The Last Page ch-1

by Anthony Huso

  Caliph could also see that Yrisl was carrying something.

  It took over a minute for Yrisl and his platoon to cross the roof. Finally they halted in orderly fashion and Yrisl advanced, stopping just before the king. He knelt, holding a sheathed sword at shoulder level in his upturned hands.

  Caliph noticed that many of the former Council were among the assemblage and they clapped with proper smiles as Caliph took the sword.

  Some political drivel and an overwrought metaphor about Caliph both taking and becoming the Sword of the Duchy was delivered with halfhearted gusto through an echophone. Despite its volume, the speech seemed unheard by most of the crowd.

  Caliph was just about to inspect his new weapon when something truly amazing drew his attention once again.

  The vast hangar door through which Yrisl and his troops had come suddenly swelled with an enormous indistinct shape.

  Something fierce and slender and huge was gliding from the darkness into the morning light, pulled on many ropes and heavy wheeled carts, drifting out above the rooftop.

  The zeppelin was spherical but compressed so that it looked slim and dangerous from the side. Its internal framework protruded through the skin covering the gasbags, slipping out to form long imminent spines. They ringed its equator and flowed in menacing rows.

  At least six such elliptical hoops armored the balloon, the longest of the barbs circling only the equator. The spines dwindled gradually toward the crown and undercarriage, looking more like serrated knives compared to the great spikes that sheltered its central girth.

  Underneath the gasbag, but no less threatening, hung a cunning saucer-shaped structure like a lidded frying pan turned upside down. It was decorated with longitudinal bands of metal, oval widows and a bouquet of down-thrusting spikes, the longest of which jutted like an inverted steeple from the exact center to the thing’s belly.

  There were ballistae mounted to its underside as well. Housed in well-greased oscillating turrets. The gasbag was perhaps one hundred fifty yards in diameter and twenty-five in height. Including the spines, the thing needed an inordinate amount of space to float out of the hangar and up above the battlement.

  Caliph noticed a six-foot circle of metal riveted to the masonry of the roof. It was scooped out like a socket and fitted with couplings. The inverted steeple that jutted from the bottom of the zeppelin’s observation deck sank into this socket with a solid clunk and was secured momentarily by several dexterous men in dark uniforms.

  Air horns sounded again and somebody was announcing the High King’s tour of the city was about to get underway.

  Vhortghast led Caliph to a mechanized lift and from there onto the boarding platform.

  Though less than half the height of the high tower at Isca Castle, the view was only slightly less impressive.

  Gunnymead Square moved far below like an animal carcass thronging with life. Its paper lanterns of blue and yellow bobbed happily. Its colorful awnings frittered and declined, surrendering only after four hundred yards of unchecked sprawl to the dismal brown tenements of Three Cats.

  Clock towers, steeples and belfries confused the horizon with hazy ominous shapes.

  “Welcome to the Byun-Ghala,” said the captain of the airship. Caliph turned away from the vista and smiled, shaking the man’s hand. “Right this way, your majesty.”

  A narrow bridge with railings had been extended from the craft to the tower roof and Caliph stepped off solid ground with an uneasy pit in his stomach. The bridge swayed ever so slightly as a gust of wind tried unsuccessfully to buffet the enormous craft.

  Caliph stepped through an oval door frame into a cramped passageway that opened on a small but luxurious stateroom paneled in dark jungle wood. Much different from the military craft that had picked him up in Tue, this space was lit with gas lamps as well as many small windows.

  Brandy and cigars waited on a wooden table with a mirrorlike finish while a woman in provocative dress played soft lilting music on a baby grand. Paintings of former High Kings, generals and other nameless politicians hung on the walls. They looked solemn and important.

  An open archway led to an outer observation deck, girded with railings and fitted with spyglasses on convenient swivel mounts.

  Vhortghast directed Caliph through a paneled door into another room that smelled of fresh leather and wood polish.

  Caliph noticed a hulking four-poster bed in the shadows.

  From the previous room came the sound of additional passengers boarding, clinking glasses and music. The smell of freshly lit cigars began to filter in.

  General Yrisl entered, amber eyes flashing. He gave the spymaster a strange look of disapproval and immediately poured himself a drink.

  “I don’t want him visible,” said Vhortghast as though Caliph were not in the room. He shut the door and then turned, graciously gesturing for Caliph to have a seat.

  “I think I’ll stand.”

  Yrisl swallowed his whiskey in one gulp and set the glass down with stinging decorum. “He should mingle.”

  “No he shouldn’t,” said Vhortghast calmly.

  Yrisl looked on the verge of cutting off the spymaster’s head.

  “We haven’t had a High King in sixteen years. Your agenda is outdated.”

  “Yours is dangerous,” countered Vhortghast.

  “Am I even here?” asked Caliph. “What in the trade wind—”

  Vhortghast flung his finger toward the other room where the sound of music and conversation barely carried through the door. “That is a dangerous room.” He was speaking to Yrisl. When he turned to the High King his voice became restrained and cordial.

  “Forgive me, your majesty, but those people, good as they are at being burgomasters and barons and whatever else we let onto this ship, have only one thing on their minds right now.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” cried Yrisl.

  Vhortghast raised his palm. “They want to sidle up to you, your majesty, while you are still new and—forgive me—still inexperienced. If they can get you to promise them some kind of favor or action or exemption while you are yet unable to gauge the possible repercussions—” He shrugged. “You may wind up playing favorites without realizing it or be called a liar later on when you try to back out of an innocent and even good-intentioned promise with unforeseeable consequences. Everything you say will make it to the papers.”

  “Bah!” Yrisl seemed to barely restrain himself from spitting on the carpet. “Caliph Howl handles himself better in a crowd than Jerval Nibbets. Did you read the papers today? If he stays in here he’s going to look like a recluse, like he has something to hide.”

  Vhortghast made the southern hand sign for no. “I understand your point, really I do. And yes I read the Herald and several other unofficial publications. I assure you, one week of silence will not hurt his image in the least. If anything it will give the illusion that he is planning for the looming conflict with Saergaeth, devising unfathomable plans. He’ll—”

  Illusion? Caliph felt incensed.

  Yrisl took a threatening step toward Zane and the spymaster fell silent. “If you want to listen to the worm of the underworld, your majesty, that’s fine.” Yrisl’s eyes pinned the spymaster in place. “But his kind doesn’t process information like the average citizen. You pay him to think like a criminal and frankly we don’t really care what criminals think of you right now. We need a kingship that’s open and accessible to the masses, especially with the recent publicity.

  “Stonehold is used to a Council nowadays. You’ll have to emulate that democracy and candor. They held open forums before you arrived! Debates, for Palan’s sake! With journalists in the wings writing down everything they said! If you take that away now . . .”

  Vhortghast bit his lip, looking at Caliph and Yrisl with equal anticipation.

  “I appreciate your concerns. But I think I can manage,” said Caliph. “All I needed was a warning.”

  Vhortghast bowed graciously.

  �
��Of course. As you wish, your majesty.”

  Yrisl rolled his eyes.

  Caliph adjusted his lapels as Vhortghast opened the door for him. The High King emerged.

  The crowded smoky room quieted for an instant. All faces turned to him with a kind of bathetic wonderment.

  Caliph could see a few furtive smiles amid the throng, knowing glances cast between apparent partners or friends. He marked them immediately. No doubt there were those with more sinister intentions, hidden behind flawless smiles, but those were a job for Vhortghast’s men. The less subtle of the lot Caliph could handle on his own.

  “Good morning, your majesty.”

  Various cheerful greetings rang in Caliph’s ears. A young lieutenant general seemed to hold Caliph in particular awe.

  Three old men with handlebar mustaches, sporting an array of medals on their chests welcomed the High King with suspicious warmth.

  Caliph accidentally bumped into an ugly woman with black hair and a nose like a fin who stood wrapped in fashion. As he apologized, Caliph noticed the debonair but visibly spineless gentleman she clung to. Both of them fawned over Caliph as though he were their long lost son.

  Caliph’s stomach lurched slightly.

  Somewhere below, the coupling had been released and the Byun-Ghala lifted off the roof of West Gate and powered east over Gunnymead Square.

  Almost at once, the well-dressed herd pressed gently but persistently toward the observation deck and the mounted spyglasses, oohing and ahhing and pointing at the tangled sepia piles of architecture below.

  “How many men does it take to pilot a zeppelin?” asked Caliph, turning to the Blue General.

  It sounded like the beginning of a joke.

  “Depends on the size, your majesty. This one here is the smallest of three basic designs. We call this a lion. It’s small, agile, but not as powerful as sky sharks or the largest: leviathans.”

  “And crew size?”

  “Sorry. Yes. A ship like this could run with anywhere from nine up to a dozen or so men. The larger ones range from eighteen to fifty.”

  “How does it run?”

  “The engines? They’re electric. Off monster chemiostatic cells toward the aft. They funnel air in different directions, over the fins and such. This one has a range of over a thousand miles but the big ones can go several times that. We’d like to get our hands on solvitriol or the coriolistic technology they have in the south. But so far no luck.” Yrisl looked at Vhortghast who seemed not to be listening.

  “We’re lagging behind,” said Vhortghast with thin cynicism. “Shouldn’t we be out with the others? Mingling?”

  “Absolutely,” said Caliph with underscored conformity. Mentally he tacked you shit onto the end. Caliph walked out onto the wide balcony that overlooked the sprawl.

  Light from the enormous chemiostatic cells could be seen faintly, reflecting off the spines.

  Behind and to the west, West Gate formed a swollen rupture in the city wall, spewing buildings out toward the farmlands and hills like the contents of an overripe blackhead. “That’s West Fen,” said Vhortghast.

  Caliph allowed his annoyance to show. “Thank you, Zane. Isn’t that one of Isca’s two external boroughs?”

  “My apologies,” said the spymaster.

  Eastward, the sky moved with a grisly ivory color. Between the zeppelin and the indistinct haze of the dockside boroughs rose and fell the undulant jumble of Maruchine, Grue Hill and Os Sacrum. To the south, the long squamous blocks of Candleshine knitted together like cells under a monolcular.

  Caliph remembered Sena standing beside him in the musty lab, her perfume purling up into his face as he leaned forward, pretending to look at pig muscle on the slide.

  “There’s Cripple Gate!” shouted the woman in black, still clinging to her enslaved husband. She pointed at a pentagonal structure below and fore of the airship. “Where all the beggars go to panhandle. I do hope you plan to do something about them, King Howl. The Herald says they’re the main cause of disease.”

  “I find that unlikely,” said Caliph.

  The woman’s mouth opened in mute shock. “Well! The papers are written by scientists, your majesty. And they’re poor.” She said the word poor like she might have said the word evil.

  Vhortghast’s eyes flicked to Caliph, scrutinizing him suddenly for any reaction.

  “Actually I believe the papers are written by journalists,” said Caliph.

  The spymaster smiled wanly and tossed back his brandy.

  “Disease or no,” said Travis Whittle, the burgomaster of Lampfire Hills, “most of our expenditures go to mopping up after them. That’s just the way it is. We have eight thousand city police to pay!”

  “And Ghoul Court should pay for seventy-five percent of them,” said Clayton Redfield. He was the burgomaster of Blkton.

  Everyone laughed except Caliph and Zane Vhortghast.

  The unpleasant woman was clearly drunk. “I think we should sell them as slaves to the Pplarians or collect them for the physicians to experiment on, not the police I mean but the poor. If we get some useful medicine out of them, it will be absolutely ticky.”

  “Ticky?” whispered Caliph.

  Vhortghast smiled. “Means clever or novel. That dress she’s wearing is ticky.”

  “I see.”

  The Byun-Ghala was churning east and Caliph could see the terrifying black splendor of Hullmallow Cathedral erupting from the chimneys of Grue Hill. The enormous structure utterly dwarfed every other building in sight. Like a diffuse nightmare, the ornamented spires and flying buttresses gave the appearance of a grossly fat, daemonic spider with sky bent legs and a horrid horn-encrusted head.

  Caliph endured another hour as they sailed over Lampfire Hills, where Travis Whittle pointed out all the peculiar wonders of his domain but snubbed questions about Winter Fen and Daoud’s Bend, the boroughs abutting his south and east borders.

  When the zeppelin turned north, Caliph noticed how the pilot avoided the sky above Ghoul Court and churned instead into Maruchine.

  Up ahead, rising from what by now had become a monotonous clutter of peaked roofs, six enormous zeppelin towers fumbled like partially exhumed claws toward the stratosphere. An array of other airships could now be seen drifting over Thief Town and Murkbell. They carried huge industrial parts through the dirt-smeared skies.

  Malgôr Hangar, however, was a strictly military installation. Built lower to the ground than Hullmallow Cathedral, it was less visible but still ten times the size. It housed most of Isca’s zeppelin fleet at the very heart of the city on the border between Maruchine and Thief Town.

  Caliph’s zeppelin ride had come to an end.

  The ship slowed and eased toward one of the six towers. They docked with a disconcerting lurch as somewhere far below ropes were quickly tightened.

  Enormous gears and pistons like titanic tree trunks adjusted the dock’s elevation, pulling the airship down.

  “We’ll be bidding Mrs. Din farewell here,” whispered Zane.

  “Is that her name?” remarked Caliph, watching the woman gather her dress as she prepared to disembark.

  “Freja Din and Salmalin Mywr aren’t natives,” said Vhortghast lowly, “they have strong ties to Greymoor and the Pandragonian Empire—respectively. Both of them would probably like nothing better than to see Stonehold and especially Isca annexed by a southern power.”

  “They’re harmless gadabouts,” muttered Yrisl. “Don’t let him spook you. They spend too much time at the opera to plan a coup.”

  Vhortghast curled his lip at the Blue General as though catching wind of something foul.

  Caliph’s head hurt from trying to see the entire city from the air. He stepped up to a spyglass and peered through its lens at a distant clock tower. Eight-sixteen. Nearly noon. His stomach grumbled.

  “Right this way, your majesty.”

  Caliph didn’t even look at who was talking to him. He turned and headed back through the stateroom, stale with
the smell of cigar butts, spilled brandy and sweating bodies.

  A bridge led to solid ground and a windswept battlement behind which the sky glowered with wisps of dirty rain already falling over Tin Crow and Nevergreen.

  Freja Din guided her husband directly toward the shelter of the tower as though frightened by the wind.

  “The opera house is just there,” pointed Vhortghast, “across the canal in Murkbell. We’ll meet them again this evening for the premier of Er Krue Alteirz. The High Seneschal will be coming.”

  “Do we have tickets?”

  Vhortghast grinned like a ruined fence.

  “The High King donates a sizable sum to the opera. You have the best seats in the house. We don’t need tickets.”

  Caliph was beginning to understand that ordinary rules did not apply to him. He could do virtually whatever he wanted and all but the most outlandish would accommodate him without question.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’ll want to save your appetite for this evening,” said Vhortghast.

  Caliph scowled visibly. “Actually I’m starving.” The eggs and strudel had been wonderful but hadn’t stuck with him past an hour ago.

  Vhortghast shrugged.

  “We can eat, but you may lose whatever you put down.”

  “Why?”

  “We have some business which I’m fairly certain you will find most memorable—more so than our zeppelin ride and more so than Er Krue Alteirz, unfortunately because it is somewhat . . . distasteful.”

  Caliph’s hunger slacked only slightly at the spymaster’s words.

  6 W.: “Sena sleeps.”

  7 D.W.: A hit squad of witches composed of three Ascendant Sisters.

  CHAPTER 9

  Caliph never saw the zeppelin hangars of Malgôr firsthand—at least not that day. He heard about them instead from Vhortghast on his way down a crepuscular spiral staircase deep inside the northwest zeppelin tower. Humming overhead metholinate lights illuminated patches of rust and slippery stone.