The Last Page (12 page)

She hesitated a moment, weighing the odds, wondering if it was worth the energy. Then, finally committing to the task, she reached for her bookcase and pulled a thin book from the shelves. She set it in the middle of her worktable like a centerpiece, then turned and left the room.

In her kitchen, she took a moment to scrawl a note and tack it to her corkboard. Then she set out on the two-minute walk that took her to the Stones.

The Porch of S
th gathered starlines from all across the world, angles, lines through the N
cr
pa. The Shr
dnae Sisterhood used them for navigation and connecting space. Megan claimed no one outside the Sisterhood knew how to use them, that they were forgotten like the very monuments that marked them.

But the Porch of S
th was different. Its numerology was skewed. Routes taken to the Stones from other places did not always have reciprocal lines. And lines taken away from Tue were often difficult to retrace.

But there was one place she could go and return from and she had planned it from the beginning.

At the Stones, Sena’s body shimmered and unwound, a two-dimensional cicatrix, a spool of black ribbon thrown from the mile-high cliff by holomorphy, fading north into nothingness.

Where she went, she hoped, would be impossible for anyone except Caliph Howl to deduce.

⁴
D.W.: Witch’s pupil.

⁵
Pår
n and får
n are respectively “The Duty” and “The Betrayal”. Pår
n specifically is sex work to advance the Sisterhood’s political agenda. Får
n is sex for personal reasons and seen as jeopardizing the Sisterhood’s veil of secrecy.

The train crawled between the Spine Mountains and howled over the Medysan Bog. Caliph got off at Crow’s Eye. Even stopped, the great hideous thing flickered with people: bodies adjusting behind three stories of slotted white windows. The obscene black cars repeated like segments of a myriapede, fading back along the Vaubacour Line.

Caliph dispersed with the rest of the passengers, fading from the platform like engine steam.

In the east, the sun had left ruins in the clouds. He found the toilets locked and crouched behind the station. Far away, the horizon crumpled with distant humidity. A glimmer that might have been an airship floated south. Caliph finished up. There was no shortage of waste paper. He wrinkled his nose and made due.

Just then, a man’s cough startled him. A slender silhouette emerged from the deserted platform, utterly featureless in the dark. Caliph buckled his belt. He watched the man, who didn’t seem to notice him, take a set of cement stairs down behind a fence that was alive with spectral bits of paper.

Caliph took one step and his foot hit a can. It sang mournfully off the gravel. The man stopped and turned in Caliph’s direction. He stood there, too long, staring directly into the blackness. Maybe he was frightened. Maybe he was a thug.

“It’s just me,” Caliph finally said, feeling stupid. “The toilets were locked.”

The man said nothing. He continued to stare.

Caliph stepped out into a gray tangent of streetlight. When he did, he thought he heard the other man gasp.

Caliph tried again. “I didn’t mean to startle you . . . nowhere else for me go—”

“You rode from Greymoor?” The other man’s voice was older, slightly stretched and tinged with emotion: anxiety or perhaps disbelief. Caliph felt trapped, uncertain how to answer. Certainly people were looking for him, probably a great many people by now. Maybe this man worked for the Stonehavian government.

“I’m a butcher,” said the man. There was no further explanation but his accent indicated a degree of education. His vowels sounded vaguely like he usually spoke Gnah Lug Lam or maybe High M
lk. “Name’s Alani.”

Do I dare use my name?
“I’m Caliph.”

“There’s a pushing school on the south side of town,” said Alani. “But you’re not going there, are you?”

Caliph wished he could see the man’s face.

“I don’t know . . . I . . .”

“No. You’re headed for that little skirt’s place on the lip of the plateau.”