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

  Most 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.”

  The 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, thi
nking 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.

  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.”

  The 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 k
new 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?”