The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge

by Cameron Baity

  “Two for two!” he cried, pumping his fist in the air.

  They applauded him, but Phoebe just rolled her eyes.

  “Impressive! We be fortunate to have a patron of such fearless talent.”

  “Yeah, my pa was a sharpshooter, and so’s my sister Margie,” boasted Micah. “She’s ranked Apex-Seven in the army, which ain’t half bad.”

  “Aha! So it be an inherited trait?” Mr. Pynch inquired.

  “Well, by the time I was old enough, Pa was too drunk to teach me. When he was around,” Micah said. He kicked hard at the ground to loosen up an ore rock to blast. “But Margie showed me a thing or two. So yeah, you could say it was inherited. She taught me that you never hold your breath. You gotta shoot in that one…still…second, just before you breathe in.”

  He tossed up the chunk, took a big breath, and then let it out. WHOOMF. He missed the rock by a long shot.

  “Guess you’re a slow learner,” Phoebe jabbed. Micah spun to face her.

  “An invaluable lesson, irregardless,” Mr. Pynch intercepted with a smile. “We be nearing Tendril Fen. Sally forth!”

  “S-s-sally, s-sa…sal…” Dollop squeezed his eyes shut and pounded the dent in his head with a fist. “Sal-l-l…SALATHYL!” he screamed with joy.

  They all looked at Dollop, not comprehending.

  “Th-that’s it! That’s who made the pit back in F-Fuselage. A s-s-salathyl!”

  Mr. Pynch chuckled. “There haven’t been salathyls near the Lateral Provinces in hundreds of phases. They be a rarified breed, only thriving in scant pockets beneath the Ephrian plains.”

  “That’s because the C-C-Covenant k-keeps them secret, um, so no one expects them to at-t-tack from underground! They pop up and KA-BOOM!”

  Dollop leaped into the air and flailed his arms. He looked at the others expectantly, but Mr. Pynch just wheezed out a laugh while the Marquis strobed his amusement. Micah saw this and joined in the laughter as well.

  “Ah, what a refreshingly credulous young mehkie,” the fat mehkan sighed. “Whatever will you come up with next?”

  “So you guys don’t buy that supersecret army junk either?” Micah asked.

  “Not j-j-junk! They have the lof-f-ftiest of functions!”

  “Oh, tales of this ilk be circulating since time immemorial,” Mr. Pynch explained. “Although I must admit our friend Dollop here be the first I ever encountered to unabashedly advocate for their veracity.”

  “Yeah, I figured they was made up.”

  “Indeed, folk today believe all manners of balderdash, so long as it brings hope. They cling to any fantasy rather than face the rather disagreeable truth that the world be cruel. Especially in bleak days such as these.”

  “N-n-no, they are real!” chimed Dollop, determined. “The Children of Ore helped Fuselage. Th-they are coming to s-s-save us all.”

  “Aw, come on, chum. Get real,” Micah said, digging into the rucksack on Dollop’s back. He withdrew the water jug and took a big slurp. “Them langyls was wiped out. Ain’t no kiddie stuff gonna make it better.”

  “Big words, Mr. Maddox,” Phoebe burned.

  “Was I talkin’ to you?”

  “You’re the one running around quoting a Televiewer show,” Phoebe scoffed. “Talk about kiddie stuff!”

  “Quit testin’ me, Plumm, or I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?”

  The Lodestar quivered in his white-knuckled fist. Mr. Pynch cleared his throat and laid a hand on Micah’s shoulder.

  “I pray it not be overly presumptuous to interject, but I believe I ascertainate the nature of yer conflagration.” The kids looked at him. “Miss Phoebe considers me associate and I to be unscrupulous sorts, unworthy of her confidence, and Master Micah contracted us against her own behest. Be that the approximate shape of things?”

  “Bingo,” Phoebe said.

  “Would it resolve matters if we retracted our services, refunded yer payment, and took our leave?”

  “NO!” Micah argued.

  “Absolutely!” Phoebe replied.

  “I see,” Mr. Pynch said, his nozzle twirling. “I confess, Miss Phoebe, yer reservations be not unfounded. Aside from the measurable assistance we have already provided, you have limited reason to trust us. But professionals we be, and we take pride in the satisfaction of our clientele. It would shame us gravely to terminate the contract when we be so close to your objective.”

  “How close?” Phoebe asked.

  “Less than a cycle. After we procure a vellikran in Tendril Fen, we’ll have a jaunt down the Ettalye, and then a brief ascent will take us into the legendary Vo-Pykaron Mountains.” Mr. Pynch gestured to the horizon, and through the coppery foliage Phoebe could see a distant army of jagged peaks.

  “Th-that’s right!” Dollop agreed. “The Ci-Ci-Cit…It-it-it’s just beyond the m-m-mountains. I—I—I remember now.”

  “Precisely. A shortcut will wind us through the mighty metropolis of Sen Ta’rine, and from thence, a mere click to your destination.”

  “See?” Micah sneered.

  “By fusion on the morrow, our collaboration be at an end.”

  She looked at Dollop’s excited face and Micah’s smirk.

  “What say you, Miss Phoebe? A truce till then?”

  She gave a reluctant nod.

  “Excellent.” Mr. Pynch beamed. “You won’t be disappointed. Me associate and I be impassioned to demonstrate our merits to you, dear heart.”

  Mr. Pynch strolled off, and the Marquis tipped his top hat with the handle of his umbrella before following him. Micah slung his Lodestar into a loop at his hip and threw the water jug hard enough at Phoebe to knock her back a step. With a lingering scowl, she drank from the jug, stuffed it back in the rucksack, and took the bag from Dollop to relieve him.

  “Th-thanks,” he chimed. “I-I’m pretty sure my function isn’t b-b-bag boy. Come on, we’re, um, almost to the river!”

  The word hit her like a punch in the gut. The astringent sting of vesper was pungent. Her legs grew unsteady as she stepped through the reddish vegetation. She could hear rapids, and her strength begin to ebb. Phoebe pushed past a waxy copper thicket and joined them at the edge of an embankment.

  “There she be,” Mr. Pynch declared proudly. “The River Ettalye. Tireless, benevolent life stream of this region.”

  The river gouged a quarter-mile-wide swath through the landscape, extending as far as the eye could see. Phoebe quavered, feeling sweaty and ill. But she refused to let Micah see—she would not give him the satisfaction.

  I can do this, she vowed.

  “Tendril Fen be just below,” Mr. Pynch said, scampering down the embankment beneath the weight of his sack. “Don’t fret about getting spotted here. It be a backward little hamlet, but all the same, better to let me do the oratizing.”

  There was a village sprawling across the shallows of the Ettalye. Nestled among hulking trees with wide canopies of drooping foliage, Phoebe could see squat dome structures floating on separate islands. It was the worst thing she could imagine—a town built right on top of a river. She wanted to turn and run, but she had to keep up with the others.

  They descended the embankment and strode beneath clinking, dangling branches as they entered Tendril Fen. Phoebe saw that the willowlike foliage was actually mossy chains of varied length and thickness, dappled green at the tips.

  The huts were built from sun-hardened ore and floated on islands of river reeds. They bore big, scooping gears that churned the vesper, and pungent smoke wisped from pointed chutes in their dome roofs. Thick viaducts made from woven chain branches connected the sloshing isles and anchored them to the trees. Buoys like stained yellow teeth bobbed in the vesper.

  Mr. Pynch proceeded into town, merrily ambling across one of the bridges. Phoebe trembled as she watched the others cross. She clenched h
er jaw and took a tentative step onto the chains. They dipped under her weight, and foamy orange fingers grasped at her boot. She fixed her eyes straight ahead and made her way as fast as she dared across the walkway.

  There was an unexpected splash, and Phoebe nearly toppled into the river. One of the buoys rose from the vesper—a dingy yellow-robed figure that was beanpole-thin and eerily tall. Identical creatures erupted nearby on stilt-like legs. They backed away, gawking with downturned mouths and frightened eyes. Mr. Pynch gritted a Rattletrap greeting, but they did not respond.

  “Just ignore ’em.” He laughed. “They be substantiating their stereotype. Most mehkans consider syllks more than a wee bit feebleminded. This-a-way!”

  Phoebe stumbled across the bridge and tried to collect herself. This appeared to be some sort of market. There was a syllk fishmonger with a rack of squidgy critters like knots of Bike chains, and carvers crafting waterwheels from sections of metal tree trunk. As soon as their dark, glistening eyes fixed on the kids, they abandoned their wares. All around them, villagers scurried away, their clinking robes flapping. Mr. Pynch perused the catch of the day and snatched up a string of them. He drew out a handful of shiny red, oval-shaped rings and left them in a neat stack for the fishmonger.

  “Fresh culps, anyone?” he rumbled. The other mehkans nodded eagerly.

  She felt eyes boring into her back and turned to see an uneasy crowd forming on the islands, groups of huddled syllks staring from beneath chain canopies. More emerged from squat huts, waddling out on legs folded beneath their billowing gowns. She could feel their anxious terror and hear their low gurgling whispers.

  Humans were not welcome here.

  Phoebe wanted to cry out and explain that despite her appearance, she wasn’t like the others. But it was useless. The syllks would never understand. She was the enemy, the same as any other bleeder invading their home.

  “Come on, Plumm. Hurry it up,” Micah chuckled back to her. “You’re lookin’ a little green, there.”

  Phoebe wanted to put him in his place, but she knew she couldn’t speak without betraying her panic. The penetrating stares of the villagers shredded her with guilt, which melted miserably into her fear of the churning tide.

  Mr. Pynch led them across another precarious bridge to a hut that bore a mess of waterwheel gears with chains running into the river like the threads of a loom. The vesper surrounding the island was sprouting with tufts of feathery, palmlike growths dappled in green corrosion. A squatting syllk began to retreat inside his hut, but Mr. Pynch hailed him in Rattletrap. The fat mehkan unstrapped the foil satchel, drew out a set of wicker doormats and a wooden salad bowl, and then offered his treasures to the syllk with a dirty golden smile.

  Phoebe focused on her breathing and studied the syllk to distract herself from the roiling river. His yellowed robes weren’t clothes at all, but a flowing membrane of chain-link skin that twitched and pulsed. Folded beneath this mesh curtain was a pair of arms covered in cinching, hook-like digits. His head was a jowly protuberance with a toothless frown, and his dark eyes squished and flickered behind layers of translucent lids. The syllk glanced at the humans and retreated farther into his hut. Mr. Pynch bombarded the nervous villager with florid Rattletrap, offering up more treasures from his sack.

  Everything began to fit into place in her mind. She remembered his words: a jaunt down the Ettalye. Mr. Pynch was trying to charter a boat.

  No sooner had this realization struck her than Mr. Pynch laughed. He thanked the villager profusely and resealed his bag with a twist of the valve.

  “One vellikran coming up!” he announced.

  “A velli-wha—” Micah began, but his voice was drowned out by a clattering mechanism. The syllk operated his waterwheel, manipulating chains by grabbing them with the clenching hooks along his arms. The vesper behind them bubbled and frothed, and one of the feathery green growths splayed open.

  The fronds were attached to stems that spread out wide.

  No, they were legs.

  A long thorax breached the vesper, speckled with greenish corrosion and encrusted in copper barnacles. Bundled antenna slashed about at its front, surrounded by a ring of milk-bubble eyes. The fronds of its three spindly legs stretched across the surface to keep it gracefully afloat. The vellikran shook, sloughing orangey oil from its rear, which was a skirt of the same palm material. Then its tail began to spin, chugging and fluttering like a propeller. The creature buzzed faster, tugging at its tether, raring to race across the river.

  “No…freakin’…way,” Micah muttered.

  Phoebe nearly collapsed. If there was anything in the world worse than a boat ride, this was it.

  The syllk strode into the vesper to secure a chain bridle on the vellikran’s body. He cranked a wheel on the harness, and four panels swung up from the steed’s side, coming together to form a tall bucket for passengers on its back.

  “All aboard!” trumpeted Mr. Pynch. He tottered across the jangling leash that led over the vesper and hopped into the bucket, tossing his big satchel in the back. The Marquis bounded up the chain next and settled near the front. He scrubbed at splatters on his pant legs with a handkerchief.

  “D-d-does it bite?” Dollop asked, as he climbed up. “H-hi there, girl. You’re a n-n-nice girl, aren’t you?” he cooed. The vellikran responded with an abrupt shake of its flanks. Dollop scampered aboard as fast as he could.

  “You look like crap,” Micah needled Phoebe. “’Bout to pass out again?”

  “Shut up and leave me alone.”

  “My pleasure,” Micah chuckled. “Ladies first.”

  She closed her eyes, blocking him and all those staring syllks from her mind. She tried to force out the sound of the crashing river too. A few steps, that was it. Just had to look ahead, not at the orange surge beneath her feet.

  Phoebe clenched her jaw and walked out onto the leash. The walkway wavered. Another step, then another.

  The chain jostled. Her feet slipped.

  The Ettalye grabbed her like a cold, oily hand. She thrashed and strained to keep her head up, but the vesper splashed in her mouth, driving her to greater panic. Immediately, the three mehkans were upon her, their faces full of concern as they hauled her, drenched, into the vellikran bucket.

  But not Micah.

  He was bent over in a fit of giggles. With another swift shake of the leash, he showed her what he had done. He then scrambled up the chain like a sewer rat, hopped into the bucket, and leered down at her.

  “THAT was for the rust slug…”

  His words faded as he saw her. Phoebe’s heart convulsed in her chest. Fright warped her features. Tears pushed at the corners of her eyes, threatening to fall. But she refused. She had vowed a long time ago that she would never cry again, that no one else was worth her tears. Especially not Micah.

  She crawled away from him and squeezed herself around Mr. Pynch’s huge satchel, putting it between her and the others. Fumbling for her hood and face mask, she yanked it down over her head to seal herself off from the world.

  There was an exchange of muted voices, the dull jangle of chains, and a whirring drone as the vellikran embarked. Phoebe hugged her knees and closed her eyes, focusing on the thing she wanted most of all.

  To forget.

  understand your concerns, but the terms are not negotiable,” Goodwin explained coolly. “My offer is exceedingly generous. Now, what is your decision?”

  The Chairman stood with five representatives of the elusive Board, directors sent from Foundry Central to supervise this meeting. Each of them wore an identical, unassuming gray suit and a tiny silver earpiece. Kaspar lingered by the door, his long shadow hanging over the proceedings. The conference room was wood-paneled and dark, lit only with a few soft pyramid lamps and a giant Televiewer screen that took up one wall.

  Projected on the screen was a man’s glowering f
ace. He was decked out in an embroidered uniform that clinked with military medals, and his slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair clung to his skull like a helmet. He leaned away to consult a league of solemn, black-wigged magisters beneath the giant yellow and indigo crosshatched flag of Trelaine.

  Goodwin was immobile, betraying none of the tension of the moment. But he could feel it weighing down the room.

  Premier Lavaraud turned to address him. “We accept.”

  The directors nodded in approval. Goodwin’s demeanor suggested that he had never doubted this result.

  “But know this,” Lavaraud continued. “Trelaine will not tolerate another betrayal from Meridian.”

  “I do not play politics, Premier. The Foundry always delivers on its promises.”

  “You have one week to produce this exceedingly generous offer of yours. Should you fail,” he said, planting his hands on his desk, “I will submit to the Quorum that we take immediate and drastic action.”

  “You have my word—I am committed to avoiding such measures.”

  “Let us hope so. And let us hope your word is better than that of your swine-suckling Saltern.”

  “The President’s remarks were unfortunate,” Goodwin admitted. “But I believe our agreement today represents movement toward a peaceful resolution. I am glad we could bypass the usual channels in order to address these urgent matters face-to-face.”

  “One week,” Lavaraud reiterated. “I assume you are satisfied with our intelligence regarding Dr. Plumm?”

  “I am. You have my thanks for the full disclosure.”

  The Premier gave a curt nod, and the image on the Televiewer flickered off. Kaspar faded up the light.

  “A promising first step,” Goodwin noted.

  “Promising? We call it a blasted victory,” laughed Director Malcolm, a leathery old gentleman with brilliantly white-capped teeth.

  “Our work is not yet done,” cautioned Goodwin. “But we are well on our way to assembling the first shipment. Once they receive the payment in full, we will see how the rest of the Quorum responds to Lavaraud’s move.”