The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “It is said that in England men are born with prehensile toes to better grip the earth so that they may not fall off it,” he retorted. “Even those who believe such things know that like calls to like. Better to read the entrails of a chicken, unless you wish to know what portends on the southern continent.”

  “And yet …”

  “And yet you seek after phantoms,” the old man said, pouring the last of his pulque on the ground and levering himself erect. “You treat these things as if they were supernatural, not of this world. They are not, I can assure you. They are of the same world and the same flesh as we are. Older, it is true. Far older, but there is nothing miraculous to be had from them. Now I thank you for your generosity, young sir, but if you will excuse me I will seek a quiet place to piss.”

  I had just debarked from a water taxi and gone perhaps two streets back toward the Hummingbird’s Palace when I realized I was being followed. A single man, far enough back not to be obvious and no apparent threat. I loosened my sword in its scabbard under the cover of adjusting my cloak and continued on without breaking stride.

  It could be I was simply being shadowed for some reason, I told myself. After all, no one would risk Uncle Tlaloc’s wrath by attacking me while I was about his business. Yeah, right.

  I made two blocks more when there was a low whistle from behind me and three more men glided out of the darkness. All were stubby, thick-set, and muffled in coarse black cloaks. Gray turbans were tied about their heads and adjusted to hide their faces and painted to look like death-heads.

  I turned to face the one to my left, fumbling under my cloak as if for my sword. The man hung back and our eyes locked. I sensed rather than heard his companions rushing me.

  At just the proper moment I thrust backward through my cloak and into the body of the man behind. Then I sidestepped, slashed at the man on my right. That made him jump back and left me free to concentrate on the one to my left for just a split second. A quick upward slash and I felt my blade bite flesh and scrape along bone. He grasped his arm and reeled away while I turned to take on the man on my right as he closed in, sword held hilt low for a finishing thrust.

  With a single motion, I swept my cloak off and tossed it at his head, sidestepping toward him as I moved. He dodged away from the cloak, but he was still off balance when I stepped in and split his skull.

  I turned to put my back to the wall and looked around. The one with the arm wound was pattering off down the street. The one with the split skull was dead and the third man would soon join him. Now he was rolling on the ground and clutching his belly. My follower, the one who had whistled, had disappeared.

  I was breathing hard, and my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly resheathe my sword. Damn! And that was my second-best cloak. The blood had soaked into the featherwork and there was no way to get it clean. I left it behind as a calling card and, with a final look up and down the streets, hurried off to the Hummingbird’s Palace. Uncle Tlaloc doesn’t like it when a messenger is late, and it takes more than an attack by three men to deflect his displeasure.

  After delivering my report to Uncle Tlaloc, I sat in the bar at the Hummingbird’s Palace, sipping snow wine and keeping my back to the wall while I tried to figure out my next move.

  Uncle Tlaloc had been much amused and mildly interested by my adventure with the Silver Skulls. I was much less amused and a lot more interested. Obviously, someone wanted me dead even more than usual. Badly enough to hire one of English Town’s strong-arm gangs to try to take me out. But who? Who had I seriously annoyed recently? Three-flower? Unlikely. Certainly this wasn’t connected to my errand for Uncle Tlaloc.

  And anyway I couldn’t imagine anyone in English Town setting the Silver Skulls on me. They were the best-known of the muscle gangs, but the local opinion was they were much better at making threats and breaking knees than killing people. Which implied that my enemy was someone with more money than knowledge. Which brought me back to Lady Threeflower, but that was ridiculous.

  The Emperor’s Shadow? Even more ridiculous. If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. It would be an accident, a fair duel, the work of mysterious unknowns, or perhaps at the hands of the Death Master, but it would not be done by a bunch like the Silver Skulls. A warning from the Emperor’s Shadow then? No, that was too paranoid even for English Town.

  The one thing I was sure of was that I didn’t like all this attention. Not only would I have to watch my back with more than usual care, but I’d probably have to pay wergild to the Silver Skulls for the men I had killed. And I’d have to replace my feathered cloak.

  I sipped my wine and thought about my tailor for a while. Certainly a more pleasant subject than the Emperor’s Shadow, or the Silver Skulls.

  I was wandering the streets through a dark, starless night. Disease spirits floated through the air, brushing by me as they passed.

  A dark alley filled with rapid, delicate noise. A blue hummingbird was fighting with a black butterfly. The noise of battle grew louder and louder. I ran away.

  Then a rubber ball came bouncing toward me. I was about to hit it with my hip, the way I would try to play the sacred ball game as a boy. The ball suddenly stopped bouncing.

  It wasn’t a ball anymore. It was Smoke’s skinless head.

  “Who are you disappointing this time, Lucky?” it asked.

  And a voice said, “Lucky, over here!” I knew that voice. All too well.

  I found myself in the neighborhood where I grew up, where I am forbidden ever to return.

  Turning to look, I saw Twoocelot. She was standing in the doorway of a rotting Frog-style hut. She wore a bride’s dress, but her lips were painted black like a prostitute’s.

  “Lucky, where have you been all these years?” She asked. Her eyes were so much friendlier than her older sister’s.

  I tried hard to politely look away. “You know. I know. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Am I so horrible? Do you prefer my sister Threeflower?”

  “No.”

  She stepped close to me. There was something wrong with her face. Her skin hung slack, like a limp mask.

  “Why do you look at me like that? Am I so ugly?” She grabbed a handful of the skin hanging from her face, pulled and tore it away. Underneath was her sister, Threeflower.

  “You miss the old days, and your old life, don’t you?” She sneered. “You wish that you could have been a gentleman, instead of a thug!”

  “I am what the Gods made me to be.” I turned to go.

  “Lucky,” her soft voice called. Something about it stopped me in my tracks. I thought my heart was going to explode. Against my will, I looked over my shoulder at Threeflower.

  “Are you really? Do the Gods make us, or do we make ourselves?” Her skin rippled, became blotchy and bloated. Flesh-eating worms emerged like long pimples and ate away her face; except for her teeth, which grew long and rearranged themselves until she had the face of a huetlacoatl.

  The next day started in the same way as the day before—which is to say late in the afternoon in a fog of leftover alcohol. No visit from Threeflower, of course. I waited until my reflexes were back together, even if my head wasn’t, before I ventured out. Between the padded cotton tunic and the light mail shirt over it, a regular tunic over that, and a rain cloak on top of it all, I was seriously overdressed for the wet season, but I still felt better for it.

  I stepped out of my building with all my senses on full alert. The way was thronged. There were overdressed merchants with retinues like nobles, too-well-dressed individuals whose professions weren’t immediately apparent but obviously unsavory. There were slaves staggering under burdens, house servants whose tunics clashed with each other and the brightly tiled walls of the houses. On the corner a vendor was hawking fruit juices from a cart. All perfectly normal and all guaranteed to put my nerves on edge this day.

  I moved along at a leisurely amble with my stomach going tight every time someone moved past me or I passe
d the mouth of an alley. I had gone two blocks like this when someone called my name.

  “Hsst. Sir Lucky.” Beside me was a boy perhaps ten years old wearing a dirty yellow tunic that marked him as someone’s not-too-important house servant.

  “I know someone who’s got something for you,” he hissed without moving his lips. His eyes were darting around and his head swiveled from side to side as if looking for eavesdroppers. Obviously he was enjoying this.

  I wasn’t, so I gave him my best supercilious stare. “Who might that be?”

  “Oh, a beautiful lady who misses your company.” The line was the standard panderer’s come-on but he flashed a sign with the hand hidden between our bodies. The sign of the jaguar.

  “Not in the market,” I said gruffly. “Go away.” I raised my hand as if to strike him and he grinned and vanished into crowd. I resumed my leisurely pace and at the next corner I turned right and headed for the market.

  The gates were closed by the time I got there, but Mother Jaguar wasn’t hard to find. There is a dive called the Vulture’s Rest on the street of third-rate wine shops and fourth-rate brothels that runs along the market wall near where Mother Jaguar has her divining business. As usual, Mother was in a tiny nook in the back, well hidden from the doorway and doubtless close to one of her many bolt holes.

  “I found something that might interest you,” she said without looking as I slid in across from her.

  “Any words of the wise woman are as spring rain on my ears.” She cackled and pressed her hand into mine beneath the table. I felt her make the sign for gold.

  Without comment I withdrew my hand, and slid out my other hand bearing three gold pieces beneath the table.

  Mother’s head sank upon her withered breasts and she seemed to drop into sleep, or a trance. I waited as she rocked back and forth and her breathing steadied.

  “One of those has been found,” she mumbled in her reedy trance voice.

  My lips barely moved. “Ransomed?”

  “Dead, quite dead,” she keened softly. “In the street of warehouses behind the English Docks. A man of most excellent family, of the Watermonster Clan, and most excellent prospects.”

  Meaning he was well-born, but otherwise unremarkable, and had reached at least middle age without accomplishing anything of note.

  “How was he found?” I asked thinking of the huetlacoatl.

  “By the smell,” Mother Jaguar intoned. “The smell of those who die slowly. His belly had been slit, and days ago.”

  “Sacrificed?”

  “Who knows? Who knows?” Mother Jaguar wailed softly. Then she dropped her voice even lower. “Others came and took him even before the Death Master arrived. Shadows fell and the poor man vanished forever.”

  “Forever,” she repeated even more faintly and pitched forward onto the table, seemingly unconscious.

  “Thank you for your wisdom, Mother.” I said loudly enough to be overheard. And, rising from the table, I placed three more gold coins upon it.

  I was even more nervous when I left the Vulture’s Rest than I had been when I went in. I didn’t have to ask who the shadows were, or who had taken the body, or why the Emperor’s Shadow was interested in the death of a very minor noble. The slit belly implied he had been sacrificed.

  I thought briefly of Lady Threeflower and what had likely become of her friend. Then I thought in more detail about the effect this was likely to have on my career and longevity. Being interested in anything that involved the Emperor’s Shadow was not a positive career move, to say nothing of its possible effect on your lifespan. I suspected the only reason Mother Jaguar had the courage to tell me about it was that the story was all over English Town. I just hoped my interest in the matter wasn’t.

  I considered my options and the more I thought about them, the more convinced I became that this was a time to spend a quiet evening at home. That wouldn’t help me if the Emperor’s Shadow came after me, but it was the last place my other enemies would expect to find me at this time of night. Besides, if I decided a sudden retirement to the country was in my best interest, I’d need items that were at home, such as gold and a certain casket that sat near my bed.

  Lady Threeflower was waiting for me in my chambers. She kept her mantle over her face but I knew her by her carriage.

  “Is there news of Fourflower?” she asked without preamble.

  “None, my lady.”

  “I had heard,” she stopped and gathered herself. “I had heard that someone was found today. Someone who had been taken.”

  “It was not her, Lady. It was a man.” I debated telling her how he had been found—or what the implications were for Fourflower.

  She sighed deeply, as if a weight had been lifted from her. “There is one other matter,” she said. “My lord husband found out about my visit to you. He is extremely angry, and he may seek vengeance on you.”

  So that was it! “He already has, lady.” My smile was one part irony and one part relief.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “I take it he was not successful?”

  “Let’s say he caused me a certain amount of uncertainty, cost me the price of a new cloak, and probably the out-of-pocket cost of a couple of back-alley thugs, but overall it was little enough.”

  “Nevertheless, I shall repay you,” she said, reaching beneath her mantle. There was something in the way she moved that made me reach out and jerk the mantle from her face. One eye was purple black and nearly swollen shut. There were livid spots on her neck where someone’s fingers had dug into her pale flesh.

  “I think,” I said slowly, “I would rather be recompensed of your lord husband.”

  Her chin came up and her dark eyes flashed. “You would see me shamed, then. Does it please you? Does it excite you?” With a jerk she loosened the pin at her shoulder and her mantle and dress cascaded to the floor. “Here. Would you like to see all of what my lord husband did to me?”

  I averted my eyes but I still had a glimpse of matronly hips and full breasts, the brown nipples crisscrossed with lash marks. There were other lash marks on her flat stomach and down the sides of her thighs. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is between a man and wife is no business of anyone else, especially not a clanless brigand,” she said, stooping to gather her garments. There was a rustle as she replaced them. “You have served me and I have paid you. Now it is at an end between us.”

  Even if I had my full clan rank Threeflower would have been too proud to accept help.

  Besides, I recognized bitterly, she was right. She knew the risk she ran in coming to me in the first place and so did I. She had been caught and paid the price. It was not my affair.

  The tequila pot was empty, so I slept badly that night.

  “Ah, Lucky my boy,” Uncle Tlaloc rumbled when I showed up at the Hummingbird’s Palace the next afternoon. “We have a request for the pleasure of your company.” My stomach clinched at the words.

  “A high-born lady, I hope.” At least he hadn’t used the nephew routine, so how bad could it be?

  Uncle sighed gustily. “Nothing so romantic, I am afraid. This is from a priest—of sorts.” He caught my look. “Oh, not one of your relatives, I can assure you,” he said, holding up a flipperlike hand. “At least not one close enough to claim the relationship, but with the way you nobles intermarry, who can say?”

  I cocked an eyebrow at my mentor and employer.

  “I do not know why,” Uncle said. “He simply asked, very politely, to see you.” Then he reached out and took a sip from his skull mug. “Life is so charmingly full of surprises, is it not?”

  Personally my life had been way too full of surprises recently, and none of them pleasant. But I smiled and took my leave as if Uncle had done me the greatest of favors. The first rule in this game is never let them see you sweat. The second rule is never let them see you bleed.

  The Cloud Villas were on the other side of the city, so I took a water taxi for the first part of the trip, and then a cable car up
into the hills. Once, a long time ago, the area had been a suburb, a pleasant retreat beyond the city walls for nobles seeking refuge from the heat and insects of summer. Then, as the Empire tightened its grip and clan warfare was sublimated into other channels, the wealthy and noble began to live here year around. Now those seeking a summer refuge used the distant mountains, only a few hours away by steam train. Proximity to the Great Plaza and the invention of air-conditioning had drawn the nobles back to their compounds and the wealthy had found it more convenient to live closer to their businesses. So the neighborhood had filled up with smaller houses and less important residents and the big houses had been divided into apartments or put to other uses.

  The temple had started life as a nobleman’s mansion, or more likely two or three adjacent mansions. It had been knitted together with a glazed brick exterior, brilliant bloodred around the bottom and sunburst yellow on top. There was an elaborate frieze about two-thirds of the way up the side and the wall was subtly shaded to represent a stepped pyramid rather than a flat surface. A set of four broad stone steps led up to the recessed space in front of the door, flanked by two life-size carvings. The two muscular servants in feathered cloaks who stood by the oversized carved doors bore no weapons, but they were guards nonetheless.

  The place looked like a child’s picture of a temple. Awesome and splendid, but overdone. I’d seen worse, such as the Whore’s Temple to Tlazolteotl, down in English Town, but this place spoke of dark old gods put to bright new uses in a way I found unsettling.

  A temple virgin guided me from the door, down a maze of halls and up a flight of inside stairs to a rooftop pavilion where my host awaited.

  Toltectecuhtli was large, paunchy, middle-aged, and as much of a mixture as the temple he presided over. His head was flattened, Frog-fashion, until he looked like a painting on a Frog temple wall rather than a human being. His lip and ears had been pierced for the heavy jade spools the Frogs favored, but the holes were empty. He wore a green-feathered short cloak that covered his shoulders and came within a finger’s breadth of being blasphemy against the priests of Quetzalcoatl. His tunic was snowy white set off with gold bangles and a stomacher of lizard skin, and a beaten gold pectoral depicting Lord Quetzalcoatl hung from his neck. His eyes were permanently crossed but that didn’t add to his beauty. The whole effect combined the barbaric, foreign, and modern in a way that was not in the least laughable. He sat rigid as a statue on a carved stool, staring out over the rooftops at the city and the bay beyond.