The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (27 page)

The Marquis said nothing. He did not even smile. He was, as he had stated, holding his breath; he was hoping that Peregrine had listened to him; and he was counting, because at that moment counting seemed like the best possible thing that he could do to distract himself from needing to breathe. He would soon need to breathe.

35 . . . 36 . . . 37 . . .

He wondered how long mushroom spores remained in the air.

43 . . . 44 . . . 45 . . . 46 . . .

The shepherd had stopped speaking.

The Marquis took a step backward, fearing a knife in his ribs or teeth in his throat from the rough-furred guard-dog men, but there was nothing. He walked backward, away from the dog-men and the Elephant.

He saw that Peregrine was also walking backward.

His lungs hurt. His heart was pounding in his temples, pounding almost loudly enough to drown out the thin ringing noise in his ears.

Only when the Marquis's back was against a bookcase on the wall and he was as far as he could possibly get from the envelope, he allowed himself to take a deep breath. He heard Peregrine breathe in, too.

There was a stretching noise. Peregrine opened his mouth wide, and the tape dropped to the ground. “What,” asked Peregrine, “was all that about?”

“Our way out of this room, and our way out of Shepherd's Bush, if I am not mistaken,” said de Carabas. “As I so rarely am. Would you mind unbinding my wrists?”

He felt Peregrine's hands on his bound hands, and then the bindings fell away.

There was a low rumbling. “I'm going to kill somebody,” said the Elephant. “As soon as I figure out who.”

“Whoa, dear heart,” said the Marquis, rubbing his hands together. “You mean
whom.
” The shepherd and the sheepdogs were taking awkward, experimental steps toward the door. “And I can assure you that you aren't going to kill anybody, not as long as you want to get home to the Castle safely.”

The Elephant's trunk swished irritably. “I'm definitely going to kill
you.
”

The Marquis grinned. “You are going to force me to say
pshaw
,” he said. “Or
fiddlesticks.
Until now I have never had the slightest moment of yearning to say
fiddlesticks.
But I can feel it right now welling up inside me—”

“What, by the Temple and the Arch, has got into you?” asked the Elephant.

“Wrong question. But I shall ask the right question on your behalf. The question is actually what
hasn't
got into the three of us—it hasn't got into Peregrine and me because we were holding our breath, and it hasn't got into you because, I don't know, probably because you're an elephant, with nice thick skin, more likely because you were breathing through your trunk, which is down at ground level—and what did get into our captors. And the answer is, what hasn't got into us are the selfsame spores that have got into our portly shepherd and his pseudocanine companions.”

“Spores of the Mushroom?” asked Peregrine. “The Mushroom People's the Mushroom?”

“Indeed. That selfsame Mushroom,” agreed the Marquis.

“Blimming Heck,” said the Elephant.

“Which is why,” de Carabas told the Elephant, “if you attempt to kill me, or to kill Peregrine, you will not only fail but you will doom us all. Whereas if you shut up and we all do our best to look as if we are still part of the flock, then we have a chance. The spores will be threading their way into their brains now. And any moment now the Mushroom will begin calling them home.”

A shepherd walked implacably. He held a wooden crook. Three men followed him. One of those men had the head of an elephant; one was tall and ridiculously handsome; and the last of the flock wore a most magnificent coat. It fit him perfectly, and it was the color of a wet street at night.

The flock were followed by guard dogs, who moved as if they were ready to walk through fire to get wherever they believed that they were going.

It was not unusual in Shepherd's Bush to see a shepherd and part of his flock moving from place to place, accompanied by several of the fiercest sheepdogs (who were human, or had been once). So when they saw a shepherd and three sheepdogs apparently leading three members of the flock away from Shepherd's Bush, none of the greater flock paid them any mind. The members of the flock who saw them simply did the same things they had always done, as members of the flock, and if they were aware that the influence of the shepherds had waned a little, then they patiently waited for another shepherd to come and to take care of them and to keep them safe from predators and from the world. It was a scary thing to be alone, after all.

Nobody noticed as they crossed the bounds of Shepherd's Bush, and still they kept on walking.

The seven of them reached the banks of the Kilburn, where they stopped, and the former shepherd and the three shaggy dog-men strode out into the water.

There was, the Marquis knew, nothing in the four men's heads at that moment but a need to get to the Mushroom, to taste its flesh once more, to let it live inside them, to serve it, and to serve it well. In exchange, the Mushroom would fix all the things about themselves that they hated: it would make their interior lives much happier and more interesting.

“Should've let me kill 'em,” said the Elephant as the former shepherd and sheepdogs waded away.

“No point,” said the Marquis. “Not even for revenge. The people who captured us don't exist any longer.”

The Elephant flapped his ears hard, then scratched them vigorously. “Talking about revenge, who the hell did you steal my diary for anyway?” he asked.

“Victoria,” admitted de Carabas.

“Not actually on my list of potential thieves. She's a deep one,” said the Elephant, after a moment.

“I'll not argue with that,” said the Marquis. “Also, she failed to pay me the entire amount agreed. I wound up obtaining my own lagniappe to make up the deficit.”

He reached a dark hand into the inside of his coat. His fingers found the obvious pockets, and the less obvious, and then, to his surprise, the least obvious of all. He reached inside it and pulled out a magnifying glass on a chain. “It was Victoria's,” he said. “I believe you can use it to see through solid things. Perhaps this could be considered a small payment against my debt to you . . . ?”

The Elephant took something out of its own pocket—the Marquis could not see what it was—and squinted at it through the magnifying glass. Then the Elephant made a noise halfway between a delighted snort and a trumpet of satisfaction. “Oh fine, very fine,” it said. It pocketed both of the objects. Then it said, “I suppose that saving my life outranks stealing my diary. And while I wouldn't have needed saving if I hadn't followed you down the drain, further recriminations are pointless. Consider your life your own once more.”

“I look forward to visiting you in the Castle someday,” said the Marquis.

“Don't push your luck, mate,” said the Elephant, with an irritable swish of his trunk.

“I won't,” said the Marquis, resisting the urge to point out that pushing his luck was the only way he had made it this far. He looked around and realized that Peregrine had slipped mysteriously and irritatingly away into the shadows once more, without so much as a goodbye.

The Marquis hated it when people did that.

He made a small, courtly bow to the Elephant, and the Marquis's coat, his glorious coat, caught the bow, amplified it, made it perfect, and made it the kind of bow that only the Marquis de Carabas could ever possibly make. Whoever he was.

The next Floating Market was being held in Derry and Tom's Roof Garden. There had been no Derry and Tom's since 1973, but time and space and London Below had their own uncomfortable agreement, and the roof garden was younger and more innocent than it is today. The folk from London Above (they were young, and in an intense discussion, and they had stacked heels and paisley tops and bell-bottom flares, the men and the women) ignored the folk from London Below entirely.

The Marquis de Carabas strode through the roof garden as if he owned the place, walking swiftly until he reached the food court. He passed a tiny woman selling curling cheese sandwiches from a wheelbarrow piled high with the things, a curry stall, a short man with a huge glass bowl of pale white blind fish and a toasting fork, until, finally, he reached the stall that was selling the Mushroom.

“Slice of the Mushroom, well grilled, please,” said the Marquis de Carabas.

The man who took his order was shorter than he was and still somewhat stouter. He had sandy, receding hair and a harried expression.

“Coming right up,” said the man. “Anything else?”

“No, that's all.” And then, curiously, the Marquis asked, “Do you remember me?”

“I am afraid not,” said the Mushroom man. “But I must say, that is a most beautiful coat.”

“Thank you,” said the Marquis de Carabas. He looked around. “Where is the young fellow who used to work here?”

“Ah. That is a most curious story, sir,” said the man. He did not yet smell of damp although there was a small encrustation of mushrooms on the side of his neck. “Somebody told the fair Drusilla, of the Court of the Raven, that our Vince had had designs upon her, and had—you may not credit it, but I am assured that it is so—apparently sent her a letter filled with spores with the intention of making her his bride in the Mushroom.”

The Marquis raised an eyebrow quizzically, although he found none of this surprising. He had, after all, told Drusilla himself, and had even shown her the original letter. “Did she take well to the news?”

“I do not believe that she did, sir. I do not believe that she did. She and several of her sisters were waiting for Vince, and they all caught up with us on our way to the Market. She told him they had matters to discuss, of an intimate nature. He seemed delighted by this news, and went off with her to find out what these matters were. I have been waiting for him to arrive at the Market and come and work all evening, but I no longer believe he will be coming.” Then the man said a little wistfully, “That is a very fine coat. It seems to me that I might have had one like it in a former life.”

“I do not doubt it,” said the Marquis de Carabas, satisfied with what he had heard, cutting into his grilled slice of the Mushroom, “but this particular coat is most definitely mine.”

As he made his way out of the Market, he passed a clump of people descending the stairs and he paused and nodded at a young woman of uncommon grace. She had the long orange hair and the flattened profile of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and there was a birthmark in the shape of a five-pointed star on the back of one hand. Her other hand was stroking the head of a large, rumpled owl, which glared uncomfortably out at the world with eyes that were, unusually for such a bird, of an intense, pale blue.

The Marquis nodded at her, and she glanced awkwardly at him, then she looked away in the manner of someone who was now beginning to realize that she owed the Marquis a favor.

He nodded at her amiably, and continued to descend.

Drusilla hurried after him. She looked as if she had something she wanted to say.

The Marquis de Carabas reached the foot of the stairs ahead of her. He stopped for a moment, and he thought about people, and about things, and about how hard it is to do anything for the first time. And then, clad in his fine coat, he slipped mysteriously, even irritatingly, into the shadows, without so much as a goodbye, and he was gone.

SUSAN PALWICK

FROM
Asimov's Science Fiction

T
HE BUS SMELLS
like plastic and urine, and the kid sitting next to Vangie has his music cranked up way too high. It's leaking out of his earbuds, giving her a headache. He's a big boy, sprawled out across his seat and into hers as if she's not there at all. She squeezes herself against the window, resting her head against the cool glass to try to ease the throbbing behind her eyes. Maybe the kid will get off at the next stop, in forty minutes or so. Maybe nobody else will get on to take his seat. The bus is completely full, and the waves of chatter and smell might have made Vangie sick even without the booming bass.

It's a ten-hour ride to see Graham; Vangie just hopes she'll get in this time. She can't shake her gut fear that everything's lined up too neatly, that something has to go wrong. More than once, she's spent the time and money to get down there—the time's no problem, but the money's not so easy, not with her monthly check as small as it is—to find the prison on lockdown, nobody in or out and God only knows what's going on inside. All you get are reports you can't trust, and you sit in the shabby town library Googling the news every two seconds until it's time to catch the bus back home, because you can't afford another night in a motel. Sometimes it's been days until Graham's been able to call out, until Vangie's been able to hear his voice again. She always accepts the collect charges, but they never talk long. Those calls cost.

Vangie's small overnight bag is under her feet. She's got her purse strap crossed over her body, and her arms crossed protectively over that, as if the kid next to her might snatch the bag and sprint to the front of the bus, diving out the door at seventy miles an hour. She knows this wouldn't happen even if she looked like someone worth robbing, even if what's in her purse had the slightest value to anybody except her and maybe Graham. He won't value it as much as she does. She doesn't see how he could. Every time she thinks about it she feels a great weight in her chest, a clot of grief and guilt and relief and love, and sometimes a tiny bit of pride creeps in there, too—one of her kids got away, is getting away, even if it's too far—but she squashes that, always. No one else would think she deserved to feel proud. She doesn't think she deserves to feel proud. Pride is dangerous. So's luck, because it always turns, and there's already been too much this trip.