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

by Rich Horton

  “Well, for one: the youths he prefers are not, after all, girls. A few young men came forward to bear witness. All were on the brink of mesh-readiness. Exploring themselves, each other. Coming of age. Usually the Astrion Council will assign such youths an older mentor to usher them into adulthood. One who will make sure the young people know that their duty as adult citizens of the Glennemgarra is to mesh and make children—no matter whom they may favor for pleasure or succor or lifelong companionship. That the privilege of preference is to be earned after meshing. There are rites. There is,” her voice lilted mockingly, “paperwork. Onyssix sidestepped all of this. He will be fined. Watched a little more closely. Nothing else—there is no evidence of abuse. The young men did not speak of him with malice or fear. To them, he was just an older man with experience they wanted. I suppose it was a thrill to sneak around without the crones’ consent. There you have it. Oron Onyssix is a reckless pleasure-seeker who thinks he’s above the law. But hardly a murderer.”

  “I am sorry,” Shursta murmured. “I wish it might have ended tonight.”

  From the way the mattress moved, he knew she had turned to look at him. Her hand was braced against the blankets. He could feel her wrist against his thigh.

  “I wished it too.” Hyrryai’s voice was harsh. “All week I have anticipated . . . Some conclusion. The closing of this wound. I prepared myself. I was ready. I wanted to look my sister’s killer in the eye and watch him confess. At banquet tonight, I wished it most—when Sharrar told her tale . . . ”

  “The Epic of Shursta Sharkbait? You should not believe all you hear. Especially if Sharrar’s talking.”

  “I’ve heard tell of it before,” she retorted. “Certainly, when the story reached the Astrion Council, it was bare of the devices Sharrar used to hold our attention. But it has not changed in its particulars. It is, in fact, one measure by which the Astrion Council assessed your reputed stupidity. Intelligent men do not go diving in shark-infested waters.”

  The broken knife in his throat was laughter. Shursta choked on it. “No, they don’t. I told you that day we met—I am everything they say.”

  “You did not tell me that story. Strange,” Hyrryai observed, “when you mentioned they called you Sharkbait, you left out the reason why.”

  Shursta pulled the blankets up around his chin. “You didn’t mention it either. Maybe it’s not worth mentioning.”

  “It is why I chose you.”

  All at once, he could not breathe. Hyrryai had leaned over him. One fist was planted on either side of his body, pinning the blankets down. Her forehead touched his. Her breath was on his mouth, sharp and fresh, as though she had been chewing some bitter herb as she stalked Onyssix through the darkness.

  “Not because they said you were stupid, or ugly, or poor. How many men in Droon are the same? No, I chose you because they said you were good to your sister. And because you rescued the child.”

  “I rescued the child,” Shursta repeated in a voice he could barely recognize.

  Of course, he wanted to say. Of course, Hyrryai, that would move you. That would catch you like a bone hook where you bleed.

  “Had you not agreed to come to Droon, I would have attended the muster to win you at games, Shursta Sarth.”

  He would have shaken his head, but could do nothing of his own volition to break her contact with him. “The moment we met, you sent me away. You said—you said you were mistaken . . . ”

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of me?” Shursta was shivering. Not with cold or fear but something more terrifying. Something perilously close to joy. “Hyrryai, surely you know by now—surely you can see—I am the last man anyone would fear. Believe Sharrar’s story if you like, but . . . But consider it an aberration. It does not define me. Did I look like a man who wrestled sharks when your brothers converged on me? When the crones questioned me? When I could not even speak my vows aloud at our meshing? That is who I am. That’s all I am.”

  “I know what you are.”

  Hyrryai sat back as abruptly as she had leaned in. Stood up from the bed. Walked to the door. “When my hunt is done, we shall return to this discussion. I shall not speak of it again until then. But . . . Shursta, I did not want you to pass another night believing yourself to be a man whom . . . whom no wife could love.”

  The latch lifted. The door clicked shut. She was gone.

  The Blodestones took their breakfast in the courtyard under a stand of milknut trees. When Shursta stepped outside, he saw Laric, Sharrar and Hyrryai all lounging on the benches, elbows sprawled on the wooden table, heads bent together. They were laughing about something—even Hyrryai—and Shursta stopped dead in the center of the courtyard, wondering if they spoke of him. Sharrar saw him first and grinned.

  “Shursta, you must hear this!”

  He stepped closer. Hyrryai glanced at him. The tips of her fingers brushed the place beside her. Taking a deep breath, he came forward and sat. She slid him a plate of peeled oranges.

  “Your sister,” said Laric Spectrox, with his broad beaming grin, “is amazing.”

  “My sister,” Shursta answered, “is a minx. What did you do, Nugget?”

  “Nugget?” Laric repeated.

  “Shursta!” Sharrar leaned over and snatched his plate away. “Just for that you don’t get breakfast.”

  “Nugget?” Laric asked her delightedly. Sharrar took his plate as well. Hyrryai handed Shursta a roll.

  “Friends,” she admonished them. “We must not have dissension in the ranks. Not now that we’ve declared open war on my brothers.”

  Shursta looked at them all, alarmed. “You declared . . . What did you do?”

  Sharrar clapped her hands and crowed, “We sewed them into their bedsheets!”

  “You . . . ”

  “We did!” Laric assured him, rocking with laughter in his seat. “Dumwei, claiming his right as birthday boy, goaded his brothers into a drinking game. By midnight, all six of them were sprawled out and snoring like harvest hogs. So late last night . . . ”

  “This morning,” Sharrar put in.

  “This morning, Sharrar and Hyrryai and I . . . ”

  “Hyrryai?” Shursta looked at his mesh-mate. She would not lift her eyes to his, but the corners of her lips twitched as she tore her roll into bird-bite pieces.

  “ . . . Snuck into their chambers and sewed them in!”

  Shursta hid his face in his hands. “Oh, by all the Drowned Cities in all the seas . . . ”

  Sharrar limped around the table to fling her arms about him. “Don’t worry. No one will blame you. I made sure they’d know it was my idea.”

  He groaned again. “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “She signed their faces!” Laric threaded long fingers through his springy black hair. “I’ve not played pranks like this since I was a toddlekin. Or,” he amended, “since my first-year wife left me for a man with more goats than brains.”

  Sharrar slid down beside him. “Laric, my friend—just wait till you hear my plans for the hoopball field!”

  “Oh, the weeping gods . . . ” Shursta covered his face again.

  A knee nudged his knee. Hyrryai’s flesh was warm beneath her linen trousers. He glanced at her between his fingers and she smiled.

  “Courage, husband,” she told him. “The best defense is offense. You never had brothers before, or you would know this. My brothers have been getting too sure of themselves. Three meshed already, their seeds gone for harvest, and they think they rule the world. Three of them recently come of age—brash, bold, considered prize studs of the market. Their heads are inflated like bladder balls.”

  Sharrar brandished her eating blade. “All it takes is a pinprick, my sweet ones!”

  “Hush,” Laric hissed. “Here come Plankin and Orssi.”

  The brothers had grim mouths, tousled hair, and murder in their bloodshot eyes. They had not bothered looking at themselves in the mirror that morning, for Sharrar’s signature stood out bright and blue across
their foreheads. Once they charged the breakfast table, however, they seemed uncertain upon whom they should fix their wrath. Sharrar had resumed her seat and was eating an innocent breakfast off three different plates. Laric kept trying to steal one of them back. Hyrryai’s attention was wholly on the roll she decimated. Orssi glared at Shursta.

  “Was it you, Sharkbait?” he demanded.

  Shursta could still feel Hyrryai’s knee pressed hard to his. His face flushed. His throat opened. He grinned at them both.

  “Me, Shortsheets?” he asked. “Why, no. Of course not. I have minions to do that sort of thing for me.”

  He launched his breakfast roll into the air. It plonked Plankin right between the eyes. Unexpectedly, Plankin threw back his head, roaring out a laugh.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “Breakfast! Thanks, brother.”

  Orssi, looking sly, made a martial leap and snatched the roll from Plankin’s fingers. Yodeling victory, he took off running. With an indignant yelp, Plankin pelted after him. Hyrryai rolled her eyes. She reached across the table, took back the plate of oranges from Sharrar and popped a piece into Shursta’s mouth before he could say another word. Her fingers brushed his lips, sticky with juice.

  It did not surprise Shursta when, not one week later, Laric begged to have a word with him. “Privately,” he said, “away from all these Blodestones. Come on, I’ll take you to my favorite tavern. Very disreputable. No one of any note or name goes there. We won’t be plagued.”

  Shursta agreed readily. He had not explored much of Droon beyond the family’s holdings. Large as they were, they were starting to close in on him. Hyrryai’s mother Dymorri had recently asked him whether a position as overseer of mines or of fields would better suit his taste. He had answered honestly that he knew nothing about either—and did the Blodestones have a fishing boat he might take out from time to time, to supply food for the family?

  “Blodestones do not work the sea,” she had replied, looking faintly amused.

  Dymorri had high cheekbones, smooth rosy-bronze skin, and thick black eyebrows. Her hair was nearly white but for the single streak of black that started just off center of her hairline, and swept to the tip of a spiralling braid. Shursta would have been afraid of her, except that her eyes held the same sorrow permeating her daughter. He wondered if Kuista, the youngest Blodestone, had taken after her. Hyrryai had more the look of her grandmother, being taller and rangier, with a broader nose and wider mouth, black eyes instead of brown.

  “Fishing’s all I know,” he’d told her.

  “Hyrryai will teach you,” she had said. “Think about it. There is no hurry. You have not been meshed a month.”

  True to his word, Laric propelled him around Droon, pointing out landmarks and places of interest. Shops, temples, old bits of wall, parks, famous houses, the seat of the Astrion Council. It was shaped like an eight-sided star, built of sparkling white quartz. Three hundred steps led up to the entrance, each step mosaiced in rainbow spirals of shell.

  “Those shells came from the other Nine Islands,” Laric told him. “When there were nine other islands.”

  “And you think there might be more?”

  Laric cocked his ear for the hint of derision that usually flavored such questions. “I think,” he answered slowly, “that there is more to this world than islands.”

  “Even if there isn’t,” Shursta sighed, “I wouldn’t mind leaving this one. Even for a little while. Even if it meant nothing but stars and sea and a wooden boat forever.”

  “Exactly!” Laric clapped him on the back. “Ah, here we are. The Thirsty Seagull.”

  Laric Spectrox had not lied about the tavern. It was so old it had hunkered into the ground. The air was rank with fermentation and tobacco smoke. All the beams were blackened, all the tables scored with the graffitti of raffish nobodies whose names would never be sung, whose deeds would never be known, yet who had carved proof of their existence into the wood, as if to say, “Here, at least, I shall be recognized.” Shursta fingered a stained, indelicate knife mark, feeling like his heart would break.

  Taking a deep, appreciative breath, Laric pronounced, “Like coming home. Sit, sit. Let me buy you a drink. Beer?”

  “All right,” Shursta agreed, and sat, and waited. When Laric brought back the drinks, he sipped, and watched, and waited. The bulge in Laric’s narrow throat bobbled. There was a sheen of sweat upon his brow. Shursta lowered his eyes, thinking Laric might find his task easier if he were not being watched. It seemed to help.

  “Your sister,” Laric began, “is . . . ”

  Shursta took a longer drink.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Yes,” Shursta agreed. He chanced to glance up. Laric was looking anywhere but at him, gesturing with his long hands.

  “How is it that she wasn’t snatched up by some clever fellow as soon as she came of age?”

  “Well,” Shursta pointed out, “she only recently did.”

  “I know, but . . . But in villages like Sif—small villages, I mean, well, even in Droon—surely some sparky critter had an eye on her these many years. Someone who grew up with her. Someone who thought, ‘Soon as that Sarth girl casts her lure, I’ll make damn sure I’m the fish for that hook! Take bait and line and pole and girl and dash for the far horizon . . . ”

  Shursta cleared his throat. “Hard to dash with a game leg.”

  Laric plunked down from the high altitude of his visions. “Pardon?”

  “Hard to run off with a girl who can’t walk without a cane.” Shursta studied Laric, who in turn tried to read the careful deadpan of his face. “And then, what if her children are born crooked? You’d be polluting your line. Surely the Spectroxes are taunted enough without introducing little lame Sharrar Sarth into the mix. Aren’t you afraid what your family will say?”

  “Damisel Sharrar Sarth,” Laric corrected him stiffly, emphasizing the honorific. He tried to govern his voice. “And . . . And any Spectrox who does not want to claim wit and brilliance and derring-do and that glorious bosom for kin can eat my . . . ”

  Shursta clinked his mug to Laric’s. “Relax. Sharrar has already told me she is going to elope with you on your big wooden boat. Two days after she met you. She said she’d been prepared to befriend you, but had not thought to be brought low by your, how did she put it, incredible height, provocative fingers and . . . adorable teeth.” He coughed. “She went on about your teeth at some length. Forgive me if I don’t repeat all of it. I’m sure she’s composed a poem about them by now. If you find a proposal drummed up in couplets and shoved under your door tonight, you’ll have had time to prepare your soul.”

  The look on Laric’s face was beyond the price of gemmajas. He reached his long arms across the table and pumped Shursta’s hand with both of his, and Shursta could not help laughing.

  “Now, my friend,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  It was at the bar Shursta noticed the bleak man in the corner. He looked as if he’d been sitting there so long that dust had settled over him, that lichen had grown over him, that spiders had woven cobwebs over his weary face. The difference between his despair and Laric’s elation struck Shursta with the force of a blow, and he asked, when he returned to Laric’s side, who the man might be.

  “Ah.” Laric shook his head. “That’s Myrar Yaspir, poor bastard.”

  “Poor bastard?” Shursta raised his eyebrows, inviting more. It was this same dark curiosity, he recognized, that had made him press Hyrryai for details about Kuista’s death the first day they met. He was unused to considering himself a gossip. But then, he thought, he’d had no friends to gossip with in Sif.

  “Well.” Laric knocked back a mouthful. His gaze wandered up and to the right. Sharrar once told Shursta that you could always tell when someone was reaching for a memory, for they always looked up and to the right. He’d seen the expression on her face often as she memorized a story.

  “All right. I guess it began when he meshed with Adularia Yaspir three y
ears ago. Second mesh-rite for both. No children on either side. He courted her for nearly a year. You could see by his face on their meshing day that there was a man who had pursued the dream of a lifetime. That for him, this was not about the Yaspir name or industry or holdings, but about a great burning love that would have consumed him had he not won it for his own. Adularia—well. I think she wanted children. She liked him enough. You could see the pink in her cheeks, the glow in her eyes on her meshing day. And you thought—if any couple’s in it past the one year mesh-mark, this is that couple. It’s usually that way for second meshings. You know.”

  Shursta nodded.

  “So the first year passes. No children. The second year passes. No children. Myrar starts coming here more often. Drinking hard. Talk around Droon was that Adularia wanted to leave him. He was arrested once for brawling. A second time, on more serious charges, for theft.”

  “Really?” Shursta watched from the corner of his eye, the man who sat so still flies landed on him.

  “Not just any theft . . . Gems from the Blodestone mines.”

  Shursta loosed a low whistle. “Diamonds?”

  “Not even!” Laric leaned in. “Semi-precious stones, uncut, unpolished. Not even cleaned yet. Just a handful of green chalcedonies, like the one you’re wearing.”

  The breath left Shursta’s body. He touched the stone hanging from his ear. He remembered suddenly how Kuista Blodestone’s gemmaja had come up missing on her person, how that one small detail had so disturbed him that he had admonished his sister to hide her own upon her person, as if the red-speckled stone were some amulet of death. He opened his mouth. His throat clicked a few times before it started working.

  “Why . . . why would he take such a thing?”

  Shrugging, Laric said, “Don’t know. They made him return them all, of course. He spent some time in the stocks. Had to beg his wife to take him back. Promised her the moon, I heard. Stopped drinking. But she said that if she was not pregnant by winter, she’d leave him, and that was that.”