Tinker's War (The Tinkerer's Daughter Book 2) (27 page)

“Well, there is one more thing. We left the camp by wagon, and the refugees aren’t expecting us to come back flying. They might try to shoot us down.”

The three of them exchanged nervous glances. I grinned. “You’re the ones who insisted on coming with me.”

It was two o’clock in the morning when we reached the camp. The refugees didn’t know what to make of us at first, but thankfully they did not try to shoot us out of the air. Instead, they rushed over brandishing swords and firearms as we landed. Their jaws dropped when they realized who we were. I quickly explained all that had happened, and then explained it again when Analyn reached the landing area. When I finished, she was speechless. She stared at me for a while, the gears in her head turning so rapidly I thought smoke might come out of her ears.

At last, she said, “How did this happen? I sent you to meet Tinker and you decided to drive out the Vangars and take back the city instead?”

My smile faded at the mention of Tinker’s name. “It happened rather quickly,” I said. I described the mayor’s betrayal and Analyn’s face went dark. “They took Tinker,” I said. “The Vangars are going to start mining in the mountains, and they took him to help them.”

“But how did they know?” Analyn said. “I thought they were mining on the plains!”

“The mayor told them everything. They know about Blackrock steel, and they know all about Tinker.”

Analyn was understandably furious, and she was rather unhappy that I had let the mayor go. “I doubt he made it far,” I said. “I don’t think he has long to live, anyway.”

“Still, I would’ve liked to look in his eyes when he met the hangman’s noose,” she said.

“I left the sheriff in charge of the city,” I said. “They’re reverse engineering the Vangars’ weapons as fast as they can. By tomorrow we should have a much better understanding of Vangar technology.”

“And then what?” Analyn said. “Will we use their own weapons against them?”

“If we do, we’ll have to make more,” I said. “Three airships won’t turn them away when they come back. We’ll need weapons on the ground, weapons that can knock those balloons out of the sky. We can’t defeat the Vangars unless we take away their air superiority.”

“Is that possible?” she said.

“I don’t know. The first thing you have to decide is if you even want to fight for the city. We don’t have many options, but the ultimate decision must be yours. You
are
the queen.”

“So I am,” she said regretfully. “Though I never wanted it. I must consider this over a cup of tea. Join me, if you will.”

I obediently followed Analyn to the mess tent and we settled down at a table together. Analyn had many questions, of course. She wanted to know how many people remained in the city and how many were able to fight. She wanted to know what resources the Vangars had left behind. After carefully measuring her options, she arrived at the same unfortunate conclusion that I had.

“I must return,” she said at last. “This is our last hope to make a stand against the Vangars. Our people have risen up and found strength they did not know they had. I owe it to them to go back and try… and yet I can’t help but fear we will almost certainly fail.”

“Is that your decision then?” I said. “If it is, I should go back to the city at once and let them know.”

She stared at me, the steam rising from the teapot on the table between us. “Breeze, I don’t know if this is a new beginning for us or if it’s just the end, at last.” She reached across the table to take my hands. I stared into her face. I could see the exhaustion in her eyes, and the reluctance she felt facing this improbable situation. I knew exactly how she felt.

“We must fight,” I agreed, “but if we do so, we’ll need every possible advantage. We don’t have much time. There is one more thing…”

She looked at me sideways. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m going after Tinker,” I said.

“Do you think that’s the wisest course of action? He will be well guarded. You’ll be risking your life, and one of my most valuable assets. We need you now more than ever, Breeze.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’m not a fool.”

“I know that. But I also know how powerful the Vangars are. Also consider this: should you succeed, you will have the Vangars’ full attention. Tinker is valuable to them right now, and by losing him, they will also lose a great deal of time in reaching their ultimate goal.”

“Wasn’t that the plan anyway?” I said. “Originally, we were going to do whatever it took to slow them down, to wear down their defenses and build up our own.”

“Are you trying to tell me this is a good thing?” she said with a sly grin. “You sound more like a politician every day.”

“Don’t say that,” I laughed.

“And what of your team? Will they be joining you on this mad escapade?”

“I hardly think I could get away without them,” I said.

Analyn gently squeezed my hands. “The refugees need rest tonight. We will break camp tomorrow and head for Anora. Be careful, Breeze. Come back to us safely.”

As eager as we all were to be off, it wasn’t safe to fly into unknown territory at night. I told my team to get what rest they could. Robie built a fire at the edge of camp and convinced me to spend the night with him there. The weather was cool but the sky was clear, and I was glad to be outdoors. We had a late meal of fresh bread and stew and then curled up on the ground, wrapped in wool blankets.

“You seem worried,” he said, watching me.

I was staring into the flames, hypnotized by the heat and the dancing colors. “I am,” I said distantly.

“Because of Tinker?”

“No. Not entirely, anyway. I know we can save him. We have to. But what can we do about the Vangars?”

“It sounded to me like you had a good plan. Just like Tinker said before, we’ll slow them down by sabotaging their operations. They may have moved, but that doesn’t change anything does it? Now that we have Anora back, we’re in an even better position to fight them.”

“Do you think so?” I said skeptically.

“Why not?”

I sighed. “Most of the people in Anora are either too young or too old to fight, and hundreds of them are Tal’mar. We may convince them to stay for a while, but eventually they will leave. Their loyalty is to their queen first, and to their own people.”

Robie took a deep breath, his massive chest expanding like a balloon. “I don’t understand people,” he said. “Humans and Tal’mar are so much alike they can’t even see it. All they see are their differences. The color of their skin. Their ears. They fight over the stupidest things.”

“Not everyone is like that,” I said, drawing my gaze from the flames to smile at him. He inched closer, pressing up against me.

“I never cared about those things,” he said.

“Even my Tal’mar ears?” I said teasingly.

He reached out, stroking my face. “I love everything about you.” He bent forward, kissing me, and I succumbed.

I felt a strange completeness as he touched me, as if part of me had always been missing but I didn’t know it until now. I felt the warmth of his body radiating against me and when our lips met, I melted into him. An indescribable tingling feeling washed over me, rolling up and down my body in waves. For a moment, the entire world vanished.

Robie pulled away to look into my eyes, and I smiled.

“Are you laughing at me?” he said.

“No. I was thinking about how fortunate I am. I wonder why I struggled against this for so long. What was I afraid of?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “All of that is the past, and I only care about right now.”

He kissed me again and I fell into him, relishing the tender touch of his body and the warm fire beside us, savoring the cool night air that washed over my skin and the stars shining down from above. It was a beautiful night. No, it was more than beautiful. It was perfect.

Chapter 25

I woke at dawn to the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, or so I thought. After a few moments, it became apparent that the thunder was unusually repetitive. I heard ten explosions and a brief silence, quickly followed by ten more. And then ten more. This went on for nearly half an hour. It woke the whole camp. By the time the sounds faded away, my team had already eaten breakfast and we were ready to leave. Analyn wore a worried expression as she came to see us off.

“The Vangars are mining already,” she said. “How do they move so fast? It’s like they never sleep.”

“They won’t be as fast in the mountains,” I said hopefully. “They can’t possibly have forges built already.”

“Unless they brought some on their ships,” Robie said.

I grimaced, realizing he was probably right. Even the much smaller Tal’mar ships were capable of carrying a smithy. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to learn that the Vangar ships could carry several, or even a much larger foundry for smelting the ore. I suddenly wished I’d taken more time to inspect the dragon ships while we were back in Anora. It might have served us well, knowing exactly how the ships were equipped. I was half-temped to fly back and examine them more closely, but the logical part of my mind knew we didn’t have time.

“Even if they have foundries and forges, they won’t know how to temper the steel correctly until Tinker shows them,” I said. “We have to get him out of there before that happens.”

My voice didn’t sound as hopeful as my words, and my companions wore dark expressions. “Let’s do it then,” Robie said, climbing onto his gyro.

“Follow my lead,” I said. “We’ll get a look at their operation from the air and then find a safe place to land.”

He gave me the thumbs up. Wil and Jenna climbed into their places behind us and within moments, we were airborne. As I had instructed, Robie fell in behind me. We climbed as high as the gyros were able, but with our extra passengers, we couldn’t reach their maximum altitude. That meant we’d be even more visible to the Vangars. I was worried that they might recognize us if we got too close.

Half an hour into our flight, the explosions started up again. I didn’t know what to make of it. I couldn’t imagine what the Vangars were planning that required such a massive excavation. They must have been vaporizing valuable ore with all those explosions. I wondered if they knew what they were doing. Perhaps Tinker had misguided them into doing something foolish. I could only hope.

Two hours after leaving camp, the Vangar fleet came into view. They appeared as a black cloud on the horizon, but I knew exactly what I was looking at. Even so, the Vangars had a few surprises in store for us. I saw no less than thirty ships, all bound together in the air, tethered in such a way that they made one massive vehicle. Heavy chains dangled down from the ships’ bellies with links as thick as a man’s body anchored into the side of a steep-peaked mountain. From the north, it looked like an enormous city hovering in the sky between heaven and earth. The chains were the giant, grasping tentacles of a living thing.

My jaw dropped as I saw this, my mind searching for the reason behind the Vangars’ mysterious actions. It was simply beyond reason. The Vangars had gone insane.

Another series of explosions went off all at once, and I saw the mountain shudder. A massive cliff broke away and went tumbling down the side in a cascade of gigantic boulders. The boulders struck several chains, flexing them back and forth, but stone gave way before steel. The chains whipped right back into place. High in the air overhead, the sky-city creation rocked and swayed like a vessel on a stormy sea.

Dozens of gyroplanes buzzed around this strange vessel, zipping in and out, diving down between the chains below. Many of them had been outfitted with sidecars that allowed them to transport workers back and forth between the mountainside and the flying city. Then I looked up and saw the Vangars and their slaves moving back and forth on the deck that connected the ships together into a unit, just as if they had been walking around the streets of an ordinary city.

I was still absorbing all of this when another series of explosions went off, sending bursts of rock and dirt into the air, and starting up landslides all up and down the mountainside. I heard a jarring crack in the earth below that left my ears ringing. I craned my head around just in time to see a massive chunk of the mountain peak break away from its base.

I completely forgot about staying out of sight as I watched the top of the mountain rise slowly into the air, hoisted up by the buoyancy of the sky-city and the dozens of massive black balloons. A few of the chains actually snapped, but the efficient Vangars were ready. They lowered extra chains to replace the broken ones, and gyros circled in to drag the chains into place. Slave workers on the side of the mountain caught them and frantically attached the new chains to the anchors, adjusting them to the proper tension.

Workers! The Vangars had left people on that mountain to work on it, even as it rose into the air! I could hardly believe my own eyes. I watched all of this breathlessly, drawing my eyes away only when I had to because I had passed beyond view. I circled around repeatedly. I glanced over my shoulder at one point to see Wil’s reaction. His jaw was hanging open. He glanced at me and then tore his gaze away to continue watching the scene, equally in shock.

After all this, I was sure that the Vangars would rest for a while, but I was wrong. As soon as they had secured the massive chunk of stone and earth, the sky-city began maneuvering away from the mountain. I pulled back to a safe distance and continued to circle around, watching and wondering what they might possibly be planning next.

As the sky-city floated away from the mountain, I saw the massive cavity beneath that had opened up like the mouth of a volcano. Several unattached dragon ships moved into place, dropping quickly down to the ground, or as near as they could safely get. They lowered slaves and Vangar warriors down into the cavity, and they went straight to work clearing a landing area. Overhead, the entire massive sky-city began drifting towards the plains.

I flew south along the mountains and located a good place to land about twenty minutes later. As we rolled to a stop, Wil jumped up and started pacing back and forth next to me. I sat in the gyro, staring into the trees ahead, my mind whirling. Robie and Jenna touched down right after us. Judging by the looks on their faces, they were equally astounded by all we had seen. It was Jenna who spoke first: