The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2009
Page 52
“Rachel,” he said in his mind as he climbed the ladder to the deck.
Cody Jaye’s stateroom was big as such things go, dark wood, red velvet, a painting on the wall of bathing goddesses. Hector was still weary, but he was not ready to sleep; he would see the tables, and most of all, he would see Rachel again, before he rested. He opened up his suitcase, changed into what he found within and went out on deck where the tables were.
He did not seek her out directly, no; that would not do. More importantly, it would not work. Hector checked on the state of Cody Jaye’s accounts with the purser and brought some to a table where the dealer had the head of a plumed heron, and sat down to play. If he opened up enough seats at the table, he knew, Rachel would sit at one of them and play.
His understanding with the cards and his understanding of the players at his table held him through many hands, and the sun rose over the Indigo River, patrons came and left, but mostly they left their money to Hector. He was doing well; he set traps and sprung them, faced down the players and the dealer alike, and had a fine mountain in front of him when Rachel switched by his table and he caught her scent.
She had a blue dress on, still, but this one was much finer than the one she’d worn when she took his money the last time; she was tall and fair, and Hector couldn’t see her face, she’d been there and gone before he could catch it, but he felt the track of her eyes, where they’d brushed him.
Hector lost three hands and a lot of money; he was on his way to losing a fourth, but something, the sound of his own voice in the back of his mind drew him back to the table. It was still playing with that girl’s name, his sponsor; still mouthing it, and the sound of the name had come from whisper to murmur. The ring of her hair cinched up again, and the cards began to fall his way. Still, the other players were wary of him, now, and it took the rest of the day to make up what he had lost in those three hands.
Rachel came to the table between the lighting of the lanterns and the lighting of the electric lights, when the sun was sinking red on the west bank of the Indigo. She sat down next to him, and there was not a breath that Hector took that did not hold her scent. In his mind, the voice saying the banjo-playing girl’s name had risen to a conversational tone; distracting, maybe, but he found the distraction his only defense against being so near to Rachel that when she turned her head, her hair sometimes brushed against him. He embraced the distraction; if he was going to win that chip with the heart in the center, this was the only way.
Hector played; his understanding with the cards grew to a full partnership, and the dealer with his blood-red eyes made a nervous glance at Rachel. At ten o’clock, she drew out the white chip with the heart inscribed in the center and placed it in the pile. She won that hand, and Hector spent an hour regaining what he lost.
The voice in his head had grown to the volume of a conversation where the parties were slightly drunk and passionate about their topic, but it helped him win, and the tension around his finger kept him focused. At eleven o’clock, Rachel put out the chip again, and she won the hand.
Now, her shoulder was rubbing against his, and the voice in his head raised itself to the level of an argument, a you-see-here that repeated the name of the girl at the river. He wished it would shut up, but the moment he did, it quieted to a whisper and Hector nearly lost his hand, not before he wished it up higher, louder than it had been, now projecting in his head like a stump speech. At midnight, Rachel put the chip in the center again, but this time, Hector had her, and when the cards were turned, he reached across the table and pulled them in.
Rachel smiled at him. She offered him her hand. He took it, and the two of them stood up from the table. The purser had time to count his winnings before he left the table and declared a sum that was exactly nine times what Hector had sat down holding. Hector barely heard. His head was now shouting the name.
Hector took Rachel to his stateroom. In the cramped place, they kissed, and the voice in his head would not quit yelling that name at him. They kissed, and they touched and they left his fine suit and her fine dress in a pile in the strip of floor between the door and the bed, but the name would not go out of his head, and when Hector’s moment arrived, he did not know which name to call, so he said nothing. When they were spent, Hector turned his face to the wall and fell asleep. He dreamed, but not about the girl next to him.
Rachel awoke before dawn, and sat, watching the light filter in through the high little window. She sat up looking at the back of the man who’d won her, grateful that he was pretty, grateful that he was, if not gentle or kind, at least no thug. Little gratitudes that some say should be bitter things, but were sincere in the girl’s heart. Then she found a black hair, long and straight, plastered to his back.
Rachel narrowed her eyes. There was one stuck to her breast as well; two more she could find in the bedclothes without looking for them. Both she and the sleeping Cody Jaye had fine, fair hair. Little gratitudes went like flashpaper. Rachel reached out and shook him awake.
Hector rolled over to see a strange look on his lover’s face, he spoke a name. Hector could feel his eyes widen, he ran his memory over the taste of the name and it made his breath snag in his throat.
Rachel felt a panic and a rage wash over her like a witch’s spell; the young man had a dagger with him, sitting by the bed, it had been sheathed when she helped him have off his belt, but now it was drawn. With both hands wrapped around the hilt, she drove it straight through Hector’s breast bone. Blood filled the room, and the young man opened his mouth one last time. In a gurgling, bloody voice, he repeated the name.
Rachel sat on the bed for another moment, heart beating to break against her ribs. She was covered in blood. She was covered, too, in long black hairs, from the other one. She picked at them, trying to pull them off her body, wipe them off her hands, but she only seemed to pick up more. Rachel redoubled her efforts, but panic did no better than deliberation.
A dark hair fell across her forehead, bisected her sight and curled in, between her lips. Rachel screamed. She burst from the stateroom and ran through the decks, naked, trailing bloody footprints. She leaped overboard when she reached the railing up above. The paddlewheel found her body and her blood blossomed out into the river.
Askance tasted it on the river bottom; he tasted her blood and the blood of Hector Brown, he tasted a single strand of hair, straight and dark, and knew then that he’d been duped. He’d been plundered. Askance rose off the river bottom in rush. He stove in the hull of his riverboat with a slap from his mighty tail and tipped it into the water. The boiler exploded, the boat burned and then it sank. The luckier ones burned or drowned before the pike got to them.
The people on the river dragged the waters for the bodies; those who died on the boat were gentlemen and ladies, after all, but only a few were ever recovered. They kept it up for more than a month, partly for the rewards offered, but mostly for the encouragement they got, a girl sitting on a little boat of her own singing for the crews and playing on a banjo with a ghostwood neck.
THE ROAD TO LEVINSHIR
PATRICK ROTHFUSS
I
I was walking one of those long, lonely stretches of road that you only find in the low hills of eastern Vintas, far from civilization. I was, as my father used to say, on the edge of the map. I had passed only one or two travelers all day, and not a single inn. The thought of sleeping outdoors wasn’t a particularly troubling one, but I had been eating from my pockets for a couple days, and a warm meal would have been a welcome thing.
Night had nearly fallen and I had given up hope of something decent in my stomach when I spotted a line of white smoke trailing into the darkening sky ahead of me. I took it for a farmhouse at first. Then I heard a faint strain of music in the distance and my hopes for a bed and a hearth hot meal began to rise again. But as I came around a curve in the road I found a surprise better than any roadside inn.
Through the trees, about fifty feet from the road, there was
a tall campfire flickering between two achingly familiar wagons. Men and women lounged about talking. One strummed a lute, another tapped a tabor idly against his leg. Others were pitching a tent between two trees while an older woman set up a tripod next to the fire. One of the men laughed.
Troupers. What’s better, I recognized familiar markings on the side of one of the wagons. I won’t tell you what they are, but they meant these were true troupers. My family, the Edema Ruh.
As I stepped from the trees, one of the men gave a shout, and before I could draw breath to speak there were three swords pointing at me. The sudden stillness after the music and chatter was more than a little unnerving.
A handsome man with a black beard and a silver earring took a slow step forward, never taking the point of his sword off my eye. “Otto!” He shouted into the woods over my shoulder, “If you’ve fallen asleep I swear on my mother’s milk I’ll gut you.” He focused back on me, his expression fierce. “Who the hell are you?”
Before I could respond a voice came from the trees behind me, “I’m right here, Alleg, as . . . Who’s that? How in the hell did he get past me?”
When they’d drawn their swords on me, I’d raised my hands. It’s a good habit to have whenever anyone points something sharp at you. It sets them at ease. Nevertheless, I smiled as I spoke. “Sorry to startle you, Alleg . . . .”
“Save it,” he said coldly. “If your hand moves toward that sword of yours, things are going to be come very uncomfortable for you. As it is, you only have one breath left to tell me why you were sneaking around our camp.”
I had no intention of laying a hand on Caesura at all. My recent training had taught me how to use a sword, but more importantly it had taught me the extent of my abilities. Even with Felurian’s cloak and my sword, fighting three men at once would be nothing but foolishness.
But of course I had no need to fight at all, instead I turned so that everyone by the fire could see the lute case slung across my back.
The change in Alleg’s attitude was immediate, he relaxed and sheathed his sword. The others followed suit as he smiled and approached me, laughing.
I laughed too. “One family.”
“One family.” He shook my hand, and turning to the fire he shouted, “Best behavior everyone. We have a guest tonight!” There was a low cheer, and everyone went busily back to whatever they had been doing before I arrived.
A thick-bodied man wearing a sword came stomping out of the trees. “I’ll be damned if he came past me, Alleg. He’s probably from . . . .”
“He’s from our family,” Alleg interjected smoothly.
“Oh,” Otto said, obviously taken aback. He looked at my lute. “Welcome then.”
“I didn’t go past you actually,” I lied, not wanting to get him in any trouble. “I heard the music and circled around. I thought you might be a different troupe, and I was hoping to surprise them.”
Otto gave Alleg a pointed look, then turned and stomped back into the woods.
Alleg laughed again and put his arm around my shoulders. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s been irritable for weeks. Myself, I think he’s constipated, but he won’t admit to it. Might I offer you a drink?”
“A little water, if you can spare it.”
“No guest drinks water by our fire,” he protested. “Only our best wine will touch your lips.”
“The water of the Edema is sweeter than wine to those who have been upon the road.” I smiled at him.
“Then have water and wine, each according to your desire.” He led me to one of the wagons, where there was a water barrel.
Following a tradition older than time, I drank a ladle of water, and used a second ladle to wash my hands and face. Patting my face dry with the sleeve of my shirt, I looked up at him and smiled. “It’s good to be home again.”
He clapped me on the back. “Come. Let me introduce you to the rest of your family.”
First were two men of about twenty or so, with scruffy not-quite beards. “Fren and Josh are our two best singers, excepting myself of course.” I shook their hands.
Next were the two men with instruments by the fire. “Gaskin plays lute. Manst does pipes and tabor.” They both smiled at me, Manst giving the tabor a shake.
“There’s Tim,” Alleg pointed across the fire to a tall man with a deeply pockmarked face, “and Otto, who you’ve already met. They’re our strong arm. They keep us from falling into danger on the road.” Tim was as tall as Otto was large. He nodded at me, looking up briefly from oiling a well-notched sword.
“Here is Anne,” Alleg gestured to an older woman with a pinched expression and a grey bun of hair. “She keeps us fed and dressed, and plays mother to us all.” Anne continued to cut carrots for the stew, ignoring the both of us.
“And far from last is our own sweet Kete, who holds the keys to all our hearts.” Kete had hard eyes and a mouth like a thin line, but her expression softened a little when I kissed her hand.
“And that is all of us,” Alleg said with a smile and a little bow. “Your name is?”
“Kvothe.”
“Welcome, Kvothe. Rest yourself and be at your ease. Is there anything we can do for you?”
“One thing perhaps.”
Alleg looked at me curiously.
“A bit of that wine you mentioned earlier?” I smiled.
He touched the heel of his hand to his forehead, “Of course! Or would you prefer ale? We were getting ready to crack a keg when you surprised us.”
“Ale would be fine.” He returned in a minute or two with a sizable mug. “Excellent.” I complimented him, seating myself on a convenient stump.
He tipped an imaginary hat. “Thank you. We were lucky enough to nick it on our way through Levinshir a couple days ago. How has the road been treating you of late?”
I stretched backwards and sighed, “Not bad for a lone minstrel. I play whatever they pay me to, then after they drink themselves nearly to sleep . . . .” I shrugged, “I take advantage of what opportunities present themselves. A purse or two when I can. Two span ago I stole the virtue from the mayor’s wife. But that’s about all. I have to be careful since I’m alone.”
Alleg nodded wisely. “The only safety we have is in numbers,” he admitted, then nodded to my lute. “Would you favor us with a bit of a song while we’re waiting for Anne to finish dinner?”
“Certainly,” I said, setting down my drink. “What would you like to hear?”
“Can you play Leave the Town Tinker?”
“Can I? You tell me.” I lifted my lute from its case and began to play. By the chorus, everyone stopped what they were doing to listen, a wonderfully attentive audience. I even caught sight of Otto near the edge of the trees as he left his lookout to peer toward the fire.
When I was done, everyone applauded enthusiastically. “You can play it,” Alleg laughed. Then his expression became serious and he tapped a finger to his mouth, thoughtfully, “How would you like to walk the road with us for a while?” He asked after a moment. “We could use another player.”
I took a long moment to consider it. “I have been away from the family for a long while,” I admitted, looking around at everyone sitting in the firelight. “But . . . .”
“One is a bad number for an Edema on the road,” Alleg said persuasively, running a finger along the edge of his dark beard.
I sighed. “Ask me again in the morning.”
He slapped my knee, grinning. “Good! That means we have all night to convince you.”
I replaced my lute and excused myself for a call of nature. Coming back, I stopped at the fire and knelt next to Anne who still stooped by the fire. “What are you making for us, mother?” I asked.
“Stew,” she said shortly.
I smiled. “What’s in it?”
She squinted at me. “Lamb,” she said, as if daring me to challenge the fact.
“It’s been a great long while since I’ve had lamb, mother. Could I have a taste?”
&
nbsp; “You’ll wait, same as everyone else,” she said sharply.
“Not even a small taste?” I wheedled, giving her my best ingratiating smile.
She drew a breath, then darted a look at Alleg. He was watching her from across the fire. “Oh, fine,” she said throwing up her hands. “It won’t be your fault if your stomach sets to aching.”
I laughed, “No, mother. It won’t be your fault.” I reached for the long handled wooden spoon and drew it out. After blowing on it, I took a bite. “Mother!” I exclaimed. “You’ve done better on the road than wives hope for in their homes. This is the best thing to touch my lips in a full year.”
“Hmmmph,” she said.
“It’s the first truth, mother,” I said earnestly. “Anyone who does not enjoy this fine stew is hardly one of the Ruh in my opinion.”
She turned back to stir the pot and shooed me away, but her expression wasn’t as sharp as it had been before.
I returned to my seat next to Alleg. Gaskin leaned forward “You’ve given us a song. Is there anything you’d like to hear?” He asked solicitously.
“How about Piper Wit?” I asked.
His brow furrowed, “I don’t recognize that one. Maybe I know it by a different name . . . ?”
“It’s about a clever Ruh who outwits a farmer.”
Gaskin shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
I bent to pick up my lute. “Let me, it’s a song every one of us should know.”
“Pick something else,” Manst protested. “I’ll play you something on the pipes. You’ve played for us once already tonight.”
I smiled at him. “I forgot you piped. You’ll like this one.” I assured him, “Piper’s the hero. I don’t mind. You’re feeding my belly, I’ll feed your ears.” Before they could raise any more objections, I started to play, quick and light.
They laughed through the whole thing. From the beginning when Piper kills the farmer, to the end when Piper seduces the dead man’s wife and daughter. I left off the last two verses where the townsfolk kill Piper. No one noticed my omission, or, if they did, they approved and didn’t comment on it.