The Last Page

forgivable sin. And yet, Yrisl had nodded his approval. And now it was Alani’s turn to hear the plan.

Initially, the old spymaster slumped slightly, legs crossed in a deceptively tranquil pose. But as Caliph began to talk, the old assassin scratched his knuckles faintly and adjusted his posture in the chair. He fumbled with his pipe, lit it nervously and laid it aside without a toke. And when at last the High King finished, Alani sat in stunned silence, digesting every syllable he had heard.

Finally he picked up his pipe. Without an encouraging puff, the thick tobacco had snuffed itself. He fondled the bowl and muttered, “Do you really think it can be done?” The old man’s voice was sagely diplomatic. It betrayed neither skepticism nor contempt. Rather, Alani’s question indicated through its perfect timbre that if the High King answered yes, that would be good enough for him.

Caliph looked hard at the spymaster.

“Everything I’ve told you is true. In that respect, it can be done. But you’re the man that would have to see it through.

“Risky isn’t even the word. It’s touch and go at best. But if we had even a sixty-five percent success rate . . . Mother of Mizraim, if we managed even fifty percent, it would give our fleet a fighting chance.

“Logistics are what I’m counting on from you,” said Caliph. “Insight. A tether back to sanity, I guess. I’ve been thinking about it, bottling it up for so long. I don’t even know what it must sound like anymore, hearing it for the first time. So . . . it’s your turn. You tell me. What do you think?”

Alani stuffed his unlit pipe back inside his vest and folded his hands across his lap. Caliph could tell he was choosing words carefully.

“Well—since it is all true . . . and understanding the implications of even marginal success . . . we don’t have much of a choice. You have these . . . suits ready?”

“After a fashion. Willing test subjects are, as you can imagine, difficult to find.”

Alani smiled and made the southern hand sign for yes.

“It’s already out that we have solvitriol power,” said Caliph. “The Pandragonian ambassador himself accused me of theft. It wouldn’t be that far-fetched for Saergaeth to believe . . .”

“We need papers,” said Caliph. “All kinds of official documentation. It has to look absolutely real.”

Alani nodded and spoke with quiet businesslike decorum.

“I’ll take care of the details. Just two additional items I wanted to mention.

“One is King Lewis. He may have reconsidered his position. He wants an audience.”

Caliph hoisted one eyebrow but remained objective.

“That would be a welcome twist. When?”

“Lewis likes to hunt. Invite him on one . . . maybe next week?”

Caliph continued playing with his bottom lip.

“The cotters have been complaining about some creature in the hills. We could use Lewis’ visit as an excuse to go after it. I’ll talk to Gadriel and work something out. What else?”

“A Pplarian ship arrived this morning in Ironside . . . bearing gifts. Some very interesting weapons and, apparently, a manual on their use.”

“I’ll come to Ironside this evening. I need to talk with Sigmund Dulgensen.”

“I had planned to bring them up to the castle—”

“No. Don’t do that. I have to visit Glossok anyway. Might as well save a bunch of soldiers having to fly them up.”

Alani smiled.

“As you wish.”

At first they thought it was syphilis.

White rubbery gummata or necrotic chancres metastasized from people’s mouths and loins. But when it intensified and spread like pox, fear set in.

In Isca, where the sounds of coughing could easily leap between proximate windows like agile thieves, the word “plague” induced exoteric pandemonium.

Soap sold out in pharmacopolist and apothecary shops. Misinformed valetudinarians draped white linen in all the windows and doorways of their narrow homes.

Most already regarded the visitation’s alleged breeding ground with fear and loathing and didn’t voice objection when Ghoul Court was herded and burned.

One hundred knights and a thousand city watch converged on the unofficial borough like creatures from outlawed reality. Proboscidean masks dangled through fat tendrils of boiling air. Limp snouts swayed as they filtered breathable oxygen out of alleys swollen with plague and voluminous white clouds of disinfectant smoke.

Heavy, reinforced leather cuirasses covered the watchmen’s chests. Though it created a troubling domestic image, the knights wore chortium armor. They plugged in chemiostatic goads that hummed malevolently. Rubber-coated cables supplied the power from glowing cells embedded in the armor’s spines.

The Herald published several arguably autarchic paragraphs that labeled Ghoul Court the disease’s epicenter. Caliph had composed them and given them to the press.

All necessary force will be used to protect legitimate city boroughs not only from disease but from Ghoul Court’s long unchecked criminal element.

The Herald (and several other newspapers still cowed by the memory of Mr. Vhortghast’s visits) published the High King’s words without commentary on the morning of the operation.

The notion of contagion had such an effect on the populace that Caliph’s outre response surprisingly rallied opinion polls at Gunnymead Square.

There were many annoyed citizens who had walked or ridden streetcars for years in order to avoid the Court. They would have supported even harsher measures while dissentients lined up against them like charged particles —pluses against minuses—some cosmic example of ineluctable binary: a natural array of checks and balances that maintained uneasy equilibrium.

A scant hour before dawn, when the onslaught trampled out of Daoud’s Bend, Lampfire and Maruchine, word had leaked that troops were on their way and students from Shaerzac University had shown up across the end of Seething Lane to protest.

They waited in the predawn; drinking, smoking and singing songs, linked together arm in arm across the street. They expected their demonstration to have an impact when the troops arrived.

But unlike the city watch, the knights had little patience for civil disobedience. Their objectives had been given by the High King and they did not understand the concept of failure. Because the demonstration interfered with tactical surprise they plowed through the ranks of barking students as if they had been tissue.

Startled when their lines were sundered and their antigovernment banners burst into flame, most of the activists fled. Some were struck with goads or the metal-shod bottoms of rubber shields. Many were arrested. A handful became casualties of the raid.

A sophomoric face screamed loudly that “Violence will never win!” His attempt to tackle one of the knights met with a gleaming bar of chromium steel. His crazed expression and vicious scrabbling with the knight’s gas mask ended instantly when the goad swung out, smooth and unstoppable like a girder on chains. Its electrically charged body busted several of the student’s ribs and abrogated the luxury of many presupposed civil rights.

Placards showing Caliph Howl holding a gory sword and flaunting a malefic grin were abandoned on the street.

The knights and watchmen burst through veils of whipped-cream air. Their gloves aimed billowing hoses that vomited massive canopies of smoke. Waves of men and women held rubber shields and chrome batons and wands that outpoured flame. Heavy cleated boots crashed through barricaded doors and windows. A variety of lives were crushed and mangled in their wake.

It was not a gentle raid.

The police roared into Ghoul Court with halgrin on thick chains.

Vast porcine beasts, seven feet at the shoulder, the halgrins’ skeletons supported nearly a ton of mottled flesh and bone. Black and pink and hairless except for wiry strands that bristled on their humps, the halgrin mauled and shredded anything that scrambled or fell within their jaws.