Beneath Ceaseless Skies #101 Read online

  “And what happens when you have eaten all the stars?”

  “You needn’t worry about that, Ho. I will stop as soon as I bring harmony to the four quarters.”

  The astromancer’s wild grin put the lie to his words. Ho had seen the same look in the eyes of the opium smokers who floated through the Imperial court. Chuko would keep going until he’d eaten the sun and the moon and the planets as well. Though the sun might give him some indigestion. The thought sparked a desperate idea in Ho’s mind.

  “I will not seek to pass judgment on your revolutionary ideals, August Advisor,” he said. “But I must warn you, I have seen disaster in your future. The Black Tortoise’s Tear has told me that your plan is doomed to fail.”

  “The Black Tortoise? The Black Tortoise! We don’t need to be ruled by the Black Tortoise any more, nor the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger or the Vermillion Bird. Such fickle and arbitrary institutions have no right to command our destinies!”

  Chuko dramatically plunged his arm forward and clasped the crimson reflection of the Black Tortoise’s Tear. He yanked it out of the mercury with a sound like tearing silk and, with a wiggle of his eyebrows at Ho, popped it into his mouth.

  Ho felt a great sorrow. He had always been fond of the House of the Black Tortoise. He wondered if it would be happier now that it had lost its tear.

  “Urgh,” said Chuko, pulling a face. “This star is past its best.”

  Long years of training had attuned Ho to the moods of the heavens, and he could sense the swollen star’s panic as it slid down Chuko’s throat. It had been teetering on the edge of eruption already, and with the shock of its change in station....

  Chuko widened his eyes, and his stomach gave an almighty rumble.

  Ho ran for the edge of the tower, fingers tracing the symbols for the Celestial Cloud Chariot. There was no time to see if it had worked. He flung himself into the darkness.

  The cloud formed around him as he fell, cushioning him in its pillowy embrace. Ho guided it east and turned his head to look back at the porcelain tower.

  In the starlight he could see Chuko dancing grotesquely atop his tower, clutching his hands to his throat. Then, with a belch, the astromancer popped like a firework.

  The shock of the blast sent Ho’s cloud tumbling across the horizon and lit the countryside with the brightness of day. Ho was knocked from his perch and would certainly have fallen to his death if he had not, auspiciously, landed in the middle of a still and deep pool.

  * * *

  Ho sat at his desk in the afternoon light, adding spidery brushstrokes to his horoscope. As he worked, the fingers of his left hand sifted through a bowl of peeled lychees, occasionally bringing one to his lips.

  With all the damage that Chuko had inflicted on the heavens, the old charts were obsolete. Ho was having to recalculate all his auguries again from nothing—it was the most interesting work he’d had in twenty years.

  A gust of perfume filled the room and Ho raised his head to see Li Ma bowing at the doorway. “You sent for me, Master Ho?” she asked, artfully smoothing the green silk of her gown along the curve of her waist.

  “August Advisor Ho,” he corrected modestly, indicating the new Imperial decree on the wall. “Take up the position of the docile rhinoceros, and I will be with you shortly.”

  Ho put the final touches to his horoscope and laid down his brush. The auguries were good—water was flourishing, wood ascendant. His four pillars suggested riches and honor. He nodded with satisfaction.

  “I’m ready, my August sage,” called Li Ma. Ho unbottled his newly brewed elixir and let seven drops fall onto his tongue. When he turned to see Li Ma poised on the pillows, he could feel his star rising.

  Copyright © 2012 Jack Nicholls

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Jack Nicholls lives in London, where the foxes cross paths with her at night. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and her poetry in The Moment of Change, Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, and Here, We Cross. A handbound limited edition of her story “Two Coins” was created by Papaveria Press in 2010. To find out more, visit her website at: www.alexdallymacfarlane.com.

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  COVER ART

  “Bandits Assault a Stagecoach,” by Ignacio Bazán Lazcano

  Ignacio Bazán Lazcano has worked for major game companies around the world (Sabarasa, NGD, Global Fun, Gameloft, Time Gate) on numerous titles for PS3, XBOX, and PC (Section 8, Section 8 Prejudice, Aliens: Colonial Marines) and has authored publications in journals and books such as Digital Painting Techniques, 2dartist Magazine, 3DTotal, and Digital Art Masters. View more of his work online at deviantArt.com.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1046

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Copyright © 2012 Firkin Press

  This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.