The Last Page

Sena accepted the glass and sipped it greedily, making a fourth of it disappear before she answered.

“I did.”

Megan frowned. “You cleaned up after yourself according to Clea but really . . . Sienae . . . what were you doing in the Halls?”

“Are they looking for me?”

“They were. We provided several thousand gryphs and one night’s pårn to the chief constable, I think you know him, last name Hews. He’s not an easy man to bribe but he’s been aching for this girl we placed a year ago, Autumn? We knew his taste and were hoping to use her for something more sensible. What got into you?”

“It was the Cabal.”

Megan raised her eyebrows. “Of course it was! Clea checked. Gavin bore the mark!”

Sena was momentarily stunned by the detail, fearful and embarrassed that she hadn’t checked Gavin herself and simultaneously grateful that the facts supported her fabrication.

“Why did you go to Sandren?”

“To close my bank account.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Gods, Mother! You know how you are! You didn’t even let me get my clothes when you dragged me out of college! But it’s my money! I earned it. I wanted it.” She pretended to sulk.

Megan softened. “Maybe you’re right . . . but then what in Emolus’ name were you doing in the Halls?”

Now it got tricky. “I overheard Gavin, talking about a meeting with the Cabal. It was supposed to happen there, in the Halls. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Do you know what the meeting was about?”

“Something about the book.”

Megan scrutinized her for a moment. “Tell me how it went wrong.”

“It was my fault. I didn’t think I’d have to kill him. I didn’t plan ahead. I made a false step. He heard me, turned around . . . we never made it to the meeting.”

“The Seventh House doesn’t make false steps, Sienae.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I’m not exactly that kind of operative, am I? It was my first time.”

Megan drummed her fingernails against her glass. Sena knew it was no excuse. She knew the Sisterhood couldn’t tolerate this kind of blunder, especially from an Ascendant.

Megan’s expression remained soft. “With the Wllin Droul hunting us, we have to be careful. There’s no telling who to trust.”

Sena put her drink down. “If they’re such a problem, why not focus on them? Why go to war with Stonehold?”

“War? Who said anything about war?”

“Haidee.” It wasn’t exactly what Haidee had said, but Sena enjoyed stirring the pot.

Megan snorted. “It’s not a war. It’s a transumption hex. Pandragor’s negotiations with Stonehold have failed. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the Pandragonian Empire isn’t paying us for this. It’s an exchange of services. They’ve agreed to help us with the Wllin Droul . . . help us locate the book.”

Sena tensed. Wouldn’t you die, she thought, to know I’ve already found it! It’s sitting in my pack six feet in front of your nose!

“What’s a transumption hex?”

Later that night when Sena had wriggled into the doll-like allure of the Seventh House’s ceremonial dress, painted her eyes black and her lips red and pulled the sepaled mask over her head, she sauntered into Deep Cloister with a mounting sense of dread, ignoring the propositioning looks she received from her Sisters.

She had hidden the Csrym T carefully. She knew her belongings could be rifled at any moment.

The great hypostyle of Deep Cloister sat inside the enormous courtyard made by parliament’s wings. Deep Cloister was a circular collection of pillars holding up a slightly conical roof.

Sena wove inward through the columns. They were positioned in such a way that no clear line of sight extended to the interior and even daylight choked after forty yards.

Thorn apples grew in profusion throughout Miryhr and the Sisterhood had gathered leaves earlier that day. Now they boiled them, brewing a drink that promoted visions.

Some had already become sick. Others laughed and ran screaming that they were flying and that the darkness above the columns had dissolved into sky—a sky that flamed and spiraled with brilliant sinister hues of green.

Sena sipped the beverage shoved into her hands and made her way to the center where Megan was already calling loudly from atop a dais of ashen slate.

The Sisterhood responded with unified shrieks of holomorphic formulae. Though the cacophony must have floated far above parliament and filled the streets of Skellum with terrifying echoes, whatever dissidents might have heard stayed well away.

“Tonight we call on the Faceless One.” Megan’s frail voice lifted from the dais. She held an ornate staff of metal and bone, riddled with tubules and hoses and bundles of wire.

Ghastly and slender, the staff glistered. Tiny gem-like windows revealed its center was filled with chemiostatic fluid. From a distance it looked like glowing chrysoprase decorated its grotesque length.

It was not a Shrdnae implement. This thing had come out of the south. Out of Iycestoke, thought Sena. Or more likely Pandragor itself.

Wires trailed from the staff’s base across the dais to an arcane machine comprised of coils of ydellium tubing that phosphoresced faintly, drawing energy from shifting mile-thick slabs of atmosphere.

Like a gruesome mechanized god, the bulky creation produced strange arbitrary sounds: ticks, knocks and creaks as the fluid that filled the tubing expanded or contracted. Tiny valves occasionally exhaled uncanny spurts of vapor, pouring a pastel shroud of halitus out and down across the dais, cloaking Megan’s feet in icy tendrils.

Like a tuning fork, the staff had begun to hum, the blades of bone to resonate and slice through air somehow thick as cooking fat. Maybe it was just the thorn apple drink. Sena set hers on the floor and watched in fascination from beside one of the ubiquitous columns.

Megan was speaking in the Unknown Tongue.

Sena’s throat went dry as the numbers behind the words and the meaning behind the numbers rose in a distorted spiral through the displaced roof and into the sky.

The tuning staff sang an oscillating, bone-shivering sweetness, a keen, a razor cutting, a howl, a bone-shattering sledge, a feather tickling. The sound induced spasms, sudden vivid nightmares that Sena could never after describe.

As Megan raised her staff, the throng of witches poured blood, the Sisterhood’s own blood, into the argument. Hemofurtum . . . but willingly, consciously.

The Unknown Tongue poured from the assemblage, fortifying the math:

“”¹⁶

Witches jackknifed, clutched their stomachs. They vomited blackness. What came out of their mouths did not hit the floor but purled upward like ink gouts in water. Winding skyward. Imbuing the spinning green clouds.

Convulsive twitching gripped their bodies, arrhythmic shudders that sucked from inside their chests. Their arms, legs and heads flailed like marionettes. A surreal paroxysm of extraordinary violence.

The very substance of space and dimension quailed, undulated, air sluggish now and even thicker, like sewage. Like curdled milk. Rippling and heaving. Solids bled into vapor. Vapor solidified. Liquids became plasmodia—mobile and sentient. The stone columns began to seep into the sky, drooling up like candles melting from the bottom, gravity reversed.

Sena tried to flee but the air rebuked her, heavy and suffocating. Warm pudding. Her arms lengthened. Melting candy. Honey drizzled across the vacant roof.