After the chorus, the singer, a woman with a mellow and smooth voice, began the next verse in English:
But why is the moon always fullest when we take leave of one another?
For us, there is sorrow, joy, parting, and meeting.
For the moon, there is shade, shine, waxing and waning.
It has never been possible to have it all.
All we can wish for is that we endure,
Though we are thousands of miles apart,
Yet we shall gaze upon the same moon, always lovely.
Yeling turned off the music and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “She found a way out of the storm,” she said. There was no need to ask who she meant. “She dodged that lightning at the last minute and found herself a hole in the storm to slip through. Sharp eyes. I knew it was a good idea to repaint the left eye, the one watching the sky, before we took off.”
I watched the calm waters of the Pacific Ocean pass beneath us. “In the storm, she shed her scales to make herself lighter.”
I imagined the tung oil lines drawn on the ship’s hull by Yeling, the lines etching the ice into dragon scales, which fell in large chunks into the frozen sea below.
“When I first married Barry, I did everything his way and nothing my way. When he was asleep, and I was flying the ship, I had a lot of time to think. I would think about my parents getting old and me not being there. I’d think about some recipe I wanted to ask my mother about, and she wasn’t there. I asked myself all the time, what have I done?
“But even though I did everything his way, we used to argue all the time. Arguments that neither of us could understand and that went nowhere. And then I decided that I had to do something.
“I rearranged the way the pots were hung up in the galley and the way the dishes were stacked in the cabinets and the way the pictures were arranged in the bedroom and the way we stored life vests and shoes and blankets. I gave everything a better flow of qi, energy, and smoother fengshui. It might seem like a cramped and shabby place to some, but the ship now feels like our palace in the skies.
“Barry didn’t even notice it. But, because of the fengshui, we didn’t argue any more. Even during the storm, when things were so tense, we worked well together.”
“Were you scared at all during the storm?” I asked.
Yeling bit her bottom lip, thinking about my question.
“When I first rode with Barry, when I didn’t yet know him, I used to wake up and say, in Chinese, who is this man with me in the sky? That was the most I’ve ever been scared.
“But last night, when I was struggling with the ship and Barry came to help me, I wasn’t scared at all. I thought, it’s okay if we die now. I know this man. I know what I’ve done. I’m home.”
“THERE WAS NEVER any real danger from lightning,” Icke said. “You knew that, right? The American Dragon is a giant Faraday cage. Even if the lightning had struck us, the charge would have stayed on the outside of the metal frame. We were in the safest place over that whole sea in that storm.”
I brought up what Yeling had said, that the ship seemed to know where to go in the storm.
Icke shrugged. “Aerodynamics is a complex thing, and the ship moved the way physics told it to.”
“But when you get your Aurora, you’ll let her paint eyes on it?”
Icke nodded, as though I had asked a very stupid question.
LAS VEGAS, THE diadem of the desert, spread out beneath, around, and above us.
Pleasure ships and mass-transit passenger zeppelins covered in flashing neon and gaudy giant flickering screens dotted the air over the Strip. Cargo carriers like us were constricted to a narrow lane parallel to the Strip with specific points where we were allowed to depart to land at the individual casinos.
“That’s Laputa,” Icke pointed above us, to a giant, puffy, baroque airship that seemed as big as the Venetian, which we were passing below and to the left. Lit from within, this newest and flashiest floating casino glowed like a giant red Chinese lantern in the sky. Air taxis rose from the Strip and floated towards it like fireflies.
We had dropped off the shipment of turbine blades with the wind farm owned by Caesars Palace outside the city, and now we were headed for Caesars itself. Comp rooms were one of the benefits of hauling cargo for a customer like that.
I saw, coming up behind the Mirage, the tall spire and blinking lights of the mooring mast in front of the Forum Shops. It was usually where the great luxury personal yachts of the high-stakes rollers moored, but tonight it was empty, and a transpacific long-haul Dongfeng Feimaotui, a Flying Chinaman named the American Dragon, was going to take it for its own.
“We’ll play some games, and then go to our room,” Icke said. He was talking to Yeling, who smiled back at him. This would be the first chance they had of sleeping on the same bed in a week. They had a full twenty-four hours, and then they’d take off for Kalispell, Montana, where they would pick up a shipment of buffalo bones for the long haul back to China.
I lay in bed in my Downtown hotel room thinking about the way the furniture in my bedroom was arranged, and imagined the flow of qi around the bed, the nightstands, the dresser. I missed the faint hum of the zeppelin’s engines, so quiet that you had to listen hard to hear them.
I turned on the light and called my wife. “I’m not home yet. Soon.”
This story was inspired in many ways by John McPhee’s Uncommon Carriers. Some liberty has been taken with the physical geography of our world: a great circle flight path from Lanzhou to Las Vegas would not actually cross the city of Ordos.
The lyrics of the song that Yeling plays come from a poem by the Song Dynasty poet Su Shi (1037-1101 A.D). It has remained a popular poem to set to music through the centuries since its composition.
TOUGH TIMES ALL OVER
Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie (www.joeabercrombie.com) attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology. He moved into television production before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. His first novel, The Blade Itself, was published in 2004, and was followed by sequels Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings, and stand-alones Best Served Cold, The Heroes, Red Country, and YA fantasy Half a King. His most recent novel is sequel Half a World. Joe lives in Bath with his wife, Lou, and his daughters, Grace and Eve. He still occasionally edits concerts and music festivals for TV, but spends most of his time writing edgy yet humorous fantasy novels.
DAMN, BUT SHE hated Sipani.
The bloody blinding fogs and the bloody slapping water and the bloody universal sickening stink of rot. The bloody parties and masques and revels. Bloody fun, everyone having bloody fun, or at least pretending to. The bloody people were worst of all. Liars and fools, the lot of them. Rogues every man, woman and child.
Carcolf hated Sipani. And yet here she was again. Who, then, she was forced to wonder, was the fool?
Braying laughter echoed from the mist ahead and she slipped into the shadows of a doorway, one hand tickling the grip of her sword. A good courier trusts no one, of course, and Carcolf was the very best, but in Sipani she trusted... less than no one.
Another gang of pleasure-seekers blundered from the murk, a man with a mask like a moon pointing at a woman who was so drunk she kept falling over on her high shoes. All of them laughing, one of them flapping his lace cuffs as though there never was a thing so funny as drinking so much you couldn’t stand up. Carcolf rolled her eyes skyward, and consoled herself with the thought that behind the masks they were hating it as much as she always did when she tried to have fun.
In the solitude of her doorway, Carcolf winced. Damn, but she needed a holiday. She was becoming a sour arse. Or, indeed, had become one, and was getting worse. One of those people who held the entire world in contempt. Was she turning into her bloody father?
“Anything but that,” she muttered.
The moment the revellers tottered off into the night she ducked from
her doorway and pressed on, neither too fast nor too slow, soft boot heels silent on the dewy cobbles, her unexceptional hood drawn down to an inconspicuous degree, the very image of a person with just the average amount to hide. Which in Sipani was quite a bit.
Over to the west somewhere, her armoured carriage would be speeding down the wide lanes, wheels striking sparks as they clattered over the bridges, stunned bystanders leaping aside, driver’s whip lashing at the foaming flanks of the horses, the dozen hired guards thundering after, streetlamps gleaming upon their dewy armour. Unless the Quarryman’s people had already made their move, of course: the flutter of arrows, the scream of beasts and men, the crash of the wagon leaving the road, the clash of steel, and finally the great padlock blown from the strongbox with blasting powder, the choking smoke wafted aside and the lid flung back to reveal... nothing.
Carcolf allowed herself the smallest smile, and patted the lump against her ribs. The item, stitched up safe in the lining of her coat.
She gathered herself, took a couple of steps and sprang from the canalside, clearing three strides of oily water and onto the deck of a decaying barge, timbers creaking under her as she rolled and came smoothly up. To go around by the Fintine Bridge was quite the detour, not to mention a well-travelled and well-watched way, but this boat was always tied here in the shadows, offering a short cut. She had made sure of it. Carcolf left as little to chance as possible. In her experience, chance could be a real bastard.
A wizened face peered out from the gloom of the cabin, steam issuing from a battered kettle. “Who the hell are you?”
“Nobody.” Carcolf gave a cheery salute. “Just passing through!” and she hopped from the rocking wood to the stones on the far side of the canal and was away into the mould-smelling mist. Just passing through. Straight to the docks to catch the tide and off on her merry way. Or her sour arsed one, at least. Wherever Carcolf went, she was nobody. Everywhere, always passing through.
Over to the east that idiot Pombrine would be riding hard in the company of four paid retainers. He hardly looked much like her, what with the moustache and all, but swaddled in that ever-so conspicuous embroidered cloak of hers he did well enough for a double. He was a penniless pimp who smugly believed himself to be impersonating her so she could visit a lover, a lady of means who did not want their tryst made public. Carcolf sighed. If only. She consoled herself with the thought of Pombrine’s shock when those bastards Deep and Shallow shot him from his saddle, expressed considerable surprise at the moustache, then rooted through his clothes with increasing frustration and finally no doubt gutted his corpse only to find... nothing.
Carcolf patted that lump once again, and pressed on with a spring in her step. Here went she, straight down the middle, alone and on foot, along a carefully prepared route of back streets, of narrow ways, of unregarded shortcuts and forgotten stairs, through crumbling palaces and rotting tenements, gates left open by surreptitious arrangement and, later on, a short stretch of sewer which would bring her out right by the docks with an hour or two to spare.
After this job she really had to take a holiday. She tongued at the inside of her lip, where a small but unreasonably painful ulcer had lately developed. All she did was work. A trip to Adua, maybe? Visit her brother, see her nieces? How old would they be now? Ugh. She remembered what a judgemental bitch her sister-in-law was. One of those people who met everything with a sneer. She reminded Carcolf of her father. Probably why her brother had married the bloody woman...
Music was drifting from somewhere as she ducked beneath a flaking archway. A violinist either tuning up or of execrable quality. Papers flapped and rustled upon a wall streaked with mould, ill-printed bills exhorting the faithful citizenry to rise up against the tyranny of the Snake of Talins. Carcolf snorted. Most of Sipani’s citizens were far more interested in falling over than rising up, and she had other business.
She scratched at her groin, trying to find a comfortable position, but it was hopeless. How much do you have to pay for a new suit of clothes before you avoid a chafing seam right in the worst place? She strode along a narrow way beside a stagnant section of canal, long out of use, gloopy with algae and bobbing rubbish, plucking the offending fabric this way and that to no effect. Damn this fashion for tight trousers! Perhaps it was some kind of cosmic punishment for her paying the tailor with forged coins. But then Carcolf was considerably more moved by the concept of local profit than that of cosmic punishment, and therefore strove to avoid paying for anything wherever possible. It was practically a principle with her, and her father always said that a person should stick to their principles – Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father.
“Ha!”
A ragged figure sprang from an archway, the faintest glimmer of steel showing. With an instinctive whimper Carcolf stumbled back, fumbling her coat aside and drawing her own blade, sure that death had found her at last. The Quarryman one step ahead? Or was it Deep and Shallow, or Kurrikan’s hirelings... but no one else showed themselves. Only this one man, swathed in a stained cloak, unkempt hair stuck to pale skin by the damp, a mildewed scarf masking the bottom part of his face, bloodshot eyes round and scared above.
“Stand and deliver!” he boomed, somewhat muffled by the scarf.
Carcolf raised her brows. “Who even says that?”
A slight pause, while the rotten waters slapped the stones beside them. “You’re a woman?” There was an almost apologetic turn to the would-be robber’s voice.
“If I am, will you not rob me?”
“Well... er...” The thief seemed to deflate somewhat, then drew himself up again. “Stand and deliver anyway!”
“Why?” asked Carcolf.
The point of the robber’s sword drifted uncertainly. “Because I have a considerable debt to... that’s none of your business!”
“No, I mean, why not just stab me and strip my corpse of valuables, rather than giving me the warning?”
Another pause. “I suppose... I hope to avoid violence? But I warn you I am entirely prepared for it!”
He was a bloody civilian. A mugger who had blundered upon her. A random encounter. Talk about chance being a bastard. For him, at least. “You, sir,” she said, “are a shitty thief.”
“I, madam, am a gentleman.”
“You, sir, are a dead gentleman.” Carcolf stepped forward, weighing her blade, a stride length of razor steel leant a ruthless gleam from a lamp in a window somewhere above. She could never be bothered to practice, but nonetheless she was far more than passable with a sword. It would take a great deal more than this stick of gutter trash to get the better of her. “I will carve you like –”
The man darted forward with astonishing speed, there was a scrape of steel and before Carcolf even thought of moving, the sword was twitched from her fingers and skittered across the greasy cobbles to plop into the canal.
“Ah,” she said. That changed things. Rather materially. Plainly her attacker was not the bumpkin he appeared to be, at least when it came to swordplay. She should have known. Nothing in Sipani is ever quite as it appears.
“Hand over the money,” said the mugger.
“Delighted.” Carcolf plucked out her purse and tossed it against the wall, hoping to dart past while he was distracted. Alas, he pricked it from the air with impressive dexterity and whisked his sword-point back to prevent her escape. It tapped gently at the lump in her coat.
“What have you got... just there?”
From bad to much, much worse. “Nothing, nothing at all.” Carcolf attempted to pass it off with a false chuckle but that ship had sailed and she, sadly, was not aboard, any more than she was aboard the damn ship still rocking at the wharf for the voyage to Thond. She steered the glinting point away with one finger. “Now I have an extremely pressing engagement, so if –” There was a faint hiss as the sword slit her coat open.
Carcolf blinked. “Ow.” There was a burning pain down her ribs. The sword had slit her open too. “Ow!” She subside
d to her knees, deeply aggrieved, blood oozing between her fingers as she clutched them to her side.
“Oh... oh no. Sorry. I really... really didn’t mean to cut you. Just wanted, you know...”
“Ow.” The item, now slightly smeared with Carcolf’s blood, dropped from the gashed pocket and tumbled across the cobbles. A slender package perhaps a foot long, wrapped in stained leather.
“I need a surgeon,” gasped Carcolf, in her best I-am-a-helpless-woman voice. The Grand Duchess had always accused her of being over-dramatic, but if you can’t be dramatic at a time like that, when can you? Probably she really did need a surgeon, after all, and there was a chance the robber would lean down to help her and she could stab the bastard in the face with her knife. “Please, I beg you!”
He loitered, eyes wide, the whole thing plainly gone further than he had intended. But he edged closer only to reach for the package, the glinting point of his sword still levelled at her.
A different and even more desperate tack, then. She strove to keep the panic out of her voice. “Look, take the money, I wish you joy of it.” Carcolf did not, in fact, wish him joy, she wished him rotten in his grave. “But we will both be far better off if you don’t take that package!”
His hand hovered. “Why, what’s in it?”
“I don’t know. I’m under orders not to open it!”
“Orders from who?”
Carcolf winced. “I don’t know that either, but –”
KURTIS TOOK THE packet. Of course he took the packet. He was an idiot, but not so much of an idiot as that. He snatched the packet and ran. Of course he ran. When didn’t he?
He tore down the alleyway, heart in mouth, jumped a burst barrel, caught his foot and went sprawling, almost impaled himself on his own drawn sword, slithered on his face through a slick of rubbish, scooping a mouthful of something faintly sweet and staggering up, spitting and cursing, snatching a scared glance over his shoulder –
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine Page 15