World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (22 page)

While technically some of Erefan’s old mines once held some amount of coal, they did not actually paint the workshop. Kezudkan and Gederon—mostly Gederon—swept up the debris that neither of them normally took notice of. With a bit of welding gas and a few spare lengths of piping, they constructed a frame. It took a quick jaunt via the world-ripper to find draperies that looked suitably royal-friendly, but in the markets of some bustling Telluraki city, they scared the wits from a gaggle of human shoppers and snatched an entire bolt of red velvet.

By the time they were finished, the view
from
the world-ripper was at least not so embarrassing compared to the view through it. The pipe-work frame acted as a curtain rod, and the draperies blocked the view of most of the workshop from the viewframe. All anyone in the daruu throne room would see would be a backdrop of red velvet, like the curtains at a theater.
I suppose this is a theater of sorts, playing the world out before us. Cracked and slurried veins! I could have made my fortune charging kuduks to watch the show, and never told them that it could open for real.

Gederon arranged the viewframe to the exact coordinates they had found before. The king’s court had finished their meal, and the courtiers had rearranged themselves into a proper audience for an audience. A pair of daruu stood at the base of the dais, with the king’s full attention fixed on them. Everyone else present looked on from neat rows of stone seats, arrayed in a semi-circle in the king’s field of vision.

“Were those benches there before?” Kezudkan asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

“I didn’t notice any. But I wasn’t looking for benches, last time,” Gederon replied.

“Magic. Must be.”

“Feet getting all gooey with mortar again?” Gederon asked, smirking at him.

“Listen, lad. I’m about to walk into the throne room of our distant kinfolk from the world of Veydrus. I am neither an orator nor a diplomat, just a crazy old tinker with delusions of grandeur. If this works, it will be the single most significant achievement for our people since the great wars. If it doesn’t, we might both be in for a rather unpleasant demise. So pardon my caution, but I do not intend to step into that throne room on a whim, or because you’re prodding at my pride with a sharpened nail, or because I can’t stand the wait a moment longer. So if you would kindly dunk your head underwater for a few minutes, I’d like to think this over.”

Kezudkan watched for minutes that stretched into hours until every joint threatened to stiffen solid. He studied the expression on the king’s face, cursing for the hundredth time since building the world-ripper that he could not read lips. He knew nothing useful of Veydrus, especially when it pertained to his kin there. Who were the supplicants? What were their pleas before their king? He tried to imagine professions for them, but their garments and mannerisms gave him too few clues. What he
was
able to gather was that this daruu king seemed even of both hand and temperament. There was no rancor in his countenance, no frown, no sneer. The young king exuded a calm dignity, and his subjects—however they were who approached him—treated his judgment with respect.

“Good enough,” Kezudkan announced at last. “We’ll open the hole as soon as I can walk again.” The idleness had crept insidiously into his joints, hardly paining him as they hardened. It told Kezudkan that he had hardly moved during his observation. He took a few moments with the help of his cane to hobble loose his knees, ankles, and hips. His hands never seemed quite so bad as his lower extremities; a lifetime of tinkering and writing had kept them more mobile than the rest of him.

Gederon hopped from his chair, his eagerness to be busy plain as he pulled the drapes between the viewframe and the rest of the workshop. Within arm’s reach, there was a fold of fabric with a slit meant to be used as a peephole. “All set, uncle. I can see enough to be sure you’re through.”

“Not until I give the word,” Kezudkan warned. He watched the scene in the throne room, imagining himself standing amid that waiting crowd. There was a feel to the proceedings, a rhythm he had watched and judged as he tried to decide whether the king was a man he could deal with. Lulls were the key. The bailiff—or whatever they called the one who acted in a bailiff’s stead—would escort the supplicants to and from the base of the dais. In between, the court relaxed momentarily. Small conversations broke out; people shifted in their seats, came and went. Once the next supplicant was brought forth, they would all settle into respectful stillness again.

Kezudkan watched as the current supplicant was dismissed. The king lifted a hand, and the bailiff came to take a middle-year daruu gentleman in a bronze jacket back to the gallery.
Five … four … three … two …

“Now,” said Kezudkan.

Gederon was alert. Not a second passed before the thunk of the switch heralded the change in the viewframe that made the throne room a real place just a pace away. Kezudkan took a step forward, cane leading the way. No sooner had he set both feet on the warm, smooth stone of the throne room, but the pervasive hum of the world-ripper’s dynamo vanished. The eerie silence that was left was short lived.

There was an outcry from the audience, a hundred different exclamations of shock and outrage. Kezudkan did not let the chaos reign unopposed. “Greetings,” he proclaimed, raising his voice to be heard above the courtiers. “I am Kezudkan Graniteson, I am from a world known as Korr. I have come here by—”

“Silence!” the king commanded. Kezudkan caught himself short, feeling as if he may have misjudged the monarch. The throne room grew quiet enough that he could hear nearby daruu breathing. “What manners are these? We have a guest among us, one who claims to be from very far away indeed. I will have silence that we might all hear what he has to say. Continue, Kezudkan Graniteson of Korr.”

Kezudkan bowed slightly, which was all the bowing his body was fit for. “My thanks. I have recently created a device that allows me to see and travel to other worlds, or to other places in my own. To my astonishment and delight, I happened upon this place, where I find a people who are no doubt some kinfolk of mine. I come in friendship, and fellowship, and in the hope of learning more about my own people through knowing yours.”

“You speak our language,” the king observed. “How is this, if you are from another world?”

“Runes are runes, and the daruu tongue cannot change while it uses the runes of our ancestors.”

“Well said,” the king replied. “I am King Dekulon, ninth to take this name. You will be a guest of our people. This forum is unfit for scholarly discussion, and you, elder, seem very much to be a scholarly man. I would learn of your world and our people who inhabit it. Hulara, take him to a guest room, and see that he gets some proper attire.” The king raised a hand, and the bailiff came forward to remove Kezudkan.

This could have gone worse
. At first, he assumed Hulara to have been the bailiff’s name, but he was handed off to a woman at the edge of the room who took custody of him. She was in her late second century, smooth with just a few crevices at the corners of her eyes, her brow sloped gently back to her scalp. Kezudkan was very well inclined to follow wherever she wished to take him.

“Right this way, honored guest,” said Hulara, sweeping a hand out to the side toward a side exit from the throne room.

“Thank you very much,” Kezudkan replied, inclining his head toward her.

“I must say,” she replied. “You have the most charming accent. Do all your people talk like that?”

Kezudkan could not have removed the grin from his face with a pickaxe and hammer. “Not a one of them. I am utterly unique.”

Gederon sat with his feet on the edge of the control console, lounging in his chair. The draperies bunched at one end of the curtain rod contraption he and his uncle had assembled, allowing an unfettered view of the proceedings. A lazy hand gave a dial a twist here or there, keeping up with Kezudkan’s progress through the Veydran palace. Like his uncle, Gederon had no talent for reading lips, but he was no fool, and neither as young nor naïve as his uncle seemed to think him. He watched as the daruu woman—who had to be half his uncle’s age—followed Kezudkan into what appeared to be a lavish bedroom.

Stretching from his reclined position, Gederon managed to get a hand on the main spark switch for the world-ripper. With a pull, the machine went dark. “Best of luck, Uncle, but that’s about the limit of what I’m willing to see. You’re on your own until morning.”

Chapter 17

“I didn’t expect to live a long life. That’s how I managed to live one.” –K’k’rt

Rynn awoke from a fitful night spent on the floor of K’k’rt’s little workshop, which took up the large ground floor of the tinker’s home. It felt wrong, primitive. While Tinker’s Island had been a bit of modern comfort in a backward world, K’k’rt’s workshop was like a living museum. Outdated tools were organized in wooden racks around the room, more iron than steel in their construction. The floor was dirt, the better for dealing with molten metals, K’k’rt had told her, but knowing that did not make it seem any less a hovel. Spread upon the floor, a tarp delineated her sleeping spot. Piled with cloth to soften it, there was still no escaping the feel of the earth beneath. A single blanket of goblin manufacture was too short to cover her neck to toe, and so she had used two of them, with an awkward overlap that turned to a chilly gap as she tossed and turned through the night.

K’k’rt’s chuckle greeted her. “Oh, you decided to join me this morning. Not all humans are so lazy. I know, since my own are already at work.”

“You have humans?” Madlin asked. “You never mentioned having humans.”

K’k’rt chuckled again. “It was a busy day. Besides, if I told you all at once, we would have nothing but silence for the rest of your time here. Yes, I have a few human workers. Refugees from Megrenn, they came with me because they did good work for me, and I let them live with my people instead of dying with their own.”

“So where are they? Can I meet them?”

“You hope too much, I think. Yes, you will meet them. You will meet everyone. But they aren’t going to speak your language. Maybe you can teach them, huh? Just don’t let me catch you not teaching how to build spark cannons.”

“Spark cannons?” Madlin echoed. A lopsided grin spread across her face. “I think I like the sound of that. So where are these humans of yours? You never answered me.”

“Where is everyone?” K’k’rt asked. “Oh, they are all working, that’s where.” He bustled around the workshop, checking on things and moving them around. What the routine was meant to accomplish was anyone’s guess.

Madlin looked around. Tables, forges, kiln, all corners of the workshop were empty save for Madlin and the tinker. “Oh, this isn’t where we’re going to be working?”

K’k’rt paused, like a gearworks with a rock jammed in between the teeth. Tilting his head to the side, he watched Madlin for a moment. “In here? Where would we possibly hide thirty-five thousand goblins?”

“What are you talking about?” Madlin asked. “We haven’t even started yet.”

“
They
have. You mentioned the basic facilities you would need. Construction began last night. I’ve lived with humans, so I can understand your confusion. We don’t—I don’t know if this translates well—sit around warming each other’s cheeks.”

“Huh?”

“You talk too much,” K’k’rt replied. He chuckled. “Listen to me babble like a human … Talking is fine, but doing is just as important. Come, we’ll get you a morning meal on our way. It’s easier just to show you.”

The morning meal came from a communal cafeteria, one of dozens scattered throughout the city, according to her host. Waterlogged puffed grains sounded unappealing, but they were sweetened with cane sugar and honey, topped with a sprinkling of cinnamon, and served warm. Madlin wolfed down three bowls meant to fill goblin stomachs before she became self-conscious of the stares she drew. She could have eaten three more, she guessed.

Trekking through the goblin city, Madlin attracted every eye to her. It was a small thing, but there seemed to be fewer of them than there had been the day before, and she asked K’k’rt about it.

“I think you still might not grasp what you’ve started here,” he replied. “You will see those same eyes from yesterday, and they will see you. But not here.”

She followed the tinker through town and out the southeastern gate. The guards there were armed with spears tipped with steel blades so thin and sharp they looked like they would shatter the moment they touched something. Madlin had a sudden vision of one breaking off inside her flesh after being stabbed and understood the danger.
Small creatures, so the lightweight blade makes it easier to handle. Vast numbers, so the loss of a weapon that takes out an enemy is a good trade.
She had always been the one outnumbered. She had always been the one pressed for manpower, for supplies.
Is this the mindset I’m going to have to take now?
Humans outnumbered kuduks in Korr, and if she had reinforcements from Tellurak, and maybe even Veydrus, how badly could her own forces outnumber the kuduks?

Madlin pondered as she followed the elderly tinker into the foothills. He was keeping up remarkably well, considering his apparent frailty and reliance on a walking stick. She began to suspect that he was not so infirm with age as he let on. He sped his pace subtly as they approached one rise, reaching the crest well ahead of Madlin.

“There is your answer,” he stated simply, pointing down to the unseen valley beyond.

Madlin reached the hilltop and stared, dumbstruck.
Thirty-five thousand, the dragon said.
They were all there. Madlin did not try to count them, of course, but the number was plausible. Down on the valley floor, goblins and oxen were constructing what looked like a small city. “What is all this?”

“You made mention of the facilities you would need,” K’k’rt said. “Forges, foundries for several metals, rune carvers and empowerers, glassworks, workshops for metalworking and woodworking, a test range, warehouses for raw materials, piecework, and finished weapons. I told them to add worker barracks and an office for you.”

“You …
you
did all this?”

“Are you daft? I’m thirty-eight. I don’t do real work anymore. I sketched out a map of the valley for your foremen before I went to bed last night. I laid out where I wanted everything.”

“But … the planning, the details …”

K’k’rt chuckled. “If my people were your size, we’d own this world.” He paused, raising a thoughtful finger to his chin. “Or perhaps we would grow lazy and busy-tongued, and spend all our energies fighting our own kind. Perhaps being smaller than the other peoples of Veydrus forces us to be smarter, to work harder.”

Madlin looked out over the sea of goblins. If the green of the Katamic were tinged with grey instead of blue, it would have looked like her new workforce.
So many of them … how am I even going to teach them?
“Are you going to be my translator?”

K’k’rt’s shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh. He turned to look back at the mountain. “Fr’n’ta’gur decrees is, and so it is. But I’ve rounded up three scholars who speak the stone folk tongue. They’re going to begin classes for the workforce. By season’s end, I hope a quarter—maybe a third—will have picked it up.”

“A quarter of your people can learn a new language in three months—I mean a season?” Madlin asked. K’k’rt just shrugged. “Can I ask you something?”

K’k’rt chuckled. “You’ve done little else,” he replied.

“I met Fr’n’ta’gur. I see how fast your people work, and everyone keeps telling me how smart you all are. How come you
haven’t
taken over Korr? That dragon of yours could wipe out cities. Surely you can figure out some way to protect him from anything that might hurt him.”

“What do you think we’re doing right this moment?” K’k’rt asked. He pointed to the valley floor. “Dragons are expansionists by nature, but they think in times we can’t conceive. A hundred winters, five hundred? Tell me, Madlin Errol, how many of your people plan fifty generations ahead? How many even plan two ahead? Fr’n’ta’gur is cautious, like all dragons. He had time we don’t. So what if he hasn’t moved his borders in my lifetime. What are thirty-eight winters to him? He waited for a strong play, and now you’ve given it to him. He gives the word, and my people—who are
his
people—act on it.”

“Still, it just seems like …”
your dragon is a coward.
Madlin thought better of finishing her thought aloud.

“You are new to this world. Anzik Fehr told me that the world you are from is poor in magic. Have you ever felt its touch?”

Madlin shrugged. “A few times. I’ve seen sorcerers fight. Anzik and a Kadrin warlock. It’s like a wind running through you.”

K’k’rt nodded slowly. “You felt its kiss, but never its bite. I felt magic once,
real
magic. I am a sorcerer myself of no small skill, and this power struck me like a hammer against my Source. I was across a city from it, but there was no doubt that the power of that force was greater than I wished to see from any closer.”

“How did you survive?”

K’k’rt rapped Madlin in the shin with his walking stick. “Follow along, human! It was a figure of speech. I was not struck by the magic; I only felt its presence.”

“Fine, you felt a strong magic. What’s that got to do with Fr’n’ta’gur and the other dragons not banding together and carving up the world for themselves?”

“The demons,” said K’k’rt, exaggerating his vowels for effect, Madlin guessed. If it was meant to sound scary, it was going to have to come from a more menacing creature, one not hammering at her language with a wrench. “A dragon is as strong a creature as the old gods made, but the demons made themselves even stronger, against the wishes of the gods. Certain human sorcerers are dangerous as well, but it is the demons above all others who the dragons fear.”

“Nothing personal, Kukaroot, but I think I’m heading back to my own world as soon as this is all done. Any place where something the size of Fr’n’ta’gur fears the inhabitants is someplace I might not want to stay on a long-term basis.”

K’k’rt turned to watch the workers in the valley below. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps what?” Madlin asked.

“Perhaps I, too, may not stay long.”

“Are they always like this?” Cadmus asked.

“Yes,” Anzik replied.

The two of them stood in the lunar headquarters, not looking at one another. Each had their eyes fixed on the viewframe where Madlin and K’k’rt watched the construction in the valley. Had the viewframe been inert—as it had been first thing in the morning—they would have found some other way not to look at one another.

“Could use workers like that.”

“You are.”

“Are you going to go on like that all day?” Jamile asked as she bounded into the room with a tray of pastries. “I thought I told both of you that you’re going to be civil while we’re cooped up together here. I’ve a mind to bring in a proper household staff.”

“Kaia quit after a day,” Cadmus pointed out. “Just too strange here. Most minds can’t adapt.”

Jamile landed beside Cadmus with the false grace that one sixth gravity can give a body. She offered him a choice of tarts or turnovers, all filled with strawberry. “Well, look what we’ve got here,” she said, pointing to Anzik with her free hand. “A spare warlock with nothing to do but start at a machine all day.”

“Sorcerer,” said Anzik, not turning to look at her.

Jamile rolled her eyes. “Fine, we’ve got a rusted sorcerer hanging his face all over the place and eating our food. Why not have him fix up gravity so it feels like back below? Hmm?”

“We asked Dan the same thing, and
he
couldn’t do anything about it,” Cadmus replied. “Why would I bother with this one? We’ve adapted just fine.”

“Yes, but Dan didn’t really try. I think he just didn’t want to—”

“Danilaesis Solaran is a buffoon,” Anzik said, a hint of venom slipping into his normally placid voice. “He is gifted with a powerful Source, a boon from the Kadrin selective breeding plans. He had the mind of an infant: spoiled, selfish, and temperamental. He knows nothing about magic save what his tutors have forced into his head, and the destructive spells he relishes wielding.” Anzik turned to Cadmus with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “He is a hammer for a world of screws.”

“That’s a Korrish saying,” Cadmus said, “Where’d you pick that up?”

“Unlike Danilaesis and his weakling twin, I absorb my surroundings and process them. Rynn chose me over him because I am the stable one, the reasonable one. Though I suspect she does not even realize it herself, she prefers a thinker to a blunt instrument. As much as she leads a rebellion, she would rather wall herself in behind a pile of books and never come out.”