For a moment Ingray was astonished, but then she remembered that eir business as a forger of vestiges of course meant that e kept track of important families. She’d said as much herself already. “It would.” She stepped into the galley and onto the belt and started it moving. “Supposedly Netano will choose the most promising of her children to take her place, and it could be either of us and we should be working hard to be chosen, but everyone knows she’s giving her name to Danach.”
“So why encourage competition, then?” asked Garal.
“I think she intends the threat to keep him sharp. If he always knows he’s going to inherit there’s no reason for him to work at anything, right?”
“Hm,” said Garal, as though e disagreed, but e didn’t expand on it. “I take it he’s who you’re hoping to con, with my help.”
Ingray had been turning plans over in her mind for the past week but had not settled on any of them, let alone said anything more to Garal Ket about her thoughts. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer em now.
“I’ve never met Danach Aughskold, but I know his reputation. I don’t imagine you like him very much.” And then, into Ingray’s continued silence, “We’ve got another two weeks of travel. I’m trying to imagine what I’ll do after that.”
“I suppose you could do whatever you liked. You don’t have to go back to wherever you came from, or go anywhere the Budrakims are likely to see you. You could go to the public registry, and probably find pretty decent work.”
“I suppose I could,” said Garal. E didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospect, but then, e had never sounded terribly enthusiastic about anything in the week or so that Ingray had known em. “I’d like to know all my options, though.”
Ingray stepped for a few moments in silence. She’d rarely come out and said anything about her various plans. And she had never quite gotten to the point with this plan where it seemed to make perfect, brilliant sense. “Danach,” she said finally, “is a serious collector. Or he considers himself to be one. He’s always on the lookout for exactly the sort of thing you said you did—vestiges that seem insignificant now, so they go for cheap, but they’ll turn out to be valuable later. He considers it an investment.”
“Why worry about an investment when he’s going to inherit Netano’s not inconsiderable wealth, as well as her vestiges?”
“He wants to add to that. And every time he buys some trinket for cheap that turns out to be worth a lot, he gets a thrill out of the idea that he’s cheated someone out of a treasure. He’s said as much.”
“Delightful.” E had to be speaking sarcastically, but there was no trace of it in eir voice or on eir face.
“So,” said Ingray, and then hesitated, feeling an unaccustomed sense of uncertainty. Her last big plan had failed completely, and she was entirely out of resources. “So,” she said again, “what if we turned up and you told Danach that you knew where the Budrakim Garseddai vestiges were? That you’d give him that information in exchange for a sufficiently high payment. I know he can’t sell them, or display them. He’d probably want to give them to Mama.”
“It has the virtue of being very straightforward,” Garal commented after a moment’s consideration. “There is the difficulty that I don’t know where the Garseddai vestiges are, and when your brother goes to retrieve them he will find nothing, and there we’ll be.”
“Yes. But if we ask him for enough, we can buy a new set of identities and then go back to Tyr Siilas and buy citizenship.” Silence. Unsurprisingly—it was the part of the plan that was the most impractical, the blankest in Ingray’s mind. “And if we choose the spot right, we can convince him the vestiges are somewhere really inconvenient or expensive to get to. Or, you know, somewhere he can get into a lot of trouble if he’s caught poking around for stolen goods.”
Garal Ket stood silent in the corridor, apparently thinking for a good ten seconds. Then e said, “Let’s talk some more about that.”
Ingray waited until they left the ship at Hwae Station to access the public news and data feeds. She could have looked sooner—could probably have had access while the ship was still in the Tyr/Hwae gate—but hadn’t wanted to know if any of her family had tried (or not tried) to contact her. Now as she stepped through the airlock, a flood of messages scrolled past in her vision. None of them looked urgent, or even particularly interesting, and she blinked them away.
“How do I have messages?” asked Garal, behind her.
She turned. E wore a dark blue coverall that Captain Uisine had given em, and over eir shoulder e carried a large velvety-looking black bag Ingray supposed was from the same source, though what Garal needed with a bag when e didn’t have any other possessions at all Ingray wasn’t sure. “I had it set up that way,” she said. It had cost extra, but it was too easy to spot a fake identity when they had no personal data anywhere in the system. “Your travel history says you’ve been away from Hwae for a while.” She looked around for directions and saw a path to the left marked INCOMING TRAVELERS on the dull green floor.
“Not that way,” said Garal. “We’re on the other side of the station from where the passenger ships usually dock. That exit comes out a long way from anywhere we want to be. If we go the other way we’ll be just a short distance from the System Lareum and the Assembly Chambers.”
And it was a direct tram ride from the System Lareum to the elevator shuttle, where they were headed. Ingray pulled a map into her vision. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll spend half our time backtracking if we go that way.” She frowned. “But it looks like we’ll have to walk the whole way?”
“There should be a freight transport, it has room for passengers. Or, it did last time I was here. You send a request to …”
“Ah, thanks, I found it.” She sent the request and turned right into the scuffed gray corridor beyond the bay. After passing a few more bays she said, “So, we have enough money to take transport the rest of the way home, but then we can’t afford to eat. If we eat, we’ll have enough for probably one night’s lodging as well.” If Captain Uisine had not bought the crate and suspension pod from her, sparing her the trouble of pushing it around and trying to sell it herself, she would still be completely broke. “Well, you can probably get yourself on the public allotment list, if you like. I can’t. And if I call home and ask for a ride, someone will probably help us.”
“But you’d rather not do that,” guessed Garal. “I can’t say I blame you, and besides I think you’ll be in a better position if you arrive home without having to ask for help to get there.”
Ingray waited a moment for em to say more, but e didn’t. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll claim us seats on the next elevator shuttle.”
A walk, a tram ride, and several minutes in a lift took them to the freight transport, which took them on a slow, rumbling ride through tunnels Ingray had never imagined existed to another stretch of dingy corridor with two doors at the end. They walked past the line at the door marked NON-HWAE CITIZENS, to where the floor changed from dull gray to brass-bordered blue tiles and a bored-looking guard sat staring. “Identity tabulas, please,” e said dully as Ingray and Garal approached. Ingray had already begun to pull hers out of her jacket. She held it up as she walked past the guard. Tried to keep her breathing even, her steps no more hurried than any other tired traveler. This was a moment when Garal’s identity would be under extra scrutiny. Just walk, she told herself.
She didn’t dare turn to look for Garal until they were well away from the door, down another corridor and through a much larger entrance into one of the station’s main thoroughfares, a broad avenue that led to a wide, open space in front of the System Lareum, where, finally, surrounded by people passing, files of crèche children streaming toward the lareum entrance, under cover of the noise and chatter, she stopped to look at em. E looked calmly back at her, eir tabula already tucked away again. “All right?” she asked.
“Just fine,” e said.
“Let’s go, then
.” Though it was a nonsensical thing to say; they were already walking toward the tram that would take them to the elevator shuttle.
But she was brought up short by someone calling, “Ingray! Ingray Aughskold!”
Damn. She knew that voice. She put a smile on her face, though she feared it wasn’t a convincing one. She was tired, and she’d been wearing the same clothes for just short of a month, though they were as clean as the ship’s laundry facilities allowed. She’d done her best to put her hair up with the few pins she had left, but her best wasn’t very good and she very obviously had no luggage beyond her shoulder bag. And while this person was nominally her friend, Ingray knew he was much more sympathetic to Danach. “Oro,” she said, “what a surprise.”
“I haven’t seen you in months!” exclaimed Oro happily. “Where have you been?”
“Oh, traveling.” She didn’t look around for Garal. “Glad to be home.”
“Where are you coming from?”
She considered lying, but there would be no point, really. “Tyr Siilas.” And braced for questions about what she’d been doing there.
But instead Oro asked, “So did you see the Geck?”
Ingray blinked. Tried to look as though the question hadn’t startled her. “How could I have? They arrived just hours before my ship left, actually.” A little surprised at how easily the lie that wasn’t technically a lie had come into her mouth.
“Well”—he leaned closer—“if you aren’t going down the elevator right away, maybe you can see them when they get here.”
“What?” There was no concealing her surprise at that. “I thought they were going on to Ildrad. That’s what the news said at Tyr Siilas.”
“They changed their mind for some reason. They’ll be coming out of the Tyr Siilas gate sometime tomorrow, and it won’t hit the newsfeeds for a few hours yet. Nobody’s sure why they decided to change their itinerary, though there are lots of theories. System Safety is putting together a plan for handling the change in traffic and making sure nothing untoward happens, and once they have that in place they’ll announce. I had it from my nuncle. In fact, I’m running an errand for em right now. If you want, I can get you in on the greeting party.” He glanced briefly at Ingray’s rumpled jacket and skirt, her hair half falling out of its chignon. “It’ll probably be very late tomorrow, or even the next day. I have no idea if you’ll see any actual Geck, but it’s worth the chance.”
She smiled again, hoping it looked vaguely sincere. “It’s awfully nice of you to offer, but I’ve been away so long and I’m eager to be home. Catch up next time you’re onworld? You can tell me all about the Geck.”
“Sure, sure.” And after a few platitudes he was gone, off into the crowd.
Ingray looked around again for Garal. Didn’t see em. Closed her eyes and took a breath. Garal couldn’t have gone far. Or if e had, well, there was nothing she could do about that. She opened her eyes again.
Garal stood beside her. “You’re going to have to show me how you did that,” she said. E gave a small quirk of eir mouth, the closest Ingray had seen to an actual smile, but e didn’t reply. Ingray said, “We need to warn Captain Uisine. The Geck are coming here.” She knew the captain intended to stay longer in Hwae System than he’d previously planned, so that he could be sure to avoid the Geck ship.
“I heard,” said Garal. “I’ve already sent the message.” Eir face was as blandly expressionless as ever. “He says thanks.”
“Why would they come here? Don’t they have to be at the Conclave?”
“From what I can tell,” said Garal, “it’s going to take years for everyone to get to that conclave, and probably a few more years before the first meeting even happens. The question of who’s representing humans there is still unsettled. Radchaai involvement in this business has left a lot of people with a very bad feeling. Depend on it, there are going to be arguments all through human-inhabited space about who should and shouldn’t be at that conclave. We’ll be lucky if there are no actual wars over it.” And then, in response to Ingray’s open astonishment, e said, “There wasn’t much to do for three weeks. I caught up on the news.”
Well. That made sense. “It’s not our problem, I guess. Let’s go to the elevator shuttle lobby and find someplace to sit down.” It was getting to be late at night, on the schedule Ingray and Garal had kept for weeks.
By the time they reached the lobby and found seats, Ingray had lost all but two of her remaining hairpins and was glad to sit down again. She was sorely tempted just to lie down on the bench. She thought that even in the noise and chaos of the lobby she’d be able to get at least a little bit of sleep.
The lobby was crowded with travelers from every part of Hwae, and even some from outsystem—mostly tourists from Omkem, who were fascinated enough by the ruin glass on the planet that they traveled through two gates to visit, even though relations between Hwae and the Omkem Federacy had been tense ever since the Omkem/Byeit gate had gone down, and Hwae had become their only route to Byeit, which they badly wanted back. But most of the people here were Hwaean. A few aisles of benches away from Ingray and Garal sat two dozen Hwaean adolescents in identical blue shirts and lungis, carrying identical small shoulder bags. Or they mostly sat. Some stood in clusters, talking or giggling. A fair number sat looking at handhelds, another few staring off into space. Looking at a news or entertainment feed, maybe, though the uniforms looked like these children were from a public crèche and very possibly might not be able to afford the implants yet. If ever. Maybe they were enthralled by the shifting historical images cast on the walls of the lobby—right now it was the Archprolocutor of the Assemblies of Hwae presenting the final payment for construction of the Tyr/Hwae gate to the collected Tyr Executory. In the picture the archprolocutor presented the payment in a gilded and inlaid box, though of course no physical currency had changed hands on the occasion, or any other in the centuries-long course of the debt. Behind the archprolocutor stood the prolocutors of the four Assemblies of Hwae, ready to unroll the length of linen they held and reveal the Rejection of Further Obligations and officially declare themselves the government of an independent Hwae. Then again, maybe the children were just tired and bored. At the end of one bench, two of them slept, huddled together.
Longing suddenly seized Ingray. She had come from a public crèche but had gone to Netano Aughskold’s house when she was still quite young. If she had stayed, she would certainly have had very little luxury in her life, but would she have had crèchemates like this, to lean on so comfortably? Ingray had been a ward of the district, one of a number of children whose parents were unwilling or unable to care for them. Her life was so different now, because Netano had adopted her. And if she left the Aughskolds she would have no family at all, and no way to go back to what she had been, no way to find a place where she’d have naturally belonged if Netano had chosen some other child. No way to find even a shred of the comfortable companionship she saw here.
She couldn’t imagine snuggling up against Danach like that. Not even during the times they got along. And there had been times like that, every now and then, particularly when the family’s interests were at stake for some reason.
Then again, neither she nor Danach had ever had to sleep in a lobby. Every time they’d been to the station, Ingray had had a room with a bed, where she could wait until just before the shuttle boarded.
She looked at the cost of a train ride from the elevator base to the city where Netano’s house was, and compared that with how much money she had left from the sale of the suspension pod. Sighed. “Well, we’ve got enough for all our transport anyway. Or most of it. We’ll have to walk from the district transport terminal to the house, and it’s quite a distance.”
“That’ll be a nice change, anyway,” Garal said. “You did say you wanted to be able to walk more just last week.”
Ingray made a small breathy laugh. “And supposedly a person can go weeks without eating.” They’d both claimed a half-day water allo
wance on the way to the lobby, so at least they had that.
Garal swung eir bag onto eir lap and opened the latch. Showed Ingray what was inside: foil-wrapped, spongy blocks of nutrients. Ingray stared at them, then looked up at Garal’s sharp-featured face. “What, did you skip lunch every day?” She tried to remember if she’d ever seen em eating a nutrient block on the ship. She herself had gotten heartily sick of them.
“Every other day.” E did not visibly react at all to her surprise. “I’d have saved some of the noodles, except those aren’t very good to eat if you don’t have access to hot water.”
It had never occurred to Ingray to save some of her food. Why would she? Apart from the last day or so of her stay on Tyr Siilas, she had never once worried that she might not be able to eat in the future. “Well, that’s … good thinking.”
Garal pulled a nutrient block out of the bag and handed it to her. Pulled another one out for emself and latched the bag shut again. “I suppose the Aughskolds didn’t go on crèche trips.” Not looking directly at the children ahead of them, but clearly referring to them.
“No, we had tutors, and went on family trips. We did come to see the System Lareum, though.” Of course. Everyone came who could. It was the one place to find vestiges of the system settlement and founding, vestiges of nearly every important event in the history of Hwae. Every citizen should have an opportunity to see them in person, to be in their presence. Which was why politicians like Netano Aughskold often made a point of helping children in their districts do exactly that, and no doubt why those blue-uniformed adolescents were even now noisily waiting for the shuttle back home.
Garal chewed and swallowed a bite of nutrient bar. “What must that be like,” e said, “to see things your own family gave to the lareum?”
There were some Aughskold vestiges there. But Ingray hardly knew how to answer. She had been proud to see them, of course, but at the same time they hadn’t quite felt like they had anything specifically to do with her. “Complicated,” she said. “You already know, I’m sure, that the couple of most famous Aughskold vestiges here originally belonged to other families.”