And self-serving. It would not surprise me if Fosyf had realized, one way or another, what part her own daughter had played in the episode that had led to Translator Dlique’s death. Hoped, perhaps, that hosting me during the mourning period would be, if not a bribe, at least a gesture toward remorse for what her daughter had done. But it might well be useful. “Raughd could come downwell with us, of course,” I observed. “And stay after. For quite some time.”

“I’ll see to it,” said Station Administrator Celar, with a small, bitter smile that, had I been Raughd Denche, would have made me shiver.

12

Athoek’s sky was a clear cerulean, shot here and there with bright streaks—the visible parts of the planet’s weather control grid. For some hours we’d flown over water, blue-gray and flat, but now mountains loomed, brown and green below, black and gray and streaked with ice at their tops. “Another hour or so, Fleet Captain, Citizens,” said the pilot. We had been met, at the base of the elevator, by two fliers. Between one thing and another—including maneuvering on the part of Kalr Five—Fosyf and Raughd had ended up in the other one, along with Captain Hetnys and the Sword of Atagaris ancillary who accompanied her. Both Captain Hetnys and I were in full mourning—the hair we’d shaved off barely beginning to grow back, no cosmetics but a broad white stripe painted diagonally across our faces. Once full mourning was over, Translator Dlique’s memorial token would join Lieutenant Awn’s plain gold tag on my jacket: a two-centimeter opal, Translator Dlique Zeiat Presger engraved large and clear on the silver setting. They were the only names we knew to use.

In the seat beside me, silent the entire trip so far—an impressive two days of not saying a word beyond the absolutely necessary—sat Sirix Odela. My request that she accompany me would leave the Gardens shorthanded, and theoretically she could have refused. Very little choice was actually involved. I guessed her anger had made her unable to speak without violating the terms of her reeducation, that attempting to do so would make her extremely uncomfortable, and so I did not press the issue, not even when it stretched into the second day.

“Fleet Captain,” Sirix said. Finally. Voice pitched to reach my ear over the noise of the flier, but not carry up front to where the pilot sat. “Why am I here?” Her tone was very, very carefully controlled, a control I didn’t doubt was hard-won.

“You are here,” I said, in an even, reasonable voice, as though I was unaware of the resentment and distress behind the question, “to tell me what Citizen Fosyf isn’t telling me.”