The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (26 page)

“It must not have woken me. No one else will touch the telephone,” Tremaine answered, distracted.
He didn’t say that nothing was wrong, he just said that we were turning
.

“Oh, I see.” She couldn’t tell if he did see or if he was just being well-bred. “Can you be there soon, madam?”

“Yes, I won’t be long.” He nodded and turned for the door. The deck was already moving back toward the horizontal, and Tremaine asked, “It’s the Walls, isn’t it? We found the Walls?”

The officer hesitated, then decided it was obviously no secret. “Yes, madam.” Another hesitation, then he shook his head, adding gravely, “It’s one hell of a wall, all right.”

T
he dawn view was best from the open walkway that jutted off both ends of the bridge, designed so a crewman could look down the side of the ship and warn the captain that he was about to shear off the end of a dock. The sight that filled the vista from sea to sky was enough to drive the lingering cotton fuzz from Tremaine’s sleep-dulled brain.

The jagged ridge of mountains rose out of the sea some distance off the ship’s port side. The upper slopes were green where small tropical forests clung to the rock, spilling over sharp cliffs in curtains of vine. Beaches clung to their feet in little coves created by folds of rock. Sheltered places were formed by offshore reefs and pillars of stone that thrust up from the waves. Approaching it by boat, anywhere, would be treacherous.

Giant clefts and crevices broke through the rock at frequent intervals, waves crashing through them. Leaning on the rail, Tremaine stared in fascination as they passed a giant tear in the mountain that went all the way through to the other side, big enough for several locomotives to travel abreast in.

None of these openings was even vaguely suitable for the
Ravenna,
though one of her launches might make it through a cleft without being smashed to pieces. If the pilot was skilled and lucky.

Gyan and a couple of ship’s officers, with Ander to translate, were standing on the deck behind her having a consultation about navigation. Gyan had a long wooden pole, marked with a cross brace, which he was using to peer at one of the fading stars in the gradually lightening sky.

Tremaine went back into the wheelhouse, where the helmsman and his mate stared worriedly at various monitors and dials. From overheard conversations she gathered that something called the boiler feed pumps were causing the intense interest, and if they failed all the turbogenerators would go down like a house of cards. Not that they needed anything else to worry about at the moment.
Great, they’ve got Gyan out there with a stick trying to figure out where in hell we are, and the boilers might fail.
She went back to the chartroom where the Gardier maps were spread out on the big table with Captain Marais, Colonel Averi, Ilias, Giliead, Pasima, Count Delphane and several of the ship’s officers gathered around. Fortunately, Florian was there to translate, leaving Tremaine free to wander around and scavenge from the room’s large supply of coffee and rolls. It amused her grimly to see Pasima’s suspicion, as if the Syprian woman thought they had conjured the Walls as a trick.

Tremaine wasn’t sure of nautical miles and distances, but the
Ravenna
covered a lot of water at 30 knots, and she had been paralleling the Walls for some hours without any sign of a break. The ship had come about late last evening when it became obvious that she was going too far out of her way for no reason.

“What about taking the ship back through the etheric world-gate now, instead of waiting until we’re closer to Capidara?” Count Delphane asked, studying the map with a frown. In the bright electrics of the chartroom he looked aged and exhausted, his gray hair thinning and his face sallow and drawn. He looked almost as bad as Colonel Averi.
They know more about what’s happening at home than they’ve told us,
Tremaine thought dryly, eyeing them as she poured herself another cup of coffee. If that was what the knowledge did to you, perhaps it was better they kept it to themselves. She sure wasn’t going to ask for it.

His arms folded, Colonel Averi shook his head. “The navigator’s calculations show that in our world we’re crossing through the Maiutan archipelago. It’s a hotbed of Gardier activity, and the sorcerers say opening a large gate for the ship could draw them straight to us. We will if we have to, of course, but it would be best to find the break in the range the Syprians believe is out there.”

Delphane’s frown deepened, and he rubbed his eyes. On impulse, Tremaine handed him the cup of coffee, and he took it with a muttered thanks.

Ilias saw she was back and came over to report, “The Walls weren’t marked on the Gardier map, but it does show something to the south. They thought it was an island, and they came this way to avoid it. Gyan’s trying to figure out now if it’s in the same place as the stories say the Wall Port is.”

Tremaine frowned. “What’s a Wall Port?”

“A break in a Wall, with a trading port. None of us have ever been to one, but the stories say the breaks are big, big enough for this ship.”

“And the Gardier have something planted right in the middle of it. That makes sense.” Tremaine nodded, unsurprised. “Horrible inevitable sense.”

The ship’s telephone rang, making Pasima flinch. Ilias saw it and snorted derisively. “She should be up here when they blow the big horn,” he said, low-voiced.

Tremaine lifted a brow. “Perhaps I can arrange that.”

The lieutenant who answered the telephone was saying, “Yes, she’s here. Yes, I believe they’re all here.” He held the receiver up, motioning to Tremaine. “Madam, it’s for you.”

Tremaine handed her cup to Ilias. “It has to be Gerard.”

As she took the receiver, the ship’s operator said, “Hold for the hospital, please.”

In another moment, Gerard’s voice said, “Tremaine? Come down here at once and bring Giliead with you. The Gardier prisoners are dead.”

A
n early-morning hush hung over the ship’s hospital, where many of the patients had been moved off into the Second Class cabins on the same deck. Tremaine perched on the desk, Niles paced the office area and an exhausted Florian sat next to a distraught nurse. Giliead and Ilias were with Gerard in the Isolation Ward, looking at the secure rooms where the Gardier prisoners had been held. Dr. Divies was currently with the army surgeon in the operating theater, examining the corpses.

All but one of the Gardier had died in the night, apparently victims of a virulent poison. The only surviving prisoner was the woman, who now lay in one of the smaller wards in the hospital, with one armed guard at the door and two more inside.

“I suppose someone’s warned the kitchen staff?” Tremaine said, swinging her feet against the desk.

“This is insupportable,” Niles fumed, not really answering her question. His tie was knotted incorrectly, for him a sign of great agitation.

Florian looked up, wearily pushing her hair back. She didn’t appear as if she had gotten much sleep. “Niles did reveal charms on all the food stores as soon as he realized what had happened.”

Tremaine frowned. Despite that, she wasn’t much in the mood for breakfast. “The poison wasn’t in the food then?”

“Only the soup,” the nurse answered her, sounding sick at the thought. “It was the only part of the meal that the hospital staff didn’t eat too.” She gestured helplessly. “The first day most of the Gardier didn’t eat it and the ones who did were ill. I thought it might be the spices, so I asked the kitchens to make a batch without so much.”

“Did the kitchen staff know it was for the Gardier?” Tremaine asked.

The nurse looked up, frowning. She was young though there were already touches of gray in her dark hair. “Yes, I said it was for the prisoners. The patients’food was separate, and the guards on the Isolation Ward were in shifts, so they could go to dinner. Some of the patients still can’t keep much down and—” Realization hit and she added uncertainly, “Oh, you don’t think…”

Tremaine shrugged. The kitchen staff were probably all Rienish and Aderassi with perhaps a few other nationalities mixed in. Poison was a weapon of choice for Rienish domestic murderers; her perusals of
Medical Jurisprudence
had told her that much. “Are we sure it was actually a sorcerous poison and not just something somebody sprinkled in on impulse when they realized who the soup was for?”

“It worked so fast,” Florian protested. “Surely something you could find in a kitchen wouldn’t be so…virulent.”

Tremaine tapped her lower lip, lost in thought. “I bet I could put together something, if I had time to really look.” She turned to Niles to ask a question and saw he was giving her that look again. “What?” she demanded.

Niles shook his head in annoyance. “Dr. Divies has already explored that possibility, but a cleaning agent or anything else readily available in the kitchens would have had more specific symptoms.”

Ilias and Giliead walked in with Gerard. “Anything?” Tremaine asked hopefully.

Giliead shook his head. “No trail. But a curse on the food wouldn’t leave one.”

“In a way, this changes nothing,” Gerard said grimly. He hadn’t had a chance to shave yet, and it gave him a faintly disreputable air. “We just have to keep looking.”

B
y the end of the day, Ilias thought he and Giliead and Tremaine had been over almost every pace of the ship, with no sign of their quarry. They had even gone down into the
Ravenna
’s mysterious innards, where the curses that drove her lived.

A sailor had guided them through those dark noisy spaces, down alleyways crammed with metal and pipes in indescribable combinations, or across little bridges over vast spaces of growling labyrinthine shapes, all of it making an indescribable din. The stink was worse than the flying whale or the Rienish wagons without horses, and there were many of the Rienish trail signs that meant danger. He knew if Pasima or any of the others knew all this was down here, they would never have set foot on the ship.

One of the sailors who worked there, a big dark-skinned man whose duty, as far as Ilias could tell, was to keep all these metal guts working, had looked both him and Giliead over skeptically, then gestured to the red markings and the levers near them, speaking with serious emphasis. Tremaine translated, “He says not to touch anything, especially the releases for the watertight doors.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Giliead agreed with a wary glance around. They were in one of those crowded alleys between rows of boxy metal shapes and pipes. Even the wizard lamps made more shadows than light, and the air was foul.

Ilias gave the man a grim nod, wishing they didn’t have to come down here at all. “What’s a watertight door?” he asked carefully, having a sudden vision of doors below the water level in the hull, perilously keeping out the sea.

Tremaine translated the question, and the man stepped back to pat the thick frame of the doorway behind him. Tremaine listened, frowning, then translated, “Hatches that close off the compartments if the hull is breached. They can all be shut from the bridge in moments. He says on the first voyage a man was killed in one during a drill.” She paused, obviously thinking it over. “I don’t think I wanted to know that.”

Ilias leaned forward, eyeing the heavy slab of metal. It was at least a handspan thick. He exchanged a look with Giliead.

Gerard had told them the only curses that were supposed to be down there were protective, meant to stop rust and fire and other things that might damage the ship’s insides; Giliead had been unable to sense most of them but then they were beginning to believe that there were some Rienish curses he just couldn’t see.

After that nerve-shattering experience they had fled to the upper decks, to the topmost one. Here the covered hulls of the ships’ boats were cradled just below the railing, and there was an open space outside between the first and second of the giant chimneys. It was floored with polished wood, and Tremaine explained that it was meant for some kind of game. It was a good place to lie in the salt-laden breeze and watch the sunset and the distant outline of the Walls.

Tremaine had found a wooden contraption something like a couch and dragged it onto the open area near where Ilias and Giliead sprawled on the sun-warmed boards. Propping up one end and sitting in it, she surveyed the view, saying, “So. If this sorcerer who spoke to Bain is a Gardier, why hasn’t he done the mechanical disruption spell and sunk us yet?”

They had been discussing this off and on all day. Ilias sat up, propping himself on his hands. His headache from going so far belowdecks had finally started to fade. It was another world up here, impossibly high above the water, all sky and air and sea forever. You could easily forget the troubled waters they sailed. “Your god won’t let him use his curses, except on the other Gardier.”

Tremaine gave him a sour eye. “He is not a god. Just call him Arisilde.”

Ilias was fairly sure he didn’t want to be on such intimate terms with a foreign wizard god, no matter how much he liked Tremaine and the other Rienish. It had taken him a year or so just to get used to knowing their own god personally. He caught Giliead’s amused eye. His friend was lying on his stomach with his head propped on his folded arms, and Ilias could tell he was thinking the same thing and laughing at him. He thumped him in the ribs with his bootheel. Giliead grunted and changed the subject, saying, “We’re too far out. If he sinks the ship, he has no way to get to shore. Any shore.”

“He could take one of the lifeboats,” Tremaine put in thoughtfully. “They’re made to travel long distances if they have to. But you’re right, if he’s not a good sailor, he might not like the idea much. I sure as hell wouldn’t try it if I were him.”