Ancillary Sword

“I greatly fear,” Citizen Fosyf said before I could answer, “that the fleet captain’s interests are musical rather than spiritual. She’s only interested if there’s singing.” Quite rudely presumptuous. But true enough.

Under the table a tiny, bare hand clutched my trouser leg—whoever was there had lost patience with the governor’s absorption in the conversation and had decided to try her luck with me. She wasn’t much more than a year old, and was, as far as I could see, completely naked. I offered her a piece of dredgefruit—clearly a favorite—and she took it with one sticky hand, put it in her mouth, and chewed with frowning absorption, leaning against my leg. “Citizen Fosyf tells me the workers on her estate sing a great deal,” I remarked.

“Oh, yes!” agreed Station Administrator Celar. “In the past they were mostly Samirend transportees, but these days they’re all Valskaayans.”

That struck me as odd. “All your field workers are Valskaayan?” I slipped another piece of dredgefruit under the table. Kalr Five would have reason to complain about the sticky handprints on my trousers. But Radchaai generally indulged small children greatly, and there would be no real resentment.

“Samir was annexed some time ago, Fleet Captain,” said Fosyf. “All the Samirend are more or less entirely civilized now.”

“More or less,” muttered Captain Hetnys, beside me.

“I’m quite familiar with Valskaayan music,” I confessed, ignoring her. “Are these Delsig-speakers?”

Fosyf frowned. “Well, of course, Fleet Captain. They don’t speak much Radchaai, that’s for certain.”

Valskaay had an entire temperate, habitable planet, not to mention dozens of stations and moons. Delsig had been the language a Valskaayan would have needed to speak if she wanted to do much business beyond her own home, but it was by no means certain that any Valskaayan would speak it. “Have they retained their choral tradition?”

“Some, Fleet Captain,” Celar replied. “They also improvise a bass or a descant to songs they’ve learned since they arrived. Drones, parallels, you know the sort of thing, very primitive. But not terribly interesting.”

“Because it’s not authentic?” I guessed.

“Just so,” agreed Station Administrator Celar.

“I have, personally, very little concern for authenticity.”

“Wide-ranging taste, as you said,” Station Administrator Celar said, with a smile.

I raised my utensil in acknowledgment. “Has anyone imported any of the written music?” In certain places on Valskaay—particularly the areas where Delsig was most often a first language—choral societies had been an important social institution, and every well-educated person learned to read the notation. “So they aren’t confined to primitive and uninteresting drones?” I put the smallest trace of sarcasm into my voice.

“Grace of Amaat, Fleet Captain!” interjected Citizen Fosyf. “These people can barely speak three words of Radchaai. I can hardly imagine my field workers sitting down to learn to read music.”

“Might keep them busy,” said Raughd, who had been sitting silent so far, smiling insincerely. “Keep them from stirring up trouble.”

“Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”

It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”

“It was the middle of the growing season, Fleet Captain,” said Citizen Fosyf. “And all my neighbors had the same difficulties. But eventually we rounded up the Samirend ringleaders, made some examples of them, and the workers themselves, well, they came back soon after.”

So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”

“Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to pick tea.”

“Are you staying, Fleet Captain?” asked Governor Giarod. “Or on your way back to your ship?”

“I’m staying in the Undergarden,” I said. Immediate, complete silence descended, not even the chink of utensils on porcelain. Even the servants, arranging platters on the pale, gilded sideboards, froze. The infant under the table chewed the latest piece of dredgefruit, oblivious.

Then Raughd laughed. “Well, why not? None of those dirty animals will mess with you, will they?” Good as her façade had been so far, her contempt reached her voice. I’d met her sort before, over and over again. A few of those had even turned out to be decent officers, once they’d learned what they needed to learn. Some, on the other hand, had not.

“Really, Raughd,” said her mother, but mildly. In fact, no one at the table seemed surprised or shocked at Raughd’s words. Fosyf turned to me. “Raughd and her friends like to go drinking in the Undergarden. I’ve told her repeatedly that it’s not safe.”

“Not safe?” I asked. “Really?”

“Pickpockets aren’t uncommon,” said Station Administrator Celar.

“Tourists!” said Raughd. “They want to be robbed. It’s why they go there to begin with. All the wailing and complaining to Security.” She waved a dismissive, blue-gloved hand. “It’s part of the fun. Otherwise they’d take better care.”

Quite suddenly, I wished I was back on Mercy of Kalr. Medic, on watch, was saying something brief and acerbic to one of the Kalrs with her. Lieutenant Ekalu inspected as her Etrepas worked. Seivarden, on the edge of her bed, said, “Ship, how’s Fleet Captain doing?”

“Frustrated,” replied Mercy of Kalr, in Seivarden’s ear. “Angry. Safe, but playing, as they say, with fire.”

Seivarden almost snorted. “Like normal, then.” Four Etrepas, in a corridor on another deck, began to sing a popular song, raggedly, out of tune.

In the ocher-walled dining room, the child, still clutching my trouser leg, began to cry. Citizen Fosyf and Citizen Raughd both evinced surprise—they had not, apparently, realized there was anyone under the table. I reached under, picked the child up, and set her on my lap. “You’ve had a long day, Citizen,” I said, soberly.

A servant rushed forward, anxious, and lifted the wailing child away with a whispered, “Apologies, Fleet Captain.”

“None needed, Citizen,” I said. The servant’s anxiety surprised me—it had been clear that even if Fosyf and Raughd hadn’t realized the child was there, everyone else had, and no one had objected. I’d have been quite surprised if anyone had. But then, while I had known adult Radchaai for some two thousand years, seen and heard all the messages they’d ever sent home or received, and while I’d interacted with children and infants in places the Radch had annexed, I had never been inside a Radchaai household, never spent much time at all with Radchaai children. I wasn’t actually a very good judge of what was normal or expected.

Supper ended with a round of arrack. I considered several polite ways to extricate myself, and Governor Giarod with me, but before I could choose one Lieutenant Tisarwat arrived—ostensibly to tell me our quarters were ready, but really, I suspected, hoping for leftovers. Which of course Fosyf immediately directed a servant to pack for her. Lieutenant Tisarwat thanked her prettily and bowed to the seated company. Raughd Denche looked her over, mouth quirked in a tiny smile—amused? Intrigued? Contemptuous? All three, perhaps. Straightening, Tisarwat caught Raughd’s look and was, it seemed, intrigued herself. Well, they were close in age, and much as I found I disliked Raughd, a connection there might benefit me. Might bring me information. I pretended to ignore it. So, I saw, did Piat, the station administrator’s daughter. I rose and said, pointedly, “Governor Giarod?”

“Quite,” the system governor said, with still impressive aplomb. “Fosyf, delicious supper as always, do thank that cook of yours again, she’s a marvel.” She bowed. “And what delightful company. But duty beckons.”

Governor Giarod’s office was across the concourse from Fosyf’s apartment. The same view of the concourse, but from the other side. Cream-colored silk hangings painted with a pattern of leaves draped the walls. Low tables and chairs scattered around, an icon of Amaat in the typical wall niche, a bowl before it but no smell of incense—of course, the governor hadn’t come in to work today.

I’d sent Tisarwat back to the Undergarden with her prize—enough food to fill even a seventeen-year-old comfortably and then some, and the governor’s compliments for Fosyf’s cook had been entirely deserved—and I had also dismissed Captain Hetnys, with orders that she report to me in the morning.

“Sit, please, Fleet Captain.” Governor Giarod gestured to some wide, cushioned chairs well back from the window. “What must you think of us? But from the beginning of this… crisis, I’ve tried to keep everything as calm and routine as possible. And of course religious observances are very important in times of stress. I can only thank you for your patience.”

I sat, and so did the governor. “I am,” I admitted, “approaching the limits of that patience. But then, you are as well, I suspect.” I had thought, all those days on the way here, of what I should say to Governor Giarod. Of how much I should reveal. Had decided, in the end, on the truth, as unvarnished as I could produce it. “So. This is the situation: two factions of Anaander Mianaai have been in conflict with each other for a thousand years. Behind the scenes, hidden even from herself.” Governor Giarod frowned. It didn’t make much sense, on the surface. “Twenty-eight days ago, at Omaugh Palace, it became open conflict. The Lord of the Radch herself blocked all communications coming from the palace, in an attempt to hide that conflict from the rest of herself. She failed, and now that information is on its way across Radch space, to all the other palaces.” It was probably reaching Irei Palace—the one farthest from Omaugh—just about now. “The conflict at Omaugh appears to be resolved.”

Governor Giarod’s obvious dismay had grown with every word I’d spoken. “In whose favor?”

“Anaander Mianaai’s, of course. How else? We are all of us in an impossible position. To support either faction is treason.”

“As is,” agreed the governor, “not supporting either faction.”

“Indeed.” I was relieved that the governor had enough wit to see that immediately. “In the meantime, factions in the military—also fostered by the Lord of the Radch, with an eye toward an advantage if this ever came to actual physical battle—have begun fighting. One in particular has begun attacking gates. Which is why, even though communications from Omaugh Palace are now functioning, you’re still isolated from them. Every route any message would take has had a gate somewhere along it destroyed.” Or at least the routes that wouldn’t take months.

“There were dozens of ships in the Hrad-Omaugh Gate! Eighteen of them are still unaccounted for! What could possibly…”

“I suspect they’re still trying to keep information back. Or at least make it difficult for any but military ships to travel between systems. And they don’t particularly care how many citizens die in the process.”

“I can’t… I can’t believe that.”

It was, nonetheless, true. “Station will have shown you my remit. I have command of all military resources in this system, and orders to ensure the safety of the citizens here. I also bring an order to forbid all travel through the gates for the foreseeable future.”

“Who gave this order?”

“The Lord of the Radch.”

“Which one of her?” I said nothing. The governor gestured resignation. “And this… argument she’s having with herself?”

“I can tell you what she has told me. I can tell you what I think it’s about. More than that…” I gestured ambiguity, uncertainty. Governor Giarod waited, silent and expectant. “The trigger, the precipitating event, was the destruction of the Garseddai.” The governor winced, barely perceptibly. No one liked talking about that, about the time Anaander Mianaai had, in a fury, ordered the destruction of all life in an entire solar system. Even though it was a thousand years in the past, by now, and easier to forget about than it once had been. “When you do something like that, how do you react?”

“I hope I would never do anything like that,” said Governor Giarod.

“Life is unpredictable,” I said, “and we are not always the people we think we are. If we’re unlucky, that’s when we discover it. When something like that happens, you have two choices.” Or, more than two, but distilled, they came down to two. “You can admit the error and resolve never to repeat it, or you can refuse to admit error and throw every effort behind insisting you were right to do what you did, and would gladly do it again.”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. But Garsedd was a thousand years ago. Surely that’s time to have resolved on one or another of those. And if you’d asked me before now, I’d have said my lord had chosen the first. Without, of course, publicly admitting error.”

“It must be more complicated than that,” I agreed. “I think there were already other issues that events at Garsedd exacerbated. What those were I can only guess. Certainly the Lord of the Radch couldn’t continue expanding forever.” And if expansion stopped, what to do with all those ships and ancillary soldiers? The officers that commanded them? Keeping them was a drain on resources, to no purpose. Dismantle them, and systems on the periphery of Radch space were vulnerable to attack. Or revolt. “I think it wasn’t merely admitting error that the Lord of the Radch has been resisting, but admitting her own mortality.”

Governor Giarod sat considering that, silent for twenty-four seconds. “I don’t like that thought, Fleet Captain. If you had asked me even ten minutes ago I’d have told you the Lord of the Radch was the next thing to immortal. How can she not be? Constantly growing new bodies to replace the old, how could she ever die?” Another frowning three seconds of silence. “And if she dies, what will be left of the Radch?”

“I don’t think we can concern ourselves with anything beyond Athoek.” Possibly the most dangerous thing I could say, just now, depending on the governor’s sympathies. “My orders only involve the safety of this system.”

“And if they were otherwise?” Governor Giarod was no fool. “If some other part of my lord ordered you to take one side or another, or use this system in some way for her advantage?” I didn’t reply. “No matter what you do it’s sedition, rebellion, so you may as well do as you like, is that it?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “But I really do have orders.”

She shook her head, as though clearing away some obstruction. “But what else is there to do? You don’t think, do you, that there’s been any… outside interference?”

The question was depressingly familiar. “The Presger would not require subterfuge in order to destroy the Radch. And there is the treaty, which I’m given to understand they take very seriously.”

“They don’t use words, do they? They’re completely alien. How could the word treaty mean anything to them? How could any agreement mean anything?”

“Are the Presger nearby? A potential threat?”

A tiny frown. The question troubled her for some reason. Perhaps because the very idea of the Presger nearby was frightening. “They pass through Prid Presger, sometimes, on their way to Tstur Palace.” Prid Presger was a few gates from here, nearby only in the sense that it would take a month or so to get here from there, instead of a year or more. “By agreement, they can only travel by gate, within the Radch. But…”

“The treaty isn’t with the Radch,” I pointed out. “It’s with all humans.” Governor Giarod looked puzzled at that—to most Radchaai, human was who they were, and everyone else was… something other. “I mean to say, whether Anaander Mianaai exists at all does not affect it. It is still in force.” Still, for more than a thousand years before the treaty, Presger had seized human ships. Boarded human stations. Dismantled them—and their crews, passengers, and residents. Apparently for amusement. No one had any way of preventing it. They had ceased only because of the treaty. And the thought of them still sent a shiver down a good many human backs. Including, it seemed, Governor Giarod’s. “Unless you have some specific reason, I don’t think we should worry about them just now.”

“No, of course, you’re right.” But the governor still seemed troubled.

“We produce enough food for the whole system?”

“Certainly. Though we do import some luxuries—we don’t make much arrack, and various other things. We import some number of medical supplies. That could be a problem.”

“You don’t make correctives here?”

“Not many. Not all kinds.”

That could pose a problem, far enough into the future. “We’ll see what we can do about that, if anything. Meantime, I suggest you continue as you have been—keeping calm, keeping order. We should let people know that the gates that are closed are down for the foreseeable future. And that travel through the remaining gates is too dangerous to allow.”

“Citizen Fosyf won’t like that! Or any of the other growers. By the end of the month there’ll be tonnes of top-grade handpicked Daughter of Fishes with nowhere to go. And that’s only Fosyf’s bit.”

“Well.” I smiled blandly. “At least we’ll all have very good tea to drink for the next long while.”

It was too late to visit Citizen Basnaaid with any sort of courtesy. And there were things I wanted to know that had not been in the information I’d received at Omaugh Palace. Politics from before an annexation were considered irrelevant, any old divisions wiped away by the arrival of civilization. Anything remaining—languages, perhaps, or art of some kind—might be preserved as quaint museum displays, but of course never figured into official records. Outside this system, Athoek looked like any other Radchaai system. Uniform. Wholly civilized. Inside it, you could see it wasn’t, if you looked—if you were forced to acknowledge it. But it was always a balancing act between the presumed complete success of the annexation and the need to deal with the ways in which that annexation had, perhaps, not been entirely complete, and one of the ways to achieve that balance was by ignoring what one didn’t have to see.

Station would know things. I’d best have a chat with Station anyway, best put myself in its good graces. A ship or station AI couldn’t, strictly speaking, do anything to oppose me, but I knew from very personal experience how much easier life was when one liked you, and wanted to help.

9

Despite the fact that the Undergarden wasn’t terribly well ventilated, and my bed was little more than a pile of blankets on the floor, I slept comfortably. Made a point of saying so to Kalr Five, when she brought me tea, because I could see that she, that all my Mercy of Kalrs, were vain of what they’d achieved while I sat at supper with Citizen Fosyf. They’d managed to clean our several rooms to an almost military level of spotlessness, rig lights, get doors working, and pile luggage and miscellaneous boxes into something approximating tables and chairs. Five brought me breakfast—more porridge tea, though thicker than what I’d drunk in the tea shop, bland but filling—and Lieutenant Tisarwat and I ate in silence, she in a state of suppressed self-loathing. It had been barely noticeable aboard Mercy of Kalr. Her duties there, and the self-contained isolation of our travel, had made it easy for her to almost forget what Anaander Mianaai had done to her. What I had done to Anaander Mianaai. But now, here at Athoek Station, the chaos of cleaning and unpacking past, she must be thinking of what the Lord of the Radch had meant to do when we’d arrived here.

I considered asking her. I already knew Anaander Mianaai’s assessment of the system governor and of the ships and captains stationed here. Knew that she considered most of the tea-growing houses to be almost entirely preoccupied with their tea and likely unthreatened by the changes the Lord of the Radch had set in motion over the past hundred years. After all, upstart houses drank tea just as much as anciently aristocratic ones, and (aside from captains who demanded their soldiers play ancillary) human soldiers did, too.

Athoek was probably not fertile ground for the other Anaander. And most of the fighting would probably center round the palaces for now. Then again, a planet was a valuable resource. If fighting lasted long enough, Athoek could draw unwelcome attention. And in a game with such high stakes, neither Anaander would have failed to place a few counters here.

Kalr Five left the room, and Lieutenant Tisarwat looked up from her porridge, her lilac eyes serious. “She’s very angry with you, sir.”

“Who is that, Lieutenant?” But of course she meant Anaander Mianaai.

“The other one, sir. I mean, they both are, really. But the other one. If she gains the upper hand at any point, she’ll come after you if she possibly can. Because she’s just that angry. And…”

And that was the part of the Lord of the Radch who dealt with her reaction to Garsedd by insisting she had been right to lose her temper so extravagantly. “Yes, thank you, Lieutenant. I’d already worked that out.” Much as I’d wanted to know what the Lord of the Radch was up to, I hadn’t wanted to make Tisarwat talk about it. But she had volunteered. “I take it you have access codes for all the AIs in the system.”

She looked quickly down at her bowl. Mortified. “Yes, sir.”

“Are they only good for specific AIs, or can you potentially control any one you come across?”

That startled her. And, oddly, disappointed her. She looked up, distress plain in her expression. “Sir! She’s not stupid.”

“Don’t use them,” I said, voice pleasant. “Or you’ll find yourself in difficulty.”

“Yes, sir.” Struggling to keep her feelings off her face—a painful mix of shame and humiliation. A hint of relief. A fresh surge of unhappiness and self-hatred.

It was among the things I’d wanted to avoid, in avoiding asking her about Anaander’s aims in sending Tisarwat with me. I certainly didn’t want her to indulge in her current emotions.

And I found I was unwilling to wait much longer to find Lieutenant Awn’s sister. I took a last mouthful of porridge. “Lieutenant,” I said, “let’s visit the Gardens.”

Surprise, that almost distracted her. “Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence, sir. Aren’t you meeting with Captain Hetnys?”

“Kalr Five will desire her to wait until I get back.” I saw a flash of trepidation from her. And an undercurrent of… admiration, was it? And envy. That was curious.

Raughd Denche had said the Gardens were a tourist attraction, and I could see why. They took up a good portion of the station’s upper level, more than five acres, sunlit, open, and undivided under a high, clear dome. Entering, that was all I could see beyond a heavy-smelling bank of red and yellow roses—that high, black sky cut into barely visible hexagonal sections, Athoek itself hanging, jewellike, beyond. A spectacular view, but this close to vacuum there ought to have been smaller partitions, section doors. I saw no sign of them.

The ground had been built to slope downward from where we entered. Past the roses the path meandered around shrubs with glossy green leaves and thick clusters of purple berries, around beds of something pungent-smelling with silvery, needle-shaped leaves. Small trees and more shrubs, even jutting rocks, the path winding around, every now and then affording a glimpse of water, of broad lily-pads, flowers white and deep pink. It was warm, but a slight breeze disturbed the leaves—no ventilation problems here, though I found myself waiting for a pressure drop, still disturbed by that huge open space. The path crossed over a tiny stream, rushing down a rock-built channel to somewhere below. We might almost have been on a planet but for that black expanse above.

Lieutenant Tisarwat, behind me, seemed unconcerned. This station had been here for several hundred years. And if something happened now there was very little either of us could do about it. There was nothing for it but to continue on. At the next turn we came into a copse of small trees with gnarled and twisted branches, and under them a small, still pool that trickled into another on a level below, and on down the slope into a succession of such pools, slowly but inexorably to a patch of lily-blooming water below. Lieutenant Tisarwat stopped, blinked, smiled at the tiny brown and orange fish darting in the clear water at our feet, a sudden bright, startling moment of pleasure. Then she looked up at me, and it was gone, and she was unhappy again, and self-conscious.

The next turn of the path revealed a stretch of open water, nearly three acres of it. Nothing on a planet, but on a station it was unheard of. The nearest edge was lined with the lilies we’d glimpsed as we’d come down the slope. Some meters to the left of that a slight, arched bridge led to a tiny island with a large stone in the middle, a one-and-a-half-meter cylinder with fluted sides, as high as it was wide. Elsewhere, here and there, rocks jutted out of the water. And away on the opposite side of the pond, up against the wall—up, so far as I could see, against hard vacuum—a waterfall. Not the trickles we’d seen on the way in, but a rushing, noisy mass of it foaming and spilling down a rock wall, churning the bit of lake below it. That rock wall stretched across the far side of the lake, ledged and irregular. There was another entrance there, which gave onto the ledges, and a path that led from there around the water.

It had been laid out to make that sudden full view as beautiful and dramatic as possible, after those flashes of water through branches on the path down, the runnels and tiny waterfalls. And dramatic it was. All that open water—usually, on a station, a large volume of water like this was kept in partitioned tanks, so that if there was a leak it could be sectioned off. So that if anything happened to the gravity it could be quickly enclosed. I wondered how deep this pond was, did some quick guesses and calculations that told me a failure in containment would mean disaster for the levels below. What, I wondered, had the station architects put below this?

Of course. The Undergarden.

Someone in a green coverall stood knee-deep in the water at one end of the stretch of lily pads, bent over, reaching under the surface. Not Basnaaid. I nearly dismissed her with that realization, bent on that one aim, on finding Basnaaid Elming. No, the person working near the lilies wasn’t Basnaaid. But I recognized her. I stepped off the still twisting path, walked straight down the slope to the edge of the water. The person there looked up, stood, sleeves and gloves muddy and dripping. The person I’d spoken to in the Undergarden tea shop, yesterday. Her anger was banked, hidden. It flared to life again as she recognized me. Along with, I thought, a trace of fear. “Good morning, Citizen,” I said. “What a pleasant surprise to meet you here.”

“Good morning, Fleet Captain,” she replied, pleasantly. Ostensibly calm and unconcerned, but I could see that very small, nearly invisible tightening of her jaw. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Horticulturist Basnaaid,” I said, with as unthreatening a smile as I could produce.

She frowned slightly, speculatively. Then looked at my single piece of jewelry, that one gold memorial tag. I didn’t think she was close enough to read it, and it was a mass-produced thing, but for the name identical to thousands, if not millions, of others. “You have but to wait,” she said, clearing away that tiny frown. “She’ll be along in a few moments.”

“Your Gardens are beautiful, Citizen,” I said. “Though I admit this very lovely lake strikes me as unsafe.”

“It’s not my garden.” That anger again, strongly, carefully suppressed. “I only work here.”

“It would not be what it is without the people who work here,” I answered. She acknowledged that with a small, ironic gesture. “I think,” I said, “that you were too young to have been one of the leaders of those strikes on the tea plantations, twenty years ago.” The word for “strike” existed in Radchaai, but it was very old, and obscure. I used a Liost term I’d learned from Station last night. The Samirend that had been brought to Athoek had spoken Liost, sometimes still did. This person was Samirend, I’d learned enough from Station to know that. And learned enough from Citizen Fosyf to know that Samirend overseers had been involved in those strikes. “You’d have been, maybe, sixteen? Seventeen? If you’d been important, you’d be dead now, or in some other system entirely, where you didn’t have the sort of social network that would let you cause trouble.” Her expression became fixed, and she breathed, very carefully, through her mouth. “They were lenient on account of your youth and your marginal position, but they made sure to make some sort of an example of you.” Unjust, as I’d guessed yesterday.

She didn’t answer at first. Her distress was too strong, but it told me I’d been right. Her reeducation would have made the contemplation of certain actions strongly, viscerally unpleasant for her, and I’d reminded her directly of exactly the events that had brought her through Security. And of course any Radchaai found the bare mention of reeducation deeply distasteful. “If the fleet captain’s remarks are complete,” she said finally, tense but just a bit fainter than her usual tone, “I have work to do.”

“Of course. I apologize.” She blinked, surprised, I thought. “You’re trimming dead leaves from the lilies?”

“And dead flowers.” She bent, reached under the water, pulled up a slimy, withered stem.

“How deep is the lake?” She looked at me, looked down at the water she was standing in. Up again at me. “Yes,” I agreed, “I can see how deep it is here. Is it all the same?”

“About two meters at its deepest.” Her voice had steadied, she had recovered her earlier composure, it seemed.

“Are there partitions under the water?”

“There are not.” As though to confirm her words, a purple and green fish swam into the lily-free space where she was standing, a broad, bright-scaled thing that must have been nearly three quarters of a meter long. It hung under the water, seeming to look up at us, gaping. “I don’t have anything,” she said to the fish, and held her sodden-gloved hands out. “Go wait by the bridge, someone will come. They always do.” The fish only gaped and gaped again. “Look, here they come now.”

Two children rounded a bush, came running down the path to the bridge. The smaller jumped from the land to the bridge with a resounding thump. The water alongside the bridge began to roil, and the purple and green fish turned and glided away. “There’s a food dispenser at the bridge,” explained the person standing in the water. “It’ll be quite crowded in an hour or so.”

“Then I’m glad to have come early,” I said. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you tell me what safety measures are in place here?”

She gave a short, sharp laugh. “It makes you nervous, Fleet Captain?” She gestured toward the dome overhead. “And that?”

“And that,” I admitted. “They’re both alarming.”

“You needn’t worry. It’s not Athoeki built, it’s all good, solid Radchaai construction. No embezzling, no bribes, no replacing components with cheaper materials and pocketing the difference, no shirking on the job.” She said this with every appearance of sincerity, not even traces of the sarcasm I might have expected. She meant it. “And of course Station’s always watching and would let us know at the slightest sign of trouble.”

“But Station can’t see under the Gardens, can it?”

Before she could answer, a voice called out, “How is it coming along, Sirix?”

I knew that voice. Had heard recordings of it, childish, years ago. It was like her sister’s, but not the same. I turned to see her. She was like her sister, her relationship to Lieutenant Awn obvious in her face, her voice, the way she stood, a bit stiff in the green Horticulture uniform. Her skin was a bit darker than Lieutenant Awn’s had been, her face rounder, not a surprise. I had seen recordings of Basnaaid Elming as a child, messages for her sister. I had known what she looked like now. And it had been twenty years since I had lost Lieutenant Awn. Since I had killed Lieutenant Awn.

“Almost finished, Horticulturist,” said the person from the tea shop, still knee-deep in the water. Or I presumed she was, I was still looking at Basnaaid Elming. “This fleet captain is here to see you.”

Basnaaid looked directly at me. Took in the brown and black uniform, frowned slightly in puzzlement, and then saw the gold tag. The frown disappeared, replaced with an expression of cold disapproval. “I don’t know you, Fleet Captain.”

“No,” I said. “We’ve never met. I was a friend of Lieutenant Awn’s.” An awkward way to say it, an awkward way to refer to her, for a friend. “I was hoping you might have tea with me sometime. When it’s convenient for you.” Stupid, nearly rude to be so direct. But she didn’t seem to be in a mood to stand and chat, and Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had warned me she wouldn’t be happy to see me. “Begging your indulgence, there are some things I’d like to discuss with you.”

“I doubt we have anything to discuss.” Basnaaid was still frostily calm. “If you feel the need to tell me something, by all means do so now. What did you say your name was?” Outright rude, that was. But I knew why, I knew where this anger came from. Basnaaid was easier in her educated accent than Lieutenant Awn had ever been—she had begun practicing it earlier, for one thing, and I suspected her ear was better from the start. But it was still, to some degree, a cover. Like her sister, Basnaaid Elming was acutely aware of condescension and insult. Not without good reason.

“My name is Breq Mianaai.” I managed not to choke on the house name the Lord of the Radch had imposed on me. “You won’t recognize it, I used another name when I knew your sister.” That name she’d have recognized. But I couldn’t give it. I was the ship your sister served on. I was the ancillaries she commanded, that served her. As far as anyone here knew, that ship had disappeared twenty years ago. And ships weren’t people, weren’t fleet captains or officers of any sort, didn’t invite anyone to tea. If I told her who I really was, she would doubt my sanity. Which might be a good thing, considering the next step, after the name, would be to tell her what had happened to her sister.

“Mianaai.” Basnaaid’s tone was disbelieving.

“As I said, it wasn’t my name at the time I knew your sister.”

“Well.” She almost spat the word out. “Breq Mianaai. My sister was just, and proper. She never knelt to you, no matter what you may have thought, and none of us wants payment from you. None of us needs it. Awn didn’t need it, or want it.” In other words, if Lieutenant Awn had had any sort of relationship with me—knelt implied a sexual one—it hadn’t been because she’d been looking for some sort of benefit from it. When Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had offered Basnaaid clientage for Lieutenant Awn’s sake, the implication had been that Awn and Skaaiat’s relationship had been based on the expectation of exchange—sex for social position. It was a common enough trade, but citizens moving from low on the ladder to noticeably higher were open to accusations that their promotions or assignments had been made in exchange for sexual favors, and not on merit.

“You’re quite right, your sister never knelt, not to me, not to any other person, ever. Anyone who says she did, you will kindly send to me, and I will relieve them of their misapprehension.” It would really have been better to lead up to this, to have had tea and food and polite, indirect conversation beforehand, to feel out the approach, to take the edge off the foolishness of what I meant to suggest. But, I saw, Basnaaid would never have allowed it. I might as well state my business here and now. “The debt I owe your sister is far larger, and impossible to repay adequately, even if she were still alive. I can only offer the smallest token to you in her place. I propose to make you my heir.”

She blinked, twice, unable at first to find any reply. “What?”

The noise of the waterfall across the pond was paradoxically both distant and intrusive. Lieutenant Tisarwat and Citizen Sirix were frozen, I realized, staring at us, at Basnaaid and me. “I propose,” I repeated, “to make you my heir.”

“I already have parents,” Basnaaid said, after three seconds of disbelieving silence.

“They are excellent parents,” I acknowledged. “It’s not my intention to replace them. I couldn’t possibly.”

“Whatever is your intention, then?”

“To be certain,” I said, carefully, clearly, knowing I had failed in this, having come into this knowing I would fail, “for your sister’s sake, that you are safe and secure, and at all times have whatever you desire within your reach.”

“Whatever I desire,” said Basnaaid, as deliberately as I had just spoken, “is, right now, for you to go away and never speak to me again.”

I bowed low, an inferior to one of higher station. “As the citizen wishes.” I turned, and walked up to the path, away from the water, away from Sirix still knee-deep by the lilies, away from Basnaaid Elming standing, stiff and indignant, on the shore. Not even looking to see if Lieutenant Tisarwat followed.

I had known. I had known what Basnaaid Elming’s reaction would be to my offer. But I had thought I would only tender a polite invitation this morning and have the confrontation itself later. Wrong. And now, I knew, Captain Hetnys was waiting in my apartments in the Undergarden, sweating in the warm, still air and stiffly, angrily refusing the tea Kalr Five had just offered her. Going into that meeting in my present mood would be dangerous, but there was, it seemed, no good way to avoid it.

At the entrance to those rooms, Bo Nine standing at impassive attention just beyond the open door, Lieutenant Tisarwat—I had forgotten, between the waterside and here, that Lieutenant Tisarwat was with me—spoke. “Sir. Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence.”

I stopped, without looking behind me. Reached out to Mercy of Kalr, who showed me a perplexing mix of emotions. Lieutenant Tisarwat was miserable as she had been all morning, but that misery was mixed in with an odd yearning—for what? And a completely new sort of elation that I had never seen in her. “Sir, permission to go back to the Gardens.” She wanted to go back to the Gardens? Now?

I remembered that startling moment of pleasure when she’d seen the little fish in the pool, but, I realized, after that I’d paid her no attention whatever. I’d been too caught up in my encounter with Basnaaid. “Why?” I asked, blunt. Not, perhaps, the best way to respond, considering, but I was not at my best just this instant.

For a moment a sort of nervous fear kept her from speaking, and then she said, “Sir, maybe I can talk to her. She didn’t tell me to never speak to her again.” As she spoke, that strange, hopeful elation flared bright and sharp, and with it something I’d seen in countless young, emotionally vulnerable lieutenants.

Oh, no. “Lieutenant. You are not to go anywhere near the citizen Basnaaid Elming. I do not need you interfering in my affairs. Citizen Basnaaid certainly doesn’t need it.”

It was as though I had struck Tisarwat. She nearly physically recoiled, but stopped herself, held herself still. Speechless, for a moment, with hurt and anger. Then she said, bitter complaint, “You aren’t even going to give me a chance!”

“You aren’t even going to give me a chance, sir,” I corrected. Angry tears welled in her ridiculous lilac eyes. If she’d been any other seventeen-year-old lieutenant I’d have sent her on her way to be rejected by the object of her sudden infatuation, and then let her cry—oh, the volume of baby lieutenant tears my uniforms had absorbed, when I’d been a ship—and then poured her a drink or three. But Tisarwat wasn’t any other baby lieutenant. “Go to your quarters, Lieutenant, get a hold of yourself, and wash your face.” It was early yet for drinking, but she’d need time to get herself in hand. “After lunch you have leave to go out and get as drunk as you like. Better yet, get laid. There are plenty of more appropriate partners here.” Citizen Raughd might even be interested, but I didn’t say so. “You’ve been in Citizen Basnaaid’s presence a whole five minutes.” And saying that, it was even clearer how ridiculous this was. This wasn’t about Basnaaid, not really, but that only made me more determined to keep Tisarwat away from her.

“You don’t understand!” Tisarwat cried.

I turned to Bo Nine. “Bo. Take your officer to her quarters.”

“Sir,” said Bo, and I turned and went into what served as the anteroom for our small apartments.

When I was a ship, I had thousands of bodies. Except in extreme circumstances, if one of those bodies became tired or stressed I could give it a break and use another, the way you might switch hands. If one of them was injured badly enough, or ceased to function efficiently, my medics would remove it and replace it with another one. It was remarkably convenient.

When I had been a single ancillary, one human body among thousands, part of the ship Justice of Toren, I had never been alone. I had always been surrounded by myself, and the rest of myself had always known if any particular body needed something—rest, food, touch, reassurance. An ancillary body might feel momentarily overwhelmed, or irritable, or any emotion one might think of—it was only natural, bodies felt things. But it was so very small, when it was just one segment among the others, when, even in the grip of strong emotion or physical discomfort, that segment knew it was only one of many, knew the rest of itself was there to help.

Oh, how I missed the rest of myself. I couldn’t rest or comfort one body while sending another to do my work, not anymore. I slept alone, mostly only mildly envying the common soldiers on Mercy of Kalr their small bunks where they slept all together, pressed warm and close. They weren’t ancillaries, it wasn’t the same, wouldn’t be, even if I’d abandoned any pretense to dignity and climbed in with them. I knew that, knew it would be so wholly insufficient that there was no point in wishing for it. But now, this moment, I wanted it so badly that if I had been aboard Mercy of Kalr I’d have done it, curled up among the sleeping Etrepas Ship showed me, and gone to sleep myself, no matter how insufficient it would be. It would be something, at least.

A terrible, terrible thing, to deprive a ship of its ancillaries. To deprive an ancillary of its ship. Not, perhaps, as terrible as murdering human beings to make those ancillaries. But a terrible thing nonetheless.

I didn’t have the luxury to consider it. I didn’t have another, less angry body to send into the meeting with Captain Hetnys. Didn’t have an hour, or two, to exercise, or meditate, or drink tea until I was calmer. I only had myself. “It will be all right, Fleet Captain,” said Mercy of Kalr in my ear, and for a moment I was overwhelmed with the sensation of Ship. The sleeping Etrepas, Lieutenant Ekalu half awake, happy and for once utterly relaxed—Seivarden in the bath, singing to herself, my mother said it all goes around, her Amaats, Medic, and my Kalrs, all in one jumbled, inundating moment. Then it was gone—I couldn’t hold it, not with only one body, one brain.

I had thought that the pain of losing myself, of losing Lieutenant Awn, had—not healed, exactly, I didn’t think it would ever do that—but that it had receded to a tolerable, dull ache. But just seeing Basnaaid Elming had thrown me off-balance, and I had not handled it well. And had, as a result, not handled Lieutenant Tisarwat well, just now. I knew about the emotional upheavals of seventeen-year-old lieutenants. Had dealt with them in the past. And whatever Tisarwat had been, whoever she turned out to be, however ancient her memories or her sense of herself, her body was still seventeen, her reactions today very much those of someone in the last throes of adolescence. I had seen it, known it for what it was, and I ought to have responded more reasonably. “Ship,” I said, silently, “was I smug when I thought I’d sorted out Seivarden and Ekalu?”

“Maybe just the tiniest bit, Fleet Captain.”

“Sir,” said Kalr Five, who had come into the anteroom, all ancillary-like impassivity, “Captain Hetnys is in the dining room.” And did not add, she’s fretting, and beginning to be angry at being made to wait so long.

“Thank you, Five.” Despite my permission earlier to go in shirtsleeves here in the Undergarden, she was still in her jacket. All my Mercy of Kalrs were, I saw, querying Ship. “You’ve offered her breakfast and tea?”

“Yes, sir. She said she didn’t want anything.” A trace of disappointment there—no doubt she felt deprived of an opportunity to show off her dishes.

“Right. I’ll go in, then.” I took a breath, did my best to clear both Basnaaid and Tisarwat from my mind, and went in to receive Captain Hetnys’s report.

10

Captain Hetnys had sent Mercy of Ilves on a survey of the outstations. She’d brought a few of her Atagaris ancillaries with her to Athoek Station, and her Var lieutenant and decade to run Security for the Undergarden.

She tried to explain to me why she’d set Sword of Atagaris to watch a gate that led to a system of airless rocks, gas giants with icy moons, no inhabitants, and no other gates.

“The Presger can travel without the gates, sir, they might…”

“Captain. If the Presger decide to attack us, there will be nothing we can do about it.” The days when the Radch had commanded fleets huge enough to overwhelm entire systems were past. And even then, opposing the Presger would have been hopeless. It was the main reason Anaander Mianaai had finally agreed to a treaty. It was the reason people were still frightened of them. “And honestly, Captain, the biggest danger, for now, is going to be from Radchaai ships on one side or the other attempting to control or destroy resources another side might use. That planet downwell, for instance.” All that food. A base, if they could secure it. If I could. “And it’s possible Athoek will be left alone entirely. Certainly I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to muster anything like a real fleet, not for some time, if ever.” I didn’t think anyone could surprise us. A military ship could gate to within kilometers of the station or the planet, but I didn’t think it likely any would try. If someone came, we’d have time to watch them approach. “We should concentrate our defenses around this station, and this planet.”

She didn’t like that, thought of an argument, but closed her mouth on it, unsaid. The question of where my authority came from, of where Captain Hetnys’s loyalties lay in this conflict, didn’t come up at all. There was no point pressing the issue, no advantage for me, or for her. If I was lucky, everyone else would ignore Athoek and it would never be an issue. But I wasn’t going to bet on that.

Once Captain Hetnys had gone, I thought for a bit about what to do next. Meet with Governor Giarod, probably, and find out what, besides medical supplies, might come up short in the near future, and what we might do about that. Find something to keep Sword of Atagaris and Mercy of Phey busy—and out of trouble—but also ready to respond if I needed them. I sent a query to Mercy of Kalr. Lieutenant Tisarwat was above, on level two of the Undergarden, in a wide, shadowed room irregularly illuminated by light panels leaning here and there against the dark walls. Tisarwat, Raughd Denche, and half a dozen others reclined on long, thick cushions, the daughters, Ship indicated, of tea growers and station officials. They were drinking something strong and stinging—Tisarwat hadn’t decided if she liked it or not, but she seemed to be mostly enjoying herself. Piat, the daughter of the station administrator, a bit more animated than I’d seen her the evening before, had just said something vulgar and everyone was laughing. Raughd said, in an undertone that can’t have carried much past Tisarwat, who was sitting near both of them, “Aatr’s tits, Piat, you’re such a fucking ridiculous bore sometimes.”

Tisarwat, where only Ship and I could see it, reacted with instant revulsion. “Piat,” she said, “I don’t think Citizen Raughd appreciates you. Come sit closer, I need someone to tell me amusing things.”

The whole exchange, plus Piat’s hesitation and Raughd’s ostensibly amused reply—I was only joking, Lieutenant, don’t be so sensitive!—told me unpleasant things about their relationship. If they had been my officers, when I had been a ship, I’d have intervened in some way, or spoken to their senior lieutenant. I wondered for an instant at Station’s apparently not having done anything, and then it occurred to me that Raughd had perhaps been very, very careful about where she said what. Station couldn’t see into the Undergarden, and though everyone in that room was certainly wired for communications, they had probably switched their implants off. That was very possibly the whole purpose of carousing here rather than elsewhere.

Below, in my own quarters, Kalr Five spoke. “Sir.” Trepidation behind her stolid exterior.

“It’s all right,” called an unfamiliar voice from behind her, in the next room. “I’m all grown up, I’m not going to eat anyone!” The accent was an odd one, half well-educated Radchaai and half something else I couldn’t place, nothing like the accents I’d heard here so far.

“Sir,” Kalr Five said again. “Translator Dlique.” She stumbled slightly over the oddness of the name.

“Translator?” No one had mentioned that anyone from the Translators Office was in the system, and there was no reason why anyone should be. I queried Ship and saw its memory of Kalr Five opening the door to a person in the loose, bright shirt and trousers people in the Undergarden wore—gloved, though, plain, stiff gray. No jewelry. No mention of a house name or of the division of the Translators Office she worked for, no hint of family affiliation or rank. I blinked the vision away. Rose. “Send her in.”

Five stood aside, and Translator Dlique entered, smiling broadly. “Fleet Captain! How glad I am to see you. The governor’s residence is terribly boring. I’d much rather have stayed on my ship, but they said there was a hull breach and if I stayed I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like much, does it? Breathing?” She took a deep breath, gestured irritated indecision. “Air! It’s just stupid, really. I’d as soon do without, but they insisted.”

“Translator.” I didn’t bow, as she had not. And a horrible suspicion occurred. “It would appear you have the advantage of me.”

She drew her shoulders up, her eyes widening in astonishment. “Me! The advantage! You’re the one with all the soldiers.”

The suspicion was growing into a certainty. This person certainly wasn’t Radchaai. Translator for one of the aliens the Radch dealt with, then. But not for the Geck or the Rrrrrr—I’d met translators for the Geck before, and I knew something about the humans who translated for the Rrrrrr, and this person didn’t seem to be either sort. And that odd accent. “I mean,” I said, “that you appear to know who I am, but I don’t know who you are.”

She outright laughed. “Well, of course I know who you are. Everyone is talking about you. Well, not to me. I’m not supposed to know you’re here. I’m not supposed to leave the governor’s residence, either. But I don’t like being bored.”

“I think you should tell me who you are, exactly.” But I knew. Or knew as much as I needed to know. This person was one of those humans the Presger had bred to talk to the Radch. Translator for the Presger. Disturbing company, Anaander Mianaai had said of them. And the governor knew she was on the station. So, I would bet, did Captain Hetnys. This was surely behind her so inexplicable fear that the Presger might arrive here suddenly. I wondered what was behind the fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to me.

“Who I am? Exactly?” Translator Dlique frowned. “I’m not… that is, I said just now I was Dlique but I might not be, I might be Zeiat. Or wait, no. No, I’m pretty sure I’m Dlique. I’m pretty sure they told me I was Dlique. Oh! I’m supposed to introduce myself, aren’t I.” She bowed. “Fleet Captain, I’m Dlique, translator for the Presger. Honored to make your acquaintance. Now, I think, you say something like the honor’s all mine and then you offer me tea. I’m bored of tea, though, do you have arrack?”

I sent a quick silent message to Five, and then gestured Translator Dlique to a seat—an improbably comfortable arrangement of boxes and cushions covered with a yellow and pink embroidered blanket. “So,” I said, when I’d sat across from her on my own pile of blanket-covered luggage. “You’re a diplomat, are you?”

All her expressions so far had been almost childlike, seemingly completely unmoderated. Now she showed frank dismay. “I’ve made a hash of it, haven’t I. It was all supposed to be so simple, too. I was on my way home from Tstur Palace after attending the New Year Cast. I went to parties, and smiled, and said, the omens’ fall was very propitious, the coming year will bring Justice and Benefit to all. After a while I thanked the Humans for their hospitality and left. Just like I was supposed to. All very boring, no one who’s anyone has to do it.”

“And then a gate went down, and you were rerouted. And now you can’t get home.” With things the way they were, she’d never make it to Presger space. Not unless she had a ship that could generate its own gate—which the agreement between humans and the Presger had very specifically, very deliberately, forbidden the Presger to bring within Radch space.

Translator Dlique threw up her incongruously gray-gloved hands, a gesture, I thought, of exasperation. Say exactly what we told you to and nothing will go wrong, they said. Well, it all went wrong anyway. And they didn’t say anything about this. You’d think they might have, they said lots of other things. Sit up straight, Dlique. Don’t dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn’t nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique.” She scowled a moment, as though that last one particularly rankled.

“There does seem to be a general agreement that you are, in fact, Dlique,” I said.

“You’d think! But it doesn’t work like that when you aren’t anybody. Oh!” She looked up as Kalr Five entered with two cups and a bottle of arrack. “That’s the good stuff!” She took the cup Five handed her. Peered intently into Five’s face. “Why are you pretending you’re not Human?”

Five, in the grip of an offended horror so intense even she couldn’t have spoken without betraying it, didn’t answer, only turned to give me my own cup. I took it, and said, calmly, “Don’t be rude to my soldiers, Dlique.”

Translator Dlique laughed, as though I’d said something quite funny. “I like you, Fleet Captain. With Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys, it’s all what is your purpose in coming here, Translator, and what are your intentions, Translator, and do you expect us to believe that, Translator. And then it’s You’ll find these rooms very comfortable, Translator; the doors are locked for your own safety, Translator; have some more tea, Translator. Not Dlique, you see?” She took a substantial swallow of arrack. Coughed a little as it went down.

I wondered how long it would be before the governor’s staff realized Translator Dlique was missing. Wondered for only a moment why Station hadn’t raised the alarm. But then I remembered that gun, that no ship or station could see, that had come from the Presger. Translator Dlique might seem scatterbrained and childlike. But she was certainly as dangerous as Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys feared. Likely considerably more so. They had, it seemed, underestimated her. Perhaps by her design. “What about the others on your ship?”

“Others?”

“Crew? Staff? Fellow passengers?”

“It’s a very small ship, Fleet Captain.”

“It must have been crowded, then, with Zeiat and the translator along.”

Translator Dlique grinned. “I knew we’d get on well. Give me supper, will you? I just eat regular food, you know.”

I recalled what she’d said when she’d first arrived. “Did you eat many people before you were grown?”

“No one I wasn’t supposed to! Though,” she added, frowning, “sometimes I kind of wish I had eaten someone I wasn’t supposed to. But it’s too late now. What are you having for supper? Radchaai on stations eat an awful lot of fish, it seems. I’m beginning to be bored of fish. Oh, where’s your bathroom? I have to—

I cut her off. “We don’t really have one. No plumbing here. But we do have a bucket.”

“Now that’s something different! I’m not bored of buckets yet!”

Lieutenant Tisarwat staggered into the room just as Five was clearing away the last supper dish and Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don’t you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they’re programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.” The entire dinner conversation had been like that.

“You raise a good point, Translator,” I replied, and then turned my attention to Lieutenant Tisarwat. It had been more than three hours since I’d thought much about her, and she’d drunk a considerable amount in that time. She swayed, looked at me, glaring. “Raughd Denche,” Tisarwat said to me, raising a hand and pointing somewhere off to the side for emphasis. She did not seem to notice the presence of Translator Dlique, who watched with an expression of slightly frowning curiosity. “Raughd. Denche. Is a horrible person.”

Judging from even the very small bit I’d seen of Citizen Raughd today, I suspected Tisarwat’s assessment was an accurate one.

“Sir,” Tisarwat added. Very belatedly.

“Bo,” I said sharply to the soldier who had come in behind her, who hovered anxiously. “Get your lieutenant out of here before there’s a mess.” Bo took her by the arm, led her unsteadily out. Too late, I feared.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it to the bucket,” said Translator Dlique, solemnly. Almost regretfully.

“I don’t, either,” I said. “But it was worth a try.”

That a Presger translator was here on Athoek Station was problem enough. How long would it be before whoever had sent her began to wonder why she hadn’t returned? How would they react to Athoek having essentially made her a prisoner, even if somewhat unsuccessfully? And what would happen when they found the Radch in such disarray? Possibly nothing—the treaty made no distinctions between one sort of human or another, all were covered, and that same treaty forbade the Presger to harm any of those humans. That left open the question of what, to a Presger, would constitute “harm,” but presumably issues like that had been hammered out between the translators of the Radch and those of the Presger.

And the presence and attention of the Presger might be turned to advantage. In the past hundred years or so the Presger had begun to sell high-quality medical correctives, significantly cheaper than the ones made inside the Radch. Governor Giarod had said Athoek didn’t make its own medical supplies. And the Presger wouldn’t care if Athoek was part of the Radch or not. They would only care if Athoek could pay, and while the Presger idea of “pay” could be somewhat eccentric, I didn’t doubt we could find something suitable.

So why had the system governor locked Translator Dlique in the governor’s residence? And then said nothing to me about it? I could imagine Captain Hetnys doing such a thing—she had known Captain Vel, who had believed that Anaander Mianaai’s current fractured state was a result of Presger infiltration. I was fairly sure Translator Dlique’s arrival here was a coincidence—but coincidences were meaningful, to Radchaai. Amaat was the universe, and anything that happened, happened because Amaat willed it. God’s intentions could be discerned by the careful study of even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant events. And the past weeks’ events were anything but small and insignificant. Captain Hetnys would be alert for strange occurrences, and this one would have set off a multitude of alarms for her. No, her concealment of Translator Dlique’s presence only confirmed what I had already suspected about the captain’s position.

But Governor Giarod. I had come away from dinner at Citizen Fosyf’s, and the meeting after in the governor’s office, with the impression that Governor Giarod was not only an intelligent, able person, but also that she understood that Anaander Mianaai’s current conflict with herself originated in herself, and not anywhere else. I didn’t think I could possibly have misjudged her so badly. But clearly I had missed something, didn’t understand something about her position.

“Station,” I transmitted, silently.

“Yes, Fleet Captain,” replied Station, in my ear.

“Kindly let Governor Giarod know I intend to call on her first thing in the morning.” Nothing else. If Station didn’t know I knew about Translator Dlique’s existence, let alone that she’d had dinner with me and then gone off again, my mentioning it would only panic Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys. In the meantime I would have to try to find some way to handle this suddenly even more complicated situation.

On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden sat in Command. Talking with Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant, also apparently on watch on her own ship. “So,” she was saying, Ship sending her words directly into Seivarden’s ear. “Where are you from?”

“Someplace we don’t fuck around while we’re on watch,” Seivarden said, but silently, to Ship. Aloud, she said, “Inais.”

“Really!” It was plain that the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant had never heard of it. Which was hardly surprising, given the extent of Radch space, but didn’t help Seivarden’s already low estimation of her. “Have all your officers changed? Your predecessor was all right.” Ekalu (at that moment asleep, breathing deep and even) had painted the former Mercy of Kalr Amaat lieutenant as an unbearable snob. “But that medic wasn’t very friendly at all. Thought quite a lot of herself, I’d say.” (Medic sat in Mercy of Kalr’s decade room, frowning at her lunch of skel and tea. Calm, in a fairly good mood.)

In many ways, Seivarden had in her youth been just as unbearable as the former Mercy of Kalr Amaat lieutenant. But Seivarden had served on a troop carrier—which meant she’d spent actual time in combat, and knew what counted when it came to doctors. “Shouldn’t you be looking out for enemy ships?”

“Oh, Ship will tell me if it sees anything,” said the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant, breezily. “That fleet captain is very intimidating. Though I suppose she would be. She’s ordered us closer to the station. So we’ll be neighbors, at least for a bit. We should have tea.”

“Fleet captain is a bit less intimidating when you’re not threatening to destroy her ship.”

“Oh, well. That was a misunderstanding. Once you identified yourselves everything was cleared up. You don’t think she’ll hold it against me, though, do you?”

On Athoek Station, in the Undergarden, Kalr Five put away dishes in the room next to where I sat, and fussed to Eight about Translator Dlique’s sudden, discomfiting appearance. In another room yet, Bo pulled off an unconscious Tisarwat’s boots. I said, to Ship, “Ekalu wasn’t exaggerating, about Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant.”

“No,” Mercy of Kalr replied. “She wasn’t.”

Next morning, I was dressing—trousers on, still bootless, fastening my shirt—when I heard an urgent shouting from the corridor, a voice calling, “Fleet Captain! Fleet Captain, sir!” Ship showed me, through the Kalr standing watch in the corridor, a seven- or eight-year-old child in grubby loose shirt and trousers, no shoes or gloves. “Fleet Captain!” she shouted, insistent. Ignoring the guard.

I grabbed my gloves, went quickly out of my room to the antechamber, through the door Five opened for me at my gesture. “Fleet Captain, sir!” the child said, still loud though I was standing in front of her. “Come right away! Someone painted on the wall again! If those corpse soldiers see it first it’ll be bad!”

“Citizen,” began Five.

I cut her off. “I’m coming.” The child took off running, and I headed down the shadowed corridor after her. Someone painted on the wall again. Minor enough. Small enough to ignore, one might think, but Captain Hetnys had overreacted before—how badly clear to read in this child’s urgency, either her own conclusions about what might happen when Sword of Atagaris Var arrived, or conveyed to her by some adult who’d sent her as messenger. Serious enough. And if it turned out to be nothing, well, I would only have delayed my breakfast by a few minutes.

“What did they paint?” I asked, climbing up a ladder in an access well, the only way between levels here.

“Some kind of words,” the child replied, above me. “It’s words!”

So she either hadn’t seen them or couldn’t read them, and I guessed it was the second. Probably not Radchaai then, or Raswar, which I’d learned over the past two days was read and spoken by most of the Ychana here. Station had told me, my first night here, when I’d asked it for some information, some history, that most of the residents in the Undergarden were Ychana.

It was Xhi, though rendered phonetically in Radchaai script. Whoever had done it had used the same pink paint that had been used to decorate the tea shop door, that had been left sitting at the side of the small, makeshift concourse. I recognized the words, not because I knew more than a few phrases of Xhi at this point but because it dated from the annexation, had been emblematic of a particular resistance movement Station had told me about, two nights before. Not tea but blood! It was a play on words. The Radchaai word for “tea” bore a passing resemblance to the Xhi word for “blood,” and the implication was that the revolutionaries, rather than submitting to the Radch and drinking tea, would resist and drink (or at least spill) Radchaai blood. Those revolutionaries were several hundred years dead, that clever slogan no more than trivia in a history lesson.

The child, having seen me stop in front of the paint, not far from the tea shop entrance, took off running again, eager to be safely away. The rest of the Undergarden’s residents had done the same—the small concourse was deserted, though I knew that at this hour there should be if nothing else a steady stream of customers into the tea shop. Anyone passing this way had taken one look at that Not tea but blood! and turned right around to find somewhere safe and out of the way of Sword of Atagaris’s Var lieutenant and her ancillaries. I was alone, Kalr Five still climbing up the access well, having been a good deal slower than I was.

A now-familiar voice spoke behind me. “That vomiting, purple-eyed child was right.” I turned. Translator Dlique, dressed as she had been last night, when she’d visited me.

“Right about what, Translator?” I asked.

“Raughd Denche really is a horrible person.”

At that moment, two Sword of Atagaris ancillaries came rushing onto the concourse. “You, there, halt!” said one, loud and emphatic. I realized, in that instant, that they might very well not recognize Translator Dlique—she was supposed to be locked in the governor’s residence, she was dressed like an Ychana, and like all of the Undergarden this space was erratically lit. I myself wasn’t in full uniform, wore only trousers, gloves, and partially fastened shirt. It was going to take Sword of Atagaris a moment to realize who we were.

“Oh, sporocarps!” Translator Dlique turned, I assumed to flee before Sword of Atagaris could see who she was and detain her.

She had not turned all the way, and I had only had the briefest moment to begin wondering at her using “sporocarp” as an obscenity, when a single gunshot popped, loud in the confined space, and Translator Dlique gasped, and tumbled forward to the ground. Unthinking, I raised my armor, yelled “Sword of Atagaris, stand down!” At the same moment I transmitted to Station, urgently, “Medical emergency on level one of the Undergarden!” Dropped to my knees beside Translator Dlique. “Station, Translator Dlique’s been shot in the back. I need medics here right now.”

“Fleet Captain,” said Station’s calm voice in my ear. “Medics don’t go to the—”

“Right now, Station.” I dropped my armor, looked up at the two Sword of Atagaris Vars, beside me now. “Your medkit, Ship, quickly.” I wanted to ask, What do you think you’re doing, firing on people? But keeping Translator Dlique from bleeding out was more immediately important. And this wouldn’t be entirely Sword of Atagaris’s fault, it would have been following Captain Hetnys’s orders.

“I’m not carrying medkits, Fleet Captain,” said one of the Sword of Atagaris ancillaries. “This is not a combat situation, and this station does have medical facilities.” And I, of course, didn’t have one. We’d brought them, as a matter of routine, but they were still in a packing case three levels down. If the bullet had hit, say, the translator’s renal artery—a distinct possibility, considering where the wound was—she could bleed out in minutes, and even if I ordered one of my Kalrs to bring me a kit, it would arrive too late.

I sent the order anyway, and pressed my hands over the wound on Translator Dlique’s back. Likely it wouldn’t do any good, but it was the only thing I could do. “Station, I need those medics!” I looked up at Sword of Atagaris. “Bring me a suspension pod. Now.”

“Aren’t any around here.” The tea shop proprietor—she must have been the only person who’d stayed nearby when they’d seen that slogan painted on the wall. Now she called out from the door of her shop. “Medical never comes here, either.”

“They’d better come this time.” My compression had reduced the blood coming out of the translator, but I couldn’t control internal bleeding, and her breathing had gone quick and shallow. She was losing blood fast, then, faster than I could see. Down on level three Kalr Eight was opening the case where the medkits were stored. She’d moved the instant the order had come, was working quickly, but I didn’t think she would be here in time.

I still pressed uselessly on the translator’s back, while she lay gasping on the ground, facedown. “Blood stays inside your arteries, Dlique,” I said.

She gave a weak, shaky hah. “See…” She paused for a few shallow breaths. “Breathing. Stupid.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, breathing is stupid and boring, but keep on doing it, Dlique. As a favor to me.” She didn’t answer.

By the time Kalr Eight arrived with a medkit and Captain Hetnys came running onto the scene, a pair of medics behind her and Sword of Atagaris behind them, dragging an emergency suspension pod, it was too late. Translator Dlique was dead.

11

I knelt on the ground beside Translator Dlique’s body. Blood soaked my bare feet, my knees, my hands, still pressing down on the wound on her back, and the cuffs of my shirtsleeves were wet with it. It was not the first time I had been covered in someone else’s blood. I had no horror of it. The two Sword of Atagaris ancillaries were motionless and impassive, having set down the suspension pod they had dragged this far to no purpose. Captain Hetnys stood frowning, puzzled, not quite sure, I thought, of what had just happened.

I rose to make way for the medics, who went immediately to work on Translator Dlique. “Cit… Fleet Captain,” said one of them after a while. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Never is,” said the proprietor of the tea shop, who was still standing in her doorway. Not tea but blood! scrawled only meters away from where she stood. That was a problem. But not, I suspected, the problem Captain Hetnys thought it was.

I peeled off my gloves. Blood had soaked through them, my hands were sticky with it. I stepped quickly over to Captain Hetnys faster than she could back away and grabbed her uniform jacket with my bloody hands. Dragged her stumbling over to where Translator Dlique lay, the two medics scrambling out of our way, and before Captain Hetnys could regain her balance or resist, I threw her down onto the corpse. I turned to Kalr Eight. “Fetch a priest,” I said to her. “Whoever you find who’s qualified to do purifications and funerals. If she says she won’t come to the Undergarden, inform her that she may come willingly or not, but she will come regardless.”

“Sir,” Eight acknowledged, and departed.

Captain Hetnys had meanwhile managed to get to her feet, with the assistance of one of her ancillaries.

“How did this happen, Captain? I said not to use violence against citizens unless it was absolutely necessary.” Translator Dlique wasn’t a citizen, but Sword of Atagaris couldn’t have known it was the translator they were shooting at.

“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys. Voice shaking either with rage at what I’d just done, or distress generally. “Sword of Atagaris queried Station, and it said it had no knowledge of this person and there was no tracker. She was not, therefore, a citizen.”

“So that made it fine to shoot her, did it?” I asked. But of course, I myself had followed exactly that logic on a nearly uncountable number of occasions. It was such compelling logic, to someone like Sword of Atagaris—to someone like me—that it had never occurred to me that Sword of Atagaris would even think of firing guns here, on a station full of citizens, a station that had been part of the Radch for centuries.

It should have occurred to me. I was responsible for everything that happened under my command.

“Fleet Captain,” replied Captain Hetnys, indignant and not trying as hard as she might have to hide it. “Unauthorized persons pose a danger to—”

“This,” I said, each word deliberate, emphatic, “is Presger Translator Dlique.”

“Fleet Captain,” said Station, in my ear. I had left the connection to Station open, so it had heard what I had said. “With all respect, you are mistaken. Translator Dlique is still in her rooms in the governor’s residence.”

“Look again, Station. Send someone to look. Captain Hetnys, neither you nor any of your crew or ancillaries will go armed on this station under any circumstances, beginning now. Nor will your ship or any of your crew enter the Undergarden again without my explicit permission. Sword of Atagaris Var and its lieutenant will return to Sword of Atagaris as soon as a shuttle can take them. Do not”—she had opened her mouth to protest—“say a single word to me. You have deliberately concealed vital information from me. You have endangered the lives of residents of this station. Your troops have caused the death of the diplomatic representative of the Presger. I am trying to think of some reason why I shouldn’t shoot you where you stand.” Actually, there were at least three compelling reasons—the two armed ancillaries standing beside Captain Hetnys and the fact that in my haste I had left my own gun behind in my quarters, three levels below this one.

I turned to the proprietor of the tea shop. “Citizen.” It took extra effort not to speak in my flat, ancillary’s voice. “Will you bring me tea? I’ve had no breakfast, and I’m going to have to fast today.” Wordlessly, she turned and went into her shop.

While I waited for tea, Governor Giarod arrived. Took one look at Translator Dlique’s body, at Captain Hetnys standing mute and blood-smeared by Sword of Atagaris’s ancillaries, took a breath, and then said, “Fleet Captain. I can explain.”

I looked at her. Then turned to see the tea shop proprietor set a bowl of tea-gruel on the ground a meter from where I stood. I thanked her, went to pick it up. Saw revulsion on the face of Captain Hetnys and Governor Giarod as I held it with bare, bloody hands and drank from it. “This is how it will be,” I said, after I’d drunk half of the thick tea. “There will be a funeral. Don’t speak to me of keeping this secret, or of panic in the corridors. There will be a funeral, with offerings and suitable tokens, and a period of mourning for every member of Station Administration. The body will be kept in suspension so that when the Presger come for the translator, they may take it and do whatever it is they do with dead bodies.

“For the moment, Sword of Atagaris will tell me the last time it saw this wall free of paint, and then Station will name for me every person who stopped in front of it from then until I saw it just now.” Station might not have been able to see if someone was painting, but it would know where everyone was, and I suspected very few people would have stood right next to this wall, in that window of time, who had not been the painter herself.

“Begging the fleet captain’s very great indulgence.” Captain Hetnys dared, against all wisdom, to speak to me. “That’s already done, and Security has arrested the person responsible.”

I raised an eyebrow. Surprised. And skeptical. “Security has arrested Raughd Denche?”

Now Captain Hetnys was astonished. “No, sir!” she protested. “I don’t know why you would assume Citizen Raughd would do something like this. No, sir, it can only have been Sirix Odela. She passed here on her way to work this morning and stopped quite close to the wall for some fifteen seconds. More than enough time to paint this.”

If she passed by on her way to work, she lived in the Undergarden. Most of the Undergarden residents were Ychana, but this name was Samirend. And familiar. “This person works in the Gardens, above?” I asked. Captain Hetnys gestured assent. I thought of the person I’d met when I’d first arrived. Who I had found standing in the lake in the Gardens, so distressed at the thought of expressing anger. It wasn’t possible she had done this. “Why would a Samirend paint a Xhi slogan in Radchaai script? Why wouldn’t she write it in Liost since she’s Samirend, or Raswar, that more people here could read?”

“Historically, Fleet Captain—” began Governor Giarod.

I cut her off. “Historically, Governor, quite a lot of people have good reason to resent the annexation. But right here, right now, none of them will find any profit in more than token rebellion.” It would have been that way for several centuries. Nobody in the Undergarden who valued her life (not to mention the lives of anyone else in the Undergarden) would have painted that slogan on that wall, not knowing how this station’s administration would react. And I’d be willing to bet that everyone in the Undergarden knew how this station’s administration would react.

“The creation of the Undergarden was no doubt unintended,” I continued, as Mercy of Kalr showed me a brief flash of Kalr Eight speaking sternly to a junior priest, “but as it has benefited you, you tell yourselves that its condition is also just and proper.” That constant trio, justice, propriety, and benefit. They could not, in theory, exist alone. Nothing just was improper, nothing beneficial was unjust.

“Fleet Captain,” began Governor Giarod. Indignant. “I hardly think—”

“Everything necessitates its opposite,” I said, cutting her off. “How can you be civilized if there is no uncivilized?” Civilized. Radchaai. The word was the same. “If it did not benefit someone, somehow, there’d be plumbing here, and lights, and doors that worked, and medics who would come for an emergency.” Before the system governor could do more than blink in response, I turned to the tea shop proprietor, still standing in her doorway. “Who sent for me?”

“Sirix,” she said. “And see what it got her.”

“Citizen,” began Captain Hetnys, stern and indignant.

“Be silent, Captain.” My tone was even, but Captain Hetnys said nothing further.

Radchaai soldiers who touch dead bodies dispose of their impurities by means of a bath and a brief prayer—I never knew any to bathe without muttering or subvocalizing it. I didn’t, myself, but all my officers did, when I was a ship. I presumed civilian medics availed themselves of something similar.

That bath and that prayer sufficed, for anything short of making temple offerings. But with most Radchaai civilians, near contact with death was entirely another matter.

If I had been in a slightly more spiteful mood I would have gone deliberately around the small makeshift concourse, indeed around this entire level of the Undergarden, touching things and smearing blood so that what priests came would be forced to spend days on it. But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite, and besides I suspected that the entire Undergarden was already in a dire state, as far as ritual uncleanness went. If Medical never came here, others had certainly died here before, and if priests would not come, then that impurity had certainly lingered. Assuming one subscribed to such beliefs, in any event. The Ychana probably didn’t. Just one more reason to consider them foreign and not worth basic amenities every Radchaai supposedly took for granted.

A senior priest arrived, accompanied by two assistants. She stopped two meters from Translator Dlique’s corpse in its puddle of blood, and stood staring at it and us with wide-eyed horror.

“How do they dispose of bodies here?” I asked no one in particular.

Governor Giarod answered. “They drag them into the corridors around the Undergarden and leave them.”

“Disgusting,” muttered Captain Hetnys.

“What else are they supposed to do?” I asked. “There’s no facility here for dealing with dead bodies. Medical doesn’t come here, and neither do priests.” I looked at the senior priest. “Am I right?”

“No one is supposed to be here, Fleet Captain,” she replied primly, and cast a glance at the governor.

“Indeed.” I turned to Kalr Five, who had returned with the priests. “This suspension pod is functional?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then Captain Hetnys and I will put the translator in it. Then you”—indicating the priests with a gesture that my barehandedness made offensive—“will do what is necessary.”

Captain Hetnys and I spent twenty minutes washing in blessed water, saying prayers, and being sprinkled with salt and fumigated with three kinds of incense. It did not dispense with all of our contamination, only mitigated it so that we could walk through corridors or be in a room without anyone needing to call a priest. The soldier’s bath and prayer would have done as well. Better, in fact, strictly speaking, but it would not have satisfied most of the residents of Athoek Station.

“If I go into full, traditional mourning,” Governor Giarod pointed out, when that was finished, and Captain Hetnys and I were dressed in clean clothes, “I won’t be able to go into my office for two weeks. The same goes for the rest of Administration. I agree, though, Fleet Captain, someone should.” As the rite had gone on, she had lost the harried expression she’d arrived with, and now seemed quite calm.

“Yes,” I agreed, “you’ll all have to be lesser cousins. Captain Hetnys and I will act as immediate family.” Captain Hetnys looked none too pleased about that but was not in any position to protest. I dispatched Kalr Five to bring a razor so that Captain Hetnys and I could shave our heads for the funeral, and also to see a jeweler about memorial tokens.

“Now,” I said to Governor Giarod, when Five was away and I’d sent Captain Hetnys to my quarters to prepare for the fast, “I need to know about Translator Dlique.”

“Fleet Captain, I hardly think this is the best place…”

“I can’t go to your office as I am.” Not so obviously just after a death that put me in full mourning, when I should be fasting at home. The impropriety would be obvious, and this funeral had to be absolutely, utterly proper. “And there’s no one near.” The tea seller was inside her shop, out of view. The priests had fled as soon as they thought they could. The Sword of Atagaris ancillaries had left the Undergarden at my order. My two Mercy of Kalrs, standing nearby, didn’t count. “And keeping things secret hasn’t been a very good choice so far.”

Governor Giarod gestured rueful resignation. “She arrived with the first wave of rerouted ships.” The ships that neighboring systems had sent here either in the hope that they could find a different route to their original destinations, now the gates they needed to traverse were down, or because their own facilities were overwhelmed. “Just her, in a tiny little one-person courier barely the size of a shuttle. I’m not sure how it could even carry as much air as she needed for the trip she said she was making. And the timing was just…” She gestured her frustration. “I couldn’t send to the palace for advice. I cast omens. Privately. The results were disturbing.”

“Of course.” No Radchaai was immune to the suspicion of coincidence. Nothing happened by pure accident, no matter how small. Every event, therefore, was potentially a sign of God’s intentions. Unusual coincidences could only be a particularly pointed divine message. “I understand your apprehension. I even, to a certain extent, understand your wanting to confine the translator and conceal her presence from most station residents. None of that troubles me. What does trouble me is your failure to mention this alarming and potentially dangerous situation to me.”

Governor Giarod sighed. “Fleet Captain, I hear things. There’s very little that’s said on this station—and, frankly, most of the rest of the system—that I don’t eventually become aware of. Ever since I took this office I’ve heard whispers about corruption from outside the Radch.”

“I’m not surprised.” It was a perennial complaint, that transportees from annexed worlds, and newly made citizens, brought uncivilized customs and attitudes that would undermine true civilization. I’d been hearing it myself for as long as I’d been alive—some two thousand years. The situation in the Undergarden would only add to those whispers, I was sure.

“Recently,” said Governor Giarod, with a rueful smile, “Captain Hetnys has suggested that the Presger have been infiltrating high offices with the aim of destroying us. Presger translators being more or less indistinguishable from actual humans, and the Translators Office being in such frequent and close contact with them.”

“Governor, did you actually hold any conversations with Translator Dlique?”

She gestured frustration. “I know what you intend to say, Fleet Captain. But then again, she apparently left a locked and guarded room in the governor’s residence with no one the wiser, obtained clothes, and walked freely around this station without Station being aware of it. Yes, talking with her could be downright peculiar, and I’d never have mistaken her for a citizen. But she was clearly capable of a great deal more than she let on to us. Some of it rather frightening. And I had never thought the rumors were credible, that the Presger, who had left us alone since the treaty, who were so alien, would concern themselves with our affairs, when they never had before. But then Translator Dlique arrives so soon after gates start to go down, and we lose contact with Omaugh Palace, and…”

“And Captain Hetnys spoke of Presger infiltration of high offices. Of the highest office. And here I am, a cousin of Anaander Mianaai, and arriving with a story about the Lord of the Radch fighting with herself over the future of the Radch, and an official record that clearly did not match what I actually was. And suddenly you had trouble dismissing the previously incredible whispers about the Presger.”

“Just so.”

“Governor, do we agree that no matter what is happening elsewhere, the only thing it is possible or appropriate for us to do is secure the safety of the residents of this system? Whether there is a division within the Lord of Mianaai or not, that would be the only reasonable order you would expect from her?”

Governor Giarod thought about that for six seconds. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Except, Fleet Captain, if we have to buy medical supplies, that may well mean dealing with outside sources. Like the Presger.”

“You see,” I said, very, very evenly, “why it wasn’t a particularly good idea to conceal Translator Dlique from me.” She gestured acquiescence. “You’re not a fool. Or I didn’t think you were. I admit my discovery of Translator Dlique’s presence has somewhat undermined my assurance on that score.” She said nothing. “Now, before I officially begin the fast, there’s other business that needs to be taken care of. I need to speak to Station Administrator Celar.”

“About the Undergarden?” Governor Giarod guessed.

“Among other things.”

In my sitting room on level four of the Undergarden, my Kalrs ordered to leave us to speak privately, I said to Tisarwat, “I’ll have to spend the next two weeks in mourning. Which means I won’t be able to do any work. Lieutenant Seivarden is of course in command of Mercy of Kalr during that time. And you will be in charge here in the household.”

She had awakened miserably hungover. Tea and meds had begun to remedy that, but not entirely. “Yes, sir.”

“Why did she leave this?”

Tisarwat blinked. Frowned. Then understood. “Sir. It’s not a big problem. And it’s useful to have somewhere you can… do things in secret.” Indeed. Useful to any and all parts of the Lord of the Radch, but I didn’t say that. She would already know it. “And really, you know, sir, the people here got on all right until Captain Hetnys showed up.”

“Got on all right, did they? With no water, and no Medical to come in emergencies, and apparently nobody questioning Hetnys’s methods here?” She looked down at her feet. Ashamed. Miserable.

Looked up. “They’re getting water from somewhere, sir. They grow mushrooms. There’s this dish that…”

“Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was she going to do here?”

“Help you, sir. Mostly. Unless you were going to do anything that would prevent her from… reassembling herself once this was done.” I didn’t reply to this immediately, and she added, “She thinks that’s likely, sir.”

“This situation in the Undergarden needs fixing. I’m about to talk to the station administrator about it. Use your contacts—surely she sent you here with contacts—to get it done. Once the funeral is done, I’ll be unable to do anything directly, but I will be watching you.”

Tisarwat left, and Kalr Five ushered Station Administrator Celar into the sitting room. She wore the light blue of Administration today, managed to make the standard uniform look elegant on her broad and heavy form. I sat when she sat. Did not offer her tea, as would ordinarily have been polite. In my current state no one but my own household could eat or drink in my presence. “The situation in the Undergarden is intolerable,” I said, with no preamble, no softening. No thanks for coming here at what was surely considerable inconvenience. “I am frankly astonished that it’s been left this way for so long. But I am not asking for reasons or excuses. I expect repairs to begin immediately.”

“Fleet Captain,” said Station Administrator Celar, bristling at my words, though my tone had been calm and flat, “there’s only so much that—”

“Then do that much. And don’t tell me that no one is supposed to be here. Clearly people are here. And”—this was entering delicate territory—“I doubt very much any of this could have happened without at least some collusion from Station. I strongly suspect Station has been concealing things from you. You have a problem there, and it’s of your own making.” Station Administrator Celar frowned, not immediately understanding me. Offended. “I would urge you to look at this from Station’s point of view. A not inconsiderable part of itself has been damaged. Restoring it entirely isn’t possible, but no attempt has been made to even mitigate it. You just sealed it off and tried to forget it. But Station can’t just forget it.” And it struck me as likely that having people here felt better to Station than a numb, empty hole. And at the same time constantly reminded it of its injury. But I didn’t think I could find a way to explain why, or how I’d come to that conclusion. “And the people who live here, they’re Station’s residents, who Station is made to care for. You don’t treat them particularly well, though, and I imagine Station resents that. Though it can’t ever say that directly to you, and so instead it just… leaves things out. Does and says exactly what you ask of it and very little more. I’ve met unhappy AIs.” I didn’t say how, or that I’d been an AI myself. “And you have one here.”

“How can an AI be unhappy when it’s doing exactly what it was made to do?” asked Station Administrator Celar. Not, thankfully, how it could possibly matter whether an AI was happy or not. And then, demonstrating that she had not been given her office merely on the strength of her looks, Station Administrator Celar said, “But you say we’ve prevented Station from doing that. That is the substance of what you’ve said, yes?” She sighed. “When I arrived, my predecessor depicted the Undergarden as a morass of crime and squalor, that no one could find a way to safely clear out. Everything I saw seemed to indicate she was right. And it had been that way so long, fixing it seemed impossible. Everyone agreed it was so. But that’s no excuse, is it. It’s my responsibility.”

“Repair the section doors,” I said. “Fix the plumbing and the lights.”

“And the ventilation,” said Station Administrator Celar, fanning herself briefly with one blue-gloved hand.

I gestured agreement. “Confirm the current occupants in their places. Just for a start.” Getting Medical here, and Security patrols that would not cause more problems than they might solve, would be next, and more difficult.

“Somehow, Fleet Captain, I don’t think it could possibly be that simple.”

Likely not. But. “I couldn’t say. But we have to do something.” I saw her notice that we. “And now I need to speak to you about your daughter Piat.” Station Administrator Celar frowned in puzzlement. “She and Citizen Raughd are lovers?”

Still the frown. “They’ve been sweethearts since they were children. Raughd grew up downwell, and Piat often went down to visit, and keep her company. Not many other children Raughd’s age in the family, at the time. Not in the mountains, anyway.”

Downwell. Where Station couldn’t see more than trackers. “You like Raughd,” I said. “It’s a good connection, and she’s very charming, isn’t she.” Station Administrator Celar gestured assent. “Your daughter is very subdued. Doesn’t talk to you much. Spends more time in other households than home with you. You feel, perhaps, she’s driven you away.”

“What are you aiming at, Fleet Captain?”

Even if Station had seen the way Raughd treated Piat when she thought no one was looking, it wouldn’t have reported it directly. On a station, privacy was paradoxically both nonexistent and an urgent necessity. Station saw your most intimate moments. But you always knew Station would never tell just anyone what it saw, wouldn’t gossip. Station would report crimes and emergencies, but for anything else it would, at most, hint here or guide there. A station household could be, in some ways, very self-contained, very secret, even though living at close quarters with so many others. Even though every moment it was under Station’s constant, all-seeing eye.

The hints could often be enough. But if Station was unhappy, it might not even do that. “Raughd is only charming when she wants to be,” I said. “When everyone is looking. In private, to certain people, she’s very different. I’m going to ask my ship to send you a recording of something that happened here in the Undergarden last night.”

Her fingers twitched, calling up the file. She blinked, her eyes moving in a way that told me she was watching that scene of Raughd, her daughter, others, reclining on those cushions, drinking. I saw on her face the moment she heard Citizen Raughd say, You’re such a fucking ridiculous bore. The stunned disbelief, and then a look of determined anger as she kept watching, through Raughd’s increasing aggression as Lieutenant Tisarwat, drunk as she was, tried to maneuver Piat out of Raughd’s way. Station Administrator Celar gestured the recording away.

“Am I correct,” I asked, before she could speak, “in guessing that Citizen Raughd never took the aptitudes? Because she was already Citizen Fosyf’s heir?” Station Administrator Celar gestured yes. “The tester would almost certainly have seen the potential for this sort of thing, and routed her toward some sort of treatment, or an assignment where her personality would have been of benefit. Sometimes, combined with other things, it suits someone for a military career, and the discipline helps keep them in check and teaches them to behave better.” Gods help the crew of such a person who was promoted to any position of authority without learning to behave better. “They can be very, very charming. No one ever suspects what they’re like in private. Most won’t believe it if you tell them.”

“I wouldn’t have,” she admitted. “If you hadn’t shown me…” She gestured forward, meaning to indicate the recording that had just played in her vision, in her ears.

“That’s why I showed it to you,” I said, “despite the impropriety of doing so.”

“Nothing just can be improper,” replied Station Administrator Celar.

“There’s more, Station Administrator. As I said, Station has been keeping things back that you have not explicitly asked for. There was at least one occasion on which Citizen Piat reported to Medical with bruises on her face. She said she’d been drinking in the Undergarden and tripped and stumbled into a wall. The bruises didn’t look like the right sort for that, not to my eye. Not to Medical’s either, but they weren’t about to get involved in any personal business of yours. I’m sure they thought if it was really a problem, Station would have said something.” And no one else would have noticed. A corrective, a few hours, and the bruises would be gone. “There was no one around, at the time, except Raughd. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Raughd will have apologized and sworn never to do it again. I strongly suggest asking Station explicitly about each and every visit your daughter has made to Medical, no matter how minor. I’d also ask Station about her use of first aid correctives. I queried Station directly, with the intention of finding this sort of incident, because I’ve seen this sort of thing before and knew it was almost certainly there. Station only answered me because System Governor Giarod ordered it, at my request.”

Station Administrator Celar said nothing. She barely seemed to breathe. Maybe watching the record of her daughter’s visit to Medical. Maybe not.

“So,” I continued after a moment. “No doubt you’re aware of the difficulty this morning that ended in the death of the Presger Translator Dlique.”

She blinked, startled at the sudden change of topic. Frowned. “Fleet Captain, this morning was the first I’d heard the translator even existed, I assure you.”

I waved that away. “Station was explicitly asked who had stood near that wall, in the right time frame, for long enough to paint those words. Station answered with two names: Sirix Odela and Raughd Denche. Security immediately arrested Citizen Sirix, on the assumption that Raughd wouldn’t have done such a thing. But Station was not asked if either citizen had paint on her clothes. And since Station was not asked, it did not volunteer that information.” I was not connected to Station at the moment, though I thought it very likely Station Administrator Celar was. “This is not something I think you should blame Station for. As I said earlier.”

“Surely,” said Station Administrator Celar, “it was a prank, something done for amusement. Youthful high spirits.”

“What amusement,” I asked, my own voice carefully even, “could youthful high spirits have anticipated? Watching Sword of Atagaris Var arrest completely innocent citizens? Putting those completely innocent citizens through interrogation to prove their innocence, or worse not interrogating them at all, convicting them without any evidence beyond Raughd Denche could never have done that? Further alarming you, and the governor, and Captain Hetnys at a time when things were already tense? And if, for the sake of argument, we pretend those are harmless amusements, then why has no one said of Citizen Sirix, It’s nothing, it must have been a prank?” Silence. Her fingers twitched, just slightly, the station administrator speaking to Station no doubt. “There’s paint on Citizen Raughd’s gloves, isn’t there?”

“Her personal attendant,” acknowledged Station Administrator Celar, “is even now trying to wash the paint off of them.”

“So,” I said. This was going to be even more delicate than the problem with Station. “Citizen Fosyf is prominent, and wealthy. You have authority here, but it’s just easier to get the things you want done when you have the support of people like Fosyf. And, no doubt, she gives you gifts. Valuable ones. The romance between your daughter and hers is convenient. When you sent Citizen Piat downwell to keep Raughd company, you were already thinking of this. And you might be wondering if you’d noticed that your daughter was unhappy. Or how long ago you’d first seen the signs of it, and maybe you told yourself that it was nothing, really, that everyone has to put up with a little stress, for the sake of family connections, family benefit. That if it was ever really bad, surely Station would say something. To you, of all people. And it’s so easy to just go along. So easy not to see what’s happening. And the longer you don’t see it, the harder it becomes to see it, because then you have to admit that you ignored it all that time. But this is the moment when it’s laid before you, clear and unambiguous. This is the sort of person Raughd Denche is. This is what she’s doing to your daughter. Are her mother’s gifts worth your daughter’s well-being? Is political convenience worth that? Does the wider benefit to your house outweigh it? You can’t put off the choice any longer. Can’t pretend there’s no choice there to make.”

“You are very uncomfortable company, Fleet Captain,” observed Station Administrator Celar, her voice bitter and sharp. “Do you do this sort of thing everywhere you go?”

“Lately it seems so,” I admitted.

As I spoke, Kalr Five came silently into the room, and stood ancillary-stiff. Very clearly wanted my attention. “Yes, Five?” She wouldn’t have interrupted without very good reason.

“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence, sir. Citizen Fosyf’s personal attendant has inquired about the possibility of the citizen inviting you and Captain Hetnys to spend the two weeks after Translator Dlique’s funeral on her estate downwell.” Such an invitation was properly made in person—this sort of inquiry beforehand, through servants, prevented any inconvenience or embarrassment. “She has more than one house on her land, so you’ll be able to spend the mourning period in proper fashion, very conveniently, she says.”

I looked over at Station Administrator Celar, who gave a small laugh. “Yes, I thought it was odd, too, when I first came. But here at Athoek, if you can afford it, you don’t spend your two weeks in your quarters.” After the initial days of fasting, after the funeral, residents in a mourning household did no work, but instead stayed mostly at home, accepting consolatory visits from clients and friends. I’d assumed that Captain Hetnys and I would stay here in the Undergarden for that time. “If you’re accustomed to have things done for you,” Station Administrator Celar continued, “especially if you don’t pick your meals up at the common refectories but rather have someone in your household cook for you, it can be a long two weeks. So you go to stay somewhere that’s technically its own house, but servants nearby can cook and clean for you. There’s a place right off the main concourse that specializes in it—but they’re filled up right now with people who just need someplace to stay.”

“And that’s considered entirely proper, is it?” I asked doubtfully.

“There has been some suspicion,” Celar replied wryly, “that my not being familiar with the practice when I arrived indicates that my upbringing wasn’t what it might have been. Your not being familiar with it will be a shock they may never recover from.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had known officers from nearly every province, had known that the details of funeral practice (among other things) could differ from place to place. Things widely considered mandatory were sometimes only actually available to citizens with sufficient resources, though that was rarely acknowledged. And beyond that, I knew that small details often went unmentioned, on the assumption that of course all Radchaai did things the same way and there was no need to discuss it. But I was used to those being fairly small details—what sort of incense was appropriate, prayers added to or subtracted from the daily observances, odd food restrictions.

I considered Five. She stood there outwardly impassive, but wanting me to see something, impatient I hadn’t yet. Her announcement had, from her point of view, been heavy with suggestion. “It’s customary to pay for such services?” I asked Station Administrator Celar.

“Often,” she agreed, still with a wry smile. “Though I’m sure Fosyf is just being generous.”

And self-serving. It would not surprise me if Fosyf had realized, one way or another, what part her own daughter had played in the episode that had led to Translator Dlique’s death. Hoped, perhaps, that hosting me during the mourning period would be, if not a bribe, at least a gesture toward remorse for what her daughter had done. But it might well be useful. “Raughd could come downwell with us, of course,” I observed. “And stay after. For quite some time.”

“I’ll see to it,” said Station Administrator Celar, with a small, bitter smile that, had I been Raughd Denche, would have made me shiver.

12

Athoek’s sky was a clear cerulean, shot here and there with bright streaks—the visible parts of the planet’s weather control grid. For some hours we’d flown over water, blue-gray and flat, but now mountains loomed, brown and green below, black and gray and streaked with ice at their tops. “Another hour or so, Fleet Captain, Citizens,” said the pilot. We had been met, at the base of the elevator, by two fliers. Between one thing and another—including maneuvering on the part of Kalr Five—Fosyf and Raughd had ended up in the other one, along with Captain Hetnys and the Sword of Atagaris ancillary who accompanied her. Both Captain Hetnys and I were in full mourning—the hair we’d shaved off barely beginning to grow back, no cosmetics but a broad white stripe painted diagonally across our faces. Once full mourning was over, Translator Dlique’s memorial token would join Lieutenant Awn’s plain gold tag on my jacket: a two-centimeter opal, Translator Dlique Zeiat Presger engraved large and clear on the silver setting. They were the only names we knew to use.

In the seat beside me, silent the entire trip so far—an impressive two days of not saying a word beyond the absolutely necessary—sat Sirix Odela. My request that she accompany me would leave the Gardens shorthanded, and theoretically she could have refused. Very little choice was actually involved. I guessed her anger had made her unable to speak without violating the terms of her reeducation, that attempting to do so would make her extremely uncomfortable, and so I did not press the issue, not even when it stretched into the second day.

“Fleet Captain,” Sirix said. Finally. Voice pitched to reach my ear over the noise of the flier, but not carry up front to where the pilot sat. “Why am I here?” Her tone was very, very carefully controlled, a control I didn’t doubt was hard-won.

“You are here,” I said, in an even, reasonable voice, as though I was unaware of the resentment and distress behind the question, “to tell me what Citizen Fosyf isn’t telling me.”

“Why do you think I would be willing or able to tell you anything, Fleet Captain?” Sirix’s voice took on just the slightest edge, skirting what she would be able to say without discomfort.

I turned my head to look at her. She stared straight ahead, as though my reaction didn’t concern her at all. “Is there family you’d like to visit?” She’d come from downwell, had relatives who’d worked on tea plantations. “I’m sure I could arrange for it.”

“I am…” She hesitated. Swallowed. I had pushed too hard, somehow. “Without family. For any practical purpose.”

“Ah.” She did have a house name, and so was not legally houseless. “Actually throwing you out of the family would have been too much disgrace for them to bear. But perhaps you’re still in discreet contact with someone? A mother, a sibling?” And children generally had parents from more than one house. Parents or siblings from other houses might not be considered terribly close relatives, might or might not be required to lend any sort of support, but those ties were there, could be drawn on in a crisis.

“To be entirely honest, Fleet Captain,” said Sirix, as though it was an answer to my question, “I really don’t want to spend two weeks in the company of Citizen Raughd Denche.”

“I don’t think she realizes,” I said. Citizen Raughd had been oblivious, or at least seemingly so. Oblivious to the seriousness of what she’d done, to the fact that anyone at all might be aware she’d done it. “Why do you live in the Undergarden, citizen?”

“I didn’t like my assigned quarters. I think, Fleet Captain, that you appreciate directness.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “It would be hypocritical of me not to.”

She acknowledged that with a bitter quirk of her mouth. “I would like to be left alone now.”

“Of course, Citizen. Please don’t hesitate to tell me or either of my Kalrs”—Kalr Five and Kalr Eight sat behind us—“if you need anything.” I turned forward again. Closed my eyes and thought of Lieutenant Tisarwat.

Who stood in the garden, on the bridge stretching across the lake. The fish roiled the water below her, purple and green, orange and blue, gold and red, gaping as Tisarwat dropped food pellets into the water. Celar’s daughter Piat stood beside her, leaning on the rail. She had just said something that had surprised and dismayed Lieutenant Tisarwat. I didn’t query, but waited to hear Tisarwat’s answer.

“That’s ridiculous,” Tisarwat said, indignant. “First assistant to the chief of Horticulture of the entire station, that’s not nothing. If it weren’t for Horticulture no one on this station could eat or breathe. You don’t seriously think you’re doing some unimportant, useless job.”

“What, making tea for the chief of Horticulture?”

“And managing her appointments, and communicating her orders, and learning how the Gardens are organized. I bet if she stayed home for the next week, no one would even notice, you’d have everything running smoothly as normal.”

“That’s because everyone else knows their jobs.”

“You included.” Devious Tisarwat! I’d told her to stay away from Basnaaid, which would mean staying away from the Gardens, but she knew well enough I had to approve of a friendship with Station Administrator Celar’s daughter, if only on political grounds. But I couldn’t find it in myself to be too angry—her horrified astonishment at Piat’s dismissal of her own worth was obvious and sincere. And she’d clearly made short work of getting behind Piat’s defenses.

Citizen Piat folded her arms, turned around, her back to the rail, face turned away from Tisarwat. “I’m only here because the chief of Horticulture is in love with my mother.”

“Hardly surprising if she is,” acknowledged Lieutenant Tisarwat. “Your mother is gorgeous.” I was seeing through Tisarwat’s eyes, so I couldn’t see Piat’s expression. I could guess, though. So could Tisarwat, I saw. “And frankly, you take after her. If someone’s been telling you otherwise…” She stopped, unsure for a moment, I thought, if this was the best angle of attack. “Anyone who’s been telling you that you’ve got a shiny-but-useless assignment just to keep your mother happy, or that you’ll never be as beautiful or as competent as she is, well, they’ve been lying to you.” She dropped the whole handful of fish pellets into the water, which boiled with bright-colored scales. “Probably jealous.”

Piat scoffed, in a way that made it plain she was trying very hard not to cry. “Why would…” Stopped. About to say a name, perhaps, that she didn’t want to say, that would be an accusation. “Why would anyone be jealous of me?”

“Because you took the aptitudes.” I hadn’t said anything to Lieutenant Tisarwat about my guess that Raughd had never taken them, but she clearly hadn’t been the Lord of the Radch for a few days for nothing. “And the tests said you should be running something important. And anyone with eyes can see you’re going to be just as beautiful as your mother.” A moment of mortification at having said that going to be. And it wasn’t quite the sort of thing a seventeen-year-old would say. “Once you stop listening to people who just want to drag you down.”

Piat turned around, arms still crossed. Tears rolled down her face. “People get assignments for political reasons all the time.”

“Sure,” said Tisarwat. “Your mother probably got her first assignment for political reasons. Which probably included the fact that she could do the job.” It didn’t always—which Tisarwat well knew.

And that sounded dangerously like someone much older than Tisarwat ostensibly was. But Piat seemed unable to deflect it. She was driven to a last-ditch defense. “I’ve seen you mooning around the past few days. You’re only here because you’ve got a crush on Horticulturist Basnaaid.”

That scored a hit. But Lieutenant Tisarwat kept her outward composure. “I wouldn’t even be here except for you. Fleet captain told me I was too young for her and stay away. It was an order. I ought to stay away from the Gardens, but you’re here, aren’t you. So let’s go somewhere else and have a drink.”

Piat was silent a moment, taken aback, it seemed. “Not the Undergarden,” she said, finally.

“I should think not!” replied Tisarwat. Relieved, knowing she’d won this round, a minor victory but a victory all the same. “They haven’t even started repairs there yet. Let’s find somewhere we don’t have to pee in a bucket.”

By now Sword of Atagaris had moved away from the Ghost Gate, closer to Athoek Station. It had said almost nothing to Mercy of Kalr the whole time. Hardly surprising—ships generally weren’t much given to chitchat, and besides, Swords all thought they were better than the others.

On Mercy of Kalr Lieutenant Ekalu had just come off watch, and Seivarden had met her in the decade room. “Your opposite number on Sword of Atagaris was asking after you,” Ekalu said, and sat at the table, where an Etrepa had set her lunch.

Seivarden sat beside her. “Was she, now.” She already knew, of course. “And was she glad to see someone she knew on board?”

“I don’t think she recognized me,” replied Ekalu, and after a moment’s hesitation and a quick gesture from Seivarden, who’d had supper already, she took a mouthful of skel. Chewed and swallowed. “Not my name, anyway, I was only ever Amaat One to her. And I didn’t send any visuals. I was on watch.” Ekalu’s feelings about that—about Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant not realizing who she was—were complicated, and not entirely comfortable.

“Oh, I wish you had. I’d have loved to have seen her face.”

I saw that while Ekalu herself might well have enjoyed the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant’s discomfiture at being faced with an officer of such common origin, Seivarden’s obvious amusement at the same prospect troubled and dismayed her. It reminded me a bit too painfully of some of Lieutenant Awn’s interactions with Skaaiat Awer, twenty years gone and more. Ship said, in my ear, where I sat in the flier, “I’ll say something to Lieutenant Seivarden.” But I wasn’t sure what Ship could say that Seivarden would understand.

In the Mercy of Kalr decade room, Ekalu said, “Expect her to contact you at the start of your next watch. She’s determined to invite you over for tea, now Sword of Atagaris is going to be close enough.”

“I can’t be spared,” Seivarden said, mock-serious. “There are only three watchstanders aboard right now.”

“Oh, Ship will tell you if anything important happens,” Ekalu said, all sarcastic disdain.

In Command, Medic said, “Lieutenants. Letting you know that something appears to have exited the Ghost Gate.”

“What is it?” asked Seivarden, rising. Ekalu continued to eat, but called up a view of what Medic was looking at.

“It’s too small to see well until it’s closer,” said Ship, to me, in the flier over Athoeki water. “I think it’s a shuttle or a very small ship of some sort.”

“We’ve asked Sword of Atagaris about it,” Medic said, in Command.

“You mean they haven’t threatened to destroy it unless it identifies itself?” asked Seivarden, halfway to Command herself by now.

“Nothing to worry about,” came the reply from Sword of Atagaris, whichever of its lieutenants was on duty sounding almost overly bored. “It’s just trash. The Ghost Gate doesn’t get cleaned out like the others. Some ship must have broken up in the gate a long time ago.”

“Your very great pardon,” said Medic dryly as Seivarden came into Command, “but we were under the impression there was no one on the other side of that gate, and never had been.”

“Oh, people go there on a dare, sometimes, or just joyriding. But this one isn’t recent, you can see it’s pretty old. We’ll pull it in—it’s large enough to be a hazard.”

“Why not just burn it?” asked Seivarden, and Ship must have sent her words to Sword of Atagaris, because that lieutenant replied, “Well, you know, there is some smuggling in the system. We always check these things out.”

“And what are they smuggling out of an uninhabited system?” asked Medic.

“Oh, nothing out of the Ghost Gate, I should think,” came the blithe answer. “But generally, you know, the usual. Illegal drugs. Stolen antiques.”

“Aatr’s tits!” swore Seivarden. “Speaking of antiques.” Ship had asked Sword of Atagaris for a closer image of the object in question and, receiving it, had shown it to Medic and Seivarden both, a curving shell, scarred and scorched.

“Quite a piece of junk, isn’t it?” replied the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant.

“Ignorant fuck,” said Seivarden, after Sword of Atagaris had signed off. “What are they teaching in officer training these days?”

Medic turned to regard her. “Did I miss something, Lieutenant?”

“That’s a supply locker off a Notai military shuttle,” replied Seivarden. “You honestly don’t recognize it?”

Radchaai often speak of the Radch as containing only one sort of people, who speak only one language—Radchaai. But the interior of a Dyson sphere is vast. Even if it had begun with a single population, speaking only one language (and it had not), it would not have ended that way. Many of the ships and captains that had opposed Anaander’s expansion had been Notai.

“No,” said Medic, “I don’t recognize it. It doesn’t look very Notai to me. It doesn’t really look like a supply locker, either. It does look old, though.”

“My house is Notai. Was.” Seivarden’s house had been absorbed by another one, during the thousand years she’d spent in suspension. “We were loyal, though. We had an old shuttle from the wars, docked at Inais. People used to come from all over to see it.” The memory of it must have been unexpectedly specific and sharp. She swallowed, so that her sudden sense of loss wouldn’t be audible when she spoke next. “How did a Notai ship break up in the Ghost Gate? None of those battles were anywhere near here.”

In Seivarden’s and Medic’s vision, Ship displayed images of the sort of shuttle Seivarden was talking about. “Yes, like that,” said Seivarden. “Show us the supply locker.” Ship obliged.

“There’s writing on it,” said Medic.

“Seeing?” Seivarden frowned, puzzling out the words. “Seeing… something?”

“Divine Essence of Perception,” said Ship. “One of the last defeated in the wars. It’s a museum now.”

“It doesn’t look particularly Notai,” said Medic. “Except for the writing.”

“And the writing on this one,” said Seivarden, gesturing into view the image of the one that had come out of the Ghost Gate, “is all burned away. Ship, did you really not recognize it?”

Ship said, to Medic and Seivarden both, “Not immediately. I’m a little less than a thousand years old and never have seen any Notai ships firsthand. But if Lieutenant Seivarden had not identified it herself, I would have within a few minutes.”

“Would you have, ever,” asked Medic, “if we trusted Sword of Atagaris?” And then, struck by a new thought, “Could Sword of Atagaris have failed to recognize it?”

“Probably it has,” said Seivarden. “Otherwise, surely, it would tell its lieutenant.”

“Unless they’re both lying,” said Ekalu, who had been listening in the whole time from the decade room. “They are taking the trouble to pick up a piece of debris that they might as well mark and let someone else take care of.”

“In which case,” remarked Seivarden, “they’re assuming Mercy of Kalr won’t recognize it. Which doesn’t strike me as a safe assumption.”

“I don’t presume to know Sword of Atagaris’s opinion of my intelligence,” said Ship.

Seivarden gave a small laugh. “Medic, ask Sword of Atagaris to tell us what they find when they examine that… debris.”

Ultimately, Sword of Atagaris replied that it had found nothing of interest, and subsequently destroyed the locker.

Citizen Fosyf’s house was the largest of three buildings, a long, balconied two-storied structure of polished stone, flecks of black and gray and here and there patches of blue and green that gleamed as the light changed. It sat beside a wide, clear lake with stony shores, and a weathered wooden dock, with a small, graceful boat moored alongside, white sails furled. Mountains loomed around, and moss and trees edged the lakeshore. The actual tea plantation—I’d seen it as we flew in, wavering strips of velvet-looking green running across the hillsides and around outcrops of black stone—was hidden behind a ridge. The air was 20.8 degrees C, the breeze light and pleasant and smelling of leaves and cold water.

“Here we are, Fleet Captain!” Citizen Fosyf called as she climbed out of her flier. “Peace and quiet. Under other circumstances I’d suggest fishing in the lake. Boating. Climbing if that’s the sort of thing you like. But even just staying in is nice, here. There’s a separate bathhouse behind the main building, just across from where you’ll be staying. A big tub with seating for at least a dozen, plenty of hot water. It’s a Xhai thing. Barbarically luxurious.”

Raughd had come up beside her mother. “Drinks in the bathhouse! There’s nothing like it after a long night.” She grinned.

“Raughd can manage to find long nights even here,” observed Fosyf pleasantly as Captain Hetnys and her Sword of Atagaris ancillary approached. “Ah, to be young again! But come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”

The patches of blue-green in the building stone flared and died away as our angle on it changed. Around the other side of the house was a broad stretch of flat, gray stones, shaded by two large trees and thickly grown with moss. To the left of that stretched the ellipse of a low building, the nearer long side of wood, the nearer end and, presumably, the farther long side of glass. “The bath,” said Fosyf, with a gesture. On the other side of the mossy stone, up against a road that ran over the ridge and down to the house by the lake, sat another black and blue-green stone building, two-storied, but smaller than the main house and not balconied as it was. The whole side facing us was taken up with a terrace under a leafy, vine-tangled arbor, where a group of people stood waiting for us. Most of them wore shirts and trousers, or skirts that looked as though they’d been painstakingly constructed from cut-apart trousers, the fabric faded and worn, once-bright blues and greens and reds. None of them wore gloves.

Accompanying them was a person dressed in the expected, and conventional, jacket, trousers, and gloves and scattering of jewelry. By her features, I guessed she was a Samirend overseer here. We stopped some three meters from the group, in the shade of the wide arbor, and Fosyf said, “Just for you, Fleet Captain, since I knew you’d want to hear them sing.”

The overseer turned away and said to the assembled people, “Here, now. Sing.” In Radchaai. Slow and loud.

One of the elders of the group leaned toward the person next to her and said, in Delsig, “I told you it wasn’t the right song.” A few gestures and a few whispered words under the somewhat agitated eye of the overseer, who apparently didn’t understand the reason for the delay, and then a collective breath and they began to sing. “Oh you, who live sheltered by God, who live all your lives in her shadow.” I knew it, every line and every part. Most Delsig-speaking Valskaayans sang it at funerals.

It was a gesture meant to comfort. Even if they hadn’t already known the reason for our coming, they could not have failed to notice my shaved head and the mourning stripe across my face, and Captain Hetnys’s. These people didn’t know us, quite possibly didn’t know who had died. We represented the forces that had conquered them, torn them away from their home world to labor here. They had no reason to care for our feelings. They had no reason to think that either of us knew enough Delsig to understand the words. And no expectation that we would understand the import of their song even if we did. Such things are fraught with symbolic and historic significance, carry great emotional weight—but only for someone aware of that significance to begin with.

They sang it anyway. And when they were finished, the elder said, bowing, “Citizens, we will pray for the one you’ve lost.” In perfectly comprehensible, if heavily accented, Radchaai.

“Citizens,” I replied, also in Radchaai, because I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to realize how much Delsig I spoke, just yet. “We are greatly moved, and we thank you for your song and your prayers.”

The overseer spoke up, loud and slow. “The fleet captain thanks you. Now go.”

“Wait,” I interjected. And turned to Fosyf. “Will you favor me, and give these people something to eat and drink before they go?” She blinked at me, uncomprehending. The overseer stared at me in frank disbelief. “It’s a whim I have. If there’s any question of impropriety, I’ll be happy to pay you back. Whatever is on hand. Tea and cakes, perhaps.” It was the sort of thing I’d expect the kitchen here to always have ready.

Fosyf recovered from her immediate surprise. “Of course, Fleet Captain.” She gestured toward the overseer, who, still clearly aghast at my request, herded the field workers away.

The ground floor of the building we were to stay in was one large, open space, part dining room, part sitting room, the sitting-room side full of wide, deep chairs and side tables that held game-boards with bright-colored counters. On the other side of the room we ate egg and bean curd soup at a long table with artfully mismatched chairs, by a sideboard piled with fruit and cakes. The line of small windows around the ceiling had gone dull with twilight and clouds that had blown in. Upstairs were narrow hallways, each bedroom and its attached sitting room carefully color coordinated. Mine was orange and blue, in muted tones, the thick, soft blankets on the bed very carefully made, I suspected, to appear comfortably worn and faded. A casual country cottage, one might have thought at first glance, but all of it meticulously placed and arranged.

Citizen Fosyf, sitting at one end of the table, said, “This actually used to be storage and administration. The main building was a guesthouse, you know. Before the annexation.”

“All the bedrooms in the main house exit onto the balconies,” said Raughd. Who had maneuvered to sit beside me, was now leaning close with head tilted and a knowing smile. “Very convenient for assignations.” She was, I realized, trying to flirt with me. Even though I was in mourning and so her pursuit of me would be highly improper in the best of situations.

“Ha-ha!” laughed Citizen Fosyf. “Raughd has always found those outer stairs useful. I did myself when I was that age.”

The nearest town was an hour away by flier. There was no one here to have assignations with except household members—over in the main house, I assumed, would be cousins and clients. Not everyone in a household was always related in a way that made sex off-limits, so there might well have been allowable relationships here that didn’t involve intimidating the servants.

Captain Hetnys sat across the table from me, Sword of Atagaris standing stiff scant meters behind her, waiting in case it should be needed. As an ancillary, it wasn’t required to observe mourning customs. Kalr Five stood behind me, having apparently convinced everyone here that she, also, was an ancillary.

Citizen Sirix sat silent beside me. The house servants I’d seen appeared to mostly be Samirend with a few Xhais, though I’d seen a few Valskaayans working on the grounds outside. There had been a small, nearly undetectable hesitation on the part of the servants that had shown us to our rooms—I suspected that they would have sent Sirix to servants’ quarters if they’d not been given other instructions. It was possible someone here would recognize her, even though she’d last been downwell twenty years ago and wasn’t from this estate, but another one a hundred or more kilometers away.

“Raughd’s tutors always found it dull here,” said Fosyf.

“They were dull!” exclaimed Raughd. In a singsong, nasal voice, she declaimed, “Citizen! In third meter and Acute mode, tell us how God is like a duck.” Captain Hetnys laughed. “I always tried to make life more amusing for them,” Raughd went on, “but they never seemed to appreciate it.”

Citizen Fosyf laughed as well. I did not. I had heard about such amusements from my lieutenants in the past, and had already seen Raughd’s tendency toward cruelty. “Can you?” I asked. “Tell us in verse, I mean, how God is like a duck?”

“I shouldn’t think God was anything like a duck,” said Captain Hetnys, emboldened by my past few days of outward calm. “Honestly. A duck!”

“But surely,” I admonished, “God is a duck.” God was the universe, and the universe was God.

Fosyf waved my objection away. “Yes, yes, Fleet Captain, but surely one can say that quite simply without all the fussing over meters and proper diction and whatnot.”

“And why choose something so ridiculous?” asked Captain Hetnys. “Why not ask how God is like… rubies or stars or”—she gestured vaguely around—“even tea? Something valuable. Something vast. It would be much more proper.”

“A question,” I replied, “that might reward close consideration. Citizen Fosyf, I gather the tea here is entirely handpicked and processed by hand.”

“It is!” Fosyf beamed. This was, clearly, one of the centers of her pride. “Handpicked—you can see it whenever you like. The manufactory is nearby, very easy to visit. Should you find that proper.” A brief pause, as she blinked, someone nearby having apparently sent her a message. “The section just over the ridge is due to be picked tomorrow. And of course the making of the leaves into tea—the crafting of it—goes on all day and night. The leaves must be withered and stirred, till they reach just the right point, and then dry-cooked and rolled until just the right moment. Then they’re graded and have the final drying. You can do all those things by machine, of course, some do, and it’s perfectly acceptable tea.” The smallest hint of contempt and dismissal behind that perfectly acceptable. “The sort of thing you’d get good value for in a shop. But this tea isn’t available in shops.”

Fosyf’s tea, Daughter of Fishes, would only be available as a gift. Or—maybe—bought directly from Citizen Fosyf to be given as a gift. The Radch used money, but a staggering amount of exchanges were not money for goods, but gift for gift. Citizen Fosyf was not paid much, if anything, for her tea. Not technically. Those green fields we’d flown over, all that tea, the complicated production, was not a matter of maximizing cost efficiency—no, the point of Daughter of Fishes was prestige.

Which explained why, though there were doubtless larger plantations on Athoek, that likely pulled in profits that at first glance looked much more impressive, the only grower who’d felt competent to approach me so openly was the one who did not sell her tea at all.

“It must take a delicate touch,” I observed. “The picking, and the processing. Your workers must be tremendously skilled.” Beside me, Citizen Sirix gave an almost inaudible cough, choking slightly on her last mouthful of soup.

“They are, Fleet Captain, they are! You see why I would never treat them badly, I need them too much! In fact, they live in an old guesthouse themselves, a few kilometers away, over the ridge.” Rain spattered against the small windows. It only ever rained at night, Athoek Station had told me, and the rain always ended in time for the leaves to dry for the morning picking.

“How nice,” I replied, my voice bland.

I rose before the sun, when the sky was a pearled pink and pale blue, and the lake and its valley still shadowed. The air was cool but not chill, and I had not had enough space to run for more than a year. It had been a habit when I had been in the Itran Tetrarchy, a place where sport was a matter of religious devotion, exercises for their ball game were a prayer and a meditation. It felt good to return to it, even though no one here played the game or even knew it existed. I took the road toward the low ridge at an easy jog, wary of my right hip, which I had injured a year ago and which hadn’t healed quite right.

As I came over the ridge, I heard singing. One strong voice, pitched to echo off the stony outcrops and across the field where workers with baskets slung over their shoulders rapidly plucked leaves from the waist-high bushes. At least half of those workers were children. The song was in Delsig, a lament by the singer that someone she loved was committed exclusively to someone else. It was a distinctively Valskaayan subject, not the sort of thing that would come up in a typical Radchaai relationship. And it was a song I’d heard before. Hearing it now raised a sharp memory of Valskaay, of the smell of wet limestone in the cave-riddled district I’d last been in, there.

The singer was apparently a lookout. As I drew nearer, the words changed. Still Delsig, largely incomprehensible, I knew, to the overseers.

Here is the soldier

So greedy, so hungry for songs.

So many she’s swallowed, they leak out,

They spill out of the corners of her mouth

And fly away, desperate for freedom.

I was glad my facial expressions weren’t at all involuntary. It was cleverly done, fitting exactly into the meter of the song, and I wouldn’t have been able to help smiling, thus betraying the fact that I’d understood. As it was, I ran on, apparently oblivious. But watching the workers. Every single one of them appeared to be Valskaayan. The singer’s satire on me had been intended for these people, and it had been sung in a Valskaayan language. On Athoek Station, I had been told that all Fosyf’s field workers were Valskaayan, and at the time it had struck me as odd. Not that some of them might be, but that all of them would be. Seeing confirmation of it, now, the wrongness of it struck me afresh.

In a situation like this, a hold full of Valskaayans ought to have been either parceled out over dozens of different plantations and whatever other places might welcome their labor, or held in suspension and slowly doled out over decades. There should have been, maybe, a half dozen Valskaayans here. Instead there appeared to be six times that. And I’d have expected to see some Samirend, maybe even some Xhais or Ychana, or members of other groups, because there had certainly been more than Xhais and Ychana here before the annexation.

There also shouldn’t have been such a sharp separation between the outdoor servants—all Valskaayan as far as I’d seen this morning and the day before—and the indoor, all Samirend with a few Xhais. Valskaay had been annexed a hundred years ago, and by now at least some of the first transportees or their children ought to have tested or worked their way into other positions.

I ran as far as the workers’ residence, a building of brown brick with no glass in the windows, only here and there a blanket stretched across. It had clearly never been as large or as luxurious as Fosyf’s lakeside house. But it had a lovely view across its valley, now filled with tea, and a direct road to that wide and glassy lake. The trampled dirt surrounding it might well have been gardens or carefully tended lawns, once. I was curious what the inside of it was like, but instead of entering uninvited and very likely unwelcome, I turned there to run back. “Fleet Captain,” Mercy of Kalr said in my ear, “Lieutenant Seivarden begs to remind you to be careful of your leg.”

“Ship,” I replied, silently, “my leg is reminding me itself.” Which Mercy of Kalr knew. And the conversation with Seivarden, that had produced Ship’s message, had happened two days before.

“The lieutenant will fret,” said Ship. “And you do seem to be ignoring it.” Was that disapproval I detected in its apparently serene voice?

“I’ll relax the rest of the day,” I promised. “I’m almost back anyway.”

By the time I crossed the ridge again, the sky and the valley were lighter, the air warmer. I found Citizen Sirix on a bench under the arbor, a bowl of tea steaming in one hand. Jacketless, shirt untucked, no jewelry. Mourning attire, though she was not technically required to mourn for Translator Dlique, had not shaved her head or put on a mourning stripe. “Good morning,” I called, walking up to the terrace. “Will you show me about the bathhouse, Citizen? Maybe explain some things to me?”

She hesitated, just a moment. “All right,” she said finally, warily, as though I’d offered her something risky or dangerous.

The long, curving bathhouse window framed black and gray cliffs and ice-sheeted peaks. On one far end, just the smallest corner of the house we were staying in. The guests here must have prized this place for its vistas—few if any Radchaai would have thought to make an entire wall of a bath into a window.

The walls that weren’t window were light, elaborately carved and polished wood. In the stone-paved floor was a round pool of hot water, bench-lined, in which one sat and sweated, and next to it a chilled one. “It tones you after all the heat,” said Sirix, on the bench in the hot water, across from me. “Closes your pores.”

The heat felt good on my aching hip. The run had, perhaps, not been terribly wise. “Does it, now?”

“Yes. It’s very cleansing.” Which seemed an odd word to use. I suspected it was a translation of a more complicated one, from Xhi or Liost into Radchaai. “Nice life you have,” Sirix continued. I cocked an interrogatory eyebrow. “Tea the moment you wake up. Clothes laundered and pressed while you sleep. Do you even dress yourself?”

“Generally. If I need to be extremely formal, though, it’s good to have some expert help.” I myself had never needed it, but I had provided that help on a number of occasions. “So, your forebears. The original Samirend transportees. They were all, or nearly all, sent to the mountains to pick tea?”

“Many of them, yes, Fleet Captain.”

“And that annexation was quite some time ago, so as they became civilized”—I allowed just the smallest trace of irony to creep into my voice—“they tested into other assignments. That makes perfect sense to me. But what doesn’t make sense is why there are no Samirend working in the fields here. Or anyone but Valskaayans. And there are no Valskaayans working anywhere but in the fields, or one or two on the grounds. The annexation of Valskaay was a hundred years ago. No Valskaayans have made overseer in all that time?”

“Well, Fleet Captain,” said Sirix evenly, “no one’s going to stay picking tea if they can get away from it. Field hands are paid based on meeting a minimum weight of leaves picked. But the minimum is huge—it would take three very fast workers an entire day to pick so much.”

“Or a worker and several children,” I guessed. I had seen children working in the fields, when I’d run by.

Sirix gestured acknowledgment. “So they’re none of them making the actual wages they’re supposed to. Then there’s food. Ground meal—you had some upwell. They flavor it with twigs and dust that’s left over from the tea making. Which, by the way, Fosyf charges them for. Premium prices. It’s not just any floor sweepings, it’s Daughter of Fishes!” She stopped a moment, to take a few breaths, too dangerously close to saying something openly angry. “Two bowls a day, of the porridge. It’s thin provisions, and if they want anything more they have to buy it.”

“At premium prices,” I guessed.

“Just so. There are generally some garden plots if they want to grow vegetables, but they have to buy seeds and tools and it’s time out from picking tea. They’re houseless, so they don’t have family to give them the things they need, they have to buy them. They can’t any of them get travel permits, so they can’t go very far away to buy anything. They can’t order things because they don’t have any money at all, they’re too heavily in debt to get credit, so Fosyf sells them things—handhelds, access to entertainments, better food, whatever—at whatever price she wants.”

“The Samirend field workers were able to overcome this?”

“Some of the servants in this house are doubtless still paying on the debts of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Or their aunts. The only way out was pulling together into houses and working very, very hard. But the Valskaayans… I suppose I’d say they aren’t very ambitious. And they don’t seem to understand about making houses of their own.”

Valskaayan families didn’t work quite the way Radchaai ones did. But I knew Valskaayans were entirely able to understand the advantage of having something that at least seemed like Radchaai houses, and on and around Valskaay groups of families had set up such arrangements at the first opportunity. “And none of the children ever test into other assignments?” I asked, though I already knew what the answer would be.

“These days field workers don’t take the aptitudes,” replied Sirix. Visibly struggling now with the reeducation that had made it difficult, if not impossible, for her to express anger without a good deal of discomfort. She looked away from me, breathed carefully through her mouth. “Not that they would ever test any differently. They’re ignorant, superstitious savages, every one of them. But even so. It’s not right.” Another deep breath. “Fosyf’s not the only one doing it. And she’ll tell you it’s because they won’t take the tests.” That I could believe. Last I was on Valskaay, taking the tests or not was an urgent issue for quite a lot of people. “But there aren’t any more transportees coming, are there? We didn’t get anyone shipped here from the last annexation. So if the growers run out of Valskaayans, who’s going to pick tea for miserable food and hardly any wages? It’s just so much more convenient if the field workers can never get themselves or their children out of here. Fleet Captain, it’s not right. The governor doesn’t care about a bunch of houseless savages, and nobody who does care can get the attention of the Lord of the Radch.”

“You think that strike twenty years ago escaped her attention?” I asked.

“It must have. Or she’d have done something.” Three shallow breaths, through her mouth. Struggling with her anger. “Excuse me.” She stood hastily, throwing a shower of hot water, and levered herself out of the pool, strode over to the cold, and immersed herself. Five brought her a towel, and she climbed out of the cold water and left the bath without another word to me.

I closed my eyes. On Athoek Station, Lieutenant Tisarwat slept, deep, between dreams, one arm thrown over her face. My attention shifted to Mercy of Kalr. Seivarden stood watch. She’d been saying something to one of her Amaats. “This business with the fleet captain running off downwell.” Odd. This wasn’t the sort of thing Seivarden was at all likely to discuss with one of her Amaats. “Is this really something necessary, or just some specific injustice that infuriates her?”

“Lieutenant Seivarden,” replied the Amaat, oddly stiff even given this crew’s love of imitating ancillaries. “You know I have to report such a question to the fleet captain.”

Slightly exasperated, Seivarden waved that answer away. “Yes, of course, Ship. Still.”

I saw suddenly what was happening. Seivarden was talking to Mercy of Kalr, not the Amaat. The Amaat was seeing Ship’s answers displayed in her vision and she was reading them off. As though she had been truly an ancillary, a part of the ship, one of dozens of mouths for Ship to speak through. Thankfully, none of the crew had ever attempted such a thing with me. I wouldn’t have approved in the least.

But it was clear, watching, that Seivarden found it comfortable. Comforting. She was worried, and Ship speaking like this was reassuring. Not for any solid, rational reason. Just because it was.

“Lieutenant,” said the Amaat. Ship, through the Amaat, “I can only tell you what the fleet captain has already said herself, in her briefings to you. If, however, you want my personal opinion, I think it’s something of both. And the fleet captain’s absence, and the removal of Citizen Raughd from Athoek Station, is allowing Lieutenant Tisarwat to make valuable political contacts among the younger of the station’s prominent citizens.”

Seivarden gave a skeptical hah. “Next you’ll be telling me our Tisarwat is a gifted politician!”

“I think she’ll surprise you, Lieutenant.”

Seivarden clearly didn’t believe Mercy of Kalr. “Even so, Ship. Our fleet captain generally keeps out of trouble, but when she doesn’t, it’s never the insignificant sort. And we’re hours and hours away from being able to help her. If you see something brewing and she’s too distracted to ask us to come in closer so we’re there if she needs us, are you going to tell me?”

“That would require knowing days in advance that something was, as you say, brewing, Lieutenant. I can’t imagine the fleet captain so distracted for so long.” Seivarden frowned. “But, Lieutenant, I am as concerned for the fleet captain’s safety as you are.” Which was as much of an answer as Ship could give, and Seivarden would have to be happy with that.

“Lieutenant Seivarden,” said Mercy of Kalr. “Message incoming from Hrad.”

Seivarden gestured go ahead. An unfamiliar voice sounded in her ears. “This is Fleet Captain Uemi, commanding Sword of Inil, dispatched from Omaugh Palace. I’m ordered to take control of the security of Hrad system.” One gate away, Hrad system was. More or less next door. “My compliments to Fleet Captain Breq. Fighting is still intense at Tstur Palace. Several outstations have been destroyed. Depending on the outcome, the Lord of the Radch may send you a troop carrier. She sends you her greetings, in any event, and trusts you’re doing well.”

“Do you know Fleet Captain Uemi, Ship?” There was no expectation of an immediate, this-moment reply—Hrad was hours away at lightspeed, through the connecting gate.

“Not well,” replied Mercy of Kalr.

“And Sword of Inil?”

“It’s a Sword.”

“Hah!” Seivarden, amused.

“Lieutenant, the fleet captain left instructions in case such a message should be delivered in her absence.”

“Did she.” Seivarden wasn’t sure whether she was surprised at that or not. “Well, let’s have it then.”

My instructions had been minor enough. Seivarden, replying, said, “This is Lieutenant Seivarden, commanding Mercy of Kalr in Fleet Captain Breq’s temporary absence. Most courteous greetings to Fleet Captain Uemi, and we are grateful for the news. Begging Fleet Captain Uemi’s indulgence, Fleet Captain Breq wonders if Sword of Inil took on any new crew at Omaugh Palace.” Though it might not be new crew I should worry about. It was entirely possible to make ancillaries out of older adults.

But no reply could reach me before supper. The question puzzled Seivarden, who didn’t know about Tisarwat, but Ship wouldn’t explain it to her.

Walking back to the house I met Raughd coming from the main building. “Good morning, Fleet Captain!” she said, with a sunny smile. “It’s so invigorating to be up at the break of day like this. I really ought to make a habit of it.” I had to admit, it was a creditably charming smile, even given the nearly undetectable strain behind it—even if she hadn’t just implied as much, I was sure this was not an hour when Raughd was accustomed to rising. But knowing as much as I did about her quite spoiled the effect for me. “Don’t tell me you’ve already been to the bath,” she added, with the merest touch of disappointment, calculatedly coy.

“Good morning, Citizen,” I replied without stopping. “And yes, I have.” And went into the house for breakfast.

13

After breakfast—fruit and bread that Fosyf’s servants had left lying on the sideboard the night before, by a polite fiction only leftovers from supper—Captain Hetnys and I were supposed to spend the day sitting quietly, praying at regular intervals, eating spare, simple meals. We sat, accordingly, on the sitting-room side of the house’s open ground floor. As the days went on we could properly spend more time farther from the house—sit, for instance, under the arbor outside. Convention allowed a certain amount of wider movement, for those who could not be still in their grief—I had taken advantage of that for my run that morning, and to use the bath. But most of the next few days would be spent in our rooms, or here in this sitting room, with only each other for company, or any neighbors who might stop by to console us.

Captain Hetnys did not wear her uniform—in these circumstances she was not required to. Her untucked shirt was a muted rose, over olive-green trousers. But what civilian clothes I had were either far too formal for this setting, or else they dated from my years outside the Radch, and if I wore either I would not seem to be properly in mourning. Instead I wore my brown and black uniform shirt and trousers. In strictest propriety I ought to have worn no jewelry, but I would not part with Lieutenant Awn’s memorial token, and pinned it on the inside of my shirt. We sat silent for a while, Kalr Five and Sword of Atagaris standing motionless behind us, in case we should need them. Captain Hetnys grew increasingly tense, though of course she showed little outward sign of it until Sirix came down the steps to join us. Then Captain Hetnys rose, abruptly, and paced around the perimeter of the room. She had said nothing to Sirix on the trip here, nothing last night. Intended to say nothing to her now, it seemed. But that was perfectly within the bounds of proper mourning, which allowed for some eccentric behavior at such a time.

At midday, servants came in with trays of food—more bread, which could be a luxury on stations but was still considered a plain, simple kind of food, and various pastes and mixtures meant to be spread on it, all of which would be lightly seasoned, if at all. Even so, judging by last night’s supper I was sure they would only technically qualify as austere eating.

One servant went over to the wall and, to my surprise, pulled it aside. Nearly the entire wall was a series of folding panels that opened out onto the arbored terrace, admitting filtered sunlight into the room, and a pleasant, leaf-scented breeze. Sirix took her lunch to one of the benches outside—though the wall-wide doorway also made the division between inside and outside an ambiguous one.

On Athoek Station, Lieutenant Tisarwat sat in a tea shop—sprawling, comfortable chairs around a low table littered with empty and half-empty arrack bottles. More than her pay was worth—she’d bought them on credit, then, or they were gifts based on her presumed status. Or mine. One or the other of us would have to find some way to make a return, but that was unlikely to pose a problem. Citizen Piat sat beside Tisarwat, and a half dozen other young people sat in the nearby chairs. Someone had just said something funny—everyone was laughing.

On Mercy of Kalr Medic raised an eyebrow, hearing the Kalr assisting her singing softly to herself.

Who only ever loved once?

Who ever said “I will never love again”

and kept their word?

Not I.

On Athoek, in the mountains, Captain Hetnys stopped pacing, took her own lunch to the table. Sirix, on the bench out on the terrace, seemed not even to notice. One of the servants walked by her, paused, said something quick and quiet that I couldn’t quite catch, or perhaps she’d spoken in Liost. Sirix looked up at her, serious, and said quite clearly in Radchaai, “I’m just an adviser, Citizen.” Not even a trace of rancor. Odd, after her unhappiness that morning, that indignant sense of injustice.

Above, in the tea shop on Athoek Station, someone said, “Now that Captain Hetnys and that really quite frightening fleet captain are downwell, it’s up to Tisarwat to protect us from the Presger!”

“Not a chance,” replied Tisarwat. “If the Presger decide to attack us there’s nothing we can do. But I think it’s going to be a long time before the Presger ever get to us.” Word of the split in the Lord of the Radch had not yet gotten out, and problems with the gates were still officially “unanticipated difficulties.” Somewhat predictably, those who didn’t merely accept that found the idea of alien interference to be a more plausible explanation. “We’ll be fine.”

“But cut off like this,” someone began.

Citizen Piat said, “We’re fine. Even if we were to be cut off from the planet”—and someone muttered a gods forbid—“we’d be fine here. We can feed ourselves, anyway.”

“Or if not,” said someone else, “we can grow skel in the lake in the Gardens.”

Someone else laughed. “It would take that horticulturist down a peg or two! You should see to it, Piat.”

Tisarwat had learned a thing or two from her Bos. She kept her face—and her voice—impressively bland. “What horticulturist is this?”

“What’s her name, Basnaaid?” said the person who had laughed. “She’s a nobody, really. But, you know, an Awer from Omaugh Palace came and offered her clientage and she refused—she’s got no family, really, and she isn’t much to look at, but still, she was too good for Awer!”

Piat was sitting on one side of Tisarwat, and on the other was someone Ship told me was Skaaiat Awer’s cousin—though not, herself, an Awer. Tisarwat had invited her; she wasn’t usually a part of this group. “Skaaiat didn’t take offense,” the cousin said now. And smiled, almost taking the edge off her tone.

“Well, no, of course she didn’t. But it can’t possibly be proper to refuse such an offer. It just tells you what sort of person the horticulturist is.”

“Indeed it does,” agreed Skaaiat’s cousin.

“She’s good at what she does,” said Piat, in a sudden rush, as though she’d spent the last few moments nerving herself to say it. “She should be proud.”

A moment of awkward silence. Then, “I wish Raughd was here,” said the person who had brought the topic up to begin with. “I don’t know why she had to go downwell, too. We always laugh so hard when Raughd is here.”

“Not the person you’re laughing at,” pointed out Skaaiat’s cousin.

“Well, no, of course not,” replied Raughd’s partisan. “Or we wouldn’t be laughing at them. Tisarwat, you should see Raughd’s impression of Captain Hetnys. It’s hilarious.”

On Athoek, in the house, Sirix rose from her seat and went upstairs. I shifted my attention to Five, saw that she was sweating in her uniform and had been bored watching me and Captain Hetnys. Was thinking about the food on the sideboard, which she could smell from where she stood. I would need to go upstairs myself soon, pretend, perhaps, to nap, so Five could have a break, so she and Sword of Atagaris could have their own meals. Captain Hetnys—unaware of having just been mentioned upwell—went out to sit on the terrace, now Sirix was safely away.

One of the servants approached Kalr Five. Stood a moment, debating, I suspected, what sort of address to use, and settled finally on, “If you please.”

“Yes, Citizen,” Five said to the servant, flat and toneless.

“This arrived this morning,” the servant said. She held out a small parcel wrapped in a velvety-looking violet cloth. “It was most particularly requested that it be given directly into the fleet captain’s keeping.” She didn’t explain why she was giving it to Five instead.

“Thank you, Citizen,” said Five, and took the parcel. “Who sent it?”

“The messenger didn’t say.” But I thought she knew, or suspected.

Five unwrapped the cloth, to reveal a plain box of thin, pale wood. Inside sat what looked like a triangular section of thick, heavy bread, quite stale; a pin, a two-centimeter silver disk dangling from an arrangement of blue and green glass beads; and underneath these, a small card printed close with characters I thought were Liost. The language so many Samirend still spoke. A quick query to Athoek Station confirmed my guess. And told me at least some of what was on the card.

Five put the lid back on the box. “Thank you, Citizen.”

I rose, without saying anything, and went over to Five and took the box and its wrapping and went up the stairs and through the narrow hallway to Sirix’s room. Knocked on the door. Said, when Sirix opened it, “Citizen, I believe this is actually for you.” Held out the box, its purple covering folded beneath it.

She looked at me, dubious. “There’s no one here to send me anything, Fleet Captain. You must be mistaken.”

“It certainly isn’t meant for me,” I said, still holding out the box. “Citizen,” I admonished, when she still did not move to take it.

Eight approached from behind her, to take it from me, but Sirix gestured her away. “It can’t possibly be mine,” she insisted.

With my free hand, I lifted the lid off the box so that she could see what was inside it. She went suddenly very still, seeming not even to breathe.

“I’m sorry to hear about your loss, Citizen,” I said. The pin was a memorial, the family name of the deceased was Odela. The card bore details about the deceased’s life and funeral. The purpose or meaning of the bread was unknown to me, but clearly it had meant something to whoever sent it. Meant something, certainly, to Sirix. Though I could not tell if her reaction was grief, or the distress of anger she could not express.

“You said you had no family, Citizen,” I said after a few uncomfortable, silent moments. “Clearly someone in Odela is thinking of you.” They must have heard Sirix was here with me.

“She has no right,” said Sirix. Outwardly calm, dispassionate, but I knew that was a necessity for her, a matter of survival. “None of them do. They can’t have it both ways, they can’t just take it back.” She took a breath, looked as though she would speak again but instead took another one. “Send it back,” she said then. “It isn’t mine, it can’t be. By their own actions.”

“If that’s what you want, Citizen, then I will.” I replaced the lid, unfolded the purple cloth, and wound it around the now-closed box.

“What,” Sirix said, bitterness creeping into her voice, “no exhortations to be grateful, to remember that they are, after all, my f—” Her voice broke—she had pushed herself too far. It said something about her usual self-control that she did not, that moment, slam the door in my face so that she could suffer unwatched. Or perhaps it said she knew that Eight was still in the room, that she would not be alone and unobserved no matter what she did.

“I can produce such exhortations if you’d like, Citizen, but they would be insincere.” I bowed. “If there is anything you need, do not hesitate to ask. I am at your service.”

She did close the door then. I could have watched her through Eight’s eyes, but I did not.

When supper arrived, so did Fosyf and Raughd. Sirix didn’t come downstairs, hadn’t since lunch. No one commented on it—she was only here by sufferance, because she was with me. After we ate, we sat right up at the edge of the room, the doors still wide. What we could see of the lake had gone leaden with the evening, shadowed, only the very tops of the peaks behind it still brilliant with the sunset. The air grew chill and damp, and the servants brought hot, bittersweet drinks in handled bowls. “Xhai-style,” Fosyf informed me. Without Sirix to flank me, I had Fosyf on one side and Raughd on the other. Captain Hetnys sat across from me, her chair turned a bit so she could look out toward the lake.

On Mercy of Kalr, the reply to the question I’d that morning asked Fleet Captain Uemi finally arrived. Ship played it in Lieutenant Ekalu’s ears. “All thanks, Lieutenant Seivarden, for your courteous greeting. My compliments to Fleet Captain Breq, but I did not take on any crew at Omaugh.”

I had left instructions for this, as well. “Fleet Captain Breq thanks Fleet Captain Uemi for her indulgence,” said Lieutenant Ekalu. Just as puzzled as Seivarden had been, hours ago. “Did any of Sword of Inil’s crew spend a day or two out of touch, on the palace station?”

“Well, Fleet Captain,” said Fosyf, downwell, in the growing dark by the lake, “you had a peaceful day, I hope?”

“Yes, thank you, Citizen.” I was under no obligation to be any more forthcoming. In fact, I could quite properly ignore anyone who spoke to me for the next week and a half, if I felt so moved.

“The fleet captain rises at an unbelievably early hour,” said Raughd. “I got up early especially to be sure there was someone to show her the bath, and she’d already been up for ages.”

“Clearly, Citizen,” said Captain Hetnys genially, “your idea of getting up early isn’t the same as ours.”

“Military discipline, Raughd,” observed Fosyf, voice indulgent. “For all your recent interest”—this with a sidelong glance at me—“you’d never have been suited to it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Raughd, airily. “I’ve never tried it, have I?”

“I went over the ridge this morning and saw your workers,” I remarked, not particularly interested in pursuing the issue of Raughd’s military fitness.

“I hope you could add some songs to your collection, Fleet Captain,” Fosyf replied. I inclined my head just slightly, barely an answer but sufficient.

“I don’t know why they didn’t just make ancillaries out of them,” observed Raughd. “Surely they’d be better off.” She simpered. “Two units off a troop carrier would do us, and still leave plenty for everyone else.”

Fosyf laughed. “Raughd has taken a sudden interest in the military! Been looking things up. Ships and uniforms and all sorts of things.”

“The uniforms are so appealing,” Raughd agreed. “I’m so glad you’re wearing yours, Fleet Captain.”

“Ancillaries can’t be new citizens,” I said.

“Well,” said Fosyf. “Well. You know, I’m not sure Valskaayans can be, either. Even on Valskaay there are problems, aren’t there? That religion of theirs.” Actually, there were several religions represented on Valskaay, and in its system, and various sects of all of them. But Fosyf meant the majority religion, the one everyone thought of as “Valskaayan.” It was a variety of exclusive monotheism, something most Radchaai found more or less incomprehensible. “Though I’m not sure you can really call it a religion. More a… a collection of superstitions and some very odd philosophical ideas.” Outside had grown darker still, the trees and moss-covered stones disappearing into shadow. “And the religion is the least of it. They have plenty of opportunity to become civilized. Why, look at the Samirend!” She gestured around, meaning, I supposed, the servants who had brought us supper. “They began where the Valskaayans are now. The Valskaayans have every opportunity, but do they take advantage of it? I don’t know if you saw their residence—a very nice guesthouse, fully as nice as the house I live in myself, but it’s practically a ruin. They can’t be bothered to keep their surroundings nice. But they go quite extravagantly into debt over a musical instrument, or a new handheld.”

“Or equipment for making alcohol,” said Raughd primly.

Fosyf sighed, apparently deeply grieved. “They use their own rations for that, some of them. And then go further into debt buying food. Most of them have never seen any of their wages. They lack discipline.”

“How many Valskaayans were sent to this system?” I asked Fosyf. “After that annexation. Do you know?”

“No idea, Fleet Captain.” Fosyf gestured resigned ignorance. “I just take the workers they assign me.”

“There were children working in the fields this morning,” I remarked. “Isn’t there a school?”

“No point,” Fosyf said. “Not with Valskaayans. They won’t attend. They just don’t have the seriousness of mind that’s necessary. No steadiness. Oh, but I do wish I could take you on a proper tour, Fleet Captain! When your two weeks is ended, perhaps. I do want to show off my tea, and I know you’ll want to hear every song you can.”

“Fleet Captain Breq,” said Captain Hetnys, who had been silent so far, “doesn’t only collect songs, as it happens.”

“Oh?” asked Fosyf.

“I stayed in her household during the fasting days,” Captain Hetnys said, “and do you know, her everyday dishes are a set of blue and violet Bractware. With all the serving pieces. In perfect condition.” Behind me, Ship showed me, Kalr Five was suppressing a satisfied smirk. We’d hardly eaten during the fasting days, as was proper, but Five had served what little we did eat on the Bractware and—no doubt purposefully—left the unused dishes where Captain Hetnys could see them.

“Well! What good taste, Fleet Captain! And I’m glad Hetnys mentions it.” She gestured, and a servant bent near, received murmured instruction, departed. “I have something you’ll be interested to see.”

Out in the dark a high, inhuman voice sang out, a long, sustained series of vowels on a single pitch. “Ah!” cried Fosyf. “That’s what I was waiting for.” Another voice joined the first, slightly lower, and then another, a bit higher, and another and another, until there were at least a dozen intoning voices, coming and going, dissonant and oddly choral-sounding.

Clearly Fosyf expected some sort of reaction from me. “What is it?” I asked.

“They’re plants,” Fosyf said, apparently delighted at the thought of having surprised me. “You might have seen some when you were out this morning. They have a sort of sac that collects air, and when that’s full, and the sun goes down, they whistle it out. As long as it’s not raining. Which is why you didn’t hear them last night.”

“Weeds,” observed Captain Hetnys. “Quite a nuisance, actually. They’ve tried to eradicate them, but they keep coming back.”

“Supposedly,” continued Fosyf, acknowledging the captain’s remark with a nod, “the person who bred them was a temple initiate. And the plants sing various words in Xhi, all of them to do with the temple mysteries, and when the other initiates heard the plants sing they realized the mysteries had been revealed to everyone. They murdered the designer. Tore her to pieces with their bare hands, supposedly, right here by this lake.”

I hadn’t thought to ask what sort of guesthouse this had been. “This was a holy place, then? Is there a temple?” In my experience, major temples were nearly always surrounded by cities or at least villages, and I’d seen no sign of that as we’d flown in. I wondered if there had used to be one, and it was razed to make way for tea, or if this whole, huge area had been sacrosanct. “Was the lake holy, and this was a temple guesthouse?”

“Very little gets past the fleet captain!” exclaimed Raughd.

“Indeed,” agreed her mother. “What’s left of the temple is across the lake. There was an oracle there for a while, but all that’s left now is a superstition about wish-granting fish.”

And the name of the tea grown on the once-sacred ground, I suspected. I wondered how the Xhais felt about that. “What are the words the plants sing?” I knew very little Xhi and didn’t recognize any words in particular in the singing discord coming out of the dark.

“You get different lists,” Fosyf replied genially, “depending on who you ask.”

“I used to go out in the dark when I was a child,” remarked Raughd, “and look for them. They stop if you shine a light on them.”

I hadn’t actually seen any children since we’d arrived, except for the field workers. I found that odd, in such a setting, but before I could wonder aloud or ask, the servant Fosyf had sent away returned, carrying a large box.

It was gold, or at least gilded, inlaid with red, blue, and green glass in a style that was older than I was. Older, in fact, than Anaander Mianaai’s three thousand and some years. I had only ever seen this sort of thing in person once before, and that when I was barely a decade old, some two thousand years ago. “Surely,” I said, “that’s a copy.”

“It is not, Fleet Captain,” replied Fosyf, very pleased to say it, clearly. The servant set the box on the ground in our midst and then stepped away. Fosyf bent, lifted the lid. Nestled inside, a tea service—flask, bowls for twelve, strainer. All glass and gold, inlaid with elaborate, snaking patterns of blue and green.

I still held the handled bowl I’d been drinking from, and now I lifted it. Five obligingly came forward and took it, but did not move away. I had not intended her to. I got out of my seat, squatted beside the box.

The inside of the lid was also gold, though a strip of wood seven centimeters wide above and below the gold showed what it covered. That sheet of gold was engraved. In Notai. I could read it, though I doubted anyone else here could. Several old houses (Seivarden’s among them), and some newer ones that found the idea romantic and appealing, claimed to be descended from Notai ancestors. Of those, some would have recognized this writing for what it was, possibly would have been able to read a word or two. Only a few would have bothered to actually learn this language.

“What does it say?” I asked, though of course I knew already.

“It’s an invocation of the god Varden,” said Captain Hetnys, “and a blessing on the owner.”

Varden is your strength, it said, Varden is your hope, and Varden is your joy. Life and prosperity to the daughter of the house. On the happy and well-deserved occasion.

I looked up at Fosyf. “Where did you get this?”

“Aha,” she replied, “so Hetnys was right, you are a connoisseur! I’d never have suspected if she hadn’t told me.”

“Where,” I repeated, “did you get this?”

Fosyf gave a short laugh. “And single-minded, yes, but I already knew that. I bought it from Captain Hetnys.”

Bought it. This ancient, priceless thing would have been nearly unthinkable as a gift. The idea of anyone taking any amount of money for it was impossible. Still squatting, I turned to Captain Hetnys, who to my unspoken question said, “The owner was in need of cash. She didn’t want to sell it herself because, well, imagine anyone knowing you had to sell something like that. So I brokered the deal for her.”

“And took your cut, too,” put in Raughd, who I suspected wasn’t enjoying being eclipsed by the tea set.

“True,” acknowledged Captain Hetnys.

Even a small cut of that must have been staggering. This wasn’t the sort of thing an individual owned, except perhaps nominally. No living, remotely functional house would allow a single member to alienate something like this. The tea set I had seen, when I had been a brand-new ship not ten years old, had not belonged to an individual. It had been part of the equipment of a decade room of a Sword, brought out while my captain was visiting, to impress her. That one had been purple and silver and mother-of-pearl, and the god named in the inscription had been a different one. And it had read, On the happy and well-deserved occasion of your promotion. Captain Seimorand. And a date a mere half a century before the ascendancy of Anaander Mianaai, before the set had been taken as a souvenir of its owner’s defeat.

I was sure the bottom of the inscription in the box lid now before me had been cut off, that On the happy and well-deserved occasion was only the beginning of the sentence. There was no sign of the cut—the edges of the gold looked smooth, the wood underneath undamaged. But I was sure someone had removed it, cut a strip off the bottom, and put back what was left, centered so that it didn’t look so much as though part of the inscription had been removed.

This wasn’t something passed down for centuries among some captain’s descendants—those descendants would never have removed the name of the ancestor who had left them such a thing. One might remove the name to conceal its origin, and even damaged this was worth a great deal. One might conceal its origin out of shame—anyone who saw it might be able to guess which house had been forced to part with such a treasure. But most families that owned such things had other and better ways to capitalize such possessions. Seivarden’s house, for instance, had accepted gifts and money in exchange for tours of that ancient, captured Notai shuttle.

Stolen antiques, the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant had said. But I had not imagined anything quite like this.

Add in that supply locker. “Debris.” Any writing conveniently obscured—like this tea set.

Captain Hetnys had thought it was important to station her ship by the Ghost Gate. A piece of debris that was likely more than three thousand years old—and extremely unlikely to have ended up here at Athoek to begin with—had come out of the Ghost Gate. A piece of a Notai shuttle.

Captain Hetnys had made a great deal of money selling a Notai tea set nearly as old as that supply locker likely was. Where had she gotten it? Who had removed the name of its first owner, and why?

What was on the other side of the Ghost Gate?

14

Back in my room, I removed my brown and black shirt, handed it to Kalr Five. Had bent to loosen my boots when a knock sounded at the door. I looked up. Kalr Five gave me a single, expressionless glance and went to answer it. She had seen Raughd’s behavior these past few days, knew what this was likely to be, though I admit I was surprised she had chosen to make this blatant a move so soon.

I stood aside, where I would not be visible from the sitting room. Picked up my shirt from where Five had laid it, and drew it back on. Five opened the door to the hallway, and through her eyes I saw Raughd’s insincere smile. “I wonder,” she said, with no courteous preamble, “if I might speak privately to the fleet captain.” A balancing act, that sentence was, offering Five herself no consideration whatsoever, without being rude to me.

Let her in, I messaged Five silently. But don’t leave the room. Though it was entirely possible—indeed, likely—that Raughd’s idea of “private” included the presence of servants.

Raughd entered. Looked around for me, bowed with a sidelong, smiling glance up at me as I came from the bedroom. “Fleet Captain,” she said. “I was hoping we might… talk.”

“About what, Citizen?” I did not invite her to sit.

She blinked, genuinely surprised, I thought. “Surely, Fleet Captain, I’ve been plain about my desires.”

“Citizen. I am in mourning.” I had not had time to clean the white stripe off my face for the night. And she could not possibly have forgotten the reason for it.

“But surely, Fleet Captain,” she replied sweetly, “that’s all for show.”

“It’s always for show, Citizen. It is entirely possible to grieve with no outward sign. These things are meant to let others know about it.”

“It’s true such things are nearly always insincere, or at least overdone,” Raughd said. She had missed my point entirely. “But what I meant was that you’ve undertaken this only for political reasons. There can’t possibly be any real sorrow, no one could expect so. It’s only needed in public, and this”—she gestured around—“is certainly not public.”

I might have argued that if a family member of hers had died far from home, she might want to know that someone had cared enough to perform funeral duties for that person—even if the rites in question were foreign, even if the person who performed them was a stranger. But given the sort of person Raughd apparently was, such an argument would have carried no weight, if it had even been comprehensible to her. “Citizen, I am astonished at your want of propriety.”

“Can you blame me, Fleet Captain, if my desire overwhelms my sense of propriety? And propriety, like mourning, is for public view.”

I was under no illusions as to my physical attractiveness. It was not such that it would inspire propriety-overwhelming enthusiasm. My position, on the other hand, and my house name might well be quite fascinating. And of course, it would be far more fascinating to someone wealthy and privileged, like Raughd. Entertainments might be brimful of the virtuous and humble gaining the favorable notice of those above them, to their and their house’s ultimate benefit, but in daily life most people were fully aware of just what would happen if they deliberately sought such a situation out.

But someone like Raughd—oh, someone like Raughd could set her sights on me, and she might pretend it was all down to attraction, to romance or even love. No matter that in such a case no one involved would for a moment be unaware of the potential advantages.

“Citizen,” I said, coldly. “I am well aware that you are the person who painted those words on the wall in the Undergarden.” She looked at me with wide-eyed, blinking incomprehension. Kalr Five stood motionless in a corner of the room, ancillary-impassive. “Someone died as a direct result of that, and her death has very possibly put this entire system in danger. You may not have intended that death, but you knew well enough that your action would cause problems, and you didn’t really care what those were or who was hurt by it.”

She drew herself up, indignant. “Fleet Captain! I don’t know why you would accuse me of such a thing!”

“At a guess,” I said, unruffled by her resentment, “you were angry at Lieutenant Tisarwat for spoiling your fun with Citizen Piat. Who, by the way, you treat abominably.”

“Oh, well,” she said, subsiding just a bit, her posture relaxing, “if that’s the problem. I’ve known Piat since we were both little and she’s always been… erratic. Oversensitive. She feels inadequate, you know, because her mother is station administrator and so beautiful on top of it. There she is, assigned to a perfectly fine job, but she can’t stop thinking it’s nothing compared to her mother. She takes everything too hard, and I admit sometimes I lose patience because of it.” She sighed, the very image of compassionate regret, even penitence. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s accused me of mistreating her, just to hurt me.”

“Such a fucking bore,” I quoted. “Funny how the last time you lost patience with her was when everyone was laughing at her joke and she was the center of attention. Rather than you.”

“I’m sure Tisarwat meant well, telling you about that, but she just didn’t understand what…” Her voice faltered, her face took on a pained expression. “She couldn’t… Piat couldn’t have accused me of painting those words on the wall? It would be just the sort of horrible thing she’d think was funny, when she was in one of her moods.”

“She hasn’t accused you of anything,” I said, my voice still cold. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

Raughd froze, completely still for an instant, not even breathing. Then she said, with a coldness that nearly matched my own, “Did you accept my mother’s invitation just so you could come here and attack me? Obviously, you’ve come here with some sort of agenda. You turn up out of nowhere, produce some ridiculous order forbidding travel in the gates so the tea can’t get out of the system. I can’t see it as anything less than an attack on my house, and I will not stand for that! I’m going to speak to my mother about this!”

“You do that,” I said. Still calm. “Be sure to explain to her how that paint got on your gloves. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knows about it and invited me down here in the hope that I could be dissuaded from pressing the issue.” And I had accepted knowing that. And I had wanted to know what it was like, downwell. What Sirix had been so angry about.

Raughd turned and left the room without another word.

The morning sky was pale blue streaked with the silver traces of the weather grid, and here and there a wisp of cloud. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the mountain so the houses and the lake, the trees, were still in shadow. Sirix waited for me, at the water’s edge. “Thank you for the wake-up call, Fleet Captain,” she said, with an ironic bow of her head. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in.”

“Already used to the time difference?” It was early afternoon on the station. “I’m told there’s a path along the lakeside.”

“I don’t think I can keep up with you if you’re going to run.”

“I’m walking today.” I would have walked anyway, even if Sirix hadn’t needed to keep up. I set off in the direction of the lakeside trail, not turning my head to see if she followed, but hearing her step behind me, seeing her (and myself) as Five watched us out of sight from the corner of the arbor.

On Athoek Station, Lieutenant Tisarwat was in the sitting room in our Undergarden quarters, speaking to Basnaaid Elming. Who’d arrived not five minutes earlier while I’d been pulling on my boots, about to leave my room. I’d been briefly tempted to make Sirix wait, but in the end I decided that by now I could watch and walk at the same time.

I could see—almost feel, myself—the thrill thrumming through Tisarwat at Basnaaid’s presence. “Horticulturist,” Tisarwat was saying. She wasn’t long out of bed herself. “I’m at your service. But I must tell you, the fleet captain has ordered me to stay away from you.”

Basnaaid frowned, clearly puzzled and dismayed. “Why?”

Lieutenant Tisarwat took an unsteady breath. “You said you never wanted to speak to her again. She didn’t… she wanted to be sure you didn’t ever think she was…” She trailed off, at a loss, it seemed. “For your sister’s sake, she’ll do anything you ask.”

“She’s a bit high handed about it,” responded Basnaaid, with some acerbity.

“Fleet Captain,” said Sirix, walking beside me on the path alongside the lake. I realized she’d been speaking to me, and I had not responded.

“Forgive me, Citizen.” I forced my attention away from Basnaaid and Tisarwat. “I was distracted.”

“Plainly.” She sidestepped a branch that had fallen from one of the nearby trees. “I was trying to thank you for being patient with me yesterday. And for Kalr Eight’s help.” She frowned. “Do you not allow them to go by their names?”

“They’d much prefer I not use their names, at least my Kalrs would.” I gestured ambiguity, uncertainty. “She might tell you her name if you ask.” The house was well behind us by now, screened by a turn of the path, by trees with broad, oval leaves and small cascades of fringed white flowers. “Tell me, Citizen, is suspension failure a problem, among the field workers in the mountains here?” Transportees were shipped in suspension pods. Which generally worked very well, but sometimes failed, leaving their occupants dead or severely injured.

Sirix froze midstride, just an instant, and then kept walking. I had said something that had surprised her, but I thought I’d also seen recognition in her expression. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone thawed out. I don’t think anyone has been, for a while. But the Valskaayans, some of them, think that when the medics thawed people out, they didn’t let all of them live.”

“Do they say why?”

Sirix gestured ambiguity. “Not plainly. They think the medics dispose of anyone they consider unfit in some way, but they won’t say exactly what that means, at least they wouldn’t in my hearing. And they won’t go to a medic. Not for anything. Every bone in their body could be broken and they’d rather have their friends splint them up with sticks and old clothes.”

“Last night,” I said, by way of explanation, “I requested an account of the number of Valskaayans transported to this system.”

“Only Valskaayans?” asked Sirix, eyebrow raised. “Why not Samirend?”

Ah. “I’ve found something, have I?”

“I wouldn’t have thought there was much to find, that way, about the Valskaayans. Before I was born, though, before Valskaay was even annexed, something happened. About a hundred fifty years ago. I don’t know for certain—I doubt anyone but the parties actually involved know for certain. But I can tell you the rumor. Someone in charge of the transportees coming into the system was siphoning off a percentage of them and selling them to outsystem slavers. No,” she gestured, emphatic, seeing my doubt. “I know it sounds ridiculous. But before this place was civilized”—not even a trace of irony there—“debt indenture was quite common, and it was entirely legal to sell indentures away. No one cared much, unless someone had the bad taste to sell away a few Xhais. It was entirely natural and boring if it happened to a lot of Ychana.”

“Yes.” When I’d seen those numbers—how many Valskaayans had been transported here, how many brought out of suspension and assigned work, how many remaining—and, further, because I’d just seen that ancient tea set and heard Captain Hetnys’s story of selling it to Citizen Fosyf, I had queried the system histories. “Except that outsystem slave trade collapsed not long after the annexation and has never recovered.” Partly, I thought, because it had relied on cheap supply from Athoek, which the annexation had cut off. And partly because of problems internal to the slavers’ own home systems. “And that was, what, six hundred years ago? Surely this hadn’t been happening undetected all that time.”

“I’m only telling you what I’ve heard, Fleet Captain. The discrepancy in numbers was covered—very thinly, I might add, if the story is true—by an alarming rate of suspension failures. Nearly all of those were workers assigned to the mountain tea plantations. When the system governor found out—this was before Governor Giarod’s time, of course—she put a stop to it, but she also supposedly hushed it up. After all, the medics who’d signed off on those false reports had done so at the behest of some of Athoek’s most illustrious citizens. Not the sort of people who ever find themselves on the wrong side of Security. And if word of it ever got back to the palace, the Lord of the Radch would certainly want to know why the governor hadn’t noticed all this going on before now. So instead a number of highly placed citizens retired. Including Citizen Fosyf’s grandmother, who spent the rest of her life in prayer at a monastery on the other side of this continent.”