The Assassins of Altis (14 page)

Upset as she had been, Mari had to admit that those times when he sealed the gate it was usually because she had given him good cause. Stubborn as she could be, Mari knew that she had been wrong to snap at him this time. “I’m sorry,” Mari finally muttered.

He nodded, but still said nothing.

“You know how I feel about that,” Mari continued. “You shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Alain looked over at her. “I said the name of a city.”

“Yes, but
—
” She glowered at the worn cobblestones beneath their feet. “I don’t think you can understand.”

“I understand that you avoid thinking about and confronting your past.”

“What makes you an expert at dealing with the past?” Mari whispered savagely.

“I have stood at the graves of my parents.”

It was odd how painfully such an impassive statement could lash at her. Mari grimaced. “All right. You have a point. I can only guess how hard that must have been for you. It’s different for me.”

“Would you feel better if your parents too were in their graves?”

That was as harsh a thing as Alain had ever said to her. Mari fought to control her anger. “No. I admitted that you have a point. Please drop it.”

“We always drop it, yet always it stays with us and between us.”

She stopped walking so abruptly that Alain took another step before he caught himself and came back. Mari stared at the ground, not really seeing the cobblestones now. “Maybe this was all a mistake. You and me.”

“Do you believe that?” he asked, and once again she could easily sense the emotion in his words.

Mari thought about possible responses, about more ways to hurt Alain, and then got a grip on herself. “No. Not really. I was trying to attack you so I could avoid facing things I don’t want to face. I can’t forget the past, Alain.”

“I would never ask you to do so. But will you let the past destroy the present?”

She exhaled slowly, dimly aware of annoyed pedestrians going around her and Alain where the two of them stood still on the sidewalk. An image of Marandur came to Mari, and it took her a moment to realize why. “Is that what I’m doing? Building a wall around the ruins of my childhood and maintaining those ruins as some kind of horrible monument to my suffering? Alain, please stick with me. I know something has to change. I don’t know how, yet. Please…don’t go.”

His voice finally relented. “I will never go.”

Mari took a deep breath, smiled at him, then took his hand as they started walking again. “I don’t deserve you.”

“If you did not deserve me,” Alain said, “then destiny would not have brought us together.”

“I’m sure. Maybe destiny wanted to punish you.” Feeling better, Mari spent the rest of the walk to the docks trying to relax.

Unfortunately, once they got there a series of talks with agents selling tickets on outbound ships kept producing the same result. “It will be three days before a ship leaves directly to Altis,” Mari said with disgust. “I do not want to spend three days here, worrying about various people who are looking for us.”

“One night in Palandur was almost too many,” Alain agreed.

Mari studied the boards where sailings and ships were posted, finally shaking her head. “There’s only one thing to do. Yes, again, we’ve only got one good choice. There’s a passenger ferry leaving about noon for Caer Lyn. From there we can surely get a ship heading straight for Altis without having to wait much, if at all.”

“You have not been back?”

“Not since I left the Guild Hall there.” But she knew what he was really asking. Had she ever gone home again. “No. Once I became a Mechanic, I guess my parents decided there was no place for me to go back to.” It came out not in anger, as she knew it usually did, but sadly.

He nodded, not pressing it this time.

“But getting on the ferry means getting past the Imperial customs checkpoints.” Mari looked around, an idea coming to her. “They’re looking for two people traveling together. If we buy two tickets for two separate compartments, and then go through customs separately and board separately, that might ensure that the Imperials don’t take any special notice of us. Once out of Landfall, we’ll be clear of the Imperials and not have to worry about them anymore.” She frowned as Alain shook his head. “What? The Sharr Isles are independent.”

“They are called independent,” Alain explained. “To a Mechanic such as you, the real status of the Sharr Isles would not matter, but the independence of the Sharr Isles is purely at the sufferance of the Empire and maintained by the Great Guilds. It serves the Empire’s interests to have so-called independent islands to funnel trade to and from the west. Even then, only the supremacy of the Great Guilds and their insistence that the Imperial borders expand no farther has kept the Empire from claiming the islands. The Sharr Isles take no step without Imperial approval, and do whatever the Empire commands. In exchange they gain the right to call themselves free and are defended by the Empire’s formidable military.”

“Great,” Mari groused. “So even in Caer Lyn we’ll have to worry about the long arm of the Empire. Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“What bridge is that?”

One moment he was explaining geo-politics and history to her, and the next he was confused by something simple and everyday. Mari closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then looked at Alain. “That is a figure of speech. It means we will deal with that situation when we encounter that situation.”

He nodded back, his expression serious.

“The ferry is the
Sun Runner
,” Mari continued. “Let’s go get the tickets. I’ll go first, with you in line behind me, and you can just copy what you see me say and do. All right?”

The plan worked without any problem, though the length of the line to get past Imperial customs and border control worried Mari when she saw how close it was getting to the
Sun Runner
’s sailing time. The line moved slowly, everyone waiting with the stolid acceptance of official inconvenience that marked life in a state such as the Empire. When Mari finally reached an official, that woman eyed Mari’s papers with disinterest. “Traveling alone?”

“Yes.” An Imperial customs official just wasn’t as intimidating as a troll.

“Purpose of travel?”

“I spent a few years in Caer Lyn as a child.” Alain had taught her that lying by telling a misleading truth was far less likely to be apparent to any questioner than telling a complete fabrication.

“Emdin,” the officer commented. “You came straight from there?”

“Yes,” Mari replied. “Through Alfarin.”

“Have you been north or east of Alfarin?” the officer pressed.

That called for a flat-out lie. “No. I went from Emdin to Alfarin and then here.” Mari tried to look and sound like a rustic girl who didn’t have much experience in the wider world. “Should I have gone another way?”

“No,” the officer replied, sighing in the manner of someone tired of dealing with the public. “Did you see any unusual travelers? A pair of them, one an uncommonly attractive young woman with dark hair, the other a young man? They might have been claiming to be students at the university in Palandur.”

“I saw many other travelers, but none that seemed unusual,” Mari said, wondering again at why the Imperials seemed focused on an “uncommonly attractive” young woman. “I didn’t meet anyone who looked like that.”

The officer glanced at Mari’s pack. “Are you carrying any contraband?”

“No.” Not by Imperial definitions, anyway. It was the Mechanics Guild which had banned the ancient texts in Mari’s pack, manuscripts which the Imperials didn’t even know existed.

“Pass.” The official handed back Mari’s papers and gestured her onward.

Mari went up the gangway onto the
Sun Runner
and leaned on a rail, looking down at the pier where Alain was just reaching another Imperial official to be interviewed. She wasn’t too worried about how well Alain would handle that. The ability of Mages to lie without any sign of misgiving or deception was legendary.

Sure enough, after a very brief interview Alain was waved onward and came up the gangway. He glanced at Mari, then once aboard took a place at the rail nowhere near her but still within eyesight.

It wasn’t too much later that whistles sounded and sailors began taking in the gangway and the lines holding the
Sun Runner
to the shore. Commands were shouted from the high quarterdeck at the stern of the ferry where the ship’s wheel rested. More sailors ran up into the rigging and along the spars, and soon sails unfurled on the masts above the ship, shining white against the blue sky. Mari felt the ferry lurch beneath her as the sails caught the wind. The
Sun Runner
swung out away from the pier and into the harbor, then began gliding across the water toward the harbor entrance.

Mari watched the city of Landfall and the territory of the Empire slowly recede, thinking about when she had entered the Empire with Alain months ago and far to the north from the mountains of the Northern Ramparts.
We made it. Through the heart of the Empire, through the forbidden city of Marandur itself, and out through the Empire’s oldest and largest port.

Maybe Alain and I can actually sleep in peace tonight, without keeping one eye open for danger. I’ve forgotten how that feels
.

Several commons were talking in low voices nearby, just loudly enough for Mari to catch the conversation. She had been trying to ignore them, but then Mari heard something about Jules and listened closer.

“She was seen in the Northern Ramparts,” a woman insisted. “Just a few months ago. The daughter of Jules. Wearing a Mechanics jacket, she slew a dragon single-handed to save some commons, wouldn’t take any payment, and healed a dozen badly injured soldiers with the touch of her hand.”

“Nobody wearing a Mechanics jacket would care about commons,” a man grumbled.

“
She
did, but she didn’t act like a Mechanic except that she fixed all of their Mechanic weapons, too. And then,” the woman added, “a Mage showed up and swore allegiance to her and they went off together. People saw it. Some say she’s on her way to see the Emperor, to ask him to let her lead the legions against the Great Guilds.”

Mari pressed the palm of one hand against her forehead, closing her eyes to try to block out this latest development.
Blasted soldiers. I save their lives and this is the thanks I get, them telling everybody who I am!

Stars above. I thought “who I am.” Not “who people think I am.” Am I starting to accept it? Am I starting to believe that I really am the daughter? I don’t want to be her. I don’t want that responsibility. But…she’s needed.

Caught in the internal discomfort of her thoughts, Mari barely noticed the second man shaking his head, but when he started speaking his words immediately caught her attention again.

“I don’t doubt she’s trying to get to the Emperor,” the man said in a low voice. “I’m sure she wants back in the palace again, after all these centuries.”

“What?” the woman asked in anxious tones. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of Mara, haven’t you?” the second man whispered. “Consort to the first emperor, Maran himself? So incredibly beautiful, they say she bewitched Maran and almost ran the Empire for a time.”

The first man nodded. “I heard about that. She never wanted to get old, so she made a deal with the Mages to keep herself young forever. But it’s just a story, isn’t it?”

“Some say it is, some say it isn’t.”

“How could even the Mages keep someone young forever?” the woman asked.

“I don’t know,” the second man said. “It must be pretty hard, or pretty terrible, but she had the entire Imperial treasury to pay them off, and Maran’s hand backing her.” The man lowered his voice so much that Mari had to strain to hear it. Not that she wanted to hear it, but her curiosity was too strong by this point. “She doesn’t age, because she’s not really alive and not really dead. Mara drinks blood, they say, to keep herself looking young, the blood of young men. She has no trouble seducing them to their deaths because Mara is still as beautiful as she was when Maran reigned. And after all these centuries she knows more magic than any Mage. They say the Emperor Palan himself sealed her into a tomb in the old Imperial capital when the city was destroyed, but there are reliable stories that somebody or something came out of Marandur recently. You must have seen how the police have been extra vigilant lately, checking anyone traveling. Word is they’re looking for whoever left Marandur, where Mara has been imprisoned in her lair for more than a century. Someone woke her up. Someone freed her. She’s come out now. That’s what’s trying to get to the Emperor and back in the palace again. Mara the Undying.”

A hush fell over the three commons, while Mari stared at the waves, aghast.

“But,” the woman finally asked, “what if she really is the daughter of Jules and not Mara?”

“Believe what you like, but if I meet her I’m going to be looking to see if her teeth have sharp points,” the second man said.

“I’m not so young anymore,” the first man remarked, “so I guess she wouldn’t want my blood, and I’m not a citizen of the Empire, so it doesn’t matter to me whether she’s Mara or the daughter of Jules, as long as she does in the Great Guilds.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” the second man muttered.

The small group wandered off past Mari, who stayed leaning on the rail, hoping her expression didn’t show how appalled she was.
I thought it was bad enough being the daughter of Jules. But that’s a lot better than having people think I’m an undead, vain, blood-drinking seducer of emperors and young men.
At least it explains why the Imperials keep asking about a very good-looking dark-haired young woman. They actually think Mara might have been the one who left Marandur? Granted, if any place would be a suitable lair for the undead it would be Marandur. I suppose the only good thing about that rumor is that no one is likely to recognize me from it. Incredibly beautiful? That’s about as true as the sharp teeth.