by R. T. Kaelin
His face turned a sickly gray-yellow and his eyes darted back and forth like minnows in a koi pond.
“The woman is safe and out of the way. Wouldn’t you like to be safe, too?”
The man nodded.
“Answer, then: How many inside?”
“My master and the monster and your Male, and I let in a vagabond—a flute player—and then I was sent out on patrol.”
The “vagabond” would be the All-Father, in one of his go-among-the-people disguises. But “the monster”?
“What sort of monster?”
The man nodded, quivering. “It gives the master gold and tells him what to do. The master isn’t afraid of it, but it told me it would eat me if I failed…” His trembling grew more violent, then his eyes rolled up in his head and, with a sigh, he collapsed in a faint.
Pimchan sheathed her swords, dragged him into the bushes and bound and gagged him with sections of his own sash.
A monster? Intuition tripped a series of switches in Pimchan’s mind, and she rose and ran, vaulting the wall and landing soundlessly in the garden. Swords again drawn, she eased up to the house door, listened intently, and slipped past the painted bamboo screen inside the doorway. She heard voices coming from her arena, and one of them belonged to the All-Father.
“I fail to see how The Blessed Land would benefit,” he said querulously.
She slid closer to the rosewood screen in the arena doorway and peered through the filigree. The All-Father knelt in the center of the arena, as she had seen him in her mind the night before, but dressed in shabby clothes and with a long flute tucked into the sash at his waist. Before him was a tea table and on it was a piece of paper—paper of a snowy whiteness covered in even lines of black symbols. Aroon Kama knelt beside him, holding an inkpot and a quill pen. Her Male was bound, his hands high above his head, to the empty rack that usually held the swords now in her hands. Seated on her meditation altar, legs stretched in front and crossed at the black-booted ankles, was “the monster”.
Its skin was pink-tinged brown; eyes as green as a spring frog with hair the color of a fresh egg yolk. The nose was long and pointed, like a beak, and one of its teeth flashed gold. No wonder it had terrorized the servants, who would never have seen or heard of such a creature. Pimchan, the All-Father and the no-doubt well-traveled Aroon Kama recognized it—him—as a Fahr-ang—a foreign Barbarian from across the Endless Sea which apparently was not endless, after all.
When the Fahr-ang spoke, he spoke clearly, but with the words of a child. He had been expertly taught and had learned The Beautiful Language well, and was intelligent enough not to over-reach his abilities.
“I have told you. Twice. The Blessed Land needs to grow up and work with the rest of the world. You and your old nobles hold it back. Some of your young nobles are tired of the past. They are right. Sign this and make your young nobles glad. You will see it is best. Trade is good. We have bright goods to sell you. You have some things we might want to buy.”
“There are Fahr-ang in and out of my court daily,” the All-Father said. “I’ve heard many presentations of trade agreements. My advisors and I consider all of them. We will draft a comprehensive policy on this subject soon.”
The Fahr-ang shook his head.
“Those ones from other lands lie to you. They want to rob you. Only my land can be trusted. That’s why I had to see you like this, where they can’t tell you lies. Sign.”
Aroon Kama thrust the inkpot closer. “Do as he says, Blessed One.”
The All-Father reached for the quill, then drew back his hand and tapped the paper. Ignoring Aroon Kama, he spoke to the Fahr-ang:
“This is written in your language. I can read it, but not well. There are some things I don’t understand. I need—”
“Sign!” The Fahr-ang pushed himself to his feet as he shouted. He loomed over the All-Father, who quailed back toward Aroon Kama. “Sign!”
The All-Father flinched, knocking the inkpot up and splashing the liquid into Aroon Kama’s face.
Pimchan kicked aside the screen and erupted into the room.
The Fahr-ang drew an object Pimchan knew to be a firearm—a “gun”—and pointed it at her. Something exploded in it, and she dropped her left-hand sword and reeled back, struck by an invisible blow. He threw the spent firearm aside and drew another, striding to the All-Father’s side. Kicking Aroon Kama out of his way, he held the gun to the All-Father’s head.
“Oh!” said the All-Father, eyes wide with surprise. “If you shoot me, who will sign your paper? Pimchan, who will sign their paper?” He picked up the quill from the table, where Aroon Kama had dropped it. “Pimchan, I have no ink.”
What was wrong with the man? He wasn’t old enough to wander in his mind. Had they knocked him on the head? Had terror chased away his sense?
“You fool!” Aroon Kama shouted, wiping sand and ink out of his eyes. “Warriors are sworn to let the All-Father die, rather than give in to Fahr-angs or other bandits. Here’s what will stop her.” He wrenched a spear from its place on the wall and drove it with all his weight into Pimchan’s Male. The child didn’t even have time to cry out, but sagged against his bonds, the spear piercing the red rune just below his breastbone.
Aroon Kama laughed, his ink-smeared face a purple mask as Pimchan turned blankly to the All-Father.
The Fahr-ang, his attention on Pimchan, failed to see the All-Father’s hand move, failed to see the quill become a small knife. The All-Father somersaulted over the tea table, using his momentum to drive the knife into the Fahr-ang’s forearm. The gun discharged into the air.
The Fahr-ang drew his sword and backed to one of Pimchan’s many weapons racks and pulled down a small red shield worked with silver runes of defense. He couldn’t have chosen better.
The All-Father ripped the flute from his waistband, put it into Pimchan’s empty hand, and stepped aside.
Aroon Kama gasped, “No…,” and was quiet.
The All-Father’s placid voice said, “Proceed, Warrior.”
Pimchan became a blue-steel whirlwind. She could feel the runes carved into the All-Father’s flute, carefully rubbed full of ink from the soot of holy candles. Time after time, the flute blocked the other’s assaults, and even struck him once on the tip of his over-reaching nose.
The “monster” fought well, but his pale blade was no match for the blue steel forged in The Blessed Land, which cut through the Fahr-ang sword like fire through straw. Only the shield he had taken from the wall saved him, and gave him the chance to un-rack one of Pimchan’s swords and meet her with an equal weapon.
He was good, he was disciplined, he was strong, and he was fighting for his life. But Pimchan was a Warrior, so enraged that only the self-command learned in battle meditation kept her from losing control. He tired before she did. She saw his death reflected in his eyes, and his death was herself.
Two blows, and he sprawled face down on the sand, his blood mingling with the ink to make a richer purple.
Pimchan dropped her sword and the All-Father’s flute and turned, barehanded, to the man who had put a spear into the body of a child she had sworn to protect.
He lay, eyes wide, mouth gaping, in a heap near the wall. The All-Father was lowering Pimchan’s Male to the floor, having cut his bonds.
“What happened to Aroon Kama?” Pimchan asked.
“Hmmm? Who? —Oh, he killed himself. Strangled himself with his own braids. Or took poison. Something or other. Are you all right?”
Pimchan inspected herself. Cuts on her hands and face, chest deeply bruised where the lead ball of the Fahr-ang’s gun had hit her steel-reinforced armor with the steelcloth beneath, weary and sick at soul, but all in one piece. Alive.
“Even with half a heart,” the All-Father said, “you fight like an angel.”
“You know I don’t have half a heart.”
“Go fetch the other half. Go.”
Pimchan kowtowed, retrieved her swords and left.
Aroo
n Kama’s male servant was right where she’d hidden him. She freed his feet but kept his hands tied and his mouth muffled. She wanted no trouble from him and she wanted no talk. There were three dead bodies in her arena, and the fact that two of them were Aroon Kama and his monster instead of the All-Father and herself only lightened that burden but didn’t eliminate it. The third body was still that of her Male, the beating of his heart silenced by steel.
At the stone hut, all she said was, “The men who ordered these two to take my Male are dead.”
“The monster is dead?” cried Aroon Kama’s Female. “You killed it?”
“Go away,” Pimchan said. “Both of you. Down this side of the mountain and through that valley. If I see you again within three days’ walk of here, I’ll kill you, and honor be damned.”
“Names—our names!” said the woman.
“You don’t want any names I would give you. Name yourselves after the first creatures you see when you leave here. But don’t leave until we’ve gone. I don’t want to see you walk away alive.”
She left the hut and took a deep breath, calming her spirit as best she could.
When Tyana and Pimchan’s Female joined the Warrior, the girl said, “I hope the first things they see are a spider and a toad.”
Tyana shook her head at the girl, and then followed the silent Pimchan through the afternoon light back to the enclave.
The “vagabond” had set the screen back in the doorway of the arena and draped it with a woven cloth to hide what lay inside. Pimchan’s Male lay on the floor of the common room, washed and shirtless. A pot of unguent and a roll of linen were arranged beside him. The shaft and part of the head of the spear protruded from his thin chest, too small to engulf so large a weapon.
Tyana cried out, but Pimchan’s Female walked calmly to him, knelt by his side and took his hand.
“I thought you should do the honors,” said the All-Father.
Pimchan grasped the spear and, gritting her teeth, tugged it out cleanly and cast it through the doorway into the garden beyond. From now on, it would be a beanpole and never again a Warrior’s valued ally.
“Tend his wound,” she said. “Bind it tightly, before his heart goes back to work.” She stepped away and Tyana knelt by his other side, packing the gash with unguent and folding some of the linen into a pad.
“Help me lift him up,” she ordered Pimchan’s Female, “and we’ll use the other strips to tie this on.”
Pimchan waited until the color came back into her Male’s flesh then followed the All-Father out into the Chaos garden. They sat in the soft shadows of the gazebo until Pimchan had recovered her serenity.
The All-Father, as was proper, spoke first.
“I’m not a fool.”
“Of course not, All-Father. Anyone might have a councilor who betrayed him.”
“Any fool might. I would not have a councilor who was not above betrayal.” He sniffed in disdain. “Some of the Fahr-angs think I’m a fool. The man you killed was one of the worst. The rest will reconsider their opinions, now.”
“All-Father…”
“Yes, my Warrior?”
“Did you arrange this yourself?”
“A dear, straightforward gentleman like me?”
“Who else knew about the heartsafe charm?”
“How unfortunate for Aroon Kama that he judges others by himself. He assumed that two heartsafe charms meant you had divided your heart in two to protect yourself. It never occurred to him that you hid the children’s hearts in your own bosom to keep the children safe.”
“My Male…” Pimchan bit back the words of chastisement that would have dishonored her.
The All-Father spoke them himself: “I miscalculated. The Fahr-angs think the heartsafe charm is superstitious nonsense. That yellow-hair only intended to use your belief in it to force you to do what he wanted. He wouldn’t have tried to disturb your spirit by frightening the child, and he wouldn’t have thought he could harm you by killing the boy. Aroon Kama was a danger I failed to foresee.” He inclined his body a noticeable degree—an unheard-of abasement, and one neither of them would ever mention to anyone.
The clop and rattle of oxcarts stopped outside the compound. An official fist thumped at the screen, making the bells fixed to it jump and jingle.
“Ah,” said the All-Father. “My conveyance back to the capital, I think. We’ll drop off your unwanted visitors somewhere along the way. Let my bodyguards in, my Warrior.”
“Of course, All-Father.” Pimchan kowtowed but rose with an impudent smile. “A poor weak noble dare not go anywhere without them these days.”
*
Among The Stars
by Sarah Hans
Doctor Fumalatro’s Astounding Device lured passersby like a flame lures insects. As night settled over the city, its glow became beacon-like, so bright with electricity that it made the lantern light from the surrounding shops seem dull and oily. The groups that clustered around it after dark—mostly orphans and homeless drunkards—never dared to give it a coin, though whether out of poverty, fear, or superstition, no one knew. Instead the crowd just watched, waiting for someone to give it money and see what predictions it would make.
Colonel Bannister was just the sort of man to try the silly thing. Gwen regretted taking him around Tolliver Street the moment his eyes lit up at sight of the device. He was like a child fixated on a toy. Though Gwen had been known to hold her own in a catfight or barroom brawl, the Colonel was a good head taller than she, and drunk to boot. Once he had his mind set on finding out his fortune, she could not hold him back.
The hobos and street children scrambled out of the Colonel’s way as he staggered up to the device. The machine played a soft, catchy tune while its lights twinkled and danced in time. It appeared to be a fortunetelling automaton seated in a box of red velvet gilded with gold paint and glass gems. It was the sort of thing Gwen had seen at countless fairs and carnivals. “Learn How You Will Meet Your End!” the words beneath the logo promised.
She had to admit that it was unique. She’d never seen a fortuneteller that promised to predict one’s demise. How delightfully morbid.
As the Colonel stepped up to it, the device flared to life. A spotlight shone down on him, glaring off his bald pate and flushed cheeks. The automaton jerked and tinny words issued from a speaker in its mouth:
Present your coins to learn your fate
Don’t be afraid. Don’t hesitate
The Colonel, quite against the advice of the automaton, jumped back as if spooked, shaking his head. “Gwendolyn, dear, why don’t you give it a try?”
Gwen frowned but held out her palm to collect a few pennies from her companion. She thought about teasing the Colonel about his fear, but if his reaction to her teasing was angry, as it so often was, she’d end the night with half as much coin. With her rent due tomorrow and her need for opium thick and bitter at the back of her throat, she needed the money more than she needed to humiliate the fat old fart. He’ll be gone soon enough, might as well let his last night on Earth be a pleasant one.
So she took his pennies and made to insert them into the device. She couldn’t find a slot. Instead, the automaton’s hand swung around and presented her with its palm. The sudden movement was a bit unnerving, but she shrugged and dropped the coins onto the wooden hand anyway. I’m not going to be afraid of some mechanized puppet.
Behind her, she heard the Colonel clicking his watch. The watch that is not a watch, she reminded herself. The sound made her grind her teeth.
The automaton’s hand disappeared with the money. Its button eyes whirled and glowed, and its mouth moved again so that it could recite another poem:
Neptune, Jupiter, Venus, Mars
You shall perish among the stars
When the automaton finished its recitation, a slip of paper slid from its mouth like a flat white tongue. The slip lolled there for a moment before Gwen reached up and tore it away to read it. The poem was printed on the paper in s
tark black ink beneath Doctor Fumalatro’s garish logo.
“But I’m not an aeronaut,” she muttered to nobody in particular.
Colonel Bannister lurched over to her, spinning her around by the shoulders and snatching the fortune from her fingers. “Clearly that one’s for me, ha-ha! Must’ve been because it was my money, don’t you know.” Before Gwen could protest he had stuffed the slip into his jacket pocket and nodded to the machine. “Give me a few pennies and I’ll get your fortune, ha-ha!”
Gwen thought about refusing but again, the promise of the Colonel’s extra generosity after a night well spent—or the opportunity to raid his pockets after he’d passed out in the gutter—was too tempting to pass up. She fastened her most winsome smile onto her lips and fished in her reticule for a few coins, passing them obediently to the Colonel.
“There’s a girl,” the old man cooed, patting her behind as he stepped up to the device. The automaton repeated its routine: hand, pennies, poem. This time the tinny voice announced:
Tea and crumpets, bangers and mash
You shall die in an auto crash
Gwen shuddered as the Colonel presented her with the slip of paper with the demeanor of one issuing an award. “That’s much better, much more pedestrian,” he mumbled. She wasn’t sure what “pedestrian” meant exactly, but she could guess, and she felt the heat of embarrassment and anger rise to her cheeks.
“Did it never occur to you that maybe the fortune you have was meant for me, and you’re the one who’s to die in the street?” She stormed down the sidewalk, hobos slinking aside to avoid her wrath.
“Oh my dear, don’t be silly!” Colonel Bannister called, chasing after her. “I’m going up in the Daedalus in only a few hours, so clearly the first fortune was meant for me. You’re never going to the stars. You’re just a…a…”
Gwen halted abruptly, then whirled to face him, cutting him off. She was livid, and would have sworn that smoke was streaming from her nostrils. “Say it. I’m just a…a what?”