The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight Read Online Free PDF Page A

the dust with his back to her, dark sweat patch down the middle of his shirt. She gave some long, hard consideration to making that sweat patch the bull's eye and shooting him in the back right there. But killing a man isn't easy, especially after hard consideration. She watched him pick up the last coin and drop it in the bag, then stand, pulling the drawstrings, then turn, smiling. "I got the –"
    They stayed there a while. He crouched in the dusty street, bag of silver in one hand, uncertain smile lit up in the sun, but his eyes looking decidedly scared in the shadow of his cheap hat. She on the bottom step of the tavern – bloody bare feet, bloody split mouth, bloody hair plastered across her bloody forehead – but the bow good and steady.
    He licked his lips, swallowed, then licked them again. "Where's Neary?"
    "In a bad way." She was surprised by the iron in her voice. Sounded like someone she didn't even know. Smoke's voice, maybe.
    "Where's my brother?"
    "In a worse."
    Dodd swallowed, sweaty neck shifting, starting to ease gently backwards. "You kill him?"
    "Forget about them two and stop still."
    "Look, Shy, you ain't going to shoot me, are you? Not after all we been through. You ain't going to shoot. Not me. Are you?" His voice was rising higher and higher, but still he edged back towards the well. "I didn't want this. It weren't my idea!"
    "Course not. You need to think to have an idea and you ain't up to it. You just went along. Even if it happened to mean me getting hung."
    "Now look, Shy –"
    "Stop still I said." She drew the bow all the way, string cutting tight into her bloody fingers. "You fucking deaf, boy?"
    "Look, Shy, let's just talk this out, eh? Just talk." He held his trembly palm up like that might stop an arrow, his pale blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly she got a memory rise up of the first time she met him, leaning back against the livery, smiling free and easy, none too clever but plenty of fun. She'd had a profound lack of fun in her life since she'd left home. You'd never have thought she left home to find it.
    "I know I done wrong, but... I'm an idiot." And he tried out a smile, no steadier than his palm. He'd been worth a smile or two, Dodd, at least to begin with, and though no artist of a lover had kept the bed warm, which was something, and made her feel as if she weren't on her own on one side with the whole rest of the world on the other, which was something more.
    "Stop still," she said, but more softly now.
    "You ain't going to shoot me." Still he was edging back towards the well. "It's me, right? Me. Dodd. Just don't shoot me, now." Still going. "What I'm going to do is –"
    She shot him.
    It's a strange thing about a bow. Stringing it, and drawing it, and nocking the arrow, and taking your aim – all that takes effort, and skill, and a decision. Letting go the string is nothing. You just stop holding it. In fact, once you've got it drawn and aimed it's easier to let fly than not to.
    Dodd was less than a dozen strides distant, and the shaft flitted across the space between them, missed his hand by a whisker and stuck silently into his chest. Surprised her, the lack of a sound. But then flesh is soft. Specially in comparison to an arrow-head. Dodd took one more wobbly pace, like he hadn't quite caught up with being arrow-stuck yet, his eyes going very wide. Then he blinked down at the shaft.
    "You shot me," he whispered, and he sank to his knees, blood already spreading out into his shirt in a dark oval.
    "Didn't I bloody warn you!" She flung the bow down, suddenly furious with him and with the bow too.
    He stared at her. "But I didn't think you'd do it."
    She stared back. "Neither did I." A silent moment, and the wind blew up one more time and stirred the dust around them. "Sorry."
    "Sorry?" he croaked.
    Might've been the stupidest thing she'd ever said, and that with some fierce competition, but what else could she say? No words were going to take that arrow out. She