“If you die, then my life will mean nothing,” Alain replied miserably.
“Yes, it will! If you continue what I was trying to accomplish. If you love me you will want to finish what I was trying to do. Now promise.”
He finally nodded. “I promise that should you die I will try to bring these texts to safety and contact your friends.”
“Good. That applies if I’m captured, too. You’re not to try to rescue me.”
Alain frowned at her, upset enough that the emotion showed. “I will not promise that. If you are captured, I will try to free you.”
“Alain…”
“No.” He had gotten good enough at putting emotion into his words that his feelings on this must have been clear.
She gave him an aggravated glare, but must have been able to see that he would not bend on that. “Fine. Why did I get involved with a Mage?” Mari shifted her glare to the snow. “I know we’d agreed to go through the ruins because we’d be a lot harder for the barbarians to see than if we stuck to the relatively open ground along the river banks,” she said in an abrupt change of the subject. “Is that still a good idea? This snow is thickening fast.”
Alain squinted up at the sky again. “I think we would still be best going through the city. If this storm continues to worsen, we would catch its full fury on the exposed river banks, but in among the ruins those walls and buildings still standing will help break the worst of it.”
“Unless the storm breaks them first,” Mari observed acidly. As if on cue, a low rumble sounded somewhere in the distance, marking the collapse of one more long-abandoned building. “But you’re probably right. Once we start moving again, let’s not talk unless we absolutely have to so there’s less chance of those savages hearing us.”
She exhaled heavily, then kissed him again quickly. “I’m still unhappy you won’t promise to leave me if I’m captured, but I don’t want to go into danger mad at you. Just use your head, no matter what happens. I love you, my Mage.”
“I love you, my Mechanic,” Alain whispered in reply. It had taken a long time for him to be able say such a simple phrase, so alien was the concept of love to one taught the ways of Mages.
Alain followed as Mari moved cautiously among the wreckage cluttering what had once been a street through the city. Piles of debris blocked streets and other open areas, some dating to the fighting between rebels and Imperial legions a hundred and fifty years ago and some more recent, the result of slow disintegration of the ruins. Vacant buildings stood on all sides, their windows gaping on emptiness within, their walls and roofs broken in places large and small. Scattered everywhere were the remnants of ancient battle: broken and badly corroded armor and weapons and the white fragments of shattered bones from countless unburied bodies left behind after the legions withdrew. Most of the weapons were the swords, spears and crossbows used by common folk, but once in a while they glimpsed a broken Mechanic weapon like those Mari called rifles or pistols. The bone fragments, though, offered no clues as to who their owners had once been in life, whether rebels, legionaries, or helpless citizens caught in the fighting.
“I’d forgotten how very much I hate this place,” Mari mumbled just loudly enough for Alain to hear, unnerved enough to break her own rule.
He was deciding whether or not to reply when a black cloud seemed to drift across the street in front of them, then vanished. Alain’s hand went out to seize her shoulder while he breathed out a soft warning for silence. Mari stopped instantly, waiting while Alain peered into the gray-lit street ahead. Alain studied the area ahead of them, wishing he knew how to bring his foresight to work instead of hoping it would. But foresight was unreliable at the best of times, and now it offered no further signs. He brought his mouth close to Mari’s ear. “I saw a warning of danger ahead,” he murmured in a low voice. “We should go to the left or right some distance.”
Mari looked in those directions, both blocked by piles of debris, and shook her head at facing two equally bad choices. Alain watched as she did an odd ritual with her finger, pointing each way several times back and forth while muttering something under her breath. Whatever she was saying ended with her finger pointing right. Mari beckoned to Alain, then began moving that way even more cautiously.
Despite the danger, Alain felt an irrational glow of satisfaction that Mari did not question his foresight. Even many Mages regarded foresight with suspicion, though in their case mainly because it required an unwelcome personal connection to anyone the foresight offered warnings about. Mechanics simply dismissed it as fortune-telling.
But not his Mechanic. Mari believed in him.
The street to the right being blocked by rubble, they had to cut through the collapsed remains of what might have been a large store. The floor inside was covered with piles of rotting debris. Mari’s foot slipped and she fell sideways as some of the fragments turned under her. Alain grabbed at her arm, catching Mari just before she slid over a drop into a yawning pit which had been a basement. She stood still for a moment, then gave Alain a shaky smile. “Thanks,” she whispered.
They moved on in silence for a while, out back onto the rubble-strewn street, the falling snow helping to muffle the sound of their movement at the same time as it obscured dangerous spots beneath their feet and restricted their vision to all sides. After moving right for a while, Mari paused, looking around, then came close to Alain to whisper again, her breath a welcome warmth against his cheek. “I think I know this street. If the new Imperial capital of Palandur copied this part of Marandur, then if we take that street to our left we should be turning back to the southwest, heading directly for the city walls and moving parallel to the river.”
“Parallel?”
She gave him one of those looks again, the kind Mari used when he did not know something she thought everybody knew. “It’s basic geometry, Alain.”
“Geometry?”
“Alain, how can even a Mage possibly function without knowing any geometry?”
“Since I do not know what geometry is, I cannot answer that. I do function, though.”
“Yes, you do,” Mari admitted. They were very close together, the words they spoke barely audible to each other, the falling snow blocking out vision, as if they were alone inside a cocoon of white. “Parallel means… never mind. What I meant was if we go that way it will be the shortest route to the nearest section of the city walls and we won’t have to worry about running into the river.”
“I see. Why did you not say that before?”
Mari tensed, slapping one hand up to cover her face, then with a visible effort relaxed and lowered the hand. “Every time I start to feel superior to you I have to remind myself that you can do things I can’t even explain.” She pointed to the left and started off.
Alain nodded, following again as they traversed the new route, which was fairly clear until they reached a stretch where the fronts of several buildings had fallen into the street. As they struggled through the rubble, Alain heard a sudden intake of breath from Mari. Alarmed, he followed her gaze, to see that she was looking at the interior of one of the buildings which had lost its front.
Inside, the crumbling shapes of many human skeletons lay in rows, witness to ancient tragedy. Alain wondered who they had been. Citizens of the city who had taken shelter in the building only to be trapped and die, or who had been murdered by the rebels when they first took control of the city? Rebels, captured and executed by legionaries? Or legionaries, taken prisoner and killed, or perhaps badly wounded or killed in battle and taken here only to be forgotten?