The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (4 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tremaine eyed him, unimpressed. “Really.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d like to help.”

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

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

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

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

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

The old wooden door, propelled by the shade’s anger, shoved against Ilias’s shoulder with renewed vigor; he leaned into it more firmly, bracing his feet in the doorjamb. The shade’s turbulent presence made the room deadly cold; their breath misted in the air and his fingers were going numb. “Why do you think she wants to gain something?”

“Why else would she care?” Giliead demanded. “It doesn’t do her any good if I die. Whoever the god picks will be a child; does she want Cineth to have to rely on other cities’ Vessels for the next score of years?”

“No. I think she was being sincere. For her, anyway.” It was what worried Ilias the most. The door whacked him in the back again and he grimaced, saying impatiently, “Look, just calm down. Forget Pasima. You’re not going to be able to convince this motherless shade to rest if you’re angry.”

Giliead snarled, “I know that.” Then he pressed his hands over his eyes, taking a deep breath.

Dust stirred across the room, lifting in a curtain, then gently dispersing. Ilias found himself holding his breath, and not just to keep from sneezing.
It doesn’t mean anything if he can’t do it. Some shades never rest and this one is a real bastard.
But he still held his breath.

The room was calm, silent. Ilias felt the pressure of the door against his back ease, then it squeaked as it swung gently back. He straightened up slowly, relieved.

Further down the corridor, another door banged. Then again. And again. Giliead opened his eyes, swearing. “Well, at least it’s not haunting this room anymore,” Ilias said wearily, standing back to let him stomp out. It was going to be a long evening.

D
usk was gathering and a light rain had started when the taxicab deposited Tremaine and Ander in a broad residential street. It was lined with three-story brown brick town houses. Unlike such houses in Vienne, most had steps leading down to basement entrances for servants under the front doors, and there were no ornamental ironwork fences, window boxes or potted trees. Despite that, the street seemed clean and open. Tremaine could see warm yellow light behind drawn curtains, and men in overcoats or women carrying market baskets hurried up to welcoming doorways. There was something odd about observing such ordinary activities, as if seeing people who weren’t enslaved, weren’t fleeing death or warily waiting for the next bombing was unusual.
Well, for me it is,
she thought tiredly.

Tremaine looked down to consult the address again and decided it should be in the middle of the block. “This doesn’t look so bad,” she said cautiously as they walked along the damp pavement.

“What were you expecting?” Ander asked, sounding amused.

Tremaine thought of trying to explain Nicholas’s taste in houses, or Nicholas’s taste in general, and decided against it. She also thought of saying
I shot a man in cold blood to get a truck, Ander, so please get that tone that says “you silly little girl” out of your voice when you speak to me.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
Nothing changes. You shouldn’t have let him come.

These houses looked about the size for families of professional men with room for children and a cook and housemaid; some even seemed to be broken up into flats. She had thought Gerard wanted something with a room large enough to draw a spell circle in. Though maybe— She stopped suddenly, as the house occupying the middle portion of the block came into view. “Oh, God.”

It was a huge hulking structure, its brick leprous with mold, with no ground-floor windows and a pair of badly proportioned pillars flanking its entrance. There was no carving on the eaves and the proportions were subtly off; it looked like a small and incompetent copy of a badly neglected Vienne Greathouse. The neat town houses to either side of it seemed to stand in silent reproach. Ander took the address away from her, saying, “That can’t be it.”

“Of course that’s it,” she snapped. “The place has ‘Valiarde’ written all over it.” It had probably been built years ago as part of an estate by some Capistown land baron and the city had gradually encroached on its grounds until only the house was left.

She stamped up the steps, reflecting that at least it looked big enough to have a ballroom, and tugged at the bellpull.

Nicholas, who must have noted their approach, opened the door almost immediately. He eyed Ander with enigmatic disfavor, greeting them with, “Why did you bring him?”

Tremaine regretted it now herself but she wasn’t going to admit that. “Because he asked,” she said flatly, stepping in past Nicholas to look around. The entrance hall was high-ceilinged and dingy, the wood floor showing evidence of past water leaks. Four sets of double doors opened off it, and there was a staircase at the end, but it was all a little too small and badly balanced for a true grand entrance. Whoever had built the place had been struggling between elegance and parsimony.

“Evening, Valiarde,” Ander said with cautious reserve, stepping inside.

Shutting the door, Nicholas answered with a noncommittal grunt. Years ago when Tremaine and Ander had first met, she had been immersed in Vienne’s artistic community and Ander had been a feckless young noble who liked slumming. Nicholas had met him twice, managed not to speak directly to him on either occasion, and now appeared to be trying to stay consistent.

For his part, Ander seemed to be fooled by Nicholas’s portrayal of an eccentric gentleman-adventurer, though with Ander it was always hard to tell. In contrast, Ilias and Giliead weren’t familiar enough with Rienish society to be taken in by the façade. They treated Nicholas with wary respect, and when they were in the same room, they always seemed to reserve a part of their attention for him, alert for any sign of aggression. It was a wariness they didn’t show with anyone else in their group, an almost instinctive understanding that Nicholas was dangerous; they weren’t willing to trust their safety to his goodwill.

Kias seemed to sense it as well; he avoided the whole issue by trying to never be in the same room with Nicholas.

And Nicholas…
Appreciates the honesty.
Well, she had thought he might be tired of hiding what he was.

Tremaine went toward the only set of doors that stood open, stopping in the archway. There was a fire in a large and ugly brick hearth and the electric sconces were lit, chasing shadows back into the dark wainscoted corners. Calit was on the floor by the fire, dressed in dungarees and a bulky blue pullover sweater that was too big for him. Spread out on the floor around the boy were an array of toys, all of the kind that could usually be bought from street peddlers in Ile-Rien and presumably here as well: a few crudely carved wooden animals, picture cards with famous sights in the city, some polished stones and three brightly colored tops. Calit was arranging the collection with the concentration of an explorer surveying artifacts of a foreign land; which, in a way, he was. He was an Aelin, one of the people who the Rienish called Gardier, and had come back with them from their brief involuntary visit to the Gardier’s world. He glanced up, nodded a solemn greeting to Tremaine, and regarded Ander with suspicion.

Tremaine advanced cautiously into the room. “Where is everyone?”

“The attic appears to be haunted,” Nicholas said, following her in, Ander trailing behind. “Ilias is with Giliead, dealing with it. I think Kias is shifting some empty barrels out of the pantry.”