Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  Over dinner that night, she says, “You asked if I was rich. No. Librarians swear an oath of poverty. I traveled the world studying textiles, yet I only ever wore the uniform of a librarian—or a cheap disguise. Now that I am dead... why not enjoy what I can?”

  “Would you mind if I asked how you died?” Perhaps Hillie is rubbing off on me. I never would have asked such a personal question before meeting her.

  “A book fell on me.”

  I laugh and she bats my shoulder.

  “To be fair, the front-board was a lovely mosaic—so it was quite heavy. I was an old fool for trying to get it down by myself.”

  “How long has it been? Since you died?”

  “A long time. Longer than I was alive. And I was older than you when I died.” She pauses, and pulls away slightly. “Am I your first?”

  First what? I don’t know how to explain my relationship with my kin-workers. I never met a Ytarran anything like Hillie. I wonder what she sees in me, even as I am too afraid to ask.

  * * *

  Days pass and we believe we have found a route to Cmlech. Yet, our letters to the intervening gods return unopened, or with tersely worded rejections. I am not surprised, for Cmlech is a pariah god, working at the edges for the destruction of empires that provide other gods with followers and sacrifices.

  We keep trying, but it is hard waiting for letters to work their way through the narrow and twisting caverns between underworlds. I am learning to read, and while it’s unclear if I’m helping or hindering, at least I can pretend I am working towards my own departure.

  Every night Hillie prepares a feast from one of her many cookbooks. I teach her a few Ytarran dishes, and try not to cringe when she writes them down.

  We eat until we are near to bursting, then climb into bed, the frustrations of the day melting under the warmth of the quilt and the heat of our bodies. Perhaps Hillie is right: after a lifetime’s work it is good to rest and enjoy the underworld.

  And then I see the man who killed me.

  He slips out of the book-return room. The book I am shelving falls from my hands. I freeze, doubting myself. Then I see the faint flash of his death-giving smile, and I am sure. I unstrap my hammer, hands clammy against the wood haft, and pursue him.

  I dash across the great hall. He disappears into the stacks; I push myself faster. Hillie steps out in front of me—saying something I do not hear—and I almost tumble to the ground. By the time I catch myself and reach the stacks, he has disappeared.

  I turn this way and that, searching for the flash of white robes in my periphery. Nothing. I rush back to Hillie.

  “Come with me.” I grab her hand and try to drag her towards our living quarters.

  “But—” she says. I pull harder until she starts walking with me. She keeps speaking, not understanding my urgency. “Btta, I just received a letter from my god. They’re going to personally escort you to Cm—to your god—in exchange for a story they’ve never heard before.” She tries to pull away from me. “The contract is back on my desk.”

  My stomach lurches. I can’t handle the thought of leaving right now.

  When we reach the kitchen, I put my hands on her shoulders and say, “I just saw the man who killed me. He’s inside the library.”

  She stiffens her back, head held high, and says, “I'll go kick him out.”

  “No!” My hands grip her shoulders, remembering Myrna’s death at the tip of the necromancer’s sword. “Hillie, this isn’t an unruly patron. He killed my kin-workers. I’m not losing you, too!” I struggle not to shake her. “Stay up here, where it’s safe. Lock the door. I’m going to get rid of him.”

  She protests at first, still thinking her routine more important than her safety. Yet she chooses to put her faith in my fear, and I hear the click of the lock as I head down the stairs.

  I run to the great hall, but I am too late. Smoke occludes the stacks and library patrons flee through the entrance doors, which have been forced open from the inside. White-robed men with torches are burning the books. My killer must have let them in.

  I slip into the stacks and bring the first one down with a wet crumpling sound, barely audible under the growing roar of the fire. Thinking the library undefended, they are armed only with torches. They don’t expect me; so I kill or maim four before the rest know I am among them.

  Then my killer finds me, his sword in hand. I roar when he sees me, but to him I am just an unknown woman who stands in his way.

  He closes the distance between us, and I step back. His sword slices the smoky air and I shudder at the memory of its sharpness. He has reach-advantage on my hammer, and the narrow stacks leave little room to maneuver.

  My only hope is to distract him enough to slip beneath his guard and land a crushing blow. “Why did you send me here? What happened to my kin-workers?”

  He steps forward, sword held tip up, ready to fall upon me. “Ah, you’re that Ytarran death-cultist.” He steps forward again, driving me back. “I needed to test the targeted-death ritual before performing it on myself. You were a convenient sacrifice. The only thing I ever wanted of you is your death.”

  I fake a forward thrust, then turn and run. I weave left and right and lose him in the smoke.

  I hide in the stacks, hoping for an opening. My killer and I see Hillie at the same time.

  She strides through the smoke, kitchen-knife held aloft. I told her to stay upstairs!

  The necromancer whirls and advances toward her. I scream and I run and I am almost upon him when he turns on me and the flashing sword slices jagged-red across my torso. I fall against a bookshelf, the stone burning my back.

  The necromancer’s death grin rises above me, but I won’t give up while I still hold my hammer. He lazily blocks my one-handed swipe with the flat of his blade. I am going to die again, and then he is going to kill Hillie. I will never see her again.

  “Why do you still struggle? You have nothing left to fight for. Your quarry is ours; its god-stone fuels our great work. Your friends are dead; your nameless god did not aid them.”

  I watch Hillie behind him; she puts on a mask and fiddles with something at her desk. Oh. Of course she would prioritize her books over her life. She is going to activate the emergency fire-suppression failsafe.

  Wincing at the pain, I speak in an attempt to delay my death. “What ‘great work’ could justify this?”

  My ears pop. Wind buffets the necromancer’s robes. I close my mouth; hold my breath tight within me.

  He smiles. “We work for your freedom, Ytarran. Neither the living nor the dead exist to serve the gods. The gods exist to serve us. We bound our god with god-stone chains, and now he enacts our will. If you had done the same, you would not be lying bloody on the floor, praying for help from a nameless god who will not answer.”

  His sword rises slowly to its apex. He blinks and sways and shakes his head. It is enough of an opening. I grab the haft of my hammer and bring it hard against his knee. He goes down and I rise up and press him against the floor with my bloody hammer.

  “My god has a name, killer.” He yelps as I grind the head of the hammer into his chest. “My god’s name is the sound of the death of empires, the sound of the triumph of the weak against the strong.” I lift my hammer. “My god’s name is the sound of your skull breaking beneath the iron of my hammer.”

  He is dead.

  My vision darkens. I should have kept my mouth shut, but it was worth it to say Cmlech's blessing at the moment of my triumph. At least I will die of suffocation instead of the blade. My body weakens and falls, and I plunge into the ocean of unconsciousness.

  * * *

  I awaken in pain, knowing I am in the right underworld.

  My head throbs with the agony of my suffocation. I shudder at the trauma of my almost-death, then I look up into Hillie’s eyes and all is well. She pulls the breathing mask from my face and leans down to kiss me.

  She smells of ashes and the destruction of her library. Her tears trac
k channels across her soot-stained cheeks and drip on my face.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, knowing words are not enough. I should have been faster, stronger, smarter. How many of her books did I fail to save?

  She grips me tight, pulls me closer. “No. You have nothing to be sorry for. Without you, I’d be dead. Or—even if I survived—” She sighs, trying to express her feelings. “Yes, I mourn the lost books. But wisdom isn’t just written down on paper or carved into clay. It lives in our heads and our hearts.” She ruffles my hair, then places her hand on my chest. “People are books, too, and I never want to stop reading you.”

  Tears blur my eyes. I want to tell her how much she means to me, but the words don’t come. What could I possibly say that would compare?

  She shifts beside me. “I saved your transit-contract.” She hands me the papers.

  I stare sightlessly at them. She watches me, waiting.

  This is my path to freedom. A long road to walk—alone—and then reunion with Myrna and my kin-workers. My desire to see them is an ache nestled hard against my heart, my duty to Cmlech a searing brand held an inch behind me. And yet.

  “I can take you to the checkpoint now, if you like.” She wipes her eyes. “I’ll be... fine here.”

  I clutch her arm. “They might come back. I can’t...” But that is a lie. I could leave, if I wanted to.

  No.

  Hillie is right. I have served my time in the world above and have earned my rest. Perhaps I don’t need words to tell Hillie what she means to me.

  I take the contract and begin to rip, but Hillie grabs my hands.

  She smiles at me, understanding my intent. “I want to be with you, too.” She puts the contract on the ground and kisses me. “But I don’t need you bound to me. You should have the freedom to leave... or we can go together, or stay here and rebuild, or...” She throws her hands up. “Whatever happens, I want to be with you. Do you...?”

  “Yes,” I say. I take her hand and hold it as tight as I can, in the hope that we will never let go.

  What Finds You in the Deep

  by K.A. Doore

  Lammeët’s lips pursed with doubt as she pulled her lambskin hood back, spattering the ground with rain. “This is it?”

  Tucked beneath a rocky overhang of what had once been a lake, the cave had been passed by for an entire town’s memory until a few farmers came looking for stones. When they’d found the cave, they’d done the proper thing and alerted their council—after removing as many stones as they needed for their fences, of course.

  The entrance was little more than a slice of darkness, barely wide enough to squeeze through. A pile of yellow-painted rocks was a recent addition from those same farmers, without which the entrance was invisible to passersby. Now the yellow glowed like a beacon despite the spitting rain on this early summer day, still chilled by its memories of spring.

  “Some of the local kids got inside and found ancient tech,” said Kuolma. “That means it could be a lost cultist refuge. The Council believes we’ll find magic.”

  “The Council believes we’ll find bodies,” corrected Lammeët, but a tight excitement underlaid her words and she approached the entrance with sharp curiosity.

  Just getting Lammeët here had been the work of months and countless favors and—yes—bribes. Officially, the fourteenth princess-elect of the Republic of Saavki had better things to do with her time than waste it exploring a cave. Magic, wherever it was found, was the sole purview of Kuolma and the other seven specialists, not any of the hundreds of elects.

  But Lammeët was not just any of hundreds; she was Kuolma’s elect, and Kuolma her guard. Even though now Lammeët’s station required a rotating dozen of guards, Kuolma had been her first and closest. And, if Kuolma were being honest, they’d been more than mere elect and guard for a long time. While Kuolma no longer attended Lammeët as often as she once had—some state affairs weren’t for the ears of a mere appointee—she still protected Lammeët. Stood by her side. Cared for her. Understood her. Knew what she needed.

  And if there was one thing Lammeët needed more than anything else right now, it was an excuse to step away, if only for a few short hours, from her tightly controlled and constantly critiqued life in the castle, where the election for principal-elect was on the horizon and the expectation hovered over her every waking moment that she would not only run, but win.

  Kuolma couldn’t do anything about those expectations, but she could give Lammeët this: a trip into an unexplored cave, potentially rife with toxic magic and deadly animates, and a chance to temporarily shed her constant responsibilities and expectations.

  It was a gift to herself, too: time alone with Lammeët, time enough to remember what had kept them together beyond their bond as guard and guarded, to rekindle the spark of what they’d had, once, to see if they could be more than occasional lovers. Lammeët loved danger and Kuolma loved Lammeët. This cave was what they both needed.

  “Do you think the magic is old enough for animates?” asked Lammeët, the thinnest edge of hope in her voice.

  “If this was a cultist site, then it’s old enough to move stone.”

  The corners of Lammeët’s lips twitched up. “Stone animates?”

  “I can’t make any promises—”

  But Lammeët had already turned sideways and slipped through the crack as if it had been carved just for her. Kuolma shoved down the worry that flashed within her before it could catch and keep. There wasn’t anything at the start; she’d already made sure of it.

  She pushed her pack through first—someone had to carry provisions in case they got lost or stuck—but the stone tried to trap her when she slid in after, rocks sticking sharp into her chest and back. She sucked in a breath and squeezed and wiggled, the stone so close she wasn’t sure she’d make it through this time, but then she passed the tightest point and the stone gradually opened back up again until she could slide and then shuffle and then, finally, walk free.

  Kuolma pulled a torch from her pack and unraveled the wax cloth, but didn’t light it yet. Ahead, Lammeët’s steps clicked on stone. The princess-elect insisted on wearing boots fitted with spikes even in a cave, even in the yawning edge of spring, when there wasn’t a sliver of ice in sight.

  Only when Kuolma was far enough into the cave that she no longer felt the walls within reach did she strike a spark. The torch caught, flickered to life, and spilled warm yellow—safe —light on their surroundings.

  “Oh.” Lammeët’s breath steamed as she turned in a slow circle, pupils huge enough to devour the entire cave. “It’s bigger than I thought.”

  Having seen this cavern already, Kuolma drank in Lammeët instead. Even damp and sweaty from traveling, the princess-elect was a sight to behold: warm lips pursed tight, pale cheeks reddened from climbing the muddy hill outside, dark eyes sparking in the dim light. Before Lammeët could catch her staring, Kuolma glanced around the first of many connected caverns.

  The ceiling curved away, out of easy reach, and extended far past the small circle of their torchlight. But what the light could touch gleamed. Metal and glass and plastic, all of it ancient, all of it preserved, all of it covered in dust. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with cans and boxes and books and supplies marked in a language that had shivers of familiarity while still not quite their own. There were chairs and desks, empty cups, broken plates, scattered children’s toys, and even the withered tendrils of fibrous plants.

  Most of it had been left as if awaiting an owner that would be back any moment. Chairs had been pushed away, turned as if someone had just stood up. Plates with a fork on their lip, as if they’d just been set down.

  But there were hints of the troubles the people in the cave had endured in their final days: smashed glass, overturned tables, broken tech, and pieces of precious circuits and metal scattered across the floor. Whoever had once inhabited these caves, seeking shelter from the apocalypse they’d both feared and prayed for, they hadn’t been the lucky few who’d em
erged again. These caves were their tomb, but their tragedy could be the Republic’s fortune.

  Click. Lammeët had extended her cane, its metal tip meeting the floor. She approached a curving hulk of old technology, still intact. Its light was long gone, but hints of purpose remained: a smooth surface like a dark mirror; a series of raised buttons marked with their common alphabet, familiar in shape if not order; and a smaller piece of plastic attached by a long wire. She ran one gloved finger along the buttons, their soft clack like pebbles falling.

  “I wonder if we can repurpose some of these. It’s dry in here, preserved from the elements. I think...” Lammeët wiped off some of the grime. “There’s no rust. We can use this to get another wind catcher running.”

  Kuolma smiled. Even with the promise of an adventure, Lammeët was still concerned about her people. One more wind catcher would make a difference for an entire town, but Kuolma wasn’t here for tech. There were other specialists for that.

  They didn’t have the luxury of dawdling and dreaming of all the tech they could fix. Kuolma might be one of Lammeët’s personal guards, but the Council guards waiting in the carriage had been ordered to return by nightfall and they wouldn’t leave a princess-elect behind. Kuolma couldn’t risk them coming into the cave and spoiling the surprises she had planned.

  “Come on.” Kuolma moved toward one of three dark hallways. “This isn’t what we came here for.”

  Lammeët turned away from the tech, but her fingers trailed along the smooth plastic as if reluctant to let go. Then she straightened. “Right. You promised me magic, not old tech. So where do you think the bodies are?”

  “They’ll be farther below,” said Kuolma. “Cultists went underground when threatened. If something happened here, they would have gone deep.”

  Lammeët grinned, all teeth and wolfish sharpness, a reflection of the stylized wolf that circled her neck in silver. “Then why are we dithering? If there are monsters, let’s find them.”