The Gate of Gods (Fall of the Ile-Rien) by Martha Wells Read Free Book Online

that now. She pulled a Rienish wool sweater on over it, put on her comfortable old boots and sighed with relief.
    She took the back stairs down to the kitchen to discover actual food being delivered through the service door under Kias’s supervision. The kitchen walls were dingy brick, the room furnished with a long plank table and a few chairs. A couple of old wooden dressers held a random assortment of cracked china plates and stained copper pots, all probably judged too worn for the former owners to haul away. Distracted by the sight of a bag of coffee beans and two bottles of wine on the sideboard, Tremaine almost didn’t recognize the white-jacketed man placing warming pans on the old-fashioned monster of a range. He nodded to her affably and she squinted at him, racking her memory. “Were you on the Ravenna ?”
    “Yes, I volunteered in the kitchens,” he answered with a smile and an Aderassi accent. “I am Derathi, late of the Hotel Silve. I have been hired as chef in a restaurant a few streets over, and your father has made arrangements with us to feed you.”
    Tremaine lifted the lid of the warming pan, her stomach contracting at the appetizing scents. “This looks wonderful,” she murmured.
    “If you need anything, please send to us, at any time.” Derathi paused at the kitchen doorway. “This is a good city, but …I would like to return to Ile-Rien, and then Adera again someday.”
    Tremaine looked up, meeting his solemn gaze. We both know, but let’s not say it. “Someday.”
    Derathi took his leave and Kias stepped out of the pantry, asking without much hope, “Any news?” Kias was Giliead’s father Ranior’s sister’s son. He was big like Giliead, olive-skinned, with frizzy dark hair falling past his shoulders.
    “Nothing good,” Tremaine told him. She supposed he already knew the news about Ixion from Ilias.
    With a resigned shake of his head, he filled a couple of plates and carried them out of the kitchen, calling for Calit. Not feeling sociable, Tremaine sat down to eat at the battered kitchen table; the old range still radiated heat, making this the most comfortable room in the house. Ilias wandered in when she was nearly finished, standing in front of the still-warm range, with his arms tightly folded across his chest. He looked worn down and tired, more so than he had this morning. She knew that dealing with Giliead, who had been shuttling between rage and despair over what he saw as Ixion’s release, wasn’t easy. Tremaine had been on the verge of asking about it several times, but she was reluctant to broach the topic. She asked instead, “House still haunted?”
    He shook his head, casting an annoyed glance up at the ceiling. “I think Gil scared it away.”
    Tremaine hesitated. “Because he’s a Chosen Vessel or because he was really angry?”
    He snorted wryly. “Guess.”
    Tremaine winced. She thought for a moment he would go back to rapt contemplation of the rusting iron range but he turned to the table, hooked a chair out and sat down. He pulled her plate over, investigating it for scraps.
    Tremaine rescued the last hunk of bread. She eyed Ilias for a long moment. “Homesick?” she asked him finally.
    He glanced at her with a lifted brow, not understanding.
    She was surprised Syrnaic didn’t have a word for it. She gestured with the bread, clarifying, “You miss being home.”
    He shrugged, but looked away. “It’s summer there. We’d sleep outside in the atrium at night, or out in the fields.”
    As opposed to being stuck in this moldy cold house, or the crowded cold refugee hostel. Watching him crack the leftover bone and render it free of any shred of edible material as methodically as a wolf, she said, “We’re not going to be here that long.”
    He frowned down at the plate and started to speak. Then Ander walked in. Searching for an uncracked cup on the sideboard, he nodded politely. “Ilias.”
    Ilias looked up sideways, regarding Ander for a moment in