Tinker's War (The Tinkerer's Daughter Book 2)

by Sedgwick, Jamie

  “I know the way into the city,” I said. “Once we’re inside, the Vangars won’t pay any attention to us. They’ll think we’re captives like everyone else.”

  “All right,” she said. “You may take your team, but not the whole team. Brand is too old. I don’t want him sneaking around in the dark. And Kale is too young. I know he could manage it, but I won’t be the one to tell his family that I sent him into the heart of danger. It’s bad enough having him out scavenging with the rest of you.”

  “Fine,” I said. “The three of us, then. Me, Wil, and Jenna.”

  “Four,” Robie’s voice said behind me.

  I spun around to face him. It had been almost two weeks since the contest, and his injuries had healed quite nicely. He had been helping out around the camp, working with the mechanics and the carpenters. His natural vigor had returned, along with his strength.

  “I should’ve known you’d try to weasel into this trip,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him. I wasn’t about to let him know he had actually surprised me.

  “Good. Then you must have also figured that I wouldn’t let you leave me behind this time.”

  I gave him an exasperated eye roll and turned back to Analyn. “Well?” I said, placing my hands on my hips.

  She grinned. “It’s your team, Breeze. Your decision.” She wandered away from the circle and left the two of us standing there. With an exaggerated sigh, I turned back to Robie.

  “Well, it seems I have no choice then,” I mumbled.

  He stepped forward, putting his arms around me. “You never had a choice,” he whispered in my ear.

  I smiled. “Uh-huh. You just keep thinking that.”

  When I broke the news to my team in the mess tent, Brand didn’t have much to say. He was wise enough to know that this journey was better suited to younger adventurers. “In that case, I think I’ll catch up on some sleep,” he said, grinning. “Best of luck to the rest of you.”

  Kale on the other hand, was heartbroken. “This isn’t fair!” he said “You know I can do this!”

  “I know, as does Queen Analyn,” I said, reminding him of her authority. “However, it would not be right to risk your life unnecessarily.”

  “But the Vangars killed my mother! They killed my uncle.”

  “All the more reason to keep you here,” Analyn said, stepping into the tent. “This is not Breeze’s decision, Kale. Your father is waiting for you at the south end of camp. The two of you will be going hunting at dawn.” He sighed heavily and left the tent with his shoulders slumped.

  “I didn’t know his father was a hunter,” I said.

  “He’s not,” Analyn said with a wink. “But he knows how to use a bow, and frankly they need the family time anyway.”

  I nodded. Kale’s father was getting on in years. He was close to the same age that General Corsan had been, and that was a bit old for hiking up and down mountainsides. I suspected they would spend more time talking than stalking deer.

  “The rest of you, get ready,” I said to the others. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  They agreed, and headed off to fill their canteens and sharpen their weapons. It was still early evening. I didn’t want to rush my team, so I went for a walk in the woods. My thoughts had been much clearer since I sent Tam away and started my relationship with Robie, but that had left me with an entirely new set of worries. I knew that Robie would inevitably start pushing to join my team. He’d been sitting on the sidelines this long, but with his health back, my worry-free days were ending.

  I knew it would be a waste of time to refuse him because Robie had already shown he wouldn’t think twice about risking his neck to follow me. But if I did let him join the team, I would have to be very careful about making him accept my role as the team leader. It was a role that he’d been willing to accept in the past, but now our situation was different. In addition, I would have to go to great lengths to make sure the rest of the team didn’t feel I was giving Robie special treatment. That meant I might have to be harder on him than the rest of the team, and that wasn’t going to be good for the team or for our relationship.

  While walking, I found a nice stream about a mile north of the camp and I settled down to rest on a mossy old log. The tree branches creaked overhead and moaned in the wind, and the water bubbled along down the mountainside. I saw a few squirrels and birds, and even a fox. I listened to the voices of the trees, which is the way of the Tal’mar, but I didn’t hear much. They were enjoying the late summer weather, peacefully slumbering under the sun with their roots buried in the cool damp earth. They had no concern over matters of humans and Tal’mar. They didn’t know me in the way that the trees in Tinker’s valley had when I was a child, and speaking with them was no longer effortless for me. My senses seemed to be dulling with age and with lack of use, which left me frustrated, particularly because I knew it was mostly my fault. I had turned my back on that part of my life.

  At some point, the noise of the stream lulled me into a light sleep. I had a disturbing dream about fire and explosions, and I saw Tinker’s face over and over again. For some reason I couldn’t talk to him, I only saw his face. I woke with my heart racing and my gut churning. I knelt down and drank from the stream, my mind whirring with quickly fading images. I told myself that the dream meant nothing; that I’d dreamed of fire and explosions because of the sounds I’d heard that afternoon, and I had seen Tinker’s face because I was going to visit him. I put the disturbing images out of my mind and headed back to camp.

  We left just before sunset in the small steamwagon. We didn’t speak on the way down the mountain. I concentrated on driving and Jenna watched the woods around us for signs of trouble. Wil and Robie sat in the back, Wil sharpening his many knives and Robie reading some old book that he’d found in the mess tent about a horse thief and a court jester. Less than an hour later, it was full dark and we had abandoned the wagon to go racing across the plains on foot as fast as we dared in the poor light. I took the front, picking out a path with my sharp Tal’mar vision and the rest of my team followed, doing their best to match my pace and maintain their footing on the unstable terrain. Three hours after we’d left the shelter of the woods, we reached the outskirts of Anora.

  I guided the group into a small ravine at the edge of the swampland north of the city. I told the others to wait for me there. I took a few minutes to scout ahead, taking note of the Vangar patrols in the area and calculating the time of their circuits. When the path was clear, I summoned the others and we slipped across the river and made our way into the back alleys of Anora.

  I led the team on the same route I’d taken with Tam. Before we slipped into the crowd on the street, I instructed everyone to leave their weapons in the alley. “You can wear your knives as long as you can keep them covered,” I said, “but no bows or swords. Remember, the citizens here are captives. None of them are armed. Many of them don’t even have shoes, so don’t attract attention to yourselves. And if you see someone you recognize, don’t speak to them on the street. Go somewhere safe.”

  I slipped into the crowd first, making my way down Main Street towards the Flying Pig. Robie and others followed, carefully timing their entrance into the pedestrian traffic so that none of us would attract attention, and so that if one of us was caught, the rest wouldn’t be implicated. As before, the streets were crowded with thousands of captives. Hundreds of citizens had gathered in the town square to quietly play cards and board games, especially the board game Gather, which can last for hours.

  Gather is played on an octagonal board of multicolored tiles. The pieces are divided; one player takes the role of royalty while the other plays the role of the merchants. The rules differ depending on which side you choose, and the game involves a lot of time and strategy, which is probably why it’s mostly popular with the elderly. At the moment however, the game seemed to be popular with just about everyone, probably because there wasn’t much else to do.

  I reached the inn first and I
rushed upstairs to knock on Tinker’s door. He answered immediately and quietly invited me in. He was alone this time.

  “You came early,” he said in a low voice. “I wasn’t expecting you for two more days.” There was a knock at the door and his eyes widened.

  “I’m not alone,” I said. “There are four of us.” Over the next ten minutes, the others arrived quietly, unnoticed by the Vangars patrolling the street outside. Tinker filled his percolator with fresh water and coffee grounds, and set it on top of his small wood-burning stove.

  “I’m sorry about the timing,” I said. “A few things haven’t gone according to plan. When we heard the explosions today, we didn’t know what to do.”

  “They’re mining,” Tinker said.

  “Mining? For what?”

  “Steel,” he said, grinning slightly.

  “Steel?” I echoed, confounded by his statement. “Why would they mine steel so close to Anora? Don’t they know the ore here is worthless?”

  “No they don’t,” he said, winking. “And let’s hope they don’t find out for a while yet.”

  I laughed aloud. “Tinker, you deceived them?”

  “No, not in so many words. I simply didn’t give them all of the relevant information.”

  “But why?” The percolator started humming on the stove, the water inside hopping up into the cap with the steady beat of a drum.

  “That’s the reason they’ve come,” Tinker said. “The Vangars want our steel. Not the stuff they’re mining now, mind you. They want the good Blackrock stuff, but they don’t know where to find it yet.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “We’ve been inspecting their technology. The combustion engines they use are a technological wonder. They smoke and stink a lot, but they’re quite powerful.”

  “Indeed. The Vangars discovered the black oil nearly a century ago. Since then, they’ve used it to power their entire society. They’ve built machines that we couldn’t even imagine. Machines that could level a mountain. But now, after a century of building cities and weapons and dragon ships, their oil is running out. Their wells have begun to dry up, and they have been unable to find a suitable replacement.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering what my grandmother had told me about the missing Tal’mar ships. “Tinker, the Tal’mar sent ships to the west, exploring,” I said. “One of them never came back.”

  “Yes, I know. They equipped each ship with a small scouting plane, which the Vangars discovered when they captured the Tal’mar explorers. That’s how they learned about our technology, and that’s why they’ve come for our steel.”

  “How did you learn about all of this?” I said. “Have you learned their language?”

  “Well enough,” he said. “I still can’t speak it right. The Vangar tongue neglects several consonants we use often, and they have a few we don’t. But then, I’m an old man and language is not my strength. Some of the others have excelled. I have an updated journal for you…” He went into the kitchen and pulled a new journal from a shelf. “This will provide you with the basics, and a small dictionary of common words and phrases.”

  I accepted it, flipping through the pages. Tinker had done a wonderful job of cross-referencing the Vangar language with our own, even providing several pages of notes on pronunciation. “It’s no substitute for hearing them speak,” he said, retrieving the percolator from the stove. He set out five cups on the table and filled them. “You can read about the pronunciation and learn the words, but you’ll never get it right until you spend time with them.”

  “Not likely,” Robie said. “If I spend any time with the Vangars, it’ll be looking down on their corpses.”

  Tinker nodded. “Understood, but don’t act hastily. We mustn’t win a battle today only to lose the war tomorrow.”

  “Do you have a plan then?” I said. “Have you learned enough about the Vangars yet?”

  “I do,” he said. “I had hoped to discuss this with the others in our meeting the day after tomorrow. Since you’re here now, I suppose I’ll have to have this conversation twice.”

  “Then what do we do?” said Robie. “How do we beat them?”

  Tinker took a sip of his coffee and savored it for a moment. “Start by enjoying the small luxuries,” he said, raising his cup. “Because if we fail, we won’t even have this.”

  We were silent for a moment, waiting impatiently. Tinker took another drink, smiling. “Yes, that warms an old man to the soul.” He looked at our faces for a moment, and it seemed he’d forgotten we were there. I wondered if the stress was getting to him, or if it was just old age.

  “Rumors were flying last week,” he said at last, staring into his cup. “Rumors about a dragon ship overtaken by insurgents, and a hundred Vangar warriors slain, their bodies left to rot on the plains. They say the ship was burned.”

  I grimaced, shooting a Robie a glare. “I’m sorry Tinker. We didn’t have much choice. It wasn’t all that bad, though. The ship was full of captives, and it wasn’t guarded that heavily.”

  “I see. At any rate, that’s not the way I would have planned it, but your attack proved surprisingly valuable. It taught me a lot about the Vangars.”

  “How do you mean?” said Robie.

  “The Vangars have never faced an enemy who has turned on them. They have invaded half a dozen kingdoms on their own continent, and met very little resistance. As you know, they are fierce and fearless warriors. But as it turns out, that little attack on the dragon ship gave them something to think about. The Vangars have no idea how many of you there are. For all they know, their might be thousands of refugees up in those mountains.”

  “That’s silly,” I said. “We have-”

  “No!” he said, cutting me off. “Don’t tell me how many, or where they are. Don’t tell me anything about the resistance. I must not know these things, you understand. I am in a very dangerous position now.”

  “Tinker,” I said, my voice tinged with worry. “Come back with us. If things have gotten that dangerous, then leave with us tonight.” The others nodded their agreement.

  “No. You already know I won’t do this. I won’t leave the others here to take my punishment, and I won’t abandon the fight before we’ve even drawn blood.”

  I stared at him sadly, wondering if the poor old man was losing his mind. “You’ll get yourself killed if you stay here, Tinker,” I said. Tears rose to my eyes as I spoke.

  He stared at me, his face full of sadness. “Breeze, I won’t die,” he said. “I’ve never said this before, but I know you need to hear it. You’re my daughter. Ever since your father left you on my doorstep all those years ago, I’ve raised you and cared for you as if you were my own blood. No one else in this world means to me what you do.”

  “Then come back with us,” I persisted.

  “No, Breeze. It’s because of you that I must stay. Don’t you see what will happen to our world if I don’t? Don’t you see what will become of us if we give up the fight?”

  I stared into my cup, watching the steam rising off that dark liquid. I felt the others watching me, and I tried to fight back my tears so that they wouldn’t lose respect for me. I closed my eyes and felt warmth on my cheeks.

  “Breeze, I won’t let them destroy everything you fought for. I will see the Vangars destroyed.”

  “How?” Robie said. “If you’re so sure we can beat them, then tell us your plan.”

  Tinker settled back in his chair. “We know two things about the Vangars: We know they came here for our steel, and they won’t stop until they have it all. By then, we’ll all be dead or assimilated into their culture, and they’ll move on to destroy the next place. But as strong as they are, they also have a weakness. They are overconfident, and they’re beginning to see that. You didn’t see the Vangars’ faces as they spoke of the dragon ship you destroyed. They were worried, Breeze. You are a faceless enemy and they fear that. They’ve never faced an enemy that fought back.”

  “Then we fight!” R
obie said.

  “Yes, but not like you’re thinking. I don’t care how many of you are up in the mountains, you can’t face the Vangars head on. For now, we must keep them weak. Continue taking out their patrols, even taking the dragon ships if you can. Above all else, slow down their mining operations.”

  “Above all else?” Robie said. “Why is that so important?”

  “The Vangars have a limited supply of fuel. Soon they will begin converting to new forms of energy. The longer we stall them, the better off we are. Eventually, they will smelt the iron ore from the plains and discover that the steel they’ve worked so hard for is useless to them. Then they will move to the mountains. Before that happens, we must wear them down. We must use up their fuel supplies and weaken their defenses.”

  “How will we do that?” I said. “Where should we start?”

  “I don’t want to know,” Tinker said. “I’ve given you the information you need to start. Take this information to Analyn and start planning. During this time, I must have no contact with you. Eventually, the Vangars will get suspicious, and they will begin to question us. The less I know, the safer I will be.”

  “How will we know when to strike?” Jenna said, speaking up for the first time. “I understand the need for secrecy and the reason you must remain ignorant of our plans, but if we don’t coordinate, we won’t succeed. At some point, we must communicate.”

  “Assuming things go according to plan, they will make little progress over the next few weeks. Come back in one month, on the new moon, and I will update you. But from now on, don’t come to my door unless you see a candle in the window. If you don’t see it, then it won’t be safe.”

  “What should we do in that case?” I said.

  “Search for me in the streets. If you don’t find me, find the others.”

  I hated hearing Tinker talk like that, but the sensible part of me knew that he was right. His best chance of survival was in ignorance. If the Vangar truly believed he wasn’t a threat, then perhaps he would be safe. Of course, I would have preferred to simply bring him back to the camp with us, but Tinker wouldn’t hear of it. When his mind was made up, he could be as stubborn as a mule. I suppose that’s where I learned it, though I don’t think it’s a uniquely human trait. Some of the Tal’mar are just as bad.