Hello, hello! I'm psyched to be posting this chapter, because it (finally) gets Mal off Zhi's estate and into a very different setting. I had a lot of fun imagining and writing it, so I do hope you enjoy.
Soundtrack - Lu'Weng: "The Sea Scene" by Bruno Coulais & Kila, from Song of the Sea: Original Soundtrack (2014) + Day and Night: "Smooth" by Saib, 2017 Single
CHAPTER NINE
REALITY
Walking through the main drag of Sihnon's capital city, Mal felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. Encased on all sides by a prism of buildings, advert-banners and screens. Laser beams of afternoon sun sparked off the metal and mirrors, and lashed his eyes, if he dared to lift his head.
Lu'Weng may be beautiful, but its beauty came at a price.
Of course, the tiān cái who designed this solar oven of a cosmopolis never had to step foot on its streets. They breezed back and forth overhead, cool and comfortable inside their speeders, between air-conditioned business towers. They never had to reckon with the pitfalls of their creation.
A bead of sweat rolled down Mal's neck, under the collar of the light, formless shirt he'd found in his bunk room, left behind by the previous stable hand. At least he didn't have to wade through this crystal jungle in his service uniform.
He felt more himself every minute he spent not wearing it. His feet moved more surely in the worn, tanned-leather boots he'd brought with him from Shadow.
It was only Mal's second time in Lu'Weng, the first being when he arrived. He stole frequent glances at the scrap of paper in his hands. The street map Anders had given him, crude and unmarked, was Mal's sole guide. He couldn't even carry the route key Emory Osborne had slipped him the day before, after making his Sunday delivery.
Before every debriefing, there'd be a different key. Mal laid it over his own map like a stencil, in order to see the route to the meeting place. Then he had to commit the location to memory, and destroy the key. "That way, if you get yourself caught, they won't haul us in, too," Anders had explained. "Least, not 'til they torture our names outta you."
Mal grimaced. He could always rely on Prince for a comforting word.
Like a sky shifting towards dusk, the bright heat of the commercial district gave way, little by little. At the end of a narrow street, Mal came to a cement stairway leading downwards at a steep grade. The buzz of one-person speeders and shouting voices grew louder as he descended.
At the base of the stairs, Mal stepped into a different city altogether. Gone were the high-gloss surfaces and smartly-dressed guards. Here, the streets tangled artlessly. Buildings grew out of one another without any human design or intervention. Bulging residential blocks huddled together like giant beasts with so many shuttered eyes.
Mal pressed himself into the crush of people, squeezing through the narrow passage between the vendor's stands which lined both sides of the street. The stench of overripe fruit and char from the hissing grills thickened the air into soup.
Half from his memory of the map key, and half from instinct alone, Mal found his way to the vice district. There was no sign, of course. It was written plain as could be in the hungry eyes of men leaning against the walls, hands hidden in their pockets. In the grins of teenagers with mouths full of razor-sharp teeth, filed to points with metal.
All down the street bars kept their doors flung open, to let the sound of music and laughter escape. It didn't matter that it was the middle of the afternoon. In a city where half the population worked nights, a 24-hour business model was the rule, rather than the exception.
Women in scant clothing decorated the entrances of every establishment. The neon signs lent a lurid polish to their brightly-colored wigs. Bait. Mal's stomach twisted.
Even here, below Lu'Weng's perfect surface, the lie persisted. Glamour and glitter to conceal the dirt underneath. Mal saw it in the women's eyes, their wide smiles, teasing him as he hurried past. "What's the rush? Who's your boss-daddy, errand boy?" They were paid to pretend, all of them, pretend they wanted him. "Hey, jùn nán, come in and have a drink with me." They did it because it worked. So many others played along.
Mal ignored them. He wouldn't be taken in by a lie.
At the end of the street, he stopped, and turned to his right. That was as far as the instructions had gone. He looked up at the entrance of the bar. Characters curled in blue and gold light above the door, spelling out Rìyèdiàn. 'Day-and-Nightclub.'
A hand clapped onto Mal's shoulder, and he jumped. He relaxed when he heard the familiar cackle, and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, turning to face Anders Prince.
He wore an iridescent suit, which he managed to outshine by the glow of his russet brown skin. It didn't fit him well, large around the shoulders and short in the ankles. He'd buzzed his hair since Mal last saw him, no longer the tapered natural style he'd favored before. It brought his face, always his trump card when he got in trouble back on Shadow, into sharp relief.
"So, you made it through the gauntlet." Anders tossed his head back down the street, indicating 'prostitute row.' He smirked. "Congratulations."
Mal cocked his brow. "Isn't it a mite early to be congratulatin' me?"
Anders laughed again, and tightened his grip on Mal's shoulder, giving him a shake. "Don't worry. You'll do fine," he cooed. "'Long as you tell 'em what they wanna hear."
"And what's that?"
Anders grinned. He let go of Mal, with a push towards the entrance. A dark curtain obscured the interior, allowing only the murmur of voices and low, reverb-drenched music to seep through.
"Best not keep 'em waitin'." Anders bent his mouth to Mal's ear, as he ushered him through the doorframe. "First impressions count."
The image of Miss Serra crossed Mal's mind, brief as smoke. He shook his head, to clear it away, and stepped inside the bar.
/*/*\*\
He recognized not a one of his superiors. Unfamiliar faces, all three of them, lit from beneath by the eerie glow of the tabletop. Mal sensed their eyes on him, sizing him up from foot to face, as he followed Anders to the cave-like booth in the back corner of the bar.
The man in the center of the booth was as stout as they come, short enough to show it even when sitting down, pudgy arms folded across his chest. He might have looked jolly, with the ruddy cheeks of an uncle who drinks too much at family gatherings, but for the stillness of his face.
Unsmiling, he introduced himself as Moran, and the others in turn. A woman, Latha, and a younger man, Cymbeline, who immediately insisted on Bel.
Latha glared at Mal with bored, heavy-lidded eyes. "This our man on Zhi? What is he, fifteen?"
"I'm nineteen," Mal shot back.
Bel leaned forwards, knitting his slim, pale fingers. "What she means to say, Malcolm, is that we admire your courage." His voice rounded in a lower-class variant of the prissy Core-world diction. He pursed his mouth, almost a smile.
Mal remembered what his mother used to tell him: "There's two kindsa friendly, little colt. The kind that shows a person's heart, and the kind that hides it." Of the people seated at that table, there wasn't a single one Mal felt sure of. Except maybe Anders. He might be an obnoxious niǎo rén, but at least he's honest about it.
A round of drinks arrived. The server set in front of Mal a slender glass of what looked like anti-rust solution, a translucent and unnatural blue. The first sip tore him a new throat on its way down his windpipe. He coughed into his fist, blinking, as tears sprung to his eyes. Anders snickered.
The server paused at the edge of their table, and tapped a panel overhead, before she ducked away. A strange, high-pitched sound filled the air inside the booth. It muffled the ambient noise of the club by several layers of static. Mal's ears began to itch.
"Noise-cancellation," said Anders from the side of his mouth.
Mal raised his eyebrows. "Shiny."
Moran spread his hands on the table. "Let's start with a few pieces of advice, free of charge." He carved his words with precision, but his accent was impossible to place. "You've likely noticed a distinct… atmosphere, here on Sihnon."
Mal nodded. The word 'suffocating' comes to mind, he thought.
"We have to be more careful than you're accustomed to, I'd imagine. There's no saluting, signaling, no allusions to the Independent persuasion. Doesn't matter where you are, nor how certain you may be of somebody's sympathies. This is Alliance turf. They hear and see everything."
"That's just fine." Mal smirked. "Forgot my brown coat at home anyway."
Latha narrowed her eyes at him. "You think it's a joke? Guess you didn't hear what happened last week, when they caught some drunk idiot singin' Hera's planetary anthem, right in the street."
Mal gave Latha a non-smile, and tilted his head. "Let me guess. The city guards cut out his tongue and made him eat it with hoisin sauce?"
"No." Latha took a sip of her drink, and set it down. "But they did crack his skull open, when they smashed it into the curb. Took sanitation an hour to clean up the mess."
Bel suggested they get down to business. Mal agreed.
Most of the questions were as he'd expected. They asked about the people who worked for Solomon Zhi, how many lived on the estate, what kind of work they did for him. Mal recounted his success with the cook and with Reese Sonder, the gardener, who liked to brag about the compliments his landscaping had received from various powerful people who'd come to visit Councilor Zhi. Naturally, Mal had provided him a willing audience.
He had no trouble explaining the invisible laser trip-wire system that surrounded the estate's perimeter. He knew it pretty well, because the horses' pasture abutted the edge of the property, and he walked the fence often to make sure it was secure.
"And the security set-up in the mansion itself?" Moran asked.
Mal shrugged. "No idea."
Moran's eyes narrowed. "Care to elaborate?"
"I've never stepped foot in that house, and there's no one I'd ask about it. The details of the security layout ain't exactly a small-talk topic."
"You'll hafta find a way." Latha sneered. "Or would you like us to tell Jo Mercey that you can't get a few simple security specs?"
Mal tightened his mouth. "Understood," he croaked. "I'll work on it."
"Have you spoken to Councilor Zhi yourself?" Bel asked.
"Not once."
Latha shook her head, taking another swallow of her drink. "All that land, all those horses. You'd think the man would at least bother to ride 'em once in a while."
"Actually, it's better that your interactions with him are limited," said Moran. "Don't do anything to distinguish yourself in front of the Councilor, nor anyone related to him, by business or by blood. If you carry off your mission well, you should be invisible." Moran tilted his head. "Speaking of which, has there been any sign of his daughter?"
Mal's face must have blanked, because Moran interpreted it in the negative, and went on, "Her name is Inara Serra. We don't know much about her, to be frank. She doesn't live with him, and she's not listed as a dependent in his tax records." Moran gestured to Latha, who dug into the inner pocket of her coat. Moran went on. "Their connection is kept quiet, for her own privacy, one would imagine. This is all we have, from the few times she's appeared in public with him."
Latha tossed the file on the table in front of Mal. He opened it.
A handful of captures showed Inara Serra at various ages, most from far away, in a tableau of Parliament officials posing with their families. The most recent, from maybe a couple years before, was of her and Councilor Zhi alone. It was the first time Mal had seen them side by side. She wore a red traditional dress, dark curls twirled up and held in place by a golden comb. She gleamed like a New Year's gift on her father's arm.
Mal realized the others were staring at him, expectant. He blinked, and said, "Oh, her. Yeah, uh- I met her." He cleared his throat. "A couple times."
"Do tell," Latha drawled.
He swallowed. "May've made a bit of an impression."
Moran leaned forward. "What sort of impression, exactly?"
Mal told them everything. From the rocky beginning up to the day before, when she'd brought him that 'probiotic ointment,' and he'd questioned her Good Samaritanism. He found himself fighting a blush. As if he was holding something back, keeping a secret, even though he wasn't.
When he'd finished, Anders started laughing.
"Oh, Lord, it's too good." His shoulders shook, as he leaned his mouth into his hand. He spoke in fits, between cackles, "Couldn't've set it up better if we'd tried."
Mal narrowed his eyes. "What are you talkin' about?"
Anders gave him a shove on the shoulder. "Miss Serra's got flush for you." His grin was dirty enough to require a parental warning.
Mal opened his mouth to protest, but Latha spoke first. "Daddy's new stable boy, fresh from exotic lands. And your looks don't hurt." She raised her eyebrows. "Guess your youth counts for somethin', after all."
Mal's mouth hung open. That can't be right, he thought. Not a girl like Inara Serra, who no doubt had her pick of Sihnon's handsome young inheritors. Not after she'd seen Mal drenched in sweat and manure. Especially not after the way he'd received her gesture of goodwill.
I don't want her to like me, he reminded himself. The attention of an aristo hoping for a taste of the Border was attention he could do without.
"This is a golden opportunity for you, Reynolds."
Mal scrunched his brow, and forced his eyes to focus on Moran. "Sorry?"
"You must earn Miss Serra's trust, by any means necessary."
Mal pulled his lips into his mouth. He ducked his eyes to the table, willed his heartbeat to slow down. "Are you sure that's-" He looked back up. "You sure she's worth the risk, sir?"
"Your work is risk, by definition," said Moran. "The value of the intel you stand to gain far outweighs the danger."
"Of course, you'll have to be careful," Bel put in, then perked up. "And speaking of careful…" His narrow shoulders hunched as he opened his jacket, and pulled something from the breast pocket. He tossed it to Mal, who caught the object in both hands. His brow shot up in surprise.
It was a book. Not much bigger than his palm, but a real, old-fashioned book. Printed on paper facsimile, no doubt, and bound up all pretty in blue fabric. The title gleamed in gold script, both English and Chinese.
'The Covenant of the Union of Allied Planets for Representative Interplanetary Governance and Universal Concord,' it read. Mal couldn't hold back a scoff.
"My very own copy of the Covenant? Gee." He lifted it up, flashing Bel a dry smile. "You shouldn't have."
Bel's thick-lashed eyes stared back at him, solemn. "That's why you came to the big city, on your afternoon off. To find yourself a nice edition of the most important document in the Core."
"Ah. Right." Mal patted the cover. "I'll keep it under my pillow, like a good little Alliance citizen."
"As regards the next debriefing, we'll be in touch," said Moran. "We'll want the security layout, and a full update of your progress with Inara Serra." The man paused a moment, then added, "This should be obvious, but in case it isn't: you must proceed with caution on this. Don't overstep your boundaries."
"Least not 'til she steps first." Anders winked.
Moran gave Anders a look that could melt sand into glass. He turned it to Mal. "You certainly will not engage in physical relations, of any kind, with the Councilor's daughter." He laid down the words like steel nails. "You are to stay in control, and remember your mission, at all times. Are we clear, Brownie?"
Mal nodded. The nickname for new Browncoat recruits settled onto his shoulders with a certain weight. It felt good.
"Crystal," he said.
"Let's drink to that, then." Latha raised her glass. The others followed suit. "Wǒ men shàng shēng." The cheer of the Independents, her voice quiet but fierce.
"Wǒ men shàng sheng," Mal echoed. He drank from his glass, and this time the burn was oddly pleasant in his throat. He drank deep, to let himself be cleansed by fire.
He drank to be rid of the small yet tenacious doubt clinging to his insides. The voice warning him that this order to befriend the Councilor's daughter, but no more, was about to make his mission more difficult than he ever could have anticipated.
translations:
tiān cái - geniuses
jùn nán - cutie; handsome boy
niǎo rén - bastard; a**hole
Wǒ men shàng shēng - We rise
So as always, I'd love to hear any and all thoughts on this chapter, even if it's just that you're excited to see what happens next! I'm especially curious as to your impressions of Mal's contacts in the Independents. Anything that struck you as confusing, weird or not believable, please feel free to share. I find it difficult to write the resistance folks and their activities, so feedback on that aspect is especially helpful.
As you might guess, things only go downhill from here... but not right away. And there's quite a bit of Manara fluff/tension in the next couple chapters, so stay tuned for that. ;) Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you in the next chapter!
