World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (5 page)

Rynn’s arms did nothing to cushion her impact as far as she noticed. She blacked out as she hit the plaza’s edge, just a few feet from empty air. What could only have been seconds later, she blinked her eyes open, feeling the blood gushing from her broken nose.

The crashball wobbled along and plummeted over the side.

Madlin cringed and held her hands to her nose.

“What’s wrong? Rock catch you?” Cadmus shouted over the grating of the auger and its steam engine. The auger’s bit reached through the open world-hole and into the guts of Korr’s moon. It dumped moon gravel into a chute that ran down into a newly cut hole in the bottom of the
Jennai
, dumping the extramundial stone debris into the Sea of Kerum in a fine shower.

“No,” Madlin replied. She was standing by the head of the auger, but she was wearing goggles and helmet, and none of the large fragments were being ejected in her direction. “Rynn’s a clumsy idiot is all.” She checked a counter on the side of the auger, the numbered dials each turning slower than the one to its right. “Stop there! Three hundred twenty-five feet, two inches. You went over a bit.”

“We’ll deal with the variance,” said Cadmus. Madlin was possibly the only one alive who could pick the sarcasm out of his assurance. They were within a twentieth of a percent of their target length for the pass. The auger kept running, but the noise cut down sharply as Cadmus pulled the world-ripped back the way it came. The auger scraped the edges of the hole it had cut, but was otherwise spinning idly.

Madlin clutched at her elbow as she watched the numbers reverse, counting back toward the zero mark where they’d begun the tunnel. She tried to hold up the sketched plans for the lunar hideaway, but sharp pains in her arm kept her from bending it properly. Sharp
imaginary
pains, she knew, but they were troubling her no less for it.

“She hurt badly?”

Madlin gritted her teeth. “Still has all the parts she had this morning.” She could feel the eyes on her, though Madlin and Cadmus were alone in the world-ripper room. Guards had been posted to keep work on the lunar expansion under wraps. Its actual location was to be a secret shared only by the two of them. The actual eyes were on Rynn. Curious, gawking eyes, too scared of doing wrong to do anything of use for her. They were all just waiting for Jamile or Sosha to show up and do the work for them.

Rynn stumbled into her room in a daze and slammed the door behind her. She’d ordered her way free of Sosha’s ministrations as soon as she’d wrung out an admission that she was in no more immediate danger. The loss of blood had made her lightheaded along with the blow to the head itself. She had a welt where the side of her forehead had struck, and a bandage wrapped tightly around her face, packing her nose with gauze to set the break. Her left arm was splinted and swollen; Sosha said she’d have to wait for the swelling to subside but was fairly certain it was broken. Numerous scrapes and friction burns stung from antiseptics. Bloody Eziel, even her chest hurt from the impact of the rusted crashball.

It seemed the only part of her that came through unscathed were her legs. Armored in the tinker’s legs, she hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch or bruise on them. So all in all, a successful field test followed by an unforeseen disaster attributable to user error, not design.

“Bet you wish you knew a shielding spell about now, huh?” Dan asked.

Rynn flinched and snapped her head to see what Dan was doing in her quarters. Mistake. Rynn squeezed her eyes shut against the dizziness and waves of pain from moving her head too fast.

“Wud you want?” she demanded, her voice muddy by the bandage over her nose.

“Some trick with those legs. I saw the whole thing from up here.”

“How long you been up here?”

“I watched that little festival in the plaza,” Dan said with a shudder. “Nice cult you’ve got there. Not my style, worshiping dead gods.”

“Wud you know ‘bout gods?” Rynn was too weary to throw Dan out or yell for guards—what little good those might do—so she sat herself down on the bed and hoped to get the conversation over with.

“I probably believe in Eziel more than you do,” said Dan, “but the gods are long gone. I mean, thousands of winters gone. Whatever gets you rebels off your arses and fighting again though, right? But that’s not why I’m here. I want to know when you’re sending me back to Tellurak.”

“You sure you dun wanna fight for us here?” Rynn asked. “You’re good at it.”

“I’m more of a war god  than Eziel is these days, but that’s not the point. The food here is dog shit, most of your people don’t speak a civilized language, and this airship was interesting for about a day and a half. This isn’t a warship or even a vessel anymore. It’s a backwater garrison stationed in the middle of nowhere.”

“I thought you liked the idea of having airships.” Rynn tried to pinch the bridge of her nose to alleviate her headache, but the bandage was too much in the way.

“Yeah, sure. Real ones though, not this spit-pasted monstrosity. So when can you get me back to Tellurak? I need to find out what became of Tanner. For his own good, and for my peace of mind.”

Rynn sighed. Just talking was exhausting her. “Couple days. Promise.”

Dan stared at her. She couldn’t tell whether he was trying to formulate an argument or trying to decide whether she was lying. “Fine. You should get some rest though. You look like shit someone stepped in. Maybe you should consider a full armor suit.”

Chapter 5

“I left the Academy early not because I had nothing left to learn, but because that had nothing left to teach me.” –Rashan Solaran

The cramped, stone-walled classroom smelled of old paper and chalk. Glass-paned windows stood guard against the entrance of fresh spring air and the scents of grasses and flowers. Summer crept up slowly on Kadris, seat of the Kadrin Empire, at the southernmost extent of the civilized world. Danilaesis Solaran was never one for frolicking in the gardens or roughhousing in the grass with the other boys, but a discontent brewed in him at being cooped up on so fine a day.

At the front of the classroom, Wenovin droned on about stars, sketching the night sky in white chalk on the black slate hanging from the wall. For the major stars, he listed the name in both Kadrin and Arcane, and explained the etymology of each. Each had a story, a lore, a history, a use in navigation or in reading omens. It was rubbish, every bit of it. Madlin had undone the class with one simple revelation from the astronomers of Korr.

“The sun is a star, the closest by unimaginable margins. The other stars are just like it, but seen from afar.”

The Korrish knew better. They had better telescopes, better methods, better thinkers, quite frankly. It was so painfully obvious when he saw the work that went into their machines. Magic had made Veydrans lazy, Kadrins in particular. If they could see the stars well enough to steer a ship, that was all that mattered—and few enough Kadrins were sailors, with their sprawling empire webbed with roads.

Crack!

Wenovin’s wooden pointer slammed against Danilaesis’s desk, startling him from his mind’s idle wandering. “I asked the name of the topmost star in Tansha’s Tear,” said Wenovin. “Would you be so kind as to tell us?” There was a tittering from behind Danilaesis, Cara and Inivise as always. They were peasant-bred and whip-smart, but neither was sorceress enough for him to pay them any mind outside of the classroom. Inside it, they tormented him with their inanities.

Dan rubbed a hand across his face, trying to force the sleep from his eyes. “Piss off,” he muttered.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Wenovin demanded. He towered over Danilaesis, something the sorcerer could only manage because he was the one standing. It was intended to be intimidating, but Danilaesis found him wearying instead.

Danilaesis considered the question a moment. It was a direct translation from Acardian, so any meaning ought to have come along with it, but he could not formulate a proper definition, now that he thought about it. At length, he shrugged.

“A sixth year ought to know to be more judicious with his words. Schoolboy taunts are a nasty habit for a boy who considers himself fit to be warlock.”

Danilaesis had been staring off at the walls as he thought and had not turned when speaking to his instructor. He raised a dead-eyed glare to Wenovin and watched the Fourth Circle sorcerer stiffen. “Considers?” he asked. “Are you lecturing on star names or spoiling for a draw, Wenovin?”

“That’s Sorcerer Wenovin, Danil—”

“Warlock Danilaesis. If you’re going to pull formal ranks here, let’s have it. My grandfather can spew on until he turns grey again that I’m not, but I
am
a warlock. Go back to your droning and leave me in peace.”

Wenovin slunk over to the blackboard with his head hung but a hard set in his eyes. Axterion would hear of their exchange, Danilaesis knew. Wenovin was too much a coward to confront him, and too weak a sorcerer to take up the challenge of a draw. Until Axterion’s rejuvenation, everyone had been too weak to oppose him openly.

Danilaesis looked down at the idle scratchings his quill had traced during his mind’s wanderings. Numbers, equations, and simplistic diagrams were scrawled haphazardly all across it, with nary a word reflecting Wenovin’s lecture. It was a combination of algebraic gymnastics that were just on the cusp of his understanding and formulae that he had seen in Korr and nowhere else. The latter were memorized and copied, but he had no means of puzzling out their meaning. Mathematics was tedious, his least favorite of subjects after etiquette and genealogy. The thought that he would need to plumb such depths of it as Veydrus might never have seen was something he dreaded.

But the world-rippers were powered by mathematics. If he was to master their secrets, he needed to know how to operate one on his own. He needed to find a way to learn just enough to get one working, but the only sure way he could think of was to consult with Rynn, Madlin, or Cadmus. They were the only ones he had access to in Korr who didn’t seem completely dim, but none of them would be inclined. Madlin and Rynn would want magic in exchange, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to trade that yet. Cadmus would as soon teach kuduks how to use the world-ripper as him. For all the help he had been, the Mad Tinker was skittish around him. Magic was daruu to him, which Danilaesis found vaguely insulting since the daruu had Sources like rocks and the sorcerous ability to match. Rune carvers they might be, and brilliant ones, but they were nothing like Kadrin sorcerers.

The lecture continued on around him. In front of him, Wenovin babbled, and his chalk tapped and scratched on the blackboard. Behind him, whispers of gossip passed among his peers—at least in age. There was no quiet in which to lose himself, but Danilaesis shut out the noise and lost himself in his own mind.
Considers himself a warlock
, he scoffed mentally. He let the classroom become a battlefield, his ponderings his only opponent. The rest faded from his hearing. With a clear head, he considered how he might take advantage of his hosts in Korr while he was marooned there.

Maybe I don’t need to know how it operates. Just how the dials aim it.
He would need a plan, but he was in no real rush. Getting one of the machines for his own use was important, crucial even, but it was not urgent.

It was not until he was jostled by one of his classmates pushing past him that Danilaesis realized that the lecture had ended. He blinked a few times to bring himself back to the world around him. He was going to be one of the last to leave, it seemed. With a glance to the nonsense that covered his note paper, he leaked a bit of aether into it and set it aflame. Taking it between thumb and forefinger, he lifted it from the desk before that caught fire as well, and watched it disappear into ash in a matter of seconds.

“Showoff.”

It was whispered, but Danilaesis caught the word in his ear. He failed to recognize the voice, but he had his guesses. Cara and Inivise were huddled close as they walked, heads nearly touching. Nothing witty came to mind that would refute the comment without making him sound like a braying mule, but there were other ideas that crept into Danilaesis’s head. He kept his place as he watched the two peasant sorceresses depart, taking his measure of them as he did every stray chance he had to glance at them unawares. Lowborn and poor, a few summers of Academy life had flowered them into proper young women, worth the time to linger after and watch. Close as cousins they were, too. He wondered if he could split them by taking an interest in just one.

Danilaesis saved the idea for later; he was busy with too many roiling thoughts in his mind to add another just then. Still, as he walked to history class, he could not help wondering which of them he would choose if he did.

“Warlock Danilaesis!” the voice called out from down the hall. It was evening, and Danilaesis’s day of lectures was at an end. He had studying to do, but it would be his own research and nothing he had been assigned. Mind-sore, groggy, and stiff from long hours sitting in hard seats, he was hardly in the mood for anyone shouting his name. Those sorts of messengers usually meant someone wanted him to go somewhere—usually Empress Celia or his grandfather.

“What is it?” he asked, not concealing his weariness.

“A letter has just arrived for you, warlock,” the messenger said as he approached. It was petty, Danilaesis knew, but he was placated by the use of his proper title. The messenger knew how to lick a boot or two to get his job done. Danilaesis took the sealed envelope and turned it over in his hands. It was plain paper, the seal pressed into the wax was just the tip of a sword. That alone was enough to tell him who it was from, even if he hadn’t been secretly hoping for such a missive.

The messenger stood at military attention as Danilaesis looked the letter over, not willing to open it in public. It seemed odd that the man would wait since he had not announced the sender and thus could not be waiting to take a reply. Letters were an entirely different matter from spoken messages. A single, amused sniff escaped Danilaesis as he realized the man expected a coin for his efforts. He didn’t carry coin since no one ever asked him to pay for anything. It was one of the many small privileges of being a warlock from a wealthy family.

Danilaesis ignored the messenger and walked away. Once he was safely ensconced in his room with the door locked and the wards armed, he broke the seal and read:

Dan,

Not sure how long this letter will take in getting to you. Sorry for any worries in the meantime. I didn’t trust the Errol girl to make good on getting me off that rock, so I made my own arrangements. Stalyart took me in, and I’m safe and sober (fig. of speech, of course) on his ship
Merciful
. If you want to meet up, I’m sure you can find a way to contact him or me.

-T

It was written in Acardian, a simple precaution for which Danilaesis was grateful. The annoyance was that he did
not
have a way at hand to contact Tanner. Magic was not the cure-all that Tanner suspected it was, at least not in Danilaesis’s hands, nor Dan’s. Rashan might have known how to find a lone man somewhere out at sea with his magic, or perhaps any number of other sorcerers long dead. The Errols’ machine could make short work of a search as well, he supposed. Dan shook his head.

Patience
. Tanner was fine, which was a greater ease on his mind than he would have expected. He felt no great love for the sword-wielding lout, but Tanner had been a companion for long enough that Dan was used to his presence. With no immediate danger, there was little reason to rush to a rescue Tanner didn’t need.

Dan held the note flat in his palm and set it aflame. He watched it burn, his shielding spell flickering as it kept the heat from scorching the skin of his hand.
Problems are so much simpler when they can be burned away.

That evening, Danilaesis strode the halls of the palace, past guards who stiffened at his approach. He was neither invited nor barred from the royal chambers; the guard captain had long since abandoned hope of corralling him under the rules that governed everyone else when they visited the imperial palace. Though he wore his warlock’s garb, all trimmed in black, he felt like an impostor without Sleeping Dragon sheathed on his back.

Blast you, grandfather. You had no right to take it.

The sword hung at waist level in mid-air, in the front courtyard of the palace. Danilaesis had to pass by it every time he visited. Twice he had tried to snatch it from the air, but both times the aether construct Axterion had placed around it stopped him from so much as touching it, resisting him with greater and greater force the closer his hand came to the hilt. On the second attempt, he caught palace servants stopping to stare at his efforts, snickering behind their hands at him. It took an act of will to ignore the sword each time he passed by it, but Danilaesis despised being mocked.

He knocked on the door of Empress Celia’s private chambers. The ornate doors were meant to be impressive, but Danilaesis had never cared for them. The gold leafing and red lacquer seemed gaudy. His family’s estate was not quite so richly appointed, but it was done with better taste, in black and silver. The Solaran Estate runed theirs better as well.