Seven of Infinities, page 13
And then she was gone, and Vân was still curled around the gun, struggling to breathe.
* * *
UP TO THE last moment, Sunless Woods had expected it would turn out all right—that she’d rustle up a miracle, turn this on its head the way she always turned things around, that things were bleak and desperate but that she’d find a way. That she’d come out of this the way she always had, with a daring escape that let her be the darling of memorials and newscasts.
Until Vân grabbed the gun from Hương Lâm, and Sunless Woods’s entire world narrowed to that silent struggle—and the detonation, and her whole consciousness focused into that single, primal scream that tore from her distant core all the way into the habitat—and then Uyên walking in and effortlessly managing the situation while Sunless Woods stood frozen, seeing, over and over, the shot so close to Vân’s face, how close she’d come to losing it all.
Because of her single focus and arrogance, and mistaken belief she could do it all, because she thought she could show off and save Vân, and still find a way to salvage it all.
Because of her.
She should be moving now. She should be taking charge, making sure that Vân was safe, that things resolved the way they should. Thiên Hoa was staring at her, wondering why she wasn’t—why Uyên, barely old enough to be considered out of childhood, was the one who seemed to be in charge.
Sunless Woods just stood there, trying to patch together her shattered thoughts.
* * *
“TEACHER, TEACHER.” IT was Uyên’s voice, and her student’s hands, gently uncurling her. “Come on come on, Teacher.”
Vân tried to rise, found only shaking in her arms and legs. Uyên was pressing something in her hands, and then into her mouth when it didn’t work. A short burst of rich sweetness in her mouth: it was some kind of flaky durian cake, a thin outer layer that melted, leaving only the savour of the fruit.
“She needs a doctor,” Sunless Woods’s companion was saying.
Uyên’s voice was savage. “Don’t even think of interfering in this. You’ve done enough as it is.” Sunless Woods still hadn’t moved: or more accurately she’d relaxed but was still staring at Vân with tears streaming down in her face. Good, because Vân wasn’t sure of what she’d have told her.
An Thành said, sharply, She lied, earlier. When she referred to you as messed-up leftovers.
Why would she? But she knew, didn’t she. Because if she’d told Hương Lâm how much she cared, Hương Lâm would have held Vân hostage.
Understanding didn’t make Vân less angry, or bereft. She had no right.
From An Thành, only silence.
“Better?” Uyên asked. “Teacher?”
The statesperson’s pose was gone, and now she looked as though she’d crossed ten courts of Hell to get there.
“I’m all right.” Vân tried to pull herself upwards again—managed it finally, shaking, on legs that still felt like jelly. “Thank you.”
Uyên’s smile was dazzling. “That was only the right thing to do.”
Remember me, Hương Lâm had said, before walking away—before once more leaving Vân to carry on with her life.
Duty. Truth. Integrity. All the hidden things, and the lie she’d built for herself, and the past that she couldn’t escape. How could she pretend to be a teacher, if she wasn’t telling Uyên who helped her provide the teachings? “Child,” she said. “There’s something you need to know. About me. About my honored ancestor.” She braced herself then, feeling An Thành in her thoughts, the leaden weight that would crush the life she’d built. But it was the right thing to do. “A long time ago, I—”
Uyên’s finger rested on her mouth, lightly—but as rigid as a bar of steel. “I don’t need to know.”
“But—” Vân started. That wasn’t what she’d expected.
Uyên’s face was grave. “We are what we are. What we made ourselves into. The choices we made. I’ve seen it, Teacher. That’s all that matters.”
“I’ve done things you wouldn’t forgive.”
Uyên cocked her head. “Ah. We all do these, don’t we?”
Vân thought of the gun, and the utter certainty that she couldn’t let Uyên see her that way—that she needed to stand up and live. “I’m your teacher.”
Laughter. “You say that like you should be perfect. Trust me, Teacher, you don’t need to be.”
“You can’t mean—”
“To forgive you? I already have.” Uyên smiled, and once again it felt as though the whole room, ramshackle overlay and all, was flooded with light. She laughed. “After all, I’ve just helped a murderer escape justice. I can’t even say I have a very firm grounding on keeping with the law.”
I’ve done things you wouldn’t forgive.
We all do these, don’t we?
She had failed her friends. She had been dishonest and cowardly, and nothing would change that. She thought of Sunless Woods, of An Thành; of Uyên and of Hương Lâm, walking away from her.
She couldn’t escape her past, but she could acknowledge it—could own it, let it be part of who she was rather than having it destroy her. She could know who she was, and forgive herself. “The militia—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll deal with the militia. Or Sunless Woods will.”
Sunless Woods. Thief. Her mocking words, echoing in Vân’s thoughts, again and again, the easy lies, the arrogance. But she was standing stock-still and still hadn’t moved, and her scream still echoed in Vân’s thoughts, and Vân didn’t know, anymore, what to do.
Uyên’s face shifted. “I see,” she said. “Come on.”
* * *
IN THE END, it was Uyên and Vân who came to her: Vân shaking and in obvious shock, and Uyên’s gaze dark and piercing, decidedly unfriendly, as if at any moment she would lecture Sunless Woods heedless of their age difference.
“Thank you,” Sunless Woods said. “For what you did.”
An expansive shrug, from Uyên. “Only the righteous thing.” Her eyes glinted. “Sorting out the situation with the militia should be interesting.”
Behind them, Thiên Hoa raised a suggestive eyebrow. Time to show off; to impress Vân—except that she’d almost gotten Vân killed, and had hurt her prior to that. She should leave—run and change her identity, the way she always had. She’d tried to bring changes in her life, and nothing had worked out. Time to start over with her crew, find fresh wrongs to be righted, or valuables to be stolen.
“I don’t know who you are,” Uyên said.
“Not a scholar,” Vân whispered. And in her gaze was only anger and despair, an expression that shook Sunless Woods to her core.
She could run, again and again, trying to outpace her old life. Or she could try, for once, to go the hard way. She said, slowly, “Think of me as a help. I can work with the militia to finish untangling this, but the credit for all this is yours.”
Uyên’s gaze on her was ironic, and way too perceptive for a girl her age. “Thank you.”
Vân’s hand, resting on Uyên’s. “Can I—”
Uyên’s face softened. “Of course, Teacher.” And stepped away, to leave the two of them some privacy.
* * *
“YOU WOULD HAVE let me die.” Vân’s voice was shaking. She couldn’t seem to stand still—at length, she had to lean on the wall, struggling to breathe.
Sunless Woods said, finally, “No. I was trying very hard not to make that happen.”
“You—you let me think I was loot.”
“I had to. I had to pretend I did not care, that I was as much of a thief as she was.” The ship’s voice was no longer as confident as it had once been. “By pretending you were worthless to her or me. It was the only way—”
“And look what happened! I—” a deep, shaking breath. “If I hadn’t pushed her away…”
A silence. The ship wasn’t looking at her. At length she said, and her voice was different, “It was a risk, and I should never have taken it. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your excuses.” Vân tried to keep the bitterness from her voice, but it was hard. She understood why Sunless Woods had done it—she should have forgiven, but she just couldn’t. It was too much.
“Are you going to reproach me for keeping secrets?”
“No,” Vân said. “We both did that, and we knew it. I didn’t take you into my confidence: I wasn’t expecting to be taken into yours.” She paused, then, because she didn’t know what to expect anymore. And then, finally, “You lie with such ease. How can I ever be sure anything is the truth? How can I—” she stopped, then. “How can I even know if you cared at all?”
A silence. A gentle, trembling heat on her hands: Sunless Woods, wrapping her own hands around hers, her skin the colour of the night sky, with stars slowly winking on her fingers. “Because I do. Because I’ve never met anyone like you, and I let it blind me. Because I was thoughtless and arrogant.” A deep, trembling breath from the ship: underneath them was the cloth of heaven, slowly spreading to Vân’s feet and sheening with all the colours of the rainbow. “And because you’re right. I can’t make excuses that would atone for any of this. I just—” she withdrew her hands, gently reached up to tilt Vân’s head up, to look into her deep, black gaze—“I just wanted you to know there’s more to life than duty. That you’ve earned everything you have, and no life should ever become a chokehold or a cage. But that’s arrogance too, isn’t it, to hope that I can interfere in what’s yours.” An expressive shrug. “Take what you want from what we had. I just hope you’ll remember it without regret.”
“You’re leaving,” Vân said.
The ship shook her head. “No. I’m sticking around to see if Uyên needs help with the aftermath of any of this. But you don’t have to deal with me. I’ll talk to Uyên directly. You can go back to your old life.”
Her old life. It should have felt like a relief, but the thought of it—of teaching Uyên, of being on the margins of society, barely tolerated—of having nothing but duty and obligations, with An Thành as her only comfort—was a leaden weight in her chest.
I don’t want to go higher. I’m happy here, she had told Hương Lâm, and it had all felt like a lie, because it was one. Because she didn’t want to become an official or rule, but there were other ways to reach out, to stretch past the boundaries she’d put on her own life.
She thought of the asteroid field and of the ship—of hanging weightless and without obligations, of what it had felt like to be free.
She’d forgiven herself—why should she not forgive Sunless Woods?
Sunless Woods said, “If I thought there was a chance, any chance that you’d leave it all behind for my sake, I’d ask.” The ship’s laughter was bitter. “But it would be unfair. Because I can’t ordain your life as I see fit, or protect you from harm. In the end, the decisions are yours.” She let go of Vân, and stood for a while, staring at her with that odd expression on her face.
And then she was turning away, gliding rather than walking, the darkness of the stars withdrawing from Vân, that trembling oily sheen travelling across her bare feet, An Thành silent and shocked in her mind as it all left—and she’d never felt so cold or so miserable or so small.
No life should ever become a chokehold or a cage.
“Big’sis,” she said—and, as she’d once said while on the ship’s body, “Wait. Please.”
Sunless Woods paused; turned, watching her, with painful hope in her face. Vân said, haltingly, “I can’t leave. I’m Uyên’s teacher: I have obligations here. It just can’t work that way.”
“I see.” The ship’s voice was taut, braced for a blow.
Vân plunged on, “But we could find other ways to make it work.”
A slow, heavy silence. Sunless Woods was by her side again; Vân had hardly seen her move; but felt her now, a dark, vast presence by her side, as inevitable and natural as the sun and the nebulae and the black holes. “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Sunless Woods said.
Vân smiled, then. “No. But neither do you. That’s half the challenge, isn’t it?”
And, gathering the strength she had left, she stood on tip-toe and kissed Sunless Woods, drinking in sheeny oil and sharp metal and the endless song of the stars—until Sunless Woods caught her in her arms, and she hung weightless and free, with nothing in the habitats holding her back anymore.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Tade Thompson, Marissa Lingen, Fran Wilde and Kate Elliott for beta-reading the draft of this book, and Hara Trần for double-checking all my Vietnamese names.
For support, Stephanie Burgis, D Franklin, Zoe Johnson, Liz Bourke and Charlotte Cuffe, Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dev Agarwal, Zen Cho, Nene Ormes, Alessa Hinlo, Inksea, Sheila Perry, Stella Evans, Likhain, Juliet Kemp, Michelle Sagara, Samit Basu, Victor Fernando R Ocampo, Vida Cruz, Lynn E O’Connacht, Rachel Monte, Kari Sperring, Hana Lee, Ghislaine Lai, Justine, Nina Niskanen, Natasha Ngan, Liz Bourke, Laura J Mixon, Gareth L Powell, Cindy Pon, Alessa Hinlo, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Camille Regan, Jeannette Ng and Jenny Rae Rappaport.
Many thanks to Yanni Kuznia, Bill Schafer, Geralyn Lance, and everyone at Subterranean Press and Desert Isle Design for the gorgeousness of the US edition, and to Maurizio Manzieri for the cover. For the UK edition, thanks to Patrick Disselhorst and Lisa Rodgers, and to Dirk Berger for cover art. To John Berlyne for advice and support and friendship, as always.
To my family for their support and love.
And to Maurice Leblanc and Arsène Lupin, for inspiring the character of Sunless Woods and her adventures!
About the Author
Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Architect. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. Aliette has won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards, and was a double Hugo finalist for 2019 (Best Series and Best Novella).
Her most recent book is Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.) a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court. She is the author of the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war–which comprises The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz, 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, Locus Award finalist), The House of Binding Thorns (Ace/Gollancz, 2017 European Science Fiction Society Achievement Award, Locus award finalist), and The House of Sundering Flames. She also wrote Fireheart Tiger (Tor.com), a sapphic romantic fantasy set in a Vietnamese-esque court.
Her short story collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is out from Subterranean Press.
Her space opera books also include The Tea Master and the Detective (2018 Nebula Award winner, 2018 British Fantasy Award winner, 2019 Hugo Award finalist), a murder mystery set on a space station in a Vietnamese Galactic empire, inspired by the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
Visit her website www.aliettedebodard.com for free fiction (including further short stories set in the same universe as this one), Vietnamese and French recipes and more.
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Aliette de Bodard, Seven of Infinities
