going to Stonehold to spy on the High King in accordance with Megan’s wishes.
No one argues or tells her it is unsafe.
Haidee arranges for an electric cab to take her as far as Jyn Hêl.18The starlines there will take her to Stonehold.
From her tower window, Giganalee watched Sena go. She had not approved of Megan’s decision to sell a transumption hex to Pandragor. Such holomorphy was unpredictable and Giganalee felt certain that the Pandragonians could not even fully understand what they were buying. It would make Stonehold forever dangerous as the effects of the hex seeped through time. The Duchy would be beaten repeatedly, at random intervals, as if by a blind giant wielding a maul. The devastation would be indiscriminate and unprecedented. Regardless of misgivings, her duty to the Sisterhood was to advise, not control. The Eighth House did not engage in politics.
Giganalee trudged across the room and sat in her throne like a dead thing, claws clutching velvet armrests, head balanced like a skull, trying to see into Sena’s future.
Hours passed. The Eighth House did not sleep while she dreamt of red skies and death. She could not catch the shapes, could not pause them in their flight. They soared like scarlet clouds across the murrey pitch, recreant shapes wheeling to turn south; they tried to get away. They were hideous and malevolent as they scooted before the weather, fleeing something far more ominous.
All at once, Giganalee’s eyes opened.
The sallow, oily light of dawn slipped through the windows, shearing off around the shape of a bird.
Giganalee dragged a broken tooth across the back of her hand, tearing skin like tissue. She muttered in the Unknown Tongue as her blood broke through the fragile, liver-spotted flesh.
The pigeon came to her, charmed.
It was ugly and in poor health, ragged from mountain winds and weather. It had not been as fast as the Pandragonian albatross that had delivered word of Mr. Amphungtl’s failed negotiations.
Giganalee clutched it and carried it to her workbench like a piece of wood. She laid it on its belly, forcing the legs down. With her other hand she pulled a jeweler’s screwdriver from a rack of delicate tools.
Using the flat edge she pried the cruestone from the socket in its skull and dropped it into a bottle on the nearby shelf. Then she flipped the bird over on its back and, with a pair of tweezers, pulled the coiled message like a clock spring from its housing.
Her eyes were old and cloudy. Her collection of ornate magnifying glasses lay scattered throughout the room. She shoved the bird into an enormous cage and locked the door.
When she found a lens, she studied Miriam’s note under the ochre window light, reading the miniscule Withil with ease. Then she stuffed the paper into her mouth and chewed it to paste, swallowing it like a lump of phlegm. She laid her glass on a small stand near her chair and frowned.
Miriam had done right. She was brave. Brave enough to be Coven Mother someday. Yet Giganalee faltered in her thoughts. After all, it was too much to believe.
How could she have missed it? How could the Eighth House not have seen? If the book had been with Sienae, it had been in Skellum, within parliament’s walls!
How could she not have felt it? How could she not have known?
Giganalee felt fear trickle through her iron insides, cold and unfamiliar. There must be some mistake. Sena could not have found the book. Or could she?
The Eighth House had read legends of the book hiding when it did not want to be found. Giganalee retreated to her chair and uncoiled the tubing from her hookah. She lit it and sucked long cool tendrils of smoke through the water. The facets of the giant spinning bottle caught light, threw different colors across the orreries suspended from the ceiling and encouraged her to dream.
No.
She could not move. Miriam’s intelligence must be wrong. If the Eighth House moved without proof, the Sisterhood would stumble, sensing the uncertainty of its leaders. She had to wait. Even if Sena had the book, she couldn’t open it.
Giganalee frowned. Sena knew nothing of love.
17 Iycestoke Society for the Study of Antiquities.
18 I.: The Place of Burning.
CHAPTER 16
With twenty-six boroughs and thirty-six square miles of sprawl, Isca City was easily the largest city north of Yorba. Its population exceeded two million and Caliph had more to keep track of.
Keeps and towns with ancient names like Clefthollow and Coldwell slugged against nature, scuffling