The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rein) Read Free

bound with the same chains they had used on their slaves. With pale skin and heads shaved to stubble, they all looked alike to Tremaine. Their brown coverall uniforms with heavy boots and close-fitting caps had nothing to distinguish one from the other. They were a different problem altogether. Tremaine eyed them, deciding it looked like a problem that could be solved by eleven bullets.
    “The wireless?” Basimi, one of the Rienish soldiers, turned to ask Ander.
    Ander squinted at the wireless that had brought them the Ravenna ’s signal. “Take the box, leave the antenna.” It was strung up across the two stone buildings and would be too much trouble to remove. And the Gardier knew they were here, there was no point in trying to remove any trace of their presence.
    Ander stepped toward the Gardier prisoners, watching them carefully. He grasped the Gardier translator disk around his neck, saying, “Get up, follow us quietly and you won’t be harmed.” They had captured several of the translators, small silver medallions with an inset crystal that held the spell that converted the speaker’s words to the Gardier language. They translated only Rienish, unfortunately, and didn’t work for Syrnaic.
    Most of the Gardier just stared at him but one spoke rapidly in a high light voice, the disk translating his words, “Free us and surrender. You will be well treated—”
    Tremaine, her eyes on the long black shape of the gunship plowing through the gray sea, suddenly had enough. That a Gardier, sitting there in chains surrounded by Rienish, would still have the gall to try to dictate terms was too much. The slaves, the people fleeing Vienne knowing they had no control over their lives, poor dead Rulan’s betrayal, what the Gardier had done to Arisilde, all came together in perfect clarity for her.
    Basimi had set his captured Gardier rifle aside so he could pack the wireless box; Tremaine walked across the plaza to pick it up. Distracted and thinking she was just relieving him of a burden, he barely glanced at her.
    Tremaine hefted it thoughtfully. The weight and stock felt odd in her hands and there was no safety. Crossing back to the Gardier, she pumped it to get a cartridge into the chamber. She stopped beside Ander, lifting it to her shoulder to aim at the Gardier spokesman. The man’s expression went from stoic contempt to fear, his dark eyes widening in alarm. Good, she thought. I’d hate to take you by surprise. Then before her finger could tighten on the trigger a long arm reached over her shoulder and grabbed the barrel.
    It was Giliead. Tremaine tried to hold on to the gun but had to give up before her hand got caught in the trigger guard. Ander was staring, startled. From across the plaza Ilias shouted, “Tremaine, stop that!”
    “They won’t move!” She gestured in frustration at the Gardier. She wondered if anybody else was appreciating the irony of the barbarian Syprians preventing the civilized woman of Ile-Rien from shooting the prisoners. Some of the ex-slaves had stopped to watch, probably hoping to see her do it. Ander and Basimi and the other Rienish military men were staring in disbelief. Why do they all look like this is such a bad idea? “We can’t leave them, they know too much about us! What else are we going to do?”
    “Not that.” Giliead’s expression was way too reasonable for her current mood. “They’re not wizards,” he said patiently. “And they’re helpless.” He held the gun away from his body, his distaste for what he thought of as a curse weapon evident, but there was no way she could get it away from him.
    “Then let them loose and I’ll pick them off on the run.” But the moment of cold uncontrolled fury was fading. Tremaine knew she wasn’t in touch with her own emotions at the best of times, but maybe this was a little much. She pushed her hair back, looking away.
    Ilias rolled his eyes and turned back to helping one of the Parscian women to her feet,