“Look again, Station. Send someone to look. Captain Hetnys, neither you nor any of your crew or ancillaries will go armed on this station under any circumstances, beginning now. Nor will your ship or any of your crew enter the Undergarden again without my explicit permission. Sword of Atagaris Var and its lieutenant will return to Sword of Atagaris as soon as a shuttle can take them. Do not”—she had opened her mouth to protest—“say a single word to me. You have deliberately concealed vital information from me. You have endangered the lives of residents of this station. Your troops have caused the death of the diplomatic representative of the Presger. I am trying to think of some reason why I shouldn’t shoot you where you stand.” Actually, there were at least three compelling reasons—the two armed ancillaries standing beside Captain Hetnys and the fact that in my haste I had left my own gun behind in my quarters, three levels below this one.

I turned to the proprietor of the tea shop. “Citizen.” It took extra effort not to speak in my flat, ancillary’s voice. “Will you bring me tea? I’ve had no breakfast, and I’m going to have to fast today.” Wordlessly, she turned and went into her shop.

While I waited for tea, Governor Giarod arrived. Took one look at Translator Dlique’s body, at Captain Hetnys standing mute and blood-smeared by Sword of Atagaris’s ancillaries, took a breath, and then said, “Fleet Captain. I can explain.”

I looked at her. Then turned to see the tea shop proprietor set a bowl of tea-gruel on the ground a meter from where I stood. I thanked her, went to pick it up. Saw revulsion on the face of Captain Hetnys and Governor Giarod as I held it with bare, bloody hands and drank from it. “This is how it will be,” I said, after I’d drunk half of the thick tea. “There will be a funeral. Don’t speak to me of keeping this secret, or of panic in the corridors. There will be a funeral, with offerings and suitable tokens, and a period of mourning for every member of Station Administration. The body will be kept in suspension so that when the Presger come for the translator, they may take it and do whatever it is they do with dead bodies.

“For the moment, Sword of Atagaris will tell me the last time it saw this wall free of paint, and then Station will name for me every person who stopped in front of it from then until I saw it just now.” Station might not have been able to see if someone was painting, but it would know where everyone was, and I suspected very few people would have stood right next to this wall, in that window of time, who had not been the painter herself.