Alli shook her head. “No. It will just put us in a position to do something if Mari decides to. But the captain doesn’t want to alter course to do that unless Mari says so, or unless you say Mari would be all right with it.”
“Tell the captain that Mage Alain agrees with the wisdom of what you wish to do,” Alain said.
“Great. Thanks.” Alli straightened with a grin that changed to an uncertain look as she nodded to the other Mages and walked aft again.
Mage Tana spoke softly. “The Mechanic spoke to you as an elder. She sought your approval and accepted your authority.”
“Mechanic Alli helped save Mage Alain from the Dark Mages,” Mage Asha said. “She is… different, but she has a wisdom of her own. She will return in kind whatever is given her.”
“Given?” Tana puzzled over that. “There is much to think on.”
Alain spent much of the day regaining his strength and thinking, sitting on deck with his back against the door to the cabin where Mari still slept the sleep of exhaustion. While the Mechanics he could see and hear were clearly happy, and the other Mages remained in deep discussion or meditation, Alain’s thoughts were dark.
If she lives.
There was another… she died.
He remembered Mari’s face when he told her that she was the daughter. What had she said? Something about her life being worth only dust because of all those who would want the daughter dead. He had felt awful then, but mainly because of how his words had distressed Mari. He had not wanted to think too much about the fact that her words were also true.
But it was getting difficult to ignore. Mari’s dreams were often troubled now, and when she would speak of them she would talk of assassins and death stalking her and her friends. How much comfort could he offer when those dreams were not fantasies but a reflection of the dangers Mari and her friends actually faced?
He could change small parts of the world illusion for short times, but he could not change that.
“Are you all right?”
Alain looked up to see Mechanic Bev nearby. He had long been able to tell that Bev held some secret inside, some pain that she would not share with others. But now she stood eyeing him with concern.
“I am… all right,” Alain said.
“You know,” she said, “there are a lot of jokes about how much Mages lie, but I never actually caught one at it before. What is it? Is Mari all right?”
“Mari is well. Just tired. And worried.”
“Do you mind?” Bev sat down beside him, looking out across the deck. “Mari spends most of her time worrying about the rest of us, and you, and how she’s supposed to make this prophecy come true before the world blows up. Every once in a while she stops to think about what might happen to her personally and she gets really scared. I can see it. I don’t blame her. I couldn’t handle it if it was me. But she’s got you. So it worries me a bit when I see you looking scared.”
“You saw—?”
“I could tell. I doubt anyone else could. Maybe another one of you Mages.” Bev sighed. “It’s easy to be scared. To be so scared you don’t know how to face it. I know. But you have to keep going.”
“I know this,” Alain said. “Sometimes it is hard.”
“Sometimes it is very hard,” Bev said. “You need to be honest with Mari when it is. She thinks you’re built of the finest steel alloy and can’t crack. But nobody is that strong.”
“You are right,” Alain said. “Nobody can stand alone.”
“Nobody,” Bev whispered. “Here I am giving you good advice that I can’t follow myself. There’s something I can’t talk about to people. Not even Mari. But maybe I really sat down here because I have to say something to somebody. I’ve heard about the kind of hell you went through when you were an acolyte. So maybe you’d understand.”
Alain simply nodded, waiting.
“The Senior Mechanics run the Mechanics Guild,” Bev said in a very low voice, her eyes on the deck now. “They make the rules and they’re supposed to enforce the rules. Maybe you’ve already heard how much they abuse that power. At the Guild Hall in Emdin where I was an apprentice…” She paused for a long moment. “They lost control of themselves. Completely lost control. They started—”
Bev paused again, swallowing. “It was physical, you know? Not just beatings. I could handle that. Other stuff. And being told it was our duty as apprentices to do everything we were told, to keep quiet about it, to just submit.”
“They did this not to teach, but to harm?” Alain asked.
“Oh, they were teaching us stuff,” Bev said. “Stuff about how little we mattered, how we were just toys for them, how the people in charge could do anything they wanted and we had to go along with it.”
“Mechanic Alli said something about Emdin.”
“Yeah. Rumors got out eventually, and then three apprentices committed suicide. Not one by one but all at once. That got the attention of the Guild Headquarters at Palandur, which had somehow avoided seeing anything before that. They had to do something, and there are some Senior Mechanics who aren’t monsters. They pushed for an investigation.”
Alain waited.
“So,” Bev continued, her eyes still on the deck, “investigators came and talked to us and heard everything. And then some of the Senior Mechanics at Emdin were sent to other Guild Halls, and some of the apprentices were sent to other Guild Halls, and all of us were sworn to secrecy and told that if we ever said anything then every single detail would come out and we wouldn’t want that, would we? For everyone to know everything that had been done to us?”
“There was no punishment of the elders, of the Senior Mechanics?” said Alain.
“No. For the good of the Guild. Had to keep it quiet. What would the Mage Guild have done? Does that sort of thing happen there?”
Alain shook his head. “No. Not the same. The elders and the Mages who teach acolytes would beat us. They would inflict harm, and withhold food and water, and leave us to stand freezing in the winter. To enable us to ignore the world illusion, you see. It had a purpose. Sometimes an elder or a Mage would be… too enthusiastic. They would beat and harm in ways that could cause permanent damage. That was not allowed, and they would be sent away, not allowed to teach anymore.”
“But what about other stuff? Did acolytes ever get abused?”
“It is different,” Alain said, trying to find the words to explain. “Mages are taught that physical relations do not matter except that they are distractions from wisdom. They should be satisfied as quickly and efficiently as possible. And then move on and focus once again on the wisdom that says others do not matter.”
“There’s no power in it,” Bev said. “Your elders and Mages couldn’t get any thrills out of that kind of power trip, could they? Because I knew it was about power, mostly. Some of them hurt you in ways that did satisfy their power thrills, but abusing you wasn’t one of them because you were all being taught it didn’t matter. Did thinking that way make you happy?”
Alain shook his head again. “Happy did not exist. Happy was an illusion. After enough time, we all believed that.”
“They stole something else from you,” Bev whispered.
“What they stole, I was able to find again,” Alain said. “I wish… I wish I could change the illusion so that you had not been hurt. Mari reminded me that the shadows around me feel pain just as I do. But there is so little I can do to stop that pain. It is easier to think of them just as shadows. But Mari never does the easy thing.”
“And she won’t let you, either, huh?” Bev blew out a long breath. “Thanks for wanting to make it go away, but it never will. Do you hate the elders who hurt you?”