The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (10 page)

He stared at her, then unclipped the holster from his belt and handed it over.

T
he trail led upward through a small stairwell near the center of the ship. There were only a few lights set back into walls lined with smoky dark wood, and with the dark green patterned carpet underfoot they might have been making their way through a dim woodland glade. Keeping his voice low, Ilias said, “This makes sense. He’s making for open air.”

Giliead nodded. “He may be confused. He’ll know we’re at sea, but—” His slight shrug took in their strange surroundings, so unlike a ship except for the movement underfoot.

A distant hollow voice spoke suddenly, shattering the stillness. Ilias flinched violently and Giliead swore under his breath.

“It’s the same as before,” Tremaine whispered from behind Ilias. “He’s telling everyone to stay at their posts or in their quarters, and to call the bridge if they see anyone suspicious.”

Ilias nodded. She had explained it was one of the crew, speaking into a talking box that let his voice be heard through other boxes all over the ship. It had had a more authoritative ring when they thought it was the ship herself speaking.

“Here,” Giliead said suddenly, frowning. “There’s something here.” He stepped off the stairs into a small foyer.

“What?” Tremaine demanded. She had a small curse weapon tucked into the back of her pants under her shirt, which she thought they didn’t know about.

“Ixion must have cast a curse up here,” Ilias told her as Giliead cautiously pushed open the door.

It opened into a long room where the wizard lights weren’t lit but it hardly mattered; the whole outside wall was windows, nearly floor-to-ceiling, looking out onto an expanse of roofed deck that ran along this side of the ship, allowing in enough cloudy gray daylight to illuminate the room. It was filled with cushioned chairs and couches, patterned carpets in soft warm colors covering a floor of green-veined marble. There were drapes over portions of the inner wall and a set of double doors near the middle. As they moved further in, Ilias saw there was a large arched entranceway at the opposite end, next to a giant example of one of the Rienish paintings. It was a river winding through a green valley, so real it looked as if you could get your feet wet standing near it.

An earsplitting shriek rent the air and he and Giliead both jumped violently, looking frantically around for the source. But Tremaine waved hurriedly for them to relax and moved to a little table near a chair. On it sat a small box; she lifted the curved part on top and held it to her ear. Ilias let his breath out and exchanged a harassed look with Giliead; another one of the Rienish talking curse boxes. “You’d think,” Giliead said deliberately, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “they could make those things a little quieter.”

Tremaine listened for a moment, her face getting that concentrated look Ilias had learned meant trouble. He could just hear the tinny voice issuing from the box, but it spoke Rienish. She put the piece down, setting it carefully on the table instead of replacing it on the talking box. “Ah, that was Niles,” she said in Syrnaic, turning to them. “He says hello.” Then she jerked her head toward the double doors.

Ilias stared at the doors, feeling the skin on the back of his neck prickle. They were heavily padded with a deep red leather. Giliead stepped to them, lifting his hand but not quite touching, then shook his head. No curses. He came back to Tremaine and asked in an almost voiceless whisper, “What’s in there?”

She had already pulled out the little map of the ship, studying it frantically. “There’s a small ballroom, a lounge and a theater, a movie theater.”

“A what?” Ilias asked quietly. Most of the sentence had been in Rienish.

“It’s a room where they show movies, moving pictures.” She waved the map, as if trying to use it to illustrate what she was saying. “It’s not a spell, it’s like the engines.”

“Great,” Ilias said under his breath. He didn’t know what the engines were either, except that the Rienish said they made the ship cleave the water without sails or oars. He hoped she didn’t mean “like the engines” as in powerful enough to move a metal ship the size of an island at incredible speeds.

“Is there another way in?” Giliead asked softly.

Tremaine traced the path on the map. “Yes, just through here, there should be another entrance through the lounge.” She looked up at them, eyes thoughtful. “Gerard and Niles are on their way here.”

“We can’t wait.” Giliead consulted Ilias, brows lifted. His mouth set in a grim line, Ilias nodded. Doing this made his insides go cold, but he knew they didn’t have a choice.

Giliead took Tremaine’s arm, drawing her with him through the open archway. She went without comment, stuffing the map back through her belt, with one enigmatic glance back at Ilias. He stepped to the leather-padded door, waited until he was sure they had had time to find the other entrance, then pushed it open.

It was a long room, filled with soft shadows. The walls were the same polished wood as the rooms outside, but broken by giant glass panels etched with a garden of colorful flowers and strange birds that glowed with wizard light. The entire space appeared empty, but that meant nothing. Ixion had curses that allowed him to hide in shadows not much bigger than a bird’s wing.

Ilias stepped inside, moving cautiously but trying not to look as if he expected to find anything, his boots making soft sounds on the fine wood floor. He was certain the lights in the glass panels shouldn’t be lit; the Rienish kept all the bigger rooms dark unless someone was inside, but Ilias pretended not to know that either. Ixion wouldn’t have had time to notice, and he would tamper with the Rienish wizard lights and anything else he could find.

There was a raised platform at each end of the room, the steps up to them bands of silver and bronze, and another wizard light overhead was a mass of prisms in colors Ilias didn’t know the names of. Padded chairs in rich blue fabric were stacked atop small tables, obscuring the view and creating more pockets of shadow. He could hear a low metallic clicking that he thought might be coming from the double doors near the platform on the right. On the left an open archway showed another room more deeply shadowed, filled with couches and chairs shapeless under big white cloths; that must be the lounge on Tremaine’s map.

Giliead would be there now, slipping softly in while Ixion’s attention was on Ilias, as it was bound to be. Ilias went toward that darker portion of the room, as if to investigate it. The cool air that came through the little grilles in the walls stirred the dust more than it should, and he knew there was something else moving in here with him. Then something brushed past him.

Ilias glanced down, saw the dust swirl up around his feet, saw it start to opaque and solidify. He tried to leap away and half fell as his feet remained rooted to the floor.

He saw sudden movement out of the corner of his eye and kept trying to wrench free, forcing himself not to look; Giliead would need every moment he could buy for him. The thickening dust crept up to his knees when he heard a gasp and a thump behind him. The dust vanished abruptly and he staggered free.

He caught himself against the side of the archway, twisting around to see Giliead wrestling with a struggling form wrapped in one of the white drapes from the furniture. Ilias lunged to help, skidding to a halt when the floor around the two figures turned molten green.

Ilias hopped back before the stuff touched his boots. It could be an apparition or a flesh-melting curse; he saw it wasn’t affecting Gil, but that didn’t tell him anything. Then he saw that the green ooze was shredding the drape. The thrashing figures separated as Ixion managed to toss Giliead off. Both came to their feet, Ixion tearing the remains of the drape away.

The man crouched at bay, still dressed in the brown Gardier garments, was like a shadow of his former self, his features still faintly blunted and distorted. But the way he held himself, the wild hate in his eyes were all Ixion.

Then the green mist dispersed, swept away in a silent wind.

Ilias glanced back and saw Gerard and Niles standing in the open doors, both wearing grim expressions. Niles had the god-sphere tucked under his arm.

Ixion stared at them for a long heartbeat, then smiled. He turned and pushed through the doors behind him.

Giliead plunged after him, Ilias reaching the doors only a few steps behind.

Directly inside was a bloodred curtain, looped back to reveal a dark room filled with chairs that all faced the back wall. Giliead had halted abruptly just inside and Ilias smacked into his back.

There were moving images flickering on that far wall, the source of the metallic clicking he had heard.
Moving pictures,
Ilias thought in awe.
She meant that literally
. Cast in shades of gray and somehow flat, they didn’t look as real as the paintings in the other rooms, but they moved, jerking and stuttering across the wall in imitation of life. People walking beside stone buildings, on horseback, riding in wagons that moved by themselves like the ones in the Rienish city.

Then Giliead took a step to the side and Ilias realized one of the gray forms on the wall wasn’t moving. Ixion stood in the front of the first row of chairs, outlined against the flicker of images.

Ilias looked at Giliead, his friend’s face hard to read in the fractured light. Giliead caught his eye and jerked his head faintly toward the figure. Ilias nodded and started down the aisle on his side as Giliead moved down the opposite wall.
He’s strong,
Giliead had warned him earlier,
stronger than he looks. And fast
.

He had just drawn even with the still figure, was just able to see the man in profile, when Ixion spoke above the click-clack noise. “The Gardier had so much contempt for their enemies, I never expected them capable of something like this.” His gesture took in the room around them, the whole ship. “A floating mountain, with so many wonders inside it.”

“I wouldn’t describe you as a wonder.” Giliead’s voice was cool and level, but he had encountered Ixion on the island. Ilias realized he was breathing hard, his heart pounding. It was the voice.
It really is him
. The last time he had heard that voice was right before Giliead had cut Ixion’s head off. He wanted to leap over the chairs and rip Ixion’s throat out. He wanted to run out of the room. He managed to do neither, waiting for a signal from Giliead as sweat ran down his back.

The image on the wall changed to a view of a storm-tossed sea from the deck of a ship and in the suddenly brighter light Ilias saw the corner of Ixion’s mouth lift in a smile. “And Ilias is here. I’ll say ‘It’s been a long time’ and you can say ‘Not long enough’ and—”

“Shut up.” The words were out before Ilias realized it.

Ixion hesitated, then said more softly, “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“I really doubt that,” Ilias grated. He heard a soft sound behind him and realized Gerard and Niles now stood in the doorway.

“Well.” Ixion turned to eye the Rienish wizards. “How did they do it?” He looked at Giliead, head tilted inquiringly. “You fought for them. You used the curse they gave you against me. You haven’t been cursed. You’re acting for them of your own will. How did they do it?”

He was trying to sound merely curious, but Ilias heard the strain in his voice. He really wanted to know. Giliead must have sensed that too because he didn’t answer.

“Is it just because they destroyed my curse on Andrien House?” Ixion must have realized he was betraying himself and looked away, smiling at the flickering images on the wall. “I’m still searching for allies. Perhaps I can offer my services to them as well.”

“I’m afraid we aren’t in the market,” Gerard said in Syrnaic, his voice cool.

Giliead spoke, “You’re nothing new to them. They have wizards like you in their land, and they destroy them like sick animals.”

Ixion watched the flicker of movement on the screen. Then he shrugged. “Surely you realize you can’t kill me. I’ll just come back.”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Ilias heard another metallic sound, weaving in and out of the clicking of the moving images. It was the noise the god-thing in the sphere made, he realized, when it thought something was dangerous.

“If that’s such a great plan, why haven’t you just killed yourself?” Tremaine’s voice was so unexpected, Ilias flinched. He hadn’t even realized she was in the room. “You’ve had all the time in the world to jump off the boat. Hell, if you do it from the stern, you’ll drown in moments. Instead, you wander around, sightseeing, playing with the switches on the projector. Even if you’ve got this other body to jump back to, which I’m still willing to believe, I don’t think you want to go there.”

Ixion turned, staring at her incredulously. “Who in the netherworld’s name are you?”

“You didn’t answer her question,” Ilias said tightly. It was, now that he thought about it, a damn good one.

Ixion looked at him, then at Giliead. He finally said, “Very well, I’m not eager to go to my new body. It will take months for me to grow into it, and by the time I do, the Gardier will have retaken the island and destroyed Cineth.” He turned to Gerard and Niles again. “I spoke to one of their men of learning at length. He taught me their language so we could converse. I know much about them and have no particular loyalty to cause me to dissemble.”

“You would trade your life for information.” Gerard sounded skeptical.

“Yes.”

They can’t,
Ilias thought.
We can’t
. But was there any other way out of this standoff?

Gerard spoke to Niles briefly in their language. Niles answered in a dry tone, and Gerard shook his head. He said to Ixion in Syrnaic, “And if caught, you would trade similar information about us to the Gardier.”

Ixion smiled. “Then don’t get me caught.”