The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (7 page)

T
remaine decided to take that bath, then realized once she had wrestled her boots off that she hadn’t yet retrieved her bag of belongings from the steward’s office. The lure of clean underwear was too seductive to ignore, so she padded barefoot down the quiet corridor and up the stairs to the office. There she found it under the control of several women, some Institute personnel and some from the Chaire group of refugees, all apparently having signed on as Lady Aviler’s minions. They offered to take the bag of Gerard’s belongings to his cabin and Tremaine accepted, thinking that it would be interesting to see if Lady Aviler ended up leading a faction or being the power behind one. And Tremaine was certain there would be factions.

Walking back to the suite, listening to the quiet thrum of the ship, she decided grandly not to declare allegiance with any of them; it would be far more instructive to play them all against each other. She grinned to herself, giving up the fantasy. Attempting it in practice rather than theory sounded like a good way to get thrown off the boat.

As she passed one of the narrow cross corridors that connected the larger bow-to-stern passages, movement out of the corner of her eye startled her. Midway down the cross corridor stood two men, one in a civilian suit and the other in dark blue naval fatigues. Reflexes common to anyone who walked the less reputable parts of Vienne kept Tremaine moving with only a slight jerk of her head to betray she had noticed them; the set of their shoulders and the way they stood conveyed furtive activity, and she was fairly sure she had seen some object change hands. It might be nothing, and it was none of her business. War profiteering, the opium trade and other criminal pursuits had flourished in Ile-Rien since so many Prefecture officers and the sorcerers who had once assisted in investigations had been either killed in the bombings or gone into the military. It would be the same on this ship, which was going to be near impossible for anyone to police. She kept an ear cocked in case either man was foolish enough to pursue a potential witness, but neither came after her.

Back in the bathroom she started the water, then realized she had also forgotten to get soap. It didn’t matter; the hot saltwater bath in the enameled tub felt incredibly luxurious. Her various cuts, scrapes and blisters stung a bit but it was worth it. By the time she got out and dressed again, Giliead had gone down to take his turn at watching Ixion and Ilias was back.

“How did it go?” she asked him, using one of their few precious towels to dry her hair.

“He didn’t come back to life and kill us all,” Ilias replied laconically.

Tremaine decided not to prod that sore point any further. The others were stirring and food was suddenly a priority.

In search of it, she and Ilias followed the map booklet back to the grand stair and down one deck, then through an elegant foyer to the giant First Class dining area. Dyani, who had loudly declared, “I’m not afraid. I want to see it,” trailed along after them.

The room was huge with mellow gold wood broken along the base and top of the walls by silver and bronze bands. Silvered glass panels were set above the columns that separated the main area from the private dining salons along the sides. The light from the overheads was warm and the people sitting or wandering about were far more calm than the chaotic crowd in the main hall earlier. What must have been about half the room’s original chairs and tables remained, and about a third of those were in use. The only reminder of the danger was the blackout cloth tightly tacked over the outside windows.

Lady Aviler was right and the volunteers had managed to produce food; trolleys were lined up near the baize serving doors and several women and a few older children were dispensing bread, soup, tea and coffee. Tremaine turned to Ilias to comment only to find he wasn’t there. He and Dyani were absorbed in the set of embossed wall panels at the side of the big chamber. Going to join them, she saw the theme was “A History of Shipbuilding from Classical to Modern Times” and understood the attraction. She nudged Ilias with an elbow. “You think we can get the others down here to eat?”

“If they don’t, they can go hungry.” Engrossed in the images, Ilias didn’t sound sympathetic to their plight.

“Did Dannor make any more trouble?” Tremaine started to ask, when someone shouted, “It’s you!”

She looked wildly around, thinking
oh no,
but the woman who had jumped up from one of the tables and now hurried toward her didn’t look hostile. She had dark hair tied back and wore men’s pants and an oversized Rienish army fatigue shirt. As the woman reached her she caught Tremaine’s hands and said in a Lowlands accent, “I thought it was you! You’re the Ile-Rien spy.”

“Oh, no, not really—” Tremaine managed. She did know this woman; she was a Lowlands missionary who had been taken by the Gardier on Maiuta. Tremaine and Florian had spoken to her briefly when they had been captured on the island with Ilias. She hadn’t recognized the woman at first because the brilliant smile she wore now transformed her face and made her look years younger.

“I want to thank you.” She wrung Tremaine’s hands gratefully. “I thought we would never see the sun again. And you.” She looked at Ilias. “I saw his people fight for us. Who are they?” she asked Tremaine, “I don’t recognize their language.”

“They’re Syprians. The Gardier base was in their territory,” Tremaine explained vaguely. “But I’m not really—”

The group at the woman’s table was standing up to leave and one of the other women called to her. The missionary glanced over her shoulder. “I must go back, but thank you.” She kissed Tremaine’s cheek quickly and darted away.

M
ost of the Syprians who weren’t still asleep ended up trailing reluctantly along to the dining room. Some of them eyed the food suspiciously, but when Halian, Gyan and Arites ate, they followed suit. The biggest problem seemed to be that since Syprian dining tables were only a foot or so off the floor, they found the waist-high Rienish ones awkward. Arites had found some old pages of ship’s stationery and a pencil in the suite somewhere and sat on the floor, happily taking notes. Tremaine noticed he was writing with his good arm, a trace awkwardly.

Having gotten everyone else settled and approaching the food herself, Tremaine found her stomach in mild revolt, but a mug of tea settled it and she was able to eat one of the thick slices of bread moistened with rich brown onion soup. She had been expecting military metal plates and cups, but it was served on the ship’s china, gleaming white with a band of antique gold.

Then one of the volunteers emerged out of the back somewhere to call out, “Is Tremaine Valiarde here?”

Tremaine set her bowl aside and stood hastily. “Yes?”

“There’s someone on the line for you; it sounds important.”

“On the line?” Tremaine frowned.

“The ship’s telephone,” the woman clarified as she led her back to the discreet baize doors. Just inside the first was a narrow little corridor that led to a sort of staging area of steel cabinets and wooden counters. Through another door Tremaine could hear pots banging and someone yelling in Aderassi. She started to make a jaunty remark about it being no different than any other hotel kitchen in Ile-Rien, then recalled uncomfortably that that was a way of life none of them might find their way back to again. Adera barely existed anymore and the fine hotels and Great Houses of Vienne were probably even now being turned into Gardier barracks. There was a telephone set tucked into a small cubby and the woman handed her the receiver.

Tremaine put it to her ear in time to hear, “Miss Valiarde? You’ve been asked to report to the ship’s hospital—”

The thought that they had discovered she was crazy and were planning to lock her up crossed her mind. She brushed that aside in annoyance; it was an old defensive reflex from the time right after she had been kidnapped into a mental asylum by her father’s enemies. Still, she demanded, “Why? Who wants me there?”

A little taken aback, the voice replied, “It’s on Captain Ander Destan’s request. I think it’s something to do with the Gardier prisoners.”

“Oh, Ander. I’ll be right there.”

T
he hospital was down on D deck, where according to the booklet the crew messrooms and workshops, one of the swimming pools, some of the Second Class cabins and much of the food storage areas were located. The corridor in this section was still decorated with wood paneling and carpet since passengers were meant to use it. As they approached the hospital they met Institute personnel coming and going, some leading small groups of ex-prisoners from the Gardier base. This caused a delay as many of them recognized Tremaine and Ilias as members of the group that had rescued them and they stopped to thank them in a variety of languages. Ilias seemed caught between gratification and bewildered embarrassment. Tremaine was embarrassed too, mostly because she had no idea how to respond, but she was surprised at Ilias’s reaction. He and Giliead’s daily life included risking death to defend their people from crazed wizards; didn’t anyone ever thank them for it?

Then outside the door to the hospital area she saw two men, dressed in dark suits of an old-fashioned cut and archaic ruffled black neckcloths. Tremaine rolled her eyes.
God, Bisrans. That’s all we need
. From their dress these two were members of the dominant religious sect that completely controlled the Bisran government. Bisra had come down in the world since it had near-successfully invaded Ile-Rien more than two hundred years ago; it had spent itself in pointless wars and had become a minor player in the game of nations. Easy meat for the Gardier, once they had finished with Ile-Rien.

The two Bisrans watched them approach, neither man losing the cold aloof expression worn like a uniform. “Who are they?” the younger one asked. He spoke Bisran, but that was one of the languages Tremaine’s father had insisted she learn. One of Nicholas’s many false identities had been a Bisran importer of glass and art objects.

The older man replied in the same language, “Some sort of native partisans, I heard one of the sailors speak of them. They’re barbarians, worse than the Maiutans.” He turned his head to hide a thin smile. “Perfect allies for Ile-Rien.”

“At least the women aren’t half-naked too.”

Tremaine realized she was the Syprian woman in question; she was still wearing the shirt and pants Giliead’s mother Karima had given her a few days ago. An astute observer would have noted her boots, scuffed and stained but with brass buckles and rubber heels, but then neither of these men had the perspicacity of the fabled Inspector Ronsarde.

Reaching the hospital door, she paused and said earnestly in accented Bisran, “I was naked but it’s so cold up on deck.” The older man stared and the younger flushed an unbecoming shade of red. “Pardon me, you’re in my way,” she added in Rienish, stepping past them through the door.

Ilias eyed the men suspiciously as he followed her, then asked, “What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re Bisrans,” she replied in Syrnaic, raising her voice a little, knowing the two men would hear the word “Bisran” and know she was talking about them. “They’re idiots. Now laugh like I said something really witty.”

Ilias laughed obligingly, then added, “I’m not doing this again.”

A narrow corridor with green-painted walls led back into the hospital, which was a warren of wardrooms with a dispensary, operating theater and tiny cabin-offices for the doctor and nurses. It smelled like every hospital Tremaine had ever been inside, with the odor of carbolic that was an unpleasant reminder of the asylum. They passed an open door and she saw the room was lined with beds, all occupied. A pile of stained brown coveralls, the garments the Gardier had given their slave labor, lay on the floor. Voices murmured, a woman whimpered in panic and a harassed nurse she recognized from the Institute’s infirmary passed, readying a hypodermic.

Tremaine felt her stomach clench and moved on past. Just around the corner was an office area, with desks and cabinets. Sitting perched on the edge of a table, Florian glanced up as they came in. “You’re here,” the other girl said in relief. She looked like she had had a bath as well and had changed into a clean sweater. She smiled a greeting at Ilias, then looked at Tremaine with concern. In Syrnaic she said, “Everyone says you tried to shoot somebody.”

Oh, good. My reputation precedes me.
“It was just a Gardier,” she said, adding randomly, “Why are there Bisrans aboard?”

Dropping the subject with a reluctant frown, the other girl answered, “They were picked up at Chaire. There’s a fairly big group of them. They’d escaped from Adera and had been stuck in Ile-Rien for the past month.”

Tremaine lifted her brows, skeptical. “From Adera? From Gardier territory?”

Florian nodded grimly. “Ander said just the same thing.”

“So you think they’re spies?” Ilias asked worriedly. “You people have a lot of spies.”

“I think that’s why they wouldn’t let them out of Ile-Rien.” Florian turned to him, elaborating, “When the Gardier first invaded Adera, tons of people escaped into Ile-Rien and they sent most of them on through to Parscia or wherever else they wanted to go. My mother used to work with the Refugee Assistance group, finding clothes and things for them. Then the fighting along the border got very intense and the refugees stopped coming. But last month these Bisrans just found their way across.”

“Found their way across when lots of desperate Aderassi who were native to the area couldn’t?” Tremaine snorted.

Florian nodded agreement, her mouth twisting in annoyance. “I’m not sure why they were still in Chaire. I think the government must have been watching them.”

“That’s all we needed,” Tremaine said, thinking of Rulan and Dommen and the other men the Gardier had suborned or bribed to work for them. They had had enough trouble with the spies they already had without taking on more.