The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (3 page)

She shook her head as if he had made some silly emotional protest, not understanding. “He would be safe. Safe from the god’s punishment, at least,” she amended, perhaps remembering that none of them were safe, now that the Gardier could cross worlds wherever they wanted.

“He has to know what will happen,” he told her, annoyed. Surely no matter what she thought of Giliead, she could understand that.

“He should accept it, stay here, and let the god choose another Vessel,” she insisted.

Oh, now I see.
Ilias smiled sourly. “The god won’t choose another Vessel while Giliead lives.”

Pasima frowned in disbelief. “How do you know that?”

“It’s in the Journals.” Gathered by various poets through the years, the Journals told the stories of all the Vessels, their life histories, the wizards they had fought and killed, details about the different curses they had encountered. Everything they knew about the gods. Most people didn’t bother to read the whole text, as the poets usually excerpted the more entertaining stories. But Ilias had had to do something on all the long nights Giliead had set himself to study, so he had read them too. “There’s a story about Liatres, a Vessel from Syigoth. He was injured in a battle on the Outer Islands and couldn’t walk. He lived for years after, but the god didn’t choose the Vessel to replace him until he died.” Arites had been writing Giliead’s journal, Ilias recalled suddenly. He didn’t know if the older parts had been copied and sent to the poets in Syrneth yet or not. The newest part must be mixed up with the story Arites had been writing of the
Ravenna
’s voyage. Though if things went the way they feared, Giliead’s journal might not be a story Arites would have much wanted to tell.

Pasima sat back, her brows knit. Ilias felt a flash of pity for her. He said, “There’s nothing anyone can do about it now. We have to wait and see what the god will do.”

Her face set, the lines of strain around her finely shaped mouth deeply etched. “There’s a reason our ancestors decided to mark the cursed. Maybe it’s Giliead’s continued association with you that made this happen.” She stood abruptly. “You should stay here and let him return alone.”

Pasima didn’t stay to take in his stung expression, already turning on her heel, striding away down the cold corridor. Ilias looked at the mud-stained stitching on his boots, gritting his teeth until his jaw hurt.
Why did you even talk to her? What is wrong with you?

When he looked up, Nicholas Valiarde was standing over him. He wore Rienish clothing, all in black, most of it concealed by a long black coat.
Oh good, it’s my crazy father-in-law,
Ilias thought in resignation. This day was just getting better and better. Nicholas said, “Come with me.”

Ilias eyed him. “No.”

An eyebrow lifted slightly. “You only take orders from my daughter?”

Ilias lifted a brow right back at him. “Yes.”

Unexpectedly, Nicholas’s mouth quirked in amusement. He sat down on the bench, sweeping his coattails out of the way. “I see.”

A test,
Ilias thought sourly. That was about all he needed. Then he realized Nicholas had spoken Syrnaic. “You got the god-sphere to give you our language.” It came out sounding like an accusation. The special sphere, the one that the wizard Arisilde lived in, had given Tremaine, Gerard, Ander and Florian the ability to speak Syrnaic when they had first come to Cineth. They had discovered later how to get it to give the ability to speak Aelin, the Gardier language. At least Nicholas had learned that one the hard way, by living among the Gardier.

“It seemed easiest.” Nicholas regarded him for a long moment. “I have an appointment to view a house in town. Do you want to accompany me?”

Ilias frowned, not certain he understood. “A house?”

“Gerard needs a place to make further experiments with the sphere. And I’m assuming you and the others find the accommodations in the refugee hostel as uncomfortable as I do.” He watched one of the Capidaran warriors with a shooting stick propped on his shoulder stride down the hall.

Ilias thought it over, considering briefly the idea that Nicholas might mean to kill him. At this point, anything would be a welcome distraction. He shrugged. “I’ll come.”

I
lias had walked along the harbor with the others, usually to look wistfully at the
Ravenna,
but he had only gone into the city a few times, and not very far. The noise and stink of smoke was bad enough inside the port.

Nicholas didn’t lead him toward the building’s outer court, but down the polished stone stairs and through an unobtrusive door in the wall at the bottom. It led through a series of dingy corridors and into a low-ceilinged noisy room filled with wooden cabinets and steam and cooking smells. People in white clothing stared at them as they passed but no one tried to stop them; Nicholas pushed through a heavy wooden door at the far end and they were suddenly out in gray daylight, in a small dirty stone-paved court. It was sunk below the street, walled by an iron-barred fence, with a stairway leading up to an alley between high brown brick walls. Following Nicholas up steps that were still damp from a recent rain, Ilias was aware this was probably not the way most people left the building. As Nicholas paused to close the barred gate behind them, Ilias asked, “Are we prisoners here?”

Nicholas hesitated, then let the gate latch drop. “Not as such.” He took a pair of small round glass eye-lenses out of a pocket, like the ones Gerard wore. But when he put these on, Ilias saw the glass was tinted dark rather than clear. He turned down the alley, walking toward the noise of the street. “I’d rather not give anyone the opportunity to restrict my movements.”

Ilias could understand that. They reached the walk bordering the street in front of the heavy stone façade of the Port Authority. It was fairly broad but awash in mud, with a narrow stone verge for people to walk on. The passersby hurried along, dodging water and mud spray from the wheels of the horseless wagons. Most were dressed in the same kind of clothes the Rienish wore, dark blues or browns and grays with only a touch of color in a neckcloth or scarf. Ilias wrinkled his nose at the stench of smoke and stagnant water and worse. He didn’t understand how these people could have horseless wagons and wizard lights like the Rienish but have failed to master the elementary skill of draining their city of human waste.

Ilias had been to a Rienish city with Tremaine, the one the Gardier now occupied. The smoke and the noise had been nearly as bad but there had been marvelous things to look at: windows with jewel-colored glass, huge stone buildings heavy with carvings of strange creatures. These buildings were all brown brick or a weathered dun-colored stone, none as imposing, and the windows were just dusty glass. The people here spoke mostly Rienish but other languages were mixed in as well, making it confusing.

Ilias knew from past ventures out that the people here would still stare even if he tied all his hair back, so he hadn’t bothered. People did stare, not in the idly curious or sometimes appreciative way that the Rienish did, but as if they were affronted at seeing someone different from themselves.

Nicholas stepped around a mud puddle, and said, “Why did you ask if we were prisoners?”

Ilias shrugged, at first not meaning to answer. Then he found himself saying, “Tremaine says they’re listening to Pasima. If she’s told them that when we go back to Cineth, the god will kill Giliead for what he’s done…” He shrugged again, torn between the anxiety that made him want to talk about it and a reluctance to drag the whole thing out before Tremaine’s enigmatic father.

Nicholas threw him a sideways glance, his eyes invisible behind the opaque lenses. “I hadn’t realized your situation in Cineth was quite that serious.”

“We don’t really know what the god will do,” Ilias admitted. “But no Chosen Vessel ever used a curse before.”

“But it has punished Vessels for transgressions in the past.”

“Our god hasn’t.” Cineth’s previous Chosen Vessels had all led fairly unremarkable lives, except for the one a few generations ago who had somehow managed to acquire two husbands and a pack of children in between ridding her territory of several particularly vicious wizards. Her descendants still had their farms to the south of the city. “Other gods have. They refuse to see the Vessel, and then he kills himself.” Gunias of the Barrens Pass had fallen on his sword when his god had denied him, though no one knew what Gunias had done. Eliade of Syrneth’s crime had been more obvious: she had been sent away from her god when she had killed her own sister out of jealousy over a man; she had drowned herself.

Nicholas was silent for a few steps before he replied obliquely, “There are better ways of getting rid of unwanted individuals.”

Ilias thought he meant that it was no good overreacting, that there was no proof the gods had caused deaths that might well have come out of guilt. But because he wanted to get something out into the open, he said, “Like me.”

Nicholas stopped to regard him directly, the stream of people impatiently circling around them. Ilias still couldn’t see his eyes but his voice was dry and faintly exasperated. “That aside, if anything happened to you, Tremaine would of course assume that I had arranged it. No evidence I could produce of my innocence, no alibi no matter how ironclad, would convince her otherwise, and I could shortly expect an unpleasant surprise.” Turning away to continue up the street, he added, “If you raise a daughter to be both independent and an excellent marksman, you have to accept the fact that your control over her actions is at an end.”

T
hey reached a quieter street finally, though the buildings here were just as ugly. Nicholas stopped in front of one with steps leading up to a door a little way above street level. Ilias supposed with the city so crowded they had to take advantage of every space, but he didn’t understand why half the people didn’t just pick up and go build another city somewhere else. It seemed ridiculous to let a place grow so large that it became unpleasant to live in.
And it’s not like they have to look for a spot with a god either,
he thought, watching Nicholas climb the steps and pull at a little brass handle to one side of the door.

Ilias heard a bell ring dimly within. After another moment’s wait, the door opened to reveal a thin man with dark hair and narrow features, dressed in the same jacket and pants that many of the men seemed to wear, except his was a dark brown and the cloth tied around his neck was bright red. Nicholas spoke to him in Rienish and Ilias didn’t bother to listen, looking around to see if there was anything on the street to keep him occupied while Nicholas conducted his business. The man replied, moving back out of the doorway and making an expansive gesture. Nicholas glanced back, gesturing for Ilias to follow.

Ilias hesitated a moment, surprised, then remembered the only good thing about this place was that they had no more idea what a curse mark was than the Rienish. He went up the stairs after Nicholas.

The entry hall was high-ceilinged and dark, despite the wizard lights in glass shades mounted on the walls. Four doors opened into other spacious rooms, and stairs at the far end led to the upper floors. It was a relief to be out of the cold, though Ilias suspected that once he got used to it this house wouldn’t feel warm either. It was a little like the house that Tremaine had lived in, the one he had seen in their brief trip to her land, except this one smelled of damp rot. It made him miss the
Ravenna
again; her insides were all light wood and colored glass, her colors ivory and gold and red.

The Capidaran man looked him over curiously as he shut the door, speaking to Nicholas in Rienish, “And this is your …?”

“Son-in-law,” Nicholas replied, stepping to one of the partly open doors to examine the room inside. Everything was dark and heavy, with dark colors in the carpets and the wall coverings, heavy dark wooden furniture with dark fabric cushions. “I’m taking this house for my daughter and her in-laws.”

“Oh, I see.” The man seemed to make some mental shift.

“The ballroom?” Nicholas prompted.

“Ah! This way.” He turned to lead the way up the stairs.

Ilias trailed after, turning over the Rienish words
ball room,
and remembering it wasn’t as interesting as it sounded. At the top of the stairs there were two double doors, and the room proved to be just a big shadowy chamber, the floor of once-fine wood set into squares, the different grains and hues used to make patterns. There were curse lights in pink crystal balls mounted on the walls, and the ceiling was figured into squares. Though the colors here were lighter pinks and creams, the paper wall coverings were peeling off, revealing plaster beneath that was green with mold. Ilias wrinkled his nose at the smell. But Nicholas looked at the polished expanse of floor and nodded to himself. “Perfect.”

“So glad it suits,” the Capidaran man said, though there was a note of incredulity in his tone.

The talk turned to coins and how much Nicholas was going to give for the house. Bored, Ilias wandered the length of the room, half-alert for lingering curse traps. Though he didn’t have Giliead’s god-given ability to see curses, there were things he knew to look for: blind spots in his vision, surreptitious movement, changes in the air. Giliead would have to check over everything, but Ilias suspected there was nothing here.

Through an archway at the back he found a much smaller room that was all glass, the long panes set into panels of wrought iron. It might have been a fine place except that the glass was covered with dust, turned to a thick sticky substance by the damp, and there were pottery tubs filled with dirt and the dry remains of dead plants. He rubbed at the glass with his coat sleeve and found it looked down onto a garden paved with stone, with overgrown beds choked with weeds and dead brush and a fountain with stagnant green water. He sighed, leaning his forehead against the cold glass. Everywhere he looked there were reminders of death.