The Assassins of Altis

by Jack Campbell

  One of the sailors nodded. “Aye, Lady Mechanic. That ship lies off to starboard there. Is that where you wish to be taken instead of to the Gray Lady?”

  “No. Thank you,” Mari answered in a dry voice. Mage Dav, though the owner of the ship, didn’t seem interested in telling anyone what to do. “We need the Gray Lady. Then we need to get out of this port as fast and quietly as possible.”

  The sailors grinned knowingly. “Trouble with the authorities?”

  “Right,” Mari assured them. She pointed back to where the sounds of destruction still rumbled. “That’s going on because they’re after us.”

  The sailors exchanged looks and then bent to their oars, driving the boat ahead at a faster rate.

  Despite Mari’s fears and an occasional larger swell that slopped a small amount of water over the side of the skiff, they made the Gray Lady without sinking. Mari climbed aboard the small clipper-rigged ship, delighting in the trim shape it showed in the starlight. Some machines were clunky and some were sleek. This particular sailing machine was a thing of beauty.

  A man with a nicely trimmed beard approached Mari and Mage Dav, his manner deferential but not servile. “Sir Mage, we’ve been watching and hearing the events up in the city. Where and when do we sail?”

  Mage Dav simply indicated Mari.

  “I guess I’m still in charge,” she said. “You’re the captain? We need to leave port now without anyone noticing.”

  “We can do that. The harbor guard won’t know we’re gone.”

  “I’m more worried about the Mechanic ship.” Mari pointed out the silhouette of the much larger Mechanic vessel.

  “Mechanics fear a Mechanic ship?” The captain rubbed his chin, eyeing her, then the other Mechanics and the Mages. “You wouldn’t be the daughter, would you?”

  “Yes,” Mari admitted. It was easier to say this time. “But call me Lady Mari. Is there anybody on Dematr who hasn’t heard about me?”

  “Not on this ship, anyway. Some months ago every tavern on the waterfront of Marida had men and women telling how they’d seen you in the Northern Ramparts and what you’d done there.” The captain bowed. “It’s an honor to sail with you, daughter. But that Mechanic ship has a big weapon on her deck.”

  “I know. If they open fire, try not to get hit by it.”

  The captain grinned. “I never thought to meet a Lady Mechanic after my own heart. You heard Lady Mari, you tars,” he ordered his crew. “Get anyone still sleeping up here now. It’ll be dawn soon and we need to be gone before then even though we’ll have to fight the tide.”

  Alain had remained amidships at the rail, leaning on it and looking weary. Mari came back to stand by him. “We’re almost out of here.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, then frowned noticeably, a sign of how tired he was. “Something is missing.”

  “What?” Mari had learned not to question Alain’s judgment in a crisis.

  Alain looked back and up. “The city lies silent. There is no more sound of Mechanic warfare.”

  Mari followed his gaze, trying to fight off another wave of anxiety. “Then they’ve figured out that we’re not where they’ve been blowing up stuff. Or maybe they think we’re there, but dead and buried under rubble.”

  “Or they have found or heard from the Mechanics at the first barricade we went through—which means they will soon find the second barricade we took.”

  “Which means they’ll know we’re on the water,” Mari finished. “Captain! Get this thing moving!”

  The clanking of the capstan announced the anchor coming up and other sailors rushed upward to spread and trim the sails. The Gray Lady wore round under her sails, gently gathering headway under the soft breeze which was all they had to work with. “We won’t be going anywhere fast fighting that tide,” the captain announced.

  Mari met the gazes of her followers: Alli grinning, confident beyond reason; Mechanic Dav chewing his lip as he stared at the dark shape of the Mechanic ship; Bev standing by the rail with a worried expression; the Mages Asha and Dav as apparently unworried and unemotional as ever; and Alain right beside her. Mari felt totally worn out as she swayed slightly with the movement of the ship and wondered how Alain was able even to stand after his exertions earlier in the evening and then the long trek down to the harbor. “We’ve got four rifles. Alli, Mechanic Dav and Bev take three of them and line up at the rail with me facing the Mechanic ship so we can shoot if we have to.”

  “Rifles against that?” Mechanic Dav asked, pointing to the Mechanic ship. The tide was forcing the Gray Lady closer to the Mechanic vessel as she tried to beat her way out to sea, so that the shape of the deck gun was now possible to make out as a dark, deadly silhouette between the masts of the large sailing ship.

  “It’s what we’ve got,” Mari said, trying to sound firm and confident.

  “They’ve got a far-talker on board. Once they hear we were at the landing…”

  “They’ve already heard,” Alli interrupted, pointing.

  Mari stared through the nigh, seeing the dim, distant shapes of sailors rushing along the deck of the Mechanics Guild ship to the big deck gun, pulling off its canvas covering. The Gray Lady had been borne by the tide so far to starboard that they were within hailing distance of the Mechanic ship, and a moment later a voice came to them faintly over the water, magnified by a speaking trumpet. “Ahoy the ship! Heave to and await our boat!”

  The captain gave Mari a questioning look. “Tell him we’re on official business for the Mechanics Guild,” Mari suggested.

  Shrugging in a why-not way, the captain hoisted his own speaking trumpet. “Ahoy the Mechanic ship! We’re on official business for the Mechanics Guild, and the Mechanics aboard will not allow me to heave to.”

  Unfortunately, that bought far less time than Mari had hoped. A reply came almost immediately. “That is a lie! Heave to in the name of the Mechanics Guild! No ships are allowed to leave this harbor by order of the Guild!”

  The captain lowered his speaking trumpet. “Any more suggestions, Lady Mari? If I announce that the daughter is aboard, every other ship in the harbor will likely come to our aid.”

  “And be sunk,” Mari added grimly. “They couldn’t get here in time to help us, anyway.”

  The big deck gun on the Mechanic ship was training around to point at the Gray Lady. The sky was beginning to brighten in the east, making the Mechanic ship a little easier to discern but making the Gray Lady an easier target as well. “We’ll dodge, as you suggested, Lady, but we’re making little headway and our turns will have more in common with the sway of an old drunk than with the swerve of the barmaid evading his grasp,” the Gray Lady’s captain advised.

  Alli was shaking her head. “Do you realize there’s no action around their boat at all? They’re just planning on blowing us away and hope we’ll stop so we’ll make an easier target for that cannon. Oh, I wish I could build a gun like that.”

  Mari found herself momentarily struck by the absurdity of the comment after Alli’s all-too-likely assessment of the Mechanic ship’s intentions. “Alli, if we get out of this, I’ll let you build guns a lot better than that one. Heavy artillery that will fire over the horizon.”

  “Really? That’ll be so cool. I can’t wait.” Alli shook her head again as she looked at the Mechanic ship. “I hope we survive.”

  “Me, too,” Mari said. “Everybody, rifles up.” She pumped the lever on the rifle she had acquired at the barricades, then brought it to her shoulder, aiming at the figures of Mechanics on the other ship. Mechanics wearing the same jacket she wore, maybe people she had known in other places, studied beside as an apprentice, worked beside as a Mechanic. “I don’t want to do this,” she whispered to Alain.

  “You may not have to.” Alain was standing at the railing, facing the Mechanic ship. “Is it made of wood?”

  “Is what made of wood?” Mari asked, sighting toward the person aiming the deck gun.

  “The Mechanic ship,” Alain explai
ned patiently.

  “Yes, sure. That ship has a boiler, you can see the stack, but it also depends on sails. Only two of the remaining steam-powered ships are made of metal, and they don’t have masts like that, and you and I almost sank one of those a few weeks ago anyway. Even though this one probably has some metal hull plating for armor, the decks and the hull underneath are all wood.”

  The voice from the Mechanic ship called again. “This is your final warning! Heave to now or we will fire upon you! There will be no warning shots!”

  Bev stood at the rail to one side of Mari, face set, her rifle steady. “Thanks,” she whispered to Mari. “Even if we die in the next few minutes, you gave me something worthwhile to fight for.”

  Mari blinked sweat from her eyes, wishing that she weren’t so tired, trying to hold a good aim at the crew of the deck gun and knowing the Gray Lady was well within range of the big gun but that the Mechanic ship was outside the effective range of their rifles.

  “Do not let me fall,” Alain said in that same calm voice.

  As soon as Alain’s words registered in her brain, Mari forgot about aiming. She jerked around to stare at him. Alain was standing very still, his gaze locked on the Mechanic ship, hands held at waist height and spread well apart. Something glowed there as enough heat radiated for Mari to feel it easily where she stood. Then the glow was gone and Alain was falling toward the rail, gone limp and possibly unconscious. Mari dropped her rifle onto the deck, grabbing Alain and yanking him back onto the deck before he could go overboard.

  “Wow!” Mari heard Alli exclaim as a crash and roar sounded. Thinking the deck gun had fired, Mari crouched down over Alain to shield him with her body even though her mind knew that small amount of protection would do no good at all against the destruction that would be wrought by the deck gun’s shell.

  But no shell came to shatter the Gray Lady and her passengers. Asha was kneeling beside her, offering with a gesture to hold Alain safe and pointing toward the Mechanic ship. Mari stood, turning to look back and stopping in mid-turn.

  The deck of the Mechanic ship was ablaze between the mainmast and the deck gun, flames leaping upward to devour the rigging and spreading outward along the railings. Figures were running frantically from the deck gun. Mari stared, trying to figure out why they weren’t rushing to fight the fire.

  “Mari!” she heard Alli yell. “The ready ammunition! Get down!”

  Suddenly she realized what Alli was talking about. The big shells stacked next to the deck gun, the flames licking about them as she watched. “Everybody!” Mari shouted. “Hit the deck! As fast as you can!” Disregarding Asha, she dropped down next to Alain and pulled herself over his unconscious body again. “You put everything into that fire to try to save us,” Mari whispered in Alain’s ear, “and if it doesn’t work you’re helpless. I’m going to give you an incredibly hard time for taking that risk once you wake up. But until then I’m going to keep you as safe as I can.”

  A titanic roar born of multiple explosions merging into one sounded from the direction of the Mechanic ship. Mari buried her head next to Alain’s, her arm over his face, as pieces of shrapnel tore past overhead, then waited as more fragments of metal and wood rained down upon them. Finally she rose up to look at the Mechanic ship.

  A giant had taken a huge bite out of the Mechanic ship where the deck gun had been. The gun itself had fallen through the main deck and lay canted at a crazy angle, barrel pointed almost straight up. Flames had completely engulfed the forward part of the ship, the mainmast had already fallen and, as Mari watched, the foremast toppled slowly sideways like a tree falling to the axe, the top half crashing into the water of the bay and the bottom part lying across the deck of the doomed ship. Mechanics and apprentices were jumping off the ship and into the water, where chunks of wood that once had been part of the ship now served as improvised life preservers and rafts.

  Overhead, the sails of the Gray Lady were pocked with small holes caused by debris hurled from the blast, and here and there pieces of the rigging hung limp where they had been sliced through.

  Alain blinked, looking up with eyes bleary with exhaustion. Mari met his gaze. “That was stupid,” she told him angrily. Then she kissed him. “Thank you. I love you.” Alain’s lips curved into a barely visible smile as he passed out again.

  Alli was back on her feet, gazing at the devastated Mechanic ship. “Wow,” she repeated. “Alain has got to show me how to do that.”

  Mari laughed. “Alli, stick to regular explosives.” She staggered to her own feet. “Is everyone all right?” Mari saw the captain watching her with an awed expression. “Captain, let’s get out of here!”

  “Yes, Lady Mari!” he cried. “And thanks to your Mage for our salvation this day!”

  Though they saw some harbor guard vessels veering in to rescue the crew of the Mechanic ship, which was now on fire from stem to stern and lighting up the entire harbor with its death throes, none of the guard boats made any move to intercept the Gray Lady. Instead, they all took care to avoid the ship with four Mechanics and two Mages visible at the rail. One harbor guard craft armed with a small ballista on the bow angled past the Gray Lady close enough that the crew was clearly visible, all of them gazing fixedly toward the wreck of the Mechanic ship as if the Gray Lady did not exist.

  “They must have heard what you told those commons,” Mechanic Dav said in a wondering voice. “We’ve got commons helping us because they want to, not because they have to. That’s so weird. I didn’t think anybody could do that, Mari.”

  They cleared the harbor, past fortifications which remained silent as the Gray Lady passed, as the blazing wreck of the Mechanic ship finally sank to settle on the harbor bottom. In the growing light of day it was easy to see a huge cloud of dust and smoke rising over the city of Altis, illuminated from within here and there by fires still raging in various places.

  Alli shook her head. “Mari? You really did it this time. I mean, you totally trashed a city, and this harbor is kind of messed up, too.”

  Mari laughed, though with no immediate crisis to face she was starting to feel the total exhaustion brought on by the labors of the night before. “I didn’t do that. It was the Mechanics trying to kill me. Do you think the commons will believe that?”

  “You already told them, remember? By now the entire city probably knows that the Mechanics Guild tried to murder Lady Mari, the daughter of Jules herself, and that she got away again.” Alli looked at Alain where he still lay on the deck. “She and her Mage. That guy is really handy in an emergency, isn’t he?”

  “He’s nice to have around at other times, too.” Mari blinked but couldn’t dispel a haziness in her vision despite the growing light as the sun rose in a blaze of glory. Her mind felt full of fog and her legs wobbled unsteadily. She tried to remember how many hours she had been running and fighting and escaping with barely any pause, but her fatigue blurred recent events into a cloud of disjointed images. “Alli, please take command for a while. Tell the Captain to get us away from Altis, whatever course lets us make the best speed and avoids any pursuers.”

  “Sure. What are you going to do?”

  Mari looked down at Alain, chest falling and rising as he slept, Asha kneeling nearby. “I’m going to pass out now.” She took a couple of uncertain steps to stand near Asha. “Thanks for everything, Lady Mage. I’ll take it from here.” Dropping down beside Alain on the deck, she rolled next to him and lost consciousness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Gray Lady was running almost due south, coasting before the spring winds, bow slicing through the long swells before her with a rhythmic pounding that Mari found oddly soothing. The white spray occasionally being tossed over the bow shone under the light of the half-moon.

  Mari sat on the deck, leaning her back against the railing, staring up at the sails and beyond them the stars. Mage Asha came by, looking down impassively at Mari. “Please join me,” Mari offered.

  Asha nodded and sat c
arefully, then uttered a most unmagelike sigh. “We are all so weary, even after a day’s rest.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I did,” Asha replied. “You wish me to say it again?”

  Mari grinned. “That’s just an expression, Lady Mage.”

  “I see. Why do we go to Julesport?”

  “We’ll need to take on food and water. The Captain believes that’s our safest destination even though the Great Guilds will lean heavily on the Confederation to attack us. He’s also worried about the Syndaris, who he says would sell out their own mothers if the price was right.”

  “If they find we are there,” Asha said tonelessly, “the Great Guilds will not depend on commons but mount their own attacks as well. Can we…? I do not know the word. How do we know the shadows in Julesport will not betray us?”

  “Can we trust the common people there, you mean?” Mari shrugged. “I think so. I only passed through there once, so I don’t know much about the place personally, but the captain told me that Julesport still takes after the person who founded the city.”

  Asha nodded. “Jules?”

  “Herself. Explorer, pirate and hero of the Confederation. She didn’t exactly live by the rules.”

  “My uncle has told me that sailors hold her name in awe to this day,” Asha said.

  Mari remembered the way the sailors from the Sun Runner had reacted to her when they believed she was the daughter of Jules, and the way the sailors on this ship looked at her. She didn’t look forward to seeing those gazes constantly aimed at her. “That may be true. Anyway, the captain says that Julesport has never strayed all that far from its origin as her home. They have a fairly lax attitude toward laws and don’t ask a lot of inconvenient questions. At the least we can resupply ourselves there and decide on the next destination.”

  Asha gazed across the dark waters. “If the leaders of Julesport learn that the daughter of Jules is among our number, perhaps they will greet her as a long-lost and long-sought-for relation.”