Alright, I know I said I was busy (which is true! I am!) but right after posting that I was struck by a lightning storm of inspiration and I rewrote the whole first half of this chapter. So, here it is. I don't want to inflate your expectations or anything, but this is probably my favorite chapter out of all the ones I've posted so far. You'll see why.
But first, a quick shout-out to a couple folks I couldn't thank by PM: Guest reviewer Jojo - thank you for all your lovely reviews! I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, and I do hope you continue to enjoy. And to reneparanoiaxx - thank you so much for your support, I'm thrilled to hear you'd be interested in the AU!
And now, without any further ado: let the angst commence.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STARLIGHT
09 - 19 - 2506
Mal crested the hill just after dusk. Cords of wind lashed the wine-colored sky, whipping strong enough to leave a mark.
The Councilor's mansion looked like one of those holo-screen music boxes that lit up all pretty when you opened it. Mal could see into the parlor and the longer room beside it, where the guests swirled in a kaleidoscope of fanciful fabrics. Even their laughter rang with coin, over the prissy squeak of orchestral music.
According to the service schedule, Zhi was hosting a gala. Which, Mal had learned from Leo the cook, was just a party with enough rich and important people in attendance. This one was to thank all the major contributors to Councilor Zhi's campaign. Leo had on good authority that the guest list included the likes of Blue Sun investors, top military brass, and bio-weaponry engineers.
If Mal was going to find anything on Zhi, tonight looked like his best chance. He scanned the unfamiliar faces inside the ballroom, looking for Inara's. He didn't see her. He lifted a hand to his chest, fingers pressing into the cross emblem under his uniform. He dropped his hand, clenched it into a fist, and kept walking.
He reached the path that looped around the mansion, and followed it to the servant's entrance on the far side. Earlier that afternoon, he had watched streams of people preparing for the gala, lugging crates of food and champagne, stacked linens and enormous bouquets of peonies. Temp workers, enough of them that, with a pinch of luck, Mal bet he wouldn't stick out too sorely.
The cramped space downstairs could barely contain the chaos. Among the blur of uniforms, Mal snuck through. He didn't even try to make sense of the activity consuming the oxygen around him. In a room devoted to pressing napkins, he narrowly avoided a second-degree burn from the steam pouring off the domestic bots. Shaking his hand, he stumbled into the hallway beyond.
He skidded to a stop, as a dozen servers trooped out of a side corridor in single file. They wore crisp, identical black-and-white suits. Mal quirked an eyebrow. He slipped down the corridor, and through the door they'd come out of.
A minute later he emerged, tugging at the stiff white collar around his neck. He made it to the main hallway, before a voice struck his ears.
"Stop right there."
Mal froze. He pivoted on his heels. A stout woman with severe eyebrows, gripping a tablet in her yellow-lacquered nails, stared him down. "What is this."
"I, uh." Mal gulped. "I'm new?"
She aimed a finger at his chest, and spat with the efficiency of machine gun fire, "Your waistcoat. It's crooked. Fix it. Then unhitch the lead from your pì gǔ and get moving." Her finger swung to indicate the correct direction. "The others already took their trays up."
"Yes, ma'am," said Mal. The woman had already swept away, fingernails clacking on her tablet.
Fumbling with the buttons of the odd little vest, Mal hastened to the end of the hall. A breathless young woman handed him a tray of champagne and pointed up a stairway.
"You're behind," she hissed. "Go, go!"
Mal barely kept the two dozen champagne flutes upright as he climbed the stairs, and burst through a doorway, into another dimension.
"Whoa," he breathed.
The ceiling stretched above at least 20 feet high, every inch of the white stone carved in rich detail. From the ceiling downward cream and gold tumbled in a glimmering cascade, minute designs curling along the wallpaper. The room stretched into a vast, cold cavern, decorated along the walls with enormous vases of peonies. The guests looked and moved like statues come to life, artwork dressed in more colors than Mal could name. They wore their smiles like jewelry, something put on just for the way it gleamed.
"Ahem."
Mal looked down to find a man in a red sash wearing a scowl that nearly outgrew his face. Mal flashed him a smile.
"Sorry about that, sir," he chirped, and lowered the tray. The man gave him a strange look, and plucked up a flute of champagne. It was then that Mal remembered the servers he'd seen earlier, and their stoic faces. He dropped the grin. Red Sash turned away, shaking his head.
Mal caught sight of another server, and took note of their posture, imitating it as best as he could. In no time at all, he gained a new and profound respect for indoor staff. He'd hauled a hundred bales of straw in less than an hour once. After five minutes holding a tray of full glasses, his arm felt ready to fall right off.
There was no sign of Councilor Zhi. Mal made his way toward the entry into the next room, but every two seconds he was forced to stop, and offer the tray to another guest, then all their friends in turn. Other servers passed by in his periphery, and he made sure to tilt his face from their view. He kept his ear cocked to the conversation around him, but the words were hard to hold onto, foreign and slippery. More than half the conversations were in Mandarin, in dialects he'd never heard before.
At last, he made it through the doors.
The next room was even bigger than the first. A few guests clumped in conversation along the edges, but dancing took up most of the floor, couples joining and disconnecting hands, weaving in and around each other.
Mal skirted around the walls, and stopped for a woman in ceremonial military uniform. She took the last full flute of champagne without looking at Mal, or pausing her conversation with the official beside her, who wore a gender-neutral flared suit.
"-can't disclose any details, of course. But I can assure you that we are prepared for when this 'treaty' of theirs inevitably falls apart." She took a sip of her champagne, with a small smile. "Councilor Zhi has seen to that."
"Do you truly believe it is inevitable, Commander?" asked the official.
"I'm not a politician, nor am I a priest. I don't deal in 'belief.' All I'm saying is-"
Mal didn't hear the rest.
Somehow he felt Inara, before he saw her. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He only caught a glimpse of her, like a flash of light, before he turned away, blinded. His head filled with static.
A hand landed on Mal's arm. He jumped, nearly dropping his tray, before turning to find himself face-to-face with Solomon Zhi.
The man was a good half a head shorter than Mal. But something about him, maybe the well-tailored suit, or his symmetrical features, made him appear utterly proportionate and purposeful. As if he'd sculpted himself through sheer strength of will, and anyone who deviated from this ideal form betrayed some character deficit.
Mal remembered to avoid eye contact. He braced himself.
Zhi glanced at the tray Mal was holding, and waved a hand. "Oh, you're out. Go on, then." His voice, smooth and detached, coated Mal in a gritty layer of hate. He felt it between his teeth.
Of course Zhi hadn't recognized him. Mal was one of a hundred or so people in service on the estate. The few times Zhi had gone riding he'd barely acknowledged Mal, much less noticed what he looked like. His eyes brushed over him as if he were a non-entity, a piece of furniture, there to serve a purpose and nothing more.
Mal stood motionless, as Zhi turned away. If he had run, dropped the tray and bolted from the room, maybe it all could've turned out alright. But hypotheticals are meaningless. There's only what happened, when Inara walked up to her father, and her eyes landed on Mal. Her mouth fell open. Zhi looked at her, head tilted. Mal's heart stopped beating.
For a moment, the three of them were caught. One wrong move could trip the wire, and bring the end of the 'Verse, right there in the middle of the ballroom.
Then, just as quickly, the moment was gone, and Inara was smiling pleasantly at her father. She reached out to squeeze his arm.
"Forgive me, Bàba. I'll return presently." She turned, and walked right past Mal. She didn't look at him, but her lips mouthed 'follow me,' knowing he would see.
Councilor Zhi frowned, before he was called away by a nearby clump of garishly-dressed aristocrats. He moved on.
Mal started to breathe again. But he knew better than to feel relief.
He milled through the crowd for a long and horrible minute, pausing robotically to let guests deposit their empty glasses on his tray. Blood rushed hot in his ears. He went through his options.
He could follow Inara, and tell her the truth. And have her run crying to her daddy? Not a chance. He could turn tail and run. Tempting. But no. There was only one thing to do.
Follow Inara, and lie.
He escaped the crowd, and left the hall the same way she had gone. As soon as he slipped through the doors, a hand clapped around his wrist, stabbing adrenaline through his heart.
"Tā mā bāzi-" he burst. He barely managed to slide the champagne tray onto a nearby decorative table, before Inara dragged him into a room across the hall.
It was pitch dark, before she smacked a panel on the wall, and a glow appeared along the edges of ceiling, illuminating a small library full of genuine, leather-bound books. Under different circumstances, Mal would've marveled, with some disgust, at this mind-boggling display of wealth. He'd never been inside a room with so much paper and wood in his entire life.
Inara shut the door behind them. She pinned Mal against it with her eyes, dark yet bright, burning him.
"What are you doing here?"
"I…" He swallowed. His mind was blank. The lie rose up from somewhere else, somewhere in his stomach. "I had to see you."
Inara stared at him. "Are you crazy?"
"Maybe." It sure felt like it. Inara glowed in the red silk of her traditional wrap dress. It was the first time Mal had seen her in something other than her plain school uniform. He felt light-headed, almost giddy. He was reminded of when Moran had dangled him off the roof of the Aerie, and every second had tasted like his last.
Inara narrowed her eyes. "You're the one who told me to stay away from you. Or don't you remember?"
"Yeah, I did." Mal ran a hand through his hair. "I was angry, and… I was wrong. Wrong about a whole lot. I just couldn't let you go without tellin' you I'm sorry. For everything." The words hollowed out his insides, left him lighter than before.
She looked away, blinking fast. "I can't do this, Mal." She let out a breath, not quite a laugh. "I shouldn't even be talking to you."
He nodded. His throat had turned to rock. "Yeah. I get it."
"No, you don't." Her eyes shot to his. "I'm sorry." Her voice was brittle, weak. She dropped her eyes. "You should go."
Mal nodded again. A hot fog settled onto his shoulders, making the air so thick he could barely breathe. He turned away, without a backward glance, and slipped through the library doors.
Further down the hall, Councilor Zhi was emerging from another, similar set of doors. Mal ducked into the shadows. He held his breath and watched, as Zhi pressed his thumb to the center of the door handle. It let out a faint electronic chime. Satisfied, Zhi swept across the hall, and reentered the ballroom.
Mal hesitated a moment. He grimaced. There were secrets in that room, he had no doubt. But there was no way he was getting inside right then. The fog was too dense, frustration hot and tight around his neck, as he left the way he'd come. He passed unnoticed, invisible, through the party, the service basement, and into the deepening night.
/*/*\*\
By the time midnight closed in, Mal decided he hated galas. He put them right near the top of his list of the worst things about the Core.
He sat on the barn roof, boots braced against the gutter, on the side facing away from the mansion. Tendrils of light reached out from behind him, across the fields, almost reaching the trees clumped on the edge of the estate.
From the sound of it, the revelry wouldn't be dying down anytime soon. Mal wondered how Inara was doing.
He lifted the bottle at his side, and took another swallow. It punished him, burning all the way down. He let out his breath in a hiss.
In a show of uncanny foresight, or more likely by mistake, the previous stable hand had left behind an unopened bottle of baijiu in a compartment under the bed. White liquor: the drink of choice for those who wanted to get as drunk as possible, as quick as possible. Mal had been tempted to open it after the dust-up at the Aerie, but decided in the end to save it for a worthier occasion.
He sighed, and squinted at the bottle. A third of the way gone already, and he'd been at it less than an hour. The 'drinking game' he'd come up with was maybe a tad too effective.
He threw himself back against the roof, and stared upward. A few sparse stars pinpricked the black bowl of the sky. Nothing like the ribbons of constellations one could see back on Shadow. Sihnon's two moons hung side by side, full and bright, the smaller one cradled below and to the right of its big sister.
At that moment, Mal should have been working on how to sneak back into the party, and get past Zhi's bio-tech lock on that door. He had only ten days left before Mercey's deadline. Yet there he sat, on the barn roof.
He knew, no matter what he did, she would appear before him, and everything would fall apart.
He clenched his jaw. "Dammit." He tipped back another mouthful of liquor, and swallowed it down.
"Mal?"
He froze. Maybe the alcohol was strong enough to cause auditory hallucinations.
"Mal, I know I heard you." Her voice got clearer, closer. The rear sliding doors of the stables squealed open, and Inara stepped through them. She wore her winter cloak, arms crossed tight over her chest. "Where are you hiding?"
Mal held his breath, squeezed his eyes shut. Go away, go away, go away, he thought as loud as he could. He cracked his eyes open. Inara hadn't moved.
She huffed out a white cloud of breath. "You can be so childish." She cast her eyes around. "I know you're out here, somewhere, because you would never leave this door unlocked. You might be crazy, and childish, and an idiot about so many things, but you're never irresponsible."
Mal couldn't help himself. "Gee, that almost sounded like a compliment."
Inara jumped, whirling around. She looked up at the roof. Her eyes widened. "What are you doing up there?"
"Wanna come up an' find out?"
She let out a breath of a laugh. "You are incorrigible."
"Thanks." Mal grinned.
Inara tugged her gloves off, and tucked them into an inner pocket of her cloak. She disappeared from Mal's line of vision. There was a telling creak of wood, from the bench that stuck out along the back wall. Then a thud, as her foot found the doorframe.
"Whoa, hey." Mal scrambled to a crouch, trying to peer over the edge without falling off. "I was kidding, don't-"
A pair of hands clapped onto the gutter. Inara swung herself up with ease, one silk slipper after the other. She pulled the ample fabric of her dress and woolen cloak along with her.
She landed with hands flat on the roof, and turned to give Mal the most adorable grin of astonishment. "I did it," she breathed.
He blinked. "Uh, yeah. So you did."
"I'm on a roof," she said, louder. Her eyes shone, cheeks flushed.
Mal smirked. "This your first time, huh?"
"Shockingly, I don't get a lot of chances at my school. I missed registration for the course on illegal climbing." She flipped herself around, so she could sit next to Mal, and arranged her dress over her knees.
He frowned. "I ain't breakin' no laws."
Inara's eyes lit on the bottle of baijiu, lying between them. Mal grabbed for it, but she was faster. She read the label, and cocked an eyebrow at him. "So, you weren't drinking this, then. Just holding it for a friend?"
"Hey, I'm legal." Mal tried to grab it back, but Inara held it out of his reach. "On Shadow, anyway," he added, giving up. He wasn't going to wrestle her for it.
He hastily wiped that image from his mind.
"Right." Inara tilted her head. "What's the drinking age there?"
"Fifteen."
"Mm. Here it's 21."
Mal huffed. "You Core-worlders and your long lifespans. Got a skewed sense of age." A light switched on in his mind. He sat up straight. "What day is it?"
Inara consulted a tiny screen sewn into the sleeve of her cloak. "As of twelve minutes ago, it is the 20th of September."
Mal chuckled, though it felt heavy in his chest.
"What?"
"Nothin', just-" He turned to her, with half a smile. "It's my birthday."
"Oh, let me guess. You just turned 21?" she asked, on the edge of a laugh.
Mal shook his head. "Almost. I'm 20."
"You're serious?" She pushed his shoulder, smiling wide. "Happy birthday, Wesley Malachi Gale."
He managed to hold his smile, at the sound of the name that wasn't his. "Thank you." He shook his head. "Honestly, never thought I'd make it this far."
Inara laughed. Mal joined her, though he hadn't meant it as a joke.
"Well, as I'm only two weeks from turning 21 myself, I'll toast your 20 years of life with you." Her smile, delicate yet devious, flipped Mal's insides. She poured a thimbleful of baijiu into the cap of the bottle, and drank it down.
"Hm." She winced. "It's… definitely not rice wine."
Mal chuckled, and took the bottle from her. "Yeah." He tossed back another swallow. "43 percent alcohol."
"Where did you get it?"
"Found it under the bed. The last stable hand musta forgot it when he left."
Inara gave him an odd look. "You mean, when he died."
"What?" Mal's grin evaporated.
"Sorry, I thought you knew. Don't worry, it wasn't here," she added, soothing. "He took leave to go home, for a family emergency, and had some sort of accident."
Mal turned away. A slow, sick realization spread through him.
"It happened shortly after Davis arrived," Inara went on, oblivious. "Quite an unpleasant start for him here, I imagine."
Mal barely heard her over the thud of his pulse. It had to have been someone in the Intelligence Corps. Or someone they'd hired. They'd murdered a man whose only crime had been to work in a position they wanted open, so Mal could step in.
His gut twisted. "Yeah. Real unpleasant," he muttered.
He looked over at Inara. She had tilted her gaze up to the sky. Light spilled over her face in profile, catching in her eyelashes. It glinted off the small golden disc on her left ear, branded with the Alliance symbol.
A profound ache bore into Mal's chest, heavy and certain as iron in his blood.
He couldn't follow through with the mission. Damn Zhi, and Mercey, and all the rest.
But if you give up, it means giving her up, too.
"The stars are out." Her voice, soft and sweet, pulled him out of his head. "Though not as many as there must be on Shadow. The light pollution here is intense."
"Sure is." Mal let out a breath. "But the view's not so bad."
He'd said it without looking away from her. He bit his cheek, swallowing a curse. Inara's lips twitched against a smile.
"You must be freezing." She knit her brow. "You're not even wearing a jacket."
"I'm hot-blooded," he joked. An inadvertent chatter of his teeth betrayed him.
Inara rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous." She undid the clasp of her cloak, and slid over, before Mal could utter a word of protest. He froze, every muscle tensed. Inara pressed herself flush against his side. She draped the cloak sideways over their shoulders, like a blanket.
"Better?" she murmured in his ear.
Mal didn't trust himself to speak. He nodded. He sure felt warmer. In fact, he felt like he'd been plunged into a blazing iron forge. He swallowed hard.
"Aren't they missin' you, at the party?" he asked, to distract himself from the wholeness of her: hip pressed into his, legs crossed prettily at the ankles.
"I made my excuses."
She twined her arm around his. He risked a glance over at her. She had turned her gaze out to the fields, chewing her lower lip.
"Inara."
She looked over at him. They were so close, he felt her breath on his cheeks. "Why'd you come here, really?" he asked.
"Same reason you came to the house. I had to see you."
"Why?"
Inara glanced down, to find Mal's hand. She wove her fingers with his. "A few weeks ago, when you said all those things about the Core, I got the feeling… you were doing it on purpose. You wanted to push me away, for some reason." She lifted her head, to catch his eyes.
Mal pulled his mouth into a hard line. He looked down at their hands, half-transfixed by the wonder of it. Inara's palm, soft and slightly cool, kissing his.
"Never mind." She shook her head.
"No, it's- you're not wrong. Truth is, I…" Zāogāo. He could barely speak with her staring up at him, eyes all big. "I'm sick of pretendin'. That's all." He sighed. "We both pretend like we can be friends, when we can't."
"Oh." Her breath stuttered. "What can we be, then?"
Against his will, Mal's eyes landed on Inara's lips. Blood coursed close to the surface of his skin, electric-charged with baijiu and the vague scent of caramel and the curve of her cheek.
He grimaced. "We can't be nothin', Inara." He turned away, jaw clenched hard. He pulled his hand out of hers. He didn't want to know what was on her face just then. But he broke, weak, as always, and turned back.
He hadn't expected no reaction at all. Her hands folded neat on her knees, all of her composed, compressed. Only her eyes showed something else.
"I wish you would tell me what's wrong," she said, quiet.
What isn't? Mal scowled. "Whadd'you care? In a month's time you'll be in some plush office on Londinium, busy servin' the Great Alliance. You'll forget I even exist."
"Don't pretend to know my life." Her mouth pressed tight, eyes flashing. "And if you believe I could ever forget you, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought."
She gathered her cloak, arranging it over her shoulders again, before she slid over to the gutter. Mal sat still, stunned. He watched her drop down lightly over the edge. Her slippers padded over cement, ringing from within the stables.
He broke out of his trance, and scrambled upright, then tumbled off the roof. Ankles stinging, he lurched through the rear doors.
"Wait." It jerked out of him, scattering the silence. A few of the horses stirred.
Inara stopped, and turned around.
Mal kept his eyes in hers. He walked like he was falling, like he couldn't stop until they collided. He reached out, and touched her. Only because she had touched him first. Because she had asked 'What can we be, then?' with her eyes on his mouth.
He took her shoulders in his hands. She drew close to him in answer. And just like that she was in his arms, and Mal couldn't quite make sense of it. She was soft and whole and staring up at him, breathing through an open mouth. Mal bent down toward her.
"Miss Serra?"
Mal and Inara jolted apart, stumbling away from each other. They turned. A large, lopsided silhouette filled the front doorway.
"Wán le, shā le wǒ ba," said Mal, under his breath.
Talmai Davis listed into the barn, feet dragging, unhurried. He held a lantern in one hand. Its harsh light streaked shadows up his long, narrow face.
"Mr. Davis, please, I can explain." Inara lifted her palms. "This was all my doing. I'm the one who came down here, please don't-"
She stopped. Davis wouldn't even look at her. His eyes didn't waver from Mal's. "Let me walk you back up to the house, miss," he said evenly. "It's late."
Inara's eyes flashed to Mal, bright with pity, and regret. In that moment, he almost hated her. Almost. She looked back to Davis, and ducked her head. "Yes," she whispered. "Alright."
Inara crossed the barn to stand at the groundskeeper's side. Mal found his voice. "Sir, nothing's happened, I swear. We were only-"
Davis lifted a hand. "You ought to remember your place here, Wesley." His voice scraped like sand, dry and toneless, in Mal's ears. "In this world, those who forget don't last very long."
He turned away, and loped out of the stables, his lantern splashing light like flames up the walls. Inara cast her eyes to Mal, one last time. She followed Davis out, and the door slid shut behind them.
translations:
Tā mā bāzi - Sh*t, Holy sh*t
Wán le - That's it, I'm done for
shā le wǒ ba - Kill me now
Okay, okay, you have every right to be mad at me for that, but come on - it's not a slow burn without at least one excruciating near-kiss. ;)
If you'd like to share a couple words of response to this chapter, please go ahead! It honestly lights up my whole day to hear from you, even if it's just a brief sentence to let me know you're enjoying the story. Or if you just want to yell at me for the groundskeeper's untimely entrance, that is also welcome.
I hope I'm able to post the next chapter sooner rather than later. Until then, stay shiny!