1
TANGLER CHASE
Việt Nhi had resigned herself, early on, to not liking people. And especially not people from the navigator clans. Which was more than a little unfortunate, as she was not just part of the navigator clans, but a Rooster disciple so junior that everyone could order her about into whatever fraught or difficult work needed to be done—and more often than not, said work included more contact with the clanspeople.
To wit, her current situation.
“There’s been a … slight problem,” Elder Mộng Liễu had said.
They were sitting in the reception hall of the Rooster fortress. In the background was the Central Needle and its steady flow of spaceships, rising—flashing golden for a moment as their navigators summoned their Shadows to cocoon them—and then vanishing into the Hollows, the space beyond the stars, beyond the void where travel went faster than light. Nhi liked being near the Needle: the dance of merchants boarding and ships lifting off was mesmerising and a comfort, a reassurance that the world was going on as it had always done.
She focused on the teacup in her hand, feeling its warmth against her skin. “What problem?” she asked.
“An incident with a ship.”
“One of ours?”
Elder Liễu tightened her lips. “A Rat ship,” she said.
Nhi tolerated Elder Liễu: she didn’t equivocate, got straight to the point. And the only secret she had that Nhi could find was before she’d retired from active challenges in the void and stars circles—the society of navigators, always fighting each other for status—she’d loved an Ox navigator and passed on some minor information to him. Insofar as dark inner secrets went, it was tolerable.
She hadn’t told that to Elder Liễu, of course. Most people didn’t appreciate being told all of the truth, and Nhi couldn’t always understand where the tipping point was between being honest and scaring off people. There were rules, but rules sometimes failed, because people were too messy. “We’re not currently allied with the Rat clan,” Nhi said, finally. She gripped her cup, finding solace in its smooth surface.
“No,” Elder Liễu said. “But the imperials intervened.” She raised a hand. “I know you hate politics, but the empire has requested we investigate.”
All that Nhi understood of the empire was that it owned everything and that the merchants whose goods were transiting through the four major navigator clans owed allegiance to it. That was a good enough reason to say yes to whatever they suggested. “And you want me to investigate?” It made sense, because she was good at finding out things.
“No,” Elder Liễu said. “I want you to deal with a tangler.”
That stopped her. “A tangler? There’s a tangler loose?”
Tanglers were large and tendriled creatures whose natural habitat was the Hollows—the space navigators took ships to, the space that enabled fast space travel. In their natural state, tanglers floated in the Hollows, grabbing other Hollows creatures and slowly digesting them. Unfortunately, this also included people travelling on ships, as tanglers fed on cognition: anyone human touched by their tendrils would gradually lose control over their own body, until death finally came as a mercy. And whenever a navigation gate was opened, there was a risk tanglers would go back to normal space, where they would prey on people.
A skillful navigator would use their Shadow to fend off tanglers, both during the navigation in the Hollows and during the opening and closing of navigation gates.
Clearly, something had gone wrong.
“Not just loose. Lost.” Elder Liễu’s face was grim. “It left the vicinity of the Rat Needle where the ship crashed, and it went … somewhere. We lost track of it.”
“Somewhere.” Nhi gripped her cup. A tangler loose outside the Hollows, where no one but the navigator clans could see them—tendrils trailing through streets and habitats, snaring people and draining them slowly of everything that made them sentient. She wasn’t particularly scared of tanglers, but the idea offended her: tanglers belonged in the Hollows, not in the matter world.
“Who was the navigator?”
“A Rat called Phan Văn Ðăng An.”
“Ninth Judge,” Nhi said. She couldn’t place him, which meant she probably hadn’t spent any extended period of time with him.
“I see your knowledge of clan business is still unparalleled,” Elder Liễu said. It wasn’t sarcasm, merely a statement of fact. She understood how Nhi worked.
“Well,” Nhi said, still clutching her cup, “this Ninth Judge wasn’t very good at what he was doing. His Shadow should have protected the ship.” That was, after all, what Shadows were for.
“It didn’t.”
“And what about the protections at the Needle?”
“These failed, too.”
“Those are serious failures.” All navigators cultivated their own Shadow as part of their training: it was a physical extension of their khí, the life-energy that originated in the body’s vitality center, low in the belly, and circulated along the body’s network of meridians. Unfolded and projected outwards, their Shadow enabled them to open gates to the Hollows, and to keep their ships whole during the transit—both against the pressures of the Hollows themselves, and against tanglers. It also enabled them to fight other navigators, whether in the Hollows or outside them, the usual way hierarchy was established among the clans. Every clan—and every teacher in every clan—had a different style of Shadow. Ninth Judge’s Shadow should have turned the tangler aside, and if that failed, the Needles in the various clan-controlled spaceports were heavily protected, to make sure that tanglers emerging from the Hollows into the matter world would be contained, and sent back to the Hollows. Nhi could see why the empire was unhappy. “You said the tangler went somewhere. Into imperial space?” Nhi asked.
A shrug, from Elder Liễu. “I don’t know,” she said. “But yes, that’s the suspicion.”
Clans controlled their own fortress and their central Needles, and the lesser Needles and associated spaceports in their own networks. The empire controlled the rest. “I’m not the best person for this,” she said.
Low laughter, from Elder Liễu. “And coming from you, it’s not false humility, is it. Just a statement of fact.”
Nhi was flagging. This conversation was too unpredictable, and her small reserves of energy were starting to get depleted. She summoned her Shadow, felt it rise, trembling, from her vitality center, and spread through her meridians, a warm, golden flow of power—like being under heavy rocks, a grip that held and comforted her. Her full Shadow would be golden wings and thick veils of energy: Nhi’s style, the Heavenly Weave, was ponderous and powerful, unlike Elder Liễu’s own, more aggressive Blood-Extinguishing Palm. “I advise you to send someone else,” Nhi said.
A grimace from Elder Liễu, which Nhi knew was bad news. It meant whatever she asked for wasn’t convenient. “I don’t have someone else. And—” She paused, and again that grimace on her face. Nhi gripped her Shadow more tightly. “The empire has asked for a delegation of major clans. They are annoyed with us. They want the tangler caught before more deaths can occur.”
Nhi could understand that—she’d be annoyed, too, if something so large had gone wrong. But, still … “Elder—”
“You’ll be our delegate,” Elder Liễu said, firmly. “Meanwhile, we’ll be investigating the matter of the crash with the other elders from the major clans.”
“I’d rather not do this,” Nhi said, knowing already that it was pointless.
“I’m afraid we don’t always do the things we like,” Elder Liễu said, slowly, smoothly.
Insofar as Nhi was concerned, she never got to do the things she liked. Too much noise, too many people—and she’d much rather stay in the Rooster fortress cultivating, but the way things were structured there made it extremely hard. She was meant to go out and make a name for herself—to grow old without being killed by some other clan’s navigator, whether major or minor. To prove herself. And knowing far too much about people didn’t help with that—what the clans respected was defeating other navigators and transporting large ships safely. But to do the latter, one had to first do the former.
Elder Liễu said, “I believe the other clans sent people you’ll be familiar with. That means you should be able to work together.”
Nhi tried to smile. It was probably coming off as insincere, but Elder Liễu respected the attempt rather than the content.
“I’ll go,” she said.
“Good,” Elder Liễu said. “The imperial envoy, Ly Châu, is arriving at the Rooster Needle. You can go and wait for her with the others.”
The others. The others were already here. Nhi fought a brief moment of panic: things were happening too fast, too uncontrollably. She released her Shadow—feeling the loss of security keenly—and tried to look forward to the mission. An utter failure. This was dangerous, and had far too much uncertainty.
And, worse, it had people. Not just any people: Nhi was going to have to put up with her peers.
* * *
All too soon, Nhi found herself in a lineup of far too many people, waiting for a ship to emerge from the Hollows.
She’d usually have dressed in flamboyant finery like armour, but Elder Liễu had ushered Nhi straight from her quarters onto the landing platform. It was the largest one at the Needle, the one nearest to the ground floor. Like all platforms, it was surrounded on all sides by various buildings where clan members would store supplies as well as renew the protections around the landing area itself. Its portico, nearest to the Needle, was now filled with most of the dignitaries of the Rooster clan: too many people, too much noise, and the expectation that Nhi would have to make small talk—which she hated at the best of times and certainly couldn’t keep up with the stress eating at her innards.
Elder Liễu led Nhi to a place near the front, where the flamboyant colors of the Roosters gave way to the more subdued ones of other clans. Nhi clung to her unfolded Shadow, trying to steer through the din of sounds and the closeness of other people as much as she could.
Ahead of the clan’s Shadow protections—a pressure Nhi could feel getting stronger and stronger, turning the air to tar—two people were waiting, wearing the robes of juniors.
“These are the delegates from the other clans. Everyone bar the Rat envoy, who’s already with the imperial envoy,” Elder Liễu said. “Children, this is Nhi.”
Two pairs of eyes turned to stare at Nhi—who felt herself withering under the weight of the combined attention.
“Ah, the Rooster. I’m Hạc Cúc.” Hạc Cúc looked to be in her midtwenties—old, for a junior. She had a sharp, edged face and an impeccable topknot. She moved brashly and confidently; she appeared present in every movement, every toss of her head and shrug of her shoulders. Nhi had a vague memory of her from clan gatherings fifteen or so years ago—as a standoffish child whose respect for rules was likely to get peers into trouble. There was nothing of that here now: she was magnetic and at the same time almost too much, like a sun pulling you into its orbit before you’d realized what would happen.
“Honoured to meet you,” she said.
A sharp look from Hạc Cúc. “Mmm. Pleased to be here?” The Snakes kept order among themselves, and among the clans. Their pragmatic and brutal assassinations of rules-breakers were well-known. Hạc Cúc wore the clothes of an enforcer, and moved like one. Probably not to be crossed if one was sensible, and if one didn’t wish to wake up poisoned, or with a gun wound to the chest, or any of the myriad ways the Snakes had of dispatching their victims.
Not that Nhi was sensible when it came to her own duties, or keeping her own given word. She plastered her brightest and most pointed smile on her face. “I go where my clan needs me.”
Hạc Cúc smiled, and said nothing more.
“Hello, em.” The Ox envoy was Lành, an older woman in her thirties, wearing gloves to hide the minute scars on her hands. Nhi knew her; they’d worked together before. Lành had been the only survivor of a crash involving tanglers, an unheard-of occurrence that had brought her fame as a child, a fame that hadn’t carried into adulthood. Lành was weird, bitter, abrasive, but Nhi found her restful; she was frank, and her actions were easy to predict. “Good to see you here.”
Nhi laughed, sharply. “Let’s see what’s good, eh.”
Lành smiled, a rare enough expression from her. Next to her, Hạc Cúc looked as if she’d swallowed something sour. “Not this company,” she said, sharply.
It couldn’t be Nhi who was the issue, so it had to be Lành. Great. It wasn’t just going to be a mission where Nhi had to deal with people, but a mission where she was going to have to prevent people from killing each other.
“You know her?” Nhi asked Lành, in a whisper.
“Shh,” Elder Liễu said. “Incoming ship.”
The air tightened. Nhi unfolded her own Shadow—and felt the pressure of other Shadows in the courtyard, every navigator unfolding theirs as a precaution against tanglers. But the bulk of the pressure wasn’t other Shadows: it felt as though everything was tearing itself apart—as if only an act of Heaven kept them all from being torn into fragments. Nhi’s Shadow fluttered, caught in the grip of the gate. Even behind layers and layers of clan protection, the pull of that gate—the pull of the Hollows—was almost too much.
A hole appeared in the center of the courtyard, filled with shimmering iridescence halfway between pearl and oil, which then became pinpoints of lights, like distant stars, except those lights kept shifting and distorting. Inside were the Hollows: the darkness where they navigated, where the tanglers were born and lived and died. Outside, on the edges, the air was roiling and roiling like a storm, Shadow bursting into the center, cleaved into myriad fragments.
Something pushed through, and the air burst like a series of bubbles. Nhi’s ears ached, and her arms shook with the pressure of keeping herself upright. Everyone in the courtyard looked various degrees of uncomfortable; gates always had that effect. If not for the necessity of welcoming the imperial envoy, no one would have been out there.
The imperial ship was small—the size of the room where Elder Liễu had welcomed Nhi, and like the room it was bulky, imposing, all straight angles and weaponry ports, and generally looked like something from two or three generations back of ships. The clans had moved on to sleeker things, but the empire much preferred to go for reliable and intimidating. It glistened as it came out of the Hollows—some of that iridescence clinging to it and cascading into the courtyard like a flare of ashes from an explosion. Then the gate shut, and the ship landed in the middle of the courtyard.
Nhi breathed out at the same time as everyone else. The uncanny pressure on her Shadow was gone, but she didn’t dare to let go. It was Elder Liễu who gestured her forward at the same time as the ship extended a steel gangplank towards the ground, and two people appeared framed in its opening. “Kneel,” Elder Liễu said. “As we honour the empire.”
Nhi knelt, head bowed. So did the other two juniors, and Elder Liễu. The rest of the clan pointedly did not. A barbed, edged honouring.
Footsteps, on the gangplank. Slow and steady. A shape getting closer and closer. With her head bowed, all Nhi could see was the hem of a richly embroidered tunic—brown and red, the colors of the Dog clan—fluttering in the breeze from the recently closed navigation gate.
Copyright © 2024 by Aliette de Bodard
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