“To Colonel William Bolduan, officer in custody of Joy, from Joseph, once acquaintance and always friend, emperor of all he loves, hates, or imagines, on the occasion of the colonel’s retirement from a lifetime of most meritorious service.
“Now, you may not remember because of measures taken both terrible and necessary, but when I hungered so long for sustenance, and courage, you made us a meal out of the wings of some glorious bird whose name was unfamiliar to all, whose face bore a map of the hard world we’d traveled, and while we ate, our eyes became like white jewels, and we paid each other out of laughter and song. For us there were no soldiers or emperors, no desperate orders or misguided honor to separate us, and we swore to each other the peace that comes with age. I would stand by you as your children were married, and we would tolerate no serious disagreement, and think nothing of the worlds that separated us, but praise the fineness of difference.
“When we woke I could see your embarrassment, the shame you felt for being so familiar, and you would not hear when I explained what all emperors know, that sometimes the heart must be lubricated if any truth is to be told.
“Still, we were no strangers to adventure. We were not strangers in our hearts. Without regret I followed you into the fires at Weilung, where the breath of the dying fliers erased our uniforms and then our hair. In agony you carried me to the fountains of that fading world, where those beautiful ghosts regretted our injuries, and we lay swaddled in their manes as the battles raged without us, until finally I could open my eyes without screaming, and you had that ship waiting, and past the eighty-two falls of those unfortunate worlds you transported me, until the rest of the fleet arrived, and there began our first separation.
“And you should know my people thought it improper. They called themselves my people but in truth I was irretrievably theirs. Some beings must remain separate, they told me, and a friendship of equals is a lie we tell children. So I had to content myself with reports of your exploits, your rescue mission between the two green seas, the time you brought the children (those oh-so-gullible children!) out of the mines at Debel ’Schian, and your long voyage out of the Cheylen clouds.
“If you could only remember our next meeting at the Hejen Temples! How broken I was over those jokes you told! I painted my cheeks like a little girl, and danced until you were too hoarse to sing. Later, when you were afraid your honor could not bear such frivolous and insane behavior, I somehow convinced you that sometimes insanity is the only reasonable response to atrocity, and the death of everything, and long voyages home, alone in the dark.
“But all this ends. And even I with such a grand, fully augmented memory, cannot remember the last time we laughed together, any more than you, my friend. It all has to end. And strangeness comes, and there is no science deep enough to explicate the secrets of the heart. An empire separates us, but still I think of you.
“Signed Joseph, your emperor.”
Jacob returned immediately to his ship. His dialogue with command continued in the recording room, even as the vessel departed that atmosphere, trailing unanswered messages from the occupants of Joy.
“This is a continuation of queries related to the death of Anders Nils, crewman reporter third. Are you prepared to answer these queries?”
“Ask me anything. You may also repeat questions from our first session. Obviously, I have nothing better to do.”
“Before proceeding to those queries we would like to ask you some possibly related questions concerning your stay on 960G4-32.”
“Yes, I imagine you do.”
“The letter you read from the Emperor Joseph—that was a complete fabrication, was it not?”
“Yes, a complete fabrication.”
“The letter was fabricated from fabrications previously entered by Anders Nils in his diaries, concerning imaginary adventures you and he experienced while visiting a variety of worlds.”
“Yes, that was the principal source—Ander’s imaginary adventures and the imaginary friendship he invented for us. But I filled it in with a few details from the colonel’s service record, some stray descriptive passages from this soup of transmissions I have travelled in these past nine years. The style came out of Li Po’s Exile’s Letter. Have you read it?”
“The poem is in the database.”
“I admit I’ve hardly done it justice.”
“So you admit the emperor’s letter was a lie?”
Jacob waited, thinking, then said, “It is not a lie. It is an accurate depiction of the way Anders Nils felt about me, felt about the loneliness of the voyage. It is an accurate depiction of his yearnings. I also believe it is an accurate depiction of Colonel Bolduan’s yearnings, and perhaps those of our maybe-living, maybe-not emperor as well. It is certainly an accurate depiction of my own feelings.”
“But the events you’ve narrated, events which were supposedly experienced by Colonel Bolduan, are fictional.”
“Those events, those memories are gone forever. They were taken from the colonel. If the colonel had lost a leg in combat, the service would have provided him with a prosthetic. The events I have narrated in the emperor’s letter are a prosthetic for what he has lost.”
“Do you know why Anders would commit suicide?”
“I cannot be sure. I will never be sure. But I believe the stories he had made up, or fabricated, to use your word, had ceased to work for him. He must have been terribly, terribly lonely.”
“He should have spoken to you. He could have asked us for assistance.”
“Some people are unable to ask, or tell. People do what they can do.”
“Why did you not know Anders was thinking of committing suicide?”
“Because I failed at the one thing I have been so thoroughly trained to do. I failed to listen.”
And there ended the interview. Jacob returned to his long nights listening, alone, waiting for Anders’s replacement, wondering if there would even be a replacement. Now and then he would listen to Anders’s diaries. Now and then he would make up diary entries of his own.
Command wrapped up its report and transmitted it into the empty space between its reported location and a vague approximation of the location called home, not knowing, or caring, if contact was made.
HOLDFAST
MATTHEW JOHNSON
Irrel was halfway through milking Black-Eye when the sky went dark with dragons. He looked up to see what had happened and saw dozens of winged shapes obscuring the sun in the east. They were flying low to the ground; that might mean rain, but if they were riding-dragons it meant battle was coming. He shrugged and turned back to his work, resuming his interrupted song:
Five riders in a ring
Round Bessie’s udder
Bessie bring milk
Milk bring butter
Milk fell into the bucket with each pull, thick and yellow with cream drawn by the charm. Irrel’s daughter Niiv sat on a stool across the yard churning the milk: With every fourth stroke she clapped the churn-staff down hard to catch the hands of any witches or devils that might try to spoil the butter. She stopped partway through a stroke and pointed over Irrel’s head.
He turned just in time to see the load of worm-cast falling a short distance away to the west. Irrel gave one more pull of Black-Eye’s udder and patted her on the side. “Good girl,” he said as he stood. Then he called out: “Sifrid, get the wagon and shovels.”
Sifrid, the season-man, was over by the house. He waved and then headed for the carriage-house.
Niiv stood up and threw a glance in Sifrid’s direction. “Let me get the cows back inside, and I’ll come with you.”
Irrel shook his head. “Black-Eye’s too full to wait. Besides, someone has to keep watch over Tyrrel.”
His daughter frowned. “Where is he?”
“Chicken coop, should be.”
Niiv crossed her arms. “Well, am I to be a milkmaid or a nursemaid?”
Irrel fought to keep himself from smiling at her pout and her wrinkled n
ose. It was far from the only thing she had got from her mother, but it was the one that most recalled Eliis. “Fetch him first. Black-Eye will keep for a few moments, and then perhaps you can persuade him to try milking her.” He took the tally sticks from his apron pocket and handed them to her; she took them, gave Black-Eye a pat and walked off toward the chicken coop, sighing loudly.
Once she was gone he made his way to the stable, unbarred the small door and stepped inside, pausing until his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. Along the wall hung a dozen rope harnesses, each one tight and unfrayed. He cast his eye over the harnesses, his fingers twitching with the memory of having tied them, until finally he reached out and chose a Ram’s Knot.
Grunting a little with the effort, he lifted the harness off of the wooden hook and went to the stalls. Sviput and Svegjut whickered as he passed, impatient to be let out into the yard; he called Sviput, the gelding, with a whistle and then led him to where the leather collars hung. Once the horse was dressed Irrel brought him outside, shading his own eyes against the change in light.
Sifrid had loaded the dray with shovels and drawn it up by the gate. His shirt was soaked with sweat. His childhood in the city had not left him well prepared for farm work, and he stooped with exhaustion as he drew the cart into position to be harnessed.
“Where are we going?” he asked as he dumb-tied the tug to the horse’s collar.
Irrel pointed down the road to the west, then gave the gelding a pat and tossed the halter over its neck. He leaned down to loosen the holdfast on the gate, then lifted it carefully and hung it on the fencepost before leading the horse and dray forward with a tug of the harness-rope. He kept a tight hand on it. The Ram’s Knot would give Sviput strength to pull the load when the cart was full, but for now it only made him headstrong. Sifrid closed the gate and followed along a few steps behind.
The road was rough, holed by hoof-prints and stranger spoors. After they had been walking for a while they saw a man ahead leading a donkey-drawn cart. Irrel gave the lead a tug, letting Sviput go more quickly, and they soon drew up close enough to see that it was Allren, who worked the farm on the other side of Slow Creek.
“Morning find you,” Allren said, touching the brim of his hat and tugging it.
Irrel touched his hat in response. “And you,” he said. He gave the lead a pull to slow the horse and found himself breathing harder than he was used to. His years had mostly spared his strength, but he had lost much of his wind.
“You saw it too, I suppose?”
Irrel nodded.
“And there’s been men this way, looks like.” Allren pointed to a break in the fencing at the side of the road. Beyond it the wheat had been trampled and torn from the ground, the heads broken and kernels scattered. “Or almost men. Only the Margrave’s beasts would eat plain rye, and before harvest-time too.”
“People will eat the same as pigs if they’re hungry enough.”
“That’s true as you say it,” Allren said, nodding. “That’s not your fence there, is it?”
Irrel shook his head. “My hide ends back at the crooked tree.”
“Didn’t think so. Never saw your fence in such a state.”
The wind, which had been blowing from the south all morning, had shifted to the west: It brought the smell of worm-cast, acrid and sulphurous. It grew stronger as they kept walking, passing beyond the fenced land and into marshy country. Finally they began to see the first drops of worm-cast, pats of manure about a hand around that were fibrous like a horse’s droppings but dark, oily and resinous. Irrel had Sifrid gather them as they passed. Each drop clung to the season-man’s gloves, needing a hard shake to fall into the cart.
The largest concentration lay ahead, in a pile about a cow-hide around that had fallen on a stretch of peatland at the edge of the marsh. Two more men with carts were standing at the side of the road, having come from the opposite direction: One Irrel knew as Karten, a brinker whose tiny strip of land stood just outside the marsh; the other one he did not know at all. Both touched their hats at he and Allren’s arrival.
“Fair morning,” Karten said. He was thinner than he was the last time Irrel had seen him, sometime in the winter.
“To you,” Irrel said.
Allren looked back the way they had come, then further down the road. “Do either of you claim a stake by law in this find?” he asked. After a moment the two men shook their heads. “Then I propose we divide equal stakes. Do you all agree?”
Karten and the other man both looked to Irrel; after a moment he nodded, took his shovel from the cart and began to walk towards where the worm-cast had fallen. The others followed him as they walked first across the spongy peatland and then through the thick shit, which reached nearly to the tops of their boots by the time they were at the center of it. Once there they clasped hands and then turned away from one another, walking towards the edge of the worm-cast and drawing their shovels behind them to quarter it. Sifrid brought his shovel and they began to work, separating sticky spadefuls from the pat and ferrying it back to their carts.
As they were both bringing loads to the cart, Sifrid cleared his throat. “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said.
Irrel grunted, levering the shovel high to drop the worm-cast into the cart. “And now’s the time, is it?”
“Well, it’s, I guess it’s as good a time as any, but I couldn’t wait any longer. With the harvest coming, I mean.”
“Hm.” Irrel planted the shovel on the ground and leaned his weight on it, catching his breath. “And so?”
“Well—well I, I suppose you know that I have—I’ve known Niiv, I’ve known your daughter a long time, and . . . well. Perhaps you know already.”
“I hadn’t thought a goldsmith’s son was working as a season-man because he needed the coin,” Irrel said.
Sifrid was silent for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said. “And, well, the thing is, I’d like to marry her. I’d like to marry your daughter, to marry Niiv.”
“Well,” Irrel said, “I suppose I should talk to Niiv about this.”
“She feels the same as I do, sir.”
“I’m sure she does, but I’ll talk to her just the same.”
Sifrid laughed nervously. “Of course. I only meant—”
Irrel held up a hand. There was a sound he couldn’t quite identify, something out of place. After a moment he realized it was a voice, quietly chanting:
Ten little men all in a ring
Ten little men bow to the king
He closed his eyes and turned his head slightly from side to side, still listening.
Ten little men dance all day
Ten little men hide a—
Irrel reached out and seized the boy by his shirt-collar. Of course it was Tyrrel, his son, his hands still splayed out in the dancing part of the charm. “What are you doing here?” Irrel said. “Your sister’s sure to be beside herself.”
“She didn’t even go look for me!” Tyrrel said. He was a handsome boy, a bit small for ten but already bearing the lean, serious face of a man: A thatch of chestnut hair, his mother’s legacy, fell over his eyes. “I watched her before I followed you. She just went into the house.”
“And you showed her right,” Irrel said, frowning.
“But I needed to come with you,” Tyrrel said. “I have to start learning about things like this. I’ll be a man soon enough, you know.”
Irrel nodded slowly. “So you will,” he said. “Well then, get in the cart and see if you can find any worm-coal in that mess.”
Tyrrel wrinkled his nose in distaste. “What’s worm-coal?”
Irrel held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Shiny black balls, say this big. Burns purer than sea-coal or charcoal—might be we’ll sell what we find to Sifrid’s father.”
“Is it just smiths that use it in their craftings, or is it wizards too? We could give it to Uncle Allel.”
“Could be we would, if you find any. Now hop to.”<
br />
Tyrrel’s eyes widened, and Irrel turned to see what he was looking at: More dragons were flying in from the east. Tyrrel began counting as they flew overhead: “One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a wedding.” A moment later another appeared on the horizon and he laughed, a child again. “And four for a baby boy!”
Irrel looked over at Sifrid, who was blushing. He took a deep breath and went back to his work.
By the time they had gone back to the farm and finished shoveling the worm-cast onto the dung-hill, Niiv had dinner ready. Irrel kept his eyes on his plate as they ate the meal: dark bread, beet pickle and cheese.
“Fetch me some rope and meet me on the afternoon porch,” he said to Tyrrel as he stood. He looked over at Sifrid: The young man was a careful distance from Niiv, keeping the firepit between them. “There might be some trouble tonight. I need you to walk the fences today, make sure they’re all holding. Be sure you go sunwise, not widdershins.”
Sifrid nodded.
“And me?” Niiv asked.
“Hex signs need freshening,” Irrel said. “You know where the paint is.”
He stepped out of the summer kitchen, then turned and went through the door that led into the storage room. He drew a rope-cutting knife from its drawer, then took four thunderstones from their box and went back through the long hall and out onto the afternoon porch. Tyrrel was waiting for him there, sitting on a stool with a pile of rope at his feet.
Irrel settled into the empty stool across from him and put down the knife. “That was quite a charm you did this morning,” he said. “Kept it up all the way to the marsh, and with five men there too.”
“It’s just a children’s charm,” Tyrrel said; he shrugged, but there was pride evident in his voice. He had always excelled at the craftings children did for mischief: making a leaf fly through the air or a thrown stick return to your hand. His hands were quick like his mother’s had been, and he was able to hold his concentration much longer than any other boy his age.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 17
