by J. S. Morin
“That kid’s as much a genius as he is an idiot,” Tanner said. He kept his voice low, mindful that eavesdropping from wagon to wagon worked both ways.
“What do you mean?” Jamile asked. She twisted in her seat, up front with Tanner as he drove.
“You’d think a boy that age would be all twistin’ himself up in knots to get on a girl’s good side, ‘stead of riling her every chance he gets.”
Jamile laughed. “You haven’t been around a lot of boys then, I imagine.”
“Naw, I guess not. Not since I was that age myself.”
“I used to live in a sanctuary overrun with children of all ages. Dan’s unusual in a lot of ways, but he makes a mule of himself the second he talks to a girl, same as any other. At least he tries to be the know-it-all, rather than beating up some poor defenseless lad to prove he’s a man.”
Tanner’s eyes widened and he gave an exaggerated shudder. “Wouldn’t want to be around for that. I could end up the poor defenseless lad, if he was lookin’ to knock someone around.”
Jamile smiled and bumped a playful shoulder into Tanner’s. “Oh, it’s all bluster.”
“Don’t get me wrong, kid’s got nerves of stone, but he’s got a temper, too.”
“He seems to respect you, at least,” Jamile said.
Tanner chuckled and shook his head. “He needs me ‘til he’s old enough that fellas will take him seriously by himself. He knows he can’t go around buying ships and hiring coinblades looking like ... well, looking his age. Ain’t like he’s some old nutter of a sorcerer going round lookin’ like a kid, he’s just a smart kid is all.”
“So what, he turns sixteen or eighteen and burns you up like a cinder?” Jamile asked lightly, still smiling from her earlier amusement. Tanner glanced over at her. Jamile always seemed to be smiling or joking. She had warmed as quickly as the weather as they’d ventured north, but Tanner couldn’t get a read on her. Madlin was plain enough to judge: hotheaded, stubborn, demanding—a spoiled rich girl who was willing to dirty her hands a bit, but still a child at heart. Jamile seemed a decade older: composed, mature, patient. She carried herself like a woman too, unlike her friend.
“What is it?” Jamile asked, catching his eyes lingering on her.
Tanner blinked and looked away. He returned his attention to the road. “Nothin’. Sorry. Just don’t need remindin’ that I’m a dead man if he ever gets drunk and mad and I say somethin’ that crosses his mind wrong.”
“He wouldn’t ...” Jamile said. Tanner raised an eyebrow. “Would he?”
“I know he don’t look like much, but that kid’s got nerves like a headsman. They got to him young; killin’ don’t even rile him. I killed plenty in my time, and I never sleep right the night after. Usually it’s me or the other guy, and I can’t help wonderin’ when it’ll be me on the wrong end.”
“A lot of children put on a brave face, but they still get nightmares about things like that.”
“Oh yeah?” Tanner asked. “How often do our kind get nightmares?”
Jamile straightened, and Tanner knew he’d made his point. Twinborn saw another world instead of dreaming; Jamile and Madlin saw the world of Korr, while Dan and Tanner split their time with Veydrus. There was no place for nightmares.
“Well, surely it must still bother him,” Jamile protested.
“He’s a warlock, sweet-thing,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “Being from that other world of yours, you don’t know the half of what that means.”
Madlin woke with a start when an elbow bumped her cheek. It was a nap she hadn’t intended to take. The darkness had passed in an instant, since Chipmunk was asleep in Korr; she had no awareness of either world. Her first look was to the sky outside, to judge how long she’d slumbered. In the process she noticed Dan snoring next to her. His had been the elbow that jostled her awake.
“Get off me, you oaf,” Madlin said as she shoved him onto his side and freed herself from bodily contact with the boy. Dan’s snoring continued.
It was late afternoon, with a reddened sky and long shadows bidding welcome to sunset. The monotonous clop of hooves and the gentle roll of the wagon threatened to lull her back to sleep, but she resisted the temptation.
Rummaging in the wagon’s supplies, she found a meal of salted pork strips and some ale to wash it down. Madlin watched the young warlock’s face while she ate, wondering at the mischief he was undoubtedly up to in Veydrus, awake in the middle of the night. There was no other explanation for him sleeping through her rough handling.
Shortly before sundown, the lead wagon stopped. The driver of hers followed their lead, as did the two wagons behind them.
“What’s going on?” Madlin asked. It was her place to call the halt of a day’s travel. All of them but Tanner and Dan were in her employ.
“Couldn’t say, Miss Errol,” the driver replied. “Want me to head up and ask?”
“No, you stay here. Keep your rifle handy.”
Madlin hopped down and checked that her pistol was loose in its holster. A yawn snuck up on her unbidden, and she muffled it with the back of her non-shooting hand. As she walked to the lead wagon, she idly touched her neck where a collar would have been if she were Chipmunk. Stop that, she chided herself.
The caravan had arrived at a low stone bridge spanning a stream. There were guard houses on either side, and a chain struck across the span, barring their way. An official in a red coat with gold buttons was arguing with Tanner as Jamile looked on.
“That’s not going to happen,” Tanner said, waving his hands in front of him. Madlin was comforted to see that he didn’t have a weapon in hand. The official appeared to be unarmed.
“I’m afraid I must insist, sir,” the official replied. The man moved to step around Tanner, but Tanner sidestepped and interposed himself between the official and the wagons.
“Can’t let you.”
“Tanner,” Madlin called out as she approached. “Your Kheshi’s gotten a lot better of late, but you should let me handle this.”
“Are these your wagons, lady?” the official asked.
Madlin looked the man over. He was paunchy and his straggly moustache had streaks of grey in it: a bureaucrat, not a guardsman.
“They are. What’s the trouble?”
“Lady Emskarl insists that all goods brought into her lands be inspected,” the official replied.
“And I told him it was none of his rotten business,” Tanner said.
“Is there any kind of toll?” Madlin asked, ignoring Tanner.
“It depends on the cargo you carry. Consider it the cost of protecting your valuables, while you enjoy Lady Emskarl’s protection.”
Madlin surveyed the guard posts and the far bank of the stream. “I don’t see her around here,” Madlin said without returning her attention to the official. “When will she be joining us? We’ve got room in the wagons, of course. Hope she likes salted pork, because we’ve got it by the—”
“Lady Emskarl is not going to be joining your sorry little caravan,” the official replied. Madlin knew even before she looked back that his face was reddening. “These lands are her protectorate, and while traveling them, you are subject to her laws and beneficiary of her protections.”
“We don’t need any protection. In fact, seems like we’ll be protecting a little patch of land within a rifle’s range everywhere we go. Maybe she oughtta be paying us for protection,” Madlin watched the official’s face as it turned a shade darker. Pureblood Kheshis were so obvious in anger, their pale skin striking a stark contrast when flush. Madlin scrunched her nose and shook her head. “Naw, we can just call it even I think. We’ll take care of our own, and not trouble Lady Enkarl—”
“Lady Emskarl!”
“—her ladyship’s troops while we cross.”
Madlin heard the whisper behind her before she heard the approach of steps. “Hey, let her take care of this.” It was Tanner’s voice, but the footsteps weren’t.
“Could you two kind
ly piss off and let ... me sleep in peace?” Dan drawled around a yawn. He shuffled past Madlin and stopped before the Kheshi official, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “And who’s this ape?”
“Guards!” the official yelled over his shoulder. Madlin watched the last shred of his patience as it crumbled between her jibes and Dan’s thoughtless insult. She had been intent to bully the man, intimidate him enough that he would accept their bribe rather than risk his life to do his job. Dan’s push had been too much.
Ten men in red uniforms poured from the guard houses with muskets in hand and short swords sheathed at their hips. Behind her, Madlin heard the sound of rifle bolts being thrown. They’d ejected an unspent cartridge apiece, Madlin knew, but it told her they were there behind her, ready to confront the Kheshis.
“Lay down your arms and surrender yourselves to the authority of Lady Emskarl,” the official said as his men spread out. Madlin felt a cool wind cut through her, refreshing but out of place amid the languid warmth that had settled over the countryside. “You will step aside and allow—”
Madlin felt a shockwave, though it passed through her without harm. The Kheshi soldiers’ muskets were jerked upward; most panicked and fired wildly into the sunset sky. Madlin’s own men reacted and fired, though the effect was difficult to notice. From Dan’s outstretched hand, black lightning crackled and leapt, lashing out to strike each of the Kheshis in turn. In less than the time it took for Madlin to release the breath that had caught in her throat, they all lay dead. All but the unarmed official.
Dan walked over to the man as the bodies lifted into the air and drifted toward the stream. The official backed away, but stopped with a jolt, as if he had struck a solid wall, though nothing was visible behind him. Madlin watched wide eyed, unwilling to blink.
“What part of ‘piss off’ was so hard to understand?” Dan asked, his face inches from the Kheshi’s. Madlin could see the sweat bead on the man’s face. The reddish hue had drained completely. The man stammered silently, his lips trying and failing to form words. He flinched and began shuddering when a chorus of splashes accompanied the bodies of his men plunging into the shallow waters of the stream.
“Quit scaring the poor bastard,” Tanner said from behind her. Madlin couldn’t tear her attention away from Dan and the Kheshi official to bother to look back.
Dan’s head titled back. Madlin couldn’t see his eyes, but she’d seen the expression on Dan’s face often enough to envision them rolling. His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “Fine.”
The Kheshi flew aside as if fired from a cannon, hitting the stream with a splash that sent water cascading over the far bank. He hadn’t yelped or cried out, likely dead from a snapped neck the instant he was launched.
The chain across the bridge snapped and fell aside. “Road’s clear,” Dan announced as he walked back to the wagon. He yawned and stretched, his arms reaching out, fists clenching and unclenching. “And gut me, I’m wide awake now.”
Madlin didn’t sleep well that night, or at least, she lay awake a long while before sleep caught up with her. Jamile breathed nasally beside her, something in the northern air disagreeing with her constitution. It was a distraction—some small, constant worry for her friend’s health that was far from serious enough to dwell on. Madlin listened to each catch in her breath, the different sounds she made as she wheezed. But Jamile slept.
How can she just sleep after watching that? Madlin wished she knew the trick, because she couldn’t get the image from her eyes, even by closing them—especially by closing them.
Tanner had shrugged aside the incident, obviously inured to Dan’s outbursts of violence. Jamile hadn’t wanted to talk about it. The Errol Company guards had gossiped about it with her, none of them offering any reassurance at all. Madlin would have been neither surprised nor reproachful if any of them quit their jobs rather than stay with the caravan. To his credit, Dan had offered to share what he had pilfered of the Kheshis’ dinner, but no one else was of a mind to share the spoils of his murders.
Madlin tried to picture the Kheshis with kuduk beards, and when finally she had the image fixed firmly in her mind, she asked herself: Could I have done it?
She meant Chipmunk, and she had to admit: Yes.
Chapter 4
“Lift is achieved by offsetting mass with a displaced volume that is lighter than air.” –Introductory Flight, by Z.K. Orelan
The Jennai led the way over the plains of northern Ruttania with the Cloudsmith following in her wake. Vacuum pumps aboard both vessels were working constantly, straining to keep air out of the lift chambers that kept them buoyant. Dry, barren farmland sped by beneath them, less than one hundred feet below.
Chipmunk stood at the forward-facing windows of the bridge, watching with growing alarm as they drew closer to the ground by the hour. “We can’t keep this up,” she muttered. As much as they’d tried to balance the load from newfound supplies, their thunderail heist had put both airships overweight.
“You said yourself we have to get well away before we set down,” Captain Bosley replied, though Chipmunk hadn’t meant her comment for his ears. “I can turn us for the mountains anytime you like.”
“I’m not even sure we have the lift to navigate the foothills anymore.” Chipmunk held onto the railing and hobbled over to the starboard side of the bridge. The Homespires loomed to the east, a taunting warren of hiding places and kuduk settlements. A wrong turn around a peak could put them in artillery range of an aerodrome’s defenses. All that was moot though, as far as Chipmunk was concerned, until they had the lift to keep safe amid the mountain range.
“There are cities all along the coast,” Bosley reminded her. “If we don’t get above cloud level, we’re sure to get spotted on this course.
Her options were unpalatable. All the lift the ships needed was readily available; they just needed to abandon their hard-won supplies and strand their refugees. Chipmunk couldn’t bring herself to give it serious consideration. If they set down, the craftsmen aboard both vessels could work on placing levitation runes on the airships, and Sosha and Chipmunk could empower them, supplementing the vacuum with all the lift they needed. It was the plan she preferred, but setting down in the open was an invitation to ambush should anyone spot them. They could also plot the course least likely to get them discovered as they crossed the shoreline, then put themselves out over the Sea of Kerum and find some refuge amid the islands of the Broken Chain. It seemed like the riskiest option, but only if they plotted wrong or were unlucky.
Chipmunk lost track of time as she mused, turning the options over one by one. She changed her mind each time some downside of her current favorite came to the fore of her thoughts. Problems only exist until a solution presents itself, her father had taught her. She contemplated taking a nap so that she could have Madlin send word to her father via Jamile and Sosha. All the twinborn her father had gathered were spread between the crews of the two airships. Surely someone among them could formulate a better plan.
All the twinborn in one place.
For the first time, Chipmunk wondered whether they were taking too great a gamble. All the rebellion’s twinborn in one place meant an unlucky encounter with a Ruttanian airship patrol could be the end of them. And they weren’t even doing anything beyond acting as officers and taking their part in the fighting. Helpful, perhaps, but nothing that one-worlders couldn’t handle.
“Signal the Cloudsmith to land. I have a plan.”
The cargo hold of the Jennai was packed with Korrish twinborn from both vessels. Even with the cargo bay ramp down and compartment open to the air, the press of bodies made it oppressively hot. A table had been set up, and Chipmunk brought twinborn by the pair to hand out assignments.
“Leda and Raimy, you make your way to Juudun Sky. Should be about two days on foot. Take whatever supplies you need.” The pair nodded their understanding and Chipmunk gave them a salute, which they returned. She’d adopted the fist-to-temple gesture used by the Tak
alish army in Tellurak as the official salute among the rebels. They’d never had one before, and she thought it was high time that they started acting like an army if they were going to be functioning as one.
“And remember,” she called after them, “your twins aren’t to leave Tinker’s Island until further notice. Understood?” Leda and Raimy both turned and saluted again. That was the key: pairs. Just as she could relay information ship-to-ship via Madlin and Jamile, so could the whole of the rebellion keep in constant contact via other pairs of twinborn.
“How many more spies and infiltrators do you plan on sending out?” Erefan asked from the far side of the table. The Mad Tinker of Korr had his arms crossed and a neutral expression plastered over whatever thoughts he was keeping to himself.
“Another few pairs. Why?”
“They’re not trained for this sort of thing,” Erefan replied.
Chipmunk winced. It was a subject she’d hoped to keep quiet. There was no delusion among her troops, but it helped morale to treat them as if they were ready for anything. “Who’s trained for any of this? We’re all putting up our best effort.”
Chipmunk leaned on her crutch and hopped around the side of the table. “Kinmi and Suben, you two will be—”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Kinmi said, “but could I get paired up with Syr?” Chipmunk cast a suspicious eye toward Kinmi, a cobbler’s assistant who’d proven to be handy with mechanic’s tools. Apparently, he’d also proven to be handy with the ladies.
“You talk to her about this?” Chipmunk asked. Kinmi nodded. “You gonna be able to keep your hands off each other long enough to do your job?” Kinmi grinned and couldn’t meet Chipmunk’s eyes, but nodded. “Fine. You’ll pose as married freemen. Just keep a high neckline on any dress she wears until the calluses from her collar fade.”
“Yes ma’am,” Kinmi replied.
Chipmunk leaned over the map to point out the location of Kinmi and Syr’s assignment. In doing so, she put her weight on her bad foot and grimaced in pain. Grunted words escaped through her clenched teeth; she hoped they hadn’t been clear enough for anyone to hear—especially her father. Though she was a general, it seemed uncouth to use that sort of language in her father’s presence. He had taught her better words than those.