Jenna Starborn

by Sharon Shinn

  “There is,” I said shortly. “It was disabled. Chance alone led me to wake up in time to save the house—but it was almost too late to save you.”

  His perambulations had brought him quite near me, and now he turned on me the full force of his regard. His eyes were so dark they appeared devil-black, and just now they were focused on me with an unnerving intensity.

  “Yes. I have not forgotten. You need not remind me that you saved my life. I doubt I will forget from now till the day I die. I am not used to owing anything to anyone—I never borrow a dollar because I hate debt so much that it leads me to despise my lender. But, is it not strange? I am happy to be your debtor in this. There is nothing I can think of that I would rather owe you.”

  I was a little embarrassed at this speech. “I merely happened to wake, and I happened to find you. Anyone could have done as much.”

  “But no one else in the house has stirred,” he said quietly. “What supreme delicacy of constitution led you to wake when everyone else has merely slumbered more deeply? What small voice whispered ‘Danger!’ in your ear and roused your fierce protective instincts to safeguard the ones you love? For there are many in this house you love, are there not, Miss Starborn? When you worked with such concentrated efficiency—I know, I watched you a good half hour—you were laboring to save Ameletta and Mrs. Farraday and Miss Ayerson and ... others. You would have worked just as hard to save strangers, I know—that is the kind of woman you are—but knowing that a slip on your part could result in the deaths of people you care for—that must have given your fingers greater quickness, must have sent the mental orders sizzling through the synapses of your brain.”

  “I did not want anyone to die, sir,” I said quietly, for his talk was strange and made me uneasy, and I thought a sober answer might soothe him. “As I am one of the inhabitants in the house, some of my liveliness may be attributed to a sense of self-preservation.”

  That made him smile, but the expression erased little of the intensity on his face. “That is the Miss Starborn I have gotten to know over the past week—valiant in such an unpretentious way that you cannot even get her to admit her heroism. Very well, we shall tell none of the others how close they were to oblivion, so that you need not suffer their gratitude as well. But I at least insist on thanking you—with all my heart, Miss Starborn.”

  He held out his hand and, wondering, I put mine in his. I could not recite a dozen times in my life when a level-one citizen had touched me of his own accord; it was the highest mark of favor. He clasped my hand with a grip so firm it drew me a pace nearer to him, and he peered down at me from those black eyes as if he would devour my own soul to light his darkness.

  “The first moment I laid eyes on you, when I saw your small figure stealing across my lawn, I knew you would exert some amazing and terrifying influence on my life,” he said, very softly and very rapidly. “I was trying to argue myself out of this conviction when I lost control of my aircar, so you see, you instantly fulfilled my dark predictions. You and I are destined to meet in confrontations more strange and violent than this one, Miss Starborn—that I tell you with no fear of contradiction. You are my good angel or my bad angel, I know that for sure, but I could not say for certain which you will prove to be.”

  “I hope I am no man’s bad angel, Mr. Ravenbeck,” I said, as calmly as I could, though his wild talk made it hard to speak without agitation.

  His hand squeezed on mine so painfully I thought he had forgotten that I was, in fact, flesh and bone. “Then good angel you shall be,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I take that as your promise.”

  I could scarcely think of a reply to this mad declaration. “I will do what I can, sir,” was all I could come up with.

  Again, he squeezed my hand. “And so you shall, Jenna, and so you shall.”

  What I could have replied to that—addressed as I was by my given name!—I could never have guessed. Just at that moment there was a ringing at the upstairs door loud enough to rouse the whole unnaturally sleeping house.

  “The mine superintendent, no doubt,” Mr. Ravenbeck said, dropping my hand and swiveling around to glance toward the exit. “I surmise you were correct in thinking damage was done at the compound as well as the manor. I must go and make sure all is well there.”

  “I will check on the others,” I managed to say in a cool voice.

  He glanced at me once and nodded briskly. “Do that,” he said, and strode for the door without another word. I stared after him blankly a moment before turning back to make sure I had successfully completed all the repairs I could manage at this hour of the night.

  Once satisfied that the generators would get us safely to dawn, I climbed wearily back upstairs. I went silently from room to room, making sure all the residents were alive and breathing. I kissed Ameletta on the cheek before leaving her room and finally making my way back to my own chamber. There I sat on my bed and stared at my hand for a good half hour before climbing back under the covers and commanding my stupefied brain to relax itself into slumber.

  Chapter 6

  Perhaps it was no surprise that I slept late the next morning, something I do so rarely I can count the occasions on my two hands. As soon as I woke, my thoughts instantly went to the place they had stayed so stubbornly the night before, when I could not will myself to sleep. The whole night had been so strange, from the powerful dreams to the terror of seeing Mr. Ravenbeck unconscious to the frantic working in the generator room to repair the malicious damage. But my thoughts lingered only briefly on those events. What I considered, again and again, was the feel of his hand commandeering mine and the dark look in his dark eyes as he watched me.

  I shivered, and got out of my bed and dressed.

  Down in the breakfast room, there was some of the chaos I was beginning to expect during the days of Mr. Ravenbeck’s visit. Miss Ayerson was eating tidily enough, but Ameletta was doing some kind of twirl around the room, and Mrs. Farraday was half in, half out of the doorway, talking to an invisible person on the other side. I gathered a plateful of food and seated myself at the table.

  “Is something amiss?” I inquired.

  “Apparently there was some excitement last night,” Miss Ayerson said with her usual serenity. “We have not yet learned all the details, but there was some trouble at the mine compound.”

  I poured myself some coffee and looked interested. “Oh? What kind of trouble? A brawl between workers, you mean?”

  The look she flicked in my direction was very cool. “Nothing like that. One of the generators failed, and there is some suspicion it was sabotage. Mr. Ravenbeck was summoned in the dead of night.”

  Mrs. Farraday stuck her head back in the room to address us. “Yes, did you not hear the ringing at the door, Jenna? I did, but I declare I was so tired I could not force myself to move! And eventually I convinced myself it was just a part of my dream, for I was having very gloomy dreams—things I’m sure I don’t like to think about in bright daylight.”

  “The doorbell?” I repeated, not sure how to answer, for indeed I had heard it but under circumstances I was loath to repeat. It seemed Mr. Ravenbeck had kept his promise and refrained from telling the others what danger they too had been in.

  “Yes, it rang and rang, but I slept through it and didn’t hear a thing,” Ameletta said mournfully. She twirled over in my direction for her morning kiss, a custom we had begun in recent days.

  “Just as well, for a good night’s sleep is what a child of your age needs,” Mrs. Farraday declared. “Though I must say, for having slept as deeply as I did last night, I do not feel particularly rested.”

  No answer to that either. I sipped my coffee. “So Mr. Ravenbeck was called away to deal with the crisis? Did they find the individual who vandalized the equipment?”

  “Mr. Ravenbeck seemed to think he was quite certain who was responsible and would take immediate steps,” Mrs. Farraday said. Someone from the other side of the door addressed her at that moment
, and her face again turned from us as she made her reply.

  I raised my eyebrows at the tutor. Mr. Ravenbeck had showed no such certainty to me last night—indeed, had rejected out of hand my one very good suspect. “Really!” I said. “I wonder who?”

  “Even if we had the name, we are unlikely to recognize the staff at the mining compound,” Miss Ayerson said. “No doubt it was some malcontent Mr. Ravenbeck had already heard of.”

  “Well! This is all very exciting,” I said. “I shall have to ask Mr. Ravenbeck for more details if I see him today.”

  Mrs. Farraday’s head swung around in our direction again. “Oh, you won’t see him today. He’s left.”

  “Left?” I said blankly. I felt my stomach quite irrationally dissolve at the news. “For good?”

  “No, just for a few days. He’s gone to the holding of the Ingersolls, half the continent away, to consult about—some new mining process, I believe he said, but I simply have no head for matters like that. He and Bianca Ingersoll have always been allies here on Fieldstar, and they frequently share information about—new markets or new techniques, or whatever it is. I sometimes think Mr. Ravenbeck would not come to Fieldstar half so often if Bianca Ingersoll was not just a day’s flight away.”

  It was not just my stomach; it was my bones and muscles and arteries that were liquefying beneath my skin. “She sounds like a good friend to him,” I said in a hollow voice.

  “Yes-perhaps more than friend one day. No! Rinda! Not that serving tray!” Mrs. Farraday exclaimed, and dove through the door to disappear into the kitchen.

  I was left staring blindly at the plate on the table before me. My fingers could not support the weight of my coffee cup, so I sloppily set it down. The smell of my food left me nauseated, and for a moment I thought I might be sick.

  “I do wonder what will become of us if Mr. Ravenbeck marries Bianca Ingersoll,” Miss Ayerson observed in such a casual voice it was clear she neither noticed my distress nor suffered from any herself. “Obviously, both mines would still be in operation, but I cannot imagine that they would want to maintain two households, and Sollbrook Manor is much finer than Thorrastone Park. Perhaps they would relocate all of us there—or some of us. I cannot imagine that I would still have a position here. And Mrs. Farraday ...” Miss Ayerson shook her head. “Well, we shall just have to await the outcome of events.”

  I looked over at her, though my eyes were having trouble settling on anything, and certainly her pale, closed face did not give me much to focus on.

  “And, of course, if they closed the manor, you would have no work here either,” she pursued. “But technicians are wanted everywhere. Perhaps they would even need you at Sollbrook Manor. So I would not despair, if I were you, Miss Starborn. I cannot think your life would change at all for the worse if Mr. Ravenbeck were to marry.”

  I could not later remember how I escaped the breakfast room and Miss Ayerson’s knifelike conversation. I performed my duties that day as one in a dream, skimmed the technical bulletins on the StellarNet without registering any of the words, and walked the grounds of Thorrastone Park for hours. I knew that my reaction was not only extreme, it was ridiculous, for there was nothing, could be nothing, between my employer and me. The fact that he had held my hand and gazed down at me with something like infatuation last night did not change the facts of the case. Which were: He was a level-one citizen, I a half-cit, and our worlds could only with great violence intersect. I did not expect them to; I had never even shaped that plotline in my dreams. I just had not expected—so quickly and so abruptly—that my ability to fantasize over him freely would be taken away. For you can, with some forgiveness, moon over an unattached man who has shown you some kindness. Only a fool or a scoundrel will pine after someone who is married, or about to be.

  It took me most of the day, and a great deal of vigorous walking, before I had full command over myself again, but by and by my natural composure reasserted itself. When I joined the others at dinner, I was able to talk with about the same level of coherence I thought I usually managed. Just give me a day or two to adjust to the idea, and I would be even more unconcerned than now I pretended to be.

  Still, this hard-won calm did not prevent me from engaging in a shameful exercise that night when I returned to my room. I went to my private StellarNet terminal, which heretofore I had only used to check on the day’s news events or Arkady updates, and I activated one of the search engines. Narrowing down my inquiry by degrees, I entered in the following sequence of names: Fieldstar, Ingersoll, Sollbrook Manor and Bianca Ingersoll. Then I waited for the information to leap to the screen.

  It arrived in seconds, complete with graphics. Sollbrook Manor was, as Miss Ayerson had said, a splendid place, a rolling, multistoried mansion of simulated gray brick on lawns more festooned with gardens than Thorrastone Park. The upkeep of the imported roses must in itself cost a small fortune. It was hard to imagine why, on such an inhospitable and not particularly sociable planet, any property holder would need such a huge house. I had had that thought more than once about Thorrastone Park. The expansive grounds—yes, that I could understand, and the mining operations themselves required a great deal of space. But why build such a large manor for a handful of inhabitants; would that not serve to emphasize your loneliness rather than erase it? But I was not one who delighted in grand displays. My idea of true happiness was a small crowded hearth, not a great empty one. Perhaps this was how citizens and half-cits differed. We craved closeness and they craved ostentation.

  The text gave me details of the manor’s founding, the name of the architect and the year the building was completed. But I did not care much for that information. I pressed on to the next screen, grimly curious to see the face of Bianca Ingersoll.

  And there she was, laughing back at me from her electronic storage. She had fine, patrician features, high sculpted cheekbones that looked arrogant enough to be natural but perfect enough to have been purchased. Her eyes were a sunny blue, unclouded by any troubles, and her full mouth was turned up in a smile of pure happiness. But her true glory was her hair, a sparkling champagne blonde that cascaded over her shoulders with great abandon. In this image, it was impossible to judge its length, for it seemed to tumble down past her waist and out of range of the camera.

  Only a full citizen would have hair like that. Only someone who did not have to rise early in the dark, dress herself quickly, tie back whatever stray tresses might fall in her way during the hours of her labor. Only a full citizen could be that beautiful, that carefree. Who would not love to look upon such a countenance, unwearied by stress, by worry, by fear? Who would not want to come to rest inside the circle of such beauty?

  Leaving Bianca Ingersoll’s image on my screen, I fetched a small round mirror from my dressing table and propped it up against a stack of books, right beside the monitor. Now my own face peered back at me, side by side with Miss Ingersoll’s. Oh, here was a contrast! Here was a study in contradictions! The skin of my own face was dark and sallow, while my narrow mouth showed no inclination toward merriment. My cheekbones were firm but unremarkable, and my eyes were shaded and secretive. Even when I attempted to smile—to laugh, like the beautiful woman on the screen—my expression remained watchful, as if I expected whatever event amused me now to turn in a flash to something that would destroy me.

  And my hair! Short, straight, brown, severe, it framed my face in a dark halo as if to further contain any thoughts, any expressions, that my features might otherwise give away. This was a working woman’s coiffure, cut in such a way that it would not impede my vision or fall into a set of gears and get wound around a working mechanism. This was the hairstyle, this was the face, this was the expression of a half-citizen.

  Who would ever love a woman like me? Could Mr. Ravenbeck? Could anyone?

  Three more days passed with no additional mishaps or even significant events. I took Ameletta with me one of those days, more for her companionship than to gratify Miss Ayerson, and
again we picnicked under the mighty oxenheart tree and read fables aloud. We did not encounter Mr. Ravenbeck on this particular outing, nor Gilda Parenon, nor anyone else. We had the whole park to ourselves.

  That evening was yet another of those meals in which Mrs. Farraday seemed beside herself with excitement. She fluttered in late, took her seat, jumped up to go confer with the cook, returned, helped herself to the main meal, ran to the kitchen again, and, upon rejoining us, settled herself with a breathless little laugh.

  “Oh, my! I don’t know when I’ve been so flustered!” she exclaimed. “Jenna, could you pass me the potatoes, please? Yes, and the gravy, too. Ameletta, love, the meat platter. Careful—now—”

  “Has something happened to upset you?” I asked, though she did not seem unhappy, just agitated.

  “Upset me! No! Though the house may very well be turned upside down. Mr. Ravenbeck is returning tomorrow—and bringing a houseful of guests with him! I declare, the last time we had five or ten people staying here was—was—well, I can’t recall!”

  “Guests? Really? From Sollbrook Manor?” Miss Ayerson said, for I was incapable of framing the question.

  “Indeed, yes, Bianca Ingersoll and her sister and her mother, and several houseguests who have been staying with them—Mr. Fulsome and Mr. Taff, I believe, and perhaps one or two more—it’s very exciting, but I must confess to a little onset of nerves—”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?” I started to ask, but my question was interrupted by a squeal from Ameletta, who had leaped to her feet upon the first mention of a party.

  “Ooooh, may I dress up in my pearl-white dress and sit at the table with Mr. Ravenbeck?” she cried. “May I have luncheon with the ladies? May I stay up late every night and—”