by J. S. Morin
Inside the workshop, it was a worse scene than when the flywheel had shattered. Everyone inside was either twinborn, armed with a rifle, or both. They picked their way among rubble and blood-flecked debris. Madlin had expected a relative calm inside, but the chaos was merely a smaller scale from the scene outside.
“Where’s Orris?” she asked. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be him. Orris could also tell them what Kandrel was seeing in Korr. The Jennai was suddenly as much a concern as the Tinker’s Island, if the explosion had carried through the world-holes.
Greuder elbowed his way through the milling crowd of gossiping twinborn more concerned with figuring out what happened than helping sort it out. “He’s in a bad way. They took him up to Tucker’s house to get him patched up, since it was the shortest walk.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. More red than pink on him. A few pounds heavier for all the metal shards stuck in him. He needs Jamile, and needs her bad.”
“What about the Jennai’s machine. Can they open a hole to send her?”
Greuder shook his head. “Tucker mentioned it before he went off with Orris and the lot of them. Blast took out both machines. No one on the Jennai side was hurt because Erefan had gone through and left it unattended.”
Madlin shuddered at the fresh reminder that she was short a father. Erefan had sired Rynn, not her, but those waters were muddy enough to walk across. The loss of a leg had left an ache in her beyond the physical wound. There was no way to build a mechanical Erefan to help Cadmus recover.
“What do you want us to do?”
Madlin blinked. Of course they were asking her. She was General Rynn. Cadmus was holed up in his bedroom performing trigonometry at a global scale, unavailable to consult.
Madlin took stock of the workshop. “Get this crowd out of here. The riflemen can stand guard outside and still be ready if there’s an assault. Anyone with idle hands, shove a broom in them, give them a wheelbarrow, or get them the bloody furnace of Eziel out of my way.”
Despite the grim circumstances, Greuder gave her a weak smile. “New curses?”
“We’ve got us a preacher of the war god. The true litany’s got a bit more spice to it. Now get!”
Madlin waited as Greuder passed her orders along. She remembered when he first moved to Tinker’s Island, a chubby, congenial old man with hands that turned dough and sugar into pure decadent pleasure. Cadmus had told her that he used to be a recruiter for the cause, his best agent for sniffing out twinborn and shipping them north. She could see a bit of that in him now, as she watched him wrangle the unruly crowd into obedience. Or it could have just been that years of running a popular bakery had given him a bit of heft in the community—upset the baker and you might be breaking your fast on runny eggs and toast.
When the crowd had thinned and those remaining were the ones who took up the task of clearing debris, Madlin stepped in to assess the damage. It was a task she wished some other tinker could look to. The fragments of steel, copper, brass, and poured-stone were mundane enough, hardly worth a second look. It was the other bits, the bone chips, the shreds of cloth, the red smears and flecks and splotches—some of it might have been Powlo; some of it was almost certainly Erefan. She looked past it as best as she could to the machine beneath it all.
Cadmus had tools everywhere. There was no place in any workshop on Tinker’s Island where you could find yourself in need of a simple implement and not have one close at hand. Madlin took one of her father’s tool belts and buckled it around the waist, two notches tighter than the well-worn holes her father used. She removed the panels that protected the inner workings, starting from behind the machine where the blast hadn’t caught the world-ripper directly.
The insides of the control console were a shambles. Shrapnel had pierced the access panels on the operator’s side, causing havoc to the innards. She’d always envisioned the wires as the veins and arteries of any spark-run device. Being twinborn meant never having the dreams that trouble the one-worlders, for which Madlin was glad. Otherwise her nightmares would have been plagued with severed copper wires bleeding red blood. Madlin angled her head so that she wasn’t blocking her own light, the better to see how much of the wire would need to be replaced, and how many of the terminals were still intact. Caught up in her inspection, she leaned too close and felt a smear on her cheek as her face rubbed against the edge of a panel. She wiped it with the back of her hand, so used to getting grimy at her tinkering that she hardly gave a thought to a greasy piece of steel. When her hand came away red, she vomited.
Some tinker’s instinct got her to turn her head before she lost her prior night’s dinner and the acids from her stomach into the controls. Scrambling on hands and knees, she found a rag to clean herself up. The blood was more a worry than the vomit. The workshop was overpowered by the scent of burnt metal and poured-stone dust, but the smell of the blood clinging to her was threatening to turn her stomach out again.
Madlin climbed to her feet and turned her back to the world-ripper. She was done with it for a good long while. Blood could carry spark, so any repairs would have to include a thorough cleaning. It was pointless to get replacement parts covered in blood.
The workshop crowd had thinned down to those willing to stay and work. Workers swept up and carted out debris. They were steering clear of the world-ripper as Madlin checked it over. None of them were eager to break the Mad Tinker’s already broken toy. Her eyes caught one, two, four mechanics puttering about the room at menial tasks, and summoned them each by name—she knew the name of every one of her father’s mechanics.
“You lot, get that machine stripped naked, all panels open. Cut power from the dynamo. I want the insides washed out with clean water—no soap. Get rid of all the blood, the fragments, anything that doesn’t belong in there. Any part that’s damaged, if it’s a spark wire or terminal, take it out and set it aside. If it’s structural, make sure it’s not going to fall apart or damage anything else and shore it up best you can.
“Any questions?”
“Ain’t water bad for spark?” asked a mechanic named Alder.
Madlin shook her head. “Not once we let it dry. Recondensed water is best, but so long as you use pump water and not that Katamic shit, it’ll dry fine.”
If there was another question, it was swallowed in a hail of rotorifle fire. Madlin spun to see a world-hole open in far corner of the workshop, well clear of most of the wreckage. She’d heard of steam tanks, but never seen one with her own eyes. It was a crawling brick of steel and glass, dragging itself through the world hole on studded steel belts. If certain fascinating details of its construction escaped her, it was because Madlin’s attention was drawn to the muzzle flashes of a rotogun spinning too fast for her to even take count of the barrels.
Rynn’s instincts took over—no, Chipmunk’s. The rebel army could call her what they liked, but it was Chipmunk who had been shot at. Madlin ducked behind the bulk of the control console and saw the cleaning crew torn to pieces. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep any more of the image from burning itself into her mind. There was a distinctive screeching rumble as the steam tank dragged itself into Tellurak, and she guessed that the second such sound wasn’t an echo following behind it.
No shot had been fired in her direction. They want the machine intact. Well, intact might have been asking too much, but they didn’t want to damage it any further. Madlin wasn’t about to let that advantage pass without availing herself. There was a small cluster of offices at the side of the workshop, through a door and down a hallway, from when the world-ripper’s workshop had been used as a warehouse. A workshop required little in the way of clerical support, but a warehouse needed shippers, accountants, freightmasters, and crew supervisors. Those functionaries had lost their offices in the conversion, but the rooms were still there.
Madlin ducked at the waist and ran, tool belt and holster flapping at her thighs. If she’d been armed with a coil gun, she might have sta
yed and slugged it out with a single steam tank, hoping to ventilate the crew before they got a bead on her with the rotoguns. With two, the odds of her getting turned into ground meat where she stood was nearly one hundred percent, even if she had a weapon to fight back with. She reached the door handle in seconds, but flinched at every burst of rotogun fire, expecting each to be capped off with a searing pain that never came. On the far side of the door, the hall was dark. She was willing to take the darkness over the invitation of an open door, but when she moved to close it, she saw that two of her mechanics had followed her.
“Come on. Move!” Madlin waved them through the door. No fools, they—the mechanics monkeyed after Madlin’s bent-over run and slipped through the door behind her. With both through, she slammed the hall door behind her.
“Alder? Bakersfield?”
“They got got.” It was as succinct an answer as she was likely to get. No detail, for which she was thankful.
The hallway ran parallel to the workshop wall. They heard the rotogun fire and shouts from the bass voices of kuduks, all muffled through the stone-block walls, but still too loud for comfort. “Last office on the south side,” said Madlin, leading the way without waiting for confirmation. She hustled down the hall, dragging a hand along the left side wall, counting doors. The fourth door was the last; any farther and she would have hit the far wall.
The door opened with a faint click. There was no lock to worry over. A double-window, hung with lavender curtains, was the only thing inside. The desk, the files, the chair, all had been removed. She popped the catch and thrust the window open. She didn’t bother to check on the mechanics. They made enough noise that there was no question of whether they’d kept up.
Outside the gunfire sounded distant. Madlin heard it by the echoes from the other buildings, from the mountainsides. Answering fire came in a discordant chorus of single shot rifles. There was no telling how well they’d hold out. Errol Company made the best arms Tellurak had ever seen, but Korrish military hardware was still a cut above. Cadmus had plans drawn up for rotoguns, steam tanks—even the twenty-crew behemoths—but nothing that had made it past vellum. The coil guns were so simple to build by comparison that all production had been diverted to those.
The workshop! Workshops abounded in Tinker’s Island, but there was one that came to mind: the one where her coil guns were pieced together. Her first thought, and her first step, was to arm herself. But she stopped. Father. She couldn’t rush off to play the hero, not until she’d seen that he was safe, or at least on his way to safety. In his current state of mind, there was no telling how he’d respond to the attack. He might slip into despair, he might decide to play general-from-out-front with a rifle in his hand and go out fighting. Madlin was hoping for something along the lines of slipping away quietly into the mountains.
“You two are with me.”
The mechanics nodded and followed Madlin on her looping route to her house. There was a straight avenue from the Errol home to the world-ripper, but the population of airborne bullets in the area made it a bit too crowded for her tastes. She and her escorts slipped down side streets and alleys. The echoes of the gun battle caught her ears weirdly, coming from all directions, sounding at times like they were chasing the battle, at other times rightly that they were fleeing it.
The door to her house hadn’t arrived soon enough for her liking, but they got to it intact.
“I want the two of you to get down to the docks. The Treforge is in port, and her deck guns ought to be able to handle a steam tank, if you can hit one.”
“Miss Madlin, I ain’t never fired one of them guns.” His companion nodded agreement.
“Stop at Captain Tucker’s on the way. If you can grab him, do it. If you can’t, you smart fellas are going to do some quick learning.”
Madlin sped them on their way and went inside.
In the foyer of the house, Cadmus stood with a scattergun in hand, jamming cartridges into the breech. Thankfully the Mad Tinker had the presence of mind to dress himself before heading off for his assault. “Madlin!” He gave a single laugh. “I got it figured out. Ten minutes from now, I’ll have my foot on that daruu bastard’s corpse. He’s in the iron mines a little over a mile from here, except in Korr. Great minds, eh? Hah!” Cadmus snatched up a pile of papers covered in pencil scratches—equations, diagrams, coordinates.
“Father, what are you doing?” Madlin asked. “We’re under attack. Great minds, my arse! You got out-mathed. They found us first.”
Cadmus’s face went slack, eyes gaping. “No. We can’t be. He couldn’t have guessed. He saw through our world-holes. Must have seen our dials. BLOODY BASTARD! I’LL KILL HIM.”
“That’s a nice thought, but they brought steam tanks, and we’re getting pushed—”
“Is this a festival day?”
Madlin’s head snapped toward the hall, where a bed-haired Dan was yawning as he walked toward them.
“Winds, you people make a racket. I was up late studying those—”
“Dan!” Madlin’s trip to the workshop for half-assembled coil guns suddenly seemed a like a fool’s errand. “We’re under attack.”
Dan stopped mid-stretch. “You’d better not be dangling apples over my head.”
“We’re. Under. Attack. Full scale assault from a Korrish force coming through their own world-hole. We’re being overrun.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected. Dan had never shown cowardice, or shyness to fight. But the prospect seemed daunting. The rational part of her considered a soldier’s response, a grim acceptance of duty with a clenched jaw and a nod. The worrier in her thought he might toy with her, let the daruu’s force take the city and help them escape by the slimmest margin. His actual response sent a shiver through her.
His eyes widened and a little smile grew into a toothy grin. “Happy age-day to me.” Dan strode past Madlin and snapped his fingers. The nightshirt he wore transformed, turning into a costume of black silk and matching leather boots, with a long cloak, draped in lacquered chain at the shoulders. She felt the aether swirl around her, rushing in the direction of the departing boy. Though there was no physical force, she found herself leaning against the current of it.
The doors to the Errol mansion were thick timber, bound in brightsteel. Madlin had to lean whenever she pushed them open. Dan threw them from the hinges and stepped through the gaping passage that they left.
Madlin and Cadmus looked to one another in the wake of Dan’s departure. “You still want to run out there with a scattergun?”
With the doors burst open, the sounds of the battle carried clearly into the foyer. Cadmus looked down at the scattergun clenched in his hand. What thoughts ran through that mind of his—that twisted conglomeration of gears and levers, all powered on steam, not spark—Madlin was sure she couldn’t imagine. It went on too long for her liking.
“Go down to the docks. I sent a couple mechanics to see about using the guns on the Treforge. It’d be nice to know someone there knew the workings, if they can’t snag Tucker on their way.”
Cadmus nodded, blinked a few times, shook his head, and nodded again. “Right. Of course.” He set his pages of calculations down on a side table and jogged out the door.
Let him set his mind to a task—anything that kept him from realizing that Dan might be able to clear a path to the invading world-ripper and to Kezudkan beyond. In his current state, he was not fit for vengeance.
Madlin set off in the young warlock’s wake. With some hope of fighting back, it was time to act the part of a general.
The exchange with Cadmus had taken mere moments. If Madlin had known how far she had fallen behind, she would have run.
The streets of Tinker’s Island still cracked with gunfire. Rotoguns must have numbered in the dozens, and between bursts, the hum and scrape of the steam tanks could be heard plodding along, clearing out opposition. There was nothing shoddy about the construction of the local buildings. No wood or plaster walls stood readi
ly shredded by bullets, but thick stone blocks, piled and mortared. The defenders took up positions in houses and shops, making miniature fortresses of them. They had been built against the harsh weather, but met their new challenge well.
Dan’s path through the battlefield was easy to follow. Kuduk ground troops had joined the fight, packed up inside suits of steel-plated leather, with glass-faced helms, each with a filter canister protruding to either side of the mouth. Madlin got a good, close look at them, inside as well as out. The bodies lay scorched and torn in the middle of the road, leaking blood over the cobbles. The suits looked well guarded against bullets, but no bullet had felled any of the kuduks Madlin saw. She could imagine a fairy-story dragon had descended and taken umbrage with the invading force, such were the great gashes and burns covering their bodies.
From a block away, judging by the sound, she heard the thunderous crash and metallic clatter that could only have been one of the steam tanks running into misfortune. A tinkling of falling parts followed, then another great crash like the first. Madlin rounded the back corner of Joskin’s Fine Jackets to see one of the steam tanks flipped like a turtle, studded belts drifting to a halt, with the driver’s cabin smashed flat. Miraculously, someone was stirring inside.
Dan strode toward the wreck, showing confidence but no sign of hurry. He leaned to peer in through the glassless frame of the side window. “What are you rutting monsters made of?” he asked offhandedly. He stuck a hand into the opening and unleashed a gout of flame. A riot of gunfire answered as the ammunition overheated and fired wherever it lay within. Madlin ducked back around the corner until the bullets stopped. When she dared peek, Dan was already moving, keeping to the sides of buildings but showing no other precaution.