The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance

by Wanrow, Laurel

  “Can’t,” Rivley answered. “Think I broke some fingers.”

  “Don’t you risk it,” shouted James. “Jac and Maraquin have got this, if anyone does. Everyone else stop where they are.”

  What the hell was going on? Daeryn leaped up on the nearest grave marker—and nearly toppled over the other side because he misjudged the distance. His view wasn’t good—his damned eye was swelling shut—but he could see enough. The wolves darted through the stones. The ropens, flying a straight line, outpaced them by a long shot. They were headed for town…odd.

  Wyatt spun around, yanking his shirt back on. “What started all this?”

  Henry jabbered out his account of Paet trying to lead Annmar away. “Then Daeryn jumped him, like a tiger. Most ferocious thing I’ve ever seen, and coming from the smallest ’cambire. But that ropen couldn’t stop Daeryn.”

  No, he didn’t let Paet win, because if he had, Annmar would be gone. But why did he want her? Did Annmar know? Thank the Creator she was on Wellspring property, easily found.

  Daeryn jumped down—and missed his footing. He kept going before any of the others noticed. Once inside Wellspring’s boundary, he tripped on a root, something he never did, and sank to the ground, his face and leg throbbing. Just a minute’s rest, then he’d go look. He lay on his belly in the cool grass, panting open-mouthed. The others returned, grumbling at not catching the ropens, rehashing the fight.

  “We had that one, wing tattered completely,” Henry said, “until the bigger one got here.”

  “Damned ropens,” Wyatt said. “Never thought they’d escape with wing rips that serious.”

  Grr-amn. Maraquin spat. “He tastes awful. I need to soap my mouth.”

  “That’s not far from the truth,” James said. “Everyone in for cleansing before we hit the fields again.”

  “Hell,” Jac snapped. “We’re down to us again. At least I sent Maraquin after Paet when the ass snuck off from his section. I knew he was up to something, but not…I don’t even want to think it.”

  Daeryn didn’t either. He had to get his breath. His nose wasn’t working right. Panting was downright painful. He changed— “Owwww.”

  “Great Creator.” Maraquin hobbled to his side. “You are such a yellow-livered…ah, hell. Some help over here.”

  “Never mind me.” He pushed up to his knees and searched around. “Has anyone seen Annmar?”

  Rivley walked up, holding one hand. “Mary Clare got her out of here.” He peered down, then clasped Daeryn’s forearm and helped him to his feet.

  “Thank the Creator.” Daeryn sagged downward.

  “No you don’t, buddy.” Rivley boosted him again. “Up. We’re heading straight to the sickroom. I’m not sure the demon didn’t take off your nose.”

  “You’re kidding?” Jac shoved her way between them and turned his face. Her hand loomed double and fuzzy in his vision—

  Daeryn jerked back. “Bloody hell! Watch what you’re doing.”

  She dropped her hand without touching him. “Nah, you’re a night-blind hawk, Riv. There’s a lump under all that blood.”

  “You idiots.” Daeryn batted her away. “It has to be there. It hurts like hell.”

  “Henry,” Wyatt said, “get to the house and tell Miz Gere. Have her send someone for Miriam and Mr. White.”

  The blond boy stumbled ahead. Jac put an arm around Maraquin to help her, and with Wyatt shouldering Daeryn’s side opposite Rivley, the group began a slow limp toward the house.

  “Half of us won’t make it back out tonight,” Jac grumbled, “thanks to those bloody bastards. They won’t get far.”

  Daeryn tried to summon some encouragement, but he couldn’t. Wellspring was doomed.

  “Mar,” James said. “Your rear looks like Daeryn’s face.”

  She gingerly twisted to have a look. “Feels like it, too.” She shrugged and gave Daeryn a light punch on the shoulder. “You really like her, don’t you?”

  She voiced the question in an oddly gentle way. Damn, his face must be really bad. Suddenly, he felt sick. And exhausted. He let Riv and Wyatt take his weight. “Fell for her the moment I met her.”

  “The moment you met her? But that was days before Mar…” Jac smacked his bare chest.

  “Ow.” Daeryn fell into Rivley. “What’d you do that for?”

  “You ass. You let another girl in your bed when you knew you liked the city girl. What kind of an idiot are you?” Jac ranted, while beside her, Maraquin bit her lip.

  “Enough already,” Rivley said. “He knows it.”

  “Sure do,” Daeryn muttered. “Now.”

  chapter thirty-five

  “Then Rivley appeared and pulled me away from the fighting,” Annmar told Mistress Gere. “Mary Clare came running up, and he told us to get to the house before he ran back toward the snarling…” She cringed. “That’s all I know.”

  If Annmar could make her mind un-know it, she would. She laid her throbbing head against the back of the kitchen rocker and pulled the blanket they’d wrapped around her shoulders closer. She’d stopped shaking, but every noise outside startled her to alertness, every person entering the kitchen called to be identified. Several layers of people surrounded her in the woodstove corner, with someone new arriving every minute. They might as well be on the Derby train platform.

  Beside her, Mistress Gere frowned as she had through the story, but the hovering Mrs. Betsy swore.

  Mary Clare jerked around with a grin. “I’ll say.”

  Mrs. Betsy tapped her on the head. “Not in my kitchen you won’t.” A string of tutting followed, during which Miriam finished washing the stinging cuts on Annmar’s hands.

  “Indeed.” Mistress Gere flashed a small smile that quickly faded. “I am truly sorry someone I trusted on my property harmed you. I’ll certainly learn why.” She paused a moment. “Speaking selfishly, I hope this doesn’t color your opinion of Blighted Basin. I would like you to stay. However, under these circumstances I will not hold you to our agreed trial.”

  Those tucked into the corner fell silent. Here was a chance to go, gracefully, and if employment in Derby fell through, she might return. Without intending to, Annmar’s gaze met Mary Clare’s. Her friend stared wide-eyed while Mrs. Betsy snaked a hand around her shoulders. Miriam squeezed her hand, and Annmar dropped her gaze to the healer.

  “In my decades of experience,” she said, “attacks of this sort are unusual.”

  Annmar nodded, but looked back to Mistress Gere. “I will stay for the trial. I have ten labels ready for approval, but”—a wave of weariness threatened to drown her—“I might need a day before presenting them to you.”

  Mistress Gere smiled. “I didn’t expect you to work Sunday, but appreciate your commitment. Monday is soon enough. Rest, and if you feel up to it, I can put you in touch with the owner of the paintings. I now have permission—”

  “Constance?” Miriam said. “The girl needs to rest now.”

  A denial stuck in Annmar’s throat. Mother’s paintings. Was the owner far away? But before Annmar could form the words, Mistress Gere rose from her chair and patted Annmar’s arm.

  “I’ll leave you to the care of these ladies while I seek help to find Paet.” Mistress Gere left, ushering most of the kitchen’s occupants out with her.

  Perched on a footstool, Miriam smeared salve on Annmar’s cuts. “Leave that to settle in. Until the fire warms the library, you stay here.” She nodded to the woodstove. “We don’t need you taking a shock.” The healer sorted through small cloth bags in a basket, selected one and opened it. “A mug please, Mary Clare.”

  She brought one, and Miriam added a teaspoon of herbs to it. “Fill with hot water and allow it to steep ten minutes. Then have her drink it when she lies down.” While Mary Clare carried the herbal treatment to the kettle, Miriam gathered her things. “I’ll see you in the morning, for I suspect from Henry’s message—and the state of the boy—a line is forming in the sickroom. Anything else? How’s your head?
”

  Annmar lifted a willow twig she’d chewed briefly before Mistress Gere asked what had happened. “I still have this.” She couldn’t bother Miriam when the healer had others to help.

  “And the valerian Mary Clare is preparing will help.” Miriam rose with a nod.

  Mrs. Betsy leaned in to pat Annmar’s shoulder. “Thank the Creator our guards are on top of things. Close your eyes for a minute, duck. Mary Clare will tell you when the girls have the cot made up.”

  Annmar stuck the willow in her mouth and chewed the sour bark with her eyes closed. She was fine. Nothing had happened. Whatever Paet had had in mind for after he carried her off—talking? She knew better than to believe that—he hadn’t managed his plan. She would be forever grateful to everyone here at Wellspring. A tear trickled down her cheek, but only the one. Her head hurt too much to break into sobs. She was safe, so sobbing could wait.

  It didn’t seem long before Mary Clare tugged at her arm. “Annmar? The cot is ready.”

  She tucked a hand beneath Annmar’s elbow and helped her stand. “We’ll take it slow.”

  They crept through the farmhouse. The dining room was strangely quiet, but once they turned into the hall, the back door opened.

  “Almost there,” said a grower she didn’t recognize. He held Maraquin’s arm while she limped over the threshold. Her other arm was torn, fresh blood welling from gashes at the shoulder, staining the sheet she clutched around herself.

  Annmar gasped. “Oh, my Lord.”

  “She’s a fighter,” Mary Clare murmured, “but I heard Mar barrels in without planning her moves so well as Jac. Some of those look like her earlier cuts reopened.”

  As if proving this, Jac entered, also clad in a sheet, but moving in her usual strong strides. She and the grower guided Maraquin into the sickroom, then Jac stormed up the hall. “Where’s Miz Gere?”

  “Her office,” Mary Clare answered.

  Jac nodded and started to continue on, but stopped, her gaze flitting to Annmar’s hands then over her face. “You all right?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Yes. How are you?”

  “A few cuts.” She tugged up the sheet, exposing five oozing slices across her thigh. Claw marks. “One of the bastards bit me, too.” She twisted her wrist back and forth to show pea-sized swellings of red punctures, two to a side. “But I did worse to him.”

  “Thank you,” Annmar whispered.

  Jac smiled. “You fought back, maybe like a city girl, but you did. You’ve got bollocks.”

  At that Mary Clare laughed.

  A grin curled across Annmar’s face. “Thanks. I made it through Market Day. I’m staying the complete trial, too.”

  Jac nodded. “See that you do.” The wolf girl passed them and went into Mistress Gere’s office without knocking.

  Mary Clare squeezed Annmar’s arm, but before they made it much farther down the hall, Henry came through the door, clothing torn, his arm held awkwardly. Annmar’s stomach sank again. This was awful. And her fault…well, not exactly. But it felt like it. “I feel so bad for them,” she whispered to Mary Clare.

  She groaned. “Who’ll be hunting pests tonight?”

  Who indeed? Annmar bit her lip. “My sketchbook. I dropped it out there. I need to fetch it.”

  Mary Clare shook her head and tugged her forward. “Not you. Plenty of folks here are itching for something to do.” At the sickroom door, she talked to the grower who’d come in with Maraquin. He and several others left, holding the door open for—

  “Daeryn?” Taut, purpling skin covered a quarter of his face, his bloody nose swelling into one closed eye. He clutched a blood-splotched sheet around him, below which five gashes twisted across his calf—

  She stared. “Oh, my Lord.” She jerked her gaze back to his face. “Daeryn, I’m so sorry he hurt you, and the others…”

  “S’nothing,” he croaked. “How are you?”

  “I managed to stay on Wellspring property, where Mary Clare said I’d be protected.”

  “She’s supposed to be lying down because of her head,” said Mary Clare, her voice tight. “He hit her. But other than bruises from fighting him off, she’s good.”

  “But how are you, Daeryn?” Annmar slid a hand to an uninjured spot on his arm and lightly squeezed. “This was…terrible. I’m grateful everyone came and helped me.”

  He only nodded.

  She winced. Talking probably hurt. “Your…your nose?”

  “Annmar,” said Mary Clare. “Let him in to see Miriam. You can find out later.”

  More injured people crowded the doorway, so with a last squeeze, she let Daeryn go. One of the fellows who’d just come in held out her sketchbook and Mother’s shawl.

  “This what you dropped, miss?” he asked.

  She took them, hugging both to her, and, trying not to sound too weepy, thanked them. The growers crowded to the sickroom door again, and Mary Clare guided her toward the library. “No,” Annmar whispered, “let’s sit here.” She dropped to the staircase. “Please make sure none of them look over here.”

  Mary Clare snorted. “Tonight, you’re not much to stare at compared to our guards.”

  Annmar had watched Jac long enough at the fire to sketch a fair resemblance of her face. That didn’t need the detail. She moved the pencil along into a muscular arm to her wrist. Focus here. This is the spot to mend. Pushing her Knack harder than when she’d done the drawing of Daeryn’s foot, Annmar imagined Jac’s wrist. The vision popped into her mind’s eye, weirdly an inside view where the punctures scraped the bone.

  Mercy. Startled, she let the image go. But she had to look, had to see how the swelling flesh could be mended.

  Mary Clare put her hand over Annmar’s, stopping her from continuing. “I thought you were drawing Daeryn.”

  “I had a better look at Jac’s injuries. I’ll heal her first.”

  “But…” Mary Clare darted a glance at the last of the growers going out the door, leaving them alone. “Daeryn asked you to heal him before, so it’s likely he’d give you permission again. But Jac”—Mary Clare shook her head—“doesn’t know. Using a Knack on someone else isn’t accepted in the Basin.”

  “Yet you…” Annmar lowered her voice. “Sometimes my feelings change when I’m near you. I know it’s you persuading—”

  “I-I shouldn’t. I know better. And sometimes my feelings accidentally get loose. If anyone found out, I’d be in trouble, and so would you. Believe me, you don’t want that reputation.”

  Annmar turned her hand and gently moved Mary Clare’s hand aside. “I have to help. If it works, I’ll apologize.”

  Mary Clare blew out a breath. “Go ahead. It looks like Wellspring has few other options. For tonight anyway.”

  Bending to her drawing, Annmar called up her Knack again. Deeper into the vision, blue threads appeared. Like with the plants, the soil. How a person could be related to dirt wasn’t something she could ask now. Annmar brushed the thought away and focused on the light threads streaming through Jac’s muscles and tendons. The wounds interrupted several.

  No threads had been broken when she drew the plants, nor across the fields. Others were broken on the faulty spider machine. Was that the process, to repair these broken threads?

  They did seem to represent life. She could only try it. Annmar traced her pencil over them, reconnecting the lines. They stayed connected, so she drew Jac’s leg, repeated her focus and the connection of the lines.

  Mercy, is this what she’d done on Daeryn before she knew how to look? Her healing on him had apparently worked since he’d fought Paet so well. She still didn’t know how long it had taken—which might be different for different people, for different injuries. Annmar bit her lip. Wellspring couldn’t afford to have the guards miss one night.

  * * *

  Great Creator, if a grower hadn’t been holding him steady, Daeryn would have melted to the floor. Annmar talked to him, touched him, hadn’t wanted to let him go. Everything else faded
as his helper got him into the sickroom. Suddenly, his injuries didn’t seem so bad, even when Miriam glanced up from swabbing ointment over Maraquin’s scratched arm and shoulder.

  “Only the injured in my sickroom,” she said. “Thank you, but the rest of you move...” Her gaze landed on him with a double take.

  Ah, hell. Now he’d catch it for not staying tucked away in his room.

  She straightened, and though the exam table separated them, his muscles tightened, ready to dart if the lithe woman pounced.

  Instead, she hit him with her steel-gray gaze. It ran head to toe, collecting more information than he’d ever imagined giving an herbalist. Miriam somehow knew what remedy you needed before you opened your mouth. The growers who’d been helping scurried from the room.

  “On my mother’s pestle and mortar, not again, Daeryn.”

  “Not my choice.” At her grunt, he admitted, “Well, it was this time.” Using the corner of the sheet, he dabbed at a gouge on his arm. “No choice.”

  Miriam sighed and shook her head, her strong shoulders sagging for just a moment before she pointed for him to sit on the bed next to Henry. Then she took James’ arm and helped the middle-aged man sit in a wing chair, briefly inspecting his leg before she returned to treating Maraquin. Her quick movements echoed in her long brown braid twitching over her back, no piece of it daring to come loose.

  Maraquin raised her head and peered at Daeryn. “We’re used to some roughing up. None of us are too bad off since we walked in here.” Her hands clenched the bloodstained sheet wrapping her torso. “I’m more worried about the artist girl. Did that bastard try anything?”

  Miriam raised a hand. “Where do you think I’ve been while the lot of you licked your wounds?”

  “Ugh,” Henry said. “Some of us have not been licking our wounds.”

  “She’s had a shock, but at least that’s all. You”—Miriam jabbed her swab toward Daeryn—“arrived in the nick of time.” She shook her head. “Prevented him from carrying her off, for who knows what. But I believe we all have the same thought. You may have stopped a horrific crime. We’ll deal with the brawl, though for two against seven, the injuries on you lot are considerable. The constable has been called up.”