The Last Page

Robert growled but the door clicked and wind howled briefly through the bedroom, billowing up gusts of Sena’s perfumery. When the door clicked again, the wind had blown her out like a flame.

Sena walked briskly, adjusting the black britches and a studded watchman’s jacket. She had not gathered her own clothing from the floor.

It’s a good fit, she thought. Robert was a very small man—the reason she had picked him out of the crowd. His leather pants pulled tightly across her slender hips.

She smiled as she fancied him trying on her skirt in the morning. Around her index finger swung a heavy ring of city keys that slapped against her palm.

If all went well, Robert would never see her again, and never understand why she had stolen almost everything in his possession.

His cloak, stitched with the city insignia, displayed a winged silhouette against a pink sun.

The do’doc statues were Sandren’s most prominent skyline feature and one of several things that drew the tourists. They hunkered on all fours atop their spindles of stone, looking beyond the curvature of the planet with a unified expression of morbid, almost alien anticipation.

Sandren’s murky history was the reason she was here. Gimmon Mae had come late to the north. The city’s foundations had been laid by the Groull, creatures that flourished and fell long before human tribes discovered fire. Just like men, they had come here for the gold.

But something had forced them to abandon the mines before the ore ran out, a mystery to the archeological society that flourished here. Certainly an invasion was out of the question. Sandren’s position precluded siege.

Sena wished she had followed Megan’s recommendation to infiltrate the city’s archeological society. Her goal tonight certainly would have been easier to achieve.

Still, in the dark, no one would notice that her uniform pinched or sagged a bit in places that made it obviously masculine. Robert’s weapons moved against her hips with an easy sway.

She met the concierge of the Black Couch with a smile, mentioning that “the man upstairs” would take care of any residual fees. The concierge checked his register. He eyed her and made the hand sign for yes. Sena headed into the street.

Outside she could smell summer blooms like tender-loin girls: pink-petaled skirts ruffling in the wind. She walked southeast, listening to the creak of queelub cages swinging over Litten Street.

The wind in Sandren was always delicious. Sena could see west now down Windlymn Street and beyond the cliffs to the remote clouds over Tibin that had smeared like charcoal into night. She felt comfortable here. Not a tourist. Living in Tue had made her part of the city-state and she read tobacco signs and bistro names with ease in several different tongues.

She entered the Aerie: the most extravagant of the rich districts. It was where Tynan’s family lived. She had met him this morning at the Merchant’s Pillow just above Jdellan’s Fountain and told him a carefully abridged version of her disastrous spring.

His corresponding tale had revolved around his own panic at finding her cottage a mess. He had told the police, and a squad of officers had been dispatched. Sena gnashed her teeth until it was clear from Tynan’s story that they had found nothing of the secret cellar.

Sena had endured their hour together at the Merchant’s Pillow but she could not look him in the eye. The tenderness in his face was unbearable and she understood that for him it was like she had come back from the dead. His affection only reminded her of the deep secret between them, the thing they never spoke of, whose tiny bones lay in the ground at Desdae.

Sena had buckled the coins he gave her in her pack and swallowed hard, forcing a smile.

Later, alone over lunch, she had counted the wealth. He had given her southern scythes. They were worth twice as much on exchange for northern gryphs and Sandren’s system accepted both kinds of currency.

They would get her to Stonehold and back again if things unraveled with Caliph.

The dark streets of Sandren wound confusingly behind pubs and town houses. Rose-tinted light bled from deep-set alley windows onto cobbled walls where the smell of blossoms mixed with the sour stench of rotting fruit and garbage: refuse from the never-ending galas of the rich.

Sena swung between wheeled crates of waste and arrived at a narrow intersection sheltered from the wind and glutted with a humid veil of sewer steam.

She swung Robert’s ring of keys around her finger and snapped the heavy bouquet together with a clank. Then she fanned them and examined the teeth and relative length of each shaft, trying to gauge which ones might go to standard doors versus large metal gates. She would have only one chance to bluff her way through . . .

Distracted and nervous, she turned down Gullet, trying to ignore the howling in her head. As crazy as she imagined it might sound, she believed the book wanted to be opened.

Crossing over an archaic bridge, cloak billowing in a roaring updraft, Sena thought about Caliph and about opening the grimoire.

Thoughts of Caliph still flitted through her head as she moved into an unlit section of town, gliding through the blackened tapestries of laundry lines and orchid-clustered walls.

Another loud group of young nobles passed her on their way to a party. They saw her city insignia and hid their bottles discreetly behind backs or against thighs.

Sena turned down a narrow street stacked with hives of vented coils. Gauges glowed, tiny featherweight beads inside them tumbled with the flow of gas. She exited at a bright intersection where metholinate lamps flickered overhead, illuminating one of the do’doc statues: a fantastic long-clawed leering beast crumbling into air.

To the south stood a well-lit gate. Frosted bulbs enclosed white darts of flame on either side of the portal, a tall block affair comprised of lofty columns capped with pyramidal stones. The columns framed and anchored ornate grilles of iron that rose thirty feet or more above the level of the street.

Two men in studded watchman’s jackets identical to Robert’s stood talking about the bets they had placed on the fights in Northcliff Court. They glanced at her as she approached but kept talking. It was time for her to focus.

“Got a report of somebody making noise on the other side of the fence,” said Sena as though such an idea were preposterous.

The watchmen chuckled.

“Yeah right. Probably someone’s cat gettin’ laid.”

Sena fumbled through Robert’s keys, trying to guess which one fit.

“Hey, you’re new,” one of the men was saying. His eyes traveled her body. “You see police?”

“Maybe.” She winked at him. “What time you off?”

“Seventeen.”

“Palan damn these things.” She was genuinely frustrated. “I can’t keep them straight. Which one is it?”

The guard came over and flipped through the assortment, touching her fingers.

“That one.” She guessed it was his best seductive baritone. “GS-Four.”

Sena suddenly noticed the tiny digits engraved on the shaft. They probably stood for Great Steps Gate Four.

“Thanks.” Sena looked up with an expression that showed her (completely false) interest in him. “I’ll be back after I take a look around.”

“Hey,” said the other guard. “Where’s your lamp?”

Sena scowled as though he were being ridiculous. “I’m not going to need one. It’s probably nothing. I’ll just have a peek and write it up as a stray.”

“Suit yourself. Place gives me the creeps even from this side of the bars.”

The guard, who was hitting her like bait, offered to go with but Sena convinced him that leaving his post wasn’t worth the risk.

He grinned and shut the gate, stopping her one last time. “Take this just in case.” He handed a whistle through the bars.

“Thanks.” Sena draped it around her neck and turned her back on him.

She went south toward the black cascade of masonry stacked against the mountainside, monstrous and dark like the terraced ascent to some Veyden ziggurat. The city officially ended here. Eight broad terraces rose fifty feet like a giant staircase.