He stepped outside, slightly dizzy and grateful for the door’s support before he closed it.
“Alain! You’re all right!”
Alain blinked in confusion at the Mechanic standing before him. He knew that face from somewhere. Somewhere cold. “Mechanic Calu? Friend of Mari?”
“That’s me.” Calu studied him, looking worried. “Take it easy. You still look a little beat up.”
“Apparently I have been beat up.” Alain indicated the bandage on the back of his head. “Do you know how?”
“Only what I was told.” Calu helped Alain sit down on a barrel lashed to the front of the cabin. “You got knocked out by some Dark Mages. Mari led a rescue and found you with Mage Asha’s help.”
“How was that possible?” Alain wondered. “I will have to ask Mage Asha. Wait. How did you come to be here? You were in Umburan.”
“Sure was,” Calu agreed. He leaned against the cabin next to Alain, his Mechanics jacket dark against the wood. “But the Mechanics Guild has gotten even more worried about Mari. You remember I got sent to Umburan because the Guild was trying to break up Mari’s old gang? Which wasn’t really a gang, but anyway. The Senior Mechanics have been moving people between Guild Halls a lot more, trying to keep any gangs from forming. That’s how I ended up in Julesport. That’s the official reason, anyway. I suspect the Guild thought Mari might go to Julesport and figured that if I was there she’d try to contact me. They’ve been watching me pretty close, but what they didn’t know was that two of the Mechanics supposedly keeping an eye on me were just as eager to join Mari as I was.”
“Mechanic Alli was worried about you,” Alain said, still gathering his thoughts.
“He needs to be watched or he gets into trouble,” Alli said, coming up and putting one arm around Calu. “How are you doing, Alain? You looked pretty bad when we carried you out of that Dark Mage den. The healers said you might be hurting. Are you in any pain?”
“It is nothing,” Alain said.
“Is everything nothing with you Mages?” Alli asked. “There’s some pain medication you are supposed to take if you need it.”
Alain shook his head. “I do not need it. I have endured far worse pain than this.”
Alli shook her head in turn, then looked at Calu. “Mari has been telling me some things about the training Mages get when they’re—not apprentices… acolytes. It is seriously ugly. Take a look sometime and you’ll see all of the Mages, even Asha, have lots of scars.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me looking at Mage Asha,” Calu said. “Scars? I saw them on you before, Alain, and I thought maybe they were from that fight in the desert or at Dorcastle. I’m really sorry.”
“Why?” Alain asked.
“Because it must have been pretty tough on you, and on the other Mages.”
“Oh.” He still had trouble grasping the way shadows thought, of how they could care for others while also doing things that harmed others. How could someone like Alli see others as real and yet also be able to point a Mechanic weapon at them? Mari could do the same, but he knew it caused her great distress. Perhaps Alli hid her distress the way a Mage would. “We are heading for Tiae?”
“Yes,” Alli said. “Though Calu and I have been talking about something that might alter that a bit. We’ll talk to you when we’ve argued it out. In the meantime, you might want to check out our other new friends.”
He saw some anxiety in her and looked where Alli indicated. Sitting in a circle on the deck were five Mages, not two as he would have expected.
“Mage Asha and Mage Dav have been with them, but otherwise they haven’t interacted with anybody,” Alli added. “Those three act like regular Mages and—well, it’s a little difficult.”
“I will speak with them,” Alain said. “You are worried that they might harm someone?”
“Yeah. Mage Dav says they’re all right, but, uh…”
“I understand.” The reputation of Mages—that they treated others as merely playthings—was well established and, Alain knew, well earned. Why care about the lives and well-being of shadows? But he had learned otherwise and so must these new Mages. Alain stood up carefully, still feeling weak.
Calu immediately offered a steadying hand. “Take it easy. Let us know if you need anything.”
“Mari may be out cold, but we’ve got your back,” Alli said.
It made no sense, did not comport with the wisdom taught to Mages, but Alain felt stronger at that moment. Strong enough to manage a small smile of reassurance and then walk steadily to where the other Mages sat.
Asha looked up as Alain approached, one corner of her mouth twitching slightly in the way of a Mage who had not yet relearned how to smile. She moved aside in the tight circle so that Alain could seat himself next to her.
Alain looked around the tight circle of hooded figures. Mage Asha was next to him, and next to her Mage Dav. Then a male Mage who bore the marks of advanced age, another male Mage not much older than Alain, and a female Mage of middle years. All looked back at him in the way of Mages, barely acknowledging his presence and giving no sign of how they felt about it.
“Mage Alain,” Alain said, introducing himself to the eldest first.
“Mage Hiro,” the old man said.
“Elder Hiro,” Mage Dav corrected.
“No longer.” Mage Hiro’s voice and face gave no clue as to whether he felt regret over that. “I have known the wisdom I was taught is lacking. I seek new wisdom.”
The young man spoke next. “Mage Dimitri. I cannot see all as shadows, yet I have some power. The elders could not explain, but they could punish.”
Then the woman. “Mage Tana. Like Mage Hiro, I have had questions, and no longer will keep silent.”
Mage Hiro gestured slightly at Alain. “Mage Dav says you see one other as real?”
“This is so,” Alain admitted, realizing that his own face and voice were growing as impassive as the other Mages’. He let it happen, knowing it would help them believe his words. “Master Mechanic Mari. She is real.”
“Yet you have power? Show us.”
Mage Asha indicated Alain’s bandage. “He has been injured.”
“I see this,” Hiro said. “I feel how little power there is here. I would know what Mage Alain can do when injured, with little outside himself to draw on.”
It was the sort of test that elders would demand to judge the abilities of younger Mages. Alain nodded once, seeing out of the corner of his eye that Mechanics Alli and Calu were watching the group from a distance. Watching him. Because Mari cared for him, they did also.
It gave him a confidence and a strength that had been lacking. Alain wrapped himself in the spell that granted invisibility, causing the illusion that light itself bent around him. He held it, feeling his strength draining quickly, then finally dropped the spell.
Mage Tana measured Alain with her gaze. “One who could manage that under such conditions is not weak.”
“But he was taken by the Dark Mages,” the young Mage said.
Hiro dismissed the comment with another sharp gesture. “See the bandage. A blow from behind. The smallest illusion can defeat the one thing that is real. The mightiest Mage can be felled by a single rock. You know this.”
“I do not question that wisdom.”
“Has your art changed?” Hiro asked Alain. “Because you see the Mechanic as real?”
“No. The means by which I place a smaller illusion over the greater illusion of the world has not changed. My art has only grown more powerful,” Alain said, drawing some barely visible reaction from the three new Mages.
“She accepts your wisdom?” Mage Tana asked. “This Mari?”