Issue #249 • Apr. 12, 2018

“Weft,” by Rahul Kanakia

“Fireskin,” by Joanne Rixon

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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WEFT

by Rahul Kanakia

         After I spoke to the tablecloth, its edges unraveled and slid through the arm of Aakash the Undying, neatly stitching up the flaps of his recently purloined skin.

         “That fucking hurts,” he said. “Can’t you make it not hurt?”

         The serving boy had startled at the oath, but I made a tamping motion with my hands. The staff had become so jumpy since the hunt began. They’d all known her, I suppose, the cook’s daughter, whatever her name had been. The boy came forward, poured more arrack, then the third member of our party joined. Rina was incorporeal, nothing more than a thinly shimmering patch of air, until I tossed her a handful of ribbons, which she threw into the air, buffeting them from one hand to the other like a cat.

         “You’re headed east?” I said.

         The cook’s daughter was on a horse with ten thousand legs. East was her obvious destination. She’d fare well in the hills, much better than even the hunters, who sat astride the tall-goats. But if that was where she’d gone, Rina would fly to her, faster than anything on land could possibly go, and the girl would be dead by morning.

         The ribbons spun faster and faster.

         “We’ve no secrets from each other,” I said. “There’s no need to be so oblique.”

         “But what if I enjoy being oblique?” Rina said. “Is that something you’ve considered?”

         I held my glass up to the sunlight. Watched the light shimmer through the wine. The boy, jumping, went to draw the curtains, but I shouted at him to stop, then told him to go and check on the fucking food.

         The gardens were so green. Not the color of emeralds. They were brighter than that, and more distinct, but shot through with a pale yellow that made each blade stand out. The cook’s daughter had lived in that collection of huts. She’d worked in the kitchens, over in that golden building with the paper walls. She must’ve walked across these lawns every day. Not a bad life, all things considered. But she must’ve thought otherwise.

         “What would it take?” I said. “For you to let the girl escape?”

         Aakash slammed his hand on the table. “You always do this, Thread,” he said. “Every single goddamn time.”

         The ribbons plaited themselves into long braids.

         “You know it,” Aakash said. “You know it, Rina. And what does he say next?”

         “‘Not much of a life’,” she said.

         I said nothing, but I didn’t think this was a true accusation at all. Sometimes the crimes were egregious: murder and torture. In these cases I ripped up the would-be magicians with no compunctions. But other times...

         “Not much of a life,” I said. “The daughter of a cook.”

         “A moment ago, you thought exactly the opposite,” Rina said.

         Fucking mind-readers.

         “Well, indulge me,” I said. “And let me say—it’s not much of a life, being the daughter of a cook. Seeing people eat and drink things you’ll never get. Watching them laugh and dance all day instead of work. Hearing all the shit your father must take just to survive. Not much of a life. No dignity in it.”

         “Agreed,” Rina said.

         I smiled. Then I looked at Aakash. The sun was down a little bit. Off in the distance I heard the hoot of a bird, then the snap of wings. But I saw nothing. The peacocks and peahens must be hiding in that stand of trees, the only trees for miles

         “You want me to argue?” he said. “Well I won’t. You forget where I came from.”

         “Then we’re agreed. If we’d been born in her position, in this place, we’d have done the same—stolen whatever book she stole, summoned whatever demon, made whatever bargain. So why should we—”

         Aakash slapped the table. “Okay, let’s do it. You’ve convinced me.”

         I stuttered. “Wh—what?”

         “I’m gonna go on down to that barracks and set it afire.”

         “Don’t joke,” I said. “This is a matter of life and death.”

         “And I’m serious. My mind is half-rotted, didn’t you hear? I’m full of sorrow now for poor little girls.”

         The tangle of ribbons tumbled down into the seat and lay still.

         “Well?” I said.

         “He’s serious,” Rina said.

         Aakash grinned. “You see?”

         We sat there, and fear sprouted in my stomach. It was an insane thing. How could Aakash... he really wanted to fight all the Mansadar’s men?

         “You’re a coward, Thread,” Rina said. She said it with a laugh, and the word didn’t offend me. I’d been called a coward many times, when I was growing up. A coward and a woman and a weakling.

         The palace was built on a nodal point, as most palaces were, and I sucked its energy up into my stomach.

         “Sit down,” I said. “If we do it, we’ll do it in the middle of the night.”

         Aakash smiled at me. His teeth were very white but misshapen. He’d collected them from half a hundred dead men. And women too, I presumed. And the effect was not unpretty. It was startling, the teeth he’d found. You’ve never seen such white. His face, too, frequently changed. That was one body part that he didn’t suffer to wear out.

         “You’re lying to me,” I said. I laughed and looked at Rina. “You’re both lying. You won’t do anything.”

         The boy appeared then, with half a dozen other servants in his wake. They brought vegetables fried with spices, and a rack of strange doves whose bones were so soft that they could be chewed up and swallowed, and fruit that was something like a grape except twice as big and golden and with a bitterness to go with the sweet. That and ten or twenty more things.

         In their presence, we relaxed. Rina became more and more visible, and I remembered how young she was: her face was unlined and her hair still mostly black. She wore, as always, a silver sari whose trailing end disappeared into the aether.

         I asked about her children, and she gave me a sad look. They were all still in the other world, she said, waiting until she found a safe place for them. I wondered, privately, if she was really looking. It was my opinion—had long been my opinion—that she didn’t care a whit for these children of hers, and that her search would never end, because it had never begun.

         She narrowed her eyes, and I knew then that she’d read the thought, but I didn’t care. These two were engaged in some strange game, trying to spit me on my words and roast me alive, but I wouldn’t let them.

         “Nice place,” Aakash said, as the servants cleared one course and laid out another. “Good cook.”

         I looked down at my plate, and I wondered then if the cook who’d made this food was the father of our fugitive. Surely not. They must have other cooks in this province.

         “What was her name?” Rina said suddenly. “The cook’s daughter.”

         I scratched my head. They’d told me in the beginning, long before giving me the other details. The Mansadar had shouted it several times. I believe it started with a T.

         “Tara?” I said.

         “Something like that,” Aakash said.

         One of the boys glanced up. He knew. But I didn’t ask him. I was suddenly weary of this place. Of this girl, with her silly ambitions. Of the night itself, which had brought a cloud of moths to launch themselves ceaselessly against the muslin screen that the servants had lowered around the pavilion.

         When finally we were alone again, I said, “If you’re serious about helping her, then why the change of heart?”

         “You convinced me,” Aakash said.

         “I never said my heart was any different,” Rina said.

         All these years I’d known him. No matter how far you travel, you see the same people. We criss-cross the globe, but we do it along the same trade routes and find ourselves in the same great cities. And he’d never been one of my favorites. He always seemed too fully inhuman. He was so exactly the reason why people hated people like the three of us. Aakash cared for nothing more than perpetuating his own life.

         “Thread doesn’t like you,” Rina said. “Thinks you’re selfish.”

         Aakash laughed. “I’m not the type to care about that.”

         Rina turned to me. “Aakash’s feelings about you are more complex. He is, in all, a larger person than you give him credit for being. He wants... I think he wants you to be better than you are.”

         The crack of bones and the slap of flesh against wood. Aakash was expanding, sloughing off his skin. This was not something he did lightly. With his skin, Aakash is merely an unpleasant sight. Without it, he’s terrifying.

         “Don’t need all that,” he said. “Considering all the dead bodies we’re about to make.”

         His eyes flickered, and his many mouths snapped open and shut, and I experienced in that moment a sense of terror. I was not made for a life of violence. I was a boy who’d read a book. That was all I’d done. I never wanted to fight monsters or hunt runaways. I’d simply wanted to be free to read books and drink fine wines and have high-sounding discussions over dinner.

         “Sit down,” I said. “Sit down. They won’t yet be asleep.”

         “You’re afraid,” he said. “Don’t need Rina to tell me that.”

         I gulped. The moths made a noise as they beat against the cloth screen, and my heart made that self-same noise as it beat against my chest. I was so damned human. Usually I was proud of my humanity, but not at this moment.

         “You haven’t mentioned that girl again,” Aakash said. “That poor girl we’re gonna kill. Or not. Mostly not, right? Certainly not after we’ve cut down every able-bodied man in this palace.”

         I didn’t know what to say. I was an insect laid out on a table, waiting for the collector’s pin to pierce its wings and affix it there forevermore.

         “Maybe I’m gonna fuck that girl,” Aakash said. “Maybe I’ll steal a penis off one of these guards, and I’ll go to her and she’ll be so grateful for what I’ve done that she’ll let me fuck her. What about that? How’s that for a reason?”

         I glanced at Rina.

         “She’s not gonna tell you anything I don’t want her to tell you,” he said. “Because she’s scared of me. And she’s right to be scared. I’m not like you, Thread. Not like her either. I’m like nobody in this world. I’m too alive.” He closed his eyes, and all of his many mouths let out a single sigh.

         “And my opinion doesn’t matter?” Rina said.

         Aakash didn’t open his eyes, and I didn’t turn away from him. His whole body dripped yellow ichor.

         He waved his fingers. “I love you to pieces, Reeny,” he said. “So go on. Fill up my ears.”

         “I say we do our job,” she said. “I say we roam high into the hills and find this girl, and I will stop her heart and you, Thread, will suck her brains out through her eyes, and Aakash can for a time wear her face, and the rest of her we will eat.”

         “You eat them?” Aakash said.

         “Not for sustenance,” Rina said. “But simply because I can. I find pleasure in it. When they’re young. When they’re beautiful. It pleases me, and I know why it does, but I think you will not find this interesting. Let us instead say we will do with it what we wish, and then we will come back here and a revel will be held in our honor, and instead of going in three separate directions, we will bind a cord round our wrists and pull it tight until it disappears and then forevermore we shall be linked.”

         Aakash blew air through his many teeth. The noise was not unpleasing. It was like the whistling of wind through a barely open shutter.

         “You’re a dreamer,” he said. “Us three?”

         “And why not?” she said.

         She’d risen up, floating above our table, and for the first time I saw the tiny bright children swirling beneath her cloak.

         I did not need to be a mind-reader to see that all three of us were immured within our pasts. The cook’s daughter would be as well, if she lived. I wondered what she’d be like. Maybe she’d hate taking orders. Maybe she’d kill anyone who tried to hire her. I’ve known a few magicians like that.

         But perhaps it wouldn’t be that simple. Maybe she’d be good and nice and well-behaved until something simple, perhaps only a word—a word like ‘coward’—set her off. Or something else. I didn’t know. Aakash, lying back in his seat. He was so—

         “Watch out!” Rina screeched, but it was too late. I acted without thinking. The threads in his arm snapped tight, and chunks of flesh fell away. Then they wriggled through his body, moving faster than any worm, and inside of a second, the life had gone out of him.

         I turned to Rina, and the thought I should kill her too must’ve flashed so quickly through my mind because she blasted outward, but the ribbons—those little ribbons. They lashed around her limbs and pulled her apart.

         With a few more words, their bodies vanished in the wind. I lay back in my seat, exhausted, and when the next course came, I told the confused servants to bring it all, as quickly as they could. I set myself to eating, and when morning came I was covered in grease and spice and flecks of sauce.

         I didn’t bathe. The Mansadar’s men held their noses as I came close, and their horses reared away. We ventured far up into the hills, traveling for many weeks, until our rations got low. I went out, hunting, bringing back game, leading them further and further away, making them more and more dependent on me. And then suddenly I was gone. I’m told a few of them would’ve made it home, if they hadn’t unfortunately encountered the girl and her horse with ten thousand legs.

         For years, I searched for her on the byways. I imagined telling her that I was the one who’d saved her. But then one day I was in some far-off court, down in some land where they wear feathers instead of cloth, and as I knelt in front of some strange king, I looked to the side at a new arrival, and I knew instantly it was her.

         We were domiciled in a distant pyramid, right at the edge of the city, and after a captive was slaughtered and his blood drained into a cauldron, we were left alone to eat. Her cloak was slightly frayed, and, with her permission, I pulled a few golden threads from the ground and mended the collar for her. She was thankful but remained mostly quiet, answering my questions with only a few words. Vermilion was her name now, but I knew her for what she was: Tara, I think. Or perhaps Tila. Something short. I stared at her. She was no youth anymore. She must’ve consumed the horse long ago, because I saw it, those ten thousand legs, moving just beneath her skin.

         After a few minutes, she said, “Why are you staring at me?”

         The stone blocks beneath us were rusty with old blood, and the noises of the people down below were muted beneath the sound of the wind. The legs pushed out from the sides of her shoulders, forming bulges that stretched and twisted her aged flesh.

         “It’s not much of a life,” I said.

         “Are you one of the gnomic ones?” she said. “I hate how we can become so gnomic.”

         “No,” I said. “I try not to be. I was just remembering—”

         “That’s what always infuriated me when I was young. Serving all these learned magicians as they talked their nonsense to each other. Speak clearly, I wanted to scream at them to just speak clearly.”

         “I—”

         The legs pushed and pushed against the confines of her body.

         “Well?” she said. “What’d you have to say to me?”

         I could see now the madness in her eyes, and I’m sure I too shone with the same desperation as I struggled to weave a pattern with my words. I wanted so much to be clear. “A long time ago,” I said. “When I was a boy, I found a skein of golden thread, and instead of giving it over to my—”

         “Do you think I have time for this? Always wasting my time... all of you... just the waste...” The legs had sprouted now from her torso, popping through the flesh. “Well? Speak up. I’m telling you to speak. Or are you too frightened?”

         My mouth opened, but no words emerged. She stood now on her ten thousand legs, and her head was so far above me that I could only see her chin. But she still wore the cloak I’d mended, and as she turned away from me, its golden threads unspooled and tightened around her neck.

Copyright © 2018 Rahul Kanakia

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Rahul Kanakia’s first book, a young adult novel entitled Enter Title Here, came out from Disney-Hyperion in Fall 2015. His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, The Indiana Review, Apex, Nature, and previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford, and used to work in the field of international development. Currently, he lives in Oakland, CA and makes his living as a freelance writer and content creation consultant. If you want to know more about him, visit his blog at www.blotter-paper.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/rahkan.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

FIRESKIN

by Joanne Rixon

         In late summer of the fourteenth year of the reign of Fei-hu the Road-Builder, on a day when the portents suggested peace and prosperity throughout the city and all its territories, the warrior Aun-ki woke up and found that her skin caught fire at the slightest touch. Pale flickers of flame sprouted on her brown arms, almost invisible in the sunlight, then guttered out. Even the light drape of her dressing gown across her shoulders was like the grind of a blade on a whetstone, striking sparks. The fabric browned, and when her apprentice Jin-ho came in to help her bathe, Jin-ho’s fingers left streams of blisters in their wake.

         “What’s happening, Aun-ki-gan? What is this?” Jin-ho clenched her hands around her own elbows, distressed.

         Aun-ki grunted, unwilling to admit that she was afraid, and sent Jin-ho away. Then she bathed herself, gingerly, the water steaming off her skin. She gritted her teeth against the rough weave of her tunic and trousers, and she walked in her house slippers through the palace to the rooms of the Royal Physician because the tightness of her boots produced so much heat the laces frayed and smoked.

         The Royal Physician examined every inch of Aun-ki’s body, then shook his head and admitted that he could do nothing to stop her skin from blistering. The Court Magician took one look at her and declared that despite all appearances, what had happened to her was nothing as scientific as wizardry; he couldn’t explain why the fire didn’t consume her. The High Priestess interceded with the Benevolent Goddess for three days, but her prayers didn’t lower the temperature of Aun-ki’s skin even one degree.

         Aun-ki retreated to her rooms, and for a fortnight she would see no one, not even the king. Gossip raged through the city. In the palace hallways, courtiers whispered about the lingering magics unleashed by the sprites during the Ever-Summer War, in which Aun-ki had earned her sword mastership. In the marketplace, butchers and grocers worried that an acolyte of the Mad God had cursed her in revenge for the sacking of the Garnet Shrine. And in the classrooms and libraries of the Royal University, the astronomers and mathematicians suggested that it was a remnant of her battle with the Great Winged Lion Chiar-shu.

         Everyone knew that when she’d plunged the Sword of Mr into Chiar-shu’s heart, she’d been so close to being burned alive that all her hair was singed off and the fine filigree on her gauntlets was melted into unrecognizability. In his death throes, Chiar-shu had flung out a claw and gouged down the side of her chin, leaving a dark raised scar. This was like that scar, they said. Like an after-image left on the eye after looking at the sun.

         After fourteen days of silence, Aun-ki emerged from her rooms before dawn. She wore only a robe of the softest combed cotton, light leather shoes, and a scarf around her bristly new hair. Her hands and forearms were covered in burns, but her face was calm and resolute.

         “Fei-hu-ban, Son of the Sky,” she said, “I request permission to depart the court. I am called on a quest.” She was the day’s first supplicant in the king’s audience chamber, but the whole court knew she wasn’t really seeking permission. She was the city’s champion, and the king couldn’t stop her from leaving.

         Fei-hu looked troubled. “Where are you going, and to what end?”

         “I go east to the Lake of Five Waters, beyond the Xianchal Pass. It is said that the waters cure many ailments, both natural and not.”

         “Very well. Outfit yourself from my stores, and I will send an honor guard with you, for the pass is perilous.”

         “No, Fei-hu-ban. I go alone.”

         The whole court bowed somberly as she left the chamber, and out of respect for her pain and bravery they waited until she was almost out of earshot before they started placing bets.

         Aun-ki sent Jin-ho to the kitchens to pack supplies, then returned to her rooms to rest for a little while longer before she set out on a journey that she knew would be torturous. When she opened the door to her room, she found a package on the table in her entryway, wrapped in undyed cotton and tied with a string.

         She picked at the knot with her fingernails, untying it and earning only three new blisters on her fingertips. Inside was fabric, which revealed itself to be a shirt and trousers of cloth so fine it felt almost as gentle as water flowing over her hands. When she shook them so that they unfurled, a note fell to the floor.

         Aun-ki-gan,

         You saved the lives of my parents and brothers when you stopped the sprites at the Battle of Taratau Forest. These garments are made of the smoothest, lightest silk the Ssalalah mulberries have to offer, with threads from the spiders in the caves of Garowe. May they be an armor against the elements in your time of need, and may you return to defend our city safe and soon.

         In thanks,

         Lou-ga the Weaver

         The paper slowly browned and curled in Aun-ki’s grasp.

         She needed more than silk; she needed steel and hardened leather. But the fire on her skin weakened all she wore and made her vulnerable; she was more naked to the sky than she had been in all the years since she’d earned her sword mastership. Silk was not what she needed. She should not be so fiercely glad to have it.

* * *

         The journey over the Xianchal Pass to the Lake of Five Waters took much of the autumn; the heat of Aun-ki’s burning made the horses prone to overheating. Jin-ho grew fearless with smoothing the healing salve onto Aun-ki’s burns, and Aun-ki taught herself to repair her horse’s tack when the heat of her body weakened the leather. They learned that when the snow fell, Aun-ki could start even the wettest wood alight simply by clapping her hands together, but that the pain would follow her for days after and the burst blisters would leave tiny white scars that were slow to fade.

         The Lake’s waters, when they arrived, were covered in a layer of ice as thin as the shell of a sparrow’s egg. Aun-ki stripped off the garments made for her by Lou-ga the Weaver and waded into the water, the ice melting before she touched it. Steam rose around her until she was buried in a thick white cloud.

         Jin-ho waited for her on the bank, silently beseeching the Benevolent Goddess for a cure. But the steam did not dissipate, though Aun-ki remained submerged up to the nose until long after the sun set. Jin-ho waited, fireless and nearly frozen, on the shore. Aun-ki retreated from the water, silent, and when Jin-ho saw her face, she didn’t dare speak to her.

         They arrived back in the city as the days began to lengthen. The watchers on the walls sent out runners to greet them, but Jin-ho shook her head at them, and when they entered the city there was no celebration waiting. Aun-ki reported to the king alone. After, instead of retreating again to her solitary rooms, she walked on soft leather shoes down the long hill outside the palace, down to the house of weavers.

         “I wish to speak to Lou-ga,” she told the man at the door. “I owe her thanks for a gift.”

         He leapt up at once and returned only minutes later with a round-faced girl in a stained smock, her hair pulled back in a tight practical braid. “Lou-ga the Weaver,” he announced, and bowed his way out of the entry-room.

         “I thought you’d be older,” Aun-ki said, startled into rudeness.

         Lou-ga laughed loudly. “I’m twenty-three,” she said. “I got my mastership two years ago. And anyway, I thought you’d be taller.”

         “Yes, well. You’re not the first person to say that,” Aun-ki said, and realized that her mouth was remembering how to smile.

* * *

         Aun-ki stayed with Lou-ga for weeks, and the smells of tannin and wood-ash rising from the vats of fabric dye became as familiar as the perfumes of the king’s court. But the fire on her skin continued to burn. When the morning cold invaded their breakfast table, she could wrap her hands around Lou-ga’s mug of tea to heat it, but the pain that small act caused her was more severe than she allowed even Lou-ga to know. The fire didn’t physically consume her, but there was more than one way to be consumed. She knew she must find a way to quench it.

         So she called Jin-ho to her, and when the preparations were ready, they rode out together, this time for the Temple of the Burning Twins on the edge of the Kaparkent Desert to the southwest. Jin-ho rode behind her, Aun-ki’s swords in sheaths on her back. Aun-ki wore her trousers and shirt of finest silk, and in her saddlebags she carried a long, gauzy scarf, light as a brilliant green cloud.

         Folded up small in the bottom of the saddlebag, underneath the scarf, was another note: I wish I could give you a kiss for luck. Until I see you again— Lou-ga.

         The road toward the Kaparkent Desert passed through the Mirkek Wastes, and though Aun-ki rode as confidently as if she had an army at her back, she knew the king’s law did not extend to the stony wilds. On the morning they passed the last of the watchtowers, she tried to send Jin-ho back to the city. Jin-ho rolled her eyes, passed Aun-ki her swords, and loosened the spear strapped to her saddle.

         A dozen bandits attacked that evening, as the setting sun cut into Aun-ki’s eyes. Jin-ho twirled her spear, pushing back the trio that advanced on her. Aun-ki swung her paired swords like a lightning storm on a dry summer night, pale flames licking from her hands up the blades.

         As her swords crossed with the bandits’ weapons, the clanging was drowned out by her shouts. With each clash, the flames softened the metal of her swords until they shattered, spraying the bandits around her with needling fragments of molten metal. They scattered, screaming.

         When the bandits were gone, Jin-ho hesitated to approach Aun-ki. Aun-ki knelt on the ground, her skin glowing as though at any moment the fire might burst her body open like an overripe fruit. Her breath came in short, whimpering pants, and tears sizzled on her cheeks. For many steps in every direction around her, the stones were scorched and the sparse grass was burned black. Jin-ho brought her water and sat as close beside her as she could bear, until the cool of the early morning contained the burning back inside Aun-ki’s skin.

         Word of Aun-ki’s fearsomeness spread before them, and no one troubled them further as they passed through the Wastes. When they reached the Temple on the edge of the Kaparkent Desert, the holy men and women welcomed them with figs and cool water and a place in front of the figures of Sritanya and Srivushi twined together on a pedestal of flame. Aun-ki lay prostrate before the Burning Twins for ten days while Jin-ho brought her water and bread, but on the eleventh day the Temple Father came and knelt beside her.

         “They have not spoken,” he said.

         “I know.” Aun-ki’s voice was hoarse from disuse. The stone where her forehead rested was cracked like a dry lakebed baked in the late summer sun.

         “No sign is also a sign,” the Father said. “You must seek your healing elsewhere.”

         Aun-ki rolled her forehead against the stone in frustration and a flash of fire rippled upward, singing off her hair and blistering her scalp. But the powers maintained their silence no matter what pain she caused herself.

* * *

         Aun-ki rode out early the next morning, Jin-ho two steps behind her. The green scarf around Aun-ki’s face shaded her tender burns from the desert sun.

         When they reached the city, King Fei-hu welcomed Aun-ki with trumpets and an honor guard. The soldiers of the guard marched along the edge of the wide road while Aun-ki rode down the middle. Only Jin-ho approached within arm’s length of Aun-ki’s horse, and when Fei-hu greeted them he did so from the top of the long stairway that stretched from the foot of his throne.

         “Aun-ki-gan,” he said. “Greatest of warriors! Tales of your magnificent prowess in battle against the bandits that plague our borders have preceded you. In three days’ time there will be a feast to celebrate the return of our faithful defender.”

         “You honor me, Fei-hu-ban.” Aun-ki bowed and smiled politely, but at the earliest opportunity she slipped away from the noise of the court.

         Like the rest of the city, the house of weavers was bustling with preparations for the celebration. The stink of boiling vats of dye wafted past the walls into the street. Before Aun-ki could even knock on the door, it swung wide to reveal Lou-ga, her sleeves rolled up past her elbows and her face streaked with purple dye where she had brushed back tendrils of hair.

         “Lou-ga-ma, I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” Aun-ki said.

         Lou-ga stepped forward and raised her hand as though she’d forgotten how painful it would be for both of them if she were to caress Aun-ki’s face. Aun-ki refused to flinch, and Lou-ga refused to pull her hand back, but they didn’t touch. “The news of your journey is being told a hundred different ways all over the city. I’m glad to see that you haven’t turned into a walking statue made of volcano glass, or become an unsleeping avatar of the Burning Twins, or acquired an infant dragon. Unless—perhaps you’ve stabled your dragon so you don’t scare the horses in the streets?”

         Aun-ki laughed, desperately glad that Lou-ga at least wasn’t afraid of her. “I have no dragon, although I do have a scale from the tail of Chiar-shu that I could show you.”

         “Once I’m done dyeing this batch of banners, you can show me anything you like.” Lou-ga grinned and stepped aside from the door in invitation. “If you’re willing to wait while I finish up, I’ll cook for you.”

         Three days later, the Festival of Aun-ki’s Return was the biggest celebration the city had seen in years. King Fei-hu sponsored food vendors and dancers who filled the streets with orange ribbons, and the skull of Chiar-shu, half as tall as an adult and polished to an obsidian shine, was displayed in the center of the forum. Children ran through the streets with paper masks painted orange and red like fire, and from every window hung fluttering banners. Alongside the king’s purple and blue banners were flags made to look like yellow and orange flames.

         Aun-ki herself wore green silk that draped so that no abrasive seam touched her delicately smoking skin. She smiled, genuinely pleased, when the king himself presented her with a new set of finely crafted swords, and she sat very still while a troupe entertained the court with the story of how the Great Warrior Aun-ki-gan called fire from the sky and channeled it through her swords to burn a hundred bandits to ashes. Everyone clapped vigorously for the entertainers, but the lies made Aun-ki feel like a stranger in her own home, and she slipped away as soon as she could.

         As the servers filed into the hall with the fourth course, she begged a paper mask from a boy in the hall, to hide her face from the crowds of revelers in the streets. In spite of the mask’s lightness, it was singed at the points where it touched her nose and forehead by the time she made it through the crowded streets to the house of weavers.

         Lou-ga’s fellow weavers were congregated on their balcony where they had a good view of the fireworks, but Lou-ga pushed her feathered mask back onto the top of her head and shepherded Aun-ki through the hallways into an inner room. The sound of the celebration sank to a distant hum. Lou-ga filled a basin with water so Aun-ki could press a damp cloth to her reddened swollen skin.

         When Aun-ki pressed the cloth to the heat rash on her belly, she hissed. “They shouldn’t be celebrating,” she said. “They think this is a blessing, that I’m some kind of miracle. They don’t know how much it hurts.”

         “They see only that you protect us, ma,” Lou-ga said. “Which is stupid of them. But don’t you forget that you do protect us.”

         “I barely even fought those bandits—my swords failed me.” Aun-ki’s shoulders slumped. “By the end of that great victory they’re so elated about, I wished for death.”

         “You’re going to seek out Yvgen the Curse-breaker, aren’t you?” Lou-ga sounded wistful. The journey to Oktyabasar Mountain would take a season even for a fast rider, and the road passed through territory controlled by capricious Ekibasar warlords.

         Aun-ki looked at the floor. “I don’t know what else to do, ma.”

         Lou-ga smiled sadly. “I have something for you.” She opened a chest and pulled out a stack of garments. Even folded, it was obvious that the material they were made from was no ordinary cotton or silk. “The aurochs of Zarafdak produce a fine wool that resists heat,” Lou-ga said. “That’s the gloves and doublet lining, there. It should protect your armor enough to keep it from weakening, and there’s a drape to protect your horse. Everything that might touch your skin is layered with water-silk, too. It’s fireproof, and as gentle as I can make it.”

         “This is too much.” Aun-ki trailed one fingertip over the top layer of smooth fabric. When she lifted it, it was barely pinked.

         “I’m not about to send you off without armor if I can help it. I worry, you know. Besides, one of the apprentices ruined this whole dye lot, that’s why it’s that awful, uneven shade of brown.”

         Aun-ki smiled. “Thank you.” She lifted the mask from Lou-ga’s head and plucked the long feather off it so she could stroke her lover’s face without burning her.

* * *

         The next morning Aun-ki rode out the city gates toward the frozen north, Jin-ho riding beside her. She wore her armor for the first time since she had begun to burn. The fabric woven by Lou-ga rested against her skin, and she was able to sit tall and straight on her horse. Awed spectators waved from the tops of the walls, and only Jin-ho knew that even Lou-ga’s finest work was not enough to keep heat blisters from forming on Aun-ki’s shoulders and back where the weight of her armor pulled at her skin.

         The ride toward Oktyabasar began in the low rolling hills north of Aun-ki’s city. She had spent her years as an apprentice patrolling these roads, so she was expecting no trouble until they passed into the Chongbaqin Forest beyond the borders. After only six days on the road, however, Aun-ki saw that the village she approached had fields empty of farmers; fences fallen and not repaired.

         She waved Jin-ho to stay behind and rode down the village’s main street, looking for signs of the people who lived in the silent houses.

         Everything was deserted until she reached the smithy at the end of the lane. There, the villagers worked in wordless unfatigued harmony, trundling barrows of clay to the smith yard, pressing the clay into molds, and levering the molds into a giant yellow-brick kiln that radiated heat across the yard. On the edge of the yard, a man in a blacksmith’s apron outfitted giant baked-clay statues with steel swords, axes, and spears.

         Aun-ki went from villager to villager, but not one of them replied to her greetings or questions. When she got down from her horse and shook the blacksmith by the shoulder, he twisted away from her and returned to his anvil without saying a word or flinching at the painful heat of her hand.

         Aun-ki got on her horse and rode back out of town, troubled that such a strong enchantment had taken over a village so close to the city without any kind of warning. She met Jin-ho in a copse of trees near the road.

         “While you were gone, a patrol passed by,” Jin-ho said. “At first, I thought they were only locals who were particularly tall and broad, but the road shook as they walked, and they carried massive steel axes like they weighed no more than grass. Whoever’s responsible for bewitching the villagers must also have brought the clay soldiers to life.”

         “Where did that patrol go?” asked Aun-ki.

         Jin-ho pointed to the largest house in the village where it sat on a small hill, two floors taller than the houses that leaned up against it. “They went in that house, and haven’t come out again.”

         Aun-ki loosened her brand new swords in their sheaths, ignoring the biting sparks the hilts struck from her palms, and with Jin-ho at her side rode back into the town. Jin-ho watched warily for further patrols. This time, when they approached the great kiln at the smithy, the villagers all turned to them with expressionless eyes, then began to advance in unison, hands stretched out to grasp at the intruders.

         Jin-ho cursed under her breath, and Aun-ki wheeled her horse around. They retreated at a steady pace, leading the villagers away from the smithy, along the twisting roads of the town and into a large barn on the village outskirts. Aun-ki and Jin-ho dashed back outside and slammed the barn door shut behind them. Jin-ho heaved the heavy iron bar into place to keep the villagers locked away.

         “That was unsettling,” Jin-ho said, voice deadpan in spite of the white in her eyes.

         Aun-ki nodded. “We’re going to have a story to tell. But first the kiln, and then we must destroy the sorcerer responsible for this.”

         The steel door of the kiln was bolted and locked, but Aun-ki retrieved a hammer from the smithy and swung at the frame of the door until it fell from its hinges. The rush of cool air cracked the hot molds inside the kiln, and they fell to pieces with a sound like wind chimes in a storm.

         As the cracking sounds from inside the kiln died down, the quiescent clay men leaning up against each other in the smithy yard also cracked and tilted. One by one, they stood and raised their weapons.

         Jin-ho cursed more loudly this time.

         “On the bright side,” Aun-ki said through gritted teeth, “if you live through this you’ll have earned your mastership.”

         Though the clay men were strong, they were slow and clumsy. A stab to the chest didn’t kill them, but when Aun-ki and Jin-ho toppled them and smashed their heads open, they reverted to lifelessness. By the time all the clay men had been dispatched, Aun-ki was steaming with sweat and the handle of the hammer she held was charred.

         The road up to the tallest house was clear and wide, and the dozen clay soldiers marching down it toward them made no effort to hide. Aun-ki and Jin-ho fought their way through to the house. Aun-ki’s skin glowed red as a hot coal, and the hammer weakened with each strike, each lick of fire up the handle, until the wooden handle crumbled into cinders.

         Another squad of looming clay men awaited them in the courtyard of the house, and in the house’s doorway stood a tall thin woman wrapped in white. Her black hair brushed the ground at her heels, and her arms were raised in the air. When her hands danced like a puppeteer at a festival, her clay servants lurched forward. Aun-ki had heard whispers of a sorceress like this: Bírendan the Demon-Raiser, from far to the east.

         Aun-ki drew her swords; the flames that sprouted from her hands danced along their flats. She leapt into action with a scream like a lightning bolt from the sky, all the more terrifying for its ragged edge.

         The clay men came at her like oxen trampling reeds, and she cut her way through them, ducking and bending so that her strikes would cut cleverly and not require so much strength that her swords were destroyed. Nevertheless, after dismembering three of the clay men, when she struck the shoulder of the fourth, the sword in her right hand bent, and then as she smashed open its forehead the sword in her left warped and splintered.

         The next clay man would have chopped her down if Jin-ho hadn’t jumped in with her long spear and tripped it. Aun-ki kicked open its face with her heel, and Jin-ho smashed the butt of her spear through its chest. In this way they killed the fifth and sixth clay men. Aun-ki thought the flames gave her an advantage, the heat making the clay men brittle, but it was difficult to tell through the pain. And beyond the clay men, the sorceress stood, smirking.

         As Aun-ki approached, Bírendan called up a great wind, which raised the dust from the ground in a funnel cloud and surrounded Aun-ki. Aun-ki screamed as the flying grit abraded her red-raw skin. Step by step, she struggled forward through the storm. Flames burst from the ground every time her foot touched the dirt, but she didn’t stop.

         Bírendan saw that her wind wasn’t powerful enough and raised a handful of magic to her mouth. She blew across her palm, and the magic turned to needles that flew at the joints of Aun-ki’s armor. Many caught in the armor lining woven by Lou-ga, but others stabbed straight into Aun-ki’s flesh at her knees and armpits and neck.

         Aun-ki screamed again, full of anger and pain and fear, and lunged for the sorceress. When her hands closed around Bírendan’s neck, fire burst from between them up to the dry wooden shingles of the house’s roof. Aun-ki’s grip tightened, bursting the blisters on her hands and searing the flesh of her palms.

         Whatever miracle or curse protected Aun-ki’s flesh from being consumed by the fire was absent from Bírendan’s body. The sorceress scrabbled frantically at Aun-ki’s hands, mouth open in a soundless scream, the breath burned out of her.

         Aun-ki squeezed tighter, and tighter, and then slammed her forehead forward into Bírendan’s face. A dazzling thunderclap rang out, as though they’d been struck by the lightning spear of the Benevolent Goddess herself, and Bírendan collapsed.

         Immediately the wind calmed and the clay men in the house’s yard froze where they stood. The only sounds were the crackling of the house as it began to burn down around the sorceress’s body and the harshness of Aun-ki’s breathing. The smell of burnt flesh hung heavy and sweet in the air.

         When Aun-ki turned around, she saw Jin-ho collapsed on the ground, blood leaking out of a wound on her thigh. Jin-ho’s teeth were bared brightly in victory even as both hands clamped around the muscle to stop the bleeding.

         Aun-ki knelt beside Jin-ho and gingerly pressed her bare fingertips to the wound, cauterizing it. Then she put her gloves back on and bound Jin-ho’s wound as carefully as she could. The auroch-wool cloth of her gloves soaked up the red blood and then faded to brown as the heat set the bloodstains in the fabric.

         Like the clay men, the villagers had been released from their stupefying enchantment when Bírendan died and were able to free themselves from the barn where they’d been trapped. When Aun-ki and Jin-ho dragged themselves down the hill to the village inn, a murmuring crowd welcomed them. The innkeeper insisted that they stay and rest for three days in a room that overlooked a courtyard shaded by pear trees.

         When Jin-ho was well enough to ride, Aun-ki loaded their bags on their horses and turned her face to the south, away from the distant home of Yvgen the Curse-breaker and back toward the city she loved.

         “Aun-ki-gan, this troubles me,” Jin-ho said. “I’ve never known you to concede defeat.”

         Aun-ki sighed, and let her gaze linger on the northern road for a moment. “It’s been a year. The road to Oktyabasar is long, and our city is beset by threats. Our people depend on me to protect them.”

         “Will you fight with your bare hands, then?” Jin-ho scowled. “Will you just—burn?”

         “Yes.” After a pause, Aun-ki said, again, “Yes. For the city I will.”

* * *

         Lou-ga met them at the gates, and after she and Aun-ki accompanied Jin-ho to the offices of the Royal Physician, she took Aun-ki home with her to her rooms in the house of weavers.

         In the years after the defeat of Bírendan, many different rumors circled through the city. The courtiers said that Aun-ki had so pleased the Benevolent Goddess that She reached Her hand down and wicked the pain away; Aun-ki’s enemies burned, but she herself was blessed, immune—perhaps half-divine. The butchers and grocers whispered that Aun-ki fought their battles and then retreated to the tallest coldest tower of the king’s palace, where smooth marble and chilled fountains offered a refuge that would turn anyone else to ice. The astronomers and alchemists knew that Aun-ki still burned but, when they remembered it, were certain that with just a little more experimentation they could solve the riddle and rescue her.

         The truth, as ever, was more complicated. King Fei-hu was pleased to honor Aun-ki for her service protecting their people, and after the death of Bírendan she came to his audience hall to ask him for a small house on the rise of the city’s third hill. Fei-hu ordered his architects to build a stone house just up the street from the house of weavers, with large windows that looked south toward the far-away sea.

         Aun-ki lived in that house until she passed on to the Cloud Lands to take her place at the feet of the Benevolent Goddess. She experimented, not with cures but with weapons that might withstand the fire. Until she was old, she rode out to vanquish whatever forces threatened her home, but always she returned again. Lou-ga covered the floor of the house in the softest rugs and furnished the bed with silk sheets for them both and felt blankets for herself. In the winter she left the windows open so the air would cool Aun-ki’s burning skin. And at night, they lay together in bed and whispered to each other, though they could not touch except with the most delicate brushes of their fingertips.

Copyright © 2018 Joanne Rixon

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Joanne Rixon lives in the shadow of an active volcano with a rescue chihuahua named after a dinosaur. She is an organizer with North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers, and her stories have appeared in Crossed Genres, Liminal Stories, and Reckoning 2, among others. You can find her yelling about politics and poetry on twitter @JoanneRixon.

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COVER ART

“Island Outpost,” by Stefan Meisl

Stefan Meisl is a freelance artist from Germany who works both in traditional and digital media. He has created illustrations for books and online media. Most of his fantasy environments are influenced by the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien. More of his work can be seen on his website www.stefanmeisl.de or his gallery on deviantArt.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2018 Firkin Press

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