BreadCrumb Trail (The Yellow Hoods, #2): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale Read Online Free Page A

long.”
    “Father, we don’t even know who they are—you said so yourself. Now you’re imagining them as having—”
    Ignoring his son, Maxwell continued, “The plans have to get to Nikolas. I need you to put them in his hands. He’ll know how to keep them safe.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tale of the Mountain Man
     
    Many citizens of Minette enjoyed going down to the larger city of Mineau a couple of times per year. As far as cities in the kingdom of Freland went, Mineau was average size, but compared to Minette, it seemed enormous.
    The main road from Minette to Mineau wound its way lazily down the mountain, over streams and small bridges, through forest and large, snowy clearings. In summer, the trip was one hour on horseback, but in winter it could take anywhere from one to eight hours, depending on the potentially brutal weather.
    When Nikolas’ sleigh arrived at Mineau two hours later, he found Bakon already there, sitting on the back of one of the sail-carts. Bakon was nursing a bruise over his left eye, and a fat lip. The Yellow Hoods were nowhere to be seen.
    He glanced over to Egelina-Marie, who gestured that they shouldn’t discuss Bakon’s situation. Nikolas nodded, while the other two Cochon brothers chuckled to themselves.
    He wondered what the Yellow Hoods were up to. In a brief couple of months Tee, Elly, and Richy had used the carts in ways he’d never imagined. Nikolas didn’t like being unable to predict the outcome of his decisions—something that rarely happened. Lack of knowing how his inventions might be used in the world was one of the biggest reasons he seldom felt comfortable with sharing them.
    He found himself questioning his intent to hand over the plans for his horseless cart to the Tub. The LeLoup incident had inspired him to finally solve the last of the design problems and build it, after wrestling with it for so long. He’d shown the first prototype to Tee and her mother, Jennifer—his daughter. Yet, no one knew just how far he’d been able to push things since. He’d figured the best thing to do in passing the innovation over to the Tub was to give them a design from a month ago and then see what happens.
    The Yellow Hoods would typically make the trek down to Mineau with their parents, but now they were masters of their sail-carts. Tee had celebrated her thirteenth birthday mere days ago, and the three were behaving like teenagers, going off to who-knows-where in their sail-carts. Each set of parents had taken a different approach in dealing with this.
    For Elly, her parents had witnessed the change firsthand. From their front steps, they’d watched; standing facing backward on a rapidly moving sail-cart, Elly had thrown a shock-stick at one of LeLoup’s horsemen, defeating him. They’d watched as she spun in the air, seated herself perfectly, and brought the sail-cart to a quick stop right in front of them.
    Since then, Elly responded to every worry her parents tried to throw at her with her clear, convincing logic, all tied back to what they had witnessed. While they didn’t like the idea of the sail-cart, they believed that if she and Tee stuck together, then they’d come out unscathed together. In the end, Elly’s parents occasionally wondered about the odd cut and bruise, but if Elly seemed happy, they didn’t worry.
    As for Tee, almost as soon as she could walk, her parents knew they had trouble on their hands. She loved adventure and had a mind for getting things done, and William and Jennifer each blamed it on the other’s heritage. William’s father, Samuel Baker, was one of the three top leaders of the Tub, while Jennifer’s father, Nikolas Klaus, was a renowned master inventor, also affiliated with the Tub.
    Tee’s parents weren’t sure whether she hunted for danger, or if danger just seemed to find her. They were thankful for Tee’s incredible natural luck, and her close, trusting friendship with Elly. Where that wasn’t enough, they’d invented all sorts