Black Bottle (20 page)

“You need more proof? Is that it?” she asked. “More proof than the fact that you are alive?” Her voice was not angry.

But Caliph’s was. He heard how his tone had risen and how it now hinged between hysteria and indignation. But his emotions pushed him on. “If you did it for me, you can do it for them!” He flung his arm again toward the window, aiming generally at the tent hospital. “Isn’t that reasonable? If I were you, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be out there. I’d bring every one of them back to life.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “Trust me. But I don’t blame you for being angry. What I did for you was selfish. I didn’t want to go the distance, you know?” She looked away. “Without you…”

“Angry? I’m not angry. I’m just confused. I’m just trying to make sense of what you’re saying. I don’t even know what you mean.
Go what distance?
You’ve been gone over half a year. Where? Why? What was more important than being with me?”

“I went to the Pplar, to the jungles. I wish I could tell you everything, Caliph.” She opened her mouth as if to say more but no sound came out. It was like she was afraid. Her eyes slid sideways in her head as if wary of someone or something listening.

“Why don’t you?” he pressed. “Tell me everything?”

“Because. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

“In this case it is, Caliph.”

“If you told me I would believe you.”

“I can’t.”

“And you won’t cure the Sandrenese? Are you saying that you can’t do that either?”

“What I’m saying is that there aren’t any gods coming to save us—or you. No one can save the Sandrenese. You have to save yourself, Caliph. It’s down to you. It’s down to your ambit.”

Caliph found her conviction chilling but her behavior was too bizarre. Gods or not, he believed she was wrong. He believed she was crazy.

Looking down at the tent hospital, all he knew was that the Sandrenese could not save themselves. People were bad at saving themselves, he thought. The world didn’t work that way. In the real world, people saved each other.

Sena looked at him with an expression of deeply fractured sorrow. He wondered if she could still read his mind, if she was always reading it.

His uncle’s book had changed her, hurt her, made her this way. He stood up. Compelled partly by his own self-righteousness to go down to the hospital.

“You’re right, Caliph.” The words sent a teeming pitter-patter of icy pincers up his back.

Right about what?
he thought. There was a long pause during which he stood, patiently attuned to her.

“You’re right, Caliph, but when you can, will you read these?” In her hand she held two thin books, sandwiched together, one old—one not so much.

“I don’t have time to read!”

“You missed them,” she said, “the night you were in my library.”

His whole body congealed.

“They’re important,” she said.

And he believed her. He felt that if he didn’t believe her, in a spite-fueled way, he would be justified. But his gut told him that not believing would also be a terrible mistake. And besides, he had promised that he would believe her.

She seemed so childish in the face of what was going on: Stonehold was on the brink of sanctions if not war. This conference, which was of critical importance to protecting the duchy, had been derailed by plague. He was in very real danger of being assassinated. All he wanted to do was help, despite the odds. And she treated all of it like a diversion, a table-game between them that they were talking over, distracted from, potentially uninterested in finishing.

Caliph held out his hand for the books.

On entering his palm, their texture worried his fingertips. Their weight conveyed immediately an irrational sense of defeat that settled at his core: another burden he had allowed her to saddle him with.

CHAPTER

15

The day after the attack that had won the Sisterhood the book, Miriam stood in Parliament with her Sisters.

She imagined ice-cold air inflating her lungs as she stared into the marble surround. Great rectangles of black stone served as mirrors, framing the fiery hollow. The fireplace dwarfed her, its mantel entirely out of reach.

While pretending to stare at her reflection she traced the thin scar around her neck with her fingers, feeling the completeness of its circuit. She felt giddy and strange to have been part of something so mythic. Yet it troubled her. She also felt violated. As if she had agreed to a hypnotism without realizing she would have no recollection of the event.

Just the memory of cold air touching her insides.

Miriam stared past herself. She could see the women behind her. Deep in the black marble, a red dress wavered like a brushstroke as one of the women reached for another beer. The surround’s atrous polish subdued the colors and turned the entire scene glossy as a litho.

“Miriam, hon? Come get drunk with us. You earned it.”

She turned around. The brown ten-pound contraption on the floor was open, hissing with green lights and ice. It held a dozen black bottles with red and silver labels.

“Sure.” She walked over and took one, kissed its neck. It tasted of pungent southern soils.

The spoils of war rested on a low table, before the semicircle of women in large leather chairs: the legendary
Cisrym Ta.
Its cover, still red after more than twenty-thousand years, had faded and torn. Could it really be that old? The black thorny mark on it threatened her vaguely. Its latch was locked.

She took another drink.

Giganalee’s laugh gurgled up near Miriam’s elbow and terrorized her.

The Eighth House’s withered frame sat propped in a huge chair. Her face clung to her skull like crepe fabric.

Miriam noticed the old woman’s fingers, unrelated bones that had been tied together somewhere inside her lace sleeves. They poked out awkwardly, fiddling with her beer as she coughed and giggled without explanation.

Worried that she might choke, Miriam leaned forward and asked if she was all right.

But the Eighth House did not answer. Sisters had dressed her up in full ceremonial garb tonight for the celebration. Giganalee’s coal-black dress was cut from silk and trimmed with midnight-colored lace. Peeking from beneath, a white satin lining swaddled her throat and claws, conferring the elegance of a decorated corpse.

“Madam D’ver?” Haidee took the bottle out of Giganalee’s fingers and tried to calm her but Giganalee continued rocking in her chair, bubbling with laughter.

We are lost,
thought Miriam.

An iatromathematique showed up with a sedative. She spoke in a soothing whisper into Giganalee’s ear as she rolled up the old woman’s sleeve. Her arm resembled suet. A quick injection put her into a torpor and several girls wearing white gowns maneuvered her frail body onto a wheelchair that they silently rolled away.

“What do we do now?” asked Duana.

Haidee straightened her crimson hem. “Whatever we want.”

Miriam found her conviction repugnant. “Really? How do we open it?”

“There’s a recipe,” said Haidee. She wagged her chin and scowled at Megan from under her eyebrows. “We
have
it.”

“A recipe none of us can follow,” said Miriam. “Unless one of us wants to admit to a little faron
12
on the side?”

“That’s just hocus-pocus.” Haidee swung her beer bottle back and forth like a pendulum from the neck. “You don’t have to love him … or her.”

Duana interrupted Miriam’s response. “Why would Sena give us the book unless—” She snatched her hand back from the cover. “Shit! It’s cold.” Miriam saw Duana swallow her fear, which made the surgically perfect scar encircling her neck ripple.

“A better question is: how do we know this is the real book?” Miriam used the hem of her dress to twist open another beer. “I’ve seen Sena throw a glamour. She’s better than any of us.”

All nine women stared at the
Cisrym Ta.

“She said she’d drag us through the jungle,” said Duana, who looked unabashedly worried.

Autumn Solburner was a dusky-skinned girl that Miriam tried not to show outward favoritism for. She entered the conversation cautiously, seeming to wonder why Miriam was being negative. “This is what the Houses have been trying to accomplish for decades.” She turned her palms up. “
This
is the book. It’s not a fake. We’ve won, Miriam. We have it. Why aren’t you happy? The Willin Droul doesn’t stand a chance.”

Miriam gave Autumn a serious look then said, “Sena’s in Sandren. That’s where the Chamber is.”

Haidee set her bottle down and pointed at Miriam. “You hush.”

“I will not. She’s going to the Chamber and you know it.”

No one talked. Haidee’s black eyes burned across the table at Miriam. Miriam didn’t feel like backing down. She had been the last Sister in Stonehold, the last to speak with Sienae Iilool. She knew what she was talking about. “What is it?” she asked. “You don’t want to admit it? You’re the one in the red dress …
Mother.
”

“Shut up,” hissed Haidee. “I’m not Coven Mother yet so be happy. We all know you think you deserve it but it’s not coming to you so quit being sour.”

“Don’t turn this into that old argument,” Miriam snapped. “This isn’t about you or me. It’s about the Sisterhood and the fact that the Eighth House is insane. We need a leader that—”

“Bite your tongue!”

“I will not! Giganalee is
incompetent
!” said Miriam. “If she’s not, get her out of bed and bring her down here so she can sentence me to Juyn Hel herself!”

The others gasped.

“You are excused,” said Haidee.

“Really? You’re not Coven Mother yet. I don’t think I
am
excused.”

“I said—”

“Focus on getting the Sisterhood back on track!” shouted Miriam, “or I swear—”

A kyru snapped out in Haidee’s hand, gleaming. A single talon. Extended.

Autumn, Duana and the rest made room.

Miriam was committed now. She felt how exquisitely and abruptly the time for shouting had ended. Feeling ambivalent about both the future and the recent past, she pulled her own kyru with a tremble. It was internal. No one else would see her fear.

To the positive, the other seven weren’t taking sides. It seemed they might be willing to let this sort itself out.

Miriam pulled her blade down over her hand and gasped. Haidee started babbling numbers instantly, enlisting the Sisterhood’s trick of hemofurtum. She meant to steal Miriam’s blood, suck her holojoules into a fast equation before Miriam had time to reach her sum. Oddly, no holojoules came …

In a smooth redirection of the kyru’s motion, Miriam pulled the weapon up into a throw. The razor left her fingertips, spinning through air. It embedded itself in Haidee’s chest; Miriam was already talking. The Unknown Tongue poured out of her. She too enlisted hemofurtum: only her equation was working.

Miriam had not cut herself.

Haidee’s equation ran dry. She had been fooled by sleight of hand and amateur acting and it was too late to adjust.

Miriam finished her sum quickly and the blade sank deep. With one gruesome tug the kyru obeyed her words and snugged itself up into Haidee’s heart.

Haidee dropped to the floor. Her lips passed an airy sound.

Miriam picked up her beer and tipped it back. Then she tossed the bottle on the carpeted floor. “We need some fucking better leadership around here. That’s all I’m saying.” She felt a little drunk. All of them were at least a little drunk. The improbability of Haidee’s body on the floor felt less significant in that light. But Miriam had spoken the truth. She turned and left the room.

*   *   *

O
N
the morning of the fourteenth, Giganalee woke up laughing.

Eight Ascendant Sisters stood with Miriam around the oval bed. They were the only ones who had witnessed Haidee’s death and, as the Eighth House woke, Duana functioned as elected speaker for the group. She used the Eighth House’s proper title, which Miriam thought absurd considering Giganalee’s state of mind.

“Ascended One? Haidee is dead.”

“Who killed her?” Giganalee’s eyes stared blindly at the extravagant ceiling.

Miriam felt a rivulet of sweat cut loose under her arm and trickle over her ribs.

Duana hesitated just a moment, unable to meet the eyes in the room. “It was Miriam.”

Giganalee started laughing again.

Miriam didn’t know whether to keep holding her breath. Duana looked at her. So did Autumn, Gina and the others. But Miriam realized they weren’t looking
at
her. They were looking
to
her, wondering what to do.

Autumn’s gaze in particular was deadly serious. She had taken Miriam’s side without saying a word.

“Hmm … hmm-hmm.” Giganalee’s chuckle tapered. “You know,” she said, “that girl from the isles is a scroll. Hagh, hagh-hagh—” She chortled again.

“This is useless,” Miriam said under her breath. She began to back away from the bed.

“Miriam Yeats!” Giganalee bawled.

Miriam stopped.

“You are Sororal Head.”

Duana whispered skeptically, “Why not Coven Mother?”

But Miriam could almost feel what was coming before Giganalee opened her mouth.

“There will be no Mother—” for half a second Giganalee gagged on her own tongue, then continued, “until the trouble is sorted, Miriam will wear red.”

“How do we sort the trouble?” asked Gina.

“We stop Sena,” said Miriam.

Giganalee waved her hand.
Yes,
said the hand.
Yes, yes, yes.
“If it can be done. The book has come late. I should have known.” She was grinning. “I’m an old fool.” Her words trailed off into an animal growl.

Miriam saw Giganalee’s slender talons produce a lovely brown pill from beneath the bedclothes. She popped it into her mouth.

“Gods!” yelled Duana. But it was too late.

“The Eighth House is outside the Circle!” shrieked Giganalee. Then her body yanked through a series of feral contortions. Black and yellow foam erupted from Giganalee’s mouth and burned through the snowy sheets.