Ancillary Sword

This was why I’d had this conversation away from the house. Just in case. “Faked suspension failure numbers won’t have been enough to cover it. There will have been more than just that.” This story hadn’t been in the information I’d received, when I’d queried the histories. But Sirix had said that it had been hushed up. It might have been kept out of any official accounts.

Sirix was silent a moment. Considering. “That may well be, Fleet Captain. I only ever heard rumors.”

“… very heartfelt poetry,” Basnaaid was saying, in my sitting room in the Undergarden. “I’m glad no one here has read any of it.” She and Tisarwat were drinking tea, now.

“Did you send any of your poetry to your sister, Citizen?” asked Tisarwat.

Basnaaid gave a small, breathy laugh. “Nearly all of it. She always said it was wonderful. Either she was being very kind, or she had terrible taste.”

Her words distressed Tisarwat for some reason, triggered an overpowering sense of shame and self-loathing. But of course, there was hardly a well-educated Radchaai alive who hadn’t written a quantity of poetry in her youth, and I could well imagine the quality of what the younger Tisarwat might have produced. And been proud of. And then seen through the eyes of Anaander Mianaai, three-thousand-year-old Lord of the Radch. I doubted the assessment had been kind. And if she was no longer Anaander Mianaai, what could she ever be but some reassembled version of Tisarwat, with all the bad poetry and frivolity that implied? How could she ever see that in herself without remembering the Lord of the Radch’s withering contempt? “If you sent your poetry to Lieutenant Awn,” Tisarwat said, with a sharp pang of yearning mixed still with that self-hatred, “then Fleet Captain Breq has seen it.”

Basnaaid blinked, began just barely to frown, but stopped herself. It might have been the idea of my having read her poetry that brought on the frown, or it may have been the tension in Lieutenant Tisarwat, in her voice, where before she had been relaxed and smiling. “I’m glad she didn’t throw that in my face.”

“She never would,” said Tisarwat, her voice still intense.

“Lieutenant.” Basnaaid put her bowl of tea down on the makeshift table beside her seat. “I meant what I said that day. And I wouldn’t be here, except it’s important. I hear it’s the fleet captain’s doing that the Undergarden is being repaired.”

“Y…” Tisarwat reconsidered the simple yes she’d been about to give as not entirely politic. “It is, of course, entirely at the order of Station Administrator Celar, Horticulturist, but the fleet captain has had a hand in it, yes.”

Basnaaid gestured acknowledgment, perfunctory. “The lake in the Gardens above—Station can’t see the supports that are holding that water up and keeping it from flooding the Undergarden. It’s supposed to be inspected regularly, but I don’t think that’s happening. And I can’t say anything to the chief horticulturist. It’s a cousin of hers who’s supposed to do it, and the last time I said something there was a lot of noise about me minding my own business and how dare I cast aspersions.” And likely if she went over the chief horticulturist’s head and straight to Station Administrator Celar, she’d find herself in difficulties. Which might be worth it if the station administrator would listen, but there were no guarantees there.

“Horticulturist!” Tisarwat exclaimed, just managing, with difficulty, not to shout her eagerness to help. “I’ll take care of it! All it wants is some diplomacy.”

Basnaaid blinked, taken a bit aback. “I don’t want… please understand, I really don’t want to be asking the fleet captain for favors. I wouldn’t be here, except it’s so dangerous. If those supports were to fail…”

“Fleet Captain Breq won’t be involved at all,” said Tisarwat, solemnly. Inwardly ecstatic. “Have you mentioned this to Citizen Piat?”

“She was there when I brought it up the first time. Not that it did any good. Lieutenant, I know that you and Piat have been friendly these past several days. And I don’t mean to criticize her…” She trailed off, looking for a way to say what she wanted to say.

“But,” said Tisarwat into the silence, “generally she doesn’t seem to care much about her job. Half the time Raughd is hanging around distracting her, and the other half she’s moping. But Raughd has been downwell for the past four or five days, and if Fleet Captain Breq has anything to say about it, she’s not coming back up anytime soon. I think you’re going to see a difference in Piat. I think,” she continued, “that she’s been made to feel that she’s not capable. That her own judgment is unreliable. I think she could use your support, at work.”

Basnaaid tilted her head and frowned further, looked intently at Tisarwat as though she’d seen something completely, puzzlingly unexpected. “Lieutenant, how old are you?”

Sudden confusion, in Tisarwat. Guilt, self-loathing, a thrill of… something like triumph or gratification. “Horticulturist. I’m seventeen.” A lie that wasn’t exactly a lie.

“You didn’t seem seventeen just now,” said Basnaaid. “Did Fleet Captain Breq bring you along so you could find the weaknesses of the daughters of the station’s most prominent citizens?”

“No,” Tisarwat said, openly mournful. Inwardly despairing. “I think she brought me along because she thought I’d get into trouble if she wasn’t watching me.”

“If you’d told me that five minutes ago,” said Basnaaid, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Downwell, on the path through the woods by the lake, the sky had brightened to a more vivid blue. The brightness in the east had intensified, leaving the peak blocking the sun a jagged black silhouette. Sirix still walked beside me, silent. Patient. When she had not struck me as a patient person, except by the necessity of her situation, unable as she was to express anger without considerable discomfort, likely some of it physical. So, almost certainly a pose. “You’re as good as a concert, Fleet Captain,” she said, slightly mocking, confirming my suspicion. “Do the songs you’re always humming have anything to do with what you’re thinking about, or is it random?”

“It depends.” I had been humming the song the Kalr had been singing the day before, in Medical. “Sometimes it’s just a song I recently heard. It’s an old habit. I apologize for annoying you.”

“I didn’t say I was annoyed. Though I wouldn’t have thought cousins of the Lord of the Radch cared much if they were annoying.”

“I didn’t say I would stop,” I pointed out. “Do you think all that happened—transportees being sold off, I mean—and the Lord of the Radch didn’t become aware of it?”

“If she’d known,” Sirix said, “if she’d truly understood what was happening, it would have been like Ime.” Where the system administration had been entirely corrupt, had murdered and enslaved citizens, nearly started a war with the alien Rrrrrr until the matter had been brought directly to Anaander Mianaai’s attention. Or at least, the attention of the right part of Anaander Mianaai. But Sirix didn’t know that part of the story. “The news would have been everywhere, and the people involved would have been held accountable.”

I wondered when Anaander Mianaai had become aware of it, of people, potential citizens, being sold away for profit here. It would not have surprised me at all to discover that part of Anaander knew, or that a part of her had continued or restarted it, hidden from the rest of herself. The question then became, which Anaander was it, and what use was she making of it? I couldn’t help but think of Anaander stripping ships of their ancillaries. Ships like Mercy of Kalr. Troop carriers like Justice of Ente, which Skaaiat Awer had served on. Human soldiers might not be relied on to fight for the side that wanted them replaced. Ancillaries, on the other hand, were just extensions of their ship, would do exactly what a ship was ordered to make them do. The Anaander who objected to her own dismantling of Radchaai military force might well find those bodies useful.

“You disagree,” Sirix said into my silence. “But isn’t justice the whole reason for civilization?”

And propriety, and benefit. “So if there is injustice here, it is only because the Lord of the Radch isn’t sufficiently present.”

“Can you imagine Radchaai, in the normal course of events, practicing indentured slavery, or selling indentures away, like the Xhai did?”

Behind us, in the building where we stayed, Captain Hetnys was likely eating breakfast, attended by a human body slaved to the warship Sword of Atagaris. One of dozens just like it. I myself had been one of thousands of such, before the rest of me had been destroyed. Sirix didn’t know that, but she surely knew of the existence of other, still surviving troop carriers, still crewed by ancillaries. And over the ridge lived dozens of Valskaayans, they or their parents or grandparents transported here for no better reason than to clear a planet for Radchaai occupation, and to provide cheap labor here. Sirix herself was descended from transportees. “Ancillaries and transportees are of course an entirely different sort of thing,” I said drily.

“Well, my lord has stopped that, hasn’t she?” I said nothing. She continued, “So the suspension failure rate among Valskaayan transportees seems high to you?”

“It does.” I’d stored the thousands of bodies I’d once had in suspension pods. I had long, extensive experience with suspension failures. “Now I’m curious to know if the traffic in transportees stopped altogether, a hundred fifty years ago, or if it just seemed to.”

“I wish my lord had come with you,” Sirix said. “So she could see this for herself.”

Above us, in the Undergarden, Bo Nine came into the room where Tisarwat and Basnaaid sat drinking tea. “Sir,” said Bo, “there’s a difficulty.”

Tisarwat blinked. Swallowed her tea. Gestured Bo to explain.

“Sir, I went up to level one to get your br… your lunch, sir.” I had left instructions for the household to purchase as much of its food (and other supplies) as possible in the Undergarden itself. “There are a lot of people around the tea shop right now. They’re… they’re angry, sir, about the repairs the fleet captain has ordered.”

“Angry!” Tisarwat was taken completely aback. “At maybe having water, and light? And air?”

“I don’t know, sir. But there are more and more people coming to the tea shop, and nobody leaving. Not to speak of.”

Tisarwat stared up at Bo Nine. “But you’d think they’d be grateful!”

“I don’t know, sir.” Though I could tell, from what Ship showed me, that she agreed with her lieutenant.

Tisarwat looked at Basnaaid, still sitting across from her. Was suddenly struck by something that filled her with chagrin. “No,” she said, though in answer to what I couldn’t tell. “No.” She looked up again at Bo Nine. “What would the fleet captain do?”

“Something only Fleet Captain would do,” said Bo. And then, remembering Basnaaid’s presence, “Your indulgence, sir.”

Ship, Tisarwat messaged silently, can Fleet Captain give me some help?

“Fleet Captain Breq is in mourning, Lieutenant,” came the answer in her ear. “I can pass on messages of condolence or greeting. But it would be most improper of her to involve herself in this just now.”

Downwell, Sirix was saying, “Everyone here is too involved. The Lord of the Radch can be above all that, but she can’t be here herself. But you have your authority from her personally, don’t you?”

In the Undergarden, Lieutenant Tisarwat said, “What was this morning’s cast, in the temple?”

“No Gain Without Loss,” replied Bo Nine. Of course the associated verses were more complicated than that, but that was the essence of it.

Downwell, under the trees by the lake, Sirix continued. “Do you know, Emer said you were like ice that day.” The woman who ran the tea shop, in the Undergarden, that was. “That translator shot right in front of you, dying under your hands, blood everywhere, and you collected and dispassionate, not a sign of any of it in your voice or your face. She said you turned around and asked her for tea.”

“I hadn’t had breakfast yet.”

Sirix laughed, a short, sharp hah. “She said she thought the bowl would freeze solid when you touched it.” Then, noticing, “You’re distracted again.”

“Yes.” I stopped walking. In the Undergarden, Tisarwat had come to some conclusion. She was saying, to Bo, Escort Horticulturist Basnaaid back to the Gardens. Downwell by the lake, I said to Sirix, “I’m very sorry, Citizen. I find I have a lot to think about right now.”

“No doubt.”

We walked about thirty meters in silence (Tisarwat strode out of our Undergarden rooms and down the corridor), and then Sirix said, “I hear the daughter of the house left in a huff last night, and hasn’t come back.”

“So Eight is giving you the house gossip,” I replied, as in the Undergarden Tisarwat began the climb to level one. “She must like you. Did she say why Raughd left?”

Sirix raised a skeptical eyebrow. “She did not. But anyone with eyes can guess. Anyone with any sense would know from the start she was a fool to set her sights on you like she did.”

“You dislike Raughd, I think.”

Sirix exhaled, short and sharp. Scoffing. “She’s always in the offices of the Gardens. Her favorite thing is to pick someone to make fun of and get everyone else to laugh while she does it. Half the time it’s Assistant Director Piat. But it’s all right, you see, because she’s only joking! Me being arrested for something she did is really just an extra.”

“You figured that out, did you?” Upwell, in the Undergarden, Bo Nine helped Basnaaid over the pieces of shipping crate that held the level four section door open. Tisarwat climbed toward level one.

By the lake, Sirix gave me a look that communicated her contempt for the idea that she might not have known about Raughd’s involvement. “She probably flew into town. Or possibly she went to the field workers’ house to roust some poor Valskaayan out of bed to amuse her.”

I hadn’t stopped to think that in turning Raughd down so coldly I might be inflicting her on someone else. “Amuse her how?”

Another eloquent look. “I doubt there’s much you could do about it just now. Anyone you ask will swear they’re more than happy to gratify the daughter of the house however she likes. How could they do otherwise?”

And likely if she’d come down here without me she’d have gone straight there, as the easiest available source of amusement and gratification. Doubtless a version of amusement and gratification that was common among the tea-growing households here. I might find some way to move Raughd somewhere else, or prevent her from doing the things she did, but the same things were likely happening in dozens of other places, to other people.

Upwell, in the level one concourse outside the tea shop, Tisarwat stepped up onto a bench. A few people outside the tea shop had noticed her arrival, and moved away, but most were intent on someone speaking inside the shop. She took a deep breath. Resolved. Certain. Whatever it was she had decided on was a relief to her, a source of desire and anticipation, but there was something about it that troubled me. “Ship,” I said silently, walking beside Sirix.

“I see it, Fleet Captain,” Mercy of Kalr replied. “But I think she’s all right.”

“Mention it to Medic, please.”

Standing on the bench, Tisarwat called out, “Citizens!” It didn’t carry well, and she tried again, pitching her voice higher. “Citizens! Is there a problem?”

Silence descended. And then someone near the tea shop door said something in Raswar I strongly suspected was an obscenity.

“It’s just me,” Tisarwat continued. “I heard there was a problem.”

The crowd in the tea shop shifted, and someone came out, walked over to where Tisarwat stood. “Where are your soldiers, Radchaai?”

Tisarwat had been so sure of herself coming here, but now she was suddenly terrified. “Home washing dishes, Citizen,” she said, managing to keep her fear out of her voice. “Out running errands. I only want to talk. I only want to know what the problem is.”

The person who had come out of the tea shop laughed, short and bitter. I knew from long experience with this sort of confrontation that she was likely afraid herself. “We’ve gotten along fine here all this time. Now, suddenly, you’re concerned about us.” Tisarwat said nothing, suppressed a frown. She didn’t understand. The person in front of her continued, “Now when a rich fleet captain wants rooms, suddenly you care how things are in the Undergarden. And we’re cut off from any way to appeal to the palace. Where are we supposed to go, when you kick us out of here? The Xhai won’t live by us. Why do you think we’re here?” She stopped, waited for Tisarwat to say something. When Tisarwat remained silent (baffled, confused), she continued. “Did you expect us to be grateful? This isn’t about us. You didn’t even take a moment to stop and ask what we wanted. So what were you planning to do with us? Reeducate us all? Kill us? Make us into ancillaries?”

“No!” cried Tisarwat. Indignant. And also ashamed—because she knew as well as I did that there had been times and places where such a concern would have been well founded. And from what we’d seen when we arrived, with the painter and Sword of Atagaris, there was some reason to suspect that this was one of those times and places. “The plan is to confirm existing housing arrangements.” A few people scoffed. “And you’re right,” Tisarwat went on, “Station Administration should be hearing your concerns. We can talk about them right now if you like. And then you”—she gestured at the person standing in front of her—“and I can take those concerns directly to Station Administrator Celar. In fact, we could set up an office on level four where anyone could come and talk about problems with the repairs, or things that you want, and we could make sure that gets to Administration.”

“Level four?” someone cried. “Not all of us can get up and down those ladders!”

“I don’t think there’s room on level one, Citizen,” said Tisarwat. “Except maybe right here, but that would be very inconvenient for Citizen Emer’s customers, or anyone who walks through here.” Which was nearly everyone in the Undergarden. “So maybe when this good citizen and I”—she gestured toward the person in front of her—“visit Administration today, after we talk here, we’ll let them know that repairing the lifts needs to be a priority.”

Silence. People had begun to come, slowly, cautiously, out of the shop and into the tiny, makeshift concourse. Now one of them said, “The way we usually do this sort of thing, Lieutenant, is we all sit down, and whoever is speaking stands up.” In a tone that was almost a challenge. “We leave the bench for those who can’t sit on the ground.”

Tisarwat looked down at the bench she was standing on. Looked out at the people before her—a good fifty or sixty, and more still coming out of the tea shop. “Right,” she said. “Then I’ll get down.”

As Sirix and I returned to the house, Fleet Captain Uemi’s message reached Mercy of Kalr. Medic was on watch. “All respect to Fleet Captain Breq,” came the words into Medic’s ear. “Does she desire some sort of firsthand or personal information? I assure you that I was the only person on Sword of Inil to spend more than a few minutes on Omaugh.”

Medic, unlike Seivarden or Ekalu, understood the import of the questions I had been asking of Fleet Captain Uemi. And so she was horrified rather than puzzled when she spoke the reply I’d left, in case the answers to my questions had been what they were. “Fleet Captain Breq begs Fleet Captain Uemi’s very generous indulgence and would like to know if Fleet Captain Uemi is feeling quite entirely herself lately.”

I didn’t expect a reply to that, and never did receive one.

15

Fosyf’s servants spoke quite freely in the presence of my silent and expressionless Kalrs. Raughd had not, in fact, gone immediately to her mother, as she had threatened, but ordered a servant to pack her things and fly her to the elevator that would take her upwell, to a shuttle that would bring her to Athoek Station.

Most of the servants did not like me, and said so outside the house where we were staying, or in the kitchen of the main building, where Five and Six went on various errands. I was arrogant and cold. The humming would drive anyone to distraction, and I was lucky my personal attendants were ancillaries (that always gave Five and Eight a little frisson of satisfaction) who didn’t care about such things. My bringing Sirix Odela here could be nothing but a calculated insult—they knew who she was, knew her history. And I had been cruel to the daughter of the house. None of them knew exactly what had happened, but they understood the outlines of it.

Some of the servants went silent hearing such opinions expressed, their faces nearly masks, the twitch of an eyebrow or the corner of a mouth betraying what they’d have liked to say. A few of the more forthcoming pointed out (very quietly) that Raughd herself had a history of cruelty, of rages when she didn’t get what she wanted. Like her mother that way, muttered one of the dissenters, where only Kalr Five could hear it.

“The nurse left when Raughd was only three,” Five told Eight, while I was out on one of my walks and Sirix still slept. “Couldn’t take the mother any longer.”

“Where were the other parents?” asked Eight.

“Oh, the mother wouldn’t have any other parents. Or they wouldn’t have her. The daughter of the house is a clone. She’s meant to be exactly like the mother. And hears about it when she isn’t, I gather. That’s why they feel so sorry for her, some of them.”

“The mother doesn’t like children very much, does she?” observed Eight, who had noticed that the household’s children were kept well away from Fosyf and her guests.

“I don’t like children very much, to be honest,” replied Five. “Well, no. Children are all sorts of people, aren’t they, and I suppose if I knew more I’d find some I like and some I don’t, just like everyone else. But I’m glad nobody’s depending on me to have any, and I don’t really know what to do with them, if you know what I mean. Still, I know not to do things like that.”

Two days after she’d left, Raughd was back. When she’d arrived at the foot of the elevator, she hadn’t been allowed to board. She’d insisted that she always had permission to travel to the station, but in vain. She was not on the list, did not have a permit, and her messages to the station administrator went unanswered. Citizen Piat was similarly unresponsive. Security arrived, suggested with extreme courtesy and deference that perhaps Raughd might want to return to the house by the lake.

Somewhat surprisingly, that was exactly what she’d done. I would have guessed she’d have stayed in the city at the foot of the elevator, where surely she’d have found company for the sort of games she enjoyed, but instead she returned to the mountains.

She arrived in the middle of the night. Just before breakfast, while the account of her fruitless attempt to leave the planet was only just beginning to reach the servants outside the kitchen in the main building, Raughd ordered her personal attendant to go to Fosyf as soon as she woke and demand a meeting. Most of the kitchen servants didn’t like Raughd’s personal attendant much—she derived, they felt, a bit too much satisfaction from her status as the personal servant of the daughter of the house. Still (one assistant cook said to another, in the hearing of Kalr Five), her worst enemies would not have wished to force her to confront Fosyf Denche with such a message.

The subsequent meeting was private. Which in that household meant in earshot of only three or four servants. Or, when Fosyf shouted, half a dozen. And shout she did. This entire situation was of Raughd’s making. In attempting to remedy it, she had only made it worse, had set out to make me an ally but through her own ineptness had made me an enemy instead. It was no wonder I had turned Raughd down flat, inadequate and worthless as she was. Fosyf was ashamed to admit that they had even the slightest relationship to each other. Raughd had clearly also mishandled Station Administrator Celar. Fosyf herself would never have made such mistakes, and clearly there had been some sort of flaw in the cloning process because no one with Fosyf’s DNA could possibly be such a useless waste of food and air. One word, one breath from Raughd in protest of these obvious truths, and she would be cast out of the house. There was time yet to grow a new, better heir. Hearing this, Raughd did not protest, but returned, silent, to her room.

Just before lunch, as I was leaving my own room in our smaller house, Raughd’s personal attendant walked into the middle of the main kitchen and stood, silent and trembling, her gaze fixed, off somewhere distant and overhead. Eight was there seeing after something for Sirix. At first no one noticed the attendant, everyone was working busily on getting the last of the food prepared, but after a few moments one of the assistant cooks looked up, saw the attendant standing there shaking, and gave a loud gasp. “The honey!” the assistant cook cried. “Where’s the honey?”

Everyone looked up. Saw the attendant, whose trembling only increased, who began, now, to open her mouth as though she was about to speak, or possibly vomit, and then closed it again, over and over. “It’s too late!” someone else said, and the second assistant cook said, panic in her voice, “I used all the honey in the cakes for this afternoon!”

“Oh, shit!” said a servant who had just come into the kitchen with dirty teabowls, and I knew from the way no one turned to admonish her that whatever this was, it was serious business.

Someone dragged in a chair, and three servants took hold of Raughd’s attendant and lowered her into it, still shaking, still opening and closing her mouth. The first assistant cook came running with a honey-soaked cake and broke a piece off, put it into the attendant’s gaping mouth. It tumbled out onto the floor, to cries of dismay. The attendant looked more and more as though she were going to throw up, but instead she made a long, low moan.

“Oh, do something! Do something!” begged the servant with the dirty dishes. Lunch was entirely forgotten.

By this time I had begun to have some idea of what was happening. I had seen things something like this before, though not this particular reaction to it.

“Are you all right, Fleet Captain?” Sirix, in the other building, in the hallway outside both our rooms. She must have come out while I was absorbed by the goings-on in the main building’s kitchen.

I blinked the vision away, so that I could see Sirix and answer. “I didn’t realize the Samirend practiced spirit possession.”

Sirix did not attempt to hide her expression of distaste at my words. But then she turned her face away, as though she was ashamed to meet my gaze, and made a disgusted noise. “What must you think of us, Fleet Captain?”

Us. Of course. Sirix was Samirend.

“It’s the kind of thing someone does,” she continued, “when they’re feeling ignored or put out. Everyone rushes to give them sweets and say kind things to them.”

The whole thing seemed less like something the attendant was doing than something that was happening to her. And I hadn’t noticed anyone saying kind things to her. But my attention had strayed from the kitchen, and now I saw that one of the field overseers, the one who had met us the day we’d arrived and had seemed completely oblivious to the field workers’ ability to speak and understand Radchaai, was now kneeling next to the chair where the still trembling, moaning attendant sat. “You should have called me sooner!” the overseer said sharply, and someone else said, “We only just saw her!”

“It’s all to stop the spirit speaking,” said Sirix, still standing beside me in the corridor, still disgusted and, I was certain now, ashamed. “If it speaks, likely it’ll curse someone. People will do anything to stop it. One petulant person can hold an entire household hostage for days that way.”

I didn’t believe in spirits or gods to possess anyone, but I doubted this was something the attendant had done consciously, or without a true need of whatever the reaction of the other servants might provide for her. And she was, after all, constantly subject to Raughd Denche with very little real respite. “Sweets?” I asked Sirix. “Not just honey?”

Sirix blinked once, twice. A stillness came over her that I’d seen before, when she was angry or offended. It was as though my question had been a personal insult. “I don’t think I’m interested in lunch,” she said coldly, and turned and went back into her room.

In the main kitchen, the head cook, clearly relieved by the presence of the overseer, took firm charge of the dismayed, staring servants and managed to admonish and cajole the rest of the work from them. Meanwhile the overseer put fragments of honey cake into the attendant’s mouth. Each one fell out onto her lap, but the overseer doggedly replaced them. As she worked, she intoned words in Liost, from the sound of it. From the context, it must have been a prayer.

Eventually, the attendant’s moans and shaking stopped, whatever curse she might have uttered unspoken. She pled exhaustion for the rest of the day, which no one, servants or family, seemed to question, at least not in Eight’s hearing. The next morning she was back at her post, and the household staff was noticeably kinder to her after that.

Raughd avoided me. I saw her only rarely, in the late afternoon or early evening, on her way to the bathhouse. If we crossed paths she pointedly did not speak to me. She spent much of her time either in the nearby town or, more disturbingly, over the ridge at the field workers’ house.

I considered leaving, but we still had more than a week of full mourning to go. An interruption like this would only appear ill-omened, the proper execution of the funeral rites compromised. Perhaps the Presger, or their translators, wouldn’t understand, or care. Still. Twice I had seen the Presger underestimated with disastrous results—once by Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys, and once by Anaander Mianaai herself, when she had thought she had the power to destroy them and in response they had put those invisible, all-piercing guns in the hands of the Garseddai the Lord of the Radch thought she had so easily conquered. The Presger had not done it to save the Garseddai, who had in the event been completely destroyed, every one of them dead, every planet and station in their home system burned and lifeless, with no action, no protest from the Presger. No, they had done it, I was sure, to send a message to Anaander Mianaai: Don’t even think about it. I would not underestimate them in my turn.

Fosyf still visited our small house daily, and treated me with her usual jovial obliviousness. I came to see her strangely serene manner as both a sign of just how much she expected to get whatever she wanted, and also an instrument by which she managed to do that, plain persistent saying what she wanted to be true in the expectation that it would eventually become so. It’s a method I’d found worked best for those who are already positioned to mostly get what they want. Obviously Fosyf had found it worked for her.

Above, on Athoek Station, even with Lieutenant Tisarwat’s push, with Station Administrator Celar’s involvement, a thorough inspection of the Gardens’ supports wouldn’t happen for more than a week. “To be entirely honest,” Tisarwat explained to Basnaaid one afternoon, in my sitting room on the station, “there are so many things that need urgent attention that it keeps getting pushed back.” I read her determination, her continuing thrill at being able to help Basnaaid. But also an undercurrent of unhappiness. “I’m sure if the fleet captain were here she’d find some way to just… make it happen.”

“I’m impressed that it seems likely to happen at all,” said Basnaaid, with a smile that left Tisarwat momentarily, speechlessly, pleased with herself.

Recovering her self-possession, Tisarwat said, “It’s not anything urgent, but I was wondering if Horticulture could provide some plants for public areas here.”

“It can’t help but improve the air quality!” Basnaaid laughed. “There might not be enough light yet, though.” And then, at another thought, still amused, “Maybe they could put some of those mushrooms out.”

“The mushrooms!” exclaimed Tisarwat, in frustration. “Nobody will tell me where they’re growing them. I’m not sure what they’re afraid of. Sometimes I think everyone here must be growing them in a box under their beds or something, and that’s why they’re so anxious about Station Maintenance coming into their quarters.”

“They make money off the mushrooms, don’t they? And if the chief of Horticulture got her hands on them, you know she’d figure out a way to keep them in the Gardens and charge outrageous prices for them.”

“But they could still grow them here,” Tisarwat argued, “and still sell them themselves. So I don’t know what the problem is.” She gestured dismissal of her irritation. “Speaking of mushrooms. Shall I send Nine out for something to eat?”

On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden sat in the decade room with Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant. Sword of Atagaris’s lieutenant had brought a bottle of arrack. “Very kind,” Seivarden said, with barely detectable condescension. The other lieutenant did not seem to see it at all. “With your pardon, I won’t have any. I’ve taken a vow.” It was the sort of thing someone might do for penance, or just an occasional spiritual practice. She handed the bottle to Amaat Three, who took it and set it on the decade room counter, and then went to stand by the Sword of Atagaris ancillary that had accompanied its officer.

“Very admirable!” replied the Sword of Atagaris Amaat lieutenant. “And better you than me.” She picked up her bowl of tea. Three had begged Kalr Five for permission to use the best porcelain—still packed away in my own quarters on the ship, because Five hadn’t wanted anything to happen to it—and thus humiliate the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant with an obvious show of my status. Five had refused, and suggested instead that Amaat Three come around from the other direction and serve the lieutenants from my old, chipped enamel set. Three had been briefly tempted, remembering, as the entire crew did, Sword of Atagaris’s threat when we’d entered the system. But propriety had won out, and so the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant drank her tea unconscious of her narrow escape from insult. “Seivarden is a very old-fashioned name,” she said, with a joviality that struck me as false. “Your parents must have loved history.” One of Anaander Mianaai’s allies, before she had grown beyond the confines of the Radch itself, had been named Seivarden.

“It was a traditional name in my family,” Seivarden replied coolly. Indignant, but also enjoying the other lieutenant’s confusion—Seivarden had not yet offered a house name, and because that house was no longer in existence, because she had been separated from them by some thousand years, Seivarden wore none of the jewelry that would have indicated family associations. And even if Seivarden had still owned any, this lieutenant likely would have recognized very little of it, so much had changed in all that time.

The Sword of Atagaris lieutenant appeared not to notice the past tense in Seivarden’s sentence. “From Inai, you said. What province is that?”

“Outradch,” replied Seivarden with a pleasant smile. Outradch was the oldest of provinces, and the closest most Radchaai had ever been to the Radch itself. “You’re wondering about my family connections,” Seivarden continued, not out of any desire to help the visiting lieutenant through a potentially awkward social situation, but rather out of impatience. “I’m Seivarden Vendaai.”

The other lieutenant frowned, not placing the name for half a second. Then she realized. “You’re Captain Seivarden!”

“I am.”

The Sword of Atagaris lieutenant laughed. “Amaat’s grace, what a comedown! Bad enough to be frozen for a thousand years, but then to be busted back to lieutenant and sent to a Mercy! Guess you’ll have to work your way back up.” She took another drink of tea. “There’s been some speculation in our decade room. It’s unusual to find a fleet captain in command of a Mercy. We’ve been wondering if Fleet Captain Breq isn’t going to send Captain Hetnys here and take Sword of Atagaris for herself. It is the faster and the better armed of the two, after all.”

Seivarden blinked. Said, in a dangerously even tone, “Don’t underestimate Mercy of Kalr.”

“Oh, come now, Lieutenant, I didn’t mean any offense. Mercy of Kalr is a perfectly good ship, for a Mercy. But the fact of the matter is, if it came down to it, Sword of Atagaris could defeat Mercy of Kalr quite handily. You’ve commanded a Sword yourself, you know it’s true. And of course Sword of Atagaris still has its ancillaries. No human soldier is as fast or as strong as an ancillary.”

Amaat Three, standing by waiting in case she should be needed, showed of course no outward reaction, but for an instant I worried she might assault the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant. I wouldn’t have minded much (though of course Seivarden would have had to reprimand her), but Three was standing right next to the Sword of Atagaris ancillary, who would certainly not allow anyone to injure its lieutenant. And no amount of training or practice would make Amaat Three a match for an ancillary.

Seivarden, with just a bit more freedom to express her anger, set down her bowl of tea and sat up straighter and said, “Lieutenant, was that a threat?”

“Amaat’s grace, no, Lieutenant!” The Sword of Atagaris lieutenant seemed genuinely shocked that her words might have been taken that way. “I was just stating a fact. We’re all on the same side, here.”

“Are we?” Seivarden’s lip curled, aristocratic anger and contempt that I had not seen for more than a year. “This is why you attacked us when we came into the system, because we’re on the same side?”

“Amaat’s grace!” The other lieutenant tried to seem unfazed at Seivarden’s reaction. “That was a misunderstanding! I’m sure you can understand we’ve all been very tense since the gates went down. And as far as threatening you now, I intended no such thing, I assure you. I was merely pointing out an obvious fact. And it is unusual for a fleet captain to command a Mercy, though perhaps it wasn’t in your day. But it’s perfectly natural that we should wonder whether we’ll lose Captain Hetnys and end up serving under Fleet Captain Breq directly.”

Seivarden became, if anything, more contemptuous. “Fleet Captain Breq will do as she thinks best. But in the interest of preventing further misunderstanding”—she leaned on that word just a bit—“let me say clearly and unequivocally that the next time you threaten this ship you’d best be able to make good on it.”

The Sword of Atagaris lieutenant reiterated that she had never, ever meant to do such a thing, and Seivarden smiled and changed the subject.

On the station, Basnaaid was saying to Lieutenant Tisarwat, “I never met my sister. I was born after she left. I was born because she left. Because she was sending home money, and if she’d made officer, I might do something, too. Something better than steaming fish and chopping vegetables.” Lieutenant Awn’s parents had been cooks. “It was always Awn I was living up to. Always Awn I should be grateful to. Of course my parents never said so, but I always felt as though nothing was ever for me, for my own sake, it was always about her. Her messages were always so kind, and of course I looked up to her. She was a hero, the first of our house to really be someone…” She gave a rueful laugh. “Listen to me. As though my family were nobodies, all of them.” Lieutenant Tisarwat waited in un-seventeen-year-old-like silence, and Basnaaid continued, “It was worse after she died. I could never forget all the ways I didn’t measure up to her. Even her friends! Awer is so far above Elming they might as well not even be in the same universe. And now Mianaai.”

“And those friends,” put in Lieutenant Tisarwat, “were offering you things because of your sister, not because of anything you’d done to deserve it.” I wondered if Tisarwat had worked out why she was so infatuated with Basnaaid. Possibly not—at this moment she was clearly focused on listening to Basnaaid, on understanding her. Pleased to help. To be confided in.

“Awn never knelt.” Basnaaid seemed not to notice the strangeness of Lieutenant Tisarwat’s words or demeanor, so much older than her apparent age. Had become accustomed to it, perhaps, over the past few days. “She never would have. If she made friends like that, it was because of who she was.”

“Yes,” said Tisarwat, simple agreement. “The fleet captain has said so.” Basnaaid didn’t answer this, and the conversation turned to other things.

Three days before we were to leave, Captain Hetnys finally broached the topic of the daughter of the house. We sat under the arbor, the doors of the house wide open behind us. Fosyf was attending something at the manufactory, and Raughd of course was away at the field workers’ house. Sirix had gone down to a shady section of the lakeshore, she said to watch for fish but I suspected she just wanted to be by herself, without even Eight hovering behind her. There was only Captain Hetnys and myself, and Sword of Atagaris’s ancillary, and Kalr Five nearby. We sat looking out at the shaded stretch of mossy stone, the ridge, and the black, ice-streaked peaks beyond. The main building was off to the left, the bath ahead, where it was in easy reach of the main house but would not obscure the scenery, one end of its glass wall curving into view. Despite the brightness of the afternoon, the air under the trees and the arbor was damp and cool.

“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys. “Permission to speak frankly.”

I gestured my assent. In all the time we’d been here, Captain Hetnys had not once mentioned what had brought us here, though she had daily put on the mourning stripe and said the required prayers.

“Sir, I’ve been thinking about what happened in the Undergarden. I still think I was right to give the orders I did. It went wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” Her words were in themselves defiant, but her tone was deferential.

“Do you, Captain?” One of the household groundcars came over the ridge, along the road. Either Fosyf returning from the manufactory, or Raughd from the field workers’ house. That situation could not stay as it was, but I hadn’t managed to come up with a solution. Perhaps there was none.

“I do, sir. But I was wrong to have Citizen Sirix arrested. I was wrong to assume that she must have done it, if Raughd was the only other choice.”

The sort of thing I had always liked, in an officer. The willingness to admit she was in the wrong, when she realized it. The willingness to insist she was in the right, when she was sure of it, even when it might be safer not to. She watched me, serious, slightly frightened of my reaction, I thought. Slightly challenging. But only slightly. No Radchaai officer openly defied her superior, not if she wasn’t suicidal. I thought of that priceless antique tea set. Its sale was almost certainly meant to cover illegal profits. Thought of the implausible death rates of transportees to this system. Wondered, for just a moment, how these two things could coexist in Captain Hetnys, this courage and integrity alongside the willingness to sell away lives for a profit. Wondered what sort of officer she would be if I had had the raising of her from a baby lieutenant. Possibly the same as she was now. Possibly not. Possibly she would be dead now, vaporized with the rest of my crew when Anaander Mianaai had breached my heat shield some twenty years ago.

Or perhaps not. If it had been Lieutenant Hetnys commanding me in Ors, on Shis’urna, and not Lieutenant Awn, perhaps I would still be myself, still Justice of Toren, and my crew would still be alive.

“I know, sir,” said Captain Hetnys, emboldened further, perhaps, by my not having answered, “that prominent as this house is here at Athoek, they must seem like nothing to you. From such a great distance, Raughd Denche looks very little different from Sirix Odela.”

“On the contrary,” I replied evenly. “I see a great difference between Raughd Denche and Sirix Odela.” As I spoke, Raughd strolled out of the main building, on her way to the bathhouse, all studied unconcern.

“I mean to say, sir, that from the great elevation of Mianaai, Denche must appear as no different than other servants. And I know it’s always said that we each have our role, our given task, and none of them is any better or worse than another, just different.” I had heard it said many times myself. Strange, how equally important, just different always seemed to translate into some “equally important” roles being more worthy of respect and reward than others. “But,” Captain Hetnys continued, “we don’t all have your perspective. And I imagine…” The briefest of hesitations. “I imagine if ever your cousins committed some youthful foolishness or indiscretion, they were not treated much differently than Raughd Denche. And that is as it is, sir.” She lifted her green-gloved hands, the vague suggestion of pious supplication. All that was, was Amaat. The universe was God itself, and nothing could happen or exist that God did not will. “But perhaps you can understand why everyone here might see the daughter of this house in that light, or why she herself might think herself equal to even a fleet captain, and a cousin of the Lord of the Radch.”

Almost. Almost she might have understood. “You see Raughd, I think, as a nice, well-bred young person who has somehow, in the past few weeks, made some inexplicably unfortunate choices. That I am perhaps being too harsh on someone who does not live under the military discipline you or I have been accustomed to. Perhaps the daughter of the house has even spoken to you of enemies of hers who have whispered accusations into my ear, and prejudiced me against her unfairly.” A brief change of expression flashed across Captain Hetnys’s face, nearly a plain admission I was right. “But consider those unfortunate choices. They were, from the beginning, meant to harm. Meant to harm residents of the Undergarden. Meant, Captain, to harm you. To harm the entire station. She could not have anticipated the death of Translator Dlique, but surely she knew your ancillaries went armed, and knew how uneasy you were about the Undergarden.” Captain Hetnys was silent, looking down at her lap, hands empty, her bowl of tea cooling on the bench beside her. “Nice, well-bred people do not just suddenly act maliciously for no reason.”

This would clearly go nowhere. And I had other things I wanted to know. I had spent some time considering how someone could remove transportees from the system without anyone knowing. “The Ghost Gate,” I said.

“Sir?” She looked, I thought, not quite as relieved at the change of topic as she might have.

“The dead-end gate. You never met another ship there?”

Was that hesitation? A change of expression, gone from her face before it could be read? Surprise? Fear? “No, sir, never.”

A lie. I wanted to look toward Sword of Atagaris, standing stiff and silent beside Kalr Five. But I would never catch, from an ancillary, any subtle reaction to its captain’s lie. And the glance itself would betray my thoughts. That I recognized the lie for what it was. Instead I looked over toward the bathhouse. Raughd Denche came striding out, back the way she’d come, a grim set to her expression that boded ill for any servant who might come across her path. I almost looked around to see where her personal attendant was, and realized, with surprise, that she hadn’t followed Raughd into the bathhouse.

Captain Hetnys also noticed Raughd. She blinked, and frowned, and then shook her head slightly, dismissal, I thought. Of Raughd’s obvious anger, or of me, I couldn’t tell. “Fleet Captain,” she said, glancing toward the bathhouse, “with your indulgent permission. It’s very warm today.”

“Of course, Captain,” I replied, and remained sitting as she rose, and bowed, and walked away across the mossy stones, angling toward the bathhouse. Sword of Atagaris fell quickly in behind her.

She had walked about halfway across the shaded green and gray yard, was directly in front of that curving end of the bathhouse window, when the bomb went off.

It had been twenty-five years since I’d seen combat. Or at least the sort of combat where bombs were likely to go off. Still, I had been a ship filled with bodies for fighting. So it was due to two-thousand-year-old habit that without any sort of effort at all, nearly the instant I saw the flash in the bathhouse window, and almost (but not quite) instantaneously saw the window shatter and its pieces fly outward, I was on my feet and my armor was fully extended.

I suspected Sword of Atagaris had never seen ground combat, but it reacted almost as quickly as I had, extending its armor and moving with inhuman speed to put itself between the flying glass and its unarmored captain. The front of glittering, jagged glass swept out from the window, tearing leaves and branches from the trees shading the stones, reached the ancillary, knocked it to the ground, Captain Hetnys beneath it. The barest moment later a scatter of small bits of glass and leaves and twigs reached me and bounced harmlessly off my armor. A quick thought told me that although Kalr Five had only just finished raising her armor, she was quite safe. “Give me your medkit,” I said to her. And when she’d done that, I sent her to call for Medical, and for Planetary Security, and then went to see if Captain Hetnys had survived.

Flames licked the edges of the shattered bathhouse window. Shards and fragments of glass littered the ground, some snapping or crunching underfoot as I went. Captain Hetnys lay on her back, awkwardly, under Sword of Atagaris. A strange, misshapen fin protruded from between the ancillary’s shoulder blades, and I realized that it must be a large shard of glass that had embedded itself before Sword of Atagaris could completely raise its armor. Its reaction had been fast, but not quite as fast as mine, and it and Captain Hetnys had been some twenty meters closer to the window than I had.

I knelt beside them. “Sword of Atagaris, how badly injured is your captain?”

“I’m fine, sir,” replied Captain Hetnys before the ancillary could answer. She tried to roll over, to shove Sword of Atagaris off her.

“Don’t move, Captain,” I said sharply, as I tore open Kalr Five’s medkit. “Sword of Atagaris, your report.”

“Captain Hetnys has sustained a minor concussion, lacerations, an abrasion, and some bruising, Fleet Captain.” Its armor distorted Sword of Atagaris’s voice, and of course it spoke with the expressionlessness typical of ancillaries, but I thought I heard some strain. “She is otherwise fine, as she has already indicated.”

“Get off me, Ship,” said Captain Hetnys, irritably.

“I don’t think it can,” I said. “There’s a piece of glass lodged in its spinal column. Lower your armor, Sword of Atagaris.” The medkit held a special-made general-purpose corrective, designed to slow bleeding, halt further tissue damage, and just generally keep someone alive long enough to get them to a medical facility.

“Fleet Captain,” said Sword of Atagaris, “with all respect, my captain is unarmored and there might be another bomb.”

“There’s not much we can do about that without killing this segment,” I pointed out. Though I was sure there had only been the one bomb, sure that blast had been meant to kill one person in particular, rather than as many as possible. “And the sooner you let me medkit you, the sooner we can move you and get your captain out of danger.” Uncomfortable and annoyed as she clearly was, Captain Hetnys frowned even further, and stared at me as though I had spoken in some language she had never heard before and could not understand.

Sword of Atagaris dropped its armor, revealing its uniform jacket, blood-soaked between the shoulders, and the jagged glass shard. “How deep is it?” I asked.

“Very deep, Fleet Captain,” it replied. “Repairs will take some time.”

“No doubt.” The medkit also included a small blade for cutting clothes away from wounds. I pulled it out, sliced the bloody fabric out of the way. Laid the corrective on the ancillary’s back, as close as I could to where the glass protruded without jostling it and maybe causing further injury. The corrective oozed and puddled—it would take a few moments (or, depending on the nature and extent of the injuries it encountered, a few minutes) to stabilize the situation, and then harden. Once it had, Sword of Atagaris could probably be moved safely.

The fire in the bathhouse had taken hold, fed by that beautiful woodwork. Three servants were standing by the main building, staring, aghast. More were running out of the house to see what had happened. Kalr Five and another servant hastened toward us, carrying something flat and wide—Mercy of Kalr had told her there was a spinal injury. I didn’t see Raughd anywhere.

Captain Hetnys still stared at me from under Sword of Atagaris, frowning. “Fleet Captain,” said the ancillary, “with all respect, this injury is too severe to be worth repairing. Please take Captain Hetnys to safety.” Its voice and its face were of course expressionless, but tears welled in its eyes, whether from pain or from something else it was impossible for me to know. I could guess, though.

“Your captain is safe, Sword of Atagaris,” I said. “Be easy on that score.” The last bit of cloudiness cleared from the corrective on its back. Gently I brushed it with a gloved finger. No streak, no smudge. Kalr Five dropped to her knees beside us, set down the board—it looked to be a tabletop. The servant carrying the other end didn’t know how to move people with back injuries, so Kalr Five and I moved Sword of Atagaris off of Captain Hetnys, who rose, looked at Sword of Atagaris lying silent and motionless on the tabletop, the shard of glass sticking up out of its back. Looked, still frowning, at me.

“Captain,” I said to her as Kalr Five and the servant carefully bore Sword of Atagaris away, “we need to have a talk with our host.”

16

The explosion had put an end to any mourning proprieties. We met in the main house’s formal sitting room, a broad window (facing the lake, of course), scattered benches and chairs cushioned in gold and pale blue, low tables of dark wood, the walls more of that carved scrollwork that must have occupied the entirety of some servant’s duties. Over in one corner, on a stand, sat a tall, long-necked, square-bodied stringed instrument that I didn’t recognize, which suggested it was Athoeki. Next to that, on another stand, was that ancient tea set in its box, lid open the better to display it.

Fosyf herself stood in the center of the room, Captain Hetnys in a chair nearby, at Fosyf’s insistence. Raughd paced at one end of the room, back and forth until her mother said, “Sit down, Raughd,” ostensibly pleasantly but an edge to her voice. Raughd sat, tense, didn’t lean back.

“It was a bomb, of course,” I said. “Not very large, probably something stolen off a construction site, but whoever placed it added scraps of metal that were meant to maim or kill whoever might be close enough.” Some of that had reached Captain Hetnys but had been blocked by Sword of Atagaris. It had arrived just the barest instant after that shard of glass.

“Me!” cried Raughd, and rose to her feet again, gloved hands clenched, and resumed her pacing. “That was meant for me! I can tell you who it was, it can’t have been anyone else!”

“A moment, Citizen,” I said. “Probably stolen off a construction site, because while it’s easy to find bits of scrap metal, finding the actual explosive is of course more difficult.” Quite deliberately so. Though sufficient determination and ingenuity could find ways around nearly any restrictions. “Of course, explosives aren’t generally left lying around. Whoever did this either has access to such things or knows someone who does. We can probably track them down that way.”

“I know who it was!” Raughd insisted, and would have said more except the doctor and the district magistrate entered just at that moment.

The doctor went immediately to where Captain Hetnys sat. “Captain, no nonsense from you, I must examine you to be sure you are unhurt.”

The district magistrate had opened her mouth to speak to me. I forestalled her with a gesture. “Doctor, the captain’s injuries are fortunately minor. Sword of Atagaris’s ancillary, on the other hand, is very badly hurt and will need treatment as soon as you can manage.”

The doctor drew herself up straight, indignant. “Are you a doctor, Fleet Captain?”

“Are you?” I asked coldly. I couldn’t help but compare her to my own ship’s medic. “If you’re looking at Captain Hetnys with your medical implants turned on, it should be obvious to you that she has sustained little more than cuts and bruises. Sword of Atagaris, which sees her even more intimately, has said its captain is largely uninjured. Its ancillary, on the other hand, has had a twenty-six-centimeter shard of glass driven into its spinal column. The sooner you treat it the more effective that treatment will be.” I did not add that I spoke from personal experience.

“Fleet Captain,” the doctor replied, just as coldly, “I don’t need you to lecture me on my own assignment. An injury of that sort will have a long and difficult recovery period. I’m afraid the best course will be to dispose of the ancillary. I’m sure it will be inconvenient for Captain Hetnys, but really it’s the only reasonable choice.”

“Doctor,” interposed Captain Hetnys, before I could reply, “perhaps it’s best to just treat the ancillary.”

“With all respect to you, of course, Captain Hetnys,” said the doctor, “I am not subject to the authority of the fleet captain, only my own, and I will rely on my own judgment and my medical training.”

“Come, Doctor,” said Fosyf, who had been silent so far. “The fleet captain and the captain both want the ancillary treated, surely Captain Hetnys is willing to deal with its recovery. What harm can there be in treating it?”

I suspected that the doctor, as was common in this sort of household, did not merely work for the tea plantation but was also a client of Fosyf’s. Her continued well-being depended on Fosyf, and so she could not answer her in the same terms as she had answered me. “If you insist, Citizen,” she said with a small bow.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “Five.” Kalr Five had stood silent and straight by the door this whole time, in case I should need her. “Find a proper doctor in the town and have her come and see to Sword of Atagaris as quickly as possible.” Sooner would have been much better, but I did not trust this doctor at all. I didn’t wonder that the field workers would rather bleed to death than consult her. I wished very much that Medic was here.

“Sir,” replied Five, and turned neatly and was out the door.

“Fleet Captain,” began the doctor, “I’ve said I’ll…”

I turned away from her, to the district magistrate. “Magistrate.” I bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, sadly in unfortunate circumstances.”

The magistrate bowed, with a sidelong glance at the doctor, but said only, “Likewise, Fleet Captain. I’m here so quickly because I was already on my way to pay my respects. May I express my sorrow at your loss.” I nodded acknowledgment of this. “As you were saying when we came in, we can probably find whoever made this bomb by tracking the materials it was made with. Security is even now examining what remains of the bathhouse. A sad loss.” She directed that last to Citizen Fosyf.

“My daughter is unhurt,” Fosyf replied. “That’s all that matters.”

“That bomb was meant for me!” cried Raughd, who had stood fuming all this time. “I know who it was! There’s no need to go tracking anything!”

“Who was it, Citizen?” I asked.

“Queter. It was Queter. She’s always hated me.”

The name was Valskaayan. “One of the field workers?” I asked.

“She works in the manufactory, maintaining the dryers,” said Fosyf.

“Well,” said the magistrate, “I’ll send—”

I interrupted her. “Magistrate, your indulgence. Do any of the people you’ve brought speak Delsig?”

“A few words, Fleet Captain, no more.”

“As it happens,” I said, “I’m fluent in Delsig.” Had spent decades on Valskaay itself, but I did not say that. “Let me go down to the field workers’ house and talk to Citizen Queter and see what I can discover.”

“You don’t need to discover anything,” insisted Raughd. “Who else could it be? She’s always hated me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She thinks I’ve corrupted her baby sister. Those people have the most unreasonable ideas about things.”

I turned to the magistrate again. “Magistrate, allow me to go alone to the field workers’ house and talk to Citizen Queter. In the meantime your staff can trace the explosive.”

“Let me send some security with you, Fleet Captain,” said the magistrate. “Arresting this person all by yourself, surrounded by Valskaayans—I think you might want some help.”

“There’s no need,” I replied. “I won’t need the help, and I have no fear for my safety.”

The magistrate blinked, and frowned, just slightly. “No, Fleet Captain, I don’t suppose you do.”

I walked to the field workers’ house, though Fosyf offered me the use of a groundcar. The sun was going down, and the fields I passed were empty. The house sat silent, no one outside, no movement. If I didn’t know better I might have thought it abandoned. Everyone would be inside. But they would be expecting someone—Fosyf, Planetary Security, the district magistrate. Soldiers. There would be a lookout.

As I came in earshot of the house I opened my mouth, drew breath, and sang:

I am the soldier

So greedy, so hungry for songs.

So many I’ve swallowed, they leak out,

They spill out of the corners of my mouth

And fly away, desperate for freedom.

The front door opened. The lookout who had sung those words, that first morning when I had run past the workers picking tea. I smiled to see her, and bowed as I came closer. “I’ve been wanting to compliment you on that,” I said to her, in Delsig. “It was nicely done. Did you compose it that moment, or had you thought about it before? I’m only curious—it was impressive either way.”

“It’s only a song I was singing, Radchaai,” she replied. Radchaai only meant “Citizen,” but I knew that in the mouth of a Valskaayan, speaking Delsig, in that tone of voice, it was a veiled insult. A deniable one, since she had, after all, only used an always-proper address.

I gestured unconcern at her answer. “If you please, I’m here to speak with Queter. I only want to talk. I’m here by myself.”

Her glance flicked to over my shoulder, though she had, I knew, been watching, knew that no one had come with me. She turned then, without a word, and walked into the house. I followed, careful to close the door behind me.

We met no one as we went through to the back of the house, to the kitchen, as large as Fosyf’s, but where that kitchen was all gleaming pans and ranks of freezers and suspension cabinets, this one was half empty: a few burners, a sink. A rumpled pile of clothes in one corner, faded and stained, doubtless the remnant of what had been provided as the field workers’ basic clothing allowance, picked over, altered to suit. A row of barrels against one wall that I strongly suspected were filled with something fermenting. Half a dozen people sat around a table drinking beer. The lookout gestured me into the room, and then left without a word.

One of the people at the table was the elder who had spoken to me, the day we’d arrived. Who’d changed the choice of song, when she’d seen that we were in mourning. “Good evening, Grandfather,” I said to her, and bowed. Because of my long familiarity with Valskaay, I was fairly sure my choice of gender—required by the language I was speaking—was correct.

She looked at me for ten seconds, and then took a drink of her beer. Everyone else stared fixedly away from me—at the table, at the floor, at a distant wall. “What do you want, Radchaai?” she asked finally. Even though I was quite sure she knew why I was here.

“I was hoping to speak to Queter, Grandfather, if you please.” Grandfather said nothing in response, not immediately, but then she turned to the person at her left. “Niece, ask Queter if she’ll join us.” Niece hesitated, looked as though she would open her mouth to protest, decided otherwise, though clearly she was not happy with her choice. She rose, and left the kitchen without a word to me.

Grandfather gestured to the vacant chair. “Sit, Soldier.” I sat. Still, no one else at the table would look directly at me. I suspected that if Grandfather had told them to leave, they would have gladly fled the room. “From your accent, soldier,” said Grandfather, “you learned your Delsig in Vestris Cor.”

“I did,” I agreed. “I spent quite some time there. And in Surimto District.”

“I’m from Eph,” Grandfather said, pleasantly, as though this were nothing more than a social call. “I never was in Vestris Cor. Or Surimto, either. I imagine it’s very different these days, now you Radchaai are running things.”

“In some ways, I’m sure,” I replied. “I haven’t been there in quite some time myself.” Queter might have fled, or might refuse to come. My coming here, approaching like this, had been a gamble.

“How many Valskaayans did you kill while you were there, Radchaai?” Not Grandfather, but one of the other people around the table, one whose anger and resentment had built beyond the ability of her fear of me to contain it.

“Quite a few,” I replied, calmly. “But I am not here to kill anyone. I am alone and unarmed.” I held my gloved hands out, over the table, palms up.

“Just a social call, then?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm.

“Sadly, no,” I replied.

Grandfather spoke then, trying to steer the conversation away from such dangerous territory. “I think you’re too young to have been in the annexation, child.”

I ducked my head, a small, respectful bow. “I’m older than I seem, Grandfather.” Far, far older. But there was no way for anyone here to know that.

“You’re very polite,” said Grandfather, “I’ll give you that.”

“My mother said,” observed the angry person, “that the soldiers who killed her family were also very polite.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, into the tense silence that greeted her observation. “I know that even if I could tell you for certain that it wasn’t me, that wouldn’t help.”

“It wasn’t you,” she said. “It wasn’t in Surimto. But you’re right, it doesn’t help.” She shoved her chair back, looked at Grandfather. “Excuse me,” she said. “Things to do.” Grandfather gestured permission to go, and she left. As she went out the kitchen door, someone else came in. She was in her twenties, one of the people I’d seen under the arbor the day we’d arrived. The lines of her face suggested she was genetically related to Grandfather, though her skin was darker. Her eyes and her tightly curled hair that she’d twisted and bound with a bright green scarf were lighter. And by the set of her shoulders, and the frozen silence that descended when she’d entered, she was who I’d come to see.

I rose. “Miss Queter,” I said, and bowed. She said nothing, did not move. “I want to thank you for deciding not to kill me.” Silence, still, from Grandfather, from the others at the table. I wondered if the hallways outside were full of eavesdroppers, or if everyone else had fled, hiding anywhere that might be safe until I left. “Will you sit?” She didn’t answer.

“Sit, Queter,” said Grandfather.

“I won’t,” said Queter, and folded her arms and stared at me. “I could have killed you, Radchaai. You’d probably have deserved it, but Raughd deserved it more.”

I gestured resignation and reseated myself. “She threatened your sister, I take it?” An incredulous look told me my mistake. “Your brother. Is he all right?”

She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head. “The rescuer of the helpless.” Her voice was acid.

“Queter,” warned Grandfather.

I raised a gloved hand, palm out—the gesture would have been rude, to most Radchaai, but meant something else to a Valskaayan. Hold. Be calm. “It’s all right, Grandfather. I know justice when I hear it.” A small, incredulous noise from one of the others sitting at the table, quickly silenced. Everyone pretended not to have noticed it. “Citizen Raughd had a taste for tormenting your brother. She’s quite shrewd in some ways. She knew what lengths you’d go to, to protect him. She also knew that you have some technical ability. That if she managed to filch some explosives from a construction site and provided you with the instructions for how to use them, you’d be able to follow them. She didn’t, I suspect, realize that you might come up with ways to improve their use. The scrap metal was your idea, wasn’t it?” I had no evidence for that, beyond the repeated signs that Raughd rarely thought things through. Queter’s expression didn’t change. “And she didn’t realize you might decide to use them on her instead of me.”

Head still tilted, expression still sardonic, she said, “Don’t you want to know how I did it?”

I smiled. “Most esteemed Queter. For nearly all of my life I have been among people who were very firmly convinced that the universe would be the better for my absence. I doubt very much that you have any surprises for me. Still, it was well done, and if your timing hadn’t been just that smallest bit off, you would have succeeded. Your talents are wasted here.”

“Oh, of course they are.” Her tone became, if possible, even more cutting than before. “There’s no one else here but superstitious savages.” The last words in Radchaai.

“The information you would need to make something like that is not freely available,” I said. “If you’d gone looking for it you would have been denied access, and possibly had Planetary Security looking closely at you. If you attended school here you’d have learned to recite passages of scripture, and some cleaned-up history, and very little more. Raughd herself likely knew no more than that explosives can kill people. You worked the details out yourself.” Had, perhaps, been pondering the question long before Raughd made her move. “Sorting tea leaves and fixing the machines in the manufactory! You must have been bored beyond belief. If you’d ever taken the aptitudes, the assigners would have been sure to send you somewhere your talents were better occupied, and you’d have had no time or opportunity to dream up trouble.” Queter’s lips tightened, and she drew breath as though to reply. “And,” I forestalled her, “you would not have been here to protect your brother.” I gestured, acknowledging the irony of such things.

“Are you here to arrest me?” Queter asked, without moving, her face not betraying the tension that had forced that question into the open. Only the barest hint of it in her voice. Grandfather, and the others around the table, sat still as stone, hardly daring to breathe.

“I am,” I replied.

Queter unfolded her arms. Closed her hands into fists. “You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.”

“You’re right,” I agreed.

“Let’s just go!” Queter crossed her arms again, hands still fists.

“Well,” I replied calmly. “As to that, I walked here, and I think it’s raining by now. Or have I lost count of the days?” No reply, just tense silence from the people around the table, Queter’s determined glare. “And I wanted to ask you what happened. So that I can be sure the weight of this falls where it should.”

“Oh!” cried Queter, at the frayed edge of her patience finally. “You’re the just one, the kind one, are you? But you’re no different from the daughter of the house.” She lapsed, there, into Radchaai. “All of you! You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization. And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from? You said you knew justice when you heard it. Well, what is your justice but you allowed to treat us as you like, and us condemned for even attempting to defend ourselves?”

“I won’t argue,” I said. “What you say is true.”

Queter blinked, hesitated. Surprised, I thought, to hear me say so. “But you’ll grant us justice from on high, will you? You’ll bring salvation? Are you here for us to fall at your feet and sing your praise? But we know what your justice is, we know what your salvation is, whatever face you put on it.”

“I can’t bring you justice, Queter. I can, however, bring you personally into the presence of the district magistrate so that you can explain to her why you did what you did. It won’t change things for you. But you knew from the moment Raughd Denche told you what she wanted that there would be no other ending to this, not for you. The daughter of the house was too convinced of her own cleverness to have realized what that would mean.”

“And what good will that do, Radchaai?” asked Queter, defiant. “Don’t you know we’re dishonest and deceitful? Resentful where we should be docile and grateful? That what intelligence we superstitious savages have is mere cunning? Obviously, I would lie. I might even tell a lie you created for me, because you hate the daughter of the house. And me in particular. In the strikes—your pet Samirend will have told you of the strikes?” I gestured acknowledgment. “She’ll have told you how she and her cousins nobly educated us, made us aware of the injustice we suffered, taught us how to organize and induced us to act? Because we could not possibly have done those things ourselves.”

“She herself,” I said, “was reeducated afterward, and as a result can’t speak directly about it. Citizen Fosyf, on the other hand, told me the story in such terms.”

“Did she,” answered Queter, not a question. “And did she tell you that my mother died during those strikes? But no, she’ll have spoken of how kind she is to us, and how gentle she was, not bringing in soldiers to shoot us all as we sat there.”

Queter could not have been more than ten when it had happened. “I can’t promise the district magistrate will listen,” I said. “I can only give you the opportunity to speak.”

“And then what?” asked Grandfather. “What then, Soldier? From a child I was taught to forgive and forget, but it’s difficult to forget these things, the loss of parents, of children and grandchildren.” Her expression was unchanged, blank determination, but her voice broke slightly at that last. “And we are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.”

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place. With Queter’s help I can remove Raughd from this place, permanently. I will try to do more if I can.”

“Really?” asked another person at the table, who had been silent till now. “Fair pay? Can you do that, Soldier?”

“Pay at all!” added Queter. “Decent food you don’t have to go in debt for.”

“A priest,” someone suggested. “A priest for us, and a priest for the Recalcitrants, there are some over on the next estate.”

“They’re called teachers,” Grandfather said. “Not priests. How many times have I said so?” And Recalcitrant was an insult. But before I could say that, Grandfather said to me, “You won’t be able to keep such promises. You won’t be able to keep Queter safe and healthy.”

“That’s why I make no promises,” I said, “and Queter may come out of this better than we fear. I will do what I can, though it may not be much.”

“Well,” said Grandfather after a few moments more of silence. “Well. I suppose we’ll have to give you supper, Radchaai.”

“If you would be so kind, Grandfather,” I said.

17

Queter and I walked to Fosyf’s house before the sun rose, while the air was still damp and smelling of wet soil, Queter striding impatiently, her back stiff, her arms crossed, repeatedly drawing ahead of me and then pausing for me to catch up, as though she were eager to reach her destination and I was inconsiderately delaying her. The fields, the mountains, were shadowed and silent. Queter was not in a mood to talk. I drew breath and sang, in a language I was sure no one here understood.

Memory is an event horizon

What’s caught in it is gone but it’s always there.

It was the song Tisarwat’s Bos had sung, in the soldiers’ mess. Oh, tree! Bo Nine had been singing it to herself just now, above, on the Station.

“Well, that one’s escaped,” said Queter, a meter ahead of me on the road, not looking back at me.

“And will again,” I replied.

She paused, waited for me to catch up. Still didn’t turn her head. “You lied, of course,” she said, and began walking again. “You won’t let me speak to the district magistrate, and no one will believe what I have to say. But you didn’t bring soldiers to the house, so I suppose that’s something. Still, no one will believe what I have to say. And I’ll be gone through Security or dead, if there’s even any difference, but my brother will still be here. And so will Raughd.” She spat, after saying the name. “Will you take him away?”

“Who?” The question took me by surprise, so that I hardly understood it. “Your brother?” We were still speaking Delsig.

“Yes!” Impatient, still angry. “My brother.”

“I don’t understand.” The sky had paled and brightened, but where we walked was still shadowed. “Is this something you’re afraid I’ll do, or something you want?” She didn’t answer. “I’m a soldier, Queter, I live on a military ship.” I didn’t have the time or the resources to take care of children, not even mostly grown ones.

Queter gave an exasperated cry. “Don’t you have an apartment somewhere, and servants? Don’t you have retainers? Don’t you have dozens of people to see to your every need, to make your tea and straighten your collar and strew flowers in your path? Surely there’s room for one more.”

“Is that something your brother wants?” And after a few moments with no reply, “Would your grandfather not be grieved to lose both of you?”

She stopped, then, suddenly, and wheeled to face me. “You think you know about us but you don’t understand anything.”

I thought of telling her that it was she who did not understand. That I was not responsible for every distressed child on the planet. That none of this had been my fault. She stood there tense, frowning, waiting for me to answer. “Do you blame your brother? For not fighting harder, for putting you in the position you’re in?”

“Oh!” she cried. “Of course! It’s nothing to do with the fact that your civilized self brought Raughd Denche down here. You knew enough about the daughter of the house to realize what had happened, you knew enough about her to realize what she was doing to us. But it wasn’t serious enough for you to stir yourself until some Radchaai nearly got killed. And there won’t be anything for you to worry about once you’re gone and the daughter of the house and her mother are still here.”

“I didn’t cause this, Queter. And I can’t fix every injustice I find, no matter how much I’d like to.”

“No, of course you can’t.” Her contempt was acid. “You can only fix the ones that really inconvenience you.” She turned, and began walking again.

If I were given to swearing, I would have sworn now. “How old is your brother?”

“Sixteen,” she said. The sarcasm returned to her voice. “You could rescue him from this terrible place and bring him to real civilization.”

“Queter, I only have my ship and some temporary quarters on Athoek Station. I have soldiers, and they see to my needs and even make my tea, but I don’t have a retinue. And your idea about the flowers is charming, but it would make a terrible mess. I don’t have a place in my household for your brother. But I will ask him if he wants to leave here, and if he does, I’ll do my best for him.”

“You won’t.” She didn’t turn as she spoke, just continued walking. “Do you even know,” she said, and I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was about to cry, “can you even imagine what it’s like to know that nothing you can do will make any difference? That nothing you can do will protect the people you love? That anything you could possibly ever do is less than worthless?”

I could. “And yet you do it anyway.”

“Superstitious savage that I am.” Definitely crying now. “Nothing I do will make any difference. But I will make you look at it. I will make you see what it is you’ve done, and ever after, if you would look away, if you would ever claim to be just, or proper, you’ll have to lie to yourself outright.”

“Most esteemed Queter,” I said, “idealist that you are, young as you are, you can have no idea just how easy it is for people to deceive themselves.” By now the tops of the mountains were bright, and we were nearly over the ridge.

“I’ll do it anyway.”

“You will,” I agreed, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.

We stopped at the smaller house first. Queter refused tea or food, stood by the door, arms still crossed. “No one at the main house will be awake yet,” I told her. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’d like to dress and see to a few things, and then we’ll go up to the house and wait for the magistrate.” She lifted an elbow and a shoulder, conveying her lack of concern over what I did or didn’t do.

Sword of Atagaris was in Captain Hetnys’s sitting room, still facedown on the tabletop on the floor. Its back was covered with the thick black shell of a corrective. I squatted down beside it. “Sword of Atagaris,” I said quietly, in case it should be asleep, and not wanting to disturb Captain Hetnys.

“Fleet Captain,” it replied.

“Are you comfortable? Is there anything you need?”

I thought it hesitated just the smallest moment before replying. “I’m in no pain, Fleet Captain, and Kalr Five and Kalr Eight have been very helpful.” Another pause. “Thank you.”

“Please let either of them know if you need anything. I’m going to get dressed, now, and go up to the main house. I think it very likely we’ll want to leave before tomorrow. Do you think we’ll be able to move you?”

“I believe so, Fleet Captain.” That pause again. “Fleet Captain. Sir. If I may ask a question.”

“Of course, Ship.”

“Why did you call the doctor?”

I had acted without thinking much about why. Had only done what had, at the moment, seemed to be the right and obvious thing to do. “Because I didn’t think you wanted to be too far from your captain. And I see no reason to waste ancillaries.”

“With all respect, sir, unless the gates open soon, this system only has a limited number of specialized correctives. And I do have a few backups in storage.”

Backups. Human beings in suspension waiting to die. “Would you have preferred I left this segment to be disposed of?”

Three seconds of silence. Then, “No, Fleet Captain. I would not.”

The inner door opened, and Captain Hetnys came out, half dressed, looking as though she’d just woken. “Fleet Captain,” she said. Taken somewhat aback, I thought.

“I was just checking on Sword of Atagaris, Captain. I’m sorry if I woke you.” I rose. “I’m going up to the main house to meet with the district magistrate as soon as I’ve dressed and had something to eat.”

“Sir. Did you find the person who did this?” Captain Hetnys asked.

“I did.” I would not elaborate.

But she didn’t ask for details. “I’ll be down myself in a few minutes, Fleet Captain, with your indulgence.”

“Of course, Captain.”

Queter was still standing by the door when I came back downstairs. Sirix sat at the table, with a piece of bread and a bowl of tea in front of her. “Good morning, Fleet Captain,” she said when she saw me. “I’d like to come up to the house with you.” Queter scoffed.

“Whatever you like, Citizen.” I took my own piece of bread, poured myself a bowl of tea. “We’re only waiting for Captain Hetnys to be ready.”

Captain Hetnys came down the stairs a few minutes later. She said nothing to Sirix, looked quickly at Queter and then away. Came over to the sideboard to pour herself some tea.

“Kalr Eight will stay behind to look after Sword of Atagaris,” I said, and then, to Queter, in Radchaai, “Citizen, are you sure you don’t want anything?”

“No, thank you so very kindly, Citizen.” Queter’s voice was bitter and sarcastic.

“As you like, Citizen,” I replied.

Captain Hetnys stared at me in frank astonishment. “Sir,” she began.

“Captain,” I said, forestalling whatever else she might have been intending to say, “are you eating, or can we go?” I took the last bite of my bread. Sirix had already finished hers.

“I’ll drink my tea on the way, sir, with your permission.” I gestured the granting of it, swallowed the last of my own tea, and walked out the door without looking to see if anyone followed.

A servant brought us to the same blue and gold sitting room we had met in the day before. By now the sun was nearly above the mountains, and the lake, through the window, had turned quicksilver. Captain Hetnys settled into a chair, Sirix carefully chose another three meters away. Five took up her usual station by the door, and Queter stood defiant in the middle of the room. I went over to where the stringed instrument sat, to examine it. It had four strings and no frets, and its wooden body was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I wondered how it sounded. If it was bowed, or strummed, or plucked.

The district magistrate came in. “Fleet Captain, you had us worried, you were so late last night. But your soldier assured us you were well.”

I bowed. “Good morning, Magistrate. And I’m sorry to have troubled you. By the time we were ready to come back, it was raining, so we spent the night.” As I spoke, Fosyf and Raughd entered the room. “Good morning, Citizens,” I said, nodding in their direction, and then turned back to the district magistrate. “Magistrate, I would like to introduce Citizen Queter. I have promised her the chance to speak to you directly. I think it is extremely important that you listen to what she has to say.” Raughd scoffed. Rolled her eyes and shook her head.

The magistrate glanced in her direction, and said, “Does Citizen Queter speak Radchaai?”

“Yes,” I replied, ignoring Raughd for the moment. I turned to Queter. “Citizen, here is the district magistrate, as I promised.”

For a moment, Queter didn’t respond, just stood straight and silent in the middle of the room. Then she turned toward the magistrate. Said, without bowing, “Magistrate. I want to explain what happened.” She spoke very slowly and carefully.

“Citizen,” replied the magistrate. Enunciating precisely, as though she was speaking to a small child. “The fleet captain promised that you would be given a chance to speak to me, and so I am listening.”

Queter was silent a moment more. Trying, I thought, to rein in a sarcastic response. “Magistrate,” she said finally. Still speaking carefully and clearly, so that everyone might understand her, despite her accent. “You may know that the tea planters and their daughters sometimes amuse themselves at the expense of the field workers.”

“Oh!” cried Raughd, all offended exasperation. “I can’t go within fifty meters of a field worker without flattery and flirting and all sorts of attempts to get my attention in the hope I’ll give gifts, or that eventually I’ll bestow clientage. This is amusing myself at their expense, is it?”

“Citizen Raughd,” I said, keeping my voice calm and chill, “Queter was promised the opportunity to speak. You will have your chance when she is finished.”

“And meanwhile I’m to stand here and listen to this?” cried Raughd.

“Yes,” I replied.

Raughd looked at her mother in appeal. Fosyf said, “Now, Raughd, the fleet captain promised Queter she could speak. If there’s anything to say afterward we’ll have our chance to say it.” Her voice even, her expression genial as always, but I thought she was wary of what might come next. Captain Hetnys seemed confused, looked for an instant as though she would have said something, but saw me watching. Sirix stared fixedly off into the distance. Angry. I didn’t blame her.

I turned to Queter. “Go on, Citizen.” Raughd made a disgusted noise, and seated herself heavily in the nearest chair. Her mother remained standing. Calm.

Queter drew a deliberate breath. “The tea planters and their daughters sometimes amuse themselves at the expense of the field workers,” she repeated. I didn’t know if anyone else in the room could hear how carefully she was controlling her voice. “Of course we always say flattering things and pretend to want it.” Raughd made a sharp, incredulous noise. Queter continued. “Most of us, anyway. Anyone in this house has… can make our lives a misery.” She had been about to say that anyone in the house had the field workers’ lives in their hands, an expression that, literally translated from Delsig into Radchaai, sounded vulgar.

The district magistrate said, voice disbelieving, “Citizen, are you accusing Citizen Fosyf or anyone else in this household of mistreatment?”

Queter blinked. Took a breath. Said, “The favor, or the disfavor, of Citizen Fosyf or anyone else in this house can mean the difference between credit or not, extra food for the children or not, the opportunity for extra work or not, access to medical supplies or not—”

“There is a doctor, you know,” Fosyf pointed out, her voice just slightly edged, something I had never heard before.

“I’ve met your doctor,” I said. “I can’t blame anyone for being reluctant to deal with her. Citizen Queter, do continue.”

“In entertainments,” said Queter after another breath, “beautiful, humble Radchaai are lifted up by the rich and the powerful, and maybe it happens, but it never happens to us. Only an infant would think it ever would. I tell you this so that you understand why the daughter of this house is met with flattery, and is given everything she wishes.”

I could see from the district magistrate’s expression that she saw little difference between this and what Raughd had described. She looked at me, frowning slightly. “Continue, Queter,” I said, before the magistrate could say what I was sure she was thinking. “I promised you would have your say.”

Queter continued. “For the past few years it has pleased Citizen Raughd to demand that my younger sister…” She hesitated. “Perform certain acts,” she finished, finally.

Raughd laughed. “Oh, I didn’t have to demand any of it.”

“You haven’t been listening, Citizen,” I said. “Citizen Queter just explained that your merest wish is in reality a demand and that displeasing you in any way can cause difficulties for the field worker who does so.”

“And there wasn’t anything wrong with any of it,” Raughd continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “You know, you’re turning out to be quite the hypocrite, Fleet Captain. All this condemnation of sexual impropriety and yet you brought your pet Samirend here to amuse you while you are supposedly in full, proper mourning.” I understood now why Raughd had made such a hasty, obvious move toward me—she had thought she needed to outflank Sirix.

Sirix gave a sharp, surprised laugh. “You flatter me, Citizen Raughd. I doubt the fleet captain has ever considered me in such a light.”

“Nor you me, I’m sure,” I agreed. Sirix gestured assent, genuinely amused from what I could see. “More to the point, Citizen, this is the fourth time Citizen Queter has been interrupted. If you cannot restrain yourself, I’ll have to ask you to leave the room while she speaks.”

Raughd was on her feet the instant I finished speaking. “How dare you!” she cried. “You may be the cousin of God herself for all I care, and you may think you’re better than everyone in this system, but you don’t give orders in this house!”

“I had not thought the residents of this house would be so lacking in the most basic propriety,” I said, my voice utterly calm. “If it is not possible here for a citizen to speak without interruption, it would suit me just as well for Queter to tell her story to the magistrate elsewhere, and privately.” Just the smallest stress on privately.

Fosyf heard that stress. Looked at me. Said, “Sit down and be quiet, Raughd.” Surely she knew her daughter well enough to guess what had happened, at least the outlines of it.

Hearing her mother, Raughd went very still. She seemed not even to breathe. I remembered Kalr Five and Six listening to the servants talk, how Fosyf had said that there was time enough to grow a new heir. Wondered how often Raughd had heard that threat.

“Now, Raughd,” said the district magistrate, frowning slightly. Puzzled, I thought, at Fosyf’s tone of voice. “I understand that you’re upset. If someone had tried to kill me yesterday I’d have a hard time keeping calm. But the fleet captain has done nothing more offensive than promise this person”—she gestured toward Queter, standing silent in the middle of the room—“a chance to tell me something, and then try to be sure that promise was kept.” She turned to Queter. “Queter, is it? Do you deny that you placed the explosive in the bathhouse?”

“I don’t deny it,” Queter replied. “I meant to kill the daughter of the house. I am sorry I failed.”

Shocked silence. Everyone had known it, of course, but it was suddenly different, hearing it said so plainly. Then the magistrate said, “I can’t imagine what you would say to me that would change the outcome of this. Do you still wish to speak to me?”

“Yes,” said Queter, simply.

The district magistrate turned to Raughd. “Raughd, I understand if you would rather leave. If you stay, it will be best if you’ll let this person finish speaking.”

“I’ll stay,” replied Raughd, her tone defiant.

The magistrate frowned again. “Well.” She gestured peremptorily toward Queter. “Get it over with, then.”

“The daughter of the house,” said Queter, “knew that I hated her for taking advantage of my sister. She came to me and said that she wanted the fleet captain to die, that the fleet captain always bathed early before anyone else was awake, and an explosion in the bathhouse at the right time was sure to kill her.” Raughd scoffed again, drew breath to speak, but then met her mother’s look and said nothing, just crossed her arms and turned to stare at the antique blue and green tea set, on its stand three and a half meters away from where she stood.

“The daughter of the house,” continued Queter, her voice steady but just a bit louder in case anyone tried to speak over her, “told me that she would supply me with the explosive if I didn’t know where to get it. If I refused, the daughter of the house would do it herself and be sure the blame fell on my sister. If I would do it, she would grant my sister clientage, and she would be sure the blame never fell on me.” She looked over at Raughd then, whose back was still to the rest of the room. Said, with withering contempt, “The daughter of the house thinks I’m stupid.” She looked back at the magistrate. “I can understand why someone would want to kill the fleet captain, but I don’t have any personal argument with her. The daughter of the house is another matter. I knew that whatever happened I would be going through Security and my sister would have nothing but grief. For such a price, why not be rid of the person who threatened my sister?”

“You’re a very articulate young person,” said the magistrate after three seconds of silence. “And by all accounts fairly intelligent. You know, I hope, that you can’t possibly lie about this without being discovered.” A competently conducted interrogation with drugs would uncover a person’s most secret thoughts.

But of course, if authorities assumed the truth of your guilt, they might not bother to conduct any such interrogation. And if someone truly, mistakenly believed something, that’s all an interrogation would uncover. “Interrogate the daughter of the house, Magistrate,” said Queter, “and discover if what I say is true.”

“You admit that you tried to kill Citizen Raughd,” remarked the magistrate dryly, “and that you have, as you put it, a personal argument with her. I have no reason to assume that you’re not just making this up in order to cause her as much difficulty as possible.”

“I’ll make a formal accusation if one is needed, Magistrate,” I said. “But tell me, have you found the source of the explosive?”

“Security confirms it likely came from a construction site. None of the sites nearby reports anything missing.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “the supervisors of those sites should actually look at their stock of explosives and be sure it matches what the record says.” I considered adding that Security ought to pay special attention to places where friends of the daughter of the house worked, or where she had recently visited.

The magistrate raised an eyebrow. “I’ve given that order. Gave it, in fact, before I came downstairs to meet with you this morning.”

I lowered my head in acknowledgment. “In that case, I have one more request. Only the one, after which I will leave matters to you, Magistrate, as is proper.” Receiving the magistrate’s gesture of assent, I continued. “I would like to ask Citizen Raughd’s personal attendant one question.”

Raughd’s attendant came into the room a few tense minutes later. “Citizen,” I said to her. “Your arms are filled with blessing and no untruth will pass your lips.” Said it in Radchaai, though it was a translation, undoubtedly rough, of the words I’d heard in the kitchen that day, through Eight, what the overseer had said as she’d placed bits of honey cake in Raughd’s attendant’s mouth. “Where did Citizen Raughd get the explosive?”

The attendant stared at me, frozen. Terrified, I thought. No one ever paid attention to servants except other servants, especially in this house. “Your very great pardon, Fleet Captain,” she said after an interminable silence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come, Citizen,” I said. “Citizen Raughd hardly takes a breath that you’re unaware of. Oh, sometimes you weren’t with her in the Undergarden, sometimes she sends you on errands while she does other things, but you know, the way a good personal attendant knows. And this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, like painting Not tea but blood on the wall that time.” She’d tried to clean Raughd’s gloves before anyone could realize there was paint on them. “This was different. This was complicated, it was planned in advance, and she won’t have done all that by herself, that’s what a good personal attendant is for, after all. And it’s come out anyway. Citizen Queter has told the magistrate everything.”

Tears welled in her eyes. Her mouth trembled, and then turned down. “I’m not a good personal attendant,” she said. A tear escaped, rolled down her cheek. I waited in silence while she debated with herself—whether over what to say, or whether or not to say it, I didn’t know, but I could see her conflict in her expression. No one else spoke. “If I were, none of this would have happened,” she said, finally.

“She’s always been unstable,” said Raughd. “Ever since we were children I’ve tried to shelter her. To protect her.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said to Raughd’s attendant. Ignoring Raughd herself. “But you knew what Queter had done. Or you suspected for some reason.” She’d probably drawn the obvious conclusion that Raughd had not—Queter, cornered, would not simply do as she was told. “That’s why you didn’t come to the bathhouse yesterday, when Raughd called you.” And Raughd had lost patience waiting for her servant to come see to her, had left the bathhouse to go look for her, and as a result had not died in the explosion. “Where did Raughd get the explosive?”

“She took it on a dare, five years ago. It’s been in a box in her room since then.”

“And you can tell us where and when and how, so we can confirm that?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Yes.”

“She’s making it up!” Raughd interjected. “After everything I’ve done for her, she does this to me! And you!” She turned to me. “Breq Mianaai. You’ve had it in for my family ever since you arrived in this system. This ridiculous story about how dangerous it is to travel in the gates, it’s obviously made up. You bring a known criminal into this household.” She didn’t look at Sirix as she said it. “And now you blame me for what, for trying to blow myself up? I wouldn’t be surprised if you planned this whole thing.”

“Do you see?” I said, to Raughd’s attendant, who still stood there, weeping. “It isn’t your fault at all.”

“It will be a simple thing, Citizen,” said the magistrate to Raughd, frowning, “to check your servant’s story.” I saw Fosyf notice that address, the change from Raughd to the more distant citizen. “But we should discuss this elsewhere. I think you should come stay with me in the city until we get this straightened out.” Raughd’s servant and Queter, of course, had no such invitation. Would stay in cells in Security until their interrogations were finished, and they had been suitably reeducated. Still, there was no mistaking what that invitation meant.

Certainly Fosyf didn’t mistake it. She gestured dismay. “I should have realized it would come to this. I’ve protected Raughd for too long. I always hoped she’d do better. But I never thought…” She trailed off, apparently unable to express what it was that she had never thought. “To think I might have left my tea in the hands of someone who could do such things.”

Raughd went absolutely still for a full second. “You wouldn’t,” she said, barely more than an emphatic whisper. As though she could not entirely engage her voice.

“What choice do I have?” asked Fosyf, the very image of injured regret.

Raughd turned. Took three long steps over to the tea set on the stand. Picked the box up, raised it over her head with both hands, and threw it to the ground. Glass shattered, blue and green and gold fragments skittering across the floor. Kalr Five, standing by the door, made the smallest noise, audible to no one but her and me.

Then silence. No one moved, no one spoke. After a few moments a servant appeared in the doorway, drawn, no doubt, by the crash of the tea set. “Sweep this mess up,” Fosyf said, catching sight of her. Her voice was quite calm. “And dispose of it.”

“You’re throwing it away?” I asked, partly because I was surprised, and partly to cover another very small noise of protest from Five.

Fosyf gestured unconcern. “It’s worthless now.”

The magistrate turned to Queter, who had stood straight and silent this whole time. “Is this what you wanted, Queter? All this heartache, a family destroyed? For the life of me I don’t understand why you didn’t put your obvious determination and energy into your work so that you could make things better for yourself and your family. Instead, you built up and fed this… this resentment, and now you have…” The magistrate gestured, indicating the room, the situation. “This.”

Very calmly, very deliberately, Queter turned to me. “You were right about the self-deception, Citizen.” Evenly, as though she only remarked casually on the weather. In Radchaai, though she might as well have used Delsig, which she knew I understood.

Her remark wasn’t meant for me. Still I replied. “You were always going to speak if you could, whether you thought it would do any good or not.”

She lifted one sardonic eyebrow. “Yes,” she agreed. “I was.”

18

From the moment we had left Fosyf’s sitting room, Sirix was tense and silent, and she did not say a word nearly all the way back to Athoek Station. This was a particularly impressive length of silence because Sword of Atagaris’s injury meant we’d be taking up more seats on the passenger shuttle from the elevator to the station than we ought, and so we had to wait a day for a flight with the available extra space.

Sirix didn’t speak until we were in the shuttle, an hour from docking with the station. Strapped into our seats, Five and Eight behind us, their attention mostly on Queter’s sister, who’d had a miserable time the whole flight, among strangers, missing home, disoriented and sick to her stomach in the microgravity but refusing to take any medication for it, upset further by the way her tears clung to her eyes or broke free into small liquid spheres when she wiped her face. She had finally fallen asleep.

Sirix had accepted the offered meds, was therefore more comfortable physically, but she had been troubled since we’d left the mountains. Since before, I thought. I knew she didn’t like Raughd, had, on the contrary, good reason to resent her, but I suspected that she of all people in the room that day had understood what Raughd must have felt, to hear her mother speak so easily, so calmly, of disinheriting her. Had understood the impulse that had led Raughd to smash that ancient tea set that her mother clearly valued highly, took pride in. Citizen Fosyf had not changed her mind, about her daughter or about the tea set. Kalr Five had retrieved the box from the trash, and the fragments of gold and glass, the shattered remains of the bowls and the flask that had survived undamaged for more than three thousand years. Until now.

“Was that justice, then?” Sirix asked. Quietly, as though she was not speaking to me, though no one else would have heard her.

“What is justice, Citizen?” I replied with my own question. “Where did justice lie, in that entire situation?” Sirix didn’t reply, either angry or at a loss for an answer. Both were difficult questions. “We speak of it as though it’s a simple thing, a matter of acting properly, as though it’s nothing more than an afternoon tea and the question only who takes the last pastry. So simple. Assign guilt to the guilty.”

“Is it not that simple?” asked Sirix after a few moments of silence. “There are right actions and wrong actions. And yet, I think that if you had been the magistrate, you would have let Citizen Queter go free.”

“If I had been the magistrate, I would have been an entirely different person than I am. But surely you don’t have less compassion for Citizen Queter than for Citizen Raughd.”

“Please, Fleet Captain,” she said after three long, slow breaths. I had made her angry. “Please don’t speak to me as though I’m stupid. You spent the night at the field workers’ house. You are apparently familiar with Valskaayans and fluent in Delsig. Still, it’s quite amazing that you walked to the house and came back the next morning with Queter. No protest, no difficulty. And before we even left the house—before the magistrate left—the field workers had sent Fosyf a list of demands. Just at the moment Fosyf can’t depend on the magistrate’s unquestioning support.”

It took me a moment to understand what she meant. “You think I put them up to it?”

“I can’t believe it’s merely fortuitous, that uneducated and uncivilized field workers, who for ten years and more could not find the resources to strike, choose to do so now.”

“Not fortuitous at all. And while they may be uneducated, they’re hardly uncivilized. They’re perfectly capable of planning such a thing on their own. They understand Fosyf’s position as well as anyone. Perhaps better than many.”

“And Queter coming with you so willingly, that wasn’t part of any bargain? She won’t ultimately be let off lightly? And in the meantime, Citizen Raughd’s life is destroyed.”

“No sympathy for Queter? Raughd acted from malice and injured pride, and would have destroyed more than me if she had succeeded. Queter was faced with an impossible situation. No matter what she did, things would end badly.”

A moment of silence. Then, “All she needed to do was go to the magistrate in the first place.”

I had to think about that for a few moments, to understand why Sirix of all people thought Queter could or should have done that. “You do realize,” I said finally, “that Citizen Queter would never have gotten within a kilometer of the district magistrate without my having explicitly demanded it. And I beg you to recall what generally happened in the past when Citizen Raughd misbehaved.”

“Still, if she had spoken properly she might have been listened to,” Sirix replied.

Queter had been right to expect no help from the district magistrate, I was sure. “She made the choices she made, and there’s no escaping the consequences of that. I doubt very much she’ll get off lightly. But I can’t condemn her. She was willing to sacrifice herself to protect her sister.” Sirix of all people ought to have approved of at least that. “Do you think that if the Lord of the Radch were here she would have seen through everything, to give each act and each actor’s heart its proper weight? To dispense perfect justice? Do you think it’s possible that any person will ever get precisely what they deserve, no more and no less?”

“That is what justice is, Citizen, isn’t it?” Sirix asked, ostensibly calm, but I could hear that very small tightness in her voice, a flattening of tone that told me she was, now, angry. “If either Raughd or Queter wants to appeal their judgment, there’s no recourse, not cut off from the palaces as we are. You’re the closest thing we have to the Lord of the Radch, but you aren’t the least bit impartial. And I can’t help but notice that each time you’ve arrived somewhere new, you’ve gone straight to the bottom of the ladder and begun making allies. Of course it would be foolish to think a daughter of Mianaai could arrive anywhere without immediately engaging in politics. But now I see you’ve aimed the Valskaayans at Fosyf, I’m wondering who you’re planning to aim the Ychana at.”

“I didn’t aim the Valskaayans at anyone. The field workers are entirely capable of making their own plans, and I assure you that they have. As for the Undergarden, you live there. You know what conditions are, there, and you know that it should have been repaired long ago.”

“You might have had a private word with the magistrate yourself, about the Valskaayans.”

“I did, in fact.”

“And,” Sirix continued, as though I had said nothing, “many of the Ychana’s problems would be remedied if only they became better citizens.”

“Just how good a citizen does one have to be,” I asked, “in order to have water and air, and medical help? And do your neighbors know you hold such a low opinion of them?” I didn’t doubt that, like the Valskaayan field workers, they did.

Sirix said nothing else for the rest of the trip.

Lieutenant Tisarwat met us at the shuttle dock. Relieved to see us, pleasantly anticipating… something. Apprehensive, perhaps of the same something. As other passengers streamed past I looked through Five and Eight’s eyes, saw that Sword of Atagaris’s ancillary was being tended to by medics and another segment of itself, that yet a third Sword of Atagaris ancillary had placed itself behind Captain Hetnys.

Lieutenant Tisarwat bowed. “Welcome back, sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” I turned to Captain Hetnys. “Captain, I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.” She acknowledged that with a bow and I gestured us away, out into the corridor and toward the lift that would take us to the Undergarden. The Genitalia Festival was long over—there were no tiny, brightly colored penises hanging in the corridors, and the last of the foil sweet wrappers had gone to recycling.

And—though I knew this already, had seen it through Tisarwat’s eyes, and Bo Nine’s—there was no broken table at the entrance to the Undergarden. There was an open section door, and an indicator that said, quite properly and correctly, that the door was functioning as it should, with air on both sides of it. Beyond this, a scuffed but well-lit corridor. Mercy of Kalr showed me a little surge of pride from Lieutenant Tisarwat. She had been looking forward to showing me this.

“All the section doors leading out of the Undergarden on this level are repaired, sir,” Tisarwat said as we walked into the Undergarden corridor. “They’ve made good progress on the level two doors. Three and four are up next, of course.” We walked out into the Undergarden’s tiny, makeshift concourse. Well lit, now, the phosphorescent paint around the tea shop door barely noticeable, though still there, as were the spills and footprints. Two potted plants flanked the bench in the center of the open space, both clumps of thick, blade-like leaves shooting upward, one or two of them nearly a meter tall. Lieutenant Tisarwat saw me notice them, but none of her apprehension reached her face. The plants were, of course, the product of her conversation with Basnaaid. The small space seemed even smaller now it was brightly lit, and even a little crowded, not just residents, whom I recognized, but also Station Maintenance in gray coveralls passing through.

“And the plumbing?” I asked. Not mentioning the plants.

“This part of level one has water now.” Tisarwat’s satisfaction at saying that nearly eclipsed her fear that I’d notice she’d been spending time with Horticulture. “Still working on the other sections, and work has only barely started on level two. It’s slow going in some places, sir, and I’m afraid that level four is still… inconvenienced in that department. The residents here agreed it was best to start where most of the people live.”

“Rightly so, Lieutenant.” Of course I’d known most of this already, had kept half an eye on Tisarwat, on Bo Nine and Kalr Ten, on what was happening here on the station while I was downwell.

Behind me, behind Tisarwat, Sirix stopped, forcing Five and Eight behind her, shepherding Queter’s still silently miserable sister, to stop also. “And what about those residents? Do I still have my quarters, Lieutenant?”

Tisarwat smiled, a practiced, diplomatic expression I knew she’d been using a good deal this past week. “Everyone living in the Undergarden at the time the work began has been officially assigned whatever quarters they were using. Your room is still yours, Citizen, though it’s better lit now, and eventually will be better ventilated.” She turned to me. “There were some… misgivings about the installation of sensors.” There had been, in fact, a contentious meeting with Station Administrator Celar, here on this tiny concourse—the lifts hadn’t been ready yet—which Lieutenant Tisarwat had arranged by sheer force of will combined with a level of charm that had surprised even me, who had already suspected what sort of things she might be capable of. No Security, only Tisarwat sitting by the station administrator. “Ultimately, it was decided that sensors will be placed in corridors, but not in residences, unless the residents request it.”

Sirix made a small, derisive hah. “Even sensors in the corridors will be too much for some. But I suppose I’d better make my way home and find out just what you’ve done.”

“I think you’ll be pleased, Citizen,” replied Tisarwat, still in diplomatic mode. “But if you have any problems or complaints, please don’t hesitate to let me or any of Mercy of Kalr know.” Sirix did not answer this, only bowed and departed.

“You could send people directly to Station Administration,” I said, guessing what had troubled Sirix. I began walking again, putting our small procession back into motion. We turned a corner to find a set of lift doors sliding open, ready for us. Station watching us.

On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden stood naked in the bath, attended by an Amaat. “Fleet captain’s back safe, then,” she said.

“Yes, Lieutenant.” The Amaat, speaking for Ship.

On Athoek Station, in the Undergarden, I stepped into the lift with Tisarwat, with my Kalrs, and Queter’s sister. Mercy of Kalr showed me Lieutenant Tisarwat’s momentary doubt, as she considered, not for the first time, the likelihood of my having seen, from downwell, everything she’d done. “I know I should send them to Station Administration, sir. But most of the people who live here would prefer not to go there. We are closer by. And we did start this, and we do live here. Unlike anyone in Administration.” A brief hesitation. “Not everyone here is happy about any of this. There’s some amount of smuggling that goes through here. Some stolen goods, some prohibited drugs. None of the people making a living off of that are pleased to have Station watching, even if it’s only in the corridors.”

I thought again of Seivarden. She’d been quite clear about her determination to never take kef again, and had stuck to her resolve so far. But when she was taking it she’d had an impressive ability to find it, and find ways to get it, no matter where she was. It was a good thing I’d left her in command of Mercy of Kalr, and not brought her here.

Still in the bath, on Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden crossed her arms. Uncrossed them again. A gesture I recognized from months ago. It surprised the Amaat attending her, though the only outward sign of that surprise was a quick two blinks. The words You were very worried appeared in the Amaat’s vision. “You were very worried,” she said, for Ship.

In the lift, in the Undergarden on Athoek Station, Tisarwat’s pride at showing me how much had been accomplished was suddenly drowned in a surge of the anxiety and self-loathing that had been hovering in the background the whole time.

“I see it, Fleet Captain,” Ship said to me, before I could say anything. “It’s mostly under control. I think your return is putting some stress on her. She’s worried you won’t approve.”

On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden didn’t answer Ship right away. She’d recognized the arm-crossing gesture she’d just made, was ashamed of what it might say about her current state of mind. “Of course I was worried,” she said, finally. “Someone tried to blow up my captain.” The Amaat poured a measure of water over Seivarden’s head, and she sputtered a bit, keeping it out of her mouth and her nose.

In the lift in the Undergarden, Tisarwat said to me, “There’s been some complaining outside the Undergarden the past few days, about residential assignments.” Ostensibly calm, only the barest trace of her feelings in her voice. “There are those who think that it’s not fair the Ychana are going to suddenly have luxury quarters, and so much space, when they don’t deserve it.”

“Such wisdom,” I observed dryly, “to know what everyone deserves.”

“Sir,” agreed Lieutenant Tisarwat, with a fresh pang of guilt. Considered saying more, but decided not to.

“Forgive me for bringing this up,” said Ship to Seivarden, with the Amaat’s voice, on Mercy of Kalr. “I understand being alarmed by the attempt on the fleet captain’s life. I was alarmed, myself. But you are a soldier, Lieutenant. The fleet captain is as well. There is a certain amount of risk involved. I would think you’d be used to that. I’m sure the fleet captain is.”

Anxiety, from Seivarden, feeling doubly vulnerable because she was in the bath, uncovered. Uncovered by Ship’s question. “She’s not supposed to be at risk sitting in a garden drinking tea, Ship.” And silently, her fingers twitching just the slightest bit, You don’t want to lose her, either. Not wanting to say that aloud, in the hearing of her Amaat.

“Nowhere is completely safe, Lieutenant,” said Ship, through the Amaat, and then, words in Seivarden’s vision, All respect, Lieutenant, perhaps you should consult Medic.

Panic, from Seivarden, for just an instant. The Amaat, puzzled, saw Seivarden freeze. Saw Ship’s words in her own vision, It’s all right, Amaat. Continue.

Seivarden closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. She hadn’t told Ship, or Medic, about her past difficulty with kef. Had been, I knew, confident that it would no longer be a problem for her.

Ship spoke aloud—or, rather, Ship showed the Amaat what it wanted to say, and Amaat said it. “You can’t be worried about taking command if something were to happen. You had your own ship, once.” Seivarden didn’t answer, just stood motionless on the grate while her Amaat did what was needful. The question was meant as much for Amaat’s ears as for Seivarden’s.

“No, Ship, that doesn’t trouble me.” Seivarden’s answer was also meant mainly for her Amaat. Silently, she said, She told you then.

She didn’t need to, replied Ship, in Seivarden’s vision. I do have some experience of the world, Lieutenant, and I see you very thoroughly. Aloud it said, “You were right. When the fleet captain stirs up trouble it’s not the ordinary sort. Surely you’re used to that by now.”

“It’s not an easy thing to get used to,” Seivarden replied, trying very hard to sound light and amused. And did not say, silently or aloud, that she would speak to Medic.

In the lift, in the Undergarden, on Athoek Station, I said to Lieutenant Tisarwat, “I need to speak to Governor Giarod as soon as possible. If I go to the governor’s residence to invite her to supper, will she be available to accept my invitation?” My rank and my ostensible social status gave me some amount of freedom from the strictest propriety, and an excuse to be arrogantly peremptory even to the system governor, but what I wanted to discuss with her was going to require some delicacy. And while I could have just messaged the question to Five, whose job it was to take care of such things for me, I knew that there were even now three citizens (one of them Skaaiat Awer’s cousin) lounging in my sitting room, drinking tea and waiting for Tisarwat. It was not intended to be an entirely social meeting.

Lieutenant Tisarwat blinked. Took a breath. “I’ll find out, sir.” Another breath, a frown suppressed with some effort. “Do you mean to dine at home, sir? I’m not sure if there’s anything there worthy of the system governor.”

“You mean,” I said, my voice calm, “that you’ve promised supper to your friends and you’re hoping I don’t kick you out of our dining room.” Tisarwat wanted to look down, to look away from me, but held herself still, her face heating. “Take them out somewhere.” Disappointment. She’d wanted to dine in for the same reason I did—wanted to have a conversation with these particular people, in private. Or as close to private as she could get, attended only by Mercy of Kalrs, with only Ship and possibly me watching. “Make me out to be as tyrannical as you like. They won’t blame you.” The lift door opened on level four, a few meters beyond the lift brightly lit, light panels still leaning against walls beyond that.

Home, for now.

“I admit, Fleet Captain,” said Governor Giarod at supper, later, “that I generally don’t much like Ychana food. When it’s not bland, it’s sour and rancid.” She took another taste of the food in front of her, fish and mushrooms in a fermented sauce that was the source of that “sour and rancid” complaint. On this occasion it had been carefully sweetened and spiced to suit Radchaai taste. “But this is very good.”

“I’m glad you like it. I had it brought in from a place on level one.”

Governor Giarod frowned. “Where do the mushrooms come from?”

“They grow them somewhere in the Undergarden.”

“I’ll have to mention them to Horticulture.”

I swallowed my own bite of fish and mushroom, took a swallow of tea. “Perhaps it might be best to let the people who have become experts continue to profit from their expertise. They stand to lose if it becomes something Horticulture produces, wouldn’t you think? But imagine how pleased the growers might be, if the governor’s residence started buying mushrooms from them.”

Governor Giarod set down her utensil, leaned back in her seat. “So Lieutenant Tisarwat is acting with your direction.” It wasn’t the non sequitur it seemed. Tisarwat had spent the last week encouraging maintenance workers to try food in the Undergarden, and the new plumbing on level one had made work easier for the people who had been providing that food. The aim was obvious to someone like Governor Giarod. “Is that what you brought me here to talk about?”

“Lieutenant Tisarwat hasn’t been acting under any orders from me, though I approve of what she’s done. I’m sure you realize that continuing to isolate the Undergarden from the rest of the station would be just as disastrous as trying to force the residents here to live like everyone else.” Balancing that would be… interesting. “I would be very unhappy to see this end with anything valuable here taken away from the Undergarden so that others can profit by it elsewhere. Let the houses here profit from what they’ve built.” I took another swallow of tea. “I’d say they’ve earned it.” The governor drew breath, ready to argue about that what they’ve built, I suspected. “But I invited you this evening because I wanted to ask you about Valskaayan transportees.” I could have asked earlier, from downwell, but attending to business during full mourning would have been entirely improper.

Governor Giarod blinked. Set down the utensil she’d just picked up. “Valskaayan transportees?” Clearly surprised. “I know you have an interest in Valskaay, you said so when you first arrived. But…”

But that wouldn’t account for a hasty, urgent invitation to a private dinner, less than an hour after my getting off the passenger shuttle from the Athoek elevator. “I gather they have been almost exclusively assigned to the mountain tea plantations, is that the case?”

“I believe so.”

“And there are still some in storage?”

“Certainly.”

Now for the delicate part. “I would like to have one of my own crew personally examine the facility where they’re stored. I would like,” I continued, into the system governor’s nonplussed silence, “to compare the official inventory with what’s actually there.” This was why supper had to be here. Not in the governor’s residence, and certainly not in some shop, no matter how fashionable or supposedly discreet. “Are you aware of rumors that, in the past, Samirend transportees were misappropriated and sold to outsystem slavers?”

Governor Giarod sighed. “It’s a rumor, Fleet Captain, nothing more. The Samirend have mostly become good citizens, but some of them still hold on to certain long-cherished resentments. The Athoeki did practice debt indenture, and there was some traffic of slaves outsystem, but that was over by the time we arrived. And I wouldn’t think that sort of thing would be possible since then. Every transportee has a locator, every suspension pod as well, and every one of those is numbered and indexed, and no one gets into that storage facility without the right access codes. Every ship in the system has its own locator, too, so even if someone did get access and did somehow take away suspension pods without authorization, it would be simple to pinpoint what ship was there that shouldn’t have been.” In fact, the governor knew of three ships in the system that didn’t have locators visible to her. One of them was mine.

The governor continued. “To be honest, I’m not sure why you would have placed any credence in such a rumor.”

“The facility doesn’t have an AI?” I asked. Governor Giarod gestured no. I would have been surprised to learn otherwise. “So it’s essentially automated. Take a suspension pod and it registers on the system.”

“There are also people stationed there, who keep an eye on things. It’s dull work these days.”

“One or two people,” I guessed. “And they serve a few months, or maybe a year, and then someone else cycles in. And no one’s come to take any transportees for years, so there’s been no reason to do any sort of inventory check. And if it’s anything like the holds on a troop carrier, it’s not the sort of thing you can just walk into and look at. The suspension pods aren’t in nice rows you can walk between, they’re packed close, and they’re pulled up by machinery when you want them. There are ways to get in and take a physical inventory, but they’re inconvenient, and no one’s thought it necessary.”

Governor Giarod was silent, staring at me, her fish forgotten, her tea grown cold. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” she asked, finally.

“If there were a market for slaves or body parts, I’d say money. I don’t think there is such a market, though I may be mistaken. But I can’t help thinking of all the military ships that don’t have ancillaries anymore, and all the people who wished they still did.” Captain Hetnys might well be one of those people. But I didn’t say that.

“Your ship doesn’t have ancillaries,” Governor Giarod pointed out.

“It does not,” I agreed. “Whether a ship does or doesn’t have ancillaries is not a good predictor of its opinion of our no longer making them.”

Governor Giarod blinked, surprised and puzzled, it seemed. “A ship’s opinion doesn’t matter, does it? Ships do as they’re ordered.” I said nothing, though there was a great deal to say about that. The governor sighed. “Well, and I was wondering how any of this mattered when we have a civil war going on that might find its way here. I see the connection, now, Fleet Captain, but I still think you’re chasing a rumor. And I haven’t even heard anything about Valskaayans, only the one about Samirend from before I came here.”

“Give me accesses.” I could send Mercy of Kalr. Seivarden had experience with troop carrier holds, she would know what to do, once I’d told her what I wanted. Right now she was on watch, in central command. Ill at ease since that conversation with Ship. Resisting the urge to cross her arms. A nearby Amaat was humming to herself. My mother said it all goes around. “I’ll take care of it myself. If everything is as it should be, you won’t have lost anything.”

“Well.” She looked down at her plate, picked up her utensil, made as if to pick up a piece of fish, and then stopped. Lowered her hand again. Frowned. “Well,” she said again. “You were right about Raughd Denche, weren’t you.”

I had wondered if she would mention that. The fact that Raughd had been disinherited would be common knowledge within a day, I suspected. Rumor of the rest of what had happened would eventually reach the station, but no one would openly mention the matter, particularly not to me. Governor Giarod, however, was the one person here with access to a full, official report. “I was not pleased to be right,” I said.

“No.” Governor Giarod set her utensil down again. Sighed.

“I would also,” I said, before she could say anything more, “like you to require the planetary vice-governor to look into the living and working conditions of the field workers in the mountain tea plantations. In particular, I suspect the basis on which their wages are calculated is unfair.” It was entirely possible that the field workers would get what they wanted from the district magistrate. But I wouldn’t assume that.

“What are you trying to do, Fleet Captain?” Governor Giarod seemed genuinely baffled. “You arrive here and go straight to the Undergarden. You go downwell and suddenly there are problems with the Valskaayans. I thought your priority was to keep the citizens in this system safe.”

“Governor,” I replied. Very evenly, very calmly. “The residents of the Undergarden and the Valskaayans who pick tea are citizens. I did not like what I found in the Undergarden, and I did not like what I found in the mountains downwell.”

“And when you want something,” the governor remarked, her voice sharp, “you say so, and you expect to get it.”

“So do you,” I replied. Serious. Still calm. “It comes with being system governor, doesn’t it? And from where you sit, you can afford to ignore things you don’t think are important. But that view—that list of important things—is very different if you’re sitting somewhere else.”

“A commonplace, Fleet Captain. But some points of view don’t take in as much as others.”

“And how do you know yours isn’t one of them, if you’ll never try looking from somewhere different?” Governor Giarod didn’t answer immediately. “This is the well-being of citizens we’re talking about.”

She sighed. “Fosyf has already been in contact with me. I suppose you know her field workers are threatening to stop working unless she meets a whole list of demands?”

“I only just heard a few hours ago.”

“And by dealing with them in such circumstances, we are rewarding these people for threatening us. What do you think they’ll do but try it again, since it got them what they wanted once already? And we need things calm here.”

“These people are citizens.” I replied, my voice as calm and even as I could make it, without reaching the dead tonelessness of an ancillary. “When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”

“You don’t understand, Fleet Captain, this isn’t like—”

I cut her off, heedless of propriety. “And what does it cost you to consider the possibility?” In fact, it might well cost her a great deal. The admission, to herself, that she was not as just as she had always thought herself to be. “We need things running here in such a way that no matter what happens outside this system—even if we never hear from the Lord of the Radch again, even if every gate in Radchaai space goes down—no matter what happens elsewhere, this system is safe and stable. We will not be able to do that by threatening tens or hundreds of citizens with armed soldiers.”

“And if the Valskaayans decide to riot? Or, gods forbid, the Ychana just outside your door here?”

Honestly, some moments I despaired of Governor Giarod. “I will not order soldiers to fire on citizens.” Would, in fact, explicitly order them not to. “People don’t riot for no reason. And if you’re finding you have to deal with the Ychana carefully now, it’s because of how they’ve been treated in the past.”

“I should look from their point of view, should I?” she asked, eyebrow raised, voice just the slightest bit sardonic.

“You should,” I agreed. “Your only other choice is rounding them all up and either reeducating or killing every one of them.” The first was beyond the resources of Station Security. And I had already said I would not help with the second.

She grimaced in horror and disgust. “What do you take me for, Fleet Captain? Why would you think anyone here would even consider such a thing?”

“I am older than I look,” I replied. “I have been in the middle of more than one annexation. I have seen people do things that a month or a year before they would have sworn they would never, ever do.” Lieutenant Tisarwat sat at supper with her companions: the grandniece of the chief of Station Security, the young third cousin of a tea grower—not Fosyf, but one of those whose tea Fosyf had condescendingly declared “acceptable.” Skaaiat Awer’s cousin. And Citizen Piat. Tisarwat complained of my stern, unbendable nature, impervious to any appeal. Basnaaid, of course, wasn’t there. She didn’t move in this social circle, and I had, after all, ordered Tisarwat away from her.

System Governor Giarod spoke across the table in the dining room in my Undergarden quarters. “Why, Fleet Captain, do you think I would be one of those people?”

“Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor,” I replied. “It’s best to learn that before you do something you’ll have trouble living with.” Best to learn it, really, before anyone—perhaps dozens of anyones—died to teach it to you.

But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience.

19

Seivarden understood my instructions about transportee storage immediately. “You don’t seriously think,” she said, aloud, sitting on the edge of her bunk in her quarters, her voice sounding in my ear where I sat in the Undergarden, “that someone has managed to steal bodies.” She paused. “Why would anyone do that? And how could they manage it? I mean, during an annexation”—she gestured, half dismissing, half warding—“all sorts of things happen. If you told me someone was selling to slavers that way, at a time like that, I wouldn’t be that surprised.”

But once a person had been tagged, labeled, accounted for, it became another matter entirely. I knew as well as Seivarden what happened to people during annexations—people who weren’t Radchaai. I also knew that cases where people had been sold that way were vanishingly rare—no Radchaai soldier could so much as take a breath without her ship knowing it.

Of course, the past several centuries, the Lord of the Radch had been visiting ships and altering their accesses, had, I suspected, been handing out access codes to people she had thought would support her, so that they could act secretly, unseen by ships and stations that would otherwise have reported them to authorities. To the wrong half of Anaander Mianaai. “If you need ancillaries,” I said, quietly, alone in my sitting room on Athoek Station, now that Governor Giarod had left, “those bodies might well be useful.”

Seivarden was silent a moment, considering that. Not liking the conclusions she was coming to. “The other side has a network here. That’s what you’re saying.”

“We’re not on either side,” I reminded her. “And of course they do. Everywhere one side is, the other side is. Because they’re the same. It’s not a surprise that agents for that part of the tyrant have been active here.” Anaander Mianaai was inescapable, everywhere in Radch space. “But I admit I didn’t expect something like this.”

“You need more than bodies,” she pointed out. Leaned back against the wall. Crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. “There’s equipment you need to install.” And then, apologetic, “You know that. But still.”

“They could be stockpiling that, too. Or they may be depending on a troop carrier.” A troop carrier could manufacture that, given time and the appropriate materials. Some of the Swords and Mercies that still had ancillaries had some in stock, for backup. In theory, there wasn’t anyplace else to get such things. Not anymore. That was part of why the Lord of the Radch had had the problem with Tisarwat that she did—she could not easily get the right tech, had had to modify her own. “And maybe you’ll get there and find everything is in order.”

Seivarden scoffed. Then said, “There aren’t many people here who could do something like that.”

“No,” I acknowledged.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be the governor, since she gave you the keys to the place. Though now I think of it she couldn’t have done much else.”

“You have a point.”

“And you,” she said, sighing, “aren’t going to tell me who you’ve got your eye on. Breq, we’ll be days away. Unless we gate there.”

“No matter where you are you won’t be able to rush to my rescue if anything were to happen.”

“Well,” replied Seivarden. “Well.” Tense and unhappy. “Probably everything will be very dull for the next few months. It’s always like that.” It had been, for both of our lives. Frantic action, then months or even years waiting for something to happen. “And even if they come to Athoek”—by they she meant, presumably, the part of the Lord of the Radch that had lost the battle at Omaugh Palace, whose supporters were destroying gates with ships in them—“they won’t come right away. It won’t be the first place on their list.” And travel between systems could take weeks, months. Even years. “Probably nothing will happen for ages.” A thought struck her then. “Why don’t you send Sword of Atagaris? It’s not like it’s doing much where it is.” I didn’t answer right away, but didn’t need to. “Oh, Aatr’s tits. Of course. I should have realized right away, but I didn’t think that person…”—the choice of word, which was one that barely acknowledged humanity, communicated Seivarden’s disdain for Captain Hetnys—“was smart enough to pull something like that off.” Seivarden had had a low opinion of Sword of Atagaris’s captain ever since Translator Dlique’s death. “But now I think of it, isn’t it odd, Sword of Atagaris being so intent on picking up that supply locker. Maybe we need to take a look on the other side of that Ghost Gate.”

“I have some guesses about what we might find there,” I admitted. “But first things first. And don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

“Yes, sir,” Seivarden agreed.

At breakfast next morning, Queter’s sister stood silent, eyes downcast, as Lieutenant Tisarwat and I said the daily prayer. The flower of justice is peace. Silent as we named the dead. Still stood as Tisarwat and I sat.

“Sit, child,” I said to her, in Delsig.

“Yes, Radchaai.” She sat, obedient. Eyes still downcast. She had traveled with my Kalrs, eaten with them until this morning.

Tisarwat, beside her, cast her a quick, curious glance. Relaxed—or at least calm, preoccupied, I thought, with the things she wanted to accomplish today. Relieved that I had said nothing to her—so far—about the initiative she’d taken since I’d been gone downwell. Five brought us our breakfast—fish, and slices of dredgefruit, on the blue and violet Bractware, of course, which Five had missed. Was still enjoying.

Five was apprehensive, though—she’d learned, last night, about the apartments Tisarwat had taken over, down the corridor. No one I could read had looked this morning, but I was quite sure there would already be half a dozen Undergarden residents there, sitting on makeshift chairs, waiting to speak to Lieutenant Tisarwat. There would be more as the morning progressed. Complaints about repairs and construction that were already underway, requests for other areas to have attention sooner, or later, than scheduled.

Five poured tea—not Daughter of Fishes, I noticed—and Tisarwat set to her breakfast with a will. Queter’s sister didn’t touch hers, only looked down at her lap. I wondered if she felt all right—but if homesickness was the problem, asking her to speak her feelings aloud might only make things worse. “If you’d rather have gruel, Uran,” I said, still in Delsig, “Five can bring you some.” Another thought occurred. “No one is charging you for your meals, child.” A reaction, there, the tiniest lift of her head. “What you’re served here is your food allowance. If you’d like more you can have more, it’s not extra.” At sixteen, she was doubtless hungry nearly all the time.

She looked up, barely lifting her head. Glanced over at Tisarwat, already three quarters of the way through her fish. Started, hesitantly, with the fruit.

I switched to Radchaai, which I knew she spoke. “It will take a few days to find suitable tutors, Citizen. Until then, you are free to spend your time as you wish. Can you read the warning signs?” Life on a station was very, very different from life on a planet. “And you know the markings for section doors?”

“Yes, Citizen.” In fact, she couldn’t read Radchaai well, but the warning signs were bright and distinctive on purpose, and I knew Five and Eight had gone over them with her, on the trip here.

“If you take the warning signs very seriously, Citizen, and always listen to Station if it speaks to you through your handheld, you may go around the station as you like. Have you thought about the aptitudes?”

She had just put some fish in her mouth. Now she froze in alarm, and then, so that she could speak, she gulped it nearly unchewed. “I am at the citizen’s disposal,” she said, faintly. Winced, either at hearing herself say it, or at the lump of fish she’d just swallowed nearly whole.

“That isn’t what I asked,” I pointed out. “I’m not going to require you to do anything you don’t wish to. You can still be on the ration list if you claim an exemption from the tests, you just can’t take any civil or military assignments.” Uran blinked in surprise, almost raised her head to look at me, but quickly stopped herself. “Yes, it’s a rule recently made, expressly for Valskaayans, and away from Valskaay not much taken advantage of.” It was one any of the Valskaayan field workers might have invoked—but it wouldn’t have changed anything. “You’re still required to accept what assignment Administration gives you, of course. But there’s no hurry to ask them for one, just yet.”

And best not to make that application until Uran had spent some time with her tutors. I could understand her when she spoke Radchaai, but the overseers downwell had all behaved as though the speech of the Valskaayan field workers was completely incomprehensible. Possibly it was the accent, and I was used to speaking to people with various accents, was well acquainted with the accents of native Delsig-speakers.

“But you don’t have an assignment yet, Citizen?” asked Lieutenant Tisarwat. A shade eagerly. “Can you make tea?”

Uran took a deliberate breath. Hiding panic, I thought. “I am pleased to do whatever the citizen requires.”

“Lieutenant,” I said, sharply. “You are not to require anything of Citizen Uran. She is free to spend the next few days as she likes.”

Tisarwat said, “It’s only, sir, that Citizen Uran isn’t Xhai. Or Ychana. When residents…” She realized, suddenly, that she would have to openly acknowledge what she’d been up to. “I’d have asked Station Administration to assign me a few people, but the residents in the Undergarden, sir, they’re more comfortable speaking to me because we don’t have a history here.” We did have a history here, and doubtless everyone in the Undergarden was conscious of it. “The citizen might enjoy it. And it would be good experience.” Experience for what, she didn’t specify.

“Citizen Uran,” I said. “Except for questions of safety or security, you are not required to do what Lieutenant Tisarwat asks you.” Uran still stared down, at her now-empty plate, no remaining trace of breakfast. I looked pointedly to Lieutenant Tisarwat. “Is that understood, Lieutenant?”

“Sir,” Tisarwat acknowledged. And then, with inward trepidation, “Might I have a few more Bos, then, sir?”

“In a week or so, Lieutenant. I’ve just sent Ship away on an inspection.”

I couldn’t read Tisarwat’s thoughts, but I guessed from her emotional responses—brief surprise, dismay, rapidly replaced by a moment of bright certainty and then nervous hesitation—that she had realized I might still order Seivarden to send her Bos on a shuttle. And then reached the conclusion that I certainly would have suggested that, if I’d wanted to. “Yes, sir.” Crestfallen, and at the same time relieved, perhaps, that I hadn’t yet disapproved of her improvised office, her negotiations with Undergarden residents.

“You got yourself into this, Lieutenant,” I said, mildly. “Just try not to antagonize Station Administration.” Not likely, I knew. By now, Tisarwat and Piat were fast friends, and their social circle included Station Administration staff as well as Station Security and even people who worked for Governor Giarod. It was these people Tisarwat would doubtless have drawn on, in requesting people to be assigned to her, but they all had, as she had put it, a history here.

“Yes, sir.” Tisarwat’s expression didn’t change—she’d learned a few things from her Bos, I thought—and her lilac eyes showed only the slightest trace of how pleased and relieved she was to hear me speak so. And then, at the back of that, the regular undercurrent of anxiety, of unhappiness. I could only guess at what caused that—though I was sure it wasn’t anything that had gone wrong here. Left over, then, from the trip here to Athoek, from what had happened during that time. She turned again to Uran. “You know, Citizen, you wouldn’t really actually have to make tea. Bo Nine does that, at least she brings in the water in the morning. Really all you’d have to do is give people tea and be pleasant to them.”

Uran, who from the moment I had met her had been quietly anxious not to offend (when she had not been quietly miserable), looked up, right at Tisarwat, and said, in very plain Radchaai, “I don’t think I’d be very good at that.”

Lieutenant Tisarwat blinked, astonished. Taken quite aback. I smiled. “I am pleased to see, Citizen Uran, that your sister didn’t get all the fire, between the two of you.” And did not say that I was also glad Raughd had not managed to put what there was completely out. “Have a care, Lieutenant. I’ll have no sympathy if you get burned again.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Tisarwat. “If I may be excused, sir.” Uran looked quickly down again, eyes on her empty plate.

“Of course, Lieutenant.” I pushed my own chair back. “I have my own business to attend to. Citizen.” Uran looked up and down again quickly, the briefest flash of a glance. “By all means ask Five for more breakfast if you’re still hungry. Remember about the warning signs, and take your handheld with you if you leave the apartments.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Uran.

I had sent for Captain Hetnys. She walked past the door to Lieutenant Tisarwat’s makeshift office, looked in. Hesitated, frowned. Walked on to receive Lieutenant Tisarwat’s bow—I had seen Captain Hetnys through her eyes. Tisarwat experienced a moment of pleased malice to see Captain Hetnys frown, but did not show it on her face. I strongly suspected Captain Hetnys turned to watch Tisarwat go into the office, but as Tisarwat didn’t turn to see it, I didn’t, either.

Eight showed Captain Hetnys into my sitting room. After the predictable round of tea (in the rose glass, now she knew about the Bractware, and Five could be sure she knew she wasn’t drinking from it), I said, “How is your Atagaris doing?”

Captain Hetnys froze an instant, surprised, I thought. “Sir?” she asked.

“The ancillary that was injured.” There were only the three Atagarises here. I had ordered Sword of Atagaris Var off of the station.

She frowned. “It’s recovering well, sir.” A slight hesitation. “If I may beg the fleet captain’s indulgence.” I gestured the granting of it. “Why did you have the ancillary treated?”

What answers I might have given to that question would doubtless have made little sense to Captain Hetnys. “Not doing so would have been a waste, Captain. And it would have made your ship unhappy.” Still the frown. I’d been right. She didn’t understand. “I have been considering how best to dispose of our resources.”

“The gates, sir,” Captain Hetnys protested. “Beg to remind the fleet captain, anyone might come through the gates.”

“No, Captain,” I said, “no one will come through the gates. They’re too easy to watch, and too easily defended.” And I would certainly mine them, one way or another. I wasn’t certain if Captain Hetnys hadn’t thought of that possibility, or if she had thought I might not think of it. Either was possible. “Certainly no one will come by the Ghost Gate.”

The merest twitch of muscles around her eyes and her mouth, the briefest of expressions, too quickly gone to be readable.

She believed someone might. I was increasingly sure that she had lied when she had said that she had never encountered anyone else in that other, supposedly empty, system. That she wanted to conceal the fact that someone was there, or had been there. Might be there now. Of course, if she had sold away Valskaayan transportees, she would want to conceal that fact in order to avoid reeducation or worse. And there remained, still, the question of whom she might have sold them to, or why.

I could not rely on her. Would not. Would be very, very careful to watch her and her ship.

“You’ve sent Mercy of Kalr away, sir,” Captain Hetnys pointed out. My ship’s departure would have been obvious, though of course the reason for it would not be.

“A brief errand.” Certainly I did not want to say what that errand was. Not to Captain Hetnys. “It will be back in a few days. Do you have confidence in the abilities of your Amaat lieutenant?”

Captain Hetnys frowned. Puzzled. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” There was, then, no reason for her to insist on returning immediately to Sword of Atagaris. Once she did, her position—should she be able to recognize the fact—would be stronger than I wanted. I waited for her to request it, to ask permission to return to her ship.

“Well, sir,” she said, still sitting across from me, rose glass teabowl in one brown-gloved hand, “perhaps none of this will be needed, and we’ll have exerted ourselves for nothing.” A breath. Deliberate, I thought, deliberately calm.

No question that I would need to keep Captain Hetnys nearby. And off her ship, if possible. I knew what a captain meant, to a ship. And while no ancillary ever gave much information about its emotional state, I had seen the Atagaris ancillary, downwell, with that shard of glass jutting out of its back. Tears in its eyes. Sword of Atagaris did not want to lose its captain.

I had been a ship. I did not want to deprive Sword of Atagaris of its captain. But I would if I had to. If it meant keeping the residents of this system safe. If it meant keeping Basnaaid safe.

After breakfast, before letting Uran wander as she pleased, Eight took her to buy clothes. She could have gotten them from Station stores, of course, every Radchaai was due food, and shelter, and clothing. But Eight didn’t even allow this possibility to arise. Uran was living in my household and would be dressed accordingly.

I might, of course, have bought clothes for her myself. But to Radchaai, this would have implied either that I had adopted Uran into my house, or that I had given her my patronage. I doubted Uran wanted as much as the fiction of being even further separated from her family, and while clientage didn’t necessarily imply a sexual relationship, in situations where patron and client were very unequal in circumstances it was often assumed. It might not matter to some. I would not assume that it did not matter to Uran. So I had set her up with an allowance for such things. Hardly any different from my just outright giving her what she needed, but on such details propriety depended.

I saw that Eight and Uran were standing just outside the entrance to the temple of Amaat, on the grimy white floor, just under the bright-painted but dusty EskVar, Eight explaining, not-quite-ancillary calm, that Amaat and the Valskaayan god were fairly obviously the same, and so it would be entirely proper for Uran to enter and make an offering. Uran, looking somewhat uncomfortable in her new clothes, doggedly refusing. I was on the point of messaging Eight to stop when, glancing over Uran’s shoulder, she saw Captain Hetnys pass, followed by a Sword of Atagaris ancillary, and speaking earnestly to Sirix Odela.

Captain Hetnys had never once, that I could remember, spoken to Sirix or even acknowledged her presence while we had been downwell. It surprised Eight, too. She stopped midsentence, resisted frowning, and thought of something that made her suddenly abashed. “Your very great pardon, Citizen,” she said to Uran.

“… tizens are not going to be happy about that,” Governor Giarod was saying, where we sat above in her office, and I had no attention to spare for other things.

20

Next day, Uran went to Lieutenant Tisarwat’s makeshift office. Not because she’d been told to—Tisarwat had said nothing more about the matter. Uran had merely walked in—she’d stopped and looked in several times, the day before—and rearranged the tea things to her satisfaction. Tisarwat, seeing her, said nothing.

This went on for three days. I knew that Uran’s presence had been a success—since she was Valskaayan, and from downwell, she couldn’t be assumed to already be on one side or another of any local dispute, and something about her shy, unsmiling seriousness had been appealing to the Undergarden residents who’d called. One or two of them had found, in her silence, a good audience for their tale of difficulties with their neighbors, or with Station Administration.

For all those three days, neither mentioned any of it. Tisarwat was worried I already knew, and that I would disapprove, but also hopeful—no doubt her success so far suggested I might also approve of this last small thing.

On the third evening of silent supper, I said, “Citizen Uran, lessons begin the day after tomorrow.”

Uran looked up from her plate, surprised, I thought, and then back down. “Yes, sir.”

“Sir,” said Tisarwat. Anxious, but concealing it, her voice calm and measured. “Begging your indulgence…”

I gestured the superfluity of it. “Yes, Lieutenant, Citizen Uran appears to be popular in your waiting room. I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to be helpful to you, but I have no intention of slighting her education. I’ve arranged for her to study in the afternoons. She may do as she likes in the morning. Citizen”—directing my words now to Uran—“considering where we’re living, I did engage someone to teach you Raswar, which the Ychana here speak.”

“It’s a sight more useful than poetry, anyway,” said Tisarwat, relieved and pleased.

I raised an eyebrow. “You surprise me, Lieutenant.” That brought on a rise in her general background level of unhappiness, for some reason. “Tell me, Lieutenant, how does Station feel about what’s been going on?”

“I think,” replied Tisarwat, “that it’s glad repairs are going forward, but you know stations never tell you directly if they’re unhappy.” In the antechamber, someone requested entry. Kalr Eight moved to answer the door.

“It wants to see everyone, all the time,” said Uran. Greatly daring. “It says it wouldn’t be the same as someone spying on you.”

“It’s very different from a planet, on a station,” I said, as Eight opened the door, revealing Sirix Odela. “Stations like to know their residents are all well. They don’t feel right, otherwise. Do you talk to Station often, Citizen?” Wondering as I spoke what Sirix was doing here, whom I had not seen since Eight had seen her talking to Captain Hetnys.

In the dining room, Uran was saying, “It talks to me, Rad… Fleet Captain. And it translates things for me, or reads notices to me.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “Station is a good friend to have.”

In the antechamber, Citizen Sirix apologized to Eight for arriving at such an awkward hour, when the household was at supper. “But Horticulturist Basnaaid wanted very much to speak to the fleet captain, and she’s unavoidably detained in the Gardens.”

In the dining room I rose, not responding to Tisarwat’s reply to my words, and went out to the antechamber. “Citizen Sirix,” I said, as she turned toward me. “How can I assist you?”

“Fleet Captain,” said Sirix, with a small, tight nod of her head. Uncomfortable. After our conversation three days ago, and the strangeness of her errand, entirely unsurprising. “Horticulturist Basnaaid wishes very much to speak with you in person on what I understand is a private matter. She’d have come herself but she is, as I was saying, unavoidably detained in the Gardens.”

“Citizen,” I replied. “You’ll recall that when last I spoke to the horticulturist, she quite understandably said she never wanted to see me again. Should she have changed her mind I am, of course, at her service, but I must admit to some surprise. And I am at a loss to imagine what might be so urgent that it could not have waited until an hour more convenient for herself.”

Sirix froze for just an instant, a sudden tension that, in someone else, I would have taken for anger. “I did, Fleet Captain, suggest as much. She said only, it’s like the poet said: The touch of sour and cold regret, like pickled fish.”

That poet had been Basnaaid Elming, aged nine and three quarters. It would have been difficult to imagine a more carefully calculated tug at my emotions, knowing as she did that Lieutenant Awn had shared her poetry with me.

When I didn’t reply, Sirix made an ambivalent gesture. “She said you’d recognize it.”

“I do.”

“Please tell me that’s not some beloved classic.”

“You don’t like pickled fish?” I asked, calm and serious. She blinked in uncomfortable surprise. “It is not a classic, but one she knew that I would recognize, as you say. A work with personal associations.”

“I had hoped as much,” Sirix said, wryly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, Fleet Captain, it’s been a long day and I’m late for my own supper.” She bowed and left.

I stood in the antechamber, Eight standing still and curious behind me. “Station,” I said aloud. “How are things in the Gardens right now?”

Station’s reply seemed just the smallest bit delayed. “Fine, Fleet Captain. As always.”

At age nine and three quarters, Basnaaid Elming had been an ambitious poet, without a particularly delicate sense of language, but an abundance of melodrama and overwrought emotion. The bit Sirix had quoted was part of a long narrative of betrayed friendship. It had also been incomplete. The entire couplet was, The touch of sour and cold regret, like pickled fish / ran down her back. Oh, how had she believed the awful lies?

She said you’d recognize it, Sirix had said. “Has Sirix gone home, Station? Or has she gone back to the Gardens?”

“Citizen Sirix is on her way home, Fleet Captain.” No hesitation that time.

I went to my room, took out the gun that was invisible to Station, invisible to any sensors but human eyes. Put the gun under my jacket, where I could reach it quickly. Said to Eight, as I passed her in the antechamber, “Tell Lieutenant Tisarwat and Citizen Uran to finish their supper.”

“Sir,” Eight replied, puzzled but not worried. Good.

Perhaps I was overreacting. Perhaps Basnaaid had merely changed her mind about wanting to never speak to me again. Perhaps her anxiety about the supports under the lake had grown strong enough to overcome her misgivings about me. And she had misremembered her own poetry, or remembered only part of it, meaning to remind me (as though I needed reminding) of my old association with her long-dead sister. Maybe she truly, urgently needed to speak to me now, at an hour when many citizens were at supper, and she truly could not leave work. Didn’t want to be so rude as to summon me via Station, and sent Sirix with her message instead. Surely she knew that I would come if she asked, when she asked.

Surely Sirix knew it, too. And Sirix had been talking to Captain Hetnys.

I considered—briefly—bringing my Kalrs with me, and even Lieutenant Tisarwat. I was not particularly concerned about being wrong. If I was wrong, I would send them back to the Undergarden and have whatever conversation Horticulturist Basnaaid wished. But what if I wasn’t wrong?

Captain Hetnys had two Sword of Atagaris ancillaries with her, here on the station. None of them would have guns, unless they had disobeyed my order to disarm. Which was a possibility. But even so, I was confident I could deal with Captain Hetnys and so few of Sword of Atagaris. No need to trouble anyone else.

And if it was more than just Captain Hetnys? If Governor Giarod had also been deceiving me, or Station Administrator Celar, if Station Security was waiting for me in the Gardens? I would not be able to deal with that by myself. But I would not be able to deal with that even with the assistance of Lieutenant Tisarwat and all four of my Mercy of Kalrs. Best to leave them clear, in that case.

Mercy of Kalr was another matter. “Yes,” Ship said, without my having to say anything at all. “Lieutenant Seivarden is in Command and the crew is clearing for action.”

There was little else I could do for Mercy of Kalr, and so I focused on the matter at hand.

It would have been easiest for me to enter the Gardens the same way I had when I had first arrived at Athoek. It might not make a difference—there were two entrances to the Gardens that I knew of, and two ancillaries to watch them. But on the off chance that someone was waiting for me and assuming that I would come by the most convenient way, and on the off chance that Station might take its favorite course of resistance and just not mention the fact, I thought it worth taking the long way.

The entrance gave onto the rocky ledge overlooking the lake. Off to my right, the waterfall gushed and foamed its way down the rocks. The path led to my left, down to the water, past a thick stand of ornamental grass nearly two meters tall. I would not walk past that without a great deal of caution.

Ahead, a waist-high railing guarded the drop to the water, rocks jutting up just below and here and there in the lake. On the tiny island with its fluted stone, Captain Hetnys stood, her hand tight on Basnaaid’s arm, a knife held to her throat, the sort of thing you might use to bone a fish. Small enough, but sufficient for the purpose. Also on the island, at the head of the bridge, stood Sword of Atagaris—one of it—armored, gun drawn. “Oh, Station,” I said, quietly. It didn’t answer. I could easily imagine its reasons for not warning me, or calling for help. Doubtless it valued Basnaaid’s life more than mine. This was suppertime for many on the station, and so there were no bystanders. Possibly Station had been turning people away on some pretext.

On the ledge, the grass trembled. Unthinking, I pulled my gun out of my jacket, raised my armor. The bang of a gun firing, a blow to my body—whoever was in that stand of grass had taken aim at precisely that part of me that was covered first. I was entirely enclosed before any second shot could be fired.

A silver-armored ancillary rushed out of the grass, inhumanly quick, reached to grapple with me, thinking, no doubt, that the gun I held was no threat, armored as it was. We ought to have been equally matched hand to hand, but my back was to empty air and it had momentum on its side. I fired, just as it shoved me over the rail.

Radchaai armor is essentially impenetrable. The energy of the bullet Sword of Atagaris had fired at me had been bled off, mostly as heat. Not all of it, of course, I’d still felt its impact. So when my shoulder hit the jagged stone at the foot of that seven-and-a-half-meter-high rock wall, the actual impact wasn’t particularly painful. However, the top of the stone was narrow, and while my shoulder stopped, the rest of me kept going. My shoulder bent backward, painfully, definitely not in any way it was meant to, and then I slid off the stone into the water. Which fortunately was only a little over a meter deep where I was, about four meters from the island.

I got to my feet in the waist-deep water, the pain of my left shoulder making me catch my breath. Something had happened during my fall, I didn’t have time to ask Mercy of Kalr exactly what, but Lieutenant Tisarwat had apparently followed me, and I had been too absorbed in my own thoughts to notice. She stood at the shore end of the bridge, armor up, gun raised. Sword of Atagaris faced her, its gun also raised. Why hadn’t Ship warned me that Tisarwat had followed me?

Captain Hetnys faced me, also now silver-armored. She likely knew the ancillary on the ledge was injured or even dead but didn’t realize, I was sure, that her armor would do her no good against my gun. Though perhaps the Presger hadn’t bothered to make the gun waterproof.

“Well, Fleet Captain,” said Captain Hetnys, voice distorted by her armor, “you do have human feelings after all.”

“You fish-witted fuck,” cried Lieutenant Tisarwat, vehemence clear in her voice even through the warping of her armor. “If you weren’t such an easily manipulated ass you’d never have been given a ship.”

“Hush, Tisarwat,” I said. If Lieutenant Tisarwat was here, depend on it, so was Bo Nine. If my shoulder didn’t hurt so much I’d be able to think clearly enough to know where she was.

“But, sir! She has no fucking idea…”

“Lieutenant!” I didn’t need Tisarwat thinking in those terms. Didn’t need her here. Mercy of Kalr wasn’t telling me what was wrong with my shoulder, whether it was dislocated or broken. Mercy of Kalr wasn’t telling me what Tisarwat was feeling, or where Bo Nine was. I reached, but could not find Seivarden, whom I had last seen in Command, who had said, to Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant, days and days ago, the next time you threaten this ship you’d best be able to make good on it. Sword of Atagaris must have made its move when I fell off the rock wall. At least Ship would not have been caught entirely by surprise. But Swords were faster, and better armed, and if Mercy of Kalr was gone, I would make Seivarden’s warning good, if I possibly could.

Captain Hetnys stood facing me on the island, still gripping Basnaaid, who stood rigid, eyes wide. “Who did you sell them to, Captain?” I asked. “Who did you sell the transportees to?” Captain Hetnys didn’t answer. She was a fool, or desperate, or both, to threaten Basnaaid. “That is what precipitated this rather hasty action, is it not?” Governor Giarod had let something slip, or outright told Captain Hetnys. I had never told the governor who I suspected, or perhaps she would have been more cautious. “You had a confederate at the storage facility, you loaded up Sword of Atagaris with suspension pods, and you took them through the Ghost Gate. Who did you sell them to?” She had sold them. That Notai tea set. And Sirix had never heard the story of how Captain Hetnys had sold it to Fosyf. She hadn’t been able to make that connection. But Captain Hetnys had realized that I had made it. Had needed to know where I might be vulnerable, and after two weeks in the same house, even never speaking to her, she had known what Sirix would respond to best. Or perhaps Sword of Atagaris had suggested such an approach to its captain.

“I did what I did out of loyalty,” asserted Captain Hetnys. “Which is apparently something you know little of.” If my shoulder hadn’t hurt so badly, if this situation hadn’t been so serious, I might have laughed. Oblivious, Captain Hetnys continued. “The real Lord of the Radch would never strip her ships of ancillaries, would never dismantle the fleet that protects the Radch.”

“The Lord of the Radch,” I pointed out, “would never be stupid enough to give you a tea set like that as a payment supposedly more discreet than cash.” A plashing, bubbling sound came from the middle of the lake, where, I assumed, the water was deeper. For an instant I thought someone had thrown something in, or a fish had surfaced. I stood there in the water, gun aimed at Captain Hetnys, my other shoulder hurting ferociously, and then on the edges of my vision, it happened again—a bubble rising and collapsing on the surface of the water. It took me a fraction of a second to realize what it was I had seen.

I could see by the increased panic on Basnaaid’s face that she had realized it, too. Realized that air bubbling up from the bottom of the lake could really only be coming from one place—from the Undergarden itself. And if air was coming up, water was surely going down.

The game was over. Captain Hetnys just hadn’t realized it yet. Station would remain silent to save Basnaaid’s life, and even block calls to Security from here. But it would not do so at the cost of the entire Undergarden. The only question remaining was whether Basnaaid—or anyone else here—would come out of this alive.

“Station,” I said, aloud. “Evacuate the Undergarden immediately.” Level one was in the most immediate danger, and only some of the consoles there had been repaired by now. But I didn’t have time to worry how many residents would hear an evacuation order, or would be able to spread the message. “And tell my household the Undergarden is about to be flooded, and they’re to help evacuate.” Mercy of Kalr ought to have told them by now, but Mercy of Kalr was gone. Oh, Captain Hetnys would regret that, and so would Sword of Atagaris. Once I got Basnaaid clear of that knife at her throat.

“What are you talking about?” asked Captain Hetnys. “Station, don’t do any such thing.” Basnaaid gasped as Captain Hetnys gripped her tighter, shook her just a bit to emphasize the threat.

Stupid Captain Hetnys. “Captain, are you really going to make Station choose between Basnaaid and the residents of the Undergarden? Is it possible you don’t understand the consequences of that?” Tisarwat’s fish-witted had been about right. “Let me guess, you intended to kill me, imprison my soldiers, destroy Mercy of Kalr, and claim to the governor that I’d been a traitor all along.” The water bubbled again—twice, in quick succession, larger bubbles than before. Captain Hetnys might not have yet realized that she’d lost, but when she did, she would likely take the most desperate action available. Time to end this. “Basnaaid,” I said. She was staring ahead, blank, terrified. “As the poet said: Like ice. Like stone.” The same poem she had quoted, that had brought me here. I had understood her message. I could only hope that now she would understand mine. Whatever you do, don’t move a muscle. My finger tightened on the trigger.

I should have been paying more attention to Lieutenant Tisarwat. Tisarwat had been watching Captain Hetnys, and the ancillary at the head of the bridge. Had been moving slowly, carefully closer to the island, by millimeters, with neither myself nor Captain Hetnys nor, apparently, Sword of Atagaris noticing. And when I had spoken to Basnaaid, Tisarwat had clearly understood my intention, knowing as she did that my gun would defeat Captain Hetnys’s armor. But she also understood that Sword of Atagaris might still pose a danger to Citizen Basnaaid. The instant before I fired, Tisarwat dropped her own armor and charged, shouting, at the Sword of Atagaris ancillary.

Bo Nine, it turned out, had been crouching behind the rail at the top of the rocky ledge. Seeing her lieutenant behave so suicidally, Bo Nine cried out, raised her own gun, but could do nothing.

Captain Hetnys heard Bo Nine cry out. Looked up to see her standing on the ledge, gun raised. And the captain flinched, and ducked low, just as I fired.

The Presger gun, it turned out, was waterproof, and of course my aim was good. But the shot went over Captain Hetnys, over Basnaaid. Traveled on, to hit the barrier between us and hard vacuum.

The dome over the Gardens was built to withstand impacts. Had Bo Nine fired, or Sword of Atagaris, it would not have even been scratched. But the bullets in the Presger gun would burn through anything in the universe for 1.11 meters. The barrier wasn’t even half a meter thick.

Instantly, alarms sounded. Every entrance to the Gardens slammed shut. We were all now trapped, while the atmosphere blew out of the bullet hole in the dome. At least it would take a while to empty such a large space, and now Security was certainly paying attention to us. But the water flowing out of the lake meant that there was no real barrier between the Gardens (with their hull breach) and the Undergarden. It was entirely possible that the section doors there (the ones that worked, at any rate, all of which were on level one, immediately below us) would close, trapping residents who hadn’t managed to get out. And if the lake collapsed, those residents would drown.

It was Station’s problem. I waded toward the island. Bo Nine ran down the path to the water. Sword of Atagaris had pinned Tisarwat easily, was raising its weapon to fire at Basnaaid, who had wrenched free of Captain Hetnys’s grip and scrambled away toward the bridge. I shot Sword of Atagaris in the wrist, forcing it to drop its gun.

Sword of Atagaris realized, then, that I posed an immediate danger to its captain. Ancillary-quick, it rushed me, thinking, no doubt, that I was only human and it would be able to easily take the gun from me, even injured as it was. It barreled into me, jarring my shoulder. I saw black for an instant, but did not let go of the gun.

At that moment, Station solved the problem of water pouring into the Undergarden by turning off the gravity.

Up and down disappeared. Sword of Atagaris clung to me, still trying to pry the gun out of my hand. The ancillary’s impact had pushed us away from the ground, and we spun, grappling, moving toward the waterfall. The water was not falling, now, but accumulating at the dome-edge of the rocks in a growing, wobbling mass as it was pumped out of the lake.

In the background, behind the pain of my shoulder and my effort to keep hold of the gun, I heard Station saying something about the self-repair function of the dome not working properly, and that it would take an hour to assemble a repair crew and shuttle them to the spot to patch it.

An hour was too long. All of us here would either drown, unable, without gravity, to escape the wobbling, growing globs of water the waterfall pump kept sending out, or asphyxiate well before the dome could be repressurized. I had failed to save Basnaaid. Had betrayed and killed her sister, and now, coming here to try, in the smallest, most inadequate way, to make that up, I had caused her death. I didn’t see her. Didn’t see much, beyond the pain of my injured shoulder, and Sword of Atagaris, and the black and silver flash of water as we drew closer to it.

I was going to die here. Mercy of Kalr, and Seivarden and Ekalu and Medic and all the crew, were gone. I was sure of it. Ship would never leave me unanswered, not by its own choice.

And just as I had that thought, the starless, not-even-nothing black of a gate opened just outside the dome, and Mercy of Kalr appeared, far, far too close to be even remotely a good idea, and I heard Seivarden’s voice in my ear telling me she looked forward to being reprimanded as soon as I was safe. “Sword of Atagaris seems to have gated off somewhere,” she continued, cheerily. “I do hope it doesn’t come out right where we just were. I may have accidentally dropped half our inventory of mines just before we left.”

I was fairly sure I was more starved for oxygen than I realized, and hallucinating, up until half a dozen safely tethered Amaats took hold of the Sword of Atagaris ancillary, and pulled us both through the hole they’d cut in the dome, and into one of Mercy of Kalr’s shuttles.

Once we were all on the safe side of the shuttle airlock, I made sure that Basnaaid was uninjured and strapped into a seat, and set an Amaat to fuss over her. Tisarwat, similarly, but retching from stress and from the microgravity, Bo Nine holding a bag for her, ready with correctives for her lieutenant’s bloody nose and broken ribs. Captain Hetnys and the Sword of Atagaris ancillary I saw bound securely. Only then did I let Medic pull off my jacket and my shirt, push my shoulder bones back into place with the help of one of Seivarden’s Amaats, and immobilize my shoulder with a corrective.

I had not realized, until that pain went away, how hard I’d been gritting my teeth. How tense every other muscle in my body had been, and how badly that had made my leg ache as a consequence. Mercy of Kalr had said nothing directly to me, but it didn’t need to—it showed me flashes of sight and feeling from my Kalrs, assisting the final stages of the evacuation of the Undergarden (Uran assisting as well, apparently now an old hand with microgravity after the trip here), from Seivarden’s Amaats, from Seivarden herself. Medic’s outwardly dour concern. Tisarwat’s pain and shame and self-hatred. One-armed, I pulled myself past her, where Bo Nine was applying correctives to her injuries. Did not trust myself to stop and speak.

Instead I continued past, to where Captain Hetnys and her ship’s ancillary were bound, strapped to seats. Watched by my Amaats. Silver-armored, both of them. In theory, Sword of Atagaris could still gate back to the station and attack us. In fact, even if it hadn’t run into the mines Seivarden had left for it—which likely would only do minimal damage, more an annoyance than anything else—there was no way to attack us without also attacking its captain. “Drop your armor, Captain,” I said. “And you, too, Atagaris. You know I can shoot through it, and we can’t treat your injury until you do.”

Sword of Atagaris dropped its armor. Medic pulled herself past me with a corrective, frown deepening as she saw the ancillary’s wounded wrist.

Captain Hetnys only said, “Fuck you.”

I still held the Presger gun. Captain Hetnys’s leg was more than a meter from the shuttle hull, and besides we had the ability to patch it, if I sent a bullet through it. I braced myself against a nearby seat and shot her in the knee. She screamed, and the Atagaris beside her strained at its bonds, but could not break them. “Captain Hetnys, you are relieved of command,” I said, once Medic had applied a corrective, and the globs of blood that had floated free had been mopped up. “I have every right to shoot you in the head, for what’s happened today. I will not promise not to do so. You and all your officers are under arrest.

“Sword of Atagaris, you will immediately send every human aboard to Athoek Station. Unarmed. You will then take your engines off-line and put every single ancillary you have into suspension until further notice. Captain Hetnys, and all your lieutenants, will be put into suspension on Athoek Station. If you threaten the station, or any ship or citizen, your officers will die.”

“You can’t—” began Captain Hetnys.

“Be silent, Citizen,” I said. “I am now speaking to Sword of Atagaris.” Captain Hetnys didn’t answer that. “You, Sword of Atagaris, will tell me who your captain did business with, on the other side of the Ghost Gate.”

“I will not,” replied Sword of Atagaris.

“Then I will kill Captain Hetnys.” Medic, still occupied with the corrective she’d applied to Captain Hetnys’s leg, looked up at me briefly, dismayed, but said nothing.

“You,” said Sword of Atagaris. Its voice was ancillary-flat, but I could guess at the emotion behind it. “I wish I could show you what it’s like. I wish you could know what it’s like, to be in my position. But you never will, and that’s how I know there isn’t really any such thing as justice.”

There were things I could say. Answers I could make. Instead, I said, “Who did your captain do business with, on the other side of the Ghost Gate?”

“She didn’t identify herself,” Sword of Atagaris replied, voice still flat and calm. “She looked Ychana, but she couldn’t have been, no Ychana speaks Radchaai with such an accent. To judge by her speech, she might have come from the Radch itself.”

“With perhaps a hint of Notai.” Thinking of that tea set, in fragments in its box, in the Undergarden. That supply locker.

“Perhaps. Captain Hetnys thought she was working for the Lord of the Radch.”

“I will keep your captain close to me, Ship,” I said. “If you don’t do as I say, or if at any time I think you have deceived me, she dies. Don’t doubt me on this.”

“How could I?” replied Sword of Atagaris, bitterness audible even in its flat tone.

I didn’t answer, only turned to pull myself forward, to get out of the way while Seivarden’s Amaats brought a suspension pod for Captain Hetnys. I caught sight of Basnaaid, who had been only a few seats away, who had perhaps heard the entire exchange between me and Sword of Atagaris. “Fleet Captain,” she said, as I pulled myself even with her. “I wanted to say.”

I grabbed a handhold, halted myself. “Horticulturist.”

“I’m glad my sister had a friend like you, and I wish… I feel as though, if you had been there, when it happened, whatever it was, that maybe it would have made a difference, and she’d still be alive.”

Of all the things to say. Of all the things to say now, when I had just threatened to shoot Captain Hetnys only because I knew how her ship felt about her. Of all the times for me to hear such a thing, coming from Lieutenant Awn’s sister’s mouth.

And I had gone beyond my ability to remain silent, to seem as though I was untouched by any of it. “Citizen,” I replied, hearing my own voice go flat. “I was there when it happened, and I was no help to your sister at all. I told you I used another name when I knew her, and that name was Justice of Toren. I was the ship she served on, and at the command of Anaander Mianaai herself, I shot your sister in the head. What happened next ended in my own destruction, and I am all that’s left of that ship. I am not human, and you were right to speak to me as you did, when we first met.” I turned my face away, before Basnaaid would see even the small signs I might give of my feelings at having said it.

Everyone in the shuttle had heard me. Basnaaid seemed shocked into silence. Seivarden already knew, of course, and Medic. I didn’t want to know what Seivarden’s Amaats thought. Didn’t want to see or hear Sword of Atagaris’s opinion. I turned to the only person who seemed unaware of me—Lieutenant Tisarwat, who had no attention for anything but what a failure she’d been, at living and dying both.

I pulled myself into the seat beside her, strapped myself in. For a moment I seriously considered telling her just how stupid she’d been, back in the Gardens, and how lucky we all were to have survived her stupidity. Instead, I unhooked her seat strap with my good hand—my left arm was immobilized by the corrective on my shoulder—and pulled her to me. She clung to me and leaned her face into my neck, and began sobbing.

“It’s all right,” I said, my arm awkwardly around her shaking shoulders. “It’ll be all right.”

“How can you say that?” she demanded into my neck, between sobs. A tear escaped, one tiny, trembling sphere floating away. “How could it possibly?” And then, “No one would ever dare offer you such a platitude.”

Over three thousand years old. Infinitely ambitious. And still only seventeen. “You assume incorrectly.” If she thought about it, if she was capable just now of thinking clearly, she might have guessed who it was who might have said such a thing to me. If she had, she didn’t say it. “It’s so hard, at first,” I said, “when they hook you up. But the rest of you is around you, and you know it’s only temporary, you know it will be better soon. And when you are better, it’s so amazing. To have such reach, to see so much, all at once. It’s…” But there was no describing it. Tisarwat herself would have seen it, if only for a few hours, distressed or else blunted by meds. “She never let you have that. It was never part of her plan to let you have that.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” And of course she’d known. How could she not? “She hated the way I felt, she dosed me up as fast as she could. She didn’t care if…” The sobs that had died down began afresh. More tears escaped and floated off. Bo Nine, near all this time, horrified by my revelation minutes before, horror that was not at all relieved by my conversation with Tisarwat now, caught them with a cloth, which she then folded, and pushed it between Tisarwat’s face and my neck.

Seivarden’s Amaats hung motionless, blinking, confused. What sense the universe had made to them had disappeared with my words, and they were unsure of how to fit what they’d heard me say into a reality they understood. “What are you hanging around for?” Seivarden snapped, sterner than I’d ever heard her with them, but it seemed to break whatever had held them until now. “Get moving!” And they moved, relieved to find something they understood.

By then Tisarwat had calmed again somewhat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t get it back for either of us. But it will be all right. Somehow it will.” She didn’t answer, and five minutes later, exhausted from events and from her despair and her grief, she fell asleep.