The Hidden Masters of Marandur

Chapter Fifteen

Dawn came eventually. Mari stood up, blinking and feeling rotten. A bed. I used to sleep in beds all of the time. Someday, when all this is over, I’m going to wake up every morning in my comfortable bed and give thanks. I’ll never take a bed for granted again.

The sound of a rock fall came from somewhere inside the city, rattling her nerves. “Alain? How are you?”

He looked into the city, rubbing his face. “I have slept better.”

“Me, too. Excuse me while I find a convenient ruin to do my business behind, then we can eat.”

When she got back, Alain was standing braced against the wall. The huge stone blocks making up the fortification would have seemed invincible if not for the ragged breach in them that loomed just beyond Alain. “We need to find good shelter tonight,” Alain said. “Somewhere we feel secure enough to rest.”

“Good shelter?” She ran her gaze across the vast landscape of ruin that stretched ahead of them. “I hope the remainder of the city is in better shape than this. Otherwise we’ll be camping out in the open so we don’t have to worry as much about a wall falling on us.”

They ate and drank, Mari thinking that the food tasted dusty, as if the ruins were already working their decay on it. “All right. Let’s go. Can you handle the distraction of me going first?”

Alain looked as ragged as Mari felt, but he managed one of his tiny smiles. “I will be grateful to be able to see something nice amid all of this wreckage.”

“Just keep your eyes on your feet occasionally. I don’t want you walking into a hole while you’re staring at my rear end.”

The banter heartened Mari a little and they started off, trying at first to stick to one of the main roads of the city, but finding that so choked with rubble that it was easier just to follow whatever path offered the least resistance. “The destruction seems horrible at the walls, but I can see buildings that are more intact farther inside the city,” Mari remarked. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“I would guess the rebels first tried to defend the walls and the buildings closest to the walls, and held out long enough to cause the devastation of the areas they were in. Once the walls and the defenses behind them crumbled, subsequent fighting was less intense though still awful.” Alain shook his head, then hastily reached out to grab the remnants of a brick wall as the debris under his feet shifted.

Mari looked down, seeing shards of white bone mixed in with the broken masonry. “How many bodies lie unburied here? Ugh.” Then she saw something else. “Alain. There’s a path.”

He looked in the direction she pointed. They approached cautiously, seeing it was a beaten trail through the wreckage. Mari knelt to examine it. “This wasn’t made by animals. Those look like sandal prints. I think. It’s pretty crude cobbler work. And some bare feet. Human.”

“Those prints cannot be too old,” Alain said.

“No. Certainly not a century and half old.” Mari looked up at the partial buildings around them. Empty windows stared back like the eyeless sockets of skulls. “I guess everybody didn’t get out of Marandur before the emperor sealed it off. Maybe some of the inhabitants survived. Maybe rebels who managed to hide out until the legions left. Over one hundred and fifty years trapped in a dead city…I don’t think I want to meet these people, Alain.”

“I agree. Now we know why the Imperial sentries focus so much of their attention inward. Where should we go from here?”

Mari stood, pivoting slowly as she studied what could be seen. “Too bad nobody sells maps of Marandur any more, but that’s banned, too. The Mechanics Guild Hall should be near the center of the city. In the oldest cities, that’s where all the halls are located, and Marandur wasn’t too much younger than Landfall. Can you see any sign of an aqueduct?”

“Aqueduct?”

“Something that looks like a thin bridge. Aqueducts carry water to cities.”

Alain shook his head. “The Ospren River cuts through Marandur. Would the city have needed an aqueduct?”

Mari squeezed her eyes shut and slapped herself lightly. “No. I should’ve figured that out. That means the Mechanics Guild Hall should be somewhere on the banks of the river.”

“How will we know it?”

She looked around, then found what she sought and pointed. “See that strand of wire hanging there? Electrical wires to send power through the city would’ve come out of the Hall. We need a big building with lots of wires visible. Once we get close enough I’ll be able to know it’s the Mechanics Guild Hall by the design features. All Guild Halls have standardized hallways and things like that.”

Alain nodded. “Why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“Why are these things standardized, as you called it?”

“Because…” Mari wondered how to describe it to a Mage. “It’s easier to build things if they follow certain rules every time.”

“It gives you comfort?”

“No. Well, okay, I guess it does. But that’s not the reason. It’s more efficient.”

Alain nodded slowly, then shook his head. “Efficient?”

Mari tried not to slap herself again, this time out of frustration. “It means doing things the best way you can. Like when we needed to go through that Mage alarm thing and you had to maintain the hiding spell. It would have been more efficient to concentrate on one thing at a time, but of course you couldn’t do that.”

“Oh. Why do Mechanics have so many words for things?” Alain asked. “Mage Guild acolytes are told that Mechanics believe giving names to everything grants them power over things.”

Mari grinned. “Are you serious?” Then she thought about it. “Maybe there’s truth to that. In order to do science or technology you need a lot of special words. In a way it does give us power over things. Change of subject. Do you want to look for the Mage Guild Hall, too?”

“No.” Alain didn’t seem to think the issue even needed to be discussed.

“There’s nothing there you need? Or want?”

“No. There would not be.”

“All right, then.” No sense following that dead end. Times like this reminded Mari of just how different Alain’s training and experience had been. “Let’s get away from this trail before anyone who uses it comes along, and see if we can find our way to the river.”

As the sun rose higher and began heating the rubble, their surroundings became almost uncomfortably warm, especially since little wind found its way into the ruined city. At one point they startled a little herd of small deer, about the size of dogs, which stampeded nimbly off through the piles of debris. Occasionally Mari spotted a wild cat watching them from some high vantage point. Birds nested everywhere among the broken buildings, their discarded feathers and messes covering the debris in some places. About noon they saw roughly a dozen dogs running across a wide street some distance away. Mari and Alain veered off in the other direction to avoid meeting the pack. By then the route had cleared considerably, with buildings relatively undamaged by battle but worn and disintegrating from decades of abandonment.

Tough grass had sprouted in many places, and wiry bushes could be seen anywhere enough dirt had gathered, including on the upper stories of buildings blown open to the weather a century and a half earlier. Sometimes they would find a tree shoving its way up through the buckled pavement. Every once in a while, a slow rumble in the distance announced the collapse of something somewhere in the city. Everywhere they found traces of the former inhabitants, or of the soldiers and rebels who had died in the act of mutually destroying the city. Mari tried to avoid walking on the splinters of bone, but sometimes the patches lay too thickly to avoid and then she just tried to close her mind to it. One time she slipped, almost turning her ankle, as an old, heavily corroded Imperial helmet rolled underfoot, exposing the crumbling skull still resting within it.

They took a break at noon, sitting in the shade of a partial wall. Mari glanced at Alain. “Is this affecting you in any way? I can’t tell.”

Alain shrugged. “There is a lot of dust. It is hard to keep crawling over all of this wreckage. I am not enjoying myself, if that is what you are asking.”

“I don’t mean just that.” She gazed down the street as a small flock of birds swooped by. “It’s really strange in a way. It’s so quiet, and there’s animals and birds and plants. Almost idyllic. Except it’s a huge graveyard.”

He nodded. “I was thinking how people create this illusion of a world. How many people labored to create the illusion of a city here—these buildings.” Alain waved his hand at the ruins. “Then other people worked to create another illusion, that of death and destruction. Their illusion has triumphed. That is the illusion the Emperor Palan sought to maintain, and it has endured thus far. Someday the last remnants of the last building will fall to dust, the grass and the trees will grow everywhere, and then that illusion too will be gone, and it will be as if no man or woman ever laid hand to this spot.”

“Why, Alain,” Mari said, startled, “that’s almost poetic.”

“Do you mean that? I was never taught to use words artfully,” Alain responded.

“You must be a natural, then,” Mari remarked.

“Should I say thank you?”

“Yes, that would be appropriate.”

“Thank you.” Alain looked around, shaking his head. “I have seen no sign of humans since we saw that path, though, and that worries me.”

“Me, too. I’d hate to think they might be spying on us and setting up an ambush.” Mari checked her water bottle, then took a small swig. “Hey, we’re rationing water again. Remember that? If I never again go back to the desert near Ringhmon it’ll still be too soon.”

“At least we survived the experience.”

“Yeah. Do you think the water here is safe? There’s got to be wells and cisterns still intact enough to hold something, and it has been a long time since things I don’t want to think about were dumped or fell into them.”

Alain shook his head. “I would not trust it. You see there are still many places where grass or trees do not grow. Old poisons must still abide here. The river should be safe, though. It flows from clean lands to the east and then through the city, constantly renewing itself.”

“Yeah.” She pulled herself up, studying the route ahead. “I think we need to bear right a little for the shortest route to the river.”

“I would advise staying on this side street. The way you are looking is too exposed.”

She sighed. “I’m tired, but I see your point. All right. Let’s see how far we can make before sunset. I’m not walking around this place in the dark. Even if I wasn’t worried about unseen humans and other predators, this wreckage is treacherous. We’d probably end up walking into a big hole that used to be a basement or something.”

But they almost immediately encountered a maze of destruction so jumbled that it slowed progress to a crawl. Climbing to a precarious perch on a high mound of rubble, Mari could see the same devastation running off to both sides for long distances. Making her way back down a sliding slope of broken brick, she told Alain. “This is at least as bad as the stuff near the walls.”

“It is probably what is left of the inner defensive line of the rebels,” Alain suggested.

“What were they doing all the way from the walls to here?” Mari groused. “I thought that wreckage marked heavy fighting.”

They still hadn’t caught sight of the river by the time the setting sun was touching the top of the ruins to the west, though at least they had gotten clear of the area of total destruction. Alain pointed out a nearly intact storefront and led the way inside. Mari pulled out her hand light and searched the dim interior. “The front room doesn’t look bad, and there’s some kind of counter or divider still intact here. We can get behind that and be invisible from the street.”

Whatever the store had once sold must have been looted long before, the remnants having since crumbled into piles of decay. They cleared a small area of the floor behind the counter in the angle where two miraculously intact walls met, Mari feeling relief at the lack of human remains here. She and Alain ate cold rations, drank sparingly, and then huddled together against the chill that night brought on, not wanting to risk the light and smoke a fire would create. Mari closed her eyes, feeling worn out and achy. “I’m hope I’m not too tired to sleep. Hey, Alain? Guess what we’re doing.”

He turned his head to look at her. “What are we doing?”

“Cuddling together on the first night of our visit to the old Imperial capital. Isn’t it a wonderful vacation?”

“You are making an illusion to place over that of this city?” Alain asked. “Perhaps I will make a Mage of you.”

“Not likely,” Mari said. “So, how do you like it in my illusion?”

“The accommodations leave something to be desired,” Alain said, “and the travel arrangements have been wanting. But I cannot fault having you along with me. The only thing that would make things better would be if this was our honeymoon.”

“Men!” Mari said with a snort. “Move your hands, Mage. No, not there. All right, that’s better. I thought you’d be too tired to be thinking about that kind of thing.”

“You have a way of bringing it to my mind, even here.”

“You’ll get over it,” Mari told him.

“It seems I must, for now,” Alain said. “Try to sleep. I can no longer sense any other Mage nearby, so I have set a small alarm spell on the entrance to this place which should sustain itself until close to morning, if not full daylight. It will reveal little trace of itself to anyone searching for signs of me.”

“Thanks.” She raised her head enough to kiss him. “I’m a lucky girl, even if I am in the middle of a dead city with two Great Guilds after my hide and now an Imperial death sentence added to the measure.” Mari closed her eyes again, wondering how long it would take to fall asleep in the middle of this dead city.

She was so tired she must have passed out quickly, but at some point in the night something caused Mari to jerk awake. The room lay in almost total darkness now, barely illuminated by the moonlight outside which revealed only the vague shape of the counter they were huddled behind. A heavy chill lay leaden in the air around them, making her glad for Alain’s warmth next to her. Mari lay still, breathing slowly, listening as carefully as she could, wondering what had awoken her, feeling incredibly grateful for the barrier between them and the broken front of the building that gave onto the street. Faint sounds came, the sort of noises insects or small rodents might make. The thud of Mari’s pulse pounding in her ears seemed almost deafening by contrast.

Every once in a while she could hear the far-off sound of debris shifting slightly, marking the movements of small creatures, or the slow centuries-long collapse of the city’s ruins, or possibly the progress of larger beings accustomed to negotiating the rubble. Possibly humans, though how human such persons would be after living all their lives in this awful place was an open question.

Glancing over at Alain required Mari to turn her head slightly, which she did with great care, afraid of making the slightest noise in the eerie quiet that enfolded the ruins of Marandur. Alain was sleeping peacefully, no sign of worry on his face. Surely if there was any immediate danger, Alain’s Mage alarm would provide warning.

Mari closed her eyes again, trying to calm herself. None of the noises appeared to be nearby. But if anything in this world was haunted, it was these ruins. Her imagination too easily conjured up images of vengeful spirits stalking the empty streets of the dead city. How many had died here? Not just the rebels who had chosen their fates and the legionaries following their orders, but the countless men, women, and children caught in the middle of the fight? There wasn’t any way to know how many victims there had been. “I’m sorry,” Mari whispered in the barest voice she could manage.

Alain stirred slightly and she leaned into him, willing Alain to be silent again but finding immense comfort in his presence. She imagined being alone in these ruins and almost shuddered at the thought. A night alone in Marandur could surely drive someone insane.

Would the ruins of the Mechanics Guild Hall feel haunted, too? What would those dead Mechanics think of her and what she wanted to do? Would they feel remorse for their actions when living, or would they seek to protect the secrets they had kept in life?

Jules herself might have walked these streets, centuries ago when Marandur had been a living city and the capital of the Empire. Mari had learned a little more about Jules in the last few weeks, curious about the woman. After all, if Alain and the old prophecy were right, that ancient hero had been her distant forbearer. Before heading west, Jules had been an officer in the Imperial fleet. Different accounts offered different reasons for her leaving Imperial service and becoming an explorer and a pirate. The truth was probably long lost, though Mari fantasized for a moment about finding some ancient records lying amid the rubble of the city. Am I doing the right thing, Jules? Should we have come here? Are you really my blood ancestor? Can anything about that blood help me know what to do and how to do it? It seems like total superstition, but is there any truth to it? I need all the help I can get.

Why am I doing this? Not because I’m supposed to, according to that prophecy. To stop the storm? Yes. But that’s like overthrowing the Great Guilds, just a step on the way to something else. For freedom? That’s a big thing. This city…this city is a monument to how the world works, the world controlled by the Great Guilds. The Great Guilds didn’t prevent this. All they could do was help destroy the city.

Freedom. But what if freedom caused this disaster in the first place? What if those who argue that the Great Guilds need to control the commons to prevent more dead cities are actually right? Something has to change. The world has to change. Otherwise there will be a lot more cities filled with the dead. If Alain is right about that storm he talks about, every city will end up like this within just a few more years, as the world the Great Guilds have wrapped in chain breaks out and breaks up. But is freedom the answer? Or will it just lead to the same outcome, as every place turns into Tiae anyway? How do I know?

The unnaturally quiet ruins offered no answers. Mari stared out into the darkness for a long time before her eyes drooped shut from exhaustion and she fell into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, the pale light of dawn was visible over the counter. The sun had risen on their second day in the dead city.

They waited until the light was good enough to illuminate any dangerous spots in the ruins, eating cold food and drinking sparingly for a cheerless breakfast, and then started out again.

Progress was better than the day before, though still not easy. They stumbled across one relatively clear street and were able to follow it for a little way before finding the wreck of an Imperial siege tower lying athwart the road. That forced them back into a warren of alleys and side streets choked with debris, further slowing their progress. They finally stopped before a small plaza, an open space with little wrack of battle littering it. Alain shook his head. “Must we cross this? It is open to easy sight of anyone in those buildings surrounding.”

Mari wiped sweat from her forehead, the moisture smearing the dust on her into a muddy streak on her forearm. “We can’t go back. And I am not going into any of those buildings.”

“No. That would be far too dangerous, even if nothing but the dangers of decay lurked within them.” Alain stared around the plaza. “My foresight reveals nothing at this time, but my instincts tell me we are being watched.”

“Me, too. We’re making plenty of noise getting through this mess. They could track us by that racket alone.” Mari checked her pistol. She needed both hands free while scrambling over the rubble, but wanted to be sure she could get the weapon out fast if needed. “Let’s go.”

They made it across the plaza without incident, even though the blank faces of the surrounding buildings watched Mari and Alain with silent menace. Mari breathed a sigh of relief as they entered the next street, where piles of debris formed an irregular series of barricades which needed to be climbed over. They were about halfway down that street and crossing a small open area between obstructions when a rock fell ahead of them, rolling down a long slope formed by the collapse of one side of a building. Alain froze. Mari yanked out her pistol and searched the wrecked buildings rising in one or two crumbling stories around them. “What is it?” she asked him.

Alain pointed. A man was visible ahead, standing in shadow between two piles of debris. All three of them stood still, the man silent and motionless, Alain and Mari watching him and searching their surroundings for others.

Finally, the man moved, stepping into the light. Mari fought down a shudder of revulsion. It was impossible to tell how old he was because his body and hair were caked with filth. He wore a ragged strip of fabric as a sort of loincloth, crude-looking sandals on his feet, and on his chest the type of breastplate Imperial centurions had worn more than century ago. Looking every day of its age, the pitted and corroded breastplate also sported a large hole which could have been made by either an antique crossbow bolt or a Mechanic bullet.

Mari took in all that in a moment, focusing on the broken sword the man held in one hand. She pulled back the slide of her pistol to load a round, clicked off the safety, then leveled her pistol at him while steadying it with both hands, hoping that the process was sufficiently threatening to deter the man and any unseen companions he had. “Stop right there, unless you want that armor to get another hole in it.”

The man stopped, then opened his mouth in what could have been a smile but wasn’t, the gesture revealing that a lot of teeth were missing. “Give up or fight. Don’t matter to me. You fight, we kill you slower.” His accent was archaic, the words slurred from sloppy pronunciation.

“We?” Alain asked.

The man gave a low, shrill whistle. There was a stirring of the rubble on all sides, and others came into view, each wearing a combination of badly aged cast-off clothing and pieces of armor, and each carrying a weapon in various stages of corrosion or breakage.

Mari shook her head, hoping her voice would remain steady, her weapon staying fixed on the leader. “I’ve got enough bullets in this Mechanic weapon to kill every one of you. Leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.”

The man seemed amused, showing another gap-toothed smile, and Mari realized the expression was actually more like the snarl of a wolf. “We already dead, girl. Didn’t ya know? Dead born to the dead. Emperor say so.” He spat to one side. “What can you do?”

“Right now you may be officially dead, but you’re not really dead,” Mari replied. “I can change that.” The man took a step closer. Aiming carefully, her weapon steadied in both hands, Mari fired at the battered wall next to the man. The sound of the shot was amplified by the small hollow they were in, echoing repeatedly off the broken ruins to all sides. A chunk of the wall shattered, spraying the man with fragments. “I missed you on purpose. That was a warning. The next shot will blow your head off.”

The man bared what teeth he had, the snarl fiercer, looking up and to one side. Mari kept her eyes and her pistol sights on the leader as Alain followed the gesture. She felt a sense of warmth that told her Alain was building a ball of heat in one hand.

There was a crack of breaking masonry, then Alain spoke with a Mage’s total calmness. “A man in a broken window, with a short spear. Both man and window are now gone. You deal with a Mage, commons. Depart or die.”

Mari took a deep breath, keeping her weapon sighted on the leader. To her own surprise her voice remained firm. “You heard my Mage. Try anything else and I’ll kill you where you stand.”

The leader shook his head. “I already dead, woman.” He raised the broken sword and lunged forward. Mari could hear sounds all around as his followers also charged.

Her mind numb, Mari lowered her sights to make sure they were centered on the leader’s breastplate and fired. He staggered, swaying to one side, then got his feet under him again and tried to keep coming. Mari fired again, her shot this time cracking his ancient breastplate in half as he dropped to the dusty rubble. She could hear Alain hurling fire to her right, so she spun left, firing again as another man scrambled toward them. The shot missed but she got off another immediately, this one knocking him down. Pivoting again, Mari lined up on a third man and put a bullet in his belly. He was still screaming when she fired three times at a fourth enemy, a woman who was very close and diving with a rusty dagger at Alain’s back. The hits drove the woman back and to the side, to fall like a broken doll.

Mari couldn’t see any other targets to the left so she spun back to the right, checking each man she had already dropped. The wounded man seemed unable to get up, but picked up a broken brick and heaved it at her as she turned. Mari flinched as the brick hit her shoulder, then closed her mind to what she was doing and fired one more time.

Silence fell. Alain spoke into the quiet as he sheathed his long Mage’s knife under his coat. “All on this side are dead.”

“Here, too,” Mari gasped. “Are we safe?”

“For the moment.”

“Good.” With trembling hands she ejected the clip in her pistol, loaded a new one, set the safety, returned the pistol to its holster, then went to her knees and got sick, losing everything she had eaten that morning and what felt like some of last night’s meal in the bargain. Once that was done she knelt there, shaking like a leaf, until she felt Alain’s hand on her shoulder.

“It is hard,” he said. “These are the first you have killed?”

“Y-yes.” She was trying not to think about what had happened, to keep her mind blank, but revulsion still roiled through her.

“It is hard,” Alain repeated, his voice carrying compassion she could hear. “I have never forgotten the first time I had to kill others, and then I believed them to be but shadows.”

“We didn’t have any choice,” Mari muttered, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her coat. “They didn’t give us any choice. Why didn’t they give us any choice?”

“That is right,” Alain said, his voice soft. “We had no choice. We did not seek the fight and we tried to avoid it.”

She clenched her teeth, then stood up, Alain steadying her. Mari’s mouth and throat were sour with her vomit but right now she felt like hurting, letting the pain distract her a little from the sight of the bodies about her, the memories of bodies falling as she fired her pistol. “We—we need to move. Get away from here before more of them come. The sound of this fight must’ve been heard all over the city.”

He didn’t argue, and had probably already reached the same conclusion, Mari thought, but had given her a few moments to cope with her reactions to the first time she had been forced to use the pistol to shoot other humans. “Stupid. Stupid people,” she gasped, half sobbing. “Maybe they didn’t have any reason to fear dying. But they didn’t have to make us kill them.” Fighting down another tremor in her arms and legs, Mari followed Alain, glancing back once to see the bodies sprawled on the rubble, a few small fires set in the ancient wood by Alain’s spells sending up thin columns of smoke.

A voice in her head nagged at Mari as she scrambled over the next pile of debris. She realized it was her old friend Alli, who had taught her to shoot and sprinkled the lessons with lots of advice. “Always reload any time you get a chance, Mari. You don’t want to get caught with an empty weapon.”

Alli, back then it was just fun, blowing holes in a paper target. It’s no fun at all when the target is another person. It’s just awful and frightening and terrible. But thank the stars above that you taught me how to use a pistol. I don’t even want to think about what those creatures would have done to me.

Mari tried to focus on the rubble they were climbing over to help block out the horror filling her, but took advantage of a level stretch to reload the clip she had ejected from the pistol, wondering whether the barbarians would be sensibly discouraged by the killing of their comrades, or would keep coming after her and Alain. “The legionaries must have heard those shots, too. They’ll report them. They won’t come inside the city, though.”

“No, they will not enter the city.” Alain thought, then shook his head. “Perhaps there will be no report, either. Declaring that they had heard the sounds of your weapon would mean admitting someone had gotten into the city past them. I would not be surprised if the legionaries find another explanation for the noise, one which they would not be required to report to their superiors.”

“Something big collapsing, maybe? Beams of wood snapping?”

“Yes. Whatever illusion they need to convince themselves of in order to avoid placing themselves in serious trouble with their superiors. Mages are not the only ones who try to make the world illusion into a different form. Sometimes it is necessary for everyone.” Alain looked back at her for a moment. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll survive, Alain. Thanks for asking.” Mari drew in a long trembling breath as they crested the latest pile of wreckage and headed down the other side. “Let’s not talk unless we have to. More of those savages might hear. I’ll be all right. Because I have to be.”

They moved as quickly as possible for a while, not worrying much about the noise, trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the place where they had fought. Alain seemed wearier than he should have given their pace, causing Mari to worry until she mentally kicked herself for forgetting that his spells tired him out. Another battle might leave him too exhausted to move for a while. That was something else to worry about.

Once Alain stopped in his tracks and gestured off to the side. Mari followed without question, assuming his foresight had this time warned of some danger ahead.

Because of the ruins blocking their view, they stumbled onto the banks of the Ospren River without warning and stood, trying to catch their breaths. Mari walked to the cracked edge of the river wall, looking each way down the river. “All of the bridges have collapsed. No surprise there, unfortunately.”

Alain nodded, gazing watchfully back the way they had come. “They were probably badly damaged during the fighting. Is your Guild Hall on the other side of the river?”

She pulled out her far-seer and studied the far bank of the river, checking out each ruined building in turn. She scanned past one a short ways downriver from them, then turned the far-seer back to take another look. “That’s a hydroelectric generator if I’ve ever seen one. It’s beat to junk and corroded like there’s no tomorrow, but I’m sure of it. The Guild Hall did get blown to blazes if one of the generators is out in the open.” Mari pointed. “That’s the place we want.”

Alain blew out a long breath. “Getting there may be difficult. Especially since I fear our trail can be easily followed by the inhabitants of Marandur. We may not have much time before more of them arrive.”

Mari studied the river. The water flowed clear, impeded only by the broken stubs of bridge supports, marching in ragged columns toward the opposite shore, and the remains of the fallen bridges themselves, which in some places poked above the surface. Aside from that, the only things visible in the water were the decaying stumps of masts from boats and ships sunk long ago. From what she could tell from the wrecks, the river hadn’t silted up in the long time since the Imperials had last dredged it, remaining deep enough that small ships could probably still navigate it. As far as Mari could see, the Ospren River spread widely between its banks, its waters running with a steady current that carried occasional pieces of driftwood past at a decent clip. Swimming obviously wasn’t an option even without taking into account the weight of her pack. “Deep, wide, and fast, and we’re on the wrong side of it. We need a boat.”

“I cannot create one, if that is what you are asking,” Alain advised.

“Maybe I was hoping for that.” Mari stared around at the ruins of the waterfront. “Most of these places seem to have been burnt out as well as blown apart. But if we can find a warehouse door that wasn’t burnt and hasn’t decayed into uselessness, maybe it’ll serve as a raft.” She started walking along the edge of the water, peering at the battered buildings and rubble for large pieces of wood. Fortunately, the very edge of the river wall near the water was almost clear of junk, probably having been swept clean occasionally when the river flooded in the Spring.

Alain followed, his own eyes going back frequently to check on their trail. “They are not in sight yet, but they will see us crossing,” he observed.

“Fine. As long as they don’t have boats to follow us with,” Mari snapped. “Hey.” She darted toward a gaping opening, tugging at some large pieces of wood still fastened together. “It’s part of an old warehouse door.”

Alain lent a hand and they pulled it free. The Mage eyed the cracked wood dubiously. “Will it hold us across the river? Will it even hold us and stay afloat?”

“Do we have a better option?” Mari asked. As she waited for Alain’s answer, they heard rubble falling a short distance upriver in the direction they had come from.

“Not unless we want to fight again soon,” Alain agreed.

It took both of them to shove the old door to the river. Mari climbed on first, balancing with difficulty, then going to her hands and knees. “We’re not standing up on this trip,” she advised.

Alain nodded, began to join her, then paused. “We should get paddles of some kind.” But as he turned back a thrown rock struck less than a lance-length away from him, thudding into a rotten crate. “Then again, perhaps we need to trust to luck.” He sat down on the door and then used his legs to shove off from the shore as hard as he could.

Mari hung on, her arms and legs quickly drenched as chill river water washed over the makeshift raft. But the raft didn’t sink, supporting them as the river’s current carried them out toward the center of the water and down toward the remains of the nearest bridge. “We need to try to catch ourselves on the remains of that bridge and pull ourselves across the river,” she yelled over at Alain. “Otherwise we might get swept completely out of the city.” She didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if the Imperial sentries saw a couple of people on a raft drifting out of Marandur.

“All right,” Alain called in reply.

A moment later, Mari heard the plunk of something small and heavy hitting the water. Looking back, she saw more barbarians on the riverbank, still too close for comfort and all of them hoisting rocks and bricks from the endless supply around them. She could see dark objects arcing toward her, following them with her eyes until they landed around the raft, sending up splashes that soaked any parts of Mari and Alain that had remained dry up until then.

“They have bad aim and little strength,” Alain told her. “That is not surprising. They probably get barely enough to eat to survive, and in the warren of the ruined city, they surely fight normally at close hand by ambush.”

“Does that mean we’re safe?”

“Not yet. I think I remember something about being in water. Swimming, it was called?” Alain put his feet in the water and began kicking, helping shove the raft farther from the river bank.

Mari kept her eyes on the approaching bridge, trying to judge their chances of snagging some part of the wreckage. But a wide stretch of river ran free between two supports, and the raft was heading straight down the center of that. Cursing, she tried using one hand as a paddle to propel the raft toward some of the debris sticking up above the river, but made far too little progress. The current swept them through the gap and downstream. “Okay. Let’s aim for the next bridge. It’s a big one. Probably used to be the main bridge for the city. There should be lots of wreckage sticking up far enough for us to use.”

Their pursuers had been left far behind now, small shapes on the riverbank, as Mari did her best to aim the foundering raft toward a bridge support, cutting across the current with the help of Alain’s kicking in the water. For a long moment she feared they would fall short, but then the raft hit, almost knocking her off as she grabbed for handholds, the worn stone and masonry cold and slick from river water and algae. A hard lump formed in her stomach as she imagined getting thrown from the crude raft into the river, having to abandon her pack with her jacket and her tools, struggling through the cold water but perhaps not making it, sinking slowly into the darkness of the river, her spirit becoming one more restless wraith haunting the ruined city.

Mari gripped the shattered bridge support so hard her hands ached, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

“Mari?” Alain’s voice was close by. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “No. I’m scared to death.”

“I am glad I am not the only one.” His voice held no trace of humor.

Mari turned her head enough to stare back at him. “Are you really?”

Alain nodded, his face tight with strain, his clothes drenched. He lay on the other side of the small, improvised raft. “I do not swim all that well, and I am tired, and this raft is…not very good.”

“Alain, I’m too scared to move. There’s just been too much. The storm and the trip south and the Dark Mechanics and Professor S’san and the prophecy and this awful, awful city and—” She tried to still her shaking. “You know.” He nodded again, silently. Mari closed her eyes, trying to block out the world for a moment, but she kept seeing an image of Alain. He trusted me. He got on this raft. He’s counting on me. I have to get him to safety.

Thinking about someone else made her own fear subside a little. Mari forced her eyes open, staring at the ruined bridge support just before her face, then moved her head to look where they needed to go. There were plenty of rough spots ahead. Plenty of places to grab and hold. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. Just keep telling yourself that. You can do this. It’s gotten you through life this far and it’s going to get you to the other side of this river.

She focused on her left hand, willing it to release its death grip on a protruding brick. And finally it did, jerking free. She scrabbled the fingers along the surface of the column a short distance, to a place where some bricks had fallen, leaving an opening she could latch onto. Shivering, Mari wrenched her right hand free, bringing it up to grab a hold near her left hand. The raft swayed and grated sidewise along the bridge support a little. Seeing another handhold a little farther down, Mari lunged for it and grabbed on there. The raft moved a little more.

She found that once she had started moving, keeping going was hard but not nearly as hard as starting had been. The raft swung alarmingly under her knees as she pulled it along, Alain helping where he could from the back and using his legs to push the raft when he could find a spot to rest a foot. They came to places where branches and other debris had piled up against the bridge supports, and yanked the raft around them. In one of those piles, Mari found a stout branch long and light enough to be useful as a pole and passed it back to Alain.

They cleared one column. Mari stared down into the rushing water, seeing the layer of broken bridge remains lying beneath the surface here. If you’re the daughter of Jules, then your ancestor sailed unknown seas. You can get the rest of the way across one lousy river. “Don’t let me fall off,” she said to Alain, then slid down so her upper body was resting face down on the raft and her feet dangled into the water low enough to reach the submerged rubble. Step by step she walked the raft across the gap, the cold water biting into her legs and hips and grabbing at her as it raced past through the opening.

“Let me take the front now,” Alain suggested as they reached the next bridge support.

Mari shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the next stretch of wreckage. “We can’t get by each other without losing the raft. It’s barely together as it is. I’m all right.”

After the fight through the gap between supports, pushing along the solid surface of another support seemed easy, even though her shivering was increasing as the cold water stole the heat from her body. She pushed her fears back a little again with thoughts about heat-sinks and fluid dynamics. The next gap between supports wasn’t too hard, with the remnants of the fallen bridge so close to the surface Mari could brace herself against them. Then another column, another gap…

She thought the raft might be sinking lower, the ancient wood soaking up water and losing its ability to float. Pieces broke off occasionally, whirling away in the cold water and quickly lost from sight. Her shivering had grown so violent that Mari wondered if that alone would break the decayed wood. Don’t think about it. Just keep going. You can do this.

Mari bumped up against a flat surface and just stared at it blankly. Alain’s hands were on her shoulders, then his arms were around her waist, helping her up a short, steep slope that abruptly leveled out onto a flat surface littered with the leavings of battles over a century gone. They were on the other side of the river, on the clear area edging the river wall. Mari huddled into a tight ball, her clothing soaked, shaking uncontrollably from the cold.

A warmth grew around her, surrounding her body as if she were encircled by gentle fires. Mari yanked her eyes open, astonished, to see Alain kneeling nearby and staring at her. “W-what are you d-doing?”

He spoke slowly, concentrating on his effort. “I am making the air around you heat up. Not enough to harm, just enough to help.”

“I–I kn-knew that h-having a M-mage for a b-boyfriend would c-come in handy s-someday.”

She just lay there for a while, the heat soaking in, her shivering subsiding and her breathing growing calmer. “Alain, I know this takes a lot of work. Please stop. I’ll be all right now.” Getting her arms under her, Mari pushed herself up to a sitting position.

Alain looked weary but he was smiling at her, the expression clear enough that anyone might have noticed it. “You are a brave and remarkable woman, Mari.”

“I’m not half as brave and remarkable as my Mage is.” Feeling embarrassed by his praise, she forced herself to her feet, then offered Alain a hand. “Come on. We need to keep moving, just in case those sub-humans have another way across the river.”

He took the hand and stood up, almost overbalancing her. But she managed to stay up, too, then laughed. “Hey. We forgot to fill our water bottles.”

“Other issues had our attention. Can it wait?” Alain asked.

“Yeah.” Mari pointed. “The current carried us downstream. The old Mechanics Guild Hall should be right over that way.” Walking along the edge of the river at the best pace they could sustain, they saw the building they sought once they had climbed up and over a pile of rubble where a waterfront building had collapsed outward.

Mari led the way, her eyes searching the remains of the old Guild Hall. “Yes. That’s definitely it. What happened to it?” She paused to rest, breathing heavily under the weight of her pack, hands resting on her legs. “It looks like… I bet they did.”

“Did what?” Alain asked. He was standing beside her but once again looking back the way they had come. “I do not recommend spending a lot of time unmoving like this, Mari.”

“I know.” Mari straightened. “I think my Guild blew up the place. Maybe after the rebels captured it. The way the walls have fallen outward in several places make it look like internal explosions did the job.” She started walking. “There should be a couple of ways down to the basement vaults. If we’re lucky one of those will still be usable.”

As they got closer, Mari pointed off to one side, where once-impressive buildings had collapsed in on themselves long ago. “That must have been the old Mechanics Guild academy. It looks like it was once identical to the one I attended.” Mari shook her head, overwhelmed by a strange feeling, as if she were a ghost haunting the ruins of a place where she had lived long ago. “It’s so bizarre, seeing that. Less than a year ago I left the living, breathing buildings of the new Guild academy, and now here are identical buildings wrecked over a century in the past. It looks like they were gutted by fire.” She swallowed, imagining the chaos, the destruction, places she would have recognized, hallways which would have seemed familiar, all sharing in the death throes of Marandur.

“It happened many years ago,” Alain said, his calm voice a comfort. “Your imagination gives new life to what has long been dead.”

“So I need to stop thinking about it.” Mari turned her face grimly from the brooding ruins of the old academy, concentrating on picking out a path to the tumbled remains of the old Guild headquarters next door.

When they reached the front of the building after crossing the rubble-littered courtyard, Mari found a solid wall of debris where the main entrance had stood. Working their way around to the side entrance, they discovered it too was completely blocked where part of the upper stories had simply slid down on top of it. Crossing her fingers, Mari led the way to the back entryway.

There she stopped for a moment, unable to believe their luck. Then she took another look. “Somebody cleared this.”

Alain studied the ruins before them. “You are certain?”

“I think so. It must’ve been quite a while ago, but look at the way some of the wreckage has been shifted to clear the entry.” Mari knelt to examine the dusty surface. “I don’t see any sign that anybody has used it in a long, long time, though.” Moving carefully, she started forward, crouching to get past low areas in the cleared passage. The light dimmed as they went inside and down, so she paused long enough to open her pack and extract the hand light. Her pack was as watertight as Mechanic art could make it, but a little moisture had made its way inside during the river crossing. Fortunately, the hand light was dry. Mari clicked it on, then started walking again. Alain followed close behind. Mari could see he was still devoting most of his efforts to watching their trail for signs of pursuit.

She paused to study the ruins, running her light across their surroundings. “I could be wrong, but it looks like there were two stages of destruction. Part of this looks like it collapsed, then the rest came down on top of it later.” Mari frowned as she turned sideways to slip through an area where the path was barely still open. “The second collapse came after this path was cleared, though. I’m sure of it.”

The first door they came to had long ago fallen off its hinges. The second had been shoved aside, its splintered remnants heavily coated with dust. Mari froze as something creaked alarmingly somewhere overhead in the wreck of the building and a fine haze of more dust trickled down from the bent ceiling above them. An occasional scuttling noise marked small creatures fleeing from Mari and Alain’s approach, but nothing large seemed to have laired here. Mari sniffed, catching the faded scent of industrial chemicals, wondering if the poisons liberated by the destruction of the building had kept it free of invading plant and animal life. “Don’t touch anything unless you have to,” she cautioned Alain.

Moving ahead again with great care, they reached the steel door leading to the basement area. It, too, lay askew, but had been wedged to one side to help support the cracked door frame. Mari pointed to old, dark smudges on the ceiling. “Soot. Somebody was down here using torches.” Or somebody had been down here burning something else. How much soot would have been created by priceless technical texts turning into ash? She tried not to think about that possibility, feeling sickened by the idea of so much knowledge being destroyed.

The stairs leading downward were slick with dust but otherwise sturdy enough. Mari took a moment to bless her Guild’s obsession with excavating foundations, basements and subsurface stairs from solid stone whenever possible. Reaching the bottom, she gave Alain an anxious look. “The vaults should be right up this way.” She wondered why she whispered, then realized she felt worried about noise somehow causing further collapse of the ancient ruin. Then, too, there was a sensation of disturbing a place where living humans were no longer welcome.

She picked her way across the floor, increasingly concerned at the signs that there had been a lot of foot traffic here, even so long ago. At one point she paused, seeing something sticking out from under a fallen mass of material. Mari knelt, touching a rifle barrel so badly rusted that a portion of it disintegrated under her finger. “Standard- model repeating rifle. It looks like it was identical to the ones today. The same weapons used in this siege over a century and half ago were employed by the bandits who attacked us in the desert waste. It’s like we’re part of the same story.”

“Perhaps we are,” Alain said, his voice also hushed.

Finally they reached the vaults. Mari shone her light on the big metal doors, all of them sagging open. Their massive hinges, heavy enough to support the doors, had nonetheless bent under the burden of decade upon decade of holding up their weight. “The vaults have been open for a long time,” she whispered. “But they don’t show any signs of being forced. Someone had the keys and the combinations.”

Mari stepped to the entry of one vault, moving the light from side to side, seeing empty shelves and vacant drawers left hanging open. Dust lay heavily everywhere, all of the drawers corroded so badly that it was probably impossible to move them now.

Somebody had been here before them. A long time before them. Their entire ordeal had been for nothing. She checked the other two vaults, seeing the same vacancy. Running her light along the floors and ceilings of the vaults, she could not see any signs that fires had burned here in the past, one small comfort in the midst of her distress. “At least they didn’t burn the texts, but my Guild must have somehow managed to get them out of the city before the emperor’s ban took effect. The texts must be in the Guild’s vaults in Palandur, where we’ll never be able to get to them. This entire, horrible journey was a waste, Alain.”

“I am sorry. It was my idea.”

She turned to him, fighting back tears. “It was a good idea. It just didn’t work out.” Without another word, she headed back the way they had come. Mari took the route almost carelessly this time, only caring about getting out of the ruin as fast as possible. She didn’t stop until they reached the open again, where she stood blinking up at the late afternoon sky and wiping her eyes with one dirty coat sleeve.

Mari was turning to blurt out her disappointment again to Alain when a sound came from somewhere in the dead city on this side of the river, a long, low whistle. Moments later another whistle came, from back along the way they had come down the river. A third whistle sounded in reply, this one farther inside the city.

Alain shook his head. “The hunt is on. We are the prey. We need to find a place where we can defend ourselves and we must find it quickly.”