by J. S. Morin
“What’s she thinking, right this moment?” Harwick asked.
Rynn straightened and leaned away from Harwick. “That’s none of your—”
“I don’t particularly care,” said Harwick. “My point is that you don’t know. You’ll know what she’s said, what she’s seen and heard. You’ll remember it like you were there, but you didn’t think it. I am keenly aware of the difference. Ever since the death of Caladris Solaran, I find myself missing the devious streak he had. It helped me sort through more political …”
Harwick droned on, but Rynn’s mind blocked out the sound. Caladris Solaran, he said. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. How many twinborn Solarans could there have been? There had to have been some relation to Danilaesis Solaran. Dan had mentioned his twin’s name every chance he got, as if a Korrish twinborn like Madlin ought to have recognized it. The risk of him discovering the role she played in Dan’s death made his possession of the books problematic. She was going to need to find a way to get them all back from Harwick and acquire another translator. The rebellion had thrown in fully with Anzik’s people, and Denrik Zayne was dead. Perhaps Anzik or one of the sorcerers from among his people could be trusted now.
Harwick snapped his fingers. “You still in there? I didn’t mean for you to go looking through Madlin’s eyes. You’re not going to unravel her thoughts, no matter how hard you try. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I suspect that both of us have more important things to do than to toss words back and forth. While I don’t understand most of this next book, the insight into the minds of these ingenious people is fascinating. They take for granted wonders that I can barely grasp, and I am sure there are concepts that are second nature to them that I am wholly ignorant of. It makes things patchwork at times, trying to translate them.”
“Well, I’ll pass your gift on to my father,” Rynn replied, unsure as to whether she would do any such thing.
“Oh, and no offense, my dear,” Harwick said. “But if you could send that girl Kaia, next time, I would much enjoy seeing her again.” There was a mischievous gleam in the old lord’s eye.
Rynn replied with a nod and a tight smile, then stepped though the world-hole back to Korr.
That evening, Rynn stared out at the stars from the window of her quarters aboard the Jennai. How many twists of a world-ripper’s dials would it take to reach one of them? How long could she afford to stand on the firing range, dodging conspirators brought close by her own hand? The temptation to flee and leave the burden to someone else tugged at her sleeve. Chipmunk had known better than to get in over her head. When had Rynn lost that cautious, sly part of her that stuck to the tunnels when she went on her criminal errands? She had made herself a fulcrum, the wedge that drove one force against another, and she was feeling the pressure of that lever bearing down on her.
A tentative knock broke the quiet. “Come in,” she answered at once. This time, she was expecting her visitor.
“You wanted to see me?” Sosha asked. She crept into the room as if a child lay sleeping in the bed. Rynn kept no light switched on. Only the moon and stars revealed them to one another.
“Yeah,” Rynn replied. “You remember how I asked you to keep Cadmus from driving himself into true madness?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Yes.”
“Think you could do the same for me?”
“What do you … I mean, I think you … Rynn are you all right? What’s wrong?”
Rynn sighed a long, cleansing sigh. It was like getting go of a rope you had been dangling from until your arms could take no more. “It’s Harwick. He just let slip that his Veydran family name was Solaran.”
Sosha clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. “Does he know?” she asked when she took the hand away.
Rynn shook her head, still looking out at the stars. “It was offhanded. If he knew, I doubt I’d be here right now.”
“Do you know how they’re related?” Sosha asked. “The name has to be more than a coincidence.”
“Of course it’s more than a coincidence,” Rynn replied, feeling the tide of panic rising. “But what do I do now? He’s got the books, and he’s only given back three of them so far translated. Do I keep my cards or throw them in?”
“Throwing them in is killing him, isn’t it?” Sosha guessed.
Rynn put her hands against the glass and leaned against it. “Yeah. How do we risk him finding out about Dan, with so much at stake?”
“Are you sure he’d react badly? I mean … it’s hard to overlook how Dan was.”
“Consider Harwick’s age. He’s got to be a great uncle or something at the least, maybe even the kid’s grandfather. Even if he doesn’t hold it against the rebellion, you can bet your back teeth he’s going to get revenge on me at least.” Rynn gave a bitter chuckle and pulled the vial from her pocket. “He even gave me this for my father. It’s supposed to reverse aging—one of the wonders of bookish chemistry. I leafed through the book, and there’s a lot of weird substances in there. Acids that can melt through stone, artificial rubber, some disease cures you’re going to want to read up on, a couple—”
“But that’s all in Acardian,” Sosha said. “I can’t read the translations.”
Rynn shrugged. “Least of our worries right now.” She handed the vial to Sosha. “Can you at least take a look at this and make sure it’s not poison or something?”
“Why would it be? Harwick has no way of knowing.”
“He has no way that we know of,” Rynn replied. “He’s a clever old bastard, and he’s happy to tell you about it. If he did know, this might be his vengeance.”
“You’re getting worse with the paranoia,” Sosha said.
Rynn looked up to the moon, with her father tucked away inside. “I know. That’s why I need you. Tell me, should I just open a world-hole while he sleeps, ventilate him, and start over with a new translator?”
“Who would you … no, forget what I was about to ask,” said Sosha. She put a hand on Rynn’s shoulder. “It’s wrong. You can’t just go around killing people ‘just in case.’”
“I’ve been reading lately,” Rynn replied. She pointed to a stack of books by her bedside, shadowed in the moonlight. “Histories of generals and kings. Korr didn’t have what I was looking for, so these are all Telluraki. I wish I could read any of the Veydran languages; it sounds like they might be the most warlike. But they all seem to agree that killing people ‘just in case’ is good judgment. You have to know who your friends and enemies are. A known enemy can be a tool, but a questionable ally is dangerous. It cost Prince Artanchis in the Tea Wars, when he allied with Krangan pirates. King Gibani of Steth allied with the early Kheshi Empire against Takalish invasions, and there’s no Steth anymore. What if I try to play Veydran politics in a Korrish rebellion, and end up costing us everything?”
“There’s another option, even if you don’t trust him,” said Sosha.
“What’s that?”
“You can just sneak in while he’s asleep, take back the books, and never speak to him again.”
For some reason that felt wrong. Some strategist in her told Rynn that it was worse to leave an ally questioning than to kill him as a traitor. She swallowed. When did I start thinking it was all right to kill humans? As a rule, Korrish humans did not kill one another. They fought, but it was the stuff of tavern fisticuffs and disagreements over crashball loyalties. There was always the underlying belief that harming a human helped a kuduk. All but the most ardent shavers thought that way.
It was the world-ripper. She had mixed the worlds, perhaps mixed them too much. Tellurak pitted humans against humans throughout history. Veydrus seemed little more than an arena peopled with armies and sorcerers, goblins and dragons. The creatures from there fought everything they could find. The Korrish thing to do—the human thing to do—was to take Sosha’s advice. If she couldn’t admit to the man’s face that she had killed the twin of Danilaesis Solaran, she could at least spare the man’s life in cu
tting him off from the rebellion.
“I’ll sleep on it,” Rynn said. “There’s no hurry, if he isn’t on to us. If he is … there’s still two days until the next book is due. We have until then to decide. Madlin’s got a big day ahead.”
Sosha’s smile twitched into place and vanished just as quickly. “Have you got a plan worked out yet?”
“Anzik’s working on it.”
Morning in the heart of Korr’s moon was an arbitrary thing. On the world spinning below, it was always the break of dawn somewhere. For Cadmus Errol, it began when a clock at his bedside, set to Eversall time, struck 5:30 and set off a bell. Throughout the facility, every room had a clock that was within a second of matching the time Cadmus had decided for them. And so it was no surprise to Jamile to hear the bell through the door just before she knocked, and entered without waiting for a reply.
Cadmus stretched and twisted, his joints crackling as he threw off the covers and fumbled at the bedside table for his spectacles. A yawn preceded the first words he spoke on the day. “Where’d you run off to? Conspiring with Rynn again?”
“Sosha was,” Jamile replied. She handed him a vial of clear liquid. “Here. This is from the latest book.”
The light from the hall left the vial too much a mystery. Cadmus flipped a switch on the wall and a spark light flickered on. Holding the vial at eye level, he sloshed the contents around inside. “What’s it do?”
“It reverses aging,” Jamile replied, as matter-of-factly as if she had told him it was a salve for rashes.
“You don’t say,” Cadmus replied, continuing his examination. The only signs of his having just awakened were his rumpled clothing and wild hair. “Who concocted it?”
“Harwick,” Jamile replied. “He’s taken it himself, and he’s already looking years younger.”
Cadmus smirked. “I see. And you think it’s worth the risk?”
“He gave a vial of it to Rynn, but that’s not this one. I used the world-ripper and swapped it for an identical one in Harwick’s desk. Rynn asked me to check it and make sure it’s safe; I figured seeing how Harwick reacts to it in the morning will be as good a test as I can think of.”
“Good girl. I’ll get you thinking like a tinker yet.”
“Rynn’s also got a dilemma on her hands,” Jamile said. “Harwick let slip that he’s a Solaran.”
“A what?” Cadmus asked with a squint.
“Dan’s twin was a Solaran. They’re sorcerers from Veydrus—enemies of Anzik’s people.”
“Wonderful,” Cadmus muttered. “Does she have any thoughts on a replacement translator?”
Jamile threw up her hands. “You’re just like her!” She looked around suddenly with wide eyes, then lowered her voice. “You can’t just kill people because they might be enemies possibly maybe. You’re helping save his people, and he wants to help us.”
“And he made this …” Cadmus held up the vial to the light.
“And gave it to you freely.”
Cadmus tilted to the side until a crackling sound emanated from his lower back. “I wouldn’t mind forgetting what it’s like to wake up every morning like a kinked chain. You ever wonder what I was like as a young man?”
Jamile smiled and glanced away. “Maybe. But you’d still be you. Just with a bit more vigor.”
“And hair. I was blond once, you know. Aside from my build, folks would have taken me for full-blooded southern Kheshi.”
“I’d like to see that.”
Cadmus popped the stopper and raised the vial. “To Eziel, or whoever the bloody bolts wrote those books.” He downed the contents.
Jamile waited in silence for a few moments as Cadmus sat with a bemused expression. “Anything yet?” he asked.
Jamile furrowed her brow and studied him. Taking him by the chin, she looked over the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and the edge of his hairline. “Nothing yet, but we should give it some time.” She closed the door behind her. “Greuder’s in the kitchen, but it’ll be a while before anyone else is up. We should stay here and wait to make sure it’s working.”
“I’ll be able to go on raids,” Cadmus mused. “I won’t need to waste six hours a night sleeping.”
“I had more selfish reasons in mind,” Jamile said. She wrapped her arms around him and they toppled to the sheets.
Chapter 17
“Who the blazes wrote these daft books?” – Lord Dunston Harwick
In the cozy confines of his bedroom above the workshop he had worked in for years, K’k’rt packed away his belongings and said a quiet goodbye. For better or worse, Madlin had some plan tinkered together, and she was either going to take him with her, or he would be killed by Fr’n’ta’gur. K’k’rt snorted. Many of his fellow goblins would have found it a great honor to be devoured by their god. Most traitors and malcontents would be killed and thrown to the animals as feed. Fr’n’ta’gur was almost certain to kill K’k’rt himself, but somehow the old goblin could not bring himself to look forward to the prospect.
K’k’rt had not grown up among Fr’n’ta’gur’s goblins. He had served another dragon, Ni’hash’tk, until her demise, and had lived among humans for a time. Just when he had become so different from his kin, he could not say, but he now valued his life more highly than his fellows seemed to. And there was so little left of it.
Just when K’k’rt thought he had every ache and malady of age his body could handle, it found yet another place to vex and torment him. For ten years, his back had ached each morning upon waking; for the last three it had never gone away. For five years, his fingers had pained him with their every movement. For the last two years, his spectacles had been the only thing keeping him from walking into walls, and even with them he could hardly read. And yet, for all that he was not ready to die, by dragon or otherwise.
A ripple in the aether caught K’k’rt’s attention just in time for him to turn and face the world-hole as it opened. Finally, they bring me word of the plan. He had worried that he would be caught in the avalanche Madlin was no doubt about to unleash, struggling to keep up without knowing what was coming next. Secretly, he worried that he was not meant to survive with her.
But the world-hole revealed not Rynn, but Anzik Fehr, and Rynn’s dark-skinned friend, who worked the controls. Anzik stood like his father, imperious and cold—though he lacked the edge of malice that Jinzan Fehr wielded like a dagger. The young sorcerer stepped through without preamble, and the world-hole closed behind him. It was a sound precaution, for as long as it remained open, it was bound to draw attention.
“I need to know about the collar Madlin wears,” Anzik said.
“Welcome, Master Fehr,” K’k’rt replied, injecting a greeting into the proceedings.
“The collar.”
K’k’rt sighed and settled into a thick-padded chair. “I made it, you know.”
“Then you should know how to remove it safely,” Anzik reasoned. The human’s head did not angle down to K’k’rt, the eyes merely glanced lower. It was as if the motion of the head was deemed unnecessary.
“Safely? There is no unsafe. There is no trick to it at all. Yes, the chains to the guards’ bracers are unfortunate, but Fr’n’ta’gur insisted on some method of control over her. But merely scratching out a single rune on the collar itself will render the confining effect null. I wanted her escape to be as easy as possible, when the time came.”
“So you could have released her at any time?” Anzik asked.
“Release her?” K’k’rt asked with a chuckle. “She didn’t want to escape. Of course she hates it here, but she values the daily shipment of weapons for her rebels more than she values her freedom. She has the world-ripper, and she’s even cleverer than she’s let on. She could have gotten out of here any time she wanted.”
“She bargained with me for her escape,” Anzik said. “She wanted to be free of the runes that prevent her from passing through a world-hole. I think you’ve overestimated her.”
“Barga
ined, eh?” K’k’rt asked. “What did you get in return?”
“Airships in Korrish fashion.”
“Already delivered?”
“Yes,” Anzik replied with a hint of a frown.
“Well, there you have it. She wanted your help, but not in escaping. You killed the Kadrin sorcerer for her, and she’s worried that you might turn on her as well, so she tightened your alliance. You are too young for politics, it seems.” K’k’rt chuckled. He liked being older than humans. “So when is Madlin planning her escape?”
“She has told me of no escape plan,” Anzik replied.
K’k’rt stroked his chin. “Interesting. I had assumed her audience with Fr’n’ta’gur to fix the volcanic instability in Raynesdark was her deadline. There is no way that girl is going to solve a problem of that magnitude in just a few days. The dragon was a fool to think she could. You sure she hasn’t left clues as to her plan or her time table?”
“Rynn isn’t that subtle.”
K’k’rt nodded. “Can you do me a favor?”
Anzik stared down at him, but said nothing.
“Can you take that pack, and the one on the floor by the bed, and bring them with you?” K’k’rt asked. “Whether Madlin chooses to honor our agreement or not, I don’t think I’ll be needing them here anymore.”
Anzik nodded, then made a sign in the air with his fingers. The world-hole opened behind him. With a gesture, the two packs with most of K’k’rt’s personal effects floated through to Korr. K’k’rt raised a hand and waved to the dark-skinned girl running the machine. She smiled and waved back just before she pulled the switch to shut the hole and leave K’k’rt alone in his bedroom.
There were things left that he had not yet packed. It seemed so pointless now. He lay back in the chair and fell asleep.
Madlin checked and rechecked her calculations. Across the page, diagrams and notations described in painstaking detail the method and means of venting and capping the volcanic conduit near Raynesdark. There was a fair to middling chance that some goblin would take the time to examine the plans in detail before she was allowed to present them to Fr’n’ta’gur, and she had to make sure they were believable.