Tinker's Justice

by J. S. Morin

  The ale was everything her crewmen had boasted of—rich, thick, with a bitter jolt that didn’t linger between swallows. She still had yet to find any place in Korr that could make an ale to rival the better Acardian brews, but the Hammer’s Harm made a good effort. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine that she was still Chipmunk, drinking with her friends at the Tap’n’Chug. Of course, she could go there whenever she liked, but she could never be just Chipmunk again. No simple disguise would pass muster there, and her old gang were all on the Jennai now. All except Tabby. And Buckets. And of course, No-Boots. If Rynn wasn’t careful, she’d end up as one of those maudlin drunkards who sat around mourning lost friends.

  “Table’s lookin’ awful empty,” said a man in a plain brown shirt and an equally plain smiling face. His neatly trimmed beard glistened with oil, and his teeth shone white amid the coarse black hair. Rynn glanced at his hands; they were slender and pink. He worked for humans, in some job that a kuduk would have if it were on another layer.

  Rynn gave him a tight, forced smile. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m waiting for someone.”

  He slid into the seat across from her anyway. “I’ll keep a place warm for her,” he said with that same smile.

  Rynn pulled a pistol—the common black powder variety that seemed so quaint now—and laid it on the table between them. “It’s a ‘he’ and I’ll wait alone, thanks.”

  The man stumbled over his own shoes as he scrambled to his feet. “Eziel’s eyes, girl! You one of those rebels or something?”

  Rynn looked up at him wide-eyed and innocent, face impassive. She took a sip of her ale. “Naw, I just own a pistol.” And an airship with a cannon the size of a six-car thunderail. “Now scoot. You’re blocking my view of the door.” Scoot? When did I become Jamile? And so much for keeping a quiet corner to myself.

  No one else approached her as she waited, with the exception of the aleman who brought her a fresh tankard. She wasn’t sure whether the aleman was the brave sort, just used to armed patrons, or counted on the fact that no drinker ever punched an aleman, let alone shot one.

  Anzik’s arrival was both a blessing and a curse. Rynn couldn’t sit there all night letting the rebellion coast off in whatever direction she last pushed it, but she was enjoying the quiet and the drink. The Veydran sorcerer walked through the door like he had just entered a pipers’ den, wary of touching anything or anyone as he threaded his way over to the table. Someone—it was hard not to see Jamile’s hand at work—had dressed him in dreary brown trousers and a pullover shirt. If he was supposed to be a down-on-his-luck worker, like they had planned, Jamile ought to have had him stop shaving, or magic himself a beard to better fit in. Everyone in the tavern had either breasts or a beard except for Anzik. It wasn’t a shavers’ sort of establishment.

  Rynn nodded to the seat across from her. With a furtive glance around the room, Anzik joined her. Without her spectacles on, it was hard to be sure, but she thought she saw a gap between his hand and the chair as it slid back far enough for him to sit. It could also have been the ale.

  “This place is strange,” he said, his voice low, speaking Kheshi. “Such weak Sources all around. Is this typical, or was this part of your reason for selecting this peculiar location?”

  “I picked it for the ale,” Rynn said, hoisting her tankard. She signaled for the aleman to bring one for Anzik. “Dunno about the rest. I can see aether when I need to, but I hardly bother most of the time.”

  “I sometimes wonder what that would be like, seeing light and aether separately.”

  Rynn paused, lowering the tankard as she was about to take a drink. “How’s that?”

  “It’s not important. I have true business to conduct.”

  “Half what we get sound fair?” Rynn asked.

  Anzik blinked. “Yes, actually. More than fair. I had expected a harder bargaining position on your part.”

  “We’ll be piled with them before long,” Rynn said. “Dragon’s got a fertilizer factory for a tongue, but he’s kept his deliveries going. We’re keeping up arming new recruits; we’ve got more in the field now than aboard the Jennai. It’s not going to hurt us to split the share even.”

  “Excellent news,” said Anzik, sipping at his ale like a steam soup. “But I have another proposal to make.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Kadrin airships outmatch our own,” said Anzik. “Can you build us Korrish ones?”

  Rynn regarded him a moment over the rim of her tankard, ale sloshing against her lip. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do I get if I can?” Rynn asked. “Not that I’m saying I can, mind you, because it’s taking me months to get coil guns from a goblin workforce. I can’t exactly steal you airships and shrink them to fit through a world-hole.” She furrowed her brow. “Unless you can shrink them.”

  Anzik shook his head. “Too large. But what price would you want for them if you can?”

  I want you to translate 12 books into a language I can read. It was tempting. Any sorcerer supposedly knew the language. A freak like Anzik would probably manage it in a day or two, not blinking the whole time. But the knowledge was more valuable than anything she could imagine. Anzik ought to pay her for the privilege, knowing that he’d learn the contents in the process. Plus … there was still something disquieting about him. His oddities disguised his character in a way Rynn couldn’t begin to unravel. He worked with his pirate father in one world, and was running a war in another. Simple pragmatism might keep him to his agreements while he needed her, but the moment he had all that he needed, Rynn suspected he could turn on them.

  “How about you figure a way so Madlin can get back through the world-ripper?” Rynn asked. “The rotted dragon figured some way to keep me from passing. You find a way to undo it, and I’ll find a way to get you your airships.”

  Rynn slumped into the chair at her bedside and took up a pencil. The images were still fresh in her head, and she wanted to transfer them to paper before sleep took her. The pitcher of ale she had brought back with her from the Hammer’s Harm had not been her best idea, nor had absentmindedly draining it as she sat alone studying Megrenn airships through a viewframe. They were just boats with runes, floating on the same aetherial buoyancy that kept the Jennai aloft. The key difference was that the Megrenn still relied on wind for both propulsion and steering.

  Rynn’s pencil flew across the page, scribbling a sailing vessel in a bird’s nest of overlapping strokes. Next she sketched a liftwing airship, using the Gradlek P-103 as a guide. Chassis, cockpit, wings, wing-struts, propeller, tail, she added features as she remembered them, more to fix the images more firmly in Madlin’s mind than for what value they had on paper.

  Shoving that page aside, she drew another sailing vessel, this time from an overhead view. She took more care this time, trying to represent proper proportions. The masts and spars were the key, and when she finished drawing those, she sketched the liftwings attached to the spars. They were already built to take the force of the wind on the vessel and transfer it to the hull of the ship for propulsion. With the liftwings attached, they could ditch the sails and use propeller power. She continued on to draw front and side views, continuing to recall the dimension of the Megrenn sailing ships as best as her drowsy mind was able. This looks ridiculous. From the top the liftwings had looked odd, but plausible. From the front and side, they looked like oversized birds stuck up in a tree. The forces looked like they would align poorly as well; the liftwings would pitch the vessel forward without some other force to balance it. The Megrenns must have changed the cut of their sails to compensate. Doing the same with the liftwings sounded like too much trouble. Rynn crumpled the page and tried again.

  The next attempt showed two liftwings attached to the sides of the vessel, each one missing a wing where it was bolted onto the hull. They could work out a center of mass for the ship and align the liftwings accordingly. The wing flaps would be on the small side
to move something the size of a sailing ship, but they would work. Piloting the ship would be an act of coordinating two operators in the cockpits.

  Rynn was sketching alternate views, checking for flaws in the plan, when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come on in,” she called out.

  The door opened. “What did you need me for?” Vaulk asked.

  Rynn pushed her pencil away and leaned back, cracking her stiff neck. “You were my father’s agent in Acardia since before I was born.”

  “Well, Greuder was, but yes.”

  Rynn motioned for Vaulk to have a seat. “I need some of that local knowledge you’ve built up. Do you know a man named Harwick?”

  “I know two, actually: father and son, lord and lordling. Why?”

  “I need to get in touch with whichever of them is a one-worlded Veydran sorcerer,” Rynn replied. She pointed to the shelf where she had stored the twelve books. “The one who returned my father’s books said that Harwick could translate them. They’re written in a Veydran language that sorcerers know.”

  “If Veydran sorcerers know it, why not just ask …” Vaulk slowed as Rynn offered him the best patronizing glare she could manage while drunk. “I see. No getting help from the boy. But what makes you think you can trust this Harwick fellow? I don’t know that I’d be inclined to go to either of them for aid.”

  “She said he was a reformist, someone who would sympathize with Korr’s humans.”

  “She? She who?”

  “She said her name was Juliana.”

  Vaulk stopped, his eyes wide. Rynn couldn’t even see him breathing. “Thin girl, taller than I am, swaggers like a coinblade?”

  “You know her?” Rynn asked, blinking to try to wake herself fully. This was promising.

  “Know her? Not well, but yes, I’ve met her. Blazes girl, she’s married to Kyrus Hinterdale, a good friend of mine who’s been gone for years. It’s him you want helping us. If we can convince that one to help us, we won’t need Anzik, or goblins, or any of the allies of convenience we might dredge up.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s a sorcerer, lass. It was all rumor and speculation until I put the pieces together, but that Kyrus is responsible for the Marker’s Point incident some years back.”

  “My father said it was black powder that was improperly mixed,” Rynn said.

  “Cadmus left it at that. It was his man’s best guess at the time, but he didn’t believe in magic outside of runes back then. I had a chat with Kyrus and his wife the day they dropped off the face of the world. He hammered everywhere but the nail, but he hinted that he had stumbled onto some big secret. It didn’t take much to piece together that the two of them were both twinborn.”

  Rynn sighed. “So he’s a sorcerer, she’s a sorcerer. She told me that they couldn’t help us directly, that giving the books back was just to make up for taking them in the first place. She’s the one who recommended we see Harwick.”

  Greuder scratched at the back of his head. “That’s all well and dandy, but the Harwicks and I … well, let’s just say they’re the ones who chased me out of Acardia.”

  Rynn squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw. She might have guessed. Nothing was ever easy. Send a man to spy in Acardia for over twenty years, and the one name you needed was the one who ousted him. Rynn needed another pitcher of Hammer’s Harm Stout.

  “Fine,” she murmured. “Can you remember my plan long enough to have Greuder tell my father? If you can’t go see an Acardian lord, he can.”

  Cadmus Errol had been a warmonger for less than a year. Before that, for over twenty years, he had been known as the Mad Tinker, his reputation spreading from Tinker’s Island to the southernmost reaches of Khesh. He had met kings, mayors, governors, councilors, prelates, generals, and more lords than he cared to count. Among the latter was a heavyset drunkard named Dunston Harwick. Greuder’s mere mention of the man conjured an image of a conniving sneer, emanating from a pudgy face flushed with recent drink. He had met the man only casually, while he had been in Golis working on the installation of a clock tower, but the Acardian lord had left an impression.

  The occasion called for a shave and a change into laundered clothes. That gleam in Harwick’s eye made so much more sense now; it was the look of a man who knew something he wouldn’t let on. Cadmus wasn’t sure the impression he had made last time they saw each other, but if the man could read Kezudkan’s books, it was worth the trouble to make a good re-impression.

  “Anything amiss?” he asked, surveying himself in the mirror like a girl in her first ball gown.

  Jamile tugged his collar, holding onto it as she looked first to one side of him, then the other. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got a speck of grease on your left lens though.”

  Without hesitation, Cadmus pulled off his spectacles and wiped the lens on the front of his shirt.

  “Well, there goes that now,” said Jamile. “You’ve gone and wiped grease on your shirt. Here, let me get you another one.”

  Cadmus took hold of her arm, careful not to hurt her with his grip. “No time. It’s small enough.”

  “No time? He’s not even expecting you. And just a minute ago you were worried about impressions.”

  “There’s no time because there’s no time to waste. That bastard daruu and I tried for years to puzzle out the words in that book. All the right runes, arranged into gibberish. We tried every code we could think of, but we didn’t need a code-breaker. We needed a translator. And now we’ve got one. Or we will, once I convince him.”

  “Your gears are freewheeling, tinker,” said Jamile. “Put a brake on and slow it down.”

  “Working from rusted pictures, we built the most dangerous device known to Korr,” said Cadmus. “The sooner we find out what’s in the rest of it, the sooner we can end this war.”

  “What makes you think the rest will be weapons?” Jamile asked.

  “I don’t think the world-ripper was ever meant as a weapon. But drive a steam-shovel through a village of savages and it will be a good enough weapon. These books are so far beyond us; whatever wonders they contain will have power greater than Korr can sustain. And this time I won’t be sharing those secrets with any daruu.”

  The world-hole opened in a vacant hallway of the Ministry of Law in Golis, capitol city of Acardia. Cadmus looked both ways just to be sure, then stepped through into Tellurak. As the world-hole closed behind him, he shrugged off his jacket. The building was warmer than he had expected. Despite some similarities of climate with Tinker’s Island, the kingdom did experience a proper summer. Even in the evening hours, the air was thick to breathe. He broke out in a damp sweat within moments of his arrival.

  There was not much to his plan. Dunston Harwick was King Gorden’s chief jurist and one of his closest advisors. If Harwick was the sort of man who was that close to a king, he was the sort who lived his job at all hours of the clock. Cadmus walked the halls, wishing he had just scanned the building until he found Harwick, but caution had stayed his hand. The dratted dragon could see the viewframe, even when a hole wasn’t open—some of the goblins as well—and it wouldn’t have surprised Cadmus to find that Harwick was enough of a sorcerer to be put on his guard by one opening nearby. Once the Mad Tinker showed up at his door, he hoped that Harwick would be too preoccupied to notice. It was a risk he was willing to take, with it being his only option for escape.

  If there was a trait he admired in the Acardians, it was in their fastidiousness. When he came to the top of a flight of stairs, there was a plaque listing all the offices on the floor, with directions to each. A separate plaque listed general categories of offices on other floors. There was no mention of a Harwick on his current floor, but the top floor had a listing for “Chief Magistrate.”

  Age had its advantages: experience, reputation, perspective. Cadmus had all these in greater abundance than when he was a young man. But as he tromped up two flights of stairs, he considered signaling for Jamile to open him a world-
hole and save him the exertion. By the time he reached the top floor, his shirt stuck to his back and his brow was dripping; the heat had risen with each successive floor as well, due to some defect of ventilation. His only consolation was a plaque that told him which way led to the Chief Magistrate’s office.

  The halls were lit only by the moonlight from windows down one wall. As he made his way to Harwick’s office, a glow of lamp light shone beneath a door here or there. A wash of light spilled into the hall from an open door just before the end of the hall.

  “Excuse me, sir, but the Ministry offices are closed for the day,” a woman called from the open-doored office. Cadmus had made no attempt to quiet his footsteps.

  Cadmus glanced at the plaque outside the door, squinting in the moonlight: Elleigh Crownley, Chief Prosecutor. “I’m here to see Lord Dunston Harwick.”

  Lady Crownley looked Cadmus up and down. “I don’t know who you are or how you got in here, but—”

  “I’m Cadmus Errol,” he said. It answered both questions, as far as he was concerned.

  The woman blinked, donning a pair of spectacles that hung on a silver chain around her neck. She craned her neck toward him. “Of course you are. I can see why a man with Cadmus Errol’s wealth and connections would skulk around the ministry offices after dark. Now get out of here this instant, before I must suffer the indignity of shouting for the guards.”

  Cadmus scratched at his face, even though there was no stubble to itch. “Do what you have to. Harwick can send them away,” he said after a moment’s reflection. He turned and headed to the end of the hall, and there was no shout of alarm from behind him.

  As he raised his hand to knock, a voice from inside called out. “Just let yourself in. I’m not half as deaf as you’d expect of a man in my advanced years.” Cadmus hesitated a moment and let himself in.