It probably would have been a bar, if it wasn’t on a Fleet ship. There were tables, and music—something Three Seagrass dimly remembered had been popular last winter, with a lot of synthesizers in—and dimmer lighting than in the corridors, and lots of strangers, and even some food that wouldn’t have been out of place in a bar: fried noodles, maize kernels soaked in spices and vinegar, cassava chips. What there wasn’t was alcohol.
No getting drunk on your off-shift, apparently. Not on the Fleet’s credit chip, at least.
Everyone was sober, which meant everyone turned to look at her when she walked in. It was fairly gratifying. Three Seagrass could imagine the picture she made: Information envoy in coral-orange, the brightest uniform in this sea of Fleet grey-and-gold, with a kitten on her shoulder. An absurd picture. Possibly a threateningly absurd one.
“Hi,” she said, brightly. “What kind of food is the best here? For me, and also for this—creature.”
There was a resounding silence. Three Seagrass waited for it to shatter. It always did. Curiosity and interest would win every time, if she was just patient enough and expressed sufficient bravado.
Still, the ten seconds of détente were excruciating. Then, a woman who had been sitting alone along the not-a-bar—she was wearing the rank sigils of a cuecuelihui, a specialist officer of some kind—said, “Hot-fried noodle cake. Why have you got a cat, Envoy?” and the whole room relaxed.
“The adjutant gave it to me,” said Three Seagrass, and took the empty seat beside the cuecuelihui. “Do you want it? It seems very friendly. If—sharp, on the ends.”
“No,” said the cuecuelihui, “I definitely don’t want a Kauraanian kitten,” and held out her arms for it.
Three Seagrass felt a sharp pang of recognition: this person knew exactly how to take control of a conversation, combine surprise and confusion and generosity to engender rapid trust. How nice! Someone trained in basic interrogation! Like finding a lost asekreta sibling on a Fleet ship. She coaxed the kitten off her shoulder and let it settle on the cuecuelihui’s knee, where it transformed itself into an ovoid of contently vibrating black fur and claws.
“I’m Three Seagrass,” she said, once freed of animalian encumbrances. “Are you serious about the noodle cake, or are you trying to make the Information spook look bad via capsaicin poisoning?”
“I’m serious about the noodle cake, unless you’re especially sensitive to capsaicin poisoning, Envoy.” The cuecuelihui sketched a bow over her fingertips without dislodging the kitten. “Fourteen Spike, of the scout-gunner Knifepoint’s Ninth Blooming, Tenth Legion. We don’t poison spooks unless necessary.”
Knifepoint’s Ninth Blooming was the ship which had brought back the transmission of hideous alien noises. Maybe Three Seagrass had picked the right recreation area after all, even if there wasn’t any alcohol to be served. She said, “Thank you,” in two formality-modes higher than what she’d been using before, and watched Fourteen Spike figure out why she was being thanked. It didn’t take that long. Definitely a trained negotiator. A spy, even! A Fleet spy, but that hardly mattered.
“You’re using that recording,” said Fourteen Spike. “The one Knifepoint took before we got chased back here. Good fucking luck, Envoy. I speak five languages and that stuff isn’t language.”
Three Seagrass nodded. “I’ve noticed,” she said. “But Information makes a habit of speaking to the unspeakable, so one has to try, no?”
“Better you than us.”
“Five languages. What do you use those for on a scout-gunner?”
There was an art to this. Like playing a amalitzli game against a new opponent, gauging skill and speed, but all with words. It was what Three Seagrass was for. It was—so much easier than thinking about Mahit Dzmare.
Fourteen Spike shrugged, a fractional amused motion, and said, “Talking. We do that. Even in the Fleet. It isn’t reserved for spooks.” She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.
“Oh, I’ve heard that the Third Palm of the Fleet is very good at talking,” Three Seagrass said, matching that shrug exactly—and was surprised, delightedly surprised, when Fourteen Spike’s face went still and quiet and cold.
“Not just the Third Palm,” she said.
“Forgive my ignorance,” Three Seagrass told her, and left her the opening to explain herself. She suspected Fourteen Spike wouldn’t be able to resist. She’d touched some nerve, some place of pride at the core of her, and she’d defend it, and Three Seagrass would know something new.
“We’re the Tenth Legion, not Third Palmers,” said Fourteen Spike. “We don’t need political officers to get our missions done, if you understand me. Envoy.”
Unspoken but obvious: We don’t need Information, either. And more importantly: the Tenth Legion under Nine Hibiscus really, really didn’t like being ordered around by the Third Palm of the Ministry of War.
Which was run by Eleven Laurel, he of the have you ever spoken to him interrogation in the spaceport bar back in Inmost Province. He whom the Emperor Herself was worried about. Fascinating.
“Oh, I think I have an idea,” said Three Seagrass. “Forgive the insinuation. We are, of course, only the Information Ministry, and can’t possibly know everything.” She smiled, deliberately wide-eyed. “I think I’d like that noodle cake. And if you don’t mind—and it isn’t classified, naturally—I’d love to hear more about your missions.”
If she played this right, she could stay here all night being useful, and not have to talk to Mahit at all until the morning. It made her feel guilty and faintly ill—she didn’t avoid problems, she really didn’t—but right now, a not-bar with a useful Fleet contact was just so very much easier. Than everything.
Mahit lay flat on her back in the dark and tried to feel the ship around her, the great engine of it, the hum of live machinery. Her face was a foot from the ceiling. After she’d finished reading The Perilous Frontier! there had really been nothing else to do but go to bed. She’d taken the higher bunk, both out of deference to Three Seagrass if she ever came back to their assigned quarters (it was miserable climbing a bunk-ladder in the dark, everyone knew that), and out of wanting what comfort she could get from enclosure. If she ignored the drop to her right side, the distance to the floor, she could be inside her own sleep-pod on Lsel, safe.
Not that she’d been safe there. But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors. Narrow, confined spaces to sleep in, suspended inside the complex shell of metal that was a Station—or a ship, even a Teixcalaanli one—were correct. They felt right. She reached up and brushed the ceiling with her fingertips—and found them numb still, waking to shimmering prickles when they touched its surface.
Neuropathy. It happened more often now. Or—it surprised her more often now, how it could sneak in even when she wasn’t trying to work with her imago. With either version of her imago. She was going to have to learn to live with it, wasn’t she. As a permanent part of herself.
A sensation of sorrow, from very far off: not even a thought, but an emotional echo. How she herself wanted to cry, and didn’t want to want to, and felt also that Yskandr was—sorry, wished that there was an otherwise life for them, where this wasn’t happening—