Heiresses of Russ 2011

by JoSelle Vanderhooft

  He started badly as Jessaline rounded the door, and she froze as well, fearing to cause Eugenie’s death. Very slowly she set the sixgun on a nearby sideboard, pushed it so that it slid out of easy reach, and raised her hands to show that she was no threat. At this, Forstall relaxed.

  “So we meet again, my beauteous negress,” he said, though there was anger in his smile. “I had hoped to make your acquaintance under more favorable circumstances. Alas.”

  “You are with the White Camellia?” He had seemed so gormless that day on Royal Street; not at all the sort Jessaline would associate with a murderous secret society.

  “I am indeed,” he said. “And you would have met the rest of us if my assistant had not clearly failed in his goal of taking you captive. Nevertheless, I too have a goal, and I ask again, sir, where are the plans?”

  Jessaline realized belatedly that this was directed at Norbert Rillieux. And he, too frightened to bluster, just shook his head. “I told you, I have built no such device! Ask this woman—she wanted it, and I refused her!”

  The methane extractor, Jessaline realized. Of course—they had known, probably via their own spies, that she was after it. Forstall had been tailing her the day he’d bumped into her, probably all the way to Rillieux’s house; she cursed herself for a fool for not realizing. But the White Camellias were mostly philosophers and bankers and lawyers, not the trained, proficient spies she’d been expecting to deal with. It had never occurred to her that an enemy would be so clumsy as to jostle and converse with his target in the course of surveillance.

  “It’s true,” Jessaline said, stalling desperately in hopes that some solution would present itself to her. “This man refused my request to build the device.”

  “Then why did you come back here?” Forstall asked, tightening his grip on Eugenie so that she gasped. “We had men watching the house servants, too. We intercepted orders for metal parts and rubber tubing, and I paid the glasssmith to delay an order for custom vacuum-pipes—”

  “You did that?” To Jessaline’s horror, Eugenie stiffened in Forstall’s grasp, trying to turn and glare at him in her affront. “I argued with that old fool for an hour!”

  “Eugenie, be still!” cried Norbert, which raised him high in Jessaline’s estimation; she had wanted to shout the same thing.

  “I will not—” Eugenie began to struggle, plainly furious. As Forstall cursed and tried to restrain her, Jessaline heard Eugenie’s protests continue. “—interference with my work—very idea—”

  Please, Holy Mother, Jessaline thought, taking a very careful step closer to the gun on the sideboard, don’t let him shoot her to shut her up.

  When Forstall finally thrust Eugenie aside-she fell against the bottle-strewn side table, nearly toppling it—and indeed raised the gun to shoot her, Jessaline blurted, “Wait!”

  Both Forstall and Eugenie froze, now separated and facing each other, though Forstall’s gun was still pointed dead at Eugenie’s chest. “The plans are complete,” Jessaline said to him. “They are in the workshop out back.” With a hint of pride, she looked at Eugenie and added, “Eugenie has made it work.”

  “What?” said Rillieux, looking thunderstruck.

  “What?” Forstall stared at her, then Eugenie, and then anger filled his expression. “Clever, indeed! And while I go out back to check if your story is true, you will make your escape with the plans already tucked into your clothes.”

  “I am not lying in this instance,” she said, “but if you like, we can all proceed to the garden and see. Or, since I’m the one you seem to fear most—” She waggled her empty hands in mockery, hoping this would make him too angry to notice how much closer she was to the gun on the sideboard. His face reddened further with fury. “You could leave Eugenie and her brother here, and take me alone.”

  Eugenie caught her breath. “Jessaline, are you mad?”

  “Yes,” Jessaline said, and smiled, letting her heart live in her face for a moment. Eugenie’s mouth fell open, then softened into a small smile. Her glasses were still askew, Jessaline saw with a rush of fondness.

  Forstall rolled his eyes, but smiled. “A capital suggestion, I think. Then I can shoot you—”

  He got no further, for in the next instant Eugenie suddenly struck him in the head with a rum-bottle.

  The bottle shattered on impact. Forstall cried out, half-stunned by the blow and the sting of rum in his eyes, but he managed to keep his grip on the gun, and keep it trained more or less on Eugenie. Jessaline thought she saw the muscles in his forearm flex to pull the trigger—

  —and then the sixgun was in her hand, its wooden grip warm and almost comforting as she blew a hole in Raymond Forstall’s rum-drenched head. Forstall uttered a horrid gurgling sound and fell to the floor.

  Before his body stopped twitching, Jessaline caught Eugenie’s hand. “Hurry!” She dragged the other woman out of the parlor. Norbert, again to his credit, started out of shock and trotted after them, for once silent as they moved through the house’s corridors toward the garden. The house was nearly deserted now, the servants having fled or found some place to hide that was safe from gunshots and madmen.

  “You must tell me which of the papers on your desk I can take,” Jessaline said as they trotted along, “and then you must make a decision.”

  “Wh-what decision?” Eugenie still sounded shaken.

  “Whether you will stay here, or whether you will come with me to Haiti.”

  “Haiti?” Norbert cried.

  “Haiti?” Eugenie asked, in wonder.

  “Haiti,” said Jessaline, and as they passed through the rear door and went into the garden, she stopped and turned to Eugenie. “With me.”

  Eugenie stared at her in such dawning amazement that Jessaline could no longer help herself. She caught Eugenie about the waist, pulled her near, and kissed her most soundly and improperly, right there in front of her brother. It was the sweetest, wildest kiss she had ever known in her life.

  When she pulled back, Norbert was standing at the edge of her vision with his mouth open, and Eugenie looked a bit faint. “Well,” Eugenie said, and fell silent, the whole affair having been a bit much for her.

  Jessaline grinned and let her go, then hurried forward to enter the workshop—and froze, horror shattering her good mood.

  The bootblack man was gone. Where his body had been lay Jessaline’s derringer and copious blood, trailing away…to Eugenie’s worktable, where the plans had been, and were no longer. The trail then led away, out the workshop’s rear door.

  “No,” she whispered, her fists clenching at her sides. “No, by God!” Everything she had worked for, gone. She had failed, both her mission and her people.

  “Very well,” Eugenie said after a moment. “Then I shall simply have to come with you.”

  The words penetrated Jessaline’s despair slowly. “What?”

  She touched Jessaline’s hand. “I will come with you. To Haiti. And I will build an even more efficient methane extractor for you there.”

  Jessaline turned to stare at her and found that she could not, for her eyes had filled with tears.

  “Wait—” Norbert caught his breath as understanding dawned. “Go to Haiti? Are you mad? I forbid—”

  “You had better come too, brother,” Eugenie said, turning to him, and Jessaline was struck breathless once more by the cool determination in her eyes. “The police will take their time about it, but they’ll come eventually, and a white man lies dead in our house. It doesn’t really matter whether you shot him or not; you know full well what they’ll decide.”

  And Norbert stiffened, for he did indeed know—probably better than Eugenie, Jessaline suspected—what his fate would be.

  Eugenie turned to Jessaline. “He can come, can’t he?” By which Jessaline knew it was a condition, not an option.

  “Of course he can,” she said at once. “I wouldn’t leave a dog to these people’s justice. But it will not be the life you’re used to, either of you. Are yo
u certain?”

  Eugenie smiled, and before Jessaline realized what was imminent, she had been pulled rather roughly into another kiss. Eugenie had been eating penuche again, she realized dimly, and then for a long perfect moment she thought of nothing but pecans and sweetness.

  When it was done, Eugenie searched Jessaline’s face and then smiled in satisfaction. “Perhaps we should go, Jessaline,” she said gently.

  “Ah. Yes. We should, yes.” Jessaline fought to compose herself; she glanced at Norbert and took a deep breath. “Fetch us a hansom cab while you still can, Monsieur Rillieux, and we’ll go down to the docks and take the next dirigible southbound.”

  The daze cleared from Norbert’s eyes as well; he nodded mutely and trotted off.

  In the silence that fell, Eugenie turned to Jessaline.

  “Marriage,” she said, “and a house together. I believe you mentioned that?”

  “Er,” said Jessaline, blinking. “Well, yes, I suppose, but I rather thought that first we would—”

  “Good,” Eugenie replied, “because I’m not fond of you keeping up this dangerous line of work. My inventions should certainly earn enough for the both of us, don’t you think?”

  “Um,” said Jessaline.

  “Yes. So there’s no reason for you to work when I can keep you in comfort for the rest of our days.” Taking Jessaline’s hands, she stepped closer, her eyes going soft again. “And I am so very much looking forward to those days, Jessaline.”

  “Yes,” said Jessaline, who had been wondering just which of her many sins had earned her this mad fortune. But as Eugenie’s warm breast pressed against hers, and the thick perfume of the magnolia trees wafted around them, and some clockwork contraption within the workshop ticked in time with her heart…Jessaline stopped worrying. And she wondered why she had ever bothered with plans and papers and gadgetry, because it was clear she had just stolen the greatest prize of all.

  •

  The Storytellers

  Steve Berman has written many pieces of queer speculative fiction. His story in this volume was inspired by taking his mother to the ballet. He hopes that women reading this story realize that they can fulfill their heart without chasing after princes or crowns.

  •

  Georgina Bruce hates writing her author biography, and usually ends up writing something incredibly pretentious and quirky that in no way reflects her real personality. In real life, she is not the least bit quirky. If she had to sum herself up in one word, it would probably be “grumpy.” Or “fat.” If she were an animal, she would be a dog. If she were a piece of cutlery, she would be a knife. She thinks this should tell you all you really need to know about her.

  Georgina has been writing since forever, but has only recently started to get good at it. There was a brief detour into screenwriting which messed with her head and gave her delusions of grandeur, but which also taught her a lot about how to tell a story. Her favourite kind of stories to write are about worlds within worlds and stories inside stories.

  The things she has done for money include cleaning, cooking, selling double glazing, audio typing, bookselling and bellydancing. She has lived and worked in Japan, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. She currently lives in Birmingham, England, which she suspects is a punishment for the sins of her past lives, and she teaches English to people who need to learn it, which is not the worst job in the world. She also teaches screenwriting and creative writing, whenever and wherever she gets the chance.

  Her other stories can be found in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, and various other places in print and around the internet, including her website, georginabruce.com.

  •

  Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia, read law at Cambridge, and is now based in London. Her fiction has been featured or is forthcoming in various venues including Strange Horizons, The Selangor Times, Fantastique Unfettered, GigaNotoSaurus, and Steam-Powered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Her short story “First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia” was a finalist in the 2011 Selangor Young Talent Awards.

  •

  Jewelle Gomez is the author of seven books, including the double Lambda Literary Award-winning novel The Gilda Stories. She also authored the theatrical adaptation of the novel Bones and Ash. Her fiction and poetry is included in over one hundred anthologies. She has written literary and film criticism for numerous publications including The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine, and Black Scholar. Her most recent novel, Televised, is looking for a home and her newest play, “Waiting for Giovanni,” which explores a moment in the mind of James Baldwin, had its world premier at New Conservatory Theatre Center in the fall of 2011. Visit her website jewellegomez.com.

  •

  N. K. Jemisin is an author of speculative fiction short stories and novels who lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo (twice), the Nebula (twice), and the World Fantasy Award; shortlisted for the Crawford, the Gemmell Morningstar, and the Tiptree; and she has won a Locus Award for Best First Novel as well as the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.

  Her short fiction has been published in professional markets such as Clarkesworld, Postscripts, Strange Horizons, and Baen’s Universe; semipro markets such as Ideomancer and Abyss & Apex; and podcast markets and print anthologies. Her short story “Non-Zero Probabilities” received Hugo and Nebula Nominations.

  Her first two novels, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms, are out now from Orbit Books. As of mid-2011, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has been nominated for ten literary awards, winning Best First Novel from Locus Magazine. The final book of the Inheritance Trilogy, The Kingdom of Gods, was released October 2011.

  In addition to writing, she is a counseling psychologist (specializing in career counseling), a sometime hiker and biker, and a political/feminist/anti-racist blogger.

  •

  Csilla Kleinheincz is a Hungarian-Vietnamese writer living in Kistarcsa, Hungary. Although having a Master’s Degree in agricultural engineering, all her work is now centered around literature. She translates fantasy and science fiction (Peter S. Beagle, Kelly Link, and Ursula K. Le Guin, for instance) and is an editor at Delta Vision, a major Hungarian fantasy publisher. As editor she launched two series, one, “Masters of Imagination,” featuring iconic works from the SF/F genre, the other, “Delta Workshop,” introducing young and talented Hungarian writers from the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres and collecting their works in annual thematic anthologies (77 and Erato). She is also founding editor of the online magazine SFmag (http://sfmag.hu). She has written poems, two novels (an urban fantasy focusing on dreaming and a YA fantasy based on Hungarian fairy tales), and a short story collection in Hungarian. Her short stories appeared in English and in various European languages.

  •

  Ellen Kushner’s first novel, Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners, quickly became a cult book that some say initiated the queer end of the “fantasy of manners” spectrum. She returned to the same setting in The Privilege of the Sword and its sequel, The Fall of the Kings (written with her partner, Delia Sherman), as well as a growing number of short stories. Her second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the Mythopoeic Award and the World Fantasy Award.

  Her most recent work includes the anthology Welcome to Bordertown, co-edited with Holly Black, and a “feminist-shtetl-magical-realist” musical audio drama, “The Witches of Lublin” (written with klezmer artists Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz). She is currently recording the audiobook version of Swordspoint.

  Kushner was for many years the host of public radio’s Sound & Spirit. Her work for kids includes The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer “Nutcracker” for Chanukah. Kushner has taught writing at the Clarion and Odyssey workshops, and at Hollins University. She is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She and her partner, author and educator Delia She
rman, had a huge wedding in Boston in 1996, followed by a legal marriage ceremony there in 2004. They now live in New York City, with a lot of books, airplane tickets, and no cats whatsoever. EllenKushner.com.

  •

  Michelle Labbé is named after a Beatles song. She was raised by a librarian and a chemist in the suburban wastelands of Springfield, Virginia. She is certain that this explains everything.

  Michelle received her B.A. in English from the University of Mary Washington in 2009 and her M.A. in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2011. Her illustrious post-graduate career has thus far consisted of writing freelance articles, forgetting to change out of her pajamas, and scouring the job market for entry-level editorial positions. She likes to imagine that this will make for an excellent inspirational rags-to-riches story someday, if she ever happens to become rich and famous.

  In her spare time Michelle enjoys bike-riding, baking perfect soufflés, and trying to write the kind of lesbian fantasy novel she has always wanted to read. Michelle’s short fiction has appeared in journals such as Renard’s Menagerie and Reflection’s Edge, as well as Microchondria, an original flash fiction anthology published by Harvard Book Store. Michelle lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with assorted roommates, a very fluffy cat, and a TARDIS cookie jar.

  She would like to take this opportunity to thank her mentor, Dr. Warren Rochelle. This one’s for you.

  •

  Tanith Lee is one of the more acclaimed British writers of speculative fiction alive today. She has penned over seventy novels and 250 short stories as well as numerous poems. The recent collection Disturbed By Her Song, which featured “Black Eyed Susan,” was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. But don’t fret for her…as Lee has won multiple World Fantasy Awards as well as the British Fantasy Award (the first woman to ever do so).

  •

  Catherine Lundoff is a transplanted Brooklynite who now lives in scenic Minnesota with her wife, bookbinder and conservator Jana Pullman, and their cats, the latter of which are ostensibly Egyptian in origin. In former lives, she was an archaeologist and a bookstore owner, though not at the same time. These days, she does arcane things with computer software at large companies.