“Well shot,” said Mister Fitz. “Somewhat making up for your misjudgment of the woman, though I should have come to expect that.”
“She fooled you too,” said Sir Hereward, grimacing as he felt his burned throat. “You, to be caught like a novice in an Ikithan net.”
“True,” mused the puppet. “It was fortunate she did not have one resistant to seawater. But I suspected her from the first, for she had too much sorcerous gear for any thief of Kwakrosh, even she be the Thief-Mother herself.”
“Then why did you not—” said Sir Hereward hotly before a great crack sounded behind them, and man and puppet turned to see a gout of flame leap up from the fortress on the mole.
“Mortar bomb,” said Sir Hereward, watching fuse sparks trail across the sky. “They are poor aimers … if you have a needle left, Fitz …”
“None to hand,” said the puppet. “My sewing desk is back at the inn.”
“Or perhaps their aim is good,” said Sir Hereward, as the spark trail plummeted towards the almost-completely-submerged hulk of the hexareme, only its stumpy mast now visible above the white tops of the waves, a hundred yards behind them. “But if the fuse is too long, the bomb will be drowned …”
A yellow-red flash lit the sky, followed a moment later by the shock of force through the water, and a moment later still by a great boom. As Hereward blinked to clear the flash from his eyes, he saw that there was no longer a mast or any other indication of the hexareme.
“I thought they were shooting at us,” he said.
“Perhaps they were,” said Mister Fitz.
“In any case, it will take them some time to load another bomb,” said Sir Hereward, looking back again. “We will be ashore before then. It is a sad end for a famous vessel. One of the last surviving hexaremes of Ashagah, I believe. It will be difficult to explain to the worthies of the town, who I perceive are amongst the notable force gathering on the quay as our reception.”
“Perhaps not so difficult, should we provide a suitable scapegoat,” said Mister Fitz. He stood up on Rosie’s head, held on to Hereward’s shoulder, and pointed ahead.
Tira the thief, or priestess, or whatever she was, was floating on her back ahead of them, feebly kicking her legs. As the moklek drew closer, Hereward reached out and half slid her, half dragged her onto Rosie’s back.
“Curse you,” she whispered. “May Pixalten-Qockril send—”
Mister Fitz leaned across and pressed one wooden finger against the middle of her forehead, his gauntlets being long since swept away. Tira stopped talking, her eyes rolled back, and Hereward had to turn her head so her mouth and nose weren’t in the water.
“And we have money for bribes,” continued Mister Fitz. He reached to his arm and pulled off the brassard, the letters fading. “All will be well.”
“So I suppose,” said Sir Hereward. He took off his own armband, slapped his hand lightly on the moklek’s back, and added, “We have much to thank you for, Rosie.”
“Indeed, she is a princess amongst mokleks,” said Mister Fitz. “Quite literally, albinism is a mark of the royal line.”
“Hexareme of Ashagah and mokleks,” said Hereward thoughtfully. “It reminds me of a poem. Let me see …
Hexareme of Ashagah
From far-off Panas
Drumming down the sea-lanes
In search of easy prey
Seeking a cargo of ivories, gold and mokleks …
“Bah!” protested Mister Fitz. “That is doggerel, a murder of the original poem. If you must recite, Hereward, you should do honor to the poet, not commit a crime!”
“It is a later translation, true, but nonetheless I stand by it!” protested Sir Hereward. “You and your heart of cypress have no feeling for verse!”
The moklek trumpeted, spraying them with a little seawater. A wave lifted her, and the east wind blew against Hereward’s back, taking them shorewards, knight and puppet bickering all the way.
Walter Jon Williams
Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico. His short fiction has appeared frequently in Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Subterranean, and in other markets, and has been gathered in the collections Facets and Frankensteins and Foreign Devils. His novels include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, Hardwired, The Crown Jewels, Voice of the Whirlwind, House of Shards, Days of Atonement, Aristoi, Metropolitan, Rock of Ages, City on Fire, as well as a huge disaster thriller, The Rift, and a Star Wars novel, Destiny’s Way, and three novels in his acclaimed Modern Space Opera epic, “Dread Empire’s Fall,” Dread Empire’s Falclass="underline" The Praxis, Dread Empire’s Falclass="underline" The Sundering, and Dread Empire’s Falclass="underline" Conventions of War. His most recent books are the novels Implied Spaces, This Is Not a Game, Deep State, and The Fourth Wall, the chapbook novella The Boolean Gate, and a new collection, The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories. He won a long-overdue Nebula Award in 2001 for his story “Daddy’s World,” and took another Nebula in 2004 with his story “The Green Leopard Plague.”
In the sly story that follows, a movie star (Sean Makin, the comically self-absorbed narrator of Walter’s novel The Fourth Wall) becomes involved in an intricate real-life plot that proves to be even more outlandish than that of a Hollywood movie, and more dangerous for everyone involved.
DIAMONDS FROM TEQUILA
Walter Jon Williams
“No,” says Ossley. “No. Really. You can make diamonds out of tequila.”
“Sell enough tequila,” says Yunakov, “and you can buy all the diamonds you want.”
“That’s not what I mean,” says Ossley.
We’re sitting in Yunakov’s room at the resort, with the breeze roaring through the windows and doors and sweeping our cannabis smoke out to sea. In one corner of the room a 3D printer hums through its routine, and in another corner is a curved wet bar with two stools and about fifteen half-empty bottles of liquor. Six or eight of us are sitting around a blocky wooden coffee table on which is perched a large clear plastic bong that Ossley had printed out on the first day of principal photography.
The movie is called Desperation Reef. Yunakov is the prop master, and Ossley is his assistant. The others in the room are members of the crew: a couple gaffers, a wardrobe assistant, a set dresser, and somebody’s cousin named Chip.
I’m the star of the picture. In fact I’m a very big star, and the producers are spending a couple hundred million dollars to make me a bigger one; but I’m not so big a star that I can’t hang with the crew.
I want the crew to like me because they can make me look good. And besides, they have the best dank on the set.