The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard

  An obvious suspect. “I assume the militia looked.”

  “They did more than look,” Bao said. “Nothing conclusive came up, but—” she hesitated.

  “Go on,” The Shadow’s Child said. It could hardly get worse.

  “Several months after the investigation closed, your teacher came into possession of rather too much money. It was traced back to people smugglers.”

  “Slavers.” She kept her voice flat, emotionless. She had to, or she’d burst.

  “I don’t know,” Bao said. “The tribunal didn’t find any conclusive evidence it was tied to Kim Oanh.”

  “The family would have pressed,” The Shadow’s Child said. Surely many rules could bend and break, when money and influence were involved?

  “They did,” Bao said. “The magistrate is a stickler for rules, and they didn’t appreciate their hand being forced in that clumsy a manner. So it stopped there.”

  Seven years ago. A year before the uprising that tore the belt apart. So easy for a wayward, suspect teacher to slip away, and to reinvent herself as a dilettante detective—to take on cases to amuse herself, living on blood money.

  In fact—

  Long Chau still had the money. In all likelihood, she’d used it to pay The Shadow’s Child.

  The Shadow’s Child was going to be sick.

  “You’ve gone very silent,” Bao said. “She paid you, didn’t she? That big lump transaction you gave me access to the other day—”

  Too sharp, but then Bao hadn’t gotten to where she was by being stupid.

  “I’ll sort things out,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly, carefully. She felt, dimly, her core stretch against the connectors in the heartroom, their reassuring coolness against her.

  She’d return it. She’d find some other way to earn her living—more customers, or perhaps some deliveries on the edge of deep spaces. Something. Anything.

  “I see,” Bao said. And then, with a shake of her head, “You worry too much about morality.”

  “Don’t you?” The Shadow’s Child said.

  “The tribunal thought she was innocent.”

  “Not innocent. Just not guilty. That’s not the same.” Words seemed to have turned to tar—to come, slowly and inexorably, from her physical body, shivering in the heartroom.

  “I don’t judge,” Bao said.

  “You offered me the office space. To a shipmind.”

  “Precisely. You could pay. That was a calculated risk. I didn’t pass moral judgments on what you were or weren’t.”

  “I—”

  “For what it’s worth, I’d say in your current position, you can ill afford to pick and choose on mere suspicions.” Bao rose, and picked a book from the shelves—an electronic. She held it towards The Shadow’s Child, cover turned up to reveal the flowing calligraphy of a Lao Quy title, with the sharply coloured characters against the background of stars and ships. “You look like you could use a distraction. Here. You’ve probably read it cover to cover ten thousand times, but it’s still good.”

  After she cut off the connection, The Shadow’s Child remained in her office, staring at the bookshelves.

  They deemed her innocent.

  No. They’d merely thought there wasn’t enough evidence to declare her guilty. It was a different set of standards—one to weigh a possible execution against.

  Mere suspicions, Bao had said.

  But what if it were true? The evidence was just too compelling to be ignored; and Long Chau stubbornly refused to offer any explanation or any justification for what had happened.

  As if she didn’t have any defence.

  The Shadow’s Child tried to go back to her blends—to the bots-handler and the activity maps she needed to build, the blend she’d have to carefully build—something that would make the handler feel subtly more assured, less fearful—but everything kept sliding off, and she couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

  Sharpening Steel into Needles pinged her, once, twice. There was some sort of celebration with other shipminds: an official event with Official Truc, an exiled scholar of the third rank who was going to regale them with his own poems in the presence of most of the high society of the orbitals. Sharpening Steel into Needles was going both to enjoy themselves, and to push forward some of the younger ships in the hopes of getting them positions with officials or families. They wanted The Shadow’s Child to go, of course. It would do her good to get out.

  The Shadow’s Child didn’t want to get out. And the last thing she wanted was Sharpening Steel into Needles dragging her around. Her response was terse, and obviously sharp enough that the older ship didn’t even insist.

  She climbed back into her own body—curled up in her heartroom, withdrawing from her sensors and letting go of her bots, space stretching around her, vast and cold and unchanging, the wind whispering against her hull like a lullaby—the sharp light of the stars a restful, familiar sight. It was the busy time of day, with many ordinary ships ferrying everything from people to crates of food from habitat to habitat, their coms chatter a soothing presence in the background.

  She settled down to watch a vid of The Turtle and the Sword: familiar characters from empress to concubines, caught in soothing, distant drama—questions of who was the real mother of the prince, and whether the disgraced general would ever get their revenge...

  Something was blinking, in her notifications. Long Chau. She didn’t want to hear from Long Chau. It was going to be another high-handed request for help, or company, with explanations doled out only when it suited her.

  But it wasn’t from her.

  The sender was a Tran Thi Cam, a controller of deaths working at the tribunal—shared with both her and Long Chau, with a few layers of obfuscations to make it seem anonymous. Amateur work, and nothing that stood up to The Shadow’s Child’s first few probes.

  It was an autopsy report on the corpse they’d found. Why in Heaven had Long Chau or Tran Thi Cam thought this would be relevant? She was about to close it when a line caught her eye.

  “Decomposition was, in effect, halted by deep spaces, enabling the recovery of trace amounts of the following.”

  The list of compounds that followed was extensive: crushed honeydreamer, ginseng, winged sai seeds, and a host of other familiar things.

  A blend. That wouldn’t have been a cause for concern—blends were common—but the ingredients list was odd, considering everything they’d known about Hai Anh.

  Her coms blinked again. This time, it was Long Chau. She sent back a message that she wasn’t interested, and of course Long Chau kept calling. She dropped it to a lower priority routine, and tried to focus again.

  No use. A centiday later, she’d read just one line of the report, and thought of nothing but the steady blink of that call.

  She took it.

  “I’m not interested,” she said. And then saw the location from which the call was made.

  Long Chau’s voice was cool. “You should be.”

  “You’re in deep spaces?”

  “In a frozen ship.” A trace of amusement. Her voice was off, but The Shadow’s Child wasn’t sure why. “You were right. Maintenance on The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen was really shoddy.”

  “You stole aboard—No one steals aboard mindships!”

  “The old ones, with blind spots all over their corridors? Easy.”

  “You—” And then professional instinct took over. “You told me you couldn’t function in deep spaces.”

  “I stole a blend,” Long Chau said. “From the kitchen stores. Looks like the sisterhood is keeping it in reserve to help its inductees remain sane in deep spaces. I have to grant them this: they have no intention of breaking anyone past repair.” The admission sounded like it cost her.

  Too many things, too many problems. Alarms were going off at every level of The Shadow’s Child’s processes. And she still didn’t know if she could trust Long Chau. “They’re feeding the same blend to different people? You can’t do that. Blends ar
e tailored to one person.”

  “I didn’t think you could.”

  “You drank one,” The Shadow’s Child pointed out.

  “Not much choice.”

  Why was she surprised Long Chau would get herself into trouble, and fast? And the voice...

  She knew exactly what was wrong with the voice. “You’re drunk.”

  “I think not.”

  Not quite, but it was the fastest way The Shadow’s Child could explain that Long Chau’s thought processes were currently warped by a blend not meant for her. “Is Tuyet onboard?”

  “She and Grandmother Khue and a host of other folks I don’t know. I’m not sure I get your sense of urgency.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “So you can rescue me, of course. Coms look to be down as well. They’re putting a backup transmitter together, but I’ll have lost patience long before any rescuing does happen. Not to mention functionality.”

  Blends. A delicate balance of compounds fed to one person, monitored to be sure they had no adverse effects. Expensive, of course, and the sisterhood was tight for money. They’d pay someone not very much. Someone like Nguyen Van An Tam, the brewer who gave Grandmother Khue her cheap blends. And they’d get a shoddily made job, and...

  Breathe. In a room at the heart of her was her core—her self, plugged into connectors and then into the ship, hanging in the vastness of space, and nothing could touch her there.

  An easy way to deal with folks like Grandmother Khue and Long Chau was simply to crank the self-confidence as high as it would go. It worked, though it wasn’t subtle. But with folks like Hai Anh—mousy and quiet, fighting with low sense of worth, unaccustomed to trusting themselves—blends like these made them reckless. Terminally drunk.

  How did a mindship let someone out into deep spaces? If the person—Hai Anh—themselves did it. If in the airlock, instead of putting on the unreality suit as anyone functional would, they stepped outside, so intoxicated they thought their shadow skin would protect them.

  Tuyet.

  Tuyet was young, and scarred; and with the same kind of tricky profile as Hai Anh. Not someone whose self-esteem could be so casually boosted.

  Not without consequences.

  “Shadow’s Child? Ship?” Long Chau’s voice, barely tinged with concern. “What’s happening with Tuyet?”

  She still didn’t know what Long Chau wanted with Tuyet, or what had happened seven years ago. But—

  There were two people, currently, who could help Tuyet: her and Long Chau.

  And she was too far away. She’d just put in a request for a mindship to rescue The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen, who now hung in deep spaces—not on the edges, where she’d taken Long Chau, but deep inside, where Hanh and Vinh and her crew had died, where time stretched to an eternity with no meaning, and space curved back onto itself—he was wounded and broken, just as she’d once been—but no, she couldn’t afford to think of that—she needed to focus on what was happening. Too many ships around the orbitals, and Traffic Harmony was unresponsive.

  It was Long Chau or no one. “I’m getting help,” she said, sharply. “Just keep an eye on Tuyet.”

  No answer, but then why had she expected one?

  Traffic Harmony suddenly came online. “I’m not sure I see the need,” they said in an emotionless voice. “It’s not an emergency. The mindship’s critical functions are still working.”

  “Someone—” The Shadow’s Child tried to sort out her thoughts, to convey more information than the fragmented panic she felt. “Someone is going to die.”

  “I don’t understand. Surely, if a mindship is needed, you could go?”

  The thought of diving into deep spaces, of losing herself, all over again— “Can you just find another mindship? Any mindship? Someone who can come and help them?”

  Long Chau’s cool voice in her ears, taking priority over the com with Traffic Harmony. “I’m afraid we have a problem.”

  “We what—?”

  A silence, accompanied by an odd rush. “Can you see where I am? Exactly?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Good,” Long Chau said. “You have a centiday. Perhaps a little more, but I wouldn’t count on it. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need all my concentration.”

  “What—?”

  “You’re smart: you can most probably make the necessary deductions.”

  She’d expected the call to cut, but it didn’t. What happened was that Long Chau fell silent, and she heard a familiar rush of air: a mindship’s airlock, dilating open, and then profound silence, only Long Chau’s breath, coming slow and measured.

  A centiday. The time it would take for a human being in deep spaces to start dying.

  “Please tell me you have an unreality suit,” she said to Long Chau. If Tuyet didn’t have it...

  She could almost hear Long Chau say she wasn’t a fool—but again, there was no answer.

  Long Chau had turned on the suit’s sensors. That was now the only thing The Shadow’s Child was getting from her: a body, tumbling away, and a shadow skin torn to shreds by the pressures of unreality, all of it growing larger and larger as Long Chau propelled herself to catch Tuyet. Tuyet’s eyes were closed, her face swollen—her skin flushed the colour of bruises, changing and shifting in successive washes of alien colours.

  A centiday.

  If she stopped—if she thought, truly, really, about what she was going to do—she would freeze.

  “Traffic Harmony?”

  “Yes?”

  “I need to enter deep spaces.”

  A heartbeat—a slow, agonising one—before the authorisation came through, tinged with more than a hint of puzzlement.

  She took in a deep breath, and dived in.

  It was restful at first. Oily light crept along her hull, things shifting and changing, a cavernous noise like the booming of a heartbeat, resonating in her corridors, being held and loved—and then, as she got deeper in, as the light changed—as the cold seared the metal of her hull, as the warmth turned into a spike that seemed to pierce her heartroom and her core, she remembered.

  Corpses. Lieutenant Hanh, torn apart as the rebel ship took out the docking bay, her sharp and angular face above the ruin of her body. The damage spreading out, engulfing the living quarters and the motors and driving through her entire body, incinerating paintings and furniture on its way to the heartroom. The privates, scattered in her now airless corridors, their screams and moans as they died still resonating in her memories. And Captain Vinh, struggling to reach the heartroom, her face tightening and changing, her skin awash in light—deep spaces pulling her apart and the scrabbling on the heartroom’s door giving way to a low whimper, and then nothing. The Shadow’s Child reaching, again and again, for controls that slid out of her grasps, feeling everything grow distant and meaningless, her bots clattering one after the other, her corridors growing numb, until only the cold and empty heartroom remained, locked tight, as if any locks and double doors could change anything going on outside...

  Turn back.

  There was still time. She had to—

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  Long Chau had reached Tuyet. She’d wrapped her arms around the girl. She was fumbling, trying to shield the girl from deep spaces. As if she could: there was no protection there, not from what was shredding the shadow skin to unrecognisable filaments, and turning the body the colour and harshness of jade. Long Chau turned, for a moment. The link showed the dark, faraway shape of The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen. She said, slowly, “Tran Thi Kim Oanh.”

  It was such an incongruous thing that The Shadow’s Child forgot, for a moment, where she was.

  “She was my student,” Long Chau said. “A bright, quick girl—a delight to teach.” Again, no emotion. No hint of where she was, of what she was recollecting. “Such an intellect. If she’d been allowed to be properly trained—”

  They were tumbling deeper and deeper, carried away by the current, e
verything blurring and shifting around them. Tuyet’s face rested on Long Chau’s shoulder, her long hair turning dark and brittle, breaking away in chunks—her tears turning into hard, jeweled things—eyes starting to bulge out. “Until she vanished,” The Shadow’s Child said. She was surprised to find old, familiar anger, strong enough to burn away everything else. “On your watch.”

  A silence. Then. “Her family wanted her to enter the army,” Long Chau said. “The fastest way for her to rise—to earn honour and reputation for the family. It was a disappointing choice. A waste of my work and of my time.”

  “A waste?” She was now so angry she shook. In the background, her motors continued to run, fuelling the dive, the minute adjustments that made her leap from point to point, struggling to hold her course against the currents of unreality. “That’s why you decided to earn your money the other way.”

  “You don’t understand.” Long Chau’s voice was mild. “She asked me to help her vanish. I had to choose which loyalty to uphold—to her, or to her family. Not that it was much of a choice, in the end. The answer was obvious.”

  “She—”

  “She’s alive and well. I get messages, sometimes.” The Shadow’s Child couldn’t see the smile, but she could imagine it all too well—slow and lazy and gradually taking over Long Chau’s entire face. “And if the price for that is people wondering about what I did—let them wonder. The tribunal did interrogate me, but there are ways to mislead them, if you’re determined enough.”

  “The money—”

  “She paid me. For, ah. Services rendered.”

  “You—you let her family think that she was dead.” The Shadow’s Child was almost there. The pressure against her hull was now unbearable. Claws, raking her again and again, a memory of struggling, powerless and broken, hearing only the screams of the dying.

  She—

  She could do this.

  “Of course. The moment they find out she’s not, they’ll hunt her down and drag her back home. For her own good.” The sarcasm in her voice was almost unbearable.

  And Tuyet—of course Tuyet, young and running away from family troubles, would remind Long Chau of her former student.