by J. S. Morin
“...drained, my ass ... ” she muttered to herself, resolving to have words with the Treforge’s captain when she next ran into him.
She retrieved the pipe wrench and hung it from her tool belt. Reaching under the boiler, she was able to spin the bypass valve free by hand. It had a reassuring heft when she held it, but a quick inspection confirmed the reason for its removal: it was rusted solid.
“ ...oughtta make these out of brightsteel ... ”
Footsteps sounded from the decks above. It was well past time for a midday meal, and Madlin hoped that someone had thought to bring hers.
“Miss Madlin,” a voice called down, destroying hope of a delivered meal. Orris Fisher was not the sort of man to carry a meal, and she heard no second set of footsteps of someone who might. “Miss Madlin, is it safe to come down?”
“Yeah, Orris, it’s safe.” Madlin set her hands on her hips and waited.
The man who poked his head into the engine room did so with all the eagerness of a lion tamer. He smiled as he put his head in the beast’s mouth, but he wanted nothing more than credit for his bravery before beating a quick retreat.
“Your father has a surprise for you,” Orris said.
“My father hates surprises.”
“Well yes, but he’s not the one being surprised. You’re on welcome duty today.”
“What? Since when?” Madlin asked. “I never ... nah, I’ve got work to do. Just slough it off on someone else. I’ll meet the new twinborn over dinner and make nice.”
“This is a special case. The Darksmith brought in a new girl who’s about your age. She’s already waiting to meet you. Your father hoped you two might become friends.”
Madlin sighed and pushed her goggles farther up onto her head. There certainly were few enough women about.
“Fine, you win. I’m on welcome duty,” Madlin relented. She underhanded the greasy, wet bypass valve to Orris, who grimaced as he caught it against his expensive suit coat. “You can take that to smelter for me. I’d say to tell Captain Tucker not to leave port, but he wouldn’t get far with his bypass valve set to ambient air.” She smiled as her own jest, but Orris just gave a perplexed look and a wan smile in return. He was useless around steam.
Despite only being early autumn, the wind off the Katamic Sea made the walk down the gangplank brisk. Madlin’s coveralls were damp with sweat, and the weather on Tinker’s Island was as cold as anywhere humans chose to live on Tellurak. The docks teemed with activity around the newly arrived Darksmith. Passengers ducked and dodged around longshoremen who carried trunks, crates, and whatever other small parcels could be managed by hand. A pair of cranes lifted out larger cargoes: crates filled with ore, grains, and luxuries such as tea and wine. Guards with rifles patrolled the area, keeping foreigners berthed on the far side of the harbor from wandering too close to the steam ships.
The one fixed point in all the chaos was a lone woman with a pack slung over her shoulder. She was dressed for deep winter, in a fur-trimmed coat and hat. She stood with her back to Madlin, turning to look about but with her feet rooted in place.
“Hello!” Madlin called out to the newcomer. The girl spun around. She had smooth, dusky skin and brown eyes, shadowed beneath the hood of her coat. Madlin watched those eyes and saw curiosity. There were only two kinds of eyes: the kind that sought things out and the kind that just waited for things to happen. Madlin liked the girl already. “Welcome to Tinker’s Island. I’m Madlin Errol.”
The girl squinted and shook her head. “No Kheshi.”
“Sorry,” Madlin said, switching to Takalish. “Didn’t figure you for full-blooded Takalish. Took a guess you were from Mongrel Khesh, like me.”
“You’re right, except for geography,” the girl replied. “My mother was Takalish, but my father was from Khesh. I never met my father, and my mother died when I was young.”
“Ah,” Madlin replied. It was as polite a way of admitting to being a whore’s daughter that she could ever recall hearing. “My condolences.”
“It was a long time ago,” the girl reassured her, smiling with teeth as white as Madlin had seen, looking all the brighter against her dark skin. “My name is Jamile. Well, here it is, anyway, in the—”
“Hold off on that until we’re alone,” Madlin cautioned. She pulled a glove off and offered her hand to Jamile. The Takalish girl knew the custom and shook it. “Come on. Let me show you around.”
“This is unbelievable. It’s like someone built a bit of Korr right here in Tellurak,” Jamile marveled. Madlin had taken her to see the foundry. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The two girls stood on a catwalk overlooking the foundry floor. There were no lights, but the orange glow of molten metal kept the facility bright enough to work by. Workers below poured ladles of liquid bronze into a series of molds.
“Much as my father hates the way things are run on Korr, he’s not afraid to copy the stuff that works,” Madlin replied. “We make stuff here.”
“I know; I was watching the ships unloading ore at the docks. I can hardly believe the amount of it. It must be frightfully expensive to import all your iron.”
Madlin chuckled. “We only import a fraction of what we use. The reason we’re up here in winter’s root cellar is because Tinker’s Island isn’t really an island. It’s almost half the size of Takalia, if you count the parts buried under ice year round. There’s plenty of ore in the high mountains further north. We buy it up because there’s no such thing as enough raw ore, plus we get stuff like chromite on the cheap because no one else knows anything worthwhile to do with it.”
“I’m no metallurgist,” Jamile said, shrugging before turning her attention back to the foundry workers. “I don’t know anything worthwhile to do with it either.”
“It’s the secret to brightsteel, for a start,” Madlin replied. “So, what did you do before coming here?”
“I worked at the sanctuary where I was raised. I helped tend the younger children.”
“Not a lot of cause for that around here,” said Madlin. “We don’t get a lot of families up this way. Lots of workers just come here a few years, and take home enough coin to last them ‘til they’re old, or to set up with a business of their own.” Madlin glanced around. There was no one within hearing, considering the din from the foundry. “I guess we’re alone enough now. What is it you do on the other side?”
Jamile lifted her head. “I’m a nurse.”
Madlin gaped at her. “A human nurse? How’d you pull that trick?”
“Well, my patron is very progressive. He takes human patients, and it’s hard finding kuduks willing to treat them. He took me on because I knew my letters and learned quickly. He said he wanted to train a young nurse so she’d last longer.” Jamile shrugged. “I was lucky, I guess. It could have been anyone he picked, but Dr. Coalear picked me.”
“Wow. We’ve got ship captains and mill supervisors who are miners and slaves on the other side. A few have shirt-collar jobs, but not many. That’s a more impressive profession than just about anyone around here.”
“Captain Toller told me your father had worked in the patent office. That’s got to be a lot more impressive than being a nurse,” Jamile said. “Look at all the things he built.”
“My father’s an exception to a lot of things...”
Dinner at the Errol home was an informal event done in a grand fashion. The dining hall had a single large table, perfectly circular, that could comfortably seat fifty. The outermost ring was a table much like any other, with a polished oak finish that had a solid feel to it. There was a ring within it though, that was made of steel and set with teeth, and it rotated within the outer ring. This inner ring, which was set with a buffet, drifted its offerings past the diners throughout the meal. Inside the inner ring there was an open area with a pair of stairways down to the kitchen level. Servants came up and down to remove empty dishes and replace them with full ones.
The table was half full when Madlin brou
ght Jamile down to meet everyone. Extracted from the three layers of her outer garments, Jamile was a striking young woman. She was taller than Madlin, a fact which was accentuated by thick-heeled winter boots, and her hair was coiled in twin braids that looped around her head. A plain brown dress fell just below her boot tops and hugged tight around her neck. It fit her well despite being threadbare. Jamile carried herself with self-consciously perfect posture, which, combined with the outfit, made her look like a schoolteacher.
Jamile pulled up short before they reached the table.“Am I overdressed?”she whispered to Madlin.
“Naw. There’s no overdressed or underdressed around here,” Madlin assured her. “We had a Kheshi lord—the fancy southern Kheshi sort, mind you—for dinner once, all in his silks and whatnot. My father was working on setting up the munitions factory that day, and came to dinner straight from beneath a saltpeter hopper.”
The attendees at the dinner looked like they had mostly come straight from the factories and mines. Madlin had taken the time to change out of her sweat-stained coveralls before bringing Jamile down, but few others had taken the time for such niceties.
“Welcome to my home, Jamile,” an older man called out, standing from the table. “My name is Cadmus Errol.” Cadmus walked over to meet Jamile before she reached the table. He was no taller than Madlin and had receding white hair pulled back into a horsetail at the back of his neck. He looked her up and down through his gold-rimmed spectacles(which had a series of additional lenses attached by a hinge to one corner). It was an appraising look, not of a lecher, but of a horse-trader inspecting a new acquisition.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Jamile replied. She extended her hand tentatively. Cadmus took it and gave it a firm shake. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing wire-corded muscle with no hint of wasted flesh. Madlin could see he was gentle with her; despite his puny build, she had seen him make grown men wince with his grip.
“You’re welcome here as long as you like. Mind you though, manners run a bit different in these parts. I’m no ‘sir,’ nor is anyone else here. Folk have names and jobs, not titles. Call me either ‘tinker’ or Cadmus, if you please.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamile replied.
“We all have lots to learn; it’s one of the reasons we’re here. I don’t abide scholars, mind you. Just a good brain gone fallow. It takes use to make knowledge worthwhile. One bit that we don’t like teaching though, is Korrish speech; that’s reserved for our kind. From here out, all business this evening will be among twinborn, so it’s Korrish for us.” He spoke the latter in Korrish—the language of the other world—to emphasize his point.
“Oh. Yes, sir,” Jamile agreed in Korrish. Cadmus looked at her sidelong. “I mean, tinker.”
The three of them settled into chairs at the table, Madlin keeping Jamile at her side. Madlin took a bowl of vegetable stew, some brisket, and a pair of honeyed rolls. As she bit into one of the rolls, she watched to see what Jamile chose. The Takalish girl took a bowl of chicken broth and nothing else.
“That’s for dipping the hard breads in, you know. You can get some real food.”
“This ... this is just so much food. I may take more later, but this ought to fill me up,” said Jamile.
“Don’t worry, there’s plenty. It’s not like Korr where there’s some poor starving kid next tunnel over who could be eating it. No one goes hungry on Tinker’s Island. We eat like kuduk around here. One of our agents in Acardia found us a twinborn chef, knows all the best kuduk recipes—once you take out the coal ash and iron oxide, anyway.”
Jamile hunched low in her chair as she snuck a few slices of bacon as a platter went by. Madlin smirked, but hid her amusement from the newcomer.
“Well everyone,” Cadmus said, raising his voice over the numerous side conversations. “We have a new addition tonight. Jamile Farrule is one of ours. I’m not going to wear her out introducing you all now, but take some time in the next few days to make her acquaintance. She’s a nurse in Korr, as I understand it, which ought to make her a doctor around these parts.”
“What?” Jamile exclaimed. “I’m no doctor!”
“Maybe not on Korr,” Madlin said, “but around here, you probably know more than any one-worlded doctor.”
“Indeed,” Cadmus agreed. “I am just a lab assistant in Eversall Deep, slave to a daruu eccentric who tinkers with magical devices. Here, I oversee the largest private concern in Tellurak. Arvin there is a vent-sweep in Bessel Deep, but here he runs the steel mill. Haimes works the fields as a slave outside Yellowcorn Sky, but here he’s captain of the ship that brought you here. My daughter scrubs floors and dusts bookshelves at the university in Eversall Deep, but here she’s the best tinker I’ve got working for me.”
“See?” Madlin said. “You can be anything here. Don’t let Korr stop you. You think I just dust those books?” Madlin’s face spread in a grin.
Jamile looked around in wonderment. She ran her hands over the huge writing desk, and felt the heavy velvet drapes. She paused to look out the window as the sunset, lost somewhere over the western mountains, lit the sky and the Katamic Sea in pink hues.
“This is all mine?” Jamile asked.
“For now, yeah,” Madlin replied. “It’s a guest room. Plenty of twinborn spend a month or two here until they figure everything out and find a place of their own. You’re welcome as long as you like.”
“Oh Madlin, thank you. Thank you all so much. I’ve ... I’ve never had much, not on either side. It’s going to all be so jarring, falling asleep to see my little room back in Yerek Sky.”
“Yerek Sky?” Madlin asked. “I guess I never got around to asking where you were from, but I guess that makes sense. That’s way up north somewhere, isn’t it?”
Jamile nodded. “It’s in Braavland, which would be Takalia if it were in this world. Over there, my name is Sosha. Who else are you?”
“They call me—” Madlin said, stopping herself just short of saying ‘Chipmunk.’“They call me Rynn.”
Chapter 3
“The kuduk give nothing readily. Take what you need. Steal what you have to. Even if they catch you, they can’t take back knowledge.” -Cadmus Errol
If anyone were to have made a careful study of the halls of Klockwerk University in Eversall Deep, they would have found that the cleanest spots—places where the tiles were polished smooth as glass—were right outside the lecture hall entrances.
Behind closed mahogany doors, a sonorous kuduk voice droned on about the application of different materials to a spark circuit, accompanied at times by the squeaking taps and scratches of chalk on slate. In front of those same doors knelt a human girl with a bucket of sudsy water, worrying the floor with a stiff-bristle brush.
Even though it was early in the semester and the material was introductory, Rynn still picked out new snippets. Everyone knew steam frontways and back, but the spark was still new enough that discoveries were made each year, and this changed the lectures. The professors talked of theories years before anything came out of them in the wider world. Rynn’s induction coil gun was the first of its kind, but in the practical labs, she had seen toy versions of the solenoid coil that could toss cufflinks a foot in the air. From there it was just a matter of supplying larger values for the variables—amounts of spark the little table-top dynamos in the lab could never hope to generate.
Footsteps sounded from down the hall. Kneeling about all day in empty halls, Rynn had learned the walking cadence of all the staff and knew them by the sound of their shoes. Mrs. Bas-Klickten was heading her way. Rynn scurried across the floor, heedless of the wet, soapy mess. Her work dress was already soaked through at the knee. The bucket scraped the floor as she dragged it in tow. Rynn dunked the brush and began scrubbing a new spot with a fury. The footsteps drew nearer.
“Rynn, are you not done this hall yet?” Mrs. Bas-Klickten’s scolding voice called from out of sight. An elderly kuduk woman rounded the corridor. She was shorter than
Rynn, but twice as wide, with a broad nose and squinting eyes beneath a hedgerow of a brow. Her smoky hair was tied in a bun that looked sculpted to the top of her head. In her hand she carried a pair of spectacles fixed to the end of a wand. She raised them to her nose and peered down at Rynn.
“I am done, ma’am,” Rynn replied. She dropped the brush into her bucket with a splash. “Just giving a bit of extra scrubbing until the lecture’s out. Then I’ll be in to wash Professor Hurmbeck’s slate clean.”
“Fine, but be quick about it. There was a spill of ink in the library and you shan’t be leaving until it has been dealt with.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rynn replied. She kept her eyes at her feet, but glared bullets at them. Don’t you have a home to go to, hag? Mrs. Bas-Klickten always stayed late when her charges did.
A bell rang five times, the sound echoing through the air vents to carry throughout the university corridors. A moment later the door to the lecture hall opened and a stream of kuduk students filed out.
“We will be down in the lab this time tomorrow,” a voice hollered after them. The students gossiped amongst themselves, paying little heed to their professor and even less to Rynn.
When the line of students had passed, Mrs. Bas-Klickten clapped her hands twice. Rynn started at the sound.
“No dallying! Work won’t do itself.”
Rynn scooped up her bucket and slunk into the lecture hall before she drew further ire from the head of the university’s servant staff. Semi-circular tiers of tables rose like the seats of an arena, bringing focus to the desk and slate board at the center. Professor Hurmbeck was fussing over papers, wrangling them into piles neat enough to stuff into his briefcase. The slate was covered in chalked notes.
“Good evening, Rynn,” Professor Hurmbeck greeted her. He spared a glance from his tidying to watch as Rynn started scrubbing his notes away with a wet rag. She had to hold the rag left-handed, as the bruise on her right shoulder kept her from raising that arm above her head.