The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition

by Rich Horton (ed)

  “No,” I said. “It’s dangerous for Leah here. Miranda already tried to hire pirates to shoot her down once, when she was out in the sky kayak. We have to leave.”

  Carlos looked up at me, and with sudden sarcasm said, “Miranda? You’re joking. That was me who tipped off the pirates. Me. I thought they’d take you away and keep you. I wish they had.”

  And then he turned back to Leah. “Please? You’ll be the richest person on Venus. You’ll be the richest person in the solar system. I’ll give it all to you. You’ll be able to do anything you want.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leah repeated. “It’s a great offer. But no.”

  At the other end of the room, Carlos’ bodyguards were quietly entering. He apparently had some way to summon them silently. The room was filling with them, and their guns were drawn, but not yet pointed.

  I backed toward the window, and Leah came with me.

  The city had rotated a little, and sunlight was now slanting in through the window. I put my sun goggles on.

  “Do you trust me?” I said quietly.

  “Of course,” Leah said. “I always have.”

  “Come here.”

  LINK: READY blinked in the corner of my field of view.

  I reached up, casually, and tapped on the side of the left lens. CQ MANTA, I tapped. CQ.

  I put my other hand behind me and, hoping I could disguise what I was doing as long as I could, I pushed on the pane, feeling it flex out.

  HERE, was the reply.

  Push. Push. It was a matter of rhythm. When I found the resonant frequency of the pane, it felt right, it built up, like oscillating a rocking chair, like sex.

  I reached out my left hand to hold Leah’s hand, and pumped harder on the glass with my right. I was putting my weight into it now, and the panel was bowing visibly with my motion. The window was starting to make a noise, an infrasonic thrum too deep to hear, but you could feel it. On each swing, the pane of the window bowed further outward.

  “What are you doing?” Carlos shouted. “Are you crazy?”

  The bottom bowed out, and the edge of the pane separated from its frame.

  There was a smell of acid and sulfur. The bodyguards ran toward us, but—as I’d hoped—they were hesitant to use their guns, worried that the damaged panel might blow completely out.

  The window screeched and jerked, but held, fixed in place by the other joints. The way it was stuck in place left a narrow vertical slit between the window and its frame. I pulled Leah close to me and shoved myself backward, against the glass, sliding along against the bowed pane, pushing it outward to widen the opening as much as I could.

  As I fell, I kissed her lightly on the edge of the neck.

  She could have broken my grip, could have torn herself free.

  But she didn’t.

  “Hold your breath and squeeze your eyes shut,” I whispered, as we fell through the opening and into the void, and then with my last breath of air, I said, “I love you.”

  She said nothing in return. She was always practical, and knew enough not to try to talk when her next breath would be acid. “I love you too,” I imagined her saying.

  With my free hand, I tapped, MANTA.

  NEED PICK-UP. FAST.

  And we fell.

  “It wasn’t about sex at all,” I said. “That’s what I failed to understand.” We were in the manta, covered with slime, but basically unhurt. The pirates had accomplished their miracle, snatched us out of mid-air. We had information they needed, and in exchange they would give us a ride off the planet, back where we belonged, back to the cool and the dark and the emptiness between planets. “It was all about finance. Keeping control of assets.”

  “Sure it’s about sex,” Leah said. “Don’t fool yourself. We’re humans. It’s always about sex. Always. You think that’s not a temptation? Molding a kid into just exactly what you want? Of course it’s sex. Sex and control. Money? That’s just the excuse they tell themselves.”

  “But you weren’t tempted,” I said.

  She looked at me long and hard. “Of course I was.” She sighed, and her expression was once again distant, unreadable. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  THE MAGICIAN AND THE MAID AND OTHER STORIES

  CHRISTIE YANT

  She called herself Audra, though that wasn’t her real name; he called himself Miles, but she suspected it wasn’t his, either.

  She was young (how young she would not say), beautiful (or so her Emil had told her), and she had a keen interest in stories. Miles was old, tattooed, perverted, and often mean, but he knew stories that no one else knew, and she was certain that he was the only one who could help her get back home.

  She found him among the artists, makers, and deviants. They called him Uncle, and spoke of him sometimes with loathing, sometimes respect, but almost always with a tinge of awe—a magician in a world of technicians, they did not know what to make of him.

  But Audra saw him for what he truly was.

  There once was a youth of low birth who aspired to the place of King’s Magician. The villagers scoffed, “Emil, you will do naught but mind the sheep,” but in his heart he knew that he could possess great magic.

  The hedge witches and midwives laughed at the shepherd boy who played at sorcery, but indulged his earnestness. He learned charms for love and marriage (women’s magic, but he would not be shamed by it) and for wealth and luck, but none of this satisfied him, for it brought him no nearer to the throne. For that he needed real power, and he did not know where to find it.

  He had a childhood playmate named Aurora, and as they approached adulthood Aurora grew in both beauty and cleverness. Their childhood affection turned to true love, and on her birthday they were betrothed.

  The day came when the youth knew he had learned all that he could in the nearby villages and towns. The lovers wept and declared their devotion with an exchange of humble silver rings. With a final kiss Emil left his true love behind, and set out to find the source of true power.

  It was not hard to meet him, once she understood his tastes. A tuck of her skirt, a tug at her chemise; a bright ribbon, new stockings, and dark kohl to line her eyes. She followed him to a club he frequented, where musicians played discordant arrangements and the patrons were as elaborately costumed as the performers. She walked past his booth where he smoked cigarettes and drank scotch surrounded by colorful young women and effeminate young men.

  “You there, Bo Peep, come here.”

  She met his dark eyes, turned her back on him, and walked away. The sycophants who surrounded him bitched and whined their contempt for her. He barked at them to shut up as she made her way to the door.

  Once she had rejected him it was easy. She waited for his fourth frustrated overture before she joined him at his table.

  “So,” she said as she lifted his glass to her lips uninvited, “tell me a story.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “A fairy tale.”

  “What—something with elves and princes and happily-ever-after?”

  “No,” she said and reached across the corner of the table to turn his face toward her. He seemed startled but complied, and leaned in until their faces were just inches apart. “A real fairy tale. With wolves and witches, jealous parents, woodsmen charged with murdering the innocent. Tell me a story, Miles—” she could feel his breath against her cheek falter as she leaned ever closer and spoke softly into his ear “—tell me a story that is true.”

  Audra was foot-sore and weary when they reached the house at dawn. She stumbled on the stone walk, and caught Miles’s arm to steady her.

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything from home?” he asked as he worked his key in the lock.

  At his mention of home, she remembered again to hate him.

  “Quite sure,” she said. He faced her, this time with a different kind of appraisal. There was no leer, no suspicion. He touched her face, and his habitual scowl relaxed into something like a smile.

&
nbsp; “You remind me of someone I knew once, long ago.” The smile vanished and he opened the front door, stepping aside to let her pass.

  His house was small and filled with a peculiar collection of things that told her she had the right man. Many of them where achingly familiar to Audra: a wooden spindle in the entryway, wound with golden thread; a dainty glass shoe on the mantle, almost small enough to fit a child; in the corner, a stone statue of an ugly, twisted creature, one arm thrown protectively over its eyes.

  “What a remarkable collection,” she said and forced a smile. “It must have taken a long time to assemble.”

  “Longer than I care to think of.” He picked a golden pear off the shelf and examined it. “None of it is what I wanted.” He returned it to the shelf with a careless toss. “I’ll show you the bedroom.”

  The room was bare, in contrast with the rest of the house. No ornament hung on the white plaster walls, no picture rested on the dresser. The bed was small, though big enough for two, and covered in a faded quilt. It was flanked by a table on one side, and a bent wood chair on the other.

  Audra sat stiffly at the foot of the bed.

  The mattress creaked as Miles sat down beside her. She turned toward him with resolve, and braced herself for the inevitable. She would do whatever it took to get back home.

  She had done worse, and with less cause.

  He leaned in close and stroked her hair; she could smell him, sweet and smoky, familiar and foreign at the same time. She lifted a hand to caress his smooth head where he lingered above her breast. He caught her wrist and straightened, pressed her palm to his cheek—eyes closed, forehead creased in pain—then abruptly dropped her hand and rose from the bed.

  “If you need more blankets, they’re in the wardrobe. Sleep well,” he said, and left Audra to wonder what had gone wrong, and to consider her next move.

  Aurora was as ambitious as Emil, but of a different nature. She believed that the minds of most men were selfish and swayed only by fear or greed. In her heart there nestled a seed of doubt that Emil could get his wish through pure knowledge and practice. She resolved in her love for him to secure his place through craft and wile.

  Aurora knew the ways of tales. She planted the seed of rumor in soil in which it grew best: the bowry; the laundry; anywhere the women gathered, she talked of his power.

  But word of the powerful sorcerer had to reach the King himself, and to get close enough she would need to use a different craft.

  The hands of guards and pikemen were rougher than Emil’s; the mouths of servants less tender. She ignited the fire of ambition in their hearts with flattery, and fanned it with promises that Emil, the most powerful sorcerer in the kingdom, would repay those who supported him once he was installed in the palace.

  And if she had regrets as she hurried from chamber to cottage in the cold night air, she dismissed them as just a step on the road toward realizing her lover’s dream.

  Audra woke at mid-day to find a note on the chair in the corner of the room.

  In deep black ink and an unpracticed hand was written:

  “Stay if you like, or go as you please. I am accountable to only one, and that one is not you. If that arrangement suits you, make yourself at home.—M.”

  It suited her just fine.

  She searched the house. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she was certain that any object of power great enough to rip her from her own world would be obvious somehow. It would be odd, otherworldly, she thought—but that described everything here. Like a raven’s hoard, every nook contained some shiny, stolen object.

  On a shelf in the library she found a clear glass apothecary jar labeled “East Wind.” Thief, she thought. Audra hoped that the East Wind didn’t suffer for the lack of the contents of the jar. She would keep an eye on the weather vane and return it at the first opportunity.

  Something on the shelf caught her eye, small and shining, and her contempt turned to rage.

  Murderer.

  She pocketed Emil’s ring.

  Miles seemed to dislike mirrors. There were none in the bedroom; none even in the washroom. The only mirror in the house was an ornate, gilded thing that hung in the library. She paused in front of it, startled at her disheveled appearance. She smoothed her hair with her fingers and leaned in to examine her blood-shot eyes—and found someone else’s eyes looking back at her.

  The gaunt, androgynous face that gazed dolefully from deep within the mirror was darker and older than her own.

  “Hello,” she said to the Magic Mirror. “I’m Audra.”

  The Mirror shook its head disapprovingly.

  “You’re right,” she admitted. “But we don’t give strangers our true names, do we?”

  She considered her new companion. The long lines of its insubstantial face told Audra that it had worn that mournful look for a long time.

  “Did he steal you, as well? Perhaps we can help each other find a way home. The answer is here somewhere.”

  The face in the Mirror brightened, and it nodded.

  Audra had an idea. “Would you like me to read to you?”

  Emil travelled a bitter road in search of the knowledge that would make his fortune. By day he starved, by night he froze. But one day Luck was with him, and he caught two large, healthy hares before sunset. As he huddled beside his small fire, the hares roasting over the flames, a short and grizzled man came out of the forest, carrying a sack of goods.

  “Good evening, Grandfather,” Emil said to the little man. “Sit, share my fire and supper.” The man gratefully accepted. “What do you sell?” Emil asked.

  “Pots and pans, needles, and spices,” the old man said.

  “Know you any magic?” Emil asked, disappointed. He was beginning to think the knowledge he sought didn’t exist, and he was losing hope.

  “What does a shepherd need with magic?”

  “How did you know I’m a shepherd?” Emil asked in surprise.

  “I know many things,” the man said, and then groaned, and doubled over in pain.

  “What ails you?” Emil cried, rushing to the old man’s side.

  “Nothing that you can help, lad. I’ve a disease of the gut that none can cure, and my time may be short.”

  Emil questioned the man about his ailment, and pulled from his pack dozens of pouches of herbs and powders. He heated water for a medicinal brew while the old man groaned and clutched his stomach.

  The man pulled horrible faces as he drank down the bitter tea, but before long his pain eased, and he was able to sit upright again. Emil mixed another batch of the preparation and assured him that he would be cured if he drank the tea for seven days.

  “I was wrong about you,” the man said. “You’re no shepherd.” He pulled a scroll from deep within his pack. “For your kindness I’ll give you what you’ve traveled the world seeking.”

  The little man explained that the scroll contained three powerful spells, written in a language that no man had spoken in a thousand years. The first was a spell to summon a benevolent spirit, who would then guide him in his learning.

  The second summoned objects from one world into another, for every child knew that there were many worlds, and that it was possible to pierce the veil between them.

  The third would transport a person between worlds.

  If he could decipher the three spells, he would surely become the most powerful sorcerer in the kingdom.

  Emil offered the old man what coins he had, but he refused. He simply handed over the scroll, bade Emil farewell, and walked back into the forest.

  Audra filled her time reading to the Mirror. The shelves were filled with hundreds of books: old and new, leather-bound and gilt-edged, or flimsy and sized to be carried in a pocket.

  She devoured them, looking for clues. How she got here. How she might get back.

  On a bottom shelf in the library, in the sixth book of a twelve-volume set, she found her story.

  The illustrations throughout the blue, cl
oth-bound book were full of round, cheerful children and curling vines. She recognized some of her friends and enemies from her old life: there was Miska, who fooled the Man-With-The-Iron-Head and whom she had met once on his travels; on another page she found the fairy who brought the waterfall to the mountain, whom Audra resolved to visit as soon as she got home.

  She turned the page, and her breath caught in her throat.

  “The Magician and the Maid,” the title read. Beneath the illustration were those familiar words, “Once upon a time.”

  A white rabbit bounded between birch trees toward Audra’s cottage. Between the tree tops a castle gleamed pink in the sunset light, the place where her story was supposed to end. Audra traced the outline of the rabbit with her finger, and then traced the two lonely shadows that followed close behind.

  Two shadows: one, her own, and the other, Emil’s.

  Audra was reading to the Mirror, a story it seemed to particularly like. It did tricks for her as she read, creating wispy images in the glass that matched the prose.

  She had just reached the best part, where the trolls turn to stone in the light of the rising sun, when she heard footsteps outside the library door. The Mirror looked anxiously toward the sound, and then slipped out of sight beyond the carved frame.

  The door burst open.

  “Who are you talking to?” Miles demanded. “Who’s here?” He smelled of scotch and sweat, and his overcoat had a new stain.

  “No one. I like to read aloud. I am alone here all day,” she said.

  “Don’t pretend I owe you anything.” He slouched into the chair and pulled a cigarette from his coat. “You might make yourself useful,” he said. “Read to me.”

  The room was small, and she stood no more than an arm’s length away, feeling like a school girl being made to recite. She opened to a story she did not know, a tale called “The Snow Queen,” and began to read. Miles closed his eyes and listened.

  “Little Kay was quite blue with cold, indeed almost black, but he did not feel it; for the Snow Queen had kissed away the icy shiverings, and his heart was already a lump of ice,” she read.