Agent of the Crown (12 page)

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
that 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.