World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (31 page)

Rynn managed to distract herself from the thought of the dragon itself until she reached its treasure chamber. The goblin priests pushed and shoved and chittered away at her until she realized they were trying to get her to kneel. She was about to comply when an impulse came over her. Setting her feet, she put a hand to the shoulder of one of the prodding goblins and shoved him to the ground. He hit the stone with a rustle of priestly vestments and a look of astonishment. Madlin knocked over another of the priests before the rest backed away.

“Faaraunatagur,” Madlin shouted into the dark recessed of the cavern, remembering the name K’k’rt had told her. “Call off these pests of yours!”

Fr’n’ta’gur’s chuckle shook the cavern floor. The dragon spoke something in harsh, unintelligible syllables, and the priests scattered, bowing and pronating themselves as they scurried for the exit.

“I despise beggars,” Fr’n’ta’gur said in clear, sub-bass Korrish. “What is it you come to discuss?”

“I’m here to find out when you plan to keep to your end of the bargain,” Madlin said. Her head was fuzzy as she forced herself to confront the monstrosity verbally.
No deceit, no weakness, no backing down … no getting sick all over the pile of gold.
“We’ve got hundreds of weapons piling up in warehouses. One quarter of those are mine by terms of our deal.”

Avalanches of coins rang like piles of chain, and Madlin could
feel
the presence of the great beast approaching. It was a tingle, like the feeling of aether through her when a sorcerer cast a spell nearby; only this was both larger and more subtle. An ocean wave instead of a river.

“I see no discrepancy,” Fr’n’ta’gur replied. “Indeed, one weapon in four will be given to you in payment for the secret of their construction.”

“Yesterday’s inventory said there were eight hundred eleven completed coil guns,” said Madlin, staring into the darkness, waiting for the first light to hit the dragon. “That means two hundred two of those are mine, even rounding in your favor. I want them delivered.”

The first glint of light from the corridor caught teeth. Madlin’s breath caught in her throat as the monster’s head loomed over her as it approached. “I can see your dilemma. However, your view is shortsighted. Do you expect that eight hundred eleven weapons are all my goblins will make?”

“N-no.”

“Neither do I,” the dragon replied. “I expect far more than that. Far more. I have armies to equip. Six hundred and nine weapons would be insignificant.”

“So?” Madlin asked. “Make more.”

“They will do exactly that,” Fr’n’ta’gur replied. “They will build, let us say, eight hundred thousand.”

Madlin’s eyes widened. She had grown too used to thinking on the scale of the rebellion. They had hundreds of troops. In the coming months, with the help of Kupe’s notoriety, she had hoped their numbers would swell into the thousands. What would she do with two hundred thousand coil guns? The rebellion would have to reinforce the
Jennai
just to pack that many guns aboard and keep aloft.

“So you see,” Fr’n’ta’gur continued as Madlin struggled with the sudden shift in expectations, “you are barely one tenth of one percent finished with your task.”

“My task was to show your goblins how to build coil guns, not to be their shop foreman for the rest of my life,” said Madlin, mustering her reserves of indignation. “I want my cut now, paid as we go.”

The dragon bared its fangs in what Madlin sincerely hoped was a smile. “No.”

Madlin backed up a step, but the dragon still hovered over her, its neck stretching off into the gloom beyond her vision. “I didn’t want to resort to threats, but I
will
have my share. I need those guns, and I’m not waiting years for them.”

“Amuse me, Madlin Errol of Korr,” Fr’n’ta’gur said, twisting his head around and lowering it until it was behind Madlin, blocking the way out. “Threaten me.”

Madlin turned to look into the nearest eye of the beast—she was too close to see both of them. “I’ll find another dragon and teach
his
goblins to make coil guns. I’ll find one of you lizards who’ll pay his debts.”

Fr’n’ta’gur hissed, louder than a thunderail coming to rest at a station and venting its boiler. The dragon’s tongue flicked between its teeth, coming within inches of touching Madlin. She stiffened but held her ground.

“You think I would let you leave?” the dragon asked. “You have a debt as well, and until it is paid, you will not leave this chamber. The artisans can come here to consult with you. You will learn what it is to deal with dragons. I will not be threatened. I will not be dictated to. I will not be deprived of my rightful share.”

“No,” said Madlin. “I am going to sleep in my cot tonight, down in the valley below. I am going to get to work tomorrow morning, same as ever, overseeing the factories. And tomorrow night, I’m going to count up the inventory, set one gun in four aside, and take them to my troops.”

“And if I just ate you? If I trusted that my artisans could keep making the weapons without your help?” Fr’n’ta’gur asked, drifting closer to her. His breath smelled of charred meat.

“Then you’d find out about the vengeance of a man who breached the barrier between worlds without even knowing magic, and what he would do to the creature that killed his only daughter.”

“So, you believe you bargain from a position of strength?” Fr’n’ta’gur asked, drawing away from Madlin a few feet.

“If I die, I swear before Eziel, you’ll die, too,” Madlin replied.
Not to mention Rynn’s vengeance though I’d rather not take the time explaining that one.

The dragon’s eye widened. “Worshipers of the war god? How interesting. Have the old gods taken refuge in your world?”

Madlin was tempted to reply that they had, but she remembered K’k’rt’s warning. She had yet to lie to Fr’n’ta’gur and preferred not to test his powers of observation. “We follow the creed. 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.”

“Grammar was not the war god’s specialty,” Fr’n’ta’gur replied.

“You knew him?” Madlin asked.

“Of course not,” Fr’n’ta’gur replied. “How old do I look?”

Madlin shrugged. He was the only dragon she’d ever encountered. He could have been a hundred years old or a million.

“A true servant of the war god
would
be prepared with vengeance, and you honestly believe you could achieve it,” said Fr’n’ta’gur. “Very well. Your piddling requests for your proper lodging I grant you without condition. Your greater request for an earlier split of the spoils of our collaboration will require one thing.”

“What’s your condition?”
Why do I have the feeling I’m going to hate this, whatever he says?

“You will prove the worth of them in battle, against a foe one of my kin was unable to overcome.”

Yup. That’s why
.

Chapter 23

“You know, Father, you’ve gotten predictable as you’ve gotten older. I’m the one who comes up with the innovations now. You just tinker on old designs.” -Madlin Errol

Madlin sat in the back of a wagon, having refused the goblins’ suggestions that she walk the distance from Fr’n’ta’gur’s mountain to their destination. If there was one thing that changed in the aftermath of her encounter with the dragon, it was that Madlin no longer allowed any of the goblins to boss her around. The only point on which they seemed never to budge was allowing Madlin access to the warehouse of completed coil guns.
I can steal as many as I want—once—with the world-ripper. Then, they’ll figure out a way to protect them. They also might either try to kill me or stop making the weapons.
It still rankled her, seeing the goblin troops carrying more of the weapons than she had in the entire rebellion. The final count before the march had been three thousand eighty-five.
Seven hundred seventy-one of those are mine, by rights.

The trip was eerily familiar. The trek from Buou had started farther north, but their destination was nearly identical. It seemed that no matter the world, once that vein of gold was discovered, someone built a mine there, then a great city atop its ruins. K’k’rt had given her a brief history of the city of Raynesdark, the westernmost major stronghold of the Kadrin Empire. It was thousands of years old, and the mines beneath had been emptied of gold centuries ago. It still produced exotic minerals that the goblin metallurgists used but which the humans of Veydrus did not. Madlin listened patiently as K’k’rt tried to explain, in child-like terms, what bauxite, chromium, and nickel could be used for. Of course, K’k’rt’s Korrish was primitive, and he didn’t know the proper terms, but Madlin knew what came from beneath that mountain better than he ever would. It had been home, at least in Korr. She knew miners who dug those ores loose from the earth with pickaxes, paid only two bowls and a loaf a day.

So many times in the days the army traveled, Madlin found herself turning to a phantom Jamile, or worrying over a memory of Dan. All she saw were goblins, oxen, and the strange six-lizards that the high-ranking officers rode, saddles perched on the creatures’ heads. K’k’rt was one of those. Though technically he was not a member of the army, he was respected as an elder. The tinker had confided in Madlin that
she
was technically an elder, should she ever need a bit of leverage when arguing with the officers. Only a pair of sorcerers and one of the generals was over the age of sixteen.

Madlin sighed as she stared at the distant mountains, unchanging as they drew nearer, or at least growing so slowly that she couldn’t notice. K’k’rt said they would be at the base of the mountains by nightfall, but he could have told her a week and she wouldn’t have known any differently.

Except for Rynn. Madlin hadn’t gone into the expedition blindly. Rynn had been using the
Jennai’s
main world-ripper for days, sweeping the countryside for scouts, mapping the city of Raynesdark, taking count of troops and looking in detail at the fortifications. She had told none of this to her allies. Let the goblins think they were on their own, that she was trusting in them and in her invention to protect her. Let Anzik think that she was waiting to see Raynesdark for the first time upon her arrival. The enigmatic young sorcerer likely would have guessed that she would scout ahead through a viewframe, but she wasn’t about to tell him and remove all doubt. Nor was she about to share the knowledge she gained, at least not without negotiating a price. Given freely, the knowledge of the stronghold was as likely to be used against her somehow, as it was to gain her anything.

The casual consideration of betrayal was new to Madlin. All her life, she felt she had known who to trust. The rebels, her gang friends, her father’s workers, she trusted all of them with her life. She had never been betrayed by a kuduk because she had never trusted one.
When did I start becoming so distrustful? Dan?
The murder of the unbalanced warlock lad was certainly the first time she felt the guilt of double-crossing someone.
No. Naul. First human who ever sided with the kuduks against me
. She wondered whatever became of him. Had he delivered the “music box” that Madlin had entrusted to him, brought it to his kuduk patron, and been killed? Had he realized at the last minute that he had his freedom, if only he took it? Madlin shook her head. She had never investigated. The gift she had given herself was the uncertainty of not knowing that she’d sent Naul to his death.

The rumble of wagon wheels and the bestial noises from the goblins’ pack animals formed a relaxing monotony that threatened to lull Madlin to sleep. She tried to judge the size of the mountains, remembering her views of them in Korr, from the thunderail, and from a wagon in Tellurak. But the memories did not come with a ruler or a sextant, or any other measuring device.

K’k’rt’s chuckle snapped Madlin awake. “Do you have your optics?” the goblin tinker asked. His lizard mount was walking beside and behind Madlin’s wagon, and he had guided the creature’s head around in front of her. The lizard was walking without looking where it was going, which Madlin took as a sign that they were either very stupid creatures or very smart ones.

Madlin cocked her head in reply, confused by the question. She pointed to the spectacles, which were not exactly hidden on her face.

“No, the long-sight one on your weapon,” K’k’rt said. “Look to the east, then turn thirteen degrees right.”

Madlin drew her coil gun and sighted down the scope. It was her own gun, not one of the goblin-made weapons with the shoddily-ground glass. They were getting better, she had to admit, but they weren’t yet up to Tinker’s Island standards. In the tiny circle of view, she saw a lot of dark grey rock. She panned to the right, unable to judge precisely how far thirteen degrees might be. Through the scope, it was hard to miss.

It looked so much smaller than it had in the world-ripper’s viewframe, but there it was: Raynesdark. The poor, beset crossroads of two worlds’ ambitions, about to become a battlefield because of Madlin. All she could see of it were the two staggered walls—one above the city protecting it from the glacial ice, one below shielding it from view from the west—and a few taller buildings, one of which was the ruler’s dwelling. Rynn had been all through the building, which was half buried into the side of the mountain, covering the entrance to the old gold mines. It was stark, unadorned stonework, grand in scale but juvenile in its simplicity. Raynesdark had a deep, which surprised her more than anything else she found about it. It was a single, massive vaulted cavern with forges vented up through to the sky. There were offshoots that looked to have been built from old mine tunnels, and a few that appeared to be active mines. The inhabitants were only mostly human. Rynn had seen her first ogres in those deep mines. Gigantic, dull-eyed humanoids, they provided brute labor for the Kadrins; Rynn suspected that they would provide muscle in battle as well.

Had she wanted to, Madlin could have arranged for Rynn to do any number of things to sabotage the Kadrins’ defenses. With access via the world-ripper, she could have arranged assassinations, undermined the city wall, poisoned the water supply, or pillaged the armory. But something Anzik had told her kept nagging at her thoughts.
The Kadrin Empire keeps its power by magic.
Dan was a symptom of a larger problem with the empire: sorcerers bred for generations to produce stronger and stronger bloodlines. If one of those sorcerers caught her with an open world-hole, there might be no end to the trouble that resulted.

Of course, Madlin also didn’t care whether the goblins prevailed. So that was an even better reason not to risk aiding them. The coil guns worked. She knew they would function to the dragon’s satisfaction.

“It’s just a wall,” K’k’rt said. “Unless you see something more than these old eyes could make out.”

Madlin blinked and lowered the coil gun. “No, just thinking.”

K’k’rt chuckled. “Getting the palm sweats before a battle. You wouldn’t be the first.”

Madlin snorted. “Please. I’ve been to more battles than you’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, I hadn’t realized I was in the presence of such a grizzled old warrior, elder Madlin.”

“You know,” Madlin replied, “for someone who claims that speaking my language cramps his tongue, you sure talk a lot.”

K’k’rt laughed out loud, slapping his knee repeatedly. “Exercise doesn’t do an old body like mine any good, but it seems my tongue is younger than the rest of me.”

Madlin sighed. The city was still well out of range for the coil guns. The wagons dragged on. “So what now?”

K’k’rt shrugged. “For such a young human, you are quite impatient. We wait.”

The arrayed goblin forces prepared for the assault on the Kadrin city of Raynesdark. Madlin had never seen the whole group at one time, strung out as they were over the course of miles of wagons. Now, as tents popped up and cooking fires lit the dusk, the plains below the mountain city teemed with scrawny, grey-green invaders. Madlin crouched at the flap of her tent, too tall to stand inside it. It was an annoying precaution, but a sensible one for her safety, having her in the same tents as the army. Even poking her head out to peer through the optics on her coil gun seemed risky. There was always the chance that some sharp-eyed bowman or sorcerer aided by magic would catch sight of her and make her a target. Rynn had made and runed a steel plate jacket for her, but Madlin resisted the urge to open a world-hole to receive it. Her better protection was anonymity.

Up on the walls, in the evening’s fading light, Madlin could just make out movement. The city’s defenders must have known that the goblins were settling in after a long journey, not preparing for an immediate assault.
Sorry fellas. You may just be doing your job up there, but you’re doing it for the wrong side.
At least, everything Madlin had heard told her that it was the wrong side. When she had started out her rebellion, it had been the right thing to do. Humans. Kuduks. Daruu to a lesser extent. She knew who she was fighting for, who she was fighting against. A few holes in some knockers were a cause for celebration. Dead humans were mourned. Now she was surrounded by goblins, about to attack a city of her fellow humans. Except that
these
humans—in fact all humans of this world—seemed to place little value on that fellowship. She had needed allies, and to secure them, she had taken sides. In so doing, Madlin had set in motion this series of events that led her to Raynesdark. There was no way she could have foreseen it, but she was the cause nonetheless. The human blood spilled was on her conscience. The goblin blood, Fr’n’ta’gur could keep on his own conscience—if dragons even had them.

The clank of spoon in bowl brought Madlin’s attention back to her immediate surroundings. “Still looking through that thing?” K’k’rt asked. He handed her a bowl of the sugary mush that the goblins seemed to use for any meal that had to feed thousands. Madlin wondered if they even had a more sophisticated cuisine.

“Thanks,” she replied, juggling her coil gun and the bowl until she managed to holster her weapon. “Just wanted a better look, I guess.”

K’k’rt chuckled softly. “Second thoughts about attacking your own kind?”

“You think it’s funny?” Madlin snapped.

K’k’rt cocked his head. “Oh … that. Nervous habit. I seem less threatening if people see me as pleasant-faced.”

“You mean lighthearted.”

K’k’rt shrugged. “Same thing, I imagine. I have spent far too long—most of my ember years—balanced on a blade. I used to be a sorcerer who tinkered for amusement. I was younger, back then.” He drew a thin blade from his belt, little more than a pocket knife, and twirled it in his fingers. It spun, darting around nimble fingers, twisting and reversing. Then it fell to the turf. K’k’rt muttered something in his own tongue and kicked the knife away, stumbling as he overbalanced.

“What was that all about?” Madlin asked.

“I used to be able to do that all day, without even paying heed to it,” said K’k’rt. “I used to have the fingers of an assassin, or a harpist. I was quick with my spells. Now, I’m a shepherd of vengeful humans, a promise-maker to dragons, and not much of a sorcerer at all. You’d laugh too, if it kept them all at bay.”

Madlin sat down in the dirt beside the tinker, still poised at the opening of her tent flap. “What’s gotten into you? Battle too much for you?”

“I was here the last time,” K’k’rt replied. “My magic was growing difficult even then, six winters ago. But it was enough to sneak me away. I saw it all though before I escaped. The cannons smashing the Kadrin wall. The glory of Ni’hash’tk breathing fire down on their city, routing their forces. I saw the demon arrive and the two of them quit the battlefield together, to watch us mortals fight it out. I watched the demon kill her, and destroy the high wall, dropping an avalanche over our forces. As far as I know, only myself and the human sorcerer who taught me to make cannons survived.”