The Wrinkled Crown

by Anne Nesbet

  “Why can’t I?” asked Linny, still furious about everything: the queasy-making ride in the coach, the weapons that did something terrible to the structure of the world, the sliver of a room where the magician had kept her a prisoner. Plus how he had dragged off poor Elias!

  Linny turned her back on the magician and the madji, all of them, and pounded on the door. The madji were shouting, too.

  “Just go away, all of you!” said Linny, not even turning around to look at them, her eyes focused on the door that her Aunt Mina, her mother’s sister, must must must be living behind. Oh, hurry!

  Sometimes a good stare can work like magic. That very moment the door flung itself open, and a crisp voice said, “Who can possibly be knocking at this door? Nobody ever comes here.”

  No, this could not be Linny’s Auntie Mina. The voice was not a woman’s voice, for one thing.

  “Umm, excuse me, hello!” said Linny, gasping a little for breath. “Is someone named Mina here, please? Can you tell me fast?”

  “What’s all the ruckus?” said the man, taking a step forward into the light. He was dressed in a black and gray work shirt and striped apron, and had a black cap pulled down over his head, and a silvery ponytail running down his back. “Why is that giant trying to break through my gate?”

  “Not a giant—he’s a magician,” said Linny, feeling more desperate every second. “Please, is Mina here?”

  “Magicians!” said the man, and he waved a narrow wrench he had in his hand in the general direction of the gates. “Aha! Of course! Hotheads! Know-nothings! Go away, you lot!”

  The magician roared in response, rattling the gates so hard with one huge fist that Linny thought surely the metal would crack and give way.

  Enough! Before her brain had had time to catch up with her limbs, she had already scooped up the Half-Cat and barged right under the man’s arm and into the dark hall beyond the door. And then compounded her crimes by kicking the big front door shut with her foot. (The shouting outside vanished, just like that. The door must be really very thick.)

  The Half-Cat made a shrill, offended spitting noise, scratched itself loose, and sprang to the ground, where it strutted back and forth for a moment, shrugging its fur back into place like a goose settling its feathers after a fight.

  Linny wasn’t any better. For a moment all she could do was lean forward, her hand on her knee, and gasp.

  But the man with the work apron wasn’t looking at her just at that moment. He had finally noticed the cat. It was the strangest thing: his whole face lit up.

  “My best of all inventions!” he said. “It’s my own lost kitty cat brought you here!”

  “Excuse me, but why’d the people out there call you the Tinkerman?” asked Linny. What she wanted to ask was, “Excuse me, are you dangerous?” But this seemed like a way to come at the question from a more tactful angle.

  “No respect for applied science anymore, is there? On the one side of the river, know-nothings, and on the other side, know-it-alls.”

  “Oh,” said Linny. She wasn’t sure whether this meant he was dangerous, or not at all dangerous. She looked around, just as a precaution, looking for other ways out.

  They were standing at one end of a long, long corridor, lit by what at first seemed an endless line of windows along the left-hand side. The windows could not be all the same, though: the light was different, farther down the hall. Brighter, perhaps. The windows closest to the door she had just come in by were curtained and shuttered. Hence the shadows here.

  Along the right-hand side of the hall were doorways and doors, so many of them that Linny could not count them all. A house that was also a bridge! She had never heard of such a thing. A house between places. Living in this house must be like always being on a journey.

  The man had shifted his gaze back from the Half-Cat by now. He stared at the lourka sack in Linny’s hands, and at her face, and then back at the bag again.

  “And what’s in that?” he said, pointing.

  “My lourka,” said Linny. “I made it.”

  “Did you?” he said, his eyes all at once waking up and focusing. “A lourka? So you’re here for the fair?”

  “No,” said Linny. “I never heard of the fair until I got to the city. I’m looking for someone named Mina. Does she live here?”

  “Oh, Mina!” said the man. “Mina hasn’t been here for years.”

  “But I thought she’d be here,” said Linny. Disappointment, thick as a blanket, settled over her. Now what was she supposed to do?

  “Did she go somewhere?” she said.

  “Her sister got herself lost in the wrinkled hills,” said the man. “Mina wanted to follow after.”

  “She went into the hills?”

  “She tried, all right, but the hillsickness stopped her. You can’t just waltz up into those hills, you know.”

  Linny certainly knew that. Her mother had been almost sick enough to die when she had first arrived in Lourka. But then she had gotten better.

  “But if Mina didn’t go into the hills, where’d she go?”

  “She got ambitious, that’s what. Started working on a cure for hillsickness—an antidote for magic. Then she could go looking for her sister, couldn’t she? But the Surveyors heard what she was up to, sure enough, and so they nabbed her.”

  Linny was having trouble following the story. Mina wasn’t here, though; that much was clear.

  “The Surveyors took her away? Because they didn’t want a cure for hillsickness?”

  The man barked with laughter.

  “The other way around! The other way around!” he said. “They want a cure for hillsickness so much they shiver to think of it! Imagine what they could do then—how they could finally map every nook and cranny of those hills and tame all the wild places. So when they heard what she was up to, of course they whisked her right off to a research hub at the plainest edge of the Plain Sea, where I suppose she’s been stirring and mixing ever since. And she’ll be kept there until they get what they want. And who are you, you young person with all these odd questions?”

  “My moth—I mean, Mina’s sister, Irika, told me Mina might know about medicines. My friend is sick. That’s why I came down here to the Plain. For medicines.”

  “Did you just say Irika?” he said. “So have you seen her, then, the child of my wife, my almost-daughter Irika? We lost Mina to the Plain, and Irika to the hills. There’s symmetry for you. Where are you from, that you’ve been chatting with my Irika?”

  “From the hills,” said Linny.

  “Oho!” said the man. “A girl, down from the hills, with a lourka over her shoulder! That’s a news item, right there. I’d better run a quick scan.”

  “What’s a scan?” said Linny.

  The man had already darted over to a chest of drawers against the wall and was rummaging around in them for something.

  Linny shrugged off her cloak. She was hot and sweaty after her mad dash up the embankment. Though then she remembered all the ribbons and buttons on the dress she was wearing, and she made her face very tough to compensate. Just because she was wearing ribbons didn’t mean anybody should take her for a fool.

  The Tinkerman swung around, brandishing a double-pronged wiry fork that he had dug out of that drawer.

  “Found it!” he said, and he darted forward and back, holding the wiry fork thing out toward Linny and watching its wires vibrate and hum, as if they were strings being played by some entirely invisible musician.

  “What’s that thing?” said Linny. “What are you doing?” Like most people since the dawn of time, she did not like having sharp things pointed at her.

  “Measuring the magic in you, as scientifically as I know how,” said the Tinkerman. “I’ll have you know this is wrinkled technology, which is something new. Something quite special. Cat’s whiskers and wires. And you, young lady, are registering very high on my meter here. Unbelievably, impossibly high. You’ve been far up in the hills, I’m guessing. Especially your rig
ht pocket. What’s that in your pocket, impossible girl? And where does it come from?”

  “Would you mind putting down that big fork?” said Linny, making an effort to stay polite. Of course she knew perfectly well what was in her pocket. Her hand quickly checked, and it was still there: Sayra’s present.

  “But where oh where have you been?” said the Tinkerman, putting the fork thing behind his back even as he leaned forward some. “And why oh why has an impossible creature like you come all the way here?”

  “I told you—I had to,” said Linny, feeling increasingly desperate. “For medicines. To save my friend who’s fading. She’s trapped in Away, and now Mina isn’t even here!”

  “Oho!” said the Tinkerman. “Around here they like to say Away doesn’t exist.”

  “Does so,” said Linny.

  “How do you know that, girl?”

  “Because I was there!” said Linny. “Well, almost. I’m pretty sure my right hand was there.”

  “The hand in your pocket,” said the Tinkerman shrewdly.

  Linny pulled that hand of hers out of the dress’s pocket and hid it instead behind her back.

  “And how did your right hand get into Away?” said the Tinkerman. “I’m very curious about that—I have a theory about the place, you see.”

  “I played a song,” said Linny.

  “A song!” said the man. “How delightful! Well! When they hear about these readings, they’ll have to admit how right I’ve been all along. Complexity, like water, flows downhill. Oh, don’t look so puzzled! Complexity’s just the scientific word for wrinkledness, for magic. Run some nice wires from Away down to the Plain, and it’ll power all our lamps eventually, that’s what I’ve been saying. All we need is for Mina to get that antidote finished. And she must be nearly done by now. Oh, they’ll just have to agree to send us, once they get a good look at you. Come this way!”

  It made her feel a little shy. Perhaps it was because of the things all around her here. This part of the house, she now saw, was full of things, the shelves absolutely crammed with dead animals, filled up with stuffing so they’d look real and staring at Linny through glinty glass eyes. There were even pickled creatures in jars, not to mention other things that weren’t creatures at all, neither pickled nor stuffed, but carved toys or dolls made of twigs or polished rocks.

  “Here we are,” said the Tinkerman, stopping short in front of a series of shelves and reaching up for his notebooks. “This, this, I think, and this—”

  When a crashing din interrupted, coming from much farther down the hall. A pounding on the walls, a shouting, a banging, a raucous metallic ringing.

  “What’s that?” said Linny, jumping around in alarm. Her mind had gone immediately to raging madji and enormous and unhappy magicians.

  The Tinkerman seemed as surprised as she was.

  “More visitors!” he said. “But nobody ever comes to that door, either!”

  It was true—the noise was coming from the other end of the house. The Tinkerman was already speeding down that long hall, with Linny behind him, because she didn’t know what else to do, and also because she did not much want to stay, all alone, at the end of the house that held those staring creatures in their jars. The Half-Cat padded along beside her, keeping its own counsel.

  “Coming, coming, coming,” muttered the Tinkerman under his breath.

  On the left-hand side of the hall, the line of windows gave Linny glimpses, through a light mist of water spraying from the tumbling river, of the larger bridge downstream, of the river widening out below, of the two cities spreading out on either bank: chaotic pointy roofs on the left, rectangular blocks of shiny rectangular buildings on the right. Under other circumstances, not involving her having to race along after this muttering old man toward absolutely horrible crashing sounds at the far end of the hall, Linny would have liked to stand at one of those windows for a while, just soaking up all that information about the world.

  The noises were getting louder and more alarming. There was a whirring, whining sound added to the mix now that made Linny want to cover her ears and hide. The Half-Cat yowled. The Tinkerman broke into an actual run. And suddenly the whole far end of the hall filled with smoke or dust, and a half-dozen men in gray came striding in through the cloud, while the Tinkerman ran forward, waving his fists and shouting in rage.

  Without thinking anything over, Linny ducked through the nearest doorway, into a room that was something between a kitchen and a workshop, all incomprehensible machines and white walls. Her eyes assessed it in one second, and she bit her lip. There was no place to hide.

  “What have you scoundrels done?” the Tinkerman was wailing, down at the far end of the hall. “I was on my way to open the door! We were coming to the blasted court ourselves.”

  “Noncompliance with search order,” said some gray voice while boots came stamping down the hall, one two, one two. “Harboring illegal persons. You think we don’t keep an eye on this house? Transport of aliens. Reckless disregard of immigration laws. That’s plenty of trouble, Arthur Vix. Smuggling dangerous impostors across the river! Better hand her over now.”

  That cat outside wouldn’t budge! And in any case, there really was, no matter how hard she looked, nowhere in this room to hide.

  Plan B, she thought to herself. Time for a backup plan. But there was no backup plan that she could see.

  Outside in the hall, the Tinkerman was almost babbling, he was so angry. He was sputtering about warrants and property damage, and the gray voice was saying, “Hand her over. Hand her over.”

  Sometimes if you cannot hide, the worst thing of all is being found. So it was not a plan, exactly: it was instinct—it was not wanting to be found—that made Linny step right back through that doorway now, to stand as tall as she could next to the hissing Half-Cat and face down that crowd of gray men in the hall.

  “There she is!” some of them shouted. But she held her ground and stared unblinking into their grayness, and for a magical moment they fell into the silence that means there’s been a rewriting of the story.

  For the length of that moment, at least, they had not found her.

  She had found them.

  16

  THE FIRST SURVEYOR

  Then they arrested her anyway.

  The gray uniforms came and surrounded her and pointed down the hall, to where they had made a dusty mess of things by knocking down the Tinkerman’s Angleside door.

  “You’d better run away,” whispered Linny to the Half-Cat, but it had parked itself on her toes and was practically throwing off sparks as it glared at the men in gray all around, so in the end she had to pick it right up. It was like trying to lift a very awkward, prickly, hissing sack filled with sand and molasses.

  The good thing was, having the angry Half-Cat in her arms helped disguise the awful shakiness that was spreading through all her limbs.

  It is hard to stand tall and pretend not to be afraid when your arms insist on trembling.

  The other distraction, as the gray men marched her down the hall and through the dusty hole in the wall that had once been a door, was the angry Tinkerman, who darted around the edges of the gray men, yelping and protesting. They were interfering with his research work! And stealing his inventions! When the regent heard about this, he would—

  “It’s the regent’s own orders,” said the gray man who did the talking. “Take it up with him.”

  And when the Tinkerman wouldn’t shut up, they arrested him, too.

  But by then they had emerged onto the (damaged) porch of the Bridge House, and for a moment Linny’s mind soared far away from all these arguing men and her trembling knees and the sagging weight of the Half-Cat. As she stepped across that threshold, the other half of the Broken City, the Angleside, spread itself out like a strange feast before her. Her first impression was of straight lines and fire. Every corner so sharp you could cut yourself on it, and the sunlight rioting between all those sheets of metal and large glass windows.
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  It was so very different from anything she had seen before. She loved the undulating, shifting hills, but these angles also satisfied some kind of longing in her that she hadn’t even known she had.

  And, anyway, it was such a relief to be out of that narrow hall, even if it had to be a crowd of Surveyors hustling her out. “You’re such a squirrel in a tree,” Sayra had said once. “Running from burrows. Climbing up, climbing up! Anything for a view!”

  Oh, Sayra!

  Linny sent some hold-on-I’m-still-coming thoughts fiercely in Sayra’s direction, shifting the Half-Cat in her arms.

  The Surveyors hurried her (and the Half-Cat and the still-protesting Tinkerman) into a strange wheeled cart, made mostly of metal, but lacking horses or donkeys or even goats to make it move. Apparently on this side of the river, the lack of horses and goats meant nothing. One of the gray men pushed a red button, and the cart started moving forward, entirely on its own. All the man had to do was shift a lever one way or the other, and the cart’s wheels turned, as obedient as could be.

  “I thought they didn’t have wrinkled things over here!” said Linny, forgetting herself.

  “Hush, hush,” said the Tinkerman. “There’s nothing wrinkled about it; that’s electricity it’s running on. Still scarcer than it should be, electricity, but you know what we’ve got planned about that.”

  And when Linny didn’t respond to the significant look he was giving her (because she had no clue what he was talking about), he leaned closer to her and added, “My theory! My plan! To tap into Away. Think! Think! We could convert all that dense antientropic complexity into so much power we could all have carts of our own—”

  It sounded slightly menacing to Linny. He spoke of Away as if it were an old maple tree you could bore into to catch drip-drops of sweet sap. She turned her head to the side and looked instead at where they were going.

  A broad street led away from the Bridge House and the river, past a long line of buildings that were almost too glaring in the sun. Some kind of thin stone had been used to pave walkways on either side of the street, but it wasn’t as though there was a lot of muck in the street itself, to warrant such caution about walkways. It was an eerily clean street, to tell the truth.