The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (42 page)

She snorted derisively. “Do you?”

He shrugged, surprising her. “Might be.” At her incredulous stare he smiled faintly. “I’ve read quite a bit about our wars with Bisra. Back in the early ones, a couple of hundred years ago, their Priest-Sorcerers used to make a big point to the peasant foot soldiers that if they didn’t fight to the death, God and the church and their family and everyone else would spit on them and they’d go straight to hell. But many of those who were captured alive or surrendered were cooperative. They talked about their commanders and what they knew of the troop movements, they helped dig trenches and build barricades. The thing was, they believed their Priests, and since they weren’t dead, they figured they weren’t Bisran anymore and they should join Ile-Rien, Church, Old Faith, and all.”

Tremaine turned that over thoughtfully. “Those were Bisran peasants.” Only an artificial border drawn arbitrarily on the map had kept them from being Rienish peasants anyway.

He shook his head a little. “People are people. They need something to belong to.”

Tremaine suddenly didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She didn’t want the Gardier to be people; it was easier to kill them when they were just faceless enemies. She straightened her legs, stretching. “What were you before the war?”

Dubos poked at the fire. “I was an inspector in the Prefecture.”

“Oh.” Startled, Tremaine let the silence draw out. He looked old enough to have been a young constable when her father’s alter ego Donatien had been operating in Vienne. “I’m going to go check on the others.”

V
ines clung to her and little bugs whined in her ears as Tremaine made her way through the dark toward the outer edge of the island. Mud squished unpleasantly underfoot. “Hey, I need to talk to you two,” she whispered softly, knowing they were out here somewhere.

“Here,” Ilias whispered back. “To your right.”

She fumbled toward his voice, tripping on a tree root. There was more light here at the edge of the trees, but not much. She could only see vague lumps in the dark. “Is that both of you?”

Something large shifted near the base of a tree. She assumed it was Giliead. Ilias said, “Yes. What’s the matter?”

She sat down cautiously, finding a mostly dry seat on a matted clump of grass. She hesitated, but it was suddenly harder to wait and wonder than to just get it out in the open. She said, “Giliead…Do you know how the sphere works?”

“No.” Giliead sounded puzzled at the question.

“Arisilde is inside it, and a sorcerer—or any person with enough magic—talks to him, and asks him to do the spell to open the gate and take us through.” She hesitated, then added, “It works like a Gardier crystal.”

Giliead was quiet for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?”

He knows,
Tremaine thought. She could hear it in his voice. She could feel Ilias staring at her, could sense his confusion. Her voice came out harder than she intended. “I think you know why. We need someone to make the crystal take us back to your world.”

“I’m a Chosen Vessel.” Giliead’s voice sounded stony. “I talk to gods, not—” He cut it off abruptly.

She heard Ilias swear under his breath.
Now he knows too,
Tremaine thought. She couldn’t stop now, not for anything, even if she was making a horrible mess of it. She persisted, “You used a spell Gerard gave you to get away from Ixion.”

“I wasn’t the one who made it work,” Giliead said deliberately. “All I did was hand it to Ixion.”

“You won’t be doing a spell this time either. You can’t do a spell you don’t know, even if you have magic. You’d just be asking the crystal to do it for us, the way I asked Arisilde to do it for me that time.”

Giliead snorted derisively. “That’s a god.”

“That’s my uncle.” Tremaine took a sharp breath. “He’s as much of a god as the person who’s trapped inside that crystal.”

Giliead got up abruptly and walked away a few paces. Tremaine froze at his sudden movement, startled, then made herself relax, shifting a little to ease the ache in her back. Ilias didn’t move and she was afraid to look at him, even though she couldn’t see his face in the dark.

Giliead came back and she could feel him looming over her. Then he said quietly, “It’s different.”

She hadn’t expected that. “How is it different?” she demanded.

He sat on his heels in front of her. She still couldn’t see his face, just smell his musky sweat and feel his body heat. “Because I’m Syprian.” He suddenly sounded desperate. “What if that’s the difference? What if that’s why your wizards can heal you and defend you and protect you, and ours go mad and kill for the sake of killing?”

Tremaine turned that over, aghast. “I don’t think that’s it. Gerard didn’t either. Think so, I mean. He thinks it’s the way they’re taught. He thinks you do have good wizards, they just don’t know they’re wizards, or they stay in hiding.”

Giliead took a deep breath. “Ilias—”

“Don’t ask me,” Ilias said roughly. “Don’t ask me this.”

Giliead hesitated. “Why not?”

“Because if I say you should do it and I’m wrong—” He couldn’t finish.

Tremaine took a deep breath, pushing her hair back wearily.
This is going just as well as I thought it would
. “Just think about it. There’s nothing we can do now, anyway. In your world we’re in the middle of the ocean, miles away from the Walls. We need a boat before we can do anything. So just…think about it.” She got up, feeling her way through the tangle of trees back to the fire.

I
lias waited for Giliead to speak but his friend just sat there in a silence broken only by the hum of insects. He knew he was being a coward, but he didn’t want anything like this to be his decision. Ilias had thought for a while that Syprian wizards might be corrupting the same curses that the Rienish used for good; that the Rienish way was how it was meant to be and the Syprian wizards turned it into a foul distortion. But Giliead had followed that thought further, and Ilias was afraid he might be right. Finally, Giliead stirred, saying, “Go tell Cimarus it’s his watch.”

Ilias didn’t move. After a moment, Giliead caught him by the back of the neck and dragged him into a brief one-armed hug, pulling him off-balance. Then Giliead stood up, dumping him onto the damp ground.

Ilias didn’t argue, getting to his feet and weaving a path through the trees.

The Rienish Dubos still sat by the fire, keeping his own watch. On the edge of the camp, away from the others, Tremaine had found a relatively dry spot in the leaves and lay with her head pillowed on her arm. Ilias kicked Cimarus in the ribs, stepped back as he woke in a startled flurry, and jerked his head toward the trees. Cimarus took the hint, getting to his feet with a glare at Ilias but going to join Giliead anyway.

Ilias picked his way quietly toward Tremaine and lay down next to her, snuggling up behind her and burying his face in her hair. He felt tension go out of her body suddenly and knew she hadn’t been asleep.

F
lorian and Kias searched for Arites among the dead and wounded until morning before admitting that he wasn’t there to be found. The few Raiders who had escaped the Gardier’s defenses had taken no prisoners. The sphere, which had been helpful in tracking down several Gardier wounded who had crawled off into the rocks, couldn’t or wouldn’t find Arites. Finally, they had to face the fact that somehow Arites must have ended up aboard the airship with the others.

Florian kept hoping against hope that the airship would reappear, but when dawn broke over the peaks of the Walls she felt hope begin to die. She picked her way back through the ruined compound and found Gerard, Ander and Kias with several Rienish soldiers gathered around a man sitting on the ground. As she reached them she saw it was one of the Raiders. His hands were tied, his shaved skull streaked with blood and dirt. The soldiers were watching him warily. He glared at Kias, defiant and angry, and spit words in a language she didn’t understand.

Kias let his breath out and rubbed his forehead wearily. He told Gerard and Ander, “They were hired as mercenaries by a group of the traders in the port to clean this place out. Shitheads,” he added, aiming a halfhearted kick at the prisoner, who snarled at him.

Gerard’s face was bleak. “Then it was a coincidence.”

Ander swore under his breath and looked away. “Bad luck.”

Bad luck,
Florian thought.
There has to be a better word for it than that.
“Gerard, do you want me to help question prisoners?” They had a new group of Gardier prisoners now. More officers, and more of the little belt devices with the crystal shards. But the large crystal, the one that had powered the spell circle, was a shattered mass of half-melted fragments, destroyed in the battle with the sphere.

It took Gerard a moment to come back from his own thoughts and focus on her. He shook his head. “Why don’t you go back to the ship? It’s been a long night.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then realized it really didn’t matter. She had been no help here to anyone, and there was no point in staying. “All right.”

T
he
Ravenna
had steamed cautiously into the mouth of the harbor, and now apparently half the port was in hiding and the other half was down there staring at her. The Syprian eye shapes hastily painted onto the bow seemed to be reassuring to some of them, perhaps as a sign that this set of strange newcomers were actually open to alliances. Florian knew Averi and Count Delphane wanted to make an agreement with the Wall Port people similar to the one with the Syprians. Before she left, Kias had been hauled off to meet with a group of merchants from the port who had rather bravely come up to the outpost to find out what had happened.

On the launch, halfway back to the ship, Florian realized no one had told Gyan about Ilias, Giliead and Arites, or Pasima and the others about Cletia and Cimarus.

They met her on the boat deck with Sanior and Danias, anxious for news. No one who could translate Syrnaic had returned to the ship yet, but they must have realized something had gone badly wrong from the way everyone was behaving. When she told them what had happened, Pasima turned away with a drawn face, put her arm around Sanior and walked away, Danias trailing after. Gyan had just stared off at the port, nodding. Then he hugged her tightly and followed the others.

After that, Florian didn’t want to go back to her cabin. Her two roommates, both of whom had lost loved ones in the war, had implied before this that she was undeservedly lucky. She didn’t feel like facing their condemnation or belated sympathy at the loss of her friends.

She ended up staying on the boat deck, walking along the rail around and around, the sun warming her back and the wind pulling at her hair as if nothing was wrong. When someone hailed her she stopped, blinking, not sure how long she had been pacing.

It was a very young man in army uniform who trotted up to her, saying urgently, “Miss, the sorcerer prisoner has been asking for one of the natives, Giliead. At least I think he’s been asking for him. We can’t understand what he’s saying. I can’t find Colonel Averi or Captain Destan or the sorcerers, and this is the first time he’s spoken to us, and I thought it might be important.”

Florian nodded. “They’re still at the port.” She tried to make herself think straight.
It could be a trick, but—I don’t know, at least I can find out what he wants
. “I’ll come.”

T
hey hadn’t traveled long the next day when they reached the road. Tremaine had tramped along through the forest in silence, lost in thought, and the others were too worried to talk or too occupied with keeping up and not losing their footing on the muddy ground. She hadn’t tried to reopen the crystal discussion with Ilias and Giliead, and they hadn’t raised the subject.

He’ll do it. I know he’ll do it,
she thought. For one thing, Giliead had been brought up to self-sacrifice. What was making her stomach churn was the possibility that he might be right. But if Gerard’s theory was correct, Giliead and every other Vessel before him had been using magic all along, whether they knew it or not. None of them had gone mad yet. As far as she knew.

When she wasn’t worrying about that, Tremaine was evolving a plan that was probably completely insane, but she couldn’t think of anything else. “Do I look like one of your people?” she asked Calit.

The boy, trudging along beside her, gave her a startled sideways glance. “What else would you be?”

She shrugged. Since it was his answer to most questions, she could hardly complain. But as unintentionally unhelpful as the boy was, he was giving her a picture of the Gardier, or the Aelin as they called themselves. A small civilian population was totally given over to supporting the war effort. Only the families of the higher-ranking Command or Scientists traveled or had luxuries; those in the Service class spent all their time working and knew little or nothing about what went on in the other Matons. “You said Ilias and Giliead didn’t look like Labor. What made you say that?”

The boy’s brow furrowed as if he had never been required to think analytically before. The Gardier didn’t waste education on people destined for Service or Labor, which fit in with what their prisoners had told them. “They have too much hair. And him, Ilias and that woman, their hair is a funny color. They just look funny.”

Tremaine nodded. The Gardier prisoners and the ones attached to the island base all seemed to have black or brown hair and to be pale-skinned. The paleness undoubtedly came from spending so much time underground on the island, but the hair color seemed to be a general trait. She, Dubos, Molin and Basimi could pass for Gardier well enough, especially with the uniforms they had taken from the airship; there was no way the Syprians could, no matter what they wore.

Shortly after that Ilias had dropped back to report finding the road.

Cautiously emerging from the cover of the trees, they saw a road about twenty feet wide, made of gravel packed into dirt, cutting a path through the thick marshy woods on either side. “This is the way to the Maton,” Calit said defiantly, as if used to being argued with. “I told you it was here.”

“And we believed you,” Tremaine couldn’t help adding, though she tried to keep her voice noncommittal. She had the idea Besta had not encouraged the boy to offer his opinion much. She also refrained from pointing out that Calit’s sense of direction was if anything worse than his sense of fashion. The Syprians had actually found the road by scouting ahead and somehow managing to interpret Tremaine’s translation of Calit’s vague descriptions of the terrain.

“Something’s coming.” Staring uneasily down the road, Ilias motioned everyone to get back into concealment. “It sounds like one of your wagons.”

“My wagons?” Tremaine repeated blankly, heading hurriedly for the bushes. They could all hear it now, a low rumbling coming from around the bend in the road. Ducking under the low branches, she suddenly got it. “You mean an automobile?”

“One of those,” Ilias agreed, tugging her into cover.

Everyone crept back through the woods, burying themselves in the tangle of heavy green brush a short distance from the road. Crouching, Tremaine heard Basimi mutter, “It’s a truck. I think.”

She looked cautiously. Rattling slowly down the gravel road was something that looked like a truck as designed by someone who had only heard one badly described. It was mostly a big wooden crate on a metal chassis with a large engine in front of it, and it had six metal-rimmed wheels instead of four. Judging by its current speed, these defects caused it to move slowly at best. There was also no windscreen, and the steering column sported a wheel the size of a millstone that the driver peered over the top of.

Watching it trundle slowly past, Ilias said, low-voiced, “I just realized what seemed strange about that town.”

Giliead nodded. “No stables, no cowsheds.”

Ilias stared at him in exasperation. “If you knew, why didn’t you say it?”

Giliead looked at him as if he was insane. “You didn’t tell me you wanted to know.”

“Never mind,” Tremaine interposed. Both men had been on edge all morning, and she was grimly certain of being responsible for it. “I know what you mean. The streets weren’t big enough for wagons or motorcars.” Maybe they didn’t have draft animals, like the Maiutan islands back home. “I think they relied on boats and hot-air balloons and airships, until…something happened. They had to change the way they lived, or something made them change it.”

“That attack you said the boy talked about?” Ilias prompted.

“Maybe.” She eased to her feet as the truck rattled past, leaving foul diesel exhaust in its wake. “Whatever attacked them, it wasn’t us.”

T
hey followed the road, staying in the cover of the forest, until they saw more trucks; Tremaine began to feel that Calit was right, that they were close to the city. Ilias and Giliead led them deeper into the woods then, at an angle to the road, though how they knew they were heading toward the sea again Tremaine had no idea.

But after a short difficult walk through the thick brush and the heavy cover of the trees, Ilias reappeared, telling Tremaine, “You’ve got to see this.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said to herself, tripping on vines and roots as she trudged up a low hill in his wake.

The brush thinned out and suddenly through the trees she had a clear view of the gray cloud-streaked sky, and below it the immense expanse of an airship landing field.

It was a vast empty plateau of flat ground, with two black airships tethered in open areas between four giant arched barnlike structures that stood some distance apart. The buildings were larger than the airships, and the human figures moving in and out of them looked tiny by comparison. Made of ribbed metal and wood, each must easily be half the size of the
Ravenna
. Tremaine was baffled for a moment, fumbling for the field glasses in her bag.

Standing by a tree, Giliead asked softly, “What are those?”

Tremaine finally saw the familiar shape of an airship’s bow poking out of one giant doorway, and it suddenly made sense. “They’re hangars. Sheds for the airships.”

Giliead nodded slightly and beside her Ilias relaxed. She realized he had been worried about giants. Considering their brief experience in the world Florian had accidentally taken them to when using the sphere for the first time, she wasn’t surprised.
Small mercies. We’re drowning in Gardier, but no giants,
she thought bitterly.

Dead leaves crunched behind her as the others caught up, Basimi whistling softly as he caught sight of the airfield. Cimarus murmured in awe and she heard the others making various startled comments.

Tremaine ignored them all, studying the distant line of buildings on the far side of the landing area through the field glasses. The terrain sloped down and in contrast to the hangars, the structures there seemed to be all shoddy temporary buildings crowded together. Past that she could see larger structures rising above them. They looked as though they might be stone towers, perhaps three or four stories tall at most. According to Calit, that was the old city that the Maton had grown around. The harbor would be at its feet.

“What about an airship?” Dubos said suddenly.

Tremaine lowered the glasses, staring at him. “What about one?”

His pack over his shoulder, the sheen of sweat and dirt on his forehead, he was studying the landing field intently. “Instead of a boat. Our mission was to get one, after all. Might be nice if we came back with one.”

She considered it dubiously, peering at the nearest shed through the field glasses. “I don’t know. I was thinking of stealing somebody’s fishing boat, not making off with a military craft.”

“They don’t have any artillery emplacements around the field,” Basimi pointed out. “Doesn’t make much sense with what the boy said about an invasion that they fought off.”

“No, but that invasion sounds like a political invention.” Molin frowned. “It means if we could take off, they’d have to launch another ship to go after us.”

Basimi snorted. “There’s nothing to stop them from doing that.”

Dubos shook his head. “I’m saying it’s a thought, I’m not saying I think we should do it.”

Ilias was nudging Tremaine in the arm. “They think we should steal a flying whale?” he asked, obviously intrigued. Giliead stepped closer, interested.

“It’s not a good idea,” Tremaine told Ilias firmly. He would know just enough Rienish to pick up on that. And she sensed that he and Giliead would welcome the distraction from the problem of the crystal.

“Why not?” he demanded.