Leah R. Cutter's Blog, page 8

Going to Grandma’s Sale!

For those of you in the US, it’s the week before Thanksgiving. You might be traveling this week, either near or far, to visit family.

And while you’re traveling, you might be bored.

So we came up with the “Going to Grandma’s Sale”. To provide you with lovely books for your travels.

FOR ONE WEEK ONLY

Auberon, The Raven and the Dancing Tiger, and Darklady’s Carnal Archives are on sale for $0.99!!!!

Sale ends November 30th, 2015.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free Fiction–Movers, Inc.

The story this week was originally written for a Fiction River anthology. The spec for the anthology involved teens discovering their superpowers.

I wrote one story (The Glass Girl) but I was afraid it was just too weird. So I wrote a second story, this one, Mover’s Inc.

However, I decided to go with the story I really loved, and submitted the first story to Fiction River, not this one.

The Glass Girl did turn out to be too weird for the editor of the superpowers anthology. However, other editors loved it well enough that it sold to a different Fiction River anthology. (The premise: A Japanese teen-aged girl turns into a glass box and carries hope into the slums of Tokyo.) (Okay, so it was a little weird. Written very much like a manga.) (It will be coming out December 2016.)

I have garnered a couple of really nice rejection letter with this story. And it’s much lighter, sillier, than most of the science fiction I write.

So I figured I’d bring it to you, as the last brand new stories that I’d publish with the Baker’s Dozen Redux. (Next week I’m doing another Shadow War’s short story.)

Enjoy!

Jeremy wants to be like his big brother, and do well at Movers, Inc., where they teach people how to use their telekenetic powers.

But Jeremy’s power is…fading.

Jeremy is willing to do anything to strengthen his powers. Even if it means going to a shrink and talking about his, ugh, feelings.

Available for $0.99 at Amazon, Kobo Books, and iBookstore.

“Ready, set, PUSH!”

Jeremy focused his telekinetic ability on the weighted box in front of him. It was about a foot square, made from gray plastic, the red tape on the sides indicating its weight: fifteen pounds. It rested on a green track with white lines designating each student’s individual channel.

He was going to send it flying across the room this time, damn it!

Jeremy concentrated. He strained.

The box trembled, then started inching away.

Jeremy redoubled his efforts. Pulled from his very toes. Clenched his fists, his jaw, his arms in front of his chest, his T–shirt pulling tightly across his back.

The box slid a very short ways. Then it stopped.

Jeremy strained to move it further. He ignored the other boys in the room and their cheers of victory. He bent over, contracting all the muscles in his stomach, across his chest, becoming a solid ball before he flung all that energy out in one big blast.

The box grudgingly moved maybe another three inches. Then it stopped again.

“Time!” Coach called.

Jeremy sighed and looked up. As he suspected, everyone else in class had had more success. Frank’s box looked like it had flown across the track so hard that it had crunched into the wall at the far end.

Even Avery the freak had managed to move his box further than Jeremy, his box sitting three–quarters of the way down the track.

“Eyes closed!” Coach called out.

Jeremy blinked his eyes as the bright ceiling lights flashed and Coach took a picture, recording the placement of everyone’s box along the track. The flash also recorded the psychic remnants in the room. Jeremy had seen pictures of his own abilities—like purple smoke wafting around the X–ray of the box he’d moved.

“Good work, boys,” Coach said, encouragingly. He slipped the camera remote in his faded gray slacks and crossed his arms over his broad chest, stretching the black and white logoed company shirt across his back. “But it looks like some of you are going to have to focus more on finesse, Rogers.”

Jeremy bit back a smirk. Figured. Rogers was always bragging about how much he could move, and how far he could send stuff. Which he could—his box was all the way across the room, touching the far wall.

But it wasn’t in the right track. It was three over.

It didn’t matter how far you could move stuff with your mind if you couldn’t actually send it where you wanted it to go. Coach had been drilling them on that all semester.

“Frank, you too.”

Jeremy wasn’t sure why Coach called Frank out. He’d sent his box flying, right?

But maybe it was just supposed to touch the wall, rest perfectly like Erik’s.

Jeremy wanted to hate his roommate Erik. He really did. Erik had perfect hair and no zits and was at the top of the class at Mover’s Inc. for almost every subject: telemetry, underwater mechanics, remote assembly, and of course, general moving with Coach.

But Erik was just too nice a guy. Even if he did fart a lot.

“Class dismissed,” Coach said. “Jeremy, can you stay?”

Jeremy nodded and sighed again. He knew that sooner or later he’d be getting The Talk.

He had the genes, damn it! And his brother Tom’s abilities were off the charts. He’d won almost every award Mover’s Inc. gave out. Mom and Dad had been so proud of him. When Tom had graduated from Mover’s Inc., he moved straight into a top position for a moving factory. Hell, he’d bought a new car even, and he’d just turned twenty–one!

So why couldn’t Jeremy move even a single weighted box?

Give him balls and he could roll them around all day long. Never even tax his energies.

But anything heavy and he failed.

“Yeah, Coach,” Jeremy said, walking up to the older man, his heart heavy.

“Now, I can see you’re trying,” Coach said. “And the recordings show you are putting out psychic energies.”

Jeremy nodded. He wasn’t the slacker his brother accused him of being. But he didn’t know why he couldn’t move anything heavy.

Coach rubbed his meaty hands together. “Is there something wrong? Like, at home? With your brother?”

“No,” Jeremy said quickly. Nothing was wrong with Mom or Dad or Tom. Or even Erik, his roommate.

The only thing that was wrong was him.

“I know you said nothing’s wrong. But you might have some kind of block, that’s preventing you from reaching your full potential,” Coach said.

Jeremy looked up, heartened. Maybe it was a block, and not his puny abilities, that seemed to be shrinking, not growing.

But what did that mean?

“I’d like you to go talk to a friend of mine,” Coach said. He wrote down a number on a piece of paper. “Karl Jones. He’s easy to talk with. He might be able to help.”

Jeremy took the paper and tried not to be disappointed. It was the number of a shrink.

He didn’t need a shrink. He could do this all on his own. He just had to work harder. Get a better grip on his abilities. Or something.

Coach sighed. “Karl isn’t your typical psychologist,” he assured Jeremy. He paused and scratched the back of his neck, pushing his hand against his quarter–inch–shorn silver hair. “I know it sounds all woo–woo and like that. But he can really help a guy out.”

Had Coach needed help at some point? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to go and talk about his feelings or some such crap.

“Thanks Coach,” Jeremy said. He shoved the piece of paper into the front pocket of his jeans. “I gotta get to class,” he lied.

“Jeremy,” Coach said just before he left.

Jeremy paused in the doorway.

“You’re going to have to start showing some improvement, son. And soon. Anyone other than Tom McCormick’s brother would have been shown the door by now.”

“I know, Coach,” Jeremy said. He slipped out into the hallway.

Great. Just what he needed. Dweebs. Group of four of them huddled together as they walked down the hallway.

While Jeremy and his class were the “jocks” because they used their telekinetic powers moving big things, the “dweebs” moved items at a chemical level, using microscopes instead of weighted boxes.

But they didn’t seem to notice him. They were the last thing Jeremy needed. Dweebs thinking they could mess with him, like untie his shoelaces or something.

Jeremy left the building quickly, heading across the quad toward his dorm. He didn’t bother crossing to the far side, though he did sometimes—that moved him further away from the girl’s classrooms.

It wasn’t 100%, but for the most part, boys had telekinetic powers while girls had telepathic powers. It made school dances interesting, as the boys weren’t interested in getting close enough to the girls for them to read their minds, while the girls were afraid the boys would unhook their bras.

The day was actually kind of nice for Michigan, with blue sky and a nice breeze. Grass was already growing, and the ivy climbing the red brick buildings was starting to come back. It would be summer soon.

Would Jeremy be invited back to the school come fall?

What was he going to do? He wanted to be a Mover, like his big brother. He wanted a guaranteed job and to be making lots of money. Hell, he might even get a girlfriend someday. Find one who wasn’t so scary.

He didn’t want to go see a shrink. He could fix this on his own.

He just didn’t know how.

Ξ

Erik was waiting in the dorm room when Jeremy got there.

“Hey,” he said, looking up briefly from his video game.

“Hey,” Jeremy said.

The room wasn’t huge. They both had a bed and a desk on opposite sides. It was easy to tell Erik’s half from Jeremy’s: The bed was usually made, books piled neatly on the desk, and dirty clothes in the hamper instead of scattered everywhere.

They kept the middle of the room clean of mess by mutual agreement. Plus, Erik had threatened to fart on Jeremy’s pillow if he didn’t live up to his end of the bargain.

And Erik’s farts could stun a rhino.

The mutual parts of the room had also been carefully measured and agreed on. Jeremy kept the fridge on his side, while Erik kept the video game system on his side.

Jeremy threw his books on his desk, fished out the piece of paper Coach had given him and threw that on top, then collapsed on his bed.

Ow.

He moved the—ugh—sweaty gym socks from the middle of his bed and rolled back.

“Tough day, huh?” Erik asked, not getting up or even pausing his video game.

“You have no idea,” Jeremy said. And he didn’t. Erik was perfect in every way. Plus, he didn’t have this great brother, or the McCormick name to live up to.

High school was hard enough without the extra Mover classes.

All the expectations just made it suck more.

“What did Coach want?” Erik asked.

Jeremy lifted his head, surprised. Why would Erik ask about that?

Then again, Erik was the nicest guy in the world. He’d already tried helping Jeremy with his ability, going through drills and stuff.

But Erik hadn’t turned around, still had all his attention on his video game.

“Eh,” Jeremy said, flopping his head back down on the bed. “He wants me to go see a shrink or something lame. Figures maybe I’m blocked.”

Jeremy wasn’t going to bring up the possibility that he had no abilities, or that they’d burned out or something stupid like that.

“Huh,” Erik replied. Then he added, “I figured he wanted to make sure you hadn’t shit yourself. Uhn. Ugh,” he said, imitating Jeremy. “You were all bunched over. You got to relax, dude.”

“Asshole,” Jeremy said.

But Erik was right. Jeremy was too tense every time he went into the general movers class. Maybe that was what was blocking him.

“I won’t think any less of you for going to see a shrink,” Erik promised solemnly.

Jeremy rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming.

“Because I don’t think it’s possible to think less than zero about someone,” Erik added.

Jeremy shook his head and didn’t reply. He didn’t want to go get help. That wasn’t what McCormick men did.

But he wanted to stay at Movers Inc. He wanted to graduate top of his class, like Tom had.

A noxious smell crept into his awareness.

“Dude, what crawled inside you and died?” he choked out.

Erik finally paused his game and looked up, grinning at Jeremy. “Onion, cheese, and bean burritos for lunch,” he said proudly. “Want to lose at Death–Match 3?”

Jeremy made more gagging noise as he crawled out of his bed and staggered over to where Erik was sitting. “Really. You should bottle that shit and sell it to the government. They’d classify it as hazardous. Use it to kill entire armies.”

Erik didn’t reply, just passed a game consul to Jeremy. “Ready to get your ass handed to you?”

“You’re on,” Jeremy replied. “Only I think it’s you who’s gonna be crying by the end.”

“I’ve always got my secret weapon,” Erik said. “Let’s play.”

Jeremy happily threw himself into the game, but at the back of his head he wondered how long it would be before the administrators would have to call his mom and dad, before they’d send him home from boarding school and he’d have to do something in the regular sector for a job.

Ξ

Jeremy dreamed of a dandelion world. The seeds floated all around him, blowing in a soft summer breeze. The day seemed golden and hazy.

Then Jeremy shrank. He wasn’t just watching the dandelion seeds float in the wind, he became the same size as them, floating between them.

A big wind came up. Jeremy tried to grasp the seeds around him, but they slipped out of his fingers. He tumbled on the wind, heading for a dark hole in the sky.

Just before he hit the hole, Jeremy woke up. His mouth was dry, his T–shirt was soaked, and his covers were all twisted up between his legs.

As quietly as he could, Jeremy pushed himself up. It was, damn it, 3:17 a.m. He tried to rearrange the sheets without making too much noise. Erik bitched about losing his beauty sleep way too much already.

“Am awake,” came a quiet voice in the darkness.

“Sorry,” Jeremy said. Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about waking Erik up.

“You know, you keep having these nightmares,” Erik pointed out.

“Just part of my block,” Jeremy assumed. He couldn’t move things with his mind. So his mind was going to move him. That made sense, right?

“You ever call that shrink?” Erik asked.

“I got busy,” Jeremy said. He knew it was an excuse. He should have called the man. Set up an appointment. Gotten his head straightened out.

He’d been drilling every night. Trying to get his puny abilities to grow. But nothing seemed to work. If anything, he could move weighted boxes shorter distances than before.

“Tell you what,” Erik said. “You go get your head shrunk, and I’ll lay off the burritos for a week.”

“Promise?” Jeremy said. Erik had been getting even more noxious than usual, recently.

“Promise. I’d like a good night’s sleep for a change,” he said wryly.

“I’ll call him in the morning,” Jeremy promised.

However, Jeremy kept it very clear in his head that he was only going the one time.

He could still figure out everything on his own.

Ξ

Karl Jones’ office turned out to be in the administration building for Movers Inc. To get to his office, Jeremy had to pass by the testing hall.

He remembered his first visit there, scared and anxious and proud. Tom had tested off the charts, so his parents had brought him in early.

A low table sat against the far wall. A three inch tall, clear Plexiglas top covered it. The table itself was smooth and white, with lots of colored balls scattered across it.

Jeremy remembered being left in the room by his parents. He’d gone over to the table first because that was where Tom always went. He couldn’t reach the balls with his fingers, but he really wanted to play with them.

Suddenly, they were moving and rolling, just how he’d wanted them to.

Could he still do it? Jeremy glanced at his phone. He had some time before his appointment.

No one was in the testing hall, so Jeremy walked over to the table. It had seemed so big when he’d been a kid. It was really only three feet long and a couple across.

Simple enough to roll the red ball into the blue, the green into the yellow.

But those balls weren’t much bigger than pingpong balls, made of light plastic, and sitting on a special, frictionless surface. There were for kids. He should be able to move more.

A flickering monitor drew Jeremy’s attention. He didn’t remember seeing it before. Then again, he’d been focused on the balls, like Tom.

Below the monitor were a series of numbered switches. Jeremy flipped the first switch.

A moving pattern showed up on the monitor, kind of like a computer screensaver. There were three blocks and a rod, slowly bouncing into each other and off the sides of the screen.

Weird.

Jeremy flipped the next switch. Triangles.

Then another. He gasped.

What looked like dandelion seeds appeared on the screen. Like what he’d been dreaming about. He found himself making a grasping motion with his right hand.

A group of the dandelion seeds clustered together on the right side of the monitor.

Huh. That was strange.

Jeremy made a grasping motion with his left hand.

The dandelion seeds on that side came together in a group.

Maybe it was like those new video games where you made motions with your hands, instead of using a consul.

What else could he do with them?

Jeremy experimented, grouping then letting the dandelion seeds go. But that didn’t feel right. After a while, he started ordering them, shifting the first group over and replacing it with the third, and so on. Then he got them all to float in a straight line, with the points facing down.

That was the right order. He didn’t know how he knew, but it felt good.

What was the next switch?

Again, boxes and rods, though with a ball this time, too. Bright blue and red and green. Jeremy used his right hand to rotate one of the squares. Ah, there was a hole there. For the rod?

The long cylinder turned out to be trickier to grasp, but Jeremy got hold of it, attached it to the box, then hung the other box and the ball off the first rod. It took some time to figure out how to attach the other rod and box, but he did it.

The final form wasn’t symmetrical. But like the dandelion seeds, it was right in a way Jeremy couldn’t explain.

And he felt really satisfied.

Someone cleared their throat next to him.

Jeremy jumped.

The guy looked an awful lot like Coach, with big meaty hands and features, silver hair shaved to a quarter inch, typical black and white Movers Inc. shirt and dress slacks.

“I take it you’re Jeremy,” the man said. “I’m Karl.”

“Hi, sorry, I’m late,” Jeremy said.

Karl shrugged. “I’m not sure we need an appointment. You’ve worked through your block all on your own.”

“I have?” Jeremy asked.

Karl nodded toward the screens. “This is why my office is next to the testing hall. So kids can find their own way.”

Jeremy looked at Karl, then at the table with balls across the way, then back at the screen.

“I’m a dweeb?” he asked, horrified. “Not a jock?” He’d been moving microscopic things with his mind. That was what the screen had been reflecting. Not some weird video game.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a dweeb,” Karl said, smiling. “It frequently happens with brothers.” He waved his hand, and suddenly all of Jeremy’s connected boxes and rods came apart.

Jeremy shook his head. Tom was going to give him nothing but shit about this. Along with all his friends.

But at least that meant he wouldn’t have to transfer out of Movers Inc.

Ξ

Jeremy learned to his great relief that most of his credits transferred when he changed tracks. He was only going to have to attend one summer session, and then he’d be able to graduate with the rest of his class.

The classroom for General Moving, 101, dweeb style, looked nothing like Coach’s room. It had half–a–dozen tall tables, white and pristine, with four monitors standing on each. Underneath were—ugh—microscopes.

But Jeremy was determined to work hard. To make his parents proud. Even Tom hadn’t given him too much grief.

He didn’t recognize any of the guys in the class. They were all dressed like he was, though, in T–shirts and jeans. There was even a girl, standing up near the front.

Each monitor showed a familiar pattern of bouncing boxes, rods, and balls. Mr. Aaronson, the teacher, started the off the class with a quick test of their abilities, to give him a baseline.

Silence spread across the classroom while everyone concentrated.

Then came a loud, extended fart noise.

“David Munster, could you please try to control yourself?” Mr. Aaronson asked in a long suffering tone.

The guy standing next to Jeremy looked up and gave him a huge grin.

Jeremy gave him a quick fist bump before looking back at his monitor.

He was going to be all right here.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free Fiction Tuesday-Dancing with Tong Yi

I still can’t believe how lucky I’ve been to be part of the Uncollected Anthology.

We’re a collection of urban fantasy writers, and we come out with new short stories four times a year (roughly quarterly), each of us writing to the same theme.

The first story I wrote turned out to have legs, as it were. Dancing with Tong Yi has now had two sequels.

I don’t know yet if there will be another sequel, or if I’m just going to have to write the novel. (Yes, there will be a novel, possibly titled, “The Immortals’ War.” There’s too much of that story still to tell, and I don’t know if I can break off more chunks or not.)

In the meanwhile, to celebrate the release of The Sweet Shop, the latest Tong Yi story, I’m going to list the first Tong Yi story here for free for a week.

Tong Yi works for Huli Transport, a company that specializes in rides and transportation for those who aren’t quite human.

When the newest job comes up—delivering a message to Zhang Guo Lao, one of the Eight Immortals—Tong Yi assumes the job will be tricky because the immortal likes to play games.

He has no idea that Zhang Guo Lao isn’t the only one interested in “dancing” with him.

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books, and iBooks.

 

The piercing scream rolled through the canyon of Taroko Gorge, reverberating over the sound of Tong Yi’s motorcycle, making him swerve, but he managed to keep his bike upright. Luckily, he’d been going down a straight–ish piece of road, not taking a curve, or he might have wiped out. Plus, he was driving the bike Ren Wu referred to as “Big Bing Xi,” a sleek red–and–black Yamaha Street Rally.

Tong Yi glanced over his shoulder. A huge bird, easily two times the size of a human, raced after him. Its feathers were the color of wet concrete. It had the head and neck of a snake, with the beak of an eagle. Its lighter colored feet were like a rooster’s, thick and scaly, with razor–sharp black talons.

God damn it. Where had that huang come from? Judging by its color, or lack of it, it must be a female. It blended in well with the granite gorge walls. The feng, the male of the fenghuang, had a white–death face, reddish wings, and blue legs. And it spat poison, which the female couldn’t.

Evil mountain shan and other non–humans sometimes used the fenghuang as mounts. Tong Yi dared another glance back. It was riderless. Maybe he had a chance.

Except, the female’s nest was probably close by, judging by how well it knew the road, drawing back its wings when the car–and–a–half width dropped down to a single lane over a bridge. Was it defending her young? Or looking for a snack for them?

It didn’t matter. Tong Yi had to get the hell out of there. Neither his leathers or helmet would protect him from the beast. At least the company’s colors— Huli Transport, brown and yellow—weren’t bright enough to make him a flaming target in the misty, pre–dawn light.

Possibly, though, just because he worked for Huli Transport was why the huang had targeted him. Tong Yi didn’t understand all the politics between the human and non–human races, and he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.

The huang screamed again. The sound bounced off the closed–in canyon walls. Tong Yi leaned to the left, into the next curve, not daring to slow down. Bing Xi took the curve like a dream. The bird folded its wings and dove after him, sliding like an eel through the air.

Tong Yi had only driven Taroko Gorge once before, and that had been before he’d started working for Huli Transport. He didn’t know the road well enough to recognize where he was, or how many li he had to survive before he got out of the gorge. He didn’t remember the road being this narrow, the rough rock walls so close, or how few of the turns had guardrails.

Why hadn’t anyone warned him that the fenghuang lived here? It made sense, actually. The gorge’s steep walls and tight curves made an excellent hunting ground.

Tong Yi should have realized that delivering a message to Zhang Guo Lao, one of the Eight Immortals, was never going to be that easy.

Still, he hadn’t been the only one who’d stepped up when Ren Wu had asked who was available for an easy run. Once he’d been chosen, though, the other messengers had giggled at him, the new recruit, getting the job. Of course, neither of them had offered any advice or warning. Wan Cho had gone back to eating her Ramen and playing games on her phone, while Han Di had walked away, outside, to smoke another clove cigarette.

One less messenger meant more jobs for them. Huli Transport specialized in rides for non–human clientele. They’d only recently branched out from China into Taiwan, and into messaging as well.

The road curved to the right. A yellow warning sign flashed by, showing a black series of s–curves.

Shit.

No straightaway in sight.

Tong Yi kept up his speed. At least it was too early in the morning for a damned tourist bus to be coming the other way, taking up the center of the road.

The blacktop at the next curve shone darkly, coated with a fine mist of water from the picturesque waterfall tumbling down the gorge wall.

Tong Yi felt his back wheel start to go out from under him. Cursing, he backed slightly off the accelerator.

The huang saw its chance.

Instinct made Tong Yi slow more and duck.

The hunag’s talons clicked together in the air where Tong Yi’s head had been. It screeched angrily as it coasted over him. Then it unfolded its wings and flapped, heading back up toward the sliver of blue sky above the dark walls of the canyon.

Tong Yi held Bing Xi on the road through sheer will as the backdraft pushed against him. She was heavy enough to take it, though. A lighter machine would have been blown off the road.

How the hell was Tong Yi supposed to find Zhang Guo Lao when he was going at this speed? He was certain he’d recognize him: Like the rest of the messengers, Tong Yi had been born with a higher level of sight, that had been enhanced with the training all employees of Huli Transport received.

The old man was known for resting with his white mule along the Liwu River that rolled along the bottom of the gorge. Tong Yi had hoped to find him as the road opened up into one of the main highways.

He’d assumed none of the other messengers had fought to get the job because Zhang Guo Lao was known as a trickster. Finding him, delivering the message, as well as getting his response, was sure to be, well, tricky.

Tong Yi glanced up above again. No sign of the huang. It was probably winging its way behind him again.

Or lying in wait in front of him.

It couldn’t be the immortal in disguise, could it?

That didn’t feel right to Tong Yi. Zhang Guo Lao was much more likely to misdirect as a human, appearing as a bum or old prospector, in order to test kindness. Not to attack as a different creature.

Another scream pierced the air. Damn bird was back. How was Tong Yi going to get out of the canyon alive? Then find the immortal? He didn’t want to drive past Zhang Guo Lao by accident, then have to come back and face the huang again.

The road flattened out and Tong Yi found himself climbing. Great, just great. The road was bringing him closer to the sky where the stupid bird was. The canyon walls were dropping away. He glanced back when he dared, but he didn’t see the creature. It was close, though.

The road continued to climb, and Tong Yi negotiated another steep curve. If he hadn’t been being chased, he would have enjoyed how Bing Xi handled turns.

Up ahead, fog and clouds rolled across the road. It was another reason why so many tour buses would clog the road later in the day: The tourist brochures for the Taroko Gorge road promised not only beautiful rolling whitewater at the bottom of the gorge, but in parts, the road also rose up above the low hanging clouds, drawing closer to heaven.

Tong Yi plunged into the wet whiteness. Bing Xi’s growling engine reverberated between the rock walls. He couldn’t see a damned thing through the fog. What sweat had gathered under his leathers suddenly cooled. He flipped up the faceplate on his helmet as the moisture beaded up, making it even more difficult to see.

The next screeching cry seemed to come from all around Tong Yi. Shit. Where was the damned thing?

A talon appeared directly in front of Tong Yi. He ducked and swerved. The claw missed him mere inches.

Bing Xi fishtailed on the wet road. Tong Yi slowed and fought to keep her upright. He had a few seconds (he hoped) before the bird made its way back around.

Suddenly, Tong Yi popped out above the clouds. Clear blue sky opened up above him. Higher peaks, the gray rocks laced with snow, appeared on either side. Below him was a lake of white fog.

Tong Yi slowed the bike and pulled over to the panoramic overlook. The huang wouldn’t attack him in the open, where her prey could easily run. Only after he stood Bing Xi up and swung his leg over the seat did he realize just how badly he was shaking.

He couldn’t rest long. He had to negotiate the rest of the gorge road before the tourist buses started rolling.

The buses wouldn’t stop the huang, no, instead, Tong Yi would be trapped, unable to escape. The humans riding the buses wouldn’t see the great bird hunting him: their mundane eyes hid all manner of things. They’d only see another young man accidently driving off the gorge road when he tried to pass them and the great beast attacked.

But how was he going to get through the rest of the gorge alive?

Θ

After stretching and jogging in place, Tong Yi still had no idea how he was going to get through the rest of the gorge alive. But he didn’t have a choice: He had a message to deliver. It was in his contract that he would make heroic efforts to deliver all messages entrusted to him.

At least his family would receive an adequate insurance payout from the company if he was killed while on duty.

Tong Yi didn’t want to die. His older brother, the eldest sibling in the family, was the one with the deathwish, wanting to flameout and leave a beautiful corpse.

Tong Yi wouldn’t abandon his family that way.

He wondered sometimes if his brother also had some sort of sight, which was why he’d started drinking so heavily and shooting heroin, rather than deal with the red–faced ghosts, fox fairies, and even stranger creatures that co–existed in the world, generally hidden to most humans.

When the representative from Huli Transport had approached Tong Yi, telling him that he had great potential, he’d seen the opportunity to help his family out of the debts generated by the eldest son.

Shaking himself all over like a dog, Tong Yi climbed back on his bike and started it up. The purring of Bing Xi’s engine’s sounded pitifully small in the open air, spread out and thin.

But the vinyl seat had warmed in the sun, and the clean winds had cleared Tong Yi’s senses.

He just had to go like hell, get out of the gorge, and not slow down until the very end. Hopefully he could time approaching the immortal with the huang’s attacks, actually see the old man and not blow by him.

Tong Yi rode the bike slowly to the edge of the wet fog. It smelled like a thunderstorm, that sharp scent of ozone piercing through his sinuses to the back of his skull. Tong Yi revved the engine once, twice—a challenge—before he shot forward into the blinding whiteness, hugging the canyon wall.

The huang waited just on the other side. Tong Yi was glad he’d chosen the right side, and not the center, where the bird had been. Its talons clicked empty a couple feet to his left.

Ha! Tong Yi sneered. He could do this.

A second claw manifested right in front of Tong Yi. He swerved to the left.

Damn it! Now there were two of them. Had the bird’s mate joined her? The fog was too thick for him to be able to see.

He wouldn’t be able to predict the attacks, and possibly he wouldn’t have any rest between them.

The road curved as it dropped down. Above the muffled roar of the engine Tong Yi heard the splash of a hidden waterfall. He slowed suddenly, but still fishtailed across the wet road. Claws brushed against his back, throwing him forward, making him swerve harder to the right.

Tong Yi knew better than to put his foot down to help stop the fall. He threw his weight to the left, righting Bing Xi and wobbling.

Goddamn it. He wasn’t going to get out of this.

The next curve climbed again. Tong Yi torqued the accelerator, leaping forward. Maybe there was another break above the clouds up ahead.

Of course, that might just give the damn bird the chance to recruit yet another of its kind for the free lunch.

After another curve, the fog thinned out. Up ahead, Tong Yi saw an opening.

But it wasn’t the road going above the clouds again. No, a bridge rose up from the road.

Not a human bridge.

Was this an escape route? Or a trap?

Tong Yi had never heard of a bridge like this. Solid bleached–wood planks made up the center of it, while shining strands of spun glass held up the looping arches. The foot of the bridge took up almost the entire road.

He saw that he had a choice. A skinny sliver of road curved to the left of the bridge. Tong Yi could stick to the road and not take the bridge if he wanted.

Two piercing screams rang together behind Tong Yi. He swerved to the right, then to the left, hoping that the erratic path his bike took would protect him. Bing Xi flowed easily in and out of the curves, like she was dancing.

At least the road went straight for a while. Tong Yi sped up, pushing the engine to a roar. He swerved one more time, then righted the bike and struck the foot of the bridge straight on. The bump tossed him into the air. He landed on the bridge with a solid thump, the entire bridge dipping and bucking under the force of his landing.

The screeching call of the huang faded as Tong Yi climbed the bridge. He slowed, risking a glance back.

The huang and its feng mate wheeled at the far end of the bridge, frustrated, unable to follow him.

Tong Yi slowed the bike further, pausing. The bridge lifted up, off the road, across the gorge. Nothing but steep walls and endless rocks lay beneath it.

Up ahead, the other edge of the bridge disappeared in more thick fog.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire? Possibly.

Tong Yi didn’t have a choice, though. He just pushed on.

Θ

The fog on the far side of the bridge was wetter and colder than the clouds Tong Yi had pushed into earlier. He thought about pulling down the visor for his helmet, but decided not to: He needed to be able to really see.

Nothing but whiteness surrounded Tong Yi. He strained his ears over Bing Xi’s rumble, but couldn’t hear anything beyond it. The fog tasted of calm and snow. Tong Yi didn’t relax, however. He had no idea where he was, or what was ahead of him.

The bump at the far end of the bridge tossed Tong Yi back up into the air, despite the slow speed at which he took it.

He landed on gravel. The tires spun. Tong Yi skidded and fishtailed, but kept the bike upright.

Where the hell was he?

After only a few yards, the fog dissolved. Tong Yi found himself still riding on a peak. Clouds covered the valleys between him and the mountains on either side. The blue sky above him was much brighter and sharper, while the winds were thinner, needling him.

The road itself wasn’t much more than a dirt trail. The sides of the mountain spine dropped abruptly on either side of him.

Tong Yi had to stay strictly to the trail. If he swerved or fell, it was a long way down.

If there was a bottom at all.

The mountain path was only clear for a short while. Another solid bank of cloud loomed up ahead, just after the trail forked.

Tong Yi had no way of knowing which way to go. He paused, considering. Then he walked his bike down along the one path, stuck his nose into the fog, then down the other.

There had been that movie, once, where the wise wizard had said to follow your nose.

But one side didn’t smell sweeter than the other, or more sour.

Tong Yi tried again. This time he caught the faint call of a seagull from the right–hand side. Plus, Bing Xi seemed to roll more easily along that path.

Zhang Gua Lao was known as a fisherman….

Taking a chance, Tong Yi started down the right hand side. Maybe he could climb back up if it turned out to be wrong, though in all the myths he’d ever read, it was the second (or third) person faced with a choice who ended up choosing correctly. The first never got a chance to correct course.

Hopefully, Tong Yi had chosen correctly the first time.

The fog here wasn’t as thick. Tong Yi was still on a dirt trail, cut into the side of the mountain. Sharp rocks pushed out from the left. To his right was an abrupt drop off. Far below, a stream rushed by.

A rumbling to Tong Yi’s left made him hang on more tightly to Bing Xi. What was that? Earthquake? Or…

Waterfall.

The path swerved hard to the left. Tong Yi barely made the turn. The waterfall fell off the overhanging cliff, while the trail went behind it. Wet dirt made Bing Xi’s back wheel slide.

And keep sliding.

Tong Yi swallowed down the bile that suddenly rose as he fought to right the bike.

He was not going off the damn cliff.

The wet stone directly behind the waterfall wasn’t an improvement. Tong Yi continued on his barely controlled skid. Bing Xi started turning sideways, until the rear wheel was inches away from the edge of the cliff.

With an abrupt jerk, Tong Yi managed to right himself. He stopped Bing Xi on the hairpin turn, panting.

What the hell had Tong Yi been thinking? Why had he believed he could do this job? Did he really want to keep going? He’d signed a contract, but still.

However, the company had already given him such great sight training. It had opened up so many opportunities for him, not just for the human world, but the non–human world as well.

And the pay was Western scale.

If he could just manage to live through the next few paychecks.

He was just going to have to sign up for motorcycle trick–riding lessons.

With a sigh, Tong Yi edged forward again, the trail dipping sharply.

He also might ask for combat pay with the next job.

Θ

Tong Yi felt like getting off his bike and kissing the ground when he finally reached the bottom of the mountain.

However, he was afraid his legs would shake so badly he wouldn’t have been able to walk, or even have the strength to get back on Bing Xi.

In front of Tong Yi ran a long stretch of white sandy beach. The ocean, just beyond, was strangely calm, a flat dark blue, burping little waves onto the shore. A solid, blacktop road ran out from the foot of the mountain, then turned, and cut across the sand.

To Tong Yi’s left, on the far side of a stream that ran down from the mountain and out into the ocean, an old man dressed in plain white robes sat cross legged on the ground, his fishing pole dipping into the water. Beside him, a large white mule stood, nodding its head to its own internal rhythms.

Finally! Here was Zhang Gua Lao. Tong Yi was certain of it. He eagerly turned Bing Xi that direction. However, as soon as the front wheel touched the sand, she stopped.

Frustrated, Tong Yi kicked the starter pedal.

Nothing. The engine didn’t even click.

When Tong Yi backed up, so both wheels were on the blacktop, the engine turned right over.

Tong Yi looked over his left shoulder, to where the immortal sat, and then back up, along the road. As far as he could tell, it didn’t curve that direction all, just ran straight along the beach, with tall mountain cliffs on the left and the ocean on the right.

It didn’t go anywhere near the old man.

With a sigh, Tong Yi backed Bing Xi up onto her kickstand, turned off the engine, and took off his helmet. In the sudden quiet, the waves sounded louder and he could hear seagulls squawking in the distance. A quick glance told Tong Yi that despite how loud they’d grown, the waves hadn’t increased in size.

Yet.

Tong Yi put down his helmet on the seat of his bike and swung his leg over slowly, happy that he could stand. He stomped his feet a couple of times into the ground, driving feeling back into his toes. From his saddlebag he grabbed the red envelope he was supposed to deliver to Zhang Guo Lao. He kept on his gloves, not touching the paper with his bare fingers out of respect.

How far across the sand was it to the immortal, really? Would the distance grow as soon as he put his first foot down? Would he ever reach the old man?

It didn’t matter. Tong Yi had to try. He was so close. He couldn’t fail now.

Θ

Luckily, it only took Tong Yi about thirty minutes to cross the few dozen yards from the road to the stream where the immortal still sat, fishing.

Unfortunately, the wind and waves had built up unnaturally quickly during that time. A storm brewed just off the coast. Dark clouds tumbled over one another, and flashes of lightning sparking through them.

If Tong Yi had any luck remaining, he’d get at least halfway up the mountain trail before the storm struck the coast.

Knowing how this day had gone, though, the storm would hit before Tong Yi even left the blacktop for the mountain trail.

Tong Yi approached the old man silently, afraid that he might drive away any fish that swam in the stream if he was too loud. There was no way across the stream that Tong Yi could see. It was too wide for him to try to leap across. And he knew that if he tried something stupid like walking into the water, well, it would be like the beach, and he’d probably drown instead.

Zhang Guo Lao looked up a couple minutes after Tong Yi had reached the far side of the stream. “Ni hau,” he said, nodding his head.

“Nin hau,” Tong Yi replied, bowing low, using the more formal form of greeting, relieved that his patience had paid off and he wasn’t going to have to wait longer.

The immortal gave a toothful grin to Tong Yi. He put his bamboo fishing pole to the side, sticking the end into the sand, then he stood, smoothing his plain white robes. A large brown–leather belt held them together. Many oddly–shaped pouches and bags hung from it.

“Have you come to join me fishing today?” Zhang Gua Lao asked.

“No, sir,” Tong Yi said. “I have a message for you.”

Tong Yi raised the envelop up, resting it on both of his open palms above his head as he offered it to the old man. He knew better than to grab hold of the envelop as a sudden wind whisked it away, out of his grasp, across the water, and to the immortal.

When Tong Yi looked back up, the old man had already opened the envelop and drawn out the letter.

The immortal’s face darkened as he read.

Tong Yi looked away, back out toward the now angry water. He really wasn’t looking forward to the trip back.

“This means war, you know,” Zhang Gua Lao said softly.

“Excuse me?” Tong Yi asked. War? What did that mean? Between who?

“Ah, never mind,” Zhang Gua Lao said with a heavy sigh. He gave Tong Yi what looked like a forced smile while he slipped the letter inside his robe.

Then the immortal began to fold up the red envelope.

Tong Yi remembered the old stories, about how the sturdy looking mule standing beside the old man was actually made of paper and would fold up neatly into one of the pouches hanging off Zhang Guo Lao’s belt.

When the immortal had finished, a beautiful red lotus flower sat in the palm of his hand.

Was it a declaration of peace? Or passivism, indicating that he wouldn’t be joining this war? Or was there some other message trapped inside the clever folds?

Zhang Gua Lao raised up the flower in both palms, presenting it to Tong Yi, then he blew on it.

Tong Yi reached out his open hand and accepted the lotus after it floated back across the stream. He assumed this was Zhang Gua Lao’s response to the letter. Still, Tong Yi waited to hear if there was anything else.

The old man looked down at the stream, seemingly lost in thought, before he glanced up again. “Give Bi Qi some extra attention from me, would you?” the old man asked.

“Excuse me, sir,” Tong Yi said after a moment. “Who?” He had no idea who the immortal was talking about.

“Bi Qi,” Zhang Guo Lao said. He looked over Tong Yi’s shoulder. “Your steed.”

Tong Yi glanced over his shoulder, then whipped around. Where Bing Xi had once rested, now stood a graceful black mare, with red ribbons braided into her mane and tail. She shook her head at Tong Yi and whinnied, pawing at the ground.

“She wants you to hurry back,” Zhang Guo Lao said. “She wants to dance more. She really enjoyed this morning’s ride. She likes dancing with you.”

“Dancing?” Tong Yi asked. Dancing? All the slides and fishtailing and nearly falling off the cliff? Those had been her idea of fun?

Did fishtailing equal dancing to Bi Qi?

“She likes you,” Zhang Guo Lao confided. “She may even let you ride her in her natural form someday.”

Tong Yi and Bi Qi were going to have to have a long talk at some point. But for now, Tong Yi had another message to deliver, bringing Zhang Guo Lao’s reply back to Ren Wu.

And more dancing with Bi Qi to survive.

 

This story is the first story about Tong Yi and The Immortals’ War. Find the second story, War on all Fronts at your favorite retailer.

Tong Yi carries the mysterious message of Zhang Gua Loa back to his boss.

The immortal had said there would be war. But between whom? And why?

Huli Transport takes advantage of the situation to become the messenger service of choice in the war zone. They promise to remain neutral, and to deliver messages to all sides.

In the meantime, Tong Yi has battles of his own to fight, both with his older brother and his own growing understanding of magic.

But in the middle of a war, is it possible for him to remain neutral? Or has his side already been chosen for him?

 

Be sure to read the continuing adventures of Tong Yi in The Sweet Shop at your favorite retailers.

Tong Yi waits for something to happen—for his brother to return from the war zone, for his boss to trust him again, for his magical training to be expanded.

Something. Anything.

Then powerful wizard Uncle Bei takes him to The Sweet Shop—a magic shop more special and strange than Tong Yi has ever imagined.

Tong Yi finally returns to the war zone as well, delivering a message to a client he’d never expected.

But he must now make a decision about the war, about his place in it, about his magical training.

And everything, everything, has a price.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

New Short Story!

I have a new short story! YAY! YAY! YAY! Published as part of the Uncollected Anthology.

The blurb:

Tong Yi waits for something to happen—for his brother to return from the war zone, for his boss to trust him again, for his magical training to be expanded.

Something. Anything.

Then powerful wizard Uncle Bei takes him to The Sweet Shop—a magic shop more special and strange than Tong Yi has ever imagined.

Tong Yi finally returns to the war zone as well, delivering a message to a client he’d never expected.

But he must now make a decision about the war, about his place in it, about his magical training.

And everything, everything, has a price.

This “short” story (14,000+ words) is the sequel to Dancing with Tong Yi and War on all Fronts.

Available at Amazon, Kobo Books, Barnes and Nobel, and iBookstore.

This novella is ALSO part of the Uncollected Anthology series! Issue #6: Enchanted Emporiums.

Go check out the other fabulous writers and their stories!

The Magic Bean

Our extra special guest this issue: Rebecca Senese!

After a safe life, an inheritance affords George the chance to leap for his dream: his own coffee shop. He even finds the perfect spot: a small, rundown shop.

Soon George is planning and polishing. Every day the shop looks cleaner, feels newer. Flaws melt away.

But every night strange images haunt him and threaten his sanity.

Is George’s desire to run a coffee shop a dream or a nightmare?

When Gods Hunger

Leslie Walker

Beth embraces her new, immortal life and forever job as apprentice to Malek, the serpent from the Garden of Eden cursed into human form. Neither immortality nor her magical gig changes her essential curious, risk–taking nature. In fact, the power Malek passes to her opens the door to greater risk—and more disastrous consequences.

When she takes a short cut with her new magic, she finds herself in Hell—or a hell, anyway. She comes under the watchful gaze of a new enemy—a power of Biblical proportions who offers Beth the chance to buy the one thing she longs for most in her heart of hearts: a true home.

What You Wish For

Dayle Dermatis

Why does a two–thousand–year–old djinn own a convenience store and spice shop in Manhattan?

The world has changed, for one thing, and Wadid isn’t proud of some of the things he’s done in the past. But really, he loves that he can help the magical community—and enhance the cooking skills and palates of some of his customers.

That’s all well and good until two gunmen burst through the front door and threaten him and one of his customers. Wadid breaks his personal code and uses his darkest ability to make them go away.

Not that it matters. Because the next person who walks through the door is the last person he would wish for.

Fear’s Mirror

Michele Lang

Viv Levy, owner of the Sacred Circle magic store in New York City, knows she runs a big risk in her job. All kinds of supernatural currents, including quite dangerous ones, run under, through and above the streets where regular people walk. And evil often seeks a place of power…

A mysterious stranger seeks Viv’s help in dealing with a sinister magic mirror, and another stranger arrives when all appears lost. But will Viv herself have the courage to look into Fear’s Mirror?

An urban fantasy short story set in the world of the Ms. Pendragon series!

“This is simply a fantastic read…Ms. Pendragon has the best Arthur and Guinevere I have seen in years of reading everything I can find about Camelot. Merlin is completely charming, and not since Mary Stewart has Mordred received a better treatment.”—Amanda Killgore, Huntress Reviews (review of Ms. Pendragon)

All Hallows’ Hangover

Annie Reed

Teddy woke up the day after Halloween with the mother of all hangovers. The kind that comes complete with wagging tail and a lack of opposable thumbs.

Tabby owns a magic shop that carries just what Teddy needs, but Tabby’s dealing with her own brand of post–holiday hangover. The last thing she wants in her life is another complication.

Even if this particular complication has the cutest grin and the most soulful brown eyes she’s ever seen.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free Fiction–The Alchemy of Coffee

The short story for this week, The Alchemy of Coffee, started as a writing assignment for a workshop. The anthology we were supposedly writing for was titled, “YUMMY.”

Of course, I didn’t necessarily go food related. Or totally food related. While I can cook, it isn’t something I love.

I do, however, love coffee.

For Christmas in 2014, I got myself a Fresh Roast 500. (They do go on sale now and again, if you find yourself interested.) So I’ve been roasting my own coffee beans for about a year, now. I still feel as though I have so much to learn about roasting. There really are so many things to take into account, like how humid it is outside, how hot or cold it is, etc.

I put as much of that geekery as I could into this story.

I have learned that part of my process, sometimes, is to write a short story that I find I need to expand, in order to find the rest of the world. I don’t mean to. It just happens.

That was what happened with The Raven and the Dancing Tiger. It was another writing assignment for a workshop. And the short story just didn’t end. It became the first chapter of the novel (with very few changes, I might add.)

The Alchemy of Coffee works as a short story, I think. However, there’s a whole world there. And my brain has already (helpfully!) provided at least one of the subplots for novel to follow. Currently, that novel is called Magicless. Okay, so I might already have a cover design in mind for it as well.

But that will wait until next year. I’m heavily into the new novel (The Glass Magician, which also started life as a short story, however, I won’t publish that short story until next year because it first has to be published in an anthology.) Cassie (of Poisoned Pearls) has been talking to me. And there are so many other stories I want to write.

In the meanwhile, please enjoy The Alchemy of Coffee.

The Alchemy of Coffee

Katrissa is magicless, a rare minority in the world. She has no magic guild, no badge of rank. She isn’t fit for the few jobs open to the magicless, either.

She does have one great love: coffee.

Can a magicless girl turn her passion into a meaningful career?

Available at Amazon, Kobo books, and iBookstore.

———–

“What in the world is that infernal stench?”

Katrissa looked up guiltily from the pan of roasting coffee beans she’d been stirring with the flat wooden spatula, making sure that all the beans were cooking evenly. Shoot! Why was Mom home? She was supposed to be teaching her hexes and potions class tonight, a second power’s class for older mages, at least until eight.

The hour glass sitting on the shelf above the stove showed the time as just a line past half–six. Fortunately, the tiled counters weren’t a mess—they held their usual clutter of colorful spices in carefully labeled glass jars, the large clay pot of cooking mead, and the tiny fire elemental Mom had tamed, safely caged behind glowing golden wards. The manual hand–pump for bringing water to the copper sink wasn’t even dripping.

However, Katrissa had turned up all the magical lanterns hanging on the white plastered walls, so the haze of smoke from her beans was obvious, floating between the great wooden ceiling beams.

“Sorry!” Katrissa called out as she hurriedly put the coffee bean back in the oven, hiding them from her mom, at least for the moment. “I was planning on having everything cleaned up by the time you got home,” she called out. She glanced down at on her own workman’s tunic, gray and badgeless. No stains there to give away what she’d been doing.

Mom entered the kitchen and stopped, standing next to the breakfast bar, looking over the counters and the sink. She seemed surprised.

There wasn’t an obvious mess beyond the chaff littered at Katrissa’s feet.

And the overwhelming smell of burnt coffee.

“What are you doing home so early?” Katrissa asked, hopelessly trying to distract her mom.

Mom sniffed, her nose wrinkling. “Mrs. Henderson reversed the order of the ingredients she was supposed to add. Again. Her potion exploded in a cloud of blue haze. Blue,” she added, looking down at her own workman’s tunic in dismay.

Large stains of bright baby–blue streaked the front of Mom’s gray tunic. The only clean spot was the yellow badge near her left shoulder, her Witch’s mark, indicating that she was a member of the Crafting guild, level six.

“I refused to help her clean up her hair,” Mom said with relish. “So her eyebrows are still blue. At least until she gets home.”

Katrissa giggled. She could well imagine stuffy Mrs. Henderson from up the street shrieking as her potion blew up in her face.

The blue eyebrows were more difficult to imagine, but still funny.

“So what mischief have you been getting into while I was away?” Mom asked, coming around the breakfast bar and standing beside Katrissa. She tsked when she saw the state of her usually spotless wooden floor, littered with coffee bean chaff.

Katrissa hesitated, then said all in a rush, “I want to enter the king’s Grand Feast contest next week.”

“But, honey, you can’t really cook, not like those other chefs,” Mom pointed out gently.

“I know that,” Katrissa said. She didn’t have any magical talent. She’d never belong to a guild, never have a badge showing her rank.

While being magicless wasn’t common, it wasn’t unknown either. Generally, children under the age of ten didn’t have magic. And maybe one in fifty never got any magic. As Katrissa had already turned eighteen, it was far too late for any talent to arrive.

And without the ability to create or manage magical flame elements, how could she cook? How could she collect the right herbs from the sacred gardens when she couldn’t defend herself from its guardians? If she couldn’t add magical touches to any of her food, seasoning it perfectly, who would want to eat it?

While growing up, all Katrissa had ever wanted to do was to become a chef, or at the very least, work in a kitchen, like her dad had until he’d died. However, her handicap had made it impossible.

Until now.

“I wouldn’t compete as a chef,” Katrissa explained, “but as a coffee steward.”

“A coffee steward?” Mom asked, puzzled. “Someone who matches the coffee to a meal?” she guessed.

“Exactly!” Katrissa said, smiling. Maybe this wouldn’t be too hard to convince her mom.

“Don’t you think that position would be better served by someone magical?” Mom asked. “Who could flavor the coffee to exactly match the meal?”

“The king believes that natural coffee, coffee that hasn’t been touched by magic, has a different flavor,” Katrissa said.

“Poppycock,” Mom replied. “Magic doesn’t have a taste.”

“Yes, it does,” Katrissa said stubbornly. None of her friends could taste it. But she could always tell the difference between food that she had made and that her mother had magicked together.

If her mother started with real ingredients, cooking them together, then adding just magical flavoring, the magic taste wasn’t there as much. However, Katrissa could always tell.

And she was really starting to dislike that taste, though it was as much a feeling as it was a taste—like burnt sugar, high in the back of her mouth, coating her throat.

Mom just stared at Katrissa. They’d had this argument before. Time to move on.

“So the king is looking for alchemists, for his coffee steward. Not magicians,” Katrissa said.

“I see,” Mom said, disapproving.

Katrissa sighed but held her tongue. What else did her mom expect her to do? She didn’t have any magical talent. She always ended up with blisters and strange rashes whenever she’d tried gardening, she hated small kids and usually ended up making them cry. There weren’t many positions available for the magicaless, and there really wasn’t any other job she’d rather do but work in a kitchen all day.

Sure, magic was pure and dependable. Alchemists—those who tried to recreate spells and potions without magic—had a nasty reputation for blowing themselves up, as well as tricking innocent folks.

But this was different.

“I’ve been teaching myself all about coffee,” Katrissa explained. “The different varieties of beans. The different types of roasts. Which roasts work best for which beans. Like that.”

“How does one roast coffee beans?” Mom asked suspiciously.

Katrissa bit her lips together. This was going to get sticky. “In a heat source,” she said slowly.

Mom gasped. “Do not tell me that you are using my oven unsupervised!” She glanced at the fire element—still caged—then reached past Katrissa and yanked open the oven door.

Smoke billowed out. Katrissa had been trying for a darker roast that night. She’d started with a bean from the fire islands, one that already had a deep, rich flavor.

The darker the roast, the trickier it was for Katrissa to time it correctly. Heartbeats counted with the more delicate beans. That was the only way Katrissa had been able to time the roasts—was by counting her heartbeats. The hour glass just didn’t divide time up finely enough. And she certainly couldn’t afford a fancier timepiece, like what the real alchemists used.

At least, not yet.

Katrissa put on her oven mitts and pulled out the pan of beans, looking at them critically. They were dark and oily, not really burned, though they produced a lot of smoke. She sniffed them critically, shaking the pan and rolling the beans gently.

Mostly, she smelled the wood of the stove, the iron of the pan, and the smoke from the oily beans. There wasn’t much of the bean flavor remaining. She’d have to try one once they cooled a bit.

“You built…you built a fire in my oven?” Mom asked, incredulous.

Katrissa cringed. “It was the only way I could figure out to roast the beans!” she explained. “It’s too cold outside for me to do it over the cauldron pit or something. Plus, then the whole neighborhood would smell like this,” she added, indicating the kitchen.

“You could have damaged my oven,” Mom scolded.

“Mom, you use magical flame in that oven all the time! You’ve even set the fire element free in it! How could a little real fire hurt it?” Katrissa asked, trying to be reasonable. She really had thought it all through.

“Magical flame is predictable,” Mom said firmly. “Real fire is so tricky.”

“I didn’t hurt it. I swear. I haven’t yet,” Katrissa said as she put the pan down.

“You’ve done this before,” Mom said slowly.

Katrissa nodded. “Lots of times.”

“How did you get rid of the smell?” Mom asked.

“I stole the ‘scent–aways’ that you kept putting into Andrash’s closet,” Katrissa admitted. She’d felt guilty about possibly getting her younger brother into trouble, but Mom had just thought they’d disappeared, all used up by the stench of his gym shoes.

“Clever,” Mom admitted. “I’d been making them stronger, too, as even your brother had started to notice that he was, well, not smelling as fresh as he once did.”

Katrissa put down the pan of beans, then carefully smothered the fire still burning in her mother’s oven, showing her mom how she’d cover it with the great iron pot that her mother used for some of her potions. Then Katrissa meticulously cleaned out all the ash from the oven, until it was as spotless as usual.

When she stood back up, she noticed that Mom had already gotten rid of all the chaff from the beans—the kitchen floor was clean again.

If only Katrissa had some magic! It would have taken her so much longer to clean the kitchen.

“I don’t want you to do this again,” Mom said slowly as Katrissa put the beans into a dark glass jar, sealing it tightly.

“But—”

“No buts. You could have burned the house down,” Mom continued.

Katrissa knew she shouldn’t argue, but she couldn’t help herself. “The house wardens would have put out the fire before it got too bad,” she said.

“That’s not the point,” Mom said. “You could have hurt yourself.”

“But I didn’t! And I really want to try this!” Katrissa said.

“Go to your room,” Mom ordered. “Now.”

Katrissa opened her mouth to argue some more, then shut it and stomped off.

It wasn’t fair. But her life had never been fair, because she was one of the magicless. Being a coffee steward was at least something that she could do, and her mom wasn’t even letting her try! Now, she’d be stuck for the rest of her life with a job that she hated because of her handicap.

And it wasn’t as if she could marry someone with enough money so she didn’t have to work. Any man who would marry her would be criminally insane or something, afraid that her magiclessness would spread to their children, though it didn’t run in families.

It was all just so unfair.

Ξ

Katrissa came back down into the kitchen the next morning. Andrash had already gone to school. Mom was seated at the breakfast bar, reading her paper and eating what looked like dark rye bread, toasted to perfection by her tiny fire elemental, with fresh butter and strawberry jam. She had on her darker work tunic that morning. Katrissa would bet Mom was planning on spending the morning in the sacred gardens, finding the perfect herbs for next week’s meals. Maybe she’d make some rosemary–lavender cake, Katrissa’s favorite.

Katrissa’s stomach rolled with hunger, but she had something to do first. She waited until her mother looked up.

“Can I make you some coffee?” Katrissa asked, feeling great daring.

“How can you make coffee?” Mom asked, disbelieving. Then she sighed and shook her head. “Show me.”

Katrissa went back upstairs and fetched the special coffee brewing kit that she kept hidden under her bed. Then she took down one of the magical lamps from the kitchen wall. It was shaped like a small ball, with a bright flame burning in a hole in the center of the top. A handle on the side allowed Katrissa to increase or decrease the flame.

While her mother and brother could turn up the lights or turn them down with just a wave of their hand, Katrissa had to do it manually.

Katrissa put a small metal standing grill over the lamp—originally intended as a cooling rack—then cranked the flame up high. She pumped water from the sink into a small iron pot and put it on top of the grill.

“That’s quite clever,” Mom grudgingly admitted.

“Thanks,” Katrissa said. She’d adapted a lot of the magical things around the house to suit her needs, most of which she still hid from her mom.

From her kit, Katrissa pulled out a coffee press, as well as a grinder. She’d bought both of them with her babysitting money, forcing herself to go take care of the squalling kids for just a few more nights. The grinder was actually useful for other things as well, like grinding herbs. She had to be careful about taste contamination, however.

Without thinking, Katrissa fell into her normal ritual when it came to making coffee. She ground the coffee to a medium fineness, then used a brush to carefully sweep all the remains into the press. She closed her eyes and listened carefully to the water. She needed to remove it from the flame just before the water started to boil.

She stirred the coffee grounds as she poured the water into them, then she counted heartbeats before she pressed the plunger down.

She’d chosen a South Continent bean for her mother that morning, grown deep in the rainforest. It was rich and flavorful. But she hadn’t roasted the beans for very long after the beans had given their first crack and started releasing their flavor.

This gave the coffee a very “green” finish, with lots of berry notes.

Katrissa held her breath as her mother took her first sip.

Mom eyes looked up over the cup and caught Katrissa’s, surprised as she took a second sip.

“That’s marvelous,” Mom said, savoring the flavor.

Katrissa grinned. She knew Mom liked a lighter roast in the mornings, to ease her into the day. The South Continent bean was a risk, as it was a darker, richer coffee. But Katrissa knew she’d also roasted the beans just right, to give that combination of light and dark.

“You roasted this?” Mom asked.

Katrissa nodded.

“In my oven. With real flame?” Mom asked, disbelieving, taking another sip.

“I did,” Katrissa admitted. She’d been experimenting now for almost three month.

Mom sighed and put her cup down. “Do you remember how you used to beg for coffee from your father?”

Katrissa nodded again. Dad had died almost a year ago—a horrible accidental explosion that had taken out most of the town square. They’d never caught the perpetrator, though many speculated that it had been an alchemist’s experiment gone awry.

“Dad used to pour milk and sugar into one of my doll’s cups, then flavor it with coffee for me,” Katrissa said. Though she’d grown out of her dolls, she’d kept the cups.

Her father had loved his coffee. Katrissa had always felt closer to him when she was roasting coffee beans, though the local necromancer had assured her family that her father had left this world and was happily somewhere else.

“Are all your roasts this good?” Mom asked.

“It took a while to get this one just right,” Katrissa admitted. “There’s so many factors to consider! Like if the oven is already warm, if it’s raining outside, the type of bean. A thousand combinations of things.”

She paused, then pulled her notebook out of her bag. “I’ve kept track of every single experiment,” she admitted.

Mom took another sip of coffee before she started looking through the pages of notes.

Katrissa had tried to track everything—the type of bean, where she’d bought it from, how long she roasted it, when the first crack happened, if it was a single crack or a flurry of cracks, when the second crack occurred, everything. As well as the weather conditions, the time of day, whether the oven was hot or cold, the amount of beans.

“You’ve been quite thorough,” Mom said. She closed the notebook and pushed it back across the breakfast bar to Katrissa. “I’ll tell you what. You can try for this coffee steward position. But even if you get it, you still have to make my morning coffee for me every day.”

“Deal,” Katrissa said.

Maybe life wasn’t completely unfair after all.

Ξ

Katrissa shifted nervously from one foot to the other, waiting to present her six roasts to the qualifying judges. The room was dim, with no lamps. The only light came from the small, arched windows set high on the wall to her left. It gave the room the feeling of a small chapel. The age of the room added to that feeling, the walls made of round, river stones cemented together. Worn granite covered the floor, the cold leeching into the soles of Katrissa’s feet.

Mom hadn’t been allowed to come with her, so Katrissa stood in line by herself. Mom had kissed her forehead and whispered a blessing into her hair, not that it would help. While magical spells could affect Katrissa, lighter ones tended to fade away quickly.

Katrissa had already passed the first test, out in the courtyard of the castle. All those who’d used magic to roast their beans had been turned away at the door. And there had been dozens of them.

Why couldn’t people follow simple instructions? Particularly for something as important as this?

There were only five people in line before Katrissa. She was the youngest, as well as the only one who wore a badgeless tunic. All of the others were from the Crafting guild, third level or less, as well as older, past their second power.

For most people, sometime in their thirties, they’d suddenly grow much more magical, either gaining a second power in addition to their first, or greatly increasing their skill in their primary power.

The theory was that when a person reached the age of their second power, they were no longer growing, but dying. The time a person gained their second power often marked the exact halfway point in their life—they’d die exactly that many years later.

Though there were stories about people who had no magic who suddenly developed skills in their thirties, Katrissa knew those were just fairytales. She’d never have magic.

Finally, it was her turn to present her roasts. She’d fretted for a full week before the contest, trying to determine the winning combination. She’d have to make four perfect cups of coffee. She’d only be allowed two blends. The other two cups had to be made from a single bean roast.

The contestants wouldn’t find out exactly what food they were pairing coffee for until the day of the contest. That made sense to Katrissa—the king’s coffee steward had to ready to anticipate any guest’s needs.

“Good morning,” Katrissa said as she stepped up to the long table. Three people sat behind it, a woman and two men. The man at the end of the table wore a master Crafting badge, indicating that he was very powerful, above level ten. The woman wore also wore a master badge, but from the Knowing guild. She would instantly be able to verify everything the contestant said.

The man in the center wore a unique Crafting badge that bore the king’s family crest—a golden crown on the head of a duck. Katrissa nearly dropped one of the containers of beans that she was placing on the table when she realized that this was one of the Peers.

The royal family tended to be weaker magically, but very well connected and rich. They were balanced out by the twelve Peers, one for each of the guilds, such as Crafting, Transmuting, Warding, and so on. Every year the guilds conducted their own contests so that only the best and most powerful of that guild became a Peer that year.

As most people didn’t come into their second powers until their thirties, the Peers tended to be older. This man had white hair shot through his closely cropped, kinky black hair, with skin the color of a light mountain–grown roast. He had a thin face, most of which was currently taken up with his broad smile and white teeth.

He was Gregor, the Peer for the Crafting guild, the lead of her mother’s order.

“Your name, dear?” the male master Crafter asked.

“Sorry,” Katrissa said when she realized that she’d been staring rudely at the Peer. She’d never met one, had never expected to meet one. “Katrissa Longate.”

He wrote her name down on the piece of paper before him in a beautiful script, the feather quill moving all on its own.

“And how old are you?” the man continued.

“Eighteen.”

“Are you truly magicless?” Gregor asked, quizzically looking at her.

“Yes, sir,” Katrissa replied stiffly. Though people knew better now, the magicless hadn’t always been tolerated. In olden times, they’d been killed outright, or forced to leave their homes and villages. Some still thought that Katrissa’s handicap was contagious, and refused to let her near their children.

“Interesting,” Gregor said. “Did anyone help you roast your beans?”

“No, sir,” Katrissa said. She’d refused all help, even from her mom. She knew she needed to be able to answer these questions truthfully.

“Very good,” Gregor said.

The woman touched each of the jars of beans, one after another, then nodded.

Katrissa nearly sagged with relief. She knew that she’d done all her roasting without magic or help, but it was still a relief to have it verified.

“How did you roast your beans?” Gregor asked.

Given the looks the two masters gave the Peer, Katrissa figured this question was out of the ordinary. “I built a real fire in my mom’s oven,” she admitted.

Gregor snorted in barely controlled laughter. “I bet that made her angry.”

Katrissa shrugged. “She got over it. Particularly once she tasted my coffee.” Then she gasped, realizing just how arrogant that had sounded.

But Gregor just smiled at her. “I’m looking forward to tasting it as well.”

“Thank you, sir,” Katrissa said as she gathered up her jars.

Katrissa walked out of the small room in a daze, blinking suddenly to clear her eyes when she stepped back out into the bright sunlight.

She’d made it past the first and second tests.

Now came the hard part. Making the perfect coffee from her not perfect, not magically roasted beans.

Ξ

The breakfast cup that the contestants had to make for the first round had to accompany a hearty meal—ham baked overnight with honey and cloves, served cold, with the freshest, fluffiest eggs Katrissa had ever tasted, made with cream and just a sprinkling of chives and parsley, all balanced with greens cooked in maple syrup and vinegar, that were merely sour, not bitter.

Katrissa sat in a small room with the five other contestants after tasting every dish, mimicking what they were doing—opening up each container of coffee beans and deeply inhaling the scent, trying to pair it to what she’d just tasted.

She didn’t want to perfectly match any part of the meal—sweet, savory, or sour—but rather to balance it with a brew that had just enough weight.

She finally picked the rainforest beans, her mother’s favorite, that started with that rich, deep coffee flavor and ended with a light, berry note. One of the things she’d noticed early on was that the coffee in the jar smelled differently than when it was ground up, at least to her, so she wasn’t sure why the others were sniffing their beans so.

She longed to talk with the other men about their coffee, their favorite roasts, their techniques. But none of them had looked her way, or tried to engage her as they’d waited.

That was fine. She was still going to beat them all.

Katrissa followed the others into the grand hall. Floor–to–ceiling windows let in the brilliant sunlight, giving a golden glow to the wooden floor.

At the far end of the hall, on a platform that Katrissa guessed was usually where the musicians might play for a crowded group of dancers, was set a long table. She wasn’t sure, but she assumed that the king was there—probably the elderly man in the middle with the flabby face, reddened cheeks, and keen black eyes.

At the other end of the room were six smaller, round tables, covered in pristine white tablecloths, each set up with the necessary equipment for making their coffee. Katrissa was glad that it was similar to what she’d been using at home—a hand grinder, a small magical burner, an iron pot for boiling water, and a French press.

The others all had fancy time pieces for timing their water. Katrissa stole glances at the time piece closest to her, until she realized it wouldn’t do her any good: she’d never trained with one, so she had no idea how to use it.

Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to the water, hearing the pitch rise as the water drew closer to boiling. She refused to be rushed: if the water wasn’t warm enough, the coffee wouldn’t fully mature—she’d lose a lot of the flavor. If it was too hot, her perfect blend would turn bitter.

Finally, the water was ready. Katrissa poured it into the coffee press. The man next to her tsked when she stirred the grounds into the water. Katrissa paused for a moment, then continued. Coating the grounds in water would release all the complexities of the bean, both the darker, rich tones as well as the lighter, green finish. She didn’t care that it went against tradition.

Again, Katrissa closed her eyes and counted her heartbeats until the coffee was steeped. Then she pushed down the plunger and poured her cups carefully, not wanting to spill a single drop on the white tablecloth.

All she could do now was wait for the judgment.

Ξ

After the dinner tasting, just Katrissa and two of the men were left. While her first cup, and what she had considered her strongest, had won second place, her second cup had left her merely tied for third. The dinner tasting had knocked out the other three contestants, until now it was just the three of them, readying for the fourth and final cup, to go along with dessert.

The chef had really outdone himself. The chocolate mousse had been heavenly, melting on Katrissa’s tongue with the perfect combination of sweet and cream. As she swallowed, she got the finishing taste of cherries and hazelnuts.

If magic tasted good, it would taste like this, Katrissa decided. Light and airy and she just couldn’t get enough of it.

Katrissa decided to highlight the lightness of the dessert by choosing her lightest coffee, the Western Islands peaberry. Most coffee beans grew two to a berry. Peaberries were coffee berries that had a single coffee bean inside of them. The beans were generally smaller and more round. This made them easier to roast for Katrissa, since they would roll around the pan when she gently shook it, all sides evenly cooking.

She knew it was a risk going with a lighter roast. However, she wanted her guests to leave the table satisfied, not weighed down or overly full.

Jakob, on one side of her, had chosen his Fire Island beans, a dark and oily roast, blending them with his lightly roasted, mountain–grown beans, a much lighter and dryer combination.

On the other side, Sinclair used his rainforest beans. Like Katrissa’s roast, he’d done a lighter roast with it, so it had a greener finish. He mixed that with a coastal bean that had a similar roast, that to Katrissa, had tasted very similar.

What would Sinclair achieve with such a blend? Though he was her competitor, Katrissa was curious. The two men had finally warmed to her when it was just the three of them, talking about the merchants they purchased their beans from, how they roasted them, the different techniques they’d tried. They both had so much more experience than Katrissa that mainly she sat there and listened.

They made their coffee, poured their final cups, then were escorted back into the room they’d been waiting in all day—a storage room, just off the kitchen, with wooden cupboards that reached from floor to ceiling and a large table in the center with chairs around it.

They each carried their coffee presses with them into the waiting room, so they could taste each other’s brew.

At the first sip of Jakob’s brew, Katrissa knew she’d lost. Complexities danced on her tongue, one flavor following the next—dark bitter herbs soothed by the smoothness of chocolate and chased by bright blueberries. It was masterfully done, and subtly different with each sip. It needed no cream or honey. It was so smooth and easy to drink all on its own.

Sinclair’s cup held similar revelations for Katrissa. Because he’d used two lighter roasts, blending them perfectly, it was a symphony of berries on her tongue. It started with dark cherry and blackberries, lightening up to a blueberry, followed by a smooth finish of strawberries.

Katrissa just shook her head and sat back in her chair as her competitors politely congratulated her on her own cup. It was a good cup of coffee, she knew that, but it held merely a few notes. She hadn’t mastered the richness of either of the others.

There was just so much for her to learn! Just by spending the day talking with Jakob and Sinclair she knew that she’d already make better roasts.

Then she took another sip of Sinclair’s brew. The coffee changed as it cooled. Growing sweeter, yet at the same time, more bitter.

Katrissa wasn’t sure what she was tasting, or why. Good coffee sometimes grew bitter when it cooled, the oils growing stale.

This was different. It had a familiar taste—if only she could place it.

Gregor walked into the room. The three of them leaped to their feet.

“You have all done a marvelous job, today,” he said warmly, looking at each of them and smiling. “However, there’s only room for a single coffee steward to the king.” He turned to Sinclair. “Congratulations, Sinclair. The king would like to see you now.”

The older man grinned at both of them then rushed out of the room.

Katrissa narrowed her eyes. He’d certainly been in a hurry. Then again, she might of just rushed off as well if she’d been chosen as the winner.

“Better luck next time, old friend,” Gregor told Jakob.

Jakob merely shrugged. “If there is a next time,” he said.

Katrissa didn’t try to say anything to cheer him up. He was older, possibly nearing sixty. Who knew how long he had left? There were some in the Knowing guild who might have been able to tell him, but it went against their practice to utter such proclamations.

Turning back toward the table, Katrissa caught sight of Sinclair’s coffee. She knew there was something off with it. She took another sip.

Instead of smoothly sliding down her throat, the coffee seemed to get stuck. It coated the inside of her mouth with a burnt flavor, followed by a sweet taste.

Burnt sugar.

“Why are you making such a face?” Gregor asked Katrissa, coming up next to her.

Katrissa debated saying anything. What if she was wrong? What if magic really didn’t have a flavor? It was going to sound like sour grapes if she said anything.

Then again, if she didn’t say anything now, she’d never get another chance.

“I know this is going to sound like I’m a sore loser or something,” Katrissa said slowly. “But I think Sinclair used magic, somehow, with his last cup.”

“May I?” Gregor asked, holding out his hands for the cup of coffee that Katrissa held. He closed his eyes but didn’t taste the coffee, instead, just inhaled deeply, carrying the scent of the cooling coffee far inside him.

He opened his eyes and stared hard at her. “You may be right,” he said slowly. “You both need to wait here.”

Quickly, Gregor rushed from the room.

Katrissa looked at Jakob, who looked at her curiously. “You have no magic,” he said. “How could you tell?”

“I could taste it,” Katrissa admitted.

Surprisingly, Jakob just grinned at her. “You and the princess! Ah, you young people.”

“What do you mean?” Katrissa asked.

“King Eszes is holding this contest because Princess Helena is the one complaining about the state of the coffee. The king can’t tell the difference between a green roast and burnt beans,” Jakob explained with a knowing wink.

“Why couldn’t I taste the magic when the coffee was warm?” Katrissa asked.

“It probably wasn’t the beans that were magical. If there’s magic, it was added after the coffee was brewed. Just a thread of flavor. I wondered how he’d managed to get so many berry notes in a single cup,” Jakob admitted. “Then the thread frayed as time went on. I bet in a short while, all the magical taste will be gone. It will have disappeared, leaving no trace.”

“Clever,” Katrissa said.

Jakob merely shrugged. “He’ll never be trusted again. And even if he hadn’t been caught now, the princess may have still complained.”

Gregor came back into the room. “It appears you were right,” he told Katrissa. “There was a spell, a thread of flavor, added to the coffee after it had been brewed. Sinclair has been disqualified and sent home.”

He turned to Jakob. “So it appears that we’ll be working together again after all, old friend.”

“Thank you,” Jakob said, shaking Gregor’s hand. Then he turned back toward Katrissa. “You know, I could use an apprentice…”

Gregor merely laughed. “I’m sure you could. However, I believe the king has another job in mind for our young lady. Won’t you both accompany me?”

Katrissa swallowed down her surprise. Whatever did the king have in mind?

Ξ

Katrissa stood at the end of the dais, the royal family seated with their guests and feasting beside her. She still wore a gray, workman’s tunic, though this one was made of the finest silk. Instead of a craft badge, she wore a badge of the king near her left shoulder.

Thomas, one of the servants, came scurrying up. With a grand flourish, he lifted the silver lid off the tray of fish he carried, presenting it to Katrissa. It was salmon, poached in white wine, with dill and capers.

Taking the silver spoon that she wore around her neck as the sign of her office, Katrissa took a ceremonial bite of the dish, before giving her approval for it to be served to the royal family.

She was glad all she had to do was taste for magic, something she felt comfortable with. Ramero of the Knowing Guild stood at the door and checked all the food for poisons before it was allowed into the room.

It appeared that the princess really could taste magic, just like Katrissa. She’d been complaining for weeks about the cooks burning the meals and adding sugar to cover up the taste. To please his daughter, the king had created Katrissa’s position as official magical taster, to ensure that not too much magic had been used for any dish.

At this point in the meal, Katrissa’s position was largely ceremonial. She’d done the real work during the day, as well as the previous week, working with the king’s chefs to come up with the perfect dishes for the day, making sure that each was balanced in terms of natural, real ingredients and the hints of magic to bring out all the flavors.

She’d never worked so hard in all her life, learning to cook, roast and prepare amazing coffee, as well as the art of drying tea leaves. Every day presented new challenges, new twists, new ways for her to prove herself, to show both herself and the world that her handicap didn’t have to hold her back.

The cutest servant, Ellison, came up with another dish and presented it with a wink for her.

Katrissa contained her blush, focusing on her job.

Maybe she wouldn’t die an old maid, all alone and powerless. Maybe life wasn’t always unfair.

Maybe even a plain cup of coffee could be magical.

If you liked this story, you may like the novel The Changeling Troll.

A different kind of ugly duckling story.

Christine works at her dream job in the archives at a university library, loses sleep most every night to reading, lives mostly in her dreams. But can’t find what she’s really looking for.

After losing a bet with her brother, Christine forces herself to go to a bar. Listen to some live music.

Live a little.

When she meets the impossible–her exact twin–her world starts falling apart until all Hell breaks loose.

Literally.

Available at your favorite retailers.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free fiction — The Healer’s Daughter

While I was writing the novel A Sword’s Poem I came to realize that there was a huge, long backstory for one of the main characters, namely, the priestess Ayumi.

While I was at the fantasy workshop earlier this year, I decided to write that story.

So here it is – The Healer’s Daughter.

Ayumi has a magical talent for healing.

Unfortunately, her father, and society in general during Heian era Japan, won’t allow women to work.

Can Ayumi find a life for herself that doesn’t involve an odious marriage and wasting away, shunned and hidden in dim corridors like most women? Or does she have to take her own life, as her mother did?

This story is the prequel to the novel A Sword’s Poem.

Available for $0.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books and iBookstore.

The Healer’s Daughter

 

here and gone!

 

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free fiction–Community Service

Community Service, like many of the other stories I’m publishing during this Baker’s Dozen Redux challenge, have received some very positive rejections. (This one almost sold but I was stupid and didn’t take the offer when I should have.)

This short story isn’t really like any of my novels, however. For one, it’s science fiction. Kinda hard SF, in some ways, and I don’t have any hard SF novels.

However, I realized that it is like a lot of my other hard SF short stories. Like Touch.  Like Slow Honey. Like Hunting Ghosts in the Machine. Like Obsessions.

Most of my hard SF is not happy. The stories are visceral and disturbing. I have another hard SF story that I might do as part of this series (might not) that also fits into this mode perfectly.

One of the reasons why I’ve been doing the Baker’s Dozen Redux is because I figured out that I have many different readers. Some readers might like all of my stories. Many won’t. I’d estimated that I probably had 3-4 different types of readers.

After reviewing my hard SF stories, I realized that I probably have one other type of reader. The reader of my SF, which isn’t anything like my fantasy.

So strap yourselves in for another hard SF ride, likeTouch. 

Only this time, we’re surfing all the way down, catching that last wave.

CJ and her crew live in the big domed cities on the moon and do what most teens do best: screw off, as well as mess with the system.

This time, however, some of her crew have gone too far.

Available for $0.99 at Amazon, Kobo Books, and iBookstore.

Community Service

No one lived outside the domes, on the actual surface of the moon. Ojvind talked big, making endless plans about heading out and homesteading on the barren rock. But he was full of it, and Rose and Skeeter and I all knew it. We didn’t call him on it, though—who needed a fight like that?

Instead, everyone on the moon lived in one of the domed cities, mainly so they could sleep in the public purr chambers provided by the government to every citizen. The free chambers were shit, of course. But no one wanted to lose all their muscle mass.

I’ve seen vids about those mega–expensive, private purr chambers, that could be programmed to put muscle on you. They had silk covers, foam pillows that perfectly fit your body, and probably smelled like roses.

The public ones always stank of unwashed bodies. Sticky vinyl—no longer pristine white—covered the rock hard cushions. At least half the chambers were badly tuned, and the subsonic vibrations—based on a cat’s purr—that were supposed to stimulate your muscles left me with massive headaches.

Still, they were better than nothing. And a good place to arrange a meet up, in meat space, making it harder for security to track us.

They weren’t stupid. They knew this was where we’d meet.

We weren’t stupid either. We only met in public places, too big and noisy to be bugged. Skeeter worked security for a private firm, and kept track of the chatter, made sure no action was being planned.

The four of us met that day at Mike’s Massive Diner. I swear the hard red–plastic seats were specially designed to put your ass to sleep. At least it wasn’t as bad as some of the food lines, with the creepy “happy” music supposed to aid in digestion as well as get you moving in and out of there. The syrupy Muzak played at Mike’s was just loud enough to cover the clanking of the assembly belt that pumped out sludge socks—recycled swill in a long tube that tasted just about as bad as you’d imagine.

We hunched together in one of the smaller booths along the wall, apart from the thirty or so tables jumbled across the echoing room. We kept our sludge socks close to us, nursing our way through our meal so no one had a legitimate reason to kick us out. The attendants in their prissy white uniforms with yellow aprons still shot us dirty looks after we’d sat there for a full twenty minutes.

I wore a bio suit, of course—the newest model, silver and self–repairing, with internal heating and cooling, abrasion resistant, and form fitting. Only my head and hands were exposed, but I always carried my helmet and gloves.

Always.

There hadn’t been a dome breach in decades, but the reason most public places resembled a metal rat warren with mazelike tunnels was so sections could be quickly quarantined, only killing off a few unlucky bastards instead of putting all of Half–Dome city at risk.

My older brothers—who’d thought it was fun to put pinhole pricks in my suit the day before we’d had a drill, then left me outside an airlock—had taught me what airless suffocation truly felt like, and I was never going to experience it again.

Skeeter dressed like I did, ready to bug out at the faintest siren. He didn’t keep his brown hair short enough, though. It constantly fell into his hazel eyes and stuck out over the collar of his suit. I harassed him about it, but he’d just given me that killer smile of his and told me I was sweet.

As if.

Ojvind and Rose wore gray overalls, typical of most factory workers. At least three–fourths of the room wore them as well. That was the only similarity between them: Ojvind was blond, tall, and too lanky—we were all getting on his case about getting more muscle mass—while Rose was dark, skin and hair, short, and strong.

I always considered myself the oddball: pure Asian with parents imported directly from China, Earthside, and from a good home with a mom and a dad and half–a–dozen older siblings. They loved me, and told me I could always come back.

I learned the proclamation I’d made the year before was right—I would rather shovel shit than live with them.

Though the table top at the diner looked like cheap plastic, it was actually self healing, and couldn’t be scratched or even dented. Skeeter still tried, using a diamond–tipped pen he’d hacked together. I’d seen him use it to etch his tag on the top of a dome, an oversized, stylized S, like Superman, or Super–Skeeter.

Ojvind brought up the next ride first. “When can we go?”

Skeeter shrugged. “Got to finish the latest modules. Maybe a week.”

I knew Skeeter was full of it: In his message to me he’d already told me we were leaving the dome tonight. But I wasn’t about to say anything.

“But I need to get out! Soon,” Ojvind insisted.

Rose tugged on Ojvind’s arm, trying to get him to lean back, calm down, not to draw attention to us. “Sweetie, don’t you think—”

“Leave off,” Ojvind said, shoving Rose away, almost knocking her to the ground. We all scrambled to get her reseated, Skeeter assuring the wait staff that we were okay, and not going to cause any trouble.

When Skeeter slid back into the booth, he gave me a worried look. This wasn’t the first time Ojvind had been too physical with Rose. But what could we do? She wouldn’t leave him.

“Can we get out tonight? Please,” Ojvind whined once the usual crowd noises had returned and no one was paying any attention to us again.

“Yeah, sure, okay,” Skeeter said. “I’ll get us through darkside security. Ojvind, you’re first on the rope for the climb to the top of the dome. Then Rose, then CJ, then me. We’ll synchronize our boards up top.”

It was the usual setup for us.

And maybe that was our downfall, how casual we all were. It was cloak and dagger for fun, not in earnest, hiding from the authorities, believing we’d only get a hand slap if we were caught.

We should have planned more. Checked our equipment sooner. Synced our boards earlier.

How could any of us have known it would be our last ride?

Ξ

The guard at the darkside gate didn’t even look up from his game as we strode through the detector. The automatic scanners we walked by picked up the fake IDs Skeeter had given us. The vid would catch the overlay Skeeter had set up as well. Nothing much could hide height and gait, but we still shuffled like Earthers, hunched over and watching the ground, as if we were unsure of the gravity.

Red warning signs flashed and the hazard buzzer rang through the decompression chamber as air slowly drained out. Blazing arrows pointed to the emergency buttons, giving us time to make sure our suits were working. I checked and double–checked every system and joint, verifying my readiness.

Once I knew I was safe, I found myself bouncing on the balls of my feet, unable to hold back my excitement and nervousness.

Finally. It was time to ride again.

The airlock didn’t spit us out directly onto the surface. A set of two standing walls circled the base of the dome, some type of defense the military had insisted on. Because there were so many tanks up here that could have been smashed into the dome, right?

But the walls helped hide us. We walked between them, until we were at the mid–point between the dark and day sides.

Skeeter always swore that Half–Dome had the sweetest rides. Something about that contrast—half the city in darkness, just out of reach of the sun, while the other half bathed in its glory. Because the dome protecting those law abiding citizens on the inside had to do two jobs, it was easier for those of us, now on the outside, to fuck with it.

We roped in, maintaining the order that Skeeter had laid down, then started to climb up the dome.

The handles attached to a ribbon down the side of the dome were like squared–off, capital Ds, spaced so that a ten–year old wouldn’t have any problem climbing them, making me hunch over, afraid to miss a step. The metal cut into hands and boots alike. It wasn’t a pleasant climb—no one did this part for fun.

Ojvind went first, clipping in, then climbing, attaching the guide rope to each point as he passed them, finally getting to the first ledge and resting, a dark spot high against the starry sky. It was good he went first, since he’d been the most on–edge of all of us.

But I understood what he was feeling.

Only as I climbed did I feel the confines of the city drop away. First, we got above the walls surrounding the base of the dome, then above the standing rocks, until, finally, the sky opened up and you could see forever. Enough light spilled over from the bright side to illuminate the moonscape. Climbing on the light side, you could see more. But here, on the dark side, you could imagine more, stare into the endless night and create your own castles and cities.

The topside platform wasn’t much more than a meter across. We turned our backs to each other to put together our boards: folded pieces of high–res plastic, each about the length of a boot, that snapped open and were held rigid by supercharged magnets.

“Goddamn it!” Ojvind’s voice came over our group channel with a force that made me wince. “My board won’t stay together.”

“What’s the problem?” Rose asked, easing over to take a look.

“Charge won’t hold,” Ojvind complained.

“Sucks, man,” I told him. He was just going to have to climb back down. There was no way we were set up to do field repairs.

“Rose, you should give me your board,” Ojvind replied.

“What?” I asked, livid. “No way. You carry up your own equipment, ride down with it. She shouldn’t have to give up her ride.”

I knew Rose would buckle, though. Ojvind would switch to a private channel and harangue and threaten her until she caved.

“I know,” Skeeter said. “Instead of using the full board, why not just the foot piece?”

“Do you think it would work?” Ojvind asked.

“Sure,” Skeeter said. “I can make the adjustments to the course to compensate.”

“Dude, don’t,” I told Ojvind as he started disassembling his board. “This is crazy. You need the full board for control.” While riding a shorter board was possible, in theory, now wasn’t the time to try it. Not on a full run, from the top to the bottom of the dome, where falling could be deadly.

“It’ll be cool,” Rose piped up, the mechanics of her helmet making her voice tinny. “Do it.”

Skeeter already had his equipment out. It looked like an overly large game controller, with two antennas and a boatload of dials, buttons, and readouts. It projected a “slope” for us to surf down. Our boards were synced up with it, so we’d feel every bump, dip, and patch of ice.

“The smaller board shouldn’t be that difficult to track,” he assured us. “Might be slower though. More drag with a smaller footprint.”

“Really?” I asked Skeeter on our private channel.

“It’ll be fine. A nice, slow ride down,” Skeeter replied.

I could hear the huge grin he had.

That would show Ojvind.

“CJ, you should go first,” Skeeter told me on the public channel. “Test the slope, check for shoals.”

“The only shoals will be the ones you put there,” I pointed out. Still, I strapped my boots into my board. “See you bottomside.”

From the top of the dome to the bottom was about a mile. I intended to take every turn, every mogul, every shoal with grace and speed. Show the rest of them how it should be done.

Ξ

Darkness hurtled toward me. There was no wind, no rush, but the sense of movement, of freedom, held up through Skeeter’s artistry and my physical skill.

The first shoals showed up in my heads up display as sparkling pink rocks. “Cute,” I muttered as I slid around them, banking hard right, then hard left, sliding between the piles of data designed to slow me down.

Then came the moguls, mounds of delight, that I had a split second to decide whether to avoid or fly over.

I took as many as I could, by long board flexing as I flowed up and over, never loosing full contact with the glass of the dome.

A crevice showed up next. I cut hard left, then right. “Goddamn it Skeeter! A path would be nice.”

All of them cracked up over the comms. “Just messing with ya,” Skeeter assured me. “You need to watch your speed.”

“Asshole,” I said, still slowly making my way toward the abyss. “Where?”

A single bridge appeared, over the endless darkness. I had to tack over to it, then slid across. From there on, I took it easy. Skeeter gave me a more smooth course, and I took advantage of it, turning and sliding and enjoying the freedom, the night sky, and the open air.

At the bottom, I folded up my gear and tuned into the security comms.

No reports that I could find.

Maybe we’d be lucky, and get in a second ride that night.

When I tuned back to our group chat, Ojvind was harassing Skeeter about going next.

“What the fuck?” I asked, breaking back in. “Rose should go next.” That way, Skeeter wouldn’t have to reset the course twice. It would be more fair to all of us. We’d have more time, then, maybe for that second ride.

“I got it,” Skeeter said tersely.

I pinged him on our private channel. “What the hell, dude? You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. Ojvind didn’t threaten me. Much,” Skeeter muttered. “Later, ’K?”

“Later,” I assured him. Because Ojvind shouldn’t pull that shit, and I was tired of it.

Did we really need to be four to ride?

Ojvind started his run. At the shoals he commented, “Really? Pink?”

He made it through those, but the moguls messed him up.

I think it was the moguls. I think it happened because Skeeter hadn’t adjusted the course enough.

It wouldn’t have been because Skeeter had left in some of the larger bumps on purpose, his own kind of “community service.”

I think.

Ojvind flowed up and over the first couple of moguls with no problem. But he didn’t slow down, as Skeeter had thought. Instead, Ojvind gained speed on his shorter board, and when he hit the next mogul, he went up.

And kept going.

He didn’t have a long enough board to keep contact with the dome.

And he didn’t have the grace when he landed to keep on his feet.

Ojvind tumbled, slowly at first, then faster and faster down the edge of the dome, bouncing hard, his screams cutting off abruptly as he struck the ground.

I raced as fast as I could around the base of the dome, between the two walls. I tried to raise Ojvind on his private channel, cranking the sound way up, but I didn’t even hear breathing.

However, he hadn’t landed between the walls. He was all the way outside. If his helmet had cracked, or his suit ripped, and he was unconscious, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t get to him before he suffocated.

When I switched my comms back to the group chat, I heard Skeeter shouting, “No, Rose! NO!”

Rose had decided that the fastest way down, to help Ojvind, was over the side of the dome.

Skeeter hadn’t had time to adjust the course back, though.

And Rose fell, too.

Ξ

The courts put Skeeter away, claiming his equipment somehow endangered all the good citizens of Half–Dome. Bullshit, I say. We weren’t weakening the dome or interfering with its effectiveness or any of the other stupid lies.

The only ones ever in danger was us.

Me—I got ten kajillion hours of community service. For those who think that wasn’t enough, trust me, working in the bowels of the city at the refuge reclamation plant is Hell.

Can’t see the stars down here. Can’t breathe, either, not really.

I manage to sneak edgeward some nights, though, and look out of the dome, beyond the pod houses and auto–buggies and onto stark rock, no moisture to erode it, no gravity to hold it down. Some people—most I guess—don’t like the moonscape. Too alien, too other. They prefer their warrens and sludge socks and feel safer with the solid roof of a rat warren overhead.

I’d live out there, in that desolate land, still, if I could.

So I’m taking a break from the recycling, the helmetless smells, the shock of seeing skin, and writing down my side of the story.

Telling the truth about what happened—that’s community service too, isn’t it?

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free Fiction — New World Gambles

I have two stories set in the 1800s in Victoria, Canada, dealing with the tong.

Though this one takes place chronologically before the second, I wrote the second first.

I remember how much fun I had writing the first story set here. My sweetie and I had gone up to Victoria, Canada, and had spent sometime wandering through the old Chinatown there. (Second largest in North America…) Then I found some books at a used bookstore, and I was hooked.

There are other stories that I have for this place and these characters. I just need to find the time to write them all!

This story has no fantasy in it. It’s straight up crime. However, I think that if you enjoy this sort of historic, Asian milieu, you might enjoy my novel Paper Mage.

Coming to Canada, the New World, to win his fortune was the first gamble Mei Quon took. Working in Victoria on a crooked game of fan tan, pleasing clients, instead of breaking his back with the railroad was the second.

Now, throwing in his lot with one of the tongs might be his biggest gamble yet.

Previously published in Fiction River: Past Crime.

Available for $0.99 at Amazon, Kobo Books, and iBookstore.

New World Gambles

“Place your bet, sir?” Mei Quon asked his patron. He kept his smile simple, doing his best to convey happiness and not the truth of how his empty stomach growled, or how his feet hurt from standing for so long, or how his back and neck screamed from staying bent over so his head was properly placed below that of his short patron.

He reminded himself how lucky he was to be here dressed in fine blue–cotton robes and not camped out in the wilderness someplace, swinging a heavy mallet and laying rails for the grand Canadian Pacific railroad. That here, in Victoria, Mei Quon might actually make his fortune and be able to pay back the horrendous sum of money it had taken to bring him to the New World.

Even if it meant working in a crooked fan tan parlor that stank of the opium being smoked next door and the despair of desperate men, instead of using the books and scrolls of a scholar.

“What do you think?” Old Ren asked, contemplating the top of the table in front of him. “You’ve been lucky so far, tonight.” He leaned closer and whispered, “My good luck charm,” his breath tainted with sour fish and cheap plum wine.

Mei Quon shivered and ignored the implied intimacy. He wasn’t so broke that he had to whore himself out—always an option when there were only three women for every hundred men. All he ever agreed to was companionship: Enough for the lonely, fat, and old to get by on, enough to keep Mei Quon fed most days. It was a gamble. Too much insinuation would ruin his reputation. But he had to eat.

Instead of replying to Old Ren, though, Mei Quon studied the table.

The fan tan table was about four feet high, three feet wide, and eight feet long. A beautifully carved wooden spindle railing outlined the edge, separating the players from the table top. A simple red square, divided into four quadrants, was sewn into the center of the black cloth covering the table. Each quadrant represented a number—from one to four—that patrons could bet on. They could also bet on the corners—doubling their chances but lowering the percentage of their winnings.

It was a fool’s game, without the strategy and tactics of something like classical xiangqi, which the westerns likened to chess. No skill was involved in fan tan, just luck.

But Mei Quon needed fools for patrons. Who would tip him without expecting too much.

Who would never notice the look Mei Quon gave the tan kun, the man responsible for gathering the coins to be counted, who knew by weight the number in each handful.

The tan kun blinked twice, put his fistful of coins into the center of the square, then covered them immediately with a decorated gold bowl.

“Last call,” Mei Quon whispered. “Put your marker on four.”

Old Ren beamed at Mei Quon. Not only did he bet his winnings, he put down a playing card that indicated he was betting his entire purse.

Mei Quon knew better than to ask his patron about the wisdom of his bet. Old Ren didn’t like to be questioned, and Mei Quon had worn his scarf high for a week to hide his fat lip the one time he had asked. The purse Old Ren carried to the game that night had been filled with twice the amount of money Old Ren generally had, but again, Mei Quon didn’t ask any questions.

Maybe Mei Quon should have listened to his cousin and learned how to fight. He’d shot up since coming to the New World, and now stood almost a head above most of the men around him. He didn’t just have to rely on his good lucks, charm, and manners anymore.

But as a scholar, he’d always believed that violence was never the answer.

Silence descended around the table as the tan kun lifted the bowl. Using a curved bamboo stick, he started dividing up the pile of coins, counting by four.

When the tan kun finished, whatever number of coins remained, indivisible by four, would be the winning number.

Old Ren had just bet on four. If two, the square on the table opposite of four, was the winner, as the tan kun had indicated by the number of times he’d blinked his eyes, Old Ren would lose everything.

And Mei Quon would make a percentage of what the house acquired. More money that he could apply against his debt.

The pile of bright gold coins in the center of the table—minted in the current dynasty, never in circulation, only used for the game—grew smaller. Mei Quon’s stomach tightened. Maybe he could finally get rid of this stupid Old Ren, find a better patron, someone more free with their money. Who wasn’t pushing for more than Mei Quon would give.

Mei Quon tried counting the number of coins remaining. He’d have to be clever about leaving Old Ren. Maybe he could disappear into his cousin’s attic for a couple days.

The number had to come down to two.

If it was one or three, Old Ren wouldn’t lose his purse—his bet would be returned to him. If it was four, Old Ren would make four times what was in his purse, and Mei Quon would never be welcomed back to that fan tan parlor again, though he’d just done what the tan kun had said.

Only a small pile of coins remained. Mei Quon caught his breath. Was it actually going to be four? He tried to catch the eye of the tan kun, but he wouldn’t look up from his duty.

Damn it. If Old Ren won, Mei Quon would be stuck. And the old man was getting more lecherous.

The count was easy to make—it looked as though the tan kun had been wrong, and Old Ren would win.

“Raid!”

The door banged open. Police poured in.

Mei Quon started with everyone else. The fan tan parlor was in the basement. The room had been quiet. Why hadn’t they heard the raid approaching? Whoever had been stationed on the ground floor should have warned them.

Time for questions later. Mei Quon turned and ran. Old Ren’s querulous tones sounded behind him, making Mei Quon move faster. He vaulted over one patron who’d fallen and made it into the kitchen.

“Police raid!” Mei Quon shouted at the cooks in Cantonese.

They followed right behind him, out the back door and up the short set of step into the narrow alley.

Mei Quon ran left in the cool night air. The others turned right.

Above Mei Quon, a warning whistle sounded. He sprinted, keeping his hands over his head, protecting it as he ran.

A heavy iron door slammed down behind him, blocking the alley. The police could force their way through, but it would take time, and Mei Quon would be long gone.

He stopped and leaned against a rough brick wall, trying to catch his breath. Why had the police only come through the front door? They knew there was a back alley. Generally, a second squad would have been waiting there. Also, why hadn’t there been a warning? Had the lookout on the ground floor been bribed?

At least Old Ren hadn’t won. But neither had Mei Quon. He was out his tip for the night. The fan tan parlor always served dinner at the end of gaming: tonight, Mei Quon wouldn’t get fed, either.

Maybe he could beg a bowl of rice from his cousin.

Mei Quon made his way down the skinny lane, skirting the pile of sand left next to a doorstep—someone making improvements to their flat—and waving his hand over his nose as he passed by another sickly sweet opium den.

With a sigh of relief, Mei Quon stepped out of the small, dank alley, onto the main broad walk on Pandora street. He took a deep breath of the cool night air and tightened his stomach. Maybe he could go another night without a proper meal—

“That’s him!”

Before Mei Quon could turn around, something blunt and hard struck the back of his head and a colder darkness embraced him.

Ξ

Mei Quon knew that opening his eyes would hurt. He kept them closed and took stock first. His wrists were twisted and tied behind his back. Hard, cold packed earth pushed up against his sore butt—he’d been dragged and thrown into some sort of storage room, in a basement somewhere, he’d bet. It smelled of dried onions and wet stone. His head wasn’t actually being pounded on by hammers, but it felt that way.

With a wrenching pain, Mei Quon opened his eyes, blinking to keep the tears from blinding him. A pale outline of light came from above his head—a boarded–over window. He couldn’t see the outline of a door, though he knew there must be one. Rough brick scratched his arms when he turned to the side and examined the far wall.

“Hey!” Mei Quon shouted. “Anyone there?” He spoke first in classic Mandarin, then repeated his words in Cantonese. It would be better to find out the worst of it, then to sit in the dark and let his fears build.

After taking a deep breath, Mei Quon forced himself up to his knees. Idiots hadn’t tied his feet.

Or maybe they’d bricked over the door and there was no way out.

Mei Quon pushed down on his fears and staggered up, forcing himself to stand, though the movement made his head hurt worse. Where was he? He could be in any of the storerooms under Victoria’s Chinatown.

“Hey!” he called again.

Shouting made Mei Quon’s head ache, but he didn’t know what else to do.

“Is anyone there?” he called, this time repeating the phrase three times, using Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. He stumbled forward, hitting wood instead of brick.

This had to be the door.

Before Mei Quon could kick at the hard wood and probably break his foot, he heard a jangle of keys on the other side. Mei Quon stepped back quickly into what he thought would be the center of the cell.

Light flooded the room. Mei Quon blinked against the sudden brightness.

“Boss wants to see you,” came a rough voice, speaking Cantonese.

“Who?” Mei Quon asked, not moving.

“You heard me. Boss. Now move. If I have to drag you, I’ll drop your head on every step,” the man warned.

With an internal sigh, Mei Quon staggered into the light. His sight had cleared enough that he could see the other man—shorter than Mei Quon, but at least twice as big around, with powerful shoulders and a squat neck, like a bull. He wore a Western style cowboy hat over his partially shaved head and Western pants under his black, knee–length robe.

The hallway was roughly cut out of dirt, shored up with wooden beams, like a miner’s tunnel. It smelled wetter here, as if water dripped behind the walls. Mei Quon had to duck his head to avoid hitting the crossbeams. The stairs were also cut into the dirt, shored up with wood.

Wafting down from the open square above Mei Quon’s head came the stench of rotten potatoes and sour cabbage. Was he below a grocery store?

Mei Quon paused before pushing his head up. The stout man behind him gave him a hard shove. Mei Quon swallowed down all his complaint and kept going.

The room above was a storage room, at the back of some sort of shop. Wooden shelves lined the walls, heaped with produce: Leafy greens, dark carrots, Western potatoes, and Chinese cabbage.

A plain table had been set up in the center of the room—skinny and long, like an altar. A thin man sat behind it, with white whiskers dangling almost to his waist. Like in the paintings of old, his eyebrows had been shaved off and repainted further up his intelligent brow. He wore a black scholar’s cap, square, with a long black tassel. White–silk plaques embroidered with lucky blue clouds and bats covered the collar, cuffs, and front of his cream–colored robe.

Mei Quon instinctively bowed low before this man.

“I am Ang Woo. Head of the Chee Kung Tong.” The old man spoke in beautiful Mandarin, clear and precise.

Mei Quon contained his shiver. He had no idea Old Ren had been involved in a tong.

“You’ve caused a great deal of trouble,” Ang Woo continued, his voice unsurprisingly strong.

“Sir?” Mei Quon asked.

“I need that money back,” Ang Woo said. “Old Ren wasn’t betting his own purse.”

“I see,” Mei Quon said, blinking. He had wondered where Old Ren had gotten his money, but he hadn’t been about to question it. “I’m sorry, but the police raid—”

“Was very convenient, don’t you agree?” Ang Woo asked. “Think about it. How often has that particular parlor been raided whenever there was a large pot at stake?”

Mei Quon thought back furiously. He’d known the parlor was crooked—they’d recruited him, after all.

But for them to also be working with the white, western police? Against their own people? That was revolting. It turned Mei Quon’s stomach.

“Sir, I’m not sure how I can help,” Mei Quon said honestly. He knew he’d likely get beaten for such an admission, but it was the truth.

He really was going to have to learn to fight with more than words and the pen.

“That’s all right. I have a plan.” Ang Woo gave Mei Quon a smile that chilled him more than the thought of being bricked in down in the cellar.

Still, Mei Quon knew he had to take this one last gamble, to declare, “all in”—zai suoyou. “Tell me how I can help.”

Ξ

A new lookout sat at the doorway to the fan tan parlor. Mei Quon breathed a quick thanks to Kang Ti, ruler of ten–thousand household ghosts and a patron of lost causes. It meant that he wouldn’t be barred at the door because Old Ren had made a complaint against him, and could make it into the actual parlor, a first hurdle overcome.

He hoped that wasn’t the end of his luck—he needed more throughout the night.

The fan tan parlor hadn’t changed since three days before: Plain wood made up most of the walls, with a few black and red paper posters painted with white characters, describing how to play the game, the rules of the house, as well as a general blessing on all who came there.

The tan kun recognized Mei Quon, but the cashier was new and he took Mei Quon’s purse without a question, issuing him a white pigeon playing card, indicating that he’d started with a kitty of one hundred Canadian dollars—more money than Mei Quon had ever held in his hand.

But he knew that if he’d tried to leave Victoria with the cash, he never would have made it to the pier alive. The tong wasn’t very forgiving.

A game had just started. Mei Quon watched the first count, paying particular attention to the tan kun, but Mei Quon didn’t see him pass along any signals. Either he didn’t have a partner that night, or he’d changed his system.

At the next game, Mei Quon placed a small bet on one, with a red “dog’s tongue” card: If he won, the house would pay out four times what he’d bet. If three—the number on the square opposite of one—was the remaining number after all the coins had been spread out and divided up, he’d lose everything.

Mei Quon maintained a passive expression when three turned out to be the remaining number of coins. He was going to have to win at some point, enough to threaten the house. But not right away. Ang Woo needed Mei Quon to play for an hour or more, betting the entire time.

Keeping the house occupied, a strategy Mei Quon recognized from chess, harrying the king while mounting a surprise attack on his henchmen.

The head of the parlor, Bei Hai, came by while another count was being spread across the table. He wore a new, fine robe, made of black silk. Had he paid for it out of Old Ren’s purse?

Bei Hai stared hard at Mei Quon and had a whispered word with the cashier, who handed over Mei Quon’s purse.

Mei Quon kept his face impassive though his heart beat hard in his chest. They had to believe he’d just come back to gamble, to bet. They couldn’t suspect there was anything more than that.

“Who’s your new patron?” Bei Hai asked once the count was finished and Mei Quon collected his minor winnings, minus the house cut.

“Yi Chen,” Mei Quon said carelessly, a made–up name that Ang Woo had given him. “You wouldn’t know him. He works for railroad.”

Mei Quon turned and stared at Bei Hai, delighted that he was able to stand tall and look down on the other man.

“Why isn’t he here with you?” Bei Hai asked.

“He’ll be along shortly,” Mei Quon assured him.

Bei Hai made a face, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What, my money isn’t good enough on my own?” Mei Quon challenged.

“Of course it is,” Bei Hai replied, slipping back into his place as a company man, hosting a game. “Please, enjoy yourself.”

Mei Quon knew Bei Hai was also wishing him to lose all his money at the same time.

The next bet had Mei Quon sweating more. He won a corner, as did his neighbor, meaning the house would pay out double the amount, and they’d both bet heavily.

If the house lost too much, they’d close the table. And he needed to keep it open. Until he could make a sizeable bet.

Mei Quon was more cautious with his next bet, buying a twist, placing his money at the end of the two side with a red dog tongue, and breathed a sigh of relief when he won.

Little by little, Mei Quon’s purse increased. Was the house working for him, instead of against him? He looked toward the front entrance once or twice. Bei Hai knew that he was waiting for his new “patron” so it was to be expected.

Finally, Mei Quon decided he’d taken enough time—and won enough money—to take a risk. Like Old Ren from three nights before, Mei Quon bet on four, placing his white pigeon card down on the side along with his marker.

Time to bet everything.

The tan kun slowly turned over the bowl and started counting. Mei Quon tried to keep his face impassive though the skin under his palms itched and his breath came short.

It was a huge amount of money. The house had to call and ask for “help.”

Suddenly, down the stairs came the loud tromp of feet and the shout of, “Police!”

When the tan kun looked up, Mei Quon shot his hand out and dropped a dozen coins into the pile already sitting on the table.

Special coins that looked identical to the ones already there, but weighted differently.

“Cheater!” Mei Quon said in clear English, standing up as the police entered. “They’re cheating!” he added, pointing at the tan kun then at Bei Hai.

The police looked from Mei Quon in his fine robe to the workers. “We were called in for a disturbance,” the head one said, walking forward.

“They’re cheating!” Mei Quon said again, pointing to the table. “Feel those coins. They’re weighted!”

The policeman reached over the railing and picked up two coins, weighing them in his hand.

“This one is a featherweight compared to the other,” he said, nodding at Mei Quon. “I’m surprised you were able to tell.”

Mei Quon quickly repeated the words in Mandarin for those whose English wasn’t as good. The other players around the table gasped and turned as one to face Bei Hai.

“Now, now, we don’t want any violence. Why don’t we all take a walk down to the station and settle this?” the policeman suggested.

Bei Hai stepped forward. “Good. We can see Officer Bradly, then.”

“Seems Officer Bradly had to go on an extended family leave,” the policeman said with a shrug. “You might be having to deal with me, now. Officer Karlson.”

Bei Hai glared at Mei Quon, who merely shrugged.

“Seems like we should do as this good officer suggested,” Mei Quon said. “Though you won’t be able to meet my new patrons. The Chee Kong Tong and Ang Woo.”

Bei Hai stiffened. He knew who he’d have to buy his freedom from.

Ang Woo would get his money back—Bei Hai would have to pay a lot to get out of jail this time, then even more to keep his fan tan parlor open, as his friendly policeman had just been replaced by Ang Woo’s.

And for doing his part, Mei Quon was going to have new opportunities with the Chee Kong Tong. He’d learn how to fight, but maybe he’d be able to use his scholar abilities as well.

Particularly when Ang Woo insisted on going through the books of all the fan tan parlors under his protection.

Mei Quon’s New World gambles were finally paying off.

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free Fiction–Let’s Make a Deal!

There are times when I write silly.

The short story this week is indicative of that. It isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. It’s more of a snicker.

Then again, this story takes place in kind of a silly place, at the First Contact Café. You see, there are rules for first contact with aliens. And this is the place to meet aliens where the rules are enforced. Simple things like avoiding smelly bodily emissions, even if your race considers them a compliment, and complicated things like not asking another race if they are edible.

First Contact Café is a shared world, originally created by Irene Radford.

I had great fun writing this story. It’s light hearted, not dealing with suicide and the horror of touch, unlike some of the other stories I’ve posted here so far.

I think that if you like this story, you’ll also like the novel The Changeling Troll.  It’s also light hearted, and slightly silly, though it has a serious heart. (Although one of the characters does find it a serious character flaw that trolls can’t swivel their ears like dogs and cats.)

I’ve already written the second novel in the Troll Trilogy–The Princess Troll. It will come out sometime in spring 2016. And I have lots of notes for the final book–The Fairy Bridge Troll–which I expect will come out probably in spring 2017.

In the meanwhile, have a fun story. Come and join the characters at the First Contact Café.

Saul will go to any length to close a deal, including adding three extra lumbar vertebrae so he could bend just so when greeting a particular alien ambassador.

But the latest clients won’t even negotiate.

Saul has to find out what makes them tick. What they really want.

Everyone will strike a deal eventually, right?

Originally published in the anthology, “First Contact Cafe,” part of a shared world created by Irene Radford.

Available for $0.99 from Amazon, Kobo Books, and iBookstore.

Let’s Make a Deal!

“They won’t negotiate,” Saul complained over the interstellar com. He sat back in his chair, glad for the support against his three extra lumbar vertebrae. He’d had them added as part of his most recent negotiations so that he could bend just so when greeting the Karada Katamuké ambassadors.

Anything to seal a deal.

As the only human who’d gone that extra effort, they’d awarded his client an exclusive contract on mineral rights.

Even at only point–two percent, that had been a very lucrative trip.

“What do you mean they won’t negotiate?” Trish’s annoyance came through the com loud and clear—clearer than the signal, actually. Her projected image was almost as fuzzy as the curly red hair that circled her head. “Everyone negotiates. They wouldn’t be at the Labyrinthe space station if they didn’t want to strike a deal. What’s the real holdup?”

Saul sighed. Trish would find out sooner or later, so he might as well admit to his problems now. He didn’t know how that woman discovered what she did—she was permanently bound to her spaceship—not really a cyborg, more like a brain–to–ship transplant—so she couldn’t ever get off and visit a planet. Saul didn’t even know what she really looked like. Her usual transmission showed a gangly redheaded human, with pale skin and intense green eyes, though if the mood struck her, she could appear as any species or gender, or any combination thereof.

No one ever visited the ship, either.

Yet, Trish had spies and networks in places Saul had never even heard of before, and Saul had traveled the galaxy a lot, always looking for the best deal for his clients.

“The Hor’kha are unionists,” Saul said carefully. He was never certain what would set Trish into an absolute (and literal) tailspin and what wouldn’t.

“They’re what?” Trish asked. At least she sounded fairly calm.

Saul suspected she was just buying time while she rapidly looked up all references to unions, unionists, hell, maybe even wobblies, so she’d know everything there was to know in just a matter of minutes. Part of that whole “mated to a spaceship” thing.

“Unionists. They have a union of workers. The leaders who were sent here to negotiate keep having to verify things with their constituency. They vote on the clauses. Then the leaders come back to me with different demands.” Saul couldn’t help but sigh again. “It’s completely arbitrary. And aggravating. And a waste of time.”

Saul bit his lip. He shouldn’t have gone that far, he knew. But he was frustrated with the lack of progress. Most so than Trish, he knew. He’d worked with a hive mind before—this was so much worse.

While the Labyrinthe space station—also known as Rosy’s Café and Convention Center—was nice, it was still, well, a space station. Saul had been promised a nice long vacation after his latest negotiations on this beautiful little planet he’d found, full of clean white sand and purple oceans with the optimal moon rotation for gentle tides and splashing waves.

But this deal had come up, and Trish had offered to double the number of weeks he could take off if he’d postpone it.

Saul should have looked at the players more closely before agreeing. He took a sip from his usual beverage of choice, pure, unadulterated water.

At least Trish overlooked the basic break in protocol—it was rude to drink or eat anything in front of the essentially bodiless. And was probably somewhere on the huge list of rules for the space station as well.

“Is there something the leaders want? That would get them to agree on a contract without such back and forth?” Trish asked reasonably.

Saul shrugged. It was part of why he felt so helpless. “Hell if I know. They’re rocks, Trish. Goddamn rocks.”

They didn’t look human. Or Arachnoid. Or any of the other species that Saul had met.

They were just rounded lumps of rocks, about one meter high, two across. They came in various shades of deathly dull brown, beige, and tan. They weren’t even symmetrical, just vaguely roundish. They had mouths, but that was about the only part Saul consistently recognized. He’d spent hours studying the feeds Trish had sent him. It was in the space station rules that he should at least be able to recognize their ears.

But he still hadn’t a clue.

“Sentient rocks whose home is the Mimby asteroid belt. They can extract more greystroke per hour than all of the GGMP consortium combined,” Trish said gently.

Was she really that worried about him that she felt the need to explain the deal to him again?

“I know, I know.” Saul sighed again. “And this deal could make us astonishingly wealthy.” Greystroke was one of the raw ingredients needed for matter transformers. While the engineers of Karada Katamuké could synthesize it, it wasn’t as effective as the material occurring in natural space. They couldn’t grow it quickly or inexpensively enough to make farms possible.

“Have you invited them to a night out?” Trish asked delicately.

“Of course I have,” Saul snapped. “Don’t try to double–guess me. But they’ve refused. Said they didn’t want to give the appearance of being bribable.”

“Ah ha!” Trish said with delight. “That means they are bribable.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that? I’ve tried every means I know how in order to discover what they might really want.” Saul pushed his back further into the chair, resisting the impulse to take another drink of water. “But they’re always together. I can’t get less than three in a room. There’s no way of asking any of them more directly.”

“Hmmm,” was the only response Trish gave.

“I mean, they aren’t even carbon based. And no one would be so impolite here as to ask for a tissue sample.” No, that would go against the rules. Of which there were too damned many for Saul to keep track of.

“I bet I can find out,” Trish said slowly. “But it might be costly.”

Saul sighed. He knew what that meant. Costs like that would be charged against his signing bonus. “Do it.” He had to figure out how the Hor’kha ticked. And soon. Before Lexie Dupree, the Earth trade ambassador, got wind of the negotiations and decided to slice out a piece for herself.

Ξ

Saul knew it was against the rules to go into any negotiation room with food or beverage. That was a rookie mistake. How could you know whether you were giving the greatest insult to a client by sipping a glass of wine or even chewing on a stim tab? There were far too many cultural taboos to keep track of. No, the negotiator always waited until invited by the client to partake in something that may or may not resemble human food.

Saul gave an involuntary shudder, remembering some of the “meals” he’d been forced to attend.

Still, the Hor’kha had called him when he was in the middle of an exercise cycle. He’d been down on the Zenith level, sparing with a computerized version of a Giliham. It was a great way to keep in shape, particularly learning to avoid the four arms, the hand–like feet, and the tail. Also, sparing with a non–human sharpened his wits, made him think outside the box, as it were.

But the message had said to come immediately. That word had been emphasized twice. And he hadn’t replenished nearly enough liquids to be coherent. Not after that second bout.

Saul wiggled his jaw, making sure everything at least felt like it was in place. He wasn’t in his usual suit either, no, he wore a skin–tight bodysuit, the kind space commanders wore under their armor.

He was still sweating as well. He hoped his odor wasn’t a blatant insult. It was even in the space station rules that he needed to be aware of that.

And he carried a container of water. Pure, clean, unenhanced water.

Trish called him a barbarian for drinking it. No one drank pure water—everyone knew it wasn’t as nutritious as the enhanced versions. It made him wonder if she was actually a human–machine mix, or if there were some other DNA sequestered in there. But the other stuff never quite tasted right to him.

However, Saul couldn’t just leave the bottle in the hallway. And he couldn’t find a trash receptacle that would take it. Honestly, it was easier to live with clients who may be upset than pissing off the damned station mistress.

Saul shuddered again, then squared his shoulders and went into the negotiating room.

K’tan, K’zar, and K’glee were in the room already. At least, that was who Saul thought were there. It was so damned difficult to keep the dozen or so leaders straight.

K’tan was the easiest to identify—his coloring was mostly black, with some odd splotches of dark blue along his left side, if a being that was mostly spherical could be thought of as having sides.

K’zar looked like a lump of tannish rock, with a lip on what might be called his right(?) side.

K’glee looked very similar to K’zar, but a mirror image—same rounded shape and height with a small lip on the left(?) side.

They didn’t have vocal chords, of course. They did have implanted communication jacks with a direct connection to the station computer and externally communicated through that. Their voices used the exact same monotone voice, which made it even more difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Saul wasn’t sure how they communicated with each other—he figured some sort of chemicals or pheromones. Might have to get Trish to look into that, if he couldn’t get them to sign a deal any other way.

“We’re sorry to be bothering you on an off–cycle,” K’tan began. He came forward half a meter then held himself very still. The other two didn’t move at all either.

Silence clogged the room. Saul cursed under his breath. Was it his smell? His general state of undress?

“I apologize for my current condition,” Saul said reflexively. This had been such a mistake, coming to see a client wearing a suit like this, still sweating, and carrying water. He threw in one of the fancy, undulating bows he’d learned from the Karada Katamuké ambassador.

That seemed to break whatever was holding the Hor’kha miners. “About clause number three–point–two–A, that you have decided to strike,” K’tan said. “The right of taking a forty–seven hour in–cycle break when the K’jar’t’une moon is full. We know the moon isn’t in system, however, it is one of our major religious holidays…”

And they were off. Saul lead as best he could, pointing out that whether a moon was full or not depended on the planet it was viewed from, so there needed to be additional language added before it could be properly considered. Because a moon when viewed from another system would always appear full.

When Saul finally got back to his quarters, he felt as wrung out as if he’d gone twenty rounds with an Porgeusa. Underwater.

However, Saul had barely managed to go through the shower cycle (and really, it was just a freshener, had no water, how could it properly be called a shower?) before the buzzer above his door sounded, loud and harsh in the closed space.

“Come in!” Saul called. At least he was more properly dressed, though he did a quick check just to make sure his bare feet weren’t showing—that seemed to be something the Hor’kha miners found repulsive.

K’tan came noodling in. “Thank you again for seeing me in such intimate quarters,” he said. The voice projecting from the space station’s computer sounded a little more…human? Less constructed?

“You’re welcome,” Saul said. What did the Hor’kha miner want? And why was he alone? They never went anywhere alone. Was this finally Saul’s chance to find out what bribes would actually work?

K’tan came closer. “It is really good to see you like this.”

Christ on a stick. He wasn’t about to propose something more intimate, was he? Saul’s motto was, “Anything for a deal,” but there were some things he drew the line at.

Not that he wasn’t hung up on cross–species breeding, and his orientation was flexible. However, rocks just didn’t do it for him.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Saul said. And it really was humble. Just two rooms with a wall full of communication equipment that Saul could use to talk with Trish or check on any of the other deals they had coming up. An eating area that Saul rarely used—he preferred one of the station’s many cafés or bars. And a couch that he could recall sitting on only once, as it seemed to grab and enfold him and not want to let him go.

“It really is a different space. Different than ours,” K’tan said. He did a weird half rotation that Saul had never seen before, with only the top half of the rock moving while the bottom stayed stationary.

Huh. Maybe that’s where his eyes were. And his ears.

Then K’tan rotated back. “Very different.”

“Yes,” Saul said, still bewildered. He hadn’t a clue what the Hor’kha miner wanted. And he wasn’t interested in any more pussyfooting around negotiations. “Is there something I can get you? Something you need?”

“You have a,” K’tan’s voice dropped very low and quiet, until he was whispering, “bathroom, don’t you?”

Saul controlled his natural reflex to let his eyes go wide. He wasn’t about to make any physical gesture that could be misinterpreted. “Yes, I do.”

This was not about to get kinky, was it?

“With…water?” K’tan seemed to be quivering, in a rock–pile jittery sort of way.

Water? “No, not really,” Saul said, watching carefully.

There. On that right side. Did the rock sag a little? Possibly in disappointment?

“But I do have bottled water,” Saul said slowly. He fetched his refreshment bottle, then held it out to the Hor’kha miner.

That quivering was back again, though more subdued. “I couldn’t possibly take it,” K’tan said slowly. He seemed spellbound by the small bottle of water.

“I insist,” Saul said. “Think of it as a cultural exchange,” he added. “From my people to yours.” He knew better than to call it a gift. The miner would back off, insist he couldn’t be bribed.

But a cultural exchange…Maybe that was the key.

“Thank you,” K’tan said. He opened up a shelf on his upper left(?) side, where Saul carefully deposited the bottle without touching any part of the grossly pink insides of the miner.

“I shall not forget this,” K’tan declared as he scooted toward the door leading back out.

After the miner had left, Saul shook his head. What the heck had that been about? He didn’t have a clue.

He did, however, go fetch a dozen more bottles of pure, unadulterated, plain water. He got them out, arranged them on his desk.

Much better to be prepared.

Ξ

Saul laughed at Trish’s expression of disbelief. “Water?” she asked again, incredulous, if he was reading through the static correctly.

“A–yup. Water. Gets them drunker than a skunk on moonshine. Something to do with their chemical structure.”

Trish was quiet for a moment, probably searching her databases again. “So you illegally gave them an intoxicant,” she said coldly.

“Station master was pissed,” Saul added with delight. “But don’t worry. We’ve got the okay to come back again.” Particularly after the miners had volunteered to pay for all damages done to the station. Plus extra, for the mental stress they’d caused.

“And the contract?” Trish asked.

“Signed, sealed, and delivered, just about…now,” Saul said, watching the red light in the corner of his screen light up, indicating his communication had just been received.

Trish took a moment to scan the contract. She gave a low whistle. “Three solar years? Exclusive?”

Saul chuckled. “Just for keeping water out of the hands of their constituency.” Seemed what was good enough for the leaders was not good enough for their followers.

“We’ll have to keep track of the earth shipments,” Trish said.

Saul was surprised she wasn’t already.

“More than we currently do,” Trish added.

Saul smiled. “And now, while it’s been lovely chatting with you, I have a date with a beach.”

“But there’s the deal with the Giliham,” Trish complained.

“Nope,” Saul said.

“I’ll double your normal rate,” Trish added.

“You already pay me triple what you’d pay anyone else. I need a break,” Saul said gently.

“You’ll be bored,” Trish warned.

“That’s the point,” Saul reminded her.

“Oh, very well. But expect there to be a dozen contracts lined up and waiting for you when you return,” Trish said petulantly.

“There always are,” Saul said as he turned off his communication gear.

He gave a great sigh. Finally. Alone. It would take less than a week to reach his destination. And less than a day to make a spot habitable.

That is, if the negotiations with the natives went well….

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.

Free fiction Tuesday…

Yes, it’s Tuesday again. Got another story for you.

This story is historic fiction. It’s one of The Shadow Wars stories, the first one in The Guardian Hound.

I started my career writing historic fantasy. I’d always been fascinated with history, as well as with China. So I combined my two passions and wrote Paper Mage. It’s the novel I’m still best known for among readers.

I figure, if you like this story, you might like one of my other historic novels, such as Paper Mage, A Sword’s Poem, Caves of Buda, or even The Jaguar and the Wolf.

I find that about one out of every three stories I tell is either straight historic, or has historic elements (like The Guardian Hound.)

However, I don’t assume that the readers who like my historic fantasy will like the contemporary fantasy. So there will be more historic fantasy to come.

In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this short story!

Hans can never do anything right. He’s a disappointment to his father, his employer, even the hound clan.

But Hans’ Grandpapa was a brilliant Apotheker, and his old books contain many potions.

Maybe Hans can find just the right one. . .Or maybe he makes a serious mistake.

This story is set in “The Shadow Wars” series, and is part of the novel, The Guardian Hound.

Available for $0.99 as an ebook from Amazon, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble, and iBookstore.

 

Here and gone!

Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.