Black Bottle

by Anthony Huso

  Caliph had gone flaccid. Now he straightened. “I get it. What are you offering in exchange?”

  “In exchange, we help you … hunt down the individual who misused the book’s power, blah blah some justice for the papers. We tell the press that the book has been destroyed or locked up for safekeeping or what. Meanwhile, you keep your copy. Iycestoke its copy. We of course form an alliance—if it turns out that the book is actually useful—and we prevent its dissemination, obviously, to people who want to cause our respective nations harm.”

  “So, you’ll help me hunt down my ex…” Mother of Emolus, what did he call her? Even now, he felt like he was betraying her. “… mistress. And we’ll what? Put her to death?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then I fly home,” said Caliph.

  “Yes.”

  “But first, we have to make a copy of the Cisrym Ta.”

  “Is that what it’s called?” Wade perked up in a way that Caliph found repugnant. “Kiss-ream-tah? What language is that? What does it mean?”

  “Am I right?” asked Caliph.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wade. “That would be the arrangement.”

  “Not quite. We forgot the clause about what happens if I say no. Not that I’m going to. I just want to have that out on the table—”

  Mr. Wade laughed in high amusement and shook his finger. “I wish I had been ambassador to Stonehold instead of Pandragor these last couple years. Talking plainly? Right? Plain as we can? Iycestoke has the means to fly up over the mountains and take Stonehold in,” he stuck out his lower lip, “one? Two days? King Howl, your country exists because we’ve never had any reason to care about it. But now we do.”

  Caliph squirmed. “And your forces, the ones coming to intercept me, are going to arrive when?” He glanced at Isham’s glittering ring. “How long do I have to make a decision?”

  “How long do you need?”

  “When are they arriving?”

  “They’re already here.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  Dr. Baufent was working like she had never worked before. Sweat glistened on her face.

  “What’s wrong with him? What’s going on?” The captain of the Bulotecus was standing over her shoulder, looking distraught. Caliph had just left his meeting with Isham Wade and had discovered the scene on the port deck. He braced himself in the doorway and looked down on the desperate business at hand.

  Specks wasn’t floating. His thin body had been carried from the hallway near the kitchen and laid out on the deck where there was more room to work. His shirt had been torn open. Some safety mechanism in the bracer had sensed a change in blood pressure and the tiny holomorphic engine that usually allowed him to levitate had shut itself off. The ticking that always announced Specks’ presence had stopped and Caliph felt the silence.

  Specks had long needed a haircut. His dark hair tossed around his eyes in the wind but his eyelids did not flinch. His skin was paler than usual and his mouth was slack and open.

  “What happened?” asked Caliph.

  “I don’t know,” said the cook. “One minute he was fine. The next, he’d floated into a cabinet and banged his head.”

  Caliph couldn’t see a mark. “Did he knock himself out?”

  “He hit it pretty hard, but I don’t know if it was hard enough to—”

  “He’s been poisoned,” barked Baufent. She was looking at his pupils. “Increased heart rate, cold and clammy. He’s drooling. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what he’s taken. I can’t fix this! Get the fucking witches!”

  Caliph turned and ran. He plowed through the narrow hallway and banged on the witches’ door.

  Miriam answered. “What is it?”

  “Specks. The captain’s son. He’s been poisoned. We need you.”

  Miriam glanced back into the room, then came straight into the hall.

  Caliph opened the door for her.

  “Come on.”

  They hurried down to the hall. Caliph noticed her clenching her fist. She had already cut her palm in anticipation of holomorphy and was bleeding freely. She was whispering.

  As she came onto the deck where Specks was laid out, Baufent looked at her solemnly.

  “He’s gone,” said Baufent.

  The captain of the Bulotecus, that great tall deep-chested man, had folded up on one of the deck chairs, hunched forward over his son and was sobbing brokenly. His face was in his lap, his arms covered the back of his head.

  Miriam looked pale. She got down and examined Specks. Her hand bled across his tiny chest and the smear was vivid and dark across the whiteness of his ribs. She looked up at Caliph. He hadn’t expected a hardened Shradnae witch to react like this.

  Her eyes were full of restrained emotion. “This was professional,” Miriam said. “I can smell it on him. It’s trixhidant.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a southern plant,” said Baufent.

  Miriam made the hand sign for yes. “That’s right. He had to drink it or eat it.”

  “He drank one of the glasses from the lunch tray,” said the cook.

  Despite the lump in Caliph’s throat, he tried to analyze Miriam’s fear. The witches knew poison. Miriam had to know that they would be the obvious suspects. But Caliph didn’t believe, in his gut, that they were to blame.

  “Your majesty—” The cook leaned in to whisper in Caliph’s ear. Caliph noticed Miriam cock her head and listen. “Lady Rae was in the kitchen just before the tray went out. She was acting … strange.”

  “I can’t see her trying to poison anyone,” said Caliph.

  Caliph tried not to think about Specks. His main goal was protecting anyone else from the murderer—whoever that was. He tried to remember what had happened after Specks brought the tray into the dining room. Could Isham Wade or Mr. Veech have reached across the table in some unaccounted-for moment and dissolved the poison in his drink? The only person who might have seen it happen was Specks.

  Caliph heard the captain cry.

  Baufent stood up, looking gray and beaten. Her shoulders slumped. She turned away and went to stand at the railing where the wind howled.

  Caliph went over and touched the captain softly on the arm. “Vik? Viktor?” The captain’s breathing was a shudder. “We’re going to find out who did this.”

  “Just let me be.”

  * * *

  A FEW minutes later, Sigmund stepped into Caliph’s stateroom with a mystified almost sheepish expression on his face. “Am I in trouble?” His eyes went first to the great circular window thrown open to the sky and then to the bureau where they seized on a ruffle of black satin previously invisible to Caliph.

  The stretchy crumple of underwear registered strongly now and brought back embarrassing memories of Sena on the bar in the Odalisque’s stateroom. Caliph didn’t know how they had gotten here but he supposed she had, at some point, used the Bulotecus to change. He almost walked over and swept them into a drawer. Instead he gestured toward the only chair and said, “No. You’re not in trouble. Have a seat if you want.”

  “I’ll stand.” Sigmund shifted from one foot to the other, gazing out through the window at the string of huge heads that the Bulotecus was passing. They were carved from black stone and tilted every direction, rising from the sand in wind-polished splendor.

  “We’re in deep shit,” said Caliph.

  “I heard the little guy didn’t pull through,” said Sig.

  “No, he didn’t. So there’s an assassin on board.”

  “Okay.” Sig scratched the side of this neck and kept listening.

  “I’ve got you that I can trust,” said Caliph. “Dr. Baufent doesn’t really like me. The priestess—I don’t know what’s going on with her—she could be the one. The diplomats from Iycestoke? Right now, they’re my primary suspects.

  “What about the witches?”

  “I don’t think they did it. They’re after Sena. Why would they try to kill me? If I die, this ship
turns around and goes back to Stonehold.”

  “Sort of. We’d need to get fuel.”

  “Whatever, you get my point.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s not the worst part of the shit, Sig. The assassin isn’t our biggest problem. Look out there.” He pointed through the window, beyond the mysterious monumental heads. “We’ve got an Iycestokian armada.”

  “Reeeeally?” Sig headed toward the window. He took two steps and then, for no apparent reason, the glass exploded. Nuggets bounced like ice cubes over the floor. Sig pulled up short.

  Caliph scowled and went to the gaping casement, boots crunching on glass. The sky pulled across his hair and face like steel wool, making his eyes burn. Below, the dunes undulated with bright colors like the back of a poisonous grub. The sand, orange as flame, divorced itself from great blue spots and splatters of something else. From the air, it looked like industrial quantities of smalt had welled up from underneath. The sand refused to mix with it and instead poured around it with the wind, forming crisp blue-and-orange patterns.

  Out in the sky a faint zip faded into a muffled whine.

  “I think they’re shooting at us,” said Sig.

  Caliph was incredulous. “Why would they do that? They have an ambassador on board!”

  Sig craned his head out the window to stare at the shadow, a fume really, like the indiscernible smudge of far-off birds wheeling. An entire colony.

  Another noise whizzed past the open window.

  “Huh,” said Sig. “I do believe that’s what’s happening. They’re fucking shooting at us.”

  Caliph took out his bottle of chewable tablets and popped two. They dissolved into lemon chalk-powder. The grit stayed between his teeth.

  “I thought the witches,” Sigmund looked confused, “weren’t they doing some kind of, what did they call it? Glamour? Ain’t they supposed to try and hide us?”

  Sig walked to the bar and pulled down a bottle of whisky. He glanced at the brand. “This stuff could carry me to town on its back.” His enormous hands rested around the neck but did not open it.

  “Well,” said Caliph, “I guess the south has holomorphs.”

  “Yeah but we’ve got Shradnae witches for fuck’s sake. I mean, I expected more.”

  “I don’t know what they’re doing at the moment,” said Caliph. “Maybe I should find out.”

  “Shot at by Iycestokian military…” Sigmund wrung the bottle’s neck. “It’s going to be a crazy story, huh? When we all get back.”

  Caliph looked at his friend and saw the determined irony, the intentional black joke that served to harden the fear in Sigmund’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, it will be.”

  “I assume, as my fearless leader, you won’t be having a drink?”

  Caliph didn’t answer. He looked out the window one last time, against his better judgment, and stared at the dark shapes in the west.

  Sig toyed with the bottle for a moment. Then he set it back in its socket on the shelf. “What are we gonna do, Caph?”

  Caliph tugged his lip. “I’m going to go find the witches. And then I’m going to talk to Isham Wade about my broken window and about whether he knows anything about poisons.”

  Sigmund looked toward the stateroom door from which there came a sudden and insistent knocking.

  “Come in!” Caliph and Sigmund shouted in unison.

  Neville, the copilot entered, pale and breathless. “We’re taking fire!”

  “You don’t say.” Sig gestured to the shattered window with a sweep of his hand. “We were just coming to that conclusion ourselves.”

  “The gasbags’ve sustained moderate damage,” Neville gasped. “Our gauges show slow leaks in the aft.”

  “Can we stay aloft?” asked Caliph.

  “Assuming we don’t continue to take fire,” said Neville. “But even then … we probably don’t have much time left.”

  “Much time left before what?” asked Sig. “Before we land?”

  “Before we crash,” said Caliph.

  Neville ignored the grim assessment. “What should I tell the captain, your majesty?”

  “As long as we’re still afloat, nothing changes,” said Caliph. “Follow the Pplarian ship.” Caliph thought of the captain, sitting at the controls while other people now took care of this son’s body.

  Neville disappeared. He left the door open.

  “What’s the logic there?” asked Sig. “Why are we still chasing her?”

  Caliph rubbed his chin. “The logic is that there are more airships than I can count back there. And Sena’s going in the opposite direction.”

  “Good plan.”

  Caliph took a step toward the door. “You want to come with me?”

  “Sure,” said Sig.

  Caliph led him from the stateroom, down the hall to where he stopped and tapped on the witches’ quarters.

  Miriam again opened the door.

  “We’re under attack,” said Caliph.

  “Yes. We’re working on it.”

  “Great,” said Caliph. “Anything I can do? Open a vein or something?”

  Sigmund grimaced. Miriam did not look amused.

  “We’re doing our best,” said the witch. Her face was stretched with exhaustion. She looked far less pretty than he remembered her.

  “I hope your best is good enough.”

  Caliph turned and marched down the hall, around the corner to Mr. Wade’s room. On this door, he pounded. Mr. Veech answered. He was an intimidating man but he was also half the size of Sigmund Dulgensen. Caliph started to walk into the room. Mr. Veech put his hand on Caliph’s chest and Sigmund’s huge meaty arm reached out in response. He took hold of Mr. Veech by the collar.

  Mr. Veech struggled. He appeared to try some unarmed training, to leverage himself against Sigmund’s great mass but the huge engineer was like a boulder. He could not be moved. Sigmund pushed Mr. Veech up against the wall and held him there, waiting for Caliph to tell him what to do.

  Caliph walked into the room. “Where is he?”

  “He went out to stretch his legs,” Veech said tersely. The skin on his face was rolled into a series of folds by Sigmund’s forearm.

  “Well let’s go find him,” said Caliph.

  * * *

  TAELIN was down the hole, deep in the dark with the shuwt tincture leading her by the nose.

  She kept trying to light a cigarette but her wrists were bound in white straps. They trailed back to either side of a bed. She couldn’t move her arms. Strangely, she was making love to Palmer—the homeless man from St. Remora—while Aviv (the man she had been going to marry) sat in a chair nearby, watching.

  A woman in a red trench was there too, with a clipboard. So were her mother and father. Her father had fine powder on the side of his nose. All of them were hovering in the blurry light of a big white room.

  “It’s fine,” said the physician. “She’ll be asleep soon.”

  “Some drugs and a good fuck always put me to sleep,” said Taelin’s father. Everyone ignored him.

  “It’s not that she’s lying,” said the physician. “Taelin believes what she sees is true. The delusions, the paranoia, even the promiscuity are all part of the disorder.”

  Taelin looked over Palmer’s sweating shoulder at her mother, who harbored a sad, guilty look. “I’m sure her home life hasn’t helped.” Her mother started to cry. “This is all my fault.”

  “No, Mom!” said Taelin. “It’s not your fault. It’s not.”

  She pushed Palmer off the bed. He either vanished into white clouds or fell to the floor without a sound.

  “I saw Nenuln, Mom! I saw her. She was beautiful! Like a cloud of light! And my baby is going to be a god!”

  “She’s quite intelligent,” the physician interrupted. “If Taelin would stay on her medications, and I mean the correct medications, I think she could…”

  The physician’s voice faded into the room’s white blur. Taelin had turned her head away to the dark man sit
ting beside her bed. It was Aviv. All Taelin could see was Aviv. Sweet, sweet Aviv.

  Aviv stood up and gathered his black silks around him, scarves and silver beads dangling wildly. The circlet on his head flourished with four platinum uraei. “Thank you, doctor,” he said.

  “Wait!” she screamed but the room was spinning. “Don’t take my baby! Don’t take my baby!”

  Her mother’s face was close to her now. “Shh—Tae it’s his baby too. Aviv will take good care of him.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s not Aviv’s! I never loved Aviv. He can’t be Aviv’s if I didn’t love him! That’s impossible! Babies are made of love. You can’t have a baby if you don’t love—”

  And then she woke up.

  She was holding hands with Sena on a street corner in Pandragor. “Relax,” said the High King’s witch. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  Sena fished a cigarette out of her black coat. It was rolled from butterfly wings. She handed it to Taelin. Taelin put it between her lips and leaned forward. Sena whispered some minor holomorphic miracle and the tip of the cigarette smoldered to life.

  Taelin sucked in. The smoke felt good. She set her bezeled derringer on top of a marnite retaining wall. She laughed. The tiers of the city rose above her in scalloped blocks of golden mineral and tarnished steel. Pandragor’s blue domes floated high above.

  Bariothermic coils on the back of an angular sedan caught her eye as the vehicle’s ass incandesced and glided on magnetic blocks, vanishing down the park’s serene avenue.

  Sena tugged her away from the street, onto the quartz terrace that overlooked the marshland. “You’re coming with me. As soon as you wake up.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Taelin. “I forgot my gun.”

  Taelin felt like this conversation had happened before, with someone else. It was as if Sena had taken the place of the other person, the other friend with whom she had this experience. Reliving the past, twisting it, was only one facet of a shuwt journey. Taelin tried to bend it, to get it back on track, to take away Sena’s influence.

  “What about my baby?” asked Taelin. “Aviv bought his way out. I’m going to find him.”