Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

Sylvain found the nearest service corridor and descended to the cellars. He got a bottle of champagne from one of the king’s stewards – a man who knew him well enough to extend the mercy of credit. He bought a bag of walnuts and half a cheese from a provisioner’s boy who was wise enough to demand coin. The Duc d’Orléans’ baker gave him a loaf of dark bread and made a favor of it. Then he slipped out of the palace and made his way to the cisterns.

The little fish dozed on a branch of her ice tree, thin limbs dangling. The bird was rearranging the nest, plucking at fern fronds and clucking to itself.

“You’re fancy,” the little fish said, her voice sleepy.

Sylvain looked down. He was in full court garb, a manikin in satin, wrapped in polished leather and studded with silver buttons.

He pulled off his wig and settled himself on a boulder. “Do I look like a man of worth to you, little one?”

“Worth what, Papa?”

He grimaced. “My dear, that is exactly the question.”

He spread a handkerchief at his feet and made a feast for himself. Good cheese and fresh bread made a better meal than many he’d choked back on campaign, better even than most palace feasts with dishes hauled in from the village or up from the cellar kitchens, cold, salty, and studded with congealed fat. A man could live on bread and cheese. Many did worse. And many went gouty and festered on meat drowning in sauce.

The parrot winged over to investigate. Sylvain offered it a piece of cheese. It nuzzled the bread and plucked at the bag of walnuts. Sylvain untied the knot and the bird flapped away with a nut clenched in each taloned foot.

The little fish stretched and yawned. She slipped from the branch, surfaced at the edge of the pool, and padded over to him.

“Stinky,” she said, nose wrinkling.

“The cheese? You’re no French girl.” He pared a sliver for her. She refused it. “Some bread?”

She shook her head.

“What do you eat, my little fish?” She had teeth, human teeth. Had he been starving her?

“Mud,” she said, patting her belly.

There was certainly enough mud to choose from. “Would you eat a fish?” She stuck out her tongue in disgust. “The parrot eats nuts. Have you tried one?”

“Yucky. What’s this, Papa?” She lifted the champagne bottle.

“Don’t shake it. Here, I’ll show you.”

He scraped off the wax seal and unshipped the plug. He held it out. She sniffed at the neck of the bottle and shrugged, then took the bottle and dribbled a little on the floor. It foamed over her bare toes.

“Ooh, funny!” she said, delighted.

“It’s like water, but a bit different.”

She raised the bottle overhead and giggled as the champagne foamed over her ears. It dribbled down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. She licked her lips and grinned.

“Don’t drink it. It might make you sick.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just water, Papa. Fuzzy water.”

“All right, give it a try.”

She took a gulp and then offered the bottle to him, companionable as a sentry sharing a canteen with a friend.

He shook his head. “No, thank you, I don’t prefer it.”

He watched attentively as she played. She drank half the bottle but it had no apparent effect. She remained nimble and precise, and if her laughter was raucous and uncontrolled, it was no more than normal. The rest of the bottle she poured on or around herself, reveling in the bubbles and foam. Sylvain wondered if the ladies of the palace had tried bathing in champagne. If they hadn’t, he wasn’t going to suggest the fashion. The foamy sweet stuff was already a waste of good grapes.

When she lost interest, she dropped the bottle and arced back into the pool, diving clean and surfacing with a playful spout and splash. A finger or two was left, and when he poured it out, it foamed on the rocks fresh as if the bottle had just been cracked.

He nodded to himself. If the little fish could force water through pipes and sleeves, could make ice and keep it from melting, could chase him around the palace and make him look a fool while never leaving the cisterns, what were a few bubbles?

Sylvain knelt and pushed the empty bottle under the surface of the pool. He had done this a thousand times – filled his canteen at village wells, at farmyard troughs, at battlefield sloughs tinged pink with men’s blood – and each time, his lungs ached as he watched the bubbles rise. He ached for one sip of mountain air, a lick of snowmelt, just a snatch of a shepherd’s song heard across the valley, or a fading echo of a wolf’s cry under a blanket of moonlight. Ached to crouch by a rushing rocky stream and sip water pristine and pure.

“Thirsty, Papa?”

The little fish stood at his side. In her hand was a cup made of ice, its walls porcelain-thin and sharp as crystal. He raised it to his lips. The cold water sparkled with fine bubbles that burst on his tongue like a thousand tiny pinpricks and foamed at the back of his throat. He drank it down and smiled.

THE GRAND GALLERY streamed with all the nobles and luminaries of Europe, men Sylvain had glimpsed across the battlefield and longed to cross swords with, highborn women whose worth was more passionately negotiated than frontier borders, famous courtesans whose talents were broadcast in military camps and gilded parlors from Moscow to Dublin, princes of the church whose thirst for bloody punishment was unquenched and universal. This pure stream was clotted with a vast number of rich and titled bores with little to do and nothing to say. The whole world was in attendance for the king’s birthday, but Sylvain had only glimpsed it. He hadn’t left the champagne fountain all evening.

“If you don’t come, I’ll brain you with my sword hilt. Mademoiselle de Nesle is Madame’s sister. If you snub one, you insult both,” Gérard said, then added in an undertone, “Plus, she has the finest tits in the room and is barely clothed.”

“In a moment.”

The fountain branched overhead. Crystal limbs reached for the gilded ceiling and dropped like a weeping willow. Each limb was capped with ice blossoms, and each blossom streamed with champagne.

Madame had offered the first taste to the king, plucking a delicate cup of ice that sprouted from the green ice basin like a mushroom from the forest floor and filling it from a gushing spout. The king had toasted Sylvain and led the gallery in a round of applause. Then the guests flocked eagerly for their turn. They drank gallons of champagne, complained about toothache, and then drank more.

Sylvain had planned for this. He knew the noble appetite, knew the number of expected guests and how much they could be expected to drink. The fountain’s basin was tall and wide, and the reservoir beneath held the contents of a thousand magnums. The reservoir was tinted dark green with baker’s dye. It was too dark to see through but Sylvain calculated it to be about half full. More than enough champagne was left to keep the fountain flowing until the last courtier had been dragged to bed.

But the guests were now more interested in the king’s other gifts – an African cat panting in a jeweled harness, a Greek statue newly cleaned of its dirt and ancient paint, a tapestry stitched by a hundred nuns over ten years, a seven foot-tall solar clock. The guests were still drinking champagne at an admirable rate but sent attendants to fill their cups. The novelty had worn off.

Sylvain slipped off his glove and laid his hand on the edge of the basin, letting the cold leach into his bare palm. The little fish had been eager to play in the fountain’s reservoir, but she’d been inside for hours now and must be getting bored. Still, she had played no tricks. She kept the champagne flowing fresh, kept the ice from melting just as she had agreed. All because he had promised her a song.