5. Secrets

"That was very well done," Elder Lieu said.

She'd arrived at the inn with a delegation of other Elders from the Council of the Eight: an elderly Rat woman, a middle-aged, plump Snake Hac Cúc had seemed to dislike on sight, and a startlingly young Ox who'd immediately and bossily taken charge. Nhi knew them on sight—everyone knew the Council of the Eight—but didn't know enough about them, and the thought of having to talk to total strangers made her weak in the knees.

There'd been no sign of a Dog anywhere, which was odd. Something was itching at the back of Nhi's mind, something she couldn't quite place: that feeling that secrets didn't quite make sense, that she was missing something that would make everything fall into place.

Elder Lieu had received Nhi alone, which was clearly in deference to Nhi's personal preferences. The others were with the Council: Bao Duy, chastened and bandaged; Lành, aggressive, unpleasant, unwilling to talk about any of what had happened to her; Hac Cúc, exhausted and disinclined to explain anything. Nhi hoped they would be all right, but she couldn't be sure.

There was tea on the table, and translucent dumplings with shrimps. Nhi picked at hers with her chopsticks, trying to breathe.

"We'll deal with the tangler," Elder Lieu was saying. She was sitting between the two energy-founts in the room: all the shining blue lines converged to her, putting her wrinkled, sharp face in darkness and making her seem like something from the oldest stories, a wise woman scholar, or a statue of a bodhisattva.

"And the others?" Nhi said. "The strobilation."

"That's going to take more time," Elder Lieu said, smoothly. A sigh. "You know there are politics in the Council."

Of course. That didn't mean Nhi appreciated them. "Yes," she said. "Is this your way of telling me you're not going to deal with the remaining tangler seeds? The other juniors and I can take care of them."

"You," Elder Lieu said, sharply, "need to be in the infirmary."

"That's Bao Duy," Nhi said. Bao Duy had sheepishly apologized for going off on her own—as Nhi had suspected, she'd wanted to observe the tangler alone. She'd deliberately left the barrier generators behind her to not be a hindrance. Nhi supposed she should at least give Bao Duy credit for not wanting to put the other juniors in danger. Minor credit for that, major discredit for endangering the entire mission.

Elder Lieu knew Nhi well enough to know that when exhausted and stressed, she became literal and blunt. She had the grace to not say anything about disrespect. "You'll owe me a full accounting," she said. "But it can wait until you're all recovered. Most juniors wouldn't have done half as well as you did."

"Is that why you sent us?" Nhi said. That feeling of unease again. "Politics?"

Elder Lieu grimaced. "It's for the good of the clans," she said, finally.

Which wasn't an answer.

A sigh, from her. "I'll send people to deal with the strobilating tanglers, one way or another. You have my word. We wouldn't want any loss of life in the Silver Stream." Behind her, the Ice Jade Planet rose, all green and blue, none of the huge arcologies on its surface visible from this height.

Nhi considered it. Elder Lieu's word, like Nhi's, wasn't given lightly. "There's something you're not telling me," she said. She clung to her Shadow, but it was weak and trembling, and not as comforting as it should be. She was exhausted from the tangler chase, and from having to pull Bao Duy out from under the rocks that had collapsed on her. Rats. Definitely couldn't be trusted with common sense. Bao Duy had thought a tangler observation project was more important than anything else, even her own life.

"Yes," Elder Lieu said. "You'll have to trust me on this."

And Nhi did. Except … "What about Ly Chau?"

"Mmm." Elder Lieu sighed. "I want to wait until we've dealt with the tangler to deal with Ly Chau. Right now it's imprisoned by your barrier, but neither Elder Hanh from the Rat clan nor Elder ánh Ng?c from the Snake have figured out how to damage it in the least."

Ah. Nhi could see some of the shape of it, perhaps: that it was a loss of face for the clans if they were unable to deal with a tangler. That the imperial clan would love to see them admit weakness, to finally claim dominance over navigation and the steady stream of income it provided. "I see," she said. "Do you need help?" It felt presumptuous, but it was sincerely offered, which was the only thing Nhi had in her anymore.

"No," Elder Lieu said, sternly. "I need you to rest, and then you and the others can coordinate the juniors who'll arrive to deal with the tangler seeds from the strobilation. We'll deal with the large one."

She sounded utterly confident, and bossy: the mother Nhi barely remembered, the one who'd died in mysterious circumstances—the one terrible and unattainable secret of Nhi's life, the thing all other secrets were proxies for. The thing that was forever beyond reach, her parents' corpses inaccessible in the wilderness where they'd died, the clan's best efforts uncovering no evidence or testimonies. The thing that she feared most and yet would never have an explanation for. An onslaught of utter fatigue and panic assaulted her, everything she'd been keeping at bay suddenly coming into sharp and unbearable focus, even Elder Lieu's voice resonating painfully under the metal ceilings of the habitats. She was sitting too close to Nhi, talking too loudly—every clink of her cup was too much, an echo that felt like it was drilling into Nhi's brain. "I have to go," Nhi said. "Thank you for your time."

She rose, shakily—on the verge of utterly coming apart—clinging to her diminished Shadow like a faltering lifeline.

Hac Cúc. She needed Hac Cúc's company now.

Hac Cúc couldn't sleep. They were done with the Council of the Eight, an utterly draining, exhausting, and pointless exercise that had seen way too much posturing and way too much infighting among the clans, with the juniors' decisions scrutinized and criticized as a proxy for gaining political points—all the bickering and infighting her s? ph? Quang L?c effortlessly navigated and for which she had so little patience. Yet another reason why she wouldn't ever be worthy of him.

Frustrated, exhausted, and acutely conscious she was a finger's width from snapping at someone or stabbing them or both, Hac Cúc wandered down the corridors of the inn the Council of the Eight had commandeered. It was not the same one they'd stayed in with Ly Chau, but it was similar enough: a series of small rooms with large openings onto the Silver Stream and its chaotically oriented buildings and ballet of shuttles that never really seemed to slow down—and the Ice Jade Planet in the background like a huge, dim sun, the contours of its continents sharply outlined.

A ping on her comms. It was Nhi. "Em, what's going on?"

No answer from Nhi.

"Em?"

"Ch?." It was Nhi on her comms. She sounded exhausted and wrung out, on the verge of panic. "Please. Help."

Hac Cúc felt as though she'd been thrown out into space, instantly going from exhausted and annoyed to keyed up. Sharp and all too aware she'd pay for it one way or another. "What's happening?"

No answer. And, finally, "Help."

Help. Hac Cúc ran through a dozen scenarios in her mind, and discarded them all. The elders from all the clans were there, which meant no tangler or assassin would get into the inn. The most likely explanation was fallout from Nhi's interview with her own clan elder, which she had no way of guessing at. Each clan's politics were their own.

"Where are you?"

"Room," Nhi said.

Room. A different room. The Council of the Eight had drawn the usual boundaries between clans: instead of the juniors rooming together, they now had rooms in separate clan quarters. Which meant Rooster territory.

"I'm coming," she said. She struggled to think of something that would be reassuring—decidedly not her specialty—and everything she could think of seemed false or insincere. "I'm coming," she said, again.

She followed the string of small rooms with open doors—the tearooms all lit up, the blinking blue lines of energy, the sharp smell of jasmine tea, the narrow openings and their ballet of shuttles carrying people from angled building to angled building. The private quarters: fewer people, doors locked or with retainers or alarms set on them. Ox. Rat. Snake.

There.

There was no sign. No alarm. But Shadow within, that she could feel even without unfolding her own very far, a brash and steady presence that belonged to the Roosters—not Nhi's, which was far more cautious.

Hac Cúc unfolded her own Shadow, not very far, not very strong, but just enough to signal her own presence, and that she wasn't going to budge a single finger's width, no matter what happened. Then she walked in. Not running—because that was going to be nothing but trouble in quarters full of another clan. Just walking at a fast enough clip, trying not to think of Nhi and what kind of trouble she could have gotten into.

I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming.

Stay where you are. Please. Please.

"Can I help you?" It was a Rooster junior, the sort of vaguely familiar face from clan conclaves.

Hac Cúc smiled. "That's all right," she said. She kept her Shadow under control. It took an effort. She was exhausted. "I'm just looking for Nhi. I needed to go over something with her." She kept her voice even, her tone casual.

"Ah." The Rooster junior stared at her for a moment, trying to decide if it was worth their while to challenge her. Hac Cúc felt their Shadow bump against hers, probing to see if there was any give. "I see. She's that way."

"Thank you." Hac Cúc was too tired for this. For any of this.

It was all Rooster colors: jewel tones, brash green the color of imperial jade, the deep blue of Heaven's cloth, the decoration a mixture of vids projected on configurable decoration-screens and of cloths that must have come with the elders, a far cry from the bare rooms the juniors had had to make do with—a riot of unsubtle, almost tasteless decoration that reminded Hac Cúc of why Roosters in general got on her nerves fairly fast.

She found Nhi in one of the smaller rooms: a bed and barely enough space around it to stand, and that same riot of colors all around, though the screens were off. Nhi herself was on the bed, barely visible under the quilt, Shadow so tightly wrapped around her it felt like an impregnable ship.

"I'm here," Hac Cúc said. "Em?"

No answer from the bed. Hac Cúc unfolded her Shadow a little more, feeling, acutely, the connection between her vitality center—the place low in her belly where the Shadow coalesced—and everything she was extending towards Nhi.

Still no answer.

"Em."

Bodily, Hac Cúc had an intense desire to scream or do something nonsensical. She was either too late or she wasn't—a straightforward, calm logic she'd applied all her life to most scenarios but whose cold sharpness now deserted her in the moment she needed it most.

Think think think. Panic or self-recrimination were not going to help. Unfortunately, her brain hadn't gotten the message, and was currently busy indulging in both. She could have run on her way here. She should have run.

She—

Against her own Shadow, something small flickered. "Em."

In a heartbeat she was on the bed, kneeling by Nhi's side. A hand poked out, held hers—and squeezed. She squeezed back. For a moment there was nothing in the entire universe but that shock of warm flesh against hers, that frantic heartbeat, a faint flicker in Nhi's Shadow.

She wanted to ask what happened, who she should stab. She held herself still, and asked, instead, slowly and softly, "What do you need?"

A silence. Nhi's Shadow, quietly and softly pulsing. "Silence," she said, and it was almost inaudible.

Ah.

Hac Cúc stared at the turned-off screens, and then back at Nhi. So not just silence, but possibly also darkness. "Give me a moment," she said. She got up and turned off the energy-fount in the room. The glowing blue lines vanished; the room turned darker, and the slight buzzing sound of the energy-fount vanished from hearing. She walked back to sit next to Nhi, grabbed the hand that was offered to her again, and waited. She said nothing, just felt their Shadows next to each other. Slowly and carefully, Hac Cúc stretched her own Shadow further and further. Nhi's Shadow, slow and cautious, surged to meet it; they twined, like their stretched hands. Hac Cúc closed her eyes and imagined herself flying: she was in her own clan ship, The Steel Clam, a sleek and small craft that could only carry five or six passengers and their cargo. She was moving in the Hollows, outracing any tanglers—maneuvering fast, the ship feeling like an extension of her own Shadow, sleek and fast and veering through the starless void of the Hollows, the space that twisted all light into darkness and all sound into scattered meaninglessness. She was sharp and fast and everything she needed to be—everything Nhi needed. She could feel Nhi, on the edge of her own Shadow—felt the moment Nhi's own Shadow slowly withdrew.

She opened her eyes. Nhi was sitting on the bed, staring at her. She had circles under her eyes, and looked like she hadn't slept in days. To be honest, she probably hadn't. Neither of them had.

"Thank you," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc sniffed. "For what?"

There was a long silence, Nhi's face hardening. Hac Cúc saw it as clear as a tangler in the Hollows: she was going to push Hac Cúc away again. And it would have been fine, if she hadn't looked so tired. If she hadn't looked like she could use the help, and the company. Hac Cúc said, instead, "Would you like to tell me about secrets?"

Nhi's face softened. Hac Cúc moved closer to her—and Nhi did the same thing, until they sat side by side on the bed. "There are too many," she said. Her voice was still shaking.

"Among the juniors?"

"No," Nhi said. She folded, her face resting on Hac Cúc's shoulder. Hac Cúc felt a great, unfamiliar, and almost embarrassing warmth deep in her chest; she'd been physical and even close with her girlfriends in the past, but she'd never experienced anything as devastatingly intimate and vulnerable as this.

"Ah. The elders, then. I'm assuming it's not the tangler." She paused. "Sorry. I'm tired, and it makes it hard not to be sarcastic."

Nhi didn't speak for a while, or move. Hac Cúc felt the weight of her head on her shoulder, the slow and steady rhythm of her breath, everything she wanted to keep and hold forever.

"When I'm tired," Nhi said, slowly, carefully, "everything seems to jumble together. Things get too loud, too bright. And I—" Another silence. "I feel like something terrible will happen if I don't get to my own rooms immediately."

She said it like it was a shameful secret. Hac Cúc chewed on it like a valued confidence. She said, matter-of-factly, "What kind of terrible thing?"

"That I'll lash out at everyone with Shadow, or collapse inwards and never recover. And in the moment, I'm not sure which is worse."

"They're both equally bad," Hac Cúc said, sharply. "You know you're not worth less than other people, don't you?"

A sigh, from Nhi. "Sometimes."

Hac Cúc's heart felt too large for her chest. At least it was honest, but it made her angry that Nhi didn't value herself more. There were plenty of terrible people in this life, and they wholeheartedly believed themselves to be better than others—and Nhi, who was someone, didn't believe in herself enough. "I'll take that," Hac Cúc said. "But we should come back to it."

"Maybe," Nhi said.

"Did something terrible ever happen to you?"

"I don't know," Nhi said. It was bare and honest. "Maybe it did, when I was a child and less able to deal with it. Maybe it didn't."

"You're not always able to get to your own rooms, are you?"

"Sometimes I just run," Nhi said. "As far as I can. As fast as I can. So I can be somewhere in the silence and try to hold it all at bay."

"I'm assuming that's what happened just now," Hac Cúc said. A silence. She reached out to squeeze Nhi's hand. "How secret is it?"

Nhi said, "The kind of thing that would be embarrassing to admit to an elder, let alone to other clans."

Hac Cúc laughed, softly. "Good thing I'm not that kind of other clan, then."

"Ch?!"

"I know what you mean," Hac Cúc said, more seriously. She said, finally, "I appreciate the trust." She chewed on it for a while, wondering on what would be fair to give in return. She said, finally, "I'm always afraid."

"You?" Nhi snorted. "You—"

Hac Cúc put a finger on Nhi's lips—feeling them contract under her touch, sending a spike of breathless, heightened desire within her. "Shh," she said. "Not of people. Of myself."

"Ah." Nhi's words were barely audible beneath Hac Cúc's touch.

Hac Cúc said, slowly, carefully, "I was five when Quang L?c chose me. He walked among the Snake younglings, the ones barely old enough to be disciples, and he pointed to me. He said I would do great things."

"You have." There was quiet wonder in Nhi's voice. It hurt, because she didn't know what she was talking about.

"No," Hac Cúc said. "I'm too brash. Too sharp. Too cruel. You've seen it with Lành."

"Lành would drive anyone to anger." An exhausted sigh from Nhi. "And she's been even worse than usual on this mission."

"Not my s? ph?," Hac Cúc said, simply. "And I'll never be him."

Nhi was silent for a while. She slid from Hac Cúc's shoulder, down into her lap. Her face—bruised, dark, and haggard—looked up at Hac Cúc. Even worn down and shaking, she was still the loveliest person Hac Cúc had seen; there was something about her that just drew her eye and held it, a quiet firmness, a deliberation, a sense that she wholly inhabited the space around her and wouldn't ever twist herself out of shape to conform to what others expected. She was frowning now, looking away from Hac Cúc, but her attention was still utterly focused on her, so strong Hac Cúc could almost feel the air trembling with it. Hac Cúc shivered with anticipation, with a wild and nebulous desire to bend down, to touch Nhi. She held herself still instead, because the last thing Nhi needed was someone invading her space now.

Finally Nhi said, "It must be so hard, feeling you need to be perfect all the time, else it'll all come apart at any point." Each word felt like it had been weighed, carefully slotted into its proper place.

Hac Cúc had expected some of the same platitudes people had told her—things about being her own self, about how it didn't and shouldn't matter. She'd been bracing herself against hearing them from Nhi's mouth. Instead … instead, she had this, and it was like a shock in her chest. An odd, discomfiting thrill, the same thing she'd felt when they'd touched back on the shuttle.

"Yes," she said. "Yes." She grasped for words that wouldn't come. She was in shock, and it was ridiculous. She killed people for a living. She'd imprisoned the largest tangler ever seen. She shouldn't have been struck speechless.

Nhi reached up. She was surrounded by Shadow—it spread around her like a halo, but Hac Cúc saw now that Nhi used it as a shield to steady herself against the world. "Ch??" she said.

"Yes?"

Nhi drew her down, and kissed her.

Her lips were warm and trembling under Hac Cúc's—and the wave of desire within her crested and hardened, and she kissed Nhi back, feeling at once too tight and too large for her own body, that sense of warmth tightening in her lower belly, Shadow flaring for a brief moment.

Nhi broke the kiss, but didn't run away like she had on the shuttle. She remained in Hac Cúc's lap, staring up at her. Smiling, and it was an expression Hac Cúc would have killed again and again to see.

"Thank you," Hac Cúc said.

Nhi laughed. "For what?" she said, asking exactly the question Hac Cúc had asked of her, earlier, but it was softer and quieter, and there was affection in it.

"Nothing," Hac Cúc said. She felt herself blush. "Secrets."

"Now that would be worth something," Nhi said. "Speaking of secrets—"

"Shh. Not now," Hac Cúc said—and bent down and kissed Nhi again, because she could.

After the kiss—the kisses—Nhi remained on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She rubbed her own skin, feeling the warmth in her belly and cheeks. She felt boneless and drained, but it wasn't altogether an unpleasant feeling. She wanted to sink into sleep with the memory of Hac Cúc's touch on her lips, the slight press of Hac Cúc's skin on her—wondering what it'd feel like to feel that press elsewhere.

And, beyond the kisses, there had been what they had shared. Time together. Space. Not just physical space, but mental space. Intimacy. Hac Cúc asking what Nhi needed. Listening to Nhi's own secrets—to shameful things, and not blinking, not judging. Simply listening and asking questions, trying to get to the bottom of how it all worked, taking it all on faith. And, most of all, she'd offered a secret in return, understanding the weight of what Nhi was offering her.

Nhi hoped she'd said the right words in exchange for that secret—Hac Cúc had let her kiss her, and even kissed Nhi again, which surely meant it hadn't been such a terrible thing to say in return. Surely she'd have said, if Nhi had offended?

Surely.

The weight of the exhaustion Nhi had been keeping at bay was coming back now, crushing her. The deep-seated knowledge that holding secrets—that speaking up while knowing them—was bound to drive people away. That it might be safer, and more convenient, to drive Hac Cúc away before they both got too attached and got hurt. No matter how much she wanted this.

As Nhi lay on the bed staring at the darkened ceiling, feeling her own thoughts scatter and peter out, the Shadow she'd wrapped around her for pressure slowly fading away as her conscious control slipped, things surfaced in and out of existence. Events and facts, fizzing in and out. Ly Chau. Nebula Cinnabar. A navigator poison, slow acting. No Dog among the elders, and that curious deflection from Elder Lieu about politics. The tangler, too huge, too frightening. Juniors. Bao Duy, too inclined to gamble her own life away. Lành, bitter and uncontrollable. Hac Cúc, isolated and overaggressive. Nhi, asocial, graceless, slow. All of them failures in their own different ways.

Failures. Expected to fail. Expendable.

This had never been about catching a tangler, and people were in danger. No, not just people. The clans. Everyone.

She needed to warn someone.

But darkness was catching up to her, and she sank into sleep, powerless to stop it.