“It’s what I do,” Mari said. “I have no reason to treat you with anything but respect, Captain.”
“I hope you will always feel that way,” Banda said, smiling, and walked toward one of the aft hatches.
A short distance off to port, the Gray Lady raced along next to the Pride of Longfalls, the first rays of the morning sign highlighting the blue and gold banner flying from her mast. The rising sun turned the sky to shades of coral and turquoise as Banda led the bewildered passengers onto the deck. One of them laid eyes on Mari and began laughing. “Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn! I should have known when I heard gunshots and cursing that the Senior Mechanics were trying to deal with you!”
Mari broke into a smile. “Mechanic Ken! I haven’t seen you since I left the Guild Hall at Caer Lyn for the Academy at Palandur!”
Ken, well into middle age, walked over to her, oblivious to the rifles held by Mari’s friends. He grasped her forearm, still grinning. “And now a Master Mechanic! Well done, Mari!”
Alli smiled too. “Hey, Ken.”
“Alli! And Calu? That’s great. I guess what the Guild tried to keep asunder, Mari brought together.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Calu said. “Why are you here, sir?”
Ken waved away the honorific. “We’re all Mechanics now, Calu. Why am I here? Because I was one of the Mechanics who taught and sponsored a certain Apprentice Mari of Caer Lyn. Given how she turned out, I was accused of not doing any of that well.”
“Given how she turned out, I’d say the question is still open,” someone else said.
Mari turned to look. “Master Mechanic Lukas. You?”
“Me.” Lukas was considerably older, and wasn’t smiling. “Under suspicion as someone who once advised you, but I’m here because I protested too strongly that we had to change practices or lose more of the Guild’s technology. What now, Mari? I always told you to think three steps ahead. What’s the point of this? Freeing us is well intentioned, but life as a refugee among the commons isn’t likely to be much of an improvement over life as a prisoner of the Guild.”
“Why don’t I tell everyone?” Mari said, feeling more nervous than she had just before swinging into the dark. She waited as the freed passengers gathered on the port side and the crew near the bow, then stood before them all, her friends arrayed behind her. There were twenty guards, plus Senior Mechanic Denz. The crew consisted of another twenty-five, with Banda and four other Mechanics, five Apprentices, and fifteen common sailors. Plus thirty-one passengers.
“Tell Alain and Asha to swing over from the Gray Lady,” she asked Mechanic Dav. “You and Bev help them get aboard.”
Turning back to the eyes upon her, some hostile, some curious, Mari took a deep breath. “I’m going to start off by saying that anyone who does not want to join me will be free to leave this ship. They will be put off in one of the ship’s boats, with sufficient food and water to reach land. All I ask is that you listen to me before you decide.”
“Don’t listen!” Senior Mechanic Denz yelled. “You are all already in great trouble, and this will surely get you all branded as traitors, just like that delusional, arrogant young fool!”
Bev smiled and raised her weapon. “If you say anything else without first raising your hand and then being called upon,” she told Denz, using the old schoolroom rule for young Apprentices, “I will shoot you.”
Mari waited, but no one else said anything and Denz appeared to have been quelled by Bev’s threat. “Let me say a few things that you all know are true. The technology the Mechanics Guild uses is failing. Everyone knows it, but the Senior Mechanics refuse to make any changes. Mages can actually do things. Many of you have seen that, and you have all been told not to speak of it. The commons hate us, and even though they supposedly do as the Mechanics Guild and Mage Guild order, they actually find ways to sabotage us at every turn.”
No one interrupted, so Mari continued. “Here’s what you may not know. I committed no crime against the Guild before it tried to have me killed. I was loyal and doing my job as best I could, and I was set up to be killed by commons.”
“How do you know that?” one of the passengers asked.
“I was told it by a Master Mechanic who had personal knowledge of the matter,” Mari said.
“What she says is true,” an older male Mechanic among the passengers said. “I was one of those in Palandur who learned of it and tried to bring about an accounting. Instead, we were ordered to be silent about it.”
“Here’s another thing,” Mari added. “Something you all may have felt. The commons have been slaves of the Great Guilds for centuries. They’re like a belt under greater and greater tension, and they’re about to snap. The rioting, the sudden, random attacks on Mechanics and Mages, the blind defiance we’ve all been seeing is getting worse at an accelerating rate, and soon it will pass a point of no return. When it does, this entire world will go the way of the Kingdom of Tiae. Only much worse. Tiae isn’t an anomaly. Tiae is a warning sign.”
“I have felt the tension you speak of,” a male Mechanic said. “But how can you be sure this isn’t just a temporary problem, part of a cycle of resistance and acceptance?”
A deeper silence fell before Mari could reply. She turned enough to see that Alain and Mage Asha had joined her group, standing out in their robes. “Partly because of them,” Mari said, indicating the two and knowing how badly the Mechanics she was speaking to would take that. “And partly from being among the commons.”
“Do they work for you?” someone demanded.
Before Mari could answer, Mage Asha did, her emotionless voice carrying clearly and eerily in the stillness of dawn. “Master Mechanic Mari has shown us new ways of wisdom. We follow her to learn more, and to aid her when called upon.”
“You’re teaching them to be Mechanics?”
“No,” Mari said, “I’m teaching them to be human! A lot of you may be wondering how I have managed to stay alive with both of the Great Guilds and the Empire trying to kill me. That Mage,” she said, pointing at Alain, “is the reason. In places where my Mechanic skills would have failed or been insufficient, his Mage skills made the difference.”
“That’s hard to believe,” another passenger commented. “Mages?”
“Believe this,” Senior Mechanic Gina said from where she stood with the passengers. “I was briefed on her before this job, told everything the Guild knew. Master Mechanic Mari should have been dead a dozen times already. She keeps getting out of impossible-to-get-away-from situations, including escaping from the Queen of the Seas with just one companion and disabling the ship in the process. According to the updates we received just before sailing from Julesport, at Altis she not only avoided being killed by the Special Missions Mechanic force but also did substantial damage to Guild assets, including sinking a ship
comparable to this one. The Guild keeps blaming our failures on incompetence, but the Special Missions goons never fail. Until Altis. Either the Mages have made a big difference, or Master Mechanic Mari is personally unstoppable and unkillable.”
After a few moments spent thinking, another passenger nodded. “No offense, Master Mechanic Mari, but I do find it more believable that the Mages made a difference.”
“There’s still something else going on,” another insisted. “Why did these Mages even listen to you? You’ve got commons on that ship following you, and according to the Guild you’re close to stirring up rebellion by all the commons. What are they seeing?”
“They listen to me,” Mari said, not sure how the full truth would be received. “Because I listen to them.”
“She’s insane!” Senior Mechanic Denz yelled, ducking back behind the other guards to shield himself from Bev. “She thinks she’s the daughter of Jules!”