by J. S. Morin
“Well, I’m not getting any younger,” Tanner said, sliding out from behind the table. He made his way for the deck, while Anzik disappeared deeper into the ship’s interior.
Under the sunshine, it was a mild and breezy day, the sort of romanticized vision of life at sea that had convinced Tanner to take up with Stalyart in Veydrus, and to go along with Denrik Zayne in Tellurak. A few stray clouds lazed across the sky, following the same wind as the False Profit. The crew had grown accustomed to Tanner’s presence and worked around him. Deckhands gave him a wide berth, the bosun waved a hello, and Captain Denrik Zayne spared him a glance when he noticed the reaction of his crew.
“Mr. Tanner,” said Denrik. “You’re not up here to drag my men off to the card table, are you?”
“Day like this?” Tanner said, gawking up at the sky as if he had never seen such weather before. “Figured I’d get a sniff of what summer feels like up this far north. Rare as an honest banker, days like this.” If there was one topic that was sure to pass time and do little else, it was to comment on fair weather. At least with a storm brewing you could make a pretense of it being precautionary, but no profit had ever come of belaboring the merits of a fair day. Tanner sauntered over beside the captain, a self-satisfied grin plastered across his face.
“Are you planning on being insufferable all day, or do I have some respite to look forward to?” Denrik asked. “This is a ship on the hunt, not some Kheshi prince’s pleasure barge.”
Tanner smirked but held his tongue. He didn’t trust himself not to say something revealing. Instead he walked to the railing and stared out at the horizon. If anyone took note that he held onto that railing with a white-knuckled grip, or that he kept his balance well back from the edge, it would have been easy to pass the posture off as a dryfoot fearing the great Katamic Sea. Tanner was a reluctant sailor and everyone aboard knew it. When the ship shook, Tanner was the only one on deck who was prepared.
The explosion was the sound of a hundred cannons firing in a hellish chorus. But there was no barrel to shield the ship from the force, no projectile shot forth. The blast was the stored powder for the port broadside erupting. The False Profit rocked, first from the force of the explosion, then from the water rushing into the shattered hull. A good captain could recover a ship from many mishaps, but there was no saving a ship missing half its hull on the port side.
Of course, in any shipwreck there was a chance of survival if you were lucky. The wreck of the Fair Trader had provided floating debris for half the crew to cling to and reach landfall. Jadon hadn’t wanted to take that chance. Tanner sprang into action. Men shouted and ran; others dove into the water without hesitation, fleeing the burning portions of the ship and the chance that yet unexploded powder for the starboard broadside might go next. Captain Denrik Zayne was neither a fool nor a neophyte on the seas, but even he could not have prepared himself for a personal attack with all that swirled around him. Tanner’s sword was between the pirate’s ribs before he could raise a hand to defend himself.
There was always a chance with a belly wound that a man would survive. Slim chance, but Denrik Zayne had tricks hidden beneath his tricks. Sliding a blade between a man’s ribs on a titled deck amid the fires and smoke of a powder explosion was no small feat. But Tanner was a master swordsman—everyone in Tellurak seemed to keep forgetting that.
Denrik’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The final look in his eyes was bewilderment. “No offense, but you had it coming,” Tanner said as he pulled his sword out dripping. Denrik fell away, tumbling down the sloped deck and into the Katamic.
Captain Denrik Zayne had survived the loss of two ships, and Tanner had made sure the pirate went down with his third. Sliding the wet blade into its sheath, he made for the ship’s lower railing and dove into the water. If anyone had been paying attention to his confrontation with the captain, they were too preoccupied to do anything about it.
The breeze in the northern passage between Tinker’s Island and Takalia had been unseasonably warm. The Katamic Sea was not to be fooled; it knew the season. The water bit into Tanner like a winter storm on bare flesh. He gasped a mouthful of water at the shock, and struggled to the surface, coughing and choking for air.
The sky above turned dark, or at least dim, in a circle of space just above him. In a dizzying sight, he saw people standing on a wall, the ceiling stretching off to a great height. The hole had opened facing downward toward him, Tanner realized, though he struggled to make his eyes believe him. A rope fell through with a loop tied at the end, pulling to one side of the hole, which Tanner guessed had to be ‘down’ where he was headed. Struggling to cough the water from his lungs, he pulled himself through the loop and hooked it under his arms. The ropes dug into muscle as someone on the far side of the hole hoisted him through.
A wave of dizziness passed through Tanner as the world decided to pull him in a different direction. He flopped to the steel floor and waited a moment for the room to hold still.
“Welcome to the rebellion, Tanner,” said a voice from above him. He looked up and squinted. A face was backlit against an intense white light coming from the ceiling.
Tanner raised a dripping hand to shield his eyes. “Madlin?” he asked. Jadon stood beside her, his expression flat.
“Almost,” came the reply. “I’m Rynn.”
The room in which Tanner found himself was like no place he had ever been. Madlin had told stories of the world her twin came from. He had heard of the machine. Seeing the monstrosity of copper, brass, and a bunch of metals he couldn’t name, Tanner realized his imagination had let him down.
“How’re you dry?” he asked Jadon, who should have been dripping all over the room, but was not.
“I was off the ship before the powder blew,” he replied. “It would have been foolhardy to stay any longer, since my part was done the moment the fuse was lit.”
“Foolhardy, eh?” Tanner asked. “I’ll keep that in mind next time you’re lookin’ for a favor.”
“Don’t worry,” Rynn said, extending a hand and helping Tanner to his feet. “We approve of foolhardy around here.”
The hum took getting used to. Stalyart likened it to a bassoonist who never ran out of breath. The deck buzzed, sending the hum right through boots and legs and into the gut. The Korrish must have been used to such sensations, but he could find no comfort in it. Time. That was all he needed. Eventually the Mirror’s Trick would be like a piece of him—another leg or arm, another skin.
Tanner seemed less shy of the skies than he had of the sea. Perhaps the sky did not play such tricks on the stomach as the rolling waves. Perhaps the view so far below held some magic over him. Stalyart admitted he had a similar reaction to seeing the world spread below him in miniature.
“Fine day for sailing, is it not?” Stalyart asked when Tanner noticed him watching.
“You call this sailing?” Tanner shouted back over the wind and the hum of the machines.
Stalyart laughed from his belly. “I cannot say. Are we sailors, or some new thing? You should find me the word the Korrish use for those like us who sail the skies. I think this world lacks for a description that befits us.”
“Slow us down,” Tanner said, crossing the deck to where Stalyart manned the helm. “Machine’s got sight of us.” The crew was handpicked, each one of them Stalyart’s man. It had been a shame that he could not take them all, but Mirror’s Trick was a smaller ship.
A few shouted commands and crewmen brought the engines to a halt. They still flew as momentum and the air current carried them along, but they slowed. The wind rustled clothing and the wood of the deck creaked and thumped beneath booted feet. The rest of the sky had gone silent. Stalyart was reminded that nothing but Anzik’s runes were keeping them aloft. It was easy to think that some Korrish mechanical magic had been responsible for their flight, but that told an incomplete tale.
Tiny arcs of lightning hopped in the air, preceding the opening of a hole into the world of Korr
. Jadon was waiting beyond, along with a girl who had to be the Korrish tinker, Rynn, and several others whose names Stalyart did not know. He glimpsed the machine, strange and fascinating, far more complex than the flying devices that had been attached to Mirror’s Trick.
Stalyart swept a hand to his side and bowed to those who stood beyond. “Welcome, and thank you for the gift of this marvelous vessel.” He spoke Kheshi, which was a language Tanner had informed him the girl Rynn knew.
“We’ve got a chain set up,” Rynn said. She was unladylike in her manner of dress, in sweat and grease-stained shirt and trousers, with spectacles like an old man, wearing boots fit for a miner. “You run into problems with the mechanicals, Jadon can get word to me via a few intermediaries.” Jadon Zayne stepped through the hole in midair and onto the deck. Had Stalyart not known better, he would have sworn the boy was Anzik Fehr.
“How many?” Stalyart asked. He had been involved in such schemes before, and knew that each time information passed between twinborn, it involved delay. Messages could also become muddled in the passing—he knew this because he had muddied many himself.
“Three links and he’s got my ear.”
Stalyart gave Rynn a narrow look, but nodded.
“This is Veydran business,” Rynn said. “You can do what you like with the ship. Payment for it is Anzik’s business, one way or another. But I’d view it as a personal favor if you didn’t go getting it blasted out of the sky.”
Stalyart grinned. “My lady, I would be mortified to lose a ship. I am no Denrik Zayne.”
That same night, back in the lunar headquarters, Anzik Fehr stopped by the small dining room to find Cadmus finishing a plate of basil-rubbed chicken in a cream sauce. Greuder had been cooking late meals for him again. Anzik stopped and sat down across from the Mad Tinker, waiting for him to acknowledge his presence.
Cadmus glanced up from his plate just briefly, then stabbed another piece of chicken. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“We are not so different, you and I,” Anzik said.
Cadmus snorted as he chewed.
“We both endured circumstances that we viewed with contempt. Both of us remained despite the means for escape because we gleaned an extraordinary benefit from our position. I have seen your inventions. I find it difficult to believe you could not have escaped your daruu if you had wished.”
“Cold-blooded, doing in your old man,” Cadmus said around a mouthful of food.
Anzik shrugged. “Jinzan Fehr was my father, not Denrik Zayne. The pirate was unaware he had a son for most of my life. Jadon was abandoned by the whore who birthed him, who in turn was abandoned the moment my twin was conceived. Even with all that, I couldn’t trust myself not to have second thoughts.”
Cadmus grunted. “Not sure I like the look of that Tanner fellow.”
“He bore a longstanding grudge with Denrik Zayne. I merely gave him an accomplice, and an escape. Your daughter seems to appreciate his martial prowess—most of your rebels are more eager than competent. Sosha seemed pleased to see him once more.”
A fork clattered onto the plate, and Cadmus scowled across the table. “How’s that now?”
Anzik sat back in his chair, surprised at the reaction from the Mad Tinker. “I only meant to imply they vouched for his character. I would hope that you might reconsider your appraisal of me as well. Your mistrust seemed rooted in my association with Denrik Zayne, which I have now ended. Please weigh this accordingly.”
With that, Anzik stood and excused himself from the room, leaving Cadmus with an empty plate and a look of consternation.
Chapter 16
“Non-controlled biospheres have unpredictable weather. High winds and darkened clouds precede storms.” – Traveler’s Companion: Weather Awareness
Rynn watched through the viewframe, blowing to cool her tea before taking a sip. She stood next to the viewframe, so close that she could read the words as Harwick transcribed them into a blank journal. It was the book on medicine that he worked on; she could tell by the anatomical diagrams. The terminology was torturous, with strange words that had no translation from the arcane language. Jamile might have better luck with it, but Rynn was out of her element. Humans were wet, sticky machines on the inside with too much plumbing and too little structural support.
Still, the work was only half done on the translation, and she had been through two cups of tea already while spying on the Acardian lord. He never touched pen to paper with his own hand. Through magical means, the quill dipped itself in the inkwell and set off to work, scrawling neat Acardian script across the page. Harwick merely flipped through pages and traced along the lines of runic text with a finger.
Though Rynn struggled to say what it was, there was something different about Dunston Harwick. Perhaps he had changed his hair, or maybe it was the fact that his spectacles rested on the table beside him instead of on the bridge of his nose. Wandering back to the control console, Rynn set down her tea and resigned herself to accomplishing something rather than wasting her night in speculation.
When the world-hole opened—she wondered if she could ever convince herself to call it a transport gate—Harwick perked up at once. “Ah, Rynn my dear! I was wondering when you’d stop peering over my shoulder and drop in.”
Rynn felt her face grow warm. “You could see the viewframe?”
Harwick grinned. “Maybe. Or maybe you just confirmed my suspicion. Either way, I take no offense. Come in, come in. That cargo hold is so dreary and unwelcoming. Tell me, do you work in there all alone, day in and out, or do you just chase everyone away before coming to see me?”
Rynn stepped through into Harwick’s study. The guards outside the cargo hold would be insurance enough that no one would shut her out of the Jennai. “I don’t often work in there at all. We have enough competent technicians now that I can spend my time on other needs of the rebellion.”
“Like building more of those peculiar limbs of yours?” Harwick asked. “I notice you’ve made a new set.”
Rynn’s tinker’s legs were concealed beneath the fabric of her trousers. There should not have been enough evidence showing through for anyone to tell they were new. “You’re bluffing again.”
“Not so,” said Harwick. He pointed to her legs with the stump of a pipe as he withdrew it from the pocket of his jacket. “New rune work. Similar pattern to the old, but a tighter structure and better formed runes. Either you had someone else do the work, or your carving has improved.”
“I do my own runes.”
“Neither here nor there, of course,” Harwick replied. He ambled over to a side table and picked up a finished volume. “This is what you’re here for. Chemistry.”
“Anything worthwhile?” Rynn asked as she accepted the book. She would read it through later, but it never hurt to hear the highlights ahead of time.
Harwick tried to suppress a chuckle, but failed. “You really do lack the feminine predisposition toward noticing certain things.”
“What?”
“Turn to page one hundred eighteen,” Harwick replied. “You’ll see.”
Rynn flipped thought the hand-numbered pages—if a magically copied text could be considered handwritten. Starting from the heading at page one-eighteen, she read aloud: “If you should find yourself without a supply of age-stabilizer, this approximation can be concocted using only class two technology and class four magic. Most primitive worlds will have all the ingredients you need. Should you lack any, please consult table seven of appendix … Harwick, what is this?”
“Age-reversal!” he exclaimed. “I’ve de-aged five years in the past two days. I’ve been taking a dilute version of the formula it gives down below there, just to be safe. It’s a gods-reborn miracle.”
“It’s magic.”
“No, girl, that’s the trick of it,” Harwick replied. “It’s neither magic nor your world’s science. It’s a combination, and so far beyond both our worlds’ understanding that they make it seem a child’s
school experiment.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a stoppered vial. “I made a bit for Cadmus; figured it was only fair. You’re still a bit on the young side to begin with.” He eyed Rynn up and down.
“How are the rest going?” Rynn asked. She took the vial from Harwick and gazed into the liquid within. It was clear, but there were whorls and particles within that suggested impurities, but which were probably just the book’s incomprehensible science at work. It seemed to have done little harm to Harwick, but she would hold onto it a while before deciding whether to pass it along to her father. She was beginning to feel the weight of being his keeper, deciding which wonders he could be trusted with.
“I copy the words, but medicine escapes me,” Harwick replied. “I am neither apothecary nor physician, and my dealings with those who are have never delved into professional detail. People become ill; they make them well again. I’ve rarely given a thought to the ‘how’ of it.”
“I can see why you and my father get along so well,” Rynn replied with an edge of sarcasm.
“Indeed. Your father is cursed with a curious compulsion to be understood. I think that’s why he moved to his own continent. Even if it was the sorriest barren rock in Tellurak, he could keep out layman clods like myself who didn’t gawp over his clever machines.”
“Hey now! I grew up there,” Rynn protested.
“Then you should know,” Harwick replied. “But then again, I think that you didn’t. You’re the Korrish one, if I’m not mistaken. You’ve fallen into the old trap of twin conflation.”
Rynn shrugged. “We’re really just parts of one whole person, when you think about it. I remember growing up on Tinker’s Island.”
“That’s where you shortchange yourself, my dear girl,” Harwick replied. “The Source is different. In almost all cases it splits unevenly between worlds. I bet Madlin doesn’t have the same need of a machinery leg, either.”
“One twin’s misfortune,” Rynn replied. “We need the same optical correction, have the same freckles, the same tastes in food and drink.”