The ride back was boisterous, especially with Maggie deciding to ride on Halona’s back the whole way. And treat her injuries at the same time. While I appreciated the sentiment, the actual logic of this move was lost on me.
Apparently, she was doing it just because she could. Or because she had simply decided to do so. Cats.
“Really, just hold still so I can finish!” Maggie snapped, crawling around on Halona’s back as she rubbed alcohol and salve on Halona’s cuts, all while Halona trotted along. Halona looked like she wanted to buck to the squirming cat beastkin off her broad equine back, but instead grit her teeth and trotted along.
“I am holding as still as I can.” She pointed out. “And really, they’re just scratches! Half of which came from you when you used me as a launch pad during the fight! They’ll be fine.”
“They won’t.” Maggie replied firmly, rubbing more wounds with alcohol soaked cloth, and placing what looked like wax over the wounds after she did. She had her own little back street medical bag on her belt, and she was bound and determined to use it.
“The crazy cats probably right Halona.” I chuckled as we all moved together in a semi wagon train down the streets to a more civilized and orderly part of the city. “I’ve seen more than a few men and women die from infection of wounds that didn’t seem serious at the moment. On any battlefield, disease can kill more than any enemy force could ever hope. So, it’s best to take it seriously, even when it’s not.”
“As you say, Master.” She sighed, as Maggie wore a triumphant grin and chuckled before going back to climbing around on her broad back, cleaning and treating the various scratches and cuts.
It still looked utterly ridiculous to me, but I wasn’t going to get into that fight with either a cat, a woman, or a woman cat.
To distract Halona and myself from the sight, and to mentally move away from the hell of the Five Points battle we’d just been through, I glanced around for something to focus on. I looked over to Orna, and saw her becoming fast, giggling friends with the mouse family I had met. Seeing her sitting half hunched over while talking with the tiny mouse people on the wagon seat, I found my own curiosity about them rising.
“So, now that we finally have some time to breathe, and survive,” I called over, getting their attention as I maneuvered Butterball over to the side of the wagon, coming abreast alongside them. “Care to answer my original question?”
“What was it Mr. Wild Ranger?” Phillip called out, all childish enthusiasm.
“The one about how this happened to you and your, uh, people, in the first place?” I asked, glancing over the wagons that held Pinkertons, equipment I didn’t really understand, and tiny mouse people, looking almost like a displaced village of country folk.
“It was that damn witch!” Chenya blurted out hotly, her voice coldly furious and filled with pain and venom.
“Chenya! Language!” Mother mouse yelled instantly, reaching over to smack her daughters head.
“A witch?” I asked, my blood going cold.
Ever since the Shattering, magic, especially dark magic popular with male and female witches, had made a bloody and horrific return from the shadows. In the Union, if any witches chose to practice their trade on others, they’d been ruthlessly hunted down by the survivors, or the military, or both, and put-down as soon as they’d been found.
Other countries I’d heard about had their own ways of dealing with them, with some allowing the practice of magic, so long as it stayed away from the darker stuff. Still other nations were happy to bring back drownings and burning at the stake. Even others had either fully embraced them or outright exiled them.
I’d heard all ranges in gossips and campfire stories. As to which were true or fiction or both, I had no idea. All I’d ever gathered was that the dark stuff was addictive, like developing a powerful thirst for alcohol or a hungry need for opium and the like. And that it also attracted the wicked, the cruel, and the power hungry.
I however hadn’t dealt with them much, ever, either during the war or in the Frontier.
Thank God. I thought as I looked around at the others, their own demeanors growing slightly more nervous now.
“She still around?” I asked, nervous myself.
“Only if she followed us from our homeland across the ocean.” Father mouse replied, chuckling. “We can tell you about it if you would like, Wild Ranger, but it’s not a happy story.”
“Few stories in this sad world usually are.” I replied with a shrug. “Though we do strive for them in this country. So, by all means, tell us the story of the witch, the people, and the mice. If you wouldn’t mind. Please.”
He nodded before crawling up to sit on the top part of the back of the bench of the wagon. This put him near shoulder height of Orna, but he was still tiny as hell. However, their voices carried pretty good, even without them shouting, which I found odd, all said and done.
Well, carried well for their size, anyway.
“Two years ago we were living in a small town in Ruthenia. It was a small farming town, with some recently growing merchant shops.” Father mouse explained, looking around at us, and the city around us. “Nothing as fantastically grand, or fantastically brutal, as this place. It was quiet, but growing with new roads opening up for fresh trade.”
“You’re from Ruthenia?” Orna asked, stunned. “That’s a long way to travel to reach here. Even if you have human legs.”
“That it is.” Father mouse, who I belatedly realized I hadn’t gotten a name from as well, nodded with a smile. “Still, there’s really not much to tell. We were in the ending summer work months, preparing for the harvest, and preparing for a town festival, when the witch showed up.”
“Did your people provoke her?” I asked, curious if this was a payback story, or just a wicked story. With witches and villages and magic and the like, it usually only went one of those two ways. Or at least, they did so far as my brother Luke told me once, a long time ago now.
“No.” Father mouse shook his head, his tiny furry face sad and angry. “We didn’t even know she was a witch. She dressed normal, looked and acted and spoke normal. We thought she was just a passing traveler, there to stay a few nights at our towns tiny inn. If we’d known then what she was, what she’d been planning, we’d have killed her on the spot! And been right in the eyes of Man and the eyes of God to do it!”
“So, what did she do then?” Orna asked, riveted on the story now, along with the rest of us. Even Halona and Maggie had quieted down to listen in.
“She waited till the dead of night, when all of us were asleep, and then slipped out and poisoned all our town wells.” He explained, his voice cold and distant as he remembered while he spoke. “Poisoned them not with an actual poison, but with a magical witches potion. The bad kind. She went all over the town, and visited every farm and homestead in the area that she could. By the time she was done, every well within several miles had been visited by her.”
“She dumped a potion in your water supply?” I asked, shuddering at that thought. “All of them?”
“Basically.” Father mouse nodded. “It was a very hot time of summer, and we were all doing very hard work in the sun. So, everyone was going through their water buckets very fast. Her potion also had a time delay, so it wouldn’t affect anyone who took it for up to about six hours or so. By the time the first ones started getting affected, everyone had had multiple cups of water at the very least.”
He looked ready to weep at this part. “The witch took great delight in getting fathers to give it to their sons, mothers to their daughters, and parents to their infants. She loved how we all took her potion and passed it around to everyone. She cackled about it! Even pregnant women had it given to them as well! Infants in their cribs! Whole families from oldest to youngest, to even the unborn. All had it passed around to them.”
“What happened?” I asked, suppressing a shudder at the sheer horror that he was describing. A quiet kind of horror, one that had no snarling monster or evil killer, but rather subtle cruelty and wickedness run rampant.
“We all started transforming.” He shrugged, struggling to appear nonchalant about it. “It was staggered, so some began, and then others, and then others. Children started screaming in terror as they grew tails and fur. Adults started screaming as they began to shrink, or as their faces, ears, noses and the like all began to change. Soon, everyone was running around in utter terror as they transformed, or watched others transform first, and then it started happening to them next. And no one knew why or how. Only that it was happening.”
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I blinked as I tried to imagine that kind of terror. A terror with no obvious cause, only the effects, and the unknown behind it, making it so much worse. That is some kind of hell. I thought quietly, shuddering. And some kind of witch.
“That sounds horrifying.” Orna whispered, looking stunned. Everyone around her actually nodded quietly, their eyes distant as they thought about it.
“It was.” Tanya chimed in from next to Orna, and then shrugged. “Soon enough though, it was over, and nearly all of us were what you see before you. Tiny mice people. Oddly, there was no pain with the transformation, just some bizarre sensations, like your whole body tingling with numbness, only not quite. There was no puff of smoke and then we were different. It was a slow transformation, so we could see and mostly feel every bit of it. But it all took only a matter of minutes for our lives, and bodies to be forever changed.”
“Why though?” Orna asked, still riveted to the story. “Why do something so terrible, for no good reason?”
“Oh she had a reason.” Chenya muttered darkly. “She bragged about it to us once it was over.”
“Seriously?” I asked, blinking at the sheer amount of gall this witch woman had displayed, all apparently just for the hell of it.
“Once it was all over, the witch walked out onto the roof of the inn, to better look down on us, introduced herself, explained what she did, and cackled and gloated about it.” Father mouse blew out an exasperated breath as he recounted this part. “Witches have covens, but they also have some kind of hierarchies and groups of secret societies. To rise in the ranks, witches must demonstrate mastery of their craft. Some other powerful witch had died, and she wanted to take that spot. We were merely her own personal, demonstration, on why she should be promoted.”
“All of which she was happy to explain to us as she gloated over her success.” Mother mouse stated coldly from her spot on the bench with the rest of the family. “She knew we could still talk and think, and that we could still walk upright, and keep enough of our humanity that we wear clothes, and behave like people. Even though now we weren’t. It made it funnier and more unique to her. And more cruel.”
“Damn.” I muttered, stunned at the layers of cruelty and wickedness rolled into this mess.
“Indeed.” Father mouse replied quietly, before chuckling. “The only silver lining at the time was there were some who were immune to her potion. They drank it, but when it activated, they got violently sick and puked up what looked like piles of orange slime. She was furious when she saw that. Saw that some at least were spared. But she laughed again and said it didn’t matter. She got what she wanted, then mockingly wished us all good luck, and left. We never saw her again.”
“Why were some immune?” I asked, fascinated at this point.
“No idea.” Father mouse shrugged helplessly. “The town had swelled with people for the upcoming festival, so it was very random. The witch had called them ‘Elects,’ but she said it like a curse, and didn’t elaborate. The people themselves didn’t seem to know either. Some were adults, some children, but only a few had most or all of their families spared. There weren’t very many immune in general. Though we thank God for them.”
“They helped you, didn’t they?” Orna guessed, looking intrigued in the way only an inventor could when presented with a strange problem and unexplained outcome.
“Yes.” Father mouse nodded. “We knew if we stayed, the cats, the birds, any and every animal would kill us. But also the local government would if they learned what had happened. Either out of fear of us, or fear of the word getting out of the witch. So, those that were immune banned together, and together with us, fled.”
“So you gathered up supplies, which was now pretty easy given the size issues, and then fled to the Union?” I guessed, seeing as it was a pretty common story at this point.
“Yes.” Father mouse nodded. “It was a year long journey, over many countries and landscapes, then an ocean, and then here, at last.”
“Only to wind up in Five Points.” I muttered, shaking my head at how hard these people had had it for the last couple years.
“We’re tough!” Phillip yelled enthusiastically. “We made it to today, and now you’re taking us somewhere better!”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I whispered back with a small smile. At that point, I decided; why not? It wasn’t like I was desperately busy, though at the moment it sure as hell felt like it. I’ll help them find a better home. I can’t change much of their lives, but I can change some of it. Maybe the best parts, God willing. Let’s see.
One thing was clear though: it damn sure couldn’t hurt at this point!
“Glad to be of service.” I remarked to the little family clustered around Orna. Looking at her for a moment, I blinked, and remembered the odd behavior from that bastard Kerby. The whole fight that led to us meeting these mice people was started over something I still didn’t understand, and I decided to remedy that.
The fact that it would get us off the depressing subject of how these people became tiny mice people was just a nice side bonus. That was all.
“Orna, what’s Cog Juice?” I asked, looking at her and refusing to beat around the bush. “And why was that bastard so desperate for you to take some?”
“Oh that’s right, you really don’t know about Coppersmiths, or why Orna is so special.” Maggie chuckled as Orna looked at me and blinked in surprise.
“No I don’t, and I’d like to change that.” I replied with a shrug as we finally left the muddy streets behind us to for the cleaner streets of uptown where the hotel was at. With traffic in this city, it was still going to take a long time, but we were making headway.
Being able to breathe without smelling truly foul things in the road was a true blessing!
“It’s not any grand secret.” Orna shrugged, smiling at me. “Coppersmiths are inventors. A mix of engineers, chemists, electricians, mechanics, dreamers, and realists. We take things, and cobble them together to make new and better things for the common man. But it’s not an easy field, and some people are always looking for the shortcut.”
“And this Cog Juice concoction is one?” I guessed, frowning at where this felt like it was going.
“In part.” Orna shrugged. “The current field of Coppersmithing, which stole the title from actual coppersmiths, works with materials created from the Shattering. It’s what makes us unique from other fields.”
I blinked and stared at her in surprise. The Shattering, for all that it had transformed the world decades ago, was now just a long over event. Or, so I thought.
Sure, the effects like non-humans appearing, magic returning, city-state islands rising from the depths of the oceans and so on, were things that continually had to be dealt with. But the idea that it inspired modern engineering was a surprise. Then I thought back to the battle with the snatch-worms.
Of Lillianne and her weapons, gear, and clothes.
Then more recently, with the great metal floating airships I’d seen just yesterday.
Suddenly it didn’t seem so surprising with the proper context.
“So, you make fantastical devices, both small and large.” I summed up, thinking it through. “But for guilds, or at least guild leaders, it’s all about turning out a reliable profit. So how do you make your coppersmiths turn out reliable products, en mass, all the time?”
“By drugging them with a special concoction.” Maggie answered from behind us, now sitting properly astride Halona, having finished her tender medical ministrations. “One that makes them brilliant but obsessively focused.”
“Oh?” I asked, looking from Maggie to Orna with a raised eyebrow.
“It has some stuffy official name, but it’s just called Cog Juice by everyone else.” Orna replied with a shrug. “And it pretty much does what Maggie said. It makes someone who’s smart, experienced, and decently good at mechanics and engineering into utterly eccentric geniuses. Obsessed with various devices and tools for individual human needs and curiosities.”
She looked down with a sad face. “It becomes addictive because it offers not pleasure like other vices, but knowledge. Knowledge of the physical things you care about and can build, anyway. There are few things more addictive, I think.”
I shuddered as I thought about it. The power of knowledge, and everything that could come with it, there on a silver platter for you to take at your leisure. Or in a glass bottle in this case. Considering Satan himself used the promise of forbidden knowledge in the garden to successfully tempt humans in the first place, Orna was probably right.
There was probably nothing in this world more addictive for a human, than raw, on demand, knowledge.
“So then, what makes you so special?” I asked, looking over at her in curiosity. “Apart from all the obvious?”
Orna blushed and looked away while Maggie and Halona laughed, but I just ignored them and kept waiting for an answer. As I waited, our little wagon train now left the muddy streets behind entirely, with clean and well maintained cobblestones under foot now. Almost back. I thought, feeling suddenly very tired, and very stiff from all the fighting.
I couldn’t wait for a bath, and a bed.
“I’m special, and a threat to Kerby and his ilk, because I don’t need Cog Juice.” Orna explained quietly, still not looking at me, and instead looking straight ahead. “I am a true Coppersmith of the Shattering. I can do on my own what most of them need drugs for.”
I blinked in surprise, and then stared in admiration. A smile tugged at my lips as I did, while I thought through the implications. “How?” Was all I asked.
“My parents were both Coppersmiths, and they were taking lots of Cog Juice when they made me.” Orna answered with a shrug. “And they kept taking it after as well. It did something to me. Changed me in the womb. After I was born, and grew old enough, my parents taught me their trade, but I never needed their drugs to do what they did.”
She looked at me with suddenly glowing blue eyes. “I just do it, as needed. I am free of the guilds true power and control over Coppersmiths. I have no need of them, and if I can do it, then surely others can.”
She shrugged and looked away, her amazing stare leaving me a little breathless. “So they hate me, for I am free, and they live for the control over others.”
“Ohhh, yeah I’m betting that really would boil their blood.” I muttered out loud, chuckling as I thought through the whole mess of implications she described.
Yeah, it would be real bad for these corrupt guild leaders to have Orna even show up and make a minor name for herself at the Exhibition.
Much less achieve grand fame and glory from it.
I had a feeling my work over the next few days before with this damn Exhibition was just getting started.
Damn it. I thought sarcastically to myself. I just had to play the big damn hero. And make a big show out of it as I did it. Me and my damn big mouth!
I chuckled before glancing back to Orna.
“From a free man of the Frontier and the Union to a free woman of the Five Points and the Union, never bow down or back down. Freedom is often its own reward, and we all die and stand before God no matter what. So we might as well give him a great show to watch before we do.” I replied, thinking of what my brother Luke had told me right before I’d left for my meandering journey.
I’d changed the words a bit, but the sentiment remained the same.
Everyone around me stared at me in shock, while Orna just blushed redder than her hair.
“I will.” She whispered back, looking extremely shy, while the tiny mouse girls Tanya and Chenya giggled and hugged her hand and fingers.
“Good,” I replied, as I turned back to the street, as we approached the gates of the Brighton Hotel. “Cause we’re not done, my dear Coppersmith. We’ve got a busy few days ahead of us. You up for it?”
“Yes!” She declared, sitting up straighter with her old fire back in her eyes.
“I believe you are.” I replied after a moment of eyeing her determination. “Well then, let’s get to work.”