The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (8 page)

Then, too quickly, he released her. Somehow, Mistress Gere took over the conversation, discussing an animal problem in the fields and listing several possibilities she wanted Daeryn to look into. His brows came together over narrowed eyes, changing his face into a calculating contemplation that had Annmar glad she wasn’t the source of the problem.

“We’ll delay dinner,” Mistress Gere said. “After I show Annmar to her room, I’ll speak with your team and the growers.” She shook her head, and when she spoke again, her tone was solemn. “The damage isn’t significant at this point, but the rate at which it’s increased bothers me. If the losses continue to rise, the squash harvest will suffer like the tomatoes, and I’m afraid what we’ve seen so far with the turnips means the onions will follow the same track. The last we can’t afford to lose.”

Daeryn patted her arm and, to Annmar’s surprise, gave the older woman a quick hug. “The creatures can’t avoid us long, don’t you worry. We’ll wait in the yard.” He nodded to Annmar. “Be seeing you.” He strode out of the kitchen, leaving the doors to swish closed.

Mistress Gere turned her gaze back to Annmar. “That boy heads my nocturnal guards. I trust him with my property and my life. Having just met you, I hesitate to say this but feel I must. Some of the farm members can be overly friendly, but everyone will be respectful of your person and your territory…er, social needs.”

Social needs
better explained what her employer probably meant when warning off Daeryn. He had to be from one of the Basin’s cultural pockets with different customs. Telling him to keep to the borders of her territory must be a country way of describing propriety. Good. Mistress Gere set out the rules more clearly than Mrs. Rennet could have in town.

“I’ll make the rest of the introductions at dinner,” Mistress Gere said. “Please come to me with any questions. Or if you prefer to talk to someone closer to your own age, may I suggest Mary Clare? She has an excellent grasp of the subtle differences in individuals and how to set them straight.”

Annmar did not want to admit that she might just do that, and apparently an answer wasn’t required, because Mistress Gere resumed showing her the canning operations. Then she led Annmar across the gathering area to a door in the far wall.

“On either end of this building are the living quarters. We have assigned you the north end, where the light will be best for an artist. I’m sorry we don’t have a proper studio for you.”

“I’m sure what you have will be fine. I can work on any flat surface.”

“We have done a little better than that. Come along.” Mistress Gere opened the door.

Instead of a straightforward passage with more doors, it opened up to a warehouse-like space stacked with furniture. The afternoon sunlight streaming in the windows lit the area, just… Annmar rubbed her eyes and peered around, but no item would resolve into a distinct image.

Mistress Gere took her arm. “All right, dear?”

Lord forbid, her nerves must be unsettling again. “Yes, I…perhaps I’m tired. My eyes don’t seem to be adjusting in this light.”

“No, I don’t suppose they are.” Mistress Gere urged her forward. “But you needn’t concern yourself with this part of the building. Your room has its own stairway entrance, as does each person’s room.” They edged around what might be a wardrobe. Or a large mirror. “There, see your window just ahead?”

A triple wide window of smaller panes dominated the gable wall. Annmar saw that clearly enough. They wound through crooked aisles of stacked chairs. This couldn’t be the promised rooming arrangement. Though the place smelled fresh and clean with no sign of dust, Annmar didn’t want to sleep among open storage, especially after the owner’s warning. Perhaps she should take a room in town, with a door and a lock. The wages would cover one, and she could still take her meals here.

“Tight squeeze, this last one.” Mistress Gere pointed to a narrow space leading to steps between a wardrobe and a stack of bins.

Annmar turned sideways and felt her way up three steps. At the top, she looked back over numerous balcony protrusions, dormers and angular alcoves. Another triple window graced the far end, but the floor they’d just traversed lay in a jumble of shadows.

“Annmar? Will your room not let you in?”

Whatever did she mean? Annmar pivoted. The space fronting the windows appeared dim, as if gray gauze hung before it. Reaching a hand and feeling nothing, she shuffled beyond the wooden case at her back. The room popped into clarity as if a lamp had been lit.

Annmar gasped. This was exactly what had happened in the Gateway.
Mercy, I’ve gone beyond a case of the vapors. The edges of my sanity are coming apart.

But did insanity look this pretty? She took a few steps toward the sparkling-clean windowpanes, beneath which stood a new drafting table and stool. An oil lamp hung above, and another stood on a small table next to a buttercup-colored wing chair. It sat on a hooked rug in hues of orange, reminding her of carrots. Tucked into a cozy niche was a rather wide daybed, and beyond it a door opened to a bathing room, complete with a ball-foot bathtub.

For her? Alone? After months of sharing, this room presented pure luxury.

Mistress Gere came up the last step of the narrow passage. “Do you think it will do?”

Annmar glanced around the homey room again, this time noticing her trunk and valise already set to the side of a chest of drawers. She drew a breath and answered what she ought to, the truth really, if the strange entrance hadn’t piqued her nerves. “Oh, yes, I like the room very much.”

“Surprised?”

A skittish giggle burst from her. “Pardon me, but I never expected anything like this after—” She gestured to the part of the building they had just traversed, and blinked.

Beyond Mistress Gere, mist gathered, white, not the myriad shadows from less than a minute ago. Was it…a wall? No, they had just walked through that spot, a squeeze, but she’d definitely… The mist graduated itself into, well, solidness, from denser at the bottom to thinner near the high ceiling. It was even coloring, into a pale, pale yellow, a tint she’d make with one part yellow cadmium to ten titanium white.

What a ridiculous thought to have.

Roaring took over her ears. Her vision blurred and her knees gave out. Firm hands grasped her elbows and steered her to a soft seat. “Breathe, dear.” Mistress Gere rubbed Annmar’s hands, the brisk motion warm and reassuring.

Annmar took the breaths and her muscles eased. Her head cleared. Lord forbid, the lady had seen her completely fall apart. Trial or no, she’d surely be sent away. Annmar forced herself to lift her gaze.

Mistress Gere’s concerned gaze met hers. “How much
did
your mother tell you about her life in Blighted Basin?”

chapter NINE

Daeryn ambled from
the kitchen back to the dormer opening where he still had crates to move. Great Creator, that new girl smelled more wonderful than when he’d first scented her. Pretty blue eyes, a color ’cambires didn’t have. Nice, too. Huh, maybe a bit too nice in her fancy clothes. She wouldn’t want to befriend a crew of farmworkers. He pulled at his rolled shirtsleeves and hiked up his canvas work trousers.

A throat cleared. Daeryn looked up. The windlass was shut down, the crates stacked. Jac and Maraquin were watching him, along with Zar and Terrent.

“What?” Daeryn said.

Jac flipped her hair over one shoulder. “Oh, please. Just because you’re lead now, you think you can ditch your chores to meet the new girl?”

“I didn’t—”

The fellows snickered, the older Zar hiding it better with a hand to his sandy beard. Maraquin threw them a dark look, then, without looking at Daeryn, stormed out onto the platform extending from the loft. Her footsteps pounded the wooden stairs.

So the digs were starting. Hell, being part of the group had been much easier. But taking orders from Jac wouldn’t have been. “So what? You’re done and we’re not late. The lady says the evening meeting’s in a half hour.”

“What?” Terrent cried. “After dinner?”

“Before,” Daeryn said. “She wants the growers to tell us what they’ve found in the crops today. Might give us some guidance on what areas the vermin are hitting worst.”

Terrent grabbed his gut with an exaggerated groan.

“You’re making it up,” Jac snapped. “It’s that
girl
delaying our meal. I’m starving.”

“Yous?” Terrent lifted his shirt to bare a bellybutton hugging his backbone.

The boy was lean, but Daeryn knew he was sucking it in to make himself look thinner. Teasing Jac wasn’t the best idea before she’d eaten. Her tone made it clear, to Daeryn at least, that she’d woken up on the tetchy side of her queenly bed this afternoon.

Sure enough, one side of Jac’s mouth bunched into a near snarl. Her wolf scent rose, a sure sign of agitation. Zar shook his head behind her, but Terrent didn’t see. Or didn’t care. The mountain boy’s feisty attitude matched his flame-red hair. Jac took a step forward.

Terrent opened his big mouth. “Look what’s left of me after yous ran—oof!”

Daeryn’s backhand to his gut was lighter than the punch Jac would have landed. “We’re all hungry. Don’t make out like you just woke outta hibernation.” He swatted playfully at Terrent again, and thankfully, he was distracted.

“I did sleep like a hibernating bear. Never deeper. Never hungrier,” he added, throwing a wrinkle-nosed glance to Jac.

“Great Creator, you just don’t get it, do you?” Daeryn said in exasperation. “Go offer to help those kitchen girls carry in the dishes so they’ll take pity on you.”

“Because we aren’t,” Jac spat out.

At that, the light dawned in Terrent’s eyes and he all but scampered out of the loft and down the stairs, Zar in his wake.

Jac stepped between Daeryn and the stairs. From her advantage of several inches, she stared down at him. “Clever.”

“What do you mean?” he asked innocently, but her attitude set his nerves on edge. Terrent was just Terrent. Skilled in defense, but still slightly immature. They knew that after a summer with him on the team.

She continued to stare. One brow rose slowly, a look he knew, though such a challenge had never been directed at him. Before. The urge to pounce Jac overtook him.

His hands fisted, but he stayed rigid. If he jumped her now, it wouldn’t be a surprise like last night. Nor, her strong wolf musk told him, would the fight stay human. It’d take no time for either of them to shift in the empty loft. Then it’d be a wrestling feat to keep his polecat form on her brawny wolf shoulder long enough to mark her—

An image of what that would be like—what it almost
had
been last night—shot to his head. But just as quickly, it interchanged with the last time he’d completely marked a ’cambire into pack. Sylvan. It’d been Sylvan, and he’d been so much in love with his polecat mate. Daeryn’s heart raced as he thought of her, and what had… He shoved the memory off. It did no good to think of Sylvan and why he no longer had a pack, despite how hard Rivley wanted to make him remember. And fix it. But not this way. He owed Rivley not to mark Jac. If he could manage it.

Under their matched stares, Jac hadn’t moved. Great Creator, she was baiting him, taunting him to slip. Now he had more at risk: The leader took the fall for the group. He’d learned that lesson. Unfortunately, he hadn’t learned the new lessons the Elders had determined he’d needed when they’d bound him in the gildan with Rivley. Three lessons bespelled into the three piercings, still unresolved. So what to do…
Fight her with words
, Rivley had said.

Jac couldn’t challenge him for the lead. Her current alpha status in her pack and his lapsed one didn’t matter. Not to Miz Gere. Not for leading the nocturnal team. Daeryn released his hands, stretched his fingers. “This isn’t a lead position won through fighting like a pack alpha spot. Last night I made a mistake. I let my ’cambire instinct loose when I shouldn’t have. Right now we can’t be in a row.”

“Oh?” She said only the one word, but her stance shifted back.

Just slightly, but Daeryn took the opening. He swiped back his hair while she studied him, disdain evident in her curled lip. A faint scent tickled at his memory. The city girl. What had possessed him, following her to the kitchen like that? He had a new duty. The vermin, foremost, and running the team. Why would he work himself up over a female?

Finally, Jac huffed out a breath. “I suppose the pest problem is your excuse?”

This time Daeryn held his tongue, and after a few moments, Jac’s scent dissipated. He swept a half bow toward the stairs. “After you.”

She swung around and took her time descending to join Maraquin waiting at the base. They sauntered off, their heads tilted together, thick hair melding and shaking with laughter.

Damn wolf, baiting him like that. But he hadn’t fallen for her tricks. In fact, they only cemented his determination. He might not like that he got the lead position, but now he had it, and he was going live up to it.

Chapter TEN

“What did Mother
tell me about her life in Blighted Basin?” Annmar bit the inside of her lip while Mistress Gere waited. Annmar thought her mother’s birthplace was Gapton, but had Mother ever said that? The stories about her childhood in the country could have happened anywhere. Mother had been frank about what she did tell: She’d gotten pregnant and realized she didn’t want to live with the father. She’d left so she wasn’t forced to.

“Little,” Annmar said. “Strict parents, who would be furious she was having a baby without a husband. Mother knew returning would be difficult, but never cursed her birthplace. She said it blessed her with her artistic insight.”

Mistress Gere nodded. “Exactly. Artistic insight. She had a natural talent. A talent people liked, if I’m not mistaken?”

This woman knew this. She was the one who’d searched out Mother and offered her the excellent wages for that talent. What was Mistress Gere really asking? “Yes,” Annmar said slowly. “Mother’s art always sold. People came directly to our row house with requests for specific pieces, and Mother seemed to know just what they had in mind.” Annmar cleared her throat. “Did Mr. Fetcher investigate her business for you?”

“No, dear.” Mistress Gere patted her hand. “The people born and raised in this valley all have a Knack, a natural talent, inherited through bloodlines. For your mother, and for you, it’s being able to see beyond the surface of things and communicate what you see through your art.”

For your mother, and for you.
She had a talent, a Knack? A wave of relief coursed through Annmar. Her strange visions—though not normal—had an explanation.

Wait a second. Annmar closed her eyes to better absorb Mistress Gere’s meaning. Was the explanation
magic
?

Her eyes flashed open, lifting to the lady’s studied gaze. Good heavens, she didn’t believe…

Mistress Gere was not setting up a ruse. After a lifetime of speaking with Mother’s clients, and then her own, Annmar knew people. This businesswoman was not the smooth Mr. Shearing. Mistress Gere already proved honest and forthcoming in ways that restored Annmar’s sensibilities.

Asking directly seemed foolish. Annmar darted a look at the new wall. “If I may be so bold to ask, is your Knack like the one that separates Blighted Basin from the Outside and secures the Gateway?”

Mistress Gere smiled. “You’re very observant to have noticed the similarities. Yes, though the Gateway Knack-bearers don’t use their gifts as much as I use mine. Few Basin residents go or stay Outside. They can’t ever say what it is, but something about an Outside community isn’t right for them, and they return to the safety of the Basin.”

“The area we passed through? Those were other rooms?”

“Exactly,” Mistress Gere said. “The jumbled downstairs of this building is actually workrooms and storage. No one at the farmhouse heard you knock, nor could you enter, without my Knack’s permission. My gift guards the business and brings people together to work for common goals. Some excel in craft skills, like cooking, carpentry or mechanics, talents useful in our operation, though most of my people have Knacks with plants. For some, the talent is narrower, a special affinity with a particular plant or animal.”

Annmar could tell herself these Knack phenomena were like the miracles of science occurring every day in Derby, and across all of England. But that was foolish. Whatever words Mistress Gere chose to use, she was talking about magic. Like something out of Polly’s fantastical stories.

Though she wanted to rub her aching temples, Annmar kept her hands folded in her lap. Mistress Gere worked magic. And what’s more, she was saying Annmar could as well.

A shiver ran down Annmar’s spine. Rational thought and every lesson given a well-brought-up young lady said Annmar ought to deny it, but she couldn’t. She would rather believe Mistress Gere, because unraveling the mystery of her visions was a better choice than acknowledging a faltering sanity. Even Polly had said she felt “some sort of magical workings” in Annmar’s art.

A bubble seemed to burst inside her, scattering the clouds of worry that’d hung over her so long. Nerves weren’t her problem, magic was. A Knack. What did it do, exactly? And how? Could she manage to train herself to use it? And then…?

Well, Annmar certainly knew what she would
not
do: work for Mr. Shearing. If having a Knack ensured her freedom and prevented her from becoming that random cog in an industrialist’s plans, then she’d spend every last minute of this trial learning to use it.

She smiled at the thought and, with a start, realized Mistress Gere was smiling, too.

The lady briefly pressed a hand to Annmar’s shoulder. “Your spirits appear to have recovered. It’s up to you to get to know Blighted Basin and your mother’s people.” She stood and waved to the closed door. “Your entrance is there. No one can access your room unless you give him or her permission, something my Knack links to you. Privacy is important, even in a well-functioning team such as ours. Is this arrangement acceptable?”

Annmar rose from the chair and swiveled to survey the lovely room again, a ridiculous grin stuck on her face. “I believe it is.”

“Let’s set your room’s barrier and leave you with a few minutes to freshen up before the dinner bell rings.”

Annmar did as Mistress Gere directed. She touched the doorknob and ran her hand down the railing of the spiral staircase. Both were warm, warmer than the metals should have been. The staircase was the same one she’d noted earlier, across from the workshop. This time the curlicue decorations of the metal were clean, and the space surrounding it cleared.

Annmar felt as if she’d donned special spectacles, but stopped herself from gawking at what hid beneath Mistress Gere’s magic. No, Knack. She ought to use the local term. That Mistress Gere managed all this, and ran a business, simply thrilled Annmar.

Mistress Gere nodded to a neat line of small machines. “You’ll share an entrance with our mechanic’s inventory.”

Poised on jointed legs like huge insects—no, eight legs, so spiders—they looked ready to march from the bay. A small engine, the head, powered them from one end of the water tank body. The engine was a typical steam design, but the machine moved by way of legs? A pulley and cable system with tiny gears graced each articulated leg joint. Clockwork techniques.

Before her sat more intricately operating steam machinery than anything Annmar had been shown at Mr. Shearing’s factory. “I hope I can see them in action.”

“The growers won’t be using these much longer for the late crops. In fact…” Mistress Gere frowned and stepped to the doorway, where the afternoon light had grown fainter. “It’s time I see to a certain problem we’ve experienced.”

Annmar followed her. The dark-skinned man who had been operating the mechanized windlass now stood beneath the walnut tree, along with a younger man. Like the mechanics at Shearing’s, both wore leather aprons over waistcoats and trousers. Several other men wearing bib-and-braces, hats and carrying work gloves joined them. Farmers.

“Excuse me, please. I’ll see you at dinner in a few minutes.” Mistress Gere strode to the gathering group, arriving before a number of other workers crossing the farmyard.

Annmar returned to her room, closed the door and scooted to the window. Below, Wellspring’s farmworkers collected around the owner while she listened to the younger mechanic, tall and skinny beneath his leather apron. While speaking, he waved his hands in an animated way, his tufts of short tawny hair glinting with blue-gray highlights as he fluttered in the low afternoon sun.

Fluttered? Annmar bent her head, trying for a better angle against the glass to make out the exact movements of his sidestepping feet and flipping elbows, but he wasn’t moving. Had it been a trick of the lighting, or—her hand flew to her mouth—her Knack?

Several more people approached, including Daeryn. A girl with a cascading mane of dark hair bounced in strides across the farmyard. She’d been working in the loft, but now it struck Annmar what was different about her, beyond dressing like a man: her loose hair. No woman in Derby would think of going out with her hair not
styled
in some way. And covered.

The girl approached Daeryn and jostled him about the shoulders. My, her touch was blatantly open. How would the fellow respond—

Daeryn turned, scooped the girl into a hold and rubbed his knuckles over her hair, mussing it.

Disappointment coursed through Annmar. With such familiar actions, the fellow was obviously courting this girl. Or something. But then Daeryn released the girl, and she stepped away, throwing a worried glance over her shoulder. Why…oh. Another girl, with a matching head of free-flowing dark hair and the same curvy build as the first, marched up. Sisters? Both were older, definitely older than Daeryn.

But this one didn’t touch Daeryn. Far from it. She kept her arms crossed and leaned in to say something that made Daeryn’s eyes narrow. At his gesture, they headed over to Mistress Gere and the rest of the farmworkers. Were these the nocturnal guards he headed? He must be good at his job to supervise others older than himself.

While they walked, Daeryn glanced up to her window.

Annmar backed away, bumping into the stool, which crashed against the wall before she could grab it.

Did he see me?
She put her hands to her warming cheeks. No, Mistress Gere said the rooms were private. It had to be a coincidence. But Annmar’s behavior was as improper as the familiarities below her.

Dare she risk another look?

Annmar licked her lips and edged to the window. Everyone stood in a semicircle, listening to a tall farmer and Daeryn talk and point in various directions. Mistress Gere spoke, then broke from the group. She went directly inside, but a girl who had been with her veered to pull the bell rope Mistress Gere used earlier. The bell pealed loudly.

Dinner. Annmar’s gaze dropped to her dusty travel clothes. Oh, now she would be late. She rushed to the bathing room.