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

by Martha Wells

  She would have felt fairly stupid if nobody followed her, but Ilias and Giliead both did. Once they were out in the corridor, she snapped, “How long have you known that?”

  Ilias looked at Giliead, who shrugged, saying, “Since she was chosen to come. Gyan, Karima and Halian all knew it too.”

  “Great.” Tremaine put both hands in her hair, a symbolic gesture to keep the top of her head from exploding. “And you didn’t think to mention it?” Being an ambassador, even a lousy ambassador, was a lot harder than she had thought.

  Ilias again looked at Giliead, who lifted a brow, shifting the conversational burden back. Ilias thought about it a moment, then said with apparently honest curiosity, “What could you have done about it?”

  Tremaine let out her breath and gave up. “Good question.”

  Chapter 12

  They ended up back in the main hall, Tremaine curled in a corner of the couch with Ilias sprawled next to her and Giliead on the floor in front of them. The large room was nearly empty except for a small group of refugees seated on the other cluster of couches and a couple of weary-looking young officers near the corridor down to the Observation bar. The crystal-covered lights were turned low, though the entrances to the Promenade deck on either side of the chamber had been closed off with curtained doors. To Tremaine the place had a late-night, much-used feel, like a theater after the show was over. All that was missing was the scent of stale smoke and wine.

  Avoiding the subject of Pasima, Tremaine had told them about her hopes for Arisilde. “So I think it makes sense. Arisilde needs a body, Ixion knows how to make bodies.”

  “He won’t give you the curse, not willingly,” Giliead said, eyeing her thoughtfully.

  “Willingly is the key word.” Tremaine shrugged, well aware it wasn’t going to be easy but not ready to admit it. “He’s a sorcerer who treated with the Gardier. We execute enemy sorcerers. Or we would, if we could catch any. When we get to the government-in-exile, they’re going to need a reason to keep wasting someone’s time warding a prison for him.”

  Giliead lifted a brow. “It won’t do any good to kill him if he just goes back to another body hidden on the island somewhere.”

  “That’s the part where it gets tricky,” Tremaine admitted.

  Ilias frowned. “How is the god going to get out of the sphere and into the body?”

  “He’s not a god.” Tremaine gestured, frustrated. “And I don’t know that part yet. It’s just an idea.”

  “We never bargain with wizards,” Ilias told her firmly. “It’s a good way to get your insides boiled.”

  Giliead contemplated the scuffed tile floor. “You think your friend would want that?”

  Tremaine knew he wasn’t talking about getting their insides boiled. She rubbed at a worn spot on the upholstery, avoiding his eyes. “After he’s got a body, he can tell me.”

  “Who’s this?” Ilias asked, looking at something above her head.

  “What?” Tremaine stared. After a moment she realized Giliead was looking expectantly in the same direction. She twisted awkwardly around. A young girl was standing behind the couch, smiling tentatively. She had long reddish brown hair braided neatly back, and her plain blue coat and skirt, white stockings and sensible shoes all spoke of a boarding school.

  She said, “Hello. I’m Olympe Fontainon.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Tremaine blinked, staring up at her as the light dawned. There were two men in dark tweed suits standing a short distance away regarding the refugees, the officers, the Syprians and Tremaine with equal suspicion. They had to be Queen’s Guards, members of the traditional personal bodyguard for the queens of Ile-Rien.

  The Princess Olympe sat down on the marble-topped cocktail table next to the couch, crossing her legs neatly and looking even more like a child. Tremaine, who had never followed the court much, tried to remember how old she was and failed. “I wanted to see them,” the girl explained to Tremaine, looking at Ilias and Giliead again. “I’ve heard so much.”

  “Right.” Tremaine ran a hand through her hair, trying to gather her thoughts. Ilias nudged her impatiently with a foot, and she said in Syrnaic, “This is Olympe, the…” she fumbled for the right words, “the Matriarch’s first daughter, one of her heirs.” She turned back to Olympe, switching to Rienish, “This is Ilias of Andrien and Giliead of Andrien, the god’s Chosen Vessel.” My husband and my brother-in-law. Right. That one was still taking some getting used to.

  “I heard you have a criminal sorcerer locked up somewhere below,” Olympe said matter-of-factly, as if she discussed such things every day. Considering who her mother was, she just might.

  “Not me personally, but yes,” Tremaine agreed.

  “But he’s not a Gardier?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve never seen a Gardier.” She sounded somewhat glum about it. I hope you never do, Tremaine thought, not wanting to imagine the circumstances under which that meeting would occur. Before she could reply, Olympe added, “I wanted to go ashore and see the native city, but of course no one would let me.”

  Tremaine opened her mouth to say something placating about after the war, but met the girl’s direct gaze. “Well, if you learn Syrnaic, they can tell you all about it.” Inspiration struck, and she added, “One thing you could do. You could ask to meet and speak with Pasima, the head of the delegation the Syprians are sending to your mother’s government. Florian or I could translate for you.” Yes, she wanted to turn an adolescent Fontainon princess loose on Pasima. Yes, indeed.

  “I could do that. I could do something.” Olympe looked at Tremaine, her head cocked to one side. “You’re Tremaine Valiarde. Was your father Nicholas Valiarde?”

  Tremaine hesitated warily. This was always a problematic question. “Yes.”

  “My mother knew him. She cried when they said he was dead, then she said he was probably only pretending again,” the princess informed her earnestly.

  Tremaine became aware her mouth was open. She had been about to say that her father couldn’t possibly have known the Queen, but the bit about “only pretending” had rather put paid to that. She knew him, all right, she thought grimly. Knew things nobody should know, just like Reynard Morane did.

  Olympe looked away, her young face turning shadowed. “Everyone thought she sent me here because she didn’t love me, because she thought the ship would sink. But she sent her two cats with me, and her favorite maid Amiase, and a copy of the Royal Charter that’s three hundred years old and the crown that King Fulstan wore at his coronation. The cats are in my room with Amiase, and Count Delphane tried to put the Charter and the crown in the ship’s safe, but the cases were too big so they’re under Captain Marais’s bed.”

  Trying to make sense of the rapid flow of words, Tremaine abruptly put two and two together. “She let Reynard Morane stay behind in the city.” The man who had been Captain of the Queen’s Guard for years, who must be a trusted advisor. Her stomach felt tight from tension. The Queen doesn’t think she’ll make it to Parscia. Olympe wasn’t here as part of a chancy contingency plan, she was the only plan, the only hope. The Queen and the rest of the royal family were acting as decoys for the party aboard the Ravenna.

  “Yes. There were others. She sent them ahead, or to other places.” Olympe stared at her, blinking suddenly brimming eyes. “She looked at me and she looked at my brother and she picked me. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “Don’t count your older brother out yet,” Tremaine said with grim wryness. “Trains can make unscheduled stops.” It wasn’t an idle hope. In the long history of Ile-Rien, its monarchs had either been useless victims or clever manipulators who carried themselves grandly through disaster. That last look might not have been a choice between which child the Queen loved best, but between which child would fare better on a cross-country hike.

  “You think so?” Olympe wiped at her eyes.

  Tremaine hovered between reassurance and raw truth, and had to go with truth. “I don’t k
now. But it wasn’t your choice.”

  One of the men came forward, stooping to touch Olympe’s sleeve, saying with a combination of diffidence and parental authority, “My lady, it’s late. You should go back to your cabin now.”

  Obediently getting to her feet, Olympe asked Tremaine, “Are you going back to your cabin?”

  “Uh, no. We have something to do later.”

  Giliead had suggested faking a fight in a public room, preferably the main hall, and that Ilias could pretend to stab him. Not to be outdone, Ilias had offered to actually stab Giliead for verisimilitude. Tremaine had rejected both embellishments to the plan, knowing they were only making fun of her for offering them some fake blood, a concept they found hilarious, from her stage makeup box.

  She had to admit that pretending a fall and a minor knee injury was easier and more suitable to their needs. It was just serious enough to warrant going to the hospital but not urgent enough to require Niles or Gerard for immediate sorcerous healing. So Giliead obligingly tumbled down a narrow stair in the Second Class area, and Ilias helped him to the hospital, Tremaine trailing along behind.

  The guards Averi had posted at the entrance let them pass, and Giliead limped down the green metal passage to the office area. A tall gaunt man glanced up from the clipboard he was studying. Tremaine recognized him vaguely as the army surgeon. “We think it’s his knee,” she explained. There were two soldiers there as well, stationed by the door to the wardroom occupied by the last Gardier prisoner.

  No one but Dr. Divies had been told there would be extra patients tonight who wouldn’t necessarily need medical services. The surgeon handed the clipboard off to a tired-looking nurse, telling her, “Get him to a bed, please, Miss Calere.” Then he reached for the telephone. “Niles is still watching the kitchens? I’ll call Gerard then.”

  Only emergency cases, crew members and military personnel were supposed to get their injuries tended by Niles or Gerard; Tremaine should have realized the military doctor would include the Syprians in the last category. “Oh, no, the Syprians really don’t like sorcerous healing,” she said hurriedly, trying not to wince at how fatuous she sounded. “It’s against their religious beliefs. If you could just get Dr. Divies to look at it?”

  The surgeon hesitated, frowning and probably thinking she was insane. Then he reluctantly set the receiver back on the cradle. “Very well.”

  Ilias and Giliead had heard him say the sorcerers’ names, and both hesitated, watching Tremaine, despite the nurse’s attempts to get them to move. Gerard and Niles were supposed to stay out of the hospital tonight to avoid frightening away their quarry. Tremaine nodded to show it was all right and gestured for them to follow the nurse.

  She led them into the wardroom next door to the one where the Gardier woman was installed. There were six metal-framed beds, three on each wall, and a couple of sideboard cabinets for holding extra supplies. The room was empty except for a very pale Rienish woman stretched out on one of the beds with a compress over her eyes. A younger woman with a little boy sat anxiously beside her. Startled, she looked up at the new arrivals.

  Ilias dumped Giliead into the bed the nurse indicated and jerked his head toward the women. “It would be better to get them out of here.”

  Tremaine nodded absently. She knew the presence of other patients would keep this from looking too much like a trap, but she didn’t suppose anyone else would see it that way. “They may not be able to move them tonight,” she pointed out, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  Not understanding the Syrnaic conversation but probably catching Ilias’s worried tone, the nurse hesitated. “Is this all right?”

  “Oh yes,” Tremaine assured her hurriedly. “We were just talking about something else.”

  The nurse went out, and Tremaine pulled up a stool to sit next to the bed. Ilias perched next to Giliead, appropriating one of the pillows to lean against the headboard. “Remember not to move your leg.”

  “I know that.” Giliead threw him an annoyed look, struggling to find a comfortable position on the narrow bed and still look wounded.

  Tremaine used the polished steel panel over the ventilator grille to watch the other patients. It seemed an unlikely group for their rogue sorcerer to hide in, but the man—or woman—must be an accomplished master of disguise or misdirection to make it as far as he had. The woman in the bed was gray-haired, old pain lines etched in her face. It might be a chronic illness, something that had flared up with the stress of the evacuation perhaps. The younger woman wore a plain gray suit and could be daughter or companion, the boy, a grandson or another relative orphaned by the war. They were both staring at Ilias and Giliead, who was still grumpily shifting around on the bed. Then the younger woman seemed to realize it and looked away, a flush reddening her cheeks as she pulled the little boy into her lap. He still stared, his thumb tucked securely into his mouth.

  Dr. Divies arrived in a rush, nodding briskly to the women but heading immediately to Giliead’s bedside. “Gentlemen, Miss Valiarde.” He pretended to study notes on a clipboard.

  “We think it’s his knee,” Tremaine prompted helpfully.

  Divies nodded, pulling up another stool and sitting beside her. “It’s a quiet night,” he said, apparently just making conversation. “We only have about twelve patients here.”

  “That’s good,” Tremaine said, distracted as Divies scribbled on his notepad, holding it so she could read: three are Averi’s men. “I see,” she muttered. He’s horning in on our plan. Bastard.

  Divies eyed her sharply, saw she understood and got to his feet. Nodding to Giliead and Ilias, he went over to the woman in the other bed.

  Watching him worriedly, Giliead asked, “What did he tell you?”

  “Averi has three men here disguised—probably badly—as patients,” Tremaine explained grimly. Their opponent, if it was human, would surely find it odd that three soldiers had all suddenly acquired indeterminate and not very disabling wounds that required them to lie about in the hospital instead of patrolling the boat. And she hoped this sorcerer really was a Gardier. If he was Syprian and had been listening in on their supposedly confidential Syrnaic conversations, they were the ones who were going to look like idiots.

  Ilias made a derisive noise. “Your plan was better.”

  As Divies gave instructions to the younger woman, the little boy, temporarily unattended, made a beeline for the two Syprians, regarding them with fascinated curiosity. Ilias absently ruffled his hair, rather with the attitude of someone acknowledging a friendly dog. Tremaine thought in sudden alarm, Children. Gah! Did Ilias want children? Hopefully not. Surely not if he meant to continue his career killing wizards. Oh, come on, she told herself then, none of us are going to live that long.

  The woman called the boy back with an apologetic smile, and she and Divies helped the older woman to stand. Giliead told Tremaine, “You’d better leave too.”

  Tremaine lifted her brows. They had discussed this. Too many people hanging around would be suspicious, and if the spy knew about the sphere, he might think Tremaine would have it with her. Still, she eyed them both long enough for Ilias to look wary and Giliead defensive, then stood briskly. “Right, I’ll see you two later then.”

  “Where are you going?” Ilias demanded.

  Tremaine snorted. It seemed as if marrying a man from a matriarchy did not eliminate peremptory demands as to where one was going. “Back to the cabin—eventually.”

  A nurse had been detailed to help the two women and the little boy, and Tremaine followed them out, pausing in the corridor to consult the more detailed crew map she had now.

  On one side of the hospital, past a locked door separating crew from passenger areas, was a complex maze of food storage rooms, including cold rooms for meat and milk. They had been searched earlier in the day, and some were actually in use and filled with provisions. Others, like the room meant specifically for linen drying and not much use for anything else, were empty. The other end of the corrido
r was also blocked by a door but not locked, as it led to the printer’s and carpenter’s workrooms and eventually to the crew messes and quarters. Again, all those areas had had a search by Ander and Averi’s men and a walk-through by Giliead, and some were in use by the crew and the small army detachment. Directly across from the hospital, past the stairwell and the paneled walls that concealed boiler hatches, was a another long corridor for Second Class bedrooms, presumably mostly empty. Closer toward the bow was the locked and empty Second Class swimming pool. Two swimming pools and a room specifically for the use of ripening fruit, plus several hundred sitting areas of indeterminate purpose, all with confusingly similar names, she thought in frustration.

  Tremaine rubbed her temple, wishing she had thought to ask for a headache powder from the dispensary. The problem was that all this space was expected to be used, the storage areas full to bursting, the passenger rooms happily occupied, the crews’ quarters and workrooms bustling with activity day and night. With the ship barely half-full of either crew or passengers, someone could not only remain concealed simply by moving around, he could run a wine bar and a floating baccarat table and never be found unless it was by pure luck.

  She consulted the map again, heading absently toward the stairwell between corridors. The map showed what appeared to be another smaller stairwell in the storage area immediately adjacent to the hospital. Huh, that’s odd. Flipping through the map booklet, she found the corresponding area on the deck just above. Aha, Tremaine thought, stopping as she bumped into the smooth wooden stair rail. Just overhead were vegetable-preparing rooms, the china pantry, the liquor storage, all tucked in right next to the kitchens, the private dining rooms and the First Class dining area. Of course, all those rooms would need quick access to the food storage. Hurrying up the carpeted stairs, she wondered what else they needed quick access to up there.