No. That wasn’t true. The beginning of a plan had this moment suggested itself to me, but it was horribly impractical, relying as it did on Seivarden’s discretion and support.
She had constructed her own idea of what I was doing and why I would return to the Radch playing a foreign tourist. Why I would report directly to Anaander Mianaai instead of a Special Missions officer. I could use that.
“I’m coming with you,” Seivarden said, and as though she had guessed my thoughts she added, “You can come to my appeal and speak on my behalf.”
I didn’t trust myself to answer. Pins and needles traveled up my right leg, started in my hands, arms, and shoulders, and my left leg. A slight ache began in my right hip. Something hadn’t healed quite right.
“It’s not as if I don’t already know what’s going on,” Seivarden said.
“So when you steal from me, breaking your legs won’t be enough. I’ll have to kill you.” My eyes still closed, I couldn’t see her reaction to that. She might well take it as a joke.
“I won’t,” she answered. “You’ll see.”
I spent several more days in Therrod recovering sufficiently that the doctor would approve my leaving. All that time, and afterward all the way up the ribbon, Seivarden was polite and deferential.
It worried me. I had stashed money and belongings at the top of the Nilt ribbon, and would have to retrieve them before we left. Everything was packaged, so I could do that without Seivarden seeing much more than a couple of boxes, but I had no illusions she wouldn’t try to open them first chance she got.
At least I had money again. And maybe that was the solution to the problem.
I took a room on the ribbon station, left Seivarden there with instructions to wait, and went to recover my possessions. When I returned she was sitting on the single bed—no linens or blankets, that was conventionally extra here—fidgeting. One knee bouncing, rubbing her upper arms with her bare hands—I had sold our heavy outer coats, and the gloves, at the foot of the ribbon. She stilled when I came in, and looked expectantly at me, but said nothing.
I tossed into her lap a bag that made a tumbling clicking sound as it landed.
Seivarden gave it one frowning look, and then turned her gaze to me, not moving to touch the bag or claim it in any way. “What’s this?”
“Ten thousand shen,” I said. It was the most commonly negotiable currency in this region, in easily transportable (and spent) chits. Ten thousand would buy a lot, here. It would buy passage to another system with enough left over to binge for several weeks.
“Is that a lot?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened, just slightly, and for half a second I saw calculation in her expression.
Time for me to be direct. “The room is paid up for the next ten days. After that—” I gestured at the bag on her lap. “That should last you a while. Longer if you’re truly serious about staying off kef.” But that look, when she’d realized she had access to money, made me fairly certain she wasn’t. Not really.
For six seconds Seivarden looked down at the bag in her lap. “No.” She picked the bag up gingerly, between her thumb and forefinger, as though it were a dead rat, and dropped it on the floor. “I’m coming with you.”
I didn’t answer, only looked at her. Silence stretched out.
Finally she looked away, crossed her arms. “Isn’t there any tea?”
“Not the sort you’re used to.”
“I don’t care.”
Well. I didn’t want to leave her here alone with my money and possessions. “Come on, then.”
We left the room, found a shop on the main corridor that sold things for flavoring hot water. Seivarden sniffed one of the blends on offer. Wrinkled her nose. “This is tea?”
The shop’s proprietor watched us from the corner of her vision, not wanting to seem to watch us. “I told you it wasn’t the sort you were used to. You said you didn’t care.”
She thought about that a moment. To my utter surprise, instead of arguing, or complaining further about the unsatisfactory nature of the tea in question, she said, calmly, “What do you recommend?”
I gestured my uncertainty. “I’m not in the habit of drinking tea.”
“Not in the…” She stared at me. “Oh. Don’t they drink tea in the Gerentate?”
“Not the way you people do.” And of course tea was for officers. For humans. Ancillaries drank water. Tea was an extra, unnecessary expense. A luxury. So I had never developed the habit. I turned to the proprietor, a Nilter, short and pale and fat, in shirtsleeves though the temperature here was a constant four C and Seivarden and I both still wore our inner coats. “Which of these has caffeine in it?”
She answered, pleasantly enough, and became pleasanter when I bought not only 250 grams each of two kinds of tea but also a flask with two cups, and two bottles, along with water to fill them.