Nezahual forces a smile. “It will be all right, Centzontli.”
We fear it won’t. But before we can speak, a tinkle of bells announces the arrival of Acamapixtli—still in full Jaguar regalia, his steel helmet tucked under one arm.
“Ready?” His smile is eager, infectious.
Nezahual runs a hand in his hair, grimacing. “As ready as I will ever be. Let’s go.”
He is walking towards the door of the workshop—halfway to the courtyard—when we feel the air turn to tar, and hear the laughter from our dreams.
No.
Did you think I could be cheated, Nezahual? Tonatiuh’s voice echoes in the workshop.
We rise, in a desperate whirr of wings—and in our fear, our minds scatter, becoming that of five hummingbirds, of one quetzal, of two parrots, struggling to hold themselves together.
I, I, I—
We—
We have to—
Nezahual has stopped, one hand going to his sword—his face contorted in pain. “No,” he says. “I didn’t think I could cheat you. But nevertheless—”
Tonatiuh laughs and laughs. You are nothing, he whispers. Worth nothing. You will not make this speech, Nezahual. You will not make anything more.
Behind us, the table shakes; the metal scraps rise, spinning in the air like a cloud of steel butterflies—all sharp, cutting edges, as eager to shed blood as any warrior.
Nezahual stands, mesmerized—watching them coalesce into the air, watching them as they start to spin towards him.
We watch. We cannot move—as we could not move in the vision.
Acamapixtli has dropped his helmet and is reaching for his sword; but he will be too late. Nezahual’s knees are already flexing—welcoming the death he’s courted for so long.
The thought is enough to make us snap together again: our minds melding together, narrowing to an arrow’s point.
“Nezahual!” we scream, throwing ourselves in the path of the whirling storm.
It enfolds us. Metal strikes against metal; copper grinds against the wires that keep us together, all with a sickening noise like a dying man’s scream.
I have warned you not to interfere, Tonatiuh whispers. The sunlight, filtered through the entrance curtain, is red and angry. You are a fool, Centzontli.
Something pricks our chests—the claws from the visions, probing into our flesh.
We have no flesh, we think, desperately—but the claws do not stop, they reach into our chests. They close with a crunch.
Within us, glass tinkles—and shatters into a thousand pieces. Our blood-vials. Our hearts, we think, distantly, as the world spins and spins around us....
Blood leaks out, drop by drop—and darkness engulfs us, grinning with a death’s head.
* * *
This is what we remember: before the battle—before the smoke and the spattered blood, before the deaths—Atl and Chimalli sit by the camplight, playing patolli on a board old enough to have seen the War of Independence. They’re arguing about the score—Atl is accusing Chimalli of cheating, and Chimalli says nothing, only laughs and laughs without being able to stop. Atl takes everything much too seriously, and Chimalli enjoys making him lose his calm.
They’re young and carefree, so innocent it hurts us—to think of Atl, falling under the red light of the rising sun; of Chimalli, pierced by an enemy’s bayonet; of the corpses aligned in the morgue like so much flesh for barter.
But we remember: our curse, our gift, our blessing; our only reason for existing.
* * *
Our eyes are open—staring at the ceiling of Nezahual’s workshop. Our chests ache, burning like a thousand suns.
We are not dead.
Slowly, one by one, we rise—and the quetzal dislodges a pair of bleeding hands resting over its chest.
Nezahual. You’re hurt, we think—but it’s more than that.
It’s not only his hands that bleed—and no matter how hard we look, we cannot see a heartbeat anywhere. His chest does not rise; his veins do not pulse in his body. Metal parts are embedded everywhere in his flesh: the remnants of the storm that he could not weather.
We are covered in blood—blood which cannot be our own. We still live—a thing which cannot be.
“Come,” whispers Tonatiuh.
He stands in the doorway of the workshop, limned by the rising sun—metal lungs and metal hands, and a pulsing metal heart. “There is nothing left. Come.” His hands are wide open—the clawed hands which broke us open, which tore our hearts from our chest.
“Why should we?”
“There is nothing left,” Tonatiuh whispers.
“Acamapixtli—” He is lying on the ground, just behind Tonatiuh, we see: his heart still beats, albeit weakly. We struggle against an onslaught of memory—against images of warriors laughing at each other, sounds of bullets shattering flesh, the strong animal smell of blood pooling into the dark earth.
“Do you truly think he will make a difference?” Tonatiuh asks. “There will always be dreamers, even among the warriors. But nothing can change. The world must go on. Come.”
There is nothing left.
But we know one thing: Nezahual died, and it was not for nothing. If Acamapixtli could not make a difference, somehow Nezahual could. Somehow....
“It wasn’t Acamapixtli,” we whisper, staring at the god’s outstretched hands. “It was never Acamapixtli—it was what Nezahual made in his workshop.”
Tonatiuh doesn’t answer. His perfect, flawless face is devoid of expression. But his heart—his heart of steel and wires—beats faster than it should.
Mech-birds. Beings of metal and copper, kept alive by heart’s blood—and, even after the blood was gone, kept alive by the remnants of the ritual that gave us birth, by the memories that crowd within us—the spirits of the dead keening in our mind like a mourning lament.
“You fear us,” we whisper, rising in the air.
“I am the sun,” Tonatiuh says, arrogantly. “Why should I fear birds that have no hearts?”
“You fear us,” we whisper, coming closer to him—stained with Nezahual’s dying blood.
His claws prick us, plunge deep into our chests.
But there is nothing there. No vial, nothing that can be grasped or broken anymore. “You are right,” we say. “We have no hearts.”
“Will you defy me?” Tonatiuh asks, gesturing with his metal hands.
Visions rise—of bodies, rotting in the heat of the marshes—of torn-out limbs and charred dirigibles—of Atl, endlessly falling into death.
But we have seen them. We have fought them, night after night.
We are not Nezahual. War does not own us; and neither does blood; neither do the gods.
We do not stop.
“I am the sun,” Tonatiuh whispers. “You cannot touch me.”
“No,” we say. “But you cannot touch us, either.”
We fly out, into the brightness of the courtyard—straight through Tonatiuh, who makes a strangled gasp before vanishing into a hundred sparkles—the sunlight, playing on the stone rim; the fountain whispering once more its endless song.
Oh, Nezahual.
We would weep—if we had hearts, if we had blood. But we have neither, and the world refuses to fold itself away from us, and grief refuses itself to us.
A shuffling sound, from behind—Acamapixtli drags himself out of the workshop on tottering legs, bleeding from a thousand cuts—staring at us as if we held the answers. “Nezahual....”
“He’s gone,” we say, and his bloodied hands clench. We wish for tears, for anger, for anything to alleviate the growing emptiness in our chests.
Acamapixtli smiles, bitterly. “All for nothing. I should have known. You can’t cheat the gods.”
We say nothing. We stand, unmoving, in the courtyard—watching the sunlight sparkle and dissolve in the water of the fountain until everything blurs out of focus.
* * *
This is what we see: a flock of copper birds speaking
to the assembled crowd—of machines, of arched bridges and trains over steel tracks, of the dream that should have been Nezahual’s.
This is what we see: a city where buildings rise from the bloodless earth, high enough to pierce the heavens; a city where, once a year, a procession of grave people in cotton clothes walks through the marketplaces and the plazas of bronze. We see them make their slow way to the old war cemeteries and lay offerings of grass on the graves of long-dead warriors; we see an entire nation mourning its slaughtered children under the warm light of the silenced sun.
This is what we wished for.
Copyright © 2010 Aliette de Bodard
Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums
Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a computer engineer. She is the author of “Beneath the Mask” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #8 and “Blighted Heart” in BCS #22 and BCS Audio Fiction Podcast #20. In addition to BCS, her fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Asimov’s. Her first novel, Servant of the Underworld, was released by Angry Robot/Harper Collins in January 2010. She has been a Writers of the Future winner and a Campbell Award finalist. Visit www.aliettedebodard.com for more information.
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
THE JEWELS OF MONTFORTE, PT. II
by Adam Corbin Fusco
(Concluded from Issue #44)
* * *
One of LaRoche’s pyrates stood guard at the entrance to the ballroom. Absinthe crouched in the shadows of the entryway with Lady Montforte, weighing in his hand his rapier, which he had retrieved on their way up the stairs.
“Where are the jewels?” he asked her, whispering.
“Books in a library,” she said as she leaned against the wall.
In plain sight, then, he thought. At the far end of the ballroom he could see LaRoche and his men covering the guests. They had already been robbed, and now the pyrates awaited the abating of the storm before leaving. Doubloon still stood with his tray of cream puffs, and Absinthe knew his men would still be hidden about the room. The jewels...
He looked at the columns, the chairs of the orchestra, the chandelier—the chandelier! It glittered, the candles all lit, the perfect place to keep the jewels out of reach. But then his eyes fell on the skulls in their brackets up in the gallery, the eyes shining from the torches behind them, some red, some green, some white—white as diamonds.
“The skulls,” he said. “Your husband’s face.”
She smiled. “Aye, Captain.”
There was a stairway going up to the gallery along the nearer wall of the ballroom. He lifted his blade. “I’ll take care of this one.”
“No need.” Still smiling, she leaned back against the wall. A line opened and a section of it gave way, resolving into a hidden door. “Servant’s entrance.”
“This mountain is full of tricks, isn’t it.”
A narrow stairway lay behind the door, lit by a single torch. He followed her up. “How did you plan to retrieve the jewels if you were still with LaRoche?”
“I would come to the ballroom with him, disguised as a pyrate, and take them as more loot, just pieces of porcelain, with him none the wiser. Then I would sneak away from him to my ship.”
“You have a ship?”
Another hidden door at the top of the stairs let out onto the gallery. They crawled low, hiding behind the railing. Absinthe looked along the line of skulls on the gallery wall. He put away his rapier and grabbed a silk tapestry, ready to tear it down for use as a sack.
Lady Montforte, smirking, stopped his hand and untied a rope that held the tapestry in place. Crouching low, they went along the line of skulls and took each from the wall, loading them into the tapestry. They finished on the other side of the room.
“Now to my ship,” Lady Montforte whispered.
“I thought we had an alliance,” Absinthe said. “I still have men down there.”
“LaRoche will leave soon, and so can your men.”
“Not without me giving the signal. And what will your guests think when more pyrates appear?”
“That’s not my problem. The storm is waning. I need to plant this dress where it can be seen, so it looks like LaRoche killed me.”
“Why did you have such an elaborate plan? Why not just go pyrate on your own?”
“And how fast would these royals have hired privateers to hunt me down? Better to have them think me dead.”
“If LaRoche escapes, he’ll hunt you down himself.”
“Only if he knows I’m alive.”
“He might learn that from someone.”
“Who?” She looked at him hard, and then sighed. “What do you propose?”
Absinthe’s gaze fell on a rope secured to the wall nearby. The rope was attached to the chandelier, holding it in place near the ceiling.
The lady’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no you don’t.”
Absinthe secured the sack of masks to the rope and then untied the rope from the wall. He wrapped it around his right arm and braced his feet against the floor of the gallery, now that he had the weight of the chandelier in his grip. As he eased toward the railing, the chandelier—creaking, tinkling—lowered a few feet.
He turned to Lady Montforte. “Give me the dress.”
She shook her head, frightened. “It won’t work.”
“Come here.”
“You’re mad!”
“I thought you wanted to be a pyrate!” he hissed.
“I thought you said being a pyrate wasn’t just about swinging from ropes!”
“Well, some of it is.”
Furious, she approached him and slapped the dress over his arm. “I hate you, Monteroy Absinthe.”
“You mean you’re just starting now?”
She sidled up to him and he put his arm around her waist. She drew the pistols from the holsters at her back. “Have you done anything like this before?”
He put a foot on top of the railing. “Of course not. I’m not stupid.”
In one motion he drew himself up to the top of the railing, lifting the lady off her feet, and over the side they went.
At first he thought he had made a terrible mistake judging distances, for they plummeted straight down, the rope all slack and the floor of the ballroom rushing up to them. Then the rope grew taut, the chandelier slammed against its hook in the ceiling, and now they were sailing in an arc down and across, the air whistling in his ear—or was it Lady Montforte screaming curses?—with the room all askew in amber and honey, and guests and pyrates alike gazing at them in stunned shock as Absinthe raised his feet and the tip of his rapier scratched the marble with an audible ching!
Up they went along the rest of the arc, halting in midair, the room silent now—or was Lady Montforte catching her breath for another scream?—and then they began to swing the other way. When they were once again a few feet above the floor, he let go of her. She landed nimbly on her feet and ran for cover.
Absinthe continued along the backswing, clutching dress and rope; but now that there was less weight on it, the chandelier plummeted down, carrying Absinthe up toward the ceiling. He passed the rattling chandelier, its tinkling lights flashing in his face, and then it crashed against the marble floor, filling the room with a shattering cacophony. The rope carried him within an arm’s length of the ceiling and then stopped. He had time for a brief sigh of relief before he looked down, saw all the guests staring back at him, and then slid down the rope all the way to the floor.
As the last of the chandelier’s crystals stopped bouncing—tink, tink, tink—he nonchalantly approached the gaping LaRoche and threw the dress over the captain’s head. He stood back and said in his loudest storm voice, “What a beautiful dress you are wearing, my lady!”
On cue, all hell broke loose.
Doubloon threw his tray into the air, drew out the two pistols hidden underneath it, and fired to either side. Two of LaRoche’s men clattered to the ground at the same moment as the tray.
Wenn sh
ot up from the urn and flung its lid across the room to knock down an enemy pyrate. He then jumped out, knife in hand.
The sword plant leaves were sliced apart as Havelyn leaped through and lay about him with his blade.
The top of the eleven-tier cake burst open to reveal Merrick, who felled one man with a musket shot and then ducked back in to reload.
Absinthe drew his rapier. As LaRoche struggled out of the dress, his pistol clattered from his belt. He drew a long sword and circled round the chandelier as Absinthe approached. Candles still burned in the wreckage and broken bits of crystal lay everywhere.
Absinthe gauged the feel of the marble floor with his bare feet, shuffling to knock away the crystal shards. He feinted to one side and then the other as LaRoche did the same. Then LaRoche titled back his head, his spectacles flashing, and leaped over the chandelier toward him.
Absinthe turned aside the point and riposted into the attack with his greater reach, lunging. The swords sang. But LaRoche’s strikes seemed not to have much strength behind them; they were really to gauge Absinthe’s technique.
Absinthe did the same, careful that LaRoche not get within his point. Bookish, Absinthe thought, reading all sixteen angles of attack as LaRoche went through them in order as if from a text. But LaRoche was quick—very quick.
LaRoche pressed in and now the fight began in earnest. The swords struck and slewed, flashing from candlelight, the crystals on the floor sparkling with fire. Absinthe backed away, circling behind the chandelier. He lunged, missing. LaRoche’s sword whanged against the fixture in a failed counterstroke.
They parted and LaRoche swooshed his sword from side to side, feeling its weight. At one point he took a pass across one of the chandelier’s candles, sending its tip jumping into the air. He laughed.
Yes, a bookish boy, Absinthe thought. A fine swordsman deep down, innate ability, but too dependent on technique. And too confident by half.
LaRoche took the fight to him again and metal rang. Though LaRoche was quick, Absinthe knew he had his gauge, but though his rapier darted and sang, he could not get a hit. As he sidestepped round, left then right, he realized what it was: the silent, still ground at his feet. Absinthe was out of his element with nothing but dead land under him. His feet fell flat at every step. His legs—land legs—were leaden.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #45 Page 2