Black Bottle

by Anthony Huso

  For an instant Sena allowed herself to see it. Then the Lua’groc waddled deeper into the cyst and made a quiet soft-lipped splash.

  “I could have killed you,” she whispered. But it was gone, down into the luminous depths.

  She looked at the two broken gemstones, the two “eyes” and picked one of them up. She hefted it within her hand. It had been hollowed out, gutted by extremely clever math. It was not a gemstone. Not really. The thing it once contained had long gone free.

  Or, according to the Pplarians, the being that had made them, had failed. According to the Pplarians, there had never been anything inside. Only the power and the math carven on the surfaces of the gems had made it to Adummim, which apparently had been enough.

  But what was supposed to have been inside, had never made the trip, had never made it through. The Eyes had always been empty. According to the Pplarians, the legend of the Sslia was a dark story with a bitter end and the Eyes of Agath were just empty bottles, useless as Nathaniel had written that they would be.

  It was all true and yet she had needed to come here, to see for herself.

  “Two plus baggage,” she said as she held the broken orb up before her eye—like a sundered walnut in the late part of the year. But its cosmic black shell harbored a mercurial reflectivity. Sena could feel its antiquity against the ridges of her skin.

  Despite its overall smoothness, her fingertips detected flaws, bubbled and pitted—minute craters here and there randomly, as if it had sustained countless impacts from sugar-sized grit, which instead of penetrating the object’s extraordinary thickness, had turned its surface molten. The orbs had been created to carry and protect. They were chambers. The chambers within the Chamber.

  Duana would have laughed.

  Sena hurled the Eye at the floor. It was her will, rather than the strength of her arm that shattered it into glittering dust.

  She was bitterly glad she had come. Her cheeks were sticky but the angry warmth had left. She composed herself. She got ready to leave. Naen’s golden lights threatened, trembled, stirred behind her. But leaving this place would not bring Sena any peace.

  On the outside, Nathaniel would be waiting. He would attack her the moment she emerged, besiege her with questions and attempt to discern what she had learned.

  Sena prepared herself for his assault, the horrible sensation of his touch, his whispers in her brain. She would be ready for him. She would do what she was best at. Her most well-honed talent.

  She would lie.

  CHAPTER

  22

  “We can’t find her,” said Alani. His white goatee followed the corners of his mouth down; the whole beard became an exaggerated frown.

  Caliph knew his spymaster was right to be irritated. His job was to keep Caliph safe, which Caliph had made harder by getting entangled in Sandren. But Alani’s job was also to flex to the High King’s decisions. And in this light, Caliph wasn’t going to apologize.

  But now Caliph sensed it was his turn to capitulate.

  “I suppose we don’t have a choice but to head down without her,” Caliph said. They had already waited a full hour.

  Alani looked relieved. “She’ll be fine.” His hand remained hanging from his belt while he panned his fingers. “We’re leaving half of them here. We’ll be back.”

  Caliph boarded the Odalisque. The private political meeting to which he had been invited occupied his thoughts. A man by the name of Isham Wade wanted to speak with him on behalf of the Iycestokian Empire. Caliph couldn’t help feeling giddy.

  The Odalisque’s batteries were full. Tepid wind smacked him in the face as the captain decoupled and launched.

  As Caliph moved across the deck from fore to aft, thoroughly preoccupied, he bumped into Taelin Rae, still on crutches. She had been standing on the starboard deck.

  The red arrow on a thermometer clamped to a nearby strut climbed steadily as they descended. It seemed to measure her mood as well.

  “Pardon me—”

  “Don’t think I’m not coming back up with you.” She gave him a dirty look in addition to her warning. Caliph glanced at Alani who seemed to be overseeing the exchange with unnecessary reprehension.

  “We just needed to get the worst of them down the mountain,” said Caliph. “Baufent says it’s edema.”

  “I could have stayed,” said Taelin.

  “I need to be at the conference. And I can’t have you staying up there while I’m down below. It will be one day. A day and a half, really. I promise you. I will bring you back up—with me. After the conference.”

  Taelin reached into her pocket and seemed to manipulate some object there. Alani took a step forward. For an instant, the wind blew hard between all three of them, shutting them away from each other.

  When it relented, Caliph remembered what he had meant to ask.

  “Fine,” she said before he could get the question out. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t.” His patience was thin. He still had the journal and now he held it up in front of her. The volume’s spine was ochre, spattered with water marks. The corners had been worn down to the boards; they were threadbare and gray. “Listen, I have a favor.”

  “A favor? Are you serious?” Her eyes glowered at the book.

  Alani stepped back as if to give the swelling conversation room. Caliph shook the journal slightly. “I’ve been doing some reading,” he said. “I really don’t know what to make of it. And I wanted to ask you some questions.” He folded it in his arms, across his chest so that it barely peeked from beneath his left bicep. Taelin was peering at it. “Ask away,” she said.

  “All right. Have you ever heard of anyone named Arkhyn Hiel?”

  “Oh, my gods!” She stamped one of her crutches on the deck, childlike. “What is this? Let me tell you something … Mr. Howl. If you think digging in my history for—”

  “Whoa, whoa! I promise you, I don’t know what I’m talking about here. This is an honest question.” He raised his hands and the book stood up like a placard over her head.

  “Give me that,” she said, reaching for it. He wasn’t tall enough to keep it away. He had to take a step back and shield it from her. “Is that what you’ve been reading?” she demanded. Alani shifted uncomfortably.

  “You have to promise to give it back.”

  “I promise.” She was ferocious now.

  “No throwing it over the railing?”

  Taelin opened her mouth, only a little, and stuck her chin out at him. Hand still open, she curled her fingers.

  He gave it to her.

  She opened it. Caliph watched her jaw fall slightly as recognition suffused her face.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “This is my grandfather’s handwriting,” she said. Caliph felt discrete muscles twitch. His throat constricted. Her assertion, rather than dissuade him, strengthened a growing suspicion that he recognized the penmanship as his uncle’s. Could she be lying?

  “I was on page sixty,” he said. He stepped toward her in an attempt to find it but she jerked away. She riffled through the entries herself until she found the page.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I don’t know how it wound it up in Isca.”

  “Someone had to give it to you!”

  “This isn’t a trick. I just want to—”

  “Where did you get it?” she yelled.

  “Was Arkhyn Hiel your grandfather?”

  “Where did you get it!”

  “Was Arkhyn Hiel your grandfather!” And this time it was no joke. It was not Caliph but the office, the High King of the Duchy of Stonehold, that had shouted at her. She was compelled to answer.

  “Yes.” She looked shaken and quiet. “Yes. He’s my grandfather.”

  “Where is he? Is he in a hospital somewhere?”

  “No. He’s dead.” Her tone was vicious.

  Caliph felt like things were crawling over his skin. “All right.” He tugged his l
ower lip. “All right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what this book is. It talks about Naen’uln, which I thought would ring a bell with you.”

  “Of course it rings a bell with me.”

  “Look, it’s clearly not referring to a deity here … it’s a thing. Not Nenuln, Naen’ uln. Naen’s something-or-other. What does uln mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? You’re the only priestess of this church.”

  “It’s a Veyden word. But—”

  “Are you sure? It doesn’t sound Veyden. What does it mean?”

  “I think it means gold. I don’t know.”

  “You have to know! Where did you get your dogma? Where did you—”

  “I made it up!” She was crying now, sobbing actually. “I found my grandfather’s diaries. They talked about beautiful lights. I made it up!” She tore her necklace off and hurled it down. Then she thrust her grandfather’s journal back into his hands and poled herself away, headed for the toilets.

  Stunned, Caliph knelt to retrieve the necklace. “I’ve lost my touch with women,” he whispered.

  “I’m not sure that’s a talent you ever had,” Alani said.

  Caliph did not smile.

  * * *

  CALIPH looked over the list of conference attendees and made mental notes beside each one:

  • Emperor Junnu of the Eternal Empire of Pandragor (and his Stonehavian ambassador Nuj Ig’nos whom I despise)

  • Grand General Roma Fidakh of the Iron Throne of Waythloo (who is little more than an overlord)

  • Grand Arbiter Nawg’gnoh Pag, on behalf of the lord mayor of the Great City of Bablemum (they all hate me and, since they’ve recently become an unincorporated territory of Pandragor it probably serves for me to hate them back)

  • Prime Minister Liab Chrias of Dadelon’s fierce federal union …

  Caliph’s eyes rolled down the list.

  The Grand Tahn was here—from the Society of the Jaw. He and his armies had ground relentlessly at Bablemum for over a hundred years, something less than all-out war. He had now become Pandragor’s problem.

  Even the esoteric Queendom of Pplar had emerged from its pale chrysalis: the Pebella herself was on the list.

  Caliph looked at their ships as the Odalisque descended onto the northern edge of the congregation. Many of them were cunning works of technology that put his to shame. The south ran on solvitriol, alluvial siliventium, even the sun. Yorba’s great airship was alive! Its vast green skin soaked up sunlight and absorbed moisture from the clouds. It fed and repaired its enormous, engineered, sac-like body almost without oversight.

  Chemiostatic power, Caliph knew, was a relic. And the Duchy’s main export, metholinate—which, despite heavy dependence in the north, only reinforced how far behind Stonehold really was by global standards.

  What would happen to his country, he wondered, when metholinate finally became irrelevant?

  As he watched, a small dark craft dislodged from the belly of Iycestoke’s main ship. It sped toward him and, as it did, he imagined it and the whole conference as key components in establishing Stonehold as a world power. Finally. He was ready to deal and trade with the giants of the south. It had to happen. The north had to change.

  Simply watching the tiny craft careen, with grace impossible for northern airships to achieve, reinforced to Caliph that deals had to be made. He did not want to see Stonehold left behind.

  The craft approached and disappeared behind the Odalisque’s gasbag. Caliph knew it was docking. He had already been briefed. A chance to make headway was only moments away. He went to the staircase to greet the diplomat and his bodyguard.

  Isham Wade came down first. He was shorter than Caliph, stocky and at least twenty years older. His bow tie, like the thick lenses that covered his eyes, rested crookedly, the extremities pointing in happenstance directions. Mr. Wade reached out in proper northern custom while his other hand smoothed down a patchy black beard.

  “Hello, King Howl!” At least his handshake was firm, thought Caliph as he gripped Mr. Wade’s hand. “I’ve heard so much about you and your northern kingdom of ice and snow. The undead King, they call you in the south,” he stirred his finger as if in an invisible drink, “perhaps not so flattering,” he chuckled nervously, “but you know that business about you coming back to life and what. Well, the whole world is interested in the Duchy of Stonehold these days. Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “Did your witch bring you back to life?”

  At first Caliph couldn’t understand how this person could be the official diplomat. He had never dealt directly with Iycestoke. But when he pondered the great Iycestokian nation a moment it almost seemed to make sense. The Iycestokian military —the Iycestokian economy—was capable of crushing the Duchy outright. Caliph’s country was a curiosity to them, an enigma behind the impenetrable Healean Range. And so they had sent Mr. Isham Wade, armed with a firm handshake, a gregarious demeanor and an array of crude but pointed questions. He would get to the bottom of everything.

  “My policy is not to—”

  “Oh.” Mr. Wade nodded sagely, using the northern signs expertly rather than the hand movements of the south. “Of course: not to discuss the event publicly! But I have to ask, later perhaps, off the record and what. You understand.”

  “Of course,” said Caliph.

  “It is entirely fascinating to finally meet you,” said Wade. “I’m honored.” His eyes flitted behind his speckled lenses, gathering data as he spoke. “Of course they all say that, don’t they? But really. I am.”

  Mr. Wade blinked his eyes forcefully which had the effect of squirting the inside of his spectacles with tears. The phenomenon explained a host of dried freckles on each lens.

  “I uhm—” Caliph’s passion for the meeting had gone slack. This man was intent on following orders rather than extending a hand to the duchy.

  “I’ve arrived at a bad time?” said Wade. “You’re in a meeting perhaps?”

  “I do need to take care of some things,” said Caliph, “but we’ll have dinner tonight. I’ll answer all your questions.”

  Mr. Wade missed the subtle venom, which was a good thing. “Excellent!” He beamed. “To tell you the truth, I’m completely exhausted. We’ve been at the table all day with other nations and what. You know how it goes—” He made no mention of Caliph’s efforts against the plague and did not ask how things were going up in Sandren. “Is there someplace I could lie down for a while?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you, your majesty. Oh, and by the way, have you heard? We might be forced to have the conference in Seatk’r.”

  Caliph dipped his head obsequiously to indicate his helplessness in the matter.

  Mr. Wade scratched the back of his neck as if confused. “We’ll talk about it over dinner,” he raised a finger, “after I’ve had my nap.” He grinned.

  “Of course.”

  “In the meantime here’s a proposal I’d like you to look over. Ticky?”

  His use of northern slang did not win him additional points. Caliph took the folder. “Ticky,” he said solemnly. He watched the diplomat shamble off, followed by Mr. Veech: Wade’s silent and impersonal bodyguard.

  When they were gone, Caliph handed the folder to Alani who had been present for Wade’s arrival. “I think I need some sleep too,” said Caliph. “Would you be willing to look this over?”

  “Of course.” Alani was already thumbing through the folder.

  “Thanks.” Caliph retreated to his stateroom and took a brief, startlingly cold shower. He hung Lady Rae’s necklace on a hook inside his narrow closet. Then he stripped off his clothes and opened the window.

  Not until a dream shook him awake near midnight and sent him on a blundering quest for the toilet did he realize he had missed dinner. Too tired to lift the lid, he braced himself against the mirror and pissed directly into the sink. A wind had picked up. Just a little. Dark shapes shifted
through the windows. The airship rocked gently. He ran water a few seconds to rinse the basin and then retraced the gray shadow land that comprised his stateroom. The window he’d opened had come loose and swung back and forth gently. He walked over and reopened it, all the way, latching it against the wall. Then he fell back across his mattress. For a long time he listened to rain patter against the ship and thought about his speech for tomorrow; where Sena was at; how the doctors in Sandren were holding up.

  He imagined a wet, quiet footstep in his room and looked up but knew it was impossible. He had locked the door.

  No one was there.

  CHAPTER

  23

  On the sixteenth, morning unfolded, blue as a mountain poppy and Taelin sat in the shade of the Odalisque’s gasbags, fingering her tiny bottle of poison.

  She sensed the spymaster was watching her. Not now. But he was watching her. She was sure of it. She wondered what he knew.

  She had dragged one of the deck chairs upstairs and positioned it on the cabin roof, overlooking the starboard side. Hidden. Here she could curl up to think.

  She was so mad at Caliph for dragging her away from the hospital that she entertained the thought of doing what her father wanted her to do. Not seriously, of course. But she toyed with the notion as a way of feeling powerful instead of feeling what she really felt, which was utterly helpless and misunderstood.

  Her wrist itched. She scratched it.

  Her father and she had never really gotten along. It was a sad, ugly story that would have bored anyone she told. But her father loved Pandragor. He did what he thought was best for the country. Of that, she was sure. Why then did he want Caliph Howl dead? What did Stonehold have that was so important?

  The Odalisque floated on the northern edge of the great congregation of zeppelins. There were so many of them now, some that had arrived at Sandren for the conference, others that had come to find out what was going on. There were airships from the papers. Few of them had a safe place to land. Their huge leisurely shapes, painted bright with sunlight, soothed her. Their slow, cloudlike movement relaxed her into the chair.