The Last Page (8 page)

Caliph looked out the window at the newest crop of not-quite-alumni. No more classes. No more tests. They had nothing left but to break the code in as many ways as eight pent-up, frustrated years could help devise. They would smash it. They would trample it; crush it completely. By week’s end they would leave its smoking wreckage in their past and move on to new lives and new locations. The chancellor appeared un-announced at the frat house once or twice but everyone knew that, for the seniors, his rule had ended.

Spring was an exodus. Caliph washed, got dressed and went outside.

A venerable building crouched at the edge of the lake, poised in the shade like a giant toad, ready to either jump into the water or fall apart at any moment. Caliph went inside, unlocked the musty box with his number and found two letters, one from his father, the other in a familiar boyish
cursive that made his stomach feel like it was falling. He opened the first.

Tarsh 4, Day of the Sowing

Caliph,

I got word of your success at school today but the Council says you plan to stay another semester. Don’t do it. Come home. There’s turmoil near Clefthollow. Unfortunately I have men there to lead and will not likely be able to attend your graduation. Such are the responsibilities of serving the Council. I smile when I think that I may soon be serving you.

—Jacob

Caliph’s hand crumpled it and released it somewhere near the trash. It was forgotten even before he turned the second letter over for further inspection. He could feel something heavy inside. It wouldn’t be drivel. This letter would require something of him. His stomach fell again. Unable to do anything else, he tore off the corner with a flourish and shook its contents into his palm. A date nearly a month old crabbed the top of the page.

Mr
sh 8, Y.o.T. Falcon

Caliph,

Congratulations! I don’t have to tell you that you’re brilliant.

I have my own place now, not far from Sandren, in the Highlands of Tue. You could be here in a week if you take the steam rail. I enclosed a map. The fact that you did most of my cartography for me is my only excuse.

I have something to show you. Something that might put our last conversation in a better light. And no, that’s not the only reason I want you to come.

It gets lonely out here. I bought some things I know you like. I can probably find a use for them if you don’t show up but . . .

Don’t worry. If you decide against coming—for any reason—I’ll understand and wish you good luck. Hynns
ll
.

—Sena

There was a key, their key, tucked inside a wrecked attempt at a map. To his surprise, the key affected him profoundly like a talisman. He thought of throwing it in the pond.

At noon he met the rest of the Naked Eight at Grume’s for a drink. Since Roric’s expulsion, Caliph had become their genearch; the one they toasted while skirting the humiliating topic that had forged their fraternity.

With graduation bearing down, they promised to stay in touch, look each other up; look Caliph up in particular since he would be king. They joked about taking advantage of his featherbeds and the fictitious chambermaids that gave sponge baths.

Caliph forced a laugh but he had to wonder whether it might be true that they clung to him primarily because of the power he would soon command. He wanted to believe that regardless of his distinction, there was some invisible unbreakable bond between them. They were the Naked Eight. Unfortunately it sounded cheap and mawkish, sincerity that with time would turn into the oldest kind of lie.

Caliph left Grume’s feeling depressed.

By Day of Dusk, his isolation was complete.

He went to the chapel where a heavy brocade of dove-colored stone seemed to shout. Choking-sweet clouds of incense smudged the tierceron vault under which twenty-nine graduates milled as though eight years of school had left them confused.

Caliph walked in, spotted with jewel-colored light and found Belman Gorn’s eyes watching him.

“Here for a gown?”

Caliph felt sheepish. “I opted out of that pomp. I’m staying one more semester. There’s a class on lethargy crucibles: slow power. I couldn’t pass it up.”

“Engineering?”

“No. It’s an overview of how they run, but mostly economics. Impact, cost, infrastructure . . . that kind of thing.”

Belman chuckled. “Let no one say Caliph Howl doesn’t love school. You probably won’t miss much at commencement tonight.”

Caliph smiled but knew Belman was wrong. Suddenly he understood that this should have been his night. Belman wasn’t giving him advice. Belman wasn’t talking to him like a student anymore. Some miraculous transformation had almost taken place. Caliph imagined all the doors and windows in Desdae being suddenly flung open, releasing him—every part of him—like a startled flock of birds.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, he watched his friends accept their degrees on the lawn. It was different than Sena’s graduation, an evening ceremony with an audience
that included no one he knew and the occasional lacewing that fluttered like white fire through the last rays of evening translucence.

Caliph met the chancellor in the Administration Building on the eleventh. Enthroned behind his desk in a riveted oxblood chair, Darsey looked up from his work through a set of thick, half-moon spectacles to see the clurichaun standing on his desk. He stared at it for several moments; then his eyes flicked to Caliph. He wore a sad expression that Caliph didn’t want defined. “A deal is a deal, is that it?” the chancellor asked.

He pushed himself back, turned precisely ninety degrees in his chair and drew a roll of vellum from the great brooding bookshelf behind him.

Caliph didn’t answer. The chancellor opened the document, examined it briefly, re-rolled it and held it out. “I think you’ll find everything in order . . . your majesty.”

The words struck Caliph in the chest, solidly. He looked at Darsey for a moment, then reached out and took his diploma. “Be careful, Mr. Howl. I doubt the Duchy of Stonehold will be as quiet as the library.”

Caliph nodded faintly and left the room without a word. After that, he knew he was dead. He could feel it when he went to class. The hollowness. The emptiness of the campus. He had done spring and summer semester every year, but this year was different. This year he had fallen like too-ripe fruit.

Tarsh to Ma
m to Myhr to P
sh. It was really only two and a half months. The class on lethargy crucibles made three hours of every day tolerable. The rest of the time he found himself coping with ghosts. Everywhere he turned he saw places where someone he used to know had done or said something. Usually that someone was Sena. He carried the key in his pocket like a weight.

On the fourth of P
sh Caliph sat up in bed.