The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 39

Emery shook his head. "Me neither."

"I have," said Leonard, and smiled. "Just once, with Maggie."

Above the Capitol's dome hung the full moon, so bright against the starless sky that Robbie could read what was printed on Leonard's box.

MARGARET BLEVIN.

"These are her ashes." Leonard set the box down and removed the top, revealing a ziplocked bag. He opened the bag, picked up the box again and stood. "She wanted me to scatter them here. I wanted both of you to be with me."

He dipped his hand into the bag and withdrew a clenched fist; held the box out to Emery, who nodded silently and did the same; then turned to Robbie.

"You too," he said.

Robbie hesitated, then put his hand into the box. What was inside felt gritty, more like sand than ash. When he looked up, he saw that Leonard had stepped forward, head thrown back so that he gazed at the moon. He drew his arm back, flung the ashes into the sky and stooped to grab more.

Emery glanced at Robbie, and the two of them opened their hands.

Robbie watched the ashes stream from between his fingers, like a flight of tiny moths. Then he turned and gathered more, the three of them tossing handful after handful into the sky.

When the box was finally empty Robbie straightened, breathing hard, and ran a hand across his eyes. He didn't know if it was some trick of the moonlight or the freshening wind, but everywhere around them, everywhere he looked, the air was filled with wings.

THE MIRACLE AQUILINA.

MARGO LANAGAN.

Margo Lanagan has published three collections of short stories, White Time White Time, Black Juice, Black Juice, and and Red Spikes Red Spikes, and a novel, Tender Morsels Tender Morsels. She is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner (for best novel, novella, short story, and collection), has also won four Aurealis and four Ditmar awards, and two of her books were Printz Honor Books. Her work has also been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, International Horror Guild, Bram Stoker, and Theodore Sturgeon awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and twice been placed on the James Tiptree, Jr. Award honor list. She attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1999,has taught at Clarion South three times, and will teach at Clarion West in 2011. Margo lives in Sydney. She is currently working on her fourth collection, Yellowcake Yellowcake, and on a novel about selkies based on her World Fantasy Award-winning novella "Sea-Hearts."

You'd have thought the bread-dough was the Captain's head, the way I went at it, squashing any mouth or eye that opened. Bringing shame upon us Bringing shame upon us-smush, I smeared that mouth shut. No daughter of mine No daughter of mine-punch, that one too. Daughter of his? I was my own self; he did not own me. If I was anyone else's I was Klepper's; he owned more parts of me than Father did, than Father wanted to know know about. I was about. I was married married to Klepper in all but name; part of him floated in me, growing slowly into a bigger shame- to Klepper in all but name; part of him floated in me, growing slowly into a bigger shame- Thump, squash-I shook the thought out of my head. Reddy was spinning one of her stories-of a fisher-girl and a kingmaker, this one-to keep Amber and Roper quiet at their needlework, and I began to listen too, to stop from thinking more, from caring, from fearing. And I was almost lost in the poor girl's story-how insolent she was to the king, and how lucky he did not have her hanged for it!-when the Captain strode in, all leathered-plate and rage. He had his helmet on, even; he was only indoors for a moment.

"Here," he said. "I'll show you." He came for me, and so swiftly I didn't even flinch away. He grasped my arm; he tore me off the dough and pushed me to the door, my hands all floury claws. "I'll show you how girls end up, that don't do as they're told."

Reddy was half up, and Amber and Roper turned in their seats, a matched pair, but they would do nothing, only gape there. They would never defy him, or question; they would never save me. Then we were out on the bright street, and me all ap.r.o.ned and floury. I shook him off, but he caught my elbow again, hard, that everyone should see he was in command of me.

"This woman." He muttered it as if woman-ness itself were an evil. "She worships wooden saints-you've seen them. She prostrates herself before those foolish things. Which would be bad enough."

There was a law, that those people be left at peace in their beliefs. Even if our Aquilin G.o.ds were richer and more clearly seen-for their stories and families were all written down strand for strand, and painted on walls for those of us who couldn't read, and taught in church and school-still we were to indulge the saint-followers, allow them their shrines and mutterings, only jeer among ourselves.

"She was one of ours, from a faithful family, but her nurse impressed her to the saints-belief, corrupted her." Ah, that was the cause of his bitterness, was it?

"She's to be punished for that?" I said, because I was not sure what the law was, for our people gone over to the saints' ways, but I did not think we could call it exactly a crime crime.

"No!" He pushed me to the right, through the council portico, along the colonnade there, people glancing at us but too important about their own business to accost us. "She refused the King himself, is her offence!"

"Refused him what?" I struggled as much as I could without making a scene. "Let go of me! I will walk with you!"

"You will," he said, "you will." And did not let go. "Refused him herself. Her hand, or failing that her body. Wife or concubine he offered her. Wife! Out in the fields with her sheep, she was! Who knows what vermin were on her; who knows what lads had been at her w.i.l.l.y-nilly? And our King says I will have you, I will save you, you are beautiful enough to be queen or mistress to me! I will have you, I will save you, you are beautiful enough to be queen or mistress to me! And And No! No!, she says! She would rather turn to leather out there on the hillside, making her signs on herself, chattering to her pixies. A madwoman, or at the least imprudent! You will see, though." He shook me, and I staggered. "You will see how imprudence is dealt with, and wilfulness."

We were going down the backs now, where it was unpaved, and smelt, and was narrow. He pushed me ahead of him. There was the barracks, with soldiers smoking at the upper windows, grinning down, and the woman-houses, the crones at the doors watching us shrewdly as we pa.s.sed. Then we turned the corner, and there was the prison, blind of windows, its wall-tops all spikes and potsherds.

The guard at the entry-way saluted my father, staring hard at nothing. For a moment I felt the bitterness of belonging to a Captain. This guard's respect was for my father's rank only; the Captain the man was as nothing to him. I I was as nothing, a parcel or a doc.u.ment the Captain brought with him to his place of work. was as nothing, a parcel or a doc.u.ment the Captain brought with him to his place of work.

In we went, and along in the blind stony darkness, farther in and along again, until we were deep in the place. He was imprisoning me? He was placing me in a cell, to teach me this lesson? I would not learn it, no matter what weight of stone and military he put about me, no matter how long he kept me from the world.

Finally we came to a door that stood open; here the guard gave me a look of alarm, even as he sharpened his stance for my father. From inside came the sound of a whip through the air, like a little outraged shout, and a slap on something wet.

The chamber was vast, yet not airy. Evils were done here, it was easy to tell; their equipments reared and languished in the shadows, away from the men grouped torchlit in the middle of the room.

The woman was in a cleared s.p.a.ce at their centre, as straight as if she stood on a hilltop stretching to glimpse a distant beacon. Her back was to us; her dress-cloth was shredded into her flesh from the whipping; her blood ran freely down.

"Her legs," said the King. You could tell him by his seatedness and stillness; if a gathering can have two centres, he was the other.

Two soldiers hoisted up her skirts, from bare dirty heels, from white calves. The backs of her knees made my insides shrink, the vulnerable creases of them, the fine skin.

"Her b.u.t.tocks, too," said His Majesty.

Something gave, in the crowd of men-a kind of relief, or excitement. The soldiers pulled the skirts up above her thighs and b.u.t.tocks-all I could think was how soft, how that flesh would sting to the whip. My own b.u.t.tocks clenched at the sight, my own thighs expected that sting. But the woman herself, she stood straight and trembled not at all, as if there were no indignity in what they did, let alone any pain to come.

They made her hold her own skirts aside; the first strokes striped, then diamonded her flesh. She did not wince, or cry out. Her back glittered crimson in the torches' light, and black with the wet threads; now the stripes on her thighs and calves began to join together red; now the first gleam of blood showed there.

"The arrogance of her!" growled the Captain to himself, and this seemed to remind him that he had a voice, and he took my arm harder, and shook it. "You see? This is what's done to girls who will not be bid!"

He met my eye and he was all hot rage, that this demonstrating to me was even necessary. He could not turn me by the power of his words. He could raise his voice as loud and long as he liked, but he could not control me by the raising, as once he'd used to. I will see whom I please, I will see whom I please, I'd said. I'd said. I will marry whom I please. It is Klepper I want, not some rock-headed legionnaire you owe a favor to. I will marry whom I please. It is Klepper I want, not some rock-headed legionnaire you owe a favor to.

"Cease," said the King's cold voice onto the congested air, and there was no sound but the breathing of the soldiers who had been taking turns to beat the woman. "Let me see her," he said.

She did not wait for them to turn her, but dropped her skirts, and spun on the wetness of her own spilt blood, to face him. The soldiers moved to take her arms, much as the Captain had mine, but the King waved them aside, a casual movement, but involving many weighty rings, from which red light flashed, and a shard of kingfisher blue.

They stepped back from her; she stood, tall and full of joy, and truly my breath stopped in my throat for several moments, for it was clear what drove the King to want to marry her. She was the model of an Aquilina: broad-browed, straight-nosed, full-lipped, strong-jawed, all strength and delicacy combined. Her eyes were clear, green, open; they gazed down at the King, almost in amus.e.m.e.nt, I thought. I loved her in an instant myself, for what they had done to her, and for why. But he is the King! King! I thought. What does she have, that she can dismiss the King's wishes? That she is not dazzled by him, that she holds her own ground? I wanted to know, and I wanted it for myself. I thought. What does she have, that she can dismiss the King's wishes? That she is not dazzled by him, that she holds her own ground? I wanted to know, and I wanted it for myself.

"What have you to say, shepherdess?" There was steel in the King's voice, for he saw, as all of us could see, that she had defeated him with her carriage and beauty.

"I have nothing to say, sir," she said happily.

"Are you mad, girl?" said a courtier at the King's side. I had seen that man before. I didn't like him; he was all bones and brains. "Have your pains driven you mad, that you affect such cheer, such insolence?"

She glanced at him bemused, then returned her gaze to His Majesty. "I a.s.sure you, I have all my senses at my own command."

"You will marry me, then," he said, his voice momentarily softer, fuller, with something in it that would have been pleading, had this not been the Aquilin king, who pled with no one, not prelate nor general nor sultan nor sent prince from foreign parts of anywhere in the world.

"I will not," she said. "As I have told you, I belong body and soul-"

"To your lord," said Mr Bones-and-brains disgustedly. "Yes, girl, we have heard all that." He waved her to turn her back on us again. "Bite deeper, lads! Scatter the floor with her flesh!"

Willingly she turned. But a gasp went up, from me and from all around me. For though her blood had stained all the back of her skirt, though she stood in a puddle and her feet were red with it, her flesh within the torn dress-back was white, was clean, as if no whip had touched it. And when they lifted her skirts, her calves there, and then her thighs and b.u.t.tocks, were unwelted and unbled, restored entirely to wholeness, to perfection.

Astonishment stilled them all, the soldiers agape, the n.o.bles hands to mouths. Then gradually all turned from the marvel of the woman's recovery to His Majesty. He gazed on her grimly, up and down, his eyes a-glisten with moving thought. What would he do? What power was being shown him, that undid this work of his upon her body? Whom did she have behind her, and how would he conquer them?

"Put her in the pot," he said very softly-you see, Father, how much power a soft soft voice can carry? "We will make a soup of her." voice can carry? "We will make a soup of her."

There, again, the air changed; the excitement pitched itself a little higher, into a kind of gaiety. All was business and haste to obey him, our King our church our G.o.d and saints. I had never seen it so direct, how his will drove us, how he sat at the centre and played us all like game-pieces, or as a spinner's foot sets the pedal, then the wheel, in motion.

Pale-faced, the Captain pulled me back against the wall. "She is some kind of monster!" He watched the summoned servants run for kindling.

"She is one of us," I said. Her Aquilin hair gleamed motionless, smooth black around her head, caught away forward over one shoulder so as not to snarl with the blood-wetted whip. "And she is a miracle. If truly it is her Lord-"

He slapped my cheek, hard.

I regarded him, half my face burning from the blow, my eyes drinking back the tears that had sprung from the shock of it. His fear and weakness were written strong as his rage in his face. Don't think I cannot force you, Don't think I cannot force you, he had said to me. But I did think it; I knew it. My sisters would bow their heads and do what he told them, but I-he had this weakness in him, when it came to me. He had this softness. I would have my way. he had said to me. But I did think it; I knew it. My sisters would bow their heads and do what he told them, but I-he had this weakness in him, when it came to me. He had this softness. I would have my way.

"We should worship her as a miracle," I said evenly, coldly, straight into his eyes.

"We should kill her, and smartly! She is a demon! The longer she lives, the longer she dazzles such fools as you! You will see," he hissed close to my face, "how pretty she is, all red-boiled and bursting. You will see what insolence will bring you, and thinking you can please yourself!"

It took some while to ready the pot, though boiling water was brought down from the council-house kitchens. It was a large pot, big enough to boil several people at once, I would have thought. They built the fire so high that the walkway around the top of the pot began to scorch, and a man was sent up there, to keep it wettened, and not catch fire himself. Every face about me, except for the King's and the more important of the courtiers' imitating him, was alive with surprise and curiosity, or with a kind of greed-whether for more suffering by the Aquilina or more embarra.s.sment of the King I could not tell-and some with suppressed mirth. Whatever his state of mind, every man here, at this moment, contained very little more than the vitality of his interest in what would befall them next, this woman and this king, what damage would be done by each upon the other. I was glad the maid had her back to us still and did not see any of this, how eagerly men wished her ill, and the lengths they were going to, to see her harmed and to have that harm endure.

They led the woman to a spread net of rope, such as is used to tangle and tie a mad bull in, and subdue it. They made her stand in the middle of it; they threw the corner-ties over a ceiling-beam and the net rose around her and lifted her, and up it carried her to the railing of the pot-platform, where a hook held it aside from the rising steam. Up went the King and his nearest; one of these turned and beckoned for more to climb the wooden steps, and my father was high-ranked enough that he could bustle me up there, and press me to the front of the crowd, where a second railing kept us from pitching forward ourselves into the bubbles, into the cauldron full of torch-flash and darkness.

"You see what fate awaits you, girl," said the King, stilling the murmur around him that the sight of the water had started.

Silence from the net.

"Answer His Majesty!" snapped some official.

"His Majesty did not ask a question," she said coolly; I could not see her face for stripes of rope-shadow. But her voice was clear enough, fine and light among these rumblers and roarers. "Yes," she said, "I see my fate there in that water, in that fire-is that the answer you wish for?" A green eye, only, looking sharpish out.

"You know the answer I want, girl," said the King, and truly he did look most handsome and n.o.ble, regarding her fiercely and gently both, as if he could not quite believe what he had come to, as if he might take pity on her at any moment, did she show any sign of distress, or of indecision. "Marry me and you live. Refuse me and I lower you to boiling."

"Then lower me, Your Majesty, if those are my only choices. For my body and soul are not mine to give to you." And her fingers, strong and lean and sun-browned, sprang through the netting and grasped it in preparation.

Soldiers unhooked her, and let her out to swing in the steam, in the silence but for the fire-noise, but for the water bursting and rolling. Within the ropes, she looked up and listened, as if she were a child hiding, waiting for the seeker to find her, for her amus.e.m.e.nt to begin.

The King gave a sign. Some other behind him pa.s.sed it on, and the men below began to let out the rope.

It would have been most unsatisfactory for His Majesty, for the drowning woman let out not a whimper, let alone a scream or a begging for mercy, but went down into the water silent as a turnip or her bouquet, and the water closed over her head, and her dark hair lifted and snaked on the bubbled water a moment among the ropes. Then, only the weighted corner ropes stood stiff out of the turmoiling water, and the steam buffeted all our faces, without cease.

"There," said the King. His be-ringed hand gestured for the bringing up of her body. Little sighs of accomplishment sounded around us, murmurs of excitement at the prospect of seeing what had been done on her, but my father the Captain only leaned, with his wrists on the rail and his hands fisted, looking down, watching the woman boil.

Up they hoisted her, but we could not see her immediately for the steam pouring up and the water pouring down, and then she was only a slumped thing in the net there. The man with the hook-stick caught and pulled the net towards the platform, and a s.p.a.ce was made, several people having to move down the steps to make room.

But not us; we were only one layer of watchers from where she was brought to land. Her small foot hung white below.

"You said she would be boiled red," I whispered to the Captain.

The foot touched the wooden platform and dragged as if it were dead-but then the touch woke it, and it braced itself against the boards, and in the moment that the net was loosed from above and fell open about her, up rose the shepherdess, the miracle girl, to standing. The steam of the boiled rope, of her boiled self, rushed up, rushed out. "Praise my Lord and Lady and all the Saints for their works and wonders!" came her clear, happy voice out of the cloud, and there she was, not a mark upon her, no worse for her wetting, or for being wrapped in boiling-wet cloth and cloaked in boiling-wet hair.

All fell back from her-in horror, in wonder, in both-and the Captain pulled me back too, so it should appear I did the right thing, instead of standing forward and laughing and clapping my hands with delight, as I was tempted to do.

The King? I saw a flash in his eyes, just a moment there and then gone, of the rage I had seen in the Captain's face, hissing and pressed close to mine. Then the handsome man was stony-faced again.

"Bring my robe and mask," he said, and on the word mask mask his voice broke to a growl. "Bring me a flask of spirit. Bring reeds, bring knives-you know what I need." He did not look at those he commanded; his gaze was fixed on the steaming, smiling woman. his voice broke to a growl. "Bring me a flask of spirit. Bring reeds, bring knives-you know what I need." He did not look at those he commanded; his gaze was fixed on the steaming, smiling woman.

The courtiers looked to Bones-and-brains, who was a little forward of them, startled-faced and on the point of speaking. But the King was motionless, watching the shepherdess like a hunter keeping a faun in sight as he fits an arrow to the string. Mr Bones stepped back into the servants' doubtful silence, not taking his eyes from his master. "You heard His Majesty," he said sharply over his shoulder.

The whole platform about us was glances like knives or darts thrown hither and thither, the very air dangerous with them. The Captain kept his grim face so steady that I could watch in his eyes the last of the steam rising off the lady, but the rest of the court and chamber were too nervous to speak or stay still. "Where should we be?" hissed someone. "Is it safe for us?"

The King stepped towards the outer railing, men scattering like shooed flies before him. He looked down on the great room; there was standing-room for many watchers around the rack, and the wheel, and on either side of the cat-pit. "Along the wall there," he said with a large gesture.

"All along, sir?" said Mr Bones, with doubt in his voice, then, "Very well," he added most obediently.

"What is he doing? What is he planning?" I hissed under the turn and shuffle of people around us, the quiet exclamations around the King's iron silence.

"He does it in battle," said the Captain, his voice dead of opinion or feeling. "Only a King has this power; the priests awaken it when they invest him."

"Power to what?" I knew a dozen outlandish stories: that the King could fly, or call down thunderbolts, or conjure great winds to flatten the enemy like a field of grain stalks.

The Captain only watched. No one seemed ready to climb down from our platform here. Men ran about below, and castle-servants came with arms full of reeds reeds, of all things, green harmless reeds, and were told where and how to lay them on the flags. Mr Bones directed them very quietly and calmly, perhaps hoping to be halted in this work by his king, and not wanting to miss hearing that command.

They laid out a wide shape with the reeds lengthwise up and down it, something like a very fat, very flattened scorpion, legged and tailed. Then bags and bags, they brought, of tiny knives with nubby handles smooth as finger-bones, and the blades also short like fish-fins, with one vicious edge. I had seen someone draw the shape in the dust somewhere, whispering, and sweep the shape away when I asked what it was. Dozens of these knife-lets they laid out in a kind of crown around the shape's head, and in a double line fanning inward down its middle, then flaring outward and edging its tail. All while they worked the King watched closed-mouthed from the platform, and the shepherdess behind him at the centre of her net and her strangeness stood sodden and proud-backed, clasping her hands before her, her face neither raised in arrogance nor lowered in humiliation. She met no one's gaze and spoke not a word, but only was fully engaged with her own thoughts and her own will. Around her grew a fear and a thickening silence, p.r.i.c.ked by knife-clinks on the flagstones, underlined by Bones-and-brains's soft voice.

The shape was complete upon the floor; now a priest approached the platform, a pile of darkness in his arms. He was an older priest, not frail-no Aquilin priest lacks bodily strength-but honed almost to a skeleton by his life of privations and the cruel torchlight.

"Wait, I will come down," said the King, and a sigh of terror and doubt sounded around my father and me, a tiny wind, quick-suppressed. The King turned at the top of the stairs: "Bring her!" he cried, and with a shock I thought he meant bring me me, but of course he spoke of the woman there. "Come, men." He glanced at the a.s.sembly, and I took care to put my face behind a man's shoulder, so that he would not see and dismiss me. "Stand like men behind your G.o.d and king."

The Captain held me back, while others with many doubtful glances at one another shuffled stairwards and down. Soldiers took the woman in hand. She came awake at their touch, but did not resist it, and allowed herself to be taken as if this were a favor being done her, not a punishment being administered. And as the guard pa.s.sed with her, she saw me, unshielded now by any man but only in my floury ap.r.o.n, with still my sleeves rolled up for the baking and my hands half-wiped of the makings, and the strings of my house-cap dangling down.

I stifled a curtsey; she saw that. She saw, I was sure, all my thoughts and words caught in my throat, too many of them to say. It surprised her greatly to see me here so domestic, so unbelonging-she paused, and the guard allowed it, and she held her mouth on the point of its blossoming into a smile. Her gaze touched my Captain's hand upon my arm, the tightness of his grip. She gave the tiniest, tiniest tilt of her head and a nod to me, in the fleet moment in which we met, and she went on, her wet skirt drawing a train of water across the boards of the platform. I felt myself to have been blessed. Every moment rang and swelled with meanings now, death had been so close, and the wonders so great by which she had evaded it.

"We stay here," said the Captain. He drew me to the corner of the platform and penned me there, standing behind me. I felt very vulnerable, with my clear view, vulnerable to dismissal, vulnerable to whatever evil might happen below. I shielded my own father, who had called himself my protector once, who had stood to my defense in tiny battles I had had, against my sisters, my mother, my fellows. Now he had sworn himself my enemy over this matter with Klepper; he wanted me to feel the full brunt of the world, as punishment for having gone against him.

All eyes were on the priest. His face was haughty as only a priest's can be and not be laughed at. He accepted the empty spirit-flask from the King, and laid it in a wooden box made perfectly to its size. He unravelled the dark stuff from his arms and draped it upon His Majesty with great care. What was it made from? It seemed not more than shadow or gauze, but sometimes great clots and knots came out of the pile, to be loosened or left in their ma.s.s, like the clothing of beggars, or indeed of whipped people's garments, cut to threads and then re-matted by the beatings. Was it black, was it purple?

Then out of the last armful of cloth-stuff, a head-dress of uncertain design but suggesting once having been plumed, and a ragged mask, skull-like and dog-like and altogether repellent-these emerged and finally covered our king's handsomeness, so that all I could recognise him by was his bearing within the threads and tatters, by his stillness when all about were leaning to each other, and whispering, and shifting from foot to foot. His stillness seemed to me an actual substance, like a smoke or smell, that spread out among his followers and froze them too in their places, turned the guard to stone who had just ushered the house servants out of the chamber.

It had no need to still the Captain and me, for we were already motionless, all but unbreathing above the gathering. My eyes took in the last tiniest movements: the settling of reeds on the flags, the wagging shaft of light from a knife-blade as it rocked to a halt. The woman herself, positioned at the scorpion's head where the knives were laid densest, moved not a hair or a finger, but against the King's fearsome stillness-I felt it, I almost saw saw it-she poured out her own, which was of a different make, radiant and graceful, and careless of all the fear that infected the air around. it-she poured out her own, which was of a different make, radiant and graceful, and careless of all the fear that infected the air around.

Several moments of perfect stillness pa.s.sed. Then His Majesty drew a mighty breath; it whistled in through the mask's apertures; it swelled the chest of his webbed and ragged drapery.

When he spoke, it was with a voice not his own. Monstrously deep, was this voice, and breathy with the breath of different lungs, not a king's, not any kind of man's. Vast hollows full of smoke and stone were these caves of lungs, and the chamber rang enlarged with the breath and voice of them, and the air stung with the burning, with the danger introduced to the place.

The woman regarded him, uncowed by the wordless noise spilling from the mask, or by the force with which its sounding filled and tested the limits of the room.

And then I did not see what she did, or how the king-monster next moved, for the reeds on the floor began to hiss together and to rattle and to rise, and the knives to glint and stand, some on their handles, some on the tips of their blades.