Tinker's Justice

by J. S. Morin

  “Are there any settlements that weren’t listed on the maps?” Madlin asked, tromping through a patch of wild blueberry bushes. It was better to ask than spend hours or days scouring the land with the viewframe. Some tasks—a small number, by her estimation—still benefited from good old-fashioned human interaction.

  For all his prim attire, the Kheshi official kept up well, and showed no hint of complaint about the cross-country hike. “Nothing so grand as that, but there are two hunting lodges, and there is a warden’s farmstead down in the valley. He’s looked after the lands and done his best to keep away poachers and squatters the past fifteen years or so. It’d be a shame to see him displaced.”

  “I don’t mind him staying on the land, but he’ll be out of a job. I plan on settling people here, not hunting it.”

  “There may be outlaws or poachers still,” the official said. “We root them out when we find them, and tear down the hovels they build, but I cannot swear that we are free of them at the moment.”

  After getting the translation, Hayfield piped up. “We’ll clean the place up, spit-shined and polished. A lot of this looks like pretty good farmland, and our folk can keep out the rough crowd.”

  “I can’t help but notice the weapon you carry,” the Kheshi said. “Quite remarkable. A new Errol Company weapon, I presume. Is there any chance of including a number of those—?”

  “I’m already offering you ten tons of gold,” Madlin said before the official could finish asking. “This place is nice enough, but it’s not worth a third of that. I’m overpaying because I want this deal done quick. And since you seem like you’re playing with your hand face up, let me lay this out for you. If you try to squeeze me on this deal, the next fastest way to get this done is to use these new Errol Company guns.”

  “Pardon my asking, Miss Errol,” the Kheshi official replied with clasped hands. “It is my duty to Lord Stilvaar to get the best bargain for his land. Even yesterday, he was not expecting to sell it at all.”

  “Friendly advice then: tell him to start spending it quick. I plan on buying a lot more land around Khesh.”

  “How much more?” the official asked.

  “Enough that there’s going to be a lot of gold floating around the economy,” Madlin replied.

  Hayfield had wandered afield, and stood with Jamile at the edge of a precipice, looking down. Madlin ventured over and joined them, the Kheshi official trailing her like a puppy. The land dropped off sharply before leveling out into a forest of oaks and maples, old trees with a canopy that held room enough beneath for houses and roads. The sun was just touching the tops of the trees, and the valley floor still lay in night’s final throes.

  “Your call, Hayfield,” Madlin said softly. It seemed somehow rude to intrude upon nature’s awakening. “You think you can convince deepers to live here?”

  “Deepers are going to be a problem anywhere we put ‘em,” Hayfield replied. “Forest’s probably better than the open plains, and the sky-dwellers are going to love this place. Help from them world-rippers and we’ll have this valley built up in a matter of months.”

  “You’ve always known how to deal with people,” Madlin said. “I’m counting on you to sell this place as a home, not a hideout. This is a one-way trip.”

  Hayfield looked down into the valley and shook his head. “Leaving Korr … can’t quite believe it, to be honest. You sure about this?”

  “Hiding and half-measures aren’t getting the job done. If everyone’s counting on me to win this war, I’m going to fight it the only way I know how. And I don’t want our people in the way when I do it.”

  Kezudkan stood with his hands clasped atop the handle of his cane. Beside him, the Pillar of Runes looked on as Gederon worked the controls of the transport gate. Ever since the Kadrin boy had read the book on its operation, he had insisted that they use the book’s name for it. The pair of them watched in the target locator—once called the viewframe—as the countryside of human surface lands rushed by.

  “Is this an appropriate use of such a grand machine?” the Pillar of Runes asked in a whisper, leaning close.

  Kezudkan considered not replying. Muddy fools, the lot of them. The human boy Danilaesis was running amok, and none of them had the stones to stop him. But holding his tongue was never a course the old daruu chose easily. “Invite one rat, and they all move in.”

  “Stop there!” Danilaesis said, pointing at the scene. His Korrish was stilted, but clear, and Gederon obeyed without hesitation. The daruu lad was four times the warlock’s age, but deferred to him as if he were an elder. “Move closer.”

  The target locator descended upon a village of cylindrical houses with conical roofs, interspersed with patches of farmland. Animals grazed in the pastures, and pale-skinned humans in hats that resembled the roofs of their houses worked the fields. They used primitive hand tools, doing work that a proper steam tractor would manage on the move at a walking pace. Savages, even by human standards.

  Kezudkan felt a twinge of aether, and the switch to the machine snapped closed. The target locator became a gate—Kezudkan had to keep reminding himself of the new terms, lest he pique the warlock’s ire by using the rebels’ terms, even though he had minted those terms himself. A breeze wafted into the chamber, carrying with it the sickening odors of dung, sweat, and pollen.

  A stronger pull in the aether made Kezudkan grab at the stone floor. The bare flesh of his feet clung tight, rooted to the essence of the rock. He could have held firm against a bursting dam. But it was merely a sensation in the aether, with no real ability to pull him loose from his footing. Swallowing back the dread in his throat, he watched the spectacle unfold before him.

  Danilaesis Solaran was a rune-thrower, something that Kezudkan had heard in legend and myth until his world-ripper had opened a path to other worlds. He wished with every corner of his mind that he could stuff that knowledge back into the stories from whence he had first heard them. Sleep was growing harder the more he witnessed the power of unbound runes. The physical sciences fell apart at their touch. Lightning crackled forth from fingers instead of clouds, with thunder absent. Humans and lesser beasts were thrown by unseen hands. Fire belched in gouts that consumed buildings and crops alike, but had no proper point of ignition or intermediary fuel. It was madness that painted destruction, and if it was directed at humans, it took only a paltry flex of Kezudkan’s imagination to see himself in the path of the flames.

  Morbid fascination rooted him in place, as well as worry over Gederon’s safety. What Kezudkan would do should the warlock’s nitroglycerine temper fall upon the lad was a mystery to him. Were he not so old and feeble, he might get halfway across the chamber before the warlock struck him down. At best he could bear witness, and not hear about Gederon’s death secondhand.

  But the lad was fine—for now. Nothing of the sort could be said for the humans through the gate. They hadn’t even managed to fight back, fleeing and cowering in the face of their doom. At the warlock’s command, the gate was closed and the search began for their next target.

  “How long until we can get him working on your world?” the Pillar of Runes asked.

  Kezudkan sighed. “The successor negotiated five days of his use of the machine for five days of his help with Korr’s half-breeds. I suppose we’ll find out in four days what that bargain is worth.”

  “And what if he does not agree?” the Pillar is Runes whispered. The boy’s eccentricities and savagery were apparent to all of them.

  “He isn’t unstoppable,” Kezudkan replied.

  “Or deaf,” Danilaesis added, not turning from his vigil at the target locator. “I’ll kill your kuduks. Don’t worry. I’ll get bored with this before long. What I really want to find is missing.”

  “What would that be?” the Pillar of Runes asked. As they spoke, Gederon continued to move the view across the Veydran landscape.

  Danilaesis turned around, grinning lopsidedly. There was a glint in those eyes that Kezudkan had seen i
n one of his handymen, once. The man had killed two kitchen girls, and sat at the table with their bodies slumped across the chairs to either side of him, sipping soup. He hadn’t flinched when the guards came and shot him. Same look.

  “The one who killed me,” Danilaesis replied.

  The breeze from the Aliani Sea drifted past, languid with its own baking heat. Inland from the white sands, the tall jungle grasses shushed with the footsteps of unwelcome guests. Birds squawked from unseen heights, challenging the intruders, but the humans below had larger problems than the territorial rights of parrots and macaws.

  “This is no way to run a war,” General Kaynnyn said. She had shed her accustomed earrings and necklaces, resorting to simple garb without adornment, such as a humble islander might wear. Still a large woman, she had slimmed down amid the primitive conditions and unaccustomed exercise. “We’re just hiding here.”

  “The airships are mobile,” Anzik replied. He had shed his sorcerous robe in favor of a loose tunic and knee-length trousers that exposed skinny, pale legs. “Anything that stays put in this war is forfeit. Hiding and moving are the only ways to survive.”

  “We need to mount an assault,” General Kaynnyn replied. The two of them walked along the jungle’s edge barefoot, within sight of the sea. “He’s wearing us down by the day.”

  “I know,” Anzik replied. “I’m the one bringing you the reports. Don’t act as if I don’t understand what’s going on. Your army proved useless against the warlock. My airships only somewhat less so. The tinkers are our hope. Those guns of theirs can kill even a warlock, I think.”

  Kaynnyn shook her head and scowled down at Anzik. “Is that a way to protect your people? Just hope that a tenuous ally sees fit to rescue us?”

  They came upon a secluded beach, tucked away in a cove and sheltered from view of ships by a stretch of rocks. A young girl knelt at the waves’ edge, letting the seawater soak the skirt of her dress as she dug in the mud with her hands. She had wheat blonde hair and eyes like emeralds, with skin that had bronzed beneath the tropical sun. A number of guards kept a discreet distance with vigilant eyes on her.

  “Princess Anju is safe here,” Anzik said softly, so as not to let the girl overhear. She was a strange creature, ever growing. If he was away a month or more, he came back to see a different girl in her place, recognizable but certainly not the girl he left. He wondered what she would change into before she was of age to become his wife.

  “For how long?”

  “Long enough for me to put an end to Danilaesis Solaran,” Anzik said. He took one final look at Anju, tucking away the image of her in his memories to compare when next he saw her. “I need to be getting back.” He tromped off into the jungle, with General Kaynnyn in tow.

  “We could use you here,” she said to his back.

  “Of course you could,” Anzik replied. He held up a hand and flashed through a series of signs. “I could be a great use in many places. If there were a dozen of me, we would be faring far better than we are. If we had a hundred of me, we’d have won this war easily. But we must make do with the one of me we’ve got.” A world-hole opened, with Kaia sitting just on the far side attending the controls. “And for now, the best place for me is with the Korrish rebels. They hold the key to our salvation.”

  Changed back into his proper attire and with his feet washed clean of the jungle dirt, Anzik felt more like himself. General Kaynnyn’s objections weighed on his mind. The Megrenn Alliance needed him; that much was undeniable. But the general was an old cavalry soldier. She wanted to fight a war that looked like a war, and that wasn’t what they were faced with. Anzik knew his mind held greater breadth than the rest of those in the Alliance. It was up to him to fight the war their enemies had brought them. It was up to him to know how best to do it.

  The walk from his room to Madlin’s workshop was eighty-seven steps. Long enough to come up with a plan of action for the near term. The fourth-dimensional geography involved was one of the key components of the war. Interconnected worlds. Indefensible fortifications. Impossible reconnaissance. It was chess with a million pieces and a board that folded in on itself. And it was everyone’s turn. But even a seemingly infinite problem still consisted of a number of finite tasks, and Anzik needed to narrow those down, chop the problem into tasks he could accomplish. The first was clear in his mind before he stepped foot into Madlin’s workshop.

  The screech of metal always bothered Anzik’s ears. The pitch was wrong, too shrill. He stuck fingers in his ears to dampen the sound, and heard his own voice echo weirdly in his skull as he called out. “Madlin, I need a moment of your time.”

  Madlin raised her head from the machinery. She wore muffled cups over her ears to deaden the sound of her own work. “What for?” she shouted back.

  “My people are being slaughtered,” Anzik shouted, still plugging his ears. “Too quickly, too erratically to be airship strikes. I think Danilaesis has gained access to a world-ripper.”

  “Piss on that!” Madlin shouted back. “That’s the last thing any of us need.”

  “I was hoping you might allow me to evacuate my people along with your own. Tellurak has room enough for all of them.”

  “We’ve got enough trouble with logistics as it is.”

  “Please,” Anzik shouted. “They’re human too. They’ve done nothing. It’s my job to protect them, and I can’t do it without your help.” There was greater than an eighty percent chance that the appeal to their common humanity would be enough to get Madlin to concede his point.

  Madlin’s shoulders rose and fell in a sigh that went unheard. “Fine,” she shouted. “But you’re going to have to teach me something to make a worthwhile trade, something I can use. Work it out with Kaia and Jamile; we don’t need to tie up the Jennai’s world-rippers for this.”

  “Thank you,” Anzik shouted. Madlin nodded in acknowledgment and returned to her work. Once he closed the door behind him, Anzik unplugged his ears.

  She doesn’t want the Jennai involved. A jumble of thoughts jostled in Anzik’s head as he meandered to the central chamber of the lunar facility. The Jennai is where the Korrish rebels have their military power. She doesn’t want it distracted from its primary mission. Its primary missions are to deal with the threats to the Korrish humans, and to keep the rebels safe and hidden. A thought clicked into place. A second thought fell in beside it. Then a third.

  They need for Danilaesis to become a threat to the Jennai, then they’ll deal with him.

  “Throw a rock or something,” Danilaesis shouted through the transport gate. The farmers he berated were jumping one by one off an embankment that overlooked a pond. “Bleeding winds, you cowards sicken me. I’m burning your homes and killing you like hogs on a feast day morning. At least die like men!”

  Of course, Danilaesis didn’t speak a word of Ghelkan, so he swore and spat and raged at them in his native tongue. He doubted they would have heeded him even if they understood his words. They weren’t soldiers or sorcerers, merely peasant farmers. That was all he found of late. The sensible ones, the tradesmen and the moneyed, had all scattered like dandelion fluff on a windy day. The only ones who clustered in numbers worth stopping the machine to slaughter were the farmers, enslaved by the land they worked, yoked to it until death.

  It was sickening. Worse, it was unbefitting a warlock. Danilaesis was worth so much more to the Kadrin war effort. Burning the countryside was a siege tactic that might pay off in starvation if the war dragged on long enough. Danilaesis had always hated sieges, even when reading about them in histories. It was a quartermaster’s way to defeat a general. Cut off supply caravans. Foul the water upstream. Poison the wells. Cluster your enemy in close quarters so disease might take hold among them. They were cowards’ tactics. Danilaesis wanted a foe he could dull his blade against. None was to be found. The Ghelkan cities were mausoleums. The smaller towns all but deserted. Where the people had gone remained a mystery, but most likely they had fled any way they could,
either hiding in the wild countryside or taking ships to lands across the seas. Danilaesis would get to those eventually. The missing armies were more of a worry. There ought to have been too many to conceal. He had not done so much damage to the Megrenn Alliance that their military had crumbled.

  Danilaesis loosed a bolt of lightning into the pond, assuming that anyone in the water was as good as dead. Turning his back on the gate, he waved a dismissive hand and heard the sound of burning farmhouses end abruptly.

  Reflecting for a moment as Gederon sought his next target, Danilaesis came upon an irksome realization: he was bored. There was no challenge in chasing villagers around with lightning and fire, even if they were technically enemies. The benefit to the Kadrin Empire was nil.

  “Let’s try something a little different,” Danilaesis said, using the common tongue of the Korrish and daruu. “Switch this thing to look into Korr.”

  “Of c-course, sir,” Gederon replied. The daruu had a stuttering voice that was going to get on his nerves one day. “Whe-where should I be l-l-looking.”

  “To the skies,” Danilaesis replied, forcing a cheery smile. “I think it’s long past time I found Madlin’s flying barge. It took two of them to kill me, and if I can’t find Anzik Fehr, I’ll find Madlin Errol.”

  Axterion clung to the ship’s railing with less dignity than he would have preferred to display in front of a bunch of navy men. The Dragon’s Kiss drifted amid the trees, picking its way as through a patch of brambles. Podawei Wood was a blot in the heart of the Kadrin Empire, a forest deep and ancient that had defied exploration, logging, and even hunting beyond the nearest reaches of new growth at its edge. It was a place that made it seem the gods had fashioned it before deciding that trees should ever stop growing. The Kadrin airship passed among trunks that could have been carved out and made into towers, dodged branches that could hold three wagons driven abreast. There was a gloom of twilight upon the place, the midday sun held back by an ocean of leaves that formed the canopy above.