Beneath Ceaseless Skies #114

by James L. Sutter

  Tyrus’s eyes were dark pools. “To see people take control of their own lives? To know my children will be free to rise according to their abilities?” The arm pinned beneath Alana snaked around her shoulders, pulling her to his chest. “I’d die for that in a second. And for you.”

  “I’d die for you, too,” she whispered.

  He squeezed her once more, tightly, and then the two of them simply lay there, her head on his chest, listening to the sounds of the night. After a time, his breathing slowed and deepened, and Alana knew he was asleep.

  She’d told the truth. She would happily die for this man, this idealist who loved her beyond all question. She would give everything she had for him and never look back.

  But could she break a promise?

  Alone once more, Alana pressed her face against her lover’s ribs and hoped that the warmth of her tears wouldn’t wake him.

  * * *

  Tyrus was gone by first light, and Alana was dressed and waiting at the forest’s edge by the time the sun cut through the gaps between the eastern towers. The beastmen were gone, and her retainers stood back among the tents, arranged in neat ranks. Only royalty could enter the wood.

  There was movement between the trees. All at once a man stood before her in a brown robe, its heavy cowl shading his face so that only his mouth and chin were visible. His arms were folded into his sleeves.

  “Greetings, Keeper,” Alana said. “I come seeking the knowledge of the oracle.”

  Instead of answering, the man glided forward almost soundlessly, robes swirling across the grass. Closer up, she could see that his eyes were closed beneath the cowl’s overhanging hem. Alana heard a shuffling behind her as soldiers reached for weapons, and she silenced them with a gesture.

  When he was only a foot away, the Keeper paused and raised his hands, bringing them delicately to her face. Thin fingers like spider legs danced across forehead and cheeks, lips and chin. The man smiled.

  “You are of the line of Young-Allen, child of Erick and Mara. The oracle recognizes you, Lady.”

  Understanding dawned, and Alana spoke before she could help herself. “You’re blind.”

  The man’s smile widened, eyes still closed and face serene. “All Keepers are blind, lady. It’s what keeps us from being tempted by our charge, and makes us better servants of destiny.” He took her hand. “Come. The oracle waits.”

  Alana allowed the man to lead her into the grove, marveling at the way he moved gracefully between the great trees despite the lack of a path. At times he would stop and place a hand on a trunk, cocking his head as if listening, and then continue on.

  Soon the trees gave way and they entered a clearing. Overhead, the forest giants arched long branches that formed a cathedral dome and blotted out the midday sun. In the half-light of the clearing’s center stood a small cloth tent, a round-topped pavilion not unlike the one Alana had spent the night in, save that its canvas sides were aged and thick with moss. From inside it, a light glowed.

  “The oracle,” the Keeper intoned. He released Alana’s hand, taking up his folded-arm stance once more.

  “Thank you,” said Alana. When the man made no response, she took a hesitant step toward the tent. Then another.

  Before she could think any more about it, she strode quickly across the clearing. When she reached the tent, she lifted the flap and stepped through.

  Inside, the floor was a slab of smooth stone. The light came from a glowing globe that hung by a cord from the tent’s ceiling many feet overhead.

  Directly beneath it stood the oracle. Alana’s first thought was that it looked like a glass-walled closet, a thin metal frame holding clear rectangular panes. It was barely wide enough to contain a single person, yet the accordion-fold door stood open, beckoning. On its far wall hung a square metal box the size of a legionary’s breastplate, its face etched with the royal seal and broken by two dark mouths.

  Unwilling to lose her momentum, Alana moved into the transparent booth, half expecting the door to slam shut behind her like a hungry beast. Instead, a single red eye winked on in the metal box. She waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “I am Alana Young-Allen,” she intoned, “Princess of the Appalachian Empire. I seek the knowledge of the oracle.”

  Still the red light waited.

  Alana began to feel foolish. For a brief second, she hoped that this was all a hoax—that the great secret behind the rulers of the world was that there was no oracle, no predestined caste called the Dying, only an illusion constructed to maintain royal authority.

  But no—her father’s prediction had been accurate, and she’d seen the truth in his eyes.

  She bent down to study the box more closely. In addition to the Great Seal, there were lesser symbols engraved above the thing’s mouths. Over the smaller one was a picture of a human hand with one finger extended. The larger had yet another picture of a human skull.

  Tentatively, tensing every muscle to keep her hand from shaking, Alana extended her index finger and slid it into the smaller mouth.

  There came a sharp sting, as if from a wasp, and she jerked her hand back. A tiny bead of blood was welling up at the tip of her finger.

  On the box, the light changed from red to amber. The glass-walled chamber filled with a soft whirring noise.

  Alana didn’t notice. She was staring at the drop of blood, her clenched muscles pumping it bigger and brighter as her mind raced.

  She could leave. Right now. It wasn’t too late. She could simply exit the tent and keep walking, convince Tyrus to come with her and start a life somewhere else. Maybe somewhere on the northwestern frontier, deep in the backwater hollows of the Lakelands and far from all empires or monarchies.

  Better yet, she could smash the oracle. Without its predictions, there would truly be no difference between royalty and commoners. The box was small—surely she could rip it from its mounting and slam it against the stone floor until its single eye went out.

  Yet she had promised. She had promised her father that she would take the oracle’s test and accept the queenship. And she had promised Tyrus a revolution.

  Sweet Tyrus. He truly was ready to die for her, and for the idea of democracy, yet he had no idea that those two were now at odds. If she betrayed the revolution—if she betrayed him—would he still love her?

  Her father or Tyrus. The monarchy or the revolution. No matter what she chose, she would betray one of them.

  Her legs felt weak. She leaned forward until her forehead rested against the cool metal of the box. The engraved seal pressed against her skin, and she increased the pressure until her forehead went numb, as if she might imprint it there permanently, that the whole world might see the burden she carried. Her vision blurred and ran.

  It wasn’t fair. It was wrong to make her choose like this, between the love of a daughter and the love of a woman.

  The light on the box turned green. With the smallest of sounds, a slip of paper slid out into the wider slot.

  Alana stared down at it. The paper jutted slightly from its receptacle, inches from her face.

  With her unbloodied hand, Alana reached out and picked it up. Her fingers fumbled numbly as she turned it over.

  There was the seal, just as it had been on her father’s prediction. And printed next to it, in the same inhumanly precise letters, were three words:

  BEHEADED BY PEASANTS

  For a time, Alana did not move, nor breathe.

  Then, slowly, she began to smile.

  The oracle’s light winked off, but already the box was slipping from Alana’s attention. Sliding the printed paper into the pocket of her dress, she stepped out of the glass box and made her way to the tent flap.

  Outside, the clearing was empty, the Keeper nowhere to be seen. That was no matter—imbued with her new sense of purpose, Alana had no doubt that she could find her way back. At the clearing’s edge, she paused momentarily to look back at the little tent. She kissed her fingers and raised a hand to
ward it—a farewell, and thanks. Then she stepped into the trees. Inside her pocket, a sweaty hand clutched at the prediction.

  It was so simple. She had promised a revolution, and there would still be one—sooner rather than later, if Omar and Rhena had their way. But the rebellion was still young and unformed, too reliant on ideals and rhetoric. It needed to mature, to organize, to be tested and fire-hardened. Like any children, the rebels needed something to push against in order to learn. A common enemy to unify them.

  Alana could give them that enemy. And in the meantime, she would keep her word to her father, preparing the people of the empire to stand on their own.

  Tyrus wouldn’t like it, but he would understand. Running away together had never really been an option. The acknowledgment hurt, yet it was a good pain, the burden of choice lifting off of her. This was what it meant to be of the Dying: to see your path, and to walk it anyway. She and Tyrus had both sworn they’d sacrifice for the cause—this was just a different type of sacrifice. The freedom they both championed couldn’t be given, only won.

  When the people were ready, they would rise. And Alana would be there on the gallows to meet them.

  The trees opened up. Before her, the colorful tents with their waving pennants spread out across the field, backstopped by the distant sentinels of the towers and the wider world beyond. As dictated by tradition, the entire caravan was waiting for her.

  At the front of the assembly stood Tyrus. As she emerged from the grove, he stepped forward to meet her. “Your Highness! On behalf of the Appalachian Empire, I hereby—”

  Alana silenced him with a kiss. For once caught completely off guard, he tensed, arms flapping awkwardly at his sides. Just as he began to relax and surrender to the impropriety, she broke off and pulled back to meet his eyes.

  “Do you trust me? No matter what?”

  Flushed and flustered, he said, “You know I do.”

  “Would you die with me?”

  Eyes wide with alarm. “Of course. But—”

  “Good,” she said, and stopped any further words with another kiss. “Remember that.”

  Before he could say anything else, she turned and moved toward her people. A makeshift stage had been erected, complete with a podium.

  Strange how the stages for coronations and executions looked so similar. From atop it, Alana could see the entire assembly. Looking out over that sea of faces, some rapturous, others guarded and secretly resentful, she knew that the oracle had been right. Abdication wasn’t a revolution. The people needed to take power for themselves, and that meant playing her part.

  She would be a queen. For as long as she had to.

  Back straight, head high, Alana stepped to the podium and addressed her subjects.

  Copyright © 2013 James L. Sutter

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  James L. Sutter is the author of numerous short stories in such venues as Catastrophia (PS Publishing), Apex Magazine, and Black Gate, and the editor of the anthology Before They Were Giants: First Works From Science Fiction Greats. He works as Paizo’s Fiction Editor as well as one of the RPG developers. Aside from writing, he has toured modestly with several bands and musical projects, including the now-defunct hardcore metal band Shadow at Morning. For a complete list of his musical, literary, or gaming projects, please visit his website at www.jameslsutter.com.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THE CRIMSON KESTREL

  by Leslianne Wilder

  L’Echelle, the city of balconies and roses, echoed down the canyons of her architecture with the music of imperial revelry. In the topmost level, on storeys of glass as thick as a kneeling gendarme, the magnificent noble creatures of the Diamond Emperor’s court swirled and bubbled in dances like a champagne overflow made of velvet, silk, and good breeding. They clinked their glasses to their own station, delivered practiced remarks on the indistinct misfortune below, and knew that to the groundlings they looked as angels, apathetic and untouchable among the stars.

  Mademoiselle Ivette du Brielle, who had developed a habit of closer scrutiny, viewed the world below quite differently.

  Between the damask tablecloths pillaged from distant conquered lands and the spray of hothouse chrysanthemums, Ivette counted three men running down the Rue Boucher, visible through the lattice of bridges and balconies; two large brutes in pursuit of a smaller third.

  She excused herself au couche, pleading to the minor lord who had been boring her that she was dazzled to exhaustion by his recounting of an unsuccessful hunt. He smiled indulgently and moved off in search of another unfortunate.

  Ivette hurried to one of the lower balconied bedrooms and rammed an ornate mahogany chair below the doorknob. She pulled the pins from her talcum wig and searched out the quick-release clasp where her buttress was fastened. Her mountain of skirts fell away, and their pocket and petticoat undersides revealed her arsenal: the red silk mask with its falcon patterns, cut open back so her brown curls could flow free; the grappling hooks, rope, and launching mechanisms; the spider climbing-legs her tailor, mentor, and conspirator had somehow liberated from the guardian constructs that patrolled the walls; five fist-sized flash pots that would burn on exposure to air; a buckler that doubled as a fashionable bit of mid-line accent on her corset; and the delicate epee and dagger she had lashed to her upper thighs, which she had taken to calling Monsieur Menace and Mademoiselle Surprise, respectively. Fashions this year had left her room to arm a platoon if the need arose, and she and her mentor had refined her skirts into the perfect carrying system. She could not sit, but really, who but old dowagers and incurable bores ever sat at an imperial fête?

  Ivette knotted the silk rope onto the balcony, below the glass floor overhead and a dozen storeys above the street, and clamped the rappelling device tight into her belt. If she got a good swing from this height and cleared the cross-bridge at forty feet, she could put herself down near the last covered alley before the river in time to put the two bruisers down before too much harm was done. Or exact vengeance, she supposed, which hardly made for as storied an exploit, but what could one do?

  She twisted out over the railing, taut against the rope, her toes pointed like a ballerina. It was a funny thing how the same dance twice at a party bored her, but even the hundredth time, this lean-out over elegant suicide sent her heart up into her throat. She had to move fast, before the spider constructs that patrolled the walls noticed the rope. Those diamond-fanged guardians patrolled the walls for ladders, grappling hooks, or any other ambitious mechanisms of ascension, and the playhouses were full of the tragedies of noble lovers who had lost their lives attempting to dangle below their station. The constructs knew only to cut.

  But Ivette was not going for anything so maudlin as love. She hunted the headier prize of unparalleled thrill.

  She pushed off the balcony and the rope screamed through the gears of her rappelling harness. She pointed herself like an arrow and swung into the canyon of the streets. It was glorious. A passing priest on the cross bridge threw himself to the cobbles as she swooped through the space where his head had been two steps before. She blew a kiss as she passed. He needn’t have worried. She was far more elegant than that.

  The ground rushed up toward her and she squeezed the mechanisms on her belt. Time distended itself as her fall slowed vertically but not horizontally, and she hit the black sponge of the unpaved street running, her epee in her hand before she skidded to a halt outside the alleyway. Her quarry was still in sight, not yet lost in the maze of make-shift shanty towns under the struts and braces of the city. Instead, the two toughs had backed their prey into a corner between load-bearing walls. Efficient for them, and lucky for her.

  “Brigands!” she yelled, a practiced depth disguising her coquette’s voice though not her noble accent. “Did you think you could rob and murder under the watchful eyes of the Crimson Kestrel?”

  Chittering whispers sounded above, as peasants and low merchants recognized t
he name and gathered under the eves and on the rope bridges, ready for a show. Ivette kept her eyes on the movements of the two thugs, but she doffed her cap with a free hand and waved it to the applause of the people.

  Her quarry turned, indeed bruisers both of them, thick-limbed and looking as strong as pachyderms. Tramplers in a fight too, she wagered, fast enough for a good rush, but she could tell by the way they waddled on those load-column ankles that they lacked the speed to turn or dodge. Not that it would matter terribly in the tight corridor of the alley.

  But the crowd above were not the only ones who knew her reputation. The two brutes’ unshaven jaws clenched and they glanced between each other. It was getting now so that many of the ruffians panicked and broke instantly at the presence of le Eschell’s avenging angel. The smaller, third man cowered back against the wall. She offered up the predatory smile of a lady who has caught her rival in last autumn’s fashion.

  “Surely you miscreants aren’t thinking you’ll run away and deny me the satisfaction of thrashing you, since I’ve come all this way?” She waved Monsieur Menace in a casual arc.

  For the length of a lover’s gaze it seemed like they would stumble a retreat, but the closer man lowered his head with a roar and barreled toward her. Tramplers, she’d known it. She was out of his way and pressed fast against the wall when the second one started his run. That one, she was ready for. She slid back quick as a cat, dropped to crouch and kicked hard against his ankle, where her mentor had showed her. His leg caved with a satisfying crunch, and his pinwheeling arms did not stop his face from smashing against the wall where she had been.

  Ivette danced out of his crash with a satisfied flourish as the first charger bellowed and turned back to her. His fists pistoned the air around her dodges, and she slapped the thin flat of her epee against his forearms, drawing welts and stinging lines of blood. She tapped a K and the beginning of an E into his arm. Why had the cow of a man not quit yet? She would rather not have to kill him.