Even citizens who thought the Radch had been infiltrated and corrupted, who believed some officials and captains were potentially enemies, didn’t know the struggle had broken into the open. “Either they already know something,” I said, “or something’s happened here.”
“Take hold,” said Ship, to all of us.
“Sir,” said Lieutenant Ekalu, “how do we know where Sword of Atagaris is, when we come out?”
“We don’t, Lieutenant.”
She took a breath. Thought of saying something, but didn’t.
“We probably won’t hit Sword of Atagaris,” I added. “Space is big. And this morning’s cast was fortunate.”
She wasn’t sure if I was joking or not. “Yes, sir.”
And we were back in the universe. Sun, planet, gates, background chatter. No Sword of Atagaris.
“Where is it?” asked Lieutenant Ekalu.
“Ten seconds,” I replied. “Nobody let go of anything.”
Ten and a half seconds later, a blacker-than-black hole opened up in the universe and Sword of Atagaris appeared, less than five hundred kilometers from where we had just been. Before it was even fully out of its gate, it began transmitting. “Unknown ship, identify yourself or be destroyed.”
“I’d like to see it try,” said Ship, but only to me.
“That’s not Captain Hetnys,” said Ekalu. “I think it’s her Amaat lieutenant.”
“Sword of Atagaris,” I said. Ship would know to transmit my words. “This is Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai commanding Mercy of Kalr. Explain yourself.”
It took a half second for my message to reach Sword of Atagaris, and four seconds for the lieutenant in question to collect herself enough to reply. “Fleet Captain, sir. My apologies, sir.” In the meantime, Mercy of Kalr identified itself to Sword of Atagaris. “We… we were afraid you weren’t what you appeared to be, sir.”
“What did you think we were, Lieutenant?”
“I… I don’t know, sir. It was just, sir, we weren’t expecting you. There are rumors that Omaugh Palace was under attack, or even destroyed, and we haven’t had any word from them for nearly a month now.”
I looked at Lieutenant Ekalu. She had reverted to the habit of every soldier on Mercy of Kalr and cleared her face of any expression. That alone was eloquent, but of course I could see more. Even discounting what had just happened, she did not have a high opinion of Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant.
“If you’d had your way, Lieutenant,” I said dryly, “you’d be waiting even longer for word from Omaugh. I’ll speak to Captain Hetnys now.”
“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence,” replied the lieutenant. “Captain Hetnys is on Athoek Station.” She must have realized how that sounded, because she added, after a very brief pause, “Consulting with the system governor.”
“And when I find her there,” I asked, making my tone just slightly sarcastic, “will she be able to better explain to me just what it is you think you’re doing out here?”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Ship cut the connection, and I turned to Lieutenant Ekalu. “You’re acquainted with this officer?”
Still that expressionless face. “Water will wear away stone, sir.”
It was a proverb. Or half of one. Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be. “Her family is good,” added Ekalu at my silence, still impassive. “Genealogy as long as your arm. Her mother is second cousin to the granddaughter of a client of a client of Mianaai itself, sir.”
And made sure everyone knew it, apparently. “And the captain?” Anaander Mianaai had told me that what Captain Hetnys lacked in the way of vision she made up for with a conscientious attention to duty. “Is she likely to have left orders to attack anything that came into the system?”
“I wouldn’t think so, sir. But the lieutenant isn’t exactly… imaginative, sir. Knees stronger than her head.” Ekalu’s accent slipped at that last, just a bit. “Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence.”
So, likely to be acting under orders that suggested incoming ships might be a threat. I would have to ask Captain Hetnys about that, when I met her.
The hookup to Athoek Station’s dock was largely automated. When the pressure equalized and Five opened the shuttle hatch, Lieutenant Tisarwat and I pushed ourselves over the awkward boundary between the shuttle’s weightlessness and the station’s artificial gravity. The bay was dingy gray, scuffed, like any other bay on any other station.
A ship’s captain stood waiting there, an ancillary straight and still behind her. Seeing it I felt a stab of envy. I had once been what that ancillary was. I never could be that again.
“Captain Hetnys,” I said, as Tisarwat came up behind me.
Captain Hetnys was tall—taller than I was by a good ten centimeters—broad, and solidly built. Her hair, clipped military-short, was a silvery gray, a stark contrast to the darkness of her skin. A matter of vanity, perhaps—she’d certainly chosen that hair color, wanted people to notice it, or notice the close cut. Not all of the pins she wore in careful, uncustomary rows on the front of her uniform jacket had names on them, and those that did I couldn’t read from this distance. She bowed. “Fleet Captain, sir.”
I did not bow. “I’ll see the system governor now,” I said, cold and matter-of-fact. Leaning just a bit on that antique accent any Mianaai would have. “And afterward you’ll explain to me why your ship threatened to attack me when I arrived.”
“Sir.” She paused a moment, trying, I thought, to look untroubled. When I’d first messaged Athoek Station I’d been told that System Governor Giarod was unavoidably occupied by religious obligations, and would be for some time. As was, apparently, every station official of any standing. This was a holiday that came around on an Athoeki calendar, and possibly because of that, because it was merely a local festival, no one had seen fit to warn me that actually it was important enough to nearly shut down the entire station. Captain Hetnys knew I’d been told the governor was unavailable for some hours. “The initiates should be coming out of the temple in an hour or two.” She started to frown, and then stopped herself. “Are you planning to stay on the station, sir?”
Behind me and Lieutenant Tisarwat, Kalr Five, Ten, and Eight, and Bo Nine hauled luggage out of the shuttle. Presumably the impetus behind Captain Hetnys’s question.
“It’s only, sir,” she went on, when I didn’t answer immediately, “that lodgings on the station are quite crowded just now. It might be difficult to find somewhere suitable.”
I’d already realized that the destruction of even a few gates would have rerouted traffic this way. There were several dozen ships here that had not expected to come to Athoek at all, and more that had meant to leave but couldn’t. Even though Anaander Mianaai’s order forbidding travel in the remaining gates couldn’t possibly have reached here yet, the captains of plenty of other ships might well be nervous about entering any gates at all for the next while. Any well-connected or well-funded travelers had likely taken up whatever comfortable lodgings might have been available here. Mercy of Kalr had already asked Station, just to be sure, and Station had replied that apart from the possibility of an invitation to stay in the system governor’s residence, the usual places were full up.
The fact that my possibly staying on the station appeared to dismay Captain Hetnys was nearly as interesting as the fact that Station apparently hadn’t mentioned my plans to her. Perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. “I have a place to stay, Captain.”
“Oh. That’s good, sir.” She didn’t seem convinced of it, though.
I gestured her to follow me and strode out of the bay into the corridor. Sword of Atagaris’s ancillary fell in behind the three of us, with Kalr Five. I could see—Mercy of Kalr showed
me—Five’s vanity over her ability to play ancillary, right beside the actual thing.
The walls and floor of the corridor, like the docking bay, showed their age and ill-use. Neither had been cleaned with the frequency any self-respecting military ship expected. But colorful garlands brightened the walls. Seasonally appropriate garlands. “Captain,” I said after ten steps, without breaking stride. “I do understand that this is the Genitalia Festival. But when you say genitalia, doesn’t that usually mean genitals generally? Not just one kind?” For all the steps I’d taken, and as far down the corridor as I could see, the walls were hung with tiny penises. Bright green, hot pink, electric blue, and a particularly eye-searing orange.
“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys just behind me. “It’s a translation. The words are the same, in the Athoeki language.”
The Athoeki language. As though there had only been one. But there was never only one language, not in my considerable experience.
“With the fleet captain’s indulgence…” As Captain Hetnys spoke, I gestured assent, not looking behind me to see her. Could, if I wished, see her back, and my own, through Kalr Five’s unsuspecting eyes. She continued. “The Athoeki weren’t very civilized.” Not civilized. Not Radchaai. The word was the same, the only difference a subtlety expressed by context, and too easily wiped away. “They mostly aren’t even now. They make a division between people with penises and people without. When we first arrived in the system they surrendered right away. Their ruler lost her mind. She thought Radchaai didn’t have penises, and since everyone would have to become Radchaai, she ordered all the people in the system with penises to cut them off. But the Athoeki had no intention of cutting anything off, so they made models instead and piled them up in front of the ruler to keep her happy until she could be arrested and given help. So now, on the anniversary, sir, all the children dedicate their penises to their god.”
“What about the Athoeki with other sorts of genitals?” We’d reached the bank of lifts that would take us away from the docks. The lobby there was deserted.
“They don’t use real ones, sir,” said Captain Hetnys, clearly contemptuous of the whole thing. “They buy them in a shop.”
Station didn’t open the lift doors with the alacrity I had grown used to on Mercy of Kalr. For an instant I considered waiting to see just how long it would let us stand there, and wondered if perhaps Station disliked Captain Hetnys so much. But if that was the case, if this hesitation was resentment on Station’s part, I would only add to that by exposing it.
But just as I drew a breath to request the lift, the doors opened. The inside was undecorated. When we were all in and the doors closed, I said, “Main concourse, please, Station.” It would take Eight and Ten a while to settle into the quarters I’d arranged, and in the meantime I would at least make a point of showing myself at the Governor’s Palace, which would have an entrance on the main concourse, and at the same time see some of this local festival. To Captain Hetnys, standing beside me, I said, “That story strikes you as plausible, does it?” One ruler for the entire system. They surrendered right away. In my experience, no entire system ever surrendered right away. Parts, maybe. Never the whole. The one exception had been the Garseddai, and that had been a tactic, an attempt at ambush. Failed, of course, and there were no Garseddai anymore, as a result.
“Sir?” Captain Hetnys’s surprise and puzzlement at my question was plain, though she tried to conceal it, to keep her voice and expression bland and even.
“That seems like it might really have happened? Like the sort of thing someone would actually do?”
Even restated, and given time to think about it, the question puzzled her. “Not anyone civilized, sir.” A breath, and then, emboldened, perhaps, by our conversation so far, “Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence.” I gestured the bestowal of it. “Sir, what’s happened at Omaugh Palace? Have the aliens attacked, sir? Is it war?”
Part of Anaander Mianaai believed—or at least put it about—that her conflict with herself was due to infiltration by the alien Presger. “War, yes. But the Presger have nothing to do with it. It’s we who’ve attacked ourselves.” Captain Vel, who had used to command Mercy of Kalr, had believed the lie about the Presger. “Vel Osck has been arrested for treason.” Captain Hetnys and Captain Vel had known each other. “Beyond that, I don’t know what’s happened to her.” But anyone knew what was most likely. “Did you know her well?”
It was a dangerous question. Captain Hetnys, who was nowhere near as good at concealing her reactions as my own crew was, quite obviously saw the danger. “Not well enough, sir, to ever suspect her of any kind of disloyalty.”
Lieutenant Tisarwat flinched just slightly at Captain Hetnys’s mention of disloyalty. Captain Vel had never been disloyal, and no one knew that better than Anaander Mianaai.
The lift doors opened. The concourse of Athoek Station was a good deal smaller than the main concourse of Omaugh Palace. Some fool, at some point, had thought that white would be an excellent color for the long, open—and heavily trafficked—floor. Like any main concourse on any sizable Radchaai station it was two-storied, in this case with windows here and there on the upper level, the lower lined with offices and shops, and the station’s major temples—one to Amaat, and likely a host of subsidiary gods, its façade not the elaborate riot of gods the temple at Omaugh boasted but only images of the four Emanations, in purple and red and yellow, grime collected in the ledges and depressions. Next to it another, smaller temple, dedicated, I guessed, to the god in Captain Hetnys’s story. That entrance was draped in garlands nearly identical to the ones we’d seen on the docks, but larger and lit from inside, those startling colors glowing bright.
Crowding this space, as far as I could see, citizens stood in groups, conversing at near-shouting level, wearing coats and trousers and gloves in bright colors, green and pink and blue and yellow, their holiday clothes, clearly. They all of them wore just as much jewelry as any Radchaai ever did, but here it seemed local fashion dictated that associational and memorial pins weren’t worn directly on coats or jackets but on a broad sash draped from shoulder to opposite hip, knotted, ends trailing. Children of various ages ran around and in between, calling to each other, stopping now and then to beg adults for sweets. Pink, blue, orange, and green foil wrappers littered the ground. Some blew across the lift entrance when the doors opened, and I saw they were printed with words. I could only read scattered fragments as they tumbled… blessings… the god whom… I have not…
The moment we stepped out of the lift a citizen came striding out of the crowd. She wore a tailored coat and trousers in a green so pale it might as well have been white—gloves as well. No sash, but plenty of pins, including one large rhodochrosite surrounded by elaborately woven silver wire. She put on a delighted, surprised expression and bowed emphatically. “Fleet Captain! I had only just heard that you were here, and look, I turn and there you are! Terrible business, the gate to Omaugh Palace going down like that, and all these ships rerouted here or unable to leave, but now you’re here, surely it won’t last much longer.” Her accent was mostly that of a well-off, well-educated Radchaai, though there was something odd about her vowels. “But you won’t know who I am. I’m Fosyf Denche, and I’m so glad to have found you. I have an apartment here on the station, plenty of room, and a house downwell, even roomier. I’d be honored to offer you my hospitality.”
Beside me, Captain Hetnys and her ancillary stood serious and silent. Behind me, Five still displayed ancillary-like impassivity though I could see, through Mercy of Kalr, that she resented Citizen Fosyf’s familiarity on my account. Lieutenant Tisarwat, behind the remaining traces of antinausea meds and her normal background unhappiness, seemed amused, and slightly contemptuous.
I thought of the way Seivarden would have responded to an approach like this, when she’d been younger. Just very slightly, I curled my lip. “No need, citizen.”
“Ah, someone’s been before me. Fair enough!” Undeterre
d by my manner, which argued she’d met it before, was even used to it. And of course, I almost certainly had news from Omaugh, which nearly everyone here would have wanted. “But do at least have supper with us, Fleet Captain! Captain Hetnys already has my invitation, of course. You won’t be doing any official business today.”
Her last few words rang out clear in a sudden hush, and then I heard a dozen or more children’s voices singing in unison. Not in Radchaai, and not a Radchaai tune, but one that arced in upward leaps, wide, angular intervals, and then slid downward in steps, but moving upward overall, to stop somewhere higher than it began. Citizen Fosyf’s nattering about supper stopped midsentence, brought up short by my obvious inattention. “Oh, yes,” she said, “It’s the temple’s…”
“Be silent!” I snapped. The children began another verse. I still didn’t understand the words. They sang two more verses, while the citizen before me tried to conceal her consternation. Not leaving. Determined to speak with me, it appeared. Certain that she would get her chance, if only she was patient enough.
I could query Station, but I knew what Station would tell me. Fosyf Denche was a prominent citizen here, one who believed her prominence would mean something to anyone she introduced herself to, and in this system, on this station, that meant tea.
The song ended, to a scattering of applause. I turned my attention back to Citizen Fosyf. Her expression cleared. Brightened. “Ah, Fleet Captain, I know what you are! You’re a collector! You must come visit me downwell. I’ve no ear at all, myself, but the workers on the estate near my country house let loose with all sorts of uncivilized noises that I’m assured are authentic exotic musical survivals from the days of their ancestors. I’m told it’s quite nearly a museum display. But the station administrator can tell you all about it over supper this evening. She’s a fellow collector, and I know how you collectors are, it doesn’t matter what you collect. You’ll want to compare and trade. Are you absolutely sure you’ve already got somewhere suitable to stay?”