by Martha Wells
After a moment she glanced back to see the Chaean traders approaching the Syprians cautiously, looking as if they wanted to be friendly but weren’t sure how it would be received. Arites had taken a seat on the ground near their awning, making notes on parchment scraps, his bag propped in his lap as a makeshift desk. One of the younger Chaeans was lucky enough to pick him to speak to first, making a gesture toward the parchment and commenting on it. Arites looked up at him with a grin as he replied, waving an arm to indicate the whole of the Wall Port.
Fascinated, Tremaine watched the attitude shift in all the Syprians, as if Arites’s action had somehow committed them to diplomacy rather than hostility. She had always thought of the Syprians as gregarious people; now she wondered how much of that had been simply luck at meeting the right Syprians first, under the right circumstances.
Cimarus let himself be drawn into conversation with two other Chaean men, and the shipmaster stepped up to the awning to speak to Giliead and Cletia. Ilias was the only one who hadn’t unbent. He was leaning against the outer pole of the awning, arms folded, not openly hostile, but his expression was closed and not encouraging. None of the Chaeans attempted to approach him.
She saw Giliead, listening as Cletia spoke with polite gravity to the Chaean shipmaster, flick a worried look at him. Chaeans know what curse marks are, she realized abruptly. She was pretty sure they didn’t follow the custom the way the Syprians did, but they would know what it meant. She bit her lip, trying to think if ignoring the situation would be better than saying something to Ilias about it. Then someone behind her said, “Greeting.”
Tremaine turned and found herself facing two Chaean women. One was older, her curly dark hair streaked with gray, and the other possibly her daughter. They had the same long straight noses and high cheekbones. They wore embroidered open coats over brief singlets and loose billowy trousers. It was a style of dress Tremaine felt she could have gotten to like as much as she did Syprian clothing. Realizing they were waiting for a response, she said, “Ah, hello.”
“Where’s your ship?” the older woman asked in careful Syrnaic.
“We went aground down the coast, came up here to buy supplies while the others are working on her.” Tremaine managed to suppress a wince. Could you have blurted your cover story out in a more transparently false way? I think not. She just hoped the others had remembered it.
That out of the way, the younger woman shifted forward and asked confidentially, “Is it true that Syrnai women can have more than one man? Bonded to her, I mean.”
“Oh, sure.” So did everyone know that but me? But it explained why the two women had approached her. It was curiosity, not suspicion. Tremaine felt the biting tension ease in her shoulders. “For a first marriage anyway. If you can afford it.”
The older woman looked across at the Syprians, brows lifted speculatively. “How many of those men are yours?”
Tremaine suppressed the sudden urge to say All of them. “The blond one.” What the hell. “My other two are with the ship.”
Both women eyed Ilias speculatively. Neither commented on the curse mark, which could be politeness or just that they hadn’t noticed it, and Tremaine, Ilias and Giliead were all being wildly oversensitive. Realizing she was missing an opportunity here, she asked with what she hoped was innocent curiosity, “What is that big black thing in the cliffs above the harbor? It looks…different from everything else.”
“Newcomers brought it,” the older woman answered, her expression sobering as she shifted to face Tremaine again. “You won’t believe this, but it’s a ship that flies through the air.”
“Through the air?” Tremaine made a snap decision on how much surprise to show; it would be easier for all of them to admit they had some knowledge of the airships than to have to fake astonishment and disbelief. She felt fairly sure Ilias, Giliead and Arites could have pulled it off in their various ways, but Cimarus and Cletia were unknown quantities. She nodded, frowning worriedly. “We’ve heard stories about that. Are they dangerous?”
The woman nodded a grim assent. “They’ve killed a lot of people here, apparently. We were told they slew a number of traders in the upper part of the city with wizardry—” She threw a quick look at Tremaine, as if suddenly recalling her audience. Seeing no immediate reaction, she continued, “Some traders groups got together and tried to drive them off, but that just made it worse.”
“How long have they been here?”
“Not long. Our factor said they first saw the flying ships nearly three season turns ago, coming out of the east. It was only late this season that they came to the port and claimed the promontory for their own. Now everyone is leaving.” She gestured in resignation. “We would have been gone already, but because of all this turmoil, our provisioning took forever. We’ll leave on the evening tide.”
“I think we’ll leave as soon as we can, too,” Tremaine agreed, still looking in Ilias’s direction. He was studying the crowd and she saw the moment when he tensed and shifted from defensive wariness to aggressive challenge. Frowning, she followed his gaze. A new group of travelers were coming up the stairs of the lower level entrance to the plaza, but they didn’t look that different to her eyes than the men already here. They were big, light-skinned but tanned dark from the sea. Most had shaved heads or dark hair pulled back into a shoulder-length tail. They wore clothes of rough colorful fabrics and leather, but their only jewelry was on their weapons: gold and polished stones decorated the hilts of short swords, knives and a curving sharp thing that looked like a small scythe some had strapped across their backs.
The two Chaeans had spotted the newcomers as well. “Oh, this will be interesting,” the younger woman said, low-voiced.
Obviously this was something that as a Syprian Tremaine would be familiar with. She managed to paste on an expression of generic concern, hoping no one had noticed her stupidly blank face. The Chaean men were fading into the background, watchful caution etched on their faces. The shipmaster came to collect the two women.
The leader of the new arrivals strode toward Giliead and Cletia’s spot under the awning as if planning to claim it for his own. Without seeming to hurry, Giliead rose and met him several paces from it.
They confronted each other for a long moment. Then the leader grudgingly stepped back and Giliead casually moved past him. He went toward the lower-level exit, the other Syprians following without hesitation. Tremaine shook her head, falling in with them. She should have known the Syprians would pick the largest and most heavily armed group in the Wall Port to start a fight with. Hell, they decided to ally with us against the Gardier. Of course they’re insane.
“What was that about?” Tremaine asked Ilias as they went down the steps out of the plaza.
He threw her a quizzical look. “They don’t like us.”
“Why? Did you kill all their wizards?”
He snorted. “They don’t have wizards. They’re Raiders.”
Tremaine lifted a brow. “Are they really raiders? Do they actually raid?”
“Of course.”
“And they don’t like you because?” Tremaine persisted.
“We sink their ships,” he admitted.
“What, and leave them to drown?”
“Of course not.” He threw her an annoyed look. “They’re all dead by then.”
They came out of the stone city’s warren just above the port. Ilias paused at the top of the last cracked set of stairs to take it in. This place had been just a story for so long; he would never have expected to actually set eyes on it.
It made Cineth’s harbor look like a child’s toy. Embraced in the curve of the cliffs, hundreds of stone docks jutted out from the rocky terrace, sheltering dozens and dozens of ships of every size and shape. Among the oared galleys and small mixed-rig merchant ships, he saw at least two big Merokian three-masted carracks, ships that were almost legends in Cineth. As the Chaeans had said, many ships were leaving, or preparing to leave. People moved everywhere, h
auling cargo, bargaining, arguing as flights of white and gray gulls wheeled and shrieked overhead. The masts were like a forest, the sails every color imaginable.
In the distance he could see several pillars of stone, their tops covered in green carpets of tangled jungle, marching out from the mouth of the harbor. They were placed too conveniently as a breakwater to be an act of nature. He whistled softly, awed at the idea.
Giliead had stopped beside him and, obviously sharing the same thought, said, “Imagine driving all those pilings in deep water.”
Ilias shook his head in amazement. Automatically scanning the docks, he spotted the war prow of the Raider vessel and nudged Giliead to make sure he saw it. It was too bad they didn’t have the time to take on the Raiders while they were here; he would have given a lot to see them react to the Ravenna bearing down on their ship.
Behind them, Cimarus said, “They must have used curses to build this harbor.” Ilias might have been imagining it, but he didn’t sound as if he was entirely condemning the idea.
“Not necessarily.” Tremaine came to stand next to Ilias. He glanced back to see Cletia regarding her warily, but Tremaine didn’t notice. Or at least appeared not to notice. She continued, “They might have just been good builders. Are there any stories about who first lived here?”
Ilias shook his head, shrugging. “People from long ago, like the ones who built the city on the island.”
“Look at that!” Arites pointed, sounding as excited as a kid at a festival. “Look how long that dock is.”
Ilias stood on his tiptoes to follow Arites’s pointing finger and see past the jumble of masts. He spotted the long stone projection extending out from the far side of the harbor. It stood higher in the water than the docks on this side and looked half again as wide as well. He started to protest that it was an inner breakwater, but then he thought of the docks he had seen in Ile-Rien.
Echoing his thought, Tremaine said, “The Ravenna could pull up to that with no problem.” She glanced thoughtfully at Ilias. “The one she was at in Port Rel was too short because it wasn’t built for her. The big ships all leave—left—from the ocean docks at Chaire.”
He wished she wouldn’t be so careful to speak of her land in the past tense; there was a chance they could still win it free. It was why they were out here after all. But he just looked at the stone dock, estimating distances. “I don’t think it’s big enough for her, but yes, it’s not meant for these ships.”
Giliead nodded slowly. “The Chaeans have barges maybe half the size of the Ravenna, but they’re river craft.”
“What does this mean?” Arites demanded. “That the Wall Port has a dock for such large ships?”
“That the long-ago people who built the Wall Port had some damn big ships.” Tremaine turned to start down the steps.
“Why do you care about that?” Cletia asked, pausing to look out over the harbor now that the rest of them were out of the way. She had been too proud to elbow her way to the front before.
“Normal human curiosity,” Tremaine tossed dryly over her shoulder without pausing. “Some humans have it.”
Ilias followed her, throwing Cletia a sour look. He had thought her less annoying than Pasima, but with the older woman absent, she obviously thought it was her job to act suspicious.
The steps curved down to a wide platform just above the docks. Ilias saw there were matching steps curving in the opposite direction, maybe a hundred or so paces along the harbor front. He realized it was meant to be viewed from the water, by ships coming to port, and wondered what the effect would be if they could see it from the right direction. There were peddlers all along the walkway, some with just blankets to spread their wares and others with little awnings, selling everything from grilled fish to bolts of cloth. All of them seemed to be overwhelmed with commerce as people tried to buy provisions before leaving the port.
As the others caught up Tremaine halted, turning back to say in a low voice, “All right, this is what we’re going to do. You three”—she pointed to Cletia, Cimarus and Arites—“stay down here. We’re supposed to be buying supplies for our wrecked boat, so look at things, ask prices, bargain, just don’t commit to anything.”
Cimarus gestured around. “The traders are all too busy with the people leaving. We won’t even be able to talk to one.”
“That’s the point.” Tremaine’s assumed air of patience had an edge to it. “We don’t want people remembering us as the funny Syprians who disappeared suddenly without picking up their goods. Got it?”
Arites had already turned to study the merchants’ cubbies along the upper level, but Cimarus looked at Cletia, whose face was a study in conflict. Ilias could see as if it were written there in trail signs that Cletia had been told by Pasima to keep a close eye on Tremaine, but that she thought this a good plan. She nodded grudgingly. “It’s well. This place is big enough that each merchant will think we went to someone else.”
As usual, Tremaine’s face gave nothing away, but Ilias knew she hadn’t asked for Cletia’s approval and probably resented it. She only said, “We’ll meet back here in about—” She gestured in frustration. “Oh, dammit.”
The Rienish measured time in a way Ilias couldn’t make any sense of. He supplied, “At twilight.”
“Right,” Tremaine confirmed, turning to head briskly up the harbor front. Ilias caught up with her in a few strides, Giliead following unhurriedly. She leaned toward him to ask softly, “Where is this goddamn airship? Am I going in the wrong direction?”
Ilias looked over her head, his eyes sorting out the curving shapes of the Wall buildings. A rising outcrop blocked all view of the flying whale from the port. He jerked his chin at it. “It’s past there, probably perched in the rocks past those towers. We need to follow this curve around, then maybe do some climbing to get up near it.”
“Oh.” She shaded her eyes to look. “That’s a relief.”
As they wound their way up the broken stairs toward the flying whale’s promontory, Ilias saw more and more signs of the Gardier’s occupation.
All the city terraces on this side had already been abandoned, though some of the inhabitants were still here, huddled in bloody stinking heaps in doorways or sprawled in the dirt-covered paths. Big sandflies hummed in clouds over the corpses, and the smell hanging in the damp air made his stomach want to turn.
“I can’t believe the rest of the city hasn’t left already,” Tremaine said, low-voiced. Her face had a pained, pinched look. Ilias wanted to ask her if she was all right, but instinct told him it would not be well received. Besides, the only way to avoid the sight and smell was to turn back, and they needed her to look at the Gardier’s camp, to report to the others the things he and Giliead wouldn’t recognize.
“It’s not a city,” Giliead answered her, glancing up to make sure their approach wasn’t overlooked from this angle. He had already found and led them around three curse traps, probably meant to alert the Gardier if anyone passed by. The traps were small fragments of crystal, placed on paving blocks or atop walls. Giliead had told them he could see the curse spread out around them like giant spiderwebs. It would be nearly impossible for the Rienish soldiers to move through here without tripping them, and destroying them would surely alert the Gardier. “It’s just a lot of people who decided to live here because of the harbor and the trade. There was no one to get them to act together on anything.”
“The rich merchants probably didn’t want to leave, at first. The poor ones probably can’t,” Ilias added.
Tremaine nodded grimly, stumbling a little on the uneven path. “That’s typical.”
The old buildings of smooth stone became fewer and smaller, their backs buried in the rocky cliffs. They took to creeping through the rocks and scattered brush, still winding their way up. Finally, Giliead stopped, crouching low behind a stony ridge and gesturing for Ilias to come up and take the lead. Ilias slipped past Tremaine and forged on up the scrubby slope. He pulled a fold of his wrap up
over his hair, so the muted browns and grays of its weaving would help conceal him.
As he neared the top he caught a glimpse of the flying whale.
It took all his attention first, blotting out the sky, its shadow falling across the outcrop. The huge oblong shape was black as night and the body was narrow at the front, the middle swelling out until it narrowed again at the rear. A jagged ridge ran the length of its back to the cluster of long sharp-edged fins in the tail. Even though he knew now that it wasn’t alive and didn’t eat people, the looming presence still made his flesh creep.
Ilias reached the top of the slope and peered cautiously over the edge. Below the flying whale the flat ground of the promontory supported a skeletal metal tower. It was pyramidal in shape, ladders reaching up to a flat platform at the top, about a ship’s length and a half off the ground, just below the squarish compartments hung at the bottom of the flying whale’s swollen belly. A ramp bridged the distance between the whale and the tower’s platform.
There was a Gardier on watch at the base of the tower, his brown clothing nearly the same color as the dirt. To the left of the tower there were roughly carved stone steps, leading down to a lower level of the promontory and a flat paved platform that must have been built by the same ancients who had constructed the Wall Port itself. Stairs led down from it to the now deserted portion of the city, and he could see another Gardier patrolling there.
On the other side of the tower, partly sheltered by the cliff face, a scatter of metal huts stood, their walls streaked with rust. A pair of Gardier walked on the packed dirt between them, talking. Big round wizard lights were mounted atop the flat roofs, their glass surfaces glinting in the sunlight. The doorways had squiggly marks painted on them in black; the Gardier never decorated anything, so Ilias assumed it was writing.
