Giang doesn’t speak, for a while. Her broad face is emotionless. “They would,” she says. “But the soldiers pay dearly for that food. People on the station aren’t at risk of losing limbs or pieces of their mind, or being tortured for information on the Empire.” Ai Thi can feel, distantly, Giang’s own appeaser, a thin thread at the back of her mind, whispering about love and need and duty, all the sayings she already knows by heart.
She says, “I know this.”
“And they don’t?” Giang sighs. “I’m not questioning your conclusions, private. But as you know, the war isn’t going well. The Everlasting Emperor is going to announce an increase of the war effort.”
“You said the soldiers paid for the food because they were at greater risk. But we—” Ai Thi says.
Giang raises an eyebrow. “Are we not?” Her gaze is sardonic, and Ai Thi remembers Hoa’s gun going off, the thunder filling her ears. “We’ll be the first against the wall, if things do break down.” It sounds like a warning, though Ai Thi isn’t sure who she means it for.
Perhaps us, the appeaser whispers, but they barely sound worried. Only about Hoa, which surprises Ai Thi; but of course they would know all about hunger and need.
“There’s much unrest,” Giang says. “I don’t want you to patrol in pairs— you cover less ground—but it might become necessary. Private Khanh was attacked by a group of three dissidents masquerading as beggars, and only barely escaped.”
“Is he—” Ai Thi asks, but Giang shook her head.
“He’s fine. We didn’t manage to catch them, though.” Giang sounds annoyed. “Cinnabar Mansions Quadrant reported two riots in as many weeks. As you said, people are wound taut.”
“But we’ll be fine,” Ai Thi says, before she can think.
“Of course we will. The Empire has weathered wars and fire and riots long before we were both born,” Giang says. She makes a gesture with her hands. “Dismissed, private. Enjoy your rest.”
It’s only after Ai Thi has left the office, halfway to her room and the light comedy vid she was looking forward to, that she realises that the warm feeling of utter certainty within her is from Giang’s appeaser.
The foundations of the Everlasting Empire: the censors, rooting out disinformation from vids and newscasts. The scholars, making the laws everyone must abide by. The harmonisers and enforcers, keeping the fabric of the Empire clear of dissidence. And the soldiers, defending the borders against enemy incursions.
“There’s someone at the gates asking after you, lil sis,” Lan says. She laughs, throwing her head back in a gesture so familiar it’s barely annoying anymore. “A menial. From your old life?”
Lan comes from the Inner Rings, the wealthiest Station inhabitants. She caused some scandal at an examination, and her family gave her the choice of enlisting with the harmonisers, or with the soldiers on the front. She’s Ai Thi’s roommate, and she means well, but sometimes her assumptions about people grate. To wit: Ai Thi didn’t keep contact with anyone from her old workplaces—such attachments aren’t encouraged, in any case.
It can’t be Second Aunt, because Ai Thi is currently in communication with home, and spoke to her not a minute past. “Can you ask them to wait?” Ai Thi says. Her time for outside calls is almost up, in any case. She turns back to Dieu Kiem. “Sorry. Duty calling.”
Her daughter makes a grimace in her field of vision. She’s a ghostly overlay in Ai Thi’s implants, a tall and willowy girl who seems to have shot up three heads since Ai Thi was last given a permission home. “Captain Giang.” She looks as though she’s about to laugh. “Fine, but can you tell Great Aunt I want the network key?”
Ai Thi purses her lips. “She told me you hacked it and had every wall display copies of Huong Trang’s poems. The more explicit ones.”
“As practise,” Dieu Kiem snorts. “Too easy.”
She’s growing up too fast, too strong. Ai Thi wants to tell her to be careful, but there’s nothing illegal or reprehensible in what she’s doing—just harmless pranks, the kind even the Everlasting Emperor would smile upon. But where does dissidence start?
She has no answer. She logs off in spite of Dieu Kiem’s complaints, promising her that she’ll have a word with Second Aunt—wondering, once again, how time passes, how little she sees of her own daughter.
Sacrifices aren’t necessary, but they are all the more valued when they do occur.
The appeaser within her is … sad? There’s a peculiar tautness in her mind, as if the entire world were about to come apart. She understands that they’re sad, too, grieving for time lost.
“Thank you,” she says, aloud, shaking her head. “But it’s nothing we can’t survive.”
Warmth from within her; a sated need. The appeaser curls back to their usual, watchful self, chewing on sayings and wisdom they might need for their next patrol.
Outside the gates, Hoa is waiting for her. Ai Thi fights off the urge to pinch herself. “I didn’t think—”
“That I’d come back?” Hoa is still gaunt and pale, but there’s a light in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Ai Thi is afraid to ask where it comes from, but Hoa merely shakes her head. “I found a second job.” She grins, waving a basket towards Ai Thi. “And I owe you a meal.”
They walk towards a nearby white space in silence. Ai Thi reaches out, deftly shaping a small corner of it into a lush green space, like the jungles in the stories of her childhood. Hoa sits down at the foot of a huge fig tree, setting down the basket between ghostly roots—Ai Thi hasn’t reshaped reality, merely added a layer of illusion that they share across their implants.
Inside the basket are four puffed-up dough
