“If you don’t drink it, I won’t stop you. You can strangle me if you want. It’s what you’re thinking. And I’ll let you do it. But what will happen next, Caliph? Think about that. What will happen next?”
Caliph did think about that. She was crazy. She had always been crazy. And that was why he was here. Because he had always gone along with it. But not anymore. This was it. This was the last time.
“I drink it and you fix everything? Can you can really do that?”
“I can really do that, Caliph.”
He hated her. He hated her more in that moment than he had ever hated anyone, because even now with her lying in the shit of civilization, at his feet, she was still somehow more powerful than he could understand.
“Gods-fucking-dammit!” He could smell the drug before he unscrewed the cap. The memory of it. Its taste and aroma were already burned into his brain. What was he going to do instead? Go back to Baufent and help her drag Taelin up to street level? And then what? Find food? Barricade against the creatures?
So maybe this was the easy way out. And he was a gutless shit-heel. He had always suspected himself a coward. And maybe this was the worst moment of his life. He hated the sense of inevitability. With the flask open, the sweet tea-and-mint smell sickening the air, he tipped it into his mouth.
CHAPTER
50
The Veyden messenger that had told the lie—that Sena was on her way to make peace—was dead. Autumn had taken him out behind the hotel as ordered. Shortly after her return, Miriam had noticed how things had changed: how everything had a wrongness to it.
As the Sisterhood’s attention had been pulled inward, diverted from the exterior of the hotel and focused on the mysterious Veyden messenger, the lights in the Grand Elesh’Ox had shifted color. They were not dimmer. But they had turned from yellow-orange to olive-green. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the ornate textured wallpaper began to peel.
When some of the furniture started floating, spare inches above the floor, Miriam knew what was happening.
The humidity doubled. Then it doubled again. It was like breathing water. The whole building felt like it had been scuttled. Miriam’s feet barely kept contact with the ground.
Outside, in the wide avenues, shapes were massing—orderless and green, shadowed by distance and atmospheric moisture, flickering with a hint of silvery, reflective skin.
The Willin Droul were coming.
From all quarters, from every building, street and drain, a huge circle of hungry variegated forms drew in around the grand hotel. It was clear to Miriam that the Sisterhood had been led into a trap.
Miriam blamed herself for this mistake.
From the Grand Elesh’Ox, the collective smell of the Sisterhood’s skin, warm and fragrant, bled out into the avenues. Her girls were leeches, dangling in the watery air, baiting in a great gathering of silvery schools.
The snuffling groans, the chirrups of titillation and ecstasy were audible as the hoard surrounded the building. Miriam watched hungry eyes gather in the streets, eager for the slaughter. Some eyes were visible. Many more were not. Mounds of rags stood and swayed. The Willin Droul clogged every alleyway; they filled every adjacent window.
Talons and fat lumpen heads scraped the brickwork around the hotel’s foundations. Tentacles wrangling from fishy jowls; they tasted over sashes and drip caps. The creatures had ringed the Elesh’Ox with wards. All exits were sealed from the outside, with fish-blood holomorphy; with puissant ancient skill.
“They’re everywhere,” said Autumn. “We have to get out.”
“They’ve sealed the corners,” said Miriam. Even with the Sisterhood’s own blood, which Miriam was not prepared to spill, moving in the absence of the starlines—as her qloin had done in the desert—was not possible. In order to attempt it, they would need to get out of the hotel, out of the streets, out of the damping holomorphy that the Willin Droul had draped over everything.
Miriam didn’t feel like she should have to explain all this—especially to Autumn—so all she said was, “Put a qloin above the delivery door.”
“Already done.”
“Good,” said Miriam. Even that single word had to be forced with great effort past her teeth. She wasn’t going to try and run. In some ways, she was grateful that the Willin Droul had sealed them in. The Sisterhood had already seen too much failure and death; too much running. Tonight would be different.
As the Willin Droul surrounded the building, Miriam took comfort in the idea that Sena might have orchestrated this ambush. That, at least, would be better than being outwitted by fish. She wondered if it had always been Sena’s aim to destroy the organization that had burned her mother.
If so, there was something to admire there in the ruthlessness of the planning. In light of what the Sslia was supposed to do, it struck Miriam as peculiarly meticulous that Sena would, on her way to whatever oblivion awaited her, arrange to destroy the organization that had given her so much. Given and admittedly taken away. Was this why she had flown an airship into the south instead of simply walking lines? To lure the Sisterhood to the Willin Droul’s ancient seat of power?
Huge bodies threw themselves against the hotel’s outer walls. Miriam heard windows breaking in the back.
As the clamor rose, there was no doubt that Sena would not show up for this finale. The Sslia had more important things to do. Giganalee had been right. Who else but Sienae Iilool could claim the mantle of the Eighth House? And the Eighth House did not use its hands. It used its minions to get things done.
“What if we jump?” asked Autumn. “We can go roof to roof. We can use their blood to fuel an escape.”
“You don’t think they’re on every rooftop for a quarter mile in every direction? Waiting for us? Have you counted them?”
Autumn licked her lips.
It was fitting, thought Miriam, that the girl from the isles, who had arrived out of Greenwick so long ago would have hands like these. The fingers of the Eighth House were silver, slippery and ichthyic.
“We have to try,” said Autumn. “We can’t give up.”
“All right.” Miriam made the southern hand sign for yes. “But I’m not going to run like I did in the desert. Tonight I’m going to stay here. Take half the cohort and tell them to try and escape across the roofs. The other half will lead a distraction—with me. We’ll try to hold them in the street. The rest of you are free to go.”
“I’m staying with you.” Autumn’s eyes told of disappointment. She wanted for Miriam and herself to be in the half that fled: that escaped. Who will lead the Sisterhood? was a question neither of them asked.
“All right,” said Miriam. “Go and get them sorted.” But Autumn, baby … they’re not going to make it.
“Yes, Mother.”
Autumn did as she was told.
This was how the world would end, thought Miriam. Amid the gluttony and screams of those insensitive to the miracle that they were still alive. Amid the chaos of disease and universal pandemonium, those that represented the last vestige of intelligent life would squander their advantage in this avenue, on this city block.
She chuckled bitterly as she hustled down the hotel’s main staircase, conspicuously unafraid, incapable of changing what was going to happen.
The hotel was dark. Miriam had ordered all the lights put out. Witches covered its rooftop, crouched on dormer peaks, ledges and cornices like gargoyles. Their sweat unfurled from waxed cotton and drifted, tantalizing the crooning horde below. The horde began to hop and lurch excitedly, cracking paving stones with their collective mass.
Miriam waited for Autumn in the foyer. She peered out through a jalousie while the building’s foundations shook. The panes of glass rattled in their frames. She sensed the Sisterhood shift within the hotel, anxious. Sisters appeared in the stairwells.