Tinker's Justice (38 page)

Madlin looked out over the stunned delegates. Only the demon appeared amused. “These are my terms. There is no negotiation. You will be returned to your homes, except for Mr. Draksgollow, who will be coming with us. Good evening.”

A world-hole opened and the new Mad Tinker vanished through it.

Chapter 27

“The clearest message we have from Eziel is this: the preservation of mankind. Do what you must, whether fight or flee or hide, to give our kind the best chance to survive.” – Pious Rascal

The engine of the steam wagon chugged and puffed along. Madlin had been thinking for months that she ought to replace it with a fully rune-powered model, but she had grown fond of the little mechanical beast. Its iron-studded wheels bit into the turf as it climbed the hillside. As she crested the rise, Madlin pulled down the binocular attachment for her spectacles and surveyed the area. It seemed decadent, owning land that she had never seen. Most of Tellurak was populated by common folk who would never rub two stones of their own together.

The valley was overgrown with tall, wispy grasses and thorny bushes, but it was still easier than dealing with tree cover. At her side, Jamile looked through a spyglass—one of the ones they had brought for the delegates of the Final Peace meeting but never needed. “It’s pretty down there. Seems a shame to disturb it.”

“Everywhere’s pretty to you,” Madlin replied. “But we’ve got a thousand people a day coming through from Korr, and no place to put them. Well, plenty of land, but no places in it. Blast it, you know what I mean.”

There were chuckles from the back of the steam wagon, where the surveying crew rode. There were six of them, a mix of Korrish and Kheshi. The Kheshis were locals, who knew the land. The Korrish knew how to measure it properly.

“Go on,” Madlin snapped, “Get to work.” They knew she wasn’t cross with them; they had worked with her on five city sites previously. “I figure we’ll run the new thunderail line down that valley pass, cutting the hillside back. We’ll cross the brook over that way. Base the layout sketches on that and measure accordingly.”

“Yes, tinker,” they replied in rough unison. Madlin had cured everyone of calling her “ma’am” as soon as decorum allowed, following the war. She had retired officially, though officially only Rynn had held rank. Madlin’s new title was Mad Tinker, which was less an epithet than an honor, as far as she was concerned. The title had passed down from Cadmus, but she had no idea who she would pass it on to. She was not yet twenty, though she felt at times that her life had run twice that long. A side effect of being twinborn, she supposed. There would be time one day for home and family. For now, she had a country to build.

“You coming?” Madlin asked as she hopped down, her boots sinking in the soft soil.

Jamile smiled. “I’ll watch from here, if you don’t mind.” Jamile had been keeping off her feet more and more of late. The swell of her belly was all the reason she needed. Madlin had been surprised when she realized that Jamile was carrying a child. Never had she noticed Jamile taking an interest in men, or at least none in particular. Wartime passion, she supposed—ill-considered and fleeting. The father was a mystery, and one Madlin felt better left alone. She had a strong suspicion that the child was Kupe’s, and a scandal was the last thing Prime Minister Kupe and Lady Charsi needed. Kupe was swimming upside down as it was, trying to lead where everyone showed him.

“Well, you take it easy, then,” Madlin said. “We’ll be a couple hours. I’ll try to stay in shouting distance in case you need anything.”

“You’re not nervous at all?” Jamile asked, wringing her hands.

“Why would I be nervous?” Madlin said. “This place is tame as a milk cow.”

“Not
that
,” Jamile replied. “The other thing. You know.”

Madlin chuckled. “I’ll be fine. It’s science like we’ve never seen. Trust them.”

Rynn heard a beeping sound—rhythmic, steady, and oddly comforting. She opened her eyes and saw white. A white ceiling overhead, with a soft white light shining down. White walls with white panels, scrawled with words she couldn’t understand. She was covered in white sheets, and wore a white smock as soft as kitten fur. White wires snaked out from under that smock, running to white-painted machines with glowing displays—one of which made the beeping noise.

She was not alone in the room. She had three visitors. One was Sosha, her dark skin contrasting with the stark white all around, including the toothy smile that she gave. Another was dressed in a loose, pale blue outfit of matching pants and shirt. He carried a rectangular panel like a clipboard, but one face glowed with that same incompressible writing, along with some graphs. A loose cloth mask hung around his neck, a pair of laces dangling loose from it. Rynn’s impression was that he looked like a stage actor, with his perfect smile and coiffed hair, but it didn’t seem out of place for a doctor. The third in the room with them was a translator. The grey-haired woman had a kindly face and alert eyes, the sort of eyes that looked at things, not just passively taking them in.

“How do you feel?” Sosha asked.

“Thirsty,” Rynn replied. There was a peculiar taste in her mouth that she could not identify. Reaching for the bedside table, she drank from a little white cup they had left there for her.

The doctor said something. His language was lyrical and mysterious. “Do you have any feeling?” the translator asked.

Rynn shrugged. “Yeah, but that never meant anything. Let’s just have a look.” After waiting for the translation, the doctor nodded. Some things, it seemed, needed no translation.

The doctor pulled back the blankets and Rynn looked down. There, just below the knee, the skin turned fresh pink, like her tinker’s legs had been a scab that had just been removed. With an effort of concentration, Rynn wiggled her toes.

“They work!” Sosha squealed. She clapped her hands together.

“What else would you expect?” Rynn asked. “These people have medicine figured out. Blast it, they seem to have everything figured out.”

After an exchange back and forth in the local language, the doctor replied via translator. “Not everything, madam emissary. I’ve been fielding calls from the Ministry of Science, the Ministry of Defense, and no fewer than a dozen research universities, all wanting to study those runes of yours. The Ministry of Foreign Relations has been keeping them at bay, but they’ve been wanting to study your prosthesis.”

Rynn smirked. “They must think I’m some sort of witch.”

The doctor nodded. “You’re in little danger, of course,” he replied via translator. “Your activities will be monitored, both for the populace’s peace of mind and for your own protection.”

“As long as I can learn the science of your world,” Rynn replied, “you’re welcome to anything I know about mine.”

She felt like a card hustler. These poor folks of Olara didn’t know the shabby end of a bargain when they saw one. Tellurak would get the benefits of science a thousand years ahead of its time, and Olara would get floaty runes and mechanical replacement legs. But as long as they were happy with the bargain, who was she to argue. It wasn’t as if she had real magic to show them.

Chapter 28

“The distress beacon is only to be used as a last resort. Traveler’s Companion will not be held responsible for the consequences of frivolous use.” – Traveler’s Companion: Calling for Help

In a forested grove, the immortals gathered. They had taken their leisure among the mortal races, but one of their number had called them home. Now, beneath the stars and under the light of the cracked moon, they waited.

“You have to admit; I was right,” Kyrus whispered, grinning at his companion.

“Yeah, I feel
so
much better now that the Errol girl knows how to blast a planet to bits,” Juliana replied.

“But those kuduks never managed to wipe out their humans or replace them from Tellurak,” Kyrus replied. “They got the tinkers who knew how to build the machines and rounded them all up.”

“So now only one group controls inter-world travel.”

Kyrus chuckled.

“Fine, so we can do it too,” Juliana said. “But they’ve still got a weapon that could kill us. The mortals might not have realized how she did it, but we know what we’re up against. Do
you
think you could survive the sun?”

Kyrus shrugged. “I don’t expect I’ll ever have to. What quarrel have they got with me? Besides, I know a secret.”

“Oh?” Juliana asked. Kyrus wasn’t in the habit of keeping those, as far as she knew.

Kyrus leaned close and cupped a hand over her ear. “They don’t have a machine to do it.”

“But she said—”

Kyrus grinned. “They don’t need another. Sure, they could build one, but they blew that first one to ash and nearly cracked Tellurak’s moon in the process. But I like it, the threat of that thing will keep the peace, and since no one can find it, no one can ever be sure it’s gone.”

“Then how do
you
know?” Juliana stuck her tongue out.

“A good magician never reveals how he does his tricks.”

Juliana raised an eyebrow. It was a worse threat than anything she could have said.

“Fine,” Kyrus relented. “Illiardra told me. And don’t ask, because I have no idea how she knew.”

There was a small commotion among the immortals. The absent member of their order had returned—the one who had called them together in the first place. At first it was difficult to recognize Viyax, looking as plain and common as a Korrish human. But when he spoke his voice was the same as ever.

“Thank you all. You honor me with your attention,” Viyax said, projecting his voice to the far reaches of the assembly. He was dressed in coveralls stained with grease, and beside him was something about the size of a wine barrel, covered in a grimy cloth.

“Since when have you cherished anything else?” a voice called out from the crowd. There was good-natured laughter at the prankster demon’s expense.

“We gather tonight beneath a wounded moon,” Viyax continued, unable to prevent a smile from turning up his lip. He could not resist a good joke, not even when he was its target. “It made me think we are not so invulnerable. We have a new Tallax watching over us.”

“You overstate matters,” Illiardra said, her voice carrying clear across the grove.

“Do I?” Viyax asked. “When Tallax died, his threat died with him. This girl has left us in the hands of science, a force which bows to no single master. When the new Mad Tinker dies, some other will take up her cause, and if she is like the Korrish I have met, it will be a score of someones, not a lone successor.”

“What’s under the cloth?” Bvatrain asked. He had returned reluctantly from his visit to a land that had become a stranger to him. He made no secret that he wished to return.

Viyax grinned, his smile impossibly wide for his otherwise human face. “I built one!” He pulled the cloth away to reveal a curious contraption beneath. Despite never having seen one before, any immortal who had read through the twelve books recognized it from the descriptions contained therein: a distress beacon.

“Really, Viyax, you think we need help from some unknown source?” Illiardra asked. “From the same ones who wrote of age elixirs and makeshift transference devices. From the ones who told me the names of plants and animals I knew from their first appearance in the world. From the ones who worried that they would get lost exploring. We need no help from the likes of them.”

“Aren’t you curious who would come?” Viyax asked. “If they are weak and foolish, they are harmless. If they are not, then we might ask succor of them.”

“You have to admit he has a point,” Kyrus said. Juliana elbowed him in the side, but didn’t speak against him. She ought to have been proud; Kyrus so rarely instigated trouble.

“Thank you,” Viyax said with a bow in Kyrus’s direction. “So good to see the youths among us looking for the novel solution. I don’t relish waiting out five hundred years of domination.” He pulled a lever and the machine sparked to life. It cracked with energy, whirring to a high-pitched whine. When the whine steadied, the machine warbled a series of gibberish sounds, like spark-powered birdsong. Then it went dark and silent.

The immortals waited. Patience was a trait widely admired among them. It became a test of wills to see who would weaken first and make some comment. Before the first of them broke ranks, the skies grew clouded. The stars vanished. The crippled moon disappeared behind a wall of heavy black stormclouds. Lightning struck the ground in their midst, and a man appeared as if carried on the bolt.

“What is this?” he asked. He had a deep, melodious voice, and spoke the arcane tongue that all present understood. He appeared human, though tall for the species. He wore a long, sleeveless white tunic, trimmed in gold and belted at the waist, leaving muscular arms and calves bare. His face was … familiar.

“Eziel?” Juliana asked. She knew the face from the statue in the Acardian city of Golis, where the ancient gods stood in sculpted form, watching over a plaza.

He frowned, but it carried no hint of anger. “You are too young to know me,” he said.

“But not I,” Bvatrain said, drawing the god’s attention.

“Nor I,” added Illiardra.

“Why have you summoned me?” Eziel asked. “I had no idea these worlds still held life, so long had they been dormant.”

“Dormant?” Illiardra asked. “Your brethren cleaved them loose in fear of Tallax.”

Eziel scoffed. “Not fear for us, but fear for mortals of the other worlds. The daruu of Tellurak died at his hands. He drove the Korrish dragons to extinction. All because he was unable to find the answer to the one question he cared for.”

“He has been dead for thousands of winters,” Illiardra protested.

“And the worlds have drifted back together once again,” Eziel replied. “You could have contacted us long before now, if you were in no further danger. I’m surprised you turned to science instead of magic though. I did not expect it of a pastoral world.”

“Does this mean you’re going to return?” Juliana asked. She had prayed to Tansha as a child—the blink of an eye ago, to the ageless creatures around her. There was still a part of her that longed for proof that the goddess was real.

“Return?” Eziel asked. “Why would we return here? Our work is done—long since done.”

“You still have worshipers here,” Bvatrain said. “Some few in this world, many more in Korr and Tellurak. The humans of Korr just fought a war in your name.”

Eziel’s face wrinkled in disgust. “I taught them the means to defend themselves, not to wage war. I suppose I must shoulder blame for letting that message erode in the winds of time. But it is not for me to disabuse them. Let them believe of me as they will. They are not my problem any longer.”

“But what of the Korrish weapon that broke the moon?” Viyax asked. “What if they turn it against us? We need your help.”

Eziel threw his head back and laughed. “Is this why you’ve called for aid after all this time? Because some class three or four world gained access to class seven science? You mighty magicians are afraid of technology that can barely toddle across the floor, and you cower in the corners from it?”

“Yes?” Viyax ventured sheepishly.

“Come to me when their civilization expands to the stars, and they threaten to collapse the heavens upon themselves. That day they might inconvenience my current works, and I might come to stop them for you then. Those of you whom I remember, you disappoint me. You are so much as you were. Grow. Begin anew. Explore. Do not fritter away your vast lifespans. Even your so-called immortality is not without end.”

“What would you have us do?” Illiardra asked.

“Have you do?” Eziel asked. “I would have you tend to your own affairs. You want the gods watching over you, but to whom do these mortals turn? They pray to memories, listen to echoes, read shadows of old beliefs. Steer them. Guide them. Protect them as we once did, as we once needed to. This world is old enough; it no longer needs us. It has its guardians.”

With that, lightning struck where Eziel stood, and he was gone. The skies cleared and the broken moon stared down at them once more, accusingly. In the silence that followed, the immortals looked to one another, each trying to decide what to make of Eziel’s admonishment.

“I guess no more non-intervention,” Kyrus said with a wan smile.

“If there are no other volunteers, I’ll be the goddess of war,” Juliana offered.

* * * * * * * *

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Other Books by J.S. Morin

If you enjoyed Mad Tinker Chronicles, why not go back to the beginning, and experience the journey of mundane scribe Kyrus Hinterdale who discovers what it means to be Twinborn—and the dangers of getting caught using magic in a world that thinks it exists only in childrens’ stories.

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