* Author : L. S. Johnson

* Narrator : Abra Staffin-Wiebe

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

*

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Originally published in the Sirens anthology by World Weaver Press.

Rated R, for all the weaknesses of flesh (and how it tears between teeth).

1.

We roll into town on a bright sunny morning, steering the Caddy around the half-dozen streets that make up “downtown.” Three of us in the back dozing and the other two up front with our arms hanging out the windows, letting our fingers ride on the fall air.

We love autumn. Autumn is football and soccer and tennis season, it’s harvest festivals and Oktoberfests and the last round of carnivals and fairs. We can still get away with tank tops and shorts, or we can wear our tight wool suits with their snug skirts, or our sweaters with the necklines way, way down.

It just depends on what there is to do around here.

We roll the Caddy into two parking spaces and we pile out, lounging against the car and sizing up the people, reading the flyers posted on windows and utility poles. Free movie nights, a potluck, two spaghetti feeds, a reading at the library. When we find the town fair poster we groan in disappointment: it’s two weeks away.

“Hey,” we call out to a passing kid. “What’s there to do around here?”

The kid looks us over, his round little face intrigued and suspicious.

“Big game’s tonight, over at the high school,” he says, scratching at the back of his calf.

The big game. We sigh with pleasure. We love big games, and their parties afterwards. Big games are easy; we’ll be spoiled for choices.

The kid squints at us. “Where’re you from?” he asks.

We crouch down to study his rocket ship t-shirt and his cargo pants with bulging pockets, his oversized sneakers, his rosy-cheeked face. These boys, they’re a blur to us until their voices break, nothing but sticks and snails and puppy dog’s tails; we love them because of what they’ll become.

“We’re sirens,” we say, smiling at him. “We’re from everywhere.”

Big games mean guys from other towns, with two, maybe three parties afterwards. Big games mean the red suitcase, not the blue or the grey. In the red suitcase we have the high school clothes: the miniskirts and tennis shoes, the t-shirts and the lipstick as red as the cherry slurpees we grab on our way to the field. In the red suitcase we have five denim jackets with a patch on the back that says SIRENS, because for the big game we’re always an out-of-town gang, tough girls from some generic City that turn heads and make the adults scowl and whisper, make the mothers especially suck their teeth in disapproval and the fathers agree though with a gleam in their eye, a gleam that remembers what it was like to be a teenage boy watching the tough girls and wondering if it was all true, what they said about tough girls.

We take our slurpees and we climb up to the top of the bleachers and sprawl there, our bare legs loose and splayed on the warm metal, the wind ruffling at our skirts. We slurp our slurpees with our pursed red lips and we hum, just loud enough for the wind to hear.

We hum the call of Hades, so he’ll be ready for his new arrivals.

And as always we pause and listen. Sometimes we’ll hear an answering melody, like a shepherd’s pipes, or a farmer suddenly bursting into song,

* Author : Langley Hyde

* Narrator : Jen R. Albert

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

*

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PodCastle 520: One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You with Rubies is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG-13 for broken hearts and rolling heads.

One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You With Rubies

by Langley Hyde

“Elusia Cooper,” she said. “I’m the only child of the accused, Verus Bloodrain.”

Her father, clean-shaven and dark-haired, sat at the defendant’s bench. He looked exactly as he had when Fort Beatitude had fallen, about thirty years old, but then magic would do that. He even wore his iconic red leather robes, though his sabre sheath and gun holster hung empty, and no torture implements glittered on his utility belt.

He smiled at her. She smiled back.

Guiltily, Elusia forced her face into a somber scowl. She breathed in the beeswax-scented air once, twice, to calm herself down. Her skin prickled with an uneasy sweat and her green worsted-wool walking dress stuck to her back. She’d picked green because it had no associations with the war.

The prosecutor, a narrow man with broad, bushy sideburns, rested his hand on the stand. “What is your current occupation?”

“I work with my husband, who is a barrel maker,” she said. Her father would be so disappointed. After he read to her at night, he used to bend to kiss her on the forehead. One day, my dear, I’ll shower you with rubies, and you’ll inherit the earth. So Elusia let her pride show. “We make the finest oak casks for wine and brandy in the Taffordshire region.”

“Taffordshire?”

“Yes.” Elusia refused to elaborate. Taffordshire was predominately middish; her husband had wished to live there to be closer to his family.

“How do you think your father feels about your interspecies marriage?”

Elusia couldn’t see how this was relevant to the court’s inquiry, but saying so wouldn’t win her any accolades. She answered honestly, instead. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him for eighteen years.”

Her father had sent her letters, though, which she’d kept but never read. Once a month, like clockwork, they arrived in the mail.

“When did you last speak to him?”

“On the day he was arrested, when the Allegiance stormed Fort Beatitude.”

The day her mother had died, shot in the chest. Her father had been weeping when men in white uniforms had taken him away. I’ll see you soon, my dear. Be strong. Be brave.

The seats behind the defense were empty, and behind the prosecution, packed. A young woman in a pink cotton day dress and straw bonnet sat in the prosecution’s front row. She stared at Elusia with a particular black-eyed intensity. Had Elusia’s father killed this woman’s parents? Not a sibling, surely. She looked too young for that. A grandparent?

“Were you aware of your father’s activities in Fort Beatitude?”

“Some of them. Not all of them.” He’d come in through the gate. Let me scrub up, my dear. Then I can go play in the garden. Unless you fancy a game of checkers?

“What did you know about his activities at the time?”

“I was a child,” she said. “I understood that he was killing people, but because I never saw it, it didn’t seem real to me. He told me it was necessary, and I believed him. I understood that he had to extract their blood and their souls using techniques that were very painful. Sometimes I could hear his prisoners screaming, but when I was eight or so, he had the walls soundproofed so he could work at night without wa...

* Author : Langley Hyde

* Narrator : Jen R. Albert

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

*

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PodCastle 520: One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You with Rubies is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG-13 for broken hearts and rolling heads.

One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You With Rubies

by Langley Hyde

“Elusia Cooper,” she said. “I’m the only child of the accused, Verus Bloodrain.”

Her father, clean-shaven and dark-haired, sat at the defendant’s bench. He looked exactly as he had when Fort Beatitude had fallen, about thirty years old, but then magic would do that. He even wore his iconic red leather robes, though his sabre sheath and gun holster hung empty, and no torture implements glittered on his utility belt.

He smiled at her. She smiled back.

Guiltily, Elusia forced her face into a somber scowl. She breathed in the beeswax-scented air once, twice, to calm herself down. Her skin prickled with an uneasy sweat and her green worsted-wool walking dress stuck to her back. She’d picked green because it had no associations with the war.

The prosecutor, a narrow man with broad, bushy sideburns, rested his hand on the stand. “What is your current occupation?”

“I work with my husband, who is a barrel maker,” she said. Her father would be so disappointed. After he read to her at night, he used to bend to kiss her on the forehead. One day, my dear, I’ll shower you with rubies, and you’ll inherit the earth. So Elusia let her pride show. “We make the finest oak casks for wine and brandy in the Taffordshire region.”

“Taffordshire?”

“Yes.” Elusia refused to elaborate. Taffordshire was predominately middish; her husband had wished to live there to be closer to his family.

“How do you think your father feels about your interspecies marriage?”

Elusia couldn’t see how this was relevant to the court’s inquiry, but saying so wouldn’t win her any accolades. She answered honestly, instead. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him for eighteen years.”

Her father had sent her letters, though, which she’d kept but never read. Once a month, like clockwork, they arrived in the mail.

“When did you last speak to him?”

“On the day he was arrested, when the Allegiance stormed Fort Beatitude.”

The day her mother had died, shot in the chest. Her father had been weeping when men in white uniforms had taken him away. I’ll see you soon, my dear. Be strong. Be brave.

The seats behind the defense were empty, and behind the prosecution, packed. A young woman in a pink cotton day dress and straw bonnet sat in the prosecution’s front row. She stared at Elusia with a particular black-eyed intensity. Had Elusia’s father killed this woman’s parents? Not a sibling, surely. She looked too young for that. A grandparent?

“Were you aware of your father’s activities in Fort Beatitude?”

“Some of them. Not all of them.” He’d come in through the gate. Let me scrub up, my dear. Then I can go play in the garden. Unless you fancy a game of checkers?

“What did you know about his activities at the time?”

“I was a child,” she said. “I understood that he was killing people, but because I never saw it, it didn’t seem real to me. He told me it was necessary, and I believed him. I understood that he had to extract their blood and their souls using techniques that were very painful. Sometimes I could hear his prisoners screaming, but when I was eight or so,

* Author : C. L. Clark

* Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

PodCastle 519: Burning Season is a PodCastle original.

Rating: PG-13, for things unspeakable.

Burning Season

By C. L. Clark

It was burning season in Rashid. Again.

Even in the shop, I could smell the smoke. Can you believe I used to like the smell of burning paper? With my eyes closed, I can still see pages glow red before they burst into flame and curl into ash until they crumble.

I clerked at a small sundries shop in Commercial. The owner was a Duchies woman, one hand peach-pale, the other brown as her shop counter. She had no love for the All-King, who had toppled her Grand Duchess, but you don’t need love to run a business, just enough money to buy mercy. After that expenditure, though, she couldn’t afford to hire a licensed Translator. Coincidentally, I couldn’t afford a license, so she paid me a little extra to quietly broker transactions from the non-Duchies customers and shippers she couldn’t understand.

I am an Omniloquist. Some say we’re a curse the last true Rashidan king put on his enemies before he died, so that we’ll never flounder helpless under a conqueror. More say we have no true power, just an uncanny ability to pick up foreign sounds quickly. Until the All-King came, I was inclined to think the latter. We were a skill with a guild, like any other. And then he came, with his Collectors. There’s nothing natural about them. Maybe there’s nothing natural about us.

I slouched on my stool, drawing shapes with my finger in the whorls of the counter’s grain when the shop bell clanked and an old man shuffled in. He stumbled on a catch in the wooden floor. Loose trousers showed his bony ankles and a dirty rag around his chin protected against the soot. His dark skin hung loose on thin limbs and gray dreadlocks hung down to his waist. My hand strayed self-consciously to my own head, covered in short, springy curls. I’d cut my dreadlocks to fit in with the new king’s aesthetic.

“Can I help you, sir?” I asked in the All-King’s tongue. He didn’t look like a thief, but he didn’t look like he had coin to spare.

He squinted and shook his head. “I can’t understand,” he said in Rashidan. “I can’t understand anything but this.”

There was no one else in the shop and my employer was counting money or signing for a shipment in the back. The setting sun ignited the copper and glass and polished wood of half the room, while dousing the other half in shadow.

He could have been a spy, hunting Omniloquists working off-market. Yet I trusted him. I think it was pity.

“What do you need?” I asked in Rashidan.

His eyes brightened. “You are an Omni, yes, miss? Do you know my granddaughter?” Everything about him seemed uncertain. The inflection of his voice, the delicate wringing of his fingers. He’d barely looked at the goods since he started talking to me.

“Sorry, sir. I — I’m not an Omni, I just know some Rashidan.” I started to back away and called over my shoulder. “Madam — ”

“My granddaughter isn’t an Omni, either; she’s a student. Kiroga is her name.”

Spoken aloud, the name was a slip-dagger reopening a wound I’d cauterized with fear. Even when the door opened again, bell jangling, I struggled for my voice.

“She said to look for you if I couldn’t find her.”

Another frisson of fear, another step back. This was her vengeance.

He was no relation to Kiroga. She was the daughter of a Grand Duchies duke. With her swagger and dueling blades and her penchant for the finer things,...

* Author : C. L. Clark

* Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

PodCastle 519: Burning Season is a PodCastle original.

Rating: PG-13, for things unspeakable.

It was burning season in Rashid. Again.

Even in the shop, I could smell the smoke. Can you believe I used to like the smell of burning paper? With my eyes closed, I can still see pages glow red before they burst into flame and curl into ash until they crumble.

I clerked at a small sundries shop in Commercial. The owner was a Duchies woman, one hand peach-pale, the other brown as her shop counter. She had no love for the All-King, who had toppled her Grand Duchess, but you don’t need love to run a business, just enough money to buy mercy. After that expenditure, though, she couldn’t afford to hire a licensed Translator. Coincidentally, I couldn’t afford a license, so she paid me a little extra to quietly broker transactions from the non-Duchies customers and shippers she couldn’t understand.

I am an Omniloquist. Some say we’re a curse the last true Rashidan king put on his enemies before he died, so that we’ll never flounder helpless under a conqueror. More say we have no true power, just an uncanny ability to pick up foreign sounds quickly. Until the All-King came, I was inclined to think the latter. We were a skill with a guild, like any other. And then he came, with his Collectors. There’s nothing natural about them. Maybe there’s nothing natural about us.

I slouched on my stool, drawing shapes with my finger in the whorls of the counter’s grain when the shop bell clanked and an old man shuffled in. He stumbled on a catch in the wooden floor. Loose trousers showed his bony ankles and a dirty rag around his chin protected against the soot. His dark skin hung loose on thin limbs and gray dreadlocks hung down to his waist. My hand strayed self-consciously to my own head, covered in short, springy curls. I’d cut my dreadlocks to fit in with the new king’s aesthetic.

“Can I help you, sir?” I asked in the All-King’s tongue. He didn’t look like a thief, but he didn’t look like he had coin to spare.

He squinted and shook his head. “I can’t understand,” he said in Rashidan. “I can’t understand anything but this.”

There was no one else in the shop and my employer was counting money or signing for a shipment in the back. The setting sun ignited the copper and glass and polished wood of half the room, while dousing the other half in shadow.

He could have been a spy, hunting Omniloquists working off-market. Yet I trusted him. I think it was pity.

“What do you need?” I asked in Rashidan.

His eyes brightened. “You are an Omni, yes, miss? Do you know my granddaughter?” Everything about him seemed uncertain. The inflection of his voice, the delicate wringing of his fingers. He’d barely looked at the goods since he started talking to me.

“Sorry, sir. I — I’m not an Omni, I just know some Rashidan.” I started to back away and called over my shoulder. “Madam — ”

“My granddaughter isn’t an Omni, either; she’s a student. Kiroga is her name.”

Spoken aloud, the name was a slip-dagger reopening a wound I’d cauterized with fear. Even when the door opened again, bell jangling, I struggled for my voice.

“She said to look for you if I couldn’t find her.”

Another frisson of fear, another step back. This was her vengeance.

He was no relation to Kiroga. She was the daughter of a Grand Duchies duke. With her swagger and dueling blades and her penchant for the finer things,

* Author : Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

* Narrator : Kate Baker

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

*

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First published in Fireside Fiction.

Rated PG for vengeful mountains and the accursed dead.

Iron Aria

Merc Rustad

The mountain dreams pain. Cold iron vibrates purple-blue deep in the stone, while tongues made from rot and rust bite and gnaw and hunger ever deeper.

The dam, buried like a tooth in the mountain’s narrow gums, holds back the great burgundy ocean. Otherwise it would pour into the Agate Pass Valley and swallow up the mining town at the mountain’s toes.

From an owl’s eye, the dam is almost as big as the mountain, built five hundred human-years ago. The infesting tongues burrow in from the sea, sent by angry water-memories. The sea cannot see its children in the lakes far beyond the dam. So it sends corrosion into the mountain, into the infinitesimal pores of the dam.

The mountain is being devoured from the inside and it screams.

Kyru squints up at the mountain in the moonlight.

It slopes massive and muscled against the ice-black sky. The mountain’s dream-noise woke him from his own nightmares — the loudness of steel blood breath, of his mother’s last words — and he shivers in the late autumn night. Snow will come soon, blown in salt-scented gusts from across the ocean on the other side of the dam.

He sits on his windowsill, the shutters thrown open. It is only one floor’s drop to the burlap-covered garden below and then twenty steps to the forge, where his heavy boots and thick gloves hang on pegs, where his rucksack, stained from coal dust, waits with his leather apron.

He has never trod up the mountain, so he doesn’t know how many steps it would take.

The miners’ cart trails are well-worn and wide, easy to walk. He could be gone before dawn and not missed until —

That is where his plan falls to pieces like shattered crockery. His aunt would know he had disappeared within the hour. He apprentices to her in her smithy; and the only routes away from town are up the mountain or down the valley.

He hates the valley. Its floor is littered with unknown graves, mournful bones, his last memories of his mother and sister. He craves escape and does not know how to unearth it.

Dawn chips away the clouds and it is once again too late again to run.

“Kyra?” his aunt calls from the kitchen. “Get dressed. It’s a long forge day.”

He flinches at the wrong-name, slipped like a needle under his skin. He climbs from the chill window and grabs the heavy leather belts he uses to flatten down his chest before he pulls on his shirt and trousers.

In the kitchen, his aunt straps on her leather apron as her husband scoops warmed day-old oatmeal into trenchers for the three of them.

Kyru shuffles to the table, his sketchbook under his arm. Mint and honey spice the breakfast. He gulps his warmed cider to keep from having to speak.

His aunt shovels her oatmeal in huge bites, saying around mouthfuls, “We got a big order from Brynu down at the farrier’s. He’s armoring some new plough horses for hauling ore through the Crags. He doesn’t want to take chances on the wolves being hungry this winter.”

Kyru nods.

“Kyra,” his uncle says with a sigh, “what are you wearing in your pants? Another bunch of sackcloth?”

Kyru scoots his chair closer to the table so his uncle can’t see his lap.

His aunt shakes her head and shoves her empty trencher aside.

* Author : A. Merc Rustad

* Narrator : Kate Baker

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

*

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First published in Fireside Fiction.

Rated PG for vengeful mountains and the accursed dead.

Iron Aria

Merc Rustad

The mountain dreams pain. Cold iron vibrates purple-blue deep in the stone, while tongues made from rot and rust bite and gnaw and hunger ever deeper.

The dam, buried like a tooth in the mountain’s narrow gums, holds back the great burgundy ocean. Otherwise it would pour into the Agate Pass Valley and swallow up the mining town at the mountain’s toes.

From an owl’s eye, the dam is almost as big as the mountain, built five hundred human-years ago. The infesting tongues burrow in from the sea, sent by angry water-memories. The sea cannot see its children in the lakes far beyond the dam. So it sends corrosion into the mountain, into the infinitesimal pores of the dam.

The mountain is being devoured from the inside and it screams.

Kyru squints up at the mountain in the moonlight.

It slopes massive and muscled against the ice-black sky. The mountain’s dream-noise woke him from his own nightmares — the loudness of steel blood breath, of his mother’s last words — and he shivers in the late autumn night. Snow will come soon, blown in salt-scented gusts from across the ocean on the other side of the dam.

He sits on his windowsill, the shutters thrown open. It is only one floor’s drop to the burlap-covered garden below and then twenty steps to the forge, where his heavy boots and thick gloves hang on pegs, where his rucksack, stained from coal dust, waits with his leather apron.

He has never trod up the mountain, so he doesn’t know how many steps it would take.

The miners’ cart trails are well-worn and wide, easy to walk. He could be gone before dawn and not missed until —

That is where his plan falls to pieces like shattered crockery. His aunt would know he had disappeared within the hour. He apprentices to her in her smithy; and the only routes away from town are up the mountain or down the valley.

He hates the valley. Its floor is littered with unknown graves, mournful bones, his last memories of his mother and sister. He craves escape and does not know how to unearth it.

Dawn chips away the clouds and it is once again too late again to run.

“Kyra?” his aunt calls from the kitchen. “Get dressed. It’s a long forge day.”

He flinches at the wrong-name, slipped like a needle under his skin. He climbs from the chill window and grabs the heavy leather belts he uses to flatten down his chest before he pulls on his shirt and trousers.

In the kitchen, his aunt straps on her leather apron as her husband scoops warmed day-old oatmeal into trenchers for the three of them.

Kyru shuffles to the table, his sketchbook under his arm. Mint and honey spice the breakfast. He gulps his warmed cider to keep from having to speak.

His aunt shovels her oatmeal in huge bites, saying around mouthfuls, “We got a big order from Brynu down at the farrier’s. He’s armoring some new plough horses for hauling ore through the Crags. He doesn’t want to take chances on the wolves being hungry this winter.”

Kyru nods.

“Kyra,” his uncle says with a sigh, “what are you wearing in your pants? Another bunch of sackcloth?”

Kyru scoots his chair closer to the table so his uncle can’t see his lap.

* Author : Charlotte Ashley

* Narrator : Tatiana Grey

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Pria Wood

*

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Previously published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Rated PG-13 for honorable duelists and some less honorable warfare.

A Fine Balance

By Charlotte Ashley

My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim, was the greatest shot in the city.

Each morning, according to her wishes, I cleaned and loaded her revolving pistol. I oiled the clip on her holster and checked the stitches in the leatherwork. I strung a fresh sash of weighted bullets and laid it by the vanity over her scarves.

“Your pistol, Mistress,” I would say to her as she rose from the mirror, her wide, brown lips and dark, sly eyes painted to perfection.

“Thank you, Emin,” she always replied. “But I will not need it today.”

Each morning, she left the gun where it lay. Mistress Yildirim was the greatest shot in the city, but she hunted Kara Ramadami with a blade. That was just one of the many rules of sahidi.

That summer, Kara Ramadami hunted Mistress Yildirim with a pair of shashka, also in accordance with the rules of sahidi.

It was only recently that she had taken up the second weapon, causing the bookmakers to shake their heads and adjust their odds. How could the Dushiq mistress fight and climb with both hands occupied? But Ramadami was goat-like in her movements and did not need hands to scale walls or leap rooftops. She, like my mistress, appeared unbound by the laws of nature that hampered other duelists. Only her Kavalye — her nemesis, my mistress — could challenge her, just as no one could challenge my mistress but Ramadami. They were the most perfectly paired Kavalye the city had ever known.

In their last duel, a clash the tanners of Ceset Alley were already calling the Three-Thrust Fleece, my mistress beat Ramadami when she broke her thumb against the wooden frame of a beamhouse with her first strike. Even thus injured, Ramadami evaded Yildirim’s next advance, delivered backhanded in a whirlwind of ribbon, scarves, and braids. She mounted a clothesline, cartwheeled past my mistress, and took cover behind a red hind-skin curing in the sun. But Yildirim merely spun wide, slicing through the leather like canvas. Her third thrust split Ramadami’s purse and spilt her favor, which my mistress claimed with the broad edge of her sword before it even hit the ground.

We did not see Ramadami for a long time after that, not until I spotted her during the ten mile run Mistress Yildirim had assigned me for my rigors. I spied her unmistakable white-gold hair as I dodged traffic along the busy Ridge, towering over the common people who could match her neither in height nor radiance. She must have seen me before I did her, for no sooner had she caught my attention than she abandoned whatever business she had with the clerks spilling out of the Gentian Courthouse. Narrowing her eyes at me, she slipped around the grand marble staircase and ducked into the first alley beyond. I last caught sight of her alighting on a domed roof like a golden eagle before vanishing around the other side. I swore and sprinted down the Justice Way in the hope of spotting her again, but it was pointless; she was gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to press an exact copy of her into my memory. White blouse, white pants, white boots, as usual. The two shashka strapped about her chest like a harness. Her unlikely golden hair had been cropped short.

* Author : Charlotte Ashley

* Narrator : Tatiana Grey

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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Previously published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Rated PG-13 for honorable duelists and some less honorable warfare.

A Fine Balance

By Charlotte Ashley

My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim, was the greatest shot in the city.

Each morning, according to her wishes, I cleaned and loaded her revolving pistol. I oiled the clip on her holster and checked the stitches in the leatherwork. I strung a fresh sash of weighted bullets and laid it by the vanity over her scarves.

“Your pistol, Mistress,” I would say to her as she rose from the mirror, her wide, brown lips and dark, sly eyes painted to perfection.

“Thank you, Emin,” she always replied. “But I will not need it today.”

Each morning, she left the gun where it lay. Mistress Yildirim was the greatest shot in the city, but she hunted Kara Ramadami with a blade. That was just one of the many rules of sahidi.

That summer, Kara Ramadami hunted Mistress Yildirim with a pair of shashka, also in accordance with the rules of sahidi.

It was only recently that she had taken up the second weapon, causing the bookmakers to shake their heads and adjust their odds. How could the Dushiq mistress fight and climb with both hands occupied? But Ramadami was goat-like in her movements and did not need hands to scale walls or leap rooftops. She, like my mistress, appeared unbound by the laws of nature that hampered other duelists. Only her Kavalye — her nemesis, my mistress — could challenge her, just as no one could challenge my mistress but Ramadami. They were the most perfectly paired Kavalye the city had ever known.

In their last duel, a clash the tanners of Ceset Alley were already calling the Three-Thrust Fleece, my mistress beat Ramadami when she broke her thumb against the wooden frame of a beamhouse with her first strike. Even thus injured, Ramadami evaded Yildirim’s next advance, delivered backhanded in a whirlwind of ribbon, scarves, and braids. She mounted a clothesline, cartwheeled past my mistress, and took cover behind a red hind-skin curing in the sun. But Yildirim merely spun wide, slicing through the leather like canvas. Her third thrust split Ramadami’s purse and spilt her favor, which my mistress claimed with the broad edge of her sword before it even hit the ground.

We did not see Ramadami for a long time after that, not until I spotted her during the ten mile run Mistress Yildirim had assigned me for my rigors. I spied her unmistakable white-gold hair as I dodged traffic along the busy Ridge, towering over the common people who could match her neither in height nor radiance. She must have seen me before I did her, for no sooner had she caught my attention than she abandoned whatever business she had with the clerks spilling out of the Gentian Courthouse. Narrowing her eyes at me, she slipped around the grand marble staircase and ducked into the first alley beyond. I last caught sight of her alighting on a domed roof like a golden eagle before vanishing around the other side. I swore and sprinted down the Justice Way in the hope of spotting her again, but it was pointless; she was gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to press an exact copy of her into my memory. White blouse, white pants, white boots, as usual. The two shashka strapped about her chest like a...

* Author : Ken Liu

* Narrator : Rajan Khanna

* Host : Alasdair Stuart

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

*

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Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Rated PG.

Editors’ note: This episode originally aired as PodCastle 165. We are reissuing it to celebrate PodCastle’s 10th anniversary. This story was in first position in a listener vote that was held to determine PodCastle’s most-loved episodes over the past decade.

 

The Paper Menagerie

by Ken Liu

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom’s creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. “Rawrr-sa,” it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

“Zhe jiao zhezhi,” Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.