Black Bottle (32 page)

The legs almost hypnotized him. They jackknifed through a graceful, varied gait. The movements of huge muscle packs, stretching fluidly thigh-to-toes, pulled the “heel” up past the monster’s hip. With every step, this “heel” came tantalizingly close to hitting the creature in the back.

Caliph’s dazed eyes followed this jag of bone down to the knee. It was upon the knee that the whole upper portion of the leg and torso seemed to balance.

Each thigh bone nested in the corresponding cup of an atlatl-like sling while the mighty feet and ankles of the beast propelled and kept everything else aloft.

In split seconds, Caliph absorbed the marvelous power and how most of the creature’s weight was clearly in its feet. It could lean and stretch in ways that seemed to defy gravity. But the double-bent legs that powered the ranine body were only the beginning. At roughly eight feet off the ground, Caliph had to crane his neck to see the monster’s head. The skull hung much lower than the shoulders and the tip of its snout, which reminded Caliph of both a catfish and a salamander, was lower than either its neck or the prominent fan of its beefsteak-colored gills.

The whole body was so hunched, so crouched, so incredibly folded up in fact, that Caliph decided it could have easily stood up and reached eighteen feet into the sky.

Eighteen feet with its jaws, that was. Caliph had no way of accounting for the potential length of its many-jointed arms.

The hand of the bodyguard that had pulled Caliph to his feet had been gone ever since the creature’s arrival. There was a large red blur in the periphery, covering the cement, and Caliph heard the monster’s talons drag like plastic strips against the stone. It grabbed a cinder block–sized chunk of the man’s torso. Like a distracted child moving messy candy toward its mouth, it gave no outward sign of enjoyment or even that it was eating. The consumption of Caliph’s bodyguard seemed a reflexive action, unconnected with the movements of its eyes.

Caliph lifted his sword, which felt incredibly heavy. The impression of shouts and desperate actions behind the creature came to him as out of heavy fog.

Where did you come from?
Caliph thought.

The crouched shape turned slowly, golden-gray and shimmering. Its empty eyes—like porcelain pie-plates stuffed with pink gelatin—were dead, soulless and without recognizable intelligence. But they
were
looking at him. Of that, Caliph was sure.

He stumbled backward, away from the crunching mouth. Blood drizzled from the end of its snout, heavy and fast. Around this horror, a clutch of darkened barbels oozed though the air with dissimilar gravity, curling, stretching and swelling like snail eyes.

Even in his dizzy condition, Caliph noticed the asymmetry of the hands that were moving slowly toward him. One was an ungulate horn, which hooked sharply toward the ground; the other was a translucent duck claw banded in tropical brown and white—swaddled in ancient skin and brandishing an array of talons in Caliph’s direction.

He waited for the beast to reach out and take him. It opened its mouth, canyon-wide. He felt like he was leaning over a pit. A strange gravity drew him in. He felt the immense power of the monster’s will and teetered, feet losing traction with the ground. His boots rolled on gravel, then nothing but air.

Before his face, the deep interior of the monster swelled with fatty pink ridges. Caliph heard his name at the back of the python throat where some discreet muscles manipulated air. “Caliph Howl,” it had said.

Or at least he imagined it had spoken to him.

Then the jaws moved forward, propelled half a step. The talons reached out from the end of its impossible five-jointed arm.

Caliph raised his chemiostatic sword. The still-humming black-and-silver blade met it halfway. A blinding flash of light filled the world, accompanied by a sizzling bang: like someone striking an empty metal drum with the flat of their hand.

The creature stopped. Smoke poured off its skin. Caliph dropped to the ground. He backed away as it lost balance. Fabric that had covered the hump on its back smoldered. A low, ugly red flame danced around its skull as the huge body thundered against the concrete.

With his view cleared, he stared over the carcass to where a second creature had one of Alani’s men in its jaws. In mere seconds the man was gone, crushed and tossed down its throat like a springbuck in the throat of a saurian.

Head foggy, Caliph climbed over the sticky, charred carcass that reeked of burnt salmon and stumbled toward the second monster. He thought he might black out but he didn’t. He swung his weapon as hard as he could.

The momentum carried him forward but twisted off the creature’s skin. His blow turned down, dragging his arms with, buckling his body. He couldn’t recover. The sword left his hands and clanged against the ground.

Lazily, the vast duck paw reached out for him, talons spreading.

And then he was on his back in a cot, staring at the ceiling of his stateroom. No. Not his stateroom. He smelled medical supplies and felt nauseous.

The weight of his breasts tugged at the center of his chest, pulling gently to either side. He reached up and cupped them, pushing them back together. They were soft and comforting.

When he opened his mouth, he was screaming. He didn’t know why, but he was screaming.

Dr. Baufent showed up almost immediately, shadowed by several other people. She looked down at Caliph with grave concern.

“Bring me my satchel,” she snapped, and one of the shadows behind her disappeared.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Baufent tore into him. “No? What about this?” She held up an empty hypodermic. “Are you a junkie? Or are you just stupid?”

Caliph didn’t know what to say.

“Get me a drip,” said Baufent.

“Ma’am,” a voice behind her sounded truly afraid, “there’s something happening on the ground.”

“I am busy! Get Anselm to deal with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Caliph was still holding his breasts.

*   *   *

T
AELIN’S
second scream seemed to be mental. At least she had no control over her body. She couldn’t open her mouth. She was moving without willing herself to do so, scuttling across a concrete slab on her palms like a crab.

She reached for a sword just in front of her and grasped it by the handle. It felt cool and solid even though she was sure she was dreaming. The smell of burnt fish wrecked the air.

She jumped up, strong but clumsy, surprised by her own strength, gripping the weapon.

The palace scintillated: a pointillist’s figurative arrangement of pink and black and mica-white dots. She could hear the sounds of combat on her left flank but she could not move. Like in a nightmare, she was a watcher more than an active participant.

Her neck was locked in a direction that cast her field of view just south of the palace’s grand facade, off the cement pad and down toward an additional spread of gardens.

The taste in her mouth was foreign. She felt sweat trickle from the bridge of her nose down around her nostrils, incredibly real. At the edge of the cement pad, where a magnolia tossed in the wind, a gauzy darkness spluttered. It looked like black steam seeping into the air from no particular source but it held a shape that reminded her of the cloaks worn by college professors.

At the top of it—sweet Nenuln—a puff of white that bobbed fly-away with the wind, sheltered a pair of cimmerian eyes. They glared at her with malicious delight. Together it was the semblance of a man standing under the tree, just barely. Just almost there.

She walked toward him, which was the last thing she wanted to do, her sword out in front of her. As she approached, the shape grew taller, or perhaps it levitated slowly so that her vantage became that of a child at the foot of a grown-up.

Something like an arm effected from the mist, a hand spread and extended. She felt a cool-warm pressure grip the crown of her head. And a vaporous voice said something about her necklace that she couldn’t understand.

CHAPTER

25

There had been no report from Duana’s qloin.

When the High King had floated down from Sandren to meet Isham Wade, Miriam and her five sisters had waited for either Sena or Duana to materialize.

Neither had.

In an effort to collect intelligence, while the High King slept, Miriam and her two qloins had crawled out of the rain and into his stateroom.

The puslet was still cankered with neural cells it had cloned from Taelin Rae; its synthesis with Caliph’s brain was sloppy and any information it provided would be cloudy and intermittent. But Miriam did not care. All she needed was Sena’s location.

Unfortunately, Caliph didn’t know.

Sena had disappeared entirely, from diaglyph, blood scrying—even her lover had no idea where to find her.

Miriam could only wait for things to change. But when they had, when Sena
had
shown up—Miriam found herself woefully unprepared.

Sena’s immediate destruction of the airships had been paralyzing. For those precious moments, Miriam had been unable to think. And how she regretted it! By the time she had gathered her wits, the Eighth House—for who could doubt the meaning of Giganalee’s proclamation now?—was already walking toward the white ship.

Did Sena serve the Pplar? Or was it the other way ’round?

Miriam set these and many other questions aside. All that mattered for the moment was catching Sena. The puslet told her that Caliph Howl was intent on the same thing, that he didn’t want the world to end and that he was someone she could use.

Miriam was forced to change her plan yet again. Had it been available, she would have used the tremendous amount of energy necessary for both qloins to
cross
lines onto Sena’s ship. Not only was crossing lines exponentially more dangerous than walking lines, but it required so many holojoules—three hundred sixty murdered people for both qloins—that even if she killed the High King’s entire entourage it wouldn’t have been half enough. She would have done it. She wished there were enough bodies to use.

But it simply wasn’t going to happen. The only thing to do was use the
Odalisque
to chase Sena down.

Miriam watched the chaos unfold below her while clinging to the airship’s belly with gooey holomorphic fingers. Her ancillas were nearby.

The Cabal’s flawless had slunk up from Sandren’s fissures and the High King’s forces were now pinned beneath them, stretched like softened metal across the anvil of the Ghalla Peaks. It would be an unlikely partnership if she saved the High King.

He was standing stupidly with his back to the flawless, completely exposed and staring at a tree on the edge of the cement.

Miriam blamed the puslet. It was dirty.

The only thing giving her pause was Caliph’s spymaster. She desperately wanted him torn in half by the flawless. Then it would be safer for her to intervene. She hesitated a moment more, knowing that her window of opportunity was closing.

Finally, she gave the signal and popped the cork on a small capsule of blood. The grume of the battle was too far below for hemofurtum. She let go of the
Odalisque
and shouted. All six sisters glided out of the zeppelin’s shadow.

The boundary between the Sisterhood and its ancient enemy passed behind her as Miriam skimmed the trees, eyes focused on the flawless, which were still wolfing down human-shaped bites.

The flawless were not half-breeds. These eel-headed hulks had erupted from bygone cisterns like ancient gods. As bewildering as it was that these fables should reveal themselves here and now, Miriam’s time for idle thought ended as her feet touched the ground. Her momentum carried her into a run.

On her left, marked out by their use of velvet guns, the last three of the spymaster’s handpicked agents were fighting alongside him.
Fighting
was inaccurate. What Alani and his agents were trying to do was slow the flawless down. It wasn’t working. The flawless moved unhindered, relentlessly eating their way through the last people standing. But they seemed distracted.

Miriam tried to understand what they were looking at. Her eyes rolled up.

It was the
Odalisque.

Some of them reached into the sky, twenty feet or more, pawing. One tried to jump. It was futile. The ship was far out of reach.

Miriam looked away as she raced toward Caliph Howl. Combat was not the answer here. Her only goal was securing the High King. If he died, the chase for Sena would be over.

Miriam motioned toward Caliph’s idle form at the edge of the cement. Her ancillas, like her, were already sprinting toward him. Then, across the expanse of cement, Miriam locked eyes with the spymaster. She saw him through the mutant limbs of one towering flawless. His knives gleamed in his hands. The next instant, he held only one.

Miriam tried to steer her momentum but he had gauged his throw too well. The knife struck her like a brick. She went into a roll, tumbling over the slab. Clearly, he had seen her heading for the High King and misinterpreted her intent.

Miriam blinked. She was on the ground. Her body ached from several more or less vague locations. The knife still stuck in her back, point embedded in her shoulder blade. Gravity tugged it. So did her movements. When her scapula slid beneath her skin, the blade cut her again.

She reached back with her other hand and wrenched it out.

Already he was coming for her. Or was he?

She had never seen an old man move so fast, cutting a half-circle out from the tangle of enemies. Nearby, one of his remaining agents floated above the ground. Oozing bulbous tendrils around the monster’s upper jaw guided the agent to a quivering pink conclusion.

Miriam saw another flawless reach for the spymaster. Its arm stretched several yards but Alani’s feet hiccupped, popping him into a jump that propelled him just out of reach.

The spymaster wasn’t coming for her. He was running for Caliph Howl and her ancillas. His second knife had already left his hand. It was better aimed and took Medea in the back, through vital organs. She dropped instantly which pulled Anjie, Miriam’s second, up short.