Kalr was captain’s decade, my own. There were ten soldiers in all the other decades on Mercy of Kalr, but there were twenty in Kalr. They slept on a staggered schedule, because also unlike the other decades, Kalr was always on duty, a last remnant of the days when Ship had been crewed by ancillary bodies, when its soldiers had been fragments of itself and not dozens of individual human beings. The Kalrs who had awakened just now, as I had, were assembled in the soldiers’ mess, white-walled, plain, just big enough for ten to eat and space to stack the dishes. They stood, each by their dish of skel, a fast-growing, slimy, dark-green plant that contained any nutrients a human body needed. The taste took some getting used to if you hadn’t grown up on it. A lot of Radchaai had in fact grown up on it.

The Kalrs in the soldiers’ mess began the morning prayer in ragged unison. The flower of justice is peace. Within a word or two they settled into step, the words falling into familiar rhythm. The flower of propriety is beauty in thought and action.

Medic—she had a name, and a nominal rank of lieutenant, but was never addressed by either—was attached to Kalr, but was not Kalr Lieutenant. She was, simply, Medic. She could be—had been, would be in another hour—ordered to stand a watch, and two Kalrs would stand that watch with her. She was the only one of Captain Vel’s officers remaining. She would have been difficult to replace, of course, but also her involvement in the previous week’s events had been minimal.

She was tall and spare, light-skinned by Radchaai standards, hair enough lighter than brown to be slightly odd, but not the sort of striking shade that might have been artificial. She frowned habitually, though she wasn’t ill-tempered. She was seventy-six years old and looked much the same as she had in her thirties, and would until she was past a hundred and fifty. Her mother had been a doctor, and her mother before that, and her mother before that. She was, just now, extremely angry with me.

She’d woken determined to confront me in the short time before she went on watch, had said the morning prayer in a rushed mutter as soon as she’d rolled out of bed. The flower of benefit is Amaat whole and entire. I had turned my attention away from Kalr in the soldiers’ mess, but I couldn’t hear the first lines without hearing the rest. I am the sword of justice… Now Medic stood silent and tense by her own seat in the decade room, where the officers ate.