The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition

by Rich Horton (ed)

  I had never mentioned this to her before. Perhaps it was striding this battlefield for the first time in all those years that brought back the memory. No matter. Now of course, we could not afford awe. They were children who needed our guiding hand lest they lapse back into the same mistakes—as tedious as that responsibility was.

  “The Gray Fort is considered the finest example of Resistance-era human architecture,” recited our guide as we approached the outer wall. “It was constructed over a period of thirtythree years—thirtythree being, as you know, a particularly auspicious number—using granite quarried from the hills behind it. Far more than a mere military stronghold, this was the home base of the Army of the Northeast, as well as the retinues-retainers-advisors-wives-consorts-and-harems of the warlords who led them, for one hundred eight years. It was the first structure to incorporate certain stoneworking methods for hand-cutting and laying large blocks that had been forgotten for almost a millennium.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “We helped you recover your own lost past.”

  “Well, sir—” he allowed himself a wry grin that revealed gaps in his teeth “—I’d hardly call it ‘helping.’ ”

  He was forgetting his place. “You wouldn’t? And how well would you know what transpired in those days?”

  “Sir, I have a doctorate in pre-Resistance history from the University of the Northeast Territory.”

  “Of course you do,” I said. A native’s degree, from a native’s institution. “And how useful have you found that?”

  The old fool recognized the gibe and responded with a smile and a bow, then turned back to the path.

  “A lesson for you, my love,” I subvocalized. “Those days are gone. The history of the years before the Folk came to you is beneficial only as a reminder of mistakes you should never make again. Because of your unique position, one day your people will call upon you to teach them wisdom, and this must ever be at the forefront of your mind.”

  Jessica nodded sagely. She was remarkably sharp for her race. When we first met, she had hung on every detail I shared with her of the Days of Conflict and the battles I had seen. Her perception and wit spurred me to strengthen my reasoning and know myself better—exactly what I needed now that I was expected to settle into the role of Prefect of such a sorry district. When it dawned on me that I must make her my bride, I rushed to contact her father. He was loath to lose her, and he rejected my financial incentive, despite the crowded hovel and unwholesome slum in which he kept his family. But Jessica and I meant too much to each other, and there was no choice but to apply my influence across his entire community. He acceded at last, and I was as thrilled as a schoolboy.

  It is said that when the Queen was brought the news, she considered it idly for a moment, then laughed and blessed our union, and all her dazzling, debonair court laughed along with her.

  As we approached the fortress, Jessica’s regard returned several times to the wreckage that had once been the great gates. They lay rotting where we had left them in front of the walls, and she lingered on their twisted forms. She must have been wondering what nature of assault we had used to throw them outwards, rather then knock them inwards. In truth, we had taken the stronghold by penetrating the wall at other points; we had only smashed the doors and archway days later, from within, when we ravaged it in our dismay that there was no longer anyone left to oppose us. Her people have not failed to disappoint us since then. For years we have been secretly sending our idle soldiers home in increments. No occupying force is needed here—just the rumor of one is enough to keep these sheep docile.

  “Before the gateway,” our guide told me quietly, “you will see many vendors waiting for tourists.” Indeed, in the flat space before the gaping maw of the arch, a listless pack of hawkers manned tables and booths or sold baubles from sacks slung over their shoulders. “They are a worthless bunch of huckstersconmenpickpocketsandthieves, and you should keep your hand on your wallet and ignore them as we pass through.” At last, a point on which I was inclined to credit his opinion. “Afterwards I will take you someplace where the proprietor is trusty and you will surely get what you paid for.”

  We approached and the hawkers rushed forward and surged about us, thrusting souvenirs in our faces, crying out with rotten breath, and steering us towards their shoddy tables. They vied to shout over each other and swirled between us in dizzying, unwashed confusion that was redoubled with the impressions from my bride. Our dotard of a guide protested ineffectively and impugned the parentage of anyone who came within range. I had been in a melee on this very spot once before, a lifetime ago, as an officer with a tall helm and a long spear. Men had died here, and some good Folk, too. I would have been within my rights to kill one or two this day, and I was not too old to destroy this whole rabble single-handedly. However, I was obliged to keep in mind that I was guardian and teacher to them now. At a loss, I retreated.

  While I picked my way past the yelping mob, Jessica barely made headway, and she was obliged to halt before a plank piled high with cheap trinkets. To appease them, she tossed a hag a coin and in exchange took the first thing that caught her eye—a flimsy play dagger with a gaudy hilt and scabbard encrusted in paste gems. When she pushed her way out of the crowd, she pulled the silk shawl from her shoulders and bundled it around the toy as if she was reluctant to touch it. (Oh, to find just one of her people with the will to bear a weapon!) She was shaken by the onslaught, and I took her free hand until she was calm.

  The hawkers lost interest as soon as Jessica emerged from their midst, and receded to reveal our guide, who hobbled up the path towards us. He made his apologies to Jessica directly, which was not entirely proper, but could be forgiven under the circumstances.

  “But here,” he said, “before we enter the fortress itself, is a display created especially for pair-bonded fair lords and ladies such as yourselves.”

  “A stereogram, no doubt?” I said.

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “What’s that?” asked my Jessica.

  Before our guide could attempt an explanation, I answered, “A standard tourist gimmick, aimed primarily at newlyweds. They can however, on occasion, be diverting. Show us.”

  We handed over a few more coins and were ushered into a small building with high windows. The space inside was well-lit this time of day. It held a wide carved stone screen with two small apertures cut into it, just close enough to allow the couple peering through them to hold hands. Jessica took it all in, uncomprehending.

  “Beyond that screen is a painting,” I told her. “Two paintings, actually. Taken separately, they mean nothing—just streaks of color and jumbles of dots across the canvas. But when the viewers are bonded as we are, and one painting is viewed through your sight and one is viewed through mine, and we allow our intimacy to combine those views into a single image, the true nature of the portrait is revealed. It’s a clever technique, and if it’s done properly it can sometimes yield unexpected detail and perspective.”

  Jessica put her right eye to the hole in front of her and saw nothing but a broad expanse of blotches and marks. I put my left eye to the opening on my side and saw a similarly meaningless jumble. We reached for each other and clasped hands, and we allowed our breathing to ease and our vision to relax until it became a bit vague at the edges.

  And then, as if a third mind straddling the two of ours had suddenly divined how the marks were meant to align, the images from her eye and mine snapped together and revealed a single, meaningful prospect. What we were looking at was the Gray Fort, not the massive ruin that stood outside, but as she was in the days of her glory—when her unblemished walls rose with the graceful curve of a ship’s prow from the knees of the mountain behind her, and her towers and turrets caught the morning sun as they stood tall into the blue sky, and gold gleamed from her domes, and her long pennants made whip-cracks in the breeze. The artist’s hand held a magic that made the image stand away from the canvas, as though we could have walked around it and new det
ails would have been revealed with each step. Soldiers in bright armor manned those ramparts and lay in wait in those turrets. (They would send a cavalry charge first, and it would devastate our front ranks.) I was back on the field before those walls, and tiny chill fingers ran down my spine as I remembered for the first time in centuries the dread and wonder those men had instilled in me. I missed the weight of my spear in my hand, ready to dole out death. I recalled that I was made to fight, and to love, and to die for the things I believed in. I was not a bureaucrat or the overseer of a dull, submissive people, but a warrior once again, at a moment when history held its breath.

  And over it all, I felt an immense gratitude to have that moment back, and that my Jessica was here to see it with me, and that I could share with my bride the majesty and power of that day.

  Right:

  Loran’s long stride took him ahead of me, and he saw the fortress before I got to the top of the slope. For a frustrating moment until I caught up I had to be content with his impression of its mass and shattered strength and the way it dominated the valley. I preferred it as I saw it myself—there was more to it than I expected, and the stonework of the palaces behind the walls seemed as delicate as froth. So we really had been builders, back then.

  A man was selling souvenirs inside a small stone building next to the path. Our old guide announced in his self-taught Folk tongue, Here you can purchase many fine illustrations of the Gray Fort, quite suitable for greetingcardspostcardsbirthdaycardsholidaycards and the like. If you will just step this way—

  But Loran kept walking. The vendor inside noticed me as I passed, and his face twisted. It was an expression I had seen several times in the days since we were bonded, and what it meant was, Faery’s Whore. Our guide warned him off with a hard look.

  I prayed that the guide didn’t recognize me, though I doubted he would have forgotten. His name was Nikander. When I was a child he was a teacher, holding school in the abandoned stable he had made into a classroom, charging for lessons only what each family could afford. He smelled like turnip soup, and he laughed at his own jokes like a braying donkey. He taught me some reading and writing, and a bit of sums, but the real reason I sat in that crowded stable through hot summer days was to listen to his fantastical stories of Men before the Fair Folk came. Men before the generations of war and barbarism, and before the generations of occupation. Only a small bit of what he told us was close to believable—people flying to the moon and performing inside tiny boxes of light must have come out of his own dreams—but even that was enough to make me think there might be more to us than the Folk wanted us to know.

  Today he addressed me through Loran, as was right for our respective positions, but he wouldn’t meet my eye for even a moment, and that more than anything else told me he knew who I was.

  The wind pulled at my hair and my shawl, and I saw myself through Loran’s sight as he paused to admire me. I wouldn’t have guessed that even the long-lived Folk, with their powers and deadly pride and incomprehensible moods, could be giddy newlyweds. Another fact they chose not to reveal to the Men they ruled. I looked back at him, but I only had time to glimpse his slender height and elegance, and the straight white hair hanging past his jawline, before my stomach rebelled and I had to turn away. Let him think it was because I hadn’t adjusted to our bond yet. We each now lived through the other’s body as we lived through our own, but this intense intimacy was a leash held by whoever was the stronger. And even dogs learned ways to keep their collars loose.

  Coming to this old spot had been my idea—the sort of honeymoon trip the ancients might have taken. It was our shared interest in the olden days that had first brought me to Loran, though for him it had been mainly a chance to tell stories about his youth, while I was searching for some sense of what my people had once been. The human-tales I had heard from Nikander as a girl had stuck in the back of my mind and smoldered there. As the sprawling mud-thatch slums took my childhood and I saw a hundred daily reminders of our weakness and incompetence, I found I needed to understand what parts of those fables were true. It had been simple to flatter my way onto Loran’s estate overlooking the city, and then to flirt until I had an invitation to come back. Loran had been only too happy to talk about himself to an adoring young woman. After a while, by stitching together his silences and the details left unsaid, I gathered that the Elves’ conquest of our world had not always gone smoothly, and perhaps had even been a challenge.

  I had not expected our relationship to progress as it did.

  I felt the old axe wound in Loran’s right thigh throb, and he paused once or twice as we approached the fort. Despite his age and his decades behind a desk, Loran was still frighteningly strong, a born warrior, and not many could stand against him in one of his moments of rage. He watched a hunting hawk turn in the air over the meadow, and then scanned the bushes to locate its prey. His breath went a little shallow, in anticipation of the kill, I supposed.

  Nikander indicated the valley around us. In the olden days when the fortress still stood, he told us, this road was lined all the way up with manymany redoubts, towerhouses and palisades. An army would cower at the thought of passing through.

  He spoke to Loran, and it was odd for me to hear him string words awkwardly in the Folk tongue when he was so compelling in our own, but I knew his meaning was intended for me, and I could see it in my mind’s eye.

  And yet in the end it was you that folded, I felt Loran mutter.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that he wouldn’t let me have even this.

  That’s true—in the end, I chided him. But I said it under my breath, suddenly ashamed to have Nikander see me discussing this topic so lightly with my Fay husband.

  Loran responded with the same doctrine and morals I had heard all my life. But then he let slip—

  We were in awe of you right up to the moment of your defeat.

  My pulse banged for a moment, but I already knew the trick of dampening it with a careful breath before he noticed.

  So we were your equals, I thought, and kept the realization private. Could it be that your beautiful, blessed and cunning people came across not to guide us, but to be shaped by the struggle? You loved us for being worthy adversaries, didn’t you? Is that why your rule seems so arbitrary—do we bore you now?

  What boredom was I a cure for? Loran had decided that we would be wed before I realized how far I had let things go. Honor is more important to people who have nothing than to generals, and my father had furiously resisted Loran’s attempt to take me. My family held firm against the string of illnesses and petty hexes that laid them low and crumbled our home around us. But when soldiers started taking our neighbors to the work-farms one by one, and word spread that we had the power to save them, my parents were forced to let me go. I haven’t spoken with them since.

  Nikander filled the silence with his rote gabble. Far more than a mere military stronghold, he quoted, this was the home base of the Army of the Northeast, as well as the retinues-retainers-advisors-wives-consorts-and-harems of the warlords who led them, for one hundred eight years. It was the first structure to incorporate certain stoneworking methods for hand-cutting and laying large blocks that had been forgotten for almost a millennium.

  Indeed, said my lord and husband. We helped you recover your own lost past.

  I fought down the sudden churn in my stomach.

  Well sir, I’d hardly call it helping.

  It was the wrong time for Nikander to remember his pride. The familiar tone was like a red flag to a bull.

  You wouldn’t? And how well would you know what transpired in those days?

  Sir, Nikander replied with quiet dignity, I have a doctorate in pre-Resistance history from the University of the Northeast Territory.

  Of course you do. Loran’s voice was dry and cold. And how useful have you found that?

  There was a charged, still moment in which Nikander might have gotten himself killed, but then he ducked his head in a quick b
ow, and turned back to the path as if erasing the incident from his memory. I will never be Folk, but I can’t go back now, and if one day, riding through the streets of the city I happen to come across my family again, I hope they won’t know me.

  Loran was in particularly good spirits now, and he ignored the raw nerves in his thigh as we made our way towards the fortress. I could see the massive gates still lying where they had been thrown down, green and brown with corrosion, covered over with growing grass in some spots and twisted up higher than a man’s head in others. Like the heavy stone blocks around them, they weren’t worth the effort to move. I wondered what ram or magic had thrown them outwards when they were breached. The Folk had done a good job of keeping that technique secret from us too.

  The area in front of the gates had been turned into an improvised market, though there wasn’t a single customer. Loran would be baffled, but I had grown up amongst people like this—men and women with so little they could wait all day next to a disintegrating stall or a board laid across crates, in the hope that travel might make one sightseer a bit generous or careless with his money.

  Nikander warned Loran, They are a worthless bunch of hucksters-conmen-pickpockets-and-thieves, and you should keep your hand on your wallet and ignore them as we pass through. Afterwards I will take you someplace where the proprietor is trusty and you will surely get what you’ve paid for.

  We stepped into their midst and they came desperately alive, swarming around and between us, each demanding our attention for their chipped relics or cracking jewelry or cheap toys. The crowd was smothering, and I could focus only on the tiny wedge of space directly in front of me. Loran waded through the fringes, and Nikander in the thick of things feigned indignation, but I had never been rich before, and when I said No it was without conviction. Against my will, I was swept into the very middle of the market, and jammed hard against a stand overseen by an old woman who could have passed for my grandmother.