Lace and Blade 2

by Deborah J. Ross

It only confirmed the suspicion he had resisted—sorcery!

  Ramon Estrada took the ruby pendant from his pocket as he stood up. The coach and riders might have continued southward. They might have turned off the road and gone east or west. He hated sorcerers, but he was not so easily put off a trail, nor was he without resources. Bending down again, he pinched a few grains of dust and sprinkled them over the ruby. Then, he held the talisman by its chain and let it spin. The moonlight struck it, and it sparkled with red fire.

  He thought of Elena, to whom the jewel was bound. The ruby was part of her, and she part of it.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  The talisman continued to spin and sparkle, but it also began to swing on its chain, back and forth at first, and then in a widening circle, and then back and forth once more. Finally, it stopped swinging altogether. Defying gravity, it strained ever so slightly in a westward direction.

  Ramon Estrada rose to his feet. A cold chill brushed over him. To the west, where the cliffs loomed above the sea, stood a structure that he knew too well, an abandoned Spanish fort that only one man had dared to claim.

  Joaquin Cortez!

  Thrusting the ruby back into his pocket, he leaped upon his horse and took off on an overland course. He needed no tracks to find the way to that cursed place. He and Elena had fought Cortez there, defeated him with his own magic, and rescued Alejandro.

  This night, Ramon Estrada would fight another battle there for the woman he loved.

  ~o0o~

  Elena regained consciousness slowly. Her head throbbed from the blow to her skull, but the grogginess shrouding her senses suggested something more at work. Drugs, perhaps—or sorcery. She fought to open her eyes. What she saw caused her to gasp.

  Joaquin Cortez stared down at her.

  He was exactly as she had left him, on his knees, rigid, his face contorted with horror as his own magic was turned against him. He still wore the leather collar he had meant for her—the very same collar Ramon had slapped around his neck. She was back in Cortez’s fort.

  Yet, it was not Cortez who regarded her, only his corpse. His flesh was rotted and hung in strips on his bones. His eyes were gone, as were his fingers. The birds and the insects and the weather had taken their toll.

  Elena felt a stirring of guilt. She had not killed Cortez, only left him paralyzed, to die from time, thirst, starvation and exposure.

  A woman’s voice spoke from behind her. “He was your lover once.”

  “He was a monster,” Elena answered, her throat raspy. She tried to sit up, but found herself bound by heavy ropes. “He meant that collar for me, and worse for my little brother.”

  “He was my son.”

  Elena squeezed her eyes shut. Then, with an effort, she rolled over and looked at the old woman who spoke.

  The woman’s dress was finely made, a shimmering black with a high neck of white lace. Large hoop earrings of gold dangled from her earlobes, and a ruby not unlike Elena’s own gem glittered on her bosom.

  Elena remembered her first sight of the coaches on the road, the veiled face that seemed to look across the distance straight at her. Elena barked a short laugh. “He must have been a great disappointment to you.”

  “Indeed, he was,” the old woman answered with a shrug. “Still, he was my son. But more importantly, he was the thirteenth member of a powerful hungaro coven.” Her dark eyes burned as she loomed over Elena. “How is it that he should fall at the hands of a mere strumpet?”

  “Strumpet?” Elena laughed again as she struggled against the weight of her bonds and managed to sit up. With barely concealed surprise, she noted the ring of men and women who stood around her in the torchlight, twelve in all.

  Cortez would have been the thirteenth.

  “Strumpet?” Elena repeated, inclining her head in open mockery. “You’re one to talk, Inez Maria Cortez y Velasquez. Yes, I know you. You’ve slept with half the heads of state in Europe, or with their sons. Or their daughters.”

  Inez Maria Cortez y Velasquez pointed a bony finger. “Your life is on the line, girl,” she said in an icy voice. She swept her hand around the room, indicating the others. “They are your jury and your judges, not I!”

  “Old whore! You lie as easily as your son!” Elena had little chance for justice in such a court, nor did she look for it. She shook her head, tried to clear away the fog that muffled her senses.

  Cortez’s mother seemed to read her thoughts. “Don’t try to change. We have the power to prevent it. You won’t escape that way.”

  “We? It takes all of you, doesn’t it?”

  One of the other coven members spoke. “Enough! Take your revenge, Inez. Waste no more of our time.”

  “Dissension in the ranks?” Elena twisted around to get a glimpse of the speaker and noted the bandage on his hand. The driver Ramon had shot! She looked back at Inez. “You’re not as powerful as you think, old woman.”

  Inez Maria Cortez y Velasquez grabbed a handful of Elena’s hair and jerked her head backward. In her other hand, she held a knife. “I have enough power to cut that collar from around Joaquin’s neck and lock it around yours!”

  Elena tried to hide her fear. What could she do against so many? “Cut me loose, you cowardly sow, and I’ll lock my hands around your neck!”

  A scraping sound ratcheted suddenly through the chamber. Inez Maria Cortez y Velasquez froze. Elena shot a look around, unable to determine where the sound came from. It came again. The coven members grew uneasy. The women drew knives like Inez’s. The men pulled pistols from their waistbands.

  Like a ghost, Ramon Estrada emerged from the darkest corner. The wan torchlight shimmered on his cloak and mask, his white garments, and it glittered on the blade in his hand. He drew the point of that blade across the stone floor to make the grating sound a third time.

  “The way you talk, Elena,” he scolded. “Don’t you ever try to make friends?”

  “I’ve made you, Highwayman,” she answered. “More than once. Do you like me in bondage?”

  The coven member with the bandaged hand raised his pistol and fired. The flash lit up the chamber, filling the air with acrid smoke. A second pistol fired, then two at once.

  For a moment, the room was silent as Ramon fixed Inez with his gaze. Another pistol fired. One of the women threw her knife. Ramon caught it effortlessly and dropped it on the floor. The bandaged driver rushed at Ramon, raising his empty pistol like a club. The steel point of Ramon’s sword came swiftly up to pierce the driver’s good hand. The pistol clattered, and the man screamed.

  Inez Maria Cortez y Velasquez spun about to face Ramon. Her skirts swirled about her, and her shadow danced over the floor like that of an immense bat. She pointed her knife at Ramon and began to chant, raising her other hand as she muttered.

  For an instant, the torches seemed to grow brighter, and the room wavered in the strange glow as if the air were liquefying. The rest of the coven joined in.

  Elena felt as if her head was being squeezed in a vice. She struggled in her bonds, suddenly afraid not just of the coven or Inez, but also of Ramon!

  Ramon reached out, caught Inez’s wrists. The knife fell from her grip as he drew her close. His eyes bored into hers, and she tried to shrink back.

  “Save your spells,” he warned. “You will gain nothing but death if you persist.”

  “What are you?” Inez shrieked, asking Elena’s question.

  Ramon drew the old woman closer still. “I will not play games, nor risk more murder tonight. Look at me! If you have power, then open your mind and see me truly—if you dare. Then remember me. Remember my story!”

  Inez’s breath came in ragged gasps. Her eyes widened, and her jaw gaped as she dared to meet the iron hard gaze of the man who held her. Time seemed to stand still. Then, her old lips quivered.

  “No!” she rasped. “Oh, no! It cannot be! I—I do see you! I know—the mark!”

  She writhed and tried to pull away, but Ramon held her in an unyielding
grip.

  “Who am I, old woman?” he demanded, his voice the barest whisper. His words were for Inez alone. “Say my name.” Elena strained to hear.

  “Son...!” Inez’s voice was little more than a harsh, despairing croak. “Son of Adam!” She collapsed to her knees, her mind seeming to crumble. “Cain! You are Cain!”

  Ramon let Inez go. The old woman sprawled at his feet, shaking and sobbing, but the highwayman was not done with her. Bending low, he whispered into her ear.

  “My curse is upon you,” he said with chilling calm. “Never come to Pontevedra again. Never threaten my family.”

  Inez’s knife lay at his feet. Ramon picked it up. “Now, let’s unwrap this pretty package.” He cut Elena’s ropes, and Elena tried not to shrink from his touch.

  ~o0o~

  “I heard, Ramon,” Elena said nervously after a deep silence. The fort was long behind them before she spoke. Pontevedra, too, lay behind them. She didn’t know where they were going, but she clung to Ramon, riding behind him bareback on his horse through the darkening hills, more afraid than she wanted to admit. “I don’t understand.”

  “Forget what you heard,” he answered in a tight voice. “It’s better for both of us if you forget.”

  She leaned her head upon his shoulder and shivered. “What is the Mark of Cain?”

  She felt him tense. After a long moment, he answered. “Immortality.”

  Elena digested that. “Your soul.” She shivered again. “If you can’t die, you are denied the promise of heaven?”

  It seemed too horrible to contemplate, yet she couldn’t turn her mind from it. She swept the countryside with her gaze, taking in the stark nighttime beauty of the Galician landscape. “You had Eden,” she whispered.

  Ramon stopped the horse and looked around with her. “Sometimes,” he said, ”when things are right between us, I think I’ve found Eden once again.”

  She still couldn’t grasp what he was telling her, but she understood enough. Ramon or Cain—he was a man with a heartbeat that she could feel, with warmth and breath. He trembled as if he, too, were afraid, and she knew suddenly that whatever he was, whoever he was, he needed her.

  After all, what promise of heaven did she, a monster, truly have?

  She glanced upward and touched the ruby talisman at her throat. The moon hung over the top of a low hill, igniting the distant trees with pale fire. It would be full in a few more nights.

  “I love you.” She sat up straighter, and when he didn’t respond she gave him a teasing shake. “Tell me your name, Señor.”

  He started the horse forward again and steered toward a silvery lake.

  “I am Ramon Estrada,” he answered, but he spoke the words without conviction.

  The Pillow Boy of General She

  by Daniel Fox

  Daniel Fox is a British writer who first went to Taiwan at the millennium and became obsessed, to the point of learning Mandarin and writing about the country in three different genres. The first novel, Dragon in Chains, is now out from Del Rey. Before this, he published a couple of dozen books and many hundreds of short stories, under a clutch of other names. He has also written award-winning poetry and plays.

  Here, he offers a multi-layered story about the price of obsession, but also about the other side of that dark human experience: compassion and, ultimately, redemption.

  Any man, every man can find himself pinned by a moment, heart-stolen, abruptly turned around. The same is no doubt true of women also, but General Shu was not much concerned with women.

  Nor, to be honest, had he been too much concerned with men before this, except as units in a calculation. Shu was no master commander, he had no gifts at warfare or leadership; his talents lay in provision, in negotiation, in anticipation of need. The army was such a size, the river was this broad: it could be crossed in two days, with this many boats brought from here and here. Shu knew. How and where the boats were likely to be hidden, that too. And he wouldn’t forget provender for the men during this delay, nor for the horses; neither would he forget to propitiate the river-gods, to ensure an easy crossing.

  A spy captured, a ransom to be paid? Ask Shu, how much is reasonable. A city taken, a levy to be raised from its no doubt grateful citizens? Ask Shu, how much they can afford. A city not taken, its walls manned and its gates barricaded? Ask Shu whom to bribe and what to offer. This was his genius, and why he had to be a general. He would never win a battle, but he could make any battle winnable, if a well-fed and rested soldiery was enough to win it. If not, he was still the man to buy a victory, if someone on the other side was only prepared to sell.

  He followed the army, rather than leading it. Necessarily, he followed close. This day, heavily astride an indignant horse not accustomed to the work, he huffed into the public courtyard of the provincial governor’s great house. The dignified comforts of his carriage were stuck in highly undignified mud a mile behind, and a succession of urgent messengers had only demonstrated how essential it was for him actually to be here. The governor was a fool, and twice a fool to be so swiftly overtaken by his follies; the more military generals, they were all fools too, by dint of long practice. If they were allowed their head—the governor’s head, in this instance, along with those of all his household—then the army’s forward march would be delayed by a month or more, while it lingered to pacify a restless and unreliable province.

  Shu’s mount might be unexpected—he kept a saddle-horse for show, largely, the occasional brief parade—but his face and figure were not. A soldier ran to seize the horse’s bridle and haul it to a welcome halt; another brought a blessed mounting-stool, to save him the indignity of an ungainly slither to ground.

  Fat men should not ride horses. That had been his overriding thought all this way, all the sway and jar of it, every bruised and aching measure of his flesh. Probably, fat men should not be soldiers at all. His bones were padded most unsoldierly, and he knew that he was mocked.

  He patted vaguely at his distempered horse’s neck, because he was a decent man and truly bore no grudges. Then he had sweat-froth on his fingers, and had to wipe it on his skirts. Horses make poor plotters; their revenges are immediate, though some are lasting. He was sore now, and he would be more sore tomorrow.

  No matter. A horse was a passing sorrow. What happened here would be enduring, whichever way it went.

  As briskly as he could manage, Shu bustled through to the inner courtyard, where the generals would be sitting now in judgment.

  In some respects at least, he was too late. There was a bamboo framework rigged up beyond the gateway, with a man hung from it. What was left of a man. Nothing clung to him except his blood, no vestige of an earthly rank, but still he was no doubt, no doubt at all, late governor of this province.

  Well. Shu had not really expected to save him. If a man will stand, will declare his public allegiance to an emperor in fast retreat and close the gates of his cities against the horde that pursues, he cannot expect kind treatment from that horde when his own gates are broken, as broken they will be. What can withstand a horde?

  One dead man was not a catastrophe, except perhaps to himself. His whole house was another matter. Trying to stride, Shu scuttled past that foul and dripping scaffold, to where the lords of men—his fellow generals, he reminded himself, and none of them blessed with the seal and authority of the generalissimo, as he was himself—sat in conclave in the shade of a pavilion.

  Uninvited, unexpected—they had no doubt been counting on the mud to keep him out of their councils, out of their hair—he sat himself among them, sweaty and disordered and utterly disagreeable. Whatever they wanted to decree, he was determined to disagree with it; and his voice carried more weight than all of theirs combined, for which they would never forgive him.

  Not a man to haver or dissemble—not when so simple an act as sitting chafed his thighs, and it was their fault entirely for being so precipitate, for causing him to hurry—he said, “So: you have killed the governor, t
hen. How many more?”

  “None yet, but of course his family—”

  “Of course his family must be let live,” Shu grunted, in a mockery of agreement. “If you slay his family, who had no hand in his folly, then you must slay all his councillors who were as guilty as he; and by the time you have slain their families too, and reached perhaps a little further towards the officers who carried out the governor’s orders, then the whole province will be in terror of you, for who among them can be innocent where their masters are so guilty?”

  “So they should be in terror,” said General Ho. “A rebel province deserves to cower before the blade. Yes, and feel its bite.”

  Actually, of course, these men here were the rebels, but Shu forbore to say so. Instead, “Will you leave half your force behind, to impose this terror?”

  “No, of course not. We pursue the emperor...”

  “...With these people at your back, all churned about with hate and horror.”

  “We do not fear peasants!”

  “No? Perhaps you should. It’s these peasants who will feed you on the march and through the winter. Or not. Their mattocks have more power than your swords, in the end.”

  A shrug from General Ho. “We have heard all this from you before, Shu.”

  “You have. And I was right before, and I am right now, and you know it. You knew it before I came, or you would not have waited for me,” blithely ignoring the fact that they had not. “Half the late governor’s family would already be dangling from that scaffold in their blood, while you distributed his women among the soldiery, while you kept his daughters for yourselves.”

  Which was to say, You are all my lap-dogs truly, and they knew that too, and resented it with a smoky fury that would bring grief soon enough to someone, but not to him.

  A boy came with a tray, and squatted in the corner to prepare tea. Good. Tea was soothing for turbulent minds. He himself was hot and thirsty after the discomforts of his hurry. He would be glad of tea, and the chance it offered to speak of other matters. The army’s swift advance, the boy-emperor’s desperate retreat, the generalissimo’s sure success: all of these were proper subjects to be raised and praised over the perfumed pleasures of the tea-cup.