6. Fights

Hac Cúc walked away from Nhi's room with a smile on her face and a deep feeling of satiation and happiness with the world that lasted all of five blinks—until she remembered exactly the situation she was in. In the Rooster quarters of an inn with a tangler still to be dealt with, far too much politics, and no immediate escape from any of it.

Not to mention Nhi.

It had been good, with Nhi. A space to be someone she usually wasn't. To not have to excel. Nhi had got it exactly right when she'd said that it felt like it was all tearing her apart.

Except Nhi was wrong, too. She hadn't seen all of Hac Cúc. Deep down, Hac Cúc was sure that Nhi, like the rest of her girlfriends, hoped that Hac Cúc was like her su ph?, Quang Loc—compassionate and kind in addition to her navigator skills.

And Hac Cúc knew—deep down, deep in her heart—that she would never attain the same space as her s? ph?. That she would never live up to the promise she'd shown when she'd been chosen. Nhi would inevitably see that.

Tea. She needed tea. She'd find some tea and just enjoy it there, staring at space. Looking at the unblinking stars and enjoying their slow, invisible changes. Yes.

She wandered into the first room with an open door: a long, narrow one, its large opening showing the Ice Jade Planet, its continents sharply delineated beneath whirls of clouds. Hac Cúc almost turned back, startled, because there was someone seated there already, the lines of energy converging on a table and a tray—and when that someone rose, Hac Cúc saw that it was Lành.

They stared at each other for a while.

"Joining me for a drink?" Lành's voice was bitter, but the offer seemed sincere. Hac Cúc hesitated. "Of course you won't."

Hac Cúc wasn't sure, later, what pushed her further into the room: a mixture of curiosity and need for company, even if that company was someone she utterly despised. A hunger for a connection to Quang Loc, no matter its cause.

Lành poured the tea, handed one to Hac Cúc. Her Shadow was weak, pulsing in odd patterns, unlike the quiet brashness of Ambush in the Grass. There were deep circles under her eyes, and something else: a fey light that reminded Hac Cúc of the tangler's tendrils, contrasted with Shadow.

"I suppose I should thank you," Lành said. "For rescuing me."

Hac Cúc raised an eyebrow. "Your gratitude is overwhelming."

"Don't make this more difficult than it already is. I put up with Nhi because she means well. I'm not sure why I put up with you at all," Lành snapped. She downed her tea in one gulp, as if it had been rice wine. She stared at the empty cup, her silhouette dwarfed by the Ice Jade Planet behind her. "It spoke to me," she said, softly, slowly. "I can still feel it. Like an ache at the back of my mind."

"It spoke to you. With words?" Hac Cúc asked, sharply.

"Just … feelings. It was miserable outside of the Hollows, and then it could fly free in the canyon. It was happy in that moment, and it wanted me to be happy, too."

"Destroying everything in the Silver Stream in its path. Some kind of happiness."

Lành slammed her cup on the tray; it took on the blue hue of the energy lines as they diffused heat into it. "I knew you wouldn't understand!"

"No," Hac Cúc said. It was late and she was tired and she only seemed to have hurtful words left. "You're right. I don't. I'm not the person to come to for absolution. That's not what I do. I kill things. I kill people. I keep people safe. I'm not here to hear excuses about how unreliable you've always been, about why you endangered an entire mission and thought it was fine."

The teacup clattered to the floor. Lành had risen, breathing hard. Her Shadow, unfolding, pressed against Hac Cúc, trying to push her against the wall—in the heartbeat before Hac Cúc unfolded her own Shadow, it felt viscous and slimy, and in Lành's eyes pulsed with light on the same frequency as the tangler they had captured. "Take it back," she said. "Take it back!"

"Or what? Are you going to sting me, like the tangler would?"

"I'm not a tangler!"

"You're certainly not giving me that vibe," Hac Cúc said. She tightened her own Shadow, trying to use Divine Harmony to lift Lành off the floor to make her lose her balance. Lành's Ambush in the Grass effortlessly broke every one of her attempts to seize her. "Is this why my s? ph? rescued you? So you could turn into one of our worst enemies?"

Lành laughed. It was bitter and cutting. "Oh, em. You know why your s? ph? rescued me. Because he's got a heart in his body. Because he's ten thousand times the person you'll ever be. Because you could live myriad lives and die and be reborn myriad times, and you'd still not be him."

Every word was like a knife stab into Hac Cúc's belly. "Take it back," she said. Her Shadow, wildly weaving, finally struck Lành—lifting her off the ground and sending her flying against the wall.

Lành rolled, catching herself on the energy-fount—for a moment she glowed blue, and then she put a hand on the floor and pushed—and all of a sudden her Shadow went from bright, annoying Ambush in the Grass to something dark and viscous. It was holding her against the wall—and Lành pressed again, and the pressure became hard enough to break Hac Cúc's bones. Hac Cúc found herself back in the darkness, back with the tangler pressing against her. Back to that viscous touch pushing again and again against her own Shadow, trying again and again to sting her.

She lashed out, pushing back on it—no finesse or technique to her blows, augmented by Shadow. She needed to get free. She needed to break away.

"Ch?!" It was Nhi's voice.

Hac Cúc found herself standing, breathing hard, over Lành. She was on the floor, curled into a ball, Shadow wrapped tight around her. Blood pooled under her hands, and one of her fingers hung at an angle.

She. What had she done?

She.

She hated Lành and everything Lành stood for, but that wasn't a reason—

That—

Hac Cúc looked up, met Nhi's gaze. In Nhi's face was nothing but stunned horror and repulsion. She raised a hand to her mouth, Shadow flickering into life around her. To protect herself against Hac Cúc.

Hac Cúc's stomach heaved.

"That's not who I am," she said. She pinged the inn's owner on her comms, asking for bandages. Then, slowly, shakily, she knelt by Lành's side. "I'm sorry," she said. Lành was conscious, but turned away from her.

That's not who I am.

But Hac Cúc had seen Nhi's gaze, and she knew. They both knew that this was exactly who she was.

Nhi helped Hac Cúc bandage Lành, in the light from the energy-fount. They worked in silence. Nhi was still thinking of what to say and do. She'd woken up, woozy and panicked, remembering what she'd worked out when she'd sunk into sleep—and walked to find Hac Cúc and warn her. Only to find her fighting Lành.

What to do was simple, comparatively speaking. There was a hierarchy of emergencies: in this specific case, making sure Lành was stable was the most pressing task. What Nhi had worked out—the terrible chain of events leading them all here—could wait for a few moments.

Nhi still wasn't sure what to say. Whatever she said in these situations invariably seemed to be the wrong thing, and in this specific case there was so much at stake that she was afraid of messing it up the way she always did. And even if she didn't—she knew too much about Hac Cúc now. Too many secrets. Too many dark things. It changed things. It always did.

She'd seen Hac Cúc's face during the fight with Lành—the frozen look and the fear, that rigidity of someone no longer in control. She'd understood then what Hac Cúc feared: it wasn't just her verbal cruelty, but what it could lead to. A loss of control, such a profound betrayal of everything Hac Cúc wanted to stand for. She wanted to be perfect. To live up to the potential Quang Loc had seen in her. And of course Quang Loc—the legendary Pure Heart Master—would never sink so low as to beat up a fellow junior.

"Here," Nhi said. "She should wake up soon."

Lành's Shadow was like a low-banked fire, but she was still alive. Her eyes were closed.

"Are you—" Hac Cúc asked.

"I'm not going to say anything," Nhi said. "Not unless Lành's state worsens. Did she start this?"

Hac Cúc bit her lip. "Maybe she did. But it doesn't change—"

"You're too harsh on yourself."

"No," Hac Cúc said, sharply. "Would you do the same thing?"

"I'm not you," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc glared at her, Shadow roiling. "No," she said. "But that's not the point, is it?"

Nhi wasn't really sure why Hac Cúc seemed so unsatisfied. Why Nhi seemed to make everything worse with everything she said. She fell back to the familiar, the easy. "We need to warn someone."

"You said you weren't going to tell anyone," Hac Cúc said, sharply.

"That's not about this," Nhi said. She could feel Hac Cúc's anger and shame like physical blows, and wasn't quite sure what to do with either of them. She'd have left, but she couldn't afford to. "It's about the tangler."

"What about the tangler?"

"It's gone."

That was Lành's voice, still thick with unconsciousness.

"Wait. What?"

"It's gone," Lành said. "It was … it was free. For a moment only, and then it plunged back."

"Where did it go?"

Nhi forced herself to focus. She accessed the window-screen and changed the view to the canyon where they'd left the tangler. Somehow—even knowing everything that she did—she expected the window-screen to show a pulsing mass of tentacles. She expected to be proven wrong, for her fears to be nothing more than idle fancies. It would have hurt, but it would have been easier to deal with.

But, when the view became clear enough for them to see, there was nothing there. The barrier was gone as if it had never been, and it was just … canyon. Buildings. Ruins. Nothing else. Nothing that even suggested there had been a tangler there.

"It is gone." Hac Cúc's face was white. "Where?"

Lành sat up, glaring at them. Her Shadow flickered—it was dark and odd, like it had been before during the tangler chase. "Why would you expect me to know this?"

"Because it talked to you!" Hac Cúc said.

"Stop it," Nhi said. Behind the door, distant noises, but not the commotion she'd have expected. The moment the barrier went down, surely the elders would have noticed. Surely alarms would have been blaring everywhere. Surely … "I need to focus, and this is decidedly not helpful. Plus, that one fight was enough."

Hac Cúc tensed, Shadow tightening. She'd been hurt by what Nhi had said. Nhi wasn't quite sure why—it was something Hac Cúc herself would have agreed on—except that obviously, sometimes, people didn't like the implicit made words.

Nhi would have apologized, but she was too busy trying not to panic. "I don't know where the tangler is. But I don't think it went back to the Hollows."

"All right, slow down," Hac Cúc said. She pointed to Nhi. "You weren't going to tell me this about the tangler?"

"No," Nhi said. She looked around her, at the room—and nudged the door closed with her Shadow. She took a deep, shaking breath. "What I was going to tell you is that I don't think we were meant to succeed."

"You make no sense," Lành said. "And why aren't there alarms? If that tangler escaped, we should know about it."

"She does make sense." It was Hac Cúc, on her other side. "I'd already found it odd, but I'd assumed it was because someone else wanted to look good."

Nhi breathed in shakily. She'd never shied away from the truth, but this truth hurt. "Nebula Cinnabar is a navigator poison, and we already know that none of us poisoned Ly Chau."

"Well, I'm glad to hear we've all been cleared," Lành said.

"Shut up," Hac Cúc said, sharply. "What of Nebula Cinnabar?"

"You said it yourself. It's a slow poison. Ly Chau didn't get into any fights we saw, didn't get poisoned anywhere in the Silver Stream. Remember when we all met at the Rooster Needle, and she came to pick us up?"

Hac Cúc inhaled sharply. Nhi could see her hands shaking. "You mean she got poisoned there. Before we ever met her. Back when she was in Rooster territory. The tea," she said, softly. The tea Ly Chau had contemptuously drunk and not shared with anyone else. "But that means—"

That means Elder Lieu had known about it, or closed her eyes on it—or worse, done it herself. "I know what that means," Nhi said, sharply. "I hate it and all it stands for."

"I don't understand," Lành said. She rose on tottering legs, making her way to the door. "You," she said, pointing to Nhi, "make no sense. And you"—she pointed to Hac Cúc—"assaulted me. I'm leaving. Wherever that tangler is, the elders will catch it. They'll keep us safe. That's what they always do."

She was gone before Nhi could think of anything smart to say. She was … not exactly Nhi's friend but at least someone Nhi wished to be well, and she was obviously in distress. "We should find her," she said, slowly. Fix the mess Nhi had made, the words she'd spoken that didn't seem to be the right ones.

"Oh, let her go." Hac Cúc's voice was dark. "You know what's going to happen if she stays. She'll try to go back to the familiar. Or worse, she'll turn towards the tangler. She can't be trusted."

The same way Hac Cúc couldn't be trusted to keep calm around Lành? Nhi tried, very hard, to not say the words, because they were true, and hurtful. But she was worried they were showing in her posture—and more importantly, that they were affecting her opinion of Hac Cúc. "You believe me," Nhi said.

Hac Cúc was staring at her with a particular hunger in her face. "Always," she said. "Why, though?"

Not why was Nhi saying this, but why the elders were doing this.

"I don't know," Nhi said. "I don't play politics. But, if we'd failed, that tangler would have gone down to the Ice Jade Planet and stung everyone there." She could barely envision the loss of life; it would have been immense. "That we succeeded against all odds"—she saw Hac Cúc smile at this, briefly—"means they must have set it loose. Which means it's not back in the Hollows. They opened a navigation gate and sent it somewhere."

"Downworld." Hac Cúc's voice was flat. "That's not a precise enough location."

Nhi shook her head. "It won't be hard to find. Just follow the newscasts for the deaths. Ice Jade is replete with habitats. But we'd have to catch it again." It had been difficult enough the first time, and catching it again would just put them back in the same spot. And that they'd have to do it again with too many navigators between them and their target—oh, Heavens. She was going to be sick. Just the thought of having to talk to Elder Lieu was making her nauseous.

"Lành could feel it. That's—part of why we had the fight," Hac Cúc said. "So yes, I think it's loose. I just—we can't just march in there and confront people! We—" She stared at her hands. "I need to contact my s? ph?."

"Ah," Nhi said. "Should I leave?"

Hac Cúc nodded. "Yes, if you would. I'd rather have the space."

It took an unusually long time for Quang Loc to answer—time enough for Hac Cúc to wonder if he already knew about her failure. He couldn't. He was a legend, but even he couldn't possibly have found out. Unless Lành had complained to the Ox Elder and the Ox Elder to the Snake, but surely—

Enough. Anxiety was getting her nowhere.

When he came online, he was looking exhausted. "Hac Cúc," he said. "What's the matter?"

"It's escaped," Hac Cúc said. "The tangler. It's. It's loose somewhere, and I don't know what to do."

A silence. Quang Loc was watching her.

"I did something wrong, didn't I?" She knew what she'd done wrong already, but perhaps there was more. Perhaps there was another test, like the ones he'd used to run in her childhood, the ones where she'd failed and failed until she finally figured out the rules.

At length, he sighed. "I was hoping you wouldn't get involved in this."

Involved. In. This. Her blood instantly ran cold. He couldn't be saying what she thought he was saying. He—

"What is ‘this' exactly?" she asked.

Another sigh from Quang Loc. "You asked me to look into something. I did."

So at least he hadn't been part of it. It was a small and utterly inadequate consolation. "What's going on, S? ph??"

"Politics." He looked old—not the patriarch, the wise one, just small and tired and like someone she could have snapped in two halves with a mere brush of her Shadow. It was an unavoidable, shameful thought. How dare she have no respect for her s? ph?? "I told you the Dogs were unhappy with the clans."

"Yes?"

"The clans are unhappy, too. They don't appreciate the empire's attempt to cut them out of the navigation business. They feel disrespected. That people have forgotten what it is that they keep away from ships in the Hollows."

Oh, gods. Hac Cúc said, slowly, carefully, "After we'd tried and failed to catch the tangler, someone was going to look good, swooping in to take all the credit. It was the clans, wasn't it? The tangler was going to get loose in a very large population center, Ly Chau and the Dogs would be conspicuously absent"—being dead did have that disadvantage—"and the clans would just come in and save everyone. But for this to matter, people needed to die first. The risk had to be real." She felt sick to her stomach. "Please—"

"I'm not sure what you want me to tell you," Quang Loc said.

"Something helpful! Some advice I can use!"

A silence that felt like it was going on for ten thousand years. Quang Loc said, "I can't help you. You understand that."

No. No. Hac Cúc didn't. On some level, she did. She'd always known he'd see what she was, how she failed to live up to the promise he'd seen in her. She'd always known that one day, he'd leave, not even turning back to stare at her—because she would no longer be worthy. No, that wasn't it. She'd never been worthy. He'd just have realized she wasn't.

"I don't understand it, no."

A silence. Then, very softly from him, "Then let this be the lesson you never were able to hear from me. You worship the ground I tread on. You think me a living legend."

"Because you are!"

"I'm just a man," Quang Loc said. "And perhaps once, my cultivation of Shadow was unnaturally good. Perhaps once, I was unnaturally fast when piloting ships. Just as you are."

No. No. No. "You—please—" She was sobbing now.

"I'm just a man," Quang Loc said. "And in particular, I don't hold any particular power over the elders. I can't stop them."

"You could try!"

"I have tried," Quang Loc said. "It cost me what little influence I had within the clan. And it didn't work."

"You could—"

"You asked for my advice. My advice to you is this: stand aside."

"Why should I?"

"Because you'll change nothing. Just as I didn't change anything. This'll come to pass, one way or another. And it's better if you're not there when it does." He looked at her. His skin was translucent and thin, and Hac Cúc saw bones under it, the outline of a fragile, easily breakable skeleton. "You have a future. A bright one. Don't waste it."

"S? ph?!"

But he'd cut the communication and wouldn't answer, no matter how hard she tried to raise him again.

It was Nhi who found her sprawled on the floor. Hac Cúc barely heard the door open, but she did feel Nhi's Shadow brushing against hers, a tentative reaching out to her, which she didn't acknowledge. How could she?

"Ch?," Nhi said. "Ch?."

"I can't," Hac Cúc said. "I just can't."

"Can't what? What did he say?"

"He said—" Hac Cúc struggled to breathe. Abruptly Nhi was too close, and she was too vulnerable. Hac Cúc unfolded her Shadow, pushing herself to stand up. Nhi stood up as well, puzzlement on her face. "He said to stand aside. He said there was nothing to be done."

Nhi stared at her. "And that's what you're going to do? Nothing?"

"What do you want me to do?" Hac Cúc said.

I'm just a man.

If he was just a man, and she was less than him, where did that leave her? For so long she'd been trying to live up to the example he set; for so long she'd looked up to him as an ideal, while being keenly aware she'd never be him. And now …

She was cruel, and he was cowardly, and where did that leave her? Where—

There was nothing that made sense anymore. "I can't," she said.

"Can't what?"

"Remember the bedroom?" Hac Cúc snapped. "When you couldn't move anymore."

"That's not the same!"

"It is exactly the same!"

A silence. Nhi said, slowly, carefully, "I understand you're disappointed. You wanted to live up to an ideal and it turns out to have been rotten—"

"He's not rotten. He's a good man. A good man."

Nhi flinched as if Hac Cúc had struck her. She took a deep, shaking breath, Shadow slowly hardening around her. "You know he's not a good man."

"No, I don't! You don't know anything." How could she? How dare she judge? How—it wasn't just Quang Loc she was judging. It was her. Her. Hac Cúc. The child who'd failed.

A sigh, from Nhi. "You're not him."

"No, I'm not. I'm the kind of person who'll beat Lành bloody just because I can. Just because I'm scared. You know that. You've seen it."

"I have," Nhi said. She didn't say anything more. She didn't need to. Hac Cúc had seen her look when she'd walked into the room after the fight. The silence stretched on and on, uncomfortable. Because Nhi was too ashamed, too angry at her?

Hac Cúc should have known what to say, but she could barely move.

The door opened. It was two juniors, one from the Rooster and one from the Ox. "The Elders want to see you."