“Oh, well,” she said, subsiding just a bit, her posture relaxing, “if that’s the problem. I’ve known Piat since we were both little and she’s always been… erratic. Oversensitive. She feels inadequate, you know, because her mother is station administrator and so beautiful on top of it. There she is, assigned to a perfectly fine job, but she can’t stop thinking it’s nothing compared to her mother. She takes everything too hard, and I admit sometimes I lose patience because of it.” She sighed, the very image of compassionate regret, even penitence. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s accused me of mistreating her, just to hurt me.”

“Such a fucking bore,” I quoted. “Funny how the last time you lost patience with her was when everyone was laughing at her joke and she was the center of attention. Rather than you.”

“I’m sure Tisarwat meant well, telling you about that, but she just didn’t understand what…” Her voice faltered, her face took on a pained expression. “She couldn’t… Piat couldn’t have accused me of painting those words on the wall? It would be just the sort of horrible thing she’d think was funny, when she was in one of her moods.”

“She hasn’t accused you of anything,” I said, my voice still cold. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

Raughd froze, completely still for an instant, not even breathing. Then she said, with a coldness that nearly matched my own, “Did you accept my mother’s invitation just so you could come here and attack me? Obviously, you’ve come here with some sort of agenda. You turn up out of nowhere, produce some ridiculous order forbidding travel in the gates so the tea can’t get out of the system. I can’t see it as anything less than an attack on my house, and I will not stand for that! I’m going to speak to my mother about this!”

“You do that,” I said. Still calm. “Be sure to explain to her how that paint got on your gloves. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knows about it and invited me down here in the hope that I could be dissuaded from pressing the issue.” And I had accepted knowing that. And I had wanted to know what it was like, downwell. What Sirix had been so angry about.

Raughd turned and left the room without another word.

The morning sky was pale blue streaked with the silver traces of the weather grid, and here and there a wisp of cloud. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the mountain so the houses and the lake, the trees, were still in shadow. Sirix waited for me, at the water’s edge. “Thank you for the wake-up call, Fleet Captain,” she said, with an ironic bow of her head. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in.”