And Haplo noted that, though Jarre had no compunction about hurling kitchen utensils, she was careful to keep them clear of the High Froman and august leader of WUPP. She seemed nervous and uneasy around Limbeck, watched him out of the corner of her eye with an odd mixture of frustration and anxiety. In the early days of the revolution, she had been accustomed to smacking Limbeck on both cheeks or tugging playfully, if painfully, at his beard to bring him back to reality. Not any longer. Now she appeared reluctant to come near him. Haplo saw her hands twitch, more than once, during the argument, and guessed that she would have liked nothing better than to give her leader’s side whiskers a good tweak. But her hands always ended up twisting her own skirts instead, or mangling the forks.
“I designed this weapon myself,” said Limbeck proudly. Rummaging under a pile of speeches, he produced it, held it to the flickering light of the glampern.
“I call it a flinger.”
Haplo would have called it a toy. The humans in the Mid Realms would have called it a slingshot. The Patryn said nothing disparaging about it, however, but duly admired it and asked how it worked.
Limbeck demonstrated. “When the Kicksey-winsey made new parts for itself, it used to turn out quite a lot of these things.” He held up a particularly wicked-looking, sharp chunk of metal. “We used to throw them into the helter-melter, but it occurred to me that one of these, flung at the wings of the elves’ dragonships, would tear a hole in the skin. I learned from my own experience that an object cannot travel through the air with holes in its wings.[22] Fill it full of enough holes, and it seems to me logical that the dragonships will not be able to fly.”
Haplo had to admit that it seemed logical to him, too. He regarded the weapon with more respect. “This would do a fair bit of damage to someone’s skin,” he said, picking up the razor-sharp metal chunk gingerly. “Elf skin included.”
“Yes, I thought of that, too,” remarked Limbeck with satisfaction. An ominous clanging came from behind him. Jarre was banging an iron skillet in a threatening manner against the cold stove. Limbeck turned around, stared at her through his spectacles. Jarre dropped the skillet on the floor with a bang that caused the dog to scoot as far back beneath the bed as possible. Head high, Jarre stalked toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Limbeck demanded.
“For a walk,” she said haughtily.
“You’ll need the glampern,” he advised.
“No, I won’t,” she mumbled, one hand wiping her eyes and nose.
“We need you to come with us, Jarre,” Haplo said. “You’re the only one who’s been down in the tunnels.”
“I can’t help you,” she said, her voice choked. She kept her back turned. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know how we got down there or how we got back out. I just went where that man Alfred told me to go.”
“This is important, Jarre,” Haplo said quietly. “It could mean peace. An end to the fighting.”
She glanced at him over one shoulder, through a mass of hair and side whiskers. Then, tight-lipped, she said, “I’ll be back,” and walked out, slamming the door shut behind her.
“I’m sorry for that, Haplo,” said Limbeck, cheeks flushed in anger. “I don’t understand her anymore. In the early days of the revolution, she was the most militant among us.” He took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes. His voice softened. “She was the one who attacked the Kicksey-winsey! Got me arrested and nearly killed.” He smiled wistfully, gazing back into the past with his fuzzy vision. “She was the one who wanted change. Now, when change is here, she... she throws soup pans!”
The concerns of the dwarves are not mine, Haplo reminded himself. Stay out of it. I need them to take me to the machine, that’s all.
“I don’t think she likes the killing,” he said, hoping to mollify Limbeck, end the disruption.
“I don’t like the killing,” Limbeck snapped. He put his spectacles back on.
“But it’s them or us. We didn’t start it. They did.” True enough, Haplo thought, and put the matter aside. After all, what did he care? When Xar came, the chaos, the killing would end. Peace would come to Arianus. Limbeck continued planning the diversion. The dog, after making certain Jarre was gone, came out from under the bed.
Haplo snatched a few hours’ sleep himself, woke to find a contingent of dwarves milling about in the hallway outside the BOILER ROOM. Each dwarf was armed with his or her own flinger and metal chunks, carried in strong canvas bags. Haplo washed his hands and face (which reeked of glampern oil), watched, and listened. Most of the dwarves had become quite adept at using the flingers, to judge from what he saw of their crude target practice taking place in the corridor.
Of course, it was one thing to shoot at a drawing of an elf scrawled on the wall, quite another to shoot at a live elf who is shooting back at you.
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Jarre told the dwarves. She had returned and had, with her characteristic briskness, taken control. “So keep under cover, stay near the doors and entrances to the Liftalofts, and be ready to run if the elves come after you. Our objective is to distract them, keep them busy.”
“Shooting holes in their dragonship should do that!” Lof said, grinning.
“Shooting holes in them would do it better,” added Limbeck, and there was a general cheer.
“Yes, and then they’ll shoot holes in you and where will you be?” Jarre said crossly, casting Limbeck a bitter glance.
The dwarf, not at all perturbed, nodded and smiled, his smile seeming grim and cold, topped by the glittering spectacles.
“Remember this, Fellow Warriors,” he said, “if we manage to bring the ship down, we will have scored a major victory. The elves will no longer be able to moor their dragonships on Drevlin, they will be reluctant to even fly near it. Which means that they may think twice about keeping troops stationed down here. This could be our first step toward driving them off.” The dwarves cheered again.
Haplo left to ascertain that his own ship was safe.
He returned, satisfied. The runes he’d activated not only protected his ship, but also created a certain amount of camouflage, causing it to blend in with objects and shadows around it. Haplo could not make his ship invisible—that was not within the spectrum of probable possibilities and, as such, could not be contrived by his magic. But he could make it extremely difficult to see, and it was. An elf would have to literally walk into it to know it was there, and that in itself was not possible, since the sigla created an energy field around the ship that would repel all attempts to get near it. He returned to find the dwarves marching off to attack the Liftalofts and the elven ship that was moored there, floating in the air, attached to the arms by cables. Haplo, Bane, Limbeck, Jarre, and the dog headed off in the opposite direction, to the tunnels that ran beneath the Factree.
Haplo had traveled this route once before, the last time they’d sneaked into the Factree. He could not have remembered the way, however, and was glad to have a guide. Time and wonders witnessed on other worlds had blurred the wonder of the Kicksey-winsey. His awe returned at the sight of it, however; awe tinged now with a sense of unease and disquiet, as if he were in the presence of a corpse. He remembered the great machine pounding with life: Mectric zingers zapping, whirly-wheels whirling, iron hands smashing and molding, dig claws digging. All still now. All silent.
The tunnels led him past the machine, beneath it, over it, around it, through it. And the thought came to him suddenly that he’d been wrong. The Kicksey-winsey wasn’t a corpse. The machine was not dead.
22
Undoubtedly a reference to a previous adventure, when Limbeck was made to “walk the Steps of Terrel Fen”—a form of execution. Feathered wings are strapped to the arms of the accused and he is pushed off the floating isle of Drevlin into the Maelstrom.