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“All right,” I said, and took a mouthful of my tea. Swallowed it. There was no reason I could see for Ship to have said that through Seivarden.

But of course, Seivarden was entirely human. And she was
Mercy of Kalr
’s Amaat lieutenant. Perhaps Ship’s words hadn’t been meant for me, but for her.

Seivarden had never been the sort of officer who cared, or even noticed, what her ship felt. She had not been one of my favorites, when she’d served on
Justice of Toren
. But ships did have different tastes, different favorites. And Seivarden had improved markedly over the last year.

A ship with ancillaries expressed what it felt in a thousand different minute ways. A favorite officer’s tea was never cold. Her food would be prepared in precisely the way she preferred. Her uniform always fit right, always sat right, effortlessly. Small needs or desires would be satisfied very nearly the moment they arose. And most of the time, she would only notice that she was comfortable. Certainly more comfortable than other ships she might have served on.

It was—nearly always—distinctly one-sided. All those weeks ago on Omaugh Palace, I had told Ship that it could be a person who could command itself. And now it was telling me—and, not incidentally I was sure, Seivarden—that it wanted to be that, at least potentially. Wanted that to be acknowledged. Wanted, maybe, some small return (or at least some recognition) of its feelings.

I hadn’t noticed that Seivarden’s Amaats had been particularly solicitous, but then, her Amaats, like all the soldiers on
Mercy of Kalr
, were human, not appendages of their ship. They would have been uncomfortable with the flood of tiny intimacies Ship might have asked of them, if they were to act for it in that way.

“All right,” I said again. In her quarters, Lieutenant Tisarwat pulled on her boots. Still waking up—Bo Nine stood by with her tea. The rest of Bo decade slept deeply, some dreaming. Seivarden’s Amaats were finishing their day’s tasks, getting ready for their suppers. Medic, and half of my Kalrs, still slept, but lightly. Ship would wake them in another five minutes. Ekalu and her Etrepas still stood watch. Lieutenant Ekalu was still a bit indignant over the system governor’s message, and also troubled by something else, I wasn’t sure what. Outside, dust skittered now and then across
Mercy of Kalr
’s hull, and the light of Athoek’s sun warmed it. “Was there anything else?”

There was. Seivarden, on edge since this part of the conversation had begun, blinked, expecting to see some sort of reply in her vision. Nothing, for an entire second. And then,
No, Fleet Captain, that’s all
. “No, Fleet Captain,” Seivarden read off. “That’s all.” Her voice doubtful. For someone who knew ships, that brief pause had been eloquent. I was mildly surprised that Seivarden, who had always been oblivious to her ships’ feelings, had noticed it. She blinked three times, and frowned. Worried. Disconcerted. Uncharacteristically unsure of herself. Said, “Your tea is getting cold.”

“That’s all right,” I said, and drank it down.

Lieutenant Tisarwat had wanted to go back to Athoek Station for days. We had only been in the system a little over two
weeks, but already she had friends, and connections. Had been angling for some sort of influence over system administration, nearly since the moment she had set foot on the station. Which was hardly surprising, considering. Tisarwat hadn’t been Tisarwat for some time—Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, had altered the hapless seventeen-year-old lieutenant in order to make her nothing more than an appendage of herself, just another part of the Lord of the Radch. One she hoped I wouldn’t recognize as such, who could keep an eye on me, and keep control of
Mercy of Kalr
. But I had recognized her, and removed the implants that had tied Tisarwat to the Lord of the Radch, and now she was someone else—a new Lieutenant Tisarwat, with the memories (and possibly some of the inclinations) of the old one, but also someone who had spent several days as the most powerful person in Radch space.

She waited for me just outside the shuttle hatch. Seventeen, not tall exactly but rangy in the way some seventeen-year-olds are who haven’t quite grown into themselves. Still groggy from waking, but every hair in place, her dark-brown uniform immaculate. Bo Nine, already aboard the shuttle, would never have let her young lieutenant out of her quarters in any other state. “Fleet Captain.” Tisarwat bowed. “Thank you for taking me with you.” Her lilac-colored eyes—a remnant of the old Tisarwat, who had been flighty and frivolous, and had spent what was probably her first paycheck on changing the color of her eyes—were serious. Behind that she was genuinely pleased, and a bit excited, even through the meds
Mercy of Kalr
’s medic had given her. The implants the Lord of the Radch had installed hadn’t worked properly, had, I suspected, done some permanent damage. My hasty removal of those implants had fixed part of that problem, but perhaps had caused others. Add in her powerful—and
entirely understandable—ambivalence about Anaander Mianaai, whom she arguably still shared some identity with, and the result was near-constant emotional distress.

She was feeling all right today, though, from what I could see. “Don’t mention it, Lieutenant.”

“Sir.” She wanted, I saw, to bring something up before we got into the shuttle. “System Governor Giarod is a problem.” System Governor Giarod had been appointed by the same authority that had sent me here to Athoek System. In theory we were allies in the cause of keeping this system safe and stable. But she had passed information to my enemies, just days ago, and that had very nearly gotten me killed. And while it was possible she hadn’t realized it at the time, she surely knew it now. But no word of that from her, no explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment of any kind. Just this edge-of-disrespectful summons to the station. “At some point,” Tisarwat continued, “I think we’re going to need a new system governor.”

“I doubt Omaugh Palace is going to send us a new one anytime soon, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir,” replied Tisarwat. “But
I
could do it. I could be governor. I’d be good at it.”

“No doubt you would, Lieutenant,” I said, evenly. I turned, ready to push myself over the boundary between
Mercy of Kalr
’s artificial gravity and the shuttle’s lack of it. Saw that though Tisarwat had held herself absolutely still at my words, she had been hurt by my response. The pain was dulled by meds, but still there.

Being who she was, she had to know I would oppose her bid to be system governor. I still lived only because Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, thought or hoped that I might be a danger to her enemy. But of course, Anaander Mianaai’s
enemy was herself. I didn’t care particularly which faction of the Lord of the Radch emerged victorious—they were all, as far as I was concerned, the same. I would just as soon see her entirely destroyed. An aim that was well beyond my ability, but she knew me well enough to know that I would do what damage I could, to all of her. She had hijacked the unfortunate Lieutenant Tisarwat in order to be near enough to control that damage as much as she could. Tisarwat herself had said as much to me, not long after we’d arrived at Athoek Station.

And days ago Tisarwat herself had said,
Do you understand, sir, that we’re both doing exactly what she wants? She
being Anaander Mianaai. And I had said that I didn’t care much what the Lord of the Radch wanted.

I turned back. Put my hand on Tisarwat’s shoulder. Said, more gently, “Let’s get through today first, Lieutenant.” Or even through the next few weeks or months or more. Radch space was big. The fighting that was happening in the provincial palaces might reach us here at Athoek tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Or it might burn itself out in the palaces and never arrive here at all. But I wouldn’t bet on that.

We often speak casually of distances within a single solar system—of a station’s being near a moon or a planet, of a gate’s being near a system’s most prominent station—when in fact those distances are measured in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of kilometers. And a system’s outstations could be hundreds of millions, even billions, of kilometers from those gates.

Days before,
Mercy of Kalr
had been truly, dangerously close to Athoek Station, but now it was only near in a relative sense. We would be a whole day on the shuttle.
Mercy of Kalr
could generate its own gates, shortcuts around normal space,
and could have gotten us there much more quickly, but gating close up to a busy station risked colliding with whatever might be in your path as you came out of gate-space. Ship could have done it—had, in fact, quite recently. But for now it was safer to take the shuttle, which was too small to generate its own gravity, let alone make its own gate. Governor Giarod’s problem, whatever it was, would have to wait.

And I had plenty of time to consider what I might find on the station. Both factions of Anaander Mianaai (assuming there were only two, which was perhaps not a safe assumption) surely had agents there. But none of them would be military. Captain Hetnys—the enemy of mine to whom System Governor Giarod had so imprudently passed dangerous information—lay frozen in a suspension pod aboard
Mercy of Kalr
, along with all her officers. Her ship,
Sword of Atagaris
, orbited well away from Athoek itself, its engines off-line, its ancillaries all in storage.
Mercy of Ilves
, the only other military ship in the system besides
Sword of Atagaris
and
Mercy of Kalr
, was inspecting the outstations, and its captain had so far shown no inclination to disobey my order to continue doing so. Station Security and Planetary Security were the only remaining armed threat—but “armed,” for Security, meant stun sticks. Which wasn’t to say Security couldn’t pose a threat—they certainly could, particularly to unarmed citizens. But Security was not a threat to me.

Anyone who’d realized I didn’t support their faction of the Lord of the Radch would have only political means to move against me. Politics it was, then. Perhaps I should take a cue from Lieutenant Tisarwat and invite the head of Station Security to dinner.

Kalr Five was still on Athoek Station, along with Eight and Ten. The station had been overcrowded even before the Undergarden
had been damaged and evacuated, and there weren’t beds enough for everyone. My Kalrs had deployed crates and pallets in the corner of a dead-end corridor. On one of those crates sat Citizen Uran, quietly but determinedly conjugating Raswar verbs. The Ychana on Athoek Station mostly spoke Raswar, and our neighbors on the station were mostly Ychana. It would have been easier if she’d been willing to go to Medical to learn the basics under drugs, but she very vehemently had not wanted to do that. Uran was the only nonmilitary member of my small household, barely sixteen, no relation to me or anyone on
Mercy of Kalr
, but I had found myself responsible for her.

Five stood by, to all appearances absorbed in making sure tea was ready for when Uran’s tutor arrived in the next few minutes, but in fact keeping a close eye on her. A few meters away, Kalr Eight and Kalr Ten scrubbed the corridor floor, already a good deal less scuffed than it had been and noticeably less gray than what lay outside the household’s makeshift boundary. They sang as they worked, quietly, because citizens were sleeping beyond the nearby doorways.

Jasmine grew

In my love’s room

It twined all around her bed

The daughters have fasted and shaved their heads

In a month they will visit the temple again

With roses and camellias

But I will sustain myself

With nothing more than the perfume of jasmine flowers

Until the end of my life

It was an old song, older than Eight and Ten themselves, older, probably, than their grandparents. I remembered when
it was new. On the shuttle, where neither Eight nor Ten could hear me, I sang it with them. Quietly, since Tisarwat was beside me, strapped into a seat and fast asleep. The shuttle’s pilot heard me, though, with a tiny swell of contentment. She had been uneasy about this sudden trip back to the station, and what she’d heard about Governor Giarod’s message. But if I was singing, then things were as they should be.

On
Mercy of Kalr
, Seivarden slept, dreaming. Her ten Amaats slept as well, close in their bunks. Bo decade (under the direction of Bo One, since Tisarwat was in the shuttle with me) was just awake, running thoughtless and ragged through the morning prayer (
The flower of justice is peace. The flower of propriety is beauty in thought and action
…).

Not long after, Medic came off watch, found Lieutenant Ekalu in the tiny, white-walled decade room, staring at her supper. “Are you all right?” Medic asked, and sat down beside her. The Etrepa in attendance set a bowl of tea on the table in front of her.

“I’m fine,” lied Ekalu.

“We’ve served together a long time,” Medic replied. Ekalu, discomfited, did not look up, or say anything in response. “Before you were promoted, you’d have gone to your decade-mates for support, but you can’t go to them anymore. They’re Seivarden’s now.” Before I’d come—before
Mercy of Kalr
’s last captain had been arrested for treason—Ekalu had been Amaat One. “And I suppose you feel like you can’t go to your Etrepas.” The Etrepa attending Ekalu stood impassive in a corner of the room. “Plenty of other lieutenants would, but they didn’t come up out of the decades, did they.” Didn’t add that Ekalu might be worried about undermining her authority with shipmates who’d known her for years as a common soldier. Didn’t add that Ekalu knew firsthand how unequal such
an exchange might be, to demand any sort of comfort or emotional support from the soldiers serving under her. “I daresay you’re the first to do it, to come up out of the decades.”