CHAPTER FOUR

When River made her way into the dining room for breakfast, the other three were already there. Zoe and Mal were talking quietly and Jayne was shoving food into his mouth as fast as he could. When they saw her, Mal and Zoe stopped talking and Jayne froze with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. They were all silent for a moment, and then Mal said, "Who are you and what've you done with River?"

River made a face under the thick coat of white makeup she had applied. It made her face feel itchy and wrong. "I had an idea."

"You look like a gorram painted doll," Jayne told her.

"That's the idea," River said, sliding into the chair beside Zoe, her computer pad clutched to her chest.

"I think I'm missin' somethin'," Mal said.

River slid into the seat at the table beside Jayne so she wouldn't have to watch him eat. Unfortunately, her hair was pulled up on top of her head, so she didn't even have her hair to block her from seeing Jayne in her peripheral vision.

Mouth full, Jayne asked, "Does it involve gettin' paid?"

"Yes, actually."

Jayne straightened up, much more interested now. "It's about ruttin' time."

Mal shot Jayne a look that clearly meant he was going to hear the plan before agreeing to anything.

River took a deep breath. "The man who shot at us last night—I did some searching on the cortex. I don't think he wasn't the actual contact. He was more of a hired mercenary, bodyguard. So was the other man, the one that you shot at, Mal. Their boss, who I think might be the actual slaving contact on Olympia, was at the party. Rina Duncan." River set her computer pad on the table and showed them the picture.

All three of them stared. "It's a woman," Mal finally stated the obvious.

"She works for the interplanetary liaison office. It's her job to help coordinate people and cargo shipped between worlds, and to maintain public relations in the government. And she has access to that house we were at. She could have had the weapons put there before the party so her bodyguards could get them."

"Guess the coordinatin' people and cargo part would come in handy for the slave-trade," Zoe murmured.

"Don't make no sense as to why she would want to do it," Mal said. "What benefit could it give her?"

"Could be any number of things," Zoe said. "Blackmail, or some kind of political advantage…"

"Get to the part where you explain why you're dressed up like a gorramed geisha," Mal said.

River beamed at him. "Because that's what I'm going to be."

"Be in what?" Mal asked slowly, a note of impatience creeping into his voice.

"Here." River tapped the computer screen and the schematics of a building appeared. "This hotel is on New Canaan. It also happens to be the hotel where Rina Duncan will be staying next week—it's the next trip on her itinerary, and I had to go deep into her personal traveling schedule to find that. It's not listed in the government's itinerary for her, so it's not a political trip. She didn't even use her real name to register at the hotel."

"Maybe somethin' to do with the slavin'," Zoe said.

River nodded. "Maybe. That's what I want to find out." She looked quickly at Mal. "I can do it on my own," she said. "I can make money doing it, and I'll give you all the money. It will pay for—"

Mal held up a hand and cut her off. "River. You ain't explainin' very clear."

"Well, obviously, New Canaan isn't a core planet. They have nice cities, and this is a nice hotel, but it's easy to get in and out of it, which is what you'd need if you were involved in slaving. No ident scans or anything. But the hotel has to hire entertainment, and most hotels commonly hire geishas to do the entertaining. Dancing and singing, storytelling..." River wasn't much of a singer, but the dancing she could definitely pull off, and maybe the storytelling, if she was careful with her words. "If Rina Duncan is on the lookout for me, it's unlikely she would recognize me like this." She'd hardly recognized herself in the mirror. "This way the rest of you will stay safe." She didn't look at Mal while she said this last.

"So you just want us to sit around and wait while you put yourself out there?" Mal demanded.

"Yes."

"Shiny," Jayne said with a grin. "Get paid for takin' a break?"

"Gotta say, I think she might be onto somethin' here. I might not know her if I saw her out in public like this," Zoe said.

"I won't have to be there for long once Rina Duncan shows up, but I do want to go early so I can make some money for us, and to establish some credibility," River said. "Then we can go pick up Simon, Kaylee, and Ren."

Mal sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The idea of quick money and the possibility of finding out what was going on with this slave ring were too good to pass up, especially with no jobs lined up, and River knew it. "All right," he finally said. "We'll do it."

He seemed almost irritated by his own decision, and he stayed in his seat as Zoe left. River stood up and picked up a napkin. She began wiping her face off, using a pan to see her reflection. Mal didn't say a word until Jayne had finished his breakfast and gone out of the dining room. When River had removed every last bit of makeup and taken her hair down, she turned and walked over to the table, facing Mal, who was watching her with crossed arms.

"You're thinking that I can handle myself, but you don't like the idea of me being there without back-up, especially as a geisha." She smiled gently at him. "It's not what you think. It's a common misconception that geishas are prostitutes. They're only entertainers, Mal. Guild law protects them."

Mal stood to his feet. "Maybe, but ain't no guild law gonna protect you if you're found out, especially as you ain't really a geisha."

"Then I'll just have to make sure I'm not found out."

Mal sighed. "That seems easier said than done lately."

:-:-:

It was only a day's flight to New Canaan, and the crew—well, Zoe and Mal, anyway—did their best to help River prepare for her masquerade. She was limited on white makeup, which was actually part of a face paint set that Kaylee had won at a fair they'd visited some months back. She knew she was going to have to purchase more, and knew that was just more money going to this, but she felt better now, knowing that she was going to pay it back.

River spent most of the time altering some of her clothes to fit the part she was going to play, and altering a few of the outfits still on board from Inara's time on Serenity. Most of Inara's belongings had been delivered to her family on Sihnon, but a box of clothes that she had never worn had remained on board, crammed into one corner of the shuttle, and River had been finding a lot of use for these lately.

Mal found her sewing in a chair in the dining room very early the morning they were set to land on New Canaan. "River, it's three in the morning—" all right, very, very early "—what are you doin'? I told you I'd get up to do the landin' on New Canaan since you gotta start work today."

"Can't sleep." River refrained from mentioning that she'd been having recurring nightmares involving Mal getting shot in the head with a laser. "You can go back to sleep if you want."

"It's all right. I'm awake enough." Mal headed for the pantry. "Coffee?"

"Sure." River set down her sewing and watched Mal start to make two cups of coffee.

When it was ready and Mal had handed her a cup, he sat down across from her. "So why can't you sleep?"

"The dreams won't let me." River took a sip of the coffee, then looked down at the cup. "It reminds me of Osiris, a little."

Mal's eyebrows went up. "The dreams or the coffee?"

River smiled. "This. Hot drink, late night. I used to make hot chocolate for Simon during med school, when he wasn't at the hospital. He was always up late, studying. He let me stay in his room with him and drink hot chocolate while he studied. I usually fell asleep on the floor, but Simon would move me to his bed and I'd wake up there and he'd be sleeping on his couch…" River trailed off, quickly drinking some more coffee, not really sure why she was telling Mal this.

Mal was watching her. "You ain't never said much about life before the Academy."

"It seems like a different lifetime. It feels like I've lived so many different lives."

Mal took a gulp of coffee without taking his eyes off her. "Sometimes I wonder about you. Seems you oughtta be off doin' somethin' else…you oughtta be in university blowin' people away with your genius, instead of usin' it for capers. Hell, you could be teachin' university."

River shrugged one shoulder. "I did the school thing. Their program was terrible."

Mal's eyes smiled at her. "So I heard."

"Besides, I'm always learning out here. Not bookwork, maybe, but about life." River looked at him over her cup. "That's something, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is." A minute passed, and it wasn't until Mal looked over at her, his eyebrows raised, that River realized she was staring at him.

She quickly turned her eyes back on her cup, a little embarrassed—not about the staring, because she did that all the time without realizing, but about the thoughts that accompanied it right now. She downed the rest of her coffee as fast as she could.

"You got somethin' botherin' you?" Mal asked her.

"I…why would you think that?" she asked quickly. She stood up and took her empty coffee cup toward the sink. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mal set his coffee down, stand, and follow her toward the counter. He waited until she had washed out the cup and dried it, and when she really couldn't put off facing him anymore, she sighed and turned around, unsurprised to find him not more than two feet away. She crossed her arms, pressing back against the sink as far as she could. "I'm fine, Mal." That, at least, was the truth.

"Really."

"Yes, really," River said, narrowing her eyes. "I just have a lot on my mind—and you're not making it any easier," she told him agitatedly as he took another step closer.

Mal stopped, frowning. "See? You been actin' all twitchy for the last while. Thought it was just all this slavin' stuff, but I ain't so sure."

River closed her eyes, not trusting herself to keep looking at Mal. Maybe it was the late night. Or the coffee. Or the fact that she was about to leave Serenity for over a week. That was it. She was just too tired and all of those nightmares about Mal had terrified her, and it was stupid—he was fine, he hadn't been shot. She was just tired, tired of being close to Mal without being close at all, of nearness that wasn't the nearness she craved.

And she knew she had to get out of here right now, except her feet weren't moving, and Mal had put a hand on her shoulder, his worried voice saying, "River?"

River opened her eyes. Mal was watching her with concern, and suddenly, she didn't care what she had thought before, didn't care about all the reasons why she shouldn't do it—she stretched to her tiptoes and touched her lips to Mal's, a little clumsily, as she'd never kissed anyone before. For a moment, he went stiff, but then he was responding, his mouth moving on hers, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her tight to him, and she realized this really wasn't so hard. It was flying, it was melting and burning and she wanted this. She needed this, and so did he—she felt it, heard it. His lonely thoughts entangled with her own, until she wasn't sure which were hers and which were his.

Then, abruptly, he placed his hands on her shoulders and fell back a step. "Fang zong feng kuang de jie. River…we can't…this is—" He stopped and took a deep breath, staring at her as if he had never seen her properly. Before she could say anything, Mal withdrew his hands from her shoulders and shoved his hand through his hair.

"Mal…" River whispered. She knew, now, that Mal loved her, too. She could hear it. He had been trying hard not to think about it, to deny it, so that not even she had been able to see it for what it was. And now he was shaken—not only by what she'd done, but by the intensity of his emotions. River had just ripped open the box of everything he had been carefully concealing and thrown its contents all over the place, and he was at a loss as to what to say to her. One very specific thought finally came to the surface—Mal wondering why she had kissed him, thinking that maybe she had done it because she had picked up something from him in his mind that had driven her to it.

She was quite happy to shatter that illusion. "I didn't see anything in your mind," she told him. "I didn't know how you felt."

"And you know how I feel now, do you?"

"Yes."

Mal rested his hands behind him on the counter. "River. This ain't…this can't—" …can't do this so young can't hurt her won't work needs better…

River's hands clenched against the sudden force of muddled thoughts, and she swallowed. "Not true."

"Now's probably not the best time to be in my head, River."

"I can't help it. Your mind's yelling." A little bolder now that she knew she wasn't alone in her emotions, she took a small step toward him, encouraged when he didn't shirk away. She looked up at him solemnly, and he looked back, his eyes and mind speaking a lot more than his voice.

The tension in the air was so thick that River could almost taste it. Their eyes remained locked, and River honestly didn't know what would have happened had the proximity alert not gone off.

But it did go off, indicating that they had reached New Canaan. "I'll get it," Mal said. He let out a heavy breath and shot River a sideways glance as he turned toward the exit. "This discussion ain't over."

"I didn't think it was." River kept her arms folded across her chest as Mal strode out of the room, and as soon as he was gone, she collapsed into the nearest chair and buried her head in her hands.

:-:-:

Once they landed on New Canaan, there was really no time for River and Mal to discuss anything. Zoe and Jayne got up, and then River had to leave. She had already hacked into the hotel's systems, and according to the schedule she had already created, she was supposed to be there before breakfast at the hotel, which, due to local time, meant she had to go immediately. She disembarked from Serenity, which was parked in a desert far outside of town. Mal followed her down the ramp, and they looked at each other for a long moment. "You ready for this?" Mal finally asked.

"Yes," River said quietly. She continued to gaze at him, her hands held tightly behind her back. She wanted to go to him, to be held, to tell him she was going to do it, and she was going to come back to him, to say she knew he loved her, and she loved him, and that things would be so much simpler if they could just be.

"Right. Well. Best get to it, then."

But she didn't say any of that. Instead, she nodded and turned for the long walk into town. She showed up for her first day of work, much to the confusion of the manager, who said she hadn't recalled hiring a geisha, but the records proved otherwise. With a shrug, she said her assistant manager must have done it and didn't question it again.

River had to stay at the hotel by herself, since they couldn't risk the others being recognized—although one time, a very heavily-veiled woman showed up at the hotel and River recognized Zoe's thoughts under the layers of clothing, so she knew that Mal was still keeping tabs on her.

She mostly stuck to dancing, though she did have a few storytelling sessions, which were always interesting, because she had to watch the order of her words. However, if she did ever get tired and slip into metaphors, the crowd seemed to think it was just part of the style or the tale.

Most of the customers she catered to were men—a long time ago, geishas had mostly performed at male parties, but things had become a lot more liberal concerning the trade over the years. What it had been even fifty years ago was completely different from what it was now. She knew that geishas had originated on Earth-That-Was, and she knew that it was very different now from what it had been so many hundreds of years ago, so much different that 'geisha' was really just a word that had survived through the generations.

She got paid very well by the hotel, and by tips from the patrons at the hotel. A good amount, too, as much as they made on most of their jobs and more than some. She kept it under her mattress in her locked room until this was finished and she could go back to Serenity.

She felt very confined here, though she knew she could walk away at any time if she really wanted to. She missed the freedom of sailing through the black, going wherever the stars took her. She missed Mal and was frustrated that she had taken a step toward him, but there had been no time to sort any of it out. There wasn't much she could do about it now, though, so she tried hard just to focus on her task at hand.

It was actually the night before Rina Duncan was supposed to arrive that things got interesting. River was out wandering the dining room because the manager wanted her to be a presence, to entertain on a whim if people requested her to.

River knew exactly which people had been at the hotel for a while, which had been there since lunch, and which ones had just arrived. One person in particular caught her attention—a red-haired woman wearing very nondescript clothing sitting in one corner. She looked familiar, but River knew this was the first time she had been at the hotel.

The second time she passed her, she suddenly realized—she had seen this woman at the party on Olympia. She had been one more face in the crowd, but she had been there; River was sure of it.

Before River even had a chance to try to glean anything from the woman's mind, one of the waiters carrying dishes to the tables swung by her and pressed a note in her hand. "Someone left that for you in the kitchen," he murmured before he headed off to serve the next table.

River tucked the note into her pocket, and slowly made her way out of the room before she withdrew it and unfolded it. Nothing was written on it except a room number and a time—ten minutes from now—in unfamiliar handwriting.

River considered. Either it was some customer at the hotel under the mistaken impression that she was more than just simple entertainment, or someone had figured out who she was. Either way, she had no idea the intentions of the letter-writer. She finally decided to go, but very cautiously.

The room was on the fourth floor, and River took the stairs to get there, to give herself time to sense any danger, and to give herself room to run or fight—easier to do in the open stairwell than trapped in a lift.

She found the room number and stopped outside of it, still not getting any sense of danger. In fact, when she concentrated on the occupants within the room, she suddenly knew who the woman downstairs was, and what was going on. She hesitated a moment, and then knocked.

The door opened, revealing a man wearing a cowboy hat and raggedy clothes. He nodded at her and stepped aside, allowing her entrance to the room. There were three others inside, one woman and two men, and all of them appeared to be perfectly suitable border folk, except contrary to their simple appearance, there were hi-tech computers and equipment up and running around the room.

And most of them were a little nervous about her presence in the room, because they all knew who she was, which meant they knew just what she was capable of. The man who'd opened the door was the first to speak. "River Tam, in the flesh." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Agent Tristram."

"I know." River crossed her arms without shaking his hand. "You work with the Bureau of Internal Affairs. Your superior is sitting downstairs in the dining room." She looked around the room at the other agents. "You followed me here after the ball on Olympia. Why?"

"You mean you can't—" Tristram cleared his throat. "You can't read it in my mind?"

"You're not thinking about it," River told him. "So, no."

"I think Agent Burnham would prefer to—ah, here she is."

The door to the hotel opened and the red-haired woman from downstairs came in. Tristram nodded at her. "Agent Burnham."

River turned to her, deciding that being upfront would be the best right now. "Why did you follow me here after the ball on Olympia?"

Agent Burnham studied her for a moment. "I believe that you are tracking the same slave ring that we are."

"What makes you think I'm tracking a slave ring at all?"

"Official reports from the slavers caught off of Triumph have circulated through government. The slavers themselves described you and identified you from pictures. There are only so many young women known to travel on a Firefly with the ability to take out more than twenty slavers and hijack their ship. After we received word of this report, one of my agents spotted you on New Melbourne. This might have been coincidence, except that you were at that party on Olympia." Burnham looked at River sharply. "Someone tried to kill you, and your Captain Reynolds, which means you were obviously spotted by someone besides my agents—the same someone who tried to put you six feet under at that party. I don't know why you're tracking them, but—"

"To shut them down," River said simply.

"I would ask why, but I expect it doesn't matter in the end."

"I expect not," River said. She looked around at all of the other agents, then back at Burnham. "You followed me because you still don't have a suspect in government."

Burnham's eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she nodded shortly. "We—" She nodded at the others in the room "—have been tracking this slave ring for six months, since word reached Internal Affairs that someone in government might be involved. It took me that long to get close enough to finding answers to be at that party. And you're correct; I still have no suspect. The men involved in the shooting on Olympia managed to get away before they were identified."

"They were mercenaries, bodyguards," River said, finally relaxing enough to unfold her arms. Now that the subject was being talked about, it all unraveled in their minds, and River could read it easily. They had thought River might know more and followed Serenity from Olympia. It had taken them three days to locate her in town—they had found Serenity parked outside of town and kept an eye on it, tracking Zoe to the hotel when she had come to check up on River. It hadn't been that difficult, afterwards, for them to realize that River must be the geisha. "You want to know if I found the name you've been looking for."

"Yes. You managed to do in less than two weeks what it took us half a year to complete. More, actually, because you seem to be a step ahead of us."

River took a deep breath, her feelings mixed. "You know, I've never had much luck working with the Alliance. Ever."

Burnham sighed. "I appreciate your history with the Alliance. I assure you I want nothing more than to simply put this slave ring out of commission, which I trust you can see is the truth."

River nodded once. She could tell that this was the absolute truth—she didn't sense any hidden motivations or lies.

"I would much prefer my investigation not be compromised by yours, because though you may not have invested much time in this, I certainly have."

"You're not trying to stop my investigation," River said, finding that a bit of an oddity.

Burnham gave a very small, very wry smile. "Miss Tam, I have seen the aftermath of what happens to people who stand in your way when you are intent on a goal. No. I am only asking for your assistance. We have, after all, the same end goal, do we not?"

River thought about it, and honestly, she still wasn't sure about Rina Duncan—wasn't sure what her involvement was with the slavers, or her reasons behind anything, and until she knew, she wasn't just going to give her hypotheses to these people, no matter how well intentioned. "Maybe, but I'm very close to my goal here, and I really don't want that compromised. I'm not going to promise anything, not until I know more about the person I came to find." River stepped around Burnham and opened the door. "If you'll excuse me, I have somewhere I'm supposed to be."