The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Desdemona hesitated, her gaze shifting from Analise to the statue, then back again.

  At last she said, “Yes. Of course. Come inside and take tea with me. We’ll have to fetch it ourselves. I sent the staff away after they scrubbed down the house from last night’s ball. I wish you might have been there, Leez. One woman came dressed as a mermaid. They rolled her indoors in a tank of water, if you can believe it! What a mess!”

  Analise cast a glance over her shoulder. The statue turned its head to watch her until she disappeared from sight.

  The worst thing Gideon ever did to Analise was invite her to the Farmer’s Ball.

  That was the night of his revenge. It didn’t begin with the publisher pouncing on her and announcing how much she loved Analise’s manuscript, how she thought it was just so darling, and needed only one or two of teensiest revisions to be an absolute smash, let’s talk contract, let’s talk advance, let’s talk promotional tours—but that’s how it ended. It began when Analise showed up at his mother’s house dressed in her normal clothes.

  He hadn’t told her who he was.

  He hadn’t told her where he came from, or what the house looked like. He’d invited her to supper, half reluctantly, even roughly, telling her, “My mother wants to meet the neighbor who keeps feeding me soup.”

  So Analise had shown up at Ochre Court with a fistful of ragged flowers and a ribbon in her hair. She was dressed neatly, if eccentrically, in a worn green velvet skirt with a flutter of lace at the hem, a button down shirt of paler green with embroidery on the collar and no visible ink stains, and her sturdy boots. Obviously this was an effort for the girl who often wore nothing but pajamas and a red scarf for days in a row, as she curled in her window seat and scribbled endlessly on her heap of papers. She’d partially pulled back her thickety red hair with wooden combs. She wore pearl earrings. Not real pearls. The small locket her dad gave her when she left the farm. An heirloom from a grandmother. Pot metal.

  When the Ochre Court butler opened the enormous front doors to her ring, Gideon had placed himself near enough to observe her without being seen. He heard her anxious, “I’m sorry—I think I have the wrong house. Is Gideon . . . Does someone named Gideon have a . . . Is there someone named Gideon Alderwood here, by any chance?”

  “Mr. Alderwood is in the Gold Salon, Miss Field,” the butler intoned. “But Mrs. Beckett-Alderwood asks that you be brought directly to the ballroom.”

  “The . . . Excuse me, the what?”

  And Gideon didn’t know, watching her, whether he wanted to lean against a wall and laugh helplessly at her expression, or sweep her out the door again with a sneer and a, “Go back to the garret where you belong,” or step out and reassure her that it was only one of his mother’s stupid parties, and not a single guest could rival her in imagination or kindness or that inimitable way she wore a scarf. Not to mention that her soup was a miracle from the gods, and that he would give up both his hands just to eat from hers.

  He did not do any of that. He merely fell in step behind her, softly and several paces away. She was too preoccupied keeping up with the butler and taking in the splendor of Ochre Court to notice the new shadow she had acquired.

  If an invitation to the Mannering’s Gentry Moon Masquerade at Breaker House was the coveted object of autumn, it was to the Alderwood’s Ochre Court that the upper crust of Seafall society flocked at the burning zenith of summer.

  The ballroom was full of farmers. Or rather, wealthy people dressed in their idea of what farmers wore. Lacy shepherdesses with hoop skirts and gilded crooks flirted with rouged roués in red waistcoats, earthy tweeds, careless kerchiefs tied round their necks, and pipe stems clamped between their teeth. Bronzed, bare-chested waiters wearing nothing but leather shorts, suspenders, straw hats, and gleaming boots served craft ales from enormous steins.

  Analise tried to stare in all directions at once. Her generous mouth began to smile. She was always quick, Gideon knew, to perceive the ridiculous, to enjoy any bright parade or ostentatious array, as if anything absurd or gorgeous had been placed directly in her path for the partaking. He watched her mentally scribbling notes. The soft light in her eyes was one of wonder and delight, a hint of satire. She was pleased with the treat she’d be given. Pleased with Gideon. Perhaps a bit exasperated that he had not told her what she was in for. But he could tell that she perceived the surprise as rather . . . sweet.

  She would soon learn better, Gideon thought grimly, and watched his mother sweep Analise Field skull to stocking with a single comprehensive glance. Then she cut her eyes to Gideon.

  “Madame,” said the butler, bowing. “Miss Field.”

  “Thank you, Jinn.”

  “Madame.”

  The butler left, and his mother said, “So you are the neighbor. I presume.”

  “Analise Field,” said Analise, offering her hand. “You’re Gideon’s mother?”

  “I am Mrs. Beckett-Alderwood.”

  Her eyes cut to Gideon again, but either Analise did not notice or thought it was too rude to look over her shoulder. His mother did not take Analise’s hand. She was dressed like a dairymaid. Her wig was a mass of flaxen curls and upturned braids. Her dress was the deep, eye-watering yellow of egg yolks, with enormous sleeves and a stiff crinoline beneath the satin skirts. A scrap of foamy lace apron barely contained the rich yellow froth of her dress from spilling out onto the ballroom floor and knocking down the dancers. Little blue slippers peeped from beneath her long bloomers.

  “Gideon didn’t tell me,” Analise cleared her throat, “to bring a costume.”

  “No,” Gideon agreed from behind her. “It’s a Farmer’s Ball, Miss Field. I figured anything in your closet would do.”

  Analise whipped around at the sound of his voice. Gideon didn’t know if that stricken look in her eye smote him with vengeful pleasure or a nauseated wave of shame.

  Both.

  She opened her mouth, but his mother got there first.

  “Gideon tells me you are an authoress, Miss Field.”

  “Oh, I—” She blushed. Analise blushed so easily. Gideon had always wanted to cup her face in his hands when she did so, and warm his fingers by her glow. “I’m just . . . Well.” She breathed. “Yes. I did come to the city to write. That’s what they say back at home; writers have to live in the city. Real writers. For a while anyway. They can come home again—that is, if they want to, if the city doesn’t eat them up—but they can’t stay at home. If you know what I mean . . . ”

  His mother did not so much as raise a single, bleached, plucked, painted eyebrow. All she did was make an almost imperceptible gesture, and a woman dressed like a migrant fruit picker (if fruit pickers wore vines in their hair, skirts made of silken leaves, and clusters of candied grapes dangling strategically over breasts and groin) joined them.

  “Kitjay Sinjez of Lyrebird Publishing,” said his mother. “This is Analise Field of Seafall Rising.”

  “Oh, my!” said Kitjay Sinjez, enfolding Analise in her arms and kissing both her cheeks. “I adored your book! I adored it! Love, love, love! You must sign with me. Tonight. No time to waste!”

  “My . . . ” Analise looked at Gideon again. “You didn’t give her my . . . ” She gasped, though he hadn’t nodded. “It was just a draft, Gideon. You said you wanted to read it! You never asked . . . ”

  Gideon yawned. “Truthfully, Ana, I couldn’t make it through the first chapter. So I sent it to Kitten.” He paused, then drawled, “She actually likes that kind of thing.”

  Kitjay dragged Analise off, chattering a mile a minute. Analise’s entire neck and chest had turned that same dusty brick color as her face. Her shoulders were hunched all the way up to her ears. From behind she looked a horrible, humpbacked thing with insufferable hair. When he glanced away from her, his mother was staring at him, her pale blue eyes as cold as the poles.

  “If you marry her, I will disown you.”

  Gideon snorted. “Analise Field is the last woman on Athe
I’d marry.”

  “I warn you, Gideon. Ruin her if you feel you have to, but out of the public eye. She doesn’t deserve the Alderwood name.”

  “Really, mother. Who does?”

  “No one decent,” she said. “Had I the gift of foresight, I would have put strychnine in the champagne font the day your father wed me.”

  “Poison the line before propagating it?” he teased her.

  “It was already propagating,” she answered. “As you well know. An Alderwood obsessed goes to any length to possess the prize he covets.”

  “An Alderwood obsessed is a danger to society,” Gideon murmured. He could no longer see Ana in the crowd. But she was thinking of him. He could feel that, all the way down his spine. She would, he was sure, have happily ripped out his spine with the sole power of thought just then.

  “What next for your Miss Field?” his mother asked. “Will you pay someone to mug her? Set fire to that tenement you both live in? Have her kidnapped and dumped outside the city? To what lengths will you go to quell your ardor for her person, my son?”

  “Next,” Gideon replied, “she will find herself the most celebrated authoress from here to Winterbane.” He paused. “She’ll hate it, knowing she did not earn it.”

  “Maybe she’ll even stop writing,” his mother suggested with gentle malice.

  “Oh, no,” he murmured. “Not she. She’d pierce her veins and write with her own blood if she had to.”

  “Ah. You think you have discovered the twin of your soul. The two of you may lay waste the ripest years of your youth, raggedly and passionately starving in that ridiculous garret of yours for the slave wages of your art . . . ”

  “Hardly.”

  “I tell you again, Gideon, for fear that you have inherited your father’s selective attention: if Analise Field ever becomes Analise Alderwood, I will not only never forgive you, I might have you murdered. Exposed on the bell tower and eaten by feral seagulls.”

  Audrey Beckett-Alderwood smiled beneath all her yellow curls and porcelain-tinted paint. Even now her smile had the power to make her son want to curl up in a fetal ball and cry. “I mean it, Gideon. Ruin that girl if you must. But do not destroy her utterly. Leave her enough of herself to heal and move on. I beg you.”

  “Mother!” Gideon said lightly. “You have nothing to worry about. If I do indeed defy you and marry Analise, I’ll simply take her last name for my own. I’ll be plain Gideon Field, anonymous farmer husband to a famous literary wife. No one will know I’m your son. You may tell people that seagulls ate me for all I care. Leave your money to the Factory Girls With Phossyjaw Charity. Would that not avenge you? Perhaps father will even allow you your divorce at last.”

  “The idea is not . . . unappealing,” his mother replied. “Though I pity the girl who lets you taint her good, plain name.” Her terrible smile faded. “I won’t tell you to be careful, Gideon. You never were a careful boy. And the gods help any girl who tries to take care of you. Your Miss Field certainly has the look of one who would drag her loved ones back from the mouths of the seven hells. She would never believe it is not in her power. That it never has been in anyone’s power to save you. Not for years.”

  “If I hurt her enough, she’ll be so occupied staunching her own wounds, she won’t have any time for mine. She’ll be safe.”

  “Yet you will not drive her away? Remove temptation wholly? I would feel easier,” she admitted, “if you simply had her beaten senseless and abducted. But it is unlike you to show kindness.”

  Drive her away? Let the garret they split between them stand empty and unoccupied, the paper-thin wall dividing him not from her restless sleep but only from the ghost of her breathing?

  It was the one thing in the world Gideon could not bear.

  “If she hates me,” he insisted, “she’ll be safe.”

  His mother shook her head. “You are an optimist.”

  In the spare room at Breaker House, awaiting the bone chimes to sound midnight, Analise suspected that Desdemona Mannering knew exactly what her unwanted houseguest was about. For one, her hostess had placed her in Gideon’s room. Analise knew it was his because the pillow smelled like him, as did the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. Not having packed a jacket and cold with nerves, Analise stole a woolen blazer from his stock, though the sleeves pinched her upper arms and the buttons did not meet their counterparts in front.

  After showing her the room, Desdemona had said nothing to her except, “Sleep well.” But the injunction to Save Gideon burned in her eyes, along with the warning that nothing good would come to Analise if she tried to crawl back through any wall into this world without him.

  Come midnight, and the first of the bone bells began to sound, the statue appeared at her door. Analise could not remember ever being more grateful for companionship. If not for that gleam of living marble, the hand outstretched to hers, that glimmer of green in those darkest eyes, she knew she would have crushed her pillow (Gideon’s pillow) (his impatient sandalwood scent) (those brittle flecks of clay he scattered wherever he went) about her ears and willed herself not to hear. To disregard the bells and reject the journey they heralded, and to live.

  But the statue was ready. And her backpack was right there by the bed that smelled of him, how he had smelled those rare nights he’d wept into her lap. She had sandwiches, and a pen, and a silver box, and Nyx had given her a job to do that was of far greater importance than Analise’s fear.

  What’s more, Gideon Alderwood, gods-triple-damn his scornful eyes, needed rescuing. Whether he deserved it or not.

  Analise took the statue’s waiting hand, and they walked through walls that ran like mercury, from one Breaker House into another.

  They arrived in a courtyard with a fountain full of tangled stone swans. Analise barely had time to peer into the twilight around her before the soldiers were upon them.

  They all looked like her statue, more or less, tall and eggshell-pale and sleekly muscled as demigods. The tallest of them stepped forward. Alone of all of them its semblance seemed craggy and slightly unkempt. The spear it carried was long and black, the head of it a piece of obsidian fashioned into lozenge-shape. A billow of red velvet swirled across its white chest, fastening at the shoulder with a smoldering ruby broach. This and the black spear and its odd lumpy face set it apart from the others. When it spoke, the cavern of its voice had an eerie echo all its own.

  “In the name of Loreila the Winter-Touched, High Queen of the Valwode, I charge you with trespass into the palace territory of Dark Breakers.”

  The statue beside Analise sucked in a deep breath. The first breath it had ever taken, through lips that had come unsealed. It replied in the same way a mountain canyon replies when you shout into it.

  “Sibling of my Maker’s hands, I greet you. Gladly will I wear whatever shackles your edict requires for my trespass. But harm not this mortal maid who rescued me, humble property of Her Gracious Majesty, from certain destruction by our angry God. She stole me from his wrath and treated me with kindness. As soon as she was able, alone and ignorant of Gentry ways, did she return me here to take my place among you, my good and rightful kin, as your comrade in arms, a willing warrior to swell your ranks and protect our Perfect Queen upon her throne.”

  Analise blinked at her statue as if it were a splinter of glass she had to expel from her eye. Her throat worked, trying to swallow. She could not quite manage it.

  She recalled a dream she once had, of bearing a baby daughter under mysterious circumstances who not only seemed to spring forth from her womb with a full set of teeth, but was also possessed of an unusual vocabulary and philosophical bent of mind. In the dream, it had astonished her that any baby could speak with such eloquence and at such length! Waking, her breasts no longer swollen with milk, Analise had found she sharply missed her daughter and the conversations they’d had between feedings.

  That same feeling of loss was with her now, remembering the happy hours she had spent at Elliot’s house
, reading her statue alphabet books and children’s nursery rhymes. She could not help but wonder if all of her efforts had been foolish. If the statue held her beneath contempt. Obviously the only thing it had needed from her was passage through the walls back to its own world.

  Who was she to teach this majestic thing words?

  She was afraid to open her mouth lest she disturb the delicate silence between the two statues. They gazed at each other for minutes, the air crackling between them. Analise imagined that they communicated entire histories in the space of that unblinking glance, from an infancy of clay to this faceoff in the courtyard of Dark Breakers.

  Analise’s statue began to smile, ever so slightly.

  It raised one hand to the place its heart was not. The buzzing sound Analise had often heard in its chest crescendoed and poured out into the air. Analise watched as rank upon rank of living statues in the courtyard lifted their hands to their own sculpted chests in bewildered awe, as if something inside them had just come alive with the vigor of summer beehives. They made no murmur, but looked to their red-caped leader beseechingly, uncertain that this startling change the newcomer had wrought in them was welcome, but unwilling to tear their hands away from the novelty of the sensation.

  The pale, rough-hewn planes of their leader’s face did not change. It alone had not reflected the gesture of its comrades, though its hands clenched upon the black spear, and its stance shifted slightly, resettling its weight on its back leg as though flinching from a blow. The green flames of its eyes flickered a disquieted black.

  When next the red-caped statue spoke, Analise thought even its voice sounded different. There was no softening, for a voice made of stone and hollow space cannot soften, but a flush of warmth filled the former emptiness with something like excitement. Perhaps even a kind of deference.

  “Be welcome, sibling,” it said, with a short bow. “And be assured your mortal maid shall know no harm at our hands before our Queen has put her to the question. For now we shall take her to the prison where our God and Maker abides in his madness. You, we shall at once present to Loreila the Winter-Touched, for surely your grace shall soothe her fretted senses.” It drew nearer to Analise’s statue, venturing to place a hand upon its shoulder.