The Last Page (27 page)

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 Isca 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 everything 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.

After listening to Simon petition for less stringent labor laws and plead for relief from the city’s pollution tax (while professing the indispensable value of Growl Mort’s factories) Caliph politely accepted a miniature factory made of iron.

The ugly little contraption was bedizened with tiny emeralds in place of windows and contained a chemiostatic cell that made them glow. Caliph felt fairly certain there was some kind of bromidic metaphor going on.

About clean factories and clean power sources.

A hidden ampoule of chemical ink and some sulfate, or so Simon explained, was mixed at the touch of a button and produced a soundless but violent reaction that caused black steam to bubble from the smokestacks and dissipate harmlessly into thin air.

Caliph smiled graciously at the clever but hideous effect and handed the model off to Gadriel for relegation to the hidden stockpile of useless gifts accepted with outward cordiality from the arms of many decades’ worth of wheedling politicians.

Then, maintaining decorum despite a throbbing headache and exigent need for sleep, the High King accompanied the burgomaster of Growl Mort into yet another lavish parlor where a dozen other guests had gathered for an evening of chamber music.

Somewhere between the sublime strains of violins, violas and cellos Caliph nearly lost his sanity.

Though the music dripped with gorgeous sounds Caliph could barely stay awake. The recital ended at sixteen-forty, an hour and a half before midnight.

Caliph clapped brightly and thanked everyone before the High Seneschal—who must have seen the king’s discomfort like piano wire stretched under his skin—mercifully made an excuse and ushered him from the room.

“I’m terribly sorry.” The seneschal began a bizarre apology. “They’re usually much better.”

Caliph waved off the man’s kind but baseless repentance.

“It’s not that, Gadriel. The musicians were fine. They were wonderful. I’m just exhausted. If I don’t start getting more sleep—”

“Tomorrow morning you will not be disturbed. I swear my life on it. I will postpone your breakfast appointment until—”

“No, that’s no good. I need to be there. It’s a very important breakfast. Don’t postpone it. And don’t make the cooks go to any special trouble. I don’t want it to seem like an important breakfast.”

“Very well.” Gadriel paused at the High King’s bedroom with a strange look of sympathy. His eyes said something like, twenty-six is too young to be High King. He opened the door and Caliph walked in like a blind man, slowly but straight for the bed.

“Shall I help you undress, my lord?”

“No.” Caliph fell like a tree across the mattress. He muttered with his face in the comforter, “Wasn’t that miniature factory hideous?”

“Ungodly,” the High Seneschal agreed.

“What did you do with it?”