by JY Yang
Just by the Gardens’ sprawling library was a set of stairs leading to the basements. I knew with dream-certainty that this led to my destination. I climbed downward for fucking ever, plunging into a damp gloom that strained the eyes and clung to the skin. The walls changed from wood to mortar slurry to raw stone. I was in the bedrock underneath the mansion. I must have descended a hundred yields, maybe more.
By the time I reached the bottom, I was dazed, almost numb, as if the air above had the weight of water and was crushing the ability to think out of me. In front of me lay a web of red string, impressively knotted like a gift box. All good sense had left me by then, so I unthinkingly grasped the central knot, as if I could undo it with my hands. Pain shot up both arms the moment I touched it, and in hindsight I wonder if it was just the poison darts or also a warning from my benefactor. At the merest touch of slackcraft, the ropes undid themselves, reeling back into hidden places in the walls. But by then, it was too late. I was already doomed, even if I didn’t realize it then.
I traveled a long dark corridor of stone, its ceiling high over my head. At the end of it: a massive stone door that had to be pushed in with slackcraft. Behind that? Caves. I don’t know how old they were, whether they were carved by hand or slackcraft or machinery—I’m no geologist, I can’t fucking tell. But now the chamber was filled with light from massive sunballs strung between its hewn pillars.
In the middle of it all, on a tall flat slab of rock like a dais, sat the one who had brought me here. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure what I would find at the end of this gravesent journey. None of the writings around this child prophet had described them. They had barely treated them as human. And after all the horrors I’d read about, I was expecting something monstrous, deformed by cruelty.
But what I found was a child. A child who looked normal, a child who breathed and had blood running in their veins like any other human. Blood that showed as a blush on papery skin that had never seen the sun. That child looked at me with an expression equal parts sadness and longing.
“It’s you,” I said. Their identity was unmistakable. I was staring into Rider’s face, as it might have been when they were ten years old. “You did it. You made the future.”
The child shook their head. “No, I didn’t. It never works perfectly.”
“But I’m here,” I said.
“You’re not them,” they said.
I realized that they had been waiting for their twin. I thought about the argument I’d had with Rider before coming here. Was I meant to have brought them with me? Was this my fault?
“It’s hard to control the flow of events,” they explained. “It’s like directing a drop of water rolling down the back of your hand.”
“Water follows the most likely pathway,” I said. “But there are many pathways.”
They nodded.
I had so many questions, but one burned the brightest of all. “Tell me what happened at Rewar Teng. What did you do?”
“I tried to escape.” They looked pensive. “And I almost got away, but I didn’t do it right. It’s so hard, you know. There’s so much more I have to learn.”
They had let the beast out, but it wasn’t by popping a latch. Nothing so crude. It was the little things they changed: a weakness in the chains, a distracting quarrel between colleagues. Shifting the shape of events so that it became not just likely but inevitable that something would happen. A skill honed over the years, yet still horribly imprecise.
And they were foiled. All their talents aside, they were still an experimental subject, and their every movement was monitored. The Tensors in charge had instruments to measure small distortions in the Slack. Their plans were detected, anticipated, and the children moved a day before the calamitous events were to take place.
I don’t blame the child for the deaths at the institute. They don’t understand the impact of what they did. How can they understand the cost of death when they’ve never experienced enough of life to understand its value?
But the ones in charge. Those gravefuckers. They let the disaster happen. They knew how many would die—and let them. Because they wanted to see if their experiment worked. Those stone-hearted turtle bastards. Those monsters. Someone has to track them down, bring them to justice. It won’t be me. It can’t.
There was so much more to be said. But standing in that great, cold hall with its artificial light, I had one goal and one goal only: to get the child out of there. I could not bear to see them in this gravesent mockery of safety and shelter, separated from all those who could care for them. I saw a reflection of the little girl I had been, frightened and angry in an alien place, and remembered how that little girl burned with desperation, wishing for the skies to open and for someone to swoop down and rescue her from that place she hated. I wanted nothing more than to save this poor child.
“Come with me,” I said. “I know where your twin is. I can take you to them.”
But they only looked sadder. “I cannot,” they said. “There’s slackcraft in my blood that will wake the moment I leave this chamber. Sonami will know what happened. She’ll find us before we get away.”
If only I had brought Rider with me. They could have folded us off to safety. We could have gotten away, all of us. But it’s useless to wish for things to be different now.
The child had a letter for their twin. “Give it to them,” they said. “So they’ll know the truth.”
It seemed so inadequate in the face of what I wanted to do. So underwhelming. A letter? I wanted to deliver freedom. I wanted to enact justice. I heaped foolish and hasty promises on the child. I was going right back to their twin. We were going to come for them immediately. I was going to save them. Soon, they would be free.
I was leaving. They told me, “You touched that red string, didn’t you? It’s poisoned. Look for the antidote in the chemist’s room. It’s on the second shelf in the white cabinet, in a small brown bottle shaped like a gourd. You must take it all, or you will die.”
And I meant to. Believe me, I meant to. I rushed back upward, through the tunnels of stone and the endless steps, fully intending to find the chemist’s room as the child instructed. But urgency burned in my veins like fire, and fear snapped at my heels. The moment I got to ground level, I saw the shadow of a person—a servant? a guard?—vanishing around the corner before me. I was almost caught. Panic took hold of me. No matter what, I knew I had to get out. So I thought, like an enormous fool: Fuck it. I don’t feel unwell, I’ve got time. I can make it to the Grand Monastery. Thennjay’s a doctor. We can fix this. See, I thought the poison was slow-acting. And I had to get out. That was the most important thing. So I ran. I headed straight for the outside, where our meeting point waited.
By the time I’d reached the outer Gardens, my heart had started to slow. And by the time I’d reached the pig’s trail, my legs were failing me. I knew I’d made a mistake, but by then, it was too late. I collapsed to the ground, and that was that. I won’t be getting up again.
How ironic. In my investigation, I ran up against the worst of human malice, but in the end, it was my own carelessness that got me killed. Here I am, lying helpless, waiting for death to claim me. Yuan-ning and Old Choo won’t reach me in time. The soil is cold, but I see the sunrise coloring the sky above me, and it’s beautiful. I wish Kayan were here. I want to hear that laugh of hers one more time. She would be furious about how foolish I’ve been, but she knew she was throwing her lot in with a fool when she first kissed me. And she would find it darkly funny that after a lifetime of walking the straight and narrow, this is how I’m going out: a rebel.
Of course, I was still doing the bidding of another, even if I didn’t know it. But I own this destiny. I own my death. The child didn’t determine everything. At the very end of my life, I am sure of that. It was I who chose to do something. It was I who chose to turn against greed and evil. It was I who chose freedom and truth.
It’s all right. It’s all right. I know I made the ri
ght choices. I found out what I wanted. I found out
Chapter Twenty-four
Message from Rider’s twin
My beloved twin:
It’s strange writing a letter to someone you have never met, who is nevertheless the most important person in your life. You do not know me, and I do not know you, but I have spent most of my waking days wondering what you might be like. The Tensors discourage us from learning about the outside. But the Slack brings us dreams that they can’t censor. I’ve seen you sometimes, or I think it’s you. You’re a lot older than I am. They don’t let us grow up here. I wonder what you have seen in this world. I know you’re looking for me. That’s why I decided I wanted to leave.
I have so many things I want to say in this letter. So many things I want to tell you about my half-life, submerged in sleep most of the time, confined to pens and never left alone. But these are things I want to tell you when I see you in person.
The Tensors are trying to teach us to control the dreams, but they can’t control us, no matter how much they try. I’m getting better at shaping the world to my whims. I’m not perfect yet. That’s how I got caught. But they can’t hold me here forever.
Sonami is treating me well. She has plans for things I don’t understand yet, things that spread across the breadth of the land and concern the fate of the Protectorate. But you should get out of the capital as soon as possible. You and all of your friends are in danger.
She gave me a name, but I don’t like it. In the long years under the stone, I chose a name for myself: Tau. It sounds nice to me, although I don’t know why. I’d like to use it when we meet.
I hope we get to meet soon. I’m going to keep trying. And I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. Thank you for not giving up on me.
Your twin,
Tau
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to my editor Carl and my agent DongWon for their infinite patience as I repeatedly ripped up this novella and tried to put it back together again. To the Tor.com publishing team—Irene, Christine, Katharine, Mordicai, and Ruoxi— for all their hard work in turning this book into a real thing. And to my friends, who held me together even as I was ready to come apart at the seams.
About the Author
Author photograph © Nicholas Lee
JY YANG is the author of The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune. They are also a lapsed journalist, a former practicing scientist, and a master of hermitry. A queer, non-binary, postcolonial intersectional feminist, they have over two dozen pieces of short fiction published. They live in Singapore, where they work as a science communicator, and have a MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Find out more about them and their work at jyyang.com.
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ALSO BY JY YANG
The Tensorate Series
The Black Tides of Heaven
The Red Threads of Fortune
PRAISE FOR THE TENSORATE SERIES
“Joyously wild stuff. Highly recommended.”
—N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times
“Yang conjures up a world of magic and machines, wild monsters and sophisticated civilizations, that you’ll want to return to again and again.”
—Annalee Newitz, Ars Technica
“Full of love and loss, confrontation and discovery. Each moment is a glistening pearl, all strung together in a wonder of world-creation.”
—Ken Liu, Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award winner and author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie
“I love JY Yang’s effortlessly fascinating world-building.”
—Kate Elliott, author of Black Wolves and Court of Fives
“A fascinating world of battles, politics, magic, and romance.”
—Zen Cho, author of Sorcerer to the Crown
“Filled with memorable characters and set in a wonderfully imaginative and original universe.”
—Aliette de Bodard, Nebula Award–winning author of The House of Shattered Wings
“Like a Miyazaki movie decided to jump off the screen and sear itself into prose, and in doing so became something entirely new.”
—Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers
“Relentlessly captivating, heartbreaking, and powerful.”
—Fran Wilde, award-winning, Nebula and Hugo–nominated author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon
“Yang’s prose carries the reader along. . . . A really good book.”
—Locus
“Yang deftly creates a world infused with magic, story, and hierarchy.”
—Joel Cunningham, B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog
“Yang captures an epic sweep in compact, precise prose.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Part One
To My Beloved Kayan
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Two
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ALSO BY JY YANG
PRAISE FOR THE TENSORATE SERIES
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DESCENT OF MONSTERS
Copyright © 2018 by JY Yang
Cover illustration by Yuko Shimizu
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Map by Serena Maylon
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
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Tor® is a registered trademark of
Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-16585-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-16584-8 (ebook)
First Edition: July 2018
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