The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  His Grace is not going to come clawing up through the stones at my feet, she told herself firmly. Her tail remained stiff and prickly, trailing gracelessly behind her in a parody of alarm.

  The city continued to be restive. A pall of smoke hung low in the sky, and the reek of burning buildings dogged every breath. The harbor had virtually emptied, its shipping steering away from the riots and the uncontrolled militias were all that remained of the Ducal Guard after the recent assassination. The streets were an odd alternation of deserted and crowded. Folk seemed unwilling to come out except in packs. If chance emptied a square or a cobbled city block, it stayed empty for hours. The hot, heavy damp did nothing to ease tempers.

  At the moment, she strode alone across the purple-and-black flagstones of the Greenmarket area. The smell of rotting vegetables was strong. The little warehouses were all shuttered. Even the everpresent cats had found business elsewhere.

  She hurried onward. The message which had drawn her onto the open streets had been quite specific as to time and place. Her sense of purpose was so strong that she could feel the blurring tug of the hunt in her mind. A trap, that; the hunt was always a trap for her people, especially when they walked among men.

  Wings whirred overhead in a beat far too fast for any bird save the bright tiny hummers that haunted the flowering vines of the temple district. She did not even look up.

  * * *

  The Dancing Mistress found at a little gateway set in the middle of a long stucco wall that bordered close on Dropnail Lane in the Ivory Quarter. It was the boundary of some decaying manse, a perimeter wall marking out a compound that had long been cut up into a maze of tiny gardens and hovels. A village of sorts flourished under the silent oaks, amid which the great house rotted, resplendent and abandoned. She’d been here a few times to see a woman of her people whose soul path was the knowledge of herbs and simples. But always, she’d come through the servants’ gate, a little humped arch next to the main entrance that faced onto Whitetop Street.

  This gateway was different. It clearly did not fit the wall in which it was set. Black marble pilasters were embedded in the fading ochre plaster of the estate’s wall. The darkness within tried to pull her onward.

  She shook away the sense of compulsion. In firm control of her own intentions, the Dancing Mistress slowly reached to touch the metal grate. Though the air was warm, the black iron was cold enough to sting her fingers down to the claw sheaths.

  The way was barred, but it was not locked. The Dancing Mistress pushed on through.

  The dark gate opened into a tangle of heavy vines. Ivy and wisteria strangled a stand of trees which had been reduced to pale, denuded corpses. Fungus grew in mottled shelves along the lower reaches of the bare trunks, and glistened in the mat of leaves and rot that floored the little grove. There was a small altar of black stone amid the pallid trunks, where only shadows touched the ground. An irregular block of ice gleamed atop the altar. It shed questing coils of vapor into the spring-warm air.

  Her folk had no name for themselves—they were just people, after all. And it was one of her people who had written the note she’d found strung by spider webs against the lintel of her rented room. She had been able to tell by the hand of the writing, the scent on the page, the faint trail of a soul flavored with meadow flowers.

  No one she knew, though, not by hand nor scent nor soul. While the Dancing Mistress could not readily count the full number of her folk in Copper Downs, it was still a matter of dozens amid the teeming humans in their hundreds and thousands.

  This altar freezing amid the bones of trees was nothing of her people’s.

  A man emerged from the shadows without moving, as if the light had found him between one moment and the next. He was human—squat, unhandsome, with greasy, pale hair that twisted in hanks down his shoulder. His face had been tattooed with fingerprints, as though some god or spirit had reached out and grasped him too hard with a grip of fire. His broad body was wrapped in leather and black silk as greasy as his hair. Dozens of small blades slipped into gaps in his leather, each crusted in old blood.

  A shaman, then, who sought the secrets of the world in the frantic pounding hearts of prey small and large. Only the space around his eyes was clean, pale skin framing a watery gaze that pierced her like a diamond knife.

  “You walk as water on rock.” He spoke the tongue of her people with only the smallest hint of an accent. That was strange in its own right. Far stranger, that she, come of a people who had once hunted dreams on moonless nights, could have walked within two spans of him without noticing.

  Both those things worried her deeply.

  “I walk like a woman in the city,” she said in the tongue of the Stone Coast people. The Dancing Mistress knew as a matter of quiet pride that she had no accent herself.

  “In truth,” he answered, matching her speech. His Petraean held the same faint hint of somewhere else. He was no more a native here than she.

  “Your power is not meant to overmatch such as me,” she told him quietly. At the same time, she wondered if that were true. Very, very few humans knew the tongue of the people.

  He laughed at that, then broke his gaze. “I would offer you wine and bread, but I know your customs in that regard. Still, your coming to meet me is a thing well done.”

  She ignored the courtesy. “That note did not come from your hand.”

  “No.” His voice was level. “Yet I sent it.”

  The Dancing Mistress shivered. He implied power over someone from the high meadows of her home. “Your note merely said to meet, concerning a water matter.” That was one of the greatest obligations one of her people could lay upon another.

  “The Duke remains dead,” he said. She shivered at the echo of her earlier thought. “The power of his passing has left a blazing trail for those who can see it.”

  “You aver that he will not return.”

  The man shrugged away the implicit challenge. She had not asked his name, for her people did not give theirs, but that did nothing to keep her from wondering who he was. “Soon it will not matter if he tries to return or not,” he said. “His power leaches away, to be grasped or lost in the present moment. Much could be done now. Good, ill, or indifferent, this is the time for boldness.”

  She leaned close, allowing her claws to flex. He would know what that signified. “And where do I fit into your plans, man?”

  “You have the glow of him upon you,” he told her. “His passing marked you. I would know from you who claimed him, who broke him open. That one—mage, warrior or witch—holds the first and greatest claim on his power.”

  Green!

  The girl-assassin was fled now across the water, insofar as the Dancing Mistress knew. She was suddenly grateful for that small mercy. “It does not matter who brought low the Duke of Copper Downs,” she whispered. “He is gone. The world moves on. New power will rise in his place, new evil will follow.”

  Another laugh, a slow rumble from his black-clad belly. “Power will always rise. The right hand grasping it in the right moment can avoid much strife for so many. I thought to make some things easier and more swift with your aid—for the sake of everyone’s trouble.”

  “You presume too much,” she told him.

  “Me?” His grin was frightening. “You look at my skin and think to judge my heart. Humans do not have soul paths as your people do. You will not scent the rot you so clearly suspect within me.”

  The Dancing Mistress steeled herself. There was no way she could stand alone against this one, even if she had trained in the arts of power. “Good or ill, I will say no more upon it.”

  “Hmm.” He tugged at his chin. “I see you have a loyalty to defend.” “It is not just loyalty.” Her voice was stiff despite her self-control, betraying her fear of him. “Even if I held such power within my grasp, I would have no reason to pass it to you.” “By your lack of action, you have already handed the power to whomever can pluck it forth. Be glad it was only me come calli
ng.” He added in her tongue, “I know the scent of a water matter. I will not argue from the tooth.”

  “Nor will I bargain from the claw.” She turned and stalked toward the cold gate, shivering in her anger.

  “’Ware, woman,” he called after her, then laughed again. “We are not friends, but we need not be enemies. I would still rather have your aid in this matter, and not your opposition. Together we can spare much suffering and trouble.”

  She slipped between the black stone gateposts and into the street beyond, refusing for the sake of the sick fear that coiled in the bottom of her gut to hurry on her way.

  * * *

  There was no one out in the late afternoon, normally a time when the squares and boulevards would have been thronged, even in the quieter, richer quarters.

  She walked with purpose, thinking furiously even as she watched for trouble. That shaman must have come from some place both rare and distant. There were tribes and villages of humans in every corner of the world of which she’d heard. Men lived in the frigid shadows high up in the Blue Mountains where the very air might freeze on the coldest nights, and amid the fire-warm plains of Selistan beyond the sea, and in the boundless forests of the uttermost east. Not to mention everywhere in between.

  He was from somewhere in between, to be sure—the Leabourne Hills, perhaps, or one of the other places her people lived when they had not yet done as she had, drifting away to dwell among the cities of men. There was no other way for him to speak their tongue, to know of water matters, to command whatever binding or influence or debt had brought her the note with which he’d summoned her.

  The Dancing Mistress had no illusions of her own importance, but it had been her specifically that he’d wanted. It seemed likely the man had counted her as the Duke’s assassin.

  That was troublesome. If one person made that deduction, however flawed it was, others could do the same. A fear for another time, she told herself. Had he learned her people’s magics the same way the late Duke of Copper Downs had? By theft?

  A sickening idea occurred to her. Perhaps this greasy man had been an agent of the Duke.

  As if summoned by the thought, a group of Ducal guards spilled out of an alley running between the walled gardens of wealth.

  She happened to be walking close along the deserted curb just across from them. They stopped, staring at her. The Dancing Mistress didn’t break stride. Act like you are in charge. Do not fear them. Still, she risked a glance.

  The leader, or at least the one with the biggest sword, had a fine tapestry wrapped across his shoulders as a cloak. Looters. Though they wore Ducal uniforms, their badges were torn off.

  “Hey, kittie,” one of them called, smacking his lips.

  Corner, she thought. There’s a corner up ahead. Many of these houses are guarded. They wouldn’t risk open violence here.

  Her common sense answered: Why not? They had certainly risked open looting.

  Colors were beginning to flow in the corner of her eye. The hunt tugged at her. That ritual was anchored deep in the shared soul of her people, a violent power long rejected in favor of a quiet, peaceful life. The Dancing Mistress shook off the tremor in her claws as she turned a walled corner onto Alicorn Straight, passing under the blank-eyed gaze of a funerary statue.

  They followed, laughing and joking too loudly among themselves. Weapons and armor rattled behind her. Not quite chasing, not quite leaving her alone.

  The towers of the Old Wall rose amid buildings a few blocks to her east. If she could get there before the deserters jumped her, she might have a chance. Once past those crumbling landmarks, she would be in a much more densely populated and notably less wealthy area. In the Dancing Mistress’ experience, aid was far more likely from those who had nothing than from those who held everything in their hands. The rich did not see anyone but their own glittering kind, while the poor understood what it meant to lose everything.

  “Oi, catkin,” one of the guards shouted. “Give us a lick, then.”

  Their pace quickened.

  Once more colors threatened to flow. Her claws twitched in their sheathes. She would not do this. The people did not hunt, especially not in the cities of men. Walking alone, the gestalt of the hunt had no use, and when fighting by herself against half a dozen men, the subtle power it gave meant nothing.

  They would have her down, hamstrings cut, and be at their rape before she could tear out one throat.

  Speed was all she had left. Every yard closer they came was a measure of that advantage lost. The Dancing Mistress broke into a dead run. The guards followed like dogs on a wounded beggar, shouting in earnest, hup-hup-hupping in their battle language.

  Still the street was empty.

  She cut across the pavers, heading for Shrike Alley, which would take her to the Old Wall and the Broken Gate. There was no one, no one. How could she have been so stupid?

  Fast as she was, at least one of the men behind her was a real sprinter. She could hear him gaining, somehow even chuckling as he ran. The Dancing Mistress lengthened her stride, but his spear butt reached from behind to tangle her ankles and she went down to a head-numbing crack against the cobbles.

  The guard stood above her, grinning through several days of dark beard and the sharp scent of man sweat. “Never had me one of you before,” he said, dropping away his sword belt.

  She kicked up, hard, but he just jumped away laughing. His friends were right behind him with blades drawn and spears ready. Seven on one, she thought despairing. She would fight, but they would only break her all the faster for it.

  The first man collapsed, stunned, his trousers caught around his knees. A second yelled and spun around. The Dancing Mistress needed nothing more than that to spur her to her opportunity.

  There was small, small distance between dance and violence. Controlled motion, prodigious strength, and endless hours of practice fueled both arts. She stepped through a graceful series of spins, letting the edges of the hunt back in as her clawed kicks took two more of the guards behind the knees.

  The shaman was on the other side of them, grinning broadly as he fought with an already-blooded yatagan. His movements held a shimmer edge that was far too familiar.

  He gambled on me joining the counter-attack, she thought. It did not matter why. They made common cause in the moment, and tore another man’s hip from its socket. The last three deserters scrambled away before turning to run hell for leather down the street.

  The Dancing Mistress had never thought to see a human who could take on even the smallest aspect of the hunt.

  “I should have expected more of you.” Her rescuer’s voice was scarcely shuddering from the effort of battle.

  She kept her own voice hard, saying in the tongue of the people, “This does not bind us with water.”

  “We are already bound. Think on what I have asked.” He nodded, then strode purposeful away among the silent houses of the rich.

  Shaking, the Dancing Mistress trotted toward the Old Wall, away from the groaning, weeping men.

  * * *

  She made her way to the Dockmarket. That area was quiet as well, given that the harbor was as empty as it ever had been in the decades since the Year of Ice. Still, there were some humans about. Though the booths were shuttered and the alleys quiet as the Temple Quarter, the taverns stayed open. The breweries of Copper Downs had operated through flood, fire, pestilence and famine for more years than anyone had bothered to count. Political turmoil and a shortage of the shipping trade were hardly going to stop people from drinking.

  There was a place off the alley known as Middleknife (or the Second Finger, depending on who you asked) behind a narrow door. It was as nameless as the people it served—mostly her folk, truth be told, but also a scattering of others who did not pass without a sidewise cast of human eyes elsewhere in Copper Downs. Many races had come out of the countries that rose skyward to the north in order to live in the shadows of the human polities along the Stone Coast.

&nbs
p; The Dancing Mistress had always scorned solaces such as this. Still, she needed to be among her people tonight. There few enough places for that, none of them part of her daily life.

  She slipped inside with a clench riding hard in her gut.

  No smoke of tabac or hennep roiled within. No dice clattered, no darts flew. Only a dozen or so of the people in quiet ones, twos and threes. They sat at tables topped by deep stoneware bowls in which forlorn lilies spun slowly, sipping pale liquid the consistency of pine sap from tiny cups that matched the great bowls. The place smelled of water, rock and trees.

  Much like where she had been born.

  She also saw a very narrow-bodied blue man in pangolin-skin armor alone at a table, crouched in a chair with his knees folded nearly to his chin. Though he did not look to weigh eight stone, she thought he must be seven feet tall at the least. There were even a few people who might have been human.

  The barkeep, one of her people, glanced briefly at her. He then took a longer look before nodding slightly, a gesture they had all picked up in the city. She read it well enough.

  Between any two of her people there was a scent, of soul and body, that once exchanged could not easily be forgotten. Much could be read there, in a language which did not admit of lies. This one was not sib-close, nor enemy-distant, but she saw the path of trust.

  “You work in the Factor’s Quarter,” he said in Petraean. “I did,” she admitted. She’d trained slave girls and the forgotten younger daughters of rising houses. Sometimes they were one and the same. “Before all things fell just lately.” And therein lay her story, the scent the shaman had been tracking. “In any case, welcome.” He brought out a wooden plate, as tradition dictated turned by someone’s hand on a foot-powered lathe. There he spilled dried flower petals from a watered silk sack, three colors of sugar, and a trickle from a tiny cut crystal decanter. Their hands crossed, brushing together as each of them dragged a petal through sugar and lifewater.