Sea Change by S.M. Wheeler

Author:S.M. Wheeler [Wheeler, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2013-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Lilly slipped the last potato into the water-filled pot and hovered a while at the back door, head tilted. The noises—were no longer fighting noises. Strange men. She put the pot on the stoop and retreated. The stables were mucked, the horses curried and exercised, she’d done what little work the garden required, and she would not take on tasks without a direct request so long as the bandits’ favor persisted at its current level. When she had first arrived the upkeep of the cottage and its plot of land seemed endless; now that she could do them in half the time, she found herself loafing.

Perhaps I’ll make someone a good servant someday, she thought to herself, wry; there’s gentry enough by the sea who would gladly take on a hand with such diverse skills—if the hand didn’t admit where he developed them.

One task she had set aside since morning, before the storm between the partners disrupted the household; Mr. Duerr wished her to take an iron coin down to Ms. Gottschalk. Sensing some greater significance in this gesture than she wanted to be involved with, she had gone about her other duties first. Cowardice—wisdom. Pulling the coin from her coat pocket, she turned it from one face to the other, on one a scowling king and on the obverse a startled-looking eagle. Huffing a sigh, she turned her feet to the path.

The shouts sounded at first to be an echo from the cottage above, but these were too high, too clear, bell-tones human voices never could reach. Lilly ran, and in running dropped the coin. She recognized a voice beneath Ms. Gottschalk’s. Nasal—terrified.

She came up short at the trail mouth. Horace cowered a yard back from Ms. Gottschalk, who stood in the richly dead gardens like a queen on her throne, and in one hand upheld some small object. Her attention shifted, bit at Lilly’s face. “You’ve come to disappoint me, too?”

Horace’s eyes flashed panic, suspicion, and she knew he would strike out at whatever came near. Swinging wide around him, slow and careful and aware equally of the threat that each represented—a dog would bite out of fear, and its master kill for sport. “Mr. Duerr sent a coin. It is lost, ma’am.”

A noise tore from her that sounded as if it might rend the fragile tissues of her throat. “Always! Those charms against magic—always he finds them on his corpses and brings them to me. Long ago he ordered me I must take all such things. He laughs when it burns.” She snarled an offhand insult at Horace, threw her head back. “Where is it?”

“I lost it, ma’am.” Lilly licked her lips. “I could find it again.”

“Do you mean that you might?”

Do not, she meant, find it. “It’s true, ma’am, that I might not know where I dropped it.”

“Horace!” Ms. Gottschalk swiveled on him. “Do you think to sneak away?”

Half-risen, he allowed himself to fall back to the ground, resigned. His eye was blacked and nose running blood; scratches clotted with filth across his cheek.

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