Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “Let’s go downstairs,” she continued, and Hope again put her small hand in hers. The gesture gave her a rush of pleasure at being trusted by this small girl, who reminded her so much of Jessamy when he’d been this age. He’d been mad after Devices even then, and that passion had never gone away. How relieved she’d been when he turned out to have the magical ability to match the passion.

  Telaine went to the broad, age-worn kitchen table that had fed generations of Richardsons and pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve, which she spread across its scarred top. “Do you want to watch? Only I have to cut your doll open. You might not like that.”

  Hope looked at her with the disdain only small children can muster. “She’s not alive,” she said.

  Telaine raised her eyebrows. “Well then, stay and watch,” she said with amusement. She laid open her roll of tools and took out her tin snips. They’d do as scissors. She cut the stitches along the seam at the back of the doll’s head and removed the padding and the little Device. It was a knot of wires the size of a walnut, its round shape distorted, but Telaine thought that was on purpose.

  She poked at the threads of wire, moving them to get a look at the interior. “Hah,” she said, finding a hinge. It only looked like it was a ball of wire. She found a catch, depressed it with a flattened rod the size of a penny nail, and it popped open.

  “This is easy to fix. You can come with me, I think you’ll like this,” she said. She carried the opened Device outside and around the back of the forge, feeling Garrett’s eyes on her. It was a much nicer feeling than Morgan’s attentions, but she still didn’t want to meet his gaze, knowing he’d again have something to say about her safety with Morgan.

  She crouched near the source, which had drifted only a bit, said “Watch this” to Hope, held the Device like a cracked nut in the center of the source, and pulled at the source to make a loose end.

  Hope’s eyes and mouth went round as the tiny ball of silver inside the Device began to glow a pale purple. It soon became bright enough to cast an ethereal glow over both their faces. Telaine clicked the latch shut when she judged the motive force had been imbued enough. Hope looked disappointed. “It has to be closed if you want your doll to talk,” Telaine reminded her, and the girl’s face cleared.

  Back inside, Telaine repacked the Device in the cloth head, then said, “Now she has to be sewn together. Your ma can do that when she’s got a minute.”

  “I have one now,” Eleanor said. She had a needle and thread ready and re-stitched the seam in no time.

  “I wish I could do that,” Telaine sighed.

  “Not hard to learn,” Eleanor said. She handed the doll to Hope.

  “Hard to do, though, for me. You have no idea how hard my aunt tried to make a needlewoman of me. Do you know how to make her work?” she said to Hope.

  Hope shook her head. Telaine took the doll, gently, held it to her face, and said, “I love my baby.”

  A tinny voice said, “I love my mommy!”

  Hope snatched the doll and ran away, up the stairs. “Say thanks to Miss Bricker, Hope!”

  “Thanks,” came a muffled voice, far above. The two women chuckled.

  “How much do I owe you for that?” Eleanor asked.

  Telaine shook her head. “I don’t charge children. They remind me of my cousin, and I never made him pay. Well, not in the traditional sense.”

  “There’s a story there, I wager.”

  Telaine grinned. Could she tell stories of her royal family? It wasn’t like she had to name names or say anything pompous like “When my cousin Prince Jessamy, seventh in line for the throne…”

  “My youngest cousin—you remember I went to live with my aunt and uncle when I was young? Well, he was born several years after that, so he thinks of me as his sister. Anyway, my youngest cousin always wanted to be a Deviser, ever since he was younger than Hope. And one day, when he was five or six, he stole my tools and wrecked them. Some of them are delicate and easy to break. I caught him banging away at this toy train he had, shouting ‘Device! Device! Device!’ I gather he wanted to make it move by itself.” Eleanor laughed.

  “Anyway, when I found out, I was furious. Devisers’ kits are expensive. So I went into his room one day when he was out playing, and I fixed a dozen toy soldiers to march on their own, but light-sensitive, so they’d move only when it got dark. So he’d hear something moving around, but when my aunt came in, they’d stop.

  “It was a horrible trick to play on a five-year-old, but I was sixteen and at the time I thought it was funny. Then the next day I explained what I’d done and told him if he ever took my things again, I’d find something else of his to ruin. Then I took the soldiers apart and showed him how the Device worked. He’s been responsible ever since.”

  “That’s both cruel and funny,” Eleanor said, laughing again. “But I can see how it’d leave you feeling like you owed him something.”

  “So I pay it back to other children.”

  “Well, I have something I will pay you for, if you can do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  Eleanor furrowed her brow. “I don’t quite know, but happen you can work it out if I tell you what I figure on. See, Trey’s wedding, they’re having the shivaree down by the lake. It’s where the spring festival is held, there’s a maypole and such. But this being nearly autumn, and them not wanting to wait until spring—”

  She pulled a worried, annoyed face, and Telaine nodded agreement, because it was common knowledge that Trey and Blythe hadn’t exactly waited for their wedding vows to consummate their union. “I wanted to do something to make it pretty. It’s getting brown out there. And I was thinking, what about tiny lights floating in the air? But happen that’s not possible.”

  Telaine leaned back on the bench. “Floating…maybe not. They’d try to fall down. But…lights on strings? They could maybe run between the maypole and nearby trees. It would be like a tent made of light.”

  Eleanor’s face was lit up itself. “That sounds near perfect, Lainie. Could you do it?”

  “I’d need to see the place, and I’d need a whole lot of string or twine. And components to build the Device. But, yes, happen I can.”

  Eleanor went to the door. “Ben? You got a minute?” Telaine heard his muffled reply. “Lainie needs to look at the maypole, something she’s doing for the wedding. Can you show her, or are you busy?”

  “In a few minutes,” Garrett said.

  “Thanks so much,” Eleanor said, and turned back to Telaine. “I can get you all the string you need,” she said. “And anything else.”

  “It’ll be so pretty.”

  Garrett was a comfortable companion through the forest to the maypole, telling her things about the lake, the typical autumn weather, and what a shivaree was like. “Lots of dancing,” he said, “lots of food. The bride and groom make speeches.”

  “Most of the weddings I’ve been to, the bride and groom’s friends do the talking.”

  “Here, they talk about the families they’re leaving behind and the family they’re joining. If it’s not a direct adoption, they might say something about the new family they’re making.”

  “It sounds nice.”

  Garrett smiled. “Depends on how drunk they are.”

  The forest opened up on a clearing that might have been natural once, but had been widened by axe and saw until it was nearly forty feet across and roughly circular with the maypole at its center. Telaine walked around the maypole, looking up at its height and the trees circling the cleared area.

  “I think I can thread wires back and forth from the pole to the trees,” she said. “And maybe weave some in and out of the long wires to keep it rigid.”

  “Good thing you know what you’re doing. I can’t exactly picture it.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at him, standing at the edge of the clearing. “Think how surprised you’ll be to see it.”

  “I’m always surprised at the things you come up with.” He
looked up at the sky again, and said, “Best hurry back. There’s a storm coming.”

  When they were within sight of Longbourne, he said, “You having problems with that friend of the Baron’s?”

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Garrett shook his head. “Morgan’s a mean fellow. Might turn into something you can’t handle.”

  “I don’t think the Baron would let that happen.”

  He grimaced. “Baron’s not much better than his pet.”

  “Even so, I try not to be alone with Morgan.”

  “You’re alone with him every time he takes you up on his horse.”

  “He cares more about his horse than he does about me, I think.”

  Garrett sighed. “Don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”

  “I am. I promise I know what I’m doing, and I’m being careful.”

  He shook his head again, but said nothing more until he bade her goodbye at Aunt Weaver’s back door.

  “Thanks,” she said, and went back to her room. Little sparks of light. Raw motive force would work—no, not for each one, it would be blinding. Imbued pieces lighting others. That would be easier. But how to make them stay on the string?

  She pulled out the box of parts she’d scavenged, some from the Baron’s Devices, others she’d brought with her, a few pieces from the forge Garrett had let her have, some coils of wire. A few of them were imbued already. She sat on the floor and began to experiment.

  ***

  Telaine rocked and bounced on the wagon seat beside Abel Roberts. It had only been a week since she’d last ridden down the mountain with him, but he’d already forgotten her name, her face, and the fact that she lived with Mistress Weaver.

  They again rode in silence, Telaine gazing in wonder at the changing colors on the mountain above and below them. She occupied herself with mentally coding messages to send to her uncle, reviewing the parts list she needed to fill in Ellismere, and thinking about how she’d make her tent of lights work.

  That reminded her of her conversation with Garrett the day before. He interested her. She was sure there was more going on inside his head than he let on, as quiet as he was. And she liked his directness and his smile, the way it warmed his eyes and never failed to make her smile in return. Passing the forge was starting to be one of the highlights of her day. But he was more worried about her than he needed to be. Morgan was dangerous, but so far she was in control. She remembered Morgan’s wide, pointed, mirthless smile, and refused to let herself consider the possibility she was wrong.

  They pulled into the Hitching Station before noon, Telaine having rousted Abel at sunrise. Josiah Stakely came out to meet them and a pleased look came over his face when he saw Telaine.

  “Miss Bricker! Back so soon?”

  “Hello, Mister Stakely.” She hopped down from the wagon seat and beckoned him closer. “Could you do something for me?” she whispered. “Make sure Abel doesn’t leave without me. I’m not sure how long this will take.”

  Stakely winked at her. “I’m sure I can find some way to keep him occupied.”

  “Don’t let him get too drunk,” Telaine said. “I don’t want him driving off the cliff.”

  “Abel Roberts can drive that wagon full to the eyeballs with beer,” said Stakely, “but I’ll keep him as sober as I dare.”

  Telaine thanked him and set off through the streets of Ellismere. She didn’t remember it being this noisy and busy—then she realized she was comparing it to Longbourne’s peaceful quiet. How quickly she’d become acclimatized to her…home? Not a home. Her posting? That sounded better.

  The trend in individual telecoder booths hadn’t reached this far east, but the telecoder office looked the same as all the other ones she’d ever used: dingy white walls, low-hanging Devices that shed insufficient light, and a long row of iron grilles painted white, behind which sat the operators, who generally looked bored.

  She waited in line, then laid down her forms and the fee. “Waiting for a reply,” she said.

  The operator took her money and the forms without comment. This message wasn’t going to the ultra-secure Device in the palace—there was no way Telaine would give that setting to a public telecoder operator—but to an ordinary, almost as secure Device that would nevertheless turn around her response in less than an hour.

  As any operator would give her a funny look if she turned over a form filled with random numbers and letters, she’d had to break her message into three telecodes, which made her feel terribly insecure. Her greatest security was, of course, that no one was watching Lainie Bricker, but it didn’t stop her worrying that someone might be suspicious about the stilted language her coded messages used.

  Rather than wait at the office for her replies, she walked the short distance to Crafters’ Way, which earned its name by having every conceivable kind of craftsman, smith, and builder you could imagine packed into a single long street. She came out half an hour later with several hundred feet of fat copper wire, a bag of brass eyelets, and the tiniest torsion screwdriver imaginable. She didn’t need the last, but how often was she going to get to town? She deserved a reward after almost nine weeks of hardship, not to mention the outhouse.

  Her return messages were waiting for her at the telecoder offices. She decoded them in a quiet corner, pretending to be reading the newspaper, in case one required a reply. The first was simply an acknowledgement of the information about Harroden’s addiction. The second was a list of the items Harroden had groveled to the Baron about that he could easily smuggle or embezzle to the Baron, so she’d know what to look for.

  The third, in plain text, read simply: STAY SAFE ALL MY LOVE UNCLE. She folded the messages and put them into her trouser pocket. This was more direction than she’d had before, but still left her with the problem of how to get into the fort and the locked store rooms. It was time to work out a more direct approach.

  Abel hadn’t rolled out of the tap room when she returned. Edith looked at her over the horses’ heads, spat, then turned back to brushing them down. To Telaine’s eye, they’d already been brushed thoroughly, but then Edith was a horse lover. Telaine poked her head into the tap room and caught Stakely’s eye. He snatched the tankard away from Abel, whose head was bowed as if in sleep, nudged the man and said, “Abel, it’s time to head back up the mountain. Abel, wake up!”

  Abel raised his head, looked around, then slid off his stool. He seemed surprised to see Telaine at the door. “You going up the mountain?”

  “I came down with you, remember?”

  Abel shook his head. “Hop on up, then.”

  On the way back up the mountain, Telaine contemplated how different this journey was from her first. Then, she’d been facing a total unknown; now, she knew she’d greet twenty people on her way into town, trade nods with Garrett, spend the afternoon working on the new Device, have supper with Aunt Weaver, and settle into a bed that no longer felt lumpy and hard. She was actually looking forward to it all.

  AUTUMN

  Chapter Thirteen

  Telaine sat in her bedroom, clad only in an underskirt and brassiere, and fingered the soft cotton fabric of her dress. It was a dark green that reminded her of the gown she’d worn the night this whole thing had been set in motion, but much plainer, with a skirt that flared out when she spun and a bodice that fitted snugly but wasn’t too tight. The neckline covered her collarbone and was higher than any dress she’d worn since she was a child. The buttons were in the front, so she wouldn’t need to ask Aunt Weaver for help. She couldn’t think why she was so reluctant to put it on. Because the Princess is a bitch, she told herself, and these people don’t deserve to meet her.

  She’d never thought of her alter ego in that way before, because everything she’d done and said as the Princess had been in the service of the Crown, and it hadn’t mattered what kind of woman she was. But the idea of setting the Princess loose in Longbourne…she’d promised Aunt Weaver not to manipulate the townspeople, but this
went beyond that promise into a desire not to hurt any of these people, because they were her friends in a way the Princess’s “friends” were not.

  Telaine slid the dress over her shoulders and buttoned the bodice. It flattered her slim figure and—she took an experimental twirl—it would be fun to dance in, if anyone asked her.

  She freed her hair from its braid and brushed its mousy-brown waves over her shoulders to fall nearly to her waist. Josephine had assured her it was appropriate for young unmarried women to wear their hair loose, but she still felt…could you call it naked, not doing your hair up? She brushed it again, unnecessarily, and wished she had some jewelry to wear, a gold chain, anything.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and her heart lightened. There was her everyday face, unaccented by cosmetics, her hair hanging loose like a girl’s. The Princess was nowhere in sight.

  Aunt Weaver had already left when Telaine came downstairs, so she walked alone through the town’s back streets to the forest. She followed the trail left by men and women and skipping children to the clearing where the maypole stood. Though the crowd was gathering beyond it, Telaine stopped to admire her tent of lights. Strands of glowing specks wove from the maypole to the branches and between those long ribs, shedding a warm glow over the clearing and the tables laden with food for the shivaree. She was proud of her Device, but not on her own behalf; the look on Eleanor’s face when she saw it had been a greater reward than if she’d sold the thing to the Baron for a hundred guilders. One of the strands was sagging, but there was nothing she could do about it now. It still looked perfect.

  She pushed through the crowd to join Aunt Weaver, who wore a dress of dark red wool and an expression less severe than usual. “You look nice,” she told Telaine in a voice that said she shouldn’t expect any more praise than that.