Black Bottle (14 page)

The soprano offered up another disquieting gurgle: crossing boundaries from the province of sleep. It was faint, high-pitched and filtered through the hum of the airship.
Could it be night birds?

Taelin buttoned up her blouse and tucked her thick cotton pants into her boots before unlocking her door and stepping into the rich paneled hallway, which felt abnormally cold.

She passed a gaslight flickering in a henna sconce. Its red light quavered down the hall and landed on the body of a man. His shoulder and head propped open the door at the end of the passageway that led to one of the fore observation decks. A harsh, freezing wind whined in.

For a moment Taelin stood staring at the slumped figure. A large shadow from the sconce moved horribly over his back like a feeding specter. She recognized it as an illusion conjured by the drafty hallway, but the flapping darkness made the body doubly terrifying. Taelin took a step back then, berating herself, scooted forward and crouched down to see if she could rouse him. He wasn’t breathing.

With some difficulty, she rolled him onto his back. No visible injuries. She screamed for help then pumped his chest with her palms. The wind took the door and folded it back on its hinges. A blast of icy air tore through the hall. The light went out. For a second, she heard the gas continue to hiss, then the safety valve squeaked and Taelin was alone with the wind.

The man’s body seemed to be cooling.

She tried to pull him away from the door, gripping his ankles. He was two hundred pounds of nothing she could move. She screamed again for help.

“Lady Rae?”

Taelin turned around at the voice, instantly relieved. “Mother of Mizraim, thank gods—” But her vision was adjusting to the dark. When she saw the speaker, when she saw the nightmare form that filled the hallway, she lurched sideways over the man, eyes ringent. Her feet kicked at the floor. Taelin gagged and shrieked and pushed herself through the doorway, out onto the deck. Air currents poured over her as the ship barreled south.

She scrambled to her feet.

From the blackness inside the door frame, the man’s arm still extended across the threshold, gray and motionless. And above it, a woman’s voice curdled, vowels strange and lilting: “Ooo fundou hiroo. Shioo osou hirioo!” The firefly twinkle of tiny lights oozed through the doorway.

Taelin tried to block out the memory of the floating head, the octopus-jumble of sickly shapes beneath it: tendrils, lumpy masses and the filaments of veins, but she could not shake it.

She turned to run and pulled up short, horrified by another body. This one lay on her side like a sleeper in a heavy leather jacket. The wind stirred her hair. Lying beside the woman was a velvet gun.

Taelin scooped it up and ran.

The weapon was heavy but it was also soft and silky, like the belly of a cat. It undulated in her grasp. She nearly dropped it, but moved her hands back from the living part to the wooden stock. It made a bubbling mucous sound.

Taelin mounted a metal staircase that corkscrewed up from the deck and onto the roof of the cabins. She nuddled into the cramped cable-strung space that ran beneath the gasbags. Tools, boxes and weights were piled on the flat roof, instigating stumbles.

She could smell the chemicals from the aft batteries and see the ebbing green patterns that bled from slender glass windows on the housings. The emerald radiance together with the gold-orange sidelights that studded the zeppelin’s port skin, bloomed intermittently through the jungle of cables, creating shapes and shadows that forced Taelin to aim the gun in a host of directions.

“Hiroo.”

Taelin screamed. She couldn’t help it. The terror that the voice provoked was intractable. Her finger brushed the trigger as she spun on the sound—so near! The gun’s deep wine-colored nap swelled like a ten-pound catfish at the trigger’s insistence, ballooning for possible ejaculation. Its fur dwindled near the front where fleshy red-purple antennae drooped and curled below half a dozen perfect black pearl-shaped eyes.

Something floated in the shadows cast by the zeppelin’s starboard battery. It drooled a slow cascade of twinkling motes.

Taelin, still screaming, fired.

Thick jets of milk-colored slime squirted from the gun’s oral tubes. Impossible amounts. The viscous lines struck cables and walls then sagged like ropes gone slack from the front of the weapon.

The bizarre, daedal shape of the gut-encumbered head floated out into moonlight; the expression on its face grim.

Out of the sky, Taelin discerned other shapes: floating, flying, moving fast. She didn’t know how many. All that mattered was escape.

The dark jungle of cables proved impossible to navigate. A pink-gold solvitriol cell burned beneath the weapon’s cherry-wood stock. It powered tiny sprockets and implants that controlled the lab-grown life form’s neural system. Taelin used it as a dim torch to check her footing.

She skittered forward to the edge of the roof, deliberated then turned and fired again.

Two more gouts of white ooze exploded into the darkness. One coil hit the monstrosity and pulled it down. It glided awkwardly to rest on the deck, convulsing in the sticky mess.

Taelin pulled the trigger one more time but the weapon only burped, coughing up thin lines like an infant vomiting milk. Airborne shadows loomed over her like the heads of tropical trees.

Taelin tossed the gun down and jumped.

Not well-planned. What if the airship’s trajectory and speed …

The deck came up. The rail seemed to spin below her but she landed on the deck. White-hot pain exploded inside her knee. The gun had left her hands. It rested nearly where she had found it, next to its previous owner. She saw the oral parts bite into the woman’s shoulder, slicing through meat and bone, pulling out great plugs of flesh. Its metabolism was legendary. It spewed out a digestive sauce and lapped up the nutrients. The gun was reloading.

Taelin started to crawl toward it when the airship pitched. Her knee throbbed with agonizing fire. Unable to brace herself, she felt her body slide. She scrabbled at the floor but there was nothing to grasp. Frantically she searched for a handhold and saw the gun and the dead woman roll to port, slip through the railing and tumble into the dark.

The head that had been stuck in the gun’s filaments was also gone.

Taelin plastered herself to the deck, clothing snagging against textured metal, but it wasn’t enough. She felt herself go.

The rough cleat-like surface of the deck scraped her face and palms. She cast her hands wildly for a shining metal bar and seized it. A railing newel. Her feet flew out into space. Her hips went with them. But her torso, her arms, were folded tightly around the post.

“Please, please, please…” she prayed to Nenuln. Her knee was on fire, sapping her strength. Between her breasts, her grandfather’s golden artifact was slippery with sweat.

“Taelin.”

Taelin opened her eyes. She hadn’t even realized she had clenched them against the horror. The entire airship seemed to be listing, she dangled off the edge of the deck. Three of the gruesome faces floated around her in the cold.

As she screamed she sensed one of the faces, so close she could smell its breath. It was a beautiful face despite the cable grease that marred one cheek. Wild blond hair blew in profusion around scintillating eyes. Its stomach dragged over the deck as its mouth jerked closer.

During her scream, Taelin felt the face’s lips close over her mouth. She tried to spit, bite, thrash her head but her body had gone numb. She couldn’t move. Vaguely, she felt the girl’s tongue inside her mouth.

She heard dark glottal words gurgling from the other faces, then her sinuses loosened painfully and she smelled apples.

A great blob of mucus sealed off her breathing. She nearly choked. The beautiful girl’s tongue was there, stifling her. As the mass slid down the back of her throat she gagged. The lump rose into her mouth and the girl’s tongue slurped it out.

Taelin’s whole body relaxed. Her arms slipped. The fatty glob was gone, the horrible kiss had ended and Taelin realized that she was falling.

*   *   *

C
ALIPH
looked up at the other two airships from his position on the
Odalisque
’s port deck, mystified why Sena had woken him. His body felt empty, as though she had beaten him with a club. The original orgasm, persisted even now, sending aftershocks up through his flesh, making his thoughts roll. It was an alien, unnatural sensation. The entire surface of his skin tingled.

“It’s there.” She pointed. Despite the pain, it was all he could do to concentrate on the end of her finger.

All he could see were what appeared to be black spiderwebs dragging from the other crafts’ bellies. The
Bulotecus
’s and the
Iatromisia
’s starboard lights sparkled half a mile out.

Caliph turned up the collar on his thick coat. His fingers already ached. Sena stood beside him in a cropped jacket, apparently unaffected by the wind.

Across the sky, Caliph watched the dark threads materialize as if spat into existence by unseen arachnids. He couldn’t find their exact points of origin. They simply faded away.

Some of the threads bit and anchored into the airships’ undersides, others arced then fell in graceful useless hoops toward the pitchy smear below.

“What
are
they?” said Caliph.

“Holomorphic anchors,” said Sena. “They’re trying to slow the ships down.”

“Anchored to what?”

“Air.”

Alani and Sigmund were both on the
Iatromisia.
Caliph wondered what was happening. Then, “Mother of Mizraim!” Caliph gasped and pointed.

The
Bulotecus,
without signaling, had begun to turn away from the other ships.

“They’ve stuck her,” said Sena.

“Lady Rae’s on that ship!” Caliph could see the web of black threads trailing behind, converging toward an obscure origin. “The captain’ll have to kill the engines or he’ll rip her apart.”

Caliph wanted to ask why this was happening, who “they” were and a host of other questions but a horn sounded across the sky. An alarm from the
Bulotecus.
He left Sena at the railing and bolted for the bridge, running to inform the captain.

Matters, however, seemed to be already in hand and Caliph felt the deck tilt as the rudders cranked. They were turning east.

Other men had begun to hustle around the deck. Orders were shouted. Weapons were dispensed from lockers. Caliph didn’t have to direct them. He went back to his stateroom and rummaged in the closet. Servants had packed his bags. There. He found it behind the second duffle, his chemiostatic sword.

He strapped it on and marched back out to the deck.

But now the
Odalisque
was slowing.
Some hesitation in the chain of command?
Caliph could already guess that an argument had erupted on the bridge. One side would be arguing to help the other ships. The other side would be demanding an immediate retreat: concerned only with ferrying the High King to safety.
I’m a liability,
he thought. “Mother of Mizraim…”

He took off down the deck.

“Your majesty—”

Caliph ran by. He skipped steps and burst from the landing into the tiny bridge. The captain was an implausibly thin man with features at once gentle and fierce. He looked at Caliph as he entered the room. The copilot seemed to be struggling with the ship’s controls.

“Why are we slowing down?” shouted Caliph. “We have to reach the
Bulotecus
!”

The captain, determined but powerless, turned back to his controls. His voice was thin. “I don’t know.”

Caliph’s gut sank. He whirled, exited the bridge and leapt back down the stairs, but it was too late. Even as he envisioned the holomorphic threads of darkness entangling the
Odalisque
from below, the attack had already begun.

Something appalling floated up over the starboard side. It was black against the deck lights, bobbing and strange. Caliph could not decipher its shape. He heard his men scream.

Caliph gripped the pommel of his sword and began unscrewing the safety ring that guarded the chemiostatic switch. A moment later the surrounding metal registered with him: stairs, deck, railings. He didn’t know how a beryllium steered bolt would behave under such conditions. Thinking better, he left the sword uncharged, retightened the ring and drew it from its scabbard.

But now the deck was quiet. There were shouts, possibly from starboard or aft. He couldn’t tell. Three bodies littered a blazing white circle flung from overhead magnesium lamps.

Caliph felt terrorized by the impossible alacrity of their deaths.

He looked aft into the murk beyond the cone of light. Where was Sena? How could three men die in an instant without a sound?

Maybe they weren’t dead. He scanned for the floating shape and approached the bodies half-stooped, as if an additional six inches of clearance might offer some protection. The air, the wind, the sounds of the ship had become places of hiding, places that could disgorge improbable death.

Caliph glanced up repeatedly as he checked his men, willfully paranoid of sudden attack. After three hurried inspections he found no wounds and no pulses.

He listened.

The aft observation deck hung fifty feet behind the fore decks, sequestered from the rest of the ship. It projected behind the chemical cells: eight hundred square feet of elegance jutting into space. It was from this rear deck that Caliph thought he heard voices above the chug of the propellers.

He opened the deck’s aft door and slipped down the hallway, past his stateroom, past the parlors and out onto the duralumin rear patio that basked in the glow of the batteries.

Sena stood, cropped red jacket snapping in the wind, holding the book he loathed in one of her hands. She faced the back of the ship.

A body lay like a hump of laundry just a few feet in front of her and to her right four men clutched their weapons, symbols of paralysis. What was wrong with them? They represented his elite staff of bodyguards. They should be moving. Fighting. Doing something—