Black Bottle (19 page)

Somewhere in the darkness, Taelin could hear a fountain splashing. But the lovely avenues rolled with papers and garbage.

Anselm laced his fingers over the crown of his shaven head. He arched back—stretching.

“Did you see that?”

Anselm snapped back. “Where?”

Taelin pointed. “It was right there. There it is again, see it?”

“Yes.”

Something crept below the wall, slinking through folds of darkness on the east side of a boutique. It was coming toward the palace.

Dr. Anselm’s voice broke the tension. “Our first patient?”

Taelin took her crutches and hopped down the battlement steps, hurrying as best she could toward the gate.

“Wait!” he called. “You can’t go down there! You’re under quarantine.”

Taelin stopped. “It’s not airborne.”

Anselm’s eyes seemed abnormally white. They were wide and solemn with the gravity of her objection. “Listen, this is serious. Now I know you don’t want to—”

“No. No,” she said. “You’re right. I’m being stupid.”

“You’re being concerned.” He walked down the steps, huge hands thrust into the pockets of his crimson trench. “Nothing wrong with that. But you’ve done enough today. Here.” He produced a bottle of pills. “Take one of these before you sleep. It will help with the altitude.”

She accepted the little jar of yellow and purple capsules.

“Now go get something to eat. And
sleep
! I’ll coax our patient in, don’t worry.”

Taelin knew he was right. He seemed levelheaded. He reminded her faintly of Aviv. With a wave and a smile she turned toward the medical tents and the smell of cooking food.

CHAPTER

14

Sena waited for Caliph to say something. There was no up or down. The darkness in the airship pooled around them. They were fish, in an aquarium, looking out at the mangled lights of humans. White tents wobbled. Doctors’ shadows wrinkled in the night. Sena did not touch him as she thought about the Bablemumish and Pandragonian plots, the whispers in upholstered staterooms and electroplated dining decks that floated below the City in the Mountain—
waiting
for the High King.

“Did you know anyone here?” asked Caliph.

“Yes.” When Caliph’s wait turned obstinate she relented. “His name was Tynan.”

“Was?”

“He’s gone.”

“Old boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

She felt the hair on the back of Caliph’s neck rise. Tonight it wasn’t the energy pouring off her skin that frightened him. Tonight something darker, behind her, only a foot below the ceiling, was listening. Caliph couldn’t see it but it was there. And she felt it put Caliph’s hackles on end.

“What would you do if you were trapped behind a door?” She drew his attention back to her. “Where you couldn’t see the front of the lock?”

“What?” Caliph looked back at the glowing wind-crumpled tents. They had begun to snap in the wind.

“Never mind. Let’s flip it,” she said. “Here’s your riddle.”

“Riddle?”

“Just listen.

“Pretend you’re in a room. The whole world is in the room with you. Like a giant globe. But it’s not a toy. It’s the real world. With all the people and things on it that you love. They’re real … just small. You’re not standing on the world.”

Caliph scratched the side of his face. “Okay…”

Sena felt the thing in the darkness stir behind her but she kept talking. “So you’re stuck in a room with the world. At the room’s edge is a locked door. Behind the door is Something awful. A Monster. The Monster will eat you if It gets out.”

“So I don’t let It out.”

“It really wants to eat you. It wants to eat the world too.”

“So this is a puzzle where I have to choose whether to save myself or the world, right?”

“Damn you.”

His smile was slow and roguish. “Does this have anything to do with that crazy thing you said yesterday? Are you the monster here?” She watched his face flex the ghosts of hospital light, pulling the radiance of the flapping tents into his cheeks. He wore an expression of mock fear that tried to set things right between them. It was a valiant attempt. She wanted to touch his lips.

Instead, she said, “It’s more complicated than that. The locked door is the only door in the room—that you can see.

“The Monster is banging on that door, trying to get out. Every minute, you hear the door cracking, getting weaker.

“The Monster slides you a key. It tells you that if you set It free, a mechanism will open a second door. A hidden door. If you’re fast enough, if you’re ready to run—you might just get away.”

“Not very reassuring. If I don’t unlock the door, what happens?”

“It breaks through.” She reached out and gently dug her nails into his arm. “It gets you.”

“Nice. So it’s only if I unlock the door that I have any chance at all.”

“Correct. But it’s just a chance.”

“How do I know the monster isn’t lying to me?”

“Isn’t It?”

Caliph laughed. “Not much of a riddle.”

“No?”

He dragged his laugh out until it became skeptical. “Why am I trying to solve this?”

“You don’t have to. All I said was, ’Here’s your riddle.’”

“Which is an implicit invitation.”

“Not necessarily. Not all riddles need to be solved. Some just need to be delivered.”

“I see. When I realize what the riddle is
not
asking, I’ll get my insight. Is that it?”

“Like when you dropped the Pandragonian accord into that black envelope and sent it away…”

She’d unsettled him. But his eyes didn’t go saucer. He looked at her narrowly; refused to ask how she knew this secret thing. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s no way to patch things up with Pandragor, peacefully?”

“No. That’s true, but that’s not what I’m trying to tell you.”

Sena felt the cold vacuous creep of a claw drag itself over her skin. The thing by the ceiling had slunk down to give her a slithering admonition. She heard words in her head, asking her what she was trying to do.

The voice was something Caliph would certainly have recognized if he had heard it. It was a voice that had once laughed and moved air in the house on Isca Hill, just as it had screamed commands through the jungle before poisoning a host of slaves—down to the last child.

The voice did not belong to a man. Not by Sena’s standards. It had once belonged to a Gringling king. And a desert queen. The voice that was not a voice had sounded across many lifetimes, preserved by Veyden tinctures. Phylacteries made of bone had carried it nearly to the end. But finally, it had collapsed into its foundation of femurs and costal splinters: a cradle for a new entity made of dust. With its ancient soul untethered, the shade of Nathaniel Howl was like a baby’s breath gone wandering beyond the world’s rim.

Only recently had it been pulled back, saved from listless transcosmic vagrancy. Now it was desperate to enter Sena’s brain. She did not underestimate its cunning, or the math that had gathered in its folds like dirt in a nomad’s cassock. The shade, the specter, the ghost—whatever it was—sensed that the stars had finally turned. Soon, it whispered to her. Soon—soon.

Caliph was still talking. “No offense but I think that’s bullshit. How can you
know
there’s no way for peace with Pandragor?”

“I didn’t—”

The shade did its best to distract her.

“If the accord is useless, which I know it is, I think I can still—”

“Caliph. There is no way for peace with Pandragor.” Her harshness was a result of irritation, of the stress that the shade was putting on her.

The words set Caliph back. He rested a finger across his upper lip.

The shade worked Sena’s throat violently.

It whimpered and slobbered, black claws scurrying over her like bounding rats. Sena felt their discrete impacts against her abdomen, breasts and throat. They thumped her back and thighs. Everywhere. They fled in ebbing tides only to return and burrow against her snatch. They nipped, delved and tested—hurried and mindless.

Sena braced herself. The shade pushed into the cleavage below her belt loops and designer tag. It boosted her from behind, trying to spread her croup. She couldn’t concentrate on what Caliph was saying.

“What do I do with that?” Caliph was asking. “Do I make you my top advisor? Do I hand you the throne?”

“I’m not trying to tell you about Pandragor, Caliph. I’m trying to tell you about something else.”

“And what’s that? More about the book. The Sisterhood? You’re going to destroy the world or something? You see how impossible this is for me to understand?”

Sena nodded. It was hard to ignore the shade’s insistent nuzzling at the base of her skull. A horrible black rushing sound had begun roaring, not unlike pressing a seashell to her ear. Nathaniel wanted her to stop this conversation.

“What’s wrong?” asked Caliph.

The voice was shrieking. A thousand black hexes burnt down onto her lips, like blisters, wicked numbers, sigils spinning. Nathaniel tried to seal her mouth, stifle her tongue.

Sena moved her lips with calm, calculated composure and answered Caliph’s question. “I’m haunted, Caliph,” she said.

Nathaniel’s specter seemed to go insane. It clawed at her eyes.

“Haunted?”

“Yes. Did you know there’s a legend about your uncle’s book, that he actually managed to haunt its pages after he died?”

Caliph shook his head, clearly perplexed by this sudden swerve, chilled perhaps but also perturbed that they were once again on the topic of the book.

“It’s something to think about,” she said.

Caliph visibly disagreed.

“It’s a kind of parable,” she said. “Nathaniel’s possession of the thing he craved? It’s a lesson in obsession.”

She watched that analysis chew into Caliph’s face. The muscles in his cheeks reacted with a spasm. A coldness passed between them as it registered with Caliph that she could be talking about him. Caliph swallowed. “I don’t like talking about my uncle.”

“Don’t worry about him.”

“You said you were haunted. You can’t just say something like that and—”

“I have my ambit.”

“Ambit?”

“It’s old holomorphic theory,” said Sena. “Very old.”

“Not something they taught at Desdae?”

“Your ambit’s hard boundary is at the end of your fingertips, at the surface of your skin. What you project beyond that is variable. Your influence. But this,” she pinched his arm softly, “is your boundary. If this boundary is impenetrable, nothing can touch you. That is your ambit. That is your uncontestable line.”

Caliph laughed. “Right. So, anyway…” For a split second she saw a tremor in the jaw muscles that walled his face. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Finally, he said, “I should go down and see how it’s going. Will you be all right?”

This amused her in a surprising way, that he—so fragile—would ask her if she would be all right.

“Yes. I’ll be fine.”

Soon his devotion would crumble. Even now it stood out as an abeyance of logic.

“Are you worried about the conference?” she asked.

“A little.” One side of his face hitched up around the words. “It’ll be fine.”

His mind had already moved on to other things. He was feeling guilty about the litho-slides Alani had taken of physicians setting up the field hospital. Sena knew. He felt scrubby about the fact that he was capitalizing on the political advantage of his response. Especially now that he could tell the disease was much worse than he had anticipated, that his physicians couldn’t put a dent in this catastrophe.

“Do you think it might be canceled?” she asked.

“The conference? No. This is going to be the most important speech I’ve ever given. It damn well better
not
be canceled.” Then he looked her in the face and said, “But for the moment—” He shrugged. “I’m just glad we’re in a position to help the Sandrenese.”

It was a thank you, an acknowledgment of the vaccine, the doctors, the way she had planned this out.

Sena felt ashamed.

*   *   *

C
ALIPH
couldn’t put his finger on what was happening between them. The whole evening had been tainted, charged by his sexual frustration; her curious choice of topics; the darkness and the haunted sounds of the Ghalla Peaks.

He felt like he needed her comfort, her reassurance before tomorrow, but the thought of making love to her in the luxury of the ship while soldiers and physicians worked through the night …

People were dying out there in the streets. He could hear the howls carried over the rooftops.

When Sena’s hand touched the back of his head, despite the disparity of the evening, despite the bruises on his body, he was ready to set them aside. He considered dragging her back to the stateroom or whether she might just let him throw her up against the wall.

But her expression had hardened. She said, “Strange, isn’t it? That the same plague we had in Isca is gutting Sandren. How do you think it traveled so far without affecting the rest of the north? How do you think I knew?”

He stared at her, panicked for a moment that the chemistry between them had evaporated. Her skin looked like graphite under the spell of the moons; her lips white petals. But the power he felt coming off the lines in her skin was no longer magnetic. They seemed to hum like power lines, as if they were capable of electrocuting him. The sensation stunned him into the one question he had never asked her.

“Is it true? Just tell me. Is your temple real? Are you a—?”

“I’m not crazy,” she whispered.

He considered what this meant. But he couldn’t swallow it. He caved in. Even as he made his demand for proof, even as he felt himself slip into the words of the Pandragonian priests decrying her from the street corners, demanding that she admit her lie, he couldn’t help himself.

“Then bring one of them back,” he said. He swept his arm at the city, indicating Sandren’s many dead. “Any one of them. Bring them all back.”

She was quiet. And he knew he had done something terrible. He had crossed a line. He had become like everyone else. And yet, how could she blame him? How could he not eventually need to see proof that she was so different?