“Thank you,” Alain said, then paused just long enough for Mari to nudge him to the left as the other Mechanic went about his business.
Sure enough, when they reached the bottom of the second ladder Mari could feel the heat from the boiler room and easily found the hatch leading into it. She put her hand on the lever to open the hatch, looking back at Alain. “There’ll be more than one person tending the boiler even at night. I need to handle this one. Stay back and follow my lead.”
She could tell Alain was shocked when they entered. What would a Mage think of this, a world made entirely of Mechanic creations? Heat pulsed through the boiler room. Tubes of various sizes led everywhere, snaking around the room like a forest of straight, curved and bent vines which had overgrown the room and then somehow been turned to metal. In the center, the huge squat metal cylinder that was the boiler radiated the heat which filled the air and brought sweat springing out on their skin.
Mari walked toward the boiler as it rumbled with the fires and steam within, for the first time really understanding why Alain thought of boilers as a sort of creature like a Mage dragon. She held her weapon casually, as if not planning to use it.
Another Mechanic sat near the boiler, his face flushed with the heat, staring glumly at various dials and other objects in the age-old attitude of someone standing a boring and routine watch.
This watch wouldn’t be either boring or routine, though. “I have a message from the captain,” Mari explained as the Mechanic turned to look at her. She had to speak a little loudly to be heard over the growl of the broiler and the hum of the vent fans driving air. “I need all the Mechanics on duty here to listen to it.”
“Sure.” The Mechanic looked backwards and yelled. “Hey, Yon and Gayl, we got a message from the captain!”
A few moments later the other two Mechanics came walking up from different directions, both wearing clothes marked by sweat. One was a girl not much older than Mari and the other a man who seemed close to the captain’s age.
Mari waited until the three were all together, then brought her rifle to bear on them. “I’m sorry to report that the prisoner has escaped and is threatening to shoot anyone who makes any noise. Which one of these lines is the fuel feed for the boiler?”
The three Mechanics stared at her, but none of them spoke. “All right, have it your way.” She gestured to Alain. “Keep them covered.” Alain gazed back, his expression controlled but betraying confusion to her since she knew him well. “That means point your weapon at them,” Mari hissed in a low whisper.
“But you told me not to—” -“
“Until now! Point it at them now!”
He nodded, somewhat clumsily pointing his rifle in the direction of the three Mechanics, none of whom seemed to doubt Alain’s capability to use the weapon. Mari bent down, studying the labeling on the many pipes running by. Fortunately, the labels were as standardized as everything else the Mechanics Guild maintained. She quickly spotted the right pipe by the color and its code. The pipe was down low, just above the deck gratings and about as big around as her finger.
Now what? She needed to break this in a way that couldn’t be easily or quickly fixed, yet not threaten the lives of every other Mechanic on this ship. Mari beckoned to Alain, then pointed to the pipe. “That’s the fuel line feeding the boiler. Can you make part of it disappear?”
Alain studied it for a moment. “How much?”
“Just a little. Like so,” she indicated with spread finger and thumb.
“There is little power available. I can only do this once.”
“That’s all we need. But wait a moment.” The fact that Alain was a Mage remained unknown to the Mechanics Guild so far, and maybe it should stay that way a little longer. Mari faced the other Mechanics. “Turn around. I won’t hurt you if you turn around.” The three Mechanics exchanged frightened glances, then first one and then the other two turned and faced away from her. “Now, Alain.”
“Very well.” Mari saw Alain take on a look of concentration, and a section of the pipe vanished. Thick fuel oil started gushing from one end of the gap, its strong smell immediately obvious.
Mari stood back and kicked hard several times, forcing one end of the pipe at the gap out of alignment. “Okay.”
Alain relaxed and the missing segment returned, though since Mari had kicked the end of the pipe away the restored segment now no longer matched up and the fuel continued to splash out, covering a spreading area of the deck and dripping down into the bilges. “You’re very handy to have around when I need to break something,” she commented. “All right,” Mari called to the three other Mechanics, “we’re are leaving now.” She gestured with the weapon. “Out.”
Mari went last, her head beginning to ache from the fumes of the fuel oil still pouring from the pipe. The lights around them started dimming and one of the Mechanics made an abortive move back. Mari stopped him with a threatening move of her weapon. “No fuel’s going to the boiler, so it’s losing steam pressure fast,” she explained to Alain. “The fires will go out in a very short while. Then the steam pressure will totally fall off and the electricity will fail as well as the propulsion.”
He nodded, then shook his head.
Oh, right. He doesn’t even know what a lever is and I’m explaining a steam plant’s operation to him. “But that’s not enough. We need to start a fire.”
“Fire?” Alain looked doubtful, and she noticed that he seemed to be drawn and tired. “I have done a great deal since coming aboard.”
“I’m sorry. It’s important.”
He sighed. “You always say that, and I always find a way. Where?”
“The liquid. It will burn, but it has a high flashpoint. That means it needs a lot of heat to get it burning.”
“I will do what I can.” The three captive Mechanics were just outside the hatch, unable to see what Alain was doing. Mari stood in the hatch watching them but keeping one worried eye on Alain as well.
Alain held his hand before him, palm up, looking at it. The air above his hand began to glow noticeably as the lights of the ship dimmed more. Alain looked back into the boiler room toward the pool of liquid beneath the broken pipe, and the glowing air above his hand vanished.
Flame fountained out in a frightening blast that drove Alain, Mari and the three other Mechanics away from the open hatch. Mari glared at the three captives. “Get out of here! Run!” They stared at her, then turned and bolted.
Alain stared as well. “Is that wise?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Mari growled. “Leave them in the fire? Walk around holding three Mechanics at gunpoint? Tie them up and maybe let them burn or drown? I will not kill if I don’t absolutely have to!” She paused, remembering something. “Blast. Come on.”
Mari led them back at a run to the place where she and Alain had been imprisoned, their journey complicated when the lighting on the ship went out and only a few replacement lights sprang on to provide dim illumination. “Battery-powered emergency lamps,” Mari explained, looking back and seeing that Alain had his whatever-you-say expression on, meaning he understood nothing but was willing to accept that she did. Amid her fears she felt a surge of real joy at his trust in her, trust that meant all the more since he had plenty of grounds for knowing she wasn’t perfect by any means.
But she also noticed that Alain was visibly struggling to keep up with her, gasping for breath as he followed. Despite her urgency, Mari slowed down some.
Along with the lights, the fans providing air through the ship had now died, leaving an eerie silence in their wake punctuated by growing numbers of alarmed cries from members of the crew and the sound of feet thundering on the metal decks as Mechanics dashed to and fro in hopes of discovering the problem. Mari, seeing Alain faltering more, stepped back to help him keep moving. “They can shut off the fuel and get that fire out, but by the time they do that we should be off this ship,” she explained, trying to cover her growing fear with talking. “The boiler ro
om will be badly damaged. They won’t be able to get steam up again for quite a while.”
Finally reaching the place where they had been confined, Mari stopped at the locked hatch, unfastened the lock, then lifted the handle and yanked the hatch open. The five Mechanics inside stared back. “I won’t leave anyone locked in a room on a ship that might sink,” Mari announced. “But if any of you come after me I’ll blow your heads off. Understood?” Without waiting for a reply she grabbed Alain again and ran for the closest ladder at the best pace which Alain could manage.
Reaching the next level up, Mari hesitated, looking in each possible direction, then ran up another ladder, thinking that would take her to the main deck level. Alain leaned on her, struggling up the steep steps, as the tumult grew around them. The ship’s crew dashed around and past them, staggering as the ship rolled drunkenly in the seas, its last traces of headway lost without the propulsion system working anymore.
“We are still improvising?” Alain asked.
“That’s the plan, yes,” Mari assured him. “We’re going to improvise our way off of this ship.” She saw an open hatch with the darkness of night visible through it and dodged that way.
Out on deck there were Mechanics rushing around in singles and small groups. In their stolen jackets and the darkness, Mari and Alain blended in without notice. “Follow me.” There were life rafts fastened nearby, but they were small and lacked sails. Drifting helplessly on a small platform wouldn’t save them. With Alain still leaning on her, Mari ran toward the stern, where she could see lifeboat davits rising from the deck.
Skidding to a halt at the first boat, she bent to read the instructions, blessing the Mechanics Guild’s obsession with spelling out written procedures. “Just as I thought I remembered. It’s a gravity release system.”
“A what?”
“It doesn’t need any power,” Mari explained. Yanking off her pack, she tossed it in the boat. “Put your pack in there, too.” Then she hurled the weapons they had stolen into the boat as well.
As Alain threw his pack into the lifeboat, Mari pulled out heavy pins that had held the lowering mechanism locked, then threw herself against a big lever. Alain added his own strength and the lever swung over with a dull, metallic thunk.
The davits sagged outward, taking the boat out over the water, and the lines holding the lifeboat close to the davits began unreeling, the boat freefalling to land in the sea with a tremendous splash. Mari yanked off her stolen jacket and dropped it on the deck, gesturing to Alain to do the same.
“Hey, what’s going on?” A Senior Mechanic was staring at them, the same man who had led the group that had captured Mari. “Why are you lowering a lifeboat? I didn’t hear anything about abandoning ship.”
“We’re lightening the ship,” Mari yelled back. “Getting rid of excess weight. Captain’s orders.”
“That’s ridiculous! Who told you—? Hey! You’re—!”
Mari crouched slightly, spun, and kicked out, catching the Senior Mechanic in the gut and knocking him backwards. Straightening, Mari grabbed Alain’s hand. “Jump!” she whispered urgently.
Alain, bless the Mage, didn’t ask any questions, but went over the rail with her. The side of the ship rushed past as they hurtled downward, the drop briefly terrifying, then they hit the water and went at least a lance length underwater. Mari fought her way back to the surface, spluttering and trying to swim toward the lifeboat bobbing in the water nearby, the weight of her boots and her clothing trying to drag her back down.
For several heart-stopping moments Mari wondered if she would make it, then made a desperate lunge and closed one hand over the rail of the boat. Alain reached it at the same time she did and they helped each other in. Mari rolled onto the bottom of the boat, coming up against their packs and staring upward, where she could see the silhouette of the Mechanic who had been questioning them visible against the ship’s rail. The Senior Mechanic was pointing toward them and yelling. “Get the sail set, Alain. We’ve got to get out of here.”
The Mage stared helplessly at the mast mechanism.
“Sorry, I keep expecting you to do everything,” Mari gasped as she elbowed him aside, swinging up the small mast and locking it, then yanking at the lines holding the sail bound tightly to the mast. Her hands shivered with cold and water dripped off her clothing and hair in steady streams, but Mari tried to ignore those distractions. The sail came free, flapping for a moment before billowing out. “I’ll trim it. You get to the tiller and steer us out of here.”
“Tiller?”
“That stick thing at the back! Move it from side to side and the boat will turn. Hurry!”
As Alain threw himself to the back of the boat and awkwardly grabbed the tiller there came the unmistakable boom of a rifle shot, followed immediately by the flat, hard slap of a bullet hitting the water nearby. The lifeboat swung around, wallowing in a way that ironically made it harder for someone to aim at, then steadied, the sail now taut and the boat oh-so-slowly gaining speed away from the looming mass of the Mechanic Guild ship.
More shots rang out and tiny geysers erupted around the lifeboat. Mari grabbed one of the rifles she had thrown in the boat, then looked upward and back at the Mechanics shooting at her, knowing that she couldn’t fire back when some of her targets might be Mechanics like Kalif or Apprentice Madoka. Instead, she pointed her weapon nearly straight up and fired several shots, pumping the lever awkwardly with the rifle held that way, hoping the sound of the shots would frighten the Mechanics aiming at her and praying a lucky hit wouldn’t strike her or Alain. A plonk marked a hit on the boat, wood splintering under the impact. “What of the big Mechanic weapon?” Alain called. “The one on the front of the ship?”
“With power out on the ship they’ll have to train and load it manually. Hopefully they’ll be too busy with the fire to think of that until we’re too far away.” On the heels of her words, as if mocking them, a deep boom came from the direction of the ship, causing Mari’s heart to stutter with fear.
Chapter Nine
Mari waited for the roar of a heavy shell headed their way, frozen with dread of what even a near-miss would do to the frail wooden lifeboat. But then she realized that there hadn’t been any muzzle flash from the big gun and saw the dark shape of the Mechanic ship alter as it listed to one side. “Something blew up on that ship.” The ship listed more. “They’re flooding. Alain, they’re flooding the boiler room to put out the fire before it destroys the ship.”
“Will that sink them?”
“If I remember right, the idea is to take in enough water to put out the fire but not enough to sink yourself.” A few more shots rang out in a ragged volley and Mari heard bullets snapping by overhead. “We’re almost out of range.”
“They cannot pursue?” His voice had calmed, she realized, as her own tone had grown less worried, but Alain still sounded exhausted.
“No, they can’t follow us. That boiler room is out of order for a long time. I’d stake my Mechanics jacket on it.” She yanked open the lifeboat’s tiny emergency locker and checked the compass. “Which direction are we going, anyway? Let me see. East? Alain, you’re taking us back toward the Empire!”
“You told me to get away from the Mechanic ship as fast as possible,” he complained.
“Oh, yeah. All right, let’s go out a little farther until they’ve lost sight of us, then do a wide turn and head west. As long as we go west it should be impossible to miss the Sharr Isles since they’ve got some good mountainous heights.” She laughed, giddy with relief. “This’ll actually work out. We’ve escaped and the ship saw us heading back toward the Empire so maybe they’ll warn the Guild to look for us there. But we’ll still get to Caer Lyn and take a ship out of there to Altis.”
She could see Alain nod. “Our plan worked,” he said.
“Our plan?”
“The plan not to use a plan.”
“Oh, that plan. Are you being sarcastic, my Mage?”
“Perhaps,?
?? Alain said.
“How long have you been planning to say that?”
“I just made it up.”
Mari couldn’t quite suppress another laugh. “All right, just for that, you can keep steering for a while, even though I’m happy to hear you making a joke.” Mari settled herself in the bow, trembling as reaction to recent events set in. She was torn between total tiredness and the residue of the fear which had been driving her. “It’s been another long day, hasn’t it? Once we’re on course we can tie that tiller to keep us going straight and maybe both get some sleep. It’s got to be several hours’ sailing time to the vicinity of the Sharr Isles.”
She saw Alain drooping over the tiller. “You went beyond your limit again to do what I asked, didn’t you?”
He raised his head and nodded. “It was necessary.”
“It’s still amazing what you can do, and that you keep finding the strength to do it.” Mari moved cautiously to sit next to Alain, uncertain of the stability of this boat, then held him tightly. “Have I told you today that I love you?”
“When you were being taken off the Sun Runner,” Alain said.
“I was afraid that would be the last time I could say it to you.” She took a deep breath. “Get a little sleep, Alain. You earned it. I’ll keep on eye on things for a while.”
He didn’t answer, and when she looked over at him Mari saw that his eyes were already shut.
She braced him against her, held the tiller, and looked up at the stars.
#
Mari blinked up at the darkness, wondering where she was. She looked to one side and Alain was there, lying right next to her, smiling at her. She smiled back, reaching for him. His hands were on her body, touching everywhere, and it was feeling very, very good and—
The door crashed open. Men and women came storming in, their faces shadowed but their Mechanics jackets a clear sign of their identities. The Mechanics were leveling weapons at her, demanding that she raise her arms high, and stars above she was naked in front of all of them and—