Martha Wells - The Ships of Air

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The

Ships of Air

Book Two of the Fall of Ile-Rien

Martha Wells

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Also by Martha Wells

The Wizard Hunters

Wheel of the Infinite

The Death of the Necromancer

City of Bones The Element of Fire

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are

not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission eLations embodied

in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York,

NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please

write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST EDITION

Eos is a federally registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wells, Martha.

The ships of air / Martha Wells.—1st ed.

p. cm.—(The fall of Ile-Rien ; bk. 2) ISBN 0-380-97789-3 I. Title.

PS3573.E4932W59 2004

813'.54—dc22_____________________2004042051_______________________

04 05 06 07 08 jtc/qw 10 987654321

To Rory Harper

So we made ready to leave the shore of the Isle of Storms, in hope

of never setting foot on it again.

— "Ravenna's Voyage to the Unknown Eastlands,"

V. Madrais translation

Tremaine picked her way along the ledge, green stinking canal on

one hand, rocky outcrop sprouting dense dark foliage on the other.

She was exhausted and footsore and at the moment profoundly

irritated. She said in exasperation, "All they have to do is get on the

damn ship. Is that really going to be so hard?"

"It's the eyes," Giliead told her obliquely. He and Ilias were just

ahead of her on the narrow shelf of rock, both men having a far

easier time of traversing it than she was. The mossy water a few

feet below was foul-smelling and stagnant, inhabited only by weeds

and the occasional brightly colored snake. These canals cut through

the rocky island in several directions, leading to and from the stone

buildings that housed entrances to the deserted waterlogged city that

wove through the caves below. The builders, whoever they were,

had used black stones twenty or thirty feet long to line the

watercourse, stacking them like tree trunks in the same way they

built their underground walls and bridges.

"The ship doesn't have eyes." Tremaine struggled along, sweating

in the damp air. The canal was overhung by the twisted dark-leaved

trees; the overcast sky made it even more dim. For years the island

had been a trap for seagoing vessels and the crews who sailed them;

the whole place felt as if the corruption in the caves below had

crept up through the roots of the stunted jungle.

"That's the problem," Giliead said, glancing back at her as he

brushed a branch aside. "She just looks like—"

"A big blind giant," Ilias supplied, balancing agilely on the slick

stones. They were both Syprians, natives of this world on the other

side of the etheric gateway from Ile-Rien. They were brothers,

though only by adoption, and they looked nothing alike. Ilias had a

stocky muscular build and a wild mane of blond hair, some of it

tied into a queue that hung down his back. He wore battered dark

pants and boots with a sleeveless blue shirt trimmed with leather

braid. Giliead was built on a bigger scale, nearly a head taller than

Ilias, with chestnut braids and olive skin, dressed in a dark brown

shirt under a leather jerkin. Both wore more jewelry than had been

fashionable for men in Ile-Rien for many years—copper earrings,

armbands with copper disks. Ilias also had a silver mark on his

cheek in the shape of a half-moon, but that wasn't meant to be

decorative.

Tremaine let out a frustrated breath as she ducked under a heavy

screen of pungent leaves. She was the odd woman out, with short

mousy brown hair and sunburned skin. She was wearing Syprian

clothing too, a loose blue tunic block-printed with green-and-gold

designs and breeches of a soft doeskin. Her clothes were a little the

worse for wear but in better shape than the unlamented tweed

outfits she had left behind in Ile-Rien.

At the moment all three of them were covered with bruises,

howler scratches and patches of mud and slime from the walls of

the underground passages. The last few days had been nothing but

fighting and running and swimming and falling, and Tremaine just

wanted everyone to quietly get on the ship so they could get the hell

away from here. She had also gone to a great deal of trouble to steal

the Queen Ravenna for just this purpose and she wanted her new

friends to like it. So far they had stubbornly refused to share her

enthusiasm. Even Ilias, who had actually sailed on the ship briefly.

"It won't matter how big the ship is as long as she sails by curses,"

Giliead continued frankly. "They're never going to get used to that."

Tremaine knew he was probably right, though she wasn't ready to

admit it aloud. Syprian civilization was considerably more primitive

than Ile-Rien's, and they regarded any mechanical object, from

electric lights to clocks, as magical. Worse, Syprians hated magic,

since all their sorcerers were murdering lunatics. It was a minor

miracle that they had managed to get to this point, where a woman

from Ile-Rien who was a friend of sorcerers could talk about this

subject with Syprians at all. It helped that they were a sea people

and fairly cosmopolitan, despite their prejudices. "But the Ravenna

doesn't use magic," she pointed out. "The steam engines—" She

stopped when she realized the words were coming out in Rienish.

If there was a Syrnaic word for "steam engine" the translation spell

that had given Tremaine the knowledge of the language hadn't seen

fit to include it. "There's boilers, and you put water in them, and

burn coal or oil or something, and the steam makes it go. It's not

magic," she finished lamely.

Giliead and Ilias paused to exchange a look; Giliead's half of it

was dubious and Ilias's was ironic. "They always say that," Ilias put

in. He had spent nearly one whole day in Ile-Rien and now

qualified as the local expert. "Wagons without horses, wizard lights,

wizard weapons, there's an explanation for everything."

Giliead shook his head as he started forward again. "If that's our

only way off the island, we're going to have trouble."

Ilias nodded. "It doesn't matter about me, I'm marked anyway," he

said matter-of-factly. The mark he spoke of was the little half-moon

of silver branded into his cheek. It was what Syprian law said

anyone who had ever fallen under a sorcerer's curse should wear.

"And Gil's exempt from the law because he's a Chosen Vessel, but

it's the others I'm worried about. If the people in Cineth harbor see

them come off that ship, they could all end up ostracized or worse.

And some of the younger ones come from pretty good families,

they could still have a chance of getting married."

Tremaine considered that, frowning. There were a lot of things

she didn't understand about the Syprians yet. In many ways their

society was a matriarchy; men seemed to hold the public offices

like war-leader and lawgiver but weren't allowed to own property,

and family status was important. The Andrien, the family Giliead

had been born into and Ilias adopted by, had had its ups and

downs, mostly due to Giliead's being the local god's Chosen Vessel.

The three female heirs to Andrien had all been killed by the

sorcerer Ixion, leaving the family in danger of losing their land

when Giliead's mother Karima died.

"They could end up ostracized," Giliead agreed. "But that's if we

can get them aboard her in the first place." He didn't sound

sanguine about the prospect.

It was the only way off the island at the moment and Tremaine

didn't want to contemplate leaving anyone behind. "So you're not

even curious to see the inside?" she prompted, trying a different

tack. "Ilias did."

Giliead just looked back at her, not the least bit impressed by this

technique.

Ilias snorted, swinging surefootedly over a gap in the stone. "I

didn't have a choice."

Tremaine knew what he meant; the Ravenna had been the only

way for him to return with the rescue party, to get back to his own

world. She had been hoping the Syprians would like the Ravenna

or at least get used to her. The way they acted toward their own

vessels seemed to suggest ships were fairly important in their

society. Ilias had become somewhat accustomed to the Ravenna,

but he and Giliead were much more used to strange sights and

magic than most Syprians. She said dryly, "I failed to notice your

helplessness."

Instead of retaliating verbally, Ilias just grinned and deftly caught

her when her foot slipped.

Recovering her balance with his help, Tremaine was glad she

hadn't gone headfirst into the canal; once her clothes were soaked

with water she didn't think she would have had the strength to

climb out again, and that would have been embarrassing. She said

reluctantly, "Nobody would necessarily have to see them get off the

ship. We could send all of you ashore in one of the launches

someplace nearby but out of sight." Tremaine was a little hesitant to

suggest this idea, considering what she thought Ilias's feelings on

the subject were. She knew that when he had been cursed by Ixion,

no one but he and Giliead had known, and Ilias had still insisted on

turning himself in to receive the curse mark. "Then you could warn

the city that we were coming before we sail into the harbor."

"That might be best." Giliead had to crouch to duck under some

dark trailing vines. Pausing to hold them up for Tremaine, he threw

Ilias a thoughtful look, as if he had had the same qualm.

But Ilias just said, "There would be less trouble that way."

Ducking under the vines, Tremaine absently watched the display

of flexed muscle as Ilias hauled himself up on a heavier branch to

swing across another gap in the stone. She wasn't sure "less

trouble" was a realistic expectation. But whatever happened, the

Ravenna would be leaving this area soon, steaming through the

unfamiliar waters of this world until it was safe to open the etheric

world-gate again and bring the ship to port in Capidara, one of

Ile-Rien's only surviving allies.

They still knew little about their enemies, except that they came

from somewhere in this world. The Gardier used the etheric gate

spell to reach their targets in Ile-Rien and Adera, something no one

had realized until Arisilde Damal and Tremaine's father Nicholas

Valiarde had somehow stolen the spell from them. After both men

had disappeared, it had taken the Viller Institute sorcerers years to

discover what the gate spell was and where the Gardier were

coming from.

The spell needed two things to create a gate to another world: a

circle of arcane symbols that no one properly understood and a

sorcerer using one of the Viller spheres. Carrying her circle with

her gave the Ravenna great mobility in traveling back and forth

between worlds. As far as they knew, the Gardier didn't have

circles on their ships or airships, and so could only create gates

when they were close enough to one of their bases where a circle

was located. Tremaine and the others had destroyed the Gardier

spell circle on this island; hopefully that would keep the Gardier

ships blockading the coast of Ile-Rien from coming through the

gate after them. It would not stop attack by the Gardier already in

this world.

A shout from above startled Tremaine. "Now what?" They were

so close to temporary safety and she was so tired. The two men

plunged ahead, splashing in the stagnant water. They were closer

than she thought; only a few yards along was the break in the canal

where a rough set of stairs led up the steep overgrown hill.

Tremaine reached the opening and scrambled up the steps after

Giliead and Ilias, both almost at the top by now. The short scrubby

trees and thorny vines clutched at her, and she clawed at the muddy

rock to drag her weary body up. The stairs led into a flat-roofed

stone building that was now filled with milling refugees, some

whispering in anger or panic and others fearfully silent. She

shouldered into the path through the crowd that the two men had

already made, coming out of the square doorway into the plaza.

The little group of stone structures stood on a bluff looking out

over the misty sea, all probably built about the same time as the

underwater city; the stunted trees and thick carpet of vegetation had

had time to eat away sections of the paving. Another flat-roofed

building stood at a right angle to this one, concealing a shaft leading

down to the caves.

Most of the freed prisoners had drawn back against the dark

walls. They were all from Ile-Rien's world on the other side of the

etheric gateway, a mix of Maiutans and other Southern Seas

Islanders, Parscians, with a few Rienish. They had been captured

and brought to this world by the Gardier as slave labor for their

base in the island's caves.

Wrapped in a canvas tarp and lying on the pavement was the

currently inert body of the former owner of those caves, the

sorcerer Ixion. Tremaine stared warily at the bundle, wondering if

Ixion had decided to rejoin the living and that was what had upset

everyone. But Giliead and Ilias stood with Ander, Florian and the

group of Rienish soldiers and Syprian sailors who had led the

attack on the base, all looking out to sea. After a baffled moment

Tremaine saw what had caught their attention: About three hundred

yards from shore the low dark outline of a Gardier gunship moved

silently through the mist.

Oh, no, Tremaine thought, her stomach clenching as she moved

to join the others. It wasn't the gunship from the Gardier's harbor

on the far side of the island, even she could tell that. This boat was

longer than that one and had a second gun on the stern. "How

long—?"

Florian glanced at her, her expression desperate. "We just saw it a

few moments ago." She was younger than Tremaine, a slight girl

with short red hair, dressed in stained khaki knickers and a dark

pullover sweater. It had been Tremaine, Gerard, Florian and Ander

who had first come through the etheric gateway, scouting the

approach to the Gardier base, and been shipwrecked here. Gerard

was back at the cove now where the Ravenna would be landing her

launches in preparation for taking them all aboard.

Giliead must have already informed Ander of the situation

because he turned impatiently to Tremaine, demanding, "It was the

Ravenna? You saw it?"

Ander Destan was a tall dark-haired man, conventionally

handsome. He was only a few years older than Tremaine but was

already a captain in the Ile-Rien Army Intelligence Corps, or what

was left of it. He had never quite trusted the Syprians the way she,

Florian and Gerard had, but Tremaine could tell this wasn't

disbelief of Giliead's truthfulness. It was pure relief; after seeing the

gunship, a viable escape route probably seemed like too much to

ask for. She nodded hurriedly. "Gerard's there with Niles now, the

launches will be waiting for us in that cove where we met the

Swift." She waved her arms. "We need to get moving!"

None of the Syprians gathered around could understand Rienish,

and Tremaine heard Ilias rapidly briefing Halian on the situation.

Halian was Giliead's stepfather and had been captain of the Swift;

he was an older man than any of the other Syprians except Gyan,

with a weathered face and graying dark hair. Halian turned to the

other Syprian crew members gathered worriedly around, saying,

"Break them up into groups and start leading them down the canal.

There's boats waiting at Dead Tree Point."

Florian pressed forward, following the men as they scattered. "I'll

translate for them." She and Ander were the only other Rienish

besides Gerard and Tremaine who spoke the Syprians' language,

Syrnaic. "Oh, here." She dashed back to hand Tremaine the

battered leather bag that held the sphere.

Tremaine took it absently, hanging it over her shoulder as she

watched the Syprians spread out to herd the freed slaves down the

steps to the canal. The Gardier's prisoners had had to be in fair

health to survive this long, but some of them were disoriented and

shocked by their long captivity underground and the swiftness and

violence of their escape. Some didn't speak Rienish, so that made it

even more difficult. Getting them on the motor launches waiting in

the cove would be less of a problem; once they saw the boats they

would surely know it was their best escape. The Syprians were

going to be the problem then. I'm not leaving anybody behind,

Tremaine thought, taking a sharp breath. Not this time.

Ander's military team were gathered around the eleven captured

Gardier; Tremaine moved to join them. The prisoners sat on the

broken moss-stained stone of the plaza in a sullen group, their

hands bound with the same chains they had used on their slaves.

With pale skin and heads shaved to stubble, they all looked alike to

Tremaine. Their brown coverall uniforms with heavy boots and

close-fitting caps had nothing to distinguish one from the other.

They were a different problem altogether. Tremaine eyed them,

deciding it looked like a problem that could be solved by eleven

bullets.

"The wireless?" Basimi, one of the Rienish soldiers, turned to ask

Ander.

Ander squinted at the wireless that had brought them the

Ravenna'?, signal. "Take the box, leave the antenna." It was strung

up across the two stone buildings and would be too much trouble

to remove. And the Gardier knew they were here, there was no

point in trying to remove any trace of their presence.

Ander stepped toward the Gardier prisoners, watching them

carefully. He grasped the Gardier translator disk around his neck,

saying, "Get up, follow us quietly and you won't be harmed." They

had captured several of the translators, small silver medallions with

an inset crystal that held the spell that converted the speaker's

words to the Gardier language. They translated only Rienish,

unfortunately, and didn't work for Syrnaic.

Most of the Gardier just stared at him but one spoke rapidly in a

high light voice, the disk translating his words, "Free us and

surrender. You will be well treated—"

Tremaine, her eyes on the long black shape of the gunship

plowing through the gray sea, suddenly had enough. That a

Gardier, sitting there in chains surrounded by Rienish, would still

have the gall to try to dictate terms was too much. The slaves, the

people fleeing Vienne knowing they had no control over their lives,

poor dead Rulan's betrayal, what the Gardier had done to Arisilde,

all came together in perfect clarity for her.

Basimi had set his captured Gardier rifle aside so he could pack

the wireless box; Tremaine walked across the plaza to pick it up.

Distracted and thinking she was just relieving him of a burden, he

barely glanced at her.

Tremaine hefted it thoughtfully. The weight and stock felt odd in

her hands and there was no safety. Crossing back to the Gardier,

she pumped it to get a cartridge into the chamber. She stopped

beside Ander, lifting it to her shoulder to aim at the Gardier

spokesman. The man's expression went from stoic contempt to

fear, his dark eyes widening in alarm. Good, she thought. I'd hate

to take you by surprise. Then before her finger could tighten on the

trigger a long arm reached over her shoulder and grabbed the

barrel.

It was Giliead. Tremaine tried to hold on to the gun but had to

give up before her hand got caught in the trigger guard. Ander was

staring, startled. From across the plaza Ilias shouted, "Tremaine,

stop that!"

"They won't move!" She gestured in frustration at the Gardier.

She wondered if anybody else was appreciating the irony of the

barbarian Syprians preventing the civilized woman of Ile-Rien from

shooting the prisoners. Some of the ex-slaves had stopped to

watch, probably hoping to see her do it. Ander and Basimi and the

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TheShipsofAirBookTwooftheFallofIle-RienMarthaWellsAnImprintofHarperCollinsPublishersAlsobyMarthaWellsTheWizardHuntersWheeloftheInfiniteTheDeathoftheNecromancerCityofBonesTheElementofFireThisbookisaworkoffiction.Thecharacters,incidents,anddialoguearedrawnfromtheauthor'simaginationandarenottobeconstru...

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