3. Strobilation

Nhi knew this mission was going to be trouble, and Hac Cúc made it even worse. She was by turns acid and infuriating, and by turns oddly vulnerable and straightforward in a way that made Nhi want to touch her—and Heaven knew Nhi wasn't the kind of person who touched others. Touch was always fraught for Nhi, something that everyone found natural but that, to her, felt like too much, a breaking of some unspoken rule or law. Nhi could feel the tension in the air between them, and it wasn't helping one bit.

As to the others … Bao Duy was endearing but reckless, and Lành was extremely difficult to deal with or protect, which added to the annoyance.

The gliders were small, and they were flat, about the size of Nhi's torso, and shaped like a large triangle with a blunt, flattish head. There were two magnetic holds that connected to clamps they had in their suits. Each glider had a small motor, powerful enough to move one person at perhaps half the speed of the shuttle, and their suits kept them from dying in the vacuum. A glider wasn't as powerful or as maneuverable as a shuttle, and even less than a ship in the hands of a skilled navigator and their Shadow—but for what they had to do, it would serve.

As they moved down the canyon, they all drew Shadow to them, shimmering veils that manifested differently for each of them: Hac Cúc's Divine Harmony was aggressive but discreet, Bao Duy's Hairpin Ripples exuberant and fast, and Lành's Ambush in the Grass dark and quiet. Nhi could see why Lành was isolated among her own clan; her Shadow was dark, pulsing through with light patterns that were reminiscent of tanglers, and even the way she moved clinging to her glider—oddly jerky, with pulses shooting through her Shadow—didn't really seem to belong to the Ox clan. Or to any clan.

Nhi herself wasn't really fazed; people were weird, and who was she to judge? Plus, they were trying to deal with a tangler. And smugglers who presumably would be none too happy to see them. She scanned the canyon's walls: nothing. Just abandoned buildings with windows that weren't sealed anymore, and stark gloom over shuttles that were a little too still and cold to still be in possession of a functional life-support system. No movement. No tendrils. Not that she could see. The tendrils were the worst, because they were so much longer than the tangler's body, and they didn't actually exist in the physical world, so they could cut through walls, or shuttles, or rock. Shadow would stop them, if wielded by someone who'd received the appropriate training. Which hopefully was the case with everyone on this mission.

Nhi's veils of Shadow bumped against the canyon's walls. Still nothing but the faint pressure of rock. Darkness—the canyon seemed bottomless. The sound of her own breath.

"Wait," Hac Cúc said, over the comms. "There's something—"

Nhi drew her Shadow closer, ready to strike. She felt it build up in her belly near the vitality center, just as Hac Cúc angled her glider towards one of the openings in the canyon's walls, one below them that was almost hidden by the gloom. "Ch?, don't—" Nhi said, a ball of fear building in her innards.

The comms went silent. Lành was cautiously circling. "There's no tangler," she said, firmly.

"You sound very certain," Bao Duy said.

"That's what I get for being left alone in the dark with them," Lành said. "I can sense them."

"And talk to them?" Bao Duy asked.

A snort from Lành. "They don't really talk," she said.

"But—"

"Can't you take a hint?" Lành snapped. "I'm not talking about this further."

Nhi hadn't known any of this about Lành: it was a surprise. She filed it in her brain alongside the other things she knew about her. Maybe it'd help her deal with Lành. For some reason, it was harder to this time around. Too many new variables, too many new behaviors Nhi couldn't predict.

Where was Hac Cúc? Nhi scanned the darkness. "Ch?, come back."

A soft ping on her comms. "You'd better come down, em." Hac Cúc's voice was bleak. "Just very, very quietly, will you? And very carefully. I'll guide you."

"Have you found the tangler?" Bao Duy asked.

Nhi's ears prickled. She'd have said so, if she had. So it was something else. "That'd be too easy, wouldn't it?"

"I'll send you a trajectory," Hac Cúc said.

It was mostly a straight curve, but as Nhi set the glider to follow it—as she descended into darkness, and the mouth of the opening in the canyon wall loomed over her—she saw that it ended with a strong braking, and that the entire space beyond its ending was blotted out as forbidden. So, caution. Very strong caution.

She drew her Shadow closer, and that's when she felt the first bumps against it. Soft and barely perceptible. "Ch?—" she said to Hac Cúc, on a private channel.

"I know," Hac Cúc said. "Just come here."

The opening was the beginning of a cave that flared into a larger corridor, heading off into darkness.

Inside, Hac Cúc was floating vertically by the side of two corpses. They had to be corpses, because they didn't move, and they also didn't give off any heat on the sensors. She'd clamped them to one of the cave's walls and had turned off the motor of her glider, which she was clinging to by one hand. Nhi couldn't see the corpses' faces, but the network of long, thin slashes across the suits was obvious. Tendrils. A lot of tendrils, the same ones she could feel bumping against her defenses. Too far away yet to do much damage, but if the umbrella—the main body—of the tangler moved … She fought back a sense of rising panic. She couldn't afford it. They couldn't afford it.

"Smugglers?" she asked, to Hac Cúc.

Hac Cúc wasn't answering. She was watching the darkness, carefully. Nhi moved, feeling the pressure of the tendrils increase against her Shadow. Oh, this was bad. Really bad. "How far is the umbrella?"

"That's the problem," Hac Cúc said.

Bao Duy pushed past them, Shadow unfolding into the tunnel. She was softly cursing, words that would have had the elders of Nhi's clan discipline her.

"They died of being stung," Lành said, behind them. "But there's no tangler—"

"Tendrils," Nhi said, sharply. "The tunnel is full of tendrils."

"There's no umbrella," Bao Duy said, sharply.

"What do you mean, there's no umbrella?"

"Watch, because I won't do it twice," Hac Cúc said. She did something with her free hand, and her Shadow left her, flowing towards the tunnel. It outlined everything, except the thin shapes of tendrils, which showed up as lighter shapes that couldn't be touched by Shadow. In the split moment—less than a breath—that it lit up everything, she saw what Hac Cúc meant: it wasn't the trailing mass she'd expected, but instead a dense surface across the tunnel, like a fishing net. The tendrils were sprouting from the walls themselves.

That was wrong.

A sharp intake of breath, from Bao Duy. "Strobilation."

"That's impossible," Lành said. "You've got it wrong."

"I never get it wrong," Bao Duy said.

All right, that wasn't just wrong. It was bad, bad news.

Nhi said it out loud, in a less technical fashion. "It's blooming, isn't it?"

"That's why we can't see the bigger tendrils," Bao Duy said. "Tanglers tend to reabsorb them when they bloom."

A bloom was a pullulation. A phenomenon most navigators knew to flee from. Sometimes tanglers would just … fruit. Drop seeds that split and split into multiple smaller tanglers. That was a strobilation: a scattering of seeds. But no tangler had ever done it outside of the Hollows.

"We need to warn someone," Nhi said.

"No. We need to kill that large one first." Bao Duy's voice was sharp, which was in and of itself worrying, because the Rat navigator had been soft-spoken so far. It made Nhi nervous. All right, more nervous than she currently was, with the tendrils pressing against her Shadow. No wonder there were no smugglers, if the tunnels nearby were full of tendrils. They were all dead, and it hadn't been a fast or painless death—they'd have convulsed, choking as their bodies forgot to move, to breathe.

"Why?" Nhi asked.

"Because so far, it's the only one that can bloom. The small ones won't be able to make more of themselves until they've grown."

"And that's going to take how much time?" Nhi asked.

"What I'm more interested in," Hac Cúc said, sharply, "is how you know all this. Because no one's actually seen tanglers outside the Hollows."

"That's not quite true. You know there have been incidents before."

"You know what I mean," Hac Cúc said, sharply.

"Is this really the best time to quarrel?" Nhi asked, more forcefully than she meant.

"No time like the present," Lành said. She sounded almost amused. People were just weird.

"All right, all right," Bao Duy said. "You want me to say it? I know it because I've run experiments."

"Because you've killed people to find out about tanglers," Hac Cúc said. She sounded angry.

"Because you don't kill people?"

"Only those who deserve it."

"They volunteered," Bao Duy said, sharply.

"And that still doesn't make it right."

Nhi forced herself to take a deep breath. She had to do something, because if she didn't, Hac Cúc was going to try to kill Bao Duy for breaching Hac Cúc's code—Nhi didn't know which part of her code, but she could certainly understand having rules that were sacred. But equally, they needed Bao Duy's expertise, and they most certainly didn't need to add another corpse to that freaky cave. She needed to stop the argument and she only knew one way to stop an argument, but it was going to be really unpleasant.

Unpleasant was better than dead, though, and the pressure against her Shadow was increasing, which didn't bode well for their survival. "It's really nice to see that you're more effective at killing each other than tanglers, but also regrettable," she said, with her best drawl. Her arms were shaking with the pressure to hold the tendrils away. Tanglers this small weren't smart, but they'd have hunting instincts all the same. And it was stressful to not be able to see the tendrils. In the Hollows they'd have been visible, but this wasn't the Hollows.

"Who elected you leader of the party again?" Hac Cúc asked.

"I wasn't planning on it," Nhi said, "but clearly the minimum criterion was bring everyone back alive. Which you're not doing at the moment."

Hac Cúc moved away as if hurt. Chewing on a clever comeback, no doubt. Nhi tackled Bao Duy next. "Two questions, Rat."

"I'm more than my clan," Bao Duy snapped. Good, it was working.

"Can they move? And how long do we have?"

"They're seeds," Bao Duy said. She still sounded annoyed, but at least it wasn't at Hac Cúc. "They can't move."

"How long do we have?" Nhi realized, with a touch of annoyance at herself, that the question was ambiguous. "How long until they move? And how long until they can bloom?" Her hands were shaking; she could barely hold on to her glider. Being this close to tanglers was mentally exhausting. If they could move, they'd have done it surely? But that's what the smugglers might have thought, until the first lash of a tendril went through their suit …

"They're turning towards us." Bao Duy's voice was emotionless. Lành, who hadn't said much, moved away from the corpses and towards the opening of the cave. Nhi couldn't blame her. She could feel Hac Cúc tensing, ready to lash out at someone, anyone. And it was going to be Lành, and it was going to be a disaster if she did. She spoke up before it could happen.

"And? That doesn't answer either question."

"No, but it did seem the most pressing concern," Bao Duy said. "A few days before they can move. And months before they can bloom."

All right, so the bloom wasn't the issue. Which was good, she guessed? For a definition of good that involved being in the same space as killer creatures with one of them making more. "And the large one?"

"If it's fed, it'll make more. That'll take bi-hours. Or possibly centidays. Seeing as there's eight centidays in a bi-hour…"

"Yes, yes," Hac Cúc snapped. "Don't go all Rat at me, please. I don't need the technical details. I don't believe these were the only two smugglers on this rock," Hac Cúc said. Her hands had moved; she was holding to the glider with one, and with the other she'd pulled out a large stun gun that Nhi was pretty sure wasn't standard issue with the suits in the rented shuttle. "So we can assume it fed a lot more, and it's making a lot more seeds."

"Can we do the sensible thing and be arguing outside of that cave, away from the killer creatures?" Lành asked. Wounding again: she was upset. Very upset.

Hac Cúc cocked her head to stare at her over the glider's lights. "You have a point," she said, grudgingly. "Dear leader?" It was mocking. Nhi hadn't expected it to hurt quite so much; she was so used to people being angry or sarcastic at her. But somehow Hac Cúc knew how to get under her skin.

She did the only sensible thing she could do, which was ignore it. "Let's go," she said.

Even with the gliders at full speed, it was nerve-rackingly slow. Lành was looking away from the cave, gaze resolutely fixed ahead and Shadow shimmering around her. Hac Cúc was hanging on to her glider, watching the cave, with a gun trained on it. Bao Duy was talking over the comms, the only one who seemed excited. Nhi … Nhi couldn't wait to be out of range. Why had the elders thought she was the best the person for the job?

"The main one has to be further on in the canyon. We can follow the trail of seeds—"

"Or corpses," Hac Cúc said, bleakly.

At the shuttle, no one let go of their Shadow until they were sure that they were safe. Nhi held on to hers nevertheless; it was going to be exhausting, but she wanted to be prepared for the eventuality of tanglers coming their way.

"All right," she said, since they were all looking at her and it looked like no one was going to say anything. She wasn't even the eldest in the party—she was pretty sure that was Lành or Hac Cúc. "Tell me again why we're not warning the elders and just letting them handle this."

"Because it's half a day to get back to the Silver Stream, two days to the nearest Needle, a lot of embarrassing explanations about why we have a dead Dog—I'm sure no one forgot Ly Chau, did they?—and then another few days until the elders can actually get here. And in the meantime, the big one is making more tanglers," Bao Duy said. She was leaning on the wall, more alive and excited than Nhi had ever seen her.

Enthusiasm was good; what was less good was that Nhi wasn't quite sure Bao Duy was very skilled at keeping herself—or others—alive. And Nhi had forgotten Ly Chau, which she was briefly ashamed of.

"I haven't forgotten Ly Chau," Hac Cúc said in a tone that clearly suggested someone somewhere was going to pay for the murder. Or the inconvenience to Hac Cúc, it wasn't clear. "But she's not the emergency right now."

Nhi couldn't help it. "She came here. Ly Chau. She saw … this." And then … then she'd gone back to the inn, except she'd died before it all came to a head.

A brief laugh from Hac Cúc. "And then she decided to get some proper reinforcements instead of us? That tracks. Except the murderer found her first."

Lành said, "You're still advocating we face a tangler, something an imperial navigator walked away from?"

Nhi spoke before Hac Cúc could, and before the situation with Lành degenerated even further. "Are you trying to suggest Dogs set some kind of standard for difficulty? Because we all know what they're worth. No one joins the empire's enforcers unless all the clans rejected them." It wasn't quite true. But it was what they all needed to hear.

There was a silence. Then laughter from Bao Duy and Hac Cúc, followed by a more reluctant laugh from Lành. "Dogs are so much hassle, eh?" Hac Cúc said.

A collective sigh. Everyone had had to deal with Dogs, or imperial officials, at some point.

"There's still a murderer out there," Lành said, but it was more subdued. "They could be targeting us next."

"Us?" Hac Cúc laughed. "We're really not worth it."

"But we're still going to kill a tangler?" Nhi asked. She'd looked it up before leaving. Most of the Rooster clan's techniques had to do with driving away tanglers, but there were obscure records that spoke of a more final end. "Do we know how to do that?"

Bao Duy made a gesture with her hands. "Yes," she said. "I killed several, back at the Rat Fortress."

"But?" Nhi heard the doubt she wasn't voicing.

"But we've never tried it in those circumstances."

"When it's blooming?"

"When it's fed that much," Bao Duy said. "It must be huge by now." There was something in her voice—not fear or distrust, but something of admiration.

"A little less worship of tanglers here," Lành snapped.

But of course Bao Duy was fascinated by tanglers, and considering this a unique opportunity to study one in the matter world, regardless of the danger.

No, Bao Duy definitely couldn't be trusted to keep herself alive.

"Will it be visible?" Hac Cúc asked.

A shrug. "Yes. If you have eyes. If you have Shadow."

"That's not a yes," Nhi said, sharply.

"I can feel it," Lành said. She was shivering, and she sounded like she was about to throw up. "It's further on. In the canyon. It's … happy."

Happy. Nhi definitely didn't want to dwell too much on the implications of Lành knowing this.

Nhi called up a map from the energy-founts. "Where?" she asked, and Lành showed her.

"You have to trap it first," Bao Duy said. She made a gesture, projecting from her personal comms terminal to the map-screen. "Here. You use the barrier generators to contain it. They'll key themselves to the tangler's tendrils, so they'll match its speed. At least for a little while."

"That's very imprecise," Nhi said.

Bao Duy threw her hands up. "I thought you didn't want me to go all Rat on you. Fine, fine. The mean duration is a centiday. An eighth of a bi-hour for everyone who doesn't know."

Even children knew what a centiday stood for.

"Careful," Hac Cúc said, warningly.

Nhi wrestled the conversation back on track. "The mean duration."

"Yes, it has a standard deviation of an eighth of a centiday. A fairly classical probability distribution, so outcomes beyond three standard deviations become rather improbable."

Hac Cúc's gaze was intent. "So five-eighths of a centiday as a worst possible case. That's the time we have to surround it with the barrier generators. Is it going to put up a fight?"

Bao Duy's round face stretched into a grimace. "You want certainty. I don't have a distribution model for that. But it's never happened."

"That one is different," Lành said.

"Not that different," Bao Duy said, finally. "I've seen this before. Just never at this scale. Trap it and kill it."

"Corner and then kill." Hac Cúc sounded thoughtful. "That's more in my skill set."

"And you know how to kill one?" Lành asked, aggressively.

Hac Cúc laughed. "We Snakes can kill anything. Or anyone." She not only still had her gun, she'd found a second one. And a knife with a polished blade that looked like the vacuum kind, sharp enough to cut through most materials. Leaning against the wall of the shuttle, with veils of Shadow shimmering around her, she looked like her clan's tutelary animal: coiled and ready to strike at a moment's notice—dangerously seductive, someone who'd be the death of Nhi rather than a lover.

Ughhhh. Nhi really didn't need those thoughts right now. Especially as Lành, angry and fearful, was on the offensive once again.

"Yes, of course," Lành said. Her voice was venomous. "You kill anyone and anything, for the right price. The morals you profess, which—"

"The morals you have not a shred of!"

It was going to get ugly again. Nhi moved, pushing herself effortlessly towards Hac Cúc, and laid a hand on her wrist, just above where she was holding the gun. Hac Cúc's arm tensed, but she didn't throw Nhi off. Through her Shadow, Nhi felt Hac Cúc—fast, aggressive, filled with coiled anger—pushing against her.

She'd put her hand on Hac Cúc's body before, but this time felt different. This time … the tension wasn't only aggression.

"Morality won't save any of us," Nhi said, sharply.

A sharp look from Hac Cúc. "And lack of morals might well doom us."

"Please don't kill Lành," Nhi said. "You can always kill each other after we deal with the tangler."

"Please?" A crinkle in Hac Cúc's eyes, which might well have been a smile. "Are you begging me, em?" The affectionate diminutive—reserved for intimates—made Nhi feel weird inside, as if she was burning up, tangler-stung, and couldn't find words anymore.

"Yes. No. I mean."

Hac Cúc's other hand moved to pluck Nhi's unresisting one from her wrist. Her gaze held Nhi's—not just held, but doomed Nhi, making that fire within her burn brighter and brighter, engulfing her whole. "For you, then, I suppose I can make an effort."

Nhi breathed, hard, fast. They were touching each other, hand to wrist, thin layers of flesh through Shadow, and it was unbearable to be so close, and yet it was everything she'd ever wanted.

She snatched her hand from Hac Cúc's. "You're impossible," she said, but she didn't feel like she meant the reproach—"impossible" had turned into a wholly alien word, one that meant a marvel she hadn't anticipated and an irritation. "You're not making an effort for me. You're making an effort because we have a tangler. And as soon as we've taken a rest, we'll go retrieve the barrier generators and—"

Her brain caught up with her eyes. "Where's Bao Duy?" she asked. It was just the three of them in the room.

And heard, softly, like the click of a gun, the sound of the airlock opening and closing.

"She's gone outside," Lành said.

Hac Cúc caught up with Nhi on the way to the gliders. "She's left all the barrier generators in the holds. She's only got a glider and a suit."

"Do you know where she is?" Nhi said. She sounded disconsolate. Hac Cúc fought the urge to hug her. The last time they'd touched had been … thrilling and discomfiting. She wasn't proud of herself, but flirting with Nhi had been like scratching an itch that wouldn't calm down. Except, of course, that just like scratching, it had done nothing to quench her growing feelings.

"I think it's a safe bet," Hac Cúc said, "that Bao Duy went to find the main tangler. She sounded far too excited about it. ‘The first time any tangler has bloomed in an environment that's not the Hollows. It's such an opportunity to observe.'"

Nhi laughed, shortly. "You do sound like her."

"A little only. It'll be fine," Hac Cúc said. She wasn't even sure why she said it. Because Nhi seemed so down, and it would have been mean to say what she really thought. Because Nhi was affecting her, because it was different to flirt with Nhi and to make her sad. Because she was soft, she supposed. Because being with Nhi—was weird but also strangely comforting. Like she didn't have to pretend to be who she wasn't. Like she didn't have to try to live up to false expectations.

"Do you believe that?" Nhi asked. "That it will all be fine?"

She could have lied, but it wouldn't have been fair. "For Bao Duy? I don't know. But I believe we can still make a difference."

Nhi breathed out. She released the Shadow she'd been holding; Hac Cúc felt its loss like a loss of light and life in the room. "How?" she asked.

If there was one thing life—and numerous missions—had taught Hac Cúc, it was that nothing was ever truly lost, and that every plan needed fifteen different contingency ones. No one ever showed up for their own assassination according to plan. "Trap it," she said. "Fast. Badly, if need be. And then let's see what happens." She breathed out. "I'm going to get Lành."

"Don't," Nhi said. It was quiet, but it felt like the lash of a tangler's tendril.

"Why?"

"I'll get Lành," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc stared at her. She wanted to make some joke, to say that Nhi was only doing that to make sure they all stayed alive, but Nhi was simply standing there, unmoving, with no trace of irony or sarcasm. The words shriveled in Hac Cúc's throat. "Why?" she asked again.

A hesitation, from Nhi. Then she said, with a drawl, "Mostly so you two don't kill each other. It'd be a bad precedent." For a moment, she looked as though she was going to say something else, maybe ask another question—and Hac Cúc wasn't even sure of what she'd said. Before she could collect herself, Nhi had left the room.

Hac Cúc stood there, with no one to get angry at but herself—which was a terrible way to handle anything.

She did it, anyway.

How did she keep putting herself in those situations? It felt like everything on this mission was fraught and unexpected. It felt … like being given things she didn't deserve and didn't know what to do with.

Usually she'd ask herself what Quang L?c would do, but she was pretty sure her s? ph? had never had to deal with so much pent-up sexual frustration on top of the usual frustration of being stuck with juniors she despised at best, and actively hated at worst.

All right, she could do this. Control this, or at any rate make sure it didn't crash and burn. That she didn't crash and burn.