1. Tangler Chase

Viet Nhi had resigned herself, early on, to not liking people. And especially not people from the navigator clans. Which was more than a little unfortunate, as she was not just part of the navigator clans, but a Rooster disciple so junior that everyone could order her about into whatever fraught or difficult work needed to be done—and more often than not, said work included more contact with the clanspeople.

To wit, her current situation.

"There's been a … slight problem," Elder M?ng Lieu had said.

They were sitting in the reception hall of the Rooster fortress. In the background was the Central Needle and its steady flow of spaceships, rising—flashing golden for a moment as their navigators summoned their Shadows to cocoon them—and then vanishing into the Hollows, the space beyond the stars, beyond the void where travel went faster than light. Nhi liked being near the Needle: the dance of merchants boarding and ships lifting off was mesmerising and a comfort, a reassurance that the world was going on as it had always done.

She focused on the teacup in her hand, feeling its warmth against her skin. "What problem?" she asked.

"An incident with a ship."

"One of ours?"

Elder Lieu tightened her lips. "A Rat ship," she said.

Nhi tolerated Elder Lieu: she didn't equivocate, got straight to the point. And the only secret she had that Nhi could find was before she'd retired from active challenges in the void and stars circles—the society of navigators, always fighting each other for status—she'd loved an Ox navigator and passed on some minor information to him. Insofar as dark inner secrets went, it was tolerable.

She hadn't told that to Elder Lieu, of course. Most people didn't appreciate being told all of the truth, and Nhi couldn't always understand where the tipping point was between being honest and scaring off people. There were rules, but rules sometimes failed, because people were too messy. "We're not currently allied with the Rat clan," Nhi said, finally. She gripped her cup, finding solace in its smooth surface.

"No," Elder Lieu said. "But the imperials intervened." She raised a hand. "I know you hate politics, but the empire has requested we investigate."

All that Nhi understood of the empire was that it owned everything and that the merchants whose goods were transiting through the four major navigator clans owed allegiance to it. That was a good enough reason to say yes to whatever they suggested. "And you want me to investigate?" It made sense, because she was good at finding out things.

"No," Elder Lieu said. "I want you to deal with a tangler."

That stopped her. "A tangler? There's a tangler loose?"

Tanglers were large and tendriled creatures whose natural habitat was the Hollows—the space navigators took ships to, the space that enabled fast space travel. In their natural state, tanglers floated in the Hollows, grabbing other Hollows creatures and slowly digesting them. Unfortunately, this also included people travelling on ships, as tanglers fed on cognition: anyone human touched by their tendrils would gradually lose control over their own body, until death finally came as a mercy. And whenever a navigation gate was opened, there was a risk tanglers would go back to normal space, where they would prey on people.

A skillful navigator would use their Shadow to fend off tanglers, both during the navigation in the Hollows and during the opening and closing of navigation gates.

Clearly, something had gone wrong.

"Not just loose. Lost." Elder Lieu's face was grim. "It left the vicinity of the Rat Needle where the ship crashed, and it went … somewhere. We lost track of it."

"Somewhere." Nhi gripped her cup. A tangler loose outside the Hollows, where no one but the navigator clans could see them—tendrils trailing through streets and habitats, snaring people and draining them slowly of everything that made them sentient. She wasn't particularly scared of tanglers, but the idea offended her: tanglers belonged in the Hollows, not in the matter world.

"Who was the navigator?"

"A Rat called Phan V?n D?ng An."

"Ninth Judge," Nhi said. She couldn't place him, which meant she probably hadn't spent any extended period of time with him.

"I see your knowledge of clan business is still unparalleled," Elder Lieu said. It wasn't sarcasm, merely a statement of fact. She understood how Nhi worked.

"Well," Nhi said, still clutching her cup, "this Ninth Judge wasn't very good at what he was doing. His Shadow should have protected the ship." That was, after all, what Shadows were for.

"It didn't."

"And what about the protections at the Needle?"

"These failed, too."

"Those are serious failures." All navigators cultivated their own Shadow as part of their training: it was a physical extension of their khí, the life-energy that originated in the body's vitality center, low in the belly, and circulated along the body's network of meridians. Unfolded and projected outwards, their Shadow enabled them to open gates to the Hollows, and to keep their ships whole during the transit—both against the pressures of the Hollows themselves, and against tanglers. It also enabled them to fight other navigators, whether in the Hollows or outside them, the usual way hierarchy was established among the clans. Every clan—and every teacher in every clan—had a different style of Shadow. Ninth Judge's Shadow should have turned the tangler aside, and if that failed, the Needles in the various clan-controlled spaceports were heavily protected, to make sure that tanglers emerging from the Hollows into the matter world would be contained, and sent back to the Hollows. Nhi could see why the empire was unhappy. "You said the tangler went somewhere. Into imperial space?" Nhi asked.

A shrug, from Elder Lieu. "I don't know," she said. "But yes, that's the suspicion."

Clans controlled their own fortress and their central Needles, and the lesser Needles and associated spaceports in their own networks. The empire controlled the rest. "I'm not the best person for this," she said.

Low laughter, from Elder Lieu. "And coming from you, it's not false humility, is it. Just a statement of fact."

Nhi was flagging. This conversation was too unpredictable, and her small reserves of energy were starting to get depleted. She summoned her Shadow, felt it rise, trembling, from her vitality center, and spread through her meridians, a warm, golden flow of power—like being under heavy rocks, a grip that held and comforted her. Her full Shadow would be golden wings and thick veils of energy: Nhi's style, the Heavenly Weave, was ponderous and powerful, unlike Elder Lieu's own, more aggressive Blood-Extinguishing Palm. "I advise you to send someone else," Nhi said.

A grimace from Elder Lieu, which Nhi knew was bad news. It meant whatever she asked for wasn't convenient. "I don't have someone else. And—" She paused, and again that grimace on her face. Nhi gripped her Shadow more tightly. "The empire has asked for a delegation of major clans. They are annoyed with us. They want the tangler caught before more deaths can occur."

Nhi could understand that—she'd be annoyed, too, if something so large had gone wrong. But, still … "Elder—"

"You'll be our delegate," Elder Lieu said, firmly. "Meanwhile, we'll be investigating the matter of the crash with the other elders from the major clans."

"I'd rather not do this," Nhi said, knowing already that it was pointless.

"I'm afraid we don't always do the things we like," Elder Lieu said, slowly, smoothly.

Insofar as Nhi was concerned, she never got to do the things she liked. Too much noise, too many people—and she'd much rather stay in the Rooster fortress cultivating, but the way things were structured there made it extremely hard. She was meant to go out and make a name for herself—to grow old without being killed by some other clan's navigator, whether major or minor. To prove herself. And knowing far too much about people didn't help with that—what the clans respected was defeating other navigators and transporting large ships safely. But to do the latter, one had to first do the former.

Elder Lieu said, "I believe the other clans sent people you'll be familiar with. That means you should be able to work together."

Nhi tried to smile. It was probably coming off as insincere, but Elder Lieu respected the attempt rather than the content.

"I'll go," she said.

"Good," Elder Lieu said. "The imperial envoy, Ly Chau, is arriving at the Rooster Needle. You can go and wait for her with the others."

The others. The others were already here. Nhi fought a brief moment of panic: things were happening too fast, too uncontrollably. She released her Shadow—feeling the loss of security keenly—and tried to look forward to the mission. An utter failure. This was dangerous, and had far too much uncertainty.

And, worse, it had people. Not just any people: Nhi was going to have to put up with her peers.

All too soon, Nhi found herself in a lineup of far too many people, waiting for a ship to emerge from the Hollows.

She'd usually have dressed in flamboyant finery like armour, but Elder Lieu had ushered Nhi straight from her quarters onto the landing platform. It was the largest one at the Needle, the one nearest to the ground floor. Like all platforms, it was surrounded on all sides by various buildings where clan members would store supplies as well as renew the protections around the landing area itself. Its portico, nearest to the Needle, was now filled with most of the dignitaries of the Rooster clan: too many people, too much noise, and the expectation that Nhi would have to make small talk—which she hated at the best of times and certainly couldn't keep up with the stress eating at her innards.

Elder Lieu led Nhi to a place near the front, where the flamboyant colors of the Roosters gave way to the more subdued ones of other clans. Nhi clung to her unfolded Shadow, trying to steer through the din of sounds and the closeness of other people as much as she could.

Ahead of the clan's Shadow protections—a pressure Nhi could feel getting stronger and stronger, turning the air to tar—two people were waiting, wearing the robes of juniors.

"These are the delegates from the other clans. Everyone bar the Rat envoy, who's already with the imperial envoy," Elder Lieu said. "Children, this is Nhi."

Two pairs of eyes turned to stare at Nhi—who felt herself withering under the weight of the combined attention.

"Ah, the Rooster. I'm Hac Cúc." Hac Cúc looked to be in her midtwenties—old, for a junior. She had a sharp, edged face and an impeccable topknot. She moved brashly and confidently; she appeared present in every movement, every toss of her head and shrug of her shoulders. Nhi had a vague memory of her from clan gatherings fifteen or so years ago—as a standoffish child whose respect for rules was likely to get peers into trouble. There was nothing of that here now: she was magnetic and at the same time almost too much, like a sun pulling you into its orbit before you'd realized what would happen.

"Honoured to meet you," she said.

A sharp look from Hac Cúc. "Mmm. Pleased to be here?" The Snakes kept order among themselves, and among the clans. Their pragmatic and brutal assassinations of rules-breakers were well-known. Hac Cúc wore the clothes of an enforcer, and moved like one. Probably not to be crossed if one was sensible, and if one didn't wish to wake up poisoned, or with a gun wound to the chest, or any of the myriad ways the Snakes had of dispatching their victims.

Not that Nhi was sensible when it came to her own duties, or keeping her own given word. She plastered her brightest and most pointed smile on her face. "I go where my clan needs me."

Hac Cúc smiled, and said nothing more.

"Hello, em." The Ox envoy was Lành, an older woman in her thirties, wearing gloves to hide the minute scars on her hands. Nhi knew her; they'd worked together before. Lành had been the only survivor of a crash involving tanglers, an unheard-of occurrence that had brought her fame as a child, a fame that hadn't carried into adulthood. Lành was weird, bitter, abrasive, but Nhi found her restful; she was frank, and her actions were easy to predict. "Good to see you here."

Nhi laughed, sharply. "Let's see what's good, eh."

Lành smiled, a rare enough expression from her. Next to her, Hac Cúc looked as if she'd swallowed something sour. "Not this company," she said, sharply.

It couldn't be Nhi who was the issue, so it had to be Lành. Great. It wasn't just going to be a mission where Nhi had to deal with people, but a mission where she was going to have to prevent people from killing each other.

"You know her?" Nhi asked Lành, in a whisper.

"Shh," Elder Lieu said. "Incoming ship."

The air tightened. Nhi unfolded her own Shadow—and felt the pressure of other Shadows in the courtyard, every navigator unfolding theirs as a precaution against tanglers. But the bulk of the pressure wasn't other Shadows: it felt as though everything was tearing itself apart—as if only an act of Heaven kept them all from being torn into fragments. Nhi's Shadow fluttered, caught in the grip of the gate. Even behind layers and layers of clan protection, the pull of that gate—the pull of the Hollows—was almost too much.

A hole appeared in the center of the courtyard, filled with shimmering iridescence halfway between pearl and oil, which then became pinpoints of lights, like distant stars, except those lights kept shifting and distorting. Inside were the Hollows: the darkness where they navigated, where the tanglers were born and lived and died. Outside, on the edges, the air was roiling and roiling like a storm, Shadow bursting into the center, cleaved into myriad fragments.

Something pushed through, and the air burst like a series of bubbles. Nhi's ears ached, and her arms shook with the pressure of keeping herself upright. Everyone in the courtyard looked various degrees of uncomfortable; gates always had that effect. If not for the necessity of welcoming the imperial envoy, no one would have been out there.

The imperial ship was small—the size of the room where Elder Lieu had welcomed Nhi, and like the room it was bulky, imposing, all straight angles and weaponry ports, and generally looked like something from two or three generations back of ships. The clans had moved on to sleeker things, but the empire much preferred to go for reliable and intimidating. It glistened as it came out of the Hollows—some of that iridescence clinging to it and cascading into the courtyard like a flare of ashes from an explosion. Then the gate shut, and the ship landed in the middle of the courtyard.

Nhi breathed out at the same time as everyone else. The uncanny pressure on her Shadow was gone, but she didn't dare to let go. It was Elder Lieu who gestured her forward at the same time as the ship extended a steel gangplank towards the ground, and two people appeared framed in its opening. "Kneel," Elder Lieu said. "As we honour the empire."

Nhi knelt, head bowed. So did the other two juniors, and Elder Lieu. The rest of the clan pointedly did not. A barbed, edged honouring.

Footsteps, on the gangplank. Slow and steady. A shape getting closer and closer. With her head bowed, all Nhi could see was the hem of a richly embroidered tunic—brown and red, the colors of the Dog clan—fluttering in the breeze from the recently closed navigation gate.

"So," a voice said. "These are my clan delegates." Ly Chau, the imperial envoy.

"Your Honour," Elder Lieu said.

Ly Chau's voice, sarcastic and annoyed, cut her off. "Such an honour. Get up," she said, sharply, to the juniors.

They scrambled up, not daring to look up. When they finally did, they saw a woman of slim build, with a young face and a topknot kept together by glittering silver pins. She was tapping a steel fan against her gloved left hand and scowling, looking as if she'd just found something unpleasant under her shoes.

Two attendants scurried by, holding out a tray with teacups. Ly Chau took one and drained it in one gulp, setting it back on the table with barely a second look. She didn't move to sit or serve anyone else.

"Snake," Ly Chau said. She stared at Hac Cúc, who was showing her the proper respect by averting her gaze. "You look underfed. Can you even carry your own weight around?"

Hac Cúc's face did not move, but her whole body tensed.

"Ox," Ly Chau said to Lành. "Or is it tangler?"

Lành colored. Everyone in the clans knew that she'd been the sole survivor of a tangler attack, that her Shadow was sometimes a little too odd and too uncanny.

"Leave her alone," Nhi said, sharply. She knew it wasn't the smartest thing to speak up, but Ly Chau's casual humiliation was too much to bear.

"Oh, a Rooster with a sense of justice? That'd be a first," Ly Chau said. "You people usually care more about your finery and your fights."

Nhi's hands bunched into fists. "I thought we were here to chase a tangler," she said.

"A tangler you lot let escape?" Ly Chau smiled. She gestured; behind her was a second person wearing the tunic of the Rat clan, a young woman who was wrapped in her own Shadow and doing her best to fade into the background. Nhi didn't blame her, if she'd had to put up with Ly Chau for long. "This is Bao Duy, from the Rats. She's been some help on this." The way she said "some" clearly said Bao Duy had come up short of all her low expectations.

Bao Duy gave Hac Cúc and Nhi a curt nod. She looked haggard and stressed. Nhi struggled to remember what she knew about her. The name was vaguely familiar, but Nhi would look it up when she wasn't already struggling to keep herself together. She'd also need to look up Hac Cúc, about whom she only had vague memories. She needed information. She needed secrets. Something she could hold to keep things under control.

Elder Lieu said, "I trust these are acceptable?"

Ly Chau looked thoughtful. For a moment Nhi fantasized she was going to say no, that she'd get to go back to her rooms and her tranquility. "The best the clans can send," Ly Chau drawled.

Elder Lieu's face was neutral. "Of course. Did you doubt it?"

"Never for a moment," Ly Chau said. Her smile was predatory. "You know exactly in what regard I hold you."

Ouch. Elder Lieu didn't flinch, but Nhi did.

"Come," Ly Chau said, to the juniors. She held out her fan to Hac Cúc, as if she were a low-level servant. "You can hold that. Snake."

Nhi didn't dare to look at Hac Cúc's face: an elite assassin ordered about with utter contempt. At last, Hac Cúc unfolded, grabbing the fan with a little too much speed and roughness. "It's my honour," she said, sourly.

"Come on," Ly Chau said. "The hour grows late, and we're not going to tarry here."

It was a slap in the face: a quick turnaround, with just that single teacup drunk, and nothing shared with the Roosters. Yes, there was a tangler loose, but there were also rules of etiquette. Ly Chau was effectively saying the entire Rooster clan wasn't worth her attention.

Lành straightened up and gave Ly Chau a resigned look, and then bowed, very deeply and respectfully, before following Hac Cúc onto the ship. Ah. Making the best of a bad situation.

That had never been Nhi's style.

"Your Excellency," Nhi said.

A raised eyebrow, from Ly Chau. The honorific was overboard: Nhi had used it because she guessed Ly Chau wanted to be respected beyond what she deserved. By Ly Chau's taut face, Nhi had guessed wrong.

"Are we not going to stay—" Nhi stopped then, because Elder Lieu had grabbed her by the wrist, a shock. Nhi didn't like to be touched; she froze, words drying up.

"We'll look forward to hearing from you," Elder Lieu said, smoothly and carefully. She gave Nhi's wrist a gentle push, ushering her towards the gangplank. "As you keep us all safe."

Nhi took a deep breath and followed Lành into the shadowed interior. Ly Chau and Bao Duy came in, and Ly Chau gestured for all of them to stand together. She looked at them, thoughtfully, as the gangplank lifted and the door closed—and her Shadow grew, enfolding the ship, ready to open a navigation gate again.

"What am I going to do with you," she said. It wasn't even sharp or malicious. Just matter-of-factly disappointed. "Well, I guess I'll figure something out." And she turned away from them to go into the control room.

Hac Cúc set the fan on one of the benches near the opening. "I already hate all of this," she said. She sounded annoyed. "Please tell me it gets better."

Bao Duy, the Rat, who'd been silent till then, said with a very heartfelt sigh, "She's always like this. Or worse."

"Great," Hac Cúc muttered. She looked as though she wanted to stab someone.

Lành said, "We're just going to have to put up with her until she's gone."

"Fawn over Ly Chau. How exactly like you," Hac Cúc said, and matters might have turned sour if Nhi hadn't intervened.

"Let's go see our bunks on this ship," she said, bright and forced. "Bao Duy, where do you sleep?"

Bao Duy took the lead, obviously relieved at having to provide expert facts—as opposed to navigating clan politics, or getting on in any way, shape, or form with other juniors from other clans.

And, just like that, they were on their own—not just on a tangler hunt, but with the prospect of days and months on board a ship with someone who despised them all.

It was going to be a miracle if it went well. If any of it went well.

Hac Cúc usually liked people, for short periods of time—usually before she poisoned or stabbed them as part of her job for the Snake clan.

At the moment, she was charming a waiter in a small wayhouse. The wayhouse was in the center of the Silver Stream, a string of asteroids that trailed around the Ice Jade Planet that had once made up its now fractured moon. On one of the largest Fragments, a city of buildings clinging to rock faces had sprung into existence: a chaotic place, where no two building clusters had the same orientation.

The Silver Stream was on the edge of imperial-controlled space. Usually, as a Snake clan member, Hac Cúc would be careful who she charmed—even more so if she had to harm or kill them. But she and the other juniors were with the imperial envoy, weren't they? Blessed by her presence, small saplings sheltering beneath the canopy of her grace. Which made it acceptable to … let loose. Be less careful, more aggressive.

Chasing a lost tangler sounded like a lot of time wasting. It was a thankless group effort for which all the credit would go to Ly Chau, the Dog envoy. "So there have been no odd sightings?" she asked. She itched to get back to The Steel Clam, her own ship, her own passengers. She was wasting opportunities down there.

The waiter—young, muscular—set down the tea on the table, in a place well-connected to the energy-founts, which drew power from the Fragment's mantle. Hac Cúc watched as the energy flowed from the fount to the kettle, over the network of shining blue across the metal floor—the paths set by the masters of wind and water. It would keep the water at the right temperature for several brews. A pity she wasn't planning to be around for most of them.

"What do you mean by odd sightings?" the waiter asked.

"People going missing," Hac Cúc asked. "Or people coming back odd." The body of a tangler was large and visible, but the tendrils were long: they could spread for measures, easily three to five times as long as a ship. The tendrils couldn't be seen. Any light that hit them was refracted in a part of the spectrum beyond what most people's eyes could see. They would get hurt long before they saw anything. Hac Cúc deliberately didn't mention anything further; no need to alert the general population.

The waiter gestured to the narrow opening of the wayhouse, through which Hac Cúc could see a ballet of small shuttles going from cluster to cluster—to hydroponics farms, founts-network maintenance, comms, teahouses, restaurants … "It's a spread-out place. Hard to know if people are going missing." But he looked away from her, and Hac Cúc could tell he was thinking.

"Tell me," she said.

"People go to the Old Rise." He seemed to realize, suddenly, that he'd said something he shouldn't, and clammed up.

"The Old Rise." Hac Cúc chewed on it for a while. In the areas around Needles, people trafficked in all sorts of things, and especially those Needles on the border between clan-controlled space and imperial-controlled space. She smiled. "I'm not empire." She gestured, her clothes shifting to display the insignia of the Snake clan.

She hadn't expected it to put him at ease. Snakes had a reputation in the void and stars circles, and outside of it, too. Pragmatic, stealthy, ruthless. Also just, but most people saw the bloodthirstiness of the retribution rather than the upholding of the rules.

The waiter swallowed, shaking.

"I'm not here for you," Hac Cúc said, lightly. "Or for whatever borderline-legal commerce you have. I don't follow the rules of the empire or care much for them."

He lowered his gaze, as if he was going to throw himself to the floor in the traditional gesture of respect. Hac Cúc summoned her Shadow—moving fast and unseen, putting a hand under his chin and holding him upright. "And not here for you to abase yourself, either," she said, mildly. She could feel his heartbeat pulsing through the golden glow of her Shadow, magnified ten thousand times. "What's happening at the Old Rise?"

He struggled in her grasp, but not much. Hac Cúc held him for a few more moments, pressing lightly on his windpipe—just enough to remind him she could crush it. And she would, too: there were too many lives at stake if they didn't find the tangler. That she hated the mission with a passion didn't mean she wasn't going to do it well.

"Please—" he said.

Hac Cúc set him down. Not one of the customers in the wayhouse had moved. They were looking towards the opening, wondering when it would be safe to leave. "So?"

"I'm—" The waiter struggled to get his voice under control. "I'm not sure. But you asked about people disappearing, and Old Madam H?u and her children went there and didn't come back."

"How long ago?"

"It was three days."

Hmm. Was it worth checking? Time would tell. "I see," Hac Cúc said. "Thank you." She folded her Shadow. Then she sat down again, poured the hot water over the leaves in the teapot, and brewed them, mentally counting time—heedless of the way people were scurrying away from the shop. He wouldn't call the militia—and even if he did, nothing was going to happen.

She inhaled the aroma of the tea: it was Fish Hook, smelling of brine on a faraway planet.

Perfect.

A ping, from her personal comms device. It was Ly Chau. "Little Miss Snake," she said, icily. "I didn't give you permission to traipse around the Fragments whenever you felt like it. Come back to the inn now."

Hac Cúc considered not answering, but her s? ph? had drilled manners into her—specifically, that there was no use antagonizing a powerful opponent before it was needful. But Ancestors in Heaven, how she hated the woman. "As you wish, Your Excellency," she said. She used one of the pronouns for an official far above her station—a borderline insult, as Ly Chau would know exactly.

Ly Chau didn't answer.

Ly Chau was also conspicuously absent from the common room of their inn by the time Hac Cúc made her way back to it; she'd taken the long way around, waiting for common shuttles rather than hiring a private one. Her initial satisfaction at getting the information from the waiter had faded: it was too little and too inconclusive, and she'd kept hearing her s? ph?'s voice in her head, telling her that violence was to be used with intent and purpose. If he'd been there, he'd have gotten more, even if he'd had to threaten all the customers in the wayhouse. He wouldn't be left with a vague place name, and the name of a missing person far too common to locate.

"Look who's there," Lành said. "The prodigal."

Lành was the Ox junior: mousy and trembling and always looking like she wanted to disappear into the walls or the floor. Hac Cúc knew her; they'd hated each other for ten years now. "The tangler friend," Hac Cúc said, sitting down and drawing a bowl of noodles to her from the heating plate in the center of the table. She couldn't see Viet Nhi, the Rooster junior, anywhere; she was probably reading a book in the room they all shared.

At this hour of the night, the room was busy, but not overly so. It was a large, square space, its energy coming from the center of the room. Blue lines snaked from three energy-founts to the heating plates in the center of each table, and the tables themselves were carved steel worked to mimic wood, a different quote from a revered scholar carved into each table. The customers were mostly merchants and business travelers, and everyone ate while paying studious non-attention to the juniors, who obviously—from their accent to the utilitarian cut of their clothes—were clan.

No one liked to interfere in clan business, and they would even less like to interfere with Ly Chau—who wore the brown and red of the Dog clan proudly and looked as though any moment she was going to arrest everyone for violation of the law.

"Can we just try to get on with each other?" Bao Duy, the Rat junior, asked. She was thin and had large, perceptive eyes; she moved too much and too fast, as if her body couldn't quite keep up with the speed of her thoughts. Hac Cúc didn't know her and hadn't been terribly impressed. If nothing else, it was her clan's fault that they were all here.

"If she stops referring to me as tangler friend," Lành said. "Which I'm not."

Hac Cúc snorted. "You started this one."

"I'm not the one who's failing to follow orders," Lành said, viciously. "How are you ever going to live up to your s? ph?'s reputation if you can't follow simple instructions?" Her Shadow came into focus around her, pulsing with unfamiliar and dark reflections that looked far too much like tangler trails in the Hollows.

Hac Cúc saw red. "Take it back," she snapped. She held both chopsticks, poised to throw them at Lành—she didn't summon her own Shadow, but it took an effort.

Lành raised an eyebrow. "Or what? Are you going to take me down? That'll make a pretty mess for Ly Chau to sort out."

"No one is going to take anyone down," Bao Duy snapped, irritably. "I can't believe I'm having to be the adult here. Stop it. Now."

Kinder, little fish. You have to be kinder. You don't know what Lành has been through, Hac Cúc's s? ph? had said, over and over.

And she did know. She did know that a tangler attack had wiped out Lành's family and a good part of the Ox clan when she was a child. She knew that, if her s? ph? hadn't been there, Lành would be dead. She did know, and she was trying.

And it wasn't even the Shadow—though the appearance, the slimy feel of it, too reminiscent of that taut feeling before a tangler attack in the Hollows, set Hac Cúc on edge. It was the fact that Lành always deferred to the strongest. She had no morals, no principles.

Kinder. Be kinder.

Lành was right, wasn't she? She'd never be worthy of her s? ph?. Never be respected or loved, because she'd failed.

A hand, on her shoulder. Hac Cúc turned, whiplash fast, the chopsticks leaving her hands—and the person behind her didn't move, but the chopsticks bounced against Shadow, a thick veil that deflected them.

They hit the floor, the sound of their fall ringing in the sudden silence.

Hac Cúc stared at the person: it was Nhi, the Rooster junior who'd been mostly avoiding the company, a broad, sarcastic smile on her face. "Chopsticks make terribly inefficient weapons," she said.

She was tall, gangly, and seemingly awkward, but there had been nothing awkward about the way she'd deflected the chopsticks. She had an impeccable topknot, unlike Hac Cúc's own. Her eyes were small, her nose and thin lips sharp in a moon-shaped, round face. Said lips were now thinner, closed into something very much like a disparaging smile.

Hac Cúc clenched her fists; the tone had been a mere statement of fact, but the facts hurt.

Lành stared at Nhi. "Don't interfere."

"Why not?" Nhi asked.

"This is between us."

Nhi huffed. Her Shadow was visible now: slow and ponderous. Hac Cúc couldn't remember which style of navigation she practiced, but it looked to be defensive rather than offensive. "I'm sure that'll be a terrific thing to tell Ly Chau when she comes back and finds out two of us have killed each other."

"I wouldn't kill her!"

"Oh. So good to know," Nhi said. Her hand was still on Hac Cúc's shoulder: a grip of iron. "What about you?"

Be kinder.

She wasn't kind. She was prickly and aggressive, an enforcer, but never the respected navigator her s? ph? was. A failure. "I can be convinced to let it go," she said, gritting her teeth.

"Good." Nhi stared at Lành—who held her Shadow a while longer—long enough for Hac Cúc to force her breathing under control.

"Fine," Lành said, and dropped it. "She makes an effort, I make an effort."

"How did you even show up?" Hac Cúc asked.

"I was trying to read in the corner," Nhi said. "A doomed effort, I now see." She smiled at Lành. It was all sharp teeth, and suddenly Hac Cúc saw why Nhi had been avoiding them. It was because she didn't care enough about any of them. Roosters were flamboyant and aggressive, and Nhi had seemed so out of character for one—but it was just because she'd thought them all beneath her notice.

That hurt.

"Well," Hac Cúc said, brightly, with a cheerfulness she had to fake, "we're done now. You can go back to your reading."

Nhi's hand lingered an instant longer on her shoulder; she was looking at Hac Cúc as if assessing her. "Pham Th? Hac Cúc," she said, thoughtfully. "You practice Divine Harmony. They say you're the fastest navigator of your generation. Student of the Pure Heart Master Quang L?c. Blade of the Redwood Star."

Hac Cúc lifted Nhi's hand from her shoulder, glaring at her. "Titles are earned," she said, icily. "Which isn't where I am yet."

Nhi stared back. Most people would have been afraid, but she wasn't, not one bit. But not because of any anger or desire to hurt, the way Lành had been; she was merely taking in facts and chewing on them. "Good to know," she said. "I'm sure there will be opportunities on this trip." She raised her other hand. "Here. Your chopsticks."

Hac Cúc sat down, unsure what to think about what had just happened. She settled for glaring at her noodle soup, always a surefire way to handle problems—and jabbed her chopsticks into the bowl the way she would have driven a knife into someone's chest. "Opportunities," she said, tasting the oddness of her own words. "Opportunities."

When Ly Chau still didn't appear the following morning at breakfast, there was a moment of uncertainty.

Hac Cúc caught Nhi's eye. "Maybe we should check," she said.

It took a little charm from Hac Cúc to convince the inn's owner to give them the safety override for the lock in Ly Chau's room—and a little more arguing between Lành and Hac Cúc before they all agreed to go to the room.

Nhi threw open the door. "Your Honor?" she said. "Your Honor?"

Hac Cúc had stepped a little deeper into the room. "No need," she said, bleakly.

Nhi hadn't liked Ly Chau. She was overbearing and controlling, and she'd enjoyed bossing them around far too much. And the four juniors might have quarreled about many things—about most things, really, insofar as Lành and Hac Cúc were concerned—but they'd all agreed she was a terrible person, and they couldn't wait for the mission to be over so they could be rid of them.

It was, therefore, both terribly appropriate and terribly unfortunate when they found that Ly Chau was lying on the bed, dead.

Bao Duy was kneeling by the side of the corpse, taking the pulse, heedless of the quarrel. "Nebula Cinnabar," she said, quietly.

That much was obvious: nothing else left such traces—the revulsed lips, the blue extremities, the particular vacancy in the eyes. The issue was that Nebula Cinnabar was a clan poison; anyone outside the clan would have a hard time accessing it.

What had happened here, and why?

This was a disaster.

"You should have kept a better eye on her," Hac Cúc said.

Lành reeled as if struck. "I—?"

"You're the one who was ingratiating yourself with her." Lành had decided to deal with the problem of Ly Chau by being at her beck and call, a fact that had annoyed Hac Cúc even more. Nhi didn't really blame Lành for that; it had been hard enough on board that small ship, being sent right and left on trivial errands, and mocked at every turn.

But clearly, every disaster could be made infinitely worse. Nhi sighed, inwardly. It was probably left to her to solve this one, and she only had one way of solving quarrels: the truth, which tended to set everyone at her own throat. "You're compensating, aren't you?"

Hac Cúc drew herself to her full height, Shadow trembling around her in a variegated halo. "What are you insinuating?"

"For not being the one who ended her. You're Snake," Nhi said, curtly. "Assassination is your specialty, isn't it? Rather frustrating to find someone beat you to it." Nhi's forage into the network had confirmed Hac Cúc worked as an assassin for her clan, and that her devotion to her art had estranged her from her peers. Pride in her abilities would be a sensitive spot.

Hac Cúc turned an interesting shade of red—but then she frowned. "Are you trying to annoy me so much I give up on blaming Lành and turn my attention to you?"

Nhi, in spite of herself, laughed. She'd expected anger, not this amused self-awareness. "Please grant me your attention, o bà." She used a pronoun for people much older or much higher in the hierarchy, deliberately inappropriate.

Hac Cúc stared at her, at the corpse, and then around the room. "No sign of forced entry," she said.

"No," Nhi said. "The lock was untouched, and the owner made such difficulty giving us the overrides, it's not likely that they would have given them to anyone else."

"Unless it's one of us," Hac Cúc said.

"Why would we—" It was Lành.

Hac Cúc ignored her.

"Can't be one of us," Nhi said. The speed with which this was happening was exhilarating.

"No," Hac Cúc said, almost at the same time. "We've been with her for a few days now. We'd have done it earlier. And probably while she had us out trying to find tangler tracks."

"And if it's not us—"

"Someone who hates the empire?" Hac Cúc asked.

"Mmm. Possible. She was out yesterday," Nhi said. Ly Chau kept secrets; of course she did. The first and most obvious was how insecure she was, how unsteady in her own power. But perhaps there were deeper ones. Perhaps this was why she had been killed. Nhi felt a thrill in her bones, in her unmaterialized Shadow, at the thought of digging deeper. Of finding out what had been hidden, dragging it into the light. "Perhaps she was poisoned then."

"Nebula Cinnabar is a slow poison," Hac Cúc said, with the authoritativeness of a Snake.

"How slow?"

"Slow enough that she didn't need to be poisoned yesterday."

Nhi stared at her, and then at Lành, who'd moved closer to the exit. Bao Duy had finished examining the corpse. Some utterly alien urge came to Nhi: she didn't want this conversation with Hac Cúc—this unfamiliar experience that sent a thrill into her bones—to end.

"What did you find?" she asked Bao Duy.

Bao Duy shrugged. "Traces of Shadow. She got into a fight at some point. Maybe before she entered the room. They're too faint for me to work out more information."

A pity. Each navigator clan had its own specific way of handling Shadow, and within each clan, each lineage under one s? ph? its own style. It could have been quite useful, if it had panned out.

"Em," Nhi said to Lành and Bao Duy. "Can you find out where she went yesterday and if anyone visited her?" she asked. "Hac Cúc and I will search the room further."

Bao Duy looked at her and Hac Cúc. "The Roosters weren't left in charge of anyone, least of all other major clans."

"Oh, come on," Lành said, drawling. "Do you want to stay here with such company?"

Nhi moved closer to Hac Cúc, laid a hand on her as she made a visible effort to control herself. Then, softly, into her ear, "Please don't say anything. I'm trying to help you." It felt strangely transgressive; she was never this close to people usually. She could feel her own breath, hot and humid, in the air between them.

Bao Duy and Lành left, and the door closed behind them. It felt like an eternity.

Hac Cúc shook herself away from Nhi, and glared at her. "I don't need help," she said, acidly. "And even less charity."

Nhi was used to people getting upset with her, and when it was strangers it didn't faze her. It was a fact of her life so far that eventually she would say the things that were true but that people didn't want to hear, and that then, at best, they would leave. Or get angry. "Good to know," she said. "Why Lành?"

"Why what?"

"You keep picking quarrels with her," Nhi said. "Because you think her too accommodating?"

Hac Cúc looked surprised. "That's the question you're asking me?" She gestured towards the bed. "We should have other priorities."

Nhi said, "No, I want to know."

A soft, disbelieving snort from Hac Cúc. "You're something else." But it wasn't aggressive anymore. "Lành bows to anyone who looks decisive or strong enough."

"But not to you." Was it power? Nhi was used to that answer, and it would make sense.

"One doesn't bow to anyone," Hac Cúc said. "Only to higher principles. You don't compromise on morals because someone is stronger than you."

Ah. She was following the ideals of the Snake clan, then: justice above all else. "What does it matter to you?" Hac Cúc asked. She crossed her fingers, leaning against the wall. "I've heard of you, Viet Nhi. The outcast in the Rooster clan. The one who'd rather be left alone. A bit troublesome when your clan's way of life involves so much … contact."

Nhi was being dissected as effectively as a specimen on a steel table. It should have been unpleasant, but Hac Cúc's voice was utterly matter-of-fact, without aggression. Just trying to puzzle out something, and it was something Nhi could understand, that drive to take people apart, to make them make sense when they so seldom did. Above all, it made her feel seen, and it was an unsettling feeling that left a tight warmth in her belly. "I like secrets," she said.

Other people she'd said this to usually became hostile, or profoundly misunderstood. But Hac Cúc just stared at her, for a while. "Ah," she said, finally. Her demeanor softened. "Because they make sense, don't they? You feel you finally have an advantage because you know what moves us. How we might react in a given situation."

Nhi felt as though the breath had been stolen from her. "Yes," she said.

Hac Cúc nodded, briskly. "Let's look at that corpse, shall we?" She held out her hand. Nhi didn't dare take it, but she did move closer.

The room was the same as the one the juniors shared, except smaller: the energy-fount in a corner, everything else arranged to let the energy flow freely to the bed and the light above it. The window-screen, connected to the Silver Stream's network, displayed a rotating selection of nearby building clusters; the current one was a large one, buildings on either side of a deep chasm.

A small tea kettle was on the table. It had been moved away from the flow. Nhi stared at the tea for a while. She wasn't sure why, but she reached out and put the kettle back on the flow. A blue line snapped into being between the energy-fount and the kettle, and a faint whistle came from the water inside.

"Old leaves," Hac Cúc said, behind her. "More than a day old. She didn't drink any tea yesterday."

"Mmm," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc was staring at the body with the expert eye of someone whose business involved a lot of contact with them. Nhi didn't like fresh corpses; they were troubling, something that didn't quite follow her unspoken rules. They looked alive, but small details weren't quite right: the sallowness of the skin, the lack of breathing, the way energy flows would just dead-end into them.

She focused instead on the room. The floor had reconfigured itself with the new distribution of energy flows after she'd put the kettle back on. There was something … She called up her Shadow—felt it rise around her, ponderous and crushing. With her Heavenly Weave powers close to her, she could see what had eluded her. "Tangler," she said, softly.

Hac Cúc looked up, sharply. "If there was a tangler's tendril in this room, we'd all be stung." And it wasn't like they could miss it; even a small hit would make it harder for people to summon their Shadow. Lành was the only person who'd ever survived being in prolonged contact with tanglers, and even Nhi had to admit it had made her absolutely odd.

"It was there," Nhi said. A faint line, bisecting the room from the furthest wall to the bed. Odd. Why had it gone through the walls? She mentally traced the line. Hac Cúc was right: if this was a tendril, it'd have gone through half the inn, including the room where the juniors were sleeping together. Or squabbling together, at any given time.

Hac Cúc whistled through her teeth. "She was stung," she said. "Look at the hands."

"I'd rather not," Nhi said. "I don't like corpses." She braced herself for an argument, but instead Hac Cúc nodded.

"Abraded," Hac Cúc said, curtly. "Multiple times."

"She kept running into obstacles?"

"Yes."

Loss of depth perception, then. That was bad. "I don't understand how it all comes together; I'm not an expert in tanglers. But Bao Duy is."

"She is." A sigh, from Hac Cúc. "So is Lành."

Nhi winced at the thought. She'd asked Lành about Hac Cúc, and the Ox had simply said "Stay away from her" in a way that brooked no argument. Clearly, the dislike for each other was mutual. Nhi wasn't idealistic enough to think she could fix anything between them. Lành clearly didn't need any help, and would only get offended if Nhi interfered. "Let's not ask Lành right away, shall we?"

Soft laughter, from Hac Cúc. She'd moved away from the body, came to stand by Nhi's side. "I appreciate the thought, but as I told you, I don't need the help. Ly Chau is dead; we need to find that tangler, and her murderer. That's a lot for four juniors who don't get on, and even more so if Lành and I continue at each other's throats."

She was relaxed now, and there was something about her that just drew Nhi's gaze and held it. Not the face—sharp and angular, the eyes deeply recessed into it, the hair sweeping back—but a sense of presence, of investment in the then and now. Absolute belief in what was right and what wasn't. It was … oddly magnetic.

"We should tell the elders," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc made a face. "The nearest Needle is not that far. It's downworld, but on the other side of us. The problem is that it's a Dog one. We're in imperial territory."

Even Nhi, who wasn't very good at politics, could see the issue of bringing back a Dog corpse to a Dog Needle. "Still—"

"We'll lose face," Hac Cúc said. "Not just us, personally. The clans. There are whispers already throughout the empire that the clans are greedy. That we take people's hard-earned money so the common people can travel through space safely and hoard it. If we can't find a tangler, and the only thing we have to show for ourselves is a dead imperial official…"

"It's the right thing to do."

"According to you. That's not part of my code." Soft laughter again, that look that weighed Nhi, as if deciding whether to ram her through. Nhi had said the wrong thing again, or perhaps there was no right thing to be said.

"Your code does include catching tanglers, doesn't it?"

"And?"

"Our best chance is if we have the resources."

"I agree with the sentiment, but being tied down by politics isn't resources. It's a waste of time. Let's report the death to the militia, and have it work its way upwards through the proper channels. It'll give us a few more days."

"To solve a murder and catch a tangler?"

A smile, from Hac Cúc. "Why not?" And, more seriously: "I hear your fears. We can still send a message to the Dog Needle. Just not right away. Anyway, they're Dogs. You saw Ly Chau. They're incompetent. They're a lesser clan, only here to keep an eye on what we're doing. Their navigator capacities are bad. Or else why would they become imperials?"

Because they wanted safety. Because they didn't want to be beholden to the clans. Because the clan's rules and justice—each clan had its own, and each clan was sovereign in its own space, though the Council of the Eight Elders made sure some rules were absolute—made no sense to them. Nhi ran through all of those things in her head, and didn't say them. But she did know that they were in trouble, and there was little sense in adding more trouble. "Don't you have contact with your s? ph?? Through other means?"

A searching look, from Hac Cúc. "Yes."

Nhi knew the value of a secret when it was given to her. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"The confidences."

Another of those searching looks that held her in utter stillness. "I assume you won't use that against me."

"No," Nhi said, with a confidence she didn't feel. She didn't pass on secrets or betray them, but it seemed to drive people away nevertheless.

"Can you—"

"Send him a message? I can," Hac Cúc said. "It'll be faster, but it'll still take a few days before he can sort things out for us."

Which meant they needed to sort this out first. No easy way out of here. "Be that as it may."

Another searching and piercing look from Hac Cúc. "I guess you're in charge, then. Ch?." A pronoun reserved for a slightly elder peer—not the impersonal ones they'd been using with each other.

"We," Nhi said.

Soft laughter from Hac Cúc. She held out her hand again; this time Nhi took it, and held it for a moment, feeling the worn, unfamiliar weight of it in her own. "So be it. For better or for worse. We." Nhi had used a pronoun that encompassed all four juniors, but the one Hac Cúc used was just the two of them, and Nhi felt a shiver run down her spine at that. A slight thrill, as if she were the one flirting with danger and unsure of what it all meant.