by Irene Gallo
Her apartment looks a mess because it’s small: a stack of milk crates turned to bookshelves, overflowing with paperbacks and used textbooks. A small lacquered pine-board dresser in stages of advanced decay, its side crisscrossed with bumper stickers bearing logos of bands Vlad does not recognize. A couch that slides out to form a bed, separated from the kitchenette by a narrow coffee table. Sheets piled in a hamper beside the couch-bed, dirty clothes in another hamper, dishes in the sink.
She opens her eyes, and steps out of the circle formed by the shoulder strap of her fallen bag. Two steps to the fridge, from which she draws a beer. She opens the cap with a fob on her keychain, tosses the cap in the recycling, and takes a long drink. Three steps from fridge around the table to the couch, where she sits, takes another drink, then swears, “Motherfucker,” first two syllables drawn out and low, the third a high clear peal like those little bells priests used to ring in the litany. She lurches back to her feet, retrieves her bag, sits again on couch and pulls from the bag a thick sheaf of papers and a red pen and proceeds to grade.
Vlad waits. Not now, certainly. Not as she wades through work. You take your prey in joy: insert yourself into perfection, sharp as a needle’s tip. When she entered the room, he might have done it then. But the moment’s passed.
She grades, finishes her beer, gets another. After a while, she returns the papers to their folder, and the folder to her bag. From the milk-crate bookshelves, she retrieves a bulky laptop, plugs it in, and turns on a television show about young people living in the city, who all have bigger apartments than hers. Once in a while, she laughs, and after she laughs, she drinks.
He watches her watching. He can only permit himself this once, so it must be perfect. He tries to see the moment in his mind. Does she lie back in her bed, smiling? Does she spy him through the curtains, and climb on a chair to open the skylight and let him in? Does she scream and run? Does she call his name? Do they embrace? Does he seize her about the neck and drag her toward him while she claws ineffectually at his eyes and cheeks until her strength gives out?
She closes the laptop, dumps the dregs of her beer in the sink, tosses the empty into the recycling, walks into the bathroom, closes the door. The toilet flushes, the water runs, and he hears her floss and brush her teeth, gargle and spit into the sink.
Do it. The perfect moment won’t come. There’s no such thing.
The doorknob turns.
What is he waiting for? He wants her to see him, know him, understand him, fear him, love him at the last. He wants her to chase him around the world, wants a moonlit showdown in a dark castle.
He wants to be her monster. To transform her life in its ending.
The door opens. She emerges, wearing threadbare blue pajamas. Four steps back to the couch, which she slides out into a bed. She spreads sheets over the bed, a comforter on top of them, and wriggles under the comforter. Hair halos her head on the dark pillow.
Now.
She can reach the light switch from her bed. The room goes dark save for the blinking lights of coffee maker and charging cell phone and laptop. He can still see her staring at the ceiling. She sighs.
He stands and turns to leave.
Moonlight glints off glass ten blocks away.
* * *
His wife has almost broken down the rifle by the time he reaches her—nine seconds. She’s kept in practice. The sniper scope is stowed already; as he arrives, she’s unscrewing the barrel. She must have heard him coming, but she waits for him to speak first.
She hasn’t changed from the library. Khaki pants, a cardigan, comfortable shoes. Her hair up, covered by a dark cap. She wears no jewels but for his ring and her watch.
“I’m sorry,” he says, first.
“I’ll say.”
“How did you know?”
“Dust on your collar. Late nights.”
“I mean, how did you know it would be now?”
“I got dive-bombed by crows on the sidewalk this morning. One of the work-study kids came in high, babbling about the prince of darkness. You’re not as subtle as you used to be.”
“Well. I’m out of practice.”
She looks up at him. He realizes he’s smiling, and with his own teeth. He stops.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that already.” Finished with the rifle, she returns it to the case, and closes the zipper, and stands. She’s shorter than he is, broader through the shoulders. “What made you stop?”
“She wasn’t you.”
“Cheek.”
“No.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was strong enough to be normal. But these are me.” He bares his teeth at her. “Not these.” From his pocket he draws the false teeth, and holds them out, wrapped in plastic, in his palm. Closes his fingers. Plastic cracks, crumbles. He presses it to powder, and drops bag and powder both. “Might as well kill me now.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m a monster.”
“You’re just more literal than most.” She looks away from him, raises her knuckle to her lip. Looks back.
“You deserve a good man. A normal man.”
“I went looking for you.” She doesn’t shout, but something in her voice makes him retreat a step, makes his heart thrum and almost beat.
“I miss.” Those two words sound naked. He struggles to finish the sentence. “I miss when we could be dangerous to one another.”
“You think you’re the only one who does? You think the PTA meetings and the ask your mothers and the how’s your families at work, you think that stuff doesn’t get to me? Think I don’t wonder how I became this person?”
“It’s not that simple. If I lose control, people die. Look at tonight.”
“You stopped. And if you screw up.” She nudges the rifle case with her toe. “There’s always that.”
“Paul needs a normal family. We agreed.”
“He needs a father more. One who’s not too scared of himself to be there.”
He stops himself from shouting something he will regret. Closes his lips, and his eyes, and thinks for a long while, as the wind blows over their rooftop. His eyes hurt. “He needs a mother, too,” he says.
“Yes. He does.”
“I screwed up tonight.”
“You did. But I think we can work on this. Together. How about you?”
“Sarah,” he says.
She looks into his eyes. They embrace, once, and part. She kneels to lift the rifle case.
“Here,” he says. “Let me get that for you.”
* * *
The next week, Friday, he plays catch with Paul in the park. They’re the only ones there save the ghosts: it’s cold, but Paul’s young, and while Vlad can feel the cold, it doesn’t bother him. Dead trees overhead, skeletal fingers raking sky. Leaves spin in little whirlwinds. The sky’s blue and empty, sun already sunk behind the buildings.
Vlad unbuttons his coat, lets it fall. Strips off his sweater, balls it on top of the coat. Stands in his shirtsleeves, cradles the football with his long fingers. Tightens his grip. Does not burst the ball, only feels the air within resist his fingers’ pressure.
Paul steps back, holds up his hands.
Vlad shakes his head. “Go deeper.”
He runs, crumbling dry leaves and breaking hidden sticks.
“Deeper,” Vlad calls, and waves him on.
“Here?” Vlad’s never thrown the ball this far.
“More.”
Paul stands near the edge of the park. “That’s all there is!”
“Okay,” Vlad says. “Okay. Are you ready?”
“Yes!”
His throws are well rehearsed. Wind up slowly, and toss soft. He beat them into his bones.
He forgets all that.
Black currents weave through the wind. A crow calls from treetops. He stands, a statue of ice.
He throws the ball as hard as he can.
Vlad’s eyes are faster even than his hands, and sharp. So he sees Paul blink, in surprise more than fear. He sees Paul understand. He sees Paul smile.
And he sees Paul blur sideways and catch the ball.
They stare at one another across the park. The ball hisses in Paul’s hands, deflates: it broke in the catching. Wind rolls leaves between them.
Later, neither can remember who laughed first.
* * *
They talk for hours after that. Chase one another around the park, so fast they seem only colors on the wind. High-pitched child’s screams of joy, and Vlad’s own voice, deep, guttural. Long after the sky turns black and the stars don’t come out, they return home, clothes grass-stained, hair tangled with sticks and leaves. Paul does his homework, fast, and they watch cricket until after bedtime.
Sarah waits in the living room when he leaves Paul sleeping. She grabs his arms and squeezes, hard enough to bruise, and pulls him into her kiss.
He kisses her back with his teeth.
MAX GLADSTONE has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and nominated twice for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. His Craft Sequence, beginning with Three Parts Dead, is available from Tor Books and Tor.com Publishing. Max’s game Choice of the Deathless was nominated for a XYZZY Award, and Full Fathom Five was nominated for the Lambda Award. His short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Uncanny Magazine. His most recent project is the globetrotting urban fantasy serial Bookburners, available in ebook and audio from Serial Box, and in print from Saga Press.
The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
Tina Connolly
A young food taster to the Traitor King must make a difficult choice in this story of pastries, magic, and revenge. Edited by Melissa Frain.
Saffron takes her customary place at the little round table on the dais of the Traitor King. Duke Michal, Regent to the Throne is his official title, but the hand-drawn postered sheets, the words whispered in back alleys all nickname him the same. She smiles warmly at the assembled guests, standing poised and waiting by their chairs, ready for the confections and amuse-bouches that have been a mainstay of the high table for the last year.
Saffron has been Confection Taster all that time, her husband, Danny, Head Pastry Chef. Their warm smiles have been perfected as the Traitor King’s power grows, inch by inch, as those who object to his grasp fail and fall, as the printers are vanished, as the daughters disappear from their homes. The little prince still sleeps in his nursery—but for how long? That is the question on everyone’s mind in the last year. Not a question uttered, but a question that stays poised on the tongue, and does not fall.
The Traitor King takes his place. He looks sternly around the table, watching to see if anyone dares sit or talk or breathe before him. Then he breaks into a jovial smile, and everyone exhales, and there is careful laughter: the Duke is in a good mood tonight. There will be candies and conversations, alliances formed and favors exchanged, perhaps a juggler hung for dropping the pins, but who minds the jugglers?
Saffron minds. She minds very much.
The first course! bids the Duke, and around the table the white-coated servants set down the gilded plates, each bearing the first bite-sized course, showcasing Danny’s skill. An identical plate is set next to Saffron, the Duke’s own plate, this one bearing a pastry twice as large as the others, so the Duke shall not lose any of the delight of his food to caution.
The Duke barely flicks his eyes Saffron’s direction. She knows what to do, and, smiling, she cracks the thin toast in two with her fine silver fork, and takes her bite.
Rosemary Crostini of Delightfully Misspent Youth
Saffron knows this moment instantly. The angled sun falls in clean lines on the bakery floor. Daily Bread is the name on the hand-carved sign of the shop, for it is an ordinary bakery still. A younger Danny stands at the counter, just turning with flour-dusted chin to notice her. She has come here so often with the rosemary crostini that she has what the lords and ladies do not: an instant of double-memory, of twinned lives, as she breathes, and lets herself go, and tumbles five years into the past.
Her sister Rosie pushes her forward, hisses, “Your turn,” in teasing tones, and Danny’s and Saffron’s eyes lock.
Saffron swallows. Two girls on a rare free afternoon, on a mission to see who can charm the most treats out of willing young shopkeepers and clerks. Rosie is the younger by a year but the older in daring. Her funny, loyal sister has transformed this morning into a different girl, all curls and honeyed tones, a girl on a mission. So far she has acquired: Item (1) length of green velvet ribbon, long enough to tie back her gold-brown hair. Item (1) scrap of lace, to finish the wrists of the gloves she is making for Saffron. Surely Saffron could manage a chocolate, a tartlet, a bun?
And yet here she is, with the sinking feeling that she does not know how to flirt.
The kind-eyed young man—for now she no longer knows his name, she has the faint feeling that she has forgotten, there is something teasing at the back of her mind—well, he leans on the scarred wood counter and asks again if he can help.
“A … a rye bun, please,” she says at random.
“Just one then?” he says with amusement, and he reaches for it. The young man, so quiet on other occasions Saffron has come in, seems rather more self-possessed today, but who would not be at a girl stammering “bun”?
“Yes. No.” She can’t remember anything Rosie did to charm that ribbon off of the shopkeeper; all her wits have fled. “I mean, I may have forgotten my coins?”
“It’s a fine day when a beautiful girl comes into my grandfather’s bakery with no money, but only wants one poor little rye bun,” he says. “Hardly seems worthwhile to charge her.” She flushes; he understands the game and is teasing her.
Rosie elbows her; she should make her move. Say something pert in response; acquire the prize. Her coin is her flirtation, her smiles; she sees now that she and Rosie are paying after all, in a different kind.
But instead, behind the baker she sees a small waif, silhouetted in the back door to the shop. Saffron nods at the baker, points over his shoulder. “Do you have company?”
He turns, drops his teasing manner. “Jacky,” he says affectionately, and scoops several buns and a long thin loaf off of a different shelf. The small creature holds open his bag hopefully, and the day-old bread is placed inside. Jacky pulls out a single copper cent and gravely hands it to the baker, who as gravely accepts it. “My best to your mother,” the baker says, as the waif scampers off.
The young man turns back to the counter, and the kindness in his eyes is replaced by a different kind of warmth for Saffron, one that is gentle and interested, and possibly could be the same kind of warmth as for that little boy someday if she lets it, if she begins as she means to go on.
Saffron puts the coins on the counter for the rye bun. “Will you have coffee with me?” she says, clearly and calmly and forthrightly.
The flour-dusted young man takes her money and hands her the bun. Rosie snickers in the background, but the baker’s smiles are all for her. “Aye, and more.”
* * *
Saffron returns to herself, the delight of the memory still sharp on her tongue. Her eyes clear, she smiles warmly at the crowd. “This has always been one of my favorite recipes of Danny’s,” she tells them, and her gilded plate is passed to the Duke. He does not look at her as he picks up the second bite of golden-crusted toast, redolent with rosemary and crystals of sea salt. Danny was an excellent baker long before he started experimenting with the rose-thyme plant that causes the memories, and this crostini is no exception.
Around the table, the noble sycophants follow the Duke’s example, and Saffron watches in amusement at seein
g the whole table go slack, their eyes staring off into nothing as they remember.
At the edges of the room the white-coated servants, the red-coated guards go on alert. Saffron knows, for he has told her, that the commander of the guard dislikes these little interludes. But the Duke will have his perks, and further—she is told—it amuses the Duke to watch the lords and ladies squirm. Not all the confections Danny makes evoke pleasant memories, and during their time in the Duke’s palace, he has been encouraged to experiment. An invitation to a Temporal Confections dinner is equally coveted and feared, but never declined.
Around the table, the diners slowly shake off the residue of the memory, come back to themselves with foolish smiles on their faces. Good, she thinks. Danny is outdoing himself tonight. Is that a hint of things to come? They are kept apart, in the castle, and she wishes they had some way to communicate, other than through memory. A memory can be directed, a little, if the eater has practice. Saffron knows what she wants to see with the Rosemary Crostini, and she knows Danny knows she will see it. It was a gift to her this night, that first flush of meeting, that moment trapped in time like a fly in amber.
A salad course of watercress and arugula is served, and wineglasses filled with a dry white. The Duke’s regular taster is given his salad, a fresh fork. She is a perpetually frightened-looking girl with honey-colored hair, but she is no milkmaid from the countryside. She is eighth in line to the throne, the granddaughter of kind Lord Searle, that same Lord Searle who would make a remarkably good regent—if he had not been accused of treachery by the Duke and disappeared into the maze of dungeons under the castle.
The girl retains many of her daytime privileges, but at dinner she sits at the Traitor King’s side, yet another hostage for others’ behavior. She tastes the requisite bite of the peppery greens, and then the plate is relayed to the Duke, and he picks up his own silver fork. Around the table the others join in, and Saffron and the girl fold their hands in their laps, and wait.
Fennel Flatbread of Sunlit Days Gone By
The sun is sparkling on the snow on the day Danny gets his first temporal pastry to work.
It is a Seventhday, and the shop is closed. They have been married for a year now; Danny’s grandfather has passed on, and the little bakery is all Danny’s. A small inheritance has allowed him to experiment; a small inheritance and a smaller glass bottle of dried rose-thyme that Danny’s grandfather gathered as a youth in the distant High Reaches. Despite its name, rose-thyme does not taste precisely like either; or, more correctly, it tastes like many more things than just those two flavors. It is a changeable plant; the method of preparation is key to bringing out a particular aromatic strain. More importantly, the method of preparation is key to evoking certain visions. As a child, Danny’s grandfather and his chums would chew on the flowers, which, when eaten plain, give brief flashes of déjà vu. He also told Danny that those who had once lived in the High Reaches had actual recipes that they swore could evoke glimpses of longer-ago memories, and indeed, at winter solstice every year, there was a certain currant cake made with the rose-thyme that would make everyone remember the previous solstice’s currant cake, and back and back, cementing the continuity of a long line of years.
