Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  “I cannot,” Arden said.

  “Please, you are a prisoner, too! How can you not see this? How can you not wish for freedom? You have accepted your chains when you must not ever!” The tracker increased his struggles and heaved Arden off. Arden threw out his hand and caught the chain, so when the tracker began to run, he immediately fell.

  Keth was sliding down the ravine in a cloud of dirt. The tracker kicked Arden, who commanded STOP with all of his might and held onto the chain. As the soldier neared, the tracker said, “Don’t tell me to stop!”

  They scuffled for control of the chain. STOP IT NOW.

  “No! You are not a bad man, Arden. I can see that within you. Do not do a bad thing,” the tracker pleaded. “Release me and you will have my friendship from now to the grave for righting a great wrong done against all the people of the Cascades!”

  “There is nothing I can do to help you,” Arden said, but in his heart, he was apologizing.

  Keth had almost reached them, and Dieter’s head appeared above the boulder. A rain of dirt sprayed over Arden and the tracker, going into Arden’s right eye and making him blink at the sting. The tracker took advantage of his distraction and wrenched away the chain.

  A big rock flew through the air and pegged the tracker on the head. He crumpled to the ground. Breathing hard, Keth lowered her arm. Then she yanked up torn vines and tossed one at Arden. “Quick! Bind him while he’s unconscious!”

  It took time to get back to the pond. Getting up the ravine was the worst of it. They only accomplished it by braiding three strong vines together, knotting one end of it to the tracker’s legs, and hurling the other end up to Dieter. He strained and pulled, the tracker moving little by little up the slope, and then Master Maraudi appeared and it went much faster.

  “Why’s your penchant not working then, eh?” Dieter asked once the ravine was behind them. “Did you wear it out with the battle gold or something? Need to save it up some more?”

  “My penchant is for animals,” Arden said. At last he grasped what was going on. “This is not an animal. This is a human with an animal-like ability, so my control over him is very limited.”

  “Then he will have to remain in his cage and he can piss out the bars,” Master Maraudi grunted, the tracker over his shoulder. Waking up, the man groaned and swore. The bindings around him were so tight that he could only thrash. Arden was ashamed at how Keth and Dieter were looking at him, though this was not his fault. His penchant was not for human beings.

  Twin to the shame was guilt. As the tracker was actually a man, the way he was being treated was an outrage. Slavery was a custom of Isle Zayre, for Dagad’s sake, and outlawed in Odri and Havanath. Havanath engaged in quite restricted trade with Isle Zayre as a result: its citizenry was very disapproving of a practice that it had made illegal two centuries in the past. Loria’s citizens could only purchase bonded men for five years, and then the debts that had remanded them into custody were considered paid off. And in those five years, they were limited to twelve hours a day of work, and could not be punished by a beating that exceeded six lashes or blows. That was true of everyone save the most corrupt criminals, and they were not used as household servants or shop help but sent to the mines to live out their lifetime sentences beneath the earth.

  And yes, Arden as a penchant of Odri belonged to the king, but Arden was paid for his work and held most legal privileges! That was not the same as a brutalized man of Isle Zayre, who could have his parents and siblings, wife and children ripped from his arms and sold off over the years of his life, who had no education or rights of any sort, no hopes of ever earning his freedom, who could be killed by his master, and that master would not be held accountable.

  The kidnapping of this man, the cage and forced work, beatings and starvation, it was a shameful scene all around. Arden was out of his depths with it. And never, never could the tracker be in the perindens as an exhibit. Some visitor would be rightly filled with pity and outrage and try to set him free, or carry the story to the press about a man in the king’s captivity who had never been convicted of a crime. The storm that that would kick up . . . Tolaman’s anger . . . the rage of the Master-at-Arms and the king’s man . . .

  Having none of the internal struggle that Arden was engaged in, Master Maraudi chucked the tracker into the cage and slammed the door shut. The tracker squirmed about in an effort to throw himself at the door, but it was locked by the time he banged against it.

  “You will tell us what we want to know, and you will keep all of your body parts as payment,” Master Maraudi said matter-of-factly. “You only need one finger to point us in the right direction, and you don’t need toes or a tongue at all. Just a little food and water will keep you alive, so you have a decision to make about your level of comfort on this track.”

  “Let me go!” the tracker shouted. He wriggled around and prized a hand free. With that, he tugged and tore at the vines. “What right have you to detain me? What right have any of you? I have a home and a family-”

  “And I have a job!” Master Maraudi said. “My job is to find this woman. Her condition is very important to me. Yours is not. Which direction should we be headed?” When the tracker didn’t answer, the soldier reached through the bars and grasped his foot just as the vines fell away. He pulled the foot outside the cage and ordered, “Arden, you shove yourself into what little of an animal mind he has and force him to take this seriously.”

  Arden touched the tracker’s mind but did not implant a message there. It was the first order he ever received that he did not obey since coming into the king’s service. This was wrong, so undeniably wrong, and disturbing. This was not a chicken, not a dog, not a dragon or a horse, and Arden had no business in his mind. The tracker stared at him, his green eyes burning with defiance, and then a degree of uncertainty entered them when Arden left him alone.

  Still holding onto the tracker’s foot and unaware that the command had not been given, Master Maraudi said, “Keth, you’re in charge of handling his human mind. He doesn’t seem to believe me, so get out your knife and pick the toe he’ll miss the least.”

  At the instant whisper of a knife being withdrawn, the tracker snatched his foot away. “No! No!”

  “Very good,” Master Maraudi said, Dieter smiling meanly to see the tracker bullied into helping. Arden felt sick to watch. “Which way?”

  Then they were riding back down Shattered Hill, past the pond and palace, the destroyed apartments and newer construction having met its end. The tracker said nothing. He only gestured when they came to the base of the hill, and they turned right onto the road. Sitting sullenly on the floor of the cage, he undid the last of the vines and pushed them out to fall on the ground. The blow of the rock had left a bloody spot on his scalp. It wasn’t bleeding much, but he touched it and winced. Turning baleful eyes to the back of Keth’s head, he held onto a bar to keep steady as the cage jounced.

  They traveled all afternoon, out of Brazia and through a scratch of a town called Ghirg. At the end of the main road, a crowd of excited schoolchildren ran up to peer into the cage. “Who do you got in there?” “Is he a bad one?” “What did he do, eh?” “A thief! I bet he’s a thief! What did he steal?”

  “Go on now,” Keth said. The children fell back, a little disappointed but having fun in their imaginings of terrible and scandalous crimes, and then they ran away with the mystery thrilling them anew.

  After Ghirg, they came to a crossroads between pastures. Master Maraudi barked, “Which way?” The tracker took his time in standing up, and then he breathed. His finger flicked left and Master Maraudi turned that way, calling back, “And how old is this scent, tracker?”

  Again, the tracker took his time in answering. Bloody and locked in a cage, he still clung to his pride with tight fists. At long last, he grunted, “Several days. Can’t tell you more than that. But it was not today or yesterday when she frolicked down this road with her ill-gotten goods.”

  They went on, the
wind picking up and ruffling their hair. Keth contemplated their direction, and asked for them to list the names of every village, town, and city to run this way. As a man who had until now never left Lighmoon, Arden knew very little. Dieter could only name a few more, and if the tracker knew any from his time in Odri, he kept them to himself. But Master Maraudi had the wealth of them contained in his head. He recited names for a long time, and when he reached Minkakel, Keth snapped her fingers. “Minkakel!” she exclaimed.

  “Does that spur a memory of yours?” Master Maraudi asked. Arden and Dieter rode up closer to hear the soldiers speak. The wind had gotten harder, and now it was blowing without cease and sweeping away their voices with it.

  Keth’s eyes were intent on her revelation. “Lady Ques was close in her childhood to the daughter of Lady Timmonsie. No one ever considered that as a place to where she could have fled. They were looking at more recent and firmer acquaintances than this.”

  “Minkakel is in a nowhere place,” Master Maraudi said. As Dieter and Arden had never heard of it, he gave a description for their benefit. “Tucked in the seat of The Embrace, but it’s more commonly known as The Arse. It rests below twin hills, the towns little of note, but many of the great instrument makers have traditionally called it home. See a harp or lute or violin, often it was born in the towns beneath the shadow of those hills.”

  “I don’t believe Ri Ques has ever been to their manor in Minkakel, or any of the surrounding towns whatsoever,” Keth said. “But Lady Timmonsie and her daughter . . . Brogid, I believe her name is . . . came to Lighmoon several times and those two became fast friends. They still exchange letters to this day, although quite sporadically. No one would suspect her of going to Minkakel; Lady Timmonsie herself has become an invalid in the last few years; Brogid is an academic who does not care to visit Lighmoon on her own. She is not society-minded, and she would be sympathetic. And as the two have not seen each other in person for five years or more . . .”

  Master Maraudi slapped his thigh at how this search was shaping up. “The Arse is naught but a few days’ ride.”

  “How are we to get her back if she refuses to listen to reason and come?” Arden asked the soldiers. “Are there likely to be guards at the manor that we will have to fight?” Four against an army of guards were not good odds, not to mention that Dieter was just a boy, and Arden was strong but not well versed in combat. The knife at his belt was no match for a sword.

  Master Maraudi harrumphed. “The towns below the hills are not poor enough to take out their desperation on a lady of relatively low nobility; nor are they rich enough to lather her in fineries and use her to curry favor in court. No, those aggressions and affections would be directed to the Duke of Encoul as the nearest personage of great rank. Lady Timmonsie has no need of any guard for her manor past one posted at the gate. Is she a paranoid sort, Keth? Lady Imano and her newest husband gut their purse on guards, and for sieges that occur nowhere but in their silly heads.”

  “She is not that sort, and neither is Brogid, from what I know of them,” Keth said.

  “If there are more guards at the manor than one at the gate, the acquisition likely came through the woman we are after. Yet she has no reason to believe that we are hot on her tail, should Minkakel truly be where she has gone.” He ceased to speak as a woman trotted past on a horse. Arden looked back to the tracker. Wedged into a ball on the floor of the cage, he had his head tucked into his arms against the wind.

  “Will she fight?” Arden asked.

  The wind howled past them and shook the grass on either side of the road violently. Master Maraudi flicked a leaf off his trousers and said, “If she refuses to listen to reason, if she fights, we will purchase a second cage, bind her hands, fasten the holographie crystal to a part of her person where she cannot remove it, and drag her back to Lighmoon. She can scream her true identity all she wants and people will dismiss it as the ravings of a madwoman being ferried to an asylum.” He chuckled, glanced over his shoulder to the tracker, and said in an amused but quieter voice, “The asylums are full of invisible crowns, men who claim to be the queen’s dead brother, Dagad rest his soul, and women who weep at their misfortune of being the king’s bastard daughters shorted their pretty dresses and jewels. No one will pay her any mind on our trip back.”

  “I’ve seen her in the forge-yard with a sword,” Dieter said, also making sure the tracker was not listening. “She’s a good one with a blade.”

  “Accomplished, yes,” Keth said, “but not as good as her sister who went to serve with the Odri forces. She can be taken down.”

  “Speed up, everyone!” Master Maraudi said. “Let’s see if we can’t make it to Relee or else we’ll be bunking in the grass.”

  It bothered them not at all, this man being pulled along in the cage behind them, since they needed his skill to find the princess. But it bothered Arden terribly.

  The search party made it to an inn in Relee, the sun reduced to a fading orange streak at the horizon of the western sky. The innkeeper called to her hired girl to care for the horses, and reassured Master Maraudi that they had had occupied cages stop there many times on the way to the prison in Thurma. The fellow in their company would weather the night well in the barn, and they should not concern themselves with him convincing anyone to let him out.

  “Water,” the tracker said resentfully.

  “Give him nothing!” Master Maraudi ordered as they dismounted. “Nothing out of those packs. A spot of thirst and hunger will encourage him to stay on task in the morning.”

  The tracker didn’t shout or swear, kick the bars or try to grab anyone through them. He just sat there, looking defeated, his fingers twitching in his lap. Arden went into the inn and guiltily had a heaping plate of sausage, eggs, and potatoes. Little loaves of soft, fresh bread were delivered to their table and devoured. Then a maid guided them upstairs.

  It was a strange inn that could have once been a brothel. The rooms were claustrophobic, each fitting only a small bed and a shelf for belongings. Should the walk to the communal bathroom down the corridor be too arduous a journey to make, an ancient chamber pot was stowed under each bed. Arden passed an uneasy night and was first out the door after breakfast. Dieter was on his heels, but the squire went to the road as Arden turned to the barn. Master Maraudi had given the boy money to purchase a little more food for their journey.

  The tracker was awake and chewing on a piece of straw swiped from the barn floor. Arden pushed a meal of meat and cheese and a cup of water through the bars. Then he stood there quietly as everything went down the tracker’s throat in enormous swallows. Dieter returned in short order and everyone else came into the barn for the horses.

  Master Maraudi thumped the cage and said, “We won’t have any problems today, will we, tracker?”

  “Volos,” the tracker said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Volos. My name is Volos.”

  “I’m not interested,” Master Maraudi snapped. The soldier was only kind to those who did his bidding without argument. “Which way should we be headed?”

  “Straight on down this road.”

  “Good.”

  They got underway. Keth had acquired a map, which she unrolled and consulted as they rode along to search for other cities and towns with which the princess may have had a connection. Cousins and old friends and distant acquaintances were muttered about occasionally, more to herself than to any of them. Master Maraudi and Dieter went in front and spoke in good spirits about the handsies game that was growing so popular. No dice, no cards, it was a strange competition in which one slapped one’s thighs, arms, belly, and various other personal parts in a certain order that Dieter demonstrated atop his irritated horse. As he slapped himself, he said, “It came from the miners in the High Reaches, it did.”

  “It’s guffok stupid,” Master Maraudi said. “Guffok. Don’t repeat that word around the ladies in the Low Grounds like I did as a boy. Dagad, stop slapping yourself! People are
going to think you’re loose in the mind.”

  “It’s a challenge, see?” Dieter said, but stopped his slapping. “How far can you repeat the rhythm? Then you drink ale if you win, no ale if you lose, and someone new challenges you. But it’s hard to keep winning when what you keep winning is ale, and you have to drink your winnings right there when the loser gives them to you. Or else you’ve insulted the loser. We did tabletop handsies one time and I was winning round after round up there, but then I finally fell off because the world was getting so dizzy.”

  “It wasn’t the world getting dizzy,” Master Maraudi said.

  Every time Arden looked up, the tracker was staring at him. When it grew too uncomfortable, Arden said, “What?”

  Just like they had checked on him the day before for reassurance that he was not listening, now he checked on the others in the same way. Then he addressed Arden in a soft voice. “Would you like to hear a story, Arden?”

  He didn’t wait for Arden to reply. “Once we were tracking and I thanked him for helping, my brother Humber who always came with me. I was sixteen at the time, he was seventeen, and we had been tracking together for five years then. But he did not accept my gratitude. Instead, he looked ashamed.”

  The tracker checked on the others once more. Master Maraudi and Dieter had moved even farther ahead; Keth was still mumbling over her map. Bringing his lovely green eyes back to Arden, the tracker said, “He sank to his knees and begged for my forgiveness. He confessed that he had felt spitefully toward me long ago, that I was a tracker and he was not, that I received such glory upon my returns with the lost while he stood in the shadows. This he had complained about to our mother, half-expecting her to beat him for not appreciating how our family’s circumstances had risen. But she did not beat him. She commanded him to attend me on every track and learn. Not to be a tracker, which cannot be learned, but wisdom. It did not take him long to gain that wisdom, he told me that day. Before he came along, he only saw me arrive home to embraces and gifts and honor, cheers and applause ringing up to the sky. He resented the apparent ease of my life.”