Beside her on the tightly made-up bunk sat the Esk decade’s most junior lieutenant, arrived just weeks ago, a sort of cousin of Seivarden’s, though from another house. Taller than Seivarden had been at that age, broader, a bit more graceful. Mostly. Nervous at being asked to confer in private here with the senior lieutenant, cousin or no, but concealing it. Seivarden said to her, “You want to be careful, Lieutenant, who you favor with your… attentions.”
The very young lieutenant frowned, embarrassed, realizing suddenly what this was about.
“You know who I mean,” continued Seivarden, and I knew too. One of the other Esk lieutenants had definitely noticed when the very young lieutenant had come on board, had been slowly, discreetly sounding out the possibility of the very young lieutenant perhaps noticing her back. But not so discreetly that Seivarden hadn’t seen it. In fact, the entire decade room had seen it, and seen, as well, the very young lieutenant’s intrigued response.
“I know who you mean,” said the very young lieutenant. Indignant. “But I don’t see why…”
“Ah!” said Seivarden, sharp and peremptory. “You think it’s harmless fun. Well, it would probably be fun.” Seivarden had slept with the lieutenant in question herself at one point and knew whereof she spoke. “But it wouldn’t be harmless. She’s a good enough officer, but her house is very provincial. If she weren’t senior to you, there would be no problem.”
The very young lieutenant’s house was definitely not “very provincial.” Naive as she was, she knew immediately what Seivarden meant. And was angry enough at it to address Seivarden in a way that was less formal than propriety demanded. “Aatr’s tits, Cousin, no one’s said anything about clientage. No one could, none of us can make contracts until we retire.” Among the wealthy, clientage was a very hierarchical relationship—a patron promised certain sorts of assistance to her client, both financial and social, and a client provided support and services to her patron. These were promises that could last generations. In the oldest, most prestigious houses the servants were nearly all the descendants of clients, for instance, and many businesses owned by wealthy houses were staffed by client branches of lower ones.
“These provincial houses are ambitious,” Seivarden explained, voice the slightest bit condescending. “And clever as well or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they have. She’s senior to you, and you’ve both got years to serve yet. Grant her intimacy on those terms, let it continue, and depend on it, one of these days she’ll be offering you clientage when it ought to be the other way around. I don’t think your mother would thank you for exposing your house to that sort of insult.”
The very young lieutenant’s face heated with anger and chagrin, the shine of her first adult romance suddenly gone, the whole thing turned sordid and calculating.
Seivarden leaned forward, reached out for the tea flask and stopped, with a surge of irritation. Said silently to me, the fingers of her free hand twitching, “This cuff has been torn for three days.”
I said, directly into her ear, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” I ought to have offered to make the repair immediately, dispatched a segment of One Esk to take the offending shirt away. I ought, in fact, to have mended it three days before. Ought not to have dressed her in that shirt that day.
Silence in the cramped compartment, the very young lieutenant still preoccupied with her discomfiture. Then I said, directly into Seivarden’s ear, “Lieutenant, the decade commander will see you at your earliest convenience.”
I had known the promotion was coming. Had taken a petty satisfaction in the fact that even if she ordered me that moment to mend her sleeve, I would have no time to do it. As soon as she left her quarters I started packing her things, and three hours later she was on her way to her new command, freshly made captain of Sword of Nathtas. I hadn’t been particularly sorry to see her go.
Such small things. It wasn’t Seivarden’s fault if she had reacted badly in a situation that few (if any) seventeen-year-olds could have handled with aplomb. It was hardly surprising that she was precisely as snobby as she had been brought up to be. Not her fault that over my (at the time) thousand years of existence I had come to have a higher opinion of ability than of breeding, and had seen more than one “very provincial” house rise far enough to lose that label, and turn out its own versions of Seivarden.
All the years between young Lieutenant Seivarden and Captain Seivarden, they were made up of tiny moments. Minor things. I never hated Seivarden. I had just never particularly liked her. But I couldn’t see her, now, without thinking of someone else.
The next week at Strigan’s house was unpleasant. Seivarden needed constant looking after, and frequent cleaning up. She ate very little (which in some respects was fortunate), and I had to work to make sure she didn’t get dehydrated. But by the end of the week she was keeping her food down, and sleeping at least intermittently. Even so she slept lightly, twitching and turning, often trembling, breathing hard, and waking suddenly. When she was awake, and not weeping, she complained that everything was too harsh, too rough, too loud, too bright.
Another few days after that, when she thought I was asleep, she went to the outer door and stared out over the snow, and then put on her clothes and a coat and trudged to the outbuilding, and then the flier. She tried to start it, but I had removed an essential part and kept it close. When she returned to the house she had at least the presence of mind to close both doors before she tracked snow into the main room, where I sat on a bench holding Strigan’s stringed instrument. She stared, unable to conceal her surprise, still shrugging slightly, uncomfortable in the heavy coat, itchy.
“I want to leave,” she said, in a voice oddly half cowed and half arrogant, commanding Radchaai.
“We’ll leave when I’m ready,” I said, and fingered a few notes on the instrument. Her feelings were too raw for her to be able to conceal them just now, and her anger and despair showed plainly on her face. “You are where you are,” I said, in an even tone, “as a result of decisions you made yourself.”
Her spine straightened, her shoulders went back. “You don’t know anything about me, or what decisions I have or haven’t made.”
It was enough to make me angry again. I knew something about making decisions, and not making them. “Ah, I forget. Everything happens as Amaat wills, nothing is your fault.”
Her eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to speak, drew breath, but then blew it out, sharp and shaky. She turned her back, ostensibly to remove her outer coat and drop it on a nearby bench. “You don’t understand,” she said, contemptuous, but her voice trembled with suppressed tears. “You’re not Radchaai.”
Not civilized. “Did you start taking kef before or after you left the Radch?” It shouldn’t have been available in Radchaai territory, but there was always some minor smuggling station authorities might turn a blind eye toward.
She slumped down onto the bench beside where she’d sloppily left her coat. “I want tea.”
“There’s no tea here.” I set the instrument aside. “There’s milk.” More specifically, there was fermented bov milk, which the people here thinned with water and drank warm. The smell—and taste—was reminiscent of sweaty boots. And too much of it would likely make Seivarden slightly sick.
“What sort of place doesn’t have tea?” she demanded, but leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and put her forehead on her wrists, her bare hands palm-up, fingers outstretched.
“This sort of place,” I answered. “Why were you taking kef?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Tears dropped into her lap.
“Try me.” I picked up the instrument again, picked out a tune.
After six seconds of silent weeping, Seivarden said, “She said it would make everything clearer.”
“The kef would?” No answer. “What would be clearer?”
“I know that song,” she said, her face still resting on her wrists. I realized it was very likely the only way she would recognize me, and changed
to a different tune. In one region of Valskaay, singing was a refined pastime, local choral associations the center of social activity. That annexation had brought me a great deal of the sort of music I had liked best, when I had had more than one voice. I chose one of those. Seivarden wouldn’t know it. Valskaay had been both before and after her time.
“She said,” Seivarden said finally, lifting her face from her hands, “that emotions clouded perception. That the clearest sight was pure reason, undistorted by feeling.”
“That’s not true.” I’d had a week with this instrument and very little else to do. I managed two lines at once.
“It seemed true at first. It was wonderful at first. It all went away. But then it would wear off, and things would be the same. Only worse. And then after a while it was like not feeling felt bad. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. But if I took more that went away.”
“And coming down got less and less endurable.” I’d heard the story a few times, in the past twenty years.
“Oh, Amaat’s grace,” she moaned. “I want to die.”
“Why don’t you?” I changed to another song. My heart is a fish, hiding in the water-grass. In the green, in the green…
She looked at me as though I were a rock that had just spoken.
“You lost your ship,” I said. “You were frozen for a thousand years. You wake up to find the Radch has changed—no more invasions, a humiliating treaty with the Presger, your house has lost financial and social status. No one knows you or remembers you, or cares whether you live or die. It’s not what you were used to, not what you were expecting out of your life, is it?”
It took three puzzled seconds for the fact to dawn. “You know who I am.”
“Of course I know who you are. You told me,” I lied.
She blinked, tearily, trying, I supposed, to remember if she had or not. But her memories were, of course, incomplete.
“Go to sleep,” I said, and laid my fingers across the strings, silencing them.
“I want to leave,” she protested, not moving, still slumped on the bench, elbows on her knees. “Why can’t I leave?”
“I have business here,” I told her.
She curled her lip and scoffed. She was right, of course, waiting here was foolish. After so many years, so much planning and effort, I had failed.
Still. “Go back to bed.” Bed was the pallet of cushions and blankets beside the bench, where she sat. She looked at me, half-sneering still, and contemptuous, and slid down to the floor and lay, pulled a blanket over herself. She wouldn’t sleep at first, I was sure. She would be trying to think of some way to leave, to overpower me or convince me to do what she wanted. Any such planning would be useless until she knew what she wanted, of course, but I didn’t say that.
Within the hour her muscles slackened and her breathing slowed. Had she still been my lieutenant I would have known for certain she slept, known what stage of sleep she was in, known whether or not she dreamed. Now I could only see externals.
Still wary, I sat on the floor, leaning against another bench, and pulled a blanket up over my legs. As I had done every time I’d slept here, I opened my inner coat and put my hand on my gun, leaned back, and closed my eyes.
Two hours later a faint sound woke me. I lay unmoving, my hand still on my gun. The faint sound repeated itself, slightly louder—the second door closing. I opened my eyes, just the slightest bit. Seivarden lay too quiet on her pallet—surely she had heard the sound as well.
Through my eyelashes I saw a person in outdoor clothes. Just under two meters tall, thin under the bulk of the double coat, skin iron-gray. When she pushed back her hood I saw her hair was the same. She was certainly not a Nilter.
She stood, watching me and Seivarden, for seven seconds, and then quietly stepped to where I lay, and bent to pull my pack toward her with one hand. In the other she held a gun, pointed steadily at me, though she seemed not to know I was awake.
The lock baffled her for a few moments, and then she pulled a tool out of her pocket, which she used to bypass the lock quite a bit more quickly than I had anticipated. Her gun still trained on me, and glancing occasionally at still-motionless Seivarden, she emptied the pack.
Spare clothes. Ammunition, but no gun, so she would know or suspect that I was armed. Three foil-wrapped packets of concentrated rations. Eating utensils, and a bottle for water. A gold disk five centimeters in diameter, one and a half centimeters thick that she puzzled over, frowning, and then set aside. A box, which she opened to find money—she let out an astonished breath when she realized how much, and looked over at me. I didn’t move. I don’t know what she had thought she would find, but she seemed not to have found it, whatever it was.
She picked up the disk that had puzzled her, and sat on a bench from which she had a clear view of both me and Seivarden. Turning the disk over, she found the trigger. The sides fell away, opening like a flower, and the mechanism disgorged the icon, a person nearly naked except for short trousers and tiny jewel-and-enamel flowers. The image smiled, serene. She had four arms. One hand held a ball, the other arm was encased in a cylindrical armguard. Her other hands held a knife and a severed head, which dripped jeweled blood at her bare feet. The head smiled the same smile of saintly utter calm as she did.
Strigan—it had to be Strigan—frowned. The icon had been unexpected. It had piqued her curiosity yet further.
I opened my eyes. She tightened her grip on her gun—the gun I was now looking at as closely as I could, now my eyes were fully open, now I could turn my head toward it.
Strigan held the icon out, raised a steel-gray eyebrow. “Relative?” she asked, in Radchaai.
I kept my face pleasantly neutral. “Not exactly,” I said, in her own language.
“I thought I knew what you were when you came,” she said, after a long silence, thankfully following my language switch. “I thought I knew what you were doing here. Now I’m not so sure.” She glanced at Seivarden, to all appearances completely undisturbed by our talking. “I think I know who he is. But who are you? What are you? Don’t tell me Breq from the Gerentate. You’re as Radchaai as that one.” She gestured slightly toward Seivarden with her elbow.
“I came here to buy something,” I said, determined to keep from staring at the gun she held. “He’s incidental.” Since we weren’t speaking Radchaai I had to take gender into account—Strigan’s language required it. The society she lived in professed at the same time to believe gender was insignificant. Males and females dressed, spoke, acted indistinguishably. And yet no one I’d met had ever hesitated, or guessed wrong. And they had invariably been offended when I did hesitate or guess wrong. I hadn’t learned the trick of it. I’d been in Strigan’s own apartment, seen her belongings, and still wasn’t sure what forms to use with her now.
“Incidental?” asked Strigan, disbelieving. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, except I knew it to be true. Strigan said nothing else, likely realizing that to say much more would be extremely foolish, if I was what she feared I was.
“Coincidence,” I said. Glad on at least one count that we weren’t speaking Radchaai, where the word implied significance. “I found him unconscious. If I’d left him where he was he’d have died.” Strigan didn’t believe that either, from the look she gave me. “Why are you here?”
She laughed, short and bitter—whether because I’d chosen the wrong gender for the pronoun, or something else, I wasn’t certain. “I think that’s my question to ask.”
She hadn’t corrected my grammar, at least. “I came to talk to you. To buy something. Seivarden was ill. You weren’t here. I’ll pay you for what we’ve eaten, of course.”
She seemed to find that amusing, for some reason. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“I’m alone,” I said, answering her unspoken question. “Except for him.” I nodded at Seivarden. My hand was still on my gun, and Strigan likely knew why I kept that hand so still, under my coat. Seivarden still feigned s
leep.
Strigan shook her head slightly, disbelieving. “I’d have sworn you were a corpse soldier.” An ancillary, she meant. “When you arrived I was certain of it.” She’d been hiding nearby, then, waiting for us to leave, and the entire place had been under her surveillance. She must have trusted her hiding place quite extravagantly—if I had been what she feared, staying anywhere near would have been extremely foolish. I would certainly have found her. “But when you saw there was no one here you wept. And him…” She shrugged toward Seivarden, slack and motionless on the pallet.
“Sit up, citizen,” I said to Seivarden, in Radchaai. “You’re not fooling anyone.”
“Fuck off,” she answered, and pulled a blanket over her head. Then shoved it off again and rose, slightly shaky, and went into the sanitary facility and closed the door.
I turned back to Strigan. “That business with the flier rental. Was that you?”
She shrugged ruefully. “He told me a couple of Radchaai were coming out this way. Either he badly underestimated you, or you’re even more dangerous than I thought.”
Which would be considerably dangerous. “I’m used to being underestimated. And you didn’t tell her… him why you thought I was coming.”
Her gun hadn’t wavered. “Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here.” A quick change in her expression, instantly suppressed. I continued. “Not to kill you. Killing you would defeat the purpose.”
She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head slightly. “Would it.”
The fencing, the feinting, frustrated me. “I want the gun.”
“What gun?” Strigan would never be so foolish as to admit the thing existed, that she knew what gun I was talking about. But her pretended ignorance didn’t convince. She knew. If she had what I thought she had, what I had gambled my life she had, further specificity would be unnecessary. She knew.
Whether she would give it to me was another question. “I’ll pay you for it.”