by Ann Leckie
Captain Uisine sat in the galley, eating a bowl of rehydrated noodles and fish. “Your visitor is in the bay, excellency,” he said. “It’s who you think it is. And I remind you that I will not take anyone aboard who doesn’t want to be aboard.”
“Yes. Thank you, Captain.”
The person who wasn’t Pahlad Budrakim stood a few meters away from the airlock, at an angle that let em also see through the wide door into the outer corridor. Wearing nothing, still, but the orange-brown blanket Captain Uisine had wrapped around eir shoulders the day before, eir unruly, unevenly cut hair pushed back but threatening to fall over into eir eyes. Ingray wondered where e had slept last night, or if e had eaten anything. “Good morning,” she said, and hefted the brown box. “You’re here for this, I think.” People variously dressed in lungis or trousers and tunics passed by in the corridor outside—a ship at a nearby bay must have come in recently, or one was nearing departure. And while lots of things were legal in Tyr that weren’t elsewhere, and the occupants of Tyr Siilas in particular were famous for minding their own business, she didn’t want anyone seeing that vesicle kit and guessing what it was. “Will you come inside?”
The person who wasn’t Pahlad hesitated, just a moment, and then said, “Can’t you give that to me out here?” E seemed unconcerned about the people passing in the corridor.
“I suppose.” She stepped forward and handed em the box. “You’ll want to put that under your … under your clothes, and find somewhere private to fill the vesicle. I think there’s a lavatory just down the corridor. Or you could still come aboard and do it. I know you don’t want to, I’m just telling you that’s an option.”
“Thank you, Ingray Aughskold,” e said. Garal Ket said, if e was going to be the person the tabula said e was. Which Ingray supposed had been the whole point of eir coming here.
“You’re welcome, Garal Ket.”
E almost smiled. Or seemed to, though it was just the slightest twitch of eir mouth. E inclined eir head, just a bit. Tucked the brown box under the end of eir blanket and turned to leave.
E took only three steps toward the corridor before a person in the red and yellow of an Enforcement official came into the bay, two patrollers behind em in yellow jackets, their red lungis girded up, stun sticks on their hips. “Your pardon, excellencies,” said the Enforcement official. “This bay, and this ship, are under interdict. No one is to enter or leave under any circumstances whatsoever. And I’ll see your identification.”
“We’ll have to go aboard to get our tabulas, excellency,” said Ingray, hoping her voice was steady despite the way her heart pounded with startlement and, she had to admit, fear. “I suppose Garal will have to make eir errand later.” She gestured the newly named Garal Ket toward the airlock. “Does Captain Uisine know about this?”
“He will when I tell him,” said the Enforcement official. Behind em, in the corridor beyond the bay entrance, a half dozen people walked by, looking at the Enforcement official and then quickly away as they passed.
“We’ll just let the captain know you’re here,” said Ingray, smoothly, with her blandest smile. Garal followed her aboard without a word or any change of expression.
Captain Uisine was finishing his breakfast. “Captain,” said Ingray, “there’s an Enforcement official and two patrollers in the bay. The official says your ship is under interdict, and no one can come or go.”
He slurped the last of the noodles and drank the broth off. And then said, “I’d better speak to this official, then.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” said Garal, behind Ingray in the corridor.
“I didn’t expect this,” said Captain Uisine. “But now that it’s happened, you’re right, I’m not surprised.” He rose. “I imagine you’ll both need to produce your identification.”
“Yes,” said Ingray. “We’re just fetching it now.”
“And you don’t seem worried, either,” observed Garal.
“I’m not,” replied Captain Uisine. “But I can’t get to my own tabulas until you move farther down the corridor, excellencies.”
“Of course.” Ingray continued down the narrow corridor, Garal behind her, to her tiny cabin. She sat on the bunk and pulled her own tabula out of her bag. “Do you know how to use the vesicle kit? It has instructions in it.”
“Yes.” Still standing in the corridor, e opened the kit’s top edge and peered at the contents. Removed the tiny sampler and thumbed it. Snapped the sampler back into its slot. Fifteen seconds later the brown box made a click and the hard, blue strip of an identity tabula slid out. E handed the now-useless brown box back to Ingray, who stowed it in her bag. “Do you have any idea,” e asked, “what this interdict is about?”
“None whatever,” she said. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
3
Out in the bay, the two patrollers had taken up positions on either side of the doorway into the dock corridor. The Enforcement official stood inside the bay, where Ingray and Garal had left em, and Captain Uisine was speaking calmly to em, to all appearances not the least bit alarmed. “The ship is mine. The purchase was registered here at Tyr Siilas. I have all the documentation—the history is all in the tabula, every transfer of ownership since it came from the shipyard. I own it free and clear. I am also a citizen of Tyr, with registered residency on Tyr Siilas.”
E looked over Captain Uisine’s shoulder, to where Ingray and Garal approached. A quick flash of some expression when e realized Garal was wearing nothing but a blanket, quickly gone. Tyr officials were famously uninquisitive about anything that wasn’t a potential breach of Tyr law. “These are your passengers?”
“Yes, excellency,” said Captain Uisine. “Booked through the dock office, you’ll find. I don’t do any business that isn’t aboveboard.”
“No doubt, Captain. Excellencies.” That last addressed to Ingray and Garal. “Your identifications, please.” And, having examined them and handed them back, “Thank you. This is unfortunately beyond my control, Captain. Your documents are all in order, but there’s really nothing I can do. The Geck delegation insists that you be placed under arrest until they can examine you and your ship for themselves, and they won’t be able to do that for the next several hours, at the very least. It may well be longer than that.”
“It appears,” said Captain Uisine, to Ingray and Garal, “that the Geck delegation saw my ship as they were coming in, and think it’s one that was stolen from them.”
“It’s ridiculous, I know,” said the Enforcement official, “and treaty or no treaty, they don’t have the right to demand the arrest of a citizen in good standing. We’ve told them so.”
“But nobody wants to even come close to violating the treaty,” Ingray guessed. The prospect of the Presger freed from the constraints of the treaty was horrifying. Even ordinarily an alien delegation would be treated with extreme care and caution, and this was not an ordinary time. “And everyone’s on edge about this conclave.”
“Just so,” agreed the Enforcement official. “The ship is clearly your property, Captain, and once we can show the evidence of that to the Geck delegation, we expect you can be on your way. In the meantime, we’ve promised we won’t let anyone enter or leave this bay. The Geck worry you might flee, or orchestrate some sort of trick, were I to believe the ambassador’s exact words. This is why I didn’t warn you I was coming, and why I must insist you and your passengers remain here without communicating with anyone else until the ambassador arrives. I’m sure you understand that it’s in your best interest to allay the ambassador’s suspicions as much as we can. Do you have sufficient food and water? Sanitary facilities functioning properly? No medical issues that might require outside resources?”
“Yes to the first two, and none that I know of to the last.” Captain Uisine looked a mild inquiry over his shoulder at Ingray and Garal.
“No, Captain, we’re fine. Right, Garal?”
“Just fine,” e agreed.
Back aboard, Ingr
ay said, “I don’t have any extra clothes for you, but I didn’t want to say that in front of the Enforcement official. Maybe Captain Uisine has something you could wear. Is the top bunk all right?”
“If no one is occupying this cabin”—e tapped the doorframe of the set of bunks on the other side of the narrow corridor—“I would prefer that.”
“Of course,” replied Ingray. A bit relieved, truth to tell.
E turned, looked down the otherwise empty corridor. “I wonder how you manage to steal a ship from the Geck.”
“You don’t think he stole it, do you? He’s apparently got all the documentation.”
“This is Tyr Siilas,” said Garal. “And if the captain could afford a citizenship buy-in, it’s not a far stretch to imagine he could also afford some well-forged documentation.” E said nothing about the identification tabula still in eir left hand, which had just passed Enforcement’s examination without so much as the suggestion of suspicion.
Ingray considered this a moment. “If he really did steal it from the Geck—I can’t even imagine that. I mean, they don’t leave their homeworld, right? Why would they even have a ship to steal? But if it’s true, what’s going to happen when they get here?”
“I have no idea,” said Garal. “But that’s hours from now. At the moment, I would like to have something to eat.”
E swallowed down a bowl of rehydrated noodles in what seemed like a single gulp. “Did you eat anything yesterday?” Ingray asked, sitting across from em at the galley’s tiny table. And then she realized e couldn’t possibly have, not unless e’d managed to steal something. E’d left the bay with no money, no credit account, not even any identity, and carrying nothing besides the blanket Captain Uisine had given em. Where would e have gotten food?
“Is that really what you wanted to ask me?” E leaned back and pushed the bowl into the recycle chute.
“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 Budr
akim, 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.”
“I sold it to my brother, actually.” And that money was now gone, paid to Gold Orchid as part of her scheme to get Pahlad Budrakim out of Compassionate Removal.
“I hope you got a good price for it. Do the sleeping cabin doors lock?”
It took Ingray a few moments to process the sudden shift of topic. “More or less. I’m sure Captain Uisine can open them no matter what, though.”
“Will you knock, please, if I’m not awake at the next mealtime?”
“Of course,” Ingray agreed. “I might as well take a nap myself once I’m done eating.” It wasn’t as though there was much else to do, stuck here on this ship with all the news and information feeds cut off. Though it might be a good idea to go over the fare agreement again—hopefully if this didn’t turn out in Captain Uisine’s favor, she would still be legally due a refund of her and Garal’s fares. But there was plenty of time for that. Ingray was used to government officials; it might be some time before the Geck ambassador turned up, and even longer before she—he? E? It?—no, the Enforcement official had said she—decided to do whatever it was she was going to do.
