The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) (8 page)

Then Colonel Averi, Dr. Divies and Niles stepped in from the other passage. Niles was saying, “Individual Gardier aren’t resistant to our magic, it’s those devices they wear. We suspect they derive their power from disembodied sorcerers imprisoned within large crystals, but if the small crystal fragments contain individual spells—or if they’re shards of the larger crystals, of—” He seemed to realize where that thought was leading and halted, his face hardening.

Dr. Divies was the physician assigned to the Viller Institute. He was about Gerard’s age though his hair had turned gray early and he had Parscian ancestry showing in his coffee-colored skin. His face deeply troubled, he said what the others were thinking, “Shards of the imprisoned sorcerers. Broken-off bits of soul.”

Niles took a deep breath. “It explains the siege of Lodun. We thought the Gardier must have teams of sorcerers working constantly to maintain pressure on the barrier, but with these crystals…it would be simple.”

“Obviously their plan was to overrun Vienne, then destroy the Lodun barrier and collect the sorcerers at their leisure.” Colonel Averi shook his head slightly, his lips thinning with disgust. He was older than most of the military personnel assigned to the Institute, with a habitually grim face and thinning dark hair. Startled, Tremaine thought he had aged at least ten years from the last time she had seen him; the skin of his face was pale and paper-thin, stretched over his skull like aging parchment. He and Tremaine had never gotten along and she hadn’t thought much of him except as an obstacle to be worked around. Now for the first time she wondered if he had been sent to head the Institute’s military detachment because he had been judged too ill for frontline service; he certainly looked it now.

“Don’t count Lodun out,” Niles said thoughtfully, hands in his pockets. “They’ve had a great deal of time to make plans, and they have access to some of the oldest and most extensive philosophical and sorcerous text collections in the world.”

Averi looked away a moment, then said shortly, “My wife is in Lodun.”

Tremaine folded her arms, looking at the floor. It made sense, but it was more than she wanted to know about Averi. Niles nodded, unperturbed. “I have a younger brother there. Not a sorcerer; he’s in the medical college.”

It was as if they were both admitting to sharing the same sort of chronic illness. Florian and Divies were watching them sympathetically, but Tremaine wanted to change the subject. “Have you seen the barrier?” she asked Niles somewhat desperately. She had only read newspaper stories about it, and seen a few grainy pictures that didn’t really show anything.

“I have,” Averi answered. “It looks rather like a wall of water.” He turned to her. She wondered if the white around his blue eyes had always had that yellow tint. His expression enigmatic, he said, “Gerard is getting some rest, but he suggested you might help us. One of the Gardier is a woman—”

“Really?” Tremaine lifted her brows. She supposed there had to be female Gardier, but she couldn’t recall seeing any on the base at all, much less in the group Ander and his men had rounded up. “One of the ones we caught? How did—”

Averi cut her off. “We want you to try to question her.”

“Me?” Tremaine stared at him, startled that he seemed to be voluntarily asking her to do something.

“You and Florian have had the most experience with the Gardier,” he continued, glancing at Niles. “We’re not having much luck with the others yet.”

“We have time,” Niles said with a calm that had a hint of an edge to it. “There are some spells that may help.”

Tremaine hesitated, biting her lip. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to have a conversation with a Gardier, like he—or she—was a person. She turned to Florian, who was giving Ilias a low-voiced translation. “What about Florian? She knows as much as I do.”

“I tried already with one of the men,” Florian broke off the translation to explain. She didn’t sound as if she had enjoyed the experience. She added in frustration, “He wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

Averi, Niles and Divies were all watching Tremaine expectantly. She pushed her hair back. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with her; she could hardly give them a reason for her reluctance when she couldn’t articulate it to herself. “This is hard,” she said under her breath.

Ilias was watching her, his face concerned. “You want me to go with you?” he asked her. “You don’t have one of those curse weapons, do you?”

Tremaine looked blankly at him and realized he thought she was afraid of losing control, of trying to kill the Gardier prisoner.
And he’s right,
she thought, surprised to realize it. She nodded. “Yes. No. No, I don’t have a pistol. Yes, I do want you to come with me.”

T
he Gardier were being held in a part of the ship called the Isolation Ward. It was in the far end of the stern and walled off from the inside corridors, requiring you to go along the covered Promenade deck, leave its shelter for the open deck area off the stern, go down a set of steps to a lower open deck, then down a stairway and into a warren of small secure rooms with whitewashed walls. It was technically part of the ship’s hospital system, a place for patients who came down with infectious diseases. In reality, it was a brig for stowaways.

To question the prisoners they were using a small treatment room that had a metal ventilation grille in one wall, allowing observers in the outer room to hear the conversation inside.

Standing in that anteroom with the guard, Averi gave Tremaine a Gardier translator disk. After what Niles had said about fragments of souls, Tremaine accepted it reluctantly. She hadn’t noticed before, but the surface of the crystal set into the metal disk felt greasy, like a decomposing bone; she told herself that was just her imagination. Averi already wore one around his neck so he could follow the conversation behind the grille. He said roughly, “There’s a guard in with her. I’m not expecting you to get their invasion plans for Parscia and Capidara out of her, just to get her talking.”

“Right.” She couldn’t tell what Averi thought; he hadn’t objected to Ilias’s accompanying her. As the colonel turned to open the door, Ilias’s mouth quirked in an encouraging smile.

The treatment room had been stripped to bare whitewashed walls. A young man in gray Rienish army fatigues stood in the corner, one hand on his holstered pistol. His eyes went to Tremaine and Ilias as they entered, acknowledging them with a slight nod.

Tremaine’s eyes went immediately to the other occupant; she had resolved not to make the mistake of showing shyness or diffidence even unintentionally. The Gardier prisoner was seated on a wooden chair, her hands bound with the manacles the Gardier had used for their slaves.

It was the one who had opened his—her—mouth, the one Tremaine had decided to shoot first. The Gardier was tall, lean and small-breasted, her face dirty from the battle, the skin on her cheeks reddened and raw. This didn’t stir any sympathy in Tremaine’s heart; the secure rooms for stowaways would have bunks with mattresses and bedding, sinks with hot running water and toilets. Compared to the conditions the Gardier had kept their prisoners and slaves in, it was practically the Hotel Galvaz. While Tremaine was still looking her over thoughtfully, the prisoner spoke first. “You were the one who wanted to kill us. I thought it was an act.”

Tremaine felt her face move in a smile. “I’m not much of an actress.” The Gardier’s voice was husky but high in pitch. Tremaine had noted that on the island but not the other details; the smoothness of her throat and the shape of her hairline, visible now that her cap had been removed.

“Then why are we not dead?” The woman sounded bored and skeptical.

“You are. You’re walking, talking dead.” The words came out before Tremaine had a chance to think, but as she watched the Gardier’s eyes narrowed, a faint trace of unease crinkling the smooth brow, and she knew it had been an apt impulse.
She spoke first because she wanted control of the conversation, she thought she could get information out of me
. She held her expression, keeping her smile from widening. You could do a lot with someone who thought that much of herself.

The silence stretched, and the Gardier finally said brusquely, “Then why are you here?”

“They made me come in to ask you questions.” Tremaine shrugged, shaking her head, still with the faint smile. “I personally couldn’t care less whether you answer or not, but I’ve already had lunch and I haven’t anything else to do right now.” She leveled her eyes at the woman. “I just want to get to the part where we throw you over the side.” Tremaine let her gaze turn abstract and thoughtful. “If you survive the fall, you’ll probably get trapped in the bow wake. It’ll carry you right into the propeller. I understand it’s very large.”

The Gardier tried to stare her down, then looked away.
Sincerity helps
, Tremaine thought. She hadn’t a shred of sympathy for the Gardier, even where she could find some compassion for the Rienish who spied for them. Greed, desperation, good intentions twisted out of shape she could have some empathy for; she could too easily see how she could have fallen into the same trap. The people who set that trap were just so much garbage to be disposed of.

Ilias nudged her with an elbow, asking softly, “Did she tell you anything?”

“We’re not at that point yet,” she told him. It was handy that the Gardier had never bothered to add Syrnaic to their translator crystals, or at least none of the ones they had found so far.

“Oh.” He leaned back against wall, folding his arms. “It looked like it was going well.”

The Gardier woman watched this exchange with a kind of wary incredulity. She said, “You behave as if they are people.”

Tremaine lifted her brows. Though Ilias’s boots and clothes had mud-stained patches from their recent adventures, he had had a bath more recently than the Gardier. He had also rebraided his queue so his hair wasn’t quite such a wild mane; he didn’t look that savage. “No, I behave as if you are people. I wish I didn’t have to, but it upsets the others. What makes the Syprians not people to something like you?”

The Gardier stared, insulted. “They are primitives. They don’t—It is obvious,” she finished stiffly.

Tremaine’s eyes narrowed. Destroyed coastal villages and ships going missing were what had drawn Ilias and Giliead to investigate the island in the first place. “If it’s obvious, why can’t you explain it coherently?”

“They can’t be used for labor. They don’t use civilized speech. They won’t stop fighting.” She sneered. “If they do, they’re afraid of the tools.”

The welders, the lights. The Syprians would think it was magic and would find it terrifying, would consider themselves soiled by the contact.
They tried them out as slave labor, and when it didn’t work they killed them
. Tremaine couldn’t say she was surprised. “And sometimes they blow up airships. How do you make the avatars?” That was the closest the Gardier’s translation spells could get to a Rienish word for the crystals and their imprisoned sorcerers.

The woman shook her head, caught off guard. “I don’t know. That is for Command and the Scientists. I am in Service.”

“Then you’re even more useless than I thought.”

Tremaine let go of the translator crystal and headed for the door. Following her lead, Ilias pushed off the wall and trailed after her.

She expected to have to argue with Averi, but as the guard shut the door behind them the colonel nodded sharply, motioning for them to go on through to the outer room. Once there she saw the usually grim cast to his face lightened by satisfaction. He said, “It’s a start. We’ll isolate her from the others, give it a few hours, then see if she’s more receptive.”

Florian had been waiting in the outer area too. There were only two small rooms for the staff, with a small desk for the lieutenant in charge and some comfortless wooden chairs for the other guardsmen on duty, two of whom were women. “Did she tell you anything?” Florian asked, curious.

“A little.” Tremaine shrugged. “A very little.” She was relieved that Averi seemed confident. It occurred to her that she also had Averi in a receptive mood and maybe even inclined to discuss things with her. She said quickly, “Where do you think the Gardier come from? The Syprians sail all over this area, they travel fairly far inland, and have contact with a lot of other people. But they had never seen the Gardier or even heard any rumor of them before.”

Averi nodded, leaning against the desk and saying thoughtfully, “Those maps your friends recovered from the base show a Gardier stronghold close to where Kathbad is in our world. I think it’s possible—”

“Colonel—” One of the women soldiers leaned into the room to interrupt them urgently. “There’s a call for you on the ship’s telephone.”

Averi went to the other room, taking the receiver from the instrument mounted on the wall. Watching his sallow face redden as he listened, Tremaine exchanged an uneasy look with Florian. The guards in the room watched him too, caught by the growing air of tension.

Averi finally said, “Yes,” and replaced the receiver, turning back to them. “Florian, can you find Ander? Tell him it’s the gunship.”

T
he wireless officer has picked up coded signals from the Gardier gunship. When they were translated it was apparent they were instructions to a landing party.” Averi glanced back at Gerard, his face sober. “A landing party in a native city.”

They were on the forward stairs climbing toward the wheelhouse, Averi in the lead, with Gerard, Tremaine and Ilias following. “Are we sure it’s Cineth?” Tremaine asked, her stomach twisting with guilt. “I thought the
Ravenna
could hear wireless traffic all the way to Capidara.” The ship had the most powerful transmitters and receivers on the ocean, or at least that was what the advertisements on the map brochure said.

“From the heading they gave, it has to be.” Averi was out of breath from taking the stairs at such a rapid pace. “They’re searching for Rienish refugees—they seem to believe you all left the island on native transport, which means they haven’t sighted the
Ravenna
yet.”

The ship hummed around them like a kicked anthill; Tremaine could hear someone shouting orders as they passed an open corridor. The ship’s telephone had found Gerard in his cabin, and Florian had hurried off to fetch Ander, Ilias asking her to bring Giliead too. Then Tremaine realized what Averi had said. “Wait, I thought we couldn’t break the Gardier codes.” It was common knowledge that wireless operators on the Aderassi front and along the coasts had always been able to listen in on Gardier traffic, but there had never been any progress in deciphering it.

“Ander recovered some Gardier codebooks from the island,” Gerard explained hurriedly, glancing back down at her. “One of the books had transcriptions of our older codes. There was a direct translation into a Gardier code, and that’s allowing our wireless officers to understand their traffic.”

“He didn’t tell me,” Tremaine muttered as she climbed after him. Ander being a good Intelligence officer again, she supposed. She hoped it was just that. He had at one point decided she might be either a Gardier spy herself or just stupid enough to be passing information along to one. Since she and Ilias had caught the spies in Port Rel, she had thought he was over that by now.

As they reached the wheelhouse level metal creaked alarmingly, and the stairs swayed under Tremaine’s feet, sending her careening into the wall. She fell back against Ilias, clinging to the handrail, suddenly aware how high up they were. “What the hell…?” she gasped. It was like being at the top of a tall and unsteady tower in a hurricane.

“The ship’s heeling over,” Ilias told her, bracing his feet on the steps to keep them both upright.

She looked over her shoulder at him, trying to keep up a pretense of calm. “Is that another word for sinking?”

“Turning,” Gerard explained, grimacing as he hauled himself up the railing. “Without slowing down.” Recovering his balance, Averi reached the top, wrenching the hatch open.

With Ilias urging her, Tremaine managed to pry her hands off the rail and drag herself up. As they reached the hatch, the deck began to sway back to a more level plane. Following Averi and Gerard, Tremaine bounced off the opposite wall of the short corridor and stumbled into the officers’ chartroom.

The room held a polished wooden chart cabinet in the corner, and there was a large table bolted to the floor, covered with maps and papers. The place was full of disheveled uniformed officers and worried civilians. Tremaine recognized the captain even though he was in his shirtsleeves and a younger man than she had expected to see; he was standing in the center of the room, hands planted on his hips, anger written in the tense way he held himself and the grim resolve on his windburned face.

He confronted an older man in a brown walking suit nearly as well tailored as the ones Niles wore. Captain Marais was saying, “And I’m telling you, we’re not going to run again. We were forced to abandon Ile-Rien—”

“Your orders were to take this ship to Capidara,” the man interrupted briskly. He was tall, sharp-featured, with carefully cut gray-white hair. “The civilians, the women and children on board—”

“I know what my orders say, I don’t need you to repeat them,” Marais snapped.

It’s happening,
Tremaine thought, not realizing she had been unconsciously expecting this until now. The reality of Ile-Rien’s fall was starting to sink in, and the chain of command was breaking down. From her family background Tremaine might have been expected to be an anarchist at heart, and she was a little shocked to discover this was simply not true; Captain Marais’s defiance worried her, even though she wanted to save Cineth more than he did. The other men in the room looked angry, determined, tense. She saw Niles standing back against the wall, arms folded, his lips thin with annoyance.

“Apparently you do need your orders repeated,” the other man shot back. “No one wants to see an undefended city attacked, and I admit an alliance of some sort with the native people is imperative. But this isn’t a warship.” He threw a glance at Ilias, who stood near the door with Tremaine. Ilias’s eyes moved from one man to the other, wary at the air of tension in the room. Tremaine knew he couldn’t understand the conversation, but she didn’t want to chance interrupting it with a translation.

“We’re at war with an enemy that doesn’t recognize the concept of noncombatants, Count Delphane,” one of the other civilians pointed out, his voice acerbic. He was an older man, balding and somewhat stout, dressed in a battered dark suit and fanning himself in the warm room with a folder of papers. “And we carry weapons, so of course we’re a warship. The conventions of international law simply do not apply.”

A solicitor,
Tremaine thought, pegging him instantly.
A solicitor on our side, more’s the better. And the opposition is Count Minister Delphane
. And she had been unnerved by Lady Aviler’s presence. Delphane gestured in exasperation. “Taking us into battle with the Gardier is as good as murdering everyone on board.”

Marais’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve lost three ships in this war, and watched countless others go down. I don’t intend to lose this one. But I’m in command here. If you don’t like it, my lord, you’re welcome to get off at the next port.”

Nobles in Ile-Rien, including the Queen, could be familiarly addressed as “my lord” whatever their title, but Marais made the honorific sound like a threat.
The problem is, Delphane has a valid point
. But Tremaine looked at Ilias standing next to her, his face tight with anxiety, and knew it couldn’t matter. Cineth was helpless against an attack like this. Delphane regarded the captain with narrowed eyes, saying, “At this time the Gardier do not even know of this ship’s existence—”

Niles cleared his throat. “But they do. Colonel Averi?”

Averi stepped forward, facing the count. “Unfortunately Gardier-controlled spies were present in the Viller Institute’s organization. We took some of them, but we couldn’t possibly have found them all.” He glanced sharply at Marais.
If he’s smart,
Tremaine thought, clinically interested,
Averi won’t di
rectly challenge Marais
. Pitting the crew, under Marais’s command, and the remnants of the army detachment under Averi, against each other, with Niles and Gerard and the other Institute members as wild cards was the worst mistake they could all make. But Averi only said thoughtfully, “And I can’t believe the
Ravenna
wasn’t spotted at Chaire.”

Delphane looked at him, his lips pressed together. “I was aware of that. But we’re in an entirely different world. Are the Gardier communications between wherever we are and Ile-Rien likely to be that swift?”

“As swift as our passage here,” Gerard put in.

“We aren’t facing a fleet, just a single gunship,” Marais said deliberately. “And we have every chance of taking that gunship by surprise.”

Delphane watched him. “As long as they can destroy our engines, Captain, size doesn’t matter.”

Captain Marais consulted Niles and Gerard with a look. “Well?” he demanded. “Is that true? Or can your new ward protect us from their offensive spell?”

Niles glanced at Gerard, lifting a brow. Gerard took a deep breath, and said, “We can’t know for certain until we test the ward. But I think it will work. I’ve seen the Damal sphere,” he stumbled a little over the name, perhaps recalling that the sphere wasn’t just named for its creator anymore, “the sphere’s effect on Gardier airships firsthand. It stripped heretofore impenetrable wards away effortlessly.”

Delphane turned to Colonel Averi, saying quietly, “So you are going to allow this?”

Ander arrived in the doorway, breathing hard, halting when he saw the grim tableau as the ship’s captain, the military commander, and the highest-ranking civilians confronted each other.

Averi let out a slow breath and met Delphane’s eyes. “Count Delphane, as the Solicitor General pointed out, we know the Gardier consider civilian transports, hospital ships and anything else that moves as a military target. This is a warship, whether we like it or not.” His gaze went to Captain Marais. “You’ve already changed course for the native port?”

“Yes. At full speed.” Marais’s words were clipped. His eyes fixed suddenly on Tremaine. “Ask him to describe the harbor.”

Startled, Tremaine managed to realize he meant Ilias and turned to him, repeating the question in Syrnaic. Throwing a narrow look at Marais, Ilias asked, “They’re going to help?”

Tremaine felt all eyes on her, but she wasn’t going to push him. “They’re still arguing about it, but we’ve changed course for Cineth.”

Ilias regarded Marais for a long moment. Tremaine saw a great deal of suspicion in that look, as well as pent-up fear and guilt.
If he and Giliead hadn’t brought us to Andrien, this might not be happening
, she thought, sick with nerves. Her part in bringing them to this point wasn’t exactly small either. Then Ilias took a sharp breath. “There are cliffs to the west, and a stone breakwater…” Tremaine translated his description hurriedly.

Averi listened, the creases across his forehead deepening. “You want to attempt an attack with our forward gun?” he asked Marais, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of his tone.

The weapon mounted on the
Ravenna
’s bow deck was an antiairship artillery piece. Tremaine tried unsuccessfully to visualize it, wondering if it could even be used to shoot at something in the water.

Marais’s face set in an even grimmer expression, though it seemed he was getting his way. “If we can lure the Gardier out into open water, we won’t need the gun.” He glanced at Delphane, saying with pronounced irony, “You may find, Count, that size—and speed—do matter a great deal.”

Delphane shook his head slowly. He seemed weary now that he had lost the argument. “I don’t want to leave a potential ally’s city to a Gardier attack any more than you do, gentlemen. But I hope your decision doesn’t kill all of us.”

G
erard and Niles hurried away to get their supplies for the sorcery, Ander and Averi to organize a small military force to land and search for any Gardier left trapped on-shore. Marais had more questions for Tremaine to translate for Ilias, then let them both go.

Out in the corridor, officers and crew sped past them, dashing in and out of doorways, yelling commands and questions at one another. Tremaine was impressed with Captain Marais; he was obviously an intelligent man, and the pressure and his nerves had wound him up like a top. She headed for the stairs just to get out of the way, but Ilias caught her arm. “But how soon can we get there?” he asked her, throwing a worried glance back into the chartroom. He looked just short of frantic. “I know we left the island heading east, but where are we now?”

The captain had said full speed, and Tremaine knew that as a passenger liner the
Ravenna
had been criticized for barreling along at twenty knots in the dark and fog, and thirty knots in and out of crowded ports. But there was no way to translate that into Syrnaic. She met his eyes and said deliberately, “This ship is very fast.”

He nodded, though he didn’t seem much reassured.

“We need to see what’s happening,” Tremaine said to herself. An officer, fresh-faced and surely younger than Florian, bolted past them. Tremaine managed to snag his sleeve. “Excuse me! Do you know where Gerard is, or Niles? The Viller Institute sorcerers?”

Startled, he halted, looking from her to Ilias. But she could see he was thinking that if they were up here in the wheelhouse, they must be Somebody. “They’re on the cable deck. You can follow me, I’m going there now.”

Following the man down the forward stairs, Tremaine found herself wondering how Count Delphane, Lady Aviler and other important personages like the Solicitor General had ended up on the
Ravenna
. Delphane in particular was a High Cabinet minister; he should have gone to Parscia with the government-in-exile and the royal family. There was only one reason she could think of to account for the presence of such high government officials.

They left the forward stairs to thread back through a Third Class area and reach a passenger stairwell, taking it to the landing that opened into the forward end of the now uninhabited main hall. The officer left the stairs, saying, “This way, it’s quicker.” He led them down a passage toward a set of padded leather doors with bronze fittings. He fumbled in his pocket for a set of keys and unlocked them, revealing a room like a big dark cavern. As the man hooked one door so it would stay open, Tremaine fumbled for the light switches on the wall.

As she pressed the first button, small indirect incandescents over a long ebony bar sprang to life, casting light down on leaping dancers in a wall mural above the empty bottle racks. The young officer said sharply, “Just the bar lights, madam. Leave the overheads off. It’s still light out, but we don’t want to take any chances.”