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

by Various

  Frederico sat, unmoving, for a long time after Pyrus left him there. He bent his mind to his present circumstances and tried to find something beyond the anger that licked at him, chewed on him. Try as he might, he could find nothing past that primal emotion.

  He could not even find his tears.

  * * *

  Two days slipped past and Frederico bided time. He gathered up the documents he’d searched, ordered his findings into a logical flow, and stacked everything in a way that the new servants could easily return them to their proper place if the new Czar—or would he go by some other title?—chose not to look at them, chose not to see what Frederico had seen.

  He went to the silver crescent less and less, though now he left it out in the open. He’d heard nothing from it but frogs and water since Amal had left to see her father and he wasn’t sure he’d ever hear her voice again. Some part of him even wondered if perhaps she hadn’t been a ruse, some part in Raj Y’Zir’s intricate game of vendetta.

  When her voice came through, late in the afternoon of his third day under house arrest, it was muffled but excited.

  “Frederico, are you there?”

  He stood slowly, eyeing the silver crescent where it lay across the room.

  “Frederico, my love, are you there?”

  He moved towards it. My love.

  “Oh, come quickly,” she said and her voice was nearly frantic. He could tell she was out of breath.

  He paused, then closed the gap. “I’m here,” he said.

  “I’ve found a way to you,” she said. “I’m leaving my father. I’m coming to Espira.”

  He blinked back surprise. He’d not expected these words and he found himself not knowing what to say.

  She continued. “I’m packing now. I’m taking you with me but I don’t know if it will be safe to talk.”

  Finally, he found words. “How are doing this?”

  “There’s a pool in a cave deep beneath my father’s tower,” she said, the words tumbling out. “It’s where he goes to draw up his magicks from the blood of your world.” She paused. “It’s connected somehow.”

  A childhood superstition about magicks crept into his mind. “The Beneath Places,” he said. The so-called hell of the Younger Gods, where they plundered devils of their souls and slept restless in their sins. Or bargained for power. Stories, like the ghosts in the water, to keep children obedient.

  “Yes,” she said. “We call it that, too. I will swim the pool and come to you.” She hesitated. “If you will have me?”

  Frederico found her words discomfiting but did not understand why initially. Then, he realized his silence would not be taken the way he intended and he blurted out the first question that came to mind. “But why?” It didn’t sound the way he intended and he reframed it. “Why would you have me, Amal, knowing what my family did to your sister?”

  “You’ve wept those tears already, Frederico, and they were never truly yours to weep.” There was something in her voice that he could not place and wondered if grace were an emotive quality. “Tears enough are on the way for all of us,” she continued, “without borrowing yesterday’s.”

  And in that moment, he forgot about the black-coats outside his door, forgot about the rooms that waited for him at the Ministry of Social Behavior, and forgot even about the wives his grief had slain. All he could hear was the Moon Wizard’s daughter as she asked again: “Will you have me?”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Then I will find you in Espira if I can.”

  And somehow he knew in that moment, without doubt, that he would never hear her voice again.

  But before he could reply she was gone. He waited all day hoping to hear her again but knowing he would not. He took the silver crescent with him into his private dining room and kept it near his tub as he bathed at the end of the day. He cradled it beside him on his pillow.

  That night, the weeping came upon him again but it was different this time because the loss was his own and he understood it. Gone was Ameera’s final spell upon his family, replaced now by Amal’s first and the force of his bereavement wracked his body in great sobs.

  Twice, the black-coats inquired of his well-being and consulted quietly with cloaked couriers. Then, sometime in the early morning hours, they came for him and carried the last Weeping Czar out of his palace and loaded him into a carriage bound for his new home.

  * * *

  A sense of time returned to Frederico but he had no way to know how many days he’d lost. How long had he been in this new place?

  His new rooms were loftier than his former, overlooking the forests beyond the city. The bars across his balcony cast the sunlight in straight lines across the carpeted floor and though the rooms were much smaller, they were also more comfortable.

  He’d fallen quickly into a routine. He read over his morning chai—mostly novels and plays, but sometimes he read poetry as well. He met with his physicians after breakfast and then exercised outdoors under the supervision of disinterested guards. In the afternoons, he practiced his harp.

  When Pyrus came to him, his face white and his hands shaking, Frederico had just sat down and raised his fingers to the strings. He looked up. “Minister Pyrus,” he said, inclining his head. “Or is it Chancellor now?”

  The old man said nothing. He stretched out his hand towards Frederico and in it, wrapped in black velvet, was the silver crescent.

  Frederico stood. The sight of it stopped his breath and he saw the look of stunned surprise on his own face, reflected back in its mirrored surface. He reached out and took it, held it to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Two daughters have you taken from me out of my own house,” a voice like silk said, “and I will have blood for them each.” Raj Y’Zir continued, quietly and with confidence. “When I fall upon you it will shake the foundations of the world. My physicians will cut you for my pleasure.”

  Frederico looked up and saw the wideness of Pyrus’s eyes. “I’ve not taken your daughter, Lord Y’Zir. She’s left you of her own free will.”

  “You’ve taken her, whether you know it or not. She’s swum the Bargaining Pool but she was too young to know that her body could not make the journey. Her spirit is yours for now.”

  Frederico closed his eyes. These were tears he’d already wept but he felt them again at the back of his eyelids.

  “You will not hear my voice again until it is in the sky above you,” Raj Y’Zir said. “Until then, know that a wrathful father builds his army and his bridge.”

  After that, silence.

  Frederico smiled grimly and looked to Pyrus, returning the crescent to him. “I believe this changes your position considerably.”

  The old general said nothing as Frederico sat back down and let his fingers find their way over the harp strings. The canticle was upbeat but in a minor key, haunting and yet triumphant.

  It is a love song, Frederico realized.

  * * *

  The war production was in full swing when Frederico took to his new estate near Belle-Sur-La-Mer. He left the affairs of state in the hands of his capable Chancellor Tannen and left the gun-fields and navies in the hands of his new Minister of War. Pyrus had taken to the role with gratitude appropriate for a spared life and a treason forgiven.

  He found the same routines he’d discovered during his brief stay in the Ministry; they comforted him. And he added new ones. He took to walking the markets by day and the beaches by night, his bare feet shuffling over sand still warm from the sun and bathed blue-green in the light of the moon.

  Sometimes, late at night, he even sat on the pier with his harp and played. His servants thought him mad but he was the Lord Czar and could do as he pleased. One night, as the lamps guttered low and his fingers ached from the strings, Frederico stood up and stretched.

  He walked to the end of the dock and looked up into the night sky. It had been just past a year now, he realized, and he knew now that the Year of the Falling Moon was not literal after all.
He’d wondered. But the anniversary of Jazrel’s passing had come and gone more than two months ago and there’d been no shaking ground or raining fire, no booming voice crying out vengeance.

  Hanging there, full and bright, the moon waited.

  And in that moment, deep in the waters at the end of the pier, something moved.

  At first, Frederico thought it was a reflection, blue and green light upon the warm night sea. But then it moved again and he started. He looked over his shoulder to the crimson guard that waited by the front doors of his estate, to the servants stationed near their bell. Crouching, he leaned forward and looked into the water.

  It was slender and beautiful and it coiled around the pillar of the dock before sliding off and out—a line of blue-green light moving deeper and away, as if part of the moon had fallen and now sank.

  Amal. He couldn’t tell if he said it aloud or silently. But a sudden fancy took him. Soft and low, he whistled the tune he’d been playing just minutes ago and watched the light flicker as it turned about and drifted slowly back to him.

  What had her father said? Her body could not make the journey.

  And he realized then that the Year of the Falling Moon was not about conquest and war, vendetta and violence. They’d only had part of Carnelyin’s gospel. The angry, broken potshards of loss. Those would still come but they were not the message of promise.

  No, Frederico realized, this gospel was really about love. A love so strong that it would swim, relentless, at any price. And so piercing that it could be heard in the deepest of dark places.

  “You found me,” he said quietly.

  And with that Frederico stood, returned to his harp, and gave himself to song.

  Copyright © 2009 Kenneth G. Scholes

  Books by Ken Scholes

  THE PSALMS OF ISAAK

  Lamentation (Tor, 2009)

  Canticle (Tor, 2009)

  Antiphon (forthcoming) (Tor)

  STORY COLLECTION

  Long Walks, Last Flights, & Other Strange Journeys (Fairwood, 2008)

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  No one ever asks a clown at the end of his life what he really wanted to be when he grew up. It’s fairly obvious. No one gets hijacked into the circus. We race to it, the smell of hotdogs leading us in, our fingers aching for the sticky pull of taffy, the electric shock of pink cotton on our tongue. Ask a lawyer and he’ll say when he was a kid he wanted to be an astronaut. Ask an accountant; he’ll say he wanted to be fireman.

  I am a clown. I have always wanted to be a clown. And I will die a clown if I have my way.

  My name is Merton D. Kamal.

  The Kamal comes from my father. I never met the man so I have no idea how he came by it. Mom got the Merton bit from some monk she used to read who wrote something like this: We learn humility by being humiliated often. Given how easily (and how frequently) Kamal is pronounced Camel, and given how the D just stands for D, you can see that she wanted her only child to be absolutely filled to the brim with humility.

  My Mom is a deeply spiritual woman.

  But enough about her. This is my story.

  “Merton,” the ringmaster and owner Rufus P. Stowell said, “it’s just not working out.”

  I was pushing forty. I’d lost some weight and everyone knows kids love a chubby clown. I’d also taken up drinking which didn’t go over well right before a show. So suddenly, I found myself without prospects and I turned myself towards home, riding into Seattle by bus on a cold November night.

  Mom met me at the bus stop. She had no business driving but she came out anyway. She was standing on the sidewalk next to the station wagon when she saw me. We hugged.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she said.

  I lifted my bag into the back. “Thanks.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  We went to Denny’s anyway. Whenever my Mom wanted to talk, we went to Denny’s. It’s where she took me to tell me about boys and girls, it’s where she took me to tell me that my dog had been hit by a car.

  “So what are you going to do now?” She cut and speared a chunk of meatloaf, then dipped it into her mashed potatoes and gravy before raising it to her mouth.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll fatten up, quit drinking, get back into the business.” I watched her left eyebrow twitch—a sure sign of disapproval. I hefted my double bacon cheeseburger, then paused. “Why? What do you think I should do?”

  She leaned forward. She brought her wrinkled hand up and cupped my cheek with it. Then she smiled. “I think you’ve already tried the clown thing, Merton. Why don’t you try something different?”

  I grinned. “I always wanted to be a sword-swallower but you wouldn’t let me.”

  “What about…insurance?”

  “Well, it gets steep. The swords are real, Mom.”

  The eyebrow twitched again. “I’m being serious. Remember Nancy Keller?”

  Of course I did. I’d lost my virginity with her back in eleventh grade. It was my second most defining moment that year. Three days later, Rufus P. Stowell’s Traveling Big Top rolled into town and my first most defining moment occurred. They said I was a natural, I had the look and the girth. Would I be interested in an internship? I left a note for Nancy in her mailbox thanking her for everything in great detail, hugged my Mom goodbye and dropped out of high school to join the circus.

  Mom was still waiting for me to answer. “Yes, I remember her.”

  “Well, she’s some big mucky-muck now at CARECO.”

  “And?” I took a bite of the cheeseburger.

  “And I told her you were coming home and asked her if she’d interview you.”

  I nearly choked. “You did what?”

  “I asked her if she’d interview you. For a job.”

  I had no idea what to say.

  So the next morning, Mom took me down to J.C. Penney’s and bought me my first suit in thirty years. That afternoon, she dropped me downtown in front of the CARECO building, waved goodbye and drove away.

  The CARECO building was new. I’d visited a few times over the years, had watched buildings come and buildings go. But I had never seen anything like this. It looked like a glass Rubik’s Cube tilted precariously in a martini glass full of green jello. Inside, each floor took on the color coding of the various policies they offered. Life insurance was green. Auto, a deep blue. I can’t remember what color Long-Term Disability was. Each color had been painfully worked out, according to a plaque near the door, by a team of eminent European corporate psychologists. Supposedly, it would enhance productivity by reducing the depression inherent within the insurance industry.

  While I was reading the plaque, a man stepped up to me. He was as tan as a Californian, wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt despite impending rain. I went back to reading. “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Have you seen a monkey around here?”

  I shook my head, not really paying attention to the question. “Sorry.”

  He smiled. “Thanks anyway.”

  I went inside. I rode three escalators, two elevators and talked to seven receptionists. I sat in a chair that looked like plastic but was really made of foam. I filled out long and complicated application forms.

  An hour later, someone took me up into an office at the top of the highest point of the inside of the glass Rubik�
��s Cube.

  Nancy Keller looked up. She smiled until my escort closed the door on her way out.

  “Merton D. Camel,” she said, stretching each syllable.

  “Kamal. Hi Nancy.” The view from her office was spectacular. The walls were glass framed in steel and I could see the city spread out around me in a wide view that pulled at my stomach. The office had a modern-looking desk in the middle of it, a few chairs and some potted plants.

  “I’m surprised to see you after so long. Back from clowning around?”

  “I am.” I smiled. “You look good.” And she did. Her legs were still long but her hair was short and she’d traded her Van Halen tank top for a crisp blue suit.

  She ignored my compliment and pointed to another of those foam chairs. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I sat. She sat. I waited, trying to ignore the places where my wool suit created urgent itching.

  She studied my application, then she studied me. I kept waiting. Finally, she spoke. “This interview,” she said, “consists of two questions.” She leaned forward and I realized the button on her suit coat had popped open to reveal more cleavage than I remembered her having. “First question. Do you remember the day you left for the circus, three days after our…special moment.” She made little quote marks in the air when she said “special.”

  I nodded. “I do. I left you a note.” I grinned. “I think I even said thank you. In some detail.”

  She nodded, too. “Second question. Did you ever stop to think that maybe…just maybe…my father would be the one getting the mail?” She stood and pushed a button on her desk. I stood, too. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Camel. Patrice will see you out.” She extended her hand. I shook it and it was cold.

  Later, I was working on my third bowl of ice cream and looking over the Twelve Steps when her assistant called with the offer.

  “It’s easy,” Nancy Keller said again. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “I want you to drive a monkey to our branch office in New Mexico.”