by Martha Wells
Ander’s military team were gathered around the eleven captured Gardier; Tremaine moved to join them. The prisoners sat on the broken moss-stained stone of the plaza in a sullen group, their hands bound with the same chains they had used on their slaves. With pale skin and heads shaved to stubble, they all looked alike to Tremaine. Their brown coverall uniforms with heavy boots and close-fitting caps had nothing to distinguish one from the other. They were a different problem altogether. Tremaine eyed them, deciding it looked like a problem that could be solved by eleven bullets.
“The wireless?” Basimi, one of the Rienish soldiers, turned to ask Ander.
Ander squinted at the wireless that had brought them the Ravenna’s signal. “Take the box, leave the antenna.” It was strung up across the two stone buildings and would be too much trouble to remove. And the Gardier knew they were here, there was no point in trying to remove any trace of their presence.
Ander stepped toward the Gardier prisoners, watching them carefully. He grasped the Gardier translator disk around his neck, saying, “Get up, follow us quietly and you won’t be harmed.” They had captured several of the translators, small silver medallions with an inset crystal that held the spell that converted the speaker’s words to the Gardier language. They translated only Rienish, unfortunately, and didn’t work for Syrnaic.
Most of the Gardier just stared at him but one spoke rapidly in a high light voice, the disk translating his words, “Free us and surrender. You will be well treated—”
Tremaine, her eyes on the long black shape of the gunship plowing through the gray sea, suddenly had enough. That a Gardier, sitting there in chains surrounded by Rienish, would still have the gall to try to dictate terms was too much. The slaves, the people fleeing Vienne knowing they had no control over their lives, poor dead Rulan’s betrayal, what the Gardier had done to Arisilde, all came together in perfect clarity for her.
Basimi had set his captured Gardier rifle aside so he could pack the wireless box; Tremaine walked across the plaza to pick it up. Distracted and thinking she was just relieving him of a burden, he barely glanced at her.
Tremaine hefted it thoughtfully. The weight and stock felt odd in her hands and there was no safety. Crossing back to the Gardier, she pumped it to get a cartridge into the chamber. She stopped beside Ander, lifting it to her shoulder to aim at the Gardier spokesman. The man’s expression went from stoic contempt to fear, his dark eyes widening in alarm. Good, she thought. I’d hate to take you by surprise. Then before her finger could tighten on the trigger a long arm reached over her shoulder and grabbed the barrel.
It was Giliead. Tremaine tried to hold on to the gun but had to give up before her hand got caught in the trigger guard. Ander was staring, startled. From across the plaza Ilias shouted, “Tremaine, stop that!”
“They won’t move!” She gestured in frustration at the Gardier. She wondered if anybody else was appreciating the irony of the barbarian Syprians preventing the civilized woman of Ile-Rien from shooting the prisoners. Some of the ex-slaves had stopped to watch, probably hoping to see her do it. Ander and Basimi and the other Rienish military men were staring in disbelief. Why do they all look like this is such a bad idea? “We can’t leave them, they know too much about us! What else are we going to do?”
“Not that.” Giliead’s expression was way too reasonable for her current mood. “They’re not wizards,” he said patiently. “And they’re helpless.” He held the gun away from his body, his distaste for what he thought of as a curse weapon evident, but there was no way she could get it away from him.
“Then let them loose and I’ll pick them off on the run.” But the moment of cold uncontrolled fury was fading. Tremaine knew she wasn’t in touch with her own emotions at the best of times, but maybe this was a little much. She pushed her hair back, looking away.
Ilias rolled his eyes and turned back to helping one of the Parscian women to her feet, obviously leaving the situation to Giliead, who just watched Tremaine calmly. If he had said aloud, “I’ve given you my position on this and I’m not going to argue about it,” it couldn’t have been more clear.
“Tremaine, would you mind if I handled this?” Ander said with sarcastic emphasis. He was past astonishment and on to exasperated anger, the usual emotional state he and Tremaine communicated in. “Would that be all right with you?”
Tremaine folded her arms and told him, “Somebody figure this out right now or we do it my way.” She couldn’t back the threat up with Giliead standing ready to wrestle another gun away from her, but maybe in the heat of the moment nobody would figure that out.
The conversation had been in Syrnaic, and with Florian down on the stairs urging along the first group of prisoners, Ander and the Syprians were the only ones who had understood it. He turned to the Gardier again, grasping the translator, and shouted, “Get up! I won’t ask it again!”
Maybe his grim face convinced them, though Tremaine thought it was probably her he wanted to throw off the cliff. Two of the Gardier stumbled to their feet and the others followed, the spokesman last and most reluctant, with the Rienish soldier Deric giving him a poke with a rifle to hurry him along. The other members of Ander’s military team closed around them, shepherding them toward the stairs after the last group of refugees.
Ander stopped beside Tremaine. She expected another sarcastic comment, but he said reluctantly, “At least you got them moving. They really thought you meant it.”
As he moved away Tremaine clapped a hand over her eyes. It would have been worth it, just to show Ander. He had known her for years longer than anyone else here except Gerard, and yet he didn’t know her at all. She lifted her head to find herself sharing a look with Giliead. His mouth quirked, and she had the sudden feeling he understood.
Basimi, the wireless box packed in its case and tucked under his arm, pointed at the gun. “Uh, Ma’am, could you ask him if I could have—”
“Yes, sorry.” Tremaine rubbed her face, trying to collect herself. She told Giliead in Syrnaic, “He wants the weapon back.”
Giliead handed it over as Ilias came up to them. He gave Tremaine a pointed look, and she snapped, “Don’t you start.”
He ignored her, turning to Giliead. “You ready to take Ixion?”
Giliead let out a breath, his expression darkening as he looked at the canvas-wrapped bundle lying on the broken pavement. Moving the sorcerer’s body wouldn’t disrupt the ward Gerard had placed on it, but Tremaine wouldn’t have had that job for anything, and Ilias looked as if this was as close as he planned to get to it. They both watched Giliead lift the body and heave it over his shoulder.
Tremaine hurriedly picked her way along the edge of the canal after Ilias and the others, the sphere’s bag bumping her familiarly in the hip. I feel like I just did this. Oh right, I did. The overcast sky was darkening rapidly and the canal had become a dim gray-green tunnel as the overhanging vegetation screened what little light remained. Giliead, still carrying Ixion, had gone up ahead to talk to Halian, jumping down into the canal and wading through the waist-deep water past the line of refugees making their way along the stone ledge. Ander and the other Rienish were herding the Gardier prisoners through the canal up near the front of the line. Basimi was just ahead of Ilias, burdened with the wireless box and the rifle slung over his back. Tremaine had offered to carry the gun for him, but for some reason he had declined.
Most of the refugees were moving quickly, carrying the injured, helping each other along, spurred by fear of recapture. Occasional stragglers still fell behind, dazed by the suddenness of events or too scarred by their long captivity to really understand what was happening. Ilias plunged into the water frequently to hand them back up to their companions or to just get them pointed in the right direction. “It’s not the ones who are still trying to move you’ve got to worry about,” he commented to Tremaine, hauling himself out onto the stone pathway again, dripping with the stagnant water and with his arms and chest stained with moss. “If the
y have to be carried, there’s more chance they might go dead later.”
Tremaine grabbed the shoulder of his shirt, more to steady herself than him, since he was far more surefooted on the slippery stone. “What do you mean ‘go dead’?” Her knowledge of Syrnaic having come from a spell rather than studying the language, she found she actually did know some of the local idiom, but this one escaped her.
Ilias pushed to his feet, tossed the wet hair out of his eyes and moved after the others. “It’s when someone’s been caught or had their village cursed by a wizard, and they just never get over it. They won’t talk, won’t recognize their family, won’t eat or drink unless you make them. You’ve seen that before?”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” Tremaine digested that, not liking the implications. If the other Syprians were really that affected by exposure to magic, then that didn’t bode well for a future contact between the cities of the Syrnai and Ile-Rien’s government-in-exile. The Andrien family had accepted them, but then they had felt obligated by all the mutual lifesaving that had gone on between Tremaine, Florian and Ander when they had been stranded in the underground city searching for Gerard, and Ilias, who had been likewise searching for Giliead. And Giliead’s mother Karima had managed to reconcile herself to having a son who was a Chosen Vessel, so getting used to the idea of wizards as allies probably wasn’t as hard for her as the others. Tremaine had noted that Halian’s son Nicanor, the current lawgiver of Cineth, had barely deigned to look at them.
“Anything I should know?” Basimi asked, glancing cautiously back at them. The conversation had been in Syrnaic and he hadn’t understood it.
He was a hard-faced wiry man who was one of the few who had volunteered to follow Ander back to this world to infiltrate the Gardier base. Tremaine knew nothing about him except that he probably wasn’t a traitor like Rulan. “Just chatting,” she told him.
The first of the refugees must have reached the cove long before them. As they finally climbed up the canal’s embankment near the bluff, Tremaine foundered in the sudden high wind. Following the last of the stragglers, Basimi staggered under the burden of the wireless. Ilias stopped, looking worriedly up at the cloud-heavy sky. “This isn’t natural,” he muttered. Tremaine was uncomfortably reminded of the spell-driven storm that had swamped the Pilot Boat when they had first been stranded on the island.
She stumbled around the rocks to see the little sandy cove and the even more welcome sight of two motor launches moored in the shallows. They were sturdy boats, each almost forty feet long, painted gray to match the Ravenna’s war camouflage, with steel hulls, diesel engines and canvas canopies to protect the occupants from the weather. The surf rolled in around them, white and frothy, and the wind lifted the sand in stinging sheets. Another boat already packed with people fought the waves between the tall rocks, heading for the safety of the larger ship anchored somewhere in the heavy mist outside the cove. At least Tremaine hoped the Ravenna meant safety. She couldn’t see Niles, but Gerard and a couple of men in short jackets of the red-trimmed dark blue of undress Rienish naval uniforms were helping refugees onto the first launch. Florian was at his side.
Tremaine trotted across the sand, the wind tossing her hair, and got there in time to hear the other girl say, “Gerard, is this an etheric storm?” Florian squinted up at the streaming clouds overhead, her face white and strained, having to nearly shout to be heard over the roar of the surf.
“I’m afraid so.” Gerard winced away from the spray as the waves broke around the launch’s hull. He was a tall man in his early forties, with dark hair just lightly touched with gray. He was currently wearing Syprian clothing, battered dark pants and a loose mud-stained white shirt with a green sash; he was a sorcerer and had been Tremaine’s guardian before she was old enough to assume control of the Valiarde family fortunes. “It’s nearly impossible for us to call up weather magic so quickly, but we’ve seen the Gardier do it before.”
Florian gave Tremaine a concerned look as she approached. “Is that all of them? Ander already took the Gardier on another boat.”
“We’re the last,” Tremaine told her, looking around for the Syprians. They were gathered in a group over by the rocks, and Giliead, hands planted on his hips, was talking to them. Ilias had gone to stand at his side. That doesn’t look good, she thought grimly. She noticed Giliead didn’t have the canvas-wrapped bundle anymore. “Where’s Ixion? Did they put him in the boat?”
“On the other one.” Gerard nodded, indicating the launch wallowing in the surf a little further down. “That’s the boat you’ll be taking. I want the sphere to stay fairly near him.”
“Are they coming?” Florian shielded her eyes from the spray, watching the Syprians worriedly. “I know they think the engines are magic, but it’s their only chance.”
“I’ll go see.” Stumbling in the wet sand, Tremaine went over to join the group.
Arites, a young man with wild brown hair who was a Syprian poet, was standing with Dyani, Gyan’s young foster daughter. She was a slight girl with dark brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Gyan himself looked grave, and Halian was fuming with frustration and anger. Most of the others hovered between confused and rebellious. “I won’t do it,” one of them was saying stubbornly. He was big like Giliead, but with darker hair and a boxer’s mashed nose. “It was bad enough letting them curse the Swift, and we saw what happened to her—”
“It was Ixion’s curseling that did that,” Gyan objected. Tremaine was glad he was on their side. He was an older man, with a heavy build and a good-humored face, balding with a long fringe of gray hair. He was much respected by the other crew. “And Gerard’s curse got us out of that prison—”
“But you can’t ask us to get on that wizard ship!”
“It’s not magic,” Tremaine protested helplessly. “The lights, the engines, it’s steam turbines and—” She stopped in exasperation when she realized the words were coming out in Rienish because there were no equivalents in Syrnaic. “Dammit!”
“I’ve been on the wizard ship,” Ilias began patiently. “It’s not—”
“You’ve got nothing to lose,” the man snapped at him.
Ilias’s expression went stony and he stepped back, reflexively drawing away from the group.
That did it for Giliead. He looked the men over with grim contempt. “I’m going. Anyone who wants to stay, we’ll send help back to you. If the howlers or the Gardier wizards leave anything.”
“Wait.” Halian fixed an eye on the objector and said, almost too quietly for Tremaine to hear over the rising wind, “So you’re captain now, Dannor?”
“Maybe he ought to be,” somebody else piped up.
Without taking his eyes off Halian, Dannor backhanded the offender in the mouth, saying, “When I want you to talk for me I’ll tell you.”
“Tremaine!” Gerard shouted from the launches. “We have to go!”
“Go on!” she turned to yell. “We’ll take the other boat.” I hope. She could feel the sphere shaking violently in its bag and wondered if it was responding to the argument or the growing storm.
“The thing is, Dannor,” Halian said, still softly, “either you’re making yourself captain, or you’re not.”
Dannor breathed hard, something flat and desperate in his eyes. Halian had been Cineth’s warleader once, Tremaine remembered. Dannor looked like he knew why Halian had been chosen for that job and didn’t want to find out all over again. He stared out toward where the Ravenna lay, obscured by the heavy mist and the black rocks that sheltered the cove. A scatter of raindrops pelted the sand around them and thunder rumbled. “Halian, I—”
Halian’s grim expression didn’t soften. “Do you really think I’d ask you to do this if it wasn’t the only choice?”
Gerard had splashed back out of the surf and started across the beach toward them. The other boat was leaving, she could see Florian standing in the stern watching them, hanging on to a stanchion as it fought the waves. The last one, e
mpty but for two Rienish sailors, still waited. Tremaine was turning to tell Gerard to go back when sand suddenly blew up in her face and something shoved her hard from behind. She hit the wet beach facefirst.
The next thing she knew Gerard was dragging her upright, the sphere’s bag knocking her in the stomach as she got her feet under her. “Ow,” Tremaine protested weakly. Her ears rang, her head pounded, her teeth hurt. After everything else, it seemed especially unfair. “What happened?” The Syprians were scattered around her, sprawled in the sand or struggling to their feet.
Gerard spoke urgently, but his voice sounded far away over the ringing in her ears. Giliead staggered upright, shaking his head, and Ilias rolled over, still stunned.
Tremaine gave up on trying to hear Gerard and looked around for the source of the explosion. She saw with shock that the big rock they had been standing near was missing a large chunk off the top. She could smell burning and the aftermath of a lightning strike. She pointed at it, tugging on Gerard’s sleeve, trying to get him to look. “They’re shelling us!”
Gerard gestured imperatively at the boat, shouting something that sounded tinny and far away. Ilias managed to struggle up and Giliead pulled Halian to his feet. He started pushing the others toward the beach. Tremaine reached to help Dyani, but Gerard grabbed the other girl’s arm and hauled them both toward the water.
Something flashed overhead, lighting up the gray sky, and Tremaine flinched. “What was that?” she demanded again.
Gerard’s voice still sounded too far away but this time she understood his shout. “It’s lightning, etheric lightning. The Gardier generated this storm and the lightning is aiming for us.”
