Khimairal Ink

Volume 7 Number 1

July, 2010

Stories by Vicki Stevenson Josh Roseman Jack Mulcahy Priscilla Rhoades

Khimarial Ink • 2

Volume 7 Number 1

Publisher Claudia Wilde Managing Editor Carrie Tierney Assistant Editor C.A. Casey Photos D. Clayton Layout T.J. Mindancer

ISSN 1939-3393 Khimairal Ink Magazine is published January, April, July, and October.

Š 2010 Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

July, 2010

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T

his is the fifth anniversary of Khimairal Ink and we’re still having a blast!

We’re proud of the accomplishments and opportunities this e-zine has generated. Some of our stories were chosen for the Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction 2008, edited by Fran Walker; we’ve had authors published here and then go on to sign book contracts; the e-zine web/PDF format has evolved to a unique page flipping one. We’ve had submissions from writers from different genres and continents. Khimairal Ink’s reader base has steadily increased to over 120,000 visits a year. Our baby is growing up and as with all teen-agers, growth pains and spurts are inevitable. We will continue to move Khimairal Ink forward with new staff and an easier to read format. We hope you’ll enjoy the changes and upgrades.

I have to admit, it’s a blast being the publisher of Khimairal Ink because I get to read the stories first! This month’s selections lean into the speculative fiction arena and finish with a slap of reality. Enjoy tales by first time contributors: Vicki Stevenson, Josh Roseman, Jack Mulcahy, and Pricilla Rhoades.

Good reading!

Enjoy!

Claudia

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Y

ep. We have a new look. One that is better suited to the Issuu format.

In other words, easier to read. We continue to get amazing submissions and are currently filling our 2011 issues with unique, excellent stories.

We have four new authors to Khimairal Ink in this issue. One author, Vicki Stevenson, is not new to Bedazzled Ink. She has a story in our popular anthology, Skulls & Crossbones: Tales of Women Pirates. She brings us a thought-provoking piece of alternate history. Josh Roseman takes us back to a brief but interesting time of air travel. Magic and healing are interwoven in a tale by Jack Mulcahy, that actually breaks the single requirement for a Khimairal Ink story. A lesbian is not the protagonist but we see the lesbian character from the protagonist’s point of view, and, in this case, makes for a compelling story. We go back in history again in Priscilla Rhoades’s story.

This time to San Francisco in the 1970’s.

Enjoy!

Carrie

Do you write stories that are positive, quirky, clever, funny, light, breezy?

Do you write stories that make us laugh, or at least smile a lot?

Do your stories stray from the garden path of expectation in amusing ways?

In other words, are your stories fun and original and entertaining and mayeven have an out-of-the-blue surprise or two or clever twists?

If “yes” to any of these questions, Nuance is looking for you. http://www.bedazzledink.com/nuance

Khimarial Ink • 5

Khimarial Ink • 6

Raise the sails!

Adjust the thrusters!

Skulls & Crossbones Tales of Women Pirates edited by Andi Marquette R.G. Emanuelle

Mindancer Press

http://bedazzledink.com/books/mindancer-press/skull-and-crossbones/

Read about the adventures of Torri and Kai Friends in High Place the first book of the Far Seek Chronicles Andi Marquette

Mindancer Press http://mindancerpress.wordpress.com/books/friends-in-high-places/

Khimarial Ink • 7

K

ylie stepped out of the airlock, removed her oxygen mask, and inhaled deeply. Within seconds, she sensed the excitement at the guard station.

“Hey, John,” she said as she placed her hand on the ID scanner. “What’s up?”

The young man in the impeccably starched uniform beamed. “Good news. The best, in fact. Homeland Security approved our proposal for Technology Containment. So the project won’t be suspended after all.”

“That’s great! I was starting to think they’d decided to cut us loose,” she said. She smiled at his innocent young face. He had no meaningful memory of life before the New Revolution of 2013. He didn’t miss what he’d never had. Lucky him.

He nodded happily. “Yeah, they cut it pretty close. I was sure we’d all be out pounding the pavement come month-end.”

“Looks like we’re safe for now,” she replied. “Later, John. Have a good one.”

“Back at ‘cha, Kylie.”

A sense of irony washed over her as she walked to the elevator. Despite his concern, gainful employment wasn’t really much of a problem for John Landers; security guards were needed everywhere. But it was definitely problematic for female particle physicists.

In the face of stressful academic and career demands, Kylie Donovan had thrived. Now in her forties, she was still vibrant and healthy. Despite the setbacks to women brought about by the New Revolution, she was one of the most respected physicists in the field. She was blessed with a supportive partner and two reasonably well-behaved teenage kids.

Under the New Revolution, the Revised Employment Practices Act mandated that a female could be employed in a professional position only if no qualified male was available. Starting in 2014, institutions of higher learning had been barred from enrolling women in science and math courses. With the exception of “secretarial science,” women had been excluded from business courses beginning the following year. The New

Khimarial Ink • 8 Revolution was fulfilling its promise of a long overdue return to traditional family values. In a few short years, the transition would be complete.

Bypassing her usual stop for coffee at the cafeteria on the second floor, Kylie exited the elevator on the fifth and went directly to her cubicle. She stashed her oxygen mask in the bottom drawer of her desk as she sat.

The imposing logo of Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation floated randomly around her computer monitor. She nudged her mouse to make it go away. Then she wished she hadn’t. Now visible at the bottom of the screen was the flashing icon indicating that someone on the Management Team had sent her a message.

Open sesame. Click. “Staff mtg 8:10 AM Conf Rm 5B. Attendance req’d for all members of Team Lightfoot. Johnson.” She glanced at the lower right corner of the screen. 8:05 AM. Although she was three minutes early, Kylie was the last member of Team Lightfoot to arrive. She slipped into one of the two remaining chairs at the long simulated walnut conference table and waited to be told the news that John Landers had given her a few minutes earlier. Glenn Johnson, the Team Leader, was seated at the head of the table.

“Kylie, I’m glad you finally made it,” said Glenn. “Carmen brought in all the coffee stuff, but Mr. Patterson needed her upstairs before she had a chance to serve it. Would you mind?”

It wasn’t the first such episode. Not surprisingly, Kylie was the only female on the technical staff of Team Lightfoot. She was actually second in command in terms of both seniority and title. But with Carmen temporarily unavailable, she was the only possible choice. For a male to serve coffee at a staff meeting, especially to a female staff member, would be unconscionable.

“Certainly,” she said. She distributed the cups, saucers, napkins, and spoons. She placed cream and sugar in the center of the table. She worked her way around the table with the coffee pot. She poured coffee for each of them, including the three trainees who were in the process of learning their jobs from her. One of the older men thanked her. The rest said nothing.

Glenn Johnson tapped on his coffee cup with his mechanical pencil.

“Okay, men. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that we’ve been given the green light for the project. That’s the good news. But it’s not all roses and clover, as you’ll soon see. Further work is contingent on complete compliance with the proposal for Technology Containment, which henceforth will be called the Technology Containment Act of Twentytwenty.”

Bob Hogan asked, “Will this compliance thing have much of an impact?”

When Hogan had joined the team the previous year, Kylie had quickly

Khimarial Ink • 9 pegged him as an aggressive up-and-comer whose idea of impressing the boss was to ask questions that were, in his opinion, extremely intelligent and insightful. Although he had never been able to grasp the concepts behind the project, he had somehow managed to hang on to his job.

“The impact should be minimal,” Glenn replied. “The Act is required reading as of right now. You can access it on the internal network server.

It’s your top priority—all of you. You’re not to do any further work until you read and understand it.” He paused, scowled at Kylie, then returned his attention to the group. “Kylie wrote most of it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, make sure she explains it to your satisfaction.”

Hogan turned to Kylie. “I’d like a brief summary.” It wasn’t a request. It was a command.

She smiled. “Certainly. As you know, Bob, Project Lightfoot is based on the recent finding in quantum physics that atoms aren’t matter, they’re actually processes. As you also know, one of the consequences is that electrons can move from one place to another without traversing space.”

Hogan’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over. “Until twenty-twelve, they thought that the speed of light, considered either as waves or particles, was limited by the requirement of physical movement to get from Point A to Point B. That led to the theory of worm holes as a possible way around the old limit.”

“Get to the goddamn point, Kylie.” It was Tom Patterson, her nemesis from before the New Revolution. He had never bothered to hide his resentment that even the success of the extreme Right at turning American politics on its ear, turning back women’s rights a hundred years to where they belonged, had still failed to get rid of Kylie Donovan and her fucking Ph.D. and her fucking academic prestige and her fucking 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for her discovery of matter as process.

Kylie smiled. “The point, Tom, is this. Even as far back as Einstein, the connection between matter and energy was common knowledge. By the middle of the twentieth century, every school kid knew about E equals m c squared with ‘m’ being matter, which they expressed as mass, and ‘c’ being the speed of light, which they considered a constant, and of course they expressed it in terms of distance and time. But when matter as process was finally understood in twenty-twelve, the previous limitations went out the window.”

Tom wished he hadn’t spoken out. He didn’t understand matter as process or any of its corollaries. Until some new guy came along who did, they were stuck with this smartass bitch who belonged at home raising kids and taking care of a husband . . . that she didn’t even fucking have.

“So the implications with regard to time are obvious,” Kylie continued.

She scanned the faces at the table. She had lost them all. Good. “And that’s

Khimarial Ink • 10 all the Technology Containment Act is about.” She shrugged. “Simple as that. So as you’ll see when you read it, the impact on us is tangential.”

“But if our goal is to move something faster than the speed of light,” Hogan said, jumping in for yet another shot at an insightful question, “how can we not be concerned with time?”

Kylie smiled. “As you know, Bob, Project Lightfoot is concerned with matter as process. In that context, we’re dealing with nanoseconds, at most.

Time in the conventional sense is immaterial. The difference between one second and one year is irrelevant.”

Hogan stared at his coffee cup and nodded.

“As you know,” she added for good measure. Sure you do, she thought as she stifled a laugh.

Glenn stepped in. “Thank you, Kylie. That was very sweet of you to share.” He turned to the group. “Now in light of our new directive, I think it’s time to review the individual areas of responsibility and reset our milestones . . .”

Kylie tuned out. Forty minutes later, she became aware that the meeting had ended when she realized that people were leaving the room. Back in her cubicle, she spent the rest of the day considering the Technology Containment Act of 2020.

The problem wasn’t about the activities of Project Lightfoot complying with the Act. That was a laugh. The real problem, and it was Kylie’s very own, was how to apply the knowledge she had developed in the course of writing the Act. As she’d explained for the hundredth time in the morning meeting, the nature of the tasks associated with Lightfoot involved minuscule slices of time. What she hadn’t realized until she’d thought about constraints on the technology was that there existed a time spectrum, and all of her previous work had concentrated on the end point, the smallest time slice.

Moving from a point to a line added another dimension and an additional concept to the phenomenon of matter as process. The dimension was time, and the concept was time travel, and Kylie was apparently the only person around who came close to understanding it, and, using the equipment at Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation, she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

The only other person who was aware of the situation was Maddie Logan, Kylie’s partner of twenty-two years. Their relationship had begun several years before the New Revolution. They had decided that they wanted kids, and Maddie wanted to carry them herself. So Kylie’s brother Jack had donated sperm. As the birth father of the two children, his name appeared on their birth certificates, and both kids bore the Donovan surname, much to Kylie’s delight. From the beginning, they lived in a two story Tudor about

Khimarial Ink • 11 a mile from Jordan College, a house that Maddie inherited from her maiden aunt. Over the years, the house had undergone countless renovations.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, their lives proceeded pretty much as planned. Kylie, who had received her doctorate in 1998, worked for Dow Chemical. Progress of the LGBT movement was slow but steady.

For every minor victory, there was antigay backlash. Three steps forward were usually followed by two steps back. Nevertheless, they were slowly moving ahead. When the kids started school, Maddie returned to her position as Associate Professor of History at Jordan College. But after the New Revolution, her job was secure only as long as no qualified male chose to displace her.

LOOKING BACK, MADDIE thought that the trouble had probably started around 2007. President Gore had done all he could to save the planet, but he had gotten started too late. Seven years wasn’t enough time to undo the environmental destruction of a century. Study after study demonstrated damage so extensive that much more would have to be done to repair it.

But at every opportunity, Gore’s opponents pointed out that the enormous investment of tax dollars had led to a record national debt while doing almost nothing to restore the environment.

The voice of the extreme Right had become louder and louder. More voters began to consider their simplistic message: it is far more important to minimize taxes and government spending than to solve any costly problem.

In 2008, the people expressed their discontent with the high cost of saving the Earth when they elected William Cunningham as forty-fourth President of the United States of America. Cunningham’s spotless record of fiscal conservatism appealed to large corporate interests as well as struggling taxpayers. His unblemished record of social conservatism appealed to religious fundamentalists, to anti-abortion advocates, and especially to antigay sympathizers, most of whom materialized, seemingly from nowhere, in unexpectedly large numbers.

LGBT and other civil rights groups were taken by surprise. They had grossly underestimated the power of the extreme Right to lure moderate voters into their fold. The new Congress, with over two-thirds of its members having been hand picked by the Cunningham camp, withdrew financial support of programs for disadvantaged citizens, paving the way to a tax cut for those making over a million dollars per year.

Then came a series of blows. Amendment XXVII to the Constitution of the United States, passed by the required two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, restricted the definition of marriage to the union between one man and one woman. By Executive Order, government contracts were withheld from any business offering domestic partner

Khimarial Ink • 12 benefits, and Federal financial aid was withdrawn from all local governments with anti-discrimination policies for LGBT people.

Financial crises in both the public and private spheres soon led to the reversal of fifty years of progress for the LGBT community. Private companies and government agencies became reluctant to hire gays and lesbians. Many of them, even those who had previously welcomed LGBT employees, found ways to terminate them. Maddie became curious to the point of obsession about how and why their future, which at one time seemed so promising, had been suddenly and irrevocably destroyed. She determined to study, understand, and maybe even record for future generations the horrible events that had transpired. At first she concentrated on the 2008 election of President Cunningham. How could it have happened?

As she pored over the history of the first years of the millennium, the pattern emerged. The political pendulum, never at rest, had swung slowly but relentlessly from left to right. That was no surprise. Throughout the country’s history, momentum was almost always away from the party in power. President Gore had endured eight years of disaster. The Right blamed him for everything from the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, to the huge but insufficient expenditures to preserve the planet, and the resulting record high national debt.

The Cunningham Administration saved plenty of tax money by eliminating ninety percent of funding for environmental preservation. By 2015, air pollution reached the point that it was physically painful to go outside of hermetically sealed buildings without wearing an oxygen mask. Only the very rich could afford to buy meat, as animals raised for food could not survive outside of hermetically sealed structures whose ongoing costs were tremendous. Vegetable crops were grown in sealed greenhouses.

The oceans sustained no life at all. The cost of living was astronomical. In order to maintain itself, the government taxed every income at a flat rate of fifty percent, with no deductibles. Very few could afford more than the basic necessities of life.

On the other hand, the economy had received a significant boost when three large contractors, all carefully vetted by the Administration, undertook the daunting but lucrative task of retrofitting every structure in the country (outside of poverty areas) with hermetic seals. Larger and more prosperous businesses also installed airlocks, ensuring that no polluted air could sneak into their work environments.

MADDIE WAS IN the den when she heard the door open and quickly close, followed by the familiar voice calling her name. “In the den, sweetie.”

Her gaze remained on her computer screen.

Khimarial Ink • 13 Kylie appeared and kissed her lips lightly. “Hi.” She turned to the screen.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Email from Robbie. He wants us to transfer five hundred bucks to his account. Lab expenses, he says.”

Robbie, their nineteen-year-old son, was a Junior at Cal State University in San Francisco. His parents were used to the exorbitant cost of college, but they hadn’t completely adjusted their household budget to accommodate it.

Kylie perched on the corner of the desk. “Well, today is Robbie’s lucky day, because his Mama Boo found out she has a job beyond the end of the month.”

Maddie turned to her, wide-eyed. “Seriously?”

“Yep. The powers-that-be decided that the proposal for Technology Containment is enough to keep them in complete control. So we’ve got funding for another year.”

“Did they . . . did anyone pick up on the time thing?” She referred to the veiled revelation that Kylie had included in the document as personal insurance against future accusations that she had not provided critical technical information.

“Nope. You know, there’s a test in technical writing about that. It’s called ‘understood if already known.’ The writer explains something. If the reader is already familiar with it, the explanation seems clear. Otherwise, it’s just a string of words.”

“Then your secret is safe so far.”

Kylie shrugged. “I guess so. Not that it’s worth anything at this point.” She stood and stretched. “How was your day, lovee? Learn anything new?”

“The pendulum swings.”

“Uh huh. The clock ticks. The cookie crumbles. The—” “The political pendulum,” Maddie interrupted. “If it’s on the left, it swings right. If it’s on the right, it swings left.”

“And your point is?”

“When William Cunningham was elected the first time, the pendulum was swinging right. Five years later, the New Revolution was a reality and the LGBT movement was history.”

Kylie grimaced. “Thanks for enlightening me. Now I know that the reason why we’re back in the closet is that the pendulum was swinging right instead of left in two-thousand-eight.”

“Really, sweetie, I think it’s true.”

“You think if the pendulum had been swinging left it would have turned out differently? How could that have happened? I mean, if the election in two-thousand had turned out differently . . . You think if that other guy—what was his name?”

“Bush. George W. Son of the other one.”

Khimarial Ink • 14 “You think if George W. Bush had won the election in two-thousand that the pendulum would have been swinging left eight years later?”

Maddie grasped the arms of her chair and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve never thought about that. But based on what we know of political history, it seems likely.” She looked at Kylie. “That was a strange election.

We watched it unfold on TV, remember? The vote was so close in Florida that they had to do a recount.”

“I remember it,” Kylie said. “God, it seems like so long ago. We were just kids. The ballots were paper or cardboard or something like that. They said the other guy—Bush—was ahead of Gore. And the woman that got shot and killed—the Florida Secretary of State—what was her name?”

“Something Harris, I think,” Maddie said.

“Yeah, that’s it. They found out later that she’d been about to stop the recount, so that Bush would have been declared the winner in Florida. That would have given him the grand prize.”

Maddie nodded. “But as they found out when the recount was finished, Gore really did get more votes. And he won the popular vote nationally, too.”

“Because somebody shot that woman before she could make Bush the winner in Florida.”

Maddie stood and began to pace. “This is bizarre. I remember hearing about that woman’s life after she was killed. She was an extreme Right fanatic, probably antigay all the way. And if she had lived, her actions might have changed history in our favor. We might be free and equal now.”

“Do you recall anything about the shooting?” asked Kylie.

“Not much. I know that she was shot by another woman. I guess I remember that because it’s kind of unusual. I suppose we could learn all the gory details on the Internet. Just for the hell of it, let’s see what we can find.”

On the Internet they found over a hundred newspaper articles about the assassination in 2000 of Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State. Harris was gunned down in her office. Within moments, security guards apprehended the alleged shooter, Albany Jean Rasmussen, 27, of Key West, Florida. It was later learned that Harris had told a group of local reporters outside her office that she had decided to issue an order to halt the recount of any and all Florida ballots cast in the 2000 election of President of the United States. It was known that George W. Bush held the lead at the time of the shooting. Albany Rasmussen was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Maddie continued to pace. “It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? I mean, the implication that if Gore had lost in two-thousand, Cunningham might never have been elected in two-thousand-eight. And if Cunningham hadn’t been

Khimarial Ink • 15 elected, the New Revolution might never have taken place and the gay rights movement might still be alive today.”

“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” Kylie was surprised at her partner’s speculation. Maddie rarely engaged in flights of fancy.

“I know it’s silly. But I can’t help wondering.” She snapped her fingers.

“I have an idea. Remember that history simulation program I told you about . . . the one the History Department got a couple of months ago?”

“I think so. The company that designed it asked you guys to beta test it, right?”

“Right. The idea is to input alternative parameters into historical events and see how they might have affected the outcomes. The ultimate goal is to develop a better understanding of how to allocate resources—the few we have left. Ben Kane has already done a lot of simulations varying troop levels in the Civil War. His results are amazing.”

“Amazing in what way?”

“Ben found that there’s a sixty percent probability that the South would have won the war if their troops had been deployed according to a certain pattern.”

“Wow.” Kylie shuddered.

“Of course it never could’ve happened, because the Confederate Army had no way of knowing the relevant details about the Union Army. Ben had the advantage of knowing the complete history of the war, so he was able to input the exact data into the simulation that led to a different outcome.”

“Or so your program claims. That’s a pretty bold assertion.”

“It isn’t a bold assertion,” Maddie protested. “It’s just an estimate of the probability of a certain outcome, given a certain set of parameters.”

“Okay, smarty pants, why don’t you have the program run a simulation of an alternate outcome of the two-thousand presidential election? If Bush had won in two-thousand, what’s the probability that Cunningham would’ve won eight years later? And while you’re at it, what’s the probability that the New Revolution wouldn’t have taken place? Geez, Maddie, how depressing can you get?”

THREE DAYS LATER, Maddie reported the results of her simulation.

If George W. Bush had been elected in 2000, then the probability was ninety-eight percent that he would have been re-elected in 2004, the probability was ninety-five percent that William Cunningham would not have been elected in 2008, and the probability was ninety-two percent that the New Revolution would not have occurred.

Kylie shook her head. “It sounds like just a matter of bad timing. But considering the people involved, I wonder if there’s such a thing as good timing.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” replied Maddie. “Those people are

Khimarial Ink • 16 always there. They stay quiet—sometimes for years—until they sense a chance to spread their venom. Then, look out. If normal people underestimate them until it’s too late, we can kiss our civil liberties goodbye for another century, maybe longer.”

“Yeah. Their good old New Revolution fixed our little red wagon for generations to come.”

ON THE HEELS of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integration and Calculator, the first totally electronic computer) in 1947, commercially feasible computers were introduced in the 1950’s. Each computer had several huge components, and their handlers walked around among them.

Instructions in crude, low level program code were punched into cardboard cards and fed into the ancient machines. The expense was enormous and the capabilities extremely limited. This technology evolved so quickly that by 2020, Kylie Donovan and the majority of people in the developed countries of the world carried in their pockets affordable devices with over a hundred times the computing power of the old giants.

At Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation, the laboratory for Project Lightfoot occupied less than a thousand square feet, and most of it was taken up by desks and chairs. All the hardware, which sat on a wooden table in the center of the room, would probably fit in a small suitcase.

Alone in the lab, Kylie concentrated on that hardware. Understood if already known, she thought. Even for the Nobel Prize winner who had discovered the phenomenon of matter as process without the slightest awareness of the related time spectrum, it had been a difficult step forward.

Difficult, but done. The concept of time travel was obvious, once she had made the obscure but critical connection.

Time travel paradoxes had always fascinated her. If you went back in time and killed your grandmother when she was still a young girl, then you never would have been born, in which case you couldn’t have done the deed because you didn’t exist. Therefore, your grandmother lived and you were born so you did exist. And if you went back . . .

Then there was the primary directive imposed by all those authorities in science fiction novels: No Meddling! It was forbidden to alter the course of civilization in any way, and that included time travel. Ray Bradbury had written a book about a guy who traveled back in time about a million years, stepped on a butterfly, and almost caused the end of the world as he knew it. Scary.

Technology was supposed to help people. But the whole planet was doomed and everybody knew it and nobody talked about it. Every year it got harder and harder to produce food. Air pollution continued to worsen. The lifeless oceans had begun to give off toxic fumes. Lesbians, gays, people of color, and anyone else who could be categorized as a minority had become

Khimarial Ink • 17 the designated scapegoats and were routinely punished for their contribution to the disaster. How could technology resolve problems like that?

Kylie stood over the wooden table and concentrated on the Project Lightfoot hardware. “By stopping William Cunningham from becoming the forty-fourth President of the United States,” she whispered.

The pieces fell into place. Clothing styles hadn’t changed enough in the past twenty years to make a difference. She would carry her Revolution Dynamic Research badge, oxygen mask, personal electronics, taser gun, and a newspaper photo of Albany Jean Rasmussen in the suitcase with the Lightfoot hardware. In terms of elapsed time in the lab, her mission would begin and end in less than a minute.

THE DIRECTORY IN the lobby of the R. A. Gray Building on South Bronough St. in Tallahassee indicated that the office of Katherine H. Harris, Secretary of State, was located in Room 313. According to news reports, that was where she had been shot and killed later that morning.

Kylie stepped into the elevator. Prior to September 11, 2001, security in government buildings was almost nonexistent. Thanks to the presence of over a dozen news crews and their cumbersome paraphernalia, the suitcase she carried drew no attention.

The elevator door on the third floor was about twenty feet from Ms. Harris’s office. The frosted glass office door was closed, apparently locked.

A handful of reporters waited in the wide hallway. Kylie recognized Albany Rasmussen. Leaning casually against the wall, the young woman appeared bored and relaxed. Her skin was a healthy shade of pink. Her curly strawberry blonde hair hung loosely just above her shoulders. But as Kylie approached her, she saw an almost frightening intensity in the young woman’s eyes, and she was somewhat surprised when her gaydar sent her an immediate and strong signal that Albany was family. The connection gave her a reasonable excuse to strike up a conversation. Kylie drifted over and set her suitcase on the floor.

“Is she here yet?”

Albany shook her head. “I don’t know if she’ll even show up.”

“You look familiar,” said Kylie casually. “Have you ever been on an Olivia Cruise?” It was the best she could come up with for a twenty-year-old code word. The long defunct company had been one of the first victims of the New Revolution. But she and Maddie had gone on an Olivia Cruise for their first anniversary, back in the day.

Albany flashed a big grin. “I hope to take the Alaska trip next summer, if I can scrape together enough dough for a ticket.”

“I’ve heard that’s a good one.” She frowned. “So, what’s the latest word on Harris?”

Khimarial Ink • 18 The smile disappeared. “There was a leak from the inside. She’s under pressure to halt the recount. Considering her political leanings, she’s likely to cave . . . unless somebody can stop her.”

“Do you believe Gore will win if they finish the recount?”

“Everybody seems to think so.” She glared at the locked office door.

“The woman has to be stopped. The fate of the country depends on it.”

“Maybe,” Kylie murmured.

“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it,” Albany snapped. “Do you know what those people stand for? They’re out to destroy everyone who isn’t exactly like them and every obstacle, including the environmental health of the Earth, to getting even richer than they already are.”

“Listen, Albany. At this point in history, most people are unaware of global warming. Of those who’ve heard about it, most don’t believe it. When President Gore . . .” She stopped abruptly. “If Gore gets elected and spends a fortune to save the planet, on top of the tragedy of September . . .” She stopped herself again. “At this point in history, people don’t understand the extent or the cost of the effort needed just to get the Earth back to the point where we can survive. If Gore were to spend big bucks on that effort, the political backlash could have unimaginable consequences. I think this is a case where things have to get much worse before they can get better.”

“You’re wrong,” Albany insisted. “Time is running out. We can’t wait another four years. Something has to be done.” She touched her pocket where it bulged slightly. “Right now. Today.”

Kylie’s hand shielded the tiny taser. “I’m sorry, Albany,” she whispered as she reached for the woman’s arm.

The jolt was minimal. Albany slumped against the wall. Kylie grabbed her before she slid to the floor. Supporting Albany on her right side and carrying the suitcase on her left, she struggled down the hall and stumbled into the Women’s Room.

Fortunately, the restroom was empty. She dropped the suitcase, wrestled Albany into a stall, lowered her as gently as she could to the toilet seat, and locked them in. She retrieved a capsule from a small container in her pocket, broke it open, and spread the liquid contents over the inside of Albany’s right wrist. She pulled the pistol from the woman’s pocket.

“You’ll be good as new in a few hours,” she said just before she slithered under the stall door.

THE LAB WAS still there. Except it wasn’t the lab. It was a room full of beige stychophin file cabinets. She squatted and opened the suitcase.

It held only her personal items and a pistol that looked to be over twenty years old.

It was obvious from the nearly empty suitcase that there was no Project

Khimarial Ink • 19 Lightfoot. The Lightfoot hardware must have ceased to exist in the hours after her exit from the third floor restroom in the R. A. Gray Building in Tallahassee. Time travel was once again, as it always had been, a fantasy.

Nobody paid any attention when Kylie stepped into the hallway. On the short walk to the exit, she learned that the building no longer (or maybe, more appropriately, never had) housed Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation.

Outside, only about half of the people were wearing oxygen masks. She rushed to the Trans Stop and boarded the first car that was headed in toward home. She held her breath as she placed her hand on the ID scanner. To her relief, the green light flashed. At least the Electronic Credit System was intact.

She reached home a thirty minutes later. The house was a different color and there were a few minor differences, but at least it was there. She hoped it was still hers. But just in case, she rang the bell.

The door opened almost immediately. “Thank Goddess your safe.”

Maddie cried, “Where have you been?”

“Oh, Maddie, I’m so glad to see you.” She hugged her tightly, and only then did the tears begin to flow. “I was so scared. I was afraid I might have lost you.”

Maddie stepped back and laughed. “I’ve been here all along. You’re the one who was lost. I ran into one of your students on campus, and he said you didn’t show up for your seminar this morning. Where were you?”

“My seminar? What are you talking about?”

Maddie tensed. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“I think so, but bear with me. Humor me. Answer some very basic questions, okay? Here goes. Are the kids all right, where do I work, what’s my job, and who were the Presidents of the United States from the year two-thousand until now?”

“Okay, I’ll play along. But only over coffee. C’mon.”

Over cappuccino and cinnamon rolls, she paid close attention to Maddie’s answers. Then she accessed the Internet for a quick review of the history of the twenty-first century.

Maddie told her that George W. Bush was elected President in 2000 and 2004. She didn’t catch the name for 2008, but it definitely wasn’t William Cunningham. Bark O’Brahma, or something like that. She wondered what he and his successors looked like, what they stood for, and what they had accomplished. Most important, she wanted to know if the extreme Right had again been underestimated, or if the one and only second chance to secure world freedom and human rights had been successful.

Khimarial Ink • 20

Khimarial Ink • 21

CI ommander Markel folded his arms. “Well?” looked past him. Blood spread across the parquet floor of the dining cabin. Face down at the center of the room was a man in evening dress, the tails of his suit slowly soaking up the blood that had, until very recently, been inside his body. Except for the blood, the scene was quite peaceful: a few of the staff near the kitchen entrance, the chief steward standing beside the first mate.

“I just got here, Commander,” I said. “But it certainly looks like he’s been murdered.”

“Bravo,” Markel said. He cleared his throat and leaned in my direction.

“What are you going to do about it?” He was clearly trying to intimidate me, but I was more than six inches taller than him. It wasn’t going to happen.

Nor was I going to rise to the bait. I slipped past Markel before he could do more than halfheartedly menace me. I had to get closer to the body, but the blood had spread too far. Since I didn’t want to disturb the scene until I got a better look, I was going to have to step up onto a chair and walk from table to table. At least the tables didn’t wobble; on an airship, everything was nailed down that could be nailed down. I certainly couldn’t have done this on the ground. Nor could I have done it in heels; fortunately, given the nature of my job, I could get away with boots.

I looked down at the corpse from the table nearest it. There was an awful lot of blood; my uniform skirt was going to be soaked by the time I was done examining the body.

“Mr. Peters,” I called to the steward, “I’ll be needing a tablecloth.”

“They are at your disposal, Constable McDonald.”

“Thank you.” I stepped off the table and onto a chair, then gathered up the white linen in both hands and yanked. Unfortunately, not a single piece of china, cutlery, or glass remained in place. I smiled tightly at no one in particular as I folded the tablecloth into a pad. My boots made sticky noises in the blood as I eased myself onto the floor and laid the pad beside the body. After that, there was nothing for it but to smooth my skirt under

Khimarial Ink • 22 my knees and lower myself the rest of the way. I pulled a pair of thin leather gloves out of my jacket pocket and worked them over my hands, then reached across the body and turned it onto its back.

Even I couldn’t hold back a small sound of surprise: it had been a long time since I’d seen a throat cut from ear to ear. That explained the amount of blood, at least. The man’s face was locked in an expression of surprise, dark brown eyes stuck open by congealing blood. There was also a blotch of it on his lower stomach; I’d need to expose him to see more. I worked my fingers between the rent in the fabric and ripped.

Blood misted over my skirt. I made a disgusted noise and removed my left glove so I could take a small kit out of my inner pocket. I flipped it open and set it next to me on the pad. Inside: some of the tools of my trade, including a long, narrow probe I could use to explore the wounds without touching them.

But there was little to learn from the body. I got more from the contents of the dead man’s pockets: a leather folio, room and wardrobe keys, assorted small change, and a flask half-full of—I opened it and sniffed— distressingly-cheap vodka. As if there wasn’t far better liquor available just about everywhere aboard ship.

“Constable, are you quite finished?” I glanced to the right; Commander Markel had assumed a bored expression.

“I think so.”

“Good. The staff needs to clean this room, and the passengers will be arriving for their late meals soon.”

I got to my feet, folding the evidence into a clean-looking cloth napkin and tucking it into my jacket pocket, then picked my way back across the tables to the exit. “Throat cut,” I told the first mate. “And stabbed, low in the body. I’m guessing it was a crime of passion.”

“Who was he?”

“I haven’t looked yet. I want to get the evidence back to my office.”

Markel huffed air through his mustache, but stepped aside to let me pass. “Can we move him?”

“If you want.” I called it over my shoulder; I was already on the way to the crew-only door at the far end of the passageway. Beyond it: a cramped corridor, pipes jutting out at odd angles and dim bulbs lighting the way with a weak yellowish glow. I felt my skirt pulling where blood stuck it to my boots; I’d have to change before I went anywhere near the passengers.

MY OFFICE WAS a pocket-sized cabin a few yards aft of the bridge.

I kept it as clean as possible, but inner rooms like this always smelled of mildew and used air. Markel had told me, when I’d boarded for my first tour aboard the airship Ozymandias, that beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Khimarial Ink • 23 At least I was on the king of airships: four levels of passenger berthing and entertainment, multiple dining halls, even a theater for the showing of moving pictures or the acting of plays. It certainly rated more than a single constable, but I was all the Great American Airship Company cared to employ.

I didn’t care much about that anymore, but I still would have appreciated not paying for my own supplies—including the bright bulbs I’d had to install in my office lamps. They cast sterile white light that brought Marianne into sharp relief where she sat in my one guest chair, the only dirty thing in the pristine room.

“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping into my chair behind the desk. She reached for me, and I took her hand.

“What happened?”

I squeezed her fingers. “One of the passengers was murdered.

Someone cut his throat.”

Marianne made a face. “That’s awful.”

“You have no idea.” I didn’t say it sharply, though; after dancing around each other for the better part of half a year, we were finally together, and I didn’t want to push her away. “Now I have to find out who he was, search his cabin, and then bring everything to Saint-Pierre.”

She pursed her lips. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“You have duty—” “What I have,” she said, pale eyes glinting under chestnut-brown bangs, “is Chief Engineer Frederickson eating out of my hand. I only need to ask.”

I seriously considered it for a moment. But in the end, I shook my head.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The last thing he needs to know is that you and I are anything more than shipmates. He’s not stupid.”

“No. Just an ass.” Marianne’s fingernails were cracked and dirty but her palms were soft and her lips softer as she raised my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers. “I’ll see you after-shift?”

I smiled; there was a hopeful note to her voice. “This figures to be a long night,” I said; her hands tensed, and I stroked her cheek with two fingers to try and soothe her. “Wait in my cabin. I’ll try not to be out too late.”

“Please don’t.” She kissed my hand again, then pulled away gently and left my office.

It took me a full minute before I could concentrate enough to lay out the evidence on my bare wooden desk. The room and wardrobe keys told me the man had resided on the lowest level—the most expensive, most exclusive, with windows curving downward along the edge of the hull. I piled the change at one side, then opened the leather folio.

“Well, then.” The man’s driving license proclaimed him to be Ignatius Robins of Boston, Massachusetts. “Who were you, Mr. Robins, that

Khimarial Ink • 24 someone should hurt you so?” I rifled through the dead man’s cash—more than three hundred dollars in assorted bills—and placed it near the change.

It was expensive to fly Ozymandias, to be sure, but passengers bought their tickets in advance. I couldn’t imagine needing more than one hundred dollars. But then, I’d never paid for the privilege of the journey.

Robins had kept a bank identification card in the folio, a photograph of himself with his arm around a similar-looking man—perhaps a brother—and a sealed paper envelope half the size of a dollar but thick enough to hold at least five. “Drugs, Mr. Robins? Really?” With a small, sharp paper knife, I slit open the envelope.

It wasn’t drugs I shook out into my palm, though. It was sheets of what felt like rice paper, covered in tiny writing. I looked at one through a magnifying glass.

Then I let out a hissing, dismayed breath.

Cyrillic lettering. Russian words. I read a few lines, feeling blood drain from my face.

Mr. Ignatius Robins of Boston had been engaged in espionage.

I STOPPED AT my cabin on my way to Robins’s. It was getting on to eight o’clock, but I had to change. The room was far smaller than anything I’d had working ground-side; space was at a premium even on a luxury liner. Still, I had a private bunk, as befit the ranking security constable, and if I had to sit on my bed to open my wardrobe, or sleep pressed up against the wall to share the space with Marianne, at least I had that much. The tiny washing-up cubicle wasn’t so terrible, either—the entertainers had their own quarters on another level, thankfully; those twittering birds were the last thing I needed after a long night walking the decks.

I changed into a fresh maroon skirt and rubbed a cloth over my boots until the blood was gone. After a brief stop in the crew lavatory to wash my hands, I went to the lowest level and located Ignatius Robins’s cabin. It wasn’t the most lavish, but it was close. I put on gloves and reached for the door handle.

The polished wood swung open before I could even try the key. I reached into my jacket for my baton, which lived in a pocket along my spine. The metal rod was warm even through my glove; I held it at the ready and stepped into the doorway. “This is Constable McDonald. Identify yourself!”

Something crashed, out of view, probably in the private washroom; I closed the door behind me to protect the other passengers from seeing anything potentially unpleasant before moving through the stateroom, baton raised. “Step out with your hands up!” I snapped in my best stern-teacher voice. “Do it now!”

“All right!”

Khimarial Ink • 25 A woman. I hadn’t expected that. She sidled out of the washroom, hands at shoulder-level.

“Sit down, please.” I gestured to the bed with the baton. She did as I said, curling in on herself a bit as if afraid I’d hit her. Or worse. A male constable might have—probably would have—taken advantage, but I didn’t believe in unnecessary violence or forcing myself on a suspect. Even an attractive one—and this one was very attractive. “What’s your name?”

She blinked huge green eyes at me. “Katya,” she said, her voice flavored European but not quite Russian. “Katya Iyarina.”

“What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be . . .” I made a vague motion toward the upper decks. I’d recognized Miss Iyarina’s name from the manifest as one of the dancers in the questionably tasteful revue that ran mid-days; while wives visited the health spa or played cards, their husbands crowded into a small, dark theater to stare at Katya and the other women.

She swallowed. “Ignatius. He . . .” She had the decency to look ashamed.

“He hired me. Last night.”

I tried not to look as though I’d tasted something unpleasant. It was against contract to do what Iyarina had done, but management unofficially asked constables to overlook the activity. “How did you get in?”

“The door was not locked,” she told me. “I came for what I left last night.”

“And that is?”

Now she did blush, gesturing to her very short skirt. “All right, I get it.” I sighed, putting the baton away before sitting in the room’s one chair. “Have you seen Robins today?”

“Not since this morning.” Iyarina ran one hand through thick blond hair.

The move made her body shift provocatively under her tightly-buttoned blouse; I managed not to look away. It was clearly a practiced motion, intended to attract attention. “Why do you ask?”

“Because he’s dead.”

To her credit, the dancer pulled off a good impression of a devastated lover, but I knew better: she’d been here because Robins had paid her. She didn’t really have any ties to him.

“Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt him?” I asked.

She shook her head, hair falling around her face, eyes downcast. She even manufactured a couple of tears, which dripped from her narrow nose and spattered on her stockinged thigh. “He was a gentle man,” she said.

Then she looked up at me. “Am I safe, Constable McDonald?”

“Did you kill him?”

“I did not.”

“Then you’re safe from me, at least.” I ran my palms over my knees.

Khimarial Ink • 26 “Stay in company. Just in case. But I think you’ll be all right.” I waved to the door. “Go on. I know where to find you if I need you.”

She didn’t say anything else, just got out of there. I locked the cabin door behind her and began searching the room. The wardrobe yielded nothing much, just clothing that befit a gentleman of leisure and a couple of walking-sticks—neither of which concealed swords, not that I really expected to find them. In fact, there were no weapons at all among his belongings. That was odd; spies were said to value their lives very highly.

A quick search of the drawers in the bedside tables revealed nothing but a pad of writing-paper and a sharpened pencil. I was luckier in the washroom: in the center of the toilet roll, I found another thick envelope, curled up and stuck there by two dabs of what smelled like spirit gum. I wiped my fingers on the hand towel and put the envelope into my jacket, then rechecked all of Robins’s toiletries on the off chance he’d secreted something inside one of the bottles. He hadn’t, of course; the toilet roll had been a very good hiding place.

Before leaving, I lifted the toilet lid, just to check. “Oh, that’s vile.” Robins hadn’t had the courtesy to pull the chain after his last trip. I dropped the wooden disc back onto the bowl and tugged the small handle on the wall behind.

Nothing happened.

Had this been a routine search for contraband, I might have let it be and called a mechanic, but given the situation, I was taking nothing for granted.

Upon closer inspection, the tiny silver screws holding the panel behind the handle were definitely damaged, probably by a screwdriver not made for this size or head. I used the small driver in my little leather case to remove the panel so I could reach into the opening.

Another envelope. I took it out and examined it: thicker than either of the others, and the humidity of the plumbing had loosened the gumming along the seal. It was already almost open; my thumb teased the flap the rest of the way off and I peered inside.

Hundred dollar bills. At least fifty of them. I cursed quietly: as if a murdered spy wasn’t bad enough, now I had to deal with one who might have been working for the highest bidder.

I locked the cabin behind me and made for the bridge. I needed to speak to the captain.

CAPTAIN SAINT-PIERRE wasn’t happy to be in his office talking to me, not this late in the evening, and he didn’t try to hide it. “I’m really quite busy, Mrs. McDonald.” He never said my rank, either.

“I know, sir.” I opened the flat metal box where I’d put Robins’s rice paper and handed the captain a magnifying glass. “But look at this.”

Khimarial Ink • 27 The captain huffed but did as I asked. He only glanced, though. “I don’t read this language, Mrs. McDonald.”

I suppressed a sigh. “It’s Russian, sir. These are state secrets, I think.”

“Really now?” He looked again, then shrugged, broad shoulders shifting beneath his maroon jacket. He set dark brown eyes on me. “Do you believe he was killed for them?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Did you find anything else, Mrs. McDonald?” Every time he called me that, I had to fight down the urge to snarl at him. I hadn’t been married for years, but for propriety’s sake the Company said I had to be treated as if I still had a husband. Not that the captain cared; his hand had “accidentally” brushed my backside far too many times over the past year for it to be much of an accident anymore.

“He’d hidden more documents in his toilet roll—” Saint-Pierre laughed. “You’re not being paid to clean his washroom, Mrs. McDonald.” I bit the inside of my lip as hard as I could. “Was there more?”

“No, sir.” Except the money, but I wasn’t telling him about that. Not now, and perhaps not ever. The ass.

“Then figure out who killed him. Figure out why. And soon. I don’t want a killer on my airship. Understand?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And try not to anger too many of the passengers.” He offered me a flash of a smile, teeth bright white in his dark Caribbean face. “The last thing we need is to be giving refunds because Mrs. McDonald stepped on the wrong toes.”

My teeth were clenched tightly enough that, if I kept it up, I would have a spectacular headache. “No, sir,” I said through them.

“Good.”

His hand on my lower back was overly familiar as he ushered me out of his office, but I endured it. At least he tried to be subtle; the one and only time Commander Markel had pinched my backside, I’d broken his fingers— and paid dearly for it out of my wages.

Worth it, though.

I SEPARATED THE evidence into three plain white envelopes, then locked it all in my safe. Except for the money. I couldn’t guarantee I had the only key to my safe, and it was a lot of cash. I counted it again, then put it into my jacket. $6,500. If the killer knew about the money, he or she would most certainly come looking for it. Better to keep it on my person.

I sighed. $6,500 was enough for me to quit the Company and disappear, enough for Rebecca McDonald to die quietly and be reinvented in Spain or France—I spoke both languages well enough. All I had to do was repair the

Khimarial Ink • 28 handle-plate in Robins’s cabin—Marianne would be glad to help me there, I was certain—and say nothing of the money.

Money. It had spelled the end of my career with the San Francisco Police Department: after my first partner’s death, I’d been paired with a clumsy, easily-bribed nincompoop who’d pinned his theft of $700 on me. As far as I knew, he was still taking bribes and menacing citizens, while I looked down from tens of thousands of feet and tried to figure out who had killed a spy.

And of course the Company didn’t pay women nearly as well as men; I had precious little left over after paying for a room back in California that I only used one week out of every four.

I touched the envelope in my pocket one more time, then squared my shoulders and headed out to the entertainment deck. I still had a job to do.

The money would wait—whatever I decided to do with it.

MOST OF THE three hundred or so passengers were on the entertainment deck. It was the largest deck on the airship, and for at least some portion of the evening everyone made it up here. It would’ve been suspicious not to. I looked in on the main dining cabin; no one taking a late meal seemed the worse for wear, and the help had cleaned the floor. But word had got around nonetheless, and a couple of passengers asked me if I’d caught the culprit yet.

“I can’t discuss an active investigation,” I said to an older man walking with his wife and sons—both of whom leered openly at me.

“But are we safe?” his wife asked.

“Of course,” I told her. “You have nothing to worry about. The Great American Airship Company prides itself on being the safest there is.”

The conversation was repeated, with minor changes, as I made my rounds. I eventually ended up on the open foredeck, jacket buttoned tightly, hands deep in my pockets. We were moving at speed, and with the sun gone the wind sliced through me as efficiently as the killer’s knife had slashed the throat of the late Mr. Robins. Not many passengers chose to spend their evenings out here, though one young couple was at the very prow, her red hair streaming out behind her as he held her round the waist so she could lean up against the railing. I smiled ruefully; once upon a time, I’d had a husband, and we’d had our own moments of closeness, but now, if anyone saw me holding my lover like that I’d probably be thrown over the side, and her soon after.

Someone tapped my shoulder. I spun quickly, stepping back, but it was only Mr. Peters, the chief steward. “Dining cabin closed?” I asked.

“Yes.” He breathed deeply, then inclined his head at the couple. “Sweet, isn’t it?”

Khimarial Ink • 29 “If you like that sort of thing.” I shivered. “Did you need something, Mr. Peters?”

He shook his head. “Please: call me Tony.”

“Tony, then.” I felt the wind trying to pry my hair out of its long braid. “Is something on your mind?”

“You have to ask?”

I hitched one shoulder, a half-shrug. “I’m no psychologist,” I said. “The medic can give you something to calm your nerves, if you like.”

“It didn’t bother you? At all?” Tony had his hands tucked under his folded arms; instead of a coat, he wore a dark-blue cape fastened in front with three silver buckles.

“That’s not it.” I felt the airship bank slightly; the wind ceased to blow quite so fiercely into our faces. The couple at the prow was kissing now, her back pressed into the metal railing. “I’ve seen worse.” I swallowed. “There’s just a lot on my mind.”

“Why? Was there something strange about the killing?”

I turned to him. “You seem awfully interested.”

“It did happen in my dining cabin.”

Ah. “I suppose you’re right. But I interviewed your staff already.” I’d done it before my rounds; no one had seen the actual killing, but two waiters confirmed that Iyarina and Robins were together all through the dinner hour.

I very much wanted to know why she’d lied to me, but interrupting Iyarina while she was entertaining would just draw the captain’s attention, and that wouldn’t be helpful at all. I’d have to wait until tomorrow morning. “The only possible suspect is one of the dancing girls. I don’t think she could’ve done it, though.”

“Why not?”

Now I gave him a sharp look. “I think you know enough about the entertainers on this airship to know the answer to that. If she killed him, how could he pay her?”

He smiled, apologetic. “So what will you do?”

“The murder weapon was probably tossed over the side,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ll find who did it, and he—or she—will pay for the crime.”

Tony nodded, apparently in approval, then left the foredeck via the port-side door. The couple departed the same way. But I stayed out in the open a while longer, despite the wind and the cold.

I was going to figure out who killed Ignatius Robins. Somehow.

“I THOUGHT I LEFT all this behind two years ago,” I said softly, my breath ruffling Marianne’s hair. “I thought I was just a constable on an airship now.”

Marianne and I were pressed tightly together, huddled under my

Khimarial Ink • 30 too-small, too-thin blanket. She’d slipped into the bed after I’d fallen asleep, but her warmth, and the scent of soap and skin had woken me. “You’re more than just a constable, Rebecca.” My arm was over her body; she pressed my hand between hers. “You’re my constable.”

“I know.” I kissed the top of her head—she was even shorter than the first mate, and fit very nicely against me in this position. “I just wish everything wasn’t a damned competition.”

She nodded. We both knew that if I went to the captain or Commander Markel, they’d find a way to use it against me, to say I wasn’t competent.

They already didn’t like me—well, that wasn’t quite true; they liked that I was a woman, and that I was pleasant to look at. No wonder Marianne tried to do all the dirty jobs: why dig through layers of grime and soot and cleaning fluid?

More fool they.

“I’m going to have to talk to the crew tomorrow,” I said. “The entertainers, the engineers, everyone. And if it’s not one of them . . .”

“Then we’ll see.” She brought my hand to her mouth again, kissed my fingers slowly before running her lips over the pad of my thumb. I suddenly felt very warm inside. “What about that dancer?”

“What about her?” I struggled to think. “Robins would have paid her.”

“Would he?” Marianne turned to face me, cupped my cheek with one hand. “Look at how they treat you. What if Robins wasn’t any better?”

“Iyarina said he was a gentleman,” I said. Marianne’s eyes were silver in the moonlight coming through the tiny porthole. “I’m sure he paid, and paid well.”

Marianne kissed me, then said, “you think too well of people for someone who used to be a police detective.”

“Well, she did lie to me. Should I go wake her up? Question her again?”

“Yes.” Another kiss. “But not just now.”

IYARINA WASN’T IN the cabin she shared with the other dancers.

Neither of the two were very pleased to be woken up at half-past seven, but I didn’t care. “Where’s Katya Iyarina?”

The red-haired one peered across the room; Iyarina’s bunk was one of six crammed into this space. “Out.” “She’ll be back at lunchtime.” This was the brunette in the bunk just below; she had a sleeping mask over her face and hadn’t bothered to remove her makeup; lipstick was smeared on her pillow. “I’ll tell her you stopped by.” The last was barely intelligible around a yawn.

“You do that.”

I left the cabin and stalked through the narrow corridor to the crew

Khimarial Ink • 31 staircase, and made my way down to the lowest level. Robins’s cabin door was open; I reached for my baton, but when I heard the captain’s voice, I knew I didn’t have to bother.

And that I wasn’t going to like what was about to happen.

“There you are, Mrs. McDonald.” He sounded both satisfied and angry, and he stressed the “missus” once again. “Looks like we’ve found your killer!”

Behind the captain, Katya Iyarina stood, arms held by the junior navigator and the meteorologist. “Captain—” “It’s over, Mrs. McDonald,” he said. “People were talking more about a dead passenger than the food, or the shows, or, God help me, the girls! I can’t have that on my ship! That’s not keeping the peace, and you know it.”

I took a closer look at the dancer; one side of her face was angry and red, and she was crying. “What were you doing here, Katya?” I tried to sound kind; she needed someone on her side.

“She said she left something here,” said the meteorologist. He didn’t sound happy about being conscripted to take a passenger into custody, and I didn’t blame him. “The captain . . .” He bit his lip; the captain glared at him.

“Captain Saint-Pierre questioned Miss Iyarina, and she said Robins refused to pay her that first night.”

“So she caught him after dinner,” the captain said. “He wouldn’t pay, and she killed him.”

I was watching Iyarina, though. Her jaw was set, her face hard, even though she was crying. Her green eyes met mine and I knew. “Captain, it doesn’t add up,” I said, turning to him. “Robins had three hundred dollars in his wallet.” And thousands more in his cabin, but I definitely wasn’t telling the captain about that now. “He could afford to pay her six times what she’d charge!”

“And she killed him anyway. Didn’t you, girl?”

When the dancer didn’t respond, the captain backhanded her across the other cheek. She slumped, probably feigning unconsciousness. Probably a good move.

“And as for you,” he snapped, his dark eyes on mine again, “you’re off my ship when we get to Boston.” He advanced, and I gave ground. When I’d been on the force, I’d have stood up to him, but here I had no backup. Here, Captain Saint-Pierre was the law. “Your assets are in the Company bank, aren’t they? It’ll be quite the challenge to get home to San Francisco without any money.” He was very close now. “Perhaps by then you’ll be properly humbled,” he said, low and vicious. “Perhaps I’ll let you back on my airship.”

His hand came up, and I flinched. I couldn’t help it. But all he did was touch my cheek, then my shoulder, then my breast. “In a far more revealing uniform, I think. One that befits a woman without usable skills.”

Khimarial Ink • 32 He smiled, and in that moment, I was truly afraid.

“Perhaps Miss Iyarina will teach you some of hers.”

MARIANNE FOUND ME in the plumbing room, hidden behind the water tank. When I saw her, I grabbed her and hugged her as hard as I could, disregarding the state of her clothes, not caring about the dirt transferring from her to me. “If I have to kill the captain,” I said, “please tell the police it was self-defense.”

Her arms went around me. She rocked me gently. “He’s a bastard,” she whispered, stroking my shoulders.

“He’s putting me off the ship in Boston.”

“Oh, Rebecca.” She kissed my shoulder.

“He suggested . . .” I successfully fought down a sob. “He suggested I whore my way back to California.”

Marianne had no words. She held me, I don’t know for how long. Until I was able to breathe normally, until my heart stopped hammering.

“Katya lied,” I finally said.

“What?”

I leaned against the bulkhead; Marianne held my hand, ran her thumb over my knuckles. “She lied to the captain. He . . .” I sighed. “Well, you probably know what he did. There were witnesses, though; she had to confess, even if it wasn’t true.”

“Then who did it?”

“I wish I knew.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve got four days to figure it out, though.”

“Do you want my help?”

I shook my head. “Don’t get involved, Marianne. Don’t go down with me.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but I kept going. “I love you, but I don’t want you throwing your career away for me.”

“It’s my career!”

“Marianne,” I said, voice flat, and that was that. She knew that tone, knew that there would be no more compromises.

She turned. “Pride goes before a fall,” she said, and left the plumbing room.

Maybe Marianne was right, but I wasn’t done with this case. Not even close.

HIDDEN IN AN out-of-the-way corner of deck two was a locked room with a cot, privy, and basin. When passengers got drunk and violent and needed to sleep it off, I locked them in. I figured it was where the captain would put Iyarina. But when I got there, I found Tony Peters, the chief steward, leaning over a red-uniformed crewman who was on the deck,

Khimarial Ink • 33 clutching his groin and gasping. “I came with her food,” Tony said. “She kicked him and ran.”

“Damn!” I drew my baton. “Did she say anything?”

“That she was going to jump. That no one would believe her anyway.”

I turned and bolted. There was only one place she could be going.

AT HALF-PAST-EIGHT, few passengers were up and about. The dining cabin didn’t open until nine anyway. I had to dodge only two or three people as I sprinted along the length of the entertainment deck and burst through the door.

Katya Iyarina was holding onto the railing, staring straight ahead.

“Don’t do it,” I said.

She looked back, saw me holding the baton. I put it away and moved toward her. “Katya, please. This isn’t the answer.”

“So I go to prison for murder? Or worse?” Her fingers were curled tightly around the metal, her hair flowing as the airship continued on course. “I did nothing wrong!”

“Katya,” I said, “tell me the truth.”

“The truth.” She laughed, scornful, but when I joined her at the railing, she did as I asked. “The truth is that Robins was a nice man. Sweet.

Tender.” She smiled. “Not like many of the others. We talked for a long time, and I said good-bye. But I left without the money.”

“So you met him in the dining cabin . . .”

“And he apologized, and said he would pay, and invited me to eat with him.”

“You had to be on stage right after the dinner hour, though, so you left before he did.”

“Yes.” She was crying—real tears this time. Before the captain had had her imprisoned, she could’ve written it off, could’ve moved on to another passenger. Not now, though. “He gave me a key to his cabin, told me to wait.”

“Why did you lie to me?” I asked. “Why not just tell me everything when I found you last night?”

She sniffed, a derisive noise. “You are the constable. Why would you believe me?”

I shook my head. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where will I go?”

“My cabin, for starters. I’ll find you somewhere else to hide until I uncover the real killer.”

Iyarina touched my shoulder. “Thank you, Constable.”

I smiled. “Please. Call me Rebecca.”

I led her to the port-side door and opened it.

Khimarial Ink • 34 Something slammed into my shoulder. I shoved Iyarina out of the way and fell backward, avoiding another strike. “What the hell?” I blinked tears out of my eyes. “Tony?”

The chief steward had a long wrench in his hand. He swung again; I rolled, yanking my baton out of my jacket. The next time he tried to hit me, I was ready; I grabbed the wrench and pulled him to the deck, punching at his jaw with the fist clenched around the baton. He howled in pain as I got to my feet, legs still shaky from that first blow. “What are you doing?”

Peters managed to get up, holding his face, the wrench held out like a sword, as if he was some sort of fencer. I gripped the baton more tightly.

“She told you, didn’t she.”

It wasn’t a question. “What the hell is going on?”

“She told you she didn’t kill Robins.”

Oh, my dear God. “You . . . you killed him?”

Peters stepped closer to Katya and pulled a clasp-knife from his pocket, then flicked it open. The morning sun glimmered on the blade. He pointed at the railing with the wrench; Katya dropped to her knees and huddled, making herself as small as possible. Then, to me, he said, “I had my orders.”

“Your . . . orders?”

He smiled and sketched a salute with the wrench. “Anton Petrovich, at your service. Or, more precisely, in service of the Tsar.”

“You’re the spy?”

Peters—Petrovich—laughed. “No, no, my dear Constable. Robins was most definitely the spy. And a very good one too; he stole classified information from the Russian Consulate. The telegram was very clear: kill him, recover the documents, find someone to take the blame.

I looked more closely at the knife; it was about the right size for the stab wound in Robins’s stomach. “You were sloppy,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have gotten my hands on the information.”

“I didn’t have a lot of time.” Petrovich’s hand darted out; Katya cowered back and shielded herself with her arms. The knife left a bright line of blood on her skin. “And you were so damned efficient. You found the plans before I could get to Robins’s cabin that night.” His face went hard. “You ruined everything for me, Mrs. McDonald. Everything!” It was a furious shout.

The airship hit a bump of turbulence; Katya whimpered. I kept my feet, but Petrovich dropped to one knee. I advanced, but he turned the knife as if to throw it. I had no doubt he could kill me that way. I wished I could carry a pistol, but guns were prohibited—one careless bullet could puncture the giant aluminum-encased balloon hanging above our heads.

Petrovich stood again, smiling. “You have a simple choice, Constable

Khimarial Ink • 35 McDonald: say nothing, go along with the tramp’s confession, and, when we get to Boston, make your report to the Company. You’ll never see nor hear from me again.” He brandished the wrench. “Or there could be a fight, and you both could die.”

Except for the little matter of Katya going to prison for a crime she hadn’t committed, Petrovich’s plan sounded pretty good, given what the captain had in store for me. Especially since I still had the money.

The money.

“What about the money?”

His eyes narrowed. “What money?”

He didn’t know. The Tsar’s government must have withheld that detail—or perhaps the money was intended to help Robins disappear until the Russians forgot what he’d done. Not that that would help; the Tsar was known for his long memory. “I found money along with the documents.” A plan formed in my mind. “Thousands of dollars. You can have it if you let us live.”

Petrovich clicked his tongue. “Come now, Constable. Why shouldn’t I just kill you and take the money anyway?”

“I suppose you have a point.” I tucked the baton under my arm, but didn’t put it away. “Go on, then. Kill me. You’ll never find it.”

Petrovich’s smile returned, toothy and unpleasant. He waved the knife at Katya. “Run, little tramp. Hide. Don’t let me see you again.”

Katya looked at me; I nodded, and she ran for it. Even if she was caught by the captain again, it was better than being at Petrovich’s mercy.

Once the dancer was gone, Petrovich gestured toward the door with the wrench. “Lead on, Constable.”

I shook my head. “You really believed I wouldn’t keep the money on me?” I took the envelope out of my jacket and held it up. The wind tried to tug it out of my fingers. “$6,500, Petrovich. A lot of money.”

He closed the knife and jammed it into his pocket, then reached out.

“Give it to me. Now!” “No.” I took a one hundred dollar bill from the envelope and let it go; the wind carried it to the back wall of the foredeck. “I think not.” Then I dropped the envelope.

“You bitch!” He dove for the money as bills scattered everywhere. His hand closed on the envelope, still half-full of cash; when he looked back, he wore a triumphant expression.

It lasted all of half a second before I smashed the baton across the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted as he brought the wrench up in a clumsy arc; I cracked the baton on his hand and, as the wrench clanged to the deck, I dropped to one knee and punched the metal rod into his chest, all my weight and strength behind the blow.

Khimarial Ink • 36 Bone cracked. Petrovich’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a spray of blood.

I don’t know how long it took him to die, but in the end, it didn’t really matter.

U.S. MARSHALS MET me at the port and escorted me to their Boston office, where I was debriefed. I told the truth, except for one small detail, and the Marshals didn’t seem inclined to press the issue. They also took the captain into custody—they hadn’t been happy with his mistreatment of Katya, and, looking to save face, the Company let them keep him.

I was in the care of the Marshals for four days; the Ozymandias left without me after two for her return trip to San Francisco. Not that it mattered; the Marshals were so grateful that I’d recovered the intelligence and eliminated an agent of the Tsar that they booked me a luxury cabin on the California Limited III. I boarded the train the next morning at half-past-eight and, an hour later, went to the dining car for a late breakfast. I was just spreading jam onto my toast when I heard a voice I couldn’t fail to recognize.

“Hello, Rebecca.”

I smiled at Marianne as she slid into the seat across from me and reached out to take my hands in hers. “Surprised?”

“Very. The Ozymandias left days ago, apparently without her engineer’s mate. Do you still have a job?”

She grinned. “I told you Frederickson was eating out of my hand. He convinced Commander Markel. I’m not getting paid, but it’s worth it.” Her palms were warm, fingers rough in places with calluses from years of working in engine compartments. “Even though you were a little sharp with me.”

My eyes prickled with tears. “I’m sorry, Marianne.”

“It’s all right,” she said. There were too many people in the dining car for her to kiss my fingers, but I know she wanted to. “I forgive you.”

The waiter came to take Marianne’s order, and once he was gone I asked her if she got the note I’d sent; sequestered by the Marshals, it was the only way I could get a message out. “I did,” she said. “I tried to write back, but they said you couldn’t receive any communications from outside.”

I made a face, which made Marianne chuckle. “At least you’re here now.

At least you found my train.” Her lips tightened at that, and I stroked her wrist. “What is it?”

“Not that I regret being here, but the ticket was . . .” She blushed. “I’m sorry, Rebecca, but this is expensive, and you know how much the Company pays women. Even high-ranking women like us.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I reached into my jacket and showed Marianne

Khimarial Ink • 37 the edge of the envelope. I saw her stunned expression and felt myself smile. “They asked. I lied. They didn’t push it.” I tucked it back into my inside pocket. “We have nothing to worry about. Not this trip. Maybe not ever.”

“Rebecca . . .”

“Shush now,” I said in my best mock-authoritative tone. “We’ve got a week to talk about money.” I stroked her fingers; her cheeks flushed pink.

“Among other things.”

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven —Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

Khimarial Ink • 38

In Keisha’s Shadow Sandra Barret Tori’s life seems to be going from bad to worse when brash and flirty Ashley shows up and turns her world upside down.

http://nuancebooks.wordpress.com/books/in-keishas-shadow/

Art For Art’s Sake: Meredith’s Story by Barbara L. Clanton Regal Crest

visit http://www.blclanton.com/

Khimarial Ink • 39

I

first glimpsed the girl as a small bundle wrapped in the sergeant’s cloak.

“What do you have for me?” I asked. It was my turn to take the fourth watch, midnight to dawn; a quiet night, until now. Moonlight spilled through the doorway as the sergeant carried the bundle into the Infirmary and gently set the girl on the wooden examining table.

“We’d crossed into Rahesh on a raid, Honored Healer,” the sergeant said. She’d pushed her helmet up on top of her head and unlaced her cuirass; the iron strips clinked. A runnel of sweat bisected the soot on her forehead. “We heard her crying. The bastards had tied her to an altar, and . . .” She looked away.

When I tried to remove the cloak, the girl drew it more tightly around her. I glimpsed bruises and welts, some old, others new. “Merciful Mother!”

I said. I’d seen this before on prisoners rescued from Rahesh, but never on one so young.

Hide your disgust, I told myself. The child needs your comfort, not your outrage. “Hello,” I said. “My name’s Lisayne. What’s yours?” She eyed me like a dog that’s been kicked too many times. I said, “I’m a Healer. I’d like to help you. Will you let me?”

“We think she’s about six, Healer,” the sergeant said. “Hasn’t spoken a word. Screamed like a demon possessed her whenever she saw any of my male soldiers. I had to get all the men away before she’d let me take her.”

“You didn’t bind her in any way?”

“No, Healer,” the sergeant answered. She rolled up the cuff of her leather shirt, showing the old marks of shackles on her wrist. “I know better.”

I nodded, then turned to the child again. “Won’t you at least tell me your name?”

The girl’s blue eyes regarded me suspiciously. “Are you going to hurt me?”

Her tone squeezed my heart. “No one will hurt you any more,” I said. “I promise.” I brushed a lock of golden hair off her forehead, feeling the old pangs of regret that I’d never be able to bear children: the price the Goddess exacted for Her gift of the Healing Magic.

Khimarial Ink • 40 “How can the Goddess allow such atrocities?” the sergeant asked.

“It’s not our place to question the Goddess,” I said, to myself and the sergeant. When I saw the look on her face, I added, “You did in well rescuing her. I’ll make sure it’s noted on your record. Go rejoin your soldiers.”

The child watched carefully as I probed for broken bones, listened to her heartbeat. Then I extended a wisp of my Healing Magic, and she began screaming and flailing her arms. Horrified, I cut the spell, but she kept screaming. Other patients protested the noise. I could not quiet her.

Then I heard the voice I least wanted to hear.

“Novice! What’s the meaning of this?” I froze as Elder Mairen entered the room. She was the most senior member of the Council of Elder Witches, the spiritual leaders of our Holy Aurigan cause. “What are you doing to this child?”

Elder Mairen glowered down at me, a gaunt scarecrow of a woman in her long blue overtunic, her black coif wrapping her angular face like an executioner’s hood. I felt as if my strength was being bled away. To disguise the trembling of my hands, I smoothed the wrinkles from my skirt. With her wintry blue eyes and long nose, the grim slash of a mouth bracketed by deep lines, Elder Mairen could reduce anyone to tears with a look.

“The child was brought in . . .”

Elder Mairen ripped the sergeant’s cloak from the girl. I gasped when I saw the full extent of the marks on her body. The girl started to screech, but Mairen grabbed her hair in one hand and laid the other over her face.

“Silence,” she said. The girl froze.

Mairen glared at me. “That’s how you quiet them,” she said. “Or had you forgotten?”

“Honored Elder, look at what the Raheshis did to her,” I protested. “They must have infected her with some kind of spell. You saw what happened when I—” “Don’t blame your incompetence on others, Novice,” Mairen said. “’You, who would be a Healer, what is the Magic?’”

Damn her! She’s going to make me recite the Code! “’The Magic is the force that binds all life and all being,’” I answered automatically. “’Part of the universal wisdom.’” “’What are the forms of Magic?’”

I wanted to stand up for myself, refuse to be humiliated, but my will was paralyzed. “The primary is the Healing Magic. The others are Songweaving, Shapechanging, Weaponing.’” “’How do we draw upon the Magic?’” “’When we eat the holy seeded fruits, such as apples, we partake of the seeds of knowledge. When we perform sex rituals, we strengthen that power through the joining of the male and the female energies.’”

Khimarial Ink • 41 “’What ways of drawing upon the Magic are forbidden?’”

Even thinking of that answer made me cringe. “’The first forbidden way of drawing upon the Magic is the Qabbraya, the process of drawing energy by inflicting pain on others. The other is by performing the sex ritual on a child.’” “’What is a Healer’s first duty?’” “’To do no harm to those entrusted to our care.’” I glanced at the little girl, frozen by Mairen’s spell, and wondered which of us violated that one first. “’And the second?’” “’To respect the learning of those who have come before us.’” Even if she’s a tyrannical harridan, I thought, though I dared not voice it.

She said, “Yes. Respect. Allowing no harm. Would you say you’d lived up to those precepts, Novice?”

My fists clenched and unclenched. I wanted to lash out, but could not.

Mairen apparently took my silence for an admission of guilt. She continued, “Since you seem to know only the letter of the Healer’s Code, I will finish your shift. Goddess knows what else your ineptitude has done here. Go.” All I could say was, “Yes, Honored Elder.”

I BARELY SLEPT. At daybreak, I stalked, still fuming, out to the main thoroughfare of Jehan’s Lair. Elder Mairen had no right to speak to me that way! The early sun kissed the red stone valley of the Lair and the hollowed out mounds of soft volcanic ash where we made our homes. Why can’t I stand up for myself? The odors of bread, roasting meats, dung, leather, wool, smoke, pastries, oils, and tanning clotted the air. Cursing drovers herded oxen along the pathway. My teachers and the other Elder Witches encouraged questioning and debate. But talking back to Elder Mairen is out of the question. I returned the salutes of passing soldiers. They honor my learning and Healer status. I spent my life learning the Magic, earning my title. How dare she call me “Novice”?

I took a corridor between the rows of mound dwellings. The detour allowed me to reach the Infirmary in a better frame of mind. Not free of my anger, but far enough away from it to serve my patients properly. As I entered the Infirmary, I glanced furtively toward Elder Mairen’s chamber, sighing with relief when I saw she wasn’t there. Reporting me to the Council, no doubt, I thought. At least while she’s haranguing them, she can’t bother me.

From further inside the Infirmary, a child’s laughter danced a duet with the plink of mandolin strings. I raced down the stone halls to one of the patient chambers, and paused in the doorway, not believing what I saw.

The girl from last night sat on a cot, her laughter echoing off the red

Khimarial Ink • 42 stone walls, her sparkling gaze following the mandolin player, a dark-haired woman in a bright green dress.

I coughed. The girl looked up, the joy in her eyes transforming to fear.

Someone had given her back the sergeant’s cloak, which she drew around her. But the woman leaned close and whispered something that birthed a new ripple of laughter.

“Suzannah,” I said, “what are you doing?” And how did you reach this child when I could not?

Suzannah looked at me, one eyebrow lifted. “Songweaving for your patients, Lisayne,” she answered. She had a heart-shaped face, with high cheekbones and a broad mouth that always appeared ready to smile. Just now, her mouth was a tight line across her face. “’Zannah, you know what we agreed.” I’d had my fill of confrontation last night, and wanted to avoid this one.

Suzannah would not allow it. “I know. Stay away from children.” Her eyes frosted. “But what was I to do, turn my back when I heard Alysa crying?”

“Alysa?”

“It means ‘Joyful One,’ ” she said softly. “Hasn’t had much joy in her life, has she?”

Gently she stroked the girl’s soft golden curls; Alysa did not even blink.

When I touched her, she went into fits. What kind of Healer does that make me?

I ventured, “If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be banned. But it’s Elder Mairen’s rule, not mine. No matter how much we wish it was otherwise, we can’t change what she says—” I hesitated.

“About Sh’gan,” Suzannah finished, in the lilting brogue of her homeland, Gilam. The word was literally, “Unnaturals,” a slur on the sex rites people like Suzannah practiced in their Magic. Unlike Traditionalists, like myself, Sh’gan practiced sex rites between people of the same gender.

Idly, she coaxed a few harmonics from the mandolin strings, adding, “I don’t take part in the sex rites since what happened to Finola.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. Most Sh’gan practiced their rites quietly, separate from the Traditionalists, and never disturbed the uneasy alliance the war had created between our two circles. In my mind, I heard myself last night, reciting the Code: “Performing the sex ritual on a child is also forbidden.”

I said, “You know how many people accuse Sh’gan of using children in the sex rites.”

Suzannah’s jaw hardened, accenting the dimple in her chin. “I heard Alysa crying. Was I to pretend I didn’t hear, because of the lies of fools?

What would you have done?”

“Possibly the same as you,” I said. But I’m not Sh’gan, I thought. Elder

Khimarial Ink • 43 Mairen once tried to banish all the Sh’gan from the Lair. As a fugitive slave, Suzannah would command a large bounty in Rahesh. The other Elders had voted Mairen down, thank the Goddess.

Yet Suzannah troubled even the less hidebound Traditionalists. Like a cat, she seemed to consider it your obligation to accept her on her own terms. She apparently took pride in being different in every way; those differences included what she’d done to her hair. Her Raheshi owner had forced her to grow it long, as was “natural.” After her escape she’d hacked much of it off. It had grown in since, but still was very short, parted roughly in the center, with cowlicks at odd angles and wispy bangs that brushed her eyebrows. Her crooked nose had resulted from an encounter with an enemy soldier’s pike. Even her eyes didn’t match; the left was green, the right blue. She was as inconspicuous as perfect pearl in a dungheap.

I admired her independent spirit, and did not share Mairen’s biases. Yet I had no power to change things. “ ’Zannah, come on,” I said. “Mairen’ll be back soon.”

I moved to separate her from the child; Alysa shifted to Suzannah’s far side. ’Zannah said softly, “It’s all right, Alysa. Lisayne won’t hurt you.”

But Alysa hadn’t been moving away from me.

“Novice, why have you allowed this Sh’gan near this child?”

Elder Mairen’s stare froze me. “First your incompetent attempt at a Healing sends the child into fits! Now you’re worsening the damage!”

Alysa hid behind Suzannah, tightly clutching her hand.

“It wasn’t Lisayne’s fault, Honored Elder,” the Gilamite said softly, using the proper honorific, but with no trace of submissiveness. “I was Songweaving for the patients. When I heard Alysa crying, I wanted to help.”

Chin high and eyes calm, she stood her ground, showing no fear. ’Zannah had told me of years imprisoned in a brothel in Rahesh, and of seeing her wife, Finola, burned alive. What could frighten her after something like that?

Perhaps some of ’Zannah’s courage rubbed off on me, for I said, “Honored Elder, surely you must be glad for whatever Suzannah’s done.

Alysa looks much better now.”

The Elder’s glare drained my courage. “I don’t care what this Sh’gan claims, Novice!” she snapped. “I cannot find the spell infecting this girl if she’s not suffering from it when we examine her. You allowed this creature to interfere in things that are not her concern.”

Abruptly, Alysa said, “She’s my friend. I don’t want her to leave.”

Mairen moved to silence the child, as she’d done the night before, but Suzannah seized her wrist. “Just a moment, Elder!” she said. “Alysa has been seriously ill-used. Or hadn’t you noticed? I heard a little girl in pain,

Khimarial Ink • 44 frightened and alone. I know what that’s like, and I wanted to ease it. You apparently prefer to leave her suffering, to advance your learning.”

Mairen appeared stung by ’Zannah’s boldness, but she quickly recovered. “I’d sooner that than put her at the mercy of a child-raper,” she said.

Suzannah’s face darkened. “How dare you?” she snarled, and drew menacingly close to Mairen. But she glanced at Alysa and stopped, as if recognizing the consequences of further action. Her throat muscles worked, and her hands clenched and unclenched.

She knelt beside Alysa and murmured, “Dearest, I can’t stay. Elder Mairen will take care of you.” I wondered if Suzannah’s stomach twisted as much as my own at those last words.

Alysa shook her head. “I don’t want her. I want you.” She tried to hide behind Suzannah again, but Mairen yanked her away. The girl drew breath as if to scream, but a look at Mairen’s face silenced her.

“She knows better than to try any whining with me,” Mairen said.

“You said it yourself,” ’Zannah snapped. “You don’t care. You’re no better than the Raheshis! More interested in power than the welfare of a little girl.” She slung the mandolin strap over her shoulder and left before Mairen could say anything.

IT WAS EVENING, about a week since the patrol had brought the girl in.

Suzannah and I sat across a table from each other in the crowded mess.

On all sides, people shared tables in pairs and threes and fours. Tall black soldiers from Goz and shorter, fair-haired Aurigans; wiry assassins from Khan Histar and mercenaries from Hadan who fought side by side against their common foe. But I saw no tables where men and women mingled.

Ironic, I thought. The war had brought together a diverse group, against a state where men enslaved women. Yet in our daily practices, where union should have been paramount, we were divided.

But a group of Sh’gan occupied one corner of the mess, away from the rest. Men and women shared tables there, voicing the same speculations about the war, the same complaints as we about the food and the officers, the same worries about loved ones. The “unnaturals”?

“How’s Alysa?” Suzannah asked, over a plate of mashed potatoes, kale, and some seasonings, known as colcannon. She had added chopped pork, leeks, onions, and chives.

I took a moment to answer. “She seems all right.”

Suzannah frowned. “Seems?”

“We moved her to the orphanage with the other children,” I began. “She looks healthy and normal. Appears to be eating.”

Her gaze pierced me from beneath her dark brows. “What are you not telling me?”

Khimarial Ink • 45 “Elder Mairen treats her every day,” I said. “She’s taken an interest in her welfare.”

Suzannah scowled. “I can’t think of anyone I trust less with any child.”

She ignored my sharp look and asked, “How does Alysa look? Does she play with the others? Does she do the things children do? Has she talked to you or anyone?”

Her questions forced me to confront things I’d been avoiding. “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “She ran from me one day. I followed, but Elder Mairen ordered me to stop. Said she’d ‘get over it.’ And she seemed to.

The next day, Alysa apologized to me.” I paused. “I’m telling you things that aren’t your concern.”

Suzannah said, “A child’s welfare isn’t my concern?” She snorted. “Has anyone shown concern for the poor girl?” “ ’Zannah! I visit her every day. I encourage her to play with other children. I bring her treats from the kitchen. I care very much about her!”

“But . . . ?”

I looked away, then back at her, and sighed. “Sometimes she’ll join a group of children, but doesn’t really play with them. One of the older ones told me that as soon as I leave, Alysa moves away and sits by herself.”

Suzannah stirred the colcannon, but did not eat any. “And Elder Mairen says she’ll just get over it? Lisayne, don’t be stupid. What kind of Healer can see things like that and think nothing’s wrong?”

I could have slapped her. “I’m not stupid!” I said. Several people nearby stared at me. I lowered my voice. “Elder Mairen is the best one to take care of Alysa. By the time Elder Mairen was my age, she was the most powerful Healer in a century, and now she’s over sixty.” ’Zannah shrugged. “And all those years cover her like calluses, so nothing new gets in.”

“Even if I thought she was doing something wrong, I can’t just go in and tell her.”

Suzannah’s mouth twisted. “Why not? You’re doing a fine job of telling me I’m wrong, and you don’t really believe it, do you? You’re worried about Alysa, too, aren’t you?”

I looked down. “Elder Mairen says not to worry, that Alysa will be all right.”

“Elder Mairen calls you Novice, though you’re a fully consecrated Healer.

She says your Magic will never amount to anything. Are you going to decide for yourself who you are, or are you going to let her decide for you?”

I’d asked myself the same question. In Elder Mairen’s presence all questions vanished like smoke. “You talk as if she’s evil,” I said. “She’s not evil. She’s had a hard time of it. When the Raheshis saw how powerful she was, they captured her. She defeated their chief priest in a duel of magics, but it cost her all the joy in her heart.”

Khimarial Ink • 46 “So that gives her the right to never smile or offer anyone a kind word?”

Suzannah asked. She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Well, I had a hard life, too. I lost my parents when I was Alysa’s age. I spent nearly a year on the streets, begging, sometimes stealing. Cold and scared, wondering why the Lord and Lady hated me enough to make my parents die. There were so many of us orphans that the City Fathers in Gilam passed a law making a child caught in a crime the property of the victim, to do with as that person saw fit. I saw children as young as four with a hand cut off, or put on the streets as whores, or sold as slaves.

“But I was lucky. A Sh’gan mage named Nahan took me in and cared for me like his own daughter. Taught me my letters and my Magic. And he didn’t use me for sex rituals!”

My face burned. “I didn’t think he did.”

There was a silence. Then, “I know that. I’m sorry. I’m just—” A female officer set a tray down at our table. Then she saw Suzannah, picked up the tray, and looked for another table. The pain that flashed into Suzannah’s face touched my heart. I said, “Ignore her,” but she made a wry face.

“I can’t worry about people like that,” she said.

That glimpse of Suzannah’s pain lingered in my mind. “Tell me more,” I said.

Suzannah seemed to gather her thoughts. “When I was older, I spoke of repaying him, but he said you pay for love you receive by giving it to someone else. So I can’t sit by and do nothing while that demon has hold of Alysa.” “ ’Zannah!” I protested. “Elder Mairen’s stern and unforgiving, but she’s—” “Not Elder Mairen,” Suzannah said. “There’s a demon infesting that child. I’ve felt its presence.”

Unbidden, old prejudices about Sh’gan leapt into my mind. “How do you know that?”

She looked at her colcannon and did not answer, as if she were waging some internal debate.

I said, “If there were a demon, Elder Mairen would have detected it.”

Suzannah looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Elder Mairen couldn’t detect her own backside with a candle! She has no Magic.” I stared at her.

She continued, “There was no duel of magics in Rahesh. Do you think a Raheshi wizard would offer an Aurigan witch anything like a fair fight? They took her Magic from her. Any power she has she’s leeched from everyone around her. Including you.”

I sat back in my chair. “That’s preposterous! She’s the senior member of the Council! And you still haven’t told me how you know all this.”

Khimarial Ink • 47 She hesitated again. Shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I just know.

And you know it too. Or at least you suspect it. Why do you think you lose your nerve when you face her?”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. But the flesh puckered on my arms.

Suzannah shook her head. “Mairen fears you as much as she fears me,” she said. “Open your eyes, Lisayne. She terrorizes you. And she tried to have all the Sh’gan banished. Because we threaten her. You, me, everyone who might see the truth. Everything she says and does is intended to keep people off balance, so they won’t realize she’s stealing power from them.”

I stared at her. “Why do you talk this way? You’d think Elder Mairen was the enemy!”

“Isn’t she? Would you like being called a ‘creature,’ as if you weren’t even human?”

“But it’s not just her. I once saw two Sh’gan men burned alive in the town square! And the monsters who did that—” “—were trying to protect the children,” she finished. “Only they weren’t monsters, they were people. Like the Raheshis, who made me watch them murder Finola. Like you and Elder Mairen, afraid of us. As if we have a disease you might catch if you even touch us.”

“I’m not like her!” I snapped.

In response, Suzannah leaned forward, eyes focused on me, and took my hand and held it. In spite of myself, I flinched and pulled away. A tight, bitter smile ghosted the corner of her mouth. Face aflame, I stammered an apology, but Suzannah just shook her head.

The rest of the meal, I picked at my food, and barely heard her goodbye.

I watched her pass through the crowd with her head high, black cloak swirling about her like mist, and wanted to hide.

LATER THAT NIGHT, I wandered the Lair, thinking. Could ’Zannah have been right? Was that why I lost my nerve in Elder Mairen’s presence? And what about Alysa? Suzannah claimed she was possessed, but would not say how she knew. What did that mean?

In the years since General Eurydice had led us here, the Lair had grown to the size of a small city. My steps took me away from the densely inhabited areas, to a section of older delvings that had been abandoned when larger mounds were excavated. As I approached a corner, I saw torches, and heard Elder Mairen. “Sergeant, dispatch half your soldiers to search toward the east rim. You and the rest come westward with me. That Sh’gan can’t have gotten far with the girl, and we must find them before she works some devilry!”

Blessed Goddess! Briefly, I wondered if Elder Mairen had been right

Khimarial Ink • 48 about Suzannah all along. But they both claimed to care about Alysa. Who was I to believe?

I thought of the laughter ’Zannah had brought forth from Alysa, and decided to mount my own search. I’d convince another Elder that ’Zannah wanted to help the child. The truth would come out. I did not have to decide who was right and who was wrong.

When Mairen’s two parties had left, I headed through a maze of twisting, turning paths, passing long deserted mounds with centuries-old markings on them, male and female figures, runic characters. I felt as if the eyes of those ancient inhabitants were watching me. The sounds of life diminished behind me, and my heart beat very loud. Serpents twisted in my stomach as I ventured deeper into the shadows.

Then a shadow touched my shoulder. Cold, unliving fingers froze my soul. I spun, saw a vaguely manlike thing that consumed all the light. I screamed and ran.

As in a dream, I seemed to get nowhere. The shadow-demon was behind me, stinking of blood and fear and death. I stumbled and scraped my knee. It grabbed my ankle in its cold fist, then slithered up my leg. “Goddess, help!” I cried. I struggled to regain my feet, but could not feel my legs.

Then something else had my arms, something warm and strong that pulled me from that hideous grasp. Suzannah shoved me aside and faced the demon, beckoning with her hands. The thing charged. She ducked, seized it around its middle, and heaved it against a mound wall. When it hit, it spattered like ink, black droplets running down the stone.

She shoved me. “Move! That thing’ll re-form before long! Unless you want it to feast on your soul!”

Holding tight to Suzannah’s hand, I followed her through the winding pathways until we reached the valley’s edge. There was a narrow cave in the cliff wall, just wide enough for a person to fit through, and as black as a Raheshi’s heart. I stared into that blackness, my heart hammering and my skin cold and clammy. “I can’t,” I said.

“No choice,” Suzannah said, shoving me in ahead of her. A gesture with her hands shut the opening. When I did not move, she dragged me. The stone scraped my body. I felt as if the dark had swallowed me, so that I could not breathe. A globe of light appeared in Suzannah’s hand. We were in a narrow cleft in the rock. “Sorry,” she said, gently touching my shoulder.

“I know you’re afraid. But trust me, this is better than letting that thing get you.”

“Are we safe?” I asked.

“Not for long,” she said. “Come on. Waiting just makes it harder.”

I looked around, seeing the shadow-demon everywhere. But she’d faced it down, hadn’t she? What others had she faced? “Okay,” I said. “If you can,

Khimarial Ink • 49 I can.” We set off, half running. Dampness glistened on stone walls, dripped from hidden cracks, oozed into my sandals. My feet made soft, sucking noises. She held my hand, even when the passage widened.

“That thing possessed Alysa?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I’d just managed to force it from her, but it escaped before I could do anything else.” She was breathing heavily but did not slow her pace. “It can’t live outside her body for long, so it’ll follow us.”

“Why did it attack me?” My side was starting to ache.

“I think it was drawn to your power,” she said. That was the second time she’d spoken of my power. I didn’t feel powerful.

Soon we reached a grotto that glowed with faint light from an unknown source. The walls disappeared into musty smelling darkness. I heard the flap of wings and suppressed a shudder. Alysa lay on a low rock shelf, eyes closed as if asleep. In the eerie light, she looked frail, her pale skin almost translucent, faint blue traceries of veins painfully visible.

Suzannah leaned against the cave wall. I saw a gash on her leg. When I knelt to Heal it, she said, “Don’t. It’s a small injury, and it feeds the magic.”

It took a moment for her words to sink in. “The magic?” I whispered. “Do you mean the Qabbraya? The pain-magic? Are you—” “It’s not what you think,” she said, her voice weary. She reached behind her neck and lifted something over her head, a small, pale object dangling from a gossamer string. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

It was like a shaved twig, tapered at each end, with a crook in it that described a graceful curve and a hole through which the flimsy line passed.

On closer inspection, I saw that the line was not string, but golden hair. And the twig was bone. “A vetandus,” I gasped. I’d learned about the evil magic of the vetandus at the Academy, but this was the first one I’d ever seen.

“Say hello to my wife,” Suzannah told me. “Go ahead. Touch it with your hand or your Magic. See what the Raheshis did to a filthy Sh’gan.”

I took the thing in my hand and extended a tendril of Magic to it. On the edges of my perceptions, where my normal senses met my Magic, I saw a woman in flames bound to a cross. When I tried to look directly at her, she disappeared.

“I’m Finola,” she said, her voice full of pain. As her voice merged with my mind, so too did the images of her death: the immense idol with its leering, flaming mouth, the bonds on her hands and feet, the unceasing agony as the flames devoured her. The pain filled me, and became me, twisting, throbbing. Frantically, I sought the source, trying to Heal it, but could not.

“Only someone from Rahesh could dream up such an atrocity,” Suzannah said. “When someone uses that sorcery, it sends my beloved wife into screaming agony. She can never escape and never die.”

Khimarial Ink • 50 “Goddess!” I breathed. “That’s horrible!”

“One survives,” Finola said. “There are ways to find respite. Take Suzannah’s hand and link with us both.”

I clasped Suzannah’s hand firmly, and the music of their two hearts leapt through me, a harmony that filled me with their love. I’d never realized how passionate the love between two women could be.

“Suzannah’s love eases the pain,” Finola said. “However briefly. I save my strength that way. I’ll need all my strength to help Alysa.”

“I still hate using this sorcery,” Suzannah said. “I can weave a song that—” “Songweaving takes too long, dear heart,” Finola interrupted. “We don’t have time for it. That thing can’t live long outside the girl and it will—” With a roar, the demon shredded the darkness around us like paper.

Suzannah leapt to her feet and got between Alysa and the demon. The thing poured itself over her.

When Suzannah sprang to Alysa’s defense, I lost my link with her. But I was still linked with Finola. “My magic!” she said. “Don’t try to Heal it, don’t try to fight it! Use my magic now!”

When I obeyed, the pain-fueled magic flowed through me. I raised my arms, and beams of yellow light speared from my hands to strike the shadow-demon. Its howl of pain blended with Finola’s scream as the sorcery struck it. The demon swatted at me, but I drove it back and flung it against the chamber wall. It spattered against the stone, as when Suzannah had fought it, but the Qabbraya sorcery seared the droplets before they could congeal again. There was a loud screeching that faded in volume, slowed to a dull growl, then silence.

Only then did Finola stop screaming, but my body twitched with the pain and the power that had flowed through it. “Goddess,” I gasped, and collapsed, echoes of Finola’s pain ringing through my mind.

“Whoever implanted that in Alysa expected it to encounter Aurigan Healing Magic,” Finola said. Pain I could not Heal hung in her every word.

“They didn’t expect their own pain-magic.”

I Healed ’Zannah’s leg where it was still bleeding. That, at least, I could do. She murmured her thanks and walked over to Alysa.

“The demon consumed a lot of her soul,” Suzannah said. “I’d hoped I reached her in time.” She touched the child’s shoulder, murmured her name. Alysa did not respond.

“What happened when you banished the demon?” I focused some Healing Magic on the girl, tentatively, remembering the last time. I’d almost have welcomed a screaming fit, but there was no response. I probed deeper. “There’s a trace of her soul left,” I said. “Only enough to keep her breathing and her heart beating. Damn the bastards who did this!”

Khimarial Ink • 51 “Let me help,” Finola said.

“No!” Suzannah and I both answered at once.

“You understand,” Suzannah said.

I repressed a shudder. “Better than you realize.”

I looked at Alysa. As a Healer, I was trained to accept death’s inevitability.

“Everyone dies,” I said.

“So we just give up?” Finola asked. “Do either of you find that acceptable?”

I said, “Finola’s right, I can’t Heal Alysa. And I’m certainly not going to kill her.” Suzannah stared at me. I went on, “What if I use my Healing Magic on her, and you and Finola add your Magic to the spell? Our combined energies might save Alysa.” And possibly free Finola. I dared not voice that hope, lest it flicker out like Alysa’s life.

Silence followed, broken only by the sounds of our breathing. At last, Finola said, “It’s worth a try.” She, most of all, must be trying to rein in her hopes, I thought.

“Take my hand,” I told Suzannah. “I’ll use my Magic. Then we’ll both hold Alysa.”

I took a breath and used my Magic. The link to each person is different; the chamber where the soul dwells reflects the events of the individual’s life. A child’s soul-chamber should be a bright, sunny place, filled with the promise of life. But Alysa’s was like a prison, grim, grey, forbidding. Utterly without hope. Linked with Suzannah and Finola, I could feel their revulsion for the cruelty that had never allowed any hope to enter the child’s life.

As I probed deeper, sharp, vivid images from Alysa’s life swept over me on a wave of fear and nausea. Terror, confusion, helplessness as the priest tied her to the altar. Brown stains of old blood against grey stone.

Screaming, struggling as the demon took her.

Then for an instant, I saw Suzannah as a girl, backing into a corner in the nighted streets of Gilam. Blood from her nose mingled with her tears as the tall boy closed in, slapping his thigh with his belt, his teeth gleaming like knives. Four others followed. Not hurrying. Waiting to take their turn.

That image vanished, and I was back, approaching Alysa’s soul. In the innermost chamber, I saw it, a faint, blue flame, guttering like a candle starved for air. There was a mystic carapace around her soul, with cracks in its surface. “This is the most delicate part,” I said to the others. “You see the cracks there, damage inflicted by the demon. I have to lift the carapace to reach her soul, but if anything goes wrong, it could shatter and her soul will be lost to us.”

Carefully, my Magic touched the mystic shield. I directed ’Zannah to use a spell to form hands to gently lift the carapace, exposing Alysa’s soul.

I hoped to form a magical pathway, connecting Finola, ’Zannah, and me to Alysa. It was a delicate balance, like walking a tightrope, and it worked. I

Khimarial Ink • 52 felt Finola’s soul flowing through me into Alysa. The flicker of life brightened, grew stronger . . .

Suddenly, the part of me that was still anchored in the physical world saw Elder Mairen and the soldiers break into the chamber. “Sever the Link!”

Finola cried, but before I could do so, a magical blast shot through me and the flame of Alysa’s soul extinguished.

I snapped out of the spell. Suzannah was holding Alysa in her arms, rocking her as though the child were her own. Alysa’s eyes were closed, but she was not asleep.

“Mairen killed her,” Finola told me. “All that magic we’ve stirred up must have led her here. When she saw ’Zannah, she must not have realized how we were all linked. So the blast passed right through ’Zannah and into Alysa.”

“Novice, get that creature away from that child,” Mairen demanded.

I stared up at her fierce demeanor and saw her as she truly was. “Get away from her yourself, you old viper!” I screamed. But my victory tasted like ashes.

The soldiers looked from Mairen to me, and back again. Suzannah murmured Alysa’s name over and over.

TWO DAYS PASSED. I had spent much time testifying before the Council of Elders, and had seen little of ’Zannah. I wanted her to know what happened. It was a somber, overcast day. I approached as she laid the final stone on Alysa’s mound. Suzannah wore one shoe, a Gilamite death tradition, symbolizing that the body had had its place on earth, and now the soul had its place in the spirit world.

“Want to talk?” I asked.

“About what?” Suzannah demanded. The light in her eyes had dimmed, her face was gloomy, the color faded. “They won’t do anything about Mairen. Even if they do, nothing will change. I was anointing Alysa today, and some soldier demanded what I was doing! As if I was going to commit some perversion!”

Suzannah tried to leave, but I held her arm. “Tell me what fool said that, and I’ll—” “What’s the difference?” she interrupted. “Don’t you think I see people stare when I enter the mess hall?” She tried to shake her arm free. “I’m leaving the Lair.”

“Will running away solve the problem? What about Finola? What’ll she say?”

“It’s not like she can do much. The Elders won’t even tell me what they did with her.”

I took the vetandus from my pocket and watched her eyes widen. “I think

Khimarial Ink • 53 she’ll have a lot to say,” I said. “Ask her about the Elder Witch who took the vetandus home with her.”

Her laughter told me Finola was telling her that very thing. I wanted to Link with them to listen, but felt I owed them their privacy. Yet I wondered what that Elder had thought when all her clothes came to life and refused to allow her to wear them.

At least ’Zannah was smiling. I wanted to keep her smile in place.

“Mairen’s been relieved of her duties after . . . what happened.” Finola was probably telling her that, too.

I steered her toward the Infirmary. “I’m in charge here now,” I said, as I returned the guard’s salute. ’Zannah looked shocked. I was still a little shocked; I’d learned just yesterday.

“At least they’ve made one smart decision,” she said. Then, “What’s all the noise?”

“We raided a slave camp last night. We’re still sorting them all out.”

Voices echoed through the stone hallways. “Sounds like kids,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m going to need some special help with them.” I ushered her into a throng of children. Coloring, she stammered something about leaving, but I held her arm. “You asked me if I was going to decide for myself who I am,” I said. All around us, the voices suddenly stilled. “Why don’t you get out your mandolin and show them who you are?”

Khimarial Ink • 54

Bold Stroke Books . . .

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Carlisle Crowley is a striking, beautiful vampire hell-bent on living her undead life to the fullest. The last thing she needs hanging around her is Bronwyn Hunter, a seventeen-year-old lovestruck human girl. When Crowley’s dark and mysterious past comes back to haunt her, the pair embark on a journey of self discovery that tests their relationship to the limit.

Knight Predator Jordan Falconer

Mindancer Press http://bedazzledink.com/mindancer-press/knight-predator

Khimarial Ink • 55

T

hat winter when she was twenty-seven, Margaret Byrd became lovers with her therapist.

“I have something to confess,” she had said one session after many sessions. She sat forward in the big, leather chair reserved for clients.

“Yes, Margaret?”

Colors brightened; the room contracted; the air turned electric between them.

“I’m very attracted to you.”

She waited, hardly breathing, but when the response had come, she had been disappointed.

“It’s not unusual for a client to feel attracted to her therapist. It even has a name: transference. Perhaps we should talk about what it means for you to be able to tell me you’re attracted to me.”

Her therapist was fine-boned and long-limbed and downy blonde, but it was her eyes that had seduced Margaret into therapy. Her eyes were the color of a lake back home in Indiana—Echo Lake was its name—but not Echo Lake in summer. No, her eyes were like the lake in autumn, late autumn, when the slick surface of the lake first hinted that winter was coming, that soon it would ice over. At times during her weekly session, Margaret had found herself falling into those eyes and drifting, a small leaf on an undefined body of water.

“I’m not sure why I’m here,” she had said that first session. She tried to explain: needing someone to talk to, she had turned to the phone book (how pathetic that sounded!) and found a number for the women’s switchboard, and a sympathetic voice had referred her here.

“And here I am,” she said.

“And here you are,” her therapist reflected.

A silence followed, which Margaret felt compelled to fill.

“Pat is leaving me,” she said.

“And who is Pat?” “My lover.”

“Pat. Short for Patrick?”

Khimarial Ink • 56 “No. Patricia.”

Her therapist laced her fingers together and touched them to her lips.

“Go on,” she said.

“I’m just—not sure.”

OF COURSE SHE had stopped being a client once they became lovers.

Her therapist—Sylvia Robbins, Ph.D., UC Berkeley—had insisted on ethical grounds. Instead, she had referred Margaret to a lesbian therapist in the Mission. Margaret protested that she didn’t need therapy any longer; she was feeling much better. But Sylvia remained firm.

“I’m just beginning to see you open up. It would be a shame to stop the process now.”

They began living together almost immediately. Why should Margaret waste money on a sleazy apartment in the Tenderloin? Margaret countered that it wasn’t sleazy. True, the apartment building was located in the Tenderloin, not the best part of the city, but their room was on the seventh floor, and from its north-facing window they could see Nob Hill—Snob Hill, Pat had called it.

“Once you’re inside, it’s actually quite nice.”

To which Sylvia had replied, “You may want to think about why you have this problem with change” in a way that made Margaret reconsider.

On a bright January morning, she packed all her belongings into the U-Haul boxes she had kept from the previous winter, when she and Pat had made the hard drive from New Castle. Borrowing Pat’s dented Volkswagen van (recently splattered with bumper sticker messages like “Sisterhood is Powerful,” “Free Patty Hearst,” and “Pass the ERA NOW”), Margaret realized miserably that after today, she would have no one to depend on, not in the way she had depended upon Pat. And then, even more miserably, she realized they hadn’t said goodbye. After eight years together, Pat had tossed her the van key and rushed off to her new lover, someone she had met at the art school on Chestnut Street.

Margaret unloaded the boxes and stacked them in the small, second bedroom Sylvia used as an office. Then she drove back to the Tenderloin and left the key in a half-emptied room, and the door locked behind her when it closed.

The house was a renovated Victorian in Noe Valley, painted teal with white trim. The inside walls had been painted teal as well; Margaret guessed to match the color of Sylvia’s eyes. On the teal walls of the bedroom, Sylvia had hung floral prints by Georgia O’Keefe: vibrant poppies and orchids and vagina-shaped lilies. Margaret recognized her work at once, having been educated about Georgia O’Keefe by Pat, who was always criticizing Margaret for not knowing enough about women’s contribution to the culture.

Khimarial Ink • 57 Margaret was not much of a feminist even though she had been, for as long as she could remember, a lesbian (in imagination if not in body—Pat had been her first, and until Sylvia, only lover). Pat always said that you could not really be one without being the other, but Margaret thought this was just silly, although she never said so.

Margaret knew that in a perfect lesbian world, she would be some woman’s wife. She loved to cook and didn’t mind cleaning, even finding a certain pleasure in inspecting the shiny surfaces of things after she was done with them. She sewed, too, at a time when no one sewed except sad, aging hippies. And she had this fantasy. In the fantasy she is preparing lunch. On a clean cutting board she lays two pieces of fresh white bread. On one piece she spreads a spoonful of mayonnaise and a little mustard. On the other she places a crisp leaf of lettuce and then two slices of boloney.

She folds the two pieces and together and cuts them diagonally. Then she wraps the sandwich in waxed paper and sets it inside a metal lunch pail.

In the doorway a figure appears, dressed in khaki pants and an ironed khaki shirt. Margaret holds out the lunch pail to the figure, which bends to offer a tender kiss.

Margaret was ashamed of this fantasy, which she knew came directly from her childhood. Hadn’t her mother sent her father off to work this way each morning? All those years he worked in the Chrysler plant?

As it turned out, Sylvia hated to cook. Yet the kitchen was beautiful, filled with French pots and American gadgets. Margaret assumed these were remnants of some former lover, although Sylvia never spoke about her past. (“That’s for therapy.” Sylvia had been in therapy for years, it seemed.)

Immediately, in Sylvia’s kitchen, Margaret felt at home. The first night she prepared calamari in wine sauce, preceded by a simple spinach salad with vinaigrette dressing; she finished with a small bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Sylvia was properly impressed and after dinner, in the candlelight glow, took both of Margaret’s hands in hers and kissed them.

The second night was pasta. Fettuccine Alfredo, al dente, with just a hint of garlic. Come buono!

The third night Sylvia was late. She had been out with a friend, and when she came home she was tired and, Margaret could not help but notice, a little drunk. She barely touched her steak Béarnaise, which had grown tough from heating and reheating.

“Did you have a nice time?”

Margaret tried to be gracious, cheerful even, but Sylvia sat sulking, unresponsive.

“Did you go out for a drink? One of the girls at work was saying there’s a new women’s bar South of Market. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called Dorothy’s. It’s supposed to be hot.”

Khimarial Ink • 58 Sylvia looked up from her stoneware with such an icy expression that Margaret was startled.

“What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?”

Sylvia seized her steak knife, and for one crazy moment Margaret felt sure the blade was coming for her heart. But instead, in another moment Margaret saw that Sylvia had stabbed her steak Béarnaise and was holding it in front of her, like the flag of some defeated country. And now her eyes—lovely, liquid, teal eyes—glowed with little flecks of yellow. Funny, Margaret thought, she had never noticed it before, the yellow, the little yellow flames inside the blue.

“Steak!” Sylvia shouted. “You call this steak? This is leather!” And she tossed the speared meat onto the parquet floor where it lay like the dead animal that it was. And with that, Sylvia stormed out of the dining room.

But later, in bed, she had touched Margaret’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry. It’s my work. It gets to me sometimes. You can’t imagine what it’s like. It’s like I have to provide a safe place for all of them. But where is there a safe place for me?”

And Margaret had given in to the softness of her touch and the desperation in her voice and said gently, “You’re safe here, Sylvia. With me.”

HER NEW THERAPIST had an office in the Women’s Collective Building on Mission Street, where she saw low-income, insurance-less clients.

Margaret qualified thanks to her employer’s practice of paying minimum wage and scheduling workers for fewer than the required number of hours needed for benefits. Deborah Fisher, LCSW, SFSU, was short-legged and heavy, weighed down by an extremely low center of gravity. She waddled as she walked into the waiting area, where Margaret sat skimming the latest issue of Ms. magazine. (Gloria Steinem, now there was a feminist Margaret could appreciate.)

“Margaret?”

“Yes.” Margaret set down the magazine and stood. She was several inches taller than this new therapist, which was disappointing; Sylvia was several inches taller than Margaret. Margaret liked her authority figures to be taller than she. Her father was a tall man.

“Margaret Byrd. With a ‘y’.” Margaret smiled. “No relation.”

This was met with a look of incomprehension. Margaret reminded herself that she would have to stop using this line, which was appreciated

by Hoosiers but seemed to be completely lost on San Franciscans.

She followed Deborah down the poster-laden hall to a small office with muted lighting. Deborah settled into a fuzzy, upholstered chair while inviting Margaret to do the same. Duck-like, Margaret thought.

Khimarial Ink • 59 Or maybe like an owl: there were those glasses. And why was it so many lesbians refused to wear makeup? Sylvia didn’t need it; she had such good features, but most women—or men for that matter—benefited from a little retail magic. That was the main reason Margaret kept her job with the big department store in Union Square, despite its less-than-generous management. She worked the cosmetic counter and loved it, loved helping women make themselves more beautiful. And don’t you think she was chided for that! Pat had lectured her ad nauseam —Margaret loved that phrase, the way it rolled off her tongue—reprimanding her for objectifying women and supporting the capitalist machine, and then there was something about experimenting on rabbits. One year in San Francisco, and Pat had turned into somebody Margaret really didn’t understand at all.

“How can I help you?” Deborah said now, with kindness in her voice, and the session began.

Early that spring Moulin Rouge came out with a new line of products.

There was a new shade of lipstick called Crashing Pink, a new blush called Innocence, and a new fragrance called Claudine. Margaret’s supervisor assigned her to the front aisle, where she stood, perfume bottle in hand, offering customers a spray of Claudine as they entered the store.

“Here,” Margaret would say to the sweet young things, on their way home from their jobs in the Financial District. “Let’s try this on you.” And she would spray all the lovely female bodies with lovely feminine scents.

“You should have seen the one who came in today,” she’d say later to Sylvia. “She was absolutely yummy.”

“Yummy?” Sylvia would repeat. “YUMMY?” Margaret had started to notice that in the three months they’d been living together that life with Sylvia was a bit, well, disappointing in some ways. Sex, for example. Sex to Margaret was a banquet of pleasures: sweetness and succulence, all manner of textures and flavors waiting to be tasted and savored. At least that’s how it was in her fantasies, based in part on the lesbian novels Deborah had recommended she read.

Her actual experience had been something else again. Pat had been an inconsistent lover: shy and passive at times, rough and aggressive at others (especially after she’d had a few beers). Butches, Margaret thought. Who could understand them? Although, of course, Pat would have been insulted if you’d called her a butch, which Margaret had made the mistake of doing just once.

“The butch-femme dynamic is dead,” Pat had informed her. “Roleplaying is a consequence of patriarchy, and patriarchy is how men oppress women.”

Margaret thought this was something she had picked up at art school because she had never talked this way in Indiana.

Khimarial Ink • 60 And now there was Sylvia, desirable Sylvia. But Sylvia wanted mothering in the bedroom, soft caresses and reassuring strokes, all tenderness between the sheets. And yet Margaret could provide this tenderness and feel needed in being the provider. And that satisfied her, in a way.

Every workday on her break she’d walk to the corner of Kearny and O’Farrell and wait for the public phone there to be free. Then she’d call Sylvia, hoping to catch her between clients, knowing that most days she would already be downstairs in the study where she counseled. On her way home Margaret would stop at the market on Twenty-fourth Street to buy something for dinner: boned chicken breasts, maybe, with capers and mushrooms and a nice Chardonnay. She’d pick out a bunch of fresh flowers: Sylvia liked roses—the perfect flowers, she called them—while Margaret preferred daisies, which were so much more forgiving.

Sometimes she’d look for a card at the gift store next to the market.

Usually she’d pick out a silly card with a sentimental saying. But sometimes, just to surprise Sylvia, she would buy something erotic. One night she gave Sylvia a glossy color photo of a woman eating a luscious piece of cherrycovered cheesecake. Sylvia had seemed to like the card at first, surrendering momentarily to its stark sensuality. But the next day she had scolded Margaret for her obsession with food and put her on a diet.

Margaret admitted that she was, in fact, a little plump. In particular she had this layer of fat around her hips that would not go away, no matter what.

“Look at that.” Sylvia had made her stand, naked and backwards, before the full-length mirror inside the bedroom closet door. Looking over her shoulder into the image in the closet mirror, she had to admit that, yes, in honesty it was not a pretty sight.

“Cottage cheese thighs,” Sylvia said. “Fat ass.”

Margaret had never been inspected this way before, and she felt humiliated and at the same time thrilled to belong to someone so completely.

“You’re right,” she said. “But what can I do?”

Sylvia, with her small bones and high metabolism, had the answer.

“Run,” she said.

A few days later, they parked Sylvia’s BMW near the duck pond in Golden Gate Park and walked to the running track.

“Four times around is one mile,” Sylvia explained. “You can start easy and work up to it.”

Sylvia folded her arms across her chest; she had perfect, champagneglass-sized breasts, which Margaret found so practical compared to her own D-cups.

Khimarial Ink • 61 “Now, let me see how you run.”

Margaret had never really run before; oh, for buses and bargains, but that didn’t count. Still, she did not want to disappoint Sylvia. She rose up onto the toes of the brand-new white sneakers she had bought with her store discount. Pushing her elbows in to support her bosom, she propelled herself forward and, with a little puff of breath, she was off.

“Wait! Wait!”

Sylvia came jogging up from behind. Margaret stopped and turned.

“Is that how you run?”

Margaret looked down her legs—half exposed in red running shorts—to her shoes.

“Yes?” “No, no, no. You run like a fucking ballerina. Put your feet on the ground.”

Margaret flattened her feet and tried again. She found to her relief that running this way was better, although not entirely pleasant. Still, she persisted, plodding along.

“It’ll get easier,” Sylvia promised when they had gone half a lap.

“But how will I get here?” Margaret asked, panting alongside.

“How you get anywhere,” Sylvia answered, breathing easily. “On the bus.”

By summer, it had become easier, and Margaret was running four laps around the duck pond, three times a week. The layer of fat around her hips had not disappeared, but it had become firmer. “Cheddar cheese thighs,” she thought. “Or provolone.”

It was after one of her summer evening runs that Margaret had come home to find a stranger in the house. Sylvia was in her favorite chair—which always reminded Margaret of a chenille housecoat and was the color of Sylvia’s hair—and the man was seated across from her on the modular sofa. They looked up when Margaret walked into the living room, in a way that made Margaret think they had been having a private conversation.

There was something about the stranger that suggested he might be a relative of Sylvia’s, perhaps a cousin. Sylvia had mentioned a large, extended family in the Bay Area, although Margaret had never been introduced to any of them.

“Hey,” the man said and nodded.

He appeared to be about Sylvia’s age—Sylvia was thirty-six—and he was slender like Sylvia and good-looking, although in an unkept sort of way.

“Hi,” Margaret replied and looked to Sylvia for an explanation “This is Tommy,” Sylvia said. “My brother.”

“Oh, wow. It’s so great to meet you. I can see the resemblance.”

Khimarial Ink • 62 This evoked a short laugh from Tommy, which Margaret thought contained an element of derision. Sylvia shot him a look that Margaret couldn’t quite read: anger? fear? Before she could decipher the look, it was gone.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve—” Here she wanted to say, “heard a lot about you,” but that wasn’t true at all. Instead, she said, “I’ve been running, and I need to get out of these clothes. It’s just really nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said.

From the bedroom, Margaret heard their conversation resume its quiet, conspiratorial tone.

THERAPY WAS A waste of time and money, Margaret had decided.

Even with the sliding scale fee, what she was paying Deborah Fisher could have kept her in Moulin Rouge and Italian shoes. She had only agreed to stay in therapy to please Sylvia. But if Sylvia only knew!

Because at first Deborah had seemed perplexed that someone like Margaret—small-town shop girl—had caught someone like Sylvia—urbane doctor of psychology. Not that she phrased it exactly that way, but that was the message. But later, Deborah had begun using words like unhealthy relationships and self-actualization and empowerment, and Margaret had thought she understood what Deborah was trying to say. Which was that appearances to the contrary, Sylvia might not really be such a catch after all. And this had put Margaret in an impossible situation. Should she tell Sylvia that Deborah had betrayed her? That she was actually sabotaging their relationship? This would be the easiest way to get out of therapy, of course; Sylvia would be livid and demand that Margaret quit.

But that was part of the problem: Sylvia’s temper. Because who knew how she would react to a betrayal? What she’d do. Margaret had a feeling that blame would not stop at her therapist’s door, that it would come looking for Margaret, too.

So far, Margaret had said nothing about her quandary to either Sylvia or Deborah, not even during the session when Deborah had blurted out, “Why do you stay with this woman?” I love her, Margaret had wanted to answer, although that wasn’t quite true. Margaret had loved Pat; whatever happened in their lives, Pat would always be her first love. She felt something else for Sylvia; not love exactly, and not just physical attraction, although there was that, of course.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that what she felt about Sylvia was not entirely about Sylvia; it was really about Margaret.

Because the truth was Margaret had always looked for her reflection in someone else’s eyes. If she had been honest with Deborah and

Khimarial Ink • 63 with herself, she would have answered, “I stay because I don’t want to be alone.” But she said nothing.

For the fall season, the store decorated its countertops with faux leaves, gold and red. Margaret turned twenty-eight in October, and Rhonda, the other lesbian on the floor, said they should celebrate with drinks at Dorothy’s after work. Dorothy’s—Margaret still hadn’t gone—what fun! But she knew Sylvia would not approve and said no, she couldn’t.

November blew into the city on a Canadian cold front, and it seemed that nearly everyone came down with something, a cold or bronchitis or the flu. Margaret stayed healthy; lucky for her she came from such good, mid-western stock. Her father had never been sick a day in his life.

She saw the red boxers on her way out the side door, on display in the Calvin Klein corner of the men’s department. It was an impulse buy—even though she knew better—and she brought the package home to surprise Sylvia.

Later, Margaret could see clearly that November was the month when everything changed. Because if Sylvia’s client, sick with the flu, had not cancelled her eight o’clock appointment that night, then Sylvia would not have found Margaret upstairs in the bedroom, standing over Sylvia’s top dresser drawer where she had planned to hide the boxers. And Sylvia would not have seen what Margaret had discovered there, under the bras and briefs: the baggie of white power and the syringe.

Margaret was not someone who had sudden insights, but suddenly, something that had puzzled her now made sense. As if he were standing beside her, the face of Sylvia’s “brother” appeared to Margaret, and she understood who he really was.

“What are you doing?” Sylvia demanded. “Were you spying on me?”

Margaret shut the drawer and turned to respond, but Sylvia did not give her a chance.

The blow seemed to come from nowhere, from the air. It caught Margaret on her left cheek and landed with all its force in her left eye socket. The pain hit her eye like a light bulb exploding. Reflexively, she bent and shielded her face.

“You were spying on me!” she heard Sylvia shriek.

Margaret ducked and swung around to avoid what she feared would be another blow. Cupping her hurt eye, she looked with her right eye to where Sylvia stood, trembling with anger.

“Sylvia, no,” she said.

And then the anger broke, and huge sobs overtook Sylvia’s body.

“How could you?” she moaned. “How could you?”

For an instant, Margaret wanted to go to Sylvia, to comfort her in her weakness, but she caught herself and resisted. And then some instinct asserted itself, and she used her good eye to find the door.

Khimarial Ink • 64 She stayed with Pat. Pat’s new lover—Caroline—had moved in, and it was an inconvenience because the apartment was so small, but Caroline said Margaret could stay as long as she needed to. Margaret liked Caroline; she couldn’t not like her, although she had wanted to once, many months ago, months that seemed like such a long time ago now.

She slept on the foam mattress she and Pat had brought from Indiana.

Caroline had contributed a bed, it seemed; or else they had bought one together. The new lovers slept in the bedroom, and from the living room Margaret could hear their whispers after the lights had gone out.

She quit therapy. There was no reason to continue now that she had left Sylvia. Deborah tried to persuade her to come in for one last session “for closure.” But that would mean Deborah would see the purple bruise above her eye, and Margaret would have to explain.

She used Moulin Rouge Basic Foundation at work and camouflaged the bruise under Purple Haze Eye Shadow. Rhonda looked at her a little too closely, but other than Rhonda, no one seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn’t want to see. Or perhaps they were all too busy, this being the busiest season of the year. So busy, in fact, that when Sylvia called her at work, Margaret refused her calls by saying she was with a customer, which was usually true.

But then, a week before Christmas, a courier delivered two dozen, long-stemmed red roses with a card that read, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. We need to talk.”

Christmas was such a hard time to be alone.

“COME HERE,” SYLVIA said. It was late in January, and they had been living together, again, for five weeks.

Sylvia was in the bathroom, bent over the toilet, staring into the bowl.

She looked up as Margaret approached and then down again.

“Does that look green to you?” she asked Margaret.

She stepped aside to give Margaret an unobstructed view of the toilet’s contents. Hesitantly, Margaret glanced at the white bowl. She noticed yellow urine, but Sylvia was right, it had a green tint.

Sylvia saw a gay doctor who was discreet—a friend from her UC Berkeley days. He ordered lab work and when the results came back, he told Sylvia that she had hepatitis B and would be very sick for a while.

“I swear I’m clean,” Sylvia told Margaret. “This has to be from before when I was still using.”

Margaret listened and nodded and was not sure she believed her.

“You’re going to need a shot if you don’t want to get this. I know you don’t have health insurance, so I’ll pay for it. You can see my doctor.”

Margaret rolled up the sleeve of her red polyester blouse and took the

Khimarial Ink • 65 injection and then rode two buses to work. On the way she thought about what she could do to help Sylvia get well. She would stop at the market on her way home and buy chicken soup and saltine crackers and orange juice (no more wine for Sylvia!). And some magazines to cheer her up. And some flowers: daisies would be nice.

On the seventh morning after the shot, Margaret woke up with a funny numbness in her hands and feet. Sylvia was still sleeping beside her, curled up on the inside of the bed, facing the teal wall. Margaret rolled over and put her feet on the Guatemala rainbow rug as she had done each morning for nearly a year. But this morning when she tried to stand, her legs collapsed beneath her. Confused, Margaret struggled to pull herself up and onto the bed. She tried again to stand, and again she collapsed with a thud, her legs suddenly too weak to support the weight of her body.

“Sylvia!” she said, and Sylvia jerked awake.

“Huh-huh-what?”

“Something’s wrong with my legs.”

By the afternoon, the heaviness that had begun in her legs had reached her arms. First the right arm failed and then the left. Sylvia insisted on driving her to Mission Hospital, even though Sylvia was still weak from her own virus. The BMW sped through the city streets to the hospital, where Margaret and Sylvia sat for forty-five minutes in the waiting area of the emergency room until Margaret’s name was called.

“Are you family?” an orderly asked Sylvia, and when Sylvia said no, she was told to stay in the waiting area, and when she protested, the orderly stood a little taller until she gave in, and then he helped Margaret into a wheelchair and pushed her into an exam room. Margaret was lifted into a bed, and a green curtain was pulled closed around her. Then the curtain was pulled open, and the on-call neurologist hurried in, and asked her to try to lift her legs and her arms, and he listened to her heart, and asked a dozen questions.

“Ascending muscle weakness,” he pronounced when he was done.

“We’ll see where this goes.”

Fifteen minutes later the weakness ascended to her chest, and her lungs stopped working. For a horrible moment, Margaret was sure she would die.

But then a flurry of white coats surrounded her, and a machine was rolled in, and a tube went down her throat and a mask went over her face, and the air came again, in and out, in and out.

“We believe you have a condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome,” the neurologist said some time later, after she had been admitted and rolled onto another floor, into another room.

“Guillain-Barre is an autoimmune disorder of the peripheral nervous system characterized by symmetrical weakness like the kind you’re

Khimarial Ink • 66 experiencing. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what causes GuillainBarre, although we believe it’s triggered by a foreign antigen—like a virus or bacteria or vaccine. There were a number of cases reported after the swine flu vaccine in ’76.

“Whatever triggered your condition, the good news is that most cases resolve within a matter of weeks. Or months.”

His hand touched her shoulder.

“The bad news is that there is no cure for Guillain-Barre Syndrome and no treatment, so until this resolves, I’m afraid this is where you’ll be.”

MARGARET LAY ON her back, breathing into the mouthpiece of the ventilator. She was not sure what day it was now or how long she’d been here. Days had passed, perhaps, or weeks. It was hard to tell.

This was all Sylvia’s fault. If she had never met Sylvia, this would never have happened. If she had not gone into therapy with Sylvia, she would be well today instead of here in this hospital, in this miserable bed.

If only she had been patient and not jumped into the first relationship that had come along after Pat! Maybe Pat would have changed her mind by now and come back to her. Caroline was not Pat’s true love—she was nice enough, but Pat couldn’t love Caroline the way she had loved Margaret; they couldn’t love the way she and Pat had loved each other. Margaret was sure of it.

And then Margaret had another thought, which was this: maybe it’s not too late. Maybe she still had a chance for a life with Pat, and in her misery, this thought gave her hope.

She could still move her eyelids; she could still blink. She wondered if this would be how she would communicate now, by blinking. Once for yes, twice for no. Wasn’t that how they did it? Those sad, paralyzed victims she had seen on all those awful medical dramas.

If you want to live, blink. Do you want to live, Margaret? Blink. Are you sure you want to live? Blink.

Most cases recover. In weeks or months, the doctor said. She must think of herself now. She must put herself first. She must focus on her future. She must find her strength and focus on her life ahead.

She will leave Sylvia. This time she will really do it. She will leave Sylvia and be free, free of her green urine and her white powder and her transparent frailties. Margaret will set herself free. She will. She will.

Just as soon as she can breathe on her own.

Khimarial Ink • 67

Arizona resident Vicki Stevenson is the author of four published novels and numerous shorter works. Prior to retirement she received a BA degree in Economics from UCLA, followed by four angst filled decades as a computer programmer. She lives with the love of her life Sara Lynde, her partner of nineteen years. Her hobbies are snacking and procrastination.

Josh Roseman (not the trombonist; the other one) makes things on the internet. His fiction has previously appeared on the Drabblecast and in the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. If you’d like to find out what else he’s writing and where you can read it, follow him on your favorite social network; go to roseplusman.com for a list of them. He lives in Marietta, GA, and is working on a sequel to “Amid the Steep Sky’s Commotion”.

Jack Mulcahy has been a writer all his life. He has written free-lance articles for newspapers, and has sold fiction to Shadow Sword, Lesbian Short Fiction, Lost Worlds, and Sorcerous Signals, Abandoned Towers, and Flashing Swords. “Healer” has appeared in both Flashing Swords and Abandoned Towers. Jack is now a Resume Writer, a job for which his fiction expertise is the ideal qualification. He and his wife Pat live in suburban Philadelphia, by the grace of their two cats, the real homeowners.

Priscilla Rhoades has published poetry and short fiction in many literary journals, including Mississippi Review, The Iowa Review, and Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. A former San Franciscan, she has lived for the past twelve years in the mountains of North Carolina with her long-time partner.