syrupy light on lilacs bobbing near the lake.
The universe snapped ineffectually at the dark silhouettes of students and teachers, human forms distorted by the warm gush of light spilling from the chapel across the lawn. Caliph felt superior to the herd migrating slowly toward Day of Sands vespers.
It was difficult for him to imagine being king. The fact that he was an heir did not present itself at Desdae. Here he found himself treated like any other student, disciplined and cowed under the stern rules of the chancellor. But his father assured him it was for the best.
In the belfry, like lonesome beasts, the bells began to toll.
Caliph turned from the window and gazed on the dusty abyss of the library’s interior. Eight centuries’ worth of interred paper bodies infused the air with spoor. The pages were holomorphically preserved, mummified within this vast sepulcher. It was a temple to the dead, to thought, to maxims and poetry, to plays and battles and vagaries gouged out of antiquity. But it wasn’t Caliph’s temple.
The bells ceased and a pleasant loneliness poured in with the moonlight, varnishing the railings, tranquilizing every board.
He mouthed the words he planned to use tonight if Sena actually showed up. They were old words, bleak as the air that sighed around Desdae’s gables.
Forbidden by most governments, silenced through flames that had once danced on great piles of holomorphic lore, slowly, very slowly, holomorphy was being practiced again. Opportunists seeking an edge in business, politics—they had begun drawing blood.
At Desdae, the focus stayed safely on lethargy crucibles, thaumaturgie reactors that ran off planetary rotation and cow blood, that sort of thing. The professors never openly admitted that other types of holomorphy were also catalogued in obscure sections of the library. But in the teeth of their frantic scramble to gain tenure, the faculty often followed a much older motto than Truth, Light, Chastity and Hard Work. Theirs was: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Caliph used a tiny knife to prick his finger. As any holomorph, he needed something to start with, an essential ingredient to begin the chain reaction where matter, memories, reality could be extruded and controlled.
Caliph could still remember the banal demonstration Morgan Gullows had put on for his freshman class: the way he had dropped that book. It had hit the ancient desk with a dusty thud and at that moment he had revealed a simple yet extraordinary idea to his young students: the book must travel half the distance to the desk and then half of that distance and so on, somehow going through an infinite number of divisive repetitions in a finite period of time. Although he had solved this mystery for them with simple mathematics, holomorphy, the Unknown Tongue, was the key to understanding the endless repetition of the spiral, the key to the ancient problem of the circle, the key to unlocking the universe.
Numbers became symbols. Symbols compiled words. “Language shapes reality,” said the philosophers and linguists. So the maths of the Unknown Tongue deconstruct reality; form new realities—whatever realities the mathematician desires. “In reality,” claimed the holomorphs of Desdae, “there is none.”
But Caliph knew that underneath their departmental propaganda, not everything was possible. And despite his natural aptitude for the discipline he distrusted it on a visceral level. To him, the Unknown Tongue was a struggling science propped on the intellectual framework of backward-gazing scholars.
Metholinate burners, chemiostatic cells, ydellium tubing that polarized itself against the weather and somehow generated power out of nothing—practically. Those were the only things that made holomorphy worth studying. Those and the kinds of mischievous legerdemains he had selected for this meeting tonight.
He had learned about holomorphy from his uncle before coming to Desdae: lessons he did not like to think about here, alone in the library. Instead, he examined his oozing fingertip, making the tiny cut open and close like a little red mouth.
“Early, aren’t you?”
Caliph spun to see a shape step out from the staircase. He had been expecting a knock. A clumsy tug at the bolted portals. Instead there had been a vacuum of sound, not even the scratch of picks in the lock, something that would have amplified across the library’s taut funerary silence.
“You like surprising people.” He said it like a palmist giving a reading, trying to sound cool even though his heart was racing.
“Practicing Introductory Psych?” she asked. “Let me try. You’re agnostic. Wait, that was too easy . . .”
Caliph grinned. “I’m not agnostic. I just don’t like Prefect Eaton. Something about him being chancellor- slash-resident priest causes me cognitive dissonance.”
Sena laughed softly. “So you used the handbook’s loophole clause? You actually filed a form?”
Caliph shrugged. “Got me out of vespers.” He took out his pocket watch. “I’m not sure we can make it into town before the play starts.”
“Sooo . . . you have other plans for us?” She walked toward him like a gunslinger.
“Not really. I don’t like people who show up late.”
She stopped, visibly stunned. “I’m not late.”
Caliph took advantage of the moment.
His voice yanked at the air. His wounded hand cut a black shape against the huge moon-drenched pane of glass. The spread of his fingers drew darkness over her eyes and oxygen off her brain.
It was too late for her to whisper a counter.
He was on her, protracting, suboccipital subtraction, siphoning a strand of memory. The suction was mechanical and precise. If he succeeded it would be gone.
Sena cursed and tackled him. They grappled. Caliph’s arm caught for the railing. Over thirty feet of empty air separated them from the tiles of the first floor; Caliph felt the antique balustrade give slightly under the pressure of their combined weight.
Sena punched him hard and the formula died in his mouth. Breathless vulgarities struggled from both their lips. A loud crack sounded in one of the worm-eaten balusters. Just as the whole thing seemed ready to break apart, Caliph managed to gain leverage and push her back.
Apparently she either didn’t care or didn’t comprehend their peril. Her hands clenched in his shirt, pulling him along in a clumsy stumbling dance toward the bookcases.
Their scuffle rocked something near the shelves: the sound of a wooden pedestal base rolling slowly in a teetering circle followed by a splintering smash.
Caliph toppled to the floor and wrestled with the girl who now pressed him from above. Somehow, through a quirk of balance and leverage she had managed to stay on top. He was astonished at her subtle strength.
“Don’t-move-I’ll-kill-you.”
Her lips ran all the words together. He could feel her breath and the icy edge of a small knife touch him on the throat. It was the same kind of knife he had used on his hand, the same kind every student of holomorphy was allowed to carry with them. Meant only for pricking fingers, it was still capable of opening his throat.
Beside him, the fallen bust of Tanara Mae lay facedown in the darkness, nose shattered in pale shards that spun slowly, dissected by moonlight.
“I thought you were simple,” she gasped in disgust. “What were you looking for?” She wiped a droplet of blood from her cheek, making a dark line, like a trail of mascara below her eye.
“I think you’re bleeding,” Caliph said. One of his hands rested on the slender muscles of her waist.
“Actually, that’s you bleeding on me.” They were entangled, warmth passing through their clothes, a comfortable but awkward closeness.
“Well . . . you have a cut.” His finger brushed her cheek.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting romantic.” She tried to push herself off but her leg was pinned.
“Broke Tanara’s face too.”
Caliph began to laugh, too loud. It echoed off the coffered ceiling.
“It’s your fault! If anyone gets expelled for this it will be you.” She let up slightly on the blade. “I can’t afford another session with the chancellor.”
“You must be the one they’re gossiping about—”
“Let me up! This is your fault!” She struggled furiously against his weight.
