The Tinkerer's Daughter (26 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t have time. And I was afraid that if the king didn’t believe me…” My voice trailed off. I stood there nervously as he studied me.

“I could have you court-martialed,” he said. “Even hanged.”

I hung my head. “I’m sorry, General. I let you down.”

“No, you didn’t.” He surprised me with a smile. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I asked more of you than I had any right, Breeze. And you did more than anyone else could have. I dispatched messengers to the king last night to tell him of our victory. It won’t be long before everything comes to light. Thanks for all you did, Breeze, and for all the lives you saved.”

That jingled my memory. “I couldn’t save Robie though,” I said sullenly.

“Nonsense, Robie’s just fine.”

“What do you mean? We were all sure he had died!”

Corsan smiled broadly, and gestured towards the door. “Take a look.” I trotted over to the hangar door and peered outside. Robie was in the field left of the runway. He wasn’t alone. My hand strayed to the hilt of my sword as I saw the tattooed giant lumbering across the field towards him. Kanter!

The general stayed me with a hand to my arm. “Wait,” he said. “Watch.”

I frowned. Robie let out a shout and rushed towards the giant. He made a sudden, deft movement to the right and I saw… I saw a leather ball bouncing across the field. The giant laughed. He turned and ran after it. They appeared to be playing kickball.

“Are you kidding me?” I said breathlessly.

“Do you know who he is?” the general said with a smile. I shook my head, and realized that my jaw had been hanging open. I clamped it shut.

“I have no idea.”

“His name is Keng’Chen. He is Keng’Sun’s cousin.” I stared at him.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we have a revolution on our hands. The Kanters are tired of Keng’Sun’s leadership. They’ve seen our towns and cities, and some of them are beginning to understand that life can be… different. They want change.”

“And I suppose you’re going to give it to them?”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about all of this just yet. What the general spoke of sounded to me like another war. We had just finally reached a peaceful accord with the Tal’mar after a thousand years of hatred. We’d lost good men, including my father, because of that. Everything I had done had been to stop the war. Not to start another one.

“It’s not our problem at the moment,” Corsan said with a shrug. “Not yet anyway. Chen is going to return to his people and try to overthrow Sun. In the meanwhile, he’s already signed a treaty with us. Keng’Chen is now our ally.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “You honestly made a pact with
them
? You don’t understand, general. I’ve seen what they do. The skulls, the bodies… They eat people. They’re animals!”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Wasn’t so long ago that some people might have said the same about you.”

I bit my lip as his words struck home. He was right. Regardless of what I’d seen, and regardless of what they had done in the past, there was no reason not to give the Kanters a chance to change. We had everything to gain and nothing to lose, if they could do it.

“When will you need us ready?” I said.

He winked with his good eye, and put his arm across my shoulders. “Now that’s the Breeze I know and love.”

My pilots were absent that morning because the general had sent them out to spread word of our victory. I was anxious to get back to Tal’mar, but with all three planes gone, I had no choice but to wait the day out. If that weren’t enough, Corsan gave me specific orders to relax. Naturally, I did the exact opposite.

After breakfast, I walked through the encampment and quickly realized that we had an overwhelming number of injured soldiers. Though the physicians were doing their best to keep these poor men alive, even with my limited healing skills I could do more.

During the course of the day I saved two men from becoming amputees, and a half dozen more would certainly have died without my intervention. In addition, there were a good fifty more with serious injuries that I set on the path to a quick recovery.

Some of the men were reluctant to let a Tal’mar lay hands on them at first, until they realized who I was. My fame was apparently beginning to spread.
Breeze Tinkerman
, the humans began to say,
is no Tal’mar. She is half-human
.

By the end of the day, they were all lined up waiting to see me. Of course, the act of healing even a small wound requires intense concentration, and by sunset, I could hardly focus my eyes. General Corsan personally took me back to the hangar and brought me a warm plate of dinner. He smiled as he watched me devour it.

“Are you laughing at me?” I asked.

“Not at all. I just find this whole situation incredible.”

“Why?”

He slapped his hands down on the table and threw his head back, his face a mask of wonder. “Don’t you see what’s been going on around you? The men have been talking about you all day:
It’s a good thing that girl showed up when she did. Have you heard, she’s a healer too! Does anyone know where I can find Breeze? I have a splinter!”

I burst into laughter as I listened to him mock the soldiers. “What’s wrong with that?” I said.

He slumped back in his chair, shaking his head. “Nothing. Nothing wrong, it’s just difficult to believe. It seems like Tal’mar and humans have been fighting since the dawn of time. Then you come along and, within a week, the entire world is changed.”

“It’s not just me,” I said. “This is what they all wanted. No one wanted to fight anymore. I just happened to come along at the right time. And it didn’t hurt that I had Tinker’s plane.”

“Yes, there is that,” he said with a distant look. “The world’s never going to be the same, is it?”

“No.” I could almost hear his thoughts. “I’m sure there will always be a need for good soldiers.”

“I suppose you’re right. To be honest though, it won’t hurt my feelings if we spend most of our time building roads and landing strips. That wouldn’t be a bad future.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes. The general’s mood was contagious, and I found myself wondering what the future might bring. He was right. Everything was going to be different.
With peace comes prosperity
, or so they say. If it’s true, then the future looked awfully inviting.

I glanced at Corsan, and suddenly found that I had the nerve to ask him a question I’d always wanted to. “General, how did you lose your eye?” I took a sip of water after asking this, and waited expectantly for his answer.

He smiled wickedly. “I had a terrible fishing accident.” I laughed so hard that water came out of my nose.

In truth, he’d lost his eye in battle. His shield had broken, and a Tal’mar arrow had nearly found its way into his skull. It was one of those things that he could have been bitter about; something that could have driven a wedge between the general and his new allies. But he was a better man than that.

The general was always first in line to greet Tal’mar dignitaries and offer them a handshake, and from that day forward I hardly ever saw him without a smile on his face. “War,” he used to say, “is at times an unfortunate necessity. But peace is a blessing that all people should have the luxury of taking for granted.”

I finally made it back to Tal’mar, two days later. By that time, word of our success had already spread across the kingdom. The streets were filled with celebration and festivities. As I arrived, a throng of admirers surrounded me. I stepped onto the wing of my plane and they lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me through the streets.

Revelers danced alongside us as the crowd moved through the city. It became a parade as onlookers shouted and waved at me, and I waved back at them. It was both incredible and hugely embarrassing at once. I never was the type to enjoy being the center of attention. On that day however, I managed to live with it.

We made a full circuit around the palace walls twice before I asked my bearers to take me to Tinker. They happily complied, and within a few minutes, I was back at the park near the city gates. Tinker rushed up to greet me, along with my pilots who’d not yet had a chance to fly. Naturally, they were all eager to learn, and I promised that their lessons would begin the next morning.

Some of the Tal’mar woodworkers were there as well. To my surprise, they had decided that Tinker and his devices of steel and iron weren’t so bad after all. They had been advising him on the process of modifying the planes for power. The large plane that was designed for hauling cargo was especially going to present challenges. We were discussing this when the royal coach rolled up onto the lawn.

The guards leapt to the door and Princess Bresha appeared. She looked incredible, dressed in a lavender gown and wearing a jeweled tiara. One of the guards supported her hand as she stepped down to the lawn. She rushed over and threw her arms around me. That earned her a few raised eyebrows from the elder Tal’mar, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Breeze, you must come with me to the palace at once!” she said. She smiled broadly and put her arm around me, guiding me to the coach.

During the brief ride that followed, Bresha questioned me about every aspect of everything that had happened. I could barely answer each question before she asked the next. Then the coach came to a shuddering halt. I followed Bresha up the palace stairs and across the main hall.

“Where are we going?” I asked as the princess led me down a long hall.

“We’re going to meet the queen,” she said. I licked my lips nervously. In the time I’d spent with the princess, she’d never even once offered to introduce me to the queen. That left me with a sense of inferiority, a feeling that the Tal’mar queen considered herself too superior to allow me in her presence. I was, after all, a half-breed.

“Are you sure we should?” I said breathlessly.

“Of course we should, don’t be silly.”

We passed through a guarded doorway and into the throne room. The queen was there, alone except for the guards at the entrance. We crossed the room and stopped a short distance in front of the throne. Bresha bowed slightly, and I followed her lead.

“Is this her?” the queen said. I glanced at her apprehensively. She looked a lot like Bresha, except that her hair was lighter, almost red. She looked very young to be Bresha’s mother. But then I remembered that Tal’mar didn’t age the same as humans. She may very well have been hundreds of years old.

“This is her, mother,” Bresha said.

The queen rose from the throne and cautiously made her way down the stairs to stand in front of us. “This is the girl who built the flying machine? The girl who brought us a treaty and then exposed the conspiracy of Prince Sheldon?”

“This is the girl, mother.”

“Then this is my granddaughter?”

“Yes, mother.” Bresha smiled slightly -a careful and guarded look.

My jaw went slack. Their words became a buzz as I looked back and forth between them. “I… I don’t understand.” My voice was breathless, my heart drumming in my chest.

“I’m sorry Breeze,” Bresha turned to me and said. “I wanted to tell you sooner.”

I felt my legs giving out beneath me, and the princess guided me over to a sofa. I felt dizzy as I settled onto that delicate fabric. She continued.

“We had to be sure it was really you, and not some sort of deceit. And of course, I was afraid. Not for myself, I mean, but for you. The Tal’mar may have let a child like you live, but not as a member of the royal family. Not the daughter of their princess. But you see, all that has changed now-”

“You’re my mother?”

She nodded, her face apprehensive. “Breeze, please don’t be angry.”

I tried to push myself up, but found I didn’t have the strength. “I should go,” I muttered. “I’m putting you in danger.”

“Nonsense,” said the queen. “One thousand years of nonsense, and it ends today. The war is over, and so is the nonsense.”

Bresha stroked my hair back from my face, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I didn’t know I had been crying. I looked up into her face and saw that she was as well. “I’m proud of you Breeze. You have proven yourself a hundred times over. You are more than human and more than Tal’mar. You will be remembered as this land’s greatest hero. And you are my daughter.”

“My granddaughter,” the Queen added in a proud voice. “And soon the world will know it!”

Robie and the other pilots arrived that afternoon. The queen called for a feast, and she declared the entire week to be a holiday. She said that the land of Tal’mar would celebrate the holiday every year, for all eternity, in gratitude of what I had done. And then she announced to the entire world that I was her granddaughter. She brought me out in front of the whole city, standing hand in hand with her and my mother, and made the declaration to thousands of shocked Tal’mar citizens. And then, as one, they began to cheer.

I felt something that I can’t quite explain. My heart pounded inside my chest, and my emotions ran from fear and exhilaration to pure undiluted joy. I looked out over the city and saw a collage of brilliant smiling faces. Tal’mar faces. Human faces. They stood next to each other, shouting and cheering as one, united by a dream and a belief in something greater for their combined futures. This was something that had never happened before. Tears of joy slid down my cheeks, and I wasn’t the only one.

After the excitement died down, my mother insisted that Tinker and I accompany her back to the palace for the feast. The rest of the pilots joined us, of course.

The Tal’mar were quite excited to spend time talking with Tinker about his inventions. Now that they had a good idea of how the airplanes worked, they wanted to know what else Tinker could build. Naturally, they were working to find ways of building all of these devices without metal. That was one area where humans and Tal’mar would always differ.