Free The Last Page by Anthony Huso Page B

the insects trilled across the breezy green shapes of the forest. Caliph blew a mosquito from his lips but couldn’t speak. The knife around his neck was too tight.
    “He doesn’t look like he belongs out here,” said the second woman.Then a voice behind his head said, “I’ll bet he knows her.” She was talking into his ear now. “You came out here for some fun, didn’t you?”
    Caliph still couldn’t answer. He held these women up to the memory of those he had seen at Sena’s graduation.
    “What are you doing here?” asked the one on the roof. Then she spoke in a language Caliph couldn’t understand. Instantly the pressure on his throat lessened.
    “That’s the important question.” Her voice was calm and pleasant as it shifted back to Trade. “What
are
you doing here?”
    Shrdnae Witches
. . .
do they know I’m the future king of Stonehold? If they do I’m dead
. . . And then another realization.
    Sena is one of them
. . .
    It kept going through his head, combined with all the occasions he had pressed Sena for information about the Shrdnae Witches based solely on the fact that she had grown up in the Country of Miryhr, when in fact she had been one.
    “I’m not going to ask again,” said the woman on the shed. She was beautiful. The sunlight trickling across her nose; her smile, a pleasant disguise for the threat she represented.
    Caliph knew he had to answer and that the more truth he injected into the conversation, the less likely he was to wind up dead.
    “I came to see Sena.”
    “Boyfriend?”
    Caliph had been briefed at school. As the future ruler of Stonehold, he had been given access to certain antiseptic details about who the Shrdnae Witches were and how they worked. Shrdnae field agents were forbidden from any kind of relationship that could compromise them: pregnancy in the all-female organization was strictly regulated. For Shrdnae operatives, sex was part of their training. It was an art form they perfected just like assassination and like their trademark knife sheaths, their legs didn’t open unless it was part of the job.
    She knew I was going to be king
. . .
was she using me the whole time?
Caliph’s brain froze around a new thought.
Her letter! Just to lure me out where they could kill me? Ransom?
He couldn’t help himself. He pitched forward on his hands and knees, retching; everything he’d just eaten turned out in the grass.
    For a while he stared at the weeds, watching the slick amber liquid attract bugs. His torso convulsed again; he didn’t care what the women were doing.
    “Sena’s always taken her men watered down.”
    “Not her boyfriend,” Caliph managed to croak. He wiped his mouthon the back of his hand. He felt dizzy from the heat, like he might pass out.
    “You must know her well enough to walk through her house and take her horse.”
    “I wish I
was
her boyfriend. I went to school with her.” He picked one of the Naked Eight at random. “Name’s David.”
    “Get up, David . . .”

CHAPTER 7

    Caliph stood up. As he did, the woman on the roof pitched forward like a gargoyle breaking loose from a building. She plummeted into the weeds at Caliph’s feet, landing with a simultaneous crunch-thud; she did not move again.
    He turned around. The woman behind him was standing perfectly still with a shaft of gleaming metal sticking out of her cheek. She fell forward into the flowers, brushing Caliph’s shoulder on her way down.
    Caliph ran.
    He vaulted the split-rail fence and landed in the pasture, heading for the horse. He saw its tentacle tails flipping gently like a fistful of snakes, its slab teeth shearing contentedly through grass. It looked up, watched him for a moment, then roared. Its claws ripped massive clods of sod from the ground as it bolted away, racing for the far end of the pasture.
    Caliph slipped and skidded in a patch of mud; the momentum flipped him onto his back like a turtle, speeding him over moss and horse shit down a