THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

  Colonel Averi gave her an annoyed look. “We’re not in one of your plays, Miss Valiarde. Focus, or you’re just a liability. This is a deadly serious business.”

  Tremaine’s brows drew together. “I know it’s serious,” she said mildly. “I’ve got the bruise to prove it.”

  “You’re not taking it seriously,” the man persisted.

  Tremaine met his gaze, her eyes cold, her self-consciousness dissolving abruptly. She smiled. “Sure I am.”

  “The Gardier killed her father, Colonel,” Ander said suddenly, startling her by how offended he sounded. He gazed sternly at the older man. “Of course she takes it seriously.”

  Averi stared at him, then turned to Tremaine stiffly. “I apologize.”

  Tremaine shook her head, wishing Ander hadn’t brought it up. His defense had knocked the fight right out of her. “It’s all right.”

  Niles was digging in his pockets, pulling out a pen and a notebook stuffed with loose paper. “Ander, Colonel, Tremaine, be quiet.” He turned to Gerard, saying urgently,

  “You’ll need a secondary sorcerer, someone who’s familiar with the spell.”

  “I’d rather have you here in case something goes wrong.”

  “I can do it, I can go,” Florian spoke up suddenly. As everyone turned to her, she looked a little overcome by her own temerity but forged on. “I’ve been reading all the documentation and studying the structure. I’m sure I could trigger the reverse adjuration if I had to.”

  “You’ll have to do,” Niles said, though Gerard looked like he wanted to protest. “Just stay long enough to make sure the larger gate parameters are stable.”

  “Right.” Gerard nodded. He took a sharp breath. “Let’s go.”

  A half hour later Tremaine and Florian sat huddled on crates in the cavernous boathouse, watching the Institute personnel ready the Pilot Boat for its last voyage. It was a small steam tug with a crew of two, Captain Feraim and his mate, Stanis. It didn’t take up much room at the dock, which had been meant for the large pleasure boats that took holiday travelers on excursions up and down the coast.

  On the big flat platform above the boat’s slip, another version of the spell circle had been laid out on carefully painted removable wooden panels. She could hear a few people moving around up there, though they were too far back from the railing for her to see them. She heard Averi’s voice, and then Niles’s.

  Tremaine sighed, folding her arms. She had dressed in tweed knickers and an overjacket over a lighter middy blouse, the outfit she usually wore on board the boat and her only one that was vaguely suitable for it. Florian wore a long jacket and sweater over a pair of bloomers. It was cold now but it would be significantly warmer once they crossed into the other world, though the sea breezes could sometimes be brisk. It was the last time she would see it, she realized. The fine china blue sky, the darker color of the sea, the mysterious peaks of the island and the cliffs in the distance. She touched her aching jaw thoughtfully.

  “It was nice of Ander to stick up for you to Averi,” Flo-rian commented.

  Tremaine nodded, still distracted. “Sure.”

  “Except it didn’t seem like you needed anybody to stick up for you.”

  “What?” That got Tremaine’s attention. Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Maybe not.”

  “So were you two together? You and Ander,” Florian asked, looking at her.

  Tremaine sighed, shoving her hands deep in her pockets and leaning back against the wall. “No. People thought we were. Sometimes I thought we were.” Ander had always behaved as if she was an utterly normal, completely conventional girl. At times, when her father was coming home disguised as a dustman every other night or was off plotting the downfall of some small foreign principality, this had been welcome; it had helped her pretend she was normal. Later, when she had craved an actual acknowledgment of who she really was, it had just been smothering. “I never felt like ... he really knew me.”

  Florian was nodding. “I can see that. He doesn’t listen to you when you talk.” Her brow furrowed as she tried to explain what she meant. “Or really, he listens, but he never seems to hear what you say. No, that’s not what I mean. It’s ... he says what he thinks people expect him to say. Maybe that comes from being in the Intelligence Service. He can’t tell what you expect him to say, so it never quite comes out right.”

  Tremaine stared at her, not sure whether the revelation was unwelcome because it wasn’t true or because it was.

  Florian misread her silence and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I should just not—”

  Maybe it was unwelcome because it was a little too similar to Tremaine’s own situation for comfort. “No, it’s all right—”

  Colonel Averi and Niles came down the stairs from the upper level, with Captain Dommen, Averi’s second-in-command, trailing them.

  With a harried expression, Niles sorted through an armload of folios, saying, “We’ve risked everything to make the portal large enough to bring their troopship through. It would be kind of them to supply enough troops to make it worthwhile.”

  Averi’s permanently angry expression was firmly in place. “We were lucky to get the troops we have. Not everyone at Vienne Command believes this is anything but a waste of rapidly failing resources.” Tremaine couldn’t tell if he was angry because he agreed it was a waste or because he didn’t. She also hadn’t heard Niles swear before, so the imprecation the sorcerer muttered in editorial comment as he dug through his armload of papers was a little shocking.

  Captain Dommen shook his head with a frustrated frown. He was younger than Averi, tall, dark-haired, very much the dashing officer type. Like Ander and Niles, his family was beau monde, and he looked it in his carefully tailored uniform. “I’ll make some calls. I know a few people who have influence in the Ministry. If they’re still in town—”

  Averi paused, and again Tremaine couldn’t tell if he appreciated the suggestion or not. Then he nodded sharply. “Yes, try that.”

  “We’re ready,” Ander called from the deck. “Come aboard.”

  Tremaine got to her feet, distractedly looking around, though she didn’t usually bring anything with her.

  Stanis, an awkward young man with the dark hair and olive skin of Adera, tossed a coil of rope aside to step to the gangplank and help them aboard. Tremaine smiled and Florian thanked him. From the amount of attention paid, Tremaine thought that Stanis would have badly liked to ask Florian to coffee or dinner or anything else, but none of them had any free time.

  They stepped through the hatch into the main cabin where Ander was doing a quick check of the supply lockers. The cabin was small and crowded, holding a chart cabinet, the wireless, a galley table bolted to the floor and the shelves of reference texts that Gerard, Tiamarc and the others had used to make their observations. Stanis hurried down the steps into the engine compartment.

  As Florian went to take a seat on the padded bench against the far wall, Tremaine turned to see Ander reloading his pistol. Her hands clenched in her coat pockets and she felt a nerve in her face jump.

  He saw her expression and looked puzzled. “Afraid of firearms?”

  “Yes.” She hated to give further weight to the image Ander now had of her as some kind of twitchy feather-head, but she had been avoiding guns lately. Explaining that she was afraid if she touched one she might give way to an overwhelming impulse to blow her own brains out would hardly go over well either. She knew Feraim had one too, but he kept his out of sight in his coat pocket.

  Ander shrugged slightly, tactfully dropping the subject for all the wrong reasons. “It’s all right,” he said kindly. “I just want to have something on hand if we run into trouble.”

  Gerard, stepping into the cabin behind them, frowned and said, “If by ‘run into trouble’ you mean the Gardier, we’ll be dead before you could use that thing.”

  The Gardier’s most devastating spell was the one that could detect and destroy mechanical equipment at a distance. If the little tug
came within range of a Gardier airship, it would be sunk before they could activate the return spell. Not to mention the whole plan of scouting and attacking the base would be circling the drain at that point, Tremaine thought sourly. If they see us there, they’ll know we‘ve discovered their secret.

  “The Gardier might not be the only thing we have to worry about.” Ander smiled engagingly. “I like to be prepared.”

  “How nice for you,” Gerard said shortly. Tremaine managed to control her expression, but she noted Florian had to turn and peer earnestly out the porthole at the empty dock. He continued, “Come on, Tremaine, we need to get under way.”

  Tremaine obediently followed him through the short passage into the steering cabin. It was as unimpressive as the rest of the little boat, though the wheel and the brass were polished and it looked to be in good repair. The glassed port showed them the dark wooden walls of the boathouse and the last of the navy crew leaving through the door out onto the dock. As Gerard shut the hatch, he muttered, “If anyone is going to be fumbling around with a pistol, I’d prefer it to be you rather than that overconfident young man.”

  Tremaine smiled. “He is a captain in the Intelligence Service, you know.”

  “I’m afraid that making his acquaintance years ago when he was only an upper-class layabout may have colored my opinion.” Taking the sphere out of its protective leather case and setting it carefully on the bench, he glanced at her sharply. “Why on earth did you tell him you were afraid of firearms? I know Nicholas taught you to shoot.”

  She looked away, thinking about Ander. If his past affected even Gerard’s view of him, she wondered how much it weighed with men like Averi. And did Ander realize that? And did she give a damn? She shook the thought off, realizing she hadn’t answered Gerard. “I just didn’t want to carry one. Like you said, if the Gardier see us, it’s not going to do any good.”

  Captain Feraim stepped into the cabin from the hatch that opened out onto the deck. “We’re ready.” He eyed the sphere a trifle suspiciously. Feraim had been with the project long enough to hear how the experiments with the previous spheres had ended and being near this one always worried him.

  Tremaine picked up the sphere, feeling it warm at her touch. This one won’t hurt anybody, she thought. Well, not anybody she knew. She wondered what it would do to a Gardier.

  Gerard consulted his pocket watch. “All right. Tremaine?”

  As Feraim used the speaking tube to warn Stanis in the engine room, Tremaine held the sphere out to Gerard. She watched his face as he concentrated, touching some mental connection to the spell circle carefully duplicated on the wooden panels in the boathouse. She knew when he took a sharp breath that the transition would be in the next instant.

  She would never get used to the fact that they could travel so far while standing still.

  Tremaine let go of the sphere and grabbed the table as a sickening lurch of vertigo hit her stomach. An instant later the boat met the water with a tremendous splash. They got the altitude wrong again, she thought in annoyance, squeezing her eyes shut and taking deep breaths to keep her last meal down.

  Gerard caught the sphere, then cursed suddenly. Tremaine looked up. Her own curse died unspoken as she saw the wall of gray water outside the port.

  The wave towering over them broke over the bow and Tremaine ducked back instinctively as the sea crashed into the port. She straightened up warily, watching the foam retreat across the deck. The boat was cresting a wave now and they were looking into an angry purple-gray sky, the clouds low and heavy.

  “Storm,” Feraim commented succinctly as he fought the drag on the wheel. “All the luck.”

  Tremaine swayed into the rail as the boat dipped into the next trough and rose on another wave. The peaks of the island, even more thickly wreathed in mist than usual, lay some way off their bow. Tremaine had no idea how far, not being enough of a sailor to gauge distances over water. The edge of the storm lay just past the island and she could see where the clouds dissolved into blue and the sun glittered off the water. “Gerard, look—” she pointed.

  “I see it,” Gerard muttered. “We’re on the very edge of the storm. That’s oddly coincidental.”

  Feraim cursed at a squawk from the speaking tube. He grabbed it, listened a moment, then threw it down.

  “Stanis needs help in the engine room. We’re taking on water.”

  Tremaine looked at Gerard, seeing the worry on his face. It was that drop, she realized. They must have come through the doorway at exactly the wrong moment, just above the trough of a wave, and the fall had been much harder because of it.

  “I’ll go below,” Gerard said, tucking the sphere under his arm and swaying as he started toward the door to the aft cabin. “I can do a binding spell on the hull, that should help.”

  Tremaine started after him, lurched as the deck moved underfoot, and caught herself awkwardly on the railing. “Do you want me to come along?”

  “No, stay up here.”

  He staggered as he opened the cabin door and Tremaine caught a glimpse of Florian’s worried face. Gerard closed the door behind him and she turned back to the frightening view out the port.

  The boat troughed and crested again, their vision blocked by another spray of water and foam. Suddenly something else appeared on the water. Tremaine stared. What the hell. . . . She gasped, pointing.

  There was another boat out there, cresting the next wave. It had sails, purple ones, and she could see figures frantically trying to furl them. It had no smokestack and even in the gray light she could see red, green, and gold painted designs on the wooden hull.

  “Stanis, what’s going on down there?” Feraim was shouting into the speaking tube. “This storm’s not natural,” he growled.

  The other boat vanished in the trough, leaving Tremaine pointing at empty sky and water. She tried again. “I saw a—”

  Then something else filled the port, dropping out of the storm-wracked sky like death. It was a Gardier airship, black against the gray clouds, less than a hundred yards away.

  Tremaine gripped the railing, thinking sourly, just as things were getting interesting. It hung there, a fragile fabrication of duralumin, linen and membranes, protected by a sorcery that left it untouched by the wind that made the heavy wood and metal of the compact Pilot Boat creak with strain. Feraim was shouting, hauling hard on the wheel, and that was the last thing Tremaine remembered.

  Chapter 6

  Tremaine dreamed she stood in the bow of the Queen Ravenna, the whole bulk of the great ship behind her. It was night, and under the clear chill moonlight a strange landscape of sharp hills rose across the water to either side, as if the Ravenna had sailed up a fjord. Tremaine glanced down and saw that the sea, dark and still as a sheet of glass, was far closer to the railing than it should be. She turned around and saw to her horror that the ship was sinking. Slowly, silently, with only a slight backward tilt to the deck, the ship was disappearing beneath the inert blackness, the water already up to the railings on the A deck. All the electric lights were out in the main deck and above, and she knew that the moment to give the warning had passed her by, that she had stood here with her back turned while the water got into the engines and the generators. There were no people on the deck or in the water, but the lifeboats were still in place. She could see everything in the moonlight that shone, cold and clear, out of a cloudless and starless night sky. I did this, she thought. I brought us to this. She turned back to the bow to see a man stood there now.

  She knew it was her father though she couldn’t see his face. He told her not to jump, that the suction might pull her down with the ship, but to stay on as long as possible, to wait until the bow went under, then simply step off. That sounded like something he would know, so she waited until the cold still water rose above her waist and the deck dropped smoothly away from under her feet. Nicholas held her hand as they swam to shore, and it wasn’t nearly so far away as it looked.

  Cold salt water splashed
her in the face and Tremaine woke to a screech of stressed metal and splintering wood. She groped at the crazily tilted deck, realizing she was crammed into the back corner of the Pilot Boat’s steering cabin. Her head pounded and she couldn’t tell how much of her skewed perspective was the angle of the deck and how much was a concussion. Gardier, storm, dead, she remembered. Except of course with her luck, her death was going to drag out horribly and painfully. “This is what I get for putting things off,” she muttered disgustedly as she struggled to push herself upright.

  Glass from the shattered windows covered the deck and the ceiling was sagging. Waves washed through the empty port just above her and she knew the boat must be wedged atop something. The door to the aft cabin was crunched, splintered on the edges as the sides of the hatch had pressed in on it. She looked around vaguely, freezing when she saw Captain Feraim. He was tangled in the broken wheel, covered with glass and blood. “Captain!” She dug her fingers into the uneven boards and hauled herself toward him.

  She reached him, grabbing on to the broken end of the wheel’s post to stay upright. As she tried to feel for his heartbeat she realized blood was running down the deck, mixed with seawater to stream in rivulets between the boards. He was cut to ribbons from the port’s shattered glass.

  I was standing right beside him. She stared down at her hand, wet with his blood. She didn’t have a scratch on her.

  “Tremaine!” It was Florian, somewhere outside the cabin.

  “In here.” Remembering that Feraim had always carried a pistol on these trips, Tremaine steeled herself and put her hand into the pocket of his greatcoat. She drew out only a handful of warm fragments of twisted metal that stank faintly of gunpowder. Of course, the Gardier had used then-favorite spell.

  Cursing, she pushed away from the wall, managed to grab the brass-lined doorframe. Her stomach gave a warning lurch as she stretched to step over Feraim’s body. She was just beginning to realize the enormity of the disaster. We can’t let the Gardier get the sphere. Not Arisilde’s last sphere. If it hadn’t already been destroyed; the spell might have shattered its mechanical parts too.