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

T
his isn’t a good idea,” Tremaine said under her breath. She was aware she had said it before but she hadn’t been counting.

“Do you really think so?” Radiating annoyance, Gerard was cleaning his spectacles with his handkerchief in a way that could only be described as aggressive. “I’m afraid that wasn’t made clear to me the first seven times you said it.”

Gerard, evidently, had been counting. “All right, fine.” Tremaine folded her arms, looking around the meeting room foyer. She resented being here. This building, part of the Capidaran Senate, was prized for its age and historical significance rather than its comfort or utility. Cold and not well lit, the foyer was lined with dark wood and the high coffered ceiling had yellow patches from old water damage. Colonel Averi and several dignitaries, including the Rienish and Parscian ambassadors to Capidara and members of their staffs, were waiting too, standing about in small groups, pretending to chat amiably. Gerard was the only Rienish sorcerer present; safety decreed that the
Queen Ravenna
remain crewed and ready to leave Capistown harbor at any time. At the moment Niles was on board with one of the spheres he had constructed, so the ship could defend itself from Gardier spells and be taken through the etheric world-gate at will.

They were all here in the Capidaran Senate to discuss the plan to liberate Lodun, the Rienish city where dozens of sorcerers, plus hundreds of other townspeople and students, had been trapped behind the town’s defenses in a magical Gardier blockade since the beginning of the war. And with all their past and ongoing problems with Gardier spies, Tremaine felt any discussion in a virtually public forum was an incredibly bad idea. But while the Capidarans had lost some of their merchant ships, they hadn’t yet come under direct attack, and it was hard to convince them of the immediate danger.

Tremaine could almost understand why. Up until a few weeks ago they had all believed the Gardier had come from a hidden city somewhere in the empty ocean between Ile-Rien and Capidara. Discovering that the Gardier came from another world entirely, that they used an etheric world-gate spell to transport their military vessels to a place they called the staging world, inhabited mostly by primitive peoples with no sorcery or modern weapons to protect them, and from there to Ile-Rien and Adera, had been hard enough to swallow, let alone explain.

And when it came down to it, Tremaine felt her presence here was useless. Not that her presence anywhere else would have been particularly helpful. There was plenty of work for sorcerers; the Capidaran and the expatriate Rienish and Aderassi sorcerers who had been trapped in Capidara when the war started had all been conscripted to build Viller spheres, the only real defense against the Gardier. The Viller Institute researchers were busy examining the prototype airship brought back from the Gardier world, but Tremaine really didn’t know enough about mechanics and engines to help with that.

She grimaced and looked around again, impatient. Everyone wore sober wool or broadcloth suits, except for Averi and the other military men present, who had on their dark blue dress uniforms. She noticed Averi’s uniform hung on his thin frame, making it obvious he had lost weight since it had first been issued. Tremaine wore a new outfit of dark wool serge, and the narrow skirt and long-waisted jacket might be fashionable, but she found it constricting and drafty. She didn’t think the cloche hat did anything for her either, but Capidaran polite society insisted women wear something on their heads. On her bad days, she felt as if a dead albatross might be more appropriate headgear for her, suiting her mood and her apparent role in life. Since they had arrived in Capistown, nothing seemed to be going right, or if it did go right, it moved at a snail’s pace.

“Where the hell is your father?” Gerard muttered, pulling out his pocket watch to check the time. Again. The watch had been one of the first things he had purchased in Capistown, a replacement for the one broken during an attack by the Gardier’s mechanical disruption spell. The same spell that Rienish sorcerers couldn’t defend against without the help of the spheres. The spell that had devastated Rienish and Aderassi military forces.

“Oh, come now, Gerard. Considering what you sent him out to do, does either one of us really want to know the answer to that?” Tremaine said dryly, and considered him paid back for the “seven times” comment.

Gerard gave her a brief glare, putting his watch away. “If we can just get this nonsense over and done with so we can get on with the experiment—” He stopped, relieved. “There he is.”

Tremaine looked at the double doors standing open to the dark marble-floored hall. Nicholas Valiarde was just stepping into the room, nodding cordially to Colonel Averi, who nodded back with a closed and somehow wary expression.

Tremaine regarded her father with as much suspicion as Colonel Averi did. Nicholas wore a black suit and overcoat, managing to make the impeccably expensive cut look rakish, despite the gray in his hair and the beard he had recently grown. He didn’t look as if he had been robbing a bank; but then, he wouldn’t.

Then the door to the inner chamber opened and Tremaine followed Gerard inside.

No weapons were allowed in the meeting and had to be handed over before anyone entered. This produced quite a collection. Everyone expected Colonel Averi and the other military men to be armed. A few eyebrows were raised when Tremaine produced the pistol she had been carrying for the past two weeks, and Gerard surprised everyone by emptying his pockets of a flick knife and a revolver. Nicholas was the only one unarmed. Tremaine snorted to herself in derisive amusement, knowing weapons or lack thereof was no measure of who was dangerous and who wasn’t; if the Capidarans had any inkling, they would never have allowed Nicholas inside the building.

The meeting room was as drafty as the foyer and the hall, with a dark marble floor and dark paneling lightened only by electric sconces, newly installed in the old building. Rows of long, finely carved tables and uncomfortable benches faced a dais with a table and chairs for the principal figures.

Tremaine was making her way toward a seat, already feeling the room’s damp chill penetrate her bones, wishing she was back at their refugee hostel with a cup of coffee, or in bed with Ilias, or better yet on the
Ravenna
in bed with Ilias and coffee, when Gerard grabbed her arm. This was not something Gerard normally did, not unless he strongly suspected they were about to be killed. Instinct freezing her into immobility, Tremaine hastily surveyed the room.

She had noted in a general way the several well-dressed men and women taking seats at the head table, shuffling papers, addressing casual comments to one another. Now she saw that the man seated quietly at one end of the table was Ixion.

Oh, for the love of God,
she thought, mostly disgusted with herself.
I should have expected this.
The sorcerer was wearing a gray wool suit with high pointed lapels in the latest fashion; for some reason this made Tremaine’s skin crawl. None of the other Syprians would wear Rienish clothing except for a coat against the cold.

There was no hint now to show that the body Ixion was wearing had been grown in a homemade vat on the Isle of Storms; his brows and eyelashes had grown in and his hair was dark, if too short for fashion. His face was ordinary, that of a reasonably handsome older man.

Beside her, Gerard echoed her thought, quietly furious. “I should have known this was coming.”

Tremaine turned to him, appalled, then read his expression. “Don’t walk out,” she said sharply. If ever a man looked as if he was about to take his sphere and go home, or at least back to the
Ravenna
, it was Gerard.

Count Delphane, highest-ranking Rienish noble in Capidara, and representative of the Queen and Princess Olympe, took his place at the table. He was tall, sharp-featured, with carefully cut gray-white hair. He met Gerard’s gaze steadily, as if letting the sorcerer know his reaction hadn’t gone unobserved.

Gerard pressed his lips together. “No, I won’t walk out. They would know it for an empty gesture.” They would know Gerard wouldn’t desert the people who depended on him, no matter how great the provocation.

Nicholas stepped past them, commenting dryly, “This surprises you?”

Tremaine set her jaw and studied her feet in her uncomfortable new shoes. She supposed it made a horrible kind of sense. They were desperately short of sorcerers, and only the most skilled were able to successfully build Viller spheres, the only things that made resistance to the Gardier possible. Even with every available sorcerer at work constructing them, there were still far fewer than they needed to repel an invasion of Capidara, liberate Lodun and the rest of Ile-Rien and protect their ally Parscia. To people who didn’t know Ixion’s history, it must seem mad not to make use of him. Ignoring Nicholas, she said, low-voiced, to Gerard, “The request to give up our weapons takes on a new aspect.”

“Yes, doesn’t it,” Gerard agreed, his expression grim. Nicholas had moved on, finding a seat at the front row of tables, near the outside aisle. Tremaine caught Gerard’s sleeve, hauling him to an empty place in the middle row, anxious not to be the only ones left standing. She wanted to give Gerard time to recover.

As everyone found a place, the Capidaran minister, a grim-faced older man, stood on the dais, saying, “I don’t think I need explain the gravity of our situation to anyone here. The Low Countries, their colonies in the Maiutan islands, Parscia and Bisra have all suffered terrible losses. Adera, and now Ile-Rien, have fallen.”

Unexpectedly, Tremaine felt her stomach clench. Was this the first time someone had said it aloud? The minister paused, staring inquiringly at Tremaine. She stared back blankly, then realized he was actually looking at Gerard, seated next to her, who had raised a hand. The minister asked, “You have a comment?”

“I have a question,” Gerard corrected, and Tremaine rubbed her brow to shield her expression, hearing that tone in his voice.

“Yes?”

“What is he doing here?” The question was pointed and obviously directed at Ixion.

The minister threw an unreadable glance at the Syprian sorcerer. It was Count Delphane who answered, “He’s offered to help defend Capistown from the Gardier.”

Gerard shook his head slowly, incredulously. “You must be out of your minds.”

Ixion spread his hands, the picture of reason. “I have never done anything but defend myself.” He spoke Rienish with less of an accent than Ilias and the other Syprians did; he had learned it from his captors the same way he had learned the Gardier language on the Isle of Storms.

Gerard lifted his brows. “By concealing your identity so you could murder three young women in their own home, among other crimes too numerous to list.”

This gathering was too orderly to actually stir or murmur, but Tremaine detected a sudden shift in interest and a new alertness around her; she suspected that the members of the Rienish Embassy to Capidara hadn’t known this.

Three young women
. Ilias’s cousin, Giliead’s sister and stepsister. Tremaine hadn’t known them, couldn’t remember the names she had been told. But she knew how close Syprian families could be and how painful that loss must have been. Not the least because Giliead and Ilias both felt responsible for failing to see through Ixion’s deception. And since Giliead’s sister had been all that had stood between the Andrien household and the more acquisitive branches of the family, it was a loss that continued to have repercussions. Tremaine knew why Gerard had brought up that crime rather than any of the many others that could be laid at Ixion’s door. Ilias and Giliead had seen it happen, and if the Capidaran government could be persuaded to hold a hearing, they could testify to it.

Ixion, of course, seemed impervious to the accusation. He said simply, “I was angry. I felt I needed to revenge myself. Something you could perhaps understand in your current circumstances.”

Gerard sat back, his lips thin with distaste. But he had made Ixion’s character public and it would be impossible for the Capidarans to ignore.

A voice, quiet but amused and clearly audible to the entire room, said, “It’s been my experience that such ‘indiscretions’ are invariably committed by men who are enraged by their own sexual inadequacy.”

The room went silent. Tremaine choked on an indrawn breath and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from ruining the moment by gasping for air. The speaker had, of course, been her father.

Ixion contemplated Nicholas in bemused silence. Nicholas, slouched on the bench, chin propped on his hand, gave him back a thin predatory smile.

Ixion lifted a brow. “You find such behavior cruel and immoral, of course.”

“No,” Nicholas answered with a slight shrug. “I find it dull and unimaginative. As well as enormously predictable.”

Ixion’s brows drew together. Tremaine read that look with unexpected clarity. Nicholas wasn’t what the sorcerer expected and Ixion couldn’t decide if he was facing an opponent or a kindred spirit, and it clearly intrigued him. He said slowly, “That could be construed as a challenge.”

“A challenge?” Nicholas didn’t bother to seem innocently surprised; he said mockingly, “To an entirely reformed character such as yourself?”

“That’s enough.” Delphane cut off Ixion’s response firmly, throwing a forbidding look at Nicholas. “We have much to discuss and little time for it.” He glanced at the Capidaran minister and got a nod to continue. “You all know that we’re here to discuss the plan to use the etheric world-gates to liberate the Rienish sorcerers trapped by the Gardier in the city of Lodun. If you’ve studied the notes at all, you realize there is some protection against materializing inside solid objects written into the gate spells, but creating gates on land is still problematic, at least for us. We originally thought Lodun’s wards must be keeping the Gardier out, but we don’t know if that’s the reason the Gardier haven’t entered Lodun through a world-gate, or if they were unable to establish any spell circles in the corresponding location in the staging world, or if…” His expression hardened. “They have entered Lodun, and have simply allowed the barrier to remain in place to keep whoever remains alive inside imprisoned.” Tremaine winced. The Gardier used large crystals they called avatars in place of the spheres, but all were inhabited by the displaced souls of sorcerers, none of which had gotten there by accident. The Rienish still had no idea how the Gardier did this, or what happened to the captured sorcerers’ bodies, or the answers to a number of unpleasant questions. “None of our prisoners can shed any light on this.” Delphane paused to look around the room, his eyes hard. “But if any of those inside are still alive, we have to attempt a rescue. The spheres now make this more feasible.”