Finally, what awaited us at the top of the dragon’s Anvil 4 страница

“Nobody burns three barrels of the pure shit,” he said. “Not even a lunatic.”

“You seem quite convinced of their value,” Crane said. “And yet they were so poorly secured. Removing them was child’s play, frankly.”

“You think it was clever.” Even through the mask, Riker’s thin voice was taut with anger. “Using the children.”

“Clearly you think the same.”

“Everyone in Colgrid knows better than to steal from me,” Riker said. “That means you’re not from here. Means you don’t know winter. If those children stay on the street, they’ll all be frozen fucking corpses in a couple months.”

“You keep them chained,” Gilchrist said, speaking for the first time.

“At night. Better that than have another one climb into a boiler.” Riker tapped a gnarled finger against his ornate mask. “Half the little shits are addled in the head right out the womb, from their mothers breathing the smog. They won’t last outside.”

“They left,” Gilchrist said. “First chance they had.”

“You didn’t do them a fucking favor,” Riker snapped. “I feed them. I keep them off the shiver. Out of the whorehouses. The ones with any sense will come back to the factory. The others will freeze.”

Crane cleared his throat. “We digress,” he said. “Fortunately for you, Mr. Riker, the shiver we stole was not our primary target. Our reconnaissance was flawed, you see.” He paused. “We were told there might be ichor.”

Riker didn’t react.

“We are opportunists, of course, so we took what we found,” Crane continued. “But as you ascertained, we are not from Colgrid. Our buyers lie farther south, and receive shiver through more established channels. They want ichor for the fighting pits in Vira and Lensa. That was what we intended to steal. Now we are open to an exchange.”

“You’d trade my own shit back to me.” Through the mask, Riker’s laugh was a dead thing. “You do have some fucking balls on you.”

Crane managed a careless shrug. “Assuming you do have ichor. And that you’ve tested it.”

Riker regarded them for a long minute through his lenses. “How’d you get the barrels out?”

“With considerable difficulty,” Crane said. “The method is irrelevant.”

Another long pause, then Riker spoke. “I have ichor. As a curiosity. There’s not a market for it up here.”

Merin twitched; reined it in. Riker didn’t seem to notice.

“Then I propose a deal: your shiver for your ichor. And if our buyers approve of your product, we might be able to establish a standing arrangement lucrative for all parties.” Crane’s voice hardened. “But we’ve encountered many would-be vendors returning from the New World, and their product is invariably a crude stimulant mixture that lacks the… specific ferocity of true ichor.”

Riker cocked his head to the side for a moment. “It’s real,” he said. “Gave it to a few mad beggars. One killed the other and fucked his corpse raw for an hour or so. I put him down as it wore off. More merciful than his having to remember it.”

Merin was so still she might have been a statue herself. Crane drew a breath through his mask. “How marvelous,” he said. “Though you would have been better served testing it on a more stable individual.”

“Those are hard to come by in Colgrid.” Riker waved a dismissive hand. “Half this fucking city is mad. But there was one other trial, yeah. When I first got my hands on the stuff. I cut some wastrel’s shiver with it and sent him home to his woman.”

The words drifted on the cold air. The angels seemed to bend forward, blank faces awaiting revelation.

“Did he know it was tainted?” Crane asked softly. “One must always be wary of the placebo response.”

“He didn’t,” Riker said. “And when it came on, she shot him in the head. Clever cunt must have been waiting for an excuse to do that.”

Merin ripped her filter mask down; the sudden motion triggered a flurry as the strutter driver drew her weapon, dropping the phosphor lantern. It smashed, painting a tableau in a burst of pale green: Crane had stepped back, Gilchrist’s blade was out, the driver was aiming at Merin’s chest…

Riker peered at her. His flat laugh was contemptuous. “The clever cunt. The locksmith.”

Merin had one hand still behind her back. The other trembled at her side as she spoke. “You know my fucking name.”

“I forgot it,” Riker said. “But I remember you needed a lesson.”

Merin’s face was twisted, half anger, half anguish. “You wanted me dead.”

Riker looked at Crane and Gilchrist again, then back to Merin. “No,” he said coldly. “The beggars got a full dose. Your Petro got barely a trace. He would have fucked you good and hard. Roughed you a bit. Came to his senses and wondered where he’d gotten a spine all of a sudden.”

Behind her back, Merin pulled the twine that wrapped around her fist and stretched like spiderweb to the sculptures looming over them.

“All you had to do was take your lesson,” Riker said. “Maybe you would’ve even liked it.”

The crack of the concealed musket was deafening. Riker sank; Gilchrist lunged over him. A second crack, splitting the night air and sending shards of stone flying from an angel’s ruined face. Gilchrist drove his quick-knife through the driver’s arm and the smoking musket spun away in the dark. Then Riker was on his feet again, despite a ragged hole punched through his thigh, and his silence was more terrifying than anything else as he hurtled at Merin.

Crane leapt from the side but Riker swatted him away; Merin was backpedaling as Riker’s fist glanced her jaw, snapping her head back. She crumpled to the cobblestone. Gilchrist was tangled with the driver, who was keening and bleeding as she scrabbled for the dropped gun. Riker swung at Merin again, enough force behind it to shatter her face, and Merin slid a metal shell from under her coat and thrust it up like a shield.

Riker’s hand caught in the mechanism. He made to pull back, and—

“Don’t fucking move,” Merin said, thick through a syrup of blood. “Or you’ll lose it. Feel the spikes?”

Riker didn’t move. Merin got slowly to her feet, still holding her end of the skull-crusher. Crane picked himself up. Gilchrist joined them, delivering a last kick to the strutter driver. He had the musket in hand, first wiping blood off the grip with the edge of his shirt, then loading the second ball.

“You can have the fucking shiver,” Riker said, not taking his eyes off his trapped hand. “And I’ll get you the ichor, too. For your southern buyers.”

“Oh, we have our sights set on far more exotic locales than Vira and Lensa,” Crane said, mildly apologetic. “We are bound for the New World once more, you see. Funded by a certain object worth more than all the ichor you could supply.” He massaged his chest where Riker’s blow had landed. “As for the shiver, it’s currently piled in the bottom of your factory’s third smokestack.”

Gilchrist placed the loaded musket in Merin’s free hand. He hesitated. “Do what you want,” he said. “But remember there’s always a worse man.”

“Our ship awaits us,” Crane said. “We bid you farewell, Madam Merin. Mr. Riker. The hospitality of your fair city was very…” He trailed off, wrapping his coat more tightly around himself.

“You ever need another dead box opened,” Merin said vaguely. She held the musket trained on Riker’s forehead. Her hand was perfectly steady.

Gilchrist pried the other musket from its hiding place and disassembled it with three smooth motions. Then he and Crane departed, plunging back into the winding streets, retrieving their things from a particular alley before heading toward the docks. Both of them listening for the sound of a final gunshot.

—

The strongbox sat between them on the rail, shifting precariously as the ship began to move. The crown’s gemstones had been hidden in various boots, pockets, and pouches, while the crown itself resided inside Crane’s wide-brimmed hat. Now the box was empty and stuck halfway open, a bat unsure of whether to unfurl its wings.

“Think she did him?” Gilchrist asked.

Crane cocked his head to the side, contemplating. “I heard no third report,” he said. “Though it’s possible she marched him to a more secluded location first.”

Gilchrist was silent for a moment. “Skadi’s tattoo, that was from the factory. But she had older marks on her, too. Scars. From her mother, she said.” He grimaced. “Maybe Riker was right about the children. And I only freed them to freeze to death. Maybe in the end I’m worse than he was.”

“We are all composed of light and darkness, Gilchrist,” Crane said. “Which in turn renders us all the same muddled gray as we stumble toward our respective graves. Better to not meditate long on such matters.” He retrieved the bag of shiver he’d scooped from the top of Riker’s barrel and tapped a fat white trail onto the back of his hand. “The design of this box is remarkable. I imagine we could resell it.”

Gilchrist shook his head. “Not worth finding a fence. We’re rich enough as is.”

“Indeed.” Crane snorted, rubbed his nose. “It’s time we started making arrangements for our passage across the ocean. The New World awaits our return. The infamous Crane and Gilchrist, seeking further fortunes, battling the fates…”

Gilchrist said nothing. Then he reached forward and pushed the strongbox off the edge of the rail. The winds caught its delicate mechanisms, wrenching it fully open, and it settled on the dark slushy water like a metal flower. Crane fell into uneasy silence, stroking his bruised collarbone, as they watched it sink.

⬩  ⬩  ⬩

Here’s a daring raid on a cursed, monster-haunted island by as odd and mismatched a trio of treasure hunters as ever rowed themselves hopefully ashore—only to find that they have no idea at all what they’re getting themselves into. If they had, they might have rowed back again just as quickly…

Elizabeth Bear was born in Connecticut, and now lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and in 2008 took home a Hugo Award for her short story “Tideline,” which also won her the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (shared with David Moles). In 2009, she won another Hugo Award for her novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom.” Her short work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, SCI FICTION, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and elsewhere, and has been collected in The Chains That You Refuse and Shoggoths in Bloom. She is the author of the five-volume New Amsterdam fantasy series, the three-volume Jenny Casey SF series, the five-volume Promethean Age series, the three-volume Jacob’s Ladder series, the three-volume Edda of Burdens series, and the three-volume Eternal Sky series, as well as three novels in collaboration with Sarah Monette. Her other books include the novels Carnival and Undertow. Her most recent book is an acclaimed novel, Karen Memory.

⬩  ⬩  ⬩

“I am a servant of King Pale Empire,” Doctor Lady Lzi muttered to herself, salt water stinging her lips. “My life at his command.”

Brave words. They did not quiet the churning inside her, but her discomfort did not matter. Only the brave words mattered, and her will to see them through.

Lzi told herself it was enough, that this will would see her through to the treasure she sought, and further yet. She held a long, oiled-silk package high and dry as she turned back in the warm surf to watch the metal man heave himself, streaming, from the aquamarine waters of the lagoon. He slogged up the slope beneath breakers rendered gentle by the curving arms of land beyond. The metal man—his kind were a sort of Wizard’s servant common in the far West, called a Gage—had a mirrored carapace that glittered between his tattered homespun rags like the surface of the water: blindingly.

Behind him, a veiled man in a long red woolen jacket held a scimitar, a pistol, and a powder horn aloft as he sloshed awkwardly through the sea, waves tugging at the skirts of his coat. He was a Dead Man, a member of an elite—and disbanded—military sect from the distant and exotic West. Right now, ill clad for the heat and the ocean, he looked ridiculous.

Afloat on the deeper water, the Auspicious Voyage unfurled her bright patchwork wings and heeled her green hull into a slow turn. The plucky little vessel slid toward the gap where the lagoon’s arms did not quite complete their embrace of the harbor. She took with her three hands, a ship’s cat, and the landing party’s immediate chance of escape from this reputedly cursed island. Even royal orders would not entice the captain to keep her in this harbor while awaiting the return of Lzi and her party.

They could signal with a fire in the morning if they were successful. And if not, well. At least it was a pretty place to die and a useful cause for dying in.

Birds wheeled and flickered overhead. A heavy throb briefly filled the air, an almost-mechanical baritone drone. A black fin sliced the water like a razor, then was gone. Lzi sighed to herself, and wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. True, her feet were on the sand and she hadn’t been afflicted with Isolation Island’s purported royal death curse yet, but there was water yet foaming around her thighs. Maybe the eaten-alive-by-maggots part wouldn’t kick in until she was properly beached.

Or maybe the blessing of her royal mission was enough to protect her. And maybe even the mercenaries, too. She had only hope—and the store of sorcery promised by her honorific.

Determination chilled in her belly. She turned her back on the sea and the splashing mercenaries and marched through the water to the dark gray beach, so different from the pink coral sand of most of the Banner Isles. Each roll of the sea sucked sand from under her, as if the waves themselves warned her away. She forced herself not to hesitate as she stepped from the surf: waiting wouldn’t alter anything.

When the solid, wet sand compacted under her bare toes, though, she still held her breath. And…didn’t die. Didn’t sense the gathering magic of a triggered hex, either, which was a good sign. She paused just above the tide line and turned back. While she waited for the mercenaries, she unwrapped her long knife and wrapped the silk around her waist as a sash, then stuck the knife in its scabbard through the sash, where she could reach it easily.

By the time she was done, the Dead Man had also gained the beach. The Gage was still heaving himself forward step by sucking step, his great weight a tremendous handicap.

Lzi threw back her head and laughed. “Well, here I am! Foot upon the sand, and no sign of warbles yet, you cowards!”

Whether the retreating sailors heard her or not, she could not tell. The only one she could spot on deck was Second Mate, and he seemed busy with the sail.

“This was a terrible idea,” the Dead Man said, as he found his stability in the sandy bottom. Water pumped from the top of his boots with every stride. He didn’t dignify their marooners with a backwards glance. Lzi supposed from the stiffness of his shoulders that the stiffness of his neck was quite intentional.

“At least you’ll dry out fast in the heat,” the Gage said, conversationally.

“Crusted in such salt as will rub one raw in every crevice.”

“You should strip down,” said Lzi. “I don’t know how you stand it.” She wrung out her own bright gauze skirt between her hands.

The Dead Man ignored her and thrust his sword through the sash binding his coat closed.

“I’ll be crusted in salt, too, very shortly,” the Gage said. Lzi wondered if it would flake and freckle off his metal hide. He didn’t seem to have corroded yet. He pointed with a glittering hand to the dark blue water the Auspicious Voyage was already slicing through. “How does a coral atoll form in such deep water?”

The Dead Man swept a hand around. “Ah, my friend. You see, this island is unlike the others. It is volcanic. The black sand reveals its nature. That’s not a coral ring. It’s the caldera.”

“You aren’t as ill educated as you look,” Lzi said. She kept her face neutral, hoping the mercenaries would know she meant to include herself in their bantering. “That’s the reason the King from this island chose the name King Fire Mountain Dynasty.”

“Is it extinct?” the Gage asked.

Lzi shook out her orange-patterned wrapped skirt so it would dry in the breeze. “It hasn’t erupted since about 1600, I think.”

The Gage paused—she supposed he was doing a date conversion to his weird Western system of dating by Years After the Frost—and came up with what Lzi hoped was a comforting thousand-year cushion. “That could just mean that it’s biding its time.”

“I’ve heard volcanos are so wont.” The Dead Man tugged his veil more evenly across his face. According to the books, such soldiers revealed their faces only when they were about to kill. “Do you not care to discover if your magical, impervious hide is magically impervious to molten stone, my brother?”

“Oh,” said the Gage. “I think I’ll pass on being smelted.”

“Anyway,” Lzi interrupted, pretending to be impervious to the smirk showing at the corners of the Dead Man’s eyes, “there’s plenty of fresh water on the island for you to rinse yourself in. There’s a stream right there.”

A braid of clear water trickled over steel-colored sand. When she stepped toward it, her bare feet left prints like pearls had been pressed into the wet, packed beach beside their parent oyster shells.

The Gage called her attention to the answering marks on the far side of the freshwater rill at the same moment that she noticed them herself—and just an instant after the Dead Man invoked his Prophet and her Goddess. A furrow, as if a boat had been dragged up the beach to be hidden in the greenery, with the divots of striving feet beside it.

Fresh.

“Isn’t it a strange thing,” the Dead Man said conversationally, “that we should not be the only visitors to such an out-of-the-way, shunned, supposed cursed and abandoned island on the very same day?”

Lzi stopped, staring at the furrow. “Strange indeed.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any significance to this particular date on the calendar?”

After a day’s acquaintance, Lzi had already learned that the more casually curious the Dead Man sounded, the more likely he was to have his hand on his wheel lock. She checked. Yes, there it was, resting on the ornately elaborate pistol butt.

She slapped at a mosquito that was insufficiently discouraged by the sea breeze and the brightness of the sun burning white in the rich blue sky.

“Well,” she said resignedly. “Now that you mention it. But before we talk about that, I’m going to wash the salt off.”

—

The outrigger was inside the jungle’s canopy, screened and shaded by ferns and vines. Lzi and the Gage stood over it, touching nothing, counting the seats, estimating the provisions cached under canvas for when the paddlers returned. Four seats, and they seemed to have all been filled. Leaving not much room for spoils…

Lzi slapped another mosquito and bent down to peer. She found that what was under the canvas was not food, but blown-glass fishing floats. Perhaps they too were here to steal the dead King Fire Mountain Dynasty’s treasure, and they intended to float the treasure back? Or sink it and mark its location? But then anyone could come along and claim it.

“So it’s possible,” Lzi said, “and perhaps even likely, that His Majesty King Pale Empire was overheard making preparations to rescind the old King’s curse on his island, and perhaps they decided to try to beat us to the treasure. If this interloper should succeed, of course, it would be disastrous for the poor, as King Pale Empire means to use these resources to provide for the needy.”

“That is a thing that still confounds my understanding. How is it that such treasure has come to be left in a tomb?”

“It’s not a tomb,” Lzi said, for what felt like the five hundredth time. “It’s a palace.”

“A tomb,” said the Dead Man patiently, “is perforce where a corpse is maintained…”

“Look at the bright side,” the Gage interrupted, coming back. “We just got significantly less marooned.”

“You design to steal their canoe and abandon them to the haunted island?” The Dead Man slapped at a mosquito as well, less patiently.

“Well,” the Gage said, “I’d still have to walk back. That won’t carry me. But I was thinking that they could take a message to the Auspicious Voyage for us, if they turn out to be polite. And maybe they’d let you straddle the outrigger.”

“Much to the amusement of the sharks,” the Dead Man said, slapping. “Doctor Lady Lzi. You’re a natural philosopher. Can’t you do anything about these mosquitoes?”

“Welcome to the tropics,” the Gage said lightly. “Tell him about the parasites, Doctor Lady Lzi.”

—

Lzi paused within the canopy and found long-leaved zodia plants. They had a pungent, fecund scent, and a handful of leaves stuffed into a pocket or waistband did a fairly good job of keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

“The fact is,” she said a few moments later while holding a tangle of vines aside for the Dead Man, “having all this gold tied up in mausoleums is murder on the economy.” Her knife was still sheathed in her sash. Whoever had come before them had done a good job cutting a path. While it was regrowing already, it would be useful for a few days more.

“So the current King wants to rob his ancestor’s tomb to put a little cash back into the system?” It was hard to tell when the Gage was being sarcastic. Unless he was always being sarcastic. He was a wicked and tireless hand with the machete, however.

“Not so much rob the tomb as…put the treasure back into circulation. To use as relief for the poor. And, King Fire Mountain Dynasty was not King Pale Empire’s Ancestor,” said Lzi. “Our Kings are not hereditary. Only their Voices are, and that’s because of magic. A retired King can only speak through his female relatives.”

“It would be less hassle if your Kings all came from the same lineage,” the Gage suggested. “Then at least the money would still be in the family, and the new King could use it, instead of its all going to sustain a relic. And the current Kings would keep siring Voices for their Ancestors.”

“Sure,” said Lzi. “There are absolutely no problems with hereditary dynasties. And everybody wants to spend all eternity being bossed around personally by their Ancestors. Smooth sailing all the way.”

“Well,” said the Gage. “When you put it like that…”

The Dead Man looked at Lzi shrewdly over his veil. “Will you be an interlocutor for the current King, when he is gone?”

“Not gone, exactly, either,” Lzi said. “The Kings drink certain sacred potions, which are derived by natural philosophers such as myself. Abstain from most foods, and many physical pleasures. If they have the discipline to stay the course, the flesh hardens and becomes incorruptible. The processes of life stop, but…the life remains. They may continue for a long time in such a state, far beyond a mortal life span. But eventually the flesh hardens to the point where they cannot move or speak on their own. And then they need interlocutors. Voices.”

“Interlocutors like you.”

“King Pale Empire has successfully attained the blessed state,” she said, aware her voice was stiff. “But he does not yet require a Voice. Once he does, a new King will rule, and he will retire to the position of honored antecedent. In the meantime, I am merely his servant, and a scientist. I am not of his blood, though in his kindness he adopted me into the royal family, and only women of the royal line may serve as Voices to the Ancestors.”

“How can you be sure the Kings are actually saying anything through their Voices that the Voices did not think up themselves? It seems like one of the few ways a woman could get a little power around here.”

Lzi had wondered that herself, on occasion. She chose to answer obliquely. “There are stories of Voices who did not do the will of their Kings.”

“Let me guess,” the Gage said. “They all end in tragedy and fire.”

“Stacks of corpses. As must always the ambitions of women.”

“So. This old dead King is not dead, but has no living female descendants willing to serve as his interlocutors,” the Dead Man said. “He’s a King with no Voice. What we are embarked upon, well, sounds like robbery to me, begging your pardon.”

Lzi shrugged. “Politics as usual. The voiceless are always powerless.”

The Gage said, “And is that the future you desire for yourself?”

Lzi opened her mouth to temporize, and wasn’t sure what it was about the Gage’s eyeless gaze that paralyzed her voice inside her. Maybe it was simply the necessity of regarding her own face, stretched and strangely disordered, in the flawless mirror of his face. She shut her mouth, swallowed, and tried again, but what came out was the truth. “I have no people beyond the King.”

“What became of the family of your birth?” the Dead Man asked, so formally she could not take offense. It was prying in the extreme…but the Dead Man was a foreigner, and probably didn’t know any better.

“My parents and brother were killed,” Lzi said, which was both the truth and devoid of useful information.

“I’m sorry,” the Dead Man said. He paused to allow that heavy throbbing sound to rise and fade again, then added, as a small kindness, “I lost my family too.”

“Do you miss them?” Lzi asked, surprising herself with her own rudeness in turn. She had, at best, jumbled memories of her kinfolk: warmth, a boy who teased her and took her sweets but also comforted her when she fell and hurt herself. Two large figures with large calloused hands. Sweet rice gruel served in a wooden bowl.

“The first family, I was too young to remember,” the Dead Man said without breaking stride. Nimbly, he leaped a branch. “The second family—yes, I miss them very much.”

Lzi looked away, wondering how to get out of this one. The Dead Man’s voice had been so matter-of-fact…

The Gage sank up to the knees in the compost underfoot. Lzi thought it was a good thing brass didn’t seem to feel tiredness the way bone and muscle did, or he’d have worn himself out just walking on anything except a paved road.

The Dead Man, kindly, took the opportunity to change the subject. “It’s amazing you ever get anywhere.” The Dead Man crouched on a long low branch, his soft boots still leaving squelching footprints. The wetness of the soles did not seem to impede his footing.

“I may not get there quickly,” the Gage replied, his voice as level as if he sat on cushions in a parlor. “But I have yet to fail to wind up where I intended, and when I pass through a place, few fail to remember where I have been.”

Lzi hid a shiver by shrugging her pack off her shoulder. She drank young coconut water. As she capped the canteen, she shrugged to herself. What else had she to spend her life on? More musty, if fascinating, research? More monographs that no one but other naturalists would ever even care about, much less read? More theory on the function of the body and deriving the essential principles from certain plants? More service to an ideal because she had no ambition of her own to work toward?

Perversely, ironic fatalism made her feel a little less empty inside. If she had nothing of her own to live for, it was surely better to find a purpose in life in serving others, rather than increasing suffering and chaos. If you were alone, wasn’t it the choice of the Superior Woman to serve those who were not?

The Dead Man shrugged. He stood up on his bough, pivoted on the balls of his feet, and ran lightly along the rubbery gray bark while the branch dipped and swayed under him until he reached a point where another limb crossed the first at midthigh. He stepped up onto the other without seeming to break stride and ran along it in turn, toward some presumed trunk invisible through the foliage ahead. The sound of his footsteps faded into the jungle noise before he vanished from view.

He had the sort of physique that grew veins instead of muscles, and it made his strength seem feral and weightless. In so many ways, the opposite of the Gage.

And yet Lzi could not shake the feeling that in every essential way the two were identical. Except that one wore his armor on the outside, and the other beneath his skin.

—

She did not desert the Gage. She couldn’t have kept up with the Dead Man’s branch-running, and it seemed a poor idea to allow their little party to become strung out. She wasn’t sure if the Gage noticed, because he labored along without comment.

She was relieved, though, when the Dead Man dropped through the canopy above and ran down a broad bough, his tight-wrapped veil fluttering at the edges. He skidded sideways on his insteps until he was just a foot or two above eye level, far enough away that Lzi didn’t need to crane her head back to see him.