1. They came near the end of the day. We thought it was thunder at first, though there weren’t any clouds. Eight of them on horseback with Bill Boyland at their head. “Eight men for a woman and her kid,” Mam muttered as she loaded the revolver. Once they came through our gate they stayed […]

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Everything about Councillor Rand is moisturized to the point of buttery softness. He even smells rich. The thick scent of coconut oil, an imported luxury I have only smelled on kept women with downtown addresses, drifts across the counter and crawls up my nose. “It’s a simple inter-department water transfer. Why are there so many […]

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Part One: To The End of the Earth “Which way did my mother go?” Rhy-lee asked her father one day. “North,” he said, and pointed without looking. Young as she was, she could see the small collapse that happened inside him when he heard the question, knowing that one day she, too, would leave him. […]

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Bletchley Park Helen woke to a room grown smaller than before. It was no illusion, no result of short sleep and poor light, a head grown soft and malleable under code. Her knees knew before her brain. They barked up against the bed that lay beside her own, the iron of its railings, the thin […]

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The stereopsis module clicked open in Wren’s fingers. “For the next five minutes,” she said, “try not to play any ping-pong.” She sliced deftly into my abdomen, and though my somatic subsystem signaled pain, I didn’t wince – wouldn’t want her to think I was nervous. Usually Wren’s workbench loops were stuffed with starship components […]

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The man who’d set himself up out on the point by Gray Lagoon had conjured up a house out of rocks and sea-wrack, but he didn’t wear the badge of any guild or house. He was always polite, but the people who talked to him couldn’t place his accent, and people in Cartau could place […]

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It had been the most desperate moment of Angelo Neumann’s life so far, and you were certain to live through many such moments if you lived for the opera. When he closed his eyes, he could still picture his friend of so many years and partner in so many troublesome events, wildly running away from […]

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She was just here a moment ago, round chin on his shoulder, her laugh low in his ear, fingers brushing his arm. But Bill blinks, and everything changes in an instant, over the course of ten years. He’s still got blue eyes and curl to his hair, and it’s August, sky swearing-blue and without a […]

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Oberon Officer’s Log. Day 10227 This is ridiculous. If we were still at full crew I wouldn’t even be an officer. Also, this isn’t a real log. We are drifting along in the great void of space so there is nothing to report, and even if there were, OOMA would report it for me. At […]

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The gods will mock. Give them an opening, a chink in your facade of self-importance, and they’ll slide their spears of mockery into your heart. Or at least into your inflated ego. Sometimes the jibes came in the form of rain. Thick, heavy drops on a land in desperate need of water. A blessing more […]

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