by Martha Wells
Oh, God. Her stomach trying to turn, Florian bolted down the corridor toward the First Class smoking room. Reaching it, she stumbled to a halt in the open doorway.
Niles stood beside the table in his shirtsleeves, flipping through a book with an annoyed expression. Giaren sat in one of the chairs, writing in a notebook, and Nicholas was sitting on the edge of the worktable, eating an apple. Beside him the sphere was serenely quiet, not even spinning. Niles glanced up, took in her frazzled demeanor, and said in alarm, “Florian, what is it?”
Stepping into the room, Florian flinched as the ship’s alarm blared again from the loudspeaker not far above her head. She had assumed the figure on the stretcher was Nicholas, but Ixion must have done whatever he meant to do to someone else first. “Nicholas, Ixion knows I told you about what he said to me—”
“Said what?” Niles demanded. “What did he say— Wait, when did you see Ixion? He’s supposed to be under guard—”
“He’s been slipping past his guards and running around the ship at night,” Florian told him impatiently. “But, Nicholas, he said he’d take care of you.”
Nicholas nodded, imperturbable. “Good. You found him in my cabin?”
She blinked. “Yes. But—” The telephone on the desk interrupted with a shrill ring and Giaren moved hurriedly to answer it. He listened for a moment, an expression of increasing consternation on his face. He turned, covering the receiver, and said urgently, “It’s Colonel Averi. He says Lord Chandre’s been injured— He’s not clear on specifics but he says it’s obvious it’s a sorcerous attack.”
Niles frowned in confusion. “What sort of sorcerous attack?”
Florian’s jaw dropped as the light dawned. She stared at Nicholas in horror. “You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Nicholas lifted a sardonic brow. He set the apple core on the coffee tray and dusted his hands. “I believe you’ll find Ixion used strands of Chandre’s hair, taken from a brush or comb on his dressing table. I talked to Giliead about Ixion, back in Capistown. All of Ixion’s favorite transformation spells for people who inconvenience him use hair from the victim.”
Florian just stared at him. She had seen Nicholas go into Chandre’s rooms. He took the hair from Chandre’s brush and planted it in his own room, then antagonized Ixion. So Ixion took it, thinking it was Nicholas’s. “That’s just—” She couldn’t think of the right word.
“Oh, God.” Niles shut the book, looking appalled. “What did he do to Lord Chandre?”
“What have you done?” Ixion’s voice, breathy with rage, echoed the question right next to Florian’s ear. With a yelp she spun around, backing away.
“Funny, I was going to ask you that.” Nicholas sounded unperturbed, but he slipped off the desk, facing Ixion. Florian darted a look at Niles, who stood calmly, the book still in his hands, watching Ixion. Giaren, she saw with relief, had simply removed his hand from the telephone receiver, so Colonel Averi, hopefully still on the wire, could hear everything.
While Ixion’s gaze was locked on Nicholas, Florian put a hand in her pocket, twisted the foil off one of the turnbacks and palmed it as she pulled her hand out. Let this work the way it’s supposed to, please, she thought fervently, not certain who she was appealing to.
“You tricked me.” Ixion’s voice was a low growl, his face twisted with fury. He took a step into the room, and the telephone wire suddenly sparked and burst into flame. Giaren dropped the receiver with a gasp and gripped his hand, grimacing in pain. “You foreign motherless bastards tricked me. How dare you—”
Florian used the opportunity to clap a hand over her mouth, apparently in horror, and popped the turnback in. Swallowing it was unexpectedly difficult and it scraped her throat painfully. After a moment of struggle she got it down. Don’t cough, don’t cough, she begged herself silently.
“How dare I?” Nicholas said mockingly, stepping away from the table. “It was easy. You fooled yourself.” He added, as if it had just occurred to him, “Having your head cut off must not be very conducive to constructive thought.”
“Let’s see how you like it,” Ixion snarled, lifting a hand. But Niles struck first.
Florian staggered backward, shoved by an invisible force, buffeted until she tumbled over the chair behind her. She landed hard, pushing herself awkwardly into a sitting position. She saw Nicholas thrown back against the table and slammed into the hearth, and Giaren lay on the floor and Niles reeled against the table, teeth gritted, face red with the effort of keeping on his feet. Ixion staggered back and gripped the doorframe to support himself.
Florian took a gasping breath, suddenly aware the air had been sucked right out of her lungs and the room was freezing cold. She knew what had happened: a flurry of spells and counterspells from Niles and Ixion had charged the ether in the air, temporarily giving it a physical presence. If Ixion and Niles were both incapacitated…
Then Ixion shoved himself free of the doorway and pointed toward Nicholas, who was still struggling to stand.
Florian gasped, scrambled forward and threw herself in front of Nicholas. She heard someone shout in horror and felt the spell hit like a blow to her chest, knocking her back so she sat down hard on the floor. She felt the turnback move in her stomach, a weird sensation that made her yelp. Something formed in the air just in front of her, made out of the gathered force of the spell. For a heartbeat she saw an impossible creature with no head and several gaping maws, writhing in midair, flailing with far too many clawed hands. Then it flung itself back toward Ixion.
His shocked expression as it shot toward him made it all worthwhile.
The spell struck him with full force, slamming him into the table, jarring it backward on the floor, spilling and breaking bottles and jars, sending papers flying. The sphere shivered, spinning like a top. Ixion reeled across the table, gasping for air, red suffusing his face. He struggled, clawing at his throat, and Florian felt a confused surge of triumph and horror. He did this to himself, she thought. He chose the spell, not— Gathering himself, Ixion shook his head violently, pushing up off the table, taking deep breaths. The red color faded from his face as he leaned over, spitting out something dark that hit the floor and steamed like hot tar.
Ixion straightened up, wiped his mouth off on his sleeve. He smiled grimly at Florian. “Why, flower, I didn’t think you had it in you. Too bad I’ll have to rip it right out.”
Oh, hell. Desperate, Florian looked around, spotting Nicholas’s pistol on the floor. Nicholas was just pushing himself up, shaking his head, still dazed. She stretched, grabbing for the gun.
Ixion turned and snatched up the sphere, lifted it even as it spun and threw off sparks in a paroxysm of rage. He whispered a word and cracks shot across the tarnished copper surface. It spun faster and Florian could see light streaming through the metal. She cried out, lurching forward, but light and sound coalesced into an ear-shattering crack and Ixion’s hand suddenly held a steaming collection of metal fragments, broken wheels and gears.
Breathing hard, Ixion turned his hand, letting the fragments trickle out and fall scattered to the floor. He looked at her, eyes still furious. “Now what will you do?”
Staring past him, Florian barely heard. There was a man standing framed in the doorway behind Ixion. He was tall and slender, dressed in a somewhat grubby brown sweater and light-colored canvas pants. He had white hair, long enough to just brush his collar and too wispy and soft to be the white of age. His eyes were a soft blue that looked violet in this light.
He caught her eye and winked. “Ack,” Florian managed, the most coherent noise she was capable of at the moment.
Ixion must have read her face. He twisted around, staring. The man fixed his gaze on him, his eyes hardening, his smile taking on an edge of contempt. He looked at the broken metal fragments still clutched in Ixion’s hand, and said, “Oh, it’s far too late for that.”
Ixion cocked his head, fascinated. “So you’ve come out of hiding.”
The man didn
’t move. He said, “It’s the pettiness that always surprises me. You would think the powerful would have the luxury of not taking offense.”
Ixion grimaced. “You can’t—”
Florian felt a surge of etheric energy that sucked any remaining warmth out of the room and made the electric lights flicker. Ixion’s eyes rolled back and he dropped to the floor, banging his head on the table on the way down. He sprawled limply on the floor, unmoving.
Florian looked toward the doorway again, but Arisilde was gone. The dank cold in the room made her shiver. “Did I see— Was that really—”
Niles pushed a broken chair away, managing to struggle upright. A cut on his forehead was bleeding freely but he threw a sharp look at Nicholas, saying, “Was it him, Valiarde?”
“Yes.” Nicholas stumbled to his feet. “He looked exactly as I last saw him, when I left him on the island.” She could tell by the tightness in his face and the way he kept looking away that he was fighting an uncharacteristic surge of emotion. “I thought for a moment— But when he disappeared, it was obvious I was looking at a ghost.”
“A very powerful ghost,” Niles added grimly, going to help Giaren extricate himself from a shattered side table.
Florian cautiously approached Ixion, looking down at him. She had expected burns maybe, or some monumental alteration. But Ixion was only white and still, like any other dead man. Huh? She frowned, leaning over to look more closely. “He’s breathing.”
Nicholas moved to her side, gazing down at Ixion with lifted brows. “Of course. Arisilde isn’t a murderer. Unlike some of us.”
Chapter 13
The next morning a galley arrived at Dead Tree Point, the nearest safe anchorage on the island. Tremaine stood on the bluff with Obelin, watching with arms folded as Ilias swam out to the ship. They quickly lost sight of him; the headlands and the sea were obscured by mist, the galley seeming to float in a pool of white vapor.
The waves lapped on the tumbled black rocks sheltering the cove and the ship rolled gently. It was a big galley, bigger than the Swift had been, with a double bank of oars and olive green sails currently rolled up against the spars. It also had a much more prominent prow, painted with the stylized eyes that graced every Syprian ship. Tremaine thought she was looking at a war galley, though she had only seen them beached and lying in their sheds at Cineth harbor. There was something low and dangerous about its shape that the Syprian merchant and fishing ships lacked. She hadn’t been able to pick out Halian, but other Syprians milled on the deck, waiting impatiently for Ilias to arrive.
Beside her, Obelin shifted and scratched the gray stubble on his chin, asking, “These people will accept us, you think?”
Tremaine took a deep breath, considering. That was another problem to add to the increasing list. The Aelin had been torn out of their time and place, so isolated they might as well have been trapped in one of the Gardier crystals for the past twenty years. They would need a place where they could find a home, and if the Syprians wouldn’t accept them, then they would probably end up in Capistown, just in time for the next big Gardier invasion. Obelin had learned enough by now that she suspected he might be thinking along similar lines. She said wearily, “I think they’ll at least give us lunch, and that’s about as far ahead as I’m willing to plan for right now.”
When told earlier that the galley had arrived, Giliead had pointed out that the waterpeople must have managed to deliver the message late last night and been lucky enough to actually catch Halian in Cineth. Lucky is a good word for it,Tremaine thought wryly. Despite rationing, they had run out of food that morning and Tremaine and Ilias and Gerard had been debating the notion of how palatable roast howler would be and could they separate one from a pack and get its body to the surface without being eaten themselves instead. Tremaine was mostly relieved they had been able to table that idea. She was deliberately not thinking about anything else. The galley, even as fast as it looked, would take most of the remaining morning and the afternoon to reach Cineth, and she didn’t plan to get there nearly hysterical with worry.
Obelin nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. Our luck has brought us this far, we can trust it a little further.”
Ilias was climbing a net up the galley’s side. Tremaine grimaced. Ilias had said once that she lived on luck. But luck runs out….
Florian sat in a chair in the office area of the ship’s hospital, one hand on her roiling stomach. “Are you sure?” she asked a little desperately. “You can’t use a spell to fix it?”
The hospital was a small maze of green-painted metal-walled wardrooms with a dispensary, operating theater and tiny cabin-offices for the doctor and nurses, with the office area in the center. It had been fairly empty so far this trip, occupied only with the usual minor ailments and injuries caused by sea travel and people going up and down unfamiliar stairways on a rolling ship. Now Nicholas was leaning against one of the wooden filing cabinets along the wall, holding an ice pack to his head, and Giaren was in one of the wardrooms having a broken wrist tended.
“No.” Niles, rather bruised and bedraggled himself, gave her a forbidding look. “It’s the nature of the turnback, Florian, I can’t use a spell on it. I’m afraid it has to come up the same way it went down. I assure you, if left to its own devices, it will choose a far more painful method of exit.”
“Right.” Reluctantly, Florian took the basin and the bottle of ipecac he handed her. She still felt gratified over how well the turnback had worked, though it had been Arisilde who had dealt the final blow to Ixion. They just weren’t sure exactly what that final blow was.
“So Arisilde Damal is no longer in the sphere, he’s in the ship itself.” Colonel Averi rubbed a hand over his face. He was gray with fatigue. “How is that possible?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question over and over again, and I have no idea,” Niles told him wearily. The cut on his forehead had been closed with sorcerous healing, but Niles was still in his shirtsleeves, his hair disarrayed, and he looked angry and out of sorts.
Averi’s brows drew together in consternation. “He’s made no attempt to communicate?”
“Not… coherently.” Niles gestured helplessly. “He was in the sphere for a long time and never made direct attempts to talk to us. I’m not sure his situation in the ship would change that. It may be that he’s simply forgotten how to speak on our level.”
Nicholas cleared his throat. “That may or may not be the case. Before all this, Arisilde did go through prolonged periods where he was very difficult to communicate with. On any level.”
Averi stared at him. “But he isn’t dangerous, correct?” At Nicholas’s faintly incredulous expression he amended, “Not dangerous to us, I meant. He’s still in his right mind.”
Nicholas sighed, set the ice pack atop the cabinet and dropped into a chair. “I’ve known Arisilde Damal most of my life. He hasn’t been in his right mind since his early twenties, and thinking back on it, I have my doubts about him before that. But while his behavior has occasionally been disturbing, he has never been violent. Even when he was being attacked by someone or even some creature, he never seemed to take it personally.”
Florian lifted her brows, startled. Tremaine said he was eccentric, but… To Florian eccentric meant a rather absentminded scholarly sort of person who perhaps dressed unfashionably. She liked eccentric people. Or at least those kinds of eccentric people. I should know by now that Tremaine’s definition of eccentric is… eccentric.
Niles frowned, considering this. “When he was in the sphere, he did seem to be rather… ferocious in our attacks against Gardier ships.” He shook his head, admitting, “Though that could just be the way it appears to us, because the sphere itself increases the speed at which spells are performed.”
Nicholas leaned back in the chair and lifted a brow. “Or that considering what the Gardier did to him, he does take them personally.”
“Valiarde, for God’s sake, decide which side of the argument you’re on.”
Averi shook his head wearily, turning back to Niles. “What about Ixion? Do you know yet what Arisilde did to him?”
“Not really.” Niles looked toward the closed door of the wardroom where Ixion now lay. “The etheric signatures I can detect are complicated, and all center around his brain, his nerves.” He shook his head, annoyed. “The fact that Lord Chandre returned to normal after it was done—”
“Yes.” Nicholas interrupted with a dry comment. “Pity that.”
Niles frowned at Nicholas as if he suspected him of ill-timed levity, but Florian knew by now that he was serious. Ixion hadn’t been the only one Nicholas had meant to eliminate with his little trick. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Niles continued resolutely, “It makes me think whatever it was, it was something fairly… devastating.”
“Ilias said that after Giliead killed Ixion the first time, the transformation spell Ixion put on him just stopped, and Ilias went back to normal,” Florian put in, absently tucking her basin under her arm. “Just because Ixion’s still breathing doesn’t mean …you know, that he’s still in there.”
Niles lifted his brows. “True.”
Averi frowned. “I don’t think any of us believe for a moment that whatever Ixion was doing with that vat was actually meant to create a body for the sorceress trapped in the Gardier crystal.”
Niles nodded, lost in thought. “I’ll be very interested to see what Kressein finds when he examines the contents, and—”
The ship’s alarm went off, startling Florian so much that she dropped her basin. Oh, no, she thought wearily. She had been about to point out that the howlers and the grend and all the other curselings created by Ixion hadn’t died or vanished with the sorcerer’s first “death,” and that whatever was in the vat probably wouldn’t either. That’s got to be—
