Issue #285 • August 29, 2019

“A Song for the Leadwood Tree,” by Aimee Ogden

“The Sweetest Fruit of Summer,” by R.K. Duncan

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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

BCS Needs Your Help

On Sept. 1, the pay rate that Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) sets as their qualifying “pro” pay rate for short fiction is increasing by 33%. All writers deserve this higher pay, but we need a 33% increase in revenues before Sept. 1 in order to pay it. We’re raising the price of ebook issues and subscriptions, but that alone won’t be enough; we also need support from donors.

We really appreciate you buying this single issue ebook or BCS Ebook Subscription, but we ask that you consider supporting us with a donation as well, on the BCS Patreon or a recurring donation through Paypal. We are a 501c3 non-profit; donations are tax deductible, and donors can have their name listed on the BCS website.

Thank you!!

Scott H. Andrews,

Editor-in-Chief/Publisher

A SONG FOR THE LEADWOOD TREE

by Aimee Ogden

Lightning falls before

the right-hand queen’s advance;

she sings brass and bronze and

wakes the dead who dream

of justice.

—Victory at Kimaliz Heights, Nehan na’Hak

* * *

         The morning of her last day as queen, Nehan’s mouth begins to bleed before her attendants finish braiding her hair. The blood bubbles up between her lips, catching her and them by surprise, and dribbles onto her robe. No one speaks, or perhaps their words are drowned out by the brassy drumming in Nehan’s ears.

         One attendant snatches up a copper bowl and holds it out before her. Nehan spits, and spits again, dark liquid spattering the curved inside. Another girl ducks out of the tent and returns a moment later bearing a skin of wine and a wooden cup. She pours with shaking hands, and Nehan gulps down a searing mouthful. She forces herself to hold it behind her lips for three seconds, five, ten. Then, convulsively, she swallows. This time when she spits, it is only faintly stained saliva that patters into the bowl.

         Her attendants lurch back into normal activity. Half her hair has yet to be braided; two girls hurry to twist her rampant curls into tidy plaits. Two more bend over the fresh stain in her robe-front, trying to scrub the blue cloth clean.

         Finally they give up and choose a different set of armor than the bone-splint vest Nehan has chosen. “The full bronze breastplate,” one says, and holds it out for Nehan to slide into. Neither style of armor will stop a Buskruten bullet. The bronze steals some of her freedom of movement, but it also conceals the stain. Better not to give a rifleman a convenient target over her heart. She shifts the breastplate’s weight on her shoulders and nods her approval. The attendants bow and move to dispose of the bloodied bowl and used cup. In between their busy movements, Nehan catches Ayake’s stare from across the tent.

         He sits on a pile of furs and blankets with his skinny knees pulled up to his chest. Across his arms and young face, constellations of pitted pockmarks; a mirror image of her own. On him the red-brown scars stand out darkly against his golden skin; on her the marks are less conspicuous, only a shade lighter than her darker flesh. Sunspots and stars. The son of her heart.

         She wishes she could tell him that everything will be all right. That they’ll ride forth under the banner of the leadwood tree and scourge the Buskruten from these lands forever; give them the metal for which they came to Watuk, but on the blade of a sword and the point of a spear. That he’ll be safe, not only from rifles but also from the vipers that sleep in the tall grass of the plains all around them. But she cannot say so; cannot say a word. She is not sure she would believe it, even if she could say it.

         “My queen,” says another attendant, who approaches and bows as she offers Nehan her ivory-and-gold headdress. “The high priestess has been asking for you.”

         Nehan grunts, and stands. Her attendant settles the heavy helm over her braids. Another steps up with a piece of mirrorglass. Nehan, the Blade of Watuk, the Hand of Strength, barely recognizes herself. She notes the faint bruises on her reflection’s jaw, the swelling that lingers under her chin.

         She opens her black-painted lips to examine the ruined stump of her tongue. The attendant flinches away and Nehan clamps her lips together. A sharp swat with the flat of her hand, and the attendant stumbles away with the mirrorglass.

* * *

         Three years before, Nehan first rode out against the Buskruten forces. The invaders’ pox had stolen much of her strength, strength she had yet to rebuild, but she could lift a sword and she could hold her seat ahorse and she could chant a poem. Her attendants robed and armored her and crowned her with the ivory helm, but she stopped them before they led her out to rally Watuk’s ragged armies. “Bring the Gombe child,” she ordered.

         “That shepherd boy?” one girl asked, recoiling. The other slapped her on the arm, and she silenced her foolish mouth. They trotted off and swiftly returned to Nehan with the boy, Ayake, tagging behind them, though whether this was from sullenness or fear, Nehan could not say.

         Her column had found him three weeks back, as they crossed the plains with the charred ruins of the capital behind them. Dehydrated and delirious from digging a pit to bury the rest of his herdsman clan, he swung his shovel at the spearmen she sent to retrieve him—the same way he had struck out at the carrion-birds that crept close to the fetid, swollen bodies. He screamed and spat and did not seem to see, until Nehan herself slid off her horse and knelt with him in the sun-ravaged grass. Kindred spirits, the two of them, with the beloved wreckage of everything that had once mattered to them trapped in an unreachable past.

         “Look at me,” she ordered now, and lifted his chin. His gaze did not sidle away from hers, though she could see a shimmer of tears in his eyes. Her grip on his face softened, and she patted his cheek. “You,” she said, and jerked her head at the nearest attendant. “Find a woman’s armor, the smallest you can. Dress him in it. He’ll ride with me today.”

         For a moment, all was stillness. Then the attendant said, hesitating, “O Hand of Strength—”

         “You will do this thing,” Nehan said. “And the Buskruten will tremble to see that we fear them so little, we would bring our children into battle with us.” Her fingers grazed the stiff curls behind his ear, and he leaned into the touch. “You aren’t afraid, are you, boy?”

         He shook his head, and she pretended to believe him.

         Soon she sat astride her war-stallion, knees ready at his flanks, surveying once more the drawings of the battlefield which her scouts-general had sketched. The main Buskruten deployment occupied the plains outside the trading port of Bahar, and from the high point in the hills, the Watuk had a good chance to sweep the camp before Buskruten rifles could be marshaled.

         When she guided her horse toward her waiting cavalry, they parted before her. She did not dare to raise her voice, not in the sight of the tricksome gods and perhaps the hearing of the Buskruten army, so a proper call to battle was not possible. Instead she made it roll low and strong like the sweeping sea as she launched into an old poem, written by one of the first right-hand kings:

“The peaks of Mlaz Nian

are our spears

and when their ice melts

the floodwaters will wash you

clean of our enemy’s blood;

they will slake your thirst.”

         Whispers rolled away from her, joining her in quiet unison, as she launched into the second verse. By the time they ended the third and final verse, the horses stamped restlessly, stirred to nervous energy by their masters. Nehan hefted her spear, and a hundred blades rose skyward to answer her. She wheeled her horse, and the boy’s arms cinched around her waist like a second belt.

         The Watuk came down from the hill like rolling thunder. They caught the Buskruten camp amid their morning routines: men dropping soapy razor-blades and boot polish, greasy sausages falling to the dirt and crushed under hoof.

         The lines of another poem grated between Nehan’s teeth as she drove her spear-head home in a Buskruten ribcage. Two brass buttons sheared free and flew through the space between them like miniature suns. As they drifted, Nehan struggled to free her spear. Distantly, a rifle reported. Two bearded Buskruten turned to flee at the lash of her voice, the flash of her snarl. Two more lurched at her—one with bayonet fixed, the other struggling to bring his to bear.

         She took a deep breath. In that sudden yawning silence, she could hear a small voice at her back. Ayake, singing a simple song as familiar as dreams and as old: that of the ever-true leadwood tree.

         Her spear came loose. Nehan caught the bayonet-wielder in the throat. With her spear still lodged in his skull, she pulled the haft sideways and spun him into his companion. Together they fell, and she let the spear fall with them. Her heels dug into her horse’s barrel, and she leaned forward over his neck as he picked up speed. Ayake’s arms spasmed about her, and she took one hand off the reins to cover his fingers with her own.

* * *

Two young trees fell

together and crushed a kingdom

beneath their tender boughs.

—Eulogy for the Royal Daughters, Nehan na’Hak

* * *

         Nehan steps out of her tent on Ayake’s arm to survey the field of battle. She has no desire to see her high priestess yet. Soon. Two attendants tail behind, holding a light cloak, a cup of mashed mango. They do not offer these things to Nehan, but it seems to make them feel better to have them on hand, so she does not send them scurrying to find some more useful way to occupy themselves.

         From the slight rise of the plains, she can see the lines of Buskruten blue and white. A listless wind stirs the ragged banners held aloft by a pair of her spearwomen; at a distance, cicadas wail their warning. Dull sunlight picks out sharp-peaked helmets and long slender rifle barrels.

         There are far fewer Buskruten than once there were. There are still a great many. But they are overconfident in their numbers and their guns. They believe that they have destroyed Nehan, and with her, the Watuk battleforce.

         She hopes that they are wrong.

         Behind Nehan, the Watuk are quiet. A man hushes a pair of excited dogs who leap and snort their thirst for blood, for flesh. The dogs are sacred, for they sing their own poems in a language no human understands. Their howls will put fear into many a Buskruten heart. While Nehan watches, the pair settle into a tense sit, ears cocked, heads canted forward. One opens its mouth, and a slavering tongue hangs out between its yellow teeth.

         “O Hand of Strength, Battle-Crowned Blade.” The voice turns Nehan’s head. Her high priestess, Hilaj, stands beside her, head bowed. A broad gesture from Nehan bids her to straighten. Hilaj’s eyes glitter coldly from between the deep folds of skin. Her pox scars are so thick they give her the appearance of scales.

         “Excuse me—mother. Learned One.” Ayake bows away, leaving the women to their talk. Hilaj does not look at Ayake, does not bow to him or acknowledge his presence. She does not grant him the honor that his adoptive relationship to Nehan affords him, the queen’s Gombe son. Nehan’s eyes follow Ayake to the spearwomen, where he speaks quietly. One of them dips her head and puts her haft in his hands. The wind lifts, and for a moment the faded leadwood tree is alive with imagined birdsong, its branches swaying in full flower.

         “Hand of Strength,” says Hilaj, and the vision of the leadwood tree disappears into the noonday haze. “It’s not too late.”

         Hilaj fears victory today, Nehan knows, as much as she fears defeat. The Buskruten terms would leave the Watuk a corner of their nation, a fragment of their former glory. Copper, tin, and silver mines would fall within the borders the Buskruten viceroys had drawn for themselves. With a stroke of a pen, Nehan might guarantee today that no more lives would be lost. With the same swift strike of ink, a proud people of traders would become beggars.

         Nehan snaps her fingers. An attendant comes running, and Nehan mimes writing. From the satchel upon her back, the girl produces a slate and chalk stylus. Nehan writes in broad bold letters for Hilaj to see. No paper-bound surrenders for our right-hand kings and queens. Watuk have always written our own endings in blood. Cast aside our own crowns.

         Over her shoulder, Nehan watches Ayake’s arms tremble to hold the spear upright. The soldier from which he took it says something in his ear, and he adjusts his grip, strengthening it. Whatever he says to her in response makes her smile and touch her forehead in thanks. Nehan’s lips turn upward too. She strikes the slate clean with the side of her fist. Signatures and smiles don’t unbloody my hands. My reign ends. No different from King Ayah-Izu or Queen Shab na’Mnel.

         “Times change, my queen,” says Hilaj flatly, forgoing honorifics. Nehan makes a series of swift silent gestures with the stylus: her people, the waiting Buskruten army. The sun, rising to meet its zenith. Her son, striving toward his.

         Hilaj’s lips thin when she looks at Ayake, but her hand goes to the sword at her waist. “As you will it.” Reluctant, but ready.

         As is Nehan. Soon they will water the fields of her country with blood, as much as it needs to drink down to slake its thirst, though she would rather have given the dry soil rain.

* * *

         Before the plague finished scourging Watuk, Nehan’s body betrayed her twice: to take ill in the first place. And to succumb to fever’s thrall while her daughters both sickened and died.

         Udavi had gone first, her attendants told her after, in this as in all things. Nehan’s right-hand daughter, her raven, who would have smoothed the roughness in her sister’s life by spear and sword and then surrendered reign to her left-hand sister, her dove. Then Katif too, ever pious, unwilling to let her sister have the gods to herself.

         A masked priest, leaning on a staff despite his youth, showed her into the temple’s Room of Peace. “O Hand of Plenty—” he started to say, as he bowed away from her at the door, but he caught himself and changed to her new title. “O Hand of Strength.”

         Nehan walked toward her girls, her future and Watuk’s, and when she had not the strength to walk anymore she crawled. Soft veils clung to Udavi and Katif’s faces, and cloying perfumes failed to conceal the sweet smell of decay. Nehan pulled herself up on the dais, though her breath rattled in her breast. She crawled between the two bodies and lay down. Katif’s stiff fingers did not resist her grasp; with her opposite hand she caressed Udavi’s clenched jaw through the fine veil. An emerald beetle skittered away when she disturbed the drape of the veil. It took shelter in the corner of Udavi’s eye.

         “You should have taken me instead,” Nehan croaked. In the doorway, the priest flinched at her breaking of the Peace. With a lie, no less. No great bargain to offer the gods one scratched and worldworn pearl in place of two bright, gleaming ones.

         She rolled onto her side, cradling Katif’s body in the lee of her own. “I drew my first blood,” she whispered, into her daughter’s hollow ear. “I slew the Buskruten ambassador where he stood, when he dared to come back here, to put terms before us. They think to take advantage of this sickness. This plague that rode to us on the sails of their ships!” Her fingers clenched, crushing the delicate lace of Katif’s veil. “But what is a right-hand queen, without a left hand to hold out hope for the future?”

* * *

The stars wheel slowly

through the sky; do they wonder

that the people of the earth

exult at each new dawn?

—Three Hundred Lost in the Shadow of Mrope Na,

Nehan na’Hak

* * *

         After Hilaj goes her way, Ayake returns to Nehan’s side, spear firmly shouldered. He leans his shoulder into hers, turning her away from the grooms administering to her war horse. She signs to him in the rudimentary language they have worked out together. You walk with me little while.

         He leaves the spear for now, and they move along the lines of Watuk horse-soldiers, toward the rearguard. Only a few of the warriors call out blessings or fragments of old battle-poems; they are frightened. Tomorrow they will be dead, or they will all re-learn together how to be Watuk. Today, they will fight.

         The two of them leave the mass of the Watuk forces behind, spearfolk and sword-bearers and even most of the support train, until only the heat-shimmering day lies ahead. Then she stops him and signs again. I not choice you. You choice. Leave now, be—she had to stop and spell out the next word letter by letter. A cold bead of shame rolled down her spine, that she’d never thought to shape a gesture to fit before. G-O-M-B-E.

         Not can choose be G-O-M-B-E. His hands falter, and he switches to speech. “I’ll always be Gombe. But I’ll be your son, too. I’ll do whatever has to be done.” Again his hands fly. He is faster with this gesture-speech than her. G-O-M-B-E is Watuk also.

         It isn’t. Or: it hasn’t been. But tomorrow is a different day, and if they don’t all feed the carrion crows today, Watuk will wear a new face. She puts her hand on her son’s shoulder as he says, “It’s time, isn’t it?”

         It is.

* * *

         Three years of warfare, and never once did Nehan regret carrying Ayake behind her into battle; her good luck, her heart. Not until Lake Laanzi. There, when blood turned the white sand into mud, half a dozen Buskruten infantrymen wrestled Nehan off her horse.

         She screamed when they pulled Ayake away from her. But his cries still reached her—he still lived. She’d already lost the ivory headdress. Her spear had been torn from her grasp, but she had a short sword on her leg. Her teeth found purchase in one of the hands that held her, so that she could tear one arm free. The sword came free of its scabbard singing shrilly. She opened another throat and two bellies before a boot ground down upon her wrist and she lost her grip on the hilt.

         “Kill me then! Cowards!” She thrashed against the net of tightening arms, of bruising knees and boots. Her red-stained spittle flecked blue sleeves. Dark intersecting angles—backs and limbs—sliced up her view into shifting fragments of light and space. She reached for her verse-voice, which had always struck fear into Buskruten hearts: “My ghost will chase you across nations and years; my bones will be your only bed companion.” Her teeth snapped again but only met empty air this time as a man recoiled in fear.

         The bodies around her shifted. For a moment, she saw the sky again. A single buzzard cut across the sun. Then another Buskruten blocked the light. A captain, or a general, by the golden ornamentation on his helmet. He said something unintelligible, and hands seized Nehan’s jaw, forced her mouth open. She gnashed her teeth and screamed when one cracked against unyielding metal. Something harder than fingers locked onto the end of Nehan’s tongue and pulled, bringing a wail of pain with it.

         The knife flashed.

         Nehan’s head dropped backward first. Before understanding, and before pain, which amounted to the same thing. The prison of hands let her go, and she hit the hoof-slashed sand wetly screaming. Drowning on dry land.

         Hands found her again, but small ones this time, seizing her elbows, pulling her to her feet. Wet heat dripped down her throat, and it was Ayake there before her, speaking words that foundered in the roar of her ears. Something struck her from behind: the butt of a Buskruten rifle. She staggered. Only Ayake kept her from falling.

         They walked away, backward, toward the retreating Watuk line. Stop, her son said in her ear and let go of her. She stood swaying for a moment, and then he was back beside her, steadying her. You’re strong, Mama, he said, like a prayer, and he pressed the weight of the ivory-and-gold headdress back upon her brow. Then they were hurrying again, Nehan stumbling over shifting sand and broken bodies. The Buskruten chased them, only for a while, with leadwood switches and laughter.

* * *

         The war horse is comforting solidity between Nehan’s knees. A horse’s back is the same to her now as a throne once was: a vantagepoint from which she can understand the world. The weight of Ayake’s arm pulls the breastplate against her hips in front. His spear’s butt end rests in a cup sewn onto the horse’s harness. The spear-point cuts a line through the sunlight that spills down over Nehan’s face, and the faded leadwood-tree banner upon it dances and leaps like a cast-off cloud.

         Waves of motion shift the distant Buskruten lines: rifles being inspected, loaded, shouldered. There are fewer Buskruten than there are Watuk, though they will thin Nehan’s numbers before her riders crash down upon them. The advantage between them skews and twists. The shifting wind might push more bullets off-course. Or uneven ground hidden by the long grass might cost the ankles of more horses than she can afford to lose.

         Change hangs behind the horizon. Nehan hopes she lives long enough to see its shape.

         Her line-captain signals her, alerting her that her army is ready to move. She finds the hilt of her sword and drags it free from its scabbard. Its weight battles the strength of her arm as she thrusts it skyward. A sudden stillness, from the warriors gathered behind her. A cold breeze off far-away Mlaz Nian, big enough to freeze the souls of an entire family. This is supposed to be the moment for a poem, to charge their blood with holy fire, to cleanse their hearts with song in case they should meet the gods today. They are steeling themselves to die unblessed.

         Nehan’s mouth is dry, and a coppery tang clings to what is left of her tongue. She opens her mouth and stretches her jaw against the pull of pain. The words are there in her belly, waiting. It’s just that their shape has shifted—jagged rocks rolled together until they are smooth and round. Her voice tears her throat with the round, blunt vowels that she can still muster. “Ah eh-ai anh!” she cries. “Ah uhn-ai oh—”

         She hammers the rhythm of the words, her composition from the battle at Five Wings. The shapeless song carries outward from her, like seed thrown to the wind in search of fertile ground. Only the echo of her own voice rolls back to her. Tears sting her eyes as she finishes the verse and starts again.

         But now, but now. Other voices rise to join hers, to constrain her open-voweled rage with a precision of soundful substance. The chant picks up swifter than wildfire, a scourge that shakes the foundations of heaven’s palaces:

“The red-stained hand,

the sunbright sword.

My blood today

waters the fields of tomorrow.”

         The Buskruten lines ripple. Their left flank gives way as riflemen break and flee. Nehan laughs—the language of laughter is the same, tongue or none. The horse leaps into motion at her urging, and she bears down upon the invaders with a sword of lightning in her hand and the blood-tang of a song in her mouth.

         In her ears, Ayake’s soft sturdy voice, raising the song of the leadwood tree.

* * *

         The sweat of the birthing-bed had not yet dried when Nehan held Udavi out for Katif to see. “There,” she said. “At last, a right hand to your left.”

         Katif’s face, so small, so serious. “But Mama,” she said—not whining or complaining, only arguing the points of law that governed her young world. “You’re my right hand, if I need one.”

         “I hope it will never come to that.” Nehan reached out to cup her elder daughter’s cheek with one hand. “But only once. A hand turned to war one time will seek it out again, and again. It must be turned aside. Put to gentler—and less glorious—pursuits.”

         “Oh,” said Katif, and peered down again at the small creased face cradled against Nehan’s breast. “She is very small.”

         “Babies grow. And when she is older, and you are, she will be there if a time comes when you need her. When Watuk needs her.”

         “And where will you be, Mama?”

         Nehan smiled, and her fingers slid away from her daughter’s petal-soft cheek.

* * *

         After the battle, before Ayake’s moment comes, she is afraid that he will hesitate, that he will reach out to her in kindness rather than in power. But his jaw is set, a solid foundation in which to hold his sad, swimming eyes. When she kneels before him, to surrender her rule, he takes the headdress from her and throws it down into the dirt. She holds her breath as he lifts his foot; the ivory splinters and gives way on the first blow.

         The priestesses approach, singing low in the secret, sacred tongue. Still on her knees, Nehan is gripped by a moment of panic: the silver crown is lost to the capital’s ashes. But here, Hilaj lifts her hands, and upon her palms rests a simple circlet of polished wood. “O Hand of Peace and Plenty,” she says neutrally, and holds the circlet low, at her waist. She gestures for him to kneel. Nehan’s teeth grind.

         As quick as dancing candle-flame, he snatches the circlet from Hilaj’s hands. Hilaj, shocked, grabs for it once before wisdom and dignity prevail and she lets go. “Thank you,” he tells her, without sneer or smirk, “but the king doesn’t bow, though your wisdom is great and your years of service are appreciated.” And he settles the crown atop his own dark curls. The vipers may yet snap at the foot of their Gombe king, but they will fear the strike of his staff now, too. Shepherds know well how to deal with the snakes of the field.

         With the wordless priestess still standing beside him, Ayake turns to his people, who shift from foot to foot. “O Hand of Plenty,” a few cry, but watchful silence carries the moment.

         Ayake’s mouth moves briefly then, without sound. But when he speaks, his voice travels far. “My mother’s words led us here. Her words tore down the walls in our way; her words tore holes in our enemy’s hearts and drained away their courage. I wasn’t raised to be ... I wasn’t raised to be a man of words.” He stops, and his throat jerks with a swallow.

         Nehan knows what word is the pebble upon which he has stumbled: man. He is only a boy in an adult’s office, and he feels this as keenly as any. If his burden were hers to lift, she would. But she cannot, not without staining it. “But I’ll learn the words, in time. Not to tear down, but to build up. To heal hearts, not to wound them.” His fingers dart up, to touch the simple crown upon his brow. “And I know where to start.”

         A pair of attendants help Nehan rise, as tentative voices lift in the melody of a sweet and simple song: a people finding their faltering way forward as one. Her bloodstained hands will not guide them. She will go to the cloister beside the sea, there to join her father, if he still lives. She will plant seeds in the soil, she will milk goats and ferment sour yogurt. She will learn to slake her thirst with sweeter drinks than blood.

         As she walks away, her shoulders are back and her head feels light without the twin burdens of crown and fear. The words of the song bear her up, as familiar and strange as dreams of childhood. She does not look back, and she does not say goodbye. There are some things no words are strong enough to do.

Underneath the leadwood tree

My sheep rest from the sun

Underneath the leadwood tree

We rest till day is done.

The sun burns bright but quickly

Stars hide from day’s bright glare

The silver moon is cold and shy.

The leadwood tree is always there.

Underneath the leadwood tree

My heart dreams of its love

Underneath the leadwood tree

Who is it you dream of?

—Watuk children’s song

Copyright © 2019 Aimee Ogden

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Aimee Ogden is a former science teacher and software tester; now she writes about sad astronauts, angry princesses, and dead gods. Her work has also appeared in Analog, Shimmer, Fireside, and previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and she co-edits Translunar Travelers Lounge, a new zine of fun and optimistic speculative fiction.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE SWEETEST FRUIT OF SUMMER

by R.K. Duncan

         The fields were golden and the vines heavy with fruit in the harvest of her eighteenth year, when Corra’s mother gave her to the king of barren places. It was later than they had expected, but the bone-faced king had been far in the east of his domain when Corra flowered, and he had only now returned to take his prize in person.

         Corra stood at the arch of flowers in the square before her mother’s great house and granary, her cheeks rouged red as apples, golden stalks braided through her tight black curls, a crown of grapevines on her head—the sign and symbol of all the bounty they would pay in tribute to keep the fire and steel of the riders who followed the king away from the fields and storehouses of the green valley where her mother was the queen.

         Mother’s eyes were red, as if with weeping, but it was only counterfeit from rubbing them with ash and onion milk. The dress that she had torn to make a show of grieving was her third-best, almost a rag already. Corra’s younger sister was no more sincere. She had been raised to rule after their mother, while Corra had been raised to marry the king of killers. Only Aunt Fallo had an honest tear to offer Corra. She had gone to the same tithe when she was young and come back strange and mad. She knew what Corra would endure, better than Corra herself knew.

         The king rode into the square alone, on his black horse; so tall, so fast. He leaned down from the saddle, barely slowing, and threw her over his horse’s neck. Then he turned and rode away, while Mother and all the women of the town wept and tore their hair and crashed cymbals in a pageant of grief.

         The ordinary tribute would follow later. They would load the riders’ wains with flour and bread, beer and cheese, fine cloth dyed red and blue with the blood of the river clay, and the best wine of the first harvest. They paid so much each year, to keep the riders’ swords at bay. They only played the memory of the first abduction once each generation.

         The king stole Corra, and her mother wept and sang as if she were already dead.

         Outside of the town, the king slowed his pace and helped her settle into a more comfortable seat. There was a cushion in front of his saddle for her to rest on. He did not speak. She could not see his chest rise with breath. Was he really dead already, a bad dream brought back by the demon wind of the steppes to trouble good people?

         The motion of the horse was strange, and she could feel herself grow tender where she bounced against it, but the king kept the pace slow, and it did not hurt after the wild sprint was over. His bone face was a leather mask, painted with white, real teeth sewn in a yellow smile where the mouth should be. The eyes that looked out from behind it were brown, bright and fierce as a hunting bird’s. His hair was black as hers but straight instead of curled.

         Riding even slower, they came to the riders’ camp while the tribute wains were only a cloud of dust on the horizon behind them. There were pens of sheep and a few of cattle and countless horses all around in the grassy sea of the plains, where nothing grew but the dry grass that rustled like the laughter of dead souls against the flanks of the king’s horse.

         Inside the sprawl of animals were the tents, so many of them. The king’s camp was bigger than the town in the green valley. How many towns must give up the best of their harvest to keep these wild people fed?

         The king’s people watched them as they rode among the tents, and they cried welcome and joy and said how rich a prize she was, saluting their king for his good judgment. Their skin was sun-scorched brown as any farmer, and there were beads and charms of bone in their straight black hair.

         The king stopped his horse in front of two huge tents pressed against each other. One was taller, tall as the highest house in the town, and the curtain of its door was painted with a grinning skull. The smaller one beside was painted with a green fruit bleeding red, and two women came out of it; one grey-haired with a lined face, the other a stick-limbed girl.

         The king stepped from his horse and lifted her down. His hands were strong, and they were warm, not corpse cold. He spoke from behind his mask, and his voice was ordinary, deep and confident.

         “This is Rada, who keeps my household, and Dati will be your body-servant. They will make you ready for the feast to celebrate our wedding.”

         He left her with the women and went into the great tent. They took her into the smaller one. The ground was carpeted with soft furs, and brass lamps cast in the shape of long-legged birds burned fragrant oil for light. There were cloths and curtains dyed with strange colors and stitched with foreign stitches that Corra had never seen.

         The women stripped off her white dress and flower-patterned apron, her bell wrap, and the binding that held up her breasts. Rada’s hands were sure and merciless. Dati was timid, but she followed Rada, not Corra’s wordless protests.

         When Corra was naked, Rada cooed over her, smiling at what she said were the stamps of rich living, at her belly and her hips and her thick limbs. Rada pinched her cheeks and said that she would be a fine companion for the king, strong enough to bear the duty he would ask. She did not explain more, and Corra had to bite back fear.

         The ordinary business of cleaning and dressing grated against her terror. She was coming out of the numbness of terror and the flood of new experience that had kept her from breaking down while she rode with the king. She had heard hints before that the king would want more from her than rutting and children and warmth at night, but no one would speak what. Maybe only Fallo knew, and she did not answer questions. Corra tried to ask Rada, but the old woman only said that it was the king’s business.

         They dressed her in red and purple embroidered with gold, a halter around her neck bound under her breasts that left her belly bare, a skirt that clung to show the curve of her legs and backside when she walked. It seemed made to display the rich flesh of the green-land girl the king had stolen, as though she was a prize heifer in the marketplace.

         They changed her crown of leaves for a tiara of pale gold, beaten with the shape of waves. It must have been taken from a place near the sea, which she had never seen. They rouged her cheeks again and painted her lips purple with a sour stain. They put rings of silver on her fingers and rings of gilded bronze around her arms and hung heavy golden bangles from her ears. All of the jewels were mismatched, marked by different styles of work and the luster of different lodes and castings. They dressed her in looted finery from all the towns that bowed to the bone-faced king, and they sent her out into the dusk and firelight.

         He caught her arm in a firm grip one step outside the tent and guided her to the fire circle. His face was bare now, and he looked like an ordinary man, with a strong chin and a long moustache. He was not old; older than her, but not lined or greying. The skin of his face was pale, lighter than the rest of him. He smiled at her, as if she was an ordinary woman, as if they both chosen this.

         He sat her on cushions at his left hand, and a plate was laid before her, good bread and soft cheese and beef that had been cooked in the fire wrapped in fresh bay leaves. Flagons of strong wine and barley beer passed round the fire. If she could have closed her eyes to riders, closed her ears to the strange songs they sang and only smelled and tasted, she might have been at home, feasting the harvest gathered in.

         The cords of self-control or pride that had bound back her tears and kept her floating without feeling broke then, and she wept, not caring if they saw her tears and heard her sobbing. The banter of the king and his captains did not pause for her. They heard. They had expected this, of course. She was not the first girl brought by force to share their food and fire and company. She ate the feast still sobbing, with tears to salt her bread. She wouldn’t go without. It might be her last chance to taste home before the next year’s tribute.

         The stars were out in the summer sky before he drew her from the fireside, back to his great tent with the skull-painted curtain. He would take his prize now, of course. Her time to grieve was over. Now it was time for new pain.

         He drew her to a bed of cushions and furs and pushed her down gently and stepped back from her.

         “How should I lie, Husband?” It would be best not to fight. It would hurt less if he did not want to hurt her.

         “My name is Hadi, call me that.”

         “Hadi. How do you want me?” She untied the halter and pulled it off to let him see her breasts. Was that what he wanted?

         “You don’t have tremble like that. I won’t take you while you’re so frightened. I don’t plan to force you. I need you for more than a night’s enjoyment.”

         There was that hint again. What was the doom prepared for her if not to be his broodmare?

         “What do you want me for then?”

         “Sleep beside me tonight. The warmth is good out on the plain. That is enough for my people to see that you are mine. If it is so terrible, you can sleep in the women’s tent after tonight.”

         So she laid beside the bone-faced king of bloody raiders, Hadi, her husband, and he laid his arm across her belly, heavy and stern as a shackle. She lay a long time before she could sleep there next to him, but he had not lied. The warmth was good in the cold night.

* * *

         The city of tents travelled east after they had eaten the bounty of Corra’s home. Each day, she rode in front of Hadi on his tall black horse. He wore his leather mask, to keep the pale face that the riders knew their king by, but he spoke to her now, told her of the lands they were passing, around the rim of the great plain that circled the hard desert. Hadi’s people marked the stations of their journey by the tributes they could ring from each village and town, by the watering places where they could rest their horses.

         The sky was so wide above the flat country, bright as a bronze bowl reflecting sunshine.

         She learned when to be soft and when to hold herself stiff with the rolling of the horse. She would not be taught to ride. Each morning, Dati put soft slippers on her feet, not boots. She would not run far across the grassland in the shoes they gave her. They did not forget that she was a captive and a prize or mistake her for one of them, because she belonged to their king now.

         Even understanding that, Corra did not understand the raiders.  Often while they rode, old women and men, grey-haired like Rada, would ride next to Hadi’s black horse for a moment and ask Corra what the weather might be tomorrow, or how their sons would fare in their first battle, or how to make their daughters choose a good husband. She shook her head as if she did not understand them. Why would they ask her? It only made the shadow of her hidden purpose darker in her mind.

         At night, they fed her mutton spiced with strange hot flavors that they had taken in tribute from the other end of their range. It burned her tongue and numbed her lips, but she did not starve herself. She had to be prepared for something; for whatever torture made the king of the barren places take a soft-limbed green-land girl for his bride and not even take his pleasure with her.

* * *

         They had traveled seven days from her wedding before Corra found out what he wanted her for. After the evening meal, when Hadi took her back to the great tent, Rada brought him a dark-skinned fruit and left them alone. Hadi tore the skin with his thumb, and the flesh spilled out, bright red flesh hugging little seeds; like a pomegranate but brighter, richer.

         “Eat,” he said, and pressed the seeds one by one into her mouth. Seven and he was finished, and she bit.

         The flesh burst sweet and rich as honey on her tongue, then puckered sour on the second taste. The juice coated her mouth thick as oil. The seeds were coals, and cold fire spread from them; hot at the edge, buzzing numbness at the expanding center. She could feel nothing but her mouth, and then not that.

         She fell and tumbled in the dark.

         Hadi had many altars, taken for their sheen and the skill of their making. One was some eastern god, four-armed, dancing in a ring of fire. She was the smoke, shaped by the god’s hands. She was the shadow of a bird across the sun. She was the salt of boiling tears.

         She smelled sweat and many horses, and sour smoke. A gate shaded by plum trees swung open.

         “A wall of thick tree-trunks burned at their roots and fell onto men in red-dyed leather brandishing spears against it.”

         She woke to her own skin like a too-loose shift while she was already speaking to Hadi.

         “Was the gate in a stone wall or a wooden one?”

         She answered before thinking. Her tongue was stiff and sour like the morning after too much beer. She spoke to rhythm of Hadi’s hand petting her shoulder and his other on her cheek. “Stone, white and well-mortared.”

         “And the spears the men held, were they bloody?”

         “No, they were clean.”

         Hadi smiled and took his hands off her, and she felt an ache growing in all her limbs. Like her bones were beating hammers against their prison of flesh. The blood roared like a waterfall in her temples.

         “What poison did you feed me?”

         “The prize of the desert. It only grows at the heart of the barren land, and the fruit brings true visions, but it is an ordeal. Did you think I only took you for a wife because I wanted to be feared for stealing children? Women raised on the plains die when they try to see, and men go mad. It takes girl who has never gone hungry to bear it and bring back truth.”

         It hurt. She could barely keep herself from falling back onto the bed. “What use is nonsense like that dream?”

         He smiled again, like Mother at a child asking foolish questions. “You are my oracle, but you may leave interpretation to me. I will show you the value of your sight by tomorrow’s sunset.”

         Corra tossed all night in Hadi’s bed, sweating and falling between one dream and the next as if she had taken a fever. The memory of the burning fruit stuck to her tongue like tar. She dreamed fire and screams. She dreamed Hadi’s soft fingers on her cheek sliding inside her mouth, supple and long and intentional as serpents, forcing those seeds down, all the way into her belly, and she grew heavy with a child of hot coals and delivered wolves alone and screaming in a bed of blood and mud.

         She woke for the last time when the wolves devoured her. Hadi was dressed in his riding gear, black armor hung with bones, and his riding mask.

         “Thank you for your guiding sight, Princess. I will bring you a prize tonight.”

         He left into the grey dawn outside the tent. She tried to rise and follow him, but her knees buckled under her and she fell back onto the bed. She didn’t have the strength to lift herself again. She called for Dati, and Rada came as well.

         They pampered her, covered her with blankets, fed her thick barley beer and the mare’s milk the riders loved best, and later gave her broth and marrow. By the afternoon she was strong enough to stand, and to walk if she leaned against them.

         Rada clapped her hands in praise. She said this was the strength of a green-land girl, fed and fattened on easy life to bear the burden of the desert’s prize. Corra had not felt so weak since she had been a child and spent days almost dead with the marsh fever that came in summer.

         Rada brought her outside and had a chair set for her to watch the riders return. They came in a long column, with Hadi at their head. He was stained with smoke, and there was blood splashed on the rattling bones of his armor and across his mask. He sat in a chair beside her, and his killers laid their plunder at his feet and hers in tribute.

         They brought golden ornaments and little idols, bright and well-cast, and the beaten silver coins that rich traders used; scarlet cloth and plum brandy in clay bottles, pepper and anise and cinnamon bark, swords and spearheads of good eastern steel, and seven girls with wide dark eyes and hair dyed orange with henna, trembling like captive rabbits.

         Hadi took a few of the best pieces of gold for himself, and a long sword, and a bottle of spirit, and he gave Corra a curved knife in a silver sheath, a fine dagger for a queen to cut her meat with.

         He gave the girls to his captains, and let his warriors divide the rest according to their stations, and he led Corra to the feasting fire. He let her lean on him and seemed to expect her weakness. He told her the story of the raid while the meal was prepared, unmasked and smiling in the firelight.

         “Your sight was true, Corra, and it gave us a great prize. The treasures come from the white-walled city of plum-trees, and we have never broken it before. The silk merchants rest their caravans there, and it is full of wealth. I sent my best men through the unlocked gate you saw, and they set a fire that burned the main gate open, and we rode over the defenders before they knew we were among them. The cowards were nothing without their walls to hide behind.” He smiled and clasped her hands in his. “It is your victory, Wife, as much as mine. The sun and moon will count the treasure and the battle offerings for your reward as well as mine when the time comes.”

         The riders told boasts and tales of bravery in battle around the fire, and Hadi pressed Corra to eat until she could hold no more. She had to keep herself fat and strong. She would need to see again for him soon. She should enjoy the bounty of their triumph.

         It was her victory. Her traitor vision had let the fire and bloody-handed riders in. She heard that accusation in the laughter of the murderers that her husband called his best, and saw it in the eyes of seven frightened girls watching her from the places at the fireside, where their new masters had left them while they drank and danced with the other men.

* * *

         Corra still felt hollowed by the fire of her first vision when, only a few days later, Hadi fed her the fruit again. He was waiting when she came to sleep, with the skin already torn and the guts spilled into his hand.

         “You must guide the vision this time. Do not let it rule you. Ask what dangers come to shake my saddle and make it answer you.”

         She might have argued. She could have said that she was weak and there was no way she could master the flood of fire and twist of shadows that came out of those seeds now. She should have demanded training, or at least an explanation of all he knew about these visions and how to read them.

         She had never refused Hadi or argued with him. She did not want to try now, when she was tired and frightened of the power in his hands and she could not tell the difference between love and pride and hunger in his face.

         She took the seeds he counted out, five this time, into her hand and ate them all together.

         The fire did not know words, so she did not use them. She tried to fix in her mind with the same flashes it had shown her last time. She thought of arrows flying, leaping wolves, a hand pulling Hadi from the saddle, the tent around them burning.

         The vision burst on her tongue, sweet, tart, and peppered. She stood among the tent town, Hadi’s city. Sword clanged against sword, and men shouted over the screams of horses, but that was distant, far and faded out of the sight’s pull. The people went about their business, carrying water, gathering dung to burn, spinning and weaving and mending harness. Little men, old and shriveled in the face, only as tall as her knee, stood up out of the grass, out of the ground. They had needle swords, and they cut ankles until people fell, and they stabbed and stabbed each one into a bloody ruin. The people did not see them until they were cut down. They did nothing, and they did not turn at the screams when their neighbors died. Three bearded vultures flew overhead as Corra fell onto her back.

         This time, she woke enough to guide her own tongue a little, Hadi did not have to question her. He still pet her like a favored dog while she reported on the vision. When she was finished, he nodded and smiled again.

         “You have seen what I needed. The people of the vulture banner have been restless under my tribute before. They will try to fight when we come to their range, but we will be ready for their tricks now.”

         Corra dreamed of needles that night, of corpses being stitched to her skin to make twins on either side of her, of dancing round the evening fire sewn to the seven henna-headed girls in a circle of stolen flesh.

         She did not recover from the seeing enough to stand or ride for three days. She was carried on a litter strung between two placid horses and shielded from the curious by curtains. Dati brought Corra rumors of her own death, from discontents who said Hadi relied too much on her; that he was only a strong king because his green-land wife could see the future by witchery. He was still a young king, new in the saddle, and he had won two grand victories in a month, but both had been at her word, and some of the raiders were not happy to see a green-land girl in a place of honor beside their masked king.

         Two days after she joined Hadi again on his black horse, they came to the ranges of the vulture banner, and Hadi made his warriors ready. He sent out scouts, and they returned with word of the vulture riders gathered for war and coming toward the king’s caravan.

         At dawn the next day, Hadi sent his warriors to meet the rebels, but he held back his best, the companions who had fought around him at the raid her first sight had dispatched, and he put his bone-faced mask onto another man’s face and set him to lead the charge.

         Hadi and his picked fighters, and all who did not fight, shut themselves in their tents and waited at his order. Corra watched out of the entryway of their tent beside him, pressed against his side. She felt him stern, holding himself still. He was tense and eager for something to come.

         They heard the battle joined in the distance, the grate of steel on steel, the murmur of so many horses running, the high whoops of the champions as they outpaced the rest. Hadi shivered, just a little, at the sound of a battle he was not fighting.

         She wanted to ask what they were waiting for, what he had found in the nonsense of her vision, but he had commanded silence, and she did not want to see how he would make her obey.

         The grass rustled at the edge of the tent city. Men came out, slight and swaggering even while they stepped quietly.

         “They have sent their young men to burn our tents while the real warriors fight.” Hadi whispered in her ear, watching the youths creep past the sheep pens and among the tents like a cat waiting for a bird to land. “It is good trick, when no one expects it. They think my men will break when they see smoke rising behind them, and they will ride us down.”

         The young men looked tentative when they saw no one going about the day’s work. They halted for a moment to look around. The tall one in the lead pointed the way straight toward the great tent, right at Corra hidden in the darkness of the entryway.

         Some knelt to kindle torches, and all advanced with no more hesitation. They had come to burn, and they would do it, even if the bone-faced king had turned his people into ghosts to hide them. They came right to the royal tent.

         Hadi slid his sword out slow and silent and a long knife in his left hand. When the tall vulture boy reached out to pull the tent flap aside, Hadi leapt out and opened his throat in one bright flash. He didn’t squeal like a calf did going down, only fell choking while she watched him; slow and awkward among the bright dance of blades all around. Hadi’s battle cry was solid as a fist boxing her ears. Three more young men were down before they started shouting. Hadi’s men leapt out and cut the youths apart. Hadi laughed and slashed and danced among the dying.

         Very soon the fight was over, and women trickled from the tents to cut the throats of those left alive and take anything of worth the fools had brought with them. Corra had not looked away.

         The green-flecked eyes of the tall youth stared back at her. Her hands went to her throat, where he was opened. She choked and doubled over, screaming into retching until her stomach spilled over and her throat was etched with bile and her cheeks were soaked with tears.

         Hadi came back smiling. “Another good seeing, Wife. We’ve broken them here and in the battle.” He saw her face and her sick on the grass, and he patted her head as if she were a child. “That is why you green-land people need us. You live rich, but you have no steel in you. You will always be better bowing.”

         That was all the comfort Hadi ever gave her; that he understood her weakness, and his strength left her free to be so weak.

* * *

         For all his scorn of her, Hadi was easy with praise, and she sat beside him while he passed judgment on what was left of the people of the vulture banner, and he gave her gifts of jewels and silks taken from women he sent south to be sold. She tried to wear them with a smile, to look the part of a rider’s princess.

         She had time to learn the rhythm of life in the barren places then, and to harden herself to what she had been taken into. Hadi had shown that he was stronger, not weaker, after taking a green-land wife, and he did not need new victories to show his strength or increase his wealth, so he spared her from the desert’s prize for months. After the first weeks of relief, Corra began thinking how to keep his eyes on her. She needed his regard even when he was not hungry for the future she could dream.

         The taste of their food changed as they traveled east, growing hotter and leaner, then rich with cream again as they turned north, and the treasures that each village offered changed in their seasons: silver and jade, silk and spice, bright swords, and hunting eagles. She learned to meet each new thing with resolve and to eat all that she was given. It made Hadi happy to see her fed and fattened, and she made sure to put on bangles and silks that Hadi’s eyes had fixed on. She could not afford to grow stale in his regard; to be packed away until he had a need for prophecy again. At night, she sent Dati away, so that they slept alone as much like wife and husband as kidnapper and prize.

         She taught herself to imagine little prophecies for the old men and women who still asked for them, the ones who remembered Aunt Fallo and her visions for Hadi’s uncle. Rada smiled when she rode beside and heard Corra prophesying success in love and gentle weather for the questioners, and the young women began to come with their own questions. They called her princess, sometimes even queen, and bowed as low to her as to Hadi.

         In winter, when the settled places had no wealth for a bone-faced king, Hadi ceased his wandering and made his camp in the middle of the great plain, with all the bounty that had filled his wains through the long march from harvest to harvest. His subject tribes attended him in the ancient place among the standing stones that was called the city of the horselords, and they paid him gold and steel and service for food to keep their children through the cold.

         Corra stayed with Hadi in his great tent and made sure he and all his subjects remembered that she was his queen, not only one half of a magic that kept him on the saddle-throne. She wore the silks he had given her that left her belly bare, so that he would put his warm hands on her and hold her tight and jealous. She listened to his quiet mutterings as he debated politics to himself and let him rest his head on her soft shoulder and let go the iron strength that he had to show outside the tent. He trusted her, and her green-land weakness, to make it safe when they were two alone.

* * *

         It was spring, and they were beginning the year’s slow progress at the northeast edge of Hadi’s kingdom, eating lambs slaughtered for their tenderness and winter roots baked in the coals, when he asked her to see again.

         He put the unopened fruit into her hands. “The corner of the sun was bitten off yesterday, and there have been shooting stars and shadows on the moon. They are omens of treachery. You must see which of my subjects will rise, so that I can crush them. If one rises up and stays free even for a month, a dozen more will hear and break away.”

         It would be the end of his rule. Any sign that the scourge would not come down on them was an excuse to ignore the overseer. Who would be bold enough to dare it first, though? All the towns that bowed knew what the king’s riders would do to their fields and green orchards and their children if they rebelled.

         She knew the answer she should give before she opened the fruit and counted four seeds into her hand. She wouldn’t need more to find what she already knew, and she needed to be in control when she woke to tell her vision to Hadi. If he would not have objected, she would only have taken one.

         The taste was familiar. Her first two seeings had never faded into dusty memory. They came back fresh as the sugared flesh on her tongue.

         She saw wheat stalks sharpening to spear-points in the field. She saw riders drinking wine at the feast fire and falling dead, and women with dark ringlet curls devouring live horses, and a silver serpent slither from a bed of furs and cushions. She would not tell him of that last vision.

         She woke in Hadi’s arms.

         “I won’t need your interpretation this time, Husband. It is my mother. I saw the green valley, and her face. She always kept back the best of our harvest from the tribute. I know where she has hidden weapons and the money to pay for spearmen out of the west.”

         Hadi smiled his fierce smile. “Then you will ride before me and show me your mother’s treachery, so I can punish it and teach the new queen the price of dreaming freedom.”

         He never questioned that she would give up her mother and her old home so easily. Why would he? They had sold her to be used, and he had made her a queen.

* * *

         The warriors rode light, not waiting for the wains or the pack horses. Corra was jounced and bruised against the black horse’s neck, and she ate salted meat and drank mare’s milk and slept under the stars beside her king. She was almost as tired after three days of riding as she had been after her second seeing, and she began to understand what Hadi meant by the steel the riders had.

         They rode into the green valley with only crows to herald them. Men and women were in the fields planting. The gates of the town were open, and no one raised a spear to defend them until it was too late. The riders trampled the slow and the foolish under their horses’ hooves, and they caught every woman and man who wore fine cloth enough to be a landholder and dragged them behind to her mother’s great house, its whitewashed walls adorned with blue and red tiles. Mother stood in the doorway to meet them and prayed forgiveness for whatever confusion had made the great king angry with her.

         Corra smiled when Hadi struck Mother across the face hard enough to make her fall. He dragged her by her long black hair, and Corra led the warriors through the house. She showed them the secret storerooms where the best of each year’s grain and cheese and wine was hidden, and the others where bronze spearheads and arrows and shields were kept against the day of rebellion, and the chest where her mother hoarded silver coins.

         Hadi cut off Mother’s head himself, in the square in front of the great house and granary, where the wedding arch had been set up when he had come before. Corra let him see her smiling; let him see how the watching people, held back by his riders, hated her.

         He let his captains do the rest, cutting until the square flowed with blood. Corra could not save Fallo. She could not even try without drawing suspicion, but the old woman did not weep when she was taken to the block. They killed Corra’s first sister as well, who would have been queen after Mother, but the rest of the queen’s household they only took to sell or to keep for themselves. Perhaps the captains wanted green-land wives like their king.

         They killed every landholder who had sat in council with Mother, and their first sons and daughters, and penned what remained of the Fifteen Families to carry off as slaves. The blood and killing was as easy and as swift as the slaughter of the young warriors of the vulture banner, and Corra felt the hilt jar in her hands each time a blade swept down, as if she made the stroke herself. This was her killing; her design. This time she did not flinch or wretch. This pain she understood as well as her hardened husband: a tree must be pruned to make it grow as ordered. The rich who followed her mother had grown beyond the bounds of their submission, and so they were cut off. Corra could never have done so much with her own hands.

         When it was done, Hadi declared a feast, and he shared the bounty taken from the granary among his riders and the girls and women of the town who they had taken for sport while they remained here.

         She told Hadi that she would go among the women and tell him who would be the best to make the new queen; who would keep the peace and pay without demur. She talked with girls who remembered her departure while he nodded and drank wine and watched his captains dancing with their newest concubines.

         He fell into a drunken sleep in her mother’s great bed as soon as he had spent himself, but he woke and looked into her eyes when she put the dagger he had given her into his gut.

         “Green-land girls have steel enough, Husband, before we grow old and choose comfort.” She cut his throat before he could answer. Mother had not had the steel to keep her eldest from the tribute, but the other green-land girls had not balked at Corra’s plan when she had gone among them, and she heard the soft sound of their knives from the other rooms of the great house that the riders had taken for their own.

         In the morning, she put on her mother’s crown, and Hadi’s leather mask, and she ordered the slaughter of the horses. They would set the heads as mile posts to show what waited if raiders came into the green valley again. They would not be ruled by a queen and council who bought comfort and security with the labor of subjects in the field and the terror of daughters sold for raiders’ wives. They would build high walls and keep their small gates watched against clever raiders, and if she quickened with a straight-haired daughter whose eyes were like a hunting bird’s, Corra would not sell her for peace and safety.

Copyright © 2019 R.K. Duncan

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

R.K. Duncan is an author mostly of fantasy, with a dash of science-fiction and horror thrown in. He writes about fairies and gods and ghosts from a few rooms of a venerable West Philadelphia row home. In the shocking absence of any cats, he lavishes spare attention on cast iron cookware and his long-suffering and supportive partner. Before settling on writing, he studied linguistics and philosophy at Haverford college. Links to other work and information about his drive to attend Viable Paradise 23 can be found at rkduncan-author.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“To Feel the Edge of Heaven” by Noah Bradley

Noah Bradley is a creator. He is working on The Sin of Man, a primal fantasy world of his own design. He made Art Camp, which has helped to teach thousands of students around the world to make better art. And he makes Reference.Pictures with his wife, which provides affordable, high-quality reference images for creators. See more of his work and these many projects at noahbradley.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2019 Firkin Press

This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.