Piat scoffed, in a way that made it plain she was trying very hard not to cry. “Why would…” Stopped. About to say a name, perhaps, that she didn’t want to say, that would be an accusation. “Why would anyone be jealous of me?”
“Because you took the aptitudes.” I hadn’t said anything to Lieutenant Tisarwat about my guess that Raughd had never taken them, but she clearly hadn’t been the Lord of the Radch for a few days for nothing. “And the tests said you should be running something important. And anyone with eyes can see you’re going to be just as beautiful as your mother.” A moment of mortification at having said that going to be. And it wasn’t quite the sort of thing a seventeen-year-old would say. “Once you stop listening to people who just want to drag you down.”
Piat turned around, arms still crossed. Tears rolled down her face. “People get assignments for political reasons all the time.”
“Sure,” said Tisarwat. “Your mother probably got her first assignment for political reasons. Which probably included the fact that she could do the job.” It didn’t always—which Tisarwat well knew.
And that sounded dangerously like someone much older than Tisarwat ostensibly was. But Piat seemed unable to deflect it. She was driven to a last-ditch defense. “I’ve seen you mooning around the past few days. You’re only here because you’ve got a crush on Horticulturist Basnaaid.”
That scored a hit. But Lieutenant Tisarwat kept her outward composure. “I wouldn’t even be here except for you. Fleet captain told me I was too young for her and stay away. It was an order. I ought to stay away from the Gardens, but you’re here, aren’t you. So let’s go somewhere else and have a drink.”
Piat was silent a moment, taken aback, it seemed. “Not the Undergarden,” she said, finally.
“I should think not!” replied Tisarwat. Relieved, knowing she’d won this round, a minor victory but a victory all the same. “They haven’t even started repairs there yet. Let’s find somewhere we don’t have to pee in a bucket.”
By now Sword of Atagaris had moved away from the Ghost Gate, closer to Athoek Station. It had said almost nothing to Mercy of Kalr the whole time. Hardly surprising—ships generally weren’t much given to chitchat, and besides, Swords all thought they were better than the others.
On Mercy of Kalr Lieutenant Ekalu had just come off watch, and Seivarden had met her in the decade room. “Your opposite number on Sword of Atagaris was asking after you,” Ekalu said, and sat at the table, where an Etrepa had set her lunch.
Seivarden sat beside her. “Was she, now.” She already knew, of course. “And was she glad to see someone she knew on board?”
“I don’t think she recognized me,” replied Ekalu, and after a moment’s hesitation and a quick gesture from Seivarden, who’d had supper already, she took a mouthful of skel. Chewed and swallowed. “Not my name, anyway, I was only ever Amaat One to her. And I didn’t send any visuals. I was on watch.” Ekalu’s feelings about that—about Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant not realizing who she was—were complicated, and not entirely comfortable.
“Oh, I wish you had. I’d have loved to have seen her face.”
I saw that while Ekalu herself might well have enjoyed the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant’s discomfiture at being faced with an officer of such common origin, Seivarden’s obvious amusement at the same prospect troubled and dismayed her. It reminded me a bit too painfully of some of Lieutenant Awn’s interactions with Skaaiat Awer, twenty years gone and more. Ship said, in my ear, where I sat in the flier, “I’ll say something to Lieutenant Seivarden.” But I wasn’t sure what Ship could say that Seivarden would understand.
In the Mercy of Kalr decade room, Ekalu said, “Expect her to contact you at the start of your next watch. She’s determined to invite you over for tea, now Sword of Atagaris is going to be close enough.”
“I can’t be spared,” Seivarden said, mock-serious. “There are only three watchstanders aboard right now.”
“Oh, Ship will tell you if anything important happens,” Ekalu said, all sarcastic disdain.
In Command, Medic said, “Lieutenants. Letting you know that something appears to have exited the Ghost Gate.”
“What is it?” asked Seivarden, rising. Ekalu continued to eat, but called up a view of what Medic was looking at.
“It’s too small to see well until it’s closer,” said Ship, to me, in the flier over Athoeki water. “I think it’s a shuttle or a very small ship of some sort.”
“We’ve asked Sword of Atagaris about it,” Medic said, in Command.
“You mean they haven’t threatened to destroy it unless it identifies itself?” asked Seivarden, halfway to Command herself by now.
“Nothing to worry about,” came the reply from Sword of Atagaris, whichever of its lieutenants was on duty sounding almost overly bored. “It’s just trash. The Ghost Gate doesn’t get cleaned out like the others. Some ship must have broken up in the gate a long time ago.”
“Your very great pardon,” said Medic dryly as Seivarden came into Command, “but we were under the impression there was no one on the other side of that gate, and never had been.”
“Oh, people go there on a dare, sometimes, or just joyriding. But this one isn’t recent, you can see it’s pretty old. We’ll pull it in—it’s large enough to be a hazard.”
“Why not just burn it?” asked Seivarden, and Ship must have sent her words to Sword of Atagaris, because that lieutenant replied, “Well, you know, there is some smuggling in the system. We always check these things out.”
“And what are they smuggling out of an uninhabited system?” asked Medic.
“Oh, nothing out of the Ghost Gate, I should think,” came the blithe answer. “But generally, you know, the usual. Illegal drugs. Stolen antiques.”
“Aatr’s tits!” swore Seivarden. “Speaking of antiques.” Ship had asked Sword of Atagaris for a closer image of the object in question and, receiving it, had shown it to Medic and Seivarden both, a curving shell, scarred and scorched.
“Quite a piece of junk, isn’t it?” replied the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant.
“Ignorant fuck,” said Seivarden, after Sword of Atagaris had signed off. “What are they teaching in officer training these days?”
Medic turned to regard her. “Did I miss something, Lieutenant?”
“That’s a supply locker off a Notai military shuttle,” replied Seivarden. “You honestly don’t recognize it?”
Radchaai often speak of the Radch as containing only one sort of people, who speak only one language—Radchaai. But the interior of a Dyson sphere is vast. Even if it had begun with a single population, speaking only one language (and it had not), it would not have ended that way. Many of the ships and captains that had opposed Anaander’s expansion had been Notai.
“No,” said Medic, “I don’t recognize it. It doesn’t look very Notai to me. It doesn’t really look like a supply locker, either. It does look old, though.”
“My house is Notai. Was.” Seivarden’s house had been absorbed by another one, during the thousand years she’d spent in suspension. “We were loyal, though. We had an old shuttle from the wars, docked at Inais. People used to come from all over to see it.” The memory of it must have been unexpectedly specific and sharp. She swallowed, so that her sudden sense of loss wouldn’t be audible when she spoke next. “How did a Notai ship break up in the Ghost Gate? None of those battles were anywhere near here.”