Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  “Your Highness,” Nikolia says behind her, exquisitely polite, and Élan shudders.

  The thing inhabiting Prince Arin’s form barely looks her way. “Inconvenient,” he says, stepping daintily over the painted lines. “But not insurmountable.” He moves almost correctly, but there’s something off about his skin. It’s writhing strangely, pulse pressing up from underneath in ways no heartbeat ever would. Wherever light touches flesh, green wells up and is quickly suppressed.

  Do something! Élan shouts at herself in horror. You have to—

  The prince reaches out. His hand is, as ever, delicate, and his wrist curves as elegantly as a dancer’s. The tip of his finger bulges.

  “Lift,” Nikolia’s voice, a thread of a whisper, “your godsdamned spear.”

  And Élan does.

  She gets it between them like a barrier, and the prince’s eyes narrow at its engravings, even as vines burst from beneath his skin. They’re fast, but Élan’s faster. Two hands on the haft, and block, and twist—the plant-prince-monster hisses with pain, vines withering against the blessings, but that won’t last for long; the haft is only wood. Élan steps back, gets her blade between them, and slashes. The monster flinches.

  “That’s it,” she says, barely hearing herself. “You can’t beat—”

  The flesh of his back begins to writhe.

  Ah, fuck.

  “Run!” Élan shouts, raising her spear as the prince-thing’s flesh bursts like rotten fruit. She’s answered only by the sound of song and wind, the hiss and tear of steel against vine—and slice, and parry, and lunge—and the sound of a monster laughing.

  Nikolia’s not backing off. Élan can’t protect them both. The vines are fast, and agile, and their master is clearly enraged by the singed ash a holy weapon makes of its tendrils. Élan can’t spare more than glances.

  They’re enough. She catches moments: the crown duchess by the royal biers, ferocious, her robes a seething whirlwind of silks slicing vines to shreds. Ducking towards the wall, the melisma of her voice tearing away strands from Élan’s spear-haft, cutting it free when Élan’d thought she’d have to lose it. Catching Élan’s eyes over the thing’s shoulder, determined, blood on her cheek, drawing breath for another attack as Élan pulls the monster’s focus.

  “Hey!” Élan yells. Nikolia creeps along the smooth-carved wall. The monster’s face is Élan’s prince’s, even now. Scorch marks pucker down its chest, left arm gone and the right a sea of writhing vines, whipping out to fend her off. Its naked feet are smeared with her prince’s blood and rot. “What’d you think was gonna happen, tidescum? You think we wouldn’t catch you? You think you were gonna get to rule?!”

  This thing, it’s foul and it’s cursed but it’s impatient, bad at pacing itself; it doesn’t understand the ebb and flow of combat. If the mage can bind it long enough, if Élan can get blessed steel through its heart....

  It opens its mouth, and the tongue is as pale as clam flesh. “I like crowns,” it says, and smiles, boyish and aloof, turning its head like an owl. “I like killing people who wear them.”

  And in a burst of plant-flesh, it knocks Nikolia back into the wall so hard that the dull thunk of her head against stone echoes louder than the sudden absence of her song.

  * * *

  The monster says several things after that. About loyalty and rewards. The contract between knight and monarch. It tries to bribe her. Steps in close, like it thinks her silence is defeat, is acceptance. Lowers its guard.

  Élan’s not really listening. There’s a heavy rushing noise drowning out its words, like she’s stuck in a tidal cave and the ocean’s roaring in, tugging at her knees, her waist, her shoulders.

  All she can see is Nikolia’s body, crumpled and silent. A statue of a different kind. An effigy.

  It’s not even her kingdom.

  She’d sensed something wrong, and Élan hadn’t listened, and now—

  Élan raises her spear.

  Gets the blade up against its gut while it’s busy tempting.

  Shoves.

  There’s some yelling, at first. Once it realizes. Screaming. Thrashing.

  Vines burst from its trunk and scrabble up her gauntlets, her spaulders. One gets into the gap beneath her left armpit and makes it through the gambeson, then two, stabbing; another gets into the hinge at her side, weaves deep beneath her skin. She crushes her left arm down before the tendrils can reach her lungs, grits her teeth against the burning, and holds.

  The pain hovers somewhere out of reach, sickly and searing. She’s going to pay for this.

  But she’s gotten the broad blade of her weapon up deep into its guts, and she’s pierced the green, underwater glow hiding beneath its mockery of a ribcage. Light spills out, cascading down along the etched blessings like blood down a butcher’s runnels.

  The noise fades down to a crackling desiccation. The flesh blackens, then crumbles, then falls to dust.

  Élan falls too. She goes to her knees before her prince, whose poor corpse has been knocked back across the floor. It’s much the worse for wear, trampled and broken by the fighting. Not suitable for clear salt, anymore. Better, perhaps, for burning.

  He’ll never be her king. Not now.

  Maybe he never wanted to, to try something like this.

  It’s not his fault, she tells herself, and mostly manages to believe it. He thought there was a chance. He must have been desperate.

  Her eyes sting. She’s weeping.

  A breeze from the open sky beyond blows dust up off the floor. Light as ash, it dances back towards the salt-rock biers, staining Their Majesties’ tombs with grit.

  It’s time to get up. Time to stand, and turn, and climb the stairs; find a priest. Turn herself in. Let the wheels start turning. There’ll be council votes and pledges of allegiance, royal cousins fighting cousins for what’s left of the throne. War, if that goes badly. Death.

  In a moment. Everything hurts.

  It seems distant. Insignificant, somehow, against the weight of what’s been lost.

  Nikolia.

  Élan staggers upright. She uses her monster-killing weapon as a crutch with every step. There’s no one to see. Nikolia’s eyes are closed.

  Élan lowers herself to the floor, free hand pressing her gambeson up against the ooze of blood she’ll have to deal with eventually. Up close, she can tell the woman’s breathing.

  Something hot and burning rushes up her throat: relief, or hysteria, or maybe anger, who the fuck knows. “Wake up,” Élan says, and if her voice is shaky, she’s earned it. “Come on, princess, there’s no drowning way I’m carrying you.” She puts her hand on one limp shoulder. Squeezes.

  “‘M not a princess,” Nikolia says, eyelids twitching, and bats Élan’s hand away. “By the mountain, my head feels like I tried to outdrink Niko.” She blinks, and shifts farther up the wall, pain creasing deep valleys into her face.

  Her pupils are lopsided, but she seems aware. “Not... quite,” Élan says, not sure how to explain what’d actually taken place, but the crown duchess’s gaze catches on the dead prince, the ash-strewn floor, the blackened scorch where the beast had burned away.

  “Ah,” she says, straightening with a wince, and retrieves a smile from some hidden reserve. “Really, now. You couldn’t wake me for the fun part?”

  Her hair is a bird’s nest and there’s blood smeared down the side of her face and those gold-brown eyes are still struggling to focus and her robes really do look like rags, now, and—

  Oh, Élan thinks, quiet as a stone dropped in a pool. She’s beautiful.

  “I, uh,” Élan says. “Maybe overreacted. A little. When you fell.”

  Nikolia laughs, briefly, then flinches, pressing one hand to her forehead. “Oh, you know,” she says, and waves airily. “Under the circumstances I might be inclined to forgive your presumption. Just this once.” Her eyes dip. “I might even admit to being... impressed. Gendarme.”

  “Élan,” Élan whispers.

 
“Élan,” she repeats, solemnly. “You’re far too tall, you know. Kneeling like that.”

  “What?”

  She laughs again, nose crinkling, and says, “Come down here, sink it. I can’t reach.”

  So Élan does.

  When they kiss, it’s with the taste of blood and salt hot between them. Despite the fear and desperate horror, Nikolia is soft and warm against her. The scent of flowers clings beneath the char.

  But, “Wait,” Élan says, pulling back. “I thought... Prince Arin.”

  “This one wants a wedding,” her captain had said. She glances back across the room and winces. There will be no weddings here. Not for quite some time.

  When she looks back, Nikolia’s watching her, centuries and kingdoms heavy behind her eyes. “It could have been, in another life,” she says slowly. “What’s happened here will kill more futures than that one.”

  Élan swallows. The sea behind and beneath them is very loud.

  Over time, even the tallest cliff might fall to the relentless bite of waves.

  Piegny will fall far faster than that.

  “Will you... stay?” she asks, words dying on her tongue. “Will Myrne...?” It’s not her place to ask this; it’s a question for councilors and regents and bishops, not soldiers bleeding in the crypt of those they failed to defend, wreathed in rot and ruin. But she’s here. And they aren’t.

  Nikolia’s eyes are wide. “I—” she starts, and falters. “I can’t promise that.”

  Élan looks away. “Of course,” she manages, and fumbles back, gets a hand underneath herself. Starts to stand. “Of course. I shouldn’t have— We should—”

  “I’ll try, though.”

  Élan pauses.

  Nikolia is looking up at her, chin raised, jaw set. “I can’t make promises for my brother,” she repeats, and lifts her hands, imperious.

  Élan raises her gingerly to her feet. She’s unsteady, her bare fingers slipping against Élan’s gauntlets. But she makes it.

  “But I want that,” she says, firm as the mountains. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, my dear gendarme”—she lifts her hand, presses her thumb against the ridge of Élan’s cheekbone, wipes away the salt that’s dried there, and smiles—“I tend to get what I want.”

  The City Unbreachable

  by Yoon Ha Lee

  The City Unbreachable was not, technically, a city. Veiled from the senses of other ships, powered by the rituals of matter-antimatter particles kissing, it fled from the shadow of the great and growing empire called the heptarchate. The people of the city-that-was-a-ship told stories of that home of old, and honored its traditions even as they scorned its rituals of torture.

  Anjen had been born in the City Unbreachable in Year 319 of its flight. Years ago she had served as the head duelist of Azalea House, not only expert in the arts of sword and gun, but master of etiquette and prize of her family. Now, though, Azalea House had fallen upon hard times. Where once its members numbered one hundred, only Anjen and her two cousins remained. The last bell-stroke of their doom came when the far-duelists of the heptarchate almost caught the City Unbreachable eight years ago, when its veil faltered. Anjen fought bravely in that battle. The City’s denizens still sang songs of her bladework, and of the far-duelists she had cut down. But one of them had injured both legs so that she could no longer walk.

  Today Anjen prepared for a summons from the head duelist of Luna House. Despite Azalea’s diminishment, Anjen had saved the finest of her dresses, and the fiercest of her jewels, that she might be fit company for those high of rank. Her cousin Rohaz, their expression anxious, brought out the finery for her inspection.

  The dress’s rich magenta, in honor of their House flower, pleased Anjen, and its white-and-gold embroidery was in the pattern known as fractal cunning. In better times she would have worn a coronet of azaleas, of silk if not the flesh of flowers, but the House no longer owned the former, and no one grew azaleas anymore in the City’s treasured gardens.

  “He’s not to be trusted,” Rohaz said. “The only reason Luna House wants anything to do with us is because we’re expendable.”

  “Ah,” Anjen said, leaning back in her floater chair, “but we’re expendable and very competent. This is an opportunity.”

  “Cousin,” Rohaz said, turning the dress around at a gesture from Anjen, “it’s just us and little Kihaz. Let it go.”

  “Nonsense,” Anjen said briskly. Her keen eyes had spotted a frayed thread near the collar, but she owned a scarf of blushing silk and pale quantum lace that would cover the blemish. “It’s worth hearing him out.”

  She’d heard many things about Khev of Luna House, the one head duelist who had not dueled these past eight years. Most of the rumors made her uneasy. But she couldn’t afford to be picky about her allies, and she was confident of her ability to navigate the situation.

  “I don’t like the suddenness of this summons,” Rohaz said, still stubborn. “It’s not proper.”

  Anjen laughed wryly. “As if we’re in a position to stand on propriety.”

  Nevertheless, Rohaz made a good point. Khev of Luna House should have given her time to make her preparations, scant as they were. Even if he didn’t care about her convenience, his reputation for courtesy should matter to him. A stickler for procedure, was Khev. That he deviated from it spoke of no small desperation. The question was, could she turn it to her House’s advantage?

  * * *

  She slept in the ice-vaults, but the City Unbreachable had not forgotten her. Lio of the Catastrophe Hand, they called her, Lio of the Wayward Bullet. She had lost her House twice: first when the City’s mayor-commander swore her to his service, as head duelist of the City entire; and second five years ago, when the same mayor-commander repudiated her because she failed to stop his sibling’s assassination.

  Lio of No House, known also as Lio of the Ashen Sword: In her vault her dark hair remained in its familiar crown of braids, with a pin of gold on the left and a pin of black on the right. Before her freezing she had removed all ornamentation from her jacket and trousers, also black. A keen eye would have spotted the constellations of holes where both had been adorned by gold embroidery and the fretwork of the beads. At her side rested her sword of old, which the engineer-smiths of the City had worked their wizardry upon, transmuting the once-bright metal to the tepid color of ash.

  Lio slept in the ice-vaults, but she would not sleep much longer. Already the ice receded from her skin.

  * * *

  Rohaz escorted Anjen to the section of the City that Luna House ruled. Even if she hadn’t memorized the City’s layout to the smallest detail, she would have known it as Luna’s territory. Immense plaques upon the walls depicted luna moths at rest, carved in subtle facets upon alabaster quarried from worlds whose names no one remembered. In the background, in an implied inverse sky of milky white and translucent cream, inlay of gold and silver depicted the constellations of bygone skies.

  Anjen’s chair conveyed her in comfort while Rohaz paced her. The folds of her dress covered one ruined leg, while the artful slit revealed the other. She had done nothing to conceal the livid scars, which stood out against her dark skin. In her hands she held her sword of office, demurely sheathed in black leather; a magenta tassel hung from the weapon’s hilt.

  Luna House’s guards stopped her at the checkpoint, itself marked by a banner of gray and white. The guards would have impressed a less-astute observer, given their uniforms: silk-of-stars and velvet in House gray and white, and sword hilts gleaming at their backs. But their postures betrayed a telltale sloppiness. In her prime Anjen would have been able to take them easily, and even now, if she’d come with an assassin’s intent, she could have caused them no small trouble.

  “Your sword,” said the one on the left with an air of apology that Anjen was all too used to.

  “It stays with me,” Anjen said, deceptively soft.

  A shadow fell across her feet, lengthened, stopped. It led to a broad-sho
uldered man, his costume as elaborate as the guards’, but no more. He had contemplative eyes in a brutish face. Unlike the guards, he stepped with a duelist’s exquisite command of measure; he stood just outside the range of her sword, had she drawn it.

  “It stays,” the man agreed. He pivoted on one heel, as neat as a dancer, and bowed to her a fraction more than courtesy required.

  Anjen knew him: Khev of Luna House. If she wasn’t mistaken, he had manufactured the incident for her benefit. The guards took his orders; he could have them recycled, and replacements ordered from the birthing chambers or ice-vaults, if he judged their conduct unfitting.

  She allowed her eyes to widen, feigning gratitude. “Master Khev,” she said, and dipped her head with an apologetic gesture. “I can’t do you the honor you are owed—”

  “As if I would stand on ceremony,” he said, when she knew he would do exactly that if it gained him an advantage. They were alike in that way. “You may depart,” he added to Rohaz.

  Anjen smiled with her eyes so that Rohaz knew that she wished them to go, even if it wasn’t, strictly speaking, safe.

  After Rohaz had left, Khev led the way into the labyrinthine halls of Luna House. The two of them passed brittle, gleaming curtains composed of preserved moths’ wings and beads of brilliant gunmetal, racks of swords with their blades broken in battles ancient, and—the most blatant display of Luna’s influence—copies of the master star-charts, of lapis lazuli inlaid with abalone and gold. At the end of these wonders, Khev spoke a word in a language that survived only in Luna, and a door opened in an unassuming expanse of wall, wide enough to accommodate Anjen’s chair—a courtesy she had not asked for, but which she noted.