The Kickstarter for All the Broken Blades, my first short story collection, is LIVE! Funding ends November 30, 2024 at 6:01 p.m. EST.
All the Broken Blades is an anthology of epic fantasy and dark fairy tale retellings. It will feature a selection of thirteen stories published between 2018 and 2024, two poems, and one original never-before-published short story.
All details on the crowdfunding campaign are available on the Kickstarter site.
For a preview of each of the stories included in the anthology, see below.
Table of Contents:
Dress of Ash
Buried Phoenix. And Leaves
The Palace of the Silver Dragon
Glass Gardens
Fall from the Heavens
Blood and Desert Dreams
Little Inn on the Jianghu
My Mirror, My Opposite
The Girl with the Frozen Heart
Bride of the Blue Manor
The Laughing Knight and the King of Ink: A Tragicomedy in 2.5 Parts
The Mountains My Bones, the Rivers My Blood
Lace, Comb, Apple
The Lady of Butterflies
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Dress of Ash
Originally appeared in Seasons Between Us.
There is an Etossari tale about a girl who became a servant in her own house.
After her mother passed away, her father remarried. Her stepmother, a woman of high status but little wealth, banished the girl to the servants’ quarters, where she cooked meals, scrubbed floors, and lit kindling. The girl’s face became covered in soot, and she wore a dress of ash.
The story came from a book of translated Northerner legends Father had given me. Mother scoffed at it. “Why read boneskin tales? Our own legends are the ones that matter.”
She had a point. What use were Northerner stories to a Swordbearer of Keja?
Yet during that late summer sunset, as Kaya’s form disappeared into the trees, all I could think about was that girl in the dress of ash. Unlike her, no prince came for Kaya.
Kaya, my dearest sister. Whatever else, I loved you. I loved you.
#
I lost my father in a duel between a wooden sword and a sheath.
On a breezy spring day, I emerged from the training room of our residence at the capital to see him striding across the courtyard, a bag of tied cloth slung across his back. My mother, aunt, and cousin were not home. It was only me and the servants in the compound.
Even at eight years old, I understood.
I placed myself between Father and the front gates. “Where do you think you’re going?”
His face registered a brief surprise, then reverted to his usual carefree smile. “To the market, little flower. I was thinking of buying your mother a … fan.”
A lie. He’d sooner buy her a poisoned chalice.
“With that?” I eyed his bag.
He knelt so we’d be at eye level. “You got me, little flower. I’ll be going a little farther than the market. But I’ll be back soon.”
“You’re leaving us. You’re running away.” It hurt, saying those words, because they meant Mother was right about him. I’d heard their voices at night—Mother calling him useless, an unworthy Swordbearer.
“There is something I must do. I’d stay if I could.”
I pointed my wooden practice sword at him. “Then fight me. If you win, I’ll let you go.”
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Buried Phoenix. And Leaves
Originally appeared in Little Blue Marble.
I am the renewing flame, and you are the one I must burn.
I was taught this from the beginning, when my fire was only a spark, a bean-sized flicker on the end of a match. Father folded me in his arms and said, “Daughter, someday you will save the world.”
Save the world. Burn the world. Cut out the rot from the world with my love’s ashes as the dagger. All the same thing.
Love. Do I have the right to call you that?
When the day comes, when the moons kiss and the stars spin and the skies crackle like-lightning but not-lightning, I’ll close my hands around your throat and shake you until your sixty thousand quadrillion leaves scatter onto paved roads, onto twisting skyscrapers and satellite dishes yawning at the sky like giant hollowed clams. Your leaves will rain onto forests piling with refuse, onto thinning ice where the last northern bear scrabbles, claws digging into seawater, fur streaked silver in the midnight sun.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
The Palace of the Silver Dragon
Originally published in Strange Horizons.
Aliah stood on the cliff and listened to the song of the Silver Dragon. It combed reverberating notes through her skull, wrapped around her like a net of pearls pulling her closer to the waves. A deceptively simple melody, but that voice… it sang with the longing and depth and ancient promises of the sea.
Aliah stepped toward the cliff’s edge, toward the crashing waves which beat a weak percussion beneath the Silver Dragon’s song. She imagined the West Sea spraying across her face, imagined its salt on her tongue. But the sea lay far below, and what she tasted were only her tears. The last time she’d cried… When her mother left? When her brother hurled himself into these waves? Her tears hadn’t been for them—just herself, as they were now. Selfish, her father had called her. He was right. And he was probably burning to ash right now along with everything they owned. Aliah could still smell the smoke, still taste the fire.
The wind blew back her dark hair, which was gathered in a green ribbon once worn by her mother. The Silver Dragon’s song called to the abandoned, the broken. It had called to her brother, and though Aliah wasn’t broken, not the way he was, she didn’t hesitate to throw herself from the cliff.
Falling, arms outstretched, wash-softened hemp robes billowing, she must have looked like the subject of her mother’s masterpiece, Maiden Enchanted by the Silver Dragon. She just lacked the panicked father in the background, racing over too late to stop his daughter from jumping.
She hit the water. The impact rattled her bones, threatening to turn her into more jumbled pieces, more white foam upon the sea. Saltwater pooled inside her nose, sloshed around her mouth. At first sunlight stretched trembling fingers beneath the waves, but soon she sank below where the sun could reach. Her body shivered but her lungs burned, as if she and not her father were the one choking on smoke. Bubbles burst from her lips. The Silver Dragon’s song enfolded her, dragging her deeper.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Glass Gardens
Originally appeared in Cast of Wonders.
I was the eldest daughter, so I knew I was doomed.
The youngest marries the prince. The youngest saves the kingdom. The youngest is immortalized in song. I told myself I didn’t mind missing those things. I didn’t want princes, or kingdoms, or songs. I was happy being the wicked one.
If only I knew a single story—just one—where the wicked sister won.
#
The glass garden is my masterpiece, and there’s not a soul in the world I can show it to.
Bending close, I begin cutting feathers into the ugly duckling. He’s smoke-grey and minuscule and awkward, but in glass he’s beautiful. No, that’s not right; that’s the way they see things. He simply looks the way he’s supposed to. Unchanging. Captured in glass, this ugly duckling will never turn into a beautiful swan.
He’s the latest addition. Behind him looms the tower, where an old woman stands. Her hair is snowy white, her beauty faded like ink left in the sun. Beneath the tower a dashing young man rides a rearing stallion. I’d carved for two days non-stop to capture his expression of disbelief and anguish. By the end, my eyes were sore and my hands shaking from handling the delicate glass for so long. It never cut me, of course. I simply feared I’d crush it beneath my frustrated fingers.
It was worth it though. Every time I see the man’s expression, I laugh.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Fall from the Heavens
Originally appeared in On Spec.
He had the wings of a bat and the hands of a dead man. His skin stretched so tight that every bone was visible. Would it crack if I touched it? Awari wondered. What lay beneath couldn’t be much worse. He probably didn’t even bleed.
He turned, perhaps hearing the rocks she’d dislodged to alert him. His wings dragged across the ground like shadows grown tangible. His eyes were washed-up glass—sharp once, before time had worn them away.
Awari leapt onto the plateau and drew her knife. His face grew clearer, more gruesome. They hadn’t lied. This close, familiar features emerged from the aged parchment skin. It was him: the man, the Ascendant, the fallen god who’d destroyed her world. She expected all her rage to pour back in that moment. But all she felt was relief. Finally, finally she’d found him.
“You are Nazirel,” she said.
His mouth opened but no sound came out.
“I am Awari. You know why I’m here.”
He stared at her, expressionless. Her anger finally rose, a monster tossing beneath barely peaceful waves. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
It would be so effortless to hurl her knife, to nail it to his forehead, to avenge the world lost in the Third Cataclysm—her world. And yet… It’s too easy. It’s not enough. She shook with rage while Nazirel just stood there, motionless and impassive as the rock beneath their feet.
No. She’d waited five thousand years to do this, and she would do it right. She refused to kill a dumb and defenceless Nazirel. She’d make him remember, and repent, and plead. Then she’d laugh at him and batter him to the ground and stick her knives into him, over and over.
Awari pressed her knife close to his neck. Not touching, not yet, because then she wouldn’t be able to stop. “You’re coming with me,” she said. “And you’ll live, until you remember.”
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Blood and Desert Dreams
Originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
I cut myself on kitchen duty when I was five. Blood welled from my index finger and flowed over the lines of my palm, like a miniature reproduction of the Arashka Delta.
Nancea, the kitchen mistress, rushed over. “Let me take a look at that, Kahna. Moons, I’ve been telling Lady Darya not to assign you to kitchen duty yet. Here.”
She held a handkerchief to the wound. Crimson battled snowy white and won, my blood soaking through the cloth. A single smudge brushed over Nancea’s hand.
One heartbeat. Five heartbeats. Twenty heartbeats.
She fell backwards, her breathing stopped. She was my first kill–probably. I couldn’t remember any others.
I stood there, hands limp, the handkerchief falling to the ground. One of the serving boys rushed over to see what was wrong. As he knelt over Nancea’s prone form, his bare shin must’ve brushed against the bloody handkerchief. Because not long after, he too fell over dead.
At this point, the servants realized something was very, very wrong and dared not draw near. Someone, or maybe several someones, rushed off to find Lady Darya. I was left with two corpses, the scarlet-and-ivory handkerchief, and a bloody hand that barely hurt.
A sharp blade meant little pain. That was my first lesson.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Little Inn on the Jianghu
Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
It starts in an inn.
It always starts in an inn. Or winds up there somehow.
It, I say. Better term: they, those jianghu heroes.
Another day on the job. Bustling around tables with an already soiled rag. Bringing rice and bean curd for those who can afford it. Proffering wine in delicate porcelain pitchers. Why did I buy those pitchers again? Probably ’cause all the other inns have them, no matter how much they cost or how often they break.
Some guests use the tiny porcelain cups. Some drink directly from the pitcher snout. Those you gotta watch out for, ’cause they anger quick and tend to know drunken fist.
I’m clearing away the rightmost table, balancing half a dozen plates on one arm, when the doors bang open.
Chaos stands in the doorway. You know the type. Long, unkempt hair. A chain of beads shaped ominously like miniature skulls swinging from his neck. Curved broadsword in a hand missing its smallest finger.
“Li Xilan!” he calls. “I’ve found you, you bastard!”
I don’t know who Li Xilan is and don’t stick around long enough to find out. I dive behind the counter, cradling my precious plates to my chest. They make a soupy mess down the front of my shirt. It’ll be a pain to wash, but replacing the plates would cost even more.
A crash sounds from the table by the left window. You know, the table with the scowling man in pine-green robes and a tiger-pelt vest; the sly-faced fellow who drank directly from the pitcher snout; and the woman with one side of her hair woven like a basket and the other side cascading like the world’s messiest waterfall.
I hear the hiss of swords being drawn. The whoosh of someone—probably the loudmouth hero by the door—leaping into the air with their qinggong. Blades clash, amidst shouts of “Where is my father?” and “Give me the scroll!”
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
My Mirror, My Opposite
Originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
The song begins like this: “Once there was a fishgirl who sacrificed her heart and life and voice for a prince, and her reward was a path to heaven.”
All those stories, about fishgirls yearning for legs… Are human storytellers really so arrogant, believing we are the only enviable ones?
Let’s clear up one thing: that night, the storm didn’t hurl me into the sea.
#
Ever since I was little, my feet itched. Not from sores or mosquito bites or whatever other people’s feet itch from. Merely from existing, from being mine. It was mild enough that few people noticed. I could walk. I learned to ride, like all princes did. I could even sit still during rhetoric lessons.
Once, when I was six, the itch grew unbearable before a state dinner. Nan told Father I was ill, and the dinner went ahead without me. Father ordered the whipmaster to beat me afterward. That was Father’s best quality: he never found me a whipping boy or any other sort of playmate, so I endured all the punishments myself.
The fishgirl in the song couldn’t gaze upon what she desired until she turned fifteen, but I’d been watching the sea for as long as I could remember. I’d sit on the sand and stretch my toes into the water, while Nan gripped both my arms to keep me from going further. When I did this, the itch went away. So each night before bed I asked for a bucket of seawater. I’d soak my feet in it until it soothed me enough to make sleep possible. The servants looked at me strangely, but my request was hardly burdensome.
Father hated the sea. A shame, really, when our palace lay so close to it. How easy it would be to paint my mother as his opposite, to say she loved the sea, that she walked down the sand with me, our hands intertwined and our sandals discarded. That she told me stories of the Sea King’s palace and his fishgirl daughters and the youngest, prettiest princess, who built a garden of sun-red flowers for the statue of a handsome boy. But in truth, the only stories I had were ones I dug out of the library myself. I never knew my mother. Official records said she took ill and died. Nan told me she’d fled, escaping Father’s clutches and returning to Sun Isle. Sometimes, after I made a particularly grave mistake, Father would lean over my whip-split body and whisper, “Do that again and I’ll kill you, like I killed your mother.” I didn’t know if I should have believed him. You never knew with Father, whether he was telling the truth or trying to scare you.
I wasn’t a demanding child. I wanted to be excused from state dinners. I wanted to avoid the whipmaster and Father, though not in that order. And sometimes, when I stood on tiptoes and peered through my bedroom window at the water, I wanted the sea to sweep past rock and sand and reach where I stood, to drown my world in blue and carry me away on its waves.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
The Girl with the Frozen Heart
Originally appeared in The Book Smugglers.
She was dying when the god of winter found her.
She stumbled through the snowdrift, one hand pressed to her chest. Blood dripped between her fingers, mingling with the heavy white snowflakes. She had snapped off the arrow’s shaft, but its tip remained embedded in her heart.
She managed three more steps. Three steps into wind and emptiness. Three steps from the bodies, Vilocet and Casenna alike. Then her legs finally collapsed and she fell forward, one more body in the snow. Her blood pooled around her, marking her grave, if only for a few hours—soon, the snow would bury every trace of her.
Then she heard his voice. A voice like snapping branches and tortured wind. A voice foreign to her, but one she had no trouble placing. She’d seen those wreaths on the doors of the Casenna villages, heard the songs they sang: folk songs, drinking ditties, but most of all, hymns that praised him and begged for his mercy.
“Why did you come this far,” the god of winter asked, “for someone who abandoned you?”
The girl drew a ragged breath. Coughed. “She was my mother.”
Her tears froze in the wind. She reached forward, clawing for something that was not there.
“Do you want to live?” the god of winter asked.
Yes. Yes.
But the girl was no fool. She knew the old tales of the god of winter. “I don’t need anything from you,” she gasped.
“But I want you to live.”
The truth. For in that moment the god of winter pitied her, this human who travelled so far searching for a mother who never loved her. His pity reined in the snowstorm, quieting the winds just a little.
He descended toward her on wings of ice. Cupped her face in his ancient hands and tried to breathe life back into her. But his breath was cold and only pushed her further into death. He tried to pluck the arrowhead from her chest and close the wound, but her skin shrivelled and blackened at his touch. He was the god of winter, destined to take life and not to give it back.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Bride of the Blue Manor
Originally appeared in Shattering the Glass Slipper.
I wanted to be a great ironthorn, like my ancestor Lady Naoma.
Eventually, this matters.
* * *
I stepped down from the carriage, dragging the hem of this ridiculous Alusian dress. My slippers hit the courtyard of the blue manor. Turning back to the carriage—painted with the crossed swords of House Wenri—I waved to my coachman. Then I hefted the suitcase containing my marriage papers and faced my new life.
Garlands festooned the courtyard. My husband stood by the doors, hair like sun-dappled wheat, skin like burnished bronze, eyes as blue as the stone of his manor. So different from anyone back in Kokien.
Those eyes widened when they saw me, as if he’d seen a ghost. Then, I thought he marvelled at my coal-dark hair, my birch-white skin. Now, I know his initial shock stemmed from something else.
I should have been the one gawking. My husband still possessed the smooth skin and careless beauty of a man in his twenties—when, in truth, I was his fourth wife, and he was nearing fifty.
But I’d heard the rumours. Father had permitted me to arm myself with knowledge. And in the end, I’d been the one to accept this marriage.
My husband’s features shifted back into pleasant neutrality. Extending a hand, he said, “Lady Asha, it is good to meet you at last.” Poisoned honey laced his voice, sweet and dangerous.
I took his hand. “Lord Regeus.”
Hidden beneath the bodice of my gown, the cold, hard weight of a knife pressed against my sternum. I was, after all, my father’s daughter.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
The Laughing Knight and the King of Ink: A Tragicomedy in 2.5 Parts
Original story
Epilogue
Lancelot sobbed into Arthur’s discarded cloak. The king’s blood smelled like blade metal, and the rips in the wool champed at Lancelot’s fingers like an enraged griffin.
“Get up,” Bedivere said. “Arthur’s death is tragic enough without you wiping your snot all over his clothes.”
“I… I…” Lancelot threw his head back and howled. “It’s all my fault! You were the one who threw Excalibur into the lake, but it was all because of me!”
Bedivere spoke with infinite patience and nonexistent mercy. “Yes, Lancelot. This is your fault.”
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
The Mountains My Bones, the Rivers My Blood
Originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
The God of Ash met the youngest Champion in a field of bloody flowers.
The glass asters were stained crimson that day, nestled against the bodies of the Pearl Guard. They should’ve been the palest blue, petals nearly transparent in full bloom.
The Champion turned, blood dripping from his blades to pool around his boots. He was young, so young, barely past his twentieth year. The God of Ash couldn’t decide which shone brighter: the cheery sun above or the young man’s blue eyes.
The man’s lips stretched into a smile. “Caenlux,” he said, his voice filled with wonder, “the God of Ash. Finally.”
The god wore his mortal guise: brown robe, folded fan, the unlined face of a young man. The guise of an artisan who also indulged in amateur scholarly pursuits. His appearance hadn’t fooled the boy, it seemed.
The God of Ash stepped onto the field, weaving around the bodies. “I am called Shun now. What quarrel do you have with my Pearl Guard?”
“None.” He spun his blades around, whipping off the blood. “I would’ve left them alone if you’d shown up sooner.”
Shun closed his eyes. He thought back to the Endless War, the gods he’d slain. He thought of Mika, her body melting away as he set her down in the Lieri River. He thought back to the guises he’d worn, human and beast. He wished to tell this foolish young warrior that he didn’t much like being the God of Ash at that moment, hence why he’d arrived so late. But this stranger wouldn’t care.
He expected an attack. None came.
When he opened his eyes, the boy was standing in the same spot, like a stubborn dream that refused to drift away. “My name is Armind,” he said. “I am a Champion of Kohanna, the Goddess of Clay. She wants me to deliver this message: surrender this world or perish.”
If only I could. “The mountains of this land are my bones, and the rivers my blood. So long as I exist, this world shall belong to no other.”
Armind’s eyes gleamed. He resembled a hawk ready to dive for prey. “That,” he said, “was the message from the Goddess of Clay. My message is this: I’ve waited too long to let you surrender without a fight.”
Before Shun could ask what he’d meant, Armind rushed at him in a blur of silvery blades. The God of Ash sighed and unfurled his fan.
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
Lace, Comb, Apple
Originally appeared in The Dark.
There was nothing here but swirling grey fog, and me. The laces around my waist were cinched so tight I could hardly breathe. A comb threaded through my hair, and in my hands I held an apple.
For the longest time I sat in the haze, listening to silence.
Then, footsteps. Your face swam into view, all golden hair and emerald eyes. You spoke:
“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?”
And because you were the first person I’d ever seen, I said, “You, my lady.”
~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~
The Lady of Butterflies
Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
So here I was, First Sword of the Kejalin Empire, serving as a glorified playmate for this strange northern woman.
“Do you know, Lady Rikara,” she said one morning, “how caterpillars become butterflies?”
We strolled along the wooden walkway above the Oasis Pond. Koi fish flashed white-scarlet-gold beneath the late-summer sun.
“It’s not a simple matter of growing wings,” she said. “A curious man once poked open a chrysalis, and out spilled green and white liquid. The caterpillar’s tissues had melted, disintegrated—but from that broth eventually emerges a butterfly.” She stopped walking and turned to face me. “It’s enough to wonder, is it still the same creature? Everything about it has changed: its senses, its diet, its body. And yet…people say the butterfly still dreams of being a caterpillar.”
