by Ann Leckie
“Fleet Captain,” Sirix said. Finally. Voice pitched to reach my ear over the noise of the flier, but not carry up front to where the pilot sat. “Why am I here?” Her tone was very, very carefully controlled, a control I didn’t doubt was hard-won.
“You are here,” I said, in an even, reasonable voice, as though I was unaware of the resentment and distress behind the question, “to tell me what Citizen Fosyf isn’t telling me.”
“Why do you think I would be willing or able to tell you anything, Fleet Captain?” Sirix’s voice took on just the slightest edge, skirting what she would be able to say without discomfort.
I turned my head to look at her. She stared straight ahead, as though my reaction didn’t concern her at all. “Is there family you’d like to visit?” She’d come from downwell, had relatives who’d worked on tea plantations. “I’m sure I could arrange for it.”
“I am…” She hesitated. Swallowed. I had pushed too hard, somehow. “Without family. For any practical purpose.”
“Ah.” She did have a house name, and so was not legally houseless. “Actually throwing you out of the family would have been too much disgrace for them to bear. But perhaps you’re still in discreet contact with someone? A mother, a sibling?” And children generally had parents from more than one house. Parents or siblings from other houses might not be considered terribly close relatives, might or might not be required to lend any sort of support, but those ties were there, could be drawn on in a crisis.
“To be entirely honest, Fleet Captain,” said Sirix, as though it was an answer to my question, “I really don’t want to spend two weeks in the company of Citizen Raughd Denche.”
“I don’t think she realizes,” I said. Citizen Raughd had been oblivious, or at least seemingly so. Oblivious to the seriousness of what she’d done, to the fact that anyone at all might be aware she’d done it. “Why do you live in the Undergarden, citizen?”
“I didn’t like my assigned quarters. I think, Fleet Captain, that you appreciate directness.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “It would be hypocritical of me not to.”
She acknowledged that with a bitter quirk of her mouth. “I would like to be left alone now.”
“Of course, Citizen. Please don’t hesitate to tell me or either of my Kalrs”—Kalr Five and Kalr Eight sat behind us—“if you need anything.” I turned forward again. Closed my eyes and thought of Lieutenant Tisarwat.
Who stood in the garden, on the bridge stretching across the lake. The fish roiled the water below her, purple and green, orange and blue, gold and red, gaping as Tisarwat dropped food pellets into the water. Celar’s daughter Piat stood beside her, leaning on the rail. She had just said something that had surprised and dismayed Lieutenant Tisarwat. I didn’t query, but waited to hear Tisarwat’s answer.
“That’s ridiculous,” Tisarwat said, indignant. “First assistant to the chief of Horticulture of the entire station, that’s not nothing. If it weren’t for Horticulture no one on this station could eat or breathe. You don’t seriously think you’re doing some unimportant, useless job.”
“What, making tea for the chief of Horticulture?”
“And managing her appointments, and communicating her orders, and learning how the Gardens are organized. I bet if she stayed home for the next week, no one would even notice, you’d have everything running smoothly as normal.”
“That’s because everyone else knows their jobs.”
“You included.” Devious Tisarwat! I’d told her to stay away from Basnaaid, which would mean staying away from the Gardens, but she knew well enough I had to approve of a friendship with Station Administrator Celar’s daughter, if only on political grounds. But I couldn’t find it in myself to be too angry—her horrified astonishment at Piat’s dismissal of her own worth was obvious and sincere. And she’d clearly made short work of getting behind Piat’s defenses.
Citizen Piat folded her arms, turned around, her back to the rail, face turned away from Tisarwat. “I’m only here because the chief of Horticulture is in love with my mother.”
“Hardly surprising if she is,” acknowledged Lieutenant Tisarwat. “Your mother is gorgeous.” I was seeing through Tisarwat’s eyes, so I couldn’t see Piat’s expression. I could guess, though. So could Tisarwat, I saw. “And frankly, you take after her. If someone’s been telling you otherwise…” She stopped, unsure for a moment, I thought, if this was the best angle of attack. “Anyone who’s been telling you that you’ve got a shiny-but-useless assignment just to keep your mother happy, or that you’ll never be as beautiful or as competent as she is, well, they’ve been lying to you.” She dropped the whole handful of fish pellets into the water, which boiled with bright-colored scales. “Probably jealous.”
Piat scoffed, in a way that made it plain she was trying very hard not to cry. “Why would…” Stopped. About to say a name, perhaps, that she didn’t want to say, that would be an accusation. “Why would anyone be jealous of me?”
“Because you took the aptitudes.” I hadn’t said anything to Lieutenant Tisarwat about my guess that Raughd had never taken them, but she clearly hadn’t been the Lord of the Radch for a few days for nothing. “And the tests said you should be running something important. And anyone with eyes can see you’re going to be just as beautiful as your mother.” A moment of mortification at having said that going to be. And it wasn’t quite the sort of thing a seventeen-year-old would say. “Once you stop listening to people who just want to drag you down.”
Piat turned around, arms still crossed. Tears rolled down her face. “People get assignments for political reasons all the time.”
“Sure,” said Tisarwat. “Your mother probably got her first assignment for political reasons. Which probably included the fact that she could do the job.” It didn’t always—which Tisarwat well knew.
And that sounded dangerously like someone much older than Tisarwat ostensibly was. But Piat seemed unable to deflect it. She was driven to a last-ditch defense. “I’ve seen you mooning around the past few days. You’re only here because you’ve got a crush on Horticulturist Basnaaid.”
That scored a hit. But Lieutenant Tisarwat kept her outward composure. “I wouldn’t even be here except for you. Fleet captain told me I was too young for her and stay away. It was an order. I ought to stay away from the Gardens, but you’re here, aren’t you. So let’s go somewhere else and have a drink.”
Piat was silent a moment, taken aback, it seemed. “Not the Undergarden,” she said, finally.
“I should think not!” replied Tisarwat. Relieved, knowing she’d won this round, a minor victory but a victory all the same. “They haven’t even started repairs there yet. Let’s find somewhere we don’t have to pee in a bucket.”
By now Sword of Atagaris had moved away from the Ghost Gate, closer to Athoek Station. It had said almost nothing to Mercy of Kalr the whole time. Hardly surprising—ships generally weren’t much given to chitchat, and besides, Swords all thought they were better than the others.
On Mercy of Kalr Lieutenant Ekalu had just come off watch, and Seivarden had met her in the decade room. “Your opposite number on Sword of Atagaris was asking after you,” Ekalu said, and sat at the table, where an Etrepa had set her lunch.
Seivarden sat beside her. “Was she, now.” She already knew, of course. “And was she glad to see someone she knew on board?”
“I don’t think she recognized me,” replied Ekalu, and after a moment’s hesitation and a quick gesture from Seivarden, who’d had supper already, she took a mouthful of skel. Chewed and swallowed. “Not my name, anyway, I was only ever Amaat One to her. And I didn’t send any visuals. I was on watch.” Ekalu’s feelings about that—about Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant not realizing who she was—were complicated, and not entirely comfortable.
“Oh, I wish you had. I’d have loved to have seen her face.”
I saw that while Ekalu herself might well have enjoyed the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant’s discomf
iture at being faced with an officer of such common origin, Seivarden’s obvious amusement at the same prospect troubled and dismayed her. It reminded me a bit too painfully of some of Lieutenant Awn’s interactions with Skaaiat Awer, twenty years gone and more. Ship said, in my ear, where I sat in the flier, “I’ll say something to Lieutenant Seivarden.” But I wasn’t sure what Ship could say that Seivarden would understand.
In the Mercy of Kalr decade room, Ekalu said, “Expect her to contact you at the start of your next watch. She’s determined to invite you over for tea, now Sword of Atagaris is going to be close enough.”
“I can’t be spared,” Seivarden said, mock-serious. “There are only three watchstanders aboard right now.”
“Oh, Ship will tell you if anything important happens,” Ekalu said, all sarcastic disdain.
In Command, Medic said, “Lieutenants. Letting you know that something appears to have exited the Ghost Gate.”
“What is it?” asked Seivarden, rising. Ekalu continued to eat, but called up a view of what Medic was looking at.
“It’s too small to see well until it’s closer,” said Ship, to me, in the flier over Athoeki water. “I think it’s a shuttle or a very small ship of some sort.”
“We’ve asked Sword of Atagaris about it,” Medic said, in Command.
“You mean they haven’t threatened to destroy it unless it identifies itself?” asked Seivarden, halfway to Command herself by now.
“Nothing to worry about,” came the reply from Sword of Atagaris, whichever of its lieutenants was on duty sounding almost overly bored. “It’s just trash. The Ghost Gate doesn’t get cleaned out like the others. Some ship must have broken up in the gate a long time ago.”
“Your very great pardon,” said Medic dryly as Seivarden came into Command, “but we were under the impression there was no one on the other side of that gate, and never had been.”
“Oh, people go there on a dare, sometimes, or just joyriding. But this one isn’t recent, you can see it’s pretty old. We’ll pull it in—it’s large enough to be a hazard.”
“Why not just burn it?” asked Seivarden, and Ship must have sent her words to Sword of Atagaris, because that lieutenant replied, “Well, you know, there is some smuggling in the system. We always check these things out.”
“And what are they smuggling out of an uninhabited system?” asked Medic.
“Oh, nothing out of the Ghost Gate, I should think,” came the blithe answer. “But generally, you know, the usual. Illegal drugs. Stolen antiques.”
“Aatr’s tits!” swore Seivarden. “Speaking of antiques.” Ship had asked Sword of Atagaris for a closer image of the object in question and, receiving it, had shown it to Medic and Seivarden both, a curving shell, scarred and scorched.
“Quite a piece of junk, isn’t it?” replied the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant.
“Ignorant fuck,” said Seivarden, after Sword of Atagaris had signed off. “What are they teaching in officer training these days?”
Medic turned to regard her. “Did I miss something, Lieutenant?”
“That’s a supply locker off a Notai military shuttle,” replied Seivarden. “You honestly don’t recognize it?”
Radchaai often speak of the Radch as containing only one sort of people, who speak only one language—Radchaai. But the interior of a Dyson sphere is vast. Even if it had begun with a single population, speaking only one language (and it had not), it would not have ended that way. Many of the ships and captains that had opposed Anaander’s expansion had been Notai.
“No,” said Medic, “I don’t recognize it. It doesn’t look very Notai to me. It doesn’t really look like a supply locker, either. It does look old, though.”
“My house is Notai. Was.” Seivarden’s house had been absorbed by another one, during the thousand years she’d spent in suspension. “We were loyal, though. We had an old shuttle from the wars, docked at Inais. People used to come from all over to see it.” The memory of it must have been unexpectedly specific and sharp. She swallowed, so that her sudden sense of loss wouldn’t be audible when she spoke next. “How did a Notai ship break up in the Ghost Gate? None of those battles were anywhere near here.”
In Seivarden’s and Medic’s vision, Ship displayed images of the sort of shuttle Seivarden was talking about. “Yes, like that,” said Seivarden. “Show us the supply locker.” Ship obliged.
“There’s writing on it,” said Medic.
“Seeing?” Seivarden frowned, puzzling out the words. “Seeing… something?”
“Divine Essence of Perception,” said Ship. “One of the last defeated in the wars. It’s a museum now.”
“It doesn’t look particularly Notai,” said Medic. “Except for the writing.”
“And the writing on this one,” said Seivarden, gesturing into view the image of the one that had come out of the Ghost Gate, “is all burned away. Ship, did you really not recognize it?”
Ship said, to Medic and Seivarden both, “Not immediately. I’m a little less than a thousand years old and never have seen any Notai ships firsthand. But if Lieutenant Seivarden had not identified it herself, I would have within a few minutes.”
“Would you have, ever,” asked Medic, “if we trusted Sword of Atagaris?” And then, struck by a new thought, “Could Sword of Atagaris have failed to recognize it?”
“Probably it has,” said Seivarden. “Otherwise, surely, it would tell its lieutenant.”
“Unless they’re both lying,” said Ekalu, who had been listening in the whole time from the decade room. “They are taking the trouble to pick up a piece of debris that they might as well mark and let someone else take care of.”
“In which case,” remarked Seivarden, “they’re assuming Mercy of Kalr won’t recognize it. Which doesn’t strike me as a safe assumption.”
“I don’t presume to know Sword of Atagaris’s opinion of my intelligence,” said Ship.
Seivarden gave a small laugh. “Medic, ask Sword of Atagaris to tell us what they find when they examine that… debris.”
Ultimately, Sword of Atagaris replied that it had found nothing of interest, and subsequently destroyed the locker.
Citizen Fosyf’s house was the largest of three buildings, a long, balconied two-storied structure of polished stone, flecks of black and gray and here and there patches of blue and green that gleamed as the light changed. It sat beside a wide, clear lake with stony shores, and a weathered wooden dock, with a small, graceful boat moored alongside, white sails furled. Mountains loomed around, and moss and trees edged the lakeshore. The actual tea plantation—I’d seen it as we flew in, wavering strips of velvet-looking green running across the hillsides and around outcrops of black stone—was hidden behind a ridge. The air was 20.8 degrees C, the breeze light and pleasant and smelling of leaves and cold water.
“Here we are, Fleet Captain!” Citizen Fosyf called as she climbed out of her flier. “Peace and quiet. Under other circumstances I’d suggest fishing in the lake. Boating. Climbing if that’s the sort of thing you like. But even just staying in is nice, here. There’s a separate bathhouse behind the main building, just across from where you’ll be staying. A big tub with seating for at least a dozen, plenty of hot water. It’s a Xhai thing. Barbarically luxurious.”
Raughd had come up beside her mother. “Drinks in the bathhouse! There’s nothing like it after a long night.” She grinned.
“Raughd can manage to find long nights even here,” observed Fosyf pleasantly as Captain Hetnys and her Sword of Atagaris ancillary approached. “Ah, to be young again! But come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”
The patches of blue-green in the building stone flared and died away as our angle on it changed. Around the other side of the house was a broad stretch of flat, gray stones, shaded by two large trees and thickly grown with moss. To the left of that stretched the ellipse of a low building, the nearer long side of wood, the nearer end and, presumably, the farther long side of glass. “The bath,”
said Fosyf, with a gesture. On the other side of the mossy stone, up against a road that ran over the ridge and down to the house by the lake, sat another black and blue-green stone building, two-storied, but smaller than the main house and not balconied as it was. The whole side facing us was taken up with a terrace under a leafy, vine-tangled arbor, where a group of people stood waiting for us. Most of them wore shirts and trousers, or skirts that looked as though they’d been painstakingly constructed from cut-apart trousers, the fabric faded and worn, once-bright blues and greens and reds. None of them wore gloves.
Accompanying them was a person dressed in the expected, and conventional, jacket, trousers, and gloves and scattering of jewelry. By her features, I guessed she was a Samirend overseer here. We stopped some three meters from the group, in the shade of the wide arbor, and Fosyf said, “Just for you, Fleet Captain, since I knew you’d want to hear them sing.”
The overseer turned away and said to the assembled people, “Here, now. Sing.” In Radchaai. Slow and loud.
One of the elders of the group leaned toward the person next to her and said, in Delsig, “I told you it wasn’t the right song.” A few gestures and a few whispered words under the somewhat agitated eye of the overseer, who apparently didn’t understand the reason for the delay, and then a collective breath and they began to sing. “Oh you, who live sheltered by God, who live all your lives in her shadow.” I knew it, every line and every part. Most Delsig-speaking Valskaayans sang it at funerals.
It was a gesture meant to comfort. Even if they hadn’t already known the reason for our coming, they could not have failed to notice my shaved head and the mourning stripe across my face, and Captain Hetnys’s. These people didn’t know us, quite possibly didn’t know who had died. We represented the forces that had conquered them, torn them away from their home world to labor here. They had no reason to care for our feelings. They had no reason to think that either of us knew enough Delsig to understand the words. And no expectation that we would understand the import of their song even if we did. Such things are fraught with symbolic and historic significance, carry great emotional weight—but only for someone aware of that significance to begin with.