The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard

  “Ours. Pham Thi Hai Anh,” Long Chau said. “She made a living maintaining the inner rings of the Apricot Blossom Ho habitat.”

  “I see,” The Shadow’s Child said. She didn’t. Curiosity won out, narrowly. “You know what she died of.”

  “No,” Long Chau said. “I’m friends with the controller of deaths: they could find no cause of death. Which means that, having set aside all other possible causes, she was alive and well when she tumbled into deep spaces.” She raised a hand, as if to forestall an objection from The Shadow’s Child. “The pressures of unreality would have rendered her unconscious within ten divisions, and killed her not long afterwards—a centiday, at most. A shadow skin doesn’t protect against deep spaces.”

  Trying to spare The Shadow’s Child’s feelings? Or more likely making sure she couldn’t be interrupted.

  “All right,” The Shadow’s Child said. “So an accident, then.”

  Long Chau smiled. “I don’t know what happened. But I intend to find out.”

  “I don’t understand the urgency.”

  “The militia is going to take over.”

  “And? Surely that’s good.”

  “Only if you think the tribunal and the militia competent.” Long Chau clearly didn’t. Then again, if she’d been involved with them, as a suspect... “They’ll take everyone into custody and throw drugs at them in the hopes of finding a ready culprit. By the time they’re done, there’ll be no evidence or goodwill left to base an investigation on.”

  Personal experience? She sounded so intense it must have been. But she must also have hated not knowing the answers. “I’m not sure—”

  “We have a day, perhaps two,” Long Chau said. “At most. The circumstances are unusual, and I’ve been digging: this will draw their attention faster.”

  “Look,” The Shadow’s Child said. “I don’t know what your relationship with the tribunal is—” though she fully intended to find that out—”but I’m not setting myself at odds with them.”

  Long Chau’s glance was puzzled. “Of course not. We’ll have solved this long before they intervene, if we move fast enough. That’s the point.” She stretched, drawing herself to her full height. “I’m going to Apricot Blossom Ho habitat. Care to come?”

  “Because you need a ship to take you there?”

  Long Chau shrugged. It obviously hadn’t even occurred to her. “I can take a shuttle, if you’d rather not.”

  The Shadow’s Child was getting paid, when all was said and done. And she needed the money. And—and she did want to know what had happened—how Hai Anh had died, and if any justice was going to be given to her—even if it was Long Chau’s high-handed, arrogant kind.

  She could move the two appointments she had in the afternoon, with little harm done. She could go with Long Chau, even for a little while.

  “No need,” she said. “I’ll come.”

  * * *

  In the end, Long Chau did take a shuttle, because traffic was too dense and the Apricot Blossom orbital didn’t have a docking bay ready for another bi-hour. The Shadow’s Child projected her avatar straight into the orbital, and spent some time checking out the new classes of bots for sale in shops. Not that, on her current situation, she could really afford to do more than look and dream.

  She’d finally given Long Chau privileged access, which meant Long Chau’s calls would be given priority, and that she would also be able to locate her easily. The address Long Chau was headed to wasn’t a private compartment, but a wide, airy space with a sign that said “House of Saltless Prosperity”.

  “Monastery?” The Shadow’s Child asked, when she arrived.

  Long Chau shook her head. “Sisterhood,” she said, briefly, using an odd, seldom used word. “Here. You won’t be able to materialise straight inside, I’m afraid.” It was a map of a maze of linked corridors and compartments, with a single dot at the destination.

  “Tell me something,” The Shadow’s Child said.

  Long Chau raised an eyebrow.

  “The militia took you in for questioning. Why?”

  Long Chau didn’t move. “You’ve been digging.”

  “You did the same thing to me.”

  Long Chau shook her head. “I deducted based on available information. Not the same.”

  The Shadow’s Child said, stubbornly, “Tell me why.”

  “See if you can deduce it,” Long Chau said, as she headed inside. Her tone made it clear she didn’t expect The Shadow’s Child to manage that.

  Her mistake. The Shadow’s Child would show her.

  She followed Long Chau inside. She had the map on sensors and was gliding faster than Long Chau could walk, and yet she was barely able to keep up. The corridors were plain and unadorned, though here and there a painting or a vid broke the monotony. Through half-open doors, she caught a glimpse of faces—women ranging from young to very old, none of them with that particular smoothness of rejuv—their faces taut and thin, not quite at that edge where it’d become starvation. Sisterhood, Long Chau had said. That was certainly an unusual place.

  When she arrived, Long Chau was seated cross-legged at a low table, already deep in conversation with an old woman. The Shadow’s Child used the brief interval of time to look up the place on the network. By the time the woman rose, she’d gleaned enough context, but not much.

  “This is Grandmother Khue,” Long Chau said. “The Shadow’s Child, who is assisting me.”

  Grandmother Khue looked as though she’d swallowed something sour, though clearly the ill humour was all directed towards Long Chau. She smiled at The Shadow’s Child. “I’ve heard of you,” she said.

  “I’ve had contact with your house.” The Shadow’s Child had briefly checked her own records: she’d provided blends for women who lived there—not ones for crossing deep spaces aboard a mindship, but the cheaper, blunter ones, to not feel afraid while teetering on the edge of the vacuum. She’d assigned the rewatch of her interviews with them to her fastest processes on the way there: the only thing that emerged was a vague memory of hunched, tired women who made a point of pride to pay on time.

  There was nothing whatsoever hunched, or tired, about Grandmother Khue.

  The compartment was small, and the public overlay crammed with things. Unlike in Sharpening Steel into Needles’ one, it was hard to tell which objects were physical and which ones were not. It looked to be fragments of various wrecks: twisted metal that had taken on the sheen of oil, changed and compressed by deep spaces. The kind of curiosities scholars collected but wouldn’t pay much for.

  The large, wooden box of a mat chuoc game lay prominently on a commode, open to display the patterns on polished bone tiles. It was an odd, terribly old fashioned choice, but also a casual statement that not everything there was cheap. By its side was a small wooden box carved with the insignia of a brewer of serenity—Nguyen Van An Tam, The Shadow’s Child’s sensors told her, a minor brewer of the habitat who didn’t have much of a reputation or charge much for his services.

  It was... not quite genteel poverty, but close.

  Grandmother Khue caught her looking. “I salvage in deep spaces. There’s always a market for pretty things scholars can display at banquets and poetry club meetings, to impress their friends.”

  “Not much of a steady job,” Long Chau said, coldly.

  “Better than being indentured to the families.”

  Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “Perhaps.”

  “You’re an odd pair,” Grandmother Khue said. “I’m not sure how we can help. Or if we should.”

  “She was part of your community,” Long Chau said.

  “She’s dead.” Grandmother Khue sounded—not like what The Shadow’s Child expected. Not grieving, or surprised. Merely angry. Long Chau didn’t appear to have picked up on it; or perhaps she merely went on regardless. “We don’t want trouble.”

  “And no justice?” Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “I could tell the magistrate that. I’m sure they’d f
ind that very interesting.”

  “If they bother to come at all.” Grandmother Khue sat back. “You know exactly how much we mean to the orbitals.” There were two cups of tea on the table. She gestured, and a third, ethereal one shimmered into existence for The Shadow’s Child.

  “You keep the belt going,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly. She floated the tea cup to her; sipped it, feeling a soft, grassy taste—a memory of first meeting Sharpening Steel into Needles and the sparks that had flown then; of endless conversations with her family that went on and on into the night, from everything to the examination results of the younger descendants to pregnancies and births and deaths. “You and the other women here.” The House of Saltless Prosperity: a loose sisterhood of menials, of women who, like the dead Hai Anh, worked to maintain and clean the orbitals, and who had sworn to be each other’s family.

  “We’re cheap,” Grandmother Khue said. “Easily replaceable.” She smiled. “Less so if banded together.”

  “So you do have enemies,” Long Chau said.

  “The Ho and the other Inner Habitats families?” Grandmother Hue snorted. “You’re mistaken.”

  “Am I?” Long Chau asked.

  Grandmother Khue set her tea cup on the table. “I’ve already asked you why you care.”

  “I like to solve problems.”

  “Problem? Hai Anh was a person,” Grandmother Khue said, sharply.

  “I know.” Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “So you do care, but you don’t want me to investigate. Interesting.” The way she said it, Hai Anh might as well have been a tricky paragraph in some memorial. “Why did she have a shadow skin? It’s an expensive investment to make, given a menial’s average salary.”

  “She cleaned the outside of the orbitals,” Grandmother Khue said. “And yes, it’s expensive, but shadow skins are life insurance. New workers are cheaper than proper suits or climbing pads, so the families don’t always bother with proper repairs to equipment. If something they give you fails and you tumble into the vacuum, you’ll be glad to have one.”

  “I see.” Long Chau shook her head. “It didn’t protect her against deep spaces.”

  “Nothing does.” Grandmother Khue rose, putting her cup of tea on the table. “You can see her compartment. I doubt you’ll find anything of use, but—” A younger girl had appeared in the entrance of the room. “Tuyet will show you.”

  * * *

  Hai Anh’s room was small, and almost bare of life. Not surprising, when all the holos and paintings would have been tied to her, and erased or put offline after her death. Long Chau knelt for a while, staring at the small, cramped bed. A faint smell of sandalwood and incense hung in the air, in front of a statue of Quan Am.

  “I missed the beginning of the conversation,” The Shadow’s Child said.

  “Not much of use,” Long Chau said. “Though I’d be curious how she struck you.”

  Aggravated by Long Chau, but then again, that was more or less a given. “Competent. A long-time leader. What did she strike you as?”

  “‘Long-time leader’.” Long Chau weighed the words, as if on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t like Grandmother Khue—that much was obvious. “Yes. She likes being in control, doesn’t she.”

  “You’re the one who reads people.”

  “Do I?” Long Chau shook her head.

  “You seemed to find it easy enough, with me.”

  “You’re a Mind.”

  “And it’s different?”

  “Of course it is,” Long Chau said.

  “Easier?” She didn’t usually do that, but something about Long Chau invited challenge. Perhaps the simple knowledge that she’d get an honest answer, even if she didn’t like it.

  “Different,” Long Chau said. “Easier for me, but we both know that’s not the case for most people.” And then, after a pause that announced a change of subjects, “You have contacts with other shipminds.”

  “And with other people,” The Shadow’s Child said, sharply.

  “You know what I mean,” Long Chau said. “I’m not a very social person.”

  For sure. The Shadow’s Child bit back the obvious comment. “You want to know why she was in deep spaces.”

  “Yes. See.” Long Chau knelt, bots crawling out of her sleeves. They took, one by one, positions on the bed and at the corners of the low table. Her breathing slowed, for a fraction of a moment. The entire room, walls to floor, was washed with the red of New Year’s Eve lanterns—an eyeblink only, and then there were pictures on the walls once more, and a bowl of tangerines on the table, and books by the bed. “That’s what she’d have shown to an outside visitor.” Long Chau blinked, again, and the books shifted slightly. The bowl of tangerines was joined by papers with broad, thick ink swathes—a suggestion of limbs and claws, of large wings spreading in the vacuum of space. “And to the sisterhood.”

  “You hacked her room’s systems?”

  “No,” Long Chau said. “I did that when I first came in. I’m just showing you what I’ve been seeing since.”

  “All right,” The Shadow’s Child said. “I can ask, but you’re aware I don’t know every shipmind in the belt.” She put out a query to Sharpening Needles into Steel, asking them about Hai Anh.

  “I need a point of entry, not a personal introduction. All her things still seem to be here—books, vids, tangerines. Nothing in here indicates she was about to leave for a trip of some duration.” She knelt, picked up the book on the top shelf. “Love in the Time of Mulberry Seas. One of those mythical romances that’s been all the rage in the belt.” Her tone was dismissive.

  “I’ve read it,” The Shadow’s Child said, sharply. And many of the other titles as well—she and Hai Anh obviously chose books in similar ways.

  Long Chau had the grace to relent. “It’s well-written. This one is bookmarked.” A bot crawled up her hands, settled on her fingertip. “And she’d been making regular progress through it the last few days.”

  The Shadow’s Child’s sensors had been trying to flag up something for a while: it finally climbed up the pile of priorities. In the doorway, behind her. She turned and saw the girl who’d accompanied them there—Tuyet?—standing in the narrow doorway, staring open-mouthed at Long Chau.

  “You’re a medium,” she said.

  Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “I don’t speak with the spirits. Or the dead. Or only for a very narrow range of definitions of ‘speak’.”

  Not very social. The Shadow’s Child bit back a curse, and said, “Was she your friend? Hai Anh?”

  Tuyet bit her lip, dancing back and forth. She was young, and thin. She barely looked old enough to have been allowed to join the sisterhood. “She kept to herself, a lot.”

  “Books and games,” Long Chau said, nodding. “She was shy, wasn’t she? Not very confident.”

  “Grandmother Khue said—” Tuyet stopped, and visibly changed what she’d been about to say. “It’s a thing that happens to a lot of us. Thinking we’re alone and that we don’t matter.” It sounded like a lecture she herself had been given. “That’s why we have the sisterhood.”

  The Shadow’s Child only had a rough idea of what obligations comprised the sisterhood, or of what use Long Chau could possibly think she’d be. Sharpening Needles into Steel was, in typical fashion, rounding up all the younger ships and asking about Hai Anh, or sending them to check manifestos. Nothing seemed to stand out: Hai Anh herself never seemed to have been a passenger anywhere. But she had plunged, alive, into deep spaces. There had to be a connection.

  “She didn’t get on with Grandmother Khue, did she?” Long Chau said.

  Tuyet looked startled, but said nothing.

  “She locked her communications to the sisterhood, and there was some pretty strong encryption on parts of this room.” She made a gesture, and a chessboard appeared on the table, its pieces still scattered in the midst of a game. “It could have been a general quarrel, but nothing else in said communications indicates that. More likely
she no longer wanted Grandmother Khue to monitor her.”

  “She doesn’t spy on us!” Tuyet’s face was flushed. “You don’t understand what it’s like. Everyone in the Inner Habitats families would love to tear us apart. If it means slightly fewer secrets...” She shook her head.

  The Shadow’s Child bit back a curse. If that was Long Chau’s way to solicit witnesses... “The sisterhood were the ones who got you out of trouble.”

  Tuyet didn’t speak. She was watching the chessboard, with an unreadable expression on her face. One bot rested on her wrist, trembling, as if aching to be let loose into the room.

  “I’ve met her kind before,” Long Chau said. “She rules. She has to, because disunity is weakness, and the sisterhood can’t afford to be weak.”

  Tuyet was shaking now. “You’re making it sound... dirty.”

  “I proffer no moral judgment.” Long Chau picked up one of the chess pieces, looked at it. “A good game, but her opponent was far weaker than her. Did you come here often?”

  “Disaster” might be too weak a word for how the interview was turning out. The Shadow’s Child gave up on all subtlety, and went on the offensive. “You said you’d met Grandmother Khue’s kind before. During the uprising?”

  Long Chau looked mildly surprised. “I didn’t serve, if that’s what you’re asking for.”

  The Shadow’s Child had, but of course mindships weren’t given a choice about whether to enlist. “Can you answer the question?”

  Long Chau raised an eyebrow. “I worked for someone very much like her, once.” She looked, again, at Tuyet. Her voice was kinder. “Escaping one cage for another?”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Tuyet said. “She cares. My family didn’t.” Her accent was rough: Outer Habitats, and not the social class that ever saw much of examinations or rising in the world.

  A long, uncomfortable silence. At last, Long Chau stretched. “I apologise. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”