Chapter 53.4: Common Ground

It was a strange experience, traversing the Vigil camp and departing out the back end of it, just as she, Minkus, Penny, and Wepp had only six days before. She’d literally only walked this path that one time, having gone into that old ruin-turned-abandoned-lab and not departing until they’d left it all behind the following morning. Yet this second trip was somehow haunting, like retracing her own steps through a far more oft-wandered dream, or maybe nightmare.

Just inside the edge of the hollow run by the Metamagicals krewe, Jinkke could already hear Penny at work. If she hadn’t known precisely where the enclave with all their leftover equipment had been, the stream of metallic clangs and punctuating curses would certainly have given it away.

Jinkke rubbed at her eyes, wiping away the last visible vestiges of her renewed grief. Sniffing back a sob she felt coming on, she hoisted her brother’s pack to her shoulder, pressed past a small overgrowth of mulberry that burst from a ruined wall, and rounded the corner into the dirty work area. Across the cavern, Penny rifled through a collection of objects on the stonework table that sat against the rear wall. She turned to a sheet of parchment tacked to an upright wooden board beside it and swore, staring hard while tapping a pencil against her head.

Jinkke strode in, adopting a tone of condescending provocation. “You’ve only begun tinkering, and already you find yourself in a state of befuddlement?”

Across the space, Penny groaned at the comment, but even that wasn’t enough to pull her from whatever she was inspecting. Flashing glances between the sketch and her available parts, the human continued working out her problem. It didn’t stop her from rebuffing, though. “Yeah, yeah, you’re so funny, Smalls. For your information, it’s not befuddlement.” The word dripped with mock scorn. “It’s frustration. I left a whole, damn pile of tools here, and the thing I need most right now is the only thing that’s clearly missing.”

Jinkke crossed the space, feeling an itch between her shoulder blades. The four of them had used the space for only a single night, so how did it feel at once so hauntingly familiar and chillingly alien, when neither should have been the case? The question was based more in emotion than reason, of course. She knew that. The location was one she’d only ever experienced with her brother, so logically, it was triggering remembrances of him. And it was, in fact. Each step she took, Jinkke could see him more clearly than anyone else who’d been there. She saw him assisting them at the worktable, exercising his magic outside the doorway, marveling at their successful tests, and leaping in the way of a charging norn to save a device that, in the end, hadn’t been able to save him in return.

She could cogitate that all day, though. It did nothing to resolve the angst that space dredged up in her heart.

Jinkke shook her thoughts free and refocused on the purpose of her coming here. She forced a sort of wry mischief back into her voice as she approached Penny at the table. “How did you manage to misplace a tool without even being present?”

“I didn’t,” Penny replied, still staring at her equipment. “I left everything right here. Someone took it.”

Jinkke scanned the tabletop. Penny hadn’t exactly organized the gear they’d left there, but most of it was in view: the remaining innards of her smartpack, the torch and fuel tank, a small sheet of already cut steel, random hardware, wrenches, ratchets, t-squares, and Penny’s pistol in pieces before it all.

That last one wasn’t Penny’s preferred weapon, the one she’d carried with her since their initial meeting in the Shiverpeaks. That gun had its unique, forward-rotating chambers for loading rounds, and for whatever reason, the woman cherished it. The weapon laid out on the table was the other pistol, the simpler one with the wood-wrapped barrel that she’d purchased in Bloodtide to replace a weapon she’d lost.

Returning her mind to the tool that Penny was so perturbed at the loss of, Jinkke counted the remaining items, comparing it against a mental log of what they’d first come to this camp in possession of. “What is it?” she asked.

Penny sneered. “My micrometer caliper. We didn’t bring one from your lab because we had mine, and now we don’t have that, which leaves me in a bind here.”

Sure enough, upon mention of the tool, Jinkke reached it in her mental inventory. She knew exactly what the woman was talking about, and it was nowhere to be seen.

What she didn’t know was what Penny needed it for. Before she could ask, though, the woman answered, pointing down at the separated barrel, grip, trigger, and firing mechanisms of the gun strewn out on the table. “The sights on that thing are trash. The number of times it cost me a shot the other day, I should…” She froze, words trailing off as she suddenly worked to navigate a corner she’d spoken herself into.

There was nothing for the trouble, though. Jinkke knew just as well as she did what Penny was about to say. Penny must have intuited it. She all but whispered, “I should be dead.” Jinkke had no doubt whose face flashed through both their minds.

Jinkke shook her head before the sting in her throat could become tears again. She scanned Penny’s sketched schematics. “You have a sizable amount of preparation work here for something as simple as a recalibration.”

“Have you ever recalibrated gun sights?” Penny asked.

“No,” Jinkke admitted. “Until this awful adventure, I had never even held a firearm. But I have operated, and even—” She cut off, losing her place to a sudden coughing fit, but with effort she caught herself, drawing a deep breath. “I’ve crafted my fair share of micro-measurement equipment.”

“Crafted?” Penny questioned, finally turning to her.

Before anything more could leave her lips, however, the woman’s gaze fell on the ultramagnet still gripped tightly in Jinkke’s hand and traced up her arm to the leather bag slung over her shoulder. Some blend of anger and revulsion shot across Penny’s face and was gone, and she shifted her attention back to the gear strewn across the tabletop.

For a moment, Jinkke considered addressing the subject then and there, discussing the bag’s contents and handing it back to the woman, but something in her whispered the folly of that decision. Instead, with all the subtlety she could, Jinkke lowered both Minkus’ pack and his magnet to the ground on the far side of the table, ensuring both were out of Penny’s line of sight.

From the corner of her eye, the human watched the whole thing but said nothing, poorly pretending her entire attention was on the array of equipment on the stonework table. Even if a viable opportunity to discuss that matter ever presented itself, something told Jinkke it still wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation.

“So, what do you mean you crafted measurement tools?” Penny asked, returning to a subject she was interested in engaging.

Jinkke breathed deeply, working herself up to a grin. “Unless I’m mistaken, the generally accepted definition of crafting is the creation or manufacture of an object or tool from other component materials, for a specific purpose, and with heightened skill and attention to detail. Is it the same among humans?”

Penny straightened and cast a long, cold glance down at the asura. Retaining her snide smirk, though, Jinkke only met her eyes, waiting for a response.

Putting a hand to her temple, Penny eventually agreed. “Yeah, we use the same definition. Funny enough, I think we define smart-ass the same way too.”

Jinkke felt a smile touch her face then, a genuine one. It felt good. Honestly, every time she’d found a laugh or smile in the last few days, it had felt wonderful, and most of those had been in the company of the human.

“Actually,” Jinkke said, stepping closer to Penny’s side, “That turn of phrase is a particularly bookah euphemism. Historians believe that we carried no culturally negative opinions on the intelligence of equus asinus prior to our interaction with humans.”

“Oh gods,” Penny sighed, burying her face in her hands. “I’ll kick you out of here. Don’t think I won’t.”

Jinkke found herself smiling only more broadly. “Does the torch still have sufficient fuel?”

“Depends,” Penny said, glancing askance at Jinkke. “It won’t be doing any large-scale cuts, but it’ll do a small job like this. I don’t think we’ll get many retries, though.”

We. Without saying so, Penny had accepted her help.

Penny pressed open palms on the table, low for a human, and leaned her weight on straightened arms. “Now, do you care to explain crafting again, with less equus asinus this time?”

Jinkke let herself grin some more. Somehow, exchanging jabs with this human felt like being near her brother. It wasn’t the activity itself, of course, as she’d seldom brought herself to snipe him this way. The similarity of the experience was in the levity that followed each barb, the odd, ornery joy that accompanied their exchanges. Despite the woman’s annoyance, which was often genuine, Jinkke got the sense that witted scuffles stirred Penny’s intellect—an intellect certainly greater than that of the average human. Really, when it came right down to it, Penny’s was an intellect greater than that of Jinkke’s brother, not merely similar to it. The banter was evidence of it; it made them both feel more like equals. It was different than the way Minkus had been Penny’s equal, of course, but it felt right, and it made her think of him.

Dropping the repartee, Jinkke did explain what she meant, how the crafting of tools was an essential schooling step for many in the asuran colleges. There were krewes throughout the Tarnished Coast that specialized in fabricating any and every tool known to asurakind, and most other professional krewes leveraged their specialized excellence instead of reinventing the energy relay. The colleges, though, still had faculty that stressed the importance of independence in study, down to the ability to fabricate your own most essential equipment when necessary. Vaff was one such instructor. Particularly in dealing with transmaterialization magitechnology, he had been adamant that micro-measurement was beyond essential: there were so many tiny specifications necessary to relay matter through dimensions and back again, that being without the proper tooling could prove catastrophic. He’d taught Jinkke and her krewemates from day one what it took to craft their own tools for measuring length, mass, energy expenditure, and magical frequencies, down to the smallest degrees known. That, of course, included micrometer calipers.

After a brief assessment of what she and Penny had, and what would be needed, Jinkke presented Penny with the plan for creating her needed tooling. And the two engineers set to the work.