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

by Martha Wells

  Ilias took one look around, then plunged across the room after the officer. The man fumbled under the curtains, then managed to open a glass panel door. Ilias pushed out after him, and Tremaine fought her way through the heavy drapes to find they were on a curved open balcony, looking down on the bow, the sea stretching out in all directions. The sky was gray with the remnants of the Gardier storm, and the cool wind tore at her hair. At the far end of the balcony a narrow set of stairs led down to a small deck area where the base of the mast was anchored. The mast itself was circled by a cargo derrick that looked like a giant metal spider with its legs tucked in, and surrounded by an impressive array of waist-high electric winches.

  Ilias threw himself against the railing so enthusiastically she grabbed wildly for his shirt, thinking he was about to plunge over onto the deck below. But he was pointing at a distant line of cliffs. “Look, we’re nearly there!” He tore down the stairs and Tremaine hurried after him.

  There was a gap between this area and the forwardmost section of the deck where Gerard, Niles, Giliead, Florian and several crew members stood. Tremaine followed Ilias across the short railed ramp that bridged it and through a minefield of giant cables, giant chains, and giant spindles to wind them up on.

  In the shelter of the forepeak, a small raised platform in the very tip of the bow, Niles and Gerard were crouched on the deck, drawing symbols on the planking in white chalk. Niles clutched a sheaf of notes, referring to them as he took pinches of different powders and concoctions from the small jars and boxes scattered around him. Both spheres sat on the deck: the tarnished copper one that held Arisilde and the smaller brigher one that Niles had constructed.

  Ilias stopped at Giliead’s side, asking him in confusion, “What is this?”

  “They’re making a curse so the Gardier can’t see us,” Giliead told him, keeping his voice low.

  Ilias threw a cautious glance at Gerard and Niles. “Like the Swift? That didn’t work so well.”

  Florian, trying to look over Gerard’s shoulder without getting in his way, explained, “This isn’t just a ward, it’s an illusion. All the Gardier will see is a distortion in the air. Like when it’s a very hot day, and the air seems to ripple. They’ll hear us, but that won’t matter. We just need them confused about exactly where the ship is.”

  “What about deflecting the Gardier’s mechanical disruption spell?” Tremaine asked, trying not to sound desperate.

  Glancing up, Gerard explained, “Yes, the new ward Niles has been working on should transmit the sphere’s influence throughout the ship.” He added, not quite under his breath, “We hope.” He turned to tell one of the sailors, “Signal the bridge that we’re ready.”

  The man hurried back across the deck and Tremaine stood on tiptoes to see past the solid metal railing around the forepeak. The ship was still moving at full speed, and she could see the opening of Cineth’s harbor now. It was sheltered by a high promontory, with golden cliffs falling down to the water, a pyramidal lighthouse of gray stone marking the far end. Those cliffs cut off any view of the gunship, but part of the little city was visible, sprawled across a series of low hills. The buildings were mostly white stone with red tile roofs, none taller than two stories, and a few round fortresslike structures crowned the hills. The whole was dotted with shade trees, standing in the gardens and market plazas.

  Tremaine had liked the place the moment she had first seen it. The trees reminded her of those that lined the Boulevard of Flowers, though these streets were dirt instead of ancient cobblestones patched with modern pavement. If the trees, if the Boulevard itself, was still there. The Gardier are in Vienne now, she reminded herself coldly. Jerking herself back to the present, she wondered aloud, “So how do we get the gunship to come out—”

  A sound assaulted her ears, a deep boom that set her teeth on edge and made her bones shake. She clapped her hands over her ears along with everyone else, wincing away from it. Both Giliead and Ilias recoiled as if they were in real pain. As it died away she demanded, “What was that?”

  “The ship’s whistle.” The officer who had guided them here pointed up above the forecastle. Tremaine could just make out two trumpetlike projections mounted on the first smokestack. “To lure the Gardier out of the shallow water.” He looked back toward Cineth, shading his eyes. “They have to come out sometime.”

  Ilias was at her elbow, impatient to know what the giant boom had been. Tremaine explained in Syrnaic, then they waited, staring at the mouth of the harbor. Tremaine felt her nerves jump with impatience. Giliead moved away from the spell circle to pace, and Ilias boosted himself up on the rails to get a better view past the forepeak.

  “There!” Someone pointed, and Tremaine saw the black shape of the gunship emerge from behind the promontory. She stepped closer to the rail. The illusion masking the Ravenna’s exact location made the Gardier craft seem hazy, as if she were viewing it through a mist. When they had seen the gunship from the island, she had thought the long low shape, the guns mounted in the bow and stern, looked predatory and sinister. From this high vantage point it suddenly looked like prey.

  “Here it comes!” Niles shouted, anxiously studying his spell diagrams. Tremaine tensed, and Giliead reached to pull Ilias back from the rail. Without etheric lenses the spell that was traveling toward them was invisible, a deadly wave of power.

  Then Tremaine saw the glamour haze and weaken, the view of the gunship still steaming across their bow momentarily crystal clear. Then a bright light flared. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes, stumbling back on someone’s foot. It didn’t work, that was the mechanical disruption spell, she thought frantically, we’re going to sink. An image of the dream she had almost forgotten flashed vividly behind her eyes: The Ravenna sinking beneath black water, her lifeboats still in place.

  In the next heartbeat she was free of the dream and back to reality. Giliead held on to her arm, and Ilias was braced against the rail next to her. Her eyes were watering and dazzled by the light, and she could barely see Gerard, Niles and the others. “It worked,” she breathed. “Hah.” That wall of light hadn’t been the Gardier’s spell, it had been the sphere, deflecting the Gardier’s attempt to destroy the ship.

  Tremaine blinked hard as the dazzle faded, and she leaned forward, gripping the railing. The Ravenna was still bearing down on the Gardier craft and, though she knew the gunship must be traveling at full steam, it looked as if it was standing still. Tremaine saw the puffs of smoke above the barrel as it fired its bow gun; the blast reverberated over the water a moment later. She grinned, pounding her fist on the railing. The gun pointed several degrees off their bow, fooled by the illusion still concealing the Ravenna’s exact position. “We can turn the spell back on them; Arisilde knows it too. We can—”

  “We don’t need curses,” Giliead interrupted quietly, his mouth set in a tight line. “We’re going to ram her.”

  “Can we do that?” Tremaine eyed the fast-approaching gunship. “Without sinking, or anything…?”

  The Gardier seemed to realize their error; the gun swiveled, but too late. The Ravenna’s drive forward didn’t falter as the smaller craft disappeared from view; Tremaine grabbed the rail but instead of a huge crash there was only a thump that shuddered up through the deck. Stunned by the ease of it, she peered down the side to see half the gunship flip up and vanish under the surface as shattered wood and bodies tumbled past in the Ravenna’s bow wake.

  “And you said metal ships wouldn’t float.” Giliead turned to keep the wreckage in sight, leaning out to look down the side.

  “I never did,” Ilias protested.

  Despite their attempt to sound totally unaffected, or maybe because of it, Tremaine knew they were both a little shocked by the Ravenna’s power. She knew she sure as hell was.

  The ship’s drive forward slowed, and Tremaine saw from the way the water churned below that it was moving into one of those insane turns. Oh joy, she thought with a sick sensation, contemplating the indignity
of dropping flat to the deck to cling to one of the big cables. She grabbed Ilias instead, wrapping an arm around his waist. Still watching the pieces of Gardier ship bobbing in the waves, he absently put an arm around her shoulders, bracing them both against the rail. The fact that Giliead, though he didn’t look particularly worried, still felt the need to hook one arm through the rail and grab Ilias’s belt with the other, was not reassuring.

  The ship started that frightening lean toward the waves and one of the officers from the group around Gerard and Niles shouted, “Hold on!” Everyone scrambled to grab something, Florian huddling down near Gerard. Niles grabbed for the loose jars of powder, hastily dropping them back into his case.

  “No kidding,” Tremaine muttered, watching in fascination as the churning green surface below drew closer. But this turn was less dramatic, and the ship began to sway back upright long before she felt the urge to scream. They were heading back toward the wreckage, still slowing.

  As the deck rolled to become more or less level Ilias let go of Tremaine and she lurched away toward Gerard. Before she reached him a seaman pounded across the bridge from the other deck, shot past her to one of the officers standing with the sorcerer, pulling both men aside to speak urgently.

  Tremaine threaded her way around the cables, demanding, “What is it?”

  Niles turned away from the discussion abruptly, his face ashen. “We have a problem.” He was staring down at the spell circle, at the iron filings in the center. “The inner core didn’t oxidize.”

  Giliead, Ilias, Florian and the other seamen were all watching, puzzled, and in the Syprians’ cases, wary. “Niles, nobody knows what you’re talking about,” Tremaine said, a sudden qualm making her snap impatiently. “The spell worked.”

  “It worked, but the other wards were supposed to be excluded from the effect,” he said tightly. “They weren’t.”

  Gerard turned to them, his face hard and grim. “It’s Ixion, the wards around his cell failed and he escaped.”

  “What about Ixion?” Ilias demanded. Gerard had spoken in Rienish, and he had recognized only the name.

  Tremaine grimaced. That’s all we needed. She turned to Ilias, saying in Syrnaic, “He escaped.”

  The moment was one of those long heartbeats that never ends as she watched their faces. Giliead’s expression went absolutely blank, concealing any emotion and somehow worse than if he had actually showed his feelings. Ilias looked horrified for an instant before his face set, then both men were running across the deck, jumping over the cables.

  Tremaine started after them. “I’ll go with them, they’ll need a translator—”

  “Tremaine, wait!” Gerard snapped.

  She thought he was going to tell her it was too dangerous, she would just be in the way, but he said hurriedly, “Give me something you’re wearing. Niles and I can track your progress with it. We may be able to locate Ixion with the sphere, and that way—”

  Items carried or worn for long periods of time took on the same etheric signature as the body of the owner; Arisilde and Gerard had often used this spell for her father, sometimes tracking individuals all over Vienne. Tremaine was already doing a rapid inventory of her possessions. She wasn’t wearing jewelry, her outer clothes were too new for the spell to work, she was reluctant to give up her underthings….“Here.” She hopped on one foot, hauling off her boot. “This is all I’ve got!”

  Gerard accepted it with a grimace but didn’t argue. She ran after Ilias and Giliead, charging up the stairs and tearing open the door to the Observation Lounge. The awkwardness of trying to run like this was too much and she stopped to haul off the other boot and her stockings, dumping them on a table. Barefoot she was much faster and caught them on the passengers’ forward stair.

  They barely noticed her appearance, intent on reaching the place where Ixion had been held prisoner. They made a transition to a crew stairway down in Third Class, then turned off down a metal-walled corridor on one of the decks below the passenger areas, threading rapidly through a series of turns until Tremaine saw a group of worried crewmen and crewwomen gathered at a doorway. The group parted for the two Syprians and Tremaine hurriedly shouldered her way through in their wake.

  The door to the refrigerated compartment hung off its hinges, the lock wrenched from the distended metal. The whole side where it had met the wall was scorched and melted. Three of the guards lay sprawled unconscious on the floor and another was sitting up, a bleeding cut on his temple being tended by a medical corpsman. A red-faced older man in chief petty officer’s uniform stood by the doorway, snapping orders about search parties into the ship’s telephone. Giliead surveyed the scene grimly, then turned away, pushing back out. Ilias snarled, “I knew this would happen,” and followed.

  Tremaine turned to go after them, but the officer stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Where are they going?” he asked urgently.

  “We’re going after him.” Tremaine pointed at his sidearm. “Can I have one of those?”

  He stared at her, then unclipped the holster from his belt and handed it over.

  The trail led upward through a small stairwell near the center of the ship. There were only a few lights set back into walls lined with smoky dark wood, and with the dark green patterned carpet underfoot they might have been making their way through a dim woodland glade. Keeping his voice low, Ilias said, “This makes sense. He’s making for open air.”

  Giliead nodded. “He may be confused. He’ll know we’re at sea, but—” His slight shrug took in their strange surroundings, so unlike a ship except for the movement underfoot.

  A distant hollow voice spoke suddenly, shattering the stillness. Ilias flinched violently and Giliead swore under his breath.

  “It’s the same as before,” Tremaine whispered from behind Ilias. “He’s telling everyone to stay at their posts or in their quarters, and to call the bridge if they see anyone suspicious.”

  Ilias nodded. She had explained it was one of the crew, speaking into a talking box that let his voice be heard through other boxes all over the ship. It had had a more authoritative ring when they thought it was the ship herself speaking.

  “Here,” Giliead said suddenly, frowning. “There’s something here.” He stepped off the stairs into a small foyer.

  “What?” Tremaine demanded. She had a small curse weapon tucked into the back of her pants under her shirt, which she thought they didn’t know about.

  “Ixion must have cast a curse up here,” Ilias told her as Giliead cautiously pushed open the door.

  It opened into a long room where the wizard lights weren’t lit but it hardly mattered; the whole outside wall was windows, nearly floor-to-ceiling, looking out onto an expanse of roofed deck that ran along this side of the ship, allowing in enough cloudy gray daylight to illuminate the room. It was filled with cushioned chairs and couches, patterned carpets in soft warm colors covering a floor of green-veined marble. There were drapes over portions of the inner wall and a set of double doors near the middle. As they moved further in, Ilias saw there was a large arched entranceway at the opposite end, next to a giant example of one of the Rienish paintings. It was a river winding through a green valley, so real it looked as if you could get your feet wet standing near it.

  An earsplitting shriek rent the air and he and Giliead both jumped violently, looking frantically around for the source. But Tremaine waved hurriedly for them to relax and moved to a little table near a chair. On it sat a small box; she lifted the curved part on top and held it to her ear. Ilias let his breath out and exchanged a harassed look with Giliead; another one of the Rienish talking curse boxes. “You’d think,” Giliead said deliberately, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “they could make those things a little quieter.”

  Tremaine listened for a moment, her face getting that concentrated look Ilias had learned meant trouble. He could just hear the tinny voice issuing from the box, but it spoke Rienish. She put the piece down, setting it carefully on the table instead of re
placing it on the talking box. “Ah, that was Niles,” she said in Syrnaic, turning to them. “He says hello.” Then she jerked her head toward the double doors.

  Ilias stared at the doors, feeling the skin on the back of his neck prickle. They were heavily padded with a deep red leather. Giliead stepped to them, lifting his hand but not quite touching, then shook his head. No curses. He came back to Tremaine and asked in an almost voiceless whisper, “What’s in there?”

  She had already pulled out the little map of the ship, studying it frantically. “There’s a small ballroom, a lounge and a theater, a movie theater.”

  “A what?” Ilias asked quietly. Most of the sentence had been in Rienish.

  “It’s a room where they show movies, moving pictures.” She waved the map, as if trying to use it to illustrate what she was saying. “It’s not a spell, it’s like the engines.”

  “Great,” Ilias said under his breath. He didn’t know what the engines were either, except that the Rienish said they made the ship cleave the water without sails or oars. He hoped she didn’t mean “like the engines” as in powerful enough to move a metal ship the size of an island at incredible speeds.

  “Is there another way in?” Giliead asked softly.

  Tremaine traced the path on the map. “Yes, just through here, there should be another entrance through the lounge.” She looked up at them, eyes thoughtful. “Gerard and Niles are on their way here.”

  “We can’t wait.” Giliead consulted Ilias, brows lifted. His mouth set in a grim line, Ilias nodded. Doing this made his insides go cold, but he knew they didn’t have a choice.

  Giliead took Tremaine’s arm, drawing her with him through the open archway. She went without comment, stuffing the map back through her belt, with one enigmatic glance back at Ilias. He stepped to the leather-padded door, waited until he was sure they had had time to find the other entrance, then pushed it open.

  It was a long room, filled with soft shadows. The walls were the same polished wood as the rooms outside, but broken by giant glass panels etched with a garden of colorful flowers and strange birds that glowed with wizard light. The entire space appeared empty, but that meant nothing. Ixion had curses that allowed him to hide in shadows not much bigger than a bird’s wing.