Jack Campbell: The Hidden Masters of Marandur

Mari couldn’t help laughing again. “It’s not that kind of plant. I’m sorry. Mechanics give different meanings to some words. But you’re right, it is centered around a boiler like those on a locomotive or the one we blew up in Dorcastle.”

Alain’s alarm was uncharacteristically easy to spot. “You must take care, then.”

“Relax! I made Mechanic rank as a steam specialist. I know this stuff.” She smiled ruefully. “Though given your experiences with boilers I can see why you’re worried. Believe me, I’m being careful. Now, what can you do? The best thing, I think, is to get plenty of rest and in your spare time keep looking around. Oh, and check the histories they have here. Maybe they still have things that aren’t available any more to the outside world, something about history before what you know, or even something referencing those Mechanics Guild texts. If we find something like that we’ll have grounds for asking the masters about the manuscripts in a non-confrontational way.”

“All right,” Alain agreed. “Though I will enjoy the task of searching these histories, and it seems wrong to enjoy myself while you labor so hard.”

“My Mage, I am having the time of my life. Trust me.” She leaned in and kissed him. That felt so good that she kissed him again, longer this time.

“Ma’am?”

Mari jerked away from Alain, seeing that some of the students had approached while she was…distracted with Alain. Her face once more flaring with the heat of embarrassment, she barely managed to keep from snapping at the students as Alain stood up. “Yes? What?”

“We have finished the job you gave us, ma’am,” the oldest announced eagerly.

Mari winced. The student was at least twice her age. “Lady Mechanic!”

“Yes, Lady Mechanic,” the students all chorused, looking abashed.

“I’ll see you later, Alain. Now, do you guys want to learn how to use tools?” Her stomach tightened as she said it. Actually teaching Mechanic arts to commons was something she would have thought inconceivable a year ago. It still felt wrong. But with everything else she had learned since then, this might prove important as well.

They gathered around her eagerly. In their isolation, none of the students knew how revolutionary a thing Mari was about to do. Mari found herself hesitating, realizing that this truly was a point of no return.

She bent to pick up the largest of the wrenches, one that could be adjusted to fit different widths. “This is called a mankey wrench.”

“Why?” a student asked.

“That’s its name. Big wrenches are mankey wrenches.”

“But,” another student asked, “what does mankey mean?”

“It means it’s a big wrench,” Mari replied. “I don’t know where the name came from. I’ve never heard of anyone or anything called a mankey except these tools, and no Mechanic I’ve talked to has any idea why big wrenches are mankey wrenches, but the name is an ancient one so remember it.” She raised the heavy tool in both hands. “Mankey wrench. Who wants to learn how to use one?”

By the time dinner call sounded her students had acquired an impressive array of skinned knuckles, bruises, and abrasions from slipping and misapplied tools. But they were using the tools effectively enough if not perfectly. The cleaned-up steam plant lay gleaming under the last rays of the setting sun, its fittings checked and tightened. “Tomorrow we need to go over the delivery pipelines running from here to the buildings to make sure they don’t have loose fittings or holes. Which after all this time they certainly will. Then we check all the steam heating pipes in the buildings for the same thing. Then we come back here and check this set-up again.” She had just described the sort of drudgery that made apprentices groan, but the students were staring at her with wild-eyed enthusiasm. Amazing.

She and Alain ate alone, Alain doing all of the talking as he described the histories he had read so far. “I have found nothing yet which tells more than the histories I have already seen. On the other matter, I have learned nothing else.”

They went back to his room together, Mari’s mind so full of steam plant mechanisms and operating requirements that she forgot to ask Alain if it was all right to stay with him again. But he didn’t raise the issue. It wasn’t until she was lying down beside him that the memory of her offer the night before suddenly popped back into her head. What if Alain…?

But as his arms came around her, Alain’s hands came to rest one between her shoulder and one in the small of her back. Both halted their movement, not roaming around or seeking a way inside her clothing. “Alain?” Mari murmured.

“Yes?”

“You are so special. Thanks.”

Exhausted from her day, Mari fell asleep quickly, barely having time to worry that the dreams of the night before might return.

She woke up in the middle of the night, something dark inside her fading dreams retreating as Mari fixed her eyes on Alain lying beside her, sleeping peacefully. Her heart was pounding and her breathing rapid, but they began to slow as Mari calmed herself. Somewhere outside, beyond the walls of the university, barbarians roamed the dead city of Marandur, but as Mari snuggled next to Alain she realized that she had never felt so safe.

If she dreamed again that night, she could not recall it the next day.

That next day proved less tedious than she had feared. The enthusiasm of the students was infectious. Before long, Mari was actually feeling like an eighteen-year-old herself again, pumping her fist at the sky as each section of piping checked out good or was repaired and patched where necessary. She noticed Alain watching her occasionally, his face impassive but his eyes smiling in a way she could recognize now. He looked younger again, too.

At the end of a busy and incredibly exhausting week, she stood watching as the fires were lit beneath the boiler. It felt odd to know some of the wood in the fuel bunkers had come from abandoned buildings on the university grounds that were being slowly cannibalized, but if the buildings were coming down anyway from disrepair or old damage they might as well serve a useful purpose. The rest of the wood had been harvested from buildings outside the university and from small trees growing in the ruins of the city. There were wells on the grounds, so water wouldn’t be a problem.

Alain stood back, watching with what she could have sworn was a proud expression. Her pack of student leaders, the ones she had chosen as the work progressed because they showed the best aptitude, were gathered close around as she explained the operation of the boiler. “The most important rule is to never let the pressure get too high. If it gets too low, buildings will get a little cold. But if the pressure gets too high, the boiler will explode, people will die, and this plant won’t be working again no matter what you do.”

“You mean, it will look like out there?” one of the students asked, pointing toward the ruined city.

“Yeah. Pretty much. Trust me. I purposely over-pressured a boiler smaller than this and it blew apart a really large building.” The students watched her with wide eyes, but none asked why she had blown up a boiler. It was a bit disconcerting to realize that like Alain, these students just seemed to accept that Mari would sometimes blow up stuff.

Mari went over the safety rules again and again, thanking fate that her students could all read the Mechanic warning postings on the walls. The pressure built steadily, the relief valves started hissing at the right points in the process, and Mari took her students over to crank open the valves to feed steam to the still-occupied buildings where classes were held and everyone lived and worked. The steam hissed out and she waited for shouts of pain or alarm as major leaks announced themselves. But the checks of the pipes had done their job, and to her own surprise Mari heard nothing but whoops of excitement. There would be plenty of smaller leaks to patch, but this was a low-pressure system so that wouldn’t be hard. Wearisome, but not hard.