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keep its bite, I'd found one of her hairs just lying across my shoulder. I'd
lifted it and held it there in a beam of sunlight. I watched it shiver in my
hand to the beat of the engines.
I thought of our staying on here in Bracebridge through the deep snows, and of
my working at Mawdingly & Clawtson just as my father had done. I'd study those
manuals. I'd learn to chant the spells, and the haftmarks would spread up my
arms like ivy. I'd bring home a pay packet each Tenshiftday to replenish our
vanishing funds. And slowly, slowly, term through term, month after month of
this winter, I'd find out the truth of what had happened here ... Beyond the
yards, beyond that long line of aether trucks which I was almost sure now were
mostly empty, the ground began to roughen and rise. A thin moon delineated the
scant track which few people followed up here in winter. Anna went ahead, her
breath huffing in clouds. Mistress Borrows, Anna Winters, Annalise, Anna, who
could be anything, who could do anything, live anywhere, who could bake the
bread which the angels ate in heaven and stop a church tower from falling .. .
George's trial had sunk back through the pages of the
West Yorkshire Post.
He'd been incarcerated at the pleasure of his guild, which meant a suite of
rooms in some pretty country guildhall where he could get on with designing
the perfect house for the perfect workman.
Ahead, amid the brambles of Rainharrow which my mother had once explored in
search of flowers, the cold air gleamed. White fronds, beautiful in their
complexity, embroidered the dead ferns. The sarsens glittered, frozen but not
frozen in the moonlight. The whole crown of this
hill gleamed like a beacon, not with snow, but with engine ice. Anna was
gazing south across the dim hills of Brownheath. Scarside, Fareden and
Hallowfell. Somewhere down there, hidden in the darkness, was the valley of
Redhouse. Here now, as well, the aether really was fading. And I
was sure that the chalcedony stone had been involved in an experiment to do
with its production which had been supervised by Grandmaster
Harrat. And beyond him lay some other cause, and a much more powerful presence
amid the guilds. It was this, the power of this high, dark guildmaster, which
Stropcock had tapped into, first through Harrat himself, and then, down in
London, on his own . . .
I went to where Anna stood amid the white jaws of the stones. `It explains so
much,' I said to her as we breathed the darkness. `Not just here and now, but
that experiment with the stone even then, the stuff was running out. They
were desperate to get more aether ... But I need to get inside Mawdingly &
Clawtson to find the full truth. Everything else is just ...'
But Anna seemed distracted. She flashed me, back through the moonlight, what
I'd come to think of as one of her smiles. `I was talking to Mistress
Wartington this morning. She told me that Testing seems to be coming early.
The trollman's been seen down in lowtown. He was asking questions about a
woman from the south, although that person is much higher guilded than I am
now, and she certainly isn't married.'
`It doesn't mean ..
But to Anna, at the moment, it certainly did. I could tell that she felt that
all the things which had happened in London were happening here as well, only
more quickly. The nudges, the questions. People had their doubts about me, but
things had been said about Anna, too, marvellous though everyone agreed that
she was. It was no use pretending. And I was standing here in this strange
place, spouting about changing the world just as George had done.
`So,' I said. `What do we do?'
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`We still have a day or two.' More dimly up here, but somehow more deeply, the
engines pounded. SHOOOOM
BOOM.
Huge and dark and glittering, Rainharrow seemed to exhale as well. `There's a
dance tomorrow night at Mawdingly & Clawtson. I think we should go, Robbie
it's even on East Floor ...'
IV
The Tapsters' Ball took place in that cold pause before Christmas, and was
often postponed because of heavy snows, which made years such as this, when it
was held, all the more welcome. Father had often gone was going and so was
Beth. Mother used to go as well. She'd come down to me in the kitchen one
evening, pleased with herself, with long black hair plaited, wearing a blue
dress I'd never seen before, nor after.
Guild sashes were to be worn, which was a problem to me, albeit a little one,
as Anna soon spoke to a widow in the house behind ours. A
few stitches, a little borrowed silk to get rid of the mothholes, and I had
something better than new. And that crimson dress which Anna had brought,
which was vast and low at the front and high on the arms, and thus wildly
inappropriate, was transformed, with the addition of a borrowed belt and the
sacrifice of a blouse, into a tighter and more modest outfit which would have
made any Bracebridge guildmistress, and this particular guildsman who walked
into lowtown beside her, entirely proud.
The entrance to East Floor lay tonight through the main gates of
Mawdingly & Clawtson with their twin friezes of Providence and Mercy.
The other workshop floors were closed, or on skeleton duties, although as ever
the work of the aether engines was powered from Engine Floor to
Central Floor deep below. Hastily made signs directed those few who didn't
know their way beneath the pipework arches. The machines on
East Floor, those which would move, had been hauled back. Those which wouldn't
had been decorated with ribbons, or chalked with cryptic messages. The band
was already tuning up fiddles, accordion and drums and the people were
dancing.
I felt Anna hesitate when the light and the sound struck her.
Massed people people uncontrolled and wild was something she avoided.
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