by R. T. Kaelin
He swallowed it, having no desire to spit blood and phlegm on some kind woman’s clean kitchen floor.
“I am Natalie de Bouvier,” the dear voice said, and feathers rustled. “And what you see before you, mes amis, is witchcraft and black magic, the vengeance of an ungrateful girl who fancied herself my rival and killed herself to transform me into the base creature you see before you. A tragedy, n’est-ce pas?”
Bourglay fell back on his pallet when he tried to sit. The hawk hopped away when he reached for her. He rolled on his side and coughed again.
“Mais oui, mon cher Jules followed us all the way to the New World after le pauvre petit Cendrillon did what she did—” A shrug of wings the color of maple syrup over a barred, butter-white breast. “He has made all eleven of my brothers men again, though not one of the ungrateful wretches stayed with me—” She heaved a great theatrical sigh. “And now he’s going to die before he can save me too. If he’d had the sense not to love me in the first place—”
Oui, for you did so discourage my love, my darling. All those promises and all those stolen kisses—
—only to spurn me in the end.
* *** *
Once there was a tin soldier with only one leg, but a steadfast heart, who loved a tinsel ballerina.
* *** *
Stella squeaked and burrowed deeper when the hawk began to speak. The bird hopped onto the chair on which the jacket was draped and unleashed a spatter of white excrement, oblivious to the convulsive coughing of the old leatherman hunched on the floor. “I beg your pardon,” the bird said, but did not seem concerned.
Hannah started forward, edging past the angry-eyed bird to help him as he rolled from the pallet. He was crawling for the second chair, she realized—more a determined wriggle, for he could not force himself up off his belly—the chair that held the hooded leather cloak. “Oh, merci à Dieu,” the hawk said. “ Il n’est pas tout à fait mort.”
“Sit,” Hannah told the old man firmly. She gestured her father over, and—Stella still swinging like a burr among her skirts—went to fetch the cloak. Dell helped the old leatherman sit and gave him back his needle. Hannah laid the cloak across his lap and rethreaded for him.
And then she straightened and yelped, “Mercy!” and went to pull the burning coffee beans from the stove.
She started another batch while the old man sewed, pausing every stitch to cough as if he were breathing smoke. Hannah’s father brought him a clean bandanna for a handkerchief, which he took as gratefully as he did the mug of coffee Hannah brought him. The hawk fluttered from place to place, and Stella stayed on the opposite side of Hannah’s skirts.
“What’s wrong with the brat?” the bird asked idly, squatting like a vulture on the table.
“She hasn’t spoken since her father died,” Hannah answered, her hackles rising. “Would you mind terribly not fouling that?”
It took the old leatherman hours to sew a single seam through the half-inch-thick hide to join the top of the hood together. Another racking cough doubled him over his own outstretched legs, blood darkening the red bandanna he held to his mouth. He dropped it and gestured to the jittering hawk.
She stood before him, rocking from foot to foot, wings spread and beak open in birdy anticipation. The old leatherman looked at her and smiled, and waved Dell and Hannah over as well, the cloak spread wide between his hands. Hannah came up beside her father, her hands on Stella’s shoulders to hold the squirming child before her skirts.
The old man coughed. His fingers wriggled. Closer. Closer.
With a sense of deathbed ceremony, hawk and woman and man and child obeyed.
The old leatherman pushed himself to his knees, pain creasing his forehead under beads of sweat. He spun the cloak so that its edge flared wide, a snapping noise like the clatter of vast leathery wings following the flick of his wrists. Stella cringed against Hannah so hard that she tripped on Hannah’s skirts and tumbled to her knees. The hawk edged forward, pinions wide against the floor as the old leatherman whirled the garment high and cast it—
—over Stella’s startled shoulders.
The little girl screamed aloud, and then pulled the hood over her head and dropped down on the floor under thick leather. For a moment, there was no sound but the old leatherman’s breathing and the bubble of the percolator.
And then Stella peeked from under the edge of the cloak and screamed again as the hawk, shrieking animal noises, flew at her face. “Mama, mama, help me!”
“Vielle chienne,” the leatherman whispered, slumping back on his heels, his face white as dough. “I wish I’d known thirty years back that Cendrillon was worth twelve of you.”
He died before Hannah managed to chase the draggle-tailed hawk out of her kitchen with the broom.
* *** *
Once there was a brave little tailor. Or a seamstress. Or a cobbler.
Once there was a curse.
Once there was a girl.
*
Quick
by Mark Lawrence
“I said pick it up!”
“Your pardon, sir!” Hiro set the tray of sake cups on the counter and bent to collect the fallen bowl.
“All of it!” The soldier barked the words at him, like a sergeant on the parade round.
Customers moved past Hiro as he scrambled after individual noodles, picking them from the gaps between the floorboards, rescuing them from beneath wooden soles. He knelt at the table, scooping the noodles into the bowl.
“Faster!” A hand gripped his shoulder. The soldier squeezed, and Hiro yelped in pain.
Hiro gathered all he could see, even the mashed ones.
I’d like to make you eat it now, you pig. He said nothing though and kept his eyes lowered.
“I should make you eat this,” the soldier said, as if reading Hiro’s thoughts. The other soldiers at the table laughed. The man set his foot to Hiro’s hip and pushed him away. “Get me another bowl, and be quick about it. I shan’t expect to pay.”
Hiro hurried into the kitchen. He slipped through the crowd of table-boys waiting for orders, and snatched up a bowl from the wash pile. He peered into the black lacquered dish, shiny enough to show his own distorted reflection. His face looked thin, even stretched like this, as though by a trick mirror.
“Hiro, wire-shrimp for table seven.” Olmato waved an order slip at him from across the room.
He remembered how Olmato had arrived as a snot-nosed apprentice. And now he gave him orders.
“In a moment.” Hiro shook his head. How did Olmato come to give him orders? Might as well ask how the Owner came to own the restaurant, how the emperor took the throne against so many odds, swords, and hatreds.
For a moment, he considered spitting into the bowl before ladling noodles from the pot. His mouth went dry at the thought the soldier might know or guess. He heaped the noodles in and left the kitchen’s heat for the crush of the main room.
“Your food, Honored Sir.”
The solider took the bowl without looking at him and continued the story he was telling.
“And I told him if any Watto clan dogs came to the gate again I would not be so lenient!” The soldiers laughed and banged the table with their fists.
Hiro walked away. I wish I had spat in it.
“Hiro!” Mamoso from the drinks bar.
He pretended not to hear. Mamoso always had an errand for him.
“Hiro!”
Oh what is it you great mound of whale blubber? Hiro just wanted to slip into the stock room and collapse onto the flour sacks. To lie there and think of Kenmia and her dark hair.
“Yes master Mamoso?” He turned and bobbed his head.
“I need more quails’ eggs, the ones with the blue-dyed shells.”
Then ask the store-master to order them, your immensity!
“Shall I go to the store for them?” Hiro knew Mamoso would not have remembered to order them.
“No, no. Go to Madam Jimla’s, on the Street of Sevens. Tell
them it is for the Golden Temple restaurant. They will put it on our account.”
“Yes master.” Hiro bobbed again and started to make his way toward the street door.
“Hiro!” Mamoso again.
Hiro turned back. “Yes master?”
“Be careful this time.” Mamoso shook his head and his jowls wobbled. “I saw you out there. Must you live your life one accident at a time?”
“Sorry master.” Hiro bowed. “I will be careful.”
He made for the street.
“Your pardon. Excuse me, Sir. A thousand apologies.” He inched toward the door, past fat senchals from the Spice Streets, edging between soldiers and tea-girls, ducking through conversations and beneath high held trays laden with steaming noodles, duck wings, and orange rinds in sweet-rock.
Tonight he would dream of Kenmia. He would take ink and parchment and set down a poem in dark calligraphy, he would find the words to win her and—
“Watch it you little squirt!” A mercenary, or bodyguard, a fierce man from across the Red Sea, and huge like all his race.
“A thousand pardons!” And with a twist, Hiro was out through the door, into the street and a cold rain so fine he could breathe it in.
The route to Madam Jimla’s led Hiro higher through the Old City, along narrow streets where the rain drifted in faint sheets, as if hung on invisible lines. Buildings loomed to either side, their crowding stories shutting away the evening sky. He shivered as he ran.
He turned along Magisters Street where judgments were bought and sold. He ran faster now, his feet blurring over cobbles. He skirted the outermost wall of the Holy City. Hiro imagined the emperor deep in the heart of his palace. Emperor Sutsiro would be warm and full. Emperor Sutsiro would not even know the rain fell on his golden roofs.
The cold could no longer touch Hiro. He sprinted past the Imperial Gate. The guards tensed as he shot by. Three drunken cloth-men staggered along Wen Street. Hiro wove through them as though they were statues. The other table-boys teased him about his clumsy ways, always in too much of a hurry they said, but on the rare occasions when he found his focus, they were in awe.
Hiro reached the Street of Sevens. Madam Jimla’s shop huddled between the last two of the seven ancient towers. Each story stood wider than the one below, looking as though it were about to spill into the street at any moment. Hiro wondered if he would get past the entrance hall this time.
As he approached the front door, a whiff of spiced oranges reached him, undercut with cloves. Small lanterns twinkled under the eaves, red, gold, and a blue so deep it seemed almost not to shine. He knocked, taking care not to graze his knuckles on the iron studs set across the wood.
“Yes?” A hatch pulled open at face-level, so quick that the woman behind must have been standing there waiting for him.
“I…” Hiro couldn’t think of anything to say. The blue of the lanterns filled his head.
“What do you want?” An old woman, fifty maybe, iron gray hair scraped back.
“I’ve come from the Golden Temple,” he said.
“A monk?” She frowned, and leaned in closer to peer down at his sandals.
“No. The restaurant, Golden Temple. Mamoso sent me.”
The hatch slammed shut and the door opened just wide enough to admit him.
Hiro slid through into the warmth of the entrance hall. Shelves lined every foot of wall-space, laden with glazed jars, the labels in pictographs Hiro couldn’t read.
“What do you want?” the woman asked. She moved closer, seeming to glide within her kimono silks. She came too close, her beak of a nose just a hand-span from Hiro’s face.
“I…” He couldn’t remember. Mamoso had wanted something. Rice flowers? Birds’ nests for soup? Hiro’s mouth wanted to say blue, and he knew that couldn’t be right.
A door opened on the left. A short woman stepped through, so short she was almost lost in a confusion of embroidered silks. And so old. Only Madam Jimla was that old.
“Elama?” Madam Jimla’s voice creaked with age.
“The boy doesn’t know why he is here, Madam.”
Hiro stared. He didn’t know anyone who had actually seen Madam Jimla. Maybe the Owner had. Maybe not even him.
“Now Elama, who really knows the answer to that question? Perhaps we should praise young Hiro for his honesty.”
Madam Jimla’s face creased with laughter, though she made no sound. Hiro had not imagined it could crease any further.
She knows my name!
Madam Jimla came to the door, walking with effort, her hand moving as though she thought she held a cane. She looked up at him, her eyes dark and huge.
“Can’t remember your errand, young Hiro?” she asked.
Hiro couldn’t even remember how to speak. When she looked at him it felt as if the rain outside were falling through his skull, filling his mind with cold and drifting sheets.
“Blue?” Madam Jimla asked. “I think there’s more to it than that.”
She touched his arm with a hand like a claw. “And yes, the emperor is warm in his palace. He knows nothing of the rain.” Madam Jimla watched his face. “And you wonder how he got there in his golden chair whilst you run errands in the streets. You know he wasn’t born to it. He took it. Or rather he was given it as we are all given our lives. One thing leads to another. One accident at a time.”
The claw turned, gripping Hiro above the elbow, pinching. He remembered a hard hand on his shoulder.
“Ah. A soldier. Noodles. You should forgive him, Hiro. His wife has a sharp tongue and he has no answers for her.”
Hiro tried to speak. He remembered what his errand was.
“Quail eggs. Blue. One basket,” Madam Jimla said and released him.
Elama glided away to get the eggs.
Hiro patted his arm where Madam Jimla had held him. “Quails’ eggs. Yes, that was it.” He frowned. “I thought there was something more…”
“Everyone wants something more, boy.” Madam Jimla favored him with another dark look. “The question is, are you quick enough to take it?”
Elama returned with a small wicker basket covered by a square of cloth.
“Thank you Grand-Daughter.” Madam Jimla took the basket and gave the handle to Hiro. “Be careful out there, Hiro. Many troubles walk the streets tonight, and not just the Watto clan.”
“A thousand thanks, Madam Jimla!” Hiro bowed and backed toward the door.
“He knows my name!” A smile cracked her face, yellow teeth spaced like the seven towers.
Hiro backed into the door. The egg basket left his grip. He caught it an inch from the floor tiles.
“Focus!” Madam Jimla said.
Elama opened the door for him and Hiro fled into the street to run back along the route he had taken before.
The evening played through his head, the bowl of noodles spilling from his hands, the mercenary at the door, forgetting his mission, nearly dropping the eggs. Kenmia said that if you piled enough accidents on top of each other sometimes it ended up looking like success. Hiro guessed he was still building his pile.
He watched the shadows as he ran. Watto clansmen were said to move in bands, baiting the royal guard. Other dissenters lurked behind shuttered windows. Men still loyal to the memory of Emperor Horo, sons of the old princes from the northern territories that were once a kingdom, even lumber-men agitating for protections against imports from down-river.
Focus? The new emperor would need focus if he were to rule this nest of snakes. Madam Jimla should—
Hiro smashed into a man as he turned the corner. They both went flying, the man clattering across the wet cobbles and Hiro slamming up against a stone wall. All breath left him in a single “oomph!”
The man picked himself up. He took his helmet and set it on his head again, straightening the plume. Other soldiers stood behind him, almost lost in the rain and the gloom.
“This apology had better be the best I have ever heard,” the guard captain said, his words
clipped, spoken through white teeth. “If it is, I will let you choose a hand to keep.”
Hiro tried to speak. His lips moved, but no sounds came. He got to his knees, air leaking into his lungs, black spots before his eyes.
“I am not impressed.” The captain drew his sword, a sharp glimmer in the night.
The captain swung and Hiro heard the air hiss. He stepped to the left, a quick step, and the blade passed him by an inch. Sparks flew where the sword hit cobbles. The captain almost lost his grip.
“Die!” A shriek of outrage, and the captain slashed, up and across, a disemboweling blow.
Hiro jumped back, and the sword cut air again.
“Hold still!” The captain advanced, swinging left, right, rising and falling blows, as if he were hewing a path through bamboo.
Hiro ducked, jumped, and ducked again. He kept his eyes on the sword. The terror left him. He had no time for fear. The blade slashed past his head, close enough to cut the trailing ends of his hair. Each cut seemed slower though. Even the rain seemed to fall in its own time, like syrup dripping.
Hiro backed from the attack, but he could not retreat forever. The wall waited for Hiro. He could feel it behind him. Dark stone, the anvil to the captain’s hammer.
He will kill me. He wants to slice me open. He wanted to cut my hands off. My hands.
Anger bubbled into the void left by Hiro’s fear.
He wants to kill me, to cut my flesh, and for what? I knocked him over!
Hiro jumped over the low swing and watched the captain’s plume bob. It felt like a dream now. Like the dream where the witch gives chase and you run but you make no progress, mud wraps you, you run with agonizing slowness, and the witch gets closer, then closer still. Only now, Hiro was the witch.
The captain swung again, slower, like the drawing of a deep breath. Hiro leaned inside the blow. On the captain’s belt a white handle gleamed, a carved ivory handle. Hiro pulled the hilt and he held a shoto, twelve inches of razored steel.
