When Caliph returned from Glôssok and touched down on the glowing zeppelin deck, N
s was already dying.
He saw the poor cat from across the vast expanse of concrete, lying on its side, the hazy whirring shape of a glimbender hovering over it. He ran, tried to chase it away, but the thing had already ejaculated its larva deep into Ns’ brain.
By the time Caliph crossed the deck, the furtive hairy eye on wings had gone, darting into the night.
Ns lay breathing quietly, his life force winding down as the hungry slugs squirmed inside his skull.
Rolling in a bath of their own digestive acids, the glimbender grubs would make short work of their host. After they’d eaten the cat’s brain they would spin silken cocoons inside the cranium, gestating for a month or more while the fur and skin moldered away. When they hatched, they’d come fumbling out of eye sockets or through the jaw.
There was nothing to be done.
Caliph called for Gadriel who summoned Sena to the deck. When she arrived, she wept and paced and stroked her dying pet.
Caliph tried to comfort her but she was inconsolable. Gadriel knelt with a tin of tissues at the ready.
Slowly, Ns’ breathing thinned out and settled into strange seizure-like quivers that served no respiratory function.
At last the animal stilled.
A wire seemed to burst in Sena’s brain, like a violin string popping at a concert. She reeled as from a blow, crumpled to the deck and into a deep lethargic swoon from which neither salts nor shouts could rouse her.
Caliph carried her to their bedroom and summoned the physicians. They came, hooded and robed in red, carrying bowls and scalpels and hypodermics made of glass. They checked her breathing.
They tried ammonium carbonate mixed with perfume for the third time—risking poisoning. They tried cool rags and gentle slaps about the face. Finally they gave up.
“She’s breathing. There’s not much else I can say.”
One of the physicians drew an ampoule of amber fluid from his robes. He filled the barrel of his syringe and pressed the plunger, adjusting the fluid to the level of several units etched in glass.
“This is a mild stimulant that should work during the course of the night.”
He slipped one and a half inches of twenty-gauge steel into the flesh of her shoulder. After he withdrew, he taped a cotton ball over the red pearl that blossomed on her skin and motioned for the others to leave the room.
“Have her watched. Keep her warm. If her breathing becomes irregular, or she doesn’t wake in the morning, call me back. Call me back either way and I’ll do a checkup, make sure everything’s ticky.”
Caliph nodded and the physician left.
Once he had gone, Caliph covered Sena with a comforter. Servants issued into the room. They brought coffee.
“I’ll take loring tea,” said Caliph, “with cream.”
The servants glanced at each other awkwardly until Gadriel pushed to the front. He looked as if he meant to protect them from something. The seneschal straightened his collar and forced a smile. “Unfortunately we’re out of loring tea, your majesty. But I do have several . . . northern roasts here . . . to choose from.” He bit his lip. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind sampling some of our local finest . . .”
It hit Caliph in the face that Saergaeth had blocked lines of import to the Duchy. They were cut off from the south . . . from the rest of the world. Caliph swallowed the fact slowly and then chuckled. “Of course. Loring tea isn’t what I need tonight anyway. Brew me a strong cup, any one you want. I’ll try them all.” He clamped Gadriel on the shoulder and walked over to the bed, where he listened anxiously to Sena’s breathing.
When the second hour bells tolled mournfully from Hullmallow Cathedral four miles away, Caliph summoned Mr. Vhortghast to the chamber.
Sena’s breathing was regular and deep as the spymaster entered. Caliph felt annoyed that Zane never looked disheveled or tired or disoriented even in the middle of the night.
The spymaster wore black tweed and a purple ascot that made his clay-like complexion absolutely livid.
“I want you to find Peter Lark,” said Caliph.
“David Thacker knew virtually nothing about him, my lord.”
Caliph started to raise his voice then quickly controlled himself. “I don’t give a—I don’t care. Find him.”
“I’ll put some men on it. What’s the sudden interest?” Dark glints of metal flashed from the spymaster’s dove-gray teeth.
“Mine,” said Caliph. “My personal interest.”
“Of course. I’m sure we can turn something up before long.”
Mr. Vhortghast left.
All Caliph could think about besides Sena’s health was the second set of blueprints, David’s stack of gold and the note from Peter Lark.
Around three in the morning one of the maids encouraged him to go to bed. She said she would take over. Caliph thanked her kindly before banishing her from the room. He paced the marble floor beneath the fresco in the ceiling, glancing at Sena’s face and the stripe of bright blue she had put into her hair.
His head was full. Saergaeth’s stranglehold on Isca seemed complete. He would wait a little while; starve the seat of government; terrorize them; ensure morale was at an all-time low. And then Saergaeth would come south, across the moors, riding the winds in a zeppelin army vast enough to darken the sky. “When the leaves fall. When the snow flies,” assured Yrisl, “he will be coming.”
Caliph envisioned the rain of chemical bombs and steel harpoons and cannonballs made of stone. Even with Sigmund’s brilliant mind . . . even if we can get a solvitriol bomb to work . . . we haven’t got a method of delivery . . . we haven’t even got time to test a soul-bomb’s success.
He pondered the dangers of widespread disruption.
What if the ripple effect Sigmund described traveled beyond the desired range? What if my own troops fall victim to a solvitriol bomb?
CHAPTER 25
Sena awoke in a sour mood. Her head hurt. Her familiar was dead. Light from the western fields splayed through tall windows with the dawn hovering, gray and pink above the bed.
Caliph had fallen asleep in a chair. She touched his dark curls with faint affection but he did not stir.
Unaware of the agonizing watch he had maintained, she slid from the sheets and went to find the place they had buried Ns.
She found Gadriel first in the grand hall dusting trophies amid shafts of light. He mentioned the start she had given the entire castle. After a semi-tense conversation she followed his directions to the place the gardener had set her cat on fire. A carefully raked pile and a ceramic jar in the north garden bespoke the ceremony that had gone into the immolation.
Obviously the animal’s relationship to her had occasioned this strange effort at decorum. She understood it had to be done, of course. Fire was the best way to guarantee destruction of the glimbender larvae.
Sena looked on the jar with faint stirrings of emotion that ranged all the way from parallels to her mother’s fiery end to whether the cat had ever truly liked her.
She wasn’t heartbroken. Her hysteria the night before hadn’t been about endearment. She was saddened, but not as saddened as she had been frightened of the inscrutable repercussions the cat’s death might have on her mind.
As her familiar, the animal had allowed her additional noetic space to calculate holomorphic formulae. Although she hadn’t often used the extra processing power of the creature’s brain, the pain that gashed the soft tissues inside her skull was deep and real the instant N