Very few half-castes enter the contest,” Sister Kale said. She was seated behind a table, processing Maddy’s entry form.
“I see.” Maddy shifted in her seat. Half-caste. She hadn’t heard that one before. “I’m—”
“Don’t tell me,” Sister Kale said. “Let me guess.” She studied Maddy as if she were viewing a beast in a menagerie.
Maddy stared back, examining a point on the wall behind the sister. From a distance, Maddy could be taken for a thirteen-year-old girl. Up close, people could see the truth. That’s when they stepped back. All except Nadine. This would be so much easier if her mother were here. But she wasn’t. Even though she promised.
“Red eyes . . . that glow,” the sister said. “They don’t belong in such a pretty face. Show us your teeth, girl.”
Absolutely not. “My birth-mother was a Spectral Hound,” Maddy said. “Captain Leonides Farrago and . . . my new family . . . they rescued me from crypto-naturalist pirates off the coast of Ghula.”
“I asked you not to tell.”
“You’d already guessed.” Maddy chewed her lip and tried to imagine being elsewhere. Anywhere else.
“Yes, well. Near enough, I suppose.” Sister Kale leaned forward. “Now show us those teeth like a good little beast-girl.”
Maddy crossed her arms and glanced at Sister Kale. “I fail to see what this has to do with my entry in the Spelling Bee.”
“Your eyes burn with an inner fire. I can see the flames,” Sister Kale said. “How extraordinary!” She waved her hand. “Sister Blue, you really must see this. Sister Agnes—”
“Please,” Maddy said. “The announcement said the contest is open to any student in Arduvulin City in the seventh through ninth books and—”
“Yes, of course,” Sister Kale said. “But we so rarely get to examine such a . . . It’s—”
“Outlandish,” Sister Blue said. She examined Maddy’s ears. “Though these seem nearly normal, Sister Kale.”
“Uncanny,” Sister Agnes said. She coiled a lock of Maddy’s black hair around her fingers. “It is very fine. Not at all like fur. Get undressed, girl.”
Maddy brushed the woman’s hands away. “I will not.”
“We need to know if you’ve dugs like a hound, or—”
Maddy growled and the sisters jerked back. She could kill them all. Except she had promised her mother. And Maddy kept her promises. Even if no one else did. “I’d like to go now and take my place,” Maddy said, “for the Spelling Bee.”
An officious-looking sister passed in the hallway outside, shouting, “Five minutes, sisters! We need all the contestants on the stage now!”
The three sisters kept their distance. That always happened with people. Eventually. Maybe if she won the Spelling Bee, people would start treating her like a human. Maybe Nadine would forgive her, whatever it was she had done. She must have done something, otherwise Nadine would be here.
She wasn’t going to win anything sitting in this chair. Maddy stood. “Right, which way is the stage?”
Maddy didn’t expect there to be so many contestants. There were at least three dozen seated on the stage. Maddy took a seat near the back, next to a large cabinet of extravagantly carved mahogany. It was really quite an odd bit of furniture, taller than a tall man, wide as a parlor sofa in all directions and carved in a lattice so fine it was hard to see what was inside. Maddy was pressing her forehead to the cabinet, trying to see in when the referee called out.
“All rise for Its Royal Highness, Emperor of the Fogbound Realm, Sovereign of Arduvulin. Long may It reign.”
There was a great deal of noise from the audience, some of it clapping. Maddy tried to find her family, but her view was blocked by a carved cabinet very much like the one next to her, but considerably larger, being carried on the bent backs of a dozen liveried men. As the cabinet passed, the noise of the audience grew louder until the cabinet was placed on a dais near the stage.
“My esteemed parent,” the cabinet next to her said. “Doesn’t It cut an imposing figure?”
“What?”
“Its Royal Highness,” the cabinet said. “Clearly you’ve not met It before.”
“No,” Maddy said. “I don’t—”
“Very few do,” the cabinet said. “I am Its Royal Tanist. Its . . . progeny. You may call me Tan, Miss—”
“I, um,” Maddy said. “I thought Its Royal Highness was so loathsome in visage that—”
“It needs spend Its days locked in the Nonesuch Palace,” the cabinet next to her said. “Or in a box.”
Maddy’s cheeks burned. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t—”
“Very few do,” Tan said.
Maddy’s tongue felt a dozen feet thick. “Your Royal—”
“Shhhh,” Tan said. “It begins.”
“But—”
“Quiet, please,” Tan said. “If I’m to win, I need to know the rules.”
If Maddy was to win, she needed to know the rules as well. She was going to win. Then Nadine would have to forgive her for whatever she had done.
“Attention,” a man in the yellow and black costume of the Spelling Bee said. “We shall begin. The rules are simple. One must work one’s spells unaided. One must complete one’s spell correctly. One must not raise the dead or engage in sorcery of any kind. Bonus points will be awarded for originality, flair and emotional congruence.”
“That’s it?” Tan said. “This should be cake.”
“Right,” Maddy said. She surveyed the contestants. With the exception of two or three, they were all eighth or ninth book. She was just beginning seventh. And they were all fully human. All except the creature in the cabinet next to her. Maddy shivered. “Cake.”
“Algernon Adovado,” the referee called, and a slope-shouldered boy of fifteen or sixteen marched to stand on an X marked near the center-front of the stage. He swallowed once and bobbed his head when asked if he was ready.
The first-round spells were trivial: make Greek Fire, shatter a wall of stone with sound, compose music from the murmuring of the audience. Tan had to do that one, and it was a strange and haunting song he produced, full of feelings that Maddy didn’t like to think about, a single heart beating in a dusty corridor, the steps of a lone pilgrim across rainy cobbles, the creak of an empty chair, in an empty room, in an empty house. Now that she had, thought about them, that is, it was hard to concentrate. She looked for her family in the audience and found them. Rookhaven was perched on Uncle Leo’s tricorner hat, peering to and fro. Madame Aubergine curled in Emma’s lap. Leo waved when Maddy caught his eye. Emma cheered when Maddy was called to work her spell.
“Create the illusion of galloping horses.”
Maddy repeated the challenge, stalling for time. “Create the illusion of galloping horses.”
“That is correct.”
Great. Quille had horses; they pulled a vast carriage and walked a stately mile. Uncle Leo had dray horses to haul the great wagons that trundled trade goods from warehouse to shipside. Maddy had never seen nor heard horses galloping. Except she had. When she was with her birth-mother, before she was stolen away. Maddy tried to recall the experience, but she had been a child. A very young child. She could either rely on the flawed recollection of a toddler or be eliminated in the first round.
Maddy began. From the crowd she drew the sounds of hammering hooves, the scent of harness and lathered flesh. She had some loose change in her pocket; it provided the essence of harness jingling. There was a draft in the great hall; Maddy channeled it to her purposes, amplifying it, bending it in on itself and converging it. The crowd grew louder as they felt the horses stream by. She added the sound of the hounds, her birth-mother’s cries, her uncles and aunts of the pack. Maddy closed her eyes and refined, accenting and augmenting the vibrations in the air. She compressed the
moisture of spent breath, building misty shapes of cloud. The crowd noise rose. She added the half-heard cries of the Huntsman and his pack. She amplified the scent of fear, the rush of unharvested grain against the thighs of the prey, the welling tears of terror, the whimper of despair. Maddy twisted and bent sound, and scent and touch; the grasping fingers of wind, the stumbling gait of the man, the twist of the backward glance, the leap, jaws open for the throat.
There. That was galloping horses. She opened her eyes.
The hall was empty, or so it seemed at first. Uncle Leo was standing in the aisle, cutlass drawn. Rookhaven flapped overhead, crying, “Kill them all, kill them all.” Emma sat in her seat and smiled at Maddy, Madame Aubergine curled in her lap. A ring of men blocked her view of Its Majesty; their muskets were aimed at Maddy. The remaining audience crowded the exits, struggling to escape the hall. The stage was empty except for Tan’s ornately carved cabinet, the curtain behind the stage torn down. A dozen Sisters of St. Anselm poured forth, burnished helms on their brows. Sister Kale held them back with a slash of her broadsword.
“The illusion of galloping horses,” Maddy said. She pressed her palms against her face. She bit her lip. A tear ran down her cheek.
“There will be a short intermission,” the referee said.
Maddy paced back and forth while the chaos she’d wrought was put to rights. Where was Nadine? She’d promised. Maddy didn’t know what to do. She needed supervision. Now.
“That was fantastic,” Tan said. “They ask for galloping horses and you give them the Wild Hunt.”
Maddy slapped the cabinet before she remembered it held the heir to the throne. “Oh, no, sorry, Your Royal—”
“Tan,” the cabinet said. “And that was truly spectacular, Maddy Oortsgarten-Quille. I see now why you didn’t want to tell me your name.”
“It’s Maddy Dune,” Maddy said. “Professor Quille and Detective Inspector Oortsgarten had no hand in the mess I’ve made.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Tan said. “They say Quille is the greatest enchanter who ever lived. Surely he taught you a thing or two.”
Maddy laughed. “I can’t understand half of what he says.”
“The Detective Inspector—”
“Promised she’d be here for me,” Maddy said. “I don’t know what I did to anger her. I’m trying my best.” They nearly had the audience settled back into their seats and the stage backdrop re-erected.
“Perhaps her duty called her away,” Tan said.
“Not without saying something,” Maddy said. “She’s not that way.”
“What way?” Tan said.
“Undependable,” Maddy said. “That’s my department.” Maddy bit her nails as a sister herded a half dozen of the audience back to their seats. “I need her.”
“Perhaps you only think you do,” Tan said.
“Look around, man,” Maddy said. She tried to peer into the cabinet.
“Please don’t,” Tan said. “Look, that is. Name me man anytime you wish. Few do, you know.”
“Your . . . um, Tan—”
“Shush. As for the rest, you were asked to complete a task. You did. Better than anyone could have imagined.”
“I scared the hell out of them,” Maddy said.
“We do that just by being,” Tan said. “Trust me. I know.”
“That song you made. It was beautiful,” Maddy said. It looked like the judges were taking their seats.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Tan said. “I made it for you.”
At the end of the second round there were only six left: two boys from the Cosmopolitan Day School, two Acolytes of the Sisters of St. Anselm, Tan and Maddy. The challenges were more difficult, focused on the enchantment of objects: make a chair dance, cause a clock to run backwards, that sort of thing. Maddy was weakest here. Such enchantments used up the enchanter’s life force, aging them in the process. Her adoptive father, Eusebius Quille, refused her access to his library on permanent spells, and only the most trivial were covered in the seventh book. Maddy could make a broom sweep on its own accord; that was the limit of her skill.
Tan was challenged to ring the bells of St. Anselm’s. He did, playing the same song he had played earlier. That tune of loneliness rang out across the city, and when Maddy dried her eyes, she found she wasn’t the only one weeping. A single bell toned on, in time with her beating heart.
When her turn came, the audience was already headed for the exits. The referee looked at her and shook his head. He smiled when he read the challenge.
“Make a broom sweep on its own accord.” A grim-faced sister darted out and handed Maddy a willow broom before she dashed away, stage left.
“Make a broom sweep on its own accord,” Maddy said. She held the broom at arm’s length. It was far from the best broom she had ever seen. It didn’t look up to the task.
“That is correct.”
Maddy watched the broom move back and forth like the clapper in a bell. She would make it to the third round, but it would be a hollow victory. The judges were afraid of her. They’d given her child’s play to assuage their own fear. She was so tired, so very tired of being feared. That was the root of her loneliness. Only Nadine didn’t fear her. That was why she needed her. Where was Nadine? The sound of the broom scratching across the stage tore at her. Surely there was something . . . Maddy stretched her consciousness out. She reached up and up, and there, she found them, the bells of St. Anselm’s, still vibrating to Tan’s song. She knew that song now, every note. She had been born with it playing in her heart. She tolled the bells slowly, in time with her sweeping broom. The sound resonated in her, stirring up memories she’d rather not think about. Somewhere there had to be an answer to that song, an antidote to the feeling that poured through her.
Maddy closed her eyes. She needed Nadine. If her mother were here, she wouldn’t have to be afraid. Maddy imagined that, and slowly the music changed. Tan’s song was still there, but another tune entwined it. It danced around it, holding it, not fighting it but redirecting it, answering it, an answer that negated the very question itself. There was no need for Tan’s song, not really. It didn’t have to be. Tan’s song existed, there was no denying it. But it didn’t need to linger there alone. Maddy knew that in her heart. Knew it now. She willed the bells to silence. She willed the broom to still. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t standing on the X. She was very far stage-right, the broom in her arms. She felt her face flush an instant before the crowd burst into applause. She’d been dancing with a broom.
You dance quite well,” Tan said.
Maddy felt her face burn. “I had no intention of dancing.”
“So much of what we do is without intent,” Tan said. “I’ve been thinking of your mother.”
“So have I,” Maddy said. “She’s never lied to me before.”
“What makes you think she has in this case?” Tan said.
“She promised to be here, and she isn’t.” Maddy leaned her back against Tan’s cabinet.
“I watched you dance,” Tan said. “Did you learn those steps on your own?”
“Yes,” Maddy said. “No. I don’t know.”
“Maddy,” Tan said. “May I tell you a secret?”
“Must I keep it?” Maddy pressed her palms against the cabinet.
“I hope not,” Tan said.
“What is it?” Maddy leaned her cheek against the finely carved wood.
“That song I wrote for you?” Tan said. “It was the only song I knew. Until today.”
Maddy pressed her forehead against the cabinet and closed one eye. Perhaps then, she might see.
“Don’t,” Tan said. “I beg you.”
Maddy jerked away as if the cabinet were on fire. “Very well, Your Highness.” She stalked away to find a drink of water. By the time s
he had found a sister, they were calling for third round. Only an Acolyte of the Sisters of St. Anselm, Tan and Maddy had made it through.
Project your happiest memory,” the referee said. This was the same challenge the Acolyte had received. That girl’s memory was of playing with a clowder of kittens in the straw, only the image of a sister with a sack and the dunking pond in the distance marring the final moments.
Maddy studied the audience. They leaned forward in their seats. Uncle Leo sat back, his arms crossed, his face dark. Emma shook her head no. Madame Aubergine was awake. She stared intently at Maddy. Rookhaven hopped from foot to foot. Maddy didn’t need to hear him to know his words. She searched the crowd for Nadine. Her mother had broken her word.
“Project my happiest memory,” Maddy said.
“That is correct.”
She studied the crowd. So easily swayed. They crawl before the Wild Hunt. They swoon before the dancing broom-girl. She glanced toward Tan’s cabinet. She couldn’t see inside. He wouldn’t allow it. How bad could it be? Her prince had no idea what ugliness was.
“Very well.”
Maddy was in her cage on the deck of the Polyphemus. It reeked of fear and waste. The sails were burning. Another ship was drawn alongside, grappling hooks holding the two together while men clambered aboard. The sorcerer who had bound her threw spells like rays of black sun fire about as a sure-footed woman leapt to the deck. Nadine Oortsgarten drew her sidearm. Around her men shriveled and burned.
A clumsy man followed her aboard, but when his feet struck wood, it was as if he were rooted to the spot. Eusebius Quille slammed his ashplant to the deck and the Polyphemus shuddered. Maddy howled and beat herself against the bars of the cage. The sorcerer turned his attention to Quille. Black fire burned in the sky, arcing upward, falling in sheets toward Quille only to pour around him and fall away in dark, burning sheets.
Maddy was distracted. Another man was boarding, a golden man with cutlass flashing and a young woman, parasol in hand, carrying a blue-black cat. Maddy bashed herself against the bars of her cage. A dark bird fluttered overhead. Maddy licked her lips and waited.
Writers of the Future Volume 27: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 5