by Yoon Ha Lee
“Go,” the voice said ungraciously. “I’ll keep the gunners off you. I hope you don’t crash into anything, foreigner.”
“Thank you,” Liyeusse said in a voice that suggested that she was thinking about blowing something up on her way out.
“Don’t,” Rhehan said.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“They need this ship to fight with. Which will let us get away from any pursuit.”
“As far as I’m concerned, they’re all the enemy.”
They couldn’t blame her, considering what she’d been through.
The scan suite reported on the battle. Rhehan, who had webbed themself into the copilot’s seat, tracked the action with concern. The hostile Kel hadn’t bothered to transmit their general’s banner, a sign of utter contempt for those they fought. Even ji-Kel received banners, although they weren’t expected to appreciate the nuances of Kel heraldry.
The first fighter launched from the hangar below them. “Our turn,” Liyeusse said.
The Flarecat rocketed away from the command ship and veered abruptly away from the fighter’s flight corridor. Liyeusse rechecked stealth. The engine made the familiar dreadful coughing noise in response to the increased power draw, but it held—for now.
A missile streaked through their path, missing them by a margin that Rhehan wished were larger. To their irritation, Liyeusse was whistling as she maneuvered the Flarecat through all the grapeshot and missiles and gyring fighters and toward the edge of the battlefield. Liyeusse had never had a healthy sense of fear.
They’d almost made it when the engine coughed again, louder. Rhehan swore in several different languages. “I’d better see to that,” they said.
“No,” Liyeusse said immediately, “you route the pilot functions to your seat, and I’ll see if I can coax it along a little longer.”
Rhehan wasn’t as good a pilot, but Liyeusse was indisputably better at engineering. They gave way without argument. Liyeusse used the ship’s handholds to make her way toward the engine room.
Whatever Liyeusse was doing, it didn’t work. The engine hiccoughed, and stealth went down.
A flight of Kel fighters at the periphery noted the Flarecat’s attempt to escape and, dismayingly, found it suspicious enough to decide to pursue them. Rhehan wished their training had included faking being an ace pilot. Or actually being an ace pilot, for that matter.
The Incendiary Heart continued to glow malevolently. Rhehan shook their head. It’s not personal, they told themselves. “Liyeusse,” they said through the link, “forget stealth. If they decide to come after us, that’s fine. It looks like we’re not the only small-timers getting out of the line of fire. Can you configure for boosters?”
She understood them. “If they blow us up, a lot of people are dead anyway. Including us. We might as well take the chance.”
Part of the Flarecat’s problem was that its engine had not been designed for sprinting. Liyeusse’s skill at modifications made it at least possible to run, but in return, the Flarecat made its displeasure known at inconvenient times.
The gap between the Flarecat and the fighters narrowed hair-raisingly as Rhehan waited for Liyeusse to inform them that they could light the hell out of there. The Incendiary Heart’s glow distracted them horribly. The fighters continued their pursuit, and while so far none of their fire had connected, Rhehan didn’t believe in relying on luck.
“I wish you could use that thing on them,” Liyeusse said suddenly.
Yes, and that would leave nothing but the thinnest imaginable haze of particles in a vast expanse of nothing, Rhehan thought. “Are we ready yet?”
“Yes,” she said after an aggravating pause.
The Flarecat surged forward in response to Rhehan’s hands at the controls. They said, “Next thing: prepare a launch capsule for this so we can shoot it ahead of us. Anyone stupid enough to go after it and into its cone of effect—well, we tried.”
For the next interval, Rhehan lost themselves in the controls and readouts, the hot immediate need for survival. They stirred when Liyeusse returned.
“I need the Heart,” Liyeusse said. “I’ve rigged a launch capsule for it. It won’t have any shielding, but it’ll fly as fast and far as I can send it.”
Rhehan nodded at where they’d secured it. “Don’t drop it.”
“You’re so funny.” She snatched it and vanished again.
Rhehan was starting to wish they’d settled for a nice, quiet, boring life as a Kel special operative when Liyeusse finally returned and slipped into the seat next to theirs. “It’s loaded and ready to go. Do you think we’re far enough away?”
“Yes,” Rhehan hissed through their teeth, achingly aware of the fighters and the latest salvo of missiles.
“Away we go!” Liyeusse said with gruesome cheer.
The capsule launched. Rhehan passed over the controls to Liyeusse so she could get them away before the capsule’s contents blew.
The fighters, given a choice between the capsule and the Flarecat, split up. Better than nothing. Liyeusse was juggling the power draw of the shields, the stardrive, life-support, and probably other things that Rhehan was happier not knowing about. The Flarecat accelerated as hard in the opposite direction as it could without overstressing the people in it.
The fighters took this as a trap and soared away. Rhehan expected they’d come around for another try when they realized it wasn’t.
Then between the space of one blink and the next, the capsule simply vanished. The fighters overtook what should have been its position, and vanished as well. It could have been stealth, if Rhehan hadn’t known better. They thought to check the sensor readings against their maps of the region: stars upon stars had gone missing, nothing left of them.
Or, they amended to themselves, there had to be some remnant smear of matter, but the Flarecat’s instruments wouldn’t have the sensitivity to pick them up. They regretted the loss of the people on those fighters; still, better a few deaths than the billions the Incendiary Heart had threatened.
“All right,” Liyeusse said, and retriggered stealth. There was no longer any need to hurry, so the system was less likely to choke. They were far enough from the raging battle that they could relax a little. She sagged in her chair. “We’re alive.”
Rhehan wondered what would become of Kavarion, but that was no longer their concern. “We’re still broke,” they said, because eventually Liyeusse would remember.
“You didn’t wrangle any payment out of those damn Kel before we left?” she demanded. “Especially since after they finish frying Kavarion, they’ll come toast us?”
Rhehan pulled off Kavarion’s gloves and set them aside. “Nothing worth anything to either of us,” they said. Once, they would have given everything to win their way back into the trust of the Kel. Over the past years, however, they had discovered that other things mattered more to them. “We’ll find something else. And anyway, it’s not the first time we’ve been hunted. We’ll just have to stay one step ahead of them, the way we always have.”
Liyeusse smiled at Rhehan, and they knew they’d made the right choice.
Author’s Note
The inspiration for this story came from Ross Anderson’s spectacular Security Engineering, which I have read not once but twice; I’ve even sought out a number of the works it cites. The title may sound dry, but it’s engagingly written, frequently accessible to a lay audience (you can skim the more technical sections if you’re reading for fun), and tells you how the kinds of heists you might see on Leverage would work in real life. In particular, there’s one section discussing various approaches an art thief could use that I found both hilarious and useful. Less so if you work for a museum, I’m sure.
How the Andan Court
ACTUALLY, I CANNOT offer you roses. Roses that taste like crystallized desire when you try to smell them. Roses whose buds are softer than the hands of the morning mist. Roses pierced through by the needles of nightfall.
Rose
s that count the season’s clock with their petals, disrobing red by red until all’s gone except the sun’s winter angles. Roses growing in walls around the wells of your heart. Roses crowding the boundaries of your cards until every shuffle is a procession of brambles.
Roses laid upon the swelling waters to be swallowed by black tides. Roses that candy themselves as they pass your lips. Roses so shy you can only glimpse their shadows as you fall asleep.
I would rather give you roses than a bouquet of words, but I do not speak the petal language adequately and it does not admit translation; this will have to suffice.
Author’s Note
This is more of a prose poem than a proper story. I used to write speculative poetry, and even sold some of it until I came to the conclusion that $5/poem was a miserable rate of return. (Perhaps the secret is to write better poetry. I’ll never know.) Still, sometimes the urge hits me to write something with the feeling of a poem, if not its form.
Seven Views of the Liozh Entrance Exam
1.
ACCORDING TO RECORDS held like stunted chrysalids in the vaults of the Rahal, the Liozh demanded a practical examination as well as the written examination. We can guess what both components contained, even in those days, heresy-seeds waiting to fruit into the later rebellion. We know, empirically, how long it took the other heptarchs to recognize and act against the Liozh heresy. The delay between recognition and action remains a puzzle to this day.
Of particular interest, despite their fragmentary nature, are records of the assessment of the woman who would become the final Liozh heptarch. We retain the following notes: a jeng-zai spread featuring the card combination called the Web of Worlds, after that ancient signifier; a receipt for a meat pie, dated not only to the final day of her examination but to what would have been an auspicious time; and, most confusingly, an old-fashioned romance novel with several dog-eared pages. The significance of the romance novel has not yet been deciphered.
2.
IT IS CLAIMED that the written portion of the exam was taken on paper recycled from other factions’ written exams. Occasionally, given the process used, faint distorted shadows of text surfaced, hinting at the laws of the Rahal, the rigid codes of the Vidona, the games of the Shuos. Scholars debate whether this practice helped lead to the downfall of the Liozh, or delayed it.
3.
IN A CERTAIN Vidona museum, one display shows what is said to be a Liozh cadet’s flayed skin, preserved. They had gone into a heretical settlement as part of their practicum, bringing with them food, and water, and the comfort of the heptarchate’s ideals. The heretics returned the cadet’s skin, tanned, tattooed with high holy days in their own calendar.
According to the display’s plaque, the Liozh failure to retaliate on their cadet’s behalf was just another sign of their unfitness to rule.
4.
ONE OF THE most famous entrance exam questions goes like this: If you had to destroy a single faction for the good of the heptarchate, which would it be, and why?
5.
ONE PORTION OF the exam was taken in groups of seven. Prospective cadets had to enact a scenario in which one of them played the role of a Liozh ambassador and the rest played heretics being brought into the heptarchate. Frustratingly, the scoring rubric has not survived, nor do we know how the “ambassador” was selected.
Some have suggested that this particular game was introduced by the Shuos in order to hasten the Liozh’s fall, although surely even the Shuos wouldn’t be that obvious about it.
6.
THOSE WHO DID not pass the exam were barred from trying again, or applying to other factions. This was contrary to the practice of the time among the other factions, who were more lenient in their policies. That being said, the Andan and Shuos were both known to defy this rule if they felt some advantage could be gained by scooping up some candidate and giving them a new identity.
7.
REPORTS DIFFER ON what happened to Liozh candidates who had not yet passed the exam at the time of the final purge of the faction. The Rahal claim that the Vidona reeducated those who could be salvaged. What the Liozh themselves would have said about this, no one now will ever know.
Author’s Note
This is the kind of gimmick flash story that I can dash out in fifteen minutes almost without thinking. It’s a pity that there isn’t more of a market for gimmick flash stories, but then I suppose it would be unjust if I could make a living doing something this easy. This particular example probably also reveals just how scarring I found all the tests in school growing up; my first published story, “The Hundredth Question,” is in the form of an exam!
Omens
GARACH LEDANA HAD gotten Cousin Miro to watch her little son Rodao for the evening. She was indulging in her best approximation of the season’s fashion. She’d obtained a wig in the latest trendy hairdo, all luxurious curls, since there was no way she could grow out her short mane overnight without resorting to risky modification technology. Ordinarily she didn’t regret her choice of haircut, since she hated fussing with the stuff, but tonight she wanted to look her best. Whatever Cousin Miro said, she did have standards.
So Ledana donned a tasteful necklace of onyx and black pearls that she’d inherited from her gran, matched it with black pearl earstuds, and slipped into a dark gray dress with a diagonal slash of lavender. The ensemble came perilously close to Nirai colors, but damned if she was going to let that stop her from looking good. Besides, the last time Nirai inspectors had come through her lab, she’d charmed them into submission.
(“Why didn’t you become a Nirai?” one of her assistants had demanded. “Because most Nirai are squeamish about vivisecting their own geese for holiday dinners,” she said. They hadn’t asked again.)
She took a rented hoverer down to the city a couple hours in advance—rented because the one she owned was a reliable workhorse, and “reliable workhorse” was not what she wanted to convey to her date. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the money for a more luxurious vehicle, but when you didn’t live in a big city, you wanted equipment you could rely on.
After securing parking, she hoofed it to the Shadow Theater. (Shparoi naming conventions were often rather on the nose.) Ledana had loved the building since she first encountered it as a child. It was traditional Shparoi architecture, with its high, peaked roofs and masks hung on the walls down to the absurd gold leaf everywhere, a replica of a structure that had been built back when her people initially settled this world. The original had been destroyed in a fire a generation or two back, but as a designated cultural treasure, the local government had restored it quickly.
Ledana knew perfectly well that “designated cultural treasures” were Andan manipulation all the way through, that the heptarchate’s government used them to keep the local population docile. She couldn’t help but feel gratitude toward the Andan arts council anyway. And it enabled her to enjoy the performances in an appropriate setting.
Her date awaited her in the foyer, a tall, black-haired man with a handsome, slightly angular profile, and long lashes over merry eyes. He, too, had dressed up in a suit of silk, although the rococo style of his jewelry spoke to offworlder tastes. She’d met him last week while shopping for some new jewelry after the conference; he’d been looking for souvenirs. Koiresh Shkan was a musician visiting with an ensemble from offworld, a Shparoi who’d left the homeworld as a young man and was only now returning. His accent when speaking their mutual mother tongue was atrocious, but Ledana had refrained from mentioning it.
Shkan smiled and waved when he spotted her. “I wouldn’t have expected a goose farmer to be a patron of the arts,” he said teasingly.
“Geese drive people to many strange hobbies,” Ledana said. “Farming” wasn’t all she did; she was technically an agricultural researcher. But “goose farmer” was a more entertaining way to put it. “If you’d wanted me to take you hunting instead—”
He pulled a face. “No thanks, I have no idea how to handle
a gun.”
Ledana shook her head. Out where she lived, everyone knew the basics of firearms. She was a fair shot herself. “Come on,” she said, “let’s find our seats before everyone swarms in.”
Shkan made an assenting noise, and she preceded him into the auditorium.
The only thing Ledana didn’t like about the Shadow Theater was the seats. She wished they’d gone for less authenticity with the damned wooden seats and instead installed cushions. But she loved the hanging lanterns and the wooden grilles with their carved shapes depicting scenes out of Shparoi folklore, from jackalope chorales to dawn fortresses shattered by archaic cannons.
After they took their seats, Shkan listened with a critical ear to the jumble of last-second rehearsal coming from the pit orchestra. “I’d forgotten that you tune to a different standard scale,” he remarked.
“Does it bother you?” Ledana asked.
“No,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t sure.
Then the bells rang and the lights in the auditorium dimmed, signaling the start of the performance. For the next two hours, Ledana almost forgot she was here with a man, and one she was determined to bed, at that. Instead, she was captivated by the way the actors contorted themselves and their props before the lights to form shadow figures against the back of the stage with its ever-shifting colors.