Agent of the Crown (39 page)

She had no idea how long the route through
the trees would take. Sarah would be in greater danger if the storm
hit while she was on the open road, but Telaine’s path ran through
rougher terrain, so not only was it longer than the road, it was
slower.

She rubbed her hands together again, then
blew on them.
It’s so cold,
she thought. Maybe she’d been
cocky to reject Mistress Wilson’s offer of clothing, but there just
hadn’t been
time
. She prayed again to ungoverned heaven that
she hadn’t done something fatally stupid. She remembered how
helpless Sarah had looked in that tiny, cold room, and righteous
anger surged through her, warming her. They would both make it.
They had to.

Though her face and hands were cold, and the
boots weren’t as efficient a protection from the snow as she’d
hoped, the rest of her felt as warm as if she were still wearing
her cloak. Warm, but strangely cold at the same time, near her
feet. Well, the boots weren’t exactly waterproof, and there was a
crack in one of the soles, but surely they wouldn’t have gotten wet
so quickly?

Telaine stopped to feel along her ankles, and
her fingers came away damp. She stopped walking and closed her
eyes, cursing her stupidity. Of course the bodysuit was wet. The
Device was melting the snow as she waded through it, and the thin
cotton wasn’t water resistant.

She’d known this would happen, it had
happened during their testing, but she and Josephine hadn’t done
anything about the flaw because they hadn’t anticipated anyone
being stupid enough to wear nothing but the bodysuit while wading
through snowdrifts.

Telaine started walking again. There was
nothing she could do about it now except stay out of the higher
drifts. She had to get to shelter as quickly as possible. She
pushed herself harder.
Be grateful you’ve got the trees, where
the snow hasn’t piled so high. Be grateful for the suit at all. By
heaven, it’s cold.

She slogged along, feeling her ankles go numb
and her fingers begin to tingle with cold.
Gloves
, she
thought
, gloves that are warm only on the inside, lined with
something waterproof so your hands don’t get soaked.
This was
the most foolish idea she’d ever had, and she looked forward to
telling her friends about it while she put her feet up by the fire
at the tavern. Even Ben would eventually see the humor, once he got
past the part where she risked hypothermia and death to save a
life. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

She came to where the tree line made a sharp
turn to the left, away from the road and from Longbourne. Now what?
She could keep following the trees, but that would take far too
long. Cutting across country, trying to keep a straight line toward
Longbourne or heading west toward the now-invisible road, was as
dangerous in a different way.

Telaine shivered and rubbed her arms, trying
to keep her fingers warm. The wires of the Device rolled under her
hands. They were sturdier and better secured, thank heaven, than
the prototype. It would have to be the trees. She couldn’t afford
to be caught in the open when the storm arrived. She could
compromise by striking out in the open whenever the tree line
veered too far away from Longbourne, like now. She rubbed her arms
once more, carefully, and started walking.

The snow was up to her knees now, and so was
the freezing cold, and it was taking her forever to slog through
it. Her calves were wet; she hadn’t been as careful as she’d
thought. Maybe she should have taken the longer route under the
trees instead. She couldn’t feel her nose or the tips of her
fingers. This was definitely the stupidest idea she’d ever had.

Then the storm hit.

The world went gray. Wind whipped around her
body and howled in her ears. She stood still, not sure how far she
was from the forest. She was certain she was still facing the right
direction, so she struck out again, feeling ahead until her
grasping fingers were stung by thousands of prickling needles
lashed by the wind. She clutched at the branch, hauled herself into
the shelter of the trees, and stood a moment, panting with
fear.

The trees grew thickly enough that the
storm’s fury was lessened; she even felt warmer, though she was
sure that was an illusion. She could move deeper into the forest,
find shelter and wait the storm out—

—and end up dead, if this were one of those
storms that lasted for days. She couldn’t take the risk. She would
have to keep moving south, and she would have to travel outside the
forest’s shelter or she wouldn’t be able to see Longbourne when she
neared it.
You can’t see anything at all in this weather,
Telaine thought, but at this point she had few options left to her.
She took a few more deep breaths, made sure the dial on her Device
was turned to full, and went back into the storm.

She kept on walking, keeping her mind
occupied with plans for retooling the suit, trying not to think
about how the cold wetness was spreading. It would need a second
layer that didn’t become warm, or was waterproof, or both.
Something dark loomed up before her; she barely avoided running
into a tree and instead knocked its load of snow onto her head. She
shook frantically to get it off before it melted.

More walking. She wondered how Sarah was
doing. Had she made it home before the storm broke? Had anyone
started to look for Sarah? Had anyone started to look for
her
?

A tugging at her frozen calves told her she’d
reached the low rise that ran parallel to Longbourne. She was
getting close, though she couldn’t tell how much farther she still
had to go. Time no longer existed; there was nothing but one foot
after another, one step through the snow, then the next. Her suit
was wet to her thighs and it was getting harder to feel her
legs.

She tucked her hands under her armpits,
reasoning that if the suit shed heat like that, she might as well
take advantage of it. She ran into a tree and stood hugging it for
a moment, afraid she might fall down if she let go. She was so
tired.

“Don’t stop moving,” her father said.
“Remember what I taught you. There’s nothing to stop you freezing
to death but your own two feet.”

“I don’t remember where our camp is,” she
told him. It sounded as if he were right in front of her, but the
snow was flying into her face so rapidly she couldn’t see him as
more than an outline that looked more like a tree trunk than a
man.

“Don’t stop moving,” he repeated. “You’ll
find it,
talaina,
winter flower, but you have to keep
walking or you’ll find me first.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, but let go of
the tree and took a step in his direction, then another. Her father
moved when she did, always a few paces ahead of her, and she
reached out to him, but he wouldn’t take her frozen hand…or maybe
he had, and she couldn’t feel it.

She started to shake all over and wrapped her
arms around her chest to contain the shivering. The wetness had
spread above her hips. Her feet were numb now; the only way she
knew they were still in contact with the ground was the jolt that
went through her knees every time she took a step.

She stumbled over something, a stump or a
rock, and landed on her hands and knees.
Have to keep my body
out of the snow
, she thought,
it will make me colder.
She wasn’t sure it was possible to get any colder. “Papa, help me,”
she cried, but Owen Hunter was gone, and she was afraid to cry
because her tears might freeze her eyes shut, and then she really
would be dead. She heaved herself up and, after three tries, made
it back on her feet. The world was going darker gray by the minute.
She smelled flowers. Lilac…and mint…

It was her source. She was close to the
forge.

With renewed energy, she followed her nose
until she could plunge her hands into the source, wishing it were
warm. Ben’s house was…from here, it was to the right, maybe fifty
yards away. She’d have to leave the security of the forest and the
rise. She turned, stretched her hands out in front of her, and
stepped forward, feeling her way like a blind woman.

Just as she’d begun to think she’d missed it
completely and was wandering out through the streets, something
knocked the breath out of her and she bent double. The forge
rail.

She grasped it with her two frozen hands and
followed it around the corner, then into the forge. She over the
anvil and the empty quenching bucket and groped along the side of
the house for the back door.

She held the knob and banged on the door, not
sure how hard she’d knocked because her hands were numb. She banged
again. No answer. She tried the knob; the door opened and swung
inward. The fire was out, the house cold and empty.

Her addled brain panicked. The storm was so
powerful it had swept the inhabitants of Longbourne away. Ben had
gotten tired of waiting for her and had gone down the mountain
himself; he was having tea with her uncle and explaining what the
hardie hole on the anvil was for. She was the only living creature
in Longbourne, and soon she wouldn’t even be that.

She sat in the relative quiet of the open
doorway and tried to think. Ben’s house was shelter, but she was
too numb to start a fire and if she curled up on his sofa, he’d
find her frozen to death when he returned. She could barely think,
she was so cold. She had stared so hard at the darkness, for so
long, she was starting to see specks of light glowing against the
background. Or was that a real light? It might be Eleanor’s
window.

She stood up, remembering to close Ben’s
door—he wouldn’t want his house full of snow when he came back from
tea with the King—and made her way across the forge again. At the
rail, she hesitated, then struck out across the great empty space
that separated the forge from Eleanor’s home.

The glow brightened. It didn’t illuminate her
surroundings, but it gave her something to aim for. It was so hard
to move her legs. Snow crusted her eyelashes and eyebrows and tried
to plug her ears, but the howl of the wind buffeted it away. She
closed her eyes to keep the snowflakes out—it wasn’t as if she
could see anything—and took two more steps and ran face first into
the side of the house.

A warm trickle ran down her upper lip, and
she tasted hot blood. Amazing that she had anything warm left in
her. She slid to her left along the wall until she came to
Eleanor’s door and pounded on it. Her fists were numb. She kept
pounding. Would they know it was her and not the wind? She fumbled
for the knob and found herself sliding down the door to the ground.
Mustn’t stop moving
, she told herself, but her legs weren’t
listening.

She toppled forward as the door opened and
light blazed out. “Who—” someone said, and several hands helped her
to her feet. “
Lainie?”
someone else said, and she was lifted
and carried into the blissful warmth and light of Eleanor’s
house.

“You boys, upstairs. You too, Ben. Especially
you. Set her down by the fire. Fern, fetch blankets. Marie, get a
hot compress going.” Eleanor removed the jacket and began
unbuttoning the bodysuit, saying, “I might have guessed if anyone
was going to try a stunt like wandering around in her underwear
through a blizzard, it would be you.”

“Where—” Telaine asked, mumbling through her
frozen face.

“No talking until we get you taken care of.
Sit up for just a moment.” Eleanor removed the boots and peeled the
sodden bodysuit away from her chest and over her hips until she lay
there in her underpants and brassiere and wool socks. She took
Telaine’s socks and stripped off her soaked undergarments and
patted her dry.

“Scoot over onto these blankets. Good. Hope,
if you can keep from wiggling, you can cuddle up with Lainie and
help her get warm. Take off your dress first.” A warm body that did
wiggle a little snuggled in against her side. Eleanor tucked
several layers of blankets around her and covered her head with a
knit cap. “You’re going to need this.” She lifted Telaine’s head
and put something warm and dry behind her neck.

Telaine shook so hard she was afraid her
teeth might fall out. Hope grasped her across the stomach and
squeezed. “Don’t be afraid. This happens to lots of people,” she
whispered.

Eleanor took Telaine’s hands out of the
blankets and looked at them. “Tuck those under your armpits and
leave them there until I say,” she said.

She lifted Telaine’s feet one at a time.
“Fern, do we have some hot water? Get the big pan and mix in snow
until it’s just more than room temperature.” Soon someone lifted
her feet and placed them in a burning hot bath of water. She
whimpered. “Don’t worry, that means your feet are warming up,” said
Eleanor.

“Ma?” shouted Liam from somewhere far away.
“If she’s decent, we got a very worried fellow up here wants to
come down.”

“All right, Ben Garrett, but don’t you
disturb her,” Eleanor warned. Footsteps pounded down the stairs,
and Telaine opened her eyes to see Ben’s upside-down face in front
of her.

“Still alive,” she said, and although he
began to speak, rapidly and with feeling, she drifted off to
sleep.

She woke,
confused at how the ceiling was too far away, then after a moment
realized she was lying in front of the fire in Eleanor’s house. The
great room was lit only by the flames in the hearth, making it feel
warm and comforting. Her bedmate was gone and her dry, warm feet
were under the blankets. Her hands, still tucked in her armpits,
were warm and flexible, as were her toes. She thought she had never
truly appreciated being warm before.

She stretched, and discovered she was still
naked. Her hands hurt when she opened them, and she saw they were
covered with scratches and the beginnings of a couple of bruises.
Pain, another thing she’d never appreciated, welcome because it
meant she was still alive.