Black Bottle

This time it was the High King of Stonehold that addressed her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” His eyes looked briefly at the tragedy behind her. “Can I … can I get your help?” Blood dribbled off his middle finger, hit the deck and solidified in the dust. “I’m going to check the fore cabins,” he said. “Will you please check the others?”

Miriam hesitated. What did she care about any of these people? Gina was gone! Their mission seemed impossible. Caliph Howl had ceased to be useful.

“Yes. Of course,” she said. Autumn looked at her quizzically. “Stay with Anjie,” Miriam said in Withil. Caliph Howl had already turned and dragged himself over the broken deck.

Miriam reached up and gripped the door frame. The passageway beyond was steep but hardly vertical. Inside, she heard the voices of Caliph’s bodyguards, gnarled by wind, echoing.

The first door she came to was open. She looked in and scanned the darkness. Nested like ungainly hatchlings in the room’s destruction lay Caliph’s physician and Lady Taelin Rae.

Sharing the same nationality leant Miriam considerable familiarity with all the scandals Miss Rae had faced in the south. And here she was again, embroiled in political catastrophe, tangled in the wreckage of a Stonehavian airship.

While Miriam climbed toward the priestess, the physician stirred, grumbled and attempted to right herself. “Who are you?” the older woman demanded. She had a huge goose egg on her forehead. Then, “It doesn’t matter. Help me get her up.”

Together they lifted Taelin’s limp body toward the door. There was no place level to lay her down so extricating her from the wreckage seemed the best course.

“Is she alive?”

“She’s breathing,” said Baufent.

They got her into the hall and carried her downhill, out onto the deck where they laid her on a relatively flat sweep of textured metal. The deflating gasbags formed a pavilion of sorts that shielded them partially from the storm.

Miriam watched a moment as the short woman, tangled in her red coat, checked Lady Rae’s vitals. She spoke to Taelin while concentrating on her trade. “Come on,” the doctor whispered. “You and I are going to play cards again…”

Miriam didn’t want to look. She turned away and went back to the qloin. Anjie had quieted.

“The Iycestokians are right above us,” Autumn said. “Probably waiting out the storm.”

Miriam shook her hand up and down. “Apparently the diplomats—Wade and Veech—were locked in the hold. When we hit the desert, the hull caved in. I heard from one of the Stonehavians that they’re pulling the bodies out now.”

Autumn changed topic. “So? What do we do?”

Miriam’s diaglyphs scanned the wreckage. There was blood. Some here and some there. But what holojoules still sang on the wind were surprisingly scattered. The crash had dispersed everything—even the nyaffle.

There simply weren’t enough holojoules to travel, especially not without a starline. Without the markers, without the proper lines to walk, crossing was costly and dangerous. And there were three sisters to move. Far too many cuts of blood to gather from this tiny crew. But, she thought, there is an Iycestokian airship hovering overhead. She felt confident there would be a hundred eighty people there, which would be enough for the three of them to cross lines.

“The king’s bodyguards mentioned a chemiostatic car in the hold but apparently it’s destroyed,” said Autumn. “The water tanks are broken. They’re leaking into the sand.”

Miriam inhaled the smell of carrion, strong and choking.

It was actually mixed luck that the hylden’s enormous carcass, invisible through the storm, would cover the smell of the crash. She knew the nyaffle had not gone far. Southern papers routinely chronicled nyaffle attacks on zeppelins downed in the deep desert, once or twice a year. If they returned, the qloin could use them to travel. But for the moment the Sisterhood was trapped.

Nyaffle, she mused. It had been a good plan. She admired Caliph Howl. Her thoughts turned from the High King as Anjie spoke her name.

Miriam looked at the two girls she had left. Both of them filthy and frightened though they would never say. Tears had cut through the dirt on Anjie’s cheeks but she had checked herself. She was ready for Miriam’s command.

“Let’s get out of the wind,” Miriam said firmly.

She wanted to coax the qloin across the wreck, toward shelter, out of the shock radius of Gina’s pale limb. The desert temperature had dropped quickly as twilight slipped into dusk. With Autumn’s help, she dragged a thermal crank toward the chosen site, a found hollow between the aft deck and a sand dune. Beneath the zeppelin a pile of food, chemiostatic torches and medical supplies had already started to accumulate thanks to the efforts of Baufent and a couple of the men. The provisions accreted quickly in plentiful contrast to the number of survivors.

Miriam wound the crank. Its dials wobbled and glowed but the sound, the ticking, was inaudible under the red-purple screens of sand that ripped and howled around them. For her the roar was one-sided, mono-directional, entering her brain only from the right side of her head.

She assessed the survivors: Lady Rae was sitting up; the physician seemed fine. Surprisingly, one of the diplomats and a single bodyguard were also here. Both alive. Isham Wade had been hauled out with serious injuries. His shirt was torn open and Miriam noticed that his chest was dappled with silver spots.

“How did he get it?” said Autumn.

“I don’t know.”

“Are we staying here? Where is King Howl?”

*   *   *

MR. Veech’s body could not be extricated from the crushed metal that cocooned him. Caliph found it difficult to care. He continued searching the wreckage, gut aching, skin clammy because this wasn’t a generalized search for bodies. This was a specific search—for Sig.

Caliph’s pale green torch zipped back and forth through the darkness inside the airship.

“The Iycestokians—” said Owain.

“We’re looking for Sig,” said Caliph.

Any moment now. They’d find him. If I survived, thought Caliph, so can he.

Caliph and his bodyguard scoured the areas they could reach, where the framework had not bent in on itself. Caliph trudged through sand. Back and forth. He had already checked some of the rooms twice.

“I don’t understand where he is,” said Caliph.

“Maybe he’s found the shelter,” said Owain. It was toxic optimism. Caliph knew Owain’s job was to protect the king, not search for Sigmund Dulgensen.

“Mother of Mizraim.”

“Did you find him?” The beam of Owain’s torch lanced over Caliph’s shoulder.

It was not Sigmund.

Rather, Alani’s casket rested on its side. Still sealed. It had broken loose from its ties. One end was buried in deep sand that had poured through the ruptured hull. Its fall had crushed a Baashan ombrometer.

The gray metal of the lid was beautifully and simply beveled. One of the generic caskets stored on all zeppelins in case of disaster, Caliph ran his hand along it, feeling the smooth endeavor of human dignity.

“Majesty?”

The sound of sand plinking and giggling over the metal had become so monotonous that Caliph didn’t notice it until something—the pitch, the ferocity—changed. He could hear a humming sound while sand whined in through the chinks from directions it had not come before.

Gouts of bloody orange light coned the sky, revealing massive banks of raging particulate.

“It’s the Iycestokians.” Owain took Caliph by the arm and led him toward the darkest reaches of the jumbled space they were in.

“I’m going to find a blanket, something to cover you. We’ll put some sand over it—” He was still talking when Caliph heard a thump and Owain fell over.

Hands grabbed him. How could they see without light?