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

by Martha Wells

  “Really.” Ander nodded pleasantly to him and to Tremaine’s unresponsive back, sketched a gesture of farewell at Gerard, and left the room. Gerard shook his head with a sour expression.

  “That was fun.” Tremaine rubbed her palms together briskly. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

  It was afternoon by the time everyone was ready to go. The bright sun threw long shadows, which would help the concealment charms Gerard had put on the Ravenna’s launches.

  Tremaine waited with Gerard on the boat deck, impatient to go now that everything was ready. Their boat was being lowered in its davit, bringing it level with the gate in the railing so they could step aboard. There would be four boats in all. The first would leave with the Syprians, Ander, Florian and a few of Ander’s men, including Basimi, an engineer named Molin and an army sergeant named Dubos whom Tremaine hadn’t met before. The others would follow an hour later, giving them time to find a spot for the troops to conceal themselves and to start scouting the port and the Gardier outpost. Gerard and the sphere would be coming with the troops. “You will be careful,” he said now. The sphere tucked under his arm clucked metallically at her, as if echoing the sentiment.

  “Of course.” Ilias, Giliead, Cimarus, Cletia, Arites and Kias were waiting nearby. Ilias was pacing impatiently, Giliead looked stolid, Arites appeared to be telling Kias the history of everything the Syprians knew about the Walls, and Cimarus and Cletia managed to look both defensive and aloof. Tremaine suspected Arites and Kias had been a last-minute addition to make sure Cimarus and Cletia were outnumbered.

  All the Syprians wore the loose wraps that could double as ground cloths or blankets in an emergency, and Tremaine was glad she had borrowed one of those from Pasima too. The colors were all dull browns or grays that faded into the rocks and dirt better than the brighter colors of their clothing. Pasima’s boots mostly fit her, but the soft leather had no arch support whatsoever. She was also the only one who didn’t have a sword slung across her back, but though Ilias and Giliead had brought extra blades, she saw no reason to carry a weapon she couldn’t use. What she did have was a visible sheath knife borrowed from Gyan and a holstered revolver attached to the back of her belt and hidden under her shirt and wrap.

  “‘Of course,’” Gerard mimicked her unexpectedly. He continued in exasperation, “Tremaine, we’ve come a long way—”

  “Don’t wreck it now?” she finished, taken aback by his vehemence. Taken aback and hurt. She had thought Gerard at least believed her to be a little bit competent.

  He let out a frustrated breath. “That is not what I meant.”

  They stood there in silence a moment, Tremaine watching him carefully, trying to decide if he thought she was that unreliable or if it was just the situation. He’s worried. He’s always worried, but we’ve come so far, and we’re so close. She said, “I know it’s hard to tell, but I’m serious about being careful. Really. Besides, we’re not doing that much, just scouting.”

  Gerard rubbed his eyes, rueful and tired. “I seem to remember our excursions on the Pilot Boat were officially designated a scouting mission.”

  Tremaine cocked a brow at him. Not exactly engendering my confidence, Gerard. But the boat had clunked into position, and the sailors were opening the gate in the railing, and it was time to leave.

  Ilias perched up in the bow of the boat to guide the Rienish helmsman through the treacherous waters, watching for the darker shapes of rocks just under the waves. Giliead was posted on the starboard for the same reason and Kias aft. Tremaine, Arites, Cletia and Cimarus sat near the bow, with Florian, Ander and the other three Rienish toward the stern. Other boats with the rest of the war party would be following throughout the day.

  Past the barrier islands, which were just long spits of sand and sea wrack, were giant stone pillars, thrusting up out of the water all along the base of the Walls, some as big as two or three ship’s lengths across, the tops sprouting small jungles of deep green vegetation. The barrier islands were enough to shield these inner coves from the constant movement of the waves, but Ilias thought that during a storm it would be suicide to be caught here.

  “Slow, slow, and over that way!” Catching sight of a dark lump under the surface, he motioned hastily, using a pidgin mix of Rienish and Syrnaic for the instructions.

  Muttering to himself, the sailor adjusted their course slightly, using the wheel and the levers that apparently controlled the speed of the boat. Past the obstacle safely, Ilias saw the edge of a little cove formed out of the base of this Wall. There wasn’t much beach, just large flat rocks, washed by the low waves. But the stone in the cliffs above them was honeycombed with passages, forming steep rough trails leading up. “Here.” Ilias pointed. “Let’s try here.”

  The helmsman squinted to see the cove in the dusky shadows under the cliff, then nodded, turning the wheel to adjust the course.

  “There?” Tremaine stepped up beside the helmsman, grabbing the railing to steady herself.

  Ander was beside her before Ilias could explain his choice, saying emphatically, “We’re still too far from the port.”

  “We’re too close.” Ilias rounded on him impatiently. “If they have gleaners, they’ll work out from the port at least this far down. And there could be settlements up in the cliffs. If somebody asks us why our ship isn’t where we said she was, I don’t want to answer that question, do you?”

  Ander stared at the cove, stone-faced, then spoke to the helmsman in Rienish too rapid for Ilias to catch any words. The helmsman, ignoring the tension, nodded. After exchanging more rapid speech, the helmsman guided the boat toward the cove.

  Ander moved to the stern without another word. Tremaine rolled her eyes and followed him. The helmsman saw Ilias’s sour expression and slanted a sympathetic look at him.

  Giliead stepped up beside Ilias, leaning his hip on the railing. He watched Ander’s retreat grimly, saying in a low voice, “He wanted you to ask him first if we could try that cove, instead of just telling the crewman.”

  Ilias snorted. Good warleaders let everyone do their jobs instead of finding excuses to prove they were in charge. “That’s going to be fun.”

  Giliead nodded, annoyed. “It must be just us. He’s not up here telling this man how to steer the boat.”

  Ilias eyed the wheel, the levers and knobs set into the wood beneath it. “Maybe he just doesn’t know how.”

  Tremaine moved back between the row of benches and caught Ander in the stern. “Excuse me.”

  “Look.” He rounded on her angrily. “I’m in command of—”

  Tremaine switched to Syrnaic, keeping her voice low. “That was not a challenge to your authority. Syprians work in tight little family groups and make decisions by committee.” She noticed that Basimi and the other two Rienish in the group were looking away with studied interest in the scenery. Florian, the only one who could understand Syrnaic besides Ander, had hastily shifted forward to sit with Arites, out of earshot. “God knows how it works, but apparently it does. If you push one of them, you push all of them, and Ilias may be willing to take your obvious contempt and lump it for a while, but Giliead won’t.”

  Ander glared at her, taking two deep breaths, then looked over her shoulder. She knew he was looking at Giliead, whose eyes she could feel boring into them across the length of the boat. They were coming into the cove, the wet gray stones rising up around them, the boat slowing as the engine cut out. Everyone was moving to the front to see or to help moor the boat. She heard a splash as someone went into the water to tie it off. She hoped she didn’t have to point out to Ander that Cineth and thereby the rest of the Syrnai’s recognition of Ile-Rien as an ally had hinged on, and continued to hinge on, Giliead’s opinion as Chosen Vessel. That it was on that opinion alone that the Syprians’ fragile acceptance of Rienish sorcerers rested.

  Ander’s eyes came back to her. His expression was still stony, but she thought the flush might be from awareness of a tactical mistake rather than ange
r. He said curtly, “Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”

  “You’re welcome.” Tremaine turned, but a hand on her sleeve stopped her.

  “Tremaine…” he began.

  She just looked at him, waiting, one brow cocked. It was then that she realized that what Ander thought of her didn’t matter at the moment. That perhaps it didn’t just signal the end of an ill-considered infatuation on both their parts, but the end of any friendship between them.

  Maybe he realized it too. After a moment he let her go, and she walked back to the front of the boat.

  They had been walking and climbing a torturous path along the cliff top for a couple of hours, with Tremaine cursing Syprian footgear the whole way. The waves below washed the narrow sandy strips of the barrier islands and the towering rocks; above them the jagged gray peaks of the mountain loomed. The pockets of terrain that had been in shadow all day were almost cold.

  Kias had gone ahead to scout, leaving trail signs scratched on the stone for them to follow. They had been bypassing small settlements of people Ilias said were gleaners, who lived by fishing and picking through the remnants of wrecks and whatever flotsam the sea washed up. They wanted to avoid these little communities to keep anyone from getting too close a look at the Rienish members of the party.

  They turned away from the cliff face and through a narrow tunnel in the rock. It opened up into an only slightly wider gorge that wound down through the mountain, a trickling stream playing over mossy rocks down its middle. Oh, that’s going to be fun to walk on, Tremaine thought, contemplating sliding the whole way on her bottom. At the head of the gorge, Giliead stopped, consulting a scratched marking on the stone. “He’s found a place where the war party can gather.”

  Tremaine leaned against the wall and pushed her hair back. “So we’re close to the port?”

  Ilias pointed across the jutting crags. “It’s right there, past that bluff.”

  Tremaine nodded, knowing the trail sign had somehow pinpointed the place’s location exactly for him. She was going to have to learn a rudimentary version of the trail signs, just for safety’s sake. The complexity of the designs had certainly explained why Ilias and Giliead had managed to memorize so many of the Ravenna’s directional signs in so little time.

  She passed this information along as Florian, Arites and the others caught up with them, resisting the impulse to add loudly, That all right with you, Ander?

  He seemed to have taken what might have been a badly judged rebuke well enough, and Giliead hadn’t exploded. She flatly refused to believe Ander was resentful of Ilias out of jealousy for her; it was more likely some leftover impulse of the playboy and noble scion he had once been, thwarted at getting his way. But that didn’t sound right either. Oh hell, I don’t know, she thought wearily. It was strange to be the peacemaker. All in all, she thought being the troublemaker was a more advantageous position, and less stressful. I can’t think why I gave it up.

  “We’re walking.” Florian prodded her from behind, and she realized Giliead and Ilias were already halfway down the gorge, leaping from rock to rock with the ease and unconcern of mountain goats. Wearily, Tremaine pushed off the wall.

  Chapter 14

  All the Rienish members of the party except Tremaine left the group to take cover in the sheltered overhang Kias had found. There was enough room there for the strike force to gather, and Kias had gone back to the landing point to wait for the other boats to arrive and to lead them back to it. Tremaine fully expected to have to listen to instructions all over again, but Ander only eyed her grimly and said, “We’ll be waiting.”

  As she and the Syprians continued on, Tremaine started to see the signs of occupation that Ilias and Giliead, walking a little way ahead, must have spotted long ago. In the rocks above the trail a faded red tarp blocked off a cave; someone’s home, probably. Shards of broken pottery had trickled down a small gully further on and far above it dun-colored fragments of cloth hung on a rope stretched from one cliff to another.

  Abruptly the trail turned, the rock faces falling away to reveal a city in a vast terraced bowl, the buildings perched on ledges of varied heights thrusting out like a giant staircase. Most of the structures were lean-tos or shanties, constructed of gray storm-wracked wood, but they were clustered around solid buildings of a smooth butter-colored stone with small round towers and curved walls. It’s like the underground city, Tremaine realized, frowning. The stone buildings were constructed differently, but many had been ruined a long time, and halfway down the tiers two awkwardly shaped pillars stuck up at an odd angle, the tops of both raw jagged stone. Not just like, but…But someone else had built this place, and the current inhabitants were just squatting on it.

  The city led down to a harbor sheltered by the cliffs, the entrance guarded by more of those rock pillars jutting up from the blue water, the tops covered with a tangle of jungle growth. The place was alive with people and the harbor crowded with small craft and larger ships, much less orderly than Cineth’s docks. Tremaine didn’t see any Syprian galleys at first glance or, for that matter, Gardier vessels. Most of the ships seemed to be leaving. As she watched, a big two-masted one lifted anchor, its oars taking it out of port while the crew scrambled to raise the sails.

  Everyone was standing and staring. “I can’t believe we’re here,” Ilias murmured. Cimarus pointed out something to Cletia, who nodded excitedly.

  Arites was poking Tremaine repeatedly in the ribs. “Look at the statue.”

  “The what?” He pointed down toward the big awkwardly shaped pillars. She peered more closely at the base and realized they weren’t pillars, they were legs, their bare feet planted firmly on a stone plinth. It was the lower part of a giant statue, broken off just above the knees. At its full height it must have been tall enough to pat the very top of the dome of Vienne’s Grand Opera. “Oh, that,” she agreed, impressed.

  She stepped up beside Ilias and Giliead, who had stopped on the edge of the trail to survey the scene. “I can’t see the airship from here.”

  Giliead jerked his chin toward the red cliff jutting out on the far side of the city’s bowl. “It’s just past there, hanging out over the water.”

  The wind shifted, and the smell hit her with the force of a slap: dead fish, woodsmoke and too many people. A flock of large gray gulls wheeled and shrieked overhead, adding to the din. Tremaine rubbed the back of her neck. She was sweating from a mix of stage fright nerves and the damp air and was suddenly ready to have this over and done with. And they couldn’t all stand here like lumps without drawing the wrong kind of attention. “Damn. Well, come on.”

  Giliead took the lead as they made their way down the trail, past the cleared rubble from an old rockfall, and onto the first ledge. From there a broad stairway of chipped stone led the way down. The buildings loomed up around them, cutting off the view. Most of the people seemed to be engaged in moving out of their homes, carrying goods down the stairways. Casks, bundles, bags, bales, large painted clay jars were crammed everywhere, filling the ruined buildings, or being dragged or trundled down the broad stairs. Tremaine began to see why the inhabitants were forced to live in lean-tos and tattered tents: the older permanent structures were all used for cargo storage.

  The Wall people themselves were a mixed bag, some dark-haired and dark-skinned in various shades of coffee color, others big in stature, with sallow skin and brown or red hair. Ilias and Cletia’s bright blond heads tended to stand out, and most of the Wall men kept their hair cropped short. They stared at the newcomers or watched them warily, but no one offered a challenge. Tremaine suspected they were too busy leaving. Only the youngest babies were carried; everyone who could walk was helping shift a box or a bag. Tremaine heard talk in a babble of languages, none of which she understood.

  They crossed another ledge, coming to a stairway down to an open plaza where some trading still seemed to be taking place. At least, people were standing around arguing rather than carrying their belongings to the
harbor. The plaza had a circular fountain in the center and bright-colored awnings to shield sitting areas with rugs and stools.

  With so much to look at, Tremaine didn’t see the enormous round faces carved into the walls overlooking the plaza until she was halfway down into it. Craning her neck to look, she stumbled on the stairs. She bit her tongue to hold in a Rienish curse, and Arites caught her shoulder to steady her. Waiting below, Ilias looked back up at her, frowning, and she waved him on, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  She glanced up again as she reached the bottom, shielding her eyes against the sun. The carved faces were rounded, softened by time and wind, their expressions uniformly serene.

  The others gathered around Giliead, who jerked his head to indicate a group of men and women at the other end of the plaza, talking intently to one of the Wall Port traders. They were tall, dark-skinned people, dressed in loose bright-colored trousers, sashes and coats. “Those are Chaean traders. The one with the topknot is a shipmaster,” he told Tremaine.

  She nodded. She knew the Chaeans were a people the Syprians had regular contact with, even though they didn’t always get along with them. “We could talk to them, find out what happened when the Gardier arrived.”

  Giliead lifted a brow. “They’ll think it’s odd if we just walk up to them.” He considered the problem a moment. “But if we wait a little, they may come over to us.”

  Ilias was nodding like this was a perfectly normal situation. Cletia and Cimarus didn’t seem to find it unusual either. Tremaine blew out a breath, deciding not to argue. “Ah…All right. So we just stand here?”

  Arites leaned in to say, “This is a place where ships buy provisions. We can act as if we’re waiting to talk to one of the traders.”

  Giliead nodded, looking around. He chose one of the awnings where a group of people were arguing vociferously, stepping into its shade and planting himself there solidly. The others just stood where they were. Tremaine tried it for a few moments, then gave up. She couldn’t just stand there feeling self-conscious. She strolled casually over to the next awning, where there was another trader and another angry discussion, pretending to be checking out its prospects.