The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition

by Fowler, Karen Joy

  I have only

  one candle

  Even by the mercenaries’ standards, it is not much of a poem. But the woman who wrote it was a soldier, not a poet.

  The mercenaries no longer have a homeland. Even so, they keep certain traditions, and one of them is the Night of Vigils. Each mercenary honors the year’s dead by lighting a candle. They used to do this on the winter solstice of an ancient calendar. Now the Night of Vigils is on the anniversary of the day the first war-kites were launched; the day the mercenaries slaughtered their own people to feed the kites.

  The kites fly, the mercenaries’ commandant said. But they do not know how to hunt.

  When he was done, they knew how to hunt. Few of the mercenaries forgave him, but it was too late by then.

  The poem says: So many people have died, yet I have only one candle for them all.

  It is worth noting that “have” is expressed by a particular construction for alienable possession: not only is the having subject to change, it is additionally under threat of being taken away.

  Kiriet’s warning had been correct. An Imperial flight in perfect formation had advanced toward them, inhibiting their avenues of escape. They outnumbered her forty-eight to one. The numbers did not concern her, but the Imperium’s resources meant that if she dealt with this flight, there would be twenty more waiting for her, and the numbers would only grow worse. That they had not opened fire already meant they had some trickery in mind.

  One of the flyers peeled away, describing an elegant curve and exposing its most vulnerable surface, painted with a rose.

  “That one’s not armed,” Lisse said, puzzled.

  The ghost’s expression was unreadable. “How very wise of them,” it said.

  The forward tapestry flickered. “Accept the communication,” Lisse said.

  The emblem that appeared was a trefoil flanked by two roses, one stem-up, one stem-down. Not for the first time, Lisse wondered why people from a culture that lavished attention on miniatures and sculptures were so intent on masking themselves in emblems.

  “Commander Fai Guen, this is Envoy Nhai Bara.” A woman’s voice, deep and resonant, with an accent Lisse didn’t recognize.

  So I’ve been promoted? Lisse thought sardonically, feeling herself tense up. The Imperium never gave you anything, even a meaningless rank, without expecting something in return.

  Softly, she said to the ghost, “They were bound to catch up to us sooner or later.” Then, to the kite: “Communications to Envoy Nhai: I am Lisse of Rhaion. What words between us could possibly be worth exchanging? Your people are not known for mercy.”

  “If you will not listen to me,” Nhai said, “perhaps you will listen to the envoy after me, or the one after that. We are patient and we are many. But I am not interested in discussing mercy: that’s something we have in common.”

  “I’m listening,” Lisse said, despite the ghost’s chilly stiffness. All her life she had honed herself against the Imperium. It was unbearable to consider that she might have been mistaken. But she had to know what Nhai’s purpose was.

  “Commander Lisse,” the envoy said, and it hurt like a stab to hear her name spoken by a voice other than the ghost’s, a voice that was not Rhaioni. Even if she knew, now, that the ghost was not Rhaioni, either. “I have a proposal for you. You have proven your military effectiveness—”

  Military effectiveness. She had tallied all the deaths, she had marked each massacre on the walls of her heart, and this faceless envoy collapsed them into two words empty of number.

  “—quite thoroughly. We are in need of a strong sword. What is your price for hire, Commander Lisse?”

  “What is my—” She stared at the trefoil emblem, and then her face went ashen.

  It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

  But the same can be said of the living.

  The Sandal-Bride

  Genevieve Valentine

  Pilgrims always cried when they crested the hill and saw the spires of Miruna; they usually fell to their knees right in the middle of traffic.

  All I saw was the gate that led to the Night Market.

  We pulled barrels off the cart (salt, cinnamon, chilis, cardamom, and mazeflower safe in the center away from wandering hands), and when the moon rose and the women came it was as if we’d always been waiting.

  They moved in pairs, holding back their veils, closing their eyes as the smell of mazeflower struck them.

  “Goes well in baking,” Mark told a woman, “which you know all about, with those fine things in your basket.”

  The whole night went well (Mark could sell spice to a stone), until I got peppered by a loose lid and staggered back, choking.

  From behind me a woman asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Who’s asking?” I snapped, and looked up into the ugliest face I’ve ever seen; teeth like old cheese, small black eyes, a thin mouth swallowed up by jowls.

  “A passenger,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  “South,” I said vaguely (never liked people knowing my business), then brushed pepper off my shirt and yelled, “Mark, so help me, I’ll sell your hide to the fur traders!”

  The woman was still standing there, smiling, her hands folded in front of her politely.

  “Did you need some salt?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, I wish you good journey,” I said, and then for some reason I’ll never know I asked, “Where do you travel?”

  “South,” she said, and I realized exactly where she thought she was headed.

  I’ve never known when to seal the barrel and shake on the deal. It’s how I ended up with a blue wagon and a partner like Mark in the first place.

  “Not on any transport of mine,” I said.

  “It’s for my husband,” she said. “A shoemaker in Okalide. I’ll join him there.”

  I didn’t wonder why he’d left her behind. A face like that was bad for business.

  Mark came around and stood behind me.

  “I can’t take an unescorted woman,” I said. I didn’t care, but someone on the road would. This was a church state. “Find someone else to take you.”

  As I turned to go she opened her hand and unfurled a necklace of sapphires as long as a man’s arm, flaming as they caught the dawn. Mark gasped.

  It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I reached without thinking, and had to pull back my hand when I remembered myself. I knew the trouble a woman would bring on that road full of pilgrims and devout traders.

  “I don’t accept bribes,” I said. Mark kicked my foot.

  “It isn’t a bribe,” she said. “It’s a dowry.”

  Mark stopped kicking.

  “You want me to—” I paused.

  She held out her hand draped in glittering blue, her eyes steady. “Sandal-brides are common enough on this road.”

  “Not this common,” Mark muttered, and I surprised us both when I cut him off with, “Pack the wagon.”

  Still muttering, he went, and then it was just the woman and me.

  “Sandal-briding is dangerous,” I said. “Women go missing that way if the men get greedy.”

  She smiled. “A greedy man wouldn’t have pulled back his hand.”

  I found myself smiling, too, and by the time she said, “My husband has another when I am safely delivered,” somehow I had already decided to agree.

  We went the back way; I didn’t want her to see Mark’s face until it was too late to object.

  The ceremony was easier than border-crossing. I gave her a pair of sandals I’d bought on the way, and she showed the priest the necklace she was giving me in lieu of bed rights. I swore to release her at the end of the journey. He wrote my name down next to hers, marked us “Okalide,” and it was over.

  Outside I said, “You could go pack your things.”

  “I don’t ha
ve any things,” she said, and stopped to buy a blanket.

  Mark was still packing when we got back, but he must have known what I was going to do, because he had made space in the back of the wagon for someone to sit.

  I drove the oxen, which were fonder of me than of Mark (good salesmanship never fools oxen). Mark kept watch in the back of the wagon, when he was awake.

  All morning I expected him to climb through and demand a seat away from the woman (my wife), but when we stopped in the scrub at midday and I let the oxen loose to find what they could in the stringy undergrowth, I saw him helping her down.

  “We’ll rest half an hour,” I said.

  Mark nodded and disappeared back into the wagon.

  “Just kick him out of the way when we set off,” I said, unhooking my canteen.

  She laughed and took a seat under the branches of the twisted pim. It was scant shade, but the flats were like this all the way to Okalide. There was a reason her husband made a living there; this ground wore out your shoes.

  She shaded her eyes with one hand and peered out at the horizon, though there was nothing inspiring about it. It was three months of low scrub and low hopes.

  “Expect more of the same,” I said, taking a drink from my canteen and trying to sound like a grizzled traveler and not like someone who used to live above an alehouse and still hated desert nights.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I’ve never been outside the walls before. I’m excited for anything.”

  I was probably more grizzled than I thought, though, since the idea of being closed in by city walls made my skin crawl.

  “Well, if you like scrub, we’ll have plenty.”

  “How do the animals take it?”

  I looked over at the two bony oxen, who had found enough roots for a meal and were chewing contentedly. “They’re tough beasts, though they look dead.”

  “Tough beasts do surprise you that way,” she said.

  She went back into the wagon, and only then I realized she had gone all day without so much as a drink of water, and I had offered her none.

  “We’ll arrange a bed for you in the wagon,” I said the first night as she and Mark were trying a fire.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I love the sky.”

  I wondered if she expected me to sleep at her side. I didn’t know what sandal-husbands usually did. “The wagon is really much better. More privacy.”

  “Too late,” she said, “I already know what Mark says in his sleep.”

  She handed him the flint, and Mark blushed and bowed his head to the sparks.

  After the fire was going, Mark helped me pull rations out of the barrel.

  “I hope she doesn’t eat much,” he said, staring at the salted beef and stale bread.

  “What do you say in your sleep?”

  Mark shook his head, and I hated that they should have been together in the back of the wagon with their secrets while I was sweating in the sun all day.

  “Don’t lose your manners,” I said into the barrel.

  Mark raised an eyebrow, sliced the meat into three pieces with his pocketknife. “Well, what’s her name, then, so I don’t have to keep calling her Goodwife?”

  “You should call her Goodwife.”

  “Don’t you know her name?”

  She hadn’t said it and I’d never asked, but the priest had written it down. “Sara.”

  Mark looked at me like I was one of the oxen, and took the skillet out to her.

  “Tell me about your city,” she said to me.

  “It was like your city. Like any city.”

  “I don’t know my city,” she said. “Start there.”

  And I must have made a face again, because she explained, “They have the market at night so we don’t see the city well enough to run away.”

  I thought about the women picking their way home before it was light, about her thin purse, her refusal to go home and pack. The food turned to dust in my mouth.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked, but I knew the answer before she said, “Everything.”

  I told her about the alehouse; she asked how ale was made and listened as if she’d married a brewer. She wanted to know how many people could read. I told her about my schooling in the townhouse owned by a noble who lived in the country, and then I realized how it sounded to live in the country when the country looked like this, so I explained lakes and green trees and the soft wet snow that fell in winter.

  I described the trader who sold me his wagon, his beasts, and Mark’s indenture in exchange for the alehouse. I expected her to tell me it was a poor trade, but she listened to this story the same as to the others.

  When I got to the terms of the sale, Mark said, “This was worth an alehouse in a season city?”

  I had no answer, gave him none.

  After I ran out of my life, I told her the Tale of the Pearl, which seemed to make her sad, so I told the Tale of the Blind Flower-seller to smooth things over.

  Then my throat hurt, and I said, “We should sleep.”

  “You know, I grew up, too,” Mark said as he sulked back to the wagon.

  She laughed; her voice was dry, and I handed her the canteen.

  She laid her blanket on the hard ground and pulled half of it over her. I felt guilty for not having bought a pallet, a felted shawl even, in all the time I’d been sleeping on the ground. The wagon was as it had been delivered to me, as though I was just keeping it for the man who might want it back.

  “We’ll buy you a pallet,” I said.

  “No need,” she said, like someone who’s used to the worst bed. “Do you know the stars?”

  “No.”

  She was quiet after that. When enough time had gone by, I made a bed a little behind her; it was cold that far from the fire, and it felt too familiar to be so close, but I wanted to be something between her and the night.

  I wasn’t fond of other traders on the road (or ever), but a few evenings later I saw a fire and knocked on the side of the wagon to let them know we were stopping.

  I brought a rasher of bacon to trade for a torch to light our fire. They were glass traders from Demarest, and after the pleasantries I found myself saying, “Let me bring my wife over; she has a little pepper to season it.”

  Mark and the sandal-bride (Sara, I thought) were pulling bread out of the barrel when I hauled myself into the cramped quarters.

  “Bring some pepper,” I told her.

  I wasn’t sure how to go on, but she guessed and smiled, and reached for the right barrel.

  Mark said, “That’s five coin worth—”

  “Come on,” I said, and she carried the ladle like it was mazeflower and not some common thing.

  They were surprised to see her, and I remembered she was ugly.

  She didn’t notice, or didn’t react, and they made room for us, and when there had been quiet for a moment she said, “Where have you come from?”

  They looked to me like she had spoken out of turn.

  I thought about the city walls and the night market closing around her again in Okalide.

  I said, “Do you know about the stars?”

  A week later we found someone who knew the stars, and he went through each constellation, jabbing his finger at the sky.

  We found a botanist after that, wasted out in the scrub, who described flowers I’d never seen.

  A silk trader liked her. He opened up his caravan of wagons and had his servants bring the best. We held up our lanterns and looked at the embroidered fountains that spit silver spangles along the blue silk.

  Pilgrim women never spoke; the men only spoke to me. We stopped trying. Pilgrims could season their own food.

  Once when I stopped the wagon for the night I found her sleeping with her cheek pressed against a barrel of cinnamon, like she could hear how it smelled.

  I rarely said anything at strange camps; what was there to say when you were always the ignorant one?

  But I listened, and I saw how people chan
ged as they spoke of things they loved, and with every story I felt the world opening before us as if my oxen walked on the sea.

  A metalworker and his wife sharpened our knives for some chilies, and the sandal-bride’s eyes gleamed in the dark as he explained how to power the wheel, how to shape a blade.

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “At my father’s feet,” the man said, and tears sprang into his eyes, but even as he cried he told her about the illness that had carried off his parents. He wanted a home by the sea, where the salt air dulled enough knives to feed a metalworker for the rest of his life, and where the fish was fresh.

  That night she cried softly, mourning the parents of some man she’d never see again.

  I counted the stars: the great ox, the three cubs, the parted lovers, the willow tree.

  The wagon got lighter as we went.

  Mark winced every time I opened a barrel, and though I kept the ladles skimpy, I couldn’t blame him. We would never make it to a port city before we ran out.

  I closed my hand around the sapphires in my pocket as I drove. The day was coming when I’d have to break the clasp and sell them off.

  Twice we stopped in tent cities and set up in their open squares, and Mark and Sara and I handed out envelopes of mazeflower and filled people’s burlap bags with what was left of the cumin and salt.

  By then the nights were cold in earnest. Mark made beds amidst the barrels, little fortresses to keep out the wind. Sara and I kept separate blankets, but I slept between her and the wagon flap. I would listen to the wind hissing past the canvas and think: This much, at least, I can do for her.

  One night it was birders, and I scraped the last of a barrel of cinnamon to make enough for an offering.

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping for,” Mark said, “but you’re ruining yourself this way.”

  I didn’t answer; there was nothing to argue.

  When we reached camp I said, “This is my wife Sara,” and took her arm to present her, and she looked at me for a long moment before she smiled at them.

  She told my stories, always. People were kinder if they thought she wasn’t from Miruna.

  We met the girl with the shriveled leg who made cages, the boy who made paints that turned a thrush into a sweet-anna. Above us the little beasts hopped back and forth in the bentwood cages, and of everyone we met on that long journey, that family was the happiest.