The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) (36 page)

Halian watched him for a moment more, then shook his head and walked away.

Ilias gripped the rail, looking out at the sea. He felt sick. He had thought he had been anticipating this all along, but the truth was that deep down he hadn’t believed in it. He had really thought Halian and the others would stand by them. Stand by Giliead. “You think that’s… that?”

Giliead took a deep breath. “He’ll wait for what the god decides.”

“Why should he wait?” Ilias said through gritted teeth. The sick sensation of being punched in the gut was rapidly turning into something else.
All we’ve done for them,
he thought, seething,
all those years of fighting and killing to keep them safe, can’t that count for something?
“Why can’t he trust you?” he burst out, caught between grief and rage and the pure pain of betrayal. “Why can’t he trust me?” He flung a hand in the air. “Does he really think you’d—” He sputtered, unable to put it into words. Participate in the kind of corruption that led wizards to kill indiscriminately, driven by nothing but greed and lust, feeding off fear and pain. “And that I’d help?”

Giliead shook his head. For a long time he didn’t answer, then he just said simply, “We don’t have anywhere to stay in town.”

Ilias opened his mouth, closed it again, stopped by the faint catch in Giliead’s voice.
We can’t go home.
If Karima, if the others, felt as Halian did, they didn’t have a home.

Ilias had faced that before, when he was a child and his family had left him out in the hills to die. He knew that to a certain extent he had never trusted anyone in the same way again, never felt as secure about his adopted family as those born into it. But Giliead hadn’t faced this before. And Giliead had prepared himself for this, was trying very hard to stay calm. Ilias took a deep breath, and another, until he could speak without shouting or snarling. “We can stay in the god’s cave.”

Giliead said nothing for a moment, looking away, the wind whipping his hair around to shield his face. Then he just put an arm around Ilias’s shoulders.

T
remaine woke, startled, at the thump that vibrated through the hull when the oars were shipped. She sat up on the floor of the cabin, bleary-eyed and feeling as if she had missed something important. Elon lay on the bench built into the wall, cushioned by pillows and blankets, Eliva seated on the floor next to him. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by baskets used for provisions and a rack of red clay amphorae. “I think we’re there,” Eliva said a little nervously, bracing herself against the cabin floor.

Tremaine grabbed her bag and stumbled out into the brilliant sun and a view of Cineth’s harbor.

The long curve of land was sheltered on one side by a high promontory. Atop it was a stone pyramid tower that acted as a lighthouse. On the other side of the harbor was a long breakwater of tumbled blocks. Above the stone docks, Cineth sprawled across a series of low hills, the buildings mostly white stone with red tile roofs, none taller than two stories, with a few round fortresslike structures that Tremaine now knew were granaries crowning the hills. The whole was dotted with shade trees, standing in the gardens and market plazas.

Along the waterfront there were stone stalls with wooden roofs, where men and women haggled over cargoes or hauled boxes and baskets back and forth. Gray gulls wheeled overhead. Most of the fishing boats were docked at short stone piers, and the war galleys like this ship were stored in long wooden sheds along the far bank. But as she studied the harbor front, she saw something new had been added: at regular intervals there were heavy wood scaffolds draped with ropes, with various-shaped levers sticking out and rocks piled on their wooden bases to stabilize them. Tremaine recognized catapults of different sizes, and several onagers, all aimed toward the harbor. If the Gardier came to Cineth again, the inhabitants were a little more prepared this time. But even the naphtha jugs wouldn’t be much help against artillery or bombs dropped by airships. And Cineth had no spheres to protect it against the Gardier magic.

The sails were down and their galley was already being hauled into place along one of the docks. The rowers were coming up from below, stretching and calling greetings to the people waiting ashore. Even though Halian had reported that the Gardier attacks had been further down the coast, it was still a relief to see that the place looked undisturbed. Only the Arcade, a long stone building housing shops, still bore the smoke stains and signs of damage from the Gardier gunship that the
Ravenna
had destroyed outside the harbor.

The Aelin were in an excited clump in the bow, pointing, talking to one another, the children bouncing with hysterical excitement, as if they were on an excursion boat.
Oh, God,
Tremaine thought, clapping a hand to her forehead.
This is going to be a circus.
As soon as their feet touched the dusty stone of the harbor front, the Aelin would all be wandering off in a dozen directions. Fortunately, Cineth wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis and it should be fairly easy to round them up again.

The Capidarans stood along the rail near the Aelin. Meretrisa was actually on her feet, Aras and Vervane supporting her. Gerard was nearer the bow, speaking to Obelin, who looked bewildered from too many new sights and sounds, his face and balding head reddened from too much sun.

In all the milling around, she finally saw Giliead and Ilias, standing down the rail from the others, isolated. She shouldered her bag and went to join them, grabbing the rail to steady herself as the boat sloshed and bumped toward its place along the dock. Ilias glanced at her. Even when they had been about to storm a stronghold in the middle of a Gardier city and steal an airship with which they had no guarantee of being able to create a world-gate, he hadn’t looked this tense. Giliead’s expression was as implacable as stone, though she could see the tension in the line of his jaw. She swallowed whatever comment she had been about to make, since there was nothing to be said, and just leaned against Ilias.

The galley slid into its slip, and as the men along the dock hurried to tie it off, Giliead vaulted the rail, landing on the stone platform and striding away. Ilias squeezed Tremaine’s arm and leapt the rail after him.

“Damn it.” Tremaine pushed away, elbowing through the crowd of sailors. “Gerard,” she said as she reached him. “Ilias and Gil already went ashore, I’m going after them.”

Gerard glanced at her, nodding absently. Then he paused, frowning. “They’ve gone to see the god?”

“Yes. I want to—”

He touched the bag that hung at his side, the one that held the sphere. “Perhaps I’d better come along.”

Tremaine considered that for half a moment but shook her head reluctantly. “No. I think you’d better stay back here with the Aelin and the Capidarans.”

He looked down at her, concerned. “Are you certain?”

“No, but they need to stay out of this. And hell, you’re a sorcerer, you need to stay out of it too.” The god had given both Gerard and Florian its approval on their first visit here, but if Giliead was going to be repudiated by it…Tremaine didn’t want to take any chances.

Gerard nodded reluctant assent and Tremaine clambered awkwardly over the rail, one of the dockworkers catching her arm to help her down. As she hurried after Ilias and Giliead, Gerard called after her, “Be careful!”

She caught up with Ilias at the Arcade and followed him and Giliead up the hard-packed dirt path through the town, past white clay-covered houses with fruit trees leaning over the walled courtyards. Children played around the fountain houses in the communal courts, dogs barked, people recognized Giliead and called out or pointed or stared, surprised to see him back, or just surprised that no one had told them about it yet.

If the god repudiated Giliead, he would be disgraced in front of all these people, the entire extended Andrien family, everyone he had grown up with. Trudging up the dusty road, Tremaine had the sudden realization that her own problems before the war had been minuscule compared to this. Being kidnapped into a mental asylum and branded by gossip as a madwoman, no matter how degrading she had found it at the time, had been barely an inconvenience in the larger scope of life. No one whose opinion she had really cared about had been affected by it, not Nicholas certainly, and not Gerard or Arisilde; Arisilde, in fact, wouldn’t have particularly minded had she actually been raving mad. And it hadn’t changed the opinion of her friends or acquaintances in the theater world; with all the quarrels, affairs, satirical newspaper columns, drunken sprees and being caught in opium dens with high-ranking members of the Ministry, they had barely noticed.

They reached Cineth’s central plaza, a large area of open ground where spreading trees shaded little markets of awnings and small colorful tents. The markets were crowded today, with men and women buying and selling pottery, baskets of fruit and vegetables, fleeces, chickens, goats. The plaza was bordered by several long two-story buildings with columns and brightly painted pediments. The large one with the pillared portico was the town Assembly, the smaller round one with a domed roof was a mint and the one with the square façade was the lawgiver’s house. The city fountain house was next to it, a low square structure with sea serpents carved along its pediment.

Near the center of the plaza was an old oak with heavy spreading branches that had long ago sunk to the ground under their own weight. The goat skull was still there as a warning that the god had inhabited the tree; it was stuck up on the same post but now sprouted dozens of colored ribbons tied to the horns as well as flowers and strings of beads and copper disks.

Tremaine looked around for Nicanor or Visolela, the city’s appointed lawgiver and his wife, who wielded more power than he did. The only person who seemed to be expecting them was a young man waiting beside the goat skull. His hair was a dark blond, tied back in a multitude of braids, and he was nearly Giliead’s height, his olive skin contrasting with his light hair and silver armbands. He wore a leather jerkin and a sleeveless yellow shirt over his pants and boots and a sword strapped across his back.

Giliead and Ilias halted a few paces from him, and Tremaine stopped well behind, sensing that this would not be a good moment to draw attention to herself. She wiped sweaty palms on her shirt and resolved to keep her mouth shut for once. This close, she could now see the man’s face was lined by more than sun and weather and that he also had an old burn scar on his shoulder. She thought he was still young, but life had obviously aged him prematurely.

“Herias,” Giliead greeted him, his voice even, that stonelike calm making him seem almost indifferent. Tremaine knew him well enough by now that the more impenetrable his expression the more upset he actually was. And she could tell from the tense line of Ilias’s back that he was nearly ready to explode from worry.

Herias flicked a wary glance at Ilias, then his gaze settled on Giliead. “You smell like curses.”

God, no,
Tremaine thought, sickness settling in the pit of her stomach. This man had to be the Chosen Vessel of Tyros, the one who had watched over Cineth while Giliead was gone.

“It’s because of the Rienish wizards,” Cimarus said suddenly, and Tremaine jumped. Intent on the confrontation, she hadn’t realized he stood beside her. She glanced back, seeing Cletia hurrying toward them. Both must have followed them up from the harbor and Tremaine had just been too preoccupied to notice. “Their curses got us home. But the god met their wizard before we left, so that must be all right.” Cimarus threw an uncertain look at Tremaine, asking for her support. “Right?”

“Uh, yes, that’s right,” Tremaine agreed hurriedly, just as Cletia stepped up beside Cimarus.

“Yes, that’s true,” Cletia said, but her grim expression told Tremaine that she didn’t think this was going to work either. “We must all smell of curses, but it’s—”

“Cletia,” Ilias interrupted quietly, not looking at her. “Don’t.”

Cletia subsided uneasily. A crowd was gathering, merchants from the market, men and women who had come to the city center to buy olive oil or trade cattle and sheep, or who had followed them up here from the harbor. Tremaine saw Halian, watching with a kind of sick horror. She recognized other crewmen from the
Swift,
including Dannor, who on the Isle of Storms had objected so strongly to boarding the
Ravenna
that the delay had almost gotten them killed. She also recognized some faces from the council; among them was Pella, a lean spare man who was the lawgiver’s deputy and also the leader of the political opposition to the alliance with Ile-Rien. They were all quiet, so quiet all she could hear was the breeze in the tree leaves, the crunch of the dry grass underfoot, the lowing of a cow in the distance.
A mob should make noise,
Tremaine thought, the back of her neck prickling with unease. Rienish mobs always made noise. Gerard’s pistol felt heavy in the back of her belt.
Please, don’t anybody make me use it,
she begged silently.

Giliead stared past Herias, his eyes on the heavy shadows among the tree branches. “The god isn’t here,” he said, a faint frown line appearing between his brows. It was the first sign of distress he had shown. It would be better if he showed his emotions, Tremaine realized suddenly. If he revealed how anxious he was for the god’s reaction, how worried he was for what might happen to himself and Ilias. That what had happened might change his family’s feelings toward him. If he showed that this frightened him as much as it did everyone else. But she knew she and Giliead were alike in that; the worse things got, the more likely they were to hide behind a blank façade. Or in her case, a sarcastic one.

“I don’t know where your god is,” Herias replied quietly. “I haven’t seen it for two days.”