The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  She smiled and in her smile, Frederico saw damnation and salvation dancing together to the strains of a familiar tune.

  * * *

  The servants began delivering the manuscripts and documents even before he’d returned to his rooms. He saw them filing past out of the corner of his eye as he silently took his lunch in the small dining room near his suite.

  He’d waved Pyrus and the others away when he’d left the priestess’s quarters. And the black clouds that gathered within him must have migrated to his face for they did not ask. The Minister of Social Behavior looked concerned. Pyrus looked bemused.

  That bemusement had become something else when Frederico started listing off the books and records he wished brought to his rooms. He couldn’t tell if it was the tone of voice with which he issued the commands or if it was the documentation itself that he wished to see but Pyrus had looked almost eager to accommodate him.

  And now a stream of men and women flowed into his rooms with arms stacked high, then left for yet more.

  He chewed his orange-soaked pheasant slowly and thought about the Gospel of Felip Carnelyin. He could not find the good news in it but he knew it was because the finality of her words was still sinking in.

  If her words were true then the world sat at the edge of a great change and there was nothing that could be done for it. And he had played a part in it. He’d sought to cover his shame by blaming the Lunarists for Jazrel and in so doing, he’d uncovered an older shame—the root of his family’s tears.

  He’d spoken into the silver crescent and it had answered him. He had wept into it and something like joy had found him.

  He’d gone in search of truth and found sorrow waiting in its place.

  Suddenly angry, Frederico swept the platters and goblets from his table. They clattered against the walls and floor, causing the servants to jump and yelp at his sudden violence. It surprised everyone, including him.

  He stood, mumbled an apology, and fled to his rooms and the mountains of paper that awaited him there.

  He did not bring out the silver crescent that night. Instead, he kept the lamps up and launched his research. The priestess had given him a long list of places to start and he went to those first, finding her words confirmed with each scrap he read.

  The Ministry of Intelligence had been careful, certainly. There were no blatant confessions, no straightforward accounts. But he found what he sought—verification of the priestess’s words—in the nooks and crannies of it all. In budget lines and meeting notes, in veiled references and coincidental dates from a thousand years before.

  Initially, there was wonder to be found but beneath it, shame. And as the clues fell into place, the shame gave way to dread.

  That dread grew within him until finally, as the sun grayed the eastern sky, it spilled over again into anger and he went at last to the silver crescent.

  “Are you there?” he asked it, rubbing his eyes as if somehow that effort might erase what he’d learned. He heard stirring and then a sleepy voice.

  “Frederico?”

  He didn’t answer at first. Amal’s voice had an edge of panic to it. “Frederico? Are you there? Where have you been? I fell asleep waiting for you.”

  “How old are you?" he finally asked. He could hear the flatness in his voice. “How old are you really?”

  “Nineteen,” she said. “But I’ve told you that before.”

  She couldn’t be nineteen and he knew it now. “And your older sister?” His voice was sharper now than he intended it.

  “I have no older sister.”

  No, he realized. She was correct in that assertion.

  “But you had one,” he said. “There were two daughters.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Frederico. I am my father’s only daughter.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “you should ask him about Ameera.” But even as he said it, he knew he should not have. And with the same realization, he knew that the girl he’d spent so many nights with, talking from moonrise to moonfall, had no more understanding of what it all meant than he had just a day earlier.

  I should not punish her for knowledge she does not have. Yet he had wanted to and now, just as suddenly, his desire to hurt her melted away at the fear he heard in her voice.

  “What’s wrong?” He could hear tears just beyond her panic. “What’s happened? Have your ships found something?”

  He would send word to call the ships back in a few hours. “No,” he said. “They’ve found nothing.” There had been nothing those ships could possibly find. Only one Czarist ship could ever have found evidence of Raj Y’Zir and his two daughters and that ship had been dismantled bolt by bolt, broken bit by bit, and buried at sea long, long ago. Its very existence had been hidden so well that the only reference left to it was the gaps in the supply records and the fanciful tale of a man discredited and later murdered by those who sent him to document the journey. Still, he fared better than the rest of the crew.

  And far better than the girl he brought back with him.

  Amal’s voice shook him out of memory. “If not the ships, then what is it, Frederico?”

  He looked up at the crystalline ceiling of his chambers. Already, the sky moved toward mauve and the moon had vanished. He remembered the priestess’s words to him after he’d finished hearing her tale, after he’d raged and then sobbed there at her feet in her prison. “What do you see in your night sky, Amal?”

  “Stars,” she said. “Stars and more stars.” He deceives even his own children, he realized.

  “No moon then,” he asked. But it would be so much larger than a moon. It would fill the sky and light up the night, brown and green and blue and massive.

  “No,” she answered.

  Frederico sighed. “And nothing else?”

  “Nothing else,” she said. And as if somehow it added credibility, she added, “I swear it.”

  Frederico’s mouth went suddenly dry and his hand shook. I should not say more, he told himself. But at the end of everything he’d learned this night, he could not bear being the only one ambushed and overwhelmed by unexpected truth. “What if I told you,” he said slowly, “that your father kept an entire world out of your view?” He waited for the words to settle in. “Could he do that? With his magicks?”

  There was silence. He heard the rustle of cloth, then heard the faintest trace of wind, the lingering song of frogs upon it. “Why would my father keep something like that from me?”

  “I do not know,” he answered. “But couldn’t he?”

  He could hear the tension rising in her voice. “And why wouldn’t he tell me about an older sister?”

  “I do not know that, either,” Frederico said. But he wondered if he did know and if perhaps Raj Y’Zir had hidden both the world he watched and the daughter he lost in order to spare his youngest a grief she was too innocent to bear. But how could Frederico tell her that?

  “And why would my father keep anything from me?" Amal Y’Zir asked again.

  “I do not know,” he said once more.

  “If you don’t know those things,” she said now, her voice clearly angry, “perhaps you’ll know why I would believe a lying ghost rather than my own eyes and my own father?”

  But she did not wait for a reply this time. Frederico heard the softest of cries and knew it was the sound of her sudden, angry exertion. For a moment, his ear filled with the hollow sound of air rushing past and he felt the vertigo as if he himself fell. Then there was a crash.

  After the crash, the sound of running water and frogs.

  Somewhere above and beyond that, a girl sobbing.

  * * *

  Pyrus swept into the room before the bell of his arrival sounded, his face red and his jaw firm. His black-coat escort fell back before Frederico’s Red Brigade guard but not before menacing glances were exchanged.

  Trouble brews there.

  “Minister Pyrus,” Frederico said, putting down his glass of kallaberry wine. He smile
d. “You’ve no doubt seen my release orders for the Lunarists.”

  “It is—”

  Frederico cut him off. “Well within my right as Czar, Pyrus. I’ve sent word personally to the Minister of Social Behavior.” He leaned forward. “We’ve more emergent matters to address than that harmless cult. War is coming, Pyrus, and we must be ready.”

  Pyrus looked perplexed. “War? With whom?”

  Frederico stood and went to the table. It stood stacked high with volume upon volume—some from his first frantic night of research, more from the last two nights. He’d kept the crescent nearby in case she called out to him while he pored over the records but she hadn’t and that was not surprising.

  He gestured to the papers there, then swept the broader room with its similar piles of parchment and book. “What if I told you, Pyrus, that there was a threat at least a thousand years brewing?”

  The old man snorted. “What do you play at, Frederico?”

  One of the crimson clad guards started forward but Frederico waved him off. “I play at nothing but the truth. A thousand years ago we went to the moon and we’ve wept ever since.”

  Pyrus had gone from perplexed and angry to starkly surprised. “You believe there is threat of war to us upon the moon?”

  Frederico nodded. “I do. We took the Moon Wizard’s daughter. We tortured her to death. When Carnelyin got out of hand, we quieted him quickly enough, too.” His words came out faster than he intended.

  Pyrus began to smile.

  “You think I’m mad,” Frederico said. “I assure you, I’m not. Mark me: We’ve preparations to make and still they may not be enough. I’ve called the War Cabinet together for a meeting tomorrow morning. The Year of the Falling Moon is upon us.”

  Pyrus laughed and this time, the guard made no move.

  Without another word, the Minister of Intelligence spun about on his heels and left quickly, his black-coats falling in behind him as he went.

  * * *

  That fourth night, Frederico fell asleep with his head cradled in the silver crescent. He wasn’t sure why; even knowing the threat, he could not stay away. As much as he hoped to never hear her voice again, he longed for it, even prayed for it though he had no god to pray to.

  Overhead, the sky was shrouded in clouds that promised coming rain. He heard her voice from far away, calling his name, and he stirred awake slowly.

  “Amal?”

  Her voice drew closer and was suddenly there, filling the crescent. “Frederico?” She sounded small and far away. Something wounded and broken.

  Do not answer her, some part of him warned. “I’m here,” he said.

  “You were right. I’ve seen it now.”

  “Seen what?" he asked, but he knew what. It filled her sky and boggled her.

  “I know where you come from now,” Amal said. “I know all of it now.”

  Frederico wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say. Instead, he waited and let her continue.

  “I tricked my father’s mechoservitor into showing me. That was yesterday. Then I spent last night in father’s hidden library.” He could tell from the rawness of her voice that she’d been crying. “I don’t know how he’s kept it from me. Or why. But somehow he has.” She sniffed. “And now I’m sure he knows I know something. I’ve stayed away as much as I can but he’s been asking the servants a lot of uncomfortable questions about how I’ve been spending my time.”

  Frederico sat up. “Do your servants know about me?”

  She was quiet for a moment, then answered in a quiet voice. “I think they do. They’ve caught me with you before.”

  He sighed at the powerlessness that washed over him suddenly. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” she told him. She cried for a bit then, and he heard her quiet sobbing as if it were a canticle played out in a minor key, like the song she’d taught him. He felt his own sadness welling up though he resisted it, bending his focus towards her instead. She sniffed again. “I think I will have to face him soon.”

  “What will he do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Make me forget again. Like he made me forget Ameera or the world that fills our sky.” She laughed and it was bitter in his ear. “A daily glamour with my breakfast.”

  Frederico closed his eyes to her words and imagined losing himself in forgetfulness. No memory of Sasha or Jazrel to stir his guilt and remind him of loss he brought about by sharing his mad sorrow with them. No recollection of the last months spent with Amal Y’Zir in her imaginary arms, held fast by her voice and her laughter, paralyzed by her tears. “Would that be so very bad?" he asked in a small voice.

  “So very bad?” There was an edge to her voice. “To forget you and to forget these times?” She paused. “Even with what I know now, I’d rather remember.”

  But did she know everything? Did she know what had happened in those bright-lit basements of his forefather? The priestess had whispered that part of the story to him, relaying the only unwritten chapter of Felip Carnelyin’s gospel. Eventually, their same questions, repeated again and again, had worn trails into the moon princess’s mind and eventually, she had cried out one last breath in despair and hopelessness and every hand in the room shook at the sound of it and dropped what it held, every breath in the room caught and became a sob. A thousand years of weeping.

  “I’d rather remember,” she said again. Then, after a moment: “Oh, Frederico, I wish your ships could find me here and bring me to you.”

  “I wish it, too,” he said.

  They were quiet now and Frederico could hear the sounds of the brook running and the frogs singing against the backdrop of her gentle breathing. He heard something, far and distant, deep and ominous.

  “I have to go,” she whispered suddenly. “Father calls for me.”

  Frederico heard her quickened footfalls fade quietly into the other sounds of that lunar night. After she’d gone, he lay there with the crescent and tried to find comfort in the frogs.

  But there was no comfort to be found.

  * * *

  It happened sometime in the night and Frederico did not know it. He awakened in the morning, put the silver crescent back into its lockbox, and rang for servants that did not come.

  Finally, he went to the door and opened it. The Red Brigade guard was gone; black-coats stood watch in their place.

  “What is the meaning of this?" he asked, but he knew without asking. He’d seen Pyrus’s face, had heard his laughter, and he’d known even then that this storm had brewed for some time now. Until his interview with the priestess, he might have even welcomed this change though it angered him that it came through Pyrus. But with war coming, it placed his people and the empire his family had built at tremendous risk.

  The black-coat guard did not answer. He stared straight ahead at attention, his freshly-lacquered rifle held tightly to his side. He’s ordered them not to speak. “Send the servants in with my breakfast,” he said. “And congratulate Minister Pyrus on his coups thus far.”

  He didn’t wait for any kind of acknowledgement. Instead, he closed the door and went to his closets to dress for the day.

  Pyrus came in with the servants two hours later. He looked haggard and sleepless but a satisfied smile played at his mouth. “Well, Frederico,” he said, “how go your preparations for war?”

  Frederico smiled and looked to the water clock that hissed upon his wall. “I’m afraid we’ve already missed that meeting, Pyrus. But there is time yet.” Nearly a year if the priestess spoke true.

  These were new servants, Frederico realized, men and women he’d not seen before. They laid out his breakfast table silently, their careful glances taking in their former Czar and the rooms he occupied. Pyrus sat to the table without invitation and Frederico joined him.

  “I’ve spoken with the new Minister of Social Behavior,” Pyrus said. “For now, you’ll remain here in your quarters but they will send their physicians later this week to dete
rmine just how mad you are and what treatments may help you find your way again.” He reached out and broke off a piece of honeyed pastry. “They are doing interesting things with electrostatic pulses and kallaberries these days.”

  Frederico smiled. “You and I both know I am not mad.”

  Pyrus laughed. “I know no such thing. The evidence speaks too loudly for me to know it.” He started listing his evidence on his fingers. “Your own servants speak of strange goings-on, hidden away in your rooms with that bauble. You’ve spent the operating budget of a small nation scouring the land and sea for some mysterious family no one has heard of. You spent three hours with the Lunarist priestess and released that dangerous woman and her mad followers without so much as a consultation with your cabinet. And now,” he said, leaning forward, “you are ready to declare war upon the moon.”

  “No,” he said, correcting him, “I do not declare it; it has been declared upon us.” And we’ve earned every last part of it, he did not say. “And the Lunarists are harmless; we have a much larger threat to concern us.”

  Pyrus shrugged. “I suppose you’ve heard about this threat in your little bauble?”

  “No,” Frederico said, feeling suddenly angry first at Pyrus and his smugness but then, after a moment, with himself for letting any of this come to pass. He’d seen the signs and he’d not cared. He’d played his harp and stayed up nights imagining the touch of a woman whose sister his family had killed, whose father, according to the priestess, would someday avenge himself upon them all. Yet he could not be without her any more than he could be with her and that built his rage even further. Taste and need. The anger in him was hot and white and fierce but he forced his shaking hand to put down his cup of chai. He looked up and his eyes met Pyrus’s. “I’ve not heard it in the bauble.”

  Pyrus waved a dismissive hand. “It doesn’t matter where you’ve heard it. You’re unfit, Frederico, and the empire needs leadership.” He stood and smoothed the black robes of his dark office. “You’ll remain here until sufficient quarters can be arranged for you elsewhere. You’ll want to make a list of the few things permitted for you to take when the time comes.” He walked to the door and looked over his shoulder as he opened it. “The silver bauble stays here.”