by J. S. Morin
“Piss off!” came the reply in chorus. They raised their mugs and clanged them over the middle of the table, sloshing sudsy ale over the sides.
The engine of the thunderail as seen through the world-ripper had been turned into a ragged mesh, more hole than whole. Kuduks watching from the station platform screamed in horror and fled in all directions as boiler water leaked onto the tracks, tinged with blood. The thunderail wouldn’t be leaving while the Errol Company soldiers went to work.
“Search the cars, find the slaves, and get them out here,” Erefan ordered. “No human casualties, and that includes you lads. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
The Errol soldiers piled through the hole, each carrying a coil pistol at the ready. A team of twenty was overkill, a concept which Erefan appreciated when he was on the proper end of it. Erefan watched them storm into the thunderail, car by car, chasing out kuduk passengers and heaving corpses out doors and windows from the ones that had gotten too involved in the proceedings. Human passengers ducked to keep clear of the gunfire as ball bearings whizzed about at speeds rifle-launched bullets couldn’t come close to. They scurried along the tracks and followed the freeborn rebel voices coming from the Jennai’s side of the world-hole.
Reluctant rebels could be returned later. The priority lay in getting humans aboard the airship before kuduk forces arrived to make things interesting.
Erefan could have spent a bit of time figuring out which was the slave car. He had a good idea just by looking at the outsides, but he could have panned down the length of the thunderail to make certain. But it wasn’t about saving one car of slaves, nor was it about the one particular slave that had taken him on this detour from his grid pattern. If they were going to free humans from kuduk rule, there was to be no nibbling the meat from the stew—they would take everyone they could.
After a time, the soldiers found the right car, and a line of unwashed, ragged slaves slogged down the tracks and into the cargo hold with the machine. Among them, Powlo.
“About bleeding time,” said Powlo as he separated himself from the herd and stopped by Erefan’s chair. “Could you maybe have spared me half a day’s ride in that thing?”
“I got the schedule. I knew when you’d be stopped. I wasn’t about to attack a moving target when I could take one at rest. Simple physics.”
“Bugger your physics. I want a bath.”
Erefan nodded. “Next stop is Tinker’s Island for you. I want you cleaned up, changed, and ready to help loot Kezudkan’s workshop in an hour.”
That changed Powlo’s demeanor. A tight grin twisted the corners of his mouth, and his eyes hardened. He nodded. “You can count on that.”
Erefan took a tinker’s eye to Powlo’s collar. “Nothing fancy, that. Should come off like a greased fitting. Stop and get one of the machinists to pop it off before you report to Orris. He’ll be running the machine from that side.”
Everyone had returned through the world-ripper. Erefan opened the switch and turned it back into an observation window. Powlo stood at the ready, waiting. And waiting.
“Any time, tinker.”
“Soon as we see that workshop.”
Powlo seethed an impatient breath through his nostrils, but relented. He directed Erefan to a workshop in Cavinstraw Deep, and in moments they were staring at a twin of the world-ripper they were using.
“Your word that I get to be there soon as you go.”
“Agreed,” said Erefan.
The settings for Tinker’s Island were so ingrained that Erefan had no cause to look in his notes for the coordinates. They had been nailed to the sky long enough that he’d opened the same hole countless times. Erefan saw Powlo through to Tinker’s Island, then slumped back in his chair a moment. When that moment had run its course, he went to see about some dinner. He’d been so long at his work that he hadn’t eaten since morning.
Kezudkan reclined with his feet propped on a stool and an elbow leaning on the table. His eyes had a dusty film on them from not having blinked for the past several hours as he stared. The viewing frame in the world-ripper, buried in his abandoned mine lair, showed the same image of Draksgollow’s workshop. Without so much as turning his head, he reached for one of the charred pork-on-a-stick delicacies he’d had the cooks prepare. It came on a little wooden spear, just to prove how expensive it was. He dipped it absently in a bowl of tar and crunched down, biting through wood and all.
Patience. Men with patience are rewarded. Men with too much patience ossify in their chairs and need a chisel to rise again. Kezudkan squirmed in his seat, just enough to crack his joints loose before settling in again.
Thus it was with Kezudkan, and when he had waited long enough, a hole from another world-ripper irised open in the middle of the workshop floor. Kezudkan sucked the tar from his fingers and fumbled for his cane. Every joint in his body wanted to make a statue of him, but he lurched to his feet and stood in front of the viewer.
Erefan, you sly rat, you. I’ve got you now. The slave tinker wore no collar, and might have added a bit of meat to his bones. He was first through the hole, followed by a crew of humans, crawling over the workshop like bipedal insects. When a second hole opened by the side of the first, Kezudkan found himself only mildly surprised. After all, he owned three himself, with a fourth under construction.
The first human through the other hole was Chapun. That wily slave had gotten his collar off as well. These humans were enterprising and organized. I should have put Erefan in charge of the estate years ago. We could have been a model of efficiency. Kezudkan was in a generous mood. Why shouldn’t he be? He was right once again, and Draksgollow was wrong.
Erefan and Chapun engaged in a brief conversation, then Chapun left the field of vision available in the view frame. Kezudkan could have moved it, of course, but he had set it up so very cleverly and precisely. His view was the reverse angle of the inert viewer in the now human-infested workshop. Patience.
“Camera,” said Kezudkan over his shoulder. One of the silent kuduk workers pulled himself from where he was leaning (or napping, perhaps) against the wall and picked up a camera and tripod. “Set up right there, and get me shots that can see into those other two holes there.”
Kezudkan’s vision was poor by objective standards, though for his age he felt his eyes were better than they had any right to be. He could see the two world-rippers through the holes they created. It was a setup nearly identical to the one they had arranged in Eversall for the prototype. Erefan was nothing if not a creature of habit. It worked, so he kept it.
“Get the guns ready,” he ordered.
Two more kuduks stepped out of the chamber’s shadows with rotorifles and took up positions flanking the view frame. “Steady with those now. They’re the contingency, not the plan.”
Erefan was gaping around at the workshop as his minions swarmed around, busy at whatever tasks they’d been given. Kezudkan gave less than a muddy sock about the minions. Erefan was talking to himself, looking up toward the ceiling. He grew more animated by the second, shook his fist at the workshop roof. It was a marvelous show, made all the more special when the flame lit in Kezudkan’s mind and he realized Erefan was cursing him from afar. Oh, how delicious! It could only have been more perfect had Kezudkan been able to lip read.
He must think this is his victory speech. I’ve half a mind to open the hole so he can deliver it in person. Of course, there were good reasons not to do so. For one, he was just as happy not taking the risk that one of those wicked rune-powered guns ended up aimed his way. More importantly, he had worked everything out so perfectly otherwise. It would be a shame to spoil it; a momentary amusement at the cost of a greater pleasure later.
Erefan calmed himself and got down to the business of a more pointed inspection. The idiot Chapun should hopefully have told Erefan that there was only the one machine. He and Draksgollow had talked in front of the human about the progress of the ‘second’ machine when discussing the fourth one.
Erefan had no expectation that he could be watched at that very moment, that there was another machine right there, waiting.
“Yes, that’s good. Get curious. You can’t help yourself.”
Erefan walked to the viewing frame, and despite knowing that Erefan’s side was turned off and his own was just a view, Kezudkan felt a rumbling little thrill. A human hand brushed against the webwork of copper in the frame, out of sight just behind the view. It appeared from Kezudkan’s view that Erefan’s hand pressed against the surface of the hole, a black spot where no light came through.
“Go on. You’re curious. Have a seat and find out where I pointed it.”
After his inspection of the view frame, Erefan sat at the controls. He ought to have known them, Kezudkan’s machine was based on notes and sketches from the original. The book had been vague on details of the controls, so Erefan had filled them in to his liking and Kezudkan copied them wholesale.
One by one, Erefan flipped the switches that lit the bulbs around the frame. As he worked, human workers carried off Kezudkan’s stolen valuables: coins, guns, artwork. The daruu ignored them. He saw the pale blue light reflecting from the polished surfaces of the machine’s cabinets and the control panel, brighter with each one Erefan activated.
“If you sirs would step aside, well out of sight. Keep the guns handy, but do nothing unless I call for you.”
When the last switch was engaged, the world-ripper’s view sprang to life. The look on Erefan’s face was worth far more than all the plunder his minions carried off. The smartest human Kezudkan had ever met sat in the control chair gaping like a simpleton, eyes like a dead fish. The viewer had been painstakingly calibrated to show the reciprocal view to Kezudkan’s view frame—and Draksgollow had tack welded the dials in place to keep it there. The two men, human and daruu, saw each other as if they stood just a few paces apart. Kezudkan waved.
The next part was where Kezudkan was guessing. There was a side to Erefan that he had kept hidden until the very day of his betrayal. Kezudkan had studied the raid, the uprising, all he could find about the rebellion, trying to find out the sort of man he’d fed and clothed all those years. He hoped he had reckoned it properly. One sort of man was a coward, cautious in all things, never acting until he had all contingencies covered. Kezudkan considered himself such; cowards lived longer lives, and there was no shame in taking the wiser path. He had though Erefan to be the same, holed up safe in a workshop that many kuduks would envy, better than anything he could obtain even if he bought his freedom. A coward would have stayed and protected that. But the man who had stormed through Eversall with an army at his back was another sort: a risk-taker, an arrogant bastard who would thrust himself into danger if the payoff was worthwhile. One who trusted to his wits. One who acted. Sometimes rashly.
Impatient.
Erefan drew the gun belted at his hip. Without taking his eyes from the frame, the human tinker reached back for the switch that would open the hole and bring Kezudkan into range of his gun. Kezudkan threw up his hand in feigned terror—or at least how he thought humans did so when terrified. As Erefan closed the switch Kezudkan winked at him.
“Goodbye.”
The blast was silent. The view frame was gone in an instant, replaced by a wall of smoke. A few pieces of wrecked metal landed right at the aperture of the viewer
Kezudkan chuckled, to himself at first, but then he let himself loose and guffawed, loud enough that most of the workshop must have heard him. He laughed himself hoarse, and gave in to a fit of coughing. When that passed, he took a few deep breaths and shook his head.
“In the end, you were just a human after all. Smarter than most, but unable to escape your nature. If you’d taken the time to check, you would have found the three hundred pounds of black powder wired to the main switch.”
Twisting around to the cameraman, who stood smirking in the shadows, he said, “Go get those flashpops developed. I want to see what the settings were on those world-rippers.”
Chapter 24
“In the wrong hands, mathematics is more dangerous than gunpowder.” -Cadmus Errol
Madlin bolted from her bed, clothed, but leaving boots, spectacles, and any sense of decorum behind. She tore down the hall, bare feet slapping on the cold stone. When she reached her father’s door, only a quick grab of the handle stopped her momentum. It was no occasion for knocking; she threw the door open.
“Father!”
It was light inside the Mad Tinker’s bedchamber. Open curtains let the morning sun add cheer to half the room, while the other half clung to shadows where the sunlight failed to reach. Cadmus sat in those shadows, hunched over his writing desk, pencil scribbling at a frantic pace. He had Madlin’s habit of sleeping in his work clothes, and looked to be wearing yesterday’s. A grey scruff of prickly fuzz told that he had skipped his morning shave. The jitter of his hand suggested he hadn’t eaten.
He glanced sidelong from his work, as if even turning his eyes from it was too large a distraction. Who else called him father? Of course it was Madlin. “What? Don’t just stand there, speak.”
“I came as soon as I heard. Are you all right? What happened?”
The tip of the pencil snapped against the paper. “What happened? WHAT HAPPENED? I’ll tell you what happened. That filthy, coal-hearted bastard rigged his world-ripper to explode.” The pencil snapped in half with a crack in Cadmus’s fist. Madlin flinched. “I’ll get him though. He made a mistake he won’t have long to regret. I saw the settings on the dials. I’ll work the numbers and find where he’s hiding.”
Cadmus flung the broken pencil to the floor and took another from a jar filled with sharpened pencils. They were Korrish, fresh through the world-ripper a few days earlier. The Mad Tinker truly looked the moniker as he plunged himself into his mathematics over a scale map of Korr. Madlin edged closer, emboldened at each step by his lack of response. Over his shoulder, she read the number, speaking to her like a third person in the room. They told her that Kezudkan was somewhere in the far north, and was farther underground than the workshop in Cavinstraw Deep. More than that, Cadmus would have to complete finer calculations and make better references to the map.
Or so Madlin thought. “That bastard,” Cadmus whispered. He sat back in his chair, letting the pencil fall over his scratchwork.
“What? I’m not seeing it.”
“He’s somewhere in the Ice Furnace. Years ago—long years ago—there used to by mines all over. All abandoned now. Bastard is under our noses, next world over. Oh, he must be enjoying this.”
“Why would he know we’re here?” Madlin asked. “If he knew, wouldn’t he have done something about it.”
Cadmus put a hand over his mouth. “You’re right. I forgot. His other mistake. He doesn’t know. Thinks I’m dead.” Cadmus nodded to himself. “He’s not expecting vengeance. That’s why we can trust the numbers. You don’t false the dials if you think I’m dead, do you?”
“Probably not.”
“You leave them as they are. Make sure you got them just right. Check them twice—three times, even.”
“Cadmus!” A shout from down the corridor bore a familiar voice. Greuder showed his face in the doorway, leaning against the jamb as he panted for breath.
“What is it now?”
“What do you mean, ‘what is it?’ What’s become of you?” Greuder asked. “I heard the explosion. Some ran for the machine. I came straight this way.”
“Get used to this face,” Cadmus said, scribbling away at his equations. “It’s the only one like it you’re going to be seeing.”
“Cadmus, I’m so sorry,” Greuder said in a voice just above a whisper.
“And I’m busy. Twice as busy, I suppose. If you’re here to make me feel better, I’d feel mighty good about an assault team ready to go through that world-ripper in about half an hour.”
“You’re sure you’re—”
“I’m fine,” Cadmus snapped. “And you can tell anyone else concerned w
ith my health and well-being that their concerns are both misplaced and belated.” When Greuder lingered at the door, Cadmus lit into him again. “Is there a problem, Mr. Greuder?”
Greuder licked his lips. “No, Mr. Errol. No, there’s no problem. I’ll get right on it.”
“He was just worried about you,” said Madlin.
“What are you still doing here?” Cadmus asked. “Scoot! Begone! I’ve got a pile of numbers that aren’t killing anyone yet. Go make yourself useful.”
Madlin backed toward the door. “Yeah. I’ll go help Greuder.” She closed the door behind her as softly as she could. Its catch made a gentle click, and Madlin fell back against the wall to let out a breath of relief. Whoever it was inside, she had never met him before. Was it a madness that had lain dormant for years, since before she was old enough to know any better? Had mother’s death boiled such rage and mania in him, all those years ago?
Madlin tried to put the conversation with her father to the back of her mind as she joined the crew at the world-ripper. She’d taken the time to dress and arm herself, the familiar old weight of her handmade revolver sitting easy on her hip. If she were going to be heading off on a raid, she’d have liked the feel of a coil gun better, but the only ones on Tinker’s Island were in pieces, unfinished. Every coil gun they’d completed had been sent to the Jennai to empower and put into service for the rebellion. It was an oversight she’d look to remedy shortly.
The crowd gathered outside the workshop was something she hadn’t prepared for. Guards had kept the locals and Errol Company workers from congregating outside her house, and it seemed that the whole town had gathered around the workshop instead.
“Clear a path,” she ordered, and the crowd jostled and shoved to make way for her. There was no point stopping to ask for information; if she got one answer she’d get a hundred, most of them hearsay. Answers lay inside, not out in the cold wind amid the press of bodies. She couldn’t help overhearing bits and pieces as she wove her way to the entrance, but nothing she hadn’t already heard. An explosion. Horrible sight. Tinker’s dead. Spray of blood and stone. Madlin found that the cold was making her eyes water and her nose run.