The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien)

  Nicholas didn’t lead him toward the building’s outer court, but down the polished stone stairs and through an unobtrusive door in the wall at the bottom. It led through a series of dingy corridors and into a low-ceilinged noisy room filled with wooden cabinets and steam and cooking smells. People in white clothing stared at them as they passed but no one tried to stop them; Nicholas pushed through a heavy wooden door at the far end and they were suddenly out in gray daylight, in a small dirty stone-paved court. It was sunk below the street, walled by an iron-barred fence, with a stairway leading up to an alley between high brown brick walls. Following Nicholas up steps that were still damp from a recent rain, Ilias was aware this was probably not the way most people left the building. As Nicholas paused to close the barred gate behind them, Ilias asked, “Are we prisoners here?”

  Nicholas hesitated, then let the gate latch drop. “Not as such.” He took a pair of small round glass eye-lenses out of a pocket, like the ones Gerard wore. But when he put these on, Ilias saw the glass was tinted dark rather than clear. He turned down the alley, walking toward the noise of the street. “I’d rather not give anyone the opportunity to restrict my movements.”

  Ilias could understand that. They reached the walk bordering the street in front of the heavy stone façade of the Port Authority. It was fairly broad but awash in mud, with a narrow stone verge for people to walk on. The passersby hurried along, dodging water and mud spray from the wheels of the horseless wagons. Most were dressed in the same kind of clothes the Rienish wore, dark blues or browns and grays with only a touch of color in a neckcloth or scarf. Ilias wrinkled his nose at the stench of smoke and stagnant water and worse. He didn’t understand how these people could have horseless wagons and wizard lights like the Rienish but have failed to master the elementary skill of draining their city of human waste.

  Ilias had been to a Rienish city with Tremaine, the one the Gardier now occupied. The smoke and the noise had been nearly as bad but there had been marvelous things to look at: windows with jewel-colored glass, huge stone buildings heavy with carvings of strange creatures. These buildings were all brown brick or a weathered dun-colored stone, none as imposing, and the windows were just dusty glass. The people here spoke mostly Rienish but other languages were mixed in as well, making it confusing.

  Ilias knew from past ventures out that the people here would still stare even if he tied all his hair back, so he hadn’t bothered. People did stare, not in the idly curious or sometimes appreciative way that the Rienish did, but as if they were affronted at seeing someone different from themselves.

  Nicholas stepped around a mud puddle, and said, “Why did you ask if we were prisoners?”

  Ilias shrugged, at first not meaning to answer. Then he found himself saying, “Tremaine says they’re listening to Pasima. If she’s told them that when we go back to Cineth, the god will kill Giliead for what he’s done…” He shrugged again, torn between the anxiety that made him want to talk about it and a reluctance to drag the whole thing out before Tremaine’s enigmatic father.

  Nicholas threw him a sideways glance, his eyes invisible behind the opaque lenses. “I hadn’t realized your situation in Cineth was quite that serious.”

  “We don’t really know what the god will do,” Ilias admitted. “But no Chosen Vessel ever used a curse before.”

  “But it has punished Vessels for transgressions in the past.”

  “Our god hasn’t.” Cineth’s previous Chosen Vessels had all led fairly unremarkable lives, except for the one a few generations ago who had somehow managed to acquire two husbands and a pack of children in between ridding her territory of several particularly vicious wizards. Her descendants still had their farms to the south of the city. “Other gods have. They refuse to see the Vessel, and then he kills himself.” Gunias of the Barrens Pass had fallen on his sword when his god had denied him, though no one knew what Gunias had done. Eliade of Syrneth’s crime had been more obvious: she had been sent away from her god when she had killed her own sister out of jealousy over a man; she had drowned herself.

  Nicholas was silent for a few steps before he replied obliquely, “There are better ways of getting rid of unwanted individuals.”

  Ilias thought he meant that it was no good overreacting, that there was no proof the gods had caused deaths that might well have come out of guilt. But because he wanted to get something out into the open, he said, “Like me.”

  Nicholas stopped to regard him directly, the stream of people impatiently circling around them. Ilias still couldn’t see his eyes but his voice was dry and faintly exasperated. “That aside, if anything happened to you, Tremaine would of course assume that I had arranged it. No evidence I could produce of my innocence, no alibi no matter how ironclad, would convince her otherwise, and I could shortly expect an unpleasant surprise.” Turning away to continue up the street, he added, “If you raise a daughter to be both independent and an excellent marksman, you have to accept the fact that your control over her actions is at an end.”

  They reached a quieter street finally, though the buildings here were just as ugly. Nicholas stopped in front of one with steps leading up to a door a little way above street level. Ilias supposed with the city so crowded they had to take advantage of every space, but he didn’t understand why half the people didn’t just pick up and go build another city somewhere else. It seemed ridiculous to let a place grow so large that it became unpleasant to live in. And it’s not like they have to look for a spot with a god either, he thought, watching Nicholas climb the steps and pull at a little brass handle to one side of the door.

  Ilias heard a bell ring dimly within. After another moment’s wait, the door opened to reveal a thin man with dark hair and narrow features, dressed in the same jacket and pants that many of the men seemed to wear, except his was a dark brown and the cloth tied around his neck was bright red. Nicholas spoke to him in Rienish and Ilias didn’t bother to listen, looking around to see if there was anything on the street to keep him occupied while Nicholas conducted his business. The man replied, moving back out of the doorway and making an expansive gesture. Nicholas glanced back, gesturing for Ilias to follow.

  Ilias hesitated a moment, surprised, then remembered the only good thing about this place was that they had no more idea what a curse mark was than the Rienish. He went up the stairs after Nicholas.

  The entry hall was high-ceilinged and dark, despite the wizard lights in glass shades mounted on the walls. Four doors opened into other spacious rooms, and stairs at the far end led to the upper floors. It was a relief to be out of the cold, though Ilias suspected that once he got used to it this house wouldn’t feel warm either. It was a little like the house that Tremaine had lived in, the one he had seen in their brief trip to her land, except this one smelled of damp rot. It made him miss the Ravenna again; her insides were all light wood and colored glass, her colors ivory and gold and red.

  The Capidaran man looked him over curiously as he shut the door, speaking to Nicholas in Rienish, “And this is your …?”

  “Son-in-law,” Nicholas replied, stepping to one of the partly open doors to examine the room inside. Everything was dark and heavy, with dark colors in the carpets and the wall coverings, heavy dark wooden furniture with dark fabric cushions. “I’m taking this house for my daughter and her in-laws.”

  “Oh, I see.” The man seemed to make some mental shift.

  “The ballroom?” Nicholas prompted.

  “Ah! This way.” He turned to lead the way up the stairs.

  Ilias trailed after, turning over the Rienish words ball room, and remembering it wasn’t as interesting as it sounded. At the top of the stairs there were two double doors, and the room proved to be just a big shadowy chamber, the floor of once-fine wood set into squares, the different grains and hues used to make patterns. There were curse lights in pink crystal balls mounted on the walls, and the ceiling was figured into squares. Though the colors here were lighter pinks and creams, the paper wal
l coverings were peeling off, revealing plaster beneath that was green with mold. Ilias wrinkled his nose at the smell. But Nicholas looked at the polished expanse of floor and nodded to himself. “Perfect.”

  “So glad it suits,” the Capidaran man said, though there was a note of incredulity in his tone.

  The talk turned to coins and how much Nicholas was going to give for the house. Bored, Ilias wandered the length of the room, half-alert for lingering curse traps. Though he didn’t have Giliead’s god-given ability to see curses, there were things he knew to look for: blind spots in his vision, surreptitious movement, changes in the air. Giliead would have to check over everything, but Ilias suspected there was nothing here.

  Through an archway at the back he found a much smaller room that was all glass, the long panes set into panels of wrought iron. It might have been a fine place except that the glass was covered with dust, turned to a thick sticky substance by the damp, and there were pottery tubs filled with dirt and the dry remains of dead plants. He rubbed at the glass with his coat sleeve and found it looked down onto a garden paved with stone, with overgrown beds choked with weeds and dead brush and a fountain with stagnant green water. He sighed, leaning his forehead against the cold glass. Everywhere he looked there were reminders of death.

  Nicholas wandered in and studied the windows with an air of dissatisfaction. The Capidaran man followed him, hesitating as Nicholas wandered out again. He stepped over to Ilias, and asked, “Valiarde— it’s a noble Rienish family, yes?”

  Ilias shrugged. “I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure what noble meant.

  “I see.” The man nodded, still bewildered. “But wealthy?”

  Ilias thought about it, trying to answer honestly. “They paid a lot for me.”

  The man just looked more bewildered, until a shouted question from Nicholas sent him hurrying out of the room.

  Ilias left the dead plants to their slow degeneration and went back through the big chamber. He found a wide stairway in the hall and climbed it, finding two more floors of cold musty-smelling bedchambers. Above that there was another stairwell, this one narrow and cramped, the wood paneling giving way to yellowed plaster halfway up. The hallway it led to was also narrow and cramped, with a low ceiling and only one bare wizard lamp for light. He opened a door and the wan light from the corridor showed him a small dark room with a bare iron bedstead and a washbasin on a stand. A thick layer of dust coated every surface and it smelled of must and rats. It looked like a cell, except the door didn’t seem to have any kind of lock. He left it open, moving down the hall to check a few of the other rooms. They were all the same.

  He heard Nicholas’s quiet step on the stairs and glanced back at him, asking a little suspiciously, “What are these rooms for?”

  “They’re servants’ quarters,” Nicholas said in Syrnaic. He glanced into one of the rooms as he came along the corridor. “Fortunately I wasn’t planning to hire live-in help. Other than that, I think this will do.”

  Ilias started to ask what it would do for when at the far end of the hall, one of the still-closed doors slowly started to swing open. Nicholas saw his expression change and turned, one hand moving to the pocket of his coat, but it was obvious no one was there to move the door. Fully open, it hesitated a moment before slowly and deliberately closing again; Ilias heard the latch click as it shut. Nicholas sighed in annoyance and looked at the Capidaran man standing in the stairwell, who smiled apologetically and made a helpless gesture.

  “Shades.” Ilias squinted up at the yellowed plaster ceiling, considering. Probably angry shades, since the quiet ones never knowingly drew attention to themselves. “Gil can take care of those.”

  “So he can.” Nicholas had fixed the Capidaran man with a gaze that should have melted the skin right off him. “Then this will still do—for half the price.”

  Chapter 2

  It was evening and cold with mist-drizzle when Tremaine arrived back at the refugee hostel. She was tired, thirsty, and had the strong sensation of an impending headache. Reaching the hostel was not much of a relief.

  The place had been a commercial traveler’s hotel, right up until the Capidaran authorities had conscripted it to hold refugees, so it was actually in much better condition than the dilapidated seaside hostelry at Port Rel that the Viller Institute had once taken over for its headquarters in Ile-Rien. There was no fallen grandeur here; there was in fact no grandeur of any kind. Crossing through the pokey little lobby with its bad imitation Parscian carpets and floral upholstery and dusty potted palms always brought back memories of waiting for trains in small villages along the Marches.

  The people sitting around on the hard wooden benches and understuffed couches made the place look even more like a station waiting room. Except no one’s going anywhere, she thought, depressing herself further. They spoke quietly, calm but with signs of strain showing in tired eyes and worried voices. They were Rienish, Parscians and Aderassi who hadn’t enough funds to find a place in the city or who had no relatives or friends here to support them. The Maiutans, all of whom were ex-prisoners of the Gardier, would have been in even worse straits, without even an overworked Embassy to appeal to. But some of the freed prisoners had been Lowlands Missionaries who had known which local charitable organizations to alert, and several contingents of volunteers had managed to hurry off the Maiutans before the Capidaran government had been able to stop them. The others were supposed to have dual citizenship with Capidara, so they could leave if they wanted, but employment was scarce and most had nowhere else to go. The lobby smelled of must and dust and fear sweat.

  Tremaine had almost reached the stairs when one of the harried desk clerks hurried over, holding a folded slip of paper. “Madam Valiarde! A message for you.”

  As one of the few people still in the hostel who could actually afford to tip, Tremaine usually got extra attention. She exchanged the hoped-for Capidaran coin for the message and unfolded the paper. There was nothing on it but an address. She stared at it blankly, then realized what this must be. He found a house. She wondered how. Accommodation was supposed to be nearly impossible to get in the crowded city, and Gerard had needed a large room for experiments with Arisilde’s sphere. “Did they clear out our rooms?”

  “Yes, madam.” The man sounded relieved. The entire staff was somewhat nervous of the Syprians, and Giliead in particular was in no mood to be friendly. Tremaine counted the staff lucky; it would have been much worse if Pasima’s group had been staying there as well. “They said we could give the space to someone else.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” She tucked the address away in her pocket with a mental sigh. There was no telling what shape the house would be in and she suspected real food and real rest were a long way in the future.

  Preoccupied, she turned back toward the front door, hoping she could find a taxicab driver who knew the street. Her path blocked, she looked up to find herself facing Ander Destan.

  Ander was dressed as a civilian, in a tan pullover and a leather jacket. The shopkeepers and market stalls had been doing good business with the refugees who had money, all of whom were buying clothes, blankets and other items that would quickly become scarce once the bombing started here. Smiling, Ander said, “You look lovely. That outfit suits you.”

  Tremaine regarded him blankly. She distrusted compliments on her appearance in principle, but she really couldn’t find anything in that statement to object to. It made an interesting contrast to what Ilias had said when she had gotten dressed this morning, which had been “Why do you wear clothes that hide your breasts? It’s not as if anyone’s going to think you don’t have any.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t been able to muster a suitable reply to that one either. “Are you waiting for Gerard? He’s going to be trapped in the meeting for a while longer.”

  “I was waiting for you, actually,” he said, and gave her that slow warm smile that had worked so well on her and so many women in the past.

  Tremaine eyed him, unimpressed.
“Really.”

  Ander let out his breath, the smile turning wry. “I suppose only the truth will do.”

  “Some people prefer it,” she acknowledged that warily.

  “I know Gerard and the others have some sort of plan afoot—”

  Tremaine rolled her eyes, annoyed. “And you thought you’d get it out of me with a few compliments. That’s a new interrogation technique. ‘My, what a nice hat. Give me the secret plans—’ ”

  “Tremaine! You know that’s not what I—” He eyed her. “Maybe you don’t know. Can we start over?”

  Starting over would take years, and she didn’t have any to spare. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to help.”

  Tremaine lifted a brow. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “At the moment, no. I’ve been assigned off the Ravenna, but the Capidarans are handling most of the duties.” He added bleakly, “There’s nothing to do except wait.”

  Watching his face, seeing the new lines of anxiety and strain that she didn’t remember being there before, Tremaine felt a reluctant surge of empathy. She rubbed her forehead wearily. I hate it when I do this. “All right, come on. But you’re paying for the taxicab.”

  The shade in the top of the house was not only angry, it was actively hostile. Braced against the door to keep it from slamming and trapping them inside, Ilias hoped the battle at least gave Giliead a chance to work off some of his temper. “I’m just telling you what she said,” he repeated for the third time. He hadn’t even gotten to the part yet about just who Pasima thought was responsible for all this.

  The wan yellow illumination came from the curse light in the narrow attic corridor, revealing that the floor of the long room was littered with odd fragments of metal or wooden rubbish and rat droppings. Giliead paced the confines of it, his face set in grim lines. He was a big man, even for a coastal Syprian, and nearly a head taller than Ilias. Outraged, he seemed to take up even more space in the relatively small chamber, his light brown hair frazzled in its braids. “I just don’t understand what she expects to gain out of it,” Giliead said in frustration. He had tracked the shade back to this room and the first brush with it had left long light scratches across his chest and neck.