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

by Martha Wells

  Ilias drew his sword, lunging in as the man landed, taking off the arm that held the crystal with the first stroke. The Gardier fell back with an agonized cry, and Ilias stepped in for the finishing blow.

  He freed his sword with a jerk and stepped back away from the spreading pool of blood, keeping a wary eye on that trapdoor. It led up into the flying whale’s top portion. “Where’s the others?”

  Giliead kicked the other crystal free of the dead Gardier’s arm and grimly crushed it to fragments. He jerked his head toward the other door. “Up front. They found—”

  Ilias heard muffled popping sounds. Not good. “That was a shooting weapon.”

  Startled, Giliead headed for the door. “It was outside.”

  The floor tilted, staggering them both sideways.

  Shouting Raiders streamed up the steps from the city, stormed across the compound, right into the Gardier guns. Some of them carried torches and Tremaine caught glimpses of wild-eyed men, shaven-headed, waving swords and the small scythelike weapons. A fusillade of shots went off as the Gardier fired on them. “Dammit,” Tremaine snarled, ducking down behind the rocks. The damn Raiders were ruining everything. And they must have run right over Florian, Arites and the others down there. Where the hell was the Rienish troop?

  More yelling figures burst out of the rocks behind them and Tremaine and Cletia bolted up the slope without having to discuss it, suddenly finding themselves on the open ground of the promontory. Cletia spun around, sword lifted, but Tremaine dragged at her arm. The airship provided the only possible shelter. “Come on!”

  They dodged across the compound in the confused dark, avoiding the charging Raiders by luck more than anything else. Tremaine pulled the pistol out of her belt. Most of the Raiders hadn’t made it to the Gardier buildings; their bodies were strewn at the edge of the light, and Tremaine could smell burning flesh. They had run into a spell trap; she hadn’t heard enough shots to account for all those dead.

  They were almost to the tower when a Raider rounded on them, lifting his sword. Tremaine shot him before Cletia could turn around. Another one fell heavily at her feet, an indistinct shape with Syprian braids pulling a sword out of his back.

  Tremaine fell back a step, banging into the metal leg of the tower. She didn’t see it was Arites until he straightened up. “What happened to Florian and the others?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” he gasped, gesturing to the confusion. “They were on us, and we scattered.”

  No help for it, she thought in frustration. They had to keep moving. Shots echoed off the rock and several Raiders spun and fell in midcharge. The Gardier were starting forward to clean up. “Right. Get up the ladder, hurry.” Tremaine prodded Cletia and the other woman grabbed the ladder and started to climb. Tremaine followed as soon as Cletia’s feet were out of the way. She felt the structure shake as Arites started up after her and she clung hard to it despite the sweat making her hands slick. Cletia reached the top and scrambled up onto the platform.

  Tremaine dragged herself over the edge, terrified of falling. She crawled to the center of the platform and pushed to her feet, getting a view of the dark confusion on the promontory below. The sea and most of the sky were blotted out by the giant black curve of the airship overhead. Cletia was hesitating at the head of the ramp and Tremaine waved at her to go on. “Get in there!”

  She heard another flurry of shots and something struck her in the back, staggering her forward. Tremaine ran into the handrail, the impact with the metal like a punch in the stomach. She realized Arites had knocked into her as he staggered and fell. She heard more shots from below and had the sense to drop to a crouch. Sucking in a breath to ease the pain in her midsection, she looked around and saw Arites sprawled in a jumble on the platform behind her.

  Oh, no. She scrambled toward him and tried to roll him over. She felt moisture and lifted her hand to see it black with blood.

  “Cletia, come here!” Tremaine snapped. She grabbed his arm, dug her fingers into his belt, and managed to drag him onto the ramp. Cletia landed on her knees beside him, her hands hovering above his bloody shirt as if she was afraid to touch it. “Help me,” Tremaine snarled through gritted teeth, dragging him up. Cletia grabbed his other arm and they lurched forward, hauling him up the ramp and into the dubious shelter of the airship.

  Tremaine got a confused impression of a big dimly lit room as they stumbled onto a cork-matted floor. Cimarus was suddenly there, helping ease Arites down, demanding, “What happened?”

  Tremaine crouched beside Arites. The electric light was muted but it was enough to show her the wash of blood down the front of his cotton shirt. She pulled the matted fabric aside and saw the angry wound in his chest where the bullet had left his body. No, she thought, torn between blank shock and rage. Just no. Cletia was telling Cimarus, “Raiders spoiled the trap—”

  The floor tilted abruptly, throwing Tremaine forward over Arites. She landed hard, skidding on the deck. Cletia staggered into her brother and they both went down in a heap. “Dammit, what now?” Tremaine snarled, struggling to sit up. The lights flickered and the wrenching screech of strained metal tore the air. Her stomach lurching with vertigo, Tremaine pushed herself up, uncomprehending, and looked out the hatch.

  The ramp was gone, the tower was gone, and the dark shape of the mountain was rapidly receding.

  Chapter 15

  Tremaine started to stand, but a sudden stabbing sensation in her back caught her in a crouch, breathless with pain. She thought for an instant that someone, possibly Cletia, had actually stabbed her. But as she gingerly eased herself down again she realized she had hurt a muscle in her back picking up Arites. No, don’t think about that.

  They were in the airship’s cargo hold, ribbed metal struts supporting the sides and roof. A few bare round electric bulbs suspended overhead threw puddles of glaring light down on a cork-covered deck and a small collection of crates stacked in the corner and secured with rope webbing. The open outer hatch framed a dark sweep of sky and the black shapes of the mountains the airship was inexorably rising past. Cimarus was nearest it, staring out in transfixed horror. Clutching her back and trying to ease to her feet, Tremaine said urgently, “Cimarus, close the door. Close the door before someone falls out.” It seemed enormously important.

  Cimarus didn’t move. “Goddamn it.” Tremaine cautiously rolled to her knees. If she had wrenched something, surely she wouldn’t be able to move even this much. Her mind tried to relive the moment when Arites had staggered into her, knocking her into the railing, and she ruthlessly suppressed it. “Do I have to fucking do everything?” She glared at Cletia. The other woman stared back at her, then blinked, shook herself a little, and pushed to her feet.

  “How do I close it?” she asked uncertainly as she moved toward the hatch.

  “What do you mean how do you—” Tremaine looked at the door and saw it was some sort of sliding panel. “All right, fair question. Go to the wall there and try to push it from the side.”

  As Cletia stepped past Cimarus he flinched as if she had woken him from a trance. She leaned on the sliding panel, moving it a few sluggish inches. “Help me,” she commanded Cimarus impatiently. Still moving like a sleepwalker, he stepped forward and put his weight against the door.

  As it started to rumble closed, Ilias bolted out of the interior doorway and slid to an abrupt halt, staring at the night sky still visible through the hatch.

  “Yes, it’s what you think it is.” Tremaine got her feet under her and stood cautiously, like an old washerwoman; the stabbing sensation was less painful. Ilias moved to her side, catching her arm. She realized she was shaking and hoped he wouldn’t notice. He was looking down at Arites, shocked and stricken, but she didn’t want to think about that right now. She told him, “We have to turn this thing around, find a place to land.”

  Cletia got the door shut, Cimarus holding it in place while she fumbled with the unfamiliar handle, finally getting the lock to catch. With
effort, Ilias looked away from the fallen man, telling Tremaine, “We found some Gardier on board. There might be more.”

  Tremaine nodded. So we’ll kill them. But it was good of him to tell her. Cletia came away from the door, going to her knees next to Arites, and Tremaine knew she had to get out of here now.

  “Is he all right?” Cimarus asked, moving to her side.

  Cletia shook her head, saying thickly, “He’s dead.”

  “Don’t—” Tremaine stopped, lowered her voice to a normal conversational tone and continued deliberately, “Don’t any of you say that.”

  Cletia looked stricken, like a child who had been shouted at, but she nodded obediently. Cimarus looked at the floor, his face white. Maybe Tremaine’s tone of voice wasn’t as normal as she thought, but it had done the trick.

  Ilias was tugging her arm, and she thought, right, landing. She followed him up a passage that ran through the airship, passing doors, then an engineering room with fuel vats. Everything was poorly lit by the bare bulbs, now swinging a little with the ship’s movement and sending leaping shadows up the walls. They passed Dubos, leaning out of a trapdoor overhead, demanding, “What the hell happened?”

  “We lost our mooring,” Tremaine answered vaguely, waving him back to what he was doing. “We’re working on it!” Past a room littered with blood-soaked dead Gardier, they found Giliead and Basimi at the end of another passage. There were more doors here, all of them opening into small rooms crammed with equipment or storage cabinets. The outer walls of those little rooms had broad slanted windows, looking out into the night sky. The only closed door was the one at the end of the passage, the one that must lead into the airship’s control cabin. “I think he’s saying we need to get into here,” Ilias reported, his voice tense.

  Presumably Basimi was the “he.” “What happened out there?” he demanded, sounding almost angry. Giliead was looking at Ilias, and somehow must have read the answer to his own questions there. His face set, and he looked away.

  Tremaine touched the door. It was thick metal, which was presumably why they hadn’t broken it down yet. It was more like one of the Ravenna’s watertight hatches than the light flimsy doors in the rest of the airship. But there was a key lock in it. I can pick that. Basimi kept asking questions she couldn’t bother with right now. “Is there a wireless room we can get to?” she asked, cutting him off.

  He stared at her, as if she was the one not making sense, then jerked his head back toward one of the open doors. “Yes, there.”

  “Send a message to the Ravenna, tell them what happened. They’re listening to the main Gardier frequency, they should hear it.”

  “I should be able to tune it to our frequency—” He hesitated. Realizing that if he obeyed this order it would be that much harder to question the next, and the next. Perhaps calculating that with the Syprians present his options for refusing were limited. It didn’t tell her what Molin and Dubos would do.

  Tremaine turned to face him. “You heard rumors that I’m crazy.”

  She kept her voice level and even, but something in her eyes made Basimi’s expression go wary and still. “Some.”

  “They’re true. But I’m not in the army, and neither are the Syprians, and they think I’m in charge. What do you think?”

  He wet his lips, his eyes flicking to Giliead, then Ilias. He said evenly, “I think you’re in charge, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now go send a message.”

  He nodded shortly and moved past them toward the wireless room.

  “Right.” Tremaine turned briskly to Ilias. “Do you know where my pack is?”

  He stared at her a moment. Then, his face carefully neutral, he lifted the strap on her shoulder. “You mean this?”

  Tremaine swore at herself, pulling the leather bag around, fumbling in it for her lockpicks. At least Basimi hadn’t been there for that little moment. Even in Syrnaic she would have looked like a fool. “Now let’s get this open.” Ilias stirred restlessly, not quite jogging her arm, but it jogged her memory. “Oh, the Gardier. You two go look for them.”

  Giliead touched her shoulder. It was a gesture of shared pain, not sympathy, and that she could take, though she couldn’t risk looking up at him. He went down the passage in long strides, ducking his head under the lightbulbs.

  “Take Cimarus with you,” Ilias called softly after him. “I’ll stay with her.”

  Tremaine found the picks, shaking them free of her handkerchief. “No, you won’t, you’ll go with him.”

  Ilias turned back with a protest, but she cut him off ruthlessly. “I don’t want him killed because Cimarus was too busy wetting himself in fear at the fact that we’re a couple hundred feet in the air. Now go.”

  Ilias hovered, obviously torn between annoyance and alarm that she was right. After a moment he swore in frustration and followed Giliead.

  Tremaine planted a hand on the wall to catch herself if her back tried to give out again and eased down to her knees, eye level with the lock. She pressed her hands together for a long moment, willing the trembling to stop, then carefully inserted a pick into the lock. Investigating the tumblers by feel, focused entirely on that, she didn’t look up until she heard a soft step behind her. But it was only Cletia, advancing cautiously up the passage, stopping to look into the room where Basimi worked at the wireless. Cletia saw her glance, and explained, “I’ll watch for Gardier while you do that.”

  Even in her current state, Tremaine had to admit it made sense. Cletia drew her belt knife and stationed herself in the passage, and Tremaine went back to the lock.

  Time stopped until Tremaine felt the tumblers click over. The door popped open with a hiss of released air, and she awkwardly pushed to her feet. Cletia turned, drawing Tremaine back hastily, and it belatedly occurred to her that the door might have been locked because someone was inside. She had somehow just assumed the airship had accidentally come loose from its mooring and was drifting.

  But Cletia gave the door a careful push and it swung open to reveal a small empty cabin, the front wall of which was all windows, framed by the girders that supported the gondola’s structure. The control panel itself was narrow, with a small ship’s wheel attached below a box with a few circular dials. There were boxes suspended from the ceiling with more dials, rather like barometers to Tremaine’s untrained eye. But sitting in a metal mount above the control panel, glittering malignantly in the yellow cabin light, was one of the large crystals.

  Tremaine eyed it warily. That wasn’t one of the Gardier’s small crystal devices that could perform one or two limited spells; that was one of the “avatars,” just like the one Gervas had threatened her with on the island. And if their theories were correct, there was a sorcerer’s soul imprisoned in it. A Gardier sorcerer, dangerous and probably angry at being stolen.

  “Nothing but stars,” Cletia said under her breath. She was looking out the port and the limitless view of the night sky above the dark sea.

  Tremaine stepped carefully into the cabin, wondering if she should just grab the crystal and smash it. But if they could take it intact, it might make the disaster of this mission a little more worthwhile. “We’re just going straight up. Probably a good thing, or we would have hit the mountain. But we can’t do that for long.” Stop babbling, she reminded herself.

  Cletia took a cautious step after her, studying the array of unfamiliar devices in consternation. Then she jerked her chin toward the wheel. “Can it be sailed like a ship? We could guide it back to the Wall Port, or to the Ravenna.”

  It was the first time Tremaine had heard one of Pasima’s contingent lower themselves to say the ship’s name. But if Cletia was going to attempt to take an intelligent interest in the problem, she wasn’t going to discourage her by pointing that out. “It’s sort of like a ship. We have to figure out how to make it go back down.” She moved forward, eyeing the various panels dubiously. “A big lever with an arrow on it would be nice—” She caught a movement among the dials, too quick f
or her to see exactly which one. “What was—”

  Tremaine felt a slight jolt underfoot, like a train bumping over a switch. Then a shock of familiar vertigo went straight to her stomach.

  Following Giliead, Ilias climbed up the ladder from the vat chamber onto a long narrow catwalk of flat metal bars. It was lined with walls of a slick brown fabric that felt like dead skin to the touch and was lit by curse lights that reflected a dim orange glow. He knew the whole of the upper part of the flying whale was like this, with ladders leading up to yet more catwalks. The other two Rienish had gone to search the rest of the lower part, and this was the only other place stray Gardier could be hiding. There had been one lurking up here in the first flying whale they had encountered, so searching was a necessity. But even knowing the whale wasn’t alive, the place still made his skin creep.

  Ilias glanced back as Cimarus followed him up the ladder; the boy was trying to look brave, but the color had leached from his skin and he mostly looked sick. Ilias wasn’t feeling too great himself as the upward motion of the whale did unpleasant things to both his stomach and his ears, but Tremaine had been right that Cimarus was too distracted and jumpy to be worth much. Ilias exchanged a look with Giliead, who shook his head with a resigned grimace. Giliead told the boy quietly, “See those black ropes connecting the curse lamps? Don’t touch them.”

  Cimarus looked uncertainly up at the thin black rope suspending the globe of wizard light. “If you’re dying, on your last breath, don’t touch the black ropes,” Ilias added more forcefully. Then he remembered that Arites lay dead in the cargo hold below them and wished he hadn’t.

  When Ilias had first come back from Cineth with the curse mark burned into his cheek, Halian and Karima had pretended not to see it. But he had run into Arites on the path to the sea, and the poet had stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, leaned close to peer at the mark, and said, “Damn, that must have hurt.” It had been the first normal conversation Ilias had had in days.