“And if they were otherwise?” Governor Giarod was no fool. “If some other part of my lord ordered you to take one side or another, or use this system in some way for her advantage?” I didn’t reply. “No matter what you do it’s sedition, rebellion, so you may as well do as you like, is that it?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “But I really do have orders.”

She shook her head, as though clearing away some obstruction. “But what else is there to do? You don’t think, do you, that there’s been any… outside interference?”

The question was depressingly familiar. “The Presger would not require subterfuge in order to destroy the Radch. And there is the treaty, which I’m given to understand they take very seriously.”

“They don’t use words, do they? They’re completely alien. How could the word treaty mean anything to them? How could any agreement mean anything?”

“Are the Presger nearby? A potential threat?”

A tiny frown. The question troubled her for some reason. Perhaps because the very idea of the Presger nearby was frightening. “They pass through Prid Presger, sometimes, on their way to Tstur Palace.” Prid Presger was a few gates from here, nearby only in the sense that it would take a month or so to get here from there, instead of a year or more. “By agreement, they can only travel by gate, within the Radch. But…”

“The treaty isn’t with the Radch,” I pointed out. “It’s with all humans.” Governor Giarod looked puzzled at that—to most Radchaai, human was who they were, and everyone else was… something other. “I mean to say, whether Anaander Mianaai exists at all does not affect it. It is still in force.” Still, for more than a thousand years before the treaty, Presger had seized human ships. Boarded human stations. Dismantled them—and their crews, passengers, and residents. Apparently for amusement. No one had any way of preventing it. They had ceased only because of the treaty. And the thought of them still sent a shiver down a good many human backs. Including, it seemed, Governor Giarod’s. “Unless you have some specific reason, I don’t think we should worry about them just now.”

“No, of course, you’re right.” But the governor still seemed troubled.

“We produce enough food for the whole system?”

“Certainly. Though we do import some luxuries—we don’t make much arrack, and various other things. We import some number of medical supplies. That could be a problem.”

“You don’t make correctives here?”

“Not many. Not all kinds.”