“He talked to me at night, told me stories of kings and war and death. Always death.” Caliph nodded outside. “He lived in the graveyard.”
Sena’s face showed a curious mix of sympathy and morbid fascination.
“Then I found out he was real.”
“Real?”
“My uncle was an extraordinary holomorph.” Caliph rubbed dust from his fingertips.
His childhood had consisted of this house, his uncle and the few servants on staff. When he looked around, fragmentary images of Cameron, the dream-man, strode through the cankered passageways and grim parlors.
As usual, the memories were muddy. He knew that the family had chased his rogue of a father off, and that his mother had remained here with her parents.
Then came the unfortunate dinner, an event he had no recollection of. And after that, or so he had been told, his uncle had come out of the south, claiming both the estate and Caliph: a diaper-wearing toddler.
He knew the house must have changed with his uncle’s arrival. There must have been a time when the banisters were polished to a golden sheen and bright-colored rugs and vases gleamed in the light of the tall mullioned windows flung open to the sun. But Caliph could not remember such a time or any time when this huge hollow house had been decorated in anything other than black tapestries with strange designs and dark woods imported at tremendous cost from jungles in the south.
One autumn, Cameron had walked out of the woods and come to live with them. It felt bizarre now. Where had Cameron come from? Why had Caliph’s uncle taken him in? Caliph remembered the kites and the toys that Cameron had carved on this wide stretch of lawn. With Cameron in the house, the nights seemed less dark and the shadows that moved without caster shrank slightly.
But then Caliph’s memory fumbled. Cameron had left. There had been a long journey in the middle of winter and Nathaniel had locked the house on the hill as if never to return. After that had come the white marble floors and the blood and Cameron’s voice as the two of them descended that long rope into darkness.
After the darkness, he had no memory whatsoever until, like walking through a doorway into a brightly lit room, he realized that Nathaniel was dead. Cameron had searched for and found Caliph’s father. With Jacob and Caliph’s reunion, Cameron had disolved into the north and never returned.
Jacob took Caliph to Candleshine, a crowded modest borough that pressed Isca’s southwest wall.
He had done the best he could but he was never prepared to be a father. He did not have the tools or the experience. He put Caliph in a local school run by the Sisters of the Second Moon and brought him home on weekends to continue where Cameron had left off—teaching him how to wield a sword.
“We should go. I feel like an idiot out here. I’m supposed to be a king managing a war.”
“Wait.” Sena sat down by him on the stairs and struggled free from her pack. “I have something to show you.”
Her supple fingers loosened the buckle and pushed past a change of clothes, her diary and a few other odds and ends. Deep at the bottom she gripped the cold soft skin of the C
srym T
and hauled it up into the light.
Caliph stared at it in shock. His hand touched the filthy crimson leather then drew back as though bitten.
“Where did you get that?”
Sena set it on her knees. “It turned up in an old bookshop.”
“This is the book?” Caliph whispered in disbelief. “The one you talked about?”
“The one I told you about in the attic before I left Desdae.” She nodded.
Caliph stood up, stunned.
“This was my uncle’s book!”
“I know.”
It was a long time before Caliph spoke. “So . . . you were after me for that?”
“What?” She scowled.
“What do you mean, what? Obviously you knew. What now? Interrogate me, find answers about my uncle you couldn’t find anywhere else?” He took a step away.
Sena’s face felt like it was burning. “What are you talking about? You think you’re the only one who can open your uncle’s book? You know what your problem is? You think everyone is out to get Caliph Howl and you think you have everyone under your thumb. No one crosses Caliph Howl,” she mocked, “or he crawls away to get even.”
It was the half-truth that made it sting. But Caliph saw beneath her anger. He could read the desperation behind her attack, recognized it in the way her eyes almost trembled at the very tops of her cheekbones.
He raised his hand and looked away, speaking in slow distinct syllables. “You. Do. Not. Love me.”
“I don’t love you? Where in Felldin’s Grace did that come from?” She picked up the Csrym T and stuffed it in her pack. “I’ve never heard the words come out of your mouth.” She stood up, preparing to leave.
“And why should they have come out of my mouth?” Caliph shouted with a voice of indescribable fury. “You want me to admit what a fool I am?”
The sound so surprised her that she almost sat down.
Caliph’s unfettered anger, while shocking, teased her sense of play.
“I am sitting in my past talking about ghosts while my country is at war!” he roared. He turned and kicked the door so fiercely the antique hinges at the bottom gave way. It sagged inward with a groan, threatening to fall on him.
Caliph jumped back in surprise.
Though partly appalled by his temper, the mysterious tantrum caused an emotion to flicker through Sena’s stomach that, while she could not name it, made her smile. Maybe it was because she had tried so many times at school to make him angry on purpose, to see how he would behave, and this was a kind of belated conquest.
When she finally spoke, her voice had attenuated. She used a quieter, more sincere tone than she had ever used with him before.
“I’m not the one who brought us up here to wallow in the past.”
His black eyes whirled around and locked on hers.
“I didn’t come to Stonehold to use you like a stick for the fire either,” she continued. “No. I don’t love you, but if it makes you feel any better this is the closest thing to love that I’ve ever had.”
“Wonderful. Terrific . . .” His voice trailed off.
Outside, the warhorse gnashed its teeth and snapped half a dozen tails at flies, oblivious to the difficulties its riders were having. Caliph cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
Sena’s lips curled with sly humor.
“In two years I never saw you get that excited—I mean not like that.”
He ignored her and gestured to the Csrym T now hidden in her pack.
“Why did you want to show it to me? You can’t open it?” In her anger she had given her secret away.
“I said—” she began.
“You said, ‘You think you’re the only one who can open your uncle’s book?’ So what? What kind of book is it?”
Sena bit back on the argumentative words that instantly came to mind and replied guardedly, “No one really knows—except maybe your uncle and he’s out back talking with tree roots.”
CHAPTER 17
When it came to his uncle’s book, Caliph averted his thoughts as much as possible. It had popped out of Sena’s pack like a horrible toy, but that was in the past now. It was just a book. Nothing more. He felt foolish for having gotten so angry over it.
He took Sena back to the castle and introduced her to the staff. He made it clear she was to be extended the same entitlements he himself received. Although he stopped short of formally labeling or defining their relationship, the staff had experience in this sort of thing. They didn’t ask maladroit or indelicate questions.