La Femme
Page 20
Each coming apart, in that same tidy bloodless way, over and over.
*
On a bad night, and recently all nights have been bad, her part of the city has the look of a fresh battlefield. Commercial boards lie in shards and fragments on the streets; building facades are pocked with blisters and impact wounds. Kita-Ushma can tell they are still alive because they hiss and whisper under a glass storm. In her apartment sometimes the walls, behind their thick coats of paint and steel reinforcements, would throb and twitch. Nerves and tendons as thick as her wrist, geometric organs the size of her thigh. She often wonders why the clergy hasn’t cleansed this part of the city, hasn’t gathered up the broken pieces and swept them away, the way it has been done everywhere else.
The priests have, at least, suppressed the buildings’ signals. Transmitting nerves have been seared and excavated, preventing them from interfering with citizens’ connective chips, sending calls for help and imposing such dreams as only foundations and windows might have. When Kita-Ushma first arrived, some of the residential units were still whispering and sending vision-pulses, more white noise than any real trauma, but it made sleeping a chancy proposition.
It would be easy for the clergy to euthanize them, replace them with the urbane buildings bred in approved nurseries, which break silence only to praise the Song and which know no pain. But perhaps this is meant to stand as testament, of what things used to be, of how bad they could be again without theocratic guidance. It draws tourists, pilgrims.
Ecclesiasts visit this area never, judges only to pursue heretics and apostates; that Ashenti agreed to meet here surprised Kita-Ushma. Not that the priest would ever be in danger. The Song cares for its own – her chapter would know, at all times, where she is and react to the first sign of distress.
Half an hour in the damp ruin of a house thick with the acid smell of building-blood before Ashenti shows. The priest’s body armor is discreet, but there if one knows where to look: a glint at the wrist, a subtle change in profile. “What did you do in your former life?” she asks, shaking off raindrops made chromatic under the glare of stuttering light.
Kita-Ushma gives the priest a look. The cigarette’s heat lingers in her still, wreathing her senses in a mild haze. It might, she hopes, dull the effect of Ashenti’s voice. “Revered.”
Ashenti makes a gesture of negation, formal by habit. “I’m sorry, of course I shouldn’t ask.” She nods at the titanium cadenzas. “Holy service entitles you to privacy for the life you had prior to your novitiate.”
“Exceptions being if I’ve committed crimes against persons of the Song.”
“That, yes. What have you found out?” Ashenti receives the extra footage, her gaze briefly distant as she takes the images in. When her eyes refocus, they are wide, her breathing a little quick. “These are all servants of the Song. A sacrament-elector. A lieutenant-sibyl from Springtide Envoi.”
“Do they have enemies in common? In common with you?”
“Not that I know of.” The priest’s voice has gone faint. “But they are all dead.”
*
The shardwine is of no particular quality, but Ashenti drinks it with the refinement of good breeding or long training. She almost imparts sophistication to the wine, the glass, the apartment.
“Have you ever performed indoctrination, Revered?”
The priest holds the wine close, its steam – brine and baked stone – veiling her expression. “Not personally, though I’ve observed the process. It leaves no lasting damage and doesn’t change a person; merely corrects imperfections, controls unruly destructive urges.”
“The memory loss,” Kita-Ushma says, tries to stay calm. “Can it be targeted? Could indoctrination erase or suppress specific facts or events?”
“I imagine it could.” The tone of Ashenti’s voice has not changed. But perhaps it is, barely, tense.
“You know about what happened eight years ago, Revered. But how much?”
“In generalities. Who you killed, when, where. Is it important?”
“Yes.” Kita-Ushma doesn’t visibly reach for anything, inside her coat or behind her; she’s become quite good at making these motions unobtrusive, even to someone giving her their undivided attention. “Who hired me, Revered? To kill that judge. That sacrament-elector. That lieutenant-sibyl.”
“That’s a peculiar conclusion to leap to, Kita-Ushma ul Sadan.”
She is fortified this time – there was more in the cigarette than tobacco – but her breath shudders and her nerves sing supplication. “Not that peculiar. There’s a common thread to all this – those faces, I’ve never seen them, I don’t remember seeing them. But one, one of them, the woman. She was the judge, wasn’t she, the one I assassinated?”
“Is that a confession?” The priest has set down her glass, her face half-obscured in shadow. “That you didn’t kill in self-defense but pre-meditated it, for money? For one of my station and purity, my judgment of such things is eminently flexible, but that strains even my reluctance to engage in absolutes.”
It has been so long since Kita-Ushma handled a gun. Muscle memory informs her grip and aim; experience plots a trajectory, gives foreknowledge of the exact sound the impact will make, the chair turning over and the heat of blood. How many drops will fleck her skin and clothes, the pattern they would make on the quiet respiring floor. At this range, no armor or shielding will be enough.
“It is a terrible idea, Kita-Ushma, to threaten a priest.”
“You aren’t going to summon your chapter’s judges. With what little rank I earned as a novice, I’m entitled to speak against you before a tribunal. And even if they send me for a complete indoctrination or execution, you aren’t going to go unscathed. I was the tool, Revered, but you were the hand.”
Ashenti does not move and Kita-Ushma knows why: the priest hardly needs to carry a weapon. “What would you testify with? Half-baked hunches and paranoid fancies are no evidence.”
“Suppressed memories,” she says softly, “can be recalled. Indoctrination is very exact, so I heard.” So she experienced.
“Eight years ago, Kita-Ushma, you were invited to join Elision. For someone as skilled as you to do next to nothing instead of holy service is a waste, almost blasphemy in itself. The invitation stands.”
It would be easy, too, she knows that. Become an assassin in service to the Song. Any past misdeeds pardoned, any future ones – so long as they are committed against those outside the hierarchy – preemptively excused. “It was flattering then. It’s flattering now. But I prefer to be and act as I am.”
“I suppose you would.” Ashenti doesn’t gather her breath; it is only a slight shift in pitch. Hardly noticeable, unless one knows what to listen for.
Kita-Ushma does not wait for it, a command that might make her turn the gun on herself, that might make her do anything. She pulls the trigger.
*
Sunrise and she has not slept: she huddles in a tiny cabin on a commercial craft, passage purchased last minute. Dearly bought, but her savings have always gone into emergencies.
It is as the craft docks into a trade refrain that her connection thrums, a distinctive couplet-signature of an ecclesiastic sender. It can’t be a judge – an arrest order would have already been carried out before she could enter the port. At the slowest, they would have captured her once she boarded the ship, probably executed her on the spot.
Kita-Ushma delays opening the link, a postponement measured in seconds. She knows she can’t put it off any more than she can refuse it.
“Yes,” she murmurs, waiting for visual.
A woman, bright-eyed, tattooed at earlobes and jawline: a sestina framing her face. “Congratulations on completing your passage assignment, Kita-Ushma ul Sadan.”
Her pulse judders. “You’re Elision.”
“Quite. I’m your recruiter and sponsor.”
The last video. It wasn’t Ashenti after all who sent and proliferated it – that was the one puzzle Kita-Ushma h
adn’t been able to solve. “The Revered,” she begins.
“For many obvious reasons she was deemed too poisonous to keep, and hurtling toward apostasy in any case. As I said, you have done well.”
“Am I being drafted?”
“Of course not. You enlisted eight years ago. I don’t believe we suppressed that?”
“No,” Kita-Ushma says slowly. “But Ashenti Turyen did.”
“Ah, Falldusk Choir personnel can be so sneaky. Well, technically you’ve the right to go back on your enlistment.” The woman’s expression is light, her voice cheerful, and it is just a voice. Friendly. “What will it be then?”
A choice that was not a choice at all. Under the harmony of the Song, perhaps that is the only kind that exists.
“I agreed to it once.” She folds herself, presses against the bulkhead. A thin layer, when all is said and done, between her and the oblivion of vacuum. “I might as well agree to it again.”
The woman smiles widely, a painted mouth and sestina tattoos moving in precise coordination, like soldiers in ranks, like singers in a choir. “Excellent. I’ll be picking you up at the refrain in seventy-two hours. Welcome to Elision, recruit. May the Song grant you a long and faithful future among us.”
About the Authors
Ruth E.J. Booth sold her first short story in 2012, and her most recent work can be found in Fox Spirit’s Fox Pockets series. Ruth is also a music critic and photographer, previously published by the likes of The Independent and Kerrang! (as Ruth Booth). At present, she spends her spare time as a singer, yogini, or half-marathon runner. She can only whistle backwards.
Storm Constantine has written twenty-eight books and well over fifty short stories. Her writing spans literary fantasy, science fiction, and dark fantasy. Storm is founder of the independent publishing house Immanion Press, created in order to get classic titles from established writers back in print and innovative new authors an audience. She lives in the Midlands with her husband, Jim, and five cats.
Frances Hardinge’s bizarre, fantastical books are written for 10+/YA, but have an increasing adult readership. Her debut, Fly by Night (Macmillan), won the Branford Boase Award, and her other titles include Verdigris Deep, Gullstruck Island, Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass. Frances is seldom seen without her hat, and is addicted to volcanoes.
Andrew Hook’s stories have appeared in Black Static, PostScripts, and numerous anthologies including several from NewCon Press. 2014 will see the first of two neo-noir crime novels, The Immortalists, appear from Telos Moonrise, with the second, Church of Wire, due next year. He has recently edited an anthology of punk stories for DogHorn Publishing, and co-edits Fur-Lined Ghettos magazine.
Stewart Hotston spends much of his time trying to make things ex nihilo and then worrying about them while keeping very real people happy. Formerly a proper physicist who now works with complex derivatives, he tends to write speculatively, exploring big issues and how they impact ordinary people – in other words he loves the grand old spirit of science fiction.
Holly Ice studies creative writing at Staffordshire University. She is inspired by the unknown to create science fiction and fantasy stories. Previous work has been published by Indent, Almond Press, the H.G. Wells Festival, as well as in NewCon’s recent Looking Landwards anthology. She is currently sculpting a fantasy novel and introducing two kittens to her Cotswold home.
Adele Kirby followed a childhood of voracious escapist reading by spending high school voraciously writing escapist fantasy. Writing for pleasure led to a determination to produce a book, and in time she even began to consider begging people to read her work. Adele also meddles at screenwriting, which she adores but gives up annually to ‘finish the book’. “Soleil” is set in the same world as one of her spec TV series.
Maura McHugh lives in Galway, Ireland and her short fiction has featured in various venues including Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. Her two collections, Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths appeared in the USA in 2013. She’s written comic book series Róisín Dubh and Jennifer Wilde for Atomic Diner in Ireland, and was one of the writers of the horror anthology play, The Hallowe’en Sessions, which had a sold-out performance in London. Find her at http://splinister.com and on Twitter as @splinister
Jonathan Oliver is the Editor-in-Chief of Abaddon, Solaris and Ravenstone, and the author of two novels and a whole bunch of short stories. He lives in Abingdon with his wife, daughter and their cat.
Stephen Palmer is the author of seven published novels, including Memory Seed and Glass (Orbit), Muezzinland, and Urbis Morpheos (PS Publishing). His short fiction has been published by NewCon Press, Wildside Press, SF Spectrum, Rocket Science, Eibonvale Press, Unspoken Water and Solaris. His latest novel, Hairy London, is forthcoming from Infinity Plus. Stephen lives and works in Shropshire, UK.
John Llewellyn Probert won the British Fantasy Award for his novella “The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine” (Spectral Press), and the Children of the Night Award for his short story collection The Faculty of Terror (Gray Friar Press). Endeavour has published “Ward 19” and “Bloody Angels” – two crime novellas featuring his pathologist heroine Parva Corcoran, with a third, “Suicide Blondes”, due out this year.
Benjanun Sriduangkaew enjoys writing love letters to cities real and speculative. Her work can be found in Clarkesworld Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy.
noir
The companion volume to
La Femme
Edited by Ian Whates
Thirteen stories that dance around genre boundaries but are linked by a sense of foreboding, a prickly itch that will unsettle and leave you with the impression of something sinister lurking just beyond the reach of awareness…
Dark science fiction, the supernatural, puzzling mysteries and shocking twists from:
E.J. Swift, Adam Roberts, Donna Scott, Emma Coleman, Paula Wakefield, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Jay Caselberg, Marie O’Regan, Paul Graham Raven, Simon Morden, James Worrad, Paul Kane, Alex Dally MacFarlane
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