The Tinker King

by Tiffany Trent

  Vespa shook her head, barely able to breathe. “Something to do with Syrus and Olivia, but I don’t know what.”

  “I fear this cannot be good.”

  Silver gleamed in the moonlight, and they realized it was Olivia bending over something.

  “Olivia,” Vespa said.

  Syrus was on the floor, the bite wound on his neck still oozing blood and venom.

  “By Athena,” Bayne whispered, kneeling next to him. “He went off and tried to do it alone, didn’t he?”

  Olivia nodded. “I sensed he might do it tonight. I went with him, and we pretended that he was giving me over to her. I waited until she’d drunk enough of him, and then I cut him free and ran with him. They are behind me, though. I’m certain they’ll soon be here. Can you help him?”

  It was an innocent enough question, but Vespa felt ashamed by it. They had not been able to help Olivia when she needed them. But she trusted them, nonetheless, and was absolutely without bitterness that no magic could have saved the person she’d once been.

  “Based on the knowledge I’ve been gathering lately, I hope I have just the thing,” Bayne said. He reached into his satchel, uncorked one of the vials, and poured something that smelled strongly of licorice down Syrus’s throat.

  Syrus spluttered and coughed and gasped. Then he rolled over and threw up.

  Syrus wiped his mouth on his sleeve just as Bayne tried to hand him a handkerchief. He took it sheepishly. “I hate doing that. What’s happening?” Syrus asked, looking around at all of them. His eyes stayed on Olivia. “You saved me, didn’t you?”

  Olivia smiled, nodding.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Syrus said. “She could have gotten you.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to go without telling me,” she said. Alarms rang out, drowning anything else she might have said.

  Bayne coughed rather uncomfortably. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there are sirens howling out there. We’re under attack.”

  “What do you think is happening outside?” Vespa asked.

  “Some of the forces are at the front gates, but I’ve kept back several regiments in the graveyard and along the inner walls. They still may not be enough, though,” Bayne said. “She’s coming from that direction, yes?” he asked, looking at Syrus and Olivia.

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “She was behind me, coming through the graveyard.”

  “Is there anything we can do to slow her, to make sure Tesla and Charles are in position?” Vespa asked.

  “Put up as strong a defense as we can with magic,” Bayne said. “Or . . .” He glanced over at Olivia.

  “Don’t you dare,” Syrus said.

  “What?” Olivia asked.

  “Do you have any memory of this place?” Bayne asked.

  Olivia looked around. “Yes.” She walked out onto the terrace, her metal footsteps clanging against ivory. “I have defended it often enough before.”

  “You lived here once, as General to the King’s army,” Bayne said.

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why everyone wanted me. I was a weapon to them.”

  “Bayne, no,” Syrus said. “Don’t . . .”

  Olivia turned back toward them. Her eyes couldn’t be seen in the pre-dawn gloom. “It’s all right, Syrus,” she said. “Where is the army? Still beneath this hall?”

  Everyone was silent.

  “Where is it?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” Syrus said. “Beneath us.”

  “Then let’s go there.”

  A shudder passed through the entire palace. “She’s coming!” Olivia said. “Down here.” They hurried behind the throne, down winding stairs in the dark. Bayne sent out a flare of light as they neared the bottom of the stairs, keeping them from tipping into the pit. A chasm yawned away from them. Thousands of silver bodies and pointed weapons caught and reflected the light back to them. An army indeed worthy of a king.

  “I remember this,” Olivia said. “I remember . . .” She turned to all of them. “This way.”

  They were at the deep end of the pit, which sloped upward. Vespa noticed that the walls of the pit were lined with row upon row of clay jars large enough to fit a human child inside.

  “What are those for?” she whispered.

  “Those are funerary urns. They contain the souls of those who swore to fight eternally for their King,” Olivia said.

  “Oh.”

  “There is a great door that way,” Olivia said. “My chariot is there.”

  Vespa shivered at the way she said it. Moment by moment as they traversed the pit, Olivia was sounding less like their Empress and more like the General she had once been.

  Finally the slope of the pit reached level ground again, and they could step in among the warriors themselves. As they wove through the motionless army, Vespa could have sworn that she heard a click, like a strange awareness coming sharply into focus.

  But there was also another sound. A scratching sound, a drilling sound from the wall in front of them.

  “Hurry!”

  They got Olivia into her chariot. There was a place for her feet, and she stepped into it. There was another almost inaudible click.

  Vespa didn’t know what to make of it. Anything else like this she’d seen in New London had been myth-powered. But this wasn’t powered by myth at all. She hoped they would figure it out quickly, because otherwise they were going to be sitting ducks in just a few short moments.

  The drilling and tearing sounds became more persistent. Then Vespa saw daylight. The wall in front of them had started to crack.

  “Olivia,” Syrus said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  She reached out a hand to him and took his trembling fingers in her own.

  “The old King has shown his favor of you by giving you my key. He has made you his son. Let this be the everlasting symbol of my love for you. I am abdicating in favor of you. I will be your General. I will protect you and your family for generations to come. The name of the Tinker King will be honored throughout all the Known Lands. But you must consent to let me go. You must consent to be my King.”

  Syrus was speechless as she pulled him close and kissed him. Vespa looked away, unable to bear the sadness between them.

  Olivia murmured something Vespa couldn’t quite catch.

  For several heart-stopping moments there was nothing. No movement, no sound but the resolute drilling and tearing, and the light growing brighter.

  Then there was a ticking, the sound of clockwork resolving itself into a rhythm. Olivia’s metal eyes grew very bright as she let go of Syrus’s hands.

  “Now,” Olivia said to Vespa. “Use the scarabeus to call the souls into the warriors. Their souls will restore their life force.”

  For this, Vespa had been practicing, she realized. Learning how to focus the power of the scarabeus, how to use it to control and magnify her own power. She just prayed her magic was enough.

  Bayne said, “I will feed you what strength I can.”

  Vespa nodded, and Bayne took her hand. She could feel his strength flowing up her fingers, focusing into the scarabeus and casting outward.

  Syrus’s voice strengthened hers with the proper pitch, even if it carried no power. Piskel and Truffler hummed along with them in the old language, weaving their magic with Vespa’s and Bayne’s.

  Vespa was aware of all the souls lining the pit, souls that preferred to continue their long slumber, souls that did not want to be called. Vespa pulled at them with all her might. She reached out and took hold of Bayne’s power, so fast and so hard that it sent him to his knees, clutching at the chariot’s edge with his free hand.

  “Rise,” she said. “Rise and be counted. For the dawn has come, and war is at our door.”

  The shadows stretched and tore like taffy. Vespa felt the very fiber of her being flowing off in thousands of directions, seeding the souls with the compulsion to rise and honor the oath they’d sworn. One by one, they did her bidding. One by one, the army came
to attention.

  Vespa nearly wept with joy and exhaustion. Bayne managed to stand again.

  Then the wall was torn away and harsh morning light streamed in on them, blinding them after the relative darkness of the pit.

  As her eyes adjusted, Vespa’s heart quailed at the scene that spread before them. Ximu had broken through the outer wall. Grimgorn soldiers were scattered like bowling pins. A platoon of hybrids was lined up behind xiren Captains.

  “Thank you very much for providing us with our new army,” Ximu said. “I wasn’t quite certain you could do it, but I had faith that my little Tinker spy would help me win the day. This charade can finally be at an end.”

  Bayne laughed bitterly. “I think you’d better reconsider.”

  “Oh no,” Ximu said. “I am quite sincere about this farce being at an end.”

  “Agreed,” Bayne said. “No, I mean the army. It’s ours.”

  Ximu laughed. “I am pleased to see that your acumen has not improved one bit since last we spoke.”

  “Yours hasn’t improved much either,” Bayne said.

  Syrus said almost to himself, “Don’t toy with her. Not now.”

  Vespa caught his eye, and the haunted look he gave her made her squeeze his shoulder in understanding. “He’s buying us time to recover,” she whispered. “We are all drained to the core.”

  “Enough of this!” Ximu shouted. “Give over control of this army or suffer the consequences!”

  “I think your armies and your City belong to me.”

  The spidery minions, even more hideous by day, charged them. Xiren followed them with their long-handled blades.

  “Now is the time,” Vespa said to the General, hoping perhaps to urge her and the army forward.

  The General turned her head toward Syrus.

  Another sound rose beneath the clanking sounds of Ximu’s hybrids, a heavy thrumming like the sound of drums coming toward them.

  Then the first of the Cephalopod’s tentacular arms snaked round the corner. One of the pincer arms reached out and tried to grab Ximu, but she swatted it away.

  The cockpit came fully into view, a glass bubble that encased Charles. His attempts to seize Ximu seemed futile. Vespa watched in horror as one of the energy guns burned bright before it discharged a shot that smoked on Ximu’s hide.

  “Wait! That wasn’t—” Vespa began to shout. Then she saw that the shot had mostly been a buzz of energy meant to goad her.

  Ximu took the bait, grinning at them, and followed Charles while her hybrids and xiren swarmed through the gap. Scientian reinforcements were attempting to come up through the smoke and rubble of the wall, but they were hampered by the xiren and the hybrids who waited to slice them down at the breach.

  “You can handle this?” Vespa asked Syrus and Olivia. “We have a spider to catch.”

  They nodded. Syrus had tied himself upright in the chariot. Bayne handed him a sword he’d rescued from one of the weapons caches in the walls. “Good hunting, then.”

  “And to you,” Syrus said.

  The General urged the metal horses forward, and Vespa saw that beside them in the chariot rode the ghost of the Tinker King.

  Vespa took hold of Bayne’s hand, feeling the signet ring press its Wyvern emblem into her palm.

  “Not far to go, luckily,” he said.

  And then they were standing on the porch above the courtyard, watching as Charles drew Ximu on around the corner.

  Tesla was waiting in his little cage at the far end of the courtyard, ready to press the button on his black box and bring the radiant energy net to life.

  From the other side of the building they could hear the sounds of the army fighting the hybrids and xiren. A few moments was all they had before the enemy would follow their Queen. Hopefully Olivia and Syrus could hold them off for a while. All they needed was just a few seconds. A few seconds would change everything.

  So Charles had said.

  Charles and Ximu were at a standoff. He was backing slowly toward the spot they’d designated, but he needed her to go in first.

  She was clearly waiting on something.

  “Now’s the test,” Bayne said. “Now we find out whether we were in her web all along.”

  Vespa nodded.

  Charles lunged forward. He managed to grab Ximu by the leg, but attempting to drag her bodily backward wasn’t going to work. Another odd-looking tentacle snaked out and latched onto the Shadowspider Queen’s abdomen.

  “What is he doing?” Vespa asked, looking at Bayne frantically. “This wasn’t part of the plan!”

  Ximu howled in pain. Her life energy was being pumped into a swelling bag that formed the Cephalopod’s head.

  “I hope he’s merely trying to weaken her,” Bayne said.

  They watched helplessly as she wrestled the Cephalopod, drawing it in close to her, biting the glass cockpit where Charles furiously worked the levers.

  Vespa watched them dancing back and forth, ever closer and ever farther from the division line.

  The Cephalopod was smoking and making sad moaning sounds as its hydraulics began to fail while Ximu attempted to detach its lamprey cable from her side.

  Finally, in one last great heave, Ximu rose and threw the Cephalopod straight into the trap zone, tearing a wound in her side.

  The machine flipped on its back and scored a line through the pavement, glass and parts flying everywhere. Vespa screamed as she saw Tesla dive from the control booth just before the crumpled Cephalopod skidded into it.

  All was still for a moment, with Ximu nursing her wounds at one end of the courtyard and the twisted wreckage smoking at the other.

  Then they saw Charles trying to extricate himself from the mess. He was still in the trap zone.

  “Damn it,” Bayne said. “I’m going to go help him. Be ready on my signal. Can you feed power to the field if I ask it?”

  Vespa nodded.

  Then he was gone.

  “Bayne!” There was so much more she’d wanted to say, to warn him about. Even if she could get the field working without Tesla, no one could be in the field when Ximu stepped in; they’d be trapped forever, too.

  Ximu began creeping toward them, her scarlet fangs erupting from Lucy’s poor, leering mouth. Vespa thought she might have seen tears in the monster’s eyes, but she couldn’t be certain.

  Bayne was trying to pull Charles out, but it looked like his legs were stuck.

  Tesla had risen from behind one of the guardian statues and was pointing his device at the antennae.

  “No!” Vespa shouted. She closed her eyes, expecting to hear the dreadful whine that had nearly shaken Olivia apart at the demonstration a week ago. Or the vast energy that had made all the hairs of Vespa’s body stand on end. But she heard and felt nothing.

  Dimly she heard Bayne calling her.

  She opened her eyes and saw that Tesla was standing there in complete dismay, pointing and pressing and getting no response.

  Vespa saw Charles and Bayne exchange words, and then Bayne stepped back and saluted Charles. He turned and faced Ximu.

  “No,” Vespa said, walking down a few steps. The din of fighting came from around the corner; Olivia’s soldiers were being pushed into the courtyard by the relentless xiren and their hybrid army.

  Bayne looked up at Vespa and gave her a deep bow.

  And she knew what he wanted her to do.

  Radiant energy and etheric energy were the same. They were just called by different principles. He wanted her to call down the energy and trigger the field with her magic. And he would support her in it.

  But if she did that, he would be trapped.

  Ximu was about to step over the division line.

  Do it, Bayne said in Vespa’s mind.

  She opened her heart, the place that she had thought so empty and powerless since she’d given the Heart back to Tianlong. She opened that place and let pure love flow out, the love she’d only ever briefly known in the golden country of magic.


  The scarabeus magnified it into a great wave that flowed outward from her. And as Ximu leaped over the line, the love burned through her. It cleaved something from the ancient spider, and then it sparked into a net of brilliant energy, like a sun come to rest on the stones.

  And trapped there, a giant insect in amber, was Ximu. She seemed smaller than she had been, or perhaps it was just a trick of the light. But as Ximu slowed and settled in the paralytic field, Vespa heard the sounds of fighting begin to cease.

  “Bayne,” she said.

  The ancient hall of the Tinker King seemed suddenly filled with echoes.

  Through the wavering of the field Vespa thought she saw a dark shape, perhaps more than one.

  She started to run and then realized she didn’t have to.

  The scarabeus flared, and in a moment she was on the other side of the field.

  Bayne was helping up a disheveled girl. A girl who had once had porcelain skin, snapping black eyes, and flowing black curls. And the spoiled personality to match. A girl, who, in another world it almost seemed, had briefly been Bayne’s wife. She let go of his hand when she saw Vespa and wavered uncertainly.

  “Lucy,” Vespa said. She opened her arms.

  Lucy hesitated one more moment before falling into them.

  “Forgive me,” Lucy whispered. Even her fine voice was gone.

  Vespa looked across her shoulder at Bayne. His gaze was knowing, loving, and a little bit sheepish all at once.

  “I’ll try,” Vespa whispered.

  And after that, the light somehow became too bright, the scents and sounds too overwhelming. It was as if her blood had all been drained out of her and replaced with air.

  “I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered with the deepest embarrassment.

  And then all was dark.

  CHAPTER 35

  My heart pounds until it almost burns in my chest, not just from fear or hope or any of those things, but from that last moment when Olivia’s metal lips touched mine.

  I can hear dreadful noises from the courtyard beyond. I’m praying to all the clan mothers this means that things are going well when there’s a roar and a burst of power so strong, it rocks the chariot nearly off its wheels. Piskel tumbles arse-over-teakettle off my shoulder and fetches up against the chariot wall. He stands woozily, moaning and clutching his head.