“The Gardier sank them all.” She gestured to the open corridor. “Anyway, it’s not as uncomfortable as you’d think, considering people only stayed in these rooms for a few days at a time,” she said, looking around. “There must be communal bathrooms somewhere along the corridor.” Ilias hadn’t thought it looked uncomfortable at all; it was palatial compared to some of the dirt-floored huts he had stayed in.

Giliead stopped suddenly, head cocked. Tensing, Ilias looked at the walls, the ceiling overhead, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Giliead stepped to the wall, brushing his fingers against it as he followed it to the next vestibule. He stopped there, Ilias beside him, Tremaine drawing up uneasily behind them. “How many doors?” Giliead asked thoughtfully.

“Three,” Ilias answered, studying the little cubby suspiciously. Tremaine leaned around him.

“The others all have four,” Giliead pointed out.

“Ah.” Ilias squinted hard at the blank space at the back of the narrow cubby where the fourth door should be. It might be missing because something essential to the ship The Ships of Air

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occupied that spot rather than cabin space, but he really doubted it.

“Clever,” Tremaine muttered, backing into the corridor to give them room.

Giliead stepped to the bare spot on the wall, running his hand over it. Then he stepped back and kicked it.

The door was there between one heartbeat and the next, banging open against the inside cabin wall.

Ilias relaxed slightly as he looked past Giliead, relieved and disappointed. It was a small cabin with the walls painted yellow, with two narrow beds stacked one atop the other, and a basin set into the wall below one of the perfect Rienish glass mirrors. The carpet was blue with tiny white and yellow flowers. There were cabinets built into the other walls, but no place to hide. It’s empty. Damm it. It would have been good to get this over with.

They stepped inside and Tremaine followed, though there wasn’t much room left. “No curse traps,” Giliead reported, glancing around with a frown. “Doesn’t look like he’s spent much time here.”

“But we know it’s a wizard now, and not a curseling.” Ilias started opening cabinets and drawers, finding nothing but a little dust. “A curseling wouldn’t have the brains to hide this room.”

“We don’t know that the thing that tried to get into the Isolation Ward is the same thing—person—that hid this room,” Tremaine pointed out. Then she grimaced. “But whoever’s been staying here has been mixing with the refugees. That really bothers me.”

Stooping to check under the bed, Giliead threw a thoughtful glance at her. “How can you tell?”

“The blanket is red, and the brocade along the hem doesn’t match the carpet.” She nodded toward the blanket crumpled on the lower bunk. “The mattresses are stripped to the ticking covers, and it’s the only bedding in the room.

And it wasn’t here, because it doesn’t go with the rest of the decor. It was handed out from the ship’s stores.” Ilias felt a chill settle in his stomach. She was right; all 182

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the bedding and fabrics in their cabin were the same colors.

Giliead picked up the blanket, running a hand over it. His face hardened.

“What?” Ilias asked, watching him worriedly.

Giliead dropped the blanket back on the bed, his mouth twisted. “I don’t think this one is harmless.” As they came back up the corridor of D deck, Tremaine noted the First Class area was much quieter. Her grumbling stomach informed her that it was lunchtime; most people had probably gone to the dining area. She was about to suggest they do the same when Giliead stopped abruptly in a vestibule. “There’s something here.” He stepped up to one of the doors. “It’s faint. Not like that other room. But it doesn’t seem dangerous.”

The door opened suddenly and they all three flinched back. But it was Gerard, with rumpled hair and in his shirtsleeves, regarding them with a quizzical expression. “Oh, it’s you,” he said in Syrnaic. “Did you find anything?”

“Just you.” Disgruntled, Ilias leaned against the wall and massaged the foot Tremaine had stamped on in hasty retreat from the door.

Giliead managed to look as if he hadn’t reacted at all.

Tremaine fanned herself with the map to cool the rush of heat to her cheeks. “Damn, just rush out and yell ‘boo’ next time.”

“What? Oh, sorry.” Gerard disappeared inside the room.

“Come in.”

“Were you trying to get some sleep?” Tremaine went in after him, Ilias and Giliead following more cautiously. “I thought you gave that up.”

“It’s not voluntary, I assure you,” Gerard replied ruefully.

The cabin lights were on and several books and notebooks lay open on the bed. “Niles and I put an adjuration on each other to stay awake for the next few days.” Tremaine lifted her brows. That sounded fairly drastic.

“Is that a good idea?”

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“No, not particularly,” he admitted. “Oh, thank you for packing my things, by the way.” He absently shifted some books aside so he could sit down. “Being able to shave this morning was a great relief.”

Tremaine shrugged it off. “It was an experiment with optimism.” Gerard had an ordinary stateroom, with a built-in desk and dresser, and a couch and chair in the small open area.

What wasn’t ordinary was that on every flat surface there were bowls, of crystal, colored glass and china. Tremaine stepped over to look at the three on the little boule table in front of the couch, seeing each was half-full of water and had bits of things floating in it. She recognized carpet or curtain threads, splinters of wood and what might be paint flakes.

“Keeping an eye on all of us?” she asked, a brow lifted wryly.

“Those are for different areas of the ship.” Gerard pulled off his spectacles to rub his eyes. “There’s also one for you, one for Niles and one for Florian.”

“I thought there might be one for me this morning.” Tremaine looked around the rest of the cabin. Giliead leaned in the doorway, a closed thoughtful expression on his face.

Ilias had taken a step further in but looked as if he was reluctant to touch anything.

Tremaine noted that the mirror above the dresser was tightly covered by a blanket. She knew that scrying spells used mirrors or reflective surfaces to view their targets, knowledge gained because Nicholas had required everyone associated with him to become an expert in how to avoid sorcerous spying. Finding a reflective surface for a sorcerer to use wasn’t a problem on the Ravenna, with all her glass balusters and panels. She glanced back at Gerard and saw he was thoughtfully eyeing her and Ilias. He’s wondering how things are going, marriage-wise. And maybe trying to think of a polite way to ask. To forestall it, she nodded to the draped mirror. “Is Niles peeping at you again?”

“What?” Gerard stared at her blankly. “Oh, the mirror.

With these scrying bowls active, I’d rather not take any chances.” He added with an annoyed shake of his head,

“Niles has other methods.”

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Intrigued, Giliead asked, “A wizard could spy on you through the mirror?”

“A Rienish sorcerer could,” Gerard admitted. “It’s one of the spells that is useless against the Gardier, as far as we can tell.

And we don’t know if they can use it against us.” He frowned at a sudden thought. “Though that was before we knew about the crystals and the . . . bizarre nature of their sorcery.”

“We did find something,” Tremaine interposed before he could launch into etheric theory. She dropped into the armchair, glad to rest her feet. “Someone’s been hiding up in Third Class.”

As she explained what they had found, Ilias took another cautious step into the room and sat down on the rug.

Gerard’s brow furrowed. “That still doesn’t tell us whether he came aboard at Rel, Chaire or with the freed prisoners from the island. I need to examine that room.” Ilias shifted uncomfortably. But he wants to show me he’s not afraid of Gerard’s spells, Tremaine realized suddenly. It was another gesture meant to show that he would do his best to fit in to her world, somehow even more affecting than when he had demanded to know how to say Valiarde.

Giliead was standing back and letting him do it, not ruining the gesture by coming further into the room, though he must realize the spells were harmless to them. Focus, focus, she reminded herself. “So what does Arisilde make of this?” Gerard’s frowned deepened. “He . . . didn’t seem to want to be of use.”

“Oh.” Tremaine took that in, a little nonplussed. “He’s never done that before.” She glanced around the room again.

“Where is he now?”

“With Niles in the hospital. I’m about to go down and take over for him. For Niles, that is.” She nodded. When they had first used the sphere, before realizing Arisilde himself was inside it, it had taken both Tremaine’s and Gerard’s presence to get it to work. Since then it had progressed to operating by itself, or needing only the smallest nudge to initiate a complex spell. “You’re being careful with him, right? I mean, he’s been stolen once—” The Ships of Air

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Gerard’s mouth twisted wryly. “I think it highly unlikely that he will be stolen again. I hate to think what would happen to anyone who tried.”

Tremaine saw Ilias exchange an enigmatic look with Giliead. She pushed herself to her feet. “We’d better get on with it, then.”

Gerard ran a hand through his hair, nodding absently.

“I’ll let Niles and Averi know about the room you found.” He gathered up a couple of the volumes on the bed and one of the notebooks, then followed them out into the hall, locking the door behind him.

By handing Tremaine the books while he pulled his jacket on, he managed to detain her while Ilias and Giliead wandered on up the quiet corridor. It wasn’t until he said,

“Well, and how are things going?” in Rienish that she realized she had been adeptly maneuvered into the private conversation she had wanted to avoid.

Deliberately misunderstanding, Tremaine threw him a puzzled look. “What things?”

He gave her a mild glare and made the question a pointed, “Are you two getting along?” Giving in, she shrugged wearily. “So far. It’s been less than half a day, Gerard, not even I could mess it up in that short amount of time.” She decided not to mention that she almost had.

He sighed, stopping at the narrow passage that connected the two main corridors. “I don’t mean to pry, but—”

“Yes, you do mean to pry,” Tremaine assured him.

“Yes, I do, but—” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just worry about you. Needlessly.” He patted her on the arm. “I’ll be down in the hospital with Niles.” Tremaine watched him go. She hoped he was worrying needlessly.

Lengthening her stride to catch up to Ilias and Giliead, she began, “You know, I think we should—” She stopped as she found them in a vestibule, contemplating three closed doors.

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something interesting. He said, “There’s been a curse here, not long ago. It’s fresh and strong.”

“Can you tell what it was?”

He shook his head, trailing a hand cautiously around the doorframe. “Your curses are so different.”

“Right.” Tremaine turned, seeing they had an attentive audience. Two young Rienish women in traveling dresses and a young Maiutan woman in oversized canvas pants and a sailor’s uniform shirt were seated on stools in the vestibule across the corridor, with a china coffee service laid out on a footstool. Apparently this was the hour in upper-middle-class society where one had coffee with one’s neighbors, even if one’s neighbors were Maiutan ex–prisoners of war. “Excuse me, but do you know who has these rooms?”

“Bisrans.” The older matron set her cup down on the tray with the air of someone who had just been waiting to be asked that question. She explained, “We were told they escaped from Adera and were being held at Chaire. They don’t speak to anyone, but you know Bisrans.”

“They’re in one of those sects,” the other Rienish woman put in. “The one where they dress so badly.” Tremaine translated this into Syrnaic, leaving out the sar-torial comment. Ilias rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Those men we saw near the healer’s rooms?” Tremaine nodded. “Exactly. I need to check with someone to make sure, but if one of the Bisrans is a sorcerer, he hasn’t said so.” She eyed the array of closed doors. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Giliead took that in, considering it. “Did the women see anything odd, anything that might have been a curse?” Tremaine passed the question along in Rienish, and the older woman shook her head regretfully. “We saw them all go off that way toward the dining room, while we were having coffee. But we haven’t been out here that long. My sister is getting over a fever, so we had our lunch on a tray in our room, then came out here so she could have some quiet for a nap.”

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“What did the Bisran pigs do?” the Maiutan woman asked curiously.

“They’re Bisran pigs, do they need to do anything?” Tremaine told her, distracted. She rubbed her hands together briskly. “Is there a telephone in your room I could use?”

Chapter 10

Glancing around the dining room, Tremaine spotted the Bisrans first. They were seated at two tables near the corner. Their severe dark suits and archaic ruffled neckcloths would have stood out in any Rienish setting, even with the increasing shortages of dyes and materials in the last few years as factories had been destroyed and trade routes shut down.

Against the Ravenna’s gold-toned wood and silvered glass, they looked almost absurd.

There were five men, two of whom she had seen earlier outside the hospital, three women and four children. The women wore high-necked dark-colored blouses and skirts far too long for fashion. The children were miniature copies of the adults.

The room was about half-full of refugees and off-duty crew. Dishes clattered through the propped-open serving door, and children played around the pillars. Someone had brought in some low upholstered stools and a cocktail table from one of the lounges, fashioning an impromptu Syprian dining set. Gyan, Arites, Kias, and, to Tremaine’s surprise, Cimarus and Danias were seated there. Gyan was watching them with a faint worried frown, as if something in Giliead’s manner broadcast a warning. But Arites got up and came over, saying, “Come and eat. They take stewed fruit and put it inside this crispy bread, and it’s wonderful.”

“Not just now.” Giliead shifted him aside gently. He moved toward the Bisrans, his face holding the same delib-The Ships of Air

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erate concentration as when he had trailed Ixion through the ship. One of the Bisran women looked up as they approached, her eyes widening.

“Which one?” Ilias asked, eyeing the group speculatively.

Giliead paused, only a few steps from the table where four of the men and one woman sat. “It’s one of them. I’m not sure which.” His brow creased in annoyance. “They’re too close together.”

Trailing after them and still munching on a bread roll, Arites said, “These people are snobs. They won’t talk to anyone, even the nice people who make the food. Why are they afraid to let their skin show? Is there something wrong with them?”

They had all the Bisrans’ attention now. Their faces were startled, nervous or contemptuous. Tremaine said, “In a word, yes.” The two men she had seen outside the hospital were at this table, watching with cold caution. She checked the page of the hastily typed passenger list. The volunteer in the steward’s office had given it to her once Tremaine had impressed on the woman that the whole ship was liable to instant disaster if she didn’t. I’m not even sure I was lying about that.

According to the list, the oldest Bisran man at the table was Justice Riand. Tremaine knew Justice was a title, not a name, and designated a position somewhat analogous to a Rienish High Magistrate. Except as a Bisran the man would be less bound by the conventions of law. The other three men must be his older son Bain, his younger son Damil, and a son-in-law called Carrister. The woman didn’t look old enough to be the wife listed on the manifest, so she must be one of the daughters or daughters-in-law.

Tremaine looked up to see Giliead and Ilias watching the Bisrans with a hawklike intensity that wasn’t lost on the rest of the room; everyone had fallen silent. Careful to use Syrnaic, she asked Giliead, “So we know he did a . . . curse recently.” She used the generic Syrnaic word for spell, not wanting the Bisrans to have even that much of a clue what this was about. As far as she knew, Giliead’s abilities were 190

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known only to the upper level of the Rienish command, and not even to all of them. “Is he doing one now?”

“No.” His eyes flicked to her. “Make them talk.”

“Right.” Tremaine eyed him thoughtfully. Near a real quarry for the first time in too long, he was single-mindedly intent on his goal, and Ilias, pacing around to the far side of the table like a lion in a cage, looked the same. She stepped up, took the one open chair at the table and sat down.

The Bisrans all stared at her in astonished affront.

Switching back to Rienish, Tremaine said with blithe confidence, “Hello. How are we all today? And which one of you is a sorcerer?”

Staring at her, his jaw set and his face darkening with rage, Justice Riand demanded, “What right do you have to ask this question?” From the dishes on the table, lunch appeared to be soup, casserole and the apple tart Arites had complimented. She saw that their religious frugality hadn’t prevented the Bisrans from eating it.

Giliead had moved up to stand behind Tremaine’s chair; from across the table she could see Ilias was watching his friend’s face. He caught her eye and shook his head minutely.

Not Justice Riand. She steepled her fingers and smiled around the table. “What right do you have to be on this boat?”

“Your military kept us in Chaire until we had no choice,” one of the younger men snapped.

The woman was averting her eyes from Ilias and Giliead. She spoke suddenly. “Why are these filthy natives staring at us?”

“They aren’t filthy.” That was literally true. Syprians understood plumbing and knew it wasn’t magic, so didn’t shun it as they did electric switches and other mechanical devices.

They also much appreciated the novelty of hot water on tap.

“We all share a suite, and I don’t think the bathroom’s been unoccupied since we left port. Also, I happen to have expert knowledge, since I’m married to one of them.” Even if she hadn’t been trying to provoke a reaction, it The Ships of Air

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would have been worth it to see the offended shock and disbelief on all their faces. The woman actually looked like she was going to be ill. Satisfied with her progress so far, Tremaine rattled the sheet of typescript ostentatiously. “So, you must be Justice Riand.” She smiled engagingly at the older man, who looked as if he was now certain he was dealing with a madwoman. “And we have here Bain, Damil, and Carrister?”

Justice Riand eyed her narrowly. “You have not said what right you have to question us.”

“Now, that would be telling.”

The man sitting next to her spoke suddenly, “I am Bain Riand.” He was dark and handsome in a square-jawed, broody way, if one liked that sort of thing. “What do you want of us?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but Giliead moved suddenly, grabbing Bain’s arm. Giliead said grimly, “It’s this one.”

Bain gasped, from surprise or pain. Then his hand opened and she saw he was holding a small brown stone with some strands of hair bound around it with red string. Alarmed, Tremaine shoved her chair back, stumbling to her feet. She had no idea what it was, but she could recognize a ritual object when she saw one.

Bain snatched up the dinner knife and stabbed at Giliead’s arm. With a growl, Giliead pulled Bain out of the chair, slapping the knife out of his hand. The Bisran men surged to their feet but Ilias shouted, his sword drawn. The sudden appearance of three feet of steel abruptly halted their rush to help.

A flash of light caught Tremaine’s eye. An amorphous green mass formed in the air above the table, resolving into something with razor-sharp claws and several mouthfuls of teeth. People screamed and shouted, coming to their feet.

Tremaine backed rapidly away as Ilias grabbed the elder Riand by the collar, yanking him back and setting the sword’s edge to his throat. But his face set, Giliead kept his hold on Bain’s wrist, saying, “It’s not real.” 192

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“It’s an illusion!” Tremaine shouted in Rienish. “Everyone calm down!”

Bain spit words into Giliead’s face and Tremaine saw something darken the air between them. She had seen a great many defensive spells, but this one she didn’t recognize.

Whatever it was, it made Giliead’s face suffuse with rage.

With one swift shove he pushed the black cloud away as if it was a solid mass, then slammed Bain facedown onto the table.

But he didn’t slam him hard enough, for Bain still struggled, trying to speak. Giliead tightened the hold into a strangler’s grip.

“Don’t kill him!” Tremaine yelped, realizing he wasn’t going to stop. They had covered this point, hadn’t they? “We need to talk to him!” She looked at Ilias for help. He caught her eyes, startled, then looked from her to Giliead, desperately conflicted.

She realized she had no idea if the marriage meant Ilias had to obey her. I can’t ask him to get in the middle of this. She hastily turned to Giliead. “Please don’t kill him. He can tell us things we need to know. I’d say something manipulative, but I can’t think of anything. I suppose I could throw myself on his body, but there’s no way in hell I’m doing that, so—” Giliead was looking at her from under lowered brows.

Then he released the pressure on Bain’s throat, half-lifting him to slam the sorcerer into the hardwood table again.

Stunned this time, Bain went limp and slid to the floor.

Colonel Averi had Bain Riand taken to the Isolation Ward, to the same treatment room they had used for questioning the Gardier. There were two armed guards by the door, and the place was now warded almost as strongly as Ixion’s cell. In the outer room, Tremaine peered through the grille, impatiently hoping Bain would just give in and talk.

Bain sat in a straight-backed chair in the bare whitewashed room. Niles stood over him, arms folded. He was conducting the interrogation as calmly as if he was inter-The Ships of Air

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viewing the man for a position on the Institute’s staff. It made Bain’s sullen expression seem childish.

Niles asked thoughtfully, “Why didn’t you admit that you were a sorcerer when you first crossed into Ile-Rien’s territory?”

It was a reasonable question, and Bain looked away, his dark brows now more sulky than brooding. “Talk, you idiot,” Tremaine said under her breath. As a sorcerer himself, Bain would know how to resist the mild truth spells Niles and Gerard had used on the Gardier prisoners; this could take forever.

Finally, Bain said grudgingly, “I’m not a sorcerer. I am a lay priest.”

Niles lifted a skeptical brow. He said mildly, “You didn’t admit to that either.” Bisran priests of most sects were sorcerers; it was the only practice of magic their government sanctioned. If Bain had described himself as a priest the Rienish authorities would have known exactly what that meant. “What were you doing in Room C374?” A flicker of honest confusion crossed Bain’s face. “I don’t— What room?”

“It’s a Third Class room in the bow.” Bain shook his head, sullen again. “I was not there. I have been in no one’s quarters except my own.” Niles considered him a moment. It did look distressingly as though Bain was telling the truth. Either that or he was a better actor than Tremaine had expected. “What was the spell in your quarters for?”

Bain pressed his lips together, still refusing to answer.

Tremaine rolled her eyes. This is going to take forever.

She turned away, nearly stepping on Ilias, who had been hovering right behind her. He moved back, his expression both guilty and defensive, as if he knew he had been in the wrong but was prepared to argue the point anyway.

Oh, right, that. Tremaine took his arm, tugging him away from the grille so their voices wouldn’t carry through.

“Look, it’s all right,” she said quietly, stopping in the doorway. The outer room was only just around the corner, and 194

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she didn’t want to be overheard from there either. “I understand.”

He eyed her, still troubled, obviously wanting to make sure she really meant it. “You do?”

“I think I do, yes.” During the fight in the dining room his loyalty to Giliead had come before his loyalty to her, but she was fairly certain she had already known that. In her experience of the complex web of loyalties and counterloyalties that characterized both Vienne’s underworld and its theatri-cal community, it wasn’t that much of a shock.

Ilias just nodded, his expression turning warmer. Suddenly uncomfortable, Tremaine towed him on into the office.

There, his suit and neckcloth still in disarray from the fight in the dining room, Justice Riand confronted Colonel Averi. “Your hired savages attacked my family,” he was saying, his face dark with fury.

Giliead leaned back against the desk, arms folded, with Florian perched next to him. He threw a careful look at Tremaine and Ilias as they entered and relaxed slightly at seeing no obvious signs of enmity. Gerard was standing beside the door to the other guardroom, eyeing Riand with dis-like. “That one”—Riand pointed at Ilias, his hand trembling with anger—“held a weapon to my throat. I have every right to demand vengeance on my authority as a Bisran Church Warden—”

Tremaine lifted a brow. There was a law in Ile-Rien that a diplomatic representative on Rienish soil could invoke the laws of his own country against anyone who committed a crime against him, as long as the criminal was not a Rienish citizen. It had been meant to deter Aderassi and other foreigners who came to Ile-Rien to attack prominent Bisrans.

Dissidents had known they were more likely to get a light sentence from a sympathetic Rienish Magistrate and jury and to get their grievance aired in the press.

“They aren’t hired,” Colonel Averi interrupted the dia-tribe. “They are temporarily attached to this ship by the authority of an allied nation, and their diplomatic credentials hold more weight than yours. Besides, the one that held a The Ships of Air

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weapon to your son’s throat is a Rienish citizen. That may mean nothing anywhere else in our world or this one at the moment, but I assure you it means a great deal on this ship.” He eyed Riand with cool contempt. “And as to vengeance, frankly, I’d like to see you try.” Riand stared at him in astonished affront, then set his jaw, obviously swallowing an angry reply.

Tremaine pretended to be more interested in the state of her fingernails, smiling to herself. She had forgotten that marriage to her, if a Rienish court accepted it as legal, gave Ilias Rienish citizenship. Not that that was worth much at the moment, but it was interesting that Averi was willing to use it. “What was that about?” Ilias asked her softly.

“He wanted you both turned over to him so you could finish killing him,” she explained in Syrnaic. “Averi pointed out that it was a stupid idea.”

Ilias snorted, and Giliead growled something under his breath.

Riand was still matching cold stares with Averi. Considering that Averi was the cold stare champion of the ship, Tremaine didn’t give much for Riand’s chances. The Bisran said finally, “Let us speak in private.”

“We are in private,” Averi snapped. “There isn’t anyone here who is not directly concerned in this investigation.” Tremaine knew Riand could have probably gotten a private conversation with Averi if he hadn’t been aggressive enough to trip the Rienish “if a Bisran asks for it say no” reflex. From his expression, Riand might have realized it too.

He struggled with himself for a long moment, then said stiffly, “It is true, my son is a sorcerer. But all he did was cast a ward, and that only to protect our quarters while we were gone.”

Averi’s frown deepened. “It wasn’t terribly effective. We searched your quarters while you were in the dining room.”

“The ward was not meant to bar admittance to corporeal visitors.”

Gerard came alert, staring skeptically at Riand. “Corporeal visitors? What do you mean?” He threw a glance 196

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at Giliead, and Tremaine realized he was thinking of the Syprian god. Though she didn’t think it would leave the vicinity of Cineth, it was the only incorporeal visitor the ship had had. As far as we know, she thought suddenly, uneasy.

Riand’s eyes moved from Averi to Gerard. He said, “My son was approached by something that did not show itself. It came to him while he was alone in the sitting room of our quarters, last night. It offered him . . . an unspecified reward if he would assist it.”

Florian translated for Giliead and Ilias, keeping her voice low. Giliead’s brows drew together as he listened. Ilias met his eyes with a frown and mouthed the word, “Shades?” Giliead shook his head slightly, but more as if he wasn’t sure rather than discounting the suggestion.

“Assist it in what?” Averi demanded.

Riand hesitated, then admitted, “Stopping the ship from reaching Capidara.”

Gerard cleaned his spectacles on a handkerchief, his eyes never leaving Riand. “But he refused.”

“We have no quarrel with the people on this ship.” For a moment Riand looked human, weary and exasperated.

“Should we destroy the very thing that our safety depends on? To trust ourselves to a . . . a man, if it is a man and not some fay or creature, we know nothing of? We aren’t mad.”

“He had no idea what the identity of this . . . being was?” Averi’s face was immobile, impossible to read. “If it was human, if it was male or female?”

“No.” Riand shook his head, taking out a cloth to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead. All these admissions were costing him something, at least. “Its spells of concealment were impenetrable. He could tell nothing about it except presumably what it wished him to know.”

“It didn’t occur to him to play along for a time?” Gerard asked, still watching him sharply but betraying some exasperation. “To try to discover its identity or what it planned for the ship?”

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refuse the temptations offered them by demons and devils.

To ‘play along’ with such a creature would only endanger his soul.”

Oh, please, Tremaine thought, rolling her eyes. She thought she had done well to keep her incredulity subvocal, but Riand caught her expression, and his face reddened. He looked pointedly to Averi, his temper tightly controlled.

“May my son be released now?”

The colonel’s expression was still inscrutable, giving Riand no credit and nothing to appeal to. “I’m afraid not.” Riand pressed his lips together, his eyes coldly angry. He turned and walked out of the office, one of the guards moving to follow him at Averi’s gesture. The colonel frowned at the doorway. “He isn’t telling us everything.”

“He didn’t want to say what it offered, or what it specifically wanted the boy to do.” Gerard paced a few steps, lost in thought. He lifted his brows. “In his position, it’s a wise move.”

“Could that story be true?” Florian asked a little reluctantly. “If this sorcerer or whatever he is wants to destroy the ship, why does he need help from a Bisran church sorcerer? Even a saboteur with no magic could cause us a lot of trouble.”

“He doesn’t want to destroy the ship.” Tremaine’s eyes narrowed as she considered the problem. “He was just feeling Bain out, seeing how far he could go with him. If Bain would agree to sink a ship filled with refugees, including his own family, he’d agree to anything.” She shrugged slightly. “It’s a bit crude. It makes me think Riand is right, and the thing that approached Bain wasn’t human.” It might even be why Riand believed it wasn’t human, but he just didn’t want to discuss his reasoning with people he still thought of as enemies.

Gerard nodded grimly, but Averi gave her an oddly assessing look. It wasn’t as bad as his “who the hell are you” stare, but it worried her. He turned his gaze to the sphere, saying bluntly, “There is an incorporeal being on the ship.” Everyone looked at the sphere, resting innocuously on 198

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the desk where Gerard had set it when he came in. It wasn’t even spinning or clicking.

Tremaine shook her head, startled. “No. Arisilde wouldn’t do that, not unless he went insane.” It crossed her mind suddenly that that was a very real possibility.

Arisilde’s consciousness was trapped in the sphere; if anybody had a right to go mad, it was he.

Before they had left Ile-Rien on the ill-fated Pilot Boat, Tremaine had been planning to kill herself. It was only after discovering that Arisilde was in the sphere that she had realized some of those feelings of despair had come from him.

The images of the Syprians that had worked their way into her play and a few magazine stories had been his attempts to communicate with her. But she hadn’t responded, and the sphere had been left alone and dusty, and Arisilde, left without hope, had unintentionally transferred his despair to her. She had been despondent and probably shell-shocked enough on her own, and that couldn’t have helped him either; they must have just fed each other’s melancholy. It was a pointed reminder that Arisilde might not be in total control of his powers, that he might cause things to happen without conscious volition. But she wasn’t going to point that out to Averi. “If he’s crazy, we’re all dead, so there’s no point in discussing it,” she said curtly.

Averi eyed her for a thoughtful moment. “I’m going to speak to Niles. Perhaps if Bain’s story doesn’t match his father’s, we won’t have to discuss it at all.” Tremaine watched him go, eyes narrowed, then said in Syrnaic, “Did that sound like a threat to anybody else?”

“No,” Gerard told her firmly. “He has to consider all possibilities. But I don’t think it’s the sphere—Arisilde—either.

For one thing, he wouldn’t need Bain’s help to disrupt activity on the ship.”

Wanting off the subject, Tremaine asked Ilias, “What did you say you thought it was?”

“Shades sometimes make trouble by whispering in dreams.” Ilias jerked his chin toward the sphere. “But your The Ships of Air

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god there should keep the dangerous ones away from the ship.”

Tremaine glanced at Gerard, frowning. “Is the ship haunted?” As if they needed that too.

Gerard lifted a brow, considering the question. “There’s some natural etheric activity. There were a few accidents during the early voyages, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t still lingering impressions. But I doubt we have any true entities, particularly any hostile ones.” He glanced up, frowning. “It’s more likely Bain Riand was tricked by another sorcerer, fooled into believing the offer came from some sort of etheric being.”

Ilias shook his head with a grimace. “It’s hard to believe Ixion is on this ship and he didn’t do this.” Giliead had been listening in thoughtful silence. “It’s always been him before,” he admitted grimly. “But Gerard is right. He can’t get out of that room with their god keeping him in or he’d be out of it now. And besides, it doesn’t have his . . . touch about it.” He pushed to his feet. “But . . .”

“But it won’t hurt to make sure,” Gerard finished.

Once out of the Isolation Ward and up on the open deck, Ilias stopped Tremaine with a hand on her arm. “I don’t want you to go with us.”

She lifted a brow at him. “What?” The afternoon sun was bright on the sea and the salt wind tore at their hair. Already across the deck, Giliead glanced back in annoyance to see what was keeping them. He took in the situation and suddenly found something intensely interesting off the starboard rail.

“He knows things. If he knows we’re together—” Ilias made a complex gesture.

Ah. This was about the Andrien women Ixion had cursed to death. Giliead’s older sister, a cousin of Ilias’s who had followed him to Andrien, and Halian’s daughter, who had come to live with her father. Tremaine bit a nail thoughtfully, and pointed out, “Florian’s going.” 200

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“I don’t want Florian to go either.” It was Florian’s turn to glare at him. “What?” she demanded defensively. “You think I’m going to be within ten feet of him and suddenly succumb to his will?” Ilias shook his head in exasperation. “Of course not.” Tremaine couldn’t help herself. “Florian had high marks in will-withstanding at the Lodun entrance examinations.” Florian transferred the glare to her.

Ilias planted his hands on his hips, and said firmly, “He kills women. I don’t want him to see more of you—either of you—than he already has.”

Tremaine sighed. She supposed it didn’t matter; she didn’t have anything to say to the bastard anyway. And she could hear real fear under Ilias’s no-nonsense tone. “Oh, fine. We’ll be in the main hall.”

Ilias lost some of the tension in his shoulders, and took her hand. “I’ll make it up to you.” He lifted it to his lips, and she thought he was going to kiss the back like a conventional Rienish gentleman. But instead he bit her gently in the knuckle and lifted his brows suggestively.

Tremaine freed her hand, patted him on the cheek, and said, “That’s a start.” She wasn’t going to admit just how good a start it was.

Florian muttered, “Somebody could offer to make it up to me,” but followed her without protest up the steps to the Promenade deck.

They went through the doors to the roofed and glassed-in portion of the deck that ran along the ship’s side, but Tremaine sensed foot-dragging. “Did you really want to see Ixion that much?” she asked. “He’s not that exciting.”

“No,” Florian admitted. “But I’m doing the work of a trained sorceress. If I’m going to have the responsibilities, I’d like to have a chance at the authority too.” They reached the doors that led into the main hall and the shopping arcade. The doors on either side of the hall opened to the Promenade deck, and the big room was airy without being exposed to the wind. The daylight reflected off the warm yellow woods and the mellow cream tiles. Tremaine The Ships of Air

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chose a couch at the far end of the room from where the other refugees were gathered and dropped down on it, glad to rest her back and stretch her legs out. Her feet hurt already, but after all the walking on the island, it was probably just a reflex. “You’re the only student Gerard and Niles have,” she pointed out, not realizing it was true until she said it. “They may never have another. Maybe they just don’t want to get you killed.”

Florian shrugged an acknowledgment as she sat down on the couch. In a deliberate change of subject, she said, “Well, how is it so far?”

Tremaine lifted a brow at her. “What?” Florian eyed her back. “Being married. To Ilias.” By which she meant, whether she realized it or not, Tremaine, have you managed to mess it up yet? Tremaine smiled thinly. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“A real answer,” Florian specified.

Tremaine leaned back on the soft cushion, making herself think it over. She had become friends with Ilias almost before she had been aware of it, the shared danger and the in-timacy of having to communicate without words creating a closeness that she would never have sought under normal circumstances. Frustrated because she had no idea how it was going, she said impatiently, “So far so good? It’s only been a day. Really, between Ixion and this thing with the Gardier, there hasn’t been any time.” Fortunately, Arites walked up then, plopping down on the floor in front of them with an annoyed sigh. Tremaine could interpret that expression with no problem. “Giliead wouldn’t let you stay in the room and write down the conversation with Ixion, would he?”

Arites looked disgruntled. “My history of Ixion is missing important details.” He gestured in frustration. “Somebody has to write these things down!” As Tremaine had hoped, Florian gave up on discussing the marriage. Folding her arms and resting her head back against the gold-striped upholstery, the other girl said, “I wonder if Dr. Divies is right, and they do make the Gardier 202

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soldiers forget their past.” She frowned. “If it isn’t a spell like Niles thinks, then they’d have to have terrible punish-ments to enforce it. Could that be worth it?” Tremaine took a deep breath. She was absently people-watching, scanning the faces of the passersby. Most of them were refugees, with a few crew members mixed in.

Refugees tended to wander in groups and crewmen to trot.

“You can’t fault their record of success so far,” she said, realizing she was echoing Divies’s words.

Florian nodded glumly. “The more we learn about them, the more confusing it gets.” She looked at Tremaine for a moment. “Giaren told me that the ship hasn’t picked up any radio traffic since we sank the Gardier gunship.” Tremaine frowned. “That’s not normal?”

“No. On a voyage to Capidara in our world, they could make ship-to-shore connections for almost the whole trip. We should be able to hear the Gardier talking to each other, or the other people advanced enough to have wireless, but there’s nothing. It’s like they’re communicating only with sorcery, like that radio set they had in the caves on the island.” Tremaine shook her head. “That is bizarre.” Why bother to use sorcery when a normal wireless would do the job most of the time? In Ile-Rien—or the Ile-Rien of the past—

there had been a great many people born with some talent for magic, but the number of sorcerers who could do Great Spells, or whose talent enabled them to do more than charms and simple healing and small wards, was a bare fraction.

“But it might be just empty territory all around us.” She gave Arites a poke with her foot. “You’d never heard of the Gardier before this.”

He nodded earnestly. “That’s true. I didn’t have a chance to send messages to any of the poets in Syrneth to make certain before we left, but I’m sure I would have remembered it if anyone had told a story about them before. And none of the traders from other places have ever mentioned them, as far as we know.”

“So maybe they just aren’t in this hemisphere except when they’re attacking Ile-Rien.”

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“But then why are they attacking us, when there’s all this land here?” Florian asked logically.

Tremaine followed that cold thought to its conclusion, picking at a stray thread in her shirt. Florian was still looking at her like she wanted an answer. Like she wanted someone to say it aloud. Why is that always my job? she thought wearily. “The Syprians don’t have sorcerers like we do.” Florian’s brows drew together, her face set and grim. “It must be the crystals. They must have put every sorcerer ever born to them in one of the things, and they’re all still alive, still serving them, hundreds and thousands of them. That’s what Gerard and Niles think.” She hesitated, her eyes on Tremaine again, but shadowed. “If I’m caught—” Tremaine sensed a “will you kill me” coming and nervously leapt to head it off. “Gervas didn’t seem very interested in you. Maybe they don’t do it to girls.” Florian glared at her, but at least that darkness lifted from her face. “You know, I was trying to be serious—”

“I know you were trying to be serious. It was really obvious. I’m not—” Tremaine’s casual observation of the people passing through the room suddenly brought her up short.

Two men, a sailor and a civilian, were walking with an older Parscian man between them. The sailor had a peremptory hand on the Parscian’s elbow as if the man was being conducted somewhere. The civilian was a plain-looking, dark-haired man whose pale face was vaguely familiar, though she didn’t recognize him as being with the Viller Institute.

He must be a refugee, but his brown suit was a little too seedy to mark him as part of the Court or Ministry groups.

He could be one of the people trapped at Chaire who had decided to take the risk, but . . . Seedy. And furtive. Now she remembered; he was the man she had seen with a crew member in the cross corridor, as if buying or selling some forbidden object. That wasn’t the same crewman, but as he conducted the worried Parscian down the stairs, she saw him throw a surreptitious glance over his shoulder. “Hold it.”

“What?” Florian demanded, looking around the room.

“What did you see?”

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“I don’t know.” Tremaine pushed to her feet. “Let’s go find out.”

Giliead wasn’t looking forward to this. Gerard came with them down a deck to Ixion’s chamber, stopping at the outer room to speak to the guards, and Giliead and Ilias waited outside in the metal-walled passage. Giliead folded his arms, glad Ilias had made Tremaine and Florian wait elsewhere.

Giliead knew it was only Gerard’s influence that kept the Rienish from trying to turn Ixion into an ally. After spending this much time in their company, listening to Florian’s explanations of their councils, he realized that wizards were their best warriors against the Gardier, and that their numbers were desperately depleted. If Gerard hadn’t persuaded the others that Ixion was dangerous and deeply untrustwor-thy, Giliead knew they would have tried to bargain with him.

If something happened to Gerard, or if he and Niles somehow lost their status in the Rienish ranks, Giliead knew it might happen anyway.

The guards filed out to wait in the passage, throwing them curious glances, and Giliead stepped in. Gerard had taken out the other pieces of glass that fit over his eyes, the ones he said gave him the ability to see curses, and was studying the door.

“I know you’re out there.” Ixion’s voice came from the other side of the sealed portal. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing of interest to you,” Gerard replied, still studying the door.

“Come to make me another offer?”

“What?” Giliead asked, exchanging a sour glance with Ilias. “Are you tired of the deal you made for your life, and you want another?”

There was a long moment of silence. “I have done nothing to break our agreement.” Ixion sounded sullen and weary.

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with his normal ones. He looked puzzled, but not worried. “I saw some disturbance in the patterns, but I don’t think he’s tried to escape.”

Giliead stepped closer to the door. Concentrating hard, he could just feel the currents of the Rienish protective curses in the air near the door. It was mightily disturbing. A curse this powerful he should have been able to see from any distance, let alone across the room. This was just a mild movement of air that should have been still, air that wove back in on itself instead of flowing in one direction. He couldn’t sense any of Ixion’s curses, just that deceptively gentle barrier. “I don’t think so either.”

“I keep to my word,” Ixion said with particular emphasis.

“I thought you better than that.”

Ilias, who had kept silent until now, snorted derisively.

Gerard shook his head, stepping out of the room. Giliead, not wanting to prolong the interview, prodded Ilias out and followed him. “I don’t see how he could have caused this,” Gerard said softly. “Not from behind those wards. Unfortunately.”

Giliead nodded grimly. “We’ll keep looking.” As they followed Gerard down the corridor, Ilias said,

“He sounded different. Was that a trick?” Giliead shook his head slowly, giving it serious consideration. “I don’t think so. Maybe he’s just . . . He’s never lost before.”

“He lost his head,” Ilias pointed out skeptically.

“Well, that,” Giliead agreed. “But that was over fairly quickly, and he was winning up to then.” Ilias nodded grudgingly, giving in on that point. “So you think he realizes he can’t fight the Rienish?”

“I think so. They know things he’s never heard of before.

Gerard took him down with a curse made of spit and a piece of Dyani’s hair, and he says the god-sphere knows more than he does.” Giliead nodded to himself, thinking it over.

“Ixion’s never had to give way to anybody before, much less beg and bargain for his life; that’s got to have an effect on him.”

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Ilias lifted his brows, considering it. “Good,” he said softly.

Tremaine had gotten to know this area of the ship very well over the course of the past day, so following the two men and their possibly unwilling companion wasn’t hard. Intriguingly, they seemed to be heading back to the Third Class area, further aft and just a deck down from the room where the sorcerer had been hiding. But the blue-carpeted corridors were smaller here and the layout more confusing with more cross corridors, and they turned a corner to find their quarry vanished.

Tremaine swore and followed the corridor to its end, Florian and Arites hurrying behind her. They came to an open stairwell, and Tremaine stopped, startled to see a small group of refugees going up. None of them looked particularly well off, the men in worn traveling suits and the women in dresses that had seen several seasons. “Lot of traffic back here all of sudden,” she muttered to Florian. She leaned over the smooth wooden stair railing, looking up and down, but she couldn’t tell if the three men had gone that way.

The other girl shook her head slightly, frowning. “Maybe people are using the lounge areas. The windows down on this deck are all portholes with dead-lights and easier to cover at night than those floor-to-ceiling windows in some of the First Class lounges.”

“No one was down here last night,” Arites interposed. When Tremaine looked at him inquiringly, he explained, “Kias and I walked around a lot.”

“Huh.” Tremaine looked around thoughtfully. Too many damn rooms. But if the men wanted to do something in a stateroom, why pick one all the way down here? They must be making for a public room. “If they were cutting through here . . .” She crossed the stairwell to the next corridor and headed down it.

“You think they’re spies?” Florian wanted to know.

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“Maybe.” The Ravenna’s original skeleton crew and the small army detachment that had accompanied the Viller Institute must all know each other, at least by sight. But more navy and army personnel had been picked up with the civilian refugees at Chaire, and there might be enough now to make fading into the background easy.

They passed a room labeled THIRD CLASS GENTLEMEN’S

HAIRDRESSER, with a window looking into a dark space with barber chairs and glass cabinets, then came to an open door.

Tremaine could hear low voices, speaking Parscian.

Tremaine motioned Arites and Florian to hang back, and carefully edged up to peer in. It was a long dark-paneled smoking room, probably a quarter the size of some of the First Class lounges, the chairs and tables pushed back against the wood-paneled walls and covered with dust sheets.

The three men were there, with the other crewman she had seen the suspicious civilian with before. Tremaine’s grasp of Parscian was spotty, but better than that of the sailor who was trying to speak it to the nervous but adamant Parscian man.

After a few minutes of listening to them argue she rolled her eyes in disgust and withdrew from the door.

“It’s not spies, dammit,” she reported to Florian and Arites in a bare whisper. “It’s a stupid shakedown swindle.

They’re trying to get money out of him, claiming only Rienish citizens are allowed on the ship and that they’ll report his family if they don’t come across.” Florian stared, aghast. “The hell!” Before Tremaine could stop her, she stormed into the room.

The Parscian man was grimly handing over a battered pocketwatch, probably his last possession of any value. Florian grabbed the watch out of the startled crewman’s hand as the Parscian backed hastily away. “What are you doing with this?” she demanded.

The sailor glared at her in outrage. The anger and frustration in his eyes made Tremaine rest a hand on the pistol tucked into the back of her belt. The man told Florian, “He was giving it to me, and it’s none of your business.” His gaze 208

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swept them, dismissing Tremaine but settling on Arites suspiciously. “I don’t know what you want, but you can get the hell out of here.”

Swearing, the civilian reached for the watch, but Florian jerked it away, falling back a step. “Why is he giving it to you then?”

The Parscian man asked a worried question, looking in confusion from Florian to the crewman. He looked hopefully at Tremaine for an explanation, and she shrugged helplessly.

He was probably a refugee from Adera or the Low Countries who had been trapped at Chaire, unable to get any further or waiting to be joined by others who had never come.

The civilian tried an acid smile. “He’s just giving it to us, little girl. Now take your native friends and get out.” Arites moved to Florian’s side then, forcing Tremaine to step into the room so she could still get a clear shot if she needed to. He hadn’t understood the Rienish words, but the tone must have spoken volumes. He stopped just close enough to the civilian to be threatening. His voice hard, he said, “You don’t speak to her that way.” It startled Tremaine; she had been thinking of him as being somewhat like a Rienish café poet, someone who didn’t get into fights, except rather mild ones with other café poets. For the first time she remembered that he went out on the Swift with Halian and the others and probably spent more time pulling oars than writing stories.

Not understanding Syrnaic, the crewman looked him over, his sneer probably from habit. Arites was more slightly built than Ilias or Giliead, and his wild brown hair was too wispy to stay in braids, his beard stubble as patchy as a young boy’s. He didn’t look that intimidating. “Just take your native boyfriend and get out.” Florian’s cheeks were red. “You’re stealing from these people. I’m going to report you—”

He sneered. “You got no proof. It’s my word against a bunch of lying foreigners. They’re probably spies anyway.” She shook the watch in his face, still angry. “How could you? Don’t you realize what’s happening?” The Ships of Air

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“That’s enough.” The civilian grabbed Florian’s arm.

Tremaine drew the pistol, but Arites got there first, stepping in to shove the man away from Florian. The crewman threw a punch that caught Arites in the chin, then grabbed his shirt, bracing to push him back. Arites knocked the man’s arms aside and slammed a fist into his jaw with an audible crack.

The crewman staggered back and slumped into the wall.

His companions surged forward, stopping short when Tremaine said sharply, “That’s far enough. Put your hands up and back away.”

Arites rubbed the shoulder where he had taken the Gardier bullet. “That hurt,” he said, sounding like himself again.

“Thank you,” Florian told him. She didn’t look at all upset at the fallen crewman’s obvious pain. She turned to hand the watch back to the old Parscian man, who was watching the situation in wary confusion.

Still covering the other two men, Tremaine asked the Parscian, “You speak Aderassi?”

“Yes, a little.” He turned to her in relief. “What is going on here?”

“He’s cheating you.” Tremaine jerked her head at the crewman. “Passage on the ship is free for anyone, not just the Rienish.”

He took a breath and nodded. “I thought it must be so.” He gestured to the men in disgust. “But I didn’t know what attitude the authorities aboard would take with such predators.”

“I don’t know either,” Tremaine admitted. “But I suspect it will be harsh.” She switched back to Rienish. “Florian, can you find a telephone and ask for someone to come down and take these idiots off our hands?”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” Florian said, biting her lip. The angry color was starting to fade from her cheeks. “I could have done that better. I just . . . Stealing from people when we don’t know what’s happening in Ile-Rien—” Tremaine nodded grimly. “I know.” She really did understand. It’s not that we don’t know what’s happening back home, it’s that we probably know all too well.

Chapter 11

Karima has said to beware of Pasima’s motives. She is not the woman to send on a journey of alliance, that it should have been someone older, like Deliana or Marenyi, with stronger ties to the councils in Syrneth.

Halian agrees, and tells Gyan that Pasima will watch what the ally-wizards do, and try to make ill out of it.

—“Ravenna’s voyage to the Unknown Eastlands,” V. Madrais Translation

Tremaine and Florian caught up with Ilias and Giliead just in time for the loudspeaker to announce a lifeboat drill. Tremaine hoped to avoid it, but sailors were herding everyone out on deck, and pretending not to understand Rienish didn’t work.

The crew had been organizing the refugees into groups and giving them a boat station to go to if the ship’s alarm sounded. Tremaine thought it was more for morale than anything else; if the Ravenna sank in this world, there was no friendly shipping to respond to distress calls, and though the boats could travel long distances, few would make it all the way back to Cineth. Reaching Capidara would mean using either Arisilde’s sphere or the one Niles had made to go through the etheric gateway, and trying to get all the scattered boats together for that in the confusion of a Gardier attack would be a nightmare. Not like there’s any friendly shipping left in our world, either, she thought tiredly.

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Fortunately or unfortunately, all the Syprians had been assigned to the same lifeboat station. Tremaine hoped to get through it quickly, but it took both Florian and the earnest young officer in charge of their boat to convince Pasima that throwing the davit’s release lever to swing the boat out into position and lower it wouldn’t constitute using a curse.

Tremaine considered the two Syprian women, Pasima arguing with polite vehemence with Giliead and Florian, and Cletia standing at her back, looking at the other passengers thoughtfully, the wind tugging at her bright hair. It occurred to Tremaine that if Ilias hadn’t gotten the curse mark, he would have expected to marry someone either tall and darkly beautiful or small with hair the color of clover honey. She wondered how he felt about being stuck with a rather drab specimen of Ile-Rien’s demimonde. She grimaced at herself. But you got what you wanted regardless of anyone else’s feelings, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it?

Finally, Giliead glowered at Pasima, saying, “I’m telling you it’s not a curse, that’s how you know it’s not a curse.” Pasima glared back, undaunted. “I have heard that you can’t see some of these people’s curses. What if this is one of those?”

Giliead stared at her, eyes narrowed, breathing hard. Ilias groaned under his breath and rubbed his eyes. Tremaine buried her head in her hands. The magazine stories and plays she had written had all been desperate adventures but the characters had moved through them effortlessly, unaffected.

In reality what you got was tiresome arguments and exhaustion and people pulling you in a dozen different directions and demanding you stop for a godforsaken lifeboat drill when you had to stalk the spy/sorcerer/creature who had tried to get your stupid worthless prisoners.

After they escaped, Tremaine persuaded Ilias and Giliead to stop for a hasty meal, then they continued the search.

They roamed the lower decks, padding down miles of carpeted corridors and metal-floor passages, looking at empty rooms, empty storage areas, and rooms filled with confus-212

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ingly noisy machinery until Tremaine’s feet were ready to fall off.

“It’s like the caves under the island,” Florian said at one point, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes in despair. “Except with seasickness.”

And they still had more to search.

At one point Giliead halted abruptly, turned, and led them through a foyer packed with stacked tables and chairs to a pair of embossed leather doors. He stopped with one hand on the bronze handles, looking down at Tremaine expectantly.

Her mouth quirked. This was the main ballroom, one of the largest chambers in the ship, and she knew what had drawn Giliead here. “The spell circle is in this room. It’s harmless without the sphere to make it work.” She sorted through the keys and unlocked the door.

The dark wood paneling and red velvet drapes, the unlit crystal sconces made the large space rich and shadowy, like a treasure cave. There was a stage at the far end for use when the room doubled as a musical theater, and all the tables and chairs had been stacked out in the foyer.

The circle had been permanently painted onto the marble tile, and it was much larger than the one that had been placed in the boathouse at Port Rel or the first one Tremaine had seen in the Viller Institute’s old quarters. It enclosed most of the long rectangular room, leaving only a few feet of space along the walls. Little ward signs circled the enameled red support pillars to exclude them from transport when the spell was initiated for someone within the circle. Extending the spell’s parameters outward was what allowed a sorcerer with a sphere to send the entire ship through the world-gate.

Florian was watching Giliead’s rapt expression curiously.

“What does it feel like?”

“It’s waiting,” he said slowly. “There’s nothing in it now, but it smells of curses. The curses come into it from everywhere, they’re attached to it by little lines of light.” He looked down at Ilias, one brow lifted.

Ilias gave an exaggerated shudder. “I’m glad I didn’t know that before. Let’s go.”

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It was dark outside and blackout conditions were in effect in all the outer rooms of the ship when Giliead called a reluctant halt. They went back up to the deck just below the main hall, to the foyer with the four openings to the major cabin corridors. The steward’s office was closed, no light showing through the etched-glass windows. There was a doorway open to a small bar lounge, but the windows were covered with thick curtains and the light in the foyer was limited to one small table lamp.

Tremaine leaned on the stair’s cherrywood banister, wishing she could live without feet. “You going back to your cabin?” she asked Florian around a yawn.

“Yes, I think I can use some sleep.” Florian rubbed her eyes wearily. “If I can get any. I’ve got two roommates.

One’s very beau monde, and she lost her fiancé early in the war, the other’s older, but she lost her husband only a few months ago.” She gave Tremaine a bleak look. “They think I’m too lucky.”

Tremaine rolled her eyes. “Tragedy doesn’t prevent people from being bastards, does it?”

“No.” Florian snorted in helpless amusement, then had to lean against the paneled wall to steady herself. “I think we’ve come up with a new motto for the ship’s banner.”

“It’s better than ‘drowning’s not such a bad way to go.’ If you need a place to sleep, you can come to our cabin.”

“You have a lot of people in there already, and I can handle this.” She smiled. “But thanks.” Tremaine watched her go down the hall, and turned, yawning again, to find that Ilias and Giliead had vanished.

She swore wearily. But after a moment she heard a thump and a strangled yelp.

Oh, fine. She started down the corridor cautiously, hugging the wall. Now they find something.

Suddenly Giliead bolted out of a room several doors down, skidded to an abrupt halt, his head cocked to listen.

Then he took long strides to another door on the far side of the corridor, paused at the entrance, and slipped inside.

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to put her feet down quietly. When Ilias stepped out of the narrow cross corridor, she jumped a foot in the air.

Intent on something else, Ilias barely glanced at her. Motioning for her to follow him, he stepped silently to the doorway Giliead had vanished into.

Her heart pounding, Tremaine poked her head into the unlit room cautiously. It was a children’s playroom, the walls painted with a jungle scene filled with parrots, flamin-gos, dancing bears and penguins and other unlikely combinations of animals, the colors dim in the shadows. The toys were long gone but the low wooden cabinets that had held them still lined the far wall.

Giliead was sitting on his heels in the middle of the tiled floor, staring into a dark corner. Ilias had moved to the opposite wall, easing down to sit back against it. Before Tremaine could ask what the hell they were doing, she saw the figure crouched in that dark corner.

Tremaine ducked her head, squinting to see. She thought it was a boy, or a very young man. She could just make out gangly legs in faded blue trousers and a bare ankle above a scuffed rubber-soled shoe, a bare wrist jutting out of a torn white shirt too small for it, the outline of a cap above the shadowed face. “Who’s this?” she asked softly, for some reason feeling compelled to whisper.

“A shade,” Ilias told her, his voice low but matter-of-fact.

Tremaine took that in, staring blankly at the figure in the corner. Then she stared blankly at Ilias. “A ghost?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” He glanced up at her quizzically. “A piece of someone that got left behind?”

“Uh, yes.” Tremaine took a step into the room and halted abruptly. It was like stepping into a meat freezer. The cold seemed to come up from the floor, as if a yawning cavern opened beneath them instead of a dusty floor tiled with alternating black and white squares. Oh yes, that’s a ghost, she admitted, swallowing in a dry throat. She sidestepped carefully toward Ilias, then crouched down to sit beside him.

“What’s Giliead doing?”

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Ilias shifted nearer, his shoulder and arm startlingly warm against hers. “Talking to him.”

“He was a stowaway,” Giliead said suddenly, making Tremaine flinch. He turned his head toward them, his profile etched against the shadow. “What is that?” It took Tremaine a moment to realize he was talking to her. “Someone who sneaks aboard the ship without paying.” She hoped she didn’t sound twitchy. The chill in the dim room, the silence that made even the movement of the ship seem muted, were working on her nerves.

Giliead nodded slightly, turning back to the silent figure in the corner.

Keeping his voice low, Ilias explained, “He told Gil he went out on one of the upper decks because he was afraid of being caught, but the wind was bad, and he fell.” Tremaine frowned. No one had mentioned a fatal accident. “Just recently? When they left Chaire?”

“No, it’s been a long time.”

Giliead said suddenly, “He remembers he doesn’t want to leave the ship, because he thinks it’s safe here.” Her skin starting to creep in earnest, Tremaine said softly to Ilias, “So, it’s not dangerous?”

“Some are, some aren’t.” Ilias shook his head, still watching the creature carefully. “I don’t think this one is.” She was willing to believe that. She didn’t want the thing near her, but there was something pathetic about it. “How can Giliead understand him? This is a Rienish ghost, right?”

“The dead don’t use words,” Giliead answered her again.

It was mildly disconcerting that he could be so focused on the thing in the corner yet still listen to her and Ilias’s conversation.

They sat there in silence, moisture from the damp chill air beading on the walls. Giliead let out his breath in a long sigh finally and got to his feet, moving stiffly. Ilias sat up, alert. The ghost stood and scuttled along the wall in the shadows, making toward the door. Tremaine couldn’t hear its footsteps on the carpet as it slipped out. The cold faded 216

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almost immediately as warm dry air from the corridor drifted in.

Ilias pushed to his feet, reaching down to give Tremaine a hand up. “Can we do the rites for it?” Giliead shook his head. He looked tired, his face a little drawn, and he stretched, rolling his shoulders as if he had spent time in some cramped space. “He didn’t fall in the water, just onto the deck. They did rites when they found him.” His mouth twisted ruefully. “He doesn’t want to leave the ship.”

Ilias looked after the ghost, frowning. Tremaine wondered, Does that mean it just stays here forever? Even if the ship sinks? She decided she didn’t want to ask. Then Ilias glanced at Giliead, brows lifted. “So shades can cross seas.” He sounded vindicated about it for some reason.

Even in the dim light, Tremaine could see an annoyed gleam replace the regret in Giliead’s eyes. “This ship is different.”

“So what did it say?” she put in, before the sea-crossing tangent could take them further afield. “Did it know anything about the other sorcerer?”

“It’s seen something,” Giliead admitted, leading the way out and turning down the corridor toward the stairwell again.

“It usually stays down in the lower decks, below the waterline. I could tell it’s seen your crew working down there. But whatever it saw . . . it made it want to leave there. And it couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It couldn’t show it to me.”

Tremaine didn’t particularly like the sound of that. “So this is a sorcerer that a ghost can’t recognize as human.”

“That’s just our luck,” Ilias commented dryly.

After the ghost incident, Ilias and Giliead went down to the dining hall, which was about to close up for the night. Tremaine was tired enough that food was less important than a bath and headed back to the cabin.

As she pushed open the broken door, she realized the The Ships of Air

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rooms smelled exotic and foreign now, of strange people and worn leather and the scent of the incense the Syprians stored their clothes in. She hesitated in the foyer, deciding the last thing she needed was a run-in with Pasima. No one was in the main room, but she could hear voices coming from one of the back bedrooms. She tiptoed through to the room where her bag was to dig out the gold shirt from Karima and clean underwear, then made a run for the bathroom and barricaded herself inside.

Later, Tremaine came out of the bathroom still toweling her hair dry to find Arites waiting to announce, “Ilias brought your dinner and went away again with Giliead.”

“What?” She wandered after him into the main bedroom to find a tray from the First Class dining room on the marquetry occasional table. She lifted the domed cover to see potato pie, tomato cream soup, and a small coffee service. She sat down on the couch, her stomach rumbling from the smell of sweet onions and cheese. It didn’t surprise her that Ilias knew enough Rienish by now to make someone from the kitchens understand what he wanted, but nonsensically it did embarrass her that he had done this for her. She didn’t want him to think he had to act like a servant. Truthfully, she mainly didn’t want anyone else to think he had to act like a servant. That’s just you being a Vienne snob again, she told herself. Speaking of snobs, she could just imagine how Ander would comment on it.

She set the cover aside on the floor. “Arites, did Ilias eat already?”

He dropped into the armchair opposite her, shrugging ge-nially and pulling a sheaf of ragged paper out of his bag. “I don’t know.”

It occurred to Tremaine that she was supposed to be the head of this little family group. “What about everybody else?”

“I did. I don’t know about anyone else.” Arites arranged his ink bottle and pens on the smoking table.

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provisions must have been diverted onto the Ravenna.

“Where are they? All the Andriens, I mean.”

“I don’t know where Ilias and Giliead went. Gyan is with Pasima and Ander, speaking to some of your people. I think one of them was named Avil-something.” Arites considered a moment. “Avil-er.”

Oh, goody, Tremaine thought dryly, pouring herself coffee. At least Gyan was there to watch out for Andrien interests, anyway.

Arites smoothed a rough sheet of thick paper. “And Kias is with his girlfriend.”

Tremaine choked on her coffee. “His what?”

“He met a woman last night. I don’t know her name.

She’s Rienish.”

Of course. That’s why he and Arites were roaming the ship all night. It sounded like Ilias’s decision to marry a foreigner might not be as unpopular as Visolela had feared, especially with single men of poor families. “He can’t speak Rienish,” she pointed out.

“I know.” Arites nodded earnestly. “But it didn’t seem to matter.”

This . . . sounds like someone else’s problem. “He’s a fast worker,” she commented with a lifted brow, setting her cup down.

After a moment she was aware of Arites watching her thoughtfully. Finally, he asked, “How did you know those men were thieves? To me, and to Florian too, they looked no different than anyone else passing through the hall.” Tremaine hesitated, trying to think how to frame a response. She could put it down to a misspent youth in the poets and artists’ cafés and the theater world, which tended to share boundaries with the older, darker and poorer areas of the city where such men were common. But that wasn’t the truth. “After my mother died, my father took me on walks through the city, and then questioned me afterward on what I thought of the people we saw.” At the time she had been used to Arisilde’s undemanding guardianship, and it had seemed just an annoyance; later she realized that The Ships of Air

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Nicholas had been showing her what danger signs to look for and how to listen to her instincts. “I didn’t know it at the time, but he was teaching me how to see the difference between men like that and men who are just minding their own business.”

Arites nodded slowly. “I think I see. Thank you for telling me that story.”

Tremaine had almost finished her meal when Ilias returned, planting himself at her feet. “Thank you for bringing me dinner,” she told him, self-consciousness returning.

He shrugged, shifting to lean comfortably against her knee and appropriating the last few scraps of potato. He was wearing her ring on a leather thong around his neck. She decided she could get used to this, and maybe it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. Maybe Ander can stuff himself.

She noted Ilias’s hair was damp and he smelled like salt water. “Where did you take a bath?”

“We went to that bathing place we saw,” he told her.

Tremaine frowned thoughtfully at the top of his head.

“The First Class swimming pool?” They had passed through the pool room earlier today to find that Lady Aviler’s group had had it opened as a way to try to keep the younger refugees occupied. The pool was filled with salt water from the ship’s unlimited supply and housed in a large tiled chamber with a mother-of-pearl ceiling. Ilias and Giliead had both been impressed. Tremaine just wished somebody would open the steam bath and other special services in the rooms off the pool’s gallery, but she supposed they couldn’t have everything.

“That’s it,” he agreed. She processed the fact that his clothes were perfectly dry. Syprians didn’t seem to have much in the way of nudity taboos, even in public. I suspect I’ll hear about this tomorrow.

Giliead came into the room and flung himself down on the bed. From his disgruntled expression, she suspected he had been prowling the suite looking for a relative to start a fight with and was bitter at coming up empty. It didn’t surprise her; he had been worked up all day to kill a wizard and 220

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been balked again and again. Ilias, either less bloodthirsty or just more easily distracted, poked at her dinner thoughtfully, asking, “What do you call this again?”

“The white part is potato, the red part is tomato.” The Syprians found most Rienish food palatable, if strange. The only thing they had refused to eat that she knew of was the cranberry pie the kitchens had produced for breakfast that morning, on the grounds that cranberries were reserved for offerings to the dead.

Peering hopefully into the near-empty coffeepot, Tremaine heard Pasima’s voice out in the sitting room. “Oh goody, she’s back,” she sighed.

Giliead pushed up off the bed, his face set in grim lines, headed for the door. And the ring keeper strikes the bell for round two, Tremaine thought, eyeing his expression. Arites was still engrossed in his writing, but she saw him wince in anticipation. Hopefully it would cut up Pasima’s peace as much as it would everyone else’s. Obviously thinking the same thing, Ilias watched his progress, his brows drawn together in concern. Then as Giliead strode past he stretched out a foot and tripped him.

Giliead stumbled forward and slammed his shoulder into the doorframe, barely catching himself. He glared down at Ilias incredulously. Ilias grinned up at him. “Got you.” Giliead grabbed for him, but Ilias was already shoulder-rolling away, Arites having quick-wittedly snatched his feet out of his path.

After a brief struggle Giliead had his friend in a head-lock, and Tremaine was watching wryly, wondering if Ilias had developed that instinct for deflecting possible family arguments before or after he had come to Andrien. Then behind her, someone cleared his throat. Tremaine twisted around to find herself looking at Captain Marais, standing in the doorway. “Miss Valiarde,” he greeted her calmly. “The cabin door was open.”

“Oh, yes. It got broken.” She sat up hastily, putting her cup aside and gesturing to a chair. “Captain Marais, won’t you sit down?” And why in God’s name are you here? She The Ships of Air

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wasn’t aware he ever left the wheelhouse, and if he wanted to talk to any of them, he could have had them summoned there.

Giliead released Ilias and both eyed the male interloper in their territory with wary cordiality. Businesslike, Marais nodded to them, as if finding them rolling around on the floor like oversized puppies was an everyday occurrence. He took the straight-backed chair at the desk, turning it around and taking a seat. Giliead dropped down onto the bed again, but Ilias stayed sprawled on the floor, propping himself up on an elbow. Arites shifted around to face Marais, attentively prepared to take notes. Marais glanced at their Syprian ste-nographer with mild curiosity, and explained to Tremaine, “I wanted to ask your friends some questions.”

“Ah.” She managed not to look immediately suspicious and defensive. “About what?”

He lifted a brow at her, and she wasn’t sure she had suc-ceeded. But he said only, “Just a possible problem with our course.” He sat forward, frowning and pressing his fingers together. “You may know that the Ravenna was fitted with a wireless detection system before the war.” He saw her blank look and elaborated, “It’s an experimental system to detect icebergs in the path of ships by sending out a wireless signal. If the signal strikes a large solid mass, it bounces back and is picked up by the detection device. It was under study at Lodun before the war started.”

Ilias sat up, demanding impatiently, “What’s he saying?” Giliead was regarding her with lifted brows and Arites had his pen poised impatiently.

“I don’t know yet, just wait,” she told them in Syrnaic.

Gesturing for Marais to continue, she switched to Rienish to say, “Sorry, just try to ignore them.” The captain cleared his throat and forged ahead. “We’ve been using the device throughout the voyage. This morning it returned a signal to us.”

Tremaine frowned. “So we’re nearing land? But it’s not Capidara?”

“No, not yet.”

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“Huh. I’ll ask them, but you know they don’t sail too far from the coast of the Syrnai.” She paraphrased Marais’s account in Syrnaic.

It took a while to get them past the explanation of the wireless detection system, but once there, Ilias scratched his chin thoughtfully and said, “It could be the Walls.”

“The Walls?” Tremaine repeated, having to hold on to her patience. “And that would be?”

“The Walls of the World,” Arites elaborated eagerly. “You don’t have that where you come from? It’s mountains that stick up out of the sea. Like islands, but they’re all connected. And there are old cities there, like the ones on the Isle of Storms. I hope that’s what it is. It’ll make a wonderful story.”

“Damn.” Worried now, Tremaine tried to visualize the scene Arites described. “That could pose a problem. To put it mildly.”

She translated for Marais. The lines in the captain’s brow deepened, and he looked very much as if this information was not what he had been hoping for. Controlling his frustration well, he said finally, “If they knew this was here, why didn’t they mention it?”

“He says that a word of warning might have been helpful,” Tremaine translated.

“We didn’t know it was really here.” Giliead sat up, propping his folded arms on his knees. The fight and the discussion had distracted him, and he seemed in a better mood.

“We don’t know where here is, except east and more ship’s lengths from Cineth than anyone can count. And I’ve never talked to anybody who ever saw it, except Hisians.”

“They lie a lot,” Ilias clarified.

Tremaine absorbed that for a moment. “Not about this, evidently.” Hopefully, she asked, “When you say ‘Walls of the World,’ you don’t mean all the way across?” Giliead and Ilias exchanged one of those looks. Giliead said, “The stories say there are ways through, but I don’t know whether we should go north or south to find one.” Tremaine passed this along to Marais. He reflected on it The Ships of Air

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for a moment, staring absently at nothing, then got to his feet. “Please thank them for me, Miss Valiarde.” Ilias watched him leave, frowning, then glanced up at Tremaine. “We’re not going to get to Capidara in three days, are we?”

She rubbed her face wearily. “I wouldn’t bet on it.” Tremaine had trouble sleeping. The ship’s roll seemed worse than it had at any point in the voyage so far, and dim thoughts of storms and sinking kept her out of deep sleep and in a half-conscious doze. Once she was certain she felt the ship sway over and back upright, as if it was making one of its high-speed turns. She finally woke to Pasima standing over her, shadowed by the light from the open door.

“What?” she managed to croak.

After one last sweep of the interior crew areas, they had ended up in the maid’s room of the cabin. Ilias was a warm presence against Tremaine’s side, sleeping on his stomach, arms wrapped around a pillow. Despite the mane of tousled hair, she could see one open eye regarding their visitor with hostility. Tremaine wished she could share wholeheartedly in the hostility, but she felt Pasima would rather have stabbed herself with a hot poker than come in here unless it was an emergency. Pasima confirmed this by saying, “A man is here for you. I don’t understand what he wants, but it seems important.”

Tremaine heaved up on one elbow, by habit fumbling for the bedside lamp. As she pressed the switch and the red-shaded light came to life, everybody flinched, and Ilias vanished under the blanket. “What the hell . . .” she muttered.

The rumpled shape on the floor was Kias, sleeping between the beds in a nest of pillows and bedding. “Sorry.” She switched the lamp off again. She had seen enough to know that Giliead was in the other bed, now accompanied by Arites. She vaguely recalled Arites coming in late in the evening and a minor scuffle as he had climbed over Giliead.

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liking to sleep alone, especially in strange places. God, they must not have wanted to sleep in the other rooms with Pasima’s little band. Either Gyan was being a diplomat again, or there just hadn’t been room for him.

Tremaine clambered out of bed, managing not to step on Kias, glad she had elected to sleep in her cotton night-gown. She didn’t mind the half-naked and entirely naked Syprians wandering the cabin at night, but she saw no reason to join the parade, especially if they were going to have visitors this early in the morning. She recovered her dress-ing gown from the floor and pulled it on, stumbling after Pasima as the other woman led the way out and into the main room.

Everyone else seemed to be awake and dressed. Cletia, Gyan and Danias were sitting in the main room, watching their visitor curiously. It was a naval officer, his uniform cap tucked correctly under his arm, though his tie was rumpled and there was a coffee stain on his shirt. He took in her appearance and winced sympathetically. “Sorry to disturb you, madam.”

“Right. I mean, that’s all right.” Tremaine pushed her hair back, trying to see past the bleary film that seemed to be clouding her eyes. She found herself listing to the right. She grabbed the doorframe for balance, realizing it wasn’t because she was drunk or hungover but because the boat was leaning. “What’s wrong?” she demanded, suddenly more awake. She recalled the earlier turn clearly now; it hadn’t been a dream.

The officer just shifted his balance to accommodate the new angle of the deck, as did Pasima. “We’re coming about, madam. The captain requests your presence in the wheelhouse, along with any of the Syprians who might be able to advise him on our course.” He added uncertainly, “We tried to ring you, but no one answered.”

“It must not have woken me. No one else will touch the telephone,” Tremaine answered, distracted. He didn’t say that nothing was wrong, he just said that we were turning.

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“Oh, I see.” She couldn’t tell if he did see or if he was just being well-bred. “Can you be there soon, madam?”

“Yes, I won’t be long.” He nodded and turned for the door. The deck was already moving back toward the horizontal, and Tremaine asked, “It’s the Walls, isn’t it? We found the Walls?”

The officer hesitated, then decided it was obviously no secret. “Yes, madam.” Another hesitation, then he shook his head, adding gravely, “It’s one hell of a wall, all right.” The dawn view was best from the open walkway that jutted off both ends of the bridge, designed so a crewman could look down the side of the ship and warn the captain that he was about to shear off the end of a dock. The sight that filled the vista from sea to sky was enough to drive the lingering cotton fuzz from Tremaine’s sleep-dulled brain.

The jagged ridge of mountains rose out of the sea some distance off the ship’s port side. The upper slopes were green where small tropical forests clung to the rock, spilling over sharp cliffs in curtains of vine. Beaches clung to their feet in little coves created by folds of rock. Sheltered places were formed by offshore reefs and pillars of stone that thrust up from the waves. Approaching it by boat, anywhere, would be treacherous.

Giant clefts and crevices broke through the rock at frequent intervals, waves crashing through them. Leaning on the rail, Tremaine stared in fascination as they passed a giant tear in the mountain that went all the way through to the other side, big enough for several locomotives to travel abreast in.

None of these openings was even vaguely suitable for the Ravenna, though one of her launches might make it through a cleft without being smashed to pieces. If the pilot was skilled and lucky.

Gyan and a couple of ship’s officers, with Ander to translate, were standing on the deck behind her having a consul-226

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tation about navigation. Gyan had a long wooden pole, marked with a cross brace, which he was using to peer at one of the fading stars in the gradually lightening sky.

Tremaine went back into the wheelhouse, where the helmsman and his mate stared worriedly at various monitors and dials. From overheard conversations she gathered that something called the boiler feed pumps were causing the intense interest, and if they failed all the turbogenerators would go down like a house of cards. Not that they needed anything else to worry about at the moment. Great, they’ve got Gyan out there with a stick trying to figure out where in hell we are, and the boilers might fail. She went back to the chartroom where the Gardier maps were spread out on the big table with Captain Marais, Colonel Averi, Ilias, Giliead, Pasima, Count Delphane and several of the ship’s officers gathered around. Fortunately, Florian was there to translate, leaving Tremaine free to wander around and scavenge from the room’s large supply of coffee and rolls. It amused her grimly to see Pasima’s suspicion, as if the Syprian woman thought they had conjured the Walls as a trick.

Tremaine wasn’t sure of nautical miles and distances, but the Ravenna covered a lot of water at 30 knots, and she had been paralleling the Walls for some hours without any sign of a break. The ship had come about late last evening when it became obvious that she was going too far out of her way for no reason.

“What about taking the ship back through the etheric world-gate now, instead of waiting until we’re closer to Capidara?” Count Delphane asked, studying the map with a frown. In the bright electrics of the chartroom he looked aged and exhausted, his gray hair thinning and his face sallow and drawn. He looked almost as bad as Colonel Averi. They know more about what’s happening at home than they’ve told us, Tremaine thought dryly, eyeing them as she poured herself another cup of coffee. If that was what the knowledge did to you, perhaps it was better they kept it to themselves. She sure wasn’t going to ask for it.

His arms folded, Colonel Averi shook his head. “The nav-The Ships of Air

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igator’s calculations show that in our world we’re crossing through the Maiutan archipelago. It’s a hotbed of Gardier activity, and the sorcerers say opening a large gate for the ship could draw them straight to us. We will if we have to, of course, but it would be best to find the break in the range the Syprians believe is out there.” Delphane’s frown deepened, and he rubbed his eyes. On impulse, Tremaine handed him the cup of coffee, and he took it with a muttered thanks.

Ilias saw she was back and came over to report, “The Walls weren’t marked on the Gardier map, but it does show something to the south. They thought it was an island, and they came this way to avoid it. Gyan’s trying to figure out now if it’s in the same place as the stories say the Wall Port is.” Tremaine frowned. “What’s a Wall Port?”

“A break in a Wall, with a trading port. None of us have ever been to one, but the stories say the breaks are big, big enough for this ship.”

“And the Gardier have something planted right in the middle of it. That makes sense.” Tremaine nodded, unsurprised. “Horrible inevitable sense.” The ship’s telephone rang, making Pasima flinch. Ilias saw it and snorted derisively. “She should be up here when they blow the big horn,” he said, low-voiced.

Tremaine lifted a brow. “Perhaps I can arrange that.” The lieutenant who answered the telephone was saying,

“Yes, she’s here. Yes, I believe they’re all here.” He held the receiver up, motioning to Tremaine. “Madam, it’s for you.” Tremaine handed her cup to Ilias. “It has to be Gerard.” As she took the receiver, the ship’s operator said, “Hold for the hospital, please.”

In another moment, Gerard’s voice said, “Tremaine?

Come down here at once and bring Giliead with you. The Gardier prisoners are dead.”

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the Second Class cabins on the same deck. Tremaine perched on the desk, Niles paced the office area and an exhausted Florian sat next to a distraught nurse. Giliead and Ilias were with Gerard in the Isolation Ward, looking at the secure rooms where the Gardier prisoners had been held. Dr.

Divies was currently with the army surgeon in the operating theater, examining the corpses.

All but one of the Gardier had died in the night, apparently victims of a virulent poison. The only surviving prisoner was the woman, who now lay in one of the smaller wards in the hospital, with one armed guard at the door and two more inside.

“I suppose someone’s warned the kitchen staff?” Tremaine said, swinging her feet against the desk.

“This is insupportable,” Niles fumed, not really answering her question. His tie was knotted incorrectly, for him a sign of great agitation.

Florian looked up, wearily pushing her hair back. She didn’t appear as if she had gotten much sleep. “Niles did reveal charms on all the food stores as soon as he realized what had happened.”

Tremaine frowned. Despite that, she wasn’t much in the mood for breakfast. “The poison wasn’t in the food then?”

“Only the soup,” the nurse answered her, sounding sick at the thought. “It was the only part of the meal that the hospital staff didn’t eat too.” She gestured helplessly. “The first day most of the Gardier didn’t eat it and the ones who did were ill. I thought it might be the spices, so I asked the kitchens to make a batch without so much.”

“Did the kitchen staff know it was for the Gardier?” Tremaine asked.

The nurse looked up, frowning. She was young though there were already touches of gray in her dark hair. “Yes, I said it was for the prisoners. The patients’ food was separate, and the guards on the Isolation Ward were in shifts, so they could go to dinner. Some of the patients still can’t keep much down and—” Realization hit and she added uncertainly, “Oh, you don’t think . . .” The Ships of Air

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Tremaine shrugged. The kitchen staff were probably all Rienish and Aderassi with perhaps a few other nationalities mixed in. Poison was a weapon of choice for Rienish do-mestic murderers; her perusals of Medical Jurisprudence had told her that much. “Are we sure it was actually a sorcerous poison and not just something somebody sprinkled in on impulse when they realized who the soup was for?”

“It worked so fast,” Florian protested. “Surely something you could find in a kitchen wouldn’t be so . . . virulent.” Tremaine tapped her lower lip, lost in thought. “I bet I could put together something, if I had time to really look.” She turned to Niles to ask a question and saw he was giving her that look again. “What?” she demanded.

Niles shook his head in annoyance. “Dr. Divies has already explored that possibility, but a cleaning agent or anything else readily available in the kitchens would have had more specific symptoms.”

Ilias and Giliead walked in with Gerard. “Anything?” Tremaine asked hopefully.

Giliead shook his head. “No trail. But a curse on the food wouldn’t leave one.”

“In a way, this changes nothing,” Gerard said grimly. He hadn’t had a chance to shave yet, and it gave him a faintly disreputable air. “We just have to keep looking.” By the end of the day, Ilias thought he and Giliead and Tremaine had been over almost every pace of the ship, with no sign of their quarry. They had even gone down into the Ravenna’s mysterious innards, where the curses that drove her lived.

A sailor had guided them through those dark noisy spaces, down alleyways crammed with metal and pipes in indescribable combinations, or across little bridges over vast spaces of growling labyrinthine shapes, all of it making an indescribable din. The stink was worse than the flying whale or the Rienish wagons without horses, and there were many of the Rienish trail signs that meant danger. He knew if 230

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Pasima or any of the others knew all this was down here, they would never have set foot on the ship.

One of the sailors who worked there, a big dark-skinned man whose duty, as far as Ilias could tell, was to keep all these metal guts working, had looked both him and Giliead over skeptically, then gestured to the red markings and the levers near them, speaking with serious emphasis. Tremaine translated, “He says not to touch anything, especially the releases for the watertight doors.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Giliead agreed with a wary glance around. They were in one of those crowded alleys between rows of boxy metal shapes and pipes. Even the wizard lamps made more shadows than light, and the air was foul.

Ilias gave the man a grim nod, wishing they didn’t have to come down here at all. “What’s a watertight door?” he asked carefully, having a sudden vision of doors below the water level in the hull, perilously keeping out the sea.

Tremaine translated the question, and the man stepped back to pat the thick frame of the doorway behind him.

Tremaine listened, frowning, then translated, “Hatches that close off the compartments if the hull is breached. They can all be shut from the bridge in moments. He says on the first voyage a man was killed in one during a drill.” She paused, obviously thinking it over. “I don’t think I wanted to know that.”

Ilias leaned forward, eyeing the heavy slab of metal. It was at least a handspan thick. He exchanged a look with Giliead.

Gerard had told them the only curses that were supposed to be down there were protective, meant to stop rust and fire and other things that might damage the ship’s insides; Giliead had been unable to sense most of them but then they were beginning to believe that there were some Rienish curses he just couldn’t see.

After that nerve-shattering experience they had fled to the upper decks, to the topmost one. Here the covered hulls of the ships’ boats were cradled just below the railing, and The Ships of Air

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there was an open space outside between the first and second of the giant chimneys. It was floored with polished wood, and Tremaine explained that it was meant for some kind of game. It was a good place to lie in the salt-laden breeze and watch the sunset and the distant outline of the Walls.

Tremaine had found a wooden contraption something like a couch and dragged it onto the open area near where Ilias and Giliead sprawled on the sun-warmed boards. Propping up one end and sitting in it, she surveyed the view, saying, “So. If this sorcerer who spoke to Bain is a Gardier, why hasn’t he done the mechanical disruption spell and sunk us yet?”

They had been discussing this off and on all day. Ilias sat up, propping himself on his hands. His headache from going so far belowdecks had finally started to fade. It was another world up here, impossibly high above the water, all sky and air and sea forever. You could easily forget the troubled waters they sailed. “Your god won’t let him use his curses, except on the other Gardier.”

Tremaine gave him a sour eye. “He is not a god. Just call him Arisilde.”

Ilias was fairly sure he didn’t want to be on such intimate terms with a foreign wizard god, no matter how much he liked Tremaine and the other Rienish. It had taken him a year or so just to get used to knowing their own god personally. He caught Giliead’s amused eye. His friend was lying on his stomach with his head propped on his folded arms, and Ilias could tell he was thinking the same thing and laughing at him. He thumped him in the ribs with his bootheel. Giliead grunted and changed the subject, saying,

“We’re too far out. If he sinks the ship, he has no way to get to shore. Any shore.”

“He could take one of the lifeboats,” Tremaine put in thoughtfully. “They’re made to travel long distances if they have to. But you’re right, if he’s not a good sailor, he might not like the idea much. I sure as hell wouldn’t try it if I were him.”

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Ilias scratched his chest absently, still thinking it over.

“But how did he get here? Could a Gardier really have come off the island with us?” After the improbability of being here and of surviving all these years, killing one more poisoning wizard seemed ridiculously easy; it was frustrating that they couldn’t find him.

“A Gardier spy could have come aboard at Chaire, with the other refugees,” Tremaine admitted. “But that was a last-minute change of plans, so he would have gotten the chance more by luck than anything else.” She steepled her fingers.

“I don’t believe in luck.”

Ilias lifted a brow at her, and Giliead snorted wryly.

“What?” she demanded.

“You live on nothing but luck,” Ilias told her fondly.

“It’s careful planning,” she insisted, apparently serious.

“I am not a lucky person.”

Giliead rolled over and stretched. “If it is a Gardier wizard, why not do the same as a Syprian wizard would and poison everyone on the ship?”

Ilias shrugged. “The same reason. He can’t sail this ship alone, even with—what was his name?—Bain and all his family’s help.” The tour through the lower decks had brought home just how complex a task it would be.

“That’s one reason,” Giliead agreed. He sat up on his elbows, squinting against the setting sun to see Tremaine. “He must have killed the prisoners because he didn’t want them to talk to you. But why try to make Bain help him?”

“He needs the help of another wizard for something else,” Ilias said, not liking the idea.

Tremaine’s brow furrowed. “If we can get past the stupid Walls, we’ll reach Capidara in three days. In two days we should be close enough to go through the etheric gateway and finish the rest of the trip in our world, since the Gardier don’t have Capidara blockaded yet. He doesn’t have much time.”

Giliead lifted a brow, considering. “He may try for the Gardier woman. Or if Bain hasn’t told you everything, if his father lied—”

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“We need to be there tonight, in the healer’s rooms.” Ilias met his eyes, understanding completely. It had been a frustrating day, and they were both ready to finish this off.

“Of course, he’ll expect that.” Tremaine sounded as if she preferred it that way.

So we’re not having much luck, though I suppose we could turn up another Bain.” Tremaine shrugged, sitting on the leather-clad arm of a chair. “We wanted to try a trap.”

“Niles and I were considering something of the sort. It’s obvious the woman will continue to be a target.” Gerard polished his spectacles, the calculation in his eyes belying the absent gesture. Gerard and Niles had taken over the First Class smoking room as a work area and laboratory.

Tremaine had never been there before and was unsurprised to find it as opulent as the ship’s other public rooms. The high ceiling rose to a dome and the walls were paneled in dark woods framed with strips of copper banding. The over-stuffed red leather club chairs stood about on an inlaid stone-tile floor, and Parscian carved screens framed the marble hearth. Now two of the blocky tables had been pulled into the center of the room and were stacked with books, papers, beakers and flasks, jars of herbs and powders and crystals. Several charts with incomprehensible figures and glyphs partly covered a surrealist seascape, and an easel had been put up in one corner to support a chalkboard. Wooden crates were stacked against the opposite wall, a few pried open to reveal more books. With no space restrictions to worry about, Niles must have brought the Viller Institute’s entire research library and all the sorcerous paraphernalia there had been time to haul aboard. Gerard lifted his brows.

“But of course—”

Tremaine finished the thought, “He has to know we’ll be waiting for him.”

“Yes. Our opponent will have to be aware of that. But he also may feel he doesn’t have a choice.” Gerard paced a few steps. He had the drawn look that Tremaine saw in the 234

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mirror, that everyone on the ship seemed to wear now.

Considering Gerard hadn’t had more than a few hours’

sleep in the past three days, it was a miracle he was on his feet at all. “If we present Balin with evidence that one of her own people killed her companions, it could go a long way toward making her more forthcoming. He’ll want to prevent that at all cost.”

Tremaine nodded, running a distracted hand through her hair and wincing at the odor of engine oil that came away on her fingers. Ilias and Giliead had gone on to the dining room, on the grounds that setting the trap meant they would probably be up all night again and they might as well do it on full stomachs. Suddenly what Gerard had said penetrated, and she glanced up, frowning. “Wait, who’s Balin?”

“The Gardier woman. That’s her name.” Gerard regarded her thoughtfully. “Did you not want to know?” Tremaine gave him a thin smile. “I don’t care if they all had names, children and gray-haired old mothers wasting away waiting for their return.”

Gerard’s expression grew sardonic, but he continued, “Of course, our opponent may not have counted on Giliead’s unique abilities. Gervas did say that they were only able to detect two sorcerers on the Swift, myself and Arisilde’s sphere. Unless this saboteur is somehow able to get access to our conferences, he may not realize Giliead has any special power at all.”

Tremaine eyed him thoughtfully, swinging her leg against the table. “You think Giliead’s a sorcerer, whether he knows it or not?”

“It’s one theory. I think the Syprian gods are actually selecting potential sorcerers. The Chosen Vessels learn to use their magic with the god’s help, and possibly with some assistance from other Vessels?” He glanced at her for confirmation.

Tremaine nodded slowly. “They said there were journals, left by older Vessels.”

“Just so. Those who aren’t Chosen either let their potential lapse or learn to perform small harmless charms, proba-The Ships of Air

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bly without realizing it, that never draw the attention of the gods or the Vessels. And others find a rogue sorcerer to learn from and turn themselves into abominations like Ixion.” He stopped pacing, regarding her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t mention this theory to any of the Syprians.” Tremaine snorted. “No, really.”

“But to get back to tonight.” Gerard gestured with his spectacles. “The Gardier, as far as we can tell, seem to disregard the Syprians completely, so the saboteur may not regard Giliead’s presence in the hospital as a deterrent.”

“Speaking of deterrents . . .” Tremaine said reluctantly.

“Any idea why Arisilde didn’t do anything to stop this?” Gerard frowned. “No, not yet.”

She let out a worried breath. “I don’t think Averi and Ander really understand what he’s capable of.”

“I tried to use the sphere to cast a ward around the hospital this afternoon. Niles tried with it as well. We both failed.

Niles has used his own sphere, but it simply isn’t as powerful as Arisilde.” Gerard regarded her grimly. “I suspect Arisilde doesn’t feel he should waste his strength in protecting Gardier.”

“Damn it.” Tremaine shook her head. “I was afraid of that. It could mean he’s not as all there as we thought, in which case . . .” We’re trusting our lives to a crazy man trapped in a metal ball. She rubbed her eyes. Maybe I don’t want to kill myself anymore not because Arisilde was trying to communicate with me from the sphere, but because I’ve gone insane.

They sat there in glum silence for a moment, then Gerard shook his head. “There’s not much we can do now, except try to stop this Gardier.”

Tremaine chewed her lip, distracted. “We’re sure we’re dealing with a Gardier, then?”

Gerard frowned. “No. We’re not.”

Tremaine got to the dining hall in time to eat with Giliead and Ilias, then by common consent they headed back to 236

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the cabin. Tremaine was hoping to be able to grab a nap, since it was going to be a long night.

But when they reached the cabin Tremaine saw Pasima and Cletia were occupying two of the chairs in the main room, with Sanior sitting at their feet. She groaned mentally and heard Ilias mutter, “Oh, good.” Giliead just set his face in a stony expression.

The three Syprians must have been having a conversation, but the talk stopped when they saw Tremaine and the others enter the foyer. Cletia and Sanior looked uncomfortable, but Pasima had her Ice Queen face on. Tremaine meant to plow through the room without acknowledging any of them and had almost made it to the sliding doors when Pasima said, “A word, Tremaine, if you please.” Tremaine stopped with one hand on the door, the sanctu-ary of the back area of the cabin teasingly within sight. Oh, why not. “I can think of a few choice ones,” she said, turning around. “That lifeboat drill was being conducted by an officer of this ship. Would you behave that way to one of your own captains?”

Everyone looked startled except Ilias, who leaned against the wall as if making himself comfortable for a long siege, and Pasima, who looked annoyed. She snapped, “I didn’t want to risk exposing myself to your curses.” Giliead, who had planted himself in the middle of the room with his arms folded, still stone-faced, told her, “If the ship sinks, you can congratulate yourself on your purity on the bottom of the ocean.”

Pasima’s lip curled. “Cursed ships don’t sink, more’s the pity.”

“All our others have,” Tremaine retorted.

“So you’ve told us.” Pasima eyed her. “No one has seen evidence of this.”

“Evidence?” Ilias broke in with a derisive laugh. “Are we supposed to take you to the sea bottom to look for it?” Pasima stood, her lips tightening. “The only one who has seen this land you come from is him.” She jerked her head at Ilias as if pointing at him or saying his name would con-The Ships of Air

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taminate her. “A man with a curse mark who coincidentally is taken in marriage by you—”

“So Pella of the Cineth council is on our side? Because that’s not the impression I got,” Tremaine interrupted, her anger rising with dangerous speed. She had the feeling she was seeing Pasima’s real face here, the one that Ilias and the others had seen all along. “And if you’re suggesting the Rienish government chose me to bribe Ilias to silence, then I have to say they don’t share your taste in courtesans.” About 90 percent of that was an insult to herself, but never mind.

“If you think we’re lying to you, why did you come on the damn trip in the first place?”

Pasima drew breath to reply and stopped suddenly, the words unsaid, flicking a wary glance at Giliead.

Tremaine stared at her for a long moment. Ah. I understand why they’re here now. Why she’s here. Pasima meant to prove Giliead wrong, to show that the Rienish sorcerers were as dangerous to the Syprians as their own wizards. Her voice tight, she said, “So we bribed Ilias with me, what did we bribe Giliead with? And the god? It didn’t strike me as being big on material possessions.” Pasima didn’t answer.

“Well?”

Studying Pasima thoughtfully, Giliead said, “That’s what she’s here to find out.”

“I see. It was brave of you to admit it,” Tremaine assured her. “Wait, you didn’t, did you?” She turned for the door, knowing if she stayed any longer, she would be hurling objects at Pasima’s head. “Let’s go.” She would have felt fairly stupid if nobody followed her, but Ilias and Giliead both did. Once they were out in the corridor, she snapped, “How long have you known that?” Ilias looked at Giliead, who shrugged, saying, “Since she was chosen to come. Gyan, Karima and Halian all knew it too.”

“Great.” Tremaine put both hands in her hair, a symbolic gesture to keep the top of her head from exploding. “And you didn’t think to mention it?” Being an ambassador, even a lousy ambassador, was a lot harder than she had thought.

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