Black Bottle

end. “We’re going down,” said the captain. He looked ashen. The copilot was flipping switches without any visible effect.

“You should brace yourself,” said Nichols.

Caliph rested a hand on the console. He opened his mouth to make a suggestion just as the nose of the ship dipped, sending him flying over the controls. His back smashed against the inside of the windshield, making fractures. A terrible snapping sound reverberated through the entire craft, then the nose came up and Caliph found himself on the floor.

“There went the mooring arm,” shouted the captain. “Probably sheared off at the bolts!”

Caliph had the sensation that the man was wrestling a wild animal. The captain’s shoes squeaked against the duralumin floor as he braced himself out of his chair.

Caliph had a good view of the shoes. Iscan brand High Backs—featuring a tiny black tag depicting a white mountain: High Horn. His cheek was pressed against the floor.

“Here it comes!” Nichols yelped.

And then the second impact vibrated through the airship’s frame.

A dull horrible roar shuddered through the Bulotecus. Caliph was lifted up, a momentary levitation, then dashed back down. Again, airborne. He saw Neville come up out of his copilot seat, legs flailing. Down. Bam! Up again. His stomach flipped with the rapid motions.

He realized vaguely that the Bulotecus must be on the ground, sliding across the dunes, propellers still thrusting it forward.

He pulled himself toward the door, crawling, bouncing. As the airship hit a prolonged patch of level sand, he was able to lurch out the door and down the stairs.

He rolled over the sharp steps and felt the massive ship heave to a stop. Millions of individual grains of sand screaked against the hull, rasped sharply for a final instant; then the maw of the desert settled, a massive toothless creature that had finally gotten its grip and would never let go. The wind roared triumphantly.

Caliph found himself in a painful pile at the bottom of the steps. His right thigh felt deeply bruised; he was also fairly certain something had gouged a hole in his lower back. His knuckles were bleeding and his face hurt but a real damage assessment would have to wait.

For the moment he savored the stillness of the ship. The only sound was sand tittering on metal. Then he became aware of other things. Wind, a broken cable scraping.

Maybe I’m dying—again. Zeppelins … He chuckled. Fucking bad luck.

He attempted to move but his whole body rebelled. What do you think you’re doing? it said.

He kept his eyes shut.

In an attempt to get his mind off the pain, he thought about Sigmund and Baufent and Taelin. He tried to run through the crew list but couldn’t. He felt the ones he had skipped. Even though he couldn’t remember their faces or names, he felt the holes they left in his mind.

He hoped Sig was okay. Then there was Owain. Owain was a bodyguard Caliph felt some affinity for, even though conversations with him were usually only two or three sentences long. Who else? His ears were ringing.

He rolled onto his knees but sharp pain in both shins threw him on his ass. He pressed his back up against a deck cabinet. At least he was sitting up.

He got to his feet. Sat back down.

Nearly passed out.

He cradled his head for a moment with one of his torn-up hands and felt his hair stick in the blood. He sat there.

He felt alone amid the messy wreck of his life. Stranded in the desert. He wanted to go back to Sandren and make a different choice. Strike that. He’d have to go back to Isca and never leave for the conference at all.

He regretted, in a cloudy confused way, all the people on the Bulotecus that he had dragged into this.

He wrenched himself to his feet. His legs were wobbly but he made his first objective an easy one. He stumbled up the steps to check the cockpit. Pilot and copilot were both sleeping over their brass controls; their own red oil leaked across the displays.

Caliph didn’t know whether to try and help them or race off and find Sig. He still felt uncertain about his course even as he ripped a first-aid kit off the wall. He pulled each man down to the floor, laying them out as gently as he could in the cramped space. He checked for pulses clumsily, having only a vague idea of what he was doing. Their wounds seemed superficial except for a puncture in Neville’s chest. The copilot didn’t seem to be breathing.

There was nothing in the kit that would change that. Caliph sifted through bandages and antiseptic. The inflatable splint seemed like a sardonic joke. Caliph grabbed Neville by the chin and forehead and blew into his mouth. Immediately, a thick red goo boiled out of the puncture wound in the man’s chest.

Horrified, Caliph stopped. He didn’t know what to do for either man. He set out again, down the steps, across the deck and toward the cabins in the direction of women’s voices.

*   *   *

WHEN Caliph Howl came around the corner, Miriam gasped. He looked like he had showered in blood and rolled in the sand. At first she thought one of the nyaffle had bitten him. He was barely walking.

“Where are you hurt?” She felt an unaccountable desire to help.

“I’m fine,” he said, which was certainly not the case. “We need to find everyone. Get everyone together.” He started to cough. She wondered briefly about internal injuries. Whether he lived or died didn’t really matter anymore. But the fact that he was walking around—looking like that—affected her.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

He asked her something in return. She adjusted her head and cupped a hand behind her good ear.

Caliph limped forward. “What’s wrong?” he asked again. He lifted a mangled hand and pointed it in Anjie’s direction. Apparently he had heard her sobbing.

“Nothing.” But keeping him cordoned from the truth was pointless. Even now his eyes scanned the deck, hunting for the reason. He found it quickly. Gina’s arm was pinned behind the deck rail. It marked the spot where the airship had rolled to starboard and crushed her body between the desert and the hull.

His shoulders slumped at the sight and he clenched a fist in his hair with what seemed genuine angst. Smothered as he was in his own stiffening blood, the act lifted his curls. They stood on their own even after he removed his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

One of the High King’s bodyguards emerged from the backdrop of wreckage and lowered himself to the deck from a dizzying angle. He carried a gas-powered crossbow and seemed in good health. He fretted over the High King for a few moments until Caliph finally screamed at him to check all the rooms for survivors.

Miriam turned her attention back to the qloin.

“We need to go back,” Anjie hissed in Withil. “We need to take her back to Aldrun…” She was hunkered up against the railing, holding Gina’s pale hand.

Miriam knew it wasn’t possible. Gina would not be one of the girls that returned to Skellum. Her burial wouldn’t be in the sacred tombs, but here in the desert.

“Anjie, we can’t get her out. We have to go.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

Miriam felt the pain in her words. They had already lost too many in Sandren and now, as dusk and the sandstorm pulled in around them, thick with the stench of carrion; now, with Sena’s ship nowhere in sight, Miriam felt the burden of her decision.

“We can’t kill the Eighth House,” hissed Autumn. She whispered it into Miriam’s right ear, keeping the breach of protocol just between the two of them. Miriam knew she was right. What did this mean? Was this it? The end of the Sisterhood?

They were one qloin now. One qloin that should have been able to do impossible things! But Miriam felt the exhaustion buckle her knees. Its weight was crushing.

“Miriam?”