“Just last week people started hoarding food,” Tiffin says contemptuously. “The steward is forcing farmers to sell Wolfspire Hall a huge portion of their meat, bread and vegetables from the market at very low prices, next to nothing. That means the rest of us are left to argue over what remains. It’s going to be a lean winter.”
I blanch. The Sorens have assumed the care and feeding of me and my father these last few weeks, and I had no idea about the growing scarcity, for I’ve scarcely left the workshop.
“The Margrave’s guards are on daily patrols now,” Bran says quietly. “Not just positioned at the gates of Wolfspire Hall or at our borders. They sweep through the village daily. People feel they’re being watched, more closely than ever before.”
I stare at them, experiencing a sensation I recognize faintly from years ago when I woke from a body of wood to find myself inside one of muscle and bone—a feeling of being shocked awake in my own skin.
“What? Why?” I whisper in outrage.
“Dunno,” says Fonso, turning up the wick on the oil lamp he’d placed near my workbench. “But it’s not good.”
“Something is coming,” Nan prophesies, her inky eyes glittering. “I don’t know how to name it or explain it. But all these strange orders the Maker’s Guild has received from the Margrave …” She trails off, looking around to the rest of us. “I think those are just the beginning.”
“A spoiled brat always wants what they don’t have,” says Tiffin. “Just think about it. What does the duke not have yet? He has every bloomin’ toy a fancy boy like that could want. But what about more territory? There’s always Brylov. They are much richer than we are.”
Where Tavia has farmland and craftsmen, Brylov, our larger neighbor, has that and more: rich timber and mines. Situated in a sunny valley several days away, our Margrave’s older sister, Emmaline, was made Margravina of Brylov many years ago, a move which no doubt pierced Erling to his shallow core. He was left holding the smaller share of the pie.
“What if Laszlo wants an empire here in the south, not just a territory?” Bran poses. “Like his father, his aunt is aging and close to the end of her margraviate. With both the elder von Eidle’s nearing the end of their reign, it creates the perfect opportunity for him.”
“Even so,” I say, confused, “why tax us to death, or hurt the people’s livelihood?”
“I think he prefers us weak and desperate.” Nan’s words slice like cutting wire extracting a pot from her wheel. “So we’re easier to control. Hungry people do whatever is necessary to eat—even take up arms.”
“Yeah, I think he’d rather us be puppets,” says Fonso, absentmindedly fiddling with the saboteur’s shoulder joint, flexing it back and forth.
Indignation rises in my chest. I am no one’s puppet, no one’s toy. Neither are my makers. Even if this saboteur is the last thing my hands ever make, I am determined to do better than merely giving the duke what he thinks he wants. I’ll give him what he deserves.
The hour is late. My father is no better than he was fifteen days ago. It’s torture to think that bringing him home has no more cured or healed the fever ailing him than weeks in the Keep, so I try not to think about it, and have taken to staying away from the damp, sweating figure twisting the sheets in his bed. He frightens me.
Bran no longer waits to knock at the cupboard, for he knows he’ll not likely find me there. Despite the unexplained matter of my battered nose, he visits daily, entering from the door closest to Burl’s stable.
Tonight, he surveys the cluttered workshop, appraising the completed dark-clad figure lying in wait on the work table. Usually, displaying my marionettes and seeing others marvel at the visions I’ve sculpted from wood and paint and wire is one of my greatest joys. But this time, I realize, wiping the final layers of dust from the saboteur’s body, it’s different.
For the first time, I feel a pang of regret for making a marionette. Not because I have failed, for the creature on the table is anything but a failure of craftsmanship. I regret it because it’s so marvelous. I feel like a desperate mother, forced to abandon my greatest creation to the doorstep of wolves.
“Is it everything they are expecting?” Bran asks carefully.
“Exactly to their specifications,” I reply sharply, a defensive vein splitting open in my voice.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “the gloves and clothing are a perfect fit.”
“I do have an excellent tailor.”
Bran grins and then looks thoughtful. “Still needs something,” he mutters. “Like what?”
He pulls a few clock gears from his pocket, their edges filed to crisp planes, and tucks the brass circles into the marionette’s vest—a vest of his own making.
“What are those for?”
“An addition to the costume. A gift.”
“A gift?” I ask, confused.
“Every soldier should be armed.”
“For all we know, this particular saboteur is being assembled to decorate Laszlo von Eidle’s bed chamber, like some rusty suit of armor from the old wars. I don’t envy any soldier that post. But you won’t miss them?”
“No, I have others. And no time to build anything with them.”
“Have you talked to your parents yet?”
Bran shakes his head.
“There’s no perfect time to bring up a difficult subject,” I say sagely, buffing the saboteur’s high boots with a soft cloth.
“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “You don’t have to tell a clockmaker. Perfect times do not exist.” His handsome face looks sad in the lantern glow.
“No,” I agree. “There is only now. Only now and what is yet to come.”
He hesitates. “Speaking of
