Greenglass House (23 page)

 

nine

“Oh, boy,” Milo said, staring at the house, which had suddenly been reduced to nothing more than a patch of gray.

“Good grief.” Mr. Pine sighed. “I mean, I sort of figured this might happen, but still. Brandon, how about giving me a hand with the generator? And Fenster, you mind going with Milo and helping Nora get some temporary light in there? She's probably got a couple guests freaking out on her.”

A couple at least. Mrs. Hereward and Dr. Gowervine were guaranteed to be panicking loudly. Milo didn't wait to hear Fenster's answer, just hurried as fast as he could toward the house.

He heard shouting before he even got up the porch stairs (remembering at the last moment not to try to take them two at a time because of the ice). Then he opened the front door and all hell broke loose.

“It's just me!” Milo shouted into the maelstrom of voices that, once he listened for a moment, was really just the excitable pair and Mrs. Caraway and Lizzie trying hard to calm them down. The four stood at the center of the living room where the only remaining light, the glow of the fire, made their faces look monstrous. Mr. Vinge was nowhere to be seen. Georgie was still upstairs, maybe, and Clem and Owen seemed to have left the first floor too.

Mrs. Pine appeared in the light of a candle at Milo's shoulder, and she was furious. “Once things calm down, I will have some very loud and angry words for you about the way you disappeared like that on a night like this,” she said tightly. “But obviously, they'll have to wait.” She pressed a long grill lighter, the kind that works with a trigger, into Milo's hand. “Get to lighting candles. And—” She peered over his shoulder. “Is that
Fenster?
”

Fenster pulled off his cap. “Yes, ma'am. But incognito.” He gave Mrs. Pine an exaggerated wink. “Just a humble monastery gardener, I.”

She blinked, then sighed. “Fill me in later. Milo, where's your father?”

“Starting the generator.” Milo beckoned her closer and lowered his voice. “Brandon Levi's with him.”

“Also incognito,” Fenster added, leaning in to whisper.

“Candles,” Mrs. Pine ordered through gritted teeth. “
Now,
so maybe these two will stop thinking the world's coming to an end just because it's dark. I'm going down to the basement for the lanterns. Actually, Fenster, could you give me a hand with those? And I should probably explain about this story I may have told everyone about you,” she added as the two of them disappeared through the basement door in the kitchen.

Milo made a beeline for the candles his mother had artfully worked into the centerpiece on the dining room table earlier in the day. He squeezed the trigger and touched the flame to the trimmed wicks one by one. Meddy's face peered at him from the other side of the table through the candle flames. He jumped and heard himself give an involuntary squeak.

“Where've you been?” he demanded.

“Where've
you
been?” she countered. “I've been right here. Seemed like the best thing to do was just stay put until everything calmed down.” She nodded at the living room, where, incredibly, the noise was rising. Mrs. Hereward and Dr. Gowervine had spotted Fenster passing through and were demanding to know who the new stranger in their midst was. “What's
with
those two?”

There were three unlit candlesticks on the kitchen counter. Milo gathered them and took them into the living room. He edged right into the middle of the yelling group, held up the lighter awkwardly, and clicked it alight.

Startled, the guests stopped shouting. Milo handed two of the unlit candlesticks off to Lizzie Caraway and lit the third. Then he shoved it at Mrs. Hereward, who took it more out of self-defense than any wish to be helpful. “That one goes on the table by the sofa,” he said, and pointed.

Mrs. Hereward opened her mouth. “Right there,” Milo added before she could get a word out. The old lady scowled but she did as she was told.

Milo took another candlestick from Lizzie, who was watching with a bemused look on her face. This one he lit and thrust at Dr. Gowervine. “This goes on the table by the front door. Over there, please.” The doctor gave him a scowl too, but went without arguing. Lizzie handed Milo the last candle, which he passed along to the returning Mrs. Hereward before she could start yelling again.

“Thank you,” Milo said, ignoring her obvious displeasure.

Mrs. Hereward looked at him, surprised. “Well . . . well, you're welcome.”

“Why don't you sit and relax for a bit?” he suggested. “Take the candle with you. And, Dr. Gowervine, if you want to do something really useful, you could bring the firewood in for Lizzie.” The short man stopped dead in his tracks in the act of following Mrs. Caraway into the kitchen to start yelling at her again. He glowered at Milo, turned on his heel, and slunk to the foyer to pull on his coat.

Milo smiled.
And I didn't even have to use Negret's Irresistible Blandishment,
he thought.
I just did it.

By the time his mother reappeared with the handles of four kerosene lanterns looped over her arms and Fenster on her heels carrying a mountain of blankets and a few more lanterns that dangled from his wrists, the first floor was candlelit and quiet. Mrs. Hereward was knitting quietly on the sofa, Dr. Gowervine and Lizzie were stacking wood next to the fireplace, and Milo and Meddy were conferring in the corner behind the Christmas tree.

“Wow,” Mrs. Pine said. “This isn't what I expected to find.”

Georgie stumbled down the stairs and into the candlelit dining room. “Ah, I see it's not just my floor without light.”

“Yeah, the house lost power, but everything's fine,” Milo's mom replied. “How's the young man doing?”

Georgie shrugged and trudged into the kitchen. She looked miserable. “I don't know. I left them alone.” Then she paused and roused herself out of her sadness long enough to glance curiously at Fenster. “I don't think we've met.”

He gave a short bow that threatened to topple him along with his load of cold-weather supplies. As it was, two thick blankets landed on the floor just in time to nearly send Mr. Vinge sprawling as he returned to the first floor. “Fenster Plum, ma'am. And sir,” he added, nodding to Mr. Vinge. “I'm a gardener. I work up at the monastery at the top of the hill, only what with the weather I got stuck on my way home. Home being down in Shantytown, miss, which is rather a long trip to take on such a wretched night. You can see how I wound up here. Nothing strange about it at all.”

Georgie's eyes widened as she listened, but she nodded along as if there was nothing strange about gardening in the middle of a snowstorm, nor someone attempting a long trip home on such a wretched night, nor about Fenster's overlong explanation. Milo was pretty sure she wasn't fooled one bit.

Mrs. Pine gave Fenster a warning look. “Nope, nothing strange at all,” she said.

“This wouldn't be the Fenster from your story, Mrs. Pine?” Mr. Vinge asked, picking up the fallen blankets.

“Why, yes!” Fenster said before Milo's mom could answer. “Nora said she'd told that tale!”

“You'll have to tell us your version of it,” Mr. Vinge suggested as he placed the blankets back on Fenster's pile. “We've been telling stories.”

“Glad to! Matter of fact, I can tell you now, right quick. It were April—”

“Not now, Fenster. My arms are killing me,” Mrs. Pine interrupted.

It was Mrs. Hereward who came to the rescue, bustling out of the living room with a skein of green yarn dangling from one bony hand. “Oh, Mrs. Pine? I don't wish to sound hysterical, but by what means exactly are you going to keep us all from freezing in our beds tonight?”

“Well, the generator should bring the power back before long,” she replied, sounding relieved at the change of subject. “But I'm going to take lanterns up to everybody's rooms now, and we have plenty of spare blankets and hot water bottles, too, just in case. It's true this is a drafty old house, but it's not built out of sticks and mud. It'll keep the heat in for a good long while before we have to worry about anybody freezing.”

Mrs. Hereward looked skeptical, but Mrs. Pine just hustled Fenster toward the stairs and they headed up. Georgie went into the kitchen and poured herself a mug of coffee. “I've got one,” she said. “A story, I mean.” She took her mug into the living room and dropped into the chair opposite the one Mr. Vinge was settling into. “I'll tell the story tonight. Can I?”

“Sure,” Milo said. “Why not?”

Georgie looked into her cup, then raised her face. “Milo, yesterday your mom said there was whiskey if we wanted hot toddies. You think I could have some for my coffee?”

“Sure.” He went to the liquor cabinet, found the right bottle, and took it back to the blue-haired girl, who opened it and poured a generous amount into her cup. Then she handed the bottle back, stirred the whiskey and coffee together with her index finger, and took a long sip, wincing.

“Listen,” she said at last. The night before, Mrs. Hereward had spoken the invocation like an order, but Georgie made it sound like a sigh.

“There were two moonlighters, two very famous thieves. One was a burglar who was called the Otter because of his acrobatic style and because he was known to be a spirited character. The other was a hacker called the Eye, because when he cased a target he saw everything and learned everything about it. Not one little slip of information was missed or went to waste.

“These two thieves knew of each other, of course, but they had never crossed paths. Still, by some quirk of fate, it happened that the Otter and the Eye fell in love with the same girl.

“This girl . . . well, it's impossible to say what makes a person fall in love, really, so there's no way to know how each of them came to love her. She was nice enough to look at, but that wasn't the reason. She was brilliant to speak to, and she had peculiar and fascinating ideas, which were definitely part of her allure. She was . . .” Georgie shrugged. “She wasn't the sort of person who would demand that anyone change who he or she was, and yet each thief felt in his secret heart that if by some miracle she loved him back, he might actually consider looking for gainful employment if she asked him to.”

On the hearth, Milo groaned inwardly, wondering if after the promising beginning—moonlighters!—this was going to turn into a boring love story.

“Whatever the reasons,” Georgie continued, “both the Otter and the Eye came to love her madly. And, being thieves, each immediately began to think about how he might steal her heart for himself.”

Thank goodness,
Milo thought.
Back to thievery.

“Well, it's virtually impossible for two very elite thieves to make a play for the same plunder without becoming aware of each other, so before long, the Otter and the Eye—who you will recall had heard of each other, but had never met—discovered that they were questing for the same prize.

“If the way to the girl's heart had been as simple as the gift of any valuable object that could be taken from one person and given to another, the odds would have been so completely in the Otter's favor that the Eye would never have had a chance. The Otter was an expert in jewels and precious things, and unparalleled at the sort of work it took to steal them: the crafty sneaking-in and lifting-away and escaping without a trace.

“But the girl was not that sort of creature, and they both knew it. They also both knew that this put the Eye at an advantage. He was a master at the patient seeking of information, at knowing a mark so completely that, before long, that mark could not possibly keep secrets from him, and then at discerning which secrets were meaningful and which were not. If there was a single gift that could be given to the girl that might convince her of the devotion in the heart of a bandit, it was the Eye who had the best chance of finding it. But he knew the Otter would be watching, and that if he wasn't careful, the Otter would try to steal whatever he found before he could give it to the girl. And if what he found was anything that could be taken from him by stealth, even
he
would be hard-pressed to protect it from the Otter.

“Well, not to drag the story out, the Eye found what he was looking for deep in the archives of the city. The girl had been adopted as a child”—Milo sat up just a touch straighter—“and because of the dreadful state of the city archives, she had never been able to learn anything about her family.”

“Her birth parents,” Milo corrected instinctively. “The people who adopted her would still have been her family.”

Georgie looked up at him apologetically. “Yes, sorry, Milo. She had never been able to learn anything about her birth parents, but she had always been curious. And while the Eye wasn't able to find anything about them specifically, he was able to track down some information about the one thing she had from before she'd been adopted: her middle name.
Lansdegown.
”

Milo stiffened, and on the sofa, Mrs. Hereward did the same. They glanced at each other across the room. Milo raised his eyebrows at her. Mrs. Hereward nodded, then tapped one finger to her lips.

Georgie didn't seem to notice the exchange. “The Eye discovered that the name was also the old, forgotten name of a house, and he determined to find out what this meant. He made no notes of what he'd found; for all he knew, the Otter was already sneaking into his lair every night and looking for information. The only physical clue he had was a chart, an artifact connected to the house from the days when it was called Lansdegown, and the Eye planned to follow that chart to its secret. To protect this clue, he created a decoy: a map very similar to the real one. Then he began to studiously consult that false map. When not pretending to pore over it, the Eye hid the false map as carefully as possible, as if it was precious and as if protecting it from thieving eyes was the most important thing in his life. And just as he'd expected he would, the Eye woke one morning to find the map gone as cleanly as if it had never existed. Knowing he had a very narrow window of time while the Otter was occupied with the false map, the Eye left for the house.