The Last Page

Giganalee trudged across the room and sat in her throne like a dead thing, claws clutching velvet armrests, head balanced like a skull, trying to see into Sena’s future.

Hours passed. The Eighth House did not sleep while she dreamt of red skies and death. She could not catch the shapes, could not pause them in their flight. They soared like scarlet clouds across the murrey pitch, recreant shapes wheeling to turn south; they tried to get away. They were hideous and malevolent as they scooted before the weather, fleeing something far more ominous.

All at once, Giganalee’s eyes opened.

The sallow, oily light of dawn slipped through the windows, shearing off around the shape of a bird.

Giganalee dragged a broken tooth across the back of her hand, tearing skin like tissue. She muttered in the Unknown Tongue as her blood broke through the fragile, liver-spotted flesh.

The pigeon came to her, charmed.

It was ugly and in poor health, ragged from mountain winds and weather. It had not been as fast as the Pandragonian albatross that had delivered word of Mr. Amphungtl’s failed negotiations.

Giganalee clutched it and carried it to her workbench like a piece of wood. She laid it on its belly, forcing the legs down. With her other hand she pulled a jeweler’s screwdriver from a rack of delicate tools.

Using the flat edge she pried the cruestone from the socket in its skull and dropped it into a bottle on the nearby shelf. Then she flipped the bird over on its back and, with a pair of tweezers, pulled the coiled message like a clock spring from its housing.

Her eyes were old and cloudy. Her collection of ornate magnifying glasses lay scattered throughout the room. She shoved the bird into an enormous cage and locked the door.

When she found a lens, she studied Miriam’s note under the ochre window light, reading the miniscule Withil with ease. Then she stuffed the paper into her mouth and chewed it to paste, swallowing it like a lump of phlegm. She laid her glass on a small stand near her chair and frowned.

Miriam had done right. She was brave. Brave enough to be Coven Mother someday. Yet Giganalee faltered in her thoughts. After all, it was too much to believe.

How could she have missed it? How could the Eighth House not have seen? If the book had been with Sienae, it had been in Skellum, within parliament’s walls!

How could she not have felt it? How could she not have known?

Giganalee felt fear trickle through her iron insides, cold and unfamiliar. There must be some mistake. Sena could not have found the book. Or could she?

The Eighth House had read legends of the book hiding when it did not want to be found. Giganalee retreated to her chair and uncoiled the tubing from her hookah. She lit it and sucked long cool tendrils of smoke through the water. The facets of the giant spinning bottle caught light, threw different colors across the orreries suspended from the ceiling and encouraged her to dream.

No.

She could not move. Miriam’s intelligence must be wrong. If the Eighth House moved without proof, the Sisterhood would stumble, sensing the uncertainty of its leaders. She had to wait. Even if Sena had the book, she couldn’t open it.

Giganalee frowned. Sena knew nothing of love.

¹⁷ Iycestoke Society for the Study of Antiquities.

¹⁸ I.: The Place of Burning.

CHAPTER 16

With twenty-six boroughs and thirty-six square miles of sprawl, Isca City was easily the largest city north of Yorba. Its population exceeded two million and Caliph had more to keep track of.

Keeps and towns with ancient names like Clefthollow and Coldwell slugged against nature, scuffling through mist and cold and marshy fields. They had their own industries and rulers and local villains. Caliph wondered how he could be expected to compass his own section of the Duchy, let alone the other four.

With Saergaeth’s threat, Caliph’s time for planning was attenuating. He had to know what to do.

Now.

Word had come from Prince Mortiman in Tentinil that the town of Bellgrass had signed a treaty with Miskatoll. Saergaeth’s wine-colored flag was creeping south. Great fuming engines scarred the south-sloping plains between the Fluim and White Leech rivers, pressing the prince’s borders like a giant thumb at the edge of a blister.

Saergaeth needed Bellgrass because it gave his engines access to the swath of land between the rivers. They rolled south and west out of Miskatoll, heavy metal tracks tearing up the soil, plumes of black smoke and pounding echoes shivering in their wakes.

Willoch Keep had also surrendered without a fight. Without actually attacking, Saergaeth was making headway.

The White Leech was his new border. It fortified Saergaeth’s position as much as it hamstrung his further progress. There were few fords capable of accommodating war engines and the prince of Tentinil had taken measures to ensure that nothing crossed the river. He had mined both banks with vitriol explosives and positioned troops to overlook the fords.

For the meantime, Saergaeth’s advance ground to a halt, hobbled by defiles his engines could not manage. But Caliph knew it wouldn’t last. The metholinate shipments out of the Memnaw had stopped.

He knew with enervating certainty that Saergaeth’s zeppelins, which ordinarily transported canisters of gas, were being busily outfitted for war.

Caliph had stockpiled what metholinate Isca had, rationing use with an iron hand. But stingy allocation of resources would not win the fight . . . and it was making the populace uneasy. There were already demonstrations in Gas End. People didn’t want to fight their own countrymen, let alone a national hero like Saergaeth Brindlestrm.

People wanted light, hot water and gas to cook with. They didn’t want to fight the man who controlled the supply. Saergaeth and Miskatoll, by virtue of the metholinate industry located on the edge of the Memnaw, controlled the largest fleet of zeppelins and war engines in the north. In order to export the gas, airships were needed. In order to protect Stonehold’s primary resource, thousands of troops were under Saergaeth’s direct command. Miskatoll had an endless supply of gas and men, both of which had now been turned against the High King.

It hadn’t been anticipated because the Council hadn’t actually believed Saergaeth would turn traitor. And even if they had, what were they supposed to have done? Confiscate the zeppelins that the metholinate industry—that Stonehold itself—required to survive? Pull thousands of troops out of Miskatoll and leave the mining facilities denuded of protection?

No. There hadn’t been a way to prevent this mess. Saergaeth had known his position; he had certainly used it to his advantage.

Caliph had sent one of his three dreadnoughts to guard Tentinil by sea. The enormous ironclad ship with its pounding engines had smoldered out of Isca Bay the night before last, taking with it two thousand sailors including the two brigs that escorted her.

Most of Caliph’s light engines were already in Tentinil. But if he sent more, Saergaeth could have a fleet of airships prowling the skies over Isca, and Caliph with little left to shoot them down.

Caliph felt pinned, unable to maneuver. He had to keep his engines close to the city, which meant he had to face the brunt of Miskatoll’s mechanized onslaught with infantry.