Previous Chapter

The morning sun shone down on the bluffs, a bright, harsh light that cast the hills in hard edges and deep shadows. A thin haze drifting up from the Manor house was the only smudge on the bright blue sky. Cassie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, revelling in the simple pleasure of seeing again. Her brief absence from the world of the looking had left her with a new found appreciation for a sense she had always taken for granted.

Going blind was a fact of her life. Up until the last few days she had assumed that the gifts she had would make up for that. Certainly, her sense of hearing was not normal. She could hear every word Roy was saying in spite of the fact that she was up on the bluff’s highest point and he was down in the Armory. That didn’t mean her sight meant nothing to her.

An uncomfortable analogy to the quest for the Secret of Steel popped into her mind but she pushed it aside. Having the opportunity to enjoy her sight again didn’t mean she could ignore her ears. She turned around and headed down towards the back of the house, where Mrs. Sondervan was busy scrubbing blood out of Roy’s shirt.

“There’s a guest coming up from town,” Cassie said. “He sounds like he’s about twenty minutes away. If I have the timing right he probably got off the morning skytrain, which means he’s likely the gentleman you contacted for Mr. Harper.”

The housekeeper nodded, pulling the shirt off the washboard and pinning it to the drying line with fast, practiced movements. “That’s likely. Mr. Booker was always good at getting where he wanted to go quickly. I’ll let Mr. Harper know.”

“No, I’ll tell him.” The words came out faster than she’d intended, faster than she was comfortable with. “I just wanted you to know when to expect him.”

Mrs. Sondervan gave her a sideways look, the meaning of which she wasn’t entirely certain of, but nodded. “Thank you, Miss Fairchild. That’s very kind of you.”

The inside of the Manor was a depressing wreck. Even the parts of the house that hadn’t burned were full of lingering smoke, which had contributed to her spending the morning outdoors. The men were in the process of pulling up broken and burnt boards out of the walls and floors of the house and replacing them, a process that involved crowbars, hammers and the occasional curse.

Roy and Mr. Sondervan were working to patch a hole in the hallway floor. A few feet closer to the front of the house her brother was ripping the burnt ends of boards off the wall studs. His hand had returned to normal but there were still odd notes in his voice when he spoke which might be a cause for concern. She hadn’t gotten him to hold still long enough to investigate it yet.

That wasn’t about to change, either. When Brandon saw her coming he glanced down the hall and said, “Georg, give me a hand with this rubbish, will you?”

The rubbish in question was a barrel, sawed in half, that the men had been throwing broken and burnt boards into. They weren’t even full and Brandon was more than capable of moving both of them on his own when they were. Clearly her brother was deliberately clearing the building for reasons of his own. She ignored the two of them as they gathered their things and left her alone in the hall with Roy.

The Manor’s owner was standing on a ladder down in the Armory, his head and shoulders protruding through the hole as he worked on the joists. As she approached he pulled a pair of nails out of his teeth and set them on one of the wooden beams along with his hammer. “Morning, Miss Fairchild.”

Cassie glanced at the bandage on his forearm. “Should you really be doing that?”

“I can’t leave my house a wreck, can I?” The flames that crackled within him had choked down low as she approached but now they growled with a strange overtone she didn’t really understand. There was a frightening edge to it that she’d never heard before.

“It sounds like Mr. Booker is on his way up from town.”

“Moving fast as always,” he grumbled, bracing his good hand on the edge of the hole and dragging himself up into a sitting position on the floor on the far side of the hole. He pulled his feet up and levered himself into a standing position then stared at her. “Was there anything else?”

“Are you sure you’re feeling well, Mr. Harper? You don’t seem yourself.”

“I don’t know if I count as healthy right now but I’ve been in much worse condition.” Roy rubbed the palms of his hands together, a gesture she’d never seen from him before. “Your vision seems to have returned.”

“Yes.”

The silence between them stretched into something awkward before Roy finally said, “Why did you want Marius to leave with the cornerstone?”

She jumped as if Roy had burned her, the shock racing through her body before her better sense caught up with it. “What do you mean?”

The question was a flimsy attempt to cover for her guilty reaction and Roy clearly knew it. “Don’t act stupid, Cassandra. I’ve dueled with that coin before and I’ve heard it hit the ground, or rather I should say I didn’t hear it hit the ground. There’s only one reason I would this time. It shouldn’t take that much for you to alter the course of a coin flip from what I’ve seen and I heard the note you used to do it. I just want to know why.”

In the light of day it was a much harder question to answer than it had been just twelve hours ago. How much of her vision the night before had come from the lingering dread she carried out of Riker’s Cove? How much was her own insecurities born from losing her sight for the first time? How much had been carefully planted by Marius, who knew far more about stone singers than the average person? It was impossible to tell. The best thing to do was try to make him understand what her thoughts had been in the moment.

“I heard Huaxili last night, Mr. Harper. As I was crossing the bluffs.” Nervous and at an inexplicable loss for words, she paused to wet her lips. “She… we came to understand each other, I think.”

“You let Marius take her because she wanted to go?” He sounded horrified.

“No! No, she wanted to stay, Mr. Harper. She has some purpose in mind for you, whether it’s revenge or simply malice I couldn’t tell but she had her sights set on you.” Cassie shuddered slightly at the memory of her brief contact with the Tetzlani spirit. “And she was in your blind spot because you thought she was contained but she wasn’t. I’ve been able to sense her influence since we returned from Riker’s Cover. It’s probably always been there but I wasn’t able to hear it until my ears were forced to make up for the lack of my eyes.”

Roy’s shock turned to concern. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I didn’t understand what it was, had no idea there was a Tetzlani earth goddess at all, much less that she was hiding in your Armory. You never asked us to go down there before. Which, given what was down there, was a fairly prudent decision on the whole.”

Roy sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his expression pensive. “Fine. I suppose those are good enough reasons as any for it and there wasn’t exactly an opportunity to discuss the issue ahead of time.”

“I would have if I could.”

“I don’t doubt it, Miss Fairchild, but that doesn’t make things any less difficult.” His gaze flicked past her towards the front door. “I’m going to have to explain all this mess to Books. He didn’t want to leave the coalstoking thing with me in the first place.”

She wondered why Roy would have to explain anything to his friend in the first place. At first glance he didn’t seem like much of a leader, lacking the kind of personable air that usually marked such people. Yet she’d noticed most people quickly gave way to his brusque energy and clarity of purpose. “Perhaps I can explain things to him-”

“No.” He said it with sharp certainty. “You definitely should not do that. In fact, I’d like it if you and Brandon gathered your things and slipped down the back side of the bluff to spend a few days in town.”

For a moment Cassie was too shocked to say anything. Then she rallied and asked, “Why?”

Roy pulled his attention back to her, his expression blank again. “Frankly speaking, because I’d rather he not know what you look like. Out here in the West we have one kind of dangerous men and let’s not kid ourselves, I’m one of the most dangerous among them. But there’s an entirely different breed of them that work in the shadows of the powerful and Reginald Booker is the pinnacle of their kind. Not even I know how he’s going to take this.”

“You don’t think he’ll defer to your judgement on this?”

“Deferring judgement is not a concept he understands, Miss Fairchild, and I’d rather not take chances.”

“I understand.” She really didn’t. It was hard to piece together what exactly he was implying but whatever had him in this unusual mood it was something that intimidated him more than the greatest duelist in Tetzlan. So she swallowed down all the objections she wanted to make and said, “We’ll be on our way in a few minutes, then. If my letter contains a useful lead on the Secret of Steel perhaps we’ll just follow it up. Leave town for a few days.

“That might be best.”

“Very well.” She turned to go and collect Brandon.

To her surprise, Roy walked her to the front door. As he held it open for her he said, “Cassie. You and your brother are still welcome back here once this business is done.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harper.” She swallowed once, her voice suddenly thick. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure they were. Even if Roy said it, even if she still felt she’d made the right choice, she still sensed a hurt in his voice, a sense of betrayal that was entirely justified. She’d damaged something last night. Done far more hurt to it with a single note than she’d done to her own eyes with an hour of singing in Riker’s Cove.

Maybe she shouldn’t come back.

But that was a decision she’d have to make later. For now, she’d have to keep moving. “Hearthfires, Roy.”

“Hearthfires, Cassie. Keep your brother out of trouble.”

“Of course.”

As she went to find Brandon she found herself wondering if she was satisfied with that. They might be the last words they ever exchanged and that thought filled her with a profound sadness. It was an odd thing to think. Not one brought by the melody of the situation, not one inspired by a sense of supernatural dread. It felt more like one that arose from within her own heart and that almost made it worse.

So she pushed it down and went on her way.