Nevertheless, She Persisted

by Mindy Klasky

  Dal jerked her onward, the bit rattling in her offended mouth. Laria reared high; the reins snapped taut between them. Their eyes met—astonished human eyes, feeling the first surge of personal betrayal. Enraged equine eyes, unyielding, edged with fierce despair. Then, as Laria’s feet lightly touched ground, she most deliberately whirled away, cracking the reins like a whip and tearing them from Dal’s grasp.

  And then she was gone. Nothing left but fading hoofbeats and the stinging pain across Dal’s palm.

  The Master found her that way, regarded her sadly. There was little need for discussion; there were no words immense enough to apply to this loss. Finally the Master said, “You may accompany us until the end of the season.”

  Dal shook her head, one white-knuckled hand on the knife hilt. “I need to find her.”

  The Master shook his head, too. “Come with us, and I will give you severance. It will give you a chance in this world.”

  “I won’t give up. I don’t give up.”

  The Master looked at her for a long time. “Dal. This is not a thing you can do. You have not been riding her with the correct heart, and so she would not be ridden. Just as she will now not be found.”

  Dal made no reply. She looked at her stinging palm and opened and closed her fingers. She could barely feel the imprint of Laria’s reins beneath the sense of a coil-wrapped hilt.

  And so they left her. The Master exchanged discreet words with the patron and then packed up the horses, their gear, their riders—and left Dal in a strange coastal town with nothing of her own but an obsession.

  Dal grew hungry fast. No matter her confidence. No matter that she and Laria had been the best, not in this fishing town with plenty of young men and women already mucking out stalls. When Dal got hungry enough, she cleaned gutters for pennies. When she got cold enough, she stole the corner of a barn loft on a rainy night. During the days, she ranged the beaches, finding old hoof prints and learning about clams and tides and what the sun would do to one’s cheeks and nose.

  No Laria.

  With fall settling in as a cold, whipping wind, no Laria. The knife reassured Dal, filling her empty spaces. She would not fail. She would find Laria. She would never stop looking, never acquiesce to failure.

  As the wind grew colder, as the fishing boats put to port for the season, as her boots wore thin and her clothing thinner, Dal looked. Driven by hubris and borrowed confidence, too certain of her ability to secure winter quarters, she hunted Laria. Until she was gaunt, ragged, hair wild and hopelessly snarled, she looked.

  One day she abruptly sat in mid-step, staring stupidly at the circling gulls, realizing how hunger clawed her and cold stiffened her. Realizing that she had no food, and no likelihood of finding it.

  Seeing, finally, that she might just have nothing. Looking back along her sandy footsteps as if to discover the answers there, in some decision of her past.

  Only then did she see she was not alone. Had not been alone. Laria stood on the beach slope behind her. Not near, not far. Up to her knees in the wind-blown, still-green beach grasses—the bridle still on her head and short broken reins dangling, but the saddle long gone from her skinny ribs.

  Beach grass agreed with her no more than tidal creatures agreed with Dal.

  “Laria,” Dal whispered, coming up to her knees. Laria took a step closer, ears pricked. Listening. “Laria.”

  But words of love and longing collided with the knife’s twining interference and caromed around in Dal’s head to become Laria, how could you? Laria, how dare you? I made us the best—

  “We were the best!” Dal roared.

  Laria snorted, threw up her head, and whirled away.

  Astonished at herself, too astonished to do anything but stare in horror at the retreating tangle of Laria’s tail, Dal gaped after her a long moment before crying wordlessly into the wind.

  The wind blew the sound back at her.

  Laria! How dare she! Dal keened a sudden wail of denial and fear, as mindless and gibbering as any soul pushed over the edge. How dare she?

  How could she? Dal was worth so much more than that, was so better than that, so much better than the others, than the Master, than Laria—

  Dal blinked, quite suddenly, facing the utter nothingness of her life there in the sand.

  Better than Laria? Truly?

  So unfair, so unjust. Better than the Master who left us here, better than—

  “Us?” Dal clawed at the knife, tearing shirt and skin and pants. “Us?” Yanking the blade from its scabbard, she dropped it from numbed fingers to thud into the sand, waking the knife anew—hollow promises and beguiling whispers and new understanding.

  This was not success. This was not confidence. It wasn’t even real. She had in fact given up, giving herself over to the knife. She had made of Laria a sacrifice. Made of herself, that same sacrifice.

  But the wind still bit into her very being, her empty being. And the knife still whispered promises. Whispered…

  Slowly, with an ancient’s bones, Dal bent to pick up the blade. It held no grudges. It flooded her with warmth and wrapped her in pride. She caressed it, ran her clumsy, cracked fingers along its planes and edges. How it spoke to her! How it promised her—

  Promised her—

  Dal lifted her head to the whipping wind, looking out on the empty beach with newly sharp eyes. She’d lost her home; she’d lost her life’s work. She’d betrayed Laria.

  With this blade, she’d betrayed her own heart.

  An agonized cry tore from her throat. Dal staggered upward, pushed herself to a wobbly run, and careened down into the water. Up to her knees in the frigid surf and then farther, bracing herself against buffeting waves, she threw the knife into the sea. As hard as she could. As far as she could. It arced far above the water, carrying the last of her strength with it.

  Dal returned to the sand and fell to her knees, where the next wave licked at her toes and shins. She whispered into the wind, her voice a broken thing. “Come back, Laria…”

  There was nothing but the lap of water against the shore, the wind in the grasses, the gulls overhead. Dal felt herself break in two, right in the middle of the void left by the knife. She covered her face with roughened hands and sobbed like a bereaved child, reliving memories—Laria from foalhood, Laria under first saddle, Laria’s head resting against Dal’s chest, Laria’s quiet way of speaking from her heart.

  You and I are Us.

  Dal understood, then, that she’d never been able to hide from Laria. She tipped her face to a wan sun and felt her own emptiness, her bereft isolation. The consequences of choices made.

  Breath gusted against her ear. A velvet muzzle nibbled at her hair. Dal dared not to breathe.

  After a great long moment, Laria released a whuffling sigh. You and I are Us.

  Dal tottered to her feet and threw her arms around Laria’s neck, hiding her face in the ragged wind-knots of Laria’s mane. Filling herself with the truth of herself. When she finally lifted her head, it was with purpose. Shelter. Food. She would go back to the patron, and perhaps they could survive.

  She put a hand on Laria’s withers, a gesture of old. “Walk with me?”

  Laria stood rooted, chin stiff, until Dal removed her hand, and then arched her weedy, once elegant neck. You. May walk with. Me.

  Dal struggled with those empty inner places—the places the talisman had filled, the places she had always demanded that Laria fill. The crevices they had both learned no one could fill but Dal herself.

  The knife had been giving up.

  This was pushing onward.

  With an inner wrench that made her knees quiver, Dal accepted herself. She replaced a trembling hand on Laria’s withers, waiting. Waiting…

  Laria swished a gentle tail, gently flapped her mane. And they walked together, Laria and Dal. Being.

  Tax Season

  Judith Tarr

  When the bandit horde came down from the hills, Bron the Strong was holed up in the Fa
rting Wyvern, doing her taxes. Every damned year, she left it till the absolute last minute. Bron the Strong was a tax accountant in season, and as everyone knows, the accountant’s own taxes are the last to be done.

  While Bron was swearing over her well-worn abacus and contemplating attacking it with her equally well-worn broadsword, the bandit chief belly-crawled to the top of the hill that overlooked the town of Hel’s Ford. She was much too canny to pose up there and let the whole valley know it was about to be raided. The valley knew it would be raided, expected to be raided, but what it wasn’t expecting was to be raided now.

  Everybody raided when the tax receipts were in. It was tradition. The Queen’s tax collectors took her cut, bandits took their cut of that, and the remainder trundled off to the capital on muleback, except for the fraction that came back to the lucky few whose tax statuses allowed them a refund.

  Melita was not a traditional bandit. For one thing, she had a university degree, in Greater Magicks, no less. For another, thanks to that degree, she had debt but no job, and that combination of circumstances had driven her to Desperation.

  Desperation was a bandit town, and through a series of events that we won’t take time to discuss here, Melita was now the chief of it. And Melita intended to raid Hel’s Ford before the Queen’s mule train arrived. She had calculated her fair cut—in her estimation, and including this year’s student-loan payments—and deduced that the monies collected so far would more than cover it. Those monies were conveniently stored in the bank, which was also the post office and the livery stable, on the east side of Hel’s Ford, up by the granaries.

  The bank was guarded, but the protection spells were the least expensive package, which she hardly needed a degree in Greater Magicks to bypass. All she had to do was sweep in, take her cut, and sweep out again, leaving the rest to the Queen.

  She could of course simply rob the bank by night and get away undetected, but she was not a burglar. She was a bandit. She had at least some regard for tradition.

  And in any case, she had a point to make. Crime in Zamaria had become almost as tradition-bound as its grand opera, and criminals had forgotten how to transgress without a script.

  Melita had no intention of becoming a burgling bandit, but a bandit who raided according to her own rules—that was just subversive enough to be worth it.

  So she spied out the town and plotted her raid, while down in the tavern, Bron glared at the total on Line 23(a)(1), which should have been equal to or lesser than the subtotal on Line 13(b)(z), and was, persistently and hair-tearingly, neither. Tax deadline was tonight at midnight, and if she failed to meet it, she would have to file another whole ream of paperwork, and pay a penalty, the calculation of which, she knew from dire experience, would drive her even crazier than today’s ordeal.

  She straightened and stretched and rolled her tired head on her aching neck. The innkeeper’s boy was just passing by with a pitcher of ale; she paused to appreciate his fine dark eyes and his warm brown skin and his optimal shoulder-to-hip ratio.

  He offered the pitcher. She shook her head with some regret. Taxes first. Pleasure later.

  The slant of his smile promised that he would be available for the latter if she was inclined. She replied with the hint of a nod. His step was maybe a fraction jauntier as he went on to fill another and more welcoming cup.

  Bron bent back to the stack of forms. Now she had concrete incentive to finish, she felt marginally better.

  Melita, meanwhile, had finished scoping out the town. The streets were unusually empty. Everyone whose taxes were done was tucked up smugly in her house, celebrating her virtue. Everyone else was sweating over invoices and receipts and the thrice-cursed Form 666(f)(vi), which was required for reasons so arcane that no one even remembered them, but no one was rash enough to omit it.

  “No time like the present,” she said to her lieutenant. Ankret grunted, which was as eloquent as she ever got.

  The grunt was a signal. Melita’s bandits mounted and held the line while she made her way back to her horse. Once she was in the saddle, Ankret raised the ram’s horn to her lips and blew an ear-splitting blast.

  Bron heard the horn between clacks of the abacus. She was on her feet in an instant, sword in hand. If she allowed her fighter’s instincts to completely overwhelm her tax skills (and those were mad indeed), she could hardly be faulted, all things considered.

  The noon crowd in the Farting Wyvern was unusually thin today, but a scattering of regulars occupied the booths and benches. Those who were still sober enough to recognize the sound stared at one another in disbelief. “That can’t be bandits,” said Elya Hollowleg. “Bandits don’t come till after Collection Day.”

  They all nodded and muttered agreement and dived for courage in their cups. None of them actually got up and went to see what was happening.

  Bron hadn’t expected them to. She shot a glance at her yet unfinished tax forms, resisted the urge to spit, and forayed out into the blinding daylight.

  Not only were the bandits invading, they had a new chief. She was young, and she was magnificent: tall, lean, heroically proportioned. She whirled a great sword over her head and ululated like a very mother of demons.

  The horde had split up. Some were aiming for the market square. Others had already started to rampage through different quarters of the town.

  Bron kept her eye on the chief. That one’s track led toward the bank. Bron nodded to herself and loped around the back way, keeping her head down and her sword as much out of sight as possible.

  Melita hadn’t seen the armed woman come out of the tavern, but she was expecting something of the sort. Her bandits had their orders. Most of them would obey out of enlightened self-interest. She left them to it.

  When the bandit chief reached the bank, she found Bron in front of the barred gate, leaning on her sword. The rest of the bandits rampaged through the town, terrorizing the precious few idiots who still dared the streets.

  That was a diversion. The bank was the main event. Bron smiled at the young chief and said, “Bit early, aren’t you?”

  The bandit howled and drove her horse straight at Bron, bright blade flashing.

  Bron sighed. The last chief had been much less dramatic and much more respectful of tradition. This one wouldn’t last long: she appeared not to understand the difference between a caravan on the road and a locked and guarded bank. Or else she hadn’t expected the bank to be defended while her horde attacked the rest of the town.

  She was good with a sword, Bron granted her that. The small troop of bandits with her had a battering ram, but their leader’s histrionics made it impossible for them to deploy it. Bron kept her busy with a bit of drama of her own, a little flash and an occasional flip and twirl of the blade.

  Behind her, the gate’s protections powered up. They were slow enough to be effectively useless, but once they finally got around to arming themselves, they worked moderately well.

  When the hum and buzz of the spell started to make the skin of Bron’s back crawl, she ducked, rolled, and let the bandit’s sword lunge past her toward the gate.

  The blast flung Bron up against the wall of the livery stable. She staggered upright, dizzy and half stunned, blinking till her eyes more or less cleared.

  The bandit chief’s horse had gone over backward. The chief had fallen free. Her sword was in shards.

  The horse scrambled to its feet, wild-eyed but apparently sound. The rider flung herself onto its back. Her followers were already on the run. She spurred after them.

  Bron’s head was ringing. She stayed where she was, to be sure the bandits really had had enough. No one including Bron had expected the protection spell to trigger quite so explosively. It was a miracle no one had died.

  When it was clear that the bandits would not be back at any time soon, Bron sheathed her sword and trudged back to the Farting Wyvern and her bloody bedamned taxes.

  The fight and the mis-triggered spell had shaken something loose in Bron
’s tax sense. When she sat back down to her tax forms, the discrepancy sorted itself out, and the rest was simple drudgery.

  In remarkably short order, she added up the last line, checked her numbers one more time, and signed her full name with a flourish. All that was left was to insert the forms in their official envelope, sign, countersign, date, and seal with the sign of the Elder Goddess of the Treasury; then off to the post office, which was also the bank, and the livery stable.

  The sharp tang of magic still hung in the air. There was a line at the post office, a little shorter than it might have been, but growing longer as people got over the shock of the bandit attack and gave way to the more compelling shock of the tax deadline.

  Bron took her place behind a short and stocky young woman with not one but two bulky packages. She caught Bron’s eye and made a rueful face. “Student loan payment,” she said.

  Bron grimaced in sympathy. “I remember those,” she said.

  “I’m almost paid off,” the young woman said.

  Bron nodded and twitched a smile. “Good for you,” she said.

  The line was moving fast: the young woman was already handing her parcels over to Ygern the Postmistress. While the weighing and the stamping got under way, Bron’s attention wandered to the bank.

  The outer gate was still shut, but the post office shared a wall with the bank, with a door in it for patrons’ convenience. The spell when it broke had knocked that door off its hinges. The sounds that emanated from the other side had a distinct tone of consternation.

  The young woman’s parcels were well and truly entrusted to the Royal Mail. She smiled and saluted Bron on the way out.

  The voices from the bank had risen considerably in those few moments. Bron shoved her tax packet at Ygern and slapped down enough gelt to cover the postage. She’d left her sword back at the Farting Wyvern, which she was beginning to regret.

  Ygern knew Bron well. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll get your package out.”