The Last Page ch-1

by Anthony Huso

  Mortiman had no real choice in his allies. If he wanted to stay Prince of Tentinil he had to side with Caliph Howl.

  Caliph hardened his gaze but tempered his voice with genuine sincerity. “I don’t want to alienate you. I respect your doubts . . . in me. If you didn’t have doubts, it would mean somehow that you didn’t care about Stonehold. But don’t ever speak to me like that again.”

  “Majesty—” Yrisl whispered.

  “You advise me,” Caliph raised his palm, “never interrupt me.” He let the same hand he had raised fall slowly to rest on the pommel of his sword—it was the only weapon allowed in the chamber and a solid reminder of his unquestionable power in this place.

  The Blue General of Isca raised his eyebrows and fell silent.

  Caliph stood up and faced the assemblage. “I’m well aware I’m not the king many of you wish I was. I’ve had no opportunity to stand in the shadow of a real king and watch him work. But I have spent the past eight years learning about Stonehold. Learning about you.

  “I have a sound grasp of this city’s laws and I know there are a host of outdated, still-viable punishments able to be handed down for insulting a High King.”

  He smiled softly as the audience went pale. They were gauging now, how they could explain away the hasty remarks, cast their unforgivable sauciness in a better light by adding meaning and rationale after the fact.

  “I’m insulted.

  “But I’m also patient.” He looked at the prince. “If any of you doubt me, I respect that. I will earn your trust. I will secure Stonehold’s future. And I will do that, hopefully, by not choosing war. I will not choose war. If war comes, that will be Saergaeth’s choice.”

  After the silence ebbed in, Lewis was the first to speak. “Forgive me, your majesty.” He bowed slightly and began to clap.

  Whether they felt he deserved it or not, everyone else followed suit.

  After that, the meeting broke up. Whispers slithered between the burgomasters but by and large Caliph had come out on top. At a different time or place his words might have turned the same audience against him.

  But this had been a critical moment. Caliph knew that Stonehold needed a decisive leader. With less unified military power than most northern countries, the High King of Stonehold had to exude power from his pores. He could not flinch in the face of overwhelming or unknowable odds.

  He heard the whispers but in their own draconian way he sensed that the burgomasters were pleased. Yrisl had warned him beforehand that many of them were dreading this audience, distressed by the possibility of a meeting with an academic milquetoast fresh from Desdae’s idealistic lecture halls.

  Everyone was crowding toward the door, drawn down a series of staircases and passageways by an alluring smell that propagated from the kitchen. The Blue General met them at the exit and fed them the usual lies for good measure.

  “Everything will be answered in due time. We’ll call you back once this [completely absurd, fatuous] meeting has been assessed and compared with intelligence reports from the field.”

  Caliph listened to them go. When the room was nearly empty, Yrisl approached him.

  “I’m not sure about how you handled that. We needed to cement Lewis and Vale Briar as an ally. This is a war, your majesty . . . no amount of diplomacy is going to save us and calling Saergaeth a hero . . .”

  “He is a hero,” said Caliph. “His popularity north of Tentinil approaches legend. He’s protected the people near the Glacier Rise better than any High King.”

  Yrisl sighed. “Well, two percent of the region where your hero lives is comprised of military. That means eight thousand airborne, engineers and regular army. If he musters from Gadramere and Mortrm he’ll have a legion over that. Vale Briar has to be solid with us!”

  Caliph nodded. “I’m sorry for jumping on both of you,” he looked at the prince who had stayed behind and was listening intently, “in front of everyone.”

  Yrisl’s eyebrows levitated.

  Mortiman looked hungry. “Nonsense. You did exactly what you should have. I was just glad you had it in you.”

  “Oh? And what did I have in me?”

  “You showed those fickle bastards that you don’t give a shit about etiquette when you are forced into a fight. You fought dirty. More importantly, you won. I like that and so do they.”

  Caliph looked at the floor. “Thank you . . . but . . . none of this is the issue. I’m the issue. If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be a threat. I wonder if we held some kind of election, found another way to turn the crown over to Saergaeth.”

  He looked up to see both Yrisl’s and Mortiman’s jaws go slack.

  “I mean it,” said Caliph. “I’m sure Saergaeth knows how to manage Stonehold better than I do. Why not let him? If war comes, think of all the blood that will be spilled. Think of our countrymen fighting each other. All because of me? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No,” said Yrisl. “If this is a test of our loyalties, so be it. Nevertheless I’ll respond as if your concerns are genuine. If the High King’s throne were turned over to the first challenger, where would that leave the sovereignty of the Duchy? I’ll tell you where. In question. This government isn’t up for auction. Nor is it subject to contestation—by anyone. You, your majesty, are not the issue. The issue is, pardon my saying so, much bigger than yourself. The issue is the security of the Duchy—which no one except you is authorized to ensure.”

  The prince nodded.

  Caliph sighed through his nose. He walked to the window and looked out on the distant turmoil of Temple Hill.

  “All right, tell me about Saergaeth.” He sounded apathetic.

  Yrisl glanced at the prince.

  “His only challenge, your majesty, will be feeding all his troops. Without Lewis, we die.”

  The maps rustled in a breeze that pulled into the high tower and Caliph began to feel the discomfort of the stomach that he suspected was common to all the High Kings of history.

  The prince, seeming to sense that there was nothing else to say, extended his hand and offered a solicitous smile.

  Caliph grinned and shook. “I won’t hang you out to dry.”

  “I appreciate that. I leave for Tentinil in the morning. Good luck managing Isca. I’ll send word the minute anything changes.”

  The Blue General paused, waiting for a formal dismissal before following the prince out.

  “Go ahead, Yrisl. Get something to eat.” Caliph remained at the window.

  “I could have something sent up,” Yrisl offered.

  Caliph shook his head and waved the departing tactician away.

  Alone, he pondered the past two days.

  The zeppelin had dumped him off directly at the castle. The next morning, at his coronation, the Council had been disbanded and a great crowd of people had cheered. Or, thought Caliph, maybe they had only shouted.

  For several days he had been free. An anonymous . . . mostly anonymous . . . wanderer in the north, chasing what he thought was love or adventure. Maybe it was just stupidity. But now his fate had finally caught up.

  He wished his father could be High King but Jacob wasn’t a Howl. In fact, Jacob, according to the one instance of him saying so, was a half-blooded Hjolk-trull that had come from the Gwymrn Sward, a place he had never described or explained.

  The family history was murky and embarrassing. “Unfortunately, when you were two,” Jacob had once told him, “your mother . . . got sick . . . with the rest of her family. Since you were a Howl and therefore related to the High King, he sent his physicians out to the estate. They decided it was likely bad food, something you had avoided eating due to your tender age. Your Uncle Nathaniel came from Greymoor soon after, inheriting the house and you with it.”

  Caliph could remember living with his uncle in the vast dark house. The dream man had come to live with them in the fall.

  Suddenly, Caliph wondered about the dream man as a real person instead of a dream person. Cameron was the
man in the dream, the real man that had carried him down that rope so long ago. It had been at least sixteen years but if Cameron was still alive, he might be able to help run the kingdom. He had been a soldier, a tactician maybe. Words spoken so long ago echoed indistinctly out of the past.

  Jacob would know. After his uncle’s death, Jacob had been the only reliable figure in his life. He had taken Caliph to Isca’s south side, to Candleshine.

  It wasn’t until Caliph’s eighteenth birthday, for reasons unknown, that the Iscan Council had decided Caliph’s mother’s blood was good enough to call him a Howl. They removed him from school and gave him the entrance examination to the High College of Desdae.

  Apparently he had passed.

  Now he was in Isca again, the past leaking into the present, alone in the tallest tower in the Duchy of Stonehold.

  Caliph thought again of Cameron, the dream man. He recognized it as wishful thinking, smoke puffs in the sudden wind of responsibility facing him, but it was still worth a try. If nothing else it would provide some closure: finally tying off the loose end that had generated so many dreams.

  He left the tower, locked it and descended a set of corkscrewing stairs.

  He went directly along one of the few hallways he knew—to his bedroom, festooned with wood and marble and occupied by several newly carved wardrobes.

  Caliph sat down at a desk and took a sheet of parchment that seemed to be waiting at attention. He pulled a gold-nibbed quill from an elaborate inkwell and looked down at the empty page.

  Jake,

  I’ve been curious about your old friend, Cameron. If you know where to find him, please tell him I’d like to see him as soon as possible.

  —Caliph

  Caliph smiled, somewhat amused with himself.

  He blew the ink dry and pulled one of the ropes that, through pulleys and bells, summoned one of the servants.

  “Have this delivered to my father in Fallow Down at once.”

  The servant took the note and ran.

  “At once,” Caliph whispered to himself.

  He pushed himself away from the desk and opened the bedroom windows. Outside, the sky sagged under a host of stars. They were framed perfectly by the sharp geometry of the battlements. A hundred thousand points of light trapped between the crenels seemed to represent all the people of Stonehold.

  Maybe he was being maudlin. Maybe he was just beginning to understand what the burgomasters already knew: that lifestyles were at stake. Futures were at stake. People’s lives and homes hung in the balance.

  He had studied war. Sena had handpicked the best books on tactics to augment his required reading. She had said, “You can’t ignore it, Caliph. War defines the king.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Voices come and go.

  They speak in Withil.

  A cold front pulls down into the Country of Miryhr. Gold, generator-powered lights caramelize the intricate sockets of brown medical equipment. Sena can hear the slow regular tick of a thermal crank but she is freezing.

  “Nie slipsou,” 6 says Megan. She is not talking to Sena. She is talking to a harridan at the edge of the room, a decayed crone like a strange animal folded in half. Giganalee’s voice makes Sena whimper like a dreaming dog. “What news from our half-sisters in Sandren?”

  Megan tightens. “There are signs the Wllin Droul has returned.”

  Wllin Droul? Sena listens from the heavy drapery of half-sleep. She understands from inside the framework of argot, an Ilek phrase unchanged by Withil: Wllin Droul means Cabal of Wights.

  The voices move like clouds, in and out of existence. Sena catches only bits when Giganalee speaks. “They can no longer . . . Chamber . . . Last Page.”

  “Let us hope . . . Clea will send us word . . .”

  The rain increases for a few moments, falling hard against the glass.

  Sena woke with a start. Something stirred in the darkened room. She relaxed.

  “You came quietly,” said Sena.

  The candle’s halo obscured Megan. “But you have not come quietly, Sienae.”

  Sena ignored her birth name.

  Megan sat in an armchair near the bed. “What have you been doing in the Highlands of Tue?”

  “What day is it?” Sena tried to divert the conversation to anything else.

  “Black Moon, the fourteenth of Psh. You’ve been sleeping for sixteen days. You were lucky to catch us in Eloth. We were planning to leave the next day because of weather.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you . . .” Sena’s voice trailed off.

  Megan leaned forward, face melting from the gloom. Her night-blue robe was trimmed with black. Setting her apart however was the slender coronet of tunsia that marked her as Coven Mother.

  “What is it, Sienae?”

  Sena could feel her own clouded emotions passing through the muscles of her face. Megan was reading them. For a moment they might have been real mother and daughter.

  Sena fought it. She unclenched her jaw, tried to relax, forced a faint smile. “Thank you for taking care of me, Mother.”

  Megan’s stern expression splintered. Into what? Compassion? The smudge of insoluble guilt? The Coven Mother reached out, tentatively, visibly aching in her core. Sena felt a surge of nausea. She envisioned Megan’s heart as a zombie lab of barely lurching emotions; the final resting place of matriarchal instinct strangled so long ago.

  Sena didn’t pull away. She closed her eyes and submitted to Megan’s caress.

  It didn’t last. Sena heard her sigh after only a few moments and opened her eyes to see Megan scowling at the wound. The old woman touched it lightly. It was swollen, blackish-purple, crusted and awful in the light.

  Megan drew a bowl of steaming antiseptic from the top of the thermal crank. “There’s been an incident,” she said. “Three Sisters murdered in the Highlands of Tue. Shot by Stonehavian troops.”

  Sena’s mind reeled. “Three? Why three?”

  “Shh. It wasn’t a qloin.7 I sent them to fetch some of your things. But tell me, what was the future King of Stonehold doing at your cottage?”

  “What? Why? What happened?”

  “You don’t know? It’s right here.” Megan nudged a neatly folded newspaper on the nightstand like bait.

  Grabbing for it would be a mistake. Sena forced herself to reply coolly, “I knew him at school.”

  “And you didn’t tell me? Sienae . . .”

  Sena closed her eyes.

  “We only made one attempt at school,” Megan said softly. “It was too difficult. He was surrounded by secret police. Almost every cook and gardener at Desdae was a bodyguard. We didn’t assign you to him because of your inexperience. And now I find out he went looking for you?”

  “It was his idea.”

  “There’s no mention of you in the papers. No one knows why he was in Tue. Only that he was found, quote, in the company of witches.” Megan put the antiseptic back on the thermal crank. “Difficult headlines for a new king I’m sure . . . but if it’s still possible . . . I want you in his bed, Sienae. I want you in Stonehold right away.”

  Sena wanted to ask why but could only nod her head softly. Her cheeks felt hot and seemed to throb. Great droplets of sweat welled up between her breasts and across her face. She felt sick. Truly, suddenly sick. “Mother . . . ?”

  The room whirled around her, spinning out like a vomit-inducing centrifuge of purest black.

  The morning after his Council meeting, the High Seneschal brought Caliph breakfast and his itinerary for the day.

  Caliph sat up in bed and looked at the concise schedule, bemused.

  P

  sh 16th, 561

  4:40 Breakfast

  5:00 Zane Vhortghast (tour of the city)

  That was it.

  Gadriel seemed to sense Caliph’s puzzlement.

  “From my experience, your majesty, you will be spending several long days in Mr. Vhortghast’s company, touring different locations. Although I have never been, it is my
understanding that the High King’s tour is extensive and . . . unusual.”

  Caliph laid the sheet of paper aside, greatly interested and eager for five o’clock to arrive. “Who is this Mr. Vhortghast?”

  “The spymaster of Isca,” Gadriel said somberly. He glanced at Caliph above his glasses as he poured tea.

  The High Seneschal was an immaculate man, poised and fastidious to a fault.

  “I heard nothing of him in Desdae.”

  Gadriel clucked. “Of course not. He used to be a knight. Now he ensures that the business of the burgomasters falls in line with your wishes. There is little that Zane Vhortghast does not know.”

  “My wishes? How does he know what my wishes are?”

  “I’m sure he knows quite a bit already,” said Gadriel. “Saergaeth made several attempts on your life while you were at college.”

  Caliph scowled. “How could I not have known—”

  Gadriel smiled reassuringly. “Discretion of that caliber is his job and the reason I’m afraid his salary is considerably higher than mine.”

  Caliph thought about the implications. It felt strange knowing that he was about to meet someone who had supposedly saved his life. “How did the Council hire him?”

  Gadriel shrugged. “I wish I could tell you.”

  The forty-minute half-hour between four-forty and five o’clock passed torturously slow. Caliph read part of the Iscan Herald. It had been toasted in the oven. It was crisp and still slightly warm. One of the front-page articles caught his eye.

  The King in Black

  by Willis Bothshine, Journalist

  Nearly two decades after the short inglorious reign of Nathaniel Howl, Caliph Browning Howl assumed the Iscan High Throne on a blustery thirteenth of P

  sh.

  The last of the family bloodline, King Howl arrived in Isca fresh from Desdae where he graduated with distinction. Though following in his uncle’s footsteps may be the last thing Caliph Howl wants to do, both monarchs did hail from the prestigious Greymoorian academy prior to being crowned.