Ancillary Sword (11 page)

Citizen Fosyf Denche’s apartment boasted a dining room, all glass on one side, looking out over the still-crowded concourse below. Four meters by eight, walls painted ocher. A row of plants sat on a high shelf, long, thick stems hanging down nearly to the floor, with sharp spines and thick, round, bright green leaves. Large as the dining room was by station-dwelling standards, it wouldn’t have been large enough to seat all of a wealthy Radchaai’s composite household—cousins, clients, servants, and their children—and to judge by the half dozen or so small children in various stages of undress and stickiness sleeping on cushions in the nearby sitting room, this was at least the second round of holiday supper.

“The fleet captain,” said Fosyf in her seat at one end of the table of pale, gilded wood, “is a collector just like you, Administrator Celar!” Fosyf was clearly pleased at having discovered that. Enough to almost completely conceal her disappointment at my not offering any information on the loss of communication with the nearest palaces, or her inability to politely ask me for it.

Station Administrator Celar ventured an expression of cautious interest. “A collector, Fleet Captain? Of songs? What sort?” She was a wide, bulky person in a vividly pink coat and trousers and yellow-green sash. Dark-skinned, dark-eyed, voluminous tightly curled hair pulled up and bound to tower above her head. She was very beautiful and, I thought, aware of that fact, though not off-puttingly so. Her daughter Piat sat beside her, silent and oddly indrawn. She was not so large nor quite so beautiful, but young yet and likely to equal her mother on both counts someday.

“My taste is broad-ranging rather than discriminating, Administrator.” I gestured refusal of another serving of smoked eggs. Captain Hetnys sat silent beside me, intent on her own second helping. Across the table from me, beside the station administrator, System Governor Giarod sat, tall and broad shouldered, in a soft, flowing green coat. Something about the particular shade of her skin suggested she’d had it darkened. From the moment she’d entered, she’d been as collected as though this were a routine supper, nothing out of the ordinary.

“I have a particular interest in Ghaonish music,” confessed Administrator Celar. Fosyf beamed. Fosyf’s daughter Raughd smiled insincerely, fairly competently concealing her boredom. When I’d arrived she’d been just slightly too attentive, too respectful, and I’d seen so many young people of her class, so intimately, for so long, that even without an AI to tell me so, I knew she’d been nursing a hangover. Knew, now, that the hangover med she’d taken had started working.

“I grew up only a few gates from Ghaon, you understand,” Station Administrator Celar continued, “and served as assistant administrator at the station there for twenty years. So fascinating! And so very difficult to find the real, authentic
thing.” She picked up a small piece of dredgefruit with her utensil, but instead of putting it in her mouth, moved it toward her lap, under the table. Beside her, her daughter Piat smiled, just slightly, for the first time since I’d seen her.

“Ghaonish in general?” The station that Administrator Celar had served on was only just starting to be built when I’d last been there, centuries ago. “There were at least three different political entities on Ghaon at the time of the annexation, depending how you count, and something like seven different major languages, each of which had its own various styles of music.”

“
You
understand,” she replied, having lost in an instant nearly all her wariness of me. “All of that, and so few really Ghaonish songs left.”

“What would you give me,” I asked, “for a Ghaonish song you’ve never heard?”

Her eyes widened, disbelief apparent. “
Sir
,” she said, indignant. Offended. “You’re making fun of me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I assure you not, Administrator. I had several from a ship that was there during the annexation.” I didn’t mention that I had
been
the ship in question.

“You met
Justice of Toren
!” she exclaimed. “What a loss that was! Did you serve on it? I’ve so often wished I could meet someone who did. One of our horticulturists here had a sister who served on
Justice of Toren
, but that was long before she came here. She was just a child when…” She shook her head regretfully. “Such a shame.”

Time to turn that topic aside. I turned to address Governor Giarod. “May one, Governor,” I asked, “properly inquire about this temple ritual that has kept you so occupied all day?” My accent as elegant as any high-born officer, my tone overtly courteous but underneath just the hint of an edge.

“One may,” Governor Giarod replied, “but I’m not sure how many answers anyone can properly provide.” Like Station Administrator Celar, she picked up a piece of dredgefruit and then apparently set it in her lap.

“Ah,” I ventured. “Temple mysteries.” I’d seen several, over my two-thousand-year lifetime. None of them had been allowed to continue, unless they admitted Anaander Mianaai to their secrets. The survivors were all quite nonexclusive as a result. Or at least theoretically so—they could be fantastically expensive to join.

Governor Giarod slipped another piece of fruit under the table. To some child harder to exhaust and possibly more enterprising than her siblings and cousins, I guessed. “The mysteries are quite ancient,” the governor said. “And very important to the Athoeki.”

“Important to the Athoeki, or just the Xhai? And it is, somehow, connected to this story about the Athoeki who had penises pretending to cut them off?”

“A misunderstanding, Fleet Captain,” said Governor Giarod. “The Genitalia Festival is much older than the annexation. The Athoeki, particularly the Xhai, are a very spiritual people. So much is metaphor, an inadequately material way to speak of immaterial things. If you have any interest in the spiritual, Fleet Captain, I do encourage you to become an initiate.”

“I greatly fear,” Citizen Fosyf said before I could answer, “that the fleet captain’s interests are musical rather than spiritual. She’s only interested if there’s singing.” Quite rudely presumptuous. But true enough.

Under the table a tiny, bare hand clutched my trouser leg—whoever was there had lost patience with the governor’s absorption in the conversation and had decided to try her
luck with me. She wasn’t much more than a year old, and was, as far as I could see, completely naked. I offered her a piece of dredgefruit—clearly a favorite—and she took it with one sticky hand, put it in her mouth, and chewed with frowning absorption, leaning against my leg. “Citizen Fosyf tells me the workers on her estate sing a great deal,” I remarked.

“Oh, yes!” agreed Station Administrator Celar. “In the past they were mostly Samirend transportees, but these days they’re all Valskaayans.”

That struck me as odd. “
All
your field workers are Valskaayan?” I slipped another piece of dredgefruit under the table. Kalr Five would have reason to complain about the sticky handprints on my trousers. But Radchaai generally indulged small children greatly, and there would be no real resentment.

“Samir was annexed some time ago, Fleet Captain,” said Fosyf. “All the Samirend are more or less entirely civilized now.”

“More or less,” muttered Captain Hetnys, beside me.

“I’m quite familiar with Valskaayan music,” I confessed, ignoring her. “Are these Delsig-speakers?”

Fosyf frowned. “Well, of course, Fleet Captain. They don’t speak much Radchaai, that’s for certain.”

Valskaay had an entire temperate, habitable planet, not to mention dozens of stations and moons. Delsig had been the language a Valskaayan would have needed to speak if she wanted to do much business beyond her own home, but it was by no means certain that any Valskaayan would speak it. “Have they retained their choral tradition?”

“Some, Fleet Captain,” Celar replied. “They also improvise a bass or a descant to songs they’ve learned since they arrived. Drones, parallels, you know the sort of thing, very primitive. But not terribly interesting.”

“Because it’s not authentic?” I guessed.

“Just so,” agreed Station Administrator Celar.

“I have, personally, very little concern for authenticity.”

“Wide-ranging taste, as you said,” Station Administrator Celar said, with a smile.

I raised my utensil in acknowledgment. “Has anyone imported any of the written music?” In certain places on Valskaay—particularly the areas where Delsig was most often a first language—choral societies had been an important social institution, and every well-educated person learned to read the notation. “So they aren’t confined to primitive and uninteresting drones?” I put the smallest trace of sarcasm into my voice.

“Grace of Amaat, Fleet Captain!” interjected Citizen Fosyf. “These people can barely speak three words of Radchaai. I can hardly imagine my field workers sitting down to learn to read music.”

“Might keep them busy,” said Raughd, who had been sitting silent so far, smiling insincerely. “Keep them from stirring up trouble.”

“Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”

It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”

“It was the middle of the growing season, Fleet Captain,” said Citizen Fosyf. “And all my neighbors had the same difficulties. But eventually we rounded up the Samirend ringleaders, made some examples of them, and the workers themselves, well, they came back soon after.”

So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”

“Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish
I’d
been assigned to pick tea.”

“Are you staying, Fleet Captain?” asked Governor Giarod. “Or on your way back to your ship?”

“I’m staying in the Undergarden,” I said. Immediate, complete silence descended, not even the chink of utensils on porcelain. Even the servants, arranging platters on the pale, gilded sideboards, froze. The infant under the table chewed the latest piece of dredgefruit, oblivious.

Then Raughd laughed. “Well, why not? None of those dirty animals will mess with
you
, will they?” Good as her façade had been so far, her contempt reached her voice. I’d met her sort before, over and over again. A few of those had even turned out to be decent officers, once they’d learned what they needed to learn. Some, on the other hand, had not.

“Really, Raughd,” said her mother, but mildly. In fact, no one at the table seemed surprised or shocked at Raughd’s words. Fosyf turned to me. “Raughd and her friends like to go drinking in the Undergarden. I’ve told her repeatedly that it’s not safe.”

“Not safe?” I asked. “Really?”

“Pickpockets aren’t uncommon,” said Station Administrator Celar.

“Tourists!” said Raughd. “They
want
to be robbed. It’s
why they go there to begin with. All the wailing and complaining to Security.” She waved a dismissive, blue-gloved hand. “It’s part of the fun. Otherwise they’d take better care.”

Quite suddenly, I wished I was back on
Mercy of Kalr
. Medic, on watch, was saying something brief and acerbic to one of the Kalrs with her. Lieutenant Ekalu inspected as her Etrepas worked. Seivarden, on the edge of her bed, said, “Ship, how’s Fleet Captain doing?”

“Frustrated,” replied
Mercy of Kalr
, in Seivarden’s ear. “Angry. Safe, but playing, as they say, with fire.”

Seivarden almost snorted. “Like normal, then.” Four Etrepas, in a corridor on another deck, began to sing a popular song, raggedly, out of tune.

In the ocher-walled dining room, the child, still clutching my trouser leg, began to cry. Citizen Fosyf and Citizen Raughd both evinced surprise—they had not, apparently, realized there was anyone under the table. I reached under, picked the child up, and set her on my lap. “You’ve had a long day, Citizen,” I said, soberly.

A servant rushed forward, anxious, and lifted the wailing child away with a whispered, “Apologies, Fleet Captain.”

“None needed, Citizen,” I said. The servant’s anxiety surprised me—it had been clear that even if Fosyf and Raughd hadn’t realized the child was there, everyone else had, and no one had objected. I’d have been quite surprised if anyone had. But then, while I had known adult Radchaai for some two thousand years, seen and heard all the messages they’d ever sent home or received, and while I’d interacted with children and infants in places the Radch had annexed, I had never been inside a Radchaai household, never spent much time at all with Radchaai children. I wasn’t actually a very good judge of what was normal or expected.

Supper ended with a round of arrack. I considered several polite ways to extricate myself, and Governor Giarod with me, but before I could choose one Lieutenant Tisarwat arrived—ostensibly to tell me our quarters were ready, but really, I suspected, hoping for leftovers. Which of course Fosyf immediately directed a servant to pack for her. Lieutenant Tisarwat thanked her prettily and bowed to the seated company. Raughd Denche looked her over, mouth quirked in a tiny smile—amused? Intrigued? Contemptuous? All three, perhaps. Straightening, Tisarwat caught Raughd’s look and was, it seemed, intrigued herself. Well, they were close in age, and much as I found I disliked Raughd, a connection there might benefit me. Might bring me information. I pretended to ignore it. So, I saw, did Piat, the station administrator’s daughter. I rose and said, pointedly, “Governor Giarod?”

“Quite,” the system governor said, with still impressive aplomb. “Fosyf, delicious supper as always, do thank that cook of yours again, she’s a marvel.” She bowed. “And what delightful company. But duty beckons.”