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‘To find your proof.’ ‘Yes.’ Rice Fish’s voice was hard. ‘If Kim Thông is indeed in communication with Censor Trúc and the An O Empire, then I have a problem that goes beyond a political struggle. The whole alliance would be at stake, because Censor Trúc wants to destroy us. But the council would never dismiss the Green Scholar without evidence.’

It was a contract. The marriage contract. A list of obligations, of commitments, phrased as a binding oath of sisterhood. A guarantee of her safety – which featured prominently – in exchange for her skills. She was used to selling her skills and parts of herself to survive, but this was on another level entirely. This … This was final in so many

Part of Rice Fish wasn’t there: part of her was flying through the Jade Stream towards the Citadel; part of her was monitoring bots; and part of her was sitting, stiff and upright and unsmiling, at her wife’s mourning ceremony, listening to overblown songs about the Red Scholar’s exploits that were so out of proportion Huân would have laughed in

Xích Si said, ‘What do you want?’ ‘I told you. A partnership. Proof of the Green Scholar’s guilt.’ ‘I know this. And I know you’ll go to the council with that evidence. That’s not what I’m asking. What matters most to you? Avenging the Red Scholar, or safeguarding the alliance?’

Ah. Grief. Xích Si said, finally, ‘It’s hard to let go.’ A sigh. ‘Yes. For you, too, isn’t it? Not of the dead, but of the life you had before. The one that ended when you ran into us.’ Out of all the things she hadn’t expected, compassion and pity was high on the list. ‘I don’t …’ she started, and felt Rice Fish’s hands holding hers. Pity.

I can’t get my head around why I didn’t just call your name that day. Why I just came tottering on behind, struggling for breath and dumb as a mute. If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don’t need to say ‘yes, Mum?’ or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you. But it wasn’t really you, was it? No. It

And even now thirty years have gone by, on the anniversaries of your and your father’s death, I find myself troubled when I watch your brother straighten up after bowing over the offerings. The thin line of his lips, the stoop of his shoulders, the flecks of white in his hair. It’s the soldiers, not him, that your death should have weighed on, so

The door leading back to that summer has been slammed shut; you’ve made sure of that. But that means that the way is also closed which might have led back to the time before. There is no way back to the world before the torture. No way back to the world before the massacre.

The newcomer was a mindship – and not with a ship’s usual avatar, but a human shape: a female official with long flowing robes and a topknot – except that where the hair flowed down and met the cloth, there were stars and nebulas, winking in and out of existence – and her eyes had no whites or irises: they were the colour of the void, dark with no