That a Presger translator was here on Athoek Station was problem enough. How long would it be before whoever had sent her began to wonder why she hadn’t returned? How would they react to Athoek having essentially made her a prisoner, even if somewhat unsuccessfully? And what would happen when they found the Radch in such disarray? Possibly nothing—the treaty made no distinctions between one sort of human or another, all were covered, and that same treaty forbade the Presger to harm any of those humans. That left open the question of what, to a Presger, would constitute “harm,” but presumably issues like that had been hammered out between the translators of the Radch and those of the Presger.
And the presence and attention of the Presger might be turned to advantage. In the past hundred years or so the Presger had begun to sell high-quality medical correctives, significantly cheaper than the ones made inside the Radch. Governor Giarod had said Athoek didn’t make its own medical supplies. And the Presger wouldn’t care if Athoek was part of the Radch or not. They would only care if Athoek could pay, and while the Presger idea of “pay” could be somewhat eccentric, I didn’t doubt we could find something suitable.
So why had the system governor locked Translator Dlique in the governor’s residence? And then said nothing to me about it? I could imagine Captain Hetnys doing such a thing—she had known Captain Vel, who had believed that Anaander Mianaai’s current fractured state was a result of Presger infiltration. I was fairly sure Translator Dlique’s arrival here was a coincidence—but coincidences were meaningful, to Radchaai. Amaat was the universe, and anything that happened, happened because Amaat willed it. God’s intentions could be discerned by the careful study of even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant events. And the past weeks’ events were anything but small and insignificant. Captain Hetnys would be alert for strange occurrences, and this one would have set off a multitude of alarms for her. No, her concealment of Translator Dlique’s presence only confirmed what I had already suspected about the captain’s position.
But Governor Giarod. I had come away from dinner at Citizen Fosyf’s, and the meeting after in the governor’s office, with the impression that Governor Giarod was not only an intelligent, able person, but also that she understood that Anaander Mianaai’s current conflict with herself originated in herself, and not anywhere else. I didn’t think I could possibly have misjudged her so badly. But clearly I had missed something, didn’t understand something about her position.
“Station,” I transmitted, silently.
“Yes, Fleet Captain,” replied Station, in my ear.
“Kindly let Governor Giarod know I intend to call on her first thing in the morning.” Nothing else. If Station didn’t know I knew about Translator Dlique’s existence, let alone that she’d had dinner with me and then gone off again, my mentioning it would only panic Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys. In the meantime I would have to try to find some way to handle this suddenly even more complicated situation.
On Mercy of Kalr, Seivarden sat in Command. Talking with Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant, also apparently on watch on her own ship. “So,” she was saying, Ship sending her words directly into Seivarden’s ear. “Where are you from?”
“Someplace we don’t fuck around while we’re on watch,” Seivarden said, but silently, to Ship. Aloud, she said, “Inais.”
“Really!” It was plain that the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant had never heard of it. Which was hardly surprising, given the extent of Radch space, but didn’t help Seivarden’s already low estimation of her. “Have all your officers changed? Your predecessor was all right.” Ekalu (at that moment asleep, breathing deep and even) had painted the former Mercy of Kalr Amaat lieutenant as an unbearable snob. “But that medic wasn’t very friendly at all. Thought quite a lot of herself, I’d say.” (Medic sat in Mercy of Kalr’s decade room, frowning at her lunch of skel and tea. Calm, in a fairly good mood.)
In many ways, Seivarden had in her youth been just as unbearable as the former Mercy of Kalr Amaat lieutenant. But Seivarden had served on a troop carrier—which meant she’d spent actual time in combat, and knew what counted when it came to doctors. “Shouldn’t you be looking out for enemy ships?”
“Oh, Ship will tell me if it sees anything,” said the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant, breezily. “That fleet captain is very intimidating. Though I suppose she would be. She’s ordered us closer to the station. So we’ll be neighbors, at least for a bit. We should have tea.”
“Fleet captain is a bit less intimidating when you’re not threatening to destroy her ship.”
“Oh, well. That was a misunderstanding. Once you identified yourselves everything was cleared up. You don’t think she’ll hold it against me, though, do you?”
On Athoek Station, in the Undergarden, Kalr Five put away dishes in the room next to where I sat, and fussed to Eight about Translator Dlique’s sudden, discomfiting appearance. In another room yet, Bo pulled off an unconscious Tisarwat’s boots. I said, to Ship, “Ekalu wasn’t exaggerating, about Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant.”
“No,” Mercy of Kalr replied. “She wasn’t.”
Next morning, I was dressing—trousers on, still bootless, fastening my shirt—when I heard an urgent shouting from the corridor, a voice calling, “Fleet Captain! Fleet Captain, sir!” Ship showed me, through the Kalr standing watch in the corridor, a seven- or eight-year-old child in grubby loose shirt and trousers, no shoes or gloves. “Fleet Captain!” she shouted, insistent. Ignoring the guard.
I grabbed my gloves, went quickly out of my room to the antechamber, through the door Five opened for me at my gesture. “Fleet Captain, sir!” the child said, still loud though I was standing in front of her. “Come right away! Someone painted on the wall again! If those corpse soldiers see it first it’ll be bad!”
“Citizen,” began Five.
I cut her off. “I’m coming.” The child took off running, and I headed down the shadowed corridor after her. Someone painted on the wall again. Minor enough. Small enough to ignore, one might think, but Captain Hetnys had overreacted before—how badly clear to read in this child’s urgency, either her own conclusions about what might happen when Sword of Atagaris Var arrived, or conveyed to her by some adult who’d sent her as messenger. Serious enough. And if it turned out to be nothing, well, I would only have delayed my breakfast by a few minutes.
“What did they paint?” I asked, climbing up a ladder in an access well, the only way between levels here.
“Some kind of words,” the child replied, above me. “It’s words!”
So she either hadn’t seen them or couldn’t read them, and I guessed it was the second. Probably not Radchaai then, or Raswar, which I’d learned over the past two days was read and spoken by most of the Ychana here. Station had told me, my first night here, when I’d asked it for some information, some history, that most of the residents in the Undergarden were Ychana.
It was Xhi, though rendered phonetically in Radchaai script. Whoever had done it had used the same pink paint that had been used to decorate the tea shop door, that had been left sitting at the side of the small, makeshift concourse. I recognized the words, not because I knew more than a few phrases of Xhi at this point but because it dated from the annexation, had been emblematic of a particular resistance movement Station had told me about, two nights before. Not tea but blood! It was a play on words. The Radchaai word for “tea” bore a passing resemblance to the Xhi word for “blood,” and the implication was that the revolutionaries, rather than submitting to the Radch and drinking tea, would resist and drink (or at least spill) Radchaai blood. Those revolutionaries were several hundred years dead, that clever slogan no more than trivia in a history lesson.