“I was... not following news,” The Shadow’s Child said. In a dock, being refitted and healed, pored over by an army of doctors and apothecaries, prescribed useless drug after useless drug. Any news like that would have headed the list of things she wasn’t allowed to know. “The mindship—”
“The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen? Yes,” Long Chau said. “The name has changed, of course. He wouldn’t be such a fool. He’s taking passengers between habitats for a living.”
“And you think he’s killing people? That’s not what you told Tuyet.”
“I don’t,” Long Chau said. “The girl was an accident, and everyone involved was investigated. And jailed, exiled or executed. An unbalanced mindship wouldn’t have been allowed to continue carrying people. Or to continue at all.” She picked at a translucent shrimp dumpling with her chopsticks, thoughtfully. The bots on her hands shifted, but the needles didn’t withdraw. She had to be pumped full by now. Not that it made her any more pleasant.
The Shadow’s Child just couldn’t muster any pretence of eating.
“He wasn’t jailed.”
“No,” Long Chau said. “And yet here we find him, a decade later, working with a similar organisation.”
“There’s no common point—”
“You know what I mean. A community of downtrodden people desperate for enlightenment and protection.”
“You do them a disservice,” The Shadow’s Child said, mildly. She’d heard that exact rhetoric from Inner Habitat families. In fact... she brought up again her research on Inner Habitat families, and relaunched it, using the expression Long Chau had used.
That was it.
The head of the Golden Carp Tran family had a verbal tic with exactly those words, and a similar accent. The Shadow’s Child narrowed her search queries again, asking for employment of anyone of Long Chau’s approximate age by that particular family and lineage, and correlating it with militia arrests.
“Mmm.” Long Chau finished her dumpling, and helped herself to more rice soup. “They’re doing the same thing. The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen is making regular requests to enter deep spaces. I had a look at a few of the recorded logs: it’s always Grandmother Khue, a couple of people from the house, and someone who looks scared.”
“That’s guesswork, surely,” The Shadow’s Child said, with less bite than she’d meant to. She was distracted by her search, which was showing progress on a high-priority thread. So far, no results. But it was far from done: the list of people who had worked for the family at one time or another was huge.
“No. Analysis of evidence, and converging hypotheses. Call it guesswork if you want. The likelihood of my being right is high enough that I’m confident putting this on the table.”
“Still not explaining why Hai Anh would get into deep spaces without an unreality suit.”
But the rest of it would fit. It would explain why both Grandmother Khue and Tuyet had felt so guilty. “You think it’s a disciplinary matter gone bad?”
“Now that,” Long Chau said, “would be guesswork. I don’t know. There are no recordings for the evening Hai Anh boarded. Someone wiped them, but they weren’t thorough enough to go back and wipe every single trip that mindship took into deep spaces.” She shook her arms. The bots detached from her hands, and slid back into her sleeves.
“It could also be simple malfunction,” The Shadow’s Child said. “I had a look at the records. The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen is in bad shape. The sisterhood doesn’t have the money to maintain him. It’s a wonder anyone is confident enough to leap into deep spaces with him.”
“You’re being disingenuous,” Long Chau said. “Mindship critical functions and security systems are the last things to go. If he’s still able to move and plunge into deep spaces, he wouldn’t be able to lose a human life because of a systems failure.”
Disingenuous? An easy and hurtful thing to say, as casual as the rest of her comments. “I’m not,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly. The search was distracting her. “Hai Anh was caught in strong currents. She could very well have drifted out of sight of the mindship within just a few moments.” She forestalled Long Chau’s raised hand by speaking faster. “The newer ships would have caught up with her if this happened. But The Sorrow of Four Gentlemen is old. Reflexes would be slower.”
“I’m going to the docks,” Long Chau was saying. “That ship takes regular trips with passengers, which means he’ll be around one way or another. I want to have a look at him.”
“Mmm.” The search was ending: only one result. She opened the related files; stared as she processed.
Long Chau said, “If there’s any regularity, their next trip into deep spaces should be quite soon.”
The Shadow’s Child listened distractedly, because of the file. She’d intended to process its contents quietly and have a chance to confront Long Chau after due deliberation, but what she saw—
“Kim Oanh,” The Shadow’s Child said.
Long Chau had been about to rise from the table. She sat down now. The languidness was gone, leaving only the sharp, fast and wounding edge of a blade. “What did you say?”
“Tran Thi Kim Oanh,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly, deliberately. “You were her teacher, weren’t you?” Long Chau had changed her appearance. Not a very deep or a particularly careful job, but it didn’t need to be, not when the uprising had upended so many things in the Scattered Pearls belt—and of course seven years would change a person, regardless.
“That’s none of your business.”
“I think,” The Shadow’s Child said, slowly, “that I’d want to know what happened, before letting you loose into the company of girls like Tuyet.”
Long Chau stared, and said nothing.
A sixteen-year-old girl, chafing at the strictures of family life—vanished without a trace, with dark speculations
