Black Bottle

He must have known full-well that the rubies would never work. Yet he had left no part of his deception to chance. His ambit was every bit as strong as hers and just as she had hidden her thoughts from him, he had done the same.

He had foreseen her. He had known it would come to this.

Sena swallowed hard. Now she was thinking, remembering how Nathaniel had raged when she had come back from Soth without the body, but how calmly he had mentioned finding Arrian’s head.

Arrian’s eyes would last an eternity.

And all of this, every detail down through the centuries, all the research Sena had waded through at Desdae, in the south, in the long dark hours at Isca Castle: all of it had been compiled by Nathaniel Howl with the sole purpose of fooling her.

Sena was dumbstruck. How could she not have seen this coming?

It was as if Caliph had seized this one moment of clarity, this admission from Nathaniel, and remembered it subconsciously. He had guided her to it as if he had known that it was important.

Pshaw, Nathaniel hissed. And Sena stood up straight in Caliph’s dream. Because this was not the Nathaniel from the past. This was the real shade, the lich-thing come crawling over her brain. You think Caliph guided you to this memory? You fool.

“Why?”

Because I want you to know—that you had to be shown. Doesn’t that hurt? You simply weren’t smart enough to win.

“You could have convinced Arrian to give up her eyes,” Sena said with belated understanding. “She trusted you.”

Which was something you would never do.

“But I left her there,” said Sena. “You didn’t think I’d leave her body at Soth.”

A coincidental victory. And momentary.

But Sena grasped mentally at this slender ray of hope.

Sena could not believe that she had avoided his trap—almost—and that she had done it by accident.

Not good enough.

“Would you have tried to cut your pages from Arrian’s back?”

No. I’ll use yours. You won’t be going anywhere. Neither will your little grub.

Sena’s mind went to her womb. Her thoughts locked up. He knew. He knew and he was doing something about it—out there in the real world while she was stuck here, inside Caliph’s tinctured head. Yella byun!

He had told her to use the tincture to get her out of his way, while he executed his plan. Sena looked out of the dream, just in time to see Stonehold drop dead.

The eruption that radiated from St. Remora didn’t melt the falling snow. It didn’t disturb the white-caked wires strung above the streets. It made no sound at all as it uncoiled in the heart of the city, while the city’s populace still slept.

Vaccinated as it was, Isca wasn’t to be spared, it was to be harvested according to Nathaniel’s plan.

The god-pudding calved in St. Remora’s depths—birthed dead but dreaming from that crimson world. It landed in Isca with a squelchy ripple of ethereal sound. The first of the Yillo’tharnah to physically arrive. St. Remora’s clockwork pulled it out: lightless, formless and asleep … a fetus still tethered to the dark … its plasmatic black subtrahend contracted, sending an unconscious blast outward, a feeding reflex—exactly like a solvitriol bomb—barreling through Isca.

Quick as a scavenger, Nathan Howl wrought his equation and sucked the dislodged lives out of Isca like egg whites, leaving the Yillo’tharnah stillborn.

Sena turned and ran. She had to find Caliph. Her plan had just fallen apart.

*   *   *

CALIPH rested on his back. The ceiling of his uncle’s lab was coffered white. In one of the squares a spider had made an invisible web. Caliph could see a moth dangling in the threads, sucked dry. It seemed to struggle when the breeze from the windows disturbed it. He sensed that this was not real. That all of this had happened before. He knew he was in a tincture dream. But he could not control it. All he could do was go where the dream took him. He was a passenger. A voyeur looking back on his own life.

Caliph’s eyes noticed things: fly flecks on ceiling paint, cracked plaster, discoloration where there had been a leak in the roof.

He turned his head toward the lab’s bank of windows. Several were open. The old whitewashed metholinate pipes came up through the floorboards. He followed them with his eyes, around the window frames and up through imperfect holes in the ceiling. He could feel how nervous his tiny body was, heart racing like a hamster wheel.

Caliph watched and listened to the summer branches roll like waves beyond the windows. White winged insects shuddered and flashed, carefree amid the churning green. Humid summer smells mixed with medical antiseptic as his uncle turned and swabbed his arm.

Overhead, a tin ceiling fan whispered while the brittle chirr of insects rattled in the heat.

“Good boy,” said his uncle. Then there was a sharp pinch in the tender place at the crook of his arm. “Stay still.”

Caliph winced and arched his back slightly. His head pushed into the pillow.

“You’re Hjolk-trull,” said Nathaniel. “You know what that means?”

Caliph’s eyes were streaming from the corners; the pillow soaked up his fear. He shook his head slightly because he could not speak.

“Well the Hjolk-trull are descended from Gringlings, who are descended from Limuin … who are descended from gods. That makes your great-grandfather quite powerful, doesn’t it? If you believe in him. But I’m afraid he doesn’t care about you.”

Nathaniel rummaged with some metal tools on a nearby tray. He tore a length of fabric tape and plastered it over the spot where the tubing came out of Caliph’s arm. Then he flipped a switch on a small machine and Caliph watched his blood run up through the coils. He felt dizzy.

“I don’t believe in your great-grandfather,” said Nathaniel. “He exists, I’m sure. But I don’t believe in him. The scientific fact is that your blood is special. Aren’t you happy to be helping me?”

Caliph nodded. The old man’s eyes glittered with lightless mirth.

“Now hold still. We’re doing a test. I don’t have all the ingredients I need, but let’s see what we can accomplish without them.” The small machine made a sound that Caliph imitated by popping his lips. It was an airy pumping noise.

Pop, pop. Pop, pop, pop.

“Be quiet,” said Nathaniel.

Pop.

Caliph stopped but watched his blood run through the tubing, into a kind of pen that Nathaniel had picked up and was now adjusting.

“What are you writing?” asked Caliph.

Nathaniel chuckled. “I’m not writing. I’m drawing. You like to draw and so do I.”

“What are you drawing?”

“A jellyfish,” said Nathaniel. “To float in the abyss, in the dark, alone but beautiful.”

Caliph couldn’t see the drawing from his position on the gurney but he could see his uncle concentrating, whispering. Outside, the trees kept rolling, rolling, churning. His head felt like it was on the end of a stick that was being swung around the room. “Uncle?”

Nathaniel continued to whisper and draw.

“Uncle, I don’t feel good.”

The white laboratory ceiling had a black ring around it. Fuzzy. The ring was getting fatter and the hole in the ring was getting smaller. Most of the ceiling was hidden.

“Uncle?”

“Be quiet.”

The whole room had nearly disappeared and Caliph reached up with his other hand to scratch at his eyes.