by J. S. Morin
He pushed his way through the throng and arrived at the bar. Unlike the bar at Quindley’s, the Tap’s was made of real wood, rubbed raw and smooth by years of use. “Where can I find Rynn?” he asked when he had the bartender’s attention.
“Never heard of her,” was the reply. Erefan knew enough to realize that that meant the man knew, but wasn’t about to tell.
“I’m her father. One of Pious Henlon’s acolytes sent me over here. Let’s try that again: where’s Rynn?”
The bartender shrugged. “Can’t help you, friend.”
Erefan wanted to hold a pistol to the man’s head and demand an answer. But getting access to one was beyond his current circumstances. Given a week unchained, perhaps he could manage. Chased by ticks of the clock, he was at a loss.
The tap room was filling with patrons of all description—save that all were human. Erefan looked around, and saw what his people were: worn down, weary, just struggling to get by. He decided to appeal to the finest ideals of the human condition.
“I have twenty tenar for whoever can tell me where my daughter is,” he shouted over the growing din. He waved a bank note in the air from the allowance Kezudkan had given him. “Her name is Rynn.”
There was a tug at Erefan’s sleeve. A gangly lad leaned close and whispered, “Put that away. Come with me.”
Erefan stuffed the note in his pocket and followed the lad through the crowd. They arrived at a table in the back of the taproom. The lad slipped into a seat across from a woman of middle years, with the sort of plump build that comes from raising a brood of children and having enough to eat. He guessed she worked as a cook, scullery maid, or some other profession near food, since few other freemen appeared so well fed.
“You oughtta know better than that, mister,” the lad told him. “Wavin’ coin around like that with a collar on. Folks are liable to think your owner’s out to nab someone.”
“Please sit down,” the well-fed woman said. “That is, if you’re really Rynn’s pa.”
“I am,” Erefan confirmed. He pulled over a chair from a nearby table and set it next to the booth, sitting so that one of them was to either hand of him. “How do you know her?”
“Chipmunk’s one of ours, so you know,” the lad said. “You should be proud of her, fightin’ back.”
“One of yours? Who are you?”
“I’m Buckets, this is Tabby,” the lad who called himself Buckets informed him.
“The boy I can see,” Erefan said. “But you? What’s a grown woman doing mucking about with rebels and silly names? And where is Rynn?”
“She skipped town,” Tabby said. “And the name’s Tabita. We try to keep to civic names out in public, so no one’s a witness if the knockers come ‘round. Jomko just likes his human name better.”
“Fine, she left Eversall. Where is she now?”
“Dunno,” Buckets replied. “They knocked off a pawn and loan that put the clamps to our kind. Guess it got messy cuz the papers were all up with flashpops of dead knockers the next day. They free-thundered after that.”
Erefan spent too much of his time with Kezudkan and his impeccable diction. He tried to sort the lad’s words into cogent sentences. “They stowed away on a thunderail?” he asked. Buckets nodded. “Where did they go?”
“Can’t help you on that one,” Tabita replied. “Pick’s good at his work. He arranged it so they could disappear for a while. Might be halfway to Braavland by now for all I know. I never saw the coin, but I think they pulled in a fair bundle, from the way they were talking.”
“Who was she with? I understand Pious Henlon was with her, who else?”
Buckets cocked his head. “Who?”
“He means Rascal,” Tabita told him. “Mister, I don’t doubt you’re Rynn’s pa, or that you’re worried about her. I just can’t go blowing my whistle at every stop. Them boys that got away with Rynn know their trade. They’ve got themselves locked down, all bolts tight. I couldn’t help you if I wanted to. They done me that as a favor. She’s gonna be fine. Just wait, she’ll head on home sooner or later, once things roll to a halt.”
“How’d you let a bookish girl like Rynn get involved in this mess? Haven’t you got more sense than that?”
“Bookish?” Tabita scoffed. “I know the girl can read, but she’s got more grease on her hands than any mechanic I know. Smart with spark too, and knows them runes.”
Erefan’s brow furrowed. “Runes? Since when has she mucked about with the daruu arts?”
Buckets shook his head. “Dunno, but that gun she made with ’em was silk trousers. Shoved a trolley clear off the rails. I was there, I saw the whole thing.”
“Maybe your girl ain’t the girl you think, mister,” Tabita said.
“She’s safe though, you’re sure?” Erefan asked.
“Yeah,” Buckets replied. “Only No-Boots got himself caught and hanged.”
Erefan tossed about in bed, trying to get comfortable on an uncomfortable mattress. Back at Kezudkan’s estate he may have been a slave, but he was provided with quality furnishings. His room was just large enough for a bed and a half-width wardrobe, but the mattress was stuffed with goose down, not hay, and the linens were made of actual linen. The blanket of the boarding house’s one-night room was woolen, and still smelled of sheep.
It was earlier than usual for him to sleep; circumstances demanded an early slumber. Cadmus was already waking, he could tell, but he had never mastered keeping awake and aware in two worlds at once. He needed to get the word to his twinborn. He had men and women from Grangia to The Turmon Republic. Someone was going to have to find Rynn and get her to one of the gathering points.
Chapter 19
“You can’t be in charge everywhere you go. Just keep command of the space inside your head.” -Cadmus Errol
The thunderail ambled across the western plains, its slow rocking strangely lulling. Rynn stared past Naul out the window, watching the barren, snow-kissed fields pass by. It was odd to see the same landscape Madlin and Jamile were crossing in Tellurak, where those same fields were thick pines. The uniform grey of the skies above made it seem like a ghost of that more verdant world.
Rynn had never stopped to consider how much she talked until she was denied the ability. Now, she could hardly keep from noticing every time she caught herself tempted to butt in on the kuduks’ conversation. They had taken her muzzle off for a breakfast of eggs and pork jerky, and she had managed to keep quiet on her own thereafter.
Not that she wanted the muzzle again, but it bothered her to no end that she had been cowed so easily. She was in no danger of becoming a “good slave,” at least by Delliah’s measure, but she could see that road ahead of her. She could see that road sitting next to her, in fact. Naul was everything she’d always hated in slaves. He had given up hope of freedom and settled into a vapid contentment, free from responsibility. He was unfailingly polite when addressing Delliah and Ordy—even when speaking to Rynn—as if the slightest slip in his obsequious tone would bring reprisal.
Her eyes drooped as the monotony of the landscape and the motion of the train conspired to drag her off to slumber. Between the chains and muzzle, she hadn’t found any comfort for proper sleep overnight. Her glimpses of Madlin’s world had been fragmented and brief. She was able to give Jamile an update of her location, but it would do neither of them much good until her captors stopped somewhere and Rynn could find out the name of the place. Until then, Jamile could do nothing but try to send out a general call for aid, contingent on narrowing down her location.
Jamile’s behavior had turned strange. She offered comfort, but wanted little to do with talking about Rynn’s predicament or what she was doing about it. She just kept assuring Madlin that she was doing everything she could, then she would take Madlin in her arms and hold her. It brought back memories of their mother’s arms driving away childhood fears. She hadn’t the luxury of such comforts since she was little.
Lunch came and went, delivered through a h
atch in the compartment door. Rynn ate her fill and more, with Delliah’s encouragement. The bread was bland and stale, but the carrots tasted fresh. Breakfast hadn’t purged the taste of leather from her mouth, but by the time she finished eating lunch, all she could taste were the bits of carrot stuck in her teeth. She hadn’t said a word all morning.
Delliah pulled a folio from among her luggage and leafed through the papers it held. Rynn glanced sidelong at her, but looked back out the window before she was caught snooping. The view had scarcely changed.
“Rynn, look here,” Delliah ordered.
Rynn turned and saw to her surprise that Delliah had her sketches. She couldn’t make out much detail from across the compartment, even squinting, but she recognized the style of them as her own. The count was tough to estimate, but the pile looked thick enough to contain everything from her workshop.
“Do you recognize them?”
Rynn nodded.
Delliah rolled her eyes. “Your silence this morning has been a welcome change, but you are to speak when spoken to.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Now, do you know what these sketches are?”
“I just said I did ... mistress,” Rynn replied, softening her tone at the last, realizing she had just snapped at the last kuduk she should be angering at the moment.
“You drew all these yourself?”
Rynn craned her neck, trying to get an angle to see the papers. “Can’t say for sure from here, but if that’s what the knockers pinched from my apartment, yes.”
Delliah pointed a finger to Ordy and flicked it over toward Rynn. Rynn pushed herself back against her seat as Ordy stood and stepped across to her side of the compartment.
“I’m sorry. Mistress. I meant to add that. I—”
“Just shut up, teaspoon,” Ordy said. He reached to his belt and unspooled the key with a whirring of a freewheeling ratchet. With two twist-and-clicks, her wrists were free. The shackles hung from the loop at her collar like macabre jewelry, but she didn’t care as she rubbed the circulation back into her hands.
Ordy reached back, took the papers from Delliah, and handed them to Rynn. She tried to bend down to read them, but choked herself on her collar. She lifted the documents up one at a time to eye level.
Delliah gave her a moment to peruse them. It was her work. She had kept everything she’d sketched in that cramped little workshop. She had written off ever seeing any of those drawings again. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at a sketch from three years ago, when she’d first started the workshop: a diagram showing the workings of one of her father’s clock towers. It had been after Madlin took a trip with her father to Takalia to construct one of his clocks in Riyani.
“Well?” Delliah asked once Rynn had gone through the whole stack. “Is that all of them?”
“No,” Rynn replied, cursing herself for not having thought to lie. “The rune diagrams are all missing.”
“That miserable spark-botherer!” Delliah snarled. “For the price I paid, he was supposed to hand over everything from your little hovel.”
“Maybe the offies didn’t give him everything,” Ordy suggested. “Hurmbeck wasn’t the one who raided the girl’s rat-trap.”
“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I could carve them from memory, Rynn didn’t say. It was the sort of comment she had spent the last night practicing, where she kept from moving her lips or breathing out while making it. She sat at attention, as still as she could in the shifting thunderail compartment, trying to keep her collar from shifting along with it. She faced Delliah, but kept her gaze toward the windows.
Naul leaned close to her and spoke softly in her ear. “Don’t cry. Everything’s fine. Wanna take a few puffs? It files the edge off your nerves.” He held his lit pipe stem-first toward her.
Rynn was tempted to accept, but Delliah intervened. “No! Keep that filth away from her.”
“Sorry, mistress.” Naul hung his head and withdrew his offer. Stuffing the pipe back between his lips, he took a puff.
“That stuff addles the wits. Fine for you, but I still have some hope for her.”
I like the sound of that. If you need my brain, I can bargain. She hadn’t held much leverage thus far in her relationship with Delliah, but cooperation was trickier to force than obedience.
Delliah dug in her luggage once more and pulled out a curious pair of goggles. In shape they seemed common enough, lenses set into brightsteel frames, held together on a brown leather strap that looked soft from the way it flopped in the kuduk woman’s hand. The oddity was the color; the lenses were amber.
“Tell me, Rynn, what do you make of these?” Delliah tossed the goggles to Rynn, who fumbled with the sketches she held but managed to catch them. “Could you make something like it?”
Rynn studied the goggles a moment, shaking her head. “No,” she muttered, not directing her answer to anyone in particular. “I don’t have the equipment to grind the optics.” She flipped the goggles over and noticed that the insides of the frames bore arcane markings. “These are runed!”
“Yes, they are. Can you tell by the runes what they do?”
Rynn looked once more, squinting hard to discern the tiny runes despite the lighting in the compartment. She shook her head again. “I can hardly make them out, but the ones I could, I didn’t recognize.”
“How did you make those, then?” Delliah asked, pointing to the sketches.
Rynn pursed her lips, trying to make it look as if she didn’t know how to put her thoughts into words, but instead wondering if she ought to brag or downplay her knowledge. “I learned piecemeal, from books in the university library. I knew what I wanted to do, so I searched until I found the books that told me how. I’m self-taught, but I don’t have a university degree in runes.”
Delliah snorted. “I’m just as glad they don’t teach courses in it. Less competition for us. If you could just teach any old forty-year-old university student how to power runes, my business would stall out and die.”
Wouldn’t that just be a shame. Rynn managed to keep from smiling, just as she kept herself from airing her thoughts aloud. There were card games that went on in the pubs late at night, sometimes in back rooms, often right out in the taproom. They were games of skill and chance, with nerve more valuable than calculating odds—though the latter helped some. Rynn had never been any good. Pick always said it was because her thoughts read too clearly on her face. She suspected now that coin had not been sufficient motivation to keep her expression flat.
“At any rate, those runes are inert. Power them.”
Rynn took hold of the goggles. She felt along the inside the lens frames with her thumbs, and let the power flow into runes. The runes were simple, weak, unresisting. They were nowhere near the challenge that empowering her spark dynamo had been. A moment later, she handed the activated goggles to Ordy.
“Giving up already?” he asked. He tried to give them back, but Rynn pushed them into his hands.
“They’re done.”
“What? Give them here,” Delliah said. She took the goggles from Ordy and turned them over in her hands. Removing her spectacles, she slipped the goggles over her head. “Draw the curtains.”
Ordy complied, pulling the heavy black cloth across the compartment windows, plunging them into darkness lit only where the curtain’s irregular folds allowed light to sneak beneath.
“They work. How did you do that so quickly?” Delliah asked. Ordy opened the curtains as Delliah removed the goggles. “It takes Naul half an hour.”
Rynn shrugged. “I can’t say, mistress.”
“Ordy, get those shackles off her.” The heavyset kuduk pulled the key from his belt once more, and removed the lock that kept the shackles dangling loose at her neck. “Rynn, you may be skeptical now, but you’ve got a good life ahead of you. The riches I’ll make will improve your lot as well. You’ll eat your fill, dress like a queen among humans, have men whenever you require them. In
time, we can get you certified like Naul. It’ll be like getting a waterlogged airship aloft, due to your past, but I’ll make it happen. No more shackles, no more muzzle or leash.”
“Thank you, mistress.”
“In the meantime, see to the runes on that collar of yours. There should be plenty of time left, but you can never be too safe.”
“Mistress?”
“I showed you the spikes before we put it on you. Those runes run out, they’ll be back. Damage the runes—say by trying to remove the collar—and they’ll be back. Thin a neck as you’ve got, those spikes will touch. There’s no getting that one off while your head and body are connected. Get used to it; take care of it. Don’t worry, the runes also make it sturdier than plain iron, so it will take more than mere accident to damage it.”
Rynn’s hand went to her collar. She was far from accustomed to it, but she had managed to push it from the forefront of her thoughts. It wasn’t likely to fade from her mind again anytime soon. Forgive me if I don’t consider that a favor. Go stick your head in a smelter, you rock-hearted whore.“Yes, mistress. I’ll be sure to keep the runes full.” Despite her vitriol, she took the warning to heart. Rynn wasted no time in recharging the aether in her collar.
She filled the aether in her collar twice more before dinner, once during the meal, and four times more before falling asleep for the night.
Their fourth day out from Eversall saw them arrive at their destination. Couched in the foothills of the Great Pickett Mountains, on the border of Ruttania and The Turmon Republic, Grengraw was a town dominated by smokestacks and flat, grey factories. Rynn had heard of it before but knew next to nothing about it. There was a brand of matches with Grengraw in the name, but beyond that, the town was a mystery to her.