“How do they dispose of bodies here?” I asked no one in particular.
Governor Giarod answered. “They drag them into the corridors around the Undergarden and leave them.”
“Disgusting,” muttered Captain Hetnys.
“What else are they supposed to do?” I asked. “There’s no facility here for dealing with dead bodies. Medical doesn’t come here, and neither do priests.” I looked at the senior priest. “Am I right?”
“No one is supposed to be here, Fleet Captain,” she replied primly, and cast a glance at the governor.
“Indeed.” I turned to Kalr Five, who had returned with the priests. “This suspension pod is functional?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then Captain Hetnys and I will put the translator in it. Then you”—indicating the priests with a gesture that my barehandedness made offensive—“will do what is necessary.”
Captain Hetnys and I spent twenty minutes washing in blessed water, saying prayers, and being sprinkled with salt and fumigated with three kinds of incense. It did not dispense with all of our contamination, only mitigated it so that we could walk through corridors or be in a room without anyone needing to call a priest. The soldier’s bath and prayer would have done as well. Better, in fact, strictly speaking, but it would not have satisfied most of the residents of Athoek Station.
“If I go into full, traditional mourning,” Governor Giarod pointed out, when that was finished, and Captain Hetnys and I were dressed in clean clothes, “I won’t be able to go into my office for two weeks. The same goes for the rest of Administration. I agree, though, Fleet Captain, someone should.” As the rite had gone on, she had lost the harried expression she’d arrived with, and now seemed quite calm.
“Yes,” I agreed, “you’ll all have to be lesser cousins. Captain Hetnys and I will act as immediate family.” Captain Hetnys looked none too pleased about that but was not in any position to protest. I dispatched Kalr Five to bring a razor so that Captain Hetnys and I could shave our heads for the funeral, and also to see a jeweler about memorial tokens.
“Now,” I said to Governor Giarod, when Five was away and I’d sent Captain Hetnys to my quarters to prepare for the fast, “I need to know about Translator Dlique.”
“Fleet Captain, I hardly think this is the best place…”
“I can’t go to your office as I am.” Not so obviously just after a death that put me in full mourning, when I should be fasting at home. The impropriety would be obvious, and this funeral had to be absolutely, utterly proper. “And there’s no one near.” The tea seller was inside her shop, out of view. The priests had fled as soon as they thought they could. The Sword of Atagaris ancillaries had left the Undergarden at my order. My two Mercy of Kalrs, standing nearby, didn’t count. “And keeping things secret hasn’t been a very good choice so far.”
Governor Giarod gestured rueful resignation. “She arrived with the first wave of rerouted ships.” The ships that neighboring systems had sent here either in the hope that they could find a different route to their original destinations, now the gates they needed to traverse were down, or because their own facilities were overwhelmed. “Just her, in a tiny little one-person courier barely the size of a shuttle. I’m not sure how it could even carry as much air as she needed for the trip she said she was making. And the timing was just…” She gestured her frustration. “I couldn’t send to the palace for advice. I cast omens. Privately. The results were disturbing.”
“Of course.” No Radchaai was immune to the suspicion of coincidence. Nothing happened by pure accident, no matter how small. Every event, therefore, was potentially a sign of God’s intentions. Unusual coincidences could only be a particularly pointed divine message. “I understand your apprehension. I even, to a certain extent, understand your wanting to confine the translator and conceal her presence from most station residents. None of that troubles me. What does trouble me is your failure to mention this alarming and potentially dangerous situation to me.”
Governor Giarod sighed. “Fleet Captain, I hear things. There’s very little that’s said on this station—and, frankly, most of the rest of the system—that I don’t eventually become aware of. Ever since I took this office I’ve heard whispers about corruption from outside the Radch.”
“I’m not surprised.” It was a perennial complaint, that transportees from annexed worlds, and newly made citizens, brought uncivilized customs and attitudes that would undermine true civilization. I’d been hearing it myself for as long as I’d been alive—some two thousand years. The situation in the Undergarden would only add to those whispers, I was sure.
“Recently,” said Governor Giarod, with a rueful smile, “Captain Hetnys has suggested that the Presger have been infiltrating high offices with the aim of destroying us. Presger translators being more or less indistinguishable from actual humans, and the Translators Office being in such frequent and close contact with them.”
“Governor, did you actually hold any conversations with Translator Dlique?”
She gestured frustration. “I know what you intend to say, Fleet Captain. But then again, she apparently left a locked and guarded room in the governor’s residence with no one the wiser, obtained clothes, and walked freely around this station without Station being aware of it. Yes, talking with her could be downright peculiar, and I’d never have mistaken her for a citizen. But she was clearly capable of a great deal more than she let on to us. Some of it rather frightening. And I had never thought the rumors were credible, that the Presger, who had left us alone since the treaty, who were so alien, would concern themselves with our affairs, when they never had before. But then Translator Dlique arrives so soon after gates start to go down, and we lose contact with Omaugh Palace, and…”
“And Captain Hetnys spoke of Presger infiltration of high offices. Of the highest office. And here I am, a cousin of Anaander Mianaai, and arriving with a story about the Lord of the Radch fighting with herself over the future of the Radch, and an official record that clearly did not match what I actually was. And suddenly you had trouble dismissing the previously incredible whispers about the Presger.”
“Just so.”
“Governor, do we agree that no matter what is happening elsewhere, the only thing it is possible or appropriate for us to do is secure the safety of the residents of this system? Whether there is a division within the Lord of Mianaai or not, that would be the only reasonable order you would expect from her?”
Governor Giarod thought about that for six seconds. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Except, Fleet Captain, if we have to buy medical supplies, that may well mean dealing with outside sources. Like the Presger.”
“You see,” I said, very, very evenly, “why it wasn’t a particularly good idea to conceal Translator Dlique from me.” She gestured acquiescence. “You’re not a fool. Or I didn’t think you were. I admit my discovery of Translator Dlique’s presence has somewhat undermined my assurance on that score.” She said nothing. “Now, before I officially begin the fast, there’s other business that needs to be taken care of. I need to speak to Station Administrator Celar.”
“About the Undergarden?” Governor Giarod guessed.
“Among other things.”
In my sitting room on level four of the Undergarden, my Kalrs ordered to leave us to speak privately, I said to Tisarwat, “I’ll have to spend the next two weeks in mourning. Which means I won’t be able to do any work. Lieutenant Seivarden is of course in command of Mercy of Kalr during that time. And you will be in charge here in the household.”
She had awakened miserably hungover. Tea and meds had begun to remedy that, but not entirely. “Yes, sir.”