The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Eight

  I push Dedéi out. “Run. Run and do not look back.”

  I slam the door and pray to the goddess that Dedéi will do what they must to get out, to get to safety. The pressure on the wards mounts, and I hear Brentann shout, “Dedéi! Dedéi! You rascal, Parét, what are you doing to my granddaughter? You criminal, you. . . Open up! Dedéi! Dedéi!”

  I count until fifty before I call out, “Come in!” I extinguish my candlebulbs and let the wards go.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mezará Brentann bursts in, then latches the door behind him and applies wards, thick and powerful. He looks around in the gloom, the chamber lit only by sluggish afternoon light that streams through the tourmaline glass of my single window. “Where is she? She was here!”

  He releases three candlebulbs, large and angry with his power, to circle around me like wasps. “What have you done with her? What have you done with my granddaughter?”

  He is taller than me, and taller than my lord. He is broad. In his youth, he was powerful in the body, athletic, and it still shows. His magic, too, is powerful. Against this man I am nothing. A ragi. A weakling. A man who submits to another’s advances, a spineless coward who forever cowers behind his master’s back.

  Here is the man who can easily snap me in half.

  “You do not have a granddaughter.” My voice is quiet, but my room is small, so it carries. “You have a grandchild.”

  Brentann takes a step forward.

  I have thought the word “broken” so many times in the last few days, but so few of us are ever truly broken. The mind’s naming grids are resilient. They bend and warp and twist, but only rarely do they break outright. And what’s been bent and warped can be adjusted, can be healed; even in the absence of a healer, what has been bent can adapt, can change and grow. Humans may ail in their minds, but it is very rarely that they do not have a choice in how to act.

  He takes another step forward. Not much now, before he can grab me.

  I do not move. Not moving is easier than moving. I am still.

  “She is insane and malformed. You are a worthless ragi.” He looks around, looking for Dedéi. I know his plan includes us both, but I want to make sure.

  I draw on the five-syllable, subtle, subtle, then on the four-syllable. He does not notice. Mild and weak, my names vibrate around his in an increasingly complicated weave. When I will speak, he’ll see no need to lie.

  “You finally figured out how to get to my lord.”

  Brentann spits, bitter. “A mind cannot hold more than three deepnames. Yet I forever hear rumors that Ranravan has more. What need does he have for more if he refuses to act?”

  “A feeling of helplessness. His family threatened.”

  I know how your wife died. A healing went wrong. She could not do it. The patient snapped and killed her.”

  “Yes,” I say simply. On this very floor, on these very wooden boards that drank her blood. “And I, let me see, I was to attempt to heal Dedéi, but it would be too much for me. So I kill Dedéi, and you kill me in grief, because I harmed a sick child. That’s what you were going to tell everyone.”

  He grins, a twisted thing. “Oh, better. You attempt to heal her but fail and damage her worse instead, like your wife with that man. Dedéi snaps and kills you, but the damage has been done. She dies at home a few days later.”

  I nod. I see it all too well.

  “Of course, if that does not work, there’s always what you described.”

  “And then my lord floods the river, and you get your little war.”

  I breathe and breathe into my deepnames. The subtle weave expands around Brentann.

  “You’d kill your own grandchild for a Bird-forsaken, useless, unneeded war.”

  “You. . . you weakling! What do you know of men? What do you know of men’s desires? Of glory, conquest, healthy offspring to carry on one’s name? That girl was useless. Who would miss her? My son, my only son, refused to see—always looking for a cure, always hoping. . . with Dedéi gone, he’ll finally have a real child. My family will recover. Now, the war—”

  I call on my three-syllable and take a step forward.

  When the message arrived from my son, I grieved. I still do. He took a five-syllable and completed his configuration. Three, four, five—the Healer’s Trapeze, perfect for mind-healing. But every healing contains within it its dissolution. The power of the Healer’s Trapeze contains within it the reverse, the power to unhinge and break another’s mind. My son—my child, my fledgling, my Taem, he has committed that crime.

  Is it a crime to stop a crime? How do we know? To what degree can we truly know the full extent and impact of our actions?

  I do not want to force my will upon the world.

  Lulled by the subtle vibrations of my long names, Brentann looks confused, unsure as to what’s going on. I take the last step forward, and stretch up my arms, and put my hands on the sides of his head.

  “Just as I do not heal without consent, I will not use my deepnames to break you.”

  “Coward,” he mutters. The buzz of my magic pushes him gently to his knees. Years ago, on this very floor, my wife’s killer knelt for me, and I extended my deepnames in a healing.

  My hands on the sides of Brentann’s head are firm as I look at the warps and imperfections I could have healed if he let me. There are issues here, yes, but when I look at his mind, I see a person strong and agile and decisive, resourceful and self-assured. I could have helped him, but he refused. His mind is his own, and he is at home in it. There’s nothing in his mind to tell me he’s incapable of choice. He made a choice. If I were to heal him, would he make a different one?

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. But he has not consented to a healing.

  I take a breath and fill his mind with images of the war. My own memories—the fear, the screaming, the cold. People running. People dying, people dear to me and strangers. Healings, always healings. My lord has sheltered me. My memories are not nearly harsh enough.

  I flood Brentann with memories of every soldier I have healed, the battlefield a thousand times, dozens of battlefields, severed arms flying and blood and fecal stench and fire and explosions and falling and falling and flesh torn out in a fountain, pain beyond knowing, falling onto a still-quivering body of a friend, a shower of meat and guts where—

  I do not look too closely when I heal, but I look now. It is my choice, my responsibility. Brentann screams as his mind warps under the weight of borrowed nightmares, sleepless nights without respite, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming screaming—

  Slowly, I withdraw. I remove the memories one by one, pull them out like a used thread from a stitched wound. I take my time. I do not heal. I put everything back exactly the way I found it.

  When I remove my hands from his head, Brentann has shat himself.

  “I have not warped your mind,” I say. “I have not healed you.”

  He looks at me. His eyes are white with fear. He will not have the memories. In a few hours the last traces of what I’ve done to him will wear off, but he will remember this moment. This feeling.

  “The war,” I say. “The war is an abomination.”

  He topples face forward onto the floorboards.

  ~ ~ ~

  I step over Brentann’s unconscious body and exit the healing room. I cannot stay here. My body is abuzz with the power I have channeled, with the actions I committed.

  I walk into the golden sunset air. I walk and walk, aimlessly, but I know my feet will carry me north, following the smell of the rotting seaweed in the river.

  Every action carries within it a crime waiting to spring forward. A mortal wound gapes from every healing. Within every defensive act lies an attack, a perversion greater than any good that may come from it. All my life I wanted to avoid. I wanted to be still. I wanted to do nothing. My lord would carry those burdens for me. Make the decisions. Commit the crimes. I would submit to him and float.

  Breath by breath I draw on my deepnames to conceal myself from
the world.

  I am nothing. I am a weakling, a coward, a ragi. I act, and I act badly. It is a lie to think I have not changed Brentann. He will remember. He will fear—fear me more than he hates and fears my lord.

  It is a lie to think I have not changed Dedéi. They are alive, and will remain alive, as long as they don’t fall from any more vines.

  I harmed another. Did I save another?

  My healings come undone. Everything unravels. My hopes for the children. My hopes for the world. Even the great work that I poured into the land.

  I shouldn’t have acted today, or in the past. I should never have asked my lord to accept me into his service.

  I feel, from afar, an inhalation, a swelling of someone’s very great power about to burst free.

  My lord’s wards. Brentann has rattled them. My lord will come to protect me.

  He falls in love with everything that moves, Brentann said. But that is simply incorrect. He only falls for people of very great power. His first lover was the Old Royal, that wise sovereign of the sands who knows more about deepnames and the land’s naming lore than all the northern mages put together. And then my lord loved Anda, the only one who could face him in battle, and prevail. And he loves me.

  A mind cannot hold more than three deepnames. Yet I forever hear rumors that Ranravan has more.

  The weave I have constructed will not be enough to conceal me from him. He will find me, and I cannot face him right now. Cannot face anyone.

  Breath by ragged breath, my power heaves. I remove myself from the world. There is an absence where I walk, an emptiness invisible to all. I am nothing. I should never have acted, just or unjust, necessary or unnecessary—because there is an emptiness in me, a wasteland greater than the Burri desert.

  I walk where my feet take me. Towards Katríu River. Towards the bridge.

  From afar, I can see a great roiling of power swallow the upper city. A cloud of mist and lightning devours the spires and roofs of upper Katríu, erases houses, bridges, roads. When I look to the north I see nothing except my lord’s power, unleashed and swallowing the distance between us. Would he have been in time to save me, if Brentann had prevailed? I do not know if it matters to my lord right now, if anything even exists for him except the rage and the overwhelming need to destroy.

  The cloud of his power rolls down through the streets now, it envelops the buildings, drowns the roads, smothers the lights. I do not know what will be left behind, I do not know if any people will remain. From my cocoon of emptiness I sense no life—nothing at all, except my master’s power—and it expands and expands, like Bird’s wings drawn across the far horizon. For him the goddess is never a finch, never anything small—no, it is vast, a mythical harptail of desert tales, a bird of storm blue and sunset that envelops the world in her wings.

  By the time I step on the bridge, the land has been devoured into a gray, lightning-rich mist. I stand in it, enveloped, floating, unable to see or hear anything else. Even the bridge beneath my feet is gone.

  My lord has filled the whole world with himself, with the echoes and waves of his presence—and what he did not touch is me. He found me.

  The vastness encloses me securely, completely, but it does not press.

  He’s taken the world away. There is no ground, no sky, nothing to lean on. Just him. Always and forever, it has always been him.

  He wraps his arms of flesh around my body, and the feeling of dense mist begins to fade. We are beneath a starry sky, upon the bridge.

  “Tell me what happened,” he says. “Please.”

  I do, in fits and starts, until the last words stumble out of me. We stand together, silent, wrapped around each other, until the mist recedes, until the emptiness slides off me and into the river.

  From the shelter of his arms I see that the city is back, with its people and noise and its stench and its lights. I look around, towards upper Katríu, and down into the water, but I do not see destruction. I do not see any changes at all.

  He laughs. “I think I’m getting the hang of this, Parét. I learned from you, and put things back the way I found them.”

  I press my face into his shoulder. I have no words for anything. The world, or Bird, or what we have created, what we’ve done. I have been wrong to blame my son for acting. I have been wrong to act. But now there’ll be no war.

  “There’ll be no war,” he says, and the tightness of his embrace reasserts me, just me, a person in the world. Just another person with a warped grid, a person with regrets and choices, with memories of pain and joy, like all the other people who lived a life.

  My master speaks. “You’ve done enough, and more than enough, Parét. Let us go home.”

  “I am already home.”

  I lift my listless arms to hug him back.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Rose Lemberg is a queer immigrant from Eastern Europe. Their work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Interfictions, Uncanny, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among other venues. Rose co-edits Stone Telling, a magazine of boundary-crossing poetry, with Shweta Narayan. They have edited Here, We Cross, an anthology of queer and genderfluid speculative poetry from Stone Telling (Stone Bird Press), and The Moment of Change, an anthology of feminist speculative poetry (Aqueduct Press). They are currently editing a new fiction anthology, An Alphabet of Embers. You can find Rose at roselemberg.net and @roselemberg, including links to their page on Patreon, where they post about Birdverse, the world in which their BCS stories and others take place.

  LAWS OF NIGHT AND SILK

  Seth Dickinson

  KAVIAN CAN PRETEND this girl is her daughter through drought and deluge, but the truth is the truth: Irasht is a weapon, and never any more.

  It hurts enough to break even the charcoal heart of Kavian Catamount, and so she does a forbidden thing—she puts her arms around the girl Irasht who is not her daughter, kisses her brow, and whispers:

  “I will protect you. Go.”

  Then Kavian pushes Irasht onto the stone above the battle.

  In the valley beneath them the Cteri, the people of the dams, the people of Kavian’s blood and heart, stand against the invader. The Efficate comes baying to drain five centuries of civilization into their own arid land.

  So the word has come from Kavian’s masters, from the Paik Rede and warlord Absu:

  You have had time enough to tame her. Go to the battle. Use the abnarch girl, the girl who is not your daughter.

  Destroy the Efficate army.

  Kavian cries the challenge.

  “Men of the Efficate! Men of the owl!” Her wizardry carries the bellow down the valley, across the river, to shatter and rebound from the hills. “I am Kavian Catamount, sorcerer of the Paik Rede! I like to warm my hands on your brothers’ burning corpses!”

  Fifty thousand enemy spearmen shudder in fear. They know her name.

  But the battle today does not ride on Kavian’s fire.

  The girl Irasht (who is not her daughter) stares at the battle-plain, wide-eyed, afraid, and puts her hands up to her ears. Kavian seizes her wrists, to keep her from blocking out the sound of war. Irasht claws and spits but does not cry.

  Over Irasht’s hissing frenzy Kavian roars: “My hands are cold today!”

  She hears the cry go up in the Efficate ranks, a word in their liquid tongue that means: abnarch, abnarch, she has brought an abnarch. And she sees their eyes on her, their faces lifted in horror and revulsion, at the girl Irasht, at what has been done to her.

  You poor bastards, she thinks. I know exactly how you feel.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kavian has been in pain for a very long time. There’s the pain she wears like a courting coat, a ballroom ensemble—the battle hurt that makes her growl and put her head down, determined to go on.

  And there’s the other pain. The kind she lets out when drunk, hoping it’ll drown. The pain she reaches for when she tries to play the erhu (t
his requires her to be drunk, too). It’s a nameless pain, a sealed pain, catacombed in the low dark and growing strong.

  The night she met Irasht, the night she went down into the catacombs to decant her daughter: that night belonged to the second pain.

  In the Paik Rede’s summit halls, past the ceremonial pool where the herons fish, catacomb doors bear an inscription:

  We make silk from the baby moth. We unspool all that it might become. This is a crime.

  Silk is still beautiful. Silk is still necessary.

  This is how an abnarch is made. This is the torment to which Kavian gave up her first and only born.

  The wizards of the Paik Rede, dam-makers, high rulers of isu-Cter, seal a few of their infants into stone cells. They grow there, fed and watered by silent magic, for fifteen years. Alone. Untaught. Touched by no one.

  And on nights like these their parents decant them for the war.

  “Kavian. Stop.”

  Warlord Absu wears black beneath a mantle of red, the colors of flesh and war. For a decade she has led the defense of the highlands. For a decade before that—well: Kavian was not born with sisters, but she has one. This loyalty is burnt into her. Absu is the pole where Kavian’s needle points.

  “Lord of hosts,” Kavian murmurs. She’s nervous tonight, so she bows deep.

  The warlord considers her in brief, silent reserve. “Tonight we will bind you to a terrible duty. The two mature abnarchs are our only hope.” Her eyes! Kavian remembers their ferocity, but never remembers it. She is so intent: “You’re our finest. But one error could destroy us.”

  “I will not be soft with her.” So much rides on the abnarch’s handler: victory, or cataclysm.

  Absu’s golden eyes hold hers. “The war makes demands of us, and we serve. Remember that duty, when you want to grieve.” Her expression opens in the space between two blinks—a window of pain, or compassion. “What did you name her?”

  “Heurian,” Kavian says.

  A grave nod. Absu’s face is a map of battles past, and her eyes are a compass to all those yet to come. “A good name. Go.”