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

by Martha Wells

  “Now tell me about Arisilde,” Nicholas said grimly.

  The fire spread through the hangar, creeping from work bay to work bay, but the big beams that supported the wooden walls were slow to catch. The airship itself was unhurt; it had an avatar aboard and its power fueled the wards that protected the flammable gas cells against outside attack. But the Service personnel summoned to the hangar were working hard to remove the valuable craft; if the building collapsed on it, the wards wouldn’t hold. The two trucks inside the hangar were now ablaze and others had to be brought to winch the giant hangar doors open; in the meantime the men were moving the doors by brute force. The few Command officers present were organizing a search for the escaped prisoners, but the confused reports of the survivors and the lack of any wireless closer than the next hangar hampered their efforts.

  Inside, in the burning wreckage of the wireless room, the empty shell of Command Officer Disar shoved itself upright off the concrete floor and began to crawl.

  The wounds in its body from flame and flying wood and metal were terrible and its clothes were blackened rags, but it forced itself forward, ruined hands clawing at the floor. It was making toward a body just outside the circle of debris, a young Command officer unconscious but with life still lingering.

  Reaching him, it touched the crystal in its temple, pressing until a shard of the embedded rock snapped away. Fumbling to hold its burned fingers steady, it lifted the shard toward the insensate man’s head.

  Tremaine stopped the truck on the road, near the dark line of woods where Basimi and the others should be waiting. Giliead sent Cimarus out to find them and guide them in. It was still quiet near the forest’s edge but truck lights were zigzagging between the distant hangars and on the road to the city.

  Tremaine had explained about Arisilde as best she could. In fact, she had explained about three times, realized she was babbling, and stopped. Nicholas hadn’t commented, except to say thoughtfully, “I was afraid something had happened, when he didn’t return, and there was no attempt to contact me. I knew he hadn’t been captured.”

  Then that’s theory one or theory two, I forget which, of how Arisilde got into the sphere down the drain, Tremaine thought, feeling awkward. She fumbled for something to say, knowing that Arisilde had been Nicholas’s oldest friend. Then Nicholas turned impatiently, saying, “There is a need to hurry. We only have a limited amount of time before another Command Liaison will be able to focus on that avatar.”

  But let’s not be sentimental about it, Tremaine thought grimly, her fingers beginning to tap deliberately on the steering wheel.

  From the back, she heard Cletia say softly, “He’s really her father?”

  Ilias shifted impatiently next to her. Giliead said, “Yes,” with the air of giving the final word on the subject.

  “Is he a wizard?” Cletia persisted.

  Giliead let out his breath. “No.” Ilias glanced up at him, and Tremaine realized Giliead would not exactly be sorry to stumble on another Rienish wizard they could trust. It would mean he wouldn’t have to try speaking to the crystal again.

  Nicholas said, “The Gardier have someone, or something, aboard your ship. The chief Scientist called it a ‘presence’ but I wasn’t able to ascertain exactly what it might be.”

  “I think we found it already. It killed some Gardier prisoners. Ilias and Giliead kept it from getting the last one, and Gerard and Niles did some kind of banishing on it.” She thought she could now guess what the “presence” had been so keen to stop them from finding out from their prisoners—that the Gardier home world lay elsewhere.

  Tremaine saw dim shapes moving out of the trees. She could tell that the one with the long hair and the sword was Cimarus, and she assumed the three dim figures following were Basimi, Molin and Dubos. They seemed to be carrying extra packs and she hoped they had been successful in finding some supplies; they had lost almost everything else they had when the Gardier had captured the Syprians.

  One of the shapes came to the truck window and Basimi’s voice said, “We were able to lift some rations and a few canteens, and I found a place we could get some tools if—” His voice sharpened in alarm. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a Rienish agent,” Tremaine said impatiently. “Just get in the damn truck before they find us.”

  Dubos stepped up to the window. “There can’t be a Rienish agent here, how—”

  Nicholas leaned forward, saying sharply, “Your voice is familiar. Were you ever in Vienne Magistrates’ Court?”

  “What the—” Dubos hesitated, obviously struck by that perfect Vienne-accented Rienish. He flicked a hand torch on, to a chorus of startled hisses from the Syprians. Ilias winced away from the light. “Nicholas Valiarde?” Dubos sounded incredulous.

  “Ah.” Nicholas sat back, smiling slightly. “Sergeant Dubos, is it?”

  Tremaine leaned her head on the steering wheel, muttering, “I can’t fucking believe this.” After how I had to act to get Dubos to listen to me, and now Nicholas shows up, and everyone practically wets themselves in fear and awe.

  “I made inspector before I joined the army.” Dubos turned back to Basimi and Molin. “Get in the truck.”

  The men hurriedly clambered in and Tremaine let the gear out. As the truck rumbled forward, Dubos appeared briefly in the panel to say, “Miss Valiarde, why didn’t you tell us your father was here?”

  “I didn’t know!” Tremaine protested, adding under her breath, “Nobody’s going to believe that.”

  The truck trundled along in silence until Nicholas said, “When the road turns into the copse of trees up here, stop. I’ll have to drive from then on as we’re certain to be seen.”

  Tremaine squinted against the dark, peering ahead, and managed to see the curve and the dim shape of the copse. It was near the place where she had killed the truck’s former driver, where his body still lay cooling in the ditch. The memory was a shock; in everything that had happened since, she had somehow pushed it so far aside it had left her consciousness altogether. Nicholas startled her out of the dark memory by adding, “The Gardier boy will have to go with you. He knows too much and we can’t risk releasing him.”

  Tremaine shook her head, making herself focus again. “The Gardier boy had at least two chances to run away before he knew too much so he can just go with us and like it.”

  Ilias must have caught the gist of that because he said in Syrnaic, “He’s our boy now, anyway.”

  “You’d better not mean that literally,” Tremaine snarled back at him. She switched to Rienish to ask Nicholas, “What do you mean, ‘go with you’?”

  “I’m staying behind.”

  Tremaine sputtered, “You can’t—They’ve got to know what you are by now—”

  “The key witnesses are dead, and the others didn’t see anything damning. If we manage your escape correctly, I should remain unsuspected.” He shifted to face her. “When I first arrived here, I was at a disadvantage, but I can blend in now and I also have three other personas created with full documentation. If I have to leave this Maton, I can reemerge in another one as a native.” He added impatiently, “I still have much to learn, Tremaine. My work here is still incomplete. These people, all that they’re attempting to do, it didn’t come about naturally. Something has forced this into being, has created all this for a specific purpose and I have to find out what that is.”

  “All right, fine,” Tremaine snapped. They reached the copse and she brought the truck to an abrupt halt, putting it in park and telling Ilias, “Come on, we’re getting in the back now.”

  He went without protest, though she could tell by the turn of his head he had thrown one more wary look at Nicholas. Tremaine found she wasn’t as steady as she thought when her foot slipped on the tailgate and she would have fallen face forward if Ilias hadn’t deftly caught her and handed her in. The back was dark and close, only the dim light from the opening into the cab to see by. There seemed to be benches along the sides that would make th
e ride less excruciating. She made her way to the front, stepping on Cimarus’s and Basimi’s feet to judge by the startled exclamations, and crouched down next to Giliead. “Just what is this place we’re going to?” she asked Nicholas through the opening to the cab.

  “It’s an airship mooring site.” Nicholas shifted into gear and the truck rumbled on. He switched on the headlamp, a single electric light at the front that threw dim illumination on the road. Tremaine almost protested, then saw the reason for it; it would make them just one more vehicle on the road, and the searchers would be looking for a bunch of Syprian barbarians on foot, not a truck with a single driver. “Benin’s group has just completed the prototype of an airship that carries its own spell circle with it. It can gate at any point.”

  Tremaine winced. “Like the Ravenna. That’s the ship we’re using.” No wonder the Gardier hadn’t bothered to establish a larger base on the Wall Port. Why go to the trouble, when they had that in the works?

  Nicholas flicked a dark glance back at her. “So that’s where they got the idea. It’s of recent design and was just added to the airship a few days ago. You may have noticed, they aren’t much for original thinking. Everything they have—the airships, their weapons—is copied from other sources. These people can’t even come up with an automobile on their own. They’ve stolen nearly every mechanical object they own from someone else.”

  Tremaine frowned, though it fit with what she had seen in the little abandoned town. And it explained why the airships seemed so susceptible to accident when the crystals weren’t aboard to protect them. If the electrical wiring is slapped together as badly as this truck, it’s a wonder any of them survive. “What about their magic? The crystals?”

  “To assume they haven’t done the same with their magic is absurd. Where it came from,” he said deliberately, “is what I’ve been trying to discover. It’s the key to the whole situation.”

  “And here I thought the key to the whole situation was that they were beating the pants off us,” Tremaine said, not bothering to stint the sarcasm. And here I just used to think these things instead of saying them aloud. I have changed. Or her incipient hysteria was preventing her from keeping her mouth shut.

  Nicholas changed gears to navigate a slight rise in the ground, something Tremaine didn’t usually bother to do. He said, continuing their earlier conversation, “The only thing special about that ring of yours, other than the fact that it’s made of sorcerously inert white gold, is that your family name is inscribed on it. That seems to imply a particular relationship.”

  She took much grim satisfaction from saying, “He’s my husband. We’re married. And my hair was in fashion when I left Ile-Rien.”

  Silence, except for the growl of the truck’s engine.

  Ilias’s night vision had been ruined by the curse lamp in the front of the wagon and he couldn’t see a damn thing. But by the lay of the land, he thought they were going too near the populated area. Giliead must have realized it at the same moment, because he said quietly, “Tremaine, we’re getting close to the city.”

  Tremaine shifted forward to speak to her father. Ilias had no trouble believing in that relationship; the physical resemblance might not be much, but the feyness and the ruthlessness were certainly similar. Ilias waited tensely, sweat running down his back. His head still ached and their bumpy progress made it hard to ignore the pain in his side, though he sat braced against the bench with his sword across his lap, using one of Giliead’s legs to steady himself. The reply came too rapid and soft for him to catch. The worried reaction of Dubos and the other men told him the answer wasn’t popular before Tremaine sat back with a Rienish curse and said in Syrnaic, “This airship mooring site is in the goddamn city.”

  Ilias wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm, wincing as he accidentally touched his sore nose. “I liked the boat idea better.”

  Giliead made a noise of agreement and even Cimarus added, “I did too.”

  “Can this work?” Cletia asked, tension in her voice.

  “It had better work,” Tremaine murmured.

  After a short time a low-voiced comment from the front warned that they were coming near the city gates. Everyone slipped off the benches to huddle on the floor, Giliead squeezing in next to Ilias, Tremaine just in front of him. Ilias curled up to make room, glad it was too dark for anyone to see his grimace. It was easier to ignore the pain when he was doing something; this sitting and waiting just gave him time to dwell on it.

  Ilias heard the rumble of more wagons as theirs slowed. A voice spoke Gardier right on the other side of the canvas and he froze, feeling Tremaine flinch. The wagon stopped and Ilias took a grip on his sword hilt. Not much they could do if they were caught except fight a doomed last stand.

  The Gardier spoke again, Nicholas answered, and after a too-long moment the truck moved on. Ilias let his breath out, hearing the others shift slightly in relief. But now they were in the Gardier city.

  Tremaine bit her last intact fingernail to the quick as the truck trundled through the streets. She couldn’t remember how far it had been to the building she had seen with the airship moored to the top, but surely the truck could travel faster than she and Calit had walked.

  Finally, the vehicle came to a stop with a crunch of gears, then the engine died. Nicholas leaned back to say quietly, “Stay here for a moment.”

  “Right,” Tremaine whispered, but as she heard him climb out of the cab she got up and stepped quietly past the others to the canvas over the back, gently lifting it aside to look.

  “Where are we?” Ilias wanted to know and she waved him to silence. The truck was parked in a large stone-walled chamber with a finely worked floor inlaid with gray-green slate, now stained and spotted with oil. The lights were the customary strings of wire with bare bulbs hanging down. In contrast to the fine stonework, the wooden panel doors opening onto the dark street that Nicholas was sliding shut looked shoddy and poorly fit the opening. There were a few crates stacked on the floor and two more trucks parked nearby. It looked as if the Gardier had wanted a mews in their building so they had simply knocked out a wall and converted a ballroom or assembly room. Ilias squeezed in beside her to look out and Dubos beat Giliead to the other side.

  Nicholas got the outer door closed and, as he crossed to the front of the big room, waved for them to come out of the truck. Tremaine pulled the canvas back and climbed down. The others followed her rapidly, Basimi handing out the supply bags to Molin and Cimarus.

  Nicholas stood at a set of heavy wooden doors leading into the interior of the building. They were old and scarred but still bore the curlicue carving along the rounded edges that marked them as a product of the original builders. Nicholas had eased one door open and was peering out into a dimly lit corridor. He leaned back to say, “The living quarters are on the far side of the building, but there may be men working late in some of these rooms.” His glance took them all in with deliberate emphasis. “Be very quiet.”

  Tremaine passed the warning on in Syrnaic. Ilias nodded tightly. She noticed he was sweating despite the cool air and he was carrying his sword propped on his shoulder, as if it hurt to lift it. Besides the obvious bloody nose, his shirt was torn open and there was a darkening bruise all down his right side, and the skin around his eyes looked bruised. We need to get out of here, she thought nervously. She could feel their borrowed time slipping away. Nicholas added, “There’s a small armory on the second floor where we can find some firearms for your friends.”

  “The Syprians won’t use guns,” Tremaine told him.

  He gave her that dark stare. She said with some asperity, “They won’t touch anything that looks like it might be magic, even if they know it’s not magic, and considering I can’t even get them to press the light switches and the only one who ever touched a telephone got shot to death, I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince them otherwise.”

  Nicholas let out his breath, rolled his eyes, then pulled the knapsa
ck off his shoulder, opening it to take out a metal object with a heavy round end and a handle. It looked a bit like some sort of esoteric tool for ironing laundry, but knowing her father, she said, “A bomb?”

  “An incendiary,” he corrected. “Hold it by this end, push that into place, then hold down this lever. Then throw it and run.”

  “Right.” She accepted the bag and followed him through the doors.

  The corridor led to a wide stone stair, and though they passed several doorways, everything seemed quiet. The armory wasn’t far from the second-floor landing, and Nicholas opened it with a key, revealing a long room filled with gleaming racks of weapons. Basimi, Dubos and Molin all took rifles and pistols, stopping to quickly load them, and the Syprians remained impatiently in the corridor.

  Afterward they went up the stairs toward the top floor, meeting only one man who suddenly came out of a doorway onto a landing and died without crying out with Cimarus’s knife in his throat. Ilias moved hastily to help Cimarus bundle the body back into the room out of sight and they continued on. The man hadn’t been armed, but one shout from him would have killed all of them; Tremaine stopped counting the dead innocent bystanders.

  They finally reached the top where a large archway opened onto the dimly lit landing. Through it was a room that seemed to take up the whole top floor, mostly dark except for a few pools of electric light from overhead bulbs. Parts of the space were blocked off by wooden partitions that didn’t reach all the way up to the sculpted stone arches of the ceiling. In the shadows Tremaine could see worktables, cluttered with papers and drawings, fragments of mechanical parts. In the outer wall three elegantly curved stone archways mimicked the ones in the converted garage below; these might have been meant to open onto balconies, but they were closed off with old stained boards. There was an opening to the outside somewhere because fresh cold air moved through the room in a draft, gently stirring the papers. Then she heard the creak of a chair from behind the largest partition.