Jack Campbell: The Hidden Masters of Marandur

The woman traveler snorted. “Keep an animal in a small cage long enough, beat it every time it complains, and it will snap, sure enough. Isn’t that us? If the daughter doesn’t get here soon, she’s likely to find nothing to free but the ruins of the world.”

The commons fell silent. Some of them urged their horses away from the troughs and back to the road.

Mari stood, eyes on the neck of her horse, waiting a few moments before moving on and thinking that the commons had some good sources of information. The incident in Larharbor had scared her Guild’s Senior Mechanics, because anyone crazy enough to attack a Mage would have been crazy enough to attack a Mechanic. She had hoped it would finally move the Senior Mechanics to admit to growing problems, but instead the event had been blamed on the Mage who had been killed.

Of course, the commons who had killed the Mage had themselves all been killed, too, so no one could ask them why they had done it.

But for the moment, Mari was more concerned that the commons had heard something about Dorcastle despite the Guild’s efforts to hide everything. And, unlike the Mechanics Guild, the commons were willing to talk about the dragon found amid the wreckage. They think the daughter of Jules did that? Alain and I barely survived it. I thought we hadn’t been seen getting away, but someone must have spotted us. Spotted me, anyway .

The Senior Mechanics must know that the commons are talking this freely about the incident in Dorcastle. Is that why they chose to send me on a one-way mission? Because they still suspect I didn’t tell the full truth about what happened at Dorcastle? I would have told them, if they would have listened, if they hadn’t threatened me and told me to say nothing .

Instead, the commons are thinking the mythical daughter of Jules did it. What if they had known it was me? What would they have said when they learned I was a Mechanic?

She thought of the woman trader, wistfully and sorrowfully dreaming of freedom for her children. Freedom from Mari’s Guild, as well as from the Mage Guild. In her many years confined within Mechanics Guild Halls, isolated from the commons, Mari had come to accept the beliefs the Guild had drilled into her: that Mechanics were inherently superior, that commons couldn’t rule themselves. But like so many other things she had been taught, those beliefs had been badly battered by what Mari had seen and experienced in the last few months.

She led her horse back to the road, looking intently in both directions in search of anyone lingering to keep watch on her, but seeing no one like that Mari mounted her horse and headed on toward the north.

Mari kept moving slowly along the road until night fell, the number of other travelers dwindling rapidly as darkness came on. Finally she halted, sitting silently in the gloom. Almost everyone else using the road had stopped for the night, either finding shelter at an inn, tavern or hostel, or simply camping on the road’s edge in groups for safety. From here, Mari could see and hear no one else.

Sighing, she finally dismounted and settled her pack on her back. “Thanks for the ride,” she whispered to the horse, then started to turn the animal loose. At the last moment she noticed the dangling reins and remembered that she had to do something about them. Mari tied the reins back across the saddle so they wouldn’t catch on anything. The horse would surely find her own way back to Edinton. The saddle and other tack had the name of the stable on it, and if those were lost the horse had the brand of the stable burned into one haunch. Nonetheless, Mari felt guilty as she watched the tired horse wander slowly back down the road, worried about abandoning the animal even though she had no alternative.

Already weary, her legs and thighs stiff from riding, Mari turned off the road, walking to the east through rough country. Even if she hadn’t been forced to abandon her horse in order to avoid revealing where she might have gone from there, the lack of visibility and the poor terrain would have made it too dangerous to ride through here at night. Mari picked her away along through the dark until she literally stumbled onto the impossible-to-miss tracks of the single train line connecting Edinton with cities farther north. Hoping she was heading in the right direction, Mari walked north alongside the tracks until with relief she reached a place the Mechanics in Edinton often complained about, a spot where the track curved while it also climbed a short, steep grade, forcing trains to slow to a crawl.

It would have been easy enough to fix that section, to excavate a portion of the rising terrain and straighten the track, but that was how the original line had been built centuries ago. Fixing it would mean changing it, and the Senior Mechanics didn’t approve changes except on those rare occasions when no other alternative existed. Since this section of track was still passable, it would be repaired when necessary, but otherwise remain as it had always been.

Thoroughly worn out, Mari sat down to wait. Only two trains ran north from Edinton each week, using a schedule which hadn’t varied for decades. One of those trains should come by here tonight.

Despite her efforts to stay alert, she was drowsing when the sound of the approaching train brought Mari to full wakefulness. Lying on her stomach in the darkness to be as inconspicuous as possible, she waited tensely as the ancient steam locomotive chugged past, straining at the burden of hauling its train of freight and passenger cars up the slope. She could see the engineer in the cab of the locomotive—probably some Mechanic she knew—along with a couple of apprentices, visible in the dim orange glow from the grate on the locomotive firebox.

Mari watched freight cars rolling past, then jumped up and ran toward the train as the first passenger car loomed into view. Leaping up, she caught at the platform at the end of the car, shaking with effort and anxiety as the gravel roadbed swept by below.

Her hands gripped the railing on the platform so tightly they hurt as Mari swung over the railing and found secure footing on the platform itself. Sighing with relief, she turned and peered into the darkened interior of the passenger car. She knew that only the last car, the one reserved for Mechanics, would have any electric lights. The candles or oil lamps commons would have used were banned for fear of fire in the wooden cars.

Unable to see much of the inside of the car, Mari eased the door open and slid through as quickly as she could. Inside, vague shapes were all that could be seen of passengers trying to sleep through the night journey. Fortunately, the Mechanics Guild kept the price of train tickets high enough that some seats were empty, so by moving cautiously Mari was able to find one and sit down.

The train began speeding up again as it crested the slope and the track straightened. Mari sat among the sleeping commons, staring ahead through the darkness. The port of Edinton and a ship north had been a tempting alternative, but she had thought the passenger piers too open and too easily watched. Hopefully by this roundabout overland route she had thrown off her path any Mages and Dark Mechanics as well as the Mechanics Guild itself. There was a small terminal just south of Debran where she could leave the train with little chance of being spotted and take back roads the rest of the way to Danalee.

But all that did was buy time. She needed to talk to someone else, someone she knew would listen and judge whether Mari had totally lost it or if she really was marked for death. If there was anyone else in the Guild like that, someone she could still trust to tell almost everything that Mari had learned, that person was now at the Guild’s weapons workshops in Danalee. Alli, I hope you are still the best friend I knew back in Caer Lyn .