“She didn’t identify herself,” Sword of Atagaris replied, voice still flat and calm. “She looked Ychana, but she couldn’t have been, no Ychana speaks Radchaai with such an accent. To judge by her speech, she might have come from the Radch itself.”

“With perhaps a hint of Notai.” Thinking of that tea set, in fragments in its box, in the Undergarden. That supply locker.

“Perhaps. Captain Hetnys thought she was working for the Lord of the Radch.”

“I will keep your captain close to me, Ship,” I said. “If you don’t do as I say, or if at any time I think you have deceived me, she dies. Don’t doubt me on this.”

“How could I?” replied Sword of Atagaris, bitterness audible even in its flat tone.

I didn’t answer, only turned to pull myself forward, to get out of the way while Seivarden’s Amaats brought a suspension pod for Captain Hetnys. I caught sight of Basnaaid, who had been only a few seats away, who had perhaps heard the entire exchange between me and Sword of Atagaris. “Fleet Captain,” she said, as I pulled myself even with her. “I wanted to say.”

I grabbed a handhold, halted myself. “Horticulturist.”

“I’m glad my sister had a friend like you, and I wish… I feel as though, if you had been there, when it happened, whatever it was, that maybe it would have made a difference, and she’d still be alive.”

Of all the things to say. Of all the things to say now, when I had just threatened to shoot Captain Hetnys only because I knew how her ship felt about her. Of all the times for me to hear such a thing, coming from Lieutenant Awn’s sister’s mouth.

And I had gone beyond my ability to remain silent, to seem as though I was untouched by any of it. “Citizen,” I replied, hearing my own voice go flat. “I was there when it happened, and I was no help to your sister at all. I told you I used another name when I knew her, and that name was Justice of Toren. I was the ship she served on, and at the command of Anaander Mianaai herself, I shot your sister in the head. What happened next ended in my own destruction, and I am all that’s left of that ship. I am not human, and you were right to speak to me as you did, when we first met.” I turned my face away, before Basnaaid would see even the small signs I might give of my feelings at having said it.