The Tangleroot Palace Read online

  Praise for The Tangleroot Palace

  A Publishers Weekly Top-10 SF, Fantasy & Horror 2021 Upcoming Title

  “Liu (the Monstress series) charms with this spellbinding collection of six short stories and one novella. The standouts are ‘The Briar and the Rose,’ a darkly fascinating retelling of ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ in which a female duelist discovers her witch employer is living in the stolen body of Princess Rose, and helps Rose to regain it; and ‘Call Her Savage,’ a steampunk western set during the Opium Wars and following half-Chinese antiheroine Lady Marshal as she struggles to be the hero others need her to be. Also of note are the haunting and eerie, ‘Sympathy for the Bones’; ‘The Last Dignity of Man,’ about a would-be supervillain who realizes he must be his own superman; and two stories set in the world of Liu’s Dirk & Steele paranormal romance series: the atmospheric historical fantasy, ‘Where the Heart Lives,’ which serves as a prequel to the series, and the dystopian ‘After the Blood,’ about Amish vampires, set in the series’s future. The title novella offers a more standard secondary world fantasy, about a runaway princess drawn to an enchanted forest, but uses this familiar plot to probe the character’s feelings of being trapped. Liu’s mastery of so many different subgenres astounds, and her ear for language carries each story forward on gorgeously crafted sentences. This is a must-read.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A collection of short stories exploring the emotional complexity, diverse physicality, and layered sexuality of resourceful women. . . . The only drawback to these seven stories is that readers will want far more time in each world.”

  —Kirkus, starred review

  “The Tangleroot Palace is charming and ruthless. Tales that feel new yet grounded in the infinitely ancient, a mythology for the coming age.”

  —Angela Slatter, author of The Bitterwood Bible

  “This is a superb collection from start to finish. Mysterious, beautiful and strange, harsh and charming, it fires the emotional palate.”

  —Charles de Lint, author of the Newford series

  “Vivid writing that lights up my brain. Evocative settings. Memorable characters engaged in dark struggles. When I read Marjorie Liu’s stories, I know I’m in the hands of a master.”

  —Carrie Vaughn, author of the Kitty Norville series

  “Ferociously inventive, deliciously eerie, The Tangleroot Palace both chills and enchants. Don’t be afraid: Liu’s elegantly artful stories will coil around you, devour you, and you won’t even mind being consumed.”

  —Shana Abé, New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author

  “Some authors excel at one thing; others can do it all. Whether it’s fairy tales or superheroes or the post-apocalypse, Liu always delivers, and with her own unique spin.”

  —Marie Brennan, author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent series

  “Rich and evocative tales with just the right amount of bite.”

  —Kelley Armstrong, author of Bitten

  5/5 Stars. “Each tale brought something beautiful and totally original to the table and I truly felt completely immersed in every sentence Liu wrote.”

  —A Series of Various Events

  On the Monstress series

  “This series is impossible to classify; genre elements mingle in mythical and gleefully subversive ways.”

  —New York Times

  “Filled to the brim with awesome.”

  —Kirkus

  “Infused with feminist themes; almost all of the characters are strong—and deadly—women.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Liu’s accomplishment is impressive. She’s created characters who feel larger than life, but whose motivations and values are almost always obscure.”

  —NPR

  “Big, beautiful, terrifying, violent magic.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  On the Hunter Kiss series

  “Liu is one of the best new voices in paranormal fiction.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “You’ll want to read this series over and over.”

  —Angela Knight, New York Times bestselling author of the Mageverse series

  “Readers who love urban fantasies like those of Charlaine Harris or Kim Harrison will relish Marjorie M. Liu.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Liu’s books are kick-ass reads.”

  —Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of Bitten

  “Superlative.”

  —The Miami Herald

  THE TANGLEROOT PALACE

  MARJORIE LIU

  Also by Marjorie Liu

  A Taste of Crimson (2006)

  X-Men: Dark Mirror (2005)

  The Dirk & Steele series

  Tiger Eye (2005)

  Within the Flames (2005)

  Shadow Touch (2006)

  Red Heart Jade (2006)

  Eye of Heaven (2006)

  Soul Song (2007)

  The Last Twilight (2008)

  The Wild Road (2008)

  The Fire King (2009)

  The Dark of Dreams (2010)

  Hunter Kiss series

  The Iron Hunt (2008)

  Darkness Calls (2009)

  Inked (2010)

  A Wild Light (2010)

  The Silver Voice (2011)

  The Mortal Bone (2011)

  The Labyrinth of Stars (2014)

  The Monstress graphic novel series with Sana Takeda

  Vol. 1: Awakening (2016)

  Vol. 2: The Blood (2017)

  Vol. 3: Haven (2018)

  Vol. 4: The Chosen (2019)

  Vol. 5: Warchild (2020)

  TACHYON

  SAN FRANCISCO

  The Tangleroot Palace: Stories

  Copyright © 2021 Marjorie Liu

  This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.

  Introduction copyright © 2021 by Marjorie Liu

  Cover art and illustrations copyright © 2020 by Sana Takeda

  Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

  Author photo copyright © 2020 by Nina Subin

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  415.285.5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jaymee Goh

  Print ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-352-1

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-353-8

  Printed in the United States by Versa Press, Inc.

  First Edition: 2021

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  “Sympathy for the Bones” copyright © 2012. Originally published in An Apple for the Creature, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner (Ace). | “Briar and Rose” copyright © 2016. Originally published in The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga Press). | “The Light and The Fury” copyright © 2010. Originally published as “Call Her Savage” in Masked, edited by Lou Anders. (Gallery Books). | “The Last Dignity of Man” copyright © 2013. Originally published in The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius, edited by John Joseph Ad
ams (Tor Books). | “Where the Heart Lives” copyright © 2012. Originally published on Smashwords. | “After the Blood” copyright © 2010. Originally published in Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin (Gallery Books). | “Tangleroot Palace” copyright © 2009. Originally published in Never After (Jove).

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for purchasing this book. We hope you enjoy it.

  Please absolutely do not share, reproduce, post, or resell this e-book. Piracy is illegal. This book is protected by international copyright law; all rights are reserved without the express permission of the author and the publishers.

  Most importantly, piracy keeps authors from getting paid. It also keeps publishers from putting out more great books like this. If you have any questions about copyright, or if you think this copy was pirated, please immediately contact us at [email protected]

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  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  415.285.5615

  [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Sympathy for the Bones

  The Briar and the Rose

  The Light and The Fury

  The Last Dignity of Man

  Where the Heart Lives

  After the Blood

  Tangleroot Palace

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Greetings, friends.

  I started writing this introduction when the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to unfold. An early adopter of its seriousness, I was living in Japan, close to the epicenter—and it was strange and surreal watching the societal threads, what we take for granted, pull apart bit by bit. Now, months later, I’ve returned to finish this introduction—and while I’d like to say the intervening time has given me a new perspective around my work, the only shift for me has been a deeper understanding of the limits of human imagination—including mine.

  That said, here we are, together—and here, before you, are fragments of my imagination, sometimes limited, sometimes not. I’ve never been someone who lingers over my past work. I am very much a creature of the present. When I write, I live for the moment, passing through a story, inhabiting the skin of the characters—and when that story is done, so am I.

  But I mean, done. With some rare exceptions, I have almost no recall over the content of my previous work, whether it’s a novel, short story, or comic. Broad strokes, yes. I can say, “There’s a merman! A gargoyle! A tiger shape-shifter!” But after that, my memory skids right off the road. Even now, as I write this, I keep trying to test myself by looking at the titles of my novels, and it’s dire, folks. I honestly don’t know what the hell I’ve done these past seventeen years, except that apparently, I wrote a lot of words.

  This amnesia was not some surprise. For years I’ve thought about why this happens, why the wall goes up after I write “the end.” I asked a friend once, and she commented offhand that perhaps writing is like channeling a spirit in a prolonged séance—the spirit moves through me—but it’s not as if I want it hanging around when I’m done talking. I send away that which no longer serves me—and move on to the next conversation.

  Which is a nice and tidy way of thinking about it, but one could just as easily argue that I’m phobic when it comes to introspection. Remembering my work would require remembering me—and unfortunately, that’s its own challenge.

  But, anyway, that’s a long way of saying that when I was approached regarding this collection, I had a hard time remembering what short fiction I had written that could actually fill a book. The answer, I realized in short order, was quite a lot. Nor is this collection entirely complete—there are a small handful of stories still floating around in other anthologies—but this an excellent overview of what happens when one never says no to offers of work.

  With one exception, all the stories contained herein were written over an eight-year period or so, while I was pounding out paranormal romance novels and urban fantasies—and working for Marvel Comics, as perhaps the first woman of color writing for them. These are the stories of my twenties and very early thirties, slices of prose from a formative decade when I was still figuring things out (an ongoing process, I assure you), produced between crushing deadlines, driven less by ideas and more by emotions. They’re time capsules, each one capturing a different stage of me, who I was, who I was becoming. Those are also the years when I was living in the Midwest, in the center of a forest—an impenetrable, tangled forest where every night the coyotes would howl, a forest where I never set foot because I never felt invited. But I had forgotten that, too—and I’m somewhat amused that it took me reading these stories to remember what it felt like to live in the middle of that forest—and to see how persistently those trees entered (and still enter) my work.

  These seven stories are not presented in the order they were written, and some of them have been lightly (and not so lightly) edited. I know, I know . . . but I couldn’t help myself! Don’t ever let a writer, after more than a decade away from a story, have access to it again—they’ll compulsively bring their new selves to the page and start renovating. Still, these are more or less the same as they were, tales about warrior women and runaway princesses; ordinary girls battling faery queens; a post-pandemic apocalyptic tale of an Amish vampire and the young woman who loves him; a teen who uses dolls to kill; even a depressed tech billionaire with some superhero identity issues. I look over them now and see the common threads—a longing for home, friendship, love—characters often driven by a weary hope in the possibility of something good.

  Hope in the possibility of something good—even the tiniest, most wee little good—is sometimes all we’ve got. And that hope is never unavailable to us, even if seems far away or lost entirely. Hope is the driving force of these stories before you.

  By the time you read this, who knows where we’ll be—hopefully healthy, hopefully safe with our loved ones, hopefully figuring out our lives and making what we can of them, as always. Under the best and worst of circumstances, that’s the aspirational baseline—to hope for a better tomorrow, to wake up each day with a little resolve, a little resilience, and simply try for something.

  Easier said than done, right?

  But I have this simple philosophy that’s always served me well: “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

  It applies to everything in life, really—whether it’s a job opportunity or something as nebulous as a dream. If you don’t ask life for a possibility, if you don’t dwell in possibilities, if you don’t hope, the answer is always no.

  And so I say, if you’re reading this and going through hard times, try to dwell in the possibility of a better tomorrow, no matter how impossible it seems.

  Ask the universe a question, see what happens. I hope—see, there it is again—I hope your adventure is beautiful.

  —Marjorie Liu

  August 2020

  Sympathy for the Bones

  The funeral was in a bad place, but Martha Bromes never did much care about such things, and so she put her husband into a hole at Cutter’s, and we as her family had to march up the long stone track into the hills to find the damn spot, because the only decent bits of earth in all that place were far deep in the forest, high into the darkness. Rock, everywhere else, and cairns were no good for the dead. The animals were too smart. Might find a piece of human flesh in the yard by the pump with sloppiness like that. I’d seen it myself, years past. No good at all.

  The leaves had gone yellow and the air bit cold, whining shrill like the brats left behind the dead, trudging slow beside their weeping mother. Little turds, little nothings. Just blood and bone, passed on from a father who was a cutter, a stone lover, mixing his juice inside a womb that was cold and s
ly. I did not like Martha. I did not like her husband, either. Edward Bromes was a hard man to enjoy, in any fashion. I cried no tears that he died.

  Later that night, I burned the doll that killed him.

  Next morning, frost: first kiss of winter. I added layers of wool, and laced my feet and legs into boots lined with rabbit, gathered my satchels, took up a tin can I hung from the hook at my belt, and marched from the rotten timber shack into a silver forest, glittering, spiked with light and a chill.

  Persimmons had fallen overnight and the deer had not got to them. Quick business, but careful; those thin orange skins split open at the hint of a tense finger, and I ruined more than I cared to admit. Popped them in my mouth to hide the evidence. Spit out the seeds into my palm and tucked them into the satchel where I kept the needle and thread. The rest, what was perfect and frostbit, I carried in the can for old Ruth.

  She was knitting when I came upon her, sitting on her slanting porch as though the cold was nothing to withered flesh. Crooked broken teeth, crooked smile that might have been pretty but for the long scar pulling her bottom lip.

  “Clora, you brought me sweets,” she cooed, setting aside her yarn. “Enough for pudding?”