“I wanted to ask it, or I wouldn’t have.” She picked up her own utensil full of noodles, and then amended, “I guess it was kind of a stupid question.” E just looked at Ingray, eir thin, sharp-featured face nearly expressionless. She put the noodles in her mouth, chewed and swallowed them. “What did you do? To get you sent to Compassionate Removal, I mean.” E gave a brief, tiny nod, as though e had been waiting for the question, but didn’t answer right away. Ingray continued. “You don’t seem like a murderer.”
“Quite a few murderers don’t,” Garal said. Calmly, as though it were an entirely normal topic of conversation. As though e had casual, personal experience with murderers—and of course, Ingray realized, e probably did have exactly that. Garal crossed eir arms and leaned back against the galley wall. “I have an educated accent and vocabulary, so you’re having trouble thinking of me as a criminal. Or at least, the sort of irredeemable or dangerous criminal who gets sent to Compassionate Removal. It’s a mistake I would have made, before. But most people in Compassionate Removal with my education and accent are so vicious their families or contacts have no desire to look the other way or shunt them out of the system before they get to that point. Not that a public crèche accent is a guarantee you’re safe with someone. Not at all. But your chances are far worse with someone urbane, with all the right manners.”
“You don’t seem terribly vicious to me.”
Garal blinked. “Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying?”
“I have,” said Ingray, “and it seems odd to me that you’re trying so hard to tell me how dangerous you might be. Do you have some kind of stake in my being afraid of you?”
“I never could pull it off,” said Garal, and uncrossed eir arms and pushed eir unevenly cut hair out of eir face. It flopped back down again. “I was a forger. You know how much money you can get for the right sort of vestige, I’m sure. The most important ones, the mementos of the biggest events or the most widely revered dead, those may have some kind of theoretical value attached to them, but they can’t be had for any price. The wealthiest, most important families and citizens own them all, and they’re all carefully cataloged. There’s no point forging them, you’d be found out within minutes. But if you go one level down—say, a couple of handwritten invitation sheets from a Founder’s nephew’s majority dinner or”—e frowned, just a bit—“that sort of thing. Those can go for quite a lot, if you just happen to find a couple in a storage unit somewhere.”
“Because it’s the only way to collect vestiges,” agreed Ingray. “I don’t, but my brother does.” Thinking of Danach ruined her appetite. Or else it was the way Garal seemed to be staring at her noodles as she ate them.
“Does he.” There was no hint of a question in Garal’s tone. “Yes, if you’re new money, with a new name, or just on the edges of old money, it’s how you manage to look well connected. And, of course, there’s the benefit of having those vestiges near, in your possession. Imagine the vitality that must suffuse those invitation sheets, or maybe the strips of wall hanging that were in the presence of that Founder’s insignificant relative. Perhaps the great one emself was in that room! Even the smallest trace of that would be precious. And maybe, if family fortunes shift enough in the future, that nephew will retroactively become so much more important. Perhaps you—or excuse me, you said you don’t collect—perhaps your brother would spend quite a lot of money for that. And he would take it very, very badly to discover he’d been cheated.”
“How many vestiges did you forge?”
“Quite a lot. I specialized in invitation sheets—you find stacks of them in storage units, or just thrown away when someone dies with no heirs, so it’s easy to find paper the right age. The rest is just altering them, and choosing your subject carefully. I was good at it. I sold hundreds of the things, to dozens of hopeful collectors like your brother. So when I was caught I was a repeat offender quite a few times over, and quite a few wealthy citizens wanted me gone.”
Could that be true? Ingray half recalled hearing something like that, the capture and conviction of a vestige forger. It had been a very long time ago, she’d still had her child-name, had only overheard adults talking about it. Had the forger been someone who looked quite a lot like Pahlad Budrakim? It was possible. There was no way to check, they were cut off from Tyr’s communication systems, but even if they weren’t they were too far from Hwae for Ingray to access that sort of information without paying for it.
It might well be true. It wouldn’t explain everything, but it would explain quite a lot. “So,” said Ingray, slowly, setting down her utensil, looking warily at the edges of the idea that had just occurred to her, “you could make copies of the Budrakim Garseddai vestiges …”
“No no no.” Ingray couldn’t tell if Garal was appalled or amused. “There’s no percentage in making copies of something that already exists. Particularly something famous that already exists. It’s too easy to get caught. No, the thing to do is to make new things that plausibly might exist. Far fewer questions that way, far less obvious. I can do you any number of Eighth Century invitation sheets, or even personal notes if you can get me linen or paper that’s the right age. Or I can do other things, but I’m best at those. But even then”—e raised both hands, palms up—“it wouldn’t be exactly foolproof or safe. Besides, I haven’t said I’m going anywhere with you.”
“That’s true.” She thought for a moment. Picked up her utensil and snagged another tangle of noodles. “You must have done a lot of genealogical research. Knew who was who in lots of important families.”
“Yes,” Garal agreed equably.
“So you’re lying about never having heard of Pahlad Budrakim. E’s not just a member of an important family, e’s the caretaker of a particularly famous set of vestiges. Even if you went to Compassionate Removal before e got that job, you’d have known e existed.”
“Good catch.” That very tiny twitch of eir mouth, barely a suggestion of a smile. “But I had no idea e was sent to Compassionate Removal. And honestly, I’m having trouble believing the story you’ve told me. From what I know of Pahlad Budrakim, e wouldn’t have been stupid enough to do something like that. Why in the world would e ever steal eir father’s most treasured and valuable vestiges? What would it get em? It’s not like e would have been able to sell them to anyone.”
“Did you ever meet em?” It would be so helpful if Garal had personal knowledge of Pahlad Budrakim, so that … but Garal had not, as e had already pointed out, agreed to go back to Hwae with Ingray.
“No. Did you?”
“Not exactly. I was at a couple of events where e was, or where e probably was, anyway. The opening of an Assembly session, once. I was pretty small at the time.”
“I hope you saved the entry card. That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d go after, if I were still in business. If I did contemporary vestiges. A minor vestige of a vaguely important but routine event, that someone would have tucked away somewhere and forgotten, nothing anyone would bother to hoard or catalog until it suddenly has a connection with something famous—or infamous.”