The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013

by Linda Nagata

  We were standing beside an open door to an unoccupied office. I ushered Hera inside. The DI came back with a new set of records even before the door was closed. At my invitation, Hera sat in the guest chair, her hands fidgeting restlessly in her lap. I perched on the edge of the desk, scanning the records, trying to stay calm, but my DI wasn’t fooled. It sensed my stress and sent the paralytic ribbon creeping down my arm and into my palm.

  “Let’s talk about your brother.”

  Hera’s hands froze in her lap. “My brother? You must know already. He’s dead . . . he died like Key.”

  “You used to be a city councilor.”

  “I resigned from the council.”

  I nodded. “As a councilor you were required to host visitors . . . but you haven’t allowed a ghost in your atrium since your brother’s arrest.”

  “Those things don’t matter to me anymore.”

  “You also haven’t upgraded your defensive Makers, and you haven’t been scanned—”

  “I’m not a criminal, Zeke. I just . . . I just want to do my job and be left alone.”

  “Hera? You’ve been harboring your brother’s ghost, haven’t you? And he didn’t like it when you started seeing Key.”

  The DI showed me the flush of hot and cold across her skin. “No,” she whispered. “No. He’s dead, and I wouldn’t do that.”

  She was lying. “Hera, is your atrium quirked? To let your brother’s ghost take over sometimes?”

  She looked away. “Wouldn’t that be illegal?”

  “Giving up your body to another? Yes, it would be.”

  Her hands squeezed hard against the armrests of the chair. “It was him, then? That’s what you’re saying?” She turned to look at me, despair in her eyes. “He filed the complaint against Tish?”

  I nodded. “I knew it wasn’t you speaking to me that day. I think he also used you to sabotage Key’s railcar, knowing I’d have to look into it.”

  “And Robin?” she asked, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the chair.

  “Ask him.”

  Earlier, I’d asked the DI to bring me a list of all the trained molecular designers in Nahiku, but I’d asked the wrong question. I queried it again, asking for all the designers in the past five years. This time, mine wasn’t the only name.

  “Ask him for the design of the assault Maker, Hera. Robin doesn’t deserve to die.”

  I crouched in front of her, my hand on hers as I looked up into her stunned eyes. It was a damned stupid position to put myself into.

  He took over. It took a fraction of a second. My DI didn’t catch it, but I saw it happen. Her expression hardened and her knee came up, driving hard into my chin. As my head snapped back he launched Hera against me. At that point it didn’t matter that I outweighed her by forty percent. I was off balance and I went down with her on top of me. Her forehead cracked against my nose, breaking it.

  He wasn’t trying to escape. There was no way he could. It was only blind rage that drove him. He wanted to kill me, for all the good it would do. I was a cop. I had backups. I couldn’t lose more than a few days. But he could still do some damage before he was brought down.

  I felt Hera’s small hands seize my wrists. He was trying to keep me from using the ribbon arsenal, but Hera wasn’t nearly strong enough for that. I tossed her off, and not gently. The back of her head hit the floor, but she got up again almost as fast as I did and scrambled for the door.

  I don’t know what he intended to do, what final vengeance he hoped for. One more murder, maybe. Tishembra and Robin were both just across the hall.

  I grabbed Hera, dragged her back, and slammed her into the chair. Then I raised my hand. The DI controlled the ribbon. Fibers along its length squeezed hard, sending a fine mist across Hera’s face. It got in her eyes and in her lungs. She reared back, but then she collapsed, slumping in the chair. I wiped my bloody nose on my sleeve and waited until her head lolled against her chest. Then I sent a DI to Red Star.

  I’d need help extracting the data from her quirked atrium, and combing through it for the assault Maker’s design file.

  It took a few days, but Robin was recovered. When he gets cranky at night he still tells Tishembra she’s “wrong,” but he’s only three. Soon he won’t remember what she was like before, while I pretend it doesn’t matter to me.

  Tishembra knows that isn’t true. She complains the laws are too strict, that citizens should be free to make their own choices. Me, I’m just happy Glory Mina let me stay on as Nahiku’s watch officer. Glory likes reminding me how lucky I am to have the position. I like to remind her that I’ve finally turned into the uncompromising jackboot she always knew I could be.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to help Hera, but she’d been harboring a fugitive for three years. There was nothing I could do for her, but I won’t let anyone else in this city step over the line. I don’t want to sit through another execution.

  Nahiku isn’t quite bankrupt yet. Glory assessed a minimal fine for Hera’s transgression, laying most of the fault on the police since we’d failed to hunt down all ghosts of a condemned criminal. So the city won’t be sold off, and Tishembra will have to wait to get free.

  I don’t think she minds too much.

  Here. Now. This is enough. I only wonder: Can we make it last?

  The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring

  Genevieve Valentine

  There was something more civilized about a town that could bury its dead, if they stayed dead, and so Folkvarder Gray put out the notice for a gravedigger.

  John the gravedigger was the best in the Nyr Nord Territory. He dug them narrow and he dug them deep, and when he came to Konstan Spring he provided references from Nyr Odin, where he had been called in to exercise his craft after the second English War for the Territory.

  Folkvarder Gray looked over the letters, and then he shook John’s hand and took the “Gravedigger Wanted” sign out of the window, and felt very satisfied.

  The water in Konstan Spring was warm all year, and it ran clear and pure, and once you drank it all your cuts and aches and pains vanished from you as if they were caught up in the current.

  The town was young (everything in that country was young) and did no great business. The land around the spring had to be worked to coax any crops from the dirt, and it was so far from the sea or the railroad or the Nations tribal gatherings that there was no profit in hotels or in trading.

  The general store and the saloon, the chemist and the town lodge, the blacksmith and the whorehouse, tended to those who lived there; there was little other need. The folkvarder’s office, with its little jail cell, stayed empty. There was no trouble to be had; people only found Kostan Spring by accident, and often hurried through on their way to someplace greater.

  All the same, some lonesome souls had found their way to Konstan Spring.

  It was a town that suited painstaking people, and when the town gathered for meetings to decide if newcomers should be given the water, the votes were orderly, and there was hardly a raised voice in the lodge.

  (Mrs. Domar was sometimes louder than most people cared for, but the town was loyal to its own—where else could someone go, who had tasted the water in Konstan Spring?—and no fuss was made about her.)

  The only man to bring the water out of Konstan Spring had been Hosiah Frode, the old chemist. Two years back he had written “KONSTAN’S ALE—MIRACLE TONIC” on his wagon and taken three barrels, early one morning before Folkvarder Gray could stop him.

  Everyone waited to see what would happen. No one said it, but they all worried—if the gunslingers and the gamblers and the ill-living folk got wind of Konstan’s Ale and came looking for the spring, the town might be overrun with greedy sorts, and they would never be rid of them.

  It was a dark winter.

  But Konstan Spring was a practical town, and even under the shadow of trouble, they all made do. Kit down at the whorehouse hired a few new girls all the way from Odal in case city men had finer ta
stes, and she taught Anni the blacksmith’s daughter how to cook sturdy food so she could work the kitchen when all the rich, sickly gentlemen came looking for the water.

  But the water must not have been such good luck to Hosiah Frode, because he never came back, and no rush of travelers ever appeared.

  Secretly, Folkvarder Gray suspected Frode had angered a higher power with his thieving, and been struck down by stronger hands than theirs—the water was a great gift, and Frode should have known better than to abuse it.

  It was a shame, Gray thought; Frode was a liar and a thief, but he had been a fine chemist, and Gray respected a man who was able with his work.

  Frode never returned.

  By spring, the men in town had developed fine enough taste to call on the new whorehouse girls from Odal (Kit had chosen the very best), and Kit sent Anni the blacksmith’s daughter over to the chemist’s.

  No one complained about the change; Anni had been a terrible cook.

  When he came into town, John the gravedigger took the room above the chemist shop. Anni lived in back of the shop, so the upstairs had been sitting empty.

  The best the room had to offer was the view of the fenced-in graveyard past the new-painted lodge.

  The flat, empty ground had never been touched; as yet, no one who lived in Konstan Spring had died.

  The room above the chemist was small and Anni was an indifferent hostess, but John didn’t move quarters. People figured he was sweet on Anni, or that the view of the graveyard was as close as a gravedigger could come to living above his store like an honest man.

  No one minded his reasons. Anni needed the money. In Konstan Spring the chemist never did much business.

  The first man John buried was Samuel Ness, who got himself on the losing end of a fight with his horse.

  The grave appeared one shovel at a time, sharp-edged and deep as a well. There was no denying John was an artist. The priest thanked John for the grave even before he asked God to commend Samuel’s soul.

  “Won’t work,” muttered Mrs. Domar.

  Mrs. Domar was Samuel’s nearest neighbor. She had come to Konstan Spring already a widow; her husband had fallen ill on the road, and died in an Inuit town just twenty miles from the Spring. She persevered, but the stroke of bad luck had turned her into a pessimist.

  Samuel had a young orchard at the edge of his property line, and Mrs. Domar knew that if there was a way Nature could work against her inheriting that little grove of apple trees, it would.

  It was the usual funeral, except that the priest, after the service, suggested that John fill in a little of the ground before the body went inside it.

  John obeyed. He wasn’t one to argue with the clergy.

  Two days later, Samuel Ness wriggled his way out of the shallow grave and came home to his farm and his orchard.

  “I knew it,” muttered Mrs. Domar as soon as she saw him coming.

  John, if he was surprised, said nothing. He smoothed down the earth after the priest had taken back the headstone, and for a few nights, if you walked all the way from the outlying farms to the chemist’s, you could see John sitting at his window, looking out over the sparse graveyard as if deciding what to do.

  Everyone worried. They’d feared a gravedigger would lose the will for it in Konstan Spring, and they worried that if he went out into the world there would be questions about his hardiness. They had been lucky with Frode, but luck gave out any time.

  People suggested that the folkvarder meet with him and point out the hundred-year contract John had signed. They suggested the priest give him counsel. Some suggested Anni should. If he was sweet on her, her kind face would do some good.

  Philip Prain, who minded the general store, was the brave one who finally asked John what his plans might be, now that everything was in the open and John knew that the water wasn’t just for one’s health.

  John said, “Try harder, I reckon.” After a moment he asked, “We see a lot of travelers?”

  Folkvarder Gray and Prain and Kit down at the whorehouse held a Town Council meeting to discuss the problem.

  They spoke for a long time, and made up their minds on the subject. They planned to put it to a vote before the town, since the town was very strict about having a say, but none of them would object. John was a treasure they couldn’t lose, and there were bound to be some drifters coming by sooner or later.

  In the normal way of things, strangers would have a drink at the saloon and a girl at the whorehouse and ride out the next day, but there was no record of travelers once they were this far into the wild; not everyone can be missed.

  The first drifter came on horseback a few weeks later, before there had been a formal vote.

  He ordered liquor all night, and went to bed with one of Kit’s girls, and fell asleep without ever having tasted the water from Konstan Spring.

  He suffered a horrible attack in his sleep. Some nightmare had troubled him so that he’d twisted his neck up in his blankets and broken it.

  Anni brought John the good news.

  This time John had a little audience: Folkvarder Gray and Anni came, and Mrs. Domar, who wanted to see how to get that sharp edge in her own flowerbeds.

  “You cut the ground so clean,” Anni said after a time. “Where’d you learn?”

  “Started young,” he said. “Buried my ma and pa when I was twelve. Practice.”

  Anni nodded, and after he was finished they walked home side by side.

  She was a quiet sort of girl, and John kept to himself, but Konstan Spring began to lay wagers for the month they’d be married. Anni’s father, the old blacksmith, wanted it at once—the gravedigger got a hundred dollars a year. Samuel Ness thought it was too soon for a man to be sure he wanted a wife; he said no one should rightly marry until the spring, when the flowers were out.

  Kit at the whorehouse swore they’d never get married, but everyone said it was only because John had never given her any business; she had sour grapes, that was all.

  For the whole winter it went on that way. The town welcomed four men, each traveling alone, bound for New Freya or Odin’s Lake, and one as far south as Iroquois country. Each one had gotten lost in the dark cold, in the snow or the freezing rain, and found themselves outside the saloon in Konstan Spring.

  Each one spent the night at the whorehouse—Kit insisted—and of course it was much better to have a hot mug of mead to burn off the frost of a long ride, so there was no occasion to drink the spring-water.

  The next morning John got a knock on his door from the Gerder boy who worked at the post office, or Mary the redhead from the whorehouse, to let him know he had a job to be getting on with.

  Four travelers was less than it should be, even in winter, and they all worried that a gravedigger of John’s skill would tire of having nothing to do. John, however, seemed happy to dig only one perfect grave a month for that whole winter; each one straight as a ruler, crisp edges, ground as smooth as God had ever made it.

  People in Konstan Spring began to warm to him. For all they were patient, they were proud, and it was a comfort that the gravedigger of Konstan Spring knew the importance of a job done right.

  Finn and Ivar Halfred were clerks who stumbled into Konstan Spring just before the thaw—the last spoils of winter for John the gravedigger.

  They were from Portstown, Ivar told the Gerder boy, who took their horses. The Gerder boy didn’t have the sense to ask where they were going (he didn’t have the sense God gave an apple), so Gerder the father, who tended the saloon, asked instead.

  Most of the people in Konstan Spring came out when strangers came into town. It was always interesting to see new people, no matter how briefly they’d be staying.

  Anni and John sat at a little table in a corner, set apart from the crowd and noise of the saloon. At the other tables the wagers about their courtship went up and up and up, even in the midst of looking at the strangers; there was always a place for a friendly bet.

  At last, old Gerder as
ked the brothers, “What brings you to Konstan Spring?”

  By that time Ivar was already drunk, and he laughed loudly and said, “We were supposed to head south for Bruntofte, but we turned right instead of left!” which was an old joke that no one paid any mind. It was never hard to tell which of two brothers was the fool.

  “Bruntofte isn’t very welcoming,” Gerder said. “Hope you boys plan to do some trade; they don’t like people showing up with empty hands. We all saw what happened to the English, before they got driven out.”

  After a little pause, Finn sighed and said, “Haven’t thought that far ahead. We’re just looking to start over in a place that has enough room to be lonely in.”

  You didn’t get as far as Konstan Spring unless you were putting something behind you, so no one was surprised to hear it. But the way he spoke must have struck Anni something awful, because she got up from her seat and took a place next to Finn at the bar.

  She’d never been pretty (not compared to whorehouse girls from Odal), but the way she looked at him would have charmed a much less lonely man than Finn Halfred.

  They talked until late, until everyone had gone home but Kit from the whorehouse, whose girls were working to bring Ivar back and lighten his pockets. They tried to hook Finn, too, but Anni put her hand on his arm, and the girls respected her claim.

  Anni brought Finn home with her when she left that night, his arm linked with hers. The girls from the whorehouse thought it was a scandal, but Kit told them to mind their own business and tend to their customer.

  Kit was no fool; she knew how slowly time moved in Konstan Spring, and a girl shouldn’t be a bad cook and an indifferent chemist year in and year out without anything else happening inside of her. Anni could have a night with a young clerk if she wanted. (It was the first thing Anni had managed well in a long time. Kit was glad to see something worthy from Anni at last.)