Asha suddenly revealed a tiny measure of understanding. “You are concerned that I may be seeing your imagined manifestations of physical desire for Mage Alain.”
Mari stared at Asha. Mari’s face was so hot now that it felt like it was on fire. With nowhere to hide, she buried her face in her hands, wishing with all her might that a hole would appear beneath her and allow her to fall deep into the Earth.
“Master Mechanic Mari.” Asha’s voice was very low, and very close. The female Mage must be kneeling beside her. “I saw nothing. I will see nothing. Yet I have done something to cause you to conceal yourself. I do not know what should be done now.”
That probably was the closest a Mage could come to an apology. In fact, it was a remarkable act for a Mage. Mari concentrated fiercely on what Asha had said and managed to lower her hands enough to see Asha. “Can you imagine how I feel right now?”
Asha stared back blankly. “How… you… feel? You?”
“Me.”
“Shadows… feel?” Asha looked over to Alain for confirmation and must have received some. “But it is usual to imagine having physical relations with others. Why does this distress you?”
Mari shook her head. “We really need to talk, Mage Asha.”
“We are talking.”
“No. Alone. Without Alain here.”
“Why?” Those beautiful blue eyes in that beautiful face looked back at Mari with no trace of feeling or understanding. “Is this a secret from Mage Alain?”
“No.” Mari forced her hands back into her lap, though she still couldn’t look toward Alain. “It’s just… some things are very private. Not to be shared.”
“Like Guild secrets?”
“Um… yes. Sort of. But just for each person. Personal secrets.”
Mage Asha was thinking so hard that a slight furrow appeared on her brow. “Why does it matter what others know? They are but shadows.”
“It matters,” Alain said. “I still do not know why, but it does matter. Mari calls it having social skills. I have never before heard of a Mage being able to track someone who is not a Mage, except for the thread I sense that connects Mari with me.”
“A thread?” Asha asked, her Mage tones making her sound uninterested in the answer.
“It does not exist, but it does exist, running invisibly between us. I do not know what it is. Could you sense Mari even more strongly than I do?”
“I do not know,” Asha said. “I asked careful questions of elders, but saw their suspicions rise quickly and could gain no answers. It seems some tie exists between me and Mechanic Mari now. As the feelings I cannot admit to have become stronger inside—a sense of… wanting to… share… life, of not being the only real thing in a world of illusion populated by shadows—I am able to sense her more strongly.”
Mari buried her face in both hands again. “Just one big happy threesome,” she mumbled. “Alain, we need to talk.”
“We are talk—”
“Alone! Do you Mages always have to do that?”
His hand touched her shoulder very gently, so Mari lowered her hands and glared at him as Alain spoke with great care. “There is no other for me but you.”
“Me and my blazing bonfire of love, you mean?” Mari glanced over at Asha, who to Mari’s surprise was betraying discomfort and confusion. “Mage Asha? Is something wrong?”
“Mechanic Mari,” Asha said, “it is hard to explain. I have… a brother and a sister. I saw them when I left Ihris. They saw me. I could say nothing, show nothing. I was taught they… mean nothing. They showed… what other shadows reveal when they look upon Mages.” Asha paused for a long moment. “I saw their expressions, and I told myself they did not matter, but I lied. Then I met you, and for the first time since I left the Guild Hall as a Mage, for the first time since I became an acolyte, someone looked at me and… and… smiled. No one smiles on a Mage, Mechanic Mari. I had not known how much I missed seeing a smile when another looked upon me, shadow or not.”
Mari’s embarrassment vanished as the female Mage’s words hit home. She reached to grasp Asha’s hands, barely noticing the shock in the female Mage at being touched. “Call me Mari, Mage Asha. That’s why you feel a connection to me? Because I smiled at you? I thought you didn’t care. You didn’t react at all.”
Asha gazed into Mari’s eyes. “We are taught, in many ways, harsh ways, never to show what we think, what we feel.”
“I know.” This close, Mari had no trouble seeing the scars on Asha’s hands and face, the same sort that Alain bore, the marks of the discipline that Mage Guild acolytes suffered. Some of the scars were so old that Asha must have been just a little girl when they did some of those things to her.
Asha looked down at Mari’s hands holding hers, but she didn’t try to withdraw them, instead seeming oddly vulnerable to Mari. She wants me to like her, Mari realized. She’s been alone for years, since she was a little girl, and now she’s trying to find herself again. Asha sees what has happened with Alain and she wants the same for herself, but she doesn’t even know how to ask. Instead of being envious of Alain, she’s been helping him. And I’ve been jealous and angry and suspicious of this woman. “Mage Asha, please say you will still be my friend.”
Asha stared at Mari for a long time, then nodded. “I would be… happy… if that were so.” Her mouth twitched, as if it were attempting to remember how to smile. “I have been trying, since I met you and Alain. Trying to remember.” She looked at Alain. “I have an uncle who is a Mage also.”
He nodded to her, Alain’s eyes distant with some memory. “You once spoke of him.”
“So long ago, it seems.” Asha looked into a corner for a moment, then refocused on Alain. “He and I have talked a little. He… remembers, too, I think, but is not ready. I am not certain.”
Asha took a long, slow breath. “I am remiss. I think of myself when there is much to warn you of. Alain, I must tell you of the danger here in Palandur.”
“You know of this danger?” Alain asked. “I know only that my foresight warns of great peril at all gates from the city.”
“Then your foresight spoke well. When I arrived at the Mage Guild Hall in Palandur this noon, I was told that one of the Mages there had also received foresight, seeing that sometime this day Mage Alain would leave this city.”
“This Mage knew me?”
“Yes.” Asha said. “Mage Niaro, who as an acolyte envied your early success.”
“I remember Niaro,” Alain said in the emotionless way of a Mage, giving Mari no clue as to what he felt about that other Mage.
“The envy of Mage Niaro perhaps provided the connection needed to see your future actions,” Asha continued. “The Mage Guild Hall sent every Mage available to watch the gates and the waterfront, but there was some concern because Niaro had seen himself in the vision. I do not know what this means.”
“It means he saw something that might happen, not something that will happen,” Mari explained, then realized that she, a Mechanic, had just had the gall to enlighten a Mage about foresight. “Alain told me about that.”
But Asha took Mari’s knowledge in stride. “That explains it. Alain’s foresight warned him not to leave, so the vision of Niaro did not take place. The elders believe that you must be in the city, though, and I understand this certainty now, for only if you were here could Niaro’s vision have had any chance of happening. However, Niaro himself is mistrusted, for the elders see the emotion which ties him to you, and they care little for foresight.”
“Will the Mages remain on guard tomorrow?” Alain asked.
“I was told to be ready to help guard the gates this night. They will watch for days beyond this one, I think.” She nodded to Alain. “Your ability to hide yourself from other Mages is very strong now. Even I could not have found you as I did before. Only Mechanic Mari led me to you.”