The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  And so we saved them. For the Duke of Yoo had arranged it so that her Ducal Guard would fall upon us even as we attacked, annihilate us, and achieve two notable victories: presenting themselves as the saviours of Glehenta, and destroying any evidence of their scheme. Your brother and I sprung the trap. But we did not know until leagues and months later, far from the altiplano. At the foot of the Ten Thousand Stairs, we parted—we thought it safer. We never saw each other again, though I heard he had gone back up the stairs, to the Pelerines. And if you do find him, please don’t tell him what became of me. This is a shameful place.

  And I am ashamed that I have told you such dark and bloody truths about your brother. But at the end, he was honourable. He was right. That he saved the guilty—an unintended consequence. Our lives are made up of such.

  Certainly, we can continue outside on the hoondahvi porch. I did warn you that the music was irritating to human sensibilities.

  V lucerna vesperum; Schaefferia: the Evening Candle. A solitary tree of the foothills of the Exx Palisades of Ishatria, the Schaefferia is noted for its many upright, luminous blossoms, which flower in Venerian Great Evening and Great Dawn.

  Only the blossoms are reproduced. Card, folded and cut tissue, luminous paint (not reproduced). The original is also slightly radioactive.

  A cog railway runs from Camahoo Terminus to the Convent of the Starry Pelerines. The Starsview Special takes pilgrims to see the stars and planets. Our carriage is small, luxurious, intricate and ingenious in that typically Thent fashion, and terribly tedious. The track has been constructed in a helix inside Awk Mountain, so our journey consists of interminable, noisy spells inside the tunnel, punctuated by brief, blinding moments of clarity as we emerge on to the open face of the mountain. Not for the vertiginous!

  Thus, hour upon hour, we spiral our way up Mount Awk.

  Princes Latufui and I play endless games of Moon Whist, but our minds are not in it. My forebodings have darkened after my conversation with the Thent hoondahvi owner in Camahoo. The Princess is troubled by my anxiety. Finally, she can bear it no more.

  “Tell me about the Blue Empress. Tell me everything.”

  I grew up with two injunctions in case of fire: save the dogs and the Blue Empress. For almost all my life, the jewel was a ghost-stone—present but unseen, haunting Grangegorman and the lives it held. I have a memory from earliest childhood of seeing the stone—never touching it— but I do not trust the memory. Imaginings too easily become memories, memories imaginings.

  We are not free in so many things, we of the landed class. Hector would inherit, Arthur would make a way in the worlds, and I would marry as well as I could; land to land. The Barony of Rathangan was considered one of the most desirable in Kildare, despite Patrick’s seeming determination to drag it to the bankruptcy court. A match was made, and he was charming and bold; a fine sportsman and a very handsome man. It was an equal match: snide comments from both halves of the county. The Blue Empress was part of my treasure—on the strict understanding that it remain in the custody of my lawyers. Patrick argued—and it was there that I first got an inkling of his true character –and the wedding was off the wedding was on the wedding was off the wedding was on again and the banns posted. A viewing was arranged, for his people to itemise and value the Hyde treasure. For the first time in long memory, the Blue Empress was taken from its safe and displayed to human view. Blue as the wide Atlantic it was, and as boundless and clear. You could lose yourself forever in the light inside that gem. And yes, it was the size of a thrush’s egg.

  And then the moment that all the stories agree on: the lights failed. Not so unusual at Grangegorman—the same grandfather who brought back the Blue Empress installed the hydro-plant—and when they came back on again; the sapphire was gone: baize and case and everything.

  We called upon the honour of all present, ladies and gentlemen alike. The lights would be put out for five minutes, and when they were switched back on, the Blue Empress would be back in the Hyde treasure. It was not. Our people demanded we call the police, Patrick’s people, mindful of their client’s attraction to scandal, were less insistent. We would make a further appeal to honour: if the Blue Empress was not back by morning, then we would call the guards.

  Not only was the Blue Empress still missing, so was Arthur.

  We called the Garda Siochana. The last we heard was that Arthur had left for the Inner Worlds.

  The wedding went ahead. It would have been a greater scandal to call it off. We were two families alike in notoriety. Patrick could not let it go: he went to his grave believing that Arthur and I had conspired to keep the Blue Empress out of his hands. I have no doubt that Patrick would have found a way of forcing me to sign over possession of the gem to him, and would have sold it. Wastrel.

  As for the Blue Empress: I feel I am very near to Arthur now. One cannot run forever. We will meet, and the truth will be told.

  Then light flooded our carriage as the train emerged from the tunnel on to the final ramp and there, before us, its spires and domes dusted with snow blown from the high peaks, was the Convent of the Starry Pelerines.

  V aquilonis vitis visionum: the Northern Littoral, or Ghost Vine. A common climber of the forests of the southern slopes of the Ishtari altiplano, domesticated and widely grown in Thent garden terraces. Its white, trumpet-shaped flowers are attractive, but the plant is revered for its berries. When crushed, the infused liquor known as pula create powerful auditory hallucinations in Venerian physiology and form the basis of the Thent mystical hoondahvi cult. In Terrenes, it produces a strong euphoria and a sense of omnipotence.

  Alkaloid-infused paper. Ida Granville-Hyde used Thent Ghost-Vine liquor to tint and infuse the paper in this cut. It is reported to be still mildly hallucinogenic.

  The Pilgrim’s Tale

  You’ll come out on to the belvedere? It’s supposed to be off-limits to Terrenes—technically blasphemy—sacred space and all that— but the pelerines turn a blind eye. Do excuse the cough . . . ghastly, isn’t it? Sounds like a bag of bloody loose change. I don’t suppose the cold air does much for my dear old alveoli, but at this stage it’s all a matter of damn.

  That’s Gloaming Peak there. You won’t see it until the cloud clears. Every Great Evening, every Great Dawn, for a few Earth-days at a time, the cloud breaks. It goes up, oh so much further than you could ever imagine. You look up, and up, and up—and beyond it, you see the stars. That’s why the pelerines came here. Such a sensible religion. The stars are gods. One star, one god. Simple. No faith, no heaven, no punishment, no sin. Just look up and wonder. The Blue Pearl: that’s what they call our earth. I wonder if that’s why they care for us. Because we’re descended from divinity? If only they knew! They really are very kind.

  Excuse me. Bloody marvellous stuff, this Thent brew. I’m in no pain at all. I find it quite reassuring that I shall slip from this too too rancid flesh swaddled in a blanket of beatific thoughts and analgesic glow. They’re very kind, the pelerines. Very kind.

  Now, look to your right. There. Do you see? That staircase, cut into the rock, winding up up up. The Ten Thousand Steps. That’s the old way to the altiplano. Everything went up and down those steps: people, animals, goods, palanquins and stick-stick men, traders and pilgrims and armies. Your brother. I watched him go, from this very belvedere. Three years ago, or was it five? You never really get used to the Great Day. Time blurs.

  We were tremendous friends, the way that addicts are. You wouldn’t have come this far without realising some truths about your brother. Our degradation unites us. Dear thing. How we’d set the world to rights, over flask after flask of this stuff! He realised the truth of this place early on. It’s the way to the stars. God’s waiting room. And we, this choir of shambling wrecks, wander through it, dazzled by our glimpses of the stars. But he was a dear friend, a dear dear friend. Dear Arthur.

  We’re all darkened souls here, but he was haunted. Things done and things left undone, like the prayer book says
. My father was a vicar—can’t you tell? Arthur never spoke completely about his time with javrosts. He hinted—I think he wanted to tell me, very much, but was afraid of giving me his nightmares. That old saw about a problem shared being a problem halved? Damnable lie. A problem shared is a problem doubled. But I would find him up here all times of the Great Day and Night, watching the staircase and the caravans and stick-convoys going up and down. Altiplano porcelain, he’d say. Finest in all the worlds. So fine you can read the Bible through it. Every cup, every plate, every vase and bowl, was portered down those stairs on the shoulders of a stickman. You know he served up on the Altiplano, in the Duke of Yoo’s Pacification. I wasn’t here then, but Aggers was, and he said you could see the smoke going up; endless plumes of smoke, so thick the sky didn’t clear and the pelerines went for a whole Great Day without seeing the stars. All Arthur would say about it was, that’ll make some fine china. That’s what made porcelain from the Valley of the Kilns so fine: bones—the bones of the dead, ground up into powder. He would never drink from a Valley cup—he said it was drinking from a skull.

  Here’s another thing about addicts—you never get rid of it. All you do is replace one addiction with another. The best you can hope for is that it’s a better addiction. Some become god-addicts, some throw themselves into worthy deeds, or self-improvement, or fine thoughts, or helping others, god help us all. Me, my lovely little vice is sloth—I really am an idle little bugger. It’s so easy, letting the seasons slip away; slothful days and indolent nights, coughing my life up one chunk at a time. For Arthur, it was the visions. Arthur saw wonders and horrors, angels and demons, hopes and fears. True visions—the things that drive men to glory or death. Visionary visions. It lay up on the altiplano, beyond the twists and turns of the Ten Thousand Steps. I could never comprehend what it was, but it drove him. Devoured him. Ate his sleep, ate his appetite, ate his body and his soul and his sanity.

  It was worse in the Great Night . . . Everything’s worse in the Great Night. The snow would come swirling down the staircase and he saw things in it—faces— heard voices. The faces and voices of the people who had died, up there on the altiplano. He had to follow them, go up, into the Valley of the Kilns, where he would ask the people to forgive him—or kill him.

  And he went. I couldn’t stop him—I didn’t want to stop him. Can you understand that? I watched him from this very belvedere. The pelerines are not our warders, any of us is free to leave at any time, though I’ve never seen anyone leave but Arthur. He left in the evening, with the lilac light catching Gloaming Peak. He never looked back. Not a glance to me. I watched him climb the steps to that bend there. That’s where I lost sight of him. I never saw or heard of him again. But stories come down the stairs with the stickmen and they make their way even to this little eyrie, stories of a seer—a visionary. I look and I imagine I see smoke rising, up there on the altiplano.

  It’s a pity you won’t be here to see the clouds break around the Gloaming, or look at the stars.

  V genetric nives: Mother-of-snows (direct translation from Thent). Ground-civer hi-alpine of the Exx Palisades. The plant forms extensive carpets of thousands of minute white blossoms.

  The most intricate papercut in the Botanica Veneris. Each floret is three millimetres in diameter. Paper, ink, gouache.

  A high-stepping spider-car took me up the Ten Thousand Steps, past caravans of stickmen, spines bent, shoulders warped beneath brutal loads of finest porcelain.

  The twelve cuts of the Botanica Veneris I have given to the Princess, along with descriptions and botanical notes. She would not let me leave, clung to me, wracked with great sobs of loss and fear. It was dangerous; a sullen land with Great Night coming. I could not convince her of my reason for heading up the stairs alone, for they did not convince even me. The one, true reason I could not tell her. Oh, I have been despicable to her! My dearest friend, my love. But worse even than that, false.

  She stood watching my spider-car climb the steps until a curve in the staircase took me out of her sight. Must the currency of truth always be falsehood?

  Now I think of her spreading her long hair out, and brushing it, firmly, directly, beautifully, and the pen falls from my fingers . . .

  Egayhazy is a closed city; hunched, hiding, tight. Its streets are narrow, its buildings lean towards each other; their gables so festooned with starflower that it looks like perpetual festival. Nothing could be further from the truth: Egayhazy is an angry city, aggressive and cowed: sullen. I keep my Ledbekh-Teltai in my bag. But the anger is not directed at me, though from the story I heard at the Camahoo hoondahvi, my fellow humans on this world have not graced our species. It is the anger of a country under occupation. On walls and doors, the proclamations of the Duke of Yoo are plastered layer upon layer: her pennant, emblazoned with the four white hands of House Yoo, flies from public buildings, the radio station mast, tower tops, and the gallows. Her javrosts patrol streets so narrow that their graapa can barely squeeze through them. At their passage, the citizens of Egayhazy flash jagged glares, mutter altiplano oaths. And there is another sigil: an eight-petalled flower; a blue so deep it seems almost to shine. I see it stencilled hastily on walls and doors and the occupation-force posters. I see it in little badges sewn to the quilted jackets of the Egayhazians; and in tiny glass jars in low-set windows. In the market of Yent, I witnessed javrosts upturn and smash a vegetable stall that dared to offer a few posies of this blue bloom.

  The staff at my hotel were suspicious when they saw me working up some sketches from memory of this blue flower of dissent. I explained my work and showed some photographs and asked, what was this flower? A common plant of the high altiplano; they said. It grows up under the breath of the high snow; small and tough and stubborn. It’s most remarkable feature is that it blooms when no other flower does—in the dead of the Great Night. The Midnight Glory was one name, though it had another, newer, which entered common use since the occupation: The Blue Empress.

  I knew there and then that I had found Arthur.

  A pall of sulfurous smoke hangs permanently over the Valley of Kilns, lit with hellish tints from the glow of the kilns below. A major ceramics centre on a high, treeless plateau? How are the kilns fuelled? Volcanic vents do the firing, but they turn this long defile in the flank of Mount Tooloowera into a little hell of clay, bones, smashed porcelain, sand, slag, and throat-searing sulphur. Glehenta is the last of the Porcelain Towns, wedged into the head of the valley, where the river Iddis still carries a memory of freshness and cleanliness. The pottery houses, like upturned vases, lean towards each other like companionable women.

  And there is the house to which my questions guided me: as my informants described; not the greatest but perhaps the meanest; not the foremost but perhaps the most prominent, tucked away in an alley. From its roof flies a flag, and my breath caught: not the Four White Hands of Yoo—never that, but neither the Blue Empress. The smoggy wind tugged at the hand-and-dagger of the Hydes of Grangegorman.

  Swift action: to hesitate would be to falter and fail, to turn and walk away, back down the Valley of the Kilns and the Ten Thousand Steps. I rattle the ceramic chimes. From inside, a huff and sigh. Then a voice: worn ragged, stretched and tired, but unmistakable.

  “Come on on in. I’ve been expecting you.”

  V crepitant movebitvolutans. Wescott’s Wandering Star. A wind-mobile vine, native of the Ishtaria altiplano, that grows into a tight spherical web of vines which, in the Venerian Great Day, becomes detached from an atrophied root stock and rolls cross-country, carried on the wind. A central calx contains woody nuts that produce a pleasant rattling sound as the Wandering Star is in motion.

  Cut paper, painted, layed and gummed. Perhaps the most intricate of the Venerian paper cuts.

  The Seer’s Story

  Tea?

  I have it sent up from Camahoo when the stickmen make the return trip. Proper tea. Irish breakfast. It’s very hard to get the water hot enough at this altitude, but it�
�s my little ritual. I should have asked you to bring some. I’ve known you were looking for me from the moment you set out from Loogaza. You think anyone can wander blithely into Glehenta?

  Tea.

  You look well. The years have been kind to you. I look like shit. Don’t deny it. I know it. I have an excuse. I’m dying, you know. The liquor of the vine—it takes as much as it gives. And this world is hard on humans. The Great Days—you never completely adjust—and the climate: if it’s not the thin air up here, it’s the moulds and fungi and spores down there. And the ultraviolet. It dries you out, withers you up. The town healer must have frozen twenty melanomas off me. No, I’m dying. Rotten inside. A leather bag of mush and bones. But you look very well, Ida. So, Patrick shot himself? Fifteen years too late, says I. He could have spared all of us . . . enough of that. But I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad you have someone who cares, to treat you the way you should be treated.

  I am the Merciful One, the Seer, the Prophet of the Blue Pearl, the Earth Man, and I am dying.

  I walked down that same street you walked down. I didn’t ride, I walked, right through the centre of town. I didn’t know what to expect. Silence. A mob. Stones. Bullets. To walk right through and out the other side without a door opening to me. I almost did. At the very last house, the door opened and an old man came out and stood in front of me so that I could not pass. “I know you.” He pointed at me “You came the night of the Javrosts.” I was certain then that I would die, and that seemed not so bad a thing to me. “You were the merciful one, the one who spared our young.” And he went into the house and brought me a porcelain cup of water and I drank it down, and here I remain. The Merciful One.