Agent of the Crown (38 page)

The loom was unoccupied. Sarah was gone. Alys
sat alone at the great loom, making it thump and rattle
irregularly. “Where is everyone?” Telaine asked.

“Mistress Weaver went visiting with Mistress
Ponsonby,” Alys said with a withering look. Glaring at Telaine,
even now she had a man of her own and wasn’t trying to steal Jack
Taylor, was Alys’s favorite pastime. “Sent Sarah on an errand.”

“You’re always sending her out on errands.
You should take a turn sometime.”

“Youngest apprentice does the running. I did
it in my time. So don’t come over high and mighty with me.”

“And yet you run errands to the tavern all
the time. Where did you send her now? Out to Granger or
Hightop?”

“Not that far. Just to the manor. Baron
ordered a bolt of finest and I sent her off with it.”

Telaine sucked in a sharp, horrified breath.
“How long ago?”

“Not long. Maybe an hour. Should be back
soon.”

But she won’t be. No. Not another one.
And Telaine hadn’t passed her on the road, which meant Sarah was
already there. There, gift-wrapped and delivered to the Baron
because Telaine and Aunt Weaver hadn’t told anyone his secret.

The back door slammed. “Aunt Weaver?” Telaine
called out.

“Here,” Aunt Weaver said, coming through to
hang up her cloak. “You’re home early.”

“Sarah’s at the manor.”

Aunt Weaver went still. “How long?”

“An hour.”

Aunt Weaver turned her glass-cutting glare on
Alys. “That’s an errand you should have run,” she said. “Go home.
And I’m not sure I want you comin’ back. We’ll discuss it
tomorrow.”

Alys, stunned, gathered her things and
bolted. “What now?” Telaine said.

“You’ll have to go after her,” Aunt Weaver
said. “Happen it’s not too late.”

“We could raise the town. If we’d told
someone—”

“Too late for that. And you know well as I do
that would just get Sarah killed.” She sounded calm and reasonable,
but her eyes said everything her mouth didn’t. Zara North wasn’t
used to waiting for someone else to act, and Telaine could see the
words being dragged out of her as she added, “I can’t do this. You
can.”

Telaine swept her cloak around her shoulders.
“If I’m not back in three hours—call it full dark—come after me.
Bring Ben and Liam and anyone else who might be good in a
fight.”

“That storm’ll be here before full dark.
You’d better be faster than that.”

“I’ll hurry.” Telaine put up her hood. “Don’t
worry. I’ll be back, and I’m bringing Sarah with me.”

Telaine rapidly
went through plans and discarded them as she left Aunt Weaver’s
house and hurried off through the ditches. Clouds were beginning to
gather, good for her earth mover delaying strategy, bad for what
she was doing right now. It was late afternoon, perhaps an hour
before sunset, but the darkening sky made it feel later. She needed
the darkness, but not too soon, not before she’d found Sarah.

She chafed at how slowly she traveled through
the snow. Every minute wasted was another minute Sarah might be—she
tried not to picture the manacles, the room Aunt Weaver had
described, the well-padded walls sealing in the screaming. Maybe
she was wrong. It wasn’t likely the Baron would take delivery of
the fabric himself; he might not even see Sarah. But if he had…if
he had, it might already be too late. But she had to try. All her
previous justifications disappeared; if they’d acted against the
Baron, Sarah wouldn’t be in danger. She trudged faster. Her cloak
dragged atop the snow behind her.

The manor was only partially lit, but the
Baron had to be home. She didn’t suppose he would collect his
latest plaything and then ride off to amuse himself elsewhere for a
few hours. She could see the guards at the door as indistinct
blobs; she hoped that was how she looked to them. Actually, she
hoped they couldn’t see her at all.

She took a wide, curving path around the side
of the house, following the tree line, hoping to reach the kitchen
door without being seen. Usually the guards were oblivious to
everything that didn’t happen within arm’s distance. She glanced
up, and swore. One of them was looking right at her. Now, would he
be suspicious if she went in via the kitchen door? She was a
tradesman, after all. Telaine cursed again and changed direction.
She couldn’t risk alerting them further.

She marched up the steps and said, “Good
evening,” and they let her through. As usual, no one was in the
entry. She yanked off her snowshoes and boots and pelted toward the
servants’ stair.

Telaine pattered silently down the stairs,
footwear in hand, and into the kitchen. The kitchen maids shrieked
when they saw her, and Mistress Wilson went pale. “Where’s the
girl?” Telaine asked in a low voice. Mistress Wilson was silent.
“Mistress Wilson, this is your chance to help me save one child
from the Baron. Where is she? His bedchamber?”

Mistress Wilson shook her head. “Top floor,
servants’ quarters,” she said, and Telaine understood why she was
so reluctant to speak. If Sarah disappeared, the servants might be
blamed. “Second door on the right from the stairs. We don’t know
anything. We never know what happens to them. I swear it.”

“You could have told someone he’d taken
them!”

“Who’s to tell? And who would listen to us,
accusing our rightful lord?” Mistress Wilson was in tears. “He
threatened our families if we said aught about him. There’s nothing
we can do.”

Telaine closed her lips on more
recriminations. No sense wasting time chastising the servants, much
as she wanted to. “Where’s the Baron?”

“Dining room. We’ve only just served the
first course.”

That gave her forty-five minutes, based on
her previous suppers. “I’ll be back. The Baron won’t get this one.”
She put her boots and snowshoes in a corner, snatched up her lock
picks, and tiptoed up the servants’ stair in her stocking feet, all
the way to the top.

She’d never been up here; there had been no
reason for it. The stair came out on a long hallway, scuffed from a
generation of servants’ feet, that looked as if it cut the top
floor in half. Plain wooden doors lined the hall in pairs, opposite
one another. Telaine felt like sidling along, though it wasn’t
that
narrow; she hated the idea of brushing up against
anything here, as if every door concealed something evil.

Faint light came in from a window at the far
end of the hall. The storm was coming on fast. She jiggled the knob
of the door second from the right; it was locked. She went to work
with the lock picks, feeling every second as if someone were going
to come up the stairs after her. The servants’ stair was the only
access to this floor, and she was trapped like a bird in a cage,
waiting for the cat to pounce.

The seconds stretched out. She was out of
practice, and it was going to cost both of them their lives.

The lock snapped open. Telaine opened the
door, wincing at the creak, and shut it behind her.

The chilly room, which was about eight feet
square, held nothing but a bedframe with a bare mattress and a
bedside table. Sarah lay, tied hand and foot and with a
handkerchief stuffed in her mouth, on the mattress, dressed only in
her shift and barefoot. She had been crying and began to do so
again when she saw Telaine. The light from the dirty window above
the bed made her look ghostlike, pale and weak.

Telaine whispered, “I’m taking the gag out,
but you can’t say anything, all right? Nothing.” Sarah nodded.
Telaine removed the handkerchief and helped the girl to sit up.
“I’m going to untie you and then we’ll figure out what to do,”
Telaine said. She removed the girl’s bonds in what seemed to take
forever; she should have brought her throwing knife with the lock
picks. She swore under her breath. She was slow
and
careless.
Stay focused, Telaine.

With Sarah rubbing her wrists and ankles,
Telaine paced and thought furiously. Sarah couldn’t walk home
dressed like that. She would freeze before they made it halfway
back to Longbourne. She couldn’t stay in that room, and there was
no place else to hide her. If the Baron found out she was missing
and went after her—which he would have to do if he wanted to
protect his secret—she’d be easy to spot, struggling through the
snow.

Telaine looked out the window at the lowering
pines. If Sarah could go down the stairs to the kitchen entrance,
get to the cover of the trees, she’d be able to follow the edge of
the forest back to Longbourne even if the storm came up—but no,
she’d still be mostly naked, barefoot, and weak. And Telaine
couldn’t go with her, because she had to be seen walking out the
doors of the manor if she wanted to protect herself from the
Baron’s rage.

No. Telaine didn’t have to walk out the
doors. It only had to look like she did.

She tossed her cloak on the mattress and
began undressing and tossing her clothes at Sarah. “Put these on,”
she told the girl, who looked at her in bewilderment. “Do it,
Sarah, I’ll explain in a moment.”

Clad only in her bodysuit and her thick wool
socks, Telaine twisted the knob at her neck and heat begin to
spread over her body. She folded the corner of her cloak around her
elbow and, with a quick jab, smashed the window glass, then picked
up a rope and sawed at it with one of the shards until it frayed
and split.

She dropped the ropes on the mattress and
unlatched the window, pushing it open, then shoved at the snow
beneath it to make it look as if something heavy had gone over the
windowsill. The window was small, possibly too small even for a
person Sarah’s size to fit through, and it was a sheer drop down
four stories to the ground below, but Telaine hoped it would
distract the Baron enough that he wouldn’t turn his wrath on the
servants.

Sarah looked confused, and afraid, but she
put on Telaine’s clothes obediently. She was only a few inches
shorter than Telaine and Telaine rolled up the extra length of
trouser around her ankles. She fastened her cloak around Sarah’s
neck, wrapped it close around the girl, and said, “Follow me. All
the way down. And no noise.”

When they emerged from the stairs into the
kitchen, Mistress Wilson looked at them both as if they had fallen
through the ceiling. The kitchen maids huddled together, eyes wide,
mouths shut. “Mistress Wilson, this girl needs your help,” Telaine
said. “Those guards saw me walk in here. I need them to see me walk
out. All I want is for you to walk with Sarah through the doors and
bid her goodbye using my name. When you see her reach the bottom of
the stairs, come back inside and go back to whatever you were
doing. Please, Mistress Wilson, this isn’t going to work without
you.”

“What are you…wearing?” she asked in a faint
voice.

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you
next, all right? Can you do this, Mistress Wilson?”

The woman nodded hesitantly, then, with a
look at Sarah’s face, more firmly.

Telaine grasped her hands. “Thank you.
Thank you
. Sarah, listen to me.” She took the girl’s
shoulders and turned her to face her. “Go straight down the stairs
toward the road. I left lots of footprints for you to follow. Put
on the snowshoes, get on the road and don’t stop walking until you
reach your father’s house, understand? Don’t look behind you. Just
walk. I’ll see you soon.”

She helped Sarah put the boots on, then
tucked the long trousers into them and, after a moment’s thought,
wedged the lock picks back into the left boot. The throwing knife
was still in the right—it would be useless for what she was about
to do. She gave Sarah a hug. “You’ve been braver than anyone should
ever have to be. Now, be brave just a little longer and—go
home.”

“Let me get you—” Mistress Wilson began, and
a bell jangled nearby, making her go white. “That’s the last
course.”

“We have to go,” Telaine said.

“Let me at least—surely we have clothes that
will fit you—”

“Trust me,” Telaine said, “I’ll be warm
enough. And we don’t have time if we’re going to outrun this
storm.”

“Wait,” Mistress Wilson said. She went around
the corner and came back a few seconds later with a pair of old
boots and a worn jacket. “You can’t go out there in just those
socks. These aren’t much, but better than…”

She held the boots out to Telaine. The
leather was worn, and they were too big, but Telaine shoved her
feet into them as Mistress Wilson and Sarah left the kitchen. She
wrapped the laces twice around her ankles, snugging the boots
against her skin, and took a few steps. No worse than walking in
snowshoes. They’d have to do.

She went around the corner to the kitchen
door and opened it a crack. She already knew it was not visible
from the front door, but in her dark gray bodysuit and the tan
jacket, she felt horribly outlined against the white snow. If the
sun hadn’t yet set, it was covered by the pendulous clouds that
looked as if they might drop their snowy burden at any moment.

She rubbed her hands together, trying to keep
them warm. This was the craziest thing she’d ever done. She heard
the big door open and Mistress Wilson call goodbye to “Lainie,”
counted slowly to ten, then made her way as quickly as she could
through the snow toward the rear of the manor and the black tree
line.

No one cried out after her, so the guards’
attention had to be on Sarah. Telaine was probably safe. The guards
weren’t looking at her, the servants wouldn’t dally at the windows,
and the Baron’s chair faced away from the tall windows overlooking
the rear of the manor, though it would be just her luck if he
happened to look out as she was slogging past.

She reached the tree line and ducked past the
evergreen branches, then stood for a moment, breathing heavily. She
didn’t have much time—in fact, she didn’t have any time to stand
there catching her breath. She turned south, trudging through the
ankle-deep drifts and dodging branches; it was slow, and awkward,
but she had to stay within the trees until she was out of sight of
the manor. The storm was coming, and she needed to move quickly.
Dear heaven, please let it hold off until we’re both home,
she prayed, and tried to slog faster.