by J. S. Morin
Rynn covered her mouth and thought of vomit. She pictured in her mind the thought, the feeling; she remembered the smell. With her nerves frazzled as they were, it was hardly an effort to offer up the meager contents of her stomach on command. She puked into her bucket.
“Ghastly, I know,” Professor Hurmbeck commiserated. “But those wounds were inflicted by this teensy little weapon before you.”
Rynn took a moment to compose herself, still on hands and knees, face hovering over a bucket of fouled water. She wished she had thought to sneak in so much as a single ball bearing. If she could grab the coil gun, that would be all she’d need to bluff or blast her way out.
“Why did you show me those flash-pops?” Rynn asked, trying to sound distressed. At the same time, she saw that one of the bolts that held the students’ tables to the floor was loose—loose enough to be worked free by hand.
“Because I’ve been given to understand that you may have had something to do with them,” Professor Hurmbeck explained. She didn’t look up, but heard him shuffling papers. It didn’t matter what papers they were, it meant that his hands were occupied with something besides the weapon.
Rynn hurried to unscrew the bolt, the metal edges digging into her fingers. An unhelpful part of her brain told her that since she was so close to the floor already, she should lie down for a nap. The rest of her brain slapped that part silly as she fought to enact her escape. She blocked the view of the knockers at the door so all they saw was her backside as she hunched over the bucket. The professor was preoccupied.
She had it.
Rynn leapt to her feet. She saw the gun lying on the desk and grabbed it before the doddering old kuduk could react.
“Nobody move!” she shouted. Her hands were shaking as she opened the magazine and slipped the bolt inside. It was an awkward fit, too small to be held in place for a loading mechanism that was meant for a sphere. She was certain enough that it would fire—so long as she kept it from falling out.
“Hmm, very interesting,” Professor Hurmbeck muttered, as if to himself.
“Stay back,” she ordered the knockers. “You saw the flash-pops. I can vent you, and don’t think I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t bet on that,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “There’s no aether in it. It’s aether powered, I know that much, and it’s dead as rubber. Not a bit of spark left in it. Only way you’d be able to fire that thing ... is if you are the one who imbued it.”
Rynn’s eyes widened.
She could, of course, do precisely that. In fact, if the two knockers started advancing again, she might just have to, and hope to find another small bit of metal to stuff into the gun as makeshift ammunition. Unfortunately, that would also reveal she had the power to imbue runes. Though the circumstantial evidence was substantial, she would have preferred not giving that away. Humans weren’t allowed to roam free with the ability to manipulate aether.
“I see the quandary you’re facing, Rynn,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “You’ve done a marvelous job fooling us all this time, but you’re smarter than you’ve let on. Some of these diagrams are masterful.”
Rynn looked at the desk once more. She hadn’t looked to see what Hurmbeck had been doing while she plotted from her knees, but her sketches were spread across his desk. Sketches that were safely packed away in her carryall, in her apartment, ready to grab as soon as she was done retrieving the gun she now held in her hand.
“I’ve never seen those,” Rynn lied. She looked to the desk of sketches to the knockers by the door and back again. They cracked my apartment. I’ve got nothing when I escape.
“Come now, enough with the games,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “Let’s play our cards face up. You ... do understand the metaphor, I pray. I don’t know what your sort do for amusement. But anyway, Rynn, I bought you.”
“What?” Rynn screamed.
“Pure contingency,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “The warrant for you calls for your hanging. I paid a plump sum to have you instead. If you escape and are caught, you’ll be dead in an hour.”
“So that’s the option? Collar or noose?” Rynn asked. Her hands were sweating. The grip of the coil gun was growing slick. She still tasted vomit in her mouth, and it was threatening to return unbidden for a second bout.
“Delliah, come out here,” Professor Hurmbeck called, turning in the direction of his office.
“Not until the rat-eater drops that crazy aether gun she made,” a female kuduk voice called from behind the door.
“Oh, come now,” the professor chided. “Rynn is going to be reasonable. And even if she were to fire, it wouldn’t be at you. She doesn’t even know you. She would shoot me in frustration, or one of the officers if she meant to escape. Shooting at you would be folly.”
“Who’s to say I wouldn’t?” Rynn asked. Contrarianism seemed to be the option that bought her the most time.
“Bollocks! I do,” Professor Hurmbeck replied. “You’re a smart girl. You’re a survivor. You’ll survive and adapt. It’s the only thing your kind does well, as a rule.”
Rynn’s eyes scanned the room, looking for anything that might help. She knew the contents of the professor’s desk from having rummaged through it on multiple occasions—no help there. She edged her way up the tiers of student seating, backing herself further into the hall with no escape, but also checking under the desks for anything left behind after the day’s lecture—nothing but scraps of paper and a gum eraser.
The door to the professor’s office creaked open.
“Yes, yes. Come on now,” Professor Hurmbeck urged. “Show Rynn her way out.”
A kuduk woman emerged, pushing a chair on wheels. It was high backed, with head and foot rests, and a pair of handles to push it by. There were also straps at the wrists, ankles, waist and head.
“Those men would like to take a rope, put it around your neck, and drop you such that your own body weight breaks your neck,” Professor Hurmbeck told her. “If they err, you will spend several moments choking to death as they watch. Try to imagine how that will feel ... thick rope ... pulling against your neck ... trying to breathe, but you can’t fill your lungs...”
Rynn was running out of time. They had been ready for her. They weren’t getting any less prepared for her as she hesitated. Rynn held her hand against the dynamo on the coil gun and willed the aether into it. The worst decision is indecision, right dad?
A spark panel nestled on the wall, controlling all the lights in the room. She aimed and fired before she had time to talk herself out of it.
With a crash of sparks, the room fell into darkness. The only light came from the rectangle of frosted glass in the door to the hallway, where the lights were on another circuit. Rynn ducked behind a desk and scurried across the room, pulling off her hard-soled shoes with her first steps. She hoped that the head-knockers were dumb enough to search the room for her as she doubled back past them. She threw a shoe across the lecture hall.
The kuduk woman—Delliah—screamed. Professor Hurmbeck told her to hush.
“She’s over here,” one of the knockers said. Rynn grinned. When she heard two sets of footsteps enter the student section to search for her, she made a dash for the door. She reached it without trouble, turned the handle and found it unlocked. She was already breaking into a run as she pulled the door open, but ran into a wall of kuduks on the far side.
“Oof!”
Hands with a plier-like grip closed around her upper arms. Another set of arms closed around her legs and hoisted her from the ground. A third someone put a hand over her nose and mouth, and she struggled to draw breath.
Professor Hurmbeck strolled out into the hallway as she was subdued. Delliah followed, wheeling the chair out.
“No!” Rynn managed to scream the moment she struggled free of the grasp on her mouth. The hand clamped more firmly back in place.
Rynn was forced into the chair despite her thrashing. The knockers were just too strong. One by one, the straps were secure
d, stealing her freedom. One wrist, and she couldn’t pull her hand through to slip free; her fingers grew numb as she strained against the leather. The other wrist, and the kuduk holding her arms let her go. Rynn wanted desperately to reach up and pry the hand away from her mouth, to draw in a full breath, but she couldn’t lift either arm from the chair. The kuduk around her legs was too heavy to even begin kicking free. It was like a blanket had been thrown around her, warm and smothering. The straps pulled around her ankles dug into the bare skin. She could move her knees, but every motion caused shooting pain as the restraints held her ankles fast. As the strap around her waist pulled secure, Rynn felt as if she were being cut in half. It forced her into a proper seated posture, and she was no longer able to arch her back for leverage. Black spots swam in front of her eyes as her head was yanked back against the unyielding wood of the headrest. The strap went just above her eyes, clamping her head to the chair at an angle that forced her to look up instead of straight ahead. She could barely see the ground.
She gasped for air as the hand released her mouth. It was the only part of her that felt released.
“Why?” was all she could manage to think of between breaths.
“Grant money is so hard to come by,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “This seemed worth the gamble.”
Rynn thrashed in the chair, trying once more in the vain hope that she could pull herself loose.
... and then somehow manage to get the rest of the restraints undone with no fewer than six head-knockers standing around.
... and then outrun them or fight her way free.
... after having gotten no sleep.
... without even having any shoes on.
Rynn screamed in frustration, and started sobbing.
“Give her something to calm her down.”
Rynn felt a jab in her shoulder, though she never saw the needle. At long last, she slept.
Chapter 15
“I sort people into three categories: those I trust, those I distrust, and those I don’t know well enough; I don’t trust them, either.” -Cadmus Errol
Madlin awoke with a gasp. She couldn’t move. She stiffened and struggled, trying to squirm free. The hard, unforgiving leather she expected was absent; the pressure around her eased.
“Shh, it was just a dream,” Jamile whispered. A warm arm gathered Madlin close once more, and she felt a kiss on the back of her head.
Madlin began to sob. Self-conscious of the men in the tents just paces away, she kept as quiet as she could manage. She hoped that the sound of the fire drowned her out. Rynn had always been the strong one, the independent one, the one who had been able to live her life without anyone looking over her shoulder. The university hardly counted against the latter point, since she worked there under false pretenses.
Now she didn’t even know what was happening to Rynn. Some kuduk drug had robbed her of consciousness, cutting her adrift.
Madlin hugged her knees close and watched the firelight peek around the canvas edges of the tent. The colors sparkled and shimmered through her tears. Jamile hummed a melody that sounded like a lullaby.
Madlin shook her head. “I can’t go back to sleep. I can’t.”
Jamile stopped humming. “Do you want to talk about it?” Madlin shook her head. “You don’t have to, but if you want to talk, I’ll listen. It might make you feel better.”
Madlin pressed herself in closer against Jamile, sniffling but otherwise silent.
“I hate them,” Madlin whispered.
“They’re not all like that, you know,” Jamile replied. “Plenty of kuduks get on fine with our kind.”
Madlin sniffed. “They got me. I got bought and sold like a sack of grain. What good are a few kuduks with half a conscience going to do me?”
Jamile hugged her tight. “Madlin, I’m so sorry.”
“There’re more slaves than freemen in Eversall Deep. No one’s going to care what—”
“This is all my fault.”
Madlin twisted in Jamile’s embrace and rolled free. “How you figure?”
“I was the one who told you everything was going to be fine, told you to carry on like normal. Maybe in your line of work you need worry and angry blood to keep safe, and I convinced you otherwise.”
“You didn’t convince me—”
“No, I did! Madlin, you sounded like you were ready to run away, or storm the judicial enforcement barracks, or do anything but stay your course.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“You do things, Madlin. You’re a doer. I just ... I just wait for things to happen. Now I got you stuck, just like me.”
“Well, it beats being hanged,” Madlin said. It was the first bright spot she’d considered.
“They can’t know about all the things you’ve done, can they? I’d have thought that would get you hanged for certain.”
“Worse, they knew everything. The fact that I can power runes made me more valuable alive than dead. I don’t know what they’ve got planned for me, but I expect they intend to get their coin’s worth out of me.”
“I hope they’re not—” Jamile stopped short, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“Not what?”
“Nothing, forget I said anything.”
“How can I possibly do that? Just tell me.”
Jamile paused. Madlin tried to look her in the eye, but she glanced away. “I just hope you don’t have to wear a collar, that’s all.”
Despite the tears still wetting her face, Madlin managed a smirk. “You’re an awful liar. We’re going to have to work on that.”
Neither Madlin nor Jamile slept the rest of the night. By morning, Madlin had recounted all that she could remember of the events that led up to her capture. It was a strange retelling. Despite vivid memories, for the first time Madlin could remember, Rynn’s actions felt disconnected from her, as if she had been an observer and not the participant. It made discussing what happened possible without breaking down in tears again.
After breakfast the caravan packed up and resumed their journey to the Dragon Fang Mountains, which loomed on the horizon without ever seeming to grow closer. Madlin and Jamile rode in the back of their wagon as usual, but their conversation carried a sense of urgency.
“Surely there is some way we can use our resources in here to your advantage in Korr,” Jamile insisted. They spoke Korrish so that none save Powlo would understand them, and he was at the head of the caravan, driving the lead wagon.
“Yeah, but how?” Madlin replied. “That’s the problem. If we were back home this wouldn’t be so hard. My father has twinborn agents all over Korr. If we weren’t stuck in the middle of Khesh, we could get a message to them in person.”
“Well, what about Powlo?”
“What about him? He’s on this expedition because my father can’t use him in his plots. He’s down a mine somewhere hanging on the edge of nowhere. He may be a foreman, but he’s still a slave. They’re not letting him stroll down to the spark line office to tap out a letter.”
“What about Captain Toller?”
“The one who dropped us in Khesh and left? The one we have no way to contact? That Captain Toller?”
Jamile lowered her head. “We could head back to Bouo. We could put word out from there and see if we can find him.”
“I may not know what that crazed kuduk hag has in store for me, but I’m guessing I’d like a solution that doesn’t leave me in her hands for a month.”
“I ... I would be willing to try,” Jamile offered.
Madlin put an arm around her. “Thanks. But you’ve already said yourself that you’re good and caught. You may not be bad off for a slave, but you’re no more free than Powlo.”
Jamile straightened. “That’s not so! I go out on my own all the time. All I need is a note from Dr. Ignus saying I’m on an errand. Even without one, so long as I stick to places I’m known, I can go about Yerek Sky all I like.”
“You think you can get a message sent on the spark l
ine?”
“From Yerek Sky? Who would I even contact? There’s an ocean in the way, and—”
“No cable, I know.” Madlin huffed and crossed her arms. The spark line could get messages across a continent in moments, but couldn’t go where there was no cable. “You’ll have to start a relay. Start with someone who’s up in the northlands. They’ll have to get word to someone at Tinker’s Island.”
Jamile’s eyes brightened. “Well, then your father can take over from there.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Madlin said, holding up her hands. “No getting my father involved.”
“Why not? This is no time—”
“If he gets me out, he’ll ship me off somewhere safe, in the middle of nowhere. I’d be as much a prisoner as I am already.”
“You’re just being unreasonable. Your father has more resources than anyone. If you really want to be rescued, he’s the one you ought to want.”
“I don’t want to be saved just to get taken away from the fight,” Madlin said. “One of these days we’re going to make a real difference, make the kuduks pay attention and listen to us. My father doesn’t understand that. He has everything he needs in Tellurak, and just uses Korr to get his inventions. The way things are suits him just fine.”
“He’d still help you.”
“Look around you, Jamile. See what a world looks like without any kuduks in it. This is what Korr could be like.”
“You want to kill them all?” Jamile whispered.
Madlin gritted her teeth. “No, we can’t kill every kuduk. We just need to break free of them. No more doing all their muck work for them; no more getting bought and sold. How much they have to hurt before they allow us that much, that’s up to them.”
“You’re willing to stay a slave, if that’s what it takes?”
“Before I let my father take me out of the fight, yeah. For Eziel’s mercy, he doesn’t even know I joined the rebels.”
