Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles) (4 page)

“Lady Emskarl is
not
going to be joining your sorry little caravan,” the official replied. Madlin knew even before she looked back that his face was reddening. “These lands are her protectorate, and while traveling them, you are subject to her laws and beneficiary of her protections.”

“We don’t need any protection. In fact, seems like we’ll be protecting a little patch of land within a rifle’s range everywhere we go. Maybe
she
oughtta be paying
us
for protection,” Madlin watched the official’s face as it turned a shade darker. Pureblood Kheshis were so obvious in anger, their pale skin striking a stark contrast when flush. Madlin scrunched her nose and shook her head. “Naw, we can just call it even I think. We’ll take care of our own, and not trouble Lady Enkarl—”

“Lady Emskarl!”

“—her ladyship’s troops while we cross.”

Madlin heard the whisper behind her before she heard the approach of steps. “Hey, let her take care of this.” It was Tanner’s voice, but the footsteps weren’t.

“Could you two kindly piss off and let ... me sleep in peace?” Dan drawled around a yawn. He shuffled past Madlin and stopped before the Kheshi official, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “And who’s this ape?”

“Guards!” the official yelled over his shoulder. Madlin watched the last shred of his patience as it crumbled between her jibes and Dan’s thoughtless insult. She had been intent to bully the man, intimidate him enough that he would accept their bribe rather than risk his life to do his job. Dan’s push had been too much.

Ten men in red uniforms poured from the guard houses with muskets in hand and short swords sheathed at their hips. Behind her, Madlin heard the sound of rifle bolts being thrown. They’d ejected an unspent cartridge apiece, Madlin knew, but it told her they were there behind her, ready to confront the Kheshis.

“Lay down your arms and surrender yourselves to the authority of Lady Emskarl,” the official said as his men spread out. Madlin felt a cool wind cut through her, refreshing but out of place amid the languid warmth that had settled over the countryside. “You will step aside and allow—”

Madlin felt a shockwave, though it passed through her without harm. The Kheshi soldiers’ muskets were jerked upward; most panicked and fired wildly into the sunset sky. Madlin’s own men reacted and fired, though the effect was difficult to notice. From Dan’s outstretched hand, black lightning crackled and leapt, lashing out to strike each of the Kheshis in turn. In less than the time it took for Madlin to release the breath that had caught in her throat, they all lay dead. All but the unarmed official.

Dan walked over to the man as the bodies lifted into the air and drifted toward the stream. The official backed away, but stopped with a jolt, as if he had struck a solid wall, though nothing was visible behind him. Madlin watched wide eyed, unwilling to blink.

“What part of ‘piss off’ was so hard to understand?” Dan asked, his face inches from the Kheshi’s. Madlin could see the sweat bead on the man’s face. The reddish hue had drained completely. The man stammered silently, his lips trying and failing to form words. He flinched and began shuddering when a chorus of splashes accompanied the bodies of his men plunging into the shallow waters of the stream.

“Quit scaring the poor bastard,” Tanner said from behind her. Madlin couldn’t tear her attention away from Dan and the Kheshi official to bother to look back.

Dan’s head titled back. Madlin couldn’t see his eyes, but she’d seen the expression on Dan’s face often enough to envision them rolling. His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “Fine.”

The Kheshi flew aside as if fired from a cannon, hitting the stream with a splash that sent water cascading over the far bank. He hadn’t yelped or cried out, likely dead from a snapped neck the instant he was launched.

The chain across the bridge snapped and fell aside. “Road’s clear,” Dan announced as he walked back to the wagon. He yawned and stretched, his arms reaching out, fists clenching and unclenching. “And gut me, I’m wide awake now.”

Madlin didn’t sleep well that night, or at least, she lay awake a long while before sleep caught up with her. Jamile breathed nasally beside her, something in the northern air disagreeing with her constitution. It was a distraction—some small, constant worry for her friend’s health that was far from serious enough to dwell on. Madlin listened to each catch in her breath, the different sounds she made as she wheezed. But Jamile slept.

How can she just sleep after watching that?
Madlin wished she knew the trick, because she couldn’t get the image from her eyes, even by closing them—especially by closing them.

Tanner had shrugged aside the incident, obviously inured to Dan’s outbursts of violence. Jamile hadn’t wanted to talk about it. The Errol Company guards had gossiped about it with her, none of them offering any reassurance at all. Madlin would have been neither surprised nor reproachful if any of them quit their jobs rather than stay with the caravan. To his credit, Dan had offered to share what he had pilfered of the Kheshis’ dinner, but no one else was of a mind to share the spoils of his murders.

Madlin tried to picture the Kheshis with kuduk beards, and when finally she had the image fixed firmly in her mind, she asked herself:
Could I have done it?

She meant Chipmunk, and she had to admit:
Yes.

Chapter 4

“Lift is achieved by offsetting mass with a displaced volume that is lighter than air.” –Introductory Flight, by Z.K. Orelan

The
Jennai
led the way over the plains of northern Ruttania with the
Cloudsmith
following in her wake. Vacuum pumps aboard both vessels were working constantly, straining to keep air out of the lift chambers that kept them buoyant. Dry, barren farmland sped by beneath them, less than one hundred feet below.

Chipmunk stood at the forward-facing windows of the bridge, watching with growing alarm as they drew closer to the ground by the hour. “We can’t keep this up,” she muttered. As much as they’d tried to balance the load from newfound supplies, their thunderail heist had put both airships overweight.

“You said yourself we have to get well away before we set down,” Captain Bosley replied, though Chipmunk hadn’t meant her comment for his ears. “I can turn us for the mountains anytime you like.”

“I’m not even sure we have the lift to navigate the foothills anymore.” Chipmunk held onto the railing and hobbled over to the starboard side of the bridge. The Homespires loomed to the east, a taunting warren of hiding places and kuduk settlements. A wrong turn around a peak could put them in artillery range of an aerodrome’s defenses. All that was moot though, as far as Chipmunk was concerned, until they had the lift to keep safe amid the mountain range.

“There are cities all along the coast,” Bosley reminded her. “If we don’t get above cloud level, we’re sure to get spotted on this course.

Her options were unpalatable. All the lift the ships needed was readily available; they just needed to abandon their hard-won supplies and strand their refugees. Chipmunk couldn’t bring herself to give it serious consideration. If they set down, the craftsmen aboard both vessels could work on placing levitation runes on the airships, and Sosha and Chipmunk could empower them, supplementing the vacuum with all the lift they needed. It was the plan she preferred, but setting down in the open was an invitation to ambush should anyone spot them. They could also plot the course least likely to get them discovered as they crossed the shoreline, then put themselves out over the Sea of Kerum and find some refuge amid the islands of the Broken Chain. It seemed like the riskiest option, but only if they plotted wrong or were unlucky.

Chipmunk lost track of time as she mused, turning the options over one by one. She changed her mind each time some downside of her current favorite came to the fore of her thoughts. Problems only exist until a solution presents itself, her father had taught her. She contemplated taking a nap so that she could have Madlin send word to her father via Jamile and Sosha. All the twinborn her father had gathered were spread between the crews of the two airships. Surely someone among them could formulate a better plan.

All the twinborn in one place.

For the first time, Chipmunk wondered whether they were taking too great a gamble. All the rebellion’s twinborn in one place meant an unlucky encounter with a Ruttanian airship patrol could be the end of them. And they weren’t even doing anything beyond acting as officers and taking their part in the fighting. Helpful, perhaps, but nothing that one-worlders couldn’t handle.

“Signal the
Cloudsmith
to land. I have a plan.”

The cargo hold of the
Jennai
was packed with Korrish twinborn from both vessels. Even with the cargo bay ramp down and compartment open to the air, the press of bodies made it oppressively hot. A table had been set up, and Chipmunk brought twinborn by the pair to hand out assignments.

“Leda and Raimy, you make your way to Juudun Sky. Should be about two days on foot. Take whatever supplies you need.” The pair nodded their understanding and Chipmunk gave them a salute, which they returned. She’d adopted the fist-to-temple gesture used by the Takalish army in Tellurak as the official salute among the rebels. They’d never had one before, and she thought it was high time that they started acting like an army if they were going to be functioning as one.

“And remember,” she called after them, “your twins aren’t to leave Tinker’s Island until further notice. Understood?” Leda and Raimy both turned and saluted again. That was the key: pairs. Just as she could relay information ship-to-ship via Madlin and Jamile, so could the whole of the rebellion keep in constant contact via other pairs of twinborn.

“How many more spies and infiltrators do you plan on sending out?” Erefan asked from the far side of the table. The Mad Tinker of Korr had his arms crossed and a neutral expression plastered over whatever thoughts he was keeping to himself.

“Another few pairs. Why?”

“They’re not trained for this sort of thing,” Erefan replied.

Chipmunk winced. It was a subject she’d hoped to keep quiet. There was no delusion among her troops, but it helped morale to treat them as if they were ready for anything. “Who’s trained for any of this? We’re all putting up our best effort.”

Chipmunk leaned on her crutch and hopped around the side of the table. “Kinmi and Suben, you two will be—”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Kinmi said, “but could I get paired up with Syr?” Chipmunk cast a suspicious eye toward Kinmi, a cobbler’s assistant who’d proven to be handy with mechanic’s tools. Apparently, he’d also proven to be handy with the ladies.

“You talk to her about this?” Chipmunk asked. Kinmi nodded. “You gonna be able to keep your hands off each other long enough to do your job?” Kinmi grinned and couldn’t meet Chipmunk’s eyes, but nodded. “Fine. You’ll pose as married freemen. Just keep a high neckline on any dress she wears until the calluses from her collar fade.”

“Yes ma’am,” Kinmi replied.

Chipmunk leaned over the map to point out the location of Kinmi and Syr’s assignment. In doing so, she put her weight on her bad foot and grimaced in pain. Grunted words escaped through her clenched teeth; she hoped they hadn’t been clear enough for anyone to hear—especially her father. Though she was a general, it seemed uncouth to use that sort of language in her father’s presence. He had taught her better words than those.

“What was that?” Erefan asked.

“Nothing. I just said we were lucky to have—”

“Not that! It’s that foot still, isn’t’ it? Sosha mentioned you were favoring it badly back at the thunderail.”

“It’s getting better. I was just careless and put my whole weight on it.”

Erefan’s eyes scanned her. Chipmunk felt like a misbehaving bit of clockwork that he was trying to troubleshoot. “I’ll send Sosha over to have a look at it.”

“No, it’s fine.”

Erefan walked from the cargo hold, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

In the privacy of her own cabin, Chipmunk fumed. She lay on her bed, bootless and with her foot propped on a pile of pillows. The overhead light was enough to read by, but hardly kept the whole of the room well lit; Chipmunk preferred the curtains drawn. Even with her cabin a story up from ground level while they were landbound, she feared that surreptitious looks might come through the cabin window out of curiosity mixed with ingenuity.

“I told him it was fine,” Chipmunk protested as Sosha unwound the bandage from her left foot.

“And you’ve told me that three times before when I’ve found stitches ripped out. This foot is never going to heal if you don’t keep off it. I can only imagine the scar that—”

Chipmunk had been intent not to look while Sosha worked, but she propped herself up on her elbows to find out what had caused Sosha to break off midsentence. “Scar that will what?”

Sosha didn’t answer, but instead stood and drew open the little curtain covering the cabin window. “I need better light.” Chipmunk shielded her eyes against the afternoon glare that came in through the west-facing glass.

“What’s wrong? Did I tear another stitch?”

Sosha shook her head. “Not this time,” she replied somberly.

“Good, wrap it back up and I’ll get back to the bridge. And you don’t have to sound so glum about being wrong.”

Chipmunk tried to push herself up to a seated position, but Sosha’s hand forced her back down. “The wound’s gone septic.”

“What? No.” Chipmunk brushed aside Sosha’s hand and sat up. She grabbed her ankle and twisted the injured foot around until she could see the bottom. The stitches were barely visible amid the swollen, discolored flesh. “But you washed it every time. That’s supposed to stop infections.”

“Every time you split it open, grime can get in there. I kept it clean as best I could, but you kept reinjuring it.” Sosha’s voice was small, apologetic. She couldn’t look Chipmunk in the eye.

“Well, cut it open, lance it, whatever you need to get it cleaned out properly this time,” Chipmunk said. “Just get it over with.”

“It’s not that simple, Rynn. Look at your ankle.”

Chipmunk shifted her grip where she had taken her ankle in hand. Darkened lines stood out against her pale skin, like rivers on a map. She pulled her hands away and wiped them on her pants.

“It’s on the inside,” Sosha said. “The blackened blood is showing through the skin.”

“What do you have to do?”

“I think you know.”

Chipmunk shook her head. “No. No, you can’t cut my foot off.” She pushed herself back against the wall of her cabin, as far from Sosha as she could get, swinging her leg over the far side of the bed. She was only a half pace away.

“You think I
want
to?” Sosha asked. “Rynn, you’re only going to get worse. This isn’t a joke; if it lingers, it’ll kill you.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Chipmunk muttered, looking out the window. She turned to Sosha. “You’re not doing anything until I talk to Dan.”

“I don’t think you’re being rational, Rynn. He’s already said he won’t teach us spells.”

“Maybe I can burn the taint out with aether. Maybe his world knows a medicine for it. I’m not giving up without at least asking him.”

The room lurched just then. A shuddering of the walls and floor that had been absent during their time on the ground had resumed: the sound of the pumps and propellers. The
Jennai
was taking off.

“Poo!” Sosha swore daintily. “They’re supposed to have waited for me. The
Cloudsmith
doesn’t have anyone—”

“They’re not worrying about the runes right now. We wouldn’t be lifting if we hadn’t been spotted. I left orders.”

Chipmunk swung her perilously wounded foot over to Sosha. “Wrap it, quickly.”

“You’re not in any condition to go up there.”

“None of us are going to be in any condition if we get killed.”