The Tangleroot Palace

by Marjorie Liu

  She saw the red-haired boy again. “Your name.”

  “Samuel,” he said breathlessly, still looking over his shoulder at the darkened sea. No one else was there. No one she could see.

  “Samuel,” she said, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at her. “Weapons?”

  “No’m,” he replied, blinking hard. “Just fists.”

  Xīng let go of his face, and patted his shoulder. “Good. Find other sensible lads who can lead, and then break yourselves up into small groups. Scatter, but head for the hills. You’ll be able to hide better there.”

  “But,” Samuel began, stopping himself almost as quickly before continuing, “you’re not coming with us?”

  Xīng hesitated. “I’ll be making sure no one follows.”

  “We can fight.”

  “You can live.” She unsheathed one of her knives, and pressed it into his hand. “The others need you. So do I.”

  Samuel swallowed hard, but again, gave her that sharp nod—as though it was his way of steeling himself. Xīng watched him as he ran toward the others, and then turned away from the ocean, away and away, where her friend was not emerging from the waters. She faced the hills and the scrub, and listened to the distant sounds of air ships and gunpowder bombs, imagining the scent of smoke, finally, in the air. Her skin prickled, a focused chill that rode from her scalp down the back of her neck.

  Xīng pulled out her revolver. Behind her, one of the boys shouted. She turned, glimpsing a hulking figure looming from the shadows at the edge of the beach—moving in perfect silence. He was monstrous, a giant, more than eight feet tall and built like the side of a rock-hewn mountain. His fists were clad in iron, as was his chest, and he held a sword in his hands that could slice any of those boys in half with hardly a touch. Scalps hung from his belt, long black queues looped and tangled—still dripping with blood.

  “Run!” she screamed, and dove through them as they scattered, throwing herself toward the giant. He grinned when he saw her, and took swipes at the escaping boys, his sword whistling through the air. Xīng skidded to a stop, took careful aim, and fired her revolver. The bullet hit his biceps, but he laughed at the wound and shook his head.

  “Queen of the fookin’ riders,” he bellowed. “Bullets dinnae hurt me, lass.”

  Xīng holstered her gun, and withdrew her knife. Took another running leap, dodging under his sword, feeling a shift in her body as she moved—blood surging, burning, boiling in her veins. Red shadows gathered in her vision, and her heart pounded so hard she could taste her pulse at the back of her throat. Taste that, and more.

  She slashed at his thighs, cutting deep, hacking and stabbing every part of him that she could. Taking her time, playing up his amusement. Distracting him.

  His muscles were grotesquely shaped, distended beneath skin pocked with old burns and scars: a man who had been unnaturally grown over years of deliberate exposure to crystal light. After Xīng had entered the war, after her exploits had been proven to be more than some fantasy, the British had turned desperate for their own powered soldiers. But she’d been a lucky accident that was hard to repeat, and after losing too many quality men, the British government had turned to rapists and murderers, freed from prisons to be fed to the skull engineers and their experiments.

  Few survived. But those that did were as hard to kill as Xīng. She’d found that out the hard way, the night her crew was murdered.

  The Jugranaughts in front of her smelled like an outhouse, and his laugh was careless: arrogant and cruel. Oh, he thought he was going to live forever. Xīng understood. She’d felt that way herself, a time or two.

  But then he made a choking sound.

  Xīng darted away as his knees buckled. He fell face-first into the sand, but not before she saw his hands clutching his throat, his tongue so swollen it protruded from his mouth. His eyes bulged. Xīng could not imagine what he had looked like before the engineers had changed him, nor did she care. She watched the man choke to death—poisoned by her bullet.

  Special bullets filled with special chemicals. Her father had made them while she was in her teens—when she was still the only one of her kind. Just in case the power went to her head. He had never been a sentimental man, but she appreciated that now.

  Footsteps, behind her. Xīng turned, glimpsing a pale face.

  And got shot in the chest.

  The blast was deafening, and so was the pain. Xīng rocked backward into the sand. She tried to reach for her revolver, but a knife stabbed through her palm. Xīng glanced down, saw a hole in her chest the size of her fist, spurting like a geyser. She vomited blood.

  Then stopped moving at all.

  Xīng drifted. No dreams. Just darkness pricked with moments of desperate sorrow, and a terrible, aching homesickness for a life lost so long ago, it might as well have been something she never had.

  Until, finally, she remembered her body—her body, which she did still have—and opened her eyes.

  Overhead, stars. Xīng twitched her fingers, and then her feet. No restraints. The hole in her chest had healed, though scar tissue remained; one more to add to all the others that covered her body. She knew without looking that her revolver was gone—her hip felt too light. The bullets and the chemical vial had been removed from her pockets, as well. One knife remained sheathed against her thigh.

  Her mouth tasted like raw meat. She smelled wood smoke, and listened to a fire crackling. A woman hummed, a low familiar tune that sent Xīng back to a time when she remembered how to smile.

  She swallowed hard. “Hello, Maude.”

  The woman stopped humming. “I knew you would come.”

  Xīng sat up slowly, drinking in the person who had once been her greatest friend and lover. A whole childhood spent together. How many secrets had they shared? How many tears had Xīng shed that only Maude had seen, and tasted? There had never been anyone else but Maude, even when they drifted apart.

  She looked at Maude’s body, analyzing the muscles bulging from broad shoulders and thighs, the heavy sinews at her throat, those long-fingered hands that had once been smaller than hers, but now could easily wrap around her neck. A powerful body, not easily manufactured.

  But Maude’s eyes had sunken deep in her head, her cheeks hollow, skin gray and flaking like a healing scab. Her long hair had been shaved away, revealing scars where skull engineers had inserted probes. She resembled a corpse more than a Jugranaught.

  Maude touched her face. “You look the same, except for the silver in your hair. I thought that would happen for me. But . . . there were other, unexpected side effects.”

  Xīng thought of her father, unwittingly exposing his body, and seed. Her pregnant mother, who spent too much time in the lab during his experiments. “You made that choice.”

  Maude smiled bitterly. “I told myself we’d be together forever. You were always worried about me when we’d ride into battle. Afraid I’d die before you. So I said this would make things easier . . . for you. And then I told myself it would let us grow old together, that we’d be equals . . . and I imagined how fine it would be for us as the Queens of the Starlight Six, and not just the Queen.”

  Xīng closed her eyes, unable to look at that familiar, crooked smile for one more moment. “You were jealous.”

  “In the end, yes. Maybe from the beginning.”

  Xīng’s heart ached; so much raged inside her, she was afraid to speak. “Did it give you peace? Handing yourself over to the Redcoat engineers for their experiments? Were you satisfied after you came back, and killed the others?”

  “I didn’t—” Maude began, but Xīng surged to her feet, the knife somehow in her hand.

  “You led those monsters to us while we slept,” she snarled, and threw the blade at Maude’s face.

  The woman caught the knife out of the air and spun away through the sand. She was quick—quicker than Xīn
g remembered—and rammed her hard in the shoulder, sending them both into the fire. The knife slid against Xīng’s side, but it was the flames that made her howl, and she rolled sideways as her hair and clothing burned. Maude did not scream, but stood for a moment in the flames, as though she did not feel them crackling at her skin. Then, she stepped out of the fire, and calmly reached down for the revolver that Xīng cursed herself for not seeing earlier among Maude’s belongings.

  “I heard there was a weapon that could murder a Jugranaught. But you didn’t have this the last time we met,” Maude said, as Xīng put out the flames on her body. “That night I watched you rip out the throats of the Jugranaughts who killed your crew. You used your bare hands, even your teeth. You were. . . .”

  “Savage,” Xīng hissed, trembling. “I had good reason to be.”

  Maude gave her a sad smile. “I dream of it every night. You chase me, and I run. Ten years running from you, when all I ever did before was run with you, toward you, after you.”

  She raised the revolver with its poisoned bullets, and aimed it at Xīng’s stomach. She did not fire, though. Just studied Xing, with that sadness deepening in her eyes. “Why didn’t you ever come looking? I expected it. I expected you at every corner, with your hands at my throat.”

  But Xīng said nothing. Nothing she could say, though the words bottled inside hurt worse that the burns along her back and scalp. Ten years thinking of that night, and nights before that, nights and battles and all of them together, like family. Xīng had hated the Redcoats, but she had been unprepared to hate Maude—and that was a cut that had never healed right.

  On their left, a branch snapped. Maude glanced away, just for a moment. Xīng lunged.

  No mercy. She slammed her fist into the other woman’s face, and then hit her again, with all her strength. Bone smashed. Maude cried out, trying to bring the revolver back around to fire. Xīng grabbed her wrist and broke it with one swift twist. A Jugranaughts’ should not have snapped that easily, but as Maude had said—there’d been side effects.

  The revolver fell to the ground beside them. And just like that, Maude stopped fighting.

  “I’m here,” Xīng whispered, staring into her eyes, “with my hands at your throat.”

  “Finally,” Maude breathed.

  When Xīng was done—and Maude was truly, irrevocably, dead—she sat down by the fire, and found Captain Shao crouched on the other side of the flames. He was nearly naked, soaked, and a deep scratch ran down the length of his side. But he was alive—staring at the poisoned remains that had once been his sister.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to him, too weary and heartsick to feel anything but shame at seeing him here: shame, that he should witness her covered in the blood of the only family he had left. Anger simmered in her gut, too—and despair.

  “It had to be this way,” he said quietly, also without emotion. “For justice, if nothing else. But if she had seen me again . . .”

  He stopped himself, and said nothing more for a very long time. Xīng lay down in the sand, holding her revolver close. Just before dying, Maude had told her that no other Jugranaughts were close. The rest had remained in Shanghai, working with the British to overrun what remained of the emperor’s southern seat. The Chinese military still fought, but not for long. They were running out of hope.

  Light was creeping into the horizon when finally, softly, Captain Shao said, “I understand now why you left.”

  “I doubt that,” she whispered, but pushed herself up and rubbed her face. “Your men are safe. As many as could be saved. We should find them.”

  His eyes glittered, reflecting the dying firelight. “We have no submersible. And there is a war raging.”

  Xīng studied the revolver in her hands. She had found the vial of poison nearby. More bullets could be made. “I suppose that’s true.”

  A sad smile touched his mouth, again so much like his sister that Xīng’s eyes burned with tears. “And I suppose it might also be true that the only way for us to survive is to fight.”

  Xīng sighed. Captain Shao whispered, “Can you be what they need?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “But I can try.”

  Captain Shao stood and walked to her. He did not look at his sister’s body, but held out his hand to Xīng.

  “Lady Marshal,” he said. “You, MacNamara.”

  “Yes,” she said, and took his hand.

  “Write about superheroes,” I was told, and having just seen a documentary about crystal skulls, which were originally thought to be pre-Columbian (but ended up being pre-Columbian by way of 19th century German artisans), my imagination conjured a firestorm of alternate histories: a world where China settled the Pacific Coast long before Columbus found these shores; where machines were powered by crystals, where these same crystals could alter human bodies and give them powers. In my mind there was a woman who had those powers: the Lady Marshal, a reluctant superhero committed to justice, and burdened by a past filled with war-time violence.

  The Last Dignity of Man

  “Put on the cape,” Alexander says. “Do it slow.”

  He sits very still, as the young man unfolds the shining red cloth. Here it is again: the old dream, a red dream—red on blue, with gold trim, and that lovely brand upon the young man’s fine, fine chest. The finest letter in the alphabet, Alexander thinks. A mighty letter, for a mighty myth.

  The cape will make it perfect.

  But the young man grins, ruining the effect. What was to be serious, epic, suddenly feels like the farce it is, and Alexander looks away in shame. He barely notices the young man clip the cape into place, can barely stand to hear his own voice break the quiet.

  Alexander does not know the young man’s real name—only the one he has been given for this evening. All part of the ruined fantasy.

  “Clark,” Alexander says. “Clark. You may go now.”

  The young man frowns. “Sir?”

  Alexander shakes his head. “Just . . . get your things and go.”

  Puzzlement, even a little resentment, insouciance, yet the young man does as he is told. This is not the situation where one acts up. The young man gathers his belongings: a business suit, with tie; thick glasses. He is a beautiful creature: long of muscle and bone, a hint of a Chinese grandfather in that dark, wavy hair and best of all: the palest of eyes. A lucky find, and Alexander feels a moment of regret. But no, this is not right.

  The young man leaves. Alexander sits in his chair by the window and stares at the city. There is enough light to cast a reflection in the glass; like a ghost mirror, he sees his face in shadow, transparent and wry.

  Alexander is bald. He thinks he looks good, bald, though it’s an affectation. The men and women in Alexander’s family are thick-haired, but when Alexander turned eighteen he shaved all the hair from his head. Shaves it still, so that his scalp gleams polished and perfect.

  It is a joke and Alexander knows it. His real name is Alexander Lutheran—Lex Luthor to the young men who visit him and try on the cape—but this is not a comic book, and there is no such thing as a Last Kryptonian.

  Still, it is an old dream.

  The research department at RanTech takes up an entire city block. The building squats in the center of downtown, where streets and sidewalks are a jungle during rush hour. Alexander likes the crowds; he keeps his office on the second floor so he can watch strangers pass just yards beyond his tinted windows. He has other offices, better offices, in prettier parts of town, but he has not seen them in more than five years.

  Alexander’s brothers do not understand this. They are not geneticists; they don’t know about investment or banking instruments. It is why Alexander’s father made his youngest son the principal shareholder in RanTech, why his two oldest pretend to manage sales and marketing while alternating between office and golf course, why the old man rests easy on his yach
t with a third wife who is just out of college. Despite their differences in lifestyle, which have crippled communication, Alexander’s father knows his son is a smart man. Eccentric, perhaps, but very, very smart.

  Smart enough to appreciate the backbone of the company, to dwell close within the marrow, directing firsthand the brainiacs on his payroll. Biggest surprise of all? The employees actually like him. Some respect him, even—though he knows they make fun of his name, his appearance, the poster he keeps in his office. Our boss, the mad scientist. Does he keep kryptonite in his shorts? Ha. Ha. Ha.

  But when he’s around, the Ha Ha Ha stops. Rumor is that he fired a CFO who called him Lex Luthor at a meeting. It never actually happened, the firing, but the rumor is safely entrenched in the gossip biome of the company, never to be flushed out.

  Alexander blames his mother. She insisted on his name, on the dignity of its sound. Alexander wonders if he would have a different kink if she had called him George or Simon or Larry. A name without power. Without expectation.

  But no, he is Alexander. To his young men and himself he is Lex. And he has lived up to that name, in more ways than one.

  “They’re growing faster than we anticipated, Mr. Lutheran. We’ll need bigger cages soon.”

  The lab is poorly lit. Or rather, it is well lit according to the parameters of the experiment. Batch #381 does not thrive under bright lights, so the scientists have installed lower-energy bulbs, the kind used in photography darkrooms. Everything is cast in red, blood red, and Alexander feels as though he is in the middle of a particularly nasty horror movie. The writhing masses of glistening flesh lumped in glass tanks do not help. In fact, it looks slightly pornographic.

  Alexander steps close. The tanks are completely airtight, each one equipped with an isolated oxygen pump that filters and analyzes and recycles. There are also feeding slots—storage chambers built with a series of small airlocks and safety mechanisms, timed to release sludge when the sensors indicate that tank levels have dropped below acceptable feeding levels. The creatures like to swim through shit. It is the earthworm in them, this instinct to burrow deep.