The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (3 page)

“When would Mistress Gere like me to begin? I would need to find lodging in the area.”

“Room and board are included in your employment,” Mr. Fetcher said. “Wellspring’s employees all live on site. Mistress Gere hopes you can begin immediately.”

Room and board. Twenty shillings a week. It should be enough so that she could avoid Mr. Shearing’s offer in case she didn’t pass the trial and had to return to Derby with no position. But if she did pass it, the months of work that followed would give Annmar the money she needed to lease a shop herself, free and clear of Mr. Shearing and his…conditions.

Mr. Fetcher gestured with the pouch. “Will you accept?”

She stared at the bag, both giddy at the prospect of freedom and queasy at the deception she would attempt. But facing Mr. Shearing loomed with worse distaste.

“Yes,” she whispered, stepped closer and grasped the linen-covered coins. Mr. Fetcher released the bag, and Annmar sighed as the unexpected weight sank her hand. For a few seconds, the hidden half sovereigns slipped over each other between her fingers, clinking faintly like the call of carefree sparrows. Then she wedged the bag between her sketchbook and her bodice.

With her arms wrapped tight, Annmar smiled, the first heartfelt smile to grace her face in over a year.

Mr. Fetcher returned it and handed her a folded paper packet. “Your letter of directions.”

She broke the blue wax seal and scanned the contents. The instructions were clear, but one item puzzled her. Annmar lifted a double-sided medallion of blue wax pressed over a cord and attached within the folded letter. “Why the second seal?”

“Your Gateway Proof,” Mr. Fetcher said simply. “Keep it with you.” And with a tip of his top hat, he turned and left.

chapter three

Wellspring Collective, Blighted Basin

Daeryn Darkcoat’s paws
carried his polecat form in a weasel’s rolling leaps along a dirt road. The moon, just past waxing, lit Wellspring Collective’s rows of plants in the sharp grays and blacks of his nocturnal vision. Butternut squash on the right and a late planting of beans to the left. Nothing amiss.

And yet squeaks, pitched higher than the thrum of crickets, carried across his assigned patrol section. Perking his ears, Daeryn caught the stray sound again. There. Homing in, he slunk his long, brown body down the hill to the open front of an equipment shed.

Scritch…scritch, scritch.

Not calls, but scratching. Claws on metal. Deep shadows hid one of the pests they’d been hunting for days, but it was there. Somewhere. Daeryn padded closer to the row of tillers and raised his snout.

No scent but engine oil. He hesitated. This animal’s actions were different. What farm pest entered a rain shelter full of equipment when hundreds of acres of vegetables lay available for the taking?

Scritch…

Daeryn charged through the tillers.

A shadow shifted at the back wall. The forest of metal legs stuck out everywhere, the low water tanks blocked his leaps. He twisted and—

—slammed into an inches-wide crack, nose tickled by disappearing fur.

Damn. He scuttled back, skirted machines and tore out of the shed. Behind it, he jumped on a crate and paused on his toes, ready to spring. Broad squash leaves covered the still field.

Nothing. Nothing.

At least his teammates’ fleeting glimpses had gained them clues: The pest ran versus hopped, had black fur, no tail on a low body—shorter even than his polecat height of eleven inches on the paw, Jac had taunted.

He couldn’t justify more time here. Bunching his hindquarters, Daeryn sprang. He hit the dirt road with a bound and raced it to a crossroad on a hummock. Along the farm boundary, up and down the tree line beyond the fields, only the autumn leaves stirred.

Maraquin should have been visible. Where was that wolf?

On the trail of a mystery pest? And who was he to complain, being late himself? He glanced skyward, picking out Tracker, the brightest star above the mountainous ridge on the northern horizon. An hour past midnight. If the previous three nights were any indication, those pests already should have snuck into Maraquin’s section of fields. If they bit into the tomatoes like last night, the collective kitchen would be bushels low for sauce canning. Again.

He passed the caged tomato plants drooping with ripe plum varieties. If Maraquin didn’t catch up with him, he’d start that additional section they were covering for an absent teammate, and then find her—

Woof.

He jerked around at Maraquin’s low bark and met her emerging from the tomato rows. Her robust wolf form rose onto hind legs and slimmed. Moonlight accentuated her bare curves, the best of them hidden beneath the thick hair spilling over her shoulders and chest. He averted his gaze, which each team member did out of courtesy, though they well knew each other’s bodies through their work routine.

“Twice I heard and chased something,” Maraquin said, “but found nothing. You?”

He shook his head without bothering to shift to human. Why report the same?

“Drat. I know they’re in there, but don’t have the time to search with the extra section. Can you cover the cornfield without me?” When he nodded, she sighed and dropped to all fours. “I wish Owen would come back.” The last words became a snarl as she shifted to wolf.

He felt the same, but what could they do? Owen had to take over the family harvest for his ill brother, and now faced the same battle eliminating these new pests.

Maraquin shook her thick, silky coat and nimbly closed the space between them, a jump that brought her nose down to his. She licked the side of his round face, her tongue wet on the bare skin fronting his ear. He grabbed her snout in a playful bite, not sinking his canines. Fun, he was telling her, had to wait. She huffed a half growl of understanding and they separated.

He’d see her after dawn, or not, depending on how their night went, and if Jac agreed. Alpha wolves were such a pain, and he was glad he didn’t have to answer to one. But Maraquin did. It wasn’t that he was that interested, just that Maraquin was sometimes available. Which was just as well. He’d never meet another female who’d match the one he’d lost.

Eyes and ears alert, Daeryn bounded toward the cornfield. He’d race through it before meeting the next nocturnal team member on his rounds. The five of them had easily covered Owen’s absence until the pests showed up. Now their shameful inability to run down even one of the creatures revealed how much Wellspring had relied on the older fox’s decades of experience in outsmarting prey. If their team didn’t identify the species and pinpoint these pests’ habits, there would be no stopping the crop damage—damage occurring at the worst possible time, the peak of the autumn harvest.

An hour past midnight and no new sightings of the mysterious species. He, for one, didn’t want to face the head grower in the morning without an explanation for why his workers were showing him bites in half the vegetable varieties.

A faint vibration under his paws shook Daeryn from his thoughts. He turned its direction, north. Jac’s section. Seconds later, the tremor became a pounding of paws on dirt. Light ones. The animal wasn’t a wolf, but a fox. Terrent, the newest and youngest member of their team—sixteen to Daeryn’s twenty-one years—must have worked himself into a nervous wreck because Daeryn was late.

But why was he running hell-bent? And from Jac’s section?

Maraquin’s heavier footfalls beat through the tomatoes. Daeryn signaled his location with a chattering call. The red fox veered to him, with Maraquin appearing a moment later. Terrent skidded to a stop and shifted form in a fluid transition, spoiled when he promptly sat down hard on his ass.

“Damn,” he gasped out, his breath harsh. “Jac ran me halfway to the stream chasin’ one of those black pest creatures. Stupid, I know, but there’s no telling Jac anything.”

Daeryn shifted to human. Hell, what was Jac thinking, leaving Wellspring’s borders?

“I shouldn’t have left her, I suppose, when no one knows what this creature’s capable of.” Terrent shook his head. “But I figured the rest of youse should know.”

“The fool. Where is she now?”

“Searching where she lost the creature among the outcrops on the woodlot at the Davies’.”

Maraquin raced off.

“She could be there or anywhere,” Terrent yelled after her. “If she found that creature, she’ll pursue it clear to Breakthrough Gap.”

Daeryn raked fingers through his hair. Right, but if she had found it, Jac could also be in trouble. These pests weren’t the common mice, voles and rabbits they routinely caught, or the deer, wild boars or occasional escaped sheep they ran off. They had to check, but the folly of every team member charging into the woods stopped him.

“Find Zar,” he said, then added, “Would you?” Ordering his co-workers wasn’t his place. “Tell him where we’ve gone. If we aren’t back in fifteen minutes, go ring the bell and rouse Miz Gere.” There, that should keep the team in the owner’s good graces for observing safety precautions.

“All right,” Terrent grumbled. “I hate being at the bottom of this team, especially with no leader to follow.” The fox boy rolled to his feet and shifted.

“No kidding,” Daeryn snarled back from mid-shift. But complaining wouldn’t help. He leaped away. His muscles bunched and stretched with each growing stride. If Owen had been here, Jac would have reported in, not taken the decision herself, as her alpha tendencies were more and more inclined to do these last two weeks. A leader would never allow them to waste this much energy on the foolish pursuit of a single destructive pest. Hell, in their experience, once a rabbit or two had success, more followed. For all they knew, another whole group of pests had entered Wellspring’s borders and was destroying more crops.

Daeryn quickened his pace and raced up a long rolling hill. Alone, dammit. Every one of them was alone now, the team’s routine of patrols and backup totally abandoned. How long before they found Jac, returned and made a full rotation of the eight hundred acres? Long enough the usual farm vermin would have full bellies.

He crested the rise, his lungs burning. Below, at the far side of the root crops, Maraquin’s large wolf form ran, tail up and nose to the ground, tracing Terrent’s scent. Or, more likely, Jac’s. Maraquin’s long-standing beta position to Jac went back to their home pack in the Wildlands shire, so their detection of each other was flawless. The wolf came to an opening at the woods’ edge and entered.

Daeryn followed on the same path, one of the network all the animacambires used for excursions off-property. His sensitive ears picked out Maraquin’s paw beats, fainter, more distant than he’d thought they’d be. He bounded after her, autumn leaves scattering under his paws and filling his nostrils with their earthy scent.

Fifty feet, a hundred, five hundred. The stream lay twenty times this distance away. Was Jac there? Closer? Farther? Safe? Daeryn stopped thinking and ran.

Minutes, and a mile later, barking broke out ahead.

Maraquin. Her vocalization had an edge to it, one that stopped his breathing for the endless moment it took for an answering bark.

It rasped. Jac. Close. Alive. He shot forward, running with all his might. Maraquin barked again, and this time the return call came deep and strong—alpha-like. When Maraquin issued forth a series of growls and barks that could only be the telling off of her packmate, Daeryn slowed and filled his lungs.

Hell, Jac was fine. Probably full of herself, returning from a needless search that expended everyone’s energy and left the property open to other invaders.

By the time he caught up to them, the wolves were rolling in an outright fight, the beta Maraquin for once taking on her headstrong alpha. Leaves, dirt, fur and snarls flew in confusion. He couldn’t tell which was faring better, but he’d take a piece of that action. With a burst of energy, he raced forward and leaped. His nose verified the landing pad was some part of Jac’s anatomy, so he sank his claws and let loose a series of spitting cries and growls, a pissed-off message in any language.

She froze beneath him, then tried to shake him off like water from a puddle. Daeryn clung, the muscles of his smaller European polecat form tight with the effort.

I’ll show you—

The heavy body, and whiff, of a lynx slammed them sideways—their teammate Zar. Daeryn landed with a jolt several feet away.

Just as well. He rolled over and crouched up against a log, gasping.

Apparently, Zar was even angrier than he’d been. The lynx danced a mean streak, pouncing, snarling and biting at the thick fur of Jac’s ruff and hindquarters. She twisted and snapped her heavy jaws at him, but between his agile moves and Maraquin’s worked-up anger, the fight raged on, bloodless, but just barely.

Any longer and the integrity of the team might be damaged. Daeryn shifted and swatted at the nearest furry rump. “Break it up.”

Maraquin rounded on him and growled, but sank on her haunches and shifted. Her thick, black hair fell across her face and shoulders, with the rest of her front hidden behind crossed muscular arms and the shadows of her bent knees.

Zar shifted, too, but didn’t bother to cover his heaving chest or the rest of his body. He threw his broad, muscular physique aggressively back and forth, yelling between gasps, “What the hell? What the hell were you doing…taking off alone? Trying to get yourself…maimed? No one knows what that beast is capable of!”

Jac’s upper lip curled, but no snarl emerged.

Smart Jac, because any hint of her usual uppityness and Daeryn wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking her on, big carnivore or not. But she didn’t give him an excuse.

“We don’t—” Daeryn sucked a breath to steady his tone, to make his point sound reasonable. “We don’t run down every animal that crosses onto Wellspring.”

“That’s right.” Zar jabbed a finger at her, nearly hitting the fur between her eyes.

Jac flinched back, changed to human form nearly identical to her cousin Maraquin’s, and fell to a sit. “Fine. I get it.”

“Do you?” Zar barreled on. “All a guard needs to do is run a beast off the farm property, same as every other beast who threatens the crops. Nothing more. If Owen were here, he’d have your hide for this foolish lark.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Jac said. “This beast is different. It must be foreign, from Outside the Basin.”

“You don’t know that,” Zar spat out. “By the Path, no one of us can properly identify the variety of life—animacambire, planta or just plain creatures—lurking in the back bowels of Blighted Basin.”

Jac jumped to her feet and snapped, “Would you let me finish?”

Daeryn stepped between them. “Let her talk. This team isn’t pack. With Owen gone, we’re equal members and have to hear each other out.”

Between his mustache and beard, Zar’s lips twisted like he’d scented carrion.

But Jac dipped her chin to him in a rare show of appreciation. “You didn’t see what I saw, so you can’t fault me for running down the one I finally found. It’s bad. Tonight those pests didn’t just bite up some vegetables. They’ve gnawed the stalks at the base and destroyed an entire row of acorn squash.” Jac waved her arm this way and that, her excitement from the chase still evident. “The teeth on those things must be as sharp as axes.”