The priest finished his elegy with the usual pronouncements, then added a turn of phrase Elo hadn’t ever heard a priest use. “Gods and the Destroyer be merciful,” the old man had said. Just like any man of the troop might have, with Destroyer and Gods in the same sentence. Elo looked around the bowed […]

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Nurzanah found him in the dust-eaten ruins of the library, seated before a broken writing desk. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, the bones in his wrist showing clearly under the long sleeves of his kurta, and as she hesitated in the doorway he set his head against his hands, fingers pressed into […]

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Today was a perfect day, with three flaws. It was snowing here in Miami, one of her brides had trouble recognizing her, and her cummerbund wouldn’t stay up. The cummerbund was the only problem Mel could fix. She brushed ashes off the church office’s desk and rummaged around for safety pins. She found typed notes […]

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There’s that old saying: “Truth is costly, dearly bought.Want it free? Ask a sot.” Don’t you believe it. There’s no wisdom in wine, just as there’s no brevity in beer. And while I don’t accuse Da of malice aforethought, I wouldn’t have minded some–any!–aforethought in this case, being as times are harrowed enough, without you […]

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Mother Roughcoat lived in a one-room shack in the center of the city. She wasn’t, and never had been, anybody’s mother, but because she was older than the municipal hall, or looked it–in truth, she looked older than the Foundation Fountain, and that thing was crumbling to sand–people called her Mother out of an old-fashioned […]

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Ben When Nana left Ben the house and acreage it took him a full week to remember he’d spent much of his childhood in Strange. A month after the funeral he missed and between jobs, he decided the Saab could use a good road trip. Time to figure out why he could barely recall the […]

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The fifteenth day of the first month in the seventh year of the Huayin Era: The old man, Hae-wook Lee, had been bedridden for months. He lay on the sleeping mat, wrapped in a blanket. The drugs helped him sleep, and forget about the harsh words of his son. It was an unseasonably warm winter […]

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“The men are afraid,” I said. “Of course,” said my friend the foreign magician. “Aren’t you?” “Yes.” Behind us in the belly of the boat, my crew huddled over their oars, muttering, praying. I felt that was not wise. The Mother, it seemed to me, must have fled our island, far beyond the reach of […]

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