The Best of Deep Magic- Anthology One

by Jeff Wheeler

  She disappeared into the throngs crowding the plaza. Probably another of her skills as a Queen’s Sting.

  As people swarmed through the plaza, a natural break opened in the crowd. There, sitting on a stone bench near where they’d first met in the rain, sat Gilani.

  She had seen everything.

  * * *

  “Was that the woman the Wicks paired you with?” Gilani asked, sitting still and upright, looking quietly sad.

  He sat next to her, for it felt like the whole plaza had tilted and threatened to slide from under his feet.

  “I knew something was amiss after we took the census,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Something troubled you. I rose early, worried about you. I went to your canton, but you were leaving your great-house in a terrible hurry. I called, but you didn’t hear me. So I followed. When I saw the two of you playing”—her voice broke—“then I knew what the Wicks wanted for you. For us.” She looked away.

  “Gilani, I—”

  “What did the looms decree for me? Where should I find my new love?”

  He had no answer for her.

  “I see.” She exhaled a shuddering breath.

  “I never wanted this. I expected the Wicks to let us finally wed. But when I was matched with someone else . . . I’ve spent my whole life in service of the Wicks. I couldn’t understand how they could be so wrong. I had to see her.”

  “Was she everything you hoped for?”

  “I love you.” He meant it. But he loved Lawa too, or thought he could. When he was still an acolyte, Metemis saw a tallyminder trip once in the Answer Hall, sending pendulum candles swinging out of control as he crashed to the floor. His heart did the same now.

  How could he feel this way about two women at once?

  “And your precious Wicks?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never known them to be wrong before, but—”

  “There are those in Ziroi who don’t share your faith in the Wicks or their prognostication,” said Gilani with obvious venom. “There are other wicks, other weaves.”

  “Just simple tallylooms, not the Wicks.” He’d tried many times to explain the distinction to Gilani.

  Gilani scoffed. “The Wicks are just a complex series of tallylooms, harnessed together to calculate greater sums than any could individually. You’ve explained again and again,painstakingly. So why not a series of smaller looms and weaves, spread across Ziroi, that calculate vast sums of information the way the hive pyramid does? Oh, more slowly, to be sure. But just as reliably. And what if they calculate different outcomes, what then? What does that mean for the certainty of your Wicks, and your Queen?”

  “My Queen?” said Metemis. What was it Lawa said about factions opposed to Her Royal Grace?

  Gilani stood and smoothed the front of her dress. “I don’t care who sits on the throne. What I want is to control our own destiny. Don’t you want us to marry?”

  “Well . . . yes. But . . .”

  Turning her back to the milling crowds, Gilani withdrew a small jute drawstring bag from her satchel and placed it in Metemis’s hands. He felt the shape of candles within: several votives of differing lengths, a waxspur gear for a tallyloom. But it felt wrong. The difference was subtle, but the candles were heavier than they ought to have been. Fine grains of sand fell onto his hands through the loose mesh of the jute.

  “Where did you get these?” he demanded. To give Her Royal Grace’s Chief Tallyminder a set of weighted candles clearly designed for abuse in the Wicks . . .

  “A friend.” Gilani pulled him close, her lips almost touching his chin. “If the Wicks didn’t pair us—us, Metemis!—then how could it be all-knowing? We are the Wedded Moons, you and I, a perfect match. All I want is for us to be together. The candles make that possible.”

  He understood. Substitution of the sand-weighted candles in key mechanisms of the Wicks would mean altered calculations. Done properly, Metemis could rig the Wicks to match him with Gilani. It might delay the final results a few days, perhaps accidentally tabulate some of the living as having died, maybe even upset marriage matches for others. Could he trade their happiness for his own?

  He couldn’t believe this was happening. Lawa had warned him of factions, but he’d never suspected Gilani possessed a rebel heart.

  He realized he was squeezing the jute bag and relaxed his grip. Was he really considering treason? What of his duty to the queen and to Ziroi? What of the oaths he had sworn to the Tallyminder caste?

  “It must be tonight,” Gilani said.

  How could she know that the census would be complete by sundown? Who were these “friends” she had mentioned? The calculation looms would be prepared then, proper candles selected and set in place, timed and weighted to ensure accurate tabulation of the knot-histories.

  And Metemis would oversee it all.

  “I’ll wait by the fourth-cell gate on the west side of the pyramid,” Gilani said. “If you come, I’ll know that our destiny lies together.”

  * * *

  Metemis stood in the shadows of the great tallylooms, sand-weighted candles in his hand, still unsure what he intended.

  The air in the Answer Hall was muggy and glowed with the amber light of a thousand candles dotting the curved hundred-foot stone walls, as hot and humming as any hive. All around him fourth- and fifth-cell tallyminders prepared the looms for the Grand Tally.

  Only the Queen’s Edict remained, those final census answers and last wishes (both grand and small) she would give in life. Once entered, they would shape the advice the Wicks gave the new queen.

  And they could also override specific calculations as the queen desired. This was the great secret that only the sixth-cells and the Inner Circle knew. It was hard at first to accept that anyone—even the queen—could interfere with the calculations of the Wicks. The edicts allowed the monarch to input different variables, he was told, to test outcomes. But Metemis immediately understood the possibilities for abuse. The calculations had been sacrosanct in his mind before that initiation, and so to discover that they could be subject to politics or to whim?

  He felt again the weight of the jute bag and considered his former naivety.

  The Queen’s Edict was how he would effect a change in the weave of the Wicks to alter his fate. Only a small treason, one that would go unnoticed, he told himself.

  He needed to bypass the guards to the Queen’s Edict Chamber. But a resourceful tallyminder had ways to gain entry, particularly one as knowledgeable as the chief tallyminder.

  Metemis stole from the Answer Hall and out through one of the hexagonal openings that ringed the hive pyramid’s exterior. This one held one of the hundreds of beehives that dotted the structure. As bees danced around him in the waning daylight, he squeezed past the great stone hive. The air was humid. Far beyond the farmers’ fields, lightning played between rain clouds over the jungle.

  He laid his crimson-and-feather cloak on the stone, a terrible breach of protocol, but one that made for an easier climb. Kicking off his sandals, he anchored one foot in the narrow seam between two great blocks. Taking a deep breath and using all the strength and agility he’d worked to maintain from his days as a first-cell acolyte, he drove up from that anchor point and leaped at a ledge one level above. His practiced hands found purchase, and for a moment he hung hundreds of feet above the ground. Using his momentum, he swung his leg up and over the lip of the platform and pulled himself to safety.

  The yawning mouth of a narrow ventilation shaft greeted him, and the hollow rushing sound of air being drawn in encouraged Metemis to pause and catch his breath. He made a silent prayer and continued his climb.

  * * *

  Metemis emerged on the lowest of the royal tiers and crept through the royal corridors. He had studied the edict systems and knew what to do. Coding in his name, pairing it with Gilani’s, replacing the marriage string, using the weighted candles. One of the queen’s true edicts would be cast aside as a translation error, with none the wiser.
r />   A minor indiscretion was all, he told himself. He would make it up to the new queen sixfold in return.

  The Edict Chamber was small but magnificent. A high honeycomb vault of polished white marble rose above him, illuminated by the light of flickering candles in the hexagonal recesses in the walls. The queen’s judgment table was crafted from smoky quartz, amethyst, and even metal, the rarest of the rare. Metemis marveled at the burnished metallic inlays of bees. Several pounds of metal, from the look of things.

  He’d never seen so much metal in one place.

  Candles were already burning, which meant the queen had set her decrees. He had only a twelfth of an incense-hour to make the switch. The trick was a well-timed switch, swapping out the candle without tilting the scale catastrophically.

  Metemis put his hand in his satchel and cupped the weighted candle.

  “Don’t do it, Tallyminder,” Lawa’s voice echoed behind him. “You’ve lost this game too.”

  Heart pounding, Metemis turned. Lawa’s sad eyes reflected guttering candlelight. Her right hand leveled a venomlance toward his bare chest.

  “Lawa, I—”

  “Spare me. The Queen’s Sting sees everything. We’ve been watching your beloved for months,” said Lawa. “But we didn’t know whether you were loyal to the Sand Lions too. When the Wicks matched you and I for marriage, we knew a moment of crisis had come that would force her hand. Are those the candles she gave you? I’ll have them now.” She motioned for him to toss them.

  He gripped the jute bag tight, and felt sharp sand trickle into his palm. Did Gilani belong to the Sand Lion faction?

  “You knew of our pairing?” Metemis asked as he fumbled his hand inside the small bag, playing for time. If he could gather enough sand . . . “How? No one’s seen those knot-histories but me.” He pulled a waxspur gear from the bag and tossed it to her. She let it clatter to the marble floor.

  “The whole bag,” she said.

  He threw it to her feet and she stomped the votives with the heel of her boot.

  “You’d be surprised how many of your acolytes are Queen’s Sting. Our own looms processed your knot-histories the night you made them, and our guards in the hive pyramid reported back your inquiries about me. Do you think I really spend my free time playing rushlights with old men?” She flashed her sly smile, which stung Metemis as hard as any venomlance ever could.

  “But what if the Wicks can be wrong?” Until the last few days, he would never have believed he’d say those words. Everything was upside-down.

  “Our looms gave us the same output from the same census answers. The error isn’t in the weave, but in you. I would gladly have—” she stopped short.

  “What now?”

  “Hope that the new queen is more merciful than her mother. Time to go.”

  As Lawa stepped toward him, Metemis flung a fistful of sand into her eyes.

  Lawa cried out and jabbed her lance toward him. Metemis side-stepped it but lost his footing and crashed into a bank of edict candles. A part of him wondered what edicts he had disturbed, but the need to flee took charge.

  He reached the air shaft and climbed down as fast as he dared. One slip and he’d fall a half-dozen tiers to his death. But what would he do, now that he was a hunted man?

  The chance for a future with Gilani—or even Lawa—was gone.

  At least, in this city. Hope flickered back to flame. Gilani had been marked as a traitor, too. Perhaps they could find shelter in the mountains of Rheb, or in Tekura by the coast. A man of his skills might find service tending their wicks and weaves.

  He emerged from the shaft, but not where he expected. This wasn’t the tier of the Answer Hall. Had he gone down the wrong vent? He had to reach Gilani before—

  A slender shadow landed on the same stone platform. Lawa’s hard kick to his abdomen doubled Metemis over, and he collapsed backward through the hexagonal passage into the hive pyramid.

  Metemis scrabbled on the cold stone, trying to get his wind back. An almost deafening hum surrounded him. The space was dark and echoed like a vast chamber. He felt cross breezes and bees zipping around him.

  He was in the Royal Apiary, the queen’s own hives and a museum of all Ziroi knew of beekeeping.

  Scrambling to his feet, Metemis pressed deeper into the darkness to escape Lawa. He felt his way through the room as fast as he could, though delicately so as not to disturb the hives. Moving row to row meant moving through centuries of Zirojan history, from woven skep baskets to rough hives of unbaked clay and dry straw to fired pottery and finally to the tall ceremonial hives of stone that dotted the exterior of the hive pyramid.

  A shattering body blow knocked Metemis to the floor, smacking his head hard on the stone. Thrumming tendrils of pain drove forward from the back of his skull.

  Lawa was on top of him, trying to bind his hands. He pitched her off with the last of his strength. Lawa reeled backward into the skep hives, tumbling with them in a terrible crash.

  An angry roar rose from the hives. The bees Lawa had disturbed swarmed around her in a savage cloud as she thrashed and stepped back by instinct.

  Her foot found empty space, and she fell with a cry.

  “Lawa!” Metemis grabbed for her, but he was too late. She vanished into the dark pit.

  Fiery stings assailed Metemis as the bees found him. He ran to escape the swarm, heart pounding. Could Lawa have survived the fall? Some of the low shafts had safety nets, but not all. Not knowing her fate was almost as painful as the stings.

  He emerged from the tier and found reprieve from the bees outside in the smoke of a beacon fire. He was stung in the face, on his arms, on his bare chest and back. His wounds throbbed, yes, but that wasn’t what had him trembling. He ought to turn himself in, beg the pyramid guards to search the shafts and see if Lawa might still be alive. He thought of Lawa’s musical laugh, of the brief time they had spent at rushlights, and wept.

  He should face judgment for his crimes.

  But the Queen’s Sting knew about Gilani. If they captured her . . .

  Hers was the one life he could still save.

  * * *

  Metemis walked as calmly as he could manage toward the fourth-cell gate, hoping none of the guards would see his swelling face. Gilani sat on the steps near the gate, and he fought the urge to rush forward and take her into his arms.

  She stood when she recognized him, her horror evident at his swollen face. With care, she led him down the pyramid steps.

  “I’ve failed you,” whispered Metemis through fattened lips. “I’ve failed you.”

  He said no more until they were lost among the alleys west of the hive pyramid. He whispered of his confrontation with Lawa. “Our names may already be braided with black for death. We haven’t many choices.”

  Gilani led him into a garden of flowering cacti. “There’s another way.”

  “Sand Lions.”

  Gilani nodded. “My friends will keep us safe. We can continue our work in Tekura. Live on, work on, and dream on together.”

  What was it she had said before? There were other tallylooms in Ziroi.

  “All those questions you asked me, about how the Wicks worked. You’ve been feeding them—the Sand Lions—information to refine their wicks and weaves.”

  She beckoned him to follow. “I’ll have answers, my love, once we escape the city.”

  He had dismissed other tallylooms as lesser devices, but if Lawa was to be believed, then the Queen’s Sting had one that rivaled the Wicks. What if the Sand Lion faction did likewise? The scale of such a project was unfathomable outside of the hive pyramids of each city-state. A similar system would require space, manpower, stores of candles, waterwheels to work the fans and the looms . . .

  But what if?

  Despite himself, his mind raced to consider ways the Wicks could be made smaller, better. Spread swarm-like across an entire city, as Gilani had suggested. Would he have the freedom to tinker and improve upon the technology?

&n
bsp; A thought chilled his heart. Perhaps all this time he, Lawa, and Gilani were hapless pawns in a game of rushlights between wickwork giants, with his loyalty as the prize.

  It felt right to be here with Gilani, on the knife’s edge of a new life together. Yet for all that had happened between him and Lawa, he still prayed silently that she had survived the fall.

  With a hesitant hand, Metemis brushed Gilani’s hair from her ear. She still wore them, his opal-and-greenstone gifts.

  He reached behind her neck and undid the clasp of her namestone necklace. He undid his own, too. How many of these had he processed through the Wicks? How many fates had he helped decide?

  Metemis pitched both necklaces into the thickest patch of the cactus garden. The unbraided stones scattered among the spines.

  He kissed Gilani. Despite the hurt, her kiss was sweet.

  About Tony Pi & Stephen Kotowych

  Tony Pi and Stephen Kotowych first met ten years ago, when they attended Writers of the Future. Since then, between them they have amassed a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nomination, a Writers of the Future grand prize win, and multiple appearances as finalists for the Aurora Award for short fiction, Canada's top SF prize. As individuals they have published dozens of stories in venues like Clarkesworld, Interzone, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, numerous anthologies, and had work translated into a dozen languages. This is their first—but hopefully not last—collaboration. And in a case of life imitating art, the "candlepunk" computers described in the story recently served as the inspiration for two University of Toronto engineering teams’ final projects in mechanical design. Tony and Stephen were thrilled to see their creation come to life!

  PIRATE READERS

  By James Van Pelt | 4,300 words

  KELSIE TAPPED HER desktop rhythmically, switching the display’s background image each time. As long as she interacted with the interface, it wouldn’t flag her as being inactive. Mr. Dettis, the instructional coach, was helping a student across the room from her, so she wasn’t worried he would direct her to spend more time on task. He moved with studied efficiency. Short, wiry, a mouth that never smiled. Close-set eyes. She checked her achievement status update: 27 percent through eighth-grade social studies, 42 percent through math, the same with science, 11 percent through Spanish, 14 percent through ninth-grade literacy, and only 33 percent through seventh-grade PE. It seemed as if it had been days since any of the numbers had moved.