Agent of the Crown (29 page)

He was pouring it on too thick, Telaine
thought as she started in on the morning’s crate. In fact, he
seemed entirely too cheerful. Only a few days before he’d been
annoyed with her for delaying her work to go to Ellismere, then she
hadn’t seen him or Morgan since. And now here he was doing a menial
task with every appearance of enjoyment. Something had changed. He
hadn’t gone down the mountain, someone would have noticed, but
what—

“You’re not cold, are you, Miss Bricker?
Because I’m sure I could find a way to take care of that,” said
Morgan, startling her
.

“It is chilly in here, thanks, Mister
Morgan,” she said, trying to sound innocently naïve, though his
sudden appearance made her hands tremble.

Morgan slid around the crates and stood
behind her. She focused on reassembling the gun in her hands and
pretended not to notice him. “Let’s see if I can…warm you up.”

His hands went around her waist and pulled
her close to his body, then he ran his palm over her stomach and up
toward her breasts. She could feel every ridge of the muscles of
his abdomen and, horribly, the hard rounded contours of what lay
below his abdomen. She squealed and spun around with the
reassembled gun in her hand, “accidentally” pressing it to his
throat.

Morgan froze. Before he could remember that
the gun wasn’t loaded, Telaine slid sideways out of his grasp and
lowered the weapon. “Mister Morgan, I’m sorry, but I know I’ve
asked you to stop that,” she said, trying not to let her fear show.
“It’s so hard for me to work when you do that.”

Morgan rearranged his face into its usual
slow, lazy smile. “I see I should take you more seriously, Miss
Bricker,” he said.

Telaine backed out of the storage room, and
he followed her. “I’ll have to catch you some other time when
you’re less…preoccupied with work.” He stopped as he passed her,
ran his finger down the side of her face, and raised an eyebrow
coyly. “Certainly a time when your hands are less full.”

Telaine watched him walk away, her heart
beating painfully fast. That had been close. Morgan could have done
anything he wanted to her in there. As indifferent as the soldiers
were, she couldn’t count on them to rescue her if she screamed.

She repacked the crate, not caring that she
hadn’t finished her work for the day. She could still feel his
hand, stroking her body. Her hands were shaking too much to crack
open the gun casings, let alone hold the tiny tools. She was
done.

She walked slowly back to Longbourne, trying
to dispel the memory of Morgan’s…body…pressed against her. She
wrapped her new jacket around her against the chilly wind. It was
overcast again, and a few flurries of snow blew about her face.
When the first light snows fell, Telaine had panicked, but Eleanor
had told her the big storms were a ways off and not to worry about
it. It would be a late winter in the mountains.

She should see about getting some more warm
clothes, if Longbourne got as snowy as everyone said. Definitely
one of those wool cloaks, some heavier trousers and thick socks,
maybe a hat and scarf. Josephine had some nice cloaks displayed
this week, and there was a tailor who might accept trade in kind
for the rest. Should she learn to knit? No, she’d probably make as
much a mess of it as she did with needlework—

She stopped in the middle of the road and
looked up at the sky, feeling pinpoints of cold melt on her face.
Here she was within days of completing her mission and she was
planning a winter in Longbourne. A winter at home.

The knowledge had crept up on her slowly, a
thought at a time, until Longbourne had gone from being foreign, to
familiar, to comfortable, to beloved.
Home
, she thought
again, and it warmed her as much as Ben’s smile. She hoped her
mission would be complete before the snows fell, but she wouldn’t
feel sorry if it wasn’t.
This isn’t your home
, her annoying
inner voice told her,
home is ballrooms and salons full of
glittering people and flirting in carriages
, but she ignored it
and set off down the road again. That was the Princess’s home. This
was hers.

She stopped in at Josephine’s shop and came
out the proud owner of a thick, voluminous wool cloak in pearly
gray, with a deep hood and a silk lining. It was like wearing a
self-heating blanket. Suppose you could make such a Device? No one
had ever cased a Device in anything but metal or wood, but she
didn’t think it was impossible. She’d have to look into that more
seriously. She might have all winter to do it.

It was hard to
make herself go back to the fort the next day, fearing that Morgan
might get her alone again, hating the tedium of the work and the
oppressiveness of the fort. She took her time over breakfast,
dawdled talking to Ben and to Eleanor, chatted with Maida when she
picked up her dinner, and made her walk up the road into more of a
stroll. The storm clouds still threatened, but the wind had died
down and she felt less chilly than the day before.

She closed her fingers around the iron key
that weighed her pocket down and remembered why she was actually
going to the fort. Today she would try to investigate the other
storage towers. Somewhere, there had to be whatever contraband
Harroden had sent. It was almost funny that the Baron was
responsible for giving her the freedom to engineer his
downfall.

The fort looked different that morning; she
realized, as she approached, there were no guards at the gate, and
the gate itself stood open. Her first thought was
The Ruskalder
have invaded
, then she laughed at herself. She would definitely
have noticed if Ruskalder warriors were loose in Barony Steepridge.
Still, she slowed her steps and listened. Everything seemed too
quiet, even for Thorsten Keep, which usually sounded like a sullen
bear grumbling its way toward hibernation.

When she entered the fort, she saw a few
soldiers milling around, not nearly as many as usual and none of
them spruce and well-kempt. They were all moving faster than usual,
which still meant a gait barely faster than a walk, but none of
them paid any more attention to her than before.

She walked to the keep without being stopped
by any of the soldiers, though the two men standing beside the door
did glance at her briefly and dismiss her as not a threat. She
entered, feeling unease prickle the back of her neck. “—deal with
that at once,” she heard the Baron say. “Everything can
advance.”

“Yes, milord,” said another man, whose voice
was husky, as if he spent a lot of time coughing.

Telaine eased the door most of the way shut,
or tried to; it slipped from her fingertips and shut loudly enough
to make both men stop speaking. She cursed, silently, then hurried
forward before the Baron could suspect her of eavesdropping. She
regretted that lost opportunity.

The Baron stood near the table next to one of
the slovenly soldiers, who was standing as much at attention as
she’d ever seen any of them do. He had untidy, too-long blond hair
and had removed the stiff collar of his uniform. That was one point
on which she was in sympathy with the man; Jeffy had complained
often of how the high collar dug into his chin, and how he wished
the service would do away with it.

The Baron didn’t seem upset by her
interruption. “You should go home today, Miss Bricker,” he said.
“There’s been a terrible accident and the fort is rather unsettled
at the moment. I’m afraid Captain Clarke is dead.”

Telaine gasped. She’d rather liked the man,
from what little she’d known of him. “What happened, milord?”

“He fell off the wall during the midnight
watch and broke his neck. Some of the soldiers say he looked drunk.
I wouldn’t have thought it of Clarke, myself.”

Telaine thought the chances of Clarke being
drunk on duty were about the same as her voluntarily submitting to
Morgan’s embraces. She regarded the Baron more closely. His voice
sounded unhappy and distressed, but his face was impassive, as if
he were reporting on the tragedy from a great distance. “I’m so
sorry to hear it, milord,” she said. “If it’s not impertinent for
me to ask, who will replace him?”

The Baron gestured at the soldier. “This is
Lieutenant—I should say, Captain Jackson. He was Clarke’s second
and has sadly received a promotion under tragic circumstances.”
Jackson nodded at Telaine. He didn’t look as if he thought her
worthy of his attention.

“As I say, it’s perhaps better if you
continue your work tomorrow,” the Baron said. The gesture he made
in her direction made it clear this was an order rather than a
request. Telaine left quickly.

On her way back to Longbourne, she thought
about the Baron’s face when he’d spoken of Clarke. She remembered
what he’d said to the captain only the day before…something about
not having to worry about transferring away good men anymore? That
phrase struck her as sinister now. She had no doubt the Baron was
capable of killing someone who was in his way. Had Clarke become
too much of a hindrance to the Baron’s plans, whatever they
were?

And now “everything can advance,” the Baron
had said. If he hadn’t specifically instructed her to leave, and in
the new captain’s hearing, she’d have turned around that minute and
taken advantage of the disorder to snoop in the storage towers. As
it was, disobeying a man who’d arranged a fatal accident for
someone didn’t seem like a good survival strategy.

The fort was still disorganized when Telaine
returned the next day. Clarke might not have been able to control
the men, but he’d kept some level of order. This new captain either
was less competent (almost certainly true) or less interested (also
probably true), but either way, she again felt invisible as she
entered the gate, despite the men standing on guard there.

She decided to do some work and get a feel
for the activity in the fort before trying to get into the storage
towers. By now she could disassemble the guns without looking and
could almost make the repairs the same way. She worked, and
observed, and thought. There were no regular patterns to the
soldiers’ movement, no marching drills or patrols. That would be a
problem.

On the other hand, the soldiers who passed
close to her work space either glanced at her with a total lack of
interest, or didn’t look at her at all. After Morgan’s sexually
aggressive behavior, their disinterest was welcome. And it might
mean they wouldn’t pay much attention to where she went.

She finished three weapons and decided to
test the waters. She strolled out of the storage tower and ambled
down the long row of towers to the right of the outer gate. She
kept her eyes focused on the ground, or the walls, and carefully
did not meet the eyes of any soldier who passed her. Continued lack
of interest. There were only five towers on this side of the fort;
beyond these the log wall continued until it met, as she’d guessed,
the mountainside.

She walked all the way to the end, turned
around, and came back. This time, when she reached the end tower,
she stopped and tried her key in the lock, making an informed guess
about the laziness of Thorsten Keep’s designer. It turned stiffly.
Heaven must be on her side.

She opened the door and went inside,
deliberately not looking around. This was where instinct worked
against you. It was always tempting to see if you were observed
when you were going someplace you shouldn’t. But that kind of
movement drew attention to you the way boldness, and the air of
being somewhere you were allowed to be, did not.

The crates inside, like the ones in her
tower, had had their nails removed so their lids came off easily.
The word BLANKETS was stenciled on every box. She removed the lid
of one and found, to her surprise, that it actually was full of
blankets. She felt down inside it, moved a couple of crates and
searched inside those as well. All were entirely full of scratchy,
gray wool blankets. She replaced everything and left the tower,
relocking it.

Well. That was unexpected. So some of the
shipments were legitimate goods. She hoped she wouldn’t have to
search every tower to find the contraband she was looking for.

She went back and worked on a few more guns.
Establishing a pattern was also key. Staying still and waiting for
a break in activity only made you more obvious when you did start
to move. She went back and forth between her legitimate work and
her sneaking, but still found nothing illicit.

One tower had crates of mail shirts, oiled
and wrapped individually, standard military issue if somewhat
outdated. The Ruskalder didn’t use projectile weapons, so maybe on
the frontier the shirts were still useful. Rations, clothing, more
rations, more guns, boxes and boxes of bullet wheels, one tower
holding perishable items—this one was in frequent use, so she had
to observe it from a distance and hope what she wanted wasn’t
there.

She packed up a crate of newly repaired
weapons and took a moment to rearrange everything, working weapons
here, broken weapons there. The task left her sweaty despite the
chill in the air, and she removed her coat and draped it on the
stack of finished work. Only a few more towers to investigate, and
she hadn’t found anything more incriminating than a couple of
bottles of good brandy mixed in with the rations, mislabeled,
probably on purpose.

She pushed strands of hair out of her face
and took a minute to re-braid her hair. Then she continued her
exploring. It was getting dark. This might have to be the last
one.

This tower again held boxes supposedly
containing blankets. Telaine frowned as, once again, she found
nothing but blankets. Could the secret shipments be so mundane? She
put everything back the way it was supposed to be.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here,
Miss Bricker.”