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

noted that Ixion had guards who conducted him away, burly young men in Capidaran dress militia uniforms of red and gray. There was also an older man with old-fashioned muttonchop whiskers, dressed in a well-tailored civilian suit, who would be a sorcerer, and a correct young woman in a dark dress who must be his assistant or apprentice. Tremaine snorted to herself in disgust. Small use that would be if Ixion decided to make trouble.
    She caught up with Gerard out in the foyer in time to hear him tell Averi, “I think that demonstrated that Ixion’s claims are completely false. Even under mild provocation, he couldn’t keep himself from making a threat.”
    “Yes, but I hardly think what Valiarde said was mild provocation,” Colonel Averi pointed out wearily. “The man is impossible.”
    Well, yes, Tremaine mentally agreed. She looked around, noting that Nicholas was not only impossible but absent, off on his next mission. It looked suspiciously as if he had only shown up for the meeting to invite Ixion into that confrontation. She stopped abruptly, letting Gerard and the colonel draw ahead of her, wondering if that were the case. He would have had to know that Ixion would be there, she thought, annoyance turning to anger. And he didn’t tell us…. But she didn’t see how he could have known; they had only been in Capidara two weeks, surely not even Nicholas could have set up a spy network in that time. Unless he already had one in place, and he just had to find it again….
    “Tremaine, if you have a moment.” Giaren stepped up to her, opening a brown cardboard portfolio. He was a young man, dressed very correctly, with his hair slicked back. He was Niles’s assistant in the Viller Institute, though he wasn’t a sorcerer himself. “I thought you might want some of these.”
    The portfolio was filled with photographs. Tremaine took the first he handed her, diverted. “You took these?”
    “Yes.” He paged through the others, selecting a few. “I’ve been using the camera to help catalog the Institute’s experiments with the spheres and it seemed natural to take some exposures of the Ravenna . Though,” he admitted, apparently realizing just how many photographs were in the portfolio, “I seem to have gotten a bit out of hand.”
    The black-and-white image Tremaine held was grainy but she recognized the Ravenna ’s boat deck immediately. It had to have been taken when they were disembarking at Capistown port; the long hulls of the lifeboats that nearly made a roof over the deck were swung out in their davits and a crowd of refugees and sailors milled around the railings. Back against the wall, Giliead was seated on the steps that led up to one of the hatches, Ilias at his feet. Many of the other figures were a little blurry as the camera had caught them in motion; the two Syprians, sitting still, were in sharper focus.
    There was a hard edge to Giliead’s face and his expression was guarded and suspicious. Ilias looked more relaxed but still watchful. His hair had come mostly loose from his queue and hung down past his shoulders in a mane of curls and tangles. The lack of color muted the effect of their Syprian clothes, but the sleeveless shirts and jerkins, the leather boots and braid, armbands and earrings and the pants with lacing rather than buttons still looked exotically different from the dungarees or tweed or pullovers that everyone else seemed to be wearing.
    From this distance the curse mark branded into Ilias’s cheek was just a glint of metallic light against his skin.
    She sorted through the other photographs, finding one of the ship’s officers posed rather stiffly in the wheelhouse, and one of Gerard and Niles, Gerard’s dark head bent down near Niles’s sleek blond one, their backs half-turned toward the camera and their attitude that of conspirators. So the last great sorcerers of Ile-Rien will be remembered to posterity, she thought dryly, if there is a posterity. But the next was of