foreign and even primitive.
But Seivarden didn’t say anything. She sat silent for thirty-one seconds as I intoned the first of the 322 names of the Hundred of White Lily, and then she turned her attention to the flask, and making tea.
Seivarden had said she’d lasted six months at her last attempt to quit kef. It took seven months to reach a station with a Radchaai consulate. Approaching the first leg of the journey, I had told the purser in Seivarden’s hearing that I wanted passage for myself and my servant. She hadn’t reacted, that I could see. Perhaps she hadn’t understood. But I had expected a more or less angry recrimination in private when she discovered her status, and she never mentioned it. And from then on I woke to find tea already made and waiting for me.
She also ruined two shirts attempting to launder them, leaving me with one for an entire month until we docked at the next station. The ship’s captain—she was Ki, tall and covered in ritual scars—let fall in an oblique, circuitous way that she and all her crew thought I’d taken Seivarden on as a charity case. Which wasn’t far from the truth. I didn’t contest it. But Seivarden improved, and three months later, on the next ship, a fellow passenger tried to hire her away from me.
Which wasn’t to say she had suddenly become a different person, or entirely deferential. Some days she spoke irritably to me, for no reason I could see, or spent hours curled in her bunk, her face to the wall, rising only for her self-imposed duties. The first few times I spoke to her when she was in that mood I only received silence in reply, so after that I left her alone.
The Radchaai consulate was staffed by the Translators Office, and the consular agent’s spotless white uniform—including pristine white gloves—argued she either had a servant or spent a good deal of her free time attempting to appear as though she did. The tasteful—and expensive-looking—jeweled strands wound in her hair, and the names on the memorial pins that glittered everywhere on the white jacket, as well as the faint disdain in her voice when she spoke to me, argued servant. Though likely only one—this was an out-of-the-way posting.
“As a visiting noncitizen your legal rights are restricted.” It was clearly a rote speech. “You must deposit at minimum the equivalent of—” Fingers twitched as she checked the exchange rate. “Five hundred shen per week of your visit, per person. If your lodging, food, and any extra purchases, fines, or damages exceed the amount on deposit and you cannot pay the balance, you will be legally obligated to take an assignment until your debt is paid. As a noncitizen your right to appeal any judgment or assignment is limited. Do you still wish to enter Radch space?”
“I do,” I said, and laid two million-shen chits on the slim desk between us.
Her disdain vanished. She sat slightly straighter and offered me tea, gesturing slightly, fingers twitching again as she communicated with someone else—her servant, it turned out, who, with a slightly harried air, brought tea in an elaborately enameled flask, and bowls to match.
While the servant poured, I brought out my forged Gerentate credentials and placed those on the desk as well.
“You must also provide identification for your servant, honored,” said the consular agent, now all politeness.
“My servant is a Radchaai citizen,” I answered, smiling slightly. Meaning to take the edge off what was going to be an awkward moment. “But she’s lost her identification and her travel permits.”
The consular agent froze, attempting to process that.
“The honored Breq,” said Seivarden, standing behind me, in antique, effortlessly elegant Radchaai, “has been generous enough to employ me and pay my passage home.”
This didn’t resolve the consular agent’s astonished paralysis quite as effectively as Seivarden perhaps had wished. That accent didn’t belong on anyone’s servant, let alone a noncitizen’s. And she hadn’t offered Seivarden a seat, or tea, thinking her too insignificant for such courtesies.
“Surely you can take genetic information,” I suggested.
“Yes, of course,” answered the consular agent, with a sunny smile. “Though your visa application will almost certainly come through before Citizen…”
“Seivarden,” I supplied.
“… before Citizen Seivarden’s travel permits are reissued. Depending on where she departed from and where her records are.”
“Of course,” I answered, and sipped my tea. “That’s only to be expected.”
As we left, Seivarden said to me, in an undertone, “What a snob. Was that real tea?”
“It was.” I waited