The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (47 page)

“I can drive the truck,” he said, a world of stubbornness in those few words.

“Will you just run away?” Tremaine snapped.

“And go where?” he demanded, gesturing to the night and the empty plain rolling away. “Everybody I know gets killed,” he added, his voice trembling.

Tremaine looked away, took a deep breath. “That makes two of us.” She fumbled for the latch and the door creaked as it swung open. “Don’t come after me.”

Running across the uneven ground toward the wire fence, she wondered how she was going to get over it. But as she drew closer she saw the gate under the electric pole was open and Gardier were running out. She halted, watching them head toward a lighted building some distance away. Some of them were carrying or helping wounded along.
The hell…

Tucking her gun behind her back, she started forward more slowly. There were only three Gardier left near the hangar, though it was hard to tell in the shadows left by the stark pool of electric light. One man in an officer’s uniform was arguing with two others, pointing back toward the hangar. Tremaine realized she could smell smoke on the damp cool air.

She flinched as a shot went off, but it wasn’t aimed at her. One of the Gardier at the gate was on the ground and the other two were fighting, struggling over a pistol.
That’s got to be one of us,
she thought, incredulous. Unable to see whom to shoot at this distance, she ran toward them.

I
’m too old for this,
Adram thought grimly, losing his grip on the pistol as the Gardier pulled a forearm more tightly across his throat. And anyway he had always hired people to do the physical part.

The Gardier froze suddenly but Adram felt the pistol jammed into his temple. His breath caught in his throat but the man didn’t fire. In another moment Adram saw why.

There was a woman in Gardier clothing pointing a gun at them. The light from the guardpost fell across her face, but he didn’t recognize her until she said, “Stop right—oh holy shit.”

I was right.
Pushing the last vestiges of his Adram persona aside, Nicholas said in Rienish, “For God’s sake, Tremaine, take the shot.”

Hearing a language he couldn’t understand, the guard tightened his grip, saying, “Drop your weapon or I’ll—”

The report was so loud Nicholas thought the guard had fired into his head. He staggered as the man’s grip fell away, his hand going to his cheek. He felt the warm wetness of blood, but it wasn’t his. He looked for the Gardier and saw him sprawled on the ground, one neat bullet hole in his forehead. He straightened up, reaching for a handkerchief until he remembered the damn uniform jacket had no pockets. Wiping the blood away with his hand, he said under his breath, “I knew emphasizing firearms training over deportment lessons would benefit in the long run.”

His daughter moved toward him, lowering the pistol, staring. “It’s you.”

He eyed her. God, she had changed. “Tremaine, what have you done to your hair?”

M
y what?” Tremaine repeated blankly. She heard Ilias call her name and spun around.

Through a haze of smoke, the Syprians burst out of the open hangar doors. Sword drawn, Ilias skidded to a halt, looking from Tremaine to Nicholas. In the wash of electric light she could see he had a bloody nose and a new collection of bruises. Giliead, Cimarus and Cletia were right behind him, none of them in much better shape. Giliead, amazingly enough, still had the crystal’s case. Everybody eyed Nicholas with varying degrees of suspicion. “He helped us get free,” Ilias told Tremaine, watching him warily. “He sounds Rienish.”

Nicholas moved casually to join Tremaine, brushing the dirt off his Gardier uniform. “I assume they’re with you,” he said with aplomb, nodding toward the Syprians. Tremaine just stared at him incredulously.
He’s acting as if we ran into each other during the interval at the Opera.
At least she knew it wasn’t an imposter using a sorcerous illusion; no Gardier could pull off an impersonation like this.

Ilias looked at her worriedly and Giliead eyed Nicholas with distrust. “Who is he?” Cletia demanded, obviously speaking for everyone.

Ah, a question I used to ask myself frequently,
Tremaine thought irreverently, still dazed from his appearance. “I—He’s—” A distant shout interrupted her confused attempt at a reply. She saw truck lights and the bobbing glows of hand torches coming toward them across the dark field. “Later. This way!”

She led them toward the truck at a run, Nicholas pausing to recover the dead guard’s gun and shoot out the light above the gate. In the dark the truck was impossible to see but fortunately Tremaine was too overwhelmed to second-guess herself and blundered right back into it. She clambered into the cab, shoving Calit over, and Nicholas climbed in the other side. The others ran around to the covered bed.

This truck had a large panel opening between the makeshift cab and the back, and Tremaine looked through to see the dim shapes of Ilias and the others scrambling in. As she fumbled for the starter, Calit was dragged into the opening and Ilias climbed through it into the cab to replace him. Giliead leaned through, right over Tremaine’s shoulder. The engine rumbled to life and gears ground as she got the vehicle turned and pointed away from the hangar; she wasn’t worried about direction, just speed and concealment. Her eyes were used to the dark again and she could make out vague shapes now.

“Just how were you planning on getting out of here?” Nicholas asked calmly, still in that “casual encounter at the café” tone, as if he hadn’t been given up for dead for years.

Tremaine gritted her teeth. “We were going to steal a boat.” That moment under the gate’s bright spotlight had shown her that he had shaved his mustache and beard and that his dark hair was shorter than she remembered, with more gray. He had always been adept at changing his appearance; she was a little startled at how instantly she had recognized him.

“You thought you could just stroll into the city and steal a ship from a military dock?” He sounded faintly incredulous.

“I stole a truck,” she snapped defensively. As someone who had apparently been masquerading as a Gardier, he was no one to point fingers.

“Trucks,” Nicholas said with scorn, “are easy. I have a better idea.” He leaned to point across the field into the dark, toward the city. “Head that way. You should come to a road.”

“We have to pick up the others first.” Tremaine was gritting her teeth so hard her jaw was beginning to ache. Basimi, Dubos and Molin would be waiting for them at the meeting point. She hoped.

Facing Nicholas, one arm braced on the wooden dash, Ilias asked quietly in Syrnaic, “Tremaine, who is he? A Rienish spy?”

Tremaine took a sharp breath. “No. Yes. He’s my father.”

Ilias said nothing for a moment, but she could practically hear startled consternation. Giliead, braced against the bumpy ride in the opening, shifted uncertainly. Ilias shook his head slightly. “You said he was dead.”

“I thought he was.”
God, the Queen was right. He faked his death. Again!
Tremaine felt herself proceeding rapidly from shocked senseless to seething.

“Her father’s a Gardier?” Cimarus demanded from somewhere in back, baffled.

“Cimarus, shut up,” Giliead said tightly.

“That explains how he recognized your ring,” Ilias continued, ignoring the interruption.

The ring she had given Ilias, the one he wore around his neck. “I’m surprised he recognized me,” Tremaine snarled, realizing the Syrnaic conversation allowed her parenthetical comments.

Nicholas listened to the unintelligible conversation with his usual annoying self-possession. “I assume the big man there is your sorcerer. The Command officer who captured them was able to locate him through the avatar crystal. Was he attempting to learn how to open a world-gate with it?”

“No, he’s not a sorcerer.” Tremaine forced herself to explain. “Syprians don’t like magic. He’s a Chosen Vessel. He can see etheric traces.”

There was a moment of tense silence. “You didn’t bring a sorcerer?”

“Well, therein lies the problem,” she snapped. “We didn’t know we were coming. We took that crystal off the airship that crashed after we set it on fire. Giliead might be able to make it take us back.” Had the plan always sounded that mad, or was it just the circumstance?

“If he can’t,” Nicholas said dryly, “things are going to be a touch awkward.”

His voice urgent, Giliead asked, “Tremaine, how did he come here?”

Tremaine obligingly translated, “Everyone wants to know what the hell you’re doing here.”

“I was picked up by the Gardier off the island base, the one they were using in the staging world to attack Chaire.” Nicholas glanced at her. “I’m assuming you’re with the Rienish group that attacked it, then the outpost at the barrier mountain port?”

“That would be us,” Tremaine replied tightly.

“And the Syprians are the mainland natives who objected so strenuously to the Gardier presence on the island. I see. Well, I adopted a persona called Damien Adram, and managed to convince the Gardier that I was a civilian Defense Department bureaucrat fleeing Ile-Rien due to illicit activities, and that I wished to join them.” He hesitated. “Arisilde didn’t tell you this?”

Tremaine couldn’t answer for a moment. Nicholas pressed, “I sent him back almost six years ago. He didn’t arrive?”

“Something happened,” Tremaine managed. “He didn’t—We didn’t find out what happened to him until a few days ago. It’s a long story.”

“I see.” After a moment Nicholas continued imperturbably, “The Gardier were anxious to know how I had managed the etheric world-gate spell; fortunately, I was able to convince them I had stolen the spell and an avatar from one of their spies in Adera, and that I had killed the sorcerer who had made it work for me, to keep from having to pay him. Part of that was true. I did steal the spell, but Arisilde accidentally destroyed the avatar when he was trying to ascertain what it was; his sphere, however, worked just as well if not better.

“I was lucky enough to fall in with the Scientist class, who are slower to jump to conclusions than Command and also have a certain liberty denied to most of the military. But it still took me most of this time to prove Adram’s sincerity, though unfortunately he didn’t know much that could help them. But I was able to get myself assigned to a chief Scientist named Benin. When he learned that a Rienish party had managed to gate to the staging world and how, he became determined to obtain one of the spheres. Yesterday he was able to get me assigned to the group searching for the Rienish infiltrators. I intended to find some way to avoid capturing them or effecting a release if Command got to them before I did. Then I saw the ring.”

He shifted on the bench to look toward her, saying calmly, “He could have taken it off your body, I suppose. Except that at the time I left, you didn’t wear it. Which seemed to imply you had given it to him. The ring isn’t valuable enough—or gaudy enough—for a bribe, so it must have been a gift.”

Ilias and Giliead had been tensely quiet throughout the explanation; Tremaine didn’t think they knew enough Rienish to catch more than half of it. She translated a brief synopsis.

Ilias turned to look at her sideways, though she couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “He pretended to be someone else?” he said softly. “All that time?”

Giliead shook his head, drawing in a sharp breath. Tremaine said wearily, “He’s not crazy. He did this kind of thing when I was a child too.”

“Oh.” Giliead didn’t sound reassured.

“So he’s not crazy,” Ilias repeated dubiously.

But can we trust him?
was what he didn’t add.
If we can’t,
Tremaine thought,
God help us
.

“Now tell me about Arisilde,” Nicholas said grimly.

T
he fire spread through the hangar, creeping from work bay to work bay, but the big beams that supported the wooden walls were slow to catch. The airship itself was unhurt; it had an avatar aboard and its power fueled the wards that protected the flammable gas cells against outside attack. But the Service personnel summoned to the hangar were working hard to remove the valuable craft; if the building collapsed on it, the wards wouldn’t hold. The two trucks inside the hangar were now ablaze and others had to be brought to winch the giant hangar doors open; in the meantime the men were moving the doors by brute force. The few Command officers present were organizing a search for the escaped prisoners, but the confused reports of the survivors and the lack of any wireless closer than the next hangar hampered their efforts.

Inside, in the burning wreckage of the wireless room, the empty shell of Command Officer Disar shoved itself upright off the concrete floor and began to crawl.

The wounds in its body from flame and flying wood and metal were terrible and its clothes were blackened rags, but it forced itself forward, ruined hands clawing at the floor. It was making toward a body just outside the circle of debris, a young Command officer unconscious but with life still lingering.

Reaching him, it touched the crystal in its temple, pressing until a shard of the embedded rock snapped away. Fumbling to hold its burned fingers steady, it lifted the shard toward the insensate man’s head.

T
remaine stopped the truck on the road, near the dark line of woods where Basimi and the others should be waiting. Giliead sent Cimarus out to find them and guide them in. It was still quiet near the forest’s edge but truck lights were zigzagging between the distant hangars and on the road to the city.

Tremaine had explained about Arisilde as best she could. In fact, she had explained about three times, realized she was babbling, and stopped. Nicholas hadn’t commented, except to say thoughtfully, “I was afraid something had happened, when he didn’t return, and there was no attempt to contact me. I knew he hadn’t been captured.”

Then that’s theory one or theory two, I forget which, of how Arisilde got into the sphere down the drain,
Tremaine thought, feeling awkward. She fumbled for something to say, knowing that Arisilde had been Nicholas’s oldest friend. Then Nicholas turned impatiently, saying, “There is a need to hurry. We only have a limited amount of time before another Command Liaison will be able to focus on that avatar.”

But let’s not be sentimental about it,
Tremaine thought grimly, her fingers beginning to tap deliberately on the steering wheel.

From the back, she heard Cletia say softly, “He’s really her father?”

Ilias shifted impatiently next to her. Giliead said, “Yes,” with the air of giving the final word on the subject.

“Is he a wizard?” Cletia persisted.

Giliead let out his breath. “No.” Ilias glanced up at him, and Tremaine realized Giliead would not exactly be sorry to stumble on another Rienish wizard they could trust. It would mean he wouldn’t have to try speaking to the crystal again.

Nicholas said, “The Gardier have someone, or something, aboard your ship. The chief Scientist called it a ‘presence’ but I wasn’t able to ascertain exactly what it might be.”

“I think we found it already. It killed some Gardier prisoners. Ilias and Giliead kept it from getting the last one, and Gerard and Niles did some kind of banishing on it.” She thought she could now guess what the “presence” had been so keen to stop them from finding out from their prisoners—that the Gardier home world lay elsewhere.

Tremaine saw dim shapes moving out of the trees. She could tell that the one with the long hair and the sword was Cimarus, and she assumed the three dim figures following were Basimi, Molin and Dubos. They seemed to be carrying extra packs and she hoped they had been successful in finding some supplies; they had lost almost everything else they had when the Gardier had captured the Syprians.

One of the shapes came to the truck window and Basimi’s voice said, “We were able to lift some rations and a few canteens, and I found a place we could get some tools if—” His voice sharpened in alarm. “Who’s that?”

“He’s a Rienish agent,” Tremaine said impatiently. “Just get in the damn truck before they find us.”

Dubos stepped up to the window. “There can’t be a Rienish agent here, how—”

Nicholas leaned forward, saying sharply, “Your voice is familiar. Were you ever in Vienne Magistrates’ Court?”

“What the—” Dubos hesitated, obviously struck by that perfect Vienne-accented Rienish. He flicked a hand torch on, to a chorus of startled hisses from the Syprians. Ilias winced away from the light. “Nicholas Valiarde?” Dubos sounded incredulous.

“Ah.” Nicholas sat back, smiling slightly. “Sergeant Dubos, is it?”

Tremaine leaned her head on the steering wheel, muttering, “I can’t fucking believe this.”
After how I had to act to get Dubos to listen to me, and now Nicholas shows up, and everyone practically wets themselves in fear and awe.