by Martha Wells
They had already told Tamith about the dimensional trap in the stairs, and he had said, “A human sorcerer couldn’t do that.”
“It doesn’t have to be a human,” Fletcher had pointed out. Fletcher, despite, or perhaps because of, his combined fay and human ancestry, was a great believer in evidence. Reja, whose father had been a police inspector in Parscia, was rather fond of it herself. Her mother had been a Rienish heiress and a spy during the Gardier War, so Reja blamed her heritage for any impulses toward lawlessness.
Reja glanced at Tamith, slumped in the passenger seat and studying the pages. A scion of high society, Tamith was a lean, knobby, rawboned man, his dark hair tousled from exertion. He was Rienish and as pale as Reja was dark, and it gave his face an unhealthy cast. Though that was more the late nights and unhealthy attraction to sweet liquors, rather than his studies in sorcery. He handed a sheaf of papers back to Fletcher and said, “I just don’t think it’s a fay sorcerer. He wouldn’t need all these notes and calculations, for one thing.”
After a moment of studying the pages, Fletcher said, “Maybe you’re right. He seems to be trying to figure out how portals work.”
Tamith turned another page, and handed Fletcher one of the books. “If a fay sorcerer didn’t know that, he’d be a regular wet blanket around the fayre rings. Though a portal and a transdimensional pocket like you encountered aren’t exactly the same thing. The only reason to put a portal in a pocket like that…” Tamith looked up, brows lifted. “Is to be able to get to whatever’s inside.”
“We knew the creature came to collect us,” Reja said, ignoring the chill prickle of unease on her skin. She checked the rearview mirror again, but the road, shadowed by the heavy pines, remained empty.
“It wasn’t expecting you to escape and rampage around as you did. Which is why I think it wasn’t human magic, or fay magic. It was something… natural. Like a spider building a web for prey.”
Reja said, “As if something was told to guard the house, but it wasn’t sentient enough to make contingency plans?”
“Yes, something like that.” Tamith frowned in annoyance. “There’s also no mention in any of this of needing sacrifices, or body parts, or blood, or any of the usual to open this portal. Nothing about Merita Mille or the secretary Rodrign. It looks like Challis has been trying to work out an incantation he doesn’t understand. There’s mention of appealing to some… entity, or maybe deity, or natural force…”
“He has a partner,” Fletcher added. “There are two different handwritings here.”
“I saw that.” Tamith twisted around to ask him, “Have you ever seen that language before? The one in the second hand.”
“No, and the letter groups associated with the horizontal bars are distinctive enough I’m sure I’d remember,” Fletcher answered.
Reja negotiated a difficult turn onto a broader road. “But what is the portal for? Is Mille looking for a way into fayre?” For generations, opportunists had been looking for ways into the fayre realms, and the treasure and powerful magic said to be housed there, while bypassing the fay who guarded them. She just couldn’t see why a man as rich as Baron Mille would bother with it.
“Hard to tell. From these notes it sounds like they think if they open the portal, this entity or deity will be waiting inside it. We’ll just have to find Challis and ask him,” Tamith said.
Reja took one hand off the wheel to pull out the handkerchief she had taken from Challis’s coat pocket. She passed it over to Tamith. “That will be up to you.”
***
They reached the relative safety of the highway, where it stretched out of the heavy forest and crossed the open plain toward the city. Reja pulled over to a roadside diner, the green neon decorating its pediment gleaming in the damp gray afternoon light.
Reja and Fletcher found a table in the back, taking the books and papers in with them for perusal while Tamith carried the handkerchief off to the men’s room to do the location spell. They were lucky the place was sparsely occupied, mostly by a few locals.
Reja ordered coffee and started to go through the documents, beginning with the book in Rienish. It was a more formal version of the language that showed it had been written perhaps forty or so years ago. After studying it for a time, she told Fletcher, “This book is by a man who lists examples of various people who had strange personality changes, or who went mad suddenly and believed themselves to be other people. He thinks they were replaced.”
“Replaced? Like changelings?” Fletcher squinted at the odd handwriting on one of the pages.
The counterman brought their coffee, eyeing them both warily, as they were clearly not locals, or tourists, or wealthy estate owners slumming with the common people, and Fletcher was obviously part fay—although he looked bedraggled and a little more human at the moment. Long car rides tended to make him ill, from a combination of the motion and the presence of all the steel. But the counterman voiced no objection to their presence. Considering what Tamith was doing in the men’s room, Reja decided to tip generously.
“Not like changelings.” She looked at the binding. There was no printer’s name or publisher’s mark. It might be a private volume, like a family history or travelogue, meant only for a few readers. “Many of these afflicted say that someone or something else appeared in their mind and tried to take over their body.”
Fletcher grimaced. “That’s ugly. It’s human magic, not fay.”
Reja did not take offense, knowing what he meant. “It’s odd.” Though it didn’t seem relevant to the talk of portals and strange deities in the other documents.
They had both managed to get through two cups of coffee and slices of pie cautiously offered by the counterman by the time Tamith returned. He looked paler than usual and his eyes were sunken. Spells tended to take their toll and Tamith’s preference for nightclubs didn’t exactly build stamina. Fletcher shoved a coffee cup and a plate of pie toward him as Tamith slumped into the booth. Between mouthfuls, Tamith said, “Challis might be taking a trip,” and handed over the map.
Reja leaned over to check it, and started to dig money out of her wallet to pay the bill. By the marks, Tamith’s spell had located Challis in the city’s Aerodrome. “No, he’s not leaving. Or if he is, it’s a strange coincidence. Baron Mille is giving a large party on his airship this evening.”
Fletcher frowned at the remains of the pie. “We suspect something happened at the Vermillion Towers penthouse that caused the disappearance of the stepdaughter and secretary. Now Challis is going on an airship. Maybe the portal spell has to be done at a high altitude.”
“It’s suggestive,” Reja said. Challis couldn’t sneak two captives, or two corpses, onto the airship without Mille’s connivance. “We have to go to that party.” It was one of the more coveted society events, but not so exclusive that there wouldn’t be a large crowd to mingle about with. There was a pay telephone booth in the corner, and Reja would need to phone the Baroness before they left, to obtain invitations for them to board the airship.
“Oh, god,” Tamith sighed, and ladled more sugar into his coffee. “I was hoping to avoid that.”
“Being trapped hundreds of feet above the ground with a possibly murderous sorcerer?” Fletcher asked.
“Being trapped hundreds of feet above the ground with a bunch of pretentious snobs,” Tamith countered. “At least the buffet will be worth it.”
***
They stopped at Reja’s apartment to change into evening clothes. She had to leave her pistol behind, but there was no other choice; Mille’s guards would not allow it on the airship.
They sped through the city on the elevated road, past buildings clad in limestone and polished granite, with lapis pediments or vertical striping of bronze or chrome, and figured friezes above the entrances. Reja loved this city, for all its silly emphasis on high society.
The Aerodrome bridged the river, looming above the smaller buildings scattered around it, a giant bowl-shaped structure of broad ste
el girders, stretching up to support the curving expanse of gray-green walls. Hundreds of round windows dotted those walls, providing natural light for the booking halls and offices within. Just above the roofline, three huge, sleek, banded-gray crescents were visible. They were the top edges of the balloons of three dirigibles, fastened to their mooring masts and tied securely off to the boarding structures.
But hanging above the Aerodrome was something that dwarfed all of the other dirigibles. It was Baron Mille’s flying platform, practically a floating castle. Two dirigibles, easily as large as the passenger carriers tied up below them, supported the elegantly curved structure of a multistoried cabin. It was too big to dock down in the Aerodrome’s giant bowl; the sunlight glinted off the silvery sides of the balloons and the propellers of its multiple engines, now motionless as it sat at the dock. Each balloon was attached to a double set of mooring masts, and the whole was anchored with huge cables to a raised and covered boarding platform on the outer rim of the Aerodrome’s highest wall, which had been specially built for it.
Tamith craned his neck to see. “Bloody huge, isn’t it? One can’t help but think Baron Mille is overcompensating for something.”
“Yes. Too huge.” Reja eyed it with less enthusiasm. “It’s held together with spells, you know, or the wind would rip it apart. So we have to hope the wizards who helped build it weren’t incompetent.”
The drive split off toward the first-class entrance circle, where fashionable people were being helped out and guided to the smoked glass doors, as photographers snapped photos for the society pages. The entrance was guarded by tall bronze sculptures of aeroplanes standing on their tails, their wings forming a gleaming pediment.
In the cool marble lobby, they breezed past the domed hall that led to the main concourse, booking halls, cafes, and lounges and went straight to the bronze-embossed elevator doors that led up to the private embarkation levels.
The elevator drew to a stop and Reja stepped out onto the first-class embarkation floor. It was a large room, with one wall of windows looking out over the river, the view now obscured by the gray wall of one of the passenger airships. A few guests stood amid plush chairs and potted palms, having last minute pre-boarding cocktails.
Reja had barely a moment to get her bearings, when an older woman swept up to her. “Madame Flinn, I have your invitations. And someone wishes to speak to you privately.”
Reja glanced at Fletcher and got a nod of acknowledgement; he would stay behind and watch for their quarry.
The woman led them across the room to a private parlor, then stepped out and shut the door once they were inside.
The Baroness Mille sat perched on one of the armchairs, her face strained and anxious. She gestured Reja to a seat and barely seemed to notice Tamith was in the room. She said, “Is there any news?”
“Not yet, Madame,” Reja said. Not the news that the Baroness wanted, that her daughter was safely found. “Have you perhaps ever heard the Baron mention the inaccessible fayre realms?”
The Baroness’s forehead furrowed. “No.”
“He’s not mentioned the fay at all?” Tamith asked.
She shook her head. “That’s a pastime for fortune hunters, isn’t it. Mille would never be interested.” She touched her temple and winced. “But he’s changed in the past year. Perhaps he’s become so greedy he can’t stand to have anything barred to him.” She turned to Reja anxiously. “Is that what happened to Merita and Osgood? He traded them to the fay?”
Tamith drew breath for another question but Reja held up a hand. “Changed how?” she asked.
The Baroness looked away, her frown deepening. “It started last winter, when he returned from his property up in the north. We’ve lived separate lives for some years now, but after that he became distant, cold.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “I dismissed it, thinking he was only distracted by an affair, or a new business deal. But then that sorcerer Challis arrived and he became secretive…”
“You are certain this happened after the Baron returned from the north,” Reja said. The Baroness hadn’t told her this before.
“Yes, Mille had an accident there, which caused a serious illness. For some time I attributed his behavior to bad health.”
Reja felt she was on to something. “What sort of accident?”
“A fissure had opened up near one of the old closed mines. The ground is unstable there, it’s not uncommon. But for some reason he wanted to explore it. He went in alone. Osgood and the others with him heard him cry out and they went in and he had fainted. He regained consciousness once they had gotten him out and back to the car, but he was unable to leave his bed for three weeks before he recovered fully.” She shook her head. “The physicians couldn’t find anything wrong. Several thought it was a stroke, though one said it was just a severe shock. But Osgood told me that he and the other men who went into the cave didn’t see anything, and none of them were made ill. It was just an empty grotto.”
It was all highly suggestive, though of what, Reja wasn’t sure. “Osgood Rodrign was there. Was Merita?”
“No, she was here in town, with me.”
Reja sat back, considering it. Perhaps Osgood had seen something that the other men hadn’t, and told Merita. Mysterious grottos, illnesses. It was bizarre but it seemed to fit in with the strange and possibly mad writing on the papers and in the books.
A soft tone sounded from the speaker high in the wall. The Baroness said, “That’s the boarding signal for Mille’s airship. You had better go.”
Reja stood. “I will contact you when we return. I may have more questions.”
As Tamith closed the door behind him, he said, “You think that Challis had that book for a reason? Mille thinks he’s been possessed?”
“Maybe.” Reja hesitated. The room was emptying as the last of the passengers headed toward the elevator. Fletcher was over by the potted palms, watching them worriedly. They didn’t have time to delay. She started toward the elevators. “Perhaps Challis has encouraged that belief for his own reasons.” Perhaps Challis needed the Baron’s resources to open this portal and contact the deity or creature he believed lay within.
***
They took the elevator up again to the new boarding platform, endured a brief search by the Baron’s bodyguards, and crossed the broad covered ramp into the airship. Reja followed the other passengers through a roomy foyer and corridor, and then into a lounge the size of a ballroom, with a ceiling arching high above. It was hard to believe they were on an airship, except for a slight uneasy stirring in Reja’s stomach when the thickly carpeted floor moved gently under her feet.
The walls were paneled in fine dark woods, broken with strips of chrome. Curving couches, benches, and armchairs stood about in conversational groups, all upholstered in brilliant white, gleaming under crystal and silver sconces and pendant lights. Waiters in Mille’s livery circulated through the richly dressed, already chattering crowd, offering glasses of wine and cocktails. Reja recognized a number of the guests, from seeing them in person at nightclubs or at events, or from the society pages. There were those from the high end of society, such as the new Parscian ambassador and her husband, and the lower end, such as the star of a rather risqué stage show.
Reja took a glass, and behind it murmured, “Do you see him?”
Tamith surveyed the room with the sharp eye of a savannah hunter’s guide, concealing his interest behind a wine glass. “Just the usual collections of stiffs and drunkards and hangers-on, all looking vaguely horrified to find themselves trapped on an airship in each other’s company. I don’t see Mille, either.”
“Challis has been trying to avoid being seen in public, he wouldn’t stay in this crowd,” Fletcher said, keeping his voice low. “If we’re right and high places have something to do with this portal he and Mille want to create, he’s going to need an opening to the outside.”
“They might just need the altitude, which means they could be anywhere on this giant flying waste
of money,” Tamith said.
“Yes, but we need to start somewhere.” Reja felt her stomach try to flip. The airship had cast off and was now moving upward. “Let’s try the observation deck first.”
They started to make their way through the crowd, Reja following Tamith’s lead in behaving as if they were being summoned by acquaintances on the far side of the room.
They split up at the far wall, with Reja heading toward the corridor where the ladies powder room lay and Fletcher and Tamith wandering with apparent idleness toward the casino rooms. Navigating by memory of newspaper photographs of the airship’s launch, Reja went past the powder rooms and found the forward stairwell up to the observation deck.
She went cautiously, trying to tread lightly on the metal steps. Below the deck on this side were cubicles with upholstered booths, meant for passengers to retire to if the view above was too overwhelming. She checked each one and silently cursed the designers who had built this ship with so many nooks and crannies. She took the stairs up another level and stepped out onto the glass-covered deck.
The wide walkway stretched nearly the length of the airship, the outer glass wall curving almost two stories above her head. No one moved on it, but there were alcoves built into the inner wall, as there were on the deck immediately below. The view revealed the sparkling expanse of the river and the stone and metal-clad buildings clustered on the far side. The elevated track of the hanging railway wove through them, glinting in the setting sun. The airship was still moving upward, and to the west, toward the edge of the city.