Black Bottle

Specks wasn’t floating. His thin body had been carried from the hallway near the kitchen and laid out on the deck where there was more room to work. His shirt had been torn open. Some safety mechanism in the bracer had sensed a change in blood pressure and the tiny holomorphic engine that usually allowed him to levitate had shut itself off. The ticking that always announced Specks’ presence had stopped and Caliph felt the silence.

Specks had long needed a haircut. His dark hair tossed around his eyes in the wind but his eyelids did not flinch. His skin was paler than usual and his mouth was slack and open.

“What happened?” asked Caliph.

“I don’t know,” said the cook. “One minute he was fine. The next, he’d floated into a cabinet and banged his head.”

Caliph couldn’t see a mark. “Did he knock himself out?”

“He hit it pretty hard, but I don’t know if it was hard enough to—”

“He’s been poisoned,” barked Baufent. She was looking at his pupils. “Increased heart rate, cold and clammy. He’s drooling. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what he’s taken. I can’t fix this! Get the fucking witches!”

Caliph turned and ran. He plowed through the narrow hallway and banged on the witches’ door.

Miriam answered. “What is it?”

“Specks. The captain’s son. He’s been poisoned. We need you.”

Miriam glanced back into the room, then came straight into the hall.

Caliph opened the door for her.

“Come on.”

They hurried down to the hall. Caliph noticed her clenching her fist. She had already cut her palm in anticipation of holomorphy and was bleeding freely. She was whispering.

As she came onto the deck where Specks was laid out, Baufent looked at her solemnly.

“He’s gone,” said Baufent.

The captain of the Bulotecus, that great tall deep-chested man, had folded up on one of the deck chairs, hunched forward over his son and was sobbing brokenly. His face was in his lap, his arms covered the back of his head.

Miriam looked pale. She got down and examined Specks. Her hand bled across his tiny chest and the smear was vivid and dark across the whiteness of his ribs. She looked up at Caliph. He hadn’t expected a hardened Shradnae witch to react like this.

Her eyes were full of restrained emotion. “This was professional,” Miriam said. “I can smell it on him. It’s trixhidant.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a southern plant,” said Baufent.

Miriam made the hand sign for yes. “That’s right. He had to drink it or eat it.”

“He drank one of the glasses from the lunch tray,” said the cook.

Despite the lump in Caliph’s throat, he tried to analyze Miriam’s fear. The witches knew poison. Miriam had to know that they would be the obvious suspects. But Caliph didn’t believe, in his gut, that they were to blame.

“Your majesty—” The cook leaned in to whisper in Caliph’s ear. Caliph noticed Miriam cock her head and listen. “Lady Rae was in the kitchen just before the tray went out. She was acting … strange.”

“I can’t see her trying to poison anyone,” said Caliph.

Caliph tried not to think about Specks. His main goal was protecting anyone else from the murderer—whoever that was. He tried to remember what had happened after Specks brought the tray into the dining room. Could Isham Wade or Mr. Veech have reached across the table in some unaccounted-for moment and dissolved the poison in his drink? The only person who might have seen it happen was Specks.

Caliph heard the captain cry.

Baufent stood up, looking gray and beaten. Her shoulders slumped. She turned away and went to stand at the railing where the wind howled.

Caliph went over and touched the captain softly on the arm. “Vik? Viktor?” The captain’s breathing was a shudder. “We’re going to find out who did this.”

“Just let me be.”

*   *   *

A FEW minutes later, Sigmund stepped into Caliph’s stateroom with a mystified almost sheepish expression on his face. “Am I in trouble?” His eyes went first to the great circular window thrown open to the sky and then to the bureau where they seized on a ruffle of black satin previously invisible to Caliph.

The stretchy crumple of underwear registered strongly now and brought back embarrassing memories of Sena on the bar in the Odalisque’s stateroom. Caliph didn’t know how they had gotten here but he supposed she had, at some point, used the Bulotecus to change. He almost walked over and swept them into a drawer. Instead he gestured toward the only chair and said, “No. You’re not in trouble. Have a seat if you want.”

“I’ll stand.” Sigmund shifted from one foot to the other, gazing out through the window at the string of huge heads that the Bulotecus was passing. They were carved from black stone and tilted every direction, rising from the sand in wind-polished splendor.

“We’re in deep shit,” said Caliph.

“I heard the little guy didn’t pull through,” said Sig.

“No, he didn’t. So there’s an assassin on board.”

“Okay.” Sig scratched the side of this neck and kept listening.

“I’ve got you that I can trust,” said Caliph. “Dr. Baufent doesn’t really like me. The priestess—I don’t know what’s going on with her—she could be the one. The diplomats from Iycestoke? Right now, they’re my primary suspects.

“What about the witches?”

“I don’t think they did it. They’re after Sena. Why would they try to kill me? If I die, this ship turns around and goes back to Stonehold.”

“Sort of. We’d need to get fuel.”

“Whatever, you get my point.”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s not the worst part of the shit, Sig. The assassin isn’t our biggest problem. Look out there.” He pointed through the window, beyond the mysterious monumental heads. “We’ve got an Iycestokian armada.”

“Reeeeally?” Sig headed toward the window. He took two steps and then, for no apparent reason, the glass exploded. Nuggets bounced like ice cubes over the floor. Sig pulled up short.

Caliph scowled and went to the gaping casement, boots crunching on glass. The sky pulled across his hair and face like steel wool, making his eyes burn. Below, the dunes undulated with bright colors like the back of a poisonous grub. The sand, orange as flame, divorced itself from great blue spots and splatters of something else. From the air, it looked like industrial quantities of smalt had welled up from underneath. The sand refused to mix with it and instead poured around it with the wind, forming crisp blue-and-orange patterns.

Out in the sky a faint zip faded into a muffled whine.

“I think they’re shooting at us,” said Sig.

Caliph was incredulous. “Why would they do that? They have an ambassador on board!”

Sig craned his head out the window to stare at the shadow, a fume really, like the indiscernible smudge of far-off birds wheeling. An entire colony.

Another noise whizzed past the open window.

“Huh,” said Sig. “I do believe that’s what’s happening. They’re fucking shooting at us.”

Caliph took out his bottle of chewable tablets and popped two. They dissolved into lemon chalk-powder. The grit stayed between his teeth.

“I thought the witches,” Sigmund looked confused, “weren’t they doing some kind of, what did they call it? Glamour? Ain’t they supposed to try and hide us?”

Sig walked to the bar and pulled down a bottle of whisky. He glanced at the brand. “This stuff could carry me to town on its back.” His enormous hands rested around the neck but did not open it.

“Well,” said Caliph, “I guess the south has holomorphs.”