The Last Page (54 page)

The fact that Caliph had blown it off entirely only made Sena’s sense of guilt more profound. He wouldn’t even consider arresting the journalist for slander—who had gone into hiding after the story created a sensation. There were rioting protesters near Octul Box: something that had never happened before.

But Caliph dismissed the suggestion of his advisors to retaliate by naming names. They had dug up the college degrees of every politician in Isca, ready to publicly announce those who had gotten a grade in holomorphy from any university in the north.

Instead, Caliph held a press conference and told the journalists the truth.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s a holomorph. She studied holomorphy at Desdae—just like I did.” He refused to answer any question directly as to whether holomorph also meant
witch
.

“No . . . no I won’t change the laws pertaining to witchcraft. As far as I know, the women sentenced over the past several years weren’t even tried on the grounds of witchcraft but as spies for treason.”

It had been a long conference. Caliph had been raked over the coals afterward by the same newspapers that had backed him two months ago when his father died. The same newspapers he allowed to exist.

All he had to do was give the word and the city watch would raid. He could fill West Gate overnight with editors and journalists and have their bodies swinging from chains over the castle just as fast.

But instead of engendering gratitude, the fact that Caliph didn’t crush his critics under a mailed fist made them all the more brazen.

The more sensational rags published all kinds of outrageous speculation. He was going to set up a Council of witches to enslave the population. He had been charmed by Sena and was now her puppet. He wasn’t even human. He was some creature who went around in disguise, advancing a ridiculous list of ghoulish designs.

“They’re entitled,” Caliph said blithely. “It’s actually quite amusing. They’re incessantly creative. And don’t worry,” he whispered one morning while they were still in bed, “you’re quite safe here in the castle.”

He was right. His actions, while they didn’t win him any favors from the tabloids, had cemented his staff to him. His graciousness to the maids and his refusal to be waited on hand and foot along with a charming tongue-in-cheek way of coping with the “world out there” (as he called it) had so enamored the inhabitants of Isca Castle that after the initial shock of the headline they scoffed and promptly burnt the
Herald
on the grand hall hearth. Thereafter they boycotted it entirely.

By Gadriel’s command, Caliph’s daily edition was the only edition allowed on the castle grounds.

The burgomasters were nervous. But they bit their tongues. Caliph’s charm had a way of reassuring them in ways they found difficult to explain. Clayton Redfield had told him to his face, “We don’t know how . . . but we know you’ll eventually make things right.”

Caliph didn’t know how either but his notoriety seemed indistinguishable from popularity. The large boisterous opposition ensured his every public appearance was scrutinized by the masses. But those occasions only reinforced his image as an absolute gentleman and a very good-looking
one at that. If he was sinister at all, the women of Isca found it irresistible.

Thus, there probably wouldn’t have been any catcalls at the opera even without the small army of bodyguards capable of smashing any fearless critic into paste.

Tonight, Caliph and Sena had promised each other not to talk about headlines or critics or war. Next week began a new month, the month of Streale with a new set of pressures and goals (cleaning out Ghoul Court among them). Tonight was separate. Tonight was only for them.

Caliph handed the program to Sena and rolled his shoulders back, trying to relax. The lights had dimmed and chronic talkers squeezed in a few last words before climbing over the laps and knees of the tactfully irritated toward their seats. Stage lights flared. Brilliant luminous cones flooded the deep crimson folds of curtains that loomed beyond the orchestra.

The show was about to begin.

Icy tendrils of white vapor crawled out from beneath the curtains. A deep vibration of drums had begun resonating from the pit. Suddenly all the lights went down and the curtains swept back, tearing up vortices of mist as they collapsed into the wings.

A man in a pillar of light stood center stage, hand extended overhead, fog pouring in around his feet. Stylized props of leaning cemetery markers, dripping vines and ruinous mausoleums crowded the gloom. His clear tenor rose in a solitary wail of grief as he slowly swept his arm down toward a headstone at his feet.

What followed was a captivating descent into the man’s tragic loss and unconsummated love for a fiancée that appeared on stage only in the form of a ghost who drove him laconically toward avenging her murder.

By the end of act two, when the curtains came rushing back together for intermission, the audience also had the vague unsettling notion that she was also driving him to suicide.

Caliph rubbed his eyes. They were dry and tired from staring.

“Better than
Er Krue Alteirz
?” asked Sena.

Caliph yawned. “Surprisingly so. Do you want anything to drink?” Ten minutes before the break, the warm rich smells of the concession stands had begun percolating through the stuffy theater air.

“No. But I need to pee.”

“Shall I get you anything?” asked Vhortghast, leaning into Caliph’s left ear. “I’m headed for a coffee.”

Caliph made the hand sign for yes. “Well, if you’re going, I suppose something to keep me awake would be fine. Thank you, Zane.”

The spymaster left the box and snapped his fingers subtly at one of the
two guards in the hall. He deftly indicated for him to follow Sena to the bathrooms and ensure her safe return.

Vhortghast held the curtain aside and affected a very shallow bow as she exited the box. Though his appearance horrified her, Sena smiled at the spymaster before heading toward the privies. She held her clutch in both hands in front of her waist, taking shortened graceful steps, constrained by her gown.

The huge guard shadowed her every step of the way.

She got several looks, mostly from jealous women. One leering man got a foot too close and found himself pushed by an enormous outspread palm effortlessly and unapologetically into a wall. The affronted gentleman whirled and opened his mouth to complain but thought better of it and snarled mutely instead.

The guard wore a chemiostatic sword on his hip and several throwing knives in a bandolier across his ornate leather breastplate. Outside the women’s closet he stopped and glowered at his new post.

Sena went inside and passed a row of filigreed oval mirrors interspersed with gas lamps clad in pink fluted glass. Cherry wood stalls housed overhead tanks with delicate pull chains and dainty porcelain bowls festooned with floral pink.

A gaggle of women primped and gossiped. Some, who had been discussing the High King’s mistress, went abruptly tranquil a moment too late.

They stared at her for an instant before either offering pleasantries or snubbing her altogether.

Sena entered a stall and did her business. The silence in the room had spread and become more uncomfortable than if they had just packed it in and whispered. She flushed and walked out. They were staring at her, or pointedly not staring at her. All of them had gone totally silent.

Sena washed her hands and patted them dry.

Just before she left, she turned to the silent throng and said, “Whatever you’re thinking . . . it’s true.” Then she pulled open the door and stepped back into the hall.

There was a scream.

The huge guard appointed her by Zane Vhortghast reached out and roughly jerked her behind him. His sword ascended from its scabbard like a star. His great muscled body plowed through people like sheets on a laundry line.

Sena couldn’t see what was going on. The hall boiled with arms and legs and trampling falling people piling for the stairs. A woman in a frenzy came at Sena from the side, unintentionally crashing between her and the
guard. The guard responded automatically, grabbing the assailant by her hair and tossing her back the direction she had come. Whether out of confusion or indignation, the woman charged again and Sena’s bodyguard punched her in the face, sending her to the floor with a broken nose.

He took Sena’s hand and dragged her like a child through the crowd. Frankly, she felt like a child. She allowed herself to be led. She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t
want
to be a Shr
dnae operative. Since the Halls in Sandren, she didn’t dare to trust herself.
No!
Caliph’s bodyguards were well trained. She would let them take charge. As the huge man pulled her forward, her legs couldn’t keep up and she heard the narrow dress rip. Instead of coming free she stumbled. Tangled in the tube of satin.

Vexed by the slowdown, the guard noticed her dilemma and paused to reach down. He tried to tear out the kick pleat. It was an error.

When he crouched and turned his back on the mass of people something struck him from behind. He dropped to his knees with a chilling look of surprise.

Sena saw a tall thin man behind the guard, a slender stiletto in his hand, ugly pink eyes intent on her face. The guard had dropped his sword, slumped forward, sprawled out in the hall.

A sudden chunk sound, followed by the pink-eyed man’s head doing an abrupt forward nod, jarred Sena from her trance.

A crossbow bolt had entered Mr. Naylor’s head from behind and ruptured his forehead. He looked like an apple on a skewer. Sena followed the trajectory back to the box where one of the other guards cradled a light metal crossbow in his hands.

The truly horrifying part of it was that Mr. Naylor did not go down. His head popped back up and he looked around despite the gruesome trauma.

His distraction was momentary. The hand with the stiletto lunged for Sena. She launched backward off her toes, avoiding the knife but impacting an elderly man with a cane who had been shuffling in bewildered circles right behind her. The codger tipped over like a chair and Sena tumbled over top, landing on her back with her buttocks on his head and her shoulders on the floor.

It was too crowded to be graceful and her clothing was still an obstacle. By the time she had gotten to her feet, she had managed to pull off her high-heeled shoes. She looked up at the pink-eyed man just as a second guard tackled him from behind.

Mr. Naylor went down like a sled under the momentum of the flying guard. He slid across the carpet, crushed down and howling with rage. It looked so painful that Sena nearly screamed with disbelief when the
guard was lifted up on the back of the rail-thin man like an enormous pack.

Mr. Naylor turned around, his head transfixed with metal, his arms pinned at his sides, a great pink rug burn trawling down the middle of his face. Despite the man encumbering his back, his powerful grasshopper legs moved him with ease over the fallen bodies toward Sena.

A second crossbow quarrel struck the opera house manager in the chest. This one took him to his knees. But the guards had no interest in anything other than getting the High King’s mistress out of the opera house unharmed.

The man riding Mr. Naylor’s back let go, grabbed Sena and pulled her toward the spot where Zane Vhortghast was motioning to a window.

The stairs were choked with people. But there was more to it than that. Sena saw why the spymaster had herded them toward the casement. Two other tall thin men with glassy strange-colored eyes were closing in on their position. The newcomers had bald heads and open mouths and seemed by their strange exaggerated motions to be climbing across the level floor, clawing at the air with arms in a bizarre mantis-like posture.

One of the guards pulled his trigger and a crossbow bolt plunged into the lead creature’s shoulder. Another bolt from the second guard pierced its head. Neither one slowed the thing down.

Like in a nightmare, the monster took hold of the quarrel in its face and pulled it out, tossing it aside carelessly.

Zane Vhortghast was shoving Sena through the window while his men drew their swords and engaged the seven-foot scarecrows in desperate melee. One had powered up his chemiostatic sword and touched the enemy with a vital thrust. There was a flash. The creature shivered as fire darted from its skin both where the electricity entered and from the explosive wound that appeared instantaneously on its foot.