“Don’t talk to me! I don’t know how you managed to get your hooks into Dav and Alli, but you won’t mess up my mind!” Bev struggled harder and Dav had to use both arms to restrain her. Commons walking past were averting their eyes, trying to avoid any involvement with this strange Mechanic altercation.
Alli came closer, her voice and face pleading. “Bev, you can trust Mari,” she repeated. “Mari is not like what the Guild says. I’ve known her almost all my life.”
“Trust her? And not trust the Guild? You’re turned inside out, Alli. We have to trust the Guild! The Guild is our only family, remember?”
Something broke inside Mari as those words tore the still-thin skin off a deep wound that had only lately begun to heal. “The Guild stole our families, our mothers and our fathers,” she almost shouted. “They did it to me and I’m sure they did it to you. You never heard from your common family after you went to Mechanics schools, did you? Neither did I, and our oh-so-nice Senior Mechanics told us that’s what commons did. Let me tell you, they lied. Your parents, my parents, tried to stay in touch, and the Guild destroyed every letter and package they sent and destroyed everything we tried to send. And all of you, like me, were too ashamed to admit that hurt and too brainwashed to realize that the Guild was lying to us. Is that who you want us to trust, Mechanic Bev? The Guild that stole our true parents so it could become a false parent that would use us as it saw fit?” She stopped speaking, her heart pounding with pent-up rage now released again. “Go to your true parents. They’ll tell you. They still love you.”
Alli and Bev were staring at Mari, their faces pale with shock. Dav, who Mari suspected had Mechanic parents, seemed both shocked and ashamed. Bev glared at Mari for a long moment before she could speak. “No! You’re lying! That can’t be true!” She suddenly collapsed in Dav’s grip. Dav pulled the pistol from her holster and let her slump to the ground. “It can’t be true,” Bev whispered. “It’s all I have left.”
“What do we do with her?” Alain asked. “We cannot stay here.”
Mari looked to Alli. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
Alli was still apparently stunned. “Hurt her? Stars above, Mari. If what you say is true…” Alli swallowed. “Oh, no.”
Mari knew just how they felt, but she could also feel the looming threat of their pursuers. “Snap out of it, people! I know what this feels like. Believe me. It’s not too late to reconcile with your real families. But we can’t stand around discussing it right now!”
Bev had fallen to a sitting position, her knees up and her face in her hands, sobbing. Mari knelt beside her. “I’m sorry.”
The other Mechanic raised her face enough to look at Mari, her expression angry and torn. “What?”
“I’m sorry. You can come with us, or you can stay. We’ll tie you up so you can say you fought us.”
“And if I want to tell the Guild where you are?” she asked in a strained voice.
Mari stood up, sighing. “Go ahead.”
“What?”
“Go ahead. I’ve hurt you enough.”
The others came forward in a group. “Mari—” Alain began.
“No! We let her go if that’s what she wants.” Mari knew her voice was torn with emotion and the strain of all they had been through recently. “I’ve hurt her enough today and I’m sorry, Mechanic Bev.”
Alli knelt this time. “Bev, please. At least don’t tell the Guild where we are. For Dav and me.”
Bev stood up slowly, wiping her face roughly. “That person, that Mari, she said she was sorry.” Bev glared at Mari. “No one in the Guild has ever apologized to me. Ever.”
Alli hung her head. “Bev was an apprentice in Emdin,” she murmured, as if that explained everything.
Bev took a step to stand close to Mari, staring directly into her eyes. “If you betray me, I swear I’ll kill you. I swore I’d kill the next person who betrayed me. I thought the Guild was all I had left. Will you give me something else?”
Mari nodded, her face solemn, for once feeling no doubt about what to say. “I will if you will let me. You can help me on the biggest and most important repair job ever. You can help me fix this world.”
Bev inhaled deeply, as if she had stopped breathing and only now remembered to do it. “The Guild has barricades on all of the roads to the lower port. They’re checking anyone passing through. They’ve told the city authorities that two mass murderers are trying to escape them, and they’re forcing the city guard to provide assistance.”
“How do we get past that?” Mechanic Dav asked in despairing tones.
“We could head into the mountains,” Mage Asha suggested, her placid voice sounding strange amid all the emotion.
“We?” Bev glared at Asha. “Mages?” Asha gazed back, her expression unchanging.
“They’re different than we’ve been told,” Mechanic Dav told her.
“I’ll take your word for that,” Bev stated in a rush, as if now that she was committed she didn’t want anything to make her doubt that decision. “We can’t go inland, either. The paths into the mountains are also being blocked.”
“How can they occupy so many barricades? How many Mechanics are there on this island?” Mari erupted.
“I told you, they’ve got the city guard helping, and the island militia.” Bev pointed toward the warehouse district. “Did you hear the biggest explosion back there a while ago? I heard Senior Mechanics telling city officials that you did it, that you intended doing the same to schools and hospitals.”
“Schools and hospitals?” Mari knew her revulsion was showing. “That is so sick even to suggest.”
“But it means the commons on Altis want to help capture you!”
“We could change that,” Alain suggested. “If they knew you were actually the daughter—”
“Alain, if I tell the commons of this city that, they’ll try to rise up right now!” Mari whispered angrily. “Just like those commons on the Sun Runner almost did. And all of these Mechanic professional killers will murder them in huge numbers. We can’t start the rebellion here. Even if the commons here won, Altis isn’t big enough or isolated enough for us to build up the power we need to confront the Great Guilds! They’d isolate the island and kill everyone on it!”
Alain thought, then nodded. “You are correct. But it may be necessary to tell the commons in order for us to escape this city. We may have to… trust in their ability to act wisely.”
“You may be right, and sooner or later we will have to do that, but we’re not at that point yet.” Mari paused to think, feeling the stares of six other people on her. Time was working against them. Every moment spent thinking, spent cautiously making their way to safety, was a moment for their enemies to concentrate force against them. “All right, then.” She pulled out her pistol and checked the clip, ignoring the passing commons who were trying not to notice the weapon. Making sure she had plenty of bullets still in the pistol, Mari returned it to its holster. “Here’s what we’ll do. It’s already past midnight, and the city is crawling with people looking for us. If we try to sneak out it’ll take forever and we’ll likely run into barriers anyway.”
“Then how do we get out?” Mechanic Dav asked.
Mari pulled out her Mechanics jacket and put it on. “We’re four Mechanics and three Mages. We’re done sneaking around. We’re going to walk down toward the low port like we own this city, and we’re going to walk right up to whatever barricade they’ve put up across this street, and if anyone tries to stop us we start breaking stuff. If we absolutely need to, we’ll let the common troops know who I am rather than kill them.” She gave her followers a confident look, settling the jacket on her shoulders and trying to ignore the knots in her stomach. “What do you say?”