Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

to

Dreams of Decadence

. She’s currently working on an adventure/ time travel novel with Eric Flint. Her Three Musketeer Mysteries are upcoming under the name Sarah D’Almeida.

JACONA stank in the heat of a summer night. The stenches melded, mingled, and rolled onto Ree’s senses like a physical assault—a cloying staleness of dinners, the acrid bite of wood smoke, the offensive punch of middens and animals and offal, of human sweat and too many bodies living too close together.

Ree remembered when the smell didn’t bother him. He remembered—and shook his head and tried to forget. The new talents had their uses. Right now he could smell a collection of unfamiliar scents: leather, sweat, and steel. A patrol. Approaching.

Silently, he slipped back into the shadows of his refuge, the abandoned warehouse behind him. It had been deserted since last winter, when the magic failed. All that remained now was a maze of rotting timber and fallen stone, unfit for human life. Which did not bother Ree. He had not been human since the magic storms.

One of the disturbances had caught him, a few days after the magic went bad. He had been stalking a sleek rat that would have given him meat for a day. The rat had found an old cat waiting to die. Ree had pounced on the rat as it gave the cat an experimental nip.

Lurking in the shadows, he shivered, despite the heat of the night, as he remembered the blurriness and the queasy feeling—as he remembered opening his eyes to a different world. A different self. To a self equipped with cat claws and rat’s tail, with cat eyes, too sensitive to movement and keen in the darkness—to a short coat of fur over his whole body. The fur had helped him survive the winter. His keener senses helped him avoid the patrols and the soldiers who killed hobgoblins like him.

At least he’d been lucky so far. But it was getting harder. Ever since the snow began to melt, there had been more and more patrols. Ree was the last of the street rats who sheltered in the ruined warehouse. The humans had been caught and taken off to orphanages or work gangs, and the hobgoblins had been killed. For all he knew, he was the only hobgoblin left in Jacona.

How long could he go on surviving?

Voices drifted to his ears. They had a strange accent, not like the regular patrol. And yet, they still smelled military. Ree tensed and breathed shallowly. The area around his refuge had been empty at night ever since Emperor Melles had declared a curfew so the hobgoblin patrols would not accidentally kill anyone’s registered Changechildren.

Ree scrambled up through the debris until he could peer out from one of the many holes in the roof.

Outside, in the dark night, his changed eyes could see strangers. Soldiers. Real soldiers. At least no city patrol Ree had ever seen would dress in gray. City patrols believed in bright colors as a way of showing how important they were. The army believed in efficiency. Gray clothes and actually doing their jobs.

Ree held his breath. Soldiers were bad news. He ducked back into the dark before he reminded himself that only his changed sight allowed him to see them. And to hear them, as they drew nearer.

“. . . can’t believe no one’s torn this dump down, even for firewood.”

One of the soldiers laughed. Ree could not see which one. There were five, all burly and looking well-fed.

“Ever’thing round here’s Army property now, anyhow. Ain’t no one was gonna go through all that crap last winter just to steal a bit of firewood off of Army land.”

An icy fist clenched around Ree’s gut. He bit his lip, to avoid calling out. The army was efficient. Efficient . . . at killing hobgoblins and undesirables. At rounding up street rats for the work gangs. “More like they didn’t want to meet the rats,” said another man. “Every brat that’s been picked up in this sector knows the rat hole.”

They moved in close enough to be hidden by the walls of the building. Only the sound of their breathing, the sound of their movements told Ree they were still there and coming closer. And closer.

Ree stayed where he was, frozen. His hands reached back, to find support against a wall that was mostly crumbling rubble. He felt the dryness of plaster against his palms. Surely they would not enter his refuge. This place wasn’t safe. For humans.

For him, and for the rest of the city’s discards, it was home.

“Gah! Filthy vermin!” Squeaks and skittering joined the soldier’s curse as rats fled the noise. A boot scraped in the rubble.

They had come in. Ree’s chest hurt. His mind became a blank space filled with fear. Part of him—the part of him at the back of the mind, the part of him that was not fully human, not fully himself, wanted to run, to hide. But his working mind, his memories, knew better. To run meant to call attention to himself. It meant death.