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

by Martha Wells

  Nicholas stepped into the room behind them, saying, “We can’t be certain until evening when we can get a look at the stars, but all the indications seem favorable so far.” He had taken off his jacket and wore a white shirt underneath, its right sleeve stained with blood. He was occupied with wrapping a handkerchief around the minor wound in his arm. “I wasn’t able to find out as much as I would have liked about the Gardier’s otherworld explorations, but I did learn the etheric gates don’t have unlimited options. A gate in one world can only reach certain other worlds. That’s why the Gardier can’t go directly from their world to Ile-Rien and must pass through the staging world first.”

  Tremaine thought that over, brows drawing together. “We went to a different world from the island. Florian took us there accidentally when we were trying to get back to Ile-Rien. Then Arisilde took me there to get rid of a Gardier. I think it was a different world. The sky was strange and the people were…a lot bigger.”

  Nicholas lifted a brow, frowning. “Did you. That’s odd.”

  Molin wiped the soot and sweat off his forehead in relief. “We can work that out later, once we get that crystal back to the sorcerers. But Giliead did it, all right. He got us out of there.”

  Tremaine took a deep breath. “Yes, he sure did.” She just hoped it hadn’t done anything permanent to him.

  They finished the search of the flying whale, but instead of following the others, Ilias looked for Giliead, finally going back up the narrow metal stairs in the common room to the second level. The stairs opened into a corridor with rows of depressing narrow doors for the living quarters. He stopped to look into one, seeing it was larger than those on the other flying whales, and had enough shelves for four men to sleep on instead of just two. Not that much of an improvement, as far as he was concerned.

  The far end of the corridor was lit by daylight, so he was expecting windows, but when he reached it he still halted for a moment, arrested by the view. It was a common room with an array of nearly floor-to-ceiling glass panels on each side, all looking out on the cloud-studded blue of the sky and the limitless stretch of the ocean below. The windows were shaded by the bulk of the whale’s belly above them, and looking up Ilias could see the dark skin of it curving away. There was a big table with the long narrow drawers that he now knew were for maps, more metal cabinets, a few chairs. And Giliead, sitting on the floor near the starboard window.

  He didn’t look up as Ilias crossed over to him and eased his battered body down to sit nearby. Ilias shifted gingerly around, trying to find a position that didn’t make his side ache. The brown matting on the floor didn’t provide any padding. He settled on curling his legs up and half-slumping over, supporting himself on one arm. Giliead glanced at him then, giving him a faintly incredulous look. “I don’t want to lie down,” Ilias answered the unspoken criticism. If he did, he didn’t think he would be able to get up again.

  Giliead returned his gaze to the sky on the other side of the thick glass. “You’ll make it worse.” His tone was sour.

  Ilias snorted derisively, then winced at the twinge from his midsection. “Like you’d know,” he said anyway.

  Giliead ignored that. Ilias watched him for a long moment. “What did it feel like?” he asked finally.

  Giliead let out a breath. “Like…shooting an arrow, except there was nothing in my hands.”

  Ilias considered that. “Tremaine can get the god-sphere to do things for her, and she’s not a wizard.”

  “The god-sphere is a god. It can do what it wants. The woman in the crystal can only do a few curses, only the ones that the Gardier gave her. How to make the flying whale go to other worlds, how to make it fly back to the Gardier, how to protect it from lightning and wind and fire from the outside, and how to destroy the Rienish shooting weapons.”

  Ilias examined that for a flaw but couldn’t find it. Even he could see that asking the thing that lived in the sphere for a favor was substantially different from using its power to make a curse work. He tried, “All the Rienish said you can’t do a curse if you don’t know the words that make it work.”

  Giliead looked at him then, his eyes dark with regret. “She showed it to me. The woman in the crystal. I’d woken her up enough that she remembered it from when she was alive. She couldn’t do it anymore, but she said I could.”

  Ilias rubbed his eyes. It was worse than he thought. And he had thought it was pretty bad. “What are we going to do when we get home?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as hopeless as he did inside his head.

  Giliead just looked at him. “We?”

  “We what?” Ilias frowned, then he got it. “Of course ‘we,’ you stupid bastard.” He glared at Giliead, unable to do anything else because of his injury.

  Giliead turned away, his face defensive and relieved all at once. His jaw set as if he was fighting for control. He said finally, “What if the god won’t accept me anymore?”

  Ilias bit his lip. “They’d kill us. But it wouldn’t be fair. You’re not crazy. The god’s always been fair before.”

  Giliead didn’t answer, still looking out at the clouds. “As far as we know.”

  Ilias swore under his breath. There was no one to ask what the god’s reaction might be. Gerard, source of information on all things curse-related, had had no idea that the gods even existed before he had come to Cineth. “Maybe we should just…not go back.” He knew it was a stupid idea even as he said it.

  Giliead shook his head. “And never see Mother, Halian, Dyani, any of the others again? You know Cletia and Pasima will tell them what happened. I want them to hear it from me. And…I have to know what the god will do.”

  There was a small crew area just above the control cabin, though there was no furniture and nothing in the way of amenities, just metal walls and matting on the floor. Tremaine only knew it was a crew area because there was no outside door for bringing in cargo. She found Cletia and Cimarus there seated on the floor, Cletia cleaning her sword with a swatch cut from a Gardier uniform and Cimarus examining a wound in his arm. Calit was nearby, asleep, curled up with his head pillowed on one of their supply bags. There was no sign of Ilias or Giliead.

  Tremaine wandered the compartment absently, finding a small room off the main area that had a tiny primitive sink. Since there wasn’t anything that looked like a toilet, she assumed it was a galley.

  Looking through the cabinets built into the walls, they all seemed bare. It was a good thing Dubos and the others had found some rations; if they took too long to catch up with the Ravenna, or had to go all the way to Capidara, they were going to need food and water.

  She went back out to the supply bags and began to poke through the ones Calit wasn’t sleeping on, hoping against hope that the Gardier had something like coffee. The only thing she could find was a substance in a jar that looked a little like ground coffee beans but smelled like dried seaweed. Tucking it back into the bag with an annoyed mutter, she decided to just stick with water.

  She wandered back into the galley, trying to decide if she ought to occupy herself with putting some kind of meal together for everyone. It had been so long since she had eaten that she was actually beginning to regard Cletia’s grain cakes as a fond memory. She studied the galley again, leaning on the metal counter, but didn’t see anything like a gas ring. Then she clapped herself in the forehead. That’s right, fire.

  She became aware of Nicholas leaning in the doorway watching her. She rubbed her eyes, asking, “We are pointed in the right direction, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. I read the compass for Sergeant Dubos.”

  “That’s good.” Tremaine realized she had all the symptoms of crying: a prickly warm ache right behind her eyes, runny nose, but there weren’t any tears. “I got everyone into this,” she said suddenly, not really aware the words were out until she heard herself say them. But she had to say it to someone.

  Nicholas was unperturbed. “You started the Gardier war? How precocious, at the age you were then.”r />
  His way of saying don’t be an idiot. She glared at him, wishing she could have some effect on that impenetrable façade. “The Syprians.”

  “Ah. Everyone who matters.”

  Ouch. But it wasn’t quite true. Gerard mattered, Florian mattered, even Ander mattered. Princess Olympe, Niles, Colonel Averi, Lady Aviler. The missionary woman who had been brave enough to speak to them in the Isle of Storms base, then kissed her cheek later. The chief petty officer who had given her his pistol when Ixion had escaped, various other random people whose names she didn’t know or barely remembered, they all mattered. Arites, Basimi, Captain Feraim, Stanis and all the other dead mattered. “All right, so I didn’t get everyone into this,” she snapped. “But I made them put me in charge, then I couldn’t handle it. The idea to steal a boat was stupid.”

  “Not stupid. Ill-informed. But it must have seemed the only option at the time.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “After you entered the city and saw the situation at the harbor, did you still intend to go through with it?”

  She sensed this was a question he actually wanted the answer to. “I might have. We would have gotten killed.”

  “The chances of dying were fairly high all along,” he admitted easily. “Why did you make them put you in charge?”

  Tremaine gestured helplessly. “The Syprians don’t like to take orders from men who aren’t part of their family. Giliead was the only one who could hear the Gardier crystal, I didn’t think I could convince him to try to use it if he thought—He didn’t want to do it and he did it anyway and—I don’t know.” She found herself pausing for the moment when a normal person would have said something reassuring. She sighed to herself. Do I do that? No wonder I keep Florian in a constant state of distracted annoyance. “You know, some people have fathers who just say ‘there, there, it’ll be all right.’”

  Nicholas snorted in pure contempt. “That would hardly help, since you know it isn’t true. It isn’t going to be all right. The chances are good that it will never be all right again.”

  Well, yes. Tremaine wearily leaned on the counter, eyeing him. She didn’t feel like crying anymore, at least. She felt like getting some answers. “You know Reynard Morane.”

  “We’re acquaintances,” Nicholas agreed so casually it would have fooled her if she didn’t know better.

  Tremaine rubbed the bridge of her nose, angry that he would still play these games with her. “He took time out during the evacuation to find me and ask me how I planned to get out of town.” She had always known she had had more than one guardian, that Gerard wasn’t the only one who was watching over her or the Valiarde estate, she just hadn’t known who the others were. She had had a telephone number to call in the Garbardin district of Vienne for help, and had used it occasionally at the times when Nicholas’s past had caught up with her. “The only way he could have done that was if the man at the Garbardin exchange reported directly to him.”

  Nicholas lifted a brow. “If you think that’s the only way he could have done it, you badly underestimate the resources available to the Queen’s Guard, especially during wartime.”

  Tremaine studied the ribbed metal ceiling, mentally begging for patience. “And he said he was my uncle.”

  “Ah.” Nicholas folded his arms, conceding the point with a faintly disgruntled expression. “Yes, he was your other guardian. Years ago we made the decision to act as strangers, so association with me wouldn’t damage his political career. Reynard’s past was checkered enough, he didn’t need me hanging about as further ammunition against him.”

  “I figured that part out,” Tremaine told him, mock-patiently.

  “Now I have a question for you.” He watched her thoughtfully. “What on earth possessed you to marry that man?”

  “What?” Tremaine glared at him, caught by surprise and suddenly on the defensive. “Did you pretend to be a Gardier so long that you picked up their prejudices? They don’t think the Syprians are people, by the way.”

  As an attempt to throw him off the scent, it worked miserably. “Tremaine, don’t be conventional,” Nicholas said witheringly. “My objection is that by my calculations, you can’t have known him more than six days.”

  “Oh.” Tremaine rubbed at a spot on the counter, trying to collect her thoughts. The truth might be an interesting option. “It was a dare. A Syprian political opponent dared me, in front of a lot of people, and it would have been an insult to Ilias if I’d refused. So I didn’t refuse. And I just wanted to.” She looked at Nicholas. His expression was mildly appalled. She gritted her teeth. “Gerard said it was all right.”

  Nicholas regarded the ceiling, shaking his head. “Gerard was not chosen as your guardian for his status as a paragon of propriety.”

  This distracted her. “Gerard’s proper,” she protested.

  “He came to it late in life, believe me.”

  Tremaine gestured in frustration. “Considering the decisions I was making back home before all this started, I don’t think you realize how close to normal marrying Ilias was. For me.” Maybe that was a sign. For someone who had wanted to kill herself not so long ago, she was doing an awful lot of things to try to tie herself to this life. Even before she had discovered it must have been partly due to Arisilde’s accidental influence on her. Maybe part of you knew that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed and was trying to keep the other part from doing something stupid. Nicholas was still looking at her. “And he’s nice. And his foster mother likes me.”

  Nicholas let his breath out, his expression reluctantly resigned. “I suppose it’s legal.”

  “Yes, as if that’s going to matter while the Gardier are taking over the world. Both of the worlds.” She knew he had no real objections, he was just trying to get a reaction out of her. Just to see how he would react, she said deliberately, “Syprian marriage is a little different. I had to buy him.” After a pause for effect, she added, “I used the gold coins from the safety-deposit box in the Bank of Vienne.”

  Nicholas stared at her, his pose of detached comment forgotten for the moment. “All the coins?” he demanded.

  “No, not all the coins.” Tremaine glared in irritation. Nicholas had had hundreds of thousands of reals’ worth of art at Coldcourt and yet had considered having electric wiring run on the second floor of the house an extravagance.

  Nicholas shook his head, apparently willing to let the money issue drop. “At least he’s not Ander Destan. I couldn’t stand that little prick.”

  Eventually Giliead fell asleep on the floor, so Ilias found a blanket in one of the little rooms and covered him with it. Though his body ached and his eyes were gritty, his thoughts were going in circles and he still couldn’t lie down, let alone sleep. He decided to go find Tremaine and see if he was still married.

  He went back down the ladder into the lower crew area, pausing at a doorway to a little room off the passage, where the ship’s talking curse box lived. Molin was seated inside, hunched over the box, twisting knobs and tapping on things. Ilias knew he was trying to make it hail the Ravenna, but from Molin’s expression it wasn’t going well.

  He stepped away from the door without disturbing the man and turned to find himself face-to-face with his new father-in-law. They regarded each other warily. Nicholas said, distinctly and with a certain grim emphasis, “You mean to take care of my daughter.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” Ilias said, realized he had spoken Syrnaic, and repeated the word in Rienish.

  They eyed each other. Then Tremaine broke the tension by stepping out of the crew area at the end of the passage. “Ilias.”

  Nicholas stepped out of the way, giving him a sardonic nod. Ilias moved past, not breaking eye contact until the last possible moment. When he reached Tremaine, she drew him aside into a little room off the larger common area, asking, “How is Giliead?” She kept her voice low, so Cimarus and Cletia wouldn’t hear.

  “Just…worried about what’s going to happen when we go home,” Ilias admitted. He leaned
gingerly against the metal cabinet, trying to ease the ache in his side.

  “You mean, what Visolela and Nicanor might do?”

  He shook his head slightly. “What the god might do.”

  She frowned slowly. “Like what? It can’t…un-Choose him.” She read his expression worriedly. “Can it?”

  “It doesn’t happen often. Maybe once in a generation.” He looked away, gesturing helplessly. Most people didn’t know it ever happened at all, but the poets who kept the Vessels’ Journals knew the stories. Gunias of the Barrens Pass, whose god had left him for a reason no one knew, and who had fallen on his sword. Eliade of Syrneth, who had killed her sister in a fight over a man, then walked into the sea when her god refused to see her. “I don’t know. It’s not like a person. Some things it cares about, some it doesn’t. It didn’t act any different to me after I got the curse mark—”

  “But that wasn’t your fault.”

  Ilias stopped, caught by that. He absently took her hand, noticing the nails were bitten to the quick. “This wasn’t his fault either. But it was something he did, not something that was done to him. If there’s a difference, that’s it.”

  “But the god didn’t mind us,” she protested. “It didn’t do anything to Florian or Gerard or Arisilde in the sphere.”

  “But it didn’t Choose you either.” Maybe she was right. He couldn’t think about it anymore or he was going to go crazy. He let out his breath in frustration, pushing the hair out of his eyes. “There’s no way to tell until we get there.” He looked at her for a long moment. Her eyes were hollow and her face drawn, and her skin felt chill though it wasn’t cold in here. Under those layers of sarcasm and anger she was all nerves and pain; she couldn’t keep that tamped down forever. He just wished he knew how to help her. “So, how are things going with…He jerked his chin toward the doorway.