The shouts from the caravan came again, this time clearly expressing disappointment and carrying the tone of command. From the direction of the sound, Alain guessed the voices were coming from the area of the wagon the Mechanic had occupied. “The bandits have discovered that you are missing.”
“Blazes, we’ve got to get out of here. Can you climb by yourself?”
“Yes,” Alain said, not understanding the reason for her question but unwilling to admit to his continued weakness.
“Good. Let’s go.” With a lingering look of regret toward the long Mechanic weapon lying discarded on the ground, the Mechanic turned and started climbing higher along the walls of the pass. “Thanks for saving us from those guys, Mage,” she called back in a low voice.
Alain watched her for a moment. She obviously intended for him to stay with her. He could not remember how to respond to her last words. Thanks. That had meant something to him once. He had said it…to Asha. Only once, the night they had both been brought to the Mage Guild Hall with the other new acolytes. He had been punished for it. That had been…twelve years ago? What had the word meant?
He climbed after the Mechanic as she toiled up the slope. Alain took each step, each pull upward on a handhold, one at a time, refusing to collapse again. The dust was gradually thinning, but down around the caravan it still blocked vision enough that Alain could not see what the bandits were doing, and hopefully they could not see the fleeing Mage and Mechanic. The climb was steep and difficult now, leading ever upward, and Alain felt his lingering strength being quickly consumed as they went higher.
The Mechanic looked back at him and then stopped, crouching behind an outcropping of rock that screened her from below. “How are you doing?”
Alain had to pause to get enough breath to answer. “Why do you ask this? Why do you keep asking such things?”
She looked aggravated at his response. “Do you think there’s something weird about being worried about somebody else?”
He could not think of an answer to that.
“Stars above,” the Mechanic said, “what’s the matter with you? We’re in this together, like it or not. And, no, I don’t particularly like it either, but we do what we have to do, Mage.”
Alain caught up with her, hauling himself up behind the same rock outcropping. He wished he were not so tired from the effort of casting his spells. “I neither like it nor dislike it. It is. But you are foolish to risk yourself for another, to worry. It does not matter.”
Anger flared on her face. “Everybody matters, Mage. Don’t lie to me. You must have feelings one way or the other, even if you hide them behind those robes and a face that shows nothing.”
“You do not seem to know Mages very well.” Alain looked away from her. After his years around impassive Mages, and then around commons who sought to hide their reactions to a Mage, the emotions on the Mechanic’s face were so clear and strong that it was if she were shouting the feelings at him, their intensity almost painful. Grateful for the chance to rest, Alain peered from behind the rock to search the slope behind them for signs that the bandits had realized which direction their quarry had fled.
“You’re the first Mage I’ve ever met,” the Mechanic said. “Do you believe that there’s something wrong with helping others?”
“Helping?” That had meant something once, too. He had been punished for that, and now shied from remembering.
“Yes.” The Mechanic gazed at him, some other emotion he couldn’t identify showing on her face now. “You don’t know what helping others means? You don’t believe people should help others?”
He did have a reply to that. “There are no others, and I do not believe this. I know it. Mages believe in nothing.”
His frank statement seemed to startle her. “Nothing? And that makes you happy?”
Another easy answer, drilled into him countless times during his years as an acolyte. “Happiness is an illusion.”
“I don’t believe that, and I can’t believe you do.” The sound of shouts down in the pass came again, distance rendering them vague but still menacing. The Mechanic took another deep breath. “We can’t afford to rest any longer. Ready?”
He finally realized that she had waited here, she had spoken with him, to give him time to rest even though it increased the danger for her. Alain took a moment to answer as he tried to understand the Mechanic’s actions, which were even more confusing than her words. “Yes.”
The Mechanic started climbing again, toward a crest that seemed tantalizingly close now.
Alain kept waiting for more thunder that would signify that the Mechanic weapons were launching their projectiles at him again, but they reached the top and slid over without any sign they had been spotted. The Mechanic was sitting below the ridge line on a slope that dipped down a short ways before rising to join more hills looming behind her. She was obviously waiting for him again. “They didn’t see you?” she asked.
“I do not think so.”
“How you can be so calm and unemotional about this, I don’t know,” the Mechanic said.
“A Mage has no interest in the world,” Alain explained.
“Not even when it’s trying to kill him? At least you’re consistent.” She rubbed one hand across her face, smearing sweat and dust into a dirty, wet mask. “You said that everybody else in the caravan died?”
“I believe so. All I saw were dead. I heard no sounds from anyone fighting or calling out offers to surrender.”
“Stars above.” She blinked away tears. “We were lucky to escape with our lives.”
“They do not want to kill you. They sought to capture you,” Alain said, offering the obvious explanation.
“What? Me?” She stared at him. “Why do you say that?”
“The attack destroyed the front of the caravan. Your wagon was at the rear. None of the weapons were aimed at the area near your wagon. The bandits did not immediately kill you as they did all others in the caravan, and before I killed them, their leader stopped one from harming you. I could hear the shouts when the others reached your wagon. They were discontented.”
“No, that’s…” She swallowed as her voice choked. “Bandits. They wanted to loot the caravan. That’s what bandits do.”
“They destroyed the wagons in the lead. Why would they destroy so much if they desired to loot it?”
The Mechanic ran one hand through her hair, haunted eyes gazing now at the nearby rocks. “Yeah, but…they shouldn’t even have known I was with the caravan. My Guild insisted I stay locked in that wagon so no one would know I was on my way to Ringhmon.” Her face darkened with anger. “They made me stay locked in there. If I hadn’t figured out how to take apart that lock I’d have been trapped in that wagon when the bandits got to it.”
“I would have gotten you out before then,” Alain said tonelessly.
Her eyes shifted back to him. “That’s why you were coming back?”
“Yes.” There was no reason to deny that. “I had been contracted to protect the caravan and I thought whichever shadow was in the wagon might still need my protection.”
“I never imagined a Mage would do that. The Senior Mechanics always said…you said that Mages didn’t care about people.”