Rebel Heart

  ENGINES OF LIBERTY

  REBEL HEART

  Published 2014 by DreadPennies USA, via the CreateSpace platform.

  Engines of Liberty: Rebel Heart. Copyright 2014 © by Graham Bradley. All rights reserved.

  This entire novel was written by one dude who mostly crouched over his laptop in the sleeper berth of a big International ProStar Eagle+ semi-truck, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it could someday make him eleventy jillion dollars. The dream lives on. No part of this publication, be it the text or illustrations, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, ranging from carrier pigeon to telepathic emission, and maybe even more than that, like digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, tattooing, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site, without my expressed permission, most likely in writing, unless you’re just quoting it for a review or an article or something, in which case by all means, spread the word. Basically all I ask is that you don’t steal this book, distribute it for free, or for profit for yourself or something, ‘cause that’s not cool. Even if I were an eleventy-jillionaire, the principle stands. And it’s not like I wouldn’t spot you five bucks for some tacos in that situation anyhow, you know? Thanks, go Colts.

  Cover illustration by Carter Reid (wwwthezombienation.com)

  Interior illustrations by Graham Bradley

  ISBN: 978-0692205303

  Got inquiries? My Twitter handle is @GrahamBeRad

  As of 1 January 2015, this book is not registered with the Library of Congress. I reserve the right to change that as soon as I have the resources, and/or feel like doing so.

  Printed in the good old United States of America.

  REBEL HEART

  Engines of Liberty, Book 1

  . Graham Bradley .

  DreadPennies USA

  For Schaara, who let me narrate some pretty bad writing during our courtship, and still decided to marry me.

  “The time is now near at hand, which must probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves . . . whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.”

  -General George Washington

  26 August, 1776

  CHAPTER 1

  Summer waned, but the late afternoon heat still slickened Calvin’s forehead with gritty sweat. The pile of freshly sheered wool before him resisted his attempts to clean it, and a dull ache had built up in his back. His hands were numb, waterlogged from working all day, and yet the load never seemed to shrink. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the barn, where Mother and Father enjoyed the shade as they sheared even more wool off the flock. Calvin sighed, and hung his head.

  Last year he had built a machine to speed things up—a sort of gin that would soak, scrub and work the wool until most of the oil and dirt were out of it, all with the crank of a single handle—but shortly after he’d gotten it working, the local mages had come by and cursed it with their wands. The contraption fell to pieces on the spot, its component parts refusing to connect ever again. They laughed as they walked away, indifferent to Calvin’s plight.

  When Father returned home later that day, Calvin complained about what they’d done. As usual, Father only capitulated to what the mages wanted. “You’re lucky they didn’t fine us! You shouldn’t build things, Cal,” he’d said in hushed tones.

  “Why not?”

  “Machines require special permits. There’s a lot of paperwork and it’s expensive.”

  “But why? It doesn’t have to be.”

  “They’re just dangerous, you understand?”

  “No.”

  Father threw his hands up. “Look, things are a certain way for a reason. We can do it by hand without causing any trouble, so that’s how you’ll do it. No more questions!”

  Every time Calvin asked why things had to be this way, that was usually the answer.

  He resumed his work, wringing out a clump of wool and setting it in the clean pile to be dried. This year’s yield was higher than last year’s, and the Adlers were sure to fetch a higher price per measure; the material was always in demand, because the mages preferred it for their flying carpets and traveling cloaks.

  Even if that fact drove the price up, Calvin didn’t get why his family sold their wares to the mages. The lousy Brits always found a way to cut the final price by half. That rankled Calvin further: it meant he was working twice as hard as he had to for what they’d get paid.

  Criminal. That’s what it was. But when you didn’t have magic, how to did you stand up to someone who did?

  Mother and Father were thrilled at what higher sales meant for their prospects; they could perhaps pay off the flock and build their savings. Calvin didn’t bother telling them they’d have been done two seasons ago if they’d just use some real equipment. His complaints would only fall on deaf ears. Scraping handfuls of wet, dirty wool against a washboard, Calvin longed for his machine, and seethed at the mages who had destroyed it. The echoes of their laughter still taunted him.

  “Permits,” he spat.

  Using a thin rag wrapped around the back of his wrist, Calvin wiped his brow for the thousandth time. It was thoroughly soaked from the day’s effort and now wholly ineffectual. He stood up and rested his back for a minute, craning his neck to survey the town in all its simple glory—log cabins and ramshackle farmhouses spotted the landscape. Thin wisps of smoke trailed up from cooking fires as housewives got supper underway. The people toiled, content for the most part, engulfed in their work. Overhead, a conspiracy of ravens swam lazily into the trees.

  Calvin envied them, envied their power to spread their wings and just leave a place if they didn’t like it. Nobody held them back, made them stay in the same spot, scrubbing dirty old sheep fibers until their fingernails stung, smiling the whole time like they enjoyed what they did.

  Down the main road a trio of mages rounded the corner, their long red cloaks swaying behind them. Calvin froze, his eyes narrowing almost by reflex. The two older mages in front—Winston Fitznottingham and Hammond Birtwistle—had been tormenting the residents of Baltimore for most of his life. Calvin didn’t know the third mage, who didn’t look a day over fourteen years old, yet still wore the robes of a full officer. He walked behind the others with a profound kind of sulk that Calvin saw whenever he looked in the mirror—even when he was trying to hide it.

  What bloody reason did a mage have to sulk?

  Fitznottingham and Birtwistle were showing the new guy around town. The two elder mages drank their usual pungent ale from porcelain flagons, and when they’d drained the last of their cups, they used their wands to transfigure them into coins. These they placed in their pockets, careful to make sure a handful of the villagers were watching—in particular a young girl with pigtails staring up at them in wide-eyed wonder, despite her parents’ pleas to keep walking.

  “Bet that’d be nice to do, yeah?” Fitznottingham sneered at the girl, flipping the coin over in his hands. She nodded, eyes bright. Calvin saw fear on her father’s face, even at this distance.

  “Well, keep dreaming!” Fitz snapped. He flicked his wand at the girl’s bare feet. Vines snaked up out of the ground and wrapped

  tightly around her ankles, holding her in place. The girl’s eyes went from wonder to horror, and an awful shriek escaped her throat as she kicked against the taut vines. Her mother begged her to be quiet and hold still so her father could work the vines off of her thrashing feet, but the girl would not endure reason. Still, the spell was ultimately harmless, if a little damaging to the girl’s confidence.

  Fitz and Birty strolled onward, chortling at their own wit.

  Oh, what Calvin would do t
o them if he could get away with it. Sometimes he felt like people were right at the edge of their tolerance, and all they needed was the right push to fight back.

  It wasn’t completely unheard of; he’d seen it happen only once, a long time ago in Boston.

  Calvin recalled the trip he’d taken with his father. They’d left Baltimore and led a horse-drawn wagon all the way up to Massachusetts, where Father knew of a captain who would deliver their wool to a wholesaler in Nouveau France, for a small commission. Their meager stock from that season had filled only a small part of the deck on the captain’s ship; the rest of it was dried tea leaves in strong crates secured with a special kind of iron.

  “Frosted iron,” the captain whispered to Father. “So as it can’t be magicked away by the mages, you see. It’s a special product from Ohio. Your load’s safe on this ship, Mr. Adler.”

  Father was impressed. “And all this tea?”

  The captain told how he and a handful of his friends had planted the valuable crop many years prior, tended to it themselves, harvested the leaves and dried them with painstaking care. It would catch a king’s ransom on the open market, compared to what the crew normally sold on their voyages.

  Father and the captain shook hands and parted ways. Yet it would seem that not all of the captain’s commercial associates had been so discreet that year. After Calvin and Father had gotten off the ship, a trio of mages showed up, wands in hand, and matching sneers on their faces.

  At the time, Calvin hadn’t understood what was happening. The mages demanded to know the captain’s intent for the tea. He and his crew bristled at the question. Some of them quietly grabbed nearby instruments off the deck, but they weren’t holding them the way they held tools. The captain stated his business, that they meant to sell their haul, and the mage casually said he’d have to confiscate the load.

  “It just wouldn’t be fair to the other colonists, who don’t have any tea to sell,” the mage had said, signaling for his companions to seize every crate of product. Calvin scratched his head at this; if the captain and his men had done all the work, why shouldn’t they sell it?

  Apparently the captain agreed with this sentiment. What happened next was burned into Calvin’s memory sure as a branding iron marked livestock.

  Some of the crewmen were still loading crates of tea leaves onto the deck of the boat. Half a dozen crates sat on a platform mounted to the dock, all rigged up with ropes and pulleys so it could swing out over the water. While the platform hung between the dock and the boat, the captain uttered a word in what sounded like an Indian language. One of the crewmembers, a bronze-skinned man with pitch-black hair shaved in an extreme pattern, drew a tomahawk from behind his belt, spun around and hurled it with stunning accuracy at the rigging. The tomahawk’s blade bit into the ropes, sliced them clean through, and unlaced the complicated weave that allowed the platform to move. Six crates plunged into the salty water below, instantly ruined. To save the falling crates, the mages uttered summoning spells in the Old Saxon tongue, but the anti-magical iron did its job.

  Calvin was pretty sure a fight had broken out after that, but he didn’t get to see it. Father clapped a hand over Calvin’s eyes and quickly whisked him away, telling him they were to return to Baltimore immediately.

  Even now, Father refused to let Calvin speak of that day, and all of his questions since then had been met with a sharp command to put it out of his mind. Calvin had never forgotten it, though. After years of seeing Fitz and Birty squeeze coins out of the Baltimore residents, Calvin eventually understood why the captain had destroyed his load.

  If he couldn’t keep what was his, the mages sure as daylight weren’t going to get it.

  He kept that in mind as Fitznottingham, Birtwistle and their new charge strolled up to the Tanner house across the way, eyeing the wares in the front yard. Mr. and Mrs. Tanner were metal smiths by trade, and they guaranteed every tool they sold. For anyone else it would have been a risky business model, but Calvin knew the Tanners to be good people who made good instruments. At the moment there were three other men in the yard, talking with Mr. Tanner next to a row of newly made shovels.

  “Right then, Tanner!” said Birtwistle, his British accent even more annoying through his drunken slur. “It’s at time of the week again!”

  Mr. Tanner went pale. His three guests exchanged a glance, then looked back and forth between Mr. Tanner and the mages.

  “But, um, Mr. Birtwistle, it’s only been five days, and—” Mr. Tanner began.

  “They always get like this,” Fitznottingham muttered to the new guy. “Trick is, you don’t give ‘em an inch. Watch old Birty here, he knows what’s what.”

  “It’s been two days since’a weekend, Tanner. ‘At means it’s a new week. Cough ‘em up then, we ent got all day!” Birtwistle made a show of rubbing his thumb against his index finger. In his other hand he held his wand at his side.

  Calvin’s knuckles turned white around the wool in his hand. He could see it play out in his head now: Birtwistle would go about collecting like this two or three more times over the next couple of months, then make it the norm. Soon he’d be collecting twice a week. Then thrice. Then daily, and not just from Tanner. Everyone on the street would pay that way. Sure, the daily amount would be lower than the monthly amount, but not when you added it all up.

  Calvin would protest to Father. Father wouldn’t listen. Mother would go along with Father. Things would either stay the same or get worse. That was how it always went. Calvin hated how everyone just let it happen.

  Tanner blanched and fumbled for an excuse while his customers backed away. Mrs. Tanner appeared in the doorway, face equally aghast. She muttered something to her husband about not having enough money yet from this week’s business. Birtwistle clicked his tongue in disapproval, and the tip of his wand flicked nervously, like it was anxious to cast a spell.

  Calvin found himself moving before he could give it a second thought. Mother and Father weren’t right there to stop him, so. . .

  He dropped the wool. In one hand he grabbed the handle of the sluice bucket, and with the other he snatched up a wooden rake that had been leaning against the wash bin. Hoisting the sluice bucket onto one shoulder, Calvin crossed the road in half a dozen steps and, holding his breath against the rapid-fire beat of his heart, called out to Mr. Tanner.

  “Mr. Tanner! You still need me to water your grass?”

  Fitznottingham flinched, not having heard Calvin approach from behind. The man’s eyes were red and watery, refusing to focus the way a sober person’s would. He was the perfect distance away.

  Calvin pretended to trip. The bucket of disgusting water launched into the air and drenched Fitznottingham from head to waist, marring his fine robes with the grit and grease of several dozen sheep’s worth of wool.

  “You pikey little pillock!” Fitz shrieked.

  “Oh! I’m sorry, Mr. Fitznottingham!” Calvin exclaimed. He’d hung the rake over his shoulder when he’d “tripped.” Gripping it tight, he spun around to face Fitz, allowing the end of the rake to catch a surprised Birtwistle hard on the cheek. The latter staggered back a step and immediately cupped a hand to his face.

  If they hadn’t been drunk, Calvin wouldn’t have gotten within ten steps of them.

  The third mage, the new one, jumped back wordlessly and avoided the whole mess. As Birty nursed his cheek, Fitz swore and lazily waved his wand, vanishing the water out of his clothing. He rose to his full height and leered down at Calvin.

  “What then? The nerve of you, duffer trash!”

  Calvin glared at the mage, rooted in place by a flaming batch of courage and a tiny garnish of fear. Had he really just done that?

  “I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Fitznottingham! I keep my head low when you’re about, as I should, and on account of payin’ my respects I didn’t quite keen to your proximity!” He rubbed a fair amount of his duffer accent on the words to sell the act.

  “Why I never!” Fitz spat out a disgust
ing stream of blackened spittle. Some of the water had gotten in his mouth, then. “That was intentional!”

  Mrs. Tanner looked dumbfounded, standing there in slack-jawed disbelief. Her three customers fixed Calvin with nearly identical looks of curiosity, but said nothing. It was Mr. Tanner who ran to Calvin’s aide.

  “Oh no, Mr. Fitznottingham! I saw the whole thing, the Adler boy dumps his bucket out in our yard to water the grass for us . . . he tripped! Don’t be angry with him, it was an accident!”

  Fitz only spared Mr. Tanner the briefest of glances before jabbing Calvin in the ribs with his wand. “Accident or not, you’re not paying proper heed to your betters!”

  Calvin fought to keep his eyes from narrowing, fought to hold back the rage that boiled up inside him. As much as he wanted to tell Fitz to kindly go throw himself off a bridge, he held his tongue—if nothing else, Mr. Tanner had just put himself at great risk for Calvin. He wavered, mind racing for a way to shield the man from his actions.

  “Again, terribly sorry, sir,” Calvin managed. “Mr. Tanner’s right of course, ‘bout the grass and all. I was being clumsy and I dropped it on you . . . and poor Mr. Birtwistle, well, he’s got a good strong jaw an’ such, really it’s the rake that got the worse end of the exchange . . .”

  At the sound of his name, Birty grunted and clamored to his feet. “Do you think I’m stupid, you munter?”

  I’d really love to answer that question. “Never, m’lord! You’re a mage, after all! The rest of us is just duffers, you see? Myself, and the Tanners, and their three guests, and my parents across the road, and then there’s the Parry family next door, and Mr. Parry wrestles down at the pub twice a week for prize money, he’s on a win streak going two months if it’s a week . . . let’s see, there’s also the Martins, who push their handcarts all the live-long day, moving wares for us simple folk, and blast me if those carts don’t get heavy ‘round high noon, but those Martin boys just keep pushing. Of course, that’s all we duffers do, is push and pull and lift and work with our hands while the sun’s up, on account ‘a we got no magic. Builds the body, I guess. If we had minds half as built as our shoulders, why, we wouldn’t need you fine lords, now would we?” Calvin bit his lip for added effect. “So no, m’Lord Birtwistle, I’d never think you were stupid. Not a finer mage in Baltimore! Cept you, Lord Fitz. Call it even, then.”