“By
n, byn, byn,” he whispered the Old Speech vulgarity for excrement.
Carefully, he wrapped The Fall of Bendain in the paper his forgery had been in and slid it into his pack.
Odds were she had not understood what he was doing. Still, Desdae was a tiny campus; if Roric complained loudly enough, she might remember seeing him here and put the two together. He walked quickly to the wrought-iron stairs and spun up them, looking both ways down the third story balcony.
Dark curls and skin that stayed tan regardless of weather, Caliph felt confident despite his size. His torso had hardened from swordplay and his face was already chiseled with the pessimism of higher learning. He might be quiet but he wasn’t shy. A subtle nuance that had often worked in his favor.
He saw her down the right, hand on the balcony railing, headed for the holomorph shelves. He caught up with her and followed her into an ogive marked with the bust of Tanara Mae.
When he cleared his throat, her eyes turned toward him more than her body.
“Hello.” He kept it simple and upbeat.
“Yes?”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Quite direct, are you?” She sauntered down the aisle, slender as an aerialist, fingertips running over unread names. “Yes, I am . . . he doesn’t go to school at Desdae though.”
Her smell amid the dust was warm and creamy like some whipped confection, sweet as Tebeshian coffee. In the ascetic setting of the library it made him stumble.
“So if we went to Grume’s . . . or a play?”
“I like plays.” Her eyes seized him. Bright. Not friendly. Caliph had to remind himself that he had no personal interest in her. “There’s a new play in town,” she was saying. “Some urban gauche piece out of Bablemum. Probably atrocious.”
Caliph tapped his lower lip. “I heard about it. What’s the writer’s name?”
“I don’t know. It’s called Rape the Heart.” She drifted farther down the aisle.
“Tragedy?” Caliph pressed after, trying to corner her in a casuistic way.
She slipped between the shelves like liquid. “Depends on your point of view I suppose.”
“And you’d like to see it?”
“I’m seeing a boy,” she murmured, twisting the knife.
“But he doesn’t go to school here . . .” Caliph whispered.
“No. He doesn’t.”
“And I don’t mind.” His voice couched what he hoped was a satisfactory blend of confidence and innuendo.
“Final exams?” She seemed to maintain a constant distance as though the air were slippery between them. “Aren’t you busy or worried—or both?”
Caliph shrugged. “I don’t study much.” It was a blatant lie.
She frowned. “And you have money for a play?”
“I don’t pay anyone for notes. Actually I charge—expedition fees—you know?” His slender fingers gestured to the books all around. “I come into a good deal of money this time of year, but I usually get my tickets for free.”
“Rape the Heart then?” She didn’t ask how he managed free tickets. “Tomorrow. I’ll meet you here before evening bells.”
Caliph tossed her a wan smile. This was not a date of passion. “I’ll be here. What’s your name?”
She shook her head derisively. “It matters to you?”
“I’m not like other men.”
“Boys,” she suggested. “If I were you and didn’t want to sound pretentious, I’d say, I’m not like other boys.”
“Right.” Caliph’s eyes narrowed, then he feigned a sudden recollection. “It’s Sena, isn’t it?”
Her lips curled at one corner.
He tipped his head. “Tomorrow evening . . .”
She stopped him just as he turned to go. “I’ll see you then . . . Caliph Howl.”
Caliph smirked and disappeared.
Sena stood in the dark alcove looking where he had vanished into the white glare of the balcony.
“Caliph Howl,” she mused with mild asperity. “Why now? Why here, after four years, do you suddenly decide to give me the time of day?”
Tynan Brakest was the other boy. He was sweet. He had been the one to pay her way at college. His father’s money ensured their relationship slipped easily from one moment to the next. The coins had purchased Tynan hours, weeks and months until the accumulated stockpile of familiarity had evolved into a kind of watered down love.
But Caliph Howl? Her stomach warmed. This could be exactly what I am looking for.
CHAPTER 2
A storm was coming. Caliph lay in wait at the top of the library, surveying the campus through a great circular pane of glass. The black plash of leaves perpetuated through the trees to the west where Naobi drizzled syrupy light on lilacs bobbing near the lake.
The universe snapped ineffectually at the dark silhouettes of students and teachers, human forms distorted by the warm gush of light spilling from the chapel across the lawn. Caliph felt superior to the herd migrating slowly toward Day of Sands vespers.
It was difficult for him to imagine being king. The fact that he was an heir did not present itself at Desdae. Here he found himself treated like any other student, disciplined and cowed under the stern rules of the chancellor. But his father assured him it was for the best.
It’s a time of unrest in the Duchy, read one of Jacob’s few letters. Men aspire to the High King’s throne. You’re safer at Desdae.
In the belfry, like lonesome beasts, the bells began to toll.
Caliph turned from the window and gazed on the dusty abyss of the library’s interior. Eight centuries’ worth of interred paper bodies infused the air with spoor. The pages were holomorphically preserved, mummified within this vast sepulcher. It was a temple to the dead, to thought, to maxims and poetry, to plays and battles and vagaries gouged out of antiquity. But it wasn’t Caliph’s temple.
The bells ceased and a pleasant loneliness poured in with the moonlight, varnishing the railings, tranquilizing every board.
He mouthed the words he planned to use tonight if Sena actually showed up. They were old words, bleak as the air that sighed around Desdae’s gables.
Forbidden by most governments, silenced through flames that had once danced on great piles of holomorphic lore, slowly, very slowly, holomorphy was being practiced again. Opportunists seeking an edge in business, politics—they had begun drawing blood.
At Desdae, the focus stayed safely on lethargy crucibles, thaumaturgie reactors that ran off planetary rotation and cow blood, that sort of thing. The professors never openly admitted that other types of holomorphy were also catalogued in obscure sections of the library. But in the teeth of their frantic scramble to gain tenure, the faculty often followed a much older motto than Truth, Light, Chastity and Hard Work. Theirs was: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Caliph used a tiny knife to prick his finger. As any holomorph, he needed something to start with, an essential ingredient to begin the chain reaction where matter, memories, reality could be extruded and controlled.
Caliph could still remember the banal demonstration Morgan Gullows had put on for his freshman class: the way he had dropped that book. It had hit the ancient desk with a dusty thud and at that moment he had revealed a simple yet extraordinary idea to his young students: the book must travel half the distance to the desk and then half of that distance and so on, somehow going through an infinite number of divisive repetitions in a finite period of time. Although he had solved this mystery for them with simple mathematics, holomorphy, the Unknown Tongue, was the key to understanding the endless repetition of the spiral, the key to the ancient problem of the circle, the key to unlocking the universe.