Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2015

by Nino Cipri

  Nev looked for a weapon in reach—a hack saw, a fluid needle, anything—and came up empty. His scimitar was halfway across the room.

  If they wanted the body, then, he’d give it to them.

  He whistled at Tera. She glanced over at him, grimaced, tightened her fists.

  Nev pulled the utility dagger at his belt and sliced his own forearm from wrist to elbow. Blood gushed. He said a little prayer to God’s eye, more out of tradition than necessity, and abandoned his mortally wounded body.

  There was a blink of darkness. Softness at the edges of his consciousness.

  Then a burst of awareness.

  Nev came awake inside the body on the slab. He couldn’t breathe. He rolled off the slab and hit the floor hard, vomiting bloody water, a small fish, and something that looked like a cork. His limbs were sluggish. His bowels let loose, covering the floor in bloody shit, piss, and something ranker, darker: death.

  He gripped the edge of the slab and pulled himself up. His limbs felt like sodden bread. Putting on a new, dead skin of the wrong gender often resulted in a profound dysphoria, long-term. But he didn’t intend to stay here long.

  The attackers were yelling. The kid got down on his knees and started babbling a prayer to the Helix Sun god. Nev had his bearings now. He flailed his arms at them and roared, “Catch me, then!” but it came out a mush in the ruined mouth of the dead woman whose body he now occupied.

  He waited until he saw Tera kick open the latch to the safe room and drag his bleeding former body into it. The one with such a pretty face. Then he turned and stumbled into the courtyard.

  A dozen steps. He just needed to make it a dozen steps, until his spirit had full control of the body. Second wind, second wind—it was coming. Hopefully before he lost his head. If he didn’t get them out far enough, they’d just run back in and finish off Tera and what was left of his old body. He really liked that body. He didn’t want to lose it.

  The gang scrambled after him. He felt a heavy thump and blaring pain in his left shoulder. Someone had struck him with an ax. He stumbled forward. Falid trumpeted as he slipped past. He considered putting Falid between him and the attackers—maybe some better body merc would have—but his heart clenched at the idea. He loved that stupid elephant.

  He felt hot blood on his shoulder. A good sign. It meant the blood was flowing again. Second wind, second wind …

  Nev burst out of the courtyard and into the street. The piercing light of the setting suns blinded him. He gasped. His body filled with cramping, searing pain, like birth. He’d been reborn a thousand times in just this way; a mercenary who could never die, leaping from host to host as long as there were bodies on the battlefield. He could run and fight forever, right up until there were no more bodies he’d touched. He could fight until he was the last body on the field.

  He pivoted, changing directions. The burst of new life caused his skin to flake. He was going to be powerfully thirsty and hungry in a quarter hour. But that was more than enough time to do what needed doing.

  Nev picked up speed. The body’s legs responded, stronger and fitter than they’d been for their former inhabitant. He coughed out one final wet muck of matter and took a deep, clear breath. He glanced back, ensured the gang was still chasing him, and turned down a side alley.

  They barreled after him, all four of them, which told him they were amateurs more than anything else thus far. You didn’t all bumble into a blind alley after a mark unless you were very, very sure of yourselves.

  He knew the alley well. Hairy chickens as tall as his knee hissed and scattered as he passed. He rounded the end of the alley and jumped – the leap across the sunken alley here was six feet. Not easy, but not impossible. The street had caved during the last rainstorm. Knowing to jump should have saved him.

  But he came up short.

  He missed the other side by inches, threw his arms forward, tried to scramble for purchase.

  Nev, the body that housed Nev, fell.

  His legs snapped beneath him. Pain registered: dull, still, with the nerves not yet fully restored. He cracked his head against broken paving stones at the bottom of the sinkhole. A black void sputtered across his vision.

  Fuck.

  “Shit,” the woman with the dark eyes said. She peered down at him; her mane of black hair had come loose, and with the double helix of the suns behind her, she looked like a massive lion. “Finish killing it. Take it with us. Body’s barely fit for Corez now.”

  “He’s a body merc,” one of the others said, behind her. “He’s just going to jump again.”

  “Then go back and burn his house down, too.”

  The boy came up behind her, levelled a crossbow with a violet plume at the end, and shot Nev in the chest.

  It took two more to kill him.

  Dying hurt every time.

  * * *

  Nev gasped. Sputtered, wheezed, “Where are we?”

  It was dead dark.

  “Lie flat, fool. We’re under the floor of the warehouse.”

  He gasped for air and reached instinctively for his cut wrist. Tera had bound it with clean linen and salve that stank nearly as bad as the corpse they’d hauled from the pier.

  “They’re going to burn the workshop.”

  “You’re lucky we aren’t burning in there too. You only lasted five minutes.”

  “More than long enough, for some.”

  “Easy to please, were they?”

  “My favorite sort.”

  She snorted. Sneezed. Hacked something up and spit into the dusty space. “They didn’t know what you were until you jumped. Seemed right surprised.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time we pulled a body that should have stayed buried.”

  Nev smelled smoke. His workshop, burning. If they didn’t leave soon it would catch the warehouse they were squatting under, too. Years they worked to build up that workshop. If he was lucky, some of the bodies on ice in the cellar might keep, but probably not. All those lovely bodies lost … He shivered and clutched at his wrist again.

  “Anything they say give you an idea what they wanted with the body?” Tera asked.

  “Only used one name. Said the body wasn’t fit for … Corez?”

  Tera muttered something.

  The smell of smoke got stronger. “You knew that tattoo,” he said. “It’s like the one on those priests. The new Gods’ eye cult. The real liberal ones with the habit of burning effigies in the park.”

  “Not just the tattoo,” Tera said. “I knew the woman.”

  “Who was she?”

  “My sister,” Tera said, “and Corez is the piece of shit that runs that cult temple she ran off to twenty years ago.”

  * * *

  The fire had seared a scar clean through the workshop and into the warehouse behind it. The billowing flames destroyed three buildings before the fire brigade pumped in water from the ocean. One of the buildings was a factory where children put together beautifully patterned tunics. The children still milled about on the street opposite, faces smeared in char, hacking smoke.

  Nev crunched across the floor of the ruined workshop, kicking aside broken glass and the twisted implements of his trade, all swirling with sea water. The cellar had caved in, barring the way to the bodies below. The intense heat would have melted all the ice blocks he packed down there in straw anyway, and ruined his collection. If someone shot him in the heart now, he’d have nowhere to jump.

  He saw Tera standing over a heaped form in the courtyard, and walked over to her. She frowned at the crumpled body of Falid the elephant, shot six times with what was likely a crossbow. They’d removed the bolts. Falid’s tongue lolled out. His tiny black eyes were dull.

  Nev knelt before the little elephant and stroked his fat flank. “This was unnecessary,” he said.

  “So was the factory,” Tera said.

  Nev’s eyes filled. He wiped his face. “No. That was collateral damage. This.… This was unnecessary.”

  “It’s
just…” Tera began, but trailed off. She stared at him.

  Body after body, war after war, fight after fight, Nev dealt with the consequences. He knew what he risked, and he was willing to pay the price. But what had Falid to do with any of that? He was just a fucking elephant.

  “I want my sister’s body,” Tera said. “I know you don’t care much for people. But I cared some for my sister, and I want her buried right.”

  “Revenge won’t bring her back.”

  “Revenge will get her buried right.”

  “Revenge doesn’t pay for a new workshop, or more bodies.”

  “Revenge gets you more bodies.”

  “But not a place to put them.”

  “Then do it for the money. You’ve seen that God’s eye temple on the hill. You think they only keep people in there?”

  “And if there’s no money?”

  Tera spat. “Then you’ll have to settle for revenge.”

  Falid, the little trumpeting elephant. “It was not necessary,” Nev said.

  “It never is,” Tera said.

  * * *

  The cult of God’s eye was housed in a massive temple three rings further up into the city. They had no money to wash and dress the part, so they waited for cover of night, when the only thing illuminating the streets were the floating blue bodies of the nightblinders; beautiful, thumb-sized flying insects that rose from their daytime hiding places to softly illuminate the streets until nearly dawn.

  In the low blue light, the craggy red sandstone temple threw long shadows; the grinning eyeless faces carved into its outer walls looked even more grotesque. There was just enough light for Nev to notice that the crossbowmen at the parapet above the gate carried quivers of bolts with purple plumes, just like the ones the boy had used to shoot him and Falid.

  “Over or under?” Nev said.

  Tera chewed on a wad of coca leaves. Whatever viral thing the wizards had given her was finally clearing up. “Under,” she said.

  They slipped away from the temple’s front doors and walked four blocks up to the broken entrance to the sewers. Many had been left unrepaired after the last storm. As they huffed along the fetid brick sewer, hunched over like miners, Nev said, “Why’d you want to talk to the dead, really? We don’t need to talk to the dead.”

  “You don’t,” Tera said. She slapped the side of the sewer and muttered something. She had a better sense of direction than he did. “I do.”

  “You can’t think the dead are still there, if I can run around in their bodies.”

  “I think there’s always a piece of us still there, in the bodies. In the bones.”

  “You’ll talk to me when I’m dead, then? You’re, what—eighty?”

  “I’m fifty-one, you little shit.”

  “Maybe worry over yourself first.”

  “That ain’t my job. And you know it. Here it is. Boost me up.”

  He offered his knee, and she stood on it while working away the grate above. She swore.

  The weight of her on his knee eased as she hauled herself up. The light was bad in the sewers; only a few of the nightblinders made it down here. “Come now,” she said, and he could just see her arms reaching for him.

  Nev leapt. She pulled him until he could grab the lip of the latrine himself. He rolled over onto a white tiled floor. Two lanterns full of buzzing nightblinders illuminated the room. He smeared shitty water across the floor. “They’ll smell us coming,” he said.

  The door opened, and a plump little robed priest gaped at them.

  Tera was faster than Nev. She head-butted the priest in the face. Nev grabbed the utility knife at his belt and jabbed it three times into the man’s gut. He fell.

  Tera clucked at him. “No need to go about killing priests,” she whispered. As she gazed at the body, a strange look came over her face. “Huh,” she said.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “Dead guy knows where Corez is.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  She spat and made the sign of God’s eye over her left breast. “Sordid truth, there. See, those viral wizards aren’t talking shit. Told you I’d get smarter.”

  “The man is dead. It’s impossible that—”

  “What? Messes with your little idea of the world, doesn’t it? That maybe who we are is in our bones? Maybe you don’t erase everything when you jump. Maybe you become a little bit like every body. Maybe you’re not stealing a thing. You’re borrowing it.”

  Nev turned away from her. His response was going to be loud, and angry. Unnecessary. The guild taught that death was darkness. There were no gods, no rebirths, no glorious afterlives. The life you had was the one you made for yourself in the discarded carcasses of others. Most days, he believed it. Most days.

  They dumped the body down the latrine. “Lot of work to bury your sister,” Nev said.

  “Fuck you. You wouldn’t know.”

  He considered her reaction for a long moment while they waited in the doorway, looking left to right down the hall for more wandering priests. It was true. He wouldn’t know. He’d neither burned nor buried any of his relatives. They’d all be long dead, now.

  “It made you angry I jumped into her body, didn’t it?” he said.

  “Didn’t ask me, or her. No choice, when you don’t ask.”

  “It didn’t occur to me.”

  “Yeah, things like that never do, do they?”

  She slipped into the hall. Nev padded quietly after her, past row after row of nightblinder lanterns. They circled up a spiral stair, encountering little resistance. At the top of the staircase was a massive iron banded door. Tera gestured for him to come forward. He was the better lock pick.

  Nev slipped out his tools from the flat leather clip at this belt and worked the lock open. The lock clicked. Tera pushed it open and peered in.

  Darkness. The nightblinder lanterns inside had been shuttered. Nev tensed. He heard something beside him, and elbowed into the black. His arm connected with heavy leather armor. Someone grabbed his collar and yanked him into the room. Tera swore. The armored man kicked Nev to his knees. Nev felt cold steel at the back of his neck.

  The door slammed behind them.

  The black sheathing on the lanterns was pulled away. Nev put his hands flat on the floor. No sudden movements until he knew how many there were. A large woman sat at the end of a raised bed. Her mane of black hair reminded him strongly of the woman who’d chased them through the street, but the body he knew far more intimately. It was Tera’s sister, her soft brown complexion and wise eyes restored, transformed, by a body mercenary like him.

  Four more men were in the room, long swords out, two pressed at Tera, two more at Nev. They were all men this time, which didn’t bode well. Enlisted men tended to be more expendable than their female counterparts.

  “You stink,” the woman who wore Tera’s sister’s body said. “You realize it was only my curiosity that let you get this far. Surely you’re not stupid enough to risk your necks over a burnt workshop?”

  “My sister,” Tera said. “Mora Ghulamak. You’re not her, so you must be Corez.”

  “God’s eye, that honeyring didn’t have a sister, did she?” Corez said. “Your sister pledged her body to the God’s eye. She disguised herself and tried to flee that fate. But she’s in service to me, as you can see.”

  “My sister’s dead,” Tera said. “We came for her body. To burn her.”

  “Burn her? Surely your little body merc friend here understands why that’s not going to be permitted. A body is just a suit. This suit is mine.”

  “Her body,” Tera said.

  Corez waved her hand at the men. “Dump them in the cistern. There’s two more unblemished dead for my collection.”

  Drowning was the best way to kill a body you wanted for later. It left no marks—nothing that required extensive mending. It was also the worst way to die. Nev tried to bolt.

  The men were fast, though, bigger than him, better armored, and better tr
ained. They hauled them both from the room, down two flights of stairs, and brought them to the vast black mouth of a cistern sitting in the bowels of the temple.

  Nev tried to talk his way out, tried coercion, promises. They said nothing. They were in service to a body mercenary. They knew what she could do with them, and their bodies. They wouldn’t know death. Priests of every faith said they’d never see an afterlife, if they lived as walking corpses.

  They kicked Tera in first. Nev tumbled after her.

  He hit the water hard.

  Nev gasped. It was cold, far colder than he expected. He bubbled up and swam instinctively to the side of the cistern. The sides were sheer. The top was at least thirty feet above them.

  Tera sputtered beside him.

  He hated drowning. Hated it. “Look for a way up.”

  They spent ten minutes clawing their way around the cistern, looking for a crack, a step, an irregularity. Nothing. Nev tried swimming down as far as he could, looking for a drain pipe. If there was one, it was deeper than he could dive. He could not find the bottom.

  The third time he surfaced, he saw Tera clumsily treading water. Her face was haggard.

  “It’s all right,” Nev said, but of course it wasn’t.

  “How old are you, really?” Tera said. She choked on a mouthful of water, then spit.

  He swam over to her. Looped an arm around her waist. He could last a bit longer, maybe. His body was stronger and fitter. Younger. “Old enough.”

  “The face I see now is young and pretty, but you ain’t twenty-five.”

  “Body mercs have been known—”

  “I know it’s not your body. You spend more time admiring it than a War Minister’s husband spends polishing her armor for her.”

  “That’s the trouble with the living. Everyone wants to know everything.” He had a memory of his first body, some stranger’s life, now, playing at being a mercenary in the long tunic and trousers of a village girl. It was a long road from playing at it to living it, to dying at it.

  “Only ever asked you two questions,” she said, sputtering. He kicked harder, trying to keep them both afloat. “I asked how long you been a body merc, and how much pay was.”