Bird on the Wire
by katzenfabrik

Bird on the Wire

katzenfabrik

Summary

“If you died,” Huaisang started, not knowing quite where he was going with this. “I mean, you did die, da-ge, but if someone had killed you… what would you want to happen next?”

In the wake of Nie Mingjue’s death, Nie Huaisang realises how much he’s been left in ignorance. How could the artsy little brother be left to run their ancestral asteroid-mining clan? What other secrets are hidden in his san-ge’s past? And how should he get revenge?

Maybe having da-ge’s personality backed up on a server was supposed to help with all this. Maybe.

Notes

None
Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 54847861.

Chapter 1

Nie Huaisang knew that da-ge had backups, of course.

For one thing, everyone in their circles did, Huaisang included—even though he wasn’t a clan leader, hadn’t done anything dangerous in the war, and contributed nothing to their society besides a few scribblings and painted fans. He’d been taken in to make his first one at thirteen, the year before their father had died. Sitting in the gleaming facility with electrodes covering his scalp, their long wires tangling in his hair, he’d felt as if he was undergoing a rite of passage.

Then a-die had died—blood spilling from his eyes and nose, struggling to climb out of his bed and claw at his two frightened sons, one protecting the other with his own body. After his will had been settled, Huaisang had access to his most recent backup.

He’d tried it once.

They’d done something to the backup personality, tweaked or scaled some values that should have been left alone, or else a-die had just been in the wrong mood on the day they’d scanned him. (It shouldn’t work like that, though, should it? All the literature said there was no point getting backed up more than every six months, because the values they recorded changed too slowly to make a difference.) The glint in his eye and the grim smile, the one that looked more like a scowl, those were correct—but a-die hadn’t been so openly glad to see Huaisang for years. He’d never asked Huaisang about his painting and poetry. This was almost the a-die of his childhood, except with the old man’s grey hair and the scar on his face from his last shuttle crash, six months before his death. Huaisang’s chest felt tight. A warning notification lit up in the corner of his eye and he broke the connection, ripping off his viewing helmet before a-die’s backup could say goodbye.

So, Huaisang knew that da-ge had backups. He’d even had a vague notion that there were a lot of them. Da-ge was an important figure, after all, and he’d risked life and limb in the war against the Wen clan. When he opened the documents from the backup centre, though, Huaisang thought his eyes must be blurry from all the crying he’d been doing. He lay down with a wet towel over them for an hour before checking again, but the list hadn’t changed. Who would ever make that many backups of themself? Who would keep them?

“It was part of the monitoring of his condition, Huaisang,” his san-ge told him later.

Although Jin Guangyao hadn’t cried in front of him since right after da-ge’s death, his eyes had a watery sheen that made them shine appealingly when the low lamplight in Huaisang’s rooms caught them, emphasising his dark eyelashes. Huaisang, in contrast, was a mess. His face was swollen and his nose was red and stinging from how often he’d sniffled into a handkerchief.

“The specialists could compare the scans over time to check for any… degeneration.”

San-ge had Huaisang’s hands in his now, holding on as if to stop him floating away. It wasn’t working.

“And—well, you know how da-ge was. He always needed to be strong for the clan’s sake. If anyone had noticed him visiting the clinic, he could have just said he was making a backup.”

Was that how da-ge was? He’d carried the reputation and the position of the Nie on his shoulders since he was nineteen, true, but he’d always been allergic to any kind of dissembling. Huaisang thought, That sounds more like you, san-ge. Or me.

With a soft chiming sound, the door to his private rooms slid open. Huaisang’s er-ge stepped inside. It could only have been him; the doors were set to challenge anyone but the four of them before letting them in. Lan Xichen had changed back into regular clothing, dark trousers and a jacket in grey-and-blue patterned Qinghe silk, but the chill and metallic scent of the asteroid’s surface seemed to cling to him nonetheless.

“I’ve double-checked the perimeter and guard roster with Zonghui xiong,” he said as greeting. “Everything’s in order. Huaisang, next month you’ll have to do that. Zonghui xiong can help you until you know everything to look for—make sure to ask him, all right?”

“I will, er-ge,” he mumbled.

When er-ge turned to san-ge, his face changed somehow, warming as it reflected the brightness in san-ge’s eyes. The grief in his expression refined his handsome features into nobility; it didn’t crumple or squash him like Huaisang’s did.

“A-Yao, are you ready to leave?” er-ge asked. “I know you’re travelling back to Lanling, but if I fly you to Shangqiu Station to catch a transport there, it will save you some time.”

“Er-ge is too generous,” san-ge said.

Er-ge’s home, the Gusu Toroidal Hab, was nestled in the outer atmosphere of a gas giant three planets closer to the sun than the asteroid belt where the Nie clan had built their home. This time of year, Shangqiu station was a long detour from the most direct route there. It was like er-ge to think of his younger sworn brother ahead of himself.

When they left, Huaisang’s rooms felt colder and darker. The documents he’d been trying to work through with their help whirled in front of his eyes; he swept them all off the workspace and reached for a jar of wine.

He didn’t touch da-ge’s backups. If he wanted to remember him, Huaisang looked at the photo always displayed on his workspace, wherever he was working—or pretending to work—or not even pretending, to the distress of Nie Zonghui and the other inner clan members.

It had been taken at the big inter-clan contest to celebrate the end of the war. Just as at any Jin-organised event, the central pavilions where competitors and spectators mingled had been crawling with PR reps, paparazzi and official event photographers. Da-ge had just won the low-orbit dogfighting contest. Hair mussed from his helmet, glowing with endorphins, his flight suit open to the waist, he had no idea what kind of figure he cut: da-ge was so indifferent to his admirers, it was as though he didn’t hear their calls or see the flowers that—still, even at the end of the day!—they tossed his way. Huaisang was the one who drank in all the attention aimed at his older brother, the one who judged a crowd by whether or not they appreciated him as they should.

“Nie zongzhu!” A woman’s voice hailed him directly, and this did catch da-ge’s attention. “Lan zongzhu, and Jin gongzi! The Venerated Triad all together—please let me capture this moment!”

Huaisang glanced left and right. Sure enough, er-ge and san-ge were approaching along another path, heads together in conversation. They seemed as surprised as he and da-ge were, but the photographer was persuasive and quickly had them standing in a loose line in front of one of the gigantic floral decorations.

When Huaisang looked at the picture later, he could still feel the golden sunlight of that late afternoon, on one of the many terraformed moons in Jin territory. His younger self stood diffidently at the left, wearing the silver robes he’d chosen to represent the Nie clan despite not competing in any of the traditional challenges. Beside him, da-ge was a lion of a man, half a head taller even than er-ge. The camera had caught him in a half-smile that pushed a rare dimple into one cheek. That was one reason Huaisang loved this photo so much: da-ge had spent years repressing the dimples so inappropriate for a serious clan leader, until perhaps he’d even forgotten why he never let himself smile.

Er-ge had just taken first place in the traditional sword combat for which he and his brother were famed across the system. He stood tall and limber in a silver-blue bodysuit, sheathed sword in one hand, the other arm slung around da-ge’s back. He looked happy, uncomplicatedly glad to be between his two sworn brothers.

San-ge wasn’t competing, either. He was in charge of running the entire contest, which seemed quite natural to Huaisang at the time: san-ge was the best at every type of logistics, so of course he’d be the one organising the event. Later on, it struck him that every other child of a clan leader had been vying for a position on one of the many podiums that day. Instead, wearing formal gold robes even more restrictive than Huaisang’s, san-ge had been rushing to fix every small disaster. There was a flush to his cheeks in the picture, and that expression of hesitant pride Huaisang remembered so well from san-ge’s early days at Qinghe. His hand rested lightly on er-ge’s broad shoulder.

“Turn to face me just a fraction more, Jin gongzi?” Huaisang remembered the photographer calling out.

It took a long time for him even to get started with the planning. For months after he found out the truth, Nie Huaisang was too afraid to think straight, let alone plot the downfall of a man he’d thought of as his brother.

The first time his knees buckled and he toppled to the ground on approaching the outer airlock, his guards moved to pull him up with speed built over many training hours. Two of them supported him between them and raced to the medical wing, where tests showed no issues that couldn’t be explained away by stress. It was enough to apologise for troubling everyone and let his advisors bully him into taking a break from all the work he wasn’t doing.

When he started hyperventilating at the thought of leaving his rooms, their expressions grew more concerned. It was after Nie Zonghui’s suggestion of inviting Huaisang’s san-ge to visit, and the exhausting bout of hysteria it triggered in him, that his cousin and right-hand man sat him down for a serious talk.

“Zongzhu, I know you never wanted to be in this position, but Qinghe needs a strong clan leader.”

You know how da-ge was.

Da-ge had seen off all threats to the clan with his anger and the righteous flame of his principles. It had killed him in the end, or at least Huaisang had thought so.

“Huaisang.” Zonghui frowned, taking a new tack. “How can we help you to be that leader?”

Instead of answering, he said nonsensically, “Why did no one tell me about the disease before it was too late?”

“Too late for what?” To Huaisang’s surprise, Zonghui threw himself back in his chair, staring up at the curved ceiling as if the secret to managing clan leaders were written there in secret code. “Mingjue xiong didn’t want anyone to know how bad it was getting, not even you. Not even me, honestly, but he needed someone in the clan who could keep things running when he was too out of it.” He sighed. “I don’t think he really believed that auditory therapy Lan zongzhu came up with would cure him, but he would have tried anything to be here for longer, for the Nie. You knowing… in his eyes, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

Huaisang looked down at his hands, twisted into the fabric of his pyjamas and still trembling from his screaming outburst earlier. He didn’t dare say a word.

“Besides, the old zongzhu got you tested for it years ago,” Zonghui said, rolling his head to the side to look Huaisang in the eyes. “So we figured there wasn’t so much you needed to know. You’re going to live a long life, Huaisang.”

“Zonghui xiong, you…”

His cousin’s face cracked into a grin and, for just a moment, Huaisang hoped.

“It’s moving slower for me, at least,” he said. “Could be years. The time I’ve got left is yours and our clan’s, so tell me: what do you need us to do, so you can lead?”

The picture was built into his workspace, da-ge half-smiling for Huaisang to see whenever he opened it—in his rooms, out checking the mines and their defences, or on another clan’s station when he made diplomatic visits. The day he knew he was overcoming the fear of da-ge’s murderer, he destroyed it.

No.

He wanted to destroy it, to rip himself and da-ge away to safety before shredding san-ge’s image into molecules. He wanted to grind ink until it was too thick to paint with and then drip the sooty black all over san-ge’s tidy, gleaming robes, all over his ingenu’s blush and the hand that clung to er-ge. If there was no way to destroy the man himself, he must at least scrape his image away from himself and da-ge.

Huaisang indulged himself just once, printing out san-ge’s portion of the image and scrubbing a pen so hard over the man’s face that it gouged into the desk beneath. In the moment of action, he was satisfied—but once the paper was ruined, he looked up to see the picture on his screen, as pristine as ever.

Even if he unset it from his workspace, deleted the file from every device he’d used over the years, and had it scrubbed from the Qinghe internet—Zonghui would know how—it must be saved in a thousand caches and posted on who knew how many news sites across the system. The photographer had sent each of them a high-resolution copy as a courtesy; in the Gusu Toroidal Hab and on all the moons of Lanling there would be duplicates, created incidentally as information flowed through the world run by the clans. And wasn’t Jin Guangyao like that, too? He’d sunk half a lifetime into polishing his reputation until it gleamed. Huaisang had thought he only wanted to distract from the inconvenient facts of his birth; now he knew there were darker depths, covered up just as efficiently.

Even if he killed him—oh, a spark caught in his chest at the thought—Jin Guangyao’s beautiful self-made image would persist.

Huaisang had to destroy that too.

“Huaisang,” da-ge said.

Huisang almost flinched. It wasn’t the tone of the greeting but the fact that he’d antipated being the one to break the silence—had gone over it in his mind, wondering what the right way was to address the replica of his brother.

Huaisang could have chosen any of the environment sims on file to stage this encounter, and he’d given serious thought to using da-ge’s office-cum-receiving room, now his own. He’d imagined da-ge looking up from his workspace with the expression he always wore at an unexpected interruption, one eyebrow sceptically raised, and hadn’t been able to bear the thought of it. Instead, he’d picked the default, nearly featureless sitting room that came with the backup software. It was the same setting he’d met his father’s backup in, he realised—too late.

“Da-ge,” he said helplessly. His voice stuck in this throat as though he had something to apologise for.

Da-ge cleared his throat. “Before we speak further, I have to inform you that this is a simulation of Nie Mingjue, captured from life on—” he named a date that matched the one in the backup’s metadata—“and not the original person. Please confirm you understand this.”

Huaisang nodded. After a moment of da-ge waiting silently, he croaked out, “I understand.”

“Good. Now that’s out of the way,” da-ge said briskly. He stood up smoothly. Da-ge had always been more comfortable on his feet. “How is the clan? Are you handling everything?”

“The clan’s fine,” Huaisang said slowly.

“If there’s anything Zonghui can’t help you with directly, he will know who to ask about it,” da-ge said. “Just because this backup is here, doesn’t mean you have to come and ask me for advice, all right?”

“What?” Huaisang was still trying to regain his grasp of the conversation. “Who said I was here to ask for your advice? I just got here and you’re already telling me what to do and not do.”

“You haven’t changed much, I see,” da-ge scoffed. He was standing so close to where Huaisang sat that he had to crane his neck to look up at him. “So, if I asked you right now, you’d be able to tell me exactly how far behind or ahead we are on this cycle’s ore shipment, how many leaks and broken sensors the last maintenance round caught, and which minor clans are trying to undercut our selenium prices?”

“Seven point three percent behind, well within normal fluctuations since we’re opening a seam on a new rock,” Huaisang snapped. Lucky that his procrastination on this meeting had included a briefing with Zonghui and the cousin in charge of mining operations, Nie Hezhong. “Minor leaks in six modules, all caught early enough to be patched—that’s in the habitat bases. If you want to know about every passageway in the mining complexes, I’m afraid I’ll have to check my notes.”

Huaisang rose to his feet, forcing the backup to step quickly away from him. The default sim behaviour was intended to preserve the illusion when tactile settings were turned off. Its effect was diminished by the fact that Huaisang had never seen da-ge back down in his whole life.

“As for the minor clans, the Yao are wildly overpromising on price and delivery speed, as usual.” He checked them off on a finger. “The Tingshan He and the Rong are feuding with one another over who’s been poaching whose best engineers, which is distracting them nicely from us.” Check, check. “And the Laoling Qin are putting all their energy into the big wedding, because old man Qin thinks it’s going to save their business. Hah!”

The look da-ge gave him was long and considering. Huaisang held it for as long as he could. They’d moved halfway across the room, somehow.

“If you have everything so well under control, Huaisang, then why are you here?” he asked at last. “I know you, remember? I know you wouldn’t want to see me like this.”

“I can’t just miss you?” Huaisang tried weakly. Da-ge’s backup was right. He’d felt almost normal when they were arguing, but a space-sick feeling was rising in him already now that he’d stopped shouting.

“I always knew you’d miss me,” the backup said. “I just hoped that by the time I was gone, you’d be prepared to deal with it constructively.”

“I am.” It felt like a lie in his mouth.

Suddenly, he did have questions to ask, too many of them, and nothing he could actually speak out loud or hope for an answer to. Did it hurt to die? Did it hurt being sick, and not telling anyone but Zonghui xiong? Were you really as disappointed in me as you seemed? They hadn’t been on affectionate terms by the time da-ge had gone, but Huaisang found himself longing for a hug, eerily sure that the backup was thinking the same thing.

“If you died,” he started, not knowing quite where he was going with this. “I mean, you did die, da-ge, but if someone had killed you… what would you want to happen next?”

“If someone did this to us deliberately,” the backup said, and its voice had almost the resonance and power of da-ge’s, “no revenge would be too great.”

“They’ve made a lot of progress in tuning the personality parameters in the new backup simulations,” Zonghui said casually a few nights later, while they were working side by side in Huaisang’s rooms.

“Hm?” Huaisang didn’t look away from the workspace where he was rotating a pair of 3d images alongside each other, comparing them.

“Yeah. That’s what they say, at any rate. Not that I fancy giving it another go.” Zonghui paused. When Huaisang didn’t fill the gap, he carried on, “I don’t believe they’ll get it right for—people like us. Mingjue xiong, the old zongzhu… me, when I go. We’re not in their models.”

Deliberately, Huaisang straightened up. Still not looking at Zonghui, he said coldly, “How did you know?”

“Did you forget I have access to all the networks on this rock?” Zonghui replied. “You’re not as stealthy as you think you are, Huaisang.”

Huaisang was, actually, very stealthy. All right, he would take this as a spur to get even better at covering his tracks.

“I meant it, about the models,” Zonghui said relentlessly. “You tried out your father’s backup when he died, didn’t you? That thing was spooky. Like a shadow puppet stood up and started talking to you in a human voice.”

He gave up pretending that he wasn’t going to have this conversation. “Yeah.”

“Obviously, they have to make a lot of adjustments to get from what they’ve recorded to something that’s fit to play back. No one wants to talk to a dead person who’s going to have an existentential crisis about being dead.”

“Zonghui xiong.”

“Sorry,” Zonghui said lightly. He glanced across at him and, whatever he saw in Huaisang’s face, grimaced in more serious apology. “Anyway, my theory is, the maths they do might work all right for the average healthy person, but they’re never going to fit for someone who dies with this in them.”

Zonghui waved towards his own head—as if he were as sick as da-ge had been, as if Huaisang had ever seen him angry, never mind uncontrollable with it. He made a mental note to look into Zonghui’s medical records and keep track of any developments, if he could stand it. It wouldn’t do for his right-hand man to lose that stability at a critical point.

Huaisang spun round in his seat to glare directly at his cousin. “Why are you telling me this? Go and say it to the backup developers, maybe they’ll care.”

“Right. I’ll just pay them a visit with a drive of data on the Nie Clan hereditary disease, shall I?” Zonghui shook his head. “All I’m trying to say here is, I know it’s tempting, but stay away from his backups. They’ll only make things worse.”

Silently, Huaisang rotated and zoomed out his workspace, until they could see the full clutter of files, logs and schematics they’d been working with that evening. Somewhere in the mess glowed the picture from the inter-clan contest: da-ge almost smiling, Huaisang hanging back in his shadow.

“You don’t have to tell me, ‘It won’t bring him back, Huaisang,’” he said. In the back of his throat was the tickle of a laughter that wouldn’t stop if he gave in to it. “But then what’s the point of any of this?”

The Nie sent a delegation to san-ge’s wedding to Qin Su, of course. Huaisang drank what looked like far too much and sniffled on er-ge’s well-dressed shoulder. It was practically an act of charity to distract the man from the reason they were all there; there was a tension in his jaw that grew every time someone toasted to the happy couple.

When er-ge finally managed to peel himself away, leaving Huaisang sitting on a moonlit balcony with a carafe of water beside him, he took the opportunity to get to know the waifish Jin byblow who’d been making eyes at him all evening.

“Xuanyu, you must promise to stay in touch!” he carolled as Zonghui finally escorted him off to bed.

The backup of da-ge from ten months before he died was more restless than his most recent one had been. Huaisang asked a few questions about clan business, just to refresh his own memory of what had been going on back then, and watched the backup pace the length of the bland sitting room while he gave half a lecture in response.

There were faint marks along da-ge’s hairline, barely visible at the simulation’s resolution. Huaisang recognised them from the early stage of er-ge’s auditory therapy, when they’d been monitoring da-ge’s brainwaves to check on the results. By the time san-ge took over the therapeutic visits, there’d no longer been a need for that; all he had to do was stick to the patterns they knew had the greatest healing effect. Huaisang could have done that. But no, da-ge was too determined to keep him in the dark about what he’d most needed to know.

Huaisang grit his teeth against saying that to da-ge’s backup. He’d developed a fine instinct over the years for when to stay quiet and not talk back, even if he hadn’t always followed it.

“Jin Guangyao,” he said sharply, cutting off a diatribe about old Wen electrolysis tech that had been turning up at the edges of civilised space. That was actually interesting—he’d have to investigate it himself, later.

Da-ge stopped in his tracks. “That wretched little snake,” he said immediately.

If you know that’s what he is, then why—

“Da-ge, if he ever hurts you, what should I do?” Huaisang asked.

“You won’t need to do anything,” da-ge said. “I’ll kill him before he can take a second swing at me, don’t worry.”

Against the padding of the viewing helmet, Huaisang felt his mouth twitch convulsively. The scene blurred and then wobbled back into focus as the software corrected for his tears. “But if, da-ge,” he insisted. “Say I do need to take action, then what should it be?”

“Try focusing on your own work first before getting any ideas about me,” da-ge said, his tone rising—but not far enough. “Let me see your hands. Yeah, I thought they’d be covered in ink. If you’ve got time for painting flowers and trees, you’ve got time to pay attention to what we’ve really got out here: ore, and dust, and hard vacuum.”

Huaisang clenched his fists in frustration. “Let me ask you a different way, then,” he snapped. “If someone hurt me, what would you do then?”

“You know what I’d do,” the backup said. “The Qinghe Nie would reach out and destroy them.” The corner of its mouth twitched upwards. “We’ve got the firepower to do a lot more than chew up these rocks, after all.”

“Thanks, da-ge,” Huaisang mumbled, and stopped the simulation.

It was nearly a week after Zonghui collapsed that Huaisang heard about it. He was travelling away from Qinghe, out of the asteroid belt altogether, on one of the long and complex voyages he tried to put off as much as possible. It was well-known amongst the clans that One Question, Three I Don’t Knows didn’t like to venture outside of his comfortable little hole. Aside from that, the more errands he could combine in a single trip, the greater the possibilities for slipping away between meetings, or switching ships and perhaps not ending up on the one that had originally been chartered, or carrying away certain cargoes that weren’t on any official manifest…

He was sipping smoky green tea on an arcology somewhere on a minor planet, when the ping of a message that shouldn’t have been able to get through interrupted him. The arcology had originally been designed as a prison, but economic shifts had made it unnecessary even before the building work was completed. The desert all around was uninteresting to tourists and poor in minerals, so now the tall structure stood alone, windswept and barely inhabited. Its one attraction was its security.

“Please excuse me,” Huaisang said to his hostess, setting his cup down on the low table.

The door to the bathroom was flanked on one side by a highly polished pipa of beautifully inlaid wood, and on the other by a holograph of its owner playing it, half a lifetime ago. It was honestly a relief to step away from the story she’d been relating. For all that no one would mourn Jin Guangshan, perhaps nobody needed to hear all the details of his demise. Huaisang was going to tell the entire system.

He locked the door and simply stood in the quiet little room for a moment, before he opened the message and let his workspace decrypt it.

「Nie Zonghui has suffered a medical event—now out of intensive care—recovering. Nie Hezhong and Nie Songtao are in command. Zongzhu need not return sooner than planned. 」

All relief fled his body at once.

For the next month, while Huaisang picked and skipped his way home, the dread of that ‘medical event’ mixed with Sisi’s descriptions of frightened women, a drugged and snivelling old man, and the barbecue reek of burning flesh. He woke up again and again every sleep cycle, convinced he was spattered with blood and not knowing whether it was Zonghui’s, da-ge’s or his own. Even calling Zonghui, once he could finally get a radio signal through, was no comfort. He knew too much now about how much could be concealed through revealing to trust a video again.

His final stop was a get-together of minor clan leaders: an event the Jin or Lan would never have bothered attending in-person. Da-ge would have gone, to make sure they all knew the Qinghe Nie had an eye on them. Jiang Wanyin had been a fixture at all these conferences for years, after life had nearly been wiped off the surface of Yunmeng, and now that he’d rebuilt his home, Huaisang had taken his place as the head of a weakened clan.

Yao zongzhu met him at the gates of his mansion and launched at once into a description of all the tonics he took himself, and which ones he could recommend for poor Nie zongzhu. Something to build up a little colour in his face again! It was the happiest Huaisang had seen him in years.

“What were you thinking?” Huaisang howled. “You have to rest! You have to be careful with your health, Zonghui xiong! I need you!”

Nie Zonghui, back in his own quarters but not yet cleared for work, did not look nearly as apologetic as Huaisang wanted him to. Yellow-green shadows still clung beneath his eyes. “I had to take care of the clan,” he shrugged. “It wasn’t on purpose, Huaisang. Nobody could have predicted it.”

“Anyone who looked at the list of medications you’ve been taking could have predicted it,” Huaisang said frostily. He reached onto Zonghui’s workspace, not caring how rude it was, to open that list and zoom into it. “Three of these drugs have a limited course of two weeks, and you’d been taking them for how long? Don’t tell me you didn’t have a choice. You could have spoken to me at any time.”

“I had a choice, and I made my decision,” Zonghui replied, his chin raised. “I told you before: the time I have left is for the clan, for our people, for the business. You need me, but so do all of them, and it’s… it’s getting tight, Huaisang.”

He had to sit down. He got into a chair before it was obvious how weak his knees were, and then he wondered why he’d even bothered hiding it from Zonghui. “I know,” he said.

Zonghui sighed. He swept away the medication list and the other open files on his workspace, and opened up the project he and Huaisang had been slowly adding to for so long. “All right, so, tell me. What did you get out of your trip?”

Huaisang told him: about the parts and the technology he’d acquired, about the secrets he’d scraped up from Jin Guangyao’s filthy past, and nothing at all about the things he’d had to do to get them.

“How is the clan?” da-ge’s backup asked. “Are you handling everything?”

“It’s good,” Huaisang said. The virtual room was the same as ever, but it seemed to suck up his voice, erasing all emotion from it. “Everything’s under control, da-ge.”

“Hmm.” The backup raised one eyebrow. “If you need help with anything, you can rely on Meng Yao. In the very unlikely case there’s something he doesn’t know, he’ll know who to ask about it.”

“There’s Nie Zonghui, too,” he pointed out.

“Yes, Zonghui’s reliable, but Meng Yao’s a lot closer to the actual work,” da-ge said. “He’s had hands-on experience at every level by now, and the man’s got a mind like a steel trap. If he’s forgotten something about Qinghe, there’s no point knowing it.”

“Da-ge…”

“What? Don’t tell me I’m wrong.” There was a spark in da-ge’s eye that Huaisang couldn’t look away from. Was it a glitch, an error? “You’re the one who follows my deputy around the place when he’s trying to do his job. Shouldn’t you know him best of all?”

The obvious retort was a ghost in Huaisang’s mouth. He let it speak through him, as though he were the teenager this version of da-ge had known: “I do not follow him around.”

“Oh, I think the base security footage would tell a different story,” da-ge said, and it was there, not a glitch but a smile, in his eyes and his brow, for all that he was still holding his mouth stubbornly straight. He took a long step towards Huaisang; if this were real, or if Huaisang had enabled the tactile settings, he’d be ready to throw an arm around his younger brother’s shoulders and squeeze.

Da-ge was still much taller than Huaisang, even this far back, but his shoulders were not so imposing as in Huaisang’s memory. His face didn’t carry even the faint lines he’d had when he died, or the frown that eventually never went away.

“Who is it who’s always mysteriously just there when our Meng Yao’s shift’s coming to an end?” he asked. “Who just happens to be standing around with a flask of Meng Yao’s favourite suanmeitang?”

“Someone has to make him stop working,” Huaisang said, remembering how much he’d sulked at these jokes in the past.

“Hah! That’s true.” Da-ge shook his head, his eyes faraway. There it was at last: his smile, given into, dimpling both cheeks.

“You really loved—you really love him.” Huaisang stumbled over the words. It wasn’t as though this should be a surprise.

“Why not? He’s clever, brave, extremely efficient, hardworking—”

“Handsome,” Huaisang interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, da-ge, I won’t believe you.”

“All right, then. Handsome, too.”

They grinned at one another. Huaisang could feel the pain of it, sliding up into his heart, but it wasn’t panic yet. He could take this a little longer.

“Da-ge, I have a question,” he said. “If someone hurt me, you’d get revenge for me, right? I know that. And if anyone ever hurt you, I’d do the same.”

“Of course.”

“Then, what… what should it be? What should I do? What are the limits, da-ge?”

It seemed to take forever until da-ge responded. Huaisang shivered under the gaze that wasn’t a glare or a glower.

“I trust you to know the limits of righteousness, Huaisang,” he said, eventually.

“And if I don’t, any more?”

The space of a breath, and then: da-ge snorted. “You, didi?” he asked. “You are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, and I knew our grandfather. I don’t believe any force in this system could change you that far from who you are.” He chuckled. “For example, I’m not going to ask you about your latest artistic experiments, because I know how long you’ll go on about them for, but I have no doubt at all you’re still writing poetry and painting fans.”

“Yeah.” Huaisang pulled together a wavering smile. “Right. That helps, da-ge.”

With every year, it got easier to pretend he knew nothing. With every year, it got easier to wail and fling himself against er-ge’s chest—so lean and muscular, Huaisang felt he should bounce straight off—and beg for someone to solve all his problems, both the real ones and those he’d caused himself as misdirection.

Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? It had only become clearer over time that no one was coming to help him or the Qinghe Nie, that as far as clan civilisation cared, they might as well all be crushed between the orbiting mountains they lived on. Er-ge’s care for him was strained, a last duty to the man he must somehow understand he’d failed, even if he truly didn’t know how much. San-ge’s concern was nothing more than an alibi. Huaisang had even lost clan members to his endless performance, proud Nie who’d found it harder to stand being led by a fool than to break the bonds of loyalty that meant so much in Qinghe.

Sometimes he’d run into them again. Nie Zhijian went to consult the Jiang on rare-earth synthesis and began to pop up as part of trade delegations, Jiang Wanyin having picked up on how much it rattled Huaisang to see his distant cousin on the other side of a bargaining table. True, Zonghui had spent six months scrutinising Zhijian’s communications for leaked proprietary secrets. He’d had the toughest exit interview Qinghe had seen in a generation. That didn’t stop him from frowning every time Huaisang’s attempts at negotiation were too feeble or misleading, obviously sending subvocal messages to his new clan leader.

Nie Qiming went to the Anping Rong, which really hurt. Their satellites were infamous for chaotic orbital decay, their family line barely went back three generations, and their business model was based on nibbling at the edges of Nie territory. But at Anping, Qiming could work her way up to head of defense within two years, and apparently that was all that mattered.

Drunk, and frustrated by Jin banquet conversation he was too intoxicated to follow, Huaisang explained this to the person who had been seated to his left, Qin Su. “It’s about family, you know?” he asked her, eyes big and sincere.

Qin Su made a discreet gesture to a servant, her hand almost hidden by layers of gossamer-fine silk in all the colours of blossom. This meant a bowl of sobering soup was soon to appear in front of Huaisang. If he was unlucky, there’d be a pot of tea as well. He really was too featherbrained to do the necessary calculations on how much alcohol he’d drunk, and how it might react with the ingredients in the soup—both the traditional ones and the more recent innovations—but there was no getting around it.

“Saozi,” he pouted in the meantime. “Saozi, I don’t think you’re listening to your A-Sang didi.”

“Of course I’m listening, xiaoshuzi,” Qin Su told him with a gentle smile. “I’m just ordering something extra-nice for you to eat while you tell me.” She really did believe she cared about him, Huaisang thought.

There was probably a way to let her know about her husband, and their shared father, so that it only hurt and didn’t destroy her. Huaisang didn’t care to find it. If Qin Su’s pain led to Jin Guangyao’s extermination, he’d consider any amount worthwhile.

“A-yi wants to hire someone from the Nie clan,” Xuanyu told him on their next call. The image wobbled and stretched; its radio waves struggled across space, the best path between them recalculated over and over while repeater craft swung through the system.

“Oh?” Huaisang asked. The most laconic prompt was generally enough encouragement for Xuanyu, who got it from no one but him.

“Um, don’t take it the wrong way, Huaisang gege.” Xuanyu chewed on his lower lip. Huaisang should probably train him out of that unattractive habit. “I know the Mo clan isn’t anywhere near the level of the Nie clan! It’s just something she said, because she heard her friends on the Pingzhou Hab talking about it. It would be a good status symbol, right? That’s what she always wants.”

“Don’t worry,” Huaisang said, “I know there’s no way your a-yi could afford anyone who used to be part of the Nie clan. Not unless I was helping her instead of you, and what would be the point of that?”

Xuanyu giggled. “Right. I’m so lucky to have Huaisang gege to take care of me.”

Zonghui lost an eye in his next attack. Huaisang was there for it, that time, and he spent the next month in his rooms. Only food and the most urgent news were allowed in to him and nothing got out, not even his screams.

He wondered if Jin Guangyao would have pretended to cry for Zonghui like he had for da-ge. It had been a good pretence, at least. Huaisang had half-believed in san-ge’s tears for months after he’d learned the truth.

Nie Qiming organised the personal guard for Madame Rong, who had a cousin who’d married into the Qin and liked her to visit as often as possible. When the late Madame Qin’s personal maid decided to retire while she still had some healthy years left, it was Qiming, in the end, who arranged her retirement destination and spirited her away there.

It was Nie Zhijian who let Huaisang know about the once-condemned little station orbiting around Yunmeng. He described the shrine tucked away there, too, so strangely popular with the station’s deprived inhabitants. He made it very clear that this was a single, final favour, in memory of the last real clan leader of the Nie, and that he was just as disgusted with Huaisang’s behaviour as ever.

Da-ge’s first backup was younger than Xuanyu had been, when Huaisang had first met him. At long last, Huaisang had found a version of da-ge who was shorter than him, one who laughed when he had to tilt his head upwards to meet Huaisang’s gaze.

“What have you been doing recently?” he asked, and listened to this child da-ge tell him all about his zero-g combat classes and getting to tag along with his father on clan business outside the belt, and everything he and A-Huan were planning to do the next time they met up.

“It’s A-Sang’s birthday soon,” confided the backup.

Huaisang stopped him with a frantic wave of his hand. Once he could speak again, he whispered, “Da-ge. What would you do if someone harmed the Nie? What do you think a clan leader should do in that case?”

“A-die says we need to demonstrate strength,” the backup said, its clear brow wrinkled in thought, “so we would have to retaliate, just enough to show that it’s not worth acting against us… and to show that unrighteous behaviour won’t pay off. Taking a life for a life isn’t unreasonable, or unrighteous in itself. But in the long term, war and vendettas aren’t good for anybody, you know?”

The backup looked at him as if truly expecting an answer. Huaisang gave it a jerky nod.

“The most important thing is to keep the conflict short, and to take care of the ordinary people who get caught up in it,” it said confidently. “Well, that’s what I think, anyway. I’m still learning, though. You should ask my a-die if you want a proper answer.”

He did get out his old brushes and inks again, in the end.

They’d acquired the parts for this project piecemeal, from labs and warehouses across the system, and patched them together with—at least to begin with—more failures than successes. Zonghui’s education had been in engineering, not cybernetics, and Huaisang’s was even less relevant. Just making it move had felt like an impossible goal at times. Making it look right was harder. Huaisang had read more about systems theory, biomimetic materials and kinematics in the last ten years than he’d ever thought existed.

Making it look beautiful was the last stage. He’d worried they wouldn’t have time for it, but da-ge had been beautiful: in his strength, in his bravery, in his belief in justice; in everything that Jin Guangyao had torn away from him.

It wouldn’t be right to leave that aside, so Huaisang washed the long synthetic fibres of his creation’s hair and braided it the way the Nie did on grand occasions. He assembled its outfit from da-ge’s wardrobe, carefully wiped its skin and dressed it himself. Last of all, Huaisang made it sit, still and unbreathing, so he could reach to line its eyes with his finest brush.

“He looks good,” Zonghui said behind him. “He looks ready. Are you ready, Huaisang?”

Shakily, he laid down his palette. “Zonghui xiong, if I’m not ready by now, we’ve wasted the last decade.”

The news of Mo Xuanyu’s death and the note he’d left behind had been spreading through clan gossip networks for a week by now. Sisi and Bicao had entered Jiang space by shuttle three days before, two ageing ladies on a sightseeing tour that was going to make them some startlingly high-class new friends.

He’d considered keeping the mortal remains of Jin Guangyao’s mother locked up in one of the better-guarded asteroids, just in case, but decided against doing anything that could create a further target—or another shrine. Her bones had already been crushed to gravel and jettisoned into the vacuum.

“Time to load him in, then.” Zonghui walked around to stand on the other side of their project. He didn’t move to begin the process: Huaisang knew that was his task alone.

“I should let him rest,” Huaisang said.

He pulled up the file of da-ge’s final backup on his workspace and, just as he’d planned and practised to do, uploaded it into the body he’d built so that da-ge could take his vengeance against Jin Guangyao.