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

by Sedgwick, Jamie

  “You’re wrong about that,” he said slyly. “I didn’t invent it.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Hard to say. I bought it from a traveler.”

  “Then where did he get it?” I said, wondering where this was leading. Tinker had never told me this story. In fact, he’d never discussed the old light with me at all. In retrospect, that was probably due to my fear of the thing.

  “Come, back outside before this place collapses on our heads,” he said.

  Once we were back outside, he led me around the side of the house to the old waterwheel. There, he pulled a wrench out of his pack and began working on something I couldn’t see. While he worked, he finished his story:

  “The fellow who sold me this was a traveler. He returned to Riverfork every few years with a collection of unique goods. Mostly he had jewelry, exotic foods and fabrics, and other such things. He always stopped here first though, because he knew I’d pay any price if he had something good.”

  “And he sold you the light?”

  “Indeed. Sold me the light and everything attached to it. Except the switch, of course. I made that myself. He said he’d discovered some ancient city in the northern wastes, and that was where he found this…”

  Tinker loosened the last bolt and turned around, holding a circular mechanism the size of a schoolyard kick ball. A rotor of some sort protruded from one end and I presumed that was the means by which the water wheel had driven it. “That thing powers the light?” I said.

  He smiled. “So it does, after all these years. How long has it been? Twenty at least.”

  “It looks heavy. Are we bringing that back to camp with us?”

  He shook his head seriously. “I have to show you something,” he said. “I don’t know how else to do it, so… here, touch this wire.”

  I took the wire in hand and Tinker gave the wheel a quick spin. I yelped as a jolt of electricity shot up and down my arm. I jerked my hand away, giving him a dirty look. “That wasn’t nice,” I said, looking for a wound. Strangely, I couldn’t find any damage.

  “All apologies, sincerely. But you see why I had to show you?”

  I looked at him. “You wanted me to feel the pain?” Then it dawned on me. “You wanted to show me that it could be a weapon.”

  “Possibly,” he confirmed. “Or, something like.”

  “I don’t understand. How does it work?”

  “It’s a simple device, really, but I must admit it’s beyond our ability to replicate. I partially dismantled it once and what I found was a shaft of steel rod, with powerful magnets attached. The rod is placed just so, in order to let the magnets spin freely. What you just felt is what comes out of the wire when the magnets spin.”

  I stared at the thing, still not quite getting it. “Tinker, that thing is heavy. There’s no way we could carry it into battle and I’m fairly certain the Vangars won’t stand idle waiting for us to run up and touch them with a piece of wire.”

  “I know,” he said, tossing the thing on the ground. “That’s not my point. I just wanted to show you – I wanted you to see with your own eyes so you wouldn’t doubt me – that there are other powers out there. There are things we’ve never even imagined, things the Vangars wouldn’t even comprehend.”

  Suddenly it all came clear to me. “You may be right,” I said. “Maybe in this city you spoke of, the place where the traveler found that gadget. Maybe those people have more things like this. But even if they do, how will we find them? And how will we convince them to share it with us?”

  “We will send an ambassador,” Tinker said, staring at me. I knew exactly what he meant, of course. My father had been an ambassador between the humans and the Tal’mar. I had taken his place, delivering treaties and exposing the plot against King Ryshan. What Tinker wanted me to do was to go find this strange fabled city in the north and convince the people there to help us.

  “It’s not possible,” I said. “Even in summer, the mountains beyond the Borderlands are covered in snow. This place, this city in the ice… we don’t even know if it exists.”

  “But it’s worth a look, isn’t it?” Tinker said.

  I sighed. “Tinker, even if I thought the story was true I still wouldn’t have a way to get there. Do you really expect me to just roll up a blanket and go wandering into the frozen wastelands?”

  “No! No, of course not. You can take the plane!”

  “The plane?” I echoed.

  Tinker jogged across the yard to the old barn and pointed inside. I saw an old tarp there in the darkness. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It is our very first plane. Not nearly as nice as what we’ve built since, but unfortunately the Vangars destroyed all of those.” He pulled the canvas away, revealing the smooth wooden wings and the small, modified seat that had nearly been an afterthought. I could hardly believe we’d ever used such an unstable contraption.

  “Does it still fly?” I said, my eyes full of wonder.

  “I don’t see why not! It’s just the way we left it.”

  I stepped forward, touching the smooth, polished wood. I closed my eyes, feeling the individual parts of the machine. Sheltered in the barn as it was, the plane had been kept remarkably dry. I saw no indication of rot anywhere, and only a few minor spots of rust. From what I could tell, the spring engine was nearly as good as new, though it clearly hadn’t been wound in years.

  I opened my eyes and turned to face him. “This is what you want?” I said. “You want me to abandon my child and risk my life for these ungrateful people again?”

  “It’s not what I want,” he said. “You know that. It breaks my heart to think of you heading out alone like that. But you’re all we have left, Breeze. This is our last hope.”

  I looked at the plane and a feeling of dread came over me. It had been years since I’d gone off into the unknown. I had been young, naive, audacious. I had so little to lose then. In the time since, I had grown to appreciate the things that I had, and now I had more to lose than ever. Could I do it? Could I leave River and Tinker and the others and go chasing a dream?

  “How long do you think?” I said.

  “It’s hard to say. We’ve never explored that area because of the ice. There didn’t seem to be any point, and I knew I’d never convince anyone important of my theories. What I do know is that the man who sold me that light always traveled by foot. How far could he have gone into the wastelands like that? Days? A few weeks at most?”

  I considered that. “Perhaps I could fly north for a few hours and see what there is to see. I could always turn back…”

  “Exactly! Think of it, Breeze. We could know by nightfall if that story is true. All these years I’ve wondered, and in just a few hours you could find it!”

  “Or I could fly right by it,” I said cynically. “You’re talking about a lot of land, Tinker. The odds of me finding something up there –even in a city- are slim.”

  “Perhaps, but you are who you are,” he said, smiling. “No one is better suited for a mission like this than you.”

  “I’ll need flight gear,” I said. “Goggles, gloves, my jacket.”

  Tinker smiled, opening up his pack to show me the contents. “What did you think was in here?” he said. “I also included a small tool kit and a few meals.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “You certainly had all of this planned out,” I said. “I suppose Analyn was in on it, as well?”

  “I refuse to incriminate my queen in such intrigues,” he said deftly. I laughed.

  “All right then,” I said at last. “A few hours. Do you still have a steam engine to wind up the spring?”

  “Of course!”

  Tinker pulled an old steam engine out of the corner of the barn and started the fire under the boiler while I went over the plane. Once I was satisfied, we wound the spring engine up and pushed it to the back of the farmstead. I had never actually taken off from there before. We had always taken the planes down the hill and out onto the prairie for ou
r flights. Now that I was more experienced, I was sure I could get the plane in the air from where it was.

  I was right, of course.

  As I took to the sky, I saw of a vision of my daughter. I shook it away before tears came. I circled the valley, passing over Tinker’s head, and saw him waving. I waved back, reminding myself that I’d just be gone a few hours.

  At that moment, neither of us could have guessed that we’d never meet again.

  The End

  Thank you for reading Tinker’s War. For your free sample of the third installment in The Tinkerer’s Daughter series, Blood & Steam, keep reading.

  Or, click on the link below to go directly to Jamie’s Amazon page.

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  The Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre series

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  The Shadow Born Trilogy

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  Tinker’s War copyright 2012 by Jamie Sedgwick

  Cover art copyright 2012 by Timber Hill Press

  ISBN-10: 1478364831

  ISBN-13: 978-1478364832

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, places, or situations is purely coincidental.

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  The Tinkerer’s Daughter, Book 3:

  Blood & Steam

  Part One:

  (River Tinkerman)

  Prologue

  I never knew my mother. I was little more than a babe when she headed out into that vast frozen wilderness known as the Wastelands in her old spring-powered plane, searching for the fabled lost city in the ice. According to legends, the city is a strange mystical place filled with wild magic and incredible advanced technology. My mother believed she might find something there to help us, some superior weapon or science that might give us an edge in the war against the Vangars. She never returned.

  My mother left me in the care of an eccentric old inventor who raised me as his own. I loved him like a father. I called him Tinker, but I never knew his real name until after he died.

  I was born on the side of a mountain in the spring. It was the year the Vangars invaded, the year they killed our king, decimated our cities, and forced our people into slavery. The banks of the Stillwater River were swollen with the runoff from the melting snow in the Blackrock Mountains. Stories say the river ran red that year, that it overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, and all of the land from Anora south to the Badlands became like a river of blood.

  Before she left, my mother named me River. It was no mistake she chose that name, in that year. I’ve done my best to live up to it ever since.

  Chapter 1

  I emerged from the alley like a wraith, wings of smoke and shadow curling up behind me, the filtered moonlight splashing like blood against the rusted and decaying buildings that surrounded me. Down the hill and to the west I could see the flickering lights of Dockside’s shanties in the fog, and I heard the distant rumble of a steam locomotive rattling along the tracks towards Avenston with a load of freshly hewn timber and raw Blackrock steel.

  I watched its dark shadow pass through the south end of the city, moving deeper into Dockside. The train’s whistle sliced through the night, echoing back and forth through the maze of darkened streets. Somewhere in the distance, a child began to cry.

  A chill ran up and down my spine as I saw the red crescent moon peeking through the thick layer of smoke that blanketed the city, and the words of Tinker’s eerie warning echoed through the back of my mind. I shuddered, remembering the wild look in his eyes:

  “Don’t go out tonight, River, it’s a blood-moon. Dark forces are working against us!”

  It was terrifying and tragic all at once, seeing one of the greatest minds of our time given over to dementia and superstition like a common peasant. I had been watching Tinker’s mental health decline for several years. I could tell that the end wasn’t far. His health had been failing ever since the Vangars took him captive, before I was born. All these years later, he still wouldn’t talk about what they had done to him.

  In the last few months, Tinker had begun to lose his grip on reality. He saw things: ghosts and monsters, demons from his past. His occasional moments of lucidity were stretching further and further apart, and it was all I could do sometimes just to keep him sedate. I had soothed him with calm words and a warm cup of tea before leaving our Dockside shanty that night- the tea laced with a pinch of powdered duskwood, a mild sedative that would help him sleep through the night. I hated doing that to him; hated drugging the man who had raised me as his own child. I felt I owed him more than that, and yet I had nothing more to offer.

  What I did, distasteful as it may have been, was for his own protection. I knew what the Vangars would do to Tinker if he wandered out into the city during one of his fits. Even if they didn’t recognize him (which they probably wouldn’t) a crazy old man like Tinker would have been like a plaything to them. They would have toyed with him like cats torturing a field mouse, bringing death in the slowest and most painful ways that their twisted minds could conceive.

  No, it was better just to let the old man fade away. As long as I could keep him comfortable and well-fed, Tinker would be all right. Heartbreaking as it was, I could give Tinker nothing else. He had peace and comfort, and that was more than most.

  I drew my attention back to the street and my fingers twitched nervously for the familiar grip of my revolver, though I knew it was still resting on the bookshelf by the stairs at home. I’d had a feeling in my gut all day, and not just because of Tinker’s superstitious ranting. Something just seemed wrong. I should have taken a weapon with me, but I didn’t dare break the law by arming myself in public, even late at night and under the cover of darkness. There were too many suspicious eyes on the streets, too many turncoats ready to sell out to the Vangars for a better job or a few extra coins.

  The people of Astatia were weak, dependent on their overlords. They had lost their honor, had their senses numbed by fear and starvation, their pride destroyed by decades of slavery. Most of us had nothing left to live for except the instinct for survival itself. Few still had the courage to fight. Those of us who did knew that nothing would come of it but our own inevitable deaths. If nothing else, we had the desire to spill the Vangars’ blood. For some, that was enough to keep us going.

  I hurried into an adjacent alley, my heart pounding as I exposed myself to the weak light of the gas lamps. The sense of impending doom intensified. The blood moon, I thought, gazing up into the thick, black, polluted sky. It’s just superstition, that’s all.

  If only it were so easy to believe.

  A gust of ocean breeze swirled up the smoke and fog, and for a moment, I almost thought I could see the stars. Then the clouds and vapor closed back in, smothering the life out of the sky. I relaxed as the shadows enveloped me. The dark streets of Avenston were my environment, my home. The place had molded me. It was where I had learned to fight, to survive, and to kill. That last one was the most important of all. To survive in the streets of Avenston, one must always be prepared to kill.

  I slipped down the alley and cautiously made my way to the back door of a dilapidated old engine factory. Like most of the city, the tin-sided building was in a bad state of disrepair. Most of the windows had long since broken out and the siding was peeling away from the underlying structure in numerous places. It was the type of place that even the Vangars tried to avoid after dark, and that was what made it a perfect place for the sleepwalkers to meet.

  The hinges creaked noisily as I pulled the door open. I yanked on it and stepped inside, blinking at the darkness. “It’s me,” I said in a whisper.

  I heard a shuffling noise and someone pulled the cover away from a lantern. The dim light barely illuminated the faces that peered at me from the darkness. “Are you alone?” Kale said.

  I nodded, stepping closer
. Kale and the others had gathered around a table covered in a pile of gears and machinery parts. The skeletal frames of engine hoists and factory equipment rose up from the shadows behind them like obelisks. I glanced at their faces as I stepped up to the table, taking a mental roll call.

  All of the regular sleepwalkers were there. “Sleepwalkers” was what we called our little group of rebels, because we only dared meet late at night, under the cover of darkness. It gave us a way to refer to the group in code, so that if the Vangars or other outsiders overheard us talking, they wouldn’t know what we meant. We were the only resistance, a small handful of revolutionaries plotting and scheming against our overlords in the hope that some day we would throw off the yoke of oppression and drive the Vangars back to their homeland across the Frigid Sea.

  Hatch and Shel Woodcarver were there, as always. They were the oldest of the group. The couple had been married longer than most of us had been alive. In fact, they’d raised a child who would have been old enough to be my father if he hadn’t been killed when the Vangars invaded.

  Hatch was a wily old sailor with a scar on his cheek and a twinkle that came to his eyes every time he talked about killing Vangars. Shel was his perfect match, an age-wizened woman with long wavy gray hair who knew how to take care of herself. The others: Breck, the butcher with broad shoulders and a missing left arm, cut off at the elbow by Vangars in his youth. Tasha, the tailor from the upper crust Hillcrest District whose entire family had been slaughtered by the Vangars. She had since married and had three children, but still met with us in secret once a week to keep her dream of vengeance alive.

  There were a few others, but not many. Less than a dozen. Our number had been three times that once. Some of us had been killed over the years; others had simply given up hope. The sleepwalkers were dwindling fast.