Fortunately, the other Mechanics didn’t focus on that detail. Kalif lowered his rifle to the floor cautiously, as did the others. Mari indicated the cell she had occupied. “All of you, in there.”
“You can’t get away!” the guard who had bludgeoned her repeated angrily.
“I’m really tired of people like you trying to tell me what I can and can’t do.” Mari used her thumb to pull back the hammer on the rifle, then raised it to aim at his face. “And I’m even more tired of people like you who are willing to hurt others just because someone else tells them to. Get in there. I won’t repeat myself a third time.”
He went in hastily, followed by the other former guards and the former sentry, the tiny compartment barely holding all of them. Mari looked at Mechanic Kalif as he turned to face her. “Thank you. I know this isn’t a nice way to repay your humanity, but thank you.”
“Mari,” Kalif said, “the Guild won’t really torture and kill you. They’re trying to play games with your mind is all. Give it up. You can trust the Guild.”
“I believed the same thing once,” Mari said. “Until the Guild set me up to be killed. There are other Mechanics who know about that, who know it’s true. Maybe you can find some of them. Now, you and you,” she said, pointing to two of the other Mechanics. “Take off your jackets and toss them out here.” Both Mechanics hesitated, glaring at her. “Alain.”
Alain obligingly stepped forward, raising the weapon a little awkwardly, and spoke in tones that mimicked the Senior Mechanics Mari had dealt with earlier. “Do as you are told!”
The two Mechanics yanked off their jackets and threw them out the hatch to land at Mari’s feet.
“Close the hatch, Alain.” Mari kept her rifle aimed at the five Mechanics until the hatch swung shut, then immediately grabbed its handle and twisted it down before pushing the lock closed.
Only then did she turn back to Alain. “Stars above, you’re a sight for sore eyes, my Mage.” She kissed him very quickly. “How long were you with us?”
“All the way. The woman has our packs.”
“I saw. We need to pay her another visit. She’s expecting you already.” Mari indicated the bigger jacket. “Would it bother you to wear that?”
“Not at all. It is just part of the illusion.”
“Right.” Mari hastily put on the other jacket. “We need to look like we belong here. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you holding one of these rifles. When did you learn how to use one?”
“I do not know how to use one.”
“I was afraid of that. Please, very carefully, give me the one you’re holding. Don’t press or push anything.” Mari took the rifle from Alain gingerly, breathing a sigh of relief once it was out of his hands. “Very good bluff, my Mage.”
“Did you want me to shoot them? I do not know how to do that.”
“No, I didn’t want you to shoot them. That was a bluff, too.” Mari opened the lock on the room which had held Alain, putting all but two of the rifles she had taken into it and swinging the hatch shut again. “All right, I’m going to set the safety on this rifle and give it back to you. There isn’t a round loaded and the safety is on, so as long as you just carry it and point it and don’t move anything on it, the rifle shouldn’t go off. See this lever thing on the bottom? That needs to be swung down and then back up to load a round, so if you don’t move the loading lever, then the rifle can’t fire.”
Alain was watching her, frowning in concentration. “Lever?”
Of course a Mage wouldn’t know what a lever was. “Never mind. Just don’t move anything on the rifle. And don’t point it at anyone! Unless I tell you to. We’re going to walk back to the captain’s cabin as if we’re on official business. If anybody tries to talk to us, let me answer.”
“All right. But I can talk like a Mechanic. What is an idiot?”
Mari grinned. “Someone like a Senior Mechanic. You really do have the arrogant voice down. Where did you learn it?”
“I…have observed Mechanics.”
“I’m the Mechanic you’ve spent almost all of your time with—” Mari paused. “Do I do that?”
“Very rarely, and never to me since first we met. Mari, the Mechanics on this ship are far more likely to recognize you than they are to recognize me.”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “You’re right. You take the lead. Do you remember the way to the captain’s cabin?”
“I believe so.”
“Same here. Hopefully one or the other of us will remember all the details.” Mari took a long, calming breath, then tried to look relaxed and casual. “Let’s go.”
There were fewer Mechanics in the passages of the ship now that the normal work day had ended, and they paid little attention to what appeared to be two of their fellows. Mari tried to unobtrusively avert her face whenever they passed other Mechanics, or use Alain to shield herself from being seen directly. It felt very odd to be walking behind Alain while he was wearing a Mechanics jacket. He didn’t look half bad in the jacket, though. He actually looked pretty good. Really good, Mari thought.
Alain was even mimicking the exaggerated self-confidence and swagger of a Mechanic. She knew he wasn’t copying her. She never had been able to get the swagger thing down, thinking that she looked ridiculous whenever she tried.
Mari ducked her head again, pretending to examine her rifle, as they passed two more Mechanics who were talking together. They paid no attention to Mari and Alain.
They finally reached the captain’s quarters, Mari breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn’t gotten lost on the way. Pausing a short distance away from the door, Mari looked at Alain, speaking very quietly. “There’s three things we have to do before we can try to escape. We have to get our packs back, which means dealing with that witch of a captain, then we have to disable the ship’s far-talker so they can’t tell anyone that we’ve escaped, and then we have to somehow sabotage the main propulsion system so the ship can’t chase us down. Only after all that can we try to steal a boat.”
“We cannot steal a boat unnoticed?” Alain asked.
“No. Too much noise, and the lookouts could easily see us.”
“How will we do all these things? What is the plan?”
“The plan?” Mari hesitated. “We don’t really have a plan. We’ll have to improvise.”
“Improvise?”
“That means making things up as you go along,” Mari explained.
“But you told me earlier today that we need to have a plan before we begin anything complicated,” Alain objected.
“Yes, I did, but— Fine. Our plan is to improvise.”
“But you said that means not having a plan.”
Mari glared at him. “If our plan is to improvise, then that means our plan is to not have a plan. Can we get on with it now?”
With a slightly baffled expression, Alain nodded in agreement.
Mari readied her weapon, walked the rest of the way to the captain’s door and knocked the same way the guard had before. Hearing a muffled order to enter, Mari opened the door and pointed her weapon at the Senior Mechanic in one smooth motion. “Hi, Captain. I decided to come back.” The Senior Mechanic made an abortive motion toward one side of her desk, halting when Mari cocked her rifle. “Go ahead and go for your pistol. I’d love an excuse to put a bullet in you.”
Alain came in after Mari, closing the door and then going directly to their packs while the captain stared at them with glittering hostility. “The packs have not been opened,” he told Mari. Next to one of them he found his Mage knife, and concealed that under his coat once more, grateful to have something other than the long Mechanic weapon.
Mari smiled at the captain. “Are there orders from Palandur that even you can’t look inside my pack? I wonder what Guild headquarters thinks I’ve got in there? The truth? That seems to be what they’re most scared of. It doesn’t matter, though. People will learn the truth no matter what the Guild does.”
“What doesn
’t matter is whatever you try to do,” the woman spat. “You’ll die a traitor’s death.”
“I don’t think so,” Mari stated in a soft voice that nonetheless carried something menacing that made Alain turn to stare her. “And if I do, I consider being a traitor to the likes of you to be an honor. Though I do appreciate your confirming that the Guild intended seeing me dead after getting whatever information it could from me. Turn around.”
The Senior Mechanic shook head slowly. “No. You’ll have to kill me to my face, and I know you don’t have the courage to do that.”
Mari laughed softly. “You’re not nearly as ugly as the dragons I’ve faced, honored Senior Mechanic. Well, maybe you are as ugly as the troll, but did it ever occur to you that I’m not interested in killing people if I don’t have to?” She stepped closer to the desk, nerved herself, then quickly swung the butt of her rifle so it struck the woman on the temple. The captain fell sideways, sprawling on the deck. “Make sure she’s out,” Mari asked Alain, suppressing a sick feeling at having clubbed another person unconscious.
Alain checked, then nodded. “Shall we tie her up?”
“Yeah.” Mari looked around. “We’re on a ship. Why can’t I see any rope?”
“How about this?” Alain asked. “It is slick and not too thick, but it looks like rope.”
“That’ll do.” Mari picked up the intercom wire and yanked. It didn’t give, so Mari stuck her rifle barrel behind it and twisted until the wire broke with a snapping noise. Then she handed the free length to Alain. “It’s actually wire. Make sure it’s not too tight.”
“Wire? You mean metal? But it bends like stiff rope and feels like cloth?”
“Yeah. The cloth is insulation, and no, I don’t have time to explain what insulation is. Do you remember how to tie knots?”
“Not very well,” Alain admitted.
Mari grabbed the wire from him, then pulled the captain’s wrists behind her back and tied the wire around them, making sure the wire was over the sleeves of the captain’s jacket so it wouldn’t cut off the blood to her hands. The other end of the wire was still attached firmly to the wall. She then pulled open drawers in the captain’s bureau, using a spare shirt to tie the captain’s legs together. Mari stuffed a handkerchief she found into the captain’s mouth as a gag. “That’s the best we can do. Let’s— Wait. One more thing.”
Yanking open the captain’s desk drawers, Mari found a pistol. “Same size cartridges as mine,” she explained to Alain, getting a blank look in exchange. Mari grabbed the entire box of cartridges and stuffed it in a pocket of the jacket she was wearing. Given what the Mechanics Guild charged for a single round of ammunition, she might just as well have pocketed a sack full of gold.
“Now, we need to find this ship’s far-talker. It’ll be somewhere up high.” Mari led the way out into the passageway, their movements a little harder now with the big packs on, then out onto an open upper deck area where the sea breeze gusted between parts of the metal ship’s superstructure. The sun had completely set, leaving the upper parts of the ship in darkness interrupted only by the stars above and the navigation lights on the mast of the ship. There was no sign of the passenger ship Sun Runner, which had apparently been set free to continue its interrupted voyage while the Mechanic ship turned back toward Landfall.
Another Mechanic came by, alone, and Mari waylaid him. “How do I get to the far-talker from here?”
The Mechanic provided the directions, then peered at Mari. “Are you new on board? Got a boyfriend?”
“Yes and yes,” Mari replied.
“Every girl on this ship is taken,” the other Mechanic grumbled good-naturedly, then headed off about his business.
Mari watched him go, then sighed with relief. “I didn’t want to have to club down another Mechanic. Come on.” The directions they had been given lay along the outside of the ship’s superstructure, so they had to move carefully with only starlight to mark their path. It wasn’t very far, but Mari was getting increasingly nervous by the time they reached the hatch with a sign identifying it as the place where the ship’s long-distance far-talker was kept. The longer she and Alain had to spend taking out the far-talker and the propulsion plant, the greater the chance of their being discovered or alarms being sounded. Mari rapped a brisk knock on the hatch, opened it without waiting for a reply, and quickly entered the far-talker room.
As she had expected, the far-talker was being watched at this hour by an apprentice. Mari gritted her teeth, then brought her rifle to bear on the girl. “Apprentice, I strongly recommend that you don’t move or make any noise while my friend here ties you up.” The girl sat frozen with fear while Alain used more wires to bind her.
Mari laid down her weapon and shut off the main power switch to the far-talker, then started pulling open access panels. Then she just stared at the rows of vacuum tubes gleaming in their sockets, and the ranks of circuit boards with their brightly-banded resistors. “I can’t do it,” she whispered to Alain.
“Do what?” he asked, coming close.
“Break this stuff. Stars above, Alain, I’ve spent my life learning how to fix this gear, how to treat it with respect and keep it working. Do you know how much artistry goes into those tubes and circuit boards? They’re all hand-made. It’s…it’s beautiful.”
“But it must be broken?”
“Yes,” she whispered again.
Alain looked at the butt of his rifle, then at Mari. “Is there anything else you must do in here?”
“Um, I need to check the message log to see if they’ve reported my capture and see if any special orders have come in regarding me.”
“Do that,” Alain said.
With another sick feeling inside, Mari walked over to a desk near the bound apprentice. As she opened the message log, Mari heard the sound of breaking glass and snapping boards. She had to pause, breathing deeply to calm herself, then nerved herself enough to glance back and see Alain energetically pounding his rifle butt into the openings beneath the access panels.
Shuddering at the destruction, Mari quickly scanned the message log. There’s the report of my capture, then right after that the report about Alain. A far-talker specialist from Umburan? How did he convince them of that? And here I’ve got him smashing this far-talker. But no orders received back yet. I guess the Guild Masters in Palandur are too busy celebrating my capture. She glanced over at the apprentice. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m not doing any of this because I want to. Please remember that we didn’t harm you. We’re going to put a gag in your mouth, but if you breathe calmly you won’t have any trouble.”
“Are you Master Mechanic Mari?” the apprentice asked hesitantly.
Here it came, a young Mechanic trainee already terrified of her because of the lies her Guild had told. Mari nodded. “Yes.”
To Mari’s shock, the apprentice turned pleading eyes on her. “Take me with you.”
“What?”
“Please. I want to join you. Whatever you’re doing.”
Mari had to think for a moment before answering. She had never expected to receive such a request from someone she didn’t even know. “Listen, it’s too dangerous. My friend and I have very little chance of getting off of this ship alive. Stay here and you’ll be all right. Come with us and you’ll probably die very soon or be captured and treated as a traitor.”
The apprentice shook her head. “But—”
“There’ll be another time. Somehow. Please don’t risk yourself now.”
She nodded to Mari. “How will we find you?”
We? Mari stared again. “There are still some things I need to do, but after that I’ll find a way to let the right people know.”
“And we’ll be able to build anything we want? The Guild won’t be able to tell us not to anymore? The Senior Mechanics won’t be able to do anything they want?”
“That’s what I hope for.”
The apprentice nodded. “Put the gag in my mouth. Good luck, Master Mechanic
Mari. You’ve got a lot of friends.”
“I do? More than I realized, it seems. But I’ve also got a lot of enemies, and I don’t want people like you hurt by those enemies. Good luck to you, Apprentice…?”
“Madoka.”
“I’ll be seeing you, Apprentice Madoka.” Mari gently placed the gag in the apprentice’s mouth, then stepped back and nodded farewell. Then she grabbed Alain and rushed from the room.
Closing that door behind her, Mari paused again for a moment. “Now the engine room. That’s the last thing we need to do. We need to take out the boiler.”
“The boiler?” Alain asked, his eyes showing a most unmage-like level of alarm. “You are going to destroy a boiler? Like the one in Dorcastle?”
Mari glared at him. “No. Not like that. Why is it whenever I talk about a boiler you think I intend exploding it?”
“That has been my experience.”
“I am a Mechanic! I am trained to fix things! I only break things under the direst necessity!” Mari paused. “Like now. But I won’t blow up this boiler. That would kill a lot of the crew. I have to disable it some other way. Come on.”
Alain followed Mari as she hurried back down the ladder. “It’s going to be low inside the ship,” she told him. After taking some more turns and ladders down, they ran into another lone Mechanic, who gazed at them in surprise.
“The captain has told us to take these packs down to a place near the boiler,” Alain said, surprising Mari.
“You mean the armory?”
“Yes,” Alain agreed with a readiness that awed Mari. She suspected that he had no idea what an armory was, but Alain still acted completely self-assured.
“You took a wrong turn, then. It’s quicker if you go back to port, two ladders down and then you’ll see it just aft.”