2. The Old Rise

Nhi had expected the mission to be a disaster, but not to turn sour so fast. Bao Duy, the Rat junior, was about the only person who wasn't an issue: she was driven by curiosity and a thirst for danger and experimentations Nhi had seldom seen in Rats—who liked experiments but tended to be homebodies. A quick search on the network had established facts that weren't really secrets about her: she had a tendency to dangerous experiments involving tanglers and the Hollows, and a gift for talking other people into them. Long story short, the Rat clan must have felt a pressing need to send Bao Duy somewhere where the only life she could endanger was her own.

No, the issue was everyone else. With Ly Chau's death, they were trying to deal with each other—and it was barely working. Lành was even more bitter and angry than usual, and Hac Cúc's needling was making it worse.

Hac Cúc.

Nhi hadn't expected Hac Cúc. She hadn't expected to resonate with Hac Cúc so much. It was an odd and unexpected feeling, and she'd left their meeting feeling oddly energised—and wondering what it would be like if they saw more of each other.

No.

No. That wasn't a good idea. She knew what happened every single time she tried this. She'd do or say something that was wrong—tell too much truth, drag too many secrets into the light, dealing blows to her girlfriend without meaning to. And people would leave, as they always did—and Nhi would go back to her archives and her secrets and her despondent acceptance that truth tellers, secret holders would always be alone. That love happened to other people. Not her.

It wasn't worth it. She'd had enough pain, and she could spare herself that one.

She forced herself to focus on what Bao Duy was saying. "The fight she got in was with a tangler, but it wasn't here."

"Why the tendrils?" Hac Cúc asked. They'd retreated to the juniors' room, where Bao Duy had reconfigured the window-screen to display the entirety of the Silver Stream. A little arrow pointed to their own location.

Bao Duy said, "It got snapped off, I think."

"That can happen?" Hac Cúc was kneeling by the window-screen, long sleeves displaying the token of the Snake clan on the fabric. There was nothing submissive whatsoever about this gesture.

"Of course it can," Lành said. She sounded annoyed again, like that time she and Nhi had been sent to track down some contraband tea and found a whole network of illicit warehouses on three different planets. The paperwork mess had been epic.

Hac Cúc threw Lành a glance, but didn't say anything.

Nhi released the breath she'd been holding. "Let's assume I've had my share of finding out weird things. Explain. How and why?"

Bao Duy picked a candied lotus seed from the array on the table. "If you fight a tangler—which is a terrible idea—then it can lose a bit of a tendril. And you can drag it with you. It fades."

"Because it gets inside your body," Lành said. She sounded bleak. Lived experience, no doubt. Nhi had read the incident report, and asked other people: Lành had multiple scars from those years, the marks of tendrils that had wrapped themselves around her during the ship's crash.

"Fight a tangler. That means she found it. And then just crawled back to the inn to die?"

"I don't understand how she fought the tangler," Hac Cúc said. "Did she use her Shadow?"

Bao Duy shook her head. "On a shuttle? It wouldn't have been able to bear a prolonged fight with Shadow." A little use of Shadow was just going to cause minor damage to a shuttle, but any prolonged use on something that flimsy was going to cause things to leak out, starting with heat and oxygen. The clan ships were reinforced to avoid this.

"Then not on a ship, just on herself. Like a duel between navigators playing out planetside," Hac Cúc said. And then stopped. "No, tanglers are too large."

"Also," Nhi said, drily, "I assume tanglers don't poison people with Nebula Cinnabar. Did you find anything about that?"

"She came back late," Lành said. "She received no guests in her room."

"How certain are we of this?" Nhi asked.

"The owner monitors oxygen rates and temperature," Lành said. "So fairly certain, unless said guest didn't breathe and had no heat signature."

Hac Cúc said, "If the owner does this, they know when she died."

"Yes. Bi-hour of the Tiger, second eighth, more or less. Is that helpful?"

"No," Lành said.

"She was poisoned outside," Hac Cúc said. "By the time she came back, she was already dying. What I don't understand is where she was poisoned."

Nhi said the obvious, "Nebula Cinnabar is a clan poison. Anyone here on clan business?"

"Us," Bao Duy said, drily. Nhi felt a wave of affection for the Rat; it was a tense situation, and she could still summon non-wounding sarcasm, which took guts.

"Aside from us," Lành snapped. "We've already established we didn't do it."

"Let's just say we've agreed to trust each other," Hac Cúc said. She stared at the map of the Silver Stream. "You said she came back late. When did she leave?"

"Bi-hour of the Pig, third eighth, tenth moment," Lành said.

Hac Cúc drew a long, thin line from where they were to a point on the map that meant nothing to Nhi. "Here," she said. "Time to go there, stay perhaps half a bi-hour, and then leave."

"What's there?"

Hac Cúc's face was grim. "It's a place called the Old Rise. A large cluster of buildings that failed."

"Failed?"

"No oxygen anymore. Just ruins. And some dead bodies, maybe. The vacuum would keep them more or less preserved."

Lành made a face. "You're going to need to explain to me why that place."

"Because that's where people have been going missing," Hac Cúc said.

"Tangler's hideout?" Nhi asked.

"Maybe." Hac Cúc's face was hard. "Or just a fight with smugglers, or clan people who didn't agree with who she was."

The juniors stared at each other somberly. Nhi could read that particular mood easily: clan people meant some of their own, and no one wanted to get into that kind of mess.

"This is a terrible idea," Lành said. She was fiddling with her Shadow; it kept appearing and disappearing, trembling on the shuttle's walls. "Shouldn't we take a clan ship?"

"We don't have a clan ship," Bao Duy said, sharply.

"Well, if we had a clan ship, we would definitely not have to put up with your piloting!" Lành said, clinging to the bench.

The shuttle was swerving wildly as Bao Duy was fiddling with the controls; she'd manifested her Shadow to "help" with her effusive and fast Hairpin Ripples style—which mostly meant that every single alarm was blaring as they moved through the Fragments, not just the proximity ones.

"At least don't summon your Shadow. We're not going to be left with anything to breathe!"

"Would you rather we hit a rock?"

"I'd rather we got someone else to drive!" Lành's knuckles were white. "I can't believe your clan would let you pilot anything!"

Bao Duy's voice was freezing. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with my piloting."

"I don't even understand how they let you open navigation gates. It's meant to require quiet and isolation, not weaving around like a rabbit on too much tea!"

A snort from Bao Duy. "My gates are fine. And you know we're not opening a gate here."

"No, of course we're not. We'll just get dragged into it! That's what happens when you don't have a clan ship to protect yourself—"

Hac Cúc was trying to ignore them. She was on her comms device, isolating herself at the back of the shuttle they'd hired to go to the Old Rise while Lành and Bao Duy bickered over the commands. The shuttle was a small thing: a control deck at the front, two long benches going from the deck to the back, and a small hold belowdecks where Bao Duy and Nhi had stored various supplies that they'd taken from Ly Chau's rooms. It was much, much smaller than Hac Cúc's The Steel Clam—which, contrary to what she'd said, she did have nearby. She probably was the only one of the juniors who had her own ship, and there was absolutely no way she was letting Bao Duy or anyone else anywhere near the controls.

Vi?t Nhi was sleeping on the leftmost bench, nearby, her head just a forearm's length from where Hac Cúc was sitting. Hac Cúc was impressed. It took some gumption to be able to totally ignore Bao Duy's wild piloting.

Hac Cúc put up a privacy screen and took the message from her s? ph?.

"Hac Cúc," S? ph? Quang Loc said. He was looking more fragile than she remembered, his small beard streaked with white, his bald head gleaming in some invisible light. "The Eight Elders are investigating the crash." He sounded worried, too. "There's evidence it was deliberate."

Deliberate. "Ninth Judge?" she said, aloud. She'd summoned just enough of her own Shadow—the Divine Harmony she and Quang Loc practiced enabled them to communicate by projecting her Shadow to the nearest Needle. In the rush of Bao Duy's Shadow, Hac Cúc's use of her own powers would go unnoticed. But they wouldn't have much time: the Old Rise wasn't that far.

"Ninth Judge was a skilled navigator. And a careful one."

"You think—"

Quang Loc's voice was dark. "I think the empire has been trying to push us out for a while. They don't enjoy that we provide fast space travel. They'd rather it was all done by the Dogs."

"The Dogs don't have the talent." Hac Cúc thought of Ly Chau, bossing everyone around and treating everyone with contempt, but incapable of making any progress on finding the tangler. Had it all been an act?

She'd died of Nebula Cinnabar poisoning. Of that, Hac Cúc was sure. There'd been some impairment due to the tangler's sting, but not enough to kill her. But how in Heaven had she managed to go somewhere to find a tangler, and yet not drag the juniors—the ones she'd been incessantly driving to do the dirty and menial tasks—to face it?

"The Dogs don't have the talent," Quang Loc said. "But they don't need to. If there was a big enough accident on our watch, if the tangler wasn't caught. If it went to a major population center and caused a disaster…"

Then, yes, of course, people would turn against the four major navigator clans—the ones unable to protect them. Especially if the empire had spoken enough about the greed of the navigators. Never mind that ships and Needles and spaceports were expensive. Hac Cúc shivered. "Yes. I see that."

"You see why it's imperative you succeed."

"Here's something I don't understand," Hac Cúc said. She looked at where Lành was still arguing with Bao Duy, who was now aglow with Shadow. The shuttle was spinning—Hac Cúc extended her magnetic clamps and unthinkingly grabbed Nhi, dragging her into her lap and holding her there as the ship spun. Nhi didn't even stir. "Bao Duy was all but kicked out of her clan after that experiment with the two tanglers at the Rat's fortress. Lành is an orphan with no connection and unpredictable powers. Nhi is an ineffective book nerd and an introvert with none of the aggressiveness of the Roosters. And I—" She wanted to say the words. To say that she was a failure. That she'd never live up to her own s? ph?'s reputation. That she couldn't be as good, as kind as Quang Loc was. But she couldn't. If she spoke them, she'd make them real. She'd have to watch Quang Loc's face as he realized it, too.

"You're my apprentice," Quang Loc said, simply. "And my heir. That matters more than you believe it does."

That was only because Quang Loc didn't really see who Hac Cúc really was. Hac Cúc said, slowly, "What I don't understand is this: catching a tangler and sending it back to the Hollows is dangerous business. We own exactly one ship between the four of us. We're—" They were the very definition of expendable. Why send them on something this important?

A sigh, from Quang Loc.

"Was this meant to leave the empire to look good when they swooped in? Because that's not going to work. Ly Chau is dead."

"So you told me. I don't know. I'll make enquiries. But it is odd."

Hac Cúc folded her Shadow—and looked down to see Nhi had her eyes open, and was staring straight at her. Of course, she should have known. It wasn't just Snakes that could be sneaky. Little devil. "How long have you been listening?"

A shrug, from Nhi. "Long enough." She didn't move from Hac Cúc's lap. "It is rather comfortable."

"You're not going to find it comfortable if I kill you," Hac Cúc snapped.

"Oh?" A raised eyebrow from Nhi. "I'll look forward to your explaining to the elders why five of us left, and only three of us came back."

"You'll be dead!"

"But my ghost will possibly be very entertained," Nhi said. And winked at her, a horrible expression that would have made Hac Cúc lose her temper further, if she had any temper left to be lost. A more serious look. "You know I don't share secrets lightly."

"Not even with your elders?"

Another shrug. "I don't like my elders particularly."

Hac Cúc, staring into those mesmerising eyes—feeling the weight of Nhi in her lap, the utter, unwise vulnerability of her, lying in a Snake's lap with no defenses—asked a reckless question. "Then who is it that you like?"

A look, from Nhi—another of those searching ones that felt like Hac Cúc was being dissected. "Not many people, really. But you knew that." An amused laugh. "An ineffective book nerd."

Too late, Hac Cúc remembered that the conversation with Quang Loc had included her rather brutal assessment of everyone in the shuttle. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be," Nhi said. "I say far unkinder things about myself. But I'm curious."

In spite of herself, Hac Cúc found herself bending closer to Nhi. "About what?"

A smile from Nhi—an expression that utterly transformed her round, moon-shaped face. "You stopped before saying anything about yourself. What is it you were going to say?"

Flawed. Failure. Forever unable to live up to her s? ph?'s reputation. Unloved. All these went through Hac Cúc's mind, a heartbeat before she snapped, "None of your business."

Nhi unfolded herself, bowed to her. The gesture was sarcastic. What she said next wasn't. "Fair. I hope one day you can bring yourself to say it." There was no irony in her voice, just utter seriousness.

Hac Cúc stared into Nhi's eyes. Her gaze held her and she couldn't look away; there was an odd, flushed heat in her chest that wasn't her Shadow. "What?"

Nhi shook her head. "If you don't want to say it, I'm not going to say it for you." She kept one hand on the shuttle's metal walls, the magnetic clamp holding her in place.

Hac Cúc fell back on the familiar. She pointed to Lành, who was still arguing vociferously with Bao Duy. "I think we should stop the bickering. And the reckless piloting. If it's smugglers in the Old Rise, we should probably make a more inconspicuous arrival."

Nhi laughed. "How's your piloting?"

Hac Cúc couldn't help but laugh. "Terrible," she said. "But it gets people places and it doesn't get me noticed if I don't need to be." She'd parked The Steel Clam near one of the larger Fragments; she wanted to be sure she could leave if she needed to, even if leaving required rallying the Dog Needle and charming them into letting her pass. And she could take Nhi, too.

No.

No.

That was a terrible idea. As soon as Nhi realized who she was—that there was nothing of care, nothing of what had made her s? ph? great and beloved in the void and stars circles—she'd leave.

Something screeched, and the shuttle slowed to a dead stop—the inertia jostling Hac Cúc. She sighed. "I think we should do something about the driving."

Nhi broke off eye contact and said, "Thank you for all the information on everyone else." She winked. "I'll be back." She walked to Lành, who was still trying to convince Bao Duy to slow down.

Lành looked up. Nhi said, "This is a den of smugglers. I'm going to need someone else to pilot if we want to not be unduly noticed as we arrive."

Bao Duy weighed Nhi up for a while. "Makes sense," she said, and stepped away from the controls, folding her Shadow back. The alarms finally fell silent; Hac Cúc hadn't realized how annoying they were until they stopped. "Have at them," she said.

"Good," Lành said, drawling. "Finally some competence."

Nhi said nothing. She changed the shuttle's front-window display to show the front and sides of the shuttle, and piloted the same way she wielded Shadow—slow and ponderous, the various Fragments filling the display and then remaining on it. It should have been laborious, but it was oddly graceful; rock debris of the Silver Stream came at them in clumps and clouds, moved their way by the vagaries of gravity, and through it all Nhi made only minute adjustments to the trajectory of the shuttle. It was as if she was anticipating whatever the Silver Stream was throwing at them well in advance of when it would show up—weaving a mesmerising pattern of her own between the smaller Fragments.

This close to the Old Rise, there were no clusters of buildings, only, from time to time, the pings of rescue beacons on the odd smaller Fragment, a steady light that entered the window and then left.

"Here," Hac Cúc said.

It was a much larger Fragment, where buildings clung to the sides of huge canyons that were too deep and too dark for her to see the bottom of. They poked at all angles, unconstrained by gravity.

"No sign of life," Bao Duy said, frowning. She had her Shadow around her, drawn for defense. The pressure of it was making the walls of the shuttle tremble; it was no reinforced clan ship, and it was going to lose oxygen if Bao Duy didn't fold her Shadow back into herself. Hac Cúc braced herself for the alarms to blare again, and decided she didn't have to put up with any of that.

"Stop with the Shadow," she said, walking closer to Bao Duy and looming over her. "Or it'll get extremely unpleasant."

Nhi didn't even look up from the controls. "Please stop threatening people. It's about as effective as using chopsticks to stab them."

How could she go from those fragile moments of understanding to being this utterly annoying? "Oh, believe me, I can stab you with chopsticks," Hac Cúc snapped. "In your sleep."

Nhi smiled. "I'll have that to look forward to, then, won't I?" She nosed the shuttle towards a large gap in the canyon walls—as they got closer, Hac Cúc saw the glint of broken approach beacons. Smuggler territory all right: there was no life or even basic safety measures. The perfect place to run some merchandise someone didn't want the empire or the clans to know about.

"All right," Nhi said after the shuttle had landed. "The suits and gliders are in the back. We also have barrier generators, just in case." Barrier generators were for creating a large bubble around a tangler that would trap it. At which point more experienced people in the clans would usually take over and kill the tangler.

They didn't have more experienced people from the clans, and somehow Hac Cúc wasn't convinced that they could even put the barrier generators to good use. But so far, what Nhi was suggesting was just looking around, which was a very different—and hopefully easier—prospect.

"Good," Hac Cúc said, shortly.

Nhi said, "Let's go see who's around." She turned to Lành, who'd been strangely silent the entire time. Cowed into submission? That seemed extremely unlike her.

"Was anything the matter?" Lành asked.

Nhi said, "We're going to need someone to stay with the shuttle to be sure no one makes away with it. Why don't you?"

Lành stared at Nhi for a while. "You're mistaken," she said, coldly. "This shuttle has bio-coded clamps. We can leave it here, keyed to our ID, and no one will be able to make away with it."

"Mistaken. Am I?" Nhi held her gaze for a while. "The offer stands," she said, coolly and calmly. "I still think it would be better to have someone here."

Hac Cúc caught up with Nhi as they exited the shuttle—the other two were ahead, floating under the wall of the cavern. "What was that about?"

A weighing gaze, from Nhi. "You know."

"No. I don't. I don't see why you'd needlessly antagonize Lành. That's my job. And why would she be so angry at you?"

Nhi said, softly, "We're going to find a tangler. A creature that likely harmed Ly Chau, possibly made her vulnerable to poison."

"And why would—" Hac Cúc stopped then. "Oh. You think Lành is scared."

"I know Lành is scared," Nhi said. She made a weird, deprecating, and oddly vulnerable gesture with her shoulders that suddenly made Hac Cúc feel warmth under her collarbone. "First, because I've worked with her. And second, because I'm very familiar with how cutting one can be, when one wants to mask fear."

"From your own experience?" Hac Cúc stared at her.

Soft laughter from Nhi. Hac Cúc suddenly had this odd, almost prescient intuition that she was going to deflect. She grabbed Nhi's hand, barely feeling it through layers of suit. "Don't," she said.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't joke and use sarcasm to get out of the truth."

Nhi stopped, as if she'd been shocked by a jolt of energy. "The truth," she said, as if chewing on it. "Fine. No, I don't do that when I'm scared. But I do it when I want to be alone."

"Does that happen often?"

A sigh, from Nhi. "Most of the time." She gestured towards the rock cave. "Shall we?"

Hac Cúc watched her drift away and then engage her glider once she was well clear of the shuttle. The warmth under her collarbone had spread to her chest and cheeks; she felt she was burning from something that wasn't embarrassment or anger, but that same odd feeling of connection she'd felt before, that hint of deeper possibilities.

She was twenty-five, and was not lacking life experience or common sense altogether. The string of relationships she'd had was long; those relationships that had been meaningful far shorter. Her longest relationship had been Linh—another Snake, drawn by the aura of the Pure Heart Master—who had left when she'd realized, as Hac Cúc already knew deep in her bones, that Hac Cúc would never be half the person her s? ph? was.

Maybe she should have a fling with Nhi. Sleep with her, get it out of their systems. But no, that would be unkind and unfair to Nhi, and if there was one thing that Hac Cúc could do, it was follow her code.

No. They were going to keep this—whatever this odd, growing dance of connections and irritations—friends only.

They were going to find a tangler, get rid of whatever problems this mission really was bringing, and then she was going to go home, and train with her s? ph? again, to try—and fail—to live up to the potential Quang Loc had seen in her.

She could do this. She could keep it all under control.