Solaris Rising 1.5 by Ian Whates Read Free Book Online

child? None of that matters. We realised what money we could, and bought a small place by the sea. I won’t say what sea. That doesn’t matter either; except that, when the dusk comes each day, and the net curtains are sucked against the open windows and go momentary starch-stiff; and when the moths congregate to worship their shining electric deities; and when the moon lies carelessly in the sky near the purple marine horizon like a pearl of great price—when Marija is fed and happy and M. and I take our turns holding her, and then lay her down and hold one another—there is a contentment spun from finitude that my previous, open-ended existence could not comprehend. I have busied myself writing this account, although only a little every day, for there is no rush, or else there is too much rush and I don’t wish to be troubled by the latter. And as for everything else, it helps to know what is really important. For the whole of the larger world could end at

TWO SISTERS IN EXILE
     
    ALIETTE DE BODARD
     
    Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, in a flat with her husband, more computers than people, and two Lovecraftian tentacled plants in the process of taking over the living room. In her spare time, she writes speculative fiction: her stories have appeared in Asimov’s,Interzone and other venues, and her series of Aztec noir fantasies, Obsidian and Blood , is published by Angry Robot. She has won the British Science Fiction Association Award, and been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Visit aliettedebodard.com for more information.
     
     
    I N SPITE OF her name (an elegant, whimsical female name which meant Perfumed Winter, and a reference to a long-dead poet), Nguyen Dong Huong was a warrior, first and foremost. She’d spent her entire life in skirmishes against the pale men, the feathered clans and the dream-skinners: her first ship,  The Tiger Lashes with His Tail , had died at the battle of Bach Nhan, when the smoke-children had blown up Harmony Station and its satellites; her second had not lasted more than a year. 
    The Tortoise in the Lake was her fourth ship, and they’d been together for five years, though neither of them expected to live for a further five. Men survived easier than ships—because they had armour, because the ships had been tasked to take care of them. Dong Huong remembered arguing with  Lady Mieng’s Dreamer , begging the ship to spare itself instead of her; and running against a wall of obstinacy, a fundamental incomprehension that ships could be more important than humans.
    For the Northerners, however, everything would be different.
    “We’re here,”  The Tortoise in the Lake said, cutting across Dong Huong’s gloomy thoughts.
    “I can see nothing.”
    There came a low rumble, which distorted the cabin around her, and cast an oily sheen on the walls. “Watch.”
    Outside, everything was dark. There was only the shadow of The Two Sisters in Exile , the dead ship that they’d been pulling since Longevity Station. It hung in space, forlorn and pathetic, like the corpse of an old woman; although Dong Huong knew that it was huge, and could have housed her entire lineage without a care.
    “I see nothing,” Dong Huong said, again. The ground rumbled beneath her, even as her ears popped with pressure—more laughter from The Tortoise in the Lake , even as the darkness of space focused and narrowed—became the shadow of wings, the curve on vast surfaces—the hulls of two huge ships flanking them; thin, sharp, like a stretch of endless walls—making  The Tortoise in the Lake  seem small and insignificant, just as much as Dong Huong herself was small and insignificant in comparison to her own ship.
    A voice echoed in the ship’s vast rooms, harsh and strong, tinged with the Northerners’ dialect, but still as melodious as declaimed poetry. “You wished to speak to us. We are here.”
     
     
    A LL D ONG H UONG knew about Northerners were dim, half-remembered