“So we let them slaughter us like animals? Worse than animals. No butcher would be this cruel.”
Officer Ouyang sets her shoulders. “There is a time and place for everything.”
She is revealing things to you that she shouldn’t, not if she wants to keep herself safe. Her trust in you is dizzying. “And are there others you know who take part in these rebellious activities?”
Ouyang Suqing looks away. Her silence is your answer.
You reach for her hands and she lets you take them. You tell her that your room is cold, too cold, and has too much empty space in the dark. Space where ghosts can hide, and find you with their bloody fingers in the night. She simply nods. Here, the two of you can keep each other warm. Safe from ghosts.
• • • •
In the course of the nights that come you dissolve into each other’s arms over and over again. You show her all the things that she has been denied and all the things that she has been denying herself.
You tell her your name is Tian.
“Can you teach me the song?” she asks, curled with her head against your shoulder.
“No,” you say, and the hurt shows on her face, but 满江红 is your song, yours and Ren’s. It is not to be shared. “Pick another. Pick one I might know.”
Suqing looks at the stars arrayed outside her window. Now that the Imperial Executioner’s ship is gone the view is clear. She breathes softly on your skin while she thinks. Songs nestle in her mouth in soft hums as she tries them out. Something seems to catch her fancy:
「明月几时有? 把酒问青天… 」
The first two syllables of the song strike your heart like stones falling into a pond. You know this one, of course.
我欲乘风归去、又恐琼楼玉宇、高处不胜寒。
起舞弄清影、何似在人间？
Suqing’s voice stumbles rough and unpracticed through the lyrics, the tones falling flat. You sing with her, you lift her voice. No portal opens between you—that kind of magic takes time and concentration—but you feel the stirrings of a connection, the right kind of purity. You fall asleep with the words lingering between you, as if you were back on the originworld, entwined with another under the moonlight, the sound of nesting swallows above your head.
人有悲欢离合、月有阴晴圆缺、 此事古难全。但愿人长久、千里共婵娟。
• • • •
Three weeks pass by like water in a river. A fresh processing officer joins you in the portal room as you prepare to resume your duties. A mountain of work awaits you: Shipments of perishable goods, important documents, and luxury items hunger for their destinations. Eighth Colony seethes with impatience after so long with no portal contact to other places. And it’s an impatience you share, but for other reasons: your heart gladdens at the thought of being immersed in Ren’s song again.
You raise your voice: 怒发冲冠，凭栏处…
The voice that joins yours is unexpected: low and smoke-roughened. 抬望眼、仰天长啸、壮怀激烈。
The alien timbre of the words startles you so much, the song stalls in your throat. Aborted in half-formation, the portal dissipates into white mist. The processing officer frowns. “Ansible? What are you doing?”
Ren, your Ren, your Wang-sun. Where is she? Is she still on leave? Why have they put a stranger, some unknown exocluster ansible, in her place?
“Ansible Xin,” the processing officer says, irritation in his tone. “We cannot afford any further delays.”
You have no choice. Three weeks of unspent work stands ahead of you. Shaking, shaken, you take up the song again, and the stranger on the originworld responds.
Your songs don’t match; you can barely hold the portal open wide enough. You don’t know who the strange ansible is or where she comes from. You don’t know her name. These things matter. All the time spent together in the temple was not for nothing. 三十功名尘与土、八千里路云和月。You feel like collapsing.
There’s still a good half left to the shipments when the processing officer leaves in a cloud of frustration, muttering about your worthlessness. You are done for the day.
Where is Ren?
• • • •
Suqing tries to break the news gently. But the look on her face tells you everything. The exhaust-heat in this secluded service corridor can’t fight off the chill in your bones.
“The Imperial Authority thought your cluster leader was compromised,” she says. “The corpse that came through here should have never left the originworld in the first place. So they decided to…” She picks her mind for words, her brow creased. “They decided to dispose of her.”
The replacement Ren was taken from the ship ansible program, where they don’t form clusters, where they are trained to be flexible. A stopgap.
You won’t let Suqing touch you, won’t let her comfort you. Traitor’s bloodfilled death stalks, sharp-toothed and slavering, through your memory. You think of Ren’s soft flesh disintegrating between lines of magebright, imagine her sweet voice torn by screams until the vocal cords are stripped away.
“They wouldn’t have executed her like that,” Suqing tells you. “She wasn’t a traitor. To them she was just a malfunctioning ansible.”
You know she’s trying to make you feel better. But the words sting. You are not a broken part to be replaced. “Leave me alone,” you hiss. You refuse to look at her until she withdraws.
• • • •
That night, after hours of deliberation and a slow settling of your mood, you go to her quarters. The door has barely shut behind you when you say: “I wish to take part in rebellious activities”.
Colour and expression drain from her face as though your words have punctured her somewhere. “What are you saying?”
“I want to avenge Wang-sun. Introduce me to your rebellion.”
Her breathing quickens. “You’ve gone mad. I can’t do that.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s not a lie, I—”
“I know where you go when you slip out at night for your walks. I know what’s happening on the evenings you tell me not to meet.”
She hides her eyes from you, momentarily. “Do you?”
“I know you keep things in the drawers you ask me not to open.”
Her face crumples in a frown. “Those are just family treasures. You—”
“The other day I saw you and Quartermaster Lu whispering together. When I came closer you stopped. What were you talking about?”
She puts space between you. “Listen to yourself talk. Do you know what’s at stake? You’ve seen what they do to traitors.”
You close the space she’s tried to make. “It doesn’t matter. My cluster has been broken. Ren is gone. They’re only waiting until they can replace us. I am already dead, it is decided.”
Suqing grimaces. “I won’t do this. Leave me alone if you have nothing else to ask.” She retreats into the bedchamber and locks the door, a mechanical click that you would have to break into. You stand in the cold air of her room, waiting for her to re-emerge and recant her declarations, but she does not.
• • • •
There’s a gap of hours before the knock comes on your door. You have been half-expecting it, half-dreading it. Suqing stands on the other side, the broad lines of her face taut and solid. “Come with me.” That’s all she says.
She leads you silently and rapidly through the backdoor byways of Eighth Colony: unpatrolled, unadorned corridors with exposed piping and unfinished metal walls. For the first ten minutes of your journey she walks without talking, and you match her strides, equally silent. Blood sings in your ears, and your heart is a drum to accompany it.
Then Suqing says: “When you asked to accompany me, I was in a dilemma. I suspected a trap. It seemed too convenient. First exposing my preferences for women, then trying to catch us in treasonous activities. I had a moment of doubt. I suspected the Authority’s involvement.”
A reasona
ble fear. “What changed your mind?”
“Nothing, actually. I just thought, I don’t want to live with this kind of fear and doubt all my life. Where even expressions of love have to be taken with suspicion.”
She comes to a stop before the entrance of a pump room, its door thick and heavy, the muffled roar of machinery thrumming from within. “Once you step through this door, there is no turning back. Are you sure about this? Do you know why you’re doing it?”
You are doing it for Ren. For Wang-sun. Your sorrow for her is overwhelming. How pitiful that she died helpless, at the mercy of the forces that have dictated the form and shape of your life. You have determined that this will not be your fate.
You straighten your spine and sing:「莫等闲白了少年头、空悲切。」
Suqing dips her head in understanding, and unlocks the room door with her mage’s touch.
• • • •
Over the next few hours and the next few days you learn many things. You suspected some of them, others catch you blind.
You learn that the roots of the rebellion have spread far and wide in Eighth Colony. They go deeper than you had imagined. Nearly half the Authority officers are active participants, and they are in every branch of operations.
You learn that of the four starmages on the colony, three have been recruited to the cause. The fourth, Officer Yao, is an Authority man, through and through. It cannot be helped. It is enough.
You learn that Quartermaster Lu leads the Eighth Colony rebels. When you ask if it feels strange to give orders to starmages, he laughs. “There is no place for that sort of hierarchy in the rebellion. We must purge ourselves and our movement of such toxic ways of thinking!”
You learn that the corpse that started your recent troubles was in fact a message from comrades on the originworld. Secrets and messages had been whispered into the dead man’s ear before he had been slaughtered. The map of his viscera has been pinned up in the pump room, Starmage Wu’s spidery interpretations scrawling downwards beside it. Gut-reading is an old art long fallen out of practice, but Starmage Wu had taught himself as a young man. The Starmage General had gotten so jittery around the Imperial Executioner’s visit that normal lines of communication were no longer safe.
You ask Quartermaster Lu: “So he was not really your cousin? That was a lie?”
“He was my cousin. But he was becoming a liability to the movement.” Since he had to die, his body might as well be made good use of. His death was regrettable, but it couldn’t be helped.
So, too, was Traitor’s. When she was caught, it was decided that saving her would only expose the movement to more danger, more executions. Starmage Jiang had visited her, quietly wiped her memories, so she could not reveal anyone else. She had died not even knowing her crimes.
You notice how uncomfortable Suqing becomes whenever Traitor is mentioned. Her name, you remind yourself, was Siyun.
Rebellion is imminent. Four of the Colonies have agreed to coordinate, overthrowing the Imperial Authority on the same day, declaring themselves independent.
Only the starmages have the ability to defeat the Starmage General. But their suits have a limiter that stops them from performing the Seventy Two Transformations, and that is under the Starmage General’s control. It is possible to bypass the limiters, but the materials needed to do so come from the originworld, and that shipment was interrupted by the Imperial Executioner’s visit.
“But we have the ansible on our side now,” says Quartermaster Lu. He thumps you heartily on the back.
“What of the processing officer?” you ask. “The new one detests me. Surely he will notice something amiss.”
“That’s Officer Xiao, isn’t it? He’s new to the colony.” Starmage Wu rubs his chin and looks at Suqing. “I hear he has his eye on you. He’s ambitious. That might work.”
Suqing flushes. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Come on, Ouyang,” Quartermaster Lu says. “Surely even a deviant like you can distract a man for a mere few minutes.”
• • • •
It takes more than a few minutes. For safety’s sake, Suqing’s flirtations with the man have to stretch across the week. The excuse is that, due to your poor performance, she has been sent to oversee you. While you sing your broken, mismatched song, she bats her eyelids and recites the lines Starmage Wu taught her. Her delivery is so glasslike and stiff you wonder how he believes it. But he is smitten. Somewhere between his posturing and Suqing’s unconvincing lip-biting, you receive a package wrapped in red cloth, mage-touched to hide it from scrutiny.
You cannot believe it worked.
Quartermaster Lu is predictably delighted, clapping Suqing on the back. He likes doing this, you realise, his boisterous laugh louder if the recipient of his gesture flinches. “Looks like you’ve truly got it in you, Ouyang. Are you sure you really like women that much?”
“I can vouch for that,” you say to him, as Suqing’s lips thin.
Quartermaster Lu guffaws. “This one has spirit! I like her.” And he looks at you with a smile that means he does not like you, at all.
Suqing takes your hand. It is done. Nothing stands between the colony and its destiny now.
• • • •
On the eve of the rebellion you lie with Suqing, one last exultation before the fall. You kiss her pale, damp skin, caressing the dips and curves that glow with implant light. How familiar this has become, as though everything that passed before had been a dream, and this has been the only reality you’ve known.
Eventually the both of you fall quiet, urgent caresses subsiding into a loose, comfortable tangle of limbs. “Are you frightened?” you ask.
Suqing blinks and looks out at the stoic, unjudgemental stars. “I’ve already done the most frightening thing I can think of.”
“Why did you do it? Why did you approach me, after so many years?”
She grips your hand. “The path of rebellion is lined with death,” she says. “And I didn’t want to die full of regrets.”
You bury your face in her fragrant shoulder. “You’re not allowed to die.”
She lifts your chin. “Surely my life is worth the freedom of the people? One life is not that much of a price to pay.”
You say nothing. Your mind struggles to construct the memory of the faces you have loved: Ren’s pale softness, the bright lines of your long-gone Mingyue. It’s like building a bridge out of smoke.
Your silence is not lost on Suqing. She kisses your fevered brow. “What happens, will happen,” she says. “We shouldn’t fight it.”
“Aren’t we fighting for the right to choose our destinies?”
She breathes out. “Yes,” she says finally. “Yes, we are. And this is what we’ve chosen.”
She has nightmares about Siyun’s death, still. You do too. Sometimes you dream that it’s Suqing in Traitor’s place. Sometimes you dream it’s you.
“After tomorrow,” Suqing says, as though reading your mind, “it won’t happen again.”
You press your chest against hers and softly begin the song you two chose for yourselves: 明月几时有？把酒问青天。Suqing’s voice joins yours, and in the cadence of her tone, snug as a glove, you feel a familiar resonance. And instead of fighting it you let it envelope you. You are falling into her song, as she is falling into yours, and her eyes are wide as a connection opens between you, a portal that transcends space and time.
不知天上宫阙、今夕是何年？
“We did it,” she whispers, as the song ends.
You press your heads together. “Now nothing in the universe can keep us apart.”
• • • •
You have never witnessed starmages in battle. Same as ordinary citizens, you have only read the poetry, heard the songs, tried to imagine the shape and sound of these battles. The things which are happening now defy the imagination, defy sense of scale, defy understanding. Creatures the size of mountains tear each other apart in the cold field of sp
ace. Two dragons battle, sinuous bodies twisting past the glass belly of Eighth Colony’s main atrium. The blood-slick scales that glide by are bigger than human heads. One dragon struggles to hold the other still. A third creature, a tiger that could swallow suns, slashes its world-splitting claws through dragonscale.
You can only guess which one is Suqing. And guesses are worth nothing in the arena of war.
Dragontail strikes glass and cracks spider across its surface. Amid cries of fear and consternation and the beat of your heart you whisper a mantra: It’s alright. It’s alright. She won’t let anything happen to us.
The citizenry clots the main atrium, bodies pushing against bodies until sweat and exhalation turns the air to thick and unbreathable soup. Terrible things transpire outside the atrium, but all that filters past the double-layered steel doors are muffled explosions and a great sense of fear. Fringes cling to foreheads, parents cling to children, and your grey tunic clings to the small of your back. A gun naps in your hands, warm and heavy, and as you patrol the atrium, intrusive thoughts of your fellow rebels follow you like a pack of wolves: What if you dropped it? What if it went off?
A woman pulls a small boy close as you walk past, and her eyes trail you as you continue your patrol. The citizenry are gathered here to protect them from the fighting; they are not hostages, or prisoners. This, too, is what they have been told.
In the center of the atrium the sculpture that used to be Traitor shimmers in the light of battle.
Something explodes in the station and you fall. Gun clatters against metal as the lights go out, and the deep bass thrum of the air system falls silent as if shot. People scream, and something—someone—strikes your jaw as the pushing starts, the angry, panicked shoving. You scramble to your feet, fearing a stampede, a loss of order, the loss of life. The gun—you see it on the floor, and you dive desperately for it. As your fingers close around the barrel something kicks you in the back. A foot crushes your hand. You scream.
The lights come back on and the air system starts again, unsteady and shuddering, as if the station is having problems drawing breath. Your hand pulses red-hot with pain as you get to your feet, and you don’t want to look at it, don’t want to see if there’s blood. The gun didn’t go off. That’s something to be thankful for. The other rebels are screaming instructions to the citizenry, to each other. Everyone seems to have forgotten about you.
The Long List Anthology Volume 4 Page 28