Black Bottle (21 page)

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G
IGANALEE
was wrapped in chartreuse lace and tied with fine black ribbon. Haidee too. Both corpses were packed into temporary wooden crates for transfer by steam rail. At the last stop, which was Menin’s Pass, the funeral procession would unpack and carry them northwest toward the hidden tombs, likely on horseback, through snow, bright green bundles strapped behind black saddles.

Funerals in winter were never easy for the Sisterhood and Miriam was glad she wouldn’t be part of the procession. Under the circumstances, she felt the need to prepare quickly and go after Sena, so she handed the funeral duties off to the Sixth House.

Details of the two deaths were not shared with anyone in the Fourth or below. The Sisterhood was already in crisis. Miriam had no interest in generating hysteria. The story disseminated was that Miriam had challenged Haidee for the right to wear red. Haidee had lost. It was maintained secondly that Giganalee had simply died in her sleep.

Speculation notwithstanding, the lower-ranked Sisters received the news and—what else could they do?—got on with preparing for the funerals.

By midafternoon, Parliament was busy as any other day, with people arriving for court hearings in the east wing and buying permits in the tiled halls of the ground floor, oblivious to the crisis their government was going through.

From her place in the Sixth House, Miriam looked up at the Seventh. Or she felt like she did. There was some uncertainty and self-consciousness associated with presiding over that group of Sisters above her, which accounted for only one percent of the entire Sisterhood.

Part of the problem was that she felt she needed to stem the gossip the Seventh House was spreading as they entertained notions about Giganalee’s final words. And telling them to shut up was not going to be easy.

The popular interpretation was that when Giganalee had shrieked that the Eighth House was outside the Circle, the grandam of the coven had been referring to Sena Iilool.

The onus of
Ascended One
was a title only the Eighth House could bestow. Didn’t it make sense that she would feel compelled to confer that title before she died? If so, only one witch had ever been expelled from the Sisterhood and lived. Only one name could fit Giganalee’s pronouncement.

Miriam did not like this interpretation. It threatened to tear the Sisterhood apart. She tried to offer an alternate: that what Giganalee had meant was that she—the Eighth House—was leaving the Circle: because she was about to kill herself. Unfortunately, this came off sounding puerile.

The trouble with all of this was that Miriam believed Giganalee had been crazy, that the Sisterhood had been headed in the wrong direction. But she was now unable to say so, because to question the crone’s sanity at this point was to question her own appointment as Sororal Head. Doing that would lead the Sisterhood into further disarray.

And this was why she let the Seventh House gossip. Because if she wielded her position too heavily, they could easily denounce her.

For now, no one in the Seventh House was doing that. They seemed to understand the repercussions and the incredibly precarious position that the Sisterhood was in. They didn’t want chaos. Instead they seemed to embrace Miriam’s ferocity as a kind of weapon they could turn against the Sisterhood’s ambiguous future. Against Pandragor and the Willin Droul.

Miriam worked through the afternoon. While the clock hands reached for the etchings of dusk, she organized qloins for what she felt was coming. When she finally looked up, the sun had lodged itself like a crashed meteor—pure red—in the snow-colored horizon, shooting otherworldly rays through a stigma of flurries.

She got up, left her new office with the vista blazing through Parliament’s enormous windows and rolled the
Cisrym Ta
down into the building’s vaults.

Though Giganalee had claimed it had come to them late, Miriam still felt it had to be protected.

The book unnerved her. Holding it was like gripping someone’s forearm. Spongy. The arm of a corpse. She had recorded a thermograph in the labs: ten degrees above freezing. It added up to something she didn’t want to carry in her arms.

So she pushed it on a creaking metal cart down an underpitched passageway and into the incandescent gloom of the archives. Most of the Seventh House wanted to try and open it but Miriam had dissuaded them. She knew the recipe for unlocking this book—the whole recipe. And it was nothing to trifle with.

The Sisterhood had had the book less than thirty hours and already two of them were dead.

She interred the book in Parliament’s holomorphic vault, locked the door and climbed the ramp back through the labs.

A lift hoisted her out of the cellars and up into the east studio with a groan. It deposited her in the exact room where Haidee had died the previous night. Cleaners had already taken care of the stain.

The red sun had vanished and the vast windows were black as the marble fireplace. The Seventh House was gathered. This meeting was not optional.

As Miriam entered the room she noticed how her sisters had gathered around the fireplace with their legs pulled up and their backs bent forward in the oversized chairs. They looked anxious. They looked stressed. There was no beer tonight.

Miriam wore a pair of ruby earrings: the only red things she could find.

She walked to her chair and sat down.

“I think we all know this is about the Eighth House.” Admitting it to them after she had struggled to suppress the notion elicited more than one apprehensive look. “But that information doesn’t leave this room.”

“What do you want us to do?” said Autumn.

“Sena’s headed south. We heard it from her own mouth. The Stairs first. We’ll try there. Then the jungle. We know her route.”

“She could have been lying,” said Duana.

“No.” Miriam wagged her hand. “Sena doesn’t believe we can stop her. She’s throwing it in our face.”

“Can we stop her?”

Miriam knew Duana had not slept since Haidee’s death and her eyes bore the brutality of the hours. “If we don’t…” Miriam groped for words strong enough to do what she needed them to do. After a moment she gave up. “If we don’t, there’s no reason for doing anything else.”

“Maybe it’s a dead end,” suggested Anjie. Her hair was dark and coiled from a recent shower. “Maybe she reaches the jungle and can’t do anything. Maybe the legend is a fraud.”

“That’s a slippery stack of maybes,” said Miriam. “I for one don’t believe the Willin Droul’s preternarcomancers have been dreaming up fiction for a thousand years.

“Securing the book. Preventing the unthinkable. That is the path the Sisterhood was on a year ago … when Sena took the
Cisrym Ta
to Stonehold. That is the path the Sisterhood has always been on … since its inception. We have secured the book. Now we must prevent the unthinkable. We must return to the path.”

Miriam saw hands and faces move in corroborative patterns.
Good,
she thought.

“Duana, I want you to take your qloin to Sandren. Sena might still be there. Autumn, Senka and Awh’Gnuoyk: I’m appointing you each cephal’matris of new qloins. Pick your ancillas from the Sixth House. Where’s the puslet we pulled out of the attorney general’s daughter?”

“It’s in the lab,” said Autumn. “It’s still alive.”

“Good.”

“I’m not sure it’s good,” said Autumn. “There was a partial graft. I think it’s taken.”

“Is it usable though?”

“We think so. But the priestess’ cells are still alive. The only way we’ll know for sure is—”

“Clean it as best you can,” said Miriam. “The High King is in Sandren … and based on Megan’s scrying dish he’s not huddled in a conference room protected by bodyguards. He’s up in the city-state—trying to play hero in the face of the Willin Droul’s disease. I doubt he’s adequately staffed for that kind of scenario.”

“Oh my gods!” said Duana.

“This is for real,” Miriam said softly. “You can take up to three more operatives from the Fourth House if you think you’ll need them.” She turned back to Autumn. “All right, Autumn … show me the puslet.”

12
Parin and faron are respectively “The Duty” and “The Betrayal.” Parin specifically is sex work to advance the Sisterhood’s political agenda. Faron is sex for personal reasons and seen as jeopardizing the Sisterhood’s veil of secrecy.

CHAPTER

16

“One Thousand Rosewind Palace.”

Even after a year’s worth of official mail from the address, it still sounded blithe and fruity in Caliph’s mouth.

He handed the two books Sena had given him to one of his bodyguards and pressed the grime-encrusted button on the lift. It was just after midnight. The cage around him staggered a moment, then smoothly unreeled down oil-streaked suspensor bars and into the courtyard’s chilly sweetness.

The captain had repositioned the ship over the palace’s ciryte mooring deck but there wasn’t enough room to accommodate both it and the
Iatromisia.
When the lift touched down, he struck out across the vast glittering dais, emerged from the zeppelin’s shadow into moonlight and descended directly toward the hospital tents that glowed whitely through a black braiding of exotic botanicals.

Already he could hear the screams.

Updates had come to him regularly, indicating that “patients” were gathering beyond the palace walls. Several of the saner ones had been
captured
and treatment had begun.

The screams did not come from the tents. Howls and wails floated above the outer walls, attesting to the great horde there.

Caliph arrived in the central tent unannounced, flanked by bodyguards. He looked at the tentative atrocities that recoiled from the touch of their caregivers. Most of them seemed to have lost the ability to speak. They gurgled half-words and lowed like nocturnal amphibians.

Were they still human? he wondered.

One squatted on a white canvas cot, another curled into the fetal position, oozing black-green pus from ulcers that glistened over skin gone iridescent gray. The disease had modified what muscles they had left, made them hunker. They smelled like salmon.

Keeping her distance, but staring through the metallic-toned morbidity, Caliph saw the priestess of Nenuln watching him.

He noticed her crutches. She looked away the moment their eyes met.
Shit,
he thought.
Here’s something I should have handled earlier.
He walked the circumference of the busy tent so that he could engage her directly. She did not attempt to escape.

“Lady Rae.”

She bowed slightly. “Your majesty.” He found her pretty, cinnamon-colored. And there were reddish highlights in her long wild hair. “I didn’t realize it would be like this.”

“You didn’t?” Her eyes accused him.

What could he say? Quantities of vaccine were piled around them in refrigerated chests.

“No.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, I came over here to apologize. I wouldn’t have brought you with if I’d known it was going to be so dangerous.” He gestured to her crutches.

“I know. It’s just political.” Her tongue snicked against her teeth. “Your doctor made it clear: I’m just here for the lithos. You didn’t expect me to actually help with anything important.”

“It’s absolutely political,” he said. “I’m sure you know my standing with your father’s government. We’re lucky to have you in Isca.”

“That seems overly candid for a politician,” she said.

Caliph pressed on, trying to fight her skepticism. “Why would I lie?”

“Apparently you wouldn’t.”

“No … I wouldn’t. The truth is, I appreciate your interest in Stonehold, the work you’ve done in Lampfire Hills and Os Sacrum. My thanks is insufficient. And your willingness to come to Sandren, to show up here, puts me even more in your debt. But now, look at your leg. I don’t feel comfortable having you so close—”

“That
would
look bad, wouldn’t it?” She smiled; a momentary awkwardness bubbled up between them. He felt like he wasn’t following her. “If something were to happen to me?” she clarified. Her head straightened and she looked at him squarely.

“That’s right,” said Caliph. He felt off balance. Maybe he had misinterpreted the smile. He supposed he understood what she was getting at. “Regardless of whether you think it’s just about my image, I’d still like you to go back down to the
Bulotecus.
”

“Where it’s safe?”

“Yes. Where it’s safe.”

“It wasn’t safe the other night.” She waved her hand in front of her crutches. “You know, King Howl—I know that for you, this
is
political. But, honestly, why do you think
I
came up this cliff in the first place?”

Caliph hung his head. “Because to you, it’s not political. You’re here out of the goodness of your heart, to help people. And you won’t be dragged away.” This was a bit of a show. Based on what Alani had told him, Caliph knew she hated Sena. The priestess wasn’t without ulterior motives. But he wanted to see if she would relent, if she might admit to some level of hypocrisy.

She did not.

Instead she clapped twice. “Very good, King Howl.” But then her face softened, her cynicism slipped marginally. She regarded him for a moment, possibly against a set of less-harsh assumptions.

“Well,” said Caliph, “everything you’ve said is fair. I invited you. Now I suppose I have to live with the risks.”

“Do you? I doubt it.”

Caliph shifted his eyes to the hospital and the grisly patients squirming on cots. He ignored her assessment. “So, how is the vaccine working?”

“There’s no one here to vaccinate,” she said. “All of them are already infected. But Dr. Baufent ran some tests. It’s the same strain you had in Isca.”

“Well, at least there’s hope for anyone we find who doesn’t have it yet.” A volley of moans carried over the walls like a fusillade aimed at his optimism. He forced a razor-thin smile and ended with, “All right. Thank you for your help. Please be careful.”