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

by Fowler, Karen Joy

  Her brother produced for her inspection the brittle, boiled bodies of several wasps in a glass jar, along with one of the smaller maps. She tickled him until he surrendered his trophies, promised him a basket of peaches in return, and let herself be fed to tautness. Then, to her family’s dismay, she wrote an urgent letter to the Academy of Sciences and packed a satchel with clothes and cash. If she could find one more nest of wasps, she said, it would make their fortune and her name. But it had to be done quickly.

  In the morning, before the cockerels woke and while the sky was still purple, she hopped onto her old bicycle and rode down the dusty path.

  Bees do not fly at night or lie to each other, but the anarchists had learned both from the wasps. On a warm, clear evening they left the hive at last, flying west in a small tight cloud. Around them swelled the voices of summer insects, strange and disquieting. Several miles west of the old hive and the wasp nest, in a lightning-scarred elm, the anarchists had built up a small stock of stolen honey sealed in wax and paper. They rested there for the night, in cells of clean white wax, and in the morning they arose to the building of their city.

  The first business of the new colony was the laying of eggs, which a number of workers set to, and provisions for winter. One egg from the old queen, brought from the hive in an anarchist’s jaws, was hatched and raised as a new mother. Uncrowned and unconcerned, she too laid mortar and wax, chewed wood to make paper, and fanned the storerooms with her wings.

  The anarchists labored secretly but rapidly, drones alongside workers, because the copper taste of autumn was in the air. None had seen a winter before, but the memory of the species is subtle and long, and in their hearts, despite the summer sun, they felt an imminent darkness.

  The flowers were fading in the fields. Every day the anarchists added to their coffers of warm gold and built their white walls higher. Every day the air grew a little crisper, the grass a little drier. They sang as they worked, sometimes ballads from the old hive, sometimes anthems of their own devising, and for a time they were happy. Too soon, the leaves turned flame colors and blew from the trees, and then there were no more flowers. The anarchists pressed down the lid on the last vat of honey and wondered what was coming.

  Four miles away, at the first touch of cold, the wasps licked shut their paper doors and slept in a tight knot around the foundress. In both beehives, the bees huddled together, awake and watchful, warming themselves with the thrumming of their wings. The anarchists murmured comfort to each other.

  “There will be more, after us. It will breed out again.”

  “We are only the beginning.”

  “There will be more.”

  Snow fell silently outside.

  The snow was ankle-deep and the river iced over when the girl from Yiwei reached up into the empty branches of an oak tree and plucked down the paper castle of a nest. The wasps within, drowsy with cold, murmured but did not stir. In their barracks the soldiers dreamed of the unexplored south and battles in strange cities, among strange peoples, and scouts dreamed of the corpses of starved and frozen deer. The cartographers dreamed of the changes that winter would work on the landscape, the diverted creeks and dead trees they would have to note down. They did not feel the burlap bag that settled around them, nor the crunch of tires on the frozen road.

  She had spent weeks tramping through the countryside, questioning beekeepers and villagers’ children, peering up into trees and into hives, before she found the last wasps from Yiwei. Then she had had to wait for winter and the anesthetizing cold. But now, back in the warmth of her own room, she broke open the soft pages of the nest and pushed aside the heaps of glistening wasps until she found the foundress herself, stumbling on uncertain legs.

  When it thawed, she would breed new foundresses among the village’s apricot trees. The letters she received indicated a great demand for them in the capital, particularly from army generals and the captains of scientific explorations. In years to come, the village of Yiwei would be known for its delicately inscribed maps, the legends almost too small to see, and not for its barley and oats, its velvet apricots and glassy pears.

  In the spring, the old beehive awoke to find the wasps gone, like a nightmare that evaporates by day. It was difficult to believe, but when not the slightest scrap of wasp paper could be found, the whole hive sang with delight. Even the queen, who had been coached from the pupa on the details of her client state and the conditions by which she ruled, and who had felt, perhaps, more sympathy for the wasps than she should have, cleared her throat and trilled once or twice. If she did not sing so loudly or so joyously as the rest, only a few noticed, and the winter had been a hard one, anyhow.

  The maps had vanished with the wasps. No more would be made. Those who had studied among the wasps began to draft memoranda and the first independent decrees of queen and council. To defend against future invasions, it was decided that a detachment of bees would fly the borders of their land and carry home reports of what they found.

  It was on one of these patrols that a small hive was discovered in the fork of an elm tree. Bees lay dead and brittle around it, no identifiable queen among them. Not a trace of honey remained in the storehouse; the dark wax of its walls had been gnawed to rags. Even the brood cells had been scraped clean. But in the last intact hexagons they found, curled and capped in wax, scrawled on page after page, words of revolution. They read in silence.

  Then—

  “Write,” one said to the other, and she did.

  The Man Who Bridged the Mist

  Kij Johnson

  Kit came to Nearside with two trunks and an oiled-cloth folio full of plans for the bridge across the mist. His trunks lay tumbled like stones at his feet, where the mailcoach guard had dropped them. The folio he held close, away from the drying mud of yesterday’s storm.

  Nearside was small, especially to a man of the capital, where buildings towered seven and eight stories tall, a city so large that even a vigorous walker could not cross it in half a day. Here hard-packed dirt roads threaded through irregular spaces scattered with structures and fences. Even the inn was plain, two stories of golden limestone and blue slate tiles, with (he could smell) some sort of animals living behind it. On the sign overhead, a flat, pale blue fish very like a ray curveted against a black background.

  A brightly dressed woman stood by the inn’s door. Her skin and eyes were pale, almost colorless. “Excuse me,” Kit said. “Where can I find the ferry to take me across the mist?” He could feel himself being weighed, but amiably: a stranger, small and very dark, in gray—a man from the east.

  The woman smiled. “Well, the ferries are both at the upper dock. But I expect what you really want is someone to oar the ferry, yes? Rasali Ferry came over from Farside last night. She’s the one you’ll want to talk to. She spends a lot of time at The Deer’s Heart. But you wouldn’t like The Heart, sir,” she added. “It’s not nearly as nice as The Fish here. Are you looking for a room?”

  “I’ll be staying in Farside tonight,” Kit said apologetically. He didn’t want to seem arrogant. The invisible web of connections he would need for his work started here, with this first impression, with all the first impressions of the next few days.

  “That’s what you think,” the woman said. “I’m guessing it’ll be a day or two, or more, before Rasali goes back. Valo Ferry might, but he doesn’t cross so often.”

  “I could buy out the trip’s fares, if that’s why she’s waiting.”

  “It’s not that,” the woman said. “She won’t cross the mist ‘til she’s ready. Until it tells her she can go, if you follow me. But you can ask, I suppose.”

  Kit didn’t follow, but he nodded anyway. “Where’s The Deer’s Heart?”

  She pointed. “Left, then right, then down by the little boat yard.”

  “Thank you,” Kit said. “May I leave my trunks here until I work things out with her?”

  “We always stow for travelers.” The woman grinned. “And cater to them
, too, when they find out there’s no way across the mist today.”

  The Deer’s Heart was smaller than The Fish, and livelier. At midday the oak-shaded tables in the beer garden beside the inn were clustered with light-skinned people in brilliant clothes, drinking and tossing comments over the low fence into the boat yard next door, where, half lost in steam, a youth and two women bent planks to form the hull of a small flat-bellied boat. When Kit spoke to a man carrying two mugs of something that looked like mud and smelled of yeast, the man gestured at the yard with his chin. “Ferrys are over there. Rasali’s the one in red,” he said as he walked away.

  “The one in red” was tall, her skin as pale as that of the rest of the locals, with a black braid so long that she had looped it around her neck to keep it out of the way. Her shoulders flexed in the sunlight as she and the youth forced a curved plank to take the skeletal hull’s shape. The other woman, slightly shorter, with the ash-blond hair so common here, forced an augur through the plank and into a rib, then hammered a peg into the hole she’d made. After three pegs, the boatwrights straightened. The plank held. Strong, Kit thought; I wonder if I can get them for the bridge?

  “Rasali!” a voice bellowed, almost in Kit’s ear. “Man here’s looking for you.” Kit turned in time to see the man with the mugs gesturing, again with his chin. He sighed and walked to the waist-high fence. The boatwrights stopped to drink from blueware bowls before the one in red and the youth came over.

  “I’m Rasali Ferry of Farside,” the woman said. Her voice was softer and higher than he had expected of a woman as strong as she, with the fluid vowels of the local accent. She nodded to the boy beside her: “Valo Ferry of Farside, my brother’s eldest.” Valo was more a young man than a boy, lighter-haired than Rasali and slightly taller. They had the same heavy eyebrows and direct amber eyes.

  “Kit Meinem of Atyar,” Kit said.

  Valo asked, “What sort of name is Meinem? It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “In the capital, we take our names differently than you.”

  “Oh, like Jenner Ellar.” Valo nodded. “I guessed you were from the capital—your clothes and your skin.”

  Rasali said, “What can we do for you, Kit Meinem of Atyar?”

  “I need to get to Farside today,” Kit said.

  Rasali shook her head. “I can’t take you. I just got here, and it’s too soon. Perhaps Valo?”

  The youth tipped his head to one side, his expression suddenly abstract, as though he were listening to something too faint to hear clearly. He shook his head. “No, not today.”

  “I can buy out the fares, if that helps. It’s Jenner Ellar I am here to see.”

  Valo looked interested but said, “No,” to Rasali, and she added, “What’s so important that it can’t wait a few days?”

  Better now than later, Kit thought. “I am replacing Teniant Planner as the lead engineer and architect for construction of the bridge over the mist. We will start work again as soon as I’ve reviewed everything. And had a chance to talk to Jenner.” He watched their faces.

  Rasali said, “It’s been a year since Teniant died—I was starting to think Empire had forgotten all about us, and your deliveries would be here ‘til the iron rusted away.”

  “Jenner Ellar’s not taking over?” Valo asked, frowning.

  “The new Department of Roads cartel is in my name,” Kit said. “but I hope Jenner will remain as my second. You can see why I would like to meet him as soon as is possible, of course. He will—”

  Valo burst out, “You’re going to take over from Jenner, after he’s worked so hard on this? And what about us? What about our work?” His cheeks were flushed an angry red. How do they conceal anything with skin like that? Kit thought.

  “Valo,” Rasali said, a warning tone in her voice. Flushing darker still, the youth turned and strode away. Rasali snorted but said only: “Boys. He likes Jenner, and he has issues about the bridge, anyway.”

  That was worth addressing. Later. “So, what will it take to get you to carry me across the mist, Rasali Ferry of Farside? The project will pay anything reasonable.”

  “I cannot,” she said. “Not today, not tomorrow. You’ll have to wait.”

  “Why?” Kit asked: reasonably enough, he thought, but she eyed him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to be annoyed.

  “Have you gone across mist before?” she said at last.

  “Of course.”

  “Not the river,” she said.

  “Not the river,” he agreed. “It’s a quarter mile across here, yes?”

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled suddenly: white even teeth and warmth like sunlight in her eyes. “Let’s go down, and perhaps I can explain things better there.” She jumped the fence with a single powerful motion, landing beside him to a chorus of cheers and shouts from the inn garden’s patrons. She made an exaggerated bow, then gestured to Kit to follow her. She was well-liked, clearly. Her opinion would matter.

  The boat yard was heavily shaded by low-hanging oaks and chestnuts, and bounded on the east by an open-walled shelter filled with barrels and stacks of lumber. Rasali waved at the third boat maker, who was still putting her tools away. “Tilisk Boatwright of Nearside. My brother’s wife,” she said to Kit. “She makes skiffs with us, but she won’t ferry. She’s not born to it as Valo and I are.”

  “Where’s your brother?” Kit asked.

  “Dead,” Rasali said, and lengthened her stride.

  They walked a few streets over and then climbed a long, even ridge perhaps eighty feet high, too regular to be natural. A levee, Kit thought, and distracted himself from the steep path by estimating the volume of earth and the labor that had been required to build it. Decades, perhaps, but how long ago? How long was it? The levee was treeless. The only feature was a slender wood tower hung with flags. It was probably for signaling across the mist to Farside, since it appeared too fragile for anything else. They had storms out here, Kit knew; there’d been one the night before, which had left the path muddy. How often was the tower struck by lightning?

  Rasali stopped. “There.”

  Kit had been watching his feet. He looked up and nearly cried out as light lanced his suddenly tearing eyes. He fell back a step and shielded his face. What had blinded him was an immense band of white mist reflecting the morning sun.

  Kit had never seen the mist river itself, though he’d bridged mist before this, two simple post-and-beam structures over gorges closer to the capital. From his work in Atyar, he knew what was to be known. It was not water, or anything like. It did not flow, but formed somehow in the deep gorge of the great riverbed before him. It found its way many hundreds of miles north, up through a hundred narrowing mist creeks and streams before failing at last, in shreds of drying foam that left bare patches of earth where they collected.

  The mist stretched to the south as well, a deepening, thickening band that poured out at last from the river’s mouth two thousand miles south, and formed the mist ocean, which lay on the face of the salt-water ocean. Water had to follow the river’s bed to run somewhere beneath, or through, the mist, but there was no way to prove this.

  There was mist nowhere but this river and its streams and sea; but the mist split Empire in half.

  After a moment, the pain in Kit’s eyes grew less, and he opened them again. The river was a quarter-mile across where they stood, a great gash of light between the levees. It seemed nearly featureless, blazing under the sun like a river of cream or of bleached silk, but as his eyes accustomed themselves, he saw the surface was not smooth but heaped and hollowed, and that it shifted slowly, almost indiscernibly, as he watched.

  Rasali stepped forward, and Kit started. “I’m sorry,” he said with a laugh. “How long have I been staring? It’s just—I had no idea.”

  “No one does,” Rasali said. Her eyes when he met them were amused.

  The east and west levees were nearly identical, each treeless and scrub-covered, with a signal tower. The levee on their side ran
down to a narrow bare bank half a dozen yards wide. There was a wooden dock and a boat ramp, a rough switchback leading down to them. Two large boats had been pulled onto the bank. Another, smaller dock was visible a hundred yards upstream, attended by a clutter of boats, sheds, and indeterminate piles covered in tarps.

  “Let’s go down.” Rasali led the way, her words coming back to him over her shoulder. “The little ferry is Valo’s. Pearlfinder. The Tranquil Crossing’s mine.” Her voice warmed when she said the name. “Eighteen feet long, eight wide. Mostly pine, but a purpleheart keel and pearwood headpiece. You can’t see it from here, but the hull’s sheathed in blue-dyed fish-skin. I can carry three horses or a ton and a half of cartage or fifteen passengers. Or various combinations. I once carried twenty-four hunting dogs and two handlers. Never again.”

  A steady, light breeze eased down from the north, channeled by the levees. The air had a smell, not unpleasant but a little sour, wild. “How can you manage a boat like this alone? Are you that strong?”

  “It’s as big as I can handle,” she said, “but Valo helps sometimes, for really unwieldy loads. You don’t paddle through mist. I mostly just coax the Crossing to where I want it to go. Anyway, the bigger the boat, the more likely that the Big Ones will notice it; though if you do run into a fish, the smaller the boat, the easier it is to swamp. Here we are.”

  They stood on the bank. The mist streams he had bridged had not prepared him for anything like this. Those were tidy little flows, more like fog collecting in hollows than this. From their angle, the river no longer seemed a smooth flow of creamy whiteness, nor even gently heaped clouds. The mist forced itself into hillocks and hollows, tight slopes perhaps twenty feet high that folded into one another. It had a surface, but it was irregular, cracked in places, translucent in others. The surface didn’t seem as clearly defined as that between water and air.