THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

  “Arrest those men, they’re traitors!” Averi said, shoving the nearest civilian toward the sentries.

  Only a few feet from Tremaine, the door at the bottom of the stairs swung open. Captain Dommen stood there, his face white and his eyes desperate. She managed to yelp and point.

  Dommen stepped back and moved to slam the door but Ilias flung himself against it, wedging himself in to keep it open. Averi shouted an order and the soldiers surged forward to help.

  Tremaine clung to the banister, trying to stay out of the way. Ilias had managed to keep the door open and as the first two soldiers joined their weight and strength to his it flew back.

  More people ran in from the front entrance and Tremaine recognized Giaren and some other members of Niles’s staff who had been working in the ballroom earlier. Tremaine shoved herself to her feet, making it to the door ahead of them.

  She pushed through in time to see a big room with large conservatory windows all covered by heavy blackout cloth. A couple of army cots stood near the far wall with two motionless figures stretched out on them—Ander and Niles. Florian was seated in a straight chair near them, her hands bound in front of her. She was still wearing a drab hospital gown and robe. Dommen backed away from the door and another man in a corporal’s uniform raised a pistol.

  Averi fired first and the man staggered back, falling to the floor. Then Dommen dragged Florian out of the chair, holding the gun to her head. Tremaine heard her say wearily, “Not again.”

  Everyone halted, the sentries pointing their rifles and the Institute personnel frozen in shock behind them. “Let her go,” Averi snapped. “Or do you want me to call a sorcerer?”

  Wild-eyed with desperation, Dommen shouted, “Get back!”

  Tremaine looked around, just as desperate. She saw the sphere on a nearby table next to a small wireless set and some notepads. Maybe we don’t need to call a sorcerer, she thought, eyeing the sphere. It was trembling on the table, spinning itself into a frenzy. Her palms were sweating as she weighed her options, but there was no way she could reach the sphere. Out of his head with panic, Dommen might kill Florian if any of them so much as twitched.

  Ilias looked from Averi to Dommen, frustrated, but he knew better than to move. The colonel stared at Dommen, his jaw working as he brought himself under control. He put the pistol aside on a chair and lifted empty hands, saying cautiously, “You have to realize it’s over. Let the girl go.”

  Dommen said thickly, “Tell them to back away from the door.”

  Tremaine stared at the sphere, willing it to hear her. Why do I have to touch you, she thought, you helped Gerard kill the leviathan from a distance. I know you can hear me. Make the pistol hot, make him drop it—

  “Tell them—” The words dissolved into an agonized yell as Dommen flung the pistol down. Florian yanked away from him, falling back into the chair. Dommen stumbled away, clutching a badly burned hand.

  There was a surge forward but Ilias reached him first. He grabbed Dommen by the jacket and threw him down on the floor. The sentries surrounded him.

  Tremaine shoved through the confusion to Florian, kneeling to untie her hands. “What kept you?” the girl said blearily.

  “It was the traffic in Vienne,” Tremaine told her, working the knots free. “It was terrible.”

  Averi looked around, frowning. “Who did that?” His eyes fell on Niles’s secretary. “Giaren, I didn’t realize you were a sorcerer.”

  Across the room Giaren, bending anxiously over Niles, glanced up to say, “I’m not. That wasn’t me.”

  “It was the sphere,” Tremaine said, more occupied with Florian. The girl’s face was stark white and she had dark circles under her eyes. “Are you all right?” Tremaine asked her, worried. “You don’t look too good.”

  “They’re Gardier?” someone asked.

  “He’s not a Gardier.” Averi looked down at Dommen coldly. “I know his family.”

  “I’m fine,” Florian told Tremaine with vague assurance.

  She dropped her head into her hands. “They gave us some kind of drug. And I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Tremaine helped her up and one of the Institute workers hurriedly led them to a bare little washroom off the foyer. Florian leaned over the sink, splashing water on her face, and Tremaine left her to the other woman’s care.

  She returned to the other room where someone had draped a coat over the sprawled form of Corporal Mirsone. More military personnel had arrived and the two civilian members of the conspiracy were handcuffed and standing back against the wall. Averi and a few others surrounded Dommen, who sat on the floor staring at his hand. It was uninjured, all evidence of what had been a terrible burn vanished.

  Reminded, Tremaine went to the table and picked up the sphere. It clicked happily at her. It hadn’t used the spell she had read about to turn metal objects red-hot; it had done something else, making Dommen see and feel that his hand had been burned without actually injuring him. If only Niles had been conscious to witness it. Speaking of... She looked around, found Ilias nearby and dumped the sphere into his hands before he could back away. “Here, take care of this.”

  He would have been less appalled if she had handed him a live snake. He swallowed and gave her a desperate look. “Uh—”

  “Just stand there with it.” She patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry, it likes you.”

  She went to the cots where Niles and Ander lay. Giaren was sitting on Niles’s cot, trying to revive the deeply unconscious sorcerer with smelling salts. It was the first time she had seen Niles looked disheveled; with his sleek blond hair mussed and without his suit coat, he seemed much younger. Ander just looked like Ander, wearing a robe and green hospital-issue pajamas. He twitched and stirred, so she sat on the edge of his cot.

  She heard Averi ask Dommen, “Why?”

  The man looked up. His uniform was disarrayed, his expression bleak. “Last year on the Aderassi front, I was captured. I knew it was hopeless. They convinced me—”

  “You told them about the project,” Averi interrupted. He must have realized that he didn’t want to hear Dommen’s reasons. “You gave them the target point for the Pilot Boat. You arranged for the Gardier assassin who killed Tiamarc.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know that Captain Destan and the others returned?”

  “We couldn’t report.” He looked toward the little wireless. “Our communication device had Gardier crystals in it so we could use it without being detected. That . . . thing destroyed them as soon as we brought it in here.”

  Good sphere, Tremaine thought. Another Institute worker hurried over with wet towels and more smelling salts. Tremaine selected one of the towels and slapped Ander with it. He snorted, batting at her, but managed to get his eyes open.

  “You all right?” she asked, peering at him.

  He tried to nod, then grabbed his head with a moan.

  “How did you know Dommen was a traitor?”

  It was Averi, standing at her side. The soldiers were taking Dommen and the others away. “He looked suspicious.” She shrugged. “I thought you were one too.”

  As Averi stared at her, Ander lifted his head wearily and said, “That’s funny, I thought you were a traitor.”

  She stared at him. It was almost flattering. Actually, it was flattering. “I offered, but they wouldn’t take me.”

  Not in the mood for humor, Ander grunted, “Great. Now help me up.”

  “Tremaine, are you in there?” she heard Florian call. She leaned toward the door to shout, “I’m in Gerard’s room.” She had come to get Gerard’s things and she was in the middle of packing his shaving kit, trying to find room for it among the books already stuffed into the bag. It might seem overly optimistic to pack at all but there seemed even less point in not packing. His room was just like hers, faded patterns on the once-fine bedclothes and carpet, blackout curtains instead of filmy silk, dingy wallpaper. At least he had managed to bag a bedside lamp t
hat worked, though in keeping with the hotel’s decor the shades were glass tulips.

  Tremaine and everyone else had been wrapped up in last-minute preparations before breaking up to gather what they needed and head for the ship. Ander, though still a little shaky on his feet, was leading a small group of volunteers back through the portal with Tremaine, Florian and Ilias. Ilias was still with him now, explaining the layout of the caves. Their goal was much the same as it had been before: to destroy the base or at least incapacitate it long enough for the Ravenna to pass through the portal herself. Though now she would be doing it without the troops originally promised and her purpose would be to carry refugees past the Gardier blockade. Tremaine’s goal, and Ilias’s too, was to rescue Gerard and the others, though she hadn’t mentioned that to Averi.

  The colonel had had legitimate concerns, mainly that Dommen and Mirsone must have told the Gardier about the Ravenna; she would have undoubtedly been a prime target already if Ilias and Giliead hadn’t destroyed one of the airships and partially crippled the base. As it was, the spies might have tried sabotage and a team of Institute and navy volunteers had been sent to search the ship for damage.

  Tremaine just wanted Averi to hurry before somebody from Vienne Command contacted them and Averi discovered that the Ravenna’s side trip to send them back through the portal was unauthorized. During the meeting, Averi had been called to the communications room and she had held her breath; when he had come back to tell them that Vienne Command had shut down all transmissions for final evacuation, she had almost said, “Thank God!” aloud.

  Tremaine glanced up from rifling Gerard’s bedside table for his spare spectacles as Florian entered the room. The other girl paused at the end of the little hallway, her face drawn and still pale from her near drowning and her encounter with Dommen and Mirsone. “You all right?” Tremaine asked, a little worried. “Where did you go?”

  “I was just in the wireless room, sending a telegram to my family.” Florian pushed her hair back. She had changed into a pair of khaki knickers and a pullover sweater. “Niles told me he offered to send us back with Ilias,” she said flatly.

  Tremaine nodded, distracted by finally locating the spectacles. “Yes, he did.”

  “Going back there to fight the Gardier, that’s one thing, going back there to hide—” Florian hesitated, her face taut with tension. “You were willing to do that? Abandon Ile-Rien?”

  Tremaine turned to regard her, feeling a little blank. “It didn’t come to that.”

  “If it had, would you?” she demanded.

  Tremaine went back to Gerard’s battered leather bag, jamming in the few items of spare clothing he had brought. She didn’t want to talk about this, not now. “I have a hard time caring about things.”

  “No you don’t.” Florian shook her head, frustrated. “You cared enough to get us out of that room at the Gardier base, to find Ilias, to get through those caves, to rescue us from Dommen—”

  “That was different,” Tremaine cut the litany off abruptly. Most of that had been luck, or Ilias.

  “How?” Florian gestured in exasperation. “It’s like you’re two people. One of them is a flighty artist, and I like her. The other one is bloody-minded and ruthless and finds scary things funny, and I’m not sure I like her very much; but whenever we’re about to die, she’s the one who gets all three of us through it alive.” She pressed her lips together, then asked seriously, “Which one are you? I’d really like to know.”

  Tremaine abandoned the bag’s stubborn clasp, letting out a frustrated breath and rubbing her eyes. She wasn’t happy to hear something said aloud that she herself had been mentally dancing around for far too long. She couldn’t tell Florian which one she really was when she didn’t know herself.

  She had chosen the flighty artist, she could see that now in a way she hadn’t before. It had enabled her to forget her past, make a new person of herself. But it was the other her she needed now, the one her father had raised and trained, and Tremaine wasn’t sure she liked that other self either. “You want me to defend the palace gates with a bloody flag wrapped around me, that’s not going to happen. You want me to fight Gardier, that I can do.” That Gardier Gervas thought I was pathetic. Never mind that’s what I wanted him to think, never mind this was personal long before that. I’m going to take the Gardier’s world away. That was all the reason she could articulate to herself at the moment and it wasn’t what Florian wanted. Lying forgotten on the bed, the sphere clicked slowly, its inner gears spinning into motion, stirred by Tremaine’s agitation. Dammit. “The sphere’s getting upset. Can you take it to Niles?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed, Florian stepped to the bed to collect it.

  Tremaine watched her go, then went back to fiddling with the clasp on Gerard’s bag. You were raised by an emotionally frozen master criminal and an opium addict sorcerer, she told herself. It’s a wonder you’re only two people. Maybe she shouldn’t have shared any confidences with Florian. I don’t belong here with these people. She didn’t think like them, and if she managed to behave like them, it was only because she was a better actress than Niles thought. She rubbed her forehead wearily. She felt she was back in the caves walking on that narrow bridge over the chasm and had deliberately looked down.

  Chapter 20

  The night was well advanced when Tremaine and Ilias headed for the Ravenna. Preparations on the dock were quiet but frantic as the skeleton crew readied the ship to sail. Trucks and cars lined the road above the dock, empty now that their passengers had boarded. Only a few stragglers seemed to be left on the dock itself.

  Tremaine had changed back into her Syprian clothes, adding her own stout walking boots and a sweater to hold off the cold on the way over to the dock. Her rationale for this was that they were better for swimming, though mostly she had done it because she wanted to wear them. Her small bag of belongings was even lighter since she was leaving behind both her tweed skirts. She had left them draped over the glass tulip lampshades, for the Gardier to puzzle over when they overran the place.

  She glanced back at Ilias. Trailing behind her with Gerard’s bag slung over his shoulder, he was eyeing the ship with a combination of dread and resignation. “Why don’t you like it?” she asked him, frustrated. The Ravenna was the first thing she had ever stolen and she was pretty damn proud of it.

  “She needs eyes,” he said, not looking up at the bow high above their heads. “Without them she’s like a ... giant with no face.”

  “Oh.” Heading on down the dock, Tremaine thought that over. It was hard to argue with.

  A scaffold with metal stairs had been erected to allow access to the ship; Rel had never been a port for vessels of this size and didn’t have the gangway structure that would normally be used to board. A group of Institute workers were carefully scaling the steps as the structure shook with the wind; it looked like a toothpick sculpture next to the giant gray wall of the Ravenna’s hull. Tremaine was more worried about that climb than she was about the trip through the spell portal. She hadn’t thought to bring a torch and was relieved someone had strung a few work lights along the handrail.

  Florian was waiting at the bottom of the steps, jittering impatiently as the guards checked them off on the list. She was carrying a battered travel case. Not wanting a return to their last topic of conversation, Tremaine asked quickly, “Did your telegram get an answer?”

  She shook her head, looking away. “There was a message waiting for me in my room. My family started for Parscia yesterday.” She shrugged regretfully as she shouldered her case. “I didn’t have a chance to tell my mother where I am. Though considering what we’re about to do, that might be a good thing.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” Tremaine said, feeling inadequate.

  “I’m sure they’re all right,” Florian said, but it was automatic. Her face was still shadowed. “Before the wireless room shut down I sent a telegram to my aunt’s house in Belaise, just to tell them I’m all right and I have
a way out of the country. I’m sure they’ll stop there on the way.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Tremaine told her, patting the girl’s shoulder awkwardly. She wasn’t good at reassurance. Probably, she reflected, because the flighty artist half is too flighty, and the bloody-minded one knows just how badly things might turn out.

  Ilias, who was good at reassurance, just stepped up and pulled Florian into a hug. It was the first time he had touched Florian since finding out she could use magic. He’s getting over it, or past it, Tremaine thought, whether he realizes it or not. Next maybe he‘ll even be able to look at Niles without baring his teeth.

  “I’m a little nervous about using the sphere again,” Florian admitted as they climbed the wooden stairs up toward the shipside door. The cold breeze picked at their clothes and tossed their hair and made Tremaine cling nervously to the handrail. Florian added reluctantly, “I’m afraid of what happened before. I know the spells, but I’m just not sure I know what I’m doing with the sphere. It’s so powerful.”

  “You got us here,” Tremaine pointed out, trying to be supportive. “And you brought us in right to the boathouse, so you must be better at it than you think.”

  “I brought us into the boathouse?” Florian threw a puzzled glance back down at her, the stark electric light throwing her sharp features into high relief.

  “Yes. You don’t remember it because you were drowning.”

  “But we were on the very edge of the target point,” Florian protested. “The boathouse is in the center. To change the spot where we came through, I would have had to change the connecting points in the reverse adjuration.”

  They reached the top of the scaffold where a wooden gangway extended to vanish into the large black hole of the door. It was dark inside except for a few emergency lights illuminating the shadowy passage into the boarding hall. “So, you must have done that,” Tremaine said, distractedly twitching hair out of her eyes. Supposedly the ship had been pronounced clear of bombs or spells planted by Gardier spies; since there was an awful lot of ship to search, she thought that was probably optimism rather than certainty.