One of the witches interjected that they might be able to put a glamour on the ship. Taelin sneered at the proposition of witchcraft but didn’t speak.
“I don’t think a disguise is going to be enough,” muttered Caliph. “You’d have to make us invisible. Think about it. An uncharted ship comes out of the desert? Two days after the disaster at Sandren? Everyone’s going to know it’s us.”
“Sena’s will come out first,” offered Sigmund. “Then we’ll see what happens.”
Taelin agreed with that. Hopefully they shoot her down! She watched Caliph massage his temples. What was he thinking about? He had better not be thinking about Sena! She started hating herself again. She poured a bowl of cereal from a box with bright green berries on its front. She dumped milk over top and stared at the drowning mess, feeling sick.
“Do we have any idea what we’re going to do if Sena lets us catch her?” Sigmund asked.
Caliph said, “We need to find out what happened at Sandren and why. That’s my first priority.”
“Do you really expect her to tell you?” Taelin blurted out.
“Yes,” said Caliph, “I do.” He put down his napkin and stood up. “Excuse me. Please enjoy your breakfast.” He wrangled through the chairs to the doorway and disappeared.
Taelin’s face had caught fire but no one seemed to notice.
“We really don’t know what we’re doing, do we?” Sigmund laughed.
No one shared his sense of humor.
“Actually we do know what we’re doing,” said one of the witches. “We’re going save the world.” They too got up and left the table.
“Save the world?” Sigmund chewed the hair under his lip a moment, “Well that’s just a little…” His voice trailed off.
Taelin excused herself. She hadn’t touched her cereal. She pushed past a crewman and found the interior of the ship to be darker, quieter and cooler than the deck. The hum of the propellers resonated, as if the sound—the vibration—were a canvas on which everything else had been painted.
At the ship’s primary intersection she looked and found both directions empty. She went to his bedroom and knocked.
No answer.
She tapped lightly again and a door opened behind her. Caliph stepped out into the hallway. “Oh, I was just…” She smiled, pointing at his door.
He smiled back at her, genial but clearly confused. “What?”
“I was just,” she tried to get her balance, “did you switch rooms?”
Caliph’s head cocked slightly as the mystery for him seemed to deepen. After a pause he said, “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?