Black Bottle

“This is my room.”

“Oh. Uh … I must have gotten turned around.” She laughed nervously. “I could have sworn you dragged me into this one last night.” She pointed at the other door with her eyes.

“What?”

Oh, my gods! Is this my worst nightmare? “Last night?” Her voice was fragile, unsure, cracking even as the words left her mouth.

“What about last night?”

“Are you serious? I should have known.”

“Known what?”

“Known you’d do this after you got what you wanted.”

“Lady Rae, I didn’t get anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You son of a bitch!” Taelin turned and ran. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Behind her, Caliph was calling out with what almost passed for real concern. “Lady Rae! Wait!”

*   *   *

“THEY’LL get over it.” Gina’s black eyes sparkled with carvings.

“There must still be some residue of cells in the High King’s head,” said Anjie.

Miriam nodded. “Which won’t last more than another hour, I think.” She was speaking in Withil, as were the others. They had overheard the High King arguing with Taelin; now they were gathered in the small room the four of them had been given to share.

“It would have gotten worse if you hadn’t taken it out,” said Autumn. “It could still get worse.”

“I don’t think it will,” said Miriam. She snapped the tiny bones and membrane in her fist: the miniature symphysis that had allowed her to eavesdrop on the High King’s memories. “The puslet was sick when I took it out. Even if there are residual cells in Caliph Howl’s head, they won’t survive long. When they die, the link between the king and the priestess will be severed and hopefully they won’t have anything more to fight about.” As she broke the symphysis in her fist, she thought about her own shattered eardrum. In felt symbolic. Her pool of assets was shrinking. Her ability to gather information had atrophied. Her tools were breaking, shutting down. She had lost two sisters in Sandren, possibly five—if she ever discovered Duanna’s fate.

She felt her own callowness in the role of Sororal Head. Should she abort, go back to Skellum? Enlist another qloin? Or should she persist in following Sena despite the losses she had sustained? Though her decision to chase Sena had already been made, she still wondered whether it was the right thing to do.

She hadn’t told anyone except Autumn that she was completely deaf in her left ear since the flawless’ attack in Sandren. And she hadn’t told anyone, even Autumn, how the puslet had really died. All she had said was that she had taken it out, that the information coming from it had turned to drivel—and that it had been sick.

It had been very sick indeed.

“What did you do with it?” asked Gina.

Miriam let her irritation slip out. “I put my full weight on it. Against the starboard deck. Then I scraped it up and flung it over the side.”

“I was just asking. It’s an expensive piece of equipment to let bake.”

“We don’t need the puslet anymore,” said Miriam. “We know Caliph Howl is sincere. He’s going after Sena. That’s all that matters.” But in her head, Miriam had serious doubts. She had heard Sena talking in Caliph’s head as the puslet died; had worried as the new Eighth House methodically seduced him. Miriam was grateful for the High King’s pragmatic nature and the way he had stuffed those incredibly weighty emotions. But she still knew Sena was meddling.

There were other things she didn’t know.

She didn’t know how Sena had gotten inside Caliph’s head, or precisely what Sena had used to kill the puslet. Clearly she had used poison, but what kind, Miriam couldn’t be sure. As a sister of the Sixth House she had been schooled in toxins. But the subtle, pleasant-smelling thing in Caliph Howl’s system was something she had never encountered in the north.

When Miriam had pulled the puslet out, it had been green. Black and green. She had run a proof to make sure, but yes, it was definitely poisoned.

The question to follow was: how?

How could Sena come and go without being seen? Certainly she was skilled. But all of them were skilled. On top of this, all four sisters, herself included, had cut their eyes. We have diaglyphs! Miriam thought. Diaglyphs were supposed to work!

Yet somehow Sena had crept onboard undetected—for the second time. And she had poisoned Caliph Howl with a chemical Miriam had no knowledge of. Sena’s use of the poison also indicated a high degree of skill—just enough to destroy the delicate puslet, while Caliph Howl suffered nothing more than a spate of overly vivid dreams.

All of this weighed heavily on Miriam. It was clear that Sena knew about the puslet and that she wanted it out of Caliph’s head. Why? What was Sena doing? What did the High King have to do with Sena’s plan?

Miriam knew the basics of what Sena might be up to as well as any sister who got beyond the Second House. The Sisterhood’s foundations were based on this shadow war with the Willin Droul. Sena had opened the legendary book that the Willin Droul had been hunting for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. According to Giganalee the act of opening the book made Sena some kind of deity in the Willin Droul’s eyes, a deity they hated as much as they adored.

Sena’s relationship with the book somehow put her in league with the Willin Droul, whose ambitions—so Giganalee had often said—revolved around the destruction of the world.

It was thus that the Sisterhood had ever been seeking the book, to keep it out of the Willin Droul’s hands. And it was thus that Miriam was troubled deeply by the idea that Sena, whom Giganalee had seemingly inducted into the Eighth House, was now a kind of dark intercessor and champion of the Sisterhood’s longtime foes.

If Sena was everything she seemed to be, thought Miriam, how could they hope to defeat her?

“What are you thinking?” asked Autumn.

Miriam shrugged. “I’m thinking we need to stay the course. I don’t want anything to jeopardize the rest of this trip. No unnecessary risks.”

“In that case I think the priestess is a liability. We should get rid of her,” said Autumn. “We know she’s not stable. To me it looks like she’s cracking.”

Miriam knew that Autumn was right. The information that had come through the symphysis showed how unstable the woman had become. But Miriam’s rebuke was gentle. “No. If Taelin chokes on a sandwich they’ll blame us. Let it go. We’re only seven hours from Bablemum now.”

“Why is Sena headed for Bablemum?” asked Gina.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she’ll really drag us through the jungles?” asked Anjie.

“I don’t know.”

CHAPTER

32

Taelin sobbed into the soap-smell of her pillow. Her face was hot and sticky. She wanted off the High King’s airship.

How could he be so cruel?

Men were always, always, always the same.

She knew this. She had begun learning this when she was thirteen, sitting with one of the hand’s sons on her grandmother’s east steps. The boy had passed her back the roach. Its coolness burned the back of her throat even now as she remembered his hand moving between her legs.

While she smoked, she watched an army of tiny red bugs swarm from a crack in the foundation of her grandmother’s house. They had small soft bodies like drops of jam and held their rear ends in the air as they skittered over the cement, black eyes glistening. The boy’s fingers made her feel dirty and clean at the same time.