Bertronius had hit another wall in his search for Ractor. None of his contacts had led to anything beyond him having to buy liquor for unsavory characters. But there was always Graz Mayhew. Bertronius knew that the curmudgeonly thug had a vested interest in finding Ractor, and although he would not have trusted the man in almost any other circumstance, Mayhew had nothing to lose and much to gain from the rat being found.
Bertronius was glad that McNab was already gone from the lodging house the next morning. He had not heard the spy master come in that night before - this was normal however for the overworked man – and Lem and Nelhoepher were still sleeping off the preceding evening's revelry by the time he had finished his breakfast and left.
Even though it was still early, Dunkler's Tavern was already open, playing host to the same small cast of sad drunks who broke their stupors only to lift their strong spirits to their dry, chapped lips as always. Bertronius scanned the small, grime-coated establishment until his eyes landed upon Mayhew. The man was sitting at a small corner table, leaning over a cloudy glass of amber liquid. Mayhew's face and body bespoke the weariness that comes from too many long days of heavy drinking with little rest, but his eyes were strangely alert and stood out sharply against the backdrop of his haggard form.
"Hullo, boy," Mayhew greeted him gruffly, a sly smile twisting the corners of his lips.
Bertronius nodded at him, trying to hide his disgust at the rather foul aroma hanging about the aging drunkard.
"I got summat fer yeh," Mayhew said before being interrupted by a spasm of hard, wet coughing. He took a sip of his liquor and shuddered before continuing, "Boy came by here a while back – 'bout yer age, he was. Had a very interestin' note with him, he did."
"Did he?" Bertronius asked, trying his best to be impassive, though his interest was piqued.
"Aye. Yeh see, this note said summat 'bout a red-headed spy causin' some trouble. Seems somebody wants me to keep this spy busy, and they're willin' to pay pretty handsome to see that I do it," he said giving Bertronius a hard, serious look.
Bertronius returned Mayhew's gaze, steeling himself against a rising fear that Mayhew might not take kindly to finding out that he was working in the service of the government. "What's this got to do with me, Mayhew?" he asked as calmly as he could.
"Are yeh a spy?" he asked coldly, fixing him again with those eyes that were clearer and more piercing than they had any right to be.
Bertronius took a deep breath and tried to look bored, purposefully paying more attention to a crack in the table that he was picking at than cold, dangerous man across from him. "Suppose that I am. What would the problem with that be? You know as good as anyone what I'm looking for and it has nothing to do with the war."
Mayhew gave Bertronius a long calculating look that chilled the boy to his very being: he knew that this was the gaze of a man completely comfortable with inflicting pain and taking life from those that stood in the way of his interests. After what seemed like an eternity, Mayhew coughed hard and swallowed the last of his drink in a single go. "Yer right, boy, it dunna matter to me. Yer business is yer own, just so long as it dunna get in me way. I dunna have any scruples 'bout takin' his gold, but, seein' as how yeh an’ me got more mutual interests than I got with this Starling fella, I ain't 'bout to work against yeh."
Starling – the name rang a bell. In a sudden flash of insight, Bertronius realized that was the name of the red elf that Lem and Nelhoepher had told him about the previous day, there was no doubt of it. "Did you happen to meet Starling himself?" Bertronius asked pointedly.
"Nah, like I said, I only got the note from some skinny human boy," Mayhew said distractedly, as he signaled to the sallow bartender that he wanted another drink.
"Was there anything else in the note?"
Mayhew scratched his head before responding. "Aye, it said I only had to distract yeh fer the next four days or summat."
"I appreciate you telling me this," Bertronius said genuinely. His nimble mind was tying together the disturbing fact that there was a red elf in Susselfen who wanted to distract him with Eralus' drunken disclosure about rebels coming to the city and the fact that now he needed to be distracted for the next four days. In spite of himself, he kept returning to Lem and Nelhoepher's insistence that there was a double agent, and the strange coincidence that he was now being targeted by an elf known to frequent the Blushing Loaf – the only place Lem and Nelhoepher could have gotten their ideas about a traitor in the first place. He had to find McNab, McNab would know where to go from here.
Bertronius stood to leave, but Mayhew’s calloused, sinewy hand snaked out and wrapped itself around his wrist. It was a tight, firm grip and Bertronius knew he wouldn’t be able to break free. He froze and looked at the old gambler with wide, scared eyes. “Yeh dunna really think yeh can get information like that and just hop out the door, do yeh?”
Bertronius swallowed, his mind trying desperately to find a way out. “What do you want?”
Mayhew smiled that cold, cunning smile again. “How much do yeh have on yeh?”
“Not much.” Bertronius said. It was true, after all, he kept only as much as he needed on him at any given time, which was only prudent considering the large number of pick pockets littering the streets.
Mayhew leaned across the table and fixed him with a wide grin. “Word on the street is yer a vassal, an’ I hear yer kind keep rings an’ such on yer person to prove it should the need arise. There’s a pale line here on yer finger, I notice, an’ I canna help but wonder what used to go there. I think that would be fair enough payment.”
Bertronius looked at the crafty old man for a moment, knowing that if he didn’t hand over his ring he would likely leave Dunkler’s Tavern with at least a broken arm. And, truth be told, the information was worth far more than his ring. He could always commission a new one, after all. He nodded, reached into his coat pocket with his free hand, and handed it over.
Mayhew released his wrist and sat back in the booth. “Pleasure doin’ business with yeh, lad, as always,” he said. Bertronius gave him a curt nod and left the tavern with his mind still reeling and his heart beating fast
The workbench was littered with hand-drawn schematics, plans, and pages of notations written in Semadran in Moshel’s tall, left-slanting handwriting. Bits of metal casing, screws, springs, gears and cogs of various sizes were scattered on top thoughtlessly. The tinker elf finished screwing the final piece of casing onto his newest attempt at a long-distance messenger bird and glanced around for a key to wind it up with. He sifted through the metallic detritus and finally found it in between two stacks of parchment, picked it up and slowly wound the clockwork bird up, hoping that this time, the bird would take flight successfully.
Moshel held the bird in hand, pinning the cold metal wings to its sides and sighed, remembering his last few failed attempts. One bird’s outer casing was too heavy, and it dropped like a stone, futilely flapping its wings in place. On another, one whose casing was lighter, the weatherproofing had seeped onto the gears inside, fixing them in place – when fully wound, the bird exploded, and gears and cogs flew everywhere. Moshel hoped he had gotten it right this time. He was trying a different alloy for the casing, one which was lighter but more durable, but only had enough for a few of the birds, so there was little room for error.
Taking a deep breath, Moshel tossed the bird upward, and watched, laughing with joy and relief, as the bird spread its wings and soared off. Sellior saw the bird dip and bank around the camp, glinting in the morning sun, and yelled in triumph. “Ye got one ta work did ye?” he asked as he walked over to the gray elf.
Moshel grinned, beaming with excitement and pride, and nodded. The pair watched the clockwork bird circle the camp once more and then land, hopping about and cocking its head from side to side in a way that was uncannily reminiscent of a real one.
“Ye want me ta get Ol’ Jelli fer ye? He’ll be pleased as punch ta send a message back ta ta rest o’ ta army,” offered Sellior. Moshel nodded and scooped up the bird, placing it on the table in front of him. Delighted, he watched the bird chirp and twitter, pecking at its metallic wings as if to clean them.
He watched the still-exhausted Jellihondor walk briskly towards him, full of enthusiasm. “Ye done it, eh? Let’s see yer handiwork,” he said, affectionately clapping Moshel on the back. “Tell me how she works, as best ye can,” Jellihondor said, lowering himself to the grass in front of the workbench next to Moshel.
Moshel smiled broadly, grateful that the old elf had such an interest in his clockwork toys and that he had someone to discuss the techniques with – even if Jellihondor could not understand most of what he said. “Well, the actual mechanics of it are quite similar to the smaller short-distance birds you’ve been using to communicate with each other. Remember what I told you about their coordinate systems and weight distributions?” Moshel asked.
Jellihondor gave him a wry look. “I don’ remember, an’ ye know better than anyone else tha’ ‘twould hardly matter if I did. Not tha’ I don’ wish I could unnerstan’ wha’ ye told me or try me hardest ta do so.”
Moshel gave a small laugh and continued. “I suppose that’s true enough. Well, anyway, these birds have the same basic design as those. You set the coordinates the same way, they have a compartment for messages just like the others, and they use the same techniques for flying. So the trick was to find some way to make that design suitable for flight over hundreds of miles and great spans of time. Weather was also a possible problem, so I knew the outer casing had to be adapted. But I found rather difficult to find a way to get enough tension in the bird without it weighing it down, and weatherproofing it seemed to weigh it down even more.”
“Tension?” Jellihondor asked, curiosity piqued.
“Yes, the bird needs a certain amount of tension – that’s where the winding comes in – in order to keep flying,” Moshel explained patiently.
“An’ how do ye know how much tension ta use?”
Moshel looked slightly embarrassed and stroked his closely cropped beard for a moment. With a half-smile, he said, “That’s where the magick comes in, I suppose. You just get a sense of how much, you can just tell when the construction’s going right.”
Jellihondor nodded, and wondered what such magick must feel like to its user1 as he watched the beautifully, elaborately detailed bird do eerily bird-like things. “How do ye get it ta dance an’ hop like tha’?” he asked with wonder.
“That’s just….that’s just what it wants to do, I guess. It’s just how the thing took shape,” Moshel said. Jellihondor did not mind the opacity of the answer, since he as well as anyone knew how difficult it can be to verbally describe magickal processes.
“So, this one’s about ready ta go, then?” Jellihondor asked brightly. Moshel nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “Brilliant! Vathorem, lad, yer good at languages, aren’ ye?” Jellihondor asked loudly, waving the tall, wavy-haired elf over.
“Oh, aye,” Vathorem responded on his way over. “Far better wit’ them than wit’ a sword, seems like.”
“Yer talent, is it jus’ wit’ spoken languages or written, too?” Jellihondor asked.
A very confident look spread across Vathorem’s face. For a while now, he had been planning to discuss his place in the army with Jellihondor, and he knew that, when he was able to work up the nerve, this conversation would fall in his favor. “Written, too.”
Jellihondor raised his eyebrows, intrigued and impressed.2 “Tell me what languages ye can write in, if ye don’ mind.”
Vathorem considered for a moment. “Common, obviously…Athenorkos – several dialects, includin’ a couple o’ archaic ones…Vinkenti, picked it up in Norsa…hmmm…can write fairly well in Ogrish, ‘tween Zartheim an’ our stay in ta Steppes. I can write bits an’ pieces in Inalan, Felin, and Semadran, thanks ta our new friends, as well.”
Moshel looked at him suspiciously. “But, I’ve never spoken Semadran in front of you.”
Vathorem smiled and pointed at the tinker’s notes. “’Twas all about ta gate, too,” he added.
“Show me,” Moshel said, filled with curiosity as he handed the red elf a slip of scrap paper. Vathorem nodded and wrote a line in the odd characters and handed it back to Moshel, still wearing a confident smile. Moshel read the slip of paper and laughed.
“Is it in Semadran? Wha’ does it say?” Jellihondor asked.
“It says ‘Moshel, do you believe me now?’ in very good Semadran,” he replied. He turned to Vathorem and said, “Your penmanship needs work, though.”
Jellihondor regarded Vathorem for a moment, his green eyes peering into Vathorem’s blue ones. “Ye can write in all o’ these, truly?” he asked. Vathorem nodded, and Jellihondor smiled and shook his head slowly and handed the injured elf a folded piece of parchment. “Vathorem, lad, ye are jus’ full o’ surprises. Here’s wha’ I want ye ta do: translate this note inta Norsan an’ send it ta ta Rebels down in ta south. Sveren or Benno should be able ta translate it. An’ after our clockwork genius has whipped up another o’ his amazin’ contraptions, translate it inta Ogrish an’ send it ta Zartheim in ta Steppes. Ta coordinates are listed there fer ye, too.” Jellihondor looked from the Moshel to Vathorem and shook his head again, saying “I’d no idea such talents were under me nose all along.”
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1 According to the eminent magicologist, Dr. Phinneas Flumpert, those using elemental magic have described the experience as suddenly becoming aware of a strong current rushing past, and finding a way to channel the current through their own bodies in order to direct its effects. The use of social graces and glamours has been reported to feel very much like an odd kind of mental dancing. Tinkers, in contrast, describe their magicks as a sort of a slow process of revealing, and some have stated that it’s almost as if their subject uses the tinker to turn itself into what it longs to be.
2 It is well-known that red elves have an great affinity for language, and often pick up spoken languages quicker than most other creatures. However, the ability to learn written forms of language is quite rare – and rarer still is Vathorem’s newly disclosed ability to competently write in languages with so short an introduction to them.
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