Agent of the Crown (32 page)

He raised his eyebrows. “That supposed to fit
into this conversation?”

“I want to tell you something.” She described
her ability, clasping her hands tight to stop their trembling, and
watched his face grow still. “I haven’t exactly put my life in your
hands, telling you this,” she said, “but it’s still a dangerous
secret. I trust you more than anyone. I hope I’m not wrong.”

Ben said, “I’ve never lied to you.”

“Only once. When you promised not to go after
Morgan.”

“That. Yes. And you knew I was lying and
didn’t say anything.”

“How could I?”

“True. You couldn’t.” He moved to sit closer
to her. “Must be an uncomfortable thing, hearing the lies people
tell.”

“Sometimes. Mostly it’s refreshing to know
people don’t lie to me often. And it can be a warning. Morgan lies
to me all the time.”

“Morgan,” he breathed, clenching his fist.
She laid her hand on his.

“Let it go for now,” she said. “We’ll find a
solution.”

“Together. Not you trying to do it all
yourself.”

“I promise. No lies.”

He laid his free hand on her cheek. “Thanks
for trusting me with that.”

She smiled, feeling peace fill her. “Will you
walk me home?”

“Seems like a gentlemanly thing to do.”

They parted at Aunt Weaver’s door with a
single kiss. Considering what they’d been doing only minutes
before, Telaine thought, it was more than enough.

Telaine woke with the feeling she’d
overslept. The light had a strange quality to it.
Abel,
she
thought,
I’ve missed him
, and she leaped out of bed and
dressed as quickly as she could, deciding to forgo breakfast rather
than miss this opportunity.

She threw open the back door and was stunned
at what she saw. Snow blanketed the yard, piled high on the roofs
of the sheds, weighed down the pine tree that grew behind the
outhouse. It was at least six inches deep across the yard and
drifted more than a foot high against the sheds. Snow lay across
her toes where it had dropped off the open door. It was more snow
than she’d seen in one place, ever. More snow than fell all winter
long in Aurilien.

She closed the door and went back upstairs,
threw open her window and ducked away from a pile of snow that
dropped off the window frame past her head. An uninterrupted carpet
of snow had unfurled the entire length and breadth of the main
street. A gap in the lowering clouds above let through a beam that
turned a patch of the carpet to diamonds.

There were no paths, no indication that Abel
had left yet. She might still make it. She dashed back downstairs
and into the weaving room, where Aunt Weaver worked the loom alone.
“Do you think Abel’s left for Ellismere yet?” she demanded.

Aunt Weaver gave her a look that said Telaine
was demented. “Abel’s not going anywhere,” she said. “First big
storm of the year. The pass is closed until spring.”

Trapped in
Longbourne for the winter. Telaine paced her room, cursing herself
for not being faster. If she’d found out the Baron’s plan a week
ago, she would have been down the mountain before the snow fell and
her uncle could prepare to defend against the invaders. Now he and
the army would have to scramble to catch up, and suppose Thorsten
Pass cleared before the main pass did?

She flung herself on her bed and beat the
mattress with her fists. She couldn’t stop thinking about what an
army of Ruskalder would do to defenseless Longbourne.

“Don’t see why you’re so upset,” Aunt Weaver
said from the doorway. “Seems like you get your wish.”

Telaine rolled over. “What wish?”

“An excuse to stay here longer,” Aunt Weaver
said. “Not hard to see what you was thinking.”

“I have a job to do, Aunt Weaver,” Telaine
said. She almost told her about the invasion, but stopped herself
before the words poured out. It wasn’t fair to burden her with the
knowledge when she wasn’t an agent herself, however good a
confidante she’d turned out to be. “I can’t afford to be stuck here
all winter. Doesn’t
anyone
go down the mountain? Skis, or
snowshoes?”

“Passes are worse than the valley,” Aunt
Weaver said. “You could try it, but you’d walk right over the edge
and they’d find your bones at the bottom of the mountain come
spring. Might as well enjoy your… bad luck.” She turned and left
Telaine staring after her, feeling guilty all over again as if her
secret wish to spend the winter in Longbourne had caused this
calamity.

She looked out her window again. A few people
were in the street now, shoveling out pathways in front of their
doors. The snow was deep enough that the paths looked like sunken
ditches; the roads were clearly impassable. She wondered how many
of those wagons she’d seen coming up and down the pass all summer
were trapped here for the duration, too.

She tromped downstairs and began making
breakfast. Aunt Weaver was right; there was nothing she could do
about it, and she wouldn’t make the winter pass more quickly by
punishing herself for getting what she wanted.

After breakfast she took a turn with the
shovel, awkwardly carving out a path that joined up with Verity
Hansen’s tailor shop next door. Michael, Verity’s young apprentice,
helped her dig the last few paces.

“You’ll love it here in the winter, Miss
Bricker,” he said, wiping his streaming red nose with his gloved
hand. “The quarry and the sawmill shut down, so everybody’s got
their family home and ready to play. The kids get into these
ditches and have snowball fights after school, and sometimes the
grownups join in too. Last year I saw Mister Fuller dunk Scottie
Albright in the snow headfirst when Scottie hit him in the face
with a snowball!”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun for
Scottie.”

“Mister Fuller gave him a piece of licorice
after. It was all in fun.”

Telaine planted the shovel in the snow and
leaned on it. “I’ve never made a snowball in my life.”

“Happen you’ll learn quickly. You’ll want to
be able to fight back.”

It took Telaine a few days to learn to relax
and enjoy herself. It helped that so many of her friends were on
holiday thanks to the quarry and mill shutting down. Though they
all seemed to have seasonal jobs in Longbourne, they also had
plenty of time for fun down at the tavern, and Telaine could
usually find good company there.

Eleanor, whose job didn’t let up because of
the season, always had time to chat over the laundry tubs, and
Ben…what a difference being in love made. Now he made time in the
middle of the day to go walking with her, hand in hand through the
snow, trying to drown one another by knocking loads of snow off the
trees and kissing under the dark-needled branches.

Telaine’s only worry was Morgan. She stayed
in Longbourne for a week, defying the Baron’s instructions about
mending the weapons, panic gripping her throat whenever she thought
about going back to the fort. But although soldiers still came to
the tavern occasionally, Morgan never appeared.

Eventually Telaine mastered her fear,
strapped on a pair of snowshoes and staggered and fumbled her way
to the fort. After a few off-handed inquiries, she learned Morgan
hadn’t been there all week. She repaired a few weapons and made her
escape. He was probably holed up in the manor with the Baron, she
thought. She hoped he was too preoccupied to think of her.

But the Baron summoned her to the manor nine
days after the pass closed for a minor repair to his music box
Device, and Morgan wasn’t there either. She didn’t quite dare to
ask the Baron about him, but she was beginning to suspect Morgan
wasn’t in the valley at all. If the Baron had sent him down
Thorsten Pass on some errand to the Ruskalder, he would have been
trapped by the storm as thoroughly as she was. She had a moment’s
worry about what part Morgan’s absence might play in the Baron’s
scheme, what could be so important that the Baron had sent him down
Thorsten Pass after full dark, but it was buried under her profound
relief that he couldn’t assault her again.

She used the snow as an excuse not to go to
the fort often; the knowledge that she was repairing guns the
Ruskalder intended to turn on Tremontane made her wish she’d lied
about the possibility that they could be fixed. Would the Ruskalder
even consent to use them? She’d heard their aversion to using
projectile weapons was a religious one and a longstanding
tradition. The Baron must be confident about convincing them
otherwise to stockpile so many of the Devices. Even so, putting any
weapons into their hands made her angry.

Winter in Longbourne was so different from
winter in Aurilien, where she would have gone to parties and
concerts every night and paid visits every day. Few people in
Longbourne had Devices and even fewer needed them repaired, and she
had no other hobbies, so between that and her decreased employment
at the fort, she was frequently bored.

She wandered around the house so much Aunt
Weaver finally said, “If you’ve got nothing else to do, happen you
should think about your Wintersmeet gifts. Never too early to worry
about those.”

The Longbourne tradition of exchanging gifts
personally made by the giver made Telaine uncomfortable. She only
had one talent—well, only one she could share—and how was she
supposed to make gifts with the few materials she had left? She had
little but her sack of spare parts, and she couldn’t exactly go to
people’s homes asking for things they might want turned into
Devices. Holidays were so challenging. She thought of the
Wintersmeet ball held at the palace, everyone dressed in white and
silver, dancing away the last and longest night of the year, and
felt little sorrow at missing it.

On one of their midday walks, Ben said,
“Watch this.” He pointed at a burl on a nearby tree, whipped his
arm around, and suddenly the burl had sprung a small knife. Ben
waded over to get it.

“I had no idea you could do that,” Telaine
said.

“Only do it in winter. Keeps me warm and my
eye sharp.” He threw the knife again. “Wish I’d brought more of
’em.”

“Will you teach me?”

“You planning to go hunting?”

“Just the trees. It’s such a graceful
thing.”

Ben retrieved the knife again and handed it
to her. “Stand like this…and then hold the knife like this. Then
it’s a quick overarm movement,
so
.”

The knife flew a few feet and disappeared
into the snow. They looked at each other. “I see a flaw in this
plan,” Telaine said. She dug around until she found the knife.

“Happen we can find a less snowy place,” Ben
said. “Figured out your plan was to get my arms around you,
anyway.”

“I didn’t think I needed a plan for that.
Weasel. No, don’t!”

The lesson continued after Telaine shook the
snow out of her shirt.

The laundry was so comfortable in winter,
warm and muggy and perfect for sitting and chatting. Too bad
Eleanor had more than sitting and chatting on her mind. “I think
this is a bad idea,” Telaine said. She waved her knitting needles.
“I told you I’m no good at sewing.”

“This is knitting, not sewing, and if you can
turn wire and eyelets into a tent of lights, happen you can learn
to turn a skein of yarn into a scarf,” Eleanor said. She rearranged
Telaine’s grip on the needles. “Now, you remember the difference
between knit and purl? This is knit one, purl one—”

The door flew open. “Baron’s riding into
town,” Ben said. “Alone.”

Telaine leaped to her feet, dropped her
needles and several stitches, and followed Ben out the door. The
Baron approached on his indifferent gray, glancing around with no
sign of interest in his surroundings. A weight lifted from her
shoulders. If the Baron himself was here, it meant his usual errand
runner was not in the valley. Suddenly the long months of winter
seemed like a Wintersmeet gift.

“Miss Bricker,” the Baron called out while he
was still several feet away. Telaine made her bow. “Excellent. My
dear, I have a challenge for you. Would you mind accompanying me to
the manor?” He did not make it sound like an invitation.

“Of course, milord,” Telaine said, bobbing
another little bow. “Give me a moment to fetch my tools.”

She sped through the ditches to Aunt Weaver’s
house. He hadn’t chastised her for not having finished the work at
the fort, so maybe he didn’t know about it. Or maybe he was waiting
to get her alone before unleashing his fury on her. Either way, she
didn’t have much choice; if she refused to go with him, it was
impossible to say how he might react, and he might decide to take
out his anger on an innocent person.

When she returned, clutching her roll of
tools, the Baron took her up behind him and trotted away without
mentioning the fort, or the guns, or Morgan. Telaine looked back
over her shoulder at Ben, who stood in the road with his fists
clenched. He’d probably follow her if she didn’t return by
nightfall. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for that, or
afraid.

The Baron was silent the whole way to the
manor, and continued silent after they were safely inside out of
the cold. He escorted her down one of the hallways. “I assume you
can repair a clock?” he said.

“Certainly, milord.”

“I don’t like how the one in the library is
running. And I dislike the sound.”

“The…sound, milord?”

“The sound it makes when it strikes the hour.
It’s tinny. I want a more full-bodied sound.”

“I’m not sure the sound is created by a
Device, milord, but I’ll do my best.”

“And your best is always excellent.”

He led her to the library, which she had not
yet seen. It about the same size as the Baron’s study, with
bookshelves much more delicate than those in the study lining the
walls. The books looked as if they were actually read as opposed to
being décor, which gave the room a homey feeling the study lacked.
Some comfortable reading chairs sat near a fireplace in which a
lively yellow fire burned steadily, with Devices hanging low to
illuminate pages better than the fire would. Ladders on rails,
elegant constructions of ash and gilt, gave access to the upper
shelves.