Jack Campbell - The Hidden Masters of Marandur

“A…family?” Where for long years a narrow, solitary path had loomed before him, now a wide plain seemed to stretch, uncounted possibilities awaiting depending on the steps he chose. Alain blinked at Mari, amazed by the change her words had wrought. “It does not happen to Mages. We do not have family. Only the Guild. But now…could this happen? With…with you?”

Mari blinked too, then wiped away tears. “Maybe. I really can’t talk about it now. We shouldn’t even be thinking about it. I mean, how long have we known each other? And we’re in danger of our lives and fighting dragons and stuff and…have you known any other girls, Alain?”

He nodded, trying to keep up with Mari as she jumped from topic to topic. “Acolytes.”

“I don’t mean, did you know them,” Mari said, sounding awkward. “I mean, have you known them.”

“I do not understand.”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how many or anything else. Understand? You say things that other people wouldn’t say. Don’t tell me that.”

Alain stared at her. “Do not tell you what?”

“Forget it.” Mari ran both of her hands through her hair this time. “Can we talk about something else now?”

He felt confused again. “But you—”

“Something else, Alain. Get your mind off my body.”

“My mind was not there before,” he objected.

She laughed. “Oh, sure. I saw how you were looking at me. I know a look of male lust when I see one aimed in my direction, even though yours is the first look like that I’ve welcomed.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Alain admitted.

Mari grinned this time, her mood shift startling him. “I always wanted a boyfriend who would tell me that I was right as often as you do.”

Alain tried to think straight again. “What is it we must speak of?”

Her smile went away. Mari settled back against the boulder behind her again, looking outward. “I wasn’t sure I’d find you and be able to tell you again that I loved you before they caught me. It’s weird, but I spent more time worrying about not ever being able to say ‘I love you’ to you again than I did worrying about dying.”

“Dying?”

“Yeah. My Guild must know. They’re trying to kill me.”

Alain’s heart seemed to pause in its beating. “Who is trying to kill you? Your Guild?”

“At least my Guild. Maybe others,” Mari said. “Dark Mechanics, Senior Mechanics, Mages, maybe Dark Mages, too. I can’t tell the difference between regular Mages and Dark Mages like you can. As far as I know, none of the commons are after me, but that’s probably just a matter of time.” Her tone seemed light on the surface, but he could sense the tension under it, the worry.

“You believe that your Guild has learned about you?” Alain asked, wondering how the Mechanics Guild could have discovered that Mari was the daughter of the prophecy, fated to overthrow the Great Guilds if she lived.

“Well, they haven’t sent a dragon to kill me, but they’ve tried a lot of other things,” Mari said.

That reminded Alain of something else. “What did you kill the dragon with? I have never heard of a dragon being slain by a single blow.”

She grinned. “A shoulder-fired, fin-stabilized rocket with a shaped-charge warhead. There are only two in the world, and I have them. Or had them. There’s one left now. You have Alli to thank for those weapons. Lady Mechanic Alli, that is. She was a friend of mine when we were apprentices. Alli has always been interested in how to make better weapons and bigger explosions.”

“This Mechanic Alli must be highly regarded within your Guild if she alone can make such weapons.”

Mari laughed sharply. “No. She’s in trouble with my Guild, even though Alli was careful. She found authorized texts describing each component of her weapon—the propulsion, the stabilizing fins, the warhead—and then she combined them into those two prototypes. After which she told the Guild, assuming in her youthful innocence that the Guild would be thrilled to have a weapon for sale that could punch holes in walls and anything with thick armor. Instead, the Guild decreed it to be a new weapon, and since independent innovation is strictly prohibited, the Guild reprimanded her most severely, told her never to build another one and to dispose of those two.”

Alain looked toward where the dragon’s carcass still lay. “But she did not do as your Guild ordered?”

Mari looked guilty. “I talked her into giving them to me. I said, ‘Alli, the Guild said to dispose of them. Dispose means for you to get rid of them. If you give them to me, you’ve disposed of them.’ Alli wasn’t too sure that was a good idea, but she was angry enough at her Guild superiors that she decided to follow the letter of her orders.” Mari shrugged in an unsuccessful attempt to make her words seem casual. “Hopefully my Guild won’t find out what I did with one of the weapons, but how can they complain? According to them, dragons aren’t real.”

“Dragons are not real,” Alain said. “Nothing is real.”

“I thought we’d agreed for you not to say that anymore.”

“You told me not to say it,” Alain pointed out. “Is that how Mechanics define agreement?”

Mari looked at him, then laughed. “I’m acting like a Senior Mechanic myself. Please, Sir Mage, do not keep reminding me that nothing is real.” The humor went away again, replaced by worry. “Alain, when we parted at Dorcastle I thought we needed to separate partly because I was afraid that the Senior Mechanics who run my Guild would try to kill you if they saw us together.”

He nodded. “You told me that you had to go away from me to protect me from your Guild, just as I felt the need to leave you for a time in order to prevent my Guild from killing you.”

“Yeah. You think we would have gotten a little credit for being willing to leave each other.” She took a deep breath, staring into the flames. “Not that I could tell anyone that I’d fallen in love with a Mage. And I do love you. Even though it’s completely crazy and impossible, and even though everyone else in my Guild would totally freak out if they knew. How could you fall in love with a Mage? they’d ask. That’s sick and disgusting and perverted, and Mages are awful.”

Alain nodded, trying to smile at her once more. The gesture still felt unfamiliar, and his muscles had been trained to avoid showing emotion, so he never knew how well it came off. “It is strange that my own Guild would say similar words about my feeling the same about a Mechanic.”

Mari perked up, her eyes shining in the firelight. “You really do love me?”

“Yes. I…I….” Alain fought to say the simple words, but they stuck in his throat, blocked by too many years of unforgiving training as an acolyte, too many years of conditioning to reject any emotions or feelings for others. He swallowed, then tried again. “I…”

“It’s all right, Alain,” Mari said, her voice gentle. “I can tell how hard you’re fighting to say it. Someday you’ll be able to say it easily, and it will mean a lot to me when you do. But you’ve already shown me how you feel. Months ago, when you risked your life to come rescue me in that dungeon in Ringhmon, and later in Dorcastle when you stood beside me while a dragon charged at us.” Another sigh, then Mari slumped back again. “If only every threat was as easy to dispose of as a dragon.”

“Easy?” Alain asked, wondering how much incredulity had sounded in his voice.

“Relatively easy,” Mari corrected herself. “Maybe simpler is a better word. If you see a dragon, you know it’s a threat, you know it wants to kill you just because it saw you, and you know you have to kill it. Simple. Not like having to figure out who is after you and why they want to kill you and what the right thing is to do.”