Tinkermage (Book 2) (26 page)

“Oh,” she whispered. A joyful weariness pressed down on her neck, her shoulders, and her eyelids. She wanted to whoop and holler, but all she could manage was a weak smile as she stared at the little miracle. The weight of maintaining her flow was becoming too much. But how could she fall asleep now, after having called this magnificent little creature into existence?

And then the weight lifted. The earthen creature swelled briefly as the other consciousness left her mind and fully entered the shell like molten iron filling a mold, removing a great deal of the burden from her strained wellspring. The mound rolled forward on its bottom half and stopped a mere hand-span from Niksabella’s face.

This being, this
elemental
creature slowly blinked, regarded her with intense curiosity, even reaching out to brush its wet nub against her nose.

“You are
beautiful
. Look at you.”

Niksabella wiped tears from her eyes and slowly constricted her wellspring flow to the elemental until only a thin line remained. She fully expected it to collapse in a flat pool of brown muck, but it didn’t. It waited.
For what?

For you to tell it what to do, you simpleton. Of course.

She placed her arms flat on the ground and sent her flickering flame to scoot around the tiny arena, and then she sent a message down that thin wellspring flow, that translucent connection between them. In what she thought was sheer animal glee, her earth elemental whacked at her spit of a flame, lunging back and forth across the battlefield until it caught the light and snuffed it out completely.

And then the presence was gone, leaving the mound to slump over.

Niksabella was bone weary. She almost felt guilty at her success. The conjuring seemed too easy, but it wasn’t as if she had no ability at all. She’d done much more impressive things as a child. Perhaps now, she was relearning what she’d lost.

The Prophetess.

Niksabella rolled over and smiled up at the night sky. A light snow was falling, and the wind made the snowflakes swirl in the air. She thought about what she’d done tonight, or what had been done to her; she wasn’t quite sure.

You conjured an actual being, Nika.
A unique consciousness, a being with thoughts and emotions and devotions. Like Jontuk, only not like him at all. Jontuk was an elemental from some faraway ultraworld, while the one Niksabella had summoned was… what? She wasn’t sure if she could call it a native of Sullenor or not. The raw materials, yes, but whatever animated it seemed to come from elsewhere.

An amazing feat, to be sure. She could tell Termund, but he wouldn’t
truly
understand the implications. Besides, he was out attending to the watch, gone more often than not with the threat of orcs looming. No, there was only one who person who would appreciate the feat. Her brother. This wouldn’t be some boring invention to him. No, this would be something Nik could
relate to, unlike schematics, thaumaturgical models, and process design. This was about feeling, emotional immersion, giving oneself over to the magick.
Living
, he would say.

“We could actually sit and have an
ale
over this one.” The thought made her smile.

By now, it was well past midnight. Another late one for her, which meant another rough morning. If she kept this up, she’d be sleeping on her feet. She gathered her things and wandered back to niner number one and found Termund already curled inside their cocoon.

As she approached, he opened his tired gray eyes and lifted back the flap. It took her all of five seconds to be curled up inside with his arm around her waist, his knees tucked behind hers. She fought sleep briefly and her comfortable smile was replaced by firmed lips. It was a marvelous thing to be this worn out, but at the same time, she was readying herself for a certain fiery-haired gnomestress when next they met.

You and me, Prophetess. We’re going to have ourselves a chat.

Chapter Thirty

Linsey came halfway down the steps and bent low, her expression worried. “Just thought you should know we’re almost there, at least by my reckoning.” The tallish first mate’s golden hair was frayed in haphazard strands from where it had been tied up, and dark circles had taken up permanent residence beneath her eyes.

Stena clenched her jaw to contain a wave of chills. She’d tried to go above more than once, but ended up right back in her cabin at Rose’s and Linsey’s insistence. “Last thing we need, Cap, is for you to pass out and tumble overboard,” Rose had told her. Still, she felt bad for her first mate almost as much as for herself for being unable to perform her captain’s duties.

They’d gone full bore into the enemy ship, relishing in the wide-eyed terror of the opposing crew as
Swinger
’s needle pierced their ship’s hull all the way through. “Hang on!” Stena had shouted just before the aerostats crashed together. Chitin and wood and metal cracked and exploded into the still sky. There was a loud pop and then an ear-shattering sound as the thing inside the crusty shell squealed like an enormous, stuck pig. Stena’s stomach lurched as
Swinger
bore both airships down, down, down in a glorious rush to meet the unforgiving ground. Out of the clouds they plummeted, picking up speed, the wind slapping Stena’s face as her deck pitched nearly vertical.

“To me!” She’d retrieved a rolling mooring pole and clambered down the deck to place her feet against the bulwark. Just in time too, for an ape-like form crawled from a port hole, leaking green gas, and leaped across the tiny space between the ships. Stena caught the thing mid-flight with the tip of her pole, knocking it down into the void.

More creatures appeared over the sides and from those mysterious port holes. Bloodshot eyes glared like orbs of hate. They’d have Stena’s ship if they could. “Come on, Lins!” Stena remembered almost feeling her first mate’s struggle through the airship’s groaning inner works. Port and starboard propellers strained in their braces. Steam engines shook the ship with their clanking internal parts, steam exhaust screaming from ductwork inside the beleaguered frame.

Another beast leaped the divide to cling to the base of
Swinger
’s needle. Stena had been too slow to get that one. She thrusted the pole, but it glanced hard off the thing’s shoulder—the tenacious beast hadn’t budged. Instead it had got hold of her boot around the ankle and pulled, leaving her with one foot on the bulwark. There was nothing to grasp, nothing to keep her from having been tossed into the void.

But then Rose and Crick arrived, shouting obscenities in between battle cries of “Hightower!” and started smashing at the thing with their own mooring poles until it relinquished and fell, unconscious, from the plummeting vessels.

Swinger
’s crew had fought for several more terrifying moments, keeping the remaining beasts at bay until the aerostat got up enough resistance to slide its needle free and right itself like a fat, lumbering beetle in the sky. They had all rushed to
Swinger
’s rail and watched the strange creature-ship tumble through the sky, bits and pieces and bodies floating free until the mess crashed in a dusty cloud of snow.

Even then, reeling from the glorious victory, the crew had rushed to keep their listing aerostat in the sky. The smell of burning wood permeated the air. Rose and Crick dove into the engine compartment with a box full of tools and three skins of water to put out whatever was burning. Linsey held the ship steady at the helm. And Stena remembered standing beneath the balloon frame on a ladder with a bucket of thick, black quicktar with which she was to repair the damage to the air bags. She’d suspected at least three internal bladders were hemorrhaging at least half their floating power, and the other three were potentially damaged as well. They didn’t have much time. One over-heated steam driver and they’d have lost a quarter more lift. Another, and they’d have met the ground.
Hard
.

Hand-over-fist she clung to side of the frame. She put her hand into the ruin of a leaking hole and felt for the inner balloon, found it bulging outward despite the escape of the hot, precious air. She tethered herself to the metal frame, removed her patching tools, and dipped a flat spreader into the bucket of sloodge, pulling out a fat glob of the stuff, held open the hole with a straight rod, and shoved the black blob inside. She spread the gunk around where it stuck fast to the tatters of the hole, forming a tenacious, air-tight patch.

And then on and on she had went, clinging to the crosshatch of ropes like a spider climbing across its web, making her way around the airship and repairing the damage. And then they twisted in a sudden gust of wind. The deck swung up, nearly even with the bladder frame, leaving Stena clinging to the ropes and screaming into the canvas, her injured back parallel to the distant ground below. For a moment, she thought they might actually flip. Every muscle in her body clenched as she’d reckoned her time had come.

But then the ship righted itself. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and went back to work, at one point even resting at the top of the bladder to warm her hands against the bulging surface before crawling back down the other side.

Once on deck, she’d collapsed in a heap, too numb to move, face frozen from the scathing wind. The last thing she remembered was being pulled below deck, wrapped in a warm blanket, heatsticks
stuck beneath the covers with her. Someone had placed a warm, wet cloth across her cheeks and nose, and sleep had lowered on her like a leaden cloud.

She woke occasionally, sluggishly, her mind groping for clues. Like a mother with a sick child, her captain’s mind doted on
Swinger’s
every creak and groan, every ear-popping change of altitude. Logic assured her that she was a captain of the sea and not of the air, so it mattered not how hard she listened; she’d more likely discover a problem well after it had become deadly. Stena argued with herself. A captain was a captain no matter the vessel and no matter the sea.

And a captain always knew how to
hear
her ailing ship.

To her crew’s credit, or possibly her delirious mind,
Swinger
worked her way up from very sick to just moderately sick. Stena sat up for the first time in what felt like a hundred years. A teeth-rattling shiver wracked her body, causing the beverage in her cup to slosh.

“Hover for a few minutes, Lins. I—”

“
Swinger
’s doing fine for now, Captain.” The first mate returned to the deck without awaiting orders.

“Stubborn crew…” Stena muttered, then took a sip of her hot snolt. “Just the way I like ‘em.”

She swung her feet out and winced as she got to her feet. She lifted her tunic to find her midsection wrapped in linen. They’d patched her up while she slept. She wondered how bad the damage was. If the ache was any indication, she’d have more scars to add to her collection.

She found her personal pack stowed away beneath one of the cots and pulled out a change of clothes. Fresh stocking socks and an additional layer of undergarments all around. Gloves this time, and she pulled her hood up, leaving it loose to show that she wasn’t completely ruined by the cold.

On the way to the ladder, she took the heatsticks with her—each with plenty of life remaining—and shoved two of them in her belt, one in the front and one tucked gingerly in the back for good measure, and then went above deck. An unfamiliar sheepishness followed her. The fact that others had been working while she rested didn’t sit well, not at all.

Stena bolstered herself against the gusting winds, fully expecting to be blown backward into the engine housing, but none came. No screaming gales, no thumping blasts, no shaking ship. The only sound to reach her ears was the steady hum of steam drivers and propellers.

She strode to the pilot’s deck, hoping to climb the port-side steps so she could speak with Linsey, but she stopped in her tracks. Against the port rail, Rose, Crick, and Bertrand hammered out dents in one of the wide, steel plates; they no longer wore hoods or gloves or even coats for that matter. They were quite unprotected out here in the… in the…

A warm wind touched her cheeks, reminding her of spring.
It can’t be. Have I been asleep seven months?

Rose stopped her hammering. “Cap, we’ve crossed the Midland Line. No need for all that.”

Already?

On land, and because of the Utenes’ position on the continent, the brunt of winter was turned mostly northward. South of the Midland Line, one could expect a reprieve even in the harshest northern winters. The ocean winds, on the other hand, were a vastly different story, always cold, and that’s what Stena was used to.

She pushed her hood back. “Thanks for the reminder. I’ve been a little under the weather, pardon the expression.”

Lins called out from the pilot’s deck. “Captain on deck!”

Everyone turned and tipped their head or the cap.

She nodded back, putting her leader’s face back on.

“You were up on that frame longer than anyone here could have stood for, Cap,” Rose said. “Didn’t think you’d ever come down.”

Stena nodded again and climbed up to the pilot’s deck, where she could get a good view of the surrounding lands. Linsey reported they had followed the Great Torrid River out of Goad’s Pocket, bearing south to where the river poured into Darkwater Lake, a great body of water that turned into a dangerous swamp festering at the foot of the land of the Giyipcias. Their current position had them coming upon the northwestern shore of the Darkwater. The hillock Willyam had visited was invisible from this perspective, buried somewhere in the embrace of the tall swamp trees.

Beyond all the green lay a short, spiny mountain range that had not been named on any of the maps she’d reviewed back at Hightower. Stena regarded the range with a wary eye, gauging what kind of winds might caper through those peaks and valleys. According to the old documents, anyone approaching Giyipcias from the air was to take a circuitous route, one likely to put them in danger from both habitat and habitants.

It was all she could do not to order
Swinger
around and back to Hightower to tell the precisor general to his face what they’d seen, but that would mean abandoning the mission. More than that, from the looks of the army forming in Goad’s Pocket, Hightower would need all the help they could get.

“How’s the ship?”

“Fine, Cap, aside from being down one starboard propeller. Some steam leaks and burn scars from whatever that stuff was they lobbed at us. Thanks to you, we got back above the clouds and Rose and Crick went to work. They shut off the steam leaks, which pretty much restored power to the ship. One piston nozzle burned up, but they replaced it. Some other odds and ends.”

“Good work, Lins.” She called for Bertrand.

The linguist was even scrawnier without all his winter gear. “Captain?”

“How many pigeons do we have left?”

“None. But we have two snowbirds. Last of the bunch. Hardy enough. They’ll do much better from this distance.”

“Let’s send one off. I want to let Dale know we’ve made it.” The linguist had already gotten off a bird during the fight over Goad’s Pocket, so Dale was sure to already have that report in hand.

Bertrand saluted and climbed back down to the main deck. Stena watched the spectacled gnome disappear below before turning back to the rail to scan the mountains ahead.

“Bertrand has been quite useful, for a linguist that is,” Linsey said, giving a tired chuckle. “Wasn’t much use to get
Swinger
’s feet back under her, but he’s a damned skilled navigator. We’d probably be somewhere over the sea without him.” Linsey winced. “No offense, Captain.”

Stena didn’t mind the revelation. She found she was thankful for Bertrand. “I’ll note it, Lins.”

“If we make it home, you think they’ll keep us in the sky after all this?”

Stena smirked. “Undoubtedly. And we’ll undoubtedly be outnumbered a hundred to one. If you think that was our last air battle, steel yourself. We’ll be spending a lot of time in the sky… until
Swinger
can fly no more.”

Linsey’s face went expressionless. “Understood, Captain.”

“We’ll circle slow, Lins. Maybe spend the next hour or two scouting and moving in. Why don’t you get some rest and let me to take the helm?”

“I’m fine, Captain. First contact with the swamp elves in three hundred years. Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“That’s an order,” Stena said. “Take Rose and Crick with you. I’ll manage.”

Lins nodded and relinquished control of the ship, leaving Stena to ponder their tenuous approach.