Beneath Ceaseless Skies #30 Read online

  I was impressed and had no difficulty saying so. He warmed to me and I realized how arrogant he was. I was sure I could use that, but then I heard another sound, much further away, someone tapping on my door.

  “That’s Malthea,” I informed him. “She’s come looking for me.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” the voice said without undue concern, his exhilaration rising again, threatening to overwhelm me like a black wave of oblivion.

  “Didn’t you listen to me?” I retorted. “You’ll make her suspicious. I know what she wants to talk to me about. As a sign of your good faith, let me go. You know I’ll come back.”

  He couldn’t know that I didn’t believe in signs anymore. The first and only one I thought I’d ever seen had now betrayed me. He only felt that I was telling the truth. He gave his assent and I was propelled upward. The darkness flowed into ink and the ink transformed into words. Once I saw them, I slammed the book closed, threw it down, and strode to the door.

  Malthea was there, her fist poised to strike again. She squared her shoulders when she saw me and said without hesitation, “So you’ve found out, young sir.”

  There was no need to say what I’d found out, and I had no intention of telling her all I’d found out. I noted she was addressing me respectfully again. The casual friendliness between us was gone. I was surprised to realize I missed it. I remembered how red her eyes had been the first day I met her and how I’d felt rather sorry for her, wondering if Vuric had been her lover. I was sure that wasn’t the case now. She’d been crying out of anguish, not grief, not knowing how she was going to get rid of a man she was afraid of, still afraid of even after his death.

  She had good reason to be afraid, I knew all too well, and suddenly I wasn’t angry at her anymore. “It’s all right, good lady. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  I almost laughed because she blinked at me, astonished, and seeing my landlady at a loss was not something that happened very often. Then she looked cynically dubious and it took me several minutes to convince her I didn’t bear a grudge. We parted at last with her promising to make my favorite meal for supper and me promising I wouldn’t be late.

  If only I could make Vuric trust me so easily. It was going to be hard, but I knew what the first step had to be. I returned to the book and opened it, showing my good faith and reminding myself to tell him about Malthea’s peace offering.

  * * *

  We came to a bargain, Vuric and I, within the darkness of the book.

  After that first time, conversing became easier and I could tell him what to expect when he took over my body. I also remembered more from when I was disembodied, floating as if in a dream, and it gave me time to plan.

  I waited for Vuric to grow complacent, caught up in the joy of wearing my young body, able to spend days at a time in it as his control increased. When I did return, it felt less and less like mine, making what I had to do more acceptable.

  I visited the apothecary every chance I could, getting more remedies to soothe the emerging symptoms of the redpox but always refusing to begin treatment. I also went back to Stationers’ Row, looking for a bookseller I’d met when I was selling Vuric’s books who’d told me he was in the market for new books to popularize an invention he’d imported from Grenaire on the continent. I offered to let him have Vuric’s book, telling him nothing about it except the intriguing title—Hope—but, as I knew it would be from my own experience, it was enough to make him curious. And then, shortly before I opened that book for the last time, I swallowed the contents of Vuric’s jar of heart medicine.

  I’d seen from the outside how quickly a large dose of foxglove takes effect. I had poured it down my master’s throat, the papermaker I was apprenticed to, the night he discovered me stealing from his strongbox. The treatment for the redpox was expensive and I’d run out of my own money. My master didn’t know I had it and I was too embarrassed to tell him. He just knew I’d frequently been with fever, unable to do my work, and he wasn’t in a forgiving mood, not when he thought I’d already cost him coin by being so inconveniently ill.

  Things might have turned out differently if I’d been able to come up with a convincing story. But I just stood there, mute and certainly looking very guilty. He roared and started to beat me, but I hit back and got in a lucky blow. I stunned him and, while he was passed out on the ground, I forced the medicine down his throat.

  He died while I watched, so I knew Vuric would too once he was in my body. It would happen too quickly for him to trade places with me. He must have dropped the book because he didn’t even try to open it. I’d have sensed that.

  As it is, I know time’s passed but not how much. It’s like my last few bouts of fever. After I killed my master, I took his money, bought the herbal concoctions I needed, fled the city, and didn’t stop until I came upon a farmhouse some distance away. I paid the farmer and his wife the rest of the money to look after me while I was sick, fighting off the last of the redpox, That felt much like now, a long dream broken up by moments of lucidity.

  I think I’m so aware because someone has opened the book. You have, haven’t you? Maybe you’re the bookseller, come to collect it like I told you to. Maybe you’re Malthea, too curious for your own good, even though I left you a note just to hand the book over to the person who’d arrive asking for it.

  It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out soon enough. Then I’ll be smarter than Vuric. He told me the power was in the words, not in the book. The bookseller has a new invention, a printing press he called it. I aim for this book to be the first thing that he prints. The first thing I print, once I’m in his body.

  Just think what it’ll be like. Multiple copies. Cheaply and quickly produced. And I’ll be in all of them, ready to have a taste of all the readers’ lives once they open the books. It’ll be so exciting. I can hardly wait. I almost feel like I should thank old Vuric. I thought he’d stolen my hope. It turns out he just taught me I have to make my own.

  Copyright © 2009 Jennifer Greylyn

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  Jennifer Greylyn has been telling stories for as long as she can remember. Her work has appeared in such varied places as Abyss and Apex and Malpractice: Tales of Bedside Terror, and she has stories forthcoming in Neo-opsis as well as the anthologies Evolve, 2012 AD, and Twisted Legends. She writes under a pseudonym to keep her writing life separate from her more mundane existence as a university teacher and tutor. She lives in Canada.

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  COVER ART

  “Sabicu,” by Myke Amend

  Myke Amend likes to mix the dark with the lighthearted, the serene with the chaotic, making pieces that can invoke different and opposing thoughts and feelings. He has been featured and/or interviewed in Kilter Magazine, Dark Roasted Blend, IO9, Fantasy Art, Brass Goggles, Elfwood, Superpunch, and many other web magazines and blogs. More of his work can be seen at http://www.mykeamend.com/.

  This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share 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.

  Table of Contents

  “The Manufactory,” by Dru Pagliassotti

  “The Book Thief,” by Jennifer Greylyn