Agent of the Crown (6 page)

She tried out a few conversational gambits in
her head, but discarded them. Her life as the Princess hadn’t
prepared her to talk to anyone like Abel. Now that seemed like an
oversight. She wasn’t sure if that life had prepared her to talk to
whatever kind of woman Mistress Weaver was. A tough lady, Stakely
had said, and she had the feeling he’d only been partly joking.
Telaine wondered what pressure her uncle had brought to bear on
Mistress Weaver, whether the woman even wanted her there. This
could turn out to be unpleasant—but that didn’t matter, because she
was in Longbourne as an agent of the Crown, not a Deviser, not as
someone’s niece.

After a long, silent hour, the wagon entered
the pass and began its slow ascent. The road was narrow, barely
more than a ridge jutting out from the side of the mountain, and
Telaine edged closer to Abel, away from the steep drop-off. From
her position, it looked as if the wheels were perched on the edge
of the cliff, mere inches from plummeting over. Just how drunk
was
the driver? But his hands on the reins were steady, the
horses unfazed by the slope, and gradually she convinced herself
they weren’t all about to fall to their deaths and was able to
admire the view.

Evergreen trees, varieties she couldn’t begin
to name, surrounded the road. Where the path narrowed further, she
dared look down the side of the mountain at even more trees growing
on the steep slopes. Some of their trunks lay parallel to the
mountainside as if someone had shaped them from clay, bending them
near the roots. Scruffy yellow grass covered the slope surrounding
the trees, bent and broken by the passage of animals, though
Telaine had trouble imagining what animals could cling to the
mountainside, some of which was nearly vertical.

“I hear water. Is there a river nearby?” she
said.

“Comes from the slopes of Mount Ehuren,” Abel
said, rousing from his silent stupor to nod in the direction of the
distant peak. “Can’t see the river from here.”

It was an obvious statement, but more than
she’d gotten out of Abel the whole ride, so Telaine let it go and
contented herself with inhaling the scent of cool water, even
though it made her thirsty. Birds darted from treetop to treetop,
calling to one another, and small gray squirrels scurried across
the way and scampered up the dark, rough trunks.

She wasn’t sure exactly how long the journey
was, because she was superstitiously afraid if she took out her
watch, it would leap out of her hand and fling itself over the
cliff. But after about two hours, they came out of the pass and saw
the valley stretched out before them, tall grass blowing in the
breeze. Telaine drew in a deep breath. She’d never seen anything so
beautiful as the groves of aspens stretching out into the distance,
their leaves golden in the afternoon light, or the dark evergreens
providing a background for them to shine against. The smell of
water came to her again, and she closed her eyes and enjoyed the
cool breeze brushing her skin as the wagon jounced along. At least
her undesired field assignment had brought her someplace
lovely.

Another hour passed before she saw signs of
civilization. In the far distance, buildings clustered, becoming
less densely packed as the town spread out on both sides toward the
valley walls. At the limit of her vision, Telaine could barely see
the road emerge from the town and wind its way farther up the
valley. Her heart beat faster. Longbourne. The last five days had
been nothing more than practice for this.

They didn’t so much enter Longbourne as be
absorbed by it, a few houses here and there becoming many houses
cheek-by-jowl and then being supplanted by larger buildings Telaine
supposed were businesses. Many of the buildings were single-story
and made of stone, fist-sized irregular pieces mortared together.
Some had upper stories of wood. Almost all had steeply-sloping
roofs of dark blue slabs of slate fitted tightly together, and all
had paned glass windows, if small ones.

There were plenty of people on the main
road—street? Whatever it was, it was paved with gravel that
crunched under the horses’ feet. They stopped to stare at Telaine
as Abel drove past; she smiled at each of them and was surprised to
see most of them turn away. Shy, or unwelcoming to new folks?
That’s not why you’re here, Telaine. Lainie.

Abel came to a stop at a crossroads where the
only two major streets in the entire town met. A gazebo sat in the
middle of the intersection, all carved white wood and tiled roof,
with red and white petunias growing in a bed encircling it. It
seemed out of place, like a—well, like a frilly socialite in a
village square. She sympathized with it.

“This is it,” Abel said, then hopped off.
Telaine climbed down and pulled first her bag, then the mail bag
from beneath the seat. She went to hand the mail bag to Abel, but
he’d already trotted away. There were a few people standing near,
but none of them seemed inclined to unload. Reluctantly, she left
the mail bag on the seat and picked up her bag.

Here at the center of town there were any
number of well-kept buildings, a general store, a dressmaker’s
shop, but nothing that was obviously Mistress Weaver’s
establishment. Down the road past the gazebo, she saw a small group
of men standing beside a short rail fence. She smelled hot metal
and heard a rhythmic
tap, tap, tap
. The forge. She might as
well ask for directions there, since no one else seemed willing to
meet her eyes.

She knew the men noticed her approach by the
way they didn’t look at her.
Come on, boys, I
invented
that technique.
“Good afternoon,” she said politely as soon
as she was close enough. “I’m looking for Mistress Weaver’s
establishment.”

“
Establishment
? Well, ain’t we
lah-di-dah!” said one of the men, a tall, burly fellow in his
thirties. All four laughed. So did Telaine, hoping to project a
hapless innocence. Antagonism wasn’t the response she’d
expected.

“You’re right there, I don’t have any idea
what to call it!” she exclaimed. “My name’s Lainie Bricker. My aunt
Mistress Weaver’s waiting on me. Can one of you tell me where to
find her?”

“Don’t know as Mistress Weaver’s exactly
waiting
,” said another man, this one in his late forties or
early fifties, with an L-shaped scar across his cheek and graying
hair tucked up under a brimless knit cap. “Sounded like she wasn’t
waiting so much, eh, fellows?”

“Don’t tell me she’s given up on me already?
I’m only a day late! Help me out, please?”

“Happen you’re not much welcome here,” said
the first man. “Don’t know as Mistress Weaver were much excited to
see you, eh?”

“If you go now, happen you’d make it back
down the mountain ‘fore dark,” said Scarface. He took a step toward
her. “If you go now.”

There was a loud hiss, and a cloud of steam
blew between Telaine and her antagonists. Telaine looked over at
the blacksmith, who had been silent this whole time. He was
unexpectedly young, no older than herself, and not tall, but he was
well-muscled and the look in his brown eyes was calm and
direct.

“If you go back that way,” he pointed,
pushing light brown hair off his forehead with the back of his free
hand, “there’s a store with a needle and thread on a sign above the
door. Next house south of that is Mistress Weaver’s place. Happen
you’ll find her there, this time of day.”

“Thank you,” she said, trying not to sound as
relieved as she felt.

The blacksmith nodded. “Welcome to
Longbourne, Miss Bricker. And”—he turned back to the group of men,
who seemed abashed—“happen you fellows might find something more
useful to do than making wind with your mouths.”

Telaine shouldered her bag and marched away.
Reticence, she’d expected. Dislike, not a surprise. But outright
hostility? What kind of place had her uncle sent her to? Fitting in
might not be a priority, but she couldn’t investigate freely if she
was fighting the townspeople all the time. Did they treat all
strangers this way, or was she a special case? Those men knew she
was coming, so Mistress Weaver had mentioned it…but would she have
outright told the townsfolk that Telaine, Lainie, wasn’t welcome?
Those men hadn’t been lying when they’d suggested as much.

She passed the needle and thread sign and set
down her bag at the next door. The building was long and wide, with
a small second story perhaps half the size of the ground floor; it
was larger than its neighbors on either side, but looked worn-out
from not having been painted recently. She could hear a clacking
sound somewhere nearby.

Telaine knocked, ignoring the stares from the
people who passed her. It might have been a more aggressive knock
than necessary, but she was tired and irritable and still jumpy
from her encounter with those men. She wasn’t used to being the
focus of male aggression and it made her feel helpless, which made
her angry and inclined to let the Princess come over haughty and
disdainful at them. That was definitely not what she was here
for.

The knob turned, and a girl opened the door,
making the noise swell. She might have been eleven or twelve, but
she was tall for her age. Her brown hair was covered by a kerchief
and she wore a wraparound apron with long sleeves. “Happen I can
help you?” she said in a fluting voice.

“I’d like to see Mistress Weaver,” Telaine
said, trying to speak over the sound without shouting.

“Come in,” the girl said. “Are you Miss
Bricker?”

“I am. Is Mistress Weaver in?”

“She is,” called a voice from far inside the
room.

Telaine stepped inside. The room took up most
of the ground floor of the building. Brightly colored skeins of
yarn hung on every wall, giving the room a festive, exotic
appearance. Two spinning wheels stood near the front door, next to
baskets full of wads of puffy grayish wool. Telaine had never seen
wool in its natural state before, and she wished she dared pick one
up to see how it felt.

One of the spinning wheels was being used by
a beautiful young woman who deliberately paid no attention to
Telaine. Beyond this was an enormous loom like a wooden mantis, its
many limbs jerking and shifting in a peculiar rhythm, that took up
nearly half the room. It clattered and thumped away without pause
as the half-visible woman operating it said, in a voice pitched to
carry over its noise, “I’m Mistress Weaver. I take it you’re my
niece?”

“I am, mi—Aunt,” Telaine said, swallowing
“milady” just in time.

“Sit there. I’ll be with you shortly.” The
clattering and thumping of the loom continued, loud enough to ring
in Telaine’s ears. It was a wonder none of the three were deaf.
Telaine sat on the stool Mistress Weaver had indicated. The young
girl, hesitating between Telaine and her mistress, settled at the
second spinning wheel and began to work the pedal.

Telaine watched them both spin. The girl
seemed to be a true novice; how good the young woman was, Telaine
didn’t know, but she never seemed to stop and only paused briefly
to pick up a new wad of wool and somehow splice it into the old
one. Telaine observed the mechanism of the spinning wheel.
A
Device could do the work of the pedal, ease the strain on the leg.
I wonder if you could do anything about that pause to put the two
pieces of wool together? Probably not, that looks finicky. But it
would be simple to set up a Device to do the up-and-down motion, or
better yet, create a wheel that runs by itself…

“Come with me,” Mistress Weaver said. The
loom went silent, and so did the spinning wheels as the two girls
stopped to watch. “Back to work, girls. And, Alys, I want you to go
stir the dyeing pot and make sure the fire’s fed up nice.”

Mistress Weaver came out from behind the loom
and regarded Telaine with a look that said she thought Telaine was
wasting her time. She was a tall woman in her early thirties, with
tightly pinned black hair, fierce blue eyes, and a stern mouth. She
didn’t look like someone who laughed often. The shape of her face
reminded Telaine of someone, though she couldn’t remember who. It
would come to her eventually.

“Upstairs,” she said, and Telaine followed
her down a narrow hall to an even narrower stairway with no
handrail and no light. Telaine tried not to walk so closely she’d
trip over Mistress Weaver’s skirts, but the dimness, and the
cramped stairwell, made her nervous. Going downstairs in the dark
could be dangerous.

The second floor wasn’t more than a hallway,
narrow and dim, with three doors opening off it. Mistress Weaver
went to the door at the far end and opened it. “I haven’t had time
to spare cleaning it up,” she said as Telaine goggled at the room,
which had no carpet and a small window overlooking the street.

It was not a large room. It contained a bed,
and a chest at the foot of the bed, and a small table with a
cracked mirror over it. It also contained a hat stand, a stack of
boxes labeled WINTERSMEET, a piece of garden statuary that might
once have been a bear cub, a pile of fur coats covering the bed, a
straw hat that was not on the hat stand, a framed landscape in
oils, and a woven belt coiled on the floor like a snake. Telaine
checked twice in case it actually
was
a snake. She glanced
at Mistress Weaver. There was a definite look of pleasure in the
woman’s eyes. “You can store whatever you won’t use in the room
next door,” she said.

“How long did it take you to haul everything
in here?” Telaine asked, following a hunch. The look of pleasure
was replaced with one of caution.

“
don’t know what you mean
. Happen
things pile up, over time. Not too good to do a little honest work,
are you?”

She turned, and Telaine asked, feeling
somewhat desperate, “You
do
know why I’m here, don’t
you?”