Seven of Infinities, page 8
A silence. Laureate An Thành was quivering with anger in Vân’s thoughts—Vân could only catch fragments of quotes, something about indigo and blue—the blue of fair justice, the indigo of righteous, irrevocable action which was also Vân’s style name. And, in that silence, tightening like a silken noose, Sunless Woods’s sharp voice, “You’re not the one who failed. And…regardless of what they did, back then, they haven’t come back the same. Your friend—the dead one—”
“Dinh. Hương Dinh.”
“Dinh killed that woman.” Sunless Woods’s voice was cool. “Stuffed her in the safe to make sure she wouldn’t be found, and then went to see Uyên.”
Fear rose, choking her. “You can’t mean—”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Sunless Woods said. “And—” a pause, but it seemed to be more for effect than because she was looking for words—“It took two people to kill the woman in the safe.”
Vân opened her mouth to say that Dinh Hương Lâm never would—and then realised that five years had passed, and her own friends were now as strangers to her. “Who was she?”
“The dead woman? One of Ngân Chi’s poor relatives. They must have promised her whatever was inside the safe.”
Except it had been empty, and the one in Uyên’s quarters as well. “They’re looking for wealth?”
Sunless Woods made a non-committal noise. “Yes. Whether it exists…that’s another matter.”
Vân was all too familiar with promises that never materialised. She tried to focus on what mattered. “Revenge.” She couldn’t imagine the sisters doing this, doing any of this; but thinking like this would only get Uyên killed. “They’ll want Uyên.”
“Yes.” The ship was sitting next to her again, hands wrapped around hers, and Vân could feel Sunless Woods’s slow, steady heartbeat, the coolness of metal, with the faint warmth of motor oil trembling in the air. “The penalty doesn’t get any worse for more murders unless we’re talking relatives. It’s slow death for them when they get caught. They’ll have no incentive to stop. And I know you’re concerned for Uyên, but consider this: you were there too, and they know who you are.”
Vân opened her mouth to say they wouldn’t have any interest in harming her, but the ship got there first.
“You’re free and respected, and they’re in immense pain and facing an agonising death whether they get caught or not. Don’t underestimate what that does to people, please.” The worst wasn’t the words—it was the way she said them, the absolute certainty in them, the clear way Sunless Woods had already seen it.
“I’m not naive,” Vân said.
“Of course not.” The ship’s smile was fond and sad. “You’re merely trying to think the best of people, always. But I can’t afford that if I want to protect you.”
Protect.
We protected you, big’sis. Don’t go and waste it all.
Vân tried to think of Hương Lâm—tried to think of facing her, of telling her everything Vân should have done—and saw only darkness where her friend’s face had once been. “Hương Lâm and Dinh thought they were protecting me, too.”
A silence, from the ship. “Yes.” Her hands hadn’t moved, but she raised Vân’s own hands, brought them to her mouth. “I can’t be them. I wouldn’t be them, because I wouldn’t make the choices they did. But I can make some of that fear you’ve been carrying for five years go away, if you’ll let me.”
Vân said, with a tongue that seemed to have melted into thick tar, “If I let you?”
Sunless Woods’s smile was sharp and dazzling, and the entire room gathered itself behind it, illuminated, wounding. “If you let me care.”
Her lips rested on the back of Vân’s hands—she kissed them slowly, gently, a slow quivering shiver climbing through Vân’s spine as she did so—she nudged Vân’s thumbs into her mouth in a fluid, effortless movement, and then her lips were sucking on them with that same slow, steady rhythm, as inexorable as the wheeling of the stars in the sky. Vân clamped down on a moan, but Sunless Woods’s lips were still on her thumbs, every touch of them raw and unbearable and glorious, and her bots were flowing down Vân’s back beneath the shirt, their legs trembling strokes on Vân’s naked skin that seemed never to end—as though Sunless Woods were peeling away layers of skin and muscles until nothing remained but the shuddering mess at Vân’s core.
Abruptly, it stopped. Vân, struggling to breathe through a chest that had contracted to burning breaths, tried to call the ship’s name and only found incoherent, garbled syllables like warm embers in her mouth. Sunless Woods’s hands rested on her shoulders—Vân moved to grab them, to hold them closer to her chest and the knot of contorted desire there, but the ship’s grip was iron. In her gaze, Vân saw the stars and the distant reflection of the Belt’s habitats; and on her arms bots glinted, a match to the ones coiled in Vân’s hair.
“You know I will stop,” Sunless Woods said. Her voice was flat. “If you ask, if any point you feel this has gone too far—”
Laureate An Thành coalesced, briefly, into the desert of Vân’s thoughts, reminding her of how the dance always went. “Yes,” Vân said. “I can stop this with a word, and so can you.” She drew Sunless Woods to her—feeling the heat and the weight of the ship on her arms, that body that was soft and pliant in a way no human body was—a touch relayed through layers of overlay that still set Vân’s skin afire. “Don’t you dare make decisions for me.” Her bots came down her arms, flowing onto Sunless Woods’s own arms, until they nipped at the flesh of the neck—she hadn’t been sure it’d work until the ship shuddered, and the entire room around them echoed this.
Vân fell with Sunless Woods on top of her—and saw the ship’s avatar arch backwards, hair flowing oily and slick, her face planes of rugged metal reflecting starlight, her hands seeking Vân’s chest, her bots delicately dancing on Vân’s earlobes, pulling them again and again until the ache within her was too much and she moaned, over and over—and then there was nothing but the relentless heat of desire, whittling away at her whole being until she felt like an arrow finally loosed into space—going weightless and free into all-encompassing, comforting darkness.
* * *
VN WOKE UP. For a brief moment she didn’t recognise where she was, and then she realised she was still in the same bed she’d been in before, except that she lay pillowed in the hollow of Sunless Woods’s shoulders, with the sound of distant starsong washing over her, and Sunless Woods’s bots curled up on her own shoulders and arms. Half of them scattered when she moved, and the ship beneath her stirred, the room slowly shifting into life in a word that Vân found hard to quantify—lights and oily reflections on metal becoming sharper and more in focus.
“Ship,” she said, slowly, carefully. And then, the word itself tentative and presumptuous, sticking in her throat like the bone of a fish, “Big’sis.” She started to ask what had happened, but it all came flooding back anyway, along with a memory of when she’d climaxed, her voice hoarse from moaning. “Hum. I—”
“Lil’sis,” Sunless Woods said. Vân couldn’t see her face, but she could feel the ship starting to pull away from her—the casual, arrogant mask being slipped back on. “Regrets?”
“No!” Vân fumbled for words. “I. Hum. It was amazing.”
Laughter, good-humoured and sharp. “Yes. Same here.”
Vân opened her mouth to say the ship had had other lovers, and then closed it when Sunless Woods ran a hand from the lobe of her ear down her cheek, slowly trailing beating warmth all the way down to her lips until she ached with need. “You’re going to protest it can’t possibly be that good. Please don’t. Unless you want another demonstration of how much I enjoyed it?”
Vân wanted to, desperately—she nibbled on Sunless Woods’s fingers instead, inhaling her until the world seemed to tremble and fold around her hunger—and then letting go with a breath that felt torn out of her. “Later?”
A silence. Then Sunless Woods said, “You’re worrying about what you told me.”
Vân opened her mouth, and realised that wasn’t it—that she didn’t know what she felt anymore—a perverse mixture of relief that it had been said, that it was out in the open and not weighing her down anymore, and of fear that Sunless Woods would push harder, that she’d ask about An Thành and the secret that would get her kicked out of Uyên’s house.
Sunless Woods rose, holding both of Vân’s hands close to her—bringing them to her chest until all Vân could feel was the steady hum of motors. In her eyes, stars wheeled and slowly expanded, and sunlight glinted across the habitats spread like pearls against the blackness of space. “I have you,” she said, simply. “I’m not in the habit of sharing confidences with other people.”
Vân’s voice choked in her chest. “You can’t—”
“Love you? Care for you?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. We—we barely know each other. We—” she sought for words. “We had amazing sex and that’s really all there is…” Her voice trailed off, because she didn’t know anymore what she’d say—what she’d be afraid to say, that the ship had seen dozens like her, that she was nothing special.
For a bare moment as they’d kissed—as Sunless Woods’s hands stroked her skin and the bots clung to her face, and everything felt tight and unbearably warm, taut with her desire—she’d been free, and it had changed everything—except that it couldn’t last, it had never been meant to last.
An Thành whispered, Love as lasting as the bamboo in winter, as sharp and as beautiful as frost on jade…
As unattainable as nirvana, Vân said, more sharply than she’d meant to, and An Thành fell back, silenced.
Sunless Woods’s voice was gentle, but as unbending as steel wrapped in silk. “And you think I’d leave you to fend off for yourself?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Laughter, gentle and amused. “As you say, you don’t know me well. But I’ve never left someone in danger, and certainly not those I love.” Her voice had hardened imperceptibly—she’d stretched, and she was…vast and terrible, the kind of ship whose passage scorched planets and moons. “I have people looking for Hương Lâm. The killing was a mistake. People won’t want to get mixed up with her. We’ll find her, and turn her in.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“That’s because it is.” Sunless Woods was still holding Vân’s hands against her chest: she bent over, and kissed Vân on the lips, gently, slowly. “Go home. You need to rest.”
“You’re cutting me out.”
“No. I’m just making sure you get rest, and food.” Sunless Woods’s voice went hard again. “And you’re a gentle soul. Sometimes it’s better not to know what I can get up to.”
Vân said, before she could think, “You’re not a scholar, are you.”
A pause. She should have braced herself for harm; for the ship to eject her into space or silence her in so many other ways—but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine it, not from Sunless Woods.
The hands on hers squeezed, once, twice—and then Sunless Woods let go, and smiled at her, her avatar once more just an outline against the metal of the ship’s body. “Firebrand. I’m the person who’s made it her business to keep you and Uyên safe.” Her voice was fond. “Ask me again, when this is over.”
Vân swallowed the words she’d meant to say, and found only tightness in her chest, as if something long held was going to burst. “I will.”
Sunless Woods laughed. “Good. Come on. Let’s get you to a shuttle and back home.”
* * *
ON HER WAY back, Vân saw the ship.
She was walking side by side with Sunless Woods’s avatar at first, and then she fell behind after the first couple corridors—as the holograms unfolded around her, unspooling ghostly dragons and fishermen, citadels of carved metal, and the distant sound of a flute mingled with the ever-present song of the stars. There was an octagonal room with a fountain—she couldn’t tell if it was real or a hologram, the way the water sparkled with trapped starlight over a transparent floor, so that she was walking on the vastness of space, watching the curve of the outer habitats beneath her—and for a moment she hung again in space with the asteroids around her, where nothing mattered but the view unspooled around her, and the sound of her breath in the shadow-skin, and the slight, silent jolt of the glider as it accelerated. The corridors curved, sharply—their surfaces slick and oily, with just a hint of the deep spaces mindships went through—and opened up again at regular intervals into circular nooks whose walls were curio cabinets, their upper shelves showing tantalising hints of objects through latticework—from jade sculptures to jewellery to ancient scrolls, to sword sheaths and carved precious woods—to a fan of rice paper so thin and so brittle it had to be centuries old, with a poem written in the sweeping, evocative calligraphy of a master.
An Thành was keeping a silent catalogue of what she was seeing through the lattice—the jade lotus statues, the filigreed silver chests with patterns of peaches and deer, the rosewood stands adorned with precious rocks. When she got to the fan she paused, and if she’d been incarnate her breath would have caught in her chest. That’s pre-Exodus. From Old Earth. Or a very good replica.
Which made it almost the same worth as the original—it wasn’t the age, but the time that had gone into recreating it that created the value. This was almost—but not quite—the treasure trove of a wealthy scholar, the life Vân occasionally dreamt of as an unattainable fancy, except for a few wrong notes.
You’re not a scholar, are you.
Ask me again after this.
There were more cabinets and more treasures, and bookshelves faintly shimmering into existence, loaded with scrolls from romantic space opera to martial heroes, and the faint sound of water answering the plaintive starsong. The ship was by her side again, holding her hand, her touch warm and comforting—and her bots had spread around them both in a teardrop shape, their legs faintly clicking on the floor.
Vân found her voice. “You’re flirting with me.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” Sunless Woods smiled. “I was rather thinking I’d sweep you off your feet.” And ran a hand on Vân’s hair, softly stroking the topknot open, fingers gently running on Vân’s scalp, a slow steady combing even as Sunless Woods bore her against the corridor’s wall and held her there.
Vân scrabbled, fingers finding Sunless Woods’s back, and the stream of bots there—her hands dancing over them as if she were playing on silk strings—Sunless Woods’s lips clamped on a moan that twisted the corridor out of shape, while behind Vân the wall yielded like living skin, holding her tight in an endless embrace, and everything stellated into that craved sense of release.
* * *
AFTERWARDS, THEY SAT side by side, holding hands on the shuttle. Vân felt held by more than hands—by the bench and by the walls, by the shuttle itself, wrapped and cocooned in Sunless Woods’s embrace. No words would come; for a while she did nothing but lay back against the shuttle’s wall, feeling the ship’s heartbeat against her own body.
“I’ll send someone,” Sunless Woods said. “To keep an eye on you and Uyên.”
Vân opened her mouth to protest, but An Thành got there first.
This isn’t the time for pride or principles, An Thành said, severely. Take the help offered.
Vân started to protest principles weren’t optional, and then she thought of Uyên. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you, big’sis.”
“Of course.” Sunless Woods smiled. “Now go home and rest. I’ll see you later.”
They kissed, on the docks—and Vân walked home with the taste of motor oil and starlight in her mouth.
* * *
SUNLESS WOODS HADN’T meant to lie to Vân.
Rather, to put things in the proper order, she hadn’t meant to sleep with Vân in the first place—except that she’d seen that bruised, wounded expression on Vân’s face, the way it had deepened as she’d told her story—and Sunless Woods was too old, too observant not to see the parts where Vân stopped, where she censured herself, where she was still afraid. She’d felt the way the hands in hers had tightened, seen the tenseness in Vân’s shoulders and back—a dam ready to burst, and nothing behind it but fear and guilt—and something in her had shifted, like something breaking in her own heartroom.
The second time…ah well, for the second time she didn’t have a convenient excuse, other than it had been slow and as hot as the hearts of stars and in all ways magnificent.
You’re not a scholar, are you. She hadn’t meant to reveal herself, either; or more of herself than she’d ever shown any of her precious flirts. She should have done what she’d always done: stick to the identity she was impersonating, and have quick, pleasurable sex that they could both look back on fondly—and then leaving or breaking it off before it had any chance to change.
Except that Vân was…all seriousness and integrity, with a sense of duty the size of planets—and all of it should have made Sunless Woods run away very fast, but instead it kept dragging her back in no matter how much she tried to pull away. She’d never seen anyone quite like Vân—and she thought that sleeping with her would solve the problem, at least, of the novelty.
It had; and it had spectacularly failed to solve her other problems.
She pinged Wine through the network, asking the other ship if she could spare either herself or a crew member to watch over Vân. Wine answered with her customary sparseness, saying she was at loose ends in any case, though Sunless Woods didn’t believe her for one moment. Wine had liked Vân.
