The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard

  “Your time is almost up,” Long Chau said, sharply. In her arms, Tuyet hung limp. Her fingers bent at odd angles, and black hard beads streamed from her nails and hair. “Tell me that was useful.”

  She could see them now, not at a remove through the suit’s coms feed, but through her own sensors. Two bodies—Long Chau’s tall and bulky shape holding Tuyet tight, arms and legs wrapped around the other woman’s hardening, fragmenting body.

  One last jump—into the darkness where she’d once so desperately prayed for an end, through space that felt dark and heavy, like hands desperately trying to drag her down one last time. And then she was close enough to both of them to touch, to open an airlock and send bots and a shuttle to retrieve them.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  * * *

  The militia was not happy. They knew Long Chau, but they certainly didn’t expect to be called from a hospital and handed a case that was almost shut. But they took it in stride, with visible ill grace.

  After they were out of hospital—after Long Chau had watched, silent and composed, as Tuyet came out, sleeping on sweat-drenched sheets, with thin, round scars on the tips of her fingers, and a skin the unhealthy colour of funeral shrouds—Long Chau headed straight for the tribunal and the holding cells.

  Much to The Shadow’s Child’s surprise, the militia let them both in.

  Grandmother Khue was waiting for them there, seated on the hard floor of the cell, under the soft, unforgiving light from above. She looked pale and exhausted, eyes bruised, nothing of her earlier self-confidence.

  “She’ll live,” Long Chau said. She was leaning against the wall, the bots clinging to her hands again. Only The Shadow’s Child, who’d insisted on monitoring her and who now had several bots nesting on Long Chau’s body, knew how close to sheer exhaustion she was running. “Through no fault of yours.”

  Grandmother Khue said nothing.

  The Shadow’s Child said, slowly, “I’d guess it would be negligence rather than murder.” They weren’t going to charge the brewer, of course—just like an apothecary wouldn’t be held responsible if the dosages prescribed weren’t respected. It was all on the sisterhood’s shoulders.

  Long Chau said nothing. She didn’t need to. She positively radiated anger—the same carefully set expression she’d had when they’d carried Tuyet into hospital—when she’d sat, tightly focused, until the doctors came out with their verdict—everything not all right, of course, because things never were that simple—but at least offering a measure of hope.

  “You had to know,” The Shadow’s Child said. She couldn’t help it. She was trying to be kind—to not be Long Chau—but it was hard. “Blends just can’t—”

  “There were other alerts.” Long Chau didn’t move from the wall. “Near misses. You’re lucky it didn’t happen before.” Her tone was unbearably light.

  Grandmother Khue said, at last—and it looked as though every word was costing her—“I didn’t know. I thought—deep spaces are frightening. It was supposed to make things easier.”

  “To control your flock.”

  “You don’t understand.” Again, that visible effort to speak up, as if the air had turned to metal in her mouth. “The Church used it to make people insignificant, but that’s not—” she paused, started again. “When you’re out there, with no one and nothing to stand in your way—when you realise how small you are—you also realise that everything that ever was, that ever will be, is connected to you. That we’re all, in the end, part of the same great thing.”

  The stuff of nightmares, and she wanted to make it into some kind of revelation? “Buddhist nonsense,” The Shadow’s Child said, sharply.

  She’d expected Long Chau to say something, but Long Chau was oddly silent. Reminiscing, the bots said. “For the right person, perhaps,” Long Chau said, at last. She shook her head. “Neither Tuyet nor Hai Anh were, I fancy.”

  “They would have been. They just had to let go of fear.”

  Long Chau sighed. She turned, halfway, to look at The Shadow’s Child. “Always easier to say than do. And it shouldn’t take deaths for you to learn that lesson.”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “It’s pointless,” The Shadow’s Child said to Long Chau, more kindly than she’d meant to. In truth, she was as shaken and as exhausted as Long Chau, and if she even so much as attempted to rest she’d see, again and again, the two bodies tumbling away from her in deep spaces, and feel herself, in the split moment before she finally dived, so close to failing them both. “Come on.”

  And—much to her surprise—Long Chau did.

  * * *

  Long Chau walked The Shadow’s Child back to her office, in silence. Inside, she pulled up a chair, and didn’t so much sit as collapse into it. The Shadow’s Child, unsure of where any of it left them, let the bots prepare tea and dumplings on an almost automatic course.

  The room was bare again. She forced herself to turn it into a living space: to make paintings and vids emerge out of the metal space, tweaking them to show stars, and the waterfalls on some distant planet. No deep spaces, though perhaps one day she’d be able to bear this particular sight so close to her. Bookshelves shimmered into existence on the overlay—crammed with mythical romances and sweeping, epic novels of scholars and ships; with heavy tomes on blend-making from basics to more complex subjects. She ached to be alone again, except that silence scared her more than she could say.

  Long Chau sat, watching her tea as if it held the secrets of the universe. On her hands, the bots glinted. Probably only the drugs kept her upright. It’d have been a time for apologies, except The Shadow’s Child didn’t feel she owed any.

  “What now?” she asked, instead.

  Long Chau smiled, a ghost of her earlier expression. “I would go look for another corpse for my memoir, but I don’t feel like I could handle the consequences just right now.”

  “The blend—”

  “It’s out of my system.” She’d refused to let the doctors look at her. Of course. “And I’ll be out of your life, soon, never fear. All debts paid.”

  Her rent. She ought to have felt relieved, but she had no energy for anything. “I see.” A pause, then, “You needn’t worry. About my telling Kim Oanh’s family.”

  A raised eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought you would.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me.”

  “You dived into deep spaces to rescue Tuyet and me. I know exactly how much that cost you. The least I could do was repay that trust.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “I know you didn’t. That doesn’t change anything.” Long Chau was silent, again. She shook her hands: the bots withdrew, leaving only dark, scarred skin beneath them, with barely a drop of blood.

  “If you trust me—”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me about the drugs. The ones you’re taking.”

  “Oh.” Long Chau set the cup on the table. “Not much to tell, is there. You still think it’s because of the militia interrogation?” A shadow of her old amusement. “It would be neat, wouldn’t it? An easy and sympathetic explanation. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. I simply need the drugs to function. That’s all there is to it. Life isn’t easy and neat.”

  “You make it sound like it is. When you make your deductions from the smallest scraps of evidence.”

  “When I deduce things? You’re mistaken. The world is chaotic and without sense. But in the smallest of spheres it’s sometimes possible to straighten things out; to make it seem as though everything means something.” She sipped the tea. So did The Shadow’s Child, letting the memories of family and warmth fill her thoughts. A comfort, though a scant one.

  “You sound like Grandmother Khue.” She felt only a fraction of her old anger. “Looking for meaning in deep spaces.”

  Long Chau shook her head. “Still angry?”

  “There’s nothing out there,” The Shadow’s Child said. “No revelations. Nothing to worship.” But n
othing to fear, either.

  “Mmm,” Long Chau said. What had it been like for her—in those long moments when she was there, desperately trying to hold on to Tuyet and praying to her ancestors—or whoever else she did pray to—that The Shadow’s Child was going to reach her in time? “As I said—I don’t speculate.” A pause, then: “But I’m not like Grandmother Khue. I don’t endanger young girls. Or ships.”

  “I know,” The Shadow’s Child said, finally. Long Chau meant well. She was abrasive and forthright, and prone to getting carried away with her own deductions, missing all the subtle cues that would have told anyone else to stop. She—

  She was all right, really. “You can come back. When you need a blend. I’ll be quite happy to help you. Honestly.”

  Long Chau set the cup on the table. “Thank you.” She rose. Barely the faintest of tremors in her legs, as The Shadow Child’s bots left her hair and hands and scuttled onto the floor.

  At the door, she stopped, looking in. She thought for a while, and then said, carefully, “If—I should happen to have a case where a shipmind’s perspective would be useful—”

  “Go on,” The Shadow’s Child said, unsure of what else to say.

  Long Chau’s gaze was piercing. “I would offer to pay you, but that would be insulting to you and what you do. So why don’t I come to see you, as a friend, and you can tell me what help you’d feel comfortable giving me, and on what terms?”

  As a friend. “I’ll be glad to,” The Shadow’s Child said—and was surprised to find that she meant it.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written at a particularly challenging time in my life, when I was learning to conciliate motherhood of two small children, work and writing. I would like to thank a number of people for the support they provided, without which I would never have made it to the end: Alis Rasmussen, Zen Cho, Vida Cruz, Tade Thompson, Fran Wilde, Michelle Sagara, Stephanie Burgis, Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, Patricia Mulles, Cindy Pon, Nene Ormes, Likhain, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Inksea, Alessa Hinlo, D Franklin, Zoe Johnson, Liz Bourke, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch.

  Thanks as well to Ava Jarvis, Lynn E. O’Connacht, Seth Gorden, Samantha Henderson, and Genevieve Cogman for providing feedback on the drafts of this, and to Jonathan L. Howard for his speedy reading and blurbing! And to Patrick Samphire and Sebb for advice on covers and lettering.

  To everyone who turned this from a draft into a gorgeous book: Yanni Kuznia, Geralyn Lance and everyone at Subterranean Press; Maurizio Manzieri and Dirk Berger for gorgeous and striking cover art; Lisa Rodgers, Patrick Disselhorst and everyone at JABberwocky who worked on this; and my agent John Berlyne for his support and advice.

  To my readers and tireless promoters: I wouldn't be here without you.

  To Jeremy Brett and Lucy Liu, the Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson of my heart.

  And, finally, to my parents, who gave 10-year-old me a much coveted two-volume edition of all the Sherlock Holmes stories; to my sister, who geeked with me on Victorian London, TV series and movies; to my husband Matthieu and his wild fixes to plot problems; and to my children, the snakelet and the librarian, who will one day hear about space detectives and their adventures!

  About the Author

  Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories, which garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award.

  Works include The House of Shattered Wings (2015 British Science Fiction Association Award), a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and its standalone sequel The House of Binding Thorns. She lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and a set of Lovecraftian tentacled plants intent on taking over the place.

  This novella is set in the same universe as On a Red Station Drifting and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls.

  Visit her website www.aliettedebodard.com for short fiction set in the same universe as this book, as well as Vietnamese and French recipes.

  ALSO BY ALIETTE DE BODARD

  OBSIDIAN AND BLOOD

  Servant of the Underworld*

  Harbinger of the Storm*

  Master of the House of Darts*

  DOMINION OF THE FALLEN

  The House of Shattered Wings

  The House of Binding Thorns

  XUYA UNIVERSE

  On a Red Station, Drifting

  The Citadel of Weeping Pearls*

  The Tea Master and the Detective*

  SHORT FICTION

  Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship

  * available as a JABberwocky ebook

  Looking for more from Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe? The Citadel of Weeping Pearls is available in eBook and print editions from JABberwocky.

  THANK YOU FOR READING

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