Mechanica Read Online Free Page A

duties around the house easier. Mother’s inventions and Fey magic—it was hard for me to imagine one without the other. “You might not always mention my new, ah, ideas to your father, though.” She spoke as if she were joking, but there was something haughty, almost angry, in the way she smiled. She’d said “your father” again too.
    I didn’t like to think what that kind of smile meant. I’d never seen anything like it on her face before.
    ✷
    Father returned from his trip to the Sudlands a few weeks later, his trunks still full of Mother’s insects and oddities.
    “I sold barely a dozen, though the trade in mechanics was the busiest I’d ever seen it,” he said. “People don’t like magic the way they used to.”
    “Nonsense,” said Mother. “This country thrives on magic.” She looked at him sharply. “So does this family.”
    Father grumbled and looked down; there was not much he could say to that. The house, Lampton Manor, was his family’s, but he—and I—both knew well enough that Mother’s inventions were what afforded us our wealthy lifestyle. It was even Mother’s workshop, rumbling away under us, that heated our fireplaces and kept the household running with only Mr. Candery and a part-time maid serving us.
    But then Father changed tactics. “There were Brethren everywhere in Esting City,” he said. “The square was crawling with them. They were carrying banners, holding signs, preaching to the crowds. Saying magic was against the Lord’s glory, against man’s endeavor. Saying that the specks’ tricks had made Estingers lazy and stupid, unable to do anything for ourselves. That we’ll be sitting ducks when they turn against us.”
    Mother sucked in her breath at
specks
and
tricks,
and I knew enough to be shocked by Father’s words myself, even if the sudden, feverish light in his eyes hadn’t frightened me already.
Specks
was the worst Estinger word for the Fey, referencing their heavily blue-freckled skin, and to call magic
tricks
was an insult to the honesty of anyone who used it.
    I waited for Mother to raise her voice, to ask whether Father was calling her a trickster. But she didn’t; for a long while, she didn’t speak at all. Then her face seemed to open up, like curtains, and what I saw behind her eyes was immensely sad.
    “You used to love it too,” she said. “What happened?”
    Father kept looking at the floor. Finally, his voice measured and carefully neutral, he said, “Sometimes one finds one is wrong.”
    He stalked past us into the sitting room, where he stayed for the rest of the afternoon.
    ✷
    His next trip was only to Esting City for a few days, but when he came back, he said things were worse yet. There were rumors of an uprising in Faerie, and Fey brigands were attacking Estinger military and trade ships alike.
    But it was not until the year I turned nine that I understood what the tensions with Faerie truly meant. That spring, Mother came home from one of her very rare social calls earlier than expected, her face ash-gray and sober. She called Father and me into the library, and Mr. Candery, too. Our housekeeper stood deferentially at the edge of the sofa where Father and I settled ourselves. Each of us tried, in our ways, to pretend patience while we waited for Mother to collect herself and give us her news. I fidgeted with my skirts; Father bit his nails. Only Mr. Candery’s composure seemed unruffled—he stood there as quiet and stable as ever.
    “The Queen has been poisoned,” Mother said. “She is dead.”
    “Poisoned?” Father pulled his hand away from his mouth. A dot of blood grew on his ragged thumbnail. “With what?”
    Mother looked at Mr. Candery, her eyes soft; I had rarely seen them softer. “Lovesbane. Her doctor gave her too much.”
    It was an herb that grew only in Faerie. Its medicinal properties were their own kind of magic, and it was the only cure for Fey’s croup, a disease that had come back with Faerie’s first