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

by Martha Wells

  Ilias stepped inside, moving cautiously but trying not to look as if he expected to find anything, his boots making soft sounds on the fine wood floor. He was certain the lights in the glass panels shouldn’t be lit; the Rienish kept all the bigger rooms dark unless someone was inside, but Ilias pretended not to know that either. Ixion wouldn’t have had time to notice, and he would tamper with the Rienish wizard lights and anything else he could find.

  There was a raised platform at each end of the room, the steps up to them bands of silver and bronze, and another wizard light overhead was a mass of prisms in colors Ilias didn’t know the names of. Padded chairs in rich blue fabric were stacked atop small tables, obscuring the view and creating more pockets of shadow. He could hear a low metallic clicking that he thought might be coming from the double doors near the platform on the right. On the left an open archway showed another room more deeply shadowed, filled with couches and chairs shapeless under big white cloths; that must be the lounge on Tremaine’s map.

  Giliead would be there now, slipping softly in while Ixion’s attention was on Ilias, as it was bound to be. Ilias went toward that darker portion of the room, as if to investigate it. The cool air that came through the little grilles in the walls stirred the dust more than it should, and he knew there was something else moving in here with him. Then something brushed past him.

  Ilias glanced down, saw the dust swirl up around his feet, saw it start to opaque and solidify. He tried to leap away and half fell as his feet remained rooted to the floor.

  He saw sudden movement out of the corner of his eye and kept trying to wrench free, forcing himself not to look; Giliead would need every moment he could buy for him. The thickening dust crept up to his knees when he heard a gasp and a thump behind him. The dust vanished abruptly and he staggered free.

  He caught himself against the side of the archway, twisting around to see Giliead wrestling with a struggling form wrapped in one of the white drapes from the furniture. Ilias lunged to help, skidding to a halt when the floor around the two figures turned molten green.

  Ilias hopped back before the stuff touched his boots. It could be an apparition or a flesh-melting curse; he saw it wasn’t affecting Gil, but that didn’t tell him anything. Then he saw that the green ooze was shredding the drape. The thrashing figures separated as Ixion managed to toss Giliead off. Both came to their feet, Ixion tearing the remains of the drape away.

  The man crouched at bay, still dressed in the brown Gardier garments, was like a shadow of his former self, his features still faintly blunted and distorted. But the way he held himself, the wild hate in his eyes were all Ixion.

  Then the green mist dispersed, swept away in a silent wind.

  Ilias glanced back and saw Gerard and Niles standing in the open doors, both wearing grim expressions. Niles had the god-sphere tucked under his arm.

  Ixion stared at them for a long heartbeat, then smiled. He turned and pushed through the doors behind him.

  Giliead plunged after him, Ilias reaching the doors only a few steps behind.

  Directly inside was a bloodred curtain, looped back to reveal a dark room filled with chairs that all faced the back wall. Giliead had halted abruptly just inside and Ilias smacked into his back.

  There were moving images flickering on that far wall, the source of the metallic clicking he had heard. Moving pictures, Ilias thought in awe. She meant that literally. Cast in shades of gray and somehow flat, they didn’t look as real as the paintings in the other rooms, but they moved, jerking and stuttering across the wall in imitation of life. People walking beside stone buildings, on horseback, riding in wagons that moved by themselves like the ones in the Rienish city.

  Then Giliead took a step to the side and Ilias realized one of the gray forms on the wall wasn’t moving. Ixion stood in the front of the first row of chairs, outlined against the flicker of images.

  Ilias looked at Giliead, his friend’s face hard to read in the fractured light. Giliead caught his eye and jerked his head faintly toward the figure. Ilias nodded and started down the aisle on his side as Giliead moved down the opposite wall. He’s strong, Giliead had warned him earlier, stronger than he looks. And fast.

  He had just drawn even with the still figure, was just able to see the man in profile, when Ixion spoke above the click-clack noise. “The Gardier had so much contempt for their enemies, I never expected them capable of something like this.” His gesture took in the room around them, the whole ship. “A floating mountain, with so many wonders inside it.”

  “I wouldn’t describe you as a wonder.” Giliead’s voice was cool and level, but he had encountered Ixion on the island. Ilias realized he was breathing hard, his heart pounding. It was the voice. It really is him. The last time he had heard that voice was right before Giliead had cut Ixion’s head off. He wanted to leap over the chairs and rip Ixion’s throat out. He wanted to run out of the room. He managed to do neither, waiting for a signal from Giliead as sweat ran down his back.

  The image on the wall changed to a view of a storm-tossed sea from the deck of a ship and in the suddenly brighter light Ilias saw the corner of Ixion’s mouth lift in a smile. “And Ilias is here. I’ll say ‘It’s been a long time’ and you can say ‘Not long enough’ and—”

  “Shut up.” The words were out before Ilias realized it.

  Ixion hesitated, then said more softly, “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

  “I really doubt that,” Ilias grated. He heard a soft sound behind him and realized Gerard and Niles now stood in the doorway.

  “Well.” Ixion turned to eye the Rienish wizards. “How did they do it?” He looked at Giliead, head tilted inquiringly. “You fought for them. You used the curse they gave you against me. You haven’t been cursed. You’re acting for them of your own will. How did they do it?”

  He was trying to sound merely curious, but Ilias heard the strain in his voice. He really wanted to know. Giliead must have sensed that too because he didn’t answer.

  “Is it just because they destroyed my curse on Andrien House?” Ixion must have realized he was betraying himself and looked away, smiling at the flickering images on the wall. “I’m still searching for allies. Perhaps I can offer my services to them as well.”

  “I’m afraid we aren’t in the market,” Gerard said in Syrnaic, his voice cool.

  Giliead spoke, “You’re nothing new to them. They have wizards like you in their land, and they destroy them like sick animals.”

  Ixion watched the flicker of movement on the screen. Then he shrugged. “Surely you realize you can’t kill me. I’ll just come back.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Ilias heard another metallic sound, weaving in and out of the clicking of the moving images. It was the noise the god-thing in the sphere made, he realized, when it thought something was dangerous.

  “If that’s such a great plan, why haven’t you just killed yourself?” Tremaine’s voice was so unexpected, Ilias flinched. He hadn’t even realized she was in the room. “You’ve had all the time in the world to jump off the boat. Hell, if you do it from the stern, you’ll drown in moments. Instead, you wander around, sightseeing, playing with the switches on the projector. Even if you’ve got this other body to jump back to, which I’m still willing to believe, I don’t think you want to go there.”

  Ixion turned, staring at her incredulously. “Who in the netherworld’s name are you?”

  “You didn’t answer her question,” Ilias said tightly. It was, now that he thought about it, a damn good one.

  Ixion looked at him, then at Giliead. He finally said, “Very well, I’m not eager to go to my new body. It will take months for me to grow into it, and by the time I do, the Gardier will have retaken the island and destroyed Cineth.” He turned to Gerard and Niles again. “I spoke to one of their men of learning at length. He taught me their language so we could converse. I know much about them and have no particular loyalty to cause me to dissemble.”

  “You
would trade your life for information.” Gerard sounded skeptical.

  “Yes.”

  They can’t, Ilias thought. We can’t. But was there any other way out of this standoff?

  Gerard spoke to Niles briefly in their language. Niles answered in a dry tone, and Gerard shook his head. He said to Ixion in Syrnaic, “And if caught, you would trade similar information about us to the Gardier.”

  Ixion smiled. “Then don’t get me caught.”

  Waiting in the lounge outside, Ilias paced, his jaw set so tightly it was beginning to hurt. There were Rienish guards waiting by the doors, but he hardly noticed them. “I should be in there,” he told Tremaine. He wasn’t exactly sure why he had followed her out here, except that she had grabbed his wrist and tugged, and he had been too distracted to resist.

  “No, you shouldn’t.” She was sitting in one of the cushioned chairs, her bare feet propped up on a little wooden table.

  He stopped, planting his hands on his hips, snarling, “He’ll think I’m afraid to face him.”

  Tremaine was unimpressed. “No, he’ll wonder where you are.”

  Ilias took a breath to reply, then stopped, staring at her. That wasn’t the argument he had expected. “What?”

  Tremaine studied her fingernails calmly. “He wants your attention, he wants you to be in there glaring at him and hanging on every word.” She paused to pick at a broken nail. “Let him wonder what you’re doing. Let him wonder what you’re thinking.” She looked up at him finally, her face serious despite her preoccupation with her hands. “Let him scramble to get a handle on you, instead of the other way around.”

  He thought that over, hoping to find a hole in it, but it was too patently evident to argue with. And her confidence told him she knew she was right. He dropped down into the next chair instead, demanding in irritation, “Why do you know things like that?”

  She shrugged, and nibbled at her broken fingernail. “Annoying people is something of a talent of mine. I gave it up for a while, but lately it’s started to come back to me.”

  They had the parley at a table just outside the moving picture room. Giliead wouldn’t sit but paced behind Ixion’s chair, hoping his presence made the wizard as uncomfortable as Ixion made him. But he probably enjoys it, Giliead thought with sour resignation. Thankfully, Tremaine had somehow gotten Ilias to leave with her.

  Gerard took a place across from Ixion, grim-faced and somehow managing to convey that he felt Ixion was contaminating the air he breathed. There were men and women armed with Rienish curse weapons at the back of the room. The other wizard, Niles, was waiting with them, his face utterly cool and emotionless. Giliead had no feel for what the man was thinking, but he knew Ixion wouldn’t be able to read him either and that Ixion wouldn’t like it.

  Gerard said with cold contempt, “Our position is simple. If you attempt to leave the room where you have been confined again, we’ll kill you and you can go on to your next body and be damned. If you give us the information you have about the Gardier and cooperate fully, you’ll be confined, but you won’t be harmed, and we’ll keep you from the Gardier to the best of our ability.”

  The god-thing’s sphere sat on the table near Gerard, and Giliead could tell it was anything but disinterested. Its clicks and whirs sounded displeased. For the first time, Giliead could also feel little spurts of curses coming from it.

  Ixion folded his too-smooth hands, saying, “You could provide refreshments for this discussion.”

  Gerard lifted a brow. “Your needs are immaterial until you give us reason to think otherwise.”

  Ixion sighed. “You could also tell whatever it is you keep in that metal cage to stop trying to annoy me.”

  Intrigued by the sphere’s activity despite the situation, Giliead concentrated on it, focusing as hard as he could. After a moment he saw a dim wisp of white light drifting from the tarnished copper surface. Fascinated, he watched the translucent wisp arch over the table toward Ixion. There was something about it that made him think of a scout trying to creep past an enemy sentry post.

  Ixion was saying, “I realize now it was the other presence I detected on the Swift, which I assumed was another foreign wizard. It’s a clever trick, but—” The wisp became a talon and dived in for a strike. He halted, frowning. Through gritted teeth, he said, “I told you, make it stop.”

  Still concentrating on the sphere, Giliead suddenly saw lines of faded blue light stretching out from it, connecting to threads of different colors stretching all through the ship. He started, blinking, and it was gone, as if someone had dropped a cloth over a lamp to conceal it. Gerard’s talk of channeling the sphere’s power throughout the ship for protection suddenly made sense. Giliead realized he had been deliberately allowed to see the tendril that had touched Ixion, that the personality in the sphere had shared it with him like a private joke. He was just as sure that the sphere deliberately shielded itself from him. He didn’t mind; seeing that light constantly would have been unbelievably distracting. So the Rienish do have gods, he thought, lifting a brow. They just didn’t know it.

  Without looking away from Ixion, Gerard said, “Arisilde, please.”

  Giliead said calmly, “Ixion, the man in the metal cage is a god, and has bigger stones than both your bodies put together.”

  Ixion flicked a glance up at him. “Crude,” he commented idly, but Giliead could sense the wariness in him. He turned to Gerard again. “If I give you the information, you will release me.”

  Gerard evinced surprise. “Are the innocent people you killed still dead? As long as they are, we won’t release you.” His expression hardened. “You are bargaining for your life, not your freedom.”

  Ixion regarded him for a long moment, then laughed softly. “The Gardier said their enemies were soft. You may be soft, but you don’t lie when you deal, do you?” He sighed, making a gentle gesture with his pale hands. “Very well, I agree.”

  Giliead met Gerard’s eyes. They both knew this was a temporary measure.

  They put Ixion back into another warded storage room, not far from the first one. Tremaine noted that as a concession to Ixion’s apparent surrender, it had been made more comfortable with a cot and chair and some bedding. They had chosen a compartment with an ordinary wooden door, locked but less likely to hurt anyone if Ixion decided to blow it up. With Gerard’s assistance, Niles had also warded the door, the walls, deck and ceiling against ether, light, scent and liquid, which should cover just about anything Ixion could attempt to use to harm them. These were wards that hadn’t been used in years since they were no use against the Gardier. She wasn’t sure if the sphere had helped them or not; it sat on a desk in the outer room of Ixion’s prison, clicking ominously to itself.

  Giliead and Ilias had stayed to grimly watch most of the process, then went to join the other Syprians preparing to go ashore with Ander’s men. It was an expedition Tremaine hadn’t managed to join, something she blamed Ander for. She also knew lifeboats had been dropped to search for Gardier survivors among the floating debris of the gunship wreck, but the rumor was that none had been found.

  The chances were good that some of the Gardier had stayed behind in the city. The Ravenna was making a slow approach to the mouth of Cineth harbor, though she wouldn’t try to go inside. One of the sailors had commented that she probably couldn’t, since it was unlikely a harbor meant for galleys had been dredged to accommodate a liner.

  Niles was finishing the last symbols on the deck in front of the closed door, the chalk marks fizzing and vanishing into the metal as he wrote. Gerard stepped over to join him, his notebooks under his arm. “This should hold him,” he said, sounding both resigned and determined. “Until we have to channel the wards through the ship again. I’m afraid it will still cause this set to fail.”

  Colonel Averi just nodded tiredly. He had been out in the corridor discussing the situation with the army sergeant in charge of the guard detail. He eyed the door. “Some of the men were injured, but nothing perman
ent. It’s almost as if he didn’t want to burn any bridges, as if he planned this as soon as he regained consciousness.”

  Tremaine knew he was right about that. “He’s like a rat. Or something else that always comes out on top.”

  “Can he provide any real information, do you think?” Averi asked Gerard, as if Tremaine hadn’t spoken.

  Gerard frowned. “Possibly. I doubt we dare trust it.”

  “There is one thing we need him for.” Tremaine folded her arms, studying the door. “Ixion grew a body, an empty one. At least we hope it was empty—” Now everyone was staring at her. She finished hurriedly, “Arisilde needs a body.”

  That got Averi’s attention. He stared at her, saying, “Good God, Tremaine.” Gerard just rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache.

  “I didn’t mean the one he has.” At least, not if they were going to be that way about it. “But the spell to make one.”

  “But could we force him to give us the spell he used?” Niles said calmly, getting to his feet and dusting off his hands. “He seems rather obstinate.”

  Tremaine kept her eyes on the door. I bet I could think of something.

  Chapter 5

  Some of those who saw the Ravenna from the cliffs said they thought the Gardier wizards had caused a great black island to rise up from the sea, until she called the wizard’s ship out to do battle and ate it. Some of them didn’t believe our telling that she was a ship until the Ravenna’s captain followed our custom and gave her eyes.

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

  Abignon Translation