“Could the accident have been an illusion?’ Alain asked.
“An illusion? Oh, you mean a staged accident? No. I was in the cabin of that locomotive, and the driver of that train was scared witless that we’d go over the edge. He would’ve had to be part of a staged accident, and I’m positive he was just as shocked and frightened as I was.”
Alain nodded. “Then a Mechanic thing, but not controlled by your Guild? There are Dark Mechanics?”
Mari grimaced. The Mage had quickly reached the same possible conclusion she had, and she couldn’t discuss it with him. “No comment. I can’t say a word on that subject.”
“I do not understand.”
“I can’t say anything on that subject. By order of my Guild.”
“Ah.” Alain didn’t seem to find arbitrary orders from a Guild anything remarkable. He looked out over the water, where sea gulls were swooping down to pick at the contents of a passing garbage scow. “What if I imagine a world illusion that includes a creature such as Mechanics use? Like your locomotive, but a creature which could cause the destruction we have seen? What would it be like?”
Mari smiled at him, amused and impressed that Alain had quickly figured out how to work around the restriction on her. “Something that could generate a lot of power. Hydraulics? No. That would leak fluid sooner or later. We would have seen the stains.”
“Fluid?”
“Sort of, uh, blood for the hydraulic machinery.”
“I see. Trolls and dragons also bleed, though it is not actually blood.”
“That’s…interesting.” Mari frowned, looking down at the low swells lapping against the quay. “Anyway, not hydraulics. That leaves steam. A steam engine of some kind. With something to multiply the force. A steam engine would need the boiler, the fuel, water, and pipes. And, unlike a dragon, a steam engine would hiss. Put it on the water and it’s mobile, but also confined to the water.” She shook her head. “There’s one big problem with that theory. Keeping it hidden. It wouldn’t need a ship, but you couldn’t fit one in a boat.”
Alain pointed. “What about a large boat such as that?”
She studied the barge that Alain had indicated. Even empty, the barge sat fairly low in the water, yet she knew barges had shallow drafts since they were designed to navigate rivers. That and its blunt ends and almost vertical sides would let a barge come close to shore from any angle, and a large wooden structure for protecting cargo covered most of the deck area. “Yeah. That big enclosed area. You could put a steam engine and all its stuff in there. It would look like just a typical barge.”
“There are many barges in Dorcastle now. I have heard the sailors talking about it. Because cargoes are not coming in or going out of the harbor, the barges which come downstream have nothing to take upstream. They just wait at the increasingly crowded barge docks.”
“Which are near the warehouses, right?”
“I believe so. Will you tell your Guild what you have learned?”
She made an exasperated noise. “We haven’t learned anything! We’ve made what I think are some excellent guesses, because we looked at what was going on before we made up our minds what was causing it. But that’s not going to impress my Guild leaders.”
“If you tell them what you have learned about dragons—”
Mari put her hands over her mouth, trying to control her laughter. “Oh, right. That’ll work. I tell my Senior Mechanics that I talked to a Mage about what dragons are really like—”
“They are not real.”
“Will you stop that? The point is, I can’t explain my logic because I can’t tell them what I’ve learned because they won’t accept the source of that information.”
“I do not understand,” the Mage said. “You are a Mechanic—”
“Shhh. Somebody might hear.”
“And I have seen that you always look at things. You look at them and then you decide what to do. This is not how others in your Guild work?”
“It’s how they’re supposed to work. A lot of them do. But there are a lot who don’t.” Mari scowled, still staring out over the water. “I had a professor in Palandur that I really admired. An elder, I guess you would call her. Her name is S’san,” Mari continued. “One time we started talking about what people do when they see danger coming, and Professor S’san said that a lot of times when people or organizations see danger coming, they just keep doing what they were doing and hope everything will work out fine. And I said that was crazy, that it was like being on a mountain path and seeing a boulder rolling toward you and all you do is close your eyes and stand there instead of keeping your eyes open and stepping to one side.” The rush of words halted for a moment as Mari pondered the memory.
“Did she agree?” Alain finally asked.
“Sort of.” Mari sighed. “She agreed it wasn’t smart or rational, but she said that’s what people often do, unless someone gets their attention and convinces them to get off the path before the boulder hits them.” She shook her head. “I didn’t understand her. Now I’m beginning to. She was telling me something important. Whatever’s going on with my Guild has been happening for a long time. I still don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but I’m beginning to think there’s some kind of boulder rolling toward my Guild—maybe more than one boulder. I think it’s already doing damage to the Guild and has been for a long time, that the rate of damage might be increasing like the speed of a boulder rolling downhill. And the Guild leadership is closing its eyes and hoping for the best.”
Alain looked straight at her. “I have been told that most Mage elders are doing the same.”
“Your elders should be worried, too?”
“A storm strikes all in its path.”
As metaphors for trouble went, Mari thought, that wasn’t bad at all. “My Guild likes things the way they are. We control how many of our devices are available and how much they cost, we’re the only ones who can fix them, and the commons do what we say because they can’t afford to offend the Mechanics and get cut off from our devices. I think that’s what City Manager Polder was talking about back in Ringhmon when he told me the commons were tired of being in the box the Mechanics Guild had made to keep the world in. The commons are unhappy, but the Mechanics don’t want anything to change.” Mari shook her head. “And things in this world don’t change, do they? You know history. Has there been change?”
“Not for a long time,” Alain replied. “The only change in recent history has been the sundering of the Kingdom of Tiae as it fell apart in a succession of civil wars. The parts of the former kingdom remain in anarchy. For centuries the Empire has dominated the east, trying to expand into the lands along the northern or southern coasts of the Sea of Bakre, only to be stymied time and again. The Bakre Confederation, the Western Alliance and the Free Cities are almost as old. There have been no great changes since the days when Jules led the founding of the Confederation in the west.”
“What if things are starting to change?” Mari said. “What if what happened in Tiae is a warning that our world is going to see major changes? That the system under which the Great Guilds control the world is accumulating stresses that will cause it to crack like old metal?”
“When metal cracks,” Alain asked, “does it happen slowly or quickly?”