In the readings coming from that terribly young Lieutenant Seivarden I saw startlement, frustration, anger. Irritation. “That was fifteen minutes ago,” she snapped. I didn’t answer. Behind me the prisoner still sobbed and moaned. “Can’t you shut her up?”
“I’ll do my best, Lieutenant,” I said, though I knew there was only one way to really do that, only one thing that would silence that captive’s grief. The newly minted Lieutenant Seivarden seemed unaware of that.
Twenty-one years after arriving on Justice of Toren—just over a thousand years before I found her in the snow—Seivarden was senior Esk lieutenant. Thirty-eight, still quite young by Radchaai standards. A citizen could live some two hundred years.
Her last day, she sat drinking tea on her bunk in her quarters, three meters by two meters by two, white-walled, severely neat. She was grown into that aristocratic nose by now, grown into herself. No longer awkward or unsure.
Beside her on the tightly made-up bunk sat the Esk decade’s most junior lieutenant, arrived just weeks ago, a sort of cousin of Seivarden’s, though from another house. Taller than Seivarden had been at that age, broader, a bit more graceful. Mostly. Nervous at being asked to confer in private here with the senior lieutenant, cousin or no, but concealing it. Seivarden said to her, “You want to be careful, Lieutenant, who you favor with your… attentions.”
The very young lieutenant frowned, embarrassed, realizing suddenly what this was about.
“You know who I mean,” continued Seivarden, and I knew too. One of the other Esk lieutenants had definitely noticed when the very young lieutenant had come on board, had been slowly, discreetly sounding out the possibility of the very young lieutenant perhaps noticing her back. But not so discreetly that Seivarden hadn’t seen it. In fact, the entire decade room had seen it, and seen, as well, the very young lieutenant’s intrigued response.
“I know who you mean,” said the very young lieutenant. Indignant. “But I don’t see why…”
“Ah!” said Seivarden, sharp and peremptory. “You think it’s harmless fun. Well, it would probably be fun.” Seivarden had slept with the lieutenant in question herself at one point and knew whereof she spoke. “But it wouldn’t be harmless. She’s a good enough officer, but her house is very provincial. If she weren’t senior to you, there would be no problem.”
The very young lieutenant’s house was definitely not “very provincial.” Naive as she was, she knew immediately what Seivarden meant. And was angry enough at it to address Seivarden in a way that was less formal than propriety demanded. “Aatr’s tits, Cousin, no one’s said anything about clientage. No one could, none of us can make contracts until we retire.” Among the wealthy, clientage was a very hierarchical relationship—a patron promised certain sorts of assistance to her client, both financial and social, and a client provided support and services to her patron. These were promises that could last generations. In the oldest, most prestigious houses the servants were nearly all the descendants of clients, for instance, and many businesses owned by wealthy houses were staffed by client branches of lower ones.
“These provincial houses are ambitious,” Seivarden explained, voice the slightest bit condescending. “And clever as well or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they have. She’s senior to you, and you’ve both got years to serve yet. Grant her intimacy on those terms, let it continue, and depend on it, one of these days she’ll be offering you clientage when it ought to be the other way around. I don’t think your mother would thank you for exposing your house to that sort of insult.”
The very young lieutenant’s face heated with anger and chagrin, the shine of her first adult romance suddenly gone, the whole thing turned sordid and calculating.
Seivarden leaned forward, reached out for the tea flask and stopped, with a surge of irritation. Said silently to me, the fingers of her free hand twitching, “This cuff has been torn for three days.”
I said, directly into her ear, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” I ought to have offered to make the repair immediately, dispatched a segment of One Esk to take the offending shirt away. I ought, in fact, to have mended it three days before. Ought not to have dressed her in that shirt that day.
Silence in the cramped compartment, the very young lieutenant still preoccupied with her discomfiture. Then I said, directly into Seivarden’s ear, “Lieutenant, the decade commander will see you at your earliest convenience.”
I had known the promotion was coming. Had taken a petty satisfaction in the fact that even if she ordered me that moment to mend her sleeve, I would have no time to do it. As soon as she left her quarters I started packing her things, and three hours later she was on her way to her new command, freshly made captain of Sword of Nathtas. I hadn’t been particularly sorry to see her go.