The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “A reproduction, Ambassador,” Klary says. “This is the original. Four hundred years old. Priceless.”

  Asher waves mention of money aside as if it were a bad smell. He is still not satisfied with Klary’s wares. She has taken a certain pride in the taste with which she has built her collection, even if it is only a ruse to conceal her true intentions. The contents of her gallery and this room are all she has to show for the life she has led since Janary left with her xeni, and none of it interests him. She wonders now if any of it really interests her.

  “One hears,” Asher says, “of a rug.”

  Klary can feel the swirl of events turning him to her purpose. “I have many rugs.”

  “Time passes, Friend Klary. One does not gladly waste it.” His voice changes and abruptly they are no longer speaking. Instead he is commanding. “A living rug. A soulcatcher.”

  Klary gasps as she experiences the full force of the xeni’s charisma. Can ecstasy hurt? She knows the answer. “That’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “Not secret enough, Friend Klary. Show.”

  Klary staggers to the edge of the carpet in the middle of the office, feigning submission. Decorated with a motif of leaves and flowers on a field of blue, it is a nineteenth-century reproduction of a seventeenth-century original that was mentioned in Pope’s Survey of Persian Art. She sinks to her knees, slips fingers underneath and rolls it up to reveal a containment sunk into the floor, three meters by five and half a meter deep. A sheet of x-glass, level with the floor, protects the contents.

  The xeni purrs. “So it’s real.”

  “As you see, Ambassador.”

  Klary’s soulcatcher has no provenance, other than horror stories told to scare children. Created by the Moccen Collective as an instrument of punishment, it is not strictly speaking textile, although it began as a matlike colony of carnivorous plants. Genetically modified to assimilate those who refused collectivization, the rugs were the Moccan’s tool to control dissidents. Since the Collective was enlightened enough to ban capital punishment, those sentenced to incarceration in a soulcatcher were functionally immortal, as long as the colony survived. The Moccen Collective had collapsed some two hundred years ago, and Klary’s soulcatcher seems as healthy as the day it captured the first dissenter.

  “A closer look, Ambassador?”

  Klary points at the controller and, when the glass retracts, she presses both hands against the rug’s translucent skin. As always, the surface yields to her touch, warm and silky-smooth. Beneath, the heads seem to float in a clear yellow broth of amniotic fluid. Cheeks bump against her palms and sink away, filmy, calm eyes peer through her fingers, lips part, revealing dark, inert tongues. Tangles of veins and arteries, bruise-blue and red, squiggle as blood surges; hairy bundles of ganglia connect the minds of the colony of the damned.

  Klary has always found the pulse of soulcatcher hypnotic. She has spent hours at its side, hoping for some sign from those within, listening not with her ears but with her fingertips. There have been nights when she has walked across it barefoot and one when, in despair at her wasted life, she lay naked on it and contemplated slicing the skin and submitting to capture. She believes that the captured know what has become of them, that they are restless but not in pain. Suddenly she is startled out of her dream of communion with the heads. Asher kneels next her and caresses the soulcatcher’s skin with his perfect fingers.

  “Alive?” croaks Janary. Without asking permission, she too has approached the open containment.

  “Yes,” murmurs the xeni. “But are they conscious?”

  “There is no way to know.” Klary sits back. “The stories say they are.”

  “They are singing.” The xeni muses dreamily. “Do you hear that?”

  Seeing that the xeni is transfixed, Klary dares a glance at Janary. Klary presses a forefinger to her lips and then nods at her sister’s kneeling abductor.

  “No,” Janary says.

  Misunderstanding, the xeni glares at her and she wilts back into her chair. “One feels for their plight. Name your price.”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  It takes a moment for the xeni’s mouth to work itself into a smile. “Not?”

  “I mean, you don’t understand. This is a registered historical artifact. It’s against the laws of our world to sell anything on the list.”

  “Then how did it come into your possession?”

  “A gift, Ambassador, from a dear friend.” A dear friend, whom Klary had blackmailed. A parting gift that poor Terez had given as she and her husbands fled their creditors.

  “Then this one must hope for your friendship, Klary.”

  Klary realizes too late how close she is to the xeni. She tries to scoot away.

  The xeni rests his hand on Klary’s shoulder. “Perhaps an exchange of gifts?”

  “Ambassador . . . ” The hand unlocks years of grief and anger, Klary’s blistering need for revenge. At the same time, she is so swollen with the xeni’s desire for the soulcatcher that her brain feels as if it’s pressing against the inside of her skull. What she wants and what xeni-Harvel Asher wants are so nearly the same—she must acknowledge their mutual desire. The xeni must have the rug, that is the plan, and Klary must have her sister. But the plan is broken, useless, there is no plan, and Asher is so powerful and she must say something or her head will crack, she must, she must.

  “Would I . . . I would . . . exchange.” How can she talk while a fist of blood is punching her chest, clutching at her throat? “I feel as if . . . ” She can’t stop herself. “Need help replacing Elloran . . . useless Elloran.” She gestures wildly at the gallery. “Help.” Now it is all she can do to point at Janary. “Her.”

  She hears her sister’s strangled cry of anguish and then the xeni is across the room. Xeni-Harvel Asher thrusts a hand to Janary’s face, palm over her mouth, fingers splayed. “Nothing,” he says. “You are nothing.” She shakes beneath his grip. “Say nothing.”

  Klary reclaims her anger and flicks her forefinger to deploy the blade. She slices into the skin of the soulcatcher.

  “You want the pet?” says the xeni, who is still attempting to subdue Janary. His back is to Klary and the soulcatcher. “But humans can’t own humans.”

  “No, of course.” Klary’s nose fills with the sweet, yeasty smell of the amniotic fluid. “Why did I say that?” As if the xeni didn’t know. “But I did, didn’t I?” She doesn’t know what she’s doing, only that she must do something. She babbles again. “It’s true that Elloran is not the best. Not to own it . . . her. No, but I could train her, perhaps. As an apprentice?”

  “She’s yours.” Asher finally lets Janary go. He stoops until their faces are at the same level. “Nothing,” he whispers to her. Klary realizes this is his name for her. “As you worship and serve this one, Asher of Harvel, you will now serve that one, Klary Hamashy.” He breathes into her gaping, agonized mouth. “Your new friend.” Then he laughs.

  Klary shakes her head to clear it. Janary is free. Wasn’t that the most important part of the plan? She can stop now. But the price of all those years of suffering must be accounted for. Not only Janary’s, but hers. Their two wasted lives. She looks past the xeni at her sister, who meets her gaze with brutal reproach. She knows Janary then, knows that she is about to warn Asher, who has taken everything from them. The plan, you stupid bitch. The plan.

  She hurls herself across the room, throws an arm around the shocked xeni’s neck and drags him back, kicking and gasping for air. Maybe he has something to say, a last plea for mercy, desperate words of command, but he is small and Klary’s anger is large.

  “Klary, stop!” Janary screams, but of course, she is nothing.

  She thrusts Asher’s head through the skin of the soulcatcher into its roiling interior. Just then Klary hears the captured. They are singing. To her? The song is deafening as she feels the stings of many lashes. They want her too but she releases her hold and falls backwards. Her dripping arm is cove
red in purple welts. The soulcatcher appears to be swallowing the xeni whole, despite churning legs and flailing arms, but then it spits the headless body out. It slumps away, blood gushing over the rolled up carpet. Ruined.

  She remembers the man who sold her that carpet. His name was Lann and they were lovers for almost a week before Klary felt herself becoming attached. Lann had the oddest collection of combs: silver and bone and glass and gold. She had never met anyone before who collected combs. She wonders what became of him. Of her life.

  Then she sees realizes that she is sitting in a puddle. She picks herself up. Janary stares at her.

  “I did this for you,” Klary says. “Our sisters chose me to rescue you.”

  “No.” Janary strangles on the word. “You don’t understand.”

  “I was going to buy you afterward, bring you home. You weren’t supposed to know about this. Nobody was.”

  The wound she has inflicted on the soulcatcher is already healing. Asher’s head grimaces and turns away from them.

  “I had a plan, Janary. All this would have been a secret.” What is that in her sister’s eyes? Hatred? Horror? Fear?

  She wonders then if anyone is coming to rescue her.

  Trafalgar and Josefina

  Angélica Gorodischer

  Translated by Amalia Gladhart

  My Aunt Josefina came to visit me. He who has never met my Aunt Josefina doesn’t know what he’s missing, as Trafalgar Medrano says. Trafalgar also says that she is one of the most beautiful and charming women he has met and that if he had been born in 1893 he would not have married her for anything in the world. My aunt came in, she looked the house over and asked after the children, she wanted to know if I was ever going to decide to move to an apartment downtown, and when I said no, never, she hesitated over whether or not to leave her jacket somewhere and decided to take it with her because there might be a little breeze in the garden later. She’s eighty-four years old; wavy hair the color of steel, a couple of tireless chestnut eyes as bright as they say my criolla great-grandmother’s were, and an enviable figure: if she wanted to, if she went so far as to admit that those coarse and disagreeable things should be used as items of clothing, she could wear Cecilia’s jeans. She said the garden was lovely and that it would look much better when we had the ash trees pruned and the tea was delicious and she loved scones but they turned out better with only one egg.

  “I drank a very good tea the other day. Yes, I am going to have a little more but half a cup, that’s good, don’t get carried away. Isn’t it a little strong? Just one little drop of milk. That’s it. And they served me some very good toast, with butter and not that rancid margarine they give you now everywhere, I don’t know how you can like it. In the Burgundy. And I was with a friend of yours.”

  “I already know,” I said. “Trafalgar.”

  “Yes, the son of Juan José Medrano and poor Merceditas. I don’t understand how she allowed her only son to be given that outlandish name. Well, I always suspected Medrano was a Mason.”

  “But Josefina, what does Freemasonry have to do with the Battle of Trafalgar?”

  “Ah, I don’t know, sweetie, but you can’t deny that the Masons purposely gave their children names that didn’t appear in the calendar of saints.”

  “Doctor Medrano was probably an admirer of Nelson,” I said, pinning all my hopes on Trafalgar’s old man’s interest in the great events of history.

  “What I can assure you,” said my Aunt Josefina, “is that Merceditas Herrera was a saint, and so refined and discreet.”

  “And Doctor Medrano, what was he like?”

  “A great doctor,” she opened another scone and spread orange marmalade on it. “Good-looking and congenial as well. And very cultured.”

  There was a quarter-second silence before the last statement: the word cultured is slippery with my Aunt Josefina and one has to step carefully.

  “Trafalgar is also good-looking and congenial,” I said, “but I don’t know if he’s cultured. He knows a ton of strange things.”

  “It’s true, he’s congenial, very congenial and friendly. And very considerate with an old lady like me. Now, I think good-looking is an exaggeration. His nose is too long, just like poor Merceditas’. And don’t tell me that mustache isn’t a little ridiculous. A man looks much tidier if clean-shaven, thank goodness your sons have gotten over the beard and mustache phase. But I have to admit that the boy is elegant: he had on a dark gray suit, very well cut, and a white shirt and a serious tie, not like some of your extravagant friends who look like. I don’t even know what they look like.”

  “Would you like a little more tea?”

  “No, no, please, you’ve already made me drink too much, but it was delicious and I have overdone it. That was Thursday or Friday, I’m not sure. I went into the Burgundy because I was fainting with hunger: I was coming from a meeting of the board of directors of the Society of Friends of the Museum, so it was Thursday, of course, because Friday was the engagement party of María Luisa’s daughter, and you know Thursday is Amelia’s afternoon off, and frankly I had no desire to go home and start making tea. There weren’t many people and I sat down far away from the door, where there wouldn’t be a draft, and when they were serving my tea the Medrano boy came in. He came over to say hello, so kind. At first I couldn’t place him and I was about to ask him who he was when I realized he was Merceditas Herrera’s son. It was so unsettling, seeing him standing there beside the table, but although I am old enough to do certain things, you understand that a lady never invites a man, even though he’s so much younger than she is, to sit at her table.”

  An “Oh, no?” escaped me.

  My Aunt Josefina sighed, I would almost say she blew out air, and great-grandmother’s eyes stopped me cold.

  “I do know customs have evolved,” she said, “and in a few cases for the better, and in many others unfortunately for the worse, but there are things that do not change and you should know that.”

  I smiled because I love her a lot and because I hope I can get to eighty-four years old with the same confidence she has and learn to control my eyes the way she does although mine aren’t even a tenth as pretty.

  “And you let poor Trafalgar go?”

  “No. He was very correct and he asked my permission to keep me company if I wasn’t waiting for anyone. I told him to sit down and he ordered coffee. It’s appalling how that boy drinks coffee. I don’t know how he doesn’t ruin his stomach. I haven’t tasted coffee in years.”

  She doesn’t smoke either, of course. And she drinks a quarter glass of rosé with every dinner and another quarter glass, only of extra-dry champagne, at Christmas and New Year’s.

  “He didn’t tell you if he was going to come by here?”

  “No, he didn’t say, but it seems unlikely. He was going, I think the next day, I’m not really sure where, it must be Japan, I imagine, because he said he was going to buy silks. A shame he devotes himself to commerce and didn’t follow his father’s path: it was a disappointment to poor Merceditas. But he’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

  “He’s doing fabulously. He has truckloads of dough.”

  “I sincerely hope you don’t use that language outside your home. It is unbecoming. Of course, it would be best if you never used it, but that’s evidently hopeless. You’re as stubborn as your father.”

  “Yes, my old man, I mean my father, was stubborn, but he was a gentleman.”

  “True. I don’t know how he spoke when he was among other men, that doesn’t matter, but he never said anything inappropriate in public.”

  “If you heard Trafalgar talk, you’d have an attack.”

  “I don’t see why. With me, he was most agreeable. Neither affected nor hoity-toity—no need for that—but very careful.”

  “He’s a hypocritical cretin.” That I didn’t say, I just thought it.

  “And he has,” said my Aunt Josefina, “a special charm for telling the most outlandish things. What an imaginati
on.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Obviously, maybe it’s not all imagination. It gives you the impression that he is telling the truth, but so embellished that at first glance you could think it was a big lie. I’ll tell you I spent a very entertaining interval. How is it possible that when I arrived home Amelia was already back and was worried at my delay? The poor thing had called Cuca’s house, and Mimi’s and Virginia’s to see if I was there. I had to start in on the phone calls to calm them all down.”

  I got serious: I was dying of envy, like when Trafalgar goes and tells things to Fatty Páez or Raúl or Jorge. But I understood, because my Aunt Josefina knows how to do many things well; for example, to listen.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Oh, nothing, crazy things about his trips. Of course, he speaks so well that it’s a pleasure, a real pleasure.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Sweetie, how you insist! Besides, I don’t remember too well.”

  “Yeah, tell me what you remember.”

  “One says ‘yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ You sound like a muleteer, not a lady.”

  I ignored her.

  “Of course you remember. You catch cold with a constancy worthy of a greater cause and your stomach is a little fragile, but don’t tell me you have arteriosclerosis, because I won’t believe you.”

  “God preserve me. Have you seen Raquel lately? A fright. She was at the Peñas’, I don’t know why they take her, and she didn’t recognize me.”

  “Josefina, I am going to go crazy with curiosity. Be nice and tell me what Trafalgar told you.”

  “Let’s see, wait, I’m not really sure.”

  “For certain he told you he had just arrived from somewhere.”