“When I sense you near me,” Alain said slowly, “your presence burns brighter than before, but it is still the same, just brighter.”
“My presence.” Every once in a while her Mage would say something totally strange like that. “I thought you could only sense other Mages.”
“I can sense you as well,” Alain said as if that was unremarkable.
“That thread thing, you mean,” Mari said.
“Yes, that thread which connects us, but also you. You are very bright, and warm, like a fire.”
That felt kind of nice, Mari thought. Also kind of weird, though. A male Mechanic would have said something like that to her as a form of exaggerated flattery, but Mari had no doubt that Alain meant literally what he said, that she was somehow a fire to his Mage senses. “Do I get… warmer… when I’m angry?”
Alain shook his head. “No. There are times when your brightness becomes more intense, but that happens when you are thinking hard on something.”
“Really? So you’re actually admiring my mind?” Mari laughed out loud with delight at the idea, drawing looks from the nearest commons on the street.
Mari gazed at the buildings around them as she and Alain went through the gate. She had known Palandur, but now she knew Marandur as well, and the similarities between the dead city and living one were disconcerting enough to drive the laughter from her. At some moments everything felt unreal, as if what Alain had said the Mages believed really was the way things were, and she was walking through some kind of illusion in which dead city and living city were both here at the same place and time. Mari reached out to grip Alain’s hand, comforted by that solid presence. “I’m pretty sure I know the way to the university from here. It’s near enough to the Mechanics Guild Academy that I saw it a few times.”
Mari began edging to the south, trying to remember the layout of the Imperial capital. She found another pretext to search the crowds behind them, confirming that the Imperial police officer was still sauntering along within eyesight. “He’s definitely staying with us.”
There were a good number of Mechanics in Palandur, swaggering down the streets with commons giving way as expected of them, so no one thought it unusual for Mari and Alain to avoid those Mechanics by wide margins. Mari tried to discreetly study them to see if she recognized any, but wasn’t able to tell through the crowds and the distance she had to put between herself and the Mechanics for safety’s sake. “There are probably Mechanics here who would help me,” she muttered to Alain, “but the academy is full of others who would turn me in without a second thought.”
“Are we going to that Mechanic Academy?” Alain asked.
“No. I don’t dare go near it, and isn’t that ironic for a girl who was one of the stars of the academy several months ago?”
Mages were here, too, in relatively large numbers, moving silently among the commons like wraiths avoided with fear and loathing. Alain seemed unconcerned about being recognized by any of them in his common clothing, and Mari recalled him once saying that no Mage would bother looking at a common.
When they reached the area of the university, Mari’s relief at finding it was submerged in a moment of shock and recognition. “Alain, I was right. When the Imperials built Palandur they copied Marandur. The university here is identical to the one in Marandur. Or rather identical to what the university in Marandur looked like before the city was destroyed.” There was the same open stretch of land separating the walls of the university from the city around it, here a well-maintained park with clipped grass and trimmed trees ending in a brick wall standing about the height of two people. But the gate they could see in the wall stood wide open and no sentries stood guard over the students and other citizens wandering in and out. The city buildings facing the wall across the open area were bright, clean and tall, instead of the crumbling ruins which had menaced the university in Marandur, and crowds of people went about their business under the gaze of assorted Imperial police and officials.
Alain was looking around, too. “It is strange to see here how the other place once was.”
“Isn’t it?” Mari looked up, seeing the buildings rising above the top of the wall and easily picking out the mirror images of the offices where she had spoken to the masters of the university in Marandur, the structure where she and Alain had been given rooms, and the top of the big building which contained the steam boiler which provided heat to the university buildings. “It’s like seeing a very old person you knew who has suddenly become young again. It really brings home what was lost. I hated that city, the way it felt haunted, but now I just feel like crying over the waste of it all. We… Alain, we have to stop that from happening here, and in other cities.” She took a deep breath. “But we can’t gawk at this or we’ll be noticed. How should we lose this cop who’s following us?”
Alain indicated an area where buildings housing sellers of food and drink had attracted a large gathering of students and other city dwellers. “We go there, enter a crowded place, and try to mislead the officer when we leave.”
“And maybe we’ll get something to eat while we’re at it? All right.”
Mari aimed for a bar which appeared to defy the laws of physics by having more people inside than could actually fit. Once inside, she slid sideways instead of moving toward the counter, pulling Alain with her as she hugged the wall. Mari caught glimpses of the officer as he entered, shook his head, then faded back out the door. “So much for that idea. He’s going to wait outside and pick us up when we leave.” She scanned the crowd. “But this is Palandur. Imperial codes say that any business has to have two exits. Where is the other one?”
Tugging Alain along with her, Mari wedged herself through the crowd, unable to spot the fire exit. “Hey!” another girl protested as Mari accidentally bumped her. “Wait your turn!”
“We’re just trying to find the other exit,” Mari said, hoping a real local would know.
“Why?”
“Uh… this guy… he’s not my boyfriend… and there’s someone outside and… you know.”
The girl grinned. “Yeah, I know. Guys get possessive. The back door is through there, past that set of shelves. Make sure you go left when you leave or you’ll end up back on the same street as the front entrance.”
“Thanks!”
Mari edged in that direction until they reached the shelves, finding a door with a faded “emergencies only” sign painted next to it. Judging by the wear and tear on the door it had been used fairly frequently for “emergencies.”
The alley outside featured the usual stacks of trash and garbage, leaving a path leading both left and right. Mari took Alain left until they reached another street occupied by many pedestrians. “And, that, my Mage, is how people who aren’t Mages hide themselves from other people.”
Alain nodded. “You created the illusion of one deceiving her friend.”
“Yeah. It was kind of embarrassing,” Mari admitted. “I’ve never actually done that. I mean, cheat on a boyfriend.”
“You have had boyfriends?”
“I… hey, what kind of question is that?” She smiled at him. “In every way that matters, there was no one before you. Now that we’ve lost that Imperial, we need to leave the city as soon as we can, through the west gate. There are horse-drawn trolleys everywhere, so we’ll grab one and—” She stopped speaking. Alain was staring at her. “What does that look mean? This better not be about that boyfriend thing.”
“It is not,” he said. “When you mentioned the west gate of the city. Great peril awaits us there now.”