Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles)

by J. S. Morin

  “Hey, I didn’t even believe in Veydrans until a few weeks ago,” Grandle said. “Maybe they’ve got some tricks we don’t know.”

  “Tricks?” Cadmus scoffed. “Need more than tricks; Rynn’s gone and got septic rot. I was up predawn, caught myself sketching up mechanical legs.”

  “Least we’ve got Sosha. Hate to have drawn lots to see who does the job.”

  Cadmus glowered at Grandle. “You always so cheerful about medical butchery? How’s my dynamo?”

  Grandle straightened up, reverting to a more subordinate posture. “All to plan, tinker. We’re just waiting for the wire production to catch up to what we need. They’re getting a better yield every day, but it’s still slow compared to the factories in Cuminol.”

  “Well, I don’t expect to let a bunch of kuduks show us up. I expect us to be up to full production by the end of the week.” Cadmus gave a nod of dismissal and headed for the door. He had other appointments to keep.

  Grandle fell into step behind him. “One other thing, Cadmus. We’re all set to tie into the main shaft for the dynamo, but Rynn had an idea.”

  Cadmus stopped short, causing Grandle to stumble to avoid crashing into him from behind. He twisted around and met Grandle eye to eye.

  “She pointed out that we’d lose use of the workshops while the dynamo was on if they were all sharing the central shaft,” Grandle said. “She thought it would be worth trying to rune the dynamo to run on aether.”

  “I’m not trusting in aether to—”

  “She said it could run in either mode.”

  “I see you two have discussed this at some length. Anything else you and my daughter have plotted behind my back?”

  Grandle reached inside his jacket and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to Cadmus as if it might spring alive and attack as soon as the tinker touched it.

  “You drew this, runes and all?” Cadmus asked. He looked up, and Grandle nodded. Cadmus crumpled the sheet and stuffed it into Grandle’s hands. “Your penmanship’s like rat droppings and you draw worse than a drunkard with busted spectacles.” Cadmus resumed his path to the exit.

  “But sir—”

  “Don’t you go sir-ing me. I don’t own you.”

  “But Cadmus, Rynn already arranged interviews for the rune carvers.” Grandle blanched as Cadmus whirled on him. “It wasn’t me. She just told me that they were ready to meet you today. She got someone else to gather them up; I don’t know who.”

  “Just who’s in charge around here, anyway?”

  Grandle sweated a moment as if unsure how—or perhaps whether—to answer. “It seems more of a bi-world arrangement these days. You run Tinker’s Island, Rynn commands our forces in Korr.”

  Cadmus let his breath vent through clenched teeth. He hated liars, bootlicks, and lackeys. As much as he might wish it otherwise, Grandle was technically correct. It was a sort of correct he had to respect, even if he didn’t like it.

  “Fine. We’ll rune the dynamo—just as a contingency!” Cadmus shook a finger for emphasis. “I’ll meet with the carvers once I’ve seen about getting us more copper.”

  Cadmus took as few meetings in his office as possible. It was a cluttered place, filled with paperwork that would be collected by his assistants at day’s end whether he looked at it or not. A small stack of important documents set to one side required his attention—contracts, treaties, and the like—but the rest was merely for his perusal. Like a castle’s torture chamber, it was a place for the unpleasant necessities of leadership that a civilized society would have been better off without.

  The Mad Tinker perched on the edge of his seat with his elbows on his desk, chin resting on his interwoven fingers. Across the table sat a younger man, hale and full of vigor, trying to slink below the tinker’s view. His visitor was the son and trade representative of Mr. Amin Sutz, a shipper whose vessel had just delivered copper ore that Cadmus had been long anticipating.

  “Say that again, more slowly, Mr. Sutz. I’m hoping that I may have just misheard you.”

  Jaffry Sutz reached a finger inside his collar and tugged it away from his neck. “I’m ... I’m afraid not, Mr. Errol. You see, there’s a new wing being built for the Kheshi royal palace, and they want it out of copper, to match the rest.”

  Cadmus pounded a fist on the table, causing Jaffry to flinch. “Rot them! I’m paying five times what it’s worth as it is. You can’t tell me they outbid me.”

  “My father made the commitment before your order. He had his trade license in Khesh to think of.”

  “You get that ship sent here instead of Khesh and I’ll make sure you won’t need to deal with them anymore. I can keep you in coin ‘til the end of days.”

  “I’m sure my father wouldn’t like to see his trade with Khesh cut off entirely. He wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not talking about your father. I’m talking about you. Mr. Sutz, you strike me as a man being forced to play against weighted dice. If it were up to you, would you sell me the ore, or deliver it to Khesh at a fraction of the price?”

  Jaffry stood, straightening himself and smoothing the front of his shirt. “This is my father’s legacy to me. I can’t soil the family name on a single deal, especially one with this importance to the Kheshi royal family.”

  Cadmus swiveled in his chair and faced the window. He could see the harbor below, where his copper ore was being unloaded from the Kimba’s Pride. It would be the last ore to arrive at Tinker’s Island for over a month, and unless he acquired a substantial supply soon, production would have to be suspended. Copper was the cheapest and most widespread conductor on Korr, and Kezudkan had procured it in vast amounts for the first world-ripper machine’s construction.

  But Kezudkan had fallen on hard times. Copper was the cheapest reasonable conductor, not the only, nor even the best.

  He spun his chair back to face Jaffry. The young man had his hands clasped in front of him, fidgeting. “What about silver?”

  Jaffry cocked his head and blinked. “Silver, Mr. Errol?”

  “Yes, shiny stuff, prone to tarnishing, used in tea sets, tableware, and hundred-fonn coins. Your father deals in all manner of ore. Does he have any silver?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose. How much are you talking about?”

  “Same as the copper. Silver’s heavier by about fifty percent, but the same volume would do.”

  Jaffry’s mouth opened, but no sound issued forth. He stayed like that way for a moment. Cadmus could envision the gnashing gears in the man’s head as his brain came to a halt.

  “Mr. Sutz,” he prompted.

  Jaffry licked his lips and came around. “I don’t know our silver holdings, but we haven’t got that much, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll take all you’ve got. Ore, coin, trinkets, all at standard market value.”

  “I ... I can’t even calculate what that would cost. I don’t know how much credit my father would be willing to extend, even to you, Mr. Errol.”

  Cadmus stood and strode around the table. Hooking Jaffry Sutz by the arm, he took the young trader in tow as he left his office. “Allow me to show you something.”

  Jaffry said nothing as Cadmus led him through the halls of the Errol Company headquarters. They passed offices, clerks, accountants, and supervisors; anyone who caught Cadmus’s eye gave a nod of greeting as he passed. Jaffry elicited a few second glances, but no one questioned what the Mad Tinker was doing with the Acardian gentleman in his grasp. Farther into the facility, they passed guard posts with locked metal doors and men with rifles. The exchanges with the Errol Company security personnel were brief, direct, and impersonal.

  Within the bowels of the building, three stories down and reachable only by steam lift, they came to a set of steel doors and another, less formal guard post. Anyone who had made it thus far was past the point of dealing with armed resistance.

  “Orris, open the vault,” Cadmus called out as the lift gates opened.

  Orris looked up from his book and took
his feet down from the desk. “Really, Cadmus, I take shifts down here for the quiet. Can’t you awe the merchant brats with your dragon’s hoard on Averi’s watch?” Despite his complaint, Orris stood and took a ring of keys from his pocket.

  “Averi’s not half the showman you are,” Cadmus shot back as Orris fiddled with the first of a half dozen locks.

  “So this is a gawk-show, then?”

  “Mr. Sutz here was balking at extending us credit for a shipment of silver.”

  Orris looked over his shoulder as he turned one of the keys in a lock. His brow knit in a perturbed frown. “When did we start buying on credit?”

  Cadmus didn’t answer, but watched Jaffry’s face as Orris unlocked the vault. He rarely took anyone down to the vaults, especially not suppliers. It was a fit of pique as much as any practical reason, Cadmus admitted to himself, after having his financial means questioned. Seeing the expectant wonder in Jaffry’s eyes made him wonder why he didn’t do it more often.

  “Behold!” Orris said with a melodramatic sweep of his arm as he pulled open the door. “Cadmus Errol’s treasure trove.” Cadmus gave Orris credit for keeping a straight face, despite a smile that looked ready to burst from his lips at any moment.

  Cadmus pulled Jaffry along, but the younger Mr. Sutz balked. Inside the vault was not a haphazard hillside of gold as dragons were known to sleep upon in fairy stories, but a warehouse of coin. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with strongboxes. Crates covered the floor, and the one nearest the door was open to reveal that it was filled halfway to the top with trade bars, the finger-sized gold currency that rich men used to buy horses and ships. Most impressive of all were the kings’ bars, gold bricks large enough to pass as masonry in a chimney. Too heavy to lug around, they were deemed too heavy for common theft as well. Kings’ bars were meant to be stored, not spent, and the only time anyone used them in barter were for payment to mercenary armies, the purchase of land, or as tribute to foreign rulers.

  Cadmus let Jaffry gape for a long while.

  “There’s not much in there besides gold,” Cadmus said. “It’s denser, so it takes up less room than silver or minted coin. If you can sell me enough silver that I can’t pay you in coin, then we can talk about my credit.”

  With Jaffry Sutz’s ship relieved of its ore and Jaffry himself loaded with dreams of gold, Cadmus found himself light afoot heading into his afternoon meetings. What good was a miser’s fortune? There was a war to win in Korr, and the rebellion was poised on the fulcrum of disaster. The sooner he had a functioning world-ripper, the sooner Erefan’s forces would be safe. The realization that he could supplement his copper supply with silver, perhaps even lightsteel or other uncommon conductors, was a key worry hammered into a solution. Even the prospect of being cooped up in his office for much of the day couldn’t dampen his spirits—until the first appointment arrived.

  The appointment book was filled with a motley cast of unlikely runesmiths. Beside the list of names and times were annotations as to the qualifications of each: a metal sculptor, a silversmith, three printing engravers, a scribe, two mechanics, and three twinborn who’d seen runes on a daily basis, one of whom worked on dynamos as an assistant cableman.

  Cadmus’s interviews were scheduled in alphabetical order. The first man was Ronley Briarford, the silversmith. He had a craftsman’s handshake, firm and rough, an honest worker’s grip. When questioned about his qualifications, Briarford produced a sheet of silver and filigree tooling. Before Cadmus’s eyes, the silversmith carved his best approximation of the runes on Grandle’s instruction page. Cadmus had seen the runes on Kezudkan’s dynamo and knew that Grandle’s engravings wouldn’t be functional, but they were a fair copy of what the man had seen. By the time Cadmus called an end to the interview, he knew he had at least one candidate who might carve working runes once he was shown a proper drawing of them.

  The second interviewee was a mechanic from his rifleworks by the name of Abe Dakinshi. He was a Takalishman older than Cadmus by a dozen years, who had been working on firearms since before Errol Company was founded. He was a trigger specialist, capable of fashioning any part of a gun but selected to work on the painstaking details of the smallest, most finicky pieces. He used an awl and an old piece of steel to scratch his sample runes. Cadmus had known the man for years, and kept up an amiable chat to stave off the cringe-worthy sight of the man’s carving. By the end of half an hour, the man had butchered a handful of runes and caught Cadmus up on the health and tidings of his family.

  A twinborn named Frent and a printing engraver by the name of Vander Heckleston failed to impress Cadmus in the least. He complimented them on their willingness to take on a new assignment, but cut their interviews well short.

  Still behind schedule from Abe Dakinshi’s interview, Cadmus was tempted to cut the scribe from his roster of potential recruits. A steady hand was admirable, but pen and ink were a long shout from working with metal. A moment’s internal debate resolved that he should meet the man, just to be thorough.

  When Erund Hinterdale sat down across the desk from him, Cadmus found himself intrigued. The scribe was tall and slender, the sort of build that few can maintain while working a manual trade. When Cadmus offered his hand across the desk, the scribe’s grip was iron-strong, though his skin was smooth as a prince’s. What struck Cadmus was the man’s ease. Even Abe Dakinshi, who had worked for Cadmus since Tinker’s Island was founded, seemed on edge in his interview. Erund Hinterdale lounged in his seat, respectful, attentive, but clearly nonplussed.

  “You’ve heard what that job entails, I imagine, Mr. Hinterdale,” Cadmus said. It was a statement that left room for interpreting it as a question.

  “Erund, if you don’t mind, Mr. Errol,” Erund replied. “And yes, I’ve heard a stray rumor or two.”

  “I’m going to show you a series of patterns, and then you will copy them as best you can. What medium will you use?” Though Cadmus knew the answer, he had asked the other candidates, so it seemed only fair.

  “Acid and steel,” Erund replied. He drew a piece of sheet metal from inside his jacket along with a thin glass rod and a stoppered vial.

  Cadmus raised an eyebrow. “Interesting choice.”

  Erund shrugged. “I can write them in pen and ink if you like, but I didn’t think that would prove much unless you were making this machine of yours out of paper.”

  “Indeed,” Cadmus said. He handed Erund the paper. “Begin.”

  Erund unstoppered the vial, letting an acrid scent waft into the office. He dipped the glass rod in the acid and shook a droplet back into the vial before it fell on Cadmus’s desk. With broad strokes, the scribe made copies of each of the runes on Grandle’s sheet, though far larger than those penned runes had been. A trail of vapors sizzled in the rod’s wake as the acid etched the steel. After a few moments, Erund produced a rag from his pocket and wiped the glass rod clean, then handed the metal sheet to Cadmus.

  Cadmus held the steel up to the light, angling it to check the etch. It wasn’t perfect, but the lines were of more uniform depth than he had suspected. Held flat before him, the runes looked like they came from a Korrish school primer, formed large and perfect. A scratching sound broke Cadmus’s concentration and he found Erund had appropriated a fountain pen from his desk and was writing on the back of Grandle’s sheet of example runes.

  “What do you think you’re—”

  “Here,” Erund said. He handed the paper to Cadmus. The ink was still wet, but there they were: Korrish runes. “Let your other candidates work from these instead. It ought to make it easier on them.”

  Cadmus had overlooked something with the distraction of the acid-work. The runes weren’t copies of Grandle’s; they were how the runes ought to have looked. He glared at Erund Hinterdale from below a furrowed brow. “How did you know to make these? Who else are you?” He was unaccustomed to twinborn showing up unannounced in his office.

  Erund reached to a chain around his neck and pulled medallion
from below his tunic. It was pewter, fashioned in the form of a letter “S” wrapped around a quill. “I’m also an expert scribe, or would be if I was still in Acardia.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “Surely it is. I’ve come across alphabets in more languages that you can imagine exist. The Society of Learned Men has used my services to transcribe ancient works so that they can pore over them at leisure without exposing the originals to undue wear. These characters you showed me are ones I’ve seen before, though I couldn’t say what they mean.”

  Cadmus leaned back in his chair and looked the Acardian scribe over. He was lighter skinned than most twinborn, pale as only Acardians and southern Kheshi are known to get, and with hair the muted brown of transmission fluid, he certainly wasn’t Kheshi by birth. Few Korrish were so pureblooded. Thanks to centuries of commercial transport of humans by the kuduks, geographic distinctions were shades of brown and tan. He had seen Acardian-looking Korrish only a handful of times, but they existed.

  “Try another one,” Cadmus said. “I’ve looked for books with runes like these in them. They’re just not to be found, even among the Society of Learned Men. I believe you that you’ve seen the runes before; I couldn’t have made them prettier myself.”

  Erund smirked and put up his hands. “You’ve got me. I was like you until about six years ago. Now, this is the only world I’ve got.”

  “One-worlded, huh?” Cadmus asked. Erund cast his eyes down and nodded. “Where were you from? Who else were you?”

  “I lived in a humans-only village outside Cuminol. I worked as a scribe, since I was one of the few who could read.” Erund glanced up as he spoke, but averted his gaze again quickly.

  Cadmus switched to Korrish. “Who is the enemy of all humans?” Among freemen humans, it was a phrase taught to every child.

  “Pardon?” Erund asked.

  Cadmus repeated the question.

  Erund squinted and put a hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, my ear for Korrish had gone soft. Who is what now?”