“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.
“Later,” one of the Mechanics replied. “The captain wants to see them one at a time. Stay here and stay on guard.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The sentry leaned against the hatch to Mari’s prison, looking unhappy with the continuation of his duty.
The other four Mechanics put Mari between them, the two at the rear prodding her along with their weapons, unaware of Alain following close behind. They walked along short hallways and took stairs upward, climbing into the higher levels above the main deck. Alain caught glimpses of the outside through infrequent small, circular windows, seeing that the sun had almost set and night was coming on quickly. Their small procession passed other Mechanics, who always stood aside. Those Mechanics averted their eyes from Mari with expressions that were trying to conceal emotions, but to Alain’s practiced eye hinted at feelings from curiosity to sympathy to fear to hostility.
He concentrated on maintaining his spell, grateful for how the ship’s motion kept supplying new reserves of power. And I know for certain that there are no other Mages anywhere near, so I need not worry about revealing myself to them.
They finally reached a short passageway where one of the escorts knocked on a door labeled captain, then opened it and led the way in. Alain barely managed to squeeze in as well before the door was closed, finding he had precious little space to stand without touching any of the Mechanics. Fortunately, the four Mechanics had herded Mari to stand in front of a desk where a middle-aged woman Mechanic sat, leaving room for Alain to stand back against a wall. Alain barely managed to avoid a small cry of satisfaction as he spotted both his and Mari’s packs sitting in one corner of the room.
The woman Mechanic at the desk gazed at Mari with obvious dislike. “Former Master Mechanic Mari, now only Mari. Even the Guild makes mistakes sometimes, and you’re the biggest mistake in quite a while. I’ve never looked upon a traitor before.”
Mari stared steadily back. “Try looking in a mirror.”
“How dare you—”
“You’re betraying everything, every Mechanic, everyone—!” Mari was yelling, when the woman made a gesture and one of Mari’s guards used his weapon as a club, jamming the wide end against Mari’s side and causing her to choke off her words with a gasp of pain. Alain noticed that the other three guards looked uncomfortable at the abuse but did not protest it.
“You’ll stay silent unless you’re answering my questions,” the woman Mechanic said in a harsh voice. “Why did you go to Marandur?”