Agent of the Crown (36 page)

She had expected to see Ben long before she
reached his house, which she’d saved for last, but he wasn’t part
of the crowd thronging the streets. She had to knock on his door
twice before he responded, his hair tousled, stubble covering his
chin, his eyes bleary. “Lainie,” he said, as if surprised not only
by her presence on his doorstep but by her existence in general.
“What time is it?”

“I gave away the last of my watches, so I
don’t know,” she replied. “Half past ten?”

“Half past—wait a minute.” He shut the door.
Telaine stood there. She waited for far longer than a minute. She
went from curious to annoyed to concerned. What was he doing in
there?

The door opened. “Sorry. I overslept.”
Getting dressed and shaved and combing his hair was what he was
doing in there. His eyes looked bloodshot and tired. “Are you all
right?” she asked.

“I celebrate Wintersmeet Eve by getting very
drunk.” He blinked in pain at the sunlight. “Family’s not a good
memory for me, this time of year. Not my favorite night, and it
goes on so long. Ready to go?”

“Where are we going?”

“I have a gift for you, and
it’s outside
of town
.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Is it
really?”

He closed his eyes. “Can’t lie to you. I
forgot. I just want to give it to you there.”

“Well, yours is right here.” She led him into
the forge and pointed at the bellows. He squinted.

“I know you didn’t make that,” he said.

“I treated the leather and patched up a
couple of holes, but what I made…is this.” She pointed proudly at
the Device perched at the spot where the handle met the leather. It
had a dial and a button. “Here’s what it does.” She turned the dial
a couple of clicks and pushed the button. The bellows rose and
fell, once, twice.

“I watched how you worked it, and saw that
sometimes you had to step aside from the metal to make the fire
rise,” she said when he didn’t say anything. “You set it for how
many times you want it to pump, and push the button to make it go.”
He said nothing. “I had an idea for a different way to do it…oh,
you hate it, don’t you. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s perfect. You’re perfect,” he said
in wonder, his eyes not leaving the Device. “Never would have
thought of that.” He turned and smiled at her. “Come on,” he said.
He took her hand and practically dragged her out of the forge. She
was put out that he had barely looked at her gift, but he seemed so
excited about his gift to her…what under heaven could it possibly
be?

He led her out of Longbourne toward the fort,
to a place where the winds had blown the snow to a depth of only
two inches. “Right here,” he said. “I wanted to give you your gift
out here, away from people. Just the two of us.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled out something
small, and took her left hand. “Let’s see if it fits,” he said, and
slid a gold ring onto her middle finger. Her wedding ring
finger.

“Supposed to be good luck to get betrothed on
Wintersmeet Day,” he said, closing both his hands over hers, making
the ring press into her skin. She looked into his brown eyes and
saw her reflection there.

“Marry me, Lainie,” Ben said quietly. “Stay
here with me forever. Be Mistress Garrett. We can set up a workshop
for you next to the forge and I’ll put a bigger bed in the bedroom
and we can start our own family here.”

She felt numb with something other than the
cold. “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“I was hoping for ‘yes,’” he teased.

She leaned into his chest. She wanted nothing
more in the world than to say yes.
I never expected this,
because I am an idiot. This is where it was always leading. You
thought you could have it both ways, but you can’t
. She
couldn’t promise to marry him when he didn’t know who she really
was. And she couldn’t tell him who she really was.

“I love you,” she said, her words muffled by
his coat.

“What?”

She lifted her head. “I can’t promise to
marry you,” she said. The most awful look came over his face, so
she hurried on, “No, it’s not what you think, it’s because in my
family, the patriarch, my uncle, has to approve every
marriage.”

This was more or less true. King Jeffrey had
to approve of his heirs’ spouses as new members of the royal house
of North, but he’d given in to Julia about Lucas, so Telaine
figured he was pretty free with his permissions. “I shouldn’t make
you any promises when I don’t know what he’ll say.
And
there
are still a lot of things you don’t know about my family that might
make you change your mind about marrying me.”

Ben opened his mouth to speak and she laid
her hand over it to still him. “But I can promise you this: if you
learn everything about my family, and my uncle gives his
permission, and you still want to, you can ask me again, and I
guarantee my answer will be ‘yes’.” She grinned. “And if he doesn’t
give permission, I will probably run away with you.”

Ben smiled from behind her hand. She gently
removed it. “I can’t say I’m happy about that answer,” he said.
“Didn’t expect anything like that.”

“Did I hurt your feelings too terribly? I
don’t want to be anything but honest with you.”
Except about
everything else.

“More surprised than hurt.” He turned her
left hand over, palm down, and they both looked at the ring. It was
a perfect fit. “Suits you,” he said.

“I don’t know how it fits so well. I didn’t
know you could even work gold. It’s beautiful.” It was incised all
over with delicate scrollwork. She couldn’t begin to imagine how
he’d managed it.

“Learned a bit of goldsmithing, back in the
day.” He removed the ring from her hand and her face fell. He
laughed then, a real laugh. “Does me good to see you want to keep
it.”

“I do. Will you hold it for me? And ask me
again when I get back from Aurilien after the snows melt?”

“Certain sure I will.” He put the ring back
in his pocket. “Glad we came all the way out here,” he added.
“Didn’t tell anyone what I was planning. Didn’t want you catching
wind of it from anyone but me. Now we won’t have to explain why the
betrothal didn’t come off.”

“It did,” she said, taking his right arm in
both of hers. “Just not the way anyone else would understand.”

As they walked back into town, she planned
furiously. Back to the capital. Resign her agent’s commission.
Coerce agreement out of Uncle. Carefully tell Ben the truth and
weather out his anger or surprise or confusion until he was ready
to propose again, assuming he wanted to. Get married. And,
apparently, buy a bigger bed. As long as she could do all those
steps in that order, she’d get that ring back.

She groaned. “What is it?” Ben asked.

“Something I forgot to do. It’s not
important.” It was very important. First, she had to stop an
invasion.

“All right, hold
it steady…no, don’t let it—
watch it
!” Telaine threw herself
backward, away from the steel cylinder that rolled a short distance
away, bumping over the hard-packed earth of the keep’s yard. “I
told you to hold it!”

“Slipped,” Private Ormond said. She was sure
it didn’t matter to him that she’d nearly lost a finger. He was the
laziest “assistant” Jackson had given her yet. If he was in on the
Baron’s treasonous plan, he certainly gave no sign of wanting to
advance it quickly.

“‘Slipped’ is unacceptable,” she said,
getting up from the dirty, wet ground. Her hip was sore from where
she’d landed on it. “Slip again, and the Baron will hear about
it.”

The soldier swallowed, his eyes wide.
“Sorry.” He rolled the cylinder back to its original place. Telaine
glared at him once more, then stuck her head inside and began
bringing gears together to interlock. It was as fussy as trying to
get a crowd of two-year-olds all pointed in the same direction.
She’d tried wedging the thing, but it rocked no matter what she
held it with, and Private Ormond was all that was left to her.

She cursed again, sucked a pinched finger,
and resumed her work more rapidly because Ormond looked like he
couldn’t hold the cylinder much longer, whatever threat she
used.

“There. You can let go,” she said, and Ormond
stepped back, relief sweeping over his dull features. The cylinder
held in place, solidly attached to its mate, and that brought the
earth mover that much closer to being finished. Wonderful.

She waved Ormond away and began packing up
her tools. It was mid-afternoon, but she’d promised the Baron she’d
give the manor’s hot-water cistern a look. He’d claimed it was
behaving erratically, but probably it was just one more thing he’d
made up to get her out there. On the other hand, he’d said he’d be
visiting the outlying villages that day, so maybe she was wrong
about that. In any case, she might be able to get Mistress Wilson
to give her supper.

It was a warm, beautiful winter day, and she
walked briskly down the valley and through the remaining snowdrifts
to the manor. The guards at the door ignored her—well, she was a
familiar visitor by now. One of them turned to open the door, then
took half a step back when it was opened from the inside and Aunt
Weaver came out. She saw Telaine, and an uncharacteristic look of
shock passed over her face. “Lainie,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“
delivering an order to the
housekeeper.
”

“But you—”

Aunt Weaver took her by the arm in a firm
grip. “How about you walk me home,” she said.

“I—”

The grip became painfully tight. “Home,” Aunt
Weaver said, and towed Telaine down the stairs and across the
gravel driveway to the main road, where she released her. She
strode off toward Longbourne, not waiting for Telaine. Telaine ran
to catch up.

“All right, what was that
really
about?” she said. “I know you don’t run errands. You yourself told
me that’s what apprentices are for. What were you doing in the
Baron’s manor?”

“I told you.
delivering an order
.”

Telaine stepped in front of her and made her
come to a stop. “You were not. What is going on? Does this have
something to do with your sneaking out at night,
not
to
knitting circle?”

Aunt Weaver eyed her. “You callin’ me a
liar?”

I’m going to regret this, but it might be
the only way to get her to talk.
“I have inherent magic. I can
hear lies when people speak them directly to me. So yes, I’m
calling you a liar.”

Aunt Weaver raised her eyebrows. “Young
Jeffrey never said a word about that.”

“Well, it’s not his secret to tell, is it?
And he kept yours.”

“That he did.” She pursed her lips in
thought. “Come with me.”

They traveled in silence until they reached
Aunt Weaver’s house, where she dismissed her apprentices, then took
a seat at the dining table. “This ain’t something I need spread
around, not until I’m sure,” she said, “but I know now you can keep
a secret, and happen you might be able to help, if that magic of
yours works the way you say.”

“I can’t tell if someone’s lying if I
overhear them talking to someone else, only if they’re talking to
me. But I’ve learned how to get people to address me directly, over
the years.”

Aunt Weaver snorted. “Happen that’s a useful
skill for an agent to have.”

“Certain sure it is.”

“Well.” She sat back in her chair with her
hands clasped loosely in front of her, resting on the table. “You
know there’ve been disappearances recently.”

“Yes. Ben said there had been four since he
arrived in Longbourne, from all over the Barony.”

“There’ve been seven over the last nine
years. All young folks between the ages of ten and twelve, all
vanished when they were running errands from home to somewhere a
mile or so away. They’re assumed dead, lost in the mountains or the
crevasse or the forest, but no bodies have ever been found.”

Aunt Weaver was gradually losing her strong
northeastern accent—stronger, Telaine realized, than that of most
of her friends who’d been born in Steepridge as Aunt Weaver had
not.

“You think someone’s been killing them,”
Telaine said.

“You’re quick. I didn’t realize there was a
pattern until about two years ago, when I finally got to talking
with some of the families. Then I couldn’t not see it. I started
looking into the disappearances—”

“Why didn’t you tell the Baron? Shouldn’t he
be the one to execute justice?”

Zara glared at her. “If I’d wanted
interruptions, I’d have told the knitting circle. And it was nine
years ago the Baron came to Steepridge. That’s a coincidence I
couldn’t ignore.”

“Is that why you were at the manor?”

“You should hear all of this in order. Stop
asking questions. I started looking into the disappearances and
realized they’d been happening more frequently as time passed—and
that in five of them, Archie Morgan had been in the area a day,
sometimes a couple of hours before someone realized the child was
missing. Never for long, but again, it was suspicious. Last autumn,
after Jenny Butler went missing, I went to the manor one day when
the Baron and Morgan were both out and I searched Morgan’s
room.”

“That was incredibly dangerous, if you
thought he was a murderer!”

“There wasn’t anyone else to do it.”

“There was me. I’m
trained
to do that
sort of thing! You could have asked for my help.”

Zara regarded her with a grim smile. “I
didn’t want to involve you because this isn’t your home. You didn’t
tell me your business, I didn’t tell you mine.”

“But—“ Telaine sighed. “You’re right. Did you
find anything?”

“I did.” Zara’s smile faded. “Four braids of
human hair, all lined up in a drawer, and three shorter tufts tied
with string.”