The familiarity startled Mari, who was used to the deference and distance commons always gave Mechanics. But she managed to cover up her reaction and look interested in the guard’s words.
“The warehouses block the view,” he continued, waving around to indicate the structure.–“But they heard it all right, over the sound of breaking wood. Hissing and moaning like the monster it was.”
“Hissing?” Alain asked.
“Yeah. You feeling all right, fella? Nothing to be scared of here now. Anyway, lots of hissing. These dragons are like big snakes, right?”
Alain made a gesture of ignorance. “Is that what they are?”
“Well, I’m no Mage, but that’s what I hear.” The guard grinned. “Of course, if I was a Mage you couldn’t believe what I was telling you, could you?”
“No, I could not,” Alain agreed, absolutely serious.
“Excuse me,” Mari interjected, trying to break up the conversation before the common figured out why Alain was so unexpressive. “Have you seen any Mechanics down here?”
The guard thought, scratching his head. “A couple, I suppose. Soon after it happened. They just looked around a little and then left. Like it wasn’t their business, you know?”
“They didn’t say anything? Ask any questions?”
“Mechanics? Say anything to the likes of me or you?” The guard laughed.
She hoped she didn’t look too uncomfortable at the guard’s blunt words. “They might’ve given some orders.”
“Orders? Nah.” The guard shook his head. “Like I said, they acted like it wasn’t no affair of theirs. I expect they’re happy seeing the Mages get raked over the coals about this. Why would they worry about whether you or me runs into a dragon or loses their job because the harbor’s closed?”
Mari kept her voice composed. “The Mechanics make a lot of money off the trade through Dorcastle. I understand they’re not happy about the harbor being closed.”
“Is that so? Hard to tell, since whenever one looks at me they’re always looking down, and I don’t figure they care about me any more than a Mage does. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Mari said after a moment. “I know exactly how it feels to be looked down upon. Thanks for your information.”
“No problem. Helps pass the time,” the guard replied with another smile.
As they turned to go, Alain faced the guard again. “Hissing? You are certain there was hissing?”
“Clear as could be, son,” the guard assured him. “Maybe you ought to lie down somewhere for a while. You might be sick. You look as blank as a Mage.”
“Come on,” Mari said, grabbing Alain’s arm and pulling him away from the guard. “What was that about?” she asked in a low voice as they walked away. “The hissing stuff?”
“Dragons do not hiss.”
“What do you mean, they don’t hiss?”
“They do not hiss.” The Mage spread his hands as if trying to pantomime something huge. “They are not like snakes at all. They have scales, but otherwise— ”
“Hissing,” Mari broke in. “What about the hissing?”
“They do not. I have been near two dragons, and the breathing sound they make is what you would expect from any very large creature. A big rumbling noise and the sound of the wind rushing in and out of their throats.”
Mari frowned. “Would a dragon hiss if it was working hard at something? Really exerting itself?”
“No. They need even more air when working hard. I know your locomotive creatures hiss at times, but do you know of any other creature which breathes through its teeth when it is in need of more air?”
“How do you know stuff about animals?” Mari asked.
The Mage lowered his gaze to the cobblestones of the street. “The farm I lived on as a young boy. The memories have been coming back to me in the last couple of weeks.”
“They have? Why do you think—”
He was very obviously not looking at her now.
“Oh.” Ever since he met me. Change the subject, Mari. “Let’s take a look at some of the other sites.”
She led the way toward another place where dragons had caused damage, trying to think of something else to talk about, something to distract Alain. “Um, you know, if I had worn my jacket, that guard wouldn’t have spoken to us unless I asked him stuff, and he probably wouldn’t have told us about the hissing.”
Alain nodded. “We were taught as acolytes that instilling fear has its purposes, but it can also create problems.”
“I wonder just how many problems.”
“You can work with commons,” Alain said.
“I guess,” Mari admitted.
“And Mages.”
“One Mage. That is unusual, I know, but if I can make it work, why not?” Mari grimaced. “I want to be in control of what I do. The hardest part of being in my Guild is having so many rules and restrictions and people telling me what to do. Some of the rules make sense. You can see why they’re necessary. But a lot of other rules feel like they’re just there because someone wanted to control Mechanics who were lower in rank. And yet that is so much easier than the life of commons. What it would have been like growing up as a common, with no power at all, no control at all, just a pawn in the games of the Great Guilds?”
“I do not think you would do well under those conditions,” Alain said.
“I don’t think so, either.” The next words came out before she quite realized what she was saying. “Why am I helping to force other people to live in a way I couldn’t stand to live?”
The Mage didn’t answer, seeming to be sunk in thought, but she didn’t know what the answer was, either, and was horrified at having said such a thing. If the Guild ever found out that she had said that…
Mari had regained her composure by the time they reached another secluded area, where a section of unloading dock had been reduced to splinters. At yet another place, a small coastal freighter, the sort whose crew normally slept ashore, had been holed and left lying on the bottom of the harbor next to the pier where it had been tied up. Asking around, Mari learned that most of the small ship’s side opposite the pier had been ripped open. Farther along, a warehouse fronting on the harbor had seen half of its seaward wall stove in, the bricks forming piles of rubble.
By the time they had finished looking over the wrecked warehouse, the sun was past noon. They stopped to grab some hand food from a small cart catering to the waterfront workers, finding seats on bollards at the edge of the pier. Below them, the waters of the harbor surged gently back and forth, some trash on the surface bumping against the piles holding up the pier. Looking down, Mari could see only a little way beneath the surface, the water so clouded that within a short distance all was hidden.
She ate slowly, trying to grasp something that was bothering her. Something that tied together all the sites they had viewed. But what? She looked around, trying to spot anything that might help her figure out what it was. Around at the water, up the long slope through the city… “That’s it.”
“What?” Alain followed her gaze. “Something is up there?”
“No. That’s the point. Nothing’s up there.” Mari could see the Mage’s eyes reflecting confusion, and felt a sense of satisfaction that she was getting better at spotting his thoughts and emotions despite his efforts to hide them. “Can dragons fly?”
The apparent change of subject didn’t seem to startle the Mage. “No. Not at all. They do not have wings, but even if they did I do not see how they could fly. Their large muscles, their heavy bones, their armored scales, it all ties them to the ground.–Although by using their hind legs, the largest can jump impressive distances,” he added. “If you want a flying spell creature, you need a Roc.”
“A what?”
“A Roc. It is a giant bird,” Alain explained.
Mari shook her head. “A giant bird. I’m crazy to be listening to this, you know that?”
“I have thought…” He fumbled for words, for
a moment looking just like any other seventeen-year-old young man. Was that actually embarrassment showing? “You might…be interested…someday…in flying…on a Roc. I mean…with me.”
“Are you asking me on a date?” Mari tried desperately not to laugh at his discomfort. “A date on a giant bird?”
“Um…I do not know…just something to do…together. That is not dangerous,” Alain added hastily.
“Doing something together that isn’t dangerous?” Mari asked. “That would be a change of pace for us, wouldn’t it? Maybe that would be fun, someday.” She wanted to let him down easy, even though the idea of flying on some giant bird felt not just impossible but also far from safe. “Have you ever gone…flying…with a girl before?”
Was he blushing? Just the faintest hint of it, but— Stars above. She had made a Mage blush.
“No,” Alain said.
From what she had seen and heard of Mages and their acolytes, from what she had learned of Alain, that wasn’t surprising. A Mage social probably consisted of everyone standing in the same room and ignoring each other. “Sure, Alain. Let’s do that someday.” I really hope I don’t end up regretting that. “For now, never mind the giant birds. Could dragons get up there?” She pointed up toward the city.
“Of course.” Alain regained his composure quickly. “The wide streets would make their passage easy.”
She smiled with satisfaction. “Then can you think of any reason why everything these dragons have done is close to the water? Even the train trestle was destroyed down at ground level, right at the shore.”
Alain stayed silent as he thought. “No. Now that you mention it, it is very unlike them. Dragons do not like water all that much, especially deep water.”
“They don’t swim well?”
“Not at all. They are heavy, as I said.” The Mage rubbed his chin, clearly thinking. “I have thought you were right about this not really being the work of dragons, but now I am certain. Only a leviathan would be tied to the water, and a leviathan would not cause the kinds of damage we have seen.”
“Leviathan.” Mari tried not to wince. “Giant fish?”
“Not exactly. Squid? Whale? It is a bit like both. But much larger.”
“Fine.” Hopefully he wouldn’t ask her out for a ride on a leviathan. “All I need to know is that we’re not dealing with one.” She started walking along the pier, Alain falling in beside her. “Just out of curiosity, and not that I ever expected to be asking someone this, but can you make a dragon?”
Alain shook his head. “No. To be able to create a spell creature you need different training, different ways of knowing how to change the world illusion. It is not something I ever sought.”
Mari nodded back. “Then it’s a specialty. That’s what Mechanics call that sort of thing.”
“Do we need a dragon?” Alain asked.
“No!” She fought down the image of a monster adding to the problems of Dorcastle. They came to some more bollards and Mari sat down on one, staring across the harbor. “If it’s not some spell creature doing this, then it’s got to be some Mechanic device. Nothing else could generate that kind of power without taking a lot of time or being so big it would be obvious. But my Guild’s not behind this. It’s costing us a lot of money.”
“It is also causing the Mage Guild a lot of trouble,” Alain pointed out, sitting down on an adjacent bollard. “That could be seen as worth the lost money for your Guild.”
“Well, yeah. But I don’t think so. That’s just a guess, of course, but the Senior Mechanics in Dorcastle are all acting very unhappy. I think I’d have spotted some signs of smugness if this was a plot cooked up by my Guild. And,” she continued, “that train accident we almost had. I don’t see how the Guild would have approved the possible destruction of the train and all its passengers. Whoever set it up might be a Mechanic.” Was she really telling a Mage this, even if that Mage was Alain? “But I don’t see how that Mechanic could be following Guild orders.”
“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 suppos
ed 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?”