{"id":3108,"date":"2022-03-10T22:47:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T22:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3108"},"modified":"2022-03-11T16:54:39","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T16:54:39","slug":"the-last-truth-by-anamaria-curtis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3108","title":{"rendered":"The Last Truth by AnaMaria Curtis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Last Truth<\/em><\/strong> by AnaMaria Curtis1<\/sup> (Tor.com, 22nd<\/sup> February 2022) opens with Eri, a lockbreaker, opening a chest on a ship so it can be plundered later on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lock on the next chest glows red when she approaches it. It\u2019s a standard truth-lock, spelled by Mr. Gilsen\u2019s lockmaster to recognize its true owner. He\u2019s a wealthy passenger unlucky enough to have hired Mareck\u2019s whole ship for his travel, and he\u2019ll be the last person Eri has to steal from.
\u201cOpen,\u201d she says.
\u201cI require a truth.\u201d
\u201cI am your rightful owner.\u201d It never works on the locks she deals with, since it\u2019s a lie, but she\u2019s supposed to try, to test for weaknesses. This lock remains a stubborn red.
\u201cI require a truth,\u201d it repeats.
Eri reaches for her tiered truths and plucks out the one that seems least painful to lose. \u201cThe ship that brought me from Ekitri to Sild was overcrowded, and my bunkmate elbowed me in her sleep and bruised my jaw one night. It hurt to speak for weeks. I learned to make myself understood without speaking; this is why Mareck picked me to be a lockbreaker.\u201d
The lock glows a soft, welcoming yellow. The ache in Eri\u2019s chest deepens a bit. She wonders what she just gave up. It\u2019s a tricky business, opening truth-locks. Only truths a lockbreaker has told nobody else can open a lock. As soon as a truth is spoken aloud to the lock, it disappears, unusable\u2014and the memory that sparked it goes too.2<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After the story\u2019s gimmick has been laid out (Eri can burgle these locked chests at the cost of her memories) she realises that there is someone watching her. That person is a musician called Aena who, after they talk, convinces Eri to open a chest that contains sheet music that she wants to see before a forthcoming test of her musical skills. Eri, who is cautious of the musician (music is a potent and semi-magical force in this world), agrees, and a relationship is formed when Eri recovers a lost memory when later listening to Aena sing.
When Aena then asks Eri to get her violin the two become even more deeply entwined, and they then agree to run away together when they get onshore (Eri hopes that, with Aena\u2019s music, she may be able to eventually recover all her lost memories).
Complications develop in the last part of the story (spoiler) when Eri encounters a particularly strong lock that the captain of the ship insists she open to gain her freedom. However, doing this will require the remainder of Eri\u2019s memories, so she leaves herself a note saying to steal the violin and then contact Aena\u2014and wonders if she will be able to understand her own instructions . . . .
Eri succeeds in an engrossing last section, and the last paragraph is suitably uplifting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman bends down to take the violin from Eri\u2019s hands and presses a soft kiss to Eri\u2019s temple as she straightens up.
\u201cWe don\u2019t have much time,\u201d she says, opening the case, making sure the soundproofed door is sealed, \u201cbut what we have, I will give you.\u201d
She puts the violin to her chin and begins to play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story\u2019s gimmick of telling truths (sacrificing memories) to open locks is, to be honest, not the most convincing, but it is the only major credulity-stretcher in the story, and the rest of it is well told and plotted. If you like the sort of fiction that appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em> magazine, you\u2019ll like this.
*** (Good). 5,350 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. This story won the \u201cLeVar Burton Reads writing contest, as co-presented by FIYAH Literary Magazine and Tor.com!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. This passage is where the story should start\u2014there are a couple of unnecessary and\/or confusing paragraphs before this (the first should have been moved further into the story and the second deleted).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Last Truth by AnaMaria Curtis1 (Tor.com, 22nd February 2022) opens with Eri, a lockbreaker, opening a chest on a ship so it can be plundered later on: The lock on the next chest glows red when she approaches it. It\u2019s a standard truth-lock, spelled by Mr. Gilsen\u2019s lockmaster to recognize its true owner. He\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[759],"tags":[539,24,760,761,12,116],"class_list":["post-3108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anamaria-curtis","tag-539","tag-3-2","tag-anamaria-curtis","tag-magical-locks","tag-short-story","tag-tor-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}