Issue #161 • Nov. 27, 2014

“Sweet Death,” by Margaret Ronald

“We Were Once of the Sky,” by Yosef Lindell

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

SWEET DEATH

by Margaret Ronald

        In the usual course of activities—in as much as murder can be considered usual—I am the one to call my friend Mieni for assistance. This time around, though, she was the one who had contacted me (by pelting my window with detritus, rather than sending a brass sparrow as was my preference). Despite Mieni’s opinion that my own investigative faculties are adequate though untrained, I knew very well that I had not been asked in that capacity.

        It was an ugly scene. The alley was a narrow one in the refugee districts, so cramped that two grown men could not easily stand abreast. The owner of the property abutting the alley, a kobold so young her claws were still gray, stood unwilling to look at the Patrol officer who was questioning her in a hectoring tone. Between us slumped a huge, shaggy form that a careless glance could have mistaken for a human in a heavy coat. But the size, the fur, and most of all the head smashed by a heavy clay pot told me that this was a worse situation than I’d expected. A low drone permeated the entire scene, setting my teeth on edge, and the smell of the pot’s contents mixed with the trace of cold blood to create a heavy, sweet stink.

        Mieni beckoned to me from where she stood by the corpse. “You see my difficulty, Mr. Swift,” she said quietly. Her breath clouded and hung in the air, lingering after mine had dissipated. Koboldim body temperature is considerably higher than humans’, and her skin fairly steamed, though that might have been from consternation. “Zio found the body this morning, but because she came to me and not to Patrol, it is not looking good for her.”

        “I’ll see what I can do,” I answered softly, crouching next to her so that we were at the same height. “But this is a hell of a problem, Mieni.”

        “I am very aware of it. Look.” She stepped back, pointing at the ground. The damp earth had frozen overnight, and while Patrol’s clumsy feet had eroded some of the evidence, I could see only the heavy, clawed prints of the victim. Blood and honey from the shattered pot merged in florid swirls. “You see? And the pot bears the mark of Zio’s family. Beekeepers,” she said as I glanced at her. “Here, as they were back in Poma-mél.”

        “Seems simple enough to me.” The Patrol officer on duty, Fries, tramped up over the frozen prints. “Bear gets into the goblin’s honey, goblin drops a pot on ‘im.”

        Mieni shook her head. “We are koboldim, not goblins. And Zio’s family attests her presence among them till this morning.”

        Fries’ eyes narrowed.

        “That’s not a bear,” I said to draw his attention.

        “Looks like a bear,” said Fries, a City boy who’d probably only seen a bear in storybooks.

        I scratched my chin—unshaven, because Mieni had woken me before my morning ablutions—and sighed. “You weren’t in the war, were you?”

        He hunched a little under my gaze. “Cried off to take care of my mum.”

        “It’s an Ursa Davala,” I interrupted, not caring what his reasons were. There were a lot of good reasons to have stayed out of the war, starting with common sense. Which I had lacked, then and now.

        Few enough of us had returned from the war, and few of those had experience of the Ursa Davala, so his reaction was not unusual. The varied races of Poma-mél had taken sides in the conflict, and we humans were simply unlucky that the greatest warriors of that land had allied with the Usurper. They were among the most feared denizens of Poma-mél, and I have a number of dents in my ribcage that attest to the prowess of even one lone Davala.

        Though the war was over, our City was still very clearly in opposition to the Usurper, its refugee population and all, and the Davala were known for their loyalty to clan and Usurper both. I would have sooner expected to see a palug prowling through the river district than an Ursa Davala outside the boundaries of Poma-mél.

        “So?” Fries said, interrupting my thoughts. “Still looks bearish enough.” I drew breath to point out the differences—the shortened snout, the narrower torso—but Fries sniggered. “Got its head in the honeypot, too. Or the honeypot in its head.”

        “Fries—” I stopped and sighed. “Have you ever actually had honey from Poma-mél?”

        His mustache lifted in something like a sneer. “I take my tea clear, me.”

        “It’s... different.” The honey had been a delicacy since long before the war, with its taste almost like distant music, the closest that most humans could come to the magic that permeated Poma-mél. I sometimes wondered if my sweet-tooth since childhood had been part of what had drawn me to fight in Poma-mél. “There’s a reason that their land is named half after honey. A Davala wouldn’t seek City honey; it’d be several steps down in quality.”

        “Still don’t explain—”

        “Send a sparrow to the Quarter, Fries. I want a proper wagon-team for the body, and they’re to do it with respect, mind. Mieni,” I added, turning as Fries muttered away into his sparrow, “can you translate for me if I ask Zio some questions?”

        “I fear it would do no good,” she said, turning to look at the smaller kobold. Zio’s young age was apparent from the lack of tufted white hair that Mieni, a grandmother several times over, bore in abundance. In contrast to Mieni’s smart if diminutive suit, she wore a human child’s clothes, several owners away from new. She stared at the body as if afraid it would get up and attack her. “Zio has told me nothing, and would tell you even less.”

        “I thought the other koboldim in the City told you everything.”

        “I hear what I hear—but truly, Mr. Swift, do you tell your own grandmother everything? I would be surprised if you did, though no less so than she, I suspect.” She sighed and jerked her head towards the scrubbed-stone wall. “And Zio has refused to let your Patrol search her yard.”

        Now I could hear koboldim voices on the other side of the wall, muffled further by the heavy drone of bees. “Mieni, this really isn’t good. I can’t prove she didn’t do it.”

        That struck a rare anger from Mieni, and her eyes actually flared a brighter gold as she looked up at me. “I can, Mr. Swift, and if you would use your faculties, you too—”

        “I can’t prove it to a judge’s satisfaction,” I interrupted. “Not a human judge.”

        Mieni closed her mouth so sharply I feared her fangs would cut her lips. “Just so, Mr. Swift,” she muttered, looking away, then frowned. A lone bee, moving drowsily in the cold, crawled out from under the shattered honeypot and stood on the Davala’s broken eyesocket, waving its antennae as if lost. It turned a half-circle, then stopped, wings twitching. “Odd,” she said. “Very odd.”

        “Seeking the honey, maybe?”

        “A lone bee? I do not think so. You impute more initiative to them than they truly have.” She shook her head, then bent to scrape a little of the bloody honey into a glass jar.

        “Mieni!”

        “Evidence,” she said, rising to her feet. “Had I all the information... no, there is something I am missing, and Zio will not tell me.”

        A new Patrol officer hurried up. “Inspector Swift,” he began, then stopped, staring at the body.

        “That was quick,” I said.

        “What?” He dragged his gaze back to meet mine. “No, sir. The Quarter sent me—Crighton asked for you specific, and your downstairs neighbor said you’d been called out to the gobl—the kobold streets.”

        “My shift doesn’t start till ten. What does Crighton want with me?”

        “He said you’d be best prepared to deal with our visitor. It’s—” The Patrol glanced behind me again and swallowed. “It’s an Ursa Davala.”

* * *

        The first misconception that many people make when meeting an Ursa Davala is to assume that because they are somewhat bearish in appearance, they carry some of the same traits that we assign to bears: slow, taciturn, graceless in movement and manner. These are all false; the Davala are large and strong, but they move quickly, often pinpointing an opponent’s weak spot before the fight has begun. Few humans have the chance to correct that impression. I am very fortunate to be one.

        Crighton met me at the gates of the Quarter. “Took you long enough,” he muttered as I fell into step behind him. “And what the hell is that doing here?”

        Mieni gave him her usual sunny, flat smile. “Your pardon, good Inspector, but I overheard the summons for my good friend Mr. Swift and thought I could be of some use. I, too, have some knowledge of the Davala.”

        Crighton snorted.

        “She has at least as much experience as I, sir,” I said quietly as we crossed the yard and ascended to the upper cloister. “And it couldn’t hurt to get another opinion from Poma-mél.”

        “Right now we’ve got a surplus of Poma-mél opinions. With ambassadors’ immunity, no less—and why the council saw fit to grant that, I’ve no idea.” Crighton yanked a door open and stomped into the hall, not waiting for either of us to catch up.

        “Sir?” I quickened my steps. “What are Poma-mél citizens doing in the City?”

        That got him to turn around. “Read the damned papers once in a while, Swift. The Usurper’s trying to make nice with the council, now that we’re on the outs with the Ageless.”

        I grimaced. The Ageless were the reason we’d gotten into the war, and though we’d failed to liberate their lands from the Usurper, they had settled here in exile. Only recently had that become a problem, and I’d had something to do with it. Mieni nodded. “It is like the masca, to jump on such a chance—but why here?”

        “You tell me.” Crighton sighed. “This damn visit is the last thing I need.”

        A Patrol officer hurried around the corner, then skidded to a stop as she saw me. I noted Fries’ sparrow in her hand. “Actually, sir, I think this message is the last thing you need.” Crighton shot me an irritated and puzzled look. “Exactly what do you want me to say?”

        “Just find out what the hell they’re doing here.” He waved over the Patrol, then stopped and turned back, leveling a thick finger at Mieni. “And that goblin stays out of the conversation. You can eavesdrop like the rest of us.”

        Mieni curtseyed as if she’d received an actual compliment. “I would be honored to do so.”

        The Quarter receiving-room barely deserved the name, being mostly where we stowed visitors until they could be shunted in the right direction. It did, however, have a decent tea service. The Ursa Davala at the far end of the room turned, a delicate cup held carefully between thumb and foreclaw. Seen close and in life, the resemblance to a bear was passing, less important than the piercing green gaze, the expression like a smile on a snout blunted for speech, and the posture that did nothing to diminish height and bulk.

        “Ah,” it rumbled. “Arthur Swift. I am called Isto of the Three Claws, first of my ranking and clan. I understand you stood challenge to another of the Three Claws; therefore I may speak on equal footing with you, without my colleague as go-between.”

        “Equal may be an overstatement,” I said, and gestured to the largest of the chairs. “After all, I did lose.”

        It ignored my offer and settled instead on one of the benches, elbows propped on knees. It wore three blue sashes wrapped crossways round its—her—torso, indicating both gender and rank, and the loosest of these sagged as she sat forward. “Lose, win. You are alive. That puts you ahead of most who face the Davala. I know few enough names in your City who may speak on such footing.”

        I nodded and settled onto a chair, aware of the wall behind me that was mostly paper and lath. It allowed eavesdroppers to hear much of what was said in this room, and undoubtedly Mieni and shortly Crighton would be behind it. “What brings you here?”

        Isto took a lingering sip of tea, vapor condensing on her bristles. “Opportunity alone. The White Queen thinks that reconciliation may be possible between your City and our lands.”

        “I doubt it.” From behind the wall I thought I heard Crighton curse. “However, I didn’t mean the City so much as the Quarter. Why visit us, specifically?”

        She bared her teeth a moment, an unsettling sight even though I knew it was meant as a smile. “Personal curiosity. My co-envoy does not much care for your methods of keeping the peace, but I find the Quarter’s honor-pattern intriguing.” Porcelain rang as she set down her teacup and reached into her sash. “Here. In recognition of the knowledge I seek—and the position I have put you in—I offer mead of our making.” She brought out a small clay flask, then frowned.

        I hesitated—the mead-offering was a gesture of respect, but I wasn’t sure whether I merited it. “Have I offended?”

        “No, this....” She raised the flask, stamped with the Three Claws’ sigil. “My brother Ayio gave this to me at the border, as his new endeavor. If I gave approval, he would produce it for the rest of our clan. I would have done you the honor of the first taste, had it been unopened. But—” She turned it around and showed the broken wax. “Odd.”

        That was all we needed, for someone to mess with a Davala’s mead. “I know clan leaders carry many flasks,” I said hesitantly. “Is it possible that you—”

        Isto whuffed a laugh. “You think I would not know my brother’s mead? For all the trouble Ayio has given me, it is a temptation. But no, my co-envoy and I shared another flask last night but did not open this one.”

        “If your co-envoy is a Davala,” I said slowly, “perhaps he partook of it?” I had no gift for subtlety, but that seemed a fair way of inquiring whether she was the only Ursa Davala in the City.

        Isto’s snout lifted in a laugh. “Ah, no. No, two Davala on a mission? The honor-patterns would be impossible to untangle. Why do you ask?”

        I cursed inwardly. “No reason.”

        “Of course.” Isto pulled the broken seal away and sniffed at the clay. “Smells just like yesterday’s plain mead. Ayio’s estimate of his skill has gone downstream. Too poor to share, I am afraid.” She put it away with a disgusted snort. “May I speak frankly?”

        “If you don’t mind being overheard.” I nodded to the wall. From behind it came a noise very much like Crighton strangling himself and Mieni stifling one of her belly laughs. I ignored them; there are a few things that go along with having survived single combat with the Davala, and one is respect enough to tell the truth.

        “If I did, I would not have come here in the first place.” She leaned forward, lacing the claws of her hands together in a gesture more human than ursine. “My co-envoy believes that the current state of affairs harms both our societies. The green land misses those who left. This is a city of men; it is not meant to hold so much of the green land.”

        There were those who agreed, certainly. But those same who deplored the presence of koboldim would often in the next breath lament the lack of able-bodied men to perform the jobs that our new refugee populations had taken. “I think you underestimate our City.”

        A shrug on a Davala is something to see, very much like a furry ripple from nape to waist. She rose in the same motion, all nine feet towering over me. “I reserve judgment, myself.”

        I rose as well, moving close to Isto, closer than I would stand with most humans—a challenge, if not a spoken one. “Are you truly the only Davala in the City?”

        “You have seen more?” she said, quickly and quietly. Her gaze shifted to over my shoulder, and she stepped back. “No, I think you are mistaking rainclouds for bears.”

        I started to speak, then paused, aware that someone else had joined us. A young man, delicate-featured and handsome if not for his scowl, stomped into the room, or would have stomped had he more weight. “Where have you been?” he demanded of Isto. “Do you realize I had to talk to their representatives to find you? And not even the council—their servants, of all people. I can’t believe you’d willingly spend more time with these fanga—”

        “I had conversation,” Isto said calmly. “With my honor-mate, Arthur Swift.”

        I bowed, unsure what gesture of respect to make to this envoy. “Of the City Inspectors—”

        The youth flapped one hand at me as if I were only a fly. Something on his back blurred, and I realized that the shimmery blue mantle that I’d mistaken for a jacket was a carapace, covering wings like those of a beetle. With the realization came a visceral chill and the knowledge that this was no child.

        When the war began and City men like me volunteered, this young man was what we’d expected to face—angies, what the vulgar call “flower-fairies.” We did so, but to our sorrow; they were many, and they were vicious. Even a Davala might yield to one, and as for me, it took a effort of will not to check that my pistol was in place.

        Luckily, the angie took little notice of me. “You think I like having to wander all over this sham of a city, this jumped-up parody of the green land?” he snapped at Isto. “We have work to do in this sterile ground, and I can’t do my job if you’re off playing honor-games.”

        This last came out with such contempt that I thought surely Isto would call challenge—but the angie’s rank must have been considerably higher than hers. Instead she simply folded her hands. “Your pardon. I was seized with curiosity as to how order is kept here, in this as you say sham.” She inclined her head to me. “Good cover to you, Arthur Swift.”

        The angie’s eyes narrowed at my name, and he turned a scornful glance on me as Isto strode out. “The White Queen may see some value in speaking to the likes of you,” he hissed, “but only because she’s never seen how stunted this place is. A blight on you and your City, ironblood.”

        I said nothing, only drew myself up, imitating Isto. I had two feet and at least a hundred pounds on the angie, although that would mean very little if it came to it. The angie spat—not at me, or I would have lost my resolve and flinched—but on the floor. The wood sizzled faintly as he glided out, the sound merging with the drone of his wings as he glided out. I exhaled slowly.

        Crighton was already out from behind the listening-wall. “Of all the—What was the purpose of that, Swift?”

        “To be honest, I have no idea.” I picked up one of the napkins and mopped up the spittle, careful not to touch it. “If she wanted someone who faced the Davala before, there are many more respectable candidates.”

        “Respectability was not the question.” Mieni emerged, hands clasped before her as if she were a professor. “The Usurper’s ambassadors have no real reason to visit the Inspectors. So the Davala must have hoped to glean some information from you that only Inspectors would have, and out of her companion la flor’s hearing.”

        “Well, yes,” Crighton said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “That’s obvious.”

        “It is?” I asked.

        Both ignored me, though Mieni smiled very slightly. Crighton continued. “The only problem is that I don’t see what Swift here could have told him, aside from how crap he is at diplomacy.”

        “It is not clear? Perhaps my grasp of your tongue is not as strong as I thought.” Mieni grinned, and I knew she meant “command of language,” but something about her grin made Crighton put a hand to his mouth. “First, she determined that the war goes unforgotten—small news there, to be sure. Second, she determined the limits of our—of Mr. Swift’s knowledge, and therefore that of the Quarter. And last, she knows there is another Davala in the City. Though I think she knew that before.”

        “Then why ask?” I said. Crighton, to my surprise, nodded instead of telling her to go away.

        “Because by waiting for you to ask, she found that you—the Inspectors—had cause to know of the other Davala. And where you have cause, there is often trouble. I wonder...” She walked to the far door, the one opening out onto the gallery and the Yard. “Mr. Swift, I think we had better return to the alley. There is more here than I quite understand—”

        She stopped, staring out the window into the yard, gold eyes widening. Crighton and I followed her gaze to see two Patrol escorting a small, wilted figure. “Mieni—” I began.

        Too late. In true kobold fashion, she discarded the stairs in favor of the window, prying the latter open and jumping down to the ground. “Quite the goblin you have there,” Crighton said.

        “Kobold,” I corrected, and hurried out.

        Mieni was in full force when I reached her, explaining in great detail why the Davala could not have been killed by a kobold and certainly not by poor Zio. Zio drooped listlessly between the two officers, and I realized that she hadn’t expected any other outcome.

        “Stands to reason, ma’am,” the Patrolman said with an inflection that turned “ma’am” into something just short of ‘goblin.’ “She got the bear with the honey jar. Simple as that.”

        “Simple? There is nothing simple—” Mieni said hotly.

        “I’ve been on scene,” I said, raising my voice. “It’s unlikely that Zio could have thrown that pot with such accuracy.” Unlikely, but not impossible—but someone had to speak for her, and they’d listen to me before they listened to Mieni.

        Not that that would stop Mieni. “That is not even the first of the reasons! The prints, the wound, the time of the death—do you no longer even bother to look at the evidence?”

        I turned to Crighton, who had finally made his way down to the yard. “Sir, there has been a mistake. You know we can’t just sweep this onto her.” I gestured to Zio, who flinched reflexively.

        “I don’t know anything of the sort, Swift.” But he stood with arms crossed a moment, gazing not at Zio but at Mieni. “There’s one too many damn bears around this City, and I’d like to find out why it’s not two too many. You think you can get something I can give the council without it blowing up in our faces?”

        I hesitated. “I can get something,” I said finally.

        Crighton snorted, but he was still watching Mieni. “Egg on you, then, if it falls. You, Patrol: Take this—kobold—back where she came from. Put a watch on the whole block.”

        “A watch will not be necessary,” Mieni said quietly. I glanced at her; it was the kind of quiet that often preceded trouble. “With Patrol like this on the street, we koboldim will be staying indoors.”

        Crighton shrugged and turned away, and the Patrol took Zio back the way they’d come. Mieni remained, hands closed tight into fists. I hesitated, then knelt next to her. “It might be best if we took a moment away,” I said quietly. “Patrol will be at the scene for a good while longer; we’ll go back to investigate after.”

        “After,” Mieni agreed, or simply repeated.

        There are a few tea-houses that cater to the Quarter, though there are more pubs and smoke-houses. None of the latter establishments look kindly on our city’s refugee population, and so I brought Mieni to the Yellow Bell, an tea-house of such mediocrity that no one could be bothered to care what the clientele was like.

        To my surprise, Mieni headed straight to the back, claiming a table and a stool so that she could sit close to my height. “Two of the kitchen staff here are koboldim,” she said at my raised eyebrow. “If they know I am here, we shall have better food.”

        “I was thinking just a cup of tea.” I nodded to a server. “Zio looked—well, she looked like she’d lost hope.”

        “She may be right to do so—but truly, if she only would speak to me!” She glared at the table while I ordered a pot of tea and biscuits. At last she shook her head. “She is trying to cover for her family, which is foolish because it is obvious what they have been doing.”

        “It is?”

        Mieni’s white brows furrowed as she looked up at me, then with a laugh she straightened up. “Ah, Mr. Swift, sometimes I think you are a flatterer. Why else would you entice me to speak of what must be clear to you? I know you have a brain, if only,” and here she leaned across the table and tapped my forehead with one clawed finger, “if only you would let yourself use it, Mr. Swift!”

        “Thank you,” I said dryly. The server placed a pot of tea and two cups on our table and left without saying more. “But in truth, all I saw was an impossibility: one dead Davala, no footprints, no reason for him even to be in the City.”

        “The last should be obvious, I think, from Zio’s reticence if nothing else.” The server brought a pair of honey-pots to the table, and Mieni gestured to them. “She and her family were smuggling honey to the Davala.”

        “But—the quality—”

        “Is irrelevant, Mr. Swift. Even the Davala occasionally seek novelty, and as a connoisseur of wines might sample a fine vinegar to taste what had once been, so a Davala might sample City honey.” She dragged a cup over to her and ran a claw around the edge. “But there is more strangeness here, and I cannot see a way to it. Perhaps what the Davala paid was more than money; perhaps there is espionage here...” She shook her head.

        “It leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” I said at last. “It’s too close to the joke Fries made about bears and honey.”

        “He also thought Zio guilty, and I believe—I know she is not. Pour, please? The cooks may be koboldim, but the teapot is not, and my hands are not proportioned to it.” I did so, and she took the cup between her hands. “But even all this does not explain the death. If I knew why, I would know who... perhaps if I knew the smuggling routes, as I did back in Poma-mél...” She moodily stared into her cup, lapsing into faint koboldim mutters.

        I gazed at her a moment. Mieni, and all her kin and kith, were not just refugees but exiles, cast out for siding against the Usurper. We humans may not all have returned to the City, but those who did return had a home to return to. I pushed the little jars across the table. “Here. Have some of the Poma-mél honey. I’m paying, so don’t worry about the extra cost.” I smiled weakly. “I’d always assumed it was a surcharge for the special flowers.”

        Mieni’s spoon clattered against her teacup, and I glanced up from my own tea to see her staring at the untouched jar. “Mar de sang! I am a fool three times over, Mr. Swift, a fool. What is it the Davala told you? Mistaking them for rainclouds?”

        “I—yes,” I said. “It’s an expression, I think—”

        “An entirely accurate one! Come!”

* * *

        Mieni’s concept of an explanation is lacking in several regards, and I’m afraid I was no less in the dark as I stood in front of Zio’s home for a good forty minutes, waiting for an answer to my sparrow.

        The street itself was quiet; the koboldim were staying inside, and the other inhabitants were scared off enough by the presence of a City Inspector. I shivered, wishing I’d had any of that tea.

        The Davala move quietly, but they are more suited to wilderness than an urban setting. I saw Isto well before I heard her, a great shadow in the fading light, gliding soundlessly between the buildings. If I had been doing this properly, I would have stepped out into the street and announced both her name and mine; instead, I waited until she had reached Zio’s front door. “Isto of the Three Claws,” I said, and gave her the salute of soldier to opposing soldier.

        “Arthur Swift,” she rumbled. “I tell you true, I did not expect this.” She opened one hand to reveal my brass sparrow balanced on her palm. “I understood that calling challenge within the City was forbidden.”

        “It is,” I said. The back of my shirt was damp with sweat, despite the cold. “I could think of no other way to bring you here alone.”

        The slow change of expression was very much like the shifting of snow on a steep hillside. “A false challenge is a stain on both our honors, Arthur Swift.”

        “I’m well aware of that,” I said, hoping that Isto didn’t decide to treat it as a real challenge regardless. I retreated a few steps, not turning my back on her but leading her down the walk that separated Zio’s home from the next, toward the yard behind her home. “You know there is another Ursa Davala within the city.”

        “Of course,” she said, a bright flicker of amusement in her voice. “Honey is honey, mead is mead. Though that you asked told me that you had not caught him—perhaps that will be enough for me to convince him such trips to your City are too risky even for us—”

        She paused as we reached the corner, and her snout lifted. Her lips drew back from teeth hard and yellowed. “I smell my family’s blood, Arthur Swift,” she growled. “I will break your sad human neck.”

        “Indeed,” a piping voice answered before I could protest. I turned to see Mieni standing in the middle of the yard, an open glass jar in her hand. Around her stood hives—or the remnants of them. The boxes had been smashed, combs and honey strewn about, and even though Zio’s family had worked hard to salvage them, the damage was clear. A hum of spared bees now came from smaller hives in the corner, but most had been crushed beyond repair, as if by a giant’s hand.

        “Indeed you could break Mr. Swift’s neck,” Mieni went on with more composure than I thought strictly necessary. “But you would not do so without giving your name in challenge, or without warning.”

        Isto raised her snout. “No. I would not.”

        “Not all are as honorable.” She held out the jar—the same into which she’d scraped honey and blood that morning, the latter of which had clearly caught Isto’s nose. “There were no footprints around your brother’s body, Isto of the Three Claws. He was alone, perhaps he saw a shadow, he looked up—” She tapped her head as if to imitate the blow. “You know what this means as well as I.”

        I didn’t know myself, but there are times when it’s better not to interrupt.

        Mieni made her way across the broken hives, the drone from the rescued ones seeming to hush as she did so. “He was killed by that which he sought to smuggle out, by the same honey.”

        Isto’s eyes narrowed.

        Mieni went on as she reached Isto, standing nearly toe-to-toe with her. “It was a blow he did not expect, since he was a trusting soul, and he had not yet gotten the honey he’d come for.” She held up the jar again. “This is your answer.”

        “Honey?” I said before I could think. “The murder weapon was a honey-crock, but—”

        “Honey from Zio’s hives,” Mieni said, never taking her eyes from Isto. “Honey made in the City. Honey that made the mead you would have tasted and approved—had someone not loathed what it was and stolen it, smashed where it came from, and then left to prevent any taste of it leaving this City of men.”

        Isto was still a moment, then dug one claw into the jar, coming away with red-smeared honey. She put it to her mouth, and if I had thought she was still before, this was the stillness of a stormcloud before the thunderclap.

        I risked sidling close to Mieni. “I don’t understand.”

        “Taste for yourself. Or, if you are squeamish, taste from the hives themselves.”

        Squeamish or no, there are limits. I cleared away a few of the dead bees from a shattered hive and got a drop on the edge of my pocketknife. I put it to my mouth, tasting raw sweetness—and more than that. The faint tingle of Poma-mél’s magic shivered through me, the echo of a land far from here, the note that could only translate itself in my head to a sweet wordless singing. And yet it was manifestly not Poma-mél honey but City honey, with the harsh tang that I’d known from boyhood. “This—the honey must be mixed—”

        Mieni shook her head. “Unmixed. Or do you distrust your own abilities, Mr. Swift? Has someone mixed it between your hand and mouth?”

        I stared at the gold smear on my knife. “The bees can’t be going so far as Poma-mél.”

        Isto raised her head, snout questing at the air. “ No. They cannot.” She turned to face me, and I knew with a chill certainty that my false challenge would go unmet. There was something worse here now.

        “Honey on its own, that is nothing special, is it?” Mieni’s gaze flicked briefly to me, then back to Isto. “But honey of the City, honey that has changed as we exiles have changed the City, honey that seems to echo something once thought exclusive to the green land—well, that is troubling. Particularly when a Davala plans to give mead of that honey to his clan. That is cause for Zio to remain silent. And that is cause, by some reckonings, for worse actions still.”

        The bees’ hum suddenly intensified, with a new note on top of it: a different hum, of larger wings. I looked up in time to see the angie drop to the ground before Isto. “Running off again?” he demanded of her. “You can’t just drop everything when challenged—”

        Wings, I realized. The angie had them—all angies did. The lack of footprints around the body was suddenly clear.

        “Bon flor, attend,” Mieni said softly. “Have you tried the honey here in our city? I think you would find it—interesting.”

        The angie glanced at her, fine features contorting in a frown—and then, as he saw the bloody honey, froze. It was not an admission of guilt, but it did not have to be.

        The Davala move quickly when they want to. I did not see Isto move, but I heard the crack and thump, and I saw the angie hit the far wall, carapace shattered, one delicate wing torn in half. He blinked at the sky, stunned, then gave a slow, bubbling gasp as the pain hit. I knew that expression. I had worn it or one like it once. “Isto,” I began.

        “I am not sure you are authorized to do anything, Mr. Swift,” Mieni said calmly. “Envoys are untouchable, after all. Such a carefully sought status, I am sure, not thinking it would therefore apply to them both.”

        “I can’t just stand by!”

        “Nor will I make you.” Isto moved to stand over the angie, then pulled him upright by one arm. The angie whimpered. “I believe I have recalled an urgent reason to return to Poma-mél,” Isto went on. “And I will have some news for my clan when I do.” I began to speak, but Isto held out her free hand. “Because we were on even footing, I am following the rules of your City, Arthur Swift. But do not presume more.”

        The angie gave another whimper as she slung him across her back and walked off. I hesitated, one hand going to the whistle that would summon Patrol. But after a moment, I let my hand drop. “How did you know?” I said finally.

        Mieni shivered, the first sign of cold I’d seen in her that day. “The bee, Mr. Swift. A lone bee does not go out in search of honey, not in this cold. Its presence spoke that the hives had been damaged, at the very least. And Zio would admit normally to smuggling, but the honey itself worried her—that was why she would not speak even to me. We are perhaps a little sensitive to traces of our home, we koboldim.” She shrugged, a single rise and fall of narrow shoulders. “Only la flor would find it so distressing that blossoms outside their jurisdiction could begin to carry the echo of Poma-mél.”

        “Enough to kill over it?”

        “More than enough.” She glanced sidelong at me. “You still do not quite understand how tied those of Poma-mél are to their natures, Mr. Swift. The Davala are bears in certain ways, the flor—” She shrugged. “The flor navigate by their own knowledge, by the flowers of the green land. You saw how angry he was at having to search rather than knowing where he was right away; with the City flowers changing, and the flowers of home a memory—perhaps he did not even realize we were in the same place as his rampage. They, too, are blossoms, and jealous ones.”

        “Deadly ones.” I looked at the gold on my blade, thought of how the City’s long relation with Poma-mél had changed so precipitously in recent years, thought of the strange taste still on my tongue. “Do you really think the City flowers are changing so much?”

        “Perhaps. One never can tell with bees.” She looked into the little pot of bloody honey, then ran a finger around the inside and sucked on it. “You and I never did have that tea, Mr. Swift. Come; I will tell the koboldim who work at the Bell to make you something comforting and warm. And, I think, more savory than sweet.”

        I turned my knife again, then wiped the honey from it and licked it from my finger. The angie had been right in a way - this was a city of men, and not meant to hold as much magic as must come from Poma-mel. But, I thought, tasting the singing sweetness cut with murk of the City, that didn’t mean the changes were all bad. Mieni nodded as I put away my knife, and we walked on to the Bell.

Copyright © 2014 Margaret Ronald

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Margaret Ronald’s short fiction has appeared in such venues as Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and ten times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including a series of stand-alone stories set in the same steampunk world that began with “A Serpent in the Gears” in BCS #34 and includes “Salvage” (BCS #77) and “The Governess and the Lobster” (BCS #95) along with four others, as well as a ongoing series of fantasy mysteries beginning with “A Death for the Ageless” in BCS #134 and continuing in “Sweet Death“ in BCS #161 and “Murder Goes Hungry” forthcoming in 2015. Soul Hunt, the third novel in her urban fantasy series and the sequel to Spiral Hunt and Wild Hunt, was released by Eos Books in 2011. Originally from rural Indiana, she now lives outside Boston. Visit her website at mronald.wordpress.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

WE WERE ONCE OF THE SKY

by Yosef Lindell

        The plague is coming. It spreads on the whispering tongues of the tavern-folk and on a breath of dry wind over dead grass.

        I sit at my table in the Bureau. Sunlight pierces the narrow windows on either side, illuminating the books in front of me. Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest—the building blocks of an ordered but sterile world. Shelves full of leather-bound volumes surround me like a scaffold, smothering me in their eternal solitude.

        I grab the desk with spindly birdlike fingers and push myself up on squat legs. From the window to my right, I can see smoke rising from the chimneys of Frampton-on-Severn. That is the human village, where Beta like myself are not welcome. The humans don’t trust our long tongues, our mottled papery skin, and the round holes just above our foreheads. But the plague kills us just the same. Out the window on my left, the Beta colony sits beyond the river Severn and the rolling hills. That is where I grew up, but I will never be at home there. It has been a long time since I could believe my people’s myths.

        Instead, I am caught in between the village and the colony. So I stay at the Bureau, collecting books and waiting for the plague.

* * *

        My earliest memory is of my third birthday. Father put me on his shoulders like he had seen the human fathers do, and took me outside. He pointed to a star, and touched his long tongue to mine. I heard his voice in my mind, which is what happens when we Beta touch tongues. I shivered, even though the night was warm. Kev, he was saying, do you see that star, just to the left of the crescent moon? See how it shines brighter than the rest? Well, that is where we came from. Someday, to there we will return.

        Oh, to have come from a distant star! At nights I would lie awake, dreaming of the sky and its limitless possibilities. But every year, when Father took me outside, he pointed to a different star. So Father doesn’t really know what star we came from, I thought. Maybe we didn’t come from the stars at all.

        Eventually, I stopped believing him. So I didn’t complain when I got too big to ride on his shoulders and we didn’t go out anymore on my birthday.

* * *

        Thrita shows me maps. “Wotton-under-Edge,” he says in his sonorous voice. He points at the map with a long, oily tongue. “That’s where it was first reported. I reckon it’s coming due north. Dursley is next in its path. Then it will reach Frampton-on-Severn, then perhaps the colony.”

        I nod numbly, pretending not to care. From reading Galen I learned that disease spreads because of bad air, or miasma. That’s why it tends to fester in the cramped quarters of cities and towns. We are out in the country. Perhaps we are safe. I tell that to Thrita.

        He stares at me with those pale lamp-like Beta eyes. Thrita has unusually oily hair which grows only in sparse patches and tufts. “The Beta are never safe,” he says.

        Thrita knows that better than anyone. As an orphaned child, he often went hungry. One night, a human patrol found him outside the colony after curfew, foraging for food. The Baron’s men ordered him put in the stocks for two days. They warned him that if he broke the curfew again, they would have him hanged as an example. Zelhorn found Thrita while he was still in the stocks, dying of thirst. Thrita had one very important skill most Beta didn’t have—someone, somehow, had taught him to read. So Zelhorn convinced the Baron’s men to free Thrita on the condition that he work for the Bureau. The humans like Zelhorn’s Bureau for the Societal and Literary Advancement of the Beta. They allow us to collect taxes and to help enforce the King’s Law. Perhaps they think we keep the Beta out of trouble. Also, the humans like Zelhorn because he worships the Christian god.

        “We always die,” Thrita was saying, in that slow, mellow voice of his. “Either the plague takes us, or the humans think we were spared because of some witchcraft. Then they kill us anyway.”

        I don’t say anything, because I know Thrita is right.

* * *

        Once a month, my family went to see the relics. They were housed in the tallest building in the colony, a gaunt structure capped by a solitary spire twisted like the horn of a unicorn. The relics, sixteen metal pieces arranged on both sides of an aisle, were viewed silently and in single file. Father went first, then Mother, then me.

        The unmarked metal coiled in strange, skeletal shapes. Some relics were dark as obsidian; others shone like pale steel. Mother instructed me not to touch them. She told me that old Bilus had touched a relic, gone mad, and died within three weeks. I wasn’t sure I had ever needed any convincing on the matter, and I certainly didn’t after her story. Still, Mother held her arm out behind her and squeezed my hand when we passed between the relics. Her hand trembled, and I wondered who was really holding who. Sometimes she cried when we got home.

        Father told me that the humans once tried to destroy the relics. Although they ruined the building, they couldn’t even dent the metal.

        “Why did they want to destroy the relics?” I asked.

        “They called them heathen idolatry.”

        I didn’t understand what that meant, but there was little about the humans that I understood. “What are the relics anyway?” I asked.

        “I’ve told you before.”

        “Tell me again.”

        “They are fragments of a great vessel that sailed the stars. They are pieces of the ship that brought us here.”

        “Why do we have to look at them? The ship is broken. It can’t sail anymore.”

        “The past is important.”

        “Then why does Mother cry?”

        Father looked troubled for a moment. I think he wasn’t quite sure of the answer. “Do you know those woodcuts of Mother’s parents that I made for her?”

        “Yes.” Mother often gazed at them in the flickering light of the fire after she put me to bed. I never fell asleep that quickly.

        “Their pictures are only carved in wood, but the likeness reminds her of what she’s lost. I figure the relics are much the same.”

        I thought back to the stars. “Sometimes,” I said, “I think we pretend to remember things that we are not sure we ever had. And that’s why Mother cries—because she doesn’t know if there ever was a ship, or if we came from the stars.”

        Father looked at me sadly and said nothing.

* * *

        Zelhorn approaches. I am still in my library, cataloguing books, inscribing them, constructing a meaningless shrine to eternity. I know it is Zelhorn without turning around. The stench of rosewater and charcoal follows him everywhere.

        “Kev,” he says, “I need a favor.”

        I face him. He is wizened and old; his braided white beard hangs in strands knotted with jade beads. He wears a cross, and he taps incessantly with a stick. Today, he bears strange parcels: tan masks with dull glass eyepieces and tapered conical fronts that look like beaks of implausible birds. I worry that he has devised yet another experiment.

        Zelhorn continues: “I need some things from Frampton-on-Severn. Lavender, camphor, mint, maybe a touch of cloves. No rose petals—I have too many here already. But do make sure we have a good deal of straw.”

        Now I’m certain this experiment concerns alchemy. No matter, Thrita and I do all of Zelhorn’s real work for him anyway. Still, I eye him suspiciously. “What for?”

        “For the doctors of course! Bubonic plague spreads by miasma. To prevent the doctors from contracting plague, the incense goes in the front of the beak and the straw serves as a filter.”

        “Doctors?”

        “For Wotton-under-Edge. The town needs doctors, but its own are either stricken or fled. I think some of the Beta might be interested.”

        “The Beta are not doctors.” They can’t even read.

        Zelhorn waves his tongue dismissively. “It matters little. We can teach them the procedure. Make a poultice. Lance the buboes. Avoid breathing the foul air.”

        “Avoid breathing the air—how?”

        Zelhorn comes so close that the stench of rosewater is overpowering. His beads and cross jangle in my face. “The costumes will mitigate the miasma, of course. And behind these masks, humans and Beta look the same. So Beta can be doctors without the humans knowing. Humans will let Beta doctors treat them. The plague will be contained, and the Beta doctors will be paid. Change, not plague, will soon be in the air. This is, after all, the Bureau for the Societal and Literary Advancement of the Beta!”

        I draw back. It is just like Zelhorn to try to find some silver lining in the plague. To use it to our supposed advantage. “I suppose the Beta will die quicker this way,” I say. “But perhaps it is for the best. There won’t be any witch trials afterwards.”

        Zelhorn’s eyes are like smoky lamps. “In all your time here, what have you actually done to help our people?”

        “You are not helping them either. These doctors will die.”

        “Only without the proper precautions. That is why I need the herbs. The sweet smell in the nose—” he taps the bird mask— “dispels the miasma.”

        I make no acknowledgment.

        “Do what you wish,” he says eventually. He hangs the bird masks on my shelves. “I will send Thrita instead.”

        I think back to a time when I trusted Zelhorn. When it seemed that he alone taught a truth of which others were afraid to speak. Perhaps he is right. I have done nothing at the Bureau. My literacy project is a failure. The Beta have no interest in learning to read. Going to Frampton-on-Severn couldn’t be any worse than remaining here. “No, I will go,” I say.

        Zelhorn looks at me approvingly. “Good.”

        I will go, I tell myself. But this will not stop the plague.

* * *

        It was night. I awoke to the familiar sound of distant tapping. I crept silently from my bed and lay at the foot of the crafting table, watching wax drip between its slats and wood shavings flutter down to meet the sticky mass forming underneath.

        When I raised my head, there was Father, a candle clenched tightly in the hole above his forehead. His tongue was taut as a bowstring and glistened silver in the half-light. An iron nib quivered on its edge. Tap. Tap. Ta-Tap. Father chipped away at the wooden block on the table, creating delicate patterns with the nib attached to his tongue.

        Father was a block cutter. He said that each block of wood was full of stories waiting to be discovered. Sometimes, the wood yielded valleys and the rivers that ran through them; other times, I saw great mountain ranges with waterfalls tumbling into canyon-beds far below. Often I imagined dragons wheeling upon the peaks, scorching the mighty mountainside with flame. Yet this time, there were no dragons or mountains. Instead, all I saw were scratches, marks that curved and curled in an unknown dance.

        “What are they?” I asked.

        “Words,” he replied.

        “I like dragons better.”

        “Words can become whatever you want them to be, even dragons.” Father offered me his hand. “Come, let me take you back to bed,” he said.

        Later, Father explained to me that these woodcuts were templates that could be smeared with ink and pressed onto parchment. This was how books were made.

        I became fascinated by books of all kinds. Words were an intricate wonder, but since I couldn’t read, I could only pretend their meaning. Father must be a master of words, I thought. So I begged Father to teach me.

        It was quite a shock when I learned that Father couldn’t read either.

        “He has a strong tongue,” said Mother, “and an eye for copying the strokes. But he doesn’t understand what he copies.”

        “The Beta don’t need books,” Father said, “when we have our stories.”

        I was crestfallen. Unlike my parents, I knew the world was changing, and that books would be more important than old stories. And if I could read, maybe I could find the truth about the Beta and where we came from.

        So I insisted on learning to read. Father made me what he called an alphabet primer. Each letter of the alphabet was carved in a flowery script and inlaid with what looked like silver. The whole alphabet was encircled by reliefs of dragons and unicorns painted scarlet and amber. It was beautiful.

        But who could teach me?

* * *

        It is a long time since I have been to Frampton-on-Severn. The marketplace is awash in smells of manure, salted fish, and a peppery stew. It is still better than the hushed and stale air in the Bureau. I see a human with a shrill voice; his wooden leg drags across the pavement. He yells “caps for sale!” and waves the caps in the air. Other humans mill around near shabby stalls. After all these years, I am still fascinated by the way they drink. They tilt back clay bottles or cups held directly to their lips. It seems so much easier just to use my tongue.

        But then again, I am Beta.

        I once accompanied Father to this market in a horse-drawn cart, surrounded by his woodcuts and crates of pears and apples that smelled sickly sweet. As we reached the square, he placed a hand on my shoulder, gently but with a determination that made me wonder if I should be afraid, and told me to stay close, for we were among humans.

        I ought to heed his advice still.

        I seek out Zelhorn’s supplies. I find camphor in little glass bottles. Near the stall selling dried lavender, two men whisper urgently. Apparently, the plague is still spreading north. It has reached Dursley. It comes closer.

        When I have bought most of what I need, two rough-looking men approach. They leer at me with unshaven faces. “A Beta,” they say.

        I wonder if I should answer them. I back away. “My name is Kev.”

        They come close. I can feel their hot breath. “You don’t belong here.”

        They are right. I don’t belong anywhere. “My pardon. I am running an errand for the Bureau—” I don’t want to mention anything about the plague. What if Thrita is right? What if they think we are witches?

        I don’t think these men have heard of the Bureau.

        One of them grabs my neck and tightens his fingers.

        My throat constricts. I cannot breathe. “Medicine!” I squeak. That’s what I was getting.

        I flail about, waving my birdlike arms helplessly. With my fading sight, I see muscles rippling in the human’s arm.

        I see a flash of metal. Please, not a sword, I whisper wordlessly.

        Not a sword. A blunt metal pipe. In the haze, it could have been a relic.

        I am on my knees. My head is throbbing. Dark blood runs down my face.

        The metal pipe rattles like old bones.

        Then I black out.

* * *

        A traveling alchemist came to our colony twice a year and put on a show for the children. We sat cross-legged on the grass as he waved his arms and his twirling and shifting fountains of colored smoke enveloped the sky. The scent of sulfur hung heavy in the air.

        The alchemist always asked us what we wanted to see. I wanted him to conjure a golden dragon spouting crimson fire and with a tail like a thunderbolt. But someone else had already asked him for a dragon that night. So instead I asked for a great ship.

        “To sail the seas?” the alchemist asked.

        “No,” I said. “To go to the stars. A ship large enough to take all the Beta home.”

        He leaned closer to me, and I caught a whiff of rosewater and charcoal. The strands of his white beard were braided with jade-green beads. “No one can sail the stars,” he said. So instead he made a sailing ship, its prow dipping and rising on a glassy blue sea.

        But I knew the ship was only an illusion. I thought: if this alchemist, with all his magic, can’t take us to the stars, then no one can. We never came from the stars, and we will never return there.

        When the show ended, I asked the alchemist if he would teach me how to read. His name was Zelhorn, and he agreed.

* * *

        Zelhorn and Thrita tend to my injuries.

        “It could have been much worse,” Zelhorn says gently. “Two broken ribs. You lost a lot of blood. Your nose was smashed. It will never look quite the same. But you will live.”

        Until the plague takes us all, I think.

        That night, I take a candle and creep down the winding stair to the library. I put on a bird mask and its matching dark cloak; then I quietly descend the stair again. The disguise covers my disfigured face. I will wear it, but I will not be a doctor. Instead, I will run far from the humans and from the plague.

        At the bottom of the stair, I see Zelhorn sitting in the dark by glass bottles of medicine under a torn canvas. His eyes are closed. He is rocking back and forth slowly; perhaps he is praying. He does not appear to notice me.

        What does Zelhorn pray for anyway? I wonder. What good could it do? No god will save me. I must save myself. That’s why I must run away.

        I reach the threshold. I touch the door.

        “Where are you going Kev?” Zelhorn asks.

        My hand jumps in surprise. I do not answer him.

        He eyes my cloak and mask. “While I admire your desire to treat the stricken, you are still too weak. I must insist you return to bed.”

        I ignore him, and open the door. The scent of rhododendron and rotting hay fills the night air.

        “Kev,” says Zelhorn again.

        I waver on the threshold. I think of all that Zelhorn has done for me, and the truths he has taught me. I think of my parents in the colony who still need my help, even though they do not want it and no longer trust me.

        I close the door. I remove the mask and hurl it at the wall. The bird nose crumples in ruin and the glass eyepieces shatter.

        “Do you know what I think about the doctors?” I say. “It’s a farce. A carefully choreographed tribal dance. No town wants to seem like it is giving up on its own. So it hires medicine men for a show with elaborate rituals that signify nothing. Everyone dies anyway, but they die with a clear conscience, thinking that they tried.”

        Zelhorn sighs. He does not sound angry, even though those masks must have been expensive. “You may be right. But the towns are desperate to try anything, and becoming doctors gives the Beta a chance to fit in. We need such a chance. Maybe then, the humans will stop hating us.”

        “The humans detest us because of who we are, no matter what we try to become,” I say. “They fear our birdlike appendages, our lizard tongues, the ghastly nooks above our foreheads, our pale faces. Those are things we cannot change.”

        “Kev my boy, on this sphere, everything is subject to generation and corruption. We were born under the sky and stars, just like the humans. Change will come, in God’s own time.”

        I care not for whether there is a God. I think only of the unchanging stars, from which we did not come, and to which we can never return. “Under the sky and stars,” I reply, “there is no hope and there are no gods. Not at least for the Beta.”

        Zelhorn crosses himself. “Spare me your heresies,” he mutters, “and please go back to bed.”

* * *

        The night before I left to become Zelhorn’s apprentice, Mother told me that she had touched the stars.

        It was late, but I couldn’t sleep. I was practicing my reading with one of the texts that Father had copied. Mother approached quietly with a candle above her forehead and her knitting still in hand. She touched her tongue to mine before I could withdraw. The Beta need their traditions as much as they need the new learning, she was saying.

        I tried to resist her; I wanted to shut her out of my mind. But I could not. Such is the strength of the bond between mother and child. “Talk to me,” I insisted. “Use words. Why must we always be different?”

        Because we are different. I know so. I have touched the stars. I have heard their song. Someday I hope you will understand.

        I just stared at her twisting tongue, her shaking hands, and the candle clenched above her forehead. She was alien to me.

        Never forget, she pleaded, that we were once of the sky.

        Yet how could I remember, when long ago we had forgotten what it meant?

        Mother’s tongue retreated, her face a mask of calm. “Good night, Kev,” she said. “I love you always.”

        I said nothing as she left.

        When I was sure my parents were asleep, I slipped outside. I needed to be alone with the relics. I needed to touch them, to know the truth.

        So I sat all that night in the cool darkness of the reliquary. In the dark, the relics did look otherworldly, like ancient dragons. As it grew later, their serpentine faces dripped with the blue light of the predawn. Perhaps in my excitement I even imagined a faint, tingling hum coursing through the cool flagstones.

        But then the sun rose, as it always does. Light cascaded off the tall spire and glittered among the drab metal parts. The dragons breathed no fire. The relics were just old broken metal and no more.

        I got up. My joints were stiff and numb. I reached out and patted a relic shaped like a trident. Nothing happened of course. Mother had been wrong. There was no way to touch the stars. “Goodbye,” I said aloud, perhaps to the relic. “I doubt we will meet again.”

        Then I went home.

* * *

        Scores of Beta flock from the colony to the Bureau—a sorry lot of rolling tongues and babbling voices.

        “Adjust your mask like this,” says Zelhorn, helping a small female Beta with the strap.

        “Burn the straw just so,” says Thrita, lighting a match.

        The Beta listen attentively. They are learning how to be plague doctors.

        I can stand it no more. I groan and sink to the floor, holding my tongue rigid in the air. “And then die like everyone else,” I say.

        Silence. Everyone turns to me.

        I get up and dust myself off. “Bubonic plague has no victors,” I explain. “Especially not its doctors. It spreads silently in the foul air. Few of you will survive, if any.”

        Zelhorn and Thrita stare at me but say nothing to contradict me.

        I ascend the winding stair. No one stops me.

        But no one heeds me either. In three days, we give away seventeen costumes.

        And the plague is still coming.

* * *

        It took some time before I finally had the courage to tell my parents the truth about the stars.

        I showed them the Almagest.

        “What’s that?” asked Mother, eyeing the figures and diagrams suspiciously.

        “It’s about the celestial spheres,” I replied.

        Neither of my parents’ expressions gave any hint of recognition.

        “It’s the structure of the heavens,” I explained. “We live on the terrestrial sphere. That’s the only sphere subject to generation and corruption—which means birth and death, being created and destroyed. Above our sphere is that of the moon. Then there’s a sphere for each of the planets, and one for the sun. Last is the sphere of the fixed stars. All of the spheres rotate, driven endlessly by the Prime Mover. The Christians call him God.”

        “There’s no birth and death among the stars?” Mother asked.

        “No,” I replied. “There can’t be. The stars aren’t made of matter—what we call the four elements. They are ethereal, made of quintessence.”

        “Then how did we come from the stars?” she asked.

        “The stars are not made of matter,” I repeated. “Imperfect terrestrial beings can’t exist in that sphere.”

        “So the Beta never sailed the stars?” asked Mother, her voice quavering a little.

        “Of course not,” I said.

        Father started tending the fire with a poker even though it didn’t need tending. The years had been unkind to him. Gutenberg’s movable type had replaced relief printing. There was no more demand for woodcuts. Sometimes he sat alone in the shadows, caressing old woodcuts with his tongue as if feeling out the shape of the letters somehow helped him understand. “If we never came from the stars,” Father asked, “what are the relics?”

        “Every Christian village has a relic, be it a fragment of the True Cross or a lock of Mary’s hair. They want tangible proof. It helps them keep the faith. Our relics are much the same.”

        “I don’t think it’s the same,” said Father. “But I suppose you won’t believe anything unless it’s written in a book.”

        Perhaps Father was right. I looked down at the Almagest again. Perhaps it was just like a relic to me. Yet unlike the Beta relics, I knew it told the truth.

* * *

        Someone is knocking at the Bureau door. I am upstairs, stacking crates of ripe apples and tins of salted pork. We are not expecting any visitors this evening. “A minute,” I say as I descend the winding stair.

        It is a Beta from the colony. He sells food. I think his name is Mika.

        “Sorry Mika, we don’t need anything today,” I tell him.

        But something is wrong. Mika just stands there. Then I notice that he is shaking.

        “What is it Mika?” I ask.

        He tries to answer, but he coughs, and blood dribbles from his mouth. He holds out his fingers. The tips are black and flaky. They smell of death.

        Then I know that the plague has reached the colony.

        I draw back behind the door and finger the handle. “I’m sorry Mika,” I say, almost in a whisper. “But the colony will need us more than ever when the plague is over. We must be here to render aid to the living.”

        Zelhorn and Thrita stand beside me now, nodding sagely. I feel a twinge of anger. It is Zelhorn who brought the plague. Zelhorn and his schemes; Zelhorn with his bird doctors. But then I sag, and all the anger sails away. The time for recriminations has passed. I know that the plague would have come anyway.

        Mika does not move.

        I shut the door anyway. I think I can hear Mika clawing at it with his blackened fingers.

        I hold my head in my hands.

* * *

        “You must teach me to read,” said Father. “Perhaps I can work in the printing press.” Outside, gossamer dew glistened from new spring leaves.

        In the shed, I found my alphabet primer, the one with the dragons and unicorns. Paint peeled from it in chunks of scarlet and amber.

        “Are there truly dragons?” Father asked when he saw it.

        “Far to the east,” I replied. “Marco Polo says so. But not here.” I paused. “But I wish there were.” Somehow I could not imagine that the Beta would suffer so in a world of dragons.

        “Me too.” A shadow momentarily fell across Father’s face. Then he laughed. “But what am I saying? I have my family and my faith, and that is all I really need.”

        Father hugged me awkwardly, and I wished that family and faith was all I really needed too.

* * *

        “We are leaving, Lawyn and I,” Thrita tells me. His things are all packed. The bedroom we shared looks bare.

        The rain had come at the end of summer, washing away the withered grass, drowning the plague and its miasma, banishing life and death together. Lawyn is one of the survivors who came to the Bureau after the plague. The plague made her an orphan. Thrita spends a lot of time with her now, even though she is half his age. I see them walking in the small herb garden, holding hands, touching tongues, laughing at private jokes.

        “Where will you go?” I ask. I have forgotten there is a world beyond the Bureau.

        “The others talk of founding a new colony further east, near Ruscombe. Lawyn and I are going with them.”

        “I guess you will need to discover some new relics.”

        Thrita laughs. I have never heard him laugh before. It is a throaty, scratchy sort of sound. “You know I don’t believe in all that. I’ll leave it to the others to carry on with the worship and the stories.”

        Then how can you go with them? I say with my eyes. How can you go if you don’t believe?

        Thrita is serious again. He puts a thin hand on my shoulder. He is worried about me. I can see it in his eyes. “Kev,” he says, “come with us. There is nothing left for you here.”

        “I must wait for my parents,” I lie. By now I am sure they are not coming. I too am an orphan.

        I hear Zelhorn muttering from the other room. “A mixture of mercury, horse manure, pearl, white alum, sulfur, clay, hair, and a couple of eggs,” he says. “What will I get?” Then he pauses, and I hear him clap his hands. “A good silver! But one can never be quite sure.”

        He has been going mad for some time. “If I go,” I ask, inclining my head toward Zelhorn’s door, “who will take care of him?”

        Thrita looks at me sadly. “He is beyond help.”

        I know Thrita speaks the truth.

        “We need to live our lives,” he adds.

        I am sure he is thinking about Lawyn. She is his life now.

        “Kev,” he says, “you need to live too.”

        I think instead about the Almagest. Ptolemy and Aristotle are hard masters and bitter lovers. But they are right. The stars do not move. “My life is here,” I tell Thrita. But what do I have left to live for?

        I watch them and the others depart, a drone of voices against an autumn-washed sky. There are strains of music—a flute, and a mandolin. Some Beta bear parcels wrapped in fine cloth. I think they are relics—meaningless relics of a past that never was.

* * *

        Father never found a job at the printing press. I regularly sent my parents money from my earnings at the Bureau. But it never seemed to go very far.

        Then I found the bottles under Mother’s bed, jumbled among the woodcuts of her parents.

        Father just stood there, rolling his tongue from side to side helplessly.

        “How come you never told me?” I accused.

        “I didn’t want to upset you.”

        “But it’s my money!”

        “It’s also your fault.”

        “What do you mean?”

        “You killed her hope, Kev. She lived for the stars.”

        “So she turned to human poison.” The irony was potent.

        Father made a resigned motion with his hands. “We live among humans.”

        Mother entered. She stood at a distance. I clenched my hands.

        “Father’s wrong,” she said. “I never lost hope.” Then she smiled. “The stars still sing. I hear them all the time.”

        She came close and put her hand against my cheek. I could smell the whiskey on her breath.

        “They tell of broken promises. They call to me from beyond a wall of glass. Don’t they call to you too?”

        I unclenched my hand, and reached upward to lay it on hers. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

        She took my hand. “You are learned. Tell me, what does Beta mean?”

        I didn’t understand. “It’s our name.”

        “No my child. The word. Where does it come from?”

        “It is the second letter of the Greek alphabet.”

        Mother gave me drugged smile. “See? We don’t even have our own name anymore.”

        I said nothing.

* * *

        I find Zelhorn in bed and unfinished alchemy on his table. His beard and beads are askew. He is perspiring, and his face is contorted in pain.

        “Water,” he gasps.

        I give him water to drink. He sucks it out with his tongue, now nothing more than a yellowish-gray lump.

        He grabs my arm. His grip is strong, but his fingers shake. “It’s time to go home,” he says, and he points toward the sky.

        When he dies, I close his eyes.

        I don’t know whether it was the plague that took Zelhorn. As a precaution, I decide burn his body anyway; it is the only sure way to stop the spread of the miasma.

        I wrap his body in a musty sheet and take it outside. I cannot find kindling, but I need something that will burn.

        I gather several books from my shelves and arrange a funeral pyre. I place Ptolemy’s Almagest on top. Then I light it. I sigh just once as the flames take hold. I think I will not be able to watch, but somehow I stand transfixed as flesh and paper alike singe, blacken, and blow to ashes beneath the autumn sky.

        Thrita was right. I also need to live.

        I do not weep for Zelhorn, or for my parents, who I am certain are dead. Instead I turn my mind to the immediate issue of survival. Supplies are running low. Perhaps I can scavenge something from the colony. In any event, I cannot stay at the Bureau now that Thrita is gone and Zelhorn is dead. Now my books are gone too. The emptiness will drive me mad. So I take a large sack and set off for the colony, for what used to be my home.

* * *

        “We need a plan,” I told Father.

        Mother had been getting worse. Her eyes always shone with the fire of drink.

        When Father didn’t reply, I continued, “Zelhorn is an alchemist. He must have some remedy that will help her.”

        Father’s tongue shook, and he pounded his fist on the wax stained table scored by years of making woodcuts. “I will not have that Beta in my home! I should never have let you study with him. His teachings have brought nothing but grief.”

        “But his medicine might heal Mother.”

        “Unless alchemy can set the course of the stars and mold the shape of the heavens, it will be of no help to her.”

        “There is still a chance.”

        Father turned to me. “Not this time, Kev.” I saw the despair and rage in his eyes. “You cannot undo what you have told us. So go! You do not belong here.”

        I was stung by his words. “I will go,” I said quietly.

        I did not return. I never saw my parents again.

* * *

        The colony burns. Even as I approach, I can see the smoke beyond the line of trees. The humans have scoured the countryside, sacking and burning in their rage. With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I see that the colony did not escape their wrath.

        I enter by the rotted gate. I lurch upon the charred cobblestones as the stench of putrefied flesh threatens to overtake me. Smoke rises like dark curtains, and steam erupts from fetid pools. A once gaudy sign reading “Provisions” flaps unhinged in the breathless wind. I crawl upon the hot ground, collecting what few supplies are left.

        I find my parents’ home. It is warped and tilted, blackened and broken. I try to locate the bodies of my parents—or what is left of them. But I cannot. My insides revolt and I vomit on the pavement.

        Then I cry out to whatever deity will have me.

        My nausea passes. I make my way to what is left of the reliquary. Its unicorn-like spire has toppled and crushed the roof, and thatch and straw burn red-orange amid the ruined cobblestones. Then I see a piece of metal shaped like a trident, burning a sorcerous green.

        I find a sliver of driftwood and push the metal from the fire. It must be one of the relics. Remarkably, it is still as pale as ever, burned but not consumed. It is covered with strange markings that I have never seen before. I cannot read them.

        I put out my hand to touch the relic, but I hesitate, held back momentarily by the old superstitions. Banishing such thoughts, I feel the relic gingerly with my hand. It is the same as before. Nothing happens.

        Then without thinking, I insert my tongue into the groove of one of the markings and let it run the length of the crevice.

        Everything changes.

        There are a thousand voices pounding inside my head. Or is it more—tens of thousands, even millions? Each one is different, yet all are the same. It seems like they are chattering across a great distance. Frightened, I try to lift my tongue, but I cannot. I feel like I am being drawn upward through a great fissure—as if the sublunar sphere has cracked and I am ascending to the moon or beyond. I try to concentrate, or to breathe, but there is no way to focus.

        The pounding grows tolerable. I breathe normally again. The voices. I cannot isolate them because they do not belong to individuals, but to a chorus. To understand them, I must make out the whole song. I concentrate. I note patterns, I discern harmonies. I think they are talking to me.

        Images populate my mind. At first they are just a blur, appearing all at once, washing over me like a wave. Then the voices grow quieter, slower, almost melodious. The images flicker and still. I am drawn toward them.

        Contact. I am standing on firm ground. The first things I notice are the trees—like alders, but full of dark fruit as heavy as eggplants. I look up. The sun is a deep, fiery crimson, dominating the entire sky. I know it is dying. We had to go, the voices say, it was time.

        The picture changes. A fleet of silver ships adrift in inky blackness. Ten thousand vessels sailing in different directions, each headed for a different star. I hear the voices whispering: it was a splintering, a fracture. Most fell victim to the void. Only some made their way to other worlds.

        I understand now. The voices are those of my people, but they are somewhere else, far away.

        Where are you? I ask.

        Scattered. We are of many worlds. What is your world?

        Earth, I reply. They call us Beta.

        We are always searching. The pieces of each ship still carry traces of our collective entity. We find each other by linking minds. But why have so few of you made contact?

        We were afraid, I respond.

        There is nothing to fear.

        Will you come find us? I ask.

        Now, there is no path. There are no more ships. But someday, we will come.

        Then contact is terminated. I lift my shaking tongue and collapse on the burnt earth.

        I writhe in and out of waking dreams. I ride a silver dragon through the ruined Aristotelian universe, darting in and out of shattered celestial spheres. Epicycles elongate and pulsate; planets are flung from their orbits like projectiles. The fixed stars escape into darkness; the Prime Mover travels backward and evaporates. I say a lament for the Almagest and its lies.

        Then I am a block cutter. I chisel away at my greatest creation, only to discover when I am done that it is Father’s face jutting from the wood. “Tell me about the great ships and stars,” I beg of him, but the wooden face is mute. I ride on past, grasping vainly at nothingness.

        Mother is here too. “Mother,” I say breathlessly, “I too touched the stars. I heard their voices. We share a great secret. We need not be afraid.” I want to touch my tongue to hers, to share secrets like we once did. But Mother does not listen. She weaves a thread so long that it could rein in the moon, and she hangs herself upon it. While her body dangles from the very heavens, her tongue grows long and dark and fat, then flies away on crystal wings.

        Zelhorn’s face appears out of the gloom. “Kev, my boy, we were wrong. Alchemy was the answer all along. Its masters teach us that nothing is immutable, and no substance is as it seems. With the proper reagents, we can even remake the stars. Everything is subject to generation and corruption, both in this sphere and beyond.” His face begins to shift and dissipate, pulled apart by an unseen vortex. “See, even I am immaterial, subject to the winds of an ever-shifting fate.” As Zelhorn fades to nothingness, I hear him shout, “You must have faith in the future, although it is yet unseen.”

        I try to follow, but I do not know where I am going. Instead I hear music, and I ride toward it. The Beta are singing among the remnants of the spheres. It is a great chorus that transcends distance and time, encompassing all the generations. I sing with them too, my voice rising and falling with the shattered stars. I think Mother, Father, and Zelhorn sing as well. Perhaps a part of them grazed the tip of the beyond and joined the mighty chorus. I do not know for sure, but I must have faith. For the first time, I feel like I belong.

        I come to in the ruins of the colony. The day is ending; the red sun shines a path through smoky haze. As I sit among the dead and their ghosts, I finally allow myself to cry. I shed bitter tears upon what might be the ashes of my parents, until the tears and soot are mingled as one.

        I clutch the relic to my breast, and voices rustle in my mind. Here of all places, amidst the dead, I have found new life. The relic carries with it a future yet to come, and I will be part of it.

        I wrap the relic in the folds of my cloak. I pack water skins, salted meat, and pickled vegetables that I recovered from the colony. As I prepare to return to the Bureau, I look up at the sky. Twilight reigns in purplish grandeur. Then slowly the stars come out, like a carpet unfolding. I shoulder my pack and do not look behind, for the stars are all that I have left, and they will have to be enough.

Copyright © 2014 Yosef Lindell

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Yosef Lindell is a lawyer and writer. Although he has published history articles in scholarly journals, this is his first fiction sale. His turn to speculative fiction is probably related to his childhood interest in taking tea with hobbits who lived in a golf course. Now he lives near Washington D.C. with his wife and son, and is a member of the Codex Writers’ Group. You can follow him on Facebook.

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COVER ART

“Golden Age,” by Juan Carlos Barquet

Juan Carlos Barquet is an artist from Mexico City. He has done illustrations for books, album covers and tabletop games for clients such as Fantasy Flight Games; concept art and matte paintings for short films supervised by DreamWorks Animation and ILM, and exhibitions at Art Takes Times Square (New York, 2013), Parallax Art Fair (London, 2012), Euskal Exhibition Center (Bilbao, 2012) and more. View more of his work at jcbarquet.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2014 Firkin Press

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