Quyen bowed, not as low as Xuan Rua, but low enough to make it clear she recognised Linh’s superiority. “We’ll await your answer, Cousin.”
She’d done all she could. Now it was in the hands of the gods, and of her ancestors.
***
On the morning after Lady Oanh’s arrival, Linh was writing poetry when a knock at the door made her look up.
It was Huu Hieu, looking almost presentable, with his hair neatly brought back into an elegant bun, stabbed with silver pins in the shape of a phoenix wrapped around a star. No, not presentable...
Domestic, she considered, and thought uneasily of caged things: pet birds, ships on display at the docks that would never fly again.
He’d brought fruit which he laid on the table. The pink spikes of pitaya mingled with a few bunches of a yellow fruit she didn’t recognise: some kind of longan, though with far smoother skin.
“From the orchards,” he said, sheepishly. He looked embarrassed. Had his brother-in-law, Bao, warned him against seeing her?
“I’m glad you decided to take advantage of my offer,” she said, ignoring the howling of all six ancestors in her mem-implants.
Huu Hieu sat cross-legged in front of the low table; one swipe of his fingers called up a display which hung, trembling, waiting for her to fill it. He sat well away from her, his stance tense. But the tension wasn’t sexual, merely the usual unease of a stranger with another stranger.
“Have you heard news from your home planet?” he asked.
Linh shrugged. “Insofar as it’s my home. The Twenty-Third Planet was just my first posting.”
“But you miss it.”
Cousin Quyen was wrong about him. He was sharp, more observant than most people would give him credit for. She guessed that a lifetime with nothing much to do had honed his senses.
“I had friends there, and a life.” She didn’t say she had none of this here, and he wasn’t churlish enough to bring it up. “We had a poetry circle. The Crab Flower Club, which isn’t a terribly original name, but we had such talent...” It had been Giap’s idea, though he was an indifferent poet at best, making stiff and graceless compositions when his turn came.
She thought of long afternoons under the red sun, watching the clouds drift across the face of the sky; of voices raised in laughter, bowls clinked together as they were refilled with wine; of prompts drawn from official hats, and poems written in the glow of rice alcohol. All that she’d run away from, all that the war had swallowed and crunched to dust within its maw. “Yes. I miss it.”
Huu Hieu said nothing, only handed her a fruit, its skin split open to reveal plump, translucent flesh through which the stone shone like the pupil of an eye. He watched her eat it; then took another one.
“Where were you born?” she asked.
“Far away. Before I was here, I came from Longevity Station.”
The network of alliances. She remembered reading about it on her way to Prosper Station, but it hadn’t been such a cold reality then. “You were bartered away.”
Huu Hieu looked away from her, as if acknowledging for the first time that he was her inferior. “I failed the examinations twice. On the stations, this means only one thing.”
Unfit for official life; doomed to be the lesser partner in a marriage, Fifth Ancestor Hoanh whispered in Linh’s mind, though really, she’d have guessed that without his help. The rules weren’t the same on the planets: more forgiving, but then the planets weren’t on such limited resources. “And so you came here.”
“Yes.” Huu Hieu picked another longan, dug his nails into the skin to split it apart. “It wasn’t so bad at first, when my wife was still here. But then...”
But then Quyen had taken over. “I see.” With a swipe of her fingers, Linh called up a book of poetry from her personal library. “Shall we read together?”
Huu Hieu nodded. For a while, there was nothing but the slow hum of the holo-screen, a sound that grew until it absorbed them all, and poetry sang in their minds, am and duong verses mingling with each other like the breath of the dragon that was the universe.
“Those are beautiful,” Huu Hieu said.
“They are.” Linh shook her head. “A pity the poets were never recognised by the literary circles of the capital.”
They chatted a bit, about the powerful images: the starships in flight over waterfalls, scattering to other planets like wild geese fleeing the winter; the wine warm in the cups, defying the emptiness of space; the paths of friends crossing only through deep-space travel, in one sense standing together, in the other so apart they might have been in different universes.
Huu Hieu was fidgeting, looking upwards at the dome of the station. His face was pale, pinched in worry, but a feverish energy underlined his gestures. “Has something happened to you?” Linh asked. She picked another book, the annals of Dai Viet dating back to the Lê dynasty, but she didn’t display it on the screen yet.
“No.” Huu Hieu looked up again at the dome, and shrugged, as if to say it didn’t matter anymore. “She’s probably listening.”
“Who?”
“Who else? The Honoured Ancestress.” He spat the word like a rotten lychee. “She who watches over us all.”
“You don’t approve.” She was always stating the obvious.
Huu Hieu hugged himself. “Always watching,” he whispered. “Always able to come to you without warning, to press against your mind as though she owned everything...” He looked again at the dome. “Who cares? I’m leaving.”
“You are?” That stopped her, like a knife, thrown into her chest with unerring accuracy, her hand halfway to the table in order to call up more books. “You...”
There was silence for a while, as if they waited for the executioner’s sword to fall. Linh broke it, again. “I hadn’t thought...” she stopped then, unsure of what he was ready to tell her. Surely he would want it discussed as little as possible?
“There is someone else.” Huu Hieu shrugged. Bright, careless, his face tight with desperation, or happiness, she wasn’t sure. “On Longevity Station. A girl I once knew who never forgot about me. I never forgot her, either, and now her husband is dead...” He stopped; his eyes strangely bright and feverish.
“Your wife...” Linh said, carefully, as if each word would topple the edifice.
“It’s been five years, and my wife hasn’t come back. I won’t spend my entire life waiting for her. I can’t. Don’t you see?” Pleading. What could she tell him? She wasn’t here to pass judgment, or even to offer advice.
“I’m not family.”
“Nonsense. Quyen might not see it that way, but you’re as much part of us as Bao or any of my sisters-in-law.”
And was the thrill that ran through her joy, or the feeling of the knife sinking deeper into flesh? “So...” she pointed at the fruit. “A parting gift, then.”
Huu Hieu’s face fell. “They’re a gift. Because I visited you, and read your poetry. Don’t think of it in terms of parting, please.” He looked at the sky again, biting his lip. “It would be best...”
“Absolutely.” Linh picked a pitaya, toying with its weight, careful never to bruise the fruit beneath the skin. “Still, I’m happy for you.” And yet...there was an odd twist in her stomach. If he went away, if he escaped Prosper, he’d have his freedom once again. He’d enjoy the company of his lover, of friends and allies, while she would remain on the station, kinless and powerless and isolated. She quenched the thought before it could turn into bitter jealousy. “Shall we return to the poetry then?”
“Tell you what.” The feverishness was back in Huu Hieu’s eyes. She was reminded again of a man awaiting the plunge into deep space, steeling himself for what was to come. “Let’s write poems.”
Linh drew in a shaking breath. She’d written nothing since leaving the Twenty-Third Planet. “Why not?” She struggled to keep her voice calm. “You suggested it. Pick a prompt.”
“Use the following words: Chrysanthemum. Spaceship. Prosper.
In Two Seven style.” Huu Hieu’s smile was deeply ironic.
“As you wish.” Linh bent down, already thinking of words that would fit, of soft and stressed syllables, of the music of the words putting themselves together, allusions to other, older texts playing against each other...
She looked up, vaguely disquieted. Something was wrong, something in the silence of the room, some blinking light in the corner of her vision. But before she could articulate the thought, the presence rose, overlaying the walls with a shimmer like sunlight on algae fields, and Linh’s hands tightened, even as she struggled to speak.
She’d expected the Honoured Ancestress but, instead, the scene around her slowly faded to be replaced by a verdant hillside under an intense blue sky. Everything, from the river to the clouds, was riven through with cracks, like torn cloth that revealed the darkness and emptiness between the stars. Linh raised her eyes and saw skeletal birds winging their way through the sky, their cries the forlorn ones of geese.
“Honoured Ancestress?” Linh asked. The Honoured Ancestress did not answer. Instead, a light blinked on the lower left hand corner of her field of vision, the same light that denoted an urgent message, usually from the station’s administrator. Linh reached out towards it and it fractured, the letters of its header slowly spreading past her until they had felt burnt into her eye-sockets.
The message had been routed from Felicity, but it had been come from the Twenty-Third Planet. Its trajectory through space had been erratic, leaping from one mindship to another in attempts to leave the cut-off war-zones and return to the planets held by the Empire. It was from Giap, but the seal on it was the two wolves of Lord Soi’s banners.
The environment around her fluttered between the verdant hills and the deeper darkness beneath them. Linh opened it, and Giap blinked into existence, not a flat image like his first image, but a full holographic recording, giving him the air of a ghost.
“Magistrate. I apologise, for it would seem I have been unworthy of your faith.” He smiled at her, his face wan and drawn. His hair had been pulled into a neat top-knot, and his clothes were the rough, off-white of mourning. Around his neck was a placard, on which was written in red ink his full name and a list of crimes. Linh read the larger letters: “Rebellion against the Celestial Order”. He wore the placard and clothes of a condemned man, being led to his execution.
No. The thought was a knife drawn across Linh’s throat. Had he not received her message? Had he not...
“As is customary, I have written my last messages, and saved this one for you. I’m no poet, and don’t expect you to remember my words beyond what custom dictates.” He smiled at her then, and it broke her heart all over again. “Don’t blame yourself for what happened. I bear the responsibility of my advice to you, and of what I did after the fall of the province. Be kind, Magistrate. Be strong. But you know all of this already. I was proud to know you, and if my ancestors grant me a place among them, I shall continue to watch over you as I have always done.”
Linh reached out, to touch the ghostly hands, but the message was finished, and Giap had blinked out of existence. “Giap!” she called, knowing it was too late already. The rest of the message streamed by her. Under the seal of Lord Soi was the order for Giap’s execution, and for the execution of other names she’d known in another lifetime: Chau and his meat dumplings and poetry that never made sense; Van and his dreams of being a soldier in some far-away land; Lan and her effortless, flowing verses that seared the soul, a great talent wasted on a lesser spouse with no ambitions beyond her hearth...
Her entire poetry club, wiped out of existence with a casual note that they had been rebels against Lord Soi’s new order. All of it tossed at her like a piece of offal.
“Honoured Ancestress!” Linh screamed. “Show yourself!”
The land around her flickered and tore, and she was back in the courtyard, struggling to breathe. “Child?” the Honoured Ancestress sounded scared. “Something happened...”
“You gave me a message.” Linh struggled to pull herself upright, to be stern, unbending, as a magistrate should be. But she couldn’t seem to muster the strength to stand up.
Breathe. Breathe, Linh. You have to breathe. One cannot let the dead destroy you. One cannot weep for subordinates. He only did his duty...He wasn’t a subordinate, he was a friend, and you should mourn him accordingly...He was to her as Quan Vu to Luu Bi: a sworn brother, and his death is like her own.... Within her, the six ancestors in their mem-implants shouted at each other, a storm of contradictory advice that threatened to tear her apart.
Breathe, Linh, breathe.
Weep.
“I apologise. A malfunction appears to have emptied my priority buffers,” the Honoured Ancestress said. There was a pause; then, “Your message had been set aside when Lady Oanh’s ship arrived.”
“Set aside?”
The Honoured Ancestress stopped and said nothing.
“Set aside by whom?” Linh asked, though she knew the answer. She’d crushed one of the pitayas. Her fingers were coated in white, sticky flesh which clung to her skin, like guilt, like blood.
“Quyen,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “She thought you should hear about this when you were in the right frame of mind. But you don’t understand, child. There is something...”
Quyen. Of course. Who else would keep news of the Twenty-Third Planet from her? Focus on your work and your place here, Cousin. Stop dream about what could have been. Then, perhaps, I will reconsider. “There is nothing,” Linh snapped. “Go away and leave me alone.”
Were this Quyen, she’d have snapped, said something about being older and wiser than Linh. But the Honoured Ancestress merely said, in a voice that quivered, “I’m sorry,” and the pressure of Her presence faded, leaving Linh alone with Huu Hieu.
Her cousin stared at her; he looked pale. “Cousin. What happened?”
“You didn’t see anything, did you?” Linh’s stomach contracted into knots. Bad enough to be weak, but that he should see it...
“I...had a message.” He forced a smile. “From Longevity. You?”
Another message Quyen had been holding on to, so she could see what they were doing? “A message I had been waiting for a while,” she said. “I am well.” She forced herself to smile through the lie, until her jawbones hurt with the effort.
She thought of Quyen, of the contrite way she’d apologised for her shortcomings earlier. To think that Linh had almost believed her, that she’d almost agreed to be her dupe once again. And all the while Quyen had been watching incoming messages, making decisions about what Linh could and could not do, had been ruling her life as she ruled everyone else’s.
And she had the gall to hope for Linh to exalt Prosper in the eyes of Lady Oanh, to participate in the glorification of Quyen’s own petty concerns. She had the nerve to come and see Linh, and dangle mysteries in front of her, to promise that she could be included in family matters, help the station with her skills. She had the nerve to ask through a tangle of lies, and to use Xuan Rua to soften Linh’s heart.
She’d been a fool.
“A poem,” she said aloud, heedless of Huu Hieu’s puzzled stare. Quyen wanted a poem? Linh would give her something that no one aboard Prosper would ever forget.
***
Quyen had expected Lê Anh Tu to be a portly man. But he was as skinny as a beggar, his face gaunt, almost malnourished, so creased and skeletal that Quyen almost turned to the Honoured Ancestress to ask Her about Tu’s allowance. But of course it was foolishness. No one went hungry on Prosper.
The trance flared to life within Quyen, reminded her that Tu was a distant relative, descended from a brother of Quyen’s great-grandfather. It mattered little, in truth. Everyone on Prosper was related to some degree or another. But Quyen took it as a good sign. The trance was working, albeit erratically. The Honoured Ancestress was still with them.
For a while, if nothing else.
The Abode of Brush Saplings was set around a wid
e, airy courtyard. Its trees and carp-filled basin almost disguised the fact that it wasn’t in the open air, but under the subdued lights of Prosper. A gaggle of a dozen students—eight girls, five boys, their ages ranging from five to fifteen—watched Quyen and Tu stroll through the courtyard, the books on their tables forgotten in the rush of curiosity.
How Quyen wished for Xuan Rua. But one of them had to remain in charge of the banquet preparation and this, this interview with Lê Anh Tu, was too sensitive to be left to her niece alone.
Tu said, “I’m honoured by your visit, Mistress Quyen.”
Quyen heard the “but” he wasn’t saying. “Family matters bring me to you, Master Tu.”
He raised an eyebrow, signifying, very clearly, that he might have been family once, but didn’t count as such anymore. “We are far away from the Inner Quarters,” Tu said. A careful overture, calculated not to cause offence.
“Indeed. But things blow where the wind wills them,” Quyen said.
Tu was smarter than Zhang. Indeed, Quyen had the feeling that he knew all of her failures, all the books spread out on his students’ tables: writing that she could decipher but not understand. He did not bother to quest for an allusion she could have made, and merely nodded. “You seek the wind’s trail, Mistress Quyen.”
“It always blows here, doesn’t it?” Quyen said, with a flourish of her hands. “Into the middle rings. Far from the warmth of the Honoured Ancestress, but not so far that you feel the cold of space.” She hesitated, but she’d lost enough time as it was. There were more pressing concerns, the dinner with Lady Oanh, the war encroaching on them...
She’d have grasped for the Honoured Ancestress, to support her in her moment of need, but she was...afraid of what would happen, should she reach for Her and not find Her anywhere. “And some things, like blown maple leaves, find their way into the most unlikely places.”
Tu raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. He appeared amused, but not unduly surprised. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mistress Quyen.” In his mouth, the “Mistress” appeared almost perfunctory.
On a Red Station, Drifting Page 7