“And if the Valskaayans decide to riot? Or, gods forbid, the Ychana just outside your door here?”

Honestly, some moments I despaired of Governor Giarod. “I will not order soldiers to fire on citizens.” Would, in fact, explicitly order them not to. “People don’t riot for no reason. And if you’re finding you have to deal with the Ychana carefully now, it’s because of how they’ve been treated in the past.”

“I should look from their point of view, should I?” she asked, eyebrow raised, voice just the slightest bit sardonic.

“You should,” I agreed. “Your only other choice is rounding them all up and either reeducating or killing every one of them.” The first was beyond the resources of Station Security. And I had already said I would not help with the second.

She grimaced in horror and disgust. “What do you take me for, Fleet Captain? Why would you think anyone here would even consider such a thing?”

“I am older than I look,” I replied. “I have been in the middle of more than one annexation. I have seen people do things that a month or a year before they would have sworn they would never, ever do.” Lieutenant Tisarwat sat at supper with her companions: the grandniece of the chief of Station Security, the young third cousin of a tea grower—not Fosyf, but one of those whose tea Fosyf had condescendingly declared “acceptable.” Skaaiat Awer’s cousin. And Citizen Piat. Tisarwat complained of my stern, unbendable nature, impervious to any appeal. Basnaaid, of course, wasn’t there. She didn’t move in this social circle, and I had, after all, ordered Tisarwat away from her.

System Governor Giarod spoke across the table in the dining room in my Undergarden quarters. “Why, Fleet Captain, do you think I would be one of those people?”

“Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor,” I replied. “It’s best to learn that before you do something you’ll have trouble living with.” Best to learn it, really, before anyone—perhaps dozens of anyones—died to teach it to you.

But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience.

19

Seivarden understood my instructions about transportee storage immediately. “You don’t seriously think,” she said, aloud, sitting on the edge of her bunk in her quarters, her voice sounding in my ear where I sat in the Undergarden, “that someone has managed to steal bodies.” She paused. “Why would anyone do that? And how could they manage it? I mean, during an annexation”—she gestured, half dismissing, half warding—“all sorts of things happen. If you told me someone was selling to slavers that way, at a time like that, I wouldn’t be that surprised.”