Lieutenant Tisarwat blinked, astonished. Taken quite aback. I smiled. “I am pleased to see, Citizen Uran, that your sister didn’t get all the fire, between the two of you.” And did not say that I was also glad Raughd had not managed to put what there was completely out. “Have a care, Lieutenant. I’ll have no sympathy if you get burned again.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Tisarwat. “If I may be excused, sir.” Uran looked quickly down again, eyes on her empty plate.
“Of course, Lieutenant.” I pushed my own chair back. “I have my own business to attend to. Citizen.” Uran looked up and down again quickly, the briefest flash of a glance. “By all means ask Five for more breakfast if you’re still hungry. Remember about the warning signs, and take your handheld with you if you leave the apartments.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Uran.
I had sent for Captain Hetnys. She walked past the door to Lieutenant Tisarwat’s makeshift office, looked in. Hesitated, frowned. Walked on to receive Lieutenant Tisarwat’s bow—I had seen Captain Hetnys through her eyes. Tisarwat experienced a moment of pleased malice to see Captain Hetnys frown, but did not show it on her face. I strongly suspected Captain Hetnys turned to watch Tisarwat go into the office, but as Tisarwat didn’t turn to see it, I didn’t, either.
Eight showed Captain Hetnys into my sitting room. After the predictable round of tea (in the rose glass, now she knew about the Bractware, and Five could be sure she knew she wasn’t drinking from it), I said, “How is your Atagaris doing?”
Captain Hetnys froze an instant, surprised, I thought. “Sir?” she asked.
“The ancillary that was injured.” There were only the three Atagarises here. I had ordered Sword of Atagaris Var off of the station.
She frowned. “It’s recovering well, sir.” A slight hesitation. “If I may beg the fleet captain’s indulgence.” I gestured the granting of it. “Why did you have the ancillary treated?”
What answers I might have given to that question would doubtless have made little sense to Captain Hetnys. “Not doing so would have been a waste, Captain. And it would have made your ship unhappy.” Still the frown. I’d been right. She didn’t understand. “I have been considering how best to dispose of our resources.”
“The gates, sir,” Captain Hetnys protested. “Beg to remind the fleet captain, anyone might come through the gates.”
“No, Captain,” I said, “no one will come through the gates. They’re too easy to watch, and too easily defended.” And I would certainly mine them, one way or another. I wasn’t certain if Captain Hetnys hadn’t thought of that possibility, or if she had thought I might not think of it. Either was possible. “Certainly no one will come by the Ghost Gate.”
The merest twitch of muscles around her eyes and her mouth, the briefest of expressions, too quickly gone to be readable.
She believed someone might. I was increasingly sure that she had lied when she had said that she had never encountered anyone else in that other, supposedly empty, system. That she wanted to conceal the fact that someone was there, or had been there. Might be there now. Of course, if she had sold away Valskaayan transportees, she would want to conceal that fact in order to avoid reeducation or worse. And there remained, still, the question of whom she might have sold them to, or why.
I could not rely on her. Would not. Would be very, very careful to watch her and her ship.
“You’ve sent Mercy of Kalr away, sir,” Captain Hetnys pointed out. My ship’s departure would have been obvious, though of course the reason for it would not be.
“A brief errand.” Certainly I did not want to say what that errand was. Not to Captain Hetnys. “It will be back in a few days. Do you have confidence in the abilities of your Amaat lieutenant?”
Captain Hetnys frowned. Puzzled. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” There was, then, no reason for her to insist on returning immediately to Sword of Atagaris. Once she did, her position—should she be able to recognize the fact—would be stronger than I wanted. I waited for her to request it, to ask permission to return to her ship.
“Well, sir,” she said, still sitting across from me, rose glass teabowl in one brown-gloved hand, “perhaps none of this will be needed, and we’ll have exerted ourselves for nothing.” A breath. Deliberate, I thought, deliberately calm.
No question that I would need to keep Captain Hetnys nearby. And off her ship, if possible. I knew what a captain meant, to a ship. And while no ancillary ever gave much information about its emotional state, I had seen the Atagaris ancillary, downwell, with that shard of glass jutting out of its back. Tears in its eyes. Sword of Atagaris did not want to lose its captain.
I had been a ship. I did not want to deprive Sword of Atagaris of its captain. But I would if I had to. If it meant keeping the residents of this system safe. If it meant keeping Basnaaid safe.
After breakfast, before letting Uran wander as she pleased, Eight took her to buy clothes. She could have gotten them from Station stores, of course, every Radchaai was due food, and shelter, and clothing. But Eight didn’t even allow this possibility to arise. Uran was living in my household and would be dressed accordingly.
I might, of course, have bought clothes for her myself. But to Radchaai, this would have implied either that I had adopted Uran into my house, or that I had given her my patronage. I doubted Uran wanted as much as the fiction of being even further separated from her family, and while clientage didn’t necessarily imply a sexual relationship, in situations where patron and client were very unequal in circumstances it was often assumed. It might not matter to some. I would not assume that it did not matter to Uran. So I had set her up with an allowance for such things. Hardly any different from my just outright giving her what she needed, but on such details propriety depended.
I saw that Eight and Uran were standing just outside the entrance to the temple of Amaat, on the grimy white floor, just under the bright-painted but dusty EskVar, Eight explaining, not-quite-ancillary calm, that Amaat and the Valskaayan god were fairly obviously the same, and so it would be entirely proper for Uran to enter and make an offering. Uran, looking somewhat uncomfortable in her new clothes, doggedly refusing. I was on the point of messaging Eight to stop when, glancing over Uran’s shoulder, she saw Captain Hetnys pass, followed by a Sword of Atagaris ancillary, and speaking earnestly to Sirix Odela.
Captain Hetnys had never once, that I could remember, spoken to Sirix or even acknowledged her presence while we had been downwell. It surprised Eight, too. She stopped midsentence, resisted frowning, and thought of something that made her suddenly abashed. “Your very great pardon, Citizen,” she said to Uran.
“… tizens are not going to be happy about that,” Governor Giarod was saying, where we sat above in her office, and I had no attention to spare for other things.
20
Next day, Uran went to Lieutenant Tisarwat’s makeshift office. Not because she’d been told to—Tisarwat had said nothing more about the matter. Uran had merely walked in—she’d stopped and looked in several times, the day before—and rearranged the tea things to her satisfaction. Tisarwat, seeing her, said nothing.
This went on for three days. I knew that Uran’s presence had been a success—since she was Valskaayan, and from downwell, she couldn’t be assumed to already be on one side or another of any local dispute, and something about her shy, unsmiling seriousness had been appealing to the Undergarden residents who’d called. One or two of them had found, in her silence, a good audience for their tale of difficulties with their neighbors, or with Station Administration.