My training told me that I must obey my elders and deny this world. I have already chosen a different path than I was instructed to seek, but I would not have found it alone. Acolytes are not taught that any other way exists. Is this why some Mages become Dark Mages, because they decide to cease obedience but can see no other road, no purpose for their powers beyond personal gain?
Mari would not lead me down such a path. If I know anything now, it is that. She believes that wisdom lies in helping.
Is that what will enable her to defeat the storm?
If the storm does not destroy her. I must tell Mari about that vision.
I must protect her.
At that thought, he could feel that insubstantial thread leading to Mari strengthen. He despaired inside, wondering how he could protect Mari if his emotions caused him to lose the ability to cast Mage spells.
Oddly, though, he felt no weakness. Instead, a strength filled him. In some way Alain could not understand, that strength did not come through the thread, but owed its existence to the existence of a thread that was not there. And there was no one he could ask about that.
He learned little more the next day. For dragons, the creatures terrorizing Dorcastle had left few signs of themselves aside from the occasional act of destruction. Down at the harbor he heard sailors gloomily discussing the lack of trade. Ships would not sail for fear of being set upon once away from Dorcastle’s defenses, and so the cargo coming down the Silver River by barge from the inner lands of the Bakre Confederation piled up in warehouses and sailors went unpaid.
His mind preoccupied with thoughts of a storm of ghostly armies and mobs, Alain could not help noticing and marveling at Dorcastle’s stout defenses. They brought a sense of reassurance and solidity against the urgent warning of the vision he had experienced in the desert.
Alain stopped at two of the monuments to past battles, finding them as true to history as Ringhmon’s had been false. Dorcastle wore its glory lightly, honoring past triumphs without exalting them and memorializing past sacrifices. There was as well a grimness to Dorcastle’s monuments, a sense that the costs had been necessary but must be remembered in any celebration of victory. It was hard to imagine a greater contrast with Ringhmon.
As the sun sank behind the cliffs to the west of the city, Alain finally made his way to the eating place where Mechanic Mari had said she would be. The thread, sometimes so thin with distance that it had grown weak, was now strong enough to tell him that she was there well before he reached the restaurant.–Just short of the place Alain went into an alley and pulled off his Mage robes, folding them into his bag again. He could not help imagining how the commons in this city would react to seeing a Mechanic and a Mage sitting at the same table in conversation.
A Mechanic and a Mage working together. If the commons saw that…
Low clouds had been closing in as the day ended, and before he reached the restaurant a thin rain had begun to fall, pattering off the gray stone streets and gray stone walls of Dorcastle, pooling in the indentations left by ancient weaponry in the many sieges which Dorcastle had endured.
Mari was not wearing her Mechanics jacket. She must have followed the same plan as he, trying to avoid attention. Alain came to the table where she sat, back in a corner by itself away from any windows, and bowed slightly. “My friend.”
Mari glanced up, her expression sharp and worried, one hand jerking toward her own bag in what Alain recognized as an abortive grab toward her concealed weapon. Then she grinned with relief. “I really am on edge. You’d think I’d recognize an unemotional voice calling me a friend. But I’ve been fending off the occasional romantic male citizen of Dorcastle. I’d never realized how much my jacket keeps commons from even thinking about approaching me.”
“You are not used to being approached by men?” Alain asked as he sat down opposite her.
Her expression turned rueful. “No. I’m not exactly a raving beauty, and I’ve always been more comfortable with machines than I have with males. And I’m a…you know. That sort of narrows the field of men who’d even think about coming on to me.”
“What is a raving beauty?”
“You know, some woman who’s so attractive that men can’t take their eyes off of her. I know Mage women don’t go in for, uh, cosmetics, so maybe you haven’t seen much of that.” Mari blushed slightly with embarrassment, as if concerned she had offended Alain. “I’m not saying Mage women aren’t worth looking at, though I never really have.”
Alain nodded, remembering Asha. “I know such a woman. A raving beauty.”
“Give me a break.”
“I did not mean you.”
Mari’s mouth hung open for a moment, then she blushed a deeper shade. “All right. Let’s pretend I never said that.”
“Why?” Alain asked.
“Because. The point is, the, uh, jacket tends to drive off men like the ones who have come on to me so far tonight.”
“But it must have been more than the jacket,” Alain said. “You are intimidating whether you wear it or not.”
She laughed. “All right, this time I have every right to say give me a break.”
“It is so.”
Mari laughed again. “I’m not intimidating compared to you.”
He shook his head. “My elders do not agree. Those here also see me as too young to be capable.”
“There’s something we still have in common.” Mari twisted her mouth in a half smile, an expression that Alain found fascinating. She had never mentioned her appearance before, but now that she had, he realized how much he wanted to watch her.
“I’m certain the Guild Hall Supervisor in Ringhmon sent a message about me here on the train,” Mari continued, oblivious to Alain’s thoughts, “or by…the arts of my Guild. It didn’t take long after I arrived for many of the other members of my Guild here to start treating me like I had some serious, communicable disease. It really does feel like the Senior Mechanics think other Mechanics will catch something from me. But enough of that. Let’s get some food and then we can talk.”
He stole glances at Mari as she ate, amazed at the play of emotions and feelings as she tasted, as she talked, as she looked out the nearest window at the city. “This food is good,” she commented.
Alain looked down at his own meal. “What is good when speaking of food?”
That earned a look of surprise followed by sadness. “They kept that from you, too? It’s taste, texture, everything. You don’t notice that?”
“We are taught to eat quickly and take no notice of taste,” Alain explained. “It could be a distraction.”
Mari rubbed her forehead, her head lowered so he couldn’t see her expression, then looked back up at him. “It doesn’t matter. If that’s important to you, I mean.”
He examined his own food, trying to pay attention to how it looked. “It cannot be a greater distraction than you are.”
“What?”
“I meant that if you have not already harmed me, then tasting my food should have no impact.”
She eyed him, her expressions shifting too fast to follow. “I am really going to have to think about that before I can figure out whether it was a compliment or a cut down.”
Alain began trying to savor his own food, cautiously paying attention to taste and texture, and found some sense of forbidden pleasure returning to the act of eating. Or maybe he was just seeking to distract himself from thinking about Mari, and about his vision and the words and advice of the elder.