by J. S. Morin
“I do. It’s the timing. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, before the excitement of an escape got me carried away. Your father has something big boiling.”
“Big? Like how big?”
“He’s gathering up the twinborn in Eversall. Tophi seemed to think there was some sort of escape planned. I didn’t get many details from her, but folks are gathering all over. He’s got something rigged up that will take people instantly from one part of Korr to another.”
Madlin’s eyes widened. She envisioned armies appearing from nowhere, striking enforcement stations, army barracks, slave markets, and then disappearing once more. If it worked, it was a victory machine. The human rebellion would be unstoppable. They would need to fortify a stronghold; Eversall would probably be too large to hold unless Cadmus had been more successful in recruiting twinborn than she had suspected.
“... Madlin, are you even listening to me?”
Madlin blinked and shut away her visions of a world free of kuduks. “What?”
“I said Fairmorn Sky has a gathering point. I’ll pick you up and take you back there.”
“Sure,” Madlin agreed, not quite paying attention. Her mind was already at work planning the argument she would have with her father. It was dawning on her that he had arranged everything to keep her away from Tinker’s Island so she wouldn’t be involved in the plot. He probably wanted Rynn safely ensconced in her job at the university while he went off and played rebel hero. She wasn’t going to let him swaddle her like a newborn. Korr was her home, and she was determined to fight for it, whatever her father said.
The wagon’s bouncing was as familiar as it was unwelcome. One day with her feet on solid mountain rock was all the luxury that Madlin’s promised coin could buy her. Tanner had insisted on being off with the loading of the wagons, eager to finalize the deal that would make him rich for life as well as the opportunity to meet the Mad Tinker himself.
Dan rode in the back of Madlin and Jamile’s wagon. Despite the frigid winds, Dan wore nothing but the silk attire she’d first seen him in, warm and cozy in the main tunnel of the nascent mine.
“Aren’t you cold?” Jamile asked not long after they departed. The sun had not yet risen above the peaks to begin softening the bite of the winds.
“Nope,” Dan replied. He hung out the back of the wagon, staring up at the peaks. “Tanner can even manage that trick a little, which proves how easy it is.”
“How easy what is?”
“Heating yourself with aether.”
“Is that anything like trying to heat water with your mind?” Madlin asked. She narrowed her eyes at Dan for having conjured that raw memory.
Oblivious to her distress, Dan smiled wide. “There you go. You’ve actually dumped aether before. That’s at least a sign that you’re not hopeless. It’s the same idea, but you only want to trickle in just enough to keep warm, not give yourself fever or boil off your blood. Some crusty old skeleton of a sorcerer might tell you it’s dangerous, but sorcery is danger. You’re tapping into a force more powerful than anything you can imagine. It’s like mining ore from a passing avalanche, drinking from a waterfall, blowing out a candle with a hurricane. You get it just right and it works miracles; get it wrong and you die.”
“I just need to power runes on an airship,” Jamile said. “I don’t want any avalanches or hurricanes.”
“Once you draw aether, it’s all the same,” Dan said.
“Draw?” Madlin asked. “The runes are already there.”
Dan shook his head. “Not draw like writing, draw like drawing water from a well. It’s what you’re doing before you power the runes, that cool, fresh feeling rushing through you.”
“I don’t get anything like that,” Madlin said.
“Then you’re doing it wrong. You must be powering them from your Source, which is stupid and dangerous.”
Madlin clenched her jaw, but couldn’t stop herself from yelling. “I’m not stupid! I just—”
Dan snapped a glare at her and held up a hand. She was reminded in an instant that the boy himself was dangerous—more so even than the magics he was explaining. “You don’t know any better. Fine. Your backwards little world doesn’t know what it’s got lurking about in the aether. I’ll teach you the basics, which should be all you’ll need to refresh some wimpy runes from an aether-dumb world. But first, I want to know who I’m training. Who else are you girls?”
Madlin took a breath to ease the bile that had risen in her. Being called “girl” by someone four, perhaps five years younger hadn’t helped. “What difference does it make? Here I’m Madlin Errol, and I’m going to make you rich.”
“Yeah, and in your other world, you might be an irresponsible guttersnipe who can’t handle a bit of aether. Convince me.”
“I’m a nurse,” Jamile said. “In a world where most humans can’t read, I’ve been taught how men and women are put together, so that I can put them back together when they are hurt or sick. I’ve learned of medicines and drugs, detailed anatomies of both humans and kuduks—I’ve never met a daruu. I’m a good learner with a strong memory.”
Dan bobbed his head in approval. He turned to Madlin.
She blew an exasperated sigh. “By day I cleaned floors and bookshelves at a university. By night I read stolen books and build weapons in a hidden workshop behind a secret door in my apartment.” She noticed a gleam in Dan’s eyes and the beginnings of a smile. She pulled her revolver from its holster. “I’ve built rune-powered guns that make this thing look like a child throwing rocks—that was what I wanted those new runes of yours for. I also went out with a group of human rebels who want to break the kuduk hold on our kind. We did small things, but I hoped that my inventions would make us able to really hurt them in ways that mattered. I got caught. They’d have hanged me for sure if not for my ability with runes. The kuduks can carve them, but only humans and daruu can empower them, and humans with the ability are rare. I got sold as a slave instead. I’m planning to break free, and Jamile is going to come by airship to retrieve me. She needs to know that her airship won’t fall from the sky halfway.”
Dan clapped. “Wonderful story—make that stories. As for myself, I am Danilaesis Solaran, son of an Inner Circle Sorcerer, from a family that has influenced events in the Kadrin Empire since before Khesh was founded here in Tellurak. I am Warlock of the Empire and blood-stained right hand of the empress. I am the wielder of Sleeping Dragon, a blade forged from the fang of mighty Nihaxtukali, a dragon who attacked a city very near where we just left. I am currently attending the Imperial Academy of Sorcery at the insistence of my grandfather, High Sorcerer Axterion. I mostly study language and history there, since I could take any of the instructors by the collar and thrash him like a hound would a hare.”
Madlin and Jamile said nothing, but exchanged a worried look.
“You don’t believe me?” Dan asked. He put up a hand before they could answer. “Just know this: the Source splits unevenly. Twinborn aren’t exact duplicates, not magically at least. One’s usually stronger than the other. For Tanner, he can manage a couple spells here, but in Veydrus his Source is too weak to light a pipe. Me, I’m the other way around. I might well be the strongest sorcerer in Tellurak, but my twin could reduce me to ash.”
“What about us?” Madlin asked.
“No way to tell what your twins are like. They could be stronger or weaker than you. Here? Madlin, your Source is strong enough where you should have no trouble becoming a sorceress. Jamile, you’re stronger than Tanner but not by a lot. Hopefully that means your twin got more of it.” Dan chuckled. “You’d better, or you’re not getting an airship off the ground. You’ll have to raise the sails and make your rescue by sea.”
Jamile shook her head. “It’s not a sea-ship that flies, it’s just an airship.”
“Oh, we have one like that at home. It’s called the Daggerstrike. It’s too complex for anyone to fill the runes though, so it just sits in drydock. Looks like a ship, e
xcept the hull is metal plates, and there’s arrow holes and hatches in the sides.”
Jamile shook her head. “This is nothing so big. It’s mostly mechanical. Here, let me show you.” Jamile searched through Madlin’s belongings until she found paper and ink. She started sketching what looked like a headless, angular bird.
It was Dan’s turn to look Madlin’s way with a skeptical eye. She shrugged in reply. There were airships of every variety, dating back to Groundfire Wars, and she could tell nothing of the variety stored at Fairmorn Sky from Jamile’s amateur artwork.
“So it’s like a bird,” Dan ventured. “The runes make it flap those wings?”
“No, no,” Jamile said. She scribbled figure eights at the nose of the bird-like thing. “The runes spin the propeller. It works like a steam ship. You see, these—”
Madlin put a hand over Jamile’s, stopping the quill in its errant mission. “Leave it be, Jamile. I’ll draw one to scale with annotations once I’ve had a look at it.”
“But Madlin, I—”
“How would you feel watching me trying to sew people up? Me, who’s never learned to darn a sock the proper way.” She looked down to the splotchy, surrealistic portrayal of a flying machine. Jamile looked down as well, and after a moment of quiet reflection, handed over the quill.
“Just show us how to do it,” Madlin said.
Dan spent the morning on what he claimed was the most basic of concepts: drawing in aether and not getting yourself killed. There was plenty of snow along the sides of their trail and they trekked northward with the wall of mountain peaks at their right hand. Dan explained how they could release pent up aether, and how some property of water made it the ideal repository for heat. Madlin held her tongue; she knew that property was called “specific heat,” and that it was something any apprentice mechanic understood in a world run on steam. She let Dan explain it anyway, in a quaint, yet accurate manner, as if revealing the grand secret that fingers and toes might be used in counting.
When Dan demonstrated, the snows boiled away, vanishing as if they were foam on a mug of ale, to be dispersed by dipping a finger. Jamile struggled, throwing wisps of steam from the snow. Madlin’s efforts yielded ice water.
“You mentioned that airship that you can’t empower, the one that doesn’t sail,” Madlin said after an hour’s practice made her confident she could draw aether when needed and not harm herself.
“What about it?”
“If you’re so much stronger than us, what if Jamile can’t light the runes on the airship in Korr?”
Dan shrugged. So little seemed to bother him, it irritated her. “That ship was made by my cousin. He didn’t really know what he was doing. He could power it, but he was a freak of supernature. I can power any other ship in the fleet, no worries. Besides, I said Sources split uneven. I’m guessing she’ll have better dice with those runes than you would.”
“What do you think?” Madlin asked, turning to Jamile.
Jamile swallowed.“Time for a nap?”
“I don’t know if I can sleep. My mind’s crackling like a dynamo filled with spark.”
“I can help with that,” Dan said. He gave an indolent smile. “Just relax.”
Dan held out a palm toward each of their faces. Madlin felt as if she’d drunk a pitcher of wine; she hated wine. Something about it left a tang on the tongue and it went straight from stomach to head, leaving her dizzy. She glanced sideways and saw Jamile blinking back against the tide of slumber sweeping over them. Jamile’s eyes drifted shut and stayed that way as she fell back to the bed of the wagon as if passing through mud.
“What did you...” Madlin’s question was lost to a yawn.
“Quit fighting it,” Dan said, his voice murky and echoing. “You said you wanted...”
Dan’s answer was lost to slumber.
Chapter 23
“The perfect time to attempt something daring never comes. Dare when you first find the courage, or you might never dare at all.” -Cadmus Errol
Rynn awoke, lying on her back. It was the only position she’d found where the weight of the collar didn’t rest against her throat. She touched her fingers to it and let a bit of aether flow into the runes, gritting her teeth. Those runes reinforced the collar, kept it safe against wear and scratching, made it impervious to cutting or melting or anything else that seemed likely to get it off; they also kept those damnable spikes on the inside in their retracted state. Rynn hadn’t figured out a solution to that conundrum, but she would make it a priority once she was safe.
The bit of wire had shifted in her mouth as she slept. It came out bloody when she fished it from beneath her tongue with a finger. She swished saliva in her mouth and spat out as much of the blood as she could. Wiping the wire dry on the bedding, she twisted it into shape and stuck the end in the lock on her chain. It was dark in her bedroom, but that mattered little since the lock was under her chin anyway, just outside her field of vision.
In her mind, Rynn envisioned how such a lock ought to be constructed. There was a slot for the key, and tumblers set along one side. She had judged from the key hanging on Ordy’s belt that there should only have been two tumblers; Rynn assumed it was a tradeoff for the cost of the self-locking feature. If Rynn could depress the two tumblers the correct amount, she could turn the barrel and the lock would spring. It sounded easy when Rynn looked at the schematic she had imagined. Maneuvering the two ends of the brightsteel wire without being able to see the slot, and while she tried to pin the lock against her collar to keep it still, was proving more troublesome.
Rynn’s mind wandered to the discussion with Dan and Jamile about how magic really worked. She wondered if she was stronger than Rynn, strong enough to heat the links of the chain until they softened. Then she remembered her struggles with the tank of water and Professor Hurmbeck’s test and that optimism faded. She shook away thoughts of magic solving this problem for her.
I’m a tinker. I’m not letting a fifty-tenar lock stop me.
It took far longer than she had hoped, but Rynn heard the lock pop. She twisted the shackle and let the lock drop to the bed. Rynn rose from the bed and stretched, working out more than stiff muscles—she felt a new sense of vigor with her newfound freedom. The room was dark as she took inventory of her resources:
Wire—useless now that I’ve picked the lock.
Length of chain—possible weapon. Noisy to carry. Could be a diversion.
Lock—could use it with the chain if Naul becomes a problem.
Collar—just a detriment unless something tries to cut my head off.
Spectacles—Giving me eye strain, but I’m better off wearing them.
Dress—I’d rather have the one with the belt back. This one fits, but it’s worthless for travel. I need clothes. And shoes.
There wasn’t much to work with, but Rynn knew there was a whole workshop down below her with just a single guard. Kuduk or no, there were ways to deal with a single opponent. Rynn looked again to the chain. It lay on the bed, its menace gone now that it was no longer restraining her. She could clasp the lock at one end of that chain, run the loose end through and make a noose of it. With all her weight behind it, and the loose end wrapped around her wrists, she might be able to strangle a kuduk, depending who it was downstairs guarding her. Unfortunately a few of the workers she’d seen were nearly Ordy’s size—she could pick her feet up and hang by the chain and still not snap a neck that thick.
Diversion.
Rynn could think of no escape that would bleed off her anger. She would have to sneak past the guard, and vowed that kuduk blood would follow later, when she was successful. The door to her room opened without a sound. Rynn smiled at the kuduk neurosis that kept hinges in good repair, even when a squeak would serve as an alarm. She closed the door silently behind herself and tiptoed to Naul’s room.
She needn’t have bothered with stealth. The snoring from within drowned out any noise her bare feet might have made. She nodded to herself as a pl
an took shape. Backtracking a few paces, she reopened her door, then headed for the washroom. The spark bulb flickered on as she threw the switch just outside the door. Rynn scanned the room: hot and cold valves on both the sink and tub, a drain valve for each, as well; there was a safety release valve for the main water line to the workshop below; the hot air line valve she’d dried herself with was the last that looked useful. She plugged the drain valves, walked to the far corner of the room, set her hands on the crank for the air-drying valve, and took a few deep breaths.
Rynn opened the valve fully, turning the crank as fast as she could. She then ran to the hot and cold valves on the tub and the sink, opening all of them. Water and air rushed into the room in torrents, howling and crashing. She shut the door behind her, spared a second to check that her feet weren’t leaving trails of wet footprints, and opened the switch, leaving the washroom in darkness. Halfway back to her room, she paused. The switch appeared so fragile, so tempting. It begged for a bit of tinkering. Positioned half open, with the copper lever sticking straight out from the wall, she set her palm against it and thrust. The rubber coating of the lever’s end wasn’t enough to keep the hard metal corner from digging painfully into her hand, but she was able to bend the lever such that it wouldn’t make contact without being repaired.
“Whazzat racket up there?”
Rynn scrambled as quickly as she could in silence. She ducked inside her room and pulled the door closed behind her. As she waited, she listened to the heavy footsteps stomping up the stairs, creaking the whole way. She held onto the door handle and kept listening. Everything hinged on whether the rushing water from the washroom could drown out the sound of Naul’s snoring.
The footsteps reached the landing and continued on past her door. “Naul? What’re you about in there?”