That poet had been Basnaaid Elming, aged nine and three quarters. It would have been difficult to imagine a more carefully calculated tug at my emotions, knowing as she did that Lieutenant Awn had shared her poetry with me.

When I didn’t reply, Sirix made an ambivalent gesture. “She said you’d recognize it.”

“I do.”

“Please tell me that’s not some beloved classic.”

“You don’t like pickled fish?” I asked, calm and serious. She blinked in uncomfortable surprise. “It is not a classic, but one she knew that I would recognize, as you say. A work with personal associations.”

“I had hoped as much,” Sirix said, wryly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, Fleet Captain, it’s been a long day and I’m late for my own supper.” She bowed and left.

I stood in the antechamber, Eight standing still and curious behind me. “Station,” I said aloud. “How are things in the Gardens right now?”

Station’s reply seemed just the smallest bit delayed. “Fine, Fleet Captain. As always.”

At age nine and three quarters, Basnaaid Elming had been an ambitious poet, without a particularly delicate sense of language, but an abundance of melodrama and overwrought emotion. The bit Sirix had quoted was part of a long narrative of betrayed friendship. It had also been incomplete. The entire couplet was, The touch of sour and cold regret, like pickled fish / ran down her back. Oh, how had she believed the awful lies?

She said you’d recognize it, Sirix had said. “Has Sirix gone home, Station? Or has she gone back to the Gardens?”

“Citizen Sirix is on her way home, Fleet Captain.” No hesitation that time.

I went to my room, took out the gun that was invisible to Station, invisible to any sensors but human eyes. Put the gun under my jacket, where I could reach it quickly. Said to Eight, as I passed her in the antechamber, “Tell Lieutenant Tisarwat and Citizen Uran to finish their supper.”

“Sir,” Eight replied, puzzled but not worried. Good.

Perhaps I was overreacting. Perhaps Basnaaid had merely changed her mind about wanting to never speak to me again. Perhaps her anxiety about the supports under the lake had grown strong enough to overcome her misgivings about me. And she had misremembered her own poetry, or remembered only part of it, meaning to remind me (as though I needed reminding) of my old association with her long-dead sister. Maybe she truly, urgently needed to speak to me now, at an hour when many citizens were at supper, and she truly could not leave work. Didn’t want to be so rude as to summon me via Station, and sent Sirix with her message instead. Surely she knew that I would come if she asked, when she asked.

Surely Sirix knew it, too. And Sirix had been talking to Captain Hetnys.