A Palace Near the Wind E-Book

Ai Jiang

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 203

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful science-fantasy novella. A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion that will stay with you long after the final page. For readers of Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang's The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao's The Surviving Sky. Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and, bound by duty and tradition, the next bride to the human king. With their bark faces, arms of braided branches and hair of needle threads, the Feng people live within nature, nurtured by the land. But they exist under the constant threat of human expansion, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop— or at least delay—the destruction of their home. Come her wedding day, Lufeng plans to kill the king and finally put an end to the marriages. Trapped in the great human palace in the run-up to the union, Lufeng begins to uncover the truth about her people's origins and realizes they will never be safe from the humans. So she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate. From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for a Palace Near the Wind

Coming soon from Ai Jiang and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. Bridewealth

2. Feng

3. The Palace

4. The Market

5. The Portraits

6. The Room

7. The Hall

8. The Ceremony

9. The Agreement

10. Gear and Engine

11. The Dinner

12. Return

13. Water

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PRAISE FOR A PALACE NEAR THE WIND

“Enchanting, mysterious, and strange, A Palace Near the Wind is a heartbreaking story of homecoming and self-discovery. Combining the best of folklore and science fiction, this eco-narrative on human greed and superhuman hope is not to be missed.”

KRITIKA H. RAO, author of The Surviving Sky

“A fantastic and magical tale of survival and rebellion set against the backdrop of a struggle between nature and the forces of industry. Ai Jiang has written a beautiful and all-too-fitting story that resonates with the choices we face in our times.”

P. DJÈLÍ CLARK, author of The Dead Cat TailAssassins and A Master of Djinn

“A breathtakingly imagined story of ecological disaster, torn families, betrayal, and hope. Unlike anything I’ve ever read before—like Ghibli retelling Tolkien through Chinese myth—with tree-like deities, political intrigue, wind magic, and mecha. Utterly enchanting.”

A.Y. CHAO, author of Shanghai Immortal

“Beautifully written and intricately layered, this novella is part fairy tale and part tale of rebellion and hope. A compelling and complex story of court politics, hidden secrets, sacrifices, alliances, and characters fighting for their freedom.”

A.C. WISE, author of Wendy, Darling and Hooked

“Haunting and lovely, Jiang creates a world of wonder in A Palace Near the Wind. Your heart will break as Lufeng must give up her home, her beliefs, and her sense of family. You’ll root for her as she builds her courage to forge a new future for herself, and those precious to her.”

JULIA VEE, co-author of The Phoenix Hoard trilogy

“Elegant and otherworldly. A tale of family and duty, devotion and obligation—and the shattering secrets hidden in every past. A glorious new myth from a talented new voice.”

A.G. SLATTER, author of All the Murmuring Bonesand The Briar Book of the Dead

Coming soon from Ai Jiang and Titan Books

A River from the Sky

A Palace Near the Wind

TITAN BOOKS

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A Palace Near the Wind

Print edition ISBN: 9781803369389

Signed edition ISBN: 9781835414736

Inkstone edition ISBN: 9781835414330

Broken Binding edition ISBN: 9781835414729

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803369396

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: April 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Ai Jiang 2025

Ai Jiang asserts the moral right to be identifiedas the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Mother Nature and allher unwilling sacrifices.

Chuiliu blew on the white and blue rain blooms as she clutched tight their navy stems. The dozens of slender arms protruding from their tips held onto teardrop-like bulbs. Her breath scattered the seeds so they may travel and grow elsewhere.

One ancient story passed down in Feng told of the floating seeds helping those who blew them to find what they were seeking. There was little doubt my sister and I were praying for the same thing: to find our sisters and mother. We denied the possibility of their death for the annuals they had spent, sight unseen, within the Palace. Grandmother would’ve told us. We would’ve held a funeral.

All we held now was our silence and uncertainty.

Even with sunlight beckoning the forest to stretch its limbs and drink its rays, the warmth was not comforting. It battered and scorched my body, igniting the pent-up anger and sorrow within.

A sob welled at the thought of my three younger sisters and mother when they were still in Feng. Back then, it felt as though our home was in an eternal spring. At dusk, in the rain-bloom fields, Yunshu, Heshi, Sangshu, and I offered whispers of our dreams of love, of age, of adventure. Mother always watched, settled under a nearby storm tree, with a gentle smile reaching her eyes. It had been three annuals since second-youngest sister Sangshu married the King. She’d be twenty-three annuals if she was alive. She is. Or so I told myself.

Chuiliu was unaware of my sorrow as I shielded my face from her, not wanting my youngest sister to watch as I crumbled. I imagined the rain-bloom droplets lifting into the sky with my own sap tears.

“Will the seeds find them?” Chuiliu’s eyes were like earthy moons.

“The natural gods and the wind will guide them.” A lie.

I, too, would soon be married to the King. I couldn’t tell her I would act as her seeking rain bloom. All she had to do was wait for my return.

“Lufeng,” Grandmother’s voice drifted from behind. “It is time.”

I patted Chuiliu’s head, her dark needle threads soft against the rough bark of my skin, and nudged her towards the cluster of hollows making up our home in Feng. Reluctant at first, her shoulders then drooped before she trotted away. Grandmother and I waited until she disappeared into the storm trees’ embrace.

* * *

Two individuals must settle the negotiation of bridewealth; they must be close—yet not too close—to the soon-to-be-married couple’s families.

This was the first time marriage negotiations were taking place in Feng.

My mother’s sister, Xiangmu, and Copper, the King’s aunt, would meet to negotiate the terms of my marriage to the King. The Palace grounds tore forth again, growing ever closer to our home. Only through the marriages would there be a chance to halt—or at least delay—the relentless expansions.

I followed Grandmother away from the fields towards the edge of Feng and waited for Copper to exit the Palace. We stood obscured by large storm-tree leaves, grey, shifting, like a slice of dark sky and clouds contained within the naturally serrated edges. Driven by slivers of wind, the tree brewed small hurricanes and tornadoes, a flurry of branches and trunks intertwining. Yet, only soft tickles graced our fingertips when we brushed the storm leaves aside, like collected dust, touchable clouds, soft tumbleweeds.

The gates of the Palace yawned like the opening of a freshly dug grave. Settled on top of a bulky and imposing Traveler, Copper towered over both the Palace guards, whose machines were half the height of hers. They flanked Copper both ahead and behind, adorned in pooling black cloaks with the hoods drawn up, hanging just before the lips. The controlled strides of the Travelers’ mechanical legs creaked metallically, resounding between the Palace and Feng. Copper and the Palace guards moved forth in a rhythm, too steady, on their Travelers, with silver legs, feet, and talons resembling those of birds.

The Palace was too far—an hour away by wind, far less on a Traveler—for the eyes and ears of those who lived within the Palace, Land Wanderers. But the sound met us early. The same with sight. Even Grandmother, ancient in her age, could see every detail of a single feather on a bird’s wing several gusts of winds away. I had heard Land Wanderers had no such capabilities.

The walls extending skywards around the Palace grazed the clouds. The Palace itself seemed encased in a bone mold—rigid, still… dead. Few had seen past the walls. Along the bottom, there were more waiting tiles, stacked on top of uprooted trees and dead undergrowth like feeble fingers, clutching, scraping, futile.

If I had the power, if the wind ever allowed—though I knew the natural gods were never in favor of chaos—I would show the King what it was like to have his home threatened, to feel attacked, to be afraid. And I would mock his terror in silence.

At the abrupt end of the bone-tiled path stretching forth with the width of a large forest stream, the three halted in unison halfway to Feng. The guards retreated. Copper continued forth alone. Her smooth, bronzed skin and slender arms were so unlike our own rough bark faces and carved branch limbs. Her white cloak billowed; her hood framed her face. I winced when the metal talons of her Traveler sank into the grass, uprooting with each step, leaving scars, marring our lands.

When Copper neared, seemingly only moments later, though the sun had already gone, I melted into the shadows and trailed behind—unseen and unheard—as she made for Aunt Xiangmu’s home near the heart of Feng.

The Wind Walkers exited their hollows and watched with bowed heads as the King’s aunt passed. Some marveled at the Traveler; some stared with scorn; a few withdrew into their homes, the sight too horrific; while others stood, feet bracing both the earth beneath them and the wind hovering near them—sometimes we borrowed for travel, and other times we borrowed for strength.

Each step Copper’s Traveler took pierced into the organs of Feng. I reimagined the ground as Copper, the Traveler’s legs as my fingers, and the King as the soil crumbling beneath the talons.

* * *

Near the entrance of Aunt Xiangmu’s home sat Copper’s Traveler, legs withdrawn, the half-shell body settled on the ground. Without her machine, Copper’s height was swallowed by the hollow’s intertwined roots reaching endlessly upwards, roofless. Beneath, branches wormed down into the earth, rippling. Storm vines hung from leaning hollow trunks, making it almost impossible to see inside—almost. The woven branch walls rippled every few seconds, allowing small glimpses into the earthy chamber, now an intruded-upon haven. I liked to call these homes eyes for the way they blinked.

I crouched on the other side of a shifting opening, caught a rippling, and tugged it to widen the gap.

During prior negotiations, Aunt Xiangmu would glide as if on clouds towards the Palace, guided by the wind, while my sisters, Grandmother, and I bid her a silent farewell half-hidden behind the walls of Feng—tangled, spiraling in place like churning clouds, rumbling storms. Perhaps this slight change, bringing a member of the Palace to us, meant we were making progress in reclaiming our lands. Or perhaps the King was only toying with us—giving us false hope before taking it away.

Chuiliu tugged at my cloak. Even at full height, she only reached my hip, and I was shorter than most from Feng, only past five feet, halfway to six. “Fengfeng.”

The Feng—Phoenix—in my name was not the same meaning as the Feng, Wind, of our home, but my youngest sister, still having difficulties with the distinct tones, always made the same mistake.

“Feng—” I raised a finger to my lips and beckoned her closer as I leaned down towards her. Though Chuiliu was naturally quiet, her whispers sounded thunderous with only the wind against the grass and a single cricket’s call.

She lowered her voice until it was almost inaudible. “What are you doing?”

“Watching. Listening.” I wrapped my arms around her slight frame and brought her to a squat, our limbs of braided and tangled branches blending with the hollow. The only thing distinguishing our legs from one another was the newness of her roots: no moss, loose, as though they would unravel with a strong passing breeze.

I clutched Chuiliu’s hand harder than she was clutching mine. In an unexpected gesture, she reached behind me, offering rhythmic pats the same way Mother used to soothe us all. Though she was the youngest, often her maturity surprised me.

Together, we watched the negotiations unfold.

* * *

Aunt Xiangmu sat across from Copper in her dinner hollow, one that remained empty elsetime, with hands settled on top of a scarred table made from the remains of our ancestors, their faces lit by a single candle Copper had brought with her, now almost burnt out. I winced as drops of melted wax met the table, as if burning our dead.

Each aunt had an emptied shell filled with tea made from riverside herbs. We didn’t need such things, but we understood Land Wanderers required different nourishment. Water, soil, sunlight, and moonlight were enough to sustain us. Land Wanderers were always picky, according to Aunt Xiangmu. Yet my younger sisters were always eager, hungry, to hear more about the Palace and its people. There’s nothing better than ourhome, I used to remind them, as Grandmother would me. My sisters would sulk and return to playing in the rain-bloom fields, or sometimes past those, swinging or crawling through vineyard thickets.

Copper pulled a second candle from her white cloak.

In Feng, we only borrowed Moonglows, tiny insects carrying the moon’s light in their bodies, and we always allowed them to leave when they wished. We didn’t need the light for our eyesight adjusted to the time of moon. Moonglows were mainly for company, comfort, celebration. Yunshu and Heshi had a habit of beckoning Moonglows into their hairs, complimenting one another on the beauty of their needle threads. Chuiliu liked to stare in silence, wordless, at the Moonglows with a small grin.

But there was also a different type of Moonglow with the same name, which grew where their crescents hung in trees, a slow juggle across the sky. For those of us injured or nearing death, Moonglows were ground, mixed, poured down throats, churned within ourselves to heal, to purify. It felt like the dim recollection of the sun at dawn, a small embrace during the nights. And sometimes, it was used for tea.

“Thank you,” Aunt Xiangmu began in Script, the tongue of Land Wanderers, gesturing to the tea in front of Copper. “For coming all the way here.”

It was a strange clang and clink of words, grinding together like gears. Even though we knew Script too—the bare minimum—most of us had no reason to use it unless we encountered Palace folk. I’d known no other spoken tongue than that of the wind—Breath, like rhythmic leavings of air from our lungs to shape the words we spoke—until I turned twenty a few annuals prior.

“Well, the King wanted to extend his respects to the Wind Walkers. The situation has been uneasy between our people, hasn’t it?” Copper took a sip, wrinkled her nose. “It’s cold.”

“Is it not to your liking?” Aunt Xiangmu took a sip of her own tea, unfazed.

Copper pressed her lips together. “No, no. Just… different.” The movement was slight, but when Copper placed her shell down, she slid it away.

I held my tongue. I wondered if Aunt Xiangmu had drunk the hot tea she once spoke about being served at the Palace and had served Copper cold tea as an act of unspoken defiance. The thought brought a small smile to my face.

“Hopefully, with this meeting, your people will become more”—Copper tapped a finger against the side of the shell—“settled with their concerns.”

“That will depend on whether you agree to our terms.” Aunt Xiangmu set down her tea, fingers tightening around the shell.

“Surely, you understand your people are at a disadvantage.” Copper thumbed her three bone rings. I imagined their texture as both grainy and smooth, like sanded teeth—like the tiles stretching in all directions from the Palace.

Copper swept her white hair aside, her face too youthful in contrast, revealing bone earrings, hanging in the shape of loosely connected joints.

“With the Palace expanding, what could you possibly have left to offer? The King was quite,” Copper sniffed, “disappointed with the last one.” She brought a finger up to her lip. “She didn’t seem to embrace Palace life, unlike the others—well, and the mother, of course.”

The others—mother—could that mean—? Hope swelled within me, but I dared not allow it to grow too rampant, to only later have it snuffed out.

Copper bowed, eyes set on Aunt Xiangmu with a calculating stare—an attempt to provoke—yet there was also a flicker of something else, an unspoken exchange between Copper and Aunt Xiangmu I couldn’t decipher. And for a moment too quick for me to be certain of, it was as though Copper had looked right where Chuiliu and I were hiding.

During the last negotiation discussions between Aunt Xiangmu and Grandmother, I overheard I was to be last. My sisters and I had been born one annual after another, but Chuiliu was unplanned. I was glad for Chuiliu’s age, her youthfulness making her ineligible for a sacrificial marriage—at least for now. I drew her closer. She tilted her head, resting against me. Her innocence, her unawareness, made me want to never let go.

“This one’s aware of her duties,” Aunt Xiangmu said. I shivered at the way she referenced me, like an object rather than a living being.

“Oh, is she?” Copper looked amused.

Aunt Xiangmu understood Copper would propose outrageous requests. They were ignorant to the death they brought with their pavings, what they called “development” and “construction.” Such faithless Land Wanderers who reviled Feng’s natural gods. For my mother, they halted the expansions towards Feng for five annuals, and the offers had been decreasing with each sister.

“Who do we have the honor of welcoming to the Palace this time?” Copper cooed.

“The eldest granddaughter of our Elder,” Aunt Xiangmu said. “Lufeng.”

The resolution in my aunt’s voice caused all of me to constrict and curl, the bark of my limbs prying. Aunt Xiangmu interlaced her hands with a slight tremor.

“Lufeng. Green Phoenix. How fascinating,” Copper said. “The juxtaposition between a creature of flames and the color of vitality. Truly, the people of Feng have such a gift for names. But,” her smile was wicked, “maybe she, too, will change hers, like her sisters.”

I immediately expelled the thought of my sisters abandoning their identities from my mind. They were loyal to Feng. They wouldn’t do such a thing of their own volition. The King must have forced the betrayal.

“So, what is it the Feng desire?” Copper drawled.

Aunt’s transpiring palms gripped her grass skirt, crushing the floral decorations. A cold breeze uncharacteristic of Feng’s usual warmth caused the skin of my limbs to contract, branches tightening, the crevices across my face sealing.

“We want cessation of construction in Eastern Feng and the nearby plains. And removal of the new Palace ground pavings from the annual prior.” Then, after a pause, Aunt Xiangmu said, “Permanently.”

Copper tsked. “Well. That is quite the ask. Is she so special?” Copper’s amusement drew up her painted lips.

“Lufeng is the eldest. The next in line to lead the people of Feng after the Elder,” Aunt Xiangmu said.

No doubt Copper saw the risks Feng was taking and the opportunities for the Palace’s further growth: their trade ventures, new markets, more roads. To weaken our hold on Feng and its lands, its resources—

“You know we cannot agree to a permanent stop to the construction, the progress. We must move forward, even if slowly.” Copper was thoughtful. “A decade. Would that suffice?”

When Aunt Xiangmu didn’t respond, Copper frowned, and there was a twitch to her eye. “This is already a more than generous offer.”

Aunt Xiangmu’s expression soured, but she quickly smoothed the crease on her forehead and lifted the downwards turn of her lips. For a long pause, she considered the proposition—a show. Then her shoulders sagged with defeat.

Copper crossed her legs, smiling. Her rows of too-straight teeth, bone white, shone in the dimming candlelight. There was silence as the two blew out the quivering flame, each pressing a slit finger—a smear of blood from Copper, glistening sap from Aunt Xiangmu—onto the agreement. The sight of the parchment made me shudder. I thought of all the dead trees, our unspeaking kin, and I mourned them in silence.

The wedding would take place in a cycle’s time.

* * *

When Copper had left and Aunt Xiangmu had rid her hollow of the unnatural candle and tea, and had withdrawn for sleep, Chuiliu squirmed out of my hold.

She stood, fists clenched at her side with what strength and anger and fear she could muster. “You can’t leave!” Sap tears dribbled down her chin.

“I don’t want to, but I must.” I ran the edge of my cloak along her jawline, collecting escaped pain.

Chuiliu didn’t yet understand the sacrifices necessary to keep our lands. I stroked her unruly, dirt-speckled needle threads.

The only thing we could do was continue resisting. If we could come to understand them, perhaps they would come to understand us. That was my mother and grandmother’s wish. I had little choice but to honor them, even if I disagreed. We could only hold the King back for so long.

The storm trees behind us shifted in tortured twists. If the natural gods could hear me, I questioned why they continued to make us sacrifice.

Grandmother appeared from the trees. She approached, slow, then rested a hand on my shoulder. I never knew where she disappeared to, or how she knew when she was needed, but rather than feeling comfort, I felt the weight of her position, the weight of Feng, and the weight of her faith.

Mother believed there could be peace. She believed the King would understand why a balance between the new world and the natural world was necessary. She was wrong. I may well be another futile sacrifice. I didn’t voice this to anyone. It was not my place to. I would have to take the risk no one else had taken, or at least no one had succeeded in taking.

I would have to kill the King—

Even if it meant imprisonment.

Even if it meant exile.

Even if it meant execution

At sunrise, a quarter cycle after the bridewealth negotiations, Grandmother and I headed towards the rain grasslands beside the forests of Eastern Feng. Ten steam engines several times my height with wheels as thick as five ancient trunks bound together littered the space, their weight crushing the sparse remains of the land. I couldn’t help but imagine how easily I would be pulped beneath these monstrous entities, the way slender twigs snapped under Land Wanderers’ feet.

There were piles upon piles of uprooted plants scattered across almost barren land. Toppled trees, too many to count, had their branches sprawled over one another—broken limbs, fallen bodies, cooling corpses. It was difficult to picture the space as once lush with towering rain grass that hid roaming creatures.

I dropped next to a young storm tree still standing, its trunk the size of my forearm, the leaves on its severed branches already wilted. My throat clenched at the sight of fur clumps—grey, brown, white—among flattened foliage. Only bones and tuffs remained.

“Stop!” Grandmother commanded the builders, her voice drowned out by the destruction roaming around us, a stark contrast to the whispering winds rustling through the trees of Feng. She waved the scroll containing the bridewealth agreement in the air. “We have negotiated the bridewealth with the King.”