—Yes, you are a poisoner, just as Folau was. Two kinds come as seekers to Isatabu: healers and poisoners. Only the poisoners come to where the swamp-witch is. The man who made the rattan bride—he, too, came here.

Just as we got set to cast off, I spied something in the water, and the boat sensed it too: flick of a palm-leaf tail. And we were off, so fast that the pots of tea leapt from the table and were on me like freezing rain and I was on the floor. The merchant yelled louder, shouting at me to stop it, but what could I do? I tried, pounding on the floor like a fool and saying no, no, not now! But I knew we'd go till the boat lost the fish—or caught it.

The General is apoplectic. He would yell, no doubt, and strike me, but he cannot afford to yell, and if he strikes me I might betray him, through my bruises if not my words. I see him realize also, with the shock of a man who is not used to being in this position, that he has no choice. If he wants Nakshedil dead, he must agree to my requests.

An undercurrent flowed that Semira couldn’t read: anger would be petty beside it, yet it was less animosity than the opposite, edged with fear and incredulity. What Aniver was suggesting was awesome and awful. And Semira, not being a wizard, didn’t understand half of it. She probably never would.

I used to dream of the heart our masters would give me; spend my days sketching rough cordiform shapes in the corners of Father's quota sheets and the backs of letters Mother sent from the front. I was sure all the other girls back at the Roost already had their hearts, that the Volant had carved each of them for a special purpose just as they'd carved my Mother, my Father, everyone but me.

It was dark as earth in the rafters. The rough beams on which I sat were painful, but I stayed still. Minutes later, the outer door opened. I would know her silhouette anywhere, even from above, even stretched and distorted by the angle of the moon; I knew Dipper almost as well as I knew myself. But now I knew her not at all.

We walked through the empty, echoing corridors of my family’s manor. I watched the Is flow by the manicured gardens where my ancestors had walked and dined. Through the wide windows of the manor’s upper levels, I looked for the shape of mountains in the distance, beyond the ivory teeth of the Capital’s broken walls. I wanted to go home.

The Doctor looked back at us, his expression equal parts contempt and amusement. "I accept your commission," he said. "Come back in a month, on the night before the dedication, and not before. You shall have your clockwork man. Whether the demon you have bargained with accepts him, well, that is not my affair."

Beneath the shop, Latch had to fight his way through a forest of dangling limbs. Hundreds of wooden arms and legs hung from the ceiling, fingers and toes low enough to brush Latch’s face as he pried his way through like some jungle explorer, all reaching out, grasping for him.

"No," Miriam said. But there had been pain. There had been terrible pain. She had bit down on a twisted sheet as her insides knotted, as the thing in her lurched and fought to live, flexing in the throes of their shared agony. It had gone on far too long, and she remembered thinking that either it must die soon, or she would.

They rose with the light and worked long into the sunrise clearing a space beneath the broken roof, like the hollow an animal makes in the bracken by circling itself to sleep. Unloading the wood-burner from the wagon and coaxing it into place against the chimney breast was harder, and the tear in Gwyn's shoulder tugged like wool caught in a wall.

It had been over ten years since Gort last heard that, chanted by children. Scare-song. Shiver at night: Stey who stripped a whole island of its flesh, Stey who wore it all and danced and finally tore off her own skin, Stey who was ripped to shreds, Stey who still stalked the islands. Teeth in the wind!

I was born a slave, like all of you. My master was a hoary old bull known as Ascaro, one of the Bull-King’s champions. Twenty feet high at the shoulders, and even past his prime he was a quick devil, though old trunk muscles were turning into fat.

I am an ugly thing of flesh and stone. My eyes, like glittering points of quartz, peer out from beneath the ridges, dark as coal, that protrude from my cheeks and forehead. I am my father’s son, poisoned by the same rituals that have turned his flesh to rock and that have already begun to do the same to me.

The other ghul came at them. Raseed sped past Adoulla, his forked sword slashing. The creature snaked left. The boy’s weapon whistled through empty air. The ghul drove its scaly fist hard into the boy’s jaw. It struck a second time, catching Raseed in the chest. Adoulla was amazed that the boy still stood.

“Of course I will come,” said the Dragon Queen. Her voice was muted beneath the layers of dark cloth that covered her, but a ripple of amusement sounded as she added, “I should hope my old friend has not forgotten my favorite blend, after all these decades. I shall be disappointed if there isn’t a fresh pot awaiting me.”

His grip tightens. He looks up at me with an honesty reserved for saints and the soon to be executed. "If you do this, it'll ruin you. Please, come back with me to the school, give up this alliance with the Empress, and together we can find a way to save the boy. Armila, please, this kind of murder, to one so young? You can't come back from that kind of corruption."

Perdita gripped Grandfather Mandrake’s shotgun and closed in on the slew with a cautious but unfaltering step. Whoever had been caught by it was still struggling, much to Perdita’s admiring surprise. She could see the dark red striae pulsing in its almost-body where it clung to the victim, leeching the lifeblood away in what she knew to be painful sips.

But the lock had finally crumbled, and the door had fallen open, and the nothing-garden beyond was revealed to her sacred eyes. Doors are only left open for her when they lead to every-day gardens that she can freely enter and exit, so she, poor innocent lamb, saw the newly open door and naively entered.

The crow kept watching me. Wherever I went, I could look up and see its eyes upon me. I didn’t realize that until I saw it out in the moon garden. It hopped up on the edge of the center urn and reached out, not with its beak, but with a foot. It took a purple berry in its talons and squeezed until juice oozed out over its claws.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z A Acks, Alex “The Book of Autumn” — in Issue #49, August 12, 2010 Ahmed, Saladin “Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride” — in Issue #43, May 20, 2010 “Where Virtue Lives” — in Issue #15, April 23, 2009 P...

I narrated a lovely story, Chris Willrich's "The Mote-Dancer and the Firelife" for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which is out today. - SF Short Stories - Google+

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