The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (24 page)

Minutes later, Mary Clare scampered down the staircase. She made a beeline for Daeryn and shoved him in the chest. “You rat.”

“Hey.” Daeryn caught himself, just managing not to tumble to the floor.

“I made her tell me. Just what were you thinking?”

He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I obviously wasn’t, as both of you have pointed out. I said I was sorry. What more can I do?”

“Stay away from her. Don’t mess this up. For Miz Gere, or for me.” Mary Clare pivoted and stormed out of the bunkhouse.

“Hell,” he muttered. “Did those words come from Annmar, or just Mary Clare dreaming she can put me in place again?”

Rivley jumped up, dropped the parts on the canvas and dashed out the door. His rising whistle sounded. Daeryn scowled. That was a familiar call. Rivley was doing whatever it took to get back with Mary Clare, dammit, rather than helping him.

He could still go forward with his plan for tonight, but for after, how was he supposed to get Annmar’s permission to reveal the healing if he had to stay away from her?

chapter twenty-six

From her room’s
high window, Annmar peered past the yellowing leaves of the walnut tree in the center of the yard. Rivley and Mary Clare were hugging.

Out in the open for anyone to see.

Mary Clare indicated they
had
been together, but Annmar hadn’t realized they still were. Despite misunderstandings.

Had
she
misunderstood what was between Daeryn and Maraquin? Annmar laced her fingers together, squeezing them to her aching heart for a moment, then wrenched her hands apart. Somehow they found their way into the pockets of her trousers. Each fist buried itself deep, the feeling of it a small comfort. Rivley had said many things while she pulled her emotions together, but never that Daeryn and Maraquin were, or were not, a couple.

Daeryn appeared, giving Rivley and Mary Clare a wide berth while he crossed to the farmhouse. He swung the crutches, one foot lifted between them.

He was healed. By her.

A shiver ran up her spine, just as one had when Daeryn told them. Oh, if she could talk to him, see his foot again, compare it to her drawing and what she imagined. And in turn, show him the mark that had formed, and confide her Knack discoveries in the friend she’d made while eating cake, and sharing his stories and her sketches.

Why hadn’t she just started talking in the workshop? She could easily have accepted his apology and continued the conversation with neither of them mentioning the unmentionable. Hadn’t she had plenty of practice doing that with Mr. Shearing?

What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been. And there he went, her chance to find out delayed. Or was it? Annmar peered down from her window, willing herself to see…something. Anything. Like with the blackberry.

Daeryn’s figure grew dark, fur coating him, thick and glossy. Heart racing, she darted her gaze to his foot—paw!—hoping for a flash of blue. He disappeared.

Annmar jerked back. Oh, he’d walked beneath the entry porch. Darn. She’d seen nothing, and to go to his sickroom again would invite more embarrassment.

Her fingers tapped at her mouth. This vision had appeared in the familiar way those in Derby had, but at her calling. And yet it wasn’t like Jac’s teeth or Rivley’s feathers, the bits Mary Clare said were Knacks showing.

She turned to watch Mary Clare and Rivley and called up her Knack again. Mary Clare didn’t change, because she was a girl, a human. Rivley, on the other hand, seemed to be wearing a fluttering cape. Annmar focused harder. What she’d thought was draping material sharpened to bluish-gray plumage. He lifted his matching head, showing prominent brows with brilliant orange eyes on either side of a hooked nose.

In an instant, his image snapped into shape. A hawk. Rivley was a hawk.

Automatically, Annmar reached across the drafting table for her sketchbook. It fell open where she kept her pencil. She snatched it and started drawing his chest of orange and white horizontal bars. Minutes later, Rivley left the farmyard.

She traced the completed sketch with her fingertips. At last she’d managed to see one of the boys in his full ’cambire form. Her mouth crooked into a wry smile. Probably better she’d caught Rivley since she didn’t need more reminders of Daeryn gracing her sketchbook. With a sigh, she closed the pages and retrieved the larger label sketchbook. The images of plants weren’t nearly so exciting as ’cambire visions of people she knew, but their drawings would keep her in Blighted Basin and earning money.

She and Mary Clare had returned too late to go to the fields. Tomorrow, after Market Day, Mary Clare would be free, and besides, she’d told Annmar, the special cooks had sent over another box of preserves. Something among those should be familiar enough to draw this afternoon.

Annmar descended her spiral stairs, both hands free now that she didn’t have to hold her skirt. She liked moving in trousers, plus with the security of the solid leather boots, walking became free and easy. Coming around the last of the stair treads, Annmar spotted Rivley kneeling beside a dismantled spider machine. Curiosity rose in her, and she focused her gaze on him. A shadow of his hawk plumage outlined his body, and the feathers tracking his arm movements drew her eye.

Her booted foot scuffed on the floor.

He started, rose and rounded in one fluid motion, his amber eyes narrowing in the piercing glare of a hawk. Her hand flew to her mouth, her breath sucking in. How fierce, as if attack was imminent. But just as fast, Rivley stepped back.

“Girl, uh, Annmar.” The image passed, and he became the solemn Rivley again. “Your room access will take some getting used to. In all the time I’ve assisted Master Brightwell, we’ve had this area to ourselves.”

That explained things. He hadn’t heard her until she left the protection of Mistress Gere’s room boundary. Annmar released her breath and crossed to the workshop.

Rivley returned to his machine parts. The long metal joints glistened with a bluish sheen, similar to Miss Lacey’s shimmery skin. That was the lanolin-vegetable oil Rivley said they used.

“Is Henry’s machine repairable?” she asked.

Rivley squatted again. “I’ve broken down the external components, cleaned and oiled the legs and the dung depositors.”

“Excuse me?”

He laughed. “That probably does sound funny to a city girl. The spiders apply what we call dung, a smelly sludge the growers make from compost.” He picked up a telescoping rod. “This keeps the smell contained. The grower leads the machine between the rows while the depositor inserts the dung into the mounded soil, next to the roots of the crop, where it can work immediately.”

He compressed the rod and pointed to a hole in the tip before letting loose. The rod sprang to its full length, accompanied by a glow of blue darting over the metal.

“Oh, there’s the blue light like on the tea warmer. Do it again.”

He gave her a funny look, but did. The faint light zinged over the surface. “That’s excess oil shining under Master Brightwell’s good lamps.” Rivley wiped at a smeared spot.

No, it wasn’t oil. But she wouldn’t argue. If she did, he’d surely ask how she knew about machines, which might lead to uncomfortable topics.

Rivley laid down the depositor and picked up a screwdriver. “I still need to clean the inner gears.” He began loosening a tiny setscrew holding an axle.

She moved closer to peer at the dim glow of blue coming from within the machine.

“I’ll have it up and running by late afternoon if you’d like to come back.” He grinned at her over his shoulder, his face flickering between human and bird-like, his arms feathering again.

Annmar wasn’t quite sure if she saw it happen with her eyes or in her mind, but didn’t want to close her eyes to check. It was just so fascinating. What harm was there in asking? They seemed to be becoming friends, like she was with Mary Clare. “What kind of a hawk are you?”

Surprise transformed his face to human.

“If it’s not too forward of me to ask. I, uh…”

“Someone told you?”

“My Knack lets me see—” She glanced over his completely human body. “Well, I can’t now, but a moment ago, you were…” Mercy, what had she started? She’d best go. “Never mind.”

She turned away, but Rivley sprang up, hopping between her and the door just like the quick bird within. He stared down, not threatening or fierce as before but…something. “You see, er, me? ’Cambire forms?”

It was hard to move, let alone talk, under that stare, which hit her uncomfortably as what a rabbit must feel when caught in the open.

He shifted off a step and wiped a hand over his face. “Very few people can tell I’m a ’cambire.”

Ah. That explained his alarm. Muscles she’d held tight sagged, the rabbit released. “Sorry,” she breathed.

Rivley’s mouth crooked, and this time his grin was pure boy. “Aw, don’t be. You’re just you. Do you think the healing and the sight are part of one Knack, or two separate ones?”

She started to nod, then shook her head. “I’m trying to solve that question. I don’t know much of anything about Knacks. Or changers,” she said pointedly.

“A sparrowhawk. I’m a Eurasian sparrowhawk.”

She had no idea of the differences in hawks. “It’s a big one?”

“One of the smaller aerial predators of the Black Mountains.” Rivley picked up the screwdriver he’d dropped. “That’s why we decided, Dae and I, to make our way to the Basin’s northern Farmlands. This shire no longer hosts the bigger prey animals, so there are more jobs for smaller predators. Neither of us could take down a deer, but rodents and nuisance birds are no problem. Those are a farm’s most common complaint.”

Oh, ugh, did that mean—“You kill mice and, uh…”

“Eat them?” He laughed. “I prefer birds. And only in hawk form. I don’t even know how they taste when I shift to human. It’s a different life.”

Annmar kept her features frozen, yet when her hand strayed to her roiling stomach, his gaze followed. “Does it upset you that I can see the hawk part of you?”

He shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it. Tomorrow another person could appear on Mistress Gere’s doorstep with yet another unusual Knack we’ve never heard of. I have to hope there aren’t any more of your kind of Knack Outside. I plan to study at a mechanics’ institute one day and can’t have anyone ratting me out.”

“I would never—”

“I know.” He flashed her a smile before bending to the machine.

That little action made her feel a part of things, in their shared confidences. She could count Rivley as a friend.

He loosened another setscrew holding a large gear and removed it. Behind shone the faint core of blue light she’d spotted earlier. Though she’d drawn many machines’ external views, Annmar never quite understood the mechanics inside the engines. She squatted down to see where the oil, what Rivley claimed produced the blue light, might be in a semi-clockwork machine like this.

He glanced over.

“I know the basics of these: Once wound, a spring releases to power the gears. But I’ve never understood how the oil spreads to make it self-lubricating.”

“It starts here.” He poked the screwdriver past a set of wheels to a neat metal cylinder about the diameter of a drinking glass. From each end, metal tubes squirmed their way off to other parts of the engine.

“That would be the oil reservoir?”

“Well, yes, it
would
be, but it’s mostly empty right now, thanks to Henry. Here, since you have an interest, I’ll clean the canister first and refill it.” Levering the tip of the screwdriver against a clamp at the bottom, Rivley released the canister, unthreaded bolt couplings holding the tubing tight to the metal sides and carried the piece to the workbench. Above an enamel tray, he unscrewed one end and upturned the contents.

Shimmery blue oil flowed across the white glass surface, though very little of it as Rivley had predicted. Then, as the viscous flow ceased, he gave the canister a little shake, and something else tumbled out and hit the bottom of the tray with a
clunk
.

The large-eared, big-eyed clay figurine of a vole stared up at them.

Annmar looked at it, then looked at Rivley. “What is a doodem doing in your machine?”

He stared back at her. “How do
you
know what a doodem is?”

She didn’t, exactly. But she recognized this clay animal’s similarity to the three figurines sitting on her chest of drawers, the only knickknacks of Mother’s Annmar had saved because they’d always seemed special. As a child, Annmar hadn’t been allowed to play with the cat, owl and flower doodems, a term Mother told Annmar was an old-fashioned word for a totem. Mother hadn’t hidden that they came from her childhood, but what they were went unexplained, just like most of Mother’s life.

Yet this doodem was very different from Mother’s white figurines. This mulberry-colored clay animal pulsed with a beautiful cerulean light.

The same blue coloring she’d seen in the luminated threads. The energy. The doodem was the heart, the origin of the energy in the machines.

With what Annmar knew of machines, this idea was ridiculous. However, in Blighted Basin, her Knack overruled Outside logic. Like with the canning cooks’ foods, she had to be seeing someone else’s Knack at work. But whose? And if doodems worked as energy for a machine, did they do the same for people? Annmar’s breath caught. If Mother had doodems, why did she die?

A dozen more questions sprang up, about blue lights and threads and sparks and doodems and Knacks, but until Annmar confirmed this Knack’s owner, she must keep her questions to herself.