Black Bottle

landscape.

She couldn’t believe she had told the High King the truth. But how had he gotten hold of one of her grandfather’s journals? And why? She felt for her necklace, then remembered throwing it on the deck. She wanted to look for it but couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her hiding spot, facing the High King again or anyone he might have told. She imagined everyone on the ship sharing a good laugh about her fake little church.

No. She would wait here until the Odalisque docked. Then she would quietly disembark. Her quest was over. She had been beaten. She would go home … to Pandragor.

Her father was certainly on the Pandragonian ship, providing advice to the emperor, busy as always. Too busy to see her in person, of course, but not too busy to assign her murderous political chores and send them to her by courier bird. She hated him. But she would endure him for the sake of a ride. The Pandragonian ship would gladly pick her up and divest Caliph Howl of his token southern ally. Then everyone could say that she had somehow been offended, perhaps Caliph Howl had even made a pass. Another brick in the foundation of a true north-south war. This thought too, rippled pleasantly through her stomach, that she might be influential enough to cause a war.

Taelin couldn’t help a small indulgent grin. Pandragor would destroy Stonehold. More importantly, they would destroy the High King’s witch.

Fantasies. Pure fantasies, but she laughed at them under her breath. Then she almost cried.

Had she failed? Oh yes, she had failed. Her religion was a fraud. But weren’t they all then? And couldn’t Nenuln be real? Wasn’t it possible that her necklace had been a nugget of truth buried in her grandfather’s chest? Some forgotten reality he had rescued from the jungle? I’m so pathetic, she thought. What’s happening to me?

What’s happening to …

The door to the starboard deck opened and the High King emerged, followed by his spymaster—the horrible man that had invited her on this nightmare trip. They were both dressed in formal black and white, sparkling with little bits of silver: they were ready for the conference.

“I’m saying we don’t have the men to cover you from whatever’s going to happen,” said Alani. His voice was soft and grave but it carried perfectly, bouncing off the rigid balloon.

“What am I supposed to do? Not go to the conference that we flew here to attend?” Taelin listened intently to the High King’s irritation.

“We need the men we left in Sandren,” said the spymaster. “That hospital is a charade. Pull the plug and —”

“Look like a fool? Pull the plug and look like I rushed up there with a box of cotton balls? Then realized I was in over my head and abandoned them?”

“It’s not ideal but—”

“You’re damn right it’s not ideal.” Caliph’s voice rose. “Those are people up there. Real people! We’re the only ones with medical supplies. No one else is going to touch this.”

“Then you have to make a choice,” said Alani. “Either we go to the conference, or we return to Sandren. But we can’t feasibly do both.”

“And why didn’t we know this yesterday?”

“Because,” Alani sounded remarkably calm, “the intelligence arrived this morning. I’m telling you, the priestess from Pandragor has been getting correspondence from her father, she’s—”

“Alani.” Caliph interrupted his spymaster with a voice that gave Taelin a chill. “If she’s a problem, get rid of her. Send her home. I don’t want to hear about her again.”

“Fine. I’ll arrange it,” said Alani.

“Back to the conference,” said Caliph. “If I don’t show up, they’re going to vilify me regardless of any humanitarian efforts I’m making up there.” He pointed at the city-state and momentarily glanced up. Taelin jerked back, trying to shrink into her chair. “You know that,” Caliph continued. Apparently he hadn’t seen her. “You know how things are stacking up.”

“Yes, but,” and Taelin could see the strain in Alani’s face now as she leaned forward again, “we believe they’re going to make an attempt on you if you show up. That’s why I’m telling you to pull out of Sandren. I need those men back down here—”

“Put another watchdog on me.”

“That’s another thing we need to talk about. All our remaining dogs are dead. Either someone’s managed to slip aboard and…”

Taelin put her hand over her mouth. A dark shape had just appeared in front of her at the top of the metal staircase that spiraled down to the deck. Where it had come from, Taelin didn’t know. It looked down at the deck as if it too had been eavesdropping.

The figure waited only a moment. Then it started down the metal staircase and Alani stopped talking. It wasn’t until that moment that Taelin actually realized it was Sena Iilool. Just as the High King’s witch turned through the spiral so that she was about to drop out of sight, she looked up, straight into Taelin’s face.

A gust of wind tossed Sena’s clutch of curls forward, carrying the smells of sweet mint and lotus.

Moments later she reappeared on the deck below, her back once again to Taelin.

Alani looked stricken and the High King seemed to lose his perpetual color. “We searched everywhere just before we left,” Caliph was saying. “How did you get on the ship? Where have you been?”

Taelin felt paralyzed as she watched the scene unfold. Would Sena give her position away? Would she be arrested for spying? Had the High King’s witch really just materialized out of thin air? What was happening?

“Caliph,” said Sena, “we’re done here.”

“What?”

“I’m going south now.” Sena made no indication that Alani was even there.

The High King’s mouth opened slowly.

Alani’s frosty eyebrows lifted. A man in black came out onto the deck and addressed Alani. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know how she—” Alani raised his hand, indicating for the guard to stand down. The fact that sentries had been posted drove home to Taelin even more deeply how wrong it was for her to be here.

“Sena,” Caliph gave his witch a pained smile, “can we talk about this later. I’m in a—”

“There’s no meeting,” said Sena.

Caliph scratched the side of his neck in irritation. “We came here for—”

Sena had walked to the railing and now looked out at the throng of brightly colored zeppelins. “Alani is right. The south wants you dead.” The wind tugged every curl and strap attached to Sena’s frame as she stood squarely, one hand on the rail, one hand lifted gently as if to touch some hanging fruit. Then she said something Taelin could not understand.

The daylight flickered as if an array of clouds was passing overhead at impossible speed. But the skies were empty and blue. Taelin couldn’t help looking up, just to be sure.

When she looked back down, the brilliant circus of zeppelins hemorrhaged, every one cusp to keel. Not with fire. And not all at once. A kind of amplitude went through their frames that Taelin sensed more than saw. The eight-hundred-foot behemoth out of Bablemum was the first to go. The Grand Arbiter’s airship, billowing brass and aqua sails crumpled like a blown egg. As it folded, its skin, its duralumin beams and whipping cables, its beautifully fluted air intakes and shimmering fuel cell exploded into the blackest, brownest, most beautiful orchid-colored clouds.

Taelin made a sound like a screen door, both spring and hinge. It escaped her mouth but no one noticed. She stared in shock at the—what? Fire? Smoke? The blowback volumes rolled and evaporated like dissipating mist.

Twinkles of brilliant blue stuttered through the explosion’s brown heart. Then everything dissolved into burnt umber steam and blew east on the prevailing winds. The airship had simply disappeared.

It was the same with the others. One after another. Dadelon’s red and silver. Pandragor’s orange and blue.

Taelin screamed but no one heard her. All eyes and ears were tuned to the destruction. People were coming out onto the deck now for a better view. Sigmund Dulgensen and the diplomat from Iycestoke. Even Dr. Baufent.

Sena had stopped speaking but the destruction continued. As if a slow breeze were moving west to east, when its leading edge touched a ship, that ship detonated and dissolved.