Xich Si is a tech scavenger, living in Triệu Hoà Port, and scavenging tech to sell and support herself and her daughter, when she’s captured by pirates. Specifically, she finds herself a prisoner on the mindship Rice Fish.
Rice Fish is the Red Consort, wife of the Red Scholar, head of the Red Banner faction of pirates. Or rather, she’s the widow of Huan, the Red Scholar, who has been killed in the recent fighting. The Red Widow.
When Rice Fish comes to Xich Si’s cell, while the drunken wake is still going on, Xixh Si fears the worst. What the mindship wants, though, is a huge shock–once the mindship verifies that Xich Si is the maker of the bots that attracted her interest, she wants to marry her. But it will be strictly a business arrangement.
Rice Fish wants Xich Si’s technical skills. She needs help finding the evidence of who really killed the Red Scholar, so she can strike back at the enemy, and protect what they’ve been building. What they’ve been building is not a marriage and a family, though they have a grown son, Hổ, the Purple Scholar–head of the Purple Banner pirate faction. Rice Fish knows who she suspects, but she doesn’t have evidence, and outside the Red Banner, she doesn’t really have allies, at least not solid allies. Not even Hổ, who resents the relationship his two mothers had, and disagrees with and resents their ideas-what they were trying to build.
What were they trying to build? A safe haven for the pirates, the Citadel, which as a structure is pretty well built. Laws guaranteeing fairness and some level of justice to everyone within the pirate community–including indentured bondspeople, which would have been Xich Si’s fate if Rice Fish hadn’t decided she could be more useful. A transition from full-on piracy to acting as escorts and protectors for merchants moving through their area. A lot of the pirates don’t like this idea; it means giving up what they enjoy most about piracy.
Xich Si finds herself in a new, confusing culture, married to someone whom she increasingly respects and finds attractive and who thinks a business arrangement is the only way a marriage can be without guaranteeing the destruction of her plans, and with Xich Si’s own daughter in Triệu Hoà Port, protected only by someone who may decide, when she realizes Xich Si isn’t coming back, may decide she’s too much trouble and should better be sold into indenture. She’s five years old, and her life would become hell.
Xich Si doesn’t know the culture or the politics of the pirates, or the politics involved in their interaction with the An O empire which is her own home, or the Ðai Viêt, and most importantly, the enemies Rice Fish doesn’t know she has. Or allies already shaken enough that they’ll fade into neutrality at best. Yet Xich Si has to navigate this treacherous territory. Both the relationship between Rice Fish and Xich Si, and the mix of politics, tech problems, and clashes between the factions Xich Si is only beginning to figure out, make fascinating stories. I love these characters, their world, and their struggles to make it better.
(Gollancz, 2022)
