Black Bottle

Sena took no joy in it. The black crescent of wreckage completed a nearly perfect ring far below her feet, gaps filled in by craft that had—erenow—orbited her in a sphere.

She looked down at the new geography and chewed her lip. God of a dying world. Light streamed from her shoulders, spitting rays through steam and dust and acid that had yet to fully clear. Emotionally, she was threadbare. Irritated at Nathaniel for his lunge toward St. Remora.

You reckless fool, Nathaniel hissed.

Sena walked across the sky, briskly at thirty knots, heading for the only ship she hadn’t touched.

I found my daughter’s head, Nathaniel said. Floating in the ocean.

“Call me callous but I don’t think you really cared about her. I think there’s something you’re not telling me.” Sena looked across the desert, north and west, across the Great Cloud Rift and out to sea. Nathaniel wasn’t lying. Arrian’s head was there, bobbing like driftwood. Why had he gone searching for it? There had to be a reason beyond familial affection.

This wasn’t a game.

Nathaniel didn’t respond to her assessment. He had left the desert and gone out over the sea.

Sena stepped from the sky onto the deck of the Iycestokian ship. Taelin was there, naked and blackish-red from head to toe. By comparison, her eyes and teeth looked incandescent. Dr. Baufent stood in the doorway, watching over Taelin’s shoulder with a terror-riven expression. Her whole body stiffened at the sight of Sena.

Taelin rushed forward. She got down on her knees.

“Shh,” Sena whispered. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” She pulled Taelin off the floor. “Get up, Taelin. Get up. We need to get you washed. We need to get everything and everyone washed. And we need to move Caliph into a proper bed. And then we need to get this ship moving again. Are you with me, Taelin? Do you understand?”

Taelin smiled a grisly smile and nodded her hand up and down.

CHAPTER

43

Earlier in the day, the Sisterhood had swung Parliament’s countless metal grilles closed across each towering windowpane. The pins were secured. Doors were bolted. Blood was spilt and the entire ground floor warded and sealed.

Despite this, the windows had shattered within moments of the onslaught and winter had billowed in. A forest of arms still flailed between the bars at every casement. Snow drifted through the central hall. The statue of the Eighth House in the atrium had become part of a frozen wasteland. Nevertheless, the silver mob did not break through.

Miriam mused momentarily over the not-quite irony that Mirayhr’s citizens had always been careful to muffle their criticism of the Witchocracy. Only now—after they could no longer enjoy whatever freedom a victory might earn—had they found the courage for rebellion, for revolution.

But as she stood in an icy balcony off the west wing, overlooking the wild fingerlings of the Willin Droul, Miriam knew this had nothing to do with domestic unrest. All that had happened was that somehow, after hundreds of years of clandestine warfare, the Willin Droul had gotten the upper hand. They had moved their dominion out of slumbering lightless reservoirs and unleashed their disease on an unsuspecting world.

Days ago, when word of the plague had first reached Sandren, many of the lower Houses had struck out through the cold. They had gone while Miriam was away, before the citizenry had turned. Before it was clear what was happening, sisters of the Fourth House and below had gone to be with their relatives.

If Miriam had been here she might have stopped them. Megan certainly would have stopped them. Those sisters that had stayed behind now maintained their vigil from Parliament’s second floor.

Two hundred twenty-two women. Hardly a crowd. More like the number of tourists on a slow day, a scant sprinkling, nearly lost amid the frescoed empyreal chambers. They were all that was left to guard the seat of Shradnae power.

Naobi burned five nights from full, pure white above the milling yard, which gave Miriam a clearer view of the numbers they faced. A thousand at least. Hundreds had frozen to death, but others had arrived. Their cries filled Miriam like the white moon filled the ice on the balcony railing.

Miriam looked up and imagined a vast ghostly squirming in the abyss beyond Naboi’s vivid corona.

Polar lights? she thought.

After crossing lines from the desert how could she think that? They had lost Anjie between the worlds. They had lost so many girls. They had lost their position of power here in Skellum and now, they had also lost the book —a secret she was trying to keep from the Sisterhood.

To Miriam, the faint ebbing tendrils in the sky were sinister. As if the Devourer had come back and turned its ravening on them. Was this it? Was she the last head of the mighty Shradnae witchocracy, destined to cope with the crumbling infrastructure Megan had left behind?

The sky swirled horribly above Parliament, black and hissing.

“Everyone’s assembled.”

Miriam felt ambushed. She had not heard Autumn approach. Now she could make out the ice crackling underfoot. It bothered her that Autumn had snuck up on her without even trying.

I’m a detriment, Miriam thought. A liability. Her injury could, in the course of any engagement, prove disastrous. Autumn knew it but said nothing.

Miriam smiled at Autumn whose calm, sweet-timbred voice, rather than reassuring her, reminded Miriam of all they had been through—and where they were going.

“All right,” Miriam said. She kissed Autumn on the mouth, softly. Then she put her arms around her and held her close.

“It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. She could feel Autumn’s shoulders tremble inside the embrace. Thankfully there was no sound.

“We’re going to catch her,” said Miriam. “We’ll end this. I promise you. We’re going to be all right.”

*   *   *

MIRIAM left the balcony and the soft whickering cries of the ghouls and went into the yawning end of Parliament’s largest meeting hall. All that remained of the Sisterhood was here, gathered by firelight and colorful metholinate lamps. Perhaps there were still qloins in Yorba or Greymoor but birds had been sent and none had returned. So this was it. All of them.

The room stilled as she took her position.

Miriam took a sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. She held it loosely, in one hand.

“Here we are,” she began. Her voice cracked. She had never been comfortable in front of crowds.

“The questions you have are simple. ’How did this happen?’

“‘Where did this terror come from?’ And most importantly, ’What do we do now?’

“All of us have lost friends and loved ones. I share your grief. As you know, until this morning, I was in the south, tracking Sena. Over the past three days I have lost some of my best friends. I was forced to leave them: in Sandren. And in the desert.

“We know from what papers were able to publish before sickness stopped the presses that the Willin Droul’s disease is everywhere. It is in the north and the south, the east and the west.

“The people of other nations cannot understand the significance of this event. Sadly, it may be too late for many of them to ever learn. But we know. We know this sickness marks the end that our enemies have long threatened.

“We knew this would happen if the Willin Droul ever returned. The Sisterhood was founded on preparing for this war.

“I know some of you believe Sena has assumed the mantle of the Eighth House. That Giganalee passed it on to her before she died.

“Even if that is true … Sena must be stopped.

“How do we stop a myth? How do we stop a legend?

“We stop it with truth. We stop it with determination. We stop it because we must. And most importantly,