The Pirates of Pacta Servanda (Pillars of Reality Book 4) (16 page)

“Because I recognize them,” Mari said. “Well, most of them.”

“And if we have a hundred Mechanics? If we stop in a city and the Mechanics there are of different loyalties, how do you know which are loyal to you?”

“All right,” Mari said, “first of all, nobody should be loyal to
me
.”

“To Master Mechanic Mari or to the daughter,” Bev said. “Whatever you call it. Like it or not, that’s what it comes down to. Are they taking orders from the Senior Mechanics of the Guild, or the elders of the Mage Guild, or some local lord from Syndar, or from you?”

Mari hesitated. “I’m sure there’s a good answer for that which doesn’t require having my own banner. I just need to think of it. Besides, everyone isn’t going to run around carrying my banner. That would be ridiculous.”

“That is the other reason,” Alain said. “Do you remember my vision in Dorcastle?”

She gave him a sidelong look. “The one about the battle we were going to be in? How could I forget that?”

“I told you that in that vision, you and I were wearing armbands of a strange design.”

“Armbands?” Mari’s eyes widened in dismay and she looked upwards again.

“Yes. That was the design, Mari. We were wearing your banner.”

“Then this is your fault,” she said, looking accusingly at Alain.

“Hold on,” Calu said. “Are you saying that you knew we were going to make a banner with this design?” he asked Alain.

“I saw this design,” Alain said. “Several months ago, in a vision I had on the walls of Dorcastle. I did not know what the design meant. Not until now.”

“Do I get any say in my own life?” Mari demanded. “You see us wearing some design and I end up with a banner showing that. You see us married and we end up married. You—”

“Huh?” Alli broke in. “Alain predicted that you two would be married?”

“Guys do that,” Calu said.

“
Most
guys don’t see visions where you are both wearing promise rings and then months later ask you what the rings mean!” Mari said.

“Is that why you married him?” Alli asked doubtfully.

“No! How can you even ask that? My point is, things keep happening whether I want them to happen or not! Are all of my decisions already carved in stone somewhere and I’m just some puppet living out the script?”

That quieted everyone.

Alain shook his head. “That is not so. Your decisions brought us here. Fate gives us choices to make. There are many points at which different things could have been done, different choices made, and those choices dictate the next set of choices. Had you not chosen to rejoin me in the Northern Ramparts, I would have died there and your actions these last several months would have been much different. My vision was of something that might be. So far, your choices have kept us on that path. But they might change our path at any time.”

“But not all foresight is like that, right?” Mari asked. “If you don’t see yourself in the vision, it’s something that will definitely happen, right?”

Alain wondered if the guilt and sorrow her question triggered showed on his face. “No.”

“No?” Mari looked doubtful. “I was sure you had said—”

“Much remains unknown and uncertain about foresight because the Mage Guild elders have discouraged study of it. I believe that any vision represents only something that might be, and that if we try hard enough we can change what comes to pass.” Truth might not exist, as the elders of the Mage Guild taught, but surely what he said was not false. And the elders had always insisted that any aspect of the world illusion could be changed by a Mage of sufficient skill and wisdom.

Mari bit her lip. “I don’t want to end up fighting in some huge battle at Dorcastle, Alain. I don’t want to fight any battles. I want to build things and fix things. And that banner sort of means there will be battles.”

“Mari, the warlords in Tiae aren’t going to just surrender, and the Senior Mechanics everywhere aren’t going to give up without a fight,” Alli said. “They’ll fight as hard as they can to keep anything from changing, right up until the moment when everything falls apart. Unless we can stop them before then.”

“We.” Mari looked up again. “It’s not really my banner, is it? It’s
our
banner. It’s about what we’re all fighting for.” She seemed to be comforted by that.

“Symbols are important,” said Mechanic Rob, who had joined them at Julesport. “And I think you’re right that it’s important this symbol be about what everyone wants to happen and not about you personally. The Senior Mechanics are already claiming you just want to set yourself up as the sole leader of a new Guild.”

“There!” Mari said. “See? Someone gets it! Wait. What are the Senior Mechanics saying?”

“That this is just about you wanting to be in charge, becoming some sort of queen of the Guild,” Rob said.

“The banner works against that,” Calu said. “It makes it clear that you and all of us are fighting for something much bigger than some power grab involving the Mechanics Guild.”

“It’s your banner,” Alli said, “but it’s not about you. We could fix that, though. Put a crown on it. A big one with Mari Queen Of Everything stenciled on it.”

“Don’t you dare!”

* * * *

Alain and Mari found the captain of the
Gray Lady
in good spirits. “I am confident we’ll run down that Mechanic ship, Lady,” he told Mari. “Not tonight. We may catch sight of her upper masts before the sun sets tomorrow, and we’ll catch her fair before the sun rises on the day after.”

“We’re considering trying to take that ship,” Mari said. “Do you know anything about sneaking up on a ship at night and getting people aboard it?”

The captain scratched his head. “Well, now, I may have heard a few things about that. Just idle talk in the portside bars, you know. But I think I may remember enough to help you out, Lady.”

Alain could easily see the deception in the man, who showed every sign of being extremely familiar with the matters discussed. “The moon will still be bright.”

“That depends on what time we make our approach, Sir Mage. If no clouds come along to aid our concealment in the night, we can move in between the time the moon sinks and the sun rises.” The captain paused, eyeing Mari. “I do feel obligated to point out, Lady, that the matter we are discussing is commonly referred to as piracy.”

“That may be the one crime I have not yet been accused of,” Mari said. “We’ll make some plans tomorrow.”

“Aye, Lady. That will also give my crew time to sew the armbands your Mechanics have asked for.”

“Armbands.” She gave Alain an aggravated look.

“It’s not a problem, Lady,” the captain assured her. “All sailors know some sewing. There aren’t any tailors out on the water to mend rips in clothes, and sometimes the sails themselves require some repairs.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Mari said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow about the plans.”

Alain could see that she was dogged by weariness, but Mari circulated about the ship, talking not only to her fellow Mechanics but also to the common members of the crew, the healers Cas and Pol, and even the new Mages. Her stubbornly determined attempts to converse with the Mages Hiro, Tana, and Dimitri were getting nowhere, though, until Mage Dav intervened and began presenting questions of wisdom to her. His inquiries were posed in terms that Mari couldn’t grasp, so she didn’t realize their purpose. But she gave Alain a look that told him she assumed Mage Dav was acting for a reason, and after a few rounds of questions all three new Mages inclined their heads towards her. “We accept your wisdom, elder,” Mage Hiro said.

Mari’s jaw dropped, and even Alain had trouble hiding his reaction. “Elder?” she asked.

“An elder,” Mage Hiro said in his emotionless voice, “is one who teaches wisdom, or a new wisdom. You have shown a new wisdom to Mage Alain, Mage Asha, and Mage Dav. You will be Elder Mari to us now.”

As Mari and Alain walked back to the small cabin, she turned a baffled look on him. “Elder? I’m nineteen years old.”

“Yes, Elder,” Alain said, unable to resist the impulse.

She glared at him. “You just lost a chance at a warm, happy night, Sir Mage.”

“I…am…sorry?”

“I’ll bet you are.” Mari reached the cabin, looking over the main deck of the Gray Lady. The last vestiges of daylight were fading in the west, the sea a great, dark expanse stretching uninterrupted on all sides, the stars already shining brightly in the vast bowl of the heavens.

“Look up there,” Mari whispered. “One of those stars is the one our people came from. And somewhere the remains of the great ship are still above this world. Do you think it could be one of the twins that follow the moon?”

“Did you not say you could look?”

“My far-seers aren’t powerful enough to tell,” Mari said. “And I can’t divert the efforts of the Mechanics to making a big far-seer just to satisfy my curiosity as soon as possible. That’s not a hard decision to make.”

She fell silent, gazing out over the water. After a long time, she spoke in a wistful way. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, Alain. About how my choices were still driving us toward that battle in Dorcastle, and that I could make other choices if I really wanted to change that. And I remembered the western continent. You and I know where that is now. I could tell the captain of the
Gray Lady
to point this ship toward it, and I’m sure we could make it, and then we could just stay there. We have plenty of men and women. We would be safe from the Storm. We could just build something new there, and I’d never have to face that battle in Dorcastle.”

She fell silent again, this time for so long that Alain felt the need to prod her. “But you have not done that.”

“No.” Mari looked at him, both sad and determined. “Because what about everyone else? What about all of those people we saw in Altis, and in Julesport? The fathers and mothers and children. Did you see the babies in Julesport? They wouldn’t have a chance. How could I just abandon them to that fate? It’s a choice I have, but it’s a choice I can’t make. I have to keep trying. I have to keep trying to fix things, even if my choices lead us to that battle, and…”

She bit her lip, staring into his eyes. “Even if I lead us into that battle and we don’t come out of it. As long as we win.”

“Mari—” Alain began, once again feeling wracked by guilt.

“No. That doesn’t mean I want to die,” Mari said. “I intend doing my best
not
to die. And my best to ensure that you don’t die. Because if I lived and lost you then the greatest victory would still feel like a defeat to me. But I need to accept the possibility, or I’ll be so scared of what might happen that I won’t be able to do what we have to do.”

“You know that my foresight shows things,” Alain began, his resolve wavering.

“Yes. We— Do you mean it might show something else? Something…bad? About you or me?” Mari inhaled abruptly, a deep and shuddering intake of breath. “But then we could try to change it, right?”

“Yes.” If he had ever believed in anything, he now believed in that.

“But if you did—” A deeper darkness passed across her face. “If you did.”

“Mari?”

“Alain, don’t die! Do you understand?”

“You have told me before that I am not allowed to die,” Alain said. He was still struggling to figure out what Mari wanted. “I will die, though, if it is the only way to save you.”

“We have been over this!” Mari said in a low growl, pointing her forefinger at him. “You don’t do something stupid in the name of saving me! You especially do not die in the name of saving me! And if your foresight, which I am really beginning to hate, shows you or me or someone else we really care about being badly hurt or…or dying, then we change that. We do not accept it. Am I clear on that?”

“You are,” Alain said. “Do you trust my decisions?”

She held his eyes with her own. “Yes. I may be the Mechanic, the one trained to fix things, but you, Sir Mage, are very good at fixing things as well. I hope you understand how much I trust you. There will be times when we can’t ask each other for input or advice. Like what happened in Julesport. I just had to act. There may be times when you have to do the same thing. I
know
you’ll decide well.”

“Thank you,” Alain said, the words coming easily this time. He was still uneasy about not telling Mari, but it seemed to be clear that Asha had been right. Mari would not want that information, and she trusted him to decide what to do. “I have known from the first day we met that you make wise decisions.”

“Oh, sure.” She laughed. “Like when I led us into the desert waste? Or went into Ringhmon City Hall all by myself and ended up in the dungeon?”

“Sometimes the choices available to us are not good,” Alain said.

“You don’t have to remind me of that.” Mari sighed and leaned against him, wrapping her arm around his waist. “But I had a choice to save a Mage or think only of myself, and saving someone else was the right decision. I assume that you agree.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go to bed. Keep acting nice and we may find out if two people can fit into one of those bunks.”

“You always make wise decisions,” Alain repeated.

She laughed as she led him inside.

* * * *

“Hey, Alain.”

Alain nodded in greeting. Mages were not supposed to notice or care about the weather. But along with reminding him of feelings, Mari had shown him how nice a morning like this could feel, with the ship bounding along over following seas and a warm sun and the blue sky merging into the blue water all around. “Hey, Calu,” he said, proud to be able to display what Mari called “social skills.”

The Mechanic sat down next to him, looking up at the sails. “Mari told us to let you rest today since we might need you at full strength tonight. I wanted to see if you needed anything, though. The blow to your head wasn’t that long ago.”

“I need nothing,” Alain said. “Mari will not rest,” he added.

“No. Right now she’s grilling the captain of the
Gray Lady
on every little aspect of tonight’s fun and games.” Calu smiled at Alain. “Mari’s always been like that. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked her. She’ll see that something needs doing and then she’ll go talk to everyone she can find who knows something about it so she can figure out exactly what to do. Mari doesn’t just accept that something that is wrong or broken has to stay that way, and she doesn’t assume she knows enough on her own to decide what to do. Like she’s doing right now, learning all about what’s going to happen tonight. By the time we meet up with the
Pride of Longfalls
, Mari will understand enough about what is happening and what should happen that if anything unexpected occurs or goes wrong she’ll be able to know what to do or tell others to do. Did she ever tell you about the time she saved several Mechanics at Caer Lyn?”