Jen Shinnan visited Kould Ves quite frequently, often merely to visit friends, or shop. All the Tanmind in the upper city did, and had done so before the annexation. “Has there been some unreported difficulty?” asked Lieutenant Awn, stiff, angry. Utterly polite.
“Well,” said Jen Taa. “In fact, Lieutenant, I’ve been wanting to mention. We’ve been here a few days, and my niece seems to have had a bit of trouble in the lower city. I told her it was better not to go, but you know how teenagers are when you tell them not to do something.”
“What sort of trouble?” asked Lieutenant Awn.
“Oh,” said Jen Shinnan, “you know the sort of thing. Rude words, threats—empty, no doubt, and of course nothing next to what things will be like in a week or two, but the child was quite shaken.”
The child in question had spent the past two afternoons staring at the Fore-Temple water and sighing. I had spoken to her once and she had turned her head away without answering. After that I had left her alone. No one had troubled her. No problems that I saw, I messaged Lieutenant Awn.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Lieutenant Awn, silently acknowledging my information with a twitch of her fingers.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Jen Shinnan. “I know we can count on you.”
“You think it’s funny.” Lieutenant Awn tried to relax her too-tight jaw. I could tell from the increasing tension of her facial muscles that without intervention she would soon have a headache.
Lieutenant Skaaiat, walking beside her, laughed outright. “It’s pure comedy. Forgive me, my dear, but the angrier you get the more painstakingly correct your speech becomes, and the more Jen Shinnan mistakes you.”
“Surely not. Surely she’s asked about me.”
“You’re still angry. Worse,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat, hooking her arm around Lieutenant Awn’s, “you’re angry with me. I’m sorry. And she has asked. Very obliquely, just interested in you, only natural, of course.”
“And you answered,” suggested Lieutenant Awn, “equally obliquely.”
I walked behind them, alongside the Seven Issa who had stood with me in Jen Shinnan’s dining room. Directly ahead, along the street and across the Fore-Temple water, I could see myself where I stood in the plaza.
Lieutenant Skaaiat said, “I said nothing untrue. I told her that lieutenants on ships with ancillaries tended to be from old, high-ranking families with lots of money and clients. Her connections in Kould Ves might have said a bit more, but not much. On the one hand, since you aren’t such a person, they have cause to resent you. On the other hand, you do command ancillaries and not vulgar human troops, which the old-fashioned deplore just as much as they deplore the scions of obscure, nobody houses getting assigned as officers. They approve of your ancillaries and disapprove of your antecedents. Jen Shinnan gets a very ambivalent picture of you.” Her voice was quiet, pitched so that only someone standing very near could hear it, though the houses we passed were closed up, and dark on the lower levels. It was very unlike the lower city, where even late into the night people sat nearly in the street, even small children.
“Besides,” Lieutenant Skaaiat said, “she’s right. Oh, not that foolishness about Orsians, no, but she’s right to be suspicious about the aptitudes. You know yourself the tests are susceptible to manipulation.” Lieutenant Awn felt a sick, betrayed indignation at Lieutenant Skaaiat’s words, but said nothing, and Lieutenant Skaaiat continued. “For centuries only the wealthy and well-connected tested as suitable for certain jobs. Like, say, officers in the military. In the last, what, fifty, seventy-five years, that hasn’t been true. Have the lesser houses suddenly begun to produce officer candidates where they didn’t before?”
“I don’t like where you’re headed with this,” snapped Lieutenant Awn, tugging slightly at their linked arms, trying to pull away. “I didn’t expect it from you.”
“No, no,” protested Lieutenant Skaaiat, and didn’t let go, drew her closer. “The question is the right one, and the answer the same. The answer is no, of course. But does that mean the tests were rigged before, or rigged now?”
“And your opinion?”
“Both. Before and now. And our friend Jen Shinnan doesn’t fully understand that the question can even be asked—she just knows that if you’re going to succeed you’ve got to have the right connections, and she knows the aptitudes are part of that. And she’s utterly shameless—you heard her imply the Orsians were being rewarded for collaboration, and in nearly the same breath imply her people would be even better collaborators! And you notice neither she nor her cousin are sending their own children for testing, just this orphaned niece. Still, they’re invested in her doing well. If we’d asked for a bribe to ensure it, she’d have handed it over, no question. I’m surprised she didn’t offer one, actually.”