“Ours. Pham Thi Hai Anh,” Long Chau said. “She made a living maintaining the inner rings of the Apricot Blossom Ho habitat.”
“I see,” The Shadow’s Child said. She didn’t. Curiosity won out, narrowly. “You know what she died of.”
“No,” Long Chau said. “I’m friends with the controller of deaths: they could find no cause of death. Which means that, having set aside all other possible causes, she was alive and well when she tumbled into deep spaces.” She raised a hand, as if to forestall an objection from The Shadow’s Child. “The pressures of unreality would have rendered her unconscious within ten divisions, and killed her not long afterwards—a centiday, at most. A shadow skin doesn’t protect against deep spaces.”
Trying to spare The Shadow’s Child’s feelings? Or more likely making sure she couldn’t be interrupted.
“All right,” The Shadow’s Child said. “So an accident, then.”
Long Chau smiled. “I don’t know what happened. But I intend to find out.”
“I don’t understand the urgency.”
“The militia is going to take over.”
“And? Surely that’s good.”
“Only if you think the tribunal and the militia competent.” Long Chau clearly didn’t. Then again, if she’d been involved with them, as a suspect... “They’ll take everyone into custody and throw drugs at them in the hopes of finding a ready culprit. By the time they’re done, there’ll be no evidence or goodwill left to base an investigation on.”
Personal experience? She sounded so intense it must have been. But she must also have hated not knowing the answers. “I’m not sure—”
“We have a day, perhaps two,” Long Chau said. “At most. The circumstances are unusual, and I’ve been digging: this will draw their attention faster.”
“Look,” The Shadow’s Child said. “I don’t know what your relationship with the tribunal is—” though she fully intended to find that out—”but I’m not setting myself at odds with them.”
Long Chau’s glance was puzzled. “Of course not. We’ll have solved this long before they intervene, if we move fast enough. That’s the point.” She stretched, drawing herself to her full height. “I’m going to Apricot Blossom Ho habitat. Care to come?”
“Because you need a ship to take you there?”
Long Chau shrugged. It obviously hadn’t even occurred to her. “I can take a shuttle, if you’d rather not.”
The Shadow’s Child was getting paid, when all was said and done. And she needed the money. And—and she did want to know what had happened—how Hai Anh had died, and if any justice was going to be given to her—even if it was Long Chau’s high-handed, arrogant kind.
She could move the two appointments she had in the afternoon, with little harm done. She could go with Long Chau, even for a little while.
“No need,” she said. “I’ll come.”
* * *
In the end, Long Chau did take a shuttle, because traffic was too dense and the Apricot Blossom orbital didn’t have a docking bay ready for another bi-hour. The Shadow’s Child projected her avatar straight into the orbital, and spent some time checking out the new classes of bots for sale in shops. Not that, on her current situation, she could really afford to do more than look and dream.
She’d finally given Long Chau privileged access, which meant Long Chau’s calls would be given priority, and that she would also be able to locate her easily. The address Long Chau was headed to wasn’t a private compartment, but a wide, airy space with a sign that said “House of Saltless Prosperity”.
“Monastery?” The Shadow’s Child asked, when she arrived.
Long Chau shook her head. “Sisterhood,” she said, briefly, using an odd, seldom used word. “Here. You won’t be able to materialise straight inside, I’m afraid.” It was a map of a maze of linked corridors and compartments, with a single dot at the destination.
“Tell me something,” The Shadow’s Child said.
Long Chau raised an eyebrow.
“The militia took you in for questioning. Why?”
Long Chau didn’t move. “You’ve been digging.”
“You did the same thing to me.”
Long Chau shook her head. “I deducted based on available information. Not the same.”
The Shadow’s Child said, stubbornly, “Tell me why.”
“See if you can deduce it,” Long Chau said, as she headed inside. Her tone made it clear she didn’t expect The Shadow’s Child to manage that.
Her mistake. The Shadow’s Child would show her.
She followed Long Chau inside. She had the map on sensors and was gliding faster than Long Chau could walk, and yet she was barely able to keep up. The corridors were plain and unadorned, though here and there a painting or a vid broke the monotony. Through half-open doors, she caught a glimpse of faces—women ranging from young to very old, none of them with that particular smoothness of rejuv—their faces taut and thin, not quite at that edge where it’d become starvation. Sisterhood, Long Chau had said. That was certainly an unusual place.
When she arrived, Long Chau was seated cross-legged at a low table, already deep in conversation with an old woman. The Shadow’s Child used the brief interval of time to look up the place on the network. By the time the woman rose, she’d gleaned enough context, but not much.
“This is Grandmother Khue,” Long Chau said. “The Shadow’s Child, who is assisting me.”
Grandmother Khue looked as though she’d swallowed something sour, though clearly the ill humour was all directed towards Long Chau. She smiled at The Shadow’s Child. “I’ve heard of you,” she said.
“I’ve had contact with your house.” The Shadow’s Child had briefly checked her own records: she’d provided blends for women who lived there—not ones for crossing deep spaces aboard a mindship, but the cheaper, blunter ones, to not feel afraid while teetering on the edge of the vacuum. She’d assigned the rewatch of her interviews with them to her fastest processes on the way there:
