by Martha Wells
The library door stood open but the interior was pitch-dark. She reached in and pressed the button for the lights. The electric bulb leapt to life in the overhead fixture, making Ilias flinch.
“Sorry,” Tremaine muttered, stepping inside. On the surface nothing seemed disturbed. But the cabinet where the sphere had been kept looked less crammed with paper, as if some of the folios and documents were missing from the shelves. She crossed the room to the big carved desk and squatted, reaching underneath the dusty wood to feel for a hidden catch. She popped it, then scrambled around to open the secret panel in the leather-embossed side. The drawers there were empty. She sat back, tapping her chin thoughtfully. There had been nothing in here except family items, papers, photos, old letters.
“So, was it Gardier?” Ilias asked. He was standing beside the empty hearth, looking around the room warily.
Tremaine glanced up, distracted for a moment by the incongruity of seeing him in this familiar setting. Even with the borrowed coat and sweater over his own clothes and his wild hair tied back, he still didn’t look as if he belonged. She shook her head slightly, getting to her feet. “No, these were my father’s people. They left the door unlocked so I’d know they’d been here. Me, and anyone else who came to the house.” It was an old custom of theirs, when they had to abandon any hideaway. Leave the doors open and the traps sprung, let any pursuers know that they were too late, anticipated, and outmaneuvered. It could also, in its way, be a declaration of war.
Next she went upstairs to find the wardstones missing, taken so the Gardier wouldn’t know there had ever been any sorcery associated with the house, and checked that all the rest of Edouard Villers’s old gadgets had been cleared out of the attics. Her own room seemed untouched. Standing there, trying to think what to take, she shrugged finally and scooped the tangled contents of her jewelry box into an empty pillowcase. She added her lock picks and an old stage makeup set from a drawer and that was that.
Coming back down into the hall, she stood there a moment, staring at nothing, then shook her head. “They were better at it than I would have been.” She pushed a hand through her hair. This house isn’t you. Maybe it wasn’t even Nicholas. Maybe he had just needed to pretend it was in order to be who he had decided to be. “I don’t even know why I wanted to stop here in the first place.”
“To say good-bye?” Ilias followed her to the door, casting a dubious look back at the cold dusty place.
“I’m not a very sentimental person,” Tremaine told him.
He pretended to be startled. “No, really?”
Tremaine pulled the door shut, her mouth twisted wryly. She didn’t know how she felt. Except that she was glad she hadn’t come here alone.
Ilias had figured out almost immediately that Tremaine didn’t want to tell him about the paper she was going to the city to get. She was almost as bad a liar as Giliead when her heart wasn’t in the deception, so it was fairly easy to get the truth out of her. Braced uncomfortably in the front bench of the car, he told her, “It’s stealing.”
“It’s not stealing,” Tremaine assured him earnestly. “That’s when you take something that doesn’t belong to you. The Ravenna is supposed to belong to me. Us. The Viller Institute.”
As the morning light grew less dim and gray, he could see the trees and fields whizzing rapidly by and it did even more unpleasant things to his stomach. And the car smelled horrible, like the flying whale; he would rather ride in a barrel strapped under an oxcart. Other cars, some of them very large with wizard lights blazing in the dimness, passed them going the other way and most seemed to stray unnecessarily close to their vehicle. He shielded his eyes, concentrating on Tremaine. “You take a paper that says one thing, and you have someone change the paper to say it gives you the Ravenna?” She had explained the ship was called after a great queen; as far as he was concerned, naming the ship after a person just made her already too-large soul even bigger. “That’s stealing.”
“It’s not stealing.” Leaning over the wheel that controlled the car, she grinned suddenly, a manic expression that was not reassuring. “It’s forgery. At least that’s what the magistrate’s charge will say.”
Those words forgery and magistrate hadn’t meant anything but the import was clear anyway. “The stealing part will be in there somewhere, trust me.” If it would help them get back to free Giliead and the others, he was all for it, but he wasn’t sure it would work. His nerves jumped with the thought that they were wasting time with this when a better plan might be formed, but since he didn’t have a clue what that better plan could be, they were stuck with this one.
Reaching the city was a relief. Not only did Tremaine have to slow the car down, but it was light enough by now to really see the structures they had been passing for some time. Ilias found the variety fascinating. There were little cottages and farmhouses with trees and gardens not much different than those he had been familiar with all his life, but there were also buildings of strange-colored stone with carvings and towers and pillars and shapes that were surely impossible.
He hadn’t expected it to be this big, though after seeing the Ravenna, maybe that was naive. He realized it must also be very old when the car approached a high city wall constructed of huge stones and surmounted with guard towers. The houses had grown right up to it on both sides and for that to happen it must have been many years since there had been any need to keep it unencumbered for defense. There was some difficulty getting in, because a large crowd of people and cars seemed to be trying to get out.
After that everything just got bigger and even more impressive. He sank down in the seat, craning his neck to look up at big graceful stone buildings decorated with statues and columns. Some had strange deformed monsters like Ixion’s creatures carved along the pediments and windows filled with glass of rich, jewel-like colors. Tremaine took the car down a street so large there was a row of trees down the middle, bare and leafless from the winter. More cars moved down it, all of different sizes and shapes, and a few small wagons drawn by one or two horses. People made their way along on foot too, most bundled up against the cold and dressed in drab colors that contrasted oddly with the richness of the background.
Then further down the street he saw a looming structure with a green-tinged dome. Except the dome was damaged, chunks knocked out as if a giant had taken a hammer to it. He remembered abruptly that these people were at war, and it was a war they were on the verge of losing. He looked more closely at the passersby in the street, seeing how they moved hurriedly, shoulders hunched, their faces preoccupied or drawn or just plain frightened. This could be Cineth, he thought, the idea making him sicker than the miasma issuing from the car. It wouldn’t take many of the bomb-things the Gardier had burned the village with to turn Cineth into a hole in the ground.
“I’m going to leave the car here,” Tremaine said, guiding it into an open space on the edge of the street near a row of other such craft. “I don’t want to take it into the part of town where we have to go.”
Ilias just nodded, relieved that they would be getting out of the damn thing.
As soon as the car came to a halt, Ilias fumbled with the catch on the door and leapt out, happy to stand on solid ground again. Broad as the street was, the stone buildings loomed over it, though not high enough to blot out the expanse of cloudy gray sky. The air wasn’t much better out here, stinking of the cars and tainted with too many strange odors, bitter and acrid like the stench that hung over the Gardier tunnels. Underneath it were more familiar scents of wet earth and human waste and cooking.
As people hurried by Ilias noticed they cast him curious glances but everyone seemed too wrapped up in their own concerns to take real notice. Tremaine had said this city was more used to strangers than Cineth and that with all the refugees pouring in and everyone told to evacuate, he wouldn’t cause that much comment. She had convinced him to tie all his hair back and it made his neck feel naked and exposed. He scratched self-consciously at the curse mar
k on his cheek but reminded himself these people wouldn’t know what it meant. And even if they did, it probably still wouldn’t make much difference, as accustomed to wizards as they were.
Tremaine led the way past a stone building with beautiful colored glass in its small windows to another with some kind of horrible creatures carved on it. Some had wings and all had hunched bodies and leering faces. As she started up a flight of stone steps toward double wooden doors bound with copper-colored metal, he hesitated. “Uh . . .” Uncertain this was a good idea, he caught her sleeve to stop her. “What’s in there?” In the Syrnai the skulls of large predators were sometimes posted to warn travelers what was in the area and these carvings looked like a similar system.
“It’s a bank. We keep money and . . .” She gestured vaguely. “Valuable things in it.”
“Oh.” He nodded, understanding now that the stone monsters were meant to scare off thieves, not warn you of what lurked inside.
“There’s a ward here,” she explained, stopping under the doorway. “It keeps people from bringing in enspelled objects that might be used to steal something. It’s not going to stop us since you know we don’t have anything like that.”
Ilias was barely listening. Inside was a big high-ceilinged room, the dim wizard lights housed in elaborate confections of bright bronzed metal and white glass. It was floored with black-veined marble, with rich dark wood everywhere. On one wall there was a painting, a giant one, a bird’s-eye view of an incredible city with domes and towers and ships on the river winding through it. He had to tear his gaze away to look around at the rest of the place. There were a few people here, sitting at tables writing or speaking in hushed tones.
Across the back were wooden stalls, with odd little grilles in the front and people inside. His first impulse was to think they were cells or cages, except the back seemed to be completely open for the inhabitants to come and go at will.
Tremaine looked around, smiling faintly. “Yes, it’s a little much, isn’t it. Sort of like a temple to money. This is the main branch of the Bank of Ile-Rien. I’ve got to get something to pay the man who’s going to help . . . change the document. It’s lucky we got here this early; it looks like they’re getting ready to shut the place down. Wait here. I’ll be back in a moment.” She started across toward the row of stalls.
He watched while she talked to someone through the grille in the front. Then the person emerged from around the back to lead her across to a door in the far wall. Ilias waited, studying the paintings. He would have felt conspicuous standing around with nothing to do, except that several others who looked far more out of place than he did came in to hold brief conferences with the people in the stalls. It wasn’t long before Tremaine came out with a leather case tucked under her arm.
As they went back down the steps to the street, she said, “It’s kind of ironic that we keep some of our accounts there, because my father actually robbed the place once.”
“He was a thief?” Ilias asked, startled. Gerard had explained that Tremaine’s father and a wizard companion had been the ones to track the Gardier from this land to the vicinity of the Isle of Storms. He and Giliead had both assumed that meant he was a warleader or explorer.
She opened the case to poke through it, saying with a shrug, “He didn’t steal money. Well, depending on whose money it was, sometimes he did. He took some documents from the bank that he wanted to use to prove that this March Baron was stealing royal land grants that were supposed to go to pensioners and ... it was complicated.”
Concentrating on the papers in the case, she was absently heading toward the edge of the walk and the muddy water pooled at the side of the street. Ilias took her elbow, steering her back. “So he was kind of like a lawgiver?”
“Sort of. I mean, he did illegal things, but it was all in the cause of...” They reached an intersection with another more narrow street and she turned down it. “. . . getting back at people he didn’t like. But they were bad people. Usually.”
All right, Ilias thought, deciding to drop the issue there. They walked down the street for some distance, until the elaborate carving and columns and colored glass gave way to dingy stained stone and boarded-up windows. Here they saw people loading bundles of belongings into cars and wagons, and other heavily laden vehicles moving slowly up the street. Then they stopped at a cross street where Ilias could see an entire section of houses had been reduced to rubble. There had been a fire too; the air still smelled of smoke and charred wood. Soot had been swept back out of the street to pile up on the remnants of the walk. “Damn,” Tremaine muttered. “I hope he’s still there. I hadn’t thought about that.”
“You think he left the city?” Ilias asked, looking away from the evidence of destruction. He was still thinking of Cineth. So much smaller, so much easier to destroy.
“No. People in his profession are like very persistent rats. They won’t leave even when the ship sinks.” Tremaine gazed at a trail sign carved into a remaining wall, then led the way down another cross street. “He probably thinks he can do good business during the occupation.”
Ilias snorted at the stupidity of it. “With the Gardier?”
“He’s in for a surprise,” Tremaine agreed, sounding as if she was looking forward to it.
Ilias was hoping to see inside another one of the bigger doorways, but she chose one of the smaller ones, with no glass windows and stone with flaking red paint. Tremaine tried the door handle and when it didn’t turn, applied her shoulder to it and popped it open.
Inside was a dark room, dirty and smelling of cooked cabbage, poorly lit by a couple of bare wizard lights hanging from the ceiling. A wooden counter blocked off the back part of the room, which was filled with shelves stuffed with moldering paper.
Behind the counter there was a boy, not much older than Dyani, lounging in a chair beside a little round iron stove, and an older woman, with ragged hair and a white puffy face.
Tremaine leaned on the counter and spoke to the woman, who answered, coming forward and shaking her head in agitation.
Then the boy got up and came around the counter, showing his teeth in a nasty grin, moving with slow threat. Ilias waited until he got just close enough, then shoved him back a few steps. Snarling angrily, the boy surged forward, throwing a punch that caught Ilias in the jaw. Not much inconvenienced by the punch—Giliead had hit him harder than that by accident—Ilias just looked at him, one brow lifted ironically. Still determined, the boy drew a knife, so Ilias slapped it out of his hand and slammed the boy’s head into the wall.
“Is he all right?” Tremaine asked, more curious than concerned as Ilias hauled him up by the collar and draped him over the counter.
“Sure,” he told her with a shrug. “I’m not going to kill him, he’s a kid.”
“Good. I’ll be right back.”
The back room was cleaner, better lit, though also crammed with paper and musty books. The faded old man who hunched over the old-fashioned writing desk looked like a large gnome. He turned slightly as she shut the door behind her, the light catching his thick spectacles. “Miss Valiarde.” He eyed her a trifle nervously. “Are you here representing your father?”
She should have expected that question. Nicholas Valiarde had disappeared before, faking his death or the death of one of his personas, though he had never stayed out of sight for quite this long. The criminal element in Ile-Rien would never be quite sure he was really gone. If he is. She hesitated, trying to decide on an answer, then realized her inadvertently enigmatic stare was intimidating him more than any lie. She said, “I’m here representing myself.”
He blinked owlishly. She could tell he didn’t believe her. Nicholas had never involved his daughter in his business activities; he had never trusted her to get things right. But this man wouldn’t realize that. He said, “I see. You have . . . something you would like me to take a look at?”
She stepped forward, taking the papers out of the dispatch case. This man wasn’t the best
forger in Ile-Rien, but then this document only had to survive a cursory inspection. “I need you to make another copy of this document with Minister Servaine’s signature, but with today’s date, and change the wording to read that Colonel Averi has permission to use the HRM Ravenna at his discretion. The exact wording is ...” She fumbled with the papers for a moment, then dumped the whole case on the desk. “It’s all here.”
He took the documents, his brows quirking. He said with a trace of amusement, “One is usually more circumspect. You imply the document is a folio of historical interest which you want me to value for you, for example.”
“I don’t have time for that. Oh.” She dug in her other pocket and pulled out two of the gold coins she had removed from the deposit box. She knew that after the next few days paper royals would only be good for starting fires but gold ones should still be worth something. “This enough?”
He sighed, apparently at the impatience of youth. “We can discuss the fee when I produce the finished result, in ... ?”
“An hour.”
He lifted his brows. Tremaine met his eyes. “An hour,” she repeated.
He sighed again, nodding. “Very well.”
She went back to the outer room where the female clerk had retreated into a corner and the bullyboy was on the floor, nursing a bloody nose and what were going to be two wonderful black eyes. Ilias was studying the bookcases. He glanced at her inquiringly and she nodded. He was relying on her, she realized suddenly. To get them through this, to get him back home. At the moment she didn’t feel very reliable.
As Tremaine made her way through the piles of books, the bullyboy said thickly, “Has he got brass knuckles?”