The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5

by Jonathan Strahan

  Sometimes we even get conductors in from other places—Russia, sometimes, or once from China. God, that was a night! What strange ideas they have about navigation! But he was built like an airship man, and from the red skin round his eyes we could tell he’d paid his dues in the helium, so we poured him some Scotch and made him welcome. If we aren’t kind to each other, who will be kind to us?

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  — Orion Airship Supply Catalog, 1893

  We were airside the last night of 1899, the night of the Gentlemen’s Ball.

  We had been through a bad wind that day,and all of us were spread out tightening rivets on the ribs, signaling quietly back and forth. I don’t know what made Anderson agree to sign us on for the evening flight—he must have wanted the Ball as much as the rest of us—and I was in a bit of a sulk, feeling like Cinderella. It was a cold night, cold even in the balloon, and I was wishing for nothing but a long bath and a long sleep.

  Then Captain Marks shoved the woman into the balloon.

  She was wearing a worn-out orange dress, and a worn-out shawl that fell away from her at once, and even as the Captain clipped her to the line she hung limp, worn-out all over. He’d been at her for a while.

  I still don’t know where he found her, what they did to her, what she thought in the first moments as they carried her towards the balloon.

  “Got some leftovers for you,” the Captain shouted through his mask, “a little Gentlemen’s Ball for you brave boys. Enjoy!”

  Then he was gone, spinning the lock shut behind him, closing us in with her.

  I could feel the others hooking onto a rib or a spine, pushing off, hurrying over. The men in the aft might not have even seen it happen. I never asked them. Didn’t want to know.

  I was closest to her, fifty feet, maybe. Through the mask I could see the buttons missing on the front of her dress, the little cuts in her fisted hands.

  She wore a mask, too. Her hair was tangled in it.

  She was terrified—shaking so hard that I worried her mask would come loose—but she didn’t scrabble at her belt: too clever for that, I suppose. I was worried for her—if you weren’t used to the helium it was painful to breathe for very long, she needed to get back Underneath. God only knew how long that second-rate mask would hold.

  Even as Anderson hooked onto a spine to get to her she was shoving off—not to the locked porthole (there was no hope for her there), but straight out to the ribs, clawing at the stiff silk of the balloon.

  We all scrambled for her.

  I don’t know how she cut the silk—Bristol said it must have been a knife, but I can’t imagine they would have let her keep one. I think she must have used the hook of her little earring, which is the worst of it, somehow.

  The balloon shuddered as the first rush of helium was sucked into the sky outside; she clenched one fist around the raw edge of the silk as she unhooked herself from the tether. The air caught her,dragging at her feet,and she grasped for purchase against the fabric. She cried out, but the mask swallowed the noise.

  I was the closest; I pushed off.

  The other conductors were shouting for her not to be foolish; they shouted that it was a misunderstanding, that she would be all right with us.

  As I came closer I held out my hands to her so she could take hold, but she shrank back, kicking at me with one foot, the boot half-fastened.

  My reflection was distorted in the round eyes of her mask—a spindly monster enveloping her in the half-dark, my endless arms struggling to pull her back in.

  What else could she do?

  She let go.

  My sight lit up from the rush of oxygen, and in my view she was a flaming June in a bottle-green night, falling with her arms outstretched like a bird until she was too small to be seen, until every bright trace of her was gone.

  For a moment no one moved; then the rails shuddered under us as the gills fanned out, and we slowed.

  Anderson said, “We’re coming up on Paris.”

  “Someone should tell them about the tear,” said Bristol.

  “Patch it from here,” Anderson said. “We’ll wait until Vienna.”

  In Vienna they assumed all conductors were lunatics, and they would ask no questions about a tear that only human hands could make.

  I heard the first clangs of the anchor-hooks latching onto the outer hull of the Underneath before the church bells rang in the New Year. Beneath us, the passengers shouted “Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!”

  That was a sad year.

  Once I was land-bound in Dover. The Conductors’ Society there is so small I don’t think ten men could fit in it. It wasn’t a bad city (I had no trouble with the regulars on my way from the dock), but it was so horribly hot and cramped that I went outside just to have enough room to stretch out my arms, even heavy as they were with the Earth pulling at them.

  A Falcon-class passed overhead, and I looked up just as it crossed the harvest moon; for a moment the balloon was illuminated orange, and I could see the conductors skittering about inside of it like spiders or shadow puppets, like moths in a lamp.

  I watched it until it had passed the moon and fallen dark again, the lamp extinguished.

  It’s a glorious life, they say.

  THE LADY WHO PLUCKED

  RED FlOWERS BENEATH THE QUEEN’S WINDOW

  RACHEL SWIRSKY

  Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in a varietyof venues, including Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, Weird Tales, and Fantasy Magazine. Her story“Eros, Philia,Agape”was nominated for the 2009 Hugo and Sturgeon awards, while “A Memory of Wind” was a 2010 Nebula Award nominee. Her most recent book is Through the Drowsy Dark,a short collection of feminist poems and short stories. She lives in Bakersfield, California,with her husband and two cats,and is seriously considering whether or not to become a crazy cat lady by adopting all four stray kittens which were recently born in her yard.

  My story should have ended on the day I died. Instead, it began there.

  Sun pounded on my back as I rode through the Mountains where the Sun Rests. My horse’s hooves beat in syncopation with those of the donkey that trotted in our shadow. The Queen’s midget Kyan turned his head toward me,sweat dripping down the red-and-blue protections painted across his malformed brow.

  “Shouldn’t… we… stop?” he panted.

  Sunlight shone red across the craggy limestone cliffs. A bold eastern wind carried the scent of mountain blossoms. I pointed to a place where two large stones leaned across a narrow outcropping.

  “There,” I said, prodding my horse to go faster before Kyan could answer. He grunted and cursed at his donkey for falling behind.

  I hated Kyan, and he hated me. But Queen Rayneh had ordered us to ride reconnaissance together, and we obeyed, out of love for her and for the Land of Flowered Hills.

  We dismounted at the place I had indicated. There, between the mountain peaks, we could watch the enemy’s forces in the valley below without being observed. The raiders spread out across the meadow below like ants on a rich meal. Their women’s camp lay behind the main troops, a small dark blur. Even the smoke rising from their women’s fires seemed timid. I scowled.

  “Go out between the rocks,” I directed Kyan. “Move as close to the edge as you can.”
<
br />   Kyan made a mocking gesture of deference. “As you wish, Great Lady,” he sneered, swinging his twisted legs off the donkey. Shamans’ bundles of stones and seeds, tied with twine, rattled at his ankles.

  I refused to let his pretensions ignite my temper.“Watch the valley,”I instructed. “I will take the vision of their camp from your mind and send it to the Queen’s scrying pool. Be sure to keep still.”

  The midget edged toward the rocks, his eyes shifting back and forth as if he expected to encounter raiders up here in the mountains, in the Queen’s dominion. I found myself amused and disgusted by how little provocation it took to reveal the midget’s true, craven nature. At home in the Queen’s castle, he strutted about, pompous and patronizing. He was like many birth-twisted men, arrogant in the limited magic to which his deformities gave him access. Rumors suggested that he imagined himself worthy enough to be in love with the Queen. I wondered what he thought of the men below. Did he daydream about them conquering the Land? Did he think they’d make him powerful, that they’d put weapons in his twisted hands and let him strut among their ranks?

  “Is your view clear?” I asked.

  “It is.”

  I closed my eyes and saw, as he saw, the panorama of the valley below. I held his sight in my mind, and turned toward the eastern wind which carries the perfect expression of magic—flight—on its invisible eddies. I envisioned the battlefield unfurling before me like a scroll rolling out across a marble floor. With low, dissonant notes, I showed the image how to transform itself for my purposes. I taught it how to be length and width without depth, and how to be strokes of color and light reflected in water. When it knew these things, I sang the image into the water of the Queen’s scrying pool.

  Suddenly—too soon—the vision vanished from my inner eye. Something whistled through the air. I turned. Pain struck my chest like thunder.

  I cried out. Kyan’s bundles of seeds and stones rattled above me. My vision blurred red. Why was the midget near me? He should have been on the outcropping.

  “You traitor!” I shouted. “How did the raiders find us?”

  I writhed blindly on the ground, struggling to grab Kyan’s legs. The midget caught my wrists. Weak with pain, I could not break free.

  “Hold still,” he said. “You’re driving the arrow deeper.”

  “Let me go, you craven dwarf.”

  “I’m no traitor. This is woman’s magic. Feel the arrow shaft.”

  Kyan guided my hand upward to touch the arrow buried in my chest. Through the pain, I felt the softness of one of the Queen’s roc feathers. It was particularly rare and valuable, the length of my arm.

  I let myself fall slack against the rock. “Woman’s magic,” I echoed, softly. “The Queen is betrayed. The Land is betrayed.”

  “Someone is betrayed, sure enough,” said Kyan, his tone gloating.

  “You must return to court and warn the Queen.”

  Kyan leaned closer to me. His breath blew on my neck, heavy with smoke and spices.

  “No, Naeva. You can still help the Queen. She’s given me the keystone to a spell—a piece of pure leucite, powerful enough to tug a spirit from its rest. If I blow its power into you, your spirit won’t sink into sleep. It will only rest, waiting for her summons.”

  Blood welled in my mouth. “I won’t let you bind me…”

  His voice came even closer, his lips on my ear. “The Queen needs you, Naeva. Don’t you love her?”

  Love: the word caught me like a thread on a bramble. Oh, yes. I loved the Queen. My will weakened, and I tumbled out of my body. Cold crystal drew me in like a great mouth, inhaling.

  I was furious. I wanted to wrap my hands around the first neck I saw and squeeze. But my hands were tiny, half the size of the hands I remembered. My short, fragile fingers shook. Heavy musk seared my nostrils. I felt the heat of scented candles at my feet, heard the snap of flame devouring wick. I rushed forward and was abruptly halted. Red and black knots of string marked boundaries beyond which I could not pass.

  “O, Great Lady Naeva,” a voice intoned. “We seek your wisdom on behalf of Queen Rayneh and the Land of Flowered Hills.”

  Murmurs rippled through the room. Through my blurred vision, I caught an impression of vaulted ceilings and frescoed walls. I heard people, but I could only make out woman-sized blurs—they could have been beggars, aristocrats, warriors, even males or broods.

  I tried to roar. My voice fractured into a strangled sound like trapped wind. An old woman’s sound.

  “Great Lady Naeva, will you acknowledge me?”

  I turned toward the high, mannered voice. A face came into focus, eyes flashing blue beneath a cowl. Dark stripes stretched from lower lip to chin: the tattoos of a death whisperer.

  Terror cut into my rage for a single, clear instant. “I’m dead?”

  “Let me handle this.” Another voice, familiar this time. Calm, authoritative, quiet: the voice of someone who had never needed to shout in order to be heard. I swung my head back and forth trying to glimpse Queen Rayneh.

  “Hear me, Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath My Window. It is I, your Queen.”

  The formality of that voice! She spoke to me with titles instead of names? I blazed with fury.

  Her voice dropped a register, tender and cajoling. “Listen to me, Naeva. I asked the death whisperers to chant your spirit up from the dead. You’re inhabiting the body of an elder member of their order. Look down. See for yourself.”

  I looked down and saw embroidered rabbits leaping across the hem of a turquoise robe. Long, bony feet jutted out from beneath the silk. They were swaddled in the coarse wrappings that doctors prescribed for the elderly when it hurt them to stand.

  They were not my feet. I had not lived long enough to have feet like that.

  “I was shot by an enchanted arrow…” I recalled. “The midget said you might need me again…”

  “And he was right, wasn’t he? You’ve only been dead three years. Already, we need you.”

  The smugness of that voice. Rayneh’s impervious assurance that no matter what happened, be it death or disgrace, her people’s hearts would always sing with fealty.

  “He enslaved me,” I said bitterly. “He preyed upon my love for you.”

  “Ah, Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath My Window, I always knew you loved me.”

  Oh yes, I had loved her. When she wanted heirs, it was I who placed my hand on her belly and used my magic to draw out her seedlings; I who nurtured the seedlings’ spirits with the fertilizer of herchosenman;Iwhoplantedtheseedlings in the womb of a fecund brood. Three times, the broods I catalyzed brought forth Rayneh’s daughters. I’d not yet chosen to beget my own daughters, but there had always been an understanding between us that Rayneh would be the one to stand with my magic-worker as the seedling was drawn from me, mingled with man, and set into brood.

  I was amazed to find that I loved her no longer. I remembered the emotion, but passion had died with my body.

  “I want to see you,” I said.

  Alarmed, the death whisperer turned toward Rayneh’s voice. Her nose jutted beak-like past the edge of her cowl. “It’s possible for her to see you if you stand where I am,” she said. “But if the spell goes wrong, I won’t be able to—”

  “It’s all right, Lakitri. Let her see me.”

  Rustling, footsteps. Rayneh came into view. My blurred vision showed me frustratingly little except for the moon of her face. Her eyes sparkled black against her smooth, sienna skin. Amber and obsidian gems shone from her forehead, magically embedded in the triangular formation that symbolized the Land of Flowered Hills. I wanted to see her graceful belly, the muscular calves I’d loved to stroke—but below her chin, the world faded to gray.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Are the raiders nipping at your heels again?”

  “We pushed the raiders back in the battle that you died to make happen. It was a rout. Thanks to you.”

  A smile lit on Rayneh’s face. It was a
smile I remembered. You have served your Land and your Queen, it seemed to say. You may be proud. I’d slept on Rayneh’s leaf-patterned silk and eaten at her morning table too often to be deceived by such shallow manipulations.

  Rayneh continued, “A usurper—a woman raised on our own grain and honey—has built an army of automatons to attack us. She’s given each one a hummingbird’s heart for speed, and a crane’s feather for beauty, and a crow’s brain for wit. They’ve marched from the Lake Where Women Wept all the way across the fields to the Valley of Tonha’s Memory. They move faster than our most agile warriors. They seduce our farmers out of the fields. We must destroy them.”

  “A usurper?” I said.

  “One who betrays us with our own spells.”

  The Queen directed me a lingering, narrow-lidded look, challenging me with her unspoken implications.

  “The kind of woman who would shoot the Queen’s sorceress with a roc feather?” I pressed.

  Her glance darted sideways. “Perhaps.”

  Even with the tantalizing aroma of revenge wafting before me, I considered refusing Rayneh’s plea. Why should I forgive her for chaining me to her service? She and her benighted death whisperers might have been able to chant my spirit into wakefulness, but let them try to stir my voice against my will.

  But no—even without love drawing me into dark corners, I couldn’t renounce Rayneh. I would help her as I always had from the time when we were girls riding together through my grandmother’s fields. When she fell from her mount, it was always I who halted my mare, soothed her wounds, and eased her back into the saddle. Even as a child, I knew that she would never do the same for me.

  “Give me something to kill,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I want to kill. Give me something. Or should I kill your death whisperers?”