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

by Martha Wells

  Giliead reached the doorway again. “Guess,” he said grimly, grabbing the back of the chair and slinging it at the growing creature.

  Ilias leaned out to catch a glimpse of the misty body reforming as if the wood had never passed through it. It glided toward the door even as Giliead forced it shut. Ilias leapt to the next bed, then the next, just opposite the one the Gardier woman was crouched on. She scuttled away from him as far as she could, clutching the metal rail of the footboard, glaring at him and spitting something in her own harsh tongue. Ilias rolled his eyes in annoyance and jumped to the head of her bed. I hate these people. “Believe me, I’d rather not,” he told her sincerely.

  The mist was creeping over the edge of the bedcovers now and Ilias had his eye on the waist-high cabinet against the far wall. He lunged forward, grabbing the Gardier woman around the waist and dragging her to her feet. She shouted, pounded on him and tried to claw at his eyes. It went through his head to dip her into the mist just a little to slow her down, but if it killed her, this would all be for nothing. He managed to get an arm around her to pin her arms to her sides, steadied himself with one hand on the wall, then took the long step over to the cabinet.

  Her struggles made him lose his balance, and he slammed both of them into the green-painted metal wall, sliding down it into a half crouch before he could catch himself. The woman’s bare feet went off the cabinet and dangled only a few handspans above the curse mist. With a gasp she went still, and Ilias dragged her up, setting her feet on the cabinet. “That was harder than it had to be,” he said, breathing hard.

  Giliead was braced against the door, watching them, his expression aghast. “I hope the Rienish appreciate this,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Ilias braced himself with one hand against the ceiling. The Gardier woman had decided to stop being stupid and was actually holding on to him now, which helped, but the mist was still rising. “Speaking of that, where the fuck are—” he began, then the words caught in his throat as something struck the door, nearly slamming the solid barrier off its hinges.

  Giliead swore, shoving away from it. The door banged open and the mist figure flowed in. With no weapon and no chance to reach for any, Giliead flung himself at it.

  Ilias yelled in pure reaction, thinking he was about to see Giliead torn apart. But the thing grappled with him, tried to throw him aside and failed. Ilias bit his lip until he tasted blood to keep silent, not wanting to distract Giliead. From here it looked like his friend was struggling with a disturbing figure of transparent shadow, mist billowing out of it like smoke. It had to be Giliead’s resistance to curses helping him; the thing had battered through that strong door easily enough, he knew it could kill a man.

  It might not have been able to shove Giliead aside easily, but it forced him backward, step by step. It was bent on reaching the Gardier woman, frozen in fear at Ilias’s side, and he looked frantically around for a way to retreat. The mist had risen to cover the nearest bed, cutting off that avenue, and there was nothing else in reach.

  A voice somewhere out in the other room, speaking in a tongue that didn’t sound like Rienish, startled him, and he reflexively tightened his hold on the Gardier woman. It’s Niles, he realized suddenly. Not speaking; shouting, declaiming, his voice strained with effort. He realized the Rienish wizard was trying to drive away the curse mist, that the words he spoke were a curse in themselves; it made the skin creep on the back of his neck. Niles sounded like Gerard had on the Swift, when he had killed Ixion’s seacurseling. Like he was doing battle, like he had to fight to get the words out.

  The mist-figure shoved Giliead back another step and another. Giliead’s head was turned to the side, but Ilias could see the sweat beading on his temple, staining his shirt. The Gardier woman whimpered in terror. “Hold on,” Ilias said through gritted teeth, talking to Giliead and not the Gardier. “Just a little longer.” Then Ilias heard Gerard’s voice join Niles’s and the mist curling up over the edge of the cabinet flattened down, as if pushed by a stiff breeze. Ilias scanned the room, saw it was happening everywhere.

  He edged along the cabinet, pulling the woman with him. The mist had dropped at least a handspan, nearly below the level of the beds. As it slid down from the blankets, he shoved off from the wall and leapt with her. She helped him this time, slamming a hand out against the wall to steady them as they landed. Relieved she was going to cooperate, he released her waist and grabbed her hand instead, making the long steps to the next bed and the next.

  They were at the one nearest the door when the mist-figure tore away from Giliead, trailing wisps of vapor and shadow. Giliead stumbled back, recovered and lunged after it, but the receding mist caught at his boots and he fell, careening over into a cabinet.

  The shadow-creature surged toward Ilias, stretching out a long arm for him. He ducked and shoved the Gardier woman behind him, scrambling back, but they were trapped at the head of the bed.

  He crouched, braced to move, the figure looming over him, mist still weaving through the shadowy form. Then between one heartbeat and another it was gone.

  Ilias slumped down on the bed, shoving his hair back, his heart pounding. Giliead got to his feet, still looking wildly around. The Gardier woman sprang up off the bed and ran out the door, only to appear an instant later, propelled back into the room by Gerard. Other Rienish pushed in after him, Niles, guards, Averi. Everyone was talking and yelling in Rienish.

  Giliead came over and sat down heavily next to Ilias. He rubbed his eyes, his hand still shaking a little, probably from muscle strain. Gerard, white-faced and grim, deposited the Gardier woman on another bed. He and Niles both looked as if they had fought a battle, their faces drawn and exhausted, the white shirts under their jackets sweat-stained. Niles leaned over the Rienish guard who had been inside the room, one of the men the mist had made into living statues. He patted the man’s face, peeled back his eyelids, and Ilias saw the man stir. That’s a relief, he thought, nudging Giliead with an elbow to make sure he saw.

  Giliead nodded, some of the tension leaving his body. “They all live?” he asked Gerard. “It didn’t kill anyone?”

  Gerard glanced at him, his face still set. “We found two men dead, the soldiers posted at the outer door. They were in contact with the substance the longest.”

  Giliead winced.

  In the doorway someone stumbled, and Tremaine shoved in past him. Her eyes fell on them first, and Ilias saw the tightness in her face ease. He smiled faintly.

  She came further in to stand next to them, resting one hand on Ilias’s shoulder. Her skin felt cold, and he had the urge to rub his cheek against her hand, but he didn’t think she would like that in front of strangers.

  She snapped a question at Gerard, and he answered, shaking his head. She looked at Ilias and demanded in Syrnaic, “There were two of them?”

  He shook his head, startled. “No.”

  Giliead looked up, frowning. “We only saw one.”

  This provoked another argument in Rienish as Gerard translated their answers to the others, then Niles and some of the guards hurriedly left the room. “What is it?” Ilias asked Tremaine worriedly.

  She shook her head slightly, her brows drawn together. “I saw one too, on the other side of the hospital.”

  “You may have seen the same one, before it came after her.” Gerard glanced at the Gardier woman, still huddled on the bed and watching them warily. “It was focused entirely on her?”

  Giliead nodded. “It looked that way.”

  Gerard eyed her speculatively. “You saved her life. Perhaps she’ll speak more readily now.”

  They all looked at the Gardier woman. She couldn’t understand the Syrnaic or Rienish conversations but she obviously didn’t like the steady gaze of so many eyes. She spit at them.

  Giliead snorted and looked away, but Ilias’s gaze went to Tremaine. She regarded the woman for a moment, apparently calm, but Ilias saw her eyes go flat. He lurched forward in time to catch her as she lu
nged for the Gardier. He got a hard elbow in the ear before Tremaine abruptly subsided. Ilias let her go, tense in case it was a ruse. The Gardier had at least had the sense to flinch, flattening herself back against the wall.

  “Fine.” Tremaine straightened her sleeves, still watching the woman with a deadly calm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 13

  Like Elea’s voyage to Thrice Cumae, we arrive at the Walls of the World. I never thought to live to see such a sight, and only hope to carry word of it home again.

  —“Ravenna’s voyage to the Unknown Eastlands,”

  Abignon Translation

  Tremaine led Ilias and Giliead to her hiding spot in the storeroom where Arisilde had appeared to her, to see if Giliead could tell if anything had really been there or not.

  By the light of the open dispensary door, Ilias crouched down on the floor to examine the minute traces left in the dust. Giliead just shook his head. “If he was here, he didn’t leave anything behind him. But gods don’t volunteer information for no reason. If he told you he couldn’t help us in this, he meant it.”

  He’s not a god. I don’t think. Tremaine rubbed her gritty eyes. She was far too weary to have a philosophical debate just now. “How do I know it wasn’t just a dream?”

  “If it was a dream,” Giliead told her firmly, “you’d know.”

  Now, sitting at a scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen’s First Class cold pantry and coffee service room, surrounded by cabinets and counters of stainless steel and nickel-chromium, it seemed very much like a dream. Tremaine propped her head in her hands, wishing the hard questions would all go away.

  The kitchen volunteers were still around and she realized the threat of sorcerously poisoned food must have both offended and deeply worried the ones who had been chefs or restaurant workers in Ile-Rien. A group of them were in the next room now, discussing their original plan to serve some of the ship’s store of carefully hoarded beef tomorrow and if that was still a good idea. Tremaine had been living on coffee to the extent that the lingering odor of it from the giant urns along the wall had made her ill, so when one of the Aderassi volunteers had come in and wordlessly opened a couple of bottles of wine for them, she had almost been ready to kiss the man’s feet.

  “Why didn’t it just spread that mist through the whole ship?” Ilias asked, cautiously taking another sip. It was different enough from the musty Syprian vintages that he had almost spit out his first mouthful, causing Tremaine to yelp with dismay and badly startling the kitchen staff in the next room.

  Tremaine considered the question, massaging her temples. “I think it was afraid of Gerard and Niles and the sphere. It couldn’t fight all three of them. Maybe that’s why it wanted Bain Riand’s help, to take them on while it was finishing the Gardier off.” She shrugged, turning her glass around. “Gerard thinks it wasn’t a human sorcerer. That Riand was right, that it was some sort of construct or creature, with only limited abilities. Maybe it did get aboard at Chaire as a spy, but when it realized we had Gardier prisoners it broke cover to kill them.” And those prisoners must have known something important, even if they hadn’t realized it. As their best interrogator, using a combination of persistence and mild charms, Niles was going to continue to work on the Gardier woman tonight. Whatever she knew, they had to find it out.

  Giliead, warned by Ilias’s choking fit, had been more cautious with the wine at first but was now putting away as much as Tremaine. He poured another glass, pausing to curiously examine what was to his eyes the enigmatic writing on the label. “Are we sure it’s dead?”

  “I saw it disappear.” Ilias shrugged doubtfully. He admitted, “A body would have been nice. And you thought you saw another one?”

  Tremaine nodded, gesturing helplessly. “I may have seen it just before it appeared to you. I’m not sure. Arisilde sounded like he was only talking about one person. He said ‘someone’s nasty spell.’” She recaptured the bottle for one last glass.

  “But if this was a Gardier creature, I thought your curses wouldn’t work on it.” Giliead lifted his brows.

  “Well, there’s that. But Arisilde’s spells do work, and he must have been helping with the banishing.” Tremaine swirled her glass, watching as the wine ran down the sides. Some hotel or Great House in Chaire must have decided that the contents of its cellar were better off going to the bottom on the Ravenna than being left for the Gardier. She wasn’t familiar with this winery, but the stuff had legs like a cabaret dancer and left a taste in her mouth like spring in the Marches and newly cut hay. Too bad the people who owned and worked the vineyards would die or flee, and the grapes would rot on the vine this summer. Only the headiness of the vintage made the poignant sting of that thought bearable. “I think—” She tried unsuccessfully to swallow a yawn. And she couldn’t remember what she had been about to say. “I think I can’t think anymore.”

  They had left the kitchens and were in the C deck corridor when the general alarm blared from the ship’s loudspeaker.

  Gerard heard the alarm sound as he and Niles reached the wheelhouse; Arisilde’s sphere had warned them minutes earlier. The steering cabin was dimly lit, so the helmsman could see out and the illumination wouldn’t betray the ship. Through the large array of windows the moon lit the sky and turned the sea to a rolling gray plane; for a moment Gerard couldn’t see what was wrong. Then an officer standing at the front of the room gestured hastily to the side door. “Out there, gentlemen.”

  Captain Marais and two of the other officers were out on the starboard side wing, Marais watching something through field glasses. As Gerard stepped out the door with Niles at his heels, he saw the airship.

  Instincts gained from living through far too many bombings in Vienne halted him in his tracks; it took a surprising effort to force himself from the illusory shelter of the wheelhouse and out onto the windswept wing.

  “Yes,” Niles said ruefully from behind him, keeping his voice low. “That’s all we need tonight.”

  The airship was still some distance away, a black shape outlined against the star-filled sky. The distinctive jagged fins and tail gave it a predatory appearance, especially in the dark; it was no wonder the Syprians had thought the things were giant avian beasts. The angle of the fins told Gerard it was pointed away from the ship and toward the distant rocky shadow of the Walls; any other detail was impossible to make out.

  “The lookout spotted it a few moments ago,” one of the officers explained, glancing back at them as they approached. “It changed course at nearly the same moment, so it must have detected us.”

  Gerard nodded grim assent. They knew the overhead concealment wards weren’t as effective when the ship was moving.

  “It looks as if it’s turning away,” Niles pointed out with annoying calm. He had the sphere tucked under his arm, and Gerard could hear it still clicking angrily. The airship must be out of its immediate range; he didn’t think Arisilde would have waited for instructions to attack.

  “It must have got some warning that we’re not an easy target.” Marais lowered the field glasses. “Where’s Colonel Averi?”

  “Still down in the hospital.” Gerard knew Ilias and Giliead had destroyed an airship on the Gardier’s island base a few days before he and Tremaine and the others had arrived on the Pilot Boat. The sphere had destroyed another during an attack on the Andrien village and a third that had tried to escape the assault on the base. If this airship had received any communication from the island or from the Gardier who had escaped by boat, its crew had every reason to be cautious.

  Niles shifted the rattling sphere to his other arm, saying thoughtfully, “It’s a pity we can’t capture it intact. But we can’t chance letting it escape.”

  Gerard looked at him, startled. For years they had fled in terror from Gardier airships. Now…“Yes.” He smiled thinly. “We can’t let it escape.”

  Captain Marais glanced back at them, the dark obscuring his expression, but the tone in his voice was approvin
g. “I agree. But it’s too far ahead of us. We’re faster, but to avoid us all it need do is fly across the Walls. If it doesn’t, we can’t trust that it isn’t leading us into an ambush.”

  “But if it thinks we’re running from it, it may turn back toward us,” the second officer pointed out, sounding intrigued.

  Marais shook his head reluctantly. “We’d have to drop to half speed to let it catch us. I don’t want to take that risk.”

  Count Delphane had commented that Marais thought he was in command of a battleship rather than an oversized excursion ferry, and Gerard was glad to see this evidence of caution. But he said slowly, “Unless they see us use an etheric gateway, and they turn back to try to detect our etheric signature.”

  “Or to try to get close enough to attempt to use our spell circle to follow us.” Niles smiled to himself. “I like that.”

  The second officer was nodding. “We’ve had to turn west far enough that we should be out of the Maiutans. And we won’t be there long enough for a Gardier patrol to find us.”

  “Check our course,” Marais told him sharply. “Verify our position in relation to our world.” He lifted the field glasses again, adding dryly, “I’d rather not materialize in the middle of an island.”

  Tremaine stopped to listen to the loudspeaker again. They had reached the main hall to find it deserted. The earlier announcement ordering everyone to leave the open decks and seal all outer doors and that the watertight doors belowdecks were closing was worrying, but there was no one to pry information out of.

  “What does it say?” Ilias demanded in frustration. “It always talks too fast.”

  “We’re making a gate,” she translated. “It—he said we’re going to gate back to our world, change course, then gate back here again. That means—”

  “We’re setting a trap,” Giliead finished. “We must have come up on a Gardier ship. Or a flying whale.”