Alain knew that the impassive expression he was trained to project was the wrong thing at a time like this. He tried to show concern, hoping that Mari would see it. “You have heard the commons speak of this, Mari. They have been dying for centuries for no greater purpose than to ensure that the Mechanics Guild and the Mage Guild continue to rule this world. Without you they would still die, and without you almost all of them will die.”
“I’m under enough pressure already, Alain! Where’s that Syndari galley now?”
Perhaps he should have said something else. Or perhaps this was one of those times when nothing said would really help. Alain gazed into the mist and saw nothing but the hanging curtains of off-white fog. “I cannot tell. There are faint noises which say the galley remains in this area, but my foresight is not working now.”
Mari exhaled angrily. “Is it because of me? Did your foresight stop working because I’m so tense?”
Alain, who still had to work at revealing his emotions, had no problem in showing surprise. Then he shook his head. “No. That should not be involved.”
“You’ve told me that foresight requires a personal connection to someone else, and if I’m not exactly encouraging close feelings at the moment…”
“Such a connection does not vary so quickly,” Alain assured her. “Nor do my feelings vary so much, especially when I know you are under the strain of being responsible for so many things. This is not your fault. Do not blame yourself for my lack of foresight. You know that my gift has always been erratic, Mari.”
She leaned on the rail, gloomily looking into the mist. “I know. But somehow I think of it like another machine. A Mechanic device. Something that I can turn on and it’ll work when I need it to work. Which is kind of funny, really, because I know plenty of machines that don’t always work when they’re needed. But this is part of you, and you’re always there when I need you.”
“Thank you.” Those words had grown easier to say. Mages were taught not to use them, not to consider any courtesy. Alain had once forgotten those words and what they meant. But she had reminded him of the simple phrase, far away in the desert waste outside Ringhmon when they had first encountered each other.
“I take you for granted,” Mari said. “I know I do. And I yell at you when you don’t deserve it.”
“We are not living an easy life,” Alain noted. “But you often show your love for me. I cannot imagine wishing to be with anyone else, whether in peace or conflict, and especially amid the perils we have faced together.”
She reached over and grasped his hand. “And here we are facing danger again, my Mage. At least we’re not facing it alone.”
Apparently he had said the right thing this time. Alain turned to look along the deck, almost immediately spotting instead a dark blot against one part of the mist. “It is there. The galley lies in that direction.”
Mari looked intently where Alain had indicated. “I can’t see anything, but your foresight is obviously working again. After I made nice to you, I might add.”
“That—” Alain paused, thinking. “That is not supposed to matter. The Mage elders—”
“Lied about a lot of things, Alain. Just like my Senior Mechanics lied to me.”
Out of the corner of his eye Alain noticed something else and swung to look off the opposite side of the ship. Another black blot on the fog. That could mean only one thing. “And there is another galley in the direction.”
“Two of them? Wonderful.”
“Why is that wonderful? I thought wonderful meant—”
“Sarcasm! Never mind! We need to tell the captain we’ve definitely got two galleys out there now.”
Alain pivoted slowly, looking for more warnings from his foresight. He paused as another blotch appeared off the bow of the Gray Lady. “There are three. And they surround us.”
Mari snagged a passing sailor. “Tell the captain that there are three galleys out there, all looking for us. One in that direction, one out there, and the third over that way somewhere.”
The sailor gaped at her, then hastily saluted. “Yes, Lady Mari! I’ll tell him immediately!” Rushing off toward the quarterdeck as quickly and quietly as he could move, the sailor vanished into the fog.
More soft footsteps sounded, and the shape of Mechanic Bev came out of the fog. “Did you do something to one of the crew?” she asked.
“I told him that there are three galleys out there hunting us,” Mari replied.
“That explains the look of terror on the guy’s face. Three? I thought it was one.” Bev herself no longer seemed rattled as she handed one of the Mechanic weapons to Mari, then others to Alli and Dav.
But Alain could still sense a tightness in Mechanic Bev. She hides something, Alain told himself. Mechanic Bev hides emotions as a Mage does, but for other reasons than Mages do. There is something she will not reveal to anyone.
If it is what I think it is, don’t ask, Mari had told him. Bev has been hurt, but if we are loyal to her she’ll be loyal to us.
He had not understood, but now was not the time to pursue the matter of whatever in Mechanic Bev’s past had been kept hidden. Not as long as Mari was certain that Bev could be counted on.
Alli scowled as she flipped the object she called a lever action on the rifle. “This thing is just waiting to jam the moment I need it. I can feel it. Bev, set this one aside and let me have that one.”
“Sure. If you can’t fix it, nobody can.”
Mari faced the rail, cradling her weapon. “If a galley runs across us in this fog they’ll be right on top of us before we see them, so we won’t have much time to deal with them. If you see one, call out fast.”
Alli leaned on the rail next to her. “While I was at Danalee some Syndaris tried to place an order with us for a lot of pistols. I gathered that they prefer to capture other ships by coming up fast and flooding them with attackers. That’s why the Syndaris wanted to buy pistols from the Guild but weren’t interested in rifles. They don’t want to fight long-distance battles.”
“That’s what Alain said. Did the Guild sell them any pistols?” Mari asked.
Alli grinned. “One. And exactly twelve rounds of ammo. You wouldn’t believe how much the Syndaris had to pay for that.”
Mechanic Dav called softly from the other side of the ship. “They want to capture the ship, you say. What about us? Do they want us alive?”
“Probably not,” Mari said. “You know how we’ve been warned that commons will accidentally hit Mechanics during a battle. That’s under normal circumstances. This time they know our Guilds want us dead.”
“Mage Guild, too?” Dav asked. “All of us dead?” His eyes strayed toward Asha.
“All of us,” Alain confirmed.
“Well…that’s not going to happen.”
Alli grinned. “We made it out of Altis in one piece, which is more than the people trying to catch us there can say.”
Mari glared at the fog, her face tight with emotion. Alain could sense what she was thinking, that she and Alain had been through many more such tight situations than the others, and how narrowly the two of them had often survived. “All right,” Mari finally said, her voice probably sounding perfectly calm to the other Mechanics even though any Mage could have heard the tension within it. “Ideally, we need to keep the Syndari galleys from getting close enough to board us. That’s going to be very hard with visibility this low. If one shows up, everybody start throwing lead at any spot where they try to board.”
“Throwing lead?” Mage Dav asked.
“That means firing our rifles,” Mari explained. “You Mages will have to do whatever you can to either scare off the galley or stop anyone trying to board us.”
“We will cast what spells are possible,” Alain cautioned. “And if any Syndaris should reach the deck of this ship we will deal with them.” He partly drew the long knife which all Mages carried under their robes, and Mage Dav and Asha did the same.
Mari’s eyes met his. “At time
“It is hard. I could strike someone with it if they came close enough,” Alain said.
“And yet you can’t use a hammer,” Mari muttered, glaring into the fog again.
They stood at the rail, saying little and even then speaking in low voices. Except for the quiet creaking of wood as the Gray Lady rode the barely apparent ocean swell, the sailing ship made no sound, a fact for which Alain was grateful. It left the galleys no clue to follow to their location. He frowned very slightly as a thought occurred to him. “Mage Asha and Mage Dav. The galleys seek us here in the fog. They know of our presence in this small part of the sea despite not being able to see us.”
Mage Dav nodded without expression. “They must have a Mage with them, one who can sense the presence of you, me, or Asha. Only the dense fog has kept them from finding us before now. I cannot sense this Mage, though.”
Asha gazed into the fog, her expression a curious mixture of blankness and intensity. She was, very slowly, following Alain’s lead in beginning to show traces of her feelings again. “I sense…” Asha pointed off the stern of the Gray Lady, her arm and hand slowly moving forward. “There. It is very hard. He hides himself well. But I know him.” She looked at Alain. “Niaro, the Mage who was almost your downfall in Palandur.”
“Great,” Mari muttered. “Can this Niaro cast fire like Alain?”
“No. His Mage gifts are modest.” Asha nodded to Alain. “His envy, I think, feeds his ability to find Alain despite Mage Alain’s skill.”
Alain saw Mari’s jaw tighten and her hands flex upon the weapon she held. Mari did not like shooting at others, often displaying great distress after having to do so, but she would when necessary. Now she looked ready to deal with Niaro. “We need to discourage him,” she said. “If I get him in my sights, he’s going to have something to worry about besides his own inadequacies as a Mage.”
“I believe he was also attracted to me,” Asha explained, almost apologetically. “In physical ways, and blamed my rejection on Mage Alain.”
Alli smothered a laugh. “He’s a man? He saw you? Yeah, he was probably hot for you. What do you think, Dav?”
Mechanic Dav looked uncomfortable, but wisely refrained from replying.
Asha shrugged lightly at Alli’s statement, then tapped her robes where the long Mage knife was concealed beneath them. “I am experienced at discouraging those Mages whose attention was not welcome. Niaro did not take that well.”
Bev, who had been more distant than the others around Asha, now turned an approving smile on her.
Mari glanced up at the sails, staring at the fog drifting among them. “I thought I felt a breeze.”
A sailor came running along the deck, bare feet making little noise, his gaze turned upward where the fog had begun swirling. The masts, spars and booms creaked as the gentle, erratic breeze pushed at the still-limp sails, the sound seeming huge amid the silence on the ship.
Alain concentrated on preparing himself for action as the fog began opening up slightly in small patches. For a moment he could clearly see the quarterdeck of the Gray Lady not far from him, then it vanished in the white mist again. “I should go to the quarterdeck as we discussed.”
“Let’s change that plan. I’d rather you stay here, if you don’t mind,” Mari said.
Grateful that she had given him a reason not to leave her side, Alain nodded.
More of the sails overhead came into view, then disappeared. The mainsail flapped with a thunderous sound as it caught a freshening wind for a moment before drooping again. Straining his hearing, Alain heard oars splashing, then pausing, as the galleys searched for them.
“Hang on,” Bev warned. A large gap had opened in the fog on the Gray Lady’s starboard side. Moments later the shape of a galley loomed out of the mist at the far side of the open space, its banks of oars resting unmoving in the water. Crewmembers on the galley spotted the sailing ship, pointing and calling out to the officers on their own quarterdeck. The galley lay low to the water, long and lean with a single mast. A large raised platform at the stern held the ship’s wheel and another raised platform at the bow offered a fighting position for lightly armored soldiers carrying crossbows and wearing swords.
Alain heard commands being called on the galley. Now that its presence was known, the drummer keeping cadence for the oars stopped gently tapping and instead began pounding, the sound carrying clearly across the water. The oars rose in unison, an unexpectedly graceful sight as the banks of oars swept up and around to splash into the water as one. The galley jumped forward, curving around slightly to aim straight for the Gray Lady, which was still barely moving under the irregular winds flowing past.
Alain felt the power in this area, appalled by how weak it still was. “Mage Asha, Mage Dav, only one of us can hope to cast a spell at one time. I will try this first one, which will likely exhaust me.”
Asha drew her long Mage knife, holding the hilt in both hands before her and making a couple of swift practice cuts through the air as she serenely watched the Syndari galley draw closer.
“I cannot hope to create a strong fire spell,” Alain told Mari, “and the fog has made all surfaces wet.”
“Is there a weak point you can strike at?” Mari asked.
“A what?”
She had her rifle leveled toward the galley and kept her eyes on her target as she answered. “Some spot where applying a little force can produce big results. You’ve made holes in things. Like…like the mast on the galley. See it? What if part of it at the bottom went away?”
His eyes focused on the base of the galley’s mast. Alain concentrated on that spot, trying to block out the uproar around him as the Gray Lady’s sailors tried to trim her sails to catch the erratic winds and the Mechanics prepared to fire their weapons. He had to draw to himself the dregs of power available here to augment his own strength, because no Mage could change the world illusion without some outside power added to his or her own. As Alain gathered the power he recited to himself the lessons that every Mage learned, the beliefs that made their arts possible. The illusion which was the world showed him a galley with a tall mast, the sail on it furled as the galley drove forward on its oars. The illusion of a mast stood tall and straight, but that illusion could be changed. Overlay another illusion, one in which the mast had a break in it, a small gap not far above the deck. It required the belief that what he saw was an illusion, and the confidence that he could change that illusion for a brief period.
Alain felt the effort draining his strength but held his concentration as the galley swept down upon the Gray Lady. He almost lost his focus as Mari’s rifle roared next to him, followed by a series of other explosions as the other Mechanics fired. He barely heard Mechanic Alli calling to the others. “He’s a still a bit out of range for these old weapons. The rifling in their barrels is worn almost smooth. Let him get a little closer and then we’ll give him another volley!”
Alain heard but did not pay attention to the captain calling out commands, hardly noticed the Gray Lady slowly, slowly starting to move and turning as the freshening wind teased at her sails and her rudder bit into the water, saw but did not pause to think about Mari standing at the rail, her rifle still raised and ready. This spell needed everything he could give, and suddenly it was there, the power and his own strength draining as the world illusion changed for a moment.
A portion of the galley’s mast just above the deck rippled and most of the base vanished for several moments, leaving the mast supported only by a thin strip on one side. Not a total success, but enough. Unable to hold the mast, the remaining strip of wood buckled and snapped, the mast swinging against the restraints of the galley’s rigging. But those ropes weren’t strong enough to hold the mast’s full weight. The rigging broke with loud reports sounding like a Mechanic weapon firing, then the top of the mast toppled forward and down, its base crashing upon the deck and the upper portion with the sail striking the water with a mighty splash. The stricken mast served as an anchor on that side, jerking the galley back and over, away from the Gray Lady, as the galley’s oars flailed in confusion and cries of distress arose from the crew.
Alain fell forward, almost dropping to the deck. Mage Dav caught his arm, holding him up, then nodded with approval.
“You are skilled,” Mage Dav said. Then he looked down at where he held Alain’s arm, supporting him. “This is help,” he announced with the pride of someone who has discovered something new.
“Yes,” Alain agreed tiredly, worn out by his effort.
Moments later the slow progress of the Gray Lady finally took her back into a deeper area of fog, losing sight of the stricken galley. Mari turned to Alain, gazing at him anxiously. “Are you all right, my love?”
He nodded. “I am only exhausted. I cannot do more anytime soon.”
“But you took out a galley.”
The captain’s voice calling down from the quarterdeck dispelled that idea, though. “That one’s not finished. He’ll cut the mast free and come after us under oars again.”
Alain leaned against the mast, waving off Mage Dav’s aid. “Prepare yourself for the next attack. I did not sense Mage Niaro aboard that galley, but my focus was on my spell so he may have been there. Thank you for your help.”
“Help,” Mage Dav repeated. He nodded, then went to the rail to search the fog.
Mari made sure Alain was securely propped against the nearest mast, then rejoined the other Mechanics and Mages at the rail.
The sails of the Gray Lady banged overhead as more gusts of winds came and went. The ship drifted through another slightly open area, where visibility stretched for almost a bow shot in one direction. Rags of fog flew by, merging into another bank that once more reduced sight to less than the length of the ship. Looking up, Alain saw threads of blue sky appearing and disappearing as the fog began shredding above them. A wind steadied, billowing out the sails as the captain bellowed orders to trim them to take best advantage of the breeze.
The Gray Lady gathered speed, her clipper-rigged sails seizing the wind and her sleek hull sliding smoothly across the water. The fog parted again with shocking suddenness, leaving Alain staring at the shape of another Syndari galley cruising past in the opposite direction, its oars working steadily. Once again shouts of command could be heard on the galley, once again the drummer began pounding his deep cadence. The oars on one side paused before reversing, and those on the other side swept down hard forward, twisting the galley in a tight turn. At the same time a volley of crossbow bolts flew up from the forward platform of the galley, arcing through the sky toward the Gray Lady.
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