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

by Martha Wells

  Do you think she’s really going back to the cabin?” Giliead asked, craning his neck to make sure Tremaine was out of earshot.

  “No.” Ilias snorted derision at the naive question. “I just wanted to see if she’d tell me.”

  Giliead acknowledged that with an ironic twist of his lips. “I’m not worried about her ruining the trap, it’s these others.”

  Ilias nodded grimly. “I thought this was our idea. Why is everybody else shoving aboard?”

  Giliead settled back, eyeing him thoughtfully. “So what is it like being married?”

  “I don’t know, it’s only been a day.” Considering Giliead’s youthful penchant for disastrous women, he was probably expecting something more dramatic. “No, wait. It’s been a whole two days.”

  “It’s been a long two days.” Giliead slumped further down in the bed and grumbled, “I want to kill this damn wizard. It’s bad enough having Ixion on board.”

  Ilias had to agree with him there.

  The tall thin healer came into the room then, glanced around, and moved to stand over them, eyeing Giliead. Ilias watched him warily. “What if he wants to look at your leg?”

  “Ah, I’ll…act hurt,” Giliead said, doubtful.

  Neither of them knew what the Rienish healers—the ones who weren’t wizards—were capable of. Ilias wondered if the man could tell there was nothing wrong with Gil just by looking at him. “Maybe I should have stabbed you.”

  Giliead glared at him. “Oh, thanks.”

  “Not in the gut or anything,” Ilias amended absently.

  The dark-skinned healer, Divay or some other impossible to pronounce Rienish name, came in then and called the other healer away. Giliead sank a little lower in the bed, maybe hoping to avoid more notice, and Ilias breathed in relief. It was going to be a long wait.

  Tremaine prowled through the maze of kitchens and their attendant service areas, avoiding the room where a group of sleepy volunteers, men and women, some Rienish and some Aderassi, sat around a table with a coffeepot and a bottle of brandy. Niles was with them, still on guard against sorcerous interference with the food supplies. He was holding a sphere, absently rolling it back and forth on the table as he listened to one of the chefs speak. Tremaine hesitated, but saw it was the smaller sphere Niles had made for the Institute, not Arisilde. She wasn’t using sorcery, so she passed unnoticed.

  She found the small stairwell behind the room that held the kitchen’s giant grill and went down it to the locked door at the bottom. Fumbling with her keys, she got it open to find herself confronted by a darkened utilitarian corridor, the metal walls painted yellow, lit only by infrequent emergency lights. It was blocked by another door perhaps forty feet along, but a number of doors and a side corridor opened off it. It smelled empty and faintly of dust, but she found herself standing still and listening intently. It was quiet except for the muted thrum of machinery and the whisper of air through the vents, ever present this far down in the ship. Oh, boy, she thought dryly, telling her nerves to stop jumping. It reminded her too much of the stories that had long formed a part of Ile-Rien’s popular literature, where some innocent but hapless person ventured into the dark depths of a cellar or crypt or ravine and was eaten headfirst by some fay horror. She hated those stories.

  The door immediately to her right had a plaque that read GROCERY. She fumbled for keys and opened it, flashing her torch around to see an L-shaped room lined with empty shelves and metal bins. Warily following the room around the corner, she breathed, “There you are,” as she spotted the closed door with a transom over it.

  There were several headboards for hospital beds leaning against the wall and a couple of plain wooden chairs with padded leather seats stacked next to them. Carrying a chair over, she stood on it and peered carefully through the transom to find herself looking down into a small half-lit room lined with cabinets and counters: the hospital’s dispensary.

  She climbed down from the chair, pleased with herself. The map had implied this door existed, and it only made sense; though this area had ended up being used for dry goods, the ship’s designers had probably also intended it to double as storage for medical supplies.

  She unlocked the door and eased carefully into the dispensary, shutting it behind her and turning the key again, not liking to have that empty darkened room at her back. She checked the dispensary door, unlocked it and opened it just a hair to peer out. All she could see was the closed door to a wardroom at the end of the short passage. The office area with the wardrooms housing Ilias, Giliead and the Gardier prisoner were on the far side of this warren of rooms. Well, here I am.

  She amused herself for a while by searching the dispensary shelves for interesting items that might be useful at some future date, but the drug cabinets had secure locks that none of the keys on her ring matched. Flattening her hand against the glass, she felt a tingle start in her fingertips. Wards, intended to drive off prospective thieves by that warning tingle that promised so much worse if the cabinets were actually tampered with. That meant picking the locks was out of the question. The wards had probably been set back when the ship was commissioned, by sorcerers long dead in the war. Regretfully, she pulled her hand away, shaking it to get the blood flowing again. Dammit. Laudanum would have been nice. Rolls of gauze and medical alcohol she could do without. Hearing movement out in the hospital passage, she hastily retreated back into the storage room, pulling the door to but not locking it.

  Looking around, she pulled the chair back over and took a seat. She might be in for a long wait.

  The night wore on. Leaning back against the pillows at the head of the bed, Ilias shoved his hair back and forced himself not to twitch. Giliead had his eyes closed and was resting his head against Ilias’s shoulder, pretending to sleep, but Ilias knew he was listening for curses. Through the open doorway, Ilias had watched people come and go for a time, but now all was quiet.

  Giliead opened his eyes, and said softly, “Take a look around.”

  Ilias slipped off the bed without question and went to the doorway. No one was in the outer area except the two guards at the door of the Gardier woman’s room. The bright light of the curse lamps made the shadows sharp as steel, and the place seemed artificial and strange now that it was nearly empty of people. Ilias scanned it, alert for any telltale signs of curses. He didn’t have Giliead’s sense for them, but he knew to look for blind spots in his vision, surreptitious movement, changes in the air. Ilias walked past the guards, exchanging a glance of mutual suspicion, and turned down the passage to the other rooms.

  The lights were softer here and most of the doors were closed. He paused beside an open one to see the healer—not the dark-skinned man that knew their plan, but the other one, the tall thin man with sparse gray hair—sitting at a table writing. Near his hand was one of the small flat healing stones.

  Ilias walked the rest of the passage, up to the second door out to the ship’s corridor and the two guards posted there, then returned to Giliead. “The other healer has one of those rocks,” he reported, dropping down next to him on the bed again. Gerard had explained about healing stones, rocks with curses cast on them that made injuries and illnesses heal more quickly.

  “That must be what I felt.” Giliead shifted with a wince; he had been lying still so long the pretend pain in his leg was probably real by now. “I think I can hear more of the Rienish curses now, the ones I haven’t been able to tell were there. They’re quieter than our wizards’ curses, I just have to listen harder. And it helps that there’s so few people around.”

  “Good.” Ilias had to admit it was a relief. He trusted the Rienish—or most of them anyway, but it had made him uneasy that they had curses that Giliead couldn’t see. And it would be good to be there when Giliead told Pasima that, too.

  Ilias looked around the empty room again, the neat little beds, the shadows cast by the dimmed curse lights. “Maybe we should have just patrolled the ship tonight. If he’s somewhere else while we’re stu
ck here…”

  “I know.” Giliead grimaced, shifting uncomfortably again. “But this is a good plan.”

  Ilias let out a breath. “Waiting just makes me—” He halted abruptly at Giliead’s sudden startled expression. “That isn’t a rock.”

  “Not a rock,” Giliead agreed, clambering out of the bed as Ilias leapt to his feet. He reached the doorway a pace before Giliead, only to halt in his tracks. The floor of the outer room was nearly covered with a thin layer of pearlescent mist, curling up against the walls, licking the legs of the chair and the table.

  It had touched the feet of the men guarding the prisoner’s door; Ilias shouted harshly, “Hey, don’t you see that?”

  The men didn’t respond, both staring straight ahead, their faces still as stone. Giliead swore and pulled Ilias back as a tendril of mist reached for them. He bent down, brushing his hand through the upper level of the mist. “All right?” Ilias asked tensely. If this curse worked on Giliead, he didn’t know what they were going to do.

  Giliead nodded and stepped out cautiously, the pearly mist clinging to his boots. He took one step, then another, having to force his way through the smoky substance as if it was heavy bog mud. Ilias saw the mist creep over the threshold and knew that unless he wanted to wait this out standing uselessly on one of the beds, he needed to move now. He stepped up onto the seat of a chair near the door, then jumped to catch the ridge around the doorframe. From there he swung his legs, just reaching the first of the heavy cabinets against the outer wall. Giliead leaned in to give him a push from behind, and Ilias scrambled to a precarious perch atop the cabinet, crouching to keep from banging his head into the ceiling.

  The tall Rienish healer appeared in the opposite doorway, staring in astonishment. “Stay back! Don’t let it touch you!” Giliead motioned urgently, and the man halted. Even though he couldn’t understand the Syrnaic words, his startled eyes took in the strange mist, Ilias working his way along the line of cabinets, and the guards’ dead faces and empty eyes. The man spoke sharply in Rienish and vanished back down the passageway.

  “I hope that meant ‘hold on, I’ll go for help,’” Ilias said under his breath. He had the feeling they were going to need it.

  At first the darkened storage area had been unnervingly quiet and isolated, giving Tremaine the feel of being locked away in the bowels of the ship. But after the first hour familiarity had bred contempt, and now it was not only unnerving but deadly boring.

  She was slumped down in the chair, her head propped on the back. Then she realized she must be asleep and dreaming, because Arisilde was crouched on the floor next to her.

  He was sitting on his heels on the dusty tile, looking much like the last time she had seen him. His white hair stood out in wisps around his face, and his violet eyes were shadowed in the dark room. He was wearing a ragged sweater and battered canvas trousers, and he looked as disordered and wild as a flower fay. Only the fine lines of laughter and pain around his eyes and mouth marked him as human. He smiled sadly, and said, “Your father never liked to show his hand. He went on and on about it. Very important. Can’t do it, you see.”

  “Can’t do what?” Tremaine straightened up a little, blinking, falling back into the habit of marshaling the patience and wit it took to get sense out of Uncle Ari at times like these. When she was very young her mother had explained to her that Arisilde’s mind worked in several different planes at once; not like a train jumping from track to track, but like five trains going in all directions, some of them straight up or down in relation to the tracks. That only made sense to someone who knew Arisilde. And Tremaine’s mother.

  “These goings-on, here. You and those young men have to deal with it. I can’t show my hand in it, just now.”

  Tremaine rubbed her eyes and found herself saying in confusion, “Uncle Ari, you don’t have any hands anymore.”

  Arisilde laughed delightedly. “That’s right!” Bemused, he looked down at his fingers and wiggled them thoughtfully. “I’d forgotten. But all the same, I can’t show them. Not obviously, you know.” His voice changed in tone, sharpening, growing darker. “Not taking someone’s nasty spell and shoving it back down his throat until he chokes on it.” He glanced up suddenly, blinking. “Oh, sorry. Having a moment, there. Interfering at this point would be dangerous to someone else, you see. I can’t see my way clear to it.”

  “You can’t help,” Tremaine translated suddenly. Someone’s nasty spell…

  “Sorry, but you know I—” Arisilde cocked his head, his eyes growing even more distant. “You need to wake up now.”

  “What?” It was damn hard to think while asleep. She was surprised she had never realized that before.

  His voice sharpened. “Tremaine, wake up!”

  Her head jerked and she was awake, alone in the deserted storage area. She sat up, scrubbing her face and shivering, partly from nerves, partly from cold. In the dim light that fell from the transom, she could see her breath misting in air that had been a little too warm when she had dozed off. She dug out her torch and switched it on, flashing it over the dusty floor. Dammit. Her own ramblings had scuffed it up so much she couldn’t tell if anyone else’s footprints were there.

  A noise from the other side of the wall made her twitch. A door banging? She stared. People don’t bang doors in a hospital, not this late at night.

  She shot to her feet, opening the door to the dispensary. Her fingers made damp prints on the metal, but the arcane cold was already fading, vanishing in the warm air of the hospital. Another bang greeted her as she stepped through the little room and put her ear to the door. She unlocked it hastily, certain she heard muffled voices speaking Syrnaic.

  The lights were still on in the hospital passage, the wardroom door at the end still closed. She hurried down it cautiously, cursing a squeaking boot. She peered around the corner, but the passage ahead was clear, the doors along it all closed but one.

  Frowning, she tiptoed to the open door and peeked in. A small office, lit by a single desk lamp, its walls lined with bookshelves and glass-fronted cabinets. The army surgeon was slumped over the small desk, the books and papers and the telephone toppled to the floor, the receiver lying just out of reach of his limp fingers. Oh no. The man must have been attacked by an intruder, but—

  Something moved, a shadow blurred, a dark but transparent form stooped over the unconscious man. It was just straightening up, just turning toward her. Tremaine shoved away from the door, ran full out down the passage, careening into the wall as she rounded the corner. She reached the dispensary door and swung inside, slamming it behind her and putting her shoulder to it as she frantically twisted the lock. The thump as the thing hit the door sent her scrambling away from it.

  The next thump nearly slammed the door off its hinges, but she was already out the back way into the storage area, bolting through it and back toward the corridor. She didn’t remember to shout for help until she reached the stairs.

  Ilias reached the end of the row of cabinets, glad they were sturdy and attached to the wall. Standing like statues, the guards still hadn’t reacted, and Ilias hoped the men weren’t dead. He couldn’t see from this angle if the mist had crept under the closed door to the prisoner’s room yet or not.

  Grimly plowing his way through the thickening mist, Giliead reached the doorway. He pulled the unconscious men away from the door, dumping both across the table and lifting their legs up out of the mist. Their bodies went limp, but neither man stirred.

  As Ilias perched on the edge of the cabinet, Giliead pushed at the door. It opened a few handspans and stopped, blocked by something just inside. Giliead set his shoulder against it and shoved. It gave way abruptly and something fell inside; as Giliead swung the door open Ilias saw it was the other Rienish guard, now sprawled across the nearest bed. He must have been standing just inside the door.

  Ilias craned his neck and saw the Gardier woman, dressed in a blue robe and sitting on a bed across the room, her legs drawn up. She w
as still alive and aware, her pale face tense with fear, but the mist was licking at the edges of the blankets, creeping up onto the bed. Her eyes flicked from them to the mist, as if she wasn’t certain which was the greater threat.

  Giliead started toward her, grunting with the effort it took to move his feet. “It’s getting thicker, like it knows we’re here,” he said, using the doorframe to drag himself along.

  “Wonderful,” Ilias muttered, uneasily studying the stuff as it billowed upward near the center of the room. He couldn’t see the doorway out into the corridor, as the passage curved away. If the healer had gone to summon help, the other Rienish should be here by now, but he couldn’t hear anything from the corridor but a distant banging. He looked to see how Giliead was faring, then his gaze snapped back to the center of the room. The mist wasn’t just billowing up, it was melding into a form, something a man’s height, with recognizable arms and a head. “Gil—”

  “What?” Several laborious steps into the room, Giliead looked back and saw the shape. “Damn,” he snarled. He turned back, grabbing a chair and shoving it into the doorway so Ilias could reach it.

  Ilias grabbed the doorframe for balance and stepped down onto the seat. The mist was higher now and one tendril curled over the polished wood, just brushing the toe of his boot. The blood pounded in his head and blackness rose up at the edges of his vision. Wavering, he managed a clumsy leap to the bed, half-collapsing against the wall.

  He shook his head to clear it, blinking, as Giliead demanded, “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” Ilias pushed away from the wall but kept one hand on it to steady himself. Fortunately, the bed was a little higher than the chair seat, but that slim margin of safety wouldn’t last long. Now he knew why the guards hadn’t made a sound. “What’s it doing out there?”