Giang raises a hand, slowly and tentatively. And when Thanh doesn’t move away, she rests two fingers on Thanh’s lips, and Thanh can feel the quivering pulse in these. “It’s all right, big sis,” Giang says. “It’s all right.”
But it’s not.
* * *
Mother is not happy. She summons priests and advisers, and Thanh says deliberately confused things about fire and assault and Eldris. Giang has left, after Thanh forcefully insisted—it’s bad enough without adding a loose fire elemental in the mix.
When Thanh is done, Mother stares at her for a while—weighing her, trying to sort out truth from lies. Thanh feels her shoulder, again and again. Will the memory of Eldris’s touch ever go away?
At length, Mother’s lips thin into a colorless slit. “You will let me handle this,” she says to Thanh.
“Mother—”
“You’ve done enough damage.” And she turns away, to Long—Thanh dismissed as if she were a child. “Search the palace. There’s a sorcerer or a magician here. An Ephterian, likely.”
Long grimaces. “And if we find them?”
Thanh cannot see Mother’s face. But she hears the grimness in her tone. “Ask them to leave. You know as well as I do that there’s nothing more we can do.”
Extraterritoriality. Of course, with the betrothal gone, they’ll have no choice but to accept Ephterian terms.
Mother glares at Eldris’s sapphire ring, which is still on Thanh’s finger. “Give me the ring,” Mother says to Thanh. She holds out her hand.
Thanh closes her hand, turning the ring inward so the stone is hidden in her palm. It’s not that she wants it—but the order grates. Mother stares at her for a while. “You’re in shock. Go back to your room. We’ll see each other in the morning.”
Guards escort Thanh to her room, and then they’re all gone, and there’s just her—and the weight of the ring in her hand, and the fading hurt on her shoulder from where Eldris grabbed her—the pain is gone, but it still feels like Eldris has taken a piece of her flesh with her.
“Big sis.” It’s Giang, sitting on the bed, with a frown on her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
In her face is only anguish. Of course. She almost burnt down the palace. She almost did what she’d sworn never to do. Thanh closes her hand on the sapphire again, and draws Giang into her embrace, feeling the warmth of her against her body, repeating Giang’s words at her. “Ssshhh. It’s all right.” And does it matter that it’s not, if it gets them through the night?
A short, bitter laugh from Giang. “Will it be?”
There’s nothing that keeps me safe.
Nothing that keeps her unharmed or out of danger’s way. But—
But.
Thanh thinks of Eldris; thinks of Mother; thinks of letters, and of the shape of politics around her, of what the future can hold. “It just might, if we put down our tiles just the right way.”
* * *
Thanh sits bolt upright by Mother’s side in the throne room, watching the Ephterians file in.
They walk slowly with their heads held high: Pharanea with the mark of Eldris’s sword on her cheek, flanked by the other two, and behind her Eldris.
Her face is pale, and she will not meet Thanh’s gaze. Her sword taps against her legs as she walks, and if Thanh closes her eyes she’ll smell fire and blood, and feel phantom pain on her shoulder.
She keeps her eyes open. Beside her, Mother says, simply, “Remember: You will let me handle this. Do not speak unless I ask you to.”
The Ephterians bow, silently, to Mother. There is tea on the table—fresh and green—and a host of officials in the room, waiting with heads bowed for the outcome of this meeting. “Sit down,” Mother says. “We need to talk about apologies.”
She’s told Thanh off already, but of course she cannot let this provocation happen in her own court. Thanh can see all the ways this is going to go, the slow, careful dance that will lead to them bowing to Ephteria once again, to be broken once again.
It’s the price she has to pay for standing up. For almost killing Eldris and burning down half the palace. It makes sense—like everything Mother has ever done.
She can imagine Giang, and what Giang would say to that: Just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it needs to happen that way.
“Li’l sis,” she whispers, and the lanterns waver in the breeze—and Giang is standing at the back of the court, a ghostly shape that is gaining color and form, as if an artist were passing successive washes of paint over her. She looks straight at Thanh with bright, luminous eyes.
Thanh stands up. She slides off the ring Eldris gave her, drops it on the dais. It clatters with a sound like a bell’s call. She says, simply, “We don’t want apologies. Nor will we tender any.”
Mother, shocked and angry, gestures towards the guards, but before she can finish Giang stretches in the doorway of the throne room and the fire in the lanterns flares sharply up with a whooshing noise like flames, drawing her gaze to them—and in that moment of frozen shock Thanh speaks up. “I’ve written to Ngân Kỳ. You’ll find that threatening the life of an imperial princess who is also a betrothed bride, and causing a wing of the palace to be destroyed, is an act beyond the boundaries of what they’ll allow from uncouth foreigners.”
Eldris says, sharply, “They owe us.”
“Yes,” Thanh says. “So do we. You’ll also find that it’s much harder to parcel us out when we jointly say no.”
Mother stares at Thanh. She opens her mouth, and her gaze finds that of Adviser Long, who simply shakes his head. Thanh can feel the beads of the abacus in Mother’s mind, clacking against each other as they slide into place—as she finishes the political calculus Thanh has started for her. “Continue,” she says to Thanh, as smoothly and gracefully as if this were all planned.
“I’ve offered them an alliance,” Thanh says. “I don’t think they’ll refuse it.”
They won’t. The imperial palace is sacred; so is the life of a bride.
“You cannot—” Pharanea starts.
“In my own palace?” Mother’s voice is sweet the way of poisoned honey.
Eldris’s gaze moves from Mother to Thanh. “You,” she says, her eyes narrowing, and her hand goes to the hilt of her sword. She’s going to cut Thanh down—too fast for anyone in the room to do anything about this. She—
No, she’s not. She’s trying to make Thanh afraid, and two can play at that game. “Eldris,” Thanh says, sharply. “Look behind you.”
Eldris turns. Giang is walking between the assembled officials—not walking so much as running in front of guards trying to intercept her. Fire flickers on her hand, on the stripes on her face. She’s looking straight at Eldris, and smiling, showing the fangs in her mouth—and Eldris takes a step back, pale and shaken—and another and another until she’s at the rightmost hand of the dais.
Mother lifts a hand, and the guards stop. So does Giang, but she doesn’t look away from Eldris.
Thanh speaks, in the silence. “I think it’s time you left.”
“Your Highness?” Pharanea asks.
“You heard her,” Eldris snaps. “Let’s go.”
She doesn’t look at Thanh as she leaves, but Thanh looks at her. She watches her walk away, watches the way the sword swings—watches her legs and the sweep of her shoulders—and thinks of a pavilion, and of lips on hers, and of trust and of everything they once had. It takes all she has to stand still, to not run after her and beg Eldris to take her back—or to scream at her for the harsh words, for the violence. She doesn’t know, not anymore, but she feels the moment Eldris leaves the throne room; feels the way the air becomes lighter in her lungs, the way muscles clenched in fear slowly relax.
“Big sis.” Giang is at her side, and Thanh turns to her, the noise of the court fading away.
“You’ll have to introduce me to your . . . friend.” Mother’s voice is sharp, but not unkind.
Thanh reaches out, finds Giang’s hand. �
��This is Giang, Mother. If you’ll excuse us—”
She half-expects Mother or an official to stop them as they walk out of the throne room. She keeps tensing, waiting for it—but there’s nothing, and then she and Giang are standing on the platform, looking down on the immense courtyard with the dragon and pearl emblem of Bình Hải spread on the pavement below them.
“Thank you for your help,” Thanh says.
Giang shrugs. “That was nothing. You did most of it, you know.”
“We did it,” Thanh says. They’re gone. The Ephterians are gone. What follows will be neither easy nor pleasant, but there is a way forward that wasn’t there before.
They stare at each other in awkward silence.
Giang is the one to break it. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Thanh says. “That thing you feel for me—”
Giang says, simply, “Love.”
“Love,” Thanh says. The word feels too raw, too fragile—too soiled by what Eldris has done. “I don’t know, li’l sis. Not yet. I feel . . . a connection between us. A start.” A seed in a garden; and given enough time and healing, what flower might it blossom into?
“A connection. It’s all right,” Giang says. “I can wait for you to figure it out.”
“For us to figure it out.”
“Li’l sis. Of course. For us.” Giang moves towards Thanh, slowly, carefully—they kiss and it’s tentative and Thanh feels as though she’s breaking inside, undone by warmth. “I can stop—” Giang says.
“Don’t you dare,” Thanh says, and kisses her again—and holds her close until the warmth of fire makes the memory of Eldris shrivel and contract into harmlessness. Giang’s hands rest on her shoulders, and Thanh’s hands wrap around Giang’s waist, feeling the curve of her spine beneath the striped skin, the fast and steady beating of Giang’s heart.
There will be explanations, introductions; arguments with Mother and with Adviser Long and the rest of the court. There will be a tomorrow and it will hold negotiations and boundaries; and the shape of Thanh’s place in the court, irrevocably changed after what they’ve done—and the shape of Giang’s place, because she, too, has changed. There will be so much to do and so much to untangle.
But for now, there is just the two of them, and the warmth that binds them both together—and the future that is theirs to shape.
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Tade Thompson, Kate Elliott, Vida Cruz, Fran Wilde, and Stephanie Burgis, and to Hara Trần for checking all the Vietnamese names in this. And to my ink posse and all my snarky, supportive friends who love hot steamed buns.
About the Author
Lou Abercrombie
ALIETTE DE BODARD lives and works in Paris. She has won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award, and four British Science Fiction Association Awards, and was a double Hugo finalist for 2019 (Best Series and Best Novella). Most recently she published The House of Sundering Flames, the conclusion to her Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which also comprises The House of Shattered Wings and The House of Binding Thorns. Her short story collection, Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight, is out from Subterranean Press.
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Also by Aliette de Bodard
In the Vanishers’ Palace
Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight
DOMINION OF THE FALLEN
The House of Shattered Wings
The House of Binding Thorns
The House of Sundering Flames
Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders
THE UNIVERSE OF XUYA
On a Red Station, Drifting
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls
The Tea Master and the Detective
Seven of Infinities
OBSIDIAN AND BLOOD
Servant of the Underworld
Harbinger of the Storm
Master of the House of Darts
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Aliette de Bodard
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FIREHEART TIGER
Copyright © 2021 by Aliette de Bodard
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alyssa Winans
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Jonathan Strahan
A Tordotcom Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-79327-0 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-79326-3 (trade paperback)
First Edition: February 2021
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