IGMS Issue 34 Read online

  Issue 34 - July 2013

  http://www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com

  Copyright © 2013 Hatrack River Enterprises

  Table of Contents - Issue 34 - July 2013

  * * *

  What the Sea Refuses

  by Brian Dolton

  Foundling

  by Christian K. Martinez

  Portraits from the Shadow

  by D. Thomas Minton

  Three Seconds

  by Jonas David

  Oyster Beach

  by Sophie Wereley

  At the Picture Show: Extended Cut

  by Chris Bellamy

  InterGalactic Interview With Michael Flynn

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Letter From The Editor

  by Edmund R. Schubert

  What the Sea Refuses

  by Brain Dolton

  Artwork by M. Wayne Miller

  * * *

  1. A Conjuror Comes To Pangxiao

  The bitter ocean wind rocked the fishing boats at their moorings, and blew salt spray across the network of wharves.

  Yi Qin allowed herself a sigh of relief. The pier, while not quite dry land, was at least attached to it. The two days she had spent aboard the Sapphire Cormorant had been intensely unpleasant. She did not like the sea; she did not like ships; she did not care for sailors.

  Which meant that she was almost looking forward to her appointed task: dispelling an entire ship's crew of ghosts. Then she could head back to the Imperial City. On foot.

  She was alone in the gathering night. The crew had dispersed rapidly to dockside wineshops and eating houses, to be followed (she strongly suspected) by the pleasures of the Pillow World. The wharves were deserted. There was only the wind. There was always the wind.

  She pulled her overdress around her and turned her back on the ocean.

  Harbourmaster Guang Er had sauce on his plump chin and did not look pleased to have so late a visitor. Yi Qin bowed; he returned it as a perfunctory nod.

  "And what is your business that cannot wait until morning?" he asked.

  "My name is Yi Qin," she said, handing him the Emperor's Tablet from her traveling bag.

  "You?" If he tried to mask his surprise, he did not succeed. She doubted he had tried. "You are . . ." He peered at the tablet in his hand, clearly eager to detect some hint of forgery. Apparently failing, he looked up, and she stood patiently as he inspected her just as closely.

  "You are a conjuror?" he finished, at last. She held out her left palm, showing him the scars.

  "I am a follower of the Seven Ways. I know five of the Twelve Unspoken Words. I patrol the hidden borders of the Empire. I am here to deal with your troublesome ghosts."

  "Very well. I'll have you escorted to the police house. Ling Fan will have quarters you might use." He lifted a small bell from his desk and rang it vigorously. As much as being a summons to his servant, it was a clear sign that her audience was over. She bowed, as protocol and courtesy demanded.

  He did not bow back.

  Constable Ling Fan was as plump, or more, than Guang Er, but where the Harbourmaster wore only frowns, Ling Fan smiled. He had fat, stubby fingers and had difficulty folding in the middle.

  Yi Qin warmed to him as he came up again from a third bow.

  "It is an honour. An honour!" She did not doubt his sincerity.

  "I am but a humble servant of the Emperor, as are we all," she demurred.

  "But you bear the Emperor's Tablet," he said. "You are --"

  "Weary," she interrupted, gently. "And hungry." She had eaten very little aboard the Sapphire Cormorant. "I would be grateful if --"

  "I will fetch you soup," he said. "The widow Heng makes the best soup in Pangxiao. And rice. And prawn cakes. And --"

  "As you see fit," she said. It was her stomach that wanted food, not her ears. He bustled out, leaving her alone in the simply-furnished room. There was a dressing table with a brass mirror and she sat down in front of it. Her reflection stared back in wide-eyed shock. She had not realised the damage two days at sea had done. Strands of hair twisted in disarray, and her salt-sprayed cheeks were a dirty brown. No wonder Guang Er had looked at her with such disapproval. She resembled a vagabond girl more than the Emperor's emissary.

  She washed her face, scrubbing it thoroughly and leaving grimy smears on the towel. Then she unpacked her traveling case and set herself down once more in front of the mirror. By the time Ling Fan bustled into the room with a tray, she had regained something of her normal, composed, appearance. Her lips were vivid red. Her cheeks were powdered. Her long hair was brushed and coiled and pinned into place.

  "You are very kind, Ling Fan," she said. The tray was furnished with three covered bowls and a small pot of tea.

  "Not at all, not at all," he answered. "If there is anything else . . . there is a bell, lady. Just ring. I will be listening. That is, I mean . . ." He blushed.

  "If I have need, I will ring. But my needs are simple: food, and rest. These you have met, and I am grateful."

  He retreated, bowing three more times. Seated as she was, she could only incline her head in acknowledgment.

  When she had eaten, and stacked the bowls back neatly on the tray, Yi Qin settled into the bed and looked, thoughtfully, up at the ceiling.

  A ship of ghosts.

  She could feel her own blood pulsing in its veins.

  Tomorrow she would spill it, to protect the town.

  2. The Returning Dead

  "So, tell me about Captain Zheng Fei."

  She was downstairs in the constabulary, sipping her morning bowl of tea.

  "I did not know him well," Ling Fan answered. "He was . . . a very bold man. Willful, one might say." She guessed it meant constable and captain had not seen eye to eye. She wondered if he was a smuggler; a pirate, even. "But he was well liked. His crew always spoke highly of him."

  "But his ship was lost?"

  Ling Fan nodded. "A storm drove it on to the reefs. The ship broke apart. It was terrible. No man could have survived." He shuddered. "No man did."

  "So since then, every eighth night, the ship has entered the harbour?"

  "At sunset. The crew come ashore. People bar their doors and douse their lanterns, terrified. And Captain Zheng Fei stands on his ship, calling for his lost love."

  Yi Qin leant forward.

  "His lost love?"

  "So he says. He calls for Kai Bing. But . . . there is no Kai Bing in Pangxiao. No one knows why he calls for her."

  Yi Qin settled back again.

  "According to the Seven Ways, sometimes the mystery of love is stronger than the mystery of death. This might explain why Zheng Fei returns. But it does not explain why his crew accompany him."

  "They used to say that they would follow him anywhere."

  "Such oaths are easily spoken. They are less easily held to."

  "I wouldn't know. I know only the Emperor's laws, and they apply only to the living."

  "For the most part," Yi Qin corrected him gently. "And where they do not? Well, that is why I am here. Disturbances such as this are . . . unwelcome."

  "You have met ghosts before?"

  "Met, and banished."

  Ling Fan looked relieved.

  "The ship will come tonight. Is there anything that you need to work your magic?"

  "I have all I require," she assured him. "There is no more to do but wait for evening."

  Yi Qin stood on the wharf, unconcerned by the winter wind. She had grown up in the mountains of Deng Wei province where the cold had teeth.

  Ling Fan stood beside her. He winced when she took a knife from her belt and sliced it across her palm. She smeared the blood onto her fingertips and painted one of the wooden stanchions of the wharf with the appropriate sign.

/>   "This is the Fifth Unspoken Word," she told him. "The Word That Binds And Releases Spirits."

  "You can bind the Captain?"

  "I could attempt it," she said. "But it is by no means certain I would succeed. No, I do not intend to bind his spirit. Quite the reverse."

  "The reverse?"

  "I intend to release his crew," she answered. She moved to another of the wharf posts and drew the sign again. "They are bound to him, but not willingly, I think, despite their bold promises. It is my belief that they are weary of death. I have met weary ghosts before. They long for release. To be lost on the borderlands is worse, in some ways, even than the northern slopes of the Silent Mountain. They are cursed to walk in shadowed places, part of no world."

  "But what if the captain will not release his crew willingly?"

  "You said they thought well of him. Perhaps he thinks well of them also, and can be persuaded. Perhaps he will listen to reason."

  "And if he doesn't?"

  Yi Qin gave him a thin smile.

  "Then we will see if my will can prevail against his."

  The wharves were deserted. The townspeople were at home behind barred doors, with protective scrolls and banners hanging from their eaves. Yi Qin was looking back at the darkened streets of the town when Ling Fan shouted beside her.

  "Yi Qin! The ghost ship! It's coming!"

  She turned to look upon her enemy.

  It was there, on the darkness of the ocean, etched in a blue light so pale that it was almost white. Figures moved upon its deck, though she could not make them out clearly.

  "Ling Fan," she said calmly. "Please return to your constabulary."

  "If there is anything I can do . . ."

  "There is not," she said. "Now go."

  He backed away, bowing again before turning and scurrying off to some measure of safety. She smiled momentarily, then folded her arms and rested her thumb on the tip of one of the darts inside her sleeve.

  As the ship approached, Yi Qin began to make out the toll the sea had taken. The broken masts were crooked, the sails ragged and torn. The timbers of the hull were twisted and broken, jammed back together as if by a careless child. It was mockery of a ship -- a paper sketch crumpled and then smoothed out again, but with the creases and tears still visible.

  But it was not, in itself, something to strike terror into anyone's heart.

  That was a matter for the crew.

  The sea had been no kinder to them than to the ship. Weed hung wreathed around their shoulders. Tiny crabs picked tasty morsels from dripping beards. Immersion had leached all colour from the men; they were pastels, washed through with that pale, painful glow that surrounded the entire wreck. But death had not taken everything from them. They were still men, each one individual, identifiable. It occurred to Yi Qin that many of these men were from Pangxiao, that their friends and family were even now huddled behind their doors and shuttered windows, praying to Mi Liao Ma Sing to take their loved ones into her calm embrace.

  Yi Qin was grateful that none of the dead faces meant anything to her.

  She could hear the ship now, the lap of waves around the hull, the slap of sodden rope against sodden wood, the snapping of the sails where a ghost wind ruffled them. The helmsman's dead hand guided the junk to the wharf. The crew lined up along the rail, ready to swarm ashore.

  They did not look weary of death.

  High on the stern stood a tall, bearded man with a large hat and blue fire in his eyes.

  "Bring me Kai Bing!" he roared, his voice carrying above the wind, above the sound of rope and wood and canvas. "Find her and bring her to me!"

  The gangplank of the ghost ship thumped down, and dead men washed ashore in an instant. They jostled and clamoured. Like an unremitting tide, they flowed down to the wharf.

  They paid no heed whatsoever to the posts Yi Qin had marked with the Fifth Unspoken Word, the spell that should have allowed them welcome respite. They hurried past, a wave of dead men flooding towards Pangxiao.

  Flooding towards Yi Qin.

  She stood her ground, small and pale and obdurate. As the first ghost reached her, her right hand flicked out, mechanical and precise. Carmine fingertips smeared a trail across dead flesh.

  The crewman should have vanished, dissipating like wind-blown spray. He did not. He simply brushed past her -- almost through her. Shock froze her where she stood; shock, and the chill, dank sensation of the ghosts. They swirled about her like water, buffeted her like a storm. Every touch was cold and hungry, drawing the life out of her, a fragment here, a piece there. This, Yi Qin knew, was why the townsfolk huddled in fear, their doors barred, their lanterns dark. This was why Harbourmaster Guang Er -- clearly no lover of conjurors -- had begged the Emperor for help. Ghosts, lost on the borderland, were always hungry for the life they had lost, and would seek to draw it from the living. Bad enough if you were a conjuror. Worse, if you were inexperienced in such matters. It could hollow out a man, turning him into a soulless shell.

  Then, as suddenly as the crew had surged forward, they were all past her and gone, into the town.

  All save the captain. He stood at the rail, sword in hand.

  "Conjuror," he hissed, through dead teeth.

  "Captain," Yi Qin answered. She lifted her hand, showing the blood on her fingertips. "You do not come ashore?"

  "A captain's place is aboard his ship," he said. "My crew do my bidding. Do not seek to stop them."

  "I have sought to do just that. Clearly I have failed."

  "My crew are bound by oaths that you cannot break, conjuror."

  "I have my own oaths," Yi Qin answered, her voice hollow and small. "I must oppose you, Captain. It is commanded to me by the Emperor himself."

  Zheng Fei chuckled.

  "So my deeds have reached the noblest ears of all? Truly, I am a great man! And yet . . ." His eyes narrowed, and scorn poured out of them at Yi Qin. "He has sent a little conjuror, all alone. It seems he underestimates me!"

  "Perhaps," Yi Qin said.

  "Enough! Go back to the Emperor and tell him that if he would be rid of me, let him send me Kai Bing. Do not come to me again, conjuror, unless you bring me my love; else my men will drag you aboard, and you will join my crew, forever."

  Yi Qin bowed.

  "You will return, eight nights hence," she said as she rose. "I will be waiting, Captain. With Kai Bing or without, I will be waiting."

  She turned and walked away from the wharf, staying upright through sheer effort of will.

  Back in the constabulary, behind barred doors, Yi Qin looked at her hollow-eyed reflection. Her magic should have been more than adequate to banish the sailor's ghosts. Clearly there was more to this matter than restless spirits or a love strong enough to break the chains of death.

  She had expected this to be simple.

  It was not going to be simple. It was not going to be simple at all.

  3. The Emissary From The Sea

  Yi Qin had been born five thousand li from the ocean. She was used to unforgiving mountains and wind-blown plains. The ocean -- its moods, its movement -- unsettled her.

  So did its unfamiliar gods.

  She knelt in front of the shrine on the headland.

  She knew little of Mi Liao Ma Sing, Watcher Over Those Who Do Not Return From The Sea. In Deng Wei Province there had been no shrines to her, there had been no need. In Deng Wei Province the dead journeyed to the Silent Mountain and the care of Wu Feng Kai Fan. But here, at the edge of the great ocean, matters were different.

  The carved figure, nestled into its arch of stone, was beautifully executed. Swirls of seaweed twisted in lithe ribbons around the goddess' plump form, accentuating her curves, mirroring the liquid rise and fall of the ocean.

  "Goddess, I seek a boon. There is a ship of dead men that rises from your realm every eighth night. I humbly petition you to take them into your care. It may be that these men have offended you. If there is an atonement that can be made, I would know of it. Be aware
that this is what I seek; not to offend you, but to free Pangxiao from the ghosts of the sea."

  She placed her forehead to the ground for the requisite sixteen heartbeats as befitted a goddess of the fourth rank. Then she dropped a half-teng piece in the goddess' cup, stood, and turned to walk back to Pangxiao.

  Harbourmaster Guang Er was waiting for her across from the docks, outside his office. The corners of his mouth were sour with disapproval.

  "And what did Mi Liao Ma Sing tell you, then?" he asked.

  "Nothing," she answered, her tone carefully neutral. "I have petitioned her. If she answers, it will be in her own time."

  "I could place a coin in a shrine's bowl," he grumbled.

  "You could," Yi Qin agreed. "And perhaps the goddess would answer you. But you could have done this before petitioning the Emperor for help." She realised she was being rude, and stopped.

  "You'd best get an answer," he grumbled. "People are leaving town. Ships won't come." He gestured at the almost-empty wharves. "If Zheng Fei comes back, I shall make my report to Overseer Du Deng. It won't be to your liking, conjuror."

  Yi Qin bowed, and did not answer.

  Guang Er's report was the least of her worries.

  She did not know whether Mi Liao Ma Sing would take any notice of a prayer from a landbound stranger, and waiting in idleness was not her nature. So she busied herself with the mystery of Kai Bing. She asked questions, but they were questions that had already been asked, and the answers were unchanged.

  No one in Pangxiao knew the identity of the Captain's lover. There was a family Kai, but no daughter named Bing. Yi Qin called upon the Pillow World, in case one of the ji nu there might have passed, once, by that name. She had the gatemen and the Harbourmaster check their records, in case a traveler might have passed through. But there was nothing.

  There was no such woman as Kai Bing.