Nebula Awards Showcase 2003

by Nancy Kress

  “Nary a bridal bell. He doesn’t even stop.” Photax gave a theatrical shudder. “He was riding like a man possessed. He’s a cursed one, he is.”

  She doubted it involved any curses. Lionstar’s destructive behavior was problem enough by itself. “I will send a messenger to the palace. If he wrecked your crops, he owes you for them.”

  Photax looked mollified. “I’d be right obliged if you would do that, Gov’ner.”

  “That’s why you’re so set on Lumenjack’s land, isn’t it? Because you’re going to be short this year.”

  “I can’t feed a family by juggling balls,” Photax said.

  “So if you get your recompense,” Lumenjack said, “will you quit trying to steal my land?”

  “Steal?” Photax bristled at him. “I don’t steal. You gave it to me!”

  “Why would I do something so stupid?” Lumenjack demanded. “What, I’m going to feed my family rocks?”

  Photax shifted in his chair, his mobile face showing less confidence now. “I heard you say it. So did my wife and other people.”

  Lumenjack made an exasperated noise. “If I said the land, instead of last year’s crops on the land, it was a mistake.”

  “You gave your word,” Photax repeated.

  Kamoj sighed. Technically, if Lumenjack had given his word, he did owe Photax the land. But the mistake was so obvious, she couldn’t imagine Photax holding him to it if he hadn’t already been in trouble due to Lionstar’s rampage. “How about this? Photax, I will see to your compensation for the crop damage. For the disputed land, why don’t you and Lumenjack split the yield this year and then call the debt done, with Lumenjack keeping his land. That way, neither of you suffers unduly from the mix-up.”

  “I don’t like giving him half my crops for nothing,” Lumenjack grumbled. After a pause, he added, “But I will agree.”

  Photax moved his hands as if he were feeling the weight of light-spheres. “All right.” He stopped his ghost juggling and frowned at Kamoj. “Do you think Lionstar will make good?”

  “I can’t say.” She doubted it, but she didn’t want to sound negative. “If he doesn’t, Argali House can help you from our yield this year.”

  “It be right decent of you, Gov’ner.”

  “I wish I could do more.” Her province needed so much. Not for the first time, she wondered if she should hasten her merger with Jax, to ensure Ironbridge support. After what had happened today, though, she dreaded facing his temper.

  She talked more with Photax and Lumenjack, catching up on news of their families. They took their leave on better terms than when they had entered, though now they were arguing about whose son could throw a bowball farther.

  She next met with the representatives of several committees she had set up: the storage group, which worked to ensure Argali had stocks of grain for the coming winter, when the village would live off crops grown during autumn; the midwives, who discussed childbirth techniques, with the hope that sharing knowledge would decrease Argali’s heartbreaking infant mortality rate; and the festival group that planned the harvest celebrations.

  The housemaid finally announced her last visitor, Lystral, or Liquid Crystal, an older woman who was well-liked in the village. Instead of arriving with her usual good nature, today Lystral stalked into the room. She wasted no time on amenities. “Well, so, Governor, have you done anything about that maniac?”

  Standing by her armchair, Kamoj blinked. “Maniac?”

  “Lionstar!” Lystral’s scowl deepened the lines around her eyes. “That misbegotten demon-spawn of a maddened spirit raised from the dead to bedevil the good folk of this land.”

  Kamoj held back her smile. Granted, Lionstar was a problem, but she suspected it had more to do with human misdeeds than misbegotten spirits. “What happened?”

  “He and a pack of his stagmen stopped at my daughter’s house in the country, where my grandchildren were playing. He jumped down at the well, helped himself to water, and broke the chain on the bucket. He’s a demonic one, I tell you. No normal man could break that chain—and Lionstar didn’t even notice! He scared the little ones so much, they almost jumped from here to the Thermali Coast. Then he just got on his greenglass and rode off. Never even pulled down his cowl. Not that any of us want to see his pud-ugly face.” She put her fists on her hips. “At least his stagman had the decency to apologize before they went tearing after him.”

  “I’m sorry he frightened your family, Lystral. I’m sending an emissary to the palace. I will include a protest about his behavior and a statement of the recompense he owes you for fixing the well.”

  “I be thanking you, ma’am.” Lystral shook her head. “I wish he would leave Argali alone.”

  Kamoj also wished so. However, he had a right to the palace as long as he paid the rent. She just hoped Argali could weather his tenancy.

  •

  The centuries had warped the library door-arch beyond simple repair. Kamoj leaned her weight into the door to shove it closed. Inside the library, shelves filled with codices and books covered the walls. The lamp by Maxard’s favorite armchair shed light over a table. A codex lay there, a parchment scroll made from the soft inner bark of a sunglass tree and painted with gesso, a smooth plaster. Glyphs covered it, delicate symbols inked in Argali colors. Kamoj could decipher almost none of the symbols. Now that she had taken primary responsibility for Argali, Maxard had more time for his scholarship.

  He was learning to read.

  Behind her the door scraped open, and she turned to see her uncle. With no preamble, he said, “Come see this.”

  Puzzled, she went with him to an arched door in the far wall. The storeroom beyond had once held carpentry tools, but those were long gone, sold by her grandparents to buy grain. Maxard fished a skeleton key out of his pocket and opened the moongloss door. Unexpectedly, oil lamps lit the room beyond. Kamoj stared past him—and gasped.

  Urns, boxes, chests, huge pots, finely wrought buckets: they crammed the storeroom full to overflowing. Gems filled baskets, heaped like fruits, spilling onto the floor, diamonds that split the light into rainbows, opals as brilliant as greenglass scales, rose-rubies the size of fists, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, star-eyes, jade, turquoise. She walked forward, and her foot kicked an emerald the size of a polestork egg. It rolled across the floor and hit a bar of metal.

  Metal. Bars lay in tumbled piles: gold, silver, copper, bronze. Sheets of rolled platinum sat on cornucopias filled with fruits, flowers, and grains. Glazed pots brimmed with vegetables and spice racks hung from the wall. Bracelets, anklets, and necklaces lay everywhere, wrought from gold and studded with jewels. A chain of diamonds lay on top a silver bowl heaped with eider plums. Just as valuable, dried foodstuffs filled cloth bags and woven baskets. Nor had she ever seen so many bolts of rich cloth: glimsilks, brocades, rose-petal satins, gauzy scarves shot through with metallic threads, scale-velvets, plush and sparkling.

  And light strings! At first Kamoj thought she mistook the clump on a pile of crystal goblets. But it was real. She picked up the bundle of threads. They sparkled in the lamplight, perfect, no damage at all. This one bundle could repair broken Current threads throughout the village, and it was only one of several in the room.

  Turning to Maxard, she spread out her arms, the threads clutched in one fist. “This is—it’s—is this ours?”

  He spoke in a cold voice. “Yes. It’s ours.”

  “But Maxard, why do you look so dour!” A smile broke out on her face. “This could support Argali for years! How did it happen?”

  “You tell me.” He came over to her. “Just what did he give you out there today?”

  He? She lowered her arms. “Who?”

  “Havyrl Lionstar.”

  She would never have guessed Lionstar would see to his debts with such phenomenal generosity. This was so far beyond any expected recompense for Photax and Lystral’s family, she couldn’t begin to comprehend his intent. “Why did he send it here?”

&n
bsp; “You tell me. You’re the one who saw him.”

  Hai! So Maxard had heard about the river. “I didn’t know he was watching.”

  “Watching what?”

  “Me swimming.”

  “Then what?”

  Baffled, she said, “Then nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Incredulity crackled in his voice. “What did you promise him, Kamoj? What sweet words did you whisper to compromise his honor?”

  She couldn’t imagine any woman having the temerity to try compromising the huge, brooding Lionstar. “What are you talking about?”

  “You promised to marry him if he gave you what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  His voice snapped. “Isn’t that why he sent this dowry?”

  Dowry? Sweet Airys, now what? “That’s crazy.”

  “He must have liked whatever the two of you did.”

  “We did nothing. You know I would never jeopardize our alliance with Ironbridge.”

  Her uncle exhaled. In a quieter voice he said, “Then why did he send this dowry? Why does he insist on a merger with you tomorrow?”

  Kamoj felt as if she had stepped into a bizarre skit played out for revelers during a harvest festival. This couldn’t be real. “He wants what?”

  Maxard motioned at the storeroom. “His stagmen brought it today while I was tying up stalks in the tri-grain field. They spoke as if the arrangement were already made.”

  It suddenly became all too clear to Kamoj. Lionstar didn’t want the ruins of an old palace, the trees in their forest, or Photax’s crops.

  He wanted Argali. All of it.

  Strange though his methods were, they made a grim sort of sense. He had demonstrated superiority in forces; many stagmen served him, over one hundred, far more than Maxard had, more even than Ironbridge. With his damnable “rent” he had established his wealth. He had even laid symbolic claim to her province by living in the Quartz Palace, the ancestral Argali home. Any way they looked at it, he had set himself up as an authority. Today he added the final, albeit unexpected, ingredient—a merger bid so far beyond the pale that the combined resources of all the Northern Lands could never best his offer.

  “Gods,” Kamoj said. “No wonder Jax is angry.” She set down the light threads, the remnants of her good mood vanishing like a doused candle. “There must be a way I can refuse this.”

  “I’ve already asked the temple scholar,” Maxard said. “And I’ve looked through the old codices myself. We’ve found nothing. You know the law. Better the offer or yield.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not going to marry that crazy man.”

  Maxard brushed back the disarrayed locks of his hair, his forehead furrowed with lines that hadn’t shown anywhere near as much yesterday. “Then he will be within his rights to take Argali by force. That was how it was done, Kamoj, in the time of the sky ships.” He squinted at her. “I’m not sure my stagmen even know how to fight a war. Argali has never had one, at least not that I know about.”

  “There must be some way out.”

  It was a moment before her uncle answered. Then he spoke with care, as if treading through shards of glass. “The merger could do well for Argali.”

  Kamoj was sure she must have misheard. “You want me to go through with it?”

  He spread his hands out from his body. “And what of survival, Governor?”

  So. Maxard’s words came with sobering force, as he finally spoke aloud what they dealt with implicitly in every discussion about the province. Drought, famine, killing winters, high infant mortality, failing machines no one understood, lost medical knowledge, and overused fields: it all added up to one inescapable fact, the long slow dying of Argali.

  The province wouldn’t end this Long Year, or next, maybe not even in a century. But their slide into oblivion was relentless. With the Ironbridge merger, they still might struggle, but their chances improved. She and Jax had regularly visited each other to discuss the merger. At worst, Jax would annex her province, making it part of Ironbridge. She would do her best to keep Argali separate, but if she did lose it to him, at least her people would have the protection and support of the strongest province on this continent. Although Jax didn’t inspire love among his people, he was a good leader who earned loyalty and respect.

  And Lionstar? Yes, he had wealth. That said nothing about his ability to lead. For all she knew he would drive her province into famine and ruin.

  “Hai, Maxard.” She rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I need to think about all this.”

  He nodded, the tension of the day showing on his face. “Go on upstairs. I’ll send a maize-girl to tend you.”

  She went stiff, understanding his unspoken implication. “Lyode always tends to me.”

  “I need her elsewhere tonight.”

  “You need her? Or Jax?” When he didn’t answer, her pulse surged. “I won’t have my people flogged.” Kamoj headed toward the door. “If you won’t tell him, I will.” She dreaded confronting Jax, but this time it had to be done.

  Maxard grabbed her arm, stopping her. He held up his other hand, a tiny space between his thumb and index finger. “ Ironbridge is this close to declaring a rite of battle against us. I’ve barely thirty stagmen, Kamoj. He has over eighty, all better trained.” He dropped her arm. “It would be a massacre. And you know Lyode. She would insist on fighting with them. Will you save Lyode and Gallium from a few lashes so they can die in battle?”

  Kamoj shuddered. “Don’t say that.”

  His voice quieted. “With the mood Ironbridge is in now, seeing you will only enrage him. He can’t touch you yet, so Gallium and Lyode are the ones he will take out his rage on.”

  Knowing Maxard was right made it no easier to hear. Kamoj wondered, too, if her uncle realized what else he had just revealed. He can’t touch you yet. She spoke with difficulty. “And after the merger, when the rages take Ironbridge? Who will pay the price of his anger then?”

  Maxard watched her with a strained expression, one that reminded her of the wrenching day he had come to tell her that the village patrol had found the bodies of her parents frozen beneath masses of ice in a late winter storm. She had never forgotten that wounded time of loss.

  He spoke now in an aching voice. “Does it occur to you that you might be better off with Lionstar?”

  She rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “What have I seen about him to make me think such a thing?”

  “Hai, Kami.” He started to reach for her, to offer comfort, but she shook her head. She loved him for his concern, but she feared to accept it. Taking shelter from the pain now would only make her responsibilities that much harder to face when that shelter was gone.

  Maxard had caught her off-guard with his insight into her relationship with Jax. Her uncle had always claimed he delayed her merger to give her experience at governing, lest Ironbridge be tempted to take advantage of a child bride. Now she wondered if Maxard had a better idea than he let on about the life she faced with Jax. As an adult she had more emotional resources to deal with Jax’s temper.

  But Maxard hadn’t guessed the whole of it. Last year, in Ironbridge, she had enraged Jax when she visited the city outside his fortress without his permission. Nor had that been the first time she bore the brunt of his temper. Most people saw him as the strong, inspired leader who had built Ironbridge into a great power. Kamoj also knew his other side, the Jax who would make Lyode and Gallium pay for defying him. The only difference was that in this case he would have a stagman mete out the punishment rather than taking care of it himself, as he did in private with Kamoj, when he used his hands or riding quirt against her.

  In her childhood, he had never touched her in anger, instead using censure or cold silence to reproach behaviors that offended him. But since she had become an adult, his temper had turned physical. She had never told Maxard, knowing it would drive her uncle to break the betrothal no matter what price it cost Argali. She could never set her personal situat
ion before the survival of her people.

  Gentle one moment, violent the next, Jax kept her on the edge between love and hatred. She dreaded his rage, savored his wisdom, feared his cruelty, longed for his mercurial tenderness, resented his need to control, and admired his remarkable intellect. But beyond her conflicted emotions, she knew one fact: Argali needed him. Her loyalty and love for her people came first, above all else, including her personal happiness. So she had learned to cope with Jax. The situation wasn’t perfect, but it would work. Lionstar threatened that careful balance like a plow tearing up their world.

  “Can you talk to Jax?” she asked. “Mollify him? Maybe you can keep him from hurting them.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He watched her, his dark eyes filled with concern. “This will work out, Kami.”

  “Yes. It will.” She wished she believed those comforting words.

  After she left her uncle, she walked through the house, down halls paneled in tanglebirch, then up to a second floor balcony. At the top of the stairs, she gazed out over the foyer below, treasuring the sight of this home where she had lived all her life—the home she might soon leave. The entrance to the living room arched to the right. A chandelier hung from the room’s ceiling like an inverted rose aglow with candles. It reflected in a polished table, drawing blue scale-gleams from the wood. Near the table, a light panel glowed in the wall, the last working one in all the Northern Lands.

  Regret and longing for all that her people had lost washed over Kamoj. When that panel failed, a thousand new light threads would do no good. Even Opter Sunsmith couldn’t fix a broken panel. The knowledge had been lost long ago, even from the Sunsmith line.

  Kamoj walked along the balcony to her room. Candlelight filled the chamber, welcoming her. It glowed on the parquetry floors, worn furniture, and her old doll collection on the table, which she kept in memory of her mother, who had given her the beloved toys. Her bed stood in a corner, each of its four posts a totem of rose blossoms and fruits, ending at the top with a closed bud.