Flying his own fleet of zeppelins out to meet Saergaeth wasn’t an option. Isca’s military boasted forty airships including the Byun-Ghala and several older, less reliable models that were practically tethered to Malgôr Hangar.
Even the most conservative estimates placed Miskatoll’s fleet at one hundred strong, including fourteen leviathans.
Caliph sat in the royal study, moving his eyes from the window to stare blankly at a map of the Duchy varnished to the top of the low table in front of him.
Gadriel lounged across the room, leg crossed over his knee. He seemed to be counting books on the study shelves. An oil lamp spread the room with pearly radiance and shadows that wavered in the corners.
Caliph had left the windows open so they framed the dark steeples and ancient gables: strange creatures watching the sea. “Gadriel, what were you before you were seneschal?”
The other man stopped his count.
“I was an intern, your highness.” His very proper gray beard and moustache twitched as he spoke.
“That’s quite a synopsis.”
“I’ve liked your wit ever since your arrival, King Howl. You have a particular economy of words that I admire.”
Caliph leaned back in the cushioned divan and folded his arms. The light wrinkled across the rich pillows that, like him, seemed to brood.
“I don’t enjoy being king.”
The seneschal looked worried. “Is something wrong?”
Caliph smiled. “Nothing I could blame you for. But I feel like I’m running with a blindfold on.”
“Nonsense,” said the old man. “You’ve already got the hang of it.”
Caliph made the southern hand sign for no.
“It’s bad luck that I took the crown during so much strife.”
“Forgive me, your majesty, but your coronation was the cause of the strife and therefore inevitable. It’s good that we have a king now. A Council may run economic affairs well enough, but for war, a king is best.”
Caliph frowned. His eyes went out of focus. “What is happening in Tentinil? I should be out there, touring the field.”
Gadriel took a small snuffbox from his pocket and rapped it lightly with a knuckle. “I’ve given word to let you sleep in.”
Caliph forced a smile.
“Shall I have anything sent up?”
“No thank you, Gadriel.” Then the careful, quiet exit, the seneschal barely allowing the door to click so as not to disturb—even Caliph’s thoughts.
Caliph lay back on the divan, staring at the molded ceiling. Most of his thoughts were stillborn, hardly worth Gadriel’s care.
Yrisl knows how to fight a war. If I give all military command over to the Blue General maybe it will be better for the Duchy. I’ve got all my life to learn how to be king. No sense trying to pretend I know what I’m doing during such a critical time.
Exhaustion crept over him. He gazed from the edge of consciousness at the ceiling, eyes drooping, in and out of a dream. In the dream he was tapping on his desk, trying to explain something to Clayton Redfield about not regulating the sale of religious artifacts along the Avenue of Charms. Temple Hill was screaming their approval. He was tapping with a silver pen to make his point, tapping, tapping on the polished desk. Tapping. Caliph woke up.
There were two doors to the High King’s study. One opened inward on the castle. The other opened out. The outward one was a thick oak and metal-studded thing that screened the room from the battlements.
He sat up.
After a moment the tapping came again, outside of the dream. Soft. Insistent. He stood slowly. A guard?
He waited.
It sounded again, barely audible through the thickness of the portal.
He walked, dumbfounded, to the door and slid away the bolt. An assassin? I could be so lucky. With well-oiled silence it opened and Caliph peered before him at the empty moonlit parapet.
To either side, the crenels looked down into deep courtyards. Naobi glowed fat and white, a reptilian eye wreathed in green. Stillness covered everything. The clear balmy night seemed devoid of sound. Not even cricket song. The gardens lay too far below.
Caliph took a half step out. He stopped. A heady sweetness lingered on the air. A whisper from behind the door. “Caliph?”
He turned slowly.
She stood in the shadow of the arch that sheltered the seldom-used portal, all but her face masked in darkness.
Caliph’s eyes burned her image into his brain. Hair, silvery-gold and short. Her eyes were worlds of blue.
Fear filled him instantly. Had she returned to finish what the witches in Tue had failed to accomplish? Was this a trick? But her eyes communicated a silent apology; a sincere vulnerability, real or imagined, that made him want to hold her and protect her.
His tongue lay ignorantly at the bottom of his mouth. His head might as well have been severed for the all the help it was in determining what to say.
Almost cautiously, as though afraid she might vanish, he reached for her face. As his fingers touched her, her lips twisted into that familiar smile that both mocked and tempted him at the same time.
Caliph couldn’t help himself. He attacked her. She gave way easily, kissing him back, letting his emotions come out.
“I guess you’re glad to see me,” she breathed into his ear.
They fell apart. A test fit after two years. But their bodies had remembered, had conformed to each other with aching familiarity.
“How—what are you doing here?” He felt inebriated. A tailless cat stepped out of the shadows and marched into the castle as though inspecting newly conquered territory.
“How am I doing here?” She laughed softly. Her shoulders lifted then fell. Her voice was husky. “Feels all right to me.”
Her lashes slipped. Lazy. Blue planets eclipsed. Only the corners of her mouth turned up. It was a well-practiced look. One that Caliph supposed had sent many men into short-term madness.
Caliph came at her again.
She was shocked by his eagerness. Of all things, this had been the one she least expected. Not from quiet, lethally rational Caliph Howl.
His hands ran over her like the fingers of a votary, leaving no line uncaressed. They traveled from wrist to ankle, drawing her up, off the parapet, off her feet, inside the castle.
Like walking lines, she moved without sense. Caliph carried her away, cradled her. A pearly light flickered in darkness. She was disoriented. She struggled free from her clothes, desperate to be rid of them.
Caliph had turned her arrival into something wild. It was better than she had hoped. It was necessary. It was urgent. She felt herself let go of the controls, let go of the premeditated steps, the calculations she used with sex. It had been a while.
Sena bit her lower lip. Her mind slipped away as the catapult fired. She was floating . . . drifting . . . in an ocean of stars, stuttering again . . . zoetrope spinning.
In the morning, the light lay crisp and white across the rich crumpled sheets of the High King’s bed. Sena had no idea how she had arrived in this room but by the look of the sheets she must have been awake at the time.
Her memory fogged with feelings that pulled her mouth into an amazed and contented smile. Caliph was nowhere to be seen.
White marble flooded the floor. The four-poster bed she had slept in was carved from cherry wood with tall spindles at every corner. In the center of the room a gleaming enameled tub stood steaming on short recurved legs. It crouched like a fat cat above a plush colorful rug.
Several wardrobes, a desk and a chest all sat at attention. They were crafted from imported woods, carved laboriously and stained deep red tones. On the walls, tapestries of inestimable value curled with the outside air.
Leaning back, she gazed up at the ceiling which comprised a vaulted affair whose ribbing floated from pillars in the four corners and met at a recessed oval where some artisan had done a fresco in the dome. It showed a cherubic youth with black wings descending from a sunlit cloud aiming a bow at an innocent-looking rabbit. Archaic lettering around the fresco read in Hinter, there is purpose in death.