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

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Help me!” Loud, over my heartbeat, I scream, “Now, goddammit!”

  That man’s close enough! If they don’t take him now he’ll kill me and they’ll get nothing and I’ll be nothing and I don’t know what else I can do. But there’s no lights, and then I’m yowling too loud to hear ’em buzzing if they do come, ’cause the beanpole drives his claws into my foot and yanks me close, lifts me high by my shoulders, and his mouth opens wide. It’s like a snake mouth, bigger than it has any right to be, and black inside with no teeth, just an eternity of nothing.

  He breathes in.

  It’s like his breath’s digging under my skin, fixing to rip it off, and it hurts more than his claws in my shoulders and where the sack’s seeping in. I scream and my voice feels skinned out of my body, and then over my pain I hear bedlam, and it’s coming fast. I feel the honey of oncoming power, and it soothes me, but the beanpole starts screaming and drops me to run. That’s when I see them, buzzing loud as a waterfall, streaming out like a river of light from the tree straight at him. They fill the darkness with light, bright as day and as pure as an angel of vengeance. When I strain up to see the beanpole, he’s covered in light. Faerie wings ripple over him like they’re breathing, a seething army of ants covering him head to foot while he’s in there screaming. It’s horrible, the sounds of buzzing and chomping and him screaming like the faeries missed his vitals when they hit. Then he chokes and goes quiet, and it stinks of sour blood and sawdust and old, rotten eggs. The faeries is still loud when beanpole starts shrinking, smaller and smaller like they’re ants on a carcass, ’til he’s all but gone.

  I can’t even think to feel glad when it happens.

  ’Cause when beanpole starts shrinking, my mind starts through memories of Pa as I lie in that unnatural light. And while beanpole’s shrinking, what I feel about those memories shrinks with him, ’til that’s all gone too.

  I think on those nights on the porch, and they still feel so strongly of love and of family, but now something big’s missing, and I feel a strange ache. I wanna slap at the faeries that land on my arms by the dozens, but the sack crunches to nothing under their sharp teeth, and I’m afraid they’ll keep eating, so I lay real still and hate them deep down.

  Up in her window, I see Sister start to cry, and her hands clench her belly, and she looks sharp at me. Then she’s gone, run right out of my sight, and there’s galumphing through the house, then she’s running through the screen door and coming straight for me.

  She sweeps me up in her arms before I can blink. “Thank God you’re okay,” she’s crying messy, “I was so afraid for you.” Says, “I’m sorry” and “forgive me, please.”

  “What was he,” I ask her. “What’d he do to you?”

  But she don’t answer, just rocks me and wails like a baby.

  “It’s okay, Sister,” I tell her. “It don’t matter. He’s gone now. We’re okay.”

  She makes a sound like she’s laughing and crying both into my hair, and I hug her with my freed arms, scraped raw by the sack.

  Then the buzzing starts again, and faeries swarm in, hornet mad as the air goes thick and bright with their light. They’ve come for the baby, I know it, and I hold Sister’s hands when she swats at the faeries like she don’t know just what they are.

  Sister’s eyes roll back when the fairies rush at her belly and disappear and reappear through her dress and her skin. I catch her and lay her down on the grass beanpole trampled half under the tree. The faeries crash wave after wave of light into Sister’s swollen belly. Then she gurgles and my knee is wet in the grass by her thigh, and a black, rotting stain’s curling up her pale nightdress. I pull the fabric so the oil slick baby oozes onto the grass, move Sister away from the spill, and then look at the thing. It’s gunny-skinned and sharp-clawed, and smells like its pa when he died.

  I hold Sister close. She shakes and keens but don’t wake. As faerie light swarms the baby, I feel Momma go too.

  The faeries fly back into the tree, drunk as anything on my feelings. Their leader streaks by me and don’t even look over. Then the lights are gone, and the faeries are gone, and that damned man and his baby are gone, like my Momma and Pa.

  For a few minutes it’s just me, then Sister wakes up and it’s just me and Sister. We huddle alone under cold, distant stars, while the land sprawls out empty for miles. Sister cries on my shoulder, but she’s Sister and not a china doll, and I cry ’cause I have her and she’s all I got.

  I think, that’s the last of it, now it’s all done. Sister’ll take care of me and we’ll be a family like before she left.

  I should’ve known better.

  Sometimes I look at Sister now and the holes in my heart feel sharp as Momma’s boning knife, and hate settles over me like a blanket, like silence. I think of Mamaw those times, seeing me every day at the end of her life and just knowing I weren’t Marianne, and it was her fault, but she couldn’t tell nobody.

  That’s sacrifice: Giving what you can’t give so people you love get along better. Not telling what you gave for them while they rub that pain right in your face and you can’t say a word, least not one they’ll believe.

  I sacrificed my love for Momma and Pa so’s Sister could get along better. She don’t remember the night the faeries came. Just wakes up the next day with no baby. Doctor says stress from Momma and Pa must’ve made her miscarry, and grief made her forget. He says, “Get some rest.” Then he takes me aside and says to me, “You take good care of your sister, Marianne.” And he asks how I’m doing without Momma, and I try to sound sad, but all I feel is the hole where my love got ripped out, and I must look real strange ’cause his eyes get real sharp.

  Doctor looks at me like the girls at school look at me: Different. Wrong. Not a real girl.

  At the funeral I don’t cry and the mourners all look at me: Different. Wrong. Not a real girl.

  And Sister and I are laughing under the faerie tree one day, months later, when she don’t cry as fast and hard missing our folks. “You remember on the porch when Pa said, ‘no fairy princes ’til you’re thirty-five’? I guess I should’ve listened.” And she laughs up through the leaves. And I laugh, but it’s hollow, and I ache missing what I can’t feel anymore ’bout strangers I used to love. And Sister says, “What do you miss most? I miss those nights on the porch.”

  And I look at the hole in the tree like the hole inside me, and I think, I wish I could miss them, and it gets real quiet, and when I look at Sister I know I said it, and she heard it, ’cause she’s looking at me: Different. Wrong. Not a real girl. Like I’m a stranger, and she’s seeing me for the first time, and she just don’t understand. I clear my throat, say, “I wish I could miss them less,” like I just talked too soft and the evening wind stole the last word.

  Sister smiles all sad, and nods like she believes me, and she acts just like always the rest of the night. But since that day, sometimes she looks at me sideways, and I think when the faeries took Momma and Pa, they took Sister from me even as they were giving her back.

  THE MOCKING TOWER

  Daniel Abraham

  Daniel Abraham (www.danielabraham.com) was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, earned a biology degree from the University of New Mexico, and spent ten years working in tech support. He sold his first short story in 1996, and followed it with twenty four novels, including fantasy series The Long Price Quartet, SF novel Hunter’s Run (co-written with George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois), the Black Sun’s Daughter dark fantasy series (as M. L. N. Hanover), the Dagger and the Coin fantasy series, the Expanse space opera series (as James S.A. Corey, co-written with Ty Franck), which included Hugo Award nominee Leviathan’s Wake, and more than twenty short stories, including International Horror Guild Award-winner “Flat Diane”, Hugo and World Fantasy award nominee “The Cambist and Lord Iron: a Fairytale of Economics”. His most recent book is a James S.A. Corey space opera, Persepolis Rising.

  OLD AU SAW the thief first.

  Squatting in the g
arden, she commanded a long view of the east road; gray flagstone straighter than nature amid the green scrub and bramble. Rich soil breathed its scent around her as she took an offending root in one hand and her garden knife in the other. Between the moment she began sawing and when she pulled the first tangle of dirt and pale vegetable flesh out of the ground, the thief appeared, a dot on the horizon. She worked as he approached. His cloak hung limp in the humid summer air. His hat, wide as his shoulders, shadowed his eyes. He wore an empty scabbard across his back. Old Au paused when he grew close. When he reached the wall of ancient stone that marked the border between the greater world and the protected lands within, he paused and looked toward the Mocking Tower.

  The tower shimmered as the tales all said it would, appearing to change shape between one breath and the next. A great thrusting pillar of alabaster studded with living torches became an ancient palace of gray stone and moss became a rose-colored complication of terraces stacked one atop another toward the sky. The thief took in the illusionist’s art with an air of haughtiness and satisfaction. Old Au watched the man watch the tower, cleared her throat, and nodded to the stranger.

  “What news?” she asked.

  His gaze shifted to the old woman. His eyes looked as if they’d been dyed the same blue as a storm cloud. The lines around his mouth and eyes spoke of age and weather, but Old Au thought she saw a boyishness in them as well, like the image of an acorn worked in oak. Something in him reminded Old Au of a lover she’d taken years before. A man of high station who dreamed of living as a gardener. Dead now and his dreams with him except for what she carried with her. When the thief spoke, his voice carried the richness and depth of a reed instrument, softly played.

  “The throne stands empty,” the thief said. “King Raan rots in his grave, and the princes vie to claim his place.”

  “All seven of them?”

  “Tauen, Maush, and Kinnan all fell to their brothers’ blades. Another—Aus by name—rose from the south with a foreign army at his back to lay a new claim. Five armies still cross the land and blight wherever they pass.”

  “Shame, that,” Old Au said.

  “Wars end. Even wars of succession. They also create certain unexpected opportunities for the bold,” he said, then shifted as by moving his shoulders, he moved the conversation. “These lands belong to the Imagi Vert?”

  Old Au shrugged, pointing to the stone wall with her chin. “Everything within the border, and all the way round. Not subject to the throne, nor the one before it. Nor to whatever comes next either. The Mocking Tower stands apart from the world and the Imagi Vert sees to that, once and eternal. You’ve come on behalf of one of the princes? Plead the Imagi to take a side, maybe?”

  “The tale I hear told says the Imagi Vert took King Raan’s soul when he died and fashioned it into a blade. And the blade lies somewhere in that tower. I have come to steal it.”

  Old Au wiped a soil-darkened hand across her cheek, squinting first at the thief then at the Mocking Tower and back to the thief. His chin lifted as if in challenge. The empty scabbard tapped against his back as if asking for attention. Green lacquer and brass fittings, and long enough to hold even a fairly large sword. As though a king’s soul surely required a palatial blade to hold it.

  “You make it a habit to announce that sort of thing, do you?” Old Au said as she brushed the soil off the length of pale, stubborn root still in the earth. “Seems an odd way to get what you want.”

  The thief’s attention returned to her. A smile both bright and brief flickered on his lips. “I’m sure you know a great deal about gardening. I know a great deal about theft. This road leads to the township at the tower’s base?”

  Old Au nodded. “Another hour down the road. Keep left at the crossing or you’ll find yourself heading south without much besides grain silos and the mill for company. But take the warning. Everyone you find there is loyal to the Imagi Vert. Anyone not tends to leave fair quick.”

  “I don’t plan to stay.”

  “You have a name, friend?” Old Au asked.

  “Many of them.”

  The thief slid a hand into his sleeve and drew it back out. Something small and bright between his fingers caught the sunlight. He tossed the coin to Old Au, and she caught it without thinking. A square of silver with a young man’s likeness pressed into the metal. Some prince or another. One of the dead king’s warring brood.

  “This for my silence?” Old Au asked.

  “For your help in directing me,” the thief said. “Anything more lies between you and your conscience.”

  Old Au chuckled, nodded, and tucked the coin in her belt. The thief and his empty scabbard stepped off down the road. His stride shifted his cloak from side to side like the flourish of a street magician’s right hand distracting from the actions of the left. His hat carried shadow under its brim like a veil. The Mocking Tower changed to a soaring complex of chains hanging from a stonework tree taller than clouds to a spiral of basalt with stairways cut into the sides. Old Au shook her head and bent back down to her work. The stubborn root defied her, but she was stern and hard and well-practiced with a garden knife. When it came out, long as her arm and pale as bone, she squatted in the churned black soil, wiped the sweat from her face, and looked west after the thief. The curve of the road and the trees hid him already.

  The township that served the Imagi Vert pretended normalcy even in the shadow of magic. Only the central square boasted flagstone. Dust, dirt, and weeds made up all the streets. The small stables reeked like stables anywhere, and pisspots stood in the alleys waiting to be taken and their contents sold to the launderer to whiten cloth or the tanner to soften hide. The flowers of early summer drew bees and flies. The sun warmed thatched roofs until they stank a little. Birds chattered and warned each other from their nests. Dogs ran here as they did anywhere, chasing squirrels and each other. A few hundred feet to the north, the Mocking Tower loomed, a spire of bone and glass, then a pillar of plate-thin stones stacked one atop the other toward the sky, then a spiral of what looked like skinned flesh, then an ivy-clad maiden of granite with a crown of living flame.

  The people of the township viewed the thief as the greater curiosity. He walked through the streets, eyes hidden but with a cheerful smile. The empty scabbard bumped against his back with every step.

  The traveler’s hearth stood just down from the square and at an angle, like a servant with eyes politely averted. The thief went to it as if he stayed there often. The keeper—a fat man wearing the traditional iron chain of hospitality wrapping his left arm—greeted him in the courtyard.

  “I need only a small room,” the thief said.

  “No small rooms, nor any big ones either,” the fat man said. “Just rooms is all.”

  “All people claim the same dignity before the Imagi?” the thief said as if joking.

  “Just so. Just so. Simin can take your horse if you have one.”

  Simin—a lanky, dark-haired boy with a simple, open face—nodded hopefully. The thief shook his head and handed three of the square, silver coins to the fat man. “I only take what I can carry.”

  The keeper considered the coins as if they spelled out the future, then pressed his lips tight and shrugged. The iron chain clinked as if offering its own metallic thoughts. Simin broke the silence. “I can show you the way anyhow.”

  “Very kind of you,” the thief said.

  Simin trotted ahead, leading the thief down short halls and into a hidden courtyard of cherry trees. A stone cistern loomed in a corner where a thin-limbed girl scrubbed away moss with a black-bristled brush and tried not to stare. The thief nodded to her. She blushed and nodded back.

  Simin stopped at a high door the color of fresh cream, opening the brass latch with a click. The thief stepped into his private room and the boy trotted along behind him. The air smelled of soap and lilac. Shadows clung to the pale walls, like stepping into a sudden twilight. A modest bed with a dark brown, rough-woven blanket of the sort comm
on to the southern tribes a hundred years before. An ironwork sculpture of an iris in a frame hung on the wall opposite the only window. An earthenware jug and cup sat on a low table beside three unlit candles. Simin, smiling, closed the shutters as if the thief had asked him to. The shadows grew deeper.

  The thief sank slowly to the bed. The empty scabbard clattered on the floor where he dropped it. He swept off his hat and let it sit beside him, covered in pollen and dust. Sweat-dark locks of hair stuck to his balding scalp. His cheerful smile vanished and fear took its place. He shook his head, pressed a palm to his brow, and shook his head again.

  “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

  “You can,” Simin—whose name was not Simin—snapped, his own affectation of boyish goodwill falling away. “And you will.”

  “Did you see that tower? I’ve heard tales of the Mocking Tower, everyone has. I thought it would... I don’t know. Catch the sunlight oddly. Cast weird shadows. ‘Seems to shift moment by moment’ they say, ah? Too damned true. How do I put myself against a wizard who can do that?”

  Simin leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “You don’t. I do.”

  “We’re making a mistake. We should go back.”

  “Back to what? Fire and death? We keep to the plan,” the boy said. “Get the sword. End the war.”

  The thief sagged forward, elbows against his knees, head in his hands. “If you say. If you say.” Then, gathering himself. “Did you find it?”

  Simin poured water from the jug into the cup and handed it to the thief as he spoke. “No. But with you here, they’ll show me. Whatever changes, wherever the guard increases, whatever they keep you from. That’s how I’ll know. You strike the drum, and I listen to the echoes for answers. It works that way. And the more they watch you, the less they watch me.”

  “I know, I know,” the thief said, then paused to drink the cup dry. He handed it back, wiping his lips with a sleeve. “I liked this plan better before I came here. Successions and thrones and blood and armies in the field. Now magic swords and wizards and a tower like something that’s crawled out of a bad dream. I don’t belong in something like this.”