Word Puppets Read online

  WORD PUPPETS

  STORIES BY

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  For my nephew, Peter,

  who shares an appreciation of short fiction with me.

  Copyright © 2015 by Mary Robinette Kowal.

  Cover art by Howard Lyon.

  Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-466-9 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-456-0 (print)

  PRIME BOOKS

  Gaithersberg, MD

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books at [email protected].

  Contents

  Introduction

  by Patrick Rothfuss

  The Bound Man

  Chrysalis

  Rampion

  At the Edge of Dying

  Clockwork Chickadee

  Body Language

  Waiting for Rain

  First Flight

  Evil Robot Monkey

  The Consciousness Problem

  For Solo Cello, op. 12

  For Want of a Nail

  The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland

  Salt of the Earth

  American Changeling

  The White Phoenix Feather: A Tale of Cuisine and Ninjas

  We Interrupt This Broadcast

  Rockets Red

  The Lady Astronaut of Mars

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Patrick Rothfuss

  So here’s the thing: Mary Robinette Kowal is one of my favorite people.

  This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I am, after all, writing the introduction to her book. Things like this are done as favors for friends. You have to know that’s how these things work. That’s just the way the world works.

  However, it puts us in a strange position, you and I. If I’m a friend of Mary’s, how can you trust me to be impartial about her writing? How do you know I won’t simply smile and tell you beautiful lies about her work?

  Here’s the thing: you don’t know. This whole issue is complicated by the fact that I’m not just a good liar. I’m a professional liar. I lie for a living. Pretty much everything I’m writing here could be a lie.

  So you’re going to have to decide for yourself whether or not you’re going to trust me. You’ll have to decide how much of this you’re going to believe.

  Ready? Let’s go.

  I’d known about Mary for a long time before I actually met her. We had a few friends in common and attended the same conventions, but we’d never really ended up talking. We moved in different social spheres and knew different people. Mary was active in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), I was not. Equally important is the fact that Mary is very socially adept. Genteel even.

  I, on the other hand, tend to be more like a bear that has somehow learned to put on pants. When I show up at parties, it’s usually because there’s food there. I wander around in a bemused sort of way, grunting and snuffling. Then, typically, I either fall asleep or wander away before I cause too much damage.

  The first time I remember chatting with Mary was back in 2011. We were both at World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, and ended up drifting into conversation with each other. After a while, the conversation wandered into writing, which isn’t that strange, when you think about it.

  I admitted I was fairly obsessive about the words that I used in my books. I didn’t feel comfortable using the word “spartan” for example, because in my world, there was never a Sparta. I was fine with the word “rubbery” as there is vulcanized rubber, but I’d avoid a word like “comrade” as it sounds too Russian to the English-speaker’s ear.

  “That sort of thing drives me crazy, too. So . . . ” Mary said. “For my Regency novels, I made a Jane Austen spellcheck dictionary from her complete works. If one of my novels uses a word that isn’t in that dictionary, it gets flagged and I look it up to see if it was in use in Regency England.” She cocked her head slightly. “Did you know they apparently didn’t have wastebaskets?”

  That’s the point at which I thought to myself, I need to spend more time with this woman. She is my kind of crazy.

  So I did. And she was. And it was lovely.

  No. Wait. Apparently that wasn’t the first time we met.

  I just checked with Mary, and she reminded me that we’d actually met the summer before at Penguicon. I remember now, that was the convention where she told me one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard about how she’d traumatized a bunch of children with an (admittedly accidental) perverse puppet show.

  So I’m at the convention, hanging out in the bar with a few other writers, and John Scalzi was giving me shit about having one of the biggest fantasy clichés ever in the first chapter of Name of the Wind: stew.

  I countered with the well-known fact that stew was both delicious and period appropriate for my novel.

  John said that was true, but it was still no excuse for using the phrase, “hearty stew.”

  “I did not,” I said. “I might have put stew in my book, but I did not write hearty stew.”

  While we were going back and forth like this, Mary had quietly picked up my book and was thumbing through the first scene. “Here it is,” she said. “A hearty, filling stew.”

  As I’ve said, words are important to me. And because of this, I was mortified. Not just the kind of embarrassment where you realize your fly is down, but the sort where you realize your fly has been down all day, including when you shook hands with the president, and someone took a picture and put it up on the internet.

  Then she laughed. “No—You’re fine. I just made it up.”

  So yes. Mary is a liar. A good one. I respect that.

  Years later, I invited Mary into a little scheme I was hatching. After years of resisting, I was ready to join Twitter, but I wanted to have some fun doing it.

  So I created six identical Twitter accounts and invited five writers to come and impersonate me. I made a game of it, asking if people could guess who the real Pat Rothfuss is.

  Mary was one of the first that I asked. To make a long, humiliating story marginally shorter: she won. Not by a little bit, either. Decisively. Crushingly. While it’s true I came in second place, the simple fact is that she ran circles around me. She got three times as many votes as I did. If that wasn’t bad enough, Twitter itself verified her account three times over the two weeks we were running the contest.

  Have I mentioned that Mary can write yet? She can write. She’s really, really good at writing.

  Over the years, I’ve come to know Mary better and better, and one of the things that delights me is how little we have in common. Mary spent ten years as a touring puppeteer. She’s a professional audiobook narrator and voice actor. She understands the technological and socioeconomic underpinnings of clothing. (Yes. I made that pun on purpose, and I’m not going to apologize.)

  Mary appreciates whiskey and wine as a connoisseur. Mary groks Regency England, while I would be hard pressed to tell you what time period that really is (though I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the 1800s). She writes award-winning short fiction.

  When I need help with any of these things, or any of a dozen others I could name, I call Mary. She’s given me advice about how to survive on tour. I’ve picked her brain about how clothing evolves in a society, and what it indicates about culture. And I’ve picked her brain about what exactly a short story is and how to write one.

  This last one still eludes me. Don’t hold it against her. I se
em to have an innate deficiency in that particular area.

  The humorous implications of asking me to write an introduction to a collection of short fiction are pretty obvious. But it actually makes it much easier for me to sing Mary’s praises. I have sought this subtle art and never found it. Mary has. She’s good at this sort of thing.

  One of my favorite things about this collection is that it’s arranged (more or less) chronologically. That means as you read, you get to see how Mary’s writing has progressed over the years. From her earlier writing to her more recent award-winning stories.

  I don’t know about you, but it does me good to see that she didn’t spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus, writing award-winning short fiction.

  The other thing I like about this collection is that it shows her versatility in a way people only familiar with her novels haven’t seen. In these pages you will find traditional fantasy. Historical fiction. Science fiction of both hard and soft varieties.

  So. Enough from me. You’re not here to read me, you’re here to read Mary.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  P. S. I promise it’s really me writing this, not Mary impersonating me.

  P. P. S. Probably.

  P. P. P. S. Seriously though. It’s really me.

  The Bound Man

  Light dappled through the trees in the family courtyard, painting shadows on the paving stones. Li Reiko knelt by her son to look at his scraped knee.

  “I just scratched it.” Nawi squirmed under her hands.

  “Maybe Mama will show you her armor after she heals it.” Her daughter, Aya, leaned over her shoulder trying to understand the healing.

  Nawi stopped wiggling. “Really?”

  Reiko shot her daughter a look. But her little boy’s dark eyes were upturned and shining with excitement. She smiled. “Really.” What did tradition matter? “Now let me heal your knee.”

  He held his leg out for her, bloodstained knee showing through his trousers. She laid her hand on the shallow wound.

  “Ow.”

  Reiko shook her head. “Shush.” She closed her eyes and rose in the dark space behind them.

  In her mind’s eye, Reiko took her time with the ritual, knowing it took less outside time than it appeared. In a heartbeat, green fire flared out to the walls of her mind. She let herself dissolve into it as she focused on healing her son.

  When the wound closed beneath her hand, she rose back to the surface of her mind. “There.” She tousled Nawi’s hair. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”

  “It tickled.” He wrinkled his nose. “Will you show me your armor now?”

  She sighed. She should not encourage his interest in the martial arts. “Watch.”

  Pulling the smooth black surface out of the ether, she manifested her armor. It sheathed her like silence in the night. Aya watched with anticipation for the day when she earned her own armor. Nawi’s face—his face cut Reiko’s heart like a new blade. Sharp yearning for something he would never have filled his face.

  “Can I see your sword?”

  She let her armor vanish into thought. “No.” Reiko brushed his hair from his eyes. “It’s my turn to hide, right?”

  Halldór twisted in his saddle, trying to ease the kinks out of his back. When the questing party reached the Parliament, he would be able to remove the weight hanging between his shoulders.

  With each step his horse took across the moss-covered lava field, the strange blade bumped against his spine, reminding him that he carried a legend on his back. None of the runes or entrails he had read before their quest had foretold the ease with which they fulfilled the first part of the prophecy. They had found the Chooser of the Slain’s narrow blade wrapped in linen, buried beneath an abandoned elf-house. In that dark room, the sword’s hard silvery metal—longer than any of their bronze swords—had seemed to shine with the light of the moon.

  Lárus pulled his horse alongside Halldór. “Will the ladies be waiting for us, do you think?”

  Halldór laughed. “Maybe for you, my lord, but not for me.”

  “Nonsense. Women love the warrior-priest. ‘Strong and sensitive.’ ” He snorted through his mustache. “Just comb your hair so you don’t look like a straw man.”

  A horse screamed behind them. Halldór turned, expecting to see its leg in one of the thousands of holes between the rocks. He caught his breath. Armed men swarmed from the gullies between the rocks, hacking at the riders. Bandits.

  Halldór spun his horse to help Lárus and the others fight off the bandits.

  Lárus shouted. “Protect the sword.”

  Halldór cursed at the Duke’s command and turned his horse from the fight, driving it as fast as he could across the rocks. Behind him, men cried out as they fought to protect his escape. His horse twisted as it galloped along the narrow paths between stones. It stopped abruptly, avoiding a chasm. Halldór turned to look back.

  Scant lengths ahead of the bandits, Lárus rode, slumped in his saddle. Blood stained his cloak. The other men hung behind Lárus, protecting the Duke as long as possible.

  Behind them, the bandits closed the remaining distance across the lava fields.

  Halldór kicked his horse’s side, driving it around the chasm. His horse stumbled sickeningly beneath him. Its leg snapped between rocks. Halldór kicked himself free of the saddle as the horse screamed. As he rolled clear, the rocky ground slammed the sword into his back. His face passed over the edge of the chasm. Breathless, he pushed back from the drop.

  As he scrambled to his feet, Lárus thundered up. Without wasting a beat, Lárus flung himself from the saddle and tossed Halldór the reins. “Get the Sword to Parliament!”

  Halldór grabbed the reins, swinging himself into the saddle. The weight of the artifact on his back gave him no comfort. What did it matter, that they had found the sword, if they died returning it to the Parliament? “We have to use the sword!”

  Lárus’s right arm hung limply by his side, but he faced the bandits. “Go!”

  Halldór yanked the sword free of its wrappings. For the first time in six thousand years, the light of the sun fell on the silvery blade bringing fire to its length. It vibrated in his hands.

  The first bandit reached Lárus and forced him back.

  Halldór chanted the runes of power, which would call the Chooser of the Slain.

  Time stopped.

  Reiko hid from her children, blending into the shadows of the courtyard with more urgency than she felt in combat. To do less would insult them.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” Nawi spun away from the tree and sprinted past her hiding place. Aya turned more slowly and studied the courtyard. Reiko smiled as her daughter sniffed the air, looking for tracks. Her son crashed through the bushes, kicking leaves with each footstep.

  She stifled the urge to shake her head at Nawi’s appalling technique, as another branch cracked under his foot. She would have to speak with his tutor to find out what the woman was teaching him. He might be a boy, but that was no reason to neglect his education.

  Aya found Reiko’s initial footprints and tracked them, away from where she hid. Watching her daughter carefully, Reiko slid from her hiding place and walked across the courtyard to the fountain. This was a rule with her children; to make up for the size difference, she could not run.

  She paced closer to the sparkling water, using its babble to cover her sounds. Nawi shouted, “Have you found her?”

  “No, silly!” Aya shook her head and stopped. She put her tiny hands on her hips, staring at the ground. “Her tracks stop here.”

  She and her daughter were the same distance from the fountain, but on opposite sides of it. If Aya were paying attention, she would realize her mother had doubled back in her tracks and jumped from fountain to the paving stones encircling the grassy center of the courtyard. Reiko had time to take three more steps before Aya turned.

  As her daughter turned, Reiko felt more than heard her son reach for her. She let herself fall forward, using g
ravity to drop beneath his hands. She rolled on her shoulder, somersaulting, then launched to her feet again as Aya ran toward her.

  Nawi grabbed for her again. With a child on each side, Reiko danced and dodged her way closer to the fountain. She twisted from their grasp, laughing with them each time they missed her. Their giggles echoed through the courtyard.

  The world tipped sideways and vibrated. Reiko stumbled as pain ripped through her spine. Nawi’s hand clapped against her side.

  Through the pounding in her head, she heard his voice shrill with joy. “I got her!”

  Fire exploded in her eyes and the courtyard vanished from her sight.

  Time began again.

  The sword in Halldór’s hands thrummed with life. Fire from the sunset seemed to engulf the sword and rent the air. With a keening cry, the air opened and a form dropped through, silhouetted against a haze of fire. Horses and men screamed in terror.

  When the fire died away, a woman stood between Halldór and the bandits.

  Halldór’s heart sank. Where was the Chooser of the Slain? Where was the warrior the sword was supposed to call?

  A bandit snarled a laughing oath and rushed toward them. The others followed him with their weapons raised.

  The woman snatched the sword from Halldór’s hands. In that brief moment, when he stared at her wild face, he realized he had succeeded in calling Li Reiko, the Chooser of the Slain.

  Then she turned. The air around her rippled with a heat haze as armor, dark as night, materialized around her body. He watched her dance with deadly grace, bending and twisting from the bandits’ blows. Without seeming thought, with movement as precise as ritual, she danced with death as her partner. Her sword slid through the bodies of the bandits.

  Halldór dropped to his knees giving thanks to the gods for sending her. He watched the point of her sword trace a line like the path of entrails on the church floor. The line of blood led to the next moment, the next, and the next—as if each man’s death was predestined.

  Then she turned her sword on him.

  Her blade descended, burning with the fire of the setting sun. Jewels of blood clung to its length. If his blood was to be the price for saving Lárus, then so be it.