The man shook his head, waiting until the waiter had asked for an order, then waiting again until wine arrived. He poured from a single bottle into glasses before himself, Mari, and Alain, then sat back. “I first saw you in Dorcastle,” the man remarked.
“Oh?” Mari tried to look disinterested, pointedly ignoring the wine glass in front of her. “Were you a dragon?”
“I was helping with that little plan, yes,” the man answered in a placid voice. “It was working pretty well, but then something happened to the warehouse we were using.”
A Dark Mechanic, then. If nothing else, this contact confirmed for Mari that the Dark Mechanics had been watching her since at least Dorcastle. “Too bad it didn’t work out for you.”
He smiled back at her, but it was a thin-lipped smile lacking in any humor. “Yeah. Some nosy Mechanic found our barge, then some Mages attacked, then the whole warehouse blew up. But you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I might,” Mari admitted, saying nothing else.
“We haven’t figured out how the Mages found us,” the Dark Mechanic continued, “but we think you were somehow involved in that, too. We lost some of our members and a lot of equipment. There were plenty of people who just wanted to get rid of the Mechanic who caused us so much trouble. You understand.”
“I do. A couple of them took shots at me in Edinton.”
Another insincere smile from the man. “They got disciplined for trying to nail the Mechanic without orders, and for missing their shots. Sometimes you can’t win. But even though we had plenty of reasons to get rid of that Mechanic for good, a number of people thought that somebody with her smarts and her guts might be a very useful member of our organization, especially since she’s having some problems with her own Guild.”
“Problems?” Mari asked.
“Arrest order, as I’m sure you’re already aware. It’s funny to think that I could pick up a nice piece of change from the Mechanics Guild for hauling you to them.”
Mari gave the man her own artificial smile. “If you tried, you might find that earning that reward isn’t all that easy. You want me to join your organization?”
“It would be a mutually beneficial decision,” the man observed, studying his fingernails.
That she hadn’t expected. A recruitment offer. Mari wished she could look at Alain to catch his reaction, but didn’t want to take her eyes off of the Dark Mechanic. “What organization is this?”
“The Order.”
“The Order of what?”
The man shook his head. “Of nothing. Just the Order.”
“And what does the Order do for a living besides tearing up things while making ransom demands?”
“Protection,” the man explained smoothly. “We were asking for Dorcastle to pay us money to protect them from dragons or…other problems. There were negotiations under way with the city. The city was getting ready to pay a very nice sum when you ruined everything.”
Mari gave him another insincere smile. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. You were blackmailing Ringhmon, too, weren’t you?”
“That cost us a lot. We were ready to pay you back after you messed up our deal in Ringhmon. It’s a shame our attempt to eliminate you failed.”
“An attempt involving a wrecked train trestle?” Mari asked, thinking of how close the locomotive she was riding had come to going off the destroyed bridge. “I’m not that easy to eliminate.”
A glint of anger showed in the man’s eyes. “No, you’re not. The Order decided to give you a chance to work with us instead of against us. You might want to give it serious consideration.”
Mari nodded, thinking furiously about how to learn as much as possible from this man before trying to get out of this restaurant in one piece. “I’d need to know more about you. What does this Order do? What’s its reason for existence?”
The man shrugged. “We’ve been over that. Profit.”
“That’s it?”
“What else?”
Mari grimaced. “If this Order truly knows the Mechanic arts, you could do a lot of good.”
The man gave another one of his humorless smiles. “We do plenty of good. For ourselves.”
“And no one else?”
“Are you trying to make me laugh, Lady Mechanic?” The man leaned back, giving her a scornful look. “Mechanics are taught to look out for themselves. We’re just doing the same thing, only the Order is willing to do a few things your Guild won’t. Or maybe I should say your former Guild. And now you’re obviously getting ready to set up your own outfit, infringing on the Order’s territory. Did I mention that doing that would be a very big mistake?”
“No,” Mari replied in frigid tones, “you didn’t. So, anything goes as far as the Order is concerned? Anything that might turn a profit? No matter the cost to someone else?”
The man looked as though he were pretending to think about her questions. Then he grinned. “That’s right.”
“And you expect me to join with you in this?”
This time the man shook his head, even though his nasty grin didn’t waver. “No, Lady Mechanic. I don’t expect you to agree to join the Order. I expect you to turn us down. I’m actually hoping you turn us down. It wasn’t my idea to make you this offer, but I got outvoted.”
Mari nodded, tensing and wondering how quickly she could draw the pistol under her coat. “What happens if I say I want to think it over?”
“You’ve got all the time you want,” the man assured her. “Just as long as you’re not planning on leaving this booth before you decide.”
“I see.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mari was noticing that several of the booths on the opposite side of the restaurant had curtains drawn. How many of those might hold other members of the Order? What weapons might they be armed with? The man’s attitude made it clear that if she didn’t agree to join the Order she wouldn’t leave this room alive. But agreeing to go with him, even if she didn’t mean it, would require placing herself totally in the power of the Order. That felt very dangerous.
Mari took a long, slow breath, then looked at Alain. “Have you made up your mind?”
He nodded, his face revealing nothing. “I am ready.”
Chapter Eleven
“All right.” Mari kicked out, her boot catching the man’s ankle and drawing a yelp of pain. The man fumbled with the weapon he had been in the act of trying to draw as Mari grabbed the wine bottle and slammed it against his head. Watching curtains being yanked back on some of the other booths in the room, Mari began sliding out of her seat as the man slumped down onto the table. Before she could tell who was inside those booths, Alain had grabbed her and pulled her back inside their own.
“Close our curtain,” he said.
Not waiting to ask, Mari used one hand to sweep the curtain to their booth closed, brandishing her pistol as she did so to dissuade anyone from rushing in immediately. “Now what? Why didn’t you let me run?”
“There are better ways to leave.”
Mari gave Alain a quick, puzzled look, then saw the wall beside his booth seat now had a hole in it, a hole large enough for them to get through. “I forgot all about that.”
The thunk of handheld mini-crossbows firing echoed in the room and the curtain to their booth jerked as bolts tore through it. Alain was already sliding through the hole, then turned to help her. Mari ducked down as low as she could get as more bolts thudded into the booth. A moment after she had cleared the hole, it vanished as if it had never been. “That should slow down any pursuers,” Alain remarked.
Mari impulsively kissed him. “I love you, my Mage.”
Alain twitched one of his small smiles at the possessive term. “We have to keep moving and get away from here. Though they may not be able to figure out how we escaped, they can still launch a search of the area.”
A couple of more thunks startled Mari, and she turned to see the very tip of one bolt sticking through the wall. “Let’s hope they keep shooting into t
hat booth for a while before they charge it.” An ugly thought struck then. “We left that guy in the booth. He might get killed by his own people.”
Alain gave her a dispassionate look. “Waste no concerns on him. When he spoke of the Dark Mechanic who shot at you in Edinton, I could see in him that he was one of those who tried to kill you there.”
Mari couldn’t help shivering. She had never before looked closely upon someone who had tried to kill her. “Thanks for not telling me that earlier.” She looked around, seeing that they were on the upper floor of a laundry, with rack after rack of clothing hanging from rails on the ceiling. The distant sound of voices and splashing water warned of laundry workers laboring on the first floor. “It might be very hard to sneak past whoever is downstairs here, and if there’s anyone watching the outside of that restaurant, they might see us leaving an adjacent doorway. Can you get us through another wall?”
“Yes, but the fewer walls the better. If we are going to run, I cannot afford to exhaust myself. Also, each time I use a spell, I risk revealing my presence to nearby Mages.”
“We’ll keep the walls to a minimum. Follow me.” Mari started across the laundry, ducking down to scuttle under the rows of hanging garments. “I just wish I knew how those guys spotted us and knew we’d be on that coach.”
“He said we had been seen together in Umburan,” Alain noted.
“We were stuck in that town for days. Even though we stayed in our hostel room most of the time, someone must have seen me there, and after they watched us get on the coach, they called ahead to Pandin. I bet anything that the Order has far-talkers.”
“Far-talkers?” Alain disentangled himself from the low-hanging hem of a long dress.
“Yes.” Mari ducked under another row of clothing. She didn’t see much sense in worrying now about some of the Guild rules that had kept her from talking to Alain in the past. “They’re exactly what the name says, devices that allow us to talk across a distance. You’ve seen me use one, in Dorcastle. I’ve still got one with me, because as a Master Mechanic I was authorized to have one, and I thought it might be important at some point to have a far-talker.”
To her surprise, Alain just nodded as if she had said something unremarkable. “The Mages have such things. There are those who can create spell creatures and send them to where we wish the message delivered.”
“Uh, yes, but this is science, Alain. Far-talkers don’t use spell creatures.”
“What do they use?”
Mari wondered just how far across this laundry was as she ducked under yet another row of hanging clothing, then wondered how to explain far-talker transmissions to a Mage with no technical background at all. “They send, uh, these sort of invisible wave things.”
“Invisible wave things?”
“Yes, waves. Of energy. The invisible waves carry messages.”
Alain nodded again. “Like the spell creatures?”
“No, they don’t really carry a message,” Mari explained, “they, um, are the message.”
“The message delivers itself?”
“Sort of. Yes. It’s hard to describe.” Why did science sound so much more mystical than the Mage arts? “Here’s the next wall.” She heard the voices downstairs pause and wondered if they had been speaking too loudly or if their footsteps had been heard. “How long will it take you?” she whispered urgently. I’m asking someone to hurry up and create an imaginary hole in a wall. Sometimes I stop to think about this and it’s scary.
“Not long.” Alain came up beside her, stood up in the gap between the last row of clothes and the wall, and took on a look of concentration. A moment later a roughly Mari-sized hole appeared in the wall. Mari stepped through cautiously, moving the pistol held in her hand back and forth in search of threats. This room was dark, with vague bulky shapes visible in the light coming in through the hole behind her.
Alain bent and turned to get through the hole. Once he was beside her the hole vanished, leaving them in darkness.
Not wanting to use her hand light, which might reveal their presence to anyone watching, Mari felt her way forward, spotting a rectangle of light that must mark the borders of a door. The door wasn’t locked, so they opened it carefully, peering out into a deserted hallway.
“Unoccupied offices, I guess,” Mari whispered. She led the way to the stairs and went down them, Mari wincing as each stair creaked with what seemed to be an incredible amount of noise. On the ground floor, a few small window openings were boarded up. “Great. How do we leave a boarded up building without someone noticing?”
Alain sighed. “Let us go to the back. If we cannot open a door there, I will make another opening.” He seemed tired already.
“Let’s hope we won’t need to do that.” Mari smiled at him. “Have I told you you’re great to have around when bad guys are on the hunt?”
Alain managed another one of his smiles. “I can be useful in dungeons as well.”
“True.” They had to kick open an interior door before reaching the back. There Mari found a door locked from the outside. Grumbling, she pulled out a tool from her pack and hastily pulled the bolts from the hinges, then swung the door open backwards. Alain was watching her with a perplexed expression, plainly trying to figure out how she had done that. It was a source of unending amazement for her that a man who thought being able to walk through a solid wall was no big deal regarded the most simple mechanical tasks as mysterious and unfathomable.
The door let out into an alley, where Mari paused to look both ways, her pistol at ready. “Now what?”
“We can assume all ways out of the city will be watched.”
“We can’t afford to stay here, Alain. Pandin’s already too dangerous for us.”
“No, we cannot stay. But we can confuse our pursuers as to where we are going. I have thought of a plan, a stratagem.”
“A stratagem?” Mari asked, impressed by his use of the term. “Really?”
He led them both out the alley and onto the street, walking rapidly back toward the coach station as Alain talked. “I am assuming someone may be watching for us,” he assured Mari. “Let us get on the coach to Marida.”
“We don’t want to go to Marida, Alain!” Mari objected. “It’s a seaport and we'd need to leave Imperial territory to get there. There’ll be more spies and more Imperial security between here and there than anywhere inland!”
“We need only take the coach a short distance and then jump off to confuse our pursuers.” Alain stopped speaking, staring ahead with a grim look in his eyes. “Then again, my foresight now warns of serious danger for us near the coach station. I do not think we will be allowed to leave that way.”
Mari thought, running through options. “We have to get out of this city. Walking would be too slow, and…wait.”
Alain looked at her. “I am already waiting.”
“No, I meant— Never mind.” She pointed in a direction where a smoky haze was visible over the city. “There’s one way out that the Order will never suspect we’ll take. We’ll get on a train.”
“A train?” Alain followed as Mari began walking rapidly toward the Mechanics Guild train station. “A Mechanic train such as we rode from Ringhmon? But your Guild seeks to arrest you.”
“Yeah. Which means it would be crazy for me to walk into a Mechanic Guild train station. Which also means no one will expect me to do that,” Mari explained, wondering to herself whether that actually sounded like a smart plan.
“But then—”
“I’m not wearing my jacket, Alain. My Guild thinks I’m still wearing it, they think I’m traveling alone, they don’t think I’m in the Empire.” Mari smiled in what she hoped was a confident way. “We should be okay. Just a couple of commons. The Mechanics here won’t look twice at us.”
* * * *
Mari turned casually away from the ticket booth as she spotted the poster with an all-too-accurate drawing of her face on it just inside where the Apprentice selling tickets could easily se
e it. The Guild had been more efficient than she had expected. “Time for another plan,” she muttered to Alain.
Gazing around the station, Mari saw that it resembled other Mechanic train stations. No surprise there, since the Guild had a mania for standardized design. The main difference from the train stations farther south was that up here the locomotives used coal to fire their boilers rather than the oil employed in the southern Empire and the Bakre Confederation. Instead of oil tanks, this station had large coal bunkers.
But if this station was otherwise just like the stations she was more familiar with… “I’ve got another idea. Follow me and try to look casual and unconcerned.”
“That was easier to do before you announced that you had another idea,” Alain said.
“Very funny,” Mari said. “Lots of Mages in the world and I get the one with the hidden sense of humor. I’ve done way too good a job of teaching you sarcasm.”
Mari led the way to one side, where crates, barrels and bags were stacked awaiting transport in freight cars. She slid smoothly in among the freight, ducking slightly so she was concealed behind the stacks, then moved rapidly toward the train just beyond.
There weren’t any guards, just as Mari had expected, because no common would risk getting close to a Mechanic train except to board the passenger cars. She studied the nearest freight car, looking up and down the train. A small cluster of Mechanics and Apprentices was visible at the rear of the train, standing around talking before boarding the passenger car there. Up front, a single Mechanic and one Apprentice were fussing with the steam locomotive. No one was looking her way. Mari pulled out her Mechanics jacket and put it on, stuffing the common coat into her pack. “Stay here,” she cautioned Alain, then stepped out from cover.
The door to the freight car was locked. Mari glanced up and down the track again, wondering what the odds were of getting the lock picked without anyone noticing. Even though right now I look like just one more Mechanic, it’s still too risky because no one should be popping open any of these cars right now. How can I get us inside this thing without being spotted? She looked up, then beckoned to Alain. “Come on.”