In the Vanishers' Palace

by Aliette de Bodard

  “Them?”

  “Your genitors,” Vu Côn said. She thought of Kim Ngoc, and of the villages, and of her masters’ distant, fading laughter. Gone. They were gone, and couldn’t touch Vu Côn or those she loved anymore. “You’re not defined by your blood. It’s your acts that matter, in the end.”

  “Mother...”

  Vu Côn set her own tea on the table. “I’m not saying it’s easy. Just that it’s possible.” And that, just like Thông, she would face the consequences of her own acts, of her own failure to diagnose Yên earlier.

  Thông stared at her for a while, and said nothing. Which was fine. She hadn’t expected an answer. Just something they could chew on.

  “Can we help you?” Liên said, a little too loudly.

  Vu Côn moved to the foundry bowl, and sent the command. The words shimmered silver for a fraction of a second, and then vanished as the surface of the bowl went darker. Digesting them. “This is for me to do,” she said. “My own mistakes to fix.”

  “Mother,” Thông said as the dark shapes of instruments began to appear in the bowl. Unlike the tea, it wasn’t instant. The bowl was accessing the table of recommended surgeries for the diagnosis, and using that as a template to offer Vu Côn her instruments and medicine.

  “Yes?”

  Thông wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but—”

  “Oh, do spit it out.”

  “I saw your diagnosis. The White Tiger, Changing.” Thông’s voice trailed off, and picked up again, gaining assurance as they spoke. “The symptoms don’t quite match.”

  “I know. It’s a mutation. That happens, sometimes, with viruses.”

  Thông took a deep breath. “It’s her heartbeat. I don’t like how it sounds. The White Tiger should just weaken the pulse, not make it go into syncopation like this. It doesn’t even sound like a human heartbeat.”

  Or the heartbeat of anything that had two lungs, two sets of limbs and a set of normal organs. “I’ve heard it,” Vu Côn said. She kept her voice even, but it cost her. “If you check the database of symptoms, you’ll see some presentations of the White Tiger include arrhythmia. That’s similar.”

  “I suppose it could be.” Thông didn’t look fully convinced.

  “Oh, come on, big sib,” Liên said. “It’s not like we can claim our last operation went flawlessly.”

  “It was a disaster.” Thông’s voice was flat. “Someone died. Don’t make light of it.”

  “Children.” Vu Côn barely raised her voice. “I’ve told you already. We’re not going to harp on responsibilities for past acts. I just want you to learn a lesson from this.”

  “Not trying new treatments on a patient without telling you,” Liên said, automatically.

  “Exactly.”

  In the bowl, needles and scalpels glinted, and a bottle of disinfectant and hydrating fluids, with the darker shadow of the tools still being made by the palace. Vu Côn picked up the needles, and started sliding them, one by one, into Yên’s body at the paralyzing points. “Just make sure I’m not disturbed, will you? For anyone or anything. I’ll take care of the rest.” And then bent, one last time, to kiss Yên on the lips: cold and unyielding, like kissing jade or marble. “It’ll be over soon,” she whispered.

  Stop hiding things, Yên had asked, but she hadn’t woken up, and there was no choice.

  Vu Côn was going to make everything better.

  NINE

  In the Ruins of the World

  Elder Tho hadn’t changed at all.

  She strode into the room where Yên was still struggling to pull herself up, her lean face suffused with that familiar arrogance. Her smile widened into the sharp, feral one of a tiger who’d found prey when she saw Yên. With her came Head Minh Phuoc, as well as five of the village’s militia carrying their spears. As they came in, one of the militia effortlessly kicked Yên’s legs from under her, sending her sprawling and coughing on the floor.

  “The official’s return,” Elder Tho spat. “Honor and glory and magic.”

  Yên pulled herself up again. One of the militia moved to kick her. In her exhausted, emptied mind ran the words of a spell: the one she’d used earlier against evil spirits. Spiral. Turtle’s Claw. Crossbow. Fortress. Again and again and again, but all she could do was bow her head, completely drained of energy.

  “Enough,” Elder Tho said, to the militia. “Don’t get carried away.” Her gaze raked the room, Mother and Oanh and Elder Giang, all clustered in the small space, and stopped at Giang. “You’ve been spending too much time with them, younger pibling. Looking for atonement?”

  Giang’s gaze was drawn and exhausted. “We’ve had this talk, haven’t we? When I am judged, nothing I do will convince the Ruler of Hell to spare me. I made a promise to this child. I’m merely keeping it.”

  “And your promise includes breaking the village laws? You know the consequences of that,” Elder Tho said. It was weighted and barbed: something she thought would cow Giang, but Giang merely stood their ground and smiled.

  “There is nothing that prevents me from caring for my daughter,” Mother said, sharply.

  “For a sick patient who breaks the quarantine laws?” Elder Tho’s voice was sharp. “Not to mention someone we already condemned.”

  Yên found her voice. “Gave away,” she said. It rasped and hurt in her throat. “You gave me away.” She felt distant, stabbing pains in her body. Like knives, sliding one by one into her spine and the inside of her thighs. Her hands opened, nerveless and almost without feeling. At her feet, darkness pooled, became the trail of Vu Côn’s robes, the words shimmering in their folds. Choking. Sleeping. Silence. What was happening? The sickness, progressing again? Why so fast?

  Elder Tho’s gaze was pitying. “A life for a life,” she said. “In any case, you cannot possibly have imagined we’d let you return.”

  Because of course this had never been about fairness, or justice. Because she could show all the magic in the world, but in the end, it would never earn her more than a brief reprieve until the magic left her. Look at Mother. Her healing skills barely keeping her alive, barely keeping her in Elder Tho’s good graces. Because in the end, it wasn’t even about usefulness. It was about the power of deciding who mattered. And there would always be someone, somewhere, who got drunk on it. Someone like Elder Tho.

  Head Minh Phuoc was staring at her daughter. “Child,” she said. “There is still time.”

  Oanh stood, defiantly, barely looking human in the dim light of the house. The planes of her nose shone beneath her translucent skin. “No. There isn’t.”

  Head Phuoc turned, pleadingly, to Elder Tho. “She was just led astray by bad company.”

  Elder Tho’s voice was soft. “I should think she knew exactly what she was doing.” She shrugged. “But her, I can afford to spare.”

  Never about usefulness.

  One of the militia picked Yên up like a rag doll. The world flipped, and she was staring at the floorboards, dangling like a puppet with cut strings, tired and bone-weary and drunk with despair. The others surrounded Elder Giang, Oanh and Mother.

  Elder Tho said, to Mother, “Grandmother?” It was a question. Yên understood what was being offered. A chance to deny. A short reprieve until favors ran out once more.

  Mother laughed. “Did you imagine this would go any other way, child?” She spat the words, drawing herself to her full height, as fierce and as indomitable as any dragon.

  “I suppose not,” Elder Tho said. She gestured. “To the Grove, then.”

  The purifying circle. Yên’s old memories: the corona of light flaring up, word after word lighting up, and in the circle, layer after layer of Old Thanh Hoa’s skin forming spinning lines like the lashes of a whip, skin and muscles and slivers of bones chipped away while the scream went on and on. An ending, of a sort. Except that Mother would die too.

  More knives, this time along her hips and the outside of her legs. A brief jolt, and then the feeling in her le
gs disappeared too. Everything blurred and blacked out. She didn’t remember being carried out of the house or through the village. They were now along the river, under the dull cover of the perpetually grey sky. They’d tied the hands of Mother, Elder Giang and Oanh, and run a rope from one to the next, like a chain of indentured people moved from village to village. The ground was thick with mold and dead leaves, so unlike the polished metal floors of Vu Côn’s palace.

  Vu Côn.

  She could. She could call Vu Côn.

  Ahead was the Plague Grove, and the shining circles traced under the skeletal trees. The sound of the river rushing by, a memory of wet lips against hers, of breathing in the sea as she lay on a bed in times now dead to her. Thông and Liên, shivering and shrinking from their Vanisher shape, and Vu Côn simply looking at them with anguish and love in her eyes...

  Yên would rather die than see the dragon again.

  But, if she didn’t summon Vu Côn—if she didn’t even try—they would all die.

  Neither her hands nor her legs worked anymore. But her head did. She could tilt her lips as the militia walked, drawing the shape of the words, letter by painstaking letter.

  Fish.

  The word was barely visible: a faint exhalation, translucent and barely lighter than the ground. They’d entered the Grove now. Trees. Not the lifeless, perfect, skeletal trees of the Vanishers, but forked and complex ones, with broken-off branches and small brown fruit half-pecked by birds, with fungus on the trunks and dead leaves carried in the river. And the circle ahead, dark and silent.

  The militia dumped Yên on the ground. She could hear Elder Tho speak, and then a sharp noise as the circle lit up, that familiar zooming noise that had haunted her as a child.

  Gate.

  Another word. Another shadow joining the first. The militia had unhooked Oanh from the chain and tied her to one of the trees. They were pushing Mother and Elder Giang toward the circle. Faster. She had to move faster.

  River.

  Storm.

  At the edge of the circle, Mother had stopped, looking at Elder Tho. “You will leave me the dignity of dying free and on my feet,” she said, icily.

  Elder Tho shrugged. “As you wish.” One of the militia moved to untie her hands. Head Minh Phuoc was trying to talk to Oanh, but Oanh had turned her head away and wouldn’t look at her.

  No.

  Yên was running out of time. Faster. Faster.

  Letter by letter, and all the while Mother was slowly being freed, slowly moving closer to a point of no return.

  Faster.

  Come.

  The last word was small and pathetic, ill formed, its letters like a child’s attempt at writing. It clustered with the others. Fish. Gate. River. Storm. Come.

  Nothing happened. Yên slumped on the floor, coughing and coughing and trying to breathe through a throat that seemed to have slammed shut. All this for nothing and it was all going to go nowhere....

  Then the Plague Grove shook. The river rose like a living tower, sending oily, shimmering water everywhere. And through the gate came not one but two serpentine beings.

  They weren’t dragons. They were sleek and lethal, all teeth and legs and claws, and their presence tore the world apart. In their wake was only the silence of dead things.

  No. That wasn’t—that wasn’t what she’d—

  When they landed, the ground fractured all the way to Yên, the earth cracking like celadon put in too much heat. One of the militia made for them, spearpoint extended toward Thông’s belly. They moved, fluid and deadly, and sent them sprawling. The smaller one hesitated, but didn’t continue the movement that would have speared the militia like a caught fish. The larger one’s tail wrapped around Elder Tho, constricting her in coils of scales, and again and again around the militia. It looked like the chain they’d formed with Oanh, Mother and Elder Giang. It’d have been ironic, in other circumstances—poetic justice, the coils drawn tight enough to suffocate or break bones and ribcages.

  Yên struggled to breathe. The knives had stopped going into her body, but the world seemed to shimmer and grow distant around her, the trees and the clouds yellowing at the edges, as if the Grove were burning. What was happening? Everything seemed to grow farther and farther away from her....

  “No,” Mother said. She’d moved away from the circle, staring warily at the beings. At the twins, for who else could they be? The last Vanishers in the entire world.

  The larger one spoke. Thông, except that their voice shook the branches of the trees and sent ripples all the way through the earth, and into the river. “They were about to kill you.”

  Mother didn’t move.

  A silence, while the world held its breath.

  At length, Thông shook their head. “Fine. No matter how much you may deserve it.” They spoke a word in a language that made Yên’s body writhe without conscious volition. The purifying circle blinked once, twice, and then shattered. The earth moved and broke beneath it, splitting into smaller and smaller pieces until nothing of the light was left. “Go away, before I change my mind.”

  The coils relaxed. Neither Elder Tho nor the militia waited to be told twice. They ran away from the Grove. Head Minh Phuoc untied Oanh and stood, shaking.

  The Vanishers shimmered and shrank, and the twins stood in their place. They were still half in Vanisher shape. Liên’s face was framed by the thin razor blades of antlers, and Thông’s robes were hiding too many limbs, too many claws.

  They’d saved her life. They could have killed everyone there, but they hadn’t. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  Yên tried to pull herself up, but her limbs kept flopping out of control. That odd yellowish tinge again. A wave of nausea, of rising vertigo, even as the cough started up again in her lungs, and she was turning her head left and right, frantically fighting to breathe.

  Mother was still speaking. “I’m not the one who summoned you.”

  “I know you’re not,” Thông said. “And you didn’t summon us, but Mother was really busy with something else....” They stopped then, stared at Yên, horror stealing across their face. “Teacher. You can’t be here. That’s not possible.”

  Yên waited for the wave of coughing to pass. When she opened her eyes again, Thông was kneeling in the mud, looking at her. “Teacher,” they said, and their worried voice was that of the student she’d taught, back in the palace, before everything had changed.

  “You—” Words didn’t seem to be swimming through the morass of her mind. “You saved them.”

  Thông shrugged, an expansive movement that made the embroidery on their robes move like living things. “You saved Liên.” They looked embarrassed, and in that moment Yên saw not a scaled monstrosity but merely a student praised for something that came naturally to them. She saw Thông’s worry and fear, and Liên hovering behind them, one hand gripping her sibling’s shoulder hard enough to bruise, and understood just what Vu Côn had seen in them. Not Vanishers, not her former masters, but simply children. Children, bewildered and lost and trying so very hard to make sense of the world that their parents had abandoned them in. “I’m sorry,” she started to say, but Thông airily waved a hand.

  “There’s something more urgent, Teacher. How can you be here?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve seen you. In the palace. You look the same, except a great deal paler and more silent.” It made no sense.

  “May I?” Thông moved when Yên nodded, gently lifting her from the mud of the grove, cradling her in splendored, warm brocade. “I— Mother said you needed to be healed.”

  The palace. Yên felt tired, so tired. Leeched of warmth, of desire to move. “I’ve seen it in dreams. Your mother was carrying me into a room....” She stopped. “It’s not dreams, is it?”

  “No.” On Mother’s face, on everyone’s face, that same slow dawning of horror. “Two heartbeats. The echo. I’ve seen this before. Old Thuan, when his husband died. Part of him remained a
t the gravestone in the tomb, and part of him just went on like before. Two shadows, âm and duong.”

  “I’ve not heard of it,” Thông said, slowly.

  “We have.” Liên’s voice was flat. “The fisherman and the scholar.”

  “It’s a story. A tale for children.”

  Mother snorted. “It’s true. I was a young, inexperienced healer, and no one suspected anything until Thuan collapsed in the fields. Being split in two is exhausting, but it’s not fatal. Unless it goes on for too long.”

  “That’s not all she has,” Giang said.

  Mother’s face was hard. “No. She also has Oanh’s sickness, or something similar to it. That’s what’s weakening and killing her, not the split soul.”

  Yên struggled to speak. It took all she had. “Knives...” she whispered. “I could feel them, going in.”

  Thông’s face was hard. “Not knives, teacher. Acupuncture needles.”

  “In the palace,” Yên said, slowly. It made sense, didn’t it? She could see what was happening there, and she could feel its effects, too.

  Liên said, “She can feel what’s happening in the palace?”

  “Distantly.” Mother shook her head. “It’s âm duong. Each of them always carries the seed of the other within themselves.”

  “Healing,” Yên whispered. Vu Côn, never stopping to ask her, to tell her what was going on. Or perhaps she’d told her other-self in the palace, but in all her dreams she’d been mute and unresponsive.

  Healing. She didn’t want to be healed. She didn’t want to go on. There was no point. The village wouldn’t take her, and any other village would just be the same: more fear and more worries of what would happen to her, the day they found her unworthy.