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!” Undeterred 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.”