by Martha Wells
“No, I think he’d realize. This is Colonel Averi.” Niles grimaced in impatience and rubbed his forehead as if the poor quality of the view was giving him a headache. “I think we’re getting this through one of his coat buttons.”
“Does Averi know? Isn’t that—” Florian had started to say “immoral,” but both Niles and Giaren were looking at her with nearly identical expressions of faint incredulity. She bit her lip, considering. All right, all right, fine. I’m a stickler for rules and look where it’s gotten me.
Niles continued, “Ixion seems to have chosen a room with nothing reflective for the scrying spell to focus on.” His expression grew sardonic. “Intentionally, I’m sure. He’s learned far too much about our methods in the short time he’s been with the Capidarans.”
With a wince, Florian nodded. That she could agree with wholeheartedly. “Chandre’s keeping you out because you refused to work with Ixion?”
“Yes.” Niles leaned back in the chair, rubbing his temples. “Kressein hasn’t been allowed in either. Apparently his critical regard affects Ixion’s concentration, so Chandre has asked that he stay out as well. And Chandre’s influence, financial and otherwise, in the Capidaran Ministry is so great, Kressein has agreed.” He let out his breath. “God, I wish Gerard was here.”
Florian nodded grimly. She wished they were all here. At least their friends were better off than they had been when the captured airship had taken them to the Gardier world. This time they had a sphere, and Gerard, and were probably just exploring the cave ruin. And being worried out of their minds as to why no one had come to fetch them yet.
She hesitated, wondering if she should tell Niles about Ixion’s threat, despite Nicholas’s instructions not to. She bit her lip, then decided against it. Niles would be made even more angry and distracted than he already was, and if he took it up with Averi and Chandre, it was still her word against Ixion’s.
As Niles leaned forward again to study the bowl, Florian asked, “Is it all right if I go through the books?” Whatever horror or miracle Ixion was creating with that vat, she still had to prepare some kind of defense against him.
Niles waved assent and Florian found a spot on the floor near the crates and piles of books. Taking out her notebook, she pulled the nearest volume into her lap. Flipping through the delicate pages, she knew she shouldn’t bother looking at complicated spells. She couldn’t do anything too complex without the help of a sphere, preferably Arisilde; complex Great Spells like the massive unbinding Niles had devised were for experienced Lodun-trained sorcerers who were experts in etheric theory. But she knew Gerard always said that for attack and defense, simple spells were often best. He had rendered Ixion unconscious back on the island with a simple charm put together from hair, thread and spittle. But Florian didn’t suppose that Ixion, now that he had more experience with Rienish magic, would be fool enough to let anyone hand him something again. Still, a charm was her best chance, and she concentrated on looking for simple ones that could be prepared in advance.
After several different books and copious notes, she looked up, startled to realize someone was standing over her. Fortunately, it was Giaren, not Ixion. Florian tried to look innocent; if Giaren asked what she was doing and she told him she was researching spells to defend herself against Ixion, Niles was going to want to know why, and she doubted he would accept random paranoia as a reason. But he only leaned down, tapping her notebook, and said thoughtfully, “Actually saltpeter works better in this one than sulfur. And try Montvarin’s History of Border Conflicts, it has an entire section on defensive and offensive charms from the First Bisran War.”
Florian blinked as he moved away. Though Giaren couldn’t use magic, he was a researcher for the Viller Institute and probably knew almost as much about magic as any Lodun-trained sorcerer. “Right, thanks.” Of course, we’re in a war. No one’s going to wonder why I’m researching attack spells. She rolled her eyes at herself and sat up on her knees to search the stacks for the book. I think I’m overthinking this. Tremaine would undoubtedly agree.
The afternoon light was just starting to fail when Tremaine and Ilias and Giliead returned to the circle chamber. The giant room was empty, disturbed dust glittering in the shafts of afternoon sunlight. Tremaine frowned, but then spotted Cimarus and Aras on guard in the archway that led to their camp in the grotto room. She could see why they had withdrawn back to that point. The large space of the circle chamber was too big to defend properly and once darkness fell it would be even worse.
“What did you find?” Aras demanded, as soon as they were within earshot. Tremaine smiled blandly at him. Gerard was already coming down the rubble-piled hall and she wanted to wait until he arrived, so she didn’t have to repeat herself. With typical Syprian reticence, Giliead and Ilias both ignored the question.
“Did you find something?” Gerard asked as he reached them.
With a wince Tremaine shifted the rifle off her shoulder. The damn thing was heavier than it should be; gunsmithy was probably one of the skills the Gardier had chosen to inadequately borrow. “It’s something, all right.” Briefly she described the chamber they had discovered, the strange appearance of the early-model airship and the wall of empty crystals, while Gerard and Aras looked increasingly incredulous. Even Cimarus looked startled, and she wasn’t sure how many of the words he understood.
Gerard nodded when she was done, his brows drawn in thought. “I agree, if they can read the message you left, they’ll have to investigate. And if they’ve been trapped here for some time, as the wrecked airship and the living quarters suggest, they won’t be able to resist. Whether they’re Gardier or not.”
“Why are you so sure they’ll come?” Aras objected, talking to Gerard. “They ran away earlier. Why should they walk into a trap?”
“They don’t know how many of us there are,” Giliead said, patiently shifting into Rienish for Aras’s benefit. He jerked his chin toward Ilias and Tremaine. “They must have seen the three of us when we went into their chamber, but they don’t know about the rest of you.”
Aras stared, startled. Tremaine folded her lips over a smile, realizing Giliead had never bothered to speak Rienish in front of the Capidaran man, or at least not to speak it quite so well, with a trace of Gerard’s upper-class Vienne accent. Aras recovered rapidly, replying, “They could have been spying on us earlier.”
Ilias shook his head. “No tracks. There was only the one, and he came no further than the outer hall.”
Tremaine felt there had been enough pretend debate. They knew what they had to do, they needed to get on with it. “We already picked out the spot to wait for them.” She handed the rifle to Aras to give him something to do and started briskly past him. “We need to get ready before dark.”
Talking over the idea for the trap, they had tentatively chosen a room off the corridor on the opposite side of the circle chamber from their camp. Looking around it again, Ilias decided it was still a good choice. There was only the one corridor that led from the Gardier wing into this section, and anyone stepping out of it into the cross corridor would see the light from their fire immediately and hopefully be drawn toward this room. Aras was to be posted at the archway into the circle chamber, in case the intruders tried to use it to reach the other end of the corridor to work their way up behind them.
This room was larger than the fountain room they had chosen to camp in, but it was overlooked by an intact stone-pillared gallery that was reached by a narrow stairway up from the next room. The Gardier—or whoever or whatever these people were—would have to come in through the door from the circle chamber’s main corridor, where they could be easily surrounded. At least that was how it was supposed to work. Ilias shook his head, reflecting grimly on how things didn’t work as they were supposed to when curses were involved, even Rienish curses.
The late-afternoon light from the single louver in the ceiling was beginning to fail, and Ilias began to collect stones to build a fire pit. He could hear t
he others moving around, Gerard’s and Aras’s voices from the room next door. Giliead came in with his pack slung over his shoulder and an armload of firewood, Cletia following him with Ilias’s pack and a stack of blankets.
Giliead deposited the firewood as Gerard stepped out onto the gallery above them, saying, “We’ll need some kind of barrier up here or anyone coming in will be able to see me. If they are Gardier and using their crystal etheric detection devices, they’ll be alert for any kind of sight-avoidance charm.”
Giliead straightened up, regarding the gallery with a thoughtful frown. Some blue-flowered rock-creeper vines had worked their way in through the louver and spread across the ceiling. “If we brace a couple of branches against the wall and pull those vines down to cover them, that should do it.”
As Giliead handed the branches up and directed Gerard’s efforts from below, Ilias finished off the fire pit. His stomach was starting to grumble and he was glad Cimarus and Vervane, who were stuck watching Balin and caring for Meretrisa, were putting together a quick meal using the last of the sava and the fruit they had found up on the plateau.
Instead of depositing her burden and leaving, Cletia had stayed to arrange the packs and blankets in a way to suggest a camp, and was now trying to make the rolled-up extra blankets look enough like sleeping bodies to fool someone in bad light. Building the small fire in the newly constructed rock hearth, Ilias watched her efforts with growing irritation. It wasn’t needed, as whoever walked through the door would have no time for close observation, and something about her manner was pricking his nerves even more than it usually did. “Don’t worry about that, I’ll do it later,” he said, exasperated.
She glanced at him, then let the blanket she was fiddling with fall. She sat on her heels on the other side of the hearth. “I wanted to talk to you.”
He snorted derisively, half thinking she wanted to reiterate Pasima’s “convince Giliead not to go home” speech. “Go ahead. There’s nobody important here to see you.”
She winced and her cheeks reddened. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”
That’s a new one. Ilias frowned, not understanding. “For what?”
She pressed her lips together in annoyance, apparently thinking he was mocking her. “For treating you as if— I never knew anyone who had a curse mark before.”
Ilias shoved at the wood, rearranging the branches unnecessarily. This made him far more uncomfortable than her contempt ever had. He had never much liked Cletia, even before the curse mark; she had always been one of Visolela’s relatives, someone from one of the town families too worried about their own consequence for their own good. Then Halian had married Giliead’s mother, Karima, and Visolela had married Halian’s son Nicanor, connecting them all by marriage and inheritance. And Visolela had begun pressuring Karima to sell Ilias into marriage to a wealthy inland trader, which hadn’t exactly given him any soft feelings toward her host of lovely and stiff-necked sisters and cousins.
Part of him didn’t want to give Cletia the forgiveness she was asking for; he had been shunned by people whose opinion he cared about a great deal more than hers. Every time anyone had avoided him it had hurt, at least until he had gotten inured to it. But he didn’t want to be childish either, not when they had to depend on each other to survive. Fighting his reluctance and bitterness, he shook his head and shrugged, feeling awkward. “It’s not something most people know how to react to.”
Cletia took a sharp breath. “And …I was angry, too. I heard the story that you didn’t have to get the mark, that no one knew about the cursing but you and Giliead, that he told you not to tell anyone about it. And you did it anyway.” She looked away, and he saw her swallow, as if the words were difficult. “I was angry that now my family wouldn’t…That there would be no more possibilities between us.”
Ilias stared at her, startled. Before the curse mark, he had never noticed Cletia, mainly because he thought she had never taken notice of him. And he had been too occupied with the women who were his friends to bother. Now with all the clear vision of hindsight, he had the sudden revelation that Cletia’s standoffish behavior then could have been shyness and lack of confidence rather than disdain. “I didn’t know. I—”
She reached out, catching his hand. Her skin was coarser than Tremaine’s, her hand callused like his across the palm and the fingers from using a sword and bow. “Don’t. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.” She blinked, looking up, startled. Giliead was standing over them; they had both been so distracted they hadn’t noticed his quiet approach. His expression was stony, his eyes on Cletia.
Her lips curved in a slight smile and she released Ilias’s hand. She gave Giliead an ironic nod, stood and walked out, her boots crunching faintly on the scatter of dead leaves.
Ilias prodded the wood again, realized how many times he had rearranged it. He swore at himself, looking around for the tinder pouch.
Giliead sat down on the dusty stone, propping one arm on his knee and regarding Ilias expectantly. When Ilias refused to give in and say anything, Giliead demanded, “What are you doing?”
Getting flints and tinder out to light the fire, Ilias paused, lifting a brow. “What does it look like?”
“With Cletia,” Giliead amended pointedly.
Ilias didn’t know what Giliead was so indignant about; he had been the one who had agreed to let Cletia and Cimarus join them in the first place. Then Ilias stared at him, suddenly realizing this wasn’t about possible truce making with the hostile side of the family. “What? That wasn’t— She just—” Giliead shook his head, rolling his eyes to the shadowy ceiling. Ilias threw a look up at the gallery. A couple of long branches were wedged against the pitted stone balustrade, artfully draped with vines, but Gerard hadn’t taken his place there yet. He lowered his voice and sputtered, “She talked to me. I can’t do anything about it.”
Giliead gave him a withering look. “When Tremaine beats you for being stupid, I’m going to help.”
Glaring at him, Ilias flicked a pebble, managing to bounce it off his head. Tremaine came in just as Ilias was rolling backward to dodge Giliead’s return buffet. She shook her head in mock disgust. “If you two are going to hit each other all night, I’m going to move to a quieter trap down the hall.”
Tremaine propped her chin on her hand, poking at the fire with a stick. The dark settling in just beyond the limits of their small fire was a little daunting; she felt a persistent prickle in the back of her neck, as if something was creeping up on her. It was a relief to hear Gerard move occasionally in the gallery not far above their heads.
Giliead and Ilias sat to either side of her, both positioned so they could half face the door, which was just a square of darkness against the lighter wall. They weren’t talking much so they could listen for the approach of their anticipated visitors. Ilias had been passing the time by methodically sharpening his various knives with a whetstone, and Giliead had that distant look that she had learned meant he was listening on a different level, alert for etheric traces that would mean spellcasting. They had arranged the blankets behind them in the darker half of the room to look like three sleeping bodies. Or look sort of like, Tremaine amended, if you don’t have long to look at them. And have bad eyes.
Gerard had loaned her his pistol, which was a comforting weight in the ammunition pouch attached to her belt. She had the flap open so she could reach the weapon easily, but if these were Gardier, she wanted the layer of thick cloth between her skin and the gun. Aras had the rifle and was at the opposite end of the hallway, guarding the archway leading into the circle chamber; Cletia was at the other end with a bow. The other bow lay behind Giliead, already strung.
Besides their own small noises, the place was utterly silent except for the occasional chirp of an insect. Tremaine’s ears felt sore from listening so intently. She shifted again, the tension making her shoulders ache. Ilias, most of his attention still on the leaf-shaped blade he was sharpening, threw her a sympath
etic half smile. She studied him a moment, watching the firelight turn his unruly curls into a halo. Keeping her voice low, she said, “You never look bored. Except when we were in Capidara.”
He thought about it, pausing to set the knife aside. “Cities are boring. There’s nothing to do. This is like hunting.”
He had a point, though Tremaine had always thought of hunting as a more active pursuit. But then she thought Ilias liked being the bait, fooling the prey into thinking it was the hunter. That she could understand. But she didn’t want to turn the conversation to anything serious. Instead, she said, “There’s lots of things to do in cities. You can talk to people you don’t like, be run over by omnibuses, smell the sewers…”
Giliead made an amused snort. It didn’t surprise Tremaine that he was both listening to them and concentrating on possible etheric vibrations; she knew he could talk to ghosts while simultaneously having a conversation with live people. Ilias cocked a brow at her and started to reply, then went still.
Tremaine held her breath; she had heard it too, a faint distant crackle of dead leaves under someone’s boot. It could be Aras or Cletia, though there was no way to make sure of that without potentially ruining the trap. Sensitized to all the night noises after sitting in the quiet for so long, she knew it had come from the wrong direction to be Gerard.
Her nerves tensing and making her feel as if her feet were several sizes too large, Tremaine carefully began to stand. Acting as if they had all the time in the world, Ilias caught Giliead’s eye, silently mouthing the word “Curses?”