THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

  The corporal mulishly persisted, “It’s not my decision, ma’am. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Who ordered this? It wasn’t Colonel Averi.” It had better not be. He hadn’t given any indication of it earlier.

  The corporal fumbled in a pocket, pulling out a folded paper. “It was his signature—”

  Tremaine snatched it out of his hand. “So you didn’t talk to him?” She looked it over as best she could in the gathering dusk. It looked as real as the orders she had in the leather document case tucked under her arm. But she didn’t know Averi’s signature to judge if it was genuine or not. She swallowed a snarl and made herself say reasonably, “Look, there has to be some mistake. I spoke to Averi and Niles just before we left for town to see Minister Servaine. Why were you told to take Ilias?”

  “All I know is what is on that order, ma’am—”

  “Let me speak to Averi first.”

  “You can do that, ma’am, but I have to take him into custody.”

  Tremaine fumed, I need to talk to Averi. This is... very wrong. What if it wasn’t wrong? What could she do, kill Averi? Tempting thought, but it would be a needless complication. “Why don’t you just wait? Until I can talk to Averi.”

  The corporal sighed. “Ma’am, it’s only house arrest. We’re holding him at the hotel, in the room he’s been assigned. Nothing is going to happen to him.”

  Dammit. Tremaine looked away. Considering Ilias might have ended up locked in a guardroom somewhere, this was lenient. But why lock him up at all? Averi knows I went to the city with him this morning. She had conscientiously signed them both out with the frantically busy duty officer and no one had said a word about it. Something was going on here and she had to find out what it was.

  She let out her breath and pushed her hair back, trying to look distracted and upset rather than homicidal. With the air of giving in reluctantly under great duress, she said, “All right, but just let me explain it to him. He doesn’t understand two words of Rienish, he doesn’t have any idea what’s happening.”

  The corporal looked relieved. “Very good, ma’am.”

  Tremaine turned to an increasingly worried Ilias. She took a breath, gathering her thoughts, and said in Syrnaic, “Something’s wrong. They’re going to take you to the room in the . . .” No word for hotel. “In the big house, the one you changed clothes in. They’re going to lock you in, but wait until it’s dark and you can climb out the window and reach my room, which should be three windows to the left. Go there and wait for me. I need to check on some things and try to find out what’s going on, then I’ll meet you there.” She had seen Ilias climb through the caves like a mountain goat, she didn’t think he would have any trouble with the ornamental ledges and scrollwork on the outside of the hotel.

  He eyed the two guards resentfully and nodded. “All right.”

  “Good ... ah, look resigned or something.”

  Ilias rolled his eyes and folded his arms.

  “That’ll have to do.” She turned to the corporal, switching back to Rienish. “He’ll go with you now.”

  The men took Ilias up the steps of the hotel’s back entrance, past the moldering wicker furniture in the boarded-over conservatory. Following, Tremaine veered off as they reached the main foyer and headed toward the ballroom.

  The high figured ceiling and lily chandeliers made a strange contrast with the packing crates of books and astronomical equipment stacked on the parquet floor. Only a few of the Institute’s personnel were still there, engaged in sorting documents in wooden file boxes and feeding most of them into the fire in one of the large marble hearths. “I’m not sure,” a young man she vaguely recognized as one of the astronomers who had worked with Tiamarc told her when she asked about Niles. “He’s supposed to be here.” He adjusted his spectacles with a frown. “I haven’t seen him since late this afternoon.”

  Feeling uneasy, she went to the infirmary next. The screens were stacked against the wall and all the beds were empty.

  A clatter led her to the serving hatches. She looked inside to see the nurse in the pantry area packing up medical supplies. “Where’s Florian and Ander?” she demanded.

  The woman jumped, startled. “Why, they were taken to the hospital.”

  “By who?”

  “I’m not sure. I wasn’t here. Captain Dommen told me they were sent away by ambulance this afternoon.” She looked puzzled. “I don’t know why. Florian was fine. I thought the doctor would discharge her after lunch and Captain Destan had woken several times and seemed much better.”

  “Thank you.” Tremaine went back out into the corridor. She stood and stared at the faded floral wallpaper for a long moment, tapping her chin. Oh yes, something’s wrong.

  An hour later, feeling as if she had a target painted on her back, Tremaine went back upstairs to her room.

  The lock stuck as usual, forcing her to wrestle with it. She had thought she was fairly calm, but had to restrain herself from screaming, kicking the door and going for the fire ax. Note to self: I am not calm. Finally she managed to turn the key and slip inside.

  Shutting the door behind her, she put her hand on the wall switch in the foyer, whispering, “Ilias, it’s me.”

  As the overhead light flickered to life, he stepped out from around the corner. Tremaine, though she was expecting him, almost jumped out of her skin.

  “What did you find out?” he demanded as she stepped past him. He had closed the window again but a few dead leaves had blown in, caught in the cushions of the window seat amid the shattered glass from the pane he had broken to open it.

  “I can’t find Florian, Ander or Niles.” She plopped down on the little settee and he sat on his heels in front of her. “I haven’t seen Averi, either. Everyone seems to think Captain Dommen is in charge. I’ve been watching Averi’s office, and I just saw Captain Dommen come out and go into this little pavilion in the hotel’s garden. I don’t have anything to go on, but he shouldn’t be there, he should be down at the docks supervising the evacuation preparations.” She scratched her head absently, still trying to put all the pieces together.

  Ilias shook his head, not understanding. “So why would he go there?”

  “To meet with Averi and the other spies. The Gardier agent that killed Tiamarc can’t have been the only one here.” Tremaine was convinced now that Averi was involved in the plot. The colonel hadn’t objected to her trip to Vienne because he wanted them out of the way. Bastard.

  Ilias watched her, troubled. “If the Gardier are there and they have Florian and Ander, they could kill them,” he said urgently.

  “I know.” Tremaine nodded, distractedly chewing on a fingernail. “I think we’re just going to have to get in there and get them out.” She dug in a pocket, pulling out the bundle of keys. “This locking people in rooms thing worried me, so I took these out of Niles’s desk in his room. If the one to the pavilion isn’t here, I can probably pick it. They put warded doors with secure locks on the boathouse and the main part of the hotel, but they didn’t bother with any of the outbuildings.” She flipped through the keys, frowning thoughtfully. “So what do you think—” She glanced up to see Ilias sitting back on his heels, smiling faintly. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did I have you worried? I worry myself a lot,” Tremaine admitted.

  “No, you didn’t have me worried.” He got to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  The night air was dank and cold, a good complement to the garden’s overgrown shrubbery and weedy flower beds. Over the hedges Tremaine could see the pavilion’s conical red-shingled roof, black against the charcoal color of the evening sky. It was a little round building, two stories, probably used for the elaborate garden parties that had been held here before the war. The path turned and Tremaine could see there were slivers of light leaking past the shades in the pavilion’s windows, reflecting off the ornamental pond that curved around the right side. Ilias stopped her, saying softly, “Someone’s there.”

&nb
sp; She peered hard at the shadows near the doorway and saw one particularly lumpy blotch of darkness move. There was a guard at the door now. There hadn’t been one when she had watched Dommen enter earlier. But it had still been light then and someone might have seen and wondered why the disused pavilion merited guarding. She touched Ilias’s arm. “We need to get rid of him.”

  “Distract him,” he whispered back, stepping into the bushes with barely a rustle.

  Right, Tremaine thought. She dropped the coil of rope and the torch she had stolen from the hotel’s garage into a weedy flower bed. Sauntering forward, hands in her pockets, she tried to look as if she was just out for a walk on the grounds of the moldering old hotel.

  She turned up the path toward the pavilion, her shoes scraping on the wood planks that bridged the little stream. She could make out the man’s shape against the white wall now. He hadn’t moved and probably didn’t realize she could see him. “Nice night for it,” she remarked.

  Obviously expecting to startle her and finding himself startled instead, the man twitched uncertainly. “Ma’am?”

  “Nice night for it,” Tremaine repeated briskly. She saw Ilias, or at least a dark Ilias-shaped shadow, creeping along the portico. He must have gotten behind the building by going through the hedges and was now edging along the curve of the wall, easing up behind the guard. He still had ten or so feet to go.

  The guard tried to recapture the initiative, saying, “I’m afraid you’re not permitted here, ma’am,” as he stepped forward. His tone was polite but she could see he had one hand on his holstered pistol. “Are you alone?”

  “Now that’s a very personal question.” Tremaine cocked her head to one side. It was also the question someone who was planning to knock her out and dump her in the pond would ask.

  He moved toward her and in another instant Ilias had him, a forearm across his throat choking off any outcry. Dodging a frantic kick, Tremaine grabbed up a rock and smashed it on the man’s gun hand. He let go of the pistol and she snatched it from the holster.

  The guard’s struggles slowed and Tremaine watched in consternation; she had forgotten to tell Ilias not to kill anyone, just in case she was wrong, but she didn’t want to distract him right now. Finally Ilias lowered a limp body to the ground. She leaned over the man and poked him in the ribs. He wheezed in response and she straightened up, relieved.

  As Ilias dragged him back up the gravel path into the brush, Tremaine hastily retrieved the rope and the torch. She checked the pistol to make sure it was loaded and shoved it into her pocket.

  They got the man gagged with a couple of handkerchiefs and bound, then approached the pavilion again. Ilias tugged on her sleeve, gesturing for her to follow him through the overgrown garden around the pond, back up onto the little building’s porch. “There are windows on the bottom floor,” she told him softly. “Shouldn’t we go in that way?”

  He shook his head, replying in a bare whisper, “I heard voices in the front part of the house.”

  She noticed again he didn’t object to the “we” part. Maybe because Ander had first met her as Tremaine Valiarde, playwright and nutty girl about town, and Ilias had encountered her as Tremaine, intrepid cave explorer. First impressions were important. “Were they speaking Gardier?”

  “No, your language.”

  “That’s funny,” Tremaine murmured thoughtfully. She had had her heart set on a nest of Gardier spies. But Rienish spies in the pay of the Gardier would do just as well.

  There was no portico along the back of the pavilion, but there were trellises hung with winter-dry vines that climbed the plank-paneled wall to the second floor. There were three windows up there, one dimly lit. “That’s the best way in,” he told her in a whisper. “But they’re going to hear it if I break the glass.”

  “Don’t break it, just open it,” she told him with some asperity.

  “Those are the same as in the hotel?”

  Tremaine gazed up at the window. “Probably, why?”

  “I could barely figure out how to open one from the inside.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She realized she hadn’t seen a Syprian house with glass or sash windows. “Here, use this.” She pulled out the metal file she had in her pocket and briefly explained how to jimmy a window latch from the outside.

  Ilias shed his coat and swarmed up the trellis. She saw him hang outside the lit window for a moment, then work his way along the ledge to a dark one that must open in the next room. After some slight fumbling, he got the latch jimmied and she saw the sash lift. He slipped inside, sliding it carefully shut behind him.

  Tremaine waited, arms folded tightly, feeling the cold damp creep into her bones. It was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car from the road past the garden and the distant roar of the ocean. In the distance the army defense battery’s searchlights played over the clouds. Then she heard a quiet hiss above her.

  Squinting, she saw Ilias leaning out the lit window and motioning for her to come up. Up there? Tremaine thought, brows lifted. Well, he’s an optimist. The problem with people who had confidence in you was that they also expected you to perform. She kicked off her shoes, grabbed the trellis and started up. It wasn’t fair; he had to weigh more than she did but the thing creaked loudly as she climbed. Trembling with the fear of falling, she reached the window and he grasped her arm to haul her in.

  Tremaine scrambled over the sill, whispering, “I will never wear a tweed skirt again.” She stumbled on a rough wooden floor. It was a dimly lit room piled with boxes and furniture draped with white dustcovers. Straightening up again, she winced. After the long car ride, her sore muscles from horseback riding had become petrified and weren’t taking well to the exercise.

  “Should I untie him?” Ilias asked, patiently watching her.

  “What?” Tremaine looked up, for the first time realizing they weren’t alone. There was a figure in naval uniform sprawled unconscious on the floor just past a stack of old packing crates. She moved around the crates to see a man seated on a wooden bench, bound and gagged and glaring at her. “That’s Colonel Averi,” she whispered. “Dammit.” She had been sure he was a traitor.

  Ilias moved to untie him and Tremaine followed, seeing the chair the guard must have occupied, the battery lamp on the little table next to it and the folded newspaper that had kept him company. As Ilias cut Averi’s hands free the colonel yanked the gag out of his mouth, spit, and said quietly, “Who else is with you?”

  “It’s just us. Where’s Florian and Ander?” Tremaine demanded, picking up the newspaper. It was a Chaire edition, dated yesterday, carrying evacuation news and not much else. “Downstairs?”

  Averi, tearing the ropes off his ankles, looked up, a flash of astonishment crossing his sallow face. “There’s no one else?”

  Tremaine looked at Ilias, who was standing with his hands planted on his hips, waiting for a translation. “He was hoping for better rescuers,” she interpreted. Ilias rolled his eyes.

  “You’ll just have to make do with us,” she told Averi. “Where are the others?”

  “Downstairs, in the front room. They have Ander, Niles, and Florian. There’s a man on the front door—”

  “Not anymore.”

  “—and four with the others.”

  “It’s Dommen who did this, isn’t it?” Tremaine said. “He’s the ringleader of a band of Gardier spies.” If they have Niles they have the sphere. Dammit.

  “No. His corporal, Mirsone, is the ringleader. Dommen seems to be subordinate to him from what I could see. There are also two civilians I didn’t recognize.” Averi leaned over the unconscious guard, taking his gun from the holster, then stood. “You go for help.”

  “I brought help already. The only people here I trust are down there.” In case there was any doubt, Tremaine amended, “I’m talking about Niles and Florian and Ander.”

  “Tremaine, dammit, you can’t—” Averi began.

  “This is just like home,” Ilias interrupted i
n exasperation. “Everybody argues. Did he say how many were down there?”

  “Four,” Tremaine supplied.

  Averi demanded, “What did he say—” Wood creaked in the hall on the other side of the closed door.

  Ilias moved instantly, silently springing over the prone guard and flattening himself against the wall by the door. Averi stepped sideways behind a set of shelves, the gun at ready. Caught flat-footed, Tremaine swore under her breath and just managed to crouch awkwardly behind a crate before the door opened.

  Tremaine’s view was bad but she saw a man in civilian dress start to step into the room. But before he moved into Ilias’s reach, his eyes found the man sprawled on the floor. He backpedaled rapidly, pulling a pistol out of his coat and shouting, “Someone’s here!”

  Running footsteps answered the shout and Ilias slammed the door shut, bracing his shoulder against it. As the men on the other side pounded and shoved at it, Averi moved swiftly to help.

  Realizing belatedly that Averi was right about calling for help, Tremaine pushed to her feet and ran back to the open window. Pulling out the pistol she had taken from the door guard, she leaned out and fired into the air.

  Three shots blasting out into the night temporarily halted everybody and the pounding on the door ceased. Then she heard running feet hurrying away as the men bolted.

  Ilias yanked the door open and he and Averi ran after them. Tremaine shoved the pistol in her pocket and followed.

  Outside the room there was a dusty, badly lit hall, ending in a narrow staircase. She hurried down after Ilias and Averi.

  The stairs ended in an open foyer and just as Tremaine reached it, the outer door slammed open and half a dozen uniformed soldiers burst in. The two fleeing civilians stopped in shock and Ilias skidded to a halt, not knowing if these were allies or enemies. Not sure of that herself, Tremaine ducked reflexively behind the banister. If the sentries who guarded the hotel grounds were traitors too, they were all dead.

  But the man in front spotted Averi and halted in confusion, saying, “Colonel, what—”