Exile of the Crown Read online

  Jeffrey shrugged. “I was thinking of telling them anyway. I don’t keep secrets from my parents. I just…I came here to see whether my talent was real or just my imagination. If it turned out there really was a North living all the way out here, that would be proof.”

  Zara hesitated again. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered this before. Anthony wouldn’t be able to come without everyone watching him, but Alison…she went to Kingsport all the time, visiting her father, and it would be so simple to arrange a meeting. And then it would be another meeting, and another, and sometime one of them would slip, and then there would be a scandal, because Agatha Weaver on her own was nobody, but Agatha Weaver next to Alison North looked too much like a North herself to keep the secret.

  “You can tell them I’m well,” she said, “but that’s all. They know I’m alive at the solstices and that has to be enough. My life is none of your business, Jeffrey.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jeffrey said, then looked embarrassed at his slip of the tongue. Maybe she hadn’t left Zara North as far behind as she’d thought. “I promise.”

  “Good.” She leaned back and regarded him again. “Did you speak to anyone here? Anyone recognize you?”

  “I didn’t need directions. And I don’t think anyone recognized me.” But he looked uncertain, and Zara’s heart sank. A Prince of Tremontane, especially one who looked so much like the King, wouldn’t pass unnoticed. Damn. She couldn’t stay in Sterris any longer. Lost her husband, lost her home—anger gripped her, replacing the momentary despair.

  “You fool,” she said. “Didn’t it occur to you that maybe there was a good reason this North wasn’t in Aurilien in the bosom of her loving family? You just had to stir things up.”

  “I didn’t mean any harm,” Jeffrey protested.

  “Not meaning it doesn’t make things right. Get out. Go home and don’t come back.”

  Jeffrey stood, but didn’t move toward the door. “It’s not just me,” he said. “There’s something else wrong.”

  “None of your business. Get out of here or I’ll throw you out.” Not that she could manage it; he was four inches taller and thirty years younger than she was. But his presence was shredding her nerves, and in a moment she’d begin shrieking.

  “All right,” Jeffrey said. “I’m sorry.” He moved past her, and a moment later she heard the door open and shut. She stood and leaned heavily on the table, her eyes closed and her breathing coming heavily. Well. She’d known she had to leave Sterris, people were starting to talk about her youthful appearance; she just hadn’t been able to face the truth. She ought to thank Jeffrey for pushing her in the right direction, but all she could feel was anger and pain coursing through her like glass shards in the blood.

  She heaved a deep sigh and went to her bedroom. She’d winnow her things tonight, get crates in the morning, arrange for someone to disassemble and pack the loom—she’d have to work hard to finish that cloth before she left. Find her spare shuttle. The need for planning almost dispelled the memory of Hank’s broken body. Maybe someday she’d be able to remember him as he’d been.

  The front door opened. “Who is it?” Zara called out, trying not to feel irritated at the new intrusion.

  “It’s me,” Jeffrey said, stepping into the kitchen. “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought I told you to get out. I distinctly remember saying that, your Highness.” She invested the last two words with as much disdain as she could muster.

  “I know. But I couldn’t leave without telling you one more thing.” He took a deep breath. “We’ve never forgotten you,” he said. “Mother and Father talk about you so often I feel like I know you—I know that’s an impertinence, but it’s how it is. I can’t imagine what your life is like, but I know how I’d feel if I had to be separated from my family. Even Sylvester, who mostly makes me want to punch him. So I wanted you to know….”

  “What?” Zara snapped when it seemed he’d run out of words.

  “That you’re not completely alone. That every solstice, we know you’re alive and now I’ll know to think of you. I know it’s not much and it can’t make up for your isolation, but I hoped it would matter to you.”

  “You’re right. That’s an impertinence.” His mouth was set in a firm line, as if he’d resolved on an unpleasant task and was seeing it through despite his reluctance. He looked so like Anthony it made her heart hurt worse, and unexpected compassion led her to say, “Thank you.”

  Jeffrey looked surprised at this. “I just wish things could be different.”

  “So do I.”

  “Where will you go?”

  He’d seen the truth, then. “Don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll see Eskandel for a while. But I don’t need to tell you, do I?”

  He grinned. “No. Does it bother you to know I’ll know where you are?”

  “A little.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

  “I believe you.”

  Jeffrey ducked his head. “You want to know what I remember?” he said. “I had a horse—a wooden horse with wheels for feet—and Sylvester stole it and threw it down the stairs from the north wing and two of the wheels came off. I was crying, and I remember…you came along, probably on your way to work, and you sat down beside me and asked me if crying was going to put the wheels back on. Then you took me to your office and showed me how to fix it—I can’t remember how, except that it was with something you took out of your desk that wasn’t an axle, but fit. And you said something about sometimes the best solution was the wrong tool for the right task. I didn’t understand it at the time, which is probably why I remember it. It makes a lot more sense now.”

  She didn’t remember that at all. “That’s a lot of years to carry a memory.”

  “It’s one of my earliest ones. You’re not alone, Aunt Zara, and maybe someday you won’t have to hide anymore.”

  “That’s unlikely.”

  “I’d prefer to think of it as…hopeful.”

  For just a moment, her pain fell away, and she saw a future in which she was reunited with her family. Then the moment passed, leaving her with that aching emptiness again, but it wasn’t quite so bad. “You go ahead and hang onto that hope for me,” she said quietly.

  “I will,” Jeffrey said, and put his arms around her. It startled her so much that she reflexively returned his embrace instead of pushing him away, which was her second impulse, and a cruel one. “Goodbye, Aunt Zara.”

  “Goodbye, Jeffrey, and…tell your parents I love them.”

  Jeffrey nodded and released her. “Do you need anything? I brought a little money.”

  “I’ll be fine, nephew. Now…go home.”

  She followed him to the door this time and stood motionless in the hall for a few moments after he’d gone. Then she went to her room and began taking Hank’s clothing out of the dresser drawers. She hadn’t been able to bear it before, but now it felt like a proper farewell. “So that’s your nephew,” she said to the air. “Last I saw him, he was a chubby toddler, and now he’s a man grown. Did it bother you to reach ungoverned heaven and discover the secret I kept from you? I assume that’s how it works. Maybe I’m wrong. But I like to think I don’t have to hide from you now you’re gone. I’m sorry I never told you. I thought it was safer that way, but maybe I should have believed you could keep the secret.”

  She straightened the folds of his spare trousers and patted the neat bundle of cloth. “I love you, Hank, and someday we’ll be together again. I know I’m not much for religion, but you were, and maybe I can hang onto your faith for a while.”

  An hour later, she went to Mercy’s pub and begged a couple of leftover crates, and packed up all the things she’d sell or give away. The house wasn’t hers, but the furnishings were, and between that and all the little things she’d accumulated over the years, she should be able to make enough to store the loom for a few months, maybe a year. Or maybe she’d sell that, too. She wasn’t ready to settle down again. Time to travel for a spell
and see what the world had to offer. Time for Zara North to begin another new life.

  Part Three: Autumn, 945 Y.B.

  The loom was as old as Miss Merriwether had described, but in the patchwork way of something that had been repaired often over the years. The batten might be original, as worn as it was along the facing side; the heddles fairly shone with newness; the frame itself was seasoned with age except for one upright that was a different color from the rest. What had happened to require that single piece to be replaced? At any rate, it was a sturdy thing, and Zara didn’t regret buying it.

  She was less certain about the house, which was much, much older than the loom, and while someone had kept it clean, it had all sorts of little problems that said Miss Merriwether’s illness had gone on longer than the woman had implied. But she’d bought the business, house, loom, and all, and now those problems were hers. Challenges, not problems, and Zara had never walked away from a challenge.

  She left the large front room where the loom hulked in one corner, intimidating the spinning wheels, and went into the drawing room, which was a quarter the size and filled to overflowing with a couple of angular chairs upholstered in worn green twill and a narrow table holding an empty vase. Miss Merriwether sat in one of the chairs, placidly knitting despite the room’s darkness; heavy curtains matching the chairs blocked most of the afternoon sunlight from reaching the room. Between the curtains and the chairs, Zara felt suffocated, as if the room were a tomb filled to bursting with funerary cloths.

  She sat on the other chair, which dug into her spine, so she edged forward until she was perched on its edge and said, “Seems satisfactory.”

  Miss Merriwether nodded, her attention still on her complicated knitting. Maybe Zara could learn to knit; it seemed as soothing in its way as weaving. “Not regretting your purchase?” Miss Merriwether said.

  “I don’t think so. You didn’t say how dilapidated the sheds were. I think the outhouse will have to come down.” Zara had never owned an outhouse before, and the idea of using it made her cringe, but she’d put all her savings into purchasing Miss Merriwether’s weaving business, and installing proper plumbing would have to wait.

  “I’m sorry about that. I don’t get outside much anymore.”

  “It’s all right. Everything else is as you described.”

  “Good. Then I suppose it’s time to tell you why you might want to change your mind.”

  Zara leaned back, startled, and regretted it instantly as the chair dug its knuckles into her spine. “Change my mind? Is there something you failed to tell me? If you’ve concealed material information, I’m within my rights to cancel the contract.”

  “It’s something that came up after we came to an agreement. I thought you should see the possibilities before you made your decision.” Miss Merriwether lowered her knitting to her lap. Her wrinkled face lacked its usual pleasant smile that Zara suspected concealed a world of pain. “Did you notice the large building in the town square? The one with no sign?”

  “I did. What of it?”

  “It’s newly built. The owner, Quincy Pierpont, intends to set up a factory there. A weaving factory. He’s been bringing in Devices for the last two weeks. It should open for business soon.”

  “A factory.”

  “He’s already made overtures to many of the local weavers, offering them the…opportunity…to take advantage of the new Devices. Says it will save time and increase productivity. There’s a lot of weavers in Longbourne, Mistress Weaver, and they’re all in a tizzy wondering what to do.”

  Zara shook her head. “They have to realize this can’t end well for them. It doesn’t take skilled labor to run those Devices. All Mister Pierpont needs is to be able to pay more for wool than the rest of them do, and they’re out of business.”

  “That’s exactly true. So I’m offering you the chance to go back on our deal. It doesn’t really matter to me; I’ll be dead in a matter of weeks. But you came here expecting to make a life for yourself and happen it’s not the life you might’ve wanted.”

  “I’m…not sure.” This was bad. Factory goods wouldn’t have the quality of home-crafted, but when it came to buying, most people wanted cheap more than they wanted good. “Does Mister Pierpont live here?”

  “He’s got a room at the hostel, next door to the tavern, but he works out of the tavern most days. You reckon on seeing him?”

  “Might as well talk to him. Happen he’s not intent on putting anyone out of business, and this factory will be good for Longbourne.” This northeastern lilt, the odd vocabulary, was infectious.

  Miss Merriwether put a withered hand over Zara’s. It was hard to remember she was only a few years older than Zara; illness had not been kind to her. “I built this business from nothing,” she said. “Built the customer base, refined my techniques, trained a dozen apprentices…and I’d hate to see it swallowed up by that man and his Devices. And I think you might be the woman to stop that happening.”

  “I’m not going to promise you anything, Miss Merriwether.”

  “Call me Sabrina. And I don’t want promises.”

  Zara nodded and stood, grateful to relieve the pressure on her back. “I’ll be back soon. Probably very soon.”

  She let herself out by the back door, which was strangely intimate, but Miss Merriwether—Sabrina—had insisted that real business in Longbourne was conducted via the back door. And if everything went well, it would be her back door. The small back yard was bare of grass, just hard-packed earth with some tall, autumn-dead weeds along the walls and around the two sheds, both of which were as weathered as the house. The narrow one, the outhouse, tilted a little, which made Zara nervous about using it; the larger one had once been painted a bright yellow that time had scoured into faded, peeling cream.

  The main house, like most of what she’d seen in Longbourne, had a ground floor made of irregular stones pieced together and a smaller upper story of wood weathered silvery by hundreds of winter storms. She tried to imagine the wind blowing about the house, whether those storms really were as bad as Sabrina had said, but the day was warm, the wind merely a breeze, and winter seemed a thousand years away. Time enough to worry about it if she chose to stay.

  She came around to the front of the house and set off down the street toward the distant plinking sound of the forge. Longbourne was bigger than most of the little towns she’d lived in over the last twenty-odd years, but still smaller than, say, Ravensholm or Ellismere, which was the last stop at the base of the mountains that marked the boundary of Barony Steepridge. The men and women she passed nodded and smiled politely, and she smiled back, but most of her attention was given to the large building ahead, facing the town square and the little white gazebo that sat at the center of it.

  Unlike its neighbors, it was built entirely of wood, a deeply-grained oak stained dark brown that made it look heavyset and sullen. Windows lined both its stories, large-paned and dim in the light of the afternoon sun that backlit it. They’d let in plenty of light during the morning, maybe more than the workers would want, but they still didn’t dispel the building’s ominous air. Or maybe that was just Zara’s knowledge of what it meant. She stopped in front of the building briefly and glared at it. It regarded her with indifference, which irritated her. Then she had to laugh at herself, privately. Irritated by a building. She must be getting old. Sixty-eight wasn’t that old, was it?

  The hostel was, unusually for Longbourne, three stories tall and shaped like a chimney. The tavern squatted next to it, friendly as a lapdog, with its door wide open and its many-paned windows shining with light even at three o’clock in the afternoon. The taproom was almost empty at this time of day, with one man seated at the bar eating a bowl of soup, a woman standing behind the bar setting bottles on the shelf there, and another man seated at a table near the window, a couple of bound notebooks in a pile beside him and a pen in hand. Zara crossed the room to stand in front of him. “Mister Pierpont?” she said.

  The man look
ed up, scowling. Despite his expression, he was attractive, young—all right, mid-forties, but that was young to Zara—and dressed too well for Longbourne. His scowl vanished. “Can I help you, miss?” His smile was appreciative, and Zara felt irritated again. There was nothing wrong with being admired, granted, but the appraising way with which he looked at her said he wasn’t going to take her seriously because she looked young and attractive.

  “Agatha Weaver,” she said, controlling her irritation and extending her hand. “I want to talk to you about your factory.”

  “Then you know who I am,” Pierpont said, rising to take her hand and bowing over it the way a fashionable gentleman would. “Please, sit down. What’s your interest in my factory?”

  “I’m looking at buying a weaving business in Longbourne and I want to know how your plans are going to affect that.”

  Pierpont threw back his head and laughed, longer than he really had to. “A weaver named Weaver! You and the smith named Smith should become friends! That’s hilarious.”

  “I really think it isn’t,” Zara said. “How disruptive do you plan to be?” After twenty years of aliases, she’d returned to Weaver as if coming back to her roots, and it angered her to hear him make light of that choice.

  “Miss Weaver—it is ‘miss,’ isn’t it?—Miss Weaver, I hope not to be disruptive at all. I intend to bring greater economic prosperity to Longbourne and, by extension, the beautiful Barony Steepridge. Mass production is the way of the future. It’s more efficient and faster and allows for better yields. I’m hoping to entice the weavers of Longbourne to take advantage of the Devices I offer, give them more leisure time and relieve them of some of the burdens of their work.”

  “And how will that happen? I don’t know much about weaving Devices.” A lie, to test him.

  “Of course not.” His condescending tone made her want to slap him. “Weaving Devices are made to set the warp of a loom faster than can be done by a single weaver—you must know how much of a difference that can make. And the shuttle is powered by a Device that regularizes its path, improving speed by up to forty percent. The operator—”