The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “But at least, this was in Egypt, yes? How did you escape?” Golescu inquired, venturing to put his arm around her. His voice seemed to break some kind of spell; Amaunet turned to look at him, and smiled with all her teeth in black amusement. The smile made Golescu feel small and vulnerable.

  “Why, a bright boat came up the river,” she said. “There was the Sun Lord, putting out his hand to take me to safety. He didn’t come for the man and woman, who had been good; He came for me, that had never believed in him. So I knew the world was all lies, even as I went with him and listened to his stories about how wonderful Heaven would be.

  “And it turned out that I was right to suspect the Sun, fat man. The price I paid for eternal life was to become a slave in Heaven. For my cowardice in running from Death, they punished me by letting the sacred asps bite me. I was bitten every day, and by the end of fifteen years, I was so full of poison that nothing could ever hurt me. And by the end of a thousand years, I was so weary of my slavery that I prayed to Him again.

  “I went out beside the river, under the light of the moon, and I tore my clothes and bared my breasts for Him, knelt down and begged Him to come for me. I wailed and pressed my lips to the mud. How I longed for His ivory teeth!

  “But He will not come for me.

  “And the Sun Lord has set me to traveling the world, doing business with thieves and murderers, telling foolish mortals their fortunes.” Amaunet had another drink of champagne. “Because the Sun, as it turns out, is actually the Devil. He hasn’t got horns or a tail, oh, no; he looks like a handsome priest. But he’s the master of all lies.

  “And I am so tired, fat man, so tired of working for him. Nothing matters; nothing changes. The sun rises each day, and I open my eyes and hate the sun for rising, and hate the wheels that turn and the beasts that pull me on my way. And Him I hate most of all, who takes the whole world but withholds His embrace from me.”

  She fell silent, looking beyond the fire into the night.

  Golescu took a moment to register that her story was at an end, being still preoccupied with the mental image of Amaunet running bare-breasted beside the Nile. But he shook himself, now, and gathered his wits; filed the whole story under Elaborate Metaphor and sought to get back to business in the real world.

  “About this Devil, my sweet,” he said, as she crammed another fistful of chocolates into her mouth, “and these thieves and murderers. The ones who bring you all the stolen goods. You take their loot to the Devil?”

  Amaunet didn’t answer, chewing mechanically, watching the flames.

  “What would happen if you didn’t take the loot to him?” Golescu persisted. “Suppose you just took it somewhere and sold it yourself?”

  “Why should I do that?” said Amaunet.

  “So as to be rich!” said Golescu, beginning to regret that he’d gotten her so intoxicated. “So as not to live in wretchedness and misery!”

  Amaunet laughed again, with a noise like ice splintering.

  “Money won’t change that,” she said. “For me or you!”

  “Where’s he live, this metaphorical Devil of yours?” said Golescu. “Bucharest? Kronstadt? I could talk to him on your behalf, eh? Threaten him slightly? Renegotiate your contract? I’m good at that, my darling. Why don’t I talk to him, man to man?”

  That sent her into such gales of ugly laughter she dropped the chocolate box.

  “Or, what about getting some real use out of dear Emil?” said Golescu. “What about a mentalist act? And perhaps we could do a sideline in love philtres, cures for baldness. A little bird tells me we could make our fortunes,” he added craftily.

  Amaunet’s laugh stopped. Her lip curled back from her teeth.

  “I told you,” she said, “No. Emil’s a secret.”

  “And from whom are we hiding him, madame?” Golescu inquired.

  Amaunet just shook her head. She groped in the dust, found the chocolate box and picked out the last few cordials.

  “He’d find out,” she murmured, as though to herself. “And then he’d take him away from me. Not fair. I found him. Pompous fool; looking under hills. Waiting by fairy rings. As though the folk tales were real! When all along, he should have been looking in the lunatic asylums. The ward keeper said: here, madame, we have a little genius who thinks he’s a vampyr. And I saw him and I knew, the big eyes, the big head, I knew what blood ran in his veins. Aegeus’s holy grail, but I found one. Why should I give him up? If anybody could find a way, he could . . .”

  More damned metaphors, thought Golescu. “Who’s Aegeus?” he asked. “Is that the Devil’s real name?”

  “Ha! He wishes he were. The lesser of two devils . . .” Amaunet’s voice trailed away into nonsense sounds. Or were they? Golescu, listening, made out syllables that slid and hissed, the pattern of words.

  If I wait any longer, she’ll pass out, he realized.

  “Come, my sweet, the hour is late,” he said, in the most seductive voice he could summon. “Why don’t we go to bed?” He reached out to pull her close, fumbling for a way through her clothes.

  Abruptly he was lying flat on his back, staring up at an apparition. Eyes and teeth of flame, a black shadow like cloak or wings, claws raised to strike. He heard a high-pitched shriek before the blow came, and sparks flew up out of velvet blackness.

  Golescu opened his eyes to the gloom before dawn, a neutral blue from which the stars had already fled. He sat up, squinting in pain. He was soaked with dew, his head pounded, and he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes.

  Beside him, a thin plume of smoke streamed upward from the ashes of the fire. Across the firepit, Emil still sat where he had been the night before. He was watching the east with an expression of dread, whimpering faintly.

  “God and all His little angels,” groaned Golescu, touching the lump on his forehead. “What happened last night, eh?”

  Emil did not respond. Golescu sorted muzzily through his memory, which (given his concussion) was not at its best. He thought that the attempt at seduction had been going rather well. The goose egg above his eyes was clear indication something hadn’t gone as planned, and yet . . .

  Emil began to weep, wringing his hands.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?” said Golescu, rolling over to get to his hands and knees.

  “The sun,” said Emil, not taking his eyes from the glow on the horizon.

  “And you haven’t got your shade-suit on, have you?” Golescu retorted, rising ponderously to his feet. He grimaced and clutched at his head. “Tell me, petite undead creature, was I so fortunate as to get laid last night? Any idea where black madame has gotten to?”

  Emil just sobbed and covered his eyes.

  “Oh, all right, let’s get you back in your cozy warm coffin,” said Golescu, brushing dust from his clothing. “Come on!”

  Emil scuttled to his side. He opened the wagon door and Emil vaulted in, vanishing into the cupboard under Amaunet’s bed. Emil pulled the cupboard door shut after himself with a bang. A bundle of rags on the bed stirred. Amaunet sat bolt upright, staring at Golescu.

  Their eyes met. She doesn’t know what happened either! thought Golescu, with such a rush of glee, his brain throbbed like a heart.

  “If you please, madam,” he said, just a shade reproachfully, “I was only putting poor Emil to bed. You left him out all night.”

  He reached up to doff his hat, but it wasn’t on his head.

  “Get out,” said Amaunet.

  “At once, madame,” said Golescu, and backed away with all the dignity he could muster. He closed the door, spotting his hat in a thorn bush all of ten feet away from where he had been lying.

  “What a time we must have had,” he said to himself, beginning to grin. “Barbu, you seductive devil!”

  And though his head felt as though it were splitting, he smiled to himself all the while he gathered wood and rebuilt the fire.

  On the feast days of certain saints and at crossroad harvest fairs, they l
ined up their black wagons beside the brightly-painted ones. Amaunet told fortunes. The rear wagon began to fill once more with stolen things, so that Golescu slept on rolls of carpet and tapestry, and holy saints gazed down from their painted panels to watch him sleep. They looked horrified.

  Amaunet did not speak of that night by the fire. Still, Golescu fancied there was a change in her demeanor toward him, which fueled his self-esteem: an oddly unsettled look in her eyes, a hesitance, what in anybody less dour would have been embarrassment.

  “She’s dreaming of me,” he told Emil one night, as he poked the fire. “What do you want to bet? She desires me, and yet her pride won’t let her yield.”

  Emil said nothing, vacantly watching the water boil for his evening potato.

  Amaunet emerged from the wagon. She approached Golescu and thrust a scrap of paper at him.

  “We’ll get to Kronstadt tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll go in. Buy what’s on this list.”

  “Where am I to find this stuff?” Golescu complained, reading the list. “An alchemist’s? I don’t know what half of it is. Except for . . .” He looked up at her, trying not to smile. “Chocolate, eh? What’ll you have, cream bonbons? Caramels? Nuts?”

  “No,” said Amaunet, turning her back. “I want a brick of the pure stuff. See if you can get a confectioner to sell you some of his stock.”

  “Heh heh heh,” said Golescu meaningfully, but she ignored him.

  Though Kronstadt was a big town, bursting its medieval walls, it took Golescu three trips, to three separate chemists’ shops, to obtain all the items on the list but the chocolate. It took him the best part of an hour to get the chocolate, too, using all his guile and patience to convince the confectioner’s assistant to sell him a block of raw material.

  “You’d have thought I was trying to buy state secrets,” Golescu said to himself, trudging away with a scant half-pound block wrapped in waxed paper. “Pfui! Such drudge work, Golescu, is a waste of your talents. What are you, a mere donkey to send on errands?”

  And when he returned to the camp outside town, he got nothing like the welcome he felt he deserved. Amaunet seized the carry-sack from him and went through it hurriedly, as he stood before her with aching feet. She pulled out the block of chocolate and stared at it. She trembled slightly, her nostrils flared. Golescu thought it made her look uncommonly like a horse.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve cooked any supper for me?” he inquired.

  Amaunet started, and turned to him as though he had just asked for a roasted baby in caper sauce.

  “No! Go back into Kronstadt. Buy yourself something at a tavern. In fact, take a room. I don’t want to see you back here for two days, understand? Come back at dawn on the third day.”

  “I see,” said Golescu, affronted. “In that case I’ll just go collect my purse and an overnight bag, shall I? Not that I don’t trust you, of course.”

  Amaunet’s reply was to turn her back and vanish into the wagon, bearing the sack clutched to her bosom.

  Carrying his satchel, Golescu cheered up a little as he walked away. Cash, a change of clothes, and no authorities in pursuit!

  He was not especially concerned that Amaunet would use his absence to move on. The people of the road had a limited number of places they could ply their diverse trades, and he had been one of their number long enough to know the network of market fairs and circuses that made up their itinerary. He had only to follow the route of the vardas, and sooner or later he must find Amaunet again. Unless, of course, she left the road and settled down; then she would be harder to locate than an egg in a snowstorm. Or an ink bottle in a coal cellar. Or . . . he amused himself for at least a mile composing unlikely similes.

  Having returned to Kronstadt just as dusk fell, Golescu paused outside a low dark door. There was no sign to tell him a tavern lay within, but the fume of wine and brandy breathing out spoke eloquently to him. He went in, ducking his head, and as soon as his eyes had adjusted to the dark he made out the bar, the barrels, the tables in dark corners he had expected to see.

  “A glass of schnapps, please,” he said to the sad-faced publican. There were silent drinkers at the tables, some watching him with a certain amount of suspicion, some ignoring him. One or two appeared to be dead, collapsed over their drinks. Only a pair of cattle herders standing near the bar were engaged in conversation. Golescu smiled cheerily at one and all, slapped down his coin, and withdrew with his glass to an empty table.

  “Hunting for him everywhere,” one of the drovers was saying. “He was selling this stuff that was supposed to make chickens lay better eggs.”

  “Has anybody been killed?” said the other drover.

  “I didn’t hear enough to know, but they managed to shoot most of them – ”

  Golescu, quietly as he could, half rose and turned his chair so he was facing away from the bar. Raising his glass to his lips, he looked over its rim and met the eyes of someone propped in a dark corner.

  “To your very good health,” he said, and drank.

  “What’s that you’ve got in the satchel?” said the person in the corner.

  “Please, sir, my mummy sent me to the market to buy bread,” said Golescu, smirking. The stranger arose and came near. Golescu drew back involuntarily. The stranger ignored his reaction and sat down at Golescu’s table.

  He was an old man in rusty black, thin to gauntness, his shabby coat buttoned high and tight. He was bald, with drawn and waxen features, and he smelled a bit; but the stare of his eyes was intimidating. They shone like pearls, milky as though he were blind.

  “You travel with Mother Aegypt, eh?” said the old man.

  “And who would that be?” inquired Golescu, setting his drink down. The old man looked scornful.

  “I know her,” he said. “Madame Amaunet. I travel, too. I saw you at the market fair in Arges, loafing outside her wagon. You do the talking for her, don’t you, and run her errands? I’ve been following you.”

  “You must have me confused with some other handsome fellow,” said Golescu.

  “Pfft.” The old man waved his hand dismissively. “I used to work for her, too. She’s never without a slave to do her bidding.”

  “Friend, I don’t do anyone’s bidding,” said Golescu, but he felt a curious pang of jealousy. “And she’s only a poor weak woman, isn’t she?”

  The old man laughed. He creaked when he laughed.

  “Tell me, is she still collecting trash for the Devil?”

  “What Devil is that?” said Golescu, leaning back and trying to look amused.

  “Her master. I saw him, once.” The old man reached up absently and swatted a fly that had landed on his cheek. “Soldiers had looted a mosque, they stole a big golden lamp. She paid them cash for it. It wasn’t so heavy, but it was, you know, awkward. And when we drove up to the Teufelberg to unload all the goods, she made me help her bring out the lamp, so as not to break off the fancy work. I saw him there, the Devil. Waiting beside his long wagons. He looked like a prosperous Saxon.”

  “Sorry, my friend, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Golescu. He drew a deep breath and plunged on: “Though I have heard of a lord of thieves who is, perhaps, known in certain circles as the Devil. Am I correct? Just the sort of powerful fellow who has but to pull a string and corrupt officials rush to do his bidding? And he accumulates riches without lifting a finger?”

  The old man creaked again.

  “You think you’ve figured it out,” he said. “And you think he has a place for a fast-talking fellow in his gang, don’t you?”

  Taken aback, Golescu just stared at him. He raised his drink again.

  “Mind reader, are you?”

  “I was a fool, too,” said the old man, smacking the table for emphasis, though his hand made no more sound than an empty glove. “Thought I’d make a fortune. Use her to work my way up the ladder. I hadn’t the slightest idea what she really was.”

  “What is she, grandfather?” said Goles
cu, winking broadly at the publican. The publican shuddered and looked away. The old man, ignoring or not noticing, leaned forward and said in a lowered voice:

  “There are stregoi who walk this world. You don’t believe it, you laugh, but it’s true. They aren’t interested in your soul. They crave beautiful things. Whenever there is a war, they hover around its edges like flies, stealing what they can when the armies loot. If a house is going to catch fire and burn to the ground, they know; you can see them lurking in the street beforehand, and how their eyes gleam! They’re only waiting for night, when they can slip in and take away paintings, carvings, books, whatever is choice and rare, before the flames come. Sometimes they take children, too.

  “She’s one of them. But she’s tired, she’s lazy. She buys from thieves, instead of doing the work herself. The Devil doesn’t care. He just takes what she brings him. Back she goes on her rounds, then, from fair to fair, and even the murderers cross themselves when her shadow falls on them, but still they bring her pretty things. Isn’t it so?”

  “What do you want, grandfather?” said Golescu.

  “I want her secret,” said the old man. “I’ll tell you about it, and then you can steal it and bring it back here, and we’ll share. How would you like eternal youth, eh?”

  “I’d love it,” said Golescu patiently. “But there’s no such thing.”

  “Then you don’t know Mother Aegypt very well!” said the old man, grinning like a skull. “I used to watch through the door when she’d mix her Black Cup. Does she still have the little mummy case, with the powders inside?”

  “Yes,” said Golescu, startled into truthfulness.

  “That’s how she does it!” said the old man. “She’d put in a little of this – little of that – she’d grind the powders together, and though I watched for years I could never see all that went in the cup, or what the right amounts were. Spirits of wine, yes, and some strange things – arsenic, and paint! And she’d drink it down, and weep, and scream as though she was dying. But instead, she’d live. My time slipped away, peering through that door, watching her live. I could have run away from her many times, but I stayed, I wasted my life, because I thought I could learn her secrets.