9. The Dog Needle

Having people on board The Steel Clam was weird, but not as weird as having Lành sit next to her and feel almost no urge to be unkind to her. It wasn't that Hac Cúc had lost her bad habits that fast but rather she was navigating quickly and aggressively while trying to keep her mind clear of worrying about Nhi.

Come on, come on, come on. Please hold out, em. Please be there.

The ship was pure clan: it was reinforced, mobile, maneuverable, and being back on board was like breathing again. Unlike everything else she'd piloted so far, this felt like an extension of her will. She scythed through the atmosphere, Shadow extended around her—Divine Harmony, fast, aggressive, stealthy, the way she'd always been meant to be—except that her thoughts were full of worry for Nhi.

Come on, come on.

"I can feel it," Lành said.

Ahead on the window-screen, a glint above the cloud layer: the Dog Needle, so far away she could barely see its infrastructure. There would be ships if she went closer, and shields of Shadow, but even the long-range sensors couldn't quite feel them yet. "Can you feel how far it is from the Needle?"

"It's not that precise, no. All I know is that it's somewhere, and we're getting close."

"How—" Hac Cúc tried to find a tactful way to broach the question while steering a ship at breakneck speed through the upper atmosphere. They were high enough that there was an atmospheric tide—a messy, messy prospect with the Fragments of the broken moon doing weird things with gravity—and she was currently having to push against the overall direction of said tide. "How is it feeling?"

"Puzzled. Angry," Lành said. She didn't sound happy. "It was imprisoned, and then they let it out, and it grew larger because it fed?"

"It fed on what."

"I think one of the Ox juniors' shields slipped when letting it loose," Lành said. "Please don't ask me to speculate any further."

"I'm good," Hac Cúc said. "I'm firmly in favor of the contents of my stomach remaining in my stomach."

Please be alive, em. Please hang on. Please please please.

She'd half expected Bao Duy to weigh in, but her only answer was a distant grunt on the internal comms. She wasn't on the control deck. She was down in the belly of the ship, in the hangar, busy doing something to one of the gliders. She'd asked Hac Cúc for permission, and Hac Cúc had granted it. She could always replace gliders. She couldn't resurrect Nhi, and the thought of being in that position hurt worse than the thought of a tangler's sting.

There were ships ahead of them. Navigator ships. Hac Cúc swore under her breath. "They're chasing her."

Lành pursed her lips. "Can I say something you're not going to like?"

"Yes," Hac Cúc said. The atmospheric tide was moving, which was annoying. It was taking everything she had to keep the ship moving fast. The atmosphere was pushing against her Shadow, and it felt as though she was continually having to push back. It exhausted her, and she could feel her inner strength draining.

"It might not be the worst thing if they're chasing her," Lành said. "Surely they'd retrieve her before she got stung by the tangler."

Bao Duy said, from the hold, "We're talking about people who thought dead Dogs and dead civilians were an acceptable price to pay for the continuation of the clans' hold on commerce."

"Precisely," Hac Cúc said. She gritted her teeth, refusing to voice her worst fear aloud. That they'd let Nhi die in a heartbeat, because they thought she didn't matter. Or worse—that Nhi would let herself die, through a combination of principles and thinking she mattered less than them.

The dots of the clans' ships were getting larger and larger. Time to fight.

"Get ready," she said.

Lành got up and left the control deck to join Bao Duy in the hangar. After a while, Hac Cúc saw the hangar doors open, and two dots of light—two gliders—slip out of the ship.

"We need a distraction," she said.

"Yes, that's you," Bao Duy said. Her voice sounded muffled. Hac Cúc could feel, distantly, her Shadow getting further and further away from the ship's hull.

"I need to open the gate." She was the only one who could; it was possible to do it on a glider—it would require control—but no glider would be able to withstand the pull into the Hollows, and no person in a suit and a glider could be expected to survive in the Hollows.

"We'll get to that bit later," Bao Duy said, sharply. "Right now, I need you to distract them so Lành can talk to that tangler, and also to find where Nhi is."

Hac Cúc opened her mouth to protest, closed it. Bao Duy was right. One thing at a time.

She extended her Shadow, softening it until it merged with the ship—until it was the atmosphere and the tide and the gravity of the broken moon, until everything was her and she was everything.

And then she dived towards the waiting clan ships, with the same ruthlessness and drive she had on her clan missions—when she moved in for the kill; when her targets saw her coming and knew it was too late to stop her.

They scattered in shock, like a flock of scared birds. It wasn't going to last. Any moment now, they'd realize it was a junior's ship, a junior's Shadow and technique—and then, if there was an elder on board, they'd regroup.

"I can see her!" Bao Duy's voice was sharp. "She's—she's in the middle of the tendrils. That's not good."

Everything froze. There was nothing left but rage in Hac Cúc's mind. "Don't you dare," she said, on the comms to those fleeing clan ships. "Don't you dare kill her." It was only after she'd spoken that she realized she'd just threatened the entire Council of the Eight where everyone could hear her.

Silence. A faint buzzing of sound. Then Elder Li?u's shaking voice, "We're not trying to kill her."

Lành's voice, floating on the comms. "I'm almost close enough." She'd unfolded her Shadow: her Ambush in the Grass was dark and pulsing, with that same weird viscousness to it, nothing human, nothing clan. She was on the left side of the tangler, going closer to the umbrella, Bao Duy in lockstep behind her. "Give me a moment."

"I can see her," Bao Duy said, again. "She's not going to hold on for very long. If Lành can do something—"

"Lành would like to be left alone," Lành said, grimly and with a voice that felt like it belonged in the Hollows—echoing, words slurred. "So I can talk to this—thing. It's very eager to have some company, and I'd rather it didn't try to sting me."

So, a distraction, then.

Hac Cúc could provide that. In spite of the way her heart was in her throat—in spite of her fears for Nhi, her anger at herself and everyone else complicit with this situation—she could do that.

She opened her comms, trying to find the frequency for Nhi. "Em!" she said, sharply. "Em." And to Elder Li?u, slowly and savagely, "Stand aside. Now."

And she reached deep inside for her Shadow—to make herself seem bigger than she was, hoping to scare them all into action.

Nhi was failing. She was falling. The shield of Shadow she'd deployed was getting thinner and thinner, the tendrils she couldn't see pressing against it. Her entire body was going limp because all her energy was maintaining the faltering shield, and it was only the magnetic clamps that kept her attached to the glider. She was scared, but it was almost soothing. They'd stopped trying to reach her; she'd stopped having to make an effort.

She was alone and it was going to be horrible, but at least it was going to be quick.

Her comms were beeping. She ignored them. People had stopped saying things that made sense some time ago.

Almost gone.

And then she felt it. An effusive and fast series of—not blows, but pushes. She knew that Shadow, that technique.

Bao Duy?

"Em!" It was Hac Cúc.

Wait.

They'd walked away. All of them. They'd left her, after she'd said—she didn't know what. But she'd said it, and everyone had looked at her with pity in their eyes, and they'd left her. To the tangler. To Elder Li?u.

People left. They didn't come back. "Chi? Em?"

"We're here." Hac Cúc's voice was thick with relief.

Back. They were back. No one had ever come back for her. Nhi struggled to breathe. "What—"

"We're here," Hac Cúc said, again. "Hold on just a little longer, please. Em."

A flood of relief.

"Please. Hold on."

They had come back. She wasn't alone. She had them. She had Hac Cúc.

Hac Cúc.

"Chi," she said, on the comms. "I—" She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to say. Some admission of vulnerability, of love?

"Shh. I know. Now isn't the time," Hac Cúc said. She sounded relieved, but also under some huge strain. "Let's get you out of there, and then we can talk. Promise."

"Promise?" She sounded so garbled, so incoherent. But she wasn't alone anymore, and it was like a warmth in her belly.

"Promise."

"I'm close enough." Lành's voice, on the comms. Her Shadow spreading. And then her voice again, but this time it wasn't speaking human words. It was saying syllables that echoed around in Nhi's brain, things that stretched like wax, without significance or logic.

"Em." It was Hac Cúc, on a private channel. "We're going to get you out of there."

"How?"

Around her, something shook. The tendrils. They were pulling away. "How—?"

"Don't ask questions." Hac Cúc's voice was darkly amused. "You really don't want to know."

A glider nudged hers. Hands held her. "I have her." It was Bao Duy.

"Chi," Nhi said, or tried to say. It all came out jumbled.

"It's all right," Bao Duy said. "We're getting you out, and then we're going to need to move fast."

"You're making no sense." It still came out jumbled, but Bao Duy's grip on her didn't waver.

"We're here," Hac Cúc said. As Bao Duy pushed out of the mass of tendrils—the tendrils that had spread to let them pass—as Lành spoke words that Nhi couldn't understand, frequencies that vibrated in Nhi's muscles and teeth, Nhi saw the ship waiting for her and felt, distant and relieved, Hac Cúc's Shadow, waiting to wrap itself around her. To hold her.

"We're here," Hac Cúc said.

Here. I love you, she tried to say, but the words wouldn't get past her exhaustion, and anyway, it had gone so badly the last time she'd tried them. "Chi—I."

"Shh," Hac Cúc said. "I know. It's all right. We've got you." And, softer still, like a wholly inadequate answer to the words that Nhi had not been able to utter, "I am here, em."

On the comms, Lành was speaking that strange language again. Hac Cúc was trying, very, very hard, not to do anything lacking in common sense—like running away as far as possible, or going straight for Nhi so she could hold her. Instead she was swooping and diving, Shadow extended, scattering the clan ships. They were extending Shadow now—it was Elder Li?u's style, the Blood-Extinguishing Palm, a fighting style that sent thin, sharp jolts of Shadow into the atmosphere, each strong enough to badly damage a ship's engines.

Hac Cúc dodged. Again and again. Her Divine Harmony style didn't include much in the way of shields. She usually swooped in, stabbed people as hard as she could with blades of Shadow, and then swooped out and ran fast.

That was obviously not going to work in this situation. She didn't have stealth, which was a prerequisite. She wasn't the strongest one—that would be the Elder—and above all, she was hopelessly outnumbered, and it was taking all her focus just to keep her ship moving. She'd got Nhi out of trouble, but she wasn't sure they could pull off the rest.

It was going to take a small miracle to get out of this.

As they cleared the tangler's last tendrils, Nhi was able to pull herself into a semblance of being upright, or at any rate no longer limp. It wasn't much—she was exhausted, and every noise seemed a little too loud in a way that prefigured total collapse—but it was something.

She could see, far away, the Dog Needle. And, much closer, clan ships—weaving, dodging, running. Shadow deployed—shockwaves that she felt the distant echo of. She unfolded her own Shadow, held it close even though it was shaking.

One of the ships was diving, again and again, towards the others, aggressive and fast, extending Shadow seamlessly. It was a clan ship, and—

Oh.

That was Hac Cúc, wasn't it? She was distracting the ships. To Nhi's eye, it was obvious that it wasn't a fair fight, but Hac Cúc's ship looked threatening enough that no one—not even Elder Li?u—wanted to engage.

"Are you going to be all right?" Bao Duy asked.

"I—I think so," Nhi said. She'd always been good at processing and compartmentalizing information. That she'd almost died was a thing she'd deal with later; right now, it was obvious that the present needed her, and needed her fast.

"Good." Bao Duy's voice was warm. Nhi wasn't sure how to take it. They'd come back. The enormity of what had happened was a little too much, a little too raw. "I need to keep an eye on the tangler for Lành, and my glider got damaged a bit."

"How badly damaged?" Nhi asked.

Bao Duy made a noise that was noncommittal. "I can function. I'm just going to keep well away from anything that requires maneuvering."

"You said you needed to watch Lành?" Nhi could see Lành. She was on the glider, standing with her feet firmly planted where the magnetic clamps were. Her head was raised towards something Nhi couldn't see, and everything about the pose spoke of reverence.

"Not Lành, the tangler. Just to make sure it's not trying anything funny. Lành is trying to convince the tangler to go home. Then Hac Cúc is going to open a gate." Bao Duy's glider pulled away from Nhi's. "Can you get to Hac Cúc's ship? Or at least keep your head down."

And then she was gone. Nhi held on to her glider, hanging from it like some dark and awkward fruit. She watched Hac Cúc dive again and again, dodging the blasts of Shadow from Elder Li?u's Blood-Extinguishing Palm. She shivered. She could feel the pull of the atmospheric tides on her suit; with the motor off, she was drifting further and further away from the battle.

She turned on the motor, feeling the low rumble of it—a little too much, a little too loud for her overstimulated sense of hearing. She nudged the motor into a higher speed so the inertia made her horizontal again, dragged along by the glider once more.

So. A gate. It made sense. Getting the tangler back to the Hollows was the fastest way to get rid of it. But it presumed some ability to herd it, which they didn't have. The clans had probably set it towards the Dog Needles, but that would have taken a lot of juniors and elders working together. And ships.

Which they didn't have.

They had the one ship, and Hac Cúc on board it.

Think think think. Nhi watched Hac Cúc dodge again and again. She stared at the evidence, holding everything together in her mind: Lành's fear of tanglers, Bao Duy's broken glider and her tendency to hold her life too cheap, Hac Cúc's single-mindedness.

She was currently the only one with the capacity to do anything.

Nhi reached for their shared comms channel. Lành was speaking, her words echoing as if under a large ceiling. There was something odd and vaguely disturbing about each syllable, something Nhi couldn't quite put her finger on. "It's unhappy, but it's not going to change course. It doesn't believe we can fix anything. No one has fixed anything for it."

Ah. Nhi knew how that felt all too intimately, and that it was a tangler having those doubts didn't change the solution much. "You have to open the gate now. In front of it."

"What? No."

"It doesn't trust us because we haven't done anything except trap it behind barrier generators. Open the gate, and it'll see that we mean what we say." Something far too few humans did anyway.

"I can't open a gate now," Hac Cúc said, grimly. "Mostly because my attention is engaged elsewhere." Something clattered, in the background. Hac Cúc hissed.

"Are you all right?" Nhi asked.

"Ask me again when we're done," Hac Cúc said.

A deflection. Nhi hoped Hac Cúc was all right.

Still … still, it was obvious, and it would have been obvious to all of them, except that Lành was stressed because she was communicating with the stuff of her nightmares, Bao Duy was too worried Lành would die, and Hac Cúc too busy keeping the clans at bay from them.

"You're not going to be able to open a gate," Nhi said.

"You just told us we had to!" Bao Duy's usually calm voice was strained.

"I mean you're not," Nhi said. "Opening a gate requires concentration and stability. Hac Cúc is too busy fighting off the clans, and even if she did break off from them, they would chase her. Bao Duy's glider is broken. And Lành is keeping the conversation open with the tangler."

A grunt, from Lành. "Please do something fast. Not going to last long here."

"You're not making sense," Bao Duy said.

"You can't open a gate," Nhi said. "But I can."

Hac Cúc spoke, sharply. "No," she said. "You're not, em. I forbid it. We didn't do this whole rescuing of you just so you could endanger yourself again."

Nhi smiled. "Opening a gate doesn't require a ship."

"But it does require a ship to not get sucked into it!"

"Ah." Nhi smiled, with a lightness she didn't feel. "How fast are you, chi?"

"You're asking me to pick you up." Hac Cúc's voice was flat. "In front of a gate that you just opened."

"They did say you were the fastest and best pilot of your generation."

"I think," Hac Cúc said, coldly, "you have me confused with my s? ph?."

And wasn't that a sore spot? But before Nhi could say anything, Hac Cúc spoke again on a private channel. "Sorry," she said. "I allowed my emotions to get the better of me. Tell me, genuinely: Do you think that's the only way to do this?"

Nhi chewed on it for a while. She said, at last, "Bao Duy can't maneuver enough. Lành is too scared. And you're too busy."

"And too busy to pick you up?"

"You know, and I know, that opening and holding a gate open requires focus that piloting a ship doesn't. And once the gate opens, every single clan ship is going to be very confused about what's happening and why. You'll have an opening. It won't be large, but you'll have one."

A sigh, from Hac Cúc. "I don't like this."

"I'm not asking you to like this," Nhi said. "Because I don't like it either. I'm asking you to trust me. It's different."

The conversation they weren't having hung in the air.

I love you.

I can't return that.

But she had come back.

A silence. Then, on the open channel, Hac Cúc's steady voice: "I do trust you, em. Let's do this."

"Are you in position?"

"Not yet," Nhi said. She'd pushed her glider as fast as it could go, trying to make for that space in front of the tangler. Behind her, the clan ships were too busy engaging with Hac Cúc—who was doing a stellar job of keeping them distracted. "Almost."

Hac Cúc had promised that she could disengage from them fast enough to pick up Nhi, and Nhi would have to trust that, too.

"I'm here," she said.

There was no tangler—it was at her back, a thick and viscous presence she could feel, the thing that had almost killed her. It wasn't nearly as scary as it should have been, because it was just a creature. A thing that did what it had to do to survive, and the scariest ones were the people. The clans. The elders. Those who would casually sacrifice others.

"Are you ready?" Nhi asked.

Ahead was the glistening of the Dog Needle: the barely visible ships taking off, landing, the same dance as the Rooster Needle, something that, in spite of everything, remained a comfort. A reassurance that the world moved on as it always did.

Nhi moved into position, maneuvering her glider to be steady.

"I'm ready," Bao Duy said.

Lành broke off, briefly, from the incomprehensible language she was speaking on the comms. "I've told it we're opening a gate. It's waiting," Lành said. They'd both moved away from where Nhi was, far enough that they wouldn't risk being caught in the pull of the open gate.

"I'm ready to catch you," Hac Cúc said, and Nhi felt a treacherous warmth in her belly.

Opening a navigation gate was like stabbing oneself in the gut. To Nhi, it felt like the entire universe was tearing itself apart. As Lành continued to speak that incomprehensible language, she felt her Shadow widen and stretch, and then drain away, siphoned into the enormous amount of energy it took to connect with the Hollows.

Ahead of her, a hole appeared, and grew and grew. Within, it shimmered—an iridescence halfway between pearl and oil, which then became distorting pinpoints of light, a window into the weirdness of the Hollows. Outside, the air felt charged, a storm of swirling tension, drawing Shadow into its center, where it burst into myriad fragments that distorted the light further.

Nhi felt the pull of that gate: it was drawing in her Shadow and drawing her in, too, pulling at the places where her Shadow was born—the meridians in her body, the vitality center in her lower belly, at the intersection with the lines of her perineum. Like a tide, it caught her and her glider and drew her in—and unlike a tide she was powerless to resist it.

Chi …

"I can't hold it—"

"Lành?"

A pause. Lành's speech wavered. "Almost there," she said. "Keep it open just a little longer. It wants to go home." And there was bright and terrible longing in her voice.

The longing would have been concerning if Nhi hadn't been doing her utmost to not get sucked into the Hollows. "I can't—"

Something large—like wings unfolding, like the cloth of Heaven stretched around her—an unbreakable hold of Shadow that caught her and held her and dragged her back, never wavering, never letting go, a steady, unwavering grip that felt like it was her entire world.

"I've got you, em," Hac Cúc's voice said.

Lành spoke again. And then the universe tore itself apart again. Something rippled. Against Nhi's Shadow, the tangler slid—diving straight into the open maw that she was holding open. Nhi felt it, all of it—umbrella, tendrils, stingers—and then it was gone, and Hac Cúc's Shadow was pulling her into her ship, and she could finally breathe again.

Hac Cúc's focus was shot. Some of it was on Nhi—who was making her way from the hangar floor to the control deck—some of it was on the clan ships, who were milling uncertainly among themselves, and some of it was on Lành and Bao Duy.

She snapped, to Lành, "That tangler is going home but you're not. Lành? Can you hear me? You're not going with it!"

The gate closed. It felt as though something had been cut loose: the terrible pull that Hac Cúc had been trying to hold at bay was no longer there, and it felt like she could finally breathe again.

The clan ships were diving towards Hac Cúc. She dodged them, but her Shadow felt spent. The tension and effort of the last few moments had finally drained it. Far away—further away, beyond the gate, ships were lifting from the Dog Needle, coming towards them. It was too big a disturbance.

"Your concern is touching," Lành said, on the comms. "But I'm not going away quite that fast."

Hac Cúc let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding.

"We're headed back to your ship." Bao Duy was the only one who seemed unshaken.

"Chi?" It was Nhi, standing at the door of the control deck. Shaking, pale, but whole. A surge of profound, violent relief went through Hac Cúc. "It's gone," Nhi said. "We did it."

Hac Cúc wanted to run to her and hug her, but there were pressing concerns. Nhi made her way closer to her, and stood there, Shadow against Shadow.

"I'm so glad you're here," Hac Cúc said.

Nhi smiled, and it did weird things to Hac Cúc's insides when she did. She held out her hand, and Nhi took it.

"Chi!" It was Lành. "I guess you're both probably having a well-deserved but entirely misplaced moment of intimacy, but could you do something about those clan ships? Please?"

Clan ships.

Hac Cúc stared at the ships approaching from the Dog Needle. She was having to lean against a chair to keep her balance and was keenly aware that whatever Shadow she had left wasn't strong enough, and certainly wouldn't withstand a frontal attack from Elder Lieu's ship. She thought of Ly Chau and the clans, and of Lành's question, about what would prevent the elders from doing this again.

Nothing from within the navigator clans. But the clans weren't the only ones with a stake in this. "Yes," she said. "I can absolutely do something about those clan ships." And she flicked a switch, steeling herself to hail the Dog ships.