The Tinker King

by Tiffany Trent

  I try to agree, to say something. Nothing comes out of my mouth except a long sigh.

  I’m back in the cave, listening to the water drip. I feel as though the cave sprites are somewhere nearby, conferring about what to do with me, but I can’t actually see them.

  “Now,” a dreaded voice says. “You will tell me what you see.”

  The words tumble out of my mouth. I tell her about how I’m certain the ship I’m on will explode. I tell her where we’re going. I tell her even that I tried to fight one of her people with a sausage.

  “You are a ridiculous fool,” Ximu says. I have to smile a little at that, because it’s true. “But perhaps you may be useful after all. Tell me how the ship will fall. And where. And when.”

  The burning star is in my mind’s eye, but I have no idea. I know nothing. I tell her as much.

  She taps me on the cheek; the hairy spines of her feet hurt. “Not good enough. You must get much better. Or else.”

  “Or else what?” I’m cheeky, but I don’t care. Our mutual dislike has already been well established.

  “I can make things much worse for you, even though your body is not here with me. I can torment your mind in such ways as you cannot imagine. You must look more deeply, Prognosticator. I have spent much power on you to place you where you are. I let you escape. I need you to be my eyes and ears. I need you to find things. See you do not fail me.”

  I start to shudder all over at this realization. Somehow she has buried a seed of her filthy magic in my mind, and now it’s sprouting poisonous vines all through me. How will I ever get free?

  I struggle then, like a fish on a hook. “What? What thing am I supposed to find?”

  “I need you to find a key. And many other things besides. And you will tell no one, do you understand? I will kill all of your people with a word. You, dear Tinker, are my secret weapon.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “No one can refuse me!” She is so very confident.

  “Vespa and Bayne did.” It’s a simple fact.

  And she punishes me for it. So hard, I fall into a deeper blackness, an ugly torment of reliving the past and trying to figure out if it’s also the future.

  A white city rising through flames, a palace hewn of bone before the world began, a Tinker King in his patched robes filling the air with magical delights, a silver army waiting far below the earth . . . and a box, an ancient, sealed box . . .

  “No!” I shout. I don’t want her to see. I don’t want her to know.

  “Yes,” she says.

  She’s still there, squatting inside my mind, sifting through my visions and plucking them with her spider feet into the vast web she spins. It’s beyond anything any of us have imagined—what she plans. I can only see it in bits and pieces. Much she is still hiding from me. And yet I must know. I must hold on because if I can know what she plans, I can warn the others.

  “You will not tell a soul.”

  I can’t help it. I ask. “Why?”

  “Because if you do, you will never see your people again.”

  And cruel-hearted evil thing that she is, she shows me their faces. The faces of the long departed, the faces of those I never truly knew. Uncle Gen. My cousins. All the other clans.

  “You have seen them here. Just like you, they are a piece of my Great Design. And if you want to ever see them again, you will do as I say. See what you’re meant to see, send your dreams to me in the night, and you will be reunited with them.”

  I am silent, hunkered down in the cold, endless dark with her. But she answers the unspoken question anyway.

  “And if you do not, all shall be slain.”

  When I wake, I feel as if I’ve been thrashed from one end of the cabin to the other. I remember some strange nightmare about being back in the cave again, but when I reach for more, everything falls apart into dark tatters. I suspect it’s near dawn, but there’s no real way to tell without windows. Truffler is still huddled in his blankets, snoring. He’ll be asleep for most of this trip. The iron and the forced separation from his land will make him unwell. I hope he will recover as Piskel has. Some Elementals never recover from being removed from their places of origin. Others are more mobile than we’d like them to be, apparently.

  I notice that I’ve managed to throw what few blankets were remaining to me on the floor, and Truffler has accumulated them into his nest. Piskel uncurls from beside me and yawns, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hungry?” I ask.

  He looks at me, and long lashes sprout around his eyes. He bats them at me.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. But I don’t have any cake.”

  I instantly regret saying so because his face falls. He droops over to my shoulder.

  I dig in the satchel, looking for the sausage, cheese, anything. It’s all gone.

  “Piskel!”

  He avoids my gaze sheepishly.

  “You ate it all, didn’t you?”

  He nods, still without looking at me.

  “Well,” I say, “I hope there’s food aboard, or we’re all going to be much thinner by the time we reach Scientia.”

  I follow the corridor back down to the cargo hold. People are milling around, sitting and talking, or curled against the curved walls, sleeping. It’s quite hot down here, and I can smell the faint, all-too-familiar odor of burned bone. Myth. They’re definitely burning myth to fly this ship. Surely they know that’s illegal? Maybe they don’t care.

  The few Elementals that I gather were at court when the attack happened are huddled together uncomfortably as far from everything else as they can be. Many of them look terribly ill, and I’d guess it’s the presence of the myth and the disconnection from their home. I’m wishing I’d brought some dirt, water, anything to offer them that might be of comfort. But I wasn’t exactly thinking of all that when we were racing through the burning alleys.

  I watch some children playing jacks as unconcerned as if they were not fleeing all they’d ever known. It reminds me so much of home that I’m a bit startled when I notice that the people are looking at me without warmth. There’s still a prejudice against my people, even though I was singlehandedly trying to teach the New Londoners how to live without the destructive magic they’d used unknowingly for centuries.

  New tragedies bring up old habits, I suppose.

  Piskel prods at me. He wants me to stop gawping and find us some food.

  I stop near a crewman checking a manifest list against some boxes. I’m surprised they even had time to get together a list. “Excuse me, sir, where might I find food for me and my companion here?”

  Piskel grins hugely at him.

  The man looks as though he’s about to have a heart attack. He backs against the stack of crates as if I’ve just thrust a venomous snake in his face and points with a quivering pencil up another winding stair without speaking.

  Still not too comfortable with the Elementals, either, I see.

  I follow the winding stair until I smell something promising. They’ve set up a makeshift mess and are slinging gruel into bowls. There’s evidently not much to go round because each person only gets one ladleful.

  Piskel sticks out his tongue at the slop, but nevertheless pulls out a tiny spoon from some invisible place and slurps it up from my bowl. People stare and turn away when they see us.

  I curl up against a window with my bowl and spoon and look out. We’re far over the green Euclidean Plain. We’re indeed nearing dawn, based on the thin line of light on the horizon. There’s not a cloud in the sky. One would never guess we left New London burning behind us.

  As I watch, a herd of unicorns below surges over a grassy knoll, their manes and tails like silver currents in the green. It has been centuries since they were able to run here. For the longest time this was all black desert, part of the Creeping Waste. A year on, and the grasslands have fully recovered. As far as we know, all their old inhabitants have been restored. Even if we’re unsure about what we’ve done or what the future ho
lds, at least we can know that in some small corners of this world, we changed things for good.

  I just wish it didn’t make my heart sink so much to know my people are behind me instead of ahead.

  “Syrus!”

  Vespa calls from the door. Heads turn for a moment, and then she gets the same sullen stares and cold shoulders that I did. Even if she doesn’t want to recognize it, I think everyone else sees what I see in her—her Tinker heritage. She’s paler than many of us but only because of her father, I’d guess. The cheekbones and eyes are there, the way she smiles. But unlike the rest of us, she’s held on to the magic that we tend to lose as we grow older.

  We’ve never really talked about it much. I don’t know how to bring up the conversation, remembering how the Cityfolk used to feel about those with Tinker blood. I doubt she feels the same as them, but I’d imagine her mother is a rather sore subject. She doesn’t talk about her, so I assume she’d rather not.

  She crosses to me. Piskel stops eating with his spoon halfway to his mouth, looking at her with hope bright in his little face.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Vespa looks around and lowers her voice. “Come upstairs.”

  I return my bowl to the mess kitchen, feeling somewhat ashamed. But Piskel is ecstatic, sure that this means we’re about to be served tasty treats.

  We follow her down a corridor, up several flights of stairs, through another observation deck that doubles as a library and gaming parlor, apparently. On the last level we pass faun sentries, who look faintly green from the flight and the smell of myth, most likely.

  “Does the Empress know they’re using mythgas?” I ask.

  Vespa shushes me. “I don’t know—I don’t really see how she could miss the smell—but it’s not something we think should be brought up just yet. Olivia has had a lot to deal with in the last few hours. We need to figure out the lay of the land first. Things in Scientia are likely to be difficult.”

  “Did you decipher the message yet?”

  Vespa shakes her head. “Olivia is working on it, actually. She has a fondness for ciphers, so she says.”

  “What will happen to the Elementals on board? Will they be given homes?”

  “I’m not sure. I hope they’ll be able to adjust. Some of those in the hold look quite pitiful, don’t they? I’m trying to work with Bayne and Olivia to see if we can give them better accommodations or feed them magic, anything that might comfort them. Maybe you can help me with that.”

  “Of course.”

  “And the Captain mentioned that when you’re feeling well again, they might be able to use your talents in the control room. The Engineer apparently never made it on board, so if something breaks . . .”

  When she says that, fear settles in the pit of my stomach, almost as if what she’s said is more a prediction than a possibility.

  I suppose a look crosses my face.

  “What?” Vespa says.

  “I don’t know. I guess this just feels too easy.”

  “You thought that was easy? I’d hate to think what you’d find hard.”

  A flare of anger blossoms in my heart. “You don’t want to know,” I say.

  We enter a warm audience chamber, lushly fitted with brass and carved wood fixtures. As I run my hand along a bookcase, it shivers under my hand, and I realize that this is living wood. The dryad is still huddled inside, forced into making the wood gleam and change its shape to the occupant’s desire. Even the Virulens did not have such horrors. Piskel shrinks back against me, spitting and hissing.

  It strangely makes my neck ache at the place where the hybrid spiderlings had been injecting me with their poison. I put my hand over it. The wound is still very tender.

  “Is something wrong, Artificer?”

  I turn and find Olivia near my elbow. She holds out a fluted glass filled with a pale yellow liquid.

  “A tonic to ease you,” she says. “We have both, it seems, been through much travail of late.”

  Her words and manner are so very pretty, but I’m still repulsed by the touch of the poor wood under my hands.

  “How can you bear to be in here?” I ask.

  Her eyes fly open wide. “What do you mean?”

  I realize that it’s not just Bayne, Vespa, and me alone with Olivia. There are others here—the Captain, courtiers, hangers-on—the sorts I despise.

  I shake my head. “Sorry, nothing. I just meant . . . the closeness, you know.”

  She frowns slightly.

  “It feels a bit stuffy,” I say lamely, and take the glass she offers.

  “Perhaps you still have a bit of the fever?” Olivia looks as though she wants to put her hand on my forehead, but she wouldn’t dare to here. I wish we could walk alone under the eaves of the Forest. It would be so much more natural than all this posing.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I find it comes and goes. Just when I think I’m well . . .” Olivia glances aside at the others to see how much they’re paying attention. Then her eyes are searching mine. “Have you had strange dreams, Syrus?”

  “Strange dreams?” Somehow the question makes me nervous, as if I’ve been caught thinking things I shouldn’t.

  She looks down, suddenly vulnerable. Suddenly not an Empress, just a girl. “Strange dreams of fire and armies . . . armies of machines . . .”

  It’s as if our minds are connected by some invisible tether. It feels dangerous, like a wire of live myth. I step back a little.

  “I’m sorry, have I said something wrong?”

  I drown in the gray seas of her eyes, wanting to tell her, wanting to say how much I know. And if you tell anyone, I will kill them. I can’t say anything. My tongue can’t make the words. Even as I try, my memory loses its grasp on what I want to say.

  “I . . .” Finally I’m able to shake my head and just say, “No, nothing wrong. It’s the fever and all that.”

  “Bayne has been telling us what he was able to find out about the shadowspiders. The venom of the Queen is said to give the gift of prophecy. I keep hoping maybe I’ll be able to forecast some good luck.” Olivia smiles then.

  It takes me a moment to catch up because the words seem to drop into a vast space that’s trying to open in my mind.

  “Syrus?” Olivia prods.

  My attention snaps back, and I realize she’s made a joke. “Ah ha, yes.” I force a laugh.

  My heart is fluttering. Piskel can feel it because he laughs at me and starts casting significant looks in Olivia’s direction. I glance aside and notice a checkerboard on a nearby table, specially designed with high sides so the pieces can’t slide off. There are two chairs.

  “Would you care to play, Majesty?” I ask. A game at least will take our minds off these things and perhaps stop the strange looks of the others around us.

  I sip at the yellow drink she’s given me. It tastes frothy and lemony at once and I have to wonder what’s in it, whether it will do anything to close the dark wound I feel inside.

  “Of course,” she says.

  We take our places opposite each other. Vespa looks over from her conversation with the Captain and smiles at me as she sees us settling ourselves.

  Piskel is strategizing almost before I’ve assembled my pieces. The sylph loves games. He’d be a fierce poker player, I’m quite certain. He points emphatically at my pieces, motioning and gesturing as to which way they should go.

  “You’re giving our game away, didi,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.

  Chagrined, Piskel thumps down on my shoulder with his chin in his fist.

  Olivia looks up briefly from the board. “That word you just said—didi—what does it mean?”

  I correct her tone with a smile. The tones of the old language are hard to understand for people not used to them. “It just means little brother. I call him that sometimes. I don’t think he minds.”

  Piskel makes a small hmph noise, as if to say, So you’d like to think.

  “And what are the other
words for family members?” she says, sliding her first piece out.

  The pieces seem to be magnetized in some way because they stay right where we put them. I want to take the table apart to see how it works. It doesn’t quite feel like this is made with myth, but then there’s so much of it in the room because of the mythgas and living wood that I can’t really tell.

  I tell her all the names—nainai, gege, waipo, mama, baba. How we have names for the maternal and paternal sides of the family.

  “So many different words! How do you keep them all straight?”

  A servant comes to take our glasses and offers us some other refreshment on a silver tray. I hesitate, thinking of all the people and Elementals in the hold.

  “Is there enough?” I ask. My stomach growls as if to protest the merest thought of refusal.

  And there are cakes.

  Piskel’s eyes bulge out of his face. Afraid he’ll start zigzagging plaid streaks around the room, I contain him gently with a hand, and he squeaks at me with indignation.

  Olivia watches us with a bemused expression. “Of course. Have some.”

  “But the people below . . .”

  “Are also being cared for. We don’t have much—I doubt this will happen every day, but for right now the Grimgorn envoy is being gracious with his master’s stores. We shouldn’t trouble ourselves over accepting that generosity.” She leans closer to me so that no one else can hear. “I’m aware of what’s going on here, Syrus. Have no fear. It will be addressed when we reach Scientia.”

  I nod and slowly lift my hand away from Piskel.

  He makes a triumphant dive toward the tray and begins gnoshing on a bit of crumb cake right then and there, much to the servant’s dismay. I scoop him up, cake and all, and hold him while he gorges himself.

  The servant offers me a piece, but I shake my head. “I think Piskel needs it more than me.”

  “You’re generous to a fault,” Olivia says.

  “I like to think so.”

  Piskel is rolling around in the crumbs in my hand, clutching them to himself with abandon.