Mechanica (6 page)

“Mother pulled us from school,” Piety said. “We were just about to start our dance lessons.”

I was filled with a sudden curiosity and envy. Dance was hardly something Mother would have taught me. There wasn’t much time for it between engineering and theoretical physics, and neither she nor Father had been much for dancing.

“Oh, I know, darling,” Stepmother said. “Worry not. I’ll have you both finished nonetheless. We simply wanted you out of danger.”

My stepsisters’ eyes widened; mine stayed fixed on Father. My curiosity about dance lessons had lasted only a moment, and now I just wanted Father to tell me why he had come home.

“Danger?” I asked. “Father, what happened? Why are you back so early?”

Father nodded. “We came back because of some news from Esting City. Heir Philip has been killed.”

“Murdered,” Stepmother said, raising her long, elegant hand from her neck to her mouth. “Assassinated by one of those Fey savages. It seems there’s nowhere safe now.”

“No need to scare the children,” Father said.

I needed no looking after in that respect; I didn’t think there was any reason why a Fey assassin who had killed the Heir might come after powerless young girls living in the country.

But Chastity, to my surprise, broke into tears.

“Philip!” she cried. “He—he—he would have been bride-searching just when we—” She buried her face in the upholstery of the love seat and sobbed.

Piety managed to contain her woe better than her sister, but her lip trembled as she turned toward her mother. “What an awful thing,” she said, but I could tell she meant awful for her, not for the young man who had died.

Stepmother nodded resolutely. “I know, girls,” she said, “but I think, truly, that this may turn out to be a blessing. The younger prince, Christopher, will be of age to start the Heir’s training in a year and a half, and he’s closer to your own ages, only thirteen now. Besides, Heir Philip was likely to search out his bride abroad, as so many of them have done—as his own father did, the fool.” She frowned. “Perhaps this will serve as a reminder that foreigners are not to be trusted, not to be brought into the palace.”

I finally looked away from Father, toward Stepmother. “There were really Fey in the palace?” I asked. “I thought King Corsin had banished them all.”

Stepmother looked at me with something between condescension and suspicion. “And what do you know of it?” she asked, but kept speaking before I could answer. “King Corsin invited the Fey ruler to the palace for negotiations—he’s always been softer on them than Philip, and it seemed he was reconsidering the banishment. The Brethren protested against the invitation altogether, of course, as well they should have.” She looked up at Father.

He nodded and continued. “Just days after the Fey arrived,” he said, “Heir Philip fell ill. Lovesbane works in a sneaking way like that—an overdose will spread through the body and kill you slowly. Who else could have administered it but the Fey, especially after what they did to Queen Nerali? King Corsin listened to the Brethren after that. The Fey ruler is in prison, and the judgment on whether he will be extradited or executed will come soon enough.” He sighed and adjusted his collar.

I noticed how he pointedly used
he
instead of
fe,
the pronoun that most Estingers use when speaking of full-blooded Fey, who are neither male nor female in the common sense. It wasn’t as insulting as calling them specks, but Mother would never have stood for it.

Did he remember nothing of Mother, of her predictions that something just like this could happen, a rebellion among the Fey? Or did he only remember her disease, her stubbornness, the way even I had to wonder if she had loved him in the end?

I thought I ought to say something, but in that room, at that moment, I was suddenly afraid to speak my mind. I wonder sometimes if I should have guessed, even then, what was to come.

Stepmother rose from the window and went to stand behind Piety and Chastity. “I did not want my daughters anywhere near the city with that murderer there, locked up or not. It’s not safe for them until he is gone. It’s not safe for anyone.”

“We’ll be safe here,” said Father, walking to her and putting an arm about her waist. “Don’t worry, dearest.”

They stood there, framing Piety and Chastity on the love seat. I watched from Mother’s chair, not quite able to stand and join them.

I had hoped that the first few weeks with my new family would be a blissful haze of new friendship and bonding; instead we all spent it nervous, quiet, waiting for news from the city.

After Heir Philip’s funeral, King Corsin extradited the Fey ruler back to Faerie on a prison ship—Father was surprised that fe had been allowed to live, but it seemed the younger Estinger prince, Christopher, had asked for leniency. Still, once the Fey ruler was delivered home, King Corsin imposed a total quarantine on the country. Father had just left on his next trade route when the news came out. No ships, Fey or Estinger, were allowed in or out of the Faerie ports; no Fey goods or magic could be traded at the markets. Whole bushels of lovesbane were burned in town squares, like effigies.

We heard—or I overheard, from the visitors Stepmother entertained—about part-Fey all over the country rising up against the King, decrying the new law, even whispering of a full revolution.

But King Corsin, Stepmother’s visitors assured her, had sent his troops out to quell the uprisings. These same friends reported back that the near-revolution had been tamped down with very little bloodshed.

There was some blood, though. There was Father’s.

Mr. Candery answered the door that day, as he always did. The black-liveried courier at the door, though, took even our staid housekeeper by surprise. I heard him gasp from where I was sitting in the library; it was the only room I could retreat to with any hope that Piety and Chastity would not disturb me. I was reading one of Mother’s engineering books.

I rose, but Stepmother reached the door before I did, coming from the front sitting room. She gestured Mr. Candery away; he retreated to the kitchen. I stood still behind her.

“Madame,” the courier said, saluting her solemnly. He handed her a thick black envelope,
To the wife of William Lampton, Lampton Manor, Woodshire
inscribed on it in an official-looking silver print.

I knew the ritual from a few novels I had read. It was one accorded to the widows of men who had died in battle.

All I could think, at first, was that Father had been a trader, not a soldier, and that there had never been a less warriorlike man in the world. Father was smart and slick and quick-thinking; he could talk anyone into anything, except Mother. He had never had to fight in his life.

But Stepmother took the letter and nodded, then swept the deep curtsy that was her part of the ritual. She opened the letter and read it silently and excruciatingly slowly.

Her voice, when she spoke, was even and low. “Thank you for delivering this news,” she said, “much as I regret to receive it.” It was as if she were reciting lines from a play.

“Madame,” the courier said again, with another salute. He turned away and mounted his waiting horse.

Stepmother closed the door behind her and turned back into the hallway. She stared at the letter for a few moments. It seemed to me a very long time.

Then she looked up at me, and her face did not change at all. It was still that perfect, cold mask, that lovely icon.

She swept past me, down the hall and then up the stairs to her room.

I stayed there, in the doorway, staring after her.

Then I ran to the kitchen, where Mr. Candery was standing by the table, and threw my arms around him. He had held me when Mother died, and I knew he was the only one who would hold me now.

And he did. Tears bled down my face, and my ribs racked with huge, shuddering, painful breaths that I could not control. I was vaguely aware that it was not just grief I felt—not entirely—but also panic. What would happen to me now? The thought only frightened me further, and I collapsed entirely, sobbing and wailing. Mr. Candery kept holding me close.

I don’t know how much time passed. At last the panic began to subside, and I felt myself go still as a haze of exhaustion came over me, too thick to see through.

Mr. Candery lifted me up and carried me, nearly sleeping, to my room.

When I finally woke up late the next morning, that fog still surrounded me, denser even than the one that came after Mother’s death. I remembered the violence of the last day’s sobs, how my body had shaken inside Mr. Candery’s gentle hold, but I could not find the place in myself where that violence, that grief, had come from. I did not even want to know how Father had died. I didn’t want to be able to see him that way in my mind: his body still and cold, torn apart or shot, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. . . . Any thought of that just made me pull the blank fog tighter around myself again. For the first time in my life I didn’t want to know, or understand, anything.

Everything was gray inside me, and quiet, and thicked with haze.

I stayed in bed until Mr. Candery called me down for lunch; after I ate, I went to the library, always my safest place. I opened one of Mother’s books and stared at the first page, still wrapped in the blankness that had settled over me while I slept.

Some time must have passed, and then Mr. Candery came in. I thought he would tell me it was time for supper.

Instead, he sat down on the couch and gestured for me to sit next to him; I did. He smiled sadly at me for a long moment, but said nothing.

“What is it, Mr. Candery?” I finally asked.

“Miss Lampton,” he said gently, “I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

I stared at him. My first thought was
of course he will.
It was what people did; it was how my story went. Mother, Father, and now Mr. Candery. Everyone left.

“Why?” I asked, nearly whispered.

Mr. Candery shook his head. “They won’t keep anyone but you now.” He looked at me carefully, but I didn’t yet understand his meaning. He sighed and started again. “Be careful of her,” he said, serious and gentle as he always was. “Of your stepmother. Don’t let her wear you down. Mr. Lampton would have said it’s not my place to say so, but—well, it’s someone’s place, and there’s no one else to say it. Be careful, Nicolette.”

He touched my hand where it lay on the page, a finger under the line I had stopped reading. Everything was a broken line for me in those days. I was slipped into the empty spaces between words.

“I’ve tried to make things as easy as possible for you, after I leave,” he said. “I’ve thought something like this might happen, ever since Heir Philip . . . well. But you’ll find the house easier to manage than it might otherwise be, if you let the spells, and your mother’s machines, do their work. I’ve locked them all away from everyone but you, like that cupboard was locked, do you remember?” He smiled fondly for a moment, then grew somber again. “I know Lady Halving won’t hire anyone else to help you.”

“Help me?” With the haze in my mind, I wasn’t sure what he meant.

He nodded. “You’ll be taking over care of Lampton, I’m afraid.” He went on before I could say anything. “She won’t hire anyone to help you, but you can help yourself, Nicolette, more than you know.” He wasn’t smiling now, and his quiet voice was urgent. “You can build things, fix things. Don’t forget.”

I hadn’t forgotten, of course, as Mr. Candery well knew. He had brought me worn-down gadgets of Mother’s to fix often enough, and had always gone to the village to find me little notions I needed for the small projects and experiments I dreamed up from reading Mother’s books. I couldn’t do much without a workshop, but if Mr. Candery hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have done anything. He had not been averse to continuing Mother’s brand of education, at least.

“I know,” I said, slowly. “I’ll be all right.” I said it disaffectedly, but I thought it must be true. I had survived through all of this, and I would continue to do so; I just had to wait out the days, the empty spaces. All the days until something better might come.

Mr. Candery smiled at me, gently, one last time. He stood. I thought he might say goodbye, but he only turned away and said, “don’t stay up too late.”

After Mr. Candery left and Stepmother made it clear that I was to replace him, I fell easily into a new routine at Lampton—much more easily, perhaps, than I should have, barring that one screaming fit the first night I cleared the table. Rules fit in nicely with the haze I walked through; I didn’t really have to think about anything. Not the deaths of my parents or losing Mr. Candery, not the way my new family had turned me into a servant.

Years passed in that haze, and I hardly noticed. I took everything in stride; even when Stepmother decided to convert the library into a receiving room, I simply rescued a few favorite volumes before the booksellers came, hid them in the kitchen, and continued about my chores. Some smothered voice inside me might have been crying out at the loss of the library, the last place in the manor where I’d felt really safe, but I paid that voice no mind. Now was a time not for anger, but for survival. I would survive. I knew that was all I could do.

I woke early every day, added new wood to the fires, and went out to fetch the eggs and milk for the Steps’ breakfast. I kept the supplies in a cupboard that was cooled by a small tin fan I’d made myself; a drop of Fey cooling water once a month, just behind the fan, was enough to keep milk from turning sour. What I would do when the cooling water—not to mention Mr. Candery’s other Fey supplies—ran out, I did not know, because they were all illegal now. But I wasn’t running low yet, and I was too sad, too bored, too . . . too passive . . . to address the problem before it began to press on me.

I took the dough for the day’s bread out of Mother’s kneading bowl with its twin wooden fists, shaped the loaves, and put them in the oven. While the bread baked, I measured tea leaves into another machine and listened to it start to heat. I laid out breakfast carefully, and any spills or crumbs I left were swept up by another small spell.