Stolen antiques, the Sword of Atagaris lieutenant had said. But I had not imagined anything quite like this.
Add in that supply locker. “Debris.” Any writing conveniently obscured—like this tea set.
Captain Hetnys had thought it was important to station her ship by the Ghost Gate. A piece of debris that was likely more than three thousand years old—and extremely unlikely to have ended up here at Athoek to begin with—had come out of the Ghost Gate. A piece of a Notai shuttle.
Captain Hetnys had made a great deal of money selling a Notai tea set nearly as old as that supply locker likely was. Where had she gotten it? Who had removed the name of its first owner, and why?
What was on the other side of the Ghost Gate?
14
Back in my room, I removed my brown and black shirt, handed it to Kalr Five. Had bent to loosen my boots when a knock sounded at the door. I looked up. Kalr Five gave me a single, expressionless glance and went to answer it. She had seen Raughd’s behavior these past few days, knew what this was likely to be, though I admit I was surprised she had chosen to make this blatant a move so soon.
I stood aside, where I would not be visible from the sitting room. Picked up my shirt from where Five had laid it, and drew it back on. Five opened the door to the hallway, and through her eyes I saw Raughd’s insincere smile. “I wonder,” she said, with no courteous preamble, “if I might speak privately to the fleet captain.” A balancing act, that sentence was, offering Five herself no consideration whatsoever, without being rude to me.
Let her in, I messaged Five silently. But don’t leave the room. Though it was entirely possible—indeed, likely—that Raughd’s idea of “private” included the presence of servants.
Raughd entered. Looked around for me, bowed with a sidelong, smiling glance up at me as I came from the bedroom. “Fleet Captain,” she said. “I was hoping we might… talk.”
“About what, Citizen?” I did not invite her to sit.
She blinked, genuinely surprised, I thought. “Surely, Fleet Captain, I’ve been plain about my desires.”
“Citizen. I am in mourning.” I had not had time to clean the white stripe off my face for the night. And she could not possibly have forgotten the reason for it.
“But surely, Fleet Captain,” she replied sweetly, “that’s all for show.”
“It’s always for show, Citizen. It is entirely possible to grieve with no outward sign. These things are meant to let others know about it.”
“It’s true such things are nearly always insincere, or at least overdone,” Raughd said. She had missed my point entirely. “But what I meant was that you’ve undertaken this only for political reasons. There can’t possibly be any real sorrow, no one could expect so. It’s only needed in public, and this”—she gestured around—“is certainly not public.”
I might have argued that if a family member of hers had died far from home, she might want to know that someone had cared enough to perform funeral duties for that person—even if the rites in question were foreign, even if the person who performed them was a stranger. But given the sort of person Raughd apparently was, such an argument would have carried no weight, if it had even been comprehensible to her. “Citizen, I am astonished at your want of propriety.”
“Can you blame me, Fleet Captain, if my desire overwhelms my sense of propriety? And propriety, like mourning, is for public view.”
I was under no illusions as to my physical attractiveness. It was not such that it would inspire propriety-overwhelming enthusiasm. My position, on the other hand, and my house name might well be quite fascinating. And of course, it would be far more fascinating to someone wealthy and privileged, like Raughd. Entertainments might be brimful of the virtuous and humble gaining the favorable notice of those above them, to their and their house’s ultimate benefit, but in daily life most people were fully aware of just what would happen if they deliberately sought such a situation out.
But someone like Raughd—oh, someone like Raughd could set her sights on me, and she might pretend it was all down to attraction, to romance or even love. No matter that in such a case no one involved would for a moment be unaware of the potential advantages.
“Citizen,” I said, coldly. “I am well aware that you are the person who painted those words on the wall in the Undergarden.” She looked at me with wide-eyed, blinking incomprehension. Kalr Five stood motionless in a corner of the room, ancillary-impassive. “Someone died as a direct result of that, and her death has very possibly put this entire system in danger. You may not have intended that death, but you knew well enough that your action would cause problems, and you didn’t really care what those were or who was hurt by it.”
She drew herself up, indignant. “Fleet Captain! I don’t know why you would accuse me of such a thing!”
“At a guess,” I said, unruffled by her resentment, “you were angry at Lieutenant Tisarwat for spoiling your fun with Citizen Piat. Who, by the way, you treat abominably.”
“Oh, well,” she said, subsiding just a bit, her posture relaxing, “if that’s the problem. I’ve known Piat since we were both little and she’s always been… erratic. Oversensitive. She feels inadequate, you know, because her mother is station administrator and so beautiful on top of it. There she is, assigned to a perfectly fine job, but she can’t stop thinking it’s nothing compared to her mother. She takes everything too hard, and I admit sometimes I lose patience because of it.” She sighed, the very image of compassionate regret, even penitence. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s accused me of mistreating her, just to hurt me.”
“Such a fucking bore,” I quoted. “Funny how the last time you lost patience with her was when everyone was laughing at her joke and she was the center of attention. Rather than you.”
“I’m sure Tisarwat meant well, telling you about that, but she just didn’t understand what…” Her voice faltered, her face took on a pained expression. “She couldn’t… Piat couldn’t have accused me of painting those words on the wall? It would be just the sort of horrible thing she’d think was funny, when she was in one of her moods.”
“She hasn’t accused you of anything,” I said, my voice still cold. “The evidence speaks for itself.”
Raughd froze, completely still for an instant, not even breathing. Then she said, with a coldness that nearly matched my own, “Did you accept my mother’s invitation just so you could come here and attack me? Obviously, you’ve come here with some sort of agenda. You turn up out of nowhere, produce some ridiculous order forbidding travel in the gates so the tea can’t get out of the system. I can’t see it as anything less than an attack on my house, and I will not stand for that! I’m going to speak to my mother about this!”
“You do that,” I said. Still calm. “Be sure to explain to her how that paint got on your gloves. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knows about it and invited me down here in the hope that I could be dissuaded from pressing the issue.” And I had accepted knowing that. And I had wanted to know what it was like, downwell. What Sirix had been so angry about.
Raughd turned and left the room without another word.
The morning sky was pale blue streaked with the silver traces of the weather grid, and here and there a wisp of cloud. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the mountain so the houses and the lake, the trees, were still in shadow. Sirix waited for me, at the water’s edge. “Thank you for the wake-up call, Fleet Captain,” she said, with an ironic bow of her head. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in.”