Daniel Fox - Jade Mans Skin

Praise for
DRAGON IN CHAINS
by Daniel Fox

Fox captures the foggy mysteries of feudal China in exquisite style with this rich fantasy series opener. Where many Western authors try and fail to capture the nuances of Chinese culture and mythology, this melodious tale quietly succeeds.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A rising star With talent like Foxs, the future of fantasy is in good hands.

Tanith Lee

Intense passions and wild imagination transform the familiar fates of emperors, peasants, and dragons with extraordinary results. A mythic China intimately imagined.

A. A. Attanasio

Daniel Fox tackles his material (loosely based on the myths and history of Old China) with a combination of insight, innovation, and sheer command of language that transforms it. Now Im waiting for the next book, with all the impatience of a dedicated fan!

Locus

Daniel Foxs poetic prose makes even the mundane seem marvelous. Definitely a noveland a seriesthat should be on every fantasy readers radar.

Fantasy Book Critic

B Y D ANIEL F OX

Dragon in Chains
Jade Mans Skin

Moshui

T HE B OOKS OF S TONE AND W ATER

Not much lies within my gift,
but this does.

This book is for you.

You know who you are.

Dragons Flight

H an flew, behind the dragons eyes.

H E DIDNT ride her, no. His body was somewhere else, below, and she would eat it if she could. Eat him.

As it turned out, though, she couldnt. She did try. But a little of him, the least little fragment of life that was himself sat somewhere within the enormity, the outrage, the cruelty of scale that was herselfand directed her just a touch, a veer away from what she most wanted, where she meant most harm.

H E HAD willfully cut her chains, and they were still bound together. That didnt seem fair, even to him. She was enraged past measure to have this puny passenger abiding in her head. Her thoughts were storms, if those were thoughts, if he understood her at all: banked like clouds but dense like solid water, more violent than the typhoon, churning and crashing together, flaring with a vicious light that meant no good to him or his.

She knew where he stood, and what he had done. He had cut her free, and watched her destroy the impertinence of ships on her watersa whole fleet in shatters now, all their crews drowned or swallowed or clinging helplessly, hopelessly to turbulent wreckage. She had relished that, but he could feel the hint of doubt in her now. Had it really been her choice? Or had he pushed her to it, his little insolent hands in her head, nudging her anger, using her ?

It was all for him now, that anger: a gift, his own. She brought it to him.

H E STOOD on the Forge, at the highest peak of that mountain-tip where it jutted from the strait, with the only people he cared about in the world: love and fear and respect, unequally divided. They all cared about the dragon, necessarily; they all feared her.

All his awareness was with her, in the air. In her mind, in her temper as she soared, as she spied, as she stooped like a hawk, like a queen condescending to pick out the petty ones she would destroy.

As it turned out, though, she couldnt harm him, or anyone in his shadow.

Not here, not now. Not yet.

Not quite.

G eneral Ping Wen had immortal longings in him.

He had godhood in his eye, and the Jade Throne should be his road there. He had reached, reached twice at once, both hands, the one with a blade and the other with a flag; but the blade had been turned aside somehow, and the flag had fetched no friends.

The boy who sat the throne, the young emperor ought to be dead in his own folly. A boatload of assassins had found him and pursued him, and absurdly failed to kill him. The boy was camped out in the mountains somewhere, sending impertinent messages. And conscripting native miners to be his bodyguard, apparently. It was a wild fancy, almost a madness. An opportunity too, of course, but Ping Wen lacked means just now to exploit it.

He should have had an army. He had sent the signal across the strait to Tunghai Wang, to summon his invasion. That might have made other difficulties, as Tunghai Wang meant to take the throne for himself; but one generals claim was no better than anothers, once the legitimate boy was dead. Ping Wen could have managed his own ascension, here on what would be his own island. Except that the invasion had not come.

Had there been a dragon, rising in the strait? The astrologers were certain; reports from the coast were confused and contradictory. Which was a strange way around, but much of the world was turned contrary now. As witness, a loyal general aspired to his masters throne and godhood, and thought it should be easy to achieve.

He thought he should have it by now. One way or the other. So many trained killers, and not one of them had reached the boy; so many shiploads of men, and not one of them had come ashore. A great fleet had been spotted, according to some. They were mostly those who claimed to have seen a dragon also, rising from the water and destroying all the boats. Others had seen a storm, no more than that, a darkness on the horizon.

Wilding or weather, he was almost sure that the invasion had been launched and met catastrophe. Almost. He couldnt be certain until he saw the wreckage or heard from Tunghai Wang; but the generalissimo should have trusted the signal. Whether that man was now dead in the strait or still stranded on the other side, seeing the ruin of his hopes wash up on every beach, Ping Wen wasnt able to guess.

Guesswork was for the credulous. When Ping Wen gambled, he did it on information. He had sent boats across the straitmanned by crews who did not believe in the dragonto discover the true state of the rebels forces and their surviving leaders. Any honest general would have done the same. Ping Wen had contrived to slip a few trusted men into the boats, to carry a minimum of news to Tunghai Wang if they had the chance; but the generalissimo must be a damaged man now, if he was not entirely broken. In many ways, his disaster should play well for Ping Wen, even if it did leave the emperor alive and apparently unchallenged here on Taishu-island.

Any honest general, of course, would also be sending messages to his emperor, urging the young man back into the proper protection of his army, the governing care of his mother and her council. Ping Wen sent daily, while doing everything he could to cement his own authority in the palace and across the island. The emperor would have to come out of the hills eventually; when he did, he would find himself in a subtly different world. For a while.

A short while.

Ping Wen clapped his hands for a scribe, and began to dictate another letter.

L i Ton sometimes liked to sit and count his losses. It helped to keep his purpose sharp; it gave a focus to his abiding anger, which might have whittled him down into a sour madness else. It might have let him die as he had lately lived, as a freeboot pirate, scum. Which would have been the last and almost the worst of his losses, if he had let that happen. He had lost so much already; he could not, he dared not lose his immaculate revenge.