Three steps in, and he saw the trick of it: that the hands were carefully articulated and pinned at each joint, that the face was a mask, eyes forever closed in wooden slumber. ‘Mother’ was no more than a puppet, and he grinned at the cleverness of it – the girl had no doubt hoped that the silent presence of this surrogate parent might warn off the very attentions that she was now enduring.
The thought soured his appreciation somewhat, but he had not heard the girl protesting yet, and perhaps that meant she was, despite appearances, one of those who knew how such arrangements worked. If she pleased Firenz, said the right things, made the right noises, then she would profit from it.
Then he heard the scream and his heart sank a little, but only a little. A few years in Firenz’s service had rubbed a lot of the shine off his principles.
Firenz could not have asked for better: the room beyond the curtain was Amaria’s bedchamber, just as he had imagined it might be. She slept in remarkable luxury there, for the bed had a silk-swaddled pillar at each corner, the canopy merging with the riotous hangings obscuring the ceiling. It was a fit bower for her beauty and his conquest of it, he thought.
‘My lord, what do you want?’ she whispered. She was trembling very slightly in his grip, and he thought that was a very becoming thing for her to do. With one hand, he turned her chin so that she faced him full on, eyes staring into his with a disarming innocence that suggested the first time would be by far the most revelatory with her – any future liaisons inexpressibly cheapened by the fact that the bloom of her inexperience had gone. He had no doubt, looking now into her half-confused, half-frightened features, that she must be virgin.
‘Fear not, I shall treat you as gently as I would one of your delicate devices,’ he whispered to her. ‘I shall lay open your casement and find the very heart of your workings. I shall tune you and tension you, and then with my key I shall wind you, and all your parts will know true fulfilment.’ He had thought some time, on the walk here, over just what terms of endearment were suitable for bedding an artificer. They would make an amusing anecdote when drinking with his fellows later.
‘Please,’ she whispered, and he took it to mean encouragement, guiding her to the bed and setting her down on it. He let his hands glide from her shoulders to plunge into her gown, forcing it down past her breasts, feeling it resist him a little at first, and then give in to him gracefully, just as it should.
‘Mother, please!’ she got out, her voice choked. She was tipping towards prudish ingratitude now, shaking beneath him and yet unable to muster the spirit to fight. Instead of this putting him off, abruptly his desire was not to be further frustrated, and he cast her back on the bed with a surprised gasp, ripping down his breeches and hose to spring his member free. He burrowed his hands into her skirts to cast them up, finding her bare thighs and pushing them apart.
She had gone into some peculiar mix of rigidity and limpness, her body fixed in place, yet jerking and swaying with each motion of his. It was not quite the welcoming response he might have hoped for, but the girl would liven up once he was in her, he knew. After all, he was bestowing a great honour on her, and no doubt she would come to appreciate it later, even if not during the act.
His need was ever more pressing, and he had her skirts all rucked up about her waist, his hands stooping on her breasts like hawks even as he thrust himself in between her legs, only to glance painfully off some hard obstruction. He hissed in hurt surprise. Did she have some belt or girdle on, some bar to his manhood that he would have to tussle with? He reached down urgently with one hand, groping at her, each rough movement jerking her entire body. Her hands were poised halfway up towards him, as though arrested in the moment of trying to push him away, swaying every time he fumbled at her, yet never quite completing the rejection.
He found the space between her thighs and scrabbled there for something to strip away or remove. There was nothing. There was nothing at all, no hair, no slit, nothing but smooth skin. She was as featureless as a statue or a doll.
With a horrified inhalation he jerked back from her, but she came with him, without ever losing that weirdly posed looseness of limb. He felt himself enmeshed, caught in a net of strands so fine as to be invisible, and yet too strong for him to free himself from. Every time he moved, she moved like his reflection, arms shaking and swaying as he tried to tug his own limbs free of the unseen strings that he was tangled in.
He stopped, locked in horror, staring at her face that was set, now, in its last fearful expression. Her eyes were unseeing, her mouth partway open. She was perfect and beautiful but, now he saw her, there was nothing of the living woman about her at all.
Then she twitched and moved again, even though he was still, but it was as a marionette jerks when its wires are plucked, nothing living about it. Three times he watched her spasm, and then her eyes focused and she looked up and spoke the word, ‘Mother.’
Firenz looked up at what was lowering itself out from the silk-cloaked ceiling, letting itself down those invisible strands limb by limb. His eyes took in the translucent bulk of its body, within which vague shadows moved which might have been alien organs or infinitely delicate mechanisms. He saw its many articulated legs picking their way as it descended upon him. He met its multiple gaze. He saw its fangs spread wide.
It took Sardos a moment too long to realize that the scream, though it had been shrill as a woman’s, came from his master’s throat. He bolted into the bed chamber, and stopped.
The girl was smoothing her skirts down, standing away from the bed, her hands trembling. Firenz lay on his back on the bed itself, his hose pulled down to mid-thigh, motionless.
Sardos was about to rush to his master’s side – yes, and kill the girl, too, if any harm had come to the young lord - but then a voice spoke as the girl straightened up. It was a gentle, firm voice, a woman’s voice. It most certainly did not issue from Amaria, or from anyone Sardos could see there in the room.
‘I am sorry,’ it said. ‘I would have acted sooner, my child, but I did not understand his purpose. They are so confusing.’
Amaria’s shoulders shook, and she rubbed at her eyes as though to clear tears or - as Sardos was abruptly certain - to try and make tears come.
‘I made you too well,’ said that bodiless voice, seeming to come from the very walls. ‘You are too near perfect, and the world has no place for perfection, even in our art.’
‘Mother,’ Amaria whispered. She had not noticed Sardos in the doorway. ‘Oh, mother…’
‘Please, tell me what I can do to make you well,’ said the voice plaintively. ‘Let me help you. Let me understand you. Humanity is such a fragile creation, and yet how very complex in its replication. I made you too well, that I cannot fathom your workings now.’
Amaria hugged herself. ‘I cannot either,’ she said softly.
‘We will go elsewhere,’ the mother-voice decided. ‘I shall find companions for you. Sisters. Brothers. No, I shall make them.’ It sounded desperate to please. ‘Or perhaps…’
All this time Firenz had been lying motionless on the bed – though Sardos could not have forced himself to go to his master’s side for all the gold in the world – but now he moved. In fact he thrust one arm straight up in the air very abruptly, then sat up in a most unnatural way, that hardly seemed to use any muscles a human body might own to. That arm remained stiffly vertical, the hand flopping at the end of it, whilst its opposite limb was completely loose, as was his swaying head.
Sardos wanted very badly to run, then, but he could not tear his eyes away.
‘Look!’ the mother-voice called gently, and Firenz stood without warning, head still down over his chest. In another sudden transformation he adopted a bizarre posture, one arm still raised, the other hand on his hip, and one leg tucked up so that its foot touched the knee of the other, stretching the lowered hose. His shrunken manhood drooped and danced.
Before Sardos’s eyes, Firenz began to execute a slow and careful pirouette,
revolving precisely on the spot.
‘You see,’ said the mother-voice with desperate gaiety, ‘he could be a companion for you. Would he amuse you? Would you like that?’
‘Mother, no!’ Amaria got out, with all the horror that Sardos felt. ‘How could you think that would be what I want?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to make you happy,’ the despair of any parent whose child is hurt, and who cannot make it better. ‘He will be good for parts, though. We can still make use of him. Perhaps you would like to make something of him?’
A look came into Amaria’s face such as Sardos had never seen. It had hope in it, though, and a certain ambition, and it made her more beautiful than she had been, whilst at the same time being a look he never wanted to see again.
‘Perhaps…’ she said, her eyes far away, fixed on some artificer’s dream inside her head.
By that time Firenz had finished his flawless pirouette, and when he came to face Sardos again, his head was up and his eyes were open. They locked onto the gaze of his servant and his expression contorted and twitched, shuddering with the need to express himself. ‘Help me, please,’ came the strangled whisper. ‘Sardos, please, help me…’
Amaria’s head snapped round to stare at the intruder in the doorway, but by then Sardos was running, and he did not stop running until he had reached the southern city-states of his birth, and ever after he listened out for rumours of a new artificer’s emporium in whatever town he lived in and, when he heard of such, he moved on.
Contributors
Paul Weimer
An expat New Yorker who has found himself living in Minnesota for the last 9 years, Paul Weimer has been reading SF and Fantasy for over 30 years and exploring the world of roleplaying games for over 25 years. Almost as long as he has been reading, and watching movies, he has enjoyed telling people what he has thought of them and trying his own hand at writing fiction as well. In addition to his reading, writing, and gaming interests, Paul enjoys taking architectural and landscape photography, with the occasional picture of a SF or Fantasy author who comes to town. Besides his chatty presence on Twitter (@Princejvstin) Paul can be found at his own blog, Blog Jvstin Style, the Functional Nerds, the SF Signal Community, Livejournal and many other places on the Internet.
Alasdair Stuart
Alasdair Stuart is the host of award-winning podcast Pseudopod (www.pseudopod.org) and works as a freelance writer and journalist, specializing in genre fiction in all its forms. Yes, including that one. An enthusiastic amateur baker and martial artist, he’s worked for The Guardian, magazines such as Neo, Sci Fi Now and Death Ray and blogs for sfx.co.uk, as well as his own site, www.alasdairstuart.com. His collection of every 2012 Pseudopod essay, The Pseudopod Tapes Volume 1, is also available from Fox Spirit Books.
Fran Terminiello
Francesca Terminiello lives in Surrey with her family and a growing collection of swords. She has previously contributed a short story to the Tales of the Nun & Dragon anthology, also published by Fox Spirit, and is currently putting the finishing touches to her debut novel, a dark and bloody fantasy noir co-written with David Murray.
She spends her spare time contributing to several blogs, as well as practicing and researching Historical European Martial Arts, in particular 16th Century Bolognese swordsmanship and 17th Century Italian rapier.
Fran talks swords at The Girls Guide to the Apocalypse http://www.ggsapocalypse.co.uk and promotes women in Historical European Martial Arts at Esfinges http://esfinges1.wix.com/e. Her own blog can be found at http://franterminiello.wordpress.com/ where she juggles both pen and sword.
C.J. Paget
C.J. hates writing bios. Bios remind him that he’s got none of the qualifications to be a science-fiction writer. He doesn’t have a PhD in Astro-physics. He wasn’t born into a literary or scientific family. He’s never worked in interesting fields or places. He wasn’t there when major world events went down. He’s never lived in far-off places and bathed in the tides of other cultures. He doesn’t even own a cat.
He did win the 2011 James White Award. So that’s something.
Andrew Reid
Andrew Reid is a writer obsessed with the fantastic and the adventurous. Born in Scotland, he lives in Yorkshire with four chickens, three cats, and an ever-growing stack of unsold novels. You can find him on Twitter as @mygoditsraining, where he will be overjoyed by any mention of movies from the eighties or nineties.
Juliet E McKenna
Juliet E McKenna has always been fascinated by myth and history, other worlds and other peoples. Her debut novel, The Thief’s Gamble, was published in 1999 and 2012 sees the publication of her fifteenth epic fantasy, Defiant Peaks, concluding The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. She reviews for the web and magazines notably Interzone and Albedo One, teaches creative writing from time to time and fits all this around her husband and teenage sons. She writes diverse shorter fiction from stories for themed anthologies to a handful of tales for Doctor Who, Torchwood and Warhammer 40k, always enjoying the challenge of writing something new and different to her novels.
Rob Haines
Rob Haines is a writer, podcaster and ex-turtle biologist. His work is collected at www.generationminusone.com, and he can be found on Twitter as @Rob_Haines.
Ren Warom
Ren’s a writer of the strange, dark and bizarre, not known for an ability to fit into boxes of any description. She’s a certified Pirate-nun, mum to three spawn, slave to several cats, writing and editing obsessive and general all round weirdo. The word askance was invented for the way people tend to look at her. Represented by the fabulous Jennifer Udden of Donald Maass Literary Agency, Ren’s looking to traumatise a book shop near you very soon. Find her on twitter @RenWarom and on the web at http://renwaromsumwelt.wordpress.com.
Suzanne McLeod
Suzanne McLeod is the author of the Spellcrackers.com urban fantasy series about magic, mayhem and murder – liberally spiced with hot guys, kick-ass chicks and super-cool supes! The Shifting Price of Prey - #4 - is her latest book. Suzanne has been a cocktail waitress, dance group roadie, and retail manager before becoming a writer. She was born in London (her favourite city and home to Spellcrackers.com) and now lives with her husband on the sunny (sometimes) South Coast of England, about a mile away from the sea.
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire, studied and trained in Reading and now lives in Leeds. He is known for the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series starting with Empire in Black and Gold and currently up to Book 8, The Air War. His hobbies include stage-fighting, and tabletop, live and online role-playing. More information and short stories can be found at www.shadowsoftheapt.com.
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