The Last Page (75 page)

Bejamin N
grüth agreed and rummaged in an oxblood attaché.

“Yes, she did however send her regards and apologies as well as this memo expressing her unanimity.”

He laid a crisp, white, notarized sheet of parchment on the desk in front of Caliph.

“Unanimity?” Caliph asked. “In what?”

Bejamin smiled and adjusted his silver spectacles. His hair was greased back in gleaming sandy bands. He forged on bravely.

“Your majesty, we haven’t disclosed this quarter’s profits yet, but we’re vicinal to bankruptcy. If the sluggish prewar economy and holomorphic chaos doesn’t get us, frankly the city’s flat pollution tax will.”

Caliph looked hard at the other two burgomasters.

“Pollution tax? That’s what this is about? Does Ben speak for all of you?” Quick nods and muttered affirmations followed.

Caliph didn’t pause. He had done his research and was ready for this.

“Ben, forgive me, but you’re being terribly imprecise. Vog Foundry has survived wartime economies before. What you’re really telling me here is that you can’t manage your business.”

Timothy Bîm let air out through his nose.

“Your majesty, with all due respect, if the four main industrial boroughs go down . . . so goes Isca.”

“So this is a genuine crisis?” Caliph asked.

The burgomasters assured him that it was.

“I disagree. If it was a real crisis I don’t think I’d have a piece of paper sitting on my desk. I think Jaeza Tal would be here. I also disagree that Isca City is so devoid of hardworking people that twenty-two boroughs will be dragged under by the managerial incompetence of four. That’s what you’re suggesting. That the fate of the majority is somehow inextricably intertwined with the fate of half a dozen executives?”

Bejamin N
grüth remained tenacious.

“Your majesty, we have a large debt both to the Independent Alliance of Wardale and the Free Mercantilism of Yorba for holomechanical resources and raw materials that were shipped to us this spring—”

“That’s an inventory issue.”

“Of course it’s an inventory issue.” Simon nearly lost control. “Our inventories were decimated by giant mushrooms, among other things!”

“What is it, Simon?” asked Caliph. “Is it the prewar economy? The pollution tax? Or the giant mushrooms? What do you want from me? You want me to bail you out?

“Gentlemen, I appreciate your industry’s integral role in our economy but changing a tax law for businesses that can’t keep themselves afloat is not going to help Isca survive. This is a difficult time, for all of us.” He saw Simon open his mouth to speak and raised his hand. “Please . . . no more about the giant mushrooms. I know that’s not your fault. I’m sure we can get you some aid for the disaster but I have no intentions of adjusting the pollution tax based on the current economy.”

Caliph leaned forward, his voice unflustered, his eyes poised and cool.

“You are shrewd businessmen, gentlemen. I’m not going to rub your tummies or offer you a toddy. It is up to you to ensure your factories survive. I don’t expect you’ll ever again track up my office with this kind of panhandling. Is there anything else?”

The burgomasters stammered a bit and dug in their attachés but came up empty-handed.

The meeting was over and Caliph guessed he had forged several new enemies. He didn’t really care.
With all the shit on my plate,
he thought,
they can eat a little too.

Unfortunately, the worst news was just around the corner.

He endured a meeting with Hazel Nantallium, who was the bishop of Hullmallow Cathedral. She reeked of sweet incense and painted her face in a manner that indicated coquetry was not without her jurisdiction.

Over the course of sixty minutes (which was twenty beyond what Gadriel had scheduled her for) she tried to persuade Caliph to allow his name to be added officially to the church records. She offered him everything from a plaque with his name on it bolted to the pulpit, to a flirtatious glimpse of her inner thigh with the not-so-subtle hint that more explicit possibilities existed.

To be able to say that the High King was a member of the congregation would give Hullmallow Cathedral the kind of official authority it had enjoyed on and off through the past several centuries if and whenever they had been able to convert a High King.

Caliph graciously and repeatedly declined.

With a terse smile, Hazel left and Caliph hurried off, late for his meeting with the Blue General.

Yrisl brought the bad news.

“It’s true,” he said. “What the papers have been saying about the worm gangs. Something is seriously fucked.”

Caliph sighed. “Please. I have a long day scheduled. Just say something useful that I can understand.”

“A wagon full of bodies was dumped behind Teapetal Wax last night. They were carved up with traditional gang sigils. Some journalist caught it on a litho-slide. We confiscated it and took him in for questioning but . . . the wagon was marked. The men who dumped the bodies . . . they . . . were police.”

Caliph sat down.

“We’ve questioned every one of them. They don’t know where the
bodies came from. All of them say they were following strict orders from high command at the Glôssok Warehouses. Does that mean anything to you?”

Caliph sat by himself in the royal study. He had asked Yrisl for a moment alone. Intelligence had come out of Miskatoll that Saergaeth planned to issue a final ultimatum, demanding the High King relinquish his throne. He would give a deadline and then . . .

Caliph listened to the sounds of the city coming through his window. Sigmund had lied. Or someone had lied. Those canisters of solvitriol suspensate hadn’t come from cats. They were human souls. Boys and girls. Gang members from the back alleys of Thief Town. Eventually he would get to the bottom of the deception. Eventually somebody, maybe even the High King himself, would have to pay. But for now, for this moment, Isca City and the entire Duchy of Stonehold was hanging by a thread.

Solvitriol power was the only thing that could save it. Solvitriol bombs. From the seedy underbelly, from violence and trash, Isca’s worm gangs had become martyrs and heroes in his eyes, an integral part of Isca’s defense.

He would go to Glôssok. He would curse and tear Sigmund’s office to pieces if he had to in order to sort this murderous debacle out. He would sentence good old Sig to death and hang himself in chains from West Gate if he had to. But not now. Not now. The gears were in motion, his war plan already underway.

It was cruel. He agreed. It was drop-dead fucking evil and wrong. And he knew he was headed for even more lost sleep because of it. But there was nothing else to do. The last thing he could do now was stop. If it was true, if murdered street youths had been Sigmund’s ingredients for bombs, by the gods of Incense Street, he had to use them to save Isca. He wouldn’t allow their sacrifice to go to waste. He would use them to save the Duchy from itself.

Caliph opened the door and let the Blue General back in. “Yrisl,” he said quietly, “there are some things you need to know.”

Sena stood determinedly in Nathaniel Howl’s ruined estate.

She let one of the dark sweets she had confected melt in her mouth. The rest she arranged in a wooden bowl, ready to be offered prosaically as she did every year to creatures crawling out of quixotic, asomatous darkness.

She had been part of the Sisterhood too long to put away the rites. There were numbers, there were powers in the motions of the seasons. Primitive articulations in some ways transcended the grinding industrial might of the current age. She whispered to the
and placed the bowl in a clutch of bushes whose branches shook with a sudden gust of wind.

While buying ingredients earlier that day, she had heard about a creature in the foothills.

Farmers claimed it had snatched up dozens of chickens and other sorts of livestock. They said strange patterns showed up in the stains it left behind.

Two children—a boy and a girl—had gone missing.

Sena picked up her candle lantern and stepped back into the foyer of the Howl mansion, shutting the door Caliph had broken as best she could.

The ingredients and the kettles had taken their toll on her purse. She sat down at the kitchen table where she had cleared a little circle amid the refuse, freeing it from dust and webs. She spilled three gold gryphs and several silver beks from a clutch and let them roll around the tabletop. They were all she had, all that she could find in the bedroom before she left.

It made her laugh. A slightly crazy lost giggle that echoed off the decayed walls. She held her head in her hands and shivered. For a moment she thought about the High King’s featherbed.

The nights were cooling.

She stared at the coins—more than enough to pay the sexton off.

He was a huge creature that barely spoke Trade and gouged sentences out of Hinter like a three-year-old fumbling at clay. She had met him a week ago while gathering stones.

He did not know she was the High King’s witch.

Sena swept the coins back into the pouch and listened to the creatures twittering in the rubbish piles.

It must be nearly time, she thought. She checked her watch. She could hear bells ringing in the city, tolls like ghosts floating on the wind. Outside, the untrimmed bushes scrabbled at the windows, hungry for more sweets.

Sena stood up. Through one of the dirty windowpanes she had seen a lantern bobbing in the yard.

She wiped her hands on a damp rag and darted up a set of creaking stairs to one of the web-choked towers where she kept her things. With her pack over her shoulder, she ran back down to the foyer and outside where the smell of dying weeds met her.

The sexton was poking around at the edge of the estate. Sena sprinted toward him amidst the roar of leaves.

The sexton looked up.

“Moon’s greetin’,” he called. His voice seemed to come out of a cave. When Sena reached him, he offered her his huge gaunt hand, either to shake or to assist her in walking.

Sena dropped a silver coin in the cavernous palm and pretended to misunderstand the gesture.

“Do you think it will storm?” It was a moronic question she asked to fill up space.

He swung his head. “Mubee few drops.”

Everything about him was enormous. Even his nose. Blade-like, hooked and thin. Long unkempt hair hung to his shoulders in straight uneven lengths almost too heavy for the wind. Instead of eyes, his face held tiny sunken points of obscurity.