The Assassins of Altis (16 page)

“Just like Jules worked for the Empire before she struck out on her own for freedom.”

“A Mechanic, and she told us not to risk helping her so we wouldn’t be hurt. She
is
the daughter.”

And one worried voice in low tones. “But maybe she’s Mara.”

That statement was followed by grumbles about Imperials, then the Mechanics were gesturing to Alain. As he took the final steps to reach them, he could no longer make out the murmuring among the commons.

Alain’s pack was pulled off, then another Mechanic seized his arms and pulled him toward the access ladder. “Wait, you idiot,” the first Mechanic growled. “Search him!”

Having a Mechanic, or any stranger, run hands over him was hard for Alain to endure. As a Mage he had been taught to avoid human contact, and his time with Mari had only dented that teaching, not overcome it. He managed to stand still, even when the Mechanic doing the search paused, then reached inside Alain’s coat to surface with the long Mage knife. “Where the blazes did you get this?” he demanded of Alain.

“I got it from a Mage,” Alain said, which was exactly what had happened. He had been presented with the knife by a fellow Mage on the day Alain had been granted Mage status.

“You took it off a Mage?” The Mechanic grinned as he stuck the knife into one of the outside pockets on Alain’s pack. “You and that Mari have more guts than you do common sense. Did you kill the Mage?”

“He was still alive when I took it from him.”

“No way!”

“Stop talking to the guy and get him into the boat!” the first Mechanic ordered.

The man who had searched Alain went down first. Alain turned to descend, seeing that the boat carrying Mari was halfway to the Mechanic ship. In her common coat she was easy to spot among the black jackets of the Mechanics, and she seemed very alone. But not for long. He would soon be with her on that ship.

He hoped he had done the right thing.

As Alain began to descend, facing the crowd again, he saw the commons watching him. Always before, commons who had known he was a Mage had given him looks of fear and of disgust. But these commons looked at him with hope. It staggered Alain for a moment. Then he nodded to them, feeling a strange surge of strength within him before the Mechanics ordered him to descend.

Reaching the bottom of the ladder and dropping into the second boat, the Mechanic in the lead gestured Alain to a seat in the center as they waited for the rest of the Mechanics to come down the ladder. “What did you guys do, anyway?” he whispered to Alain.

What should he say to a Mechanic? “We learned things that the leaders of the Mechanics Guild did not want anyone to know. This was after the leaders of the Guild tried to have Mari killed because they feared she might someday be a threat to their authority. That happened at Ringhmon.”

The Mechanic stared at Alain with worried eyes, then shook his head in warning to Alain not to say anything else as more Mechanics climbed down into the boat. The Mechanic leading this group came last, moving down the ladder quickly as the rest kept their weapons pointed upward toward the commons rushing forward to line the rail and look down at them. Some of the commons still carried the objects that they had seized to use as improvised weapons, but even though the menace in their postures and expressions was impossible to miss the commons all watched silently.

“Get us back to the ship,” the lead Mechanic ordered, untying the line securing the boat to the ladder as the other Mechanics got busy putting oars in the water. “Blasted crazy commons. Mari must have been stirring them up already. She’ll get us all killed.”

Alain shook his head. “Mari wants no one to be hurt. You heard her tell the commons not to attack you. All she wants is to fix things. She would still be loyal to the Mechanics Guild if she had not been threatened with death by its leaders while faithfully trying to carry out the orders of her Guild.”

“I told you to shut up!” The lead Mechanic stuck the end of his weapon close to Alain’s face. “You try to rouse up any more trouble and I’ll put a bullet between your teeth.”

At times like this, Alain’s Mage training was particularly useful. He gazed back at the Mechanic without any sign of worry or concern, and eventually the Mechanic had to lower his weapon with an angry grunt. Some of the other Mechanics grinned in admiration, and Alain realized that they had been impressed by his impassivity in the face of the threat. He nodded calmly to them, wondering if any of these Mechanics were like Mari’s friends, Mechanic Calu and Mechanic Alli.

As the boat came around, the setting sun glared into Alain’s eyes. He sat silently as the boat he was in crossed the distance between the ships, seeing the boat ahead carrying Mari reach the Mechanic ship. He saw her climb up the ladder, the Mechanic behind her holding one of the long weapons pressed against her. As she reached the top of the ladder, Mari was shoved out of his sight and into the metal hull of the ship. Alain watched, hoping that he would soon see Mari again.

As soon as his own boat was tied to the Mechanic ship, Mechanics pushed Alain to the wood and rope ladder going up the metal side of the Mechanic ship. He went up as fast as possible, on the chance that Mari might still be near the ladder, but he saw no sign of her when he reached the deck. Mechanics there grabbed him and used their weapons to prod him along the deck, through an entry with a metal hatch, and through more hatches and passageways and down steep metal stairways until he was thoroughly lost. The interior of the metal ship was well lit by glass globes that glowed with a steady, bright light, another Mechanic trick which his elders had once assured Alain did not actually work.

Reaching an open hatch giving access to a very small room, Alain’s escort used blows from their weapons to propel him inside hard enough that he fell. His escorts then slammed the hatch, leaving Alain in total darkness. He heard a metallic rasping which he assumed was a lock being fastened on the outside of the hatch.

Alain rolled to a sitting position, wondering how many new bruises he had picked up today, where his pack had been taken, and most importantly where Mari was now. He tried to remember if there had been another locked hatch located next to the one he had been shoved through. It seemed reasonable that the prisoners would be confined near each other, especially since the Mechanics who had taken them into captivity did not think either of them could walk through a metal wall.

Not that he could walk through many walls out on the sea. The power here was very limited, as it always was on the water, though the reasons for that remained unknown to Mage elders. But he still felt the aftereffects of that strange burst of power as the commons had looked at him, and now as the motion of the ship changed to mark it moving ahead, Alain could feel new power becoming available as the ship traveled across the sea. He had felt something like that on the Mechanic train, moving so rapidly that the flow of power was always renewed by reaching new supplies of it. It was strange to think that a Mechanic creation could thus benefit the work of a Mage. In this case, it might be what allowed him to rescue Mari.

Alain calmed himself, reaching out his mind to sense Mari’s presence. The thread he had first sensed between them in Ringhmon was strong again, leading unerringly to one side. From the strength of the thread and the intensity of Mari’s presence at the other end, she must be very close. Unable to see anything in the total darkness of his cell, Alain crawled over a rough and uneven surface made up of big ropes coiled on the deck until he reached a barrier. Alain rapped the metal wall, listening for a response.

After a moment there was a knock back.

Her presence had flared when he knocked, so it must be her on the other side. Alain sat back, thinking. Getting through a Mechanic metal wall should not be any different from getting through any other wall. Nothing was real, every wall and everything else being just illusions born of his mind. As the wall was imaginary, he would imagine an opening in it, creating and maintaining the illusion upon an illusion with the help of the power the world held here.

The spell posed an unexpected problem, though. How did he imagine a hole in a wall when he could not see the wall? His elders had always taught that a Mage must be viewing what should be changed. Alain frowned at where the wall should be, trying to think of a way around that.

He had not yet felt all the way to the side. He had not seen any wall there. Could he imagine that where he had not felt there was no wall?

The effort was unexpectedly difficult, like a physical act done in an unfamiliar way, as if he were trying to walk on his hands rather than his feet. But Alain felt the power flow, felt his strength ebb dangerously, then reached out to where the hole should be.

It was there. Alain felt the edges, then dodged through and caromed right into someone else in the total darkness on this side of the wall. They both fell with muttered grunts, then Alain felt two hands lock on his throat. “Who are you and where did you come from?” Mari hissed.

It wasn’t easy to talk with Mari’s hands clamped on his windpipe, but Alain managed to get out one half-strangled word. “Alain.”

“What?” Mari’s hands loosened, then let go of his neck to run over his face and upper body as if trying to see him by touch. “Alain? It’s you?”

“Yes.” Alain coughed, massaging his neck. “That hurt.”

“Sorry. I thought I was alone in this little compartment and then— How the blazes did you get here?”

“I turned myself in,” Alain explained, reaching carefully to touch her. “I could not leave you alone, so I came to find you in your cell when you were imprisoned. It is a kind of tradition with us, is it not?”

“You big idiot. I love you, but you shouldn’t have gotten yourself stuck on this ship.” Her voice was despairing. “Escaping from this ship will be almost impossible.”

“I had to come help you.”

“No, you didn’t! I told you to go and stay safe! I don’t want you in this kind of danger on my account.” Mari’s hands found his face again, then her lips came against his. “Stars above, I’m glad you’re here.”

Alain wondered if his voice reflected his confusion. “Are you happy or angry that I am here?”

“Both. You shouldn’t have done it.”

“You would do the same for me.”

“That’s not the point!” Mari insisted.

“It was the only way to rescue you,” Alain pointed out.

“I’m not rescued, Alain. We’re just in the same cell again, only this time you can’t—” Mari suddenly stopped talking. When her voice came again, it held hope. “You can. You got in here. Where were you locked up?”

“In a similar room next to this one.”

Mari stayed silent for a moment, then sighed. “I’m pretty sure there’s a guard out there. We can’t just open the door, even if I could see where the lock was, so we can’t get out like we did in Ringhmon. And the inside of a Mechanics Guild ship will have a lot of Mechanics walking around, so we’d be spotted pretty quick. Why did they bring you here, Alain?”

“I told you. I informed them that I was the friend of yours they were seeking.”

“But if they thought you were a common who had been accompanying me, why didn’t they just shoot you on the spot? Surely you didn’t tell them you’re a Mage?”

“I lied to them. I told them I was a Mechanic.”

He could hear her disbelief. “You were able to pass as a Mechanic? Alain, that’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard.”

“You are a good teacher,” Alain said.

“I’m not supposed to be teaching you to be a Mechanic!”

“I could not help learning how to act like one,” Alain admitted. “You have been teaching me how to show feelings again, and you are the person I look to most often as an example of how to do that.”

“I take back what I said earlier,” Mari replied. “
That
is the scariest thing I ever heard. You are not to become just like me. Understood?”

“No one else could be just like you,” Alain said.

“That had better be a compliment, but even if it isn’t I have to admit you’re probably right. You came in behind me. How long is it until sunset?”

“It will be dark soon,” Alain told her. “I assume night is the best time to make whatever escape we attempt?”

“It should be,” Mari agreed, “but I have no idea how to escape. We need to deal with the guard outside the hatch here, then we’ll have to find my pack—”

“Our packs.”

“Find our packs. Right. We can’t leave those texts behind. Then after we recover our packs we need to do something to keep this ship from chasing us and then we need to escape off of the ship. That’s a pretty tall order.”

Alain shrugged before realizing she would not see the gesture in the total darkness of the room. “It should not be any harder than escaping from Marandur.”

Mari laughed softly. “I can’t decide if you’re getting confident or crazy as a result of hanging around with me. Listen, maybe—” She stopped speaking as the thud of feet sounded outside the door to the room they both now occupied and the rasping of metal announced a lock being unfastened. “Oh, no. Can you—”

“Stay silent,” Alain cautioned. He groped his way to the side, then stood up and waited for a moment until the hatch began swinging open. Alain called upon his arts to hide himself, bending the flow of light so that it wrapped around him rather than striking him, hoping he would have the personal strength to hold the spell and that the power in the areas the ship was sailing through would be great enough to help support it.

Mari had come to her feet as well and was doing her best to look defiant, despite having to shield her eyes from the light. Two Mechanics entered and pulled her out, not even bothering to look around. Alain followed as closely as he dared, trying not to make any noise, but the heavy footfalls of the Mechanics covered the sounds of his own movements anyway.

A third Mechanic standing outside the hatch stared impassively at Mari as she passed, and two more Mechanics fell in as extra guards. The sentry moved to close the hatch. Alain dodged quickly, but the hatch struck his leg briefly and painfully before closing. The sentry blinked at the hatch, swinging it out and closed again, then shrugged before closing it a final time. “What about the other one?” he asked.