Agent of the Crown (43 page)

The setting sun turned their shadows a
starkly outlined black, and then it sank behind distant Mount
Tendennon, leaving a glow that might have been rosy or golden.
Telaine had no time to waste looking at sunsets. She could no
longer read her watch face.
A Device that lights a clock
face,
she thought,
something soft so it doesn’t blind you at
night
.

She put it away and concentrated on the road.
The light of the half-moon was not quite enough for speedy travel,
and she had to slow for fear of veering off over the verge, fear of
a horse breaking a leg, and if that happened Telaine didn’t know
what she would do. She trotted along and tried not to imagine
distant screams and war cries.
I hope they give him a gun, that
hammer won’t do any good until the Ruskalder are so close it
doesn’t matter.

She changed mounts again and urged the horses
on faster. On her left, the foothills of the Rockwilds, charcoal
gray ash-heaps in the starry night; on her right, barren prairie
that spread out uninterrupted…no. Something else. Something that
sparkled, here and there, with light.

Another half hour, she guessed, and she came
to a stop in front of the great wooden doors of the fort. It was
little more than a black hulk against the sky. She saw no watchers,
no guardsmen at the gate. “Hallo the fort!” she shouted. “Is anyone
there?” Had she not seen the lights above the wall, she might have
imagined it empty, a shell populated by ghosts.

“Who’s there?” someone shouted. A window slid
open, shedding yellow light on the ground next to her.

“I am an agent of the Crown and I need to
speak to your commanding officer.” It was getting easier. And she
wasn’t dead yet, or destroyed, from saying it. Oh, wait. Yes, she
was.

“Can you prove it?”

She wanted to scream with frustration.
Instead, she said, “Not from out here.”

After a moment, the gate swung open with a
hideous groan. She led her mounts inside.

It was smaller than the Thorsten Pass fort,
but looked bigger because it wasn’t all spread out flat. A couple
of soldiers came forward to take the reins from her. She slid down,
staggered, and said, “Please care for them. They’ve worked hard
today.”

The man who’d spoken to her—she recognized
his voice—said, “So. We’re supposed to take your word for it that
you’re a spy. You don’t look like a spy.”

“If I looked like a spy, I wouldn’t be much
good, would I?” She didn’t look like a spy. She looked, she was
certain, like a madwoman, her hair wild, her clothes sweaty and
filthy from road grime. “I must speak to your commanding
officer.”

“Don’t be a jackass, Sampson, if she’s a spy
the commander needs to know,” said another soldier, taller and
thinner than Sampson. “Wait here, miss.” He went up a flight of
stairs leading to the top of the keep. Sampson glowered at her as
if he expected her to pull out a sword or a gun and attack him.
Telaine smiled sweetly at him, or tried to; the corners of her
mouth felt tight, as if she had forgotten how.

It took a few minutes for the soldier to
reappear. “Come with me, miss,” he said, and led the way back to
the stairs and into the keep. The crenellated walls and the walkway
that ran along them looked uncomfortably like the fort at Thorsten
Pass, but the keep was nothing like its counterpart. Where the
Thorsten Pass keep had that tall, bleak, depressing central room,
the Canden fort was warm and cheery. Its top floor was given over
to a strategy room, lit by golden-white Devices and the bright
flames burning in a red brick fireplace.

Several soldiers in tidy green and brown
uniforms stood in groups of two or three throughout the room. A
few, consulting paperwork, sat at a table that would have been more
at home in someone’s dining room. A surprisingly youthful man
wearing major’s stripes stood up from the table and came to meet
her. He looked as severe as the room looked welcoming.

“You had better be able to back that claim
up,” he said. “There are heavy penalties for impersonating an agent
of the Crown.”

“I know,” she replied. “I also know you have
a protocol for verifying an agent’s status.” It had never been an
issue for her, but she knew it existed. She hoped it was something
she could pass.

He pursed his lips and stared at her for a
moment. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand, one at a time.
“This fort doesn’t,” he said. “We should.” He cracked the knuckles
of his right hand. Telaine thought her head might explode from
tension.

“What’s your name, major?”

“Beckett.”

“Major Beckett, let me explain the problem
and you and I can figure out what to do about it. At this moment, a
Ruskalder army is attacking the fort at Thorsten Pass. The fort is
inadequately defended by a force one-third the strength it should
be, as well as a number of untrained civilians. I need you to take
your garrison up the pass to Thorsten and repulse the invaders. And
I need you to do it now.”

The major cracked his knuckles again. Telaine
wanted to cut his hand off and feed it to him. “I don’t think you
realize Tremontane is already on heightened alert due to a
Ruskalder army massing on the northwestern border. Leaving my post
could mean court-martial or execution. I’d need more than the word
of a woman who claims to be an agent.”

“Major Beckett, the Ruskalder invasion surely
overrides whatever orders you currently have.”

“I have no evidence
you
aren’t a
traitor trying to pull me away from my post. For all I know that
supposed invasion is going to come from the east instead.”

Telaine closed her eyes and bit down on a
handful of hasty words before they could escape her lips.
“Suppose…suppose I could get you new orders,” she said. “Official
orders from a source you trust. You’d have to obey those,
right?”

“I don’t see how you could,” Beckett said. He
cracked his knuckles again.

“You leave that to me.” Telaine rubbed her
eyes. “Where’s your telecoder?”

“It’s broken,” the major said.

Telaine stared. “I’m sorry, did you say it’s
broken
?”

“We’re expecting someone to repair it in two
days. The dedicated receiver is still working, but the main Device
is down.”

She sank into a chair. “Just a minute,” she
said when the major asked if she was all right. Broken. No tools.
No experience. And over one hundred and seventy lives at the fort,
not to mention the thousands more living in Barony Steepridge,
depending on her to get this major off his ass and up the
mountain.

She looked up at him. “Show me your telecoder
room.”

The two telecoder Devices were in a smallish
room on the ground floor of the keep. One, the major explained,
could not send messages and was used only to receive official
directives, including new orders. The other, a standard Device for
sending and receiving, was cold. Every other telecoder she’d used
had been slightly warmer than body temperature and gave off a quiet
hum. This one was definitely broken.

Thank heaven they didn’t send Sergeant
Williams
. She picked the Device up in both hands. It was
surprisingly light. “Be careful with that,” Beckett said, putting
out a restraining hand. She held the Device out of his reach.

“Don’t worry, major, I know what I’m doing,”
she lied. “Are you afraid I’ll sabotage it?”

The major shrugged, lowering his hand. “It’s
already broken; what more can you do? And, honestly—” he lowered
his voice—“I believe you are who you say you are. But I can’t
violate protocol on one woman’s say-so, agent or no.”

I will not kill this man. I will not kill
this man.
Telaine turned the Device over, examining the case.
Four small screws fastened the brass plate to its wooden base. “Do
you have some loose change?” she asked the major, who gave her a
strange look but fished out a handful of coins. She tried one after
the other until she found one that fit the slot and then quickly
removed the screws. The base popped away too easily, and she almost
dropped it before setting it down carefully on the counter.

The wooden base was hollow in the middle, and
empty; the wires and gears that made up the Device were connected
to the brass plate and fed up through a square hole into the arm of
the telecoder. There were a lot of moving parts and a lot of copper
and brass wires. Telaine gently eased the rest of the Device out of
the arm. Like the earth mover, a thick copper wire the size of her
pinky coupled the Device to the arm. She disconnected it and the
whole thing slid neatly onto the counter in front of her.

She repressed the urge to despair. She,
Telaine North Hunter, had assembled an earth mover without any
instructions, and it was far more complex than this thing.
And
how many months did it take you to do that?
She began tracing
connections, examining tiny gears, using her fingertips instead of
her eyes to understand how this Device worked. Gear fed into gear;
wires transmitted power from the motive force, which was a disc
half an inch wide that, thank heaven, glowed strongly. She had
scented no source anywhere near this place and had no time to
search for one.

It was going to take forever. Or, worse, she
would find the problem immediately and it would be something
impossible for her to fix. She closed her eyes to shut out
distractions, wishing she could shut out her sense of the minutes
slipping by. Had battle been joined yet? Was Ben still alive? She
paused in her exploration and waited for her fingers to stop
shaking.
Stay focused. There’s nothing you can do for him now
but this.

There. A brass gear no bigger than her
thumbnail had slipped a fraction of an inch out of place. She moved
it, tapped on it to seat it, continued checking the Device in case
there was more than one problem. Another slipped gear, and another.
What had they done to this Device, shaken it? None of the parts
seemed bent or misaligned except those tiny gears; none of the
wires were broken.

A thread of hope wound its way into her
heart. Surely that had taken mere minutes and not the hours her
body told her it had been. She slid her fingers inside the arm and
connected the thick wire. Gears moved, the motive force glowed
stronger, and she felt the hum through her fingers. She breathed
out in relief.

More quickly now, she reassembled the Device,
taking great care to seat it into its wooden base without
dislodging any more pieces. The major seemed awed. “Is this
something all agents learn to do?” he asked.

She smiled. “No, but maybe they should.” She
reached for the interlocking wheels to set the code for the
ultra-secret Device at the palace, then stopped. “Major, here’s
what I’m going to do. I’m going to send some messages. After that,
your receiving Device is going to deliver a message. Don’t tell me
what its transmission code is. I don’t want you saying I somehow
found a way to send it a message from this Device. But I have to
ask you to back off now. The Device I’m going to communicate with
is for agents only and I honestly don’t know what they’d do to you
if you knew the code.”

The major’s eyes widened, and he stepped all
the way back to the door. Telaine judged that was far enough, and
swiftly set the interlocking wheels to the correct settings and
sent the “clear all” signal. Then, with a shaky hand, she tapped
out a code she’d never used before: agent in distress, immediate
response required.

It took less than thirty seconds for her to
receive a response, but it felt like forever. IDENTIFY AGENT AND
CODE.

Damn it. Of course they’d want to verify her
identity, but wasn’t her own name good enough for them? AGENT (she
had to think hard to remember her number) 15623 CODE WINTER FLOWER.
Telaine,
talaina
, the winter flower that grew along the
banks of the Snow River in Ruskald. She’d thought using it was so
clever, when she was fifteen.

RESPONSE PHRASE WINTER FLOWER

That was harder. It was…what? Right.
SUMMERTREE BLOOMS.

Nearly a minute passed. The room was silent
except for the sound of her pulse throbbing in her ears, faster and
louder than it probably should be. Suppose she’d gotten it wrong?
Was there a space between summer and tree? No, her fifteen-year-old
self thought it would be, again, clever.

NATURE OF EMERGENCY AGENT HUNTER?

She’d been holding her breath again.
RUSKALDER INVASION AT THORSTEN PASS IN PROGRESS REPEAT INVASION IN
PROGRESS. FORT IS INSUFFICIENTLY DEFENDED. REQUEST SEND NEW ORDERS
FORT CANDEN MAJOR BECKETT. GARRISON TO PROCEED THORSTEN PASS AID
DEFENDERS.

She tried to imagine the face of whoever was
on duty right then. Her hand shook again as soon as she released
the thumbplate. She turned to Major Beckett. “Soon, now,” she said.
He still looked afraid. Pity the competent Major Anselm hadn’t been
here instead. No, better that she was at Thorsten Keep. Better for
everyone there, probably.

The key began chattering again.

REQUEST RECEIVER CODE FORT CANDEN

She cursed inwardly. CANNOT PROVIDE CODE.
KNOW YOU CAN LOOK IT UP SOMEWHERE.

The key went silent. Telaine put her elbows
on the counter, linked her fingers together and leaned her forehead
on her joined fists. She was afraid to look at her watch again.
They might have been in battle for four or five hours by now. Maybe
they were lucky and the Ruskalder hadn’t shown up until after dark.
Would they attack in the dark? Wasn’t that a bad idea,
military-wise?

What if the military refused to give the
agent in the palace the code? What if that agent had to argue with
them the way she’d wrestled with Major Beckett? Maybe she should
tell the man who she was. Would he respond more favorably to an
order from the King’s niece? No, she might still be able to keep
Telaine North Hunter’s name from being attached to this fiasco, as
if she could go back to being the Princess after this.