We met no one as we went through to the back of the house, to the kitchen, as large as Fosyf’s, but where that kitchen was all gleaming pans and ranks of freezers and suspension cabinets, this one was half empty: a few burners, a sink. A rumpled pile of clothes in one corner, faded and stained, doubtless the remnant of what had been provided as the field workers’ basic clothing allowance, picked over, altered to suit. A row of barrels against one wall that I strongly suspected were filled with something fermenting. Half a dozen people sat around a table drinking beer. The lookout gestured me into the room, and then left without a word.
One of the people at the table was the elder who had spoken to me, the day we’d arrived. Who’d changed the choice of song, when she’d seen that we were in mourning. “Good evening, Grandfather,” I said to her, and bowed. Because of my long familiarity with Valskaay, I was fairly sure my choice of gender—required by the language I was speaking—was correct.
She looked at me for ten seconds, and then took a drink of her beer. Everyone else stared fixedly away from me—at the table, at the floor, at a distant wall. “What do you want, Radchaai?” she asked finally. Even though I was quite sure she knew why I was here.
“I was hoping to speak to Queter, Grandfather, if you please.” Grandfather said nothing in response, not immediately, but then she turned to the person at her left. “Niece, ask Queter if she’ll join us.” Niece hesitated, looked as though she would open her mouth to protest, decided otherwise, though clearly she was not happy with her choice. She rose, and left the kitchen without a word to me.
Grandfather gestured to the vacant chair. “Sit, Soldier.” I sat. Still, no one else at the table would look directly at me. I suspected that if Grandfather had told them to leave, they would have gladly fled the room. “From your accent, soldier,” said Grandfather, “you learned your Delsig in Vestris Cor.”
“I did,” I agreed. “I spent quite some time there. And in Surimto District.”
“I’m from Eph,” Grandfather said, pleasantly, as though this were nothing more than a social call. “I never was in Vestris Cor. Or Surimto, either. I imagine it’s very different these days, now you Radchaai are running things.”
“In some ways, I’m sure,” I replied. “I haven’t been there in quite some time myself.” Queter might have fled, or might refuse to come. My coming here, approaching like this, had been a gamble.
“How many Valskaayans did you kill while you were there, Radchaai?” Not Grandfather, but one of the other people around the table, one whose anger and resentment had built beyond the ability of her fear of me to contain it.
“Quite a few,” I replied, calmly. “But I am not here to kill anyone. I am alone and unarmed.” I held my gloved hands out, over the table, palms up.
“Just a social call, then?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm.
“Sadly, no,” I replied.
Grandfather spoke then, trying to steer the conversation away from such dangerous territory. “I think you’re too young to have been in the annexation, child.”
I ducked my head, a small, respectful bow. “I’m older than I seem, Grandfather.” Far, far older. But there was no way for anyone here to know that.
“You’re very polite,” said Grandfather, “I’ll give you that.”
“My mother said,” observed the angry person, “that the soldiers who killed her family were also very polite.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, into the tense silence that greeted her observation. “I know that even if I could tell you for certain that it wasn’t me, that wouldn’t help.”
“It wasn’t you,” she said. “It wasn’t in Surimto. But you’re right, it doesn’t help.” She shoved her chair back, looked at Grandfather. “Excuse me,” she said. “Things to do.” Grandfather gestured permission to go, and she left. As she went out the kitchen door, someone else came in. She was in her twenties, one of the people I’d seen under the arbor the day we’d arrived. The lines of her face suggested she was genetically related to Grandfather, though her skin was darker. Her eyes and her tightly curled hair that she’d twisted and bound with a bright green scarf were lighter. And by the set of her shoulders, and the frozen silence that descended when she’d entered, she was who I’d come to see.
I rose. “Miss Queter,” I said, and bowed. She said nothing, did not move. “I want to thank you for deciding not to kill me.” Silence, still, from Grandfather, from the others at the table. I wondered if the hallways outside were full of eavesdroppers, or if everyone else had fled, hiding anywhere that might be safe until I left. “Will you sit?” She didn’t answer.
“Sit, Queter,” said Grandfather.
“I won’t,” said Queter, and folded her arms and stared at me. “I could have killed you, Radchaai. You’d probably have deserved it, but Raughd deserved it more.”
I gestured resignation and reseated myself. “She threatened your sister, I take it?” An incredulous look told me my mistake. “Your brother. Is he all right?”
She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head. “The rescuer of the helpless.” Her voice was acid.
“Queter,” warned Grandfather.
I raised a gloved hand, palm out—the gesture would have been rude, to most Radchaai, but meant something else to a Valskaayan. Hold. Be calm. “It’s all right, Grandfather. I know justice when I hear it.” A small, incredulous noise from one of the others sitting at the table, quickly silenced. Everyone pretended not to have noticed it. “Citizen Raughd had a taste for tormenting your brother. She’s quite shrewd in some ways. She knew what lengths you’d go to, to protect him. She also knew that you have some technical ability. That if she managed to filch some explosives from a construction site and provided you with the instructions for how to use them, you’d be able to follow them. She didn’t, I suspect, realize that you might come up with ways to improve their use. The scrap metal was your idea, wasn’t it?” I had no evidence for that, beyond the repeated signs that Raughd rarely thought things through. Queter’s expression didn’t change. “And she didn’t realize you might decide to use them on her instead of me.”
Head still tilted, expression still sardonic, she said, “Don’t you want to know how I did it?”
I smiled. “Most esteemed Queter. For nearly all of my life I have been among people who were very firmly convinced that the universe would be the better for my absence. I doubt very much that you have any surprises for me. Still, it was well done, and if your timing hadn’t been just that smallest bit off, you would have succeeded. Your talents are wasted here.”
“Oh, of course they are.” Her tone became, if possible, even more cutting than before. “There’s no one else here but superstitious savages.” The last words in Radchaai.
“The information you would need to make something like that is not freely available,” I said. “If you’d gone looking for it you would have been denied access, and possibly had Planetary Security looking closely at you. If you attended school here you’d have learned to recite passages of scripture, and some cleaned-up history, and very little more. Raughd herself likely knew no more than that explosives can kill people. You worked the details out yourself.” Had, perhaps, been pondering the question long before Raughd made her move. “Sorting tea leaves and fixing the machines in the manufactory! You must have been bored beyond belief. If you’d ever taken the aptitudes, the assigners would have been sure to send you somewhere your talents were better occupied, and you’d have had no time or opportunity to dream up trouble.” Queter’s lips tightened, and she drew breath as though to reply. “And,” I forestalled her, “you would not have been here to protect your brother.” I gestured, acknowledging the irony of such things.