“Uh. . . uh. . . uh. . .”
“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . .”
She slithered back into her shirt, which her efforts at washing had turned from simply bloody to bloody, filthy and clinging with freezing water. She shuddered with disgust as she wiped blood out of her ear, out of her nose, out of her eyebrows.
She’d tried to do small kindnesses where she could, hadn’t she? Coppers to beggars when she could afford it, and so on? And, for the rest, she’d had good reasons, hadn’t she? Or had she just made good excuses?
“Oh, God,” she muttered to herself, pushing the greasy-chill hair out of her face.
The horrible fact was, she’d got no worse than she deserved. Quite possibly better. If this was hell, she’d earned every bit of it. She took a deep breath and blew it out so her lips flapped.
“Uh. . . uh. . . uh!”
“Rrrrrrrrrrr!”
Shev hunched her shoulders, staring back towards the bridge.
She paused, heart sinking even lower than before. Right into her blistered feet.
“You two,” muttered Shev, slowly standing, fumbling with her shirtbuttons. “You two!”
“We are. . .” came Javre’s strangled voice.
“A little. . .” groaned Whirrun.
“Busy!”
“You may want to fucking stop!” screeched Shev, sliding out a knife and hiding it behind her arm. She realised she’d got her buttons in the wrong holes, a great tail of flapping-wet shirt plastered to her leg. But it was a little late to smarten up. Once again, there were figures coming from the mist. From the direction of the bridge. First one. Then two. Then three women.
Tall women who walked with that same easy swagger Javre had. That swagger that said they ruled the ground they walked on. All three wore swords. All three wore sneers. All three, Shev didn’t doubt, were Templars of the Golden Order, come for Javre in the name of the High Priestess of Thond.
The first had dark hair coiled into a long braid bound with golden wire, and old eyes in a young face. The second had a great burn mark across her cheek and through her scalp, one ear missing. The third had short red hair and eyes slyly narrowed as she looked Shev up and down. “You’re very. . . wet,” she said.
Shev swallowed. “It’s the North. Everything’s a bit damp.”
“Bloody North.” The scarred one spat. “No horses to be had anywhere.”
“Not for love nor money,” sang the red-haired one, “and believe me, I’ve tried both.”
“Probably the war,” said the dark-haired one.
“It’s the North. There’s always a war.”
Whirrun gave a heavy sigh as he clambered from behind the rock, fastening his belt. “’Tis a humbling indictment of our way of life, but one I find I can’t deny.” And he hefted the Father of Swords over his shoulder and came to stand beside Shev.
“You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are,” said the scarred one.
“Few of us indeed,” said Shev, “are as funny as we think we are.”
Javre stepped out from behind the rock, and the three women all shifted nervously at the sight of her. Sneers became frowns. Hands crept towards weapons. Shev could feel the violence coming, sure as the grass grows, and she clung tight to that entirely inadequate knife of hers. All the fights she got into, she really should learn to use a sword. Or maybe a spear. She might look taller with a spear. But then you’ve got to carry the bastard around. Something with a chain, maybe, that coiled up small?
“Javre,” said the one with the braid.
“Yes.” Javre gave the women that fighter’s glance of hers. That careless glance that seemed to say she had taken all their measure in a moment and was not impressed by it.
“You’re here, then.”
“Where else would I be but where I am?”
The dark-haired woman raised her sharp chin. “Why don’t you introduce everyone?”
“It feels like a lot of effort, when you will be gone so soon.”
“Indulge me.”
Javre sighed. “This is Golyin, Fourth of the Fifteen. Once a good friend to me.”
“Still a good friend, I like to think.”
Shev snorted. “Would a good friend chase another clear across the Circle of the World?” Under her breath, she added, “Not to mention her good friend’s partner.”
Golyin’s eyes shifted to Shev’s, and there was a sadness in them. “If a good friend had sworn to. In the quiet times, perhaps, she would cry that the world was this way, and wring her hands, and ask the Goddess for guidance, but. . .” She gave a heavy sigh. “She would do it. You must have known we would catch you eventually, Javre.”
Javre shrugged, sinews in her shoulders twitching. “I have never been hard to catch. It is once you catch me that your problems begin.” She nodded towards the scarred one, who was slowly, smoothly, silently easing her way around the top of the canyon to their right. “She is Ahum, Eleventh of the Fifteen. Is the scar still sore?”
“I have a soothing lotion for it,” she said, curling her lip. “And I am Ninth now.”
“Nothingth soon.” Javre raised a brow at the red-haired one, working her way around them on the left. “Her I do not know.”
“I am Sarabin Shin, Fourteenth of the Fifteen, and men call me—”
“No one cares,” said Javre. “I give you all the same two choices I gave Hanama and Birke and Weylen and the others. Go back to the High Priestess and tell her I will be no one’s slave. Not ever. Or I show you the sword.”
There was that familiar popping of joints as Javre shifted her shoulders, scraping into a wider stance and lifting the sword-shaped bundle in her left hand.
Golyin sucked her teeth. “You always were so overdramatic, Javre. We would rather take you back than kill you.”
Whirrun gave a little snort of laughter. “I could swear we just had this exact conversation.”
“We did,” said Javre, “and this one will end the same way.”
“This woman is a murderer, an oathbreaker, a fugitive,” said Golyin.
“Meh.” Whirrun shrugged. “Who isn’t?”
“There is no need for you to die here, man,” said Sarabin Shin, finding her own fighting crouch.
Whirrun shrugged again. “One place is as good for dying as another, and these ladies helped me with an unpleasant situation.” He pointed out the six corpses scattered across the muddy ground with the pommel of his sword. “And my friend Curnden Craw always says it’s poor manners not to return a favour.”
“You may find this situation of a different order of unpleasantness,” said the scarred one, drawing her sword. The blade smoked in a deeply unnatural and worrying way, a frosty glitter to the white metal.
Whirrun only smiled as he shrugged his huge sword off his shoulder. “I have a tune for every occasion.”
The other two women drew their swords. Golyin’s curved blade appeared to be made of black shadow, curling and twisting so its shape was never sure. Sarabin Shin smiled at Shev and raised her own sword, long, and thin, and smouldering like a blade just drawn from the forge. Shev hated swords, especially ones pointed at her, but she rarely saw one she liked the look of less than that.
She held up the hand that didn’t have the knife in. “Please, girls.” She wasn’t above begging. “Please! There really is no upside to this. If we fight, someone will die. They will lose everything. Those who win will be no better off than now.”
“She is a pretty little thing,” said the scarred one.
Shev tidied a bloody strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, that’s nice to—”
“But she talks too much,” said Golyin. “Kill them.”
Shev flung her knife. Sarabin Shin swept out her sword and swatted it twittering away into the mist as she charged screaming forward.
Shev rolled, scrambled, ducked, dodged, dived while that smouldering blade carved the air around her, feeling the terrible heat of it on her skin. She tumbled more impressively than she ever had with t
hat travelling show, the flashes of Javre’s sword at the corner of her eye as she fought Golyin, the ringing of metal crashing on her ears as Whirrun and Ahum traded blows.
Shev flung all the knives at her disposal, which was maybe six, then when those were done started snatching up anything to hand, which, after the last fight, was a considerable range of fallen weapons, armour and gear.
Sarabin Shin dodged a hastily flung mace, then an axe, then carved a waterflask in half with a hissing of steam, then stepped around a flapping boot with a hissing of contempt.
The one hit Shev scored was with a Northman’s cloven helmet, which bounced off Shin’s brow opening a little cut, and only appeared to make her more intent on Shev’s destruction than ever.
She ended up using the fallen saddle as a shield, desperately fending off blows while the snarling woman carved smoking chunks from it, leaving her holding an ever smaller lump of leather until, with a final swing, Shin chopped it into two flaming fist-sized pieces and caught Shev by her collar, dragging her close with an almost unbelievable strength, the smoking blade levelled at her face.
“No more running!” she snarled through her gritted teeth, pulling back her sword for a thrust.
Shev squeezed her eyes shut, hoping, for the second time that day, that against all odds and the run of luck she would find a way to creep into heaven.
“Get off my partner!” came Javre’s furious shriek.
Even through her lids she saw a blinding flash and Shev jerked away, gasping. There was a hiss and something hot brushed gently against Shev’s face. Then the hand on her collar fell away, and she heard something heavy thump against the ground.
“Well, that is that,” said Whirrun.
Shev prised one eye open, peered down at herself through the glittering smear Javre’s sword had left across her sight. The headless body of Sarabin Shin lay beside her.
“God,” she whimpered, standing stiff with horror, clothes soaked with blood, hair dripping with blood, mouth, eyes, nose full of blood. Again. “Oh, God.”
“Look on the sunny side,” said Javre, her sword already sheathed in its ragged scabbard. “At least it is not—”
“Fuck the sunny side!” screamed Shev. “And fuck the North, and fuck you pair of rutting lunatics!”
Whirrun shrugged. “That I’m mad is no revelation, I’m known for it. They call me Cracknut because my nut is cracked and that’s a fact.” With the toe of his boot he poked at the corpse of Ahum, face down beside him, leaking blood. “Still, even I can reckon out that these Templars of the Silver Order—”
“Golden,” said Javre.
“Whatever they call themselves, they are not going to stop until they catch you.”
Javre nodded as she looked about at the King of the Northman’s dead agents. “You are right. No more than Bethod will stop pursuing you.”
“I have nothing pressing,” said Whirrun. “Perhaps we could help each other with our enemies?”
“Two swords are better than one.” Javre tapped a forefinger thoughtfully against her lips. “And we could fuck some more.”
“The thought had occurred,” said Whirrun, grinning. “That was just starting to get interesting.”
“Wonderful.” Shev winced as she tried to blow the blood from her nose. “Do I get a vote?”
“Henchpeople don’t vote,” said Javre.
“And even if you did,” added Whirrun, giving an apologetic shrug, “there are three of us. You’d be outvoted.”
Shev tipped her head back to look up at the careless, iron-grey sky. “There’s the trouble with fucking democracy.”
“So it’s decided!” Whirrun clapped his hands and gave a boyish caper of enthusiasm. “Shall we fuck now, or. . . ?”
“Let us make a start while there is still some daylight.” Javre stared over the fallen corpse of her old friend Golyin, off towards the west. “It is a long way to Carleon.”
Whirrun frowned. “To Thond first, so I can pay my debt to you.”
Javre puffed up her chest as she turned to face him. “I will not hear of it. We deal with Bethod first.”
With a sigh of infinite weariness, Shev sank down beside the puddle, took up the bloody rag she had used earlier and wrung it out.
“I must insist,” growled Whirrun.
“As must I,” growled Javre.
As though by mutual agreement they seized hold of each other, tumbled wrestling to the ground, snapping, hissing, punching, writhing.
“This is hell.” Shev put her head in her hands. “This is hell.”
YOU MAKE PATTAYA
Rich Larson
RICH LARSON (richwlarson.tumblr.com) was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in Spain, and now writes from Ottawa, Canada. His short work has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award, featured on io9.com, and appears in numerous Year’s Best anthologies as well as in magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Apex. He was one of the most prolific authors of short science fiction in 2015 and 2016.
DORIAN SPRAWLED BACK on sweaty sheets, watching Nan, or Nahm, or whatever her name was, grind up against the mirror, beaming at the pop star projected there like she’d never seen smartglass before. He knew she was from some rural eastern province; she’d babbled as much to him while he crushed and wrapped parachutes for their first round of party pills. But after a year in Pattaya, you’d think she would have lost the big eyes and the bubbliness. Both of which were starting to massively grate on him.
Dorian had been in the city for a month now, following the tourist influx, tapping the Banks and Venmos of sun-scalded Russians too stupid to put their phones in a faraday pouch as they staggered down Walking Street. In the right crowd, he could slice a dozen people for ten or twenty Euros each and make off with a small fortune before a polidrone could zero in on him.
And in Baht, that small fortune still went a long way. More than enough to reward himself with a ’phetamine-fuelled 48-hour club spree through a lurid smear of discos and dopamine bars, from green-lit Insomnia to Tyger Tyger’s tectonic dance floor and finally to some anonymous club on the wharf where he yanked a gorgeous face with bee-stung lips from a queue of bidders on Skinspin and wasted no time renting the two of them a privacy suite.
Dorian put a finger to his lips to mute the pop star in the mirror, partly to ward off the comedown migraine and partly just to see the hooker’s vapid smile slip to the vapid pout that looked better on her. She pulled the time display out from the corner of the mirror and made a small noise of surprise in her throat.
“I must shower.” She checked the cheap nanoscreen embedded in her thumbnail, rueful. “Other client soon. Business lady. Gets angry when I late even one fucking second.” She spun toward the bed. “I like you better,” she cooed. “You’re handsome. Her, I don’t know. She wear a blur.” She raked her glittery nails through the air in front of her face to illustrate.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dorian said, pulling his modded tablet out from under the sheets.
“Like I fuck a ghost,” she said with a grimace. “Gives me shivers.” She turned back to her reflection, piling up her dark hair with one hand and encircling her prick with the other. She flashed him an impish Crest-capped grin from the mirror. “You want a shower with me?”
Dorian’s own chafed cock gave a half-hearted twitch. He counted the popped tabs of Taurus already littered around the room and decided not to risk an overdose. “I’ll watch,” he said. “How’s that?”
Her shoulders heaved an exaggerated sigh, then she flitted off to the bathroom. Dorian flicked the shower’s smartglass from frosted to one-way transparent, watching her unhook the tube and wave it expectantly in his general direction. Dorian used his tablet to buy her the suite’s maximum option, 60 litres of hot water.
Once she was busy under the stream, rapping along to Malaysian blip-hop, he took advantage of the privacy to have a look at his
Bank. The scrolling black figure in his savings account gave him a swell of pride. 30,000 Euros, just over a million in Baht. He was ripping down record cash and the weekend’s binge had barely dented him. Maybe it was finally time to go to a boatyard and put in some inquiries.
Dorian alternated between watching curves through the wet glass and watching clips of long-keeled yachts on his tablet. Then, in the corner of his eye, the mirror left tuned to a Thai entertainment feed flashed a face he actually recognized: Alexis Carrow, UK start-up queen, founder of Delphi Apps and freshly-minted billionaire. Dorian sat up a bit straighter and the mirror noticed, generating English subtitles.
CARROW VACATION INCOGNITO
Alexis Carrow young CEO from Delphi Apps on vacay in our very own beautiful country, celebspotters made clip yesterday on Pattaya Bay Area. She appears having a wonderful time perusing Soi 17 with only bodyguard. No lover for her? Where is singer/songwriter Mohammed X? Alexis Carrow is secretive always.
Dorian dumped the feed from the mirror onto his tablet, zooming in on the digital stills from some celebspotter’s personal drone that showed Ms. Carrow slipping inside an AI-driven tuk-tuk, wearing Gucci shades and a sweat-wicking headscarf. Thailand still pulled in a lion’s share of middleclass Russian and Australian holidayers, plus droves of young Chinese backpackers, but Dorian knew the West’s rich and/or famous had long since moved on to sexier climes. Alexis Carrow was news. And she was here in Pattaya.
Cogs churned in his head; grifter’s intuition tingled the nape of his neck. He eased up off the bed and walked to the smartglass wall of the bathroom. Inside, Nan? Nahm? was removing her penis, trailing strands of denatured protein. He doubted it was her original organ—surgeons needed something to work with when they crafted the vagina, after all—but customers liked the fantasy.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven Page 11