The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (10 page)

She dashed off, leaving Annmar to finish the delicious country food. Mary Clare reappeared with the cake and fresh whipped cream, which the nocturnal team hardly took time to eat before leaving. Daeryn shot her another of his smiles, one that coated her with a sense of warmth that outlasted the welcomes of a few other farmworkers who spoke to her before they wandered out.

Decks of cards appeared, and people pulled chairs into clusters to play.

Annmar sighed at the camaraderie around her. Of course Wellspring’s groups were well established, but after Mary Clare’s outright friendliness, she was feeling a bit isolated. Her day’s travel didn’t help. Annmar rose and went to Mistress Gere to excuse herself. The fluttering, er, skinny mechanic from the farmyard arrived at the same time.

Mistress Gere introduced them—his name was Rivley Slipwing—and Annmar held her breath and watched carefully to see if she’d see…anything. She didn’t.

“You took the Derwent train north?” His voice had a lilting accent to it, similar to Daeryn’s but lighter, more musical.

She nodded. “Have you ridden it?”

He shook his head, making his tawny hair wave like short grass. “Too closed in. But I’ve inspected their workings with our mechanic for one of his inventions. We don’t have them down home.”

That pleasant accent she wanted to hear more of wasn’t from nearby. “Where is down home?”

“The Black Mountains to the south. Daeryn and I grew up in the shire called Rockbridge and answered a call for guards together, though I’m now the mechanic’s assistant.”

Together. Again, so many of these people were together, in one way or another. Rivley left, serving himself dinner and putting down coins to join a betting card game. Perhaps tomorrow she’d start to find her place.

Mistress Gere walked her outside and pointed to a one-story addition on the main house. “Use the kitchen door when you’re ready in the morning. Mrs. Betsy will take care of you.” She escorted Annmar from the pool of gaslight across the dark farmyard.

Strange animal calls sounded in the distant fields. Annmar shivered, but she dared not ask about the creatures the owner had discussed with Daeryn earlier. Things had gone too well to reveal her fear of wild animals. Mistress Gere bid her good night in the lit workroom beneath the bunkhouse, and with a glance to the puffed feathers in the nests overhead, Annmar scurried to the curving staircase.

Mistress Gere promised to be a fair employer, but the rural setting of this farm presented concerns Annmar hadn’t considered. She could not make that dark walk alone, she couldn’t—her hand slid over her churning belly—and the gold coins.

The half sovereigns she’d transferred to this skirt’s hidden pocket. She
would
do this.

Tomorrow night she simply would not linger. Or perhaps she would ask Mary Clare if they could walk together. The redhead had offered to answer Annmar’s questions, but the ones she had—about Rivley’s fluttering, or Jac’s teeth—sounded downright odd. These visions popped into her head stronger than any she’d had in Derby. They had to be her Knack. But what if no one else saw them? It would sound as if she made up tales like Polly. Yet, that Jac didn’t like her was all too real. It’d be best for Annmar to keep her visions to herself until she learned more about Knacks.

In her room, Annmar hung her clothes in the wardrobe and then unwrapped a few family items she’d saved. On the linen atop the chest of drawers, she set out white statues of a playful cat, an opening flower bud and a perched owl, all from Mother’s childhood. Lastly, she placed a photograph of the two of them, one of the few her artist mother had agreed to purchase. They sat for it two years ago. After a moment’s hesitation, Annmar picked a piece of heavy linen stock from a small stack in the trunk and turned it over.

A watercolor of Mother’s, a favorite of Annmar’s from one of their Sunday walks along the River Derwent. Simple yet telling, her lines sure, her brushstrokes delicate but vibrant in her color choices. The painting was perfect. Light. Happy. Like all of Mother’s art, a piece that stopped passersby. The shop they’d dreamed of would have been very successful.

Annmar sank into the chair and dropped her head in her hand. Why had Mother let Annmar believe her fanciful imagination was just that? When she put her visions to paper, sometimes her art emerged like Mother’s. But not always. With Mother gone, how would she unravel the mystery of this talent?

Precious little of Mother’s work remained. In the bottom of the trunk sat her sketchbooks and a dozen pieces of favorite artwork Annmar couldn’t bear to sell. The rest were gone, every illustration and painting Mother had completed, and some she hadn’t that Annmar finished and signed Anna Mary Masterson. The money stretched to pay the doctor, the funeral bills and nothing more. Annmar sold their furnishings and moved from the rented row house with the studio in the parlor to the boarding house with a girl she met through her job at Rennet’s Renditions.

Annmar drummed her fingertips on her forehead. Without Mother, she
had
gotten a start. She’d managed to walk into this strange place. Accidentally, but she had. Mistress Gere must suspect Annmar didn’t know what she was doing with the Knack, but the lady was willing to give her a chance. To produce the labels Mistress Gere wanted, Annmar had to learn about visions and her Knack in two weeks. If…no,
once
she did, Annmar could keep the job and earn the gold for her shop, but really learning how to use her Knack meant she’d have Mother’s talent, always. And
once
she did, Annmar could create pleasing artwork for any client
she
chose.

She straightened. Her gaze slid from the watercolor to her sketchbook lying on the drafting table. She flipped it open and turned to the last sketch, the one in which Mistress Gere had seen her Knack. The land did seem alive in the drawing, the soil rich with the possibility of growing anything. Annmar traced a finger over the lacy roots, liking the pattern more now that she understood how it connected everything. So delicate, but so strong. She closed her eyes and held the essence of it. This is what she must remember when she made her first drawings for Mistress Gere.

chapter Twelve

The cool night
air wrestled with warm, and across the Basin lowlands the temperatures varied from the tops of the hills into their dips. On four paws, Daeryn leaped up a hillside planted in blackberry bushes to join the fox already trotting the ridgeline northward. It was well after midnight, and none of them had found a thing in four rounds.

“Don’t und’stan’ why she has it in for me,” Terrent mumbled before his snout completely disappeared.

Who
she
was took no guessing. Jac was Terrent’s perennial whine. If only the boy would catch on to how fruitless it was to analyze Jac’s shifting array of hostility. Daeryn yawned to finish shifting his polecat mouth as they ran together. “She doesn’t have it in for you. Jac’s like that with everyone. You saw her turn on me. And she saved her best for the new girl.”

“I feel bad for her. That city thing has no chance if Jac decides to sink in her teeth.”

“She won’t.” Not if Daeryn caught her at it.

“I don’t think Miz Gere’s lecture clung.” The younger boy’s tone swung from grim to gleeful. “And I’d love to see that bitch get hers.”

Daeryn snorted. “Careful. Your mountain accent comes down on that word in a way Jac won’t take right, considering how you’re already on her shit list.”

They ran another hundred feet before Terrent muttered, “From time to time the rest of youse call her that, but I’ll stop if it helps the team.”

“Good plan.” Speaking of Terrent’s Forestridge origins, Daeryn thought he ought to pick the boy’s brain for something to discuss with the new girl, since Outside was a mystery to him. “What was it like for Annmar coming into the Basin from the north Gateway?”

“Don’t nobody get through the Gap Gateway without his or her hand held by old Mr. Yates.” Terrent grinned at him. “Nobody
new
, that is.”

“I’ll bite. Somebody old?”

“Well, not old,” Terrent said, “just a few of us. Yates never let us kits through without an adult, and since those Proofs are guarded better than gold, a few of us took to finding a way to do it. That dammed tunnel—”

“Tunnel?”

His brow creased. “I forget it’s not one. A gorge, actually. A skinny rock passage, dark as night and twisty as a tendril. And no matter how clever yous think yous are, without a Proof, that thing’ll block yous inside. Or Outside, depend’n on what side yous start.”

“Same as OverEdge. But our Gateway is a boulder maze that keeps strangers turned downhill.”

“Clever. The challenge to exit caught us, but any route around or
over
the hills led us around the Basin rim, not into the Outside Peak District. It wasn’t until three of us were potholing that we found a way out.”

“A cave passage? Impossible. That goes against every principle I ever learned or witnessed while Riv and I worked with the Borderlands Protective Chain. There’s no way in or out but the Gap and OverEdge.”

Terrent stopped and put his hand over his heart. “I swear it’s the Creator’s truth. This big cavern leads under—”

He pivoted, nose up, his nostrils flaring.

Daeryn lifted his nose, drawing the crisp air automatically. Sweeping over the adjacent squash field came a familiar scent. Familiar, but still confusing. A shiver traveled his spine, raising his growing hackles. He spun to Terrent, barely able to hold his tensing muscles from a shift. “That’s it. The pest. Have you smelled this other places tonight?”

Already, red fur was thickening over Terrent’s chest. “In the orchard. Figured it for some grower treatment. Sorry.”

“Check again. I’ll cover this hillside.” Daeryn turned, his fur erupting, his muscles bunching for a leap when he dropped. He veered across the slope.

A shadow darted through the squash vines.

He twisted for it. An animal the size of a nearly grown hare snarled and dodged.

Daeryn landed, got a noseful of scent and sprang after it. Tufted black fur. No tail. Teeth snapping, it disappeared under large leaves moving as agilely as Jac had said. Daeryn followed. The thick vines tripped him up, and the shadow moved. He leaped high to pounce after it. Around the tangles of squash stems he pounced, this way and that, seeing its furry ass disappear, but keeping the movement in sight, again and again, almost cornering it, losing it.

He…nearly…had…it.

They accidentally twisted together. He snapped his jaws, getting a taste of fur and the sting of a scratch on his nose. He doubled his long body back and landed. His claws sank into fur, then flesh. Daeryn curled his paw, digging it—

Yiiiiip!

Terrent? His head jerked up, and in an instant, the pest wrenched free. Daeryn jumped from the vines and started running east to answer Terrent’s call for help. He’d gone only fifty feet when furious barking broke out behind him—

Maraquin.

He hesitated.

Jac’s howl answered her packmate.

Daeryn sped for Terrent again. His polecat paws flew, covering the distance to the rows of trees. Following half-broken barks, Daeryn coursed between evenly spaced trunks, springing long leaps over the lawn beneath low branches.
Where is Terrent?
This was the right direction, but too many trees blocked any view of a fighting fox.

The fox barked again, a strained sound above him.

Daeryn whipped around, craning his neck and zeroing in on the canine, unbelievably up a tree, out on the proverbial limb. Terrent was backing out on the tightrope of a narrowing branch, threatened by a black animal a foot away.

Hell
. More shadows crept closer to Terrent, from above and the sides. At least three. Two circled below. Teeth bared, they weren’t wasting breath on snarling. Amid the wayward fur, Daeryn made out the small ears of a stoat, but a more rounded jawline bearing four incisors that looked overlarge for the animal’s size.

Daeryn bounded forward, ignored the ones on the ground and leaped up. Claws piercing the thin bark, he bunched his hind legs and propelled his long body to the first branch, then jumped higher, branch-to-branch.

From around the trunk, a black body hurled itself at him.

Daeryn jerked aside. Teeth grazed his face. He whirled and grabbed a mouthful of fur, biting hard into flesh. Bones snapped. Strangely, no taste filled his mouth, no urge came to eat this animal. Swinging the body aside, he released it, and the thing hit the ground with a
thud
.

He spun to Terrent’s branch. The fox flattened his ears, lowered his bared teeth and growled at the animal before him. Closer now, Daeryn saw Terrent had one hind leg propped on his toes. Injured. But they had this one trapped between them.

Its teeth glinted at Daeryn, and though he couldn’t make out its eyes under the black fur, he was relieved it had turned from the injured Terrent. Then it lunged backward at Terrent. On three legs, the fox surged forward in a counterattack, but slipped.

Confused, Daeryn grabbed the short black body mid-back. The thing wriggled in his jaws. Beyond it, Terrent scrambled for a toehold. The branch beneath Daeryn’s paws shook violently, made all the worse by the beast’s thrashing. He dug his claws into bark to hold on.

The animal got to his shoulder and bit into him. Pain shot down his left foreleg. With his vision flashing white streaks, Daeryn sank his own teeth deeper. Bones crunched. Still it held on. He wrenched his head sideways, once, twice, before pulling it off, along with a hunk of his flesh.

A growl of mixed pain and anger rumbled in his throat, cut short when another set of teeth pierced his hind leg. It burned, and Daeryn jerked forward. Terrent did, too. They collided, and in a tangle of fur, teeth and swiping claws, they fell.

* * *

“Help!”

The shout pierced Annmar’s sleep. She rolled from the bed and stood, uncertain in the unfamiliar room.

“Some help down here. Right now!” called the boy with the lilting accent.

Annmar’s head cleared—she was at the farm. She grabbed a throw from the end of the bed and opened her door. Downstairs, the gas lamps glowed.

Footsteps pounded somewhere else in the bunkhouse. “Rivley? That you?” asked a man.

“Hurry,” Rivley yelled from right below her. “Something attacked Daeryn.”

Oh, no. Annmar raced down her staircase, beating a farmworker to the pair huddled on the floor. Rivley held the curled Daeryn by the shoulders. Bleeding slices crisscrossed one arm and shoulder, a gash at his forehead and another across his chest—

Daeryn was naked. Only a silky coating of hair covered his bloody but otherwise gorgeously muscled body, and though she knew she shouldn’t, Annmar stared.

She’d never seen…and he was so…
Oh, my!

She dragged her gaze up, wincing at the twisting silver piece circling Daeryn’s navel, and made herself continue to his face.

“Not just me,” he gasped. “Terrent’s leg got ripped and… The wolves arrived to help us, but Maraquin’s bad off. Edge of the orchard. Send someone for Zar if he’s not there. And watch yourselves. Take something to whack away the vermin.”

“Got it,” said the man who’d arrived behind Annmar. He whirled to a pair jogging down the hall. “Let’s go—”

“Great Creator!” the girl yelped. “Did those pests do this, Dae?”

He nodded, his eyes scrunched closed in pain, his skin oddly dark. “S-size of a hare and black. I s-sound off my rocker, but I swear it had teeth at both ends.”

“Come on,” said the first man. “Let’s find the others.” They ran through the open door.

Annmar jerked out of her stupor. “Uh, here. A blanket.” She squatted and covered Daeryn. “What can I do?” she asked Rivley.

He tugged at the fabric, twitching it to some blood on Daeryn’s neck and patting with shaking fingers. “Run to the house and ring the bell. You know where it is?”

“The dinner bell?”

“Right. Mistress Gere will answer. Tell her—
no
!” Rivley thumped Daeryn’s chest. “Dae. Stay with me. Don’t change.”

Change? What—

Good heavens!
Annmar shot upright, stumbling back. Fur covered Daeryn’s reshaping face, his ears rounded up above his crown, and beneath the blanket, his body squirmed and shrank.

Grr-aaargh!
The long, low growl switched to a groan as his face cleared of fur and his ears dropped down the side of his head. “The pain,” he gasped. “I can’t hold my form.”

A dream. This had to be a dream.

“You can, Dae. Otherwise these cuts will bleed out worse.” Rivley pulled Daeryn’s uninjured arm from under the cover and grasped the brown paw at the end. It transformed into a hand with sturdy fingers. Rivley laced his slender digits into them, freckles dotting his white knuckles. “You
can
.”

Daeryn grunted. His body extended and filled out under the blanket.

No, not a dream. Her head stuttered at the thought, but it was true: Daeryn, the handsome, exotic boy who’d winked at her, had partially changed into an animal.