The Last Page

by Anthony Huso

  From the observation deck, the wind smelled clean and cool despite the humidity. Sena had never flown before. She was giddy with delight.

  She wore a formal décolletage, indigo with tiny diamonds down the kick pleat. One of many choices given her by the army of tailors and dressmakers, it accentuated her movements by design. Her entire back was bare.

  She had explored every cranny of the zeppelin, seen the huge bedroom and made a flirtatious joke before dragging Caliph quickly out onto the observation deck. It being her first ride, she was unwilling to miss a moment of the view.

  The airship plugged east, great flaps of skin pivoting, guiding it out over Ironside, over water. It slipped into the darkness above the bay and turned south, providing a rare romantic view of the city, a deception caused by dusk.

  Sena rested her head on Caliph’s shoulder and gazed at the distant lights and smoldering industrial stacks of Lower Murkbell. Growl Mort gave off a volcanic glow that turned the heavy vapors erratic orange. It came home to her again with considerable poignancy that the man who ruled the city, who ruled everything she could see was standing right beside her. The most powerful man in Stonehold.

  She looked at Isca.

  Caliph looked at her.

  She felt a tremor in her resolve that frightened her but gave her hope at the same time. She had to wait for autumn. For the lock of a dead man’s hair. The book was breathing at the back of her head, at the back of her neck, even though she had locked it up in the rolltop desk in Caliph’s bedroom.

  She shivered. Not from cold.

  Tonight was the debut of a local writer’s opera that would run concurrently with Er Krue Alteirz, alternating weeks to finish out the season. The Herald had proclaimed it a stunning success for a first opera and avidly encouraged attendance. But then, the Murkbell Opera House owned part of the Herald and independent publications had been noticeably less flattering.

  The Byun-Ghala headed inland, crossing Bragget Canal, mooring at an over-elegant spindle of steel and stone. The spindle poured down like molten slag into a nexus of canals where lamp-lit gondolas set out for a luxurious fifteen-minute cruise through the baroque darkness of Murkbell’s upper south side.

  Discreet operatives, along with the High King’s elite personal guard, secured a moving perimeter around the king and his mistress.

  Some were discreet.

  The musclemen ruthlessly accosted or otherwise blocked pedestrians with chemiostatic nightsticks, giving no explanation when they either turned people away into side streets and detours or when they suddenly let them pass again as the perimeter moved on.

  Caliph and Sena glided down the lapping black canals, passing buildings of fantastic age, sliding under fabulous bridges carved with winged things. Through inundated avenues and drowned forgotten alleys, the gondolier poled them. Floating. Lost amid a dizzying agglomeration of decayed fantasy in brick.

  Square mooring columns jutted like blackened fingers from sloshing boulevards smeared with nighttime reflections of distant, multicolored lights. The blue and orange lanterns on the boat cast their halos over stone, blazoned cheerful glimmers along dreary piers and culverts.

  Wind bothered them.

  It rocked the lanterns and swung the light through tunnels, up massive pylons of stone and steel cladding. It illuminated brown monochromatic graffiti.

  Suddenly they emerged from the extravagant squalor as from between artificial cliffs. The boat scudded spryly out of a flooded byway onto a lake behind the opera house.

  The huge gabled building startled Sena. It loomed like some gray-caped hulk with orange-magenta eyes, lights on for elitist guests who gossiped and smoked and drank champagne in thickets by the doors.

  Gas lamps and streetlamps clustered like magic wands, bundles of glass bulbs throwing abalone light across the cobbles, utterly defiant of the metholinate shortage.

  Caliph grumbled when he saw the waste and made a mental note to bring management into line. As the gondola touched the pier, a body of guards was already waiting. They held the curious rich at bay. Vhortghast was among them, looking winded. His pale skin glistened. Caliph wondered where he had run from.

  Political icons and others who routinely basked in the illustriousness afforded them by the High King’s sodality were of course let through. Clayton Redfield was among the few who strode confidently past the sour-faced wall of bodyguards.

  Caliph intensely disliked the sense of profound segregation, the illusion of elevation—the utter pomposity. He wanted to call out to the ogling nobles, What are you staring at? I shit just like you!

  The guards moved as the High King moved, shifting the perimeter as if by smell. They were no less attuned to his movements than a cloud of flies circling the eyes and mouth of a cow. The wealthy parted in gleeful tides, calling out as he and Sena passed, complimenting his choice of apparel—the same mundane black he always wore—as if it had been the newest style.

  Caliph waved graciously and made sure Sena managed the stairs in her heels. She smiled and pinched his arm.

  The Murkbell Opera House enfolded them.

  It was a sea of formal attire. Perfume and pomade. Awash with red lights and the smell of whipped coffee. Perfectly dim. The atmosphere exuded opulence and a frenzied exchange of erudite artistic sensibility.

  Gorgeous paintings and draperies soaked in the costly incense of exotic tobacco while men exchanged brand names, prices and offered each other cigars.

  After Clayton Redfield had finally agreed to enjoy the show for the third time and summarily faded into the crowd, Zane Vhortghast led the High King to his private box.

  A blushing young woman handed Sena a pair of opera glasses despite the box’s nearness to the stage. The girl informed her that she could use them to examine the superior craftsmanship of the costumes or the precise expressions on the actors’ faces as she chose.

  Caliph raised his eyebrows incredulously and studied the program that had made its way into his hand.

  As the mournful sounds of violins being tuned wafted from the orchestra pit, two huge men positioned themselves just without the High King’s box. They scrutinized and menaced the hall. Their twins lurked inside but hung discreetly back, watching the theater with mechanical attention. Vhortghast himself monitored surveillance from a straight-backed chair that gave him a wide view of the audience below as well as the boxes spaced around the elaborate walls.

  Most of the women in the audience and not a few of the men used opera glasses to snatch better glimpses of the royal couple. Girls with fishnet pantyhose and feathered tails and bras distributed fanciful drinks in impossibly tall glasses or whisked empty ones away.

  Below the royal box, in aisle three, a soused nobleman groped his friend’s wife and fell over a row of chairs, creating a small fracas. He promptly disappeared in the arms of three burly ushers and the tittering waves of conversation resumed as though nothing had happened.

  “I liked the Minstrel’s Stage better,” whispered Caliph.

  Sena smirked indulgently. The preceding weeks had been hard on both of them.

  At first, Caliph had chuckled when he read the note drawn out of the hawk’s tiny canister. Then he had reread it. Then he had reread it again, disbelieving. Finally he had begun to shake and whisper and pace the floor and scowl. What could it mean? he thought. Fallow Down has disappeared.

  By fast horse and private zeppelin, the adventuresome had already gone out and returned with firsthand accounts of the devastation. There was no keeping it a secret.

  The fickle papers had minted every kind of lie and theory they could dream up. Laws passed under the old Council ensuring freedom of the press remained unchallenged though barbs enough to fill a dozen quivers had been hurled at Caliph by several fearless periodicals offering special biweekly editions (or seditions as those loyal to the High King liked to call them).

  Caliph had juggled all kinds of meetings with military personnel and worried burgomasters and journalists who constantly overstep
ped their bounds.

  He wanted to go out and see the thing for himself but his advisors forbade it. Round trip, it was nearly seventy-five miles out of the way, and those were precious hours to and from Tentinil better spent in Isca directing operations from a central seat of power.

  Caliph had departed on the fifteenth for Queen Guerrian’s funeral (the prince’s mother had died in her sleep) and returned late the same night by zeppelin. He leapt off the Byun-Ghala, and dashed to a late-night meeting like the operator of a mad machine racing to throw switches in an effort to regain control.

  Then came the second blow, more devastating on a personal level to Caliph’s reign and even more confusing to his supporters than the news that Fallow Down had disappeared. It brought the castle down to a deathly hushed still as the staff read the Iscan Herald with utter disbelief.

  Some woman had come forward with details. She claimed to have known Sena for many years and felt it her duty to inform the Iscan people of the truth behind the High King’s new mistress.

  Sena could still remember the headline and the opening paragraph of a two-page story.

  High King Court’s Witch

  by Nick Glugh, Journalist

  As if the Iscan people needed more bizarre news another report rocked the foundations of King Howl’s fledgling reign when a woman identifying herself as Miriam Yeats came forward with an accusation that the new High King’s mistress is a Shrdnae operative. This, just scant days after the tragedy at Fallow Down, an event critics are calling a holomorphic holocaust, once again casts the specter of suspicion over the Iscan Crown . . .

  The fact that Caliph had blown it off entirely only made Sena’s sense of guilt more profound. He wouldn’t even consider arresting the journalist for slander—who had gone into hiding after the story created a sensation. There were rioting protesters near Octul Box: something that had never happened before.

  But Caliph dismissed the suggestion of his advisors to retaliate by naming names. They had dug up the college degrees of every politician in Isca, ready to publicly announce those who had gotten a grade in holomorphy from any university in the north.

  Instead, Caliph held a press conference and told the journalists the truth.

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s a holomorph. She studied holomorphy at Desdae—just like I did.” He refused to answer any question directly as to whether holomorph also meant witch.

  “No . . . no I won’t change the laws pertaining to witchcraft. As far as I know, the women sentenced over the past several years weren’t even tried on the grounds of witchcraft but as spies for treason.”

  It had been a long conference. Caliph had been raked over the coals afterward by the same newspapers that had backed him two months ago when his father died. The same newspapers he allowed to exist.

  All he had to do was give the word and the city watch would raid. He could fill West Gate overnight with editors and journalists and have their bodies swinging from chains over the castle just as fast.

  But instead of engendering gratitude, the fact that Caliph didn’t crush his critics under a mailed fist made them all the more brazen.

  The more sensational rags published all kinds of outrageous speculation. He was going to set up a Council of witches to enslave the population. He had been charmed by Sena and was now her puppet. He wasn’t even human. He was some creature who went around in disguise, advancing a ridiculous list of ghoulish designs.

  “They’re entitled,” Caliph said blithely. “It’s actually quite amusing. They’re incessantly creative. And don’t worry,” he whispered one morning while they were still in bed, “you’re quite safe here in the castle.”

  He was right. His actions, while they didn’t win him any favors from the tabloids, had cemented his staff to him. His graciousness to the maids and his refusal to be waited on hand and foot along with a charming tongue-in-cheek way of coping with the “world out there” (as he called it) had so enamored the inhabitants of Isca Castle that after the initial shock of the headline they scoffed and promptly burnt the Herald on the grand hall hearth. Thereafter they boycotted it entirely.

  By Gadriel’s command, Caliph’s daily edition was the only edition allowed on the castle grounds.

  The burgomasters were nervous. But they bit their tongues. Caliph’s charm had a way of reassuring them in ways they found difficult to explain. Clayton Redfield had told him to his face, “We don’t know how . . . but we know you’ll eventually make things right.”

  Caliph didn’t know how either but his notoriety seemed indistinguishable from popularity. The large boisterous opposition ensured his every public appearance was scrutinized by the masses. But those occasions only reinforced his image as an absolute gentleman and a very good-looking one at that. If he was sinister at all, the women of Isca found it irresistible.

  Thus, there probably wouldn’t have been any catcalls at the opera even without the small army of bodyguards capable of smashing any fearless critic into paste.

  Tonight, Caliph and Sena had promised each other not to talk about headlines or critics or war. Next week began a new month, the month of Streale with a new set of pressures and goals (cleaning out Ghoul Court among them). Tonight was separate. Tonight was only for them.

  Caliph handed the program to Sena and rolled his shoulders back, trying to relax. The lights had dimmed and chronic talkers squeezed in a few last words before climbing over the laps and knees of the tactfully irritated toward their seats. Stage lights flared. Brilliant luminous cones flooded the deep crimson folds of curtains that loomed beyond the orchestra.

  The show was about to begin.

  Icy tendrils of white vapor crawled out from beneath the curtains. A deep vibration of drums had begun resonating from the pit. Suddenly all the lights went down and the curtains swept back, tearing up vortices of mist as they collapsed into the wings.

  A man in a pillar of light stood center stage, hand extended overhead, fog pouring in around his feet. Stylized props of leaning cemetery markers, dripping vines and ruinous mausoleums crowded the gloom. His clear tenor rose in a solitary wail of grief as he slowly swept his arm down toward a headstone at his feet.

  What followed was a captivating descent into the man’s tragic loss and unconsummated love for a fiancée that appeared on stage only in the form of a ghost who drove him laconically toward avenging her murder.

  By the end of act two, when the curtains came rushing back together for intermission, the audience also had the vague unsettling notion that she was also driving him to suicide.

  Caliph rubbed his eyes. They were dry and tired from staring.

  “Better than Er Krue Alteirz?” asked Sena.

  Caliph yawned. “Surprisingly so. Do you want anything to drink?” Ten minutes before the break, the warm rich smells of the concession stands had begun percolating through the stuffy theater air.

  “No. But I need to pee.”

  “Shall I get you anything?” asked Vhortghast, leaning into Caliph’s left ear. “I’m headed for a coffee.”

  Caliph made the hand sign for yes. “Well, if you’re going, I suppose something to keep me awake would be fine. Thank you, Zane.”

  The spymaster left the box and snapped his fingers subtly at one of the two guards in the hall. He deftly indicated for him to follow Sena to the bathrooms and ensure her safe return.

  Vhortghast held the curtain aside and affected a very shallow bow as she exited the box. Though his appearance horrified her, Sena smiled at the spymaster before heading toward the privies. She held her clutch in both hands in front of her waist, taking shortened graceful steps, constrained by her gown.

  The huge guard shadowed her every step of the way.

  She got several looks, mostly from jealous women. One leering man got a foot too close and found himself pushed by an enormous outspread palm effortlessly and unapologetically into a wall. The affronted gentleman whirled and opened his mouth to complain but thought better of it and snarled mutely instead.

/>   The guard wore a chemiostatic sword on his hip and several throwing knives in a bandolier across his ornate leather breastplate. Outside the women’s closet he stopped and glowered at his new post.

  Sena went inside and passed a row of filigreed oval mirrors interspersed with gas lamps clad in pink fluted glass. Cherry wood stalls housed overhead tanks with delicate pull chains and dainty porcelain bowls festooned with floral pink.

  A gaggle of women primped and gossiped. Some, who had been discussing the High King’s mistress, went abruptly tranquil a moment too late.

  They stared at her for an instant before either offering pleasantries or snubbing her altogether.

  Sena entered a stall and did her business. The silence in the room had spread and become more uncomfortable than if they had just packed it in and whispered. She flushed and walked out. They were staring at her, or pointedly not staring at her. All of them had gone totally silent.

  Sena washed her hands and patted them dry.

  Just before she left, she turned to the silent throng and said, “Whatever you’re thinking . . . it’s true.” Then she pulled open the door and stepped back into the hall.

  There was a scream.

  The huge guard appointed her by Zane Vhortghast reached out and roughly jerked her behind him. His sword ascended from its scabbard like a star. His great muscled body plowed through people like sheets on a laundry line.

  Sena couldn’t see what was going on. The hall boiled with arms and legs and trampling falling people piling for the stairs. A woman in a frenzy came at Sena from the side, unintentionally crashing between her and the guard. The guard responded automatically, grabbing the assailant by her hair and tossing her back the direction she had come. Whether out of confusion or indignation, the woman charged again and Sena’s bodyguard punched her in the face, sending her to the floor with a broken nose.

  He took Sena’s hand and dragged her like a child through the crowd. Frankly, she felt like a child. She allowed herself to be led. She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t want to be a Shrdnae operative. Since the Halls in Sandren, she didn’t dare to trust herself. No! Caliph’s bodyguards were well trained. She would let them take charge. As the huge man pulled her forward, her legs couldn’t keep up and she heard the narrow dress rip. Instead of coming free she stumbled. Tangled in the tube of satin.