The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein)

by Martha Wells

  Damn. Tremaine stared up, stumbling as another flash lit the sky. The men on the boat were waving urgently for them to hurry. “Us specifically?” She looked around and saw with relief all the Syprians were with them; no one was staying behind. Dannor and Halian were half-carrying Gyan.

  “Anything human,” Gerard clarified.

  “Why aren’t we dead?” Dyani asked, looking up in terror at the flashes shooting across the gray sky.

  “The sphere is deflecting it!”

  Dyani probably didn’t understand what that meant, but Tremaine was a little reassured. Arisilde, locked inside the sphere, was fighting the Gardier spells for them.

  They stumbled into the surf and the cool water shocked Tremaine out of her daze. Staggering in the waves, they reached the boat. Tremaine grabbed the railing and looked for Ilias. She found him when he caught her around the waist and lifted her over the side.

  The floorboards were already drenched with spray. Others tumbled in, and Tremaine helped Gerard and Dyani steady Gyan as Halian boosted him up to climb the rail. The older man’s face was red and he was breathing hard; Tremaine hoped he wasn’t having a heart seizure. Then she saw the gray hair at the back of his head was matted with blood and realized he must have been hit by a fragment of the shattered rock.

  Giliead was the last to scramble in. The engine coughed to life, making the Syprians flinch in alarm, and the boat began to plow forward against the waves, taking them away from the island.

  Chapter 2

  The wall rose out of the sea and the fog, up and up, bigger than a mountain, taking up all the horizon like another sky….

  —“Ravenna’s voyage to the Unknown Eastlands,”

  Abignon Translation

  Tremaine thought the water in the cove was rough, but as the launch left the shelter of the rocks, the high waves flung it into a violent roll. She slid from her seat to the deck, clutching the bench and trying valiantly to keep her stomach down where it was supposed to be. She hadn’t ever been seasick before, but the waves tossed the boat like a tin cup.

  Gerard pushed his way up to the bow and held on to the rail next to the sailor wrestling with the wheel. Everyone else was clinging to the seats, trying to brace themselves. Ilias was beside Tremaine, gripping a stanchion, and Giliead was braced next to him. Even with the wind and the spray in their faces they were watching something with awed expressions. Whatever it was Tremaine didn’t think she wanted to see it. The sudden onset of nausea had sucked any interest in staying alive right out of her; it was almost like being back home again. Then the wind died suddenly and she realized the sea was less violent, the boat’s wild dips and sways less agonizing. She grabbed the rail and dragged herself up a little to look.

  At first all she saw was a giant gray wall. She thought it was mist or a low cloud formation, then she realized it was the Ravenna, looming over the little boat like an avalanche. Ilias and Giliead must have been watching her advance and turn.

  The pilot turned from the wheel to shout, “We’re all right now! She’s come to our windward side so we’re in her lee.”

  Oh good, an optimist, Tremaine thought. “She’s shielding us from the wind,” she translated into Syrnaic for the Syprians, though being sailors they probably didn’t need her to tell them what had happened.

  The boat chugged rapidly toward the Ravenna now, making good progress over the still-rough sea. Peering up at the ship, Tremaine could see a few lights glowing along the upper decks and a searchlight sweeping the water, fixing on the launch to guide it in. The gray paint made the ship fade into the heavy overcast sky and her upper decks were draped in mist. It fell over the ship like a giant’s shroud, catching in diaphanous streamers on the three enormous smokestacks. She didn’t dwarf the island behind them in actual physical size, but she gave the impression she wanted to try. The Ravenna had been built to be a passenger liner, the largest in the Vernaire Solar Line, and she was far from home, just like everyone else from Ile-Rien.

  Somehow approaching the liner by sea was more daunting than just walking up to her on the dock; the Ravenna was free now and all-powerful in her element. As they drew steadily closer to that great gray wall, Tremaine suddenly remembered the smashed warehouse and the sheared-off pier, victims of a miscalculation during the ship’s leave-taking from Port Rel. It had seemed funny at the time; it didn’t now.

  The pilot brought the little boat alongside the wall between dangling cables, then worked frantically with the other crewman to get them locked in place at the bow and stern. With the others, Tremaine stared nervously at the huge hull so dangerously close that she could count rivets. Gerard stood at the wheel, holding it steady as the two seamen worked. She saw Gyan up toward the bow with Arites and Dyani; he looked a little better though his face was gray in the dim light. He was staring at the Ravenna with nervous astonishment. Halian shouldered his way back through the others, his face intent, leaning over to ask Tremaine, “What are they doing?”

  Giliead and Ilias both leaned in to hear her answer. She swallowed to clear her throat. “They hook those cables to the front and the back and then there’s an electric winch to haul the boat up to the deck where they uh…keep boats.” She knew about the procedure in principle but had never gone through it herself.

  Giliead and Halian exchanged a dubious look, and Ilias leaned back on the rail, craning his neck to stare up at the height above them.

  Halian nodded in resignation, squeezed her arm, and said, “Don’t tell anyone else.”

  Finally one of the seamen signaled to those waiting above and the lifeboat started to lift, moving a little in the wind. Some men shifted and called out in alarm, but Halian snapped at them to be quiet. It seemed to take forever, and Tremaine tightened her grip on the bench, reminding herself that if the Rienish woman who was supposed to be blasé about all this got hysterical, everybody else was bound to do it too. She saw portholes in the Ravenna’s side, then larger windows streaked with water from the spray, then suddenly the boat swayed in toward an open deck, bumping against the ship’s railing.

  Tremaine stumbled as she stood and Giliead caught her arm to help her. A seaman held a gate in the ship’s railing open and she stepped up on a bench and climbed through it, finding herself on the Ravenna’s polished wooden deck in a milling confusion of sailors, freed prisoners and people she vaguely recognized from the Viller Institute. The deck was rolling, but it was nothing after being thrown around in the little launch. The wind was still harsh, but the other stowed lifeboats, their canopies flattened down, hung overhead in their curved davits, forming a sheltering partial roof for the deck.

  A little dazed, Tremaine noticed some of the sailors were women, their hair cropped short or tightly bound back under their caps. Early losses at the beginning of the war meant there were now more women serving in the army and the fragments left of the navy than ever before in Rienish history. It didn’t surprise Tremaine that the Ravenna, designated as a last-ditch evacuation transport when the Pilot Boat had failed to return with the sphere, had ended up with a lot of female crew. It also meant they would all have only a few years experience at most and that none had ever worked on a ship like this before.

  Tremaine watched the others clamber off the boat, then Gerard appeared at her side, guiding her to an open hatch. A seaman stood beside it, motioning for them to hurry. Tremaine dragged her feet, looking back to make sure the Syprians were following, then ducked inside.

  Getting out of the wind was an immediate relief; with everyone else, Tremaine jostled down a narrow wood-paneled stairwell that opened abruptly into a large area, brightly lit and teeming with refugees from the Gardier base, more Viller Institute staff and crew members trying to get them all to go somewhere. Voices spoke urgently in Rienish, Maiutan, Parscian; freed slaves who had held together throughout the battle and the trek across the island were falling down on the tiled floor and weeping with relief. Tremaine stumbled and leaned on a wall of finely polished cherrywood. Over the heads of the cr
owd, she spotted green marble pillars and the top of a glassed-in kiosk. “Promenade deck,” she said to herself, relieved. Now she had her bearings; they had come down a full level from the boat deck above and were in the ship’s main hall and shopping arcade. Past the people clustering around she could see that the glass cabinets for the shops along the walls were dark and empty.

  “Gerard!” Someone forced his way through the crowd. “There you are,” he said, as if Gerard had been deliberately concealing himself. It was Breidan Niles, the sorcerer who had brought the Queen Ravenna through the etheric world-gate to this temporary safety. He had narrow features, fair hair slicked back and wore an exquisitely tailored country walking suit. Despite the appearance of a man who should be lounging decoratively at one of the expensive and fashionable cafés along the Boulevard of Flowers, Niles had been working on the Viller Institute’s defense project as long as Gerard. As the other primary sorcerer on the project, his role had been to stay in Ile-Rien to watch over things there; this evacuation had been his first chance to travel through the gate.

  Before Niles could continue, Gerard interrupted. “There’s a problem. We’re holding an enemy sorcerer called Ixion.” Gerard gestured toward the damp canvas-wrapped bundle Giliead was just depositing on the floor. “He isn’t a Gardier; he’s a native collaborator. He’s apparently perfected a consciousness-transference spell that can take effect at the moment of his death. Now he seems to be in some sort of comatose state. Giliead here is something of an expert on this subject and he believes it’s very possible that Ixion has another body waiting somewhere that he can transfer into if we attempt to harm this one.”

  “I see.” The crowd noise rose and fell around them, but Niles stroked his chin thoughtfully, eyeing the quiescent bundle as if they were standing in a quiet library. “No chance we could tempt him over to our side?”

  Gerard’s mouth twisted in distaste. “I rather doubt it. From what our allies tell us the Syprian sorcerers are all quite mad. My experience with Ixion certainly bears that out.”

  Niles’s frown deepened. He pulled a booklet with a printed cover out of his coat pocket and began to flip hurriedly through it. Tremaine stared. It looked like a tourist brochure. “What is that?” she demanded.

  “A map of the ship for passengers,” Niles explained. “There were bundles of them in the purser’s office. They come in handy since so many of the crew were assigned here just yesterday.” He glanced at Gerard. “Thorny problem. But this Ixion isn’t resistant to our spells like the Gardier?”

  “No, not resistant at all, fortunately.” Gerard pushed damp hair out of his face. “Does the ship have a brig?”

  “No, but there’s a secure area meant for stowaways. That’s where your Gardier prisoners have been packed off to.” Niles’s brows lifted as he studied the map. “The ship does have an extensive cold-storage capability.”

  Gerard smiled thinly. “That’s a thought.”

  Giliead touched Tremaine’s arm, asking uneasily, “What are they saying about Ixion?”

  Tremaine started. Listening to Gerard and Niles talk, she had almost drifted off. “They’ve thought of a place to keep him,” she explained, switching back to Syrnaic with an effort and trying to look alert. “A locked cold room somewhere.”

  He nodded, pressing his lips together. “I’ll take him there.”

  “No!” One of the Syprians protested. Tremaine craned her neck and saw it was Dannor. Of course. “You brought us here, you stay with us.”

  Tremaine saw Halian’s face suffuse with red. Ilias muttered something under his breath that hadn’t been included in the sphere’s translation spell. But it was obvious the others agreed, except maybe Arites, who was staring around in anxious curiosity. It’s a good thing they don’t know Niles is a sorcerer, Tremaine realized. Ilias knew from his brief visit to Ile-Rien, but he didn’t look inclined to mention it. The Syprians had gotten used to Gerard, but there was no telling how they would react to another Rienish sorcerer, especially as unsettled as they were now.

  Watching with concern, Gerard told Giliead, “It’s all right, we can take care of it ourselves. I still have a ward of impermeability on Ixion.”

  Giliead hesitated, threw a dark look at Dannor, then said reluctantly, “All right.”

  “Very well.” Gerard turned to Tremaine as Niles called over a couple of men to take Ixion. “Will you let me have the sphere?”

  She nodded, handing him the bag wordlessly. The lights were too bright, and everything was taking on a surreal tint, probably a product of her exhaustion. As he pushed off after Niles, Florian appeared, saying, “Were you the last, did everyone make it?”

  Tremaine stared at her blankly. Florian, with her red hair tied tightly back and her face pale, seemed oddly normal against the chaotic background. Tremaine shook herself and nodded a shade too rapidly. “Yes, we were the last. Everyone made it.”

  “Good.” Florian relaxed in relief. “I’ve got to go, I need to help them get some people down to the hospital.”

  “Good luck,” Tremaine managed as the other girl slipped away through the crowd. She looked at the Syprians gathered around her. Dyani had fetched up next to Tremaine and she anxiously eyed the light in the wall above their heads. It was encased in a smooth crystal sheath mounted in a brass base. It took Tremaine a moment to realize what was wrong, then she said hurriedly, “The lights aren’t magic, they just look that way.” We need to get out of here, she thought wearily. She stood on tiptoes to see over the heads of the crowd; her legs felt like rubber.

  “This way,” she said in Syrnaic and turned to follow the wall around. By this method she found the grand stairway at the back of the large chamber. She led the way down the carpeted steps, feeling the tension in her nerves ease as they left the noisy crowd behind. She glanced back to make sure the Syprians were following and saw Giliead and Halian both looking around, probably doing head counts. Gyan was walking by himself but holding on to the wooden banister with another man at his elbow watching him worriedly. Dannor, who had started the mutiny, looked wary, and she was glad to see Ilias was right behind him.

  The next deck was the First Class Entrance Hall she, Florian and Ilias had passed through when they had boarded the Ravenna in Port Rel. It was brightly lit now, the fine wood walls and the marble-tiled floor gleaming, and nearly as crowded as the main hall. Tremaine continued down to the next deck, finding a smaller carpeted lounge, mercifully unoccupied, with one wall taken up by the steward’s office. It was covered in sleek wood and had etched glass windows; there was a light on inside and the door stood open. Tremaine hesitated then decided not to bother them. If she did, it would just give someone the opportunity to give her a lot of unnecessary instructions and orders.

  Four large corridors led off from here, two toward the bow and two toward the stern. She picked the nearest and led the way down toward what should be the First Class staterooms. The corridor seemed to run most of the length of the ship, the patterned carpet making her a little dizzy as her eye followed it. The doors were in little vestibules opening off the corridor; she picked one at random. There was only one doorway in this vestibule, so she hoped that meant it was a big room. “This is the place,” she said over her shoulder, trying the handle. It was locked. She stepped back and gestured. “Can somebody open this?”

  Halian stepped forward, took the handle and applied his shoulder to the fine-grained but light wooden door. Something cracked in the jamb and it swung obligingly open. It was dark inside and smelled dusty, unused. Tremaine stepped in, fumbling for the wall switches.

  Behind her, Dyani whispered like a litany, “The lights aren’t curses, they just look like it.”

  “It’s all right,” Ilias told her, managing to sound as if he believed it. “Really.”

  “Are there curses here?” somebody asked Giliead.

  He hesitated an instant too long. “No.”

  Tremaine found two call buttons for the stewards before finally pushing the button for
the lights. As the lamps flickered to life she saw she had struck gold. The lights were milky crystal lozenges set into cherrywood-veneered walls and the floor had a deep tawny carpet. If Giliead could sense spells it might be the concealment wards protecting the ship from the Gardier; or the staterooms in this section might have been warded against thieves at the commercial liner’s commission. If they had, nothing had happened when the door was forced open. She walked through a small foyer to a sitting room with gold-upholstered chairs and two couches. The built-in writing desk, the silk pillows and the rich red drapes concealing the portholes in the far wall were all meant to make it look like the best hotel in Vienne rather than a ship’s cabin.

  The Syprians followed her with subdued murmurs of admiration at the furnishings. Gyan dropped down on one of the couches, clutching his head and groaning. Halian turned and in a grim tone that reminded Tremaine that he had raised at least two children, said, “None of you better break anything, I’m saying that right now.”

  Breathing space immediately formed around a delicate little marquetry table.

  Muttering, “There’s got to be beds somewhere,” Tremaine shouldered her way through and fumbled at the latch of a sliding door in the other wall. She pushed it open to reveal a dining room with a fine wood table, more upholstered chairs, another built-in desk and chest of drawers, and another couch.

  “Is it all like this?” Dyani asked in an awed whisper. Tremaine glanced back at her and saw the girl seemed to be over her fright. She looked more intrigued than afraid now. Ilias hadn’t liked the ship much either, until he had seen some of the more richly decorated public rooms. The Syprians used a lot of color in the painted walls and floor mosaics of their own homes, and the rich fabric and decoration must seem comfortable and familiar to them, unlike the starkness of the Gardier base.