“Really? Is it unusual for a Mage to be that young?”
His eyes searched hers for a moment, as if trying to determine her reason for asking, then the Mage nodded. “I must prove myself,” he added.
“Oh.” Mari sighed again, her anger at his stubbornness fading into guilty relief that he hadn’t accepted her offer. “I know that feeling. I’m eighteen. Youngest Master Mechanic ever. I made Mechanic at sixteen. Unprecedented.” She hated bragging, but her inability to mention what she had accomplished without seeming to boast had worn on her. At least when speaking to a Mage she could talk about it without anyone thinking she was trying to impress. “I passed every test. I know my job. But every Senior Mechanic I meet thinks I’ve been promoted way too fast.”
“Many of my elders think that of me,” Mage Alain said. “Perhaps they are right.” He gestured toward the caravan’s remains. “I did not succeed here, in my first test.”
“Do you think any Mage, any person, could have saved that caravan?” Mari asked. “The people who attacked us had overwhelming force. The caravan never had a chance.”
“But it was my responsibility to protect it. That was the contract.”
She looked at him. “I thought you told me that Mages believe nothing matters. You just said that you would stay with me instead of going off alone and maybe living through this because it didn’t matter.”
“That is so.”
“Then why does what happened to the caravan matter?”
Once again Mage Alain almost frowned, the merest creasing of his brow, but said nothing.
“Actually,” Mari continued, “I agree that it does matter. But I also think you did the best anyone could’ve done. I mean that. You were willing to stand and die. What more can anyone ask?”
The Mage considered that, then met Mari’s eyes again. “It matters because the commons must remain in fear of Mages, and failure by a Mage might cause the commons to feel less fear. As for asking, more can always be asked of someone.”
Mari felt herself smiling at the irony of that last statement. “It sounds like whoever runs the Mage Guild has some things in common with the people running the Mechanics Guild.” The Guilds were enemies. Hate wasn’t too strong a word for the way Mechanics were taught to think of Mages. Yet she kept hearing things from this Mage that she could identify with.
Before she could say anything else, Mari heard the sound of a voice shouting below and felt a surge of fear.
The Mage peered over the rocks. “They are preparing to leave, I think. We were not overheard.”
“It would probably be better if we kept quiet from now on, anyway.”
He nodded, settling back and closing his eyes, seeming so calm that she couldn’t doubt his earlier declarations of belief that nothing mattered. Mari watched him for a minute, wondering why she had felt an impulse to confide in a Mage of all people. It had been a long time since she had any friends she could talk to freely. Maybe the sun was making her tongue too loose. After all, what did it take to qualify as a Mage? She had been told it merely involved learning enough tricks to fool the commons. But that was wrong. Mage Alain had clearly been put through physical challenges far worse than those which Mari had faced, and there was that superheat thing he had done.
They can’t really do anything, more than one Senior Mechanic had told her dismissively. No one had ever contradicted them.
Mari stared up at the sky, thinking. I’ve been in Mechanics Guild Halls or the Academy at Palandur since I was barely eight years old. I haven’t actually seen any Mages during that time except at long distance when I was out in Palandur with groups of other Apprentices or Mechanics. But if Mage Alain can do something like that heat thing, someone else must have seen other Mages do it. Some older Mechanics, who’ve been out in the world.
Why does every Mechanic say Mages are only fakes?
Regardless of the answer to that, Mage Alain wasn’t exactly a trusted co-worker. Whatever he had been through had obviously been brutal, but she couldn’t give him back his humanity or his childhood. She would have to keep her thoughts to herself from now on, unless they were about reaching somewhere they could find help.
By the time the sun had hit its highest, turning their hiding place into a veritable oven, the last group of the bandits had departed, heading west toward Ringhmon. They had torched the last undestroyed wagons of the caravan, leaving thin columns of smoke spiraling into the air behind them as they rode off. Mari and the Mage waited a while longer, despite the discomfort of their hiding place, but finally Mari decided that if she were going to die she would rather be killed by bandits down on the road than be broiled alive up on the ledge.
The climb down wasn’t easy, even in full daylight. Mari examined the remains of the caravan and its former guards and drivers as best she could stomach, looking for anything else that might help them. But in the time since the Mage’s search last night the bandits had done a thorough job of destroying and despoiling everything that was left.
She met Mage Alain again at the edge of the crater which marked where the first explosion had shattered the front of the caravan. Somebody had used a lot of explosives to produce a blast that powerful, and the Mechanics Guild charged plenty for explosives. This “bandit gang” had a great deal of money behind it.
If Mage Alain was right about what the bandits had said—and the lack of bullet holes in the ruin of her own wagon would seem to confirm his guess—they had spent all of that money and killed all of these people in order to get their hands on her.
Why?
Mage Alain shook his head as he looked down into the crater. “The caravan master did not escape. I believe a few guards may have made it out of the pass, fleeing east, but they could not have outrun the bandits.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Just common folk, her Mechanic training told her. Inferiors meant to serve Mechanics. They didn’t matter.
Except that they did.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Mage Alain squinted into the distance. “It should not matter…they do not matter,” he said, as if trying to convince himself, unknowingly using the same phrase which had come to Mari as she thought of her training.
Mari grimaced. “Can you think of any reason we shouldn’t start walking west right now instead of waiting for nightfall?”
“No. We will not overtake mounted bandits unless they stop to watch for us, and if they do lie in wait, perhaps I can avenge those who died here.” The lack of emotion in his voice matched that in his face.
But Mari thought she could see the anger smoldering deep in the Mage’s eyes. She could have pointed out to Mage Alain that his desire for vengeance meant he did care about what had happened here, but she simply nodded and said nothing, feeling reassured that this Mage, at least, did think the fates of others mattered.
They walked westward until close to sunset, taking full advantage of any shade cast by the heights around the pass. Just before sunset they cleared the pass, coming to a point where the road zigzagged down a fairly steep slope before continuing in a long curve toward the northwest across desert flatlands which ran all the way to the horizon. Mari, wishing she had brought a far seer, gazed out over the panorama for any sign of the bandits, but except for a tiny cloud of dust far down the road saw nothing.
After eating a small amount of the trail rations and drinking as little water as they dared, they started down the slope, cutting across the back-and-forth twists of the road designed to accommodate wagons. That sped them up enough that they reached the bottomland before moonrise.