by Paula Guran
Ngoc Ha pushed; felt her hand go in as though through congealed rice porridge. Deep spaces. Shadows and nightmares, and that sick feeling in her belly; that fear that they would take her, swallow her whole and change her utterly.
And yet . . .
Yet, somewhere within, were people who might know where her sister was.
“Can we go in?” she asked; and felt more than saw the ship smile.
“Of course, Mother.”
Inside, it was dark and cool—everything limned with that curious light—everything at odd angles, the furniture showing part of asteroids and metal lodes, and the flames of workshops; and legs and blank polished surfaces; and fragments of flowers lacquered on its surface at the same time—different times, different points of view merged together in a way that made Ngoc Ha’s head ache.
She looked at The Turtle’s Golden Claw, but the ship was unchanged, and her hands were the same, veined and pale. Perhaps whatever had a hold there didn’t apply to them, but she felt, in the background, some great pressure; some great presence awakening to their presence—a muzzle raised, questing; eyes like two supernovae turned their way . . .
“Here,” The Turtle’s Golden Claw said, and waited, patiently, for her to follow. She heard muffled noises: Suu Nuoc’s voice, coming from far away, saying words she couldn’t make out, and noises of metal against metal—and the same persistent hum in the background, and the shadows on the walls, the same as on the ship, stretching and turning and changing into claws . . .
She took a deep, shaking breath. Why had she charged in?
As they went deeper in, the furniture straightened up. Things became . . . almost normal, save that everything seemed still charged with that curious, pent-up electricity. “Time differentials,” The Turtle’s Golden Claw said. “Like the eye of the storm.” She whispered something, and after a while Ngoc Ha realized it was the same singsong incantations she’d said outside: “Integrate the quotient over the gradient lines—the princess’ blood became pearls at the bottom of the river, and her husband committed suicide at her grave—four times the potential energy at the point of stability, divided by N . . . ”
There was a door, ahead, and the light was almost blinding. Little by little—though it felt as if she was making no progress—they walked toward it, even as The Turtle’s Golden Claw wove her equations together; her curious singsong of old legends and mathematics.
The lab reminded her of Grand Master Bach Cuc’s: every surface covered with objects and odd constructs—pieces of electronics, half-baked, discarded ceramics; the light playing over all of them, limning them in blue. It was filled with Suu Nuoc’s escort, the Embroidered Guards, standing ill at ease, wedged against bits and pieces of machines.
Ahead, another door: a harmonization arch, the source of all the light, and Suu Nuoc, kneeling by the side of a young, panicked woman who was putting two bits of cabling together. “It’s overloading,” she said.
“Turn it off,” Suu Nuoc said. He glanced up, and nodded at Ngoc Ha as she knelt by her side.
The Turtle’s Golden Claw was still humming—more warily, avoiding the edges of the harmonization arch. “You set up an access to deep spaces here?”
“As I said”—the young woman—Lam—took a brief, angry look at the mindship—“I didn’t expect this to work!”
“Turn it off,” Suu Nuoc said.
“I can’t,” Lam’s voice was hard. “I have someone still inside.”
“Diem Huong?” Ngoc Ha asked, and knew she was right. There was something about the arch; about what lay beyond it—there was something in the lab with them, that same vast presence she’d felt earlier, slowly turning toward them. “The disruption is spreading to the orbital.”
“Yes,” Lam said. “I know. But I’m still not leaving Diem Huong in it.”
The Turtle’s Golden Claw followed the boundary of the harmonization arch, slowly tracing is contours, whispering words Ngoc Ha could barely hear. “It’s not stabilized, that’s the issue.”
“You can talk,” Ngoc Ha said, more sharply than she’d meant to. “Grand Master Bach Cuc didn’t stabilize anything either, and it killed her.”
“We will not talk of Bach Cuc here,” The Turtle’s Golden Claw snapped.
Lam looked vaguely curious but, through what appeared to be a supreme effort of will, turned her attention back to the door. Through the light Ngoc Ha caught glimpses and pieces—a hand, an arm, a fragment of an altar with incense sticks protruding from it, the face of a yellow-robed monk. Another place, another time. “What was it supposed to be?”
Lam finished clinching together her two cables—making no perceptible difference. She looked up, her face gleaming with blue-tinged sweat. “The Citadel. Diem Huong’s always wanted to go back.” She snapped her fingers and bots rose up from the floor, though they were in bad shape—missing arms and with live wires trailing from them. “A time machine sounded like a good idea, at the time.”
A time machine. Summoning deep spaces on an orbital. “And you thought Grand Master Bach Cuc was imprudent?”
“At least I’m still here,” Lam snapped. “Which isn’t, I understand, what happened with the Grand Master.”
“Please stop arguing about Bach Cuc,” Suu Nuoc said, in a low but commanding voice. “And turn this thing off. I don’t care about Diem Huong. This is going to destroy the orbital.”
“I’m not doing anything until Diem Huong walks out that door,” Lam said.
Ngoc Ha stood, watching the door. Watching the light, and the presence without, and her daughter, the mind-ship, prowling around the machine like a tiger. A time machine. A window on the Citadel. On Ngoc Minh and the empire and the distant past—the past that had twisted her life into its present shape and continued to hang over her like the shadow of a sword.
She reached out before she could stop herself—heard, distantly, Suu Nuoc’s scream, felt Lam Long’s arm pulling at her—but it was too late, she was already touching the arch—she’d expected some irresistible force to drag her in, some irreversible current that would have taken her to Diem Huong and the Citadel, amidst all the hurt she’d been bottling up.
Instead, there was silence.
Calm spread from the machine, like oil thrown on waves; a deafening lack of noise that seemed to still everything and everyone in its wake. And, like a huge beast lumbering toward its den, the presence that had been dogging Ngoc Ha ever since she’d entered the deep spaces turned its eyes toward her, and saw.
I am here.
It was a voice like the fires of stars torn apart, like the thunder of ships’ engines, like the call of a bell in a temple beyond time.
I am here.
And it was a voice Ngoc Ha had heard, and never forgotten, one that rose in the holes of her heart, each word a twisting hook that dragged raw, red memories from the depths of the past.
Ngoc Minh.
The Engineer
Diem Huong stood, paralyzed. The Embroidered Guards were staring at her; the commander raising a gun toward her. “There’s been a report of an intruder here, harassing Madam Quynh.”
Reports whose memories wouldn’t last more than a few moments; but sometimes, a few moments was all that it took for a message to travel along a chain of command and—like everyone else—the Embroidered Guards could teleport from the palace to any place in a heartbeat.
Diem Huong could teleport, too, but she was frozen, trying not to stare at the muzzles of five weapons aimed at her. They would shoot, and it didn’t take that long for energy arcs to find their mark.
“Look,” she said, “I can explain—” If she had enough time, they would forget her—why she was here, why she mattered. If she had enough time.
They all had their weapons raised—trained on her—and the commander was frowning, trying to see what to make of her. He was going to fire. He was going to—
There was only one thing for it.
Run.
Before she could think, she’d started pelting aw
ay from them—back toward the compartment, back toward Mother, who wouldn’t recognize or acknowledge her, or answer any of her questions.
“Stop—”
At any moment, she would feel it; the energy going through her, the spasms as it traveled through her body—would fall to the floor screaming and twitching like a puppet taken apart—but still, she ran, toward the illusory, unattainable safety of a home that had long since ceased to be hers . . .
Run.
There was a wave of stillness passing over the faces of the soldiers, catching them mid-frown and freezing them in place—an invisible wind that blew through the station, laying icy fingers on her like a caress.
In front of her, the door opened; save that it was wreathed in blue light, like that of the harmonization arch. The wind blew through it, carrying the smell of fried garlic and fish sauce and jasmine rice—so incongruously familiar Diem Huong stopped. Surely that wasn’t possible . . .
The wind blew through the door, carrying tatters of light toward it, each gust adding depth and body to the light, until the vague outline of a figure became visible—line after line, a shape drawn by a master’s paintbrush—the outline of a face surrounded by a mane of black hair; of silk clothes and jade bracelets as green as forest leaves.
Lam. Had to be. Lam had finally found a way to rescue her.
But it wasn’t Lam. The clothes were yellow brocade—for a moment only, and then they became the saffron of monks’ robes. The hair was longer than Lam’s, the face older and more refined—and the eyes were two pits of unbearable compassion. “Child,” the woman said. “Come.”
“Who are you?” Diem Huong asked.
The woman laughed; a low, pleasant sound with no edge of threat to it. “I am Ngoc Minh. Come now, there isn’t much time.”
Ngoc Minh? The Bright Princess? “I don’t understand—” Diem Huong said, but Ngoc Minh was extending a hand as translucent as porcelain, and, because nothing else made sense, Diem Huong took it.
For a moment—a dizzying, terrifying moment—she hung again in the blackness, in the void between the stars, brushed by a presence as terrible as a mindship in deep spaces, something that wrapped huge wings around her until she choked—and then it passed, and she realized the terrible presence was the Bright Princess herself; that the wings weren’t choking her, but holding her as she flew.
“It’s going to be fine,” the Bright Princess whispered, in her mind.
“Mother—”
There were no words in the darkness, in the void; just the distant, dispassionate light of stars and the sound of beings calling to each other like spaceships in the deep. There were no words, and no illusions left. Only kindness. And the memory of tears glistening in Mother’s eyes.
“Your mother loved you,” the Bright Princess said.
It still stands.
But for how long?
It’s going to fall, one way or another.
Sometimes, all you have are bad choices. Make a stand, or be conquered. Kill, or be killed. Submit, or have to submit others.
Mother had sent them away—packing off her daughter and her husband, hiding what it had cost her. She had known. She had known the Citadel had no other choice but to vanish; that Ngoc Minh would never fight against her own people. That she would gather, instead, all her powers—all her monks and hermits and their students, for one purpose only: to disappear where no one would ever find them.
“You told her,” Diem Huong said. “What was going to happen. What you were going to do.”
“Of course,” the Bright Princess said. “It’s a Citadel, not a dictatorship; not an Imperial Court. My word is law, but I wouldn’t have decided something like this without asking everyone to make a choice. The cost was too high.”
Too high. Mother had made her bad choice; to have her family survive; to have her daughter grow into adulthood. “Where is she?”
“Nowhere. Everywhere,” the Bright Princess whispered. “Beyond your reach, forever, child. She made her choice. Let her be.”
I didn’t feel you’d understand, younger aunt. You’re too young to have children or believe in the necessity of holding up the world.
“I do understand,” Diem Huong said, to the darkness, but it was too late. It had always been thirty years too late, and Mother was gone and would not come back no matter how hard she prayed or worked. “I do understand, Mother,” she whispered; and she realized, with a shock, that she was crying.
The Empress
Mi Hiep summoned Huu Tam to her quarters; in the gardens outside her rooms, where bots were maintaining the grottos and waterfalls, the pavilions by the side of ponds covered with water lilies and lotuses, the arched bridges covered by willow branches, like a prelude to separation.
“Walk with me, will you?”
Huu Tam was silent, staring at the skies; at the ballet of shuttles in the skies. His attendants walked three steps behind them, affording them both the illusion of privacy.
“We are at war,” Mi Hiep said. In the communal network, every place in the gardens was named; everything associated with an exquisite poem. It had been, she remembered, a competition to choose the poems. Ngoc Minh had won in several places, but Mi Hiep couldn’t even remember where her daughter’s poems would be. She could look it up, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same. “You’re going to have to take more responsibilities.”
Huu Tam snorted. “I’m not a warrior.”
Two ghost emperors flickered into life: the first, the Righteously Martial Emperor, who had founded the dynasty in floods of blood, and the twenty-third, the Great Virtue Emperor, who had hidden in his palace while civil war tore apart the empire. “No one is,” the twenty-third emperor said.
“I know.” Huu Tam’s voice was curt.
“You will need Van,” Mi Hiep said. Then, carefully, “And Suu Nuoc.”
He sucked in a breath and looked away. He wouldn’t contradict her—what child gainsaid their parents?—but he didn’t agree. “You don’t like him. You don’t have to.” She raised a hand, to forestall any objections. How was she going to make him understand? She had tried, over twenty-six years, and perhaps failed. “You like flattery, child. Always have. It’s more pleasant to hear pleasant things about yourself; more pleasant never to be challenged. And more pleasant to surround yourself with friends.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Huu Tam was defiant.
“A court is not a nest of sycophants,” the first emperor said, sternly.
“Flattery will destroy you,” the twenty-third emperor—sallow-faced and fearful—whispered. “Look at my life as an example.”
Huu Tam said nothing for a while. He would obey her, she knew; he was too well bred and too polite. He wasn’t Ngoc Minh, who would have disagreed and stormed off. He would talk to Suu Nuoc, but he wouldn’t trust him. She couldn’t force him to.
There was a wind in the gardens; a ripple on the surface of the pond bending the lotus flowers, as if a giant hand from the heavens had rifled through them, discarding stems and petals—and the world seemed to pause and hold its breath for a bare moment.
Mi Hiep turned and saw her.
The Bright Princess stood in the octagonal pavilion in the middle of the pond—not so much coalescing into existence, but simply here one moment, as if the Universe had reorganized itself to include her—almost too far away for Mi Hiep to make out the face, though she would have recognized her in a heartbeat—and then, as Mi Hiep held a deep, burning breath, the Bright Princess flickered out of existence, and reappeared an arm’s length away from both her and Huu Tam.
Huu Tam’s face was pale. “Elder sister,” he whispered.
The Bright Princess hadn’t changed—still the same face that Mi Hiep remembered; the full cheeks, the burning eyes looking straight at her, refusing to bend to the empress her mother. Her hair was the same, too; not tied in a topknot, but loose, falling all the way to the ground until it seemed to root her to the soil.
“Child,” she whispered. “Whe
re are you?” She could see the pavilion through Ngoc Minh’s body, and the pink lotus flowers and the darkening heavens over their heads.
Nowhere, whispered the wind. Everywhere.
“There are no miracles,” Huu Tam whispered.
Yes. No. Perhaps, said the wind. It doesn’t matter.
Mi Hiep reached out and so did Ngoc Minh—one ghostly hand reaching for a wrinkled one—her touch was the cold between stars; a slight pressure that didn’t feel quite real—the memory of a dream on waking up.
Ngoc Minh smiled, and it seemed to fill up the entire world—and suddenly Mi Hiep was young again, watching an infant play in the courtyard, lining up pebbles and frag.ments of broken vases, and the infant looked up and saw her, and smiled, and the en.tire Universe seemed to shift and twist and hurt like salted knives in wounds—and then she was older, and the infant older too, and she tossed and turned in her bed, afraid for her life—and she woke up and asked the army to invade the Citadel. . . .
“Child . . . ” I’m sorry, she wanted to say. The emperors had been right—Huu Tam had been right: it had never been about weapons or war, or about technologies she could steal from the Citadel. But simply about this—a mother and her daughter, and all the unsaid words, the unsaid fears—the unresolved quarrel that was all Mi Hiep’s fault.
Ngoc Minh said nothing, and merely smiled back.
I forgive you, the wind whispered. Please forgive me, Mother.
“What for?”
Greed. Anger. Disobedience. Good-bye, Mother.
“Child . . . ” Mi Hiep reached out again, but Ngoc Minh was gone, and only the memory of that smile remained. And then even that was gone, and Mi Hiep was alone again, gasping for breaths that burnt her lungs, as the Universe became a blur around her.
Huu Tam looked at her, shaking. “Mother—”
Mi Hiep shook her head. “Not now, please.”
“Empress!” It was Lady Linh and Van, both looking grim. Mi Hiep took a deep breath, waiting for things to right themselves again. Mercifully, none of the ghost emperors had said any words. “What is it?” she asked.
