The Last Page

came looking for you and found your cottage. I guess that’s where the scar came from?”

“You would have followed me to Eloth, wouldn’t you? You found the note.”

Caliph felt hot with embarrassment. He hated that he felt so syrupy over her. It had never been the same for her. Never sloppy. These feelings were supposed to be gone, dead with time. But their revival was wonderful, sweet, heady, almost dizzying and lined every inch with fear. What if she goes away again? He felt half-tricked, half-cheated at his own enamoredness.

“How did it go? Your search for that book?”

Her eyes lit up. She whispered even though there was no one else in the room.

“I have it. It’s here.”

“What happened at the cottage?”

A knocking sounded from the door behind the tapestry. “Your majesty?” a servant’s voice called from just outside.

“Don’t come in, I’m bathing,” Caliph shouted.

“Majesty,” Sena whispered playfully. “Do I have to call you ‘majesty’ too?”

“Shh—” Caliph scolded.

She rolled her eyes. “They can’t hear us.”

Caliph stood up and rummaged through his wardrobe.

“I’m not so sure about that. Regardless, we have to find some clothes for you.”

“What’s wrong with mine?”

“As difficult as it may prove to be, we need to make you look like a serving boy. The last thing I need is added scandal.”

“Sorry to inconvenience you.” She splashed.

Caliph turned toward her. “You know I didn’t mean it like that. It’s political bullshit, nothing else.” He stopped and frowned. “How in Emolus’ name did you get inside?”

Sena’s lips puckered at one corner. “You opened the door.”

Caliph snorted. “I mean the grounds. No holomorphy?”

She shrugged. “Maybe . . . just a little.”

“Then maybe you could get out the same way you got in. I mean, I can get you some breakfast first—”

His tongue was moving faster than his mind. He came up short.

“Thanks. I’ll just eat and,” she waved her hand around, “banish myself.” But her voice sounded far from offended. “What are you worried about? You’re the High King. You can make love to whomever you wish.” She turned over in the water and beckoned him with a finger. “You don’t really think I could pass for a serving boy, do you King Howl?”

He walked slowly back to the tub.

“It could be done, I think.” His voice sounded as though he were actually thinking about it. “It would take some work.”

Sena’s soapy hands reached up for his ruffled lapels. She pulled him down. The water in the tub rose suddenly, flowed over the lip and wet the tasseled carpet all the way through to the floor.

After her bath, and another session on the High King’s bed, she got dressed. Caliph threw a huge hooded cloak over her and escorted her from the castle.

She could tell his charade fooled no one and guessed he wasn’t the first king to ferry women. When she was safely on the city streets, he told her he would meet her at a stone marker south of West Fen beyond the city walls.

His plan was bizarre and ill-thought, something completely unnatural coming from him. “I can’t have you just show up in the castle. I’ll escort you out and then meet you someplace. Then I can bring you back in.”

But she didn’t argue. He wanted her. That much was clear. And for the time being that was all that mattered. She took a cab to West Gate and left the city, following Caliph’s directions.

Without the urban sprawl, Isca framed a new world of mountains and bogs and land by the sea. It brought back memories of her childhood in Tenwinds. Her crotch ached pleasantly. She climbed a low green tor west of Isca, again following directions, waiting for Caliph to show up. While she waited, she tossed the possibility of being honest around in her head the way Ns played with prey.

For an instant she thought about telling Caliph the truth. But what was the truth? And how could she tell him if she didn’t know?

She quickly set the idea aside. The formula for unlocking the Csrym T explicitly said that his blood must be stolen.

She paced back and forth near the stone of Mizraim, waiting for Caliph, arguing internally.

She had never felt this way before. But was it real? Or was she simply deceiving herself, forging false feelings for Caliph in an attempt to find a rare ingredient?

No, she thought, this is love. Mawkish and ridiculous and inutile. Her hopes soared. An ampoule was not so much. Caliph would not die from it. But it must be stolen. And at the right time.

She had to wait. Wait for autumn.

But she felt it now!

She kicked the stone of Mizraim in her frustration, worried that her feelings might fade with the leaves. She began to panic, tempted once more to regard the strange ingredients as mundane superfluities unrelated to the true mathematical workings of the spell. As the temptation rose, so did a gibbering madness at the back of her head, a cold upwelling that quickly swept the notion away.

She had not come for Caliph. She had come for the book. When she had met him in the library that first night in Desdae he had sent shivers through her. She had decided later, after verifying the recipe several more times, that he was the one for the equation—if she ever found the grimoire.

She leaned against the stone and stared down at the strange city. Morning fog sagged in the lowlands and distant shouts ricocheted through the gray patched-over brick of West Fen. She was an interloper, a foreigner. And yet the book’s howl seemed to quiet in this land, to give her respite from the urgency to open it.

“Yella byn,” she whispered with derision. This is not my home. Once this is over I will not be able to stay here. She knocked the back of her head against the stone as if to dislodge the fantasy.

For a long time she thought of nothing. She cleared her mind and stood enjoying the clean damp smell of the upland. A mile away the city groaned in discordant unison, like some massive abomination in the agonies of birth.

At the edge of West Fen, breaking from the jagged edge of farm machinery piled against three-story buildings, an enormous black horse trotted into view.

For Caliph, traveling alone outside the castle was not only pointedly stupid, but also difficult to achieve. Yet he had managed to slip away.

He called a greeting in Old Speech.

“You hardly look Hjolk-trull.” She crossed her arms and stood with her head tilted toward one shoulder.

He reached down, extended his hand to her.

She took it and pulled herself up onto the pillion.

“That’s all right. What’s a Hjolk-trull?” he joked. “Did you know I stole your horse?”

“Did you know I’m a witch?” It had to come out sooner or later. She couldn’t live at the castle and hide her books, her study, her passion. He had been to the cottage, to her hidden cellar. He had to know!

“Crossed my mind,” he said.

She settled behind him and spoke directly into his ear. “That’s quite a headline: HIGH KING IS WITCH- FUCKING HORSE THIEF. Where are we going?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere. I think it’s time I looked around in some old places.” The warhorse lurched up the tor’s heathery slope.

“I suppose I’m one of them?” Sena said. “Your old places?”

“Old friends,” he corrected. “First we try to hide our relationship, now the verbal sparring. Are we going to do acrostics next?”

“Mmm—” Her lips were warm against his neck.