The Last Page (17 page)

He looked up to see both Yrisl’s and Mortiman’s jaws go slack.

“I mean it,” said Caliph. “I’m sure Saergaeth knows how to manage Stonehold better than I do. Why not let him? If war comes, think of all the blood that will be spilled. Think of our countrymen fighting each other. All because of me? It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” said Yrisl. “If this is a test of our loyalties, so be it. Nevertheless I’ll respond as if your concerns are genuine. If the High King’s throne were turned over to the first challenger, where would that leave the sovereignty of the Duchy? I’ll tell you where.
In question.
This government isn’t up for auction. Nor is it subject to contestation—by anyone. You, your majesty, are not the issue. The issue is, pardon my saying so, much bigger than yourself. The issue is the security of the Duchy—which no one except you is authorized to ensure.”

The prince nodded.

Caliph sighed through his nose. He walked to the window and looked out on the distant turmoil of Temple Hill.

“All right, tell me about Saergaeth.” He sounded apathetic.

Yrisl glanced at the prince.

“His only challenge, your majesty, will be feeding all his troops. Without Lewis, we die.”

The maps rustled in a breeze that pulled into the high tower and Caliph began to feel the discomfort of the stomach that he suspected was common to all the High Kings of history.

The prince, seeming to sense that there was nothing else to say, extended his hand and offered a solicitous smile.

Caliph grinned and shook. “I won’t hang you out to dry.”

“I appreciate that. I leave for Tentinil in the morning. Good luck managing Isca. I’ll send word the minute anything changes.”

The Blue General paused, waiting for a formal dismissal before following the prince out.

“Go ahead, Yrisl. Get something to eat.” Caliph remained at the window.

“I could have something sent up,” Yrisl offered.

Caliph shook his head and waved the departing tactician away.

Alone, he pondered the past two days.

The zeppelin had dumped him off directly at the castle. The next morning, at his coronation, the Council had been disbanded and a great crowd of people had cheered. Or, thought Caliph, maybe they had only shouted.

For several days he had been free. An anonymous . . . mostly anonymous . . . wanderer in the north, chasing what he thought was love or adventure. Maybe it was just stupidity. But now his fate had finally caught up.

He wished his father could be High King but Jacob wasn’t a Howl. In fact, Jacob, according to the one instance of him saying so, was a half-blooded Hjolk-trull that had come from the Gwymr
n Sward, a place he had never described or explained.

The family history was murky and embarrassing. “Unfortunately, when you were two,” Jacob had once told him, “your mother . . . got sick . . . with the rest of her family. Since you were a Howl and therefore related to the High King, he sent his physicians out to the estate. They decided it was likely bad food, something you had avoided eating due to your tender age. Your Uncle Nathaniel came from Greymoor soon after, inheriting the house and you with it.”

Caliph could remember living with his uncle in the vast dark house. The dream man had come to live with them in the fall.

Suddenly, Caliph wondered about the dream man as a real person instead of a dream person. Cameron was the man in the dream, the real man that had carried him down that rope so long ago. It had been at least sixteen years but if Cameron was still alive, he might be able to help run the kingdom. He had been a soldier, a tactician maybe. Words spoken so long ago echoed indistinctly out of the past.

Jacob would know. After his uncle’s death, Jacob had been the only reliable figure in his life. He had taken Caliph to Isca’s south side, to Candleshine.

It wasn’t until Caliph’s eighteenth birthday, for reasons unknown, that the Iscan Council had decided Caliph’s mother’s blood was good enough to call him a Howl. They removed him from school and gave him the entrance examination to the High College of Desdae.

Apparently he had passed.

Now he was in Isca again, the past leaking into the present, alone in the tallest tower in the Duchy of Stonehold.

Caliph thought again of Cameron, the dream man. He recognized it as wishful thinking, smoke puffs in the sudden wind of responsibility facing him, but it was still worth a try. If nothing else it would provide some closure: finally tying off the loose end that had generated so many dreams.

He left the tower, locked it and descended a set of corkscrewing stairs.

He went directly along one of the few hallways he knew—to his bedroom, festooned with wood and marble and occupied by several newly carved wardrobes.

Caliph sat down at a desk and took a sheet of parchment that seemed to be waiting at attention. He pulled a gold-nibbed quill from an elaborate inkwell and looked down at the empty page.

Jake,

I’ve been curious about your old friend, Cameron. If you know where to find him, please tell him I’d like to see him as soon as possible.

—Caliph

Caliph smiled, somewhat amused with himself.

He blew the ink dry and pulled one of the ropes that, through pulleys and bells, summoned one of the servants.

“Have this delivered to my father in Fallow Down at once.”

The servant took the note and ran.

“At once,” Caliph whispered to himself.

He pushed himself away from the desk and opened the bedroom windows. Outside, the sky sagged under a host of stars. They were framed perfectly by the sharp geometry of the battlements. A hundred thousand points of light trapped between the crenels seemed to represent all the people of Stonehold.

Maybe he was being maudlin. Maybe he was just beginning to understand what the burgomasters already knew: that lifestyles were at stake. Futures were at stake. People’s lives and homes hung in the balance.

He had studied war. Sena had handpicked the best books on tactics to augment his required reading. She had said, “You can’t ignore it, Caliph. War defines the king.”

Voices come and go.

They speak in Withil.

A cold front pulls down into the Country of Mir
yhr. Gold, generator-powered lights caramelize the intricate sockets of brown medical equipment. Sena can hear the slow regular tick of a thermal crank but she is freezing.

“Nie slipsou,”
⁶
says Megan. She is not talking to Sena. She is talking to a harridan at the edge of the room, a decayed crone like a strange animal folded in half. Giganalee’s voice makes Sena whimper like a dreaming dog. “What news from our half-sisters in Sandren?”

Megan tightens. “There are signs the W
llin Droul has returned.”

W
llin Droul?
Sena listens from the heavy drapery of half-sleep. She understands from inside the framework of argot, an Ilek phrase unchanged by Withil: W
llin Droul means
Cabal of Wights.

The voices move like clouds, in and out of existence. Sena catches only bits when Giganalee speaks. “They can no longer
. . .
Chamber
. . .
Last Page.”

“Let us hope
. . .
Clea will send us word
. . .”

The rain increases for a few moments, falling hard against the glass.

Sena woke with a start. Something stirred in the darkened room. She relaxed.

“You came quietly,” said Sena.

The candle’s halo obscured Megan. “But you have not come quietly, Sienae.”

Sena ignored her birth name.

Megan sat in an armchair near the bed. “What have you been doing in the Highlands of Tue?”

“What day is it?” Sena tried to divert the conversation to anything else.

“Black Moon, the fourteenth of P
sh. You’ve been sleeping for sixteen
days. You were lucky to catch us in Eloth. We were planning to leave the next day because of weather.”