The Dragons of Dorcastle (12 page)

“You weren’t told I was coming?” Stimon hadn’t even done her that small courtesy.

“No, Lady,” the apprentice stammered as Mari’s expression hardened again.

She relaxed with an effort. “That’s not your fault, either. I need a room.”

“Of course, Lady Master Mechanic!”

The apprentice almost fell over himself summoning another apprentice to carry her pack and escort her to a room.

Mari sighed and just stood for a moment after the door closed, trying to calm herself, then glared at the air cooling unit. The breeze coming out of it was barely moving. Mari rapped the unit irritably, causing the fan to stutter.
Ha! Think you can mess with me, you worthless piece of junk? I’ve fixed more complicated things than you in my sleep.
She dug in her bag, pulled out her tool kit, popped off the front panel and peered in at the fan. As she had suspected, the screw holding one wire to the fan motor was loose, causing a weak connection. Mari got out a screwdriver, tightened the screw, causing the fan to roar fully to life, then put the panel back on, rapping it home with the handle of her tool.

The simple repair brought a feeling of satisfaction. She thought of the task she would tackle tomorrow and felt another lift to her spirits.
I’m one of the only Mechanics in the world who can do that job. Girl, am I? Wait until they see me at work. Then they’ll call me Lady and mean it.

She thought about cleaning herself off. Thought for several seconds about doing the quiet thing, the expected thing, the typical thing. She had spent years thinking about those sorts of things, really, years of staying relatively quiet and trying not to raise a fuss, though rarely with complete success. She always asked too many questions, always chafed at rules that didn’t seem to make sense, and other apprentices and later on Mechanics had for some reason looked to her for ideas. It had gained her Master Mechanic status, a recent, close brush with death, and nasty attitudes from Senior Mechanics.

Mari settled her dusty jacket on her shoulders, ran one hand through her matted hair, set her jaw and went looking for Senior Mechanic Stimon.

Since dinner hour had sounded, Mari headed for the dining hall. She found Stimon where the Senior Mechanics were dining, seated at the head of the table as befitted the Guild Hall Supervisor. Mari walked briskly across the floor, knowing her boots were leaving dusty footprints, knowing every other Mechanic in the dining hall was watching her. She halted before Stimon’s table. “Master Mechanic Mari reporting in.”

The Senior Mechanics all looked back at her with disapproval, then Stimon stood up. He had a shaven head, a broad stomach, and a truly impressive frown. All other conversation in the dining hall had stopped, so Stimon’s voice had no trouble carrying clearly. “What is the explanation for your appearance?“

“I informed you earlier that my caravan had been attacked and almost wiped out, and that I had been forced to make my way to this city by my own means across the desert waste,” Mari said. “What little water I had went to narrowly avoiding dying of thirst, so I was regrettably unable to use it for washing up each evening. However, you instructed me to report to you as soon as I arrived, and I am following your instructions.” Mari jerked her head to get some hair out of her eyes and a fine cloud of dust arose from her, drifting toward the Senior Mechanics’ table.

“Mechanic Mari—”

“
Master
Mechanic Mari.”

Stimon sat down again, drumming the fingers of one hand on the table. “It appears the stresses of your journey were too much for you.”

Mari smiled. “Not at all, Guild Hall Supervisor.”

“I decide whether or not Mechanics are prepared for contract work.”

“You intend defaulting on the contract with Ringhmon, then?” Mari asked. “I’m the only Mechanic within a few hundred thousand lances who can do the job. I assume you don’t want to discuss that here, though.”

“No, I don’t,” Stimon said, his face reddening. “You are dismissed. I will see you in the morning, after you have returned your appearance to that expected of a Mechanic.”

“Thank you, Guild Hall Supervisor Stimon.” Mari pivoted like an apprentice, then walked to a table with a few other Mechanics seated at it. As an apprentice hastened up with a plate of food and a drink, Mari nodded in greetings to the others.

One of the Mechanics pretended she didn’t see Mari. The other two, a man and woman, smiled in greeting.

“You really survived the Waste?” the male Mechanic asked, his voice pitched low as conversations began around the dining hall again.

Mari rubbed her forehead, then looked at the dirt on her hand. “I think I did. I won’t be sure until I get all of this dust off me.”

The Mechanic who had been ignoring Mari shook her head. “This is what comes of making a child a Mechanic.”

Mari smiled at her. “A Master Mechanic. I made Mechanic at sixteen.”

The woman glared at Mari before getting up and walking to sit at another table.

The face of the female Mechanic who had stayed lit up in recognition. “You must be Mari. A friend of mine at the academy mentioned you in his letters to me. I’m Cara.”

The man nodded again. “And I’m Trux. The Senior Mechanics are glaring at us.”

“I get that a lot,” Mari said, digging into the food.

“They’re on edge more than usual lately, what with the rioting in Julesport.”

“Rioting?” Mari took a drink to clear her throat. “I’ve been out of touch for weeks now. What happened?”

Cara answered. “It started out with the usual protests against the Mechanics Guild, but when the Guild Hall at Julesport told the local authorities to shut down the protests the people went crazy and raised blazes for a few days before Confederation troops restored order. Typical. They say they want to rule themselves and then they prove they’re incapable of it.”

“Not too typical,” Trux commented. “I mean the rioting. It was pretty strange for the commons to explode like that. Like they were primed to blow.”

“But no one has identified anything unusual going on,” Cara said. “Things are just like they’ve always been. Except that the commons went berserk.”

“It’s a good thing all of that fury was unfocused,” Trux added. “The commons need a leader, and they’ll never get one that they’ll all follow. That’s why they cling to that daughter of Jules nonsense.”

“What is that all about?” Mari asked. “I’ve heard that expression a few times.”

Cara laughed mockingly. “The commons think there was a Mage prophecy a long time ago that a daughter of Jules would someday overthrow the Mechanics Guild. Can you imagine being desperate enough to believe something a Mage said?”

Mari took another drink to avoid answering, hoping that she wasn’t revealing her reaction to the last statement.

“The commons think she’ll overthrow the Mage Guild, too,” Trux pointed out. “Jules hasn’t risen from the dead, so the commons have to hope some descendent of hers can do the job.”

“If any common could have, it might have been Jules,” Cara said. “Not that even Jules could have overthrown the Guild, right?”

Mari made an uncertain gesture. “I don’t really know anything about Jules.” She saw the surprise on the others’ faces. “History wasn’t my strongest subject.”

Trux laughed this time. “If you made Mechanic at sixteen, you wouldn’t have had time for much besides technical subjects. Jules was an officer in the Imperial fleet a long time back, when only the east side of the Sea of Bakre had been settled. She left Imperial service, got her own ship and headed west, exploring and engaging in piracy. She was the first one through the Strait of Gulls into the Jules Sea and the first to sail the Umbari Ocean. Jules helped found a couple of the cities in the Confederation, and when the Empire tried to move in she organized the cities in the west to fight back and keep Imperial control confined to the east.”

“She must have been an undiscovered Mechanic,” Cara added. “No one who was really a common could have done all of that.”

“Wow,” Mari commented. “But why did the unrest at Julesport throw off the Senior Mechanics out here? Even if the rioting was unusual, Julesport is a long ways off, and it’s not like there’s never been commons rioting or even attacking the Guild.”

“Because of Tiae,” Cara said. “How long has it been since the kingdom fell apart? Something like fifteen years, and it just keeps getting worse. I hear it’s complete anarchy there now.”

Trux nodded. “The Guild pulled the last Mechanic out of there about ten years ago. Too dangerous. Since then the Guild has been trying to hold the line at the border between the Confederation and what used to be Tiae. We think that’s what has the Senior Mechanics spooked, the worry that the unrest in Julesport was the first sign that the problems in Tiae might spread north. If we lose the Confederation like we did Tiae, well, that’s a big chunk of Dematr.”

“But that won’t make the Guild change the way it does anything,” Mari grumbled, then instantly regretted saying that aloud.

The other two nodded, though. “Something has to be done,” Trux agreed, his eyes on Mari. “I’ve heard…” He glanced quickly toward the table where the Senior Mechanics sat. “Maybe Cara and I should let you eat.”

Both Trux and Cara had grown nervous enough that Mari didn’t debate the point. Besides, she didn’t want them asking her what everyone should do. Just because she thought Mechanics should offer solutions rather than sticking to the past, and just because she had said that more than once, and just because she was willing to stomp in here covered with dust, other Mechanics thought she was crazy enough to…

To what?

She didn’t know the answer to that, but she did know what could happen to Mechanics who complained too loudly and too often.

Mari ate quickly, apprentices refilling her glass several times as she tried to make up for the dehydration of the desert journey. As she tipped back the last glass, Mari caught a whiff of something that didn’t smell very good. “Is that me?” she asked Cara.

“Uh, yeah. Understandable, though, if you walked here through the Waste.”

“Understandable or not, I appreciate you putting up with it. I’d better get cleaned up.”

She felt the eyes of everyone in the dining hall upon her as she left, then a rising roar of conversation behind her.

Back in her room, Mari had to let the water out of the bath and refill it after the dirt on her made the first tubful too filthy to get clean in. After getting her hair clean and combed, then putting on fresh clothes, Mari held her breath as she rolled up her old clothes before setting them outside to be laundered. She couldn’t launder the jacket, but she did clean it as well as possible.

She put her jacket back on and checked her reflection in the mirror.
No wonder that Mage never hit on me.
A couple of weeks confined in a stifling hot wagon, followed by a week out in the open desert, had not done her complexion any favors, but at least she was clean now. Mari flipped her hair lightly, causing the tips to brush her shoulders, and not for the first time thought about cutting it shorter. Some days her hair was just a pain. Other days she liked it, though, so she might as well keep it at this length.

Tired but restless, Mari carefully drew her pistol from the holster draped over the room’s chair. After all her time in the desert, the dust-covered pistol needed cleaning, too. Sitting down, Mari got out the oil and wire brushes and worked away, finding comfort in the simple task. Once she had finished, she reassembled it, pulled back the slide to check the mechanism, clicked off a dry shot on the empty chamber, then reinserted an ammunition clip, set the safety, and returned the pistol to its holster.

Only to yank it out again when a knock sounded on her door. “Who’s there?” Mari called, wishing that she could control her voice as well as that Mage had.

“Mechanic Pradar. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about my uncle. He was at the Guild Hall in Caer Lyn.”

Angered at herself for panicking, and surprised that she would react that way inside a Guild Hall, Mari shoved her pistol back into the holster. She paused to control her breathing before opening the door.

The Mechanic there looked to be in his mid-twenties, and seemed as nervous as Mari had been. “Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn?” Pradar asked.

“Yes. Though it’s been a couple of years since I left. Do you want to come in and—”

“No!” Pradar smiled anxiously. “Better we just talk here.”

“All right. What’s your uncle’s name?”

“Rindal. Mechanic Rindal.” Pradar must have seen her reaction. “Do you know anything?” His voice had taken on a pleading quality.

Mari hesitated, thinking that she was in enough trouble already. But if Rindal was this guy’s uncle… “Yes. What do you know?”

Pradar made a helpless gesture. “He just disappeared. Uncle Rindal stopped sending letters, and my father’s letters to him were never answered. We checked with other Mechanics we knew at Caer Lyn and they said he was gone. Nobody knew where or how.”

“I know how,” Mari said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know where. Not for sure.”

“What do you know?” Pradar asked, his eyes lit with hope and dread intermingled. “Please. My father…it’s been years.”

“Four years,” Mari said. She had never forgotten that night, because nightmares weren’t supposed to happen while you were awake. “I was on night internal security watch in the Guild Hall. You know how boring that is. Nothing ever happens. Except this night, a little after midnight, I got a call to come to the entrance guard post. There were Mechanics there, ones that I’d never seen before. They were all armed, all of them had pistols and rifles, and they seemed…dangerous. The Guild Hall Supervisor was there, too. He told me to do whatever these other Mechanics said, then he left.”

Pradar nodded, his eyes locked on hers. “Dangerous Mechanics?”

“Yes. Like they were soldiers or something instead of Mechanics. But they were Mechanics. I can’t explain it. Their leader told me to take them to Mechanic Rindal’s room. So I did.” Mari clenched her teeth at the memory, old guilt flooding through her.

“You didn’t have any choice,” Pradar said. “You were just an apprentice given direct orders by a Guild Hall Supervisor and some full Mechanic.”