thankful you won’t with Miz Gere’s modernized radiator heat. But my family’s homeplace is heated with Basin coal. The lumps go from solid to jelly like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And you never know when it will happen. The stuff oozes over everything, spreading a black goo that never comes out completely, not even with lye soap.”

  “No longer true.” Master Brightwell raised a finger. “Not only have I developed a process to remove it, I can also convert the coal from solid to semi-liquid—” The inventor abruptly closed his mouth, leaving only a thin line of lips showing within his whiskers. He cleared his throat. “Well, never you mind about that. The point here is the coal and its minerals hold the luciferin, and when my fans pass air over the mixture, the byproduct is this lovely vision-enhancing green-yellow light.”

  “Master Brightwell?” Mary Clare said. “That’s a real clever thing to make a lantern that stays lit for so long with this coal and luci…er, stuff. But why didn’t you put it in a device to hold? And use more to make it brighter?”

  He chuckled. “It’s not exactly a lantern, young lady, nor need it be brighter. Here, you try the Luci-viewer.” Carefully, he settled the helmet over her head.

  Mary Clare gasped, her eyes wide and darting as she looked through the greenish eyeholes. She pivoted to stare into the depths of the dark building. “It’s amazing,” she whispered. “I can see everything, near to if it were daytime.”

  “Better than in natural light,” said Master Brightwell. “I’ve lined the eyeholes with copper, a metal the Basin coal is attracted to. Small particles—molecules, scientists call them—flow along the copper, drawing the luciferin mixture along and casting its light across the eyeholes. Looking through it boosts the eyes’ night vision.”

  Mary Clare spent another minute looking about the pitch-black workshop and identifying things Master Brightwell pointed out, even reading a few lines from a crate’s label. Then he lifted the helmet.

  “Ah, what a relief.” Mary Clare rubbed the back of her neck.

  Annmar heaved a sigh. She so wanted to have a try, but she had to protect her healing head.

  “Frankly, Master Brightwell,” Mary Clare said. “I cannot imagine wearing this heavy helmet all night. I’m sure those olden knights didn’t like them either. You need headgear that’s light, something the wearer won’t even notice while working, like Rivley when he comes into dinner still wearing his magnifiers perched in his hair.”

  Master Brightwell went still. “Magnifiers,” he whispered. “Spectacles. Many are made of copper. They fit nicely over the face.”

  “Perfect,” Annmar said. “Just get ribbons like a lady’s hat to hold the engines atop…or wait, leather straps might hold better.”

  “Yes, yes,” Master Brightwell murmured excitedly. Eyes gleaming, he scurried over to his workbench, thrust the helmet to one side and turned up the gas on the lamp. Within seconds, he was drawing on a scrap of paper.

  Annmar edged closer. Lines went onto the paper as fast as she would have made them, forming the device Mary Clare described. Master Brightwell dropped the pencil, reached overhead and grabbed a box off the shelf. He rummaged through a jumble until he’d found greenish copper spectacles. He popped out the lenses with his thumbs, heedless of where they landed. Down came another box, this one containing scraps of leather harnessing.

  “Uh, Master Brightwell?” Mary Clare said. “Do you need our help anymore?”

  “What?” He glanced over his shoulder. “No, no. Thank you for the suggestions. I’ll have a few of these up and running before nightfall. More after I drum up spectacles and scrounge other miniature engines I have around the place. Thankfully, I’ve stockpiled luciferin.”

  “Master Brightwell, where does luciferin come from?” Annmar asked.

  “Glow worms. Please ask Mr. Slipwing to hurry on back here, would you?” He dismissed them with a nod, then tossed over his shoulder, “Ah, and have him bring all the tea warmers the kitchen has about.”

  Chapter SEVEN

  With Annmar’s arm firmly in Mary Clare’s grip, they crossed the farmyard. In the gathering dusk, the mountain breezes brought a freshness to the evening air, and Annmar breathed it eagerly after days indoors. The farm crops and orchard trees. The strange smells she now recognized as the mix of animals. The clean, tilled earth. And one last outdoorsy aroma that Annmar really liked.

  This scent was stronger than the others, something so familiar, but so elusive. She couldn’t tell where exactly it came from. It seemed to underlie everything. Annmar wanted it close, to draw it and explore why she should know this thing, in much the same way she wanted to explore Daeryn.

  She shivered.

  Mary Clare tightened her grip. “Tired?”

  She was, but Annmar met Mary Clare’s worried frown with a smile. How did you explain something like this to someone who had never lived in an industrial borough like Derby? That Blighted Basin and everything about this country life was taking hold of her in a strange and exciting way. Tired was worth it. She could be tired every day from now until she went back and it wouldn’t matter. She would spend every minute experiencing this novel place, and Daeryn, and enjoy them both.

  Annmar sighed. “Just going to dinner may be an event for me.”

  “Miriam is probably going to have my head. But come on,
we’re nearly there.” Mary Clare pushed open the back door. Along the hall the clanking of dishes and a buzz of voices came from the dining room.

  “Dang.” Mary Clare picked up her pace, rushing Annmar by the sickroom and its tempting cots. “We’re late. Dessert is out.” They hurried through the dining room’s archway, past lingering farmworkers and to the first empty chair at the long table. Mary Clare saw Annmar seated and dashed off.

  All around Annmar, people talked of the night ahead, shooting and gobblers. Half of the nearby growers looked familiar, a comforting change from her first dinner here. Fewer ’cambires sat among them, but now Annmar could pick out the animal changers, even without her Knack. At a glance, any of these people would pass for human in Derbyshire. Hair, skin and body shapes were as varied as any Outside. But among them, many—like Daeryn sitting at the far end of the table—possessed a faintly unusual look about their faces.

  She couldn’t keep from looking at him, now decently covered in a golden shirt and trousers and speaking with Famil, leader of the day guards. Strands of his hair curled over the crown of his head, flipped and tossed as if by the wind, his longish bangs swiped to one side, not at all like his neat, bristling polecat face.

  His eyes were brown, a normal enough color, especially compared to Famil’s orange eagle ones. Very few had blue like Annmar’s, but then most of the Basin residents had dark hair, so perhaps the ancestry was lacking. Where might the early settlers have come from? Far from England, to produce eyes as rich as Daeryn’s.

  Their gazes met, and Annmar twitched hers away. Pain shot through her head at the quick motion. Oh, the things she shouldn’t think, shouldn’t do. She picked up her fork before realizing she didn’t have any food, so put it down and instead grabbed her napkin to place in her lap.

  The chair next to her scraped out, and Miriam settled beside her with a frown. “I should be happy to see you, but I’m not.” She lifted her wrist to Annmar’s forehead. “Whatever were you thinking, getting out of bed?”