Linh struggled to compose herself, but all she could see was Xuan Rua’s eyes, like two holes into the torture pits of the underworld, and Huu Hieu’s face, slowly decomposing as he realised the attention of the entire banquet hall was moving towards him. All she could see was the moon, shifting into fractured opalescence, its light slowly turning as black as tar, as the Honoured Ancestress’ wail filled the room to bursting.
***
Quyen stood outside the heartroom, watching the light play on the station’s walls. For the first time in her life she felt as if she were floating loose, as if she could see past the oily metal and the carefully constructed calligraphy, straight into the heart of space. And the heart of space was the void, a comforting refuge, a realm where nothing began and nothing ended, removed from the turmoil of the world.
From inside came fragments of words. This, like the moon fracturing in the banquet hall, squeezed her heart into a thousand ice shards. The Honoured Ancestress had always kept an iron hand on Prosper Station’s environment, and to see it drift out of control...
She kept herself standing straight, looking like the axle that linked the Heavens to the planets, even though she couldn’t keep her own thoughts in order.
Over and over, she saw Huu Hieu’s face, as the lights of the red candles flickered in and out of existence; felt the pressure in her ears waver and fall away as the Honoured Ancestress fell in and out of focus, Her comforting embrace sheared away from them all. She heard Cousin Linh’s verses, biting into her mind like the fangs of a snake.
How dare she! How dare she accept Prosper’s hospitality, and give them...this in return.
Xuan Rua was approaching, followed by her sister. Xuan Kiem’s face looked as pale as polished metal, her hands shaking.
Rua, Kiem. Turtle, Sword; and there had been a baby girl who had died: Xuan Ho. Lake. A blatant reference to Emperor Lê Loi and his magical sword, who had wrested Dai Viet from China’s grasp in the distant past. An unsubtle, almost vulgar use of the language. Emblematic, as in everything, of Huu Hieu’s failures.
Xuan Rua bowed, briefly, as she neared Quyen. “Aunt.”
“Nieces.” Quyen kept her gaze away from the heartroom. It did her no good to endlessly wonder what Lady Oanh was going, or why she’d acceded to Quyen’s request despite the utter disaster of the banquet.
Xuan Rua swallowed. Her gaze, uncontrolled, rising to meet Quyen’s. “He had plans. Three berths on a merchant ship.”
In those days of war berths on ships did not come cheap, no matter if they were mindships cutting through deep spaces, or the slower mainliners. “And that was why he needed to sell the implants.”
It was not a question, and Xuan Rua did not treat it as such. “The mindship was Baoyu’s Red Fan, but it left three hours ago, rather precipitously.”
Of course. The news of the banquet had been around the station ten thousand times by now, and the captain had known enough to smell which way the wind was blowing. “And Lê Thu Anh?” Quyen asked. “The schoolteacher?”
“He wasn’t on the manifest,” Xuan Rua said. “But from what you were saying...I don’t think he’d have left.”
No. He would remain, burning with the desire to change Prosper, to give his students a chance to change the system. As if that would ever happen. There would always be the privileged; and if those weren’t determined by blood, they’d be determined by talent and by intelligence. And how much fairer was that, for those to whom their ancestors had not bequeathed intelligence at birth?
She’d wasted time, trying to negotiate with Lê Tu Anh, to be conciliatory. No longer. Du Khach’s implant was still on the station, or the Honoured Ancestress would have let her know. There was still hope that she could redeem herself, if she stopped being overwhelmed by events.
“Send Bao and the attendants to the Abode of Brush Saplings, and search the place. Leave no stone unturned, no nook unexamined.”
Xuan Rua nodded, but her face was pale. Poor girl, Quyen thought. It was bad enough to have responsibility thrust early upon her, but to have to deal with her father’s failings, without a mother to support her...
“I’m sorry.” Quyen thought back to what Xuan Rua had said. Three berths. It was obvious they were for him and his two daughters. “You didn’t know?” Quyen asked Xuan Rua, though she didn’t need to. Xuan Rua’s face and Xuan Kiem’s pallor made it all too clear.
“No,” Xuan Rua said.
Xuan Kiem blanched as if struck, but she said nothing. Her usual arrogance and eagerness had been washed away by a flood.
“No,” Xuan Rua said. “What did he want to do, Aunt? Did he” —she swallowed— “did he plan to drag us to the ship, without asking for our opinion?”
Quyen took a deep breath and said, slowly, “He’s free to take you wherever he wants, nieces,” she went on, before either of them could speak, “you’re not of age, and he is not beholden to ask for your opinion before leaving.” It galled her that the laws could be this misguided, but she could do nothing about that. “The law says there is nothing wrong with that.”
“But...” Xuan Rua said, her face so pale it looked powdered with ceruse.
“That doesn’t mean I approve of it,” Quyen said, sharply. “And that doesn’t mean he’s free to do any of the other things: to sell our family implants like pitaya fruit at the marketplace, or to plan to run away from Prosper without asking leave of me or the Honoured Ancestress.”
“He should have told us,” Xuan Rua said.
Xuan Kiem’s gaze was hard. “He was afraid we would refuse. He didn’t trust us, did he?”
Quyen was saved from answering the awkward question when the door to the heartroom opened, letting Lady Oanh through.
She walked a little unsteadily, her poise a fraction from perfect, her legs shaking, almost beyond the threshold of perception. But all of Quyen’s senses were sharpened. She would not be caught unawares again.
“Lady Oanh.” Quyen and the girls bowed to her. Lady Oanh waved a dismissive hand.
“No need for that, between family.” She pulled herself straighter, and the weariness disappeared. Something like a mask seemed to descend over her features, freezing them in the distant one of the statues in the temples. “You want to know about your Mind.”
Quyen nodded, not trusting her tongue. She’d asked for that, schemed and bullied her way to this moment. But now that it was there, hovering over her like the executioner’s silken garrotte, a hollow had opened in her stomach, a maw that seemed to leech all warmth from her muscles.
“Pham Lê Thi Mot,” Lady Oanh said, slowly. “Conceived by Pham Van Vu, borne by Lê Thi Phuoc in her womb. Awakened for five generations.” Her gaze was distant, as if she were already composing an official report. “I have conducted a thorough examination, given what was allotted to me, and I see no flaw of design. The five humours are properly anchored within the heart room, and the station itself was well prepared to welcome its Mind, everything in proper balance.”
She fell silent. “But?” Quyen said, slowly. The word seemed to come from a faraway place, as if it had never belonged to her.
Lady Oanh’s face moved a fraction, settling into another mysterious, unreadable expression. “Something has gone wrong. The khi flow has stagnated within the outer rings, and the elements are slowly freezing in place. She’s losing her integrity, little by little.”
The hollow in Quyen’s stomach opened wide, chilling the marrow of her bones.
Silence followed. Then Xuan Rua said, “Forgive my audacity, but there has to be something we can do.”
“Some...redesigning of key points on the station,” Lady Oanh said, “would solve the problem. But it will also remove her short-term memory.”
“Short-term?” Quyen asked.
“For the last generation.”
Meaning, effectively, that the Honoured Ancestress wouldn’t recognise them. That they’d excise a part of Her life, and expect Her to go on as before.
“It would take
time,” Lady Oanh said. “And skills.”
“And a Master of Grand Design Harmony.” Quyen couldn’t keep the taste of ashes from her mouth.
“Not necessarily.” Lady Oanh looked thoughtful. “As descendants of the Honoured Ancestress, you have access to the higher levels of the trance. This should be enough to make the adjustments you need. I will leave schematics with you, if you wish. But it has to be done...precisely. There can be no room for mistakes, or you’ll lose more than short-term memory.” She spread her hands. “You have a choice, though: it need not be done now. You can ask for a Master of Grand Design Harmony from the First Planet, and not take such a great risk.”
“You said she was losing integrity,” Quyen said, and she wasn’t sure how to make it sound less like an accusation.
“Yes, she is deteriorating fast. But it’ll stop, soon, once it has spread to all the non-vital functions. I think the obstruction dates back a generation or more; a series of mis-steps in the design. A series of...oversights on top of an old design. They didn’t build Minds to be very robust, back then.” She smiled, though she did not seem amused. “We all find it hard to project our imaginations beyond our own existence, and even less into the time of our great-great-great grandchildren. You can survive until a Master of Grand Design Harmony arrives. There are, after all, fail-safes to prevent her from depressurising the corridors, or flooding entire levels. You’ll be cramped, but fine.”
Cramped. Surviving; barely. “A decision,” Quyen said. A slow decline or a loss. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to weep. “Thank you,” she said, slowly, carefully.
Lady Oanh shrugged. “It was the least I could do, under the circumstances.” She moved away, her gaze turned towards her spaceship, her own departure, and flight back to the capital. She’d gone no more than a few paces, slowing down with each of them, as if mulling on something, when she turned back towards Quyen. “Lady Quyen.”
Whatever Quyen had expected, it wasn’t this form of address, putting her on an equal footing with Lady Oanh. “I’m not a Lady.”
“Nonsense.” Lady Oanh’s voice was brisk, business-like: she’d decided on her course of action, and nothing was going to stop her. “You might not administer a district tribunal, or a planet, but no one here will deny that you run Prosper. I have no idea why you persist in belittling yourself.” She went on, before Quyen could splutter an appropriate response. “As magistrate to administrator, I’ll give you a warning.”
“I don’t understand,” Quyen said.
Lady Oanh’s face was distant, once again. “I think you have enough to worry about without adding that. Expect one more ship to come to Prosper, quite soon.”
A ship? A merchant ship? But no, why warn them about a merchant ship? It made no sense...
The smile that spread across Lady Oanh’s face was halfway between sad and malicious. “Embroidered Guard.”
Quyen had thought she couldn’t grow any colder, any emptier. She’d been wrong. The Embroidered Guard, the Great Virtue Emperor’s elite troops, only sent to reassert the Empire’s power in the bloodiest way possible. “We have transgressed no laws,” she started, and then the obvious answer hit her between the eyes like a barbed spike.
Cousin Linh.
Book 3: The Embroidered Guard
In the hours that followed the banquet, Linh became even more of a pariah than usual. The family provided for her, and her access privileges to the higher levels of the trance weren’t cut off, but everything was given with tight lips, and her usual accesses into the Honoured Ancestress’ and Quyen’s chambers denied. Not that Linh had ever cared much about it, but she hadn’t expected the whole situation to leave her...wrung out, empty, as if there’d been nothing left within her once she’d poured her bile.
Nothing but grief, and the emptiness where Giap had once been; the bitter knowledge that all her prayers, all her entreaties to her ancestors would not bring him back, would not fill the hollow in her heart. The ancestors on her implants, too, were silent, though she could feel First Ancestor Thanh Thuy’s disapproval like a slap on the hand. No doubt she was keeping all the others silent until Linh realised the gravity of what she’d done.
It had been clumsily done. But Linh wouldn’t go back on it, or on how she felt about Prosper.
The only one she felt sorry for was Huu Hieu. She’d gone several times to his quarters, mustering an apology that rang false even to her. But the guardians at the doors of his chambers made it all too clear this access, too, was denied to her. Accordingly, she was down to using the trance, looking into the guts of the system, wondering if there was a weakness she could exploit to send him a personal message that bitch Quyen wouldn’t read.
And what was in the guts was...frightening. Everything was haphazardly cobbled up, seeming to answer little more than random impulses within the core. Linh was no Grand Master of Design Harmony, no Mover of Bots, but still, even she could see that it was all wrong and getting worse by the moment. Quyen was losing her grip on the station. Linh watched, amused, as Bao and a posse of servants tore the Abode of Brush Saplings apart, looking for the missing implants, while the teacher, Lê Anh Tu, watched them, mockingly.
In the end they had to leave. Linh had no doubt Bao would report his failure to Quyen.
Good. Let the bitch know chaos, too. Let her know loss.
But even those words seemed to ring hollow in her mind, faded against the memory of the entire hall turning to her in the wake of her poem.
She was still looking into the system—like a spaceship pilot fascinated by deep spaces a moment before the ship’s protection failed them and they were torn apart—when a visitor was announced.
It was Bao and he looked...different; the ethereal cast to his face subtly wrong, like ill-applied makeup, or a corrupted mask.
He didn’t bother with even so much as a greeting. “I can’t find my younger brother.”
Linh laughed, not bothering to disguise the bitterness in that laugh. “And you think I’d know where he is?”
“You’re a magistrate.” Bao’s tone was flat, reasonable, a monk’s, a priest’s.
Linh wished she could just throw him out of her quarters, and not wonder what hid beneath the facade he’d been so busy constructing.
“Even if you weren’t the family member he spoke to most, you’re the one who is used to tracking down people.”
“You’re mistaken,” she said. “I don’t track people down. My lieutenants do.”
“Did.” Bao hesitated. “I’ve seen the records, Cousin. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened. Quyen meant well, but no one should ever find out bad news the way you did.”
Linh sighed. If it were only Bao and his belated good-wishes, she’d have made her position clear. But she owed Huu Hieu for shattering his dreams. Still, if Huu Hieu had managed to escape who was she to deny him?
“I can’t help you,” she said. “At least he’s free, and I’m the last one who should deny him this.”
Bao surprised her by openly grimacing, and she saw the worry in his eyes, as raw as bleeding skin. “If he’s left, if he’s escaped, then I won’t pursue him. But there’s always the other option.”
“You think like Cousin Quyen,” Linh said, slowly, carefully. “You’ll want him to face the wrath of the family, like everyone else.”
“You misjudge me.” Bao shook his head, but he did not appear angry. “I didn’t say I approved, but I understand. We all retreat from grief in different ways, and I know this all too well. If my younger brother’s path to healing is away from Prosper...” He spread his hands. “I won’t be the one who shatters him. I can’t.”
And that, if nothing else, was truth, a raw admission of the centipedes that had been wearing grooves into the skin of his heart for far too long. She wondered how long he’d nursed his uncertainties, realised she didn’t even know, that she’d never asked. Misjudged, indeed.
“I don’t know him as well as you do,” Linh said, finally.
If he couldn’t leave...
A vague queasiness was growing in her stomach. She hadn’t thought he’d attempt to leave, not so soon after being found out and pilloried for it. It would take a while before the wounds faded, before he could think reasonably once more. She’d expected him to lick his wounds, nursing his grievances like warm coals. Not to run away...
He’d felt trapped on Prosper, until, at last, the jaws of the trap had opened. Freedom had been within sight. And he’d been denied at the last moment, his confidence betrayed, his secrets in the open, like a raw, pulsing wound.
The smile that played on Bao’s lips could almost have been ironic, if there hadn’t been such anguish in his eyes. “You know,” he said.
“Yes,” Linh said. “If he can’t escape Prosper by ship, he’ll try another way.” Anything, rather than remain trapped.
Anything.
Even death.
She’d expected her mind to freeze, to run in circles in a blind panic. But instead, it slowly froze in another way, every thought coalescing like the facets of a crystal: clear and bright, with everything mercilessly thrown into focus, as this were an investigation once more, with Giap at her side and the militia ready to act on any orders she might have.
Suicide. Either by poison, strangulation, or drowning. Any other way would mutilate him in death, and she didn’t think Huu Hieu was so far gone as to go join his ancestors by defacing the body that had been his parents’ gift.
It was amazing, how clear-headed she found herself, removed from everything that might have interfered, any emotional attachment.
Linh closed her eyes, and went into the highest level of the trance she could access. “Honoured Ancestress.”
On a Red Station, Drifting Page 9