The Book of Swords

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Fyltak ran on for several steps, only stopping when he realized Fitz had turned back. Puppet and knight were looking to the sky, but Fyltak could not tear his gaze away from the headless, broken thing that was now scuttling like a spider in a zigzag, backwards and forwards where Fyltak had first left the water, somehow finding a trail of energetic scent or something of that kind.

  Suddenly, a vast shadow passed over men and puppet, accompanied by a long, falling shriek of titanic proportion. Fyltak thrust his hands against his ears and cowered down, all courage leeched away by this new addition to their woes.

  But Sir Hereward kept looking up, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. A moonshade swept past overhead, its enormous leathery wings spread wide, a hundred and twenty feet or more. It turned its big-as-a-house, furred, bat-like head down and fixed Sir Hereward with one sharp black eye, an eye greater in diameter than the knight was tall. Opening its pink-lined, sharp-toothed, elongated jaw, it gave vent once more to its greeting call.

  The witch who sat securely on the tall chair on its back, seemingly grown of the same shiny black bone as the creature’s spine, added to the creature’s screech with a jaunty wave. Sir Hereward smiled, for though she was very late, Kishtyr was one of his favorite cousins, and a former lover besides, who might well be one again. The Council back at the High Pale would not be expecting her to return for at least another week.

  But far more significantly Kishtyr was suitably equipped with both a god-slaying relic and a full sewing desk of sorcerous needles. The husk of Eudonia and the diminished extradimensional entity Xavva-Tish-Laqishtax within would offer her no challenges. She would swiftly banish the godlet and give whatever might remain of the woman peace.

  Hereward lost his smile at the thought of Great-great-aunt Eudonia’s head still somewhere out there under the lake’s clouded surface. Pierced by three sorcerous needles and infused with an indomitable will that would not even surrender to a godlet, it was possible that Eudonia still lived—after a fashion—inside that sunken head. Kishtyr’s task might not be as straightforward as he had supposed, and worse, she might enlist him to go fishing. He most certainly did not want to hook and land Eudonia’s separated head…

  “What is that?” asked Fyltak, creeping up to man and puppet. He could see that whatever it was, its arrival had disturbed the remnant relict of Xavva-Tish-Laqishtax, which had retreated back to the lakeshore and was now trying to bury itself in the mud, presumably in an effort to conceal itself from this new, airborne nemesis.

  “It is a moonshade, bearing a Witch of Har,” answered Mister Fitz, responding literally, as was his wont. “The long-awaited Kishtyr, in fact.”

  The huge flying creature turned about to land on the longer and broader shore on the northern side of their current island. Despite their enormous size, moonshades were nimble and agile flyers, and could set down in a space only a little longer than their own length. Once landed, they could fold their wings up remarkably small, as this one was in the process of doing. They were in fact deceptive in their size, being mostly leathery skin and thin bones, with a little black fur dabbed here and there. Though, even when all was said and done, it was still a monster roughly the size of a watchtower laid on its side.

  “More to the point,” said Sir Hereward, dragging the smaller man upright and draping his arm over his shoulder in a comradely fashion. “The moonshade and the witch who rides it represent an opportunity which I believe we should take at once.”

  “An opportunity?”

  “To shuck off our cares and responsibility, and hie ourselves to yonder Simiril, where I will purchase both of us some more of that excellent coffee.”

  He paused and added with a wink to the puppet: “And some sweet oil, for I, for one, would like to hear Mister Fitz sing!”

  ⬩  ⬩  ⬩

  Ellen Kushner’s first novel, Swordspoint, introduced readers to Riverside, home of the city to which she has since returned in The Privilege of the Sword (a Locus Award winner and Nebula nominee), The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman), a handful of related short stories, and, most recently, the collaborative Riverside prequel Tremontaine for SerialBox.com and Saga Press. The author herself recorded all three novels in audiobook form for Neil Gaiman Presents/Audible.com, winning a 2012 Audie Award for Swordspoint. With Holly Black, she coedited Welcome to Bordertown, a revival of the original urban-fantasy shared-world series created by Terri Windling. A popular performer and public speaker, Ellen Kushner created and hosted the long-running public radio show Sound & Spirit, which Bill Moyers called “the best thing on public radio.” She has taught creative writing at the Clarion and Odyssey workshops, and is an instructor in Hollins University’s Children’s Literature M.F.A. program. She lives in New York City with Delia Sherman and no cats whatsoever, in an apartment full of theater and airplane ticket stubs.

  Here she introduces us to a young man newly arrived in Riverside to seek his fortune, one who, like many young men come to the big city before him, finds that he’s got a lot to learn to succeed—and that many of the lessons aren’t pleasant.

  ⬩  ⬩  ⬩

  “Do it,” Jess said. “It’ll be fun.”

  I had no wish to be a highwayman, even for a day, but we needed the money. So I considered it.

  Since I had come to Riverside, I had learned that not everyone there gives a stranger from the country good advice. If Riversiders advise a new blade to challenge that guy over there by the fire to a duel—you can take him, no problem!—well, it’s lucky that you do turn out to be better than he is. Of course, now he hates you and won’t recommend you for any jobs uptown, which is where the glory and the money are. Bad advice.

  But since Jessamyn and I had begun keeping company toward the end of winter, I’d learned she usually had my best interests at heart, especially when it came to advice about making money. She was expert at that herself: the cleverest con artist the city had to offer, according to her admirers, and the slyest shyster ever to pick a pocket, according to the others.

  Jessamyn was pretty, too. A mane of moon-pale hair such as I’d never seen before, fun to get tangled in at night, fun to braid up tight in the morning so she looked like a middle-city girl, decent yet delectable. That was how she played her game.

  We made a good pair. Silver and smoke; ice and steel, people said. I could go anywhere with her: suddenly, all the taverns of Riverside were open to me, even the Maiden’s Fancy, where women like Flash Annie and Kathy Blount told one another their secrets. Everyone knew Jess, and if they didn’t like her, at least they admired her skill—and the way she took marks in uptown. She knew the handkerchief trick, the Lost Baby trick, the Pigeon Drop, and the Lover’s Dare.

  I never went on jobs with her, though, because it was important for people to know my face if I was going to get work—and it was very, very important that no one remember hers.

  Jessamyn had a wardrobe a duchess would envy, for quantity if not for quality: velvet with the nap rubbed away in back, raveled silk stockings, lace frontlets and silk shawls stained underneath, ribbons in every color imaginable to trim and retrim her many hats, feathers picked up on the street—

  “It just has to look right, Richard,” she’d explain. “No one’s going to lift up my fine linen skirt to see the patched petticoats underneath. If I paint a thing gold, and wear it like it’s gold, only a jeweler will know it’s not.” She arched her neck, laughing. “And I never get anywhere near a real jeweler, so that’s no problem.”

  I stroked the nape of her smooth neck, where the soft hair grew in an arrow shape. “I’ll get you near a real one. We’re going to make money, Jessamyn—I’m going to make it. A swordsman can get rich in this town. Look at Rivers. And de Maris, before his last fight. I’m going to be better than them. And then we’ll go up to Lassiter’s Row and buy you gold earrings with jewels in them, the biggest they’ve got!”

  I didn’t know much about jewels, then; not their names, nor what they were wo
rth, really. I just liked the way they sparkled, catching the sun with a rainbow’s fire. I’d only seen my first diamond, at a merchant’s wedding I was playing guard at. I’d thought it was a composite of all other jewels, compressed into one, till someone set me right.

  Jess and I shared a couple of rooms upstairs in a crumbling old house on a narrow street full of them. Like its neighbors, it had been grand and glorious once, before the rich abandoned Riverside to move over the Bridge into the rest of the city. Our two rooms still had carvings and fancy molding clinging to the peeling walls. There was plenty of space for Jess’s massive collection of costumes. The house’s owner was a laundress who plied her trade in the courtyard’s ancient stone well and rented out her upstairs rooms by the week, which suited us fine.

  Whenever either of us got—or did—a job, we’d pay Marie her rent first, then go out and spend the rest on whatever pleased our fancy: dresses and hats and fine cloaks for Jessamyn (really just business, she explained), and whatever pretty flotsam had turned up in the Old Market at the heart of Riverside: stuff salvaged from crumbling houses, things no one could pawn, like cracked porcelain vases, a fragment of gilded picture frame, a carved boxwood figure with its arms missing.

  The money for that, I got from working a wedding uptown: the most boring job in the world. I always felt ridiculous with my sword out and that stupid wreath on my head, marching behind the bridal party to the temple, then standing there on display while the priests read the same words over each couple. It’s not as though anyone was ever coming to actually steal away the bride.

  Jess said it was a way to get noticed, and I was lucky I looked good in a wreath. “You’re, what, barely eighteen?” she’d ask, knowing perfectly well I wasn’t even that yet. “There’s time.”

  But I hadn’t come to the city to stand around watching people get married. Everyone here in Riverside knew I was a serious duelist; sometimes I was able to prove it there, when another swordsman got fresh with Jess, or a new blade came down looking for trouble and decided to see if I was any good.

  Still, it was from working a wedding that I finally got a chance to prove myself to the ones who counted. I’d gotten the job because Hugo Seville was already scheduled for a demonstration duel at some Hill noble’s birthday party, lucky stiff, so he’d passed the wedding job on to me.

  “I’m recommending you because I know you’ll do your best,” he said pompously, as though there was real effort involved in standing very still and not scratching your nose. “These people are important, Richard. Lord Hastings never comes to town, but he’s here to marry off his seventh daughter to Condell’s eldest.”

  I could never remember their names; I just put on my clean shirt and my blue doublet, polished my boots, and went over the Bridge.

  It was a very fancy wedding. A whole band of musicians walked us to the temple, not just one or two flute players. Little girls tossed lavender and rosemary in the bride’s path; when we stepped on the herbs, the scent made me suddenly homesick for my mother’s garden.

  I wasn’t the only swordsman, either. Lord Hastings had a House Sword who walked beside me, a tall, quiet, older man who didn’t want trouble; I could tell by the way he gave me enough space, and I appreciated that.

  Lord Hastings’ blade and I left the temple together, well after the musicians had played the wedding party and their guests away. Our part was done; I guess the bride belonged to her husband’s family, now. Hastings’ swordsman was no Riversider: maybe one of those men who learn from an academy, or even from their fathers, and make their way up in a nobleman’s service, fighting exhibition duels, doing weddings, showing off grace and form, and standing ready in case anyone tries to challenge their noble masters. I’d never really gotten the chance to talk to one of them; the last wedding with two swords, the other wouldn’t answer any questions, and when I challenged him after, he spat and called me Riverside guttertrash, the poser.

  I was beginning to think about asking Lord Hastings’ quiet swordsman how to get work as a duelist uptown, when suddenly he staggered and fell against the wall.

  “Are you hurt?” I said. He was very pale.

  A woman in a simple dress with bright starched cap and collar came running up. “Oh, George, George, I told you you were too ill for this today!”

  “Marjorie.” He grinned feebly at her. “How could I disappoint his lordship, after all this time? And little Amilette…Lucky Seventh, right? Didn’t she look lovely?”

  “You’re going to disappoint him even more, now, for you’re in no fit shape to duel for the guests at the party.”

  He’d started shivering; some kind of fever, I guessed. There were a lot of those in the city. “They’ve seen me fight before. Many times. They’ll like seeing someone new. What’s your name, boy?”

  I let the “boy” go because he was so ill.

  “Richard St. Vier.”

  “Of the banking St. Viers?” the woman asked.

  “Do I look like a banker?” But I said it with a smile; I’d gotten used to that question here. (My mother had once been a daughter of that family—but that was no one’s business but hers.) “I am a swordsman, madam, and I would be happy to take up this duel if you will tell me where to go.”

  “Come, George.” She had her arms around him. “I’ll take you home. And you, Master St. Vier, if you could just give me a hand with him—No, of course you don’t need one, George, but I do!—I’ll give you directions to Lord Condell’s. You’ve got plenty of time; there’s all the eating and drinking before the entertainment.”

  —

  I’d never been up on the Hill before, where the nobles’ fine houses were. They didn’t want you there if you weren’t working for them. But this time I was, so I walked boldly along the wide, open streets lined with the walls and massive iron gates of great houses on either side. An occasional carriage passed me—one of theirs, flash with high-headed horses and glitzy harness—or a liveried servant, on foot, out on some errand I couldn’t imagine.

  At Lord Condell’s house I gave my name, explained my business, and assured them that I was not there to challenge their master at his son’s wedding feast. They reminded me that I was to use the back entrance, but that Cook might have something hot for me.

  Lord Condell’s servants were all madly busy with the feast and didn’t have time for me. So I went out to the side yard to warm up and practice my moves until someone came out to tell me it was time.

  The duel was to be held in the entry hall of the house. Very dressed-up people encircled the space, many of them on the landing to the main stairs, and more of them crowding the stairs themselves or leaning from the upstairs balcony. I walked slowly, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. The people didn’t matter, but my opponent did.

  He was a fair man of about my size and reach. I stood across the hall from him while a liveried man announced:

  “For the honor and pleasure of the bride and groom, the duel will be to first blood, or until one man yields.”

  I knew about first blood. It could mean a scratch, a slash, or a deep puncture wound. I imagined duels at a wedding feast called for just a scratch, and took a long breath to remind myself to go no further in this bout.

  After a few more formalities, it began.

  My opponent and I moved slowly, testing, observing, as is right. We circled each other. The crowd was silent. In Riverside, they would have started shouting bets already. I made a feint to see what he’d do, and he did nothing but raise his eyebrows and cock up one corner of his mouth at me. Not easily drawn. This was going to be a longer fight than I’d expected.

  We let the swords converse a little, back and forth, feeling each other’s strength in the pressure of the blades, trying to hide our real abilities from each other. Suddenly his high wrist dropped and he struck low, like a swooping falcon; but I’d felt it coming and countered easily. He stepped back, surprised, to give himself time to assess, and to avoid me.

  Once they start stepping
back, you have them. I pressed forward, forward, forward, quickly, not giving him time to think, showing off a new move every time for those who could see fast enough, wanting to impress them all. He defended himself ably, but I never let him pick up an attack, just kept pushing him back.

  He was a pleasure to fight because I knew it would be hard to make my touch on him but that he didn’t stand a chance at hitting me. When we closed together with our quillons crossed, he hissed at me, “What are you doing? Fall back!”

  I understood his words only well enough to gasp, “What? No!”

  He turned his blade so that we half circled each other, still close together. “This is for their entertainment! They want to see some back-and-forth!”

  I disengaged, sliding my blade back along his, until their tips alone touched. We messed around like that for a bit, like some kind of kiddie training exercise, circling each other, circling the blades…The noble guests were enchanted. They seemed to think something was happening, and started shouting encouragement. I saw a woman’s face, very white, her hands twisting a handkerchief as though there were real danger here. Were these the arbiters of skill, the people I was so eager to impress?

  My opponent thought he held the match in his hand, that having acceded to his suggestion, I would let him control the finish. With a triumphant grin, he advanced ferociously.

  I fell back just long enough to gauge my distance and leap in over his blade, touching him in the upper breast as gently as I could manage. It drew blood. The bout was over.

  My opponent bowed, and was helped away by a footman. I stood there in the hallway with shouts of “Blood!” and “Bravo!” ringing in my ears, wondering what I should do next. A servant brought me a silver cup filled with a cool drink. When I’d emptied it, the nobles started crowding around me, congratulating me, asking my name, how long had I been in Lord Hastings’ employ, did I take commissions, what was my next fight, where could they find me…?