Black Bottle (49 page)

He laid Specks gently back on his gurney, then helped Baufent lug Taelin down the narrow hall to her room.

Once she was on her bed Caliph went to the porthole and peered uselessly into the purple-orange haze. All he could make out were the shapes of the scavenger-things, the nyaffle. They were landing on the
Bulotecus,
taking shelter from the storm, counteracting the weight that everyone had worked so hard to jettison.

Caliph scowled. He smelled sweet mint and lotus blooms in Taelin’s room. He smelled Sena. Caliph glanced around but there was nothing.

“I want you to watch her,” Caliph said to Baufent. “And I mean
watch
her. She’s your responsibility for the rest of the flight. Tie her down if you need to.”

Baufent’s hard gray face let slip a hint of misgiving. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

Caliph left the two women and headed back to the deck, finding a pair of flight goggles along the way. There was an alarm going off somewhere. His ears popped and his stomach pitched. Too many of the creatures had landed on the railings and rigging. Dozens of them. Many tons of chitin pulling them down.

Caliph hoped the witches were taking advantage of the nyaffle. He hoped they were working their equation. And indeed, the witches were on the starboard deck screaming at the sky. Caliph struggled past them, coughing on the dust and putrefaction in the air. He hoped they were doing some good—late as it seemed to be trying to hide the ship from the Iycestokians. He headed for the cockpit to check on the captain.

When he entered the room he found Viktor Nichols in a knot, clinging to a steel stick with a red ball on its end. “We’re going down,” said the captain. He looked ashen. The copilot was flipping switches without any visible effect.

“You should brace yourself,” said Nichols.

Caliph rested a hand on the console. He opened his mouth to make a suggestion just as the nose of the ship dipped, sending him flying over the controls. His back smashed against the inside of the windshield, making fractures. A terrible snapping sound reverberated through the entire craft, then the nose came up and Caliph found himself on the floor.

“There went the mooring arm,” shouted the captain. “Probably sheared off at the bolts!”

Caliph had the sensation that the man was wrestling a wild animal. The captain’s shoes squeaked against the duralumin floor as he braced himself out of his chair.

Caliph had a good view of the shoes. Iscan brand
High Backs
—featuring a tiny black tag depicting a white mountain: High Horn. His cheek was pressed against the floor.

“Here it comes!” Nichols yelped.

And then the second impact vibrated through the airship’s frame.

A dull horrible roar shuddered through the
Bulotecus.
Caliph was lifted up, a momentary levitation, then dashed back down. Again, airborne. He saw Neville come up out of his copilot seat, legs flailing. Down. Bam! Up again. His stomach flipped with the rapid motions.

He realized vaguely that the
Bulotecus
must be on the ground, sliding across the dunes, propellers still thrusting it forward.

He pulled himself toward the door, crawling, bouncing. As the airship hit a prolonged patch of level sand, he was able to lurch out the door and down the stairs.

He rolled over the sharp steps and felt the massive ship heave to a stop. Millions of individual grains of sand screaked against the hull, rasped sharply for a final instant; then the maw of the desert settled, a massive toothless creature that had finally gotten its grip and would never let go. The wind roared triumphantly.

Caliph found himself in a painful pile at the bottom of the steps. His right thigh felt deeply bruised; he was also fairly certain something had gouged a hole in his lower back. His knuckles were bleeding and his face hurt but a real damage assessment would have to wait.

For the moment he savored the stillness of the ship. The only sound was sand tittering on metal. Then he became aware of other things. Wind, a broken cable scraping.

Maybe I’m dying—again. Zeppelins …
He chuckled.
Fucking bad luck.

He attempted to move but his whole body rebelled.
What do you think you’re doing?
it said.

He kept his eyes shut.

In an attempt to get his mind off the pain, he thought about Sigmund and Baufent and Taelin. He tried to run through the crew list but couldn’t. He felt the ones he had skipped. Even though he couldn’t remember their faces or names, he felt the holes they left in his mind.

He hoped Sig was okay. Then there was Owain. Owain was a bodyguard Caliph felt some affinity for, even though conversations with him were usually only two or three sentences long. Who else? His ears were ringing.

He rolled onto his knees but sharp pain in both shins threw him on his ass. He pressed his back up against a deck cabinet. At least he was sitting up.

He got to his feet. Sat back down.

Nearly passed out.

He cradled his head for a moment with one of his torn-up hands and felt his hair stick in the blood. He sat there.

He felt alone amid the messy wreck of his life. Stranded in the desert. He wanted to go back to Sandren and make a different choice. Strike that. He’d have to go back to Isca and never leave for the conference at all.

He regretted, in a cloudy confused way, all the people on the
Bulotecus
that he had dragged into this.

He wrenched himself to his feet. His legs were wobbly but he made his first objective an easy one. He stumbled up the steps to check the cockpit. Pilot and copilot were both sleeping over their brass controls; their own red oil leaked across the displays.

Caliph didn’t know whether to try and help them or race off and find Sig. He still felt uncertain about his course even as he ripped a first-aid kit off the wall. He pulled each man down to the floor, laying them out as gently as he could in the cramped space. He checked for pulses clumsily, having only a vague idea of what he was doing. Their wounds seemed superficial except for a puncture in Neville’s chest. The copilot didn’t seem to be breathing.

There was nothing in the kit that would change that. Caliph sifted through bandages and antiseptic. The inflatable splint seemed like a sardonic joke. Caliph grabbed Neville by the chin and forehead and blew into his mouth. Immediately, a thick red goo boiled out of the puncture wound in the man’s chest.

Horrified, Caliph stopped. He didn’t know what to do for either man. He set out again, down the steps, across the deck and toward the cabins in the direction of women’s voices.

*   *   *

W
HEN
Caliph Howl came around the corner, Miriam gasped. He looked like he had showered in blood and rolled in the sand. At first she thought one of the nyaffle had bitten him. He was barely walking.

“Where are you hurt?” She felt an unaccountable desire to help.

“I’m fine,” he said, which was certainly not the case. “We need to find everyone. Get everyone together.” He started to cough. She wondered briefly about internal injuries. Whether he lived or died didn’t really matter anymore. But the fact that he was walking around—
looking like that
—affected her.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

He asked her something in return. She adjusted her head and cupped a hand behind her good ear.

Caliph limped forward. “What’s wrong?” he asked again. He lifted a mangled hand and pointed it in Anjie’s direction. Apparently he had heard her sobbing.

“Nothing.” But keeping him cordoned from the truth was pointless. Even now his eyes scanned the deck, hunting for the reason. He found it quickly. Gina’s arm was pinned behind the deck rail. It marked the spot where the airship had rolled to starboard and crushed her body between the desert and the hull.

His shoulders slumped at the sight and he clenched a fist in his hair with what seemed genuine angst. Smothered as he was in his own stiffening blood, the act lifted his curls. They stood on their own even after he removed his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

One of the High King’s bodyguards emerged from the backdrop of wreckage and lowered himself to the deck from a dizzying angle. He carried a gas-powered crossbow and seemed in good health. He fretted over the High King for a few moments until Caliph finally screamed at him to check all the rooms for survivors.

Miriam turned her attention back to the qloin.

“We need to go back,” Anjie hissed in Withil. “We need to take her back to Aldrun…” She was hunkered up against the railing, holding Gina’s pale hand.

Miriam knew it wasn’t possible. Gina would not be one of the girls that returned to Skellum. Her burial wouldn’t be in the sacred tombs, but here in the desert.

“Anjie, we can’t get her out. We have to go.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

Miriam felt the pain in her words. They had already lost too many in Sandren and now, as dusk and the sandstorm pulled in around them, thick with the stench of carrion; now, with Sena’s ship nowhere in sight, Miriam felt the burden of her decision.

“We can’t kill the Eighth House,” hissed Autumn. She whispered it into Miriam’s right ear, keeping the breach of protocol just between the two of them. Miriam knew she was right. What did this mean? Was this it? The end of the Sisterhood?

They were one qloin now. One qloin that should have been able to do impossible things! But Miriam felt the exhaustion buckle her knees. Its weight was crushing.

“Miriam?”

This time it was the High King of Stonehold that addressed her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” His eyes looked briefly at the tragedy behind her. “Can I … can I get your help?” Blood dribbled off his middle finger, hit the deck and solidified in the dust. “I’m going to check the fore cabins,” he said. “Will you please check the others?”

Miriam hesitated. What did she care about any of these people? Gina was gone! Their mission seemed impossible. Caliph Howl had ceased to be useful.

“Yes. Of course,” she said. Autumn looked at her quizzically. “Stay with Anjie,” Miriam said in Withil. Caliph Howl had already turned and dragged himself over the broken deck.

Miriam reached up and gripped the door frame. The passageway beyond was steep but hardly vertical. Inside, she heard the voices of Caliph’s bodyguards, gnarled by wind, echoing.

The first door she came to was open. She looked in and scanned the darkness. Nested like ungainly hatchlings in the room’s destruction lay Caliph’s physician and Lady Taelin Rae.

Sharing the same nationality leant Miriam considerable familiarity with all the scandals Miss Rae had faced in the south. And here she was again, embroiled in political catastrophe, tangled in the wreckage of a Stonehavian airship.

While Miriam climbed toward the priestess, the physician stirred, grumbled and attempted to right herself. “Who are you?” the older woman demanded. She had a huge goose egg on her forehead. Then, “It doesn’t matter. Help me get her up.”

Together they lifted Taelin’s limp body toward the door. There was no place level to lay her down so extricating her from the wreckage seemed the best course.

“Is she alive?”

“She’s breathing,” said Baufent.

They got her into the hall and carried her downhill, out onto the deck where they laid her on a relatively flat sweep of textured metal. The deflating gasbags formed a pavilion of sorts that shielded them partially from the storm.

Miriam watched a moment as the short woman, tangled in her red coat, checked Lady Rae’s vitals. She spoke to Taelin while concentrating on her trade. “Come on,” the doctor whispered. “You and I are going to play cards again…”

Miriam didn’t want to look. She turned away and went back to the qloin. Anjie had quieted.

“The Iycestokians are right above us,” Autumn said. “Probably waiting out the storm.”

Miriam shook her hand up and down. “Apparently the diplomats—Wade and Veech—were locked in the hold. When we hit the desert, the hull caved in. I heard from one of the Stonehavians that they’re pulling the bodies out now.”

Autumn changed topic. “So? What do we do?”

Miriam’s diaglyphs scanned the wreckage. There was blood. Some here and some there. But what holojoules still sang on the wind were surprisingly scattered. The crash had dispersed everything—even the nyaffle.

There simply weren’t enough holojoules to travel, especially not without a starline. Without the markers, without the proper lines to walk, crossing was costly and dangerous. And there were three sisters to move. Far too many cuts of blood to gather from this tiny crew.
But,
she thought,
there is an Iycestokian airship hovering overhead.
She felt confident there would be a hundred eighty people there, which would be enough for the three of them to cross lines.

“The king’s bodyguards mentioned a chemiostatic car in the hold but apparently it’s destroyed,” said Autumn. “The water tanks are broken. They’re leaking into the sand.”

Miriam inhaled the smell of carrion, strong and choking.

It was actually mixed luck that the hylden’s enormous carcass, invisible through the storm, would cover the smell of the crash. She knew the nyaffle had not gone far. Southern papers routinely chronicled nyaffle attacks on zeppelins downed in the deep desert, once or twice a year. If they returned, the qloin could use them to travel. But for the moment the Sisterhood was trapped.

Nyaffle,
she mused. It had been a good plan. She admired Caliph Howl. Her thoughts turned from the High King as Anjie spoke her name.

Miriam looked at the two girls she had left. Both of them filthy and frightened though they would never say. Tears had cut through the dirt on Anjie’s cheeks but she had checked herself. She was ready for Miriam’s command.

“Let’s get out of the wind,” Miriam said firmly.

She wanted to coax the qloin across the wreck, toward shelter, out of the shock radius of Gina’s pale limb. The desert temperature had dropped quickly as twilight slipped into dusk. With Autumn’s help, she dragged a thermal crank toward the chosen site, a found hollow between the aft deck and a sand dune. Beneath the zeppelin a pile of food, chemiostatic torches and medical supplies had already started to accumulate thanks to the efforts of Baufent and a couple of the men. The provisions accreted quickly in plentiful contrast to the number of survivors.