She actually half-smiled. “No.”
I took another spoonful, pondering the implications of this better behavior. I wasn’t sure what it meant, about her state of mind, about her intentions, about who or what she thought I was. Maybe Strigan had been right, and Seivarden had decided the most profitable course, for now, was to not alienate the person who was feeding her, and that would change as soon as her options changed.
A high voice called out from another table. “Hello!”
I turned—the girl with the Tiktik set waved to me from where she sat with her mother. For an instant I was surprised, but we were near the medical center, where I knew they had brought their injured relative, and they had come from the same direction we had, and so they had likely parked on the same side of town. I smiled and nodded, and she got up and came to where we were sitting. “Your friend is better!” she said, brightly. “That’s good. What are you eating?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The waiter said it was the house specialty.”
“Oh, that’s very good, I had it yesterday. When did you get here? It’s so hot it’s like summer already, I can’t imagine what it’s like further north.” Clearly she’d had time to recover her more usual spirits since the accident that had brought her to Strigan’s house. Seivarden, spoon in hand, watched her, bemused.
“We’ve been here an hour,” I said. “We’re only stopping for the night, on our way to the ribbon.”
“We’re here until Uncle’s legs are better. Which will probably be another week.” She frowned, counting days. “A little longer. We’re sleeping in our flier, which is terribly uncomfortable, but Mama says the price for lodging here is outright theft.” She sat down on the end of the bench, next to me. “I’ve never been in space, what’s it like?”
“It’s very cold—even you would find it cold.” She thought that was funny, gave a little laugh. “And of course there’s no air and hardly any gravity so everything just floats.”
She frowned at me, mock rebuke. “You know what I mean.”
I glanced over to where her mother sat, stolid, eating. Unconcerned. “It’s really not very exciting.”
The girl made a gesture of indifference. “Oh! You like music. There’s a singer at a place down the street tonight.” She used the word I had used mistakenly, not the one she had corrected me with, in Strigan’s house. “We didn’t go to hear her last night because they charge. And besides she’s my cousin. Or she’s in the next lineage over from mine, and she’s my mother’s cousin’s daughter’s aunt, that’s close enough anyway. I heard her at the last ingather, she’s very good.”
“I’ll be sure to go. Where is it?”
She gave me the name of the place, and then said she had to finish her supper. I watched her go back to her mother, who only looked up, briefly, and gave a curt nod, which I returned.
The place the girl had named was only a few doors down, a long, low-ceilinged building, its back wall all shutters, open just now on a walled yard, where Nilters sat uncoated in the one-degree air, drinking beer, listening silently to a woman playing a bowed, stringed instrument I’d never seen before.
I quietly ordered beer for myself and Seivarden, and we took seats on the inner side of the shutters—slightly warmer than the yard for the lack of a breeze, and with a wall to put our backs against. A few people turned to look at us, stared a moment, then turned away more or less politely.
Seivarden leaned three centimeters in my direction and whispered, “Why are we here?”
“To hear the music.”
She raised an eyebrow. “This is music?”
I turned to look at her directly. She flinched, just slightly. “Sorry. It’s just…” She gestured helplessly. Radchaai do have stringed instruments, quite a variety of them, in fact, accrued through several annexations, but playing them in public is considered a slightly risqué act, because one has to play either bare-handed, or in gloves so thin as to be nearly pointless. And this music—the long, slow, uneven phrases that made its rhythms difficult for the Radchaai ear to hear, the harsh, edged tone of the instrument—was not what Seivarden had been brought up to appreciate. “It’s so…”
A woman at a nearby table turned and made a reproving, shushing noise. I gestured conciliation, and turned a cautioning look on Seivarden. For a moment her anger showed in her face and I was sure I would have to take her outside, but she took a breath, and looked at her beer, and drank, and afterward looked steadily ahead in silence.
The piece ended, and the audience rapped fists gently on their tables. The string player somehow looked both impassive and gratified, and launched into another, this one noticeably faster and loud enough for Seivarden to safely whisper to me again. “How long are we going to be here?”
“A while,” I said.
“I’m tired. I want to go back to the room.”