What We’re Reading

Ambergate | Patricia Elliot

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Jumping ahead to three years after Leah’s disappearance from Murkmere, Aggie, her aunt, and Jethro have the estate in decent shape, given the minimal staff they have to work with. Scuff, now nearly a young woman, has been learning to read under the tutorship of Miss Jennet, and has come to lover her life at the manor. When soldiers arrive at the doors seeking girl 102 for arrest, her heart breaks. Though Aggie and Miss Jennet don’t turn her in, they all know the soldiers will return, and therefore, Scuff can’t stay. Neither will Miss Jennet allow her to say goodbye to Aggie, as she knows her niece wouldn’t want the girl to leave. Worst still, the soldiers are already returned as Scuff makes away, and they can’t open the door at the back of the property through which she’s meant to escape. Her escape takes place instead in the old Master’s flying machine, though Scuff and all onlookers are sure she’s plunging to her death when they see the contraption come through the window of the tower.

With only vague memories of wings, Scuff awakes in a foreign place. Time passes, and eventually she is well enough to sit up and move about. She finds she’s on the Wasteland, in the home of Gadd, a healer, brought to him by his son Erland, who found Scuff amidst the wreckage of the machine. Scuff, not looking forward to her new life in Poorgrass Keyes, is reluctant to leave the Wasteland. Especially when she begins to develop feelings for Erland. Gadd attempts to send her on her way, but Scuff manages to stretch her stay out indeterminately. Only when soldiers arrive in the Wasteland can she delay her departure no longer.

Sadly, her fears about Poorgrass Kayes come to life immediately, as the young boy sent to help her find her way takes her instead to a brothel. Luckily, Scuff manages to enlist his help in an escape plan as well. Unluckily, her plan falls apart, and she finds herself at a slave market, where Gravengate Home, the orphanage from which she escaped years ago, claims her for recompense. She takes some, but little, comfort in the fact that the women who’ve claimed her are her old coworkers from Murkmere, Dog and Mistress Crumplin.

Yet another soldier arrives at the home to take Scuff away. But instead of being arrested, she’s offered a deal. Kill the son of the Lord Protector, win her freedom. She agrees. But the dagger she carries around in her boot throughout her stay at the palace weighs heavily on her.

And wrapped up in all this plotting is the mystery of Scuff’s true name and heritage–facts which she forgot long ago, if she ever knew them. Only her involvement in so much scheming brings the truth slowly to light.

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