Black Bottle (63 page)

The blade landed in a white forehead and blood like lake water rolled out. The windows and peaks of the Grand Elesh’Ox began to mumble with voices. Witches pulled at currents of holojoules in the Unknown Tongue and threaded the power of the Willin Droul’s blood into divergent equations. A bubble of humid dreams surrounded the hotel and sealed the witches in, but they could still use hemofurtum to fight.

An orgy of self-mutilation began among the fingerlings who, under the numbers of the witches, started clawing off their own skins. Their blood fueled other deceptions as some of the flawless turned their long striped talons on one another. Bodies flew. Limbs and organs cartwheeled through sultry blood-flecked air.

Then chirrups and barks and groans welled from the numberless congregation and endless ranks surged at the Elesh’Ox.

Miriam watched the heavy bodies stampede toward her as she talked. With every few words another of the Lua’groc died. But they were without number and without fear.

Lacking a final moment of glory, Autumn disappeared less than ten feet in front of her, swallowed up at the base of the steps. When that happened, Miriam did not scream and throw herself into desperate battle. Instead she dropped her kyru and stopped talking. She looked up at the cloudy sky, hinting at more rain, away from the abortive ancient things that floundered up the staircase and trampled her under claw and limb. The rough brush of their hides, the slapping wetness of their bindings, the stink of their gasses was gagging.

She gasped from the impact, breath forced out when their weight ground her against the right angles of the stairs. They broke her bones. They crushed her rib cage like a sack full of kindling.

And there was blood. An elemental figure in a holomorph’s death. Hot red wax running down the stairs. She searched for any sign of Autumn between the shuffling legs but her head was pointed in the wrong way and the world was getting cloudy.

The greatest equations were products of suicide. She opened her mouth in a bid for final retribution. To gather all of what had spilled out of her into one conclusive strike: a detonation that would kill hundreds. But Miriam’s lungs were empty and she could not fill them.

CHAPTER

51

Sena watched as the tincture unfurled its pseudo-reality, its time-bent brand of postulations-cum-potential-for-meddling.

It was Caliph’s third journey. Though the pain of entry into dream was not so bad—the damage this dose did was extreme. She had lied: he would not recover.

But that didn’t matter. Nathaniel was right. This was her chance to say good-bye, and to apologize.

The tincture brought them both, Caliph as traveler and Sena as guide, down hard in the House on Isca Hill.

In this dream, Caliph was coloring at the kitchen table while his uncle stood in the sunlight holding the
Cisrym Ta,
reading. She hoped Nathaniel would not follow her. She hoped he believed what he had said and was allotting her this time for closure.

Sena looked around the room. A man in formal uniform was cooking eggs and strudel at the stove. Over Caliph’s shoulder Sena could see that he was drawing red and purple monsters. Their shapes were like simple clouds with serrations instead of soft curves. Their almond-shaped eyes had slits for pupils. Their mouths were jagged.

She wondered why his mind had gone here, of all possible memories. Perhaps the monsters in the sewer had chased him to this quiet morning where similar fears were explained with crayons.

The smell of breakfast was delicious. A bell rang in the house and Nathaniel did not look up from the book. The servant picked up a towel and wiped his hands.

“Let Caliph get it,” said Nathaniel.

Caliph sat at the table, engrossed in his images, pressing hard against the paper so that each stroke made a soft smack when he pulled the crayon away.

“Caliph! Get the door!”

Sena watched the command register. Caliph didn’t look at his uncle but his young eyes grew wide. He glanced peripherally as he slid off his chair.

In an act of betrayal, the crayon rolled off the table. It clattered loudly. The sound of it pulled him up short though he had already marched halfway across the room.

He turned around, looking frightened, then walked back. He picked the crayon up and set it on the table, making sure it didn’t move again. A quick glance at his uncle confirmed that Nathaniel was staring at him. Then Caliph walked fast out of the room, legs leading, butt tucked in, wary of a swat.

Sena followed him down the dim passageway between the mansion’s kitchen and its foyer. Little Caliph glanced over his shoulder but Sena was invisible to him. All he cared about was that his uncle was not behind him.

When Caliph reached the foyer he struggled with the huge door, trying the dead bolt several times before understanding which way he had to flip it. Then he tugged with his whole body, barely managing to drag the portal back.

The day outside was young and brutally cold. Fine snow sifted from the sky and icy golden light flared into the foyer around three women. Sena was stunned. She had not expected this.

“Hello,” one of the women said. Her eyes glittered with miniature carvings. “Is your uncle home?”

“Yes.” Caliph stood there, staring at the women.

“Can he come to the door?”

Caliph put his lips tightly together and nodded. Then he walked stiffly to the passageway and called out, “Uncle Nathaniel!”

Instantly the black billow of Nathaniel’s robes gusted down the hallway. His lips were bloodless, his expression one of infinite irritation.

“Who is it?”

“Some ladies,” said Caliph.

Nathaniel entered the foyer and stared at the women on the front steps. His scowl deepened. He pulled his robes around him and snapped his book shut.

“Nathaniel Howl,” said one of the women but her eyes, all the witches’ eyes were on the book.

He sneered at them. “Unable to get in through the windows, I assume?”

“We’re willing to make a transaction,” said the witch.

Nathaniel didn’t laugh. Instead his lips pulled back from his teeth in the manner of a cornered animal. “Really? Belting the three of you nightly until my heart wears out?” He shook the book at them and did not invite them in. “You’ll stay out there until I’m ready. And when I’m ready…” He giggled softly. “Well, I’m sure the three of you can piece it together to be gone by then.”

“You think you’ll survive long enough? To get ready?” The cephal’matris took half a step closer, keenly aware of her inability to enter the house, but threatening nevertheless.

Sena saw Nathaniel’s eyes dilate with inhuman blackness. He took several steps toward the threshold, book in hand, smiling rapaciously. The entire qloin drew back. It was impressive, even to Sena, to see them cower.

“Yes. Yes I do believe I’ll be around,” said Nathaniel. “Long after the three of you are not. Yes. I’ll be here. Rest assured. Arrangements have been made.”

“The Sisterhood can make you the richest man north of Eh’Muhruk Muht.” Sena looked at the cephal’matris’ quavering eyes. She was lovely and young and scared, sent out by Megan to do what could not be done.

“Why not the richest man north or south?” asked Nathaniel. “Why not the richest anywhere? I’ll tell you why, you pathetic pully-haully whores. Because you can’t give what you don’t have. You are not remotely powerful enough to offer me what I want. What I want, I will get. Myself! And you,” he pointed at her directly, “will go back and inform that whitewashed cunt you call the Eighth House of my decision. Have a wonderful day. Ladies.”

He shut the door and turned to Caliph who had been sitting on a tall back chair in the foyer, listening quietly to the exchange. “Women are receptacles, Caliph. You have to give them something to hold. Pound it into them really. That’s why, in the end, I’m going to survive. Because I can see the future, boy. Did you know that? I can see it. Just like my daughter, with her immortal eyes. Her perfect immortal eyes. They’ll carry whatever burdens I give them. And it’s going to be wonderful. A brilliant success.”

Caliph swallowed hard as his uncle stormed out of the foyer. “Don’t answer the door again,” Nathaniel shrieked.

*   *   *

S
ENA
marveled at this serendipitous insight.

His daughter?
Here was undeniable proof that all his notes had been careful deceptions. Not a surprise. But what
was
surprising, and the thing that sent a shiver through Sena’s immortal flesh was that Nathaniel had
not
sent her to Soth to rescue his daughter …

But to rescue her
eyes.

How could she not have seen that? The double fake! Pretending he loved his daughter and then when the lie was uncovered, he was able to make it seem that Sena had guessed right, that Arrian had meant little to him—when in fact the opposite was true.

He needed his daughter desperately as any holomorph needs a drop of blood.

Now it made sense, his smug announcement that he had found Arrian’s head, floating in the ocean.

He must have known full-well that the rubies would never work. Yet he had left no part of his deception to chance. His ambit was every bit as strong as hers and just as she had hidden her thoughts from him, he had done the same.

He had foreseen her. He had known it would come to this.

Sena swallowed hard. Now she was thinking, remembering how Nathaniel had raged when she had come back from Soth without the body, but how calmly he had mentioned finding Arrian’s head.

Arrian’s eyes would last an eternity.

And all of this, every detail down through the centuries, all the research Sena had waded through at Desdae, in the south, in the long dark hours at Isca Castle: all of it had been compiled by Nathaniel Howl with the sole purpose of fooling her.

Sena was dumbstruck. How could she not have seen this coming?

It was as if Caliph had seized this one moment of clarity, this admission from Nathaniel, and remembered it subconsciously. He had guided her to it as if he had known that it was important.

Pshaw,
Nathaniel hissed. And Sena stood up straight in Caliph’s dream. Because this was not the Nathaniel from the past. This was the real shade, the lich-thing come crawling over her brain.
You think Caliph guided you to this memory? You fool.

“Why?”

Because I want you to know—that you had to be shown. Doesn’t that hurt? You simply weren’t smart enough to win.

“You could have convinced Arrian to give up her eyes,” Sena said with belated understanding. “She trusted you.”

Which was something you would never do.

“But I left her there,” said Sena. “You didn’t think I’d leave her body at Soth.”

A coincidental victory. And momentary.

But Sena grasped mentally at this slender ray of hope.

Sena could not believe that she had avoided his trap—almost—and that she had done it by accident.

Not good enough.

“Would you have tried to cut your pages from Arrian’s back?”

No. I’ll use yours. You won’t be going anywhere. Neither will your little grub.

Sena’s mind went to her womb. Her thoughts locked up. He knew. He knew and he was doing something about it—out there in the real world while she was stuck here, inside Caliph’s tinctured head.
Yella byun!

He had told her to use the tincture to get her out of his way, while he executed his plan. Sena looked out of the dream, just in time to see Stonehold drop dead.

The eruption that radiated from St. Remora didn’t melt the falling snow. It didn’t disturb the white-caked wires strung above the streets. It made no sound at all as it uncoiled in the heart of the city, while the city’s populace still slept.

Vaccinated as it was, Isca wasn’t to be spared, it was to be harvested according to Nathaniel’s plan.

The god-pudding calved in St. Remora’s depths—birthed dead but dreaming from that crimson world. It landed in Isca with a squelchy ripple of ethereal sound. The first of the Yillo’tharnah to
physically
arrive. St. Remora’s clockwork pulled it out: lightless, formless and asleep … a fetus still tethered to the dark … its plasmatic black subtrahend contracted, sending an unconscious blast outward, a feeding reflex—exactly like a solvitriol bomb—barreling through Isca.

Quick as a scavenger, Nathan Howl wrought his equation and sucked the dislodged lives out of Isca like egg whites, leaving the Yillo’tharnah stillborn.

Sena turned and ran. She had to find Caliph. Her plan had just fallen apart.

*   *   *

C
ALIPH
rested on his back. The ceiling of his uncle’s lab was coffered white. In one of the squares a spider had made an invisible web. Caliph could see a moth dangling in the threads, sucked dry. It seemed to struggle when the breeze from the windows disturbed it. He sensed that this was not real. That all of this had happened before. He knew he was in a tincture dream. But he could not control it. All he could do was go where the dream took him. He was a passenger. A voyeur looking back on his own life.

Caliph’s eyes noticed things: fly flecks on ceiling paint, cracked plaster, discoloration where there had been a leak in the roof.

He turned his head toward the lab’s bank of windows. Several were open. The old whitewashed metholinate pipes came up through the floorboards. He followed them with his eyes, around the window frames and up through imperfect holes in the ceiling. He could feel how nervous his tiny body was, heart racing like a hamster wheel.

Caliph watched and listened to the summer branches roll like waves beyond the windows. White winged insects shuddered and flashed, carefree amid the churning green. Humid summer smells mixed with medical antiseptic as his uncle turned and swabbed his arm.

Overhead, a tin ceiling fan whispered while the brittle chirr of insects rattled in the heat.

“Good boy,” said his uncle. Then there was a sharp pinch in the tender place at the crook of his arm. “Stay still.”

Caliph winced and arched his back slightly. His head pushed into the pillow.