Sirix gestured acknowledgment. “So they’re none of them making the actual wages they’re supposed to. Then there’s food. Ground meal—you had some upwell. They flavor it with twigs and dust that’s left over from the tea making. Which, by the way, Fosyf charges them for. Premium prices. It’s not just any floor sweepings, it’s Daughter of Fishes!” She stopped a moment, to take a few breaths, too dangerously close to saying something openly angry. “Two bowls a day, of the porridge. It’s thin provisions, and if they want anything more they have to buy it.”

“At premium prices,” I guessed.

“Just so. There are generally some garden plots if they want to grow vegetables, but they have to buy seeds and tools and it’s time out from picking tea. They’re houseless, so they don’t have family to give them the things they need, they have to buy them. They can’t any of them get travel permits, so they can’t go very far away to buy anything. They can’t order things because they don’t have any money at all, they’re too heavily in debt to get credit, so Fosyf sells them things—handhelds, access to entertainments, better food, whatever—at whatever price she wants.”

“The Samirend field workers were able to overcome this?”

“Some of the servants in this house are doubtless still paying on the debts of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Or their aunts. The only way out was pulling together into houses and working very, very hard. But the Valskaayans… I suppose I’d say they aren’t very ambitious. And they don’t seem to understand about making houses of their own.”

Valskaayan families didn’t work quite the way Radchaai ones did. But I knew Valskaayans were entirely able to understand the advantage of having something that at least seemed like Radchaai houses, and on and around Valskaay groups of families had set up such arrangements at the first opportunity. “And none of the children ever test into other assignments?” I asked, though I already knew what the answer would be.