“She’ll live,” Long Chau said. She was leaning against the wall, the bots clinging to her hands again. Only The Shadow’s Child, who’d insisted on monitoring her and who now had several bots nesting on Long Chau’s body, knew how close to sheer exhaustion she was running. “Through no fault of yours.”
Grandmother Khue said nothing.
The Shadow’s Child said, slowly, “I’d guess it would be negligence rather than murder.” They weren’t going to charge the brewer, of course—just like an apothecary wouldn’t be held responsible if the dosages prescribed weren’t respected. It was all on the sisterhood’s shoulders.
Long Chau said nothing. She didn’t need to. She positively radiated anger—the same carefully set expression she’d had when they’d carried Tuyet into hospital—when she’d sat, tightly focused, until the doctors came out with their verdict—everything not all right, of course, because things never were that simple—but at least offering a measure of hope.
“You had to know,” The Shadow’s Child said. She couldn’t help it. She was trying to be kind—to not be Long Chau—but it was hard. “Blends just can’t—”
“There were other alerts.” Long Chau didn’t move from the wall. “Near misses. You’re lucky it didn’t happen before.” Her tone was unbearably light.
Grandmother Khue said, at last—and it looked as though every word was costing her—“I didn’t know. I thought—deep spaces are frightening. It was supposed to make things easier.”
“To control your flock.”
“You don’t understand.” Again, that visible effort to speak up, as if the air had turned to metal in her mouth. “The Church used it to make people insignificant, but that’s not—” she paused, started again. “When you’re out there, with no one and nothing to stand in your way—when you realise how small you are—you also realise that everything that ever was, that ever will be, is connected to you. That we’re all, in the end, part of the same great thing.”
The stuff of nightmares, and she wanted to make it into some kind of revelation? “Buddhist nonsense,” The Shadow’s Child said, sharply.
She’d expected Long Chau to say something, but Long Chau was oddly silent. Reminiscing, the bots said. “For the right person, perhaps,” Long Chau said, at last. She shook her head. “Neither Tuyet nor Hai Anh were, I fancy.”
“They would have been. They just had to let go of fear.”
Long Chau sighed. She turned, halfway, to look at The Shadow’s Child. “Always easier to say than do. And it shouldn’t take deaths for you to learn that lesson.”
“I did what I had to.”
“It’s pointless,” The Shadow’s Child said to Long Chau, more kindly than she’d meant to. In truth, she was as shaken and as exhausted as Long Chau, and if she even so much as attempted to rest she’d see, again and again, the two bodies tumbling away from her in deep spaces, and feel herself, in the split moment before she finally dived, so close to failing them both. “Come on.”
And—much to her surprise—Long Chau did.
* * *
Long Chau walked The Shadow’s Child back to her office, in silence. Inside, she pulled up a chair, and didn’t so much sit as collapse into it. The Shadow’s Child, unsure of where any of it left them, let the bots prepare tea and dumplings on an almost automatic course.
The room was bare again. She forced herself to turn it into a living space: to make paintings and vids emerge out of the metal space, tweaking them to show stars, and the waterfalls on some distant planet. No deep spaces, though perhaps one day she’d be able to bear this particular sight so close to her. Bookshelves shimmered into existence on the overlay—crammed with mythical romances and sweeping, epic novels of scholars and ships; with heavy tomes on blend-making from basics to more complex subjects. She ached to be alone again, except that silence scared her more than she could say.
Long Chau sat, watching her tea as if it held the secrets of the universe. On her hands, the bots glinted. Probably only the drugs kept her upright. It’d have been a time for apologies, except The Shadow’s Child didn’t feel she owed any.
“What now?” she asked, instead.
Long Chau smiled, a ghost of her earlier expression. “I would go look for another corpse for my memoir, but I don’t feel like I could handle the consequences just right now.”
“The blend—”
“It’s out of my system.” She’d refused to let the doctors look at her. Of course. “And I’ll be out of your life, soon, never fear. All debts paid.”
Her rent. She ought to have felt relieved, but she had no energy for anything. “I see.” A pause, then, “You needn’t worry. About my telling Kim Oanh’s family.”
A raised eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought you would.”
“You didn’t have to tell me.”
“You dived into deep spaces to rescue Tuyet and me. I know exactly how much that cost you. The least I could do was repay that trust.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know you didn’t. That doesn’t change anything.” Long Chau was silent, again. She shook her hands: the bots withdrew, leaving only dark, scarred skin beneath them, with barely a drop of blood.
“If you trust me—”
“Yes?”
“Tell me about the drugs. The ones you’re taking.”
“Oh.” Long Chau set the cup on the table. “Not much to tell, is there. You still think it’s because of the militia interrogation?” A shadow of her old amusement. “It would be neat, wouldn’t it? An easy and sympathetic explanation. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. I simply need the drugs to function. That’s all there is to it. Life isn’t easy and neat.”
“You make it sound like it is. When you make your deductions from the smallest scraps of evidence.”
“When I deduce things? You’re mistaken. The world is chaotic and without sense. But in the smallest of spheres it’s sometimes possible to straighten things out; to make it seem as though everything means something.” She sipped the tea. So did The
