Garrett Investigates by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear [Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: historical fantasy, Alternate history, Elizabeth Bear, new amsterdam
Amazon: B00A4SGERG
Barnesnoble: B00A4SGERG
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Introduction to “Almost True”

Chronologically, “Almost True” falls in the middle of the book—but it was the first Abby Irene/New Amsterdam story I ever wrote, and I was still very much feeling my way around the character.

Almost True

New Netherlands, 1900

An unsettled hush hung over the New World colony of New Holland in the autumn of 1900. After a winter and a summer of hard drought that had dropped the Hudson fifteen feet before it ever reached thirsty New Amsterdam, the weather turned wild enough to render travel a chore. Even Detective Crown Investigator Garrett might have cancelled her much-anticipated engagement at the Earl of Westchester’s country house if social excuses had not become so rare now, with the colonies on the verge of being drawn into the Empire’s war on France and the rebellion of the southern Iroquois shaman-sorcerers likely to sweep them into another Indian War.

A war on two fronts. It didn’t bear considering. And Garrett had been doing more than considering for some time now, because that war’s fruition was all the excuse the secessionists needed to break with the Crown. It was with that Crown that Garrett’s duty lay—through the auspices of Richard, New Amsterdam’s Duke. So she had grown accustomed to sleeping in carriages and eating standing up.

It was a relief to dress her role as Lady Abigail Irene and leave D.C.I. Garrett tucked into her blue velvet carpetbag with her warrant card and her sorcerer’s tools. The prospect of three days away from the city in the company of her Lord the Duke—albeit with the Duchess—had drawn Garrett to the Earl’s estate despite threatening weather. She arrived on Thursday afternoon, due to train schedules and a return from Boston.

Most of the other guests, including Duke Richard, were not scheduled until Friday evening and even at Thursday’s dinner cancellation telegrams were arriving. Which was all to the good, because otherwise she would never have been bored at dinner with only the Earl and his son Roderick to entertain her. She would not have been toying with her wineglass while the wind moaned down the chimney and freezing rain spattered the diamond-paned glass in a dozen tall windows.

She would likely have noticed the cost of the plate and the luxury of the rugs, and she might have wondered if the Earl had more in inherited money than most of those relegated to the colonies. But she would not have stared into the leaded crystal goblet and perceived the odd, spiraling way the candlelight from a dozen sconces struck off Coriolis ripples spread across the surface of the wine.

Illegal sorcery, she realized. Weather-witching. Illegal for a reason: a sunny day in Hartford could mean blizzards from Providence to Charleston.

Garrett hadn’t become a Crown Investigator by failing to follow her curiosity. Casting salt in the parlor later, after she thought the household in bed, she realized: not witching the storm away. The white crystals fell on the thick Persian carpets in unmistakable outline; Garrett scuffed her evening boot through the pattern, destroying it.

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