There was nothing whatsoever hunched, or tired, about Grandmother Khue.
The compartment was small, and the public overlay crammed with things. Unlike in Sharpening Steel into Needles’ one, it was hard to tell which objects were physical and which ones were not. It looked to be fragments of various wrecks: twisted metal that had taken on the sheen of oil, changed and compressed by deep spaces. The kind of curiosities scholars collected but wouldn’t pay much for.
The large, wooden box of a mat chuoc game lay prominently on a commode, open to display the patterns on polished bone tiles. It was an odd, terribly old fashioned choice, but also a casual statement that not everything there was cheap. By its side was a small wooden box carved with the insignia of a brewer of serenity—Nguyen Van An Tam, The Shadow’s Child’s sensors told her, a minor brewer of the habitat who didn’t have much of a reputation or charge much for his services.
It was... not quite genteel poverty, but close.
Grandmother Khue caught her looking. “I salvage in deep spaces. There’s always a market for pretty things scholars can display at banquets and poetry club meetings, to impress their friends.”
“Not much of a steady job,” Long Chau said, coldly.
“Better than being indentured to the families.”
Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “Perhaps.”
“You’re an odd pair,” Grandmother Khue said. “I’m not sure how we can help. Or if we should.”
“She was part of your community,” Long Chau said.
“She’s dead.” Grandmother Khue sounded—not like what The Shadow’s Child expected. Not grieving, or surprised. Merely angry. Long Chau didn’t appear to have picked up on it; or perhaps she merely went on regardless. “We don’t want trouble.”
“And no justice?” Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “I could tell the magistrate that. I’m sure they’d find that very interesting.”
“If they bother to come at all.” Grandmother Khue sat back. “You know exactly how much we mean to the orbitals.” There were two cups of tea on the table. She gestured, and a third, ethereal one shimmered into existence for The Shadow’s Child.
“You keep the belt going,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly. She floated the tea cup to her; sipped it, feeling a soft, grassy taste—a memory of first meeting Sharpening Steel into Needles and the sparks that had flown then; of endless conversations with her family that went on and on into the night, from everything to the examination results of the younger descendants to pregnancies and births and deaths. “You and the other women here.” The House of Saltless Prosperity: a loose sisterhood of menials, of women who, like the dead Hai Anh, worked to maintain and clean the orbitals, and who had sworn to be each other’s family.
“We’re cheap,” Grandmother Khue said. “Easily replaceable.” She smiled. “Less so if banded together.”
“So you do have enemies,” Long Chau said.
“The Ho and the other Inner Habitats families?” Grandmother Hue snorted. “You’re mistaken.”
“Am I?” Long Chau asked.
Grandmother Khue set her tea cup on the table. “I’ve already asked you why you care.”
“I like to solve problems.”
“Problem? Hai Anh was a person,” Grandmother Khue said, sharply.
“I know.” Long Chau’s face didn’t move. “So you do care, but you don’t want me to investigate. Interesting.” The way she said it, Hai Anh might as well have been a tricky paragraph in some memorial. “Why did she have a shadow skin? It’s an expensive investment to make, given a menial’s average salary.”
“She cleaned the outside of the orbitals,” Grandmother Khue said. “And yes, it’s expensive, but shadow skins are life insurance. New workers are cheaper than proper suits or climbing pads, so the families don’t always bother with proper repairs to equipment. If something they give you fails and you tumble into the vacuum, you’ll be glad to have one.”
“I see.” Long Chau shook her head. “It didn’t protect her against deep spaces.”
“Nothing does.” Grandmother Khue rose, putting her cup of tea on the table. “You can see her compartment. I doubt you’ll find anything of use, but—” A younger girl had appeared in the entrance of the room. “Tuyet will show you.”
* * *
Hai Anh’s room was small, and almost bare of life. Not surprising, when all the holos and paintings would have been tied to her, and erased or put offline after her death. Long Chau knelt for a while, staring at the small, cramped bed. A faint smell of sandalwood and incense hung in the air, in front of a statue of Quan Am.
“I missed the beginning of the conversation,” The Shadow’s Child said.
“Not much of use,” Long Chau said. “Though I’d be curious how she struck you.”
Aggravated by Long Chau, but then again, that was more or less a given. “Competent. A long-time leader. What did she strike you as?”
“‘Long-time leader’.” Long Chau weighed the words, as if on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t like Grandmother Khue—that much was obvious. “Yes. She likes being in control, doesn’t she.”
“You’re the one who reads people.”
“Do I?” Long Chau shook her head.
“You seemed to find it easy enough, with me.”
“You’re a Mind.”
“And it’s different?”
“Of course it is,” Long Chau said.
“Easier?” She didn’t usually do that, but something about Long Chau invited challenge. Perhaps the simple knowledge that she’d get an honest answer, even if she didn’t like it.
“Different,” Long Chau said. “Easier for me, but we both know that’s not the case for most people.” And then, after a pause that announced a change of subjects, “You have contacts with other shipminds.”
“And with other people,” The Shadow’s Child said, sharply.
“You know what I mean,” Long Chau said. “I’m not a very social person.”
For sure. The Shadow’s Child bit back the obvious comment. “You want to know why she was in deep spaces.”
“Yes. See.” Long Chau knelt, bots crawling out of her sleeves. They took, one by one, positions on the bed and at the corners of the low
