The Last Page (79 page)

Worry consumed her.

Now she understood the trap that Nathaniel Howl had written about in the margins, the one he claimed to have chuckled ruefully over when he discovered it decades ago. And now, she guessed, it had claimed another victim who was just as inattentive to the antithetical drollery of whatever cosmic powers had created the lock.

Quite simply, there was no way to open the
C
srym T
’s lock without succumbing to its curse.

It was a simple conditional, like those learned in logic philosophy at Desdae when students were faced with categorical syllogisms and the
prospect of memorizing the square of opposition: if true love cannot be betrayed then betrayed love cannot be true.

Sena’s hunt for the required ingredients had been a hunt for a beast that never breathed.

The trap’s simplicity was also its genius.

Only a truly impassive heart would not revolt at the cost of opening the book. Only a power-hungry zealot could accept the fulsome ritual as a tolerable exchange. And only those deserving a cryptic fate would not see the blatant incongruity demanded by the recipe.

Fear tickled the heel of Sena’s every waking thought.

Even the pleasant autumn evening seemed sinister and intelligent, as though the world had come alive, the ground hunkering underfoot, the air watching her. Any moment Sena expected calamity, black skies, roaring winds . . . more tremors in the mountains.

She looked toward Isca. The castle towers rose like golden needles by the sea.

Standing below the oak, she tried to decide whether to flee Stonehold before winter came or . . .

“Yella by
n!”

She spat the words in frustration.

Slowly the idea crept into her skull that maybe, just maybe, she had deceived herself.

Do I love him?

If I do, why now? Why now after the book is open?

She cursed again, then laughed at the mounting absurdity of her emotions.

How prosaic! She got what she wanted only when she no longer needed it.

Her humor covered the spiteful truth. She wanted to see Caliph. She wanted to tell him what she had found in the book, share her tiny discoveries thus far. She wanted to talk to him and feel his arms around her.

The guards would never let her back into the castle. Even if they did, she knew Caliph would be done with her.

She mucked around in the leaves, holding her pack in crossed arms; she had a full contingency of traveling supplies.

The wind seemed to panic her hair. Ignited by the setting sun, her unruly curls tossed this way and that against the dark western sky, a pantomime of the war going on inside her head.

With a final angry curse, Sena kicked savagely at the leaves and began walking down the hill.

Caliph’s wound scabbed over.

On the fourth of Kam he sat in the high tower eating a fish and pickle salad sandwich. After sampling a side of crisped potatoes, he morosely pushed the plate away and reached down under his pant cuff to discreetly wipe his fingers on his sock.

The chef, with what he had to work with, had outdone himself but Caliph’s appetite remained anemic. He had begun, for the second time, the painful effacing of her memory, the chiseling off of tokens that had snarled with surprising complexity in his brain.

At some future place or time (perhaps) the reduction of her image would obtain and something else be fashioned from the rubble left behind.

He would have dismissed his struggle as parody in anyone else. If this weren’t happening to him he would have curled his lip. But she had found a hairline fracture that caused something inside him, something indefinable, to fail.
If it hadn’t been her . . .

If it had been anyone but her . . .

His mind toyed with options lodged in preposterous subrealities, masochistic cognitive abortions—games of “what if” staged in excruciating futility.

And yet he played.

Alani entered the high tower exactly on time.

Caliph could see Alani read his mood: somewhere between coal and cellar black. Caliph made it vanish with a ruffle, like a tablecloth pulled under dishes by sleight of hand. The tense angular lines relaxed, faded.

Caliph bid his spymaster sit.

He was risking everything with this meeting, trusting that unlike everyone else, Alani wouldn’t let him down.

Graffiti covered the gates to the Hold. The police were terrified. The markets were dead. It was time to unveil his plan.

Yrisl had been skeptical. It relied on surreal improbabilities. Grand orchestration. Perfect timing. It relied on variables that couldn’t be nailed
down. It relied on murder, deception, cruelty and chance in order to succeed. It relied on greed and arrogance and, in the end, made the handful of murdered street youth seem like an easily forgivable sin. And yet, Yrisl had nodded his approval. And now it was Alani’s turn to hear the plan.

Initially, the old spymaster slumped slightly, legs crossed in a deceptively tranquil pose. But as Caliph began to talk, the old assassin scratched his knuckles faintly and adjusted his posture in the chair. He fumbled with his pipe, lit it nervously and laid it aside without a toke. And when at last the High King finished, Alani sat in stunned silence, digesting every syllable he had heard.

Finally he picked up his pipe. Without an encouraging puff, the thick tobacco had snuffed itself. He fondled the bowl and muttered, “Do you really think it can be done?” The old man’s voice was sagely diplomatic. It betrayed neither skepticism nor contempt. Rather, Alani’s question indicated through its perfect timbre that if the High King answered yes, that would be good enough for him.

Caliph looked hard at the spymaster.

“Everything I’ve told you is true. In that respect, it can be done. But you’re the man that would have to see it through.

“Risky isn’t even the word. It’s touch and go at best. But if we had even a sixty-five percent success rate . . . Mother of Mizraim, if we managed even fifty percent, it would give our fleet a fighting chance.

“Logistics are what I’m counting on from you,” said Caliph. “Insight. A tether back to sanity, I guess. I’ve been thinking about it, bottling it up for so long. I don’t even know what it must sound like anymore, hearing it for the first time. So . . . it’s your turn. You tell me. What do you think?”

Alani stuffed his unlit pipe back inside his vest and folded his hands across his lap. Caliph could tell he was choosing words carefully.

“Well—since it is all true . . . and understanding the implications of even marginal success . . . we don’t have much of a choice. You have these . . . suits ready?”

“After a fashion. Willing test subjects are, as you can imagine, difficult to find.”

Alani smiled and made the southern hand sign for yes.

“It’s already out that we have solvitriol power,” said Caliph. “The Pandragonian ambassador himself accused me of theft. It wouldn’t be that far-fetched for Saergaeth to believe . . .”

“We need papers,” said Caliph. “All kinds of official documentation. It has to look absolutely real.”

Alani nodded and spoke with quiet businesslike decorum.

“I’ll take care of the details. Just two additional items I wanted to mention.

“One is King Lewis. He may have reconsidered his position. He wants an audience.”

Caliph hoisted one eyebrow but remained objective.

“That would be a welcome twist. When?”

“Lewis likes to hunt. Invite him on one . . . maybe next week?”

Caliph continued playing with his bottom lip.

“The cotters have been complaining about some creature in the hills. We could use Lewis’ visit as an excuse to go after it. I’ll talk to Gadriel and work something out. What else?”

“A Pplarian ship arrived this morning in Ironside . . . bearing gifts. Some very interesting weapons and, apparently, a manual on their use.”

“I’ll come to Ironside this evening. I need to talk with Sigmund Dulgensen.”

“I had planned to bring them up to the castle—”

“No. Don’t do that. I have to visit Glôssok anyway. Might as well save a bunch of soldiers having to fly them up.”

Alani smiled.

“As you wish.”

At first they thought it was syphilis.

White rubbery gummata or necrotic chancres metastasized from people’s mouths and loins. But when it intensified and spread like pox, fear set in.

In Isca, where the sounds of coughing could easily leap between proximate windows like agile thieves, the word “plague” induced exoteric pandemonium.

Soap sold out in pharmacopolist and apothecary shops. Misinformed valetudinarians draped white linen in all the windows and doorways of their narrow homes.

Most already regarded the visitation’s alleged breeding ground with fear and loathing and didn’t voice objection when Ghoul Court was herded and burned.

One hundred knights and a thousand city watch converged on the unofficial borough like creatures from outlawed reality. Proboscidean masks dangled through fat tendrils of boiling air. Limp snouts swayed as they filtered breathable oxygen out of alleys swollen with plague and voluminous white clouds of disinfectant smoke.

Heavy, reinforced leather cuirasses covered the watchmen’s chests. Though it created a troubling domestic image, the knights wore chor
tium
armor. They plugged in chemiostatic goads that hummed malevolently. Rubber-coated cables supplied the power from glowing cells embedded in the armor’s spines.