The Assassins of Altis

Chapter Nine

Mari waited for the roar of a heavy shell headed their way, frozen with dread of what even a near-miss would do to the frail wooden lifeboat. But then she realized that there hadn’t been any muzzle flash from the big gun and saw the dark shape of the Mechanic ship alter as it listed to one side. “Something blew up on that ship.” The ship listed more. “They’re flooding. Alain, they’re flooding the boiler room to put out the fire before it destroys the ship.”

“Will that sink them?”

“If I remember right, the idea is to take in enough water to put out the fire but not enough to sink yourself.” A few more shots rang out in a ragged volley and Mari heard bullets snapping by overhead. “We’re almost out of range.”

“They cannot pursue?” His voice had calmed, she realized, as her own tone had grown less worried, but Alain still sounded exhausted.

“No, they can’t follow us. That boiler room is out of order for a long time. I’d stake my Mechanics jacket on it.” She yanked open the lifeboat’s tiny emergency locker and checked the compass. “Which direction are we going, anyway? Let me see. East? Alain, you’re taking us back toward the Empire!”

“You told me to get away from the Mechanic ship as fast as possible,” he complained.

“Oh, yeah. All right, let’s go out a little farther until they’ve lost sight of us, then do a wide turn and head west. As long as we go west it should be impossible to miss the Sharr Isles since they’ve got some good mountainous heights.” She laughed, giddy with relief. “This’ll actually work out. We’ve escaped and the ship saw us heading back toward the Empire so maybe they’ll warn the Guild to look for us there. But we’ll still get to Caer Lyn and take a ship out of there to Altis.”

She could see Alain nod. “Our plan worked,” he said.

“Our plan?”

“The plan not to use a plan.”

“Oh, that plan. Are you being sarcastic, my Mage?”

“Perhaps,” Alain said.

“How long have you been planning to say that?”

“I just made it up.”

Mari couldn’t quite suppress another laugh. “All right, just for that, you can keep steering for a while, even though I’m happy to hear you making a joke.” Mari settled herself in the bow, trembling as reaction to recent events set in. She was torn between total tiredness and the residue of the fear which had been driving her. “It’s been another long day, hasn’t it? Once we’re on course we can tie that tiller to keep us going straight and maybe both get some sleep. It’s got to be several hours’ sailing time to the vicinity of the Sharr Isles.”

She saw Alain drooping over the tiller. “You went beyond your limit again to do what I asked, didn’t you?”

He raised his head and nodded. “It was necessary.”

“It’s still amazing what you can do, and that you keep finding the strength to do it.” Mari moved cautiously to sit next to Alain, uncertain of the stability of this boat, then held him tightly. “Have I told you today that I love you?”

“When you were being taken off the Sun Runner,” Alain said.

“I was afraid that would be the last time I could say it to you.” She took a deep breath. “Get a little sleep, Alain. You earned it. I’ll keep on eye on things for a while.”

He didn’t answer, and when she looked over at him Mari saw that his eyes were already shut.

She braced him against her, held the tiller, and looked up at the stars.

Mari blinked up at the darkness, wondering where she was. She looked to one side and Alain was there, lying right next to her, smiling at her. She smiled back, reaching for him. His hands were on her body, touching everywhere, and it was feeling very, very good and—

The door crashed open. Men and women came storming in, their faces shadowed but their Mechanics jackets a clear sign of their identities. The Mechanics were leveling weapons at her, demanding that she raise her arms high, and stars above she was naked in front of all of them and—

Mari jerked into wakefulness, staring at the bow of the boat , her breath coming rapidly, heart pounding in her chest. She must have fallen asleep next to Alain. The gentle rolling motion of the lifeboat hadn’t changed, providing a strange contrast to the violent action of her nightmare. Its sail was still drawing a good breeze,

Alain was stirring next to her, sitting up. Mari tried to pretend that she was still asleep, but it didn’t do any good. “You had another bad dream,” Alain said in a soft voice.

“After what we’ve been through, that shouldn’t be any surprise,” Mari mumbled.

“I believe these dreams have less to do with recent history than with things you will not speak of.”

There he went again. Bringing up her family. “Not a good time, Alain.”

“It is never a good time. Some nights you awaken in my arms, distressed, unhappy, and yet you will not ever speak of what haunts your dreams.”

Mari had been leaning against Alain. Now she sat up straighter, looking directly ahead. “You know why I have nightmares sometimes. It’s happened ever since I had to shoot those barbarians in Marandur.”

“Those nightmares are different,” Alain said. “You react differently in them. There is another reason you have nightmares.”

“Who made you such an expert on me?” Mari turned her most intimidating look on Alain. “This is my problem. I’ll figure it out. I’ll deal with it.”

“You are not alone.”

She almost snapped at him once more in response, then realized the statement had more than one meaning. By closing him out of her problems, she was closing him out of her life.

Mari took a few long, slow breaths. “It’s… guilt, I guess. And that’s probably because of my mother. It’s got to be her fault.”

“You blame your mother for your nightmares?”

“Why not? That’s what mothers are for. Daughters blame them for their problems.”

“Why does this stand between us?” Alain asked.

That took several more breaths, while Mari nerved herself enough to answer. “Because I want you so bad. Physically, I mean, as well as loving you. And I know I must feel guilty about that. Because having sex is how you have children, even if you’re taking measures not to have children, and if we have children…”

He waited, not saying anything.

“If we have children,” Mari said in a whisper, “I might do to them what my mother did to me.” She shuddered as the words finally left her, closing her eyes against the world around her.

Alain’s arm came around her, gently offering reassurance. “You do miss them.”

“No, I don’t! If I wasn’t good enough for them, then they’re not good enough for me!”

“Anger will only—”

“I’m not getting angry!”

There was a moment of silence before Alain spoke again with the tone of a man walking into a pit full of lions. “Since neither one of us is angry, may I mention something?”

This was going too far, too fast. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone? “As long as it has absolutely nothing to do with my parents, sure.”

“May I speak of mine?”

Mari glared down at the bottom of the boat. “All right,” she grumbled.

“The last words I heard my mother say were ‘remember us.’” Alain said. “I never could forget those words or my parents, and I feel certain that my parents never forgot me.”

Tears mingled with her rage this time. “That makes me feel so much better, hearing about how your parents never forgot you.” It came out sounding vicious, making Mari feel even worse.

“Mari, you gave me back the ability to feel, to stop denying my emotions. Why do you fight so hard to deny your own feelings?”

She just stared downward. “She abandoned me, Alain. Her own daughter, forgotten, tossed aside. My mother did that, and her blood flows in me.” Mari raised her gaze, meeting Alain’s eyes. “I can’t imagine ever doing that to a child of mine, but my mother did it, and her blood is in me, and so maybe someday I would. And I will not risk that, Alain. As long as there is any chance that I might cast a child of mine aside because I inherited such a dark legacy, then I will not have a child. Why is it so hard for you to understand how horrible that is for me to think about?”

“Because you have never told me of it,” he said.

Mari pretended to be concentrating on moving the tiller so that the boat was on just the right course. “All right, you have a point there,” she finally admitted. “But now you know, and I hope you will respect that this is not something to do with you. It’s me. I have to get through what happened.”

Alain nodded, his voice calm. “What do you believe happened, Mari?”

“With my parents? I don’t believe anything. I know.” Her voice was shaking with anger. “I went off to the Mechanics Guild and I never got a single letter from them. Not one, not ever. For a few years I kept hoping they would least send something on my birthday, but no, nothing, nothing at all, and I wrote so many letters to them, Alain, so many letters, and I was still a little girl and I poured my heart into those letters and I begged them to please write and they never did.” The tears were coming again, blast it. Mari watched them fall into the bottom of the boat and mingle with the small puddles of sea water there.

“You know that they never wrote?”

“I checked. For years I checked often with the retired Mechanic who served as the mail clerk for the Guild Hall, and he never had anything for me!” Mari had been only ten years old the last time she had asked about mail from her parents, but she could still see his face, the old man kindly and regretful. Commons are like that. They get jealous. They cut you off. I’m really sorry, Mari. But you have the Guild now.

“Mari,” Alain said in a soft voice that barely carried, “did he tell you that no letters had been received, or that he had none for you?”

“What difference does it make how he said it?”

“Do you remember speaking with your friend Mechanic Calu about the letters he sent from the Guild Hall in Caer Lyn to you at the Mechanics Guild Academy, and the ones you sent to him and Mechanic Alli? At least some of those letters did not arrive, even though they were sent between Mechanics. Does this happen often?”

“No! I’ve never heard of any Mechanic complaining about it. I’m guessing now that I was being watched closer than I thought even then and that the Guild’s Senior Mechanics must have been intercepting some of my mail to see if I was being treasonous. But that’s not—” Something registered then, something too terrible to confront. “No. Oh, no, no, no.”

“My Guild never made any secret that we were to cut all ties to our parents,” Alain continued. “They taught us to believe our parents were nothing. The elders did this openly, because our training as Mages was believed to require it and because it ensured our loyalty to the Mage Guild. As I watched the Senior Mechanic on that ship taunt you, it came to me that your Guild took a different path, convincing you to deny your parents by making you believe that your parents had denied you. You know for a fact that some letters you sent were never delivered, and some sent to you were never received. This between Mechanics. What of letters to and from commons?” He paused, then spoke gently. “Your Guild elders lied to you about so much. I believe they lied about that as well.”

Mari was staring at him, feeling the tears streaming down her face again, but not in anger. No, what she was feeling now was a sense of dismay so deep it threatened to swallow her. “They lied to me and who knows how many others. We were just kids. We had no idea someone would do something like that. They cut us off from our families, and let us believe it was our families’ fault.”

“I think this may have happened, yes, Mari,” Alain said, his voice soft.

“No!” It was more a howl of despair than a word, and Mari hurled herself against Alain to clasp him and cry in great, trembling sobs. “Then my parents didn’t leave me. They never got my letters, did they? The Guild just burned their letters, probably, and told me, and told my friends, that our parents hated us now, and we believed them, and we believed that the Guild was the only family we had. Oh, no.” She couldn’t stop crying, wracked with more pain than she had ever let out, and Alain held her, saying nothing else for a long time.

Eventually Mari subsided to shivering, then finally was able to speak again, her voice sounding as lost as the place in her heart. “Gone. They’re gone. And it’s my fault for believing the lies of my Guild.”

“They are not gone,” Alain said.

“Yes, they are. How can I ever face them now? They never heard from me when I was an apprentice. I’ve been able to visit them for years and I never tried, never did anything. They must think I’m an awful Mechanic who looks down on them and wants to pretend they never existed. I can’t possibly ever face them.” Mari buried her face in Alain’s chest. “Why did you have to tell me this? It hurt less before, because at least I could blame them.”

“It is not too late.”

“Yes, it is!”

“It is too late for me to see my parents,” Alain continued, and Mari winced. “They are dead. You still have a chance to make it right.”

“Alain,” Mari whispered, “I can’t. I’m not strong enough, I’m not brave enough. I can’t go there.”

“You are not alone.”

This time it meant another thing, and she pulled back a little to stare up at him.

Alain nodded to her. “You do not need to be strong enough alone. You have a friend who will help you.”

“Would you really? But, Alain, even then—”

“I will be beside you.”

“What if they find out that you’re a Mage and they hate you?”

“If you are reassured that they love you, whatever they think of me would be a small thing.”

Mari’s despair was replaced by fear mingled with wonder. “Maybe I can, if you’re there with me. Maybe.” Mari looked out across the water, to the west where Caer Lyn lay, trying to grasp everything that had just happened. “My mother didn’t abandon me.”

“No.”

“I don’t have that in my blood.”

“No.”

“I could be a good mother, if we’re ever blessed with children. Maybe. At least I can try my best.” She turned her head to look directly at Alain. “Do you still want to get married?”

The clearest smile she had ever seen on him illuminated Alain’s face. On an average person, it would have been a small bend of the lips, but from someone trained as a Mage it was amazing. “Yes.”

Mari kissed him long and deeply, having to pause afterwards to catch her breath. “Then I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to promise myself to you. I tell you that right now. We’ll be married. I can’t believe it took me this long to be willing to say that. I can’t remember where or when it happened, but at some point I stopped being able to imagine life without you in it. And though I don’t know why you like me so much, and I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve your love, you’ve shown that you love me more than I ever thought anyone could. So I’m proposing to you now even though you proposed to me back in that inn west of Umburan. I want you to know that I want this as much as you do. Nobody and nothing will ever separate us.”

When Alain finally spoke, his voice was rough with more emotion than she had ever heard from him before. “I will never leave you. I wondered if your fears were about me, if my being a Mage was still something you could not overcome, or if you found other things about me wanting.”

“Stars above, Alain, you’re perfect. Except for little things. I looked for flaws, believe me. I wanted to run when I realized I was falling in love with you. But I guess this destiny of yours had its little joke with us.”

“I hope you retain this illusion about my perfection,” Alain said. “And I will remain certain that you are indeed perfect. Except for little things.”

“I think there’s a few big things, but we just resolved the biggest. You do realize that I’m getting the better deal, don’t you?” said Mari, fighting back tears again.

“On that we must continue to disagree.” Alain looked behind them, toward the east. “It will be dawn soon. Shall we watch the sun rise together, on this first day of a new day for us?”

She sat next to him, gazing eastward where the sky was beginning to show the tint of dawn, half afraid this was a dream as well. “Right now I don’t care if I never bring a new day to the world. This new day for us is enough.”

“That may be out of our hands,” Alain suggested.

“We could always give up, but I guess you and I aren’t the kind of people who give up. It does scare me, Alain, that…” She braced herself, then said it. “That I am the daughter of Jules. That I actually have a chance to overthrow the Great Guilds. Because there are so many things that could go wrong, and so many people could be hurt. I don’t know if you heard what that apprentice in the far-talker room on the ship said, but apparently there are Mechanics who are starting to believe things about me, too. It’s just crazy.”

He smiled at her again. “You are more than you think you are.”

“Says the man who thinks I’m more beautiful than Asha,” Mari replied, “who herself must be getting burned by the intensity of my bonfire right now.”

“You are more beautiful than Asha,” Alain began to protest.

“And you are delusional. Sometimes I wonder if you believe that I’m just one more imaginary thing in a world you believe to be an illusion, and you’re thinking you can change me just like you can change other things.”

He sounded puzzled by her statement. “What would I want to change about you?”

“How long a list do you want?”

Alain actually laughed for a moment, for only the second time since she had met him. “I am afraid my fate is to love you as you are.”

She grinned. “Another word for fate is doom, you know. Or destiny. Should we invite destiny to our wedding?”

The sun peeked up over the horizon in a sliver of dazzling brightness as Alain answered. For the moment, there was no hint of a storm threatening. “I have a feeling that destiny will be there whether we invite it or not.”

The rays of the rising sun brought light to the sky and shone on the peaks of mountains rising from the sea ahead of them. Mari used the sight of those mountains to adjust the course of their boat, her eyes sometimes distant as if she were trying to recall old memories.

Alain knew that feeling well enough. Strange how, given the differences in our lives before we met, so many things are similar between us even if the reasons are not the same. He watched her, thinking that Mari looked more relaxed than he had ever seen her.

At one point she gave him a half smile, eyes sad. “There are some walls I need to knock down before we get to the island. I’ve been building them for about ten years, so they’re pretty strong.” Mari paused as if gathering resolve, then spoke hesitantly. “Alain, what would you have done if your parents had lived and you’d gone back to them, and they’d rejected you like you said your grandmother did? You don’t have to tell me, if it’s too hard to think about, but I guess I’d like to know how you might have dealt with that.”

“I am not that good with people,” Alain said, his own reluctance probably obvious to Mari. The idea of that happening—of his parents rejecting him as his grandmother had—hurt a great deal even to think about. “I have too little experience with expressing feelings.”

“You’re a lot better than you think you are, Alain.” She forced another smile at him. “Can you try to imagine what you might have done? Please?”

Alain nodded to her. “I… think I would have told them that I had done as they wished, that even though I had become a Mage, I had remembered them. I would have told them that even though they rejected me now, I would always remember them.”

He had to pause then to control the feelings which rushed back upon him. “If they had spoken to me as my grandmother did… it… would have been very hard. But I would have known they still lived, and they would have known I had not forgotten them.” Alain met Mari’s eyes. “It would have been easier than learning that they were dead.”

Mari reached to touch his hand. “I’m sorry I made you think about that. You’re so right that I’m lucky to have the chance to fix this. If they do reject me… well, I’ll know I tried, and they’ll know I tried, despite everything.” She relaxed for a while after that.

But Mari grew tense again as the shore of the island rose over the horizon, the sand shining white under the morning sun. “Two things, Alain. No, three things. We can’t bring the rifles with us. There’s no way to hide them in our packs, and commons do not just walk around with rifles. I hate to leave them, if for no other reason than that they’re worth a great deal of money if we could sell them, but that might attract my Guild’s attention. Also, I can’t bring us in to the port. I’ve tried steering more that way, or what I think is that way, but I don’t know enough about sailing to get the boat to go in that direction. And while we have good reason to assume that our Guilds and the Imperials will take a while to figure out we might have gone to the island anyway after escaping from the Mechanic ship, we can’t linger here. I want to be away before nightfall if we can manage it.”

“What of the other thing?” Alain asked. “Are you still resolved?”

Mari took a deep breath before answering. “Yes, we will make every effort to see my family. I have no idea where my mother and father work. We’ll have to go by my old house,and hope they still live there, and that one or both of them are home. And it may be that you have to physically drag me to the door of that house, Alain.”

The wind drove the lifeboat ahead quickly as Mari aimed for a stretch of sand backed by dense growth with no signs of human presence. They ran the lifeboat onto a narrow beach before the sun had risen far in the sky, splashing ashore through the surf onto soft sand, then with difficulty pulling the weight of the boat a bit farther up onto the beach. Mari gazed back at the boat, her expression thoughtful. “What do you think our chances are of hiding it?”

Alain considered the large object. “Burying it would take a long time. It is too heavy for us to haul into the brush ahead, and covering it with brush on the beach would only make it more obvious. It is painted white, so at least it does not stand out too clearly against the sand.”

“We could set it on fire. I can’t see any sign of people nearby, and it shouldn’t generate much smoke.”

Alain looked out to sea. “Is there any chance the Mechanic ship we damaged will see it and come here?”

Mari grinned in a wicked way as she considered his question.

He had seen that expression before, when she was watching the smoke rising from the ruins of the Ringhmon City Hall. Alain realized that Mari looked unusually attractive when she was contemplating the results of major sabotage she had committed against people trying to imprison her. That probably ought to concern him, but it did not.

“No, there’s no chance of that,” Mari finally said. “As far as we could tell before we lost sight of it, the ship didn’t sink. That ship is very valuable, so there is no way the Mechanics aboard would abandon it unless they had no alternative. But that boiler isn’t going to be working for quite a while. I’m guessing that, being Mechanics, they rigged some sails on their masts and are painstakingly making their way either here or back to Landfall. Most likely Landfall, since they last saw us headed that way and the Mechanic repair facilities are probably a lot better there. With the big far-talker on the ship out of order, they’ll be dependent on their hand-held far-talkers, which means they’ll have to get close to shore to tell anyone what happened. So, short answer, there’s no way that ship could be close enough to see any smoke.”

“In that case, I agree that we should burn the boat. Sooner or later someone will find the remains, but it will take time to identify them and by then we will be long off the island.”

“Sounds good to me.” Mari pulled her pack out of the boat while Alain got his, then she hefted both Mechanic rifles, looking resigned. With a grimace, she took one by the front, whirled it around in a wide swing and hurled the weapon out into the surf. A moment later the second weapon followed it, disappearing with a splash into the incoming waves. “Let me spare you extra effort for once, especially since a spell might alert other Mages that you’re on this island.” She gathered some dry wood, pulled down the sail and bundled it on the bottom of the boat, then used her Mechanic fire-starting device, clicking it so that sparks flew onto the wood and the sail. Alain watched, fascinated, still unable to understand how the thing Mari called a flint worked to create sparks. In a short time a fire was rising in the center of the boat, the flames pale in the bright sunlight and only a thin thread of weak smoke rising into the sky.

“Good bye, little boat,” Mari said in a guilty voice. “Thanks for getting us safely here, and sorry we had to do this.”

Alain gave her a surprised look. “You speak as if the boat is alive.”

“Well, maybe it is in some way. Maybe it’s just a Mechanic thing, but we tend to think of what we create as having some sort of life.” Seeming embarrassed, Mari hoisted her pack, then turned and led the way through the undergrowth on the far side of the beach. “Unless things have changed a lot, there should be a coastal road running just inland from here. We should be able to catch a ride into Caer Lyn proper pretty quick.”

“They will not wonder who we are, out here with these packs?” Alain asked.

“No. Our clothes have dried. We’ll tell them we’re students from the college in Caer Lyn who were backpacking through the upcountry. I think students did that when I was young, because I recall my mother talking about it a few times.”

“Your mother worked at this college?”

“I guess maybe she did. When you’re eight years old, you don’t really notice all that much about your parents.”

Mari’s prediction proved to be accurate. They reached the road within a very short time and not long afterwards waved down a horse-drawn wagon heading south toward the city. “How far are we from Caer Lyn?” Mari asked.

The driver scrunched up his face in thought. “Not too far. We’ll be there well before noon. Looks like you two have had kind of a rough time. Been out a while?”

“Um, yeah,” Mari agreed, accepting Alain’s hand up into the back of the wagon.

Alain sat down among the parcels in the back. “There should be time for the visit.”

Mari nodded, her expression tense. “If I try to change my mind, don’t let me.”

“I have promised to drag you to your parents’ house.”

“You might have some trouble doing that, but I’ll try not to fight you too hard.”

He thought she needed something to lighten her mood. A joke? Alain tried one. “As long as you leave no new scars on me.”

That earned him a startled look, then a sad look, then some puzzlement. “Why did you say that? Every time I see your scars I think of what they did to you when you were learning to be a Mage.”

“I thought it would… relax you,” Alain said.

“Oh. Um… all right.” She gave him a smile that was obviously forced and then lay back, gazing up at the sky.

He decided it would be wiser not to attempt any more jokes.

It was just short of noon when the wagon dropped them in Caer Lyn. Mari spoke with the driver briefly, then came back to Alain as the wagon drove off. “He gave me directions to… where we need to go. It’s not far, so we have time.” Linking her arm in his, she started off down the street, breathing slowly, her tension radiating so clearly that Alain could feel it. After walking for a while, they reached a winding street that wove its way down a low hill, the roadway lined with narrow two-story houses set side-by-side, every house presenting brightly colored doors to the world. “It’s a custom in the Sharr isles,” Mari explained, her voice too fast and too high in pitch. “They paint the doors bright colors, for luck and… and… other things. This is the street we want. About halfway down. The… the door was green. I remember how pretty it was.”

As they walked down the slope, Mari began dragging back, her steps slowing, but Alain held her arm in his and kept her moving. Looking over at her, Alain could see Mari’s eyes darting about as if trying to spot landmarks from a memory dimmed by too many years away. “I was only eight when the Mechanics took me from here,” Mari murmured as if she had never told Alain before. “I can still see my parents in my memory, though, standing in our doorway as I was taken away. I could never forget that.”

They reached a short walk ending at a vivid green door to a modest, two-story town home standing wedged between its neighbors. Mari came to a total halt, staring at the door, her arm shaking in his, her face rigid. “Mari?” Alain asked, thinking that she looked as upset as she had when he had told her she was the daughter.

Mari glanced at him with a jerky movement of her head, then breathed deeply and slowly in an obvious attempt to calm herself. Alain began walking and after an initial resistance Mari followed, her arm clamped on his now. Reaching the door, Alain let go of Mari’s arm, then gestured toward the door. “I am here, but this is your moment. I am beside you, but you must do this.” Since his Mage training led him to be impassive in the face of stress without always realizing it, Alain made sure he showed a smile to reassure her.

Mari stood there for another moment, looking as nervous as Alain had ever seen her, even counting the time a dragon had been chasing them in Dorcastle. She reached a decision, pulling off her commons coat, then diving down into her pack to haul out her Mechanics jacket and put it on. Settling the jacket on her, squaring her shoulders and brushing back her hair with both hands, Mari took one more deep breath and then rapped firmly on the emerald-green door, the sound of the knocks echoing down the quiet street.

Several moments passed before a middle-aged woman opened the door, her eyes taking in the dark Mechanics jacket and then lowering their gaze respectfully. Looking at her, Alain could see the tension in this woman, too, though hers was a barely repressed hostility. He could also see the ways in which Mari resembled her, not least in the raven-black hair which on the older woman now showed streaks of gray. “Yes, Lady Mechanic?” the woman said in a formal and cold voice which also betrayed to the Mage enormous resentment and anger.

Mari was unable to speak for a moment, visibly trembling and blinking rapidly. She swallowed, then got out one word in a whisper. “Mommy?”