“That’s not it. And I’d like to have a talk with those Mage elders someday.”
“That probably would not be a good idea,” Alain suggested. “What is this thing Mages know about marriage supposed to be about?”
“You know.”
“Uh, no.”
“People,” Mari said. “In bed together. Something special about that.”
“Are you serious?” Alain thought, then again shook his head. “No. Nothing. No one ever said anything about that. We were told that sex was but a physical act and no emotion must connect to it.”
“Really?” Mari asked. “Maybe a female Mage would know. I’ll ask Asha the next time we see her.”
“Mari, I must ask again if you are serious?”
“Yes. Alain, I’m afraid this is something you just don’t understand.”
Alain lay back again, staring at the ceiling. “I am certainly not going to argue that,” he murmured under his breath.
“I heard that!”
Alain raised his hand to gaze at the ring there. It had not caused any physical changes in him that he knew of, but Mari’s ring seemed to have given her extraordinarily good hearing. He wondered if they only had that effect on Mechanics, or if all women gained that ability along with their rings.
“Alain?”
“Yes, Mari?”
“Would you have done it?”
Alain took a moment to ponder what that could refer to. “What do you mean?”
“What those people did, the ones who gave their unborn children to the ship.” He heard her sigh. “They would never see those children, and those children would never know their parents. They would grow up so unimaginably far away, and they wouldn’t even be born until long after their parents had died. That would be so hard. But those children would someday walk the soil of another world, one warmed by a different sun, and they’d see and experience things their parents couldn’t even imagine. And those people knew that someday their children and grandchildren and so on would live on that world and make it their own. So I can’t decide.”
Alain lay silent for a little while, thinking about it. “I do not know. As you say, it would not be an easy choice.”
“No. It would be very, very hard. I guess I’m lucky we’ll never face that choice. I have a feeling that having children will require enough difficult decisions as it is.”
Alain felt a curious blend of wonder and fear fill him. He could not see her expression well in the dark, but Mari’s comments reminded him of her statements about children earlier that day, her actions when she had heard about the passengers on the great ship, as if she were protecting something inside her. “Mari? Are you trying to tell me something?”
“What do you think I’m trying to tell you?”
“This talk of children…”
“Well, we have to think about it, Alain.”
“But…”
“You seemed upset when the librarians and I were talking about the passengers on the ship.” Mari rose up on one elbow and gazed at him. “Does having children scare you? Do you not want children? You never said that before.”
Alain stared back at her, feeling his questions crystallize into near certainty at the upset sound in her voice. “I want children. I do. But I thought that would be later, when the risks to us were much lower.”
“That’s right,” Mari said.
“But, you keep talking about… acting as if…” Alain was having trouble getting the words to come out, something that he found perplexing. “Mari, are you… ?”
“Am I what? Am I sure?”
“No.” Neither his Mage training nor his time with Mari had prepared him for this. “Are you expecting a child?”
“Am I what? Stars above, no! I need a few more years of life under my belt before I’ll be ready to handle raising children, especially if ours have any combination of your personality and mine.. I’d also like a little better assurance that I’ll even be alive a few years from now before I take on responsibility for a new life.” Mari suddenly laughed. “Was I trying to tell you something! I had you worried, didn’t I?”
“A little,” Alain admitted.
“ ‘A little’? I’ll bet you were terrified! Oh, now I understand! No wonder you got so nervous! You thought—!” Mari laughed some more, and even after she fell asleep Alain suspected Mari still had a smile on her face.
But he lay awake a while longer, gazing up through the window at the stars filling the night sky, feeling relieved but also, in some strange way, disappointed.
The next few days passed slowly. Mari kept fidgeting, knowing that Alli would have begun looking for them to return to the city but would be waiting in vain each evening. The mysterious special Mechanics would have arrived in Altis by now. What would they be doing? Had either the Mechanics Guild or the Mage Guild figured out that Mari and Alain were on this island? As Captain Patila had warned, there was only one good way out of Altis, via the city and the port, and Mari wanted to be gone before that path was blocked. Her most important questions had been answered, but the librarians needed time to copy the texts she had brought even with all of them working at full speed on the project. She couldn’t complain about the food, since the librarians kept offering the best their small farms could provide, and the sleeping room was quite comfortable except for the ever-present possibility that some kind of device would begin making a record of her actions without her knowledge.
But there was so much to do, and she had no way of knowing how much time was left to do it. “I’m worried about Alli,” Mari informed Alain.
“She seemed very capable,” he commented.
“Of course she is! But so am I, and I wouldn’t have lasted nearly this long if not for having you around.” Mari frowned, looking out the window and down across the valley. “You know, that’s important.”
“I am glad you think so.”
“Stop it. I’m serious.” She turned to look at him. “It’s like we found out at Ringhmon. Something that would have trapped or killed one of us, the other could get through. Working together, we could overcome any threat. That’s personally important to us, but I’m wondering about these purges in the Mechanics Guild that have happened every now and then, according to what Alli’s friend found out and what the librarians say. There must have been Mechanics like me before, people who were willing to risk themselves for what was right. But they always must have failed.”
“They were not the daughter,” Alain said.
“How do we know that?” Mari asked. “How do we know that I’m not just the latest daughter? That there haven’t been others, now and then in the centuries since Jules died, but those others never made it this far?”
Alain considered her words before replying. “That is possible. A daughter of Jules, the prophecy says. Not the daughter. It could be read to mean that there would be more than one, though eventually only one would succeed. You think the others, if they were fated for the same role, failed because they had only Mechanic skills?”
“Yes.” Mari sat down next to Alain. “I’ve asked the librarians if they have any record of people who could have been earlier daughters, but they can’t find anything. If those daughters died right away, as I would have at Ringhmon, who would have heard about them? They would have been gone before they could accomplish anything, just like I would have if not for you. You’re the wild card, the random variable that Mechanic traps can’t hold. And because you’re with me, I’ve been able to escape that fate. That’s what may be different this time. You. It’s not just the daughter.”