Mad Tinker's Daughter

by J. S. Morin

  Erefan nodded his reply and set to work shutting down the machine. He noted that Kezudkan has not bothered to check the log book.

  “What do you make of this?” Kezudkan asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a white marble figurine. It was the height of Erefan’s hand, and looked to be human. “I’m making a chess set for my grandson, and this would be one of the pawns. I figured you’re my expert in humans.”

  Erefan took the pawn from Kezudkan and examined it with a tinker’s eye. The proportion of the limbs looked accurate, the head was shaped properly, the facial features were a bit off, but forgivable for an inhuman sculptor. When he looked at it with human pride, his blood churned.

  “The eyes are too far apart,” Erefan grumbled, handing back the pawn. Kezudkan took it in two hands, and rubbed at the face with his thumbs. Erefan couldn’t see how he did it, but it was like he worked with clay, kneading the stone into the shape he wished. The old daruu turned the pawn so Erefan could see it. “Better.”

  “You don’t sound like you like it, Erefan. Tell me what’s wrong with it?” Kezudkan set the pawn down on the table.

  “Look at it there, hunched over, cowering. It doesn’t look like it could stand upright if its life hung on the doing. Those rags it’s wearing just dangle from it. You’ve even got a collar around its neck. Is this how you see us? How you see me?”

  “My dear sir, this little human has had the weight of the world thrust upon him. He has more pressing business than caring for the lump of flesh that’s wrapped around his mind. He’s a thinker, this one, and he’d prefer you not to worry about his shambling carcass. So he wears rags. Fashion is for kuduk women, is it not? I’ve heard you say as much. If his eyelids droop and his gaze looks yonder instead of at you, comfort yourself in knowing this his work matters more to him than your concern. He wakes before your cook and stays up past the changing of the night guard.”

  “So you sculpted a parable for me?”

  “No, I was making chess pieces for my grandson and noticed the resemblance. Erefan, strange as it feels for me to say this, you’re working yourself too hard.”

  “I haven’t—”

  “You’ve been making mistakes. The overload. The miswirings. These aren’t mistakes you make. It isn’t like you. It worries me, because I’m counting on you to turn this machine into a gold miner. I don’t want some accident causing irreparable damage to it.”

  “Nothing’s irreparable.”

  “Fine then, I don’t want an accident causing expensive damage to it.”

  Erefan scratched at three days’ stubble on his face and glanced down once more at the pawn. “All right. I’ll get to bed with the lights-out for the rest of the estate.”

  “Oh, look who’s trying to barter with me! I still own you, Erefan. You’re taking a day off.”

  Erefan’s eyes widened. He blinked as if it would somehow change what he had just heard.

  “But I—”

  “No arguing this time. You’ll go out into the city and find some diversion. I don’t know that you even know how to relax, but you’ve got a good enough mind in that soft human skull of yours; you’ll figure it out.”

  “A whole day?”

  Kezudkan laughed, a deep rumble that Erefan felt in his belly. “You make it sound like I’ve ordered you to be flogged. Go to a play or a concert. Attend a crashball game, or whatever’s popular these days. Partake of those chemicals that soften human minds. Better yet, do some rutting among your own kind; I find that it does wonders for the human psyche.”

  “But ... I don’t want to do any of that,” Erefan protested. “I want the machine working.”

  Kezudkan closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are the oddest human I’ve ever owned. Most men turn into slobbering idiots at the chance to sate their loins. If I didn’t know you had a daughter, I’d wonder if you even knew how. Let me phrase this in terms you might understand: you are malfunctioning. Some crucial bit of maintenance was left to the dereliction of an overzealous operator more concerned about output than the long term care of the equipment. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I want you taken apart, scrubbed out, and reassembled with new bolts, fresh grease, and a spit polish.”

  Breakfast was hazy in Erefan’s mind. The serving girl had brought down muffins and coffee; Kezudkan had chatted about other affairs in the household. Erefan had picked at his food.

  He found himself outside Kezudkan’s estate with fifty tenar in his pocket and an admonition not to return before lights-up the next morning. He also carried an embarrassing but useful note in his pocket: Kezudkan’s instructions that he was taking a one-day leave of absence, with his owner’s insistence; he’d need it if he was stopped by any authorities, or barred entry to a freemen’s establishment on account of his collar.

  He turned to look back at the gates. One of the guards gave him a shrug. Erefan set off down the tunnel that connected the estate to the rest of Eversall Deep.

  The streets of Eversall were crowded by the time Erefan reached the population center. He drew looks, for it was an oddity to see a man with both a collar and spectacles. Plenty of freemen got by without reading, and among slaves the skill was even less common. To find one whose owner encouraged the practice was almost unheard of. Most of the humans he passed in the tunnels gave him a wide berth. Even those who didn’t know of him could tell he was a valuable slave, the sort that the knockers would come looking for answers about if something happened to him.

  Erefan wandered. He came to the city proper so infrequently that he got lost easily and took directions when he ventured out. Today he didn’t care. He was exiled, caught in the middle of a plan with his trousers down. He wondered what he would tell his twinborn when Cadmus awoke. He hated the thought of lying to them, but his predicament was ridiculous. There were men among his retinue who worked twelve hour days in the mines, women who were brothel slaves. How could he tell them that his owner thought he was working too hard, that he needed a rest.

  What he really needed was a place to think: somewhere quiet and away from people, or at least someplace where he could be free from their bother. He stopped a clean shaven passerby in a suit coat and tie.

  “Where’s the nearest public house?”

  “Bit early for that, eh?” the shaver said. He looked Erefan up and down, paused to stare at his collar. “You belong to that daruu gentlemen on the edge of town, don’t you? This your first day on stipend or something?”

  “Nothing like that,” Erefan replied. In truth, he wondered why Kezudkan hadn’t put him on stipend. The wily old daruu knew he had Erefan chained better by curiosity than steel would ever have managed, and there was no chance that he could save up enough coin to buy himself free by scrimping; his freedom price was a vault’s treasure. “I’ve just been put out of the household for the day and need to pass the time.”

  The shaver shook his head. “Fancy that. Slave on holiday. Some of us have to work for a living, you know.” The man stepped around and continued on his way. Erefan grabbed him by the arm.

  “Nearest pub?”

  “Quindley’s. Take a right at the next tunnel,” the shaver said, pulling his arm free. Erefan watched the man brush his coat clean with the back of his hand, wondering which of them was the filthier: the slave who worked against his owner or the human who worked for his people’s oppressors. Erefan wiped his own hand on his trousers.

  Quindley’s was a freemen’s pub, but nobody bothered him when he walked in wearing a collar. His unshaven stubble was the cleanest face in the room. Erefan felt a bit better at ease. Shavers might be more respectable, but it was a false veneer put on for the kuduks in most cases. Men who wore beards were at least honest about who they were, and more than a few were sympathetic to slaves.

  Erefan approached the bar. It was a metal slab, coated in cheap yellow chrome that warped and was streaked in discolored purplish whorls. The tables and chairs were bare iron, but the tables at least had linen cloths to keep the rust
away. Erefan bumped into an empty chair as he wove his way across the room and its shriek of metal on stone attracted the attention of everyone in the establishment.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Don’t get many of your kind in here,” the bartender observed as Erefan arrived. He wore his beard in a single knot. There was a legend going around that it was an old human warrior tradition, and the style was catching on.

  “Root beer,” Erefan said, picking the weakest drink most pubs stocked.

  The bartender held out a hand, palm up. “Up front. No tab for slaves.”

  Erefan snorted. In Tellurak, his credit was good enough to buy ships. He hardly touched money anymore; he let his bookkeepers handle that for him. He handed the bartender a five tenar note.

  “What’s a slave doing with that kinda coin?” one of the patrons asked from down the bar.

  Erefan shrugged and shook his head. “My owner’s a madman. Kicked me out for the day, said my work’s been sloppy.”

  “Odd one for sure. Most’d beat ya from what I hear,” the man from down the bar said as he sidled up alongside Erefan. His breath stank of whiskey and he was clearly drunk, though lucid. “What you do you need them spectacles for?”

  “I’m his mechanic,” Erefan replied, hoping that a matter-of-fact answer might put an end to what promised to be an inane conversation. He was not so lucky.

  “I worked as a rat-boy for a mechanic once,” the drunkard said, nodding in sympathy. “Good work, but I never got the hang of it. Work for meself these days ... still in the rat business though.”

  The bartended handed him his drink and Erefan went to find a table in a quiet corner. No sooner had he sat down than the drunkard seated himself across the table, bringing his own glass along.

  “You ... you look glum for a fella what got off a beatin’ and took a holiday for it.”

  “I hadn’t planned anything ahead. I don’t quite know what to do with myself,” Erefan admitted. He wondered if it was not so much the drink, but the atmosphere of a pub that weakened personal resolve. “It’s been more than ... well I don’t think I’ve ever had a day to myself. What would you do?”

  “Ya mean just fer one day?” the drunkard asked. Erefan nodded. “I’d take my boys to a crashball game, I think. Then I’d have me a whore or two. Make sure I was good and drunk too, before it was over.”

  Erefan took a swallow of his root beer, relishing the fresh feeling of the cool drink down his throat as it washed away the taste of coffee. “I doubt my daughter would enjoy going to a ... wait, that’s it. I’ll go visit my daughter.”

  “There now, see? Ya ain’t lookin’ so glum no more.”

  Erefan chugged down the rest of his root beer. “Thanks, friend.” He clapped the drunkard on the shoulder as he got up to leave. Trust a drunk to stumble to the heart of a matter.

  Erefan knew the way to Klockwerk University once he found his bearings and got to a stairshaft. The university spanned two layers, but Erefan was too old to be climbing more stairs than he had to; he opted to visit via the Second Layer entrance.

  Erefan sat on an iron bench, idly taking it apart in his head and figuring out how it was made. Welded, held in place around a steel peg frame, not a form—bends are too tight, you can see where it kinks. He had already mentally disassembled the door latch mechanism, the clock (as best he could see of its workings), and the fountain that bubbled in the university’s lower entrance.

  Foot traffic flowed around him like a stream around a boulder. Eddies formed in the clusters of kuduk students as they strove to avoid contact with the human slave. It was just prior to classes commencing for the afternoon, and many of the students had taken their lunch off campus. Erefan tried to keep from looking at them; he wanted no trouble without being on explicit orders from Kezudkan.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” a young kuduk clerk said upon returning to Erefan’s bench. It was the first time he could recall being addressed as ‘sir’ by a kuduk. It had to be force of habit. “I find no record of any Rynn working for the university.”

  Erefan stood, causing the clerk to stumble back a step. “Check again, she works as a cleaning girl; has for three years.”

  The clerk shook her head. “I can’t help you. She doesn’t work here. The records don’t lie.”

  “Records lie if someone makes them lie,” Erefan growled.

  The clerk put up her hands to ward him away. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The implication that she would call for judicial enforcement was clear. It was laughable that Erefan would lay a hand on her. She was young and looked healthy enough despite working a clerical job, plus she had fifty pounds heft on him.

  “I’m going,” he muttered, and stormed out of the university.

  Erefan kept a tight valve on his anger as he marched off in search of the lifts. Angry slaves were liable to get rounded up as a public safety concern, and he couldn’t afford that inconvenience right now. Even if Kezudkan sent someone to get him out of lockup before day’s end, it would certainly mean the end of his impromptu holiday.

  He needed to find out where Rynn had gone. It wasn’t the first time she’d been willful, but this would be the worst he could remember. Klockwerk University wasn’t just a safe, stable job, it was an opportunity to learn. Madlin’s skills at invention had been growing by the month. He had always assumed that meant Rynn was studying on her behalf.

  The attendant at the lift barred his entry until Erefan showed Kezudkan’s note. Though Erefan got a strange look after the kuduk lad read of his parole, he was allowed aboard.

  As the gates closed and the lift car rumbled downward, Erefan ignored the chance to study its workings. His mind had another puzzle to piece together, one made of freckled flesh and reckless disobedience rather than the metal. Madlin had never talked much about Rynn’s friends; she rarely talked about her twin at all. That had always suited Cadmus just fine, since he didn’t like talking about Erefan either. There was something humbling about admitting to slavery in Korr, or in Madlin’s case, menial labor. They knew one another’s circumstances and left it at that.

  He always thought he knew her circumstances. Now it seemed he had been wrong.

  Erefan did not get off the lift at either the Third or Fourth Layer stops. He rode all the way to the Fifth Layer, where the attendant shooed away everyone left on the lift platform. There were hardly any kuduks at all down that low, just a few on unfortunate errands: couriers, debt collectors, sellers of cheap wares out of hand carts. Erefan saw no enforcement officers, which was just as well.

  He made his way down tunnels he had thought were purged from his memories, but his feet knew the way. When he stopped before the doors of the Church of Eziel, he could not help smirking. The “CE” mark on the door was stamped or affixed by plaque to every item that Errol Company made. It harkened back to a time when he had worked closely with the church to root out twinborn from both sides. Of necessity, his recruiting had been limited to Tellurak since his enslavement.

  The architecture inside had never awed him as it did many of the worshippers. He knew how it was all done. Most of the buildings on Tinker’s Island were more difficult feats of construction, though less ornate in their trappings.

  “Where is Pious Valter? I need to speak with him.”

  The acolyte on duty gave Erefan a puzzled frown. “Pious Valter died seven years ago.”

  It was Erefan’s turn to frown. Valter hadn’t been a young man, but Erefan hadn’t expected to find him gone. He was only a few years Erefan’s senior. “Who holds the church now?”

  “Pious Henlon.”

  “Fetch him for me, if you please. I have something important to discuss.”

  “I’m afraid Pious Henlon has taken sabbatical. I haven’t any way to reach him.”

  Erefan scratched at his stubble and sized up the acolyte. He was thin to the point of scrawniness. He wore his hair close cropped in the style of a kuduk schoolboy. His face was covered in pale brown hairs, but it was
a poor claimant to the title of beard. If Erefan had to put one word to describe him, it would have been “earnest.” There was nothing savvy or sly in his manner, with his wide eyes and wan, unthreatening smile.

  “I’m looking for my daughter; she’s gone missing,” Erefan said.

  “Can you describe her?”

  “About my height, hair’s got streaks of brown and reddish like her mother’s, green eyes, freckles—”

  “Do you mean Chipmunk?” the acolyte asked.

  “No, her name’s Rynn.”

  “Yes, that’s her. Chipmunk, Pious Henlon calls her.”

  Erefan’s eyed narrowed. He grabbed the acolyte by the collar of his drab brown robe and pulled him close enough that he could smell the stew the lad ate for lunch. “You’re a holy man, so I’m not going to do you bodily harm. But so help me Eziel, if you tell me your Pious Henlon’s gotten her into some mischief, I’ll have this church down in rubble. You’ll be praying at tunnel crossings, with an empty ale keg for a lectern.”

  The acolyte stared wide-eyed at Erefan but held his tongue. The lad was no fool, and Erefan took his silence as the answer he had feared. He released the acolyte, who slumped with visible relief.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rodrey, sir.”

  “Rodrey, I need you to tell me where I can find more of your Pious Henlon’s rabblerousing friends.”

  Rodrey looked away.

  “You may have a future in the clergy, Rodrey,” Erefan said, “but you’ll never make a spy or a rebel. Who knows where she might be?”

  “Check at the Tap’n’Chug. Pious Henlon drinks there.”

  Erefan didn’t say a word as he left, but as he passed the donation box, he slammed the side of his fist against it.

  The public house known as the Tap’n’Chug was just filling with the afternoon crowd, the baker’s assistants, newsboys, coal runners, and anyone else whose work started and ended early, or started late and had not yet begun. Erefan filtered in alongside them and noticed that he was not the only one wearing a collar. It seemed that the Tap was popular with the slaves on stipend, which reflected poorly on the cost and quality of their libations. Luckily Erefan wasn’t there for the drinks.