Rebel Heart

by Graham Bradley

  Calvin glared at him. “You’re kidnapping me? That’s not really giving me a choice.”

  “Perhaps not, but I doubt that in your heart of hearts you want to stay here and keep cleaning wool so the mages can have cheap carpets. Think ahead to the next time Fitz and Birty come by to collect. How are you going to feel, knowing you could have done something to beat them?”

  That Boston sailor appeared again in Calvin’s memory, an everyday man who kept his hatchet-throwing skills a secret. Calvin thought of him hurling that tomahawk at the tea crane, sending months of his own hard labor into the sea with a single blow. He’d destroyed the results of so much work when he could no longer control it, when he wasn’t living on his own terms.

  Deep down, Calvin knew he was in the same position. While the thought of running out on his folks made him a little sick inside . . . the allure of being more powerful than mages, of not having to play dumb around them, was too much temptation to resist. If he joined this army and they could somehow teach him to make the mages’ gifts irrelevant, wouldn’t that be better?

  “How long does the training take?” Calvin asked.

  “Three, maybe four weeks. Then you start to see action,” said Daniel, brushing a curled lock of hair off his forehead. “You show them you can work hard, maybe they’ll even send you back to Baltimore when we strike. You can be part of the brigade that whips your local mages.”

  John studied him with eyes that made Calvin feel like an open book. “You have the hunger, kid. It’s a hunger we all know. We’ve lost property and loved ones to the mages too, and we each doubted we could make a difference. Do yourself a favor and make the choice; there’s nothing left here for you if you keep going the way you have, the way your parents have, the way all your ancestors have for centuries. Are you going to make a better life for yourself, or are you just going to roll over and take it like your old man?”

  Calvin’s neck bristled. He took a long, hard look at his shabby room, his forlorn bed, and the sack of gold coins at his feet. Three weeks to train, six weeks to attack?

  A month and a half away from a lifetime of freedom? What was there to contemplate, really? He knew the answer.

  “I’ll do it.”

  ~

  CHAPTER 2

  Two days later, John announced that they had arrived.

  Calvin dragged his exhausted body from the saddle where he’d sat for countless hours. The trip out of Baltimore had been quick and somewhat frightening; for all their talk about machines, the technomancer trio had come to town on horseback and expected Calvin to leave with them the same way. He’d ridden bareback all of twice in his lifetime, and both times the experience had left him sore in a very sensitive place.

  Once out of town, they had gone to one of the seaports where duffers—non-magicals, like himself and the technomancers—docked their ships. Calvin expected they’d be travelling the rest of the way by sail.

  He was half right.

  This was when the technomancers revealed their machine. Something akin to a boat rose up out of the water, from underneath the surface, like a giant metal fish. Calvin just stared at it in the dim moonlight, wide-eyed and unbelieving. The vessel was in the shape of a large shark, and altogether larger than his house. A circular door opened on top and Griff led Calvin across a hastily laid gangplank, then directed him to climb a ladder down the hatch.

  Down. Into the shark.

  “We can travel this way, unseen, unheard, for miles,” John explained once they were below. Calvin nodded, unable to conjure a verbal response.

  The charm of the experience soon wore off, though. It took them two days to reach their destination. They picked up more recruits along the way, and during that whole period Calvin never once left the shark. For one who worked outside every day, it soon bothered him.

  At least the new recruits were good company. Most of them were about his age, and congregated with Calvin at the rear of the passenger compartment, while the others huddled at the front. The first was Rusty, a twelve year-old girl with thick red hair. Her father had run a smuggling chain for the technomancers, only to be found and punished by the mages. Itching for revenge, she had run away with Stitch, a dark-haired middle son of a servant family who’d worked for Rusty’s parents. Rusty’s dress had once been nice, but a short life of flight had left it soiled. Stitch’s clothes looked even worse, like they’d always been torn and repeatedly patched. Despite their appearance, their spirits were high.

  There was also a tall, pretty girl named Lyla, the daughter of a tobacco farmer; an awkward boy called Cohen, whose family owned a bitumen refinery (one of the few mechanical trades approved by the Crown); and Avery, a rugged orphan boy who’d lived mostly in the woods and was rather adept with a bow. A sixth young man boarded early on the second day, with black hair and expensive clothes, but Calvin never got his name, as he had taken to conversing with the adults.

  Each of them had a story like his own—the recruiters had seen them stand up to the mages, or utter something defiant, and then they were on route to this vessel, and now. . .

  “Where are we?” Calvin asked, walking across the gangplank on shaky legs, back toward land. Again it was dark, and he could only see the shark vessel’s outline against the moonlit river.

  “Virginia,” Griff said. “Place called Mount Vernon.”

  “Are you serious?” said Stitch, wide-eyed.

  “You’ve heard of it then?”

  “Of course I have! This is where—”

  “Ah, don’t spoil it now. Y’all are about to go through orientation.” Griff herded them down the dock, across a grassy field and around a row of smelly stables. There came into Calvin’s view the largest mansion he’d ever seen, impressive even at night.

  “Wow,” he whispered.

  “Are we staying here?” asked Cohen, scratching at his mop of straw-colored hair.

  “You’re staying in the barns. Pick it up now,” John said, joining Griff.

  “This is your house?” Stitch asked.

  John shook his head. “This estate is in the custody of our Commodore, Mister McCracken. He’s a colonial like us, and a technomancer, but he’s paid up with the right people in the British nobility. They leave him alone, and the grounds aren’t frequently searched. There are other protections in place as well.” He didn’t elaborate. Before Calvin could ask, Griff opened a door on the east side of the mansion and herded them inside.

  Calvin was sandwiched between Stitch and Rusty, who both needed a bath real bad. But he only noticed that for a second; once inside the mansion, he could only stare in awe at the surrounding regality.

  The walls were smooth, painted white, adorned with framed paintings and ornate decorations. Sconces held scented candles on the wall, filling the air with a light perfumed smell like vanilla and spice. The rug was a muddy brown, made dirty by thousands of footsteps. Calvin instantly wanted to roll up the rug, take it outside, and beat it with every ounce of skill and experience in him; such a dirty thing did not belong in a place so fine as this.

  John Penn led them down a hallway to an open foyer, where a set of double doors stood open. Beyond that was a large semicircular room furnished with dozens of velvet purple seats, like an opera house—Calvin had seen pictures of one in a book before, one of the few books that the mages had allowed in the library at school. On the stage was a podium, and behind it stood a man.

  “Take your seats. Orientation is about to begin,” Griff said. He ushered them into the auditorium and closed the doors. Calvin looked around, took the nearest open seat and dropped down into it. It was soft, softer even than his bed at home.

  What did Mother and Father think when they woke up, and I was gone, and the gold had been returned? His palms itched just thinking about it. Suddenly he wanted orientation done with. Get to the training, get to the good stuff, get this done.

  The room was mostly filled by other recruits, whom Calvin presumed had come to Mount Vernon by other means. Some were rather o
ld. Some were better-dressed than he, and others hadn’t bathed in weeks. Men, women, boys, girls, their skin a variety of colors, some marred with tattoos and others with scars. Calvin counted thirty-three in all.

  “Good evening,” said the man at the podium, a gentleman of fine clothing and proper grooming. He was older, perhaps fifty, with graying hair and a well-trimmed beard, and large spectacles. He walked with a cane that he had leaned against the podium prior to addressing them. “I am Commodore Jonathan McCracken. The recruiters will have told you about us and our purpose. Newcomers almost always have the same questions, which we will answer here with a brief presentation. Pay attention to what you are about to see.”

  Without another word, McCracken took up his cane and strode off the stage. The podium descended into the floor and the lights in the room dimmed. Calvin craned his neck to see the source of the light, but couldn’t get eyes on it. From off to his right, the smell of seasoned meat wafted over, and his stomach growled—somewhere in the mansion, supper was on the fire. This house held far too many wonders to focus on just one.

  The curtain at the back of the stage split down the middle, and the two halves pulled aside to reveal a perfectly white sheet the size of the whole wall. Something clicked behind Calvin, then rattled, and then the most wonderful thing happened: moving images appeared on the sheet. Moving images! There was no other way to describe it. A voice filled the auditorium, narrating the show.

  “The year was seventeen hundred and seventy-six, the tercentennial anniversary of the founding of Nova Britannia. The continent was enduring one of its harshest winters. Both the duffers and the mages alike fell victim to it, though the duffers were accustomed to such hardships. Then, as now, our forebears lived under the thumbs of magic-bearing oppressors.”

  Calvin heard murmurs and grumbles all around him. Everyone focused more intently on the pictures, which showed farmers working in the snow, trying to find wood to burn while the mages freely raided their storehouses to support themselves.

  The narration continued. “One man decided he had had enough. He lit a new fire, not in the hearth, but in the hearts and minds of men and women all throughout Nova Britannia. This fire gained momentum, fueled by the dreams of many brave souls. Soon, hundreds and thousands of good people armed themselves with whatever they could find, and they marched on the mages’ strongholds. Though this volunteer army was short on training and had no proper equipment, they dealt a series of humiliating defeats to their mage overlords, who had grown fat and complacent in their power.”

  The moving images stopped, replaced by a clicking slideshow of regular pictographs that showed towns on fire, mages overrun by angry ranchers with pitchforks, and men pushing large wheeled machines that hurled giant arrows like a sideways bow.

  “The leader of this army was a ragtag ruffian named George Washington. At first nobody thought he could do it—they thought the mages were too strong, too many in number to defeat. He proved everyone wrong, and with every victory he added more to his army. George Washington was bold, cunning, intelligent, and, many say, possessed of extreme luck.”

  The moving images came back. A large man whom Calvin assumed to be Washington came galloping past on a horse, a smoking battlefield behind him. He stopped and dismounted; three men ran to his aid, poking and prodding at him, but Washington just waved them off. He showed them his coat and breeches, which were perforated by no less than eight holes. Calvin recognized the star-shaped burns as the mark of a mage’s curse on wool. Though Washington’s clothes were riddled with holes, he didn’t have a single scorch on his body.

  “No way,” Calvin murmured.

  “Before long, Washington had raised a formidable armed force. That was when the Crown realized what a daring opponent resided on the new continent.”

  Another pictograph popped up, a grotesque image of the King of Britain, drawn as an ogre with a crown. Calvin laughed. So did a few others.

  “The King did not like this rebel at all. George Washington had made a fool of him and his mages. By way of retaliation, he not only sent additional war wizards, but he employed a new tactic as well: the King learned about the citizens, learned about life here in the colonies, and learned how to stoke turmoil amongst us. Books, leaflets, and slanderous print circulated among the duffers like candy.”

  Calvin watched an array of printed materials piling up on the screen. The headlines were sensational and offensive. They accused Washington of sacrificing soldiers for petty missions, gleefully leading his troops to slaughter, wasting the sacrifice of his would-be countrymen. Calvin narrowed his eyes. It was just like those rotten mages to smear the good name of a man who stood against them. A cowardly tactic by any measure. Washington couldn’t fight the mages and his own people, too.

  “People began to turn their hearts away from the nobility of the effort. By the end, the word caused even more damage than the wand, and all the fantastic luck couldn’t save Washington from being executed in a public spectacle.”

  A new pictograph swept by, this one of Washington bound in chains, standing between a trice of dragons. One bore the flag of England on its back, one bore Scotland’s, and the third represented Wales. The pictograph shifted, and all three dragons doused Washington in flames.

  “Rotten pox-marked inbreds,” Stitch muttered.

  “You said it,” Calvin breathed. “Why have we never heard of this?”

  “Long time ago,” said Stitch. He mumbled something inaudible, counting on his fingers. “The year is nineteen hundred and . . . eighty-four? So this was more than two centuries ago.”

  Calvin had already figured that out. It seemed Stitch was a little slow with numbers.

  The lights came back on. Calvin feared for a moment that their talking had cut the presentation short, but then the podium rose again from the stage and McCracken reassumed his place behind it. The images kept appearing on screen.

  “You have probably never heard this story,” McCracken said. “The mages know what it would stir up in you if you did—that the loss of this hero would affect you these hundreds of years after his martyrdom. Well, we mean to seize on the passion of Father

  George and finish his work. In order to do that, we have to be braver, bolder, and above all, more powerful than his army in his day. That’s where you come in.”

  Calvin leaned forward to get an even better look at the new pictographs as they appeared. This one was similar to the drawing on the card that John Penn had carried with him: a mage stood with his wand out as if uttering a curse.

  Opposite him was a man in boots and breeches, overcoat and gloves. He had weapons strapped to every limb, a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. He donned a leather cap and a pair of goggles as well as a look of sheer defiance on his face. A technomancer!

  The pictographs clicked away, replaced by drawings of mages on brooms and carpets, running away from a technomancer on a strange-looking gryphon—at least it had the appearance of a gryphon, yet it was also very obviously a machine of some sort. A third image showed a troll cowering under the heavy fists of a clockwork giant.

  “Make no mistake,” said McCracken. “We intend to incite rebellion, and we have the means to hold an advantage over the mages. You will all receive training in superior weaponry, equipment, tactics, and strategy. Prepare to be tired, but take heart in knowing you will no longer go hungry.”

  The shifting images disappeared and the screen retracted into the ceiling, revealing long banquet tables behind McCracken. Fruits and vegetables, blocks of cheese, sizzling meats, heaping bowls of potatoes and bread rolls, crystal goblets with colorful liquids, and three huge turkeys . . . Calvin had never seen so much food before in his life. His stomach did a little somersault and his mouth watered something fierce. So this was what he had smelled!

  “We stole this from one of His Majesty’s sustenance farms days ago. By next week you will all be raiding farms just like it,” McCracken said with a grin. “Come fill your bellies. Tomorrow the work
begins.”

  Everyone moved at once. Each recruit surged toward the tables, taking the first open chair they could get their hands on. McCracken stood back, smiling proudly, encouraging them to carefully pack down as much as they could.

  Calvin ate until his stomach ached. Hours later the recruits extricated themselves from the table, thanking Commodore McCracken for his generosity before following John Penn out to the dormitories where they would sleep. He only nodded as the recruiters explained that they’d be issued new fatigues and footwear tomorrow, and would be fine in the meantime.

  From there the cadets were mostly sorted by age, then by gender, and Calvin ended up in a barracks with the five other youths from the shark. He only kicked off his shoes before plopping down onto a bed and falling asleep in his clothes, feeling fuller and happier than he had in his whole life. A new optimism welled up within him, bringing with it a sense of invincibility.

  Then the morning came.

  ~

  CHAPTER 3

  A booming voice and a frigid shock tore them all from their slumber.

  “Rise and shine, kiddies!”

  Calvin shrieked as a torrent of ice-cold water dropped onto his bed. Gasping and sputtering, he jolted up and tumbled to the floor, landing hard on his elbows and knees. In his fright, his stomach lurched and he tossed up half of last night’s dinner. A sharp stench told him that he wasn’t the only one; the others had overdone it as well, and were paying for it.

  “See, Peter? I told you there’s always some that can’t hold it in,” said a boy towering over Calvin.

  “I shouldn’t have doubted you, Brian.”

  Calvin’s heart thudded in time with his chattering teeth as he stood up to face Brian and Peter. Peter was a head taller than Brian, and looked to be maybe nineteen or twenty, while Brian couldn’t have been much older than Calvin. The two boys—brothers, and sons of Mr. McCracken—went from bunk to bunk, emptying buckets on the recruits. Half of them were already up. Calvin wiped the water and slime from his face.