Foxfire in the Snow
Page 26
“Well?” Prince Teodor demanded. “How do you suggest we remedy this situation that you have dumped on us? Forget the treaty and the squabbling about boundary lines. We have no economy without the guilds. Trade-level skills are everywhere. On every continent. Guildware was the reason traders came to our shores. And even if we decided to completely forgo skill work for factories, Father and I could put those up tomorrow, but we’d have no one to staff them.” He jabbed a spindly finger toward me. “Fix this.”
“I don’t know how!” I dug my nails into the upholstery of my chair. “If the mechanics stumped both of the unbound guilds, I don’t know what I can offer. We could break the amulets, but I don’t know what would happen to the insides. They might evaporate and be lost forever. They might drip out and bind into the ground, giving a tree some strange ability to forge horseshoes. The contents need to be extracted properly, but I’m certain the alchemists tried every solvent known. We’d need something new.”
“Can you make it?” Magda finally looked up at me. Moisture glistened in the corners of her eyes, and beneath them, the skin was puffy. “Like your bone oil? Please tell me you would be willing to try. I can teach blacksmithing, and Sameer, textiles. Perhaps you could teach woodcutting. But aside from us, we have only free traders to rely on to restart our collective economies. We don’t even have the infrastructure for factories right now. Thousands of people are going to go hungry, or die, while we try to build. We need guilders, Sorin. Even just a handful would help.”
I couldn’t bring myself to mention the factories on the glacier, and importing from those. Magda already looked like she was suffocating, between the velvet and the chintz, and her mother’s betrayal.
“I could try.” I looked from the rulers of Eastgate to those of Puget and smiled tentatively. “I don’t think it will be fast, however, or easy, and I’d need as many amulets as you can recover. I’ll end up destroying some in experimentation, I’m sure, but there are hundreds of amulets suspended amongst the trees. I suggest sending knights immediately to recover them from the witches and alchemists.”
“Take whatever resources you need to begin your work. We will see to the amulets.” The King of Eastgate stood and stretched. His son yawned, and the rest of the rulers, save Magda, rose from their chairs as well. “I want to talk to the guilders. Teodor, see if you can find someone in our country who can do timber-frame or concrete construction. Import if you have to. We’ll prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.”
Lady Yiru helped Lord Kamon to stand, then led him by the elbow toward the door. “Our knights will leave immediately. We have questions for the guilders as well. I suggest we reconvene tomorrow morning and work together, as one country. We can’t afford to be separate now. Our economies are too fractured.”
“Agreed,” said the king. “Royal Daughter—Queen Magda, we will have a great deal to discuss with you tomorrow, especially about your mother.”
Magda stood and bowed. “I understand, and I agree. Tomorrow morning.”
The king pulled open the door, and the others followed, single file, into the hall. I could hear the guilders now, their chatting and Sameer’s tired voice, begging them to sit and be patient. A guard reached in, grabbed the handle of the door, and shut it.
“The guilders’ stories are all a little different as to how the queen found them. It will make for an interesting evening. Some left on their own and were intercepted. Some, the witches flat-out abducted. There are probably a hundred more still scattered across the inns. It will take time to round them all up. Also, I’m surprised the rest of the royalty took that so well. Do you think I should go out there in case they have more questions?”
Magda fell back into her chair and stared at a spot just above my head.
“Mag—Royal Daughter? My queen? Are you listening? Are you all right?”
“How did she die?”
“What?”
“How did it happen?”
Magda’s voice was as lost as her eyes. I wanted to take her by the arm and haul her from the stuffy room, back to the inn where we could talk, away from china teacups and dramatic furniture. But this was the world she had grown up in. She was probably comfortable here, and she deserved comfort because we were going to have to go back to the woods to collect the amulets, and she was going to have to see her mother, speared to mine, encased and frozen on the forest floor.
I got up and knelt to face her. “She…she was killed.” The next words felt like fire on my tongue. “I killed her. She’s an alchemist. Mother is, was, a witch. They did this, all of it. Their bodies are in the forest, half a day’s walk from here. I can take you to her, now or in the morning. But we should bring others. There are too many witches and alchemists about.”
“Killed,” Magda repeated, her words as thick as syrup. “I don’t…she wasn’t that…I…” She squared her shoulders, sniffed, and made a show of not wiping the wetness from her eyes. “Now isn’t the time.” Magda gripped my hand unexpectedly, and while it was no lover’s touch, neither was it painful.
“Magda, I’m so sorry. You might talk to the guilders, though, with the others. They’re still alive, and they—”
“Damn the gods, Sorin, I don’t care about the guilds!” The mask that painted Magda’s face into a queen fell away, but it was still hard to find my childhood friend under the lines of worry.
“Your Highness?”
“Sorin.” Magda said my name again, gentler this time. Her grip changed, and her thumb traced the top of my hand, almost tickling. She helped me stand, then leaned in as if to kiss my cheek in greeting, but her lips only brushed my skin before leaving haunting words in their wake.
“You left. Again.”
My lips trembled, and I tried to pass it off as a cough. “I was angry. I hadn’t meant to leave town. Mother found me, and everything spiraled from there.”
Though she looked away, toward the door, tears welled in her eyes. “Are you still angry?” Magda tried to pull her hand away, but I held it and moved into her. She shuddered as she wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her forehead against my own. Her breath smelled of fruit tea. Her curls fell into my eyes, but I didn’t brush them away.
“No. Yes. I know who I am, Magda. It’s frustrating when other people can’t see that, especially…especially people I care about.”
Magda turned her head slightly and blinked back tears threatening to fall. When she looked back up, she paused, then tilted her head as she caught sight of my tattoo. “You’re a woodcutter?”
I exhaled and rubbed at the sore skin. “No. I know it’s misleading, perhaps as much so as my breasts. I’m just me. I like to wear leather pants with vests, and sometimes dresses with puffed sleeves. Short hair stays from my eyes, but long hair is fun to braid and pin. Our bodies match, yours and mine, but I am not a woman, and neither do I feel my body is incorrect. And woodcutter? Alchemist?” I slapped my empty pouches. “They’re more words that don’t fit me well.”
I slid my hands to Magda’s waist, then to her shoulders. I brought one hand up to brush a tangle of curls from her eyes before hovering near her cheek and tracking the lines of her tears with my fingers. “I don’t have a home, and I don’t have a guild, but I would very much like to have you, Magda, as a friend again.” I brought my lips to her jaw, just below her left ear, and kissed her. “Friendship first. We have to find each other. Understand how we’ve changed. Then, maybe, we can try for more.”
Magda exhaled, and the smell of fruit tea surrounded me. We stood there for years, or minutes, not moving our hands or our bodies, our cheeks brushing each other. Magda’s breathing eventually evened out, and her grip on my hips turned lighter.
“Does that mean you’ll stay near as we try to repair the damage our mothers have done?” Magda asked. “As my…friend?” she asked hesitantly.
A grin broke across my face. “Friend, yes, as well as…a chemist, I think. Your chemist if you prefer.”
“I don’t care what yo
u call yourself, Sorin. I don’t want to lose you again.”
I took Magda’s hand. Her fingers were warm, almost sweaty, and she wrapped them around mine as if she were pulling me from a sinking boat.
“Show me where the royal laboratory is?” I asked as gently as I could manage, for Magda still looked as though she could disintegrate to wood shavings with the slightest nudge. “Then perhaps we could share a bed again for the night. For sleeping.” I squeezed her hand and smiled until the corners of her mouth began to turn up as well.
“You’re sure?” Magda asked. She bit her lower lip, and mirth returned to her eyes. “I’ve been told I steal blankets.”
“Are you afraid to sleep with me, my queen?”
Magda laughed, finally, and drew me into a hug. I buried my face in her shoulder and hair, and melted into her hands, and hips, and the faint smell of metal.
“No, no I’m not,” Magda managed when she finally pulled back. “And I’m looking forward to learning about Sorin the Chemist, and how we can rebuild the three countries, together.”
Acknowledgements
As with any book, thanks are due on multiple fronts. To the nonbinary sensitivity readers who helped with early versions, thank you so much for helping me expand Sorin’s experience beyond just my own. To my critique group, thank you for sticking it out through countless rewrites and helping make Sorin’s journey more generally accessible.
Thanks are also due to my agent, Sam, who believed in this book when no one else would, and to my editor, Elizabetta, who finally gave it a home. And to my Patreon supporters, thank you for your support, without which I wouldn’t have nearly as much time to dedicate to writing.
About J.S. Fields
J.S. Fields is a scientist who has perhaps spent too much time around organic solvents. They enjoy roller derby, woodturning, making chain mail by hand, and cultivating fungi in the backs of minivans.
Email
chlorociboria@gmail.com
Twitter
@Galactoglucoman
Website
www.jsfieldsbooks.com
Patreon
www.patreon.com/jsfields
Other NineStar books by this author
Ardulum: First Don
Ardulum: Second Don
Ardulum: Third Don
Tales from Ardulum
Coming Soon from J.S. Fields
Queen
Mornings on Queen always looked like blood. Standing at the edge of the habitable zone of the tidally locked planetoid, Ember scanned the crimson-and-rust horizon all the way to the perpetual sunrise. Her wife’s body was out here, somewhere, buried in the coarse red sand. Desiccated, mummified, likely stripped naked by the roaming packs of sand pirates Ember was out here to track.
Well… Track. Kill. The line was blurry when it involved a spouse, Ember mused, and it wasn’t like the Presidium—the administrative body of Queen—really cared one way or the other. Ember had cared, once, but she was on day seventeen of perimeter duty, and her whole plan to deal with Taraniel’s death by shooting grave robbers was starting to look a little thin.
A rabbit shot across her field of vision, registering in a halo of blue inside the face shield of her envirosuit. TOPA—the suit’s AI—scrolled data across the screen, but Ember ignored it. Without thinking, she yanked out one of the wide, flat stones she carried in her exterior right thigh pocket (they were supposed to keep her calm, according to Nadia) and threw it at the flash of white, fluffy tail with precision honed from years of dealing with Queen’s nuisance rabbit population.
The rabbit’s hind legs skittered out from beneath it as it slipped on the sand. Ember wrapped her fingers around another stone, preparing to hit the head this time, when the damn thing started digging with its front feet, sand funneling around it, and Ember lost her clean shot.
She stepped forward, grinding her teeth with an adrenaline surge that would see no release if the little shit got away. She wiped sand from the front of her face shield with a gloved hand, smearing red across her vision.
The area where the rabbit had dug settled flat with a slight pock. Little fans on the outside of Ember’s face shield blew the particulate from her vision.
The rabbit was gone and her stone along with it.
Ember cursed, the words bouncing around the inside of her rabbit-hide envirosuit, wasted on recycled air and a generic TOPA. Queen didn’t have stones like that—perfect skipping stones for lakes that didn’t exist on the barren planetoid—and those she carried in her pocket were some of her last reminders of Earth. And the rabbit… Ember knelt at the soft indent in the sand. Of course. It’d gone down into one of Queen’s giant beetle galleries. Of course it had.
TOPA pinged as she reached a gloved hand into the depression. Ember debated the possibility of Queen’s native beetles—approximately the height of a small school bus and twice the length—grabbing her wrist to pull her down in some pulp-era sci-fi fashion, and then dismissed the idea. If beetles hadn’t accosted her yet at this site, it meant the gallery had been abandoned and being used by the feral European domestic rabbit population. They’d been brought over as food stock on the colony ships. Some had escaped. Big surprise.
Please read your notes, scrolled across the interior of Ember’s face shield, in lettering so large it blocked most of the landscape from view.
“The rabbit got away. I was stupid for throwing a rock that can’t be replaced. I wasted oxygen on the exertion. That about cover it?”
TOPA didn’t respond directly, but it did fire up a series of reports. Landmass stability: within ten meters radius: moderate. Sand for at least three meters below the surface with scattered hollow tunnels reinforced with clay from the temperate zone. Sand transitioning to silt loam noted in geographic surveys, with increasing occurrence toward the colony dome. Silica content of the air: unbreathable. UV index: 10.5.
Ember snorted. That did explain the suit smell.
She balled her hands as tightly as she could in the double-layered leather of her gloves wishing, not for the first time that day, that Gore-Tex was still a thing. Leather didn’t breathe, though both the buffer and electrical linings of the suit were supposed to. Nothing from Earth breathed outside the habitable zone, and as much as her suit filters tried, they couldn’t cleanse the smell of human, slowly marinating in its own sweat.
A shitty day, even by Queen standards.
Awaiting input. Continue scan?
“Yeah. Sure. Why not?”
Ember stood, swallowing the dry air the suit pushed at her. The AI had a newly installed personality patch, but Ember would need to get a lot more bored before she turned it on. Instead, she pivoted on her right foot, keeping her eyes level with as much of the horizon as she could see, and let the suit feed data into the AI. Dunes and small valleys surrounded her, and TOPA disassembled each.
Silica = 100%
Silica = 97%, Chitin = 3%
Silica = 78%, Cellulose = 10%, Lignin = 10%, Chitin = 2%
Suggest moving 1.7 chains northeast for better visibility.
“Picturesque view?” Ember asked TOPA. Maybe a body? No point in asking that out loud. TOPA wouldn’t have any clue what she was talking about, not the generic model anyway. At the very least, she should have keyed a new name into the system after she was assigned the suit and sentry duties. All the names she could come up with, however, were vindictive, so she’d left the default name in place. If she was going to be an ass to people who were only trying to help her, she’d get far more satisfaction doing it to their faces.
“Hey, Ember!”
The red dunes faded into a semitransparent image of her sister, Nadia, displayed on the interior of the face shield. Ember clicked her right canines together to increase volume. The fierce winds outside the colony dome hindered hearing much of anything without enhancement, even when the sound came from inside the suit. That wind was the same reason the damn rabbits tended to stay in the beetle galleries. Wind screwed with everything out here.
Your sentry duties now extend to Outpost Eight. Leave immediately.
—Dr. Narkhirunkanok
Hope you enjoy the sand. I’ll make you dune-nuts when you get home. Extra sprinkles. Served on a tablecloth of rabbit hide since you love the little shits so much.
Ember read the short message and scowled—a facial contortion Nadia would see in detail from the camera inside Ember’s suit. Puns and throwaway comments about the excess rabbit population had no place on an official director request. Her willingness to deface government messages meant Nadia was worried, but she wasn’t going to say she was worried because, historically, their ability to communicate had been right around “bug and speeding windshield.”
“Leave for Outpost Eight? I’m supposed to be here for another three days.” Ember cinched her mouth into a caricature of a frown. “TOPA will be heartbroken. It hasn’t cataloged every dune within a one hundred-chain radius.”
“There’s been a change. Director Narkhirunkanok thinks the renegade mella are going to hit one of our storage units, the one where we keep sticking all the glassware we probably won’t need again but can’t get rid of. We need a sentry. You’re the closest.” The wind whipped her words away but the auditory sensors on Nadia’s suit caught them anyway.