Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles) (22 page)

Juliana watched the scene with bemused wonder. She had seen plenty of magic in her day—magics that were far more powerful. She had worked her share as well, though perhaps not quite so grand. There was still something wondrous and charming about a tropical island opening in the midst of the cold, grim factory in the forsaken northlands, even if it was just a forlorn bit of rock poking above sea level.

Check out the Source on that one
, Brannis’s voice whispered in her mind.

She envied him his mastery of aether-vision. He could see both aether and light at once. Juliana had to choose. She let the world of light slip from her vision and looked into the aether. The boy gawking at the archway stood out like a bonfire at a torch procession.

A hand clasped Juliana’s own, and an arm brushed against hers. It was Brannis’s way of letting her know he was by her side without revealing himself in the light. She squeezed the hand and thought back,
forget the boy a moment, what’s the machine doing
?

Winds if I know. Somehow I think it’s taking lightning and creating its own aether.

How is that possible? Aether comes from a Source; you can’t make it.

The invisible hand slipped from her own. She saw a wobbling wake in the aether where Brannis passed near the machine, disrupting the swirling fog. Had she not known he was there, she might never have noticed his passing.

Perhaps lightning is close enough to alive that it has a Source of its own? It’s normally so brief, you could hardly take note of it. It could be worth the study sometime when
—

Brannis!
Juliana shouted into his mind.
Look!

Two shimmering outlines in the aether slipped through the gate. Both were man-sized, but too indistinct to tell much else about them.

Well, well
, Brannis thought to her.
An old friend has brought his son on holiday. Strange place for it, up here in the land that sunlight and warmth forgot. Must be a chore for a pirate to find places he hasn’t been.

Who do you ... Is that Zayne?

Two Zaynes, if I don’t miss my guess. The younger one is disguising them both, even in the aether.

Juliana’s mind clogged.
What do we do with them?

Nothing
, Brannis replied.
This is actually an excellent opportunity to do a lot of it.

World would be a better place without his sort
, Juliana argued.
What’s the point of rules if you can’t make exceptions when a need shows itself?

World would be better without typhoons and plagues, without slavers, without tax men, without petty coin-pickers. It would be better without our kind, too, if we can’t keep our noses free of every stray quarrel we stumble onto.

You’re not going to become bleeding Tallax just because you swat down a hornet at someone’s neck.

There. Right there. Do you hear yourself? You just compared the great Captain Denrik Zayne, Scourge of the Katamic, to an insect. I don’t know how Tallax thought, but that sounded like Rashan’s words spilling from your mouth.

My brain.

Whatever.

No, not ‘whatever.’ You’re staring out the wrong end of a spyglass
, Juliana thought.
Think of it as pruning. You’re not tying up braches to a little frame and forcing them to grow to fit your whim. You’re just clipping away malignant growths; maybe rotted leaves, infested with weevils.

You did it again. Insect comparison.

You’re sleeping on the floor tonight.

Like an insect?
Brannis asked. Through the mental link, she could feel the snicker in his words.
Besides, we haven’t pretended to sleep in years.

Figure of speech, and you know it.

Thanks to efficiencies of mental communication, the exchange passed in seconds. Zayne and his little Zayne had barely passed the gate. The lad with the bonfire Source still stood gaping in the middle of the archway. Juliana was tempted to join him, curious herself what it must look like.

The gateway began to waver. The lightning converters on one side were flickering, sputtering out their aether like a cough, instead of a smooth breeze like the others.

I think the machine might be about to fail
.

No fault of its own
, Brannis replied.
Zayne’s boy is tampering with it.

Speaking of boys, what happens if the gate closes with that dumb one with the Source standing in the middle of it.

Cut in half or pushed to one side or the other. I have no way of knowing what safeguards are in place. You know, he has a familiar look to him. Winds, I wish I had a memory for faces half as good the one I—

Brannis! It’s collapsing!
Juliana didn’t wait for any response, but leapt for the gate and grabbed the wonderstuck boy as he spun about, looking up at the borderland of the gate. He did not weigh much, but then neither did Juliana. She grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward with a strength that belied her size. The machine sputtered and the gate dispersed, leaving nothing but crisscrossing copper wires in its place.

The boy looked around, bewildered.

“Bloody skulls!” someone shouted.

“The blazes happened? The dynamo’s plenty sparked up.” “Everyone all right?” “Dog dung it, we left a few back there.” “Cut the switch and try it again.”

The voices jumbled together, and Juliana let her vision drift back into the light, now that the aether was no longer enlivened by the spectacle of the Mad Tinker’s machine. The workshop was fuller than it had been before the machine’s activation, buzzing with a dozen conversations and the slop-chow slog of a famished crew gorging themselves after days of deprivation.

I think I saw Tanner.
Juliana thought.

Haven’t heard that name in a while. Where is he?

On that floating pebble those sailors were stranded on. I caught a glimpse of him when I grabbed the boy. At least, I think it was him.
She heard a scratching sound. Brannis always bothered at his scraggly excuse for a beard when pondering.

I can go check, if you’d like. You stay here and keep an eye on those two Zaynes.

But I can’t see them!

You’re always looking for something fun. Consider it a challenge.

There was quick snap in the aether—a feeling not a sound—akin to the sudden slamming of a drawer. The mental connection broke, and she knew that Brannis was gone.

“What the bloody blades was that?” Dan asked as he sidled up beside Madlin at the buffet. “That thing got the death rattles?”

Madlin swallowed a swig of ale. “Just a little hitch. Oughtta get it sorted soon enough, then I’ll get some proper runes on it and he won’t need that ludicrous flywheel juried to it.” She ripped another bite from her turkey leg.

“There’s an amusing picture: you drawing proper runes. Hey, what’s good here anyway?” Dan waved a finger around at the rapidly vanishing buffet fare. “Besides, that’s not what I meant. It gave a shudder in the aether even after it went dark.”

“Couldn’t say. Dunno how it works.” Madlin set her tankard down and took a huge bite from a warm roll.

“And you plan on runing it? Pardon me while I take my food a mile or two underground and wait until the explosion passes.”

“S’not gon bwow up,” she insisted. “Juff neeb mo’ fpaak.”

Dan shook his head. “And I thought Tanner had barbarous manners. The rutting ox piss did you just say?” He grabbed a turkey leg of his own, sniffed at it, and took a bite.

“I said it runs on spark, it just needs more of it.”

“This that tamed lightning you were telling me all about?” Dan asked. Madlin nodded as she drank. “Let me have a go at the runes then. I can take that whole twisted wreck of metal out of your way and provide lightning directly from aether.”

Madlin shook her head. “I don’t see my father letting anyone but me work on it. He’s not even happy about that.”

“Then don’t tell him.”

A few of the nearby crewmen from the
Darksmith
gave Dan sideways looks as they pillaged the buffet, but none dared say anything.

“Piss off,” Madlin replied. “You want to work on something here, you run it by the Mad Tinker. He owns everything for ten miles in any direction, including the town. I only get leeway cuz I’m right more often than him.”

Dan looked over to where Cadmus Errol sprawled on the floor with his head inside the control panel for the machine. A gaggle of mechanics and curious bystanders loomed over him, trying to see what he was up to or offering marginally helpful advice. Without another word to Madlin, Dan set off, turkey leg in hand, to see the Mad Tinker.

“Wait,” Madlin said, fumbling with full hands to grab for Dan’s arm. He shrugged aside her clumsy attempt to impede him.

“Hey!” Dan hollered over the ambient talk in the workshop. Many heads turned, but Cadmus showed no sign that he had heard. “You Cadmus Error? Because this clumsy contraption just stranded a friend of mine back on that desolate rock.”

The room grew quiet. Conversations broke off, and hungry mouths chewed more softly, though no one stopped eating for the first time in days because of a bit of a row brewing. And a row was what everyone expected. Madlin wasn’t sure quite what to do. It was too late to call Dan back, and her father had plenty of experience bludgeoning smart-mouths with his tongue. She kept a hand near her revolver and waited.

Cadmus took his time climbing out from under the machine. When he stood, he adjusted his spectacles and looked Dan up and down. “This the wizard you brought me?” he asked past Dan.

Madlin nodded.

“I’m a warlock,” Dan replied, crossing his arms. “I don’t know how this thing works, but Madlin says it needs lightning to run. I can do better than that eight-legged horse of a contraption over there.”

“We’ve discussed using the daruu arts to power the dynamo,” said Cadmus, wiping his hands on a rag tucked into his belt. “Madlin’s first job once she’s regained herself will be to make the modifications.”

“Piss on that,” Dan spat back. “Tanner might be a sword-brained lout, but he’s
my
sword-brained lout. I’m not going to sit around watching Madlin play clay-block runes like a first-year while he sits there going hungry.”

Cadmus rubbed a hand over his mouth and nodded to himself. “Fine. We’ll spin the flywheel up again and see if we can reactivate. I can’t see anything wrong in the workings. Should be up to speed by morning.” Cadmus waved to draw the attention of the workers stationed near the dynamo. “Switch clutches; get it back on the main shaft.”

Dan wandered over and watched the process. “These levers connect it back and forth?” he asked across the workshop.

Madlin drifted over and intercepted the question. “Yeah. There’s enough friction in the clutch plate to keep them from slipping.” As she explained it, the flywheel began to creak and turned at a barely perceptible rate.

“Why not just nail them together?”

“This lets us switch from one to the other. The waterwheel outside gets the flywheel up to speed, then we jam it up to the dynamo and spin it fast enough to make the spark we need.”

“So if you want spark, you just need this big bloody wheel spinning fast enough?”

Madlin nodded.

“Gut me if I’m going to wait for a waterfall to move a thing this size. Stand aside.”

“Dan, don’t—”

Dan flicked a hand and the lever disengaged the clutch from the waterfall shaft. Madlin still hadn’t gotten used to seeing things move with no direct agency at work. There was a tingling in the air, a strange feeling of a breeze in a room tucked well indoors. The flywheel turned.

It wasn’t the eking inches that the waterwheel had managed; the outer rim was already at a walking pace. Then a jog. Then a sprint. In moments, the floor shook like a weak, but endless earthquake as the flywheel became a thirty-ton tornado of brass and iron.

“Stop!” Madlin shouted. She could barely hear her own voice over the roaring drone of the spokes plowing through the air at cannonball speed. “That’s plenty fast!”

Dan turned to gift her with a smug grin and shrugged. “Go ahead.” Dan’s voice carried through the workshop as if he spoke through a megaphone. “Try it now.”