The Last Page

They sculpted their own myths from words taken out of each other’s mouths, fashioning from a crude alternative lifestyle something legendary and remarkable. Worm gangs. Their language was an arrogant gutter dialect of Hinter mixed with Trade. She could hear them making catcalls.

The stories in the papers were linked to her, which was why she had taken notice. They described how the worm gangs stalked the paths of the streetcars behind terminals servicing the District Line, where rails squeezed through dangerous territory.

By the end of Lume their bodies had started to surface at an alarming rate. Behind sagging warehouses and fences, where fans spewed hot greasy exhaust from rathskellers and sleazy bistros on the Line, the bodies of Isca’s next crop of highbinders had begun to pile up.

The Herald also claimed that when the watch found them, they usually made no report. It was part of a conspiracy theory: letting the carcasses melt in with the rest of the city’s refuse, a kind of victory said the Herald; some vague proof of a self-destructive and deviant lifestyle.

These accusations against the watch pointed up through the food chain at Caliph Howl . . . and Sena. Professors of subcultural anthropology had reported their findings in a school-run, politically boisterous sheet published at Shaerzac University in Gas End. But the professors weren’t content with small scale distribution. They took their story to the Herald and cried murder: a distinction not endorsed by the city watch.

Now the Herald was labeling the homicides with bold letters at the top of the second page: BARRAGE OF HATE CRIMES AGAINST INNER CITY YOUTH. There were demonstrations on campus that accused the High King’s witch.

NO WITCHCRAFT EXPERIMENTS! shouted poster boards. The students and faculty compiled all kinds of debatable evidence that slithered loosely into one of several favored conspiracy theories.

Popular opinion in Gas End had begun to wane and chants of No War! and Council or Saergaeth! echoed across the south greens of Os Sacrum.

Sena finished her shopping and returned to Isca Castle troubled and tired.

Zane Vhortghast had suggested making an example of the loudest mouths, but Caliph adamantly refused any kind of censor. He knew the claims were baseless and therefore ignored them despite a growing host of accusations.

Mr. Vhortghast, however, would not let it rest.

He knew something had to be done. The city was getting out of hand and with war creeping south along the mountains, and a gathering of nervous burgomasters watching Isca Castle, the spymaster had taken matters into his own hands.

Dressed his best and brandishing a cane, the spymaster had paid a visit to each of the executive editors, publishers and chairmen of the six main papers . . . at their homes.

Zane Vhortghast knew them all on a sordid, personal or compromising level. Shame, avarice and fear were well-worn tools in his hands and knowing which ones to use when and on whom comprised the bulk of his considerable expertise.

“I’m not asking for complete censorship,” Mr. Vhortghast would say in a reasonable tone of voice as he poured himself a drink. “Just a bit of discrimination.”

And then, in the corner of the room, something would quiver and nod its head in lamentable deference.

Fanatics who refused to capitulate, like Dr. Frezden, had accidents that underscored, in red, the importance of adhering to new journalistic standards.

By the end of the first week of Streale the demonstrations in Os Sacrum hadn’t lost their pitch but papers citywide were suddenly casting Caliph Howl and Sena Iilool in a much more empathetic light.

Caliph, unaware of the circumstances responsible for the change in tone, read the Herald—utterly bemused.

Zane Vhortghast was a busy man that week. He closed up shop in Ghoul Court and let slip that Peter Lark had gone south, searching for greener pastures.

The apartment building he had lived in conveniently burned to the ground, taking the landlady (who had seen him without his disguise) with it to a stinking, smoldering grave. A bird-duffer and a half-slopped chirurgeon also met seemingly unrelated accidental ends.

With the coming cleansing of the Court it was Zane’s last chance to tidy up. Caliph’s raid would be no less than devastating and there was little use in being diplomatic anymore.

Caliph talked with Cameron and Sena in the evening, exhuming additional childhood stories around the darkened fireplace in the grand hall. The city remained candent long into the evening while buzzing metal fans sucked humid shadows into the castle, across the faces and legs of the chatting friends.

After dusk they decided to go for a walk on the upper parapets. Caliph relished these spare hours because the days were so busy.

Caliph leaned heavily on the battlements, exhausted. He talked about his visit with David Thacker while Isca’s mythic nightscape did little to comfort him. Chimeric gears and water towers enmeshed steepled roofs and smoke. With Sena and Cameron, he watched the city’s slow dark rhythm of streetcars and zeppelins evoke to the sounds of bells floating out of dreamholes on Incense Street.

It hadn’t happened on the day he wanted it to. Things had come up. But by the ninth Caliph had finally made it down to the dungeons.

There had been a hearing, a jury, a verdict and so on. It had happened quickly in a system without the possibility of appeal. No one was surprised when one of the papers offered a litho-slide that showed the traitor’s face and the brassy headline: FRAT BOY GETS DEATH.

The Iscan Herald was superficially more tactful, its caption debatably less sensational: MORE BAD NEWS FOR KING HOWL. Both papers were careful to downplay the relationship between the High King and his former friend. They gave Caliph the benefit of the doubt.

Strangely, the same image of David Thacker had made its way into the hands of every major columnist and hatchet man the city over.

Caliph recounted his journey to the dungeons as he walked around the patio. The humiliation, the close, fetid air shuddering with moans and broken sobs. Unidentifiable scratching sounds and insane gibbering in the dark.

“It was awful. Some of those people have been down there since before I graduated Desdae.”

He recalled how those sane enough had pled for mercy, how others swore and spit and how several bone- thin crazies on seeing him had palmed their genitals and danced.

He had breathed through his cloak in an effort to stifle the smell. Despite the horror, it was only a short walk to David’s cage.

When he arrived he looked around, confused, wanting desperately to be mistaken, to find the unscathed face of David Thacker somewhere else.

Caliph set the lantern down and fairly crumpled to his knees before the effigy of his former friend. All his anger abandoned him. He began to sob, a dry-throated hysterical silence that dredged out his soul.

David had lost a great deal of weight in ten days. His hair was clumped and tangled up in dirty tufts. His face and neck were swollen and rife with untrimmed growth, a merciful actuality that helped disguise his beaten purple skin.

A huge black mouse hung like a sack under his right eye and his left hand was bandaged in a way that indicated missing parts.

David’s voice crackled like paper.

“Caph . . . Caph . . . is that really you? Is it that bad?” David touched his own face in a gentle vain way. “You’re the king, right? You can get me out of here. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing. I got . . . I got tangled up in . . . the wrong sorts of people, I mean. I just . . .”

He was breaking, beginning to mewl.

“I just want another chance. Just one more chance, Caph. Caph?”

Caliph held his head in one hand. He knelt before the cage, face heavy, eyes clenched tight. He had internalized his sorrow.

David gave up trying to speak. Maybe he could see that quite possibly something was about to happen in his favor. He bided his time patiently.