I’ve always known that the hotel was haunted, though not necessarily the neighborhood. Nevertheless, there it was, all laid out nice and neat in the snow, a very pretty death. We were two blocks from the hotel. At the long empty stretch where the dry goods store would be built in spring. Nothing in the lot but dead trees covered in vines, and beyond it, a marsh that spread out dark and bumpy all the way to Lake Michigan.

The doctor spotted it after me. “Hold up,” he said.

I shoved my fists deeper into my coat pockets and obeyed. Spirits in my place of employment didn’t bother me any (some are the spirits of my ancestors, and as such, they protect me). And just before dawn in Chicago, like anyone, I would rather be indoors than out in the bone-cracking cold.

“Intentional.” The doctor stooped closer, careful to stay on the boardwalk. “Look at the way it’s arranged symmetrically. No animal did that.” He waved a hand without looking up. “Light a match.”

Orders. I told myself, he’s a doctor, he treats everyone like this.

I stepped off the boardwalk and crunched two steps through snow-crusted grass to the edge of the street’s gaslight. I struck a match and held it so we could see every detail: a plucked and charred bird, wings evenly outstretched, throat slashed. Its dark eyes stared up at the fading full moon. Blue-gray feathers surrounded it, projecting outward. The icy blood sparkled.

“A pigeon,” I said. The match flickered out.

“A bad egg was messing about here.” The doctor wrenched his black hat down against the wind. “Someone all-possessed, like.”

I shrugged. Perhaps he was right, a human did it. There were some bad ones.

“What do the tracks mean?” The doctor gestured at boot prints in the frozen mud.

“Don’t know.”

“No, you can say.” A nicer tone. Maybe like I was his friend, not his barber.

“Don’t know.” I said it more firmly. The mud marks were impenetrable to me. The doctor had no way of knowing that, of course. I just trimmed his white sideburns once a week, after the doctor had checked on the slow death of Edgar Mulgrave, the hotel’s owner.

An eagle screamed. We jerked our heads up at the sound. The eagle flew low, as if it wanted us to see it, made a circle, and disappeared into a cloud.

That sign I understood. So, a man did this after all. And the spirits were angry.

The doctor glanced at me and chopped a hand at the dead pigeon. “Do something about it.”

That I would not do. I stepped back to the boardwalk.

The doctor clicked his tongue. Without a care or a prayer, he stepped onto the hard ground himself and mashed the bird under his boot. The breastbone snapped and I tried not to gag. The rest squished and blood leaked out like syrup. He messed up the feathers. He scraped the slime off his boot using the edge of the boardwalk. He did it all very slowly and casually, like he was teaching something to me.

“A dog’ll get it now,” I said. “Would’ve scared people.” Now I felt concerned. Maybe it would help if the spirits knew why the doctor had just done this.

“Maybe people should be scared.” The doctor rubbed his chin. “A hotel guest did it, perhaps. Someone from out East. Off his head, to do that to a bird.”

I frowned, first at the doctor and then at the hotel. The Royal Chicago loomed taller than any building on the avenue, a flesh and blood colored stone palace that Mulgrave’s almost-widow had opened last year. The wind kicked up stronger, into the kind that aches ears and spits rain. That is not what worried me. I took off toward the hotel with quick strides.

“Get back here,” the doctor called out. “You’re my windbreak, Nate.”

Employees weren’t supposed to use the front entrance but I ignored the rule. I could explain the situation to Mrs. Mulgrave, if need be. I took the hotel’s grand steps two at a time and strode through the lobby and main promenade. I pulled out a key and opened the door to the hotel’s barbershop.

My boots squeaked on the tile floor. The crystal chandeliers were dark and the red leather chairs stood empty. I went to a domed cage sitting on a pedestal and whisked off the cage’s black felt cover.

A single yellow canary sat inside on a carved wooden bar. It blinked, stretched its wings, and tweeted.

Her name is not known in our history. We only know her as Peaches because she sold peaches at a roadside stand. It was here the great duke found her. According to legend she was extraordinarily beautiful and this is why he so greatly desired her, but in truth, she was not extraordinary, at least not in beauty. She was fair and plump. Her eyes a bit too wide set and her mouth a bit too small. There were at least three other girls in town with better teeth and brighter eyes. But these girls were not left alone on the roadside selling peaches as the duke cantered past each day. And so he desired her, probably not for her great beauty but because she was there and demure and shy as a common girl, a common girl who sold peaches her family grew at the road stand and used the money to buy radishes and parsley and bread, would naturally be. Quite possibly he only desired her because he knew that he could have her and nothing would be done. He was a duke and she was as juicy as the peaches she sold, and who can resist a ripe peach?

So there is no surprise that one bright day he got off of his stallion, pulled her behind her cart of peaches, and had his thrusting and grunting way with her. When he had finished and jumped back on his stallion, he flipped a few coins on the ground for the pleasure, raised his hat to her, and trotted off.

She was undone. She felt sore and damp and there was such a hurting in her chest from tears that were now stuck there and fear that had dried inside of her instead of on her cheeks. She looked at the coins and they worried her. When she came back home with her unsold peaches and her father took accounting of the money and the peaches sold he would ask her, where did these coins come from, and she would have no answer because the truth would make her father angry with her.

And so, she counted out the money and counted out the peaches it would buy. She carried those peaches in her apron, held like a cradle with five fuzzy little heads. She dug a hole for each little peach all in a row by the road and into each hole she dropped a fruit.

That night her father counted the money and the peaches and all matched and was well and she sighed in relief that no one noticed the lump of tears that was now on her chest or the salty fear that was on her skin.

The next day she went to the roadside to sell her wares and the duke had his stallion saddled to go for a ride. As he passed her on the road he tipped his hat to her for the pleasure and rode on. But there was something odd. Five little saplings, tall and thin, were by the side of the road, all in a row. They weren’t there yesterday, but they were there today, and everyone knows that saplings don’t just appear, they grow. But perhaps he just hadn’t noticed them before.

She dropped a curtsey as he rode past and dropped her eyes to the ground, unable to look at him. She kept her eyes closed until she couldn’t hear the sound of his horse’s hooves anymore and then she opened her eyes and saw five little saplings standing where yesterday she had buried the peaches. She saw them and understood, and so she got a bucket and went to the river and she watered and tended the trees, pulling grass and giving them room to grow.

The sun set and the sun rose and once again she went to the roadside with her fruits and once again the duke cantered past, but he did not tip his hat to the girl. He didn’t even see her or her cart because the five little saplings were now five bright young trees with leaves so green they made his eyes hurt, and hard green fruits that hung, not ready to be picked yet, but promising later days that would be full of delicious flesh to bite and juice to suck. But for the duke the promise of later fruit was not an attraction. He was afraid of the young trees and their hard fruit and his horse slowed as he passed the trees, keeping quiet as if they were riding through a graveyard, trying not to wake the ghosts. She saw his fright and understood and again she tended the trees and gave them water.

The next day it all happened again, the peaches, the roadside stand, the stallion and the saddle. But this time he did not ride past her nor did he tip his hat. Instead he stopped and stared at five full grown peach trees with ripened fruit hanging off of each branch, each peach large and a perfect shade of sunset gold. And though the leaves were green, the same as any other tree, and the bark was brown, the same as any other tree, and the fruit was tempting, same as any other tree, the duke was afraid of the trees and could not ride past them. He could not bring himself to spur his stallion forward, but turned him and galloped off, back to his castle, where he jumped out of the saddle before the horse had stopped and called for his man.

Cut the trees down! he ordered. His man bowed and said he would gather some men to go out in the morning. But the morning wasn’t soon enough for the duke. The trees must be chopped down now. The duke’s man bowed again and set off to collect men and axes.

When the men reached the trees the sun was setting behind them and cast the men in a deep green light. It was beautiful and the men wondered why the duke would want these trees cut down. It seemed a shame to do it, seeing them filled with fruit and greenery. But one did not defy the duke and so they lifted their axes and brought them down into those trees. But it seemed a shame to let such perfect fruit go to waste.

And so the men left their axes to pick the ripe peaches, but not one of them took a bite. Instead they took off their shirts and laid the peaches carefully bundled in the cloth, far from where the trees would come down, as if trying to keep each small load of peaches as safe and warm as a child. Only when each peach from the trees was safe and sound did they pick up their axes and begin to heave. As each tree shuddered under the blows the men cried tears they could not understand, some ashamed and hiding the grief and others openly weeping as one by one, each tree came down. The men stood by and wept and wailed as if each had killed his own children.

The party was over. I was tired.

The rambling, mazelike loft apartment I shared with Cassie was now truly housewarmed, and the wine I’d sipped all evening lent a hazy gold warmth to the strings of tiny lights we’d looped from the curtain rods. Their cheery glow against the black expanse of the enormous industrial windows brought to mind a tiny vessel moving through an expanse of dark sea, the only bright spot in leagues. My ears hummed with hours of laughter and conversation, my muscles warm and languid from dancing in Cassie’s too-big dress, a sleeveless red vintage number in ruched velvet that hugged her curves. On my tiny body, with no curves to hug, it gapped and skimmed. Its hem, which graced Cassie’s ankles, tripped up my bare feet.

The last few stragglers were arranged in twos and threes, half in and out of their coat sleeves, pledging their devotion to future get-togethers, brunches, matinees, this-was-just-so-greats and we’ve-got-to-see-each-other-more-oftens. Little snatches of laughter swirled in my ears with the tinkling of all our new wine glasses being collected and carefully stood on the polished cement counter and in the gleaming steel sink. I spotted Cassie lounged with friends, leveled by drink and the relief of a party gone well on the broad sweep of hand-knotted silk and wool we’d chosen for the main living area. Her emerald dress and black hair shone like spilled inks across the lustrous blues and earthy plums of the rug, which still fairly vibrated with the effort of many hands and ten times as many fingers knotting it into existence. Cassie’s laughter rang like dropped bells as she rolled onto her back, helpless with it, her eyes soft and wet, her voice roughened with happy talk and drink. Beautiful Cassie. I would keep her happy, just like this, forever. I would–

“I’ve found you.”

I flinched and nearly fell, caught by strong hands.

“I’m so sorry. Did I startle you? It’s just that this place is so big. It’s wonderful, but I just can’t seem to find my coat.”

I’m smaller than all of Cassie’s friends, so I always look up to speak to them, but this man was monolithic. His voice rang something in me like a plucked cello string, and I took a deep breath before answering. His eyes seemed so far above me I couldn’t quite manage a bridge of reassuring contact.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s just over this way, on the other side of the kitchen. Through Cassie’s studio and down the back corridor. Follow me.”

The sounds of happy late night chatter and clinking glasses faded behind us, with one last wisp of Cassie’s laughter tickling my ear before dissipating in the darkness. I glanced back to see the tall guest a step behind me, and I startled to realize that one of his large hands still held me just above the elbow. His fingers easily enclosed my entire upper arm, and the heat of his palm pulsed into my bare skin. I regretted the playful impulse that earlier allowed Cassie to zip me into this bright, foolish splash of cloth. The enormous open space of Cassie’s studio enveloped us, the air rich with pigments and the easels peopled with gigantic canvases, landscapes teeming with impossible creatures, like walking through Cassie’s dreams. As we passed the bank of dark windows lining the corridor that would lead to the spare bed and its mountain of coats, I craned my head back to search the night sky for a light. Any light. I saw only my own reflection, shadowed by the guest’s enormous shape.

“You’re really way out here, aren’t you,” said the deep voice above me. “Not another residential building in sight. I suppose in a few years this whole warehouse district will be completely gentrified, filled up with luxury apartments like this one, all huge windows and acres of newly finished floors, cathedral ceilings and polished surfaces. Strange, just this one out here all by itself, isn’t it?”

“Well, it… Yes, well, we… Cassie and I…”

“Cassie waits tables at a coffee shop three days a week, doesn’t she? And focuses on her art, especially now that she has this place with an enormous studio. I don’t think Cassie comes from money. And you, what do you do exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh, me? Well, I do a little of this and a little of that,” I stammered. I stepped into the spare bedroom and snapped on the light. The bed was empty of coats.

I turned to face the guest, and was about to state the obvious, that his coat was clearly not here and must be somewhere else in the apartment, when he took my shoulders in his massive hands, and simply lifted me from the floor. It wasn’t pain that flooded my form, as I don’t feel pain, exactly, but the swimming feeling when my shape begins to lose integrity.

“This will do just fine,” the guest said in his booming voice. He lifted me higher and snapped my entire form in the air as one might snap the wrinkles out of a freshly washed garment. He lifted me to one side, took me in one hand and pushed the fingers of the other hand into the assembled energy of my shape, through my carefully created surface, sliding one arm inside the length of my own arm as if he were slipping into a jacket. With one arm in, he shifted and slipped his other hand and entire arm into my other arm-sleeve. Then he shrugged into me and tugged me tight around his massive shoulders and muscled back, effectively merging my energy with his own and engulfing me with his body. The soft impact I heard was the red velvet dress tumbling to the floor behind him.

He raised the energy of his voice to that of our native tongue and spoke a name I hadn’t heard in lifetimes. “It’s time to come home and make amends for what you’ve done.”

He stepped in front of an ornate freestanding mirror and turned to one side and then the other, straightening his clothing and admiring his handiwork. I could barely detect my pale shape behind the buttons of his shirt, my two eyes and mouth like three round, black holes of disappointment and surprise in the vague roundness of my face. Home. The thought of returning to that bleak place with its rules and strictures made my heart darken and cough out a mist of weak sparks. Already the mirror shimmered in the air, its solidity starting to shift.

“You really shouldn’t do this to people, you know,” he said. “Poor Cassie. She seems like a nice enough kid. She’s going to find herself and her drunk friends lying in an abandoned warehouse in a few minutes, you realize. There’ll be nothing left but a few wine glasses and an empty dress.”

But it was so lovely while it lasted, I thought as we walked as one out of the flickering, shimmering apartment and into the solidity of the night.

It’s always so lovely while it lasts.

In a rowdy Arab bar orbiting Betelgeuse, the blue-lipped, blue-haired jacky tapped his forehead, and a red monochrome hologram projected from his eyes. Sitting in the booth across from him, Freja watched it carefully.

This hologram was a security camera feed of an operating room. Must be a far-arm colony somewhere, Freja thought. There was a very pregnant woman on the table. The surgeon dipped scissors in an old-style steam autoclave. There were two men, dressed in samurai regalia, watching.

The jacky—rather Colonel Peters, the jacker—pulled a cord embedded in the flesh behind his ear and slid it across the table. Freja took the headset and put it in her ear.

“Hey sweetie, can I get a smoke?” Peters shouted to the waitress above the mesh of country and traditional sitar music that rattled the cups on the table.

Freja instinctively watched the doctor’s hands. Must be an unlicensed implant job, camera planted in the kid’s ear or eye for nutjob voyeurs. Or a drug-dosing, where they’d hold the baby’s health hostage for the dosage. That’s the only crime far-arm colonies ever had the tech for.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“There’s the rub, Freja,” Peter’s said in an electro-tinged voice. “It’s what we don’t see.”

The woman grunted and screamed. The surgeon was waiting for the baby, and then he wasn’t. There was the afterbirth, the blood, and no baby.

“Video manipulation?” Freja said, but already doubted that. Only one person could work with low-tech footage like this, but the Grey Ghost wouldn’t be caught dead on a backwater planet like Dawn.

Peters frowned. “Don’t know. We only get what was uploaded to the comsat. They’re blocking that baby’s ID for one reason or another. Unless of course…” Peters leaned in. “The kid’s invisible, and what we’re looking at is the goddamn invisible man.”

He laughed at his own joke.

“We don’t even know who these people in the video are,” Peters continued. “Facial scan doesn’t work with tech this old.”

“Slavery then,” Freja said. “Not enough AI’s to do the work there…which is?”

“Dawn’s still settling. Two generations in, but there’s a lot of forest to comb through. Still a Class-3 life-potential planet. They’re moving slower than Rigellian treacle. Gotta be careful not to disturb all that potential sentient life down there, right?” Peters chuckled. “Makes you wonder when Eden will give up the hunt and realize we’re alone out here.”

“Another thing,” Peters said, sliding a small box across the table.

It was labeled with Freja’s full name, the Old-Earth one she had tried to forget.

“Can’t believe you’d trust a jacky with a package,” she said.

“Astral Corp has good insurance. Guy that looks like this,” Peters pointed at his face, smiled. “He’s all show, no substance.”

Freja opened the box. There were plant seeds in it.

“They’re specific to Dawn’s environment. Engineered on Old Earth. Where she died.”

“Quite a coincidence,” Freja said.

“Chambers, down in the Rez Division is good about this sort of thing. Must have checked your itinerary.”

“But—”

Then Peters was gone from the jacky. The red light faded from the man’s eyes, and a cough burst from his throat as his own biology came back online.

Freja slammed the box shut. What did it matter how she got the seeds?

“Hey, Baldy, where you going?” the jacky said, watching Freja slide out of the booth. “Don’t you want to get to know the man behind the jacker? We’re good for more than flesh you know.”

He looked down at the ashtray and burning cigar on the table. “Christ, told them I don’t want no smokers. Lady, was he smoking?”

The waitress’s skates shrieked on the glass floor as she stopped in front of the booth. “All done here?” She slapped down a bill.

“Fucking Eden cheapskates,” the man shouted. “Was he smoking?”

Em’s missing.

“You never should’ve let her build those damned robots,” I mutter, making sure it’s loud enough Kammy can hear me.

Kammy lets out an exasperated sigh. “Em’s got a knack for these things,” she says in a voice that sounds like she’s pinching her nose. “If I don’t teach her how to program bio-silicate, who’s going to fix Taylor when he breaks down? You? Are you going to repair a Z-wave neural net, Olinda?”

I grit my teeth and finish lacing my boots. Maybe I can. Who knows what I could do before the accident? Maybe I’m a genius and none of us know it.

I suck in a deep breath as I stand, the scent of lavender and sweat swirling around me as I do. Kammy makes this oil we all brush into our hair. Keeps the lice away. I take another calming breath and put my hand on Kammy’s arm.

The air filtration system hums through the room and sends a hesitant vibration up into the soles of my feet. The air tastes stale and sterile. All the lights are off right now to save power. Boxes of slanting gray wash through the glass of the four south-facing windows and slash across the much-gouged wood flooring like a painting discarded by Van Gogh. The cabin is otherwise still as we gather our things.

Kammy turns and looks up at me. Her face softens slightly. She’s not a big woman, Kammy. If it weren’t for the hair she doesn’t let me cut, even her head would be tiny. Pretty much the opposite of me in every way, down to the fact she tans, and I burn in the summer sun. Her clothes are oft-patched rags of cloth we’ve found in storehouses over the years, just like mine.

“I’m worried,” I say, squeezing her forearm slightly. “The little wooden robot, Tony, seems fine enough, but that copper-plated one she made, the one she paired it with? That one keeps wandering.”

“She named it Joe for some reason. Em says they’re playing Hide and Seek,” Kammy mutters. “Don’t know why it keeps heading into the woods, though…”

Kammy opens the door and a stiff, frigid breeze sweeps into the large cabin. She grabs her old knapsack full of sensors and miscellaneous parts and steps outside. I follow, grabbing a couple walkies from their chargers as we leave. I close the door behind me with a sucking sound.

“There’s a storm coming,” Kammy says, staring off at the western horizon. “Half hour, hour. Looks bad. We need to find her.”

I hand her a walkie, then follow her eyes. A blushing crimson smears across the sky as the sun descends behind the incoming cloud front. It doesn’t look like much to me, but Kammy knows the weather by sight. She can even tell if the rains will be bad or good. Gives us time to get the fields covered.

Soft thuds come from the east side of the house as the old security droid, Taylor, wrangles the chickens. That’s how we found out Em was missing. Taylor was doing her chores while she took off.

Damn kid.

“I’ll go northeast,” I say. “Em said she saw a rabbit up there the other day. Might’ve gone after it.”

Kammy nods still staring at the clouds. “Sounds good. I’ll go north. I’ve got to replace some sensors anyway and God knows you’re all thumbs with these things.”

I smile and follow her gaze to the dark smudge on the horizon. “Good or bad?” I ask.

We could use some clean rain. Just been sweeping acid rain these past few weeks.

“‘No green, the waters clean’,” Kammy intones, then waves at me to go. “Be back before sundown. Taylor picked up some weird movement on his sensors last night, but a couple of the sensors went down last week, so he isn’t sure what it was.”

I nod, a ball of anxiety forming in my stomach. Quick flashes fill my thoughts.

Blood. Screams. Disjointed recollections of a broken mind.

Then they’re gone, and I don’t mention them. I never do. The memories come more often than I’d like to admit. They’re never good.

“Be careful,” I say, my heartbeat fluttering.

“You too,” Kammy says, then heads north on the beaten path to the north field we clear every year.

I watch her until she disappears under the barren trees, then head to where Em said she saw that rabbit.

I try, and fail, to dismiss the panic rising in the back of my throat as I break through the tree line.

---

In his bed-chamber, hung round with tapestries that emblazoned tales so ancient that the matter of them had been long forgotten, the Old Lord lay dying. His breathing made the only sound in the room save the mantel clock, and his bloody spittle flecked the linens.

At the foot of his bed, the Lady Myrilla sat in her cushioned chair, making the last neat hem stitches in his burial shroud; black work for a dark day. Her hair white as the linen, her eyes the faded blue of summer sky, she awaited the inevitable change of worlds. Her hands fell into the rhythm of the mantel clock while thoughts tumbled over in her mind, pleasure and pain, bitterness and joy in turn. The past washed over the present, yet she held the future at bay: the new age she could not bear to imagine.

Beyond the mullioned window, past the crenellated wall of the outer keep, the sea beat its own measure on the rocky strand. The waves advanced and withdrew, moving the shells and twisted, bleached driftwood now forward, now back. Straining her eyes, the Lady could see at the limit of her vision the mist-shrouded topmasts of carracks and ships of war, dancing to the long, steady swell.

He was a better Prince than a husband, though he never did me harm by word or deed. He would talk to me as though I were one of his Privy Council, and I loved that in him. My mourning I have done already, but I will never stop listening for his step.

A soft, almost tentative knock sounded at the door. “Enter,” the Lady said, threading her needle through the cloth.

Aramond, the Lord Chancellor, pushed the door open, his ironwood cane tapping on the stone floor. Myrilla presented her hand, and he made his way across the room, taking her hand in his own and kissing it. His middle finger bore the ring of his office, heavy with gold and holding an anachite diamond, sovereign against all poisons, natural or compounded by men.

He then went along to the head of the bed, steadying himself with one hand on the carved serpent that wound its way ’round the bed frame in a reflection of that great Worm which circumbinds the world. With an effort, he bent to touch the Lord’s brow.

“How long?” the Lady asked.

“An hour. Two perhaps, but no more.”

“Can you not, then, conjure against death?”

“Never so, most serene Lady.” He leaned on his cane, and pulled a chair next to Myrilla, with the dragon’s head of his staff against the arm. “We must talk, and not in fancy-dress phrases.”

“Go to! You were never a plain-spoken man.” In spite of the shadow that lay on the room, she smiled. “Let me have your last counsel.”

---