by Mindy Klasky
Bron didn’t waste time arguing. She slipped through the broken door into the high vaulted space.
The reek of magic was even stronger there. Bits of jewel-bright glass littered the floor: the skylight, which had been the bank’s pride and joy, had suffered the same fate as the door. A gaggle of people stood in the unfiltered sunlight, babbling and gesticulating furiously.
One word flew out at Bron. “Robbed! We’ve been robbed!”
Even among bankers, Bron’s size had certain advantages. She towered over them and pitched her voice to carry over the rest. “When? How much?”
It took a while, but eventually the least flustered banker pulled herself together and said, “Someone raided the vault while the bandits were raiding the town. They took the usual bandits’ share of the tax receipts, and a packet of payment tokens.”
“That’s all?” Bron asked.
The banker nodded.
Bron’s brows went up. “Did the robber leave anything?”
People muttered at that, but Bron had a certain reputation after all. The banker said, “Yes, actually. They left a note. Something about tradition, and about staying on our toes.” She paused. “You don’t think they’ll be back, do you?”
“Probably not,” Bron said, “but I’d do what the note says. Don’t relax too much.”
That set them all off again. Bron left them to it.
All things considered, Bron had no obligation to do anything more about the robbery than she’d already done. The bank was still perfectly solvent. The bandits hadn’t taken enough to cause any suffering. They’d raided a few days early, that was all.
She wasn’t even particularly embarrassed that she’d fallen for the bandits’ con as badly as anyone else. It was a good con, and it hadn’t done any lasting damage.
What sent her out on the hunt was nothing more or less than curiosity. She had a question she wanted to ask, and a suspicion she was minded to investigate. There was still plenty of daylight left, and now that her taxes were done, she was possessed of a powerful need to get out and move.
Her horse the Bitch Goddess started kicking the walls of her triple-reinforced stall as soon as Bron entered the stable. “You’ll blow a hock one of these days,” Bron told her as she lunged through the half-open stall door and shoved her nose into the halter.
Once she had that on, she was as sweet as she could be, which meant she still was death to loitering stablehands and the occasional passing dog. Bron scraped a pony’s worth of snow-white winter fluff off her, dodged attacks from both ends as she eased the saddle on and tightened the girth, and walked the worst of the kinks out of her before setting off on the bandits’ trail.
They’d made no attempt to hide it. It led up the hill and into the maze of woods and ridges and ravines that had bred and birthed bandits for time out of mind.
Right where the woods thickened, the trail scattered down a bewildering number of paths. Bron swung off the Bitch Goddess’ back, tied up her reins, and let her graze the first blades of spring grass out in front of the trees.
Bron sat with her sword across her knees. She didn’t have long to wait. The young woman from the post office rode down the farthest left-hand path.
She wasn’t built like a rider or a fighter. She was short-legged, round and stocky, with a broad-cheeked, pleasant face. That face was her fortune, and she knew it as well as Bron. It was so very ordinary, so perfectly designed to disappear into a crowd.
Melita, for of course that was she, smiled at Bron as she brought her horse to a halt at a respectful distance from the Bitch Goddess. The Bitch, for a wonder, did not offer to kill the sturdy little dun—gelding?
Definitely not a gelding. The mare’s tail flipped up over her back; her neck arched.
Melita’s stallion knew better than to do anything about that. First because he had been educated by mares who gave no quarter, and second because in his mind, Melita was the queen and goddess of all those mares. He could hardly help the answering arch of his neck or the rumble in his throat, but he presumed no further.
Melita ignored him. So did Bron.
“So,” said Bron. “Who’s the amazon with the sword?”
“That would be Phryne,” Melita answered. “Isn’t she magnificent?”
“She’s certainly easy on the eyes,” Bron allowed. “I hope she’s not too badly damaged.”
Melita winced slightly. “A few burns. Crashing headache. She’ll get over it. My fault: I overcompensated when I adjusted the protection spell.”
“Adjusted?” Bron inquired.
“Added myself to its list of personnel allowed in the vault. Your bank really should invest in a proper security package. That—” She paused as if to compose herself. “That spell could not have been set by an accredited mage.”
“And you are?”
“University of Zamaria Department of Greater Magicks,” Melita said with no effort to conceal her pride.
“And yet you’re here,” Bron observed. “Riding with bandits.”
“Leading bandits,” Melita corrected her. “I have student loans. The job market is in the tank. What’s a woman to do?”
Bron refrained from commenting on honest versus dishonest work. These days, the former was next to impossible to get.
“You know,” she said, “if you’re almost done with your loans, there’s a bit of opportunity out there for a mage with vault-cracking skills.”
“I am not a burglar,” Melita said sharply. Really, she was not. A burglar did not use a bandit horde as a cover for infiltrating a bank vault.
“I can see that,” Bron said. “I was thinking on the lines of getting into a warded city during a siege. Or recycling ancient treasures.”
“Tomb robbery,” Melita translated.
“Redistributing long-buried wealth,” Bron said.
“You do a lot of that?” Melita asked. In spite of herself, she was interested.
“Some,” said Bron. “It’s highly seasonal. Plus there’s the risk factor. The curses on the older tombs can be worse than fatal. And of course, once the treasure is liberated, there’s the challenge of keeping it safe from fellow treasure hunters.”
“And bandits.”
“And bandits,” Bron agreed. “Not to mention royal tax collectors. Still, it’s income, and for the most part it’s less dangerous, and less tedious, than your average war.”
“Hm,” Melita said. “You’re looking for a partner?”
“I might be,” said Bron. “Not right away. I’ve got a contract down in Cimmeria for a month’s worth of bodyguarding. Sometime after that, depending on what comes up, there’s an expedition heading out to the Tombs of the Eldest Goddesses. I’m thinking I might get in a bit ahead of it, see what there is to see, before it’s all dug up and the bureaucrats have got at it.”
Melita pondered for a while, as Bron waited her out. Banditry was not exactly a stable occupation, and bandit leadership all too often ended in a dead bandit leader.
Now there was a choice. Keep the job she had, get killed sooner or later. Take the job Bron not-quite-offered, get killed somewhere in the mid range.
And there were those student loans.
If she got those paid off—which with the summer travel season coming up, was fairly likely—well then.
“I’ll think about it,” she said eventually.
Bron nodded. That was as much she’d expected, this early in the season.
Melita watched as Bron rounded up her gorgeous bitch of a mare, negotiated her way into the saddle, and rode back down toward Hel’s Ford. Maybe she’d take the offer and go hunting ancient treasure—with curses, which she happened to have made a particular study of. Not that Bron could know that, but it was an interesting coincidence.
Maybe she’d stay with the bandits. It was as sure a thing as she had, and she’d just begun her campaign of adjustments to tradition. Those might lead to actual revolution. Who knew?
Either way, she expected she’d be seeing Bron again
. Her stallion was certainly hoping to see Bron’s mare.
She let him watch, yearning, till the mare went out of sight. Then he let her turn him back toward Desperation. The sun was low and dinner was waiting.
He quickened to a trot on the familiar path, while down below, the Bitch Goddess bucked and squealed into a canter. Bron smacked her neck, but laughed. She was free under the sky, her taxes were done, and she might have set herself up for a very interesting summer. Meanwhile there was a tankard of ale with her name on it at the Farting Wyvern, and a warm bed after that, with a warm brown body in it, and a pair of fine dark eyes.
Yes, she thought. Life was good.
Little Faces
Vonda N. McIntyre
The blood woke Yalnis. It ran between her thighs, warm and slick, cooling, sticky. She pushed back from the stain on the silk, bleary with sleep and love, rousing to shock and stabbing pain.
She flung off the covers and scrambled out of bed. She cried out as the web of nerves tore apart. Her companions shrieked a chaotic chorus.
Zorargul’s small form convulsed just below her navel. The raw edges of a throat wound bled in diminishing gushes. Her body expelled the dying companion, closing off veins and vesicles.
Zorargul was beyond help. She caught the small broken body as it slid free. She sank to the floor. Blood dripped onto the cushioned surface. The other companions retreated into her, exposing nothing but sharp white teeth that parted and snapped in defense and warning.
Still in bed, blinking, yawning, Seyyan propped herself on her elbow. She gazed at the puddle of blood. It soaked in, vanishing gradually from edge to center, drawn away to be separated into its molecules and stored.
A smear of blood marked Seyyan’s skin. Her first companion blinked its small bright golden eyes. It snapped its sharp teeth, spattering scarlet droplets. It shrieked, licked its bloody lips, cleaned its teeth with its tongue. The sheet absorbed the blood spray.
Seyyan lay back in the soft tangled nest, elegantly lounging, her luxuriant brown hair spilling its curls around her bare shoulders and over her delicate perfect breasts. She shone like molten gold in the starlight. Her other companions pushed their little faces from her belly, rousing themselves and clacking their teeth, excited and jealous.
“Zorargul,” Yalnis whispered. She had never lost a companion. She chose them carefully, and cherished them, and Zorargul had been her first, the gift of her first lover. She looked up at Seyyan, confused and horrified, shocked by loss and pain.
“Come back.” Seyyan spoke with soft urgency. She stretched out her graceful hand. “Come back to bed.” Her voice intensified. “Come back to me.”
Yalnis shrank from her touch. Seyyan followed her, sliding over the fading bloodstain in the comfortable nest of ship silk. Her first companion extruded itself, just below her navel, staring intently at Zorargul’s body.
Seyyan stroked Yalnis’s shoulder. Yalnis pushed her away with her free hand, leaving bloody fingerprints on Seyyan’s golden skin.
Seyyan grabbed her wrist and held her, moved to face her squarely, touched her beneath her chin and raised her head to look her in the eyes. Yalnis tried to blink away her tears, baffled and dizzy, flooded with the molecular messages of anger and distress her remaining companions pumped into her blood.
“Come back to me,” Seyyan said again. “We’re ready for you.”
Her first companion, drawing back into her, pulsed and muttered. Seyyan caught her breath.
“I never asked for this!” Yalnis cried.
Seyyan sat back on her heels, as lithe as a girl, but a million years old.
“I thought you wanted me,” she said. “You welcomed me—invited me—took me to your bed—”
Yalnis shook her head, though it was true. “Not for this,” she whispered.
“It didn’t even fight,” Seyyan said, dismissing Zorargul’s remains with a quick gesture. “It wasn’t worthy of its place with you.”
“Who are you to decide that?”
“I didn’t,” Seyyan said. “It’s the way of companions.” She touched the reddening bulge of a son-spot just below the face of her first companion. “This one will be worthy of you.”
Yalnis stared at her, horrified and furious. Seyyan, the legend, had come to her, exotic, alluring, and exciting. All the amazement and attraction Yalnis felt washed away in Zorargul’s blood.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I won’t accept it.”
Seyyan’s companion reacted to the refusal, blinking, snarling. For a moment Yalnis feared Seyyan too would snarl at her, assault her and force a new companion upon her.
Seyyan sat back, frowning in confusion. “But I thought—did you invite me, just to refuse me? Why—?”
“For pleasure,” Yalnis said. “For friendship. And maybe for love—maybe you would offer, and I would accept—”
“How is this different?” Seyyan asked.
Yalnis leaped to her feet in a flare of fury so intense that her vision blurred. Cradling Zorargul’s shriveling body against her with one hand, she pressed the other against the aching bloody wound beneath her navel.
“Get out of my ship,” she said.
The ship, responding to Yalnis’s wishes, began to resorb the nest into the floor.
Seyyan rose. “What did you think would happen,” she said, anger replacing the confusion in her tone, “when you announced the launch of a daughter? What do you think everyone is coming for? I was just lucky enough to be first. Or unfortunate enough.” Again, she brushed her long fingertips against the son-spot. It pulsed, a red glow as hot and sore as infection. It must find a place, soon, or be stillborn. “And what am I to do with this?”
Yalnis’s flush of anger drained away, leaving her pale and shocked.
“I don’t care.” All the furnishings and softness of the room vanished, absorbed into the pores of Yalnis’s ship, leaving bare walls and floor, and the cold stars above. “You didn’t even ask me,” Yalnis said softly.
“You led me to believe we understood each other. But you’re so young—” Seyyan reached toward her. Yalnis drew back, and Seyyan let her hand fall with a sigh. “So young. So naïve.” She caught up her purple cloak from the floor and strode past Yalnis. Though the circular chamber left plenty of room, she brushed past close to Yalnis, touching her at shoulder and hip, bare skin to bare skin. A lock of her hair swept across Yalnis’s belly, stroking low like a living hand, painting a bloody streak.
Seyyan entered the pilus that connected Yalnis’s ship with her own craft. As soon as Seyyan crossed the border, Yalnis’s ship disconnected and closed and healed the connection.
Yalnis’s ship emitted a few handsful of plasma in an intemperate blast, moving itself to a safer distance. Seyyan’s craft gleamed and glittered against the starfield, growing smaller as Yalnis’s ship moved away, coruscating with a pattern of prismatic color.
Yalnis sank to the floor again, humiliated and grief-stricken. Without her request or thought, her ship cushioned her from its cold living bones, growing a soft surface beneath her, dimming the light to dusk. Dusk, not the dawn she had planned.
She opened her clutched, blood-sticky hand and gazed at the small body. She drew her other hand from the seeping wound where Zorargul had lived and cradled the shriveling tendril of the companion’s penis. A deep ache, throbbing regularly into pain, replaced the potential for pleasure as her body knit the wound of Zorargul’s passing. Behind the wound, a sore, soft mass remained.
“Zorargul,” she whispered, “you gave me such pleasure.”
Of her companions, Zorargul had most closely patterned the lovemaking of its originator. Her pleasure always mingled with a glow of pride, that Zorar thought enough of her to offer her a companion.
Yalnis wondered where Zorar was, and if she would come to Yalnis’s daughter’s launching. They had not communicated since they parted so long ago, for Zorar anticipated other adventures. She might be anywhere, one star system away, or a dozen, or setting out to a
nother cluster, voyaging through vacuum so intense and a region so dark she must conserve every molecule of mass and every photon of energy, using none to power a message of acceptance, or regret, or goodwill.
Yalnis remained within parallax view of her own birthplace. She had grown up in a dense population of stars and people. She had taken a dozen lovers in her life, and accepted five companions: Zorargul, Vasigul, Asilgul, Hayaligul, and Bahadirgul. With five companions, she felt mature enough, wealthy enough, to launch a daughter with a decent, even lavish, settlement. After that, she could grant her ship’s need—and her own desire—to set out on adventures and explorations.
Zorar, she thought—
She reached for Zorar’s memories and reeled into loss and emptiness. The memories ended with Zorargul’s murder. Zorar, much older than Yalnis, had given her the gift of her own long life of journeys and observations. They brought her the birth of stars and worlds, the energy storm of a boomerang loop around a black hole, skirting the engulfing doom of its event horizon. They brought her the most dangerous adventure of all, a descent through the thick atmosphere of a planet to its living surface.
All Yalnis had left were her memories of the memories, dissolving shadows of the gift. All the memories left in Zorargul had been wiped out by death.
By murder.
The walls and floor of her living space changed again as her ship recreated her living room. She liked it plain but luxurious, all softness and comfort. The large circular space lay beneath a transparent dome. It was a place for one person alone. She patted the floor with her bloodstained hand.
“Thank you,” she said.
“True,” her ship whispered into her mind.
Its decisions often pleased her and anticipated her wishes. Strange, for ships and people seldom conversed. When they tried, the interaction too easily deteriorated into misunderstanding. Their consciousnesses were of different types, different evolutionary lineages.
She rose, lacking her usual ease of motion. Anger and pain and grief drained her, and exhaustion trembled in her bones.
