The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein)

by Martha Wells

  Even if she hadn’t been trying to provoke a reaction, it would have been worth it to see the offended shock and disbelief on all their faces. The woman actually looked like she was going to be ill. Satisfied with her progress so far, Tremaine rattled the sheet of typescript ostentatiously. “So, you must be Justice Riand.” She smiled engagingly at the older man, who looked as if he was now certain he was dealing with a madwoman. “And we have here Bain, Damil, and Carrister?”

  Justice Riand eyed her narrowly. “You have not said what right you have to question us.”

  “Now, that would be telling.”

  The man sitting next to her spoke suddenly, “I am Bain Riand.” He was dark and handsome in a square-jawed, broody way, if one liked that sort of thing. “What do you want of us?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but Giliead moved suddenly, grabbing Bain’s arm. Giliead said grimly, “It’s this one.”

  Bain gasped, from surprise or pain. Then his hand opened and she saw he was holding a small brown stone with some strands of hair bound around it with red string. Alarmed, Tremaine shoved her chair back, stumbling to her feet. She had no idea what it was, but she could recognize a ritual object when she saw one.

  Bain snatched up the dinner knife and stabbed at Giliead’s arm. With a growl, Giliead pulled Bain out of the chair, slapping the knife out of his hand. The Bisran men surged to their feet but Ilias shouted, his sword drawn. The sudden appearance of three feet of steel abruptly halted their rush to help.

  A flash of light caught Tremaine’s eye. An amorphous green mass formed in the air above the table, resolving into something with razor-sharp claws and several mouthfuls of teeth. People screamed and shouted, coming to their feet. Tremaine backed rapidly away as Ilias grabbed the elder Riand by the collar, yanking him back and setting the sword’s edge to his throat. But his face set, Giliead kept his hold on Bain’s wrist, saying, “It’s not real.”

  “It’s an illusion!” Tremaine shouted in Rienish. “Everyone calm down!”

  Bain spit words into Giliead’s face and Tremaine saw something darken the air between them. She had seen a great many defensive spells, but this one she didn’t recognize. Whatever it was, it made Giliead’s face suffuse with rage. With one swift shove he pushed the black cloud away as if it was a solid mass, then slammed Bain facedown onto the table. But he didn’t slam him hard enough, for Bain still struggled, trying to speak. Giliead tightened the hold into a strangler’s grip.

  “Don’t kill him!” Tremaine yelped, realizing he wasn’t going to stop. They had covered this point, hadn’t they? “We need to talk to him!” She looked at Ilias for help. He caught her eyes, startled, then looked from her to Giliead, desperately conflicted.

  She realized she had no idea if the marriage meant Ilias had to obey her. I can’t ask him to get in the middle of this. She hastily turned to Giliead. “Please don’t kill him. He can tell us things we need to know. I’d say something manipulative, but I can’t think of anything. I suppose I could throw myself on his body, but there’s no way in hell I’m doing that, so—”

  Giliead was looking at her from under lowered brows. Then he released the pressure on Bain’s throat, half-lifting him to slam the sorcerer into the hardwood table again. Stunned this time, Bain went limp and slid to the floor.

  Colonel Averi had Bain Riand taken to the Isolation Ward, to the same treatment room they had used for questioning the Gardier. There were two armed guards by the door, and the place was now warded almost as strongly as Ixion’s cell. In the outer room, Tremaine peered through the grille, impatiently hoping Bain would just give in and talk.

  Bain sat in a straight-backed chair in the bare whitewashed room. Niles stood over him, arms folded. He was conducting the interrogation as calmly as if he was interviewing the man for a position on the Institute’s staff. It made Bain’s sullen expression seem childish.

  Niles asked thoughtfully, “Why didn’t you admit that you were a sorcerer when you first crossed into Ile-Rien’s territory?”

  It was a reasonable question, and Bain looked away, his dark brows now more sulky than brooding. “Talk, you idiot,” Tremaine said under her breath. As a sorcerer himself, Bain would know how to resist the mild truth spells Niles and Gerard had used on the Gardier prisoners; this could take forever.

  Finally, Bain said grudgingly, “I’m not a sorcerer. I am a lay priest.”

  Niles lifted a skeptical brow. He said mildly, “You didn’t admit to that either.” Bisran priests of most sects were sorcerers; it was the only practice of magic their government sanctioned. If Bain had described himself as a priest the Rienish authorities would have known exactly what that meant. “What were you doing in Room C374?”

  A flicker of honest confusion crossed Bain’s face. “I don’t—What room?”

  “It’s a Third Class room in the bow.”

  Bain shook his head, sullen again. “I was not there. I have been in no one’s quarters except my own.”

  Niles considered him a moment. It did look distressingly as though Bain was telling the truth. Either that or he was a better actor than Tremaine had expected. “What was the spell in your quarters for?”

  Bain pressed his lips together, still refusing to answer.

  Tremaine rolled her eyes. This is going to take forever. She turned away, nearly stepping on Ilias, who had been hovering right behind her. He moved back, his expression both guilty and defensive, as if he knew he had been in the wrong but was prepared to argue the point anyway.

  Oh, right, that. Tremaine took his arm, tugging him away from the grille so their voices wouldn’t carry through. “Look, it’s all right,” she said quietly, stopping in the doorway. The outer room was only just around the corner, and she didn’t want to be overheard from there either. “I understand.”

  He eyed her, still troubled, obviously wanting to make sure she really meant it. “You do?”

  “I think I do, yes.” During the fight in the dining room his loyalty to Giliead had come before his loyalty to her, but she was fairly certain she had already known that. In her experience of the complex web of loyalties and counterloyalties that characterized both Vienne’s underworld and its theatrical community, it wasn’t that much of a shock.

  Ilias just nodded, his expression turning warmer. Suddenly uncomfortable, Tremaine towed him on into the office.

  There, his suit and neckcloth still in disarray from the fight in the dining room, Justice Riand confronted Colonel Averi. “Your hired savages attacked my family,” he was saying, his face dark with fury.

  Giliead leaned back against the desk, arms folded, with Florian perched next to him. He threw a careful look at Tremaine and Ilias as they entered and relaxed slightly at seeing no obvious signs of enmity. Gerard was standing beside the door to the other guardroom, eyeing Riand with dislike. “That one”—Riand pointed at Ilias, his hand trembling with anger—“held a weapon to my throat. I have every right to demand vengeance on my authority as a Bisran Church Warden—”

  Tremaine lifted a brow. There was a law in Ile-Rien that a diplomatic representative on Rienish soil could invoke the laws of his own country against anyone who committed a crime against him, as long as the criminal was not a Rienish citizen. It had been meant to deter Aderassi and other foreigners who came to Ile-Rien to attack prominent Bisrans. Dissidents had known they were more likely to get a light sentence from a sympathetic Rienish Magistrate and jury and to get their grievance aired in the press.

  “They aren’t hired,” Colonel Averi interrupted the diatribe. “They are temporarily attached to this ship by the authority of an allied nation, and their diplomatic credentials hold more weight than yours. Besides, the one that held a weapon to your son’s throat is a Rienish citizen. That may mean nothing anywhere else in our world or this one at the moment, but I assure you it means a great deal on this ship.” He eyed Riand with cool contempt. “And as to vengeance, frankly, I’d like to see you try.”

  Riand stared at him in a
stonished affront, then set his jaw, obviously swallowing an angry reply.

  Tremaine pretended to be more interested in the state of her fingernails, smiling to herself. She had forgotten that marriage to her, if a Rienish court accepted it as legal, gave Ilias Rienish citizenship. Not that that was worth much at the moment, but it was interesting that Averi was willing to use it. “What was that about?” Ilias asked her softly.

  “He wanted you both turned over to him so you could finish killing him,” she explained in Syrnaic. “Averi pointed out that it was a stupid idea.”

  Ilias snorted, and Giliead growled something under his breath.

  Riand was still matching cold stares with Averi. Considering that Averi was the cold stare champion of the ship, Tremaine didn’t give much for Riand’s chances. The Bisran said finally, “Let us speak in private.”

  “We are in private,” Averi snapped. “There isn’t anyone here who is not directly concerned in this investigation.”

  Tremaine knew Riand could have probably gotten a private conversation with Averi if he hadn’t been aggressive enough to trip the Rienish “if a Bisran asks for it say no” reflex. From his expression, Riand might have realized it too. He struggled with himself for a long moment, then said stiffly, “It is true, my son is a sorcerer. But all he did was cast a ward, and that only to protect our quarters while we were gone.”

  Averi’s frown deepened. “It wasn’t terribly effective. We searched your quarters while you were in the dining room.”

  “The ward was not meant to bar admittance to corporeal visitors.”

  Gerard came alert, staring skeptically at Riand. “Corporeal visitors? What do you mean?” He threw a glance at Giliead, and Tremaine realized he was thinking of the Syprian god. Though she didn’t think it would leave the vicinity of Cineth, it was the only incorporeal visitor the ship had had. As far as we know, she thought suddenly, uneasy.

  Riand’s eyes moved from Averi to Gerard. He said, “My son was approached by something that did not show itself. It came to him while he was alone in the sitting room of our quarters, last night. It offered him…an unspecified reward if he would assist it.”

  Florian translated for Giliead and Ilias, keeping her voice low. Giliead’s brows drew together as he listened. Ilias met his eyes with a frown and mouthed the word, “Shades?” Giliead shook his head slightly, but more as if he wasn’t sure rather than discounting the suggestion.

  “Assist it in what?” Averi demanded.

  Riand hesitated, then admitted, “Stopping the ship from reaching Capidara.”

  Gerard cleaned his spectacles on a handkerchief, his eyes never leaving Riand. “But he refused.”

  “We have no quarrel with the people on this ship.” For a moment Riand looked human, weary and exasperated. “Should we destroy the very thing that our safety depends on? To trust ourselves to a…a man, if it is a man and not some fay or creature, we know nothing of? We aren’t mad.”

  “He had no idea what the identity of this…being was?” Averi’s face was immobile, impossible to read. “If it was human, if it was male or female?”

  “No.” Riand shook his head, taking out a cloth to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead. All these admissions were costing him something, at least. “Its spells of concealment were impenetrable. He could tell nothing about it except presumably what it wished him to know.”

  “It didn’t occur to him to play along for a time?” Gerard asked, still watching him sharply but betraying some exasperation. “To try to discover its identity or what it planned for the ship?”

  Riand’s expression hardened. “Our children are taught to refuse the temptations offered them by demons and devils. To ‘play along’ with such a creature would only endanger his soul.”

  Oh, please, Tremaine thought, rolling her eyes. She thought she had done well to keep her incredulity subvocal, but Riand caught her expression, and his face reddened. He looked pointedly to Averi, his temper tightly controlled. “May my son be released now?”

  The colonel’s expression was still inscrutable, giving Riand no credit and nothing to appeal to. “I’m afraid not.”

  Riand pressed his lips together, his eyes coldly angry. He turned and walked out of the office, one of the guards moving to follow him at Averi’s gesture. The colonel frowned at the doorway. “He isn’t telling us everything.”

  “He didn’t want to say what it offered, or what it specifically wanted the boy to do.” Gerard paced a few steps, lost in thought. He lifted his brows. “In his position, it’s a wise move.”

  “Could that story be true?” Florian asked a little reluctantly. “If this sorcerer or whatever he is wants to destroy the ship, why does he need help from a Bisran church sorcerer? Even a saboteur with no magic could cause us a lot of trouble.”

  “He doesn’t want to destroy the ship.” Tremaine’s eyes narrowed as she considered the problem. “He was just feeling Bain out, seeing how far he could go with him. If Bain would agree to sink a ship filled with refugees, including his own family, he’d agree to anything.” She shrugged slightly. “It’s a bit crude. It makes me think Riand is right, and the thing that approached Bain wasn’t human.” It might even be why Riand believed it wasn’t human, but he just didn’t want to discuss his reasoning with people he still thought of as enemies.

  Gerard nodded grimly, but Averi gave her an oddly assessing look. It wasn’t as bad as his “who the hell are you” stare, but it worried her. He turned his gaze to the sphere, saying bluntly, “There is an incorporeal being on the ship.”

  Everyone looked at the sphere, resting innocuously on the desk where Gerard had set it when he came in. It wasn’t even spinning or clicking.

  Tremaine shook her head, startled. “No. Arisilde wouldn’t do that, not unless he went insane.” It crossed her mind suddenly that that was a very real possibility. Arisilde’s consciousness was trapped in the sphere; if anybody had a right to go mad, it was he.

  Before they had left Ile-Rien on the ill-fated Pilot Boat, Tremaine had been planning to kill herself. It was only after discovering that Arisilde was in the sphere that she had realized some of those feelings of despair had come from him.

  The images of the Syprians that had worked their way into her play and a few magazine stories had been his attempts to communicate with her. But she hadn’t responded, and the sphere had been left alone and dusty, and Arisilde, left without hope, had unintentionally transferred his despair to her. She had been despondent and probably shell-shocked enough on her own, and that couldn’t have helped him either; they must have just fed each other’s melancholy. It was a pointed reminder that Arisilde might not be in total control of his powers, that he might cause things to happen without conscious volition. But she wasn’t going to point that out to Averi. “If he’s crazy, we’re all dead, so there’s no point in discussing it,” she said curtly.

  Averi eyed her for a thoughtful moment. “I’m going to speak to Niles. Perhaps if Bain’s story doesn’t match his father’s, we won’t have to discuss it at all.”

  Tremaine watched him go, eyes narrowed, then said in Syrnaic, “Did that sound like a threat to anybody else?”

  “No,” Gerard told her firmly. “He has to consider all possibilities. But I don’t think it’s the sphere—Arisilde—either. For one thing, he wouldn’t need Bain’s help to disrupt activity on the ship.”

  Wanting off the subject, Tremaine asked Ilias, “What did you say you thought it was?”

  “Shades sometimes make trouble by whispering in dreams.” Ilias jerked his chin toward the sphere. “But your god there should keep the dangerous ones away from the ship.”

  Tremaine glanced at Gerard, frowning. “Is the ship haunted?” As if they needed that too.

  Gerard lifted a brow, considering the question. “There’s some natural etheric activity. There were a few accidents during the early voyages, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t still lingering impressions. But I doubt we have any true entities, pa
rticularly any hostile ones.” He glanced up, frowning. “It’s more likely Bain Riand was tricked by another sorcerer, fooled into believing the offer came from some sort of etheric being.”

  Ilias shook his head with a grimace. “It’s hard to believe Ixion is on this ship and he didn’t do this.”

  Giliead had been listening in thoughtful silence. “It’s always been him before,” he admitted grimly. “But Gerard is right. He can’t get out of that room with their god keeping him in or he’d be out of it now. And besides, it doesn’t have his…touch about it.” He pushed to his feet. “But…”

  “But it won’t hurt to make sure,” Gerard finished.

  Once out of the Isolation Ward and up on the open deck, Ilias stopped Tremaine with a hand on her arm. “I don’t want you to go with us.”

  She lifted a brow at him. “What?” The afternoon sun was bright on the sea and the salt wind tore at their hair. Already across the deck, Giliead glanced back in annoyance to see what was keeping them. He took in the situation and suddenly found something intensely interesting off the starboard rail.

  “He knows things. If he knows we’re together—” Ilias made a complex gesture.

  Ah. This was about the Andrien women Ixion had cursed to death. Giliead’s older sister, a cousin of Ilias’s who had followed him to Andrien, and Halian’s daughter, who had come to live with her father. Tremaine bit a nail thoughtfully, and pointed out, “Florian’s going.”

  “I don’t want Florian to go either.”

  It was Florian’s turn to glare at him. “What?” she demanded defensively. “You think I’m going to be within ten feet of him and suddenly succumb to his will?”

  Ilias shook his head in exasperation. “Of course not.”

  Tremaine couldn’t help herself. “Florian had high marks in will-withstanding at the Lodun entrance examinations.”

  Florian transferred the glare to her.

  Ilias planted his hands on his hips, and said firmly, “He kills women. I don’t want him to see more of you—either of you—than he already has.”