Agent of the Crown (42 page)

“Can I not?” This man, this disgusting,
prating, hollow shell of a man was responsible for a legion of
nightmares. “Harstow, I have spent nine years of my life pretending
to be someone I’m not. I am
very
good at my job. You saw
what I wanted you to see. You were easy to control, Harstow, and
now all I want is to be allowed to witness your execution.”

The major said, “You must be the one I was
sent to retrieve.”

Telaine, caught off guard by her
conversational tone, stared at her. It occurred to her to wonder
how this troop was even here, with the pass still closed.
“Retrieve?”

“My primary mission was to review the fort’s
defenses. My secondary mission was to find a lost agent and give
her all assistance. It was given to me by the King himself.” For a
moment, pride glinted in her eye. “He also gave me an earth mover
to expedite my mission. Is it your Highness, or Agent Hunter?”

Telaine closed her eyes. “Right now, it’s
Agent Hunter.”

“Agent Hunter, what were you saying about an
invasion?”

“The Baron was in collusion with the Ruskald
King to allow an invasion force through. He sent an earth mover
down Thorsten Pass to clear it for the invading army.”

The Baron laughed. “Earth mover? Miss
Bricker, or whoever you are, you have an overactive imagination.
Has anyone seen any evidence of this supposed Device? You have no
proof of your allegations. Major, I insist you release me.”

“Morgan—” Telaine pointed at the body—“was
gone all winter. Major, nobody came up from Ellismere before you
cleared the pass, and he didn’t come with you. The only place he
could have been was Ruskald, and the only way he could have
returned is with the Baron’s earth mover. And the soldiers all saw
me building it. Some even helped. Please, major. My word as an
agent counts as evidence in court. This has to qualify.”

The major chewed her bottom lip. “I believe
you,” she said. “How long until the Ruskalder army arrives?” she
said to the Baron. He glared at her with disdain.

“The army would have to move more slowly than
one person,” Telaine said, “but…” She did some calculations and
came up with an answer that left her sick and faint. “As early as
sunset,” she said. She exchanged glances with the major. “What’s
your name?” she asked.

“Major Anselm. Constance Anselm. Agent
Hunter, what is the status of the troops?”

Telaine cast her eye over the assembled
soldiers. “What you see here is a third of the troops currently
stationed at the fort.”

Anselm blanched. “They only have sixty
soldiers? For a fort meant to be manned by three hundred?” Her
expressive eyes added silently something about the quality of the
soldiers in front of her.

“I wasn’t kidding about the gross
negligence.” They stared at each other. “Major Anselm, how many
soldiers do you have?”

“I brought a troop of fifty. Supposedly
enough to handle any problem you might have gotten into.”

“It’s not enough,” Telaine said. She turned,
madly hoping to see more soldiers emerge from the snow, and met
Ben’s eyes. He’d stood and taken a few steps away from her, toward
the crowd of townspeople watching in perfect silence. His
expressionless, white face frightened her. It was a look she’d
hoped never to see on him again. “Ben,” she began.

“You showed us what you wanted us to see,” he
said.

“No,” Telaine said, hearing her own rash
words flung back at her. “No, that wasn’t—”

“Just heard you say it. You needed to make
the Baron believe you were an ordinary person, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“You lied about who you were. You lied about
why you were here.”

“I never lied about—”

His voice grew hoarse. “Must’ve been your
lucky day, finding a fool who believed you so completely that he’d
love your false self. No better way to fit in than that.”

She groped for something to say that would
convince him, but all she came up with was, “That’s not how it
went.”

“That sounds like another lie,” he said. “We
deserve everything you ever did to us for being such fools.” He
turned and, head bowed, walked away in the direction of the forge.
She watched him go, his fists clenched. She felt colder even than
the winter air would warrant. Everywhere she looked she saw nothing
but angry, dumbfounded, betrayed faces.

Desperate, she sought out friends: Maida,
Jack, Eleanor, Liam. None of them would meet her eyes. “Eleanor,”
she pleaded, and Eleanor turned away, her hands twisted in the
fabric of her skirt. The cold threatened to crack her heart in two.
She turned away, her eyes burning.

The Baron laughed, a dry, nasty sound, and it
turned her pain into fury. She took several swift steps and punched
the Baron with more strength than she knew she had in her. His eyes
rolled up in his head, and he sagged to the ground. The blow sent
welcome pain up her arm, a reminder that she was still alive
despite all the evidence to the contrary.

She turned back to the major, who was
watching her with unexpected compassion and said nothing about her
attack. “The fort is fully stocked,” Telaine said, her eyes dry.
She’d pay for those dry eyes later. “Weapons, rations, everything.
Milord Baron
meant it all to go for arming the invaders. The
new weapons, too, and armor.”

“But we need
soldiers
,” Anselm said.
“It will take too long to bring in reinforcements. The fort will be
overrun with only one hundred and ten men and women.”

“Don’t recall signing up to fight an invading
army,” Jackson said.

“Excuse me, soldier, but that is precisely
what you signed up for,” Anselm said coldly.

Telaine made an intuitive leap. “The Baron
meant you to die,” she said, and Jackson turned to look at her. “He
decimated the fort’s troops so the Ruskalder could overrun you
easily. I don’t know what he told you, if he claimed you’d be
allowed to join the invaders or something, but you should consider
what you know of Harstow, and ask yourself if he’s the kind of man
who would share power with a scruffy no-name soldier who only has
rank because Harstow needed a stooge.”

Jackson flinched, and Telaine knew she’d
struck home. She added, “You might also remember you could easily
be charged with treason along with your master. And, gentlemen—”
she included as many of the Baron’s soldiers in her gaze as she
could—“if you leave this mountain, I will track you down and
I
will see you hanged
.”

Her voice echoed with a cold fury that
promised violence to anyone who challenged her; she heard it, and
she knew everyone else did too. The soldiers looked at one another.
Jackson came to full attention for the first time since Telaine had
known him and said, “Yours to command, major.”

A disturbance at the outside of the crowd
turned into Ben, carrying his biggest sledgehammer as if it were a
willow stick. “I’ll help with the defense too,” he said, looking at
Anselm and ignoring Telaine. “Happen you could use a few more
hands.”

“I’m with you, too,” said Liam. A few voices
chimed in, then more and more. Telaine listened to the chorus with
growing horror.

“No,” she said to Ben, forgetting herself,
“you aren’t fighters, you’ll just get yourselves killed.”

He looked at her with such fury she didn’t
recognize him. “Happen you don’t get a say in this,” he said
coldly. “Get out of here. Go back where you came from. You’re not
one of us.”

Telaine flinched. He turned away, hoisted his
hammer over his shoulder, and joined Jack and Liam where they stood
with the rest of the townspeople, waiting for the major to direct
them.
Why am I not crying?
she wondered, and her own
thoughts seemed so remote it was as if someone else were thinking
them.

She heard Anselm say, behind her, “There’s a
garrison east of Ellismere. Fort Canden. We might be able to hold
them off long enough for those troops to get here. Sergeant
Williams, maybe—”

“I’ll go,” Telaine said. “You can’t spare any
soldiers, and I’m done here.” She walked over to Morgan’s horse and
mounted, turning it in a wide circle. “How do I find it?”

“Straight along the road east from Ellismere,
no side roads. It’s easy to find.” Anselm held out her hand and
Telaine grasped it. “That was a brave thing you did,” she added.
“Sorry it turned out that way.”

“It was always going to turn out that way,”
Telaine said. “I just didn’t want to believe it.” She saw Aunt
Weaver in the crowd, looking up at her. Her great-aunt’s face was
unreadable.
How much trouble did I let her in for?
Not that
she could do anything about it. She hoped Aunt Weaver’s secret
would stay safer than her own. She nodded once at Aunt Weaver in
farewell, then turned the horse and trotted away.

Jeffy brought his horse alongside hers as she
began heading out of town. “Lainie, did I ruin everything?” he
asked. “I only joined her troop two days ago, I asked to be
transferred in—it’s just that she’s a legendary commander, and I
wanted…”

He sounded so much like a little boy that she
laughed without bitterness. “I’m the one who ruined everything,”
she said, “and you have nothing to be sorry for. Jeffy—stay safe.
Fight well.”

“Not always compatible,” he said lightly, but
his voice shook. She patted his hand.

“I’ll send help,” she said, and kicked the
horse into a gallop.

She had to
dismount and lead Morgan’s horse down the mountain road. Though
Major Anselm’s earth mover had left a wide, obvious trail, it had
also left enough snow on the path to obscure any potential
hazards.

She forced herself to walk slowly so she
wouldn’t trip, all the while imagining the defenders of the fort
picking their way across the snowy fields, spreading out through
the fort, passing out weapons. She pictured Jeffy with his sword
he’d never used before, Liam holding one of the new guns, Ben
hefting his hammer…she had to stop thinking then, focus on not
accidentally walking off the mountainside.

She descended from winter into early spring,
a spring still touched here and there by snowdrifts, but spring
nonetheless. Daffodils sprouted at the bases of aspen trees, their
slim white trunks exclamation points against the evergreen
background.
How beautiful the world still is
, she thought in
wonder, and could not understand how it could also be so cruel.

No snow remained on the foothills, and as
soon as the road was visible, she mounted Morgan’s horse and
trotted the rest of the way off the mountain. Then she kicked the
horse into a gallop. She glanced at her watch. Just past noon. The
Ruskalder could be at the fort in less than six hours. She urged
the horse faster.

She reached the Hitching Station at one
o’clock and scrambled off the horse, thrusting its reins into
Edith’s surprised hand. The dinnertime crowd filled the tap room,
but Telaine got Josiah Stakely’s attention by shoving between him
and someone ordering a beer. “I need to speak with you in private.
Now
.”

Stakely looked at her, perplexed, and
finished drawing the man’s beer. “Back here, Miss Bricker,” he
said, and ushered her into the back room. “I hope this is
important,” he added, frowning, standing with his arms crossed in a
forbidding manner.

She took a deep breath. She’d already done it
once; how many times could she be damned? “Mister Stakely, I’m not
a Deviser. I’m an agent of the Crown and I need your help.”

Stakely furrowed his brow at her. “You’re a
what?”

“I’m an agent of the Crown. A spy. And I need
two horses. I don’t have any money to pay you now, but I swear I
will pay you anything you like for this imposition when I return.
Please
, Mister Stakely, this is more urgent than you can
imagine.”

Stakely scratched his head. “I don’t
understand—” he began.

“Mister Stakely, I don’t have time to
explain. All I can tell you is that I have to get to Fort Canden as
quickly as possible, and I need to move at top speed. So I need to
be able to switch between three mounts. Can you help me?”

He scratched his head again, his brow still
furrowed. Then he turned, and Telaine followed him out of the tap
room and into the stable yard. “Edith, Miss Bricker needs two good
mounts,” he said.

Edith was already deeply involved in grooming
Morgan’s horse. “Seems she’s got one good one already,” she
grunted. Spittle flew.

“Two other horses. You want to help her
saddle up?” Stakely asked her. Telaine held out her hand and shook
his vigorously.

“Mister Stakely,” she said, “thank you. I
promise you’ll be rewarded for serving your country.”

She and Stakely helped Edith put bridle and
lead lines on two horses, not fancy or high-stepping, but good
movers who looked like they had stamina. Exactly what she needed.
She mounted Morgan’s horse and led the other two on a string behind
her, trotting through the streets of Ellismere until she came to
the road leading out of town. Then she gave her mount its head, and
her string of horses set off rapidly eastward.

Telaine became obsessed with her watch. She
told herself she would only check it every time she switched
horses, but the terrain here was broad, featureless plains,
smelling of dust even this early in the year, and there was nothing
to focus on, so she would sneak a peek, just once or twice.

As the afternoon wore on, she and her horses
began treading on their shadows, which lengthened as the minutes
and hours passed until they were thin gray fingers pointing the way
to the garrison. The road was well-kept, paved and maintained the
way roads between military stations were expected to be. If the
troops had to be called out, no one wanted them delayed because of
potholes. Telaine stopped watching for hazards and urged her horses
on. One more glance at the watch wouldn’t hurt anyone.