BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue002 Read online

  Issue #2 • Oct. 23, 2008

  “The Sword of Loving Kindness,” by Chris Willrich

  “Architectural Constants,” by Yoon Ha Lee

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  The Sword of Loving Kindness pt2

  Chris Willrich

  Imago Bone discovered no means of barring the stairs, but a stone passageway revealed side rooms with wooden doors. He ushered Gaunt into what appeared the master bedroom. He regretted they couldn’t use the bed, blanched at the nearby torture equipment, and noted a large air shaft. He and Gaunt dragged gnarled-looking furniture to block the door.

  Fists pounded the other side.

  Bone whispered, “The air shaft leads to the outer wall.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Every thief’s an amateur architect. Up you go.”

  “And you?”

  “I will follow. Go.”

  Though Gaunt was quick to challenge him on matters social, geographic, or metaphysical, at least she acquiesced in matters of survival. Sometimes. He gave Gaunt a boost and she scrambled up the shaft.

  “Open!” cried one of the drab-robes in passable Roil. “We will not harm you.”

  “Spare me,” Bone muttered, preparing to jump.

  At that moment the door shattered, and a robed hand emerged.

  “Spare me,” Bone prayed to whatever gods yet lived. The drab-robes were far better combatants than he’d feared.

  The thief faced a dilemma. He could follow Gaunt into the air shaft, but the drab-robes would see, and would surely have time to slip outside and trap Bone, if not Gaunt as well. Whereas, if Bone stayed and struggled—fought was not really in his professional vocabulary—all the drab-robes might be delayed, allowing Gaunt a better chance. Who knew? He might even win. The drab-robes might simultaneously trip each other.

  There was another word that was not really in his professional vocabulary, and he’d never quite used it with Persimmon Gaunt. He did not think of it as he threw pain-implements like daggers, as he tripped foes with bedsheets, as he kicked and bit. He did not think of Gaunt at all, save as the fleeting idea of a woman running free beneath the sun.

  He did not even consider the word as they grappled him and smothered him with a pillow and toppled him into a hazy dream wherein he clasped Gaunt’s hand in Palmary’s finest restaurant, peering deep into her eyes.

  Is there something you wish to say to me? said dream-Gaunt.

  Yes. I hate magic swords.

  An aching haze cleared at last, and Bone awoke upon perhaps the most comfortable chair ever placed within a torture chamber. Later, despite painful associations, the memory of that chair would taunt him. It was vast and velvety and perfectly supported his long-abused frame. If the thief ever retired to a cave in the mountains, he must plant such a chair in the center of his loot and doze in sight of the jewels and gold and easily-transportable paintings. The lords of Maratrace knew their furniture.

  Alas, they also knew other arts as well.

  All around him there were racks and ropes, needles and whips, boxes and spikes, all dedicated to the ostensible purpose of the room, that of damaging the human body by precise increments. Testifying to their use, there came to his nose a reek of mingled blood, sweat, and excretion, clouded by a touch of incense.

  Such torments were perhaps to be expected. What startled Bone were the identities of the tormented.

  Four of Bone’s drab-robed captors surrounded him—stretched, pierced, constricted, and dripped upon.

  Bone sat unrestrained. Those in the devices were, by all appearances, free to leave as well. Even the man within the little confinement box could snake his arm through a hole and release the latch. Instead, the lunatic leered through another hole at Bone. They all bore demented, predatory looks, these drab-robed ones. Here and there Bone caught sight of precise and extensive scars.

  A group of more ordinary Maratracians lurked in a nearby gallery, clutching iron bars to peer more intently at the tableau. These citizens were less diligently scarred, with merely the odd missing finger or eyepatch or artistic incision.

  “This is some bizarre delirium,” Bone remarked. “I’ve dallied with dreamtellers in Palmary. As that city is fashioned in the shape of a hand, it attracts all manner of soothsayers—except oddly enough the palmists, who claim the layout overwhelms them.”

  “So,” said the man in the box, in decent Roil. “What did these dreamtellers say?”

  Why not converse? “Dreams (such as this surely is!) toss about the elements of our psyches, as a gourmet tosses a salad. As the arrangement of rent vegetables serves the chef’s purposes, so the parts of a dream may be impossible to reassemble into their original lettuce heads.”

  There were gentle snickers. “Are we the croutons then?” asked the man in the box.

  “Indeed,” said Bone, warming to his topic as a mouse warms to the notion of holes smaller than cats. “You are much as old, pebbly croutons in the salad of my mind. No doubt with reflection I could find the symbolism in each of you.” He craned his neck. “You with the water dripping onto your forehead, you might be the father who demanded I join him at sea. You upon the rack might represent my desire for greater romantic prowess.”

  “This is fascinating,” said she upon the rack.

  “Very true!” Bone eased deeper into the chair. “Now, you inside the box might recall that unfortunate time I was apprehended robbing the delvenfolk embassy in Palmary. I was conscripted into their games of hunchball. You play in a delven-height chamber in pitch blackness, you see, and the balls are of stone.”

  “And I?” said a woman upon a slab caged by needles, so tightly penned that even breathing occasioned pricking. “What do I represent?”

  “Ah,” said Bone, wincing, “that is perhaps most disquieting. There is a companion of mine, who stirs unaccustomed feelings. To approach those feelings more closely inspires fear; to withdraw inspires pain.”

  The woman grunted, and to Bone’s horror, she clapped, piercing her hands in the process.

  “Well done!” she said. “You obviously comprehend much of this universe’s rue. Yet you hold back at the last. Why assume this is a dream? Is it so implausible that you sit here, in truth, in our mindthresh?”

  Bone swallowed. This was indeed a conclusion he wished to avoid. “Were this truly real—and I assure you, many would wish me in such a room—then surely I would suffer, not my hosts.”

  There were wry chuckles all around.

  “You have never been to Maratrace,” said the man in the box.

  “It is you who are in the compromised position,” said the woman upon the rack.

  “How can that be?” said Bone. “I lack only a glass of wine and a good book.”

  At a nod from the woman among the needles, a noseless citizen entered and proffered a glass of ruby liquid. An earless citizen followed with a translation in Roil of Darkfast’sMemoirs.

  “I fear this only supports my argument,” Bone said after an agreeable sip.

  “You are mired in illusion,” said the man being dripped upon. “You do not understand the horror that underlies reality.”

  “Your comfort holds you back,” said the woman upon the rack. She coughed at one of the departing citizens, who obligingly turned the crank near her head. Bone made a point of opening and examining the book. He glanced at the line Cynics have the most fruitful sense of humor, but they get the least nourishment from it.

  “We by contrast,” said the woman of the needles, “have trained ourselves to understand truth. We rise above the human condition, perceiving it fully. Pain gives us wings.”

  Bone sighed. “
I concede this much: you are mad enough to be real.”

  “You draw nearer to understanding,” approved the man in the box.

  Bone sized up the situation. “I am a prisoner then, in the torture chamber of Maratrace.”

  “Your terms are crude,” said the punctured woman. “In place of prisoner, we would prefer supplicant. Instead of torture chamber, we would say mindthresh. And rather thanrulers we encourage you to say Comprehenders. The citizenry follows us because they respect our abyssmitude, our knowledge of life’s pain. I, for example, have no name other than Mistress Needles.”

  “And to secure my freedom, I must cultivate abyssmitude?”

  Mistress Needles said, “I am impressed.”

  “As am I. I appreciate your lesson. Applaud it, even. This wine, which seemed so pleasant, is now revealed as swill.” He drank it down. “Ugh. There. May I go?”

  Mistress Needles sighed.

  “Yes, I rather thought not,” Bone said.

  “We regret confining you,” said the other woman (Mistress Rack, perhaps?) “Though I assure you, we will not significantly damage you without your consent.”

  “What is significant damage?”

  “Whatever we deem so. Do not be overly concerned. We are civilized folk. However, you and your companion do pose a problem.”

  “What problem? We came bearing a gift—”

  “Your gift,” said he who might be Master Box, “is a weapon sent by the Pluribus to destroy us.”

  “Destroy you? The thing warps minds, and even its rose petals draw blood. But it’s hardly going to wreck your little madhouse.”

  “How little you understand,” said the man (Master Drip?) with forehead targeted by waterdrops.

  “Our founder, Captain Slaughterdark,” said Mistress Rack, “warned of this blade. It does not inflict wounds. It inflicts sweetness. It forces one to see the world through rose-tinted eyes. It is dreadful.”

  Bone smirked. “On that we may agree.”

  Mistress Needles said, “Then may we be in harmony, to the degree harmony exists in this cesspool of a universe. The sword’s presence may yet prove a desirable thing. For your freedom, Imago Bone, and that of the companion who brings you fear and pain, depends upon its destruction.”

  “Um. How might such a thing be destroyed? We could hardly bear to release it, let alone harm it.”

  “Things of magic,” said Mistress Rack, “have their own rules of being and unbeing. We believe it can be unmade, if used to destroy an innocent.”

  “That demented girl you encountered,” said Master Drip. “The one who raises weeds and refuses self-injury and smiles at nothing. She is the one.”

  “Yet,” Bone said uneasily, “I am given to understand your beliefs forbid doing harm without consent.”

  “They forbid us,” said Mistress Needles. “You are not one of us, outlander. Yet.”

  Persimmon Gaunt was uncertain whom she was angriest at, herself or Bone. It was she who should be the prisoner. Did not all romances feature the damsel’s capture? (Though she disliked romances and the term damsel.) More to the point, was she not a morbid poet, able to mine the very prison stones for material?

  Bone should be out here. Bone was the thief with far too many years’ experience, the burglar who scaled buildings like step-stools, the schemer who spied cracks in all defenses. But he was not here, and Bone would insist she flee.

  Go on (he’d say.) The dire book is safe with the Pluribus for now. Hone your self-preservation skills. Return to poetry, count yourself lucky to be free.

  But she wouldn’t abandon him. Did she love him? It almost didn’t matter. She had allowed Bone to fall for her sake. Somehow she would get him back.

  She almost felt his presence beside her as she skulked through the day. She returned to the harbor district and its clutter and crowds, obtaining hunks of dry bread and moldy cheese, dressing herself in a tattered robe. She lurked like a troll beneath a dank pier, whence she heard officials (Comprehenders, the market whispers named them) harassing every merchant stall and vessel. Seeking her. The traders, drawn to Maratrace’s useful location from many lands, did not like the place or the Comprehenders; but they promised to report the auburn-haired outlander.

  She breathed deeply as her bardic instructors had taught, watching the sun descend and make the sky recall the Sword of Loving Kindness.

  The image kept returning, of the girl Skath and her brother Skower, and their reactions to the sword.

  Gaunt’s intuition had landed her in trouble as often as out of it, but trouble was already here. She slept, her mission clear. At dawn she sought out Skath.

  Gaunt shadowed the girl from her home, and caught her atop the western gate, tending another box of weeds. Although there was no city wall as such, the westward road led through this free-standing maw that snarled with metallic fangs, speared the sky with glass horns, unfurled spiky stone wings; and as the sun rose behind the city, the gate cast spiky shadows piercing the cracked and rocky margin of the desert called the Sandboil. The girl found it easy to crouch among the horns—there were dozens, sprouting like stunted glittering trees—and Gaunt saw the guards below would have great difficulty spotting Skath, let alone catching her.

  As Skath knelt beside her stinkblossoms and spikeblooms, her snarlflowers and swamppetals, Gaunt said gently, “I like flowers too.”

  Gaunt supposed she might have said something more fugitive-like. Make a sound and you’ll be sorry, say. But, in fact, she was the sorry one.

  “Lepton,” Skath hissed, backing up against a curving, serrated glass cone. “Don’t use the sword,” the girl whispered in Amberhornish.

  “I won’t.” Gaunt spread her hands. “They took it when they took Osteon. I have no weapons except words.” As the girl relaxed slightly, the poet added, “Though I suspect it’s not ordinary cuts you fear.”

  “The sword is evil,” Skath blurted.

  “Is that why you set your Comprehenders on us?”

  Skath looked at her feet. “It hurt me. It looks like a beautiful flower, but it’s a nasty, angry thing.” She glared at her box of blooming weeds, as if to say those were what flowers should be.

  “I’d have to agree,” Gaunt said. She sat, laying hands upon bent knees. She studied the deep blue stinkblossoms for a time, wrinkling her nose. “I like your secret gardens. I spotted several yesterday, hiding from the Comprehenders. I used to keep gardens too, in a way. When I lived in Palmary, I knew a dozen alleys where flowers grew. They were tough little things, like yours. I liked to bring them water. Sometimes I gave them more sun.”

  Skath slowly sat, cocking her head skeptically. “How?”

  Gaunt smiled. “I scrounged for broken mirrors. Then I positioned the pieces in different spots in the alleys, high and low. It didn’t work that well.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t.” Skath frowned. “Why didn’t you just move the flowers?”

  “They grew up through cracks and it wouldn’t have been safe to uproot them.”

  “Mine will die if I don’t move them sometimes. People will find them and dump them out. My people, anyway—I have some friends by the harbor who let me use their roofs. But Maratracians, they like flowers with lots of thorns. They’ve been breeding for thorns for a long time. They hate weeds.”

  “Each flower has its own rules.” After a moment, Gaunt added,

  “There are flowers in gardens

  Tended by wardens

  Kissed by water-cans

  Surrounded by cousins.

  They are not my kind

  They of tended ground

  Of nurtured bud

  In a blooming land.

  Mine are of the fissure

  In a cobbled corner

  Starved of sun and water

  In an alley with no owner.

  They are hardly grown

  When the wind has blown

  That cuts them down unknown.

  They are my own.”

  Skath regarded her garden
a long time. Then: “Why did you bring the sword? It’s a bad thing. I’m sorry I gave you away, I’m sorry they took Osteon. But the sword is evil, Lepton.”

  “Even poets and thieves do things they regret. Tell me why the sword is evil.”

  “It spoke to me... like it knew me. Had always known me. I heard it from far away, you know, weeks ago. It thinks I’m it’s chosen user, but it hates me too. It wants to change me. It thinks I’m stupid and useless. Just like my family does.”

  “What does it want to do, once it’s changed you?”

  Skath shuddered. “Kill everyone in Maratrace who believes in the Comprehenders’ way. Teach everyone who repents how to wash more often, dress nice, eat healthy food, build pretty houses. Sing beautiful songs. Pull up all the weeds.”

  “Is this what the Pluribus wanted...?” Gaunt began.

  “Who is the Pluribus?”

  “The one... the ones... who sent us here. I swear to you, my friend and I know very little. We were simply hired to bring the sword. I’d wash my hands of it and leave. But not without my partner.”

  “They won’t hurt him.”

  “That’s good.”

  “They’ll make him hurt himself.”

  “Why?” Gaunt asked. “What kind of place is this?”

  “My people think being hurt is good. They think it makes you strong.”

  “Well, sometimes it can.”

  “If you break a flower,” Skath said, playing her hand through the stinkblossoms, “it dies. It doesn’t get stronger.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Skath. I’m stronger for having endured many things.” She remembered the poor family who’d sent her to live with Swanisle’s bards; and she recalled abandoning those bards to dwell in poverty far from home. “They helped make me who I am. Yet kindness shaped me, too. I don’t hold with those who embrace cruelty.” Gaunt frowned, thinking of greedy kleptomancers and bibliomaniac goblins and homicidal mermaids. “Those who rant about hard necessity, when the greatest hardness is in their eyes. The ones who, even in paradise, would find an excuse to torture.”