Black Bottle

by Anthony Huso

  “Do you want to die in Iycestoke?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. We’re not landing.”

  “What can I do?” she asked. Caliph studied her for an instant. In that instant he appreciated her grit.

  “Go down and help lighten our load. We’re going to try and stay aloft as long as we can. Have you seen those witches?”

  “No.”

  Caliph touched her on the elbow, lightly. She didn’t flinch but he could feel her rigid strength, her tenacity. “I’m going to try to get us out of this.”

  “Well don’t let me slow you down.” She pushed past him toward the hold.

  Caliph checked the starboard deck, the roof above the cabins, the port, then the aft. He looked in all the rooms, except Taelin’s. They were empty. He checked the cockpit again. The captain still clung to the controls, sweating out the second worst experience of his career—on the same day.

  Caliph took a maintenance ladder from behind the cockpit. It climbed up inside the skin, between the gasbags, rung after rung until he came to the hatch. He pushed it open and pulled himself up, poking his head above the top of the zeppelin. From here he had a clear 360-degree panorama of the desert, the debacle and the dead thing in the sand. All four witches stood a dozen yards away, staring at him, clearly interrupted.

  Caliph climbed out of the chute and marched toward them against the wind. They were flapping—hair and clothing—looking shadowy against the sinking sun. Their perfumes mixed with the thick charnel vapor rolling from the south.

  “It’s a hylden,” said Miriam. “Obviously a dead one.”

  It was a parry that failed to turn aside his anger. Caliph shouted into the wind. “I’m not really worried about that! What I am worried about is that!” He swung his arm in a wide arc at the black crescent of Iycestokian warships.

  “We don’t have enough blood to hide an airship,” shouted Autumn. “Unless you’re willing to sacrifice some of the crew.” Her black-red hair lashed around her face, obscuring her eyes.

  Caliph’s heart cooled.

  “Are you?” asked Miriam.

  Am I what? thought Caliph. She can’t be serious. Is she really asking me to let her kill some of the crew so that she can work her equation? “No!” shouted Caliph. “Fuck no!”

  “We didn’t think you would be,” said Miriam, “which is why we’re up here, debating our options. The Iycestokian ships are too far away for us to steal blood.”

  Caliph’s mind, long spinning like a runaway cog, bit down into the teeth of an epiphany. He shielded his eyes and looked toward the bloated cloud of blubber and gas. Sena had told him about the Shradnae secret of hemofurtum.

  “What?” asked Miriam. “You look like you’ve just had an idea.”

  “What about those things … feeding on the carrion,” Caliph shouted. “If we got close enough to them. Could you use them?”

  The witches squinted after his finger.

  “If we can make it there…” shouted Autumn.

  Miriam made the southern hand sign for yes. “Nyaffle. Dangerous but maybe … yes. It could work.”

  Caliph’s skin crawled. What was Sena doing? And why?

  Why wouldn’t she help them if she wanted Caliph to follow? Why let them struggle? She was the villain in this chase. He had to accept that. He had to let go, once and for all.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Taelin came out of her room with her crimson goggles on, her brown leather jacket zipped up against the wind. The world was better now, bathed in pink. She could see things clearer. She was sure of it.

  A horrible racket from belowdecks made her wonder what was happening. She walked out onto the starboard deck and immediately saw the Iycestokian ships. Her goggles made them clear against the sky, deep red rather than black. They were southern ships. And she was from the south. They should have been her friends. But she had a new directive now.

  She had a mission. A goal. The demonifuge was real. Sena had assured her of that. She was Sena’s messenger now. Taelin gripped her necklace in her hand.

  All praise the Omnispecer!

  Oh, my gods! What is that smell?

  She covered her mouth and nose with her hands.

  It’s death, you nimshi. The thought came at her from the other girl. The inside-girl.

  Taelin gasped.

  A warm trickle of anger bubbled up through the crevices in her spine. Artesian. Gushing to full red bloom in the tissues that packed her skull.

  “Do you think the Iycestokians are trying to stop us?” asked Taelin.

  Father will take care of us, said the inside-girl. He always takes care of us.

  Which father? She had two distinct memories of two distinct men.

  “We can’t let the Iycestokians win,” said Taelin. “We need to make it to Bablemum!”

  The inside-girl did not disagree so Taelin allowed her breasts to swell up, tearing through her clothing, popping the buttons off her jacket. They were so buoyant that they tugged away from her chest painfully, swelling up above her shoulders. Above her head. Bigger than balloons. Zeppelin bags. They pulled her into the air—off the deck, out across the desert toward the Iycestokian craft.

  Blue-and-orange patterns splashed below her like paint. The wind howled and the air was full of sand, but she could see. Her goggles cut through the haze. She steered herself toward the oncoming airships gliding under one of the great melon-shaped balloons just as the sandstorm closed in behind her.

  One of the soldiers on deck caught her and pulled her down. He wore smooth strange armor. She kicked him in the face.

  “Leave Sena alone!” she shouted. “Don’t you understand? You’re going to die anyway! Join the cause, or she will smite you with her mighty hand!”

  The soldier removed his helmet, with its glass and metal facets, and looked at her with sad eyes.

  Aviv! He had joined the Iycestokian military! But what were the odds that he would be on the deck of the ship she had landed on? How could this be real?

  His sweet black face, shining, smiling. His arms around her. And behind him stood their little boy. Five years old, smiling at her. Taelin knelt down on the hard deck. The texture of the metal dug into her knees but she didn’t care. She grabbed her son, pulled him into her, tight against her chest. His body felt so small. Bird bones and slender muscles.

  “I love you,” she whispered into his ear. “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

  “I love you too Mama.”

  Taelin was sobbing, shuddering. It was the happiest she had ever been.

  “You don’t feed him enough,” she said.

  “I do,” said Aviv. “He’s just small for his age.”

  Taelin pulled her son’s face back from her shoulder and held it in both hands. When she did, she noticed the silver spots on her wrist. But it was all right. She would get him vaccinated. His smooth young skin, the color of brown sugar—a perfect blend of her and Aviv. It was flawless aside from a little mole under his right eye. His lashes were long and dark and his eyes were bright brown. There were tears in his eyes but his tender lips were smiling.

  How could I have let my father convince me to give you up?

  Father will take care of us, said the inside-girl.

  “I hate my father.”

  Taelin picked her son up off the deck and held him. He cuddled her warmly, quietly, as if they’d never been apart. As if this was normal.

  The Bulotecus had disappeared from sight.

  “Let’s get out of the wind,” said Aviv.

  Taelin beamed with joy and turned to follow him. It was almost dark. The light was purple in the blowing sand. Out in the storm she could see a desaturated stripe of pinkish-blue where the sun must have been setting. Then part of the deck bent strangely and a metallic bang rattled the full length of the railing. Aviv looked unstrung.

  Taelin could smell putrefied fat. The stench carried a kind of moisture, so rich and repugnant in contrast to the thin dry air.r />
  “Behind you!” shouted Aviv.

  Taelin gazed into a black eye that sat motionless, barely twenty inches from her face. She absorbed the initial impression: that there were two eyes, and a host of serrated teeth, and a large transparent body. It was tangled in the cables that ran up to the gasbag, clinging with spindly crustacean-like legs. It did not appear to see her.

  Taelin slowly put her son on the deck and told him to run to his father.

  The movement stirred the creature, but only slightly. Its stubby head lolled to one side as a great leg plucked at the cables, trying to find a better grip. The beast seemed drunk.

  She had never been so close to a nyaffle. But she reminded herself that they were far south, over Nah’Ngode Ayrom. This was a wild place.

  The creature’s glassy carapace hunched up behind its gruesome head, ending in a splayed transparent tail. A host of slender legs acted in unison, clutching at the cables and railing like a clumsy hand. Off its back, the great crystalline wings still hummed, helping to keep it balanced where it had come to rest.

  Taelin could see through its transparent armor into its distended gut, as if a plastic bag had been stuffed with fat. The great chunks of white-green blubber it had gouged out with that circular mouth, with those serrated teeth, were already dissolving slowly into milky chowder.

  She backed away, watching the sunset convulse within the nyaffle’s glossy chitin, its soulless black eyes stared at her.

  It shifted an increment, like a specimen pressing the wall of an aquarium, mouth hinging and unhinging as though focused primarily on breathing.

  Taelin looked toward the doorway. Aviv was gone. Another ghostly white shape scudded up along the side of the railing, sounding like a child running with a stick, snapping each metal baluster. A xylophone.

  “Aviv?”

  Women in dark pants were standing on the deck, staring at her.

  “Where is my son?” she shrieked. He was lying on the deck, still, blood pouring from a nyaffle bite.

  A short stocky shape in a long red coat lurched up beside her. Some kind of crimson goblin. Taelin felt an iron grip and a stab of pain.

  “My son! My son!” Taelin screamed, sobbing.

  * * *

  “SHE’S completely out of her mind,” shouted Baufent.

  Specks’ body lay underneath the shrieking woman, where she had picked it up and carried it out and laid it on the textured floor.

  “I had him on a gurney,” shouted Baufent.

  “We need to get him off the deck before the captain sees this!” Caliph called against the wind. He had just helped Baufent wrestle the priestess to the deck and inject her with a sedative in an effort to keep her from leaping over the railing.

  With as much decorum as he could, Caliph picked Specks’ tiny corpse up and cradled it back inside the ship. He held him, head on shoulder, as if the captain’s son had been asleep, as if he was carrying him off to bed.

  But no. That wasn’t remotely how it felt. It felt horrific. It felt gruesome both physically and emotionally. The wind howled and with the rotting hylden and the desert grit between his teeth, Caliph could both smell and taste the awfulness of this moment.

  He laid Specks gently back on his gurney, then helped Baufent lug Taelin down the narrow hall to her room.

  Once she was on her bed Caliph went to the porthole and peered uselessly into the purple-orange haze. All he could make out were the shapes of the scavenger-things, the nyaffle. They were landing on the Bulotecus, taking shelter from the storm, counteracting the weight that everyone had worked so hard to jettison.

  Caliph scowled. He smelled sweet mint and lotus blooms in Taelin’s room. He smelled Sena. Caliph glanced around but there was nothing.

  “I want you to watch her,” Caliph said to Baufent. “And I mean watch her. She’s your responsibility for the rest of the flight. Tie her down if you need to.”

  Baufent’s hard gray face let slip a hint of misgiving. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

  Caliph left the two women and headed back to the deck, finding a pair of flight goggles along the way. There was an alarm going off somewhere. His ears popped and his stomach pitched. Too many of the creatures had landed on the railings and rigging. Dozens of them. Many tons of chitin pulling them down.

  Caliph hoped the witches were taking advantage of the nyaffle. He hoped they were working their equation. And indeed, the witches were on the starboard deck screaming at the sky. Caliph struggled past them, coughing on the dust and putrefaction in the air. He hoped they were doing some good—late as it seemed to be trying to hide the ship from the Iycestokians. He headed for the cockpit to check on the captain.

  When he entered the room he found Viktor Nichols in a knot, clinging to a steel stick with a red ball on its end. “We’re going down,” said the captain. He looked ashen. The copilot was flipping switches without any visible effect.

  “You should brace yourself,” said Nichols.

  Caliph rested a hand on the console. He opened his mouth to make a suggestion just as the nose of the ship dipped, sending him flying over the controls. His back smashed against the inside of the windshield, making fractures. A terrible snapping sound reverberated through the entire craft, then the nose came up and Caliph found himself on the floor.

  “There went the mooring arm,” shouted the captain. “Probably sheared off at the bolts!”

  Caliph had the sensation that the man was wrestling a wild animal. The captain’s shoes squeaked against the duralumin floor as he braced himself out of his chair.

  Caliph had a good view of the shoes. Iscan brand High Backs—featuring a tiny black tag depicting a white mountain: High Horn. His cheek was pressed against the floor.

  “Here it comes!” Nichols yelped.

  And then the second impact vibrated through the airship’s frame.

  A dull horrible roar shuddered through the Bulotecus. Caliph was lifted up, a momentary levitation, then dashed back down. Again, airborne. He saw Neville come up out of his copilot seat, legs flailing. Down. Bam! Up again. His stomach flipped with the rapid motions.

  He realized vaguely that the Bulotecus must be on the ground, sliding across the dunes, propellers still thrusting it forward.

  He pulled himself toward the door, crawling, bouncing. As the airship hit a prolonged patch of level sand, he was able to lurch out the door and down the stairs.

  He rolled over the sharp steps and felt the massive ship heave to a stop. Millions of individual grains of sand screaked against the hull, rasped sharply for a final instant; then the maw of the desert settled, a massive toothless creature that had finally gotten its grip and would never let go. The wind roared triumphantly.

  Caliph found himself in a painful pile at the bottom of the steps. His right thigh felt deeply bruised; he was also fairly certain something had gouged a hole in his lower back. His knuckles were bleeding and his face hurt but a real damage assessment would have to wait.

  For the moment he savored the stillness of the ship. The only sound was sand tittering on metal. Then he became aware of other things. Wind, a broken cable scraping.

  Maybe I’m dying—again. Zeppelins … He chuckled. Fucking bad luck.

  He attempted to move but his whole body rebelled. What do you think you’re doing? it said.

  He kept his eyes shut.

  In an attempt to get his mind off the pain, he thought about Sigmund and Baufent and Taelin. He tried to run through the crew list but couldn’t. He felt the ones he had skipped. Even though he couldn’t remember their faces or names, he felt the holes they left in his mind.

  He hoped Sig was okay. Then there was Owain. Owain was a bodyguard Caliph felt some affinity for, even though conversations with him were usually only two or three sentences long. Who else? His ears were ringing.

  He rolled onto his knees but sharp pain in both shins threw him on his ass. He pressed his back up against a deck cabinet. At least he was sitting up.

  He got to his fe
et. Sat back down.

  Nearly passed out.

  He cradled his head for a moment with one of his torn-up hands and felt his hair stick in the blood. He sat there.

  He felt alone amid the messy wreck of his life. Stranded in the desert. He wanted to go back to Sandren and make a different choice. Strike that. He’d have to go back to Isca and never leave for the conference at all.

  He regretted, in a cloudy confused way, all the people on the Bulotecus that he had dragged into this.

  He wrenched himself to his feet. His legs were wobbly but he made his first objective an easy one. He stumbled up the steps to check the cockpit. Pilot and copilot were both sleeping over their brass controls; their own red oil leaked across the displays.

  Caliph didn’t know whether to try and help them or race off and find Sig. He still felt uncertain about his course even as he ripped a first-aid kit off the wall. He pulled each man down to the floor, laying them out as gently as he could in the cramped space. He checked for pulses clumsily, having only a vague idea of what he was doing. Their wounds seemed superficial except for a puncture in Neville’s chest. The copilot didn’t seem to be breathing.

  There was nothing in the kit that would change that. Caliph sifted through bandages and antiseptic. The inflatable splint seemed like a sardonic joke. Caliph grabbed Neville by the chin and forehead and blew into his mouth. Immediately, a thick red goo boiled out of the puncture wound in the man’s chest.

  Horrified, Caliph stopped. He didn’t know what to do for either man. He set out again, down the steps, across the deck and toward the cabins in the direction of women’s voices.

  * * *

  WHEN Caliph Howl came around the corner, Miriam gasped. He looked like he had showered in blood and rolled in the sand. At first she thought one of the nyaffle had bitten him. He was barely walking.

  “Where are you hurt?” She felt an unaccountable desire to help.

  “I’m fine,” he said, which was certainly not the case. “We need to find everyone. Get everyone together.” He started to cough. She wondered briefly about internal injuries. Whether he lived or died didn’t really matter anymore. But the fact that he was walking around—looking like that—affected her.