In Seivarden’s and Medic’s vision, Ship displayed images of the sort of shuttle Seivarden was talking about. “Yes, like that,” said Seivarden. “Show us the supply locker.” Ship obliged.
“There’s writing on it,” said Medic.
“Seeing?” Seivarden frowned, puzzling out the words. “Seeing… something?”
“Divine Essence of Perception,” said Ship. “One of the last defeated in the wars. It’s a museum now.”
“It doesn’t look particularly Notai,” said Medic. “Except for the writing.”
“And the writing on this one,” said Seivarden, gesturing into view the image of the one that had come out of the Ghost Gate, “is all burned away. Ship, did you really not recognize it?”
Ship said, to Medic and Seivarden both, “Not immediately. I’m a little less than a thousand years old and never have seen any Notai ships firsthand. But if Lieutenant Seivarden had not identified it herself, I would have within a few minutes.”
“Would you have, ever,” asked Medic, “if we trusted Sword of Atagaris?” And then, struck by a new thought, “Could Sword of Atagaris have failed to recognize it?”
“Probably it has,” said Seivarden. “Otherwise, surely, it would tell its lieutenant.”
“Unless they’re both lying,” said Ekalu, who had been listening in the whole time from the decade room. “They are taking the trouble to pick up a piece of debris that they might as well mark and let someone else take care of.”
“In which case,” remarked Seivarden, “they’re assuming Mercy of Kalr won’t recognize it. Which doesn’t strike me as a safe assumption.”
“I don’t presume to know Sword of Atagaris’s opinion of my intelligence,” said Ship.
Seivarden gave a small laugh. “Medic, ask Sword of Atagaris to tell us what they find when they examine that… debris.”
Ultimately, Sword of Atagaris replied that it had found nothing of interest, and subsequently destroyed the locker.
Citizen Fosyf’s house was the largest of three buildings, a long, balconied two-storied structure of polished stone, flecks of black and gray and here and there patches of blue and green that gleamed as the light changed. It sat beside a wide, clear lake with stony shores, and a weathered wooden dock, with a small, graceful boat moored alongside, white sails furled. Mountains loomed around, and moss and trees edged the lakeshore. The actual tea plantation—I’d seen it as we flew in, wavering strips of velvet-looking green running across the hillsides and around outcrops of black stone—was hidden behind a ridge. The air was 20.8 degrees C, the breeze light and pleasant and smelling of leaves and cold water.
“Here we are, Fleet Captain!” Citizen Fosyf called as she climbed out of her flier. “Peace and quiet. Under other circumstances I’d suggest fishing in the lake. Boating. Climbing if that’s the sort of thing you like. But even just staying in is nice, here. There’s a separate bathhouse behind the main building, just across from where you’ll be staying. A big tub with seating for at least a dozen, plenty of hot water. It’s a Xhai thing. Barbarically luxurious.”
Raughd had come up beside her mother. “Drinks in the bathhouse! There’s nothing like it after a long night.” She grinned.
“Raughd can manage to find long nights even here,” observed Fosyf pleasantly as Captain Hetnys and her Sword of Atagaris ancillary approached. “Ah, to be young again! But come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”
The patches of blue-green in the building stone flared and died away as our angle on it changed. Around the other side of the house was a broad stretch of flat, gray stones, shaded by two large trees and thickly grown with moss. To the left of that stretched the ellipse of a low building, the nearer long side of wood, the nearer end and, presumably, the farther long side of glass. “The bath,” said Fosyf, with a gesture. On the other side of the mossy stone, up against a road that ran over the ridge and down to the house by the lake, sat another black and blue-green stone building, two-storied, but smaller than the main house and not balconied as it was. The whole side facing us was taken up with a terrace under a leafy, vine-tangled arbor, where a group of people stood waiting for us. Most of them wore shirts and trousers, or skirts that looked as though they’d been painstakingly constructed from cut-apart trousers, the fabric faded and worn, once-bright blues and greens and reds. None of them wore gloves.
Accompanying them was a person dressed in the expected, and conventional, jacket, trousers, and gloves and scattering of jewelry. By her features, I guessed she was a Samirend overseer here. We stopped some three meters from the group, in the shade of the wide arbor, and Fosyf said, “Just for you, Fleet Captain, since I knew you’d want to hear them sing.”
The overseer turned away and said to the assembled people, “Here, now. Sing.” In Radchaai. Slow and loud.
One of the elders of the group leaned toward the person next to her and said, in Delsig, “I told you it wasn’t the right song.” A few gestures and a few whispered words under the somewhat agitated eye of the overseer, who apparently didn’t understand the reason for the delay, and then a collective breath and they began to sing. “Oh you, who live sheltered by God, who live all your lives in her shadow.” I knew it, every line and every part. Most Delsig-speaking Valskaayans sang it at funerals.
It was a gesture meant to comfort. Even if they hadn’t already known the reason for our coming, they could not have failed to notice my shaved head and the mourning stripe across my face, and Captain Hetnys’s. These people didn’t know us, quite possibly didn’t know who had died. We represented the forces that had conquered them, torn them away from their home world to labor here. They had no reason to care for our feelings. They had no reason to think that either of us knew enough Delsig to understand the words. And no expectation that we would understand the import of their song even if we did. Such things are fraught with symbolic and historic significance, carry great emotional weight—but only for someone aware of that significance to begin with.
They sang it anyway. And when they were finished, the elder said, bowing, “Citizens, we will pray for the one you’ve lost.” In perfectly comprehensible, if heavily accented, Radchaai.
“Citizens,” I replied, also in Radchaai, because I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to realize how much Delsig I spoke, just yet. “We are greatly moved, and we thank you for your song and your prayers.”
The overseer spoke up, loud and slow. “The fleet captain thanks you. Now go.”
“Wait,” I interjected. And turned to Fosyf. “Will you favor me, and give these people something to eat and drink before they go?” She blinked at me, uncomprehending. The overseer stared at me in frank disbelief. “It’s a whim I have. If there’s any question of impropriety, I’ll be happy to pay you back. Whatever is on hand. Tea and cakes, perhaps.” It was the sort of thing I’d expect the kitchen here to always have ready.
Fosyf recovered from her immediate surprise. “Of course, Fleet Captain.” She gestured toward the overseer, who, still clearly aghast at my request, herded the field workers away.
The ground floor of the building we were to stay in was one large, open space, part dining room, part sitting room, the sitting-room side full of wide, deep chairs and side tables that held game-boards with bright-colored counters. On the other side of the room we ate egg and bean curd soup at a long table with artfully mismatched chairs, by a sideboard piled with fruit and cakes. The line of small windows around the ceiling had gone dull with twilight and clouds that had blown in. Upstairs were narrow hallways, each bedroom and its attached sitting room carefully color coordinated. Mine was orange and blue, in muted tones, the thick, soft blankets on the bed very carefully made, I suspected, to appear comfortably worn and faded. A casual country cottage, one might have thought at first glance, but all of it meticulously placed and arranged.