Black Bottle

There were over thirty. Prime ministers, dictators, senators; the flagship of the emperor of Pandragor turned to mist along with its entire entourage.

After the last ship had dissipated, it was as if sky had been wiped clean. As if the entire gathering of airships had never been. Only three aircraft still floated like frightened islands. The Bulotecus, the Odalisque and the great white leviathan out of the Pplar.

Taelin was still screaming.

Sigmund Dulgensen gaped. He was white-knuckled, both meaty fists on the rail. Beside him, Alani looked like a dark cutout with a knife glued in his hand. It reflected the sky. Taelin didn’t know where it had come from or why he was simply standing there, gripping it like a talisman.

Her gaze panned down from the cerulean gulf to the deck, searching for Sena. But she wasn’t there. No trace. Then Taelin’s eyes caught the tip of Caliph’s finger and followed it off the deck. A Sandrenese condor? The High King pointed.

Of course not.

Sena was walking on the sky.

Taelin fell back in her deck chair like a wet towel. A vibration, a sound she couldn’t hear, modulated the air, ringing in the zeppelin’s frame. It made her crutches buzz against the roof. She could feel it in her chair, her clothing, tissues and teeth: a strange hum, like the aftermath of traumas she had felt before, at hospital, sapping her strength almost to the point of sleep.

Drowsily she watched Sena walking: a red and black and golden speck in the endless blue. Then her lids closed and she dreamt the nightmare all over: that her father was on Emperor Junnu’s ship, screaming as he was eaten by eldritch fire.

*   *   *

CALIPH ordered Isham Wade and his bodyguard confined to quarters until he figured out what was going on.

Mr. Wade protested violently at first but he and his bodyguard were quickly overpowered.

What exactly had happened remained unclear but it certainly appeared that Sena had single-handedly, with less effort (or thought) than it took to lift her hand, annihilated every person and every zeppelin in a ten mile radius of sky. The impossibility as well as the improbability of the act were the only things maintaining a semblance of doubt in Caliph’s mind.

Five minutes in the past, a multinational conference was underway. Now, all the assembled leaders of the world’s mightiest nations had been erased, leaving the questions of succession, leadership and national relations drifting, less than ashes in a void.

Caliph tried to remember everything she had said to him before her disappearance, before he had left her on the Odalisque and gone down to oversee the hospital. He remembered disregarding the stranger portion of the things that she had said. He remembered thinking that she was crazy. Could she have read his mind? Could she be angry enough to do this? Was it really Sena? What, oh what was going on?

He was too numb to feel. No anger or sense of betrayal. He mumbled something as he stood at the railing. “I think she told me she was going to destroy the world.” It came out sounding random, devoid of context, the only thing he could think of to say.

“Nice,” said Sig.

No one else spoke.

Sigmund turned away and marched to the deck’s wet bar. He poured himself a drink.

“When did she tell you this?” asked Alani. It felt like a ridiculous question to Caliph—that the spymaster was taking it seriously—but Caliph answered anyway.

“A few days ago. What are you thinking?”

Alani’s eyes were fixed on Sena, in the middle of the sky, still walking for the Pplarian ship. “I’m thinking whether she can do it or not doesn’t matter. It’s her intent that counts. She thinks she’s a god.”

Sigmund bellowed with laughter. “There’s no tech I know of that can sort out three dozen airships and selectively destroy them in ten seconds while the rest are left un-fucking-scathed. If she’s not a god what the fuck classifies?”

“It’s holomorphy—” said Caliph.

“Oh yeah … I see mathematicians walk on the sky all the fucking time!” Sig tossed another drink past his teeth.

“She didn’t cut herself,” said Taelin.

“What?” Caliph glared at her. He hadn’t even realized she was there but now the priestess’s tired, tear- streaked face registered with him. She had crept up directly behind him on the deck.

“Don’t holomorphs have to cut themselves?” she asked.

“I think we should take any real deliberation privately,” Alani whispered in Caliph’s ear. “This is going to break down quickly.” And the spymaster was right. Sig was getting drunk and the priestess was positively rigid with shock. Dr. Baufent asked if it would be all right to administer her a sedative.

“I need—” Caliph tried to get their collective attention. “We need to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “If Sena did this … I don’t … I don’t know how to … we just need to find some answers.”

“Find some answers!” cheered Sig.

Caliph ignored his whisky-guzzling friend. Suddenly the books Sena had given him seemed imminently important. “She said she was headed south,” he said softly to Alani.

“Who wants to get vaporized?” said Sig. He was pouring glasses.

“And we’re still alive,” said Alani. “So she must want you to follow her.”

“And what’s your opinion of that course? If we follow her?”

The spymaster pawed at his snowy beard. “I think it comports nicely with my objective of shooting her down.”

Caliph’s heart twanged strangely but didn’t rebel at the idea.

“Unfortunately we have a couple other serious issues at the moment,” said Alani, “the men we left in Sandren … and the fact that we need to get you back to Stonehold.”

“Well I’m certainly not going back to Stonehold until we’ve resolved this.”

“Oh, really?” Alani finally tore his eyes from the sky and looked hard at Caliph. “What if the unthinkable happens?”

“We’ll reinstate the Council, temporarily. I’ll step down. We’ll send a bird right-fucking-now.”

Alani pressed his lips together.

“All of this is going to point our way,” said Caliph. “We’re the only ones standing. If we don’t sort this out, every country is going to take aim at us … at the duchy. I’m not going to be any safer up north.”

Alani’s stoicism crumbled slightly, and his eyes told that Caliph was right. The spymaster looked at his shoes as a way of showing his assent.

Caliph felt the crushing impact of Sigmund’s arm wrapping around his shoulders. “Here, Caph. I brought you a drink.”

Caliph received it rather than argue. He dumped it over the railing as soon as Sigmund and everyone else turned to watch Baufent, administering an injection to a hysterical and grief-stricken Lady Rae who was bawling about her father on the Pandragonian ship. After it was over, Sigmund leaned in close to his friend and spoke lowly in a voice that only Caliph and Alani could hear.

“What the shit, Caph?” Sigmund sniffed while holding his glass in the air. “Why do you smell like apples?”

CHAPTER

24

It was only minutes later that Taelin sagged at the railing, watching the ship to which Sena had escaped molt through myriad similar forms. It was white, of Pplarian design and it was rising fast. As it punched through layer after layer of atmosphere, the ship’s shape changed in subtle gradual ways. Taelin couldn’t tell if this was real or a