The Last Page

“Already said my good-byes to Caliph. I’ll be gone before dawn.”

She didn’t know why she wanted him to like her, but she did. She ridiculed herself for it but still, she wanted to meet whatever criteria he employed. Ever since eavesdropping on that first conversation, she had wanted fervently to be good enough for Caliph in Cameron’s eyes.

Cameron said good night and continued on his way.

Inexplicably dejected, Sena climbed the stairs to Caliph’s bedroom and drew herself a bath.

¹⁹ W.: “Mother frets over her girl.”

²⁰ O.S.: Animal baby. A mild slur that flexes to a variety of contexts.

²¹ U.T. Approximate pronunciation: Dlimehnayi-oan dlore.

CHAPTER 26

Caliph found out about the metholinate lies on the eighteenth of Streale. Ever since seeing the bouquets of glowing gas at the opera house, he had been nervous.

Lodged deeply under Ironside, the city’s metholinate reserves resided in enormous pressurized metal caverns. Before Saergaeth cut the supply, zeppelins from the Memnaw had bellied up to spindles in Ironside and pumped the precious fuel down twenty stories’ worth of pipe, through nozzles and gauges into the reservoirs.

Based on readings taken from monitoring facilities in the nether basements of Glossok Warehouse, Caliph received a weekly update on exactly how much gas was left.

Worried and too impatient to wait for the weekly report, Caliph went to Glossok on the eighteenth in the company of two knights. He surprised the guards at the measuring station who looked positively terrified at seeing him there. They took him to the gauges so he could see for himself the dwindling supply.

But when Caliph reached the dials, to his confusion, he found the metholinate levels higher—much higher— than the numbers in his reports.

He interrogated the technicians, demanding to know how such an error could have been made.

Terrorized, they stood mutely, shuffling through sheets of figures and looking to one another for something meaningful to say.

“Are these gauges correct?”

“Y-yes, your majesty.”

“Has any metholinate been added to the tanks?”

“No, your majesty.”

“Then what in the crue-blistered memory of Burim is going on here?”

The technicians seemed to forget their eminent degrees. They fumbled for answers even when Caliph demanded their names.

“Arrest these men.”

The knights obeyed.

Furious and bewildered and at the same time relieved at the discovery of three more months’ worth of gas (even if the restrictions were lifted) Caliph had the technicians interrogated while he returned to Isca Castle to ponder what it could mean.

Why would someone falsify the readings on the reserves? To panic me? Trick me into a sudden ill-planned offensive against Saergaeth? Doubtful. It was too improbable to hope for. But if not, then why?

For weeks, the reports had been coming out of Ironside, each one carefully contrived. An appalling though plausible level of depletion had been meticulously depicted. An orchestrated plunge of critical numbers that cried out urgently: the city is starving!

Unless . . .

Unless someone knew about the blueprints!

The only reason Caliph had changed his mind and sanctioned the solvitriol project had been because he believed the city was on the brink of gobbling up the last remaining cubic feet of metholinate in its stores. Someone had duped him. Someone had known.

But who besides Sigmund . . . unless Sigmund had talked? Who could benefit—specifically—from solvitriol power?

He imagined Simon Stepney, the burgomaster over Growl Mort who had given him the statue of the factory.

No. That wasn’t the right question. The right question was: who might benefit from proof that the Iscan government was conducting solvitriol experiments? Someone who wanted to sell the other set of blueprints! Someone who would send government lab notes to a potential buyer as proof of product! What about blackmail? Or, thought Caliph with sudden clarity, what about someone who was truly, honestly loyal to the Duchy? Someone who knew I didn’t want to give Sigmund the go-ahead . . . someone who knew a false crisis would prod me into a course of action that (even though I found distasteful) would ultimately save the Duchy?

Caliph felt sick. He paced around his room trying to figure out who might have been able to discover such sensitive information. The pile of names dwindled quickly. He sat down in a high-backed chair to think.

When Sena opened the bedroom door she could see instantly that something was wrong.

Caliph looked up. “Hi.” His voice was soft and expectant. “How’s your head?”

Sena touched her forehead where the pain of her familiar’s death still ached occasionally. “I’m fine.”

She could tell by the way he asked that he wanted something. At first she thought it was sex. They hadn’t made love in two weeks. But as she came into the room and shut the door, she could see by his expression that wasn’t it.

He whispered, “I have something . . . a favor to ask. I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do. It could undermine . . . a lot of things.”

Sena said nothing. She walked over and sat down beside him, looking at him intently. She had never seen him so nervous.

Caliph reached out, as though to reassure himself, and touched her fingers.

“What?” she coaxed. “What do you want me to do?”

Caliph looked around the room as though paranoid of peepholes or vents capable of conducting sound.

“I—want you to . . .” He couldn’t seem to get it out. “I want you to find out everything there is to know about . . . Zane Vhortghast.”

The spymaster came to Caliph’s room the following evening looking paler than usual. He took a seat only when Caliph bid him to do so and adjusted the ascot beneath his vest.

“I heard there was a discrepancy in the metholinate reports.” As usual, Zane’s expression gave nothing away.

Caliph was standing at the windows, looking west into a colorless sky.

“Yes. I had some technicians arrested. I was hoping you could shed some light on this . . . what with your numerous connections.”

Zane remained cool.

“Unfortunately it’s news to me, your majesty.”

Caliph turned and met the spymaster’s fearless eyes.

“I was afraid of that. I have suspicions of my own.”

Zane grew genuinely interested. He leaned forward in his chair and asked who.

“Simon Stepney,” said Caliph with an air of strange mystique. “He and Ben Ngruth would both have a vested interest.”

Zane nodded slowly, as though weighing several things on the side.

“That’s good thinking. I should check into them . . . both.”

“I want you to go tonight. Personally. I don’t want any blood or threats. Not until we know something for certain.”

Zane smiled. Caliph had to look away.