It’s night in the barracks. Lan is on patrol—should be, if she wasn’t caught in the riots. Ai Thi has known for a while that things are taut, but for riots to be this widespread, this fast? Things are bad. Very bad. Ai Thi hits the general alert on the network. She heads to the squad room first, but it’s deserted and silent—and shifts course, to get to Giang’s office.
She finds the Captain putting on her jacket, straightening her official rank patch on her chest, the eyes of the tiger shining in the dim light. “Captain—”
“I know.” Giang’s voice is curt.
Mankind is but one step away from lawlessness. Only the word of Heaven and of the Everlasting Emperor keeps us from becoming monsters to one another.
Barely contained panic within Ai Thi—Giang’s appeaser, not hers—hers is silent and watchful, but not surprised.
“We have to hold,” Captain Giang says. “We need to re-establish harmony and order.” She shakes her head. Again that feeling of rising panic within Ai Thi, the edge of something so strong Giang can barely contain it.
“Captain—”
Giang is halfway to the door already. “There’s no time, private. Come.”
Something is wrong. Not the riot, not the crowd, not what seems like a station-wide panic. Captain Giang wouldn’t lose her head over that. And she’s not currently broadcasting emotions at Ai Thi. Whatever causes that panic is so strong that it’s simply spilling outwards, like the hurt of Ai Thi’s appeaser when Hoa wouldn’t touch them.
And why hasn’t she mentioned reinforcements? “Captain,” Ai Thi says, again. “We’ll hold, but what about Plum Blossom Company?”
Giang turns then. For a moment, her composure breaks, and the face she shows to Ai Thi is the white, ashen one of a corpse, a bewildered, lost and hungry ghost. “The dissidents have overwhelmed the Palace of Heaven and Earth, private. The Everlasting Emperor is dead.”
Dead.
No.
The roar in Ai Thi’s ears isn’t the sound of the crowd—it’s a long, desperate scream that scrapes her throat raw, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from her or the appeaser.
“How can he—” she starts, stops, unable to voice the enormity of it. “How—”
Giang has pulled herself together again. “I don’t know,” she says. “But that’s not what matters. There are no reinforcements coming, private.”
Outside, on Ai Thi’s implants, the crowd has trampled the two harmonisers guarding the gates. A press of people is battering at the gates, and it’s only a matter of time until the fragile metal gives way.
Dead.
The Empire is as long lasting as the stars in the heavens, as the bonds of filial duty between parents and children.
The Empire …
They’ll die, holding the barracks. Die trying to impose harmony on a crowd that’s too large and too big for them to control.
“Captain, we can’t—”
“I know we can’t hold.” Giang is at the door: she doesn’t turn around anymore. Ai Thi calls up the inside of the gates on her implants, sees another press: Kim Cuc and Tuyet and Vu and half the harmonisers in the barracks in a loose formation that mixes all squads under the orders of Sergeant Bac and Sergeant Hong, sending wave after wave of appeaser thoughts towards the crowd, trying to calm them down. It’s like throwing stones and hoping to stop the ocean.
Giang says, “We swore an oath to the Emperor, private. Loyalty unto death.”
Giang’s appeaser: warmth and contentment within Ai Thi, the satisfaction of duty done to the bitter end. It is the duty of all subjects to give their life …
Within Ai Thi, her appeaser stirs—brings up, not the Everlasting Emperor’s voice, but Hoa’s compassion-filled gaze, Hoa’s voice, a rock against which the other appeaser’s thoughts shatter.
You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself.
“It’s not …” Ai Thi says. She’s surprised at how steady her voice sounds.
“I beg your pardon?” Giang stops then.
“It’s not our duty,” Ai Thi says. “That’s not how that saying ends, Captain.”
He never asks for more than what is necessary, and reasonably borne.
The Everlasting Emperor is dead. There is nothing that says they have to die, too.
Ai Thi’s appeaser has fallen silent, knowing exactly what she wants. She feels the thoughts from Giang’s appeaser, dancing on the edge of her mind— duty, loyalty, death, a trembling wall she can barely hold at bay for long.
Giang moves back into her office, comes to stand before her. “This isn’t a discussion, private. It’s an order.”
Necessary. Reasonably borne. Ai Thi uncoils, then—even as, within her, the appeaser moves—a psychic onslaught centred around a single, pinpoint thought. Giang grunts, goes down on one knee, eyes rolling up in her face, and Ai Thi’s hand strikes her jugular, taking her down.
Ai Thi stands, breathing hard, over Giang’s unconscious body—for a moment, at a loss at what she’s done, what she should do—but there is only one thing that she can do, after all. The rioters will come for their families next, and neither Second Aunt nor Dieu Kiem have had any training in combat or eluding pursuers. There’s a risk she’ll lead the crowd straight to them, but it’s offset by what she and the appeaser can bring them. She can help. She has to.
Ai Thi thinks of the other harmonisers, lined against the doors and waiting for them to cave in. She heads towards the squad room. Within her, rising emptiness, a howling need—how will they survive, with the Everlasting Emperor dead—what does wisdom mean, anymore, if its incarnation is no more—nothing, there is nothing left …
In the squad room, there’s only Lan, bloodied and out of breath, who smiles grimly at her. “It’s a war zone out there. Fortunately they haven’t found the back door yet, but I don’t know how long we can hold.”
Ai Thi’s voice comes from very far away—a stranger’s, utterly emotionless—because the alternative would be an endless scream. “The Everlasting Emperor is dead. Captain Giang … says to run. To scatter back to our families. There’s
