a child.”
Seivarden blinked, not understanding. If she had, she likely would have smiled. A Radchaai could live nearly two hundred years. This inspector adjunct, probably a legal adult for a decade, was still impossibly young.
“I used to know someone else who sang all the time,” the adjunct continued.
I knew her. Had probably bought songs from her. She would have been maybe four, maybe five, when I’d left Ors. Maybe slightly older, if she remembered me with any clarity.
The inspector supervisor behind that door would be someone who had spent time on Shis’urna—in Ors itself, most likely. What did I know about the lieutenant who had replaced Lieutenant Awn as administrator there? How likely was it she’d resigned her military assignment and taken one as a dock inspector? It wasn’t unheard of.
Whoever the inspector supervisor was, she had money and influence enough to bring this adjunct here from Ors. I wanted to ask the young woman the name of her patron, but that would be unthinkably rude. “I’m told,” I said, meaning to sound idly curious, and playing up my Gerentate accent just the smallest bit, “that the jewelry you Radchaai wear has some sort of significance.”
Seivarden cast me a puzzled look. The adjunct only smiled. “Some of it.” Her Orsian accent, now I had identified it, was clear, obvious. “This one for instance.” She slid one gloved finger under a gold-colored dangle pinned near her left shoulder. “It’s a memorial.”
“May I look closer?” I asked, and receiving permission moved my chair near, and bent to read the name engraved in Radchaai on the plain metal, one I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t likely a memorial for an Orsian—I couldn’t imagine anyone in the lower city adopting Radchaai funeral practices, or at least not anyone old enough to have died since I’d seen them last.
Near the memorial, on her collar, sat a small flower pin, each petal enameled with the symbol of an Emanation. A date engraved in the flower’s center. This assured young woman had been the tiny, frightened flower-bearer when Anaander Mianaai had acted as priest in Lieutenant Awn’s house twenty years ago.
No coincidences, not for Radchaai. I was quite sure now that when we were admitted to the inspector supervisor’s presence, I would meet Lieutenant Awn’s replacement in Ors. This inspector adjunct was, perhaps, a client of hers.
“They make them for funerals,” the adjunct was saying, still talking about memorial pins. “Family and close friends wear them.” And you could tell by the style and expense of the piece just where in Radchaai society the dead person stood, and by implication where the wearer stood. But the adjunct—her name, I knew, was Daos Ceit—didn’t mention that.
I wondered then what Seivarden would make—had made—of changes in fashion since Garsedd, the way such signals had changed—or not. People still wore inherited tokens and memorials, testimony to the social connections and values of their ancestors generations back. And mostly that was the same, except “generations back” was Garsedd. Some tokens that had been insignificant then were prized now, and some that had been priceless were now meaningless. And the color and gemstone significances in vogue for the last hundred or so years wouldn’t read at all, for Seivarden.
Inspector Adjunct Ceit had three close friends, all three of whom had incomes and positions similar to hers, to judge from the gifts they’d exchanged with her. Two lovers intimate enough to exchange tokens with but not sufficiently so to be considered very serious. No strands of jewels, no bracelets—though of course if she did any work actually inspecting cargo or ship systems such things might have been in her way—and no rings over her gloves.
And there, on the other shoulder, where now I could see it plainly and look straight at it without being excessively impolite, was the token I had been looking for. I had mistaken it for something less impressive, had, on first glance, taken the platinum for silver, and its dependent pearl for glass, the sign of a gift from a sibling—current fashions misleading me. This was nothing cheap, nothing casual. But it wasn’t a token of clientage, though the metal and the pearl suggested a particular house association. An association with a house old enough that Seivarden could have recognized it immediately. Possibly had.
Inspector Adjunct Ceit stood. “The inspector supervisor is available now,” she said. “I do apologize for your wait.” She opened the inner door and gestured us through.
In the innermost office, standing to meet us, twenty years older