“Go back to the palace,” I said. “Tell the Lord of the Radch what you require.” Her eyes widened just slightly, and two tenths of a second later I read disbelief and then frank terror in Kalr Five. “When everything is arranged to your satisfaction, come to the shuttle.”

Three citizens passed, bags in gloved hands, the fragment of conversation I heard telling me they were on their way to the docks, to catch a ship to one of the outer stations. A lift door slid open, obligingly. Of course. Station knew where they were going, they didn’t have to ask.

Station knew where I was going, but it wouldn’t open any doors for me without my giving the most explicit of requests. I turned, stepped quickly into the dockbound lift after them, saw the lift door close on Five standing, horrified, on the black stone pavement of the concourse. The lift moved, the three citizens chattered. I closed my eyes and saw Kalr Five staring at the lift, hyperventilating slightly. She frowned just the smallest amount—possibly no one passing her would notice. Her fingers twitched, summoning Mercy of Kalr’s attention, though with some trepidation, as though maybe she feared it wouldn’t answer.

But of course Mercy of Kalr was already paying attention. “Don’t worry,” said Mercy of Kalr, voice serene and neutral in Five’s ear and mine. “It’s not you Fleet Captain’s angry with. Go ahead. It’ll be all right.”

True enough. It wasn’t Kalr Five I was angry with. I pushed away the data coming from her, received a disorienting flash of Seivarden, asleep, dreaming, and Lieutenant Ekalu, still tense, in the middle of asking one of her Etrepas for tea. Opened my eyes. The citizens in the lift with me laughed at something, I didn’t know or care what, and as the lift door slid open we walked out into the broad lobby of the docks, lined all around with icons of gods that travelers might find useful or comforting. It was sparsely populated for this time of day, except by the entrance to the dock authority office, where a line of ill-tempered ship captains and pilots waited for their turn to complain to the overburdened inspector adjuncts. Two intersystem gates had been disabled in last week’s upheaval, more were likely to be in the near future, and the Lord of the Radch had forbidden any travel in the remaining ones, trapping dozens of ships in the system, with all their cargo and passengers.