Read Online All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) by Elizabeth Bear - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Bear
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cast, the red and purple plastic bowl. “Go on inside,” he said. “I’ll come and make you some breakfast in a minute.”
“Sig—”
“No argument.”
“Do I look helpless?”
He looked her up and down, bare feet and improvised turban and threadbare robe and skinny legs and broken hand. “No,” he said. “You look tired and half starved. Go on in.”
She went.
W hen Muire had come to live here, the warehouse had represented an obscene amount of space for one woman. But during the refugee years, her floors had been covered in pallets, and she had been a hero for a little while.
And then she had been the woman on the corner, who had been an artist before the war and was a soldier now. And then she had been the old nearman who some people said had fought for Thjierry Thorvaldsdottir, and who couldn’t be a real person, not quite, because she never got any older. And if someone whispered that she was a made-person, a halfman living on her own, unsupervised—some rich man’s escaped toy—well, it was the end of the world.
There were fewer rules against freedom.
Now, Eiledon was cramped with people—though fewer, she thought, every year—but much of the riverfront stoodempty. It was their only cemetery, and prone to fire. Muire—whose youth had been spent in communal longhouses, the only privacy that of the woods, or the silence inside one’s own mind—was grateful that Sig now occupied the other half of the building. It had stood empty for a long while, and she’d hated the blind windows and the echoes.
Because now she was just Muire, who lived beside the river-walk and who had no visible means of support and who joined in the neighborhood patrols. Muire, who had no last name and therefore wasn’t truman and therefore didn’t matter to anyone. And that was as she wished it: she was a sparrow by preference, not an eagle.
But now the Grey Wolf had come to her. And now, as in the past, she must become a sparrow hawk.
Sig fed her, as good as his word, and left her alone with the food and a pot of tea. She ate one-handed, bracing the bowl against her cast.
Once she could have willed the injury to mend. Now, she thought she could speed the healing, but not as weary as she was, and not before breakfast.
The past, she decided, as she caught herself thinking
once
once more, had all come tumbling down on her in battalions.
Vengeance,
said Ingraham Fasoltsen, as she pushed the bowl away.
“Vengeance,” she answered. “I’m working on it.”
She stood, and wobbled. The dishes could wait. Her loft was too far away. But Muire was no stranger to discomfort. And it would not, after all, be the first time anyone had slept on her foundry floor.
________
I ngraham Fasoltsen’s body was found by a moreaux patrol at the foot of the Broken Stair half an hour after sunrise. Selene was the first lieutenant to arrive, descending with perfect poise on an antigrav skimmer no bigger than a dinner plate. It would have given most trumans fits, but for Selene it was as safe and convenient a passage as descending a stair.
She stepped lightly onto the cobbles and paused, as the patrol lead turned to meet her. Achilles was a hound, silky-eared and alert, tawny fur showing between the strips of his half-gauntlets. Where Selene carried her monofilament whip, he wore two brace of daggers, one set on each thigh. His tail fanned slowly when he saw her; Achilles was an old friend.
They touched noses, and she smelled the worry on him. His nostrils twitched. “She sent you,” he said, reading Her scent on Selene as if reading a name signed to a card. “Personally.”
“Fasoltsen was Hers,” Selene said, and did not tell him about the package.
Fasoltsen lay crumpled by the intersection of the Broken Stair and the undamaged one, his hips twisted to the side, his arms spread wide. Selene wondered how many passersby had picked their way over the delicately cupped hand that lay athwart the stair, and how many
“Sig—”
“No argument.”
“Do I look helpless?”
He looked her up and down, bare feet and improvised turban and threadbare robe and skinny legs and broken hand. “No,” he said. “You look tired and half starved. Go on in.”
She went.
W hen Muire had come to live here, the warehouse had represented an obscene amount of space for one woman. But during the refugee years, her floors had been covered in pallets, and she had been a hero for a little while.
And then she had been the woman on the corner, who had been an artist before the war and was a soldier now. And then she had been the old nearman who some people said had fought for Thjierry Thorvaldsdottir, and who couldn’t be a real person, not quite, because she never got any older. And if someone whispered that she was a made-person, a halfman living on her own, unsupervised—some rich man’s escaped toy—well, it was the end of the world.
There were fewer rules against freedom.
Now, Eiledon was cramped with people—though fewer, she thought, every year—but much of the riverfront stoodempty. It was their only cemetery, and prone to fire. Muire—whose youth had been spent in communal longhouses, the only privacy that of the woods, or the silence inside one’s own mind—was grateful that Sig now occupied the other half of the building. It had stood empty for a long while, and she’d hated the blind windows and the echoes.
Because now she was just Muire, who lived beside the river-walk and who had no visible means of support and who joined in the neighborhood patrols. Muire, who had no last name and therefore wasn’t truman and therefore didn’t matter to anyone. And that was as she wished it: she was a sparrow by preference, not an eagle.
But now the Grey Wolf had come to her. And now, as in the past, she must become a sparrow hawk.
Sig fed her, as good as his word, and left her alone with the food and a pot of tea. She ate one-handed, bracing the bowl against her cast.
Once she could have willed the injury to mend. Now, she thought she could speed the healing, but not as weary as she was, and not before breakfast.
The past, she decided, as she caught herself thinking
once
once more, had all come tumbling down on her in battalions.
Vengeance,
said Ingraham Fasoltsen, as she pushed the bowl away.
“Vengeance,” she answered. “I’m working on it.”
She stood, and wobbled. The dishes could wait. Her loft was too far away. But Muire was no stranger to discomfort. And it would not, after all, be the first time anyone had slept on her foundry floor.
________
I ngraham Fasoltsen’s body was found by a moreaux patrol at the foot of the Broken Stair half an hour after sunrise. Selene was the first lieutenant to arrive, descending with perfect poise on an antigrav skimmer no bigger than a dinner plate. It would have given most trumans fits, but for Selene it was as safe and convenient a passage as descending a stair.
She stepped lightly onto the cobbles and paused, as the patrol lead turned to meet her. Achilles was a hound, silky-eared and alert, tawny fur showing between the strips of his half-gauntlets. Where Selene carried her monofilament whip, he wore two brace of daggers, one set on each thigh. His tail fanned slowly when he saw her; Achilles was an old friend.
They touched noses, and she smelled the worry on him. His nostrils twitched. “She sent you,” he said, reading Her scent on Selene as if reading a name signed to a card. “Personally.”
“Fasoltsen was Hers,” Selene said, and did not tell him about the package.
Fasoltsen lay crumpled by the intersection of the Broken Stair and the undamaged one, his hips twisted to the side, his arms spread wide. Selene wondered how many passersby had picked their way over the delicately cupped hand that lay athwart the stair, and how many
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