The Last Page (29 page)

“I don’t understand. How—”

“No, look, it’s so simple. So ball-jerking simple.”

Sigmund stood up and started walking around like Caliph sometimes did, in agitated circles. “You have to extract a soul, right? You have to
catch it before it floats away to wherever it floats away to. That’s a whole other topic of debate better left to priests. What I’m talking about is putting a body in a coriolistic centrifuge. Not a dead body, but a live one. Maybe someone sick or old.

“Then you start the spin. Only the coriolistic centrifuge doesn’t just spin off in the dimensions of known physics. We’re talking about other dimensions here. Branes. Shadow worlds. We’re talking about separating undefined matter from flesh, bones, body fluid, straining off blood and fat. Decanting the soul for Palan’s sake!

“Look, you stick some poor sod in the tube, spin him ’til he dies and don’t even let him escape. You trap his soul in a holomorphic tube of treated glass before it can slip off to sweet oblivion, plug him into some machine and let him work for an eternity.”

For a long time Caliph and Sigmund once again regarded each other with an appalled, almost stupefied stare.

Finally Caliph said, “That’s not right.”

“No shit it’s not right!” Sigmund was off and running at the mouth again. “There’s this hierarchy thing going on too. Like you could stick a cat or something in there instead of a human, only your results might vary. Half power or quarter power or whatever. I don’t understand how they categorize solvitriol batteries yet but—”

“Iycestoke does this?”

Sigmund looked annoyed at the interruption.

“Yeah. They probably power half the city on it. Like I said, cruel evil bastards. But that’s an ochlocracy, right? Why waste medicine on the sick when you can power a city block on ’em dead?”

“And you want me to use this in the Iscan military?”

Caliph’s appalled look did not fade. He began to regard Sigmund with a look of horror.

“That’s just it, Caph. Like I said you don’t have to use people. You can use animals.”

“You sick bastard!”

Sigmund glared. “Hold on—”

“I’ve heard enough!”

Sigmund raised his voice in desperation. “Wait! I told you I had some new ideas based on this. Stuff nobody’s ever tried before.”

There was an urgent knocking at the door. Caliph didn’t even glance at the sound.

“Look, if what you’re saying is true, if this solvitriol power comes from murdering life and sentencing it to endless enslavement then I’m not
interested in hearing anything more about it. It’s heinous, disgusting crap as far as I’m concerned and I don’t want any part of it. Gas and chemiostatic cells are just fine by me.”

“But Caph—”

The knocking on the door intensified. Mr. Vhortghast’s meticulous voice came from without the room.

“No!” Caliph nearly shouted. “Look, Sig. Keep your job in the military. Be an engineer. I’m happy to have you, really I am. But I don’t want to hear another thing about solvitriol power. I’m already sick beyond words from the shit I’ve seen since I took this miserable crown. Let me tell you, the last thing this city needs is another sin on its slate.”

Sigmund, visibly angry and frustrated at not having been able to share his vision, glowered in silence as Caliph answered the knock.

Zane Vhortghast stood just outside the room, pressing his fingertips together, looking slightly winded as though he had mounted the considerable staircase in a hurry.

Caliph briefly wondered if he had been eavesdropping.

“Your majesty. I am afraid I have some terrible news.” He noticed Sigmund at once. “Perhaps you should be alone to hear this. Perhaps you should sit down.”

Caliph smiled quizzically. He tried to imagine what news Vhortghast could possibly know that would upset him more than he already was. Nothing came to mind.

“Mr. Vhortghast.” He gestured for the spymaster to enter the room. “Please. I’m sure it can’t be that bad. Sigmund is an old friend. It’s perfectly fine to tell me here and now. I don’t need to sit down.”

“But your majesty—”

Mr. Vhortghast’s clay-like face twisted into some rare facsimile of regret.

“I’m fine,” said Caliph. “What is it?”

“Your father. Your father has been . . . assassinated.”

Caliph drew back sharply, wincing. “What? How?”

The unpleasant and grisly details followed and rested in Caliph’s mind.

Sigmund, distracted from his reprimand, looked disconnectedly sorry for his friend. He sat quietly while Zane Vhortghast described how Jacob had been jumped the previous night, a sack thrown over his head and knocked unconscious with something like a brick. The assailants had thrown him in the river.

“Sig—”

Sigmund was already headed for the door.

“I’ll talk to you later, Caph. I’m sorry. Sorry . . .” He disappeared into the staircase, a fading, sinking mumble of apology and hurried footsteps.

Gone was the recent excitement and debate over solvitriol power. Gone the sweetness of the creamy breakfast pastries in Caliph’s mouth.

Outside, one of the zeppelins sounded a piercing low Klaxon, plowing south over Bilgeburg and the ships in the glittering sea. It was carrying factory parts or refrigerated canisters packed with meat or metholinate or coal. The sun had finally risen high enough to reach the bay. Morning crept like something wounded toward afternoon.

Vhortghast maintained a look of well-conceived empathy as the High King swallowed his anger and began calculating even before he mourned . . . calculating his response.

Sena leaned at the window of a dark bedroom over Litten Street, her face tense and solicitous.

Beyond the casement, laughter and song echoed from taverns and all-night cafés. The voices were weird and thin, sounding like wind-tossed cans off Sandren’s reeling vertiginous streets.

Sena hadn’t been home yet, having hitched a ride with a farmer all the way from the Stones to the ghettos of Seatk’r. That had been yesterday. She’d taken the ancient lift up to the City in the Mountain and stayed the night with Clea. But tonight was different. Tonight, contingencies had forced her into a room at the Black Couch: a lavish and discretionary inn that catered to the one-night stands of the reckless wealthy.

The tang of homemade perfume ruffled through her room. Behind her, the darkness stirred with human irritation as another gust swirled over the bedclothes.

“Sounds like it’s picking up.” A man’s voice came from the bed.

Sena did not answer. Her gaze dipped with mild amusement to where a band of cup-shot youths twirled and swaggered beneath marcescent statues that threatened to topple. The city was splintered with deep fissures and the boys crossed Lôrc Rift on a bridge of antiquated stone.

Sena spun her tiny wineglass between her fingers and enjoyed the architecture. The Ghalla Peaks had been crammed and chiseled by another of the north’s prehistoric civilizations, one older and more sinister than the numinous mummified horrors that that had built the Highway of Kafree.

“Why don’t you shut it? It’s cold,” the man said.

He was not Tynan.

“I like it cold.” Sena took a sip and set the glass in the open window.

The man drew the sheets around him and turned to face her.

“What are you doing?”

Sena stepped out of the faint blue cast from the window. Her body stooped to gather soft dark shapes from the floor.

“Go to sleep,” she whispered. Parts of her were disappearing.

“I thought you were going to stay here for a while—” He sat up, trying to find her clothed body against the gloom.

“You need your rest. You must have been tired tonight—Robert.” She said his name as though hardly remembering it.

Robert growled but the door clicked and wind howled briefly through the bedroom, billowing up gusts of Sena’s perfumery. When the door clicked again, the wind had blown her out like a flame.

Sena walked briskly, adjusting the black britches and a studded watchman’s jacket. She had not gathered her own clothing from the floor.

It’s a good fit,
she thought. Robert was a very small man—the reason she had picked him out of the crowd. His leather pants pulled tightly across her slender hips.

She smiled as she fancied him trying on her skirt in the morning. Around her index finger swung a heavy ring of city keys that slapped against her palm.

If all went well, Robert would never see her again, and never understand why she had stolen almost everything in his possession.

His cloak, stitched with the city insignia, displayed a winged silhouette against a pink sun.

The do’doc statues were Sandren’s most prominent skyline feature and one of several things that drew the tourists. They hunkered on all fours atop their spindles of stone, looking beyond the curvature of the planet with a unified expression of morbid, almost alien anticipation.

Sandren’s murky history was the reason she was here. Gimmon Mae had come late to the north. The city’s foundations had been laid by the Groull, creatures that flourished and fell long before human tribes discovered fire. Just like men, they had come here for the gold.

But something had forced them to abandon the mines before the ore ran out, a mystery to the archeological society that flourished here. Certainly an invasion was out of the question. Sandren’s position precluded siege.

Sena wished she had followed Megan’s recommendation to infiltrate the city’s archeological society. Her goal tonight certainly would have been easier to achieve.

Still, in the dark, no one would notice that her uniform pinched or sagged a bit in places that made it obviously masculine. Robert’s weapons moved against her hips with an easy sway.

She met the concierge of the Black Couch with a smile, mentioning that “the man upstairs” would take care of any residual fees. The concierge checked his register. He eyed her and made the hand sign for yes. Sena headed into the street.

Outside she could smell summer blooms like tender-loin girls: pink-petaled skirts ruffling in the wind. She walked southeast, listening to the creak of queelub cages swinging over Litten Street.

The wind in Sandren was always delicious. Sena could see west now down Windlymn Street and beyond the cliffs to the remote clouds over Tibi
n that had smeared like charcoal into night. She felt comfortable here. Not a tourist. Living in Tue had made her part of the city-state and she read tobacco signs and bistro names with ease in several different tongues.

She entered the Aerie: the most extravagant of the rich districts. It was where Tynan’s family lived. She had met him this morning at the Merchant’s Pillow just above Jdellan’s Fountain and told him a carefully abridged version of her disastrous spring.

His corresponding tale had revolved around his own panic at finding her cottage a mess. He had told the police, and a squad of officers had been dispatched. Sena gnashed her teeth until it was clear from Tynan’s story that they had found nothing of the secret cellar.

Sena had endured their hour together at the Merchant’s Pillow but she could not look him in the eye. The tenderness in his face was unbearable and she understood that for him it was like she had come back from the dead. His affection only reminded her of the deep secret between them, the thing they never spoke of, whose tiny bones lay in the ground at Desdae.

Sena had buckled the coins he gave her in her pack and swallowed hard, forcing a smile.

Later, alone over lunch, she had counted the wealth. He had given her southern scythes. They were worth twice as much on exchange for northern gryphs and Sandren’s system accepted both kinds of currency.

They would get her to Stonehold and back again if things unraveled with Caliph.

The dark streets of Sandren wound confusingly behind pubs and town houses. Rose-tinted light bled from deep-set alley windows onto cobbled walls where the smell of blossoms mixed with the sour stench of rotting fruit and garbage: refuse from the never-ending galas of the rich.

Sena swung between wheeled crates of waste and arrived at a narrow intersection sheltered from the wind and glutted with a humid veil of sewer steam.

She swung Robert’s ring of keys around her finger and snapped the heavy bouquet together with a clank. Then she fanned them and examined the teeth and relative length of each shaft, trying to gauge which ones might go to standard doors versus large metal gates. She would have only one chance to bluff her way through . . .