The Last Page

inexperienced to handle the situation and took the reins himself. Look at the documents here.” Alani sorted through the papers and pointed out one in particular. “You can see what happened. He coerced David Thacker into selling him the blueprints. Then he turned around and sold them to the Pandragonians for a small fortune. But that’s when things went wrong.

“Saergaeth Brindlestm started negotiating a new deal with them, luring them out of Vhortghast’s pasture. They already had the blueprints and must’ve seen you as someone they wanted to replace.”

Caliph scowled.

It was clear that Pandragor was intent on helping Saergaeth win the war: not that Saergaeth needed any help.

For the next several hours the room grew dark with Alani’s counsel. The draperies sagged inward, trapping sound in mournful heavy folds. Even the lamplight seemed lacquered: little snails and lockets of light held in stasis by the darkly polished wood. The two men leaned together, scavenging from the paper bodies Vhortghast had left behind.

Alani smoked. The soft pop of his lips against the pipe stem punctuated their dilemma.

“I’m damned any way I go, aren’t I?” said Caliph. “There must be half a dozen nations that know I have solvitriol power. If I move ahead with development, the Duchy becomes a potential threat to them. We invite attack, sanctions . . .

“I could sign treaties that I won’t proceed with solvitriol research . . . allow inspections—”

“And ensure losing your own civil war,” finished Alani.

“And ensure losing my own civil war.”

Caliph’s echo was quiet and resigned. “It’s the only edge I have against Saergaeth.”

Alani nodded as he smoked.

“Alani—or should I call you Mr.—?”

“Alani. Just Alani.”

Caliph barely smiled. “Your altruistic endeavors—”

Alani wagged his finger. “It’s nothing that preposterous. I told you.” He laid his pipe aside and adjusted his old hands, folding them across his lap. “I am not a charitable individual, King Howl. This is more than patriotism. This . . . is for me.”

Caliph’s eyes returned Alani’s stare with calcified impunity. Maybe he can see a trace of pain, thought Alani. His injured ribs ached. But the High King’s unsympathetic glare only reinforced to Alani the correctness of his choice. Caliph Howl was the right man to be High King.

“Are you sure,” Caliph was saying, “that you can establish yourself quickly enough . . . to be useful in this war?”

Alani appreciated the question. Like everything else it was no-nonsense. It did not apologize or make excuses. Nor did it indicate that Caliph and Alani were friends.

“I have always been established in this city,” said Alani. “My profession took me out of Stonehold but . . . I will not be starting from scratch.”

“Then it’s settled.” Still, Caliph paused, seemed to hedge on asking one final question. “What are the odds,” he asked, “that Mr. Vhortghast will return?”

Alani suppressed a grin. “That is something you need not trouble yourself with. I will keep an adequate amount of resources fixed in that regard.” He picked up his pipe and smoked before proceeding. “I will of course need to do some cleaning.” His fingers fluttered like a feather duster. “Appoint some . . . different people to positions within the organization. That sort of thing. Don’t be alarmed if you see new faces around the castle or in my company. All of this, you and I,” he motioned with his hands, “is based on trust.”

Caliph felt sick. Trust, specifically, was a word that chafed him.

Isca had been cut off from fresh imports for at least two weeks. Yet, even with southern commodities being conspicuously absent from shelves all across the city, Caliph held back.

He would save war plans for another night, after he had talked to Sigmund one more time and verified again that certain technical aspects were not beyond the realm of possibility.

Even so, things were moving fast. They had to move fast. Without trade, Isca would not survive the winter and winter was, according to the austromancers, barely a month away.

After Alani had finished a second pipe and the two of them had said good night, Caliph went upstairs. He pulled off his boots and tossed them under the bed. Sena did not stir. He watched her breathe for several minutes —wanting her.

“Quit staring at me,” she mumbled without opening her eyes.

He wondered how many hearts lay like wreckage in her wake, wondered again if his might become one of them. Caliph cracked a window and took time to breathe. He inhaled the smell of rain as the sky grumbled.

“Mmmm—” Her purr came from behind. “I like it cold.”

He turned. The candles poured gold across her skin and hair. The blue stripe looked purple in the dark.

Caliph undressed quietly and crawled into bed. Despite his desire he could not bring himself to brave the rejection he felt waiting, lurking like a quiet beast beneath the sheets.

Sena listened to him. Eyes so intent she could hear them staring at her. She waited for him to adjust his body, make some casual, seemingly coincidental touch that would serve as the starting point.

When he did nothing, she became bored and finally drifted off to sleep.

The following day, green leaves rained sporadically, petulant that they, in their supple beauty, should be ripped from their laughing parties on the limbs and tossed out like rowdy guests. They tumbled from branches, destined to be changed hideously against the ground. With irregular weather patterns along the cooling sea, the wheat fields swirled with fog.

Sena’s boots stuttered through patches of blue shadow and striped sunlight. Her soles scraped over half- buried stones.

She bent down and examined one, but passed it over. With the disconcertingly early fall, she had decided to step up her timetable. She couldn’t stand the duality of her relationship with Caliph any longer.

The Healean Mountains had received a dusting of white, as though some prankster with all the Duchy’s powdered sugar at his disposal had orchestrated a grand hoax in the middle of the night. A sudden crispness inveigled the air.

Sena found the shift in temperature abrupt. With it, everything she had prepared for seemed to have suddenly crept up on her. The nearness to her goal, the realization of the cruelty she was about to effect brought a lump to her throat.

Caliph had already dealt with so much disloyalty. If only she could tell him what she planned to do! But the recipe was precise: taken by theft, it read.

Her time at Isca Castle was coming to an end.

I will go south, she thought, before winter seals the mountains shut.

She stopped, turned and shielded her eyes from the sun. A knee-high wall fenced in the square of untilled ground through which she had been walking. Her pack held two roundish rocks. She stooped to heft a third. She tossed it, caught it, spinning it in air, revealing its qualities.

She put it in her pack with the others and started back. As she picked her way over the weedy ground, she noticed a bent crone watching her.

Sena’s lips struggled frantically. Her hand fumbled for her sickle knife. Then she realized with internalized embarrassment that it was not Giganalee that had stopped along the road. Paranoia tongued her brain.

Heart still pounding, Sena flushed under the grandmother’s scrutiny. She was a caricature, old and short in a black shawl, peering and leaning on a stick of wood. Her crumpled mouth whispered syllables in Hinter to the two wide-eyed children half-hidden in her skirts. A boy and a girl stared at Sena with anesthetized alarm.

Sena stared back, warily. She pulled the strap of her pack tight against her shoulder and fingered her curls.

The old woman continued to whisper.

Sena headed for the road, departing the cemetery with a backward glance. She felt the setting sun burn orange around the contours of her face and suffuse her eyes with fire. Though unintentional, the effect seemed to