NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE

BEST NOVEL

EXCERPT FROM THE GRACE OF KINGS

KEN LIU

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he has been published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. His debut novel, The Grace of Kings (2015), is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty. It won the Locus Best First Novel Award and was a Nebula finalist. He has a collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016). He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

In addition to his original fiction, Ken is also the translator of numerous literary and genre works from Chinese to English. His translation of The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the first translated novel ever to receive that honor.

FROM THE AUTHOR

The Grace of Kings began as a suggestion from my wife to try to re-imagine one of the foundational narratives of Chinese culture, the founding of the Han Dynasty, as a modern epic fantasy. Ultimately, I decided to reject many of the popular techniques of contemporary epic fantasy and draw inspiration instead from both Western epics and Chinese historical romances. That decision led to some challenges as I had to think through what made modern narratives “modern” and what it meant to consciously evoke much older narrative traditions. Working through the voice and characterization techniques that I wanted to employ—many of which are no longer popular in contemporary fiction—taught me a lot about the arbitrary nature of many of our judgments about what a “good story” was. And I was glad that I chose to write an extremely challenging book for my first novel.

Outside Zudi: the ninth month in the third year of the Reign of Righteous Force.

The night before, Kuni Garu still had under his charge fifty prisoners—a few from Zudi, but most from far away, men who had committed some kind of crime and received sentences of hard labor in the corvée gangs.

The prisoners had been walking slowly because one of the men had a lame leg. Since they couldn’t make it to the next town in time, Kuni had decided to make camp in the mountains.

In the morning, only fifteen prisoners were left.

“What are they thinking?” Kuni fumed. “There is nowhere to hide anywhere in the Islands. They’ll be caught and their families will be executed or conscripted for hard labor to make up for their desertion. I treated them well and didn’t have them chained at night, and this is how they repay me? I’m dead meat!”

Kuni had been promoted to head of the Corvée Department two years ago. Ordinarily, escorting a team of prisoners was something one of his underlings would do. But he had taken this particular assignment himself because he knew that the gang would probably not get to their destination on time because of the man with the bad leg—Kuni was sure he could convince the commander at Pan to let it go. Besides, he had never been to Pan, and he had always wanted to see the Immaculate City.

“I just had to do the most interesting thing,” he berated himself. “Am I having fun now?” At that moment, he wished more than anything to be home with Jia, drinking a cup of herbal tea made from some recipe she was experimenting with, safe and bored.

“You didn’t know?” one of the soldiers, a man by the name of Hupé, asked, incredulous. “The prisoners had been whispering and plotting all of yesterday. I thought you knew and were letting them go on purpose because you believed in the prophecy. They want to join the rebels who declared war on the emperor and pledged to free all prisoners and conscripted laborers.”

Kuni did remember the prisoners whispering an unusual amount yesterday. And he, like everyone else in Zudi, had heard rumors about the rebellion. But he had been too distracted by the beauty of the mountains they were hiking through, and didn’t connect the dots.

Abashed, he asked Hupé to tell him more about what he knew of the rebels.

“A scroll in a fish!” Kuni exclaimed. “A fish that they just happened to have bought. That con stopped working on me when I turned five. And people believe this?”

“Don’t speak ill of the gods,” Hupé, who was very religious, said stiffly.

“Well, this is a bit of a pickle,” Kuni muttered. To calm himself, he took a plug of chewing herbs out of his waist pouch and put it into his mouth, letting it sit under his tongue. Jia knew how to make herbal mixes that made him feel like he was flying and caused him to see rainbow-haloed crubens and dyrans everywhere—he and Jia had fun with those—but she also knew how to make mixes that did the opposite: slowed things down and helped him see choices more clearly when he was stressed, and he definitely needed some clarity.

What was the point of bringing fifteen prisoners to Pan when the quota was fifty? He’d have an appointment with the executioner no matter how he tried to talk his way out of it. And most likely Jia, too. His life as a servant of the emperor was over; there was no longer any path back to safety. All the options he had were dangerous.

But some choices are more interesting than others, and I did make a promise to myself.

Could this rebellion finally be the opportunity that he had been seeking all his life?

“Emperor, king, general, duke,” he whispered to himself. “These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you’ll find a commoner who dared to take a chance.”

He got up on a rock and faced the soldiers and the remaining prisoners, all of whom were terrified: “I’m grateful that you stayed with me. But there’s no point in going any farther. Under the laws of Xana, we’re all going to be punished severely. Feel free to go wherever you want or to join the rebels.”

“Aren’t you going to join the rebels?” Hupé asked in a fervent voice. “The prophecy!”

“I can’t think about any prophecies right now. I’m going to hide in the mountains first and figure out a way to save my family.”

“You’re thinking of becoming a bandit then?”

“The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.”

To his satisfaction but not surprise, everyone volunteered to stay with him.

The best followers are those who think it was their own idea to follow you.