Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She glared around the room, catching the eyes of every one of her captivated listeners, who looked away in shame. “Well, let me tell you something, good people. Where I come from, we aren’t happy about children born outside a family bond, but we don’t think there’s anything shameful about it. And if I were pregnant without being sworn and sealed to a husband, I wouldn’t need to run away, because I’d have any number of people to support me, starting with my family.”

  She took another breath. “And if I’d known what you people were like, I sure as hell wouldn’t have come here.” Telaine pounded her fists down on the table again and stormed out of the tavern, slamming the door behind her.

  Now she knew what Aunt Weaver had told everyone. “Got into trouble” indeed. She probably hadn’t even come out and said her niece was an unmarried mother-to-be, she’d just let everyone assume it. Telaine was done being polite to the woman. She was going to tear her apart.

  She saw Mistress Richardson on her stoop and veered over to meet her. “Let’s get this straight,” Telaine said. “I have no interest in your sons. I would have no interest in your sons even if I were trolling for a father for my illegitimate child. That’s what you thought, isn’t it? How dare you take it on yourself to judge me? You are a nasty-minded, mean-spirited woman, and next time you should have the decency to say what your problem is instead of taking it out on my clothes.”

  She left the woman gaping, her face as red as her hair, and stomped away in the direction of the forge. Stomping was nearly as satisfying as kicking.

  Garrett was in the forge, laying out tools. “I am not pregnant,” she snarled at him as she passed.

  “Never thought you were,” he said, meeting her furious eyes with that calm look.

  That brought her to a halt. “Really? How did you manage to be practically the only person in town who didn’t?”

  Garrett cleaned off his hands with a stained rag. “You act like someone with nothing to hide,” he said.

  Her face must have been a wild scene of contradictory feelings, because he chuckled and added, “And I noticed your aunt never said you were pregnant. All the rest was rumor. Thought I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  Her anger drained away, leaving her with the empty, clean feeling that comes after a good rage. “Thanks for that,” she said.

  Garrett nodded. “Happen you’d take a look at something for me?” he asked. He gestured to her to enter the forge. She did, curious, and followed him through the forge to the back door of his house.

  His home was small but tidy and smelled of pine and, more faintly, the hot metal of the forge. The kitchen and the—well, it wasn’t a drawing room exactly, but she didn’t know what else to call it—were a single room, with a fireplace in the center surrounded by a half-circle hearth made of small stones and two closed doors on either side of it. At the far side of the room she could see a steeply rising staircase.

  The wooden floor, planed smooth, was covered by an Eskandelic woven rug dyed blue and green that was a long way from home. There was a sofa covered in green cloth matching the shades in the rug and a cushioned rocking chair in the drawing room, and a table and chair in what would have been the center of the kitchen if it was a separate room. The table was scratched and worn, but in a homey way that suggested many people over the years had eaten at it. Garrett’s iron stove was larger than Aunt Weaver’s and his sink was smaller. The sink—

  Telaine drew in an awed breath. Fitted to the tap was an antique Device of brass and silver, with a brass handle at the top and an engraved spout where the water emerged. She ran her fingers over the curve of the Device; it was slightly rough with pitting. “It’s got to be almost a hundred years old,” she said.

  “Happen it’s as old as the house,” Garrett said. “Was here when I moved in, certain sure, but that was only four years ago, and it’s much older.”

  “You didn’t grow up here?” Telaine said.

  “I was born in Overton, apprenticed there, and then Longbourne needed a smith. If it helps, took most of a year for folks to get used to me.” He gave a half-smile and a shrug. Telaine laughed.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be here all that long, but that’s a comfort,” she said. “I’m guessing you need this fixed.”

  Garrett turned the handle to the right. Water poured out of the tap. “Supposed to get hotter the further to the right you turn it,” he said, “but now it’s nothing but cold.”

  Telaine dabbled her fingers in the flow, then wiped them on her trouser leg. The water was icy. “They don’t make them like this anymore,” she said. “I might not be able to fix it. And I’m afraid I don’t have the materials to build a new one.”

  “You can’t make it worse,” he said. “Besides which I hear from Mistress Adderly you brought her Device back from the dead, so happen you’ll do all right.”

  “Thanks for having faith in me,” she said, and he fixed her with another one of those direct, calm looks that made her wonder what went on inside this quiet man’s head.

  “I’m outside if you need anything,” he said, and shut the door behind him. Telaine turned off the water and examined the ancient Device.

  “You deserve to work again,” she told it. Then she put a hand to her forehead and said, “Which will not happen if I don’t have tools. Big ones. Good thing I brought a few.” That would mean going past Aunt Weaver without killing her. Telaine found her rage had subsided somewhat. Her “aunt” ought to thank Garrett for preventing her untimely death.

  She retrieved her tools and her bag of spare parts without so much as a look at Aunt Weaver, a task made easier by the loom that hid almost all of her from view. The weight of the adjustable spanner in her hand calmed her somewhat; Telaine rarely needed the large tools, preferred working in miniature, but she liked its solidity and how it contrasted with the rest of her Deviser’s kit. Even so, she ignored the people she passed on the way back from Aunt Weaver’s. Making friends was no longer a priority, and she’d probably lost any chance at doing so with that outburst in the tavern, so smiling and nodding was pointless and would make her angrier when they snubbed her. Time to focus on the job.

  She had to have Garrett remove the elbow joint, which had frozen sometime in the last hundred years, but aside from that disassembling the Device was easy. They might not make them like this anymore, but maybe they should, she thought as she looked at the Device’s innards spread out neatly on the table.

  She sat down and began reconnecting the pieces, two at a time, discovering the function of each and looking for what had broken. There were, to her eye, too many iron pieces; iron had finally been phased out by silver only twenty-five years before, after some clever Deviser realized the iron was causing other pieces to fail sooner than expected. If an iron piece needed replacing, that could become expensive.

  When the door opened, Telaine said, without looking up, “Can you cast something other than iron?”

  Garrett didn’t say anything, so she looked up and saw him staring at his table, covered with bits of Device, with some dismay. His expression was so comical she had to laugh. “Don’t worry, I know how to put it all back together,” she said.

  “You’d think I’d have heard the explosion,” he said. He leaned against the sink and added, “It’s suppertime.”

  “Oh!” Telaine gasped. “And here’s a mess all over your table.”

  He waved his hand. “I eat at the sink, most nights. But…you can fix it?”

  She nodded. “But there’s bad news.” She picked up two pieces and fitted them together. “I found the broken piece and I had a replacement for it, so that’s all right. But this—” she picked up a toothy spoked gear half the size of her palm—“this is iron, which is making the Device run less smoothly—you’ve probably got to swing the handle all the way to the right to get really hot water, and that shouldn’t happen—and, worse, it’s got a crack. So it needs to be recast, but in order to make the Device work its best, it should be cast in silver. And th
at would be a lot of silver.” She bounced the gear in her hand.

  “What would you recommend?”

  She bounced the gear again. “If you don’t mind the way it’s working now, iron. If you can afford it, silver, and it will run another hundred years.”

  Garrett thought about it. “It’ll have to be iron,” he said. He sounded as if he were afraid of hurting her feelings by not wanting the best Device she could produce.

  “That would be my suggestion. You’re lucky,” she added, “you can make the part yourself. Anyone else, this might not be worth the effort.”

  “Lucky to have you around, too,” he said with a smile. She was starting to look forward to those rare smiles.

  “I should probably put this back together,” she said.

  “Won’t you have to take it apart to get at the gear?”

  “I can leave that out. You won’t be able to use your tap, but it’s not good to leave all these little pieces lying around. When can you make the cast?”

  “Tomorrow. Can you come back then?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Mister Garrett,” Telaine said, “for a chance to work on a Device like this, I ought to be paying you.” He opened his mouth to protest, and she named a price. “But it’s still a real pleasure.”

  He went through the door beyond the fireplace and returned with a couple of coins. “Happen you’re undercharging me?”

  “Not at all. I have to live, too. I don’t want to be a burden on my aunt.” Thanks to Mistress Wright handling the financial side of their uneven partnership, she had no idea how much her Deviser work was worth. She probably was undercharging Garrett, but she liked him and he was…if he wasn’t a friend yet, he was at least the only friendly person in this town who wasn’t making flirtatious advances. And she didn’t need the work to survive. Not by a long way.

  “You want to eat with me? Nothing fancy, but I did keep you past suppertime.” He looked down at his hands.

  “I should probably join Aunt Weaver.”

  Garrett glanced up and met her eyes. “Happen that’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not sure you aren’t still ready to tear her apart.”

  So he’d been paying attention. “I…think I’ve calmed down. But we’re going to have a conversation.”

  “So long as it’s not the kind of conversation ends with someone getting stabbed.” Garrett didn’t look convinced.

  Telaine began fitting pieces together, holding a couple of metal pieces in place around the imaginary broken gear. “I don’t know how to use a knife. But I wouldn’t stab her even if I could.” She’d had the basic self-defense instruction Aunt Imogen insisted all her children learn, but nothing more, reasoning it was out of character for the Princess. Fighting her way out of a tight situation would blow her cover to heaven and back. I could always scratch her eyes out.

  Garrett held the door for her when she’d finished. She felt him watching her as she walked down the dark street, her head high. She didn’t feel angry. She felt righteous. And she was going to have it out with her strangely antagonistic landlady.

  There was one light on downstairs, and Telaine found Aunt Weaver in the drawing room, putting skeins of yarn and knitting needles into a cloth bag. She didn’t look up when Telaine came in. “There’s supper in the cold room,” she said. “I’m off to knitting circle.”

  “You know, up until noon today I would have been grateful you’d saved me something,” Telaine said. She sat down on the uncomfortable chair opposite her “aunt;” its horsehair-stuffed cushion had molded into the shape of some long-ago sitter’s rear end. “But now I’m grateful the rumor you started about me being pregnant didn’t also have me fleeing from the murder of a houseful of unbonded orphans.”

  Aunt Weaver looked up, startled. “I never said you were pregnant.”

  “You said something that let everyone think that!”

  “I—” Aunt Weaver’s lips thinned in an angry scowl. “That wasn’t how I meant it. Happen I could’ve been less…ambiguous. Young Jeffrey said give you an excuse, but I didn’t want to get too creative in case our stories were at odds. So I told folks you’d had some trouble you needed to get away from. I can see how that could be misinterpreted.” She looked away, and said, “Sorry about that.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know what they were saying.”

  “Been busy since I got word you were coming. Haven’t got out much these last few days. But I bet I know who’s responsible, and Rose Garrity’s going to get an earful next I see her.” She thrust another skein into the bag, forcefully. “She needs to be reminded not to trifle with me.”

  “It’s not only that. You haven’t been even a little friendly since I arrived.” Telaine rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her head was beginning to ache. “Mistress Weaver, did I do something to you? Something you feel you need to get back at me for? Or are you resentful that I’m here at all? Because if that’s the case, you ought to take it out on my uncle. The way I’m feeling now, I’d even help. But stop finding ways to make my life a misery.”

  Aunt Weaver set the bag on the other chair and gave Telaine an angry glare that once again gave her the feeling she’d seen this woman somewhere else. Right. Julia had the same expression on the rare occasions she was angry. “You’re right, I don’t want you here,” she said, “fooling these people into thinking you’re something you’re not. They’re good people and they don’t deserve it.”

  “Good people who think it’s all right to shame someone for having an illegitimate child? They assumed the worst of me!”

  “That sort of thing means more in a small town than in a place as big as Aurilien. Men and women who don’t provide a bond for their children can set off bad feelings that last for years, and there’s nowhere to get away to. Don’t go judging ’less you plan on making a home here.”

  “But I’m not staying! I’ll do what I came here for and then I’ll be gone. And they’ll all remember me as your odd niece who couldn’t cook or do her own laundry and wasn’t actually pregnant.”

  “Really? Then why’d you care so much about them thinking you were pregnant?”

  Telaine’s mouth opened. “I—” she began. Aunt Weaver was right. She’d taken it personally, as if it mattered what these people thought. Because it had. “I don’t know why,” she said.

  “Don’t know much about your real life,” said Aunt Weaver, picking up the bag and shouldering the long strap. “Your uncle said you were good at reading people, making ’em react the way you want. Happen that’s not something you can give up doing. Happen you see these folks the way you do the ones you manipulate back home.”

  Telaine leaned back in the chair, whose hard cushion dug into her spine. It had been easy to play on Taylor and the Richardsons’ interest in her; it would be just as easy to turn them into her doting swains whether she cared for them or not. She’d flattered Mistress Adderly by stroking the woman’s ego without caring that she was being insincere; mostly, she realized in shame, to prove to herself she could. The only person she’d had any genuine interaction with was Garrett, if you didn’t count the way she’d ripped into Mistress Richardson. It seemed she hadn’t left the Princess behind in Aurilien after all.

  “You’re right. I do it without thinking,” she admitted. “The people of Longbourne aren’t friends. They’re pieces I’m using to do my job. And the truth is, I don’t need to treat them that way to do what I’m here for. I don’t mean them any harm, but if I were planning to live here, I’d be abusing their trust.”

  “And since you’re not staying, you ought leave ’em be.”

  Telaine put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, and groaned. “Aunt Weaver,” she said, her voice muffled, “if I swear I won’t manipulate these people anymore, will you stop putting obstacles in my way? Starting with showing me how I’m supposed to bathe?”

  Aunt Weaver nodded once. “But you�
��re not going to like the bathing,” she said.

  Chapter Eight

  She hated the bathing. Telaine stood naked in a large metal tub in the darkened kitchen, calf-deep in lukewarm water, and scrubbed herself more quickly than she’d imagined possible. Washing her hair in the sink was worse; the water was cold, her waist-length hair took forever to dry, and she resolved to be out of Longbourne before winter, because she imagined hair-washing didn’t even happen then.

  But once she was clean, she felt so much better. It was late when she finally crawled into bed. She slept, and had pleasant dreams of places far from this awful town where no one liked her.

  Breakfast was a surprise. When she came downstairs, Aunt Weaver was in the process of frying flat cakes on a griddle set on the top of the stove. She lifted one off with the spatula and deposited it on a plate she handed to Telaine. “They’re good with honey,” she said. Telaine poured a dollop on and tasted it. It was delicious.

  “I thought you’d made up ‘figgin,’” she confessed without thinking.

  “Does sound like a made-up thing,” Aunt Weaver agreed. “Did you ask for one?”

  “No, I asked him to name all the sizes.”

  Aunt Weaver grunted. It might have been a kind of low-grade laugh. “You’re not stupid,” she said.

  “Thanks for the compliment,” Telaine said. She gobbled her flat cake and had another one, then cleared her plate and washed it under the tap. She was starting to figure out how washing dishes worked. “I worked on a Device for Mister Garrett,” she said. “It heats water as it comes out of the tap.”

  “Boiling water over the fire’s always been good enough for me.”

  “But I think I could get the materials—wouldn’t it be nice—”

  “I got my own ways of doing things, thank you.”

  Telaine gave up. “I’m going back over there now. I’ll be back for supper.”

  “Have a good day,” said Aunt Weaver.

  Telaine stopped. “You know,” she said with an arched brow, “that was almost pleasant. I might get the idea that you approve of me.”