The Last Page

s had died.

Ever since getting up this morning she had been unable to suppress the repetitive urge to touch her forehead and examine her fingertips for blood. Of course there was none. Her wound was internal.

Maybe I’ll be fine, she thought. Maybe with the exception of last night, everything will be fine.

Sena left the city.

The moment she did, a strange sense of relief enveloped her. She took her sickle knife, her pocket watch, a bottle of water and her empty pack. Beyond Isca’s soot-fouled walls the reach of machines fell abruptly short, amputated by the Duchy’s green mélange.

She was free of the grinding gears, beyond the black vomit of urban architecture. And the war front was still over fifty miles away. People were trickling away, burping cars loaded with personal belongings, headed for the Fort Line and safety.

Beyond West Fen the road turned to clay, hedged with thickets and sloughs. Marshy ditches, resonant with biting insects and glutted with sludge as thick as cow sprue, instigated clutches of weeds that spread their hot-sweet smell along the road.

She passed cottages where people shot up like ancient gnarled stumps from benches in the shade. Their fists clutched newspapers from the city in grips familiar with loss. There were children. Babies crying and raucous games in the grass. Everyone capable of hard labor had melted with the morning into acres of corn or barely or rye.

Sena relaxed as she walked. She thought about Nathaniel Howl. Ever since Cameron’s arrival she had been collecting stories. The old man fascinated her for reasons beyond his connection with the book.

She had jotted down a few of the anecdotes Cameron and Caliph had discussed, the ones that truly unnerved her, like the time Nathaniel had taken it upon himself to explain sex to his six-year-old nephew.

“His fingers were so thin,” Caliph had said. “They did this slow together-apart, together-apart motion that interlaced with a whispery sound as the knuckles brushed against each other. He eased back in his rocking chair and said, ‘Caliph, men and women are like honey and muffins. Put the honey on . . . it melts right inside the muffin. Love is like that. Sweet and warm and sticky. It’s hard to get off because it gets inside.’

“Then he gave me a hand-illustrated book, inked in red and blue and skin-pink . . . mostly skin-pink. He patted my head and said, ‘Love is a good thing, Caliph. It’s what even old men like me want.’ ”

Sena envisioned Caliph poring over love positions by age six. She couldn’t tell if her affection for him was growing. She tried to convince herself that it was. Mostly she just felt sorry for his childhood.

Nathaniel’s character conjured vivid crazy images in her head, roaming the halls of the House on Isca Hill as Cameron described, marking up the frosted windowpanes with designs he drew with his fingertip. “Ha, that’s a little blossom, yes it is. Little frost rose on the window. Cold, cold.” He rubbed his hands. “Lovely little flowers everywhere.” She could hear him in her head, babbling.

She continued along the road, looking for round stones. They were easy to find.

Once, the Dunatis Sea had filled all of Stonehold, a prehistoric saline slab that crushed the hills under gradients of darkness many fathoms deep. Back then, the Duchy had been a black icy waste of glacial sediment and mollusks and mud. Sloshing against Kjnardag’s feet, licking at the mountains’ boots, the great sea had retreated slowly, pulled into the Duchy’s pit over epochs like a slavering beast on chains.

Sena glanced north where High Horn filled a quarter of the sky. The sight of its eternal snows glaring through the ragged humid thatch of summer sent a dissonant chill up her spine.

She stopped and dabbed her forehead with her sleeve, knowing for some time now that she was being followed. It’s time, she decided. The last cottage was a half-mile back. Her pursuer would make herself known.

Sena turned abruptly into an untilled uphill stretch of meadow and vanished from the road. Disintegrating posts screened the weed-choked field from a soggy ditch. Split and crusty with thallus, the posts barely sustained a rusted string of barbules and broken wire mesh.

She dissolved into the bracken, knowing that the sounds of popple bugs and katydids would mask her movement. Her sickle knife was out. Her eyes fought for glimpses through snarled coils of cockle vine and stymphalian grass. She ignored the predacious ephemera flashing through the weeds. A huge beetle, banded black and rotten orange, landed on her hand. She let it be.

From the road came the faint sound of a single person clapping in applause.

“You’re very good, Sienae. Very good . . .”

A woman’s voice helped pinpoint the noise. Sena stayed hidden in the grass. She could see a blond woman standing on the road, sickle in hand, gazing vaguely in her direction.

“I only came to talk,” said Miriam, slipping into Withil. “Muthiroo fritou uviroo hirou gorloo.¹⁹”

Right, thought Sena cynically, I’m sure she does. She scanned the road for others.

As if able to read her thoughts, Miriam called out again in Withil, “I’m alone, Sienae. Megan didn’t send a qloin. As if she ever would. I know the Willin Droul are after you. The Sisterhood can help. Come out and talk to me. I’m obviously no threat . . . to the Seventh House.” She added Sena’s rank like a reluctant concession, as an afterthought.

She watched the weeds intently. Miriam turned as she spoke, scanning the ditches in every direction.

But Sena wasn’t willing to risk a confrontation—yet.

She pricked her finger deeply for a legerdemain that distorted the air above the road. The Unknown Tongue trickled from her lips.

Miriam must have felt the subtle shift in temperature. Must have guessed that trickery would follow.

Sena’s voice came out from the weeds, speaking in Withil. “I didn’t really like your article in the Herald.”

Even though she had been waiting for a response, Sena’s voice obviously startled Miriam, who regained her composure quickly and continued to turn as she spoke, guessing correctly that Sena had holomorphically masked the origin.

“Sienae . . . you saw the hex . . . you know Fallow Down is only the beginning. Leave this place. Come back to Skellum—where it’s safe.”

“I doubt you’re concerned about my well-being, grda.²⁰ You’ve probably poisoned Megan with your suspicions.”

Miriam smiled. “Are you guilty of something?”

Sena scoffed. “I’m the High King’s witch. Don’t you read the papers?”

“That’s pårn. Megan sent you to Stonehold. No one’s accusing you of fårn. I’m sure you—”

“I’m not using him,” said Sena hotly. Her anger was real. “Go back to Skellum. Send a qloin if you like. I’m not coming back.”

Sena crept forward. By the time Miriam had turned around again, Sena stood in full view at the edge of the untilled field, glaring. The sight forced Miriam to take several steps back.

Sena walked forward. Careless. Unafraid. Miriam stumbled.

“This is my country, now,” said Sena.

Miriam looked surprised, like she had lost her train of thought. There was not enough blood on Sena’s finger for her to use.

“Tell the Sisterhood I am my own witch. Tell them I intend to stay here.”

“The hex—”

“Does it look like my holomorphy is suffering? I will break Megan’s hex. I will bind what stones remain. I will patch the holes Gr-ner Shie is floundering through. I will undo this thing. I am not your Sister anymore.”