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

by Martha Wells

  Florian stepped aside, taking Tremaine’s sleeve to draw her back a step. “Who is that?” she asked anxiously in Syrnaic, nodding toward Nicholas. “Is everyone all right?”

  “That’s my father. We found him. He found us.” She swallowed in a dry throat and finished evenly, “Arites and Basimi died.”

  Florian looked startled, then stricken. “Oh, no.”

  Gerard was explaining to Nicholas about the incident in the hospital. “I saw another one in the office, stopping the surgeon before he could call for help,” Tremaine interrupted, not wanting to go into details about either Arites or Basimi. “There were two. So…was Giliead fighting a construct like you thought and this was the other?”

  “It must have been a construct,” Gerard said, frowning deeply. “But…”

  “It doesn’t quite fit,” Nicholas interrupted. “Benin, the Gardier chief Scientist, said the presence wasn’t able to contact them until the ship reached the mountain barrier. It would have needed access to a wireless, as they can’t communicate between worlds, and I know there was no Command Liaison at the barrier outpost.”

  “So it must have used our wireless,” Niles pointed out, adding curiously, “Have we been introduced?”

  “That’s impossible,” Averi interrupted Gerard’s attempt to explain. “The wireless room is warded and has armed men posted around the clock. It’s guarded like the Bank of Vienne.”

  Nicholas smiled slightly. “Difficult then, not impossible.” Tremaine had the funny feeling he was breaking cover too. Maybe he had been a Gardier too long; he wasn’t making any attempt to hide his real self.

  “Why didn’t Arisilde do something about this?” she demanded. “Why didn’t he kill that thing? There has to be a reason. He told me he couldn’t show his hand in this, that it was a nasty spell, but interfering would put someone in danger…” She trailed off, thinking that over. “I thought he meant put all of us in danger, in general.”

  Nicholas was looking at her oddly. Incredulous, Gerard demanded, “When did he tell you that?”

  She gestured impatiently. “It was a dream, that night in the hospital. I wasn’t sure if it was real or not.”

  “Put someone in danger…Wait,” Niles said, frowning. “You said the implanted crystals allow them to temporarily inhabit—possess?—the individual? Are the Liaisons aware of the possession, do they remember what they did under its influence?”

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “They seem to be. But I don’t know if that’s an immutable condition.” He eyed Niles sharply. “You think someone has been implanted with a crystal without his knowledge, and the creature used him to reach the wireless?”

  Gerard took his spectacles off and pressed a hand to his forehead wearily. “Oh, God. If that’s the case—”

  “Why else—” Tremaine and Nicholas both began at once. He gestured with the severed arm, politely deferring to her, and Tremaine finished through gritted teeth, “Arisilde wouldn’t worry about hurting the person, unless he was a complete innocent.”

  Nicholas nodded. “By not ‘showing his hand’ he may have meant that he didn’t want to chance revealing himself to whomever the Liaison was reporting to. The Gardier have been desperate to discover more information about the sphere.”

  “It could be any one of the people liberated from the island base,” Averi pointed out urgently.

  “It could be one of the Syprians,” Florian put in, her face etched with worry. “I guess it could be me or Tremaine, but we were always together and we were never unconscious.”

  “I was held too, briefly,” Gerard admitted. “But I was never unconscious either, they had no opportunity to do anything without my knowledge—”

  “It won’t be the freed prisoners or the Syprians who were captured,” Nicholas interrupted impatiently. “They couldn’t have anticipated that any of them would be released, much less end up on this ship.”

  So that means it’s not Ilias, Tremaine thought, pushing her fingers through her hair in agitation. Besides, I would have found the crystal when we slept together. And he had gone swimming naked twice with Giliead, who surely would have seen it. But there were others who had been taken prisoner, at Port Rel in Ile-Rien.

  Florian, Niles and Ander. All three abducted by Dommen and Mirsone and the other Rienish traitors. Taken prisoner, not killed. How long did they think they could get away with that? They should have killed Niles. They took the sphere too, and Arisilde saw what happened, kept them from using the wireless with the Gardier crystals…. It all came together abruptly. “It’s Niles.”

  “Me?” Niles stared at her. “I’ve never been…” He clapped a hand to his forehead in appalled realization. “Oh, my God.”

  “Surely if it was Niles, the creature would have wreaked far more havoc than it has,” Averi objected.

  Niles and Gerard were staring at each other, Niles sickened and Gerard in growing horror. Gerard said, “Except we put an adjuration on each other to stay conscious on the voyage. We didn’t lift it until after the attack on the airship, the one the sphere destroyed, because we were both so exhausted. If that affected the crystal—”

  Niles swore violently. “Giaren couldn’t wake me the next morning. I could have gone to the wireless, used illusions to get past the guards, sent the operator to sleep long enough to send a message.” He felt the back of his neck, loosening his tie. “I felt something back here, but I thought it was a scratch. God, I can’t believe this!”

  Gerard and Nicholas stepped over to look, Nicholas saying, “It’s considerably smaller than the others I’ve seen.” He raised his brows. “It’s under the skin. I suspect we’ll need a pair of forceps.”

  Tremaine rubbed her eyes to hide her expression. She could only take so much of Nicholas. It’s a good thing one of us has impersonated a doctor. With an oath, Averi strode to a ship’s telephone on a nearby table, saying, “I’ll get Divies up here. You might not be the only one.”

  Florian looked urgent. “Tremaine, could you—”

  “Yes.” She took Florian’s arm. There had to be a ladies retiring room or a steward’s cubby or something nearby. “We need to tell Ander.”

  “We’ll need to check everyone else who was ever in contact with the Gardier,” Nicholas pointed out. He added wryly, “Including myself.”

  Chapter 23

  Ilias reached the healer’s area a few steps behind Giliead, though running to the stairs had made him breathe hard. He had known he was hurt; now he was starting to reluctantly admit to himself that he might have to do something about it.

  He followed Giliead down the narrow passage into the main room and found him confronting Ander. The room was full of people, Rienish soldiers, the two healers, some of the men who he knew were high in the Rienish ranks. Everyone had stopped talking to stare. Ixion, at least, was nowhere to be seen. With the air of someone arguing with a dangerous madman, Giliead said to Ander, “You let him loose on the ship?”

  Ander was planted in front of a doorway into one of the smaller rooms. From inside it, Ixion’s voice called, “I’ve pledged my help to the Rien—unconditionally—in fighting these Gardier creatures.”

  Ilias took a step back in pure reflex. He hadn’t really believed that the wizard was here until this moment. Giliead ignored Ixion, saying, “You can’t mean to do this.”

  “He’s still under guard. He’s not going to do anything.” Ander lifted his hands placatingly, as if Giliead’s concern was senseless and overwrought. Ilias wanted to hit him. Now he knew how Tremaine felt, when Ander treated her as if nothing she said meant anything, as if he always knew better.

  “You must be out of your mind,” Ilias said incredulously. He heard a familiar metallic clicking and saw the god-sphere was sitting on a table near the center of the room, trembling a little as its insides spun in agitation. “See, even it thinks you’re crazy.”

  “Look, this is complicated,” Ander began. “I know you—”

  Ixion appeared in the doorway
behind him. Ilias stared, too startled to react. The wizard looked more like himself, except black stubble was just growing in on his bare scalp and he still had no brows or eyelashes. Half his face was bruised and there was a little dried blood around his left ear. As injuries went, Ilias knew he himself looked much worse. His eyes on Giliead, Ixion said, “You’ve cast a curse. Not just held one, like before. You’ve actually cast one.” He smiled. “Welcome, brother.”

  Giliead stared for a moment, breathing hard. Ander turned to block Ixion’s way, his jaw set. “Get back in there. I told you, there’s no—” Then Giliead flung himself toward the doorway. Ander shouted, bracing his body in front of the opening, the door banging him in the shoulder as Giliead slammed into him, Ixion stepped back out of reach. It gave Ilias the chance to grab Giliead’s sword arm and haul him around. He shoved him back against the wall with all his weight, pinning him with a forearm across his chest. “Gil, listen to me!”

  Giliead glared down at him but didn’t throw him off. Ilias said softly, “If he’s really got another body waiting on the island, he could reach Cineth before we ever have a chance to get back there.” He set his jaw, deliberately not looking toward the doorway. “Nothing’s changed. We can’t take the chance.”

  He waited until Giliead’s face changed, until he could tell he saw reason again. Ilias stepped back, taking a deep breath to quell sudden dizziness. The abrupt movement had caused a flare of agony in his midsection and what he really wanted to do was hunch over on the floor. But not in front of Ixion.

  Giliead straightened up, pushing off the wall, looking at Ander as if he didn’t see all the other armed Rienish watching uneasily. He said carefully, “This is what he does. He gets close to people, then he kills them. If you won’t be warned, then you can have him, and be damned.”

  He strode out of the room and Ilias followed, throwing one last grim look back at Ander.

  So the ‘real’ presence was the creature you saw in the surgeon’s office,” Gerard was saying as they walked down the carpeted corridor to the hospital. “It saw Giliead wasn’t affected by the mist, so it sent a sorcerous construct in after him, not wanting to risk its own physical body.”

  Tremaine nodded thoughtfully. “I’m still not sure it was a great idea to move Ixion to the hospital. When are they taking him back to the warded cell?”

  Gerard’s mouth set in a thin line and he didn’t answer. Tremaine watched him suspiciously as Florian, preoccupied, said, “When it talked to Bain and Ixion, it must have been looking for another body, since it couldn’t take over Niles the way it planned to.” She rubbed her arms as if suddenly cold. “Can you imagine what it would have done if it had gotten one of them?”

  Tremaine snorted. “Yes.” Just then they reached the hospital entrance and Giliead burst out suddenly, Ilias behind him. Giliead stopped abruptly when he saw them, then started to go past without speaking. Tremaine stepped in front of him, demanding, “What’s wrong?”

  Ilias, frustrated and angry, answered her, “They let Ixion out.”

  “No. What the hell?” Aghast, Tremaine turned to Gerard and Florian. “That can’t possibly—”

  “We haven’t let him out,” Gerard said sharply. Then he drew a deep breath. “But he was injured driving off that creature and it’s—It’s becoming difficult to convince Delphane and the others not to make a deal with him. I don’t know how much longer—”

  “But Florian killed the damn thing, not him!” Tremaine protested.

  “Not with magic,” Florian said, sounding uncharacteristically bitter. “I killed it with a heavy door. Damn it.”

  Giliead snarled under his breath and started away down the corridor. With a helpless gesture, Ilias made to follow. Gerard stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You’re injured. At least let me do something about it.” It was obvious Gerard felt he had badly let them down.

  Ilias hesitated, looking at Giliead’s retreating back. It was just as obvious that he was in pain. He had had sorcerous healing twice; the first time when a mild charm from Florian had helped a badly infected wound in his back, and again when Niles had healed a broken arm. It had to be tempting, to know he could avoid days of suffering. Giliead stopped, still facing away from them, but his head turned so they could see his profile. He said, “Go ahead. What does it matter?” and walked on down the corridor.

  Ilias swore, pushing a handful of tangled hair off his face. “Come on, let Gerard help you,” Florian urged him.

  At least Gerard wouldn’t feel useless then, Tremaine thought. She folded her arms, saying nothing, not wanting to influence his decision. Ilias shook his head uncertainly. He looked back at the hospital door, then quickly away. “Not in there.”

  Tremaine knew he meant not in there with Ixion. “I’ll come to your cabin as soon as I finish here,” Gerard told him, relieved.

  Ilias nodded, still troubled, and followed Giliead. Tremaine sighed and clapped a hand to her forehead, saying, “I’d better go with them.”

  Florian nodded gravely. “I’ll come by later.”

  Gerard squeezed Tremaine’s shoulder. “Tell them I—” He sighed, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Tremaine promised anyway, and went after Ilias.

  She caught up with Ilias on the stairs; he was taking them much more slowly than usual. Not saying anything, since there was nothing much to say, she stepped next to him and guided his arm across her shoulders so she could take part of his weight. She didn’t know if it would help or hinder him, but he leaned against her with a sigh, his hair tickling her cheek. When they reached their deck he kept his arm around her. As they started down the corridor, Tremaine said thoughtfully, “If they really do let Ixion loose…Much as I hate the idea, we could go to Nicholas for help. Bastards like Ixion are right up his alley.”

  Ilias frowned, glancing down at her. “But would he go against what your people want?”

  Tremaine snorted with dry amusement. “It’s a very dark alley.”

  The cabin door stood open and when they reached it Tremaine heard raised voices—Pasima and Giliead. Ilias groaned under his breath, muttering, “She could at least let us get some sleep first.”

  As they went inside, Tremaine saw Pasima confronting Giliead in the main room. All the Syprians were here, Gyan grim-faced and angry, Kias standing back by the wall, his arms folded and his expression stolid. Danias and Sanior seemed wary, as if they expected Giliead to attack Pasima, but Cletia, seated on the couch, just looked tired. Beside her Cimarus stared at the wall, his jaw tight. Calit was sitting back in a corner, listening wide-eyed to a fight in a language he couldn’t understand in a place that must seen incredibly strange. Tremaine had forgotten all about him; he must have been tagging along with Cimarus.

  Giliead watched Pasima with a faintly contemptuous smile as she said, “I knew it would come to this. You’ve always been too soft, Andrien has always harbored the cursed. Now you’ve betrayed the god.”

  “If he hadn’t made the curse crystal work, we would have died there,” Cletia said thickly.

  Tremaine looked away, shaking her head. Oh God, this is just about getting the crystal to make the gate. Cletia and Cimarus must not realize who had been responsible for fighting off the Gardier wizard before they reached the airship. No wonder Giliead looked like that; Pasima didn’t know the half of it and Cletia’s attempt at a defense meant nothing. Giliead snorted derisively. “Betrayed the god? You hate the god, Pasima, because no matter how high your councils in the city go, it’ll always be above you. And worse, it doesn’t care how much grain your family has or what good marriages you bought for your brothers. It doesn’t know you from the lowest crippled cursed gleaner.”

  “We’ve only your word for that, haven’t we?” she snapped. “Look at all the trouble that’s come since you were Chosen. Ranior’s death, Ixion’s plagues on us, and your own brother destroyed—”

  “Destroyed?” Ilias furiously interrupted Giliead’s answer, stepping away
from Tremaine to put himself in the middle of the fight. “I’m right here! If it happened to Cimarus, you’d tell Cletia to cut his throat and never see her again if she refused. And Cletia knows it.”

  Pasima was so angry she actually answered him directly. “At least I’d have done the god’s will. Not fooled myself into thinking whatever I did for my own selfish reasons was right.”

  “That would be so much better than just living with it, wouldn’t it?” Ilias retorted bitterly.

  “You’d have a brother’s blood on your hands, but at least the right people would still talk to you in the market,” Giliead added in a deceptively even tone.

  Pasima all but bared her teeth. “Maybe Ixion’s vengeance on your family was just the god’s way of telling you it Chose the wrong Vessel.”

  “You’d better hope not.” Giliead actually smiled at her, though it was a bitter expression. “Ixion fought a Gardier curseling and the Rienish let him out of prison. He’s lying his way into an alliance with them even now.”

  Cletia looked up, startled, and Sanior made an alarmed noise in his throat. Pasima stared incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”

  Giliead laughed without humor. “Oh, I’m nothing but serious.”

  Pasima shook her head, stunned. “I knew you would lead us into disaster. I knew these people were lying filth, no better than the Hisians. And they’ve found perfect allies in you!”