“Reeeeally?” Sig headed toward the window. He took two steps and then, for no apparent reason, the glass exploded. Nuggets bounced like ice cubes over the floor. Sig pulled up short.
Caliph scowled and went to the gaping casement, boots crunching on glass. The sky pulled across his hair and face like steel wool, making his eyes burn. Below, the dunes undulated with bright colors like the back of a poisonous grub. The sand, orange as flame, divorced itself from great blue spots and splatters of something else. From the air, it looked like industrial quantities of smalt had welled up from underneath. The sand refused to mix with it and instead poured around it with the wind, forming crisp blue-and-orange patterns.
Out in the sky a faint zip faded into a muffled whine.
“I think they’re shooting at us,” said Sig.
Caliph was incredulous. “Why would they do that? They have an ambassador on board!”
Sig craned his head out the window to stare at the shadow, a fume really, like the indiscernible smudge of far-off birds wheeling. An entire colony.
Another noise whizzed past the open window.
“Huh,” said Sig. “I do believe that’s what’s happening. They’re fucking shooting at us.”
Caliph took out his bottle of chewable tablets and popped two. They dissolved into lemon chalk-powder. The grit stayed between his teeth.
“I thought the witches,” Sigmund looked confused, “weren’t they doing some kind of, what did they call it? Glamour? Ain’t they supposed to try and hide us?”
Sig walked to the bar and pulled down a bottle of whisky. He glanced at the brand. “This stuff could carry me to town on its back.” His enormous hands rested around the neck but did not open it.
“Well,” said Caliph, “I guess the south has holomorphs.”
“Yeah but we’ve got Shradnae witches for fuck’s sake. I mean, I expected more.”
“I don’t know what they’re doing at the moment,” said Caliph. “Maybe I should find out.”
“Shot at by Iycestokian military…” Sigmund wrung the bottle’s neck. “It’s going to be a crazy story, huh? When we all get back.”
Caliph looked at his friend and saw the determined irony, the intentional black joke that served to harden the fear in Sigmund’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, it will be.”
“I assume, as my fearless leader, you won’t be having a drink?”
Caliph didn’t answer. He looked out the window one last time, against his better judgment, and stared at the dark shapes in the west.
Sig toyed with the bottle for a moment. Then he set it back in its socket on the shelf. “What are we gonna do, Caph?”
Caliph tugged his lip. “I’m going to go find the witches. And then I’m going to talk to Isham Wade about my broken window and about whether he knows anything about poisons.”
Sigmund looked toward the stateroom door from which there came a sudden and insistent knocking.
“Come in!” Caliph and Sigmund shouted in unison.
Neville, the copilot entered, pale and breathless. “We’re taking fire!”
“You don’t say.” Sig gestured to the shattered window with a sweep of his hand. “We were just coming to that conclusion ourselves.”
“The gasbags’ve sustained moderate damage,” Neville gasped. “Our gauges show slow leaks in the aft.”
“Can we stay aloft?” asked Caliph.
“Assuming we don’t continue to take fire,” said Neville. “But even then … we probably don’t have much time left.”
“Much time left before what?” asked Sig. “Before we land?”
“Before we crash,” said Caliph.
Neville ignored the grim assessment. “What should I tell the captain, your majesty?”
“As long as we’re still afloat, nothing changes,” said Caliph. “Follow the Pplarian ship.” Caliph thought of the captain, sitting at the controls while other people now took care of this son’s body.
Neville disappeared. He left the door open.
“What’s the logic there?” asked Sig. “Why are we still chasing her?”
Caliph rubbed his chin. “The logic is that there are more airships than I can count back there. And Sena’s going in the opposite direction.”
“Good plan.”
Caliph took a step toward the door. “You want to come with me?”
“Sure,” said Sig.
Caliph led him from the stateroom, down the hall to where he stopped and tapped on the witches’ quarters.
Miriam again opened the door.
“We’re under attack,” said Caliph.
“Yes. We’re working on it.”
“Great,” said Caliph. “Anything I can do? Open a vein or something?”
Sigmund grimaced. Miriam did not look amused.
“We’re doing our best,” said the witch. Her face was stretched with exhaustion. She looked far less pretty than he remembered her.
“I hope your best is good enough.”
Caliph turned and marched down the hall, around the corner to Mr. Wade’s room. On this door, he pounded. Mr. Veech answered. He was an intimidating man but he was also half the size of Sigmund Dulgensen. Caliph started to walk into the room. Mr. Veech put his hand on Caliph’s chest and Sigmund’s huge meaty arm reached out in response. He took hold of Mr. Veech by the collar.
Mr. Veech struggled. He appeared to try some unarmed training, to leverage himself against Sigmund’s great mass but the huge engineer was like a boulder. He could not be moved. Sigmund pushed Mr. Veech up against the wall and held him there, waiting for Caliph to tell him what to do.
Caliph walked into the room. “Where is he?”
“He went out to stretch his legs,” Veech said tersely. The skin on his face was rolled into a series of folds by Sigmund’s forearm.
“Well let’s go find him,” said Caliph.
* * *
TAELIN was down the hole, deep in the dark with the shuwt tincture leading her by the nose.
She kept trying to light a cigarette but her wrists were bound in white straps. They trailed back to either side of a bed. She couldn’t move her arms. Strangely, she was making love to Palmer—the homeless man from St. Remora—while Aviv (the man she had been going to marry) sat in a chair nearby, watching.
A woman in a red trench was there too, with a clipboard. So were her mother and father. Her father had fine powder on the side of his nose. All of them were hovering in the blurry light of a big white room.
“It’s fine,” said the physician. “She’ll be asleep soon.”
“Some drugs and a good fuck always put me to sleep,” said Taelin’s father. Everyone ignored him.
“It’s not that she’s lying,” said the physician. “Taelin believes what she sees is true. The delusions, the paranoia, even the promiscuity are all part of the disorder.”
Taelin looked over Palmer’s sweating shoulder at her mother, who harbored a sad, guilty look. “I’m sure her home life hasn’t helped.” Her mother started to cry. “This is all my fault.”
“No, Mom!” said Taelin. “It’s not your fault. It’s not.”
She pushed Palmer off the bed. He either vanished into white clouds or fell to the floor without a sound.
“I saw Nenuln, Mom! I saw her. She was beautiful! Like a cloud of light! And my baby is going to be a god!”
“She’s quite intelligent,” the physician interrupted. “If Taelin would stay on her medications, and I mean the correct medications, I think she could…”
The physician’s voice faded into the room’s white blur. Taelin had turned her head away to the dark man sitting beside her bed. It was Aviv. All Taelin could see was Aviv. Sweet, sweet Aviv.
Aviv stood up and gathered his black silks around him, scarves and silver beads dangling wildly. The circlet on his head flourished with four platinum uraei. “Thank you, doctor,” he said.
“Wait!” she screamed but the room was spinning. “Don’t take my baby! Don’t take my baby!”