Issue #114 • Feb. 7, 2013

“Beheaded by Peasants,” by James L. Sutter

“The Crimson Kestrel,” by Leslianne Wilder

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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BEHEADED BY PEASANTS

by James L. Sutter

        Alana leaned against the stone sill of the gallery’s window and watched as the riders galloped through the front gate. From her high perch she could follow their twisting route down from the palace, harnesses jingling and hooves clattering on cobblestones as they wove between thick-timbered shops and row houses. Then they were out, through the gap in the city walls and into the last of the evening sun.

        Two of the riders turned and thundered south along the Traitors’ Road toward Charleston, through fields where farmers reaped in rhythmic motions, backs bowed and filling the air with drifting motes of grain as mule-drawn threshing machines trundled along behind them. The remaining rider continued back east, the way they had come. Alana watched his dust cloud shrink, then abandoned the window and moved down the corridor, slippered feet whispering across bare stone.

        Her father was still in the high-ceilinged audience chamber. On the far wall, the Great Seal of the Oracle loomed large behind the throne and dais, its royal book-and-skull insignia emblazoned in gold leaf. Her father stood beneath it, as he always did when holding court, along with several advisers and Tyrus, the captain of the guard. Each of the advisers—old men with beards and robes—was doing his best to talk over the others.

        “My lord, the beastmen—”

        “—if they were to take Harrisburg—”

        “—the damned Virginians will seize the opportunity to break away again, and—”

        “—with winter coming, the passes—”

        The old men faltered and fell silent as they noticed Alana.

        “My apologies, Father,” she said. “Am I interrupting?”

        Lord Erick Young-Allen, First of the Dying, King and Steward of the Appalachian Empire, was a barrel-chested man of Noreastern stock. Though only a few inches taller than Alana, with lines of gray twisting through his bushy black beard, he still managed to exude a palpable air of command. Now that beard split in a wide smile.

        “No need to be shy, gentlemen. You’ll be giving your contradictory recommendations to Alana soon enough. Yet I believe I’ve heard enough for today. You have your orders—I suggest you make good on them.”

        There was a chorus of “aye, m’lord,” and the men filed out of the room. Tyrus made to follow, but the king waved for him to stay. The young captain took up his usual position to the right of the throne, beneath the great tapestry showing the Taking of the Virginias. Alana did her best not to look at him, fearing that something might show in her face. Instead, she focused on her father.

        “Trouble to the east?”

        The king waved again, as if the matter was a fly to be chased away. “When isn’t there? The beasts of York are ever at our door. Their fields are ash, and their water poisons them and twists their children. Why shouldn’t they seek to take ours? I could almost pity them, if I didn’t know better.”

        Alana nodded. Privately, she didn’t know how he could be so cavalier about it. She’d grown up listening to tales of the beastmen and their blasted lands, the cratered and ruined ghost cities where those who had been human before the Breaking had grown warped and hateful. As a child, she’d snuck out of bed and hidden behind curtains in the feast hall to listen as her father and his generals drank and told stories too dark for children’s ears—the Battle of Scranton or the Razing of Jersey.

        Her father must have caught her expression, because he shook his head.

        “No need to worry, child. Our deaths are foretold.” He made the sign of the Oracle, then smiled. “And if that isn’t enough for you, three legions stand between them and our border. The beastmen have honored the truce for half your life—this is just the usual saber-rattling. Isn’t that right, Tyrus?”

        “Certainly, my lord. My lady.” The guard captain’s gaze flicked to Alana for only an instant before returning to a careful study of the far wall.

        “They mentioned Harrisburg,” Alana pressed. “Surely the Foundry’s not in danger?” Everyone knew that the forges and factories of Harrisburg were the main reason the Appalachian Empire had stood for so many generations. Half the metal goods in the palace came from the Foundry, and any legionary worth his commission wore Harris-forged plate. Even more important were the huge farming machines that let one field hand do the work of twenty, or the great war bombards that roared with the fires of Hell itself.

        A cloud passed over her father’s face. “No,” he grunted. Then, more softly: “No. The Foundry is well defended. It’ll take more than the trolls of shattered York to get through one legion, let alone three.” He sighed. “But you didn’t come to discuss troop movements.”

        She shrugged. “I was just about to go to bed, and came to say goodnight.”

        “Bed?” He frowned. “But it’s not even dark out.”

        “I’ve been feeling tired.”

        The king turned the full force of his attention on her. Suddenly Alana understood how his subjects must feel under that gaze—knees loose, throat dry, sweat welling up between her toes. It was all Alana could do to keep her teeth pressed together, fearing that if she opened her mouth, everything would come pouring out.

        The king’s grin reappeared.

        “You’re bored.”

        Relief surged through Alana in a cold wave. She shook her head quickly. “Of course not, my lord!”

        Her father laughed and clapped his hands together.

        “Come now, none of that. You’re long since of age for better things than keeping an old man company. Look at you! Twirl for me, girl.”

        It was an old request. As a child, Alana had loved skirts and dresses, the way they flowed and swirled when she moved. She had spent her childhood twirling in them, spinning until she made herself dizzy, while her father laughed and her mother chided.

        She spun now, slowly so that the rust-red hem of her skirt lifted only to her ankles, rattling the chatelaine keys at her belt. She held out her arms as she revolved, then finished facing her father again.

        His smile was wistful. “By the oracle, Alana, you grow faster every year. It crushes my heart to say so, but you’re no longer my little girl. You ought to have a husband.”

        Marriage. Given half a chance, her father would marry her off to one of the Iberian ship-lords, with their blue-water fleets and claims of a royal line stretching back before the Breaking. Or maybe to one of the dark-skinned Tejano Kings of the southwest, with their horses and buckskins. Whoever he picked, it would be someone of station—someone who would expand the holdings. Blood married blood.

        “Well, I fear it won’t be this year,” her father continued. “It’s too late to send out emissaries before winter closes the passes. You’re stuck with me for a while yet.”

        Alana smiled. “I think I’ll survive.”

        Her father clapped his hands again, this time a command. “Off to bed with you, then! Perhaps tomorrow you can run the council, and I’ll walk through the fields and dream of princes. What do you say to that, eh?”

        Alana stepped forward and kissed his cheek lightly. “As you wish, my lord.”

* * *

        With the moon still down, the streets were as black as a privy chute. Alana’s foot struck a loose cobble and sent it skittering down the road, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from cursing. Instead she clutched Tyrus’s hand and hissed, “Can’t we have a light?”

        “Not yet.” The guard captain’s voice was low, completely devoid of her own frustration. The man saw like a cat in the darkness, and moved just as well—a quality that both irritated and appealed to her. It made no sense that a man whose business was swords and soldiers should move like a dancer, when all her years of etiquette training left her stumbling like a drunken cow.

        Tyrus squeezed her hand and pulled her around a corner, his other hand coming up to rest along her back. The familiarity of the gesture made Alana shiver, and she quit trying to see and simply let him guide her.

        At last they stood in front of a cellar door set at an angle to the street, its weathered wood barely illuminated by a neighbor’s lantern. Tyrus reached down and knocked quickly and precisely—twice, then three times.

        There was a pause, then the sound of a bolt being drawn back. Tyrus lifted up the heavy door, and Alana moved in, following the cloaked shape that was already retreating down the exposed steps.

        Inside was light and warmth, a root cellar lit by a dozen tallow candles. The walls were lined with wooden crates and rough cloth sacks that had been pushed out of the way to create an open space in the center, barely wide enough to accommodate the room’s handful of occupants. All eyes turned toward Alana and Tyrus as they emerged from the narrow staircase.

        The assembled faces were young, though not as young as Alana’s eighteen years. At twenty-four, Tyrus was easily the eldest among them. All had the smooth cheeks and rounded edges of merchant children, and though their cloaks were dark and nondescript, there was no denying the quality of the cloth.

        Commoners, yes—but the most privileged among them, the artisans and scions of wealthy families. There were no laborers and field hands here. The true peasants would join them when the time was right, but the people of the field had other things to spend their energy on, such as securing their next meal.

        The assembly nodded respectfully to Tyrus, but Alana’s greetings were more mixed. Dowdy Tabitha, the beekeeper’s moon-faced daughter, had to visibly stop herself from bowing. Most of the others—Omar the blacksmith, Rass the scholar, Crispin the wainwright’s apprentice—regarded her with a mixture of excitement and mistrust. Only Rhena, the sharp-chinned woman whose clothes were almost as fine as Alana’s own, regarded her with visible contempt, tight lips twitched up in a half-smile.

        “So we’re the last, then.” Tyrus shrugged off his cloak. “What have we missed?”

        “Only the usual.” Omar’s voice was flat and strong, the ring of a hammer on steel. “Nattering about broadsheets and speeches and sending runners south to coordinate with other holdings.”

        Rass, a thin young man with a rare pair of pre-Breaking spectacles, harrumphed uncomfortably. As a student at the college, devoted to analyzing the texts of the ancients, he still wasn’t used to the blunt speech of non-academics.

        “I hardly think,” he began, “that discussing the precise messaging of our transition can be called ‘nattering.’ If there’s anything the surviving histories have taught us, it’s that the ability to inflame the human spirit with words and vision is every bit as important as the pre-Breaking technologies which we—”

        “As I said, the usual.” Omar smiled thinly, and Rass suddenly noticed a blemish on his glasses and began cleaning them.

        “But now that you’re here, Tyrus,” Rhena purred, “perhaps we can actually discuss something worthwhile.” Around her, several heads nodded.

        “Bows,” grunted Omar. “I’ve got every smith and apprentice who’s for us hiding away what swords and mail they can, but a farmer in armor is still a farmer. Bows, though—every field hand with two arms can draw a bow that’ll punch through chain like cheesecloth. And they can cut and string their own without raising suspicion. The king’s men won’t look twice.”

        At this, Rass found his voice once more. “Again with the weapons! As I’ve said a dozen times, it’s far too soon for such concerns. Every day that we wait brings more people to our side. Impatience on our part will cost lives, Omar. The timing—”

        “The timing will decide itself,” Tyrus said. “The king has grown weary since the queen’s death. He will pass the crown before long. He’s said as much to me in private.”

        The folk around him nodded and muttered agreement. Not for the first time, Alana marveled at how smoothly Tyrus flowed into the role of leader. There was a reason why guardsmen twice his age chose to follow him.

        “And what if Her Ladyship changes her mind?”

        Rhena’s voice was soft, yet it carried easily.

        “What if the princess decides that being queen is more fun than helping a bunch of dirty peasants usurp her throne?”

        Tyrus’s hands balled into fists, but Alana touched his arm.

        “I have no wish to rule,” she said. “I was born to privilege—as were all of you, in your way—yet I understand it for the fluke of chance that it was.” She stepped forward as well, letting all eyes fix on her. “My father is a good man, and a good king. The empire has grown strong under his line, but I think it will be stronger when every man and woman takes its rule for their own.”

        Rhena snorted. “And so you’ll give away the throne. Just like that.”

        “Rhena,” Rass broke in, “Alana has been—”

        “No.” Alana raised a hand. “Rhena’s right to be skeptical. Why would I give up power for some abstract philosophy? I dare say she wouldn’t.”

        The surprise on Rhena’s face was gratifying, but Alana didn’t waste time on it.

        “My father has given his whole life to the empire. As one of the Dying, even the mystery of his own death has been taken from him. He serves his people, and bears the weight of hard choices. And what does he get in return?

        “Hatred. The resentment of his own people. One township screams at him for not helping in a drought, and the others scream at him for levying taxes to help the first. They burn him in effigy for conscripting their sons into the same legions that guard them from the beastmen. Every step he takes, he’s dogged by advisors and malcontents who think they could do better.

        “You think the king is a tyrant, but he’s not. He’s a scapegoat, a straw man for all the empire’s problems. And I want none of it. It’s time the people stepped up and took responsibility for themselves.”

        The room was silent. Alana took a last look at all of them, then moved back out of the circle, taking her place next to Tyrus.

        Unsurprisingly, Rhena was the first to find her voice.

        “Pretty words,” she said, pointedly ignoring Alana and addressing the rest of the group. “But is it solely the ideals of the revolution that motivate her, I wonder?”

        All at once, the fire inside Alana shifted. Her cheeks grew warm, and she adjusted her own position to stand a polite distance away from the guard captain.

        So what if they knew about her and Tyrus? She’d told the truth—she didn’t want to rule. And while her father was a great man, it didn’t make sense for blood alone to determine who should lead. Look at Tyrus: his parents were farmers, yet he had risen through the guard ranks on the merit of his own skill and intellect, and—

        Alana tamped down that thought. This wasn’t the time to wax romantic. She would abdicate to the people because anything else would only prolong the problem. And if that meant she was no longer a princess of the Dying, with a princess’s responsibilities, and could instead marry whoever she chose, well....

        She realized that the rest of them had resumed talking—Tyrus and Rass about how best to rally the people to the cause before any of the lesser lords of the southern holdings could arrive to claim the throne for themselves, and Omar about building up the local militia as soon as the city was taken, lest one of the returning legions decide to instate itself as a new aristocracy.

        At last Crispin tapped the empty hourglass and noted that they’d best get home before the moon rose. With a rustle of cloaks, the conspirators made ready to leave.

        Omar was the last to hood himself. As he did, he called out a final question.

        “When, Tyrus? I grow tired of waiting.” His voice was not quite a threat. While the others were motivated by idealism or petty jealousy, Omar’s rebellion was personal. As a child, he had seen his father hung for stealing horses from the royal herd, with King Erick himself pronouncing the judgment. In her heart, Alana knew he wouldn’t be happy until her father hung from the same gibbet as his.

        Of course, Tyrus would never allow that. He was no murderer—and he loved her. Whatever happened with the revolution, Tyrus would protect Alana and her father to his last breath.

        He started to speak, yet again Alana stepped in front of him, matching the big blacksmith stare for stare.

        “Soon,” she said. “The time of the monarchy has passed. Together, we will see an Appalachia ruled by free men and women.” Quieter, she added, “You’ll have your revolution, Omar. I swear it.”

        The big man watched her, thick arms crossed in front of his chest. Slowly, he nodded.

        Not trusting herself to say anything more, Alana turned to Tyrus. He was standing with his own cloak half-on, watching her with blatant admiration. On impulse, she grabbed his hand and held it, then swiveled around, eyes daring anyone to comment.

        Without a word, the would-be revolutionaries trooped up the cellar stairs and out into the night.

* * *

        Alana was walking through the market, followed discreetly by two guardsmen and enjoying the riotous colors of the assembled bicycle carts, when the runner found her. Cutting between two fruit merchants who stood with heads bowed, the liveried man dropped to one knee on the cobbles and brought a knuckle to his forehead.

        “M’lady, your father requests your presence at once.”

        Alana thanked the man automatically and slipped him a coin—freshly minted copper, not one of the adulterated pre-Breaking pennies. Her father wasn’t the type to summon her so brusquely. Waving her thanks to the merchants, she turned and began to move back up the steep streets toward the palace as quickly as propriety would allow. Even as she went, she saw the red mass of the signal balloon leave the palace roof and sail high into the cloudless sky, bearing its burning beacon aloft. The townsfolk saw it as well, and their frightened mutters followed her to the palace gates.

        She found her father in the audience chamber again, but this time the figures with him were not his advisers. The two men who stood close to the throne wore the close-cropped hair and bulky metal armor of legionaries. With a shock, Alana realized that the soldiers’ armor was dirty and dented, stained the ruddy brown of dried blood.

        Her father looked up and saw her in the doorway.

        “Leave us,” he told the legionaries.

        Both men bowed formally, fists over hearts, then turned and left the chamber. The king instructed Alana to close the door and beckoned her close.

        If it had unnerved her to see the normally spotless legionaries so battered, it was nothing compared to the way her father looked now. Alana didn’t think she’d seen him look so tired—so old—since her mother’s funeral. He let out a long breath.

        “It’s the beastmen,” he said simply. “I thought they were putting on a show, maybe looking to annex a few more miles of scrubland.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I was wrong. They broke through the line due east of Bethlehem, in numbers not seen since the last push. The legions are in full rout. Reading will burn by nightfall.”

        “Reading!” Alana had never been to the eastern holding but knew it to be a populous region, filled with farmers and salvage-men who quarried steel and stone from the pre-Breaking ruins, selling any relics with obvious uses and taking the rest to the mystics and engineers at the Foundry.

        It was also many miles behind the front lines. Or had been.

        “With any luck, they’ll lose days looting the holding, giving us time to position ourselves. I’ve called forth what fighting men the city can spare, and we’ll meet them at Harrisburg.”

        She looked up sharply. He nodded.

        “The Foundry cannot be allowed to fall. I’ll be leading its defense personally. Tyrus will remain with an honor guard to help you hold the city in my place.”

        Alana didn’t like the way he said it. She was suddenly furious with him for daring to look so tired, so resigned. “You’ll beat them,” she said fiercely. “You have before, and you will again.”

        Lord Erick Young-Allen of the Dying put a hand on her shoulder. “Alana, there’s something you need to see.”

        With his other hand, he reached into an inner fold of his vest and brought out a thin slip of white paper, crumpled and worn with age. Alana had never seen it before, yet the moment he produced it, she knew exactly what it was.

        “No!” She jerked away, as if he were offering her a venomous snake. “I won’t!”

        The king’s voice was calm. “It’s the way of things, Alana. The oracle never lies.”

        He held the paper out to her. Against her will, Alana took it, unfolding it with trembling fingers. One end held the royal seal, identical to the one behind the throne. Printed next to it, in neat block letters too perfect for any scribe’s pen, were three words:

        DEFENDING THE FOUNDRY

        “This is how I will die,” the king said. “It has been foretold.”

        Alana shook her head violently, hair whipping around her shoulders, and threw the paper back at him. “It’s wrong.”

        Her father’s features shifted from sad to stern. “You know otherwise, Alana. You’ll be of the Dying yourself soon. This is no time for foolishness.”

        “But why?” Alana heard the petulant whine in her own voice, hating it. “Why does it have to be right? Why can’t you just stay here and send the soldiers without you? Why did you go to the stupid oracle in the first place?”

        Sighing, her father sat—not on his throne, but on the low stone lip of the dais. He drew her down with him and put his arm around her, pulling her close.

        “It’s the burden of royalty, girl. No one is fit to rule until they’ve seen the oracle. A man who knows his death can go fearlessly into any battle, yet is reminded every day that his own life is temporary. It’s too easy for a king to rule as if he will live forever, to think himself a little god. Knowing death keeps us humble. Your mother—”

        He broke off, and Alana felt the shift in his ribs as his breath caught.

        “Your mother knew that better than I. She knew from the week before our wedding that the fever would take her, and yet she lived every day with kindness and humor. She stared down her death and won long before it ever claimed her.”

        He squeezed her shoulder. “We are the Dying, Alana. And it’s that which gives us the right to rule over the living.”

        “But you don’t know when,” Alana pressed. “You could die fifty years from now.”

        Her father chuckled. “That’s very old to die on the battlefield. Perhaps I could have the legionaries carry me out in an armored palanquin.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think so. This feels... right.”

        He half-turned, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Which is why you must be ready. When I fall, you will become queen. And for that, you must first go to the oracle.”

        Alana ducked out from under his arm. “But I don’t want to rule.”

        “And you think I did?” Her father laughed sharply. “Nobility is a privilege and a burden, but rarely a choice. Your blood demands it. You are a daughter of kings.”

        “But why do we have to rule at all?” Alana realized she was almost shouting. “Why all this pageantry, and oracles, and royal lines? We’re no different from the sharecroppers of the holdings, save that we never go cold and hungry. Who are we to decide their lives? Let them elect their own leaders.”

        “Like Tyrus?” The king arched an eyebrow. Alana felt herself flush, betrayed once again by her royal blood, but her father didn’t pursue it.

        “You know your history. The Old Ones who lived before the Breaking were a democracy, and you can see what they wrought. A democracy can never stand against the solidarity and efficiency of a worthy monarchy. Ask yourself: when was the last time any of your revolutionary friends agreed on anything? Not ideals, but practical matters.”

        Alana stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

        Her father’s laugh was bigger now, more honest. “I know all about your meetings, Alana. And I approve—it’s important to know your enemies, to understand how they think and to see them for the people they are. That way you’ll never fall into the trap of thinking yourself innately superior. Those who put too much stock in their own noble birth grow complacent and careless. Yet that rag-tag bunch would never be able to protect our lands from the beastmen, or keep the Virginians from resuming their bloody feud. They’re children who resent their parents’ authority, never understanding that it’s that same authority which keeps them safe.”

        He took both her hands and held them in his own callused paws.

        “The people need the monarchy, girl. It grieves me to put this burden on you, but there’s nothing for it. When I die, you must go to the oracle and accept the queenship. And you must not give it away.”

        Alana started to protest, but her father gripped her hard. She was surprised to see tears rolling down his cheeks, running into his beard.

        “Please, Lana,” he said, and the childhood nickname cut her deeper than his weeping. “You must promise. For your mother. And for me.”

        Alana’s head spun. The room was too warm, and her stomach was caught somewhere in her throat. Her hands hurt where her father held them, yet he did not loosen his grip.

        “Promise me,” he said again.

        Alana looked at him, at those eyes so filled with love and pain, and knew she had no choice.

        “I promise.”

        Her father’s smile exploded into being again. He released Alana’s hands and reached out, gathering her to him. Numb, she leaned against his chest and allowed his huge arms to encircle her. She felt his chin come to rest in her hair.

        “You will be a good queen,” he whispered.

* * *

        They buried him in the palace cemetery a week later, with all the ceremony due a wartime king. The undertakers had done their work well, and he almost looked asleep inside the great suit of armor that the castle smiths had returned to its original shape and shine. He lay in the stone sarcophagus with hands folded over the hilt of his sword, covered by the enormous metal shield with its painted royal crest.

        Alana leaned down and tucked a flower—a daffodil—into the gap between breastplate and gardbrace. Then she stood and nodded to the bearers to replace the stone lid. She left the cemetery to the metallic hiss of shovels biting into soft dirt.

        Tyrus was waiting by the gate with the rest of the caravan. His eyes were haggard—it clearly pained him to see her grieving and be unable to go to her, but there were too many observers present. She nodded to him imperiously.

        “All is in readiness?”

        “Yes, m’lady. We await only your order.”

        “Then you have it.” She waved for her horse. A groom appeared at once, her favorite gray mare in tow. Alana mounted in one graceful movement and called, “We ride for the Grove of the Oracle!”

        It was a two-day ride north, stretched into four by the wagons. The first day was through lands familiar to Alana, the beaten dirt cart track cutting through waving yellow fields that fed the capital, peasants kneeling as the royal procession passed. Then the road diverged, and they found themselves on the wide, flat path of the High Way, twisting and weaving between the rolling hills and low crags. The wagons had an easier time on the old road, and in places the dirt and grass had been scoured away by wind and water to reveal the ancient stone of the pre-Breaking roadbed. Alana marveled at the thought of a people so powerful that they could make a perfect sheet of stone stretch off to infinity.

        Throughout the journey, Tyrus prudently kept his distance except for curt reports. As much as Alana longed to run to him, she was happy for the distance. She had not yet spoken to him of her last conversation with the king.

        At one point, on the pretense of showing her the map of their route, Tyrus brought his horse close enough to touch her hand.

        “Soon,” he whispered. “Soon all of this will be behind us.”

        That night, after the caravan made camp, Alana lay in bed and stared up at the canvas roof of her tent.

        Everyone expected her to take the throne. That much was a given, and the point of this whole ridiculous processional. By agreeing to her father’s final wish and promising not to abdicate, however, she had betrayed Tyrus and the rest of the revolutionaries. Yet even if Tyrus and all the others had been there watching, she could not have denied her father that final comfort.

        Worse yet was the fact that both were right. She’d meant everything she’d said to the rebels—blood-right was a terrible way to choose a ruler, and the monarchy was a thankless, terrifying job, one that she wanted no part of. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t deny her father’s point: the squabbling rebels would almost certainly do worse than she would. Without powerful, organized leadership from the palace, who would keep the neighboring nations from descending on the new democracy like vultures? The weight of her conflicting vows ached like a stone in her chest.

        On the morning of the last day, the road turned a final bend and the towers came into view. Even from a distance, they dominated the skyline. By late afternoon the wagons were among them, rolling through the shadows of the giants. Square-sided like mirrored obelisks, each with a footprint the size of the palace grounds, the towers were larger than anything Alana had ever seen. Ivy wound around their feet, while above them were only flat, gleaming expanses of stone and glass. Many of the buildings were broken, ending abruptly in jagged wounds, and through these scars Alana could see the interior structure of hundreds of different floors and compartments, like a termite-rotted log with the bark stripped away.

        Then they were beyond the towers and into the vast central clearing that held the Grove of the Oracle. Riding at the head of the line, Alana looked toward the distant trees—and pulled up so short that her horse whinnied in protest.

        Waving above the tents at the grove’s edge was a standard she knew only from her father’s stories: a blood-red sun on a black field.

        “Beastmen.” Tyrus appeared at her side. “They got here quick.”

        “But we beat them at Harrisburg!” Alana clamped down hard on the reins and tried to keep her voice calm. “The reports called it a full rout. We chased the survivors all the way to the border.”

        Tyrus nodded. “They’re likely here for the same reason we are. This is sacred ground—they will not challenge us. And if they do....” Tyrus loosened his sword in its scabbard.

        They rode across the clearing in a long line, their own white and blue banners snapping behind them in the light breeze. Alana rode in front, as befit one who would be queen, with Tyrus a respectful horse-length behind. At the grove’s edge, a knot of dark figures gathered beneath the Banner of the Burning Sun.

        Alana had never seen a beastman in the flesh. Her childhood had been full of stories of the twisted creatures, but none of those tales had adequately prepared her for the reality.

        They were huge. Despite their hunched frames, weighed down by the massive muscles of their overlong arms, the beastmen were all taller than Tyrus by several hands. Their skin was the boiled angry red of a burn, shot through with lumpy white lines of tumorous scar tissue and freckled with sores that wept clear pus. Their faces were cadaverous, flesh drawn tight over misshapen skulls, and blistered lips failed to completely cover yellow teeth filed to points.

        Alana had always imagined the beastmen as amalgamated monsters, full of wolf parts and snake scales and other recognizable horrors. These were nothing like that. These were corpses.

        As Alana approached, a single beastman detached himself from the crowd and came forward. He was larger than the others and wore only a long, red tabard that left his huge arms bare. His lower jaw protruded far beyond his upper, giving him an especially pugnacious look, yet his black hair was meticulously combed, shot through with braids ending in red beads. A three-fingered hand rested on the hilt of an oversized longsword.

        Alana motioned for Tyrus to hold the caravan’s position, then rode on a few more yards and dismounted. The beastman watched her with interest. When she was safely on the ground, he dropped into a surprisingly elegant bow, one leg behind the other and free hand sweeping outward.

        “The Allied Kingdoms of York greet Your Highness.”

        These creatures had killed her father. The knowledge roared through Alana’s mind like a grass fire, yet she had spent too many years at court to forget her manners. She curtsied. “And the Appalachian Empire returns your greeting.”

        The beastman straightened. His voice was the deep rumble of a falling tree. “You come to seek the oracle’s blessing.”

        “Yes.”

        He nodded. “As did I. My name is Hamal—my own father fell at Harrisburg. I will take his seat on the council.”

        “Congratulations.” It was hardly polite, yet Alana couldn’t quite think of anything more appropriate.

        Hamal didn’t bristle. “Your father was a great warrior,” he said, inclining his head. “As was mine. Our battle hymns will sing of both their deeds for a thousand years.”

        Such pleasantries from a monster. The whole situation was surreal. “Thank you,” Alana said.

        “Of course, it would have been better if their sacrifice could have been avoided. To die in battle is valiant, but to do so in unnecessary conflict is wasteful.”

        That brought Alana around in a hurry. Her face grew hot, and not with embarrassment. “A conflict you started!”

        Hamal nodded, uncowed. “A regretful necessity. We have no love of war, yet the people of York must have access to the Foundry. Our lands are poor—they starve us and mark our flesh. In the end, they claim us all. Yet with properly machined tools—”

        Alana’s patience snapped. Summoning every ounce of her training, she let her voice ring with royal disdain. “I hardly think it’s appropriate to discuss policy so soon after my father’s funeral.”

        Hamal bowed low again, inclining his head with respect. “My apologies, Highness. I had forgotten that your people make such distinctions.” His gaze rose, and cold eyes locked on hers. “In York, every day is a funeral.”

        The beastman straightened and turned back to his people. At his order, they began to dismantle their tents and pack them away. Sensing that the strange audience was at an end, Alana led her own caravan a sensible distance beyond them along the edge of the grove, then gave the order for the bearers to begin setting up the pavilions.

        It was past midnight, with all but the sentries long asleep, when Tyrus came to her in her tent. One moment she was alone, sitting in front of the mirror and brushing mindlessly at her hair for the dozenth time, and then he was behind her in the entryway, the tent flap falling silently closed.

        “Tyrus.”

        “Alana—” he began, but got no farther before she came into his arms and stopped his mouth with hers.

        They made love in the mound of blankets the wagons had brought for her. In the soft light of her tent’s single lantern, Tyrus’s face was illuminated in intervals—now light, now shadow—as they moved together, fingers on each other’s lips to keep from crying out and giving themselves away.

        Afterward they lay curled together, her head in the hollow of his shoulder and breasts pressed tight against the side of his broad, scarred chest. Yet even as the glow of their lovemaking lingered, Alana felt her confliction rising in a dark wave to sweep it away.

        Tyrus sensed her tension. “Are you scared?”

        “No,” Alana answered. Except of losing you. But Tyrus still didn’t know about her promise. She changed the subject. “Would you do it, if you could? Know your death, I mean.”

        Tyrus chuckled. “Not a chance. A soldier needs to be ready to die for his beliefs, and a revolutionary doubly so. The oracle would either make me lazy, knowing I’d survive any battle, or cost me my edge by making me constantly expect defeat.”

        Alana propped herself up on one elbow so she could see his face. “Would you really die for the revolution?”

        Tyrus’s eyes were dark pools. “To see people take control of their own lives? To know my children will be free to rise according to their abilities?” The arm pinned beneath Alana snaked around her shoulders, pulling her to his chest. “I’d die for that in a second. And for you.”

        “I’d die for you, too,” she whispered.

        He squeezed her once more, tightly, and then the two of them simply lay there, her head on his chest, listening to the sounds of the night. After a time, his breathing slowed and deepened, and Alana knew he was asleep.

        She’d told the truth. She would happily die for this man, this idealist who loved her beyond all question. She would give everything she had for him and never look back.

        But could she break a promise?

        Alone once more, Alana pressed her face against her lover’s ribs and hoped that the warmth of her tears wouldn’t wake him.

* * *

        Tyrus was gone by first light, and Alana was dressed and waiting at the forest’s edge by the time the sun cut through the gaps between the eastern towers. The beastmen were gone, and her retainers stood back among the tents, arranged in neat ranks. Only royalty could enter the wood.

        There was movement between the trees. All at once a man stood before her in a brown robe, its heavy cowl shading his face so that only his mouth and chin were visible. His arms were folded into his sleeves.

        “Greetings, Keeper,” Alana said. “I come seeking the knowledge of the oracle.”

        Instead of answering, the man glided forward almost soundlessly, robes swirling across the grass. Closer up, she could see that his eyes were closed beneath the cowl’s overhanging hem. Alana heard a shuffling behind her as soldiers reached for weapons, and she silenced them with a gesture.

        When he was only a foot away, the Keeper paused and raised his hands, bringing them delicately to her face. Thin fingers like spider legs danced across forehead and cheeks, lips and chin. The man smiled.

        “You are of the line of Young-Allen, child of Erick and Mara. The oracle recognizes you, Lady.”

        Understanding dawned, and Alana spoke before she could help herself. “You’re blind.”

        The man’s smile widened, eyes still closed and face serene. “All Keepers are blind, lady. It’s what keeps us from being tempted by our charge, and makes us better servants of destiny.” He took her hand. “Come. The oracle waits.”

        Alana allowed the man to lead her into the grove, marveling at the way he moved gracefully between the great trees despite the lack of a path. At times he would stop and place a hand on a trunk, cocking his head as if listening, and then continue on.

        Soon the trees gave way and they entered a clearing. Overhead, the forest giants arched long branches that formed a cathedral dome and blotted out the midday sun. In the half-light of the clearing’s center stood a small cloth tent, a round-topped pavilion not unlike the one Alana had spent the night in, save that its canvas sides were aged and thick with moss. From inside it, a light glowed.

        “The oracle,” the Keeper intoned. He released Alana’s hand, taking up his folded-arm stance once more.

        “Thank you,” said Alana. When the man made no response, she took a hesitant step toward the tent. Then another.

        Before she could think any more about it, she strode quickly across the clearing. When she reached the tent, she lifted the flap and stepped through.

        Inside, the floor was a slab of smooth stone. The light came from a glowing globe that hung by a cord from the tent’s ceiling many feet overhead.

        Directly beneath it stood the oracle. Alana’s first thought was that it looked like a glass-walled closet, a thin metal frame holding clear rectangular panes. It was barely wide enough to contain a single person, yet the accordion-fold door stood open, beckoning. On its far wall hung a square metal box the size of a legionary’s breastplate, its face etched with the royal seal and broken by two dark mouths.

        Unwilling to lose her momentum, Alana moved into the transparent booth, half expecting the door to slam shut behind her like a hungry beast. Instead, a single red eye winked on in the metal box. She waited.

        Nothing happened.

        “I am Alana Young-Allen,” she intoned, “Princess of the Appalachian Empire. I seek the knowledge of the oracle.”

        Still the red light waited.

        Alana began to feel foolish. For a brief second, she hoped that this was all a hoax—that the great secret behind the rulers of the world was that there was no oracle, no predestined caste called the Dying, only an illusion constructed to maintain royal authority.

        But no—her father’s prediction had been accurate, and she’d seen the truth in his eyes.

        She bent down to study the box more closely. In addition to the Great Seal, there were lesser symbols engraved above the thing’s mouths. Over the smaller one was a picture of a human hand with one finger extended. The larger had yet another picture of a human skull.

        Tentatively, tensing every muscle to keep her hand from shaking, Alana extended her index finger and slid it into the smaller mouth.

        There came a sharp sting, as if from a wasp, and she jerked her hand back. A tiny bead of blood was welling up at the tip of her finger.

        On the box, the light changed from red to amber. The glass-walled chamber filled with a soft whirring noise.

        Alana didn’t notice. She was staring at the drop of blood, her clenched muscles pumping it bigger and brighter as her mind raced.

        She could leave. Right now. It wasn’t too late. She could simply exit the tent and keep walking, convince Tyrus to come with her and start a life somewhere else. Maybe somewhere on the northwestern frontier, deep in the backwater hollows of the Lakelands and far from all empires or monarchies.

        Better yet, she could smash the oracle. Without its predictions, there would truly be no difference between royalty and commoners. The box was small—surely she could rip it from its mounting and slam it against the stone floor until its single eye went out.

        Yet she had promised. She had promised her father that she would take the oracle’s test and accept the queenship. And she had promised Tyrus a revolution.

        Sweet Tyrus. He truly was ready to die for her, and for the idea of democracy, yet he had no idea that those two were now at odds. If she betrayed the revolution—if she betrayed him—would he still love her?

        Her father or Tyrus. The monarchy or the revolution. No matter what she chose, she would betray one of them.

        Her legs felt weak. She leaned forward until her forehead rested against the cool metal of the box. The engraved seal pressed against her skin, and she increased the pressure until her forehead went numb, as if she might imprint it there permanently, that the whole world might see the burden she carried. Her vision blurred and ran.

        It wasn’t fair. It was wrong to make her choose like this, between the love of a daughter and the love of a woman.

        The light on the box turned green. With the smallest of sounds, a slip of paper slid out into the wider slot.

        Alana stared down at it. The paper jutted slightly from its receptacle, inches from her face.

        With her unbloodied hand, Alana reached out and picked it up. Her fingers fumbled numbly as she turned it over.

        There was the seal, just as it had been on her father’s prediction. And printed next to it, in the same inhumanly precise letters, were three words:

        BEHEADED BY PEASANTS

        For a time, Alana did not move, nor breathe.

        Then, slowly, she began to smile.

        The oracle’s light winked off, but already the box was slipping from Alana’s attention. Sliding the printed paper into the pocket of her dress, she stepped out of the glass box and made her way to the tent flap.

        Outside, the clearing was empty, the Keeper nowhere to be seen. That was no matter—imbued with her new sense of purpose, Alana had no doubt that she could find her way back. At the clearing’s edge, she paused momentarily to look back at the little tent. She kissed her fingers and raised a hand toward it—a farewell, and thanks. Then she stepped into the trees. Inside her pocket, a sweaty hand clutched at the prediction.

        It was so simple. She had promised a revolution, and there would still be one—sooner rather than later, if Omar and Rhena had their way. But the rebellion was still young and unformed, too reliant on ideals and rhetoric. It needed to mature, to organize, to be tested and fire-hardened. Like any children, the rebels needed something to push against in order to learn. A common enemy to unify them.

        Alana could give them that enemy. And in the meantime, she would keep her word to her father, preparing the people of the empire to stand on their own.

        Tyrus wouldn’t like it, but he would understand. Running away together had never really been an option. The acknowledgment hurt, yet it was a good pain, the burden of choice lifting off of her. This was what it meant to be of the Dying: to see your path, and to walk it anyway. She and Tyrus had both sworn they’d sacrifice for the cause—this was just a different type of sacrifice. The freedom they both championed couldn’t be given, only won.

        When the people were ready, they would rise. And Alana would be there on the gallows to meet them.

        The trees opened up. Before her, the colorful tents with their waving pennants spread out across the field, backstopped by the distant sentinels of the towers and the wider world beyond. As dictated by tradition, the entire caravan was waiting for her.

        At the front of the assembly stood Tyrus. As she emerged from the grove, he stepped forward to meet her. “Your Highness! On behalf of the Appalachian Empire, I hereby—”

        Alana silenced him with a kiss. For once caught completely off guard, he tensed, arms flapping awkwardly at his sides. Just as he began to relax and surrender to the impropriety, she broke off and pulled back to meet his eyes.

        “Do you trust me? No matter what?”

        Flushed and flustered, he said, “You know I do.”

        “Would you die with me?”

        Eyes wide with alarm. “Of course. But—”

        “Good,” she said, and stopped any further words with another kiss. “Remember that.”

        Before he could say anything else, she turned and moved toward her people. A makeshift stage had been erected, complete with a podium.

        Strange how the stages for coronations and executions looked so similar. From atop it, Alana could see the entire assembly. Looking out over that sea of faces, some rapturous, others guarded and secretly resentful, she knew that the oracle had been right. Abdication wasn’t a revolution. The people needed to take power for themselves, and that meant playing her part.

        She would be a queen. For as long as she had to.

        Back straight, head high, Alana stepped to the podium and addressed her subjects.

Copyright © 2013 James L. Sutter

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

James L. Sutter's short stories have appeared in such venues as Catastrophia (PS Publishing), Apex Magazine, Black Gate, and the anthology Machine of Death. He is the author of the novel Death's Heretic and the editor of the anthology Before They Were Giants: First Works From Science Fiction Greats. He works as Paizo’s Fiction Editor as well as one of the RPG developers. Aside from writing, he has toured modestly with several bands and musical projects, including the now-defunct hardcore metal band Shadow at Morning. For a complete list of his musical, literary, or gaming projects, please visit his website at www.jameslsutter.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE CRIMSON KESTREL

by Leslianne Wilder

        L’Echelle, the city of balconies and roses, echoed down the canyons of her architecture with the music of imperial revelry. In the topmost level, on storeys of glass as thick as a kneeling gendarme, the magnificent noble creatures of the Diamond Emperor’s court swirled and bubbled in dances like a champagne overflow made of velvet, silk, and good breeding. They clinked their glasses to their own station, delivered practiced remarks on the indistinct misfortune below, and knew that to the groundlings they looked as angels, apathetic and untouchable among the stars.

        Mademoiselle Ivette du Brielle, who had developed a habit of closer scrutiny, viewed the world below quite differently.

        Between the damask tablecloths pillaged from distant conquered lands and the spray of hothouse chrysanthemums, Ivette counted three men running down the Rue Boucher, visible through the lattice of bridges and balconies; two large brutes in pursuit of a smaller third.

        She excused herself au couche, pleading to the minor lord who had been boring her that she was dazzled to exhaustion by his recounting of an unsuccessful hunt. He smiled indulgently and moved off in search of another unfortunate.

        Ivette hurried to one of the lower balconied bedrooms and rammed an ornate mahogany chair below the doorknob. She pulled the pins from her talcum wig and searched out the quick-release clasp where her buttress was fastened. Her mountain of skirts fell away, and their pocket and petticoat undersides revealed her arsenal: the red silk mask with its falcon patterns, cut open back so her brown curls could flow free; the grappling hooks, rope, and launching mechanisms; the spider climbing-legs her tailor, mentor, and conspirator had somehow liberated from the guardian constructs that patrolled the walls; five fist-sized flash pots that would burn on exposure to air; a buckler that doubled as a fashionable bit of mid-line accent on her corset;  and the delicate epee and dagger she had lashed to her upper thighs, which she had taken to calling Monsieur Menace and Mademoiselle Surprise, respectively. Fashions this year had left her room to arm a platoon if the need arose, and she and her mentor had refined her skirts into the perfect carrying system. She could not sit, but really, who but old dowagers and incurable bores ever sat at an imperial fête?

        Ivette knotted the silk rope onto the balcony, below the glass floor overhead and a dozen storeys above the street, and clamped the rappelling device tight into her belt. If she got a good swing from this height and cleared the cross-bridge at forty feet, she could put herself down near the last covered alley before the river in time to put the two bruisers down before too much harm was done. Or exact vengeance, she supposed, which hardly made for as storied an exploit, but what could one do?

        She twisted out over the railing, taut against the rope, her toes pointed like a ballerina. It was a funny thing how the same dance twice at a party bored her, but even the hundredth time, this lean-out over elegant suicide sent her heart up into her throat. She had to move fast, before the spider constructs that patrolled the walls noticed the rope. Those diamond-fanged guardians patrolled the walls for ladders, grappling hooks, or any other ambitious mechanisms of ascension, and the playhouses were full of the tragedies of noble lovers who had lost their lives attempting to dangle below their station. The constructs knew only to cut.  

        But Ivette was not going for anything so maudlin as love. She hunted the headier prize of unparalleled thrill.

        She pushed off the balcony and the rope screamed through the gears of her rappelling harness. She pointed herself like an arrow and swung into the canyon of the streets. It was glorious. A passing priest on the cross bridge threw himself to the cobbles as she swooped through the space where his head had been two steps before. She blew a kiss as she passed. He needn’t have worried. She was far more elegant than that.

        The ground rushed up toward her and she squeezed the mechanisms on her belt. Time distended itself as her fall slowed vertically but not horizontally, and she hit the black sponge of the unpaved street running, her epee in her hand before she skidded to a halt outside the alleyway. Her quarry was still in sight, not yet lost in the maze of make-shift shanty towns under the struts and braces of the city. Instead, the two toughs had backed their prey into a corner between load-bearing walls. Efficient for them, and lucky for her.

        “Brigands!” she yelled, a practiced depth disguising her coquette’s voice though not her noble accent. “Did you think you could rob and murder under the watchful eyes of the Crimson Kestrel?”

        Chittering whispers sounded above, as peasants and low merchants recognized the name and gathered under the eves and on the rope bridges, ready for a show. Ivette kept her eyes on the movements of the two thugs, but she doffed her cap with a free hand and waved it to the applause of the people.

        Her quarry turned, indeed bruisers both of them, thick-limbed and looking as strong as pachyderms. Tramplers in a fight too, she wagered, fast enough for a good rush, but she could tell by the way they waddled on those load-column ankles that they lacked the speed to turn or dodge. Not that it would matter terribly in the tight corridor of the alley.

        But the crowd above were not the only ones who knew her reputation. The two brutes’ unshaven jaws clenched and they glanced between each other. It was getting now so that many of the ruffians panicked and broke instantly at the presence of le Eschell’s avenging angel. The smaller, third man cowered back against the wall. She offered up the predatory smile of a lady who has caught her rival in last autumn’s fashion.

        “Surely you miscreants aren’t thinking you’ll run away and deny me the satisfaction of thrashing you, since I’ve come all this way?” She waved Monsieur Menace in a casual arc.

        For the length of a lover’s gaze it seemed like they would stumble a retreat, but the closer man lowered his head with a roar and barreled toward her. Tramplers, she’d known it. She was out of his way and pressed fast against the wall when the second one started his run. That one, she was ready for. She slid back quick as a cat, dropped to crouch and kicked hard against his ankle, where her mentor had showed her. His leg caved with a satisfying crunch, and his pinwheeling arms did not stop his face from smashing against the wall where she had been.

        Ivette danced out of his crash with a satisfied flourish as the first charger bellowed and turned back to her. His fists pistoned the air around her dodges, and she slapped the thin flat of her epee against his forearms, drawing welts and stinging lines of blood. She tapped a K and the beginning of an E into his arm. Why had the cow of a man not quit yet? She would rather not have to kill him.

        She looked into his face and caught an ugly, intelligent grin. He threw another punch, wider than the others, and she dodged it only to realize too late that his target was not her head, but her hair. He wrapped his fingers in it and yanked her down, hard, bringing her down on one exquisite red knee. She hoisted Menace toward the arm, sharp end this time, no more playing, but she was off balance and too close, and he caught her small hand in the expanse of his. Her tailor had warned her time and again about the hair, had even demonstrated the hold, but Ivette had refused to let sense trump good fashion.

        And she had made the deadly mistake of underestimating an opponent.

        “That enough of a game for you, girlie?” the big man growled. His breath stank of old meat. Behind her, the second thug groaned up to a semi-crouch, clutching his bleeding face. In seconds, they could kill her, or worse.

        This was why she called the dagger in her boot Mademoiselle Surprise. In one red flash she pulled it with her free hand and drove it into the wrist that gripped her sword. The man holding her let go and staggered back at the free and swinging blade. She pulled the dagger back and threw it hard into the arm of the man struggling to rise. He rolled away with a howl. In truth it would not be enough to stop him if he put his mind to beating her, big as he was, but it was enough to make him fear her, and he was fleeing as she put her epee’s point under the chin of the man who’d held her hair.

        “You have three seconds to make the smart choice,” she growled. She could hear the silence as the bloodthirsty crowd held their breath. The bandit made a choking sound.

        “Three.”

        Ivette could no longer hear the footfalls of his running accomplice. The man swallowed, and the sword point drew a wet ruby from his adam’s apple.

        “Two,” she said, but he had already turned and fled.

        The crowd cheered and whistled. Someone threw anemic little underflowers to her and she blew an indiscreet kiss. She’d have to replace her dagger, but by the time the story reached the Imperial Court, it would probably be a gang of a dozen that the Crimson Kestrel had taken down. She pried herself from her public to inspect whoever she happened to have rescued.

        Her heart stopped in her chest.

        The denizens of the lower levels always had a patina of mud and detritus, and the foreign and colonial merchants were little better, their film of grime compounded by their distasteful bourgeois ambitiousness. This man was immaculate; doe-brown hair finely trimmed and coiffed, wearing a delicate perfume of roses, wine, and something else subtle, unnamable and intriguing. The smooth angle of his jaw suggested he could have grown a beard but elected to keep his face so smooth it must feel like silk, and she found her hand twitching to confirm with a touch. His dark green clothes were not ostentatious, but any well-bred eye could apprehend the skill in every stitch. He wore a signet ring and a gold chain at his throat. It was no surprise his pursuers had come after him, but they must not have truly understood what they were chasing. His eyes were the wide, sweet, extravagant brown of imported chocolate, and his lips....

        Ivette realized she was staring and raised a hasty hand to check her mask.

        “This is hardly the place for... one such as you.” She felt her hips swing a bit more than necessary as she stepped toward him. She did not sheathe her epee.

        “Nor one such as you, mademoiselle.” She could see his hands shake, but his voice sounded smooth and elegant as smoke, the way cultured men were meant to sound. “But I am lost in a strange place, and you seem to know your way... intimately.”

        Ivette pointed Monsieur Menace at his chest and thrilled at the way his eyes widened as he stepped back.

        “I have three demands,” she said.

        The stranger bowed, as one courtier to another, no less schooled and subtle than she had expected. “I am clearly at your mercy.”

        “As a lady in the presence of a man of breeding,” she said, loud enough to provoke jeers from above. “I demand suitable flattery.”

        His delicious lips fell open in confusion. “I....” He frowned, and the shift from a private demeanor to an actor on a stage seemed to cost him verbal footing.

        She gave her head a coquette’s tilt as she rolled the point of her sword over his heart. “Really, monsieur, I begin to feel most neglected. At this rate I shall soon decide you don’t like me at all.”

        “Hardly possible!” he replied, and this time his bow was sweeping as any harlequin’s. Did he dabble in playcraft as well? “I can honestly say, of all those who have ever threatened me with death, yours is by far the hand I would least like to die by.”

        “That’s not much of a compliment.” Ivette let her weapon sag slightly in disappointment.

        “Mademoiselle, if I die here, even the gardens of heaven will seem a wasteland for knowing how long I must wait to see you again.”

        For a moment she had no rejoinder and did not move except to draw a fluttering breath. The groundlings cheered encouragement and his smile widened, like a fencer gloating over a clean hit.

        “You had two more demands?” he whispered, leaning in slightly.

        Ivette flicked her epee up, caught the fold of his kerchief and launched it into the air like a silk butterfly. She plucked it from the air in a single graceful movement that brought her half a step closer. “As your rescuer, I’d say I’m entitled to a token of your favor.”

        “Of course.” He licked his lips and pursed them slightly, as if in anticipation. Cheeky bastard, Ivette thought. “And... the third?”

        She stepped closer. The air around him smelled like roses. “As the person with the sword,” she purred, “I’ll be taking your jewelry.”

        He staggered in surprise, the groundlings cackled, and Ivette felt her mask digging into the edges of her grin. “That’s what you get for presuming,” she whispered. He gave her a small shake of the head and a smile that looked impressed as he denuded himself of the gold chain and ring, his fingers brushing hers as he dropped them into her hand. She would look at his signet later, when she could do it less obviously. He was close enough to rush her, if he chose, but she did not think he would. She could not deny, however, the way the thought of the weight of his body pushing her back against the wall made her pulse quicken. She stepped back and swept her sword at the crowd in something like salute.

        “Take this man to the stair gate on Rue Vanite and present him to the guards,” she said. “Do not mistreat him. He is under my protection.” She dropped her voice and whispered sincerely, “can you make it yourself from here?”

        “Odd question from a robber,” he said, but there was no sting in it. His perfect mouth had posed up into a wry grin she suspected served him well with the ladies.

        “It was a dance. Who can wish ill to someone they’ve twirled with?”

        He dipped his head in acknowledgment, and she kissed the air in his direction. “Welcome to L’Echelle,” she said, and threw down a flash pot. She set off at a practiced run, scooping up her rope from where it had fallen, the end cut smooth by the patrolling constructs above. They never wasted much time. She ducked into an alleyway and listened for the sounds of pursuit in the chaos. No one seemed to be following, but she could hear the sounds of several of the low folk helping the young man to the stair gate, where he could make his case to the guards that he should be somewhere safer, cleaner, and more stylish. She flipped the ring up in her finger. Du Lambert; noble, but unfortunate. Still, it meant she would likely see him again.

        She pushed her way through the twist of trash-strewn alleys to one of the chimney passages, nestled behind an abandoned church. These holes, smooth by design, slick with the moisture and smoke of a human city, and full of overhangs and sharp curves, were, despite intuition, the best way up. Ivette opened a bag and drew forth the best of her tools: three modified spider constructs of the kind that guarded the outer walls, fitted with straps for both her hands and one of her knees. She had no idea how her mentor had secured them, but she would have been lost without them.

        As soon as she touched the wall they secured, as if hooked into invisible cracks, and began to mindlessly ascend, propelling her back to where she belonged—to a white powdered wig and jealous soiree guests who would be sure to remark on her fashionably long absence.

* * *

        The old tailor woman turned the ring over in her long fingers, and the wrinkles around her mouth deepened in a frown. Ivette tapped her foot.

        “It’s a fake,” the old woman said.

        “Surely not!” Ivette’s turn was sharp enough to dislodge the rainbow samples of silk pinned to her petticoats. “Old Madame du Lambert acknowledged him as her nephew from Des Forets—she’s even throwing a party in his honor! And it must be him, for he’s recounting the whole affair quite accurately.”

        The tailor sniffed. “I’d heard the words ‘exquisite red angel of vengeance’ were used.”

        “That’s accurate!”

        The woman gave her a severe look. “I also heard they grabbed your hair.”

        Ivette hunched her shoulders and declined to answer. The tailor tossed her back the ring.

        “It’s a fake. Shoddy etching, and all the du Lambert rings have an interior divot to guard against forgeries. This does not. His story is probably more credible with it stolen. Think, girl.” She tapped her chin, seeming to talk to herself as much as Ivette. “Du Lambert rarely leaves L’Echelle, and this ‘nephew’ of hers is a young man. An imposter would have only to bear a passing resemblance to some gangly child she ignored at a sister’s garden party years ago.”

        Ivette stewed. Her tailor was right of course, but it galled her that the woman should take such liberties in speaking to someone so far above her station. But then again, this was the woman who had taught her to use a sword, to swing through the sky, to read the muscles in an opponent’s stance; who knew her secrets and furnished her her tools. Ivette would have had none of it without her. “Why impersonate a du Lambert at all?” she said, giving in and breaking the silence. “It’s well known Madame has run through all her money, and she’s getting too old to seduce anyone to pay for her ghastly party gowns.”

        The tailor tapped her teeth. “She must have something he wants.”

        “What possible thing?” Ivette attempted to look as petulant as possible, but it was hard not to feel a thrill at the mystery of it.

        “I suppose that’s what we must learn. All we know now is he is a liar and a cheat. Possibly even a danger to the Imperium itself—”

        “He’s not!” Ivette retorted, with more passion behind the words than she’d intended. The tailor looked at her and she shook her head. “A liar and a cheat, maybe, but I am certain he is not so vile as to threaten the Empire. I cannot imagine him engaging in rebellion, or sedition, or....”

        The old tailor picked up her shears and spun them like scimitars, and not for the first time, Ivette wondered who she was, really. How many secrets about the rings of noble houses and the workings of guardian constructs did she possess? Why had she mapped out the chimneys and taken an apprentice noble girl? Was she one of the Imperium’s secret agents? An old privateer gone into hiding? Was she, despite her cultured poise and her knowledge of the noble houses, from somewhere outside the Diamond realm?

        The tailor gave her a warm smile as she chalked out the lines for a skirt for du Lambert’s ball, and one part of Ivette’s soul warmed as if her grandmother had brought her a warm plate of petite chou. A smaller part reminded her she had entered into a bargain with this strange woman, and nothing had been asked in return... yet.

        The metal arms of the old woman’s scissors closed around the thick red fabric, leaving one half neatly severed from the other. “My dear,” she said, with a grin full of teeth that seemed sharp in the candle light, “you’re going to look ravishing.”

* * *

        The du Lambert emblem was the blue hyacinth, so Ivette came in imperial rose red. The fête, such as it was, was cramped and wretched, the estate’s larger ballroom having fallen into disrepair beyond Madame’s financial means to rectify. The smaller ballroom opened to a wide balcony vista of the honeycomb of petty nobility estates below the Emperor’s storey; as much a shaded porch as a true hall.

        Du Lambert’s aging intimates composed the bulk of the guests—old men of the trade companies with gold canes, and generals of the last war stooped under the weight of pressed uniforms and fading medals so that they shambled like peasants under a heavy yoke. Ivette danced with a few of these out of pity— General Troussard in particular, with his clouded eyes and his embarrassing gratitude at her touch. What few young people du Lambert had managed to draw in were low bores, dutiful grandchildren, and total society unknowns, with two gentleman even having come in suits with black mink collars that looked like they had been locked in a trunk since before the Croviata embargo—unpatriotic, and worse, unfashionable in the extreme.

        Her quarry was now late well beyond the indulgence of style, though du Lambert herself was mercifully absent as well. To tide her guests, she had hired patisseries, jugglers, magicians, and poets to entertain the crowd. Ivette received a villanelle comparing her to the red gardens of pagan gods, wilderness and divinity barely contained by walls or dresses. The poet wrote it on a slip of paper which the magician, without touching her, made appear from the curls of her wig. Much as Ivette hated to credit du Lambert with anything, her stalling entertained far better than her presence.

        It was not to last. Ivette flinched as the crowd went silent and du Lambert appeared at the head of the steps in a powder blue confection of ribbons and frills that would have stretched good taste on a debutante at her first presentation, never mind a lady of du Lambert’s advanced years. The makeup meant to make her look untouched gave the pallor of a drowned woman, and her breasts were buttressed up so high as to lie flat like a shelf of flesh. Surely she must know better, Ivette thought. The august noble ladies of the Imperium were formidable as sharks in their own right, snapping up what beautiful men they pleased through practiced wit, experience, and position. None of them sank to such grotesque parodies of youth.

        Still, the old men muscled themselves to attention, trying to be young soldiers for this woman who was trying to be a young maiden.

        Ivette retreated from the spectacle to a table full of strawberries dipped in white chocolate to hide that they were past their prime.

        “It’s hard to let go of,” said a smooth voice behind her. She whirled and came face to face with the ‘nephew’. How had he gotten so close without alerting her? A man who could do that should not have been at the mercy of back-alley thieves. He raised a champagne flute to his lips and smiled. “Their youth, I mean. Can you blame them for wanting it back.”

        Ivette thrust out her chin. Was this pretender trying to call her out on her moral status? “I’m a noble lady of the Imperium, monsieur,” she said, turning as if his presence barely held her attention. “I think you’ll find I can blame as I like.”

        “And do quite any number of things you like as well, I assume.” His dress coat and his smile were both of a perfect cut. His voice was a whisper, not for the stage now, just for her. He held out a hand. “Will you dance, Mademoiselle?”

        “Monseuir, I would be enchanted.” She took his hand and let him lead her out. He twirled her at the edge of the balcony, by banks of potted hyacinth, over the killing drop. His steps were light and purposeful; his movements had the grace of hard training. A soldier? A spy? One of his warm hands cradled hers as the other crept into the valley between her skirts and her corset. She parted from him as the dance demanded, but always they came together and her heart quickened. She turned her face away as if watching the shambling crowd and tried to affect an air of cultured disdain. Old Troussard was gone at least, the poor thing.

        “You don’t seem as impressed with me as I am with you,” he whispered, his hand drifting rather more boldly than was proper and dangerously close to her skirt’s quick-release. She clucked her tongue at him.

        “It’s only that I find it frightfully crass when people presume things to which they have no claim.” She gestured around the room with a slight nod to their host. “Ages, fashions... names.” She gave him a knowing smile, enjoying both the dances. Let him try to make excuses here, in a crowded room. Let him try to guess how she knew.

        His grin was sharp and fine as a knife. He brushed his lips close to her ear and added: “...jewelry.”

        For a moment she wondered what he was talking about, then the realization hit her like upward rushing ground. He drew up into a proper dancing stance and twirled her again, his manner betraying nothing but the joy of a delighted party guest. His eyes were keen and perfect, his body warm and graceful.

        “I’d like my ring back, my little bird of prey. I don’t think you’d enjoy explaining to the party why you have it.”

         Ivette felt as if she were dangling over the balcony again, this man and his arms around her more dangerous than any drop. It felt glorious. No masque had ever been this thrilling. She affected a laugh no less joyous than his.

        “You have me at a disadvantage! You know who I am, but I haven’t even so much as your name.”

        His eyes scanned the fête and he danced her toward a less populated alcove. “Of course you have it. Alexandre du Lambert. This party is in my honor.”

        “No, no, my dear sir, I mean your rea-mph!”

        His lips were over hers before she finished the word; a warm, delicious indignity. Her plays at pushing him away were more show than force, as well as a fine excuse to have her hands against his chest. His lips, soft as she had imagined, tasted of strawberries and champagne. The kiss obliterated all that had come before, and when he broke for breath and explanation she almost pulled him back down into it.

        “Listen,” he whispered, close and urgent, all seriousness now and none the play that had captivated her before. “You can scream or slap me if you want propriety, but please, it’s important and I’m begging of you, on my soul and your loyalty to the Emperor, say nothing of it, if only for tonight.”

        She her eyes were on his lips, and it took a few seconds before his words penetrated the warmth in her face. Loyalty to the Emperor? Was he a spy? It explained the ruse, but what could old Madame du Lambert have worth investigating? And why the lie of being her relation?

        Think, girl, the tailor had said, but thinking was hard now, with his lips so close and murmuring pleas.

        Then in a moment his posture shifted, suddenly nervous, his shoulders dipped in worry. When Ivette followed his eyes, Madame du Lambert in all her hideous childlike frills was nowhere in the crowd.

        “I have to go,” he whispered. “I’m unspeakably sorry.”

        “Alexander” bowed a hasty apology and pulled himself away without another word. A few of the dutiful granddaughters tittered at her behind their fans, and one elderly maven gave her a disgusted look in between dance steps with a much younger colonel.

        Ivette fumed. There was no way to follow him with any dignity after his kiss and departure, and wherever he had gone, it surely had to do with the matter at hand. She felt the weight of her blades below her skirts and flounced in the other direction, playing the spurned paramour. If she hurried, she was sure she could find him from the outside.

* * *

        “Alexandre” had left the party when he’d noticed du Lambert gone, and so Ivette headed first to the old woman’s personal balcony, sliding as easy as a slow waltz under the great terrace of the ballroom with the help of her spider leg apparatuses. She tensed when the cutter constructs scuttled by, scissor mouths poised to defend the integrity of the upper levels, but she had come across them before, and as long as she wore the husks of their brethren on her hands and knee, they seemed to accept her as one of their own.

        Madame’s bedroom suite was below the ballroom and out of the view of the guests, a common arrangement that let the host and any special guest slip away for privacy without giving up the free air of the vertical streets. Ivette unlatched one hand from the construct and drew her epee, moving as close as she dared to the balcony doors.

        Immediately, she regretted the choice. Madame du Lambert reclined on a couch in the suite, exercising her questionable wiles on the old General Troussard. He shook and fawned, and she giggled like a girl of ten.

        “Oh my big strong buck, my war hero,” Madame cooed, and Ivette turned away before she could reveal herself with an unladylike gag, but Madame’s next words brought her back. “Were you able to lay hands on it? Did you bring it to me?”

        Ivette held herself still above the side windows, beside a spray of bright wisteria. She could see them in profile, and the general looked pained and shrunken as he reached below the curtain of medals that granted him access to the troves of treasure he had won expanding the Empire. He drew out a cut diamond so large it seemed his old hands held a lantern full of unmitigated starlight.

        The Reve d’Eternite; the centerpiece of the Imperial collection. She had seen it before, at palace fêtes, always guarded and behind glass. It was worth more than all of du Lambert’s estates and hers combined.

        What could du Lambert have that would interest an Imperial agent indeed? Her fingers tightened around the hilt of Menace.

        From somewhere near her window, a door burst open. Had “Alexandre” begun his arrest without her? Ivette ducked her head back and listened as two heavy boot treads passed her. No, not him. She spied back through the glass. It was the two young men in the old, unfashionable mink.

        No, she realized, looking closer at the coats, not old. No wear, none of the lines of long storage. The coats were an old design but newly made, with embargoed furs, and she could see the faint lines of long, curved knives underneath—those of the Croviata Regent guard.

        Ivette circled the window, gaining the high ground for a charge. To steal the Emperor’s treasure was one thing, but to sell it to the Empire’s enemies? There could be no forgiving it.

        The old general made a strangled noise and brandished a chair at the closer of the two men, while du Lambert retreated behind the other with the gem clutched in her powdered claws. In a movement so quick and casual it looked like he was swatting a fly, the Croviat splintered the chair with one fist and slammed the other through poor Troussard’s blinking face. The general’s medals jangled like bells out of tune as he plowed backwards, skull-first into the carved cherubs of du Lambert’s bed post. Ivette did not think the cracking sound came from the wood. Du Lambert gave a little cry, but she righted herself and placed her hand on the arm of the Croviat screening her.

        “I truly am sorry, my Love,” she said to Troussard, and almost sounded it. “But I’m going to live like an Empress.”

        Ivette could not tell if the old man shuddered from weeping, or if it was only the throes of an ignominious death. She kissed Menace’s hilt and promised make them pay for it. The old general was guilty only of theft and love. He’d never intended treason.

        And yet. These were not alley thugs she could thrash without breaking a sweat. These were a trained military elite. Professional killers. Men who could break her like a naïve  heart.

        One of the Croviata was dragging something from a corner of the room that Ivette could not see—probably a chest heavy with du Lambert’s blood money. Ivette measured the stance of the other one, calculating if she could take him out by surprise before the two of them could get around either side of her; then all at once she noticed a crack in the far door that had not been there before.

        “Alexandre” caught her eyes and gave her a wink as he drew his sword and threw the door open.

        “I think not, du Lambert!” His voice and sword were both steady and steel.

        Idiot! Ivette thought, but at the same time she wanted to bury him in kisses as if he were the hero of some foolish opera. All eyes turned on him, and du Lambert’s Croviat drew his crescent moon knives and advanced. So much for catching that one by surprise. “Alexandre” parried the first of the man’s crushing blows, but it knocked him back. Ivette did not think he could survive many more, and the other Croviat had drawn his weapons as well and was advancing from the side.

        Ivette kicked off the wall and let the force of the spin around the tether of her remaining spider glove send her crashing through the window. The construct claws on her knee caught du Lambert in the back of her atrocious gown amid the shower of glass, and the old woman crumpled, crying out. Underneath her, the Reve d’Eternite skittered across the marble floor, followed quickly by two of Ivette’s flash pots.

        “Eyes!” she barked, and “Alexandre” threw his arm up in time to shield himself. Neither of the Croviata did. From around the corners of her gloves, Ivette caught a squinting glimpse of the flash of light cut and magnified by the enormous diamond in burning rainbows on the bedchamber walls.

        She did not wait for the closer Croviat to recover but laid into him from behind, knowing she would not get a second chance. Even dazed and half-blind, he was almost fast enough to avoid Menace cutting a canyon into the flesh of his arm. His rejoinding elbow in the close quarters sent her staggering, breathless, backwards into an armoire full of ghastly hosiery. She gulped for air and brought Monsieur Menace up just in time to slow his thick knife enough to dodge. She thought she saw “Alexandre” start toward her, concern on his face, before the other Croviat cut him off from view.

        Somewhere on the edge of the chaos, du Lambert was blubbering about plans and wastes.

        Ivette fought her lungs back into functioning as she dodged blows that left hand-deep gouges in Madame’s furniture. The Croviat’s bleeding arm slowed him down, but he was still able to drive her away from the middle of the room. She bent for Mademoiselle Surprise; his arm came up in a swipe that took away a red sliver of her hat and sent her dancing back into a corner flanked by disturbingly coquettish portraits of Madame.

        No, this would not do. She was faster on her feet, but he had the reach, even with the length of her epee. She needed freedom to move, and the cluttered bedroom was not the place.

        And if need be, with the spider legs still raking at the air on her knee, she was almost certainly more dexterous on the walls. She jabbed in hard and reckless with Monsieur Menace and feigned terrified surprise as the Croviat batted her aside toward the balcony. His eyes compressed with murderous intent, and the predation in his grin leeched away the thrill of combat. Her trained rational self knew intimidation was only another tactic, an attack not on her body but on her mind, but her instinct thrashed to run, screamed that death was the least of the things the lumbering tough could inflict on her.

        She fought it down and raised her sword to block, letting him push her back toward the balcony rail and the plummet beyond. There was nothing in her vision now but him and the bleeding swings of his blade.

        From behind him, she heard du Lambert cry out and the sickening, choking sound of blood spilling across the floor, bubbling up as from a cut throat. The old woman wept. It was the sound of someone dying.

        And with that all the thought went out of her fight. The quailing inside of her became something more visceral, more powerful than fear. That these pretenders, traitors, and foreigners could come into the heart of everything elevated and beautiful; that they could pluck the crowning star of the Emperor’s treasure; that they could seduce and befuddle old heroes; that they could take the romance of her escapades and turn them into pain and danger; and worst of all that they could destroy so perfect a work of living art as the man pretending to be Alexandre du Lambert. It was a travesty beyond the bounds of reason, and one that demanded an answer in steel.

        Her swings were wild in truth now but with all the force of her body behind them. The Croviat’s eyes widened and he fell back as she railed into him with the steel needle of Menace. He regained his footing and shoved back at her, the long curve of his knife reaping the lace at her neck and leaving a long, shallow cut across her cheek and into the fabric of her mask.

        There was no going back to the party now.

        The Croviat pressed her, stronger, bigger, kept at bay only by her fury and her speed in a balcony space that was quickly running out.

        “Kestrel!” came a voice behind the Croviat. “Duck!”

        Ivette hit the floor.

        “Alexandre”, his face covered in blood, barreled full force into her attacker. The Croviat stumbled across her back, his arms outstretched like useless wings, and pitched over the shallow railing, “Alexandre” still on his back, wisteria and hyacinth blossoms spraying like fireworks above the chasm of the street.

        The Croviat’s thick fingers flailed at the balustrades before he caught a bloody hold. Ivette snapped herself up to the rail and finally breathed again as she saw “Alexandre” below, dangling with his feet over the drop and his arms around a bit of decorative flourish carved in the face of a beautiful lady of the court.

        All along the wall, there was a sudden silence as the guardian constructs, like great clockwork spiders, honed in with mindless mechanical determination on the two intruders climbing above their station.

        “Hold on!” Ivette cried down to him, her fingers working the grappling mechanism as fast as she ever had. “I’m coming for you.”

        The Croviat hauled himself up and got his elbow around the balustrade. He reached a hand up to Madame’s balcony rail.

        It was him that the constructs reached first.

        Cutting fangs as sharp as diamonds bit into the fingers that held the railing, and Ivette turned her face away from the pops of blood and the crunch of small hand bones. The man slid away, slick, and screaming out in his native tongue, his voice echoing blasphemies up the tall indifferent walls of the city of roses and balconies for what seemed like an eternity before the hard and inevitable silence.

        She secured her rope against the statuary above the door. Half of the spiders turned toward it, and the other half to “Alexandre” struggling below. She had no time.

        She leapt from the balcony, the rope burning her fingers as she juttered to a fast stop with her back to him. “Hold on to me!” she snapped. “Do it now.”

        One arm went around her neck, the other about her waist, and his head was buried in her shoulder when she felt them cut the rope.

        But by then, she had the gloves on.

        The free-fall drop, suspended from nothing, sent her heart up into her throat. His muscles tightened around her, warm, desperate, full of trust. She put out her hands, and the claws, meant only to carry one person from a state of standing, screeched and screamed in protest as they gouged the marble sides of the chasm. Her shoulders felt like fine fabric stretched to tearing, and the jolt of slowing knocked them both hard into the walls.

        But it worked, and by the time they had fallen to one of the middle levels they were moving down at a pace such that she could direct them onto a darkened balcony. “Alexandre’s” feet touched the tiles first, and the arms that had clung to her for life turned into gallant support as she slumped, arms burning. She turned her head and caught him in a long, deep kiss that held no reservation or propriety.

        When she finally pulled away, his look was one of wonder and surprise that seemed the most genuine thing she had ever seen in all her years among the poised and practiced darlings of the court.

        “Thank you,” he said, as he helped her to her feet, though she could not say if it was for the kiss or for saving his life. She supposed it didn’t matter.

        “It is a patriot’s greatest pleasure to assist an agent of the Emperor,” she returned, setting her chin as became a woman of the aristocracy. Her knees were still weak under her, her arms quivering from the shock of the fall, but she was a lady, and she knew how to look like one, under any circumstances.

        “Agent....” He looked, for the briefest moment, confused. Then he laughed. His smile was a work of art. “Yes,” he said after a moment, reaching into his breast pocket, “about that.”

        Between his soft fingers, the Reve d’Eternite sparkled like conquest in a lover’s eyes.

        Ivette’s jaw dropped. Not an imperial agent? She tried to recover. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadva—mmph” she began, but he cut her off, for the second time that evening, with a kiss.

        “They’ll be missing Mademoiselle Ivette du Brielle up there,” he whispered into her ear, and she thrilled at the feel of his breath against—

        Then, without a warning, he was off and running. She straightened her mask and brushed a bit of blood from her cheek, in order to grant him a few extra moments’ lead. He’d earned that when he pushed the Croviat for her. Perhaps she’s catch him, or perhaps he’d escape.

        Either way, the chase would be glorious.

Copyright © 2013 Leslianne Wilder

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Leslianne Wilder was born in Austin, Texas. Since then she has lived in Osaka, Miami, and San Antonio before coming to rest in Oxford, England. Her work has appeared in Shock Totem and Black Dog and Leventhal’s Psychos anthology. She blogs at lesliannewilder.blogspot.com.

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COVER ART

“The FrostValley,” by Jorge Jacinto

Jorge Jacinto is a twenty-three year old digital artist from Portugal. His work has been featured as a workshop in ImagineFX magazine. View his concept art and commissions in his gallery at deviantArt.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press

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