Ultimately, Sword of Atagaris replied that it had found nothing of interest, and subsequently destroyed the locker.

Citizen Fosyf’s house was the largest of three buildings, a long, balconied two-storied structure of polished stone, flecks of black and gray and here and there patches of blue and green that gleamed as the light changed. It sat beside a wide, clear lake with stony shores, and a weathered wooden dock, with a small, graceful boat moored alongside, white sails furled. Mountains loomed around, and moss and trees edged the lakeshore. The actual tea plantation—I’d seen it as we flew in, wavering strips of velvet-looking green running across the hillsides and around outcrops of black stone—was hidden behind a ridge. The air was 20.8 degrees C, the breeze light and pleasant and smelling of leaves and cold water.

“Here we are, Fleet Captain!” Citizen Fosyf called as she climbed out of her flier. “Peace and quiet. Under other circumstances I’d suggest fishing in the lake. Boating. Climbing if that’s the sort of thing you like. But even just staying in is nice, here. There’s a separate bathhouse behind the main building, just across from where you’ll be staying. A big tub with seating for at least a dozen, plenty of hot water. It’s a Xhai thing. Barbarically luxurious.”

Raughd had come up beside her mother. “Drinks in the bathhouse! There’s nothing like it after a long night.” She grinned.

“Raughd can manage to find long nights even here,” observed Fosyf pleasantly as Captain Hetnys and her Sword of Atagaris ancillary approached. “Ah, to be young again! But come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”

The patches of blue-green in the building stone flared and died away as our angle on it changed. Around the other side of the house was a broad stretch of flat, gray stones, shaded by two large trees and thickly grown with moss. To the left of that stretched the ellipse of a low building, the nearer long side of wood, the nearer end and, presumably, the farther long side of glass. “The bath,” said Fosyf, with a gesture. On the other side of the mossy stone, up against a road that ran over the ridge and down to the house by the lake, sat another black and blue-green stone building, two-storied, but smaller than the main house and not balconied as it was. The whole side facing us was taken up with a terrace under a leafy, vine-tangled arbor, where a group of people stood waiting for us. Most of them wore shirts and trousers, or skirts that looked as though they’d been painstakingly constructed from cut-apart trousers, the fabric faded and worn, once-bright blues and greens and reds. None of them wore gloves.