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  For the most part, ignoring them had been easy. While the shifts changed, she seemed to get the same pairings each day, and the novelty had worn off for everyone involved. Of the current pair, the heavier of the two always brought a book, and spent most of his time reading. The other was a woman who dragged over a stool and perched to watch Madlin’s work like she was a Kheshi street artist.

  Madlin whiled away the hours, refining her design iteration by iteration. She lit the discarded pages aflame, using Dan’s trick of heating objects with aether. It was good practice, as well as cathartic. Getting something hot enough to light on fire took effort, but it only took a tiny corner to catch for the fire to spread across a whole page. For all the guarding they were supposedly doing, none of her guards seemed to think anything of the burning. A lit paper drew less interest than a sneeze, an event which had her guards diving for cover, and had gotten her shocked more than once.

  With a satisfactory design in hand, she had a new dilemma: how to get the drawings to Rynn. While her twin could remember doing everything as if she had done it herself, there were measurements and calculations scrawled across the vellum that she would never remember fully. Reproducing it seemed like a waste of Rynn’s time. She turned to her guards for help.

  “Kookaroot?” she asked.

  The goblins looked at one another. One spoke, the other shrugged.

  Madlin seethed a breath through clenched teeth and tried again. “K’k’rt.”

  A brief conversation ensued. The book-reading guard knocked at the door and spoke through it. When it opened, he said something to one of the priests stationed outside. Madlin strained her ears to pick apart the chaotic language, and thought she heard K’k’rt’s name repeated. Madlin checked her pocketclock. It was still set to Lunar Standard Time, the joking demarcation that Cadmus had chosen for their timekeeping, but it was accurate to the second.

  Two hours, thirty seven minutes, and eleven seconds later, the goblin tinker was shown in to see her. “What took you so long?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  K’k’rt chuckled. “You know what trouble you cause with these little requests of yours?”

  Madlin shrugged.

  “I’ve been escorted here by five of Fr’n’ta’gur’s personal guard, told that you urgently need my assistance. No one else would do,” K’k’rt said. He shooed the female guard off her stool and took her place. “What did you tell them?”

  “Sorry, but they don’t speak Korrish. I just said your name.”

  “You just said my name, and they went to all that trouble to bring me?”

  “Well,” Madlin admitted, “I did have to repeat myself so they could understand me.”

  K’k’rt squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his temples. “She repeated herself, she says. Sorry, she says. They must have understood you the first time, because by repeating yourself, you made it clear that you would do nothing until I came to see you.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes,” said K’k’rt, “You did. You as much as told them you wanted nothing but me. Otherwise, you would have said something other than just repeating my name.”

  “But I don’t know more than five words of your language, plus whatever I accidentally say coughing.”

  “Well, those sticks have burned,” K’k’rt said with a resigned sigh. “What do you need me for?”

  “I need you to deliver something for me,” Madlin said. When K’k’rt’s eyes widened, Madlin quickly continued. “Nothing difficult, just slip it into a crate with the next shipment of coil guns.” She folded the sheets with her airship modifications and pressed them into K’k’rt’s hand.

  “I can’t—”

  “If you want out with me when this is all over, you’re going to need to help me out.”

  K’k’rt glared at her, but slid the drawings inside his coat. “There may not be an ‘over’ for you, you know. Your chance was when he let you go home. You are stuck here now, and have to learn to accept that.”

  “I only came back because I had a plan,” Madlin replied.

  “I will certainly not deliver whatever this is,” K’k’rt said, patting his coat. There was crinkle of paper beneath it. “I must decide whether to show it to Fr’n’ta’gur, or simply burn it. Good day, tinker.”

  “You little—” Madlin dove for him as she cursed, but the guards were too quick. Madlin hit the ground, her muscles spasming uncontrollably. The pain of the spark jolt was nothing compared to the pain of betrayal.

  “Let this be a lesson,” K’k’rt said, wagging a finger as he stood above her. “No more talk of escape, or plans, or deliveries. You belong to Fr’n’ta’gur now.”

  He rapped at the door and the priests let him out. Madlin couldn’t work the rest of the day, and fell asleep that night imagining painful ways to repay the goblin tinker for his treachery.

  Rynn stood by as workers opened the latest goblin shipment with pry bars. The nails squeaked as they fought back against being removed. It was a hopeless battle; they were doomed to lose to the pry bar, but they gave everything they had in the resistance. The nails were good soldiers. Rynn had always imagined the rebellion as a similar battle, back when she had gone by the name Chipmunk. Chipmunk’s world was simpler, filled with friends and foes, and she always knew which were which. It didn’t matter if she and her friends were the nails; they fought because it was the right thing to do.

  Now, Rynn struggled with foes becoming allies, and allies betraying her. The Human Rebellion had grown so large that it attracted the sorts who liked the idea of a rebellion more than the actions that were involved in rebelling. Rusted nails, ready to snap at the first blow. Davlin and Rascal helped in their own way, but it had been Rynn’s rebellion; the ultimate responsibility lay with her. Every lax soldier felt like a judgment on her leadership. Cadmus questioned her choice of allies. Maybe he was right. Aside from the trickle of much-needed coil guns, her bargain with Fr’n’ta’gur had been a disaster. K’k’rt’s betrayal didn’t hurt her chances of escape, but it could hurt her relations with the Megrenn.

  “General, there’s something in this one,” one of the workers called out to her.

  Rynn walked over to where the last crate was being unpacked. The worker who called her over stood and scrambled out of her way, pointing into the crate. Rynn leaned down and pulled out a familiar packet of folded pages. Her heart raced.

  Unfolding the vellum sheets, she scanned them to make sure someone hadn’t played a cruel joke on her. But there they were: her drawings for the Megrenn airship modifications. At the bottom was a note, scratched into the page without even using ink or pencil. Rynn had to angle it in the light to read it.

  Sorry.

  Rynn smiled. Madlin hadn’t been wrong after all. “That little bastard did it.”

  Hurrying to the door out to the plaza, Rynn stuck her head out and shouted. “Someone find me Hayfield. I’ve got a job for him.”

  Chapter 9

  “Most non-sentient animals are afraid of fire. Use it liberally if threatened.” –Traveler’s Companion: Dealing With Wildlife

  “War makes the world make sense,” Danilaesis said. “We know who our enemies are. We know our job is to kill them.” His men lounged in bunks and leaned against the walls as the warlock held court in the hold of the Sudden Blade, the latest airship he had taken as his own. He took a swig of wine and passed the bottle to his first mate. “Men like us, we don’t belong in peacetime; we’re just swords rusting on the wall. This? This is living.” He held out his arms.

  There were murmurs of agreement, but he was used to that following anything he said to a group. Danilaesis was no fool. He talked because he enjoyed thinking out loud, and they listened because he was in charge. It didn’t matter whether they agreed or not; most of them would probably have been happy sailing on the seas, hauling bales of hay or whatever worthless cargoes sailors shipped. He might convince some with his words and some with the wine but most would keep their counsel and agree for f
orm’s sake.

  Wars were fought by two sorts of soldiers, motivated by either duty or obligation. Danilaesis took his duties seriously, and would not dream of pretending he didn’t enjoy performing them. Most of the sailors of the Sudden Blade were obligated; they served because someone was forcing their hand. As much as anything, Danilaesis needed to weed out which were which, because when things went badly, the obligated ones were the ones who faltered, the ones who surrendered, the ones who retreated with no order given. And if they were not fools, this crew knew that they were doomed men.

  Danilaesis had never cowered from battle, and he was commanding his eighth vessel because of that fact. Only his first command, as a child during the last war, had ended with the return of a mostly intact crew. He had used his next six airships until they broke. Serving him, the sailors of the Sudden Blade could expect a good death, and soon.

  The ship lurched, causing the wine in Danilaesis’s stomach to slosh. They were banking; something had happened. Danilaesis rushed for the stairs to the main deck only to run into a sailor headed down. “Warlock, a ship!”

  Danilaesis turned to the sailors in the hold. “Time to work, men.” He bolted up the stairs two at a time, despite the ship’s angle and the force of their turn.

  On the deck, Danilaesis headed straight for the helm. “What do you see?”

  “Megrenn bird, doesn’t look like it’s spotted us,” the helmsman replied. He pointed to the horizon, where a fleck in the sky drifted across their path.

  “Good work,” he said with a nod to the helmsman. Raising his voice, he called out to his crew. “All right men, two days’ shore leave when we down that ship.”

  The Sudden Blade leveled out, cutting through the sky on an intercept course. The clouds were sparse, the sun still on the rise, and no mountains or hills below for the Megrenn ship to lose themselves behind. There was little chance of their escape. Danilaesis summoned a stronger wind, and the sails strained at their rigging. Wood creaked as the ship sped forward.

  Danilaesis hungered for the day when the Megrenn Alliance would be stripped of its defenses, its stronghold in Ghelk exposed. He would relish killing Anzik Fehr. In the meantime, he would feast upon their fleet of weakling airships, poor copies of the ones Kadrin built. There would be a new trick this time—there always was—but he looked forward to seeing how they would test him.

  Taking up his preferred perch at the prow of the ship, Danilaesis watched the Megrenn airship grow in the distance. Their lookout had sharper eyes than he did, for initially it had looked like nothing but a speck, easily mistaken for a bird. But it was a ship, sails and everything. It had spotted the Sudden Blade, and was turning … towards them.

  Danilaesis frowned. While the Megrenn had prepared traps for him before, they had always been more trap-like, more about trickery than confrontation. A second ship hidden in the clouds, siege engines stationed along a planned route of escape, something clever to balance the fact that Danilaesis was more powerful than any sorcerer they could find to oppose him. This was the first ship to have turned to fight head on at even odds. Maybe their spies have lost track of which ship is mine. It was certainly a yeoman’s task to follow the trail of mangled wrecks that he had left in his wake, both friendly and enemy. Could it be that Anzik has decided to come face me? He grinned at the thought, but could not sustain it. No, he would never, even if he thought he might win. He’ll trick and trap and hide and run until he manages to kill me or I find him first.

  The Megrenn weren’t stupid. It was a thought that Rashan had forced between Danilaesis’s ears. You could not underestimate an opponent; nor could you overestimate them. You needed to know them, understand them, and react to them. Megrenn wouldn’t have been attacking head on if they thought it was suicidal.

  “Pull up,” Danilaesis ordered. “Climb above them.”

  “But warlock,” the captain replied. “We won’t be able to attack them. They’ll be below the catapults and ballistae’s reach.”

  “They’re up to something. They know better than this. Forget the ship’s weapons, I’ll handle this one.” Downing an airship by magic alone was daunting, but Danilaesis had the aether for it. He drew yet more, until he was ready to burst at the joints from the burning pressure within him.

  The Sudden Blade rose, its runes of levitation flaring bright. Danilaesis clung tighter to the rigging to maintain his perch as the bowsprit pushed against the soles of his feet, threatening to overbalance him. The Megrenn airship continued its approach, veering to the left to bring it on a course to go directly beneath them.

  What are they thinking? Neither ship would be able to bring any of the standard weapons to bear. That left combat between the ships’ sorcerers, and whatever bows the crew had—bows that could do little to sink an airship from the sky. A contest of sorcery favored Kadrin nine times in ten, and Danilaesis was certainly not the tenth. This isn’t right. A new weapon? A better sorcerer? The tangled puzzle was approaching the Sudden Blade faster than Danilaesis could unravel it. He needed a decision.

  “Dive!” he ordered.

  “What?” the captain shouted in reply.

  “Ram them! That’s an order.” Whatever plan the Megrenn had concocted, he could sift it from the wreckage. If the hostile ship’s sorcerer survived, Danilaesis could deal with him on the ground.

  The ship continued on course.

  “I am ordering you to ram them!” Soldiers were meant to die, and sailors were just soldiers on a boat. Blast them all to ruin if they wouldn’t follow orders. Danilaesis leapt to the deck, ready to wrest the ship’s wheel and steer it himself.

  A crack of wood made Danilaesis pause, mind racing. He wasn’t watching the aether, but he ought to have felt a magical attack strong enough to damage the ship. Another crack and he began to worry. He ran back to the bowsprit to see for himself what the Megrenn ship was up to. That was when he noticed them. Cobbled onto the sides of the ship was a pair of liftwing hulls, just the bodies of the vessels with the propellers sticking out the front, blurred to translucent discs. The Megrenn were speeding up now that their trick had been revealed.

  The liftwing engines proved not to be their only tricks. Cracks started coming more quickly. Danilaesis squinted down at the onrushing vessel as it prepared to pass below them. He was thrown to the deck. Something had struck him in the chest like a sword blow. Blinking to clear his head, he found himself staring up at the sails, struggling to draw breath. The shielding spell that was his constant companion had just saved his life, and it was reduced to a flicker in the process. He drew more aether, but did not use it to renew his shield. He had to do something about that ship.

  He crawled to the gunwales and peeked over the edge. The ship had gone, passed beneath them in a hail of what Dan now realized was coil gun fire. It was Madlin’s doing, all of it. He hadn’t been certain, when Anzik Fehr had killed Dan, whether Madlin was complicit or had been duped by the Megrenn weasel just as he had. The presence of new Korrish improvements to a Megrenn airship was all the proof he needed to add another name to his list for vengeance. It didn’t matter that she was on a world he had no way to access; that was a detail for another time. That was a detail for if he survived his present predicament.

  Breathing pained him with each inhalation, but Danilaesis stumbled across the deck to the stern. “Cut sail,” he ordered through gritted teeth. Shouting hurt worse than trying to breathe deeply. Fortunately he did not have to waste breath arguing, for the captain and crew found this order better to their liking than they had of the order to ram.

  The Megrenn vessel was looping around, ready to make a second pass. Danilaesis crouched low, lest he take another coil-gun blast, and waited. He drew more and more aether, until the pain of it blotted the cracked ribs from his mind. For all the time he had spent among the Korrish, he knew little of how their machines worked. One of the minor points he had picked up on was the fact that machines running on spark hated getting too much of it.

  He didn’t
let the Megrenn ship approach too closely. He didn’t dare. After the pounding the ship had taken on the first pass, he didn’t want to weather another. Lightning flew from Danilaesis’s outstretched hand, slamming into the port side propeller. Crackling arcs spread to the surrounding hull; they lasted a fraction of a second, but that was long enough to set fire to the side of the Megrenn ship.

  “Full sail,” Danilaesis ordered as the Megrenn ship twisted in the air, its remaining propeller pushing into a spin.

  Danilaesis slumped against the ship’s railing as they got under way, retreating from the Megrenn and their new coil guns. “I’m going to kill her,” he muttered.

  Chapter 10

  “I cannot stress this enough. Do not attempt gene splicing or implantable prosthetics without proper facilities.” –Traveler’s Companion: Improvised Medicine

  Draksgollow felt out of place. There were so many eyes on him, eyes that didn’t look to him as customer, employer, or owner. The assembly hall in Kupak Deep was packed with kuduk faces, showing mixtures of curiosity, disgust, and hope. Most of the time Draksgollow was able to brush aside the gaping looks he drew for the mechanical parts that had rebuilt his maimed body, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt self-conscious. Maybe it was the suit he had worn for the occasion, its collar over-starched, its cut too close and restrictive. Maybe it was the fact that in this hall—at least nominally—he was not in charge. But more likely the cause of his unease was the fact that he needed the support of these people, and they found him freakish.

  Few kuduks had ever been rebuilt the way Draksgollow had. The method was buried in moldering old books, and the practice undertaken by only the least ethical of physicians. Most of the ones who had metal grafted to their bones, their muscles, and their nerves were never quite right afterward. Some lurched around on tinkers’ legs like broken clockwork toys. Others tore the limbs from their bodies in fits of madness, unable to accept that they were part thing and no longer just creatures of flesh and blood. Draksgollow had no troubles with his. It had taken getting used to, months in fact, but he was a tinker to his core. From taking lunches in the workshop, he imagined he had ingested more bits of steel and iron over his lifetime than most humans ate of real meat (excepting rats and other vermin). He was rebuilt in the manner he had wished—better in some ways, worse in others, but never so pathetic as the creature he would have been without.