The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker

and with her hands she caught trout in a starry pool.
    She carried them back in great haste, always, because the sooner she and the slave could eat, the sooner it would be time to cuddle close again and listen to the story. Tiara liked the heroine, Mendoza, well enough, identified with her in fact, the little girl who had been lost and alone in the dark and yet survived to become a fine lady; but Tiara’s favorite was the Englishman who died and came back again, just like her slave, who described him with such vividness Tiara felt sure she would recognize him in a second, should she ever meet him.
    And how brave he was, and how clever in all his incarnations! But especially as Commander Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who was in the story thelongest. Tiara could well appreciate a ruthless hero, and listened spellbound as the slave described the sea battles Edward fought, the adventures in mangrove swamps, and the duels with villainous slavemasters, the secret missions for his government, the beautiful ladies so grateful to be rescued or so eager to betray state secrets to him. Actually Tiara wasn’t sure she exactly approved of the other ladies, but the slave explained that Edward only romanced them because he hadn’t found Mendoza in that lifetime yet, and as soon as he had he would be faithful unto death.
    But how awful the story of his death, when it came! Tiara wept and stormed and struck her slave, begging him to make the story come out some other way. He reminded her that this story was true, that he had to tell what really happened to Edward. And to Mendoza, arrested by evil Dr. Zeus, only because she helped Edward, condemned to be confined to a vat like one of the glass jars Uncle Ratlin kept big people parts in, floating and dreaming, neither dead nor alive.
    What a relief to hear how the Englishman was going to be reborn and come back to rescue her! Tiara hugged the slave then. The slave wiped tears from his blind eyes and asked if she’d liked the story. She assured him it was the very best story in all the world, and ordered that he begin it all over again. How could he refuse? He was her slave, after all.
    The long, long hours in the darkness dragged on, as the story was told and told again, and then one night somewhere during the years the slave broke off in mid-telling with the strangest expression on his face. “What is it, my treasure?” Tiara wanted to know, sitting up.
    “I—Great Caesar’s ghost! My lower right quadrant diagnostic just came online,” the slave cried. He groped forward with his hand and felt his legs. “Yes! Yes! And there’s a signal getting through!” He began to laugh, a high-pitched shuddery laugh, and tears ran down his face. As Tiara watched, astonished, he flexed his right foot.
    “Your leg moved,” she announced.
    “Did it? Is it moving now? I can’t make sense of what I’m reading—oh, Princess dear, do you know what this means?” the slave gasped.
    “It is moving! What does it mean, lover mine?”
    “It means there really is some hope, after all,” the slave told her, reaching out again to touch his leg and reassure himself. “If I can get my legs back, if I can walk, we can get away from here, Princess.”
    “And see the big world? And go to London? And have adventures?” Tiara leaped up in excitement.
    “Absolutely!” The slave collapsed back against the wall, his thin chest heaving. “It must be all that food you’ve been bringing in, now that you’re becoming so clever at foraging. All those trout, and the hen eggs. I’m finally getting enough fuel to run the rest of my self-repair program.”
    “Can we go away right now?”Tiara began to dance.
    “Not yet,” the slave told her. “Yikes! What pins and needles. Oh, but it feels wonderful. Listen to me, sweetheart, I’ll need both legs working to walk. And we’ll need a plan. Silly me, all these years I never made one, but then I never really thought—”
    “If you eat more, will your other leg