The front of Seivarden’s gray jacket was spattered with blood, and one glove was soaked with it. Blood was crusted on her upper lip, and the small clear shell of a corrective sat across the bridge of her nose. Another corrective lay across a bruise forming on one cheek. She stared dully ahead, not looking up at me, or at the Security officer who had admitted me. “Here’s your friend, citizen,” said Security.
Seivarden frowned. Looked up, around the small space. Then she looked more closely at me. “Breq? Aatr’s tits, that’s you. You look…” She blinked. Opened her mouth to finish the sentence, stopped again. Took another, somewhat ragged breath. “Different,” she concluded. “Really, really different.”
“I only bought clothes. What happened to you?”
“There was a fight,” said Seivarden.
“Just happened on its own, did it?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I was assigned a place to sleep, but there was already someone living there. I tried to talk to her but I could hardly understand her.”
“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked.
She looked down at the floor. “I managed.” Looked up again, at me, at the Security officer beside me. “But I wasn’t going to be able to keep managing.”
“You should have come to us, citizen,” said Security. “Now you’ve got a warning on your record. Not something you want.”
“And her opponent?” I asked.
Security made a negating gesture. It wasn’t something I was supposed to ask.
“I’m not managing very well on my own, am I,” said Seivarden, miserably.
Heedless of Skaaiat Awer’s disapproval, I bought Seivarden new gloves and jacket, dark green, still the sort of thing that was extruded on demand, but at least it fit better, and the higher quality was obvious. The gray ones were past laundering, and I knew the supply office wouldn’t issue more clothes so soon. When Seivarden had put them on, and sent the old ones for recycling, I said, “Have you eaten? I was planning to offer you supper when Station told me where you were.” She’d washed her face, and now looked more or less reputable, give or take the bruising under the corrective on her cheek.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. A flicker of something—regret? Annoyance? I couldn’t quite tell—flashed across her face. She crossed her arms and quickly uncrossed them again, a gesture I hadn’t seen in months.
“Can I offer you tea, then, while I eat?”
“I would love tea,” she said with emphatic sincerity. I remembered that she had no money, had refused to let me give her any. All that tea we had carried with us was in my luggage, she had taken none of it with her when we’d parted the night before. And tea, of course, was an extra. A luxury. Which wasn’t really a luxury. Not by Seivarden’s standards, anyway. Likely not by any Radchaai’s standards.
We found a tea shop, and I bought something rolled in a sheet of algae, and some fruit and tea, and we took a table in a corner. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” I asked. “Fruit?”
She feigned lack of interest in the fruit, and then took a piece. “I hope you had a better day than I did.”
“Probably.” I waited a moment, to see if she wanted to talk about what had happened, but she said nothing, just waited for me to continue. “I went to the temple this morning. And ran into some ship’s captain who stared quite rudely and then sent one of her soldiers after me to invite me to tea.”
“One of her soldiers.” Seivarden realized her arms were crossed, uncrossed them, picked up her tea cup, set it down again. “Ancillary?”
“Human. I’m pretty sure.”
Seivarden lifted an eyebrow briefly. “You shouldn’t go. She should have invited you herself. You didn’t say yes, did you?”
“I didn’t say no.” Three Radchaai entered the tea shop, laughing. All wore the dark blue of dock authority. One of them was Daos Ceit, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat’s assistant. She didn’t seem to notice me. “I don’t think the invitation was on my account. I think she wants me to introduce her to you.”
“But…” She frowned. Looked at the bowl of tea in one green-gloved hand. Brushed the front of the new jacket with the other. “What’s her name?”
“Vel Osck.”
“Osck. Never heard of them.” She took another drink of tea. Daos Ceit and her friends bought tea and pastries, sat at a table on the other side of the room, talking animatedly. “Why would she want to meet me?”
I raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “You’re the one who believes any unlikely event is a message from God,” I pointed out. “You’re lost for a thousand years, found by accident, disappear again, and then turn up at a palace with a rich foreigner. And you’re surprised when that gets attention.” She made an ambiguous gesture. “Absent Vendaai as a functioning house, you need to establish yourself somehow.”
She looked so dismayed, just for the shortest instant, that I thought my words had offended her in some way. But then she seemed to recover herself. “If Captain Vel wanted my good will, or cared at all about my opinion, she made a bad start by insulting you.” Her old arrogance lurked behind those words, a startling difference from her barely suppressed dejection up to now.