The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

by Martha Wells

  He eyed her a moment. “Are you nervous about something?”

  “No,” she said firmly, deciding to ignore the hint. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” He buried his face in the pillow again. But after a moment, he asked, “We’re going back to the cave with the circle today?”

  We? Hah! Tremaine thought, her mouth twisting bitterly. She didn’t think she was likely to be included. And if you were, what could you do? “They have to have a meeting about it first. Before I came up last night Gerard had telephoned Averi, who said the Capidarans want a piece of it too.” She tried to keep her annoyed snarl subvocal. “I don’t know how much use we’re going to get out of it. We already knew the Gardier steal everything they can find and use it for their own purposes. And we already knew they must have found the spell circle somewhere else; so we found one of the places where they could have stumbled on it. In your world. Somehow.”

  “Yes,” Ilias said dryly into the pillow. “They stumbled on it, and they thought, Here’s gibberish scratched on the ground, let’s pop a wizard into a piece of pretty rock and see if it takes us to another world.”

  Tremaine lifted her brows, giving the braid a deliberate tug. “Damn, you are a sarcastic bastard. No wonder Giliead is so intimidated by you.”

  Ilias turned his head just enough to regard her with one eye and an air of deeply affronted suspicion. She clarified, “Yes, I am making fun of you.” She took the point, though. They did have much more to find out and the new circle and its destination were just a single piece of the puzzle. You’re being a pessimist again, she reminded herself with asperity, you gave that up, remember?

  She finished the braid, retying the end and reaching for the next. But he pushed himself up on his elbows, tossing the other braids out of her immediate reach. He took her hand, absently running his thumb over her bitten nails. “Why did you bring Ander here?”

  “Oh God, good question.” She shook her head. “Because I hate myself.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. Tremaine gave in and explained, “He still sees me the same way he saw me five years ago, as a silly little girl. Oh, maybe he’s condescended to elevate me to plucky little girl. And I have enough problems with trying to figure out who I am.” She shrugged helplessly. “I can’t help wanting to give him opportunities to—I don’t know, prove me wrong. Or prove himself right. It might be nice to be the plucky little girl who is absolutely sure what’s right, who doesn’t have blood on her hands, who’s never made decisions that got people killed.”

  Ilias shook his head. “Maybe he just wants something to stay the same as it used to be,” he said, sounding intensely reluctant to make this concession. Then he looked up at her through the tangled fringe of his hair. “I like grown women.”

  Tremaine eyed him for a moment. “All right, I take back the sarcastic bastard remark,” she conceded. “It was true, but I take it back.”

  Later, Ilias sat at the big table in the kitchen with Tremaine and Giliead. He was having trouble deciding if he was still angry at Giliead, but the food Derathi had brought that morning was rapidly improving his mood. Gerard and Florian had gone to meet with the Capidaran wizards at the port, Ander accompanying them, Giaren had gone to report to Niles, and Kias had taken Calit back to the Ravenna. Cletia and Cimarus hadn’t made an appearance yet this morning, a situation Ilias hoped would continue. He felt he could get along fine without ever seeing them during their entire stay in the house.

  The talking curse box kept ringing shrilly from the front room and Tremaine kept getting up to answer it, returning in a state of increasing annoyance. Nicholas was here somewhere, but apparently he was no longer bothering to respond to the box’s incessant demands.

  She returned yet again, muttering, “No, no one’s here. No, that hasn’t changed in the past five minutes. Yes, I do believe they are perfectly capable of placing a call once they do get back here, if they want to talk to you, which frankly, I can’t imagine why they would.” She dropped into a chair, rubbing her face.

  Giliead winced sympathetically. Ilias picked up one of the heavy little buns filled with sweet cream, asking Tremaine, “So has anybody said when we go back yet?”

  “No.” She propped her chin on her hand, sounding resigned. “I’m betting it will be this afternoon when the Capidarans come. Gerard can get a look at the night sky in the other world then, if it’s not cloudy.” She lifted a brow ironically, turning her cup around on the table. “You can imagine how thrilled Nicholas is about the Capidarans.”

  Ilias nodded, lifting his brows. To say Nicholas was somewhat protective of his privacy was a vast understatement. It was like saying Pasima was somewhat worried about her status in Cineth.

  Giliead leaned forward, poking at one of the buns. “We need to decide what to take.” He glanced a little self-consciously at Ilias. “You said it was cold there?”

  That trace of hesitancy, and the sign that Giliead meant to help them after all, got Ilias over the last of his pique. He shrugged, feeling guilty over letting it drag out this long. “It wasn’t bad while we were there, but it would be much worse at night. We’d need warm clothes, blankets if we stay there any time. And water. There should be a way down to the river from those passages, but we didn’t see one. I’d rather not take the chance.”

  “Yes, it would be nice to be prepared this time,” Tremaine put in, picking up her cup. “Like with a sphere and a sorcerer.” The curse box shrieked again and she swore, thumped the cup back down and stamped off to answer it.

  Giliead picked up a cloth, absently mopping up the liquid that had slopped out of her cup. He said slowly, “You know I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” Ilias interrupted. He wasn’t exactly happy with how he had reacted. It was a stupid thing to do in the middle of a battle, and even if they weren’t fighting right at the moment, this was still the middle of a battle.

  Tremaine returned, but though she was frowning, she looked considerably less irritated. “That was Colonel Averi. He wants me to come down there. It’s something about that damned Gardier woman they’ve been questioning forever.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Ilias got to his feet. Since there was nothing more to do here at the moment, he might as well.

  Since she was going to talk to a Gardier prisoner, Tremaine didn’t change out of the Syprian clothes she had put on earlier, the dark pair of pants and the gold shirt with the sleeves that tied back. Her battered boots, an overcoat and a cap made it a comfortable and convenient outfit for tramping through the cold and muddy streets. She knew from speaking to Balin before that the Gardier woman found the signs of alliance between the Syprians and the Rienish disconcerting. Not disconcerting in a “my enemies are allying with each other” way, but disconcerting in a “my enemies are intimate with animals” way. The Gardier had never seen the Syprians as people.

  Tremaine briefly considered a taxicab but automobiles made Ilias ill, so she decided to walk to the Port Authority. It wasn’t a long way and would give her a chance to work off her excess energy.

  “We didn’t come this way before,” Ilias said, as the street she had chosen expanded into an open circular plaza. It wasn’t large by Ile-Rien’s standards, but it was almost palatial given Capistown’s lack of space. It was paved with a gray-veined stone that gleamed in the overcast light. In the center, surrounded by bright beds of early-spring flowers, was an oversize statue of a female figure swathed in robes and holding a sword.

  “Nicholas likes back alleys,” Tremaine explained, turning onto the covered promenade that ran around the perimeter of the plaza. It was fronted by expensive shops, the local telegraph office and several cafés. The inclement weather had caused the café patrons to withdraw inside, but as she and Ilias passed an open set of double doors, Tremaine heard a mandolin chorus and smelled sweet bread. She sighed. She thought the Syprians would enjoy Capistown more if they had a chance to explore the places where people actually lived, and not just the refugee hoste
l and the government buildings they had been trapped in so long. She had heard of a confectionery somewhere in this district that sold chocolates shaped like seashells; maybe on the way back she could find it.

  Ilias nudged her elbow, asking in a low voice, “Who are they?”

  Craning her neck to get one last sniff of the café, Tremaine hadn’t seen the small group of people sitting on the paving stones just off the promenade, dangerously close to the motorcar and wagon traffic circling the plaza. They wore ragged cloaks over skirts of braided grasses and brief leather tabards, and both women and men had cropped dark hair with tribal scarring and tattoos decorating their sallow skin. None of them looked healthy, and the children and elders were close to emaciated. They had clay bowls set out on the pavement and were ostensibly selling jewelry made of polished stone and braided hair, though they were probably doing more begging.

  “They’re Massian natives, they lived here before Capidara was colonized.” And if we don’t stop the Gardier, that’s better than what will happen to the Syprians, she reminded herself. The Gardier would simply exterminate the inhabitants of the Syrnai. And if by some miracle we do win the war, are they any better off? her self retorted. The rich forests around Cineth would tempt any number of land barons, eager for new territories to exploit, and the rest of the city-states were probably just as lush. The Capidarans already had the secret of building the spheres and what was left of the Rienish government couldn’t even protect its own people, let alone its otherworld native allies.

  Ilias frowned, probably baffled at why the Massians were sitting in the street. “What’s colonized?” he asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar Rienish word.

  She shook her head, tugging at the sleeve of his borrowed coat to get him to move along. “It’s not important.” And I hope you need never find out.

  A light rain had started by the time they reached the Port Authority. One of Averi’s corporals met them in the foyer, a large echoing space floored with dark marble and occupied by the usual contingent of Capidaran bureaucrats and businessmen hurrying back and forth. As was apparently standard for Capidaran public spaces, it was too cold in the building for Tremaine to bother leaving her coat at the cloakroom and Ilias kept his as well.

  The corporal led them up the back stairs to the floor of the rather cramped and dingy offices given over to the Rienish authorities. Strangely dressed Rienish and Syprians were a more familiar sight here, and a couple of Capidaran naval officers and a woman secretary Tremaine recognized from the various meetings she had attended actually said hello to her. They reached Averi’s area, where there were more familiar faces and even a few officers Tremaine knew in passing from the Ravenna, most contemplating some naval charts and captured Gardier maps tacked up on the wall.

  Averi appeared almost immediately out of the back room, greeting them brusquely with, “I heard about the experiment last night. You were lucky you didn’t kill yourselves, going through a gate into some unknown place.” Colonel Averi was the highest-ranking Rienish army officer in Capidara; if there were others who had taken evacuation transports, none had made it here. He was an older man, with a grim face and thinning dark hair. He and Tremaine had had their problems when they first met, but they had managed to achieve an almost accommodating working relationship. Capistown hadn’t improved Averi’s health any either; he still looked thin, pale and more like he should be lying in a hospital bed than planning an attack on Ile-Rien’s occupied coast.

  Tremaine nudged Ilias, who was craning his neck to see the charts, saying pointedly, “He’s talking to you.”

  “What?” He looked startled, then shrugged, telling Averi in Rienish, “We had to find where it went. It’s lucky every time we go through and don’t die.”

  Averi didn’t seem satisfied with this answer, but he didn’t pursue it either, just shaking his head and gesturing for them to follow him back to the inner room.

  It was more private but not any better appointed, with wooden filing cabinets and a table covered with papers, most weighed down by a large book of standard nautical charts. “I’ve had Balin brought here from the cells in the Magistrates’ Court,” he said. “There’s a room we use on this floor for questioning.”

  “Why did you want me to talk to her?” Tremaine asked, looking distractedly around for a place to sit and seeing there wasn’t one; the straight-backed chairs all seemed to be a vital part of some arcane filing system.

  “I wanted to confront Balin with someone who has been to the Gardier world. I know she’s become increasingly uneasy with our new knowledge of the Gardier—the Aelin.” Averi glanced at Tremaine with a thin smile. “I know she wasn’t pleased the first time one of us was able to speak to her in her own language, but you should have seen her face when we asked her about the Liaisons.”

  Tremaine nodded. “Liaison” was the closest the Rienish could come to the Gardier word for the men who had had small crystals implanted in their bodies, who passed along orders from the Gardier’s upper echelons. Though Nicholas had lived among them so long, he had never been able to find out just who the Liaisons were liaising with, or why. “And you think she’s some kind of observer, sent to spy on the other Gardier by Command or Science or whichever.”

  “Yes. There’s apparently a deep distrust between the Command and Science classes.” Averi picked up a sheaf of papers, frowning absently. “She can write and read, which makes her too well educated for their Service class.”

  They had found out so much about the Gardier in such a relatively short time, going from knowing next to nothing, not even what they called themselves, to actually visiting their world and one of their cities, stealing a new prototype airship, and to having all Nicholas’s accumulated knowledge after spending the last few years as one of them. They also had a few old Aelin books, scavenged out of an abandoned library. Nicholas had read them for the Viller Institute researchers, and the books had turned out to be novels, adventure tales of explorers and traders of some earlier age, bearing little resemblance to the Gardier life Tremaine and the others had glimpsed in Maton-devara. But speaking of Nicholas…. Tremaine asked carefully, “Why did you want me to try, though? Hasn’t Nicholas already spoken to her?”

  “Yes, but—” Averi hesitated, his brows drawing together, and Tremaine looked down to hide her sudden realization. He meant, “I wanted to confront Balin with someone who has been to the Gardier world who I don’t distrust as much.” It was something of a revelation.

  Averi finally finished, “You had quite an effect on her the first time you spoke to her. I think she’s afraid of you.”

  Tremaine glanced at Ilias, who lifted an ironic brow, and said in Syrnaic, “He’s talking to you this time.”

  The room used for questioning was bare, with stained plaster over battered wainscoting, but it had a working radiator and was warmer than the hall outside. The only furniture was a scarred table and two straight chairs. The Gardier woman was already seated in one, and two guards, one Rienish and one Capidaran, stood back against the wall. It wouldn’t matter how large the audience was, as Tremaine would question her in Aelin, the Gardier language, something only a few members of the Rienish command knew.

  Balin was a tall woman and lean, dressed in a loose white civilian shirt and pants. Her hair was growing back from the bare fuzz that seemed to be regulation for Gardier Service people, probably because she hadn’t been allowed access to a razor or scissors. The color was a muddy brown and it fluffed out around her ears in a particularly foolish way. She looked up, her plain face changing from a kind of weary defiance to watchfulness. “Oh good, you remember me,” Tremaine said, with a patently false smile. She took the other chair, slouching into it casually.

  Ilias went to lean against the wall behind Tremaine, and Balin’s eyes followed him with cold disgust. Her gaze came to Tremaine again, and she said in her husky voice, “You. What do you want of me now?”

  “The same as I did before. Nothing,” Tremaine replied in Aelin. The sphere
had given the language to her the same way it had given her Syrnaic, so she knew it nearly as well as Nicholas did. She shrugged, idly examining her fingernails, surprised to discover that she still hated this woman. When Balin had been captured on the island, squatting on the ground, bound with the chains the Gardier had used on their slaves, she had demanded that her captors surrender. Tremaine would have shot her if Giliead hadn’t taken the rifle away. She said, “But the others have some idea that you were sent to the island to spy on Command for the Scientists or on the Scientists for Command. That you’re not as stupid and useless as we assume.”

  Balin didn’t betray any surprise at Tremaine’s knowledge of her language, but she must be used to it now from Averi and Niles and the others who had questioned her. Gardier considered learning other languages as an activity only pursued by a lower order of beings. Balin’s thin lips twisted in amusement. “I know what you want.”

  Tremaine met her gaze, a renewed stirring of rage making her eyes narrow and her jaw tighten. She had the realization that she really, really disliked people telling her they knew what she wanted, knew what she thought, when she didn’t know herself and they couldn’t possibly know. She smiled thinly, recognizing that Balin had an unerring talent for saying the wrong thing to her at just the right time. “I’m all attention.”

  “You want to know how we make the avatars. This is obvious. The others think you want to make them for yourself.” Her face hardened with contempt. “I know you want to unmake them, to get those inside— out.” She snorted. “You are pathetic. You could make hundreds of avatars but you will never defeat us because you are afraid to do what must be done.” Her gaze flicked to Ilias again. “You sneer at us for our contempt of the primitives, but you let them serve you—”