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

by Jonathan Strahan

  This was far from the first time she’d tried to bind me to her by displaying weakness, but it was the first time she’d ever done so when I had no love to enthrall me.

  Rayneh continued, her voice a whisper. “I regret it, Naeva. When Kyan came back, and I saw your body, cold and lifeless—I understood immediately that I’d been mistaken. I wept for days. I’m weeping still, inside my heart. But listen–” her voice hardened “—we can’t let this be about you and me. Our Land is at stake. Do you know what Tryce is going to do? She’ll destroy us all. You have to help me stop her—”

  “Tryce!” I shouted. “I’m ready to see her bleed.”

  Footsteps thudded across silk carpets. Tryce drew a bone-handled knife and knelt over her mother like a farmer preparing to slaughter a pig. “Gudrin!” she called. “Throw open the doors. Let everyone see us.”

  Narrow, muddy legs strode past us. The twigs woven through the automaton’s skin had lain fallow when I saw him in the winter. Now they blazed in a glory of emerald leaves and scarlet blossoms.

  “You dunce!” I shouted at Tryce. “What have you done? You left him alive.”

  Tryce’s gaze held fast on her mother’s throat. “I sacrificed the baby.”

  Voices and footsteps gathered in the room as Tryce’s soldiers escorted Rayneh’s courtiers inside.

  “You sacrificed the baby,” I repeated. “What do you think ruling is? Do you think Queens always get what they want? You can’t dictate to magic, Imprudent Child.”

  “Be silent.” Tryce’s voice thinned with anger. “I’m grateful for your help, Great Lady, but you must not speak this way to your Queen.”

  I shook my head. Let the foolish child do what she might. I braced myself for the inevitable backlash of the spell.

  Tryce raised her knife in the air. “Let everyone gathered here behold that this is Queen Rayneh, the Queen Who Would Dictate to a Daughter. I am her heir, Tryce of the Bold Stride. Hear me. I do this for the Land of Flowered Hills, for our honor and our strength. Yet I also do it with regret. Mother, I hope you will be free in your death. May your spirit wing across sweet breezes with the great bird of the sun.”

  The knife slashed downward. Crimson poured across Rayneh’s body, across the rugs, across Tryce’s feet. For a moment, I thought I’d been wrong about Tryce’s baby—perhaps she had loved it enough for the counter-spell to work—but as the blood poured over the dried petals Rayneh had scattered on the floor, a bright light flared through the room. Tryce flailed backward as if struck.

  Rayneh’s wound vanished. She stared up at me with startled, joyful eyes. “You didn’t betray me!”

  “Oh, I did,” I said. “Your daughter is just inept.”

  I could see only one solution to the problem Tryce had created—the life’s blood of something I loved was here, still saturating the carpets and pooling on the stone.

  Magic is a little bit alive. Sometimes it prefers poetic truths to literal ones. I dipped my fingers into the Queen’s spilled blood and pronounced, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath Your Window has betrayed you.”

  I cast the blood across the Queen. The dried petals disintegrated. The Queen cried out as my magical protections disappeared.

  Tryce was at her mother’s side again in an instant. Rayneh looked at me in the moment before Tryce’s knife descended. I thought she might show me, just this once, a fraction of uncalculated vulnerability. But this time there was no vulnerability at all, no pain or betrayal or even weariness, only perfect regal equanimity.

  Tryce struck for her mother’s heart. She let her mother’s body fall to the carpet.

  “Behold my victory!” Tryce proclaimed. She turned toward her subjects. Her stance was strong: her feet planted firmly, ready for attack or defense. If her lower half was any indication, she’d be an excellent Queen.

  I felt a rush of forgiveness and pleasure and regret and satisfaction all mixed together. I moved toward the boundaries of my imprisonment, my face near Rayneh’s where she lay, inhaling her last ragged breaths.

  “Be brave,” I told her. “Soon we’ll both be free.”

  Rayneh’s lips moved slowly, her tongue thick around the words. “What makes you think…?”

  “You’re going to die,” I said, “and when I leave this body, Kyan will die, too. Without caster or intent, there won’t be anything to sustain the spell.”

  Rayneh made a sound that I supposed was laughter. “Oh no, my dear Naeva… much more complicated than that…”

  Panic constricted my throat. “Tryce! You have to find the piece of leucite—”

  “…even stronger than the rock. Nothing but death can lull your spirit to sleep… and you’re already dead…”

  She laughed again.

  “Tryce!” I shouted. “Tryce!”

  The girl turned. For a moment, my vision became as clear as it had been when I lived. I saw the Imprudent Child Queen standing with her automaton’s arms around her waist, the both of them flushed with joy and triumph. Tryce turned to kiss the knot of wood that served as the automaton’s mouth and my vision clouded again.

  Rayneh died a moment afterward.

  A moment after that, Tryce released me.

  If my story could not end when I died, it should have ended there, in Rayneh’s chamber, when I took my revenge.

  It did not end there.

  Tryce consulted me often during the early years of her reign. I familiarized myself with the blur of the paintings in her chamber, squinting to pick out placid scenes of songbirds settling on snowy branches, bathing in mountain springs, soaring through sun-struck skies.

  “Don’t you have counselors for this?” I snapped one day.

  Tryce halted her pacing in front of me, blocking my view of a wren painted by The Artist without Pity.

  “Do you understand what it’s like for me? The court still calls me the Imprudent Child Who Would Be Queen. Because of you!”

  Gudrin went to comfort her. She kept the creature close, pampered and petted, like a cat on a leash. She rested her head on his shoulder as he stroked her arms. It all looked too easy, too familiar. I wondered how often Tryce spun herself into these emotional whirlpools.

  “It can be difficult for women to accept orders from their juniors,” I said.

  “I’ve borne two healthy girls,” Tryce said petulantly. “When I talk to the other women about bearing, they still say they can’t, that‘women’s bodies aren’t suited for childbirth.’ Well, if women can’t have children, then what does that make me?”

  I forbore responding.

  “They keep me busy with petty disputes over grazing rights and grain allotment. How can I plan for a war when they distract me with pedantry? The raiders are still at our heels, and the daft old biddies won’t accept what we must do to beat them back!”

  The automaton thrummed with sympathy. Tryce shook him away and resumed pacing.

  “At least I have you, Respected Aunt.”

  “For now. You must be running out of hosts.” I raised my hand and inspected young, unfamiliar fingers. Dirt crusted the ragged nails. “Who is this? Anyone I know?”

  “The death whisperers refuse to let me use their bodies. What time is this when dying old women won’t blow out a few days early for the good of the Land?”

  “Who is this?” I repeated.

  “I had to summon you into the body of a common thief. You see how bad things are.”

  “What did you expect? That the wind would send a hundred songbirds to trill praises at your coronation? That sugared oranges would rain from the sky and flowers bloom on winter stalks?”

  Tryce glared at me angrily. “Do not speak to me like that. I may be an Imprudent Child, but I am the Queen.” She took a moment to regain her composure. “Enough chatter. Give me the spell I asked for.”

  Tryce called me in at official occasions, to bear witness from the body of a disfavored servant or a used-up brood. I attended each of the four ceremonies where Tryce, clad in regal blue, presented
her infant daughters to the sun: four small, green-swathed bundles, each borne from the Queen’s own body. It made me sick, but I held my silence.

  She also summoned me to the court ceremony where she presented Gudrin with an official title she’d concocted to give him standing in the royal circle. Honored Zephyr or some such nonsense. They held the occasion in autumn when red and yellow leaves adorned Gudrin’s shoulders like a cape. Tryce pretended to ignore the women’s discontented mutterings, but they were growing louder.

  The last time I saw Tryce, she summoned me in a panic. She stood in an unfamiliar room with bare stone walls and sharp wind creaking through slitted windows. Someone else’s blood stained Tryce’s robes. “My sisters betrayed me!” she said. “They told the women of the grasslands I was trying to make them into broods, and then led them in a revolt against the castle. A thousand women, marching! I had to slay them all. I suspected Darnisha all along. But Peni seemed content to waft. Last fall, she bore a child of her own body. It was a worm, true, but she might have gotten a daughter next. She said she wanted to try!”

  “Is that their blood?”

  She held out her reddened hands and stared at them ruefully as if they weren’t really part of her. “Gudrin was helping them. I had to smash him into sticks. They must have cast a spell on him. I can’t imagine…”

  Her voice faltered. I gave her a moment to tame her undignified excess.

  “You seem to have mastered the situation,” I said. “A Queen must deal with such things from time to time. The important thing will be to show no weakness in front of your courtiers.”

  “You don’t understand! It’s much worse than that. While we women fought, the raiders attacked the Fields That Bask under Open Skies. They’ve taken half the Land. We’re making a stand in the Castle Where Hope Flutters, but we can’t keep them out forever. A few weeks, at most. I told them this would happen! We need more daughters to defend us! But they wouldn’t listen to me!”

  Rayneh would have known how to present her anger with queenly courage, but Tryce was rash and thoughtless. She wore her emotions like perfume. “Be calm,” I admonished. “You must focus.”

  “The raiders sent a message describing what they’ll do to me and my daughters when they take the castle. I captured the messenger and burned out his tongue and gave him to the broods, and when they were done with him, I took what was left of his body and catapulted it into the raiders’ camp. I could do the same to every one of them, and it still wouldn’t be enough to compensate for having to listen to their vile, cowardly threats.”

  I interrupted her tirade. “The Castle Where Hope Flutters is on high ground, but if you’ve already lost the eastern fields, it will be difficult to defend. Take your women to the Spires of Treachery where the herders feed their cattle. You won’t be able to mount traditional defenses, but they won’t be able to attack easily. You’ll be reduced to meeting each other in small parties where woman’s magic should give you the advantage.”

  “My commander suggested that,” said Tryce. “There are too many of them. We might as well try to dam a river with silk.”

  “It’s better than remaining here.”

  “Even if we fight to a stalemate in the Spires of Treachery, the raiders will have our fields to grow food in, and our broods to make children on. If they can’t conquer us this year, they’ll obliterate us in ten. I need something else.”

  “There is nothing else.”

  “Think of something!”

  I thought.

  I cast my mind back through my years of training. I remembered the locked room in my matriline’s household where servants were never allowed to enter, which my cousins and I scrubbed every dawn and dusk to teach us to be constant and rigorous.

  I remembered the cedar desk where my aunt Finis taught me to paint birds, first by using the most realistic detail that oils could achieve, and then by reducing my paintings to fewer and fewer brushstrokes until I could evoke the essence of bird without any brush at all.

  I remembered the many-drawered red cabinets where we stored Leafspine and Winterbrew, powdered Errow and essence of Howl. I remembered my bossy cousin Alne skidding through the halls in a panic after she broke into a locked drawer and mixed together two herbs that we weren’t supposed to touch. Her fearful grimace transformed into a beak that permanently silenced her sharp tongue.

  I remembered the year I spent traveling to learn the magic of foreign lands. I was appalled by the rituals I encountered in places where women urinated on their thresholds to ward off spirits, and plucked their scalps bald when their eldest daughters reached majority. I walked with senders and weavers and whisperers and learned magic secrets that my people had misunderstood for centuries. I remembered the terror of the three nights I spent in the ancient ruins of The Desert which Should Not Have Been, begging the souls that haunted that place to surrender the secrets of their accursed city. One by one my companions died, and I spent the desert days digging graves for those the spirits found unworthy. On the third dawn, they blessed me with communion, and sent me away a wiser woman.

  I remembered returning to the Land of Flowered Hills and making my own contribution to the lore contained in our matriline’s locked rooms. I remembered all of this, and still I could think of nothing to tell Tryce.

  Until a robin of memory hopped from an unexpected place—a piece of magic I learned traveling with herders, not spell-casters. It was an old magic, one that farmers cast when they needed to cull an inbred strain.

  “You must concoct a plague,” I began.

  Tryce’s eyes locked on me. I saw hope in her face, and I realized that she’d expected me to fail her, too.

  “Find a sick baby and stop whatever treatment it is receiving. Feed it mosquito bellies and offal and dirty water to make it sicker. Give it sores and let them fill with pus. When its forehead has grown too hot for a woman to touch without flinching, kill the baby and dedicate its breath to the sun. The next morning, when the sun rises, a plague will spread with the sunlight.”

  “That will kill the raiders?”

  “Many of them. If you create a truly virulent strain, it may kill most of them. And it will cut down their children like a scythe across wheat.”

  Tryce clapped her blood-stained hands. “Good.”

  “I should warn you. It will kill your babies as well.”

  “What?”

  “A plague cooked in an infant will kill anyone’s children. It is the way of things.”

  “Unacceptable! I come to you for help, and you send me to murder my daughters?”

  “You killed one before, didn’t you? To save your automaton?”

  “You’re as crazy as the crones at court! We need more babies, not fewer.”

  “You’ll have to hope you can persuade your women to bear children so that you can rebuild your population faster than the raiders can rebuild theirs.”

  Tryce looked as though she wanted to level a thousand curses at me, but she stilled her tongue. Her eyes were dark and narrow. In a quiet, angry voice, she said, “Then it will be done.”

  They were the same words she’d used when she promised to kill Gudrin. That time I’d been able to save her despite her foolishness. This time, I might not be able to.

  Next I was summoned, I could not see at all. I was ushered into the world by lowing, distant shouts, and the stench of animals packed too closely together.

  A worried voice cut through the din. “Did it work? Are you there? Laverna, is that still you?”

  Disoriented, I reached out to find a hint about my surroundings. My hands impacted a summoning barrier.

  “Laverna, that’s not you anymore, is it?”

  The smell of manure stung my throat. I coughed. “My name is Naeva.”

  “Holy day, it worked. Please, Sleepless One, we need your help. There are men outside. I don’t know how long we can hold them off.”

  “What happened? Is Queen Tryce dead?”

  “Queen Tryce?”

&nbs
p; “She didn’t cast the plague, did she? Selfish brat. Where are the raiders now? Are you in the Spires of Treachery?”

  “Sleepless One, slow down. I don’t follow you.”

  “Where are you? How much land have the raiders taken?”

  “There are no raiders here, just King Addric’s army. His soldiers used to be happy as long as we paid our taxes and bowed our heads at processions. Now they want us to follow their ways, worship their god, let our men give us orders. Some of us rebelled by marching in front of the governor’s theater, and now he’s sent sorcerers after us. They burned our city with magical fire. We’re making a last stand at the inn outside town. We set aside the stable for the summoning.”

  “Woman, you’re mad. Men can’t practice that kind of magic.”

  “These men can.”

  A nearby donkey brayed, and a fresh stench plopped into the air. Outside, I heard the noise of burning, and the shouts of men and children.

  “It seems we’ve reached an impasse. You’ve never heard of the Land of Flowered Hills?”

  “Never.”

  I had spent enough time pacing the ruins in The Desert which Should Not Have Been to understand the ways in which civilizations cracked and decayed. Women and time marched forward, relentless and uncaring as sand.

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not doing this very well. It’s my first summoning. My aunt Hetta used to do it but they slit her throat like you’d slaughter a pig and left her body to burn. Bardus says they’re roasting the corpses and eating them, but I don’t think anyone could do that. Could they? Hetta showed me how to do this a dozen times, but I never got to practice. She would have done this better.”

  “That would explain why I can’t see.”

  “No, that’s the child, Laverna. She’s blind. She does all the talking. Her twin Nammi can see, but she’s dumb.”

  “Her twin?”

  “Nammi’s right here. Reach into the circle and touch your sister’s hand, Nammi. That’s a good girl.”