The red scholars wake, p.4
The Red Scholar's Wake, page 4
Xích Si didn’t need to be told how it worked, for the powerful. But this in turn told her that Rice Fish’s position might not be as secure as she projected it to be. That, for all her cool self-confidence, she might be… No, she couldn’t afford to see Rice Fish as bewildered and fearful. She was a pirate, and that was all Xích Si needed to remember.
The Green Scholar, Kim Thông. And Censor Trúc.
Xích Si stared at the screen again, at the map displayed on the overlay. The pirates had been headed back to their citadel – and its satellites, the myriad hideouts dotted in the asteroids of the Jade Stream. Raiding season had been almost over. They’d berth at their private ports and weather the calmer months while the merchants were busy marking festivals and planning for the future: negotiating rates; mapping out diving expeditions in the Fire Palace; and renting hold-space on ships headed to the centre of the empire. And Đại Việt, the empire’s neighbour and the pirates’ ally, would be busy with its own festivals and pageants. The Red Scholar, coming home with a ship full of stolen Ashling artefacts and debris, hadn’t expected to find a fleet of imperial ships, still less Censor Trúc, the imperial officer who’d made it her business to destroy the pirates in the Jade Stream.
But Censor Trúc had clearly been expecting her.
‘They knew where she’d be,’ Xích Si said. She bit her lip, sweeping aside the map to call up the sequence of the battle. ‘Exactly where she’d be. And which ship she was on. I don’t mean they received a message prior to the battle – there’s something more involved. They’re tracking her too well. Here.’ She pointed to the final moments of the Red Scholar’s life, when the small three-plates ship she’d been on had attempted to escape the mass of open-the-void crafts surrounding the pirate fleet. Two ships had immediately turned to follow her. ‘It was a three-plates. A ship that’s small but not fast, and not heavily armoured. It’s the worst possible option to flee a battle zone. They shouldn’t have expected her to be on it – but there’s no hesitation, and they address her by name before they open fire.’
She looked at Rice Fish as she was speaking. She wasn’t sure what to expect; the Red Scholar had been her wife, and all that pent-up anger had to include some grief. But Rice Fish’s avatar stared straight ahead, and her expression only hardened.
‘A spy in the Red Banner, then.’
‘Mmmm.’ Xích Si stared at the battle overlay. ‘I think someone’s tracking her messages. If it’s a spy, it’s not a human one. How much of her data log and bots did you recover?’
Rice Fish’s lips thinned. ‘Not much. She tumbled into the vacuum of space from a ship which was torn to pieces by energy weapons. Frozen pieces, and no one bothered to track down the bot-fragments. But there are backups.’ Her voice was steady and cool, but keeping it that way clearly cost her; Xích Si had been in similar situations, staring down tribunal officials and not letting them see her upset or her anger. ‘I’ll see that you get them before we reach the Citadel.’
‘The Citadel.’ The pirates’ hideout, in the empty zone around Triệu Hoà Port – too many asteroids in the Jade Stream, and not enough empire militia to scan them all. The fabled heart of piratehood. ‘Of course. Raiding season is over.’ Now Xích Si worked to keep her voice steady. All that stood between her and every pirate in the Citadel was a contract, and Rice Fish, and it seemed pitifully inadequate.
‘It’s not one place.’ Rice Fish’s voice was kind, and disturbingly perceptive. ‘It’s a collection of habitats on different asteroids, with extended avatar privileges. You won’t have to leave Red Banner space if you don’t want to.’
She needed to ask – she needed to know, right now – what the terms of her captivity, her marriage, were.
‘And if I do?’
A cocked head. ‘I’m not your jailer. I’ll make introductions for you, to the banner and outside it. And I’ll assign ships to you.’
Xích Si stared, again, at the battle spread in front of her: at the ships crowding each other in what seemed almost a dance – except that everyone was in thrall to orbital mechanics – and it was more akin to the theatre, where everyone’s skin colour and expression defined the roles that they couldn’t escape.
‘Ships. For my protection?’
‘For whatever you deem them useful for,’ Rice Fish said. ‘You’re my consort. That comes with power of your own.’
Xích Si said, ‘What do you want?’
‘I told you. A partnership. Proof of the Green Scholar’s guilt.’
‘I know this. And I know you’ll go to the council with that evidence. That’s not what I’m asking. What matters most to you? Avenging the Red Scholar, or safeguarding the alliance?’
Rice Fish blinked, and stared at her. Xích Si suddenly felt the ship’s entire attention shift like a palpable thing, the room becoming smaller – no, it wasn’t the room, it was merely that Rice Fish loomed larger within it. Her gaze held Xích Si, transfixing her like a harpoon – until Xích Si had to look away, flushed and flustered.
‘Smart question,’ Rice Fish’s voice was light and ironic. ‘You mean – am I turned towards the past or the future? I was never one for vengeance.’ A thoughtful silence. ‘The alliance must stand. The Green Scholar has turned, which makes us vulnerable. We’re only strong so long as we stand together.’
So they could attack more ships and hoard more ill-gotten wealth, and continue to prey on and torture the weak?
‘You still think we’re monsters.’ Rice Fish’s voice was mild. ‘I’m not reading your mind. I have more advanced perceptions than human beings, especially when you’re on my body.’
Xích Si clenched her fists – she was tensed for an explosion from Rice Fish, but nothing happened. It was… disturbing.
‘This is a safe place,’ Rice Fish said. ‘A place where you don’t have a choice between starving or selling yourself or your children into indenture. A place where there are no greater or lesser spouses, merely partners and lovers. Where everyone has rights.’
‘Even the bondspeople?’ She shouldn’t have asked, but it came out like blood from a wound.
‘In this banner, yes,’ Rice Fish said. ‘As I said – not everyone approved of my wife and our policies.’
That anger beneath her words wasn’t aimed at Xích Si – again, a disturbing realisation. How could she be so calm, so… civilised?
You still think we’re monsters.
She did. She knew who she’d married, who her life belonged to. Who she was inextricably tied to – not by choice, but because she had no other alternatives. As Rice Fish had said, her old life was now dead to her.
It hurt. Xích Si made space for the pain – in the same way she had after Ngà’s death, going back to scavenging, swallowing the bitter ashes of her dreams, knowing she’d never be wealthy, and she’d never be a partner on a merchant ship. As she’d always done, she’d accepted the inevitability that the world would always turn against her; that ambition was and always had been a poison. But it still hurt.
She channelled it the only way she knew how: into her work and obligations.
‘Can you get me those logs? And those ships you mentioned, my honour guard.’
‘Of course.’
Rice Fish was still watching her; the entire room was still saturated with her attention. Her eyes were black once more, and her clothes were shifting, the golden embroideries of the phoenixes spreading their wings, flying amid a sea of stars. She seemed surprised, and interested. She hadn’t expected Xích Si to react like this.
Well, tough luck.
There was no way under Heaven that Xích Si would show her more weakness than she’d already displayed.
‘What’s your idea?’ Rice Fish asked.
‘I have lots of ideas,’ Xích Si said. ‘The problem is determining which ones are worth following up on.’
Rice Fish laughed. It was a crystalline and carefree sound – twisting in Xích Si’s chest in some odd and unexpected way. She had no right to be so… so genuinely pleased. So genuinely proud.
Partners. They were partners, and Rice Fish was Xích Si’s protector, and that was all there was to it. That was all there would ever be.
4
Wanderings
Two days before they arrived at the Citadel, Xích Si called Rice Fish.
‘Yes?’ the ship asked.
She didn’t materialise in the middle of Xích Si’s cabin – instead, her voice echoed around the room, as if she were standing right beside Xích Si. The effect was uncanny.
‘Is anyone out at this time of night?’
An uncertain pause.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to go out,’ Xích Si said. ‘On the ship. On… you.’ She’d stared at logs until her eyes ached – tried to find threads of logic within the Red Scholar’s death that stubbornly refused to materialise. She was frazzled and exhausted, and feeling cooped up in a small, vaguely friendly space in the midst of an ocean of uncertain goodwill, if not outright hostility. ‘Find out what you’re like. What it’s like.’
But the thought of walking into a den of pirates weighing her up just paralysed her.
A silence.
‘I see,’ Rice Fish said. She didn’t quite sound like she did, but it didn’t really matter. And then, slowly, ‘At this time of night, most people on this floor are asleep. And I can provide you with filters.’
‘Will they help?’
‘They will make you less conspicuous. People never turn off the physical layer – and there are safeguards so no one can sneak up on anyone unseen – so they’ll still see and hear you. Would you like to do this?’
They could still see her. Hear her. Xích Si fought the brief rising wave of panic. But she was here now, among pirates. She was married to a pirate. It was her future – and she couldn’t spend all of it shut in a small room because of fear. She needed to do what made the most sense.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you have a map?’
Brief, amused laughter filled the space around Xích Si.
‘Of course.’ A further silence, as if Rice Fish were chewing on something. Then: ‘Remember, you are my wife. They will not touch a hair on your head, or there will be consequences.’
And before Xích Si could answer, the sense of Rice Fish’s presence vanished like a popped bubble, but her words remained.
There will be consequences.
She was safe. As safe as she could be, and she couldn’t hide forever.
Xích Si took a deep breath, and headed out of the cabin.
It was silent and deserted outside: a corridor decorated with scrolling calligraphy. She could hear snatches of sound, very distantly – laughter and songs, and wailing from the last of the funeral banquets. There were no pirates that she could see, yet. And even if they were, she was Rice Fish’s wife. They wouldn’t touch her.
The map – which she glanced at in overlay – placed her near the centre of the ship, close to the heartroom, the place where Rice Fish’s organic core was plugged in. A mindship’s highest vulnerability. Heading that way felt… too charged, too intimate. Too much outside of the bounds of their marriage.
The other way, then.
There were five floors on the ship, the map said. Four hundred people on board the ship. Xích Si, wandering the floors, found them all merged into a bewildering series of corridors, some sloping upwards, some downwards – some folding back on themselves until she was no longer sure which way was up or down. The walls were decorated with calligraphy, with alcoves containing jade ornaments, celadon cups, asteroid fragments, star maps – a dizzying mix of physical and overlay that changed as Xích Si walked, as it had changed on her wedding night, the ship adapting herself to be more comforting.
At the next octagonal intersection, there was a pirate.
Xích Si tensed, readying herself to flee; but the pirate stared back at her, briefly noting her and nodding at her. They were an elderly person with grey hair in a stern topknot – not a stray hair out of place. Their dark, wrinkled skin was tanned with starlight. They could have been an elder, except for the gun in their belt, and the suggestive way the large sleeves of their unadorned silk robe bulged: the promise of further weapons.
Xích Si stared at them, but the pirate had already looked away, their distant gaze absorbed in an overlay: they were reading or watching a vid, and Xích Si was just another person on board the ship.
No one will touch you.
Xích Si had expected hostility or a desire to hurt her, but not this matter-of-fact indifference. Her stomach still felt empty, her heart hammering too strongly against her chest.
Focus. Focus.
Nothing was going to happen to her. She knew nothing was going to happen to her, except that her stomach felt empty and her heart was hammering too strongly against her chest.
More intersections. Two women, smiling, staring into each other’s eyes – they barely noticed Xích Si as she crept by, bending towards each other for a quick kiss, and then running forward, towards a cabin with an open door, giggling and already trying to take each other’s clothes off. More people, yawning and on their way to their beds, barely paying any attention to Xích Si or to the frantic beating of her heart. How many people were on board the ship?
A handful of pirates stood by a glittering overlay fountain, laughing and nudging each other, lifting wine cups. They were a ship – their avatar a humanoid figure with a small model of the ship held in a second and third set of hands – and three younger women, two of whom were very obviously drunk, and the last one keeping a wary eye. Xích Si walked past them, heart in her throat – as she neared the fountain, she must have made a noise, because the watch-woman looked up, sharply, finally noticing Xích Si.
‘You’re new,’ she said.
The ship with the six arms laughed, waving an overlay cup in Xích Si’s direction.
‘Come and join us!’
Join us.
The watch-woman was still staring at Xích Si, face hard – she could have been any of the people who’d grabbed Xích Si and dragged her off the ship – weather-beaten and lean, her gun on her knees and her eyes glinting in the darkness.
Join us.
Xích Si panicked.
‘I’m…’ she said. ‘Good. I’m good.’
But when the watch-woman spoke, her voice was soft, and kind.
‘Oh, I see. Very new.’ Her face remained hard, but there was concern in her eyes. She gestured towards the fountain, as one of the drunk woman produced a cup out of nowhere. ‘Have a drink.’
Xích Si’s heart rate spiked. She wasn’t drinking with pirates.
She… She wasn’t going to make small talk with people who killed for a living. She couldn’t…
She breathed out, tensing herself to run – and felt a touch on her shoulder. It was the mindship, staring at her, the dark, deepset eyes the only visible feature on their humanoid body.
‘It’s all right,’ they said. ‘You can say no if you don’t want to come with us. We can do this later. Or not at all.’
The touch on her shoulder vanished. The ship took a step back and waited, head cocked.
Xích Si stared at them, suddenly unsure of what she could say. Or should say.
‘I’d rather be alone,’ she said, finally. They were still looking at her. ‘But thank you for the invitation.’
A shrug, from the watch-woman. ‘We’ve all been there.’ She held out the full cup to Xích Si. ‘Do you want this one anyway? To enjoy the night.’
Xích Si walked away slowly, holding the cup, with an odd, uncomfortable feeling in her chest. She went back to where she’d come from – to the more deserted areas of the ship, closer and closer to the heartroom. The corridors still had people in them, but it was clear there’d been some kind of change of shift: fewer faces around, and many doors closed with light filtering through them, and absolutely no sound coming from inside, thanks to the privacy filters.
She stopped, at last, in an empty area some way from her cabin – a corridor with scrolling texts, where she sat down.
‘Ship?’ she said. ‘Elder aunt?’
‘Child.’ Rice Fish’s avatar coalesced in front of her: translucent at first and then gaining more and more solidity from the floor up, the sweep of her hair made up of stars and scrolling texts. ‘What do you want?’ She cocked her head. ‘You’re less scared than you were earlier.’
‘How…?’ But, of course, she could read Xích Si’s body language. ‘You were watching me.’
‘I’m always watching you,’ Rice Fish said. ‘I did say there would be consequences if someone touched you. And the marriage contract guarantees your physical safety.’
Xích Si exhaled. It felt… so clinical and distanced, and so intensely frustrating in a way that made her want to scream. It wasn’t what she’d hoped for – but she couldn’t name or pinpoint what she would actually hope for.
‘You can change the decorations for a single person, can’t you? You were doing it for the wedding.’
‘What you see in overlay can vary, yes.’
A silence.
‘Can you…? Can you show me the stars outside?’
A smile, swift and quickly extinguished, that seemed to light the entire avatar from within.
‘Of course.’
The overlay in front of Xích Si shifted, became a large window across the length of the wall. The text faded into darkness – and in that darkness, gradually, shone stars. Not just pinpoints of lights, but moving, pulsing swathes intertwined with a faint, distant sound. And the larger, darker mass of asteroids around them – the Jade Streams, the larger of the Twin Streams – not just masses of rocks, but hard, edged things that added their own harmonies to that intangible song. ‘Is that how you see them?’
‘Yes,’ Rice Fish said.
‘That’s… That’s beautiful.’ The words were out of Xích Si’s mouth before she could think.
She felt the tenseness, then. Rice Fish had moved closer to her, the weight of her presence palpable. Xích Si reached out, and touched the ship on the shoulder. Unexpected coolness spread to her fingers, as well as a distant pulse that felt deeper – and she suddenly realised it was the pulse beneath her feet.
