“Yes.”
“And then I fly home,” said Caliph.
“Yes.”
“But first, we have to make a copy of the Cisrym Ta.”
“Is that what it’s called?” Wade perked up in a way that Caliph found repugnant. “Kiss-ream-tah? What language is that? What does it mean?”
“Am I right?” asked Caliph.
“Yes,” said Mr. Wade. “That would be the arrangement.”
“Not quite. We forgot the clause about what happens if I say no. Not that I’m going to. I just want to have that out on the table—”
Mr. Wade laughed in high amusement and shook his finger. “I wish I had been ambassador to Stonehold instead of Pandragor these last couple years. Talking plainly? Right? Plain as we can? Iycestoke has the means to fly up over the mountains and take Stonehold in,” he stuck out his lower lip, “one? Two days? King Howl, your country exists because we’ve never had any reason to care about it. But now we do.”
Caliph squirmed. “And your forces, the ones coming to intercept me, are going to arrive when?” He glanced at Isham’s glittering ring. “How long do I have to make a decision?”
“How long do you need?”
“When are they arriving?”
“They’re already here.”
CHAPTER
33
Dr. Baufent was working like she had never worked before. Sweat glistened on her face.
“What’s wrong with him? What’s going on?” The captain of the Bulotecus was standing over her shoulder, looking distraught. Caliph had just left his meeting with Isham Wade and had discovered the scene on the port deck. He braced himself in the doorway and looked down on the desperate business at hand.
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.”