The man shrugged. “We’ve been over that. Profit.”
“That’s it?”
“What else?”
Mari grimaced. “If this Order truly knows the Mechanic arts, you could do a lot of good.”
The man gave another one of his humorless smiles. “We do plenty of good. For ourselves.”
“And no one else?”
“Are you trying to make me laugh, Lady Mechanic?” The man leaned back, giving her a scornful look. “Mechanics are taught to look out for themselves. We’re just doing the same thing, only the Order is willing to do a few things your Guild won’t. Or maybe I should say your former Guild. And now you’re obviously getting ready to set up your own outfit, infringing on the Order’s territory. Did I mention that doing that would be a very big mistake?”
“No,” Mari replied in frigid tones, “you didn’t. So, anything goes as far as the Order is concerned? Anything that might turn a profit? No matter the cost to someone else?”
The man looked as though he were pretending to think about her questions. Then he grinned. “That’s right.”
“And you expect me to join with you in this?”
This time the man shook his head, even though his nasty grin didn’t waver. “No, Lady Mechanic. I don’t expect you to agree to join the Order. I expect you to turn us down. I’m actually hoping you turn us down. It wasn’t my idea to make you this offer, but I got outvoted.”
Mari nodded, tensing and wondering how quickly she could draw the pistol under her coat. “What happens if I say I want to think it over?”
“You’ve got all the time you want,” the man assured her. “Just as long as you’re not planning on leaving this booth before you decide.”
“I see.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mari was noticing that several of the booths on the opposite side of the restaurant had curtains drawn. How many of those might hold other members of the Order? What weapons might they be armed with? The man’s attitude made it clear that if she didn’t agree to join the Order she wouldn’t leave this room alive. But agreeing to go with him, even if she didn’t mean it, would require placing herself totally in the power of the Order. That felt very dangerous.
Mari took a long, slow breath, then looked at Alain. “Have you made up your mind?”
He nodded, his face revealing nothing. “I am ready.”
Chapter Eleven
“All right.” Mari kicked out, her boot catching the man’s ankle and drawing a yelp of pain. The man fumbled with the weapon he had been in the act of trying to draw as Mari grabbed the wine bottle and slammed it against his head. Watching curtains being yanked back on some of the other booths in the room, Mari began sliding out of her seat as the man slumped down onto the table. Before she could tell who was inside those booths, Alain had grabbed her and pulled her back inside their own.
“Close our curtain,” he said.
Not waiting to ask, Mari used one hand to sweep the curtain to their booth closed, brandishing her pistol as she did so to dissuade anyone from rushing in immediately. “Now what? Why didn’t you let me run?”
“There are better ways to leave.”
Mari gave Alain a quick, puzzled look, then saw the wall beside his booth seat now had a hole in it, a hole large enough for them to get through. “I forgot all about that.”
The thunk of handheld mini-crossbows firing echoed in the room and the curtain to their booth jerked as bolts tore through it. Alain was already sliding through the hole, then turned to help her. Mari ducked down as low as she could get as more bolts thudded into the booth. A moment after she had cleared the hole, it vanished as if it had never been. “That should slow down any pursuers,” Alain remarked.
Mari impulsively kissed him. “I love you, my Mage.”
Alain twitched one of his small smiles at the possessive term. “We have to keep moving and get away from here. Though they may not be able to figure out how we escaped, they can still launch a search of the area.”
A couple of more thunks startled Mari, and she turned to see the very tip of one bolt sticking through the wall. “Let’s hope they keep shooting into that booth for a while before they charge it.” An ugly thought struck then. “We left that guy in the booth. He might get killed by his own people.”
Alain gave her a dispassionate look. “Waste no concerns on him. When he spoke of the Dark Mechanic who shot at you in Edinton, I could see in him that he was one of those who tried to kill you there.”
Mari couldn’t help shivering. She had never before looked closely upon someone who had tried to kill her. “Thanks for not telling me that earlier.” She looked around, seeing that they were on the upper floor of a laundry, with rack after rack of clothing hanging from rails on the ceiling. The distant sound of voices and splashing water warned of laundry workers laboring on the first floor. “It might be very hard to sneak past whoever is downstairs here, and if there’s anyone watching the outside of that restaurant, they might see us leaving an adjacent doorway. Can you get us through another wall?”
“Yes, but the fewer walls the better. If we are going to run, I cannot afford to exhaust myself. Also, each time I use a spell, I risk revealing my presence to nearby Mages.”
“We’ll keep the walls to a minimum. Follow me.” Mari started across the laundry, ducking down to scuttle under the rows of hanging garments. “I just wish I knew how those guys spotted us and knew we’d be on that coach.”
“He said we had been seen together in Umburan,” Alain noted.
“We were stuck in that town for days. Even though we stayed in our hostel room most of the time, someone must have seen me there, and after they watched us get on the coach, they called ahead to Pandin. I bet anything that the Order has far-talkers.”
“Far-talkers?” Alain disentangled himself from the low-hanging hem of a long dress.
“Yes.” Mari ducked under another row of clothing. She didn’t see much sense in worrying now about some of the Guild rules that had kept her from talking to Alain in the past. “They’re exactly what the name says, devices that allow us to talk across a distance. You’ve seen me use one, in Dorcastle. I’ve still got one with me, because as a Master Mechanic I was authorized to have one, and I thought it might be important at some point to have a far-talker.”
To her surprise, Alain just nodded as if she had said something unremarkable. “The Mages have such things. There are those who can create spell creatures and send them to where we wish the message delivered.”
“Uh, yes, but this is science, Alain. Far-talkers don’t use spell creatures.”
“What do they use?”
Mari wondered just how far across this laundry was as she ducked under yet another row of hanging clothing, then wondered how to explain far-talker transmissions to a Mage with no technical background at all. “They send, uh, these sort of invisible wave things.”
“Invisible wave things?”
“Yes, waves. Of energy. The invisible waves carry messages.”
Alain nodded again. “Like the spell creatures?”
“No, they don’t really carry a message,” Mari explained, “they, um, are the message.”
“The message delivers itself?”
“Sort of. Yes. It’s hard to describe.” Why did science sound so much more mystical than the Mage arts? “Here’s the next wall.” She heard the voices downstairs pause and wondered if they had been speaking too loudly or if their footsteps had been heard. “How long will it take you?” she whispered urgently. I’m asking someone to hurry up and create an imaginary hole in a wall. Sometimes I stop to think about this and it’s scary.
“Not long.” Alain came up beside her, stood up in the gap between the last row of clothes and the wall, and took on a look of concentration. A moment later a roughly Mari-sized hole appeared in the wall. Mari stepped through cautiously, moving the pistol held in her hand back and forth in search of threats. This room was dark, with vague bulky shapes visible in the light coming in through the hole behind her.