The Hidden Masters of Marandur

by Jack Campbell

  The Hidden Masters of Marandur

  Copyright © 2015 by John G. Hemry

  All rights reserved.

  Published as an ebook in 2015 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

  Cover art by Dominick Saponaro.

  ISBN 978-1-625671-32-5

  ALSO BY JACK CAMPBELL

  THE PILLARS OF REALITY

  The Dragons of Dorcastle*

  The Hidden Masters of Marandur*

  The Assassins of Altis* (forthcoming)

  Books 4-6 forthcoming

  THE LOST FLEET

  Dauntless

  Fearless

  Courageous

  Valiant

  Relentless

  Victorious

  THE LOST FLEET: BEYOND THE FRONTIER

  Dreadnaught

  Invincible

  Guardian

  Steadfast

  Leviathan

  THE LOST STARS

  Tarnished Knight

  Perilous Shield

  Imperfect Sword

  PAUL SINCLAIR/JAG IN SPACE

  written as John G. Hemry

  A Just Determination

  Burden of Proof

  Rule of Evidence

  Against All Enemies

  ETHAN STARK

  written as John G. Hemry

  Stark’s War

  Stark’s Command

  Stark’s Crusade

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Ad Astra*

  Borrowed Time*

  Swords and Saddles*

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Last Full Measure

  * available as a Jabberwocky ebook

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jack Campbell

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  To

  my daughter Carolyn

  For S, as always

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to my agent, Joshua Bilmes, and to Steve Mancino and Eddie Schneider, for their relentless championing of this series and their ever-inspired suggestions and assistance, and to the rest of Jabberwocky (notably Lisa Rodgers and Krystyna Lopez) for their tireless labors, and to editor Betsy Mitchell for her enthusiasm and editing. Thanks also to Catherine Asaro, Robert Chase, Carolyn Ives Gilman, J.G. (Huck) Huckenpohler, Simcha Kuritzky, Michael LaViolette, Aly Parsons, Bud Sparhawk and Constance A. Warner for their suggestions, comments and recommendations as Dragons took the long path from draft to reality.

  Chapter One

  Her pursuers had not shown their faces today. Instead, shadows stalked Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn through the streets of Edinton. “I didn’t see any Mages on the walk here,” Mari said.

  Her companion furrowed his brow in thought. Mechanic Abad of Highgate was a stolid, unimaginative sort. He had doubtless never questioned his own loyalty to the Mechanics Guild, and he had been assigned repeatedly to go out on contracts with her. Some might call him Mari’s coworker, some might call him Mari’s safeguard, but she knew that Abad was also a spy for the Senior Mechanics here at Edinton. Every Mechanic submitted a routine report after completing a job, but Mari knew that Abad was also providing her superiors in the Mechanics Guild with updates on everything she said and did.

  Fortunately for Mari, loyalty to the Mechanics Guild also meant that Abad was even more suspicious of Mages than he might be of her. “There’s always a Mage,” he muttered, looking around carefully. “There’s always one watching when we go out, following us.” His eyes went to Mari. “Watching you. They don’t hang around when I go out with other Mechanics.”

  Mari nodded. She couldn’t very well explain all of the reasons for that. Not to Abad, and not to any other Mechanic. “Then you know I’m not exaggerating,” Mari said. “Ever since I had a run-in with the Mage Guild back at Dorcastle they’ve been watching me.”

  “The Senior Mechanics don’t believe you,” Mechanic Abad said. “Even though I told them in my, uh, contract reports that the Mages were always hanging around when you were out. But I don't see any today. Do you think they’ve given up?”

  “Mages? Who knows how they think?” She kept her words properly disdainful. Even though she was only eighteen years old, the youngest Master Mechanic in the history of the Guild, Mari probably knew more about how Mages thought than any other Mechanic did. She knew enough not to be truly scornful of Mages. The Senior Mechanics suspected that, which was one reason why Abad was watching her, and one reason why she had been sent to the place nicknamed “End-of-the-World Edinton.”

  Mari knew enough to be worried about Mages she couldn’t see.

  Abad snorted in derision. “Mages? Think? Let’s get this done and get back to the Guild Hall.”

  Together they walked up the broad steps leading into the city hall, the dark Mechanics jackets they wore standing out amid the brighter clothes of the common folk entering and leaving the building, common folk who hastily made way for the two Mechanics. The commons bowed respectfully to the Mechanics’ faces, but Mari knew that if she turned fast enough to look behind her she would see expressions that held hostility rather than respect. The Mechanics Guild and the Mage Guild hated each other, but they were masters of the world of Dematr, and therefore the commons hated both of the Great Guilds equally.

  The stone steps, grooved from centuries of foot traffic, had been here for a very long time. Mari kept her eyes on those worn steps as she climbed them, thinking about her Guild, which worked so hard to keep anything from changing in the world it controlled. And about the chaos to the south of here, in the land once known as Tiae, where all order had collapsed over a decade ago despite the efforts of the Mechanics Guild. Here, in the southernmost city of the Bakre Confederation, fear of similar anarchy helped keep the commons of Edinton in line.

  At the entrance to the city hall two guards stood, wearing armor and weaponry that were, at least for common folk, state-of-the-art. Their freshly polished chain-mail armor gleamed in the sun, short-swords hung by their sides ready for use, and crossbows nestled in the guards’ arms.

  Mari kept her gaze impassive as she met their eyes, but one of her hands strayed under her jacket, closing about the semi-automatic pistol holstered under her arm. She hadn’t met any commons in the Confederation who posed the kind of threat those in Ringhmon had, but the memories of her kidnapping and imprisonment there still jumped to the fore whenever she encountered armed commons. Few could afford the expensive and rare Mechanic weapons like Mari’s pistol, but either a sword or a crossbow bolt could be just as deadly as a bullet if it struck home.

  “Contract,” Abad said to the guards, his tone arrogant in the normal way of Mechanic to common. “Calculating and Analysis Device.”

  The guards saluted, their faces almost as expressionless as those of Mages, then the female guard gestured to her companion. “Escort the honored Mechanics to the city leaders,” she said.

  Mari could almost hear the resentment buried beneath her outwardly deferential tone of voice. Alain would have heard it clearly, she thought, then winced inwardly. Don’t think about him. Never think about him. That’s the only way to protect him.

  The city leaders presented smiling greetings, the polishe
d skills of politicians enabling them to seem perfectly sincere in their welcome as they led Mari and Abad to the room holding the Calculating and Analysis Device. Most of the city hall was lit by oil lamps whose wavering light provided adequate illumination, but in the room holding the CAD two electric light fixtures provided a steady glow. Mari gave the lights a glance, thinking of the other electric light fixtures they had passed in this building, all old and non-operative. The electrical current provided by the Mechanics Guild was as expensive as everything else the Mechanics sold, as were the individually handcrafted light bulbs. At some point in the past, Edinton had been forced to cut expenses.

  But even a city strapped for cash had need of the number-crunching and data storage a CAD could provide. Nothing smaller than a city could afford one, though. There were only two CADs in the city of Edinton, this one leased by the city and the other within the Mechanics Guild Hall itself. “What’s the exact problem?” Mari asked.

  “It will not function,” one of the city leaders said.

  Abad smirked as Mari fought to avoid rolling her eyes at the vague description. Even the smartest common was banned by the Mechanics Guild from learning anything about Guild technology, so she really shouldn’t blame the man for his ignorance. Going to the control panel, she typed in the commands to run a simple functionality test. Instead of lights blinking in response and a punched tape emitting with the results, nothing happened. “Yeah. It’s not functioning,” Mari agreed.

  Abad watched her, frowning again, this time in concentration. “Can you fix a dead CAD?”

  “If I can’t fix this, no one else in the Confederation can,” Mari replied.

  It wasn’t a boast, just a statement of fact. Abad, who had been watching her work long enough to know that, nodded and waited for instructions. He was a good general-purpose Mechanic, but not one of the few trained in CAD work. With so few of those devices made by the Guild, not many Mechanics needed those skills, valuable though they were.

  She paused, thinking through possible causes for the CAD to be totally nonfunctioning. Most of the possibilities involved major problems and a lot of work. Where to begin? Just finding the problem might take most of the day.

  Then she recalled a test that Professor S’san had put them through at the Academy, one that had baffled every student before S’san pointed out the simple cause of the problem. It can’t hurt to check that first.

  Mari knelt by the back of the machine, where the power wire ran into a metal fitting over the wall junction with the single electrical power line within the city hall. That power line originated at the Mechanics Guild Hall, fed by the hydroelectric generators there. As far as commons were concerned, it might as well all be magic.

  She unscrewed the cover and peered at the connection. Her brief sense of satisfaction faded rapidly as Mari studied what had been hidden. “Abad, take a look at this.”

  He went to one knee beside her, eyes intent. “One of the wires is completely loose. How did that happen?”

  Mari pointed to the screw which should have held the wire securely. “It’s been unscrewed.”

  Abad’s breath caught. “Unscrewed? Who could have done that?”

  She didn’t answer, even though Mari had a suspicion. Commons weren’t supposed to have such tools, weren’t supposed to know how to use Mechanic tools, weren’t supposed to know how to do anything with Mechanic devices, but she had encountered some who did, the ones she called Dark Mechanics. The ones she had been ordered by her Guild superiors never to mention. “We’ll have to report this,” Mari said as she quickly reconnected the power and set the screw firmly in place. Maybe now the Guild would finally listen to her instead of trying to muzzle her.

  On the heels of that thought came another realization. Someone had sabotaged the CAD in a very simple way that might have tied her up for hours. That someone must have known that Mari would be the one sent to investigate a problem with a CAD.

  Someone had wanted her here. Which meant she had better leave here as fast as possible.

  But as she straightened to see the lights on the CAD blinking through its startup routine, Abad turned to the city leaders. “We need to ask some questions. Close the door,” he ordered.

  Exchanging worried looks, the city leaders gestured to one of their assistants, who turned to the door and began swinging it closed. Even though nothing could be seen in the doorway, the door abruptly stuck on something when only halfway closed, then as the baffled assistant tried again it swung closed without a problem.

  Mari’s hand went to her pistol again, closing tightly about the grip this time, her heart pounding in her ears. The group of commons was between her and the door. Mari rammed forward into a couple of them, shoving the two city leaders toward the door, but both staggered against something unseen, going down in a heap that abruptly included not only the two commons but also a Mage.

  Everyone froze for an instant. Then the female Mage on the floor raised her eyes and met Mari’s gaze. She was short, strands of stringy dark hair escaping from the cowl of her hood. Her face held no expression at all as she looked at Mari, even her eyes betraying no emotion, but in one hand she held a long knife ready for use.

  Mari didn’t remember having drawn her weapon, but she suddenly realized that she had the pistol out and pointed directly at the Mage’s face.

  Abad glared down at the Mage as the wide-eyed commons in the room cautiously moved away from both Mage and Mechanics. “Kill her,” Abad suggested.

  “No,” Mari said. “Guild policy,” she added, to avoid admitting that she didn’t want to harm anyone unless absolutely necessary to save herself or someone else. “Unless they’re actually attacking us, we’re supposed to ignore Mages. This one might have been after one of the commons.” She didn’t believe that. This Mage was looking right at her, not at any of the city leaders. “There might be more around. Let’s go.”

  Mechanic Abad hesitated a moment, but obedience was drilled into Mechanics from the time they first became apprentices, and Mari did have Master Mechanic rank. Abad nodded and followed as Mari walked sideways to the door, keeping her eyes on the Mage and her weapon aimed straight between the Mage’s eyes. Abad yanked the door open, followed Mari out, then slammed the door shut behind them as he and Mari quickly headed out of the building.

  She didn’t slow down until they were again on the steps leading out of the city hall, her eyes scanning the plaza in front of the building for any sign of other Mages.

  “How did you know?” Abad asked. “I didn’t see her until—until those commons tripped over her.”

  “There’s a Mage trick, a trap,” Mari explained, choosing her words with care. The unwritten but firm rule of the Guild was that no Mechanic ever saw a Mage do anything that the Mechanics Guild couldn’t explain. “You can tell they’re setting it if the door to a room sticks when there’s nothing visible blocking it. I found out about it in Dorcastle.” It wasn’t a lie, just a partial truth. The trick had been Mage work all right, but the door had actually hung up on that Mage bending light around herself to be effectively invisible. Alain had told Mari that a Mage needed to maintain concentration to keep something like that working, so Mari had shoved the commons at the Mage in hopes of not just knocking the Mage off-balance but also breaking her focus.

  “A trap?” Abad nodded slowly, his expression uncertain. Just like Mari, he had seen that Mage appear from out of nowhere. But to admit that would mean admitting that Mages could do things Mechanics thought impossible, and no Mechanic was allowed to do that. “Yeah. Someone deliberately unfastened that power connection to get us in there, and she must have hiding, waiting for us. Maybe she didn’t actually unscrew that wire, but just pulled on it and somehow pulled the screw out that way.”

  “It would be awfully hard to do it that way,” Mari said. Abad must know he was trying to rationalize what had happened, but he couldn’t admit the truth without admitting that the Mechanics Guild was lying about Mages and maybe other things as well.
Somebody used a screwdriver to loosen that screw. Only Dark Mechanics could have done it…or could my own Guild have set me up? But how could Mages have also been involved? Alain told me, and I saw in Dorcastle, that Dark Mechanics get along with Mages no better than regular Mechanics do. How could they be working together here? Or was the apparently joint move mere coincidence?

  She hated lying to Abad, and wished she could have discussed her thoughts with him, but the truth about Dark Mechanics, as with Mages, would have imperiled Abad with their own Guild even if he had believed it. As far as the Mechanics Guild was concerned, people who could do the work of Mechanics but were not Mechanics did not exist. She had been told that, ordered to believe it, and warned never to tell anyone else that any other truth might exist. Even though Mari had no intention of abiding by those commands forever, she had no evidence with which to convince any other Mechanics. The hard evidence she had given her Guild superiors in the past had simply disappeared once in their custody. But perhaps this incident would help break the logjam of denial. “We need to get back to the Guild Hall and report this as soon as possible,” Mari said.

  Abad nodded quickly and firmly this time. When he had first been paired with her for contract work, Abad had eyed Mari will ill-concealed suspicion and subtly questioned her every move, but that had been fading as they worked together. Now, after this latest incident, Abad no longer hesitated to follow her lead.

  They had kept moving across the plaza, turning onto the street leading back to the Mechanics Guild Hall. The crowds of commons were separating before them, leaving a clear path and an open area around the two Mechanics, not out of real respect but because the Guild insisted on such preferential treatment in all things. Abad looked back, momentarily falling a step behind Mari. She paused in mid-step to allow Abad to catch up.

  She heard the sound of the gunshot at almost the same moment as she felt the wind of the bullet’s passage as it nearly grazed her forehead, followed by the harsh crack of the bullet striking the stone building beside her. Tiny chips of stone blasted from the wall by the impact struck Mari’s neck, but she had already begun diving forward before the sound of a second shot was followed by another bullet slamming into the building exactly where she had been standing an instant earlier. Pulling out her pistol, she rolled down and came back up crouched with her back against the building. Mari held her weapon in both hands, her heart hammering, as she stared past the suddenly panicked commons running along the street in all directions.