The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One Read online

  Bone withdrew a pair of daggers, slipping the blades between metal and stone. Immediately the weapons corroded. Bone discarded smoldering hilts.

  He removed a strand of ironsilk, shaking it once for stiffness, and slipped it into the crack. A line of sizzling ruin lashed out toward Bone’s hands, and he dropped the remnant of the strand.

  He raised a jagged shard of magnetite on a string, swung it against the agonium. The shard failed to stick, and the tip smoked and crumbled. Scowling, Bone touched the stone to a ruined dagger-hilt. It clicked, but did not cling. “Gaunt,” he said petulantly, “this vile metal has neutralized my lodestone!”

  “Hold. I have a notion. . . .”

  Gaunt used the gloves with their invictium shards to trace a Nobecan character beside the door.

  Bone winced at the scraping and screeching. “Shall I just call out a challenge to the Pluribus?”

  “Hush.”

  “That was the gist, yes.”

  “This won’t take but a moment. There.”

  She had finished inscribing the Nobecan glyph for balance.

  In the original tongue it sounded much like Gaunt.

  “I am Gaunt,” she told the black door.

  With a grinding noise and a waft of cool air, it swung aside.

  Bone raised his eyebrows. “I must give you a bigger share of our hauls.”

  “We haven’t been stealing anything.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been saying. Let’s finish our task and go rob a drunk.”

  They peered into the chamber, a dark, hollow space that echoed with their breathing. Gaunt opened her pack and produced an unmarked book with a drab cover.

  “Rot in there,” she whispered, and tossed within the tome known only as Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow.

  That was when the air seemed to come alive.

  “THIEVES!” came a maddening cry, as though a thousand voices shrieked all around.

  Gaunt shivered, but did not freeze. She spun and unsheathed her own daggers, fine steel from Tancimor.

  She became aware of a dark-robed figure behind her. Even as she turned, it lashed out with both hands—or rather, what she had believed were hands. Their touch was light, yet both her wrists sang with pain. She dropped her blades.

  Meanwhile Bone had found his own weapon. It was more unorthodox; he flung a waterskin at the hooded shape.

  The skin just missed the head, but burst against the wall, spattering their foe.

  It buzzed with rage.

  For it was a swarm of bees that filled the cloak, and with their central cognitive squadron drenched, the rest spilled in all directions like golden drops of anger.

  “I’m fleeing!” Gaunt said, preempting Bone, but even as she scrambled downslope she encountered a second hooded figure droning in accusation, and beyond it a third. She skidded to a halt, and thus Bone collided with her, herded as he was by another pair of shrouded swarms. The lovers fell against each other, and huddled.

  Their original accuser(s) flowed back into the abandoned robe, filled it, and billowed up to the ceiling. Gaunt marveled how light the robe must be, or how strong the bees. Then she marveled that she and Bone yet lived.

  Down pointed a finger formed of intertwined insects, quivering with legs, wings, and antennae.

  “We are the Teller,” buzzed the voice of myriad wings. “We speak for the Pluribus. We have eaten gods. It demeans us to consume thieves. But it’s more efficient than showing you the door.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Many times Imago Bone had been surprised by Persimmon Gaunt, but never more so than today.

  “We are not thieves, O Pluribus!” cried she.

  He opened his mouth to object, reflected a moment, shut it again.

  “We fear you,” Gaunt was saying, “who rebelled against the very gods, who never fairly paid you for nectar and ambrosia. We respect you, whose Deicide allowed mortals to dominate the West. We honor you, who originated the art of banking. And we come to you now as would-be customers.”

  Bone gave her one look of perfect perplexity, then followed in languid tones, “My colleague speaks the truth.”

  “You are Imago Bone,” the Teller said, pointing a crawling “finger” at Bone’s nose. A single bee detached itself for emphasis, orbiting Bone’s head. Larger than a honeybee, it was elongated in a way that resembled wasps, and flashed a metallic shade of gold, with bristles reminiscent of spikes. “We have tiny eyes in many places.”

  “You know me?” Bone said, with a quaver of pride.

  “We were not stealing,” Gaunt said, “despite my friend’s reputation. We were leaving something behind.”

  The Teller withdrew its arm. It and its comrades rippled in consternation.

  “You were making a deposit?”

  Eyes on the circling bee, Bone said, “There is a deadly enchanted book in our care, the legacy of our first meeting.” He glanced at Gaunt, recalling their escape from kleptomancers, goblin librarians, and the two deaths Joyblood and Severstrand who’d so weirdly circumscribed and extended his life. And he remembered the cost of that escape—employing Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow, a book that killed all who absorbed so much as a paragraph. “We do not want it, but its disposal falls to us. While we search for the means, we must ensure it doesn’t fall into evil hands.”

  The Teller seemed to scowl. The thief perceived skittering, many-legged eyebrows. “You dread this bane so much? You would destroy it, not sell it? You, a thief?”

  He’d asked himself this before. “We like to sleep well at night,” he said, though he added silently that he slept best beside Gaunt, and craved her continued affection. “We deprive others of wealth. Not, as a rule, of life.”

  “You would rent a security comb?” The Teller’s tone remained incredulous. “The standard fee is ten ambrosians a month.”

  Bone revealed a single gold coin, stamped with the arms of the Empress of the Eldshore, bearing a single drop of dried ambrosia at its punctured center. “We have only one available. Why do you suppose we broke in?” One ambrosian was standard yearly pay for a soldier. It could be traded for numerous lesser coins, and slipped beneath the tongue it had an even chance of reviving a man from a mortal wound. To Gaunt and Bone the coin, a gift from the pirate captain Dawnglass, represented one last long step before destitution. They’d lived on scraps and odd jobs to avoid trading it.

  “Bone?” Gaunt whispered. “Self-preservation? Eh?”

  The Teller smiled, a grin composed of tiny black feet stained with cream-white pollen. “One? We store crown jewels, dragon-hunters’ hoards, sorcerers’ hearts, mummies and vampires, papyri of the Blind Poet, rings of power, soul-stealing swords, and a cat in an indeterminate state between life and death. The mighty of the West entrust their treasures to us. And you have but one coin?”

  Bone licked his lips at this inventory, but he composed himself. “A down payment?”

  Gaunt put in, “You know the reputation of Imago Bone. We offer a down payment of one ambrosian, plus the master thief’s services in the acquisition of your choice.”

  “We do?” Bone murmured.

  “Hush.”

  “We must confer.”

  The cloaks of the Pluribus dropped to the floor. The divine bees converged upon a nearby window and formed a writhing tapestry of gold-knifed darkness.

  “Flee?” Gaunt whispered, with little conviction.

  “Our only real option’s a plunge to the street,” Bone replied. “Though we could hide in the open security comb.”

  “With the book we’ve struggled to destroy! Oh good!”

  “If anything could harm the Pluribus. . . .”

  At that moment the swarms dispersed and dressed themselves, with two blocking the path toward the book, and the Teller once again overhead. Gaunt and Bone would never know if the Pluribus had reacted to their words.

  The Teller spread wiggling gold-black hands in a magnanimous gesture.

  “Congratulations, new customers! We are flexible beings
, and offer a special arrangement. There is a service you might do. For this, and your deposit, we will waive the cost of our damaged window and offer forty-nine weeks’ use of a security comb.”

  “Ask,” Bone said with widening eyes, “and we’ll steal the spots off the sun.”

  “An interesting proposal. But we have no theft in mind. Indeed, you will do as you did here, delivering an item of value.”

  “Speak on.”

  “We guard many wondrous things. There is one such whose renter has defaulted. We would have you dispose of it. Do you agree?”

  “What are the details. . . ?” Gaunt began.

  “Of course!” Bone said.

  “Very well,” said the Teller. “You shall convey the world’s most perilous weapon to the city of pain.”

  The Teller escorted them to the gap in the window of Allos the Smith, Gaunt glaring at Bone the whole while.

  To forestall her speech, Bone mused aloud, “Most perilous weapon, eh? The sword Crypttongue, that speaks in its victims’ voices?”

  “No,” said the Teller. Gaunt’s scowl intensified.

  “The Schismglass of Baelscaer, then, that entraps souls in its reflective blade?”

  “No.”

  The Teller stopped beside the door Gaunt and Bone had first encountered, the one named for a pirate prince.

  “All who possess this weapon have regretted it, even the fiercest of killers, mad Lord Runestock, say, or bloody Sir Fairbeast, or Captain Slaughterdark who abandoned it here.”

  At the word Slaughterdark the door swung open, revealing a glowing nimbus of a pinkish hue, festooned with sparkles and rainbows.

  “Behold the Sword of Loving Kindness.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Far to the east a girl heard words upon the wind: I am coming. The voice was dulcet and dainty, and seemed ready to burst into song.

  The girl shivered there, in her desert.

  ~ ~ ~

  On the eighteenth day of their journey from Archaeopolis to Maratrace, called the city of pain, Gaunt grew certain something was amiss.

  The initial signs had been small. Imago Bone’s normal grumbling irritation at rocks and bumps in the royal road was replaced with a cheery, cloying whistle. The whistle did not cease when the road did, and it echoed maddeningly through the precipitous mountain path. Bone’s usual haphazard way of pitching camp gave way to a tidy pattern of tent, fire, and packs, all arranged according to ancient Palmarian geomantic principles. His habitual lustful manner surrendered to a chaste, schoolboy friendliness. Even this last transformation was not so alarming at first, as it gave Gaunt more time to attack her latest work, The Next-To-Last-Winter:

  ‘Tis the loveliest of seasons (she wrote on the seventeenth day)

  A winter bright, my friend.

  Not least among the reasons:

  The next will have no end.

  Yet on the eighteenth day, Gaunt, breathing in sharp cold mountain air and trying to scoop up the delicious thrill of that penultimate snow and melt it into words, was interrupted by Bone’s latest musing.

  “I am not so good a thief, you know.”

  Gaunt’s writing hand froze, pleasant ice-scapes forgotten. She stared at him.

  “Most of my escapades,” he continued, chewing a blade of snow-crusted alpine grass, “were lucky escapes.”

  Was this some filchform, Gaunt wondered, who had eaten her beloved? Or a sorcerer who’d spirited Bone away and left a fragment of the Brazen Mirror?

  “Ah, think of it, Gaunt. I grow old, and never have I tended a garden, raised a child, run for civic office.”

  Here he absently patted the weapon from which he never wandered far. It was a rapier with a hilt sculpted like a rose blossom, its whole length an unearthly pink crystal which sparkled and flashed prismatic reflections at the merest hint of sunlight. Delicate and sharp, even its rose petals drew blood.

  “Why,” Bone continued, “what must people think? What sort of image do I present? I’ve never dwelled long in one spot, you know, Gaunt, never had a house I could show off to the neighbors.”

  “Bone,” Gaunt said, “you are frightening me.”

  “I frighten myself,” Bone said agreeably. “To think, I could have spent my life so much better! I might have been a fine physician, student of law—a courtier even! A man of substance!”

  “Have you been drinking, Imago Bone?”

  “No!” The thief stood, the Sword of Loving Kindness in hand. “Would that I had! A little drink is a social necessity. Instead, I went through long dry spells and sporadic mad binges. Better to raise the occasional stiff drink in the company of peers and patrons. I. . . .” Bone’s brow furrowed. “What. . . what is wrong with me?”

  “Bone,” she said, coming closer, relieved at this change. “Are you yourself?”

  “It. . . it is like dreaming another’s dream. I. . . what a foolish sentence. A pathetic attempt at poetry. Which reminds me, Gaunt,” Bone continued, all confusion leaving his voice, “I’ve been thinking you should give up verse.”

  “What?”

  “It is well enough for wise ancients to practice the art, but today’s women should know better. If you must write, perhaps then an etiquette primer for young girls—what are you doing?”

  Stooping, Gaunt said, “I am forming a bird out of snow. If I whisper a wish into its ear it will fly away when my back is turned, and bring happiness and prosperity to my friends.”

  “Well. . . a bit whimsical, but all in all a good, kind sentiment. I should think—ow!”

  Having packed the snowball hard, Gaunt had hurled it into Bone’s earnest face.

  The thief dropped the weapon. Gaunt kicked it downslope, where it lay against a leafless tree, shining as if reflecting an unseen, glorious sunset.

  Bone dropped to his knees. “Thank you,” he gasped.

  “It was more for me than you.”

  “I hope I haven’t lost this eye.” Bone checked. “No. I can see. But more important. I can think—of pride and greed, for example. Of me. Remind me what the Pluribus said about the Sword?”

  Gaunt said, “They were rather cryptic. Especially as you’d already agreed to their errand.” She shot him a fresh glare, then added, “I’ve given this a little thought. This may be the whispered final work of the Forge God. A weapon fashioned after most of the gods perished. . . even his beloved Nettileer Kinbinder.”

  “The goddess of love?”

  “My bardic teachers suggested I not think of her office as love per se. That is too multifaceted a thing to be embodied in a single entity. Nettileer’s function was kinbinding. She presided over courtship and marriage, childrearing and housekeeping, personal grooming and blood feuds.”

  “Blood feuds?”

  Gaunt studied the sword as she spoke. “She was not a force for good, necessarily, Bone. Her priestesses did not help the poor and sick, but rather dressed up in fanciful pastel outfits with tiaras. They held lavish balls. They bestowed wishes upon their friends and poison upon their enemies. Kin, cleanliness, status, appearance, chaste affection—that was Nettileer’s realm, and woe to those who angered her. Her husband Allos the Smith suffered much at her hands.”

  “Ah,” Bone said. “He must have dallied with another, as gods often did.”

  “No. He failed to keep his forge clean, embarrassing her in front of the other divinities.”

  “Oh.”

  “For this she shoved his face into the coals and cast him away, taking up with the war god Erethor.”

  “I see.” Bone straightened his clothing.

  “But that wasn’t the end of their story,” Gaunt said, “for one day the Pluribus rebelled and killed almost all the gods. There’s a song, a fragment from the Bladed Isles—

  Gold was the godswarm

  And red the halls of Surmount

  And black the blade of Erethor

  As Nettileer he sought.

  And swarm-spattered was his sword

  When goddess’ hand he got


  And led her to the ramparts

  And the chariot of the god.

  But “Would you flee to other worlds?”

  Said she, “To draw a coward’s breath?”

  Berserk she goaded Erethor.

  He charged foaming to his death.

  Then red rose the mane of Nettileer

  As to stones leapt she of hearth.

  Red ran her blood, that Allos took,

  To quench a thing of wrath.

  “It is said,” Gaunt said, “that Allos flung this final work into the sea before the Pluribus found him. Taletellers long wondered what it was. I think I have a guess. I think it was this sword, which so perfectly matches the goddess’ nature.”

  She stared down the slope. “Think of it, Bone. The final vengeance of the gods is not a thing of thunderbolts or gore, but something forged with the essence of the kinbinder. Something that bludgeons mind and spirit. . . until one obeys Nettileer’s notions of a clean, shiny life.”

  “A cosmic spanking rod,” Bone said. “Why couldn’t we have gotten something that ate souls?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Again the girl felt something cold and delicate kiss her neck and whisper Skath. Again she turned and saw nothing but the proud expanse of Maratrace beneath the desert sun.

  But the voice on the wind was stronger now, as were her nightly dreams of a dainty pink sword. Almost she clawed herself in the manner of her people, but limited herself to biting her lip.

  ~ ~ ~

  Bone and Gaunt resolved to carry the sword in a pack, and handle it only with cloth. Even so, their journey was marked by incidents of a most disturbing wholesomeness.

  In the Homunculus Mountains, they found themselves lecturing the Mandrake Marauders on manners and hygiene. Their subsequent dash into the Vale of Webness led to a debate with Poisonfroth Huskmaker, matriarch of the Oldspinners, in which Gaunt accused her of haphazard webmaking, and Bone chided her unfinished meals.

  This exchange degenerated into the unfortunate scene of two humans fleeing a be-webbed and burning forest. As the blaze spread onto the Wheelgreen, Gaunt and Bone argued with the Wagonlords, who disputed the notion that the grassfire might inspire their founding agricultural communities with pretty gardens.