He had to pause then to control the feelings which rushed back upon him. “If they had spoken to me as my grandmother did… it… would have been very hard. But I would have known they still lived, and they would have known I had not forgotten them.” Alain met Mari’s eyes. “It would have been easier than learning that they were dead.”
Mari reached to touch his hand. “I’m sorry I made you think about that. You’re so right that I’m lucky to have the chance to fix this. If they do reject me… well, I’ll know I tried, and they’ll know I tried, despite everything.” She relaxed for a while after that.
But Mari grew tense again as the shore of the island rose over the horizon, the sand shining white under the morning sun. “Two things, Alain. No, three things. We can’t bring the rifles with us. There’s no way to hide them in our packs, and commons do not just walk around with rifles. I hate to leave them, if for no other reason than that they’re worth a great deal of money if we could sell them, but that might attract my Guild’s attention. Also, I can’t bring us in to the port. I’ve tried steering more that way, or what I think is that way, but I don’t know enough about sailing to get the boat to go in that direction. And while we have good reason to assume that our Guilds and the Imperials will take a while to figure out we might have gone to the island anyway after escaping from the Mechanic ship, we can’t linger here. I want to be away before nightfall if we can manage it.”
“What of the other thing?” Alain asked. “Are you still resolved?”
Mari took a deep breath before answering. “Yes, we will make every effort to see my family. I have no idea where my mother and father work. We’ll have to go by my old house,and hope they still live there, and that one or both of them are home. And it may be that you have to physically drag me to the door of that house, Alain.”
The wind drove the lifeboat ahead quickly as Mari aimed for a stretch of sand backed by dense growth with no signs of human presence. They ran the lifeboat onto a narrow beach before the sun had risen far in the sky, splashing ashore through the surf onto soft sand, then with difficulty pulling the weight of the boat a bit farther up onto the beach. Mari gazed back at the boat, her expression thoughtful. “What do you think our chances are of hiding it?”
Alain considered the large object. “Burying it would take a long time. It is too heavy for us to haul into the brush ahead, and covering it with brush on the beach would only make it more obvious. It is painted white, so at least it does not stand out too clearly against the sand.”
“We could set it on fire. I can’t see any sign of people nearby, and it shouldn’t generate much smoke.”
Alain looked out to sea. “Is there any chance the Mechanic ship we damaged will see it and come here?”
Mari grinned in a wicked way as she considered his question.
He had seen that expression before, when she was watching the smoke rising from the ruins of the Ringhmon City Hall. Alain realized that Mari looked unusually attractive when she was contemplating the results of major sabotage she had committed against people trying to imprison her. That probably ought to concern him, but it did not.
“No, there’s no chance of that,” Mari finally said. “As far as we could tell before we lost sight of it, the ship didn’t sink. That ship is very valuable, so there is no way the Mechanics aboard would abandon it unless they had no alternative. But that boiler isn’t going to be working for quite a while. I’m guessing that, being Mechanics, they rigged some sails on their masts and are painstakingly making their way either here or back to Landfall. Most likely Landfall, since they last saw us headed that way and the Mechanic repair facilities are probably a lot better there. With the big far-talker on the ship out of order, they’ll be dependent on their hand-held far-talkers, which means they’ll have to get close to shore to tell anyone what happened. So, short answer, there’s no way that ship could be close enough to see any smoke.”
“In that case, I agree that we should burn the boat. Sooner or later someone will find the remains, but it will take time to identify them and by then we will be long off the island.”
“Sounds good to me.” Mari pulled her pack out of the boat while Alain got his, then she hefted both Mechanic rifles, looking resigned. With a grimace, she took one by the front, whirled it around in a wide swing and hurled the weapon out into the surf. A moment later the second weapon followed it, disappearing with a splash into the incoming waves. “Let me spare you extra effort for once, especially since a spell might alert other Mages that you’re on this island.” She gathered some dry wood, pulled down the sail and bundled it on the bottom of the boat, then used her Mechanic fire-starting device, clicking it so that sparks flew onto the wood and the sail. Alain watched, fascinated, still unable to understand how the thing Mari called a flint worked to create sparks. In a short time a fire was rising in the center of the boat, the flames pale in the bright sunlight and only a thin thread of weak smoke rising into the sky.
“Good bye, little boat,” Mari said in a guilty voice. “Thanks for getting us safely here, and sorry we had to do this.”
Alain gave her a surprised look. “You speak as if the boat is alive.”
“Well, maybe it is in some way. Maybe it’s just a Mechanic thing, but we tend to think of what we create as having some sort of life.” Seeming embarrassed, Mari hoisted her pack, then turned and led the way through the undergrowth on the far side of the beach. “Unless things have changed a lot, there should be a coastal road running just inland from here. We should be able to catch a ride into Caer Lyn proper pretty quick.”
“They will not wonder who we are, out here with these packs?” Alain asked.
“No. Our clothes have dried. We’ll tell them we’re students from the college in Caer Lyn who were backpacking through the upcountry. I think students did that when I was young, because I recall my mother talking about it a few times.”
“Your mother worked at this college?”
“I guess maybe she did. When you’re eight years old, you don’t really notice all that much about your parents.”
Mari’s prediction proved to be accurate. They reached the road within a very short time and not long afterwards waved down a horse-drawn wagon heading south toward the city. “How far are we from Caer Lyn?” Mari asked.
The driver scrunched up his face in thought. “Not too far. We’ll be there well before noon. Looks like you two have had kind of a rough time. Been out a while?”
“Um, yeah,” Mari agreed, accepting Alain’s hand up into the back of the wagon.
Alain sat down among the parcels in the back. “There should be time for the visit.”
Mari nodded, her expression tense. “If I try to change my mind, don’t let me.”
“I have promised to drag you to your parents’ house.”
“You might have some trouble doing that, but I’ll try not to fight you too hard.”
He thought she needed something to lighten her mood. A joke? Alain tried one. “As long as you leave no new scars on me.”
That earned him a startled look, then a sad look, then some puzzlement. “Why did you say that? Every time I see your scars I think of what they did to you when you were learning to be a Mage.”
“I thought it would… relax you,” Alain said.
“Oh. Um… all right.” She gave him a smile that was obviously forced and then lay back, gazing up at the sky.
He decided it would be wiser not to attempt any more jokes.
It was just short of noon when the wagon dropped them in Caer Lyn. Mari spoke with the driver briefly, then came back to Alain as the wagon drove off. “He gave me directions to… where we need to go. It’s not far, so we have time.” Linking her arm in his, she started off down the street, breathing slowly, her tension radiating so clearly that Alain could feel it. After walking for a while, they reached a winding street that wove its way down a low hill, the roadway lined with narrow two-story houses set side-by-side, every house presenting brightly colored doors to the world. “It’s a custom in the Sharr isles,” Mari explained, her voice too fast and too high in pitch. “They paint the doors bright colors, for luck and… and… other things. This is the street we want. About halfway down. The… the door was green. I remember how pretty it was.”