The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  They killed my brother! They're drunk on blood! Her brother was safe at home where she wished she was and if her pursuers were drunk it would likely be on cheap spirits as usual, but she'd shriek it with that little warble in her throat. Shy could do quite a warble when she needed one, she'd practiced it 'til it was something to hear. She pictured the patrons springing to their feet in their eagerness to aid a woman in distress. They shot my horse! She had to admit it didn't seem overpowering likely that anyone hard-bitten enough to live out here would be getting into a sweat of chivalry but maybe fate would deal her a winning hand for once.

  It had been known.

  She blundered through the tavern's door, opening her mouth to serve up the tale, and stopped cold.

  The place was empty.

  Not just no one there but nothing, and for damn sure no winning hand. Not a twig of furniture in the bare common room. A narrow stairway and a balcony running across the left hand wall, doorways yawning empty upstairs. Chinks of light scattered where the rising sun was seeking out the many gaps in the splitting carpentry. Maybe just a lizard skittering away into the shadows – of which there was no shortage – and a bumper harvest of dust, greying every surface, drifted into every corner. Shy stood there a moment, just blinking, then dashed back out, along the rickety stoop and to the next building. When she shoved the door it dropped right off its rusted hinges.

  This one hadn't even a roof. Hadn't even a floor. Just bare rafters with the careless, pinking sky above, and bare joists with a stretch of dirt below every bit as desolate as the miles of dirt outside.

  She saw it now, as she stepped back into the street with vision unhindered by hope. No glass in the windows, or wax-paper even. No rope by the crumbling well. No animals to be seen – aside from her own dead horse, that was, which only served to prove the point.

  It was a dried-out corpse of a town, long since dead.

  Shy stood in that forsaken place, up on the balls of her bare feet as though she was about to sprint off somewhere but lacked the destination, hugging herself with one arm while the fingers of the other hand fluttered and twitched at nothing, biting on her lip and sucking air fast and rasping through the little gap between her front teeth.

  Even by recent standards, it was a low moment. But if she'd learned anything the last few months it was that things can always get lower. Looking back the way she'd come Shy saw the dust rising. Three little grey trails in the shimmer off the grey land.

  "Oh, hell," she whispered, and bit her lip harder. She pulled her eating knife from her belt and wiped the little splinter of metal on her dirty shirt, as though cleaning it might somehow settle the odds. Shy had been told she had a fertile imagination, but even so it was hard to picture a more feeble weapon. She'd have laughed if she hadn't been on the verge of weeping. She'd spent way too much time on the verge of weeping the last few months, now she thought about it.

  How had it come to this?

  A question for some jilted girl rather than an outlaw with four thousand marks offered, but still a question she was never done asking. Some desperado. She'd grown expert on the desperate part but the rest remained a mystery. The sorry truth was she knew full well how it came to this – the same way as always. One disaster following so hard on another she just bounced between 'em, pinging about like a moth in a lantern. The second usual question followed hard on the first.

  What the fuck now?

  She sucked in her stomach – not that there was much to suck in these days – and dragged the bag out by the drawstrings, coins inside clicking together with that special sound only money makes. Two thousand marks in silver, give or take. You'd think a bank would hold a lot more – they told depositors they always had fifty thousand on hand – but it turns out you can't trust banks any more than bandits.

  She dug her hand in, dragged free a fistful of coins and tossed money across the street, leaving it gleaming in the dust. She did it like she did most things these days – hardly knowing why. Maybe she valued her life a lot higher'n two thousand marks, even if no one else did. Maybe she hoped they'd just take the silver and leave her be, though what she'd do once she was left be in this corpse town – no horse, no food, no weapon – she hadn't thought out. Clearly she hadn't fixed up a whole plan, or not one that would hold too much water, leastways. Leaky planning had always been a problem of hers.

  She sprinkled silver as if she was tossing seed on her mother's farm, miles and years and a dozen violent deaths away. Whoever would've thought she'd miss the place? Miss the bone-poor house and the brokedown barn and the fences that always needed mending. The stubborn cow that never gave milk and the stubborn well that never gave water and the stubborn soil that only weeds would thrive in. Her stubborn little sister and brother too. Even big, scarred, soft-headed Lamb. What Shy would've given now to hear her mother's shrill voice curse her out again. She sniffed hard, her nose hurting, her eyes stinging, and wiped 'em on the back of her frayed cuff. No time for tearful reminiscences. She could see three dark spots of riders now beneath those three inevitable dust trails. She flung the empty bag away, ran back to the tavern and –

  "Ah!" She hopped over the threshold, bare sole of her foot torn on a loose nail head. The world's nothing but a mean bully, that's a fact. Even when you've big misfortunes threatening to drop on your head, small ones still take every chance to prick your toes. How she wished she'd got the chance to grab her boots. Just to keep a shred of dignity. But she had what she had, and neither boots nor dignity were on the list, and a hundred big wishes weren't worth one little fact – as Lamb used boringly to drone at her whenever she cursed him and her mother and her lot in life and swore she'd be gone in the morning.

  Shy remembered how she'd been, then, and wished she had the chance now to punch her earlier self in the face. But she could punch herself in the face when she got out of this.

  She'd a procession of other willing fists to weather first.

  She hurried up the stairs, limping a little and cursing a lot. When she reached the top she saw she'd left bloody toe prints on every other one. She was working up to feeling pretty damn low about that glistening trail leading right to the end of her leg, when something like an idea came trickling through the panic.

  She paced down the balcony, making sure to press her bloody foot firm to the boards, and turned into an abandoned room at the end. Then she held her foot up, gripping it hard with one hand to stop the bleeding, and hopped back the way she'd come and through the first doorway, near the top of the steps, pressing herself into the shadows inside.

  A pitiful effort, doubtless. As pitiful as her bare feet and her eating knife and her two thousand mark haul and her big dream of making it back home to the shit-hole she'd had the big dream of leaving. Small chance those three bastards would fall for that, even stupid as they were. But what else could she do?

  When you're down to small stakes you have to play long odds.

  Her own breath was her only company, echoing in the emptiness, hard on the out, ragged on the in, almost painful down her throat. The breath of someone scared near the point of an involuntary shitting and all out of ideas. She just couldn't see her way to the other side of this. She ever made it back to that farm she'd jump out of bed every morning she woke alive and do a little dance, and give her mother a kiss for every cuss, and never snap at her sister or mock Lamb again for being a coward. She promised it, then wished she was the sort who kept promises.

  She heard horses outside, crept to the one window with half a view of the street, and peered down as gingerly as if she was peering into a bucket of scorpions.

  They were here.

  Neary wore that dirty old blanket cinched in at the waist with twine, his greasy hair sticking up at all angles, reins in one hand and the bow he'd shot Shy's horse with in the other, blade of the heavy axe hanging at his belt as carefully cleaned as the rest of his repugnant person was beyond neglect. Dodd had his battered hat pulled low, sitting his saddle with that round-shouldered cr
inge he always had around his brother, like a puppy expecting a slap. Shy would have liked to give the faithless fool a slap right then. A slap for starters. Then there was Jeg, sitting up tall as a lord in that long red coat of his, dirt-fringed tails spread out over his big horse's rump, hungry sneer on his face as he scanned the buildings, that tall hat which he thought made him look quite the personage poking off his head slightly crooked, like the chimney from a burned-out farmstead.

  Dodd pointed to the coins scattered across the dirt around the well, a couple of 'em winking with the sun. "She left the money."

  "Seems so," said Jeg, voice hard as his brother's was soft.

  She watched them get down and hitch their mounts. No hurry to it. Like they were dusting themselves off after a jaunt of a ride and looking forward to a nice little evening among cultured company. They'd no need to hurry. They knew she was here, and they knew she was going nowhere, and they knew she was getting no help, and so did she.

  "Bastards," Shy whispered, cursing the day she ever took up with them. But you have to take up with someone, don't you? And you can only pick from what's on offer.

  Jeg stretched his back, took a long sniff and a comfortable spit, then drew his sword. That curved cavalry sword he was so proud of with the clever-arsed basketwork, which he said he'd won in a duel with a Union officer but Shy knew he'd stolen, along with the best part of everything else he'd ever owned. How she'd mocked him about that stupid sword. She wouldn't have minded having it to hand now, though, and him with only her eating knife.

  "Smoke!" bellowed Jeg, and Shy winced. She'd no idea who'd thought that name up for her. Some wag had lettered it on the bills for her arrest and now everyone used it. On account of her tendency to vanish like smoke, maybe. Though it could also have been on account of her tendencies to stink like it, stick in folks' throats, and drift with the wind.

  "Get out here, Smoke!" Jeg's voice clapped off the dead fronts of the buildings and Shy shrank a little further into the darkness. "Get out here, and we won't hurt you too bad when we find you!"

  So much for taking the money and going. They wanted the price on her too. She pressed her tongue into the gap between her teeth and mouthed, "cocksuckers." There's a certain kind of man, the more you give him, the more he'll take.

  "We'll have to go and get her," she heard Neary say in the stillness.

  "Aye."

  "I told you we'd have to go and get her."

  "You must be pissing your pants with joy over the outcome, then, eh?"

  "Said we'd have to get her."

  "So stop pointing it out and get it done."

  Dodd's wheedling voice. "Look, the money's here, we could just scrape this up and get off, there ain't no need to –"

  "Did you and I really spring from between the same set o' legs?" sneered Jeg at his brother. "You are the stupidest bastard."

  "Stupidest," said Neary.

  "You think I'm leaving four thousand marks for the crows?" said Jeg. "You scrape that up, Dodd, we'll break the mare."

  "Where do you reckon she is?" asked Neary.

  "I thought you was the big tracker?"

  "Out in the wild, but we ain't in the wild."

  Jeg cocked an eyebrow at the empty shacks. "You'd call this the highest extent of civilisation, would you?"

  They looked at each other a moment, dust blowing up around their legs, then settling again.

  "She's here somewhere," said Neary.

  "You think? Good thing I got the self-described sharpest eyes west of the mountains with me, so I don't miss her dead horse ten fucking strides away. Yes, she's here somewhere."

  "Where do you reckon?" asked Neary.

  "Where would you be?"

  Neary looked about the buildings and Shy jerked out of the way as his narrowed eyes darted over the tavern.

  "In that one, I reckon, but I ain't her."

  "Course you ain't fucking her. You know how I can tell? You got bigger tits and less sense. If you was her I wouldn't have to fucking look for her now, would I?"

  Another silence, another dusty gust. "Guess not," said Neary.

  Jeg took his tall hat off, scrubbed at his sweaty hair with his fingernails, and jammed it back on at an angle. "You look in there, I'll try the one next to it, but don't kill the bitch, eh? That'll half the reward."

  Shy eased back into the shadows, feeling the sweat tickling under her shirt. To be caught in this worthless arsehole of a place. By these worthless bastards. In bare feet. She didn't deserve this. All she'd wanted was to be somebody worth speaking of. To not be nothing, forgotten the day of her death. Now she saw that there's a sharp balance between too little excitement and a huge helping too much. But like most of her lamelegged epiphanies, it had dawned a year too late.

  She sucked air through the little gap between her teeth as she heard Neary creaking across the boards in the common room, maybe just the metal rattle of that big axe. She was shivering all over. Felt so weak of a sudden she could hardly hold the knife up, let alone imagine swinging it. Maybe it was time to give up. Toss the knife out the door and say, "I'm coming out! I'll be no trouble! You win!" Smile and nod and thank 'em for their betrayal and their kind consideration when they kicked the shit out of her or horsewhipped her or broke her legs and whatever else amused them on the way to her hanging.

  She'd seen her share of those and never relished the spectacle. Standing there tied while they read your name and your crime, hoping for some last reprieve that wouldn't come while the noose was drawn tight, sobbing for mercy or hurling your curses and neither making the slightest hair of difference. Kicking at nothing, tongue stuck out while you shat yourself for the amusement of scum no better'n you. She pictured Jeg and Neary, up front in the grinning crowd as they watched her do the thief's dance at rope's end. Probably arrayed in even more ridiculous clothes secured with the reward money.

  "Fuck them," she mouthed at the darkness, lips curling back in a snarl as she heard Neary's foot on the bottom step.

  She had a hell of a contrary streak, did Shy. From when she was a tot, when someone told her how things would be, she started thinking on how she'd make 'em otherwise. Her mother had always called her mule stubborn, and blamed it on her Ghost blood. "That's your damn Ghost blood," as though being quarter savage had been Shy's own choice rather than on account of her mother picking out a half-Ghost wanderer to lie with who turned out – no crashing surprise – to be a no-good drunk.

  Shy would be fighting. No doubt she'd be losing, but she'd be fighting. She'd make those bastards kill her, and at least rob 'em of half the reward. Might not expect such thoughts as those to steady your hand, but they did hers. The little knife still shook, but now from how hard she was gripping it.

  For a man who proclaimed himself the great tracker, Neary had some trouble keeping quiet. She heard the breath in his nose as he paused at the top of the steps, close enough to touch if it hadn't been for the plank wall between them.

  A board groaned as he shifted his weight and Shy's whole body tensed, every hair twitching up. Then she saw him – not darting through the doorway at her, axe in his fist and murder in his eyes – but creeping off down the balcony after the bait of bloody footsteps, drawn bow pointed exactly the wrong way.

  When she was given a gift, Shy had always believed in grabbing it with both hands rather than thinking on how to say thank you. She dashed at Neary's back, teeth bared and a low growl ripping at her throat. His head whipped around, whites of his eyes showing and the bow following after, head of the arrow glinting with such light as found that abandoned place.

  She ducked low and caught him around the legs, shoulder driving hard into his thigh and making him grunt, her hand finding her wrist and clamping tight under Neary's arse, her nose suddenly full of the horse and sour sweat stink of him. The bowstring went but Shy was already straightening, snarling, screaming, bursting up and – big man though he was – she hoisted Neary right over the rail as neat as she used to hoist a sack of grain on her mother
's farm.

  He hung in the air a moment, mouth and eyes wide with shock, then he plummeted with a breathy whoop and crashed through the boards down below.

  Shy blinked, hardly able to believe it. Her scalp was burning and she touched a finger to it, half-expecting to feel the arrow stuck right in her brains, but she turned and saw it was in the wall behind her, a considerably happier outcome from her standpoint. Blood though, sticky in her hair, tickling at her forehead. Maybe the lath of the bow scratched her. Get that bow, she'd have a chance. She made a step towards the stairs, then stopped dead. Jeg was in the doorway, his sword a long, black curve against the sun-glare street.

  "Smoke!" he roared, and she was off down the balcony like a rabbit, following her own trail of bloody footprints to nowhere, hearing Jeg's heavy boots clomping towards the stairs. She hit the door at the end full tilt with her shoulder and burst into the light, out onto another balcony behind the building. Up onto the low rail with one bare foot – better to just go with her contrary streak and hope it somehow carried her through than to pause for thought – and she jumped. Flung herself writhing at a ramshackle balcony on the building across the narrow lane, as if flapping her hands and feet like she was having a fit might carry her further.

  She caught the rail, wood smashing her in the ribs, slipped down, groaning, clawing for a grip, fought desperately to drag herself up and over, felt something give –

  And with a groan of tortured wood the whole weather-blasted thing tore from the side of the building.

  Again, Shy was given a flailing instant aloft to consider the situation. Again not good, at a brief assay. She was just starting to wail when her old enemy the ground caught up with her – as the ground always will – folded up her left leg, span her over then smashed her in the side and drove her wind right out.

  Shy coughed, then moaned, then spat more grit. That she had been right about her earlier sandy mouth not being her last was scant comfort. She saw Jeg standing on the balcony where she'd jumped. He pushed his hat back and gave a chuckle, then ducked back inside.