“I’ve been like the rest of you,” Banda continued. “Trying to do my best, trying to do my job, but coming under suspicion by the Guild because I wasn’t willing to watch everything fall apart without saying or trying something. I’ll admit I’ve had it easier than many of you. Once the big far-talkers came off of these ships we gained a degree of freedom from the Guild whenever we went to sea. But we always had to come back into port sometime. And you are all examples of what is happening: how any dissent, any questioning, is taken as disloyalty. Too many Mechanics are disappearing, too many are being arrested and sent off to exile, while the rest of us wait for an alternative that we don’t think exists.”
Banda pointed to Mari. “Now we’ve got an alternative. I’d rather die trying to make something work than die in a prison cell because I wasn’t allowed to try. This Master Mechanic has given me a choice. When is the last time you were offered a choice? When is the last time you were treated with respect? Master Mechanic Mari treated me better as her prisoner than the Senior Mechanics have treated me. I’m going to follow Master Mechanic Mari.”
“Me, too,” said Senior Mechanic Gina, stepping forward. “You’re going to need someone who understands administrative functions. I can help.”
“We don’t need the Senior Mechanics running everything!” an angry voice rose among the passengers.
“I don’t want to run anything!” Gina insisted. “I want to help things run. You need administrative talent. It’s like the grease that keeps a machine moving. The problem with the Mechanics Guild isn’t because the grease is part of the system, it’s because the grease has decided it’s the reason for the machine’s existence.”
Mari saw Alain give her a slight nod. Both Banda and Gina were telling the truth. And with that she realized how to resolve her worries about whether anyone else was being truthful. “Stay next to me,” she told Alain in a low voice, then spoke loudly again. “Welcome to both of you,” she said to the captain and the senior mechanic. “For everyone else who wants to stay, I would like you to come up here, one by one, and tell me you want to work with me.”
“No vows of obedience?” a sarcastic voice called.
“No. Just say you want to work with me. We’ll start with the crew.”
Unsurprisingly, all of the commons and the Mechanics among the Pride’s crew agreed, as did all but one of the Apprentices. That boy came close to Mari and Banda to speak quietly. “Mechanic Captain, sir, I truly want to stay with you, but my parents and my little sister live in the Guild Hall at Amandan. If I am seen to be a traitor to the Guild—”
* * * *
“I wouldn’t ask you to risk your family,” Mari said.
“But we need a stronger reason for your refusal,” Banda added. “Something that will protect you.” His voice rose. “I am surprised,” he said, his tone growing colder. “I expected better of you than blind loyalty to the Guild. Go, then. You belong among those who think as you do.”
The Apprentice quickly hid a relieved smile, tried to look abashed but determined, and walked to stand next to the net cage holding the guards.
Then came the Mechanics who had been passengers. The first several came up without incident, but then a woman approached. “I wish to work with you,” she said in a businesslike manner.
Alain’s hand came up in a warding gesture. “She is lying.”
The female Mechanic flicked a quick glance at Alain. Mari saw a knife appear in her hand with shocking suddenness, then the female Mechanic lunged at her from only a lance away.
Chapter Eight
Mari had barely begun to shift position in an attempt to meet the attack, knowing that she had too little time to save herself, when she heard a gasp of exertion from Alain. A section of deck just forward of Mari’s toes vanished, leaving an opening gaping down to the next deck below. Her attacker, unable to react in time, stepped onto open air and fell forward through the opening.
The female Mechanic swung the knife at Mari as she fell, coming close enough to her that Mari easily felt the wind of the knife’s passage.
Mari stepped back into a defensive crouch, pivoting enough to grab hold of Alain as he slumped with exhaustion. She heard the impact of the female Mechanic on the deck below, accompanied by a sound like a broomstick snapping and a cry of pain. A moment later the opening was gone, the deck as solid as ever, and Mari was trying to keep Alain from collapsing while everyone stared at her.
Asha moved to help hold Alain, freeing Mari to stand upright again. Mari looked around at the shocked expressions and somehow managed to speak in a clear voice despite the pounding of her heart as adrenaline belatedly tried to shock her system into readiness for the already-passed emergency. “You just saw two reasons why I keep Mages with me. They can tell when someone lies. And they can do that.”
She pointed at the deck where the opening had briefly existed.
Captain Banda shook his head like one coming out of a dream. “Mechanic Deni. Take a couple of our people, and one of Master Mechanic Mari’s people, down and take custody of that viper. Mind the knife, but she shouldn’t give you much trouble. That was the sound of a leg breaking, unless I’m much mistaken.”
“Is he hurt?” Mechanic Ken pointed at Alain as Mechanic Deni led her group down to the next deck.
“He used up his strength to manage that spell,” Mari said. “He’s all right, but worn out in an instant’s time.”
“Then it’s not…magic? It requires energy?”
“Yes,” Mari said, not wanting to explain any more while the former guards and Senior Mechanic Denz could hear.
Mechanic Deni came back up the nearest ladder, she and her helpers hauling along a very angry female Mechanic whose arms had been trussed. The would-be killer’s legs were still free, but it wasn’t hard to see why. A shard of bone protruded from her trousers and blood dripped from her pants leg.
Mari looked over and spotted the healer Cas, who had come across from the Gray Lady and was standing with Mechanic Rob. “Help her out,” Mari ordered.
The female Mechanic was being held down by of the Pride’s crew and was swearing steadily, screaming nonstop obscenities at Mechanic Deni and Mari. As healer Cas knelt by the injured woman’s leg, Deni threw out one arm, grabbing a long, hard belaying pin from its stand. She brought the pin against the injured Mechanic’s head hard enough to knock her out and cease the yelling. “You might want to check her for a concussion, too,” Deni told Cas as the stunned healer looked on.
Deni noticed Mari looking at her. “Sorry, Master Mechanic, but she got on my nerves. If someone is going to swear in front of a sailor, they should be creative and fluent. This one just kept repeating the same old things in a very uninspired way. It offended my sailor’s sense of the art of obscenity.”
“All…right,” Mari said. She was secretly grateful that Deni had silenced the woman, but didn’t feel that she should openly admit to it.
“Remind me not to swear in front of the sailors anymore,” Mari heard Alli murmur to Calu.
“Let’s get this done,” Mari said, gesturing to the next passenger in line.
The process proceeded without any problems until near the end, when the turn came of a personable young Mechanic. He walked up to Mari with a smile on his face, declaring “I want to work with you” with enthusiasm.
But Mage Asha, and Alain who had recovered somewhat by then, both halted him. “He lies,” Asha said, the passionless voice with which she voiced the statement making it sound even more damning.
The Mechanic’s smile faded, but he shook his head as Bev, Calu and some other Mechanics closed in on him. “No. Really. I mean it.”
“He lies,” Asha repeated.
“Let’s search him,” Calu suggested.
It was Mechanic Ken who found a small concealed pocket on the inside of the young man’s Mechanic jacket. He extracted a folded piece of paper, looked it over with his eyebrows rising, then passed it to Mari.
She scanned the document quickly.
His smile completely gone now, the young man didn’t resist as he was shoved over to join the former guards.
The last couple of Mechanics passed without any problem. Mari looked over to see three of the passengers still standing some distance away. “The choice is yours,” Mari said. “But you won’t get a second chance today. If you are certain that you want to remain with the Guild, then go join that group.”
None of the three appeared enthusiastic as they walked to join the former guards. Mari suspected their reasons were similar to that of the Apprentice. But she didn’t want to question them for fear of seeming to try to bully them into changing their minds.
“Twenty-seven leaving us, then,” Captain Banda observed. “We’ll have to give up two of the boats from the Pride.” Banda didn’t look happy at giving up two of the four boats hanging from davits aft.
“Make it happen, please, Captain,” Mari directed.
The crew went to work with considerable enthusiasm, showing every sign of being eager to be free of the former guards and Senior Mechanic Denz. Both the Pride and the Gray Lady brought in most of their sails so that their speed was cut to something safe for launching boats. By early afternoon the boats had been stocked with food and water and lowered to the waves, and those who wished to remain loyal to the Guild descended a rope ladder into them. The would-be assassin with the broken leg was let down by rope, once again awake and cursing loudly until the crew “accidentally” dropped her the last lance-length into the boat. “You have the necessary navigational instruments,” Captain Banda called down to the Apprentice from his crew. “And directions back to Julesport. You should make it easily in a little more than a week’s time, assuming the wind holds.”
Mari looked down on the boats. The faces turned up toward her were hard, angry, and hostile, but she still felt badly about setting people adrift in the ocean. “They really will be all right?” she asked Captain Banda.
“The only worry they should face is sunburn,” Banda said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Or if the fools refuse to listen to Apprentice Tan. But even Senior Mechanic Denz knows that sailing east is going to bring them ashore somewhere in the Confederation. He’ll want to go back to Julesport, though, mark my words.”
“He’s not going to want to wash ashore someplace where he’d be at the mercy of the commons,” Calu agreed. “What if he decides to head for Edinton?”
“Trying to beat against these winds in those boats? Maybe two weeks. He could do it, but they’ll have to stretch their food and water very carefully.”
“Good,” Mari said. “Let’s get going, then.”
“Where to?” Captain Banda asked.
“For now, keep heading for Edinton.” She called across the water to the Gray Lady. “We’re going to speed up! Stay with us!”
* * * *
Not long later Mari sat on the deck, in the inner circle of several rows making up most of those aboard the Pride. Next to her was Alain, and right behind Alain was Asha. Clustered close by were the rest of Mari’s original group, Mechanics Alli, Calu, Dav, and Bev. Only Mage Dav, still aboard the Gray Lady, was not present.
Mari could feel the eyes of Mechanics, Apprentices, and the common sailors upon her. Before she could say anything, Master Mechanic Lukas spoke up, seated facing her across a small open area in the center of the group. “Master Mechanic Mari, my experience with you is that you work out details before deciding on actions. I didn’t question the vagueness of what you’ve told us so far because I could understand your reasons for withholding the details while hostile ears could hear. I think most of us would like to hear more now.”
“And you will,” Mari said, once more trying to sound totally in control. She was getting better at that, she realized. And that was good, since Master Mechanic Lukas’s words could be taken as a challenge as well as a request for more information.
Alain reached into his robes and produced the text she had asked him to bring from the Gray Lady, handing it to Mari. She had wanted that done in full view of the Mechanics. “This is a big detail,” she said, holding up the text, then passing it carefully to Master Mechanic Lukas. “Texts containing technology banned by the Mechanics Guild.”
“Banned technology?” The Mechanics around the circle were straining to look, their eyes filled with wonder, as Lukas took the text and began looking through it. “Communications,” he commented.
“Look at that!” a Mechanic behind him gasped, pointing. “We could do that! It would improve our portable far-talkers.”
“But what’s that?” another Mechanic asked, staring. “It’s…all right. I get it. But can we build that?”
“If we can’t yet, we’ll find a way,” Lukas said. He nodded to Mari. “This is huge. How many do you have?”
“Quite a few more,” Mari said. “Including medical, and armaments, and mass production.”
“Mass production?”
“Making things fast. Making a lot of things fast,” Mari added.
“The Guild wouldn’t like that,” Mechanic Ken said. “According to them, the Mechanic arts involve hand-crafted work for everything. No wonder the Guild would have kept that banned for centuries.” He peered at the text that Lukas held. “That paper doesn’t look ancient.”
“These are copies of the originals,” Mari said.
“Who gets to see these?” an eager voice cried.
“Everybody,” Mari said.
“She means it,” Alli said. “We’ve been looking over the texts on the Gray Lady.”
Lukas was frowning at the text he held. “Mari, this is amazing. In the long run, it will let us build some of the things we’ve only dreamed of. In the long run. But we may not have a long run. I don’t know where you’re planning to set up shop, but a few dozen Mechanics and Apprentices who have to build their basic tools before they can even start on these things won’t be able to get very far before the Guild locates us and destroys us.”
“The Mage Guild wants Master Mechanic Mari dead, too,” said Senior Mechanic Gina. “They’ll come after us as well, which I wouldn’t have worried about as much before what I read today.”
“We need tools and we need more workers,” Lukas summed up.
Mari took a deep breath, knowing that her next statements would have to be said just right. “We can get workers. We can get a lot of workers.” She pointed to the common sailors listening to the discussion. “Commons can do basic Mechanic work.”
Utter silence fell.
“I’ve proven it,” Mari said. “They can use our tools. They can operate a boiler. If given proper instruction and supervision. They can build things, if we show them what to build and how to do it.”
“Are you saying,” Lukas said slowly, “that the commons are Mechanics, too?”
“No,” Mari said. “We’re better at it all. The lie the Mechanics Guild has told all these years is that we’re the only ones who can do it. What we are, are the people who are best at it. When I was working with the commons, what to me was easy came harder to them. I don’t believe this was just because it was new to them. We Mechanics will remain the leaders, the teachers, the skilled practitioners of our arts. But we don’t have to keep them secret anymore.”
Calu nodded. “We can design, we can innovate, we can supervise, we can be engineers. The Guild has pretty much told us we have to dig every ditch because commons can’t use shovels. But the commons can. They can do basic production and operation tasks. Which frees us up to do, well, the stuff we like to do.”
“Commons mess up a lot,” someone commented.
“They mess up,” Captain Banda said, “when they’re treated poorly. When they’re treated with respect, they do a fine job. My sailors are skilled, reliable workers.”
“Let me be clear,” Mari said, acutely aware of the commons listening. “I’m not talking about the same deal the Guild has been running on Dematr, where the Mechanics are in charge of everything. The Mechanics should be in charge of Mechanic tasks. In charge of their workshops and manufacturing and design areas and the places that teach people how to be Mechanics or how to do jobs like operating boilers. But we shouldn’t be telling the commons what to do. I meant what I said earlier about freedom. The commons should rule themselves. We have to stop treating the commons as slaves to Mechanics. They are people, like us, and just as we deserve freedom and respect, so do they.”
A low rumble sounded among the Mechanics as they took that in. It didn’t sound like a happy rumble.
Alain stood up, attracting everyone’s attention. “I am a Mage,” he said. “The elders of my Guild taught me that everyone else was only a shadow. What happened to those others did not matter in any way. Mari showed me that others do matter. That Mechanics do matter, as do common people.”
Mechanic Alli stood up, too. “All of us have been unhappy with the way we’ve been treated by the Senior Mechanics. Right? They’ve ordered us around, and told us we can’t do things, and forced us to do things, and generally made our lives miserable because they wanted to control everything. You, and me, and every Mechanic haven’t been the rulers of Dematr. That’s what we were told, but it’s not true. It’s the Guild that has ruled this world. We’ve been the servants of the Guild. One step higher up the ladder than the commons, but still servants.”
“Everybody has to be free,” Mari said, giving her words more force and more volume. “Everybody. Mechanic. Mage. Common folk. Because it is going to take everybody to beat the Mechanics Guild and the Mage Guild. It is going to take everybody to change this world. We work together, and we all win. We try to keep things the same, and we all lose.”
She had chosen those words carefully, and could see the reaction they caused. Especially the last sentence. She didn’t have to underline that keeping things the same had been the primary governing rule for the Guild since its founding. And everyone here had bloodied themselves against the wall of inertia that rule had created.
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