“Then I don’t know why you’re here.” She didn’t mean to be this impolite, but it was out of her before she could think.
Bao sighed. “The Western Pavilion Le own the compartment. There’s not much that escapes them. Your revenue—”
“It’s good enough,” The Shadow’s Child said. She forced herself to be nonchalant.
“Is it?” Bao’s gaze was piercing. “I said business, but perhaps it’d be more accurate to say I’m here as a friend. Or a concerned relative. You may not need much space, or that much money to pay for it—”
If only. She should have had money for her repairs, but everything had gone into making sure she wouldn’t find herself homeless. Shipminds such as her were meant to be the centre of families: grown by alchemists in laboratories, borne by human mothers and implanted into the ship-bodies designed for them, they were much longer lived than humans—the repositories of memories and knowledge, the eldest aunts and grandmothers on whom everyone relied. They were certainly not meant to be penniless and poor, and The Shadow’s Child would die before she’d beg from her younger relatives—who were, in any case, even worse off than her. Their salaries as minor scholars in the ministries paid them a pittance, and they could barely afford their own food.
She could have remained as she was, in orbit around the habitats. But without office space, how could she practise her trade? No one would take a shuttle to come onboard a distant shipmind, not when there were closer and better brewers of serenity available. “I get your point,” she said. “And I’m grateful, but—” But she didn’t need more stress. She didn’t need her niggling worst fears to be proved right.
Bao pulled back the chair, and rose. “But I’m not good news? I seldom am.” She shrugged. “I know you won’t consider passenger service—”
“No,” The Shadow’s Child said. It was reflex, as if someone had pushed, hard, on an open wound and she’d screamed.
“The money is far better. Especially you—you’re a troop transport. You could take on a lot of passengers and cargo each run.” Bao’s voice was soft.
“I know.”
Bao was smart enough to drop the subject. She looked at the bookshelves: not physical books, because The Shadow’s Child would have needed to read them through her bots, but a selection of the ones in her electronic library, displayed in matching editions in a riot of colours. “I see you have the latest Lao Quy. It’s well worth it, if you need a distraction. She’s really got to be a master of the form.”
Bao and The Shadow’s Child shared a fondness for epic romances and martial heroes books, the kind of novels scholars looked down on as trash but which sold thousands of copies across the belt. “I haven’t started it yet,” The Shadow’s Child said. “But I liked the previous one. Strong chemistry between characters. And to have set it in a small mining operation was a smart change of setting. I loved the mindship and their habitat’s Mind lover, trying to find each other after decades had passed.”
“Of course you would. She’s good,” Bao said, fondly. “This one is different. I’d argue better. We can talk about it later, if you want, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience.” She looked at the blend on the stove, and shook her head. “I’m not going to keep you from your customer.”
A customer The Shadow’s Child didn’t like, but she’d pay handsomely, and—as Bao had all too clearly reminded her—The Shadow’s Child couldn’t afford to be picky.
* * *
The Shadow’s Child had to take Long Chau onboard, of course. When Long Chau’s footsteps echoed in the corridors of her body, it was an odd and unsettling feeling. She’d taken on a few passengers for the army after Vinh and Hanh and her crew died, but everyone had been so careful with her, as if she were made of glass. And after she’d been discharged she’d refused to take on further passengers.
She had no need of sensors or bots to follow Long Chau’s progress through her. The footsteps, slow and steady—each of them a jolt in the vastness of her body—went through room after room, unerringly going towards the cabin she’d set aside for Long Chau. From time to time, a longer pause, feet resting lightly on the floor of rooms, a faint heat spreading outward on her tiles: once, near the seventh bay, staring at the scrolling display of fairytales Mother had brought back from the First Planet; another time at the start of the living quarters, reading the Thu Huong quote on houses being a family’s heart—new paint and a new calligraphy, replaced after the ambush. The Shadow’s Child had had network decoration, once: a wealth of intricate interlocked layers only visible with the proper permissions. But she’d lost everything, and she hadn’t seen the point of putting more than basic work into this after she was discharged.
When Long Chau reached the cabin, she found a table and a chair, and a cup of steaming tea set there. She raised her eyes, as if she could see The Shadow’s Child hovering somewhere above her. It was pointless: everything around her was the ship. All The Shadow’s Child really needed to do was focus her upper layers of attention on this room, while in the background the bots and everything else continued to run without any input, and the solar wind buffeted her hull as her orbit swung her around the habitats—all familiar sensations that barely impinged.
Long Chau pulled up the chair, settling down into it without any apparent nervousness. Her movements were slow and deliberate. The Shadow’s Child felt it all. The scraping of the chair, all four feet digging into her floors; Long Chau’s weight shifting, lightly pressing down on top of the chair. “You’re quite lovely,” Long Chau said.
It’d have been a compliment from anyone else. From her, though, said with an utterly
