The Citadel of Weeping Pearls

by de Bodard, Aliette;

  “Yes,” Lam said. “I know. But I'm still not leaving Diem Huong in it.”

  The Turtle's Golden Claw followed the boundary of the harmonisation arch; slowly tracing is contours, whispering words Ngoc Ha could barely hear. “It's not stabilised, that's the issue.”

  “You can talk,” Ngoc Ha said, more sharply than she'd meant to. “Grand Master Bach Cuc didn't stabilise anything either, and it killed her.”

  “We will not talk of Bach Cuc here,” The Turtle's Golden Claw snapped.

  Lam looked vaguely curious; but, through what appeared to be a supreme effort of will, turned her attention back to the door. Through the light Ngoc Ha caught glimpses and pieces—a hand, an arm; a fragment of an altar with incense sticks protruding from it; the face of a yellow-robed monk. Another place; another time. “What was it supposed to be?”

  Lam finished clinching together her two cables—with no perceptible difference. She looked up, her face gleaming with blue-tinged sweat. “The Citadel. Diem Huong's always wanted to go back.” She snapped her fingers; bots rose up from the floor, though they were in bad shape, missing arms and with live wires trailing from them. “A time machine sounded like a good idea, at the time.”

  A time machine. Summoning deep spaces on an orbital. “And you thought Grand Master Bach Cuc was imprudent?”

  “At least I'm still here,” Lam snapped. “Which isn't, I understand, what happened with the Grand Master.”

  “Please stop arguing about Bach Cuc,” Suu Nuoc said, in a low but commanding voice. “And turn this thing off. I don't care about Diem Huong. This is going to destroy the orbital.”

  “I'm not doing anything until Diem Huong walks out that door,” Lam said.

  Ngoc Ha stood, watching the door. Watching the light; and the presence without; and her daughter, the mind-ship, prowling around the machine like a tiger. A time machine. A window on the Citadel. On Ngoc Minh and her people and the distant past—the past that had twisted her life into its present shape and continued to hang over her like the shadow of a sword.

  She reached out before she could stop herself—heard, distantly, Suu Nuoc's scream; felt Lam's arm pulling at her—but it was too late, she was already touching the arch—she'd expected some irresistible force to drag her in, some irreversible current that would have taken her to Diem Huong and the Citadel, amidst all the hurt she'd been bottling up.

  Instead, there was silence.

  Calm spread from the machine, like oil thrown on waves; a deafening lack of noise that seemed to still everything and everyone in its wake. And, like a huge beast lumbering towards its den, the presence that had been dogging Ngoc Ha ever since she'd entered the deep spaces turned its eyes towards her, and saw.

  I am here.

  It was a voice like the fires of stars torn apart, like the thunder of ships' engines, like the call of a bell in a temple beyond time.

  I am here.

  And it was a voice Ngoc Ha had heard, and never forgotten, one that rose in the holes of her heart, each word a twisting hook that dragged raw, red memories from the depths of the past.

  Ngoc Minh.

  The Engineer

  Diem Huong stood, paralysed. The Embroidered Guards were staring at her; the commander raising a gun towards her. “There's been a report of an intruder here, harassing Madam Quynh.”

  Reports whose memories wouldn't last more than a few moments; but sometimes, a few moments was all that it took for a message to travel along a chain of command—and, like everyone else, the Embroidered Guards could teleport from the palace to any place in a heartbeat.

  Diem Huong could teleport, too; but she was frozen, trying not to stare at the muzzle of five weapons aimed at her. They would shoot; and it didn't take that long for energy arcs to find their mark.

  “Look,” she said, “I can explain—” If she had enough time, they would forget her; why she was here, why she mattered. If she had enough time.

  They all had their weapons raised; trained on her; and the commander was frowning, trying to see what to make of her. He was going to fire. He was going to—

  There was only one thing for it.

  Run.

  Before she could think, she'd started pelting away from them—back towards the compartment, back towards Mother, who wouldn't recognise or acknowledge her, or answer any of her questions.

  “Stop—”

  At any moment, she would feel it; the energy going through her, the spasms as it travelled through her body—would fall to the floor screaming and twitching like a puppet taken apart—but still, she ran, towards the illusory, unattainable safety of a home that had since long ceased to be hers...

  Run.

  There was a wave of stillness; passing over the faces of the soldiers, catching them mid-frown and freezing them in place—an invisible wind that blew through the station, laying icy fingers on her like a caress.

  In front of her, the door opened; save that it was wreathed in blue light, like that of the harmonisation arch—the wind blew through it, carrying through the smell of fried garlic and fish sauce, and jasmine rice—so incongruously familiar Diem Huong stopped. Surely that wasn't possible...

  The wind blew through the door, carrying tatters of light towards it—each gust adding depth and body to the light, until the vague outline of a figure became visible—line after line, a shape drawn by a master's paintbrush—the outline of a face surrounded by a mane of black hair; of silk clothes and jade bracelets as green as forest leaves.

  Lam. Had to be. Lam had finally found a way to rescue her.

  But it wasn't Lam. The clothes were yellow brocade—for a moment only, and then they became the saffron of monks' robes; the hair was longer than Lam's, the face older and more refined—and the eyes were two pits of unbearable compassion. “Child,” the woman said. “Come.”

  “Who are you?” Diem Huong asked.

  The woman laughed; a low, pleasant sound with no edge of threat to it. “I am Ngoc Minh. Come now, there isn't much time.”

  Ngoc Minh? The Bright Princess? “I don't understand—” Diem Huong said, but Ngoc Minh was extending a hand as translucent as porcelain; and, because nothing else made sense, Diem Huong took it.

  For a moment—a dizzying, terrifying moment—she hung again in the blackness, in the void between the stars, brushed by a presence as terrible as a mindship in deep spaces, something that wrapped huge wings around her until she choked—and then it passed, and she realised the terrible presence was the Bright Princess herself; that the wings weren't choking her; but holding her as she flew.

  “It's going to be fine,” the Bright Princess whispered, in her mind.

  “Mother—”

  There were no words in the darkness, in the void; just the distant, dispassionate light of stars; and the sound of beings calling to each other like spaceships in the deep. There were no words; and no illusions left. Only kindness; and the memory of tears glistening in Mother's eyes.

  “Your mother loved you,” the Bright Princess said.

  It still stands. But for how long?

  It's going to fall, one way or another.

  Sometimes, all you have are bad choices.

  Make a stand, or be conquered. Kill, or be killed. Submit, or have to subjugate others.

  Mother had sent them away—packing her daughter and her husband, hiding what it had cost her. She had known. She had known the Citadel had no other choice but to vanish; that Ngoc Minh would never fight against her own people. That she would gather, instead, all her powers—all her monks and hermits and their students, for one purpose only: to disappear where no one would ever find them.

  “You told her,” Diem Huong said. “What was going to happen. What you were going to do.”

  “Of course,” the Bright Princess said. “It's a Citadel, not a dictatorship; not an Imperial Court. My word is law; but I wouldn't have decided something like this without asking everyone to make a choice. The cost was too high.”

  Too high. Mother had m
ade her bad choice; to have her family survive; to have her daughter grow into adulthood. “Where is she?”

  “Nowhere. Everywhere,” the Bright Princess whispered. “Beyond your reach, forever, child. She made her choice. Let her be.”

  I didn't feel you'd understand, younger aunt. You're too young to have children; or believe in the necessity of holding up the world.

  “I do understand,” Diem Huong said, to the darkness, but it was too late. It had always been thirty years too late, and Mother was gone, and would not come back no matter how hard she prayed or worked. “I do understand, Mother,” she whispered; and she realised, with a shock, that she was crying.

  The Empress

  Mi Hiep summoned Huu Tam to her quarters; in the gardens outside her rooms, where bots were maintaining the grottos and waterfalls, the pavilions by the side of ponds covered with water lilies and lotuses; the arched bridges covered by willow branches, like a prelude to separation.

  “Walk with me, will you?”

  Huu Tam was silent; staring at the skies; at the ballet of shuttles in the skies. His attendants walked three steps behind them; affording them both the illusion of privacy.

  “We are at war,” Mi Hiep said. In the communal network, every place in the gardens was named; everything associated with an exquisite poem. It had been, she remembered, a competition to choose the poems. Ngoc Minh had won in several places; but Mi Hiep couldn't even remember where her daughter's poems would be. She could look it up, of course, but it wouldn't be the same. “You're going to have to take more responsibilities.”

  Huu Tam snorted. “I'm not a warrior.”

  Two ghost emperors flickered into life: the first, the Righteously Martial Emperor, who had founded the dynasty in floods of blood; and the Twenty-Third, the Great Virtue Emperor, who had hidden in his palace while civil war tore apart the Empire. “No one is,” the Twenty-Third Emperor said.

  “I know.” Huu Tam's voice was curt.

  “You will need Van,” Mi Hiep said. Then, carefully, “And Suu Nuoc.”

  He sucked in a breath, and looked away. He wouldn't contradict her—what child gainsaid their parents?—but he didn't agree. “You don't like him. You don't have to.” She raised a hand, to forestall any objections. How was she going to make him understand? She had tried, for decades; and perhaps failed. “You like flattery, child. Always have. It's more pleasant to hear pleasant things about yourself; more pleasant never to be challenged. And more pleasant to surround yourself with friends.”

  “Who wouldn't?” Huu Tam was defiant.

  “A court is not a nest of sycophants,” the First Emperor said, sternly.

  “Flattery will destroy you,” the Twenty-Third Emperor—sallow-faced and fearful—whispered. “Look at my life as an example.”

  Huu Tam said nothing for a while. He would obey her, she knew; he was too well-bred and too polite. He wasn't Ngoc Minh; who would have disagreed and stormed off. He would talk to Suu Nuoc, but he wouldn't trust him. She couldn't force him to.

  There was a wind, in the gardens; a ripple on the surface of the pond, bending the lotus flowers, as if a giant hand from the heavens had rifled through them, discarding stems and petals—and the world seemed to pause and hold its breath for a bare moment.

  Mi Hiep turned; and saw her.

  She stood in the octagonal pavilion in the middle of the pond—not so much coalescing into existence, but simply here one moment, as if the universe had reorganised itself to include her—almost too far away for her to make out the face, though she would have recognised her in a heartbeat—and then, as Mi Hiep held a deep, burning breath, she flickered out of existence, and reappeared, an arm's length away from Huu Tam and her.

  Huu Tam's face was pale. “Elder sister,” he whispered.

  The Bright Princess hadn't changed—still the same face that Mi Hiep remembered; the full cheeks, the burning eyes looking straight at her, refusing to bend to the Empress her mother. Her hair was the same, too; not tied in a topknot, but loose, falling all the way to the ground until it seemed to root her to the ground.

  “Child,” she whispered. “Where are you?” She could see the pavilion through Ngoc Minh's body; and the pink lotus flowers; and the darkening heavens over their heads.

  Nowhere, whispered the wind. Everywhere.

  “There are no miracles,” Huu Tam whispered.

  Yes. No. Perhaps, said the wind. It doesn't matter.

  Mi Hiep reached out; and so did Ngoc Minh—one ghostly hand reaching for a wrinkled one—her touch was the cold between stars, a slight pressure that didn't feel quite real—like the memory of a dream on waking up.

  Ngoc Minh smiled; and it seemed to fill up the entire world—and suddenly Mi Hiep was young again, watching an infant play in the courtyard, lining up pebbles and fragments of broken vases; and the infant looked up and saw her, and smiled, and the entire universe seemed to shift and twist and hurt like salted knives in wounds—and then she was older, and the infant older too; and she tossed and turned in her bed, afraid for her life—and she woke up and asked the army to invade the Citadel...

  “Child....” I'm sorry, she wanted to say. The emperors had been right—Huu Tam had been right: it had never been about weapons or war; or about technologies she could steal from the citadel. But simply about this—a mother and her daughter, and all the unsaid words, the unsaid fears—the unsolved quarrel that was all Mi Hiep's fault.

  Ngoc Minh said nothing, and merely smiled back.

  I forgive you, the wind whispered. Please forgive me, Mother.

  “What for?”

  Greed. Anger. Disobedience. Good-bye, Mother.

  “Child...” Mi Hiep reached out again; but Ngoc Minh was gone; and only the memory of that smile remained—and then even that was gone, and Mi Hiep was alone again, gasping for breaths that burnt her lungs, as the universe became a blur around her.

  Huu Tam looked at her, shaking. “Mother—-”

  Mi Hiep shook her head. “Not now, please.”

  “Empress!” It was Lady Linh and Van, both looking grim. Mi Hiep took a deep breath, waiting for things to right themselves again—mercifully, none of the ghost emperors had said any words. “What is it?” she asked.

  Van made a gesture; and the air between them filled with the image of a ship—battered and pocked through like the surface of an airless moon, with warmth—oxygen?—pouring out of a hole in the hull.

  One of the Nam mindships.

  “We have one,” Van said. “But the rest jumped. Given their previous pattern, they'll be at the Imperial shipyards in two days.”

  Huu Tam threw a concerned look at Mi Hiep—who didn't answer. She didn't feel anything she said would make sense, in the wake of Ngoc Minh's disappearance. “How soon can you work on the ship?”

  “We're getting it towed to the nearest safe space,” Lady Linh said. “And sending a team of scientists on board, to start work immediately. They'll find out how it was done.”

  Of course they would. “And the shipyards?” Mi Hiep asked, slowly, carefully—every word feeling as though it broke a moment of magical silence.

  “Pulling away, as you ordered.” Van gestured again; and pulled an image into the network. The yards, with the shells of mindships clustered among them; and bots pulling them apart in slow motion, dismantling them little by little. As Van gestured, they moved in accelerated time—and everything seemed to disintegrate into nothingness. Other, whole ships moved to take the place of those she'd ordered destroyed: warships, bristling with weapons; and civilian ships, looking small and pathetic next to them, a bulwark against the inevitable. “They've already evacuated the Mind-bearers. The other ships are waiting for them.”

  There would be a battle—many battles, to slow down the Nam fleet in any way they could—waiting until they could gather their defences; until they could study the hijacked ship and determine how it had been done, and how it could be reversed. And even if it couldn't.. they still had their own mindships; and the mi
ght of their army. “We'll be fine, Mother,” Huu Tam, softly. “One doesn't need miracles to fight a war.”

  No. One needed miracles to avoid one. But Ngoc Minh was gone, her technologies and her Citadel with her; and all that remained of her was the memory of a hand in hers, like the caress of the wind.

  Where are you?

  Nowhere. Everywhere.

  Mi Hiep stood, her face unmoving; and listened to her advisors, steeling herself for what lay ahead—a long slow slog of unending battles and feints, of retreats and invasions and pincer moves, and the calculus of deaths and acceptable losses. She rubbed her hand, slowly, carefully.

  Forgive me, Mother. Good-bye.

  Good-bye, child.

  And on her hand, the touch of the wind faded away, until it was nothing more than a gentle balm on her heart; a memory to cling to in the days ahead—as they all made their way forward in the days of the war, in an age without miracles.

  The Younger Sister

  Ngoc Ha stood, caught in the light—her hand thrust through the door, becoming part of the whirlwind of images beyond. She didn't feel any different; more as if her hand had ceased to exist altogether—no sensation coming back from it, nothing.

  And then she did feel something—faint at first, but growing stronger with every passing moment—until she recognised the touch of a hand on hers, fingers interlacing with her own.

  I am here.

  She didn't think; merely pulled; and her hand came back from beyond the harmonisation arch; and with it, another hand and an arm and a body.

  Two figures coalesced from within the maelstrom. The first, bedraggled and mousy, her topknot askew, her face streaked with tears, could only be the missing engineer.

  “Huong,” Lam said, sharply; and dropped what she was holding, to run towards her. “You idiot.” She was crying, too; and Diem Huong let her drag her away. “You freaking idiot.”