by Nancy Kress
Liz said unsteadily, “Where she can’t be bashed over the head with a molecular-composite garden hoe because she’s the kid of a couple of lesbos.”
“Yes,” Jenny said.
A tight band circled Liz’s chest. A molecular-composite band, stronger and more durable than steel. She had first felt that band at Laurie’s funeral. Standing in the littered city cemetery in cruel sunshine, watching Laurie’s casket lowered into the ground, the TV cameras whirring like so many meat grinders pulverizing her insides . . . and watching Jenny. A black veil over her face, dry-eyed, already lost to Liz although it would be a year before Liz realized it. Lost to an obsession with security, in a collapsing city that could no longer offer it. To anyone.
Laurie . . .
But that was over, that sweet time of motherhood and love. Few couples, of any type, survived as a couple after the death of a child. Five percent, Liz had once read. Only five percent, made it. She and Jenny hadn’t. But this was now, not then, and Liz gathered herself for one last try.
“Jenny, listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” Jenny said. She sat down on one of the pale chairs, hairs and eyes and jumpsuit vivid. But her face was as colorless as the fabric.
“It’s not about Laurie any more,” Liz said. “It’s not even about you and me. It’s about Quinn Tower, and what it represents. For gays, for blacks, for Koreans, for every group whose most successful members flee here, or someplace like here, to avoid being reminded of how the rest of their people have to live. Jenny, the corporate-owned closed communities are wrong. We need you outside. We need you for the marches and the solidarity and the rescue work—did you know that Bellington, Texas, has mounted a vigilante campaign to eject anyone voted ‘undesirable’ from their town? This is openly, without any pretense of minority rights! Last week they stripped and stoned a Muslim family, the week before a gay couple, a few days before that—”
“I read the papers,” Jenny said.
“Then do something about what you read! How can you—how can any member of any group being made scapegoat for what’s happening out there—just sit here in your pretty safe castle and—”
Jenny sprang out of her chair. “I don’t want my next child living in that world! Dying like Laurie! I’m doing this for my daughter!”
“It’s for Laurie that you should be joining us!” Liz shouted back. She wanted to hit Jenny, to pound sense into that beautiful skull . . .Liz could feel herself crying.
“Hush,” Jenny said gently. “Oh, Lizzie, hush . . .” and a cool hand on Liz’s forehead. If only Jenny would put her arms around her, hold Liz as she used to, once, not that long ago . . .
Jenny didn’t. But she let her cool, long-fingered hand linger on Liz’s shoulder, and Liz tilted her head and rubbed her cheek against the back of Jenny’s hand.
Jenny said quietly, “I don’t love Sarah the way I loved you.”
“I know,” Liz said.
“But I want to be a mother again, Liz. I want to love and raise and protect a child, more than I want to take the risks to make the whole world safer for everybody’s children. Is that so wrong?”
“Yes.”
And after that, there was nothing much left to say. Liz got to her feet. She felt heavy, as if gravity were greater in Quinn Tower than in Los Angeles. She walked toward the apartment door, with a last involuntary glance out the window at the meadow below, full of columbine and larkspur. She didn’t see the bear.
“Jenny?”
“Yes?”
“Be well,” Liz said, and she didn’t know herself if it was supposed to be a sarcasm or a benediction.
“We will,” Jenny said, “here.”
In the train, Liz leaned back and closed her eyes. Thirteen minutes to downtown Denver, full of druggies and muggers and angry cops and angrier men and women who saw a world of evaporating jobs and disappearing government and hungry kids, and wanted someone to blame. Anyone. Anyone different. And then another fifty minutes by air to Los Angeles, which was more of the same but with the added exotica of armed “citizens’ police” patrolling the streets, looking for threats to an American way of life that barely existed anymore anyway.
But Margo would be waiting. Feisty Margo, who didn’t take shit off anybody, but who still believed they could stem the shit at its political asshole. And Barbara, running the Snake Sisters Rescue Operation with compassion and incredible resourcefulness. And Viv and Taneeka and Carol . . .
None of them was Jenny.
Well, screw that. Jenny had made her choice. And Liz had made hers. Or the new realities of the new century had made it for her. That’s the way it was.
After her plane landed at LAX, Liz retrieved her gun from an airport locker. She scanned the peeling and hole-strewn concourse, home to a lot of people with no place else to go, and automatically picked out the non-dangerous punks trying to look dangerous, and the dangerous ones trying to look safe. The frightened business people who still had a job and were trying to make it home with their briefcases intact. The three Brothers of Kali walking together, who didn’t look like they’d need any help from their own, and the two young Asian women who might. When she had determined her route, Liz started down the concourse. There was a rescue meeting tonight, followed by a survival-strategy session, and she was already going to be late.
1999
CLAD IN GOSSAMER
Nancy Kress lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is the author of more than fifteen books, including several fantasy and science fiction novels, two collections of short stories, and three books on writing fiction, most recently, Dynamic Characters. Her most recent novels are Maximum Light; Oaths and Miracles; and its sequel, Stinger. Kress’s short fiction has appeared regularly in Omni, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other major science fiction and fantasy magazines and anthologies. Her recent stories are collected in Beaker’s Dozen. She has had a story in each volume of this series.
“Clad in Gossamer” is about court life, its pressures and its intrigues. Kress asserts that she hates to shop and thinks that maybe the notion of people actually coming to a person to persuade him or her into new clothes is just congenial to her nature.
Of course I knew they were scoundrels. I knew the moment I set eyes on them. Florian, naturally, would not have believed it. He trusted the many travelers to court, trusted the pages and serving women, trusted his two-faced advisors, distrusted only me. Like all of them, he takes my looks for who I am. You, distinguish a scoundrel? he would have said, with that spew-making gentleness that conceals condescension. It is the condescension I cannot bear, and the patience. Let Florian be patient in hell, which was where these two rogues had come from. Fox-faced, quiet-voiced, elegant as ladies, sneaky as thieves. Or courtiers. Florian would not have known what they were, but I knew.
And I did not tell Florian.
Instead I gazed innocently at the two foreign tailors in their beautiful velvet breeches and silken tunics and woven sashes with strange foreign designs. “Tell me again,” I said.
The shorter, older one said smoothly, “Garments in subtle colors like shaded sky, Your Highness. As finely spun and light to wear as spiderwebs. Yet warm, impervious to water, and impenetrable by stinging insects.”
I nodded eagerly, as if I believed this nonsense. “And the magic . . .”
“Ah, the magic. Tell him again, Sorrel.”
Sorrel, young and pasty-skinned, like one who never travels by day, recited, “I was raised in a distant land, Your Highness. Far, far from your beautiful kingdom.” Indeed, he had an odd accent. So does my father’s fool. “In my land, there are many old magics. Is that not so, Telliano? I learned but a humble one, that of cloaking the truth in fancy dress and the lie in nakedness. The cloth that my master taught me to weave can be seen only by the pure of heart, men and women honest and true and fit for their posts. To all others, it is invisible.”
I let myself lean forward eagerly, like the credulous simpleton they think I am. “And if
I had a coat of this clothing . . .”
“A whole suit,” Telliano said.
“A court suit,” Sorrel said.
“Or perhaps even a ceremonial robe . . .”
“For, perhaps, Crown Prince Florian’s betrothal procession . . .”
“Most suitable—”
“If I had this clothing,” I broke in, “then I could tell who among my brother’s courtiers served him honestly and truly, and who conspired against him?”
“You could.” Telliano, the more discreet. He dropped his eyes respectfully.
“And then,” I said, with the air of a dimwit, “my royal brother the prince would admit me useful, and make me his viceroy!”
Sorrel could not hide his smile. Telliano nodded solemnly. I let myself despise them both, for despising me. There is no way Florian would ever admit me useful, or make me anything.
“I will pay what you ask,” I said happily and wiped my nose on my sleeve like the stable louts whom I so unfortunately resemble. Big and clumsy and grossly muscled. “And if I am made viceroy, I will double your fee.”
The two scoundrels bowed low. We discussed fittings, colors, secrecy. They bowed themselves out.
I sat in my chamber, thinking. Florian sent a page for me, a golden-curled, tongue-tied child who had forgotten his message before it reached me. I would have ignored it anyway. If this scheme worked, Florian would not trouble me past his betrothal day. I had tried a bribed huntsman; the assassin had failed. I had tried poison; a royal taster had died. I had tried turning our father against him; he outtalked me to the old rattlepate. Now all the court whispered of my failures. Prince Jasper the Inept, Prince Jasper the Butt, who looks like a stable lout and plots like a dimwit. But no longer.
Bow, arrow, poison, treason. All had failed.
I would try embroidery and silk.
My brother’s bride arrived from across the sea ten days before her betrothal procession. She arrived so robed and veiled that she looked like a silken haystack. Such is apparently the custom in her country. But my father and brother and I were to see her face after dinner, alone except for the guards thick around the king and his heir. To protect them from the other heir.
I did not want to go. The dinner would be long. My brother would talk brilliantly, reducing me to nothing. My father’s rheumy old eyes would rest on Florian with that proud gleam that makes me wish to . . . to do what I have been trying to do for a year now. My brother’s bride would be just the sort of sweet-faced, soft-voiced, loving milksop to give him eternal devotion, popular approval, and strong sons.
Only it did not turn out like that.
We sat over our wine after dinner, the long table cleared, the hall empty of servants save for the sole musician hidden high in the gallery, playing a flute. The bride was escorted in by her women. She was still heavily veiled.
“Let us greet your face properly, my daughter,” my father said. Beside him, Florian smiled encouragingly. Women are said to like him, despite his middling build, so puny beside my own. Narrower shoulders, four inches less in height, barely able to lift his own slight weight. I can lift twice my own. Yet Florian will be king.
“Come, daughter,” my father urged. I eyed the door.
The girl took a step forward and removed her veil.
It uncovered not only her face and hair but her shoulders as well. Her bodice was cut wide at the neck, low on her deep breasts. Masses of black hair tumbled around her painted face. Full, bright red lips, smoky black eyes, green on their thick lids. She smiled at us challengingly.
“Daughter! I . . . uh . . .” the king quavered, glanced at Florian, recovered himself. “I welcome you to your new home.”
“Happy this woman to be in this kingdom,” the girl said. Her voice matched her face: smoky as a spitting fire. It was obvious the words had been memorized; she did not speak our language. She shot Florian, on my father’s right, a bold look from those green-lidded eyes.
Florin had gone pale.
But he was, after all, a prince, damn his firstborn soul. He stepped forward, smiled, and took the girl’s hand. It was covered in jeweled rings, like a prostitute’s. The nails were long, wicked, and green. Florian said, “Welcome, my betrothed.”
Jealousy skewered me like a sword.
She never glanced at me. Or did she? Throughout the short audience, she kept her gaze on my father, the king, and my brother, the crown prince. But as I turned to go, after making my clumsy bow, I thought I felt those green-lidded eyes on my back, weighing and measuring as boldly as do the girls at the Sign of the Spotted Cat. Those eyes on my back, and lower.
I will have her if I die for it.
The weaving went forward in a secret chamber, visited by no one but me. For five days Telliano and Sorrel wove air, cut ether, fitted on my body nothing at all. “Notice the colors, Your Highness! The scarlet here, at the shoulder, shading into russet, the dull gold to highlight your noble calves! Notice how light the cloth; why, you must feel as if you are wearing nothing at all! Notice the workmanship—the stitches themselves disappear! Notice the gold lace, the rich embroidery, the graceful drape . . .” I agreed to it all, standing naked in the center of the room, a room without mirrors.
My long absences were noticed, of course. Nothing goes unnoticed at court. He will try another assassination, went the whispers gathered by my spies. Prince Florian had best look to his royal guards. Finally, Viceroy Madior, that tottery, sly old man, stopped me in the courtyard. “Your Highness!”
“Yes, Viceroy.”
“You were missed, sir, at Council this morning.”
“And why would that be, when none listen to my words there anyway?” A bold speech, and to underline it I moved closer to the viceroy, who shrank back. I could break his arm with one hand.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken. The prince asked for you, he wished your aid with—”
“I am preparing something that will aid the prince more than anyone or anything now in his kingdom.”
Madior’s old eyes sharpened. He is no fool for all his bodily weakness. He would not have kept his post so long if he were. “And may I ask . . .”
I pretended to hesitate. “I don’t know . . . but yes, you are such a trusted advisor of my brother, you should indeed know about this. Come with me, Viceroy.”
And I led him to the chamber where my two rogues snipped and sewed and embroidered empty air. In the secret passageway, so clogged with dust that Madior’s old lungs wheezed and coughed, I whispered, “I have hired two sorcerers, great magicians in their own land, to make me a ceremonial robe for the betrothal procession. It is a magic robe. Only those who are fit for their posts, honest and true, can see the material. We will know, once and for all, who is a loyal servant of the crown—and who is not.”
The viceroy’s reply, whatever it was, was lost in a fit of dusty coughing.
But at the threshold of the chamber, he stopped coughing. His eyes ran over my two scoundrels: their intent concentration, their elegant foreign clothes, the strange nonsense symbols on Sorrel’s sash. Then the viceroy slowly approached the loom, the cutting table, the baskets for ribbons and lace. He inspected everything, his wrinkled face blank as the loom. For a moment I doubted . . .
But no. “Incredible,” Viceroy Madior murmured. “So subtle . . . View the cloth from one angle and it is one color, view it from another and the color shifts . . .”
I had him.
Over the next five days, I had them all. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Captain of the Guards, Minister of Justice, Chief Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Lying grovelers, all of them, afraid to admit they saw nothing. And Telliano bowed and smiled and explained, and Sorrel stitched, unsmiling, playing his part. While my brother’s most trusted advisors, one by one and sworn to a secrecy they would of course violate, displayed before me their two-faced fear. Almost I was sorry when the day of the betrothal procession arrived and my private little mummery was over.
During the whole ten days, I saw my broth
er’s betrothed only once. It was at night, when she should not have been away from the women’s quarters at all. She and her women, heavily veiled, moved quietly along the walk from the Blue Garden. Had they merely been for a moonlit stroll? But there was a gate in the far wall of the Blue Garden, and beyond lay shrouded woods.
My brother’s bride stopped on the stone path directly in front of me. She raised her veil. The black eyes, blue-lidded this time, searched my face. Her lips were berry red, and her full, half-exposed breasts heaved.
She did not smile. It was better that way. I was the one to smile, from my much greater height, and move my body a fraction of a step closer to hers.
Immediately she lowered her veil. I had given away too much, in front of her ladies. She hurried away, leaving me on the moonlit path, still smiling.
She was the slut I had first thought her. And in another day, she would be mine.
The day of the betrothal procession, of course, dawned fine: even the sun wished to stay close to my brother. I could do nothing about the sun, but those advisors who would sell their souls to keep their posts beside him—they would soon be damned by their very loyalty.
The long walkway between castle and cathedral was hung with white flowers and thronged with courtiers, all eager for a first glimpse of their eventual queen. She would emerge from the cathedral, which in times long past had been a fort. Then, escorted by the prince’s brother, His Royal Highness Prince Jasper, she would walk slowly toward the dais, where sat the king and his heir. And her escort would be quite naked.
I stood in the windowless, mirrorless secret chamber, letting the foreign rascals dress me in nothing. They draped and fussed and buttoned and tied, Telliano babbling like the practiced fraud he was: “How light and airy, Your Highness, how flattering to your broad shoulders, your lordly height . . .”
Beyond the walls, I heard the flutes and guitars begin to play.
I made my way through the secret passageway to my chamber, and from there by underground tunnel to the cathedral. I emerged in the unused and deserted guardroom, took a deep breath, and walked to the antechamber where the processional party waited.
