The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12

by Jonathan Strahan

  No further attack came, but Anaz might live, might even survive what Kavarion had in mind for her.

  Liyeusse wasn’t dead. Presumably Anaz had known better than to interfere too permanently with the ship’s master. But Liyeusse wasn’t in good condition, either. Anaz had left her unconscious and expertly tied up, a lump on the side of her head revealing where Anaz had knocked her out. Blood streaked her face. So much for no concussions, Rhehan thought. A careful inspection revealed two broken ribs, although no fingers or arms, small things to be grateful for. Liyeusse had piloted with worse injuries, but it wasn’t something either of them wanted to make a habit of.

  Rhehan shook with barely quelled rage as they unbound Liyeusse, using the lockpicks that the two of them kept stashed on board. Here, with just the two of them, there was no need to conceal their reaction.

  Rhehan took the precaution of injecting her with painkillers first. Then they added a stim, which they would have preferred to avoid. Nevertheless, the two of them would have to work together to escape. It couldn’t be helped.

  “My head,” Liyeusse said in a voice half-groan, stirring. Then she smiled crookedly at Rhehan, grotesque through the dried blood. “Did you give that Kel thug what she wanted? Are we free?”

  “Not yet,” Rhehan said. “As far as I can tell, Kavarion’s gearing up for a firefight and they’re bent on blowing each other up over this bauble. Even worse, we have a new mission.” They outlined the situation while checking Liyeusse over again to make sure there wasn’t any more internal damage. Luckily, Anaz hadn’t confiscated their medical kits, so Rhehan retrieved one and cleaned up the head wound, then applied a bandage to Liyeusse’s torso.

  “Every time I think this can’t get worse,” Liyeusse said while Rhehan worked, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Let’s strap ourselves in and get flying.”

  “What, you don’t want to appraise this thing?” They held the Incendiary Heart up. Was it warmer? They couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t love shiny baubles that much,” she said dryly. She was already preoccupied with the ship’s preflight checks, although her grimaces revealed that the painkillers were not as efficacious as they could have been. “I’ll be glad when it’s gone. You’d better tell me where we’re going.”

  The sensor arrays sputtered with the spark-lights of many ships, distorted by the fact that they were stealthed. “Ask the general to patch us in to her friend-or-foe identification system,” Rhehan said when they realized that there were more Kel ships than there should have been. Kel Command must have had a fleet waiting to challenge Kavarion in case Shiora failed her mission. “And ask her not to shoot us down on our way out.”

  Liyeusse contacted the command ship in the Fortress’s imposed lingua.

  The connection hissed open. The voice that came back to them over the line sounded harried and spoke accented lingua. “Who the hell are—” Rhehan distinctly heard Kavarion snapping something profane in the Kel language. The voice spoke back, referring to Liyeusse with the particular suffix that meant coward, as if that applied to a ji-Kel ship to begin with. Still, Rhehan was glad they didn’t have to translate that detail for Liyeusse, although they summarized the exchange for her.

  “Go,” the voice said ungraciously. “I’ll keep the gunners off you. I hope you don’t crash into anything, foreigner.”

  “Thank you,” Liyeusse said in a voice that suggested that she was thinking about blowing something up on her way out.

  “Don’t,” Rhehan said.

  “I wasn’t going to—”

  “They need this ship to fight with. Which will let us get away from any pursuit.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, they’re all the enemy.”

  They couldn’t blame her, considering what she’d been through.

  The scan suite reported on the battle. Rhehan, who had webbed themselves into the copilot’s seat, tracked the action with concern. The hostile Kel hadn’t bothered to transmit their general’s banner, a sign of utter contempt for those they fought. Even ji-Kel received banners, although they weren’t expected to appreciate the nuances of Kel heraldry.

  The first fighter launched from the hangar below them. “Our turn,” Liyeusse said.

  The Flarecat rocketed away from the command ship and veered abruptly away from the fighter’s flight corridor. Liyeusse rechecked stealth. The engine made the familiar dreadful coughing noise in response to the increased power draw, but it held—for now.

  A missile streaked through their path, missing them by a margin that Rhehan wished were larger. To their irritation, Liyeusse was whistling as she maneuvered the Flarecat through all the grapeshot and missiles and gyring fighters and toward the edge of the battlefield. Liyeusse had never had a healthy sense of fear.

  They’d almost made it when the engine coughed again, louder. Rhehan swore in several different languages. “I’d better see to that,” they said.

  “No,” Liyeusse said immediately, “you route the pilot functions to your seat, and I’ll see if I can coax it along a little longer.”

  Rhehan wasn’t as good a pilot, but Liyeusse was indisputably better at engineering. They gave way without argument. Liyeusse used the ship’s handholds to make her way toward the engine room.

  Whatever Liyeusse was doing, it didn’t work. The engine hiccoughed, and stealth went down.

  A flight of Kel fighters at the periphery noted the Flarecat’s attempt to escape and, dismayingly, found it suspicious enough to decide to pursue them. Rhehan wished their training had included faking being an ace pilot. Or actually being an ace pilot, for that matter.

  The Incendiary Heart continued to glow malevolently. Rhehan shook their head. It’s not personal, they told themselves. “Liyeusse,” they said through the link, “forget stealth. If they decide to come after us, that’s fine. It looks like we’re not the only small-timers getting out of the line of fire. Can you configure for boosters?”

  She understood them. “If they blow us up, a lot of people are dead anyway. Including us. We might as well take the chance.”

  Part of the Flarecat’s problem was that its engine had not been designed for sprinting. Liyeusse’s skill at modifications made it possible to run. In return, the Flarecat made its displeasure known at inconvenient times.

  The gap between the Flarecat and the fighters narrowed hair-raisingly as Rhehan waited for Liyeusse to inform them that they could light the hell out of there. The Incendiary Heart’s glow distracted them horribly. The fighters continued their pursuit, and while so far none of their fire had connected, Rhehan didn’t believe in relying on luck.

  “I wish you could use that thing on them,” Liyeusse said suddenly.

  Yes, and that would leave nothing but the thinnest imaginable haze of particles in a vast expanse of nothing, Rhehan thought. “Are we ready yet?”

  “Yes,” she said after an aggravating pause.

  The Flarecat surged forward in response to Rhehan’s hands at the controls. They said, “Next thing: prepare a launch capsule for this so we can shoot it ahead of us. Anyone stupid enough to go after it and into its cone of effect—well, we tried.”

  For the next interval, Rhehan lost themselves in the controls and readouts, the hot immediate need for survival. They stirred when Liyeusse returned.

  “I need the Heart,” Liyeusse said. “I’ve rigged a launch capsule for it. It won’t have any shielding, but it’ll fly as fast and far as I can send it.”

  Rhehan nodded at where they’d secured it. “Don’t drop it.”

  “You’re so funny.” She snatched it and vanished again.

  Rhehan was starting to wish they’d settled for a nice, quiet, boring life as a Kel special operative when Liyeusse finally returned and slipped into the seat next to theirs. “It’s loaded and ready to go. Do you think we’re far enough away?”

  “Yes,” Rhehan hissed through their teeth, achingly aware of the fighters and the latest salvo of missiles.

  “Away we go!” Liyeusse said wit
h gruesome cheer.

  The capsule launched. Rhehan passed over the controls to Liyeusse so she could get them away before the capsule’s contents blew.

  The fighters, given a choice between the capsule and the Flarecat, split up. Better than nothing. Liyeusse was juggling the power draw of the shields, the stardrive, life-support, and probably other things that Rhehan was happier not knowing about. The Flarecat accelerated as hard in the opposite direction as it could without overstressing the people in it.

  The fighters took this as a trap and soared away. Rhehan expected they’d come around for another try when they realized it wasn’t.

  Then between the space of one blink and the next, the capsule simply vanished. The fighters overtook what should have been its position, and vanished as well. That could have been stealth, if Rhehan hadn’t known better. They thought to check the sensor readings against their maps of the region: stars upon stars had gone missing, nothing left of them.

  Or, they amended to themselves, there had to be some remnant smear of matter, but the Flarecat’s instruments wouldn’t have the sensitivity to pick them up. They regretted the loss of the people on those fighters; still, better a few deaths than the many that the Incendiary Heart had threatened.

  “All right,” Liyeusse said, and retriggered stealth. There was no longer any need to hurry, so the system was less likely to choke. They were far enough from the raging battle that they could relax a little. She sagged in her chair. “We’re alive.”

  Rhehan wondered what would become of Kavarion, but that was no longer their concern. “We’re still broke,” they said, because eventually Liyeusse would remember.

  “You didn’t wrangle any payment out of those damn Kel before we left?” she demanded. “Especially since after they finish frying Kavarion, they’ll come toast us?”

  Rhehan pulled off Kavarion’s gloves and set them aside. “Nothing worth anything to either of us,” they said. Once, they would have given everything to win their way back into the trust of the Kel. Over the past years, however, they had discovered that other things mattered more to them. “We’ll find something else. And anyway, it’s not the first time we’ve been hunted. We’ll just have to stay one step ahead of them, the way we always have.”

  Liyeusse smiled at Rhehan, and they knew they’d made the right choice.

  THE FAERIE TREE

  Kathleen Kayembe

  Kathleen Kayembe (kathleenkayembe.com) is the Octavia E. Butler Scholar from Clarion’s class of 2016, with short stories in Lightspeed and Nightmare, an essay in Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler, and previous publications with Less Than Three Press. She writes romance as Kaseka Nvita, co-hosts the Write Pack Radio weekly writing podcast as herself, and lives on Twitter as @mkkayembe. A long-time member of the St. Louis Writers Guild, she organizes write-ins instead of movie outings, and falls in love with the world every time she uses a fountain pen. You can find her in St. Louis, where, when not at the day job, she is generally freelance editing, walking her dogs, running Amherst Writers and Artists writing groups, scribbling stories into a notebook with an odd little smirk, or playing obnoxiously sensible RPG characters who won’t let party members die.

  THERE’S A FAERIE tree in my front yard. Its branches are gnarled like an old woman’s fingers, knobbed like her knees, and the trunk hunches down like she’s reaching for my house. Mamaw said the hole at the base of faerie trees is where faeries come out or rush in or leave gifts if it’s big enough, though I was too young to remember. She says I was fussy in any arms that weren’t hers or the tree, least ’til I got used to everything. When I was real little, Sister says she could always find me curled half in the tree if I’d toddled off, like I fell asleep tryin’ to find Mamaw’s faeries. Still, after she showed me, I was scared to sit in its big open lap for a time, scared faeries would rush on out and into me, and I would have wings beating in me and they’d fly me far from home, just buzzing along like a balloon through the clouds.

  Tonight I want to be flown away. Sister got married and didn’t tell me, she got married and didn’t tell nobody. She didn’t tell Momma, she didn’t tell Pa, she just up and got married and brought that man home. I don’t like him. He’s tall and skinny, a beanpole of a man with straw for hair and black buttons for eyes, and rough, gunnysack skin. His smile’s like still water, stagnant and sick, a birthing ground for things that’s just born rotten. I don’t know what she sees in him. He drawls and haws and hums all the time, don’t say what he mean, and look at us like we’re fools. He’s all wrong inside and his face ain’t right either. Ain’t normal—like their marriage. Sister used to be strong. “I’ll have a fairy prince, or nobody,” she’d say, “and fairy princes ain’t real.” But here she is come back from boarding school with a man and a ring and a baby on the way.

  Oh, Momma ain’t happy. She’s pretending to be, but she’s not and told me so. “That sister of yours gone and got herself knocked up and had one of Those weddings. Don’t know where she got it from. She weren’t ever getting married, and now here he is. This is your Pa’s side, Marianne. Only your Mamaw done something that stupid, God rest her, but at least we got your Pa. That damned school’s lucky it’s empty right now. Come fall term, I’m raising hell.”

  Except Sister’s quit school, quit and married and gonna have a baby, and I don’t like it one bit. I go out to the faerie tree and mosey around, looking for little wings before I sit and lean back and relax. It’s dark but still warm, and the ground’s soft, its new green poking up around my bare toes. From against the tree, big leaves hide the moon, but I can see clear through the windows into the house. The bottom floor is dark; the second floor is Sister’s room, and my room that was Mamaw’s before she passed; the top floor is Momma and Pa’s room—they have the whole attic to themselves. They were gonna move into Sister’s room so’s they didn’t have to climb so many stairs, but now they’re gonna stay put until Sister’s got a place.

  In Momma and Pa’s room, they’re arguing. I can tell even though they’re hugging and putting on nightclothes. They argue real soft, so you can’t hear them, but I can tell by their feet, ’cause Momma always gets the urge to run when she’s angry, and you can hear her skip-step-stop from down below and know she’s in a tizzy. When I heard that I put my dress back on and came out—no sense trying to sleep while she’s banging around. I can see her now, and she’s as fired up as Pa is tight and still. They’re talking about Sister, I know it.

  Sister and her scarecrow husband are in her room. She’s got a double bed, so I know where he’s sleeping tonight. They just better not do anything under Pa’s roof. From under the faerie tree I watch him kiss her, watch her close her eyes, and see him look straight out the window—at me. I freeze up, and then I think he can’t see me. But he stops kissing Sister and pulls the curtains closed, and I know if he tells Momma I saw him she’ll lick me for being nosy.

  The faeries in the tree start buzzing behind me, like a nest of wasps getting ready to swarm. I know it’s them, I saw ’em once, when Mamaw called ’em out to set me straight. I think about Sister’s man and I’m tempted, fierce as Jesus in the desert, but I don’t. Mamaw told me the price she’d paid for letting ’em loose; said giving up her grand-baby’s the hardest thing she ever done. Sure, she got back her son and he raised up our family with Momma, but sometimes she must’a looked at us and just hated.

  I ain’t scared of the faeries no more, and they never do speak, but I learned they get loud when my heart does, so I try to feel quiet. The night air is warm and the breeze is cool. I breathe deep and stare at the dark. Fireflies float everywhere, winking like the stars I can’t see through the branches. I don’t want to face Sister’s husband in the morning, but I know I have to. I don’t much like the idea of him sleeping on the same floor as me, but Sister will protect me if it comes to anything. Pregnant or not, Sister’s always stood up for me.

  IN THE MORNING, Momma’s cooking eggs and Pa’s asking Sister’s man questions at
the table over coffee. What does he do, who’re his parents, how did he meet Sister. You know, questions. Sister’s helping Momma when she’s not sitting quiet at the table with her hands folded in her lap like a big china doll. When I finish setting the table I try asking questions too, try to get Sister to talk, but she won’t. I start how the girls at school start”—how did he propose?—“even though I don’t care about that. I remember they all looked at me strange when I said so, like they knew I was Different. Wrong. Not a real girl. I pretended I cared after that, and Momma nods when she hears me ask, “What was the wedding like?” and I know I done right in her eyes. But Sister don’t answer, just sits there, and I’m done pussyfooting around like it’s fine when it ain’t, and I snap. “You’d never pick a man like that, so how’d he get his dirty claws into you?”

  “Marianne!” Momma bursts out my name like I cussed in church.

  Pa thunders, “Hush!” right behind her. They look at me sideways, like I ain’t got manners, or maybe like I just ain’t right, like I’m Different. “Men are speaking,” Pa says finally, but he don’t say go cut a switch, so I scrunch up and hush up and sulk. Sister don’t wink at me like usual though, just stares at her hands until Momma calls her to help bring out breakfast.

  There are eggs and pancakes and my mouth would water on any other day at the thick smell of hot batter on the skillet, but today I’m too busy glaring at the beanpole to be hungry. I hate him already, but I know he’s turning Pa around. It’s like Pa can’t see his scarecrow face. I know Momma don’t like him, but if Pa likes him she’ll make do and pretend. That’s how it always is.

  “So, Marianne, do you cook?” the beanpole asks.

  I tell him, “Yessir,” but that’s all I say, and my face tells him I don’t like questions.

  Before Pa can get on me again for being rude, there’s food on the table. Momma’s smiling and Sister’s just a quiet young lady, a pretty, empty face I can’t reach. Something don’t feel right, but don’t Momma or Pa notice, and I can’t tell why. So I eat quiet-like and pretend I’m a lady. Pa’s talking to beanpole again.