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Basnaaid replied with a small quirk of a smile that reminded me strongly of her sister, and that also told me that she was quite tired but trying to be polite. “They’re making good progress, the lake should be able to be filled again in a few days, they say. I’m holding out hope for one or two of the roses.” She gestured resignation. “It’ll be a while before the Gardens are back to what they were.” At least the repairs to the lake necessitated repairs to the first level of the Undergarden, directly beneath it, limiting Eminence Ifian’s ability to block the Undergarden refit. And then, because she’d clearly been thinking along the same lines, Basnaaid added, “I don’t understand this business about maybe delaying the refit of the Undergarden.” The official word, in the authorized news feeds, was still that returning displaced citizens to their homes was a priority. But rumor didn’t run along the authorized channels. “And I don’t understand what Eminence Ifian is thinking, either.” The head priest of Amaat had taken that morning’s omen-casting as an opportunity to warn station residents about the danger of acting too hastily and finding oneself in a situation that would, as a result, be difficult to remedy. How much better to consult the desire of God, and ponder where true justice, propriety, and benefit might
lie. The implication was clear to anyone who’d been paying attention to the current gossip. Which was to say, everyone on the station except very small children.

Possibly quite a few of the people Eminence Ifian knew and socialized with would be sympathetic to her point. Possibly she had made sure of support in particular quarters before making her speech that morning. But the people who were sleeping in shifts, three or four to a bunk (or who had, like me, refused to do so and were sleeping in corners and corridors), were numerous and unhappy. Any delay in getting Undergarden residents back into their own beds was, to put it mildly, unappealing to those citizens. But of course, they were mostly the least significant of Station’s residents, people with menial, low-status work assignments, or without much family to support them, or without patrons sufficiently well-off to assist them. “Clearly Eminence Ifian is thinking that if she can marshal the support of enough people, Station Administrator Celar can be pressured to change the plans for the Undergarden refit. And she means to take advantage of the fact that the station administrator didn’t stop to have a cast done before she gave orders to go ahead.”

“But this isn’t really about Station Administrator Celar, or even the Undergarden, is it?” Basnaaid’s position as Horticulturist didn’t, in theory, involve much politics. In theory. “This is aimed at you, Fleet Captain. She wants to lessen your influence on Station Administration, and she probably wouldn’t mind if all the Undergarden residents were shipped downwell, either.”

“She didn’t care whether they were here or not before,” I pointed out.

“You weren’t here before. And I suppose it isn’t just Eminence Ifian wondering what you plan to do once you’ve taken
charge of the dregs of Athoek Station, and thinking it might be best if you never get a chance to answer that question.”

“Your sister would have understood.”

She smiled that tired half-smile again. “Yes. But why now? Not you, I mean, but the eminence. This is hardly the time for political games, with the station overcrowded, with ships trapped in the system, intersystem gates destroyed or closed by order, and nobody really knowing why any of it is happening.” Basnaaid knew, by now. But System Governor Giarod had refused to even consider releasing the information generally, that Anaander Mianaai, lord of Radchaai space for three thousand years, was divided, at war against herself. Judging from the official feeds coming through Athoek’s still-working (but ordered closed to traffic) gates, the governors of neighboring systems had made similar decisions.

“On the contrary,” I replied, with my own small smile. “It’s the perfect time for such games, if all you care about is your side winning. And I don’t doubt that Eminence Ifian is thinking that I support… a political opponent of hers. She is mistaken, of course. I have my own agenda, unrelated to that person’s.” I saw little difference between any of the parts of Anaander Mianaai. “Faulty assumptions lead to faulty action.” It was a particular problem for that faction of Anaander I was now sure Eminence Ifian supported—unable or unwilling to admit that the problem lay within herself, that part of Anaander had put it about to her supporters that her split with herself was due to outside interference. Specifically interference by the alien Presger.

“Well. I don’t appreciate her trying to delay people getting back to their homes. If the families originally assigned there wanted to go back to the Undergarden so badly, they could have pressed for a refit long ago.”

“Indeed,” I acknowledged. “And no doubt quite a few other people feel the same way.”

And there was time enough for Seivarden and Ekalu, still on
Mercy of Kalr
, to have an argument.

They lay together in Seivarden’s bunk—pressed close, the space was narrow. Ekalu angry—and terrified, heart rate elevated. Seivarden, between Ekalu and the wall, momentarily immobile with injured bewilderment. “It was a compliment!” Seivarden insisted.

“The way
provincial
is an insult. Except what am
I
?” Seivarden, still shocked, didn’t answer. “Every time you use that word,
provincial
, every time you make some remark about someone’s low-class accent or
unsophisticated
vocabulary, you remind me that
I’m
provincial, that
I’m
low-class. That my accent and my vocabulary are hard work for me. When you laugh at your Amaats for rinsing their tea leaves you just remind me that cheap bricked tea tastes like
home
. And when you say things meant to
compliment
me, to tell me I’m not like any of that, it just reminds me that I don’t belong here. And it’s always something small but it’s
every day
.”

Seivarden would have pulled back, but she was already firmly against the wall, and Ekalu had no room to move away herself, not without getting out of bed entirely. “You never said anything about this before.” Because she was who she was, the daughter of an old and once nearly unthinkably prestigious house, born a thousand years before Ekalu or anyone on the ship but me, even her indignant disbelief sounded effortlessly aristocratic. “If it’s so terrible why haven’t you said anything until now?”

“How am I supposed to tell you how I feel?” Ekalu
demanded. “How can I complain? You outrank me. You and the fleet captain are close. What chance do I have, if I complain? And then where can I go? I can’t even go back to Amaat Decade, I don’t belong
there
anymore, either. I can’t go home, even if I could get a travel permit. What am I supposed to do?”

Truly angry and hurt now, Seivarden levered herself up on her elbow. “That bad, is it? And I’m such a terrible person for complimenting you, for liking you. For…” She gestured, indicating the rumpled bed, the two of them, naked.

Ekalu shifted, sat up. Put her feet on the floor. “You aren’t listening.”

“Oh, I’m
listening
.”

“No,” replied Ekalu, and stood, and picked her uniform trousers up from off a chair. “You’re doing exactly what I was afraid you’d do.”

Seivarden opened her mouth to say something angry and bitter. Ship said, in her ear, “Lieutenant. Please don’t.”

It seemed not to have any immediate effect, so silently I said, “Seivarden.”

“But…,” began Seivarden, whether in reply to Ship, or to me, or to Ekalu I couldn’t tell.

“I have work to do,” said Ekalu, her voice even despite her hurt and dread and anger. She pulled on her gloves, picked up her shirt and jacket and boots, and went out the door.

Seivarden was sitting all the way up by now. “Aatr’s fucking
tits
!” she cried, and swung a bare fist at the wall beside her. And cried out again, in physical pain this time—her fist was unarmored, and the wall was hard.

“Lieutenant,” said Ship in her ear, “you should go to Medical.”

“It’s broken,” Seivarden said, when she could speak again. Hunching over her injured hand. “Isn’t it. I even know which fucking bone it is.”

“Two, actually,” replied
Mercy of Kalr
. “The fourth and the fifth metacarpals. Have you done this before?” The door opened, and Amaat Seven entered, her face ancillary-expressionless. She picked Seivarden’s uniform up off the chair.

“Once,” replied Seivarden. “It was a while ago.”

“The last time you tried to quit kef?” Ship guessed. Fortunately only in Seivarden’s ear, where Amaat Seven couldn’t hear it. The crew knew part of Seivarden’s history—that she had been wealthy and privileged, and had been captain of her own ship until that ship was destroyed and she’d spent a thousand years in a suspension pod. What they did not know was that, on waking, she’d discovered her house gone, herself impoverished and insignificant, nothing left to her but her aristocratic looks and accent. She had fled Radch space and become addicted to kef. I had found her on a backwater planet, naked, bleeding, half-dead. She hadn’t taken kef since then.

If Seivarden’s hand hadn’t been broken she’d probably have swung again. The impulse to do it moved muscles in her arm and hand, and produced a fresh jolt of pain. Her eyes filled with tears.

Amaat Seven shook out Seivarden’s uniform trousers. “Sir,” she said, still impassive.

“If you’re having this much trouble coping with your emotions,” said Ship, still silently in Seivarden’s ear, “then I really think you need to talk to Medic about it.”

“Fuck you,” Seivarden said, but she let Amaat Seven dress her, and escort her to Medical. Where she let Medic put a
corrective on her hand, but said nothing at all about the argument with Lieutenant Ekalu, or her emotional distress, or her addiction to kef.

There was also time for an exchange of messages between myself and Fleet Captain Uemi, one gate away, in neighboring Hrad System. “My compliments to Fleet Captain Breq,” messaged Fleet Captain Uemi, “and I would be happy to pass your reports on to Omaugh Palace.” A gentle, diplomatic reminder that I had sent no such reports, not even notice that I had arrived at Athoek. Uemi also sent me news—Omaugh Anaander was sure enough of her hold on Omaugh Palace that she had begun to send more ships to other systems in the province. There was talk of allowing traffic in the province’s intersystem gates, but personally, Uemi said, she didn’t think it was quite safe yet.

The provincial palaces farthest from Omaugh (where this conflict had broken into the open) had gone silent weeks ago, and remained so. There had been no word out of Tstur Palace since it had fallen. The governors of Tstur Province’s outlying systems were near panic—their systems, particularly the ones without habitable planets, were in dire need of resources that were no longer coming through the intersystem gates. They might very naturally have asked neighboring systems for help, but those neighbors were in Omaugh Province, where rumor said a different Anaander was in charge. Rumor also said that governors of systems closer to Tstur Palace who had been deemed insufficiently loyal to Tstur had been executed.

And all this time, the official news feeds went on as they always had, a steady parade of local events, discussions of inconsequential local gossip, recordings of public entertainments, punctuated now and then with official reassurance
that this inconvenience, this brief disturbance, would be over soon. Was even now being dealt with.

“I fear,” Fleet Captain Uemi sent, at the end of all this, “that some of the more recently annexed systems may try to break away. Shis’urna, particularly, or Valskaay. It’ll be a bloody business if they do. Have you perhaps heard anything?” I had spent time in both systems, had participated in both annexations. And a small population of Valskaayans lived on Athoek, and might well have had an interest in that question. “It really would be better for everyone if they don’t rebel,” Fleet Captain Uemi’s message continued. “I’m sure you know that.”

And I was sure she wanted me to pass that on, to whatever contacts I might have in either of those places. “Graciously thanking Fleet Captain Uemi for her compliments,” I replied, “I am not currently concerned with any system but Athoek. I am sending local intelligence, and my own official reports, with many thanks for the fleet captain’s offer to pass them on to the appropriate authorities.” And bundled that up with a week’s worth of every scrap of official news I could find, including the results of seventy-five regional downwell radish-growing competitions that had been announced just that morning, which I flagged as worthy of special attention. And a month’s worth of my own routine reports and status records, dozens of them, every single line of every single one of them filled out with exactly the same two words:
Fuck off
.

Next afternoon, Governor Giarod stood beside me at a hatch on the docks. Gray floor and walls, grimier than I liked, but then for most of my life I had been used to a military standard of cleanliness. The system governor seemed calm, but in
the time it had taken for the Presger courier to reach Athoek Station from the Ghost Gate, she’d had plenty of opportunity to worry. Was possibly even more worried now that we were only waiting for the pressure to equalize between the station and the Presger ship. Just the two of us, no one else, not even any of my soldiers, though Kalr Five stood outwardly impassive, inwardly fretting, in the corridor outside the bay.

“Have the Presger been in the Ghost System all this while?” It was the third time she had asked that question, in as many days. “Did you ask, what is its name,
Sphene
, you said?” She frowned. “What sort of name is that? Didn’t Notai ships usually have long names? Like
Ineluctable Ascendancy of Mind Unfolding
or
The Finite Contains the Infinite Contains the Finite
?”

Both of those ship names were fictional, characters in more or less famous melodramatic entertainments. “Notai ships were named according to their class,” I said. “
Sphene
is one of the Gems.” None of them had ever been famous enough to inspire an adventure serial. “And it wouldn’t say what might or might not be with it in the Ghost System.” I had asked, and gotten only a cold stare. “But I don’t think this courier came from there. Or if it did, it was only there in order to access the Ghost Gate.”