The Last Page

CHAPTER 16

With twenty-six boroughs and thirty-six square miles of sprawl, Isca City was easily the largest city north of Yorba. Its population exceeded two million and Caliph had more to keep track of.

Keeps and towns with ancient names like Clefthollow and Coldwell slugged against nature, scuffling through mist and cold and marshy fields. They had their own industries and rulers and local villains. Caliph wondered how he could be expected to compass his own section of the Duchy, let alone the other four.

With Saergaeth’s threat, Caliph’s time for planning was attenuating. He had to know what to do.

Now.

Word had come from Prince Mortiman in Tentinil that the town of Bellgrass had signed a treaty with Miskatoll. Saergaeth’s wine-colored flag was creeping south. Great fuming engines scarred the south-sloping plains between the Fluim and White Leech rivers, pressing the prince’s borders like a giant thumb at the edge of a blister.

Saergaeth needed Bellgrass because it gave his engines access to the swath of land between the rivers. They rolled south and west out of Miskatoll, heavy metal tracks tearing up the soil, plumes of black smoke and pounding echoes shivering in their wakes.

Willoch Keep had also surrendered without a fight. Without actually attacking, Saergaeth was making headway.

The White Leech was his new border. It fortified Saergaeth’s position as much as it hamstrung his further progress. There were few fords capable of accommodating war engines and the prince of Tentinil had taken measures to ensure that nothing crossed the river. He had mined both banks with vitriol explosives and positioned troops to overlook the fords.

For the meantime, Saergaeth’s advance ground to a halt, hobbled by defiles his engines could not manage. But Caliph knew it wouldn’t last. The metholinate shipments out of the Memnaw had stopped.

He knew with enervating certainty that Saergaeth’s zeppelins, which ordinarily transported canisters of gas, were being busily outfitted for war.

Caliph had stockpiled what metholinate Isca had, rationing use with an iron hand. But stingy allocation of resources would not win the fight . . . and it was making the populace uneasy. There were already demonstrations in Gas End. People didn’t want to fight their own countrymen, let alone a national hero like Saergaeth Brindlestrm.

People wanted light, hot water and gas to cook with. They didn’t want to fight the man who controlled the supply. Saergaeth and Miskatoll, by virtue of the metholinate industry located on the edge of the Memnaw, controlled the largest fleet of zeppelins and war engines in the north. In order to export the gas, airships were needed. In order to protect Stonehold’s primary resource, thousands of troops were under Saergaeth’s direct command. Miskatoll had an endless supply of gas and men, both of which had now been turned against the High King.

It hadn’t been anticipated because the Council hadn’t actually believed Saergaeth would turn traitor. And even if they had, what were they supposed to have done? Confiscate the zeppelins that the metholinate industry— that Stonehold itself—required to survive? Pull thousands of troops out of Miskatoll and leave the mining facilities denuded of protection?

No. There hadn’t been a way to prevent this mess. Saergaeth had known his position; he had certainly used it to his advantage.

Caliph had sent one of his three dreadnoughts to guard Tentinil by sea. The enormous ironclad ship with its pounding engines had smoldered out of Isca Bay the night before last, taking with it two thousand sailors including the two brigs that escorted her.

Most of Caliph’s light engines were already in Tentinil. But if he sent more, Saergaeth could have a fleet of airships prowling the skies over Isca, and Caliph with little left to shoot them down.

Caliph felt pinned, unable to maneuver. He had to keep his engines close to the city, which meant he had to face the brunt of Miskatoll’s mechanized onslaught with infantry.

Flying his own fleet of zeppelins out to meet Saergaeth wasn’t an option. Isca’s military boasted forty airships including the Byun-Ghala and several older, less reliable models that were practically tethered to Malgor Hangar.

Even the most conservative estimates placed Miskatoll’s fleet at one hundred strong, including fourteen leviathans.

Caliph sat in the royal study, moving his eyes from the window to stare blankly at a map of the Duchy varnished to the top of the low table in front of him.

Gadriel lounged across the room, leg crossed over his knee. He seemed to be counting books on the study shelves. An oil lamp spread the room with pearly radiance and shadows that wavered in the corners.

Caliph had left the windows open so they framed the dark steeples and ancient gables: strange creatures watching the sea. “Gadriel, what were you before you were seneschal?”

The other man stopped his count.

“I was an intern, your highness.” His very proper gray beard and moustache twitched as he spoke.

“That’s quite a synopsis.”

“I’ve liked your wit ever since your arrival, King Howl. You have a particular economy of words that I admire.”

Caliph leaned back in the cushioned divan and folded his arms. The light wrinkled across the rich pillows that, like him, seemed to brood.

“I don’t enjoy being king.”

The seneschal looked worried. “Is something wrong?”

Caliph smiled. “Nothing I could blame you for. But I feel like I’m running with a blindfold on.”

“Nonsense,” said the old man. “You’ve already got the hang of it.”

Caliph made the southern hand sign for no.

“It’s bad luck that I took the crown during so much strife.”

“Forgive me, your majesty, but your coronation was the cause of the strife and therefore inevitable. It’s good that we have a king now. A Council may run economic affairs well enough, but for war, a king is best.”

Caliph frowned. His eyes went out of focus. “What is happening in Tentinil? I should be out there, touring the field.”

Gadriel took a small snuffbox from his pocket and rapped it lightly with a knuckle. “I’ve given word to let you sleep in.”

Caliph forced a smile.

“Shall I have anything sent up?”

“No thank you, Gadriel.” Then the careful, quiet exit, the seneschal barely allowing the door to click so as not to disturb—even Caliph’s thoughts.

Caliph lay back on the divan, staring at the molded ceiling. Most of his thoughts were stillborn, hardly worth Gadriel’s care.

Yrisl knows how to fight a war. If I give all military command over to the Blue General maybe it will be better for the Duchy. I’ve got all my life to learn how to be king. No sense trying to pretend I know what I’m doing during such a critical time.

Exhaustion crept over him. He gazed from the edge of consciousness at the ceiling, eyes drooping, in and out of a dream. In the dream he was tapping on his desk, trying to explain something to Clayton Redfield about not regulating the sale of religious artifacts along the Avenue of Charms. Temple Hill was screaming their approval. He was tapping with a silver pen to make his point, tapping, tapping on the polished desk. Tapping. Caliph woke up.

There were two doors to the High King’s study. One opened inward on the castle. The other opened out. The outward one was a thick oak and metal-studded thing that screened the room from the battlements.

He sat up.

After a moment the tapping came again, outside of the dream. Soft. Insistent. He stood slowly. A guard?