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“I’m going to do this.”

Ship said, in my ear, “No, you aren’t. Medic is right. You need another day or two. And if you fall, you’ll only injure yourself further. And no, you can’t even crawl very far right now.”

Not very like Ship, that, and I almost said so, but realized that, angry and frustrated as I was, it wouldn’t come out well. Instead I said again, “I’m going to do this.” But I couldn’t even make it to the door.

10

I needed to meet with all my lieutenants, but first I met with Tisarwat alone. “
Sphene
talked to me,” she said, standing at the foot of my bed. No one else was in the room, not even Kalr Five or Seivarden. “What it said didn’t entirely surprise me.”

No, of course it hadn’t. “Were you going to tell me about this at some point, Lieutenant?”

“I didn’t know!” Distressed. Embarrassed. Hating herself. “That is, she…” Tisarwat stopped. Obviously upset. “The tyrant had thought about using the Ghost System for a base, and thought about building ships there. She’s even thought a great deal about… sequestering some AI cores to build them around. Just in case. Ultimately she decided it was too risky to work. Too easy for her other side to find and maybe even co-opt. But since it had occurred to her, she knew that it was likely to occur to any other part of her. And that old slave trade, sir, it did suggest possibilities, if you wanted to build ancillary-crewed ships. Which
she
didn’t, but the other one did. So she kept a watch out. After a while, though, it seemed
obvious that the rest of her had come to the conclusion that convenient as it seemed, the Ghost System wasn’t the best place to build ships.”

“And
Sphene
’s idea about AI cores hidden in the Undergarden?”

“Again, sir, it’s a pretty obviously convenient place to hide things. She looked, several times, and found nothing. The other one certainly looked as well. It’s not a very good place at all with the Ychana there, but they weren’t there to begin with. And let’s say that at some point the other one did hide something there—once the Ychana moved in, getting them out was going to be difficult.”

“So why didn’t she stop that from happening?”

“Nobody realized until they were fairly well entrenched. At which point, forcing them out would have caused problems with station residents—particularly a lot of the Xhai, sir—and complicated station housing arrangements. At the same time, the fact that people were living there, the fact that her opponent had already searched several times and found nothing—that might mean it was a very good place to hide things. As long as she never made it seem like she cared about what happened there. As long as nobody ever thought to do any work there.”

As long as station officials opposed any work there. “So that explains Eminence Ifian. But what about the rest? Station Administrator Celar was happy enough to authorize the work, once the necessity of it was pointed out. Security was content to go along with her. Governor Giarod seemed to have no real opinion until Ifian made her stand. If keeping searchers out of the Undergarden was so important, if there is something there, why only the eminence to stand guard?”

“Well, sir.” Tisarwat sounded just the least bit pained, felt, I saw, a stinging sense of shame. “She’s not stupid. Not any of her. No part of her was going to leave someplace like the Undergarden—or the Ghost System—unwatched. So there was a good deal of… of maneuvering and covert conflict over appointments to Athoek System. All the while trying to pretend that really, she didn’t care what happened here. They’d both be trying to place strong pieces here, and both trying to undermine or block each other’s choices. The result is, well, what we have. And I’d have told you all this before, sir, except that I was sure—she was sure—that none of it was relevant, that there was nothing here and the maneuvering over Athoek was a distraction. That it still is a distraction from the main business, which she thinks will mostly play itself out in the palaces. You’re here because, well, for one thing, you wouldn’t have agreed to go anywhere else. And for another, like I told you a while ago, she’s very angry with you. It’s possible the other one will be angry enough to come after you, and leave her position weakened somewhere else. Which, considering recent events, does appear to be the case. I’m sure Omaugh is considering a move against Tstur this very moment.”

“So Fleet Captain Uemi is likely to have lit out for Tstur on receiving our message. And taken the Hrad fleet with her. She won’t have sent us any help.”

“That seems likely, sir.” She stood, awkwardly silent, at the end of the bed. Wanting to say something to me, afraid to say it. Then, finally, “Sir, we have to go back. Ekalu thinks we shouldn’t. She thinks we should go to the Ghost System and drop off the
Sphene
ancillary, and maybe Translator Zeiat, and go back to Omaugh, on the theory that there’s nowhere else to go and authorities there will be friendly toward us.
Amaat One agrees with her.” Amaat One was acting lieutenant, while Seivarden was in Medical.

“We have to go back to Athoek,” I agreed. “But before we do, I want to know how things stand there. It’s interesting to me that Station doesn’t seem to have alerted anyone about the Ychana moving into the Undergarden until there wasn’t really anything anyone could do about it. I thought it must have just been petulant. But if there’s something hidden there it can’t talk about, perhaps it was doing something more.”

“Maybe,” Tisarwat said, considering. “Though, honestly, this station does tend toward petulance.”

“Can you blame it?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “So, sir. About going back.” I gestured to her to continue. “There’s an old Athoeki communications relay in the Ghost System, right at the mouth of the gate. They always meant to expand there, but it never seemed to work out.” I wondered, now, how much that had to do with
Sphene
’s interference. “
Sphene
says it still works, and all the official news channels come through it. If that’s the case, we ought to be able to use it to talk to Station. If I can… I’m aware of some ways to access official relays. I should be able to make anything we send look like officially approved messages, or routine requests for routine data. Approved messages coming from an official, well-known relay won’t trigger any alarms.”

“Not even a relay that’s never sent official messages to Athoek until now?”

“If they notice that, sir, that will surely raise an alarm. But someone has to
notice
that. Station will notice immediately, but to anyone else it’ll probably just look like one more authorized incoming message. And maybe it won’t want or be able to answer us, but we can at least try. We can probably get
something out of the official news, no matter what. And it’ll give us time to finish repairs, and you time to recover some, sir, begging your indulgence, while we decide what to do, once we have that information.” That last coming out in an anxious rush. Anxious at referring to my injury. At bringing up the topic of what I might decide to do, when there might well be nothing that we
could
do. “But, sir, Citizen Uran… Uran has a good head on her shoulders, but it… and Citizen Basnaaid…” The strength of her emotions for Citizen Basnaaid rendered her inarticulate for a moment. “Sir, do you remember, back at Omaugh.” A fresh wave of distress and self-hatred.
Back at Omaugh
she’d still been Anaander Mianaai, and anything she thought I might remember was also Anaander’s memory. “Do you remember, you said that nothing she could do to you now could possibly be worse than what she’d already done? When you came to Omaugh there was nothing left for you to lose. But that isn’t true anymore. I don’t… I don’t really even think it was true when you said it. But it’s less true now.”

“You mean,” I said, “that the tyrant is sure to use Basnaaid or Uran against me if she can.” Queter had wanted me to take Uran with me back to the station, away from the tea plantations, so that she would be safe. Now, it seemed, Queter was likely safer than Uran.

“I wish they had come with us.” Still standing straight at the foot of my bed. Struggling hard to keep herself still, her face impassive. “I know we asked them and they said no, but if we’d had enough warning we could have
made
them come. And then we could just leave and not come back.”

“Leave everyone?” I asked. “Our neighbors in the Undergarden? The fieldworkers downwell? Your friends?” Tisarwat had made a fair few friends, some of them just for political reasons, but not all. “Citizen Piat? Even petulant Station?”

She drew in a shaking breath and then cried, “How can this be happening? How can there be any benefit at all? She tells herself that, you know, that all of it is ultimately for the benefit of humanity, that everyone has their place, their part of the plan, and sometimes some individuals just have to suffer for that greater benefit. But it’s easy to tell yourself that, isn’t it, when you’re never the one on the receiving end. Why does it have to be
us
?”

I didn’t reply. The question was an old one, and she knew its various conventional answers as well as I did.

“No,” she said, after thirty-two seconds of tense and miserable silence. “No, we can’t leave, can we.”

“No. We can’t.”

“As much as you’ve been through,” she said, “far more than I have. And I’m the one who wants to run away.”

“I thought about it,” I admitted.

“Did you?” She seemed unsure of how to feel about that, an odd mix of relief and disappointment.

“Yes.” And with Basnaaid and Uran aboard I might have done it. “So,” I said. “Work out exactly what you need to make this relay project happen.”

“Already have, sir.” Self-loathing. Pride. Fear. Worry. “I don’t need much of anything, I can do it right from here. If I can do it. I need Ship’s help, though. If I still had… I mean, Ship can help me.”

If she’d still had the implants that I’d removed, that had made her into part of Anaander Mianaai, she meant. “Good. Then I want you, Ekalu, and Amaat One to meet me here in fifteen minutes, and you can lay out your plan for them. And then”—this more for Ship’s, and Medic’s, benefit than Tisarwat’s—“I’m going back to my own quarters.” Whether on crutches, or crawling, or carried by Kalrs was immaterial.

Sphene
was in my quarters, standing by the counter, staring at fragments of that beautiful gold-and-glass tea set spread out on the counter’s surface. I had managed to use the crutches this time, managed the trip at least partly under my own power, though I wouldn’t have made it without Five and Twelve.
Sphene
looked up as we came in. Nodded to Five, and said, “Cousin,” to me.

“Cousin,” I replied, and with Five’s support managed to get to a bench. “How does it look?” I asked, as Five placed cushions around me. “The tea set, I mean. Before you come out with something sarcastic.”

“Now you’ve spoiled my fun, Cousin,” said
Sphene
, mildly, still staring at the fragments of colored glass on the counter. “I am not at all convinced this will actually go back together in any sort of meaningful way.” It shifted slightly as Five came over to the counter, to allow Five access to the tea-making things.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Leaned back onto the cushions Five had placed.

“Well,” replied
Sphene
, still not looking at me, “it’s just a tea set. And I did sell it away, and I knew Captain Hetnys was a fool. She wouldn’t have done business with me otherwise.” It and Five looked oddly companionable, side by side in front of the counter. It swept the pieces back into the box, which it then closed and placed on the counter. Took two rose glass bowls of tea from Five, and came over to sit beside me on the bench. “You need to be more careful, Cousin. You’re running out of pieces of yourself to lose.”

“And you said I’d spoiled your fun.” I took one of the bowls of tea. Drank from it.

“I’m really not having much fun,”
Sphene
said, equably
enough, but of course it was an ancillary. “I don’t like being cut off from myself like this.” Information could only travel through the regular intersystem gates because they were held constantly open. We were isolated in our own tiny bubble of real space, and it couldn’t contact the rest of itself, the ship that was hiding in the Ghost System. “But unpleasant as it is, I know the rest of me is out there, somewhere.”

“Yes,” I agreed, and took another drink of tea. “How’s your game with the translator going?”
Sphene
and Translator Zeiat had spent the last two days in the decade room, playing a game of counters. Or at least it had begun as a standard game of counters. By now it also involved fish-shaped cakes, the fragments of two empty eggshells, and a day-old bowl of tea, which they every now and then dropped a glass counter into. They appeared to be making it up as they went.

“The game is going pretty well,”
Sphene
replied, and drank some of its own tea. “She’s two eggs ahead of me, but I’ve got way more hearts.” Another sip of tea. “In the game, I mean. Outside the game I still have more. Probably. I’m not sure I’d like to speculate about the translator’s insides, now I think of it. Or what might be in her luggage.”

“I wouldn’t, either.” Five finished what she was doing at the counter and left the room. I could have reached to find out what errand she was on, but didn’t. “How much information comes through the Ghost Gate?”

“A fair amount,” replied
Sphene
. “I get the official broadcasts, of course. Announcements. The censored news, and all the popular public entertainments. My favorites are the historicals about wandering, grief-mad ships.” Sarcasm, surely, though no trace of it reached
Sphene
’s voice.

“You won’t want to miss the latest one, then,” I said. “It’s about a grief-mad ship who abducts an unremarkable miner
pilot because it thinks she’s its long-dead captain. Adventures and hilarious yet heart-tugging misunderstandings ensue.”

“I only wish I had missed that one,” replied
Sphene
, evenly.

“It had some good songs.”