Beneath Ceaseless Skies #27 by Yoon Ha Lee, Ian McHugh, Sara M. Harvey, Michael Anthony Ashley

She was a good deal older than Bellico, had wedded late in life for want of a man to suit her fancy. But Imre had never seen on her a wrinkle or spot. Her hymn curved as a sickle and, like her stone arm, was deeply indigo. The amphitheater fell quiet as she invoked the Voce for strength and sport and good songs. “Invest our hymns,” she said at the finish, “with the strength to kiss well.”
            “Now we sing!” Bellico shouted.
            The assembly cheered, Cantiléna glared, and unfledged Eroico bounced on his toes at Imre’s side. “Father! Father!” he shouted into the din, stone arm waving gaily. When Bellico finally paid heed, Eroico cupped his hands to his mouth and said, “Please!” The Maestro looked from his son to Imre and back again before tossing his hand in resigned permission.
            Eroico’s hymn was short, broad and grown for the close thrust, its brilliantly regal sapphire hue popular among the younger peers of the Baremescre. Imre had never seen it used in earnest. Not until Eroico, still grinning from his father’s indulgence, spun it from its sling and cut Imre across the throat.
    * * *
    Verse
            After the brawl, Imre and Naldo had been seized, stripped of everything save their clothes, and dragged off to separate cells. Imre’s was nothing more than a moist and rough-hewn hollow in a cliff side, but after his weeks aboard ship, the silence was as much a comfort as if he sat wrapped in a prince’s quilt.
            He had dozed and dreamt of a puppet show where his father’s corpse danced beneath the strings, ash vomiting from its purple lips, when footsteps outside his cell startled him awake.
            This time two guards, both with rock arms and pernicious blades, silently escorted him from the cell into a bright, muggy afternoon. Imre blinked against the light, shook away the last clinging miasma of his dream, then followed the guards down the cliffside path onto a road that cut deeper inland. They spent a good deal of daylight walking this road, resting twice at small manors surrounded by pruned coppices, but pressing on. Soon the sea breezes faded and the southern humidity made good on its reputation. Theirs was a beautiful country—flowers blooming a dozen hues of every color, shaded by wild fruit trees with thick, broad leaves, the air alive with honeybees and tiny hovering birds. But by the time they reached the sitting garden, Imre had a mind only for the cramp in his back, the sweat in his eyes, and the late afternoon midges dying against his sticky skin.
            The guards led him to stand before a rough semicircle of seated craggermen, behind them rippled a freshwater pond skinned by water-lily.
            He was instantly relieved to see Naldo reclining nearby upon a pile of cushions. The Arbiter looked drawn, but his wounds had been treated and his color was good. He smiled when he saw Imre. The anxiety, though, was glaring.
            The eight craggers that lounged upon the benches each paradoxically bore a combined countenance of languor and barely suppressed action. The grim, one-eyed man sitting in the center with the white rock arm was Bellico, and he alone spoke to Imre, albeit through Naldo’s translations. Bellico had brought his wife, one son, four other important-looking craggers, and the nut-skulled wench from the harbor road who, as ill luck would have it, was the chieftain’s daughter and heir. Every one of them bore a dimple in the flesh arm.
            When the courtesies were done, Bellico bent his hard gaze upon Imre and asked a question.
            “Maestro Bellico has inquired after your injuries, young master,” Naldo said.
            “My injuries?” Imre asked. When he’d been first dumped in his cell, stoneless surgeons had examined him and, Imre was proud to see, were utterly dumbfounded. Now as then, he lifted his shirt to show Bellico and company the