Beneath Ceaseless Skies #116 Read online

  Issue #116 • Mar. 7, 2013

  “A Family for Drakes,” by Margaret Ronald

  “Bakemono, or The Thing That Changes,” by A.B. Treadwell

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  A FAMILY FOR DRAKES

  by Margaret Ronald

  Bron was where she left him, but one of their blankets was not. “Here,” Netta said, dropping the boots where the blanket should have been. “What happened?”

  Bron held one boot up to his foot, then hurriedly peeled off the remnants of his shoes. “Did you trade for these?”

  “The boy who owned them had another pair,” she lied. Maybe he had; she hadn’t checked under his mother’s body. Probably she should have; she’d made the long trek out and back after spotting the two huddled bodies... but pulling the little boots off cold feet had taken longer than she’d thought it would, and she’d been shivering too hard to search for more. “Bron, where’s our blanket?”

  He first pointed to the one underneath him, then, when that feigned ignorance didn’t work, to a fire apart from the rest of the refugees, closer to them than any other cluster of people had been for two weeks. A hulking shape sat next to the fire, blotting out most of its light. “He had meat,” Bron added, holding out a little sack. “I was hungry.”

  Meat for a blanket was no proper trade. Netta turned away from the fire, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She could make out a few of the other groups—and yes, they were watching her. Waiting for just such a sign of weakness as this. She turned a little further and sure enough, there was Sieg, wrapped up in his heavy city official’s coat, watching to make sure she didn’t venture any closer to “decent people” than this uneasy distance. He’d failed to keep that sort of order in Alcaris, but the refugees were scared and scattered enough that one self-appointed shepherd could exercise a lot of clout. Netta sighed, then made a show of loosening Leir’s knife in its sheath at her belt. “Stay here, stay safe. I’ll be back in a moment.” Bron, fitting his feet into new boots, only nodded.

  The man looked up just as she recognized the lump on his back: a huge maul, meant less for pounding iron than cracking bones. A smaller, smith-sized hammer hung at his belt, snagging on the blanket—their blanket. Netta swallowed. “Evening,” she said, stopping on the far side of his fire.

  “Evening to you,” he responded. His head was shaved, or had been at some point; now it was mostly gray and black bristle, broken by old white scars. He didn’t look like a smith, for all that his strength appeared to be mostly in those shoulders. But he had a fire all his own, even if it was only a pale smudge of flame, and that was something smiths usually did.

  Netta crossed her arms. “My cousin tells me you traded for our blanket.” He nodded, fine lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. “Well, he doesn’t really have the best grasp of trade in this situation—” her gesture caught the two of them and Bron, all the watching refugees, maybe even all the way back to the pillar of smoke that had been Alcaris, “— and it looks like neither do you. Not for a fair trade, anyway.”

  The lines creased further. He was going to laugh at her, tell her little girl, you are twelve years old and I am twice your size, do you think I’m going to bother with your notions of fairness? Sieg hadn’t bothered with her, after all, saying that they should have known better than to trust Leir. He hadn’t cared two pins for Leir or Netta, not till one of them was dead. And where Sieg led, whether a different choice of route or an opinion as to who deserved shelter, the other refugees followed.

  “How so?” the smith asked.

  “Meat’s good, but it goes fast. Blanket, though, that’ll keep you warm till you reach Ceste.” If he was going to Ceste. She really hoped he wasn’t. “So that blanket’s worth a lot more than a sack of dried jerky.”

  The stranger gazed at her a long moment, but he didn’t laugh outright at her. “Well,” he said at last, “only so much I can offer. Got a good knife, but it seems you have one too.” He reached into the shaggy vastness of his cloak and took out a bag—smaller, but bulging. “This cover the rest?”

  He tossed the bag to her, and she caught it without thinking. Within were apples—little ones, hard and dry, but an impossibly sweet scent still clung to them, bringing back memories of her mother’s bakery. “Somewhat,” Netta mumbled, then cleared her throat. “Still not going to last to Ceste.”

  “Then I’ll have to owe you,” he said. But it was enough, for now. The other refugees would have seen the trade, and that might be enough to keep them from thinking her weak.

  Netta closed the bag, then hesitated. “You know,” she said slowly, trying to remember how Leir had said all this, back when she and Bron still had a wheelbarrow and four blankets, “seems you’re new here. Happen you might need someone to show you the ropes, teach you what’s what.” She swung the bag over her shoulder, trying for the same unapproachable confidence that Leir had shown, the attitude that said never mind Duke Tasso’s soldiers, never mind the firedrakes and the sorcery that fuels them, never mind that your home is ash; trust in me. If it had worked on her, it might work on someone else, and maybe twelve-year-olds weren’t the only ones who deserved to get swindled, regardless of what Sieg said....

  But the stranger only shook his head. “I appreciate the offer,” he said, “but I’ll navigate this on my own.”

  Netta nodded again, unsure whether she was disappointed or relieved that she hadn’t succeeded in pulling off Leir’s scam. She returned to Bron’s side, her breath clouding in the air.

  “Did you get our blanket back?” Bron asked sleepily.

  “No.” She crawled under the remaining blanket with him and handed him an apple. “Here. We’ll split it.”

  He took a tentative bite, then another. “Netta?”

  “Yes?”

  “Aunt Salda will take us in, right?”

  She’s your aunt, she wanted to say. “Of course she will. She’s family.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. If she’s there—” and that was the only worry she’d allow herself, “— then she’ll take us in.” She rolled over and curled up tight, clutching Leir’s knife.

  * * *

  The clot of refugees had started out as one group, tight as a sorcerer’s knot. But as time passed, the refugees had spread out and splintered, the older and sicker lagging behind—and Bron and Netta well behind that, shunned and pushed to the back by those who listened to Sieg. They might even have lagged this far if it hadn’t been for Sieg’s pious outrage driving the others ahead; Bron was small, even for an eight-year-old, and his short legs wearied quickly.

  When they first left Alcaris, Bron had been full of his stories about his Aunt Salda’s shop and how she had two cats and a hearth with bright red tiles on it, but now Netta couldn’t even get that out of him. Some part of her was jealously glad—she no longer had a home to tell stories of, so let him shut up about the two cats—but it did worry her.

  The smith moved just as slow as they did, for two reasons. One was the limp that worsened as day wore on into evening; the other was that he seemed not to be in much of a hurry at all. He picked up things as he walked, adding them to a heap in his hands, as if he were a needlewoman knitting.

  Three nights after the smith joined up, he chose a spot close to theirs when they lay their blanket down for the night. Netta cast a glance back at him, one hand on Leir’s knife, but he ignored them, and after a while she was glad for the fire he started.

  “I want bread,” Bron said.

  “We don’t have any.” Even her clothes had stopped smelling like bread. It was difficult to believe she’d ever been sick of the smell.


  Bron’s lower lip stuck out, but he’d learned not to argue with her, and tears didn’t bring bread. That had been a favorite saying of her mother: tears don’t bring bread, wailing won’t get you a coin, and not all the laments will make Duke Tasso stop sending his soldiers. She’d started leaving off the end of the saying over the last few months, after the duke’s sorcerer Vigil loosed the firedrakes and they started burning their way up the river.

  “Excuse me.”

  Netta turned to see the smith sitting with his back to the fire. The last light of day showed something in his cupped hands. “I said I would owe you. It’s not bread, but it’s payment of a sort.”

  He raised one hand, fingers in a set of little wire loops, and a cat the size of one of the withered apples sat up on his palm. As Netta stared, he twitched his fingers, and the cat stood up, stretched, and leapt to the ground, guided by the wires. The smith made the cat walk up to the edge of the blanket and sit back, then smiled encouragingly at them both, waiting for their response.

  Bron scrambled away and hid behind Netta, and the smith’s smile faded. “Here,” Netta said. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  She glared up at the mountain of a man, bearskin shaggy around his shoulders. “You’re terrifying him. Let me.”

  “It’s more complicated than it looks,” he said, but let her take the cat from his hand. “Are you sure—”

  “Shut up. You’re not helping.” She slid her fingers into the complicated loops. It was difficult, but there was a sense to it, and after a few false starts she brought the cat walking up to Bron’s knee. “Hello,” she said in a squeaky cat-voice. “I was passing by, and I couldn’t help hearing you mention two cats in Ceste.”

  Bron looked at her, then nodded.

  “Are they pretty cats?” She angled her hand down, and the puppet bent as if to pounce. “The prettiest cats ever?”

  Bron nodded again, this time watching the puppet instead of her. The smith, though, was watching her, and though his brows knit together he was smiling.

  “Well, I think I’ll have to judge that for myself. They can’t possibly be as pretty as me.” She made the cat sit back and preen, not nearly as smoothly as the smith had, then made it stand up on its hind legs. “Right? Right?” It bumped its head against his knee, like a kitten demanding attention.

  Bron gave a little whisper of a laugh, reaching out to touch the cat’s head. She danced it away, then made it bat at Bron’s finger, and a slow grin began to spread over her own face.

  A man cleared his throat, and Netta jerked back, thumping the cat over the uneven ground. Sieg stood over them, too close not to have seen them, but he still looked past her as if she weren’t there. The smith glanced up. “Yes?”

  “A moment of your time?” Sieg gestured toward where a few refugees had started a fire. The smith stood, but took only a couple of steps before stopping, arms crossed.

  Netta put her head down, her breath coming in short huffs. It didn’t matter. They had the apples, they had this puppet, and anything Sieg could tell the smith would just warn him away, and that suited her just fine. “Two pretty cats,” she croaked, and cleared her throat, making the cat prance again. “Two pretty cats in Ceste.”

  Sieg was never one for keeping his opinions quiet, and they hadn’t moved far enough away for her to ignore him. “. . . thought you could use a warning,” Sieg said. “The girl’s a bad one. Killed a man, not four nights past.”

  He cheated us, she thought. He took all we had, and you did nothing.

  “That’s why they’re here, at the fringes. No one else’ll have them. The boy might be all right—I’ve had some small acquaintance with his family, they’re kind souls—but her—” The smith murmured something, and Sieg stopped. “Well,” he said after a moment. “You’re risking a knife in the throat some morning, that’s all I’ll say.”

  Night. It hadn’t been morning, it’d been night—Leir had thought he could come back and take what little was left. And when it was over, all she’d had to do was cry sorry, say she hadn’t meant to, say it was an accident. But if she had, then she and Bron would still be marks—easy prey for others like Leir.

  But she had meant to. That was why she’d known to reach for his right side, where the fine knife had hung when he’d swindled them. That was why she’d leaned all her weight on the blade, even after the first cut had stopped him. And that was why she’d waited by the body till dawn, whispering to Bron that they were safe, they’d be all right. And in full view of Sieg and the other refugees as they woke and crawled from their tents, she’d deliberately bent down to first yank Leir’s knife out of his chest, then pull the boots off his feet.

  Bron nudged her hand, and Netta jumped. “Make it go,” he whispered. She stared blankly at him a moment, then raised the kitten puppet again and walked it over to his knee.

  Behind her, Sieg huffed a few times, then walked off, and after a moment the smith settled down where he was. “You’re getting the hang of that,” he said.

  Netta shrugged. “It’s easy.” It wasn’t, really, but she wouldn’t say so. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Sieg had moved his followers on by morning, leaving the stragglers to their own devices. They slogged through two days of rain that turned into thin snow by the end of second day, and the morning’s drizzle left a thin crust of ice over everything. Netta and Bron pushed on even as the sun sank below the horizon. “Traben’s Crossing is just ahead,” Netta told Bron when he started to protest. “They’ve got a wide-market there, with a roof and everything.”

  “I remember,” he mumbled, shivering.

  “Good. Then you can walk just a little further.”

  The smith lagged even farther behind, either because the ice didn’t agree with his limp or because he’d spotted something new to make trinkets out of. Netta cast a glance back as the last light faded, but she didn’t stop.

  Without moonlight their pace slowed further, and Traben’s Crossing was pitch-dark, the bridge and the houses and the wide-market all just shadowy lumps with their own crusts of ice. Someone shouted as they reached the market square, and Netta peered ahead. The stragglers had camped in front of the wide-market instead of going inside, and a few were thumping at the walls. Netta stopped, blinking, before realizing what was wrong: the doors were closed.

  “Netta?” Bron asked, his voice high and quavering.

  “Come on.” She grabbed his hand.

  They ran the last few steps, and even though she’d seen the others already try it, she put her hands to the heavy latch and pulled, its cold biting into her fingers. The doors creaked and thudded, but remained shut.

  “Netta?”

  “They have to let us in,” she said numbly. “They have to.” Wide-markets had to be open to everyone. Even the most filthy traveler could enter and curl up in a corner. Open to everyone, save sorcerers, and... murderers.

  No, she thought, yanking on the door again. Bron was freezing, and he’d die, they’d die without shelter, she’d say sorry, she’d say everything Sieg wanted if that was what it took—

  But that wouldn’t help. The people of Traben’s Crossing wouldn’t have locked their wide-market against one little girl, and one little girl’s apologies wouldn’t make a difference. She put her hand against the bronze bands holding the doors together—then realized that she could see those bands clearly, could see the shadows of the imperfections in the bronze.

  She turned to see red-gold light blossoming across the ice, coming up along the river. “Drake!” she screamed, and ran, dragging Bron behind her.

  The first firedrake swooped down over their heads with a creak like a giant’s bellows and landed on the roof of the wide-market, the fire within turning its body into a lattice of black and red. It gave a short bark of a roar and fire shot from its jaws, setting the roofs of Traben’s Crossing alight. The stragglers ran for the bridge, but a second drake reached it first, crushing a man in its lacquered-bone
teeth before giving that same coughing roar and wreathing the bridge in flame.

  Netta stumbled, nearly falling onto Bron. Behind her, the wide-market echoed with screams. “To the river!” she shouted into Bron’s ear. “Not the bridge—the river.”

  It might have worked, though how long they would last in the freezing water was another question. But Netta had forgotten the ice, the thin layer of it that refused her boots. The two of them went sprawling across the crackled crust, up against the scrub trees that lined the river.

  She pushed up to her hands and knees as a third drake, this one smaller than the others, landed in front of her. It eyes gleamed, red glass in a mask of bone and black wood, and furnace-stink swept over them. The drake turned its head to regard her with its other eye, lipless jaws parting in a grin.

  “I’m sorry, Bron,” she whispered, and clasped his hand.

  Light bloomed before her—then receded as a huge shadow interposed itself between them. She looked up to see the smith, one hand out as if to shield himself from the fire that should have consumed him, the massive hammer held in the other. “No,” the smith said. “You might have killed the rest, but you can’t have these two.”

  The firedrake gave a short cry, and the other two fell silent, turning to face them. It bowed its head, its long neck snaking around to peer at them. Its jaws parted, but instead of loosing another gout of flame, it rumbled a string of noises that made the ice shudder.

  “For much the same reason as you’d kill them,” the smith answered.

  The drake hissed, the noise accompanied by gouts of steam from the joints where its wings folded. The smith started to walk to one side, his eyes never leaving the drake, and it followed, turning so that the long leather sweep of its wing grazed the ice in front of Netta. Another hissed and rumbled somewhere in the burning town, as if joining the conversation.

  “Go back to Tasso, then.” The smith shifted his grip on the hammer, holding it in both hands as if about to drive a spike into the earth. The drake shrieked and snapped at him. Netta let go of Bron’s hand. Talking won’t stop them. We have to fight back, scare them off, even if it’s no good. She pulled Leir’s knife free and leapt onto the drake’s wing. Gut and hide parted under her dragging weight.