The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020

by John Joseph Adams

  And, without delay, the Daughters put their plans into action. Schools popped up like mushrooms. The poorest in the land had money to spend. Bellies filled. Tiny, cold feet found protection and warmth in brand-new shoes. Legions of girls learned how to throw a punch. And a spiritual revival swept across the land like a delicious breeze as people found the grace to express their devotion through song and dance, freed from the bounds of shame or tradition or convention.

  And they were beloved, the thirty-three wicked Daughters. By the proletariat, at least. The Barons and the Guild-class and the Bourgeoisie, along with their friends among the Priests and Council and Generals, all were of another opinion.

  Peasants carved likenesses of the various Daughters into the trunks of trees and the doorposts and lintels of houses. Schoolchildren painted their faces on placards and stones. Poor families named their own daughters Althea and Alana and Annika and Aneis, Andromeda, Aurora, Ada, and the rest. Villages venerated the Daughters as saints. They carved statues and placed them in temples and market squares. Blushing brides laid bouquets of roses at the feet of the wicked Daughters.

  Wicked, whispered the Council.

  Wicked, murmured the Generals and the Guildmasters.

  Wicked, grumbled the Priests, Mages, and Clerics.

  Wicked, challenged the Barons.

  Had it simply been whispers, then yes, the King could have done nothing. Grumbles, too. But a challenge was another thing. And it was the challenge that kept the King up now.

  He paced his quarters all night long. He visited his pigeons, asleep in the aviary, and asked their advice. The pigeons, of course, said nothing, and instead blinked back from the shadows of their lofts, their eyes bright and hard and keening.

  He loved his Daughters. Of course he did. He didn’t always remember their names and couldn’t always tell them apart, but he loved them anyway—with their pronounced chins and their broad shoulders and their quick feet. He loved how they wrestled and built and climbed as children, how they would go from creatures of beauty and delicacy and ribbons and grace one moment to a horde of screeching, scratching, scheming harridans the next. He loved their loud voices and their strong muscles and their wildness. He loved how they could out-think, out-reason, and out-argue him at dinner. He loved the depths of their knowledge and the beauty of their faces and the bawdiness of their jokes. He found their inexplicable incongruencies utterly delightful.

  But this challenge. It was tricky. The crown on his head was a necessary burden, but it wasn’t pleasant. Still, it wasn’t as though he could simply retire. Kings are Kings until they are not, and they leave their offices either aged and decrepit in sickrooms, or with their heads paraded through market squares and hoisted upon a bloody pike.

  And what would become of his Daughters then? Would the Council protect them? Would the Generals? Or the Priests? The King didn’t know, and he certainly didn’t know where he could turn.

  The next morning, he called his Daughters into the Royal Receiving Room.

  When they arrived, the King felt his breath catch. How beautiful they all were! And yet. He could see by the darkness under their eyes and the thinness of their bodies that they were all working themselves far too hard. Was it wickedness that was causing this exhaustion? Was it possible that the Barons and the Priests and the Council were correct? The King decided to ask.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Girls,” he said.

  “Yes, Father,” his thirty-three Daughters replied.

  “Are you . . .” His voice trailed off. This wasn’t an easy discussion. He tried again. “Are you, any of you—or all of you, as the case may be . . . Which is to say, I mean, I don’t want to presume. Or assume. Still. As I was saying. Erm. You have probably noticed—unless you haven’t, which is also perfectly fine. But still. Girls. I must ask. In case it is true—even though I cannot imagine that it is. You know your father loves you, and will continue to do so, no matter what. Without ceasing. And without question. So. What was my question? Oh yes. Very good. My question.” He stopped and looked at his Daughters, an expression of painful desperation on his face.

  Finally, Albina, the eldest, went to her father and took his hands. Her fingers, he noticed, were covered with paper cuts, and she had no fewer than fifteen quills stuck at random in the coiled braids snaking around her skull. “Father,” she said. “You look worried.”

  The King sighed in relief. She understood! Of course she did. “Oh, Albina, I am terribly worried. There is so much whispering throughout the kingdom. People think you’re wicked! As if you could be wicked—you! And not just you, darling. All of you together. And it’s crazy, of course. You’re not wicked at all . . .” He paused, and bit his lip. He glanced sidelong at the marvelous young women assembled in front of him. He loved them so much he thought he’d burst. “Unless. That is to say. I mean, not that I would judge. But . . . are you? Wicked, I mean.”

  All thirty-three Daughters rolled their eyes.

  “No, Father,” they said in unison. “For crying out loud,” they muttered as one.

  “Oh, good,” the King said. “I mean, I knew it.” He pressed his hands to his heart, as though desperately trying to keep it inside his chest. “Oh, my dearest Daughters. Come give your papa a hug.”

  And one by one, the Daughters hugged their father, and as they did so, they caught one another’s eye, and exchanged a grim expression. This isn’t going away, their eyes told one another. And it is probably going to get worse.

  The next day, Ada the archer was out in the green fields, shooting at painted targets, when one of the Council members arrived with a phalanx of soldiers, accusing her of slaughtering one of the nation’s Sacred Hawks. He displayed the Hawk for all to see, with one of Ada’s arrows shot through its heart. The punishment for the murder of a Sacred Hawk was death, of course, to be rendered immediately, as was the Law, and that was exactly what would have come to pass if not for a group of moss gatherers who happened to be in the field that day, who witnessed not only that Ada hit nothing but targets with her arrows, but also the Council member who scurried behind a target, plucked out an arrow, and plunged it into the heart of an already-dead Hawk.

  “Look,” the moss gatherers said. “There’s no blood. And the bird’s neck is wrung. And look at its eyes. So dull! The poor thing’s been dead for at least a day.” These were incontrovertible facts. The phalanx of soldiers turned their gaze to the Council member.

  “W-well,” he stammered. “I mean . . .” His voice trailed off and he said no more. A soldier’s sword neatly removed the Council member’s head from his wrinkled neck. The Law is the Law, after all. And, really, he should be grateful. The removal of the head is quick and kind. Had his offense been worse, he might have been sent to the Island of Giants to be devoured. There is no worse fate than that.

  A week after that, Abigail the knife maker found herself accused of murder. Three of her knives had been found in the backs of peasants, murdered in the darkest of dark alleys. Three of the Barons hauled her in front of the King, who wept at the wickedness of it.

  Abigail kept her composure. “Father,” she said, “ask for the knives in question to be brought forth.”

  He did, and they were.

  “Now ask one of your soldiers to unwrap the leather binding on the handles.”

  “This is nonsense,” the Barons protested. “Surely she is only trying to buy time!”

  Abigail remained unflustered. She looked at her father. “As you know, Father, when I first learned the skills of knife making, I fashioned beautiful knives for each of your Barons. Just like these. What you may not know is that I also inscribed the names of each knife’s owner on the handle, under the leather bindings. For exactly this purpose.”

  “I MEAN TO SAY,” the Barons shouted, but there, etched in metal, were their names: Baron Fraus, Baron Skulken, and Baron Malare.

  With a heavy sigh, the King asked his soldiers to haul them to the dungeons. They pleaded for mercy. The K
ing scoffed. “Feel lucky I did not have you sent to the Giants!” But this was an empty threat and he knew it. While this was the legally justified punishment for the worst offenders, the King had never used it. He had read what happens to people there, and it turned his stomach.

  “Thank you, Father,” Abigail said, kissing his cheek. She turned and walked out of the castle. She had knives to make, after all.

  The King shook his head. “This is a dangerous game you girls are playing,” he said as she retreated, but he wasn’t sure if she heard him.

  Sometimes, fathers lock their Daughters at the tops of high towers, the King thought desperately. Or build high walls around abbeys and insist that their Daughters become nuns. Or marry them off.

  But the King couldn’t bear to do any of those things. He’d miss them too much. Besides, he had no idea how he’d find a way to do it. They were tough, his Daughters. And wily. And they were much, much smarter than he. He had known that for years.

  The accusations didn’t stop. And then came the attacks.

  Annika the boxer lost the first match of her life, owing to the fact that a man reached around the edge of the ring and grabbed her arms, allowing her opponent to wale upon her face, again and again, until she saw stars. The crowd roared and complained, but the referee did nothing. Everyone could see the bulge of coins rattling in his pocket.

  Alana’s tavern burned down in the middle of the night.

  Althea’s favorite school was suddenly infested with rats.

  Arlene was accused of sedition.

  Albina was accused of theft.

  Andromeda’s women’s prayer circle was suddenly attacked by misguided young men, convinced by the Barons that a joyful circle of dancing naked women was somehow an assault on the delicate and fragile flower of the masculinity of men everywhere—their own, mostly—and was possibly the reason why they had neither jobs nor girlfriends, and that it was likely all a sinister plot, doubtlessly hatched by their mothers. They attacked with rocks and clubs and ugly words. Fortunately, the members of the prayer circle were also members of Annika’s self-defense workshops, and all of them knew how to throw a punch. And land a kick. And all of them were quite good at it. The young men retreated. And then they threatened to sue.

  The thirty-three Daughters ended each day tired and sore, bruised and brokenhearted. They did their best to hide this from their father. At night, they kissed his cheeks and squeezed his hands and retired to their quarters, sleeping like the dead.

  The Barons had counted on this.

  With the entire castle worn to the point of exhaustion, it didn’t take much to tip the whole place into a slumbering stupor. A bit of poppy-tincture in the wine, henbane powder on the handkerchiefs, ground-up mandrake thrown on the fire, causing billows of sleeping-smoke to curl around the castle. Everyone would be unconscious for hours.

  Thirty-three Barons snuck into thirty-three bedrooms and carried off thirty-three unconscious Daughters, each bringing one Daughter to his own castle, to a hidden, secret room within—a bridal boudoir, if you will. With no windows and no skylights. A heavy iron door at the threshold. And a very strong lock. Thirty-three Priests arrived before dawn, one at the home of each Baron, to mumble the wedding rites over the heads of the sleeping Daughters, and to sign the documents binding each one irrevocably in marriage to each scheming Baron. The plan, they reasoned, was foolproof. They locked their new wives into their prison-boudoirs and prepared to present themselves not as Barons any longer, but sons.

  * * *

  “Married?” the King said over his morning bowl of porridge. He had a screaming headache, and his thoughts were labored and slow. And not a single one of his Daughters had come downstairs to kiss him good morning, which had never happened before. It put the King in a foul, confounded mood.

  “Happily so!” said Baron Yre, with a florid bow. “How happy are we to be part of your family, dear Father-in-Law . . . I mean Dad.”

  “Let’s just stick with my King, for now,” the King said with a frown. There was something about this situation that didn’t sit right, but his head hurt, and his thinking slogged, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, ascertain exactly what.

  One of the Barons called for champagne, and another called for strawberries, and another called for cake, and still another called for a bit of beef and perhaps some pickled onions and maybe a few loaves of bread, since one does get peckish after one’s wedding night, doesn’t one? And the sons-in-law ate and drank and sang and guffawed, and all the while the King kept glancing at the door, waiting for his Daughters to burst in like a whirlwind. Or a cleansing fire. Or a mighty wave.

  But they didn’t come.

  The Barons left with bawdy jokes and burly man-hugs and promises of grandsons. They pounded the King’s back and told him to get used to being called “Grandpop.” The King hadn’t even considered grandsons. Or any sort of grandchildren. He just wanted to talk to his Daughters.

  Days passed.

  Weeks.

  A month.

  The King couldn’t bear it.

  “Please,” he said to his sons-in-law. “Send me my Daughters. I miss them. Tell them to come around for tea. Or dinner. Surely you can spare them for one night. Their beds are made here, and their rooms are ready. I check each one each day, to make sure it was left exactly how they like it.”

  This was true. When they were home, his Daughters swirled and tangled in his mind and he rarely could keep them straight. But now that they were gone, his broken heart separated and elevated each one. He remembered things he did not even know that he knew—how many blankets each girl preferred. How they liked their breakfasts. What they liked to read. Whether they kept their rooms cool or roasting. The sorts of scents they liked on their pillows. He was, he realized, an encyclopedia of Daughter-knowledge.

  “Please,” he said again. “Tell them to visit their old dad. I yearn for them.”

  “No, no,” the Barons said jovially. They winked and chortled. They were, the King felt, his cheeks growing hot, unnecessarily rakish. And deep within him, a fire started to burn.

  “Whyever not?” His voice was even and sharp. Like a blade.

  “Our wives are too busy. Wives cleave to their husbands, you know. It’s in the contract. They belong to their husbands now. This is how it works.”

  “What are they busy with?” the King asked.

  The Barons hesitated. “Wife things,” they said at last. “And various wifely activities.”

  “I see,” the King said. The fire in his belly grew hotter. He closed his eyes. He needed to think. He needed his Daughters. He was lost without them. He told his Barons that his strength was not what it once was and that he needed to take a lie-down. The Barons saw this as a hopeful sign.

  “This is our time,” they told one another. “Ours.” And they started scheming, each man for himself, as to the best way to capitalize on the situation. They imagined the King’s dear head raised upon a pike in the market square. They made sure to whisper their hopes and dreams to their brand-new wives, and listened to them pound upon the locked doors of their secret rooms, screaming all the while.

  It was the screaming, they decided, that satisfied the soul.

  They imagined their new wives coming around after a bit. Eventually. The marriages, after all, had not yet been consummated, given that the Barons relied on the locked iron doors to prevent their new wives from ripping out their throats. Still. Eventually. They would accept. Surely they would. Maybe even love them. It was destiny. A King needed a clever Queen, after all. And each Baron truly believed, in the deepest part of his heart, that he would be King, even if he had to slaughter each of his comrades to make it happen.

  Meanwhile, the schools closed. The shoes were gathered and burned. The community banks emptied their coffers. The Barons collaborated with the Council to make punching illegal for girls. Punishable by time in the stocks. Also illegal for girls: learning. And libraries. And any sort of banking or political science or tav
ern ownership. And they encouraged the Priests to crack down on prayer circles. They created forums for young men to vent their concerns about reluctant maidens and mean ladies and how very difficult it was to be a young man these days. And as they voiced their petulance, they became more and more petulant. And as they cataloged their aggrievements, they became more and more aggrieved. Disdain curled into the faces of the populace and hardened like plaster.

  The King called the Priests, asking for details about the weddings.

  “Why was I not invited?” the King demanded.

  “Perhaps you weren’t as close to your Daughters as you thought,” the Priests replied primly.

  That can’t be true, the King thought. Can it? He took a different tack. “Show me the contracts from the wedding night.” The Priests complied and showed him the documents, all smudged and hastily done. The Barons had signed floridly; the Daughters’ signatures were simply an inky smush.

  “Were they even conscious?” the King asked.

  “Would it matter?” the Priests said.

  “Obviously it matters!” the King said.

  “Then . . . yes?” They kept their eyes on the ground.

  They gave their word. And the word of a Priest mattered. In theory. The King dismissed them.

  * * *

  He called in the Generals. “What recourse do I have?” he asked.

  “None, my King,” the Generals said. “None under the law.”

  He turned to the Council. “Is this true?”

  “Quite true, my King,” the Council members said.

  The Council and the Generals exchanged sly glances. The King took note, and dismissed them.

  * * *

  He went to the Guildmasters, but they were no help. He turned to the Bureaucrats, but they were useless. The proletariat could have assisted him, and would have gladly, but the laws were ancient and inflexible, and peasants had no legal standing.