Agent of the Crown (2 page)

“The bad news is that an agent was killed
getting that intelligence back to me,” he said. “It might have been
an accident, but it’s possible he was exposed. We still don’t know
whether it was the rebels, or someone in Harroden’s pay. Either
way, I have to assume suspicions have been raised.”

“Can you prove his involvement?”

“If the agent had documentary proof, it
wasn’t on him when his body was found. And I hope to heaven there
wasn’t any. That would definitely tip Harroden off.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Uncle Jeffrey closed his eyes and raised his
head as if looking for heavenly guidance. “The Chadwicks are
throwing a party in three days,” he said, looking at her again.
“You’ve probably already received an invitation. I want you to see
what you can find out. He’s probably smuggling weapons, but I’d
rather not make assumptions. Find out what the rebels’ plan is.
Learn whether Harroden is in league with the Veriboldan government;
it’s never been certain whether they’re behind the rebel incursions
into our territory. Get documentation and get out.”

“I’m yours to command, my King.” Julia would
want her to stay, after so many weeks’ absence. Telaine pictured
her cousin’s face when she told her she would be leaving again, and
the knot of tension began re-forming at the base of her neck.

Uncle Jeffrey took her chin and tilted her
face to meet his gaze. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
he asked. “It was one thing when you were young and it was an
adventure, but now…I can’t help feeling it’s beginning to wear on
you. And this is far more dangerous than anything I’ve asked you to
do before.”

“It’s still a challenge,” she said, smiling.
“How can I pass that up? As tired as I get of the Princess
sometimes, it still thrills me to walk through a crowd without
anyone knowing who I really am. Don’t worry about me.”

“You ask the impossible,” he said, and
released her. “Be ready to leave day after tomorrow.”

She nodded and left the room, shutting the
door quietly behind her. She smiled brilliantly at the King’s
secretary as she passed, turning his objections into a
scarlet-faced mumbling. That should remind him not to object to the
Princess’s wishes. She tripped lightly down the North blue carpeted
stairs and went at a sedate pace through the tangled corridors to
the east wing, home to the royal family. Two soldiers in North blue
and silver, fully armed and armored in steel plates over leather,
stood flanking the wide door of three-inch-thick oak and nodded to
her before opening the door and admitting her.

She took in a deep breath, inhaled the faint
spicy-sweet scent that came from everywhere and nowhere at once,
and proceeded down the short hallway to the great drawing room of
the east wing. Light Devices cast a warm glow over the
cream-colored walls and the maple wainscoting that combined with
the scent of cinnamon and roses always meant home. No one was
there, thank heaven. Much as she loved her cousins, the long trip
and the knife-edged terror of driving like the madwoman the
Princess was well known to be made Telaine want nothing more than a
hot bath and a nap before dinnertime.

She briefly glanced down one of the hallways
that led off the drawing room, then shook her head and turned away.
She wanted to see her beloved cousin Julia, to give her comfort,
but she was too much on edge to be good company. She went to her
own rooms instead, which were far away from the rest of the
family…why? She couldn’t remember now why she’d chosen them; they’d
been hers since she was eight years old and she’d never wanted to
move in the fifteen years since. Privacy mattered to her, and she
needed a place where she could shed her alter ego, but today it
felt like isolation.

She pushed open the door to her personal
sitting room and shuddered. Frilly pink cushions teetering on
overstuffed pink sofas and chairs. Tables topped with pink marble,
their spindly legs gilded. A mantel that might have been made of
any wood, except she couldn’t tell which one because it was covered
with a thick layer of pink paint Telaine always had to resist the
urge to pick at. Rosy damask drapes and a dusky pink carpet thicker
than the breadth of her two fingers. It was a room the Princess
could entertain in. Telaine hated it.

There was a stack of envelopes on the
horrible pink mantel; she sorted through it until she found the
invitation from the Chadwicks. She entered her bedroom, which was
decidedly non-frilly and had no pink in it anywhere, and flopped
face-first onto her bed. “I am
so
sorry about the drive,”
she said to Posy, who had just put away the last of Telaine’s
undergarments. “Have I ever told you how wonderful you are?”

“Yes, but you ought to say it more often,”
Posy said. “And it’s not like I didn’t know what I was in for when
we made up this persona eight years ago.” She sat down and
stretched out her long legs. “No harm done, though I don’t know as
I’d say the same if you’d crashed and killed us both.”

“At least I wouldn’t be in a position to hear
whatever it was.” Telaine rolled onto her back and stared up at the
ceiling, plastered and painted white. “Thank you for putting
everything away. I hate to tell you you’ll need to pack it all up
again tomorrow.”

“I thought we’d have some free time
finally.”

“Unfortunately, no. We’re off to Harroden day
after tomorrow.” She tossed the envelope at Posy, who caught it and
tore it open so carelessly the invitation inside ripped as well.
She read the contents, then passed it back to Telaine, stretching
her legs even further and putting her hands behind her head, which
was how she showed displeasure. Telaine glanced at her over the
card. “Sorry,” she said.

“Not your fault. And stop apologizing,
your Highness
. I’ve been an agent for longer than you’ve
been alive and these things come with the job.”

“I’m sorry—” Telaine covered her mouth, and
Posy’s eyebrows went up a second before she grinned. Telaine smiled
back. “I’m having trouble shedding the Princess’s persona today.
Finding out about this new assignment made it worse, I think.”

“This’ll maybe help.” Posy tossed something
at Telaine’s head; she caught it automatically. “It’s been running
backwards since a day ago.” Posy stretched and left the room.
Telaine turned the thing over in her hand. It was her spare pocket
watch, a palm-sized Device encased in a smooth silver shell, and it
was indeed running backwards. Running backwards at an alarming
rate, no less. Well, that was something she could fix.

She swung her legs off her bed and went to
her dressing room, which was filled to bursting with the Princess’s
gowns and walking dresses and riding garb and court attire.
Occupying the rest of the space was her vanity table, a large
marble-topped oaken thing with an oval mirror five feet across its
long end. It had a dozen drawers of varying sizes and was covered
with pots of cosmetics and jewelry boxes. Like her choice of
suites, Telaine couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought it was a
good idea; it hulked in its corner of the room, daring anyone to
approach it. Though—possibly
that
was why she’d chosen it;
no one was likely to go rooting around in its innards and discover
Telaine’s best-kept secret.

Telaine opened the second drawer from the
bottom, which was full of odds and ends, half-used cosmetics in
unflattering colors, beauty implements used once and then
discarded, a few broken pieces of jewelry. She removed the entire
drawer and pulled out the shallow tray with its false bottom,
revealing a treasure trove of a different sort.

Neatly organized tiny tools filled racks
slotted into the bottom of the drawer; small bins contained bits of
metal, some glowing, all cut into strange shapes and coils. Sheets
of thin metal, silver, copper, and brass, were stacked upright at
the back of the drawer, and a pair of metal shears the size of nail
scissors hung on a hook next to them. The public had the Princess,
her uncle had his agent, but this belonged to her alone. Her family
knew she was interested in Devisery, but she’d concealed from them
the extent to which she’d taken her interest… why? She had so many
secrets already, things she kept hidden for the sake of her agent’s
identity. They were like knives she had to tiptoe across. This was
a tiny flame nestled close to her heart.

Telaine cracked open the shell with one hand
and studied the watch’s innards. She saw nothing obviously broken,
so there was something wrong with the imbued motive force, the
piece of metal holding the magical energy that powered all Devices.
She used a small screwdriver to remove some of the mechanical parts
and exposed the little coil—ah, it was silver, that explained a
lot. Digging in her parts bin, she found a coil identical to the
damaged one, but made of copper, then used a hook to pop the silver
coil out of the watch. The whirring stopped.

Next she needed to figure out where her
source had drifted to. The lines of power that intersected in her
dressing room, two of the hundreds of thousands crisscrossing the
world, created a strong power source at their nexus, but they kept
shifting and the source moved with them. Telaine sniffed. No one
could see source any more than they could see the lines of power,
but there were other ways to sense it, and to Telaine source always
smelled like lilac and mint. There it was, between a couple of
winter coats the Princess should have gotten rid of two seasons
ago.

She laid the copper coil on her palm, and the
source’s power spiraled up around her hand. Gently, she drew it
into the coil, pulling delicately at the source as if spinning out
a thread of spider’s silk. After a minute, it began to glow with a
pale coppery radiance. She fed it threads of source until it turned
into a spiral of white light, released the source before the coil
became too bright to look at, and set it on the dressing table.

Uncle Jeffrey had told her how rare she was,
having both inherent magic and the ability to sense and manipulate
source. Since she had no intention of becoming an Ascendant and
ruling the world with her twinned abilities, she took pleasure, but
not pride, from that fact.

Removing the piece had caused some of the
other parts to sag together, leaving little room for the new coil.
She dug out tweezers and a pair of snub-nosed pliers with tips the
width and thickness of her pinky nail. Funny how the dexterity it
took to manipulate the fiddly bits Devices were made of had
improved her lock picking skill. Or was it the other way around?
She’d been an agent longer than she’d been a Deviser.

It took her a few tries, but eventually she
dropped the coil into place and heard the Devisery begin to whir
gently. She reassembled the watch and snapped the case back into
place. She’d have to set the time by the clock in the great hall,
but it was fixed. The old silver coil she pulled into a straight,
fine wire about an inch and a half long; it was too damaged to be
used again. She dropped it into the false drawer, another casualty
of the Princess’s ongoing quest for beauty.

Telaine put the drawer and its false contents
back in its place. She sat on the floor awkwardly, constrained by
her narrow pink skirt, and contemplated the watch. It stared back
at her, its tick louder in the silence than her breathing. Here in
the privacy of her chambers she could feel sorry for herself. It
had been weeks since she’d had time to herself, time to indulge in
her passion for Devices. The Princess didn’t care anything for them
except for how they made her life easier.

She threw her head back and sighed. Pity the
watch’s current, incorrect time wasn’t right, because she would
have time to change her clothes, wipe away all traces of cosmetics,
and sneak out of the palace to go into Lower Town to Laura Wright’s
Deviser’s shop. She had a good arrangement with the woman: Mistress
Wright kept the money she made from selling Telaine’s inventions,
and Telaine was free to study and experiment without Mistress
Wright poking into her business. She even had a real Deviser’s
certificate, though it was under her assumed name of Lainie
Bricker; Mistress Wright had no idea who she really was.

She picked up the Device and pushed the
button to make it chime, an imprint of a tinkling cascade of tiny
bells. She felt more at ease now, but she could still feel the
presence of the Princess at the back of her mind.
At what
point,
she wondered,
did I start thinking of myself as two
personalities? And as tiresome as the Princess is, is she any less
me than the Deviser?

Telaine surveyed
the Chadwicks’ ballroom and suppressed a yawn. Harroden Manor was
small for a Count’s home, and though she knew it was unworthy of
her to be critical, she couldn’t help feeling the Count of Harroden
was trying to compensate for something.

Five crystal chandeliers in a space that
should have held only three shed their brilliant light over the
polished parquet floor, which was a mosaic of intricately carved
wood in a pattern no one could make out at floor level. Waist-high
pedestals bore vases of pink and white flowers that filled the room
with a sweet, almost cloying scent. Telaine had no idea what the
flowers were called, but they were showy and overbearing and
probably a mistake on Lady Harroden’s part. Telaine guessed she’d
intended to bring her famous garden indoors.

“I need fresh air,” Julia said, hooking her
arm through Telaine’s and almost dragging her onto the verandah. It
was cooler outside, and the distant scent of roses and honeysuckle
was calming rather than nauseating. Julia pulled Telaine away from
the promenading couples, down the steps, and into the garden, where
she dropped heavily onto a marble bench and took a deep breath.

“Julia, you shouldn’t have come,” Telaine
began.