The child, having seen me stop in front of the paint, not far from the tea shop entrance, took off running again, eager to be safely away. The rest of the Undergarden’s residents had done the same—the small concourse was deserted, though I knew that at this hour there should be if nothing else a steady stream of customers into the tea shop. Anyone passing this way had taken one look at that Not tea but blood! and turned right around to find somewhere safe and out of the way of Sword of Atagaris’s Var lieutenant and her ancillaries. I was alone, Kalr Five still climbing up the access well, having been a good deal slower than I was.
A now-familiar voice spoke behind me. “That vomiting, purple-eyed child was right.” I turned. Translator Dlique, dressed as she had been last night, when she’d visited me.
“Right about what, Translator?” I asked.
“Raughd Denche really is a horrible person.”
At that moment, two Sword of Atagaris ancillaries came rushing onto the concourse. “You, there, halt!” said one, loud and emphatic. I realized, in that instant, that they might very well not recognize Translator Dlique—she was supposed to be locked in the governor’s residence, she was dressed like an Ychana, and like all of the Undergarden this space was erratically lit. I myself wasn’t in full uniform, wore only trousers, gloves, and partially fastened shirt. It was going to take Sword of Atagaris a moment to realize who we were.
“Oh, sporocarps!” Translator Dlique turned, I assumed to flee before Sword of Atagaris could see who she was and detain her.
She had not turned all the way, and I had only had the briefest moment to begin wondering at her using “sporocarp” as an obscenity, when a single gunshot popped, loud in the confined space, and Translator Dlique gasped, and tumbled forward to the ground. Unthinking, I raised my armor, yelled “Sword of Atagaris, stand down!” At the same moment I transmitted to Station, urgently, “Medical emergency on level one of the Undergarden!” Dropped to my knees beside Translator Dlique. “Station, Translator Dlique’s been shot in the back. I need medics here right now.”
“Fleet Captain,” said Station’s calm voice in my ear. “Medics don’t go to the—”
“Right now, Station.” I dropped my armor, looked up at the two Sword of Atagaris Vars, beside me now. “Your medkit, Ship, quickly.” I wanted to ask, What do you think you’re doing, firing on people? But keeping Translator Dlique from bleeding out was more immediately important. And this wouldn’t be entirely Sword of Atagaris’s fault, it would have been following Captain Hetnys’s orders.
“I’m not carrying medkits, Fleet Captain,” said one of the Sword of Atagaris ancillaries. “This is not a combat situation, and this station does have medical facilities.” And I, of course, didn’t have one. We’d brought them, as a matter of routine, but they were still in a packing case three levels down. If the bullet had hit, say, the translator’s renal artery—a distinct possibility, considering where the wound was—she could bleed out in minutes, and even if I ordered one of my Kalrs to bring me a kit, it would arrive too late.
I sent the order anyway, and pressed my hands over the wound on Translator Dlique’s back. Likely it wouldn’t do any good, but it was the only thing I could do. “Station, I need those medics!” I looked up at Sword of Atagaris. “Bring me a suspension pod. Now.”
“Aren’t any around here.” The tea shop proprietor—she must have been the only person who’d stayed nearby when they’d seen that slogan painted on the wall. Now she called out from the door of her shop. “Medical never comes here, either.”
“They’d better come this time.” My compression had reduced the blood coming out of the translator, but I couldn’t control internal bleeding, and her breathing had gone quick and shallow. She was losing blood fast, then, faster than I could see. Down on level three Kalr Eight was opening the case where the medkits were stored. She’d moved the instant the order had come, was working quickly, but I didn’t think she would be here in time.
I still pressed uselessly on the translator’s back, while she lay gasping on the ground, facedown. “Blood stays inside your arteries, Dlique,” I said.
She gave a weak, shaky hah. “See…” She paused for a few shallow breaths. “Breathing. Stupid.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, breathing is stupid and boring, but keep on doing it, Dlique. As a favor to me.” She didn’t answer.
By the time Kalr Eight arrived with a medkit and Captain Hetnys came running onto the scene, a pair of medics behind her and Sword of Atagaris behind them, dragging an emergency suspension pod, it was too late. Translator Dlique was dead.
11
I knelt on the ground beside Translator Dlique’s body. Blood soaked my bare feet, my knees, my hands, still pressing down on the wound on her back, and the cuffs of my shirtsleeves were wet with it. It was not the first time I had been covered in someone else’s blood. I had no horror of it. The two Sword of Atagaris ancillaries were motionless and impassive, having set down the suspension pod they had dragged this far to no purpose. Captain Hetnys stood frowning, puzzled, not quite sure, I thought, of what had just happened.
I rose to make way for the medics, who went immediately to work on Translator Dlique. “Cit… Fleet Captain,” said one of them after a while. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Never is,” said the proprietor of the tea shop, who was still standing in her doorway. Not tea but blood! scrawled only meters away from where she stood. That was a problem. But not, I suspected, the problem Captain Hetnys thought it was.
I peeled off my gloves. Blood had soaked through them, my hands were sticky with it. I stepped quickly over to Captain Hetnys faster than she could back away and grabbed her uniform jacket with my bloody hands. Dragged her stumbling over to where Translator Dlique lay, the two medics scrambling out of our way, and before Captain Hetnys could regain her balance or resist, I threw her down onto the corpse. I turned to Kalr Eight. “Fetch a priest,” I said to her. “Whoever you find who’s qualified to do purifications and funerals. If she says she won’t come to the Undergarden, inform her that she may come willingly or not, but she will come regardless.”
“Sir,” Eight acknowledged, and departed.
Captain Hetnys had meanwhile managed to get to her feet, with the assistance of one of her ancillaries.
“How did this happen, Captain? I said not to use violence against citizens unless it was absolutely necessary.” Translator Dlique wasn’t a citizen, but Sword of Atagaris couldn’t have known it was the translator they were shooting at.
“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys. Voice shaking either with rage at what I’d just done, or distress generally. “Sword of Atagaris queried Station, and it said it had no knowledge of this person and there was no tracker. She was not, therefore, a citizen.”
“So that made it fine to shoot her, did it?” I asked. But of course, I myself had followed exactly that logic on a nearly uncountable number of occasions. It was such compelling logic, to someone like Sword of Atagaris—to someone like me—that it had never occurred to me that Sword of Atagaris would even think of firing guns here, on a station full of citizens, a station that had been part of the Radch for centuries.