I thought of Citizen Fosyf. “Perhaps I will.” I took another sip of the tea-gruel.
She raised her bowl, drank the last bits of her own. Rose. “Thank you, Citizen, for the entertaining conversation.”
“It was a pleasure to have met you, Citizen,” I replied. “I’m staying on level four. Stop by some time when we’re settled in.” She bowed without answering. Turned to depart, but froze at the sound of something heavy thunking hard against the wall outside.
Everyone in the tea shop looked up at that sound. The proprietor set her kettle down on a table with a smack that should have startled the people sitting there but did not, so intent were they on whatever was happening out on the shadowed small concourse. Grim, angry determination on her face, she strode out of the shop. I stood and followed, Five behind me.
Outside, the Sword of Atagaris ancillary had pinned the painter against the wall, bending her right arm back. It had kicked the tub of paint, to judge from the pinkish-brown splotches on its boots, the puddle the tub now sat in, and the tracks on the floor. Captain Hetnys stood where I had left her, observing. Saying nothing.
The tea shop proprietor strode right up to the ancillary. “What has she done?” she demanded. “She hasn’t done anything!”
Sword of Atagaris didn’t answer, only roughly twisted the painter’s arm further, forcing her to turn from the wall with a cry of pain and drop to her knees and then facedown onto the floor. Paint smeared her clothes, one side of her face. The ancillary put one knee between her shoulder blades, and she gasped and made a small sobbing whimper.
The tea shop proprietor stepped back but didn’t leave. “Let her go! I hired her to paint the door.”
Time to intervene. “Sword of Atagaris, release the citizen.” The ancillary hesitated. Possibly because it didn’t think of the painter as a citizen. Then it let go of the painter and stood. The tea shop proprietor knelt beside the painter, spoke in a language I didn’t understand, but her tone told me she was asking if the painter was all right. I knew she wasn’t—the hold Sword of Atagaris had used was meant to injure. I had used it myself for that precise purpose, many times.
I knelt beside the tea shop proprietor. “Your arm is probably broken,” I said to the painter. “Don’t move. I’ll call Medical.”
“Medical doesn’t come here,” said the proprietor, her voice bitter and contemptuous. And to the painter, “Can you get up?”
“You really shouldn’t move,” I said. But the painter ignored me. With the help of the proprietor and two other patrons, she managed to get to her feet.
“Fleet Captain, sir.” Captain Hetnys was clearly indignant, and clearly struggling to contain it. “This person was defacing the station, sir.”
“This person,” I replied, “was painting the doorway of a tea shop at the request of that shop’s proprietor.”
“But she won’t have had a permit, sir! And the paint will certainly have been stolen.”
“It was not stolen!” the proprietor cried as the painter walked slowly off, supported by two others, one of them the angry person in the gray gloves. “I bought it.”
“Did you ask the painter where she had gotten the paint?” I asked. Captain Hetnys looked at me with blank puzzlement, as though my question made no sense to her. “Did you ask her if she had a permit?”
“Sir, no one has permission to do anything here.” Captain Hetnys’s voice was carefully even, though I could hear frustration behind it.
That being the case, I wondered why this particular unpermitted activity warranted such a violent reaction. “Did you ask Station if the paint was stolen?” The question appeared to be meaningless to Captain Hetnys. “Was there some reason you couldn’t call Station Security?”
“Sir, we’re Security in the Undergarden just now. To help keep order while things are unsettled. Station Security doesn’t come here. No one…”
“Is supposed to be here.” I turned to Five. “Make sure the citizen arrives safely in Medical and that her injuries are treated immediately.”
“We don’t need your help,” protested the tea shop proprietor.
“All the same,” I said, and gestured at Five, who left. I turned again to Captain Hetnys. “So Sword of Atagaris is running Security in the Undergarden.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Captain Hetnys.
“Does it—or you, for that matter—have any experience running civilian security?”
“No, sir, but—”
“That hold,” I interrupted, “is not suitable for use on citizens. And it’s entirely possible to suffocate someone by kneeling on their back that way.” Which was fine if you didn’t care whether the person you were dealing with lived or not. “You and your ship will immediately familiarize yourselves with the guidelines for dealing with citizen civilians. And you will follow them.”
“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence, sir. You don’t understand. These people are…” She stopped. Lowered her voice. “These people are barely civilized. And they could be writing anything on these walls. At a time like this, painting on the walls like that, they could be spreading rumors, or passing secret messages, or inflammatory slogans, working people up…” She stopped again, momentarily at a loss. “And Station can’t see here, sir. There could be all sorts of unauthorized people here. Or even aliens!”
For a moment the phrase unauthorized people puzzled me. According to Captain Hetnys, everyone here was unauthorized—no one had permission to be here. Then I realized she meant people whose very existence was unauthorized. People who had been born here without Station’s knowledge, and without having trackers implanted. People who were not in Station’s view in any way.
I could imagine—maybe—one or two such people. But enough to be a real problem? “Unauthorized people?” I leaned into my antique accent, put an edge of skepticism into my voice. “Aliens? Really, Captain.”
“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence. I imagine you’re used to places where everyone is civilized. Where everyone has been fully assimilated to Radchaai life. This isn’t that sort of place.”
“Captain Hetnys,” I said. “You and your crew will use no violence against citizens on this station unless it is absolutely necessary. And,” I continued over her obvious desire to protest, “in the event it does become necessary, you will follow the same regulations Station Security does. Do I make myself clear?”
She blinked. Swallowed back whatever it was she really wanted to say. “Yes, sir.”
I turned to the ancillary. “Sword of Atagaris? Am I clear?”
The ancillary hesitated. Surprised, I didn’t doubt, at my addressing it directly. “Yes, Fleet Captain.”
“Good. Let’s have the rest of this conversation in private.”
7
With Station’s advice and assistance, I had claimed an empty suite of rooms on level four. The air there was stagnant, and I suspected the few light panels that leaned against the walls had been appropriated from the corridors on the way here, given shops probably weren’t open today and station stores might or might not be staffed. Even in the dim lighting, the walls and floors looked unpleasantly dusty and grimy. Besides our own luggage, a few fragments of wood and shards of glass suggested whoever had lived here before the Undergarden was damaged hadn’t taken everything, but anything useful had been scavenged over the years.