Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  “Goddammit, I’m never gonna find all those again.” She brought the skillet down hard on his face.

  He went still. His hand slowly dropped from her shirt, fell to his chest with a thud. His right wrist lay at his side, swollen purple and at an odd angle.

  Breathing hard, she pushed against the counter to stand upright. The skillet dropped from her hand to the floor. He looked like a tree had seen a man from a distance once and thought it’d give the shape a try. Something silvery poured from his nostrils. Maybe a couple broken front teeth, too.

  “Shit.” Jean scooped up her gun from the floor and stumbled toward the kitchen’s back door. “Clara.” She put her shoulder to it and tried to quiet her breath as she stepped out into the cold.

  Distant traffic. The band, a little louder inside—had someone told them to turn up the volume? The wind, always the wind in Chicago. And something that smelled of tin in the air.

  “I said no!”

  And Jean moved on silent feet.

  “Pretty bird, what did you think you were agreeing to in there?” Winston was amused and cruel. His voice rolled deep, a river filled with gravel.

  “You come any closer...” Clara sounded like a trembling little bell “...I’m...I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Please tell me.” A crackling, staticky sound, and a clatter, and then a high-pitched gasp that had Jean running toward the corner of the club’s building. “I gotta tell you, little bird, I love to laugh.”

  Jean flattened herself against the brick wall and peered around.

  Clara was leaning against a trash bin, one hand to her face, the other arm keeping her propped up. She had to be freezing, in her slinky dress. Her shiny satin heels were stained with winter slush. Her stockings were soaked from her knees to her shins. Only one of her green-gold wings fluttered; the other lay limp on the cold metal of the bin.

  Winston loomed over her, his back to Jean, his green crown ablaze with new thorns. His hands, huge bear paws, held no weapon. But did he need one, really?

  Something glinted in the snow on the alley floor as Winston’s shadow moved away. A pearl-handled knife Jean had never seen before. Tiny gold lightning bolts skittered over the shaft, up and down. Mesmerizing.

  “Wait,” Winston said softly.

  Jean tore her eyes off the knife. He was reaching for Clara’s face. Jean’s gun was tucked firm in her hand. It was the first time its weight felt useless.

  “I know you,” Winston said, so smooth and quiet.

  Clara scoffed, but some fear leaked out. “I’ve never met you in my life.”

  “No, no.” Winston waved her comment away. “Your eyes...” His hand darted out, snagged her sparkly headband, and ripped it from her hair. Clara hissed through her teeth, and Jean tasted copper.

  Winston laughed. “I didn’t see it before. But when those eyes glare... You’re what? That kid’s mother? No, too young. His sister?”

  Clara’s face sharpened, and she bared needle teeth. “His name,” she bit out, “is Jamie.”

  Winston threw his head back and roared his delight. “He’s a senseless battery in a mound under Queens now, sweetheart.” He stood up straight, threw her headband into the slush at his polished wingtip shoes. “Jamie. Right. Smart little bird. Asked all kinds of clever questions about where my den’s power comes from. But look... now he knows.”

  He took a step closer and leaned a palm on the trash can lid Clara huddled against. “Do you know how much gold fae will give to buy magic siphoned off creatures they never have to meet?” he whispered, too close to her neck.

  Clara’s voice had razor blades in it. “I’ll kill you.”

  Winston loved that. Laughing like a kid at the movies, he reached for her throat. “You don’t even have a weapon anymore, sugar.”

  Jean shoved away from the brick wall and ran for him. She could barely see Clara’s brown eyes, wide and shining, turn toward her.

  “Who says?” Clara choked out.

  Winston whirled just in time to take Jean’s .38 whipped across his face. Blood splattered the slush in the alley, and he howled, hands over his face. Results were in—two out of two fae susceptible to getting their noses broken.

  Jean got her toe under the pearl-handled knife. A smooth kick, and it was in her hand, and then in his throat down to the hilt.

  She’d never knifed a man before. She narrowed her eyes as he grabbed at his neck, then slipped and fell to his knees. The ground shook under her feet. His bones must have been as dense as the Rockies. He slumped onto his face, gagging. The crown flickered above his head, once, twice, then winked out entirely.

  Gunshots were prettier deaths, that was sure.

  She glanced at Clara, still half sitting, half lying on top of a trash can. Her hand shook at her throat, and she was coughing a little, tears on her lashes and down her cheeks.

  Jean shrugged out of her suit coat and threw it over her, mindful of the limp wing.

  Clara’s laugh was raspy. “Finally see what’s in front of you, Fletcher?” The laugh turned into a small choking fit.

  “You’re very funny. We can chat about all our secrets later. For now...” Jean knelt to pick up the headband from the slush. She held out the sparkling ribbon. “Here I am, right on time. Your weapon.”

  Clara took a shaky breath and slid off the trash can onto her feet. Pretty heels staining in the snow. She lifted Jean’s chin. “No,” she whispered. “My baby.”

  The kiss was somewhat different from the ones in Jean’s daydreams. She hadn’t pictured a seven-foot corpse at her feet, for one thing, and there had been fewer wings involved. But here in reality, her knee turning cold in the snow and ice, her neck arched, eyes closed, savoring the softness of Clara’s lips against hers, tasting the salt of a fairy’s tears....

  Jean decided it was still an excellent beginning.

  In the Salt Crypts of Ghiarelle

  by Jennifer Mace

  The captain looms behind his salt-carved desk, his craggy face gone distant with horror. His lips move, but Élan’s not really listening. There’s a sinking feeling in her throat, like a plum stone swallowed by mistake.

  “—and that,” he continues, the tap of his thick fingers breaking through her haze, “is why you arrested Her Royal Highness, Princess Nikolia of Myrne, heir to the amalgamate crown of our late king-consort’s foster brother, Archduke Nikolaus, and our closest ally against the depths? For standing in a corridor?!”

  Fuck.

  Élan has approximately a half-dozen things to worry about right now, but... sink it, did the princess have to be from Myrne? She likes Myrne; their olives and candied citrus are delicious, and their traders know the bawdiest songs.

  The princess, whose posture transforms the hard-backed guardroom chair into a throne, coughs delicately into her jewel-ringed fist. “Actually, my title translates to ‘crown duchess’,” she corrects, exquisitely polite. “Myrne has no princesses.” One triple-layered violet sleeve—so exquisitely and fashionably slashed Élan had mistaken them for rags in the crypts’ dim light—falls away from her wrist, which is already blooming into a bruise from Élan’s ungentle grasp.

  “My apologies, Your Highness,” the captain says, and bows—bows!—from his seat. “Rest assured, Gendarme Sentienne’s actions do not represent Piegny’s, or His Highness’s, broader view of Myrne.”

  “Of course, of course,” the crown duchess murmurs with a wafting gesture of fabric. The scent of foreign flowers momentarily fills the room, and Élan valiantly exerts herself not to cough. “The gendarme was just doing her job, I’m sure. I imagine tensions are running high.”

  It has been twenty-three days since Queen Marielle and her consort were laid to rest in the salt caves beneath clifftop Ghiarelle Palace. Their sole heir, Prince Arin, hides in his tower, wincing at the slightest noise. The few surviving gendarmes divide their off-duty hours between hammering dents out of plate armor and scrubbing blood from uniform tunics, now most of the funerals are done with.
>
  You could probably say things were a little fucking tense.

  Élan wants to protest, but there’s no point; the captain won’t take it well. Sweat beads on his forehead, catching on angry new scar tissue across his brow. It’s not that warm. This woman scares him.

  “If Your Highness is not offended...” he says, cautiously.

  “How could I be?” Now she’s gotten her apology, the crown duchess is as sweet as honey. Her accent droops and swirls the words into a soothing music, if you ignore what she’s actually saying. “It’s as you say: Piegny, Myrne—are we not the best of friends?”

  “Absolutely.” He’s nodding like a pigeon, but his eyes, when they cut to Élan, are mean as a leashed hawk’s. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Élan swallows. She’s sure he will.

  Once the crown duchess leaves, in a flourish of beautiful dark curls and billowing robes, the captain turns beady eyes on Élan.

  “It wasn’t just any corridor, Captain,” she blurts, breaking painfully free of parade rest now the enemy’s left the room. “She was kneeling right outside the queen’s crypt, sir; she wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t say anything except some magewaffle about plants, and if she was after their blood—”

  “I don’t give a single foundering fuck where you caught her, Gendarme, or what you thought she wanted.” His face is as tight as the seal on a tomb. “Anything short of wrist deep in His Highness’s ribcage, you bow and scrape and make nice, understand? We’re drowning in titled outlanders, and I won’t trust a tidesborn one of them till there’s a head under that crown again. Yes, this one wants a wedding, not a war, but if you piss off royalty too much that might change, Gendarme. Do you want that to change, Gendarme?”

  “No, sir!” Élan barks.

  “Then get out!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  As she turns to go, she hears, quietly, “Endless oceans, let’s hope our boy’s head will hold the weight.”

  * * *

  Like the crown duchess’s arrival was a signal, salt-wreathed Ghiarelle goes from fortress to circus overnight. Carriage after carriage, shorecraft after riverboat, by dirigible and even by dromedary train, dignitaries stream through Ghiarelle’s crystal gates and up her cliffs from the perilously hungry sea. There are dukes and marquesses and clan heads, two tussling mage schools from opposite corners of the Saiqur wastes, and a Prince of Flame from clear across the Sundering Ocean, all bound for His Highness’s coronation.

  Not that Élan’s seen so much as a glimpse. For her catastrophic fuckup with the Crown Duchess of Myrne, the captain has bolted her to the most depressingly static station upon which he can justify wasting two fully armored gendarmes. She’s pulling double shifts, barely time to stuff bread and cheese into her face before falling into a fitful sleep; the other gendarmes avoid her gaze, like her new station’s the catching kind of curse.

  It didn’t used to be this way.

  Guarding Prince Arin’s door in the lead-up to the coronation should have been an honor and a joy. It isn’t. Since the funeral, grief has burned their laughing moon-bright prince away to a husk.

  Oh, he does the minimum required for the revelry: he sits at high table during dinner, and opens the dances, and welcomes the diplomats before running back to the dark silence of his rooms. But he does so wound tight with clothing, collars pulled high enough to hide half his face, eyes bruised-looking and hands flinching from contact. Even the sound of silverware makes him wince; he eats his meals in private.

  It isn’t Élan’s place to worry.

  She’s just a guard.

  Then again, she’s not sure there’s anyone left whose place it would be. Her partner-at-guard certainly doesn’t seem to. Mind you, it’s entirely plausible Guilhan had all fellow-feeling bleached out of him as a child; if not, then losing his partner to the depth-spawn has certainly finished the job.

  “Food’s late,” she says, because it’s true, and because if she stands here much longer she’s going to scream. “I’m going to check.”

  She makes it three strides before Guilhan whisper-yells, “Come back here!” after her.

  Élan pauses. “We’re to keep him safe,” she says, and keeps it simple, like he’s a child. “Starved isn’t safe. Nor’s poisoned, if someone intercepted it.”

  “But—”

  “Sundering seas, Guilhan, leave off. I’ll be back before anyone knows it.” Frankly, she could stay away long enough to cook His Highness’s dinner herself and still expect that to be true—and she’s a godsawful chef. “Surely you can hold your piss for half an hour?”

  She leaves him there, gaping like a fish, and tries to squash the spiteful flash of pleasure at knocking him off his dignity before she gets tempted to do it again.

  Reaching the kitchens kills what’s left of that petty joy faster than snuffing a candle. They’re quiet. The kitchens are never quiet.

  Cooks and pages and wood-bearers alike have clotted around a wound in the middle of the floor: a fallen boy, a tray spilled, and a dark-haired kneeling figure in layer upon layer of thin-spun robes.

  “What happened?” Élan demands, grabbing a page girl near the back of the pack.

  “Simo just—fell,” the girl answers, jaw slack. She can’t be more than thirteen, fourteen; barely as high as Élan’s shoulder. “Cook yelled he wasn’t breathing, and then—the lady, she...” Simo. That’s the prince’s page, isn’t it?

  “Air mage,” another woman says, hair braided back and netted like a baker. She nods grimly. “Pulling the breath back, most likely. Lucky she was passing. Poor kid. Run ragged, must be, to collapse like that.”

  Élan carefully pushes through the crowd, nudging people apart with her spear butt. It’s the Crown Duchess of Myrne at the center of the circle, dark lashes fanned across those high-boned cheeks, motionless as if she’s posing for a coinsmith. Because that’s precisely Élan’s luck.

  Air mage. Huh. All right. Not just a froth of fabric and jewels, after all.

  The crown duchess hovers one hand over the fallen boy’s still face, the other over his chest. If Élan listens closely, she can hear a thin, musical hum, wavering like light on waves. The kitchen staff’s whispers easily drown it.

  Ah, fuck. If that chef’s to be believed, then the noble arrived only after the boy fell. She can’t have caused it. She’s trying to help.

  Élan passes a hand over her face, and turns, putting her back to the pair. Captain’s going to have her head for getting within a spear’s length of the woman, but there’s a child at risk. Élan braces her feet, plants her spear, and lifts her chin.

  “Make space!” she says, pulling parade-ground pitch and posture around her like a surcoat. “Step back!”

  With the grumbling noise of thwarted gossip, the crowd disperses. Élan glares the last few stragglers into submission, makes sure someone has sent for a physician, and circles to kneel cacophonously on the other side of the fallen child.

  It’s undeniably the prince’s page: not only does the royal blue uniform mark his rank, the boy’s a fosterling noble from one of the southern kingdoms, with skin a brown almost as dark as his close-curled hair. She’s seen him frequently, this past week.

  His chest moves, though barely. The crown duchess is frowning.

  “What do you need?” Élan asks, and the woman’s face tilts towards her.

  “I thought I recognized that voice,” she says without opening her eyes. Her smile is thin. “Do you sing, Gendarme? You’ve the lungs for it.”

  “Well enough,” Élan replies, bemused.

  “Give me five notes, then, ascending and descending. Slowly.” It’s a voice used to unquestioning obedience; if she resents past indignities at Élan’s hands, the feeling has been buried in impeccable etiquette. So Élan sings.

  The crown duchess does something complicated with her hand, then her eyes blink open. Simo’s chest continues to rise and fall, tied to the rhythm of Élan’s voice.

  “There’s something...” she murmurs, l
eaning over the boy’s face. She peels his lips back and runs her fingers over his teeth before Élan can say a word—not that she would, trapped as she is humming Simo’s lungs full and then empty again.

  It’s a queer sensation. Magic doesn’t run in her family, and Élan has never so much as stirred the brine in an offering dish. Does the crown duchess feel this powerful all the time?

  It would explain the way she holds herself. Even kneeling on the grubby-tiled kitchen floor, the line of her shoulders is as straight as a sword. Her sleeves are rumpled and she’s getting spit on her fingers and she still looks like a statue sprung to life.

  Élan yanks her attention back where it belongs. While she’s allowed herself to become distracted, said distraction has stuck half her hand down the page boy’s throat.

  “What are you—” Élan says, forgetting, and the boy’s ribs stutter.

  “Keep singing!” the noble snaps, though Élan has already realized her mistake and is grasping frantically for lost notes. She goes too fast, too high, loses control, and the boy gasps, back arching off the tiled floor, jaw clenching. The noble swears, or possibly casts—Élan barely knows enough Myrnish to not get swindled—and yanks her hand free, skin scraping against teeth.

  There’s a long strand of something sickly greenish-white clutched between her fingers, emerging from the boy’s mouth.

  The crown duchess keeps pulling, muttering under her breath. Élan can’t look away, song trailing uselessly off. It’s impossible, it’s nauseating, and it’s clearly hurting the boy.

  Eventually, the crown duchess sits back on her heels, hands tangled with a red-flecked mass of strands, and the boy gasps on his own, ragged and out of sync. His eyes shoot open. His previously limp hand clutches at his chest. A look of bewildered shock crosses his face. And then, the tears.