Inventing a Tinker

Part 10

Jennai waited outside as I strode in through the door of Kodahl's shop. The old man was seated behind the counter, squinting into the innards of a clock. His expression turned stormy when he recognized me.

"Cadmus, what are you—"

"I'm tendering my resignation," I said.

"You what?" Kodahl exclaimed. "Now see here, boy—"

"I wasn't a boy when you hired me on, and I'm less of one now," I said. "I'm twice the clockmaker you are, and I've got a lot more than clockwork in this head of mine. You needn't worry about competition. I don't intend to take such small jobs as these." I waved a hand at the collection of broken and misbehaving clocks scattered around the shop. "I've set my sights higher, and in a year's time, I'll either be one of the richest men in Khesh or a spectacular failure. But I won't be fixing clocks for you any longer."

"Now just a minute, boy. Cadmus," Kodahl said, pushing his chair back with a tortured shriek of wood on wood as he jumped to his feet. "I think you're being a might hasty. You can't just throw away a good job with a promising future."

I frowned. "I'm not." With that, I turned and walked out. The merry jingle of the door's bell was the only goodbye I left.

Jennai took my arm as I came out. We had an unsuspecting world to tame together. We sold schematics for a few simple gadgets to get seed money, then started in on making a true fortune. Steam ship and rifles, lathes, piston engines, and can openers, there was an endless supply of new ideas from the patent office in Eversall Deep, on top of whatever I came up with on my own. We sold them world-wide, and got whatever prices we demanded. The Errol Corporation became the trademark of quality, advanced thinking, and innovation. The jarring new technology was also meant to serve as a beacon to those poor split souls wondering if they were going mad, seeing a different world in their sleep.

There was no more time for petty drudgery. A world filled with my own long-suffering people was out there, most of them not even aware of what it would be like to be truly free.

"It might not happen in our lifetime," I said to Jennai as they left the clock shop behind them. "But I can see it so clearly. We'll beat the kuduks, and we'll do it by out-thinking them, out-maneuvering them, out-lasting them."

"Careful," Jennai said. "All plans go awry when the unexpected happens... and it always does."

"That's what new plans are for," I replied. There was a furnace fire within me. The whole world spread before me, an untapped vein ready to be mined; No force was going to stop me. "Every device has a purpose, and I've discovered mine: to invent a solution to every problem we come across."

Jennai laughed and planted a quick kiss on my cheek. "You're the most adorable monster I've ever unleashed."

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Footsteps outside the door startled Cadmus from his writing. He quickly shut the journal, hoping his ink was dry enough not to smudge. The recollections had become so vivid that when the door opened, for a moment he thought that it was Jennai who entered his workshop.

"The Darksmith finally pulled into port," Madlin said. She was the very image of a young Jennai, right down to the freckles. She had inherited more than just her mother's looks though. Madlin had Jennai's fire, her impishness, her optimism. Cadmus pondered this with a misty eye as his daughter stood waiting for him in the doorway. "You coming or what? I'm pretty sure everyone's expecting you." She had been too long without a mother and had followed the footsteps left to her. Her father's bluntness had rubbed off on her, and she had acquired his eye for machinery as well. The soot and grease stains on her coveralls told Cadmus that she'd been working at the shipyard today, and the dark goggles pushed atop her head meant that she had been welding.

Cadmus took off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose, masking the wiping of a tear with feigned eyestrain. "Yes, of course. I'll be right along."

Madlin shook her head. "Not leaving without you. Orris's orders." She smirked at him; he'd never have believed Orris could "order" her to do anything. Of course, he had already known she wouldn't be put off so easily. They thought too much alike.

He'd been given a daughter to raise and turned her into a tinker instead. Jennai would have stuffed her into a dress for a welcome party, and he felt like he ought to have said something along those lines as well. Madlin owned a dress, Cadmus was fairly certain; she'd stopped growing the last couple years, so it likely fit. But he was in no mood for the argument that would follow any such suggestion, so he left the matter alone.

"You give up on the six-shooter?" he asked instead.

"Finished it two days ago, but you've been busy," Madlin replied. "Made a holster and everything. I was wearing it around town until this morning, when Gerhard called out sick and I took his shift working on the boiler for the Treforge."

"You'll have to show me later," Cadmus replied. He let Madlin's curiosity follow him across the workshop as he tucked the journal away and locked the cabinet. It would be hers to read someday—his story of how her parents met. She would understand, even if it might be awkward hearing of their courting. Madlin was twinborn as well, working at the university in Eversall Deep, stealing lessons from the classrooms as her twin, Rynn, cleaned the floors outside. She was the next generation of the fight to reclaim some of Korr for the humans. Someday his fight would be hers to carry on.

But tonight was a night to welcome an old friend home, one who had spent a good portion of his life finding twinborn and sending them to Cadmus to join the rebellion. He had other recruiters now, men and women to carry on Greuder's work, but the baker had been the first.

"Let's go, then," Cadmus said. He clapped a hand on Madlin's shoulder as he would any colleague. But his evening's writing had made him wistful. He stopped and kissed his daughter on the forehead, in the reddened imprint where her welding goggles had spent the day.

Thanks for reading!

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