Lapidaries’ lathes were smashed across the courtyard. Shards of the Intaglio Amethyst that mapped the valley’s mines crunched under Sima’s feet as she walked toward her father.
“You cannot betray your vows, Father. You promised.”
Metal rained down on them as the gem-mad lapidary threw the chains and bracelets that had bound his arms and ears. “No longer!”
Sima sank to her knees in the courtyard and Lin fell beside her. They watched as the madman waited for his conquering army on the wall.
Then the King’s Lapidary fell quiet for the first time since Lin woke.
The two girls listened, shaking in the cold, for the mountain army’s drums. They wondered how long the palace’s doors could hold. But no drums came. Only silence. The King’s Lapidary climbed up on the lip of the palace wall. He turned to face the courtyard. His lips were pressed tight, his eyes rolled. He spread his arms wide. His hands clutched at the air.
Sima rose to her feet. Began to run toward the wall.
Without another word, the King’s Lapidary leapt from the wall, his blue robe flapping, the chains on his wrists and ankles ringing in the air.
And before Lin could scream, the King’s Lapidary crashed to the flagstones of the courtyard.
When Lin came to her senses, Sima was whispering to her sapphires and blue topaz, the ones that lined her veil. Calm, she whispered. Calm.
The valley’s gems. In a gem-speaker’s hands, Lin knew they amplified desire. When bezel-set and held by a trained lapidary, they had to obey: to protect, calm, compel. Only without their bezels, or in the presence of a wild gem-speaker or a gem-mad lapidary, could gems do worse things.
Sima’s gems did calm Lin. She remained aware of what was happening, but they were smooth facets made out of fact; her terror was trapped within. She was the only one left. An army was coming. The court of the Jeweled Valley—which had known peace for four hundred years, since the Deaf King set the Star Cabochon—had been betrayed. Lin felt a keen rising in her chest.
“Make me stronger,” she ordered Sima.
Sima tried her best. She whispered to the small topaz and diamonds at Lin’s wrists and ears. Lin could not hear the gems, but she felt them acting on her. Compelling her to be calm. To think clearly. She took a breath. Stood.
“We will collect all the gems we can find, Sima,” she said. “All the chain mail too.”
They searched the bodies of the court for gems. Lin sewed the gems herself into one of her old gray cloaks.
When she rolled her eldest brother’s body on its side to peel the ornamental chain mail from his chest, she wept, but it was a calm, slow weeping. The gems allowed her time to act. She would have to mourn later. She moved from one body to the next. Sima followed behind, tugging cloaks, searching pockets.
Sima removed the bands and chains from the fallen lapidaries, cutting the solder points with her father’s diamond saw.
They returned to Lin’s quarters in the heart of the palace and Lin wrapped herself in all of the chains she had collected. She pointed to the metal bands, the oaths meaningless now.
“You must do the rest,” she told her lapidary.
Sima, whispering her vows, shook her head. “I cannot do this work, my Jewel. It will harm you.”
The small betrayal made the lapidary wince.
“Sima, you must.” Lin spoke calmly, and Sima pulled the cache of tools from her sleeve. She lit her torch. Attached bands at Lin’s wrists and ankles. The metal grew hot. Lin felt her skin burn and thought of her sisters and brothers. Blisters rose where Sima’s torch came too close. Lin ached for her father.
“The mountains wish a bride and a throne,” Lin said. Her voice was flat. Her new veil hung heavy against her temples.
Sima added more chains to Lin’s veil. When Lin demanded it, she spoke the binding verses she’d learned at her own father’s side.
And then Sima backed out the door, latching it behind her. Lin listened to the lapidary’s metal vows clattering and chiming on her arms as she sped away. To the river, Sima. Run.
The noises faded. The palace of the Jeweled Court fell silent.
And Lin, for the first time in her life, was completely alone.
NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE
NOVELETTE
BLOOD GRAINS SPEAK THROUGH MEMORIES
JASON SANFORD
Jason Sanford is an award-winning author and an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Born and raised in the American South, he currently lives in the Midwestern United States with his wife and sons. His life’s adventures include work as an archaeologist and as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Jason has published more than a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which once devoted a special issue to his fiction. His fiction has also been published in Asimov’s Science Fictiondeer, until even the fairies which flew Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, the Mississippi Review Online, Diagram, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Pindeldyboz, and other places. Books containing his stories include multiple “year’s best” story collections, along with original anthologies such as Bless Your Mechanical Heart and Beyond the Sun.
A collection of Jason’s short stories, titled Never Never Stories, was published by a small press in 2011.
Morning’s song of light and warmth glowed on the horizon as the land’s anchor, Frere-Jones Roeder, stepped from her front door. The red-burn dots of fairies swirled in the river mists flowing over her recently plowed sunflower fields. Cows mooed in the barn, eager to be milked. Chickens flapped their wings as they stirred from roosts on her home’s sod-grass roof.
Even though the chilled spring day promised nothing but beauty, the grains in Frere-Jones’s body shivered to her sadness as she looked at the nearby dirt road. The day-fellows along the road were packing their caravan. Evidently her promises of safety weren’t enough for them to chance staying even a few more hours.
Frere-Jones tapped the message pad by the door, pinging her fellow anchors on other lands so they knew the caravan was departing. She then picked up her gift sack and hurried outside to say goodbye.
As Frere-Jones closed the door, a red fairy wearing her dead lifemate’s face flittered before her eyes. A flash of memory jumped into her from the fairy’s grain-created body. One of Haoquin’s memories, from a time right after they’d wed. They’d argued over something silly—like newlyweds always did—and Haoquin had grown irritated at Frere-Jones’s intransigence.
But that was all the fairy shared. The taste of Haoquin’s memory didn’t show Frere-Jones and Haoquin making up. The memory didn’t show the two of them ending the day by walking hand-in-hand along her land’s forest trails.
Frere-Jones slapped the fairy away, not caring if the land and its damned grains were irritated at her sadness. She liked the day-fellows. She’d choose them any day over the grains.
The fairy spun into an angry buzzing and flew over the sunflower fields to join the others.
Frere-Jones walked up to the caravan’s wagons to find the day-fellows detaching their power systems from her farm’s solar and wind grid. The caravan leader nodded to Frere-Jones as he harnessed a team of four horses to the lead wagon.
“We appreciate you letting us plug in,” the man said. “Our solar collectors weaken something awful when it’s overcast.”
“Anytime,” Frere-Jones said. “Pass the word to other caravans that I’m happy to help. Power or water or food, I’ll always share.”
Pleasantries done, Frere-Jones hurried down the line of wagons.
The first five wagons she passed were large multi-generational affairs with massive ceramic wheels standing as tall as she. Pasted-on red ribbons outlined the wagons’ scars from old battles. Day-fellows believed any battle they survived was a battle worth honoring.
Adults and teenagers and kids smiled at Frere-Jones as she passed, everyone hurrying to harness horses and stow
baggage and deploy their solar arrays.
Frere-Jones waved at the Kameron twins, who were only seven years old and packing up their family’s honey and craft goods. Frere-Jones reached into her pocket and handed the twins tiny firefly pebbles. When thrown, the pebbles would burst into mechanical fireflies which flew in streaks of rainbow colors for a few seconds. The girls giggled—firefly pebbles were a great prank. Kids loved to toss them when adults were sitting around campfires at night, releasing bursts of fireflies to startle everyone.
Frere-Jones hugged the twins and walked on, finally stopping before the caravan’s very last wagon.
The wagon stood small, barely containing the single family inside, built not of ceramic but of a reinforced lattice of ancient metal armor. Instead of bright ribbons to honor old battles, a faded maroon paint flaked and peeled from the walls. Large impact craters shown on one side of the wagon. Long scratches surrounded the back door from superhard claws assaulting the wagon’s armored shutters.
An ugly, ugly wagon. Still, it had bent under its last attack instead of breaking. The caravan’s leader had told Frere-Jones that this family’s previous caravan had been attacked a few months ago. All that caravan’s ceramic wagons shattered, but this wagon survived.
Frere-Jones fed her final sugar cubes to the wagon’s horses, a strong pair who nickered in pleasure as the grains within their bodies pulsed in sync to her own. Horses adapted so perfectly to each land’s grains as they fed on grasses and hay. That flexibility was why horses usually survived attacks even when their caravan did not.
“Morning, Master-Anchor Frere-Jones,” a teenage girl, Alexnya, said as she curtsied, holding the sides of her leather vest out like a fancy dress. Most kids in the caravan wore flowing cotton clothes, but Alexnya preferred leather shirts and vests and pants.
“Master-Anchor Frere-Jones, you honor us with your presence,” Alexnya’s mother, Jun, said in an overly formal manner. Her husband, Takeshi, stood behind her, holding back their younger daughter and son as if Frere-Jones was someone to fear.
They’re skittish from that attack, Frere-Jones thought. A fresh scar ran the left side of Jun’s thin face while Takeshi still wore a healing pad around his neck. Their two young kids, Miya and Tufte, seemed almost in tears at being near an anchor. When Frere-Jones smiled at them, both kids bolted to hide in the wagon.
Only Alexnya stood unafraid, staring into Frere-Jones’s eyes as if confident this land’s anchor wouldn’t dare harm her.
“I’ve brought your family gifts,” Free-Jones said.
“Why?” Jun asked, suspicious.
Frere-Jones paused, unused to explaining. “I give gifts to all families who camp on my land.”
“A land which you protect,” Jun said, scratching the scar on her face. As if to remind Frere-Jones what the anchors who’d attacked their last caravan had done.
Frere-Jones nodded sadly. “I am my land’s anchor,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t so. If I could leave I would . . . my son . . .”
Frere-Jones turned to walk back to her farm to milk the cows. Work distracted her from memories. But Alexnya jumped forward and grabbed her hand.
“I’ve heard of your son,” Alexnya said. “He’s a day-fellow now, isn’t he?”
Frere-Jones grinned. “He is indeed. Travels the eastern roads in a caravan with his own lifemate and kids. I see him once every four years when the land permits his caravan to return.” Frere-Jones held the gift bag out to Alexnya. “Please take this. I admit it’s a selfish gift. I want day-fellows to watch out for my son and his family. Lend a hand when needed.”
“Day-fellows protect our own,” Jun stated in a flat voice. “No need to bribe us to do what we already do.”
Alexnya, despite her mother’s words, took the canvas gift bag and opened it, pulling out a large spool of thread and several short knives.
“The thread is reinforced with nano-armor,” Frere-Jones said, “the strongest you can find. You can weave it into the kids’ clothes. The short knives were made by a day-fellow biosmith and are supposedly unbreakable . . .”
Frere-Jones paused, not knowing what else to say. She thought it silly that day-fellows were prohibited from possessing more modern weapons than swords and knives to protect themselves, even if she knew why the grains demanded this.
“Thank you, Frere-Jones,” Alexnya said as she curtsied again. “My family appreciates your gifts, which will come in handy on the road.”
Unsure what else to say, Frere-Jones bowed back before walking away, refusing to dwell on the fact that she was the reason this day-fellow caravan was fleeing her land.
* * *
That night Frere-Jones lit the glow-stones in the fireplace and sat down on her favorite sofa. The stones’ flickering flames licked the weariness from her body. A few more weeks and the chilled nights would vanish as spring fully erupted across her land.
Frere-Jones didn’t embrace spring as she once had. Throughout the valley her fellow anchors celebrated the growing season with dances, feasts, and lush night-time visits to the forest with their lifemates and friends.
Frere-Jones no longer joined such festivities. Through the grains she tasted the land’s excitement—the mating urge of the animals, the budding of the trees, the growth of the new-planted seeds in her fields. She felt the cows in the fields nuzzling each other’s necks and instinctively touched her own neck in response. She sensed several does hiding in the nearby forests and touched her stomach as the fawns in their wombs kicked. She even felt the grass growing on her home’s sod-roof and walls, the roots reaching slowly down as water flowed by capillary action into the fresh-green blades.
The grains allowed Frere-Jones, as this land’s anchor, to feel everything growing and living and dying for two leagues around her. She even dimly felt the anchors on nearby lands—Jeroboam and his family ate dinner in their anchordom while Chakatie hunted deer in a forest glen on her land. Chakatie was probably gearing up for one of her family’s bloody ritualized feasts to welcome spring.
Frere-Jones sipped her warm mulled wine before glancing at her home’s message pad. Was it too soon to call her son again? She’d tried messaging Colton a few hours ago, but the connection failed. She was used to this—day-fellow caravans did slip in and out of the communication grid—but that didn’t make it any less painful. At least he was speaking to her again.
Frere-Jones downed the rest of her drink. As she heated a new mug of wine over the stove she took care to ignore the fairies dancing outside her kitchen window. Usually the fairies responded to the land’s needs and rules, but these fairies appeared to have been created by the grains merely to annoy her. The grains were well aware that Frere-Jones hated her part in the order and maintenance of this land.
Two fairies with her parents’ faces glared in the window. Other fairies stared with the faces of even more distant ancestors. Several fairies mouthed Frere-Jones’s name, as if reminding her of an anchor’s duty, while others spoke in bursts of memories copied by the grains from her ancestors’ lives.
Fuck duty, she thought as she swallowed half a mug of wine. Fuck you for what you did to Haoquin.
Thankfully her lifemate’s face wasn’t among those worn by these fairies. While the grains had no problem creating fairies with Haoquin’s face, they knew not to push Frere-Jones when she was drunk.
As Frere-Jones left the kitchen she paused before the home altar. In the stone pedestal’s basin stood three carved stone figurines—herself, her son, and Haoquin. The hand-sized statues rested on the red-glowing sand filling the basin.
In the flickering light of the glow stones the figures seemed to twitch as if alive, shadow faces accusing Frere-Jones of unknown misdeeds. Frere-Jones touched Haoquin’s face—felt his sharp cheekbones and mischievous smirk—causing the basin’s red sands to rise up, the individual grains climbing the statues until her family glowed a faint speckled red over the darker sands below.
The red grains burned her fingers where she touched Hao
quin, connecting her to what remained of her lifemate. She felt his bones in the family graveyard on the edge of the forest. Felt the insects and microbes which had fed on his remains and absorbed his grains before dying and fertilizing the ground and the trees and the other plants throughout the land, where the grains had then been eaten by deer and cows and rabbits. If Frere-Jones closed her eyes she could almost feel Haoquin’s grains pulsing throughout the land. Could almost imagine him returning to her and hugging her tired body.
Except he couldn’t. He was gone. Only the echo of him lived on in the microscopic grains which had occupied his body and were now dispersed again to her land.
And her son was even farther beyond the grains’ reach, forced to forsake both the grains and her land when he turned day-fellow.
Frere-Jones sat down hard on the tile floor and cried, cradling her empty wine mug.
She was lying on the floor, passed out from the wine, when a banging woke her.
“Frere-Jones, you must help us!” a woman’s voice called. She recognized the voice—Jun, from the day-fellow family which left that morning.
Frere-Jones’s hands shook, curling like claws. The grains in her body screamed against the day-fellows for staying on her land.
No, she ordered, commanding the grains to stand down. It’s too soon. There are a few more days before they wear out this land’s welcome.
The grains rattled irritably in her body like pebbles in an empty water gourd. While they should obey her, to be safe Frere-Jones stepped across the den and lifted several ceramic tiles from the floor. She pulled Haoquin’s handmade laser pistol from the hiding spot and slid it behind her back, held by her belt. She was now ready to shoot herself in the head if need be.
Satisfied that she was ready, Frere-Jones opened the door. Jun and Takeshi stood there supporting Alexnya, who leaned on them as if drunk but stared with eyes far too awake and aware. Alexnya shook and spasmed, her muscles clenching as she moaned a low, painful hiss, unable to fully scream.