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

by Martha Wells

  Tremaine sighed. She supposed it didn’t matter; she didn’t have anything to say to the bastard anyway. And she could hear real fear under Ilias’s no-nonsense tone. “Oh, fine. We’ll be in the main hall.”

  Ilias lost some of the tension in his shoulders, and took her hand. “I’ll make it up to you.” He lifted it to his lips, and she thought he was going to kiss the back like a conventional Rienish gentleman. But instead he bit her gently in the knuckle and lifted his brows suggestively.

  Tremaine freed her hand, patted him on the cheek, and said, “That’s a start.” She wasn’t going to admit just how good a start it was.

  Florian muttered, “Somebody could offer to make it up to me,” but followed her without protest up the steps to the Promenade deck.

  They went through the doors to the roofed and glassed-in portion of the deck that ran along the ship’s side, but Tremaine sensed foot-dragging. “Did you really want to see Ixion that much?” she asked. “He’s not that exciting.”

  “No,” Florian admitted. “But I’m doing the work of a trained sorceress. If I’m going to have the responsibilities, I’d like to have a chance at the authority too.”

  They reached the doors that led into the main hall and the shopping arcade. The doors on either side of the hall opened to the Promenade deck, and the big room was airy without being exposed to the wind. The daylight reflected off the warm yellow woods and the mellow cream tiles. Tremaine chose a couch at the far end of the room from where the other refugees were gathered and dropped down on it, glad to rest her back and stretch her legs out. Her feet hurt already, but after all the walking on the island, it was probably just a reflex. “You’re the only student Gerard and Niles have,” she pointed out, not realizing it was true until she said it. “They may never have another. Maybe they just don’t want to get you killed.”

  Florian shrugged an acknowledgment as she sat down on the couch. In a deliberate change of subject, she said, “Well, how is it so far?”

  Tremaine lifted a brow at her. “What?”

  Florian eyed her back. “Being married. To Ilias.”

  By which she meant, whether she realized it or not, Tremaine, have you managed to mess it up yet? Tremaine smiled thinly. “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “A real answer,” Florian specified.

  Tremaine leaned back on the soft cushion, making herself think it over. She had become friends with Ilias almost before she had been aware of it, the shared danger and the intimacy of having to communicate without words creating a closeness that she would never have sought under normal circumstances. Frustrated because she had no idea how it was going, she said impatiently, “So far so good? It’s only been a day. Really, between Ixion and this thing with the Gardier, there hasn’t been any time.”

  Fortunately, Arites walked up then, plopping down on the floor in front of them with an annoyed sigh. Tremaine could interpret that expression with no problem. “Giliead wouldn’t let you stay in the room and write down the conversation with Ixion, would he?”

  Arites looked disgruntled. “My history of Ixion is missing important details.” He gestured in frustration. “Somebody has to write these things down!”

  As Tremaine had hoped, Florian gave up on discussing the marriage. Folding her arms and resting her head back against the gold-striped upholstery, the other girl said, “I wonder if Dr. Divies is right, and they do make the Gardier soldiers forget their past.” She frowned. “If it isn’t a spell like Niles thinks, then they’d have to have terrible punishments to enforce it. Could that be worth it?”

  Tremaine took a deep breath. She was absently people-watching, scanning the faces of the passersby. Most of them were refugees, with a few crew members mixed in. Refugees tended to wander in groups and crewmen to trot. “You can’t fault their record of success so far,” she said, realizing she was echoing Divies’s words.

  Florian nodded glumly. “The more we learn about them, the more confusing it gets.” She looked at Tremaine for a moment. “Giaren told me that the ship hasn’t picked up any radio traffic since we sank the Gardier gunship.”

  Tremaine frowned. “That’s not normal?”

  “No. On a voyage to Capidara in our world, they could make ship-to-shore connections for almost the whole trip. We should be able to hear the Gardier talking to each other, or the other people advanced enough to have wireless, but there’s nothing. It’s like they’re communicating only with sorcery, like that radio set they had in the caves on the island.”

  Tremaine shook her head. “That is bizarre.” Why bother to use sorcery when a normal wireless would do the job most of the time? In Ile-Rien—or the Ile-Rien of the past—there had been a great many people born with some talent for magic, but the number of sorcerers who could do Great Spells, or whose talent enabled them to do more than charms and simple healing and small wards, was a bare fraction. “But it might be just empty territory all around us.” She gave Arites a poke with her foot. “You’d never heard of the Gardier before this.”

  He nodded earnestly. “That’s true. I didn’t have a chance to send messages to any of the poets in Syrneth to make certain before we left, but I’m sure I would have remembered it if anyone had told a story about them before. And none of the traders from other places have ever mentioned them, as far as we know.”

  “So maybe they just aren’t in this hemisphere except when they’re attacking Ile-Rien.”

  “But then why are they attacking us, when there’s all this land here?” Florian asked logically.

  Tremaine followed that cold thought to its conclusion, picking at a stray thread in her shirt. Florian was still looking at her like she wanted an answer. Like she wanted someone to say it aloud. Why is that always my job? she thought wearily. “The Syprians don’t have sorcerers like we do.”

  Florian’s brows drew together, her face set and grim. “It must be the crystals. They must have put every sorcerer ever born to them in one of the things, and they’re all still alive, still serving them, hundreds and thousands of them. That’s what Gerard and Niles think.” She hesitated, her eyes on Tremaine again, but shadowed. “If I’m caught—”

  Tremaine sensed a “will you kill me” coming and nervously leapt to head it off. “Gervas didn’t seem very interested in you. Maybe they don’t do it to girls.”

  Florian glared at her, but at least that darkness lifted from her face. “You know, I was trying to be serious—”

  “I know you were trying to be serious. It was really obvious. I’m not—” Tremaine’s casual observation of the people passing through the room suddenly brought her up short. Two men, a sailor and a civilian, were walking with an older Parscian man between them. The sailor had a peremptory hand on the Parscian’s elbow as if the man was being conducted somewhere. The civilian was a plain-looking, dark-haired man whose pale face was vaguely familiar, though she didn’t recognize him as being with the Viller Institute. He must be a refugee, but his brown suit was a little too seedy to mark him as part of the Court or Ministry groups. He could be one of the people trapped at Chaire who had decided to take the risk, but…Seedy. And furtive. Now she remembered; he was the man she had seen with a crew member in the cross corridor, as if buying or selling some forbidden object. That wasn’t the same crewman, but as he conducted the worried Parscian down the stairs, she saw him throw a surreptitious glance over his shoulder. “Hold it.”

  “What?” Florian demanded, looking around the room. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know.” Tremaine pushed to her feet. “Let’s go find out.”

  Giliead wasn’t looking forward to this. Gerard came with them down a deck to Ixion’s chamber, stopping at the outer room to speak to the guards, and Giliead and Ilias waited outside in the metal-walled passage. Giliead folded his arms, glad Ilias had made Tremaine and Florian wait elsewhere.

  Giliead knew it was only Gerard’s influence that kept the Rienish from trying to turn Ixion into an ally. After spending this much time in the
ir company, listening to Florian’s explanations of their councils, he realized that wizards were their best warriors against the Gardier, and that their numbers were desperately depleted. If Gerard hadn’t persuaded the others that Ixion was dangerous and deeply untrustworthy, Giliead knew they would have tried to bargain with him.

  If something happened to Gerard, or if he and Niles somehow lost their status in the Rienish ranks, Giliead knew it might happen anyway.

  The guards filed out to wait in the passage, throwing them curious glances, and Giliead stepped in. Gerard had taken out the other pieces of glass that fit over his eyes, the ones he said gave him the ability to see curses, and was studying the door.

  “I know you’re out there.” Ixion’s voice came from the other side of the sealed portal. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing of interest to you,” Gerard replied, still studying the door.

  “Come to make me another offer?”

  “What?” Giliead asked, exchanging a sour glance with Ilias. “Are you tired of the deal you made for your life, and you want another?”

  There was a long moment of silence. “I have done nothing to break our agreement.” Ixion sounded sullen and weary.

  Gerard pulled off the heavy glass pieces, replacing them with his normal ones. He looked puzzled, but not worried. “I saw some disturbance in the patterns, but I don’t think he’s tried to escape.”

  Giliead stepped closer to the door. Concentrating hard, he could just feel the currents of the Rienish protective curses in the air near the door. It was mightily disturbing. A curse this powerful he should have been able to see from any distance, let alone across the room. This was just a mild movement of air that should have been still, air that wove back in on itself instead of flowing in one direction. He couldn’t sense any of Ixion’s curses, just that deceptively gentle barrier. “I don’t think so either.”

  “I keep to my word,” Ixion said with particular emphasis. “I thought you better than that.”

  Ilias, who had kept silent until now, snorted derisively.

  Gerard shook his head, stepping out of the room. Giliead, not wanting to prolong the interview, prodded Ilias out and followed him. “I don’t see how he could have caused this,” Gerard said softly. “Not from behind those wards. Unfortunately.”

  Giliead nodded grimly. “We’ll keep looking.”

  As they followed Gerard down the corridor, Ilias said, “He sounded different. Was that a trick?”

  Giliead shook his head slowly, giving it serious consideration. “I don’t think so. Maybe he’s just…He’s never lost before.”

  “He lost his head,” Ilias pointed out skeptically.

  “Well, that,” Giliead agreed. “But that was over fairly quickly, and he was winning up to then.”

  Ilias nodded grudgingly, giving in on that point. “So you think he realizes he can’t fight the Rienish?”

  “I think so. They know things he’s never heard of before. Gerard took him down with a curse made of spit and a piece of Dyani’s hair, and he says the god-sphere knows more than he does.” Giliead nodded to himself, thinking it over. “Ixion’s never had to give way to anybody before, much less beg and bargain for his life; that’s got to have an effect on him.”

  Ilias lifted his brows, considering it. “Good,” he said softly.

  Tremaine had gotten to know this area of the ship very well over the course of the past day, so following the two men and their possibly unwilling companion wasn’t hard. Intriguingly, they seemed to be heading back to the Third Class area, further aft and just a deck down from the room where the sorcerer had been hiding. But the blue-carpeted corridors were smaller here and the layout more confusing with more cross corridors, and they turned a corner to find their quarry vanished.

  Tremaine swore and followed the corridor to its end, Florian and Arites hurrying behind her. They came to an open stairwell, and Tremaine stopped, startled to see a small group of refugees going up. None of them looked particularly well off, the men in worn traveling suits and the women in dresses that had seen several seasons. “Lot of traffic back here all of sudden,” she muttered to Florian. She leaned over the smooth wooden stair railing, looking up and down, but she couldn’t tell if the three men had gone that way.

  The other girl shook her head slightly, frowning. “Maybe people are using the lounge areas. The windows down on this deck are all portholes with dead-lights and easier to cover at night than those floor-to-ceiling windows in some of the First Class lounges.”

  “No one was down here last night,” Arites interposed. When Tremaine looked at him inquiringly, he explained, “Kias and I walked around a lot.”

  “Huh.” Tremaine looked around thoughtfully. Too many damn rooms. But if the men wanted to do something in a stateroom, why pick one all the way down here? They must be making for a public room. “If they were cutting through here…” She crossed the stairwell to the next corridor and headed down it.

  “You think they’re spies?” Florian wanted to know. “Maybe paying that man for information?”

  “Maybe.” The Ravenna’s original skeleton crew and the small army detachment that had accompanied the Viller Institute must all know each other, at least by sight. But more navy and army personnel had been picked up with the civilian refugees at Chaire, and there might be enough now to make fading into the background easy.

  They passed a room labeled THIRD CLASS GENTLEMEN’S HAIRDRESSER, with a window looking into a dark space with barber chairs and glass cabinets, then came to an open door. Tremaine could hear low voices, speaking Parscian.

  Tremaine motioned Arites and Florian to hang back, and carefully edged up to peer in. It was a long dark-paneled smoking room, probably a quarter the size of some of the First Class lounges, the chairs and tables pushed back against the wood-paneled walls and covered with dust sheets.

  The three men were there, with the other crewman she had seen the suspicious civilian with before. Tremaine’s grasp of Parscian was spotty, but better than that of the sailor who was trying to speak it to the nervous but adamant Parscian man. After a few minutes of listening to them argue she rolled her eyes in disgust and withdrew from the door.

  “It’s not spies, dammit,” she reported to Florian and Arites in a bare whisper. “It’s a stupid shakedown swindle. They’re trying to get money out of him, claiming only Rienish citizens are allowed on the ship and that they’ll report his family if they don’t come across.”

  Florian stared, aghast. “The hell!” Before Tremaine could stop her, she stormed into the room.

  The Parscian man was grimly handing over a battered pocketwatch, probably his last possession of any value. Florian grabbed the watch out of the startled crewman’s hand as the Parscian backed hastily away. “What are you doing with this?” she demanded.

  The sailor glared at her in outrage. The anger and frustration in his eyes made Tremaine rest a hand on the pistol tucked into the back of her belt. The man told Florian, “He was giving it to me, and it’s none of your business.” His gaze swept them, dismissing Tremaine but settling on Arites suspiciously. “I don’t know what you want, but you can get the hell out of here.”

  Swearing, the civilian reached for the watch, but Florian jerked it away, falling back a step. “Why is he giving it to you then?”

  The Parscian man asked a worried question, looking in confusion from Florian to the crewman. He looked hopefully at Tremaine for an explanation, and she shrugged helplessly. He was probably a refugee from Adera or the Low Countries who had been trapped at Chaire, unable to get any further or waiting to be joined by others who had never come.

  The civilian tried an acid smile. “He’s just giving it to us, little girl. Now take your native friends and get out.”

  Arites moved to Florian’s side then, forcing Tremaine to step into the room so she could still get a clear shot if she needed to. He hadn’t understood the Rienish words, but the tone must have spoken volumes. He stopped just close enough to
the civilian to be threatening. His voice hard, he said, “You don’t speak to her that way.”

  It startled Tremaine; she had been thinking of him as being somewhat like a Rienish café poet, someone who didn’t get into fights, except rather mild ones with other café poets. For the first time she remembered that he went out on the Swift with Halian and the others and probably spent more time pulling oars than writing stories.

  Not understanding Syrnaic, the crewman looked him over, his sneer probably from habit. Arites was more slightly built than Ilias or Giliead, and his wild brown hair was too wispy to stay in braids, his beard stubble as patchy as a young boy’s. He didn’t look that intimidating. “Just take your native boyfriend and get out.”

  Florian’s cheeks were red. “You’re stealing from these people. I’m going to report you—”

  He sneered. “You got no proof. It’s my word against a bunch of lying foreigners. They’re probably spies anyway.”

  She shook the watch in his face, still angry. “How could you? Don’t you realize what’s happening?”

  “That’s enough.” The civilian grabbed Florian’s arm. Tremaine drew the pistol, but Arites got there first, stepping in to shove the man away from Florian. The crewman threw a punch that caught Arites in the chin, then grabbed his shirt, bracing to push him back. Arites knocked the man’s arms aside and slammed a fist into his jaw with an audible crack. The crewman staggered back and slumped into the wall.

  His companions surged forward, stopping short when Tremaine said sharply, “That’s far enough. Put your hands up and back away.”

  Arites rubbed the shoulder where he had taken the Gardier bullet. “That hurt,” he said, sounding like himself again.

  “Thank you,” Florian told him. She didn’t look at all upset at the fallen crewman’s obvious pain. She turned to hand the watch back to the old Parscian man, who was watching the situation in wary confusion.

  Still covering the other two men, Tremaine asked the Parscian, “You speak Aderassi?”