Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

Fatma held up the bronze coin, cutting her off. “Merira,” she demanded.

  The old woman’s smile vanished with her creases, and her gaze sharpened. “Have the young today lost all manners in speaking to one my age?” she rasped.

  Fatma felt her face heat and she shook her head, abashed. “Apologies, Auntie. Peace be upon you. I’ve come to speak to the mistress of the house, Merira.”

  The old woman gave an accepting nod. “Very well, daughter. You may come. Merira expects you.” She turned, beckoning for Fatma to follow. The small girl watched them go, her young eyes outlined in black kohl. They walked through a long curtain of blue and gold beads that led to a narrow hallway and then to a door. The old woman gave a series of patterned knocks before it opened.

  Fatma stepped into the hidden room, illuminated by bright burning lamps. The space was richly decorated, with mahogany tables and cushioned chairs. Colorful symbols that had not been used for centuries adorned the walls, alongside murals of ancient kings and queens lost to time.

  There were perhaps a dozen people in the room, all women, all dressed in diaphanous white garments. Some sat in small groups, conversing in hushed tones. Others appeared to be practicing a ritual, ringing a bell and burning bitter-smelling incense while they chanted. The most arresting sight was the tall, black granite statue of a seated woman, the very one on the coin. Her head was adorned with curving cow horns, a disc in the center. Hathor. The Lady of Stars.

  If the arrival of djinn, alleged angels, and magic into the world had made many more faithful, it had led to a questioning of faith for others. Adherents to alternative philosophies had appeared, as well—esoteric mystics and spiritualists. It wasn’t long before some turned to Egypt’s most ancient religions. Denounced as idolaters, they were forced to move underground, where they could meet without persecution. Because of their secrecy, their numbers were unknown. But the Ministry suspected their ranks to be in the thousands—and growing.

  Fatma was led to a broad divan, where a matronly woman in a gold pleated dress waited. A black braided wig fell over her shoulders as she sat arranging a set of rectangular cards on a table with fingers adorned in henna. A black cat lounged in her lap; bits of gold piercing its nose and ears while a collar of lapis lazuli circled its neck.

  To her right stood a strikingly tall woman with marbled aquamarine skin and jade eyes, whose body seemed as ephemeral as her sheer white dress that billowed from an unseen wind. A djinn. A jann, to be exact, one of the elementals. Not too surprising. Djinn could be of any faith, and more than a few now numbered among the adherents of the old religions.

  A younger woman in a form-fitting crimson dress stood to their left, her hair forming a curly mane about her shoulders. Tall, with a slender, muscular frame, she leaned idly against a wall, twirling a familiar black dagger. Fatma met her reflective gaze: almost as dark as her skin. Very familiar. A faint smile played on her lips.

  “May you be at peace, Investigator,” the seated woman called, catching her attention. “Please, sit.”

  Fatma did so reluctantly. “Merira,” she greeted tightly, skipping the normal courtesies. Merira was a priestess of the local Cult of Hathor, with whom she had dealt before. Her eyes held a doting look and her round cheeks appeared always on the verge of smiling. But Fatma wasn’t fooled. Behind that motherly face was a steel mind that worked like a fine-tuned mechanism.

  “You’re upset,” she noted, staring at Fatma with brown eyes lined in blue kohl.

  “Next time you want me, Merira, you can just send a note.” She glanced at the woman with the dagger, who only winked.

  The older woman put on an apologetic look. “Forgive us. Siti was only sent as a messenger. But she has more of Sekhmet in her than most, and can be … overzealous.” The priestess gave the younger woman a remonstrative glare, which finally erased her smile.

  Siti, was it? Fatma thought. “What’s this all about, Merira? Thought your kind kept a low profile. Not running around accosting Ministry agents!”

  “We near the end of worlds,” the jann put in with an echoing voice. “And the hour is late.” Fatma frowned at her, then turned back to Merira questioningly.

  “You’ve seen many things this night,” the priestess said. She flipped over the cards on the table, revealing the image each bore: a pair of curving horns, a sickle, an axe with a hooked end, and a half moon shrouded in twisting vines.

  Fatma stared, unable to hold back at the sight of the familiar glyphs. She leaned forward, gripping the table.

  “Enough of the games, Merira! How do you know about any of this?”

  The woman’s cheeks dimpled with a slight smile. “We may be forced into the shadows, but the Eye of Ra pierces all.” She motioned and someone stepped unexpectedly from around a corner. Like the other women, she wore a diaphanous gown that hugged her plump curves well. She sat beside the priestess, staring apprehensively at Fatma with large green eyes set in a round, olive-skinned face.

  “Rika came to us seeking sanctuary,” Merira said. “She had business with a certain djinn.”

  Fatma’s eyebrows rose. The dead djinn’s Greek lover? It had to be. The woman fit Aasim’s description perfectly. “What do you have to do with any of this?”

  The woman glanced to the priestess, who nodded with approval.

  “I met Sennar at a brothel house,” she said in a thick accent, definitely Greek. “He picked me out. Said he liked my eyes.” She shrugged. “I play a role, he pays. But he became obsessed with me, starting to asking that he be my only customer. I didn’t mind, so long as he paid for my time. Then he started talking to me about other things.” She paused, looking again to Merira, who nodded. “He would tell me about other worlds,” she continued. “He claimed there were places beyond where he came from, where gods lived. Gods that could curse you with madness, if you dared speak their name.”

  Fatma shook her head. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

  The jann glided forward, pointing an ephemeral finger at the card with the half moon shrouded in twisted vines. “Djinn once worshipped their own gods, Investigator, old beings that dwelled beyond the Kaf in cold and dark worlds. Do you not see them here? Rising from that darkness?”

  Fatma looked down at the half moon, for the first time realizing it looked like something emerging, the way the sun rose on the horizon.

  “The Rising,” she breathed aloud.

  “Sennar bragged that these old gods would soon make this world their own,” Rika went on. “He said he would be able to die and live again. He promised me I could remain with him when everyone else perished. I could be his … pet.” Her eyes flashed with anger at the word. “He bragged about powerful friends. I asked him for proof and he showed me a feather. Did you find it, Investigator? Where I left it?”

  Fatma nodded in astonishment, looking at the woman with new eyes. Aasim had underestimated this one. “Why didn’t you go to the police with this? To the Ministry?”

  The woman’s plump face went pale. “Me? Speak against a Marid djinn? And his powerful friends? What would have happened then? No dark gods were going to make me live again. When I found Sennar tonight, like that, I knew it had begun. I ran. Siti is a friend. She brought me here to hide. I told the holy mother … the priestess … everything I knew.”

  “And now we’re telling you,” Merira finished.

  “Telling me what, exactly?”

  “Of an old djinn prophecy,” the jann said. “A prophecy being performed on this very night. It is claimed that three are needed, who must offer themselves willingly.” She pointed to the horns on the card. “The Ram. Old and powerful. His blood was given first.”

  Fatma looked down, catching on. “Sennar. The exsanguination spell.”

  The jann nodded. “The second reaped the dead, much as a farmer reaps wheat.” She pointed to the sickle.

  “The Harvester,” Fatma breathed. “And the axe with the hook? Who is that?”

  “Not an axe,” Merira corrected. “An adz
e. An ancient instrument. The tool of the last of the three. The Builder. His face, we do not know.”

  “Many believe al-Jahiz tore a hole to the Kaf,” the Jann said. “It’s better stated by saying that he unlocked a door by finding a particular moment in space and time unique to the Kaf. That, in turn, weakened the barriers of other worlds, allowing magic and beings beyond the djinn to find their way into this one. There are worlds upon worlds that exist. Finding their locks requires knowing their unique places in the pattern.”

  “The system of overlapping spheres,” Fatma recited. “Every second-year in Theoretical Alchemy learns that. Al-Jahiz’s grand formula. But no one’s been able to replicate it. Not even the djinn.”

  “This Builder found a way,” the jann said.

  “How?” Fatma asked. Merira nodded to Rika.

  The woman licked her lips nervously. “I don’t understand it, really. Sennar called it the Clock of Worlds. Some kind of machine, he said, that would open the doorway to their dark gods. This was the work of the Builder.”

  Fatma went silent. Space and time, she repeated in her head. A machine that brought together all of time, in one space. And just like that, the last piece of the puzzle fit into place. Or, perhaps, the last cog. She had seen this Clock of Worlds. She had stood before it and not recognized it.

  “I know who the Builder is,” she whispered. “And we’re in trouble.”

  * * *

  Fatma held fast to her bowler, clenching her teeth at every jolt of the two-seater glider that raced high above Cairo. Beside her, Siti laughed, piloting the craft in sharp turns that made its wing flaps ripple in the wind.

  “Don’t like to fly, pretty little boy?” the woman shouted above the ruckus of the rattling engines, eyeing Fatma from beneath bulbous goggles.

  Fatma didn’t reply, focusing instead on keeping down her last meal. She had been prepared to catch a carriage, but Siti insisted on a faster way. And time was not on their side. As they passed into the island district of al-Gezira, she pointed to their destination and the glider dived. The drop was fast, and Fatma could feel her stomach in her throat. Beside her, Siti just laughed. Was this the woman’s idea of a good time? Just when she thought she might finally be sick, they landed. Or rather, they took several rough bounces that jarred Fatma deep in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t breathe until they’d come to a stop.

  “On the front doorstep?” she asked, jumping to the ground on shaky legs.

  “I like to be direct,” Siti replied. She had changed into a pair of snug-fitting tan breeches that tucked into sturdy brown leather boots. A red, quilted Mamluk kaftan served as a top, tied together at the waist by a broad sash.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” Fatma said, drawing her pistol. “The police are on their way.”

  Siti gave her a wry look, pulling out a long rifle fitted with rounded lenses from her flying craft. “Merira sent me to help. This land has enough gods as it is. Don’t need these dark upstarts. Besides, Inspector Sharif and his men won’t get here until it’s too late.” She flashed a smile. “Can’t be too particular for a partner at the end of the world.”

  Fatma had to admit that the woman had a point. “Come on, then.” She glanced to the long rifle. “And keep that thing ready.”

  For the second time this night, she walked toward the summer palace of the old Khedive. As they approached, the mechanical jackals appeared again from the garden, moving toward them. Only this time they did not trot—they ran, sleek and with intent.

  When one of them spread golden wings and took flight, a shot from Siti’s rifle quickly brought it down in a crashing heap of twisted metal. Fatma waited until the second one came close before shooting it through a glass eye, then running its mechanical body through with her cane.

  Siti kicked at the iron carcass. “Looks like we’re not welcome. Two angels gone bad in one night. That has to be some kind of record.”

  “They’re not really angels,” Fatma replied.

  The two broke into a run, weapons at the ready, as they cleared the garden and reached the front doors of the palace. Fatma glanced up for the first hints of dawn. The jann had made it clear. The Clock of Worlds had to be opened in time to the rising sun. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. At the end of a hallway, they came to the set of large mahogany doors. With Siti at the ready, Fatma pulled them open. A grisly scene greeted them.

  The Clock of Worlds stood where she had last seen it—a towering contraption of plates and wheels. Only now they moved with harmonious ticks of precision, and the numerals on those large plates glowed bright. A deep blue liquid had been poured in a circle around the machine. The djinn’s missing blood, she surmised. In a larger circle sat the bodies of ghuls in a pile of twisted limbs. Their heads had been removed and their stomachs slit to reveal the devoured flesh of an angel. Here was what remained of the Ram and the Harvester, who had offered themselves up as sacrifices.

  In the midst of this horror stood the Builder—Maker.

  The angel was terrifying to behold. Three of his hands held long curved knives, all smeared in gore. In the fourth hand hung the limp body of a headless ghul. As they watched, he gutted the creature, spilling out the glowing contents of its belly.

  “Maker!” Fatma shouted. The angel turned, his alabaster mask as calm as ever. He dropped the ghul in place and glided toward the two mortals, his metallic wings spread wide and tinged with blood.

  “Stop!” Fatma warned, aiming her pistol. To her relief, he did, staring down with those brilliant eyes.

  “The very perceptive investigator,” he remarked in his melodious voice.

  “I know what you’re up to! The Clock of Worlds. “

  “You know nothing.”

  Fatma gestured toward the clock. “Shut that thing off! Or we will!”

  Maker cocked his head curiously. “You have come here to stop me? When I do this all for Him?”

  “This has nothing to do with God. We know about the things you worship! Your hope for rebirth!”

  “No.” Maker seemed offended at the charge. “I serve only Him!”

  “The djinn, Sennar. He said—”

  “Djinn are superstitious and easily fooled,” Maker cut in. “Their dark gods have no power of granting life. Only destruction.”

  Fatma stared, now confused. “Then why?”

  “Because He wants me to,” Maker replied plainly. He extended his arms. “Look upon your world. So despoiled, so wanting. You are disobedient. Arrogant. You squabble. You war. This is not what He wanted. This is not what He created. He is perfect, and could not have made such imperfection. This is your doing. Your corruption.

  “I dwelled long on this, until I understood my place in His plan. I am Maker. It is my essence. I am in that way like Him. What I create is also perfect.” He gestured to the mechanical tree, with its two human automatons standing beneath. “This world can be remade, perfect again. Your kind can be remade. And I will help Him do so. But to fix an imperfection, the first creation must be cast aside. These dark gods of the djinn will do that. They will cleanse this world so that He and I can begin anew.”

  Fatma stood numbed at the perverse logic. “These beings you plan to unleash, they’ll kill thousands!”

  “Millions,” Maker corrected. There was no anger or emotion, just a calculation. “The Harvester was eager to help reap such death, even knowing he would not see it. A loyal servant.”

  “You ever spoken to Him?” someone asked. Both Fatma and Maker turned to Siti, who still held her rifle trained.

  “I know His heart,” the angel replied.

  Siti snorted. “That’s a no, then. What I thought. You made Him up.”

  Maker paused. “How do you mean—?”

  Siti shrugged. “You angels. You made this God up. Maybe only a few higher-ups did at first. Then the rest of you believed it. But I think He’s made up all the same.”

  Maker glared, seeming at a loss for words. So was Fatma. That had to be the most
sacrilegious thing she’d ever heard. Siti merely shrugged again.

  “I have seen the bones of your dead gods, child,” Maker rasped. He was certainly angry now. “They rot in the earth, their magic gone and bodies devoured by worms.” He inhaled deeply, becoming calm again, and turning back to the clock. “I only wish to make you worthy of Him. When they come from their dark realm, you will see. You will pluck out your mortal eyes to look upon them, but you will see.”

  His gaze tilted to the domed glass ceiling as the first rays of dawn pierced the sky. “It begins.” He lifted his three blades high and Fatma braced for attack. Where was Aasim? She and Siti alone wouldn’t last long against an angel. But Maker didn’t move toward them, instead looking down with those bright eyes and releasing a piteous sigh.

  “Even now, you fail to grasp the strength of my conviction.” And with those last words, he plunged the three blades through his body—one stabbing into his chest, a second ripping apart the armor surrounding his heart, and a third sliding through the metallic links of his neck. Bright fluid like the blood of a star poured from the wounds. He swayed, then toppled to crash upon the ground and was still.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Siti remarked.

  Fatma said nothing. Her eyes were pinned to an area in front of the clock. A hole had appeared. It sat there in the air, impossible yet all too real—like someone had bored into reality and found only black nothingness on the other end. Wisps of ephemeral vapor lifted from the dead offerings on the floor, all drawn into that nothingness to be devoured by oblivion. And as she watched, the hole grew.

  Fatma recounted the prophecy related by the jann. The Ram, the Harvester, the Builder. Their lives given willingly. Her eyes shifted to the dead angel, now shrouded in that ephemeral vapor. Given willingly.

  “Maker was the last,” she said aloud. “He was the last sacrifice. He intended to die all along. To fulfill the prophecy.” The image of the final glyph came to her, a half moon shrouded in vines. “To open the door.” She had barely spoken the words before the surface of the hole rippled like water, and then the tendrils poured out.