Return of the Boom Bap

The fine folks at Popdose are letting me play DJ today, running a sweet little mix-with-commentary—a tribute to drummers who use their heads.

Come on over and beat me up in the comments. And to those finding this blog via Popdose, hello! Come for the shameless self-promotion; stay for the impenetrable prose!

Posted 8:44 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

Just popping in to say that I’m back from my audition. I might write about it a little later, if I can find sufficiently general and neutral terms in which to talk about it.

I can say, without reservation and without concern for anyone’s privacy, that my family again gave unstintingly of their hospitality and their love, and I deeply regret that the circumstances of my trip meant they showered those gifts mainly on D and the kids. Guys, I’m sorry that I wasn’t around to enjoy your company more, and let me assure you that any loose bandying of the word “estrangement” is totally premature.

Posted 8:51 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

I've got some travel days coming up—I'm heading to Boston for my Jeopardy! audition—so I'll be incommunicado 'til Thursday or so: no phone, no e-mail. Those who do not practice psychic communication will have to practice patience instead.
Posted 11:57 PM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

37. The Painted Lady

Though they encountered no bandits and no further beasts on their way through the badlands, Pismire and Katy found Quiñones an invaluable companion. He knew each waterhole along the trail, knew if it were fresh or poison. He pointed them towards sweet fruit that grew among the brambles. He steered them through mazes of scrub and rock where the path seemed to vanish entirely, tacking their course with certainty even when the way became doubtful, and with never a misstep. And in his company, it was less easy to brood on the long weariness of the trail, or on the struggles yet to come.

Fiddlin’ Katy knew a great many tales, Katy did—for a Lady of the Roads must carry from town to town anything she hears that’s worth repeating—but the bombardier’s stock put hers to shame. Pismire, she thought, could tell out the name of every tree and flower they saw in their travels; she herself had enough woodslore to catalog their uses; but Quiñones, she thought, Quiñones knew their stories, one and all.

When she told him this, he waved his hand. “It’s not so much,” he said. “The Nevi’im, in Cathedral—they talk of the Gospodarim, who watch over this world for the Imago. And for every blade of the grass, they say, there is a Gospodar who leans over it and whispers, ‘Grow, my darling, grow!’ Now they would have tales to tell.”

Katy laughed. “There is no bottom to you, Captain!” she said. “How is it you have such a depth of tales?”

“It is often weary work, soldiering. We tend our keepsakes, to pass the time.” Quiñones shrugged. Some fellows spend their careers collecting hides, or scalps.”

“And you collected stories,” she said. She looked at Pismire. “Perhaps I should turn soldier, then.”

Pismire smiled, but Quiñones looked at her sidewise. “You might have a talent for it, Madame” he said. “It is said that your kind once made up a great army.”

Katy scoffed, but Quiñones went on. “They say the saltimbanco people rose up and swept across the land like a plague,” he said. “Great columns of you, stretching from horizon to horizon across the meadows and plains like a living wall—leaving nothing behind you but stubble and char, destroying all in your path from one end of the land to the other. And nothing could stop you but the sea. “

“No such story is told among my people,” she said.

“They have forgotten, then. Because the strangest part is that this has all happened before,” said Quiñones. “Time out of mind, back through all the ages of the world, the armies of the Saltimbanco have arisen, and advanced, leaving ruin—and then they have scattered, only to rise again after monstrous profusion of years, when the land has grown fair once more. And this has happened again and again, and each time the interval of years has been the same.” He shrugged. “But no one knows a thing of it, now.”

They walked on in silence, Fiddlin’ Katy giving Quiñones such a doubtful look that after a few moments, Pismire said, “Perhaps, Captain, you should have instead collected scalps, after all?”

Quiñones snorted and Fiddlin’ Katy giggled. “Scalps would not suit the Captain,” she said. “He is far too tender-hearted.”

Quiñones made a wry face. “I have never been called tender-hearted, Madam Saltimbanco. I will have to take you word on it,” he said. “But I will tell you a atsory of tenderness, and heartbreak, if you would like.”

Fiddlin’ Katy nodded, Katy did; but when Quiñones began, he addressed himself to Pismire.

“Love among the solitaires, Master Mélif—it is a curious thing. For the Sharing Peoples, I understand, there are limits as to who may mate, and with whom. You should think that would make difficulties, in the matter of finding love. But I have found that it is among the solitaires, where we are free to love whom we please, that there is true difficulty in finding, in choosing, in keeping a mate. Listen. This may enlighten you. Or perhaps entertain.

“This all happened many years ago, when the world was younger, and I younger too. I was already a soldier then—though less sharp than I am now. I was attached to a brigade in the service of a southern trading interest, fighting in the Mulberry Towns. You know them, Madame? Quite a way north of here, and east, near the sea. The silkworks are there. A curious place. And a curious people, much given to expressions of shame.

“Our brigade overthrew the greatest of the Mulberry Towns. Many lives were lost—and not all taken by us. Many of the folk of the Towns—many of the guard, many of the local councils—were greatly ashamed. As they saw it, they had allowed the Towns to fall; never mind that we were better-armed, and better-funded. They had a strange understanding of war. For a soldier, it is not a personal thing, the winning or losing. But they had lost their Towns, and they could not bear it. And so many of them fell upon thei knives, took their own lives—dozens of them, in the early days of the occupation. The captains shrugged it off; better they should be concentrating the violence upon themselves, and not us. Perhaps they were right.

“But it was a sad time. The families would wail in the streets. Many of them were reduced to nothing. The silkworks were re-opened, and we saw to it that no one starved. But the people were restless, and poor. And the womenfolk—well, the women...

“There was one girl—her father’s name was Thistlefoot. He had owned one of the silkworks, and he was among those who had taken their own lives. And this girl—barely more than a child she was, and very beautiful. Her family was desperately poor now, and so she took up as a Painted Lady.

“You know of them? You see them now in all the big cities—cosmopolitan, they are—but it is a profession that has its beginnings in the Mulberry Towns. Remarkable persons. Remarkably skilled. She is no common jezebel, the Painted Lady. They have another name in their own tongue—I forget—it means an artistic person. In their own person is their work of art. They sing, they dance; they play stringed instruments and flutes and drums; they make pictures; they make conversation—which is perhaps their greatest art of all. And of this is done to one purpose—to please and gratify the one whose company they keep.

“In any case, this young Mistress Thistlefoot was uncommonly talented, and uncommonly beautiful. She made of herself a great work of art, and was the most pleasing of all the Painted Ladies in this Mulberry Town. It was a respectable enough profession, and her family lost no face by it. That was not where her troubles began

“There was a Leftenant of our company. And he conceived of a passion for this Mistress Thistlefoot. He would take up all her time, keep her from other clients. And some perversity took him. I do not think it was truly desire—it was merely spite. It was less important to him to possess her, than to make sure no one else could possess her. Do you see?

“In his folly, he proposed to make a marriage. And Mistress Thistlefoot, who was not rich for all that the profession of Painted Lady was respectable, said yes. So this Leftenant found a local marriage broker, and he devised a mockery of a marriage contract—one that bound her to him for a thousand years, while allowing him to break the contract at a whim.

“Now, I was younger, as I have said; but even I could see that nothing good could come of this. I spoke to the Leftenant, and asked him to reconsider. But he would not be dissuaded. In the end there was a marriage. I was one of the witnesses. It was a farce. The Leftenant was drunk when he took her name from her. He called his barefoot bride, he called her his Plum Judy, he called her all manner of things. But in the end he called her his Chosen, and from that day forward she would answer to no other name. Chosen.

“Afterwards the Leftenant took up his drinking again, and behaved coarsely. He made ill jests at the expense of his bride and her family. And I grew angry. I spoke unkindly to him, and was asked to leave. And as I did I saw her—Chosen—hanging onto his arm, and smiling—very bravely, I thought—though perhaps her smile was only part of the art. And I suppose you know, Madam Saltimbanco, the goal of art can sometimes be deception.

“Some months passed. And this Leftenant built a little wooden house for his Chosen, high on a hillside overlooking the road through the mulberry groves—a charming little house, all painted in gay colors. And for a time they lived together in this little house, when he was not busy with his duties, and perhaps he loved her. But if he did, it was in the way that one loves a beautiful song, or a beautiful picture—not in the way that one loves a person at all. Perhaps this was to be expected, for she had made herself into an artwork, a thing of beauty.

“In time, the Leftenant drew new orders. He was called away to the west—to his home country, in fact—to fight the Hamazakaran. And he left his Chosen. he did not release her from the thousand=year marriage contract—he simply gave her a little yellowgrain, put her in the care of her servant, and went his way. The gold would not last, of course, but he thought nothing of this. He left her alone, with a foolish and insincere promise that he would soon return. he left her, although he did not yet know this, with child.

“I was part of the guard for the Governor of that place, and it was necessary that I should remain behind, in the Mulberry Towns. In due time, Chosen was delivered of her child. It was a difficult birth, and I asked for permission to send word to the Leftenant. The Governor refused me, saying that the affairs of the locals in this place were of no concern to his officer. I was angry at him—but I obeyed orders.

“When Chosen recovered, some of the men of the town took to visiting her—soldiers, locals—myself among them. She was delightful company—of course. That was her profession, as soldiering is mine. And very good at it she was. She would entertain us—sing for us, and dance in her silken gowns so that she looked like a flower herself, like petals of chrysanthemum dancing on the wind. Always the little painted house was beautiful, with blossom and tea and fine wines flavored with mulberries and spice. And always we would offer to pay for her services. But she refused. She was the Leftenant’s now, she said. She would entertain us only as friends, not as clients. And so in her pride, Chosen grew poorer and poorer and not one of us could help her.

“The fighting continued in the west, and I remained on the Governor’s staff. A year passed after the child was born, then another. And Chosen’s little house began to grow shabby. The paint could no longer conceal the lines of care on her face, and her beautiful gowns began to fade. The menfolk did not visit her so often any more. But I still came, every so often, and still she would receive me graciously, offer me tea or beer, and pass the hours in conversation. And for those hours, she would make me feel that I was the only man alive, and she the most beautiful creature in all the world.

“One day she was serving me tea, and her sleeve fell open. And up her sleeve, I saw most cunning pockets sewn inside—combs for her hair, brushes for her paints—and a long, wicked knife. I asked her what the knife was for, and she would not answer. She turned the talk to other things. The boy grew, Chosen’s son—he was a good child, but he could not help but be troublesome to her. And Chosen tended her son, and received my visits, and waited—waited for the Leftenant to return. He did not.

“One night, when I had drunk too much mulberry wine, I asked her if she might not be free from her contract, and she told me she could not. She had sworn the vow, she said. The people of the Mulberry Towns, they mate for life. They do not take these things free and easy, as we soldiers do. I had embarrassed her; I did not visit her for a long time after that.

“One day, three years after the Leftenant had gone west, the Governor received word that the fighting there was done. The Hamakazaran had been beaten back, and many of the men were returning. There was a column of soldiers bound for the Mulberry Towns, where they would lay over before returning to Cathedral for redeployment. And I knew this Leftenant would be among them.

“I ran to Chosen’s house—I ran up the hillside, and when I arrived I was quite out of breath. She took me in. And I meant to tell her. I tried to tell her. But I could not; I had not the heart. Instead, I fell down on my knees, and I begged her to break the contract and marry me. I promised my love and protection for herself and her son; I promised to lift her from her poverty and make her a fine lady. I promised everything that a young and foolish soldier can pledge. And she turned me out of the house—much more kindly than I deserved, for I had made a terrible embarrassment.

“As I was leaving her door, we both of us heard, far off in the distance, the sound of hoofbeats and the beating of drums, far away along the road. The brigades were returning from the west. I started down the hillside, and I could see Chosen sitting at her window, looking out at the road, watching for her Leftenant.

“I went back into town, and that evening the brigades marched in. This Leftenant was strutting in the midst of them, the hero of the hour. I had had all afternoon to drink myself stupid, and I made my way towards him through the crowd. What I meant to do to him, I don’t truly know; but as I got near, I saw that he was not alone—that he had by his side a young lady of his own country, and she was holding his hand.

“I went up to him, and he clapped me on the back, and introduced me to his bride. They were only passing through, he said. He was resigning his commission, and taking his bonus money to set up business in one of the market towns; they were bound out in the morning, he said. The wife smiled at me. She seemed a kindly girl, and very pretty; but I was too drunk and too angry to be very pleasant to her, I fear.

“I said to the Leftenant, ‘There is someone in town who has been awaiting your return.’

“He smiled and shook his head. ‘There is no one here I need to visit.’

“’Your son,’ I said. ‘Your son wishes to meet his father.’

“And I walked away, and left him there to answer his wife’s questions for himself.

“That night, I abandoned my post, and I left the Mulberry Towns for good. Long past midnight, on the road out of town, I passed below Chosen’s little house. I looked up through the trees, and I could see the Leftenant and his wife making their way up the hillside. And in the house, I could see the two small figures in silhouette—Chosen, standing at the window, with her arm around her son and the long knife in her hand.”

They walked in silence for a long time; Fiddlin’ Katy drew breath to ask is that story true but before she could speak, Quiñones cried, “There! Can you see it?”

They were at the top of a ridge, and below them a plain opened up—low lying grass painted with evening mist, and a ragged mountain in the distance casting its shadow as the sun fell.

“Cathedral lies beyond the mountain?” asked Pismire.

Quiñones chuckled. “Every time. I told you, didn’t I? They do it every time.”

And they began their descent into the misty valley, and their final approach to the holy city, its clay brick façade thrusting toward the sky in haphazard peaks.

More next week...

Posted 10:04 PM by Jack Feerick |  3 comments

Fiction Friday Tuesday, Ten Days Late: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

36. The Dissidents

Another day had burnt down in the West, and darkness hung over the Apiary like smoke. Fall was coming on. The soft cool of the day was sharpening, resolving into a focused chill; but in the outer wards of the city the windows were dark. Those who still had furniture to burn were hoarding it against the coming winter and the season of true need. Even candles were scarce, and the Apiary had never lacked for candles; always had wax been plentiful and cheap among the Mélif. But no more.

The streets of these quarters were crooked and jog-legged. There was no one out, though it was only an hour past sunset. days gone by, in time still within memory, evening would find the angled lanes thronged with folk, day-laborers bound for home passing night-laborers bound for the chandleries, lanterns glittering on every corner, and much drinking and dancing, with gold passing each to each and every place abuzz. Now the waxworks were shuttered, and such people as remained sat in the dark behind their doors, hungry and sleepless and watchful. Waiting.

Someone came into the street—a single person, her footsteps almost silent, walking in the shadow of the abandoned waxworks and into the mazy lanes of the outer ward. Alone she walked, hooded and cloaked in black, and no one approached her. The Mélif in their houses shivered in their homespun as she passed, perhaps with the cold of the night.

The Apiary had long been a mighty city, and even in these poorer quarters her streets were clean and paved in cobbles so tight and uniform she padded as on tiles. At one crooked corner she paused, cocking her head to listen.

From down the lane came sound of far-off music; piping, thin, and nearly tuneless. In the shadows of her hood, she smiled. If you had seen her smile, you would have loved her, and you would have trembled.

She wound outwards through the narrow streets, following the snatches of melody into a district of idle grainmills and boarded-up storehouses and into an alley that emptied on the forecourt of a derelict meadery. She flattened herself against the alley wall, made herself very still, and listened.

The piping was nearer now, and she could hear the dim chuff of feet. Stone-still and quiet, eyes unseen, she waited.

After a time, someone scuttled past the mouth of the ally and across the courtyard. She heard a hum of low voices; then, for a moment, a chink of light appeared in the face of the building opposite. It did not long linger; a flutter of footsteps, a muffled mechanical ratcheting, and the light was gone.

She waited a moment, there in the darkness, stretching out her mind through the streets and buildings that surrounded her. She found only emptiness for many blocks around; the denizens of this quarter did not partake of the Voice of the Mélif. She could not hear them at all, nor they her.

It is time, she thought, that we make ourself heard.

She strode across the court and walked along the meadery’s front, stopping beneath a boarded-up patch in the bricks. The window, or hatch, was set into the building’s face just higher than she could reach. She stood for a moment, waiting for a challenge. Then, as to herself but quite clearly, she said, “We bring news of the scouts.”

Two loose boards swung down from the window, and a dark, haggard face appeared in the gap; a roughneck, none young and thinner than he should be, and holding a lantern in one hand. “How isn’t we didn’t hear thee coming?” he hissed. “Art thou of the cell?”

“We are of the Mélif,” she said, “and the Mélif nation is of us. All the nation, even unto thy cell.”

The sentry frowned. “Still we hear only thy words, and they mean ought. Show thyself.”

She threw back her hood, and the lanternlight shimmered on the circlet of gold at her brow.

As she had suspected, the sentry was under the Influence of another; but in his shock at recognizing the Regina, the bond to his new mistress was shaken. In that instant, the Regina reached out with her own Influence and snared him. He shuddered for a moment, and she felt his presence flickering in a corner of her mind; then he was hers, settling in as a comfortable fizz beneath the surface of her thoughts.

Without another word spoken, he swung aside three more boards and set to turning the gearwheel that let down a wooden ladder. She climbed to the top and, ducking her head, drew herself up into a dim passage.

While the sentry drew up the ladder, the Regina glanced around. What she had taken for a window was in fact a door. They were standing on a sort of dock at the bottom of a long, sloping passageway; long ago, casks of metheglin had been rolled down this chute to be lowered to wagons in the street. It was just tall enough for them to stand up; the little platform had been fitted out with an upturned barrel the sentry had used for a chair, a hook for his lantern, and a bundle of extra candles. A faint pickled smell hung in the air.

The Regina turned to the sentry, who was gazing at her in a kind of baffled rapture. She made a silent gesture, and he knelt at her feet, his eyes to the floor. Gently, she laid a hand top his head. “Thou hast done well, our servant,” she said.

And her other hand emerged from her cloak, and in it was a long, sharp pogniard. With a jerk of her wrist she thrust the point into his skull, just above the ear; she yanked the blade free and kicked him hard in the chest, sending his body toppling backwards off the dock to the cobbles below.

The Regina started up the passageway, not looking back. She wiped clean her blade as she walked; she had to stoop a little. As she ascended, the air grew warmer and the sound of piping more distinct—though it was still very ragged and breathless, as if the piper were trying to convey the idea of a dancing rhythm while fearing to actually put any air through his instrument.

At length the chute leveled out and opened up. Above her, from the shopfloor, the Regina could hear urgent voices and the thump of dancing feet. The floor over her head shook, and dust swirled in the dim slats of light that feel between the floorboards.

The footsteps scuffed and stopped, and the music trickled away. A dame’s voice, cracked with age, said, “Ye dance us a fair piece from here. I fear many should die along the way.”

The dancer’s voice, gasping: “Ye sent me West. It is a fierce, barren country—as bare as here. I had thought—” She caught herself, then went on. “I thought the others might find better bloom.”

“Such was our hope as well,” said a new voice—the voice of a child, gentle, but very clear, almost piercing in its presence. “When we sent thee forth to seek for our people a new homeland, our hope was that we should have our choice of destinations,” she said. “But time is gone short, and we must away.”

The Regina, silent in the dark below, squeezed her eyes shut; but the voice went on, every word seeming to drill into her. “We must leave the Apiary tonight, and go into the West,” said the girl. “And if our hearts are true, we shall make of it a home, no matter how barren it be. We shall make of it a blooming land again. We shall be its restoration, and it shall be ours; so shall our Nation be restored.”

In one corner of the chamber the Regina found a latching mechanism—the trapdoor through which the casks were dropped into the chute. There was no lever in the ceiling to trip the latch, but the Regina was disinclined to plead admission from those above; she struck the latch sharply with the hilt of her pogniard, springing back as the trapdoor dropped open not a hand’s width from her face. She vaulted herself upwards into that place of dim candlelight and shocked faces, and rolled to her feet. “Our first thought was that thou didst lie in every word,” she cried. “But thou art right in one thing; thy time in indeed gone short.”

And she smiled her terrible smile and stared them down. There were fifteen or twenty of them; old folk, mainly, with a handful of maters and single bravo, who was now groaning with pain—he had been standing guard with one foot on the trapdoor when it had opened, and his leg was broken. The people were thin and ragged. The piper was a hunched old gaffer; his caved-in chest looked as if it would not hold a full breath. When he saw the Regina, his battered tin whistle fell to jingle on the floorplanks, and he gasped for air that would not come. They had laid planking across barrels for a table, and maps and charts were laid across it. Meager bundles of provisions and supplies were heaped at the center of the room, awaiting distribution—cloaks, fuel, a few sour loaves and bunches of sweetgrass and handfuls of dry beans like river pebbles that had not seen running water in time out of mind.

A small figure stepped forward from behind the table. Her yellow shift was frayed, and she was barefoot. But in the tilt of her head, somehow queenly; in her eyes, dark and haunted, fathomless beneath her short fringe of hair; in the set of her mouth, full-lipped and fine for all that her skull was visible, delicate as an egg, beneath her child’s face—the Regina knew her for a rival. A child of thirteen; a suzerain.

Quite calmly, the girl said, “Thou hast no dominion here, sister.”

“Thou durst call us sister? Us?” The Regina’s voice was cold with rage. “In thy playing at princess, hast thou forgotten what we are? Most Serene Majesty, Mistress Absolute, Mother of the Nation—”

“Mother of Nothing,” muttered one of the gray dames standing by the girl. “Poisoned womb and poisoned heart, thou.”

“Bid thy crone be still!” sneered the Regina, and the girl raised a hand.

“We mean thee no disrespect, sister,” she said evenly. “We call thee sister to honor days gone by, when all who loved the Mélif Nation and honored the Voice were as sisters. Nor need there be injury.” She sighed. “Our people are grown too many. Thy Influence cannot reach them all. And so some few of us shall leave this place, and found our own homestead. And so shall the Nation be perpetuated, as it has always been.”

“Lies,” the Regina said. “In us the Nation has its life, and our city is its domain. No other.” She was quivering.

The girl took a step forward. “In olden times—” she said.

“There is no time but mine!” shrieked the Regina. Her blade was in her hand. “Mine! No dawn has risen in this world that I have not bade rise, and no night shall fall save I command it!” The girl was frozen, staring blandly; why, why did she not kneel? “I am absolute! I am eternal!” cried the Regina. “Know this! Swear it!”

The girl only stood, her face now dark with sadness. At length, she shook her head, slowly. “We cannot swear to thee, sister,” she said. “Our allegiance lies with ourself, and with our people.” She gestured towards the pogniard in the Regina’s shaking hand. “Thy blade,” she said. “Must we resolve this by steel?”

“Only death shall serve for treachery,” said the Regina.

The girl nodded to one of the duffers of her company, and he handed her a harvestknife from his bundle—a wide blade, and long as her arm. A farmer’s tool, really. She swung it a few times; it looked much too large for her, but she handled it with balance and some grace.

She looked around the room. “None shall intervene,” she said, and assumed a fighting stance. “It is well,” she said. “It is as it was, when the suzerains would arise. The pipes would sound, and it would be all against all.”

“Still thy tongue,” hissed the Regina.

“And the last maid standing would challenge the Mother of the Nation,” said the girl. “And the Mother must needs fight, or flee.”

“Enough!”

“Is that not how it was, sister, in days gone? Is that not how it was with thee, and thy own mother?”

“Lies!” cried the Regina, and she charged forward. Her blade crashed against the girl’s. They twisted, clashed again, drew apart. The girl stood her ground ably at first, the Regina circling like the moon. All around, the girl’s followers stood watching, silent. No one moved.

It did not last long. The girl had spirit, and some skill; but in the end she was but a half-starved child. She lost her wind, and could not get her blade up in time. One slash from the Regina’s pogniard took the harvestknife from her hand; the next punched through her collarbone.

She stood a moment in panting horror, looking at the knife emerging from her chest. Then the Regina tugged the blade free and shot out her free hand to clutch the girl by the throat. Pulling her close, the Regina put her lips to the girl’s ear. “Always the same,” she whispered. “Didst thou think we have not slain others like thee, princess? Didst thou think we have not slain a hundred others?”

The girl moaned, eyes uncomprehending and wide with shock; she hardly felt the pogniard as it pierced her heart.

The Regina stood over her kill, eyes closed. She could already feel the hum of the voices, each of the Mélif in the room falling under her Influence. A wave of pleasure came over her with each new voice; as her Influence rippled outward, the entire quarter succumbed to her, she gave a little gasp and opened her eyes.

The room was silent. The folk in the room were staring dully. Even the bravo with the broken leg had stopped groaning. No one approached. No one spoke.

“Thy princess was right,” said the Regina. “Thou art grown too many.”

And she took up a candle, touching it first to the charts, then to the heaps of clothing and supplies. The heaps of fuel went up first; she kicked them about, spreading them, then laid the waxed groundcloths over. They caught quickly, and soon she could hear the flasks of oil bursting in the bundles. No one moved the stop her, or to escape. When the gear was blazing high, and the flames were beginning to creep up the timbers of the room itself, she leaped down the chute and left them there.

By dawn, most of the buildings in the quarter were burning freely. No one came to douse the flames, and no one came out of any of the houses as they went up in flames. The Regina stood in the street all night and watched it all burn, and her heart was light.

More next week soon...

Posted 3:30 PM by Jack Feerick |  1 comments

Moments Of Life In A Jar

I’ve got a long piece up at Popdose today—a comprehensive overview of the hippies it’s okay to like, the connoisseur’s choice of blue-eyed psychedelic jam bands, the one and only Traffic. Thousands of words, a handful of tortured metaphors, and a shedload of choice MP3s.

That sound you hear? That is THE SOUND OF DADROCK TRIUMPHANT.

Come on over. Listen to a few songs and give me a hard time in the comments.

Posted 9:34 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

It’s not that I’m a liar, exactly—just that I had no idea what a pig that week was gonna be, and the week after.

That, and I kinda suck.

Stand by. Soon.

Posted 6:19 PM by Jack Feerick |  2 comments

Honeythief will be delayed this week. No crisis—just a time crunch. Saturday, probably.

Thank you for your patronage.

Posted 12:54 PM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

35. Six-Handed Circle

Quiñones led them back down into the arroyo—the path among the rocks, he said, was a false trail, probably laid by the scavenger as part of her trap—and as they walked he told them what he knew. Crazy Eights, he said, was not a creature of the material world, not fully; it (or “he,” for so Quiñones named it) dwelt mostly in the place where thoughts come from—a place where none could reach to fight it—and there it caught up the thought-stuff and spun it out like threads. Only when it moved in to feed did it show itself in what Quiñones called “the world of things,” and only then could blade wound it or fire touch it.

“He prefers his prey live, Crazy Eights,” said Quiñones. “That is why you are still breathing. It was a near thing. I hit him as soon as I could, as soon as he began to manifest himself, and still it was a near thing.” He gave a black look. “I struck before he was fully emerged—and so is only driven off. I should have liked to kill him, but I did not dare to wait for him longer.”

“And the other,” said Katy, picking her way down the slope and still a little breathless, “she was partners with the mind-creature?”

“Crazy Eights does not recognize partnerships,” Quiñones said absently. “It is the way of the Long-Livéd to attach themselves to some stronger hunter, and live on what it leaves them. They are not great planners, the Long-Livéd—they generally take when the opportunity arises.” Quiñones looked at Pismire. “Unusual that she should track you so long.”

“How long?” asked Pismire.

Quiñones shrugged. “Perdona, Master—I’ve been tracking you myself for three days, and I picked her up two days ago, come evening. Before that, I cannot say. But she has been waiting for you to draw the notice of Crazy Eights, and she has ignored easier prey along the way.”

They had reached the bottom of the slope. Quiñones hopped down into the wash, and with his big hands reached suddenly up to grab Fiddlin’ Katy round the waist and bodily lift her over the bank of the dry river. She gave a little squawk that ended in a laugh. Pismire said nothing. The day was turning cooler, and thin fitful clouds covered the sun.

“It is certain that the Long-Livéd did not act on her own,” said Quiñones. “We cannot know for sure to what powers she may have aligned herself—”

“My sister,” said Pismire quite suddenly. His voice was flat.

“She’s an agent of the Regina?” gasped Katy.

“This is likely,” said Quiñones. “The Apiary has already turned its attention south.”

And he told them everything that had happened at the way station. Pismire listened in silence. The sun dropped low, and they stopped to rest while Quiñones finished his tale. When he was done, Pismire sat for a long time without speaking; Fiddlin’ Katy knew to keep schtum and not to press him.

At last, Pismire said, “Now it begins in earnest.” He turned to Quiñones with terrible eyes and said, “I wish you had not involved yourself in this.”

Quiñones bristled. “The Mélif, they say, have sweet tongues, backed up by a big sting,” he said. “Perdona, Master, but your tongue is not so sweet. Do you so soon tire of my company, that you would abandon me again?”

“Captain, I think you are mistaken—” Katy began.

But Quiñones was having none of it. “You will forgive me if I come to the heart of the matter,” he said, eyes flashing with anger. “But if you left me behind because you thought I was not to be trusted, I had hoped that recent events should persuade you otherwise.”

“I never thought you would betray us,” said Pismire, very quietly. “I feared I would betray you. I was afraid that you would be hurt because of me.”

Quiñones opened his mouth to speak, but Katy laid a long hand on his arm.

“We left you behind,” said Pismire, and he stared at the ground. “Not because we mistrusted you. Because we loved you too well.” He raised his head and looked Quiñones in the eye. “If you take up with me, you are likely to die in my service. And I would prevent that, if I can.”

“And what of Mistress Katy?” asked Quiñones, softly. “You allow her to follow you. Do you love her less than me?”

Pismire looked at Katy, hesitating. She nodded for him to speak. “Katy does not serve me. She is a comrade and a friend,” he said. “Our companionship is freely undertaken. I have made her no promise of reward, and I can make none to you.”

Quiñones ran a hand through his hair. “You’re damned silly bastards, the pair of you,” he said, not unkindly. “But you do me proud. I shall endeavor to justify this esteem you place in me, that I should live, while other good folk may die.” He looked at Pismire. “Your sister will not stop until she dominates all things. You know this.”

“It is what I believe, yes.”

“There have been others born with this desire; but before her, none with the means,” said Quiñones. “Do you mean to stop her?”

“If I can,” said Pismire.

Quiñones squared his shoulders. “I am a free creature, Master Mélif. To fight in defense of that freedom—this is not a duty; this is a highest of joys.” He extended his hand to Pismire. “My place is with you,” he said. “As a comrade. As a friend. As a free man.”

Pismire took his hand. Their heads were bowed, and neither spoke. Katy reached out for them both, and for a moment they formed a ring—hands linked, arms a six-angled sign like the outline of some foundation stone.

A moment, and the figure broke apart. “It will come rain,” said Quiñones, reaching for his kit bag. “Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. We’re on track to make the high ground before the mud comes, but only if we keep moving.”

More next week...

Posted 6:46 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

A Little from Column A, a Little from Column B

I’m still writing a book and I’m still feeling mouthy about it, and Julian is still asking questions...

Seems like music and mind control are recurring themes thus far. Is this related somehow to the insect world, or more a reflection of your interests?

You characterize it as “mind control”—I see it as a way of literalizing some behaviors in nature; camouflage, deception, and eusociality a.k.a. the “hive mind” phenomenon. In the case of the last I’ve tried to portray a couple of different models of correspondence. Among the Emeth, for instance, adherence to prescribed roles in reinforced by strong taboos and conformist pressures. For the Mélif, by contrast, the model is top-down and pheromone-based—more or less as it is in an actual beehive.

(And there are limits to the Regina’s Influence, as well: There’s a whole separate thread about the intrigues going on at the apiary that’s barely been touched on so far, because I’m writing it out of sequence. I don’t want to blow the reveal, but: Suffice to say that her control is far from absolute, and is maintained far more by terror and violence than by her Influence per se—and in this, too, the entomological underpinnings inform the plot points.)

As to music: It’s an interest of mine, yeah, but I would hope that I’d be able to resist the temptation to shoehorn my own personal hobbyhorses into the work simply for their own sake. Fiddlin’ Katy ended up a musician because I needed a viewpoint character who was an outsider, and who had freedom of movement; as a contrasting figure to the Emeth, she of course became a grasshopper—and, well, what do grasshoppers do, after all?

The musical component of the Crazy Eights episode was even more pragmatically conceived. I needed a way to convey to the reader the maddening experience of having a sticky thought lodged in your head, and the earworm phenomenon is something I figured would be
familiar to most of us.

(And if you really must know, it was this.)

Take advantage of me while I’m drunk in a talkative mood! Queries in the comments or at jfeerick AT rochester DOT rr DOT com. And hey, thanks for reading, everybody who’s reading.

Posted 11:48 AM by Jack Feerick |  4 comments

Tough Guys Don’t Dance

I’ve been getting some good comments and questions on recent installments of The Honeythief, and even though I really appreciate them, I’m generally loath to reply to them. My job as a writer, when receiving criticism, is to smile and nod, and not to explain. The work, ideally, should explain itself; once it’s off the Internet and out in the larger world, I can’t sit down with every single reader and tell hir what I meant by this passage or that.

But I’m in a workshopping sort of mood today, and since somebody cared enough to ask about the choices I’ve made, it seems only fair that I take the time to talk about the thinking behind those decisions.

First up: Violence!

Constant Reader Julian Hsu has occasionally opined that The Honeythief would benefit from being a little more action-packed (Or, as he so memorably put it, “FIGHT SCENE, FIGHT SCENE, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!”). When Quiñones delivered a little aggro in this chapter, Julian was moved to comment:

Over too soon though! I wonder if Quiñones is maybe too powerful for his own good...

The fight was quick and overmatched, yes. Essentially, I decided to make Quiñones super-badass here because I figured it was necessary to establish that he’s the real deal. Think back: What have we actually seen him do up to this point? He’s talked himself up; he’s shot a guy in the back; he’s sat idly by as three hooligans kicked an old man to death. Likable though he may be—and I hope I did succeed in making him likable, despite the above—I judged him lacking in a certain, how shall we say, credibility. So the idea of the scene was, in part, to show that when the bluster falls away, all the relentless-killing-machine stuff is genuine.

(Also, there’s a subtext about the Regina’s arrogance and tendency to underestimate her enemies—but that’s a relatively minor thread.)

More later, probably. In the meantime, if you’ve got a question or an opinion, leave a comment or hit me up at jfeerick AT rochester DOT rr DOT com.

Posted 5:17 PM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

34. A Soldier’s Only Thought

They stood and lay where they were, sightless and laboring for breath, until the sun shone at its highest. The impression of the approach of scuttling legs did not lessen, though it seemed somehow both immanent and monstrously far-off; but Fiddlin’ Katy and Pismire were neither of them more than sporadically aware of it. They were struggling no longer. Katy’s head rang with a sound like a battalion of pipers, drowning out everything else. Pismire beside her had divided the day into eight thousand one hundred ninety-two parts, with the thirty two thousand seven hundred sixty-eighth of the journey yet to go and Cathedral still nowhere in sight.

There he stood and there she lay in the stony waste. And when their breath was not quite gone, someone came to them through that maze of rocks, dressed in leather and with the whisk of steel. All masked and with her knives out, Kiszoon crept over the slags to them, her movements darting and instinctive, for the Yassasseen trick of mindlessness was upon her.

She moved cautiously, without and thought of caution. It was not her habit to thieve from the predator she knew as the eight-eyed spy (when she knew it at all, for at the moment she knew nothing), and she understood, without conscious understanding, that by denying the creature its prey she put herself in grave danger. The Brinjal, or melongen, is a relative to the wolf-peach, and like it is good for eating when salted and drained; both are close cousins to the Lovely Lady, which is a poison most lethal, and more distantly to the burdock and cardoon, she thought.

Kiszoon slunk into the stone clearing in a feral crouch. She sidled up to Pismire, perceiving him by sight more as a shape than as an entity—a long, thin squiggle of black splashed crookedly across the rocks. She cocked her head as if considering, though she considered nothing, and brought her face close to his. She stood like that for a moment, inhaling deeply. The nearness of the pattering footsteps made her skin prickle.

Then she dropped, with dizzying, unpremeditated speed, falling to one knee. She clutched a fistful of Fiddlin’ Katy’s red-gold tumble of hair and lifted her face from the dirt. Katy’s lips were still moving, and caked with blood and dust. Kiszoon would have smiled beneath her leathern mask, if she could. The flowers of the clustering star-daisy, minced and steeped, make a tea said to promote slumber, she thought, and without looking brought her knife to Katy’s throat.

Before she could draw the blade across, there came a roaring across the sky. Alchemical fire rushed overhead in a blazing arc from the northeast, and the scrabbling of unseen legs that had been growing ever nearer and ever clearer broke forth into a clattering like hail. An aggrieved bellow rang through the badlands, echoing down the length of the arroyo.

In her mindless state, Kiszoon faltered; Thrivewood is the hardest of timbers, she thought, and for an instant consciousness flickered and threatened to flare. Then came again the acrid whistle of flames, and a hissing shriek of pain that seemed to vibrate from the stones themselves—and then a triumphant whoop from a smaller voice, nearer by. Too near by.

Kiszoon jerked her head to one side, frozen in panic; then Fiddlin’ Katy, pinioned beneath her, gave a great rattling gasp and bucked convulsively. Kiszoon dropped the knife. Katy found purchase enough to roll herself over, and drove her knee up into Kiszoon’s belly

Kiszoon toppled backwards, winded. Her senses returning unbidden, she saw that though the saltimbanco still lay sprawled and heaving for breath, the Mélif apostate had come to himself enough to draw his sword. The scream of the eight-eyed spy was receding, along with its footsteps; but its trap was broken, and another tread was approaching from the north, bringing with it the smell of fire. She hesitated for a moment, shivering in animal terror; then she broke and bolted away to the east, bounding over the rocks.

Fiddlin’ Katy snatched up the fallen knife from where she lay, and hurled it. Kiszoon’s retreating figure crested the boulders like driftwood bobbing in a riptide. The knife flashed past her in the air, and she vanished into the rocky maze.

Katy started unsteadily to her feet, lungs burning for air but clear in her head. Pismire was helping her stand when a voice they knew cried, “Hoy-hoy!”

They turned to see Quiñones, grinning savagely and stinking of smoke, making his way into the circle of stones. His hardshell jacket glittered in the noonday sun. Katy was too breathless and dumbfounded to speak, but Pismire gasped, “Enemy to the east, Captain!”

Without breaking stride, Quiñones sprang to the top of the highest boulder in the ring. bringing his hands together, he sent a fireball arcing out into the distance. As it exploded some way off, he jumped down and disappeared from sight.

Pismire turned to Katy. “Are you all right?”

She grimaced. “I’m panting like I’ve run to Cathedral and back,” she said, “but my mind is my own again. Do you know what happened? Do you remember how we got here?”

Pismire winced. “Only bits and bobs,” he said. “Something—some predator—tried to snare us in our own thoughts. To turn our minds into a trap for our bodies.” He exhaled hard. “My heart is racing. I think it knows it was nearly stopped, just now.”

“Was it her with the knives? Some trick of hers?”

“No,” Pismire said. “She only took advantage, I think, The snare was laid by something else.”

“Most travelers, they call him Crazy Eights,” called Quiñones. He was threading his way back through the boulders, and he carried Kiszoon’s knife in one smoking hand. “He has other names, but that’s the one I know. Very dangerous. He casts a wide net, and there’s very few can escape it. No doubt he took those gypsies, as well.” He stepped forward and clapped Pismire on the shoulder. “Gratia Imago you are well, my friends.”

“The thanks go to you, Captain,” said Pismire. “We were caught fast.”

“Did you get her?” blurted Katy.

Quiñones shook his head. “She is quick, that one. She lost herself in the rocks before I could do more than shoot blind.” He held out Kiszoon’s knife. There was blood along its edge. “But I think that you left her a remembrance, Mistress.”

“Who is she?” asked Pismire.

“Her people are called the Long-Livéd by some, though I do not know why. They have some technique to hide their minds from Crazy Eights—it is the great secret of their people. In this way, they scavenge on his leavings.”

“Then how did you escape?” asked Katy. “You were nearby us—why were you not caught as well?”

“Crazy Eights, he squeezes you. He snares you by reducing all your thoughts down to one. A most disorienting mode of thought, for most persons.” Quiñones smiled, and his smile gleamed like knives. “But for me, this is the natural state of things. I am a soldier, you see and I have, at all times, but a single thought: to kill. Now, come—I can answer your questions while we walk. It is unwise to remain here.”

More next week, along with interim reports, process talk, and even reader mail!

As always—thanks for reading.

Posted 9:54 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

33. Becalmed

So long did her strange dreams linger, singing, that Fiddlin’ Katy could not name the moment she passed from sleep into waking. Even as her dream faded, still she lay with its sounds and sensations turning idly inside her head, though she felt and heard them no more. She lay a long time before she knew again the feel of her garrison blanket, or the tramp of Pismire’s boots, or the smell of food.

Her head ached. With some effort she opened her eyes, raising a hand to shield them. Pismire had set two bowls beside her with hot tea and porridge. “Another day above ground,” she said; he turned and smiled. She looked to the sky. “Mid-morning already!” she cried. “Pismire, you said you’d wake me before dawn!”

“I thought I should let you sleep,” he said. “We’ve had a weary march, and you took the longest watch, in the darkest hours of the night. It only seemed right.”

Katy sipped at her tea. “I hope I don’t give you reason to regret your kindness.”

“Many things in my life I regret. But kindness? Never.”

“D’you want to get a few hours’ kip before we set off? You must be exhausted.”

“Thank you, no. I may have a doze when we stop for mid-day. Right now, I want to move one, just as soon as you’re ready.” His jaw was clenched. “I’m worried about the ground we’re covering. We should be to the bend in the river by now.”

“You’re assuming the map is altogether accurate, and we’ve no reason to believe it is,” said Katy through her last mouthful of porridge. “And it’s only been four days, after all.”

“Four days, and we’re not yet halfway,” Pismire said. “Distance and time are against us.”

Fiddlin’ Katy shrugged, Katy did. “There never has been anything for us—leastways, nothing but luck,” she said. She stood up, rather unsteadily, and winced. “¡Maldito Imago! My head is pounding.”

“You should drink something cool,” said Pismire, then added, “There’ll be no more fresh water once we get to the riverbend.”

Katy stooped and started to roll up her blanket. “A walk is what I need,” she said. “I’ve got a tune hooked in my ear, is all. A few hours on the trail will shake it loose.”

Pismire was scuffing out the cookfire. “Would I know it?” he asked.

“I’ve never heard it myself, but for in my dream,” she said. “I dreamt we were back in that stevedore’s tavern, on the harborside—you know the one—myself and Papa Longshanks, the harvestman, playing this sort of piangente—a song of lamentation, in a slow three.” She cocked her head and shrugged. “It’s a dream that everyone has had who’s ever turned her hand to an instrument. But it wasn’t the sort of music one usually hears in dreams, that’s gone the moment you open your eyes.”

“You remember the tune still?”

“That’s the curious thing. I recall the placement of my hands in every motion. If I took out my rebequin right now, I fancy it would fall under my fingers easy as anything.” She glanced at her rucksack and bit her lip. “And testigo Imago, I’m tempted sore to do it.”

“Another time, perhaps,” said Pismire, shouldering his own pack. “We need to cover some distance.”

They set out, keeping entirely to the high ground east of the arroyo. The grasses had grown sparse and stunted, and no trees grew. Horizon to horizon was rock and thorn and thistle and pounded mud. The heat lay flat upon them as the sun continued its climb; there was no rumor of breeze. The air seemed heavy, as with the expectation of storms, though the day was cloudless.

Fiddlin’ Katy could not find a comfortable stride. Her feet kept slipping into the too-slow cadence of the dream-tune jingling endlessly in her head, until she would dash her toe or flummox herself on the odd three-step, lurching forward, almost stumbling. She scrambled for footing, trying to shake herself out of her daze.

After a while, she found herself half-a-click behind Pismire, and raced to catch him up. Falling into step beside him, she said, “At least there’s been no sign of trouble.”

“Aside from the bodies of seven dead,” he said, and he did not turn to face her.

“No fresh sign, I meant.”

He said nothing, but walked on, searching the horizon with dark and fretful eyes. “I mislike this,” he said at last. “We knew there would be danger, but I did not expect it so close to the towns. I did not expect to see it before the halfway mark. Not before the riverbend.”

Katy had no answer to this, and so they walked on. The day was very hot now, and she began to sweat. The grade was sloping upwards again. Their path was strewn with great rocks cropping up from the earth. They had to slow down to wind around the rocks; Katy found it hard to alter her pace, to uncouple her steps from the circular rhythm of the lament. Mi, re-do-re, mi-re-do-do... Mi, re-do-re, mi-re-do-do, la...

She stopped for a moment to rest, leaning against a boulder. The air seemed close; she couldn’t properly get her breath. She trudged a few steps forward, bumping into Pismire; he was stopped, staring straight ahead.

“We’ve lost the arroyo,” he said.

Katy looked around her. The path led through a labyrinth of rocks. Everywhere she looked was a jumble of boulders. She could no longer see the cliffside opposite—only rock and sky.

“The river,” said Pismire. “The bend in the river.”

“Should we keep on?” she said. She struggled for breath; her head was throbbing. “Keep going and hope it clears out? Or look for another way?”

“Turn around?” Pismire did not turn his head.

She came around to face him, and in his eyes she saw only confusion. The lament still unspooled in her skull. “Turn around,” she said through the music. There was something else she meant to say, but she could not remember. “The turnaround,” she said.

He stared at her.

“Where the melody changes,” she said. “I’m not sure which—if it’s the tonic or the four—the grace note—is it the third, or the fourth?”

“The fourth?” he said dully. “We’ve done the fourth, surely. But not the half. Not yet.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but she could not think over the sound of the tune pounding in her brain. She tried to speak, but only music came out. “Mi-fa sol re-do, la re-do, sol re-do-do,” she sang.

“Four days, and not yet halfway,” said Pismire beside her. “Two more days, and we shall not be three-quarters there.”

Katy had her hands pressed to her ears. “No, listen to me—that’s not what I meant, that’s wrong,” she gasped. She groped for the words. “Mi-fa sol re-do, la fa-do, sol re-do-do,” she sang, and for a moment she was free of it. “One! Four! One!” she shouted. “Pismire! Run! Get out of here!”

“Another day, and not yet seven-eighths,” he said. There was no sign that he had heard her. “And by noon of the next, not yet fifteen-sixteenths.”

“Mi-fa sol re-do, la fa-do,” Katy sang, “Sol re-do, di...” The high note was barely a sigh.

“Mid-afternoon... three hours... still one thirty-second and more...”

“Li... la...” Katy managed a single great, hitching breath, like a sob. “Sol re do do, ti do mi re do do.”

And then she could sing no more, but only move her lips, silently mouthing the syllables. She had fallen at some point, all unaware, and lay sprawled in the dust at Pismire’s feet. He was slumped against a boulder, whispering numbers and choking for breath: Two hundred and fifty... five of two hundred... fifty... six... But soon he, too, fell silent.

And through the pounding of her blood in her ears, through the endless circular grind of the lament, Fiddlin’ Katy could just hear the sound of something coming through the maze of rocks, the scrabble of something big and hungry, coming for them on many legs.

More next week...

Posted 2:18 PM by Jack Feerick |  1 comments

Fiction Friday Special: Sorrowful Mysteries

A quite peculiar national trait in Norway is solving crimes during Easter. Publishers churn out series of books known as "Easter-Thrillers" or Påskekrimmen. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides!

Two figures, one tall and one short, stride out of the darkness of a gloomy Friday afternoon, out of the city of Jerusalem and up the slope called the Hill of Skulls. A warm breeze off the Mediterranean stirs the tall man’s greatcoat to flap around him like the wings of a hawk. He pauses, holds out a hand; the shorter man bustles forward with a cigarette-case. The flare of a lucifer-match reveals the predatory features and glinting aristocratic monocle of the master ratiocinator himself: it is the great Norwegian detective Trygve Helqvist, along with his trusty manservant Jens, far from home and grappling with the most baffling case of his illustrious career!

Who Killed Jesus of Nazareth?
(a Trygve Helqvist mystery)

The man was already dead by the time Helqvist and Jens reached the hilltop. The cross had been taken down, and a crowd of onlookers was gathered. “Don’t move!” barked Helqvist. “This is a crime scene, and until further notice you are all under suspicion.” He turned to his hunched manservant. “Come, Jens. Let’s get a look at the victim.”

At the foot of the cross knelt an elderly man, cradling the dead man in his arms. “You! Old man!” snapped Helqvist. “Who are you, and what is your relationship with the deceased?”

“I am Joseph of Arimathea,” said the old man. “This Jesus of Nazareth, is... was... my friend. I came to cart the body away, to prepare it for burial.”

“Perhaps you have, and perhaps you haven’t,” mused Helqvist. “In any case, I will examine the body first.” He knelt down to look over the dead man, his monocle gleaming. “Take this down, Jens: deceased, Jesus of Nazareth. Palestinian male, between thirty and thirty-five years old. The body shows signs of torture on the extremities and back, and a large puncture in ventral abdomen—most likely from a spear-thrust.”

“The fatal wound, surely!” Jens ejaculated, scribbling furiously in his notebook.

“That’s a lie,” growled a nearby voice. A burly Roman centurion stepped between Helqvist and the dead man. “This man was a Jewish heretic, and we executed him by the book. You shouldn’t go sticking your nose into Roman government business, gumshoe.”

“And is it government policy to execute criminals by sticking them with spears?” said Jens.

“Forgive my dimwitted assistant, centurion,” said Helqvist. “The blood-spatter indicates that you are telling the truth—that the victim was already dead when stabbed. But it is a curious procedure, you must admit.”

The centurion looked uncomfortable. “You’ll have to ask my lieutenant about that. Longinus!” he called. “Tell the Norwegian what happened.”

Longinus, an awkward youth in an ill-fitting helmet, stepped forward. “We crucified him just as usual, sir. It’s just that he died so quick—well, it seemed odd to me, so I thought I’d best make sure he was really dead.”

“So there you have it,” said the centurion. “Official cause of death, suffocation due to crucifixion. All by the book. You’ve got no case, Helqvist.”

“Perhaps not,” replied the hawkish sleuth coolly. “But is crucifixion the usual punishment for heresy?”

“Well, no,” muttered the centurion. “The official charge was treason.” He leaned close. “Just between you and me, the locals was really putting the screws to Governor Pilate. Old Joseph, he’ll tell you. He’s in with them Sanhedrin. The deceased was getting up their noses something fierce, strutting around calling himself the Son of God.”

“Surely he was!” piped up Longinus.

The centurion rolled his eyes. “See what I have to deal with?”

Helqvist simply nodded. “I have no further questions at this time, centurion. But don’t leave town.” He turned next to a big man who sat on a nearby rock, weeping. “What’s your name, fellow?”

The big fellow turned his tear-stained face upwards. “P-Peter,” he said.

Helqvist’s monocle twinkled. “I advise to answer my question truthfully, sir. What is your real name?”

The burly man winced. “Simon. My name is Simon. He called me Peter.”

“The dead man?”

“Yes. He was my teacher, and my friend. And what he said was true; he was the Son of God.” Simon hung his head. “Although I denied it, to save my own skin.”

“How many associates did this man have?”

“Many believed, but there were only twelve of us who traveled with him,” said Simon. “Although one betrayed him. It was one of our own, Judas Iscariot, who turned him over to the Romans. He didn’t even resist.” He broke down in tears again. “He said it was all God’s plan.”

“Another piece of the puzzle,” mused Helqvist. “Very well, Simon Peter. Do not leave Jerusalem; I may wish to question you again.”

Back at the inn, Jens said, “It seems a complex conspiracy, Master. The Jewish Sanhedrin, fearing the growing influence of the man Jesus, planted a spy in his camp, this Judas fellow. That Arimathean is a follower of his, but he was powerless to stop them. As he continued to inconvenience them, the Sanhedrin sought to have him put to death. Lacking the authority to execute anyone themselves, they used Pilate as their cat’s-paw, pressuring him to write a trumped-up treason charge.”

“Oh, my simple-minded manservant,” laughed Helqvist. “You are overlooking one simple fact—this was murder! And in that fact lies the clue to the identity of the murderer. In fact, I have reason to believe that the killer is in this very room!”

How did Helqvist know? Turn the page over for the answer!

Posted 8:25 AM by Jack Feerick |  0 comments

“Holy Smokes” for $800, Alex

I just got a callback from the Jeopardy people about the online test I took, more or less on a lark. I’ve got an in-person audition in six weeks.

What is THE FUCK?!?

Posted 8:59 AM by Jack Feerick |  7 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

32. In The Watches Of The Morning

Quiñones could not sleep. The drinkingrooms had barred their doors, and the teamsters and merchants had been turned out to doss down on such beds or benches as they could scrounge. The hostel was crowded to overflowing. The landlord had doused the common-room fire and thrown down blankets and straw over the floorplanks. There were even a few on the porch, stripped to the waist (for the night was warm) and sleeping under their cloaks, with their bundled shirts for pillows.

Quiñones stood alone on the boardwalk, leaning against a porchbeam, watching the buildings opposite. From nearby, a child cried out softly, troubled in her sleep; behind the shuttered windows, a candle flared, breaking the dark face of the house with hairlines of light, and Quiñones heard a voice, soft and gentle, though he could not make out the words. Then the light faded, and all was still again.

He sighed to himself, and padded up the boardwalk to the ostler’s. He listened for a while to the snoring and chuff of the beasts in their stalls, smelling the provender’s sweet grassiness and the sharp green notes of manure. In the mountain distance, thunder husked like the dragging of heavy chains, though the sky was clear. The animals hardly stirred in their slumber.

Quiñones ground his bootheel in the packed earth of the ostler’s yard. He wished he had not drunk so much; he wished that he had drunk more. A wagon train had pulled in at noontime with a carriage full of Emeth maids bound, rumor had it, for domestic service among the Hamazakaran of the west. Away from their duties in their stolid little villages and crofts, the Emeth grow, if not merry precisely, then surely less tedious; and the maidens made a fine appearance. Greeting them at the eatinghouse, escorting them afterwards to the shebeen, Quiñones had appraised their stocky bodies, their broad unsmiling peasant faces, and found them not without beauty. He had charmed them, inasmuch as they could be charmed—that is, to the point of benign indifference—and he might have had one, perhaps even had them by twos and threes; they were a Sharing People, after all. But his heart had not been in it, and in the end he had bade them goodnight and gone off to drink elsewhere.

He wondered, with a brief jab of regret, if the maids had felt betrayed when his flattery and graces came to naught. It had not occurred to him before that they might. After all, he was only a soldier, and no better than he should be; he had never given anyone reason to expect from him fidelity or virtue, or even to suppose him capable of such.

Why, then, should the saltimbanco and her silent friend think differently? And yet Quiñones had allowed himself to believe they might. Had he so thoroughly misread them?

Or had they, perhaps, read him too well? For Quiñones was not so drunk as to no longer know his own heart; and he knew that, had their positions been reversed, he would have done the same. Straight dealing, the exchange of confidences, even affection; these are not reason enough, he thought, for trust—particularly when a great work is on the mine. And Quiñones suspected that whatever the outcome of Pismire’s mission to Cathedral, it would entail great works indeed. Perhaps the greatest this world had yet seen.

And so Quiñones could not dismiss this lost opportunity with a gibe or a curse. He knew what he had lost, and why. He was not drunk enough not to know this. And mightily he wished he was. He wandered back out into the street and was pondering the wisdom of pounding on the door of the dramshop until the keeper gave him a bottle when he heard, from far off, the sound of approaching riders.

And at that, Quiñones was a soldier again. Making pell-mell for the town center, he looked about him for a vantage point. He sprang to the top of the pumphouse. From the cupola, he scanned such horizon as he could.

The moon was down long since; but the sky was showing the first gray edges of the coming dawn. Quiñones looked to the northern roadspur leading into town, and he could just make them out—five or six riders, in tight formation, armed and riding under banners. They were still a few clicks off, but covering ground fast.

There was no time for Quiñones to arm himself, and little point in raising an alarm. He let himself down from the roof of the pumphouse, then stepped in the open front and set to working the handle. He drew a bucket of fresh water and plunged his face into it. The water was very cold. Quiñones drank long and deep, and washed his face and hands; then, raking his fingers through his hair to comb it, he sauntered up the boulevard to meet the riders at the outskirts of town.

He walked about a half-click out past the ostler’s, his hands and face drying in the warm night air as he went, to where there was nothing but scrub and rocks bordering the hardpacked mud of the road. And there he stood and waited, with his arms by his sides and his hands empty and open.

The riders came hard upon him, and for a moment Quiñones thought they might trample him, either for speed or for spite. But the lead rider called halt, and the beasts clattered to a stop so close that he could feel their breath upon him. He could see them better, though it was still dark; black on black, tall, with finely-molded features. Four maids and two bravos. Their pennants were blank, showing no device, and in the half-light they looked pale gray, almost white. Their mounts were armored above, and they wore greaves and breastplates, with helmets slung on their saddles. Three of the maids carried pikes, and all bore Mélif battleswords. A war party, to be sure.

Quiñones gave no ground; he took not a single step backward, but hailed them as if they were all walking in the street of a pleasant afternoon. “Hoy-hoy!” he cried. “If you have town business, you’d do best to ride on. Folk in these parts don’t rise ‘til the sun’s high, I’m afraid. But keep on south and you’ll make on of the market towns by the time any decent hour rolls around.”

The lead rider flipped back the hood. Her cloak seemed colorless, like the banners. “Are ye some elder of this place, sent to negotiate with us?” she said.

“Me?” Quiñones waved a hand. “I’m just a kindly soul, bearing a word of advice to the weary traveler.” He smiled, and even in the dark his teeth glistened. “Ride on. You will find no rest here.”

From the rear of the pack, one of the bravos said, “He fears us.” His voice was sleepy and toneless.

Quiñones made a noise of impatience. “Are not the armies of the Mélif to be feared?” he said. “Is not the Regina a great power upon the earth? Her hand gives, and it takes. But there is nothing for it to take, here. This place has for itself not even a name. And so, in kindness, I counsel you; ride on.”

One of the maids hefted her pike, but the lead rider held up a hand. “We seek not rest, kind soul. But we think ye know that a’ready, don’t thee?”

“What you seek is none of my wax, Lady,” said Quiñones. “Only where you seek it.”

“And where, then, shall we seek him who is thy master?” She smiled down at him from her saddle, and her smile was maddening. “Do not seek to deceive us. We know that his hand, too, extendeth far, and thou art but a tool in his grasp. Tell us, then—where is he?”

If it was a bluff, it was the best Quiñones had ever seen. He felt cold, though the night was warm. “You will not find him here,” he said. “He has hidden himself in a place of safety—”

“Coward,” growled the bravo.

“He has hidden himself in a place of safety,” Quiñones repeated, “until he can determine the Regina’s purpose. He has left me as his intermediary.” Quiñones made a little bow. “You have guessed me right, Milady. I am sent to negotiate. But not with such as you.”

As one, the riders directed their pikes at Quiñones. “Have a care, little soldier,” said the warmaid.

“Have I given offense, Lady? Think on this, then. My Master has sent for envoys, to negotiate a settlement between your Nation and himself without the use of force. And you, you band of brigands—” They were snarling at him now, and their beasts were pawing the ground; but Quiñones raised his voice indignantly. “You are the ambassadors I am to receive, and swords and pikes your diplomacy! Now tell me: who has cause for offense?”

The warmaid ignored him, and turned to her riders. “If the apostate has taken to these hills, he cannot live for long without provisions. We shall cut his supply lines and starve him out. Make ready thy fire.” She reached down to the pommel of her saddle and raised her helmet. “Seize the town. Kill anything that lives. Sequester any foodstuffs, and burn everything else.”

Quiñones closed his eye for a moment. There are two ways of solving any problem, he thought. And I have tried the first. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the pikehead sliding through the air towards his heart.

Quiñones slipped down and to the side, bending his left knee. As the pike cleft past his ear, he shot his other foot out towards the lead beast’s foreleg. He felt the impact juddering up his thigh, the distinctive splintering of bone beneath his boot; then he clutched the haft of the pike with both hands and launched himself backwards, pulling the pikemaiden from her mount. She landed hard in the road, and an instant later was pinned when the lead rider’s beast collapsed on top of her. There was an odd liquid popping as her ribs snapped.

While the lead rider was scrambling to dismount from her stricken animal, Quiñones, still holding the pike, swung it wrong way ‘round and smashed her head in. The pikehandle came to splinters on her helmet. She jerked once, and died.

The broken beast had not yet had time to scream.

For an instant, the four remaining riders were frozen, the maids with their pikes, the bravos with their hands on their sword-pommels, banners dropped heedless at the roadside, the bodies of their fellows crushed, shattered in the road, and Quiñones, swaying, clutching the shivered pikestick. Then the wounded animal set up a bawling, and they spurred their mounts to rear and retreat. Quiñones righted himself, planted his feet, and raised his hands before him.

The riders pulled back perhaps a hundred yards, then turned their mounts. All put on their helmets, and the bravos drew their swords; then, with weapons lowered, they charged Quiñones at full gallop. He stood his ground and waited, with hands raised.

The sky was lightening, and the grey half-light shone dully on Mélif steel. The air rang with hoofbeats and the shriek of panicked animals. Quiñones was quite still. Though he made no outward motion, deep inside him something stirred; and around each of his outstretched hands, a sort of vapor began to coalesce—a broiling mist, such as rises off a lake on a cool morning. The vapors swirled separately around each hand, not yet mixing, each giving off an unpleasant, alchemical smell—acrid around the left hand, and on the right bitter. The riders were perhaps thirty feet away; they broke into an attack formation, the pikemaids pounding ‘round to flank him left and right.

And Quiñones brought his hands together.

Where the two vapors mingled in the air, there erupted an enormous plume of fire. Quiñones brought his hands apart, each now wreathed in flames, and made a sweeping two-handed gesture towards the charging Mélif. Great streaming jets of flame rushed towards them, incinerating beasts and riders together, burning blue and then white.

The Mélif screamed, but they did not scream for long.

For a while the only sound was the crackle of the flames; then came Quiñones’s footsteps as he turned and headed back towards the way station. He glanced over his shoulder at the fire, like orange ribbons, fluttering among the charred bones heaped along the road. “These negotiations are concluded,” he said to no one.

Then he walked on, his steps quickening, into the red dawn of a new day.

More next week...

Posted 8:35 AM by Jack Feerick |  2 comments

Fiction Friday: The Honeythief
(late, I know, but lateness is the least of its problems)

More about Fiction Friday
More about The Honeythief
Read previous chapter here. Read an updated synopsis here.

31. The Burying Ground

They made their way out of town while the sun was still high, using the arrival of a merchant caravan as their cover. The walked among the provender-carts and in the tracks of the beasts as the wagons rolled in, hundreds strong, and it was as if they were swimming against a strong current.

Soon the rear guard fell behind, and the cries and curses of the drovers and the clack of the buckboards faded. They cut away from the road and made for the hills south of town; before long the way station itself was lost to sight, and they were quite alone—for all that they looked always over their shoulders.

The hills rose up gently, their slopes purple with heather. The afternoon was hot; the harvest would be in soon. But the clean smells of the heath took the taste of the road-dust from their noses, and in time they felt at ease once more, with the grass under their new boots.

By evening they had reached the high plains, shadowing the edge of the dry riverbed. The nights were growing longer, but their way was lit by the three-quarters moon, and by the tentpoles of dry lightning that blew up in the east. In the hours between moonset and dawn they rested on a promontory, watching the blazing spears that leaped up from the earth, lighting the countryside for miles around, catching it in frozen flashes, the terrain burned into their eyes in weirdly glowing afterimages.

Morning found them walking in ragged, half-tame meadows that might have once been tilled earth, fallow only a few years and given way to witch-grass and teasel and scrub maple. It was easy to imagine neat rows of alfalfa and cabbages, creaking farmsteads; but there was no sign of any living soul—no houses, no woodsmoke, no wheelruts or trampled footsteps in the clover and wildflowers.

Walking, they found their conversation faltering for long stretches. In all the days they had traveled together previously, the silences had never felt heavy or awkward; but now Fiddlin’ Katy found herself thinking again of Quiñones. Before their layover at the way station, Katy had almost forgotten the pleasures of conversation between Solitaires—not least a certain fullness of attention. For all her comfort with Pismire, she was aware that he was forever half-listening for some voice that she could not discern. Knowing that he, too, was cut off from that voice did nothing to ease her frustration that he was not, could not be, entirely and unreservedly present in their dialogue. Quiñones, for all his bluster and sarcasm, was vibrantly, resplendently there; and in the long marches of the day, in the vast unpeopled loneliness of that place, she found she missed his company.

They saw no sign of people until the third day, when, in the drowsy heat of afternoon, they came upon the graves.

They had edged down out of the hills so as to walk in the shade of the cliffside. Fiddlin’ Katy was at the rear, adjusting her longlegged stride to match Pismire’s. She could tell he was growing footsore, and in deference to his pride was about to call for a rest herself, when he called back, “Something ahead. Around the next bend. Stay sharp.”

They shuffled east, swinging away from the rockface to try top gain a view ahead until Katy felt quite exposed. She raised her eyes to scan the clifftops, loading a bullet into her slingpouch and wishing, not for the first time, for an arquebus in her hand; sidling close up to Pismire, she whispered, “What is it?”

“Not sure,” he whispered back. His hand was on his word, but he had not yet drawn. “A smell. Or a feeling.” They were rounding the bend. Pismire glanced up, then ahead. “Be as may it’s nothing. Still, I thought—”

But Katy never heard what Pismire had thought, for it was then that they saw a sort of alcove in the cliff-face, and a number of mounds there. They walked nearer, and saw that someone had piled up stones into heaps waist-high, each about eight feet long and four wide. There were seven altogether, all oriented longwise, with enough room to walk between them.

“Burial cairns,” said Katy.

Pismire nodded. “None too old, either. The smell of death is still on them. Ten days gone, maybe less.” He crouched down to examine the nearest rockpile. “Were these left as a warning, d’you reckon?”

Fiddlin’ Katy shook her head. “I don’t think so. Seems a lot of trouble, just to put the frighteners on us. No,” she said, “I think their own people buried them here.”

“Natives of this place?”

“Travelers, more likely.” she said. “A caravan passes through, some of them are carried off by plague—”

“Or something else,” he murmured darkly.

She grimaced. “I was trying not to think of that, but yes—some creepy-crawly takes them in the night, and their fellows lay them to rest as best they can.” She was looking at the walls of the alcove, all hewn with marks of picks and chisels there. “See here—they didn’t have enough stones to cover them all, so they hacked them right out of the rockface. It’s done with respect, but it’s a rush job nonetheless.”

As she talked, Pismire was walking among the cairns. He stooped down and picked something up. “Look at this,” he said. He held out a torn strip of cloth—a blanket weave in wide stripes of black and rusty orange.

Katy took it from his hand. “I’ve seen these colors,” she said. “That’s Elishev. They’re a gypsy clan out of the south—call themselves the Inheritors of the Oath. They run a trade in woollies.”

“Then that is who is buried here.”

“Most likely, yes.” Fiddlin’ Katy sighed. “It’s a pity. The Elisheva are usually most particular about how their dead are handled.”

“They lay them in the earth?”

Katy nodded. “Before that, though, they wrap the bodies—swaddle them in clean linen. One time up north, I met a drunken leafcutter told me about it. The Elishev, he says, believe the body should stay whole and sheltered, sleeping in the ground, so that one day—when their Oath is held fulfilled, he says—they should be transformed, and burst out of their coverings, out of the ground.”

Pismire frowned. “Transformed how? And what is their Oath?”

Katy smiled. “Sacred mysteries of the clan, Master Pismire. None know but the Elishev themselves, and they’re not telling.” She looked away over the cairns, piled in three neat rows. “It must have been awful for them,” she said. “Leaving their fellows here like this, without a proper burial.”

He did not answer. A wind was picking up from the north, hushing down the arroyo and drying the sweat on their faces. They stood there very quietly for some time, til Pismire said, “I do not believe we are in immediate danger. We should move on.” He shouldered his satchel. “Let’s cross to the hills, and keep the riverbed below us.”

They climbed for a stretch, working their way up the slope. When they reached the top, Katy glanced over her shoulder; the burial cairns looked already very far away. They strode on through swales of thistlegrass and stands of scrub oak and sycamore; and after they had walked a couple of clicks, the cairns were lost behind a bend in the trail.

It was hard going. The grass was high and coarse, and with no trail to speak of, pushing through it was like parting an endless succession of beaded curtains. They slowed to a trudge. “We burn our dead,” said Katy, quite out of nowhere. “My people. The saltimbancos, I mean. Burn our dead.” She paused. “Well. When we find them, I mean.”

Pismire said nothing; but Katy went on, racing her words ahead of her thoughts so as to not say what she was thinking.

“We travel each to his own,” she said. “And when one saltimbanco runs across another, we just nod and pass by. We have not the traditions of you Sharing Peoples.” She plucked a wild daisy as she walked, tugged at its petals one by one. “But if we’re one of us a-dying, that’s our one obligation—to stay, and see that the fellow finds his way to the bone-fire. It is an understanding that we have. I would not...”

Katy faltered. All the silver had fled from her tongue. “I should be greatly troubled, were I prevented from honoring that promise. Troubled in my heart.”

“We should set a guard tonight,” said Pismire. “We ought to take it in shifts to sleep, if there is something lurking about.”

Fiddlin’ Katy flung away the daisy-stem, and sighed. They walked on.

The sun was hot, but the northern breeze blew cool on their backs. With every click they walked, the grass and the trees thinned and grew sparser, receding like the tail end of an ocean breaker where it dissolves into bubbles. A tidal landscape, rising and falling, and silence crashing in waves.

After a while, he said, “The Mélif are reputed to have great mastery of the arts of embalming. Did you know that?”

Katy was caught short. “No,” she said. “I’ve never heard the tale.”

“There are stories,” said Pismire, “that ages ago, in the morning of the world, when the Apiary was just a single tower and its top still within sight from the ground, that a vast beast came one day to destroy the Mélif nation. “It came from outside, swooping down, enormous, a thing unlike any seen in all the nations—a hurricane of wings and talons and snapping jaws. It smashed its way into the tower of the Apiary, and became lodged there, thrashing and killing. It wrought great destruction, near to sundering the foundations of the Apiary. And the foundations of the Apiary are deep, deep within the earth.” He spoke in an offhand, absent manner.

“And when it was finally brought down, with many swords, at the loss of many lives, its carcass could not be removed, so vast was it. The very bones of the thing were so great that they could not be broken and carted away. There were no saws, and no chisels, that could dismember it. And its body was lodged within the structure of the Apiary itself.

And so our art was brought to bear. And our people preserved the body of this monstrous creature; stilled its rot with spikenard, and sealed it with propolis and wax. We entombed it within the heart of the Apiary, and on the foundation of this corpse was the Apiary built—was our empire built. On this great body, its decay forever arrested.”

He shook his head and sighed. “But we do not often practice this art upon our own. We are a roaming people, the Mélif, and we do not die in our beds. When death comes for us, we are expected to go abroad and meet it where it comes—in battle, or out a-foraging. And we are content, for the most part, to rot where we fall.”

“But the Mélif roam no more,” said Katy.

“No,” he said, still with a vague, faraway tone. “There is no place now for the dying to go—although many of the old people now when they feel their health failing, they will try to leave the city. And her guards slay them, and throw the bodies on the pile. And when there are too many, and the air has grown unwholesome, they burn the pile where it lies and leave the ashes for the wind; or some few will dig a pit, as for a latrine, and fling them in with lashings of quicklime, and cover them over. The Mélif nation,” he said, “was founded on rot, and the rot goes all through it now.”

He fell silent, and they kept walking. They saw no sign of travelers. They saw no sign of predators. By and by, they stopped to rest, and ate and drank in silence.

When they had been silent nearly an hour, Fiddlin’ Katy asked, “What are you thinking?”

Pismire looked at her. “I believe I am thinking the same thing you are thinking,” he said.

And he looked away.

Katy hung her head, and looked long and hard at the badlands below her, and at the thinning forest around her. And she was thinking: We should not have come here alone.

And beneath the darkening, unblinking dome of the sky, above the dry wash, with everything unpeopled from horizon to horizon, they seemed alone indeed.

But they were not. For eyes were watching them.

And eyes were watching.

And eyes were watching.

More next week...

Posted 2:14 PM</