Agent of the Crown (9 page)

A sign ahead bore the picture of a mug of
beer, much faded by time and weather, but Telaine would have
recognized the tavern anyway. It had a porch broad enough for a
crowd of friends to gather, windows that were single sheets of
glass five feet square, and a door flung open to welcome all
comers. Telaine thought about passing it—it was still mid-morning,
after all—but then decided if anyone in this town was likely to be
friendly, it would be the tavern owner. It was practically part of
the job description.

When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she
saw a large room crowded with tables and chairs cut from what
Telaine guessed was local timber. The style was unfamiliar, a
streamlined, minimalist approach to furniture that suited the
uncluttered look of the taproom. The bar took up one corner an
L-shaped curve of much-notched oak that matched the furniture,
clean and brightly polished. A broad, short woman stood behind it,
wiping glasses with deft gestures. She looked up, assessed Telaine
with one long glance, then bent her head to her work again. “We’re
not open till past noon,” she said.

“I thought I’d drop by and ask you about
dinner,” Telaine said. “My aunt told me I could get a good meal
here, come dinnertime.”

“Your aunt not feeding you?”

“She’s busy. I’ve hardly seen her, she’s so
much behind the loom.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, she’s a hard worker. It’s impressive.”
Would the barkeep consider that a big word? The woman’s terse
answers were making Telaine nervous.

The woman was silent for a moment. She put
down one glass and picked up another. “I serve plain fare starting
at one o’clock. Happen you’re not used to it, fancy city ways and
such.”

“I like plain food,” Telaine said, her temper
rising. “I like Longbourne. I wouldn’t have come here if I
didn’t.”

The woman looked at her, this time with her
full attention. “Heard you had to come, because of getting free of
your trouble,” she said.

“Well, I could have gone anywhere, but I
wanted to come here,” Telaine improvised. The woman had gone from
terse to uncertain. “I wanted someplace different.”

“You from the capital?”

“Yes.”

“Happen you won’t get any more different from
there as here.” She went back to polishing the glass. “You’re not
what I expected,” she added.

“You know who I am, but my name’s Lainie
Bricker, just in case,” Telaine said.

“Maida Handly,” the woman said. “I’d shake
hands but mine is full, as you can see.”

“No problem, Mistress Handly.”

“It’s Miss Handly,” she said, but without
rancor.

“Miss Handly. I’ll see you around one
o’clock, and thanks.”

Telaine left the tavern and stood for a while
on its porch, breathing in the fresh air and thinking. Aunt Weaver
had given a negative impression of her, and the people of
Longbourne were unfriendly when they weren’t being downright
antagonistic.

This was all too strange for her to ignore,
even if it wasn’t her primary goal, and it made her angry. Nobody
was better than Telaine North Hunter, in any guise, at making
people do what she wanted, and by heaven she was going to make
these people like her. It would be something to occupy herself
while she was trying to make contact with the Baron. That reminded
her she’d forgotten to make sure everyone knew she was a Deviser.
The dinnertime crowd at the bar would be a good time to start.

The dinnertime crowd didn’t exactly freeze in
their tracks when Telaine entered the tavern, but there was a
decided hush as she walked to the bar. The place was only about
half full, not what she’d expected, but she guessed the men and
women who worked at the quarry and the sawmill wouldn’t walk back
into town every day for their dinner. These must be local shop
owners and employees.

Miss Handly met her at the bar and said,
before Telaine could speak, “There’s mutton and there’s bean soup.
Mutton’s better.”

“I’ll have that, and some of whatever beer
you have on tap,” she said. Was it her imagination, or had someone
sucked in a breath? “Can I sit over here?”

“Sit where you like,” Miss Handly said with a
shrug. Telaine pulled out a chair at an empty table in the middle
of a cluster of other diners. None of them tried to meet her eyes.
Telaine sat back and waited for her food. And an opening.

It came almost immediately in the form of a
young woman, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who unluckily caught
Telaine’s eye. Before she could look away, Telaine said cheerfully,
“I’m Lainie Bricker. I’m new in town. You probably know my aunt,
Mistress Weaver? What’s your name?”

Bowled over by the torrent of words, the
young woman said, “Glenda…Brewster.”

“Good to know you, Miss Brewster. Where do
you work?”

“I’m—”

“She works in my store,” said the older woman
seated with her. Her face was narrow, her tone was icy. Telaine
ignored it.

“Really? Which store?”

“I’m the dressmaker.”

“Oh! I’ve seen your shop. It’s beautiful! And
I love the dresses you have displayed.” Telaine wasn’t exaggerating
much. They weren’t outstanding, but she’d been surprised at how
fashionable the clothing was. Even so, she would have said the same
even if the clothing had looked like it was made for cats. Ugly
cats.
Vanity. No better way to reach a woman’s heart.

“You do?” The woman was startled. “But you’re
from the city!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with whether
your clothes are nice or not. You have excellent taste.” Telaine
kept her tone confiding and faintly impressed, though she could
tell it wouldn’t take much to change this woman’s attitude.

A faltering smile spread over the woman’s
face, though the furrow to her brow said she was still expecting
trickery. “Why…thank you,” she said, and added, “My name is
Mistress Adderly.”

The other diners watched this interchange in
silent fascination. “It’s good to know you, Mistress Adderly. I
wish I didn’t spend so much time in these old rags,” Telaine said,
gesturing down at herself. “My work is too hard on dresses.”

“What work’s that?” Now Mistress Adderly had
forgotten her coldness in favor of curiosity.

Ah, I love a straight line
. “Didn’t
Aunt tell you all? I’m a Deviser. Mostly repairs, but sometimes I
build things.”

“A Deviser!” Mistress Adderly’s eyes gleamed.
A man at a nearby table kicked the leg of her chair. She ignored
him. “Miss Bricker, happen you can help me? My sewing Device’s been
going off, these few weeks. It skips stitches and stops in the
middle of a seam. Been using the old manual one, but it’s tiresome
and I’d love the other fixed.”

“Why, I’d be happy to take a look at it,
Mistress Adderly,” Telaine said. She was having trouble ignoring
the reactions of the rest of the diners, who were distressed that
the seamstress might have anything to do with her. “May—can I come
by later this afternoon? If I can’t fix it happen I could at least
tell you if it’s fixable at all.”
Did I use “happen” in a
sentence? Correctly?

“That would be most good of you, Miss.”
Mistress Adderly kicked the chair of the man next to her, but
missed and hit his leg. He swallowed a yelp.

Miss Handly swooped down at that moment with
Telaine’s food: a mutton chop, the inevitable root vegetables, and
a mug of beer. Fortunately, she’d included a knife to go with the
fork. Telaine was all in favor of blending in, but she didn’t think
her reputation would be enhanced by having mutton grease all down
her front.

She took a long drink of her beer, which
tasted better than any she’d had before—maybe that was the added
spice of playing a new role—and applied herself to her food,
ignoring the whispered conversations that sprung up around her. If
she was any judge of character, they were all about her.

The highly waxed
floor of the dressmaker’s back room made it easy for Telaine to
slide beneath the sewing Device, though the place was crowded
enough with bolts of fabric that there wasn’t a lot of room for
sliding. “It’ll be easy to fix, Mistress Adderly,” she said. She
held the motive force, a long, flexible strip of brass, by one end
and let it dangle. “This just needs to be imbued. The skipping and
stopping is because it’s giving off pulses of source.”

“That sounds most magical,” said Mistress
Adderly with a weak laugh.

“Well, it
is
magical, but it’s not too
hard to fix.” Telaine inhaled shallowly. No nearby source,
unfortunately. “I have to take this with me to find a place where I
can imbue it, but I’ll be back right soon.”

They’ve got me talking like them
, she
thought as she walked down the street, sniffing discreetly.
But
how lucky to find someone who needs my services so quickly. And
I’ve managed to turn one person’s attitude around
. The real
question was how quickly this news would reach the Baron. He was
unmarried and unlikely to have any contact with a dressmaker.
Still, it was better than nothing. And Devisery was something she
loved.

She picked up a scent near the gazebo and
followed it to the rear of the forge. She was peripherally aware of
Garrett watching her as she went around the building and up a
slight rise to find a strong source nestled at the base of a pine
tree. She sat down next to it, held the length of brass between her
thumb and index finger, and pulled a long thin strand from the
source and wound it around the strip as if winding thread onto a
spool. The metal piece began to glow emerald green, then paled to a
white-green blaze.

“What are you doing?” asked Garrett. He stood
a few feet from her, his eyes fixed on the glowing metal.

“Re-imbuing this for Mistress Adderly’s
sewing Device.”

Garrett shook his head. “Heard you were a
Deviser, but didn’t hardly credit it until now. Never in all my
life seen something like that.”

Telaine stood, dangling the glowing metal
between her fingers and thumb. “It amazes me too, and I’ve been
doing it for seven years. You want to hold it?”

Garrett stepped back. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“I’m holding it, right? Go ahead.”

Garrett took the fully imbued metal from her
hand, fumbled and nearly dropped it. “Sorry,” he said, sounding
nervous.

“You can’t hurt it. See, it doesn’t even feel
like anything special.”

“How does it work?” He held the brass strip
by his fingertips, mesmerized by the green glow.

Telaine wound another thin strand around her
fingers and tangled it into a cat’s cradle of source. “You know how
there are a lot of lines of power running through Tremontane? They
don’t just bind our families together. Where they cross, they make
a bulge Devisers can sense. The thicker the line, the larger and
more potent the bulge. This one must be at the crossing of two
bigger than average lines to be this powerful.” She shook the
threads off her fingers and let the source reabsorb them.

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know. Nobody can see source any more
than we can see the lines of power. I know how to find it because I
can smell it. To me it’s sweet, like lilac and mint. And I can feel
it in my hands when I start to draw on it, like pulling fibers from
a puff of wool.” It was a comparison she’d never thought to make
before watching Aunt Weaver’s apprentices spin their fluffy gray
wads into thread.

“Must be amazing, being a Deviser.”

“I love how I feel when I’m working with
source. But it’s also humbling, touching the power that binds us
all together.” She held out her hand and received the imbued brass
from him. “Now I put this back and tighten up the fittings, and
Mistress Adderly gets her favorite Device back.”

Garrett shook his head. “Never in all my
days. Not that there’ve been all that many of them,” he said with a
smile. It flashed across his face so quickly she almost missed it.
Another person who didn’t smile all that often, though in his case
it didn’t seem to be because of a permanently sour nature.

“I hope you don’t mind if I come back here
sometimes,” Telaine said. “That’s a good strong source.”

“Certain sure. I’ve thick curtains,” he said,
with that flash of a smile.

“You live here?” Telaine asked, looking up at
the two-story building.

“Close to the forge,” he said. He wiped his
hands on his leather apron. “Be seeing you.”

“You too.”

She waved and went back to Mistress Adderly’s
store, where she had the Device running in half an hour. Mistress
Adderly clapped her hands together and beamed at Telaine.

“Miss Bricker, I’m most grateful for your
help.” She gave Telaine a few coins and clasped her hand. “Happen
you’re not what they say you are.”

“I—thanks for that, Mistress Adderly,”
Telaine said, bewildered. Not what they say? She wished she dared
ask what it was people were saying about her. That she was an
upstart city girl? That she’d pushed her way into Mistress Weaver’s
life without permission? That she was a troublemaker? She packed up
her tools and went back to Aunt Weaver’s, musing on how strange
this town was.

She decided she’d had enough interacting with
the natives for one day and was going to do something for herself.
Halfway up the stairs she cursed, remembering the laundry. She
fetched the shirt, trotted back down and cursed again, remembering
the honey. “Aunt Weaver,” she said over the noise of the loom, “is
there someone I can get to wash my shirt, or should I do it
myself?”
Please say there’s a laundress in town.

“Mistress Richardson takes in laundry,” the
woman replied. “Hers is the house next to the forge, on the north
side.”

“Thank you. I’m off to get that honey now.”
Though it probably wouldn’t be a figgin. She made sure she had her
money with her and set off for the laundress’s house.