Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories

by Rachel Kovaciny

  “What happens after Alogath?” she asked. “I can’t stay with you forever.”

  “I can stay in Roshen,” he said, referring to the old capital city, which bordered Alogath. “It’s the city I know best, and they must have resources to help displaced persons.”

  Tanza stared. “That’s your plan? Live like a beggar?”

  “Better a free beggar than a prisoner of your Coalition.”

  Tanza wavered. She sympathized with the philosophy, but Auren’s plan put him in remarkable danger. A prince couldn’t possibly realize the threats of street life! Yet it was the best way to save Tanza’s livelihood; after only a few days he would disappear, and life would return to normal. He’d be left alone and destitute, but what other choice did they have? It was either this or the police, and Tanza didn’t want to approach them any more than Auren did.

  Finally she shrugged and replied, “Whatever you say.” She gestured to the hovercar door. “Your ride awaits.”

  Auren nodded. “You have my gratitude.” He approached the hovercar with caution, peering around, into, and beneath it. “This is your vehicle?”

  “A hovercar,” Tanza said. “It flies.”

  “With no wings?”

  The question unbalanced Tanza because she’d never thought of it and felt as if she should have. The rounded metal capsule had no external features that showed it capable of flight. “Anti-gravity,” she said. She put up a hand to forestall further questions. “Human technology. I just drive it. Trust me, it flies.”

  Auren nodded slowly. “I trust you, thief.” He ended the sentence abruptly then said, embarrassed, “I shouldn’t keep calling you that. What is your name?”

  “Tanza.”

  “Tanza,” he repeated as he climbed into the passenger seat. He pronounced every layer of the name’s sound with the perfect tones and timbre of the tephan naming tongue. “A strong name to live up to.”

  “I know,” Tanza snapped as she climbed into the other side of the hovercar. “‘Thorn.’ ‘Wound.’ The name for a child nobody wants.”

  Auren said, “That’s only its basic meaning. Listen to the undertones. The name suggests strength, determination, protection.”

  Tanza’s soul stilled. She’d never dreamed anyone would have bothered to give her name’s undertones meaning. She tried the tones on her tongue and found Auren’s translation accurate. She could have cried at the notion. Instead, she sniffed disdainfully. “A nice idea, but nothing like yours.”

  He smiled sadly. “My mother had a long time to consider it.”

  After losing nine children before birth, the aging Queen Marastel had named her son Auren. The basic meaning was “first star,” but the undertones gave it deeper meaning—the star that brings light to blackest darkness, the arrival of hope in the midst of despair.

  Once they’d settled in their seats, Tanza secured the safety harnesses and put the hovercar into flight. Its whisper-quiet engines brought it up through the tree branches and sent Tanza and Auren soaring across the open sky.

  As Auren watched the countryside pass beneath them, he asked, “What is your virtue name?”

  Tanza’s hand twitched on the control column, and the hovercar swerved. “You want to know the virtue name of the woman who robbed your tomb?”

  “A name is important whether you live up to it or not.”

  Tanza shrugged. “I wasn’t given one. My mother abandoned me three hours after birth.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “But you must have taken one at your coming-of-age.”

  “No one takes virtue names anymore.”

  Auren’s face fell. “No one?”

  “No one except for lunatics who think Arateph needs ‘cleansing’ from moral decay. The whole practice was ridiculous to begin with.”

  His jaw dropped. “How can you say that? A virtue name guides every part of a person’s life.”

  Tanza snorted. She knew her history. She doubted a virtue name had ever done anyone any good. “Really.”

  “I tried to live up to mine.”

  Tanza glanced at him sideways. “All twelve of them?

  “Fourteen. You’re forgetting my coming-of-age name, and I received thirteen virtue names at my naming day.”

  “No one counts the thirteenth one,” Tanza said.

  Auren murmured, “I did.”

  Prince Auren’s naming day had been legendary even while he lived. Tradition held that the king and queen should choose their child’s ordinary name and select the heads of two or three Great Houses to bestow virtue names. The idea was that each House could bestow a name on a royal child, but Prince Auren had been born too late for anyone to hope for royal siblings. Thus his parents had invited the heads of all twelve Great Houses give the prince a virtue name.

  A virtue name told the world each House’s hopes for their future monarch. House Jorith named him Luchrit, meaning beauty, but beauty of soul above that of body, a striving of spirit to cherish all things fair and worthy. House Thommat named him Corigrat, calling for humble grace and wisdom in his speech and actions. Tanza could never remember all of them, but each name dripped with meaning and set high expectations.

  House Kepha bestowed the twelfth virtue name, Petrior—determination and strength that triumphs over every obstacle. This should have ended the ceremony, but as Lord Kepha left the stage, a thirteenth man appeared, one who’d not been on the guest list.

  This moment of the recording had been recreated in paintings and lumiscopic dramas a thousand times in the century since—a man in a simple black shirt and trousers, surrounded by the elaborate headdresses and vividly colored clothing of Arateph’s nobility. Carabos had been the fourth son of the fifth Great House, but he’d broken away and founded a Thirteenth House that had recently proclaimed itself “the People’s House.” No one had recognized Carabos’s House or deemed him a threat. Until now.

  Because Carabos said, “I name the child Moritain, for his greatest act of virtue will be to die before his twenty-fifth year and so spare us from the rule of kings.”

  No one knew how Carabos had entered; he was dragged from the hall two moments later. But the damage had been done.

  Auren told Tanza, “That name shaped my life more than any other. People took it as a prophecy; I dodged twenty-six assassination attempts before I turned seven. In the end, the curse of Carabos fell. The spindle struck me four weeks before I turned twenty-five.”

  “Yet here you are, alive.”

  “There is that,” he said. “For how long, who knows?”

  He pulled something out of his pocket and rolled it on his fingers. Tanza glanced over and saw he held the spindle.

  Tanza’s nails dug into the hovercar’s yoke. “Please,” she growled through gritted teeth. “Put that away.”

  Auren held up the spindle. “This?”

  Tanza threw her torso against the opposite window, barely keeping her grip on the control column. “Yes,” she said, fighting back a quiver in her voice. “There’s no need for it. I won’t hurt you.”

  Auren pointed from Tanza to the spindle and back, eyes wide. “Do you think I’m threatening you? I don’t mean to. Look, it’s sheathed and the safety’s on.”

  “I don’t care,” Tanza said, urgency lacing her words. “Put it away.”

  Auren slipped the spindle back into his pocket, and Tanza sat straight again.

  Once she had full control of the hovercar and her breathing, she whirled upon Auren. “Why do you even have that?”

  Auren said, far too casually, “I couldn’t leave it behind. If I’m going to risk your world, I might want a weapon.”

  “Not that one. Just owning one will get you several years in prison.”

  Auren brought out the spindle again and considered it. “The new government’s done some good, it seems.” He shook his head. “I probably couldn’t use it anyhow. Not after . . .”

  He wedged the spindle end into a joint in his seat, snapped off its handle, and slipped both pi
eces into his pocket. Tanza hid her astonishment. The prince who could snap a spindle in two would have little need of weapons.

  She said, “Get rid of that thing after we land. Throw it in a trash heap. I don’t want it near me.”

  “As you command,” he said with a crisp royal salute.

  Moments later a light blinked on the console and the comm screen displayed Keffer’s name. Tanza bit back a curse. The last time she’d ignored Keffer after a job, he’d remotely grounded the hovercar until she answered. So she took a deep breath, told Auren to keep quiet, and prepared a few lies.

  For the first time, she wished Keffer did his business in a human language; the virtue prince would understand every word of their Common Tephan, and Tanza couldn’t switch languages without arousing Keffer’s suspicions. Auren seemed to like Tanza; he might not after he heard her discussing business with Keffer.

  She opened the audio link. “What do you want?”

  Keffer asked, “How rich are we?”

  “The tomb was a bust, Keffer.”

  “What do you mean, a bust? You promised me treasures.”

  “I promised nothing.”

  “Aurolith walls!”

  “It was too new. No one had been buried in it.”

  “I trusted you, Tanza.”

  “You know every tomb’s a gamble.”

  Keffer sighed. “I only like gambling when I win. Look, we can figure out how to regroup. I’ll see you in three hours.”

  Tanza’s jaw went tight. Keffer was never this picky after a job. She’d thought she would have plenty of time to settle Auren someplace safe from Keffer’s eyes. “Don’t be a tyrant, Keffer. I just spent four hours breaking into a tomb. I don’t even want to think about business until I’ve eaten, showered, and napped.”

  “Or until you’ve unloaded the last bit of loot. I’m not an idiot, Tanza.”

  “I’m not lying to you. Since when have you set me a curfew?”

  “Since you tried to tell me an aurolith tomb was empty. Have you forgotten who provided that hovercar? Who found you a program scanner? Who gives you a nice little salary between tomb jobs? If you think you can double-cross me now . . .”

  Tanza rolled her eyes and filled her voice with disdain. “Don’t get your tubing in a twist. Just let me have a lunch break.”

  “If you so much as slow down, I will ground you so fast you’ll be spitting dirt for a week. Come here and prove you’re not holding out on me.”

  Tanza sighed. “Yes sir.”

  She turned off the audio link and settled back into her seat with a sigh. “That could have gone better.”

  Auren looked as if he’d just tried to sprint through a neuroblock net. When he regained the power of speech, he said, “Your employer’s a demanding fellow.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Tanza replied as her mind produced a flurry of more colorful adjectives. She had not planned on introducing Prince Auren to Keffer.

  After a few frenzied moments of thought, she reassured Auren—and herself—by saying, “Don’t worry. Keffer’s a decent guy, for a career criminal. You’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 4

  THREE HOURS LATER, TANZA landed on the flat black expanse of Keffer’s roof. Keffer emerged from a doorway on the far end of the roof and swaggered toward the hovercar.

  Auren stared at him through the windscreen and murmured, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Tanza couldn’t understand what Auren found so troubling. George Keffer was a tall, broad man in his early forties with a square, sun-tanned face and thick brown hair. Unlike most in his profession, he had no scars or prison tattoos and kept himself well groomed. Most people considered him handsome.

  Then it hit her. “Keffer’s human,” she explained. “You’ve just seen your first alien.”

  A human’s eyes were slightly lower on their foreheads, their eyebrows thinner, their ears a little further back. Their nostrils flared wider, and each hand and foot had five digits, not four. No one of these features, except the extra digits, would have been remarkable in a tephan, but together they gave the impression of something very alien. Five-year-old Tanza had been frightened by her first sight, and she’d known about humans her whole life. Auren had to be terrified.

  Auren murmured, “It looks almost tephan, but it’s not. I’d have preferred aliens with tentacles or five heads.”

  Tanza helped him out of his seat. “You get used to it.”

  She escorted Auren onto the landing pad. Keffer and Auren goggled at each other in mutual astonishment until Keffer glared at Tanza. “You brought a passenger?”

  Tanza shrugged. “You wouldn’t let me take a lunch break.”

  “Then he was in the car before I called. I monitored your path. You never stopped.”

  “I found him at the job. He needed a ride.”

  Keffer scanned his gaze over Auren. “Is he wearing my clothes?”

  “Long story.”

  Keffer’s arms flailed in silent distress. Auren watched every movement of Keffer’s ten fingers, so nervous that he brushed the hair from his eyes several times.

  To end the standoff, Tanza made Keffer take them to a kitchen on the building’s second floor. She prepared Auren a fish sandwich and a salad—his first meal in a century—while Keffer stared daggers at her. The moment she finished, Keffer dragged her down the hall to his office.

  Tanza never liked Keffer’s office, but she found it especially oppressive after the beauty of an aurolith tomb. Sickly yellow afternoon light trickled through a small window and splashed over the brown wooden floor, its brown floor weaving, Keffer’s enormous wooden desk, and the unadorned brown and gray cabinets lining the walls. Everything in this room had been chosen solely for function, as if Keffer had surgically removed every scrap of beauty that crossed the threshold of his office.

  He kept his supplies scattered in a haphazard layer throughout the room, using a mental map of the mess to locate anything he needed. It drove Tanza to distraction. As they entered the office, Tanza barged past Keffer, swept aside a pile of junk on the corner of his desk, and sat in the clearing, staring at him boldly while he closed the door. She’d long ago given up verbal arguments about Keffer’s organizational skills but couldn’t resist these silent jabs.

  Keffer didn’t notice. When the door clicked shut, he leaned against it and asked, “Is that Prince Auren?”

  Tanza’s hand crashed onto a pile of digi-records. “How did . . . how could you possibly know?”

  Keffer smiled smugly and sauntered around to the other side of the desk. “He did the hair thing,” he said, and demonstrated with his hand across his forehead.

  “How do you know about the hair thing?” Tanza asked, twisting her body to keep her eyes on Keffer.

  Keffer dropped into a cracked brown office chair. “The centennial was two weeks ago. I couldn’t link up to a showstream without seeing a history program or lumiscopic drama.”

  He made Tanza explain her discovery. It took a long time; security fields and healing beds were technologies humans hadn’t invented, and they baffled human science so completely that those industries were the only two that remained in tephan control.

  Once Keffer understood, he grasped Tanza’s hand, his eyes gleaming like coins. “Do you have any idea how rich we are?”

  Tanza pulled her hand back. “You won’t see a cent.”

  Keffer went stiff. “What do you mean? I financed . . .”

  She jumped off the desk and stabbed a finger into the space she’d cleared. “No one can know I found him. If we tell the world we found Prince Auren, the media’s going to dig up all they can on the ‘daring heroes’ who rescued him. They will find out the true nature of your business.”

  Keffer mused, “We don’t have to tell the media. Other people would pay for Prince Auren.”

  Tanza’s lip curled ferociously. “Don’t go there, Keffer. You don’t sell people—and if you do, it’ll put you in much grimier company. They’d destroy you in days.”r />
  Keffer was silent a moment then scowled. “Then what did you bring him here for?”

  “He’s been asleep for a century. The least I could do is give him a ride.”

  “Then what? You let him go, he runs to the nearest police point and tells everyone about the tomb robber who found him.”

  “He won’t go to the government,” Tanza said. “He doesn’t want attention. He just wants me to take him to Alogath, so he can disappear into an ordinary life.”

  Keffer frowned. “Why Alogath? He can ‘disappear’ in Lorantz, too.”

  Tanza said, “He wants to be near Roshen. It used to be the capital. I can take him to my place in Alogath and get him on his feet.”

  “I need you here.”

  Tanza huffed, sitting back on the desk and crossing her arms. “You can spare me for a couple of days.”

  “Not to babysit a moldy old prince.”

  An argument blazed. Keffer wouldn’t let Tanza waste time helping a stranger when he needed her for paying jobs, but Tanza couldn’t back down. Keffer’s human mind didn’t understand the power of Prince Auren’s legend. Besides, she couldn’t abandon the prince right after she’d dragged him into a new century.

  Finally Keffer seemed to realize he wouldn’t win. He grabbed a thin square datapad from a desk drawer, plucked a crumpled piece of circuit-plastic from under Tanza’s hand, spread the latter atop the former, and pressed a button to make a flat green map hover at Tanza’s eye level.

  “Tell you what,” Keffer said as he manipulated the datapad screen to make a few lines of text hover next to the map, “I need a package brought to Verith. It would be on your way. Take it there for me, and I don’t care if ‘Prince Auren’ rides along.”

  Tanza noted the text entry was incomplete, nothing but a price and a delivery site. “It’s illegal goods, isn’t it?”

  “If it weren’t,” Keffer said, “I’d ship it via Coalition delivery services. It’s almost like we’re criminals or something.”