by Sean Wallace
“The heart doesn’t think.” Ysoreen sets her fists against the hard metal at her back, glad for the cuirass. It fortifies her composure; keeps her formal. Her words are in the rhetorical mode of the Institute. “It told me it found beauty in you. It told me that it wants. I obey, for if it is fulfilled then my intellect and humors will both come to benefit. If it goes unfulfilled, as it now does, then I will have lanced it and bled it of any authority over me.”
“An odd philosophy, but it surely is superior to repression, which is universally hopeless. I did not mean to mislead you.”
Ysoreen does not clutch at her breast, which throbs and roils with the terror of having been laid bare. “What did you mean to accomplish?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I say it does.” Her control asserts, piecemeal, as much habit as discipline.
“And I may not deny a Hall-Warden.” Erhensa’s wariness returns, and it is as if the last three days never happened. “Areemu was animated by a specific wish, with the shape and tune of a certain age. Her components remember that still – not for long, not forever, but for now.”
“I would,” Ysoreen snaps, “never consider a golem wife.”
“Matrimony wouldn’t have been necessary. Only your passion was required. It is moot, in any case. You will take Areemu, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Her palms are clammy, her pulse yet unsteady.
“You said golems are your study. Tell me this, would it have worked?”
“With a specific ritual, known only to its creators. But that is moot.”
Erhensa sets the casket into her arms, the fox-owl talisman around her neck. “Good day, Hall-Warden Zarre.”
Ysoreen grips the case; thinks of dashing it to the ground. Yet what purpose will it serve? The glass will shatter, but the bars and stones: those need the solar furnace, a proper disposal.
She makes a perfunctory bow. She leaves; she flees, outpacing her humiliation.
My daughter then is gone, the last dream and echo of her. Only in the weave of my recall does she live, and that will diminish as age devours its due. I may create a skein of my memory, and each strand would be so vivid, so near solidity. Except to whom will I leave that; who will treasure Areemu’s images? Who will treasure our long talks of home; who will find meaning when I ask Areemu, Do you remember the taste of coconut, the sweetness of palm sugar?
Perhaps the Hall-Warden is right that I should’ve wedded. No woman of Scre in their frosted arrogance would have looked at me. In the refugee camps, however, I could have found women far closer to Sumalin than to this nation where winter’s children reign. It is how unions are frequently made among Scre tradeswomen too poor or uncomely. Any life would be better than in the camps, and I present a far loftier prospect than being a potter’s spouse, a cobbler’s concubine.
It is futile to contemplate. This is not a choice I may make in faith, for all that I would give a desperate woman succor and she would give me companionship. For that paltriness I will not betray my nuptial vows, made on a sun-drenched day beneath palm shades, my bride and I heavy with a wealth of pearls we dived for.
We could have grown old side by side. There would have been daughters, sharp and spirited. One might have gone to the palace a handmaiden or magistrate, and another still might have honed herself to discipline not unlike Hall-Warden Zarre but tempered with the kindness of our sun.
Instead my wife gave me Areemu, hastily purchased and dearly paid for. There was no time for any other token; no time to spare for the conception of a flesh daughter. Neither of us broke that day when I turned my back to Sumalin and my face to the sails. Areemu at my side, wearing the pearls my bride and I had meant to pass to our children.
Age means possibilities trampled in our wake. Age means a serpent behind us heavy with ashes, while the length ahead gets ever shorter and each path we did not take comes back to hiss and bite, filling our veins with venom. That is life: a corpse that weighs us down, a beast that gobbles us up.
I’ve not turned all of Areemu over. It will work, the Hall-Warden said. So there is a way. Where there is one, others must exist; there is no destination with just a single road toward it.
The largest ruby, red as rambutan shell. Within its facets the last of her life wheels, an orrery of pinpoints in slow orbits. Slower by the day. When it stops entirely she will be beyond revival.
Night or day I keep it by me, as if by the warmth of my skin I may incubate it and hatch Areemu. Night or day I scheme and toil; were I a witch in certain tales sung out in the prairie, I would be hunting down pet foxes and toddlers for their eelish kidneys, their slippery brains. But I am not a story, the nearest village and its clutch of toddlers is too far, and in this matter foxes are of no use.
If blood is spilled, it is my own. If carving out my lungs would avail her life, then I would plunge the knife into my breast and call it fair.
Golemry has never ignited my passion, and I’ve taken it up only after Areemu entered my guardianship. Braving the intricacy of her structure humbles and infuriates – I am no artisan; have never been a prodigy. There once existed a record of Areemu’s making, each step inscribed with zealous faith from the first notion, the first sketch; the sisters were meticulous and rightly proud. A decade or so after acquiring Areemu, the princess had this manuscript destroyed and all copies incinerated. Areemu was hers alone; must remain unique. So thorough she was, and so ruthless. No shred of it survives.
The shadow of her malice haunts. The poison of her sneer, long-dead, stiffens the tendons of my wrists.
Areemu’s life dims by the hour.
When the gate flares I am alert – intensely alert, for the ruby’s inner orrery succumbs more rapidly now, and I may not waste even an hour on sleep.
The gating sounds as the noise of wave against rock: a sound of home, a sound absent from this land. I am prepared. Who can tell the caprices of a spurned heart; who may say what will bud from a soil of rage?
She grips not her blade or a sorcerer’s whip but the casket of Areemu’s parts and a collection of papers. Ysoreen has been weeping. On skin like hers it shows. Small surprise that in this country they try so very hard not to cry.
“Hall-Warden, the hour is late. My servant is resting, and I fear I haven’t readied any sweetmeats to share.”
“Hang the sweetmeats.” Her voice is hoarse, her hair disheveled. It doesn’t look as if she has been getting any more rest than have I. “I came for something else.”
“Yes?” She must have noticed that Areemu’s core is missing. The consequence will not be light on me. It will not be open to appeal.
“I couldn’t conquer my thoughts of you. I couldn’t extricate myself from them – from you.” Ysoreen inhales. “I cannot permit this to be. One way or another I must have resolution.”
“It will pass, Hall-Warden.” In a year or two she’ll look back and marvel that she ever felt so fiercely.
“I know myself, Mistress Erhensa. This will lodge deep in me, a splinter under the scar. It will prick when I least expect and bleed me from the inside. It will make me weak.” She thrusts the casket at me. “Will you allow me the chance to visit you a suitor?”
I laugh even as my power tautens in readiness. “You aren’t very good at courtship.”
“I’ve never felt the need to practice.” Ysoreen looks up, down, away. “It’s inexact. It’s illogical.”
“Come here, Hall-Warden.”
We are neither of us at ease, at trust; a truce hovers between us but it is cobwebs, it is slivers, it will come apart at a murmur. She approaches, and there is a look about her that she wore when she chased that fox, that owl.
The casket is between us when I clasp her jaw – and she flinches, for now her hands are trapped and her head is in my grip; if I am not half so hale as she nor a fraction so vital, still I am not weak. Ysoreen’s face is broad, eyes deep-set beneath a scuffed brow. A blunt, decisive nose; it is this part of her that I kiss. My halfway offering.
Her eyelids flutter, rapid, against my cheeks. “In the Institute’s archives there is a copy of the sisters’ manuscript.”
Now it is my rhythms which stutter, flung out of cadence. The pages she carries. “Is there. Is it—”
“I told you, golems are my study. I know how to reawaken your daughter.”
I kiss her again, on the lips. It is more calculation than passion, more necessity than desire. In my place any other would’ve done the same. She goes rigid then pliant, mouth ajar and hot with want. Her clutch at my back, this side of bruising; the taste of her tongue tart.
She is the first to draw away. Though her breathing has gone to rags, there’s a wariness to the tightness of her jaw. Perhaps she is aware – cannot escape – the fact this is a bargain where we put our goods on the table and haggle over the price. Kisses for a resurrection. So cheap; my merchant aunts would’ve shown pride.
Ysoreen gathers herself. “Your need, to fuel the wish. My youth, to replicate the conditions of the original animation. The golem’s first name before the princess, before Areemu. The one you don’t know.” Hunger has ruddied her cheeks. She wants more than kisses; will have more than touches. “The sisters loved her enough to give her a name, to provide a means to restore her.”
My fingers are already on the casket’s clasps. Ysoreen gives way – though does she notice I open the case with greater zeal than when I parted her lips? Does she recognize I pry and tug at it as I never did with her armor?
Recalling Areemu’s shape is simple. It’s in the material, in the core, and when I evoke that remnant the pieces slot together, clicking, singing.
In a moment she is complete, sapphire irises shut, platinum limbs corded with strength. Her loveliness does not move the Hall-Warden, whose gaze is for me alone.
“You’ll have to tell me,” I say. “I don’t read the manuscript’s language.” Practice alone allows me to control my tone; when you’ve used your voice as an instrument for this long, it is second nature to play it precisely.
“I’ll read it aloud. You’re familiar with the rite? I will be the princess’s substitute.”
The spell is no hardship either. Merely words, merely a rearranging of potential cupped within Areemu – this has never been difficult; it is the infusion of autonomy that eludes. I could always have had my daughter back a mannequin: no words but that of a parrot’s, no motion but that of routine. But with the sisters’ original formulae, their original words . . .
My puissance envelops Areemu’s frame, shimmering strands, cat’s cradle. Ysoreen takes Areemu’s fingertips – hesitates, before anointing each. It is more grudgingly still that she kisses Areemu’s golden lips and pours Areemu’s true name into that inanimate throat.
They wait for the golem to stir. According to the sisters’ instructions it will take until midday, and so Erhensa asks Ysoreen to share her bed.
She follows the sorcerer, her pulse like a wound. When she sheds her armor and not much else Erhensa crooks a lopsided smile. “You will wear the rest to bed?”
“I don’t think of you as a . . . a courtesan. I’m not . . .” That pathetic. Or that honest. A transaction with a courtesan or a refugee would have been frank.
“I do not invite you to think of me so. But don’t speak ill of paid companions, pricey ones in your marble brothels or elsewise. Some do it because they’ve no alternatives or because the laws of Scre confine them to the camps. Some do it for they want to, and that’s their choice as much as mine is to practice power, as yours is to administer the curbing of it.”
So Ysoreen takes off more until she is down to a shift. Under the sheets she lies on her side, Erhensa at her back, a fistful of sheet between them.
As the moth-lamps dim Ysoreen shuts her eyes, though she knows she will find no peace. Too many hours lie between her and dawn. Too much want lies between her pride and the ambush of Erhensa’s offer. There’s more than one bed in this house, and she could have refused.
Once, her hand – intent, accident, between – finds Erhensa’s. It is a contact so brief, brushing her knuckles, brushing the inside of her wrist. Ysoreen thinks that this will do; the lust has been sated and she can move past it, a return to the liberty of ambition, the clarity of a rise through Ormodoni ranks.
It does not do. It does not suffice.
In the dark, Erhensa’s chin against her shoulder. “Your flesh is iron. They train you to make a weapon of your body, don’t they?”
Ysoreen listens for the sounds of winter night. Hoots and howls. She evaluates the virtue of silence. “What of it?”
“I’m making a decision.”
“On what?”
“Later,” the sorcerer whispers, “when Areemu lives again.”
A terrible epiphany. This islander possesses control, a true ease of being. That is what drew Ysoreen: this thing she does not have.
They remain in the warmth of furs together long after dawn.
They hear her steps, first, and the chiming of her joints. When the door parts this is what Ysoreen sees: a wrist that gleams, a tress that glitters. The golem looks at them both, and says wonderingly, “Mother?”
Erhensa’s voice frays, the first faltering of her faultless poise.
Ysoreen makes herself absent.
If her daughter’s return made her weep, Erhensa has already wiped away the tears. She has changed to a layered, beaded skirt she says is of her home. “Sumalin,” she says, naming that island far to the west at last, a name that’s never appeared in documents of her past.
The golem is gone to roam the premises, bright-eyed and eager to move again.
“My mothers did not call me Erhensa,” the sorcerer says, distant. “They wove other things into my name, the aspects of Sumalin. Sand like turmeric, sea like emeralds. Girls like the sun.”
“Blinds when looked at, burns when touched?”
“I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor, Hall-Warden.” Erhensa’s gaze refocuses, here and now. “Will Ormodon not punish you for reassembling a golem, your family not shun you for wanting an immigrant spouse?”
“I was authorized to take the manuscript, and my family is . . . unconventional.” All too happy to accept a powerful sorcerer into their own, foreign or not. “I had no intention of throwing everything away to pursue you.”
“How determined are you on cleaving a path to the top?”
Ysoreen never mentioned that. Her skin prickles. Erhensa has read more than just her moods. “I mean to join First Command.”
“A long way from Hall-Warden.” The islander holds out her hand. “We each know where the other stands, don’t we?”
“When I’m First Command – perhaps Tactician Prime – what will you want of me, as a late wedding gift?” Ysoreen takes the hand; finds it as warm as Sumalin might be. Women like the sun.
“Passage to Sumalin. A visit or two. As wife to one of the First Command I’ll enjoy certain immunities – but not as the spouse of anyone lesser. You do not know my home, but I will tell you that it does not fear Scre.”
“Every nation fears Scre. And when I ascend so high, with you my wife, you’ll forfeit your home. You’ll be Scre truly, Sumalin no longer.”
Erhensa thumbs the warped pearls on her skirt. “I will see the shores of my birth, barred to me otherwise. That will suffice.”
Ysoreen purses a kiss over Erhensa’s knuckles, their texture to her a rough thrill. “An exchange is all we’ll ever have?”
“I cannot promise love. Not immediately. Perhaps never, perhaps slowly, perhaps before the season thaws. I believe that I’ll grow fond of you.”
“Even though this is how it begins?”
“We begin in honest negotiation. Marriages have been knotted over less, over worse.” A smile, to soften what they have, what they don’t yet have. “At my age it will not be passion like the monsoons, ardor like the waves.”
“Teach me that,” Ysoreen says against the skin of her island bride-to-be. “Teach me to master myself, and I’ll
do anything for you.”
“Very well. Let us begin.”
Outside, in the summer of Erhensa’s power, a golem-daughter lifts her voice in song.
EFFIGY NIGHTS
Yoon Ha Lee
They are connoisseurs of writing in Imulai Mokarengen, the city whose name means inkblot of the gods.
The city lies at the galaxy’s dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel.
Imulai Mokarengen has been unmolested for over a hundred years. People come to listen to the minstrels and drink tea-of-moments-unraveling, to admire the statues of shape-shifting tigers and their pliant lovers, to look for small maps to great fortunes at the intersections of curving roads. Even the duelists confront each other in fights knotted by ceremony and the exchange of poetry.
But now the starships that hunt each other in the night of nights have set their dragon eyes upon Imulai Mokarengen, desiring to possess its arts, and the city is unmolested no more.
The soldiers came from the sky in a glory of thunder, a cascade of fire. Blood like roses, bullets like thorns, everything to ashes. Imulai Mokarengen’s defenses were few, and easily overwhelmed. Most of them would have been museum pieces anywhere else.
The city’s wardens gathered to offer the invading general payment in any coin she might desire, so long as she left the city in peace. Accustomed to their decadent visitors, they offered these: Wine pressed from rare books of stratagems and aged in barrels set in orbit around a certain red star. Crystals extracted from the nervous systems of philosopher-beasts that live in colonies upon hollow asteroids. Perfume symphonies infused into exquisite fractal tapestries.
The general was Jaian of the Burning Orb, and she scorned all these things. She was a tall woman clad in armor the color of dead metal. For each world she had scoured, she wore a jewel of black-red facets upon her breastplate. She said to the wardens: What use did she have for wine except to drink to her enemies’ defeat? What use was metal except to build engines of war? And as for the perfume, she didn’t dignify that with a response.