Black Bottle (31 page)

“Don’t holomorphs have to cut themselves?” she asked.

“I think we should take any real deliberation privately,” Alani whispered in Caliph’s ear. “This is going to break down quickly.” And the spymaster was right. Sig was getting drunk and the priestess was positively rigid with shock. Dr. Baufent asked if it would be all right to administer her a sedative.

“I need—” Caliph tried to get their collective attention. “We need to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “If Sena did this … I don’t … I don’t know how to … we just need to find some answers.”

“Find some answers!” cheered Sig.

Caliph ignored his whisky-guzzling friend. Suddenly the books Sena had given him seemed imminently important. “She said she was headed south,” he said softly to Alani.

“Who wants to get vaporized?” said Sig. He was pouring glasses.

“And we’re still alive,” said Alani. “So she must want you to follow her.”

“And what’s your opinion of that course? If we follow her?”

The spymaster pawed at his snowy beard. “I think it comports nicely with my objective of shooting her down.”

Caliph’s heart twanged strangely but didn’t rebel at the idea.

“Unfortunately we have a couple other serious issues at the moment,” said Alani, “the men we left in Sandren … and the fact that we need to get
you
back to Stonehold.”

“Well I’m certainly not going back to Stonehold until we’ve resolved this.”

“Oh, really?” Alani finally tore his eyes from the sky and looked hard at Caliph. “What if the unthinkable happens?”

“We’ll reinstate the Council, temporarily. I’ll step down. We’ll send a bird right-fucking-now.”

Alani pressed his lips together.

“All of this is going to point our way,” said Caliph. “We’re the only ones standing. If we don’t sort this out, every country is going to take aim at us … at the duchy. I’m not going to be any safer up north.”

Alani’s stoicism crumbled slightly, and his eyes told that Caliph was right. The spymaster looked at his shoes as a way of showing his assent.

Caliph felt the crushing impact of Sigmund’s arm wrapping around his shoulders. “Here, Caph. I brought you a drink.”

Caliph received it rather than argue. He dumped it over the railing as soon as Sigmund and everyone else turned to watch Baufent, administering an injection to a hysterical and grief-stricken Lady Rae who was bawling about her father on the Pandragonian ship. After it was over, Sigmund leaned in close to his friend and spoke lowly in a voice that only Caliph and Alani could hear.

“What the shit, Caph?” Sigmund sniffed while holding his glass in the air. “Why do you smell like apples?”

CHAPTER

24

It was only minutes later that Taelin sagged at the railing, watching the ship to which Sena had escaped molt through myriad similar forms. It was white, of Pplarian design and it was rising fast. As it punched through layer after layer of atmosphere, the ship’s shape changed in subtle gradual ways. Taelin couldn’t tell if this was real or a result of Dr. Baufent’s injection. What did seem certain was that Sena’s ship moved quicker than the
Odalisque
and Taelin worried in a detached way that Sena might escape.

Why is she going to Sandren?

Was Caliph following her or was he headed for the tent hospital?

Briefly, Taelin thought about the passengers with altitude sickness. They might have to endure another hour; then the
Odalisque
would ferry them home to Stonehold. She supposed what patients remained would be crammed into the other vessel with the crew. That was what she would do if she were the High King. High. King. Hiking.
I’m high.

The
Odalisque
clambered like a bubble through thick liquid, rising once again over the cliffs where it buoyed into the sun.

Her body vibrated with the engine as it motored them in over the platform. From the railing, she looked down through southern flowers. The hospital tents flapped quietly in a breeze from the east. There didn’t seem to be anyone around.

A tin of bandages lay scattered over the grass but most things seemed orderly enough. One of the patient tables had overturned but Taelin could see no sign of movement. She asked the obvious: “Where are they?”

Caliph leaned out over the railing. The muscles in his jaw twitched. “I don’t know.”

Baufent was trying to lead her off the deck. “You should lie down,” the physician kept saying. But in the aftermath of the horrible thing that had just happened, no one was functioning efficiently. Baufent probably wanted to stay out on deck like everyone else and see what was going to happen next.

“What
will
happen next?” Taelin asked loudly to anyone who would listen.

Alani turned and hissed in her face. “What happens next, is that you shut your mouth. When we get back I’m personally escorting you off this ship.”

“Where? Seatk’r?” Taelin heard her voice crack. “I can’t get off there! In the ghettos! I’ll be—”

“You’ll get off where I tell you to get off,” said Alani. “I found the note. Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The poison.”

High as she was, the blame tied her off, anchored her. She started to sweat. “I never—”

“Shut up,” said Alani. And she did. His eyes made salient what repercussions waited should she fail to obey. “I don’t think you’re an assassin, Miss Rae. I think you’re ignorant. We’ll deal with this when I return. Until then, I want you in your stateroom. In bed.”

She made the southern hand sign for yes after which he turned and strode to a weapon cabinet where he pulled out a gas-powered bow. “We’re not landing here,” he said loudly to the group gathered on deck.

Caliph stood several feet away, tugging his lip thoughtfully. He looked so pensive. Taelin, who had momentarily had every intention of going to her room and climbing into bed, now found herself wanting to reach out and touch the High King’s mouth. It had to be the drugs Baufent had given her. Caliph and his witch had just killed her father. They were the murderers. Not her!

She bit down on her rising anger.

“We’re going to take some gliders,” Caliph announced. “Check for survivors. Twenty-minute sweep. Everyone else stays on the ship.” He looked across the city-state’s copper domes to where Sena’s white airship had stopped.

“She’s waiting for us,” Alani said.

Caliph did not reply.

Taelin stayed where she was. She was not going to her room.
I don’t have to obey
him.
Where are the Iycestokians? Where is my father? Stonehold is to blame. Stonehold’s government is very much to blame for this day!

Her feet were planted despite Baufent’s occasional pleas. She could tell the doctor had given up. Caliph and Alani descend a staircase to the
Odalisque
’s cargo hold. From below came the sound of large doors opening with a hydraulic whimper.

Accompanying them was the sound of an altercation. To Taelin it sounded like Caliph and Alani were at each other’s throats. It seemed the spymaster did not want the High King going down to assist with the search for the missing physicians, but by the sound of it, Caliph was going to have his way. This made Taelin smile with small feelings of vicarious vengeance.

Moments later, sinister winged shadows appeared on the ground and then, gliding out from under the ship, Taelin saw a squadron of half a dozen men, blackish-silver wings strapped to their backs, green glows emanating from their spines. They wore dark flight suits and their eyes were chromium blue.

They planed out over the mooring deck and landed gracefully. She could pick out Alani easiest because of his bald head. Caliph was harder but she soon decided that he was the one the other men felt obligated to assist in unbuckling his harness. Caliph had a sword. The rest held crossbows.

They left their wings in an orderly row and darted down the broad white steps into the palace gardens. Taelin was worried that they would vanish from sight, but the pilot must have been watching too. The
Odalisque
moved, following the men on the ground. Taelin’s heart raced with excitement and fear as the deck crossed over a bosk of white-flowering bushes and brought her closer to the hospital tents.

Now she could see the six men moving systematically between the white pavilions. Quickly. Crossbows pivoted with their shoulders and heads, always pointed in the direction they were looking. Caliph followed them, sword out. The blade was black with a silver stripe down its center and it left tiny silvery lights in its wake.

As the
Odalisque
drifted sideways, Taelin got a glimpse inside the tent which Caliph had just entered. She saw him roll the body of a smell-feast over with his heel. Its fat red ostracean mass glistened in the sunlight.

Taelin felt Caliph kick it. Her foot thumped. She
felt
it. What was happening?

Caliph walked out of the tent, following his men.

She had impressions of the garden’s boughs swaying around her, as if she was walking, literally, in his shoes. Her mind caught snippets of medicine packets and syringes scattered in the grass: things too small for her to have seen from a hundred feet above the ground. She could feel a static charge in her right hand, the hairs on her arm sticking up. His sword.

What
had Baufent shot her up with?

Whatever it was, she wanted more.

She stumbled away from the railing, leaving her crutches on the deck. She headed for the medical supplies.

*   *   *

C
ALIPH
lost his footing and Alani had to help him up.

“Are you all right?” The spymaster’s face composed stiff irregular lines that conferred no empathy.

Caliph was already self-conscious about fumbling his harness. He felt drunk.

“I’ll be fine.”

His men were following trampled grass toward the Sandrenese palace and he was following them. The smell of flowers mixed with wet stone and the fumes of spilled antiseptic. There were more scattered bandages in the grass.

Up ahead, Rosewind’s pink-brown blocks cavaulted into circular tourelles and around onion domes. The fact that its former tenants were dead lent it a subconscious taint that Caliph tried to ignore as he and his men scrambled over the cement cargo ramps on the building’s northwest flank.

His team of men was surrounding a familiar side door when he realized for the first time how quiet Sandren seemed. Aside from the hum of the
Odalisque
overhead, all he could hear was the creak of branches and the giggle of leaves. If there had been birds here on his last visit he couldn’t remember. Maybe Sandren was too high.

He looked toward the gate that had held the hoard of howling patients at bay. It still appeared to be shut but he couldn’t tell for certain at this distance.

His men had already stacked up around the door to the palace but Caliph was staring down into a brick and mortar pit on the left. Lined with steps and a door marked with a familiar warning in High Malk. The door stood open, which seemed inexplicably wrong. Two men were already checking it.

Pale green beams of light shot into the darkness of the utility vault as his men turned on tiny torches. Caliph glanced at Alani who was watching the men at the vault with unbroken concentration. Alani wore a scowl. The other men were waiting patiently at the palace door for the signal to enter.

Caliph saw everything shimmer as if they were standing in the desert, heat waves rippling off the ground. He braced himself against the palace wall, feeling dizzy.

“Go back to the gliders,” Alani whispered. “Wait for us there.”

Caliph felt deep shame associated with the command, shame for demanding to come with—only to inexplicably fall so ill that Alani could see it in his face. His stomach rolled. It was no use. Alani was right. And there was no reason to let pride get in the way.

What is wrong with me?

He squinted back across the grass toward the ciryte platform. It seemed impossibly far away.

His limbs felt wobbly and his head seemed to be floating away from his feet. He set out, stumbling, and heard Alani curse.

The words, “Help him,” came like bubbles in the sunlight-colored air.

Then the pavement’s beautifully fractured and intricately pitted surface raced toward his face. He loved the pavement. Its porous intricacies. The lichens. The stream of ants like grains of hardened molasses rolling two directions at once. He loved the smell of mold.

Someone grabbed him under the arm and pulled him away from the ground, which made him inexplicably sad. His view panned away from the ants, toward green windy shapes and what looked like dancing men.

He saw white lines appear and disappear at crazy angles. Swords reflecting light?

Something had happened. He still had his own sword in his hand. He struggled to unscrew the safety ring. It defied him, a black puzzle in his fingers. Then there was a snap.

Hm?

He felt the weapon hum in his grip. He must have triggered it. The thing was certainly charged. He set his feet far apart, trying to stay balanced, trying to keep the blade away from the ground. A vague understanding that he might kill himself registered enough to demand his full attention.

He pivoted on one foot, trying to aim himself in the general direction of the chaos. The palace walls were so big. They overawed him. He nearly sat down to stare.

Then as if out of an ominous opera performance, where all sounds hushed on the cusp of the starring villain’s appearance, Caliph heard the sound of a great animal walking into a building. Maybe it was into a building. The heavy leather crush of a foot against tile, the muscular shake of its bulk within the harness, and the breathing … Caliph heard it.

Only this wasn’t the pastoral grunt of some deep-chested quadruped. This was the slithering whine of air sucked through gooey vents or gills. It was a slurp mixed with a shudder.

Before his eyes, gigantic feet, frog-like, pulled up from the concrete in formidable pyramids of muscle. They were attached to legs that folded precisely in the way that Caliph would have expected from a giant amphibian-learned-to-walk.