Agent of the Crown (35 page)

Aunt Weaver sent the apprentices home early
on the day before Wintersmeet Eve. “Happen you don’t know our
Wintersmeet customs,” she said.

“Don’t see how I could know, Aunt Weaver,”
Telaine said, rolling her eyes.

“No need to be disrespectful. Thought you
wanted to be told things now ’stead of working ’em out for
yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Weaver. Please
continue.”

“Uppity girl. Well. Tomorrow we clean house.
Gets us ready to start a new year, see.”

“I do. That’s…interesting. I like it.”

“Well, I don’t so much like cleaning, but
it’s good and symbolic. Wintersmeet Eve is for families. We eat
together and think about the ones who ain’t with us.”

Telaine thought of Ben, alone in his house.
“That would be sad if you didn’t have any other family around.”

“That’s up to you. Then Wintersmeet day you
visit with all your friends and exchange gifts. I take it you have
gifts?” Aunt Weaver sounded as if she questioned Telaine’s
Wintersmeet spirit.

“I’ve made gifts for everyone. Aunt Weaver,
what if someone gives me a gift and I don’t have one for them?”

“They won’t take offense. Wintersmeet gifts
is like a thank you for doing something that mattered to the person
giving the gift. Sometimes you do more for a person than they do
for you. Sometimes it’s the other way around. But mostly you know
who’s giving to you.”

“That’s good.”

“Wintersmeet night is for big gatherings.
Your young man leads the chorals down at the tavern. Figure you’ll
want to be there. Lots of parties and people goin’ from one to the
other.”

“It sounds beautiful. Far nicer than—”

“Don’t say what I know you’re goin’ to say.
Not even in here. Don’t even think it.”

“I thought
you
told me not to get too
attached to Longbourne.”

“Too late for that. Might as well embrace
it.” Aunt Weaver paused, then added, in a quieter voice, “Happen
you’ve got a plan for all that.”

Telaine hadn’t thought about it. She had to
go back to Aurilien eventually, but what would she do after that?
She didn’t have a plan, but it sounded like Aunt Weaver thought she
needed one. Perhaps she was right. Could she come back to
Longbourne after this was over? It was a daring thought, and one
that unsettled her. Something to think about some other day.

The next day they cleaned more thoroughly
than Telaine had thought possible. Sweeping and mopping the weaving
room, dusting the sitting room and creating great pale clouds that
merely settled back on the furniture. Aunt Weaver made Telaine go
outside and wave the broom around the rafters of the outhouse,
sweeping out cobwebs that drifted around her like strands of gray,
sticky clouds.

It left Telaine feeling exhausted, but Aunt
Weaver seemed unaffected as she moved around the kitchen making
supper. The smell of hot pork roast and buttery mashed potatoes
filled the air. “Happen you’d like to get that candle off the high
shelf,” Aunt Weaver said, and Telaine climbed the step stool and
reached up for a fat silver candle in an iron casing. It had been
lit many times before, the wax melting down the sides and over the
metal holder, smooth and shiny.

Aunt Weaver produced fine china place
settings and silverware and a couple of wine glasses, then, even
more surprisingly, a bottle of good wine. She served them both, sat
down, poured the wine, and picked up her knife and fork. “Happy
Wintersmeet, niece,” she said.

“Happy Wintersmeet, aunt,” Telaine
replied.

They ate in silence, and then Telaine cleared
the dishes while Aunt Weaver lit the candle. “Family joins us,” she
said when Telaine sat down again. It sounded like ritual, one
Telaine didn’t know. “Family binds us. We leave one family to join
another. However far we go, family draws us back.” She put her hand
around the candle, below the dripping wax. “You put your hand over
mine,” Aunt Weaver said. Telaine did so.

Aunt Weaver closed her eyes. “You never knew
your grandpapa,” she said in a quiet voice. “He died before you
were born, died too young. I’d grieved for him already when I left,
because Zara North died and left him behind, but I didn’t know I
still had it in me to miss my little brother when he died.”

She smiled, her eyes still closed. “He was a
brilliant, joyful man. When he was young he cared too much for what
other people thought and didn’t have the sense to know whose
opinions he ought care for. But brilliant and joyful. No question
what your grandmama saw in him, though they had a rocky road to
travel. Wish I’d been there to see them reach the end.”

She fell silent, and Telaine sensed it was
her turn. “I never knew my mother,” she said. She gazed at the
candle flame, trying to see images from the past. “She died of lung
fever when I was not quite three. But my father was my whole world
when I was a child. When she died, he took me to live in the forest
he loved so much. I grew up wild and unschooled, without knowing
anything but surviving through winter and summer.

“He taught me a lot of things I forgot,
later, growing up in the palace. It was like losing a piece of him
every time I tried to remember how to tickle fish, or find my way
by the stars—I was so young to learn any of that, and maybe he was
denying me my mother’s heritage, but I think he loved her so much
he couldn’t bear the places where she’d been. And then he got sick,
and I think he knew he was dying, because he brought me back to the
palace before the end. I…” She broke off, cleared her throat. “I’ve
never quite forgiven him for leaving me.”

They sat in silence, hand over hand, watching
the warm silver wax slide and drip over their fingers to the table,
waiting for midnight. There was no clock in the kitchen, but there
was no mistaking the moment when the lines of power shifted their
alignment in response to the solstice, filling Telaine with a rush
of energy.

She could feel her connections to Aunt Weaver
and Uncle Jeffrey and Aunt Imogen and her cousins for three
seconds, and she knew they could feel her presence too. This was
how Uncle Jeffrey felt, all the time. She tightened her hand over
Aunt Weaver’s. She must have been so lonely, all those years…

Aunt Weaver moved her hand away and Telaine
pulled back as well. “That’s for our dead,” she said. “Now for our
living.”

“I don’t understand.”

Aunt Weaver sat back in her chair. “Been gone
a long time,” she said. “Young Jeffrey was no more than two when I
left. I resent this magic that keeps me young because I ain’t seen
you all grow up. Same magic makes it so I can’t have children of my
own. Certain sure I couldn’t have stayed, but if I could… I want to
know my family. Tell me.”

Telaine’s mind went blank. “Ah…Uncle and Aunt
Imogen, they don’t look like they ought be a match,” she said.
“Uncle is all about politics and Aunt Imo loves her horses. And I
think Uncle is a little afraid of them. Horses. But then you hear
them talking and, I don’t know, they don’t just finish each other’s
sentences, they have whole conversations where you can’t hear them
say anything. We’ve never talked about it, but I can’t imagine she
doesn’t know what his inherent magic is. They don’t keep things
from each other. That’s the kind of marriage I want.”

Memories started flowing in from the back
corners of her mind. “Julia and I are like sisters. She’s near my
same age and she helped me get through the first months after my
father died. She doesn’t use her beauty like a weapon, like I—like
the Princess does, and I wish I could be like her. Jeffy, well, he
might as well be Uncle’s twin in body as well as name…”

She talked herself hoarse into the dim
reaches of night, Aunt Weaver listening silently, and cried because
she hadn’t known how much she missed her family until that evening.
She would have to go back to them. As much as she loved Longbourne,
she couldn’t stay away from her family.

She talked until the candle burned all the
way down and flickered out, then the two of them went to their
beds. When she was certain Aunt Weaver was asleep, Telaine went
silently down the stairs with her bundle of tools and put together
a Wintersmeet gift she knew would catch her aunt’s eye.

“Lainie Bricker! You come down here right
now!”

Telaine bounded down the steps, wearing her
most innocent expression. “Yes, Aunt Weaver?”

“You want to explain this?” Aunt Weaver
pointed at the sink.

“It appears to be a tap, Aunt Weaver.”

“And what is this?”

Telaine made a big show of examining it. “I
believe it’s a Device for heating water as it comes out of the
tap.” It was her best creation yet, a slim cuff of brass that
slipped over the tap, with fine silver threads on the underside and
a motive force the size of a button below the handle.

“I know I told you I don’t want these Devices
in my home. Certain sure I told you this before.”

“You did tell me. Specifically you told me
you don’t like depending on things that might break down and be
unfixable because of there being no Deviser around. And I agree
that even though I’m here now, I won’t be here for good.”

“And yet there’s a Device sittin’ on my
spigot bold as the brass it’s made of.”

“That’s right. Now here’s what I’m thinking.
This Device is totally separate from your faucet. You don’t want to
use it, it’s just a pretty ornament on the tap. If you
do
want to use it, you turn both handles and adjust the water to be as
hot or cold as you please.”

When Aunt Weaver opened her mouth to object,
Telaine overrode her with, “And I know you have to accept a
Wintersmeet gift in the spirit it’s intended, and I intend this to
pay you back for your hospitality. Plus I want to wash my hair in
warm water. So there you are.”

Aunt Weaver turned the handle of her old
faucet. She turned the Device handle and ran her fingers under the
water. “I still have my own ways—”

“—And they’ve always been good enough for
you. Maybe this could be a new way for the new year. Happy
Wintersmeet, aunt.”

Aunt Weaver began to laugh. Telaine had never
heard her laugh before. “You know all you had to do to wash your
hair in warm water is boil it and mix it with cold.”

Telaine’s mouth dropped open. “I never—Aunt
Weaver, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Wanted to see how clever you were. But I
guess you’re clever in other ways.” She touched the handle of the
Device. “If I didn’t credit it before, I now know you’re definitely
my family,” she said. “When you get back to Aurilien, tell your
grandmama I said tell you the story of how she became Royal
Librarian. Certain sure you’ll appreciate it.”

She held out a pile of knitted fabric in dark
green. “Noticed you favor this color,” she said. “Spun, dyed, and
knitted here.”

Telaine unfolded the pile. It was a soft wool
scarf. “I love it,” she said, and wrapped it around her neck. It
hung to her waist. “Thanks, aunt.”

Aunt Weaver brushed aside her thanks. “Get
dressed and I’ll make flat cakes,” she said. “You young people all
want to get out and give your gifts first thing before the shine’s
worn off the new day.”

Telaine hadn’t finished her meal when someone
knocked at the back door. Liam. “Happy Wintersmeet, Lainie,” he
said, and held out a beautifully carved box that fit into her palm.
She opened the box and saw it was lined with dark green silk.
Apparently it was her signature color.

“I didn’t know you could do this,” she
said.

“You’ll know well enough by winter’s end,” he
said. “I go a bit stir crazy and start carving things until I’ve
got dozens of ’em. Then I sell ’em at the spring fair. You’ll see a
lot of people doing that. Mistress Adderly does about a hundred of
these embroidered pincushions. Don’t know how anyone could use that
many pincushions.”

“Wait here,” Telaine said, and ran up to her
room to get her box of gifts. She came back and handed Liam a
wrapped package. “Happy Wintersmeet,” she said.

He tore the wrapping off. “Lainie, you didn’t
make a watch—” he began.

“It’s a stretch, I know, but I didn’t have a
lot to work with and Aunt Weaver let me raid her store room. I got
it working and added something extra.” She pushed a button at the
bottom of the case and her own voice said, in a tinny peal,
This
watch belongs to Liam Richardson.

He jumped, held the watch out at arm’s
length, and pushed the button again, laughing at the sound of her
voice. “This is the strangest Wintersmeet gift I’ve ever gotten,”
he said. “And I definitely think it counts as being made by
you.”

“That’s a relief.”

“You want to make the rounds with me? I came
here first.”

“If you’ll wait a few minutes for me to
finish eating and put my coat on, yes.”

They walked through the tunnels, calling out
cheerful greetings to passersby, Telaine with her box and Liam with
a basket over his arm that looked almost dainty. All of her tavern
friends received some kind of watch—Aunt Weaver was a bit of a
packrat—that spoke; Jack Taylor blushed and his friends roared with
laughter when the little button produced Telaine’s sultriest voice
proclaiming
Jack Taylor is a handsome devil
. It was the
Princess’s only contribution to the holiday.

Out of a caster wheel casing Telaine produced
a self-winding seamstress’s tape for Josephine, who in return
handed her an elegant dove-colored silk blouse. She gave Maida a
new tap that measured exactly the amount of beer to pour into a
mug, with the promise of more if the first one worked out, and
Maida gave Telaine a small keg of her favorite dark beer, brewed by
Maida herself. Little Hope got a wooden rabbit on wheels that sped
around the floor on its own, with Hope laughing and chasing it,
always just out of her reach.

Telaine had thought hard about what to give
Eleanor, but in the end, the choice was obvious: Eleanor received
the first self-warming blanket, put together from an old quilt from
the store room and the last of the copper wire. Eleanor had knitted
Telaine a patterned sweater of green and black that was as soft as
Aunt Weaver’s scarf.