Jack Campbell - The Hidden Masters of Marandur

Alain nodded. “You seek to see through the illusion.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Where was I? We separated at Dorcastle, but I didn’t tell you that I was also worried that my own Guild was also a threat to me.” She gave him a guilty glance. “I thought you might insist on staying with me if you knew that. Besides, it still seemed crazy then, to worry that my Guild would try to hurt me. Would a Mage be a danger to me? Sure. Present company excepted. Would a common be a threat? Maybe, if they could nail me without being found out. But a fellow Mechanic? When I had never acted against my Guild? I hadn’t done anything except excel at my work, ruin Ringhmon’s plan to delve into my Guild’s secrets, discover evidence that some Guild secrets had already been compromised, and then uncover a plot by commons who were using Mechanic equipment and skills. Those should have been good things!”

She shook her head, staring at the flames of the fire. “Yes, I’d also learned about you, and that Mages weren’t frauds as I’d been taught, but my Guild didn’t know that I had learned that. At least, I didn’t think they did. So why the threats and the Interdicts against discussing anything? I needed to have the time to find out more.” Mari shifted position, grimacing. “Blazes, my butt hurts. I think horses were designed as instruments of torture. And my thighs. You can’t imagine how my thighs feel.”

“I have tried to imagine how they feel,” Alain offered.

Mari stared back at him blankly for a moment, then broke into laughter. “Alain, you don’t just say something like that to a girl. Everybody knows men are thinking it, but they’re not supposed to say it. We really have to work on your social skills.”

“What are social skills?”

“They’re…um…how people avoid saying what they really think. There’s probably a better-sounding explanation than that.”

“Lies?” Alain asked.

“No.” Mari twisted her face in thought. “More like lubrication in an engine, to keep things going smoothly.” She must have noticed his puzzlement. “That doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it? We don’t even use the same metaphors. How did we fall in love?”

“I did not choose to do it. It just happened,” Alain said. “I have wondered myself how this came to be.”

She studied him closely, then smiled. “I’m assuming you mean that in a good way. Where was I? My plan. I’d keep my head down, do as I was told, and learn more. The Senior Mechanics would stop seeing me as a threat, and all sorts of wonderful things would happen. Only they didn’t. I kept getting sent farther south, and finally ended up in Edinton.”

Her smiles and laughter were gone once more, replaced by moodiness. She leaned forward, picked up a stick dropped by those building the fire, and began drawing in the dirt before her. From Alain’s angle, she seemed to making a map. “At that point, I figured I was being out-and-out exiled for a while. Very annoying, especially when I only wanted the best for my Guild. No explanation, just ‘Follow orders, Mari.’ I didn’t have much to do—the leadership of that Guild Hall rivals that of the Guild Hall in Ringhmon for sheer idiocy and poor management—and the longer I was stuck there the more worried I got.”

Mari stopped moving or talking for a long moment, her lowered head bent over the stick in her hands. “Long story short, I got lured into a trap. A Mage using that concealment spell tried to knife me. Then someone else tried to blow my brains out with a bullet.”

“A Mage attacked you?” Alain asked, feeling a sick sensation inside.

“She tried. I knew they’d been watching me. I didn’t give them any reason to try to kill me.” Mari looked at him. “Did I?”

“It is my fault,” Alain admitted. “Even though I have tried to keep them from finding out who you are, they still believe that you are dangerous.”

She gave him another look, then shook her head. “From the looks of things, I’m mainly dangerous to my friends and myself. Just how much trouble did you actually get in because of spending time with me in Dorcastle?”

Alain looked into the fire. “My Guild did not believe that I had been with you in Dorcastle. The elders thought that the woman I had been seen with in that city was a common I had sought out because she resembled the Mechanic I had met in Ringhmon.”

“Why would you want to find a common who looked like me?” Mari asked.

“For physical satisfaction.” The simple statement would have created no reaction in a Mage, but he saw the outraged look on Mari’s face and hurriedly added more. “I would not have done that. But the elders assumed that I did. I told you that they believed I was attracted to you.”

“Alain, ‘attracted to’ doesn’t bring to mind the idea of finding another woman who resembles me so you can pretend that you’re—” She choked off the words, glaring into the night.

“The elders assumed that. I never wanted it. I would never do it. There is no other woman like you.”

Somehow he must have said the right thing, because she relaxed. “But because of that belief of theirs,” Mari said, “your elders thought you might look for me again.”

“They actually thought that you would seek me,” Alain explained. “They were very concerned that you would…” His “social skills” might need work, but Alain realized that he probably should not say the rest.

Too late. Mari bent a sour look his way. “What did they think I would do?”

“It is not that important.”

“Alain…”

He exhaled slowly, realizing that Mari would not give up on this question. “The elders thought that you would seek to ensnare me, using your physical charms, and through me work to strike at the Mage Guild.”

She stared back in disbelief. “Ensnare? They actually used the word ensnare ?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Using my physical charms?” Mari seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or get angry. She looked down at herself. “I’m a little low on ammunition when it comes to physical charms, or hadn’t these elders of yours noticed?”

“You are beautiful beyond all other women,” Alain objected.

Mari rolled her eyes. “And you are seriously deluded. I hadn’t realized how badly until this moment. You’re welcome to your illusions on that count, but please don’t assume that anyone else will share your opinion. So if other Mages had seen me near you, they would have assumed I was ensnaring as hard as my physical charms allowed? Do you have any idea how revolting that entire idea sounds to me?”

Alain nodded. “I think so. I know how I felt when the elders accused you of such a plan. I thought they had insulted you, that if they had known you they would never have suggested that you would do such a thing.”

He had managed to say the right thing again. Mari relaxed a bit. “Well, apparently your elders decided my ensnaring skills were too powerful to risk leaving me alive. After their knife attack failed, I think it was Dark Mechanics seeking revenge for Dorcastle who took a shot at me. And then my own Guild…” Mari paused, her expression a mix of anger, anguish, and disillusionment. “They gave me orders to go to Minut.”

“Minut?” It took a moment for Alain to place the name. “That is in Tiae.”

“Minut is in what used to be Tiae,” Mari said. “My supervisors claimed that a Calculating and Analysis Device had been abandoned there when the Mechanics Guild pulled out of Tiae. Do you know what a Cee A Dee is?” Alain shook his head. “What a Cee A Dee does is think. Sort of. It doesn’t really think like a person does. It calculates. Does math problems, but it does them very, very fast. And that’s all it does, though writing the proper ciphers lets you use math to figure out all kinds of things and track inventories and run simulations and…” Mari gave him a look. “You’re bored.”