Black Bottle (47 page)

All light had gone out but strange pictures formed in her head. She saw fiery rocks falling out of the sky. People dying. She had lost Sena’s hand.

The air was too thin and poisonous. Still she shouted, choked, laced her fingers over her necklace and stared up at the dark, trying to breathe.

“I see lights!” She gagged. “Nenuln’s lights!”

Thunder boomed and in the sudden brilliance Taelin’s skin turned to rubber. A grossly corpulent appendage curled around her. Its flesh flowed inward: lightless boiling plasma. It moved with self-encrypted gravity. Several more limbs, turbid and glistening, slapped down around her, reaching for her throat. Her mouth was open, howling but soundless.

She felt an icy bite. Slippery and rough. A cobweb of fatty madness enclosed her, like a bug trapped in phlegm spit at the ceiling. Something scrabbled with the demonifuge, desperate and angry.

Then the ruins ruptured and fathoms of liquid poured in. Her body—her skull—crushed instantly.

She saw, or imagined that she saw, a fading white polyp flailing on heavy currents. Her arms perhaps. Some profligate kelp-like gyration in the depths. Distortion. Golden syrup. Then more white light. Brilliant white light.

Vast black shapes moved below her, receding toward the event horizon of an oceanic trench. Light flickered through Sena’s torn coat, radiant cones that shifted from a hole between her shoulder blades. The beacon gave Taelin some sense of direction at the edge of the violent plume of sediment that billowed from Jorgill Deep.

She watched stones fall slowly, sinking back into a swirl of midnight blue and brown.

Sena’s fingers closed around her hand. The witch’s eyes were suspended in water. They looked down into Taelin, earnest and communicative.
I am not leaving you,
they said.

The pressure dissipated. Her crushed body moved. Her imploded head considered. She gripped her demonifuge tightly but knew: it had not been Nenuln. It had been Sena Iilool that pulled her out of silted blackness, up into the glorious brightness of her bedroom on the
Bulotecus.

24
U.T.: Approximate pronunciation: Sectua’Gaunt.

CHAPTER

36

Insidiously, with the ship’s southward passage, everything had become foreign. The landscape and objects they passed over had names in languages that Caliph found unfriendly. According to the captain, the wind at their backs was called the Hali. It blazed down the slopes of Ayrom Karak and out across the strangely hued desert of Nah’Ngode Ayrom.

The Hali brought the storm.

Caliph had located Isham Wade and had backed him up against a railing. Sand was already stinging them as it whipped up off the dunes.

“Unhand me!”

“Did you try to poison me?”

“No! Have you lost your mind?”

“Tell the Iycestokians to let us go!”

“I have witnesses to your brutality,” Mr. Wade sputtered.

“I want your communication device,” Caliph shouted over the wind.

Isham scoffed in a way that hinged on real amusement. “You don’t even know what it’s called.”

Caliph glared at Mr. Wade’s jeweled ring. “I want it
now
!”

Sigmund loomed over Caliph’s shoulder, ready to assist. They had locked Mr. Veech in the hold.

“Drag him inside, Sig.”

They moved off the deck into the shelter of the paneled hall. Isham raised his hands.

“Give it to me,” said Caliph.

Isham reached up and, with little effort, pulled his left eye out of its socket. He shook it gently as if about to roll it in a game of chance, then held it out, aiming for Caliph’s palm.

Caliph drew back, horrified, which tugged an indulgent laugh from Isham’s throat. “You know what they say about us Iycestokians,” said Mr. Wade. “One eye talks about what the other one sees.”

The eye looked up at Caliph from between Isham’s fingers. It was slippery and positively real. Not made of glass.

“How do I use it?”

Isham chuckled. “You can’t. It’s mine.”

Caliph did not attempt to take it away. “Put it in. Tell them to let us go. We’re on the same side.” They weren’t on the same side at all. He had hoped the device would be something he could use, something he could at least comprehend.

Isham put his eye back in. It moved and behaved like a real eye, reassuring Caliph that he had not missed the obvious.

“I can’t tell them to let you go, King Howl. They have an objective here.”

“They want the book. Fine. Tell them I’ll land in Bablemum and we’ll deliver the book there. You said you need vaccine. I can deliver that too.”

“We already have vaccine, King Howl.”

“But you said—”

“Your medical ship was intercepted just north of Sandren.”

“That’s an act of war!”

“Well, according to—”

“What about the people on board? What did you do with them?”

“I’m sure they’re fine. My government will replicate the vaccine and immunize Iycestoke.”

“And the rest of the south? The north? What about them? Are you going to sell it to—”

Isham leveled his hand, fingers spread. He wobbled it and squinted, indicating such a decision had not yet been made.

“You evil fucking bastard.”

“Be realistic!” said Isham. “Selling it will help us survive. Everyone wants to survive. Think about flies getting their heads chewed off. The mantis is just trying to survive. You can’t blame him for looking like a flower. What’s evil about that?”

Sigmund grunted.

Caliph grasped at the last straw he felt he had. “What about the book? I hand you the book at Bablemum.”

“You’re not in a bargaining position, King Howl.”

“Yes, I am,” said Caliph. “Because I’m the only one that can stop this. I’m the only one that can convince her not to do what she’s going to do. But in order for me to convince her, I need to catch up to her.”

“And what is she going to do, King Howl?”

Caliph couldn’t force himself to say it. The words simply wouldn’t come out. It was too preposterous. Even with everything that had gone wrong he couldn’t say it out loud.

Isham smiled and went on. “Whatever it is, you don’t need to catch up to her. We can do that. Iycestoke will stop her. Rest assured. You’ve never seen an Iycestokian armada, King Howl?

“Now please, just show me the book.”

Caliph deliberated whether that was a good idea. The book’s existence coupled with the fact that the Iycestokians still had a diplomat on board were probably the only reasons the
Bulotecus
had not been blown to pieces.

“Come with me,” said Caliph. He marched to his stateroom and pulled out Arkhyn Hiel’s journal.

“May I see it?”

“I believe you can see it perfectly well from there,” said Caliph. He put the book away.

“That’s hardly proof,” said Isham.

“I don’t owe you any more proof,” said Caliph. “Now tell your armada what you’ve seen. You’ll have plenty of time while you keep Mr. Veech company.”

Sig stepped forward and took Isham Wade by the arm.

“Take your hands off me!” Mr. Wade struggled fiercely but Sigmund applied torque and the diplomat went limp. “I am an ambassador, King Howl!”

“By your word, Iycestokian ships intercepted and confiscated our medical—”

“You’ve attacked every nation on the continent!” barked Mr. Wade.

“That wasn’t me,” said Caliph. “It’s your country that’s to blame for the fact that I’m locking you up.”

“You think it makes a difference? You think your country even exists without Iycestoke’s consent? You’re going to be marooned in the sand shortly. And then you won’t even be the king of Stonehold anymore. You can lock me up for a few minutes, Caliph Howl. Be my guest! But you’re the one in a cage here! You’re already dead!”

Sigmund punched Mr. Wade in the stomach. It was like a pipe wrench sinking into dough. The sound that escaped Isham’s mouth was like a death groan, all the wind going out of him at once. He collapsed, eyes huge and bulging, spittle dangling from his lips.

“Sig! Don’t!”

“Fuck him!” said Sigmund. He glared at Caliph. He dragged Isham Wade from the room and Caliph found himself unable to protest.

Hopefully Mr. Wade would soon be communicating everything that had transpired to his Iycestokian contacts. Hopefully the book bluff would work. Caliph was already formulating some vague plans. He went out onto the deck to see what the Iycestokian fleet was doing.

Returning to the deck brought pain. Caliph’s eyeballs gummed over in the hot wind. Sand was blowing but he could still see across the orange and blue dunes to where Sena’s white chrysalis tracked relentlessly south. In the other direction, behind them, loomed the armada. The Iycestokians were mostly to the north now, trailing them like the Hali, driving them like a giant hand.

The black ships were not aerodynamic. They reared up, cobra heads, black and glistening with purple lights.

Caliph went to the cockpit and asked Neville for maps. The copilot handed them over with a confused hopeless look that Caliph didn’t try to change. Instead he spread out the charts. “Where are we?”

Neville pointed to a spot two inches from the nearest letter in the phrase that meant
Shifting Sands.
Caliph stared at the empty yellow patch of paper. Behind them lay the ruins of Ueo Mrup at the easternmost tip of the withered fingers of the mountains. Ahead—far ahead on the other side of the desert—the names were equally strange: Umong, Mahn Loom’U and two vast lakes that he couldn’t pronounce. Not that any of those places mattered. They would never make it that far.

He went back out to the deck.

The Iycestokian airships boiled closer. Black with purple markings—the super power of the Tebesh Plateau. The self-proclaimed god’s hammer of the world. The ships seemed to have metal arms, tentacles almost. It was difficult to see.

He had expected them to fly faster, to have already caught up with him. But their craft did not look fast. They looked bulky and strange, as if they had been built backward or according to the physics of a different world.

He walked to the aft deck and stared back on the panoramic nightmare. Wind ruffled over the
Bulotecus
’s skin. The engines hummed. The propellers thudded dramatically. But in the distance the enemy floated sinister and silent.

Caliph turned his field glasses on them. He could see the guns, but he didn’t know what they fired. Certainly not the tiny rounds that had broken the window in his stateroom. He searched and found the Iycestokian engine cells, burning through an endless spectrum of shifting pastels: yellow and blue and purple. Solvitriol power. He could not make out propellers. What was driving them forward? The great hooded designs looked like sails, sails that should have stopped the vessels dead or driven them in the opposite direction. They did not look like they should have been capable of flight.

A movement in the western part of the formation caught Caliph’s eye. One of the ships broke and pulled out ahead of the rest. It moved with incredible speed. It closed the fifteen-mile gap between the rest of the armada and the
Bulotecus
in a span of seconds. As it came south it gave Caliph’s ship a wide berth and did not venture east. Rather than engaging, it now flew parallel, maintaining its perimeter.

Mother of Emolus, they can engage us at any time! They just don’t want to.

The
Bulotecus
was still losing buoyancy.

Caliph tried to put himself in his enemy’s position, as the commander of the whole Iycestokian fleet, presumably outfitted with the best weapons and armor on the planet. But what if word had come that a northern ship had destroyed the entire fleet of diplomatic vessels over Sandren? What if
he
had been tasked with engaging that ship?

They’re afraid,
he realized.

They don’t know what happened—any more than I do. They think I might have a super weapon on the Bulotecus. And even if they don’t … they probably aren’t willing to risk destroying the book.

Caliph watched as more Iycestokian ships moved out along the circumference of the pursuit formation, every one of them outpacing the
Bulotecus
by factors of five or more. He scanned their decks with his field glasses, focusing on the soldiers there. How could they stand the wind resistance?

Their armor was like nothing Caliph had seen, black as the skins on their ships, bearing small purple insignia. They seemed rigid, more like machines than the movements of men. Their feet moved with deliberate articulated slowness.

The Iycestokian armada formed a half-ring now, a perfect crescent around the
Bulotecus
’s rear. Through the air, from directly behind, Caliph heard some kind of broadcast, a projection of sound. It was a voice with an Ilek accent, but it spoke clear understandable Hinter.

“Stonehavian Vessel. Maintain your current course.”

Sigmund came out onto the aft deck.

“You locked him up?” asked Caliph.

“Yeah. He’s fine.” The blue sky was bronzing with evening and light glistened off Sig’s large nose. He stared out at the half-ring of ships, colorful shirt flapping against his chest, chewing on the hair under his lower lip. “I think no matter what you do, we’re probably fucked here, Caph.”

“Thanks for that.”

“You don’t think they’re going to shoot at us back here? We make fuck-fat targets. Especially me. Actually just me. You’re pretty skinny.”

“No. They’re not going to shoot at us. They know we’re coming down sooner or later and with a few hundred perforations to the gasbags it’s probably sooner.”

“You wanna drink?”

“No.”

“You might need one. Have you seen what we’re headed for?”

Caliph followed Sig back through the cabins and upstairs to the cockpit where the captain was drenched in his own sweat and probably some of his tears as well. He did not greet Caliph.

Caliph looked forward through the great curved windshield. He saw something on the horizon that he couldn’t make sense of but the first question out of his mouth was, “How much longer can we stay afloat?”