Lucky Rabbit

The one major difference between this scene and the one from Pandy’s memories was the smell. The air was hot and thick with the scent of metal. Everyone instantly started shedding their warm outerwear, and Geraldine’s cheeks bloomed with ruddy color.

The woman behind the counter looked the children and animals over with obvious disapproval, then landed on Augustus. She frowned, then her brows shot up as she obviously recognized him, and finally the scowl came back, even deeper than before. “What’re you doing here?” she growled in a surprisingly melodic voice.

Augustus raised one brow, stepping forward to offer her a hand to shake. “Falconet Chancellor Augustus Blackwood. My companion here recently acquired a house which needs some repair, and we hoped you might be able to assist us.”

This brief explanation seemed to take the woman off guard, and she blinked before reaching out to take Augustus’s hand. Pandy was a bit surprised when she handled it almost gingerly, giving it only one good shake before releasing it. Her eyes, as gray as metal – almost the same shade as Augustus’s, in fact – landed on Pandy.

“A new house? What do you need, then? Doorknobs? Hinges?” She didn’t exactly sound derisive, just not particularly interested.

Augustus didn’t speak, only watched Pandy expectantly, so she cleared her throat and said, “Actually, it’s a really, really old house. Not in very good shape. I mean, I think we have all the doorknobs and hinges we need, but the pipes are in terrible condition, and I’m really just looking for a lot of metal to fix them.”

The Blacksmith’s eyebrows went up again, then her eyes narrowed. “How old?”

“From the Founding,” Augustus said quietly, and the woman nodded, finally showing real curiosity.

Focusing on Pandy, she said, “Pipes? Like for drinking water?” Pandy nodded, and the woman turned, yelling back through the open door behind her, where loud banging could be heard. “Rufus! Get out here!”

Unintelligible grumbling came from the back as the banging stopped, and a little while later, a short, solid young man emerged from the door. The Blacksmith was almost as tall as Augustus, and this man’s head topped out at her torso. He was made of muscle stacked on muscle, though, as if someone had taken a seven-foot behemoth and put him through a can-crusher.

“I’m trying to finish up the da-” He broke off, finally seeing the children filling their small shop, and said, “fences. What do you need?”

“Scrap,” the Blacksmith said bluntly. “How much brass and copper do we have?”

Rufus frowned. “After these fences?”

“And the pipes we did yesterday. You didn’t melt it down yet, did you?”

He shook his head. “Too busy with the fence panels. Da- Nobles always want everything yesterday.” He flicked a glance at Pandy and the others, obviously unused to being in the front of the shop.

The Blacksmith nodded, turning back to Pandy. Still ignoring Augustus, she said, “We usually have our elementals separate and melt down the scraps so we can use them again, but if you want to buy it, we can get fresh, which’ll let us use that magic for forging instead. How much do you need?”

Pandy shook her head. “I really don’t know. One hundred and eighty-three, um, ‘Metal’, but I don’t know what that means in pounds or anything.”

Shaking her head, the Blacksmith turned to Rufus. “Just get it all. Everything copper or brass we’ve got. Did Stace ever manage to produce anything useful?”

Grimacing, Rufus shrugged. “Depends on your definition of useful. If you needed a shovel or a rake, maybe.”

“Given that she was supposed to be making a chamberpot, that’d be a no,” the Blacksmith muttered. “She needs to practice reforming, too, so not all of hers, but only leave her as much as her elemental can handle in a day.” Rufus nodded and headed back into the darkness beyond the door. The Blacksmith turned to Pandy and said, “Two hundred gold. Copper’s not cheap, and bronze is worse, but I guarantee you can make good pipes with it.”

Augustus cleared his throat, very softly, and the woman’s expression turned sour. “One hundred and fifty then, but I can’t go any lower, or I won’t be able to afford to replace it.” Augustus raised a brow, the Blacksmith looked stubborn, and Augustus gave a tiny nod.

Pandy wasn’t going to give the woman a chance to change her mind, so she quickly produced the required coins. As she stacked them on the counter, she said, “We also need a new stove… and oven? Are they two different things? Our old one sort of caught on fire.”

The other woman’s hands actually paused in making the coins vanish, and she looked up, startled. “Stoves aren’t supposed to be able to burn. That’s kind of the point.”

Pandy grimaced as she placed the last stack of ten coins beside the others. “It was a particularly hot fire, I think.”

The Blacksmith’s expression cleared. “Fire elemental, eh? The new stoves are spelled to sound an alarm if they get too hot, but that’s a relatively recent development. We make stoves, but they have to go off to be enchanted. I’d have to sell it to you at the same price I give the enchanters, and then you’d still have to pay them, too. Probably better to just get one that’s already finished.”

Augustus nodded, then said, “She’ll take any other scraps you have lying around as well. There’ll be other things that need it. Just send her a bill. I’ll stand as her guarantor.”

There went those eyebrows again, and the Blacksmith eyed Augustus thoughtfully as she nodded. Pulling a sheet of paper and a pen from beneath the counter, she said, “Where should I send it?” She waited, pen hovering over the paper, as everyone looked at Pandy. Who had no idea what her actual address was. Did they even have proper addresses here? She couldn’t remember ever hearing one, just ‘Celestine Point’ and ‘Lanthorne Court’ and ‘Condor’, just like in Gacha Love.

She managed to bring herself back just as the Blacksmith started to look a bit tetchy at the delay, and said, “I’m, um, Eurydice Haupe?” There was that questioning tone again, the one she hadn’t heard the entire time she was pretending to be Ms. Wellington. Alexandra Wellington was the sort of person who had never questioned herself in her life.

Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Lady Eurydice Haupe.” There it was. She actually wasn’t certain about the title, but she’d drawn on her Wellington-voice just enough to nail it down. “Avington House.”

The paper tore as the nib of the pen dug into it, and the Blacksmith looked up, her mouth actually dropping open a bit. “You’re the new Avington?” she demanded, gaze flicking to Augustus, who nodded in rather smug confirmation. The Blacksmith looked between them, astonishment easing into something like amusement as she spoke to Augustus. “Does your mother know?”

He grimaced, then sighed. “I’m certain she does. I expect I’ll be hearing from her soon.”

With almost vicious glee, the Blacksmith finished the note, ignoring the large hole in the page as she stuffed it back beneath the counter. Turning to Pandy, she thrust out a hand. “Well. It was good to meet you, Eurydice Haupe.” She only stumbled a bit over the unfamiliar name, and her callused hand was gentle on Pandy’s as she clasped it.

Releasing Pandy after a surprisingly long shake that seemed determined to make up for the abruptness of the one she’d shared with Augustus, she said, “I’m Addie Ferguson. Your chancellor and I are related,” she waved a dismissive hand, “somehow.” Looking down at the children for the first time since they entered, she said, “And these are…?”

“Students from Falconet,” Augustus said, but couldn’t quite drown out Thaniel’s loud proclamation that he was the chancellor’s ward. Pandy was fairly certain the boy wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘ward’ was, but now that he’d learned the word, he was determined to use it.

Real shock landed solidly on Addie’s face. “Are you? And-?”

“Not the others,” Augustus hurried to add, looking like he wished he’d left the children in the carriage after all.

A broad smile crossed Addie’s face, and the gray eyes that probably should have told Pandy there was something hinky going on twinkled in a way that was apparently hereditary. “Well, this should be interesting. Tell Aunt Christiana hello when you see her.”

Something like panic crossed Augustus’s face. “See her? You think she’ll come here? She hasn’t visited the city in almost a decade.”

The smile broadened into a grin. “Oh, I think she’ll find a reason. Soon.”

If Pandy wasn’t mistaken, Augustus was ever so slightly green by now, but she didn’t have time to think about it too much as Addie motioned to the door behind them. “Now, get out. I have work to do, and I’m not being paid nearly enough to do it. It was good to meet you, Lady Eurydice, ward.” She ignored everyone else, including the animals – though only Miss Cupcakes seemed at all put out about that – and followed Rufus through the rear door.

Augustus bustled them all back out into the cold, where the children immediately began to shiver. They climbed back into the waiting carriage, where Pandy and Augustus helped untangle coats as they gently jerked into motion again.

“Are we goin’ to get dinner now?” Thaniel asked somewhat plaintively, and Augustus chuckled, patting the boy on the back.

“We need to get to a few more stores before they close,” he said, settling back onto his seat. Abbington had been the only child brave enough to sit next to him, but now Thaniel hovered, swaying as the carriage moved, but clearly uncertain about where to sit. He was Augustus’s ward, after all, and the chancellor seemed to have Pandy’s approval as well. Those two things outweighed the fact that the man was also a relatively unknown authority figure.

“All right,” Thaniel sighed, finally coming to sit next to Pandy, snuggling into her in a way that made a strange expression pass over Augustus’s face.

The next stop was something like a household goods store – filled with everything from prettily potted plants to dainty dishes and sparkling silverware. The children helped Pandy pick out patterns for towels and bedding – though there was some conflict between her own tastes, the bright, flowered patterns Geraldine preferred, and the color-blocked items Thaniel liked – and they were out of the store in a surprisingly short time, leaving behind a happy saleswoman and more than a hundred of Pandy’s dwindling stash of coins. She did manage to find a few clocks, though, so that was a win.

Pandy had mentioned that she needed schoolbooks and paper, though not who they were for, so a bookshop with a section devoted to stationery was next. Conveniently, they had the books required for students of all three schools, so Pandy went ahead and got a set of each, which came to a shockingly large amount of money. She’d hoped to leave at least one store without spending in the triple-digits, but this was not to be the one. This shop was also the first one to really hesitate when she said she needed the items delivered to Avington House. For a moment she actually thought they would refuse, but the salesman met Augustus’s eyes, swallowed hard, and scribbled down the order.

After that, they went to a tailor shop which specialized in uniforms of all kinds, including those for students. They seemed to recognize Augustus as the chancellor, and when he handed the salesperson a sheet of paper with numbers written on it, they simply nodded and returned with a neatly-wrapped box. “Three sets of Kestrel uniforms, sir,” they told him, and Augustus smiled before ordering several more uniforms for the staff at Falconet. Pandy wasn’t actually certain that many people worked at the school, but when the store gave her a steep discount on Isidor’s uniforms and threw in a new pair of shoes for Geraldine practically for free, she decided that was between Augustus and whoever was supposed to be in control of Falconet’s budget.

Back in the carriage, Augustus announced that it was finally time for dinner, which was met with a resounding cheer from all three children. Looking around, he twinkled just a bit and said, “Now, we do have a rather unusual group, so we might need a rather unusual dining establishment, as well. Is that all right?”

“No fish?” Geraldine asked suspiciously.

“No fish,” he promised with great solemnity.

“No broccoli?” Thaniel pressed.

Augustus just barely managed not to laugh. “Now that I can’t promise, but there will be other options as well.”

Thaniel looked like he might protest, but Pandy managed to catch his gaze, laying her hand over one eye in a sort of improvised eyepatch. Even Pirate Pete ate his vegetables. With a deep sigh, Thaniel nodded and flopped back into his seat.