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

Chapter 3

“A newspaper is ten percent bitter truth, with a thick candy coating of comforting lies.” –Ed. L.T Stratta of the Eversall Deep Herald, in a letter left to his son

The public house smelled of ale and fire-blackened beef, overpowering the smoke from the lamps that kept the dark of the deeps at bay. The walls were irregular, with slathered on plaster coating rough raw stone beneath. The jags and nooks cast strange shadows in the lamp light, but they seemed quaint rather than sinister. Raucous laughter broke out often over the constant murmur of jumbled voices. Stories passed over tables of friends packed so tightly together that lifting an elbow required the cooperation of a neighbor. The crowd at The Bearded Man was in a boisterous mood.

A thin lad, dressed in a brown coat with sleeves too short for his arms, squeezed his way among the tables with the skill of an aleman. A few called out to him from tables he passed, and he suffered good-natured grief for the jostling he caused along his path. Kupe was known. It was all anyone needed in The Bearded Man.

“How’s it, Kupe?” a man asked. He was black haired and sweaty, with a grin that was missing a tooth in front.

“Smellin’ sweet, Mull. Wrap your eyes around this,” said Kupe. He slapped a newspaper down onto the table. Everyone at the table stared at the picture of an aerodrome hangar with no airships.

“Nice one, kid. What’s it say?” Mull asked.

Kupe could read a bit but relied on what he had heard secondhand. “This here’s the Glenwood Gazetteer. ‘Bout a month old now, but lookie that there aerodrome. Heisted it good, it says. Knocks didn’t like it, so they hushed it up, but the papers got word out.”

“Davlin sent you to rub our noses in it?”

“Somethin’ like that,” said Kupe. He stuck a shoulder in between two older freemen and wedged himself into a spot on the bench across from Mull. “Wanted me to remind you about your bet.”

Mull shook his head. “Ain’t that easy.”

“You’re just rustin’ up cuz you ain’t never thought we’d get proof.”

“Proof?” Mull scoffed. He smacked the paper with the back of his hand. “A flashpop of some building in a sky, lotsa letters we can’t neither of us read. Go hammer screws.”

Kupe frowned at Mull but saw no slack in Mull’s sweat-glistened face. He was still sober, without enough ale in him to make him either belligerent or gullible. There was no trick of wordplay Kupe knew to push or pull Mull where Kupe needed him to go. “Charsi!” Kupe shouted. He half stood from his seat and craned his neck to scan the crowd. “Charsi, come here a minute.”

A head popped up, turning this way and that to see where the call had come from. Charsi was young, with the milk-white complexion that certain among the deep dwellers developed from a lack of sun. Her eyes were the color of the sky, the closest that most of the regulars at The Bearded Man got to seeing real blue; they browsed the patrons with a practiced glance. Kupe held up an arm, and she nodded in his direction and stood. With a gentle slap on the shoulder or a murmured word, patrons squirmed and leaned to clear a path for the girl. After all, she owned the pub.

Sidling up to Kupe, she slid an arm around his shoulder and kissed him atop the head. “Welcome home, Kupe.”

“Thanks.” Kupe blushed but otherwise kept coy. He gestured to the newspaper on the table. “Mind readin’ this for us simple folk?”

Charsi frowned down at him. “You know your letters.”

“Not in front of everyone,” he whispered from the side of his mouth. “I ain’t got an hour to read it to ‘em.”

Charsi rolled her eyes but picked up the paper anyway. “ ‘Rebels attack aerodrome,’ says the headline. ‘A brazen, daring heist resulted in the loss of eight single-seat liftwings, a twenty-crew battle liftwing, and a vacu-dirge.’ Wow, that’s something now, ain’t it? ‘Official reports are mum on casualties, but witnesses who spoke to Gazetteer reporters on condition of a-no-nym-it-y’—bloody kuduks and their fifty-tenar words—‘claim that at least thirty soldiers from the garrison were killed, and the crew of the battle liftwing lost.’”

“Oil and fire,” Mull muttered.

“Believe me now?” Kupe asked. “Thanks, Charsi.”

“You can thank me proper over a drink after closing,” Charsi replied. She put him in a headlock and squeezed affectionately. “Been worried nights over you. Davlin put you up to that trip?”

“Wasn’t a put-up job. I volunteered. Ain’t like it was real danger, just a bit of freeman travel. I had tickets whole way out and back. Real proper.”

“Thinkin’ the knocks wouldn’t like seein’ that paper you brought back with you.”

“That they wouldn’t,” said Mull. “They’d have sniffed trouble, and they’d have been right to.”

“He’s right, Kupe. Davlin’s a trouble-brewer,” said Charsi “Couldn’t make a machine does it better than him.”

“Come down to the church with me tonight. I’m sure he can change your minds, both of you.”

“You know how to sweet-talk a girl,” Charsi replied dryly. “You know I can’t be leaving this place to run itself. I trust my folk with the till, but they’ll run this place right off the tracks if I’m not around.”

Kupe put an arm around Charsi’s waist and pulled her around to face him. With so many eyes around, he played at being a proper gentleman and kept his own eyes high, though she was a full head higher than him while he sat. He slipped a finger under the string of a necklace she kept concealed and tugged it free for all to see. It was little more than twine with a plain copper ring as its only adornment. It was an old tradition, but it was a mourning keepsake for the kin of freemen lost to slavery. “Davlin makes the kind of trouble that’ll get your pa free one day. Ain’t that worth a night off to go listen to him?”

“Davlin’s gone off his nutter, boy. Gunk he’s spewin’ ain’t even proper for a priest to be thinkin’.”

Charsi ignore the comment. “All right, Kupe. Just for a little while.”

No church of Eziel was kept in grand style. Cuminol Deep’s was converted from a failed mine that had been rerouted down other tunnels, leaving several short shafts abandoned. Human slaves had carved the tunnels, and the priests had left the bare, ugly work of their downtrodden flock unchanged after the miners moved on. To them, it symbolized the struggles that so many humans faced. It also saved a good deal of coin on hiring masons.

The guards at the door had let Kupe pass with merely a nod. He was known. He was also a friend of Davlin. Mull and Charsi met no resistance either, for Mull was a thunderail coalman and well respected among the deepers of Cuminol, and Charsi was known to every man with a taste for ale. It was a church guard’s duty to know what faces belonged to the devout, to the loyal, and to the shaver. Some just made their work easier than others.

Inside, the tunnels buzzed with conversation as worshipers filed in to find seats. The main tunnel crossing stood as the hub of the church, with a low dais meant not to elevate the priest at sermon, but to allow his voice to carry over the rows of eager ears. Kupe led Mull and Charsi past the altar and dais, giving a nod to Davlin as he stood watching over the incoming flock. They picked their way through the crowd and found seats down one of the side tunnels. The benches were plain steel, shin high, and kept well-scrubbed and free of rust by the initiates.

“I had no idea so many folk came to sermons,” Charsi whispered as she settled herself to Kupe’s right.

Kupe lifted his palms. “Well, here they are. Not everyone makes it down to the pub, and most of the ones that do ain’t regulars here. You get the gossip and the gripes. No offense, but you’re the drain where folk dump the slop from their souls. This is where you get filled back up with hope.”

Mull grunted, eavesdropping from the far side of Kupe. “Liked him better when he stuck to takin’ alms and buyin’ bread with it.”

Kupe shushed him and pointed toward the dais.

The crowd quieted as Pious Davlin took his place in view of all. He wore plain spun robes dyed brown and with a hand-make look to them. Conversations died away and all eyes turned in his direction. Davlin was no imposing figure, bald atop and greying at the temples, stoop-shouldered with his eyes cast down. He wore a beard—as any good human grew—close-cropped and flecked with grey.

“I see more faces than last week,” Davlin said, his voice echoing down the silent tunnels. His face spread in a smile. “You’re spreading the word. Good. Hope is still the strongest weapon we have. But hope alone will not be enough. Soon, we will need the sort of weapons that spill blood.” There was a low murmur from the crowd. Davlin raised his voice. “This day is long in coming. We have waited under foot and boot, bent with the weight of our enemies bearing down upon us. Our people are rising. We have found the strength and are beginning to stand up, not to squirm from under those boots but to throw them from us.

“Look to your left and to your right. Those are your brothers and sisters. We are all kin. We will stand together, united against our common foe. Cuminol must also look to its north and south, to its east and west, above ground and below. In every city, there are more of our kind, freemen and slaves alike. They are our brothers and sisters also. They are our kin. Their fight is our fight, and they have already begun to fight back. In Ruttania and Grangia, the forces of freedom have begun to take back what was stolen so, so long ago.”

There was a rumbling in the crowd in the silence that followed. Davlin let it percolate for a minute and more before he continued. “I hear the questions you ask among yourselves. What was taken? How do we fight back? I am not a soldier, what can I do? I will tell you ...”

Davlin delved into history then, speaking from the old texts, long kept hidden by the priests and priestesses of Eziel. He told the stories of the great wars with demons and dragons, fey creatures and followers of black-hearted gods. At length he told of the struggles against the daruu, the last remaining threat to mankind after all the other wars had been won. The rise of the kuduks was a great surprise to many. Kupe smirked as he picked from the crowd those who were attending their first sermon since Davlin had dredged up the old texts and read from them again. To think of a kuduk as nothing more than the bastard children of humans and daruu cast them in a wholly new light. They seemed less the superior people and more the ungrateful children of the elder races. Lastly, Davlin spoke of the great war, of the defeat of mankind and the supplanting of the daruu.

“It is time to remember old ways. We have grown numerous and strong. Under the light of Eziel’s gentle teachings, we have persevered when we might have been forgiven a loss of faith. We have bottled our anger instead of letting it drip and leak from us in pointless small revolts. It is time to remember the Eziel that strode beside us into battle, the one whose teachings are sharp enough to draw blood. Join hands and speak the invocation with me:

“Lord Eziel, grant us vengeance upon our enemies. Let us share our strength as comrades and become fearsome to our foes. I am your servant, teach me to kill in your name.”

The congregation murmured along, many silent because they did not know the words. Davlin repeated them, and a few new voices joined in. The chorus grew louder the third time as the words sank in, and the newcomers began to absorb them. Kupe felt his heart pump. To his left, Mull clung to his hand with a man-shy timidity, still seeming self-conscious. To his right, Charsi’s hand was slick with sweat, trying to squeeze the blood from his fingers. By the time Davlin repeated the invocation a fifth time, the tunnels thundered with the voices of the worshipers, new and old alike.

“Here we cleanse our hearts and gird our souls for battle. Outside these walls, let none know our heart or purpose. The time draws near. You will each be given your part to play. Go in peace and brotherhood.”

A heady crowd rose unsteadily and began sorting themselves out the doors of the church. Kupe had heard the invocation enough times that he kept it in his heart, not to be carried off each time he heard Davlin speak it anew. He helped Charsi to her feet and waited for Mull to collect himself.

“I had no idea,” said Charsi. She clung to Kupe’s arm as if she’d imbibed too much from her own wares.

“It gets in you, that’s for sure,” Kupe said, helping her pick her way among the benches. “We can talk more later when it’s quiet.”

“But I’ve got so many questions.”

Kupe nodded. He caught her eyes with his own and held them briefly, men and women pushing past the pair as they stood idle in the flow of foot traffic. There was a fervency there, a hope blossoming like a color-petal plant from the skies. He could hardly wait to see her again later. But business pressed. “I’ll see you to the door, but Mull and I have some things to discuss with Pious Davlin.”