The Tinkerer's Daughter (17 page)

I could see why Prince Sheldon had taken such an interest in my plane. Unlike the steamwagon, which was generally considered noisy and impractical, the plane was different. It had obvious potential for military applications. I doubted however that the prince perceived the other possibilities. I knew the plane could bring great changes to civilization. It could be a tool for explorers and adventurers, and a manner of trade and shipping as well. I could already see wealthy kings and merchants building fleets of planes that were larger and faster than mine.

Oddly, none of this had occurred to me while Tinker and I were building the thing. It was simply a distraction. I had never really seen any practical application for the machine until later, when I needed to carry Analyn’s message to the general. I suspected that Tinker hadn’t given much thought to this potential either.

When he’d designed the plane, I think he just wanted to prove that it could work. He wanted to test his theory about building a machine that could fly. In the process, he’d created a machine that was going to change our entire world. I wondered if he understood that yet.

As I flew, I tried reaching out to the trees to speak to them. I thought that perhaps they could help me. I was hoping at least to learn if I was heading in the right direction. In response, I heard only silence. Was it possible that the trees here didn’t speak? I doubted that. More likely they were not so friendly as the trees in my valley. To these trees, I was an outsider, a potential enemy. Here, even the trees mistrusted me. I wondered if they would betray my approach? That was a chilling thought.

Finally, just before dawn, I saw the shimmering glow of my destination. Silverspire is the human name for the city, a rough translation of its Tal’mar name, Resha Lazenta, which means The City of the Silver Spires. An apt name I realized, as I saw the gleaming towers of the palace reaching into the clouds. Likewise, many of the buildings were tall and cylindrical in shape, and they all had that silvery luminescent surface.

The sight made me wonder if the Tal’mar actually had metalsmiths among them. I had been told that they hated metal, and yet those shining towers looked like they must have been made from silver, or at least polished steel.

I eventually learned that the color of the spires came from a unique type of glass. The Tal’mar had a technique of blending certain sands to create a glass that was both beautiful and resilient. This blend could be poured while it was hot, and was often used to coat stone or wood. After cooling, the glass became hard as stone, and its surface took on a reflective sheen.

The homes were different. While mostly silver or white in color, they were much closer in physical appearance to the buildings I’d seen in Riverfork. They stood three or four stories in height at most, and they all had the same steep roofs. Many of the buildings were connected by bridges because, as I later learned, the Tal’mar dread setting foot on soil. They believe it lowers them to the status of humans, whom many of them feel are little more than hairless apes.

I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course. All I knew was that I had a message to deliver to the Tal’mar queen, a woman named Tarsa Salamenta. I was to allow no one to see the treaty except the queen herself. In order to make this happen, the general had given me the signed documents of a Royal Ambassador. I had no idea how the Tal’mar would receive me, but I was hopeful. After all, my father had apparently had great relations with them. Perhaps they would recognize me as his kin, just as General Corsan had.

I set the plane down on the road outside the city walls, and found guards already waiting for me. Sure enough, the trees had warned them I was coming. I should have known, since the trees at home had so faithfully done the same for me. The Tal’mar had probably known I was coming from the second I crossed the Crimson Strait.

I sensed rather than saw the eyes watching me in the branches overhead. I knew that there were at least a dozen archers ready to take me out in the blink of an eye. Cinder knew it too. She jumped onto my lap and started barking at the trees. A Tal’mar man stepped forward. Judging by his manner and uniform, he appeared to be some sort of peacekeeper or city official. He clearly didn’t approve of my plane, or me.

“What is the meaning of this… this abomination?”

Abomination
. Hadn’t I been called that before? But he wasn’t talking about me. It was my plane that bothered him, because of the Tal’mar aversion to metals. Clearly, he didn’t approve of the way Tinker and I had melded wood and steel. He stood two yards away from me and almost seemed afraid to come closer. I put my hands in the air to show that I wasn’t armed, and climbed out of the plane.

“I’ve come with a message for the queen,” I said.

I still had my flying cap on, so my ears were covered, but I could tell that he could sense the Tal’mar in me. He frowned deeply and muttered something in his own language, which I could only assume meant “half-breed.” The meaning was clear enough from the look on his face. I ignored this, and pulled the ambassador papers from my jacket. “I must have an audience with the queen.”

He snatched the papers out of my hand and looked them over. “We no longer honor treaties with humans,” he said. “Get back on that
thing
and pray we don’t shoot you down before you’re out of sight.”

I glanced at the other guards standing behind him, and saw that he had their support. I blinked, and took a deep breath. “I’m not leaving,” I said firmly. “I must speak to the queen. The Kanters are marching across the southlands even as we speak.”

“Good,” he said. “I hope they eradicate your kind once and for all… Archers!”

He raised a finger and I heard rustling in the branches. Once again, I opened my mind up to the trees, trying to communicate with them. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that I could win them over to my cause. As soon as I did this, the man backhanded me.

I stumbled back against the plane and Cinder leapt forward in my defense. She growled and latched onto the man’s ankle. There was a slight rustling overhead, and an arrow appeared in Cinder’s side. She yelped once and then dropped.

“No!” I screamed. I jumped forward, but an arrow struck me in the shoulder and something hard hit me in the back of the head. I had just enough time to feel the burning sensation of that arrow twisting through my body before I lost consciousness. My thoughts went wild, reaching out to Cinder and to the trees, but the only response I received was darkness.

I thought I had been alone before. I thought my life had been painful and solitary. I didn’t realize until I woke in the Tal’mar dungeon that I had never truly been alone. Nothing I had ever experienced could have prepared me for that.

It was dark. Only the barest light from a distant torch cast shadows on the stone walls of my cage. I tried to reach out with my mind, first to find Cinder and then to study the structure of the cell, and both times I met resistance. It was almost physical, this invisible force that pushed against me, refusing my every attempt. The harder I pushed, the more firm the resistance became. I fought a wave of panic as I realized that I was locked entirely inside myself. Any effort to reach out to the world around me was denied.

I panicked and began to hyperventilate. Locked. Alone. I couldn’t understand a world like that. I couldn’t reach out, couldn’t touch or sense anything. Was this what it was like to be human? Was this what it meant to have no bond with the world, other than one’s outward senses? To touch, smell, and hear, but to never truly
feel
anything? It was awful. Sickeningly awful.

I was so distraught that at first I didn’t even notice my wound had been healed. All I could think about was that pressure, that force pressing in against me. The more I thought about it, the worse it became, until I felt like I could hardly breathe.

I never realized until that moment how much I had been using my Tal’mar senses all along. It was second nature to me, reaching out to touch things with my mind even as I laid hands on them. I had never even thought about what I was doing. Now I had to think about everything. I had to control that instinct, to force it back.

There was a cot in the cell, and I had to lie down and force myself to take deep, steady breaths. This went on for some time, until I eventually calmed down enough to reassess my situation. I had to force myself not to use my powers, lest I invoke the same response as before. Instead, I used my eyes, and my sense of feeling. I reached out with my hands and touched the smooth stone walls and the heavy wooden door. I studied them in the dim light, looking for some weakness or flaw that I might exploit.

I found no means of escape, and I was too exhausted to persist for long. Eventually, I lay back down on the cot and drifted into a restless sleep. I knew in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t, that I needed to stay awake and find a way out of there, but I didn’t have the strength. All I could do was pray that something would happen before it was too late.

As luck would have it, something did happen. But it was the last thing I ever would have expected.

I woke to the sound of voices outside my door. I couldn’t understand the low murmuring, but I recognized the fact that one of the voices was female. A few moments passed, and then I heard shuffling noises and the door opened. A shadowy figure in a long robe appeared in the doorway.

“Who are you?” I said.

“I am Malina. I healed your wound.” The door closed behind her, and she pulled back her hood. She had the delicate features of all Tal’mar, with high cheekbones and a sharp, proud chin. Her face was framed by dark curls, and her eyes were hidden in the shadows. As she approached I saw that the woman’s face was stern but kind, and I couldn’t detect any animosity in her. She settled onto the cot next to me and began to examine my shoulder. I decided to pry for some information.

“What’s wrong with this place?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s… it’s all
closed off
. There’s something wrong.”

“You can sense that?”

I looked into her face and saw that her eyes were a deep violet color. My vision was slowly adjusting to the changing light, and my night vision was trying to work with my normal vision. Her hair seemed to be violet as well, with a reddish hue to it.

“Of course I can sense it,” I said. “It’s like someone poking their finger in my eye. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Ignore it,” she said. “Do not dwell on what you cannot change. What is your name?”

“Breeze,” I said. “Breeze Tinkerman. I had papers, but the guards took them.”

“I see.” She looked at me for a while… No, she
stared
at me. It was like her eyes were boring holes into my skull. I couldn’t even guess as to what the woman might be thinking. Finally, she spoke: “Are you hungry?”

“A little, I guess.” I hadn’t really thought about food. How long had it been since I’d eaten? A day? Two days? I should have been hungry, but so much had been happening that it was the furthest thought from my mind. She rose from the cot and went to the door.

“I’ll see that some food is brought to you. In the meanwhile, try to rest.”

“What happened to Cinder?” I said, but she turned away and the guard pulled the door closed behind her. I ran over and started pounding on it. “What happened to my dog?” I shouted. “What did you do to her?”

They didn’t respond. They knew that eventually I would tire and go back to my cot, and they were right.

I was lying there in the darkness, still trying to plot an escape when my food came. The guard opened a narrow slit in the door and pushed through a tray of fruit, meat, and cheese. I wanted to refuse it, or at least throw the tray at the wall and make some sort of racket, but as soon as I smelled it my willpower melted. My stomach groaned, and I realized just how hungry I was.

I snatched the tray and started shoveling food into my mouth as fast as I could eat. I didn’t stop until it was gone, and then I wished I had more even though my belly was already starting to ache.

A short while later the door opened and one of the guards came in. He appeared to be middle-aged, though for a Tal’mar that may well have meant he was a hundred and fifty. Their average lifespan is three hundred years, and some have been known to live for a thousand.

“Follow me,” he said.

The Tal’mar dungeon was a circular room with cells shooting off from the center. I stepped into this room and blinked against the light of the torches. There were no desks, chairs, or tables. It was simply an empty space with doors lining the outside wall. The guard closed my cell and led me to another door across the room. He waved his hand in front of it and I heard a click on the outside. The door swung open, revealing a steep stone stairway. He gestured me forward.

It was morning, and the sunlight came cascading down the stairwell as I climbed out of the dungeon. It hurt my eyes at first, especially when we reached the top and stepped out into the palace courtyard. I stood there for a moment, blinking against the light.

The courtyard was huge, easily the size of the entire town of Riverfork. It was encircled by a tall stone wall, the surface of which had been carved in fantastical relief. Great trees climbed the smooth stone, their likeness so realistic that I would have believed them real if it weren’t for their smooth gray texture. Vines dangled from the branches, bursting with glorious life in the form of leaves and flowers and enticing bulbous fruits. The faces of Tal’mar children peered out from behind the foliage, their likenesses frozen forever in that living stone. Unicorns grazed on the lush ground below the branches.

The guard nudged me, and I realized that I’d been standing there with my jaw hanging open. I swung my gaze upwards and saw the palace towers rising to dizzying heights in front of me. I stood like a fool staring up at them, until the guard bumped me again and I started stumbling forward.