Issue #136 • Dec. 12, 2013

“Kurtana,” by Christian K. Martinez

“Walking Still,” by C.T. Hutt

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KURTANA

by Christian K. Martinez

        Sagraille-Knight’s wounds bled when she moved too swiftly, the lacquered plates of her armor screeching against each other in the morning’s light; beaten out of shape. She trembled, staring into nowhere with her single mortal eye, the other clamped shut against sight. She ignored the silver arches and dangling emerald branches that marked the road. Remembering. A massive structure of bamboo, rosewood, and stone soared above her into the space between mountains, smelling of strawberries and incense.

        Her pale horse staggered as he passed through Temple’s gates and into the courtyard, collapsing to the ground as his legs bent beneath him. Her face slumped against the back of his neck. Sweat, horse-stink, and tangy blood mixed with the scents of a gentler place.

        A dozen graceful servants slid from behind doorways and alcoves. They moved like the sound of bells, wearing white robes, with heavy paint in exaggerated lines across their faces.

        Sagraille twitched mechanically as they coaxed her from the horse’s back. One gauntleted hand twitched as if to strike as they laid hands on him, and then she sagged, spilling out of the saddle.

        “His name is Mours,” she mumbled, “Take care of him?”

        A small flask found its way into her hand, filled with tea and bitter-tasting medicine. More servants appeared, blurring together, guiding her, half-lifting her up. She went quietly, only dimly aware of the surrounds. She was inside, the floor was soft. Everything felt soft.

        She drank their concoction, letting them pull at her armor, unbuckle it. Their painted faces didn’t disguise the retching as they saw her mangled, matted wounds. That almost made her smile, that a little blood was so horrifying here. This was Temple. Violence was a stranger here, just as she was. This was a good place. Safe.

        She lost herself in mist.

* * *

        Tsani drew out old dances onto straw-filled mats, skipping over strands of moonlight spearing down from slatted windows, landing noiselessly on the balls of her feet.

        “Flesh, Charcoal, Veil,” she recited secretly, beneath her breath; gazing down through painted lashes at the floor, feeling her thin silk shirt billow out as much as the short fabric could, flowing at the level of her thigh as she danced.

        She spun, leaving only the slightest disturbances in the air despite her fervor. She moved as only Kurtana can, making just the sounds she wished to make, stepping only where she wished to step; until her heart was the sound of crickets echoing through the halls, the drumming of her feet only a different flavor of silence, and her path so sure that had she stepped on pinpoints instead of mats it would’ve made no difference.

        “Jade, Music, Spark.”

        She leaped from the last section of mats onto the warmed stone of Temple-proper, where frost hinted passage-wind met the tastes of honey. Jade bracelets issued thin notes of music from her ankles and wrists. Her heart filled itself with a new heat of blood, her lungs a new pull of air, her lips with a smile, and she straightened. The sixteen braids of her hair fell in line across her shoulders.

        The nine Cousins waited for her, watching the movements of her feet. Third Dance of Jade, From Dying Stars. They wore long gowns, each labored from the fashions of a dozen different countries, eras, and cultures of romance.

        Cousin Fa snorted, turning her heavily painted visage into a map of wrinkles and valleys and smoothing it again with a breath. Cousin Hurogi’s wrist twitched just slightly, as if to flick away an annoying insect, but the foot-long beads hanging from it threatened to touch, and he too was still. Kurtana.

        The rest stared impassively.

        Wordlessly, Tsani slipped to her knees, ankles pressed together and sliding to the left of her body, one hand draping across her thighs and the other palm down, fingers splayed, a counterpoint to her feet. She bowed her head, hair falling in a curtain across her face. Fourth Graceful Motion in the Flesh.

        Cousin Mei smiled a little, the whirls and spirals of her elegant face fluxing and shifting the expression from mask to mask. As if there had never been a smile at all.

        “You are no longer a child, Tsani-dear, nor a banshi, nor a wild dog; you are well aware of keeping time,” she said. It was an admonition, voiced gently as a raindrop.

        Tsani thought she could see Cousins Fa and Hurogi cover their smirks and suppressed a snarl. Calm, she told herself, calm.

        Mei continued. “What explanation would you offer, Tsani-bold, to explain how, when Eldest calls for you at sunrise, you come only after sun has set?

        She inclined her head to Cousin Mei, then the others in turn, throwing her hair back over her shoulders in a graceful craning of the neck that exposed her throat. Every action considered, planned, letting her irritations flow away. A still mind. Calm spirit. First Standard of the Spark - Quiescence.

        “I apologize, gracious Cousins,” she said. “I would not defy you so knowingly. If only I’d been aware, I would have rushed to you, I would have leaped rivers to return. But I was not in my room, nor in any place my sisters might have known. In the hours before dawn, I sat near a pool in the forest, relaxing myself in the joys of artistry and paint. While I there reclined, two Coi spoke to one other, and I heard there matters of great interest to me—”

        —her voice rose and fell, filling the spaces between words as nimbly as her feet danced the moonbeams.

        “They discussed, in great eloquence, the matter of stars. How the entire sky might be a tree, each torch a flower, and wondered therein on the import of meteorites and comet-tails. As the sun crested the trees, like a great bird, I felt its warmth and grew weary. As the Coi slipped back to the depths of their pond, and into slumber, I too laid my head upon my shoulder and slept.

        “As I did, a fox-devil, a tree-trickster, a night spirit, some faerie thing, must have happened by, for when I woke; I found my paintings gone. Brushes, papers. All of them. Gone. No sign of all my labors.”

        Cousin Hurogi’s eyes flashed in unseemly fashion, like a predator too long without a meal. He’d ask for proof. He’d deride.

        He’d never liked her. It was one of those nameless things, enmity without real reason. Or any reason she could see, at least. Tsani figured him half a Banshi already, just a few slips of temper away from the maddened song. Almost close as Fa. She half-wanted him to hear it; wanted both of them to.

        “Except—”

        Hurogi frowned.

        “Except, perhaps, for this.” She bared the skin on her thighs. She heard sounds of indrawn breath from the Cousins. Could hear them thinking in age-old gasps. Inappropriate! Scandal! Kurtana were not harlots.

        But she was not a harlot, nor a courtesan. She was Kurtana.

        Across both her thighs, in exquisitely marked charcoal, laid the image of two coi. They stared up into a vast arboreal version of the sky, stretching up her legs, to somewhere hidden on her lower stomach. Stars in the shape of flowers fell, sparking and fading as they descended to an undrawn but hinted pond. The Coi’s scales were loving-drawn, laid over in that style of celestial dragons. The entire piece was set mildly in a clear glaze of wax. Unsmeared.

        Cousins Darua and Jhun stepped closer to see. Darua wore a green and golden dress composed of layered gauze, her face its natural black accented by golden paint in the shape of birds. Jhun was painted white, with red and blue figures twisting to dance on either cheek. His robe was a voluminous scarlet. They clicked their tongues on the back of their teeth in approval. It was tragic to them, in the way all things Kurtana were. Ephemeral and fading, forever an impression.

        They let their eyes roam over her skin, memorizing the patterns. For that was what they did, Darua and Jhun. They kept the shining stars of Temple in their hearts; immortally.

        Everyone was silent as they worked, waiting till they stepped back into line. Cousin Fa, however, coughed; as if to hurry them along. Instead of the impassivity, the calm, of her fellows she displayed impatience. Agitation.

        “I see,” said Cousin Mei, gravely nodding as all was settled and Tsani’s shirt pulled rightly down again. “We’ve received a visitor to Temple. A visitor out of Ghol, one of their Iron Knights. A blade saint, we’ve been told, in highest need of grace. The Cousins have decided, through ash and jade, water and wood, that it is your spirit that should quiet this Iron Knight; whose strength is of the mountains and the ice.”

        Tsani hid unease, or tried. She didn’t trust Knights, or warriors, or soldiers. Too much pain, too much past. Evil. Evil was what they were. And wrong. She remembered the fires still, or remembered the memory of them, on that summer home from Temple. She’d been seven.

        She wanted to say no, but that was impossible. Kurtana didn’t say no to the Cousins. No one in the Temple did. Temple was home. Temple was life. She couldn’t say no.

        There were terrible stories of Ghol’s Knights, nightmare-tellings. Vengeance tales. When their Lady Cei, the Lady Cei of Mercy, had been killed, and how they’d razed their enemies. And the sons of their enemies. And the daughters of those sons. Ghol was surrounded by a desert of salt, now, and bone roads they’d built themselves.

        Tsani’s body trembled. She filled her mind with chant, breathing evening to the sound of sky and the earth-beat rhythm.

        I have cleansed my flesh in the waters, drawing coals to it with metal rods. To stoke the spark within me I have straightened my feet and hair and body by reed and wood, filled my heart with the fires of passion and anointed my body in its scent. I am curtained by silken veils of the heart. The music dangling from my wrists flows through the wind, born of the earth. I am Kurtana. Sixth Standard of the Spark.

        She was calm.

        She was angry. A wounded, weak soldier. Blood. Fire. Stillnes. Breath. She was afraid.

        She was calm, but not kind.

        “Of course my Eldest, Cousins. As your wisdom bids, I must obey. Where does the Knight await me?”

        She leaned forward, pressing forehead to the ground in a low, subservient bow. Despite her reluctance, the fear, the hate, her mind whirred. How much jade, what colors? What coals and paints to use, what balance of water and life, fire and strife? How to heal a wounded Knight. Or... Tsani practiced, over and over, burying the hearth of that hate into herself. It had no place inside a Kurtana’s heart.

        “The Knight rests in the Willows Room,” said Cousin Mei, approvingly, “You may attend.”

* * *

        Sagraille’s presence was better than a hurricane for quieting things. The training-boys sent to wait on her for tea, and music, and wound dressing, shook a little when they got too near, sliding gazes around her instead of across. Better to look at the table in front of her, at the tea-set, at the silken screens or the willow-thrushed matts, better to look at the ceiling covered in everlasting flowers. Better to look at anything, than to meet her eyes. Her eye.

        She was used to it. Hood King’s Daughter, Noose-Maker, Sword-Saint. Sagraille of the Long Eye. The eye that she’d stolen from the Garra’gul, ancient lion feasting at the end of the world, blinked from its place in her left socket. She tensed.

         A pillar approached, thousand colored, full of old wroth and killing will, cloaked in silk smiles. It was dangerous, fit to this place like a dagger in a sheath, but struggling out. Instinctively she reached for sword, her hand slapping the cotton at her hip. She was dressed without armor, only a folded white robe. Comfortable, easy to open and get at her wounds. She wouldn’t have had a sword, regardless. She’d broken it. Long ago. Yesterday.

        She looked for rope, nothing. Nothing but the Hua board on her table, and a teacup. Hua pieces were soft, gentle wood, crafted clay. No weapons. She twitched.

         All three of the boys jumped as if she’d lunged at them with a spear.

        “Quiet yourselves, fools, something is-” she growled, struggling to stand and failing spectacularly. The stitches below her ribs stretched, almost pulling out, forcing a grunt of pain like a kick to the chest. It didn’t sear so much as sink its teeth in and grind. She panted, glaring at the point she felt the column coming for and filling herself with a sharpened moment, a field-second in legionary armor. The Gholish magic flooded her veins, evoking her years as a soldier with the strength of time. Softer things were forced from her as she managed to stand. The air twisted around her, shimmering as if in mirage. The silk panel in front of her slid open, revealing-

        A very small woman, impressively nonthreatening in her appearance. Young, too. More of a child really, though she carried herself well. Inhumanly. Kurtana.

        The sight of her hid the column behind the pretty gauze of reality. She wore a dark blue robe made of silk, covered in prints of golden branches and emerald flowers. The thing reached to her ankles, with wide flowing sleeves that dropped maybe a foot down from her wrists. She was barefoot; only thin anklets of bluish jade.

        Her skin was a copper color, true metallic flecks painted to its surface. Gold-threaded charcoal and royal blue powder feathered her eyes, gold glitter dripping in tasteful decadence off her eyebrows like a flight of shining snowflakes.

        The young woman was not what Sagraille expected; somebody older. Calmer. Without that thrashing pillar held within. She’d seen one once; the way his power fitted into the world nearly invisibly, more like a part of nature than anything. Like a breeze. This one was like a whirlpool the world moving to her, spiraling around her strength.

        The young woman inclined her head, performing an awkward Gholish curtsy, an action that really wasn’t well designed for her outfit. She did it gracefully.

        If she had been without the Eye, Sagraille would have immediately relaxed. It was what one was supposed to do, around Kurtana. They were healers and singers, artists, companions. They were witches, too, of course. With a thousand different kinds of sorcery. Meeting one was supposed to touch you forever, granting you a moment of relief, a memory to cling to in the darkest hours of never.

        But this one was a lantern in a silk pouch, righteous rage poured through gaps in the thread like water through a sieve. There was grace, beauty, love, all of that. But pain too, screaming pain, pain unhealed. Less seen, and more revealed through absences. Revealed in the way it was hidden.

        “You’re a murderer,” the young woman said, after appropriate silence, with lowered eyes. When she lifted them, her eyes had a violence in them that seemed meant to surprise. Sagraille doubted the young woman realized how obvious she’d been in the way she walked. Probably thought the words were shocking, coming from behind a pleasant pond of calm.

        They weren’t; the pond was seething, boiling to the touch.

        “You’ve burned villages, killed children. You’ve done evil, haven’t you? Working the red-ways into the world. You’ve painted blood onto the planet, into the soil. Your people have turned the growing things to salt! You’re a soldier. Murderer.”

        The boys froze in their corners, faces slack, turned down. They were trembling. Was it afraid of her? Afraid of the girl?

        Sagraille bowed her head deep, letting herself sink to the mats again, resting elbows on the table, relaxing her hold on time’s throat. The legion-second left her, dying away from herself. She wondered how many were left in her, left at all in the world outside of Ghol.

        “I have, and am,” she said, “An accomplished one. Exemplar of the craft, if you will. And you, oh blunt-tongued youth? What are you?”

        Kurtana were talented in serenity; they had to be, with the powers they harbored. To keep the Banshi in them singing soft. But serenity was a creature of pools and waters. Sagraille was a stone, a pebble. Waters parted for her in ripples and waves.

        The girl twitched. “I am Tsani. Tsani-Kurtana, Sae-Knight,” she said, staring at the eye. Perfectly composed in a moment, a dancer’s moment; poised. But if she’d been imbalanced at all, why’d they sent her? Why this one, young, impertinent? Sagraille was dangerous, in the eyes of Temple folk. She’d seen how the attendants watched her. Like a monster, like a murderer, everything the girl accused of. Everything she was.

        Could the young woman’s own people not see this in her? Not see her enough to feel the strength of her, that half-controlled and towering rage. That hardly seemed imaginable. The girl was good, excellent even; a full Kurtana, revealed only by the Eye and maybe a soldier’s trick for violence, but surely not that good. Young, unwise, and wild. Hardly one to send to the wounded, the damaged, with all that rage inside.

        Begging for Banshi, wasn’t that a saying? She’d heard it somewhere before.

        Tsani approached the table, scanning the room like it was her personal domain. She softened as she looked to the boys, and Sagraille felt strings of calm, half-mentioned notes of gentle reassurance reach out to them. It might have been in the whisper of her robe, or the fall of her feet; Sagraille couldn’t name it exactly, but the girl wasn’t all rage. Her eyes lingered on the Hua-board, the carefully sculpted suggestions of landscapes and tiles.

        Sagraille didn’t even need a full Kurtana, really. The deep wounds were old now, not likely to heal by a wonder-witch’s footwork. The body’d been saved, stitched up. The heart was gone. Cei gone. Arai. Bardenhart. Fenn. All of Old Ghol, dead by the sword, or the hourglass. Both just as sure.

        Was that it? Did they want this girl to kill her? Or be killed? Either way, a maybe monster dead? It seemed harsh, for this place. Maybe it’d changed since her day, hah. Maybe she was just getting old and stupid. Neither idea would surprise her, but she was tired. Had no patience for it. Didn’t even know what year it was yet; where Mours had left them out of Ghol.

        “You could kill me, you know,” she said, “If it would soothe your anger. Tell the boys, and your Elders, I was mad, I was planning to kill them. You’re Kurtana, you read people, master their ways, right? Could tell them you were consigning my soul to peace, the only way I’d know it now. I was Gholish, wild, uncontrollable. They still say those things of us? I have been out of things a while.... Doesn’t matter. But you could kill me, I wouldn’t stop you. I deserve it. I do not think it would help you, though. Killing rarely does.”

        She was ready for it too, ready for it to end. To return to her father. She didn’t know what would be next for her. What to do, without the old Ghol. Without what was. She could visit again, she supposed. But she was tired, done; she’d have welcomed that tower falling on her, that column collapsing into inferno against her throat. Release.

        Tsani didn’t end her, didn’t move for the longest moment; a stretched second full of tusks. Sagraille shook the thought away. Thoughts came true sometimes. Thoughts like that.

        She didn’t see what happened in the girl, what changed, but something did. Tsani relaxed, losing a tension that Sagraille hadn’t noticed was there until it wasn’t. She glided forward to kneel at the table, though calling the waterfall of silk and almost-exposed skin she displayed kneeling was probably insulting. It was more beautiful than that. A painting from the medium of motion. With her hands folded delicate steeples just on the edge of the table, Sagraille almost scoffed. The girl even cast a shadow with elegance.

        With one finger Tsani gestured to the board, unsmiling, but there was something almost like a smile behind her eyes.

        “So this game? You can teach me?” she asked.

        “Hua? It’s a soldier’s game, about war,” Sagraille answered, cautiously. Tsani hadn’t seemed particularly favored towards the profession. War was taboo enough already here, without buried pain.

        “But you could teach me?”

        “Yes, yes I could. Would you like me to?”

        Tsani nodded.

        It was hard starting. Fenn’d taught her to play, forever ago. They’d been wasteful, using Hour-spells for pieces instead of carving a set. Using the magic of Ghol as if it would be forever. Imagining time like an endless thing. He’d been a fun sort. Easy with smiles.

        It was hard remembering him.

* * *

        They played Hua for weeks with barely a word between them, but many moments. The first thing Sagraille taught her was being honest. Let the self through, into the game. It was what Fenn had told her, after telling her she was a bad liar and shouldn’t try her hand at a thing like that.

        Tsani glared in the beginning, almost without pause. Hua was a hard game; Sagraille’d been lucky they even had a board, even if they’d only placed it as a decoration. A piece of home.

        She taught patiently, in a rough sergeant’s voice. “Remember your pieces, the flow of worlds,” she said a hundred times.

        “Hua is a study of balance, as complex as living, but stated clear. Simple in basis, manifold in practice. There are soldiers of Metal that cut the guardians of Wood, who feed the beasts of Fire, whose hearts are dimmed by the messengers of Wind, who govern the shapers of the Earth, which uphold the dancers of the Water that rust the soldiers. Except -”

        Tsani groaned at each “except,” rolling her eyes, but she absorbed it. Sagraille beat her, again and again, but the girl improved. Grudgingly. Game by game.

        After each, Tsani prepared the board again. Sagraille said nothing, watching her with the Eye. The young woman struggled with defeat, raging, quieting the rage. Calming herself of the “red ways”. Mastering herself, over and again. They called it Quiescence, or something.

        Tsani talked sometimes. About old lessons, friends that weren’t really friends. How she’d excelled through every program to become one of the youngest Kurtana in the Temple’s history. There was no better dancer; few better with the Elements even among the Cousins. All she needed was tempering. No one had challenged her before. Except Fa, Hurogi. She complained about them like a child would; how they hated her. Picked on her. She didn’t understand why. Were they jealous?

        “Maybe it’s ‘cause you whine too much, when you’re the best in their class,” Saigraille answered. Tsani’d gone quiet for days after, only speaking again for their brief expedition to the stables.

        Mours. Sagraille could see him, could feel him from her room, but wanted to touch him. He’d saved her, like he always did. Good ole horse, coat white as bone, hooves black as night, eyes a midnight grey, spinning and uncertain. He was marvelous but not unscarred. Lines of old pain knotted his muscles, marred his hide; each slowed him slightly, dragging him down. He couldn’t go on forever, and neither could she.

* * *

        The stable hands said the big horse had nearly killed a few of the stallions when they’d tried challenging him in the field. He’d struck them down with his hooves until they bowed to him like men, bloody. The story made Tsani tremble inside; she wasn’t used to thinking of horses as soldiers. The violence still made her uneasy.

        She greeted him bravely after hearing it, though, or tried. He’d taken his rider here, to a place of safety. All alone. How could compassion such as that be matched with the violence he’d done? She swept into his stall, touching his muzzle, resting her face against his and breathing him in. He was a strange beast; animals had always calmed to her, but he felt different. He was proud in the way people were proud, and it showed in every line of his body, like some sort of storybook horse. It filled her with a sort of awe.

        He stiffened at her touch, ready to attack but relaxing. Her magic wouldn’t work on him, nor did she try it. She gave him her trust. He snorted kindly to her, nuzzling. Grateful for a warm touch. Calming her somehow, quieting something in her. Sagraille stood behind them, in the doorway. Tsani could feel the both of them gazing over her shoulder.

        They stayed maybe ten minutes before Sagraille’s legs shook and she was gripping the column of smooth wood beside her to stay upright. Tsani danced back, spinning on the heels of her feet, confused as she saw her charge.

        Tsani pressed herself in the crook of Sagraille’s arm like a cane, pulling her from the stables, bowing head to Mours. She felt a question trembling in herself.

        “He’s killed people, hasn’t he? That.... Mours. He’s a war-horse, yes? He’s a nice horse, but the Ghol give them armor and ride them into battle, making them trample the weak, is that true?” she asked. Accused.

        “He’s been with me since the start. The only horse that would follow me through the Hourglass doors; practically charged them. So yes. We’ve killed together. Often; sometimes. Some of them were evil men, evil women. Some of them weren’t. Mostly they were just people. People that would hurt what I loved and cared for if I didn’t hurt them first. When I was young that was a broad list. Then got twisted. Fear’ll do that, twist things.” Sagraille sighed, leaning more on Tsani’s shoulder, as if heavily weighted. The soldier-woman wasn’t happy. Didn’t have the sound of past enjoyment in her. There wasn’t guilt either, simply. Simply sorrow.

        “When you talk about those things, you sound tired. Didn’t you enjoy it? The killing? Isn’t that why you were a Soldier?” Tsani couldn’t quite believe what she felt, what she read in the woman’s furrowed brow. This woman was a warrior, evil, adept of the red ways... murderer. She was evil, wasn’t she? A pause. Tensing of the muscles running through and through, making Tsani almost tense in turn.

        “Like it?!” Sagraille growled, shaking her head firmly enough to nearly make herself fall. Tsani struggled to keep her up, blinking in shock. Tears thundered to her eyes from the fury rushing through her from Sagraille; the woman’s heart screamed. Unconsciously Tsani soothed it, whispering, letting water in through her gentle whimper, the strength of earth gravitate from her bones; a breath of wind to carry way the vigor of Sagraille’s vast pains.

        It was the first time she’d tried to help the soldier, the woman, at all. She’d played the game. She’d struggled to see something, to keep open the eyes. First Standard of the Spark.

        “I’ve never liked it. I liked the violence, I loved the artistry of combat, but never the killing. It’s why I left home at all, so that if I had to, if I had to kill, it would be for something I loved. That’s what I found in Ghol. It’s why I traveled forward, why I took the last door to the end of time, why I stole the Eye, so that if I killed, I would never do so blindly.” Sagraille’s eye shifted, changing. Black with a white and slitted pupil, spinning in its socket, letting out an eerie light that twisted shadows, almost wailing. Tsani lowered her eyes as Sagraille continued, unable to stand the trembling pain that came out of that eye. Oh what wounds.

        “So that I could be strong enough that I wouldn’t have to strike at all. That’s what Cei showed me. What the Barons stole when they killed her. Idiots. Thought we’d weaken. We’d shatter. They fantasized she’d been the architect of all our war against them, when she’d been the one to give them peace. To hold us back. There was no joy there; pain and fear, on all sides.”

        “I’m sorry,” Tsani replied, shaken, thinking. She didn’t meet the older woman’s eyes again, even when they started playing again back in the room. And not for days afterwards. She didn’t talk much for a long time.

        Sagraille left her to it quietly, which she appreciated. Focusing on the game, on teaching, on forgetting. Every stretch of her muscles screamed of pain to Tsani’s sight, not monstrosity. The slight twinges, the careful movements. Her rough voice didn’t speak of callousness but of a well won compassion. It was hard for Tsani to adapt, seeing the woman through a Kurtana’s eyes. Looking at her with other than hate.

        They slept at the table, laying down on mats the boys brought them for the dark. There was tea, and simple hearty food. Sagraille began to heal, wounds sealing over, muscles strengthening. She took to pacing while Tsani considered moves on the board.

        They received three messages in as many days, each of them from Cousins. Tiny letters painted by graceful hands. One was on a blue slip scented with sandalwood. Mei. The others with fragrances of fruit, on white cards. Hurogi and Fa. Tsani waved them away without a glance, focusing back to the board after each, biting her lip. She was doing her work; she was focused now. The studied patterns in which she moved her hands, the way she grew from teaching. It eased something in Sagraille, the old pains; progress was being made. Slowly, with only the eddies of magic, but nonetheless. And Sagraille would not trust a major working; it had to be a little at a time. No letters were needed, no instructions.

        Tsani focused more intently on the board each time. Leveling plains into fens with the Magi piece, shifting the world. Burning City, losing still. Growing icy wardens on mountain side. Tsani answered each message the same. Not petulantly, but polite.

        “If I am right for this,” Tsani said, “as they’ve decided, they should trust me. Or am I not the painter of coi? A dancer of moonbeams? Am I not who I am?”

        Tsani was gentle enough with the messengers that they smiled when they left instead of growing angry. She charmed them, but did not reply. Or make comment on the letters. Not once.

        Sagraille snorted after the last finally left; he’d been persistent. Forceful, almost. As forceful as any man in Temple. He was new, as all Fa’s attendants were, new and untempered, with too much flame. Tsani’d snuffed it out with a shrug, redirecting, balancing; the silk of her dress slipping over her shoulder an inch away from immodesty. He’d blushed, she’d smiled; back to the board.

        “Isn’t it rude to barely even read them?” asked Sagraille. “You’re playing games after all. Hardly pressing, they’re your elders.”

        “It would be, but I’m working. They understand. Or should.”

        “You’re playing games, learning from me. Slowly.”

        “I’m working.”

        Tsani smiled, one of those captured-with-a-paintbrush smiles that she knew almost annoyed the older woman. Sagraille shrugged instead, moving wooden soldiers to her mountain, kindling them to melt her icy wardens. A river flowed down. They played.

* * *

        Cousin Fa’s wail struck its way through Temple like an axe cutting wicker-weave, and Sagraille was awake. Readying. The building shook with her. With the knowing of her. Half-phantoms of every dance she’d stepped, every song, poem, masterful glance, glittered through the halls like dark whims.

        The girl woke half-mumbling Hua moves and rules clauses, shaking without knowing why.

        Sagraille smiled. “Wood takes Mountain, groups of three. Like a dam, letting loose Waters, charge....”

        Tsani blinked the sleep away, trembling. Sagraille could see the thoughts floating round her head. Still dark. No birds. What’d that awful sound been? Wait. No birds at all, not even the owls. Not even the littlest crickets. “What?” she blurted.

        “Quiet, girl. Quiet now,” snapped Sagraille. The eye shone like a red lamp, throbbing, pulsing deeper and crimson, throwing shadows across the room and into corners; scanning past the walls, into Temple.

        Tsani obeyed, sitting up. Quiet as grass and gravestones. Not a sound.

        Through the Eye, Sagraille felt Fa.

        Rage, rising up uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Almost a century of pain, of spooled-in wonders, unleashing. The other Cousins were waking but slowly. Too slowly. They weren’t ready all at once, in a start; they weren’t warriors, they wouldn’t stop her in time. Fa had been of their strongest; now going strange, wild, Banshi.

        Kurtana without control. Without humanity. She looked to Tsani. The girl was scared. Vulnerable, but still poised, in that practiced serenity. It was only the surface of fear; there was something holding it at her eyes, away from her heart. A trusting comfort laid on her face.

        Trusting her.

        That look was like a kick to the side of Sagraille’s head, and she almost ran. Gathered herself, fetched Mours, and left. Almost. Someone trusted her again. Someone living.

        It hurt.

        Maybe there was a heart, after all. Maybe not entirely gone. Tsani was in danger. Sagraille was weak. Didn’t matter. Hours and Aeons, it hurt.

        She steadied herself, whispering, pulling time around her like a vice, and commanding it. Not seconds, but hours. Not minutes, but days. The smell of dust and blood didn’t reach them; the sounds of snapping wood and crushing stone didn’t penetrate. A bubble formed, coalescing into shape around them.

        “I am going to show you something no one has seen outside of Ghol, or maybe even in her, for many years. Do you understand?

        Tsani nodded. Still confused, but not stupid. Quiet. Trusting. When had the girl started trusting her? Didn’t matter now. Time to go.

        Sagraille gathered a traveling-time to herself, by strength of will. The sound of hoof-beats; the path of herds gathered round them. Spindly nine-legged horses took shape—avatara of time. They crowded into her body, into Tsani’s. She hadn’t worked a thing like this in far too long. It thrilled her, an electric tingle on her tongue .

        “Take my hand,” she ordered. She could barely see, with the avatara filling her. Only through her Eye. She gathered the strength of Mours too, and he was suddenly with them.

        Her body shook, blood seeping from the most recent of her wounds. Tsani’s hand was in hers; it had been for a long time. Time?

        They took a step; distance bent. Into the hall. Another, into the courtyard. Tsani retched; the girl was crying but she didn’t stop. The Banshi was above them, no longer resembling a woman. It screamed, the sound smashing down on them. Focused and absolute. Ripping stone and earth, and human flesh. The sphere cracked, was going to crack. Sagraille needed to pull it in close, couldn’t. Not with Tsani, not with Mours. He knew it too.

        He neighed, eyes rolling back. There was a moment before he died when they looked at each other. She would never stop owing him, thanking him. He’d carried her a long while. Her time now, to carry others.

        He leaped past the sphere of hourglass strength, muscle and skin flensed by the Banshi’s maelstrom. Bones crunched and he screamed—another step. Away from it. So sorry. Get away. Couldn’t help him. It hurt; it all hurt again. Couldn’t save him. But could save her. Tsani. They’d both save her. He’d made the choice. It was done. Focus. Almost out of the Temple. One more, through the Arches. Another, on the hill, beneath a tree. Ready to run, to take Tsani and run—

        “I have words for you, Blade-Saint,” he said, “and your charge. There is something I would like her to see.”

        He shouldn’t have been able to see them, let alone stop them. But he did. He was leaning against the bark of an emerald tree. At a folding of his hands, the balance of time stopped; the travel days and herd hours eased out of her, healing as they went. Wasn’t right; wasn’t how the magic worked. He didn’t care. Kurtana. Sagraille was barely winded, but the cold stung, numbing her fingers. Her hands. The numbness, any numbness, scared her now. The pain was better. She flexed the fingers, the night bit them; better. Her hand squeezed Tsani’s tight.

        “Cousin?” the girl whispered.

        Cousin Hurogi looked frail without his paint, dressed in billowy breeches and bandages wrapped along his arms instead of robes or dresses. His bald head wasn’t shining; didn’t display the lengthy magic of paints and whirls the Cousins so adored. His skin was wrinkled; he was an old man. His eyes were red, and streaks of tears scarred him. He wore a single necklace of jade beads and a golden teardrop in his right ear. His nails were painted night-sky purple, small gems glued in flecks like stars; miniature suns. A moon on each thumb. He smelled like cloth. His shaded eyes squinted slightly through the dark, large on his face, locked in the direction of Temple. The Banshi. Fa.

        “My Cousin is dead, my Sister is dead,” he said, “For she was as my sister, little Tsani-spiteful. Spiteful, but not so wrongly.” He closed his eyes as he spoke. Gathering himself. Almost angry, but giving it away. The night took it from him.

        “You were always proud,” he continued, “clever and proud. Young and proud. It is hard, for some of us, to bear that. You will be a great woman. Greatness is hard to accommodate without the wisdom of age. See already, we were small minded. We schemed. Yet, for you a Knight bleeds. A dead heart beats at the center of a sandstorm. Kurtana, I think, Kurtana. I was wrong. We were wrong.”

        His face was quiet and calm, without its usual warble of irritation. That constant semi-scowl Tsani had always talked about was gone. It filled Sagraille with a sort of peace, a knowing of herself; that calm expression on his face.

        “Gentility. Last Standard of the Spark,” Tsani mouthed, whispering. In awe?

        The two of them looked towards Temple. Neither had seen a Banshi before. Fa had failed. Tsani took a step forward; Sagraille pulled her back. The girl struggled, tears welling. Hurogi’s eyes opened, breath leaving him in a sigh, starting towards the Banshi that’d been his friend without flinching.

        “Leave, little-Tsani,” he said. “I can see in you the desire to heal, to confront a thing you’ve wronged. That is good, but you have done no evil.

        “This was coming for many years, I think. I should have seen it. We should have seen it. We quiet the pain of the world and this is mine to still. My place to calm. Not yours, though we would grow greatly with your strength. You must learn outside of us, as I learned before I came.”

        His bandages began to unwrap from his arms, slipping into his hands, spinning tighter and tighter circles till they strained together like horse-length swords emerging from his fists. The flesh they’d covered was bruised, scarred, ripped. Deep ridges ran over the skin, slicing the natural flow of veins into barely functioning bulges. In places the meat beneath was discolored, almost peeling. It looked like pain. He smiled.

        Sagraille knew that smile.

        “Each act in life, each solitary thing, delivers strength,” he said. “I drink tea, and take of its heat. I cry, and learn from tears new ways to move. I witness the world, and have in me the strength of it to spare, suffusing me.

        “I am the dawn and twilight, I am the oak and the willow and the coi and the carp, and of my strength I cannot help but give. That is what it means to be one of us, to be beyond true suffering - for a time—to give until it consumes. Kurtana. This is why Fa hated you, young and powerful. You’ve not learned that sorrow is also a dance. That giving is beauty; that your pain is not your own to covet close. Nor is it ugly. You are burdened by your sorrow, Tsani- dear. I am buoyed by it. Watch.”

        The Banshi-Fa roared, multicolored limbs of cloth and tongues of paint lashing at the frosty night. The two mountains of the pass loomed, Temple’s light casting them like judging giants above the scene. Hurogi began to run, bandage-blades poised forward. Each step like twenty; feet not quite touching the ground so much as courting it. He was in the air, or was the air lifting him?

        “I am Kurtana,” his whisper carried through the dirt, in the perspiration of the air. It was written like a signature; drawn like a picture. Sagraille saw him in that instant with her Eye.

        Fa had taught him like a sister. He’d come to the Temple a soldier out of war and never left. Learning, instead. When he was made Kurtana, they had danced together, hand in hand, between the trees of Wais. She’d bandaged his arms for the first time; soothed the burns caused by sorceries. What would never heal she helped him hide, and ease.

        His soul was focused, shaped into a spear of wood and fire, steel and water; persuaded together with whispers. Lashed together with an aging will. He would not survive this. She would kill him, or he would take his life, before his balance left him. She had brought him balance. He wanted to rage at Tsani, for being proud, a catalyst of pain. But he didn’t. There was no hate in his heart.

        Neither of them turned away from him as he met the Banshi, dancing one last time with his Fa. Cloth and fire, sound and stone, clashed between the mountains, but it was not like before. None of her wildness escaped his strength. Everywhere she thrashed, his hands met, his feet danced, his voice struck. Hurogi quieted her with his passions, shrinking her in circles till the Cousins rose to his aid. Tsani sang a whistle-song that caught the air like windchimes and rose-petals dancing. Sagraille thanked her for it; she was shaking.

        They watched till the dawn, when the smoke and dust finally settled. Exhausted, they turned away and began to walk. Tsani’s hand gripped hers gently, squeezing it, pulling Sagraille forward in a way without force. Towards the gray hills of Ghol they walked, towards home, and her heart ached. Remembering the first time she’d traveled to them, the first time with Mours. Through the dark and through the days. She watched it again, through the Eye, and it hurt.

        But not so much as it had before, Tsani’s hand in hers. The girl’s quiet calm, ruffled and dirtied but still as present on her as a wave. Hurogi, Fa, Mei. They were Kurtana. And so was Tsani.

Copyright © 2013 Christian K. Martinez

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Christian K. Martinez has been known to disappear into his own mind for weeks at a time in search of faeries, D&D campaigns or just to dream. On one such occasion he moved from California to New York just in time to meet the blizzards. His short fiction can be found in AlienSkin, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Jabberwocky, Every Day Fiction, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He can be found online at dayswithaknight.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

WALKING STILL

by C.T. Hutt

        The Shiner Man’s covered wagon walked across the desert on six metal legs. Duncan Bismuth, as the fella was named, sat atop the clanking apparatus and did his level best to convince his mule to walk a straight line. The animal, which went by the name of Belch, was at least as drunk as his master. Between the two of them, they cut a pig’s tail across the prairie on their way to a shallow little town called Gunshow.

        It took the three, man, mule, and walking wagon, longer than it should have to close the distance, probably because they stopped a few times to ask directions of a cactus. The Shiner Man mistakenly considered himself well ahead of schedule due to the fact that his pocket watch was six weeks broke. Their tardiness was noticed by no one, ‘cause no one expected them to arrive. Nevertheless, they were greeted at the county line by a skeleton hanging off a sign at the crossroads leading to town.

        “Hello there, mister,” the Shiner Man said to the corpse. “Ain’t this the road to Gunshow?”

        Being dead and all, the skeleton said nothing, but a hand-painted sign hung around his neck read “MOONSHINER.”

        “Oh, I see. Bad luck, old chum.”

        Belch hee-hawed mournfully at the bones and sidled on down the road.

        When they got to within spitting distance of the town, two horsemen rode up to meet them. They were rough-looking boys with three-day beards and scatter guns, obvious guards. The Shiner Man rubbed his bleary eyes with a free hand and pulled back the reins with the other, bringing Belch to a whinesome halt. The wagon stumbled a few more steps and collided with the mule’s ass before stopping.

        “Good day to you, boys, have I arrived in Gunshow?”

        The two guards looked at each other, then at the wagon, then back at each other.

        “Grude,” said the first. “Just what in the hell kind of carriage is this?”

        “I don’t know, Pillow, but it sure is ugly as shit.”

        Pillow sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “It smells like a still. Don’t it?”

        Grude smiled a crooked smile and nodded. “It sure does.”

        “Boonwaller County is dry, you know that don’t you, mister? You have any idea what Sheriff Brady does to moonshiners in these parts?”

        The Shiner Man tipped his hat back and twitched his moustache. He jumped off his seat and rapped the side of the wagon with a long-handled cane. Presently, an elaborate banner unfurled which read Professor Bismuth and Company Miracle Elixirs.

        “You see?” he said. “No trouble, gentlemen. I’m just an honest entrepreneur looking for a market.”

        Pillow and Grude laughed and grinned coyote grins. “Who in the hells is your company then? I only see one of you.”

        Belch hee-hawed and glanced back at them. The Shiner Man winked in turn.

        “Smile and play games as you like, stranger, but if this thing is a still, you’re libel to hang,” Pillow said.

        “You and your jackass,” agreed Grude.

        The Shiner Man tsk-tsked and Belch hee-hawed, offended.  “Why, sirs, you surprise me with such harsh implications. Professor Bismuth and Company’s Restorative Tonics contain oodles and tons of the finest components and healthsome compounds ever assembled.”

        “Yeah?” said Pillow, “Like what?”

        The Shiner Man threw out his hands in an artistic flourish and began dancing and shuffling around. He bumped a lever on the wagon with his hindquarters that started a record spinning on a phonograph.

        “I’m glad you asked. It’s got Jessum squeezings, coriander, peyote leavings, and salamander. Saw grass, blue grass, laudanum too, swamp gas, sea bass, ballyhoo. Fifteen secret herbs and spices, mixed by dangerous dee-vices! Distilled and brewed and served up cold, it fixes the sick and renews the old! No malady can long withstand it, ‘cause that’s how Professor Bismuth planned it! Your natural vigor will enhance, you’ll sprout a ramrod in your pants! So come on gents and don’t delay, buy your-self a jug today!”

        His speech delivered, he stood there panting, dripping sweat, and still holding up his hands in a dramatic pose. The record skipped a few times before petering out.

        Pillow fixed Bismuth with a suspicious gaze and leaned over to Grude. “Is he addled, you figure? Why in the hells does he talk like that?”

        “I don’t know, but it sure is irritating. Speak plain, huckster. Does this bug-looking doohickey make booze or not?”

        With another flourish, the Shiner Man produced two mason jars filled with clear liquid. They were so cold that a frosty film of condensation covered their surface. It was a hot day, and both guards looked on the offering with hunger in their eyes.

        “‘Booze’ is a peasant’s word, my good man. Not fit to describe our company’s fine line of medicinal refreshments. But, I suppose if you fellows aren’t thirsty, I could just pour these out and move along.”

        Grude shook his head and reached out to take one of the jars. The Shiner Man moved the frosty jar away from his hand and flipped a little switch on his belt with one elbow. The top of his top hat flipped open like a trashcan lid; the underside read “10 Bucks a jug.”

        “We ain’t got to pay you to make sure you ain’t breakin’ the law.”

        The Shiner Man frowned and dropped his airs.   “No one drinks for free. Ten bucks a jug, no exceptions.”

        They grimaced and growled, but paid just the same.

        Minutes later, Grude started a staring contest with the far horizon and Pillow began talking philosophy to his horse. The Shiner Man left them to their business and coaxed Belch onward into town.

* * *

        The Mayor of Gunshow, Bartleby Volstead, glowered at the streets over the banister of his office’s grand porch. He admired the heady miasma of sobriety hanging over his borough like a dry cloud. The fog was his, and it smelt just fine. Satisfied that all was quiet, he turned his attention to the day’s newspaper. He leaned back on his chair and scanned the articles for telltale signs of dissent.

        His daughter and unwilling secretary, Vera, stood under the umbrella by him. Her hands were wrapped around a red portfolio. Her sun goggles revealed nothing.

        “Are those the election numbers?”

        “The revised ones, yes.”

        He wagged a finger at his offspring. “‘Refined’, child, ‘refined’. What are the results?”

        She didn’t dignify him with a sigh. “You won with one hundred percent of the vote.”

        “Oh?”

        “Yes, it appears that even your opponent voted against himself.”

        Mayor Volstead nodded and went back to his paper. “That’s the way democracy works. Dynamic mathematics and proper oversight give the people the results they need.”

        Vera tried to stop herself from hissing but didn’t succeed.

        “What are you mad about? You’ve got a job for another four years, and this town full of weak-willed peons gets the leadership they require to live correctly. Why, without a steady hand at the helm, Boonwaller County would be overrun by bootleggers, rum runners, booze barons, and other sundry scofflaws. What’s the problem, dear?”

        She looked toward the sky and tried to recall a time when she hadn’t wanted her old man to drop dead. No such recollection came to mind. “Aside from your venality, Sheriff Brady arrested my fiancé this morning... again. I assume at your direction.”

        “Oh? Whatever for?”

        “Riding an unshod horse.”

        “I see. Well, dear, the law is the law.”

        “While he was sitting indoors, eating breakfast.”

        Mayor Volstead waved her off. “How many times must I endure your malcontent before you accept a better stationed par amour? The good sheriff for instance...”

        Vera grimaced. “I’d rather eat my dress, thank you.”

        He shrugged. “Would you mind fetching me another iced tea, dear? Try not to spit in it this time. And send for Franks. That news buffoon has made another typographical error.”

        He passed her a glass full of ice cubes. She accepted it but didn’t hop-to.

        “Father,” she said.

        “Yes?”

        “I hate you.”

        He waved her off when she said it, just as he always did. Like her mother, Vera had never learned her proper station. Mayor Volstead was confident that she would in the fullness of time.

        When she was gone, he turned his gaze back on his newspaper, but something else nagged at his attention: a peculiar clicking clacking sound and the occasional baying of some unfamiliar nag. He peeked over the banister again just in time to see a six-legged wagon skitter onto Church Street and out of view. A familiar stench hung in the air.

        “What in the precious hells is that?” he said.

* * *

        Ema Blackwell, lone preacher of Gunshow, was a sight too young for the crow’s feet next to her eyes. She groaned through her sermon, using the same dirge-like cadence reserved in happier provinces for funerals.

        The congregation moaned and farted quietly through the service. They sang joyless old hymns and shuffled up to the communion cup for their weekly drink of apple juice. It was all they were allowed, due to town ordinance. Preacher Blackwell administered the draught, splashing dull drink over glum tongues ‘till the benediction was done. It was the same ritual this week as it had been the week before. Chances were good it’d be likewise in the week ahead.

        Before she sent her weary flock back into the world that made them so, she asked if there were any announcements: weddings, sales, or the like. An unfamiliar hand poked up in the back row. It belonged to stranger wearing long white vestments and a hierophant’s hat nearly as tall again as he was. Curiously, there was a ragged-looking mule sitting in the back row as well.

        “Who are you?” Blackwell asked. “And why did you bring that animal in here?”

        “I prithee, never mind my acolyte. I’m just a traveling proclaimer spreading good cheer. If you’ll hear me, I’ll take it as kindness, my dear.”

        The crowd seemed to wake up. Blackwell shrugged and stepped to one side. The heretical figure moseyed up to the front of the hall and bowed low in old formal style.

        “Friends, neighbors, and kind folk of Gunshow, is there anyone here who suffers from a malady of the mind? An affliction of the body? Corruption of their very soul?”

        The gathering murmured, unsure of what to make of the man. He swirled his robes about and pointed at a bent old woman in the first row.

        “You there, good matron, can you not feel the years bearing down on you? Have you not wished in the watches of the night for some gods-damned relief?”

        The old lady, all spectacles and shaking hands, nodded and mumbled. The man walked up to her, cupped her papery chin in his hands, and gazed deeply into her rheumy eyes.

        “What are you doing?” asked Blackwell.

        “Working miracles, dear Preacher. Now then,” he said, producing a large glass jug from under his robes. “Drink some of this.”

        Without further pleasantry, he smooshed the crone’s lips together and poured a good knock of clear liquid down her throat. She sputtered and coughed, but before Blackwell could protest, the old woman was on her feet, back straight, hands reaching out toward the sky.

        “Amen!” she exclaimed.

        “Amen,” returned the congregation.

        The odd fellow tossed off his robes and hat and pushed the old woman into Blackwell’s arms.

        “Behold friends, the spirit of spirits will set your faith right! Your redemption’s at hand and the future looks bright. Why, even the gods will look down with delight! When sinners sip sauce full of white lighting light.”

        Folks all over were standing and cheering and rushing toward the pulpit. The Shiner Man quaffed a few gulps of the substance himself then spat a mouthful at a lit candle, sending a huge fireball over the crowd. When the blaze cleared he was holding up a parchment that read “10 Bucks a Jug.”

        When her congregation began filling the collection plate with silver coins, Blackwell recovered herself and ran up to the odd fellow. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t sell hooch in my church.”

        He winked and held out his top hat. “Don’t worry, preacher, I’ll tithe you in for twenty percent.”

        Blackwell looked at the hat, then at the sad goblet of apple juice, then back at her suddenly cheerful congregation. Shrugging, she fished out a silver from her pocket and dropped it in.

* * *

        The wall of Sheriff Brady’s office was a singular exhibition of state of the art weaponry. Shooters and knives of every possible description hung on gilded hooks or shined wickedly from behind display cases. The centerpiece was a three-story high suit of cogwork armor, called an aegis. The right breast was a massive brass plate in the shape of a star. The war machine sat cross-legged in one corner, bristling with guns, polished to a fine glow.

        Sheriff Brady himself sat on top of his desk in similar repose, half-naked save for his war scars and tattoos, his eyes half-closed in meditation. His bulging muscles stood out under his skin like twisted steel cables. If it hadn’t been for the decor behind him, he’d have nearly looked serene.

        Before him, two rows of prison cells stretched back into the dark. One of the cells was occupied. Two of his deputies hung upside down on the on the door of another.

        Sam Barnes, the prisoner, placidly ate his gruel and listened to his jailor grill his employees.

        “Now, fellas,” Sheriff Brady started, “when you two began working for me we had us a little conversation about the meaning of duty. Do you remember that?”

        Pillow and Grude, both gagged with bandanas, nodded in unison. Sweat poured off them, running down their cheeks, dripping off their hair.

        “That’s right fellas, real good,” Sheriff Brady said. “Duty is what makes lawmen what they are. If we didn’t have duty, what would we be?”

        The deputies tried to answer, but nothing intelligible made it past their gags.

        “Kinky?” offered Sam.

        “Shut up, Barnes, or you’re next.”

        Sam held up his hands and went back to his gruel. Ever since he began courting the mayor’s daughter, he had learned many painful lessons about resisting Sheriff Brady by force.

        “We’d be criminals, boys—godless, petty criminals running roughshod over the land. Violence is in both of us, lawmen and criminals, but it is duty that makes what we do right. It makes us justified.”

        Sheriff Brady savored the last word as though he were about to go into raptures. Coming back to himself, he jumped off his desk and unhitched a long-handled whip from its hook on the wall. When he uncurled it across the floor, the deputies’ eyes went white and rolled around in their heads.

        Sam tilted his head to one side with faux sympathy. It was Grude and Pillow after all who’d dragged him in that morning on trumped-up charges, and not for the first time. “I guess this is one of those on-the-job hazards, eh boys?”

        Sheriff Brady ignored him and gave the weapon an experimental crack in the air. “You fellas have a duty to me. I have a duty to the mayor. The mayor has a duty to the Almighty. The Almighty is The Law. Do you get me? It’s all a chain, and each of us is a link. If there is one thing that a chain can’t abide, it’s weakness.”

        Not one for violence, Sam looked away for the beating. He could hear it, though, and it didn’t sound good.

        It only stopped when Mayor Volstead walked in off the street. Sam’s would-be father-in-law was not a welcome sight, but Sam was happy enough that the deputies’ beating was over. They hung pathetically, both passed out cold.

        “You’re a gods-damned monster, Brady,” Sam said. “And you’re just as bad, Pa.”

        Mayor Volstead walked over and put his hand on the sheriff’s shoulder, ignoring Sam. “Some administrative issues, Brady?” he asked.

        Sheriff Brady smiled and shook his head, coiling the whip around his forearm. “Just getting some things straight with the boys. When one of them wakes up, they’re going to tell me where they got their hands on some ardent spirits.”

        “That’s what I came to talk with you about,” the mayor said. “I think we may have a little problem.”

* * *

        The patrons of The Darling Darjeeling Tea House were mostly forge workers and ranch hands; honest common folk who’d all been on the job too long. Disgracefully, at the end of their day all they had to mollify their earthly troubles was a hot cup of chamomile, or at best some iced oolong. Bigby Cellars, proprietor of The Darling, scrubbed mugs and shelled out scones, and pined for the days when his joint had still been called The Leering Bastard. Those had been promising days, when Boonwaller County was green and growing and the sheriff was an old coot with a lazy conscience.

        His recent failed run for mayor had Cellars down in the dumps. His patrons didn’t seem thrilled about it neither. But that was life and fair was fair, and all a-body could do was try and make the best of a bad situation; at least that’s how things had been ‘till the Shiner Man arrived.

        He rode up to the front as bold as you please on a walking wagon pulled by a cross-eyed mule. Before Cellars could say ‘boo’, the fella slid a jug of clear white tipple down the bar and into his hands. The parcheesi and domino games came to a sudden halt. The harpsichord player gave it a rest. Cellars smacked his lips and poured a shot into a freshly cleaned teacup. He knocked back the booze and howled like a coydog. Then things got a bit hazy.

        Folks were laughing and dancing and carrying-on like sideshow curiosities. They flipped over tables, slapped each other on the backs, and tossed their cookies into the spittoon. A posse was formed to push the harpsichord into the back alley and shoot it full of holes. The mule got dressed up in a grass skirt and went blundering around upstairs. The dominoes got burned, and the tea was tossed and someone dragged the old Leering Bastard sign up from the root cellar. A bunch of church-going folk, already four sheets to the wind, pushed in a proper piano and started everyone singing.

        It was delightful anarchy, but not fated to last. The Shiner Man was standing on the bar, still peddling and hawking for all he was worth, when Sheriff Brady and his goons busted through the door.

        Even when the crowd went silent, the Shiner Man kept right on slurring through his patter. “The finest reagents from faraway places, it’ll cure all your ills and melt off your faces! So bugger the lawyers and damn the expense, come pony up hard-earned dollars and cents! Professor Bismuth brews the right cure—”

        He didn’t have time to say any more. Sheriff Brady dragged him off the bar and out into the street. The mule upstairs put up a fight, but it too was hog-tied, as much as was possible on a mule, and carted away.

        Cellars and his patrons watched from the door and windows. In front of the whole town Sheriff Brady pulled back the canvas on the Shiner Man’s covered wagon. The apparatus beneath clicked and whirred and puffed steam like a chimney. While its workings were vastly complicated, Cellars recognized a still when he saw one. Thumper keg, mash hopper, worm box, and furnace were all fancified with a mile of copper tubes, gauges, valves, and widgets. The whole get-up drained between the clockwork legs where innumerable jars dangled, suckling at metal tits like so many glass piglets

        “Moonshiner,” Sheriff Brady growled.

        Those listening removed their hats and placed them over their hearts, all of them knowing what would come next for the stranger and his walking still.

* * *

        The dawn saw Bismuth and Belch in adjacent cells across from Sam Barnes. Bismuth crawled away from a beam of encroaching daylight, trying to fend it off by squinting and waving his hat. Belch lay on his back, tongue lolling out of his mouth, legs grotesquely splayed out.

        Sam regarded the newcomers with curious sympathy. “What’s your name, mister?” he asked the fella. “And what kind of trumped-up charges did they stick you with?”

        The Shiner Man tipped his hat and extended a paw through the bars. Sam shook it, catching a caustic whiff of the stranger’s breath. “Duncan Bismuth, CEO and proprietor of the most industrious enterprise this side of the Pynchon Divide: Professor Bismuth and Company’s Miracle Elixirs. I’m sure you’ve heard of us.”

        Sam shook his head.

        “You seem like a savvy young financier,” Bismuth continued. “No doubt you’ll want to buy in right away while our stock prices are low. A canny move, but I’ll warn you fairly, my fiscal advisor is as shrewd as they come.”

        Belch righted himself and poked his nose through the bars of his cell, then hee-hawed in agreement.

        Sam raised an eyebrow at the animal. “What in the hells are you talking about?”

        Bismuth squinted hard at the prisoner. “Are you not an investor?”

        “What? No?”

        “Then why are you at the convention?”

        Sam peered about the dingy row of cells and wondered for a moment if he was the one losing his mind. “This is a jail, mister.”

        “Is it?”

        “Yeah.”

        Bismuth ran his chubby hand across the bars and pondered his condition, rubbing his stubbly chin and scratching his flattened hair. “Shits!” he exclaimed. “You’re right! How are you going to invest at a place like this? Hardly suitable for business, I say. We should speak to the event coordinator at once.”

        Sam stepped back from the bars and sat on his cot, shaking his head. “You’re mad.”

        “Mad for profit, perhaps.”

        “Nah, just plain old mad. If you’re half the moonshiner you smell like, I feel for you. Mayor Volstead is a capital-T totalitarian, and his dog, Brady, is meaner than the devil.”

        Bismuth scoffed. “I’ll have you know, young man, that I have the best lawyer in the Federated Territories at my disposal.”

        He shot a knowing wink at Belch, who hee-hawed litigiously at Sam. Then he magiced a flask out of nowhere and toasted Sam as if to say “so there.” Sam was just about to tell him to hide the thing when Sheriff Brady and Mayor Volstead darkened the doorway.

        “Making illicit connections, Mr. Barnes?” Mayor Volstead said. “I should have expected. What my daughter sees in you I’ll never fathom.”

        Holding a dainty lace napkin over his nose, the mayor tiptoed to the Shiner Man’s cell and regarded him with watery blue eyes. “You sir, stink of moral failure.”

        Bismuth raised his flask in the mayor’s direction and nodded. “If you enjoy the aroma, you’ll love the taste. Why, no governor can govern without lubrication, and we sell the most stimulating libation! To fortify thinking and sharpen—”

        Sheriff Brady rapped the cell door with his truncheon. “I done told you, mister. I won’t abide rhyming and fancy talk around here.”

        “Have ya’ll outlawed that too?” Sam said.

        The sheriff pointed his weapon at Sam. “Keep your mouth shut, Barnes.”

        Mayor Volstead reached out and snatched Bismuth’s flask away. Bismuth shrank back, sullen. The mayor sniffed the container and pulled a face. He then began shaking out its contents on the ground. “Hideous poison! Wretched, wretched, demon piss! You deviants and outlaws never learn. You must be taught, bloody-well taught to respect the— What in the hells? Where did you get that?”

        He glanced up to see Bismuth take a knock from a second flask. Mayor Volstead looked from one container to the next before pitching the first at Sheriff Brady’s chest. “Did you even search this man?”

        The sheriff looked at his feet, embarrassed. He reached through the bars and snatched away the second flask then chucked it out the open window. Sam couldn’t help but laugh.

        “I want this man taken care of, Brady,” Mayor Volstead ordered. “I don’t care how you do it, but I don’t want to see this criminal or that freakish machine you have parked outside again.”

        Mayor Volstead stalked away, muttering curses at the town and all creation as he went. Sheriff Brady spun on his heel and scowled through the bars at the Shiner Man. His fury morphed into a manic sneer. “All right then, mister, you heard the mayor. As the ranking law officer in these parts, I hereby sentence you to death by duel. Saves us all that meaningless paperwork.”

        Bismuth pondered these words as though trying to cipher through some greatly complicated equation. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

        “He means you’re going to die in the street at high noon tomorrow,” Sam offered.

        Bismuth nodded sagely. “Ah ha! Oh, oh no. That sounds terrible. Don’t I at least get to speak with my lawyer in private?”

        Belch hee-hawed an objection. Sheriff Brady shook his head and pointed at the wall of weapons behind his desk. “You most certainly do not, but seeing as I’m a sporting man, I’ll let you choose how you’re gonna die.”

        Bismuth took a swig out of yet another flask and stroked his chin. The incredulous look this brought to Sheriff Brady’s face made Sam’s day, despite the circumstances. “Well, if it must end in violence. I’ll pit you and your aegis there against me and my walker, provided you grant me the balance of my time to prepare.”

        Brady smiled and nodded. “Deal.”

* * *

        Gunshow wasn’t much of a town for gossip, but when word went ‘round that Sheriff Brady and his aegis were going to fight the Shiner Man and a giant booze-powered insect, pretty soon it was all anyone was talking about. Folks showed up at the steamworks to watch the Shiner Man in action. Though he was piss drunk, he worked with uncanny exactitude. From the best that anyone could figure, he was constructing a massive brass nozzle and attaching an extra-large steam tank on top of his wagon.

        He had plenty of help. Patrons from The Darling, the mayor’s daughter, a retinue of church-goers, and even the bandaged figures of Pillow and Grude leant their hands. Though none of them knew what the hells they were up to, and more than half of them were twice over the barrel, they got the tank and nozzle attached. They packed the big brass tube with everything they could find: scraps and bits, cogs and wire, railroad ties, rubber tires, empty bottles, bullets, shoes, chunks of sandstone, nails and screws. All manner of bric-a-brak went into the nozzle. Then, they got to brewing.

        The stars twinkled bright that evening, and a full moon rose over Gunshow. A wisp of funky smoke snaked up over the steamwork and mingled with dry cloud hanging over city hall. There wasn’t much to hope for, but there was a little.

        The next morning was lost to one big collective hangover. Citizens nursing insidious headaches lined Main Street, doing their level best to stay in the boardwalk shade. Many of them wore black.

        It took a fair piece of time just to get the sheriff’s aegis out onto the street. The better part of the wall had to be taken out. By half past eleven it stood at the ready, like thirty feet of bad news shining in the mid-day sun. Sheriff Brady sat inside the metal beast on his control saddle, both hands encased in clockwork gauntlets that caused the metal giant to mirror his actions.

        From his perspective, the teetering, mule-hauled walking wagon that limped onto the street before him looked like a spider ready to be stepped on. He used his helmet goggles to lay in his guns. He wouldn’t need them, of course, but he liked the idea of Bismuth squirming at the sight of that much iron pointed toward him.

        “Are you ready to die, shiner?” he said over the loudspeaker.

        “I’m quite ready for lunch,” the Shiner Man yelled back. “If you’d like to re-consider this, Sheriff.”

        Belch hee-hawed in agreement. Even at a distance, the sound put Brady’s teeth on edge.

        “Make your peace with the gods, dead man.”

        Mayor Volstead watched from his great porch above them, sipping iced tea and counting the seconds until high noon. Sam in his cell stood on his waste bucket to get a better view through the window bars. Preacher Blackwell waited nearby, already humming the Dirge of Rites in preparation for what was to come. Vera Volstead stood between the two combatants holding a red flag above her head. When the town clock struck noon, the flag touched the ground and the two contraptions got to it.

        Laughing furiously through the loudspeaker, Brady tramped and stomped his way toward his opponent. Bismuth didn’t seem to care a thing about it. He fiddled with his busted pocket watch, holding it up to his ear and shaking it for good measure. Belch chewed a hay straw and tracked a solitary fly that was buzzing ‘round his head. Brady extended his huge metal arms and bore down on them, fast. Parents covered the eyes of young folks so they wouldn’t catch nightmares.

         Just before Brady had them in his grasp, Belch hee-hawed the order to fire. Bismuth sighed unhappily then flipped the lever at his side that ignited eight hours’ worth of pressurized booze gas. The make-shift cannon went off with a colossal BLAM and punched a giant hole right through one side of the aegis and out the other.

        From his vantage point above, Mayor Volstead had time to see daylight on the other side of the colossus. A shiny brass star the size of dinner table soared above town on a wave of scattershot. The mayor looked up to see it twinkle in the sun before it came crashing down on top of him, along with tons of bric-a-brak and smoldering chunks of sheriff. The great porch caved in on itself and tumbled into the street below.

        When the smoke cleared, Bismuth and Belch were covered head to toe in soot but otherwise no worse for wear. Before anyone could so much bat an eyelash, the Shiner Man unfolded a table next to his wagon and laid out a few rows of frosty jugs. “Who wants a drink?” he asked.

        Just about everybody did.

* * *

        The good folk of Gunshow scooped up what was left of Sheriff Brady and Mayor Volstead and buried them together near an outland hog farm under a “No Smoking” sign, ‘cause that’s the kind of fellas they always were.

        Cellars was made mayor by a special election, and Vera Volstead became Vera Barnes that very night with the blessings of Preacher Blackwell. The blushing bride and her husband, Sheriff Sam, invited everyone to the ceremony. The whole town came out for the party that followed, and refreshments were plentiful at ten bucks a jug.

        Morning saw a lot of sore heads in Boonwaller County, but of the Shiner Man and his mule there was no sign. Toting along a fat sack of silver coins, three figures beat it westward. With nary a care or a memory to restrain them, man, mule, and walking wagon cut a pig’s tail toward the horizon.

Copyright © 2013 C.T. Hutt

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

C.T. Hutt is a former government policy analyst who escaped D.C. and took refuge in the Rocky Mountains. A graduate of the University of Colorado’s MFA program, his work has been featured in Juked Magazine and 69 Flavors of Paranoia. His debut novel Havoc’s Children: Dog Days of Thereafter will be available as an eBook in 2014. Find him on Twitter @bookhutt.

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COVER ART

“Ruins,” by Stefan Meisl

German native Stefan Meisl studied art at the University of Passau, where he went on to become a teacher. Beginning in 2006, Stefan became a freelance painter and a graphic artist. Stefan is a member of the German Professional Artists Association and has had numerous exhibitions in both Germany and abroad. In 2008, Stefan had received the Award for Young Artists of the Free State of Bavaria. View more of his artwork at his gallery on 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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