“Justice is a Two-edged Sword”

After years of sneering at anything fantastical written post-Tolkien, I’ve written my own fantasy short story. Yes, really. What’s more, I edited the anthology it’s in. How the mighty have fallen. It’s called Powers of Detection and it’ll be out in October 2004.

Twelve original paranormal procedurals from:

Donna Andrews
Michael Armstrong
Anne Bishop
Jay Caselberg
Mike Doogan
Laura Anne Gilman
Simon R. Green
Charlaine Harris
Anne Perry
Sharon Shinn
Dana Stabenow
John Straley

Excerpt from “Justice is a Two-edged Sword”

It was the first day of the Tattoo Fair, and the town square was bustling with vendors and performers from the nine provinces of Mnemosynea. Pthalean playwrights were rehearsing songs and skits with Pthersikorean dancers. From a dais two feet square a Kalliopean poet was declaiming in iambic pentameter what appeared to be an epic concerning the life of Okeon, the god of the sea, who had five wives, seventeen children, and a great deal of domestic discord which played out, as one might expect, on the hapless humankind living on shore. Next to the dais the poet’s clerk was doing a brisk trade in autographed scrolls.

A Palihymnean had a booth built of shelves of sheet music featuring every hymn written in praise of the gods from Atonis to Tseuz. Foreseers from Yranea set out star charts, some rolled, some mounted on poster board, next to wicker baskets full of fortunes tied with red satin ribbons, and shuffled their prefiguration cards in preparation for their first customers, girls looking for true love, farmers looking for rain, merchants looking for a reading on the futures of surcoats (long or short?) and breastplates (functional or ornamental?). As her mount picked his way through the debris field of wagons, tent poles, heaps of canvas and crates of goods, Sharryn pointed out one Pthalean standup comedian rehearsing an act that had a troupe of tragic actors holding their sides. “We should get tickets to that performance. Anybody who can make a Mnelpomenean laugh has to be funny.”

Crowfoot grunted and nudged her destrier through the crowd.

Sharryn looked at her with affectionate exasperation. “When last did you take the time to laugh that hard at something that silly?”

Crowfoot’s destrier whickered agreement, and the swordswoman cuffed her mane without force. “Less of that from you, Blanca.”

Blanca rolled an eye at Pedro, the sturdy brown pony bearing Sharryn, who tossed his head and snorted. “Even they agree with me,” Sharryn said. A little grimly, she added, “And after Epaphus we could both use a little amusement.”

Crowfoot, ignoring the reference to the events in the provincial capital the day before, scanned the marketplace over the heads of the jostling, energetic crowd. “Where is this inn you keep on about? The road has left me dry as a bone.”

Sharryn brightened. “Makarios’?” She craned her neck. “There, the red brick building on the corner.” She smacked her lips. “Wait till you taste Makarios’ lager. It truly is the stuff of the gods.”

“Careful, one of them will hear you.” Crow was only half joking. She looked at Sharryn out of the corner of an eye. Her partner’s eager expression indicated that there was more of interest at the inn than mere beer.

They urged their mounts alewards. Weary of the road and their last Assideres, they were both mildly annoyed to find their way blocked by a small knot of shouting, gesticulating townspeople. The knot grew into a group and then into a crowd, with no way out or around save to walk their horses right over the top of it. That of course would be unacceptable behavior for two of His Most Serene Majesty’s chosen, so they didn’t, however greatly they were tempted.

“A full tankard of cold, crisp lager,” Sharryn said, staring sadly in the direction of the inn. “I can practically smell it from here.”

“Lead me to it,” Crowfoot muttered. “Goodman,” she said to one of the townsmen standing at the fringe of the crowd, and had to raise her voice and repeat herself to be heard over the uproar.

He spared her an impatient glance, and then looked again, his eye caught by the crest on the breast of her tunic, and by the hilt of the sword protruding from the sheath strapped to her back. What he had been about to say changed to a deferential, “Swordswoman,” accompanied by a bow of the head. He looked for and found Sharryn, almost hidden by the bulk of the destrier, took in the same crest on the same tunic and the staff in her hand, and said, bowing again, “Seer.”

“Goodman,” Sharryn said pleasantly. “What’s all the fuss about?”

“It’s nothing, Seer. A fight.”

Crow surveyed the growing crowd, exchanged a raised eyebrow with Sharryn, and said, “A fight with a large audience. Is this part of the festival? Does one buy a ticket?”

“It’s nothing,” he repeated, with an involuntary look over his shoulder. “A fight over a girl, merely.”

Crow stood in the stirrups and saw a tangled ball of two men crash into the side of a cart loaded with nuts. The cart went over, the nuts went everywhere, and the vendor burned his hands catching the brazier. The two men were forcibly separated by a couple of stern townsmen, and stood revealed to be a young, slight man with dark hair dressed in the charred leather apron of the smith, and a much larger man of roughly the same age, towheaded, pale-skinned and lantern-jawed, wearing a fletcher’s gauntlet. One of the townsmen, fists on his hips, surveyed the two pugilists with palpable scorn, addressed them with what appeared to be a pithy homily, and set them to work to right the nut vendor’s cart and recompense him for his lost revenue. The crowd began to disperse, but Crow saw the looks exchanged by the two young men and thought that there would be more trouble before long.