The Last Page ch-1

by Anthony Huso

  Sena didn’t give a damn about Megan and her errands. All she wanted was to open the book. And Caliph remained her best chance of that. Now Megan actually wants me stargazing over his shoulder! And I was worried about fårn10at Desdae!

  Sena thought about seeing the pages of the Csrym T, covered with Inti’Drou glyphs. Secrets larger than the world, like an infinite opalescent mobile hung above her crib, cutting across and out: away from the planet. Past the sun. Past the blackness.

  Sena let herself wallow in anticipation for a moment. Then she stood up and left Esma, walking lines back to the Highlands of Tue.

  8 I.: The Place of Burning.

  9 O.S.: Water of Apparitions.

  10 W.: The Betrayal.

  CHAPTER 11

  Caliph’s week with Mr. Vhortghast had been just what he expected, exhausting, numbing and filled with rancorous, often disconcerting details. He despised being king.

  He had seen warehouses filled with qaam-dihet seized from drug lords in Thief Town and Maruchine. Stockpiles of munitions. Gas mines and vitriol bombs laid in the bellies of zeppelins. He had returned to Malgôr Hangar for a full tour; seen the armada of brigs and first rates and the only three dreadnoughts in the Duchy of Stonehold, powered by iron sails and mountains of coal and acid.

  He had talked with every burgomaster willing to meet, found how each borough squared (as nearly as he could) from the sources at his disposal. He had traveled to every district with the notable exception of Ghoul Court, which (the more he thought about it) seemed less like a borough and more like an independent state.

  Caliph had examined tax reports and census reports and toxicity levels from the city well water. He had been shown Bloodsump Lane in all its anathematic squalor under broad daylight without the merciful cover of dark. He had made an appearance at Hullmallow Cathedral for its customary rededication (which happened at the beginning of every High King’s reign) to the multitude of gods worshiped in the seething city and shortly thereafter visited Cripple Gate where he had donated a large sum to the Church of the Mourning Beggar that brooked homeless people from Three Cats and Candleshine.

  It had been ten days of nonstop secular, religious and image-enhancing activity. And there was only one thing Caliph knew for sure.

  The city stank.

  Gadriel assured him that it would not last long. Only at the height of summer did the streets cider. That’s what Gadriel called it.

  “The streets cider,” he said, “when the weather turns warm.”

  Caliph couldn’t have picked a milder assessment if he had spent all day thinking. Gadriel’s euphemism was actually a total mollification of reality.

  What really happened was that piles of garbage stacked between slum buildings generated spontaneous life as hot weather and their own weight started to liquefy discarded foods and mattresses and cans of varnish and bags of powdered paint.

  Great heaps wedged in alleys began to ooze and seep. First- and second-story tenants could do nothing but draw their moth-eaten drapes and ignore the squirming refuse that threatened to break through their windowpanes.

  The piles could only grow if people on the top floors tossed garbage out their casements or off the roof—which they frequently did. Great armies of flies stirred in the labyrinth of trash, a dual testament to people’s inordinate laziness and the fact that the wasteyard in Brindle Fenn was not large enough, even at nearly a hundred acres in size.

  To say that the streets cidered was nearly as litotic as saying that sticking one’s head into the anus of a cow was not a very tempting thing to do. But what troubled Caliph most was that Gadriel’s description seemed less outlandish when it was said within the confines of the castle.

  Not all of Isca City was ripe with festering piles of detritus and tatters and offal and sludge. There were enchanting canals in Murkbell, bewitching beauty in the endless arches of Candleshine and Lampfire Hills. Blkton fairly suffocated under the ambrosial pollen of variegated blossoms. There were hundreds of clean streets swept up by men with long-handled dustpans every night, places where (rain or shine) the bricks gleamed with polish. For the rich and fortunate and even for a great quantity of middle-classed citizens, saying that Isca cidered in the summer did not seem a cruel understatement of the truth.

  But Caliph had seen the cesspools. They weighed on him as if their great piles of garbage had been stacked in his own bedroom.

  While he pondered the slums, Caliph examined the sword given him on the zeppelin deck of West Gate.

  It was a marvelous piece. Forged out of tunsia, the blade would actually float on water. It was impervious to the rust and corrosion of weather, which Mr. Vhortghast had joked was good fortune considering what Caliph’s previous blade had endured.

  Light and quick and sharpened by holomorphic stones to an edge only tunsia could hold, the sword was broad and short and two-handed with a long handle filled by apple-green chemiostatic fluid. It represented the highest achievement in hand-to-hand combat possible north of the Great Cloud Rift.

  The cell was good for two or three wallops before it had to be changed out. A beryllium circuit traveling down the center of the blade ended at a silvery point where even a glancing thrust enabled the charged sword to deliver the coulombs capable of deep tissue burns and the vaporization of flesh. A dark whimsical thing, Caliph’s chemiostatic sword could produce surreal open or comminuted bone fractures. Paralysis. Thrombosis. Death.

  He had never flicked the switch on the pommel that charged the circuit from the cell. There was a safety ring that had to be unscrewed, loosening tension before the switch could move.

  Determined not to grow soft and lethargic, Caliph practiced forty minutes a day. The tunsia edge removed the oak necks of practice dummies like a machete slicing through bamboo.

  On the last day of Psh, as the city cidered and Caliph pondered the problem of the slums, he received word while taking tea in the high tower that he had visitors. Two young men by the names of David Thacker and Sigmund Dulgensen.

  Caliph set his cup down so hard he chipped the saucer. He leapt up and sped down the many staircases to the grand hall. His elation and joy over hearing the familiar names was indisguisable.

  As he approached the grand hall he slowed, forced himself to walk instead of run. When he reached the archway he paused. He peered into the vast room where a curtain of light fell from the windows, glittering with millions of dust motes.

  There they were, two of the Naked Eight standing in conversant poses near the darkened fireplace. Two of the boys who had shared his misery in the pillory and his triumph when Roric Feldman had gone home in shame.

  Caliph flew into the room and fairly danced around them, overjoyed by their visit. He bid them sit before the unlit hearth while they recounted certain professors and Chancellor Eaton and his cane.

  Sigmund Dulgensen was a brilliant engineer. He had studied almost nothing else at school and he could tell any listener all the differences between stress and wear and flow meters and load cells and solenoids and calibration.

  His hands never came clean.

  The tiny grooves around his nails and the whorls of his fingerprints were impregnated with burnt oil, engine grease and other grime. He was a meaty man. Strong. And often sat with a strange humorless smile on his face caused by the emotionless contortion required to chew at the hair under his lower lip.

  David Thacker was Sigmund’s antithesis even though they shared the same build. He was nearly as large but hopelessly docile. He had taken calligraphy and painting and all kinds of other classes that his friends called useless crap. Caliph wasn’t sure what degree David had actually graduated with.

  The three talked about virtually everything they had done since graduation although Caliph shyly omitted many details of his journey to the Highlands of Tue.

  Even when David asked him point blank if he had gone to see Sena after graduation, Caliph denied it, saying instead that he had almost forgotten about her—that with everything going on in I
sca and Stonehold he had more important things to think about.

  After an hour of catching up, Sigmund leaned back in his chair and put both hands behind his head, chewing at his beard.

  “I can’t believe I’m in Isca Castle. How about a tour?”

  Caliph chuckled, half embarrassed.

  “Well,” he scratched his head, “we could do that but we might get lost. I’ve spent more time out of the castle than in.” He suddenly sensed that there was business at hand. “What really brought you all this way . . . through the Fort Line?”

  “Jobs,” said Sigmund. “I’ll be honest, I headed down south a bit and didn’t like what I saw. Turned right around and came back up here. Dave and I traveled together.”

  He pulled a pillow that had been wedged between his robust body and the arm of the chair and threw it at David Thacker. David caught it and grinned.

  “Yeah that’s right.”

  “Jobs?” Caliph smiled wanly. “I bet I could find plenty for you to do up here. What kinds of jobs?”

  “Writing,” said David. “I want to sit around all day and write and get paid for it.”

  “I want to go into the military,” said Sigmund. “Not swords and mines and hacking people up, mind you. I want to design war engines.”

  Caliph stood up and paced around in a tiny circle.

  “I’m pretty sure I can get you both in somewhere. I don’t even really know what jobs are out there, but I guess I’m the High King and if there’s not a writing job around I’ll make one up for you. You can be my scribe or write plays for all I care. I saw the treasury the other day and I think there’s enough there to support a couple more salaries.”

  Sigmund shook his head.

  “The Iscan Treasury. That’s some serious buying power. What’s it look like, Caph?”

  “Kind of brown actually,” said Caliph, “on account of all the boxes. But inside the boxes there’s a lot of gold. Stacks and stacks of trade bars. There are collections of jewelry and gems. I don’t know. I guess it’s pretty standard.” He threw his hand in the air.

  “You arrogant prick!” said David.

  Caliph laughed.

  “I dunno, sounds ticky,” said Sigmund. “I’d be a damned arrogant prick too if I was High King. Get me a chambermaid in a short frilly skirt.”

  “One-track mind.” David jerked a thumb at Sigmund and rolled his eyes.

  Caliph shrugged.

  “So what else is new?”

  Sigmund lowered his voice. “Well, that’s another thing I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I . . . er, we . . . got our hands on some blueprints when we was in the south.”

  He gnawed at his beard and looked over both shoulders, making sure they were alone.

  “Solvitriol blueprints, Caph. Hard shit. Coriolistic stuff too. Though I’m not sure if I have enough information to make anything coriolistic-wise . . . but solvitriol tech—”

  He whistled.

  “I’ve got some theories—some ideas after looking at ’em. Stuff that’s never been tried before. I want to tell you about it sometime. Maybe over breakfast or something.”

  Caliph was too stunned to speak. Solvitriol technology was the unattainable jewel behind Iycestoke’s might. Like most power sources it supposedly had its foundations in holomorphy, but everything else about it remained a mystery.

  “You’ve got blueprints?” Caliph whispered. “Here? With you?”

  Sigmund licked his lips and repeated the southern hand sign for yes many times in rapid succession.

  “It’s crazy shit too, Caph. You’re not going to believe it—I mean you’re not going to believe what it runs on—how it works.”

  “But how?” stammered Caliph. “How did you get them? You said you went to Pandragor. Pandragor doesn’t even have solvitriol tech.”

  “Not yet. But they were going to get it. We came across this crashed zeppelin—you should have seen it—it must have been shot down by an army of bandits—some diplomatic airship strewn across the eastern ribs of Nifol. All the cash boxes broken open and emptied except for letters and deeds . . . and blueprints. I realized the idiots had overlooked the most important stuff in the lot.

  David piped up.

  “Iycestoke was shipping their secrets to Pandragor. That’s what me and Sig figure. Maybe one of the Three Kings is trying to stab the other ones in the back or needs money.”

  Caliph tugged his lip.

  “And that’s not bad reasoning. Probably as good as Vhortghast could manage.”

  “Who’s Vhortghast?” both men asked in unison.

  “Never mind. The point is you don’t have to be connected to figure things out. I’ll bet Pandragor is combing the hills for those blueprints. Yet they can’t say a thing.”

  “Yes!” Sigmund jumped up and gave a shout of unrepressed elation. Several maids and sentries appeared in various doorways, looking worried. “I knew it! I knew you were the right one to bring them to! Set me up, Caph. Give me a workshop, tools, things that need juice to run. I can bring Isca into the modern fucking age.”

  The sentries and maids melted away at a sign from the High King.

  “Do you have the plans with you?” Caliph sounded mildly skeptical.

  Sigmund’s excitement choked on the question. Caliph could see momentary apprehension flicker behind his friend’s eyes.

  “Um . . . no. I, ah . . . I left ’em at the hotel.”

  Caliph looked bemused and clamped Sigmund reassuringly on the shoulder.

  “What are you worried about? You think I’m going to cheat you out of something you rightfully stole?”

  Sigmund’s hesitancy melted into denial.

  “I never said that. Of course you’re not. Sheesh. We’re friends. Why don’t I bring them by tomorrow?”

  “Over breakfast?” asked Caliph. “They make pretty good breakfast here.”

  “Sure!” Sigmund beamed at the proposition of food.

  David, grown slightly bored, had begun poking around the room, examining the heads of halgrin and gruelocks, otter-things, a sledge newt, mystikoos and a soot-tailed deer. Caliph noticed his distraction and turned the conversation back to more general topics despite his excitement.

  “I want to see. I want to hear all about it. Breakfast it is. In the meantime why don’t we take that tour—check out the treasury along the way?”

  David perked up.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Caliph summoned Gadriel and the High Seneschal played guide with his usual decorum, uniquely devoid of condescension.

  Gadriel’s particular charm lay in his ability to exist in a desert of self-imposed sobriety while dispensing a fountain of pleasures to castle guests. His graciousness had no discernable limitations.

  As afternoon approached and the tour wound down, Caliph had learned almost as much as his friends.

  They concluded in the grand foyer where Caliph instructed Gadriel without prior warning that he would like both men to be employed: Sigmund in the design room of the engineer corps and David doing whatever suited him best.

  The High Seneschal acknowledged the king’s request with the same graceful accommodation he might have used to bestow a second lump of sugar in his lord’s coffee. Then he penciled Sigmund into Caliph’s breakfast schedule for the following day since David said he would be unable to attend.

  Caliph bid his college friends good-bye and for the remainder of the day endured several other meetings, one with General Yrisl concerning developments in Tentinil and two with the spymaster.

  Information came and went from the castle by means of carrier pigeons and surgically altered hawks.

  Saergaeth remained quiet. There had been more movement north of Bellgrass. Engine tracks between the Grass Heath and Miskatoll but no threats or engagements.

  Caliph guessed he was maneuvering. Positioning his forces. Playing the badger game. Saergaeth hoped that by rattling his sword he might obtain the crown without a fight.

  Yrisl advised Caliph that e
verything was under control. Troops had been garrisoned at Fallow Down since before Caliph’s coronation and more had been moved into Fairden’s Drop last week. Tentinil herself sheltered a regiment of roughly two thousand Iscan soldiers.

  Yrisl then promised to go over military scenarios with the High King later in the week.

  Despite his eagerness to share news of Sigmund’s blueprints, Caliph remained silent. He felt it would be a violation of Sigmund’s trust to say anything just yet.

  Instead, he listened to details from the spymaster about a group of thin, sickly looking Pplarians that had been arrested by the watch in Daoud’s Bend. They bore what appeared to be a new gang insignia, small dark tattoos above their navels.

  Caliph paid little attention to the account. He was thinking about solvitriol power and enjoying the smell of the malt house in upper Ironside.

  Delicious vapors trickled northwest across the sky and into the high tower. He was sick of crime and disturbing stories and revolting tours and meetings with despicable people.

  Images of huge meats creaking on chains filled his head at night, tunnels puddled with magnesium lights and men in goggles loading vitriol bombs into zeppelin bays. He was sick of intrigue and shifty men whose loyalty he had no way of ascertaining.

  When evening came and the meetings were finally over, Caliph ate supper with his servants.

  He invited most of the castle staff: laundry, kitchen, cellar, garden, kennel, stable . . . the list was extensive. They gathered in the grand hall where Caliph presented them with a speech, half-composed, half-impromptu, thanking them for their hard work and announcing his great appreciation for all the polished floors and moldings, delicious food and beautiful clothing, lovely flowers and so on.

  His silver tongue was in top form and all the heads of staff cheered him stentoriously as though he had promised never to make them work again.

  Following supper, he had an unplanned appointment that forced him to take brandy in one of the castle’s many opulent parlors with Simon Stepney, the burgomaster of Growl Mort.