Black Bottle (23 page)

Caliph sent for Sig.

The palace was in shambles. It smelled of death. The lord mayor, his bodyguards and staff, everyone who had once called Rosewind home, were piled in the rear courtyard. Caliph agreed with Alani that knowledge of the gruesome discovery be disseminated only on a need-to-know basis.

“I want to know who piled them up,” said Caliph. But memories of a terrifying night in Isca made it easy to conjecture. He had already made sense of this.

So had everyone else. Which was why none of his elite guards answered as he paced around a velvet divan that had been pushed back from where it had recently buttressed the palace’s main doors.

The Stonehavians sensed the danger, down in the moist fissures below the city. The things that had come up from underground. Caliph didn’t want to believe that it was true or that he had brought everyone here and run them nearly out of fuel.

All Caliph could do was hope that Sig arrived soon.

In the meantime he poked around the palace, looking through archways at darkened inner rooms where signs of further madness marred the walls and floors.

It became clear how behaviors must have changed so rapidly from the premeditated human greed of looting to more basic animal avarice. The patients in the tents certainly showed no interest in their appearance or in gathering treasures. Whatever had been stolen from these grand rooms must have soon after been scattered, thought Caliph, left in diverse locations as the thieves lost interest and slunk out of their new lairs, changed and hungry.

A chandelier on the floor of the three-story vestibule must have been too heavy to cart away. Its bent, curled shape snarled like a dead spider in a swatch of light that spilled from a doorway at the other end of the echoing room. Caliph overheard Alani’s men muttering. They wrestled with a map.

Sena had disappeared gods knew where. The conference had been delayed until tomorrow according to a note flown up by bird. Sig was on his way. Everything was in limbo.

Caliph called one of his men over. “Where are those books I gave you?”

“Right here, sir.”

Caliph took them and sat down in the patch of light. There was a bright blue note tucked into the pages that read start here.

Journal Entry: C. Tides: 562
13
,
Y.o.T. Salamander: Phisku—Whispers, 11th: Arkhyn Hiel.

I grew up along the Bainmum River, on the desert’s edge. It was perhaps because of that cruel climate that I wanted to save people from hurt. From sun and sand and raiders out of Eh’Osgaj Ogwog. That was the heart of my youth.

I woke thirty years later to find that I had paved the road to that goal with broken bodies, my philanthropy reflected in breastplate and helmet.

It seems impossible to connect me, the laughing curious child, with the bloody sword I have swung for so many years. I became a monster over decades through a slow regimen of self-rewards.

I know now that “rights” are unrelated to eating cuts of meat and drinking wine, to being served at my whim in the swiftest most accommodating manner. Still, I cannot help but dream of the great days, when all white men were our slaves and all that was beautiful was black like me: when choice was
not
a right.

But I digress.

I am also a monster in a very physical way, a decayed hand writing in the jungle. To say that I chose this would be overstatement. Many who wind up in situations from which there is no escape do so not out of choice, which implies a logical assessment of pros and cons, but out of a lack of insight. Wisdom is not imparted equally.

Wouldn’t you agree, Sslia?

What I am is consequence. In the same manner that my humanity was taken from me and I became something else, so soon … soon … what I am now will be taken again, and I will make an old transition.

I can no longer use shuwt tinctures to inhabit the bodies of young girls as I once so enjoyed doing. My veins no longer flow with blood. But sometimes I cut myself as I used to, in order to make certain. Then I wonder if I am really in a ruined stone house at the jungle’s edge—waiting for the end.

Caliph checked his chemiostatic watch. He guessed he had time for a little more and dutifully followed Sena’s note to the next log.

Journal Entry: C. Stone: -1,688
14
Li: Arkhyn Hiel.

The terrible beauty of the Last Page has long been prophesied. But who believes in prophecy these days? The churchgoer hoping for validation in his lifetime? Hoping for some great sign to appear; for his enemies to be burned? The churchgoer and the sadist are indistinguishable. Anyone with a serious mind toward the future must cast Yacob Skie’s scrolls aside, ignore prophecy and get on with the business of progress.

It is hard to fault the pragmatist since Yacob Skies’s words are difficult to understand.

But there was a time when men were more than men. When they were nearly gods they harkened to subtle things. Men are simple creatures now, as if they have poured all the complexity of themselves into their diversions and their machines. Now they understand only the simplest emotions. Lust, indignation and fear. These are the things that steer their nations. Even love has become too subtle for them to grasp.

This is why I have been seeking the evolutionary key ever since I escaped the destruction of the gardens at Jorgill Deep. It is not the evolution of machines that will save us, but the evolution of ourselves.

We must tear these otiose bodies down and knit new flesh to new bones. We must find our way back to the secrets of Gringling skins and the fields of Ahvelle. The key is there, compressed in a string of numbers. Transformation is essential. We need to become like Them.

Which was why I fled the garden on shuwt tinctures and alit in the bones of my desert princess. In exchange for my immortality, I gained the chance to discover the secrets of the Yillo’tharnah, to find a way out of Their inescapable trap.

When my desert princess waned I found a new vessel. And a new one after that. And in such manner I have compiled my research and scoured the continent for the
Cisrym Ta.

For years I screamed from the jungle at Them to let me find, to let me become the Last Page. I decorated myself in bonnets and bracers and plastrons of intricate design. I have worn platinum wires over every inch of my body and, in the end, resorted to white tattoos.

But then
she
arrived.

And for reasons that will likely ever remain opaque to me, They chose her, put the book into her hands and cut her up with Their lovely designs. And so she will be, by necessity, my enemy and my partner, traveling through everlasting night. She cannot be rid of me. She smells me at her lover’s throat—like smoke. She chases me away and thinks to bargain with her compliance. But what real choice does she have? She knows what is coming. The numbers belong to me. There is only one sane choice she can make.

So, I will bide my time, the thing in the corner that mewls and begs for scraps, the wastrel that importunes another night inside her skin—so warm!

But this is not me. These things are far beneath me. I am not a dead queen beneath the sands. I am not Arkhyn Hiel. And I was never Nathaniel Howl. I am Gringling. I am a Writer and Eater of Time.

Caliph’s eyes froze over his uncle’s name. He put the book down. Instantly terrorized. The crazy journal entries had become personal. He got up and strode across the cold echoing vestibule to the bright doorway where his men still hissed and bellyached over the map.

“Where is Sena?”

They shook their heads.

The vestibule’s front doors cracked open, letting in gloomy daylight along with the spymaster. Alani crossed the room swiftly. “Sigmund Dulgensen has arrived.”

The messenger bird had travelled quickly and the
Bulotecus
had come straight up.

“Good. Can you show him where the pumps are? I’m actually reading something at the moment. Tell Sig I’ll catch up with him as soon as I can.”

“Of course.”

Caliph wanted to go looking for Sena. He wanted to ask about his uncle’s name and about Arkhyn Hiel.

Caliph started up the vestibule’s staircase but was turned back by one of his own sentries. Sena hadn’t gone that way, he was told, and the sentry’s position marked the edge of the secure zone.

Torn between the book and the more practical obligation of seeing to Sig, Caliph decided he had better go with the latter.

The instant he set his feet in the direction of the chemical pumps two bodyguards materialized. He exited the palace with them in tow, moving through a side door that deposited all three of them on a cement landing where the pink-gray of morning wrapped Caliph in a chill.

Immediately on the right, a mortared pit lined with steps led down. They ended at a rusting door set in the brickwork, fringed with moss. Stenciled High Malk warned away unauthorized personnel. Caliph’s soldiers had used bolt cutters on the padlock and the door was already ajar.

Inside, small white bulbs illuminated the well-greased blackness. Dials and pipes and valves riddled a cave-like space without clear dimensions. Echoing from its center came the deep yet somehow boyish baritone of Sigmund Dulgensen. “Look, that’s
not
a sniffer. That’s a flusher. Get me a sniffer. They’ve gotta have one in those cabinets over there.”

Caliph rounded a huge staple of pipe and almost ran into his old friend’s backside.

“Whoa! How ya doin’, Caph? I won’t shake your hand.” Sigmund’s huge frame was draped in coveralls. An ambiguously colored turtleneck peeked from his collar. His hands were slippery and black.

Caliph patted him on the shoulder. “You came up to save us?”

“Fuck yeah. They rushed me right up. It’s no wonder you’re in desperate straits with this guy.” He poked a meaty finger toward the man rummaging in the cabinet.

“How are things going?” asked Caliph.

“I mean … that guy couldn’t piss straight without using both hands.”

“I meant down below.”

“You mean the carnival of souls?” Sigmund scratched the side of his neck, making a black mark. “I don’t know. More ships showed up this morning flying flags from Bablemum and another out of Pandragor. It’s a fuck-sick mess if you ask me. Just about everyone with a crown is floating around Skaif.”

“You’re not bored down there, then?”

“Nah. That little guy that floats around keeps me company. Cute kid.”

“Specks.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I pulled you out of Isca for this.”

“Are you kiddin? It’s only what? Sixty degrees warmer down here? You think I’m goin’ back?” He never looked directly at Caliph as he spoke, fiddling with valves, crawling under pipes and foisting his great bulk into impossible crannies on all sides of the machinery. “How’s Sena?”

“Good.”

“That’s good. Can you hold this? I can’t reach my pocket.” He was wedged deep between wall and pipe but managed to extend his hand and drop a gooey black nut into Caliph’s palm. “I think they got an override hidden down here.”

“Was Alani or anyone else here with you?”

“Ah … he fucked off somewhere. Just you, me and Jimmy over there,” he jerked a thumb at the man still rummaging in the cabinet, “and your two goons, of course.”

The man whose name was certainly not Jimmy returned with a glass cylinder connected to two feet of looped rubber tubing and a pump-ball. Inside the cylinder rolled three small spheres, one pink, one green and one yellow. “Here you go,” said
Jimmy.

Sigmund waved him away. “I don’t need that anymore.”

The man looked dejected. He took the tool back to the cabinet.

“So how’s Sena? Did I already ask you that?”

“Yeah, I said she’s good. Why do you ask?”

Sigmund glanced over at him, a momentary connection of the eyes. Then he was scowling at the machinery again, chewing on the thatch of hair under his lip and working at something with his powerful arms. “Got some home troubles?”

Caliph felt taken by surprise. “I guess you hear stories from the staff?”

“I guess I do.”

“What are they saying?”

“Nuthin’ much. Heard you couldn’t find her the night she came home.”

While Caliph thought back on the embarrassing incident, he nudged the lumpy black mess Sig had given him. “I don’t know what’s going on with her.”

“Yeah? You think she’s painting clouds?”

Caliph deliberated a moment whether this was the sort of friendship that could provide useful perspective. “I don’t know. Is that what you think she’s doing?”

“Ha! You could have me carted away.”

“Did I have you carted away over the Glossok
cats
?”

“No, but … I was fucking coerced. I should have—”

Caliph took back the reins. “I don’t want to talk about that. I was kidding. I don’t give a shit about that anymore.”

Sigmund winced. “I’m just saying—maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.”

“Yeah, but you know her. You know me. I just want to know if you think I’m an idiot.”

“No, you’re not a fucking idiot.” Sigmund groaned. He pressed his body back against the wall and shook his arms as if loosening up for a workout. “Listen, I said my piece back in college—”

“Yeah?”

“Well, my opinion hasn’t changed. She’s fifty thousand volts. Pheromones at however many feet and then you get a look. I don’t think I have to explain it. But there’s somethin’ shifty.” He shook his head. “I mean … if you can’t even find her the night she comes back from a—how long was she gone? Anyway … then what good’s her perfect little ass?”

Caliph wasn’t upset. But Sigmund seemed to feel obligated to follow up his assessment with a softer explanation.

“Caph—the thing is—you pretty much could have had your pick. I mean you had your pick. But you know there was this little gal, Y’ahc. Remember her?”

“I remember.” It surprised Caliph that Sigmund remembered the girl’s Pandragonian name.

“Complete crush on you. She was sweet too … shy but—anyway. I always thought it was a shame she never had a chance. But … I can’t blame you in the least. Sena Iilool!”