She outright laughed. “Well, of course I know who you are. Everyone is talking about you. Well, not to me. I’m not supposed to know you’re here. I’m not supposed to leave the governor’s residence, either. But I don’t like being bored.”
“I think you should tell me who you are, exactly.” But I knew. Or knew as much as I needed to know. This person was one of those humans the Presger had bred to talk to the Radch. Translator for the Presger. Disturbing company, Anaander Mianaai had said of them. And the governor knew she was on the station. So, I would bet, did Captain Hetnys. This was surely behind her so inexplicable fear that the Presger might arrive here suddenly. I wondered what was behind the fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to me.
“Who I am? Exactly?” Translator Dlique frowned. “I’m not… that is, I said just now I was Dlique but I might not be, I might be Zeiat. Or wait, no. No, I’m pretty sure I’m Dlique. I’m pretty sure they told me I was Dlique. Oh! I’m supposed to introduce myself, aren’t I.” She bowed. “Fleet Captain, I’m Dlique, translator for the Presger. Honored to make your acquaintance. Now, I think, you say something like the honor’s all mine and then you offer me tea. I’m bored of tea, though, do you have arrack?”
I sent a quick silent message to Five, and then gestured Translator Dlique to a seat—an improbably comfortable arrangement of boxes and cushions covered with a yellow and pink embroidered blanket. “So,” I said, when I’d sat across from her on my own pile of blanket-covered luggage. “You’re a diplomat, are you?”
All her expressions so far had been almost childlike, seemingly completely unmoderated. Now she showed frank dismay. “I’ve made a hash of it, haven’t I. It was all supposed to be so simple, too. I was on my way home from Tstur Palace after attending the New Year Cast. I went to parties, and smiled, and said, the omens’ fall was very propitious, the coming year will bring Justice and Benefit to all. After a while I thanked the Humans for their hospitality and left. Just like I was supposed to. All very boring, no one who’s anyone has to do it.”
“And then a gate went down, and you were rerouted. And now you can’t get home.” With things the way they were, she’d never make it to Presger space. Not unless she had a ship that could generate its own gate—which the agreement between humans and the Presger had very specifically, very deliberately, forbidden the Presger to bring within Radch space.
Translator Dlique threw up her incongruously gray-gloved hands, a gesture, I thought, of exasperation. Say exactly what we told you to and nothing will go wrong, they said. Well, it all went wrong anyway. And they didn’t say anything about this. You’d think they might have, they said lots of other things. Sit up straight, Dlique. Don’t dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn’t nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique.” She scowled a moment, as though that last one particularly rankled.
“There does seem to be a general agreement that you are, in fact, Dlique,” I said.
“You’d think! But it doesn’t work like that when you aren’t anybody. Oh!” She looked up as Kalr Five entered with two cups and a bottle of arrack. “That’s the good stuff!” She took the cup Five handed her. Peered intently into Five’s face. “Why are you pretending you’re not Human?”
Five, in the grip of an offended horror so intense even she couldn’t have spoken without betraying it, didn’t answer, only turned to give me my own cup. I took it, and said, calmly, “Don’t be rude to my soldiers, Dlique.”
Translator Dlique laughed, as though I’d said something quite funny. “I like you, Fleet Captain. With Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys, it’s all what is your purpose in coming here, Translator, and what are your intentions, Translator, and do you expect us to believe that, Translator. And then it’s You’ll find these rooms very comfortable, Translator; the doors are locked for your own safety, Translator; have some more tea, Translator. Not Dlique, you see?” She took a substantial swallow of arrack. Coughed a little as it went down.
I wondered how long it would be before the governor’s staff realized Translator Dlique was missing. Wondered for only a moment why Station hadn’t raised the alarm. But then I remembered that gun, that no ship or station could see, that had come from the Presger. Translator Dlique might seem scatterbrained and childlike. But she was certainly as dangerous as Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys feared. Likely considerably more so. They had, it seemed, underestimated her. Perhaps by her design. “What about the others on your ship?”
“Others?”
“Crew? Staff? Fellow passengers?”
“It’s a very small ship, Fleet Captain.”
“It must have been crowded, then, with Zeiat and the translator along.”
Translator Dlique grinned. “I knew we’d get on well. Give me supper, will you? I just eat regular food, you know.”
I recalled what she’d said when she’d first arrived. “Did you eat many people before you were grown?”
“No one I wasn’t supposed to! Though,” she added, frowning, “sometimes I kind of wish I had eaten someone I wasn’t supposed to. But it’s too late now. What are you having for supper? Radchaai on stations eat an awful lot of fish, it seems. I’m beginning to be bored of fish. Oh, where’s your bathroom? I have to—
I cut her off. “We don’t really have one. No plumbing here. But we do have a bucket.”
“Now that’s something different! I’m not bored of buckets yet!”
Lieutenant Tisarwat staggered into the room just as Five was clearing away the last supper dish and Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don’t you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they’re programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.” The entire dinner conversation had been like that.
“You raise a good point, Translator,” I replied, and then turned my attention to Lieutenant Tisarwat. It had been more than three hours since I’d thought much about her, and she’d drunk a considerable amount in that time. She swayed, looked at me, glaring. “Raughd Denche,” Tisarwat said to me, raising a hand and pointing somewhere off to the side for emphasis. She did not seem to notice the presence of Translator Dlique, who watched with an expression of slightly frowning curiosity. “Raughd. Denche. Is a horrible person.”
Judging from even the very small bit I’d seen of Citizen Raughd today, I suspected Tisarwat’s assessment was an accurate one.
“Sir,” Tisarwat added. Very belatedly.
“Bo,” I said sharply to the soldier who had come in behind her, who hovered anxiously. “Get your lieutenant out of here before there’s a mess.” Bo took her by the arm, led her unsteadily out. Too late, I feared.
“I don’t think she’s going to make it to the bucket,” said Translator Dlique, solemnly. Almost regretfully.
“I don’t, either,” I said. “But it was worth a try.”