Isseret was dirt and stone—earthy brown hair graying to match her hard eyes. She had all the enthusiasm of dirt as well. The colorful material culture of Vitares had found little to no purchase in her fashion choices; all of her shawls were brown, adorned in the traditional style with images and symbols rather than abstract designs. (I still didn’t know what those meant.) The sole exception was a ruby earring worn on the left ear, indicating the second degree of mastery in her profession.

She was less than impressed with me. But that was okay, because I had a plan.

See, Markus’s working theory was that the judges weren’t happy about Cades throwing that race back in the first competition. Punishing Cades would look like a strike against the Voranetti, and maybe invite Lirian to retaliate. After all, she’d gone after Roel! Markus, on the other hand, was a new face and an outsider. His only political connections were a dying house whose political presence was mostly notional at this point. He was a much less costly target.

Maybe we had a way out of this, maybe not. But this was finally an opportunity to pull my weight on the high society end of things, and getting Isseret to help would win me some points with her at the same time. Theoretically, anyways.

“My mom always said it was a great joy to watch her students learn things,” I told her. Importantly, I held eye contact to communicate that this was a request. But not so long as to imply familiarity. There’s a subtlety to these things, you know. Isseret told me that a lot.

I’d learned a lot about the form of these requests in the past month. You were supposed to open with an observation about a perceived need of the other person, so that your request could be viewed as a trade rather than a favor. That functioned both as a face-saving mechanism and a way to honor Varas, Queen of the Goddesses and patron of commerce. I could personally do without the second part—like, c’mon, you can do reciprocity as an agnostic society—but those are the realities of the job. When you practice a culture, you worship its gods.

So in effect I’d opened by offering to learn something and make her happy. Now she had a few options. She could deflect, signaling that she wasn’t interested or that I wasn’t entitled to make a request. She could validate the offer (indicating that she was interested), or make a neutral statement (indicating she was waiting for more information). Or she could make a counter-offer.

“Let no one contradict her,” said Isseret. “I hope to learn the truth of her words sooner rather than later.”

“Ouch,” said Markus over the comms.

“I’ve learned things!”

My tutor adopted a neutral expression rather than directly contradict a lady of grace. As if I couldn’t remember her making that face like, three days ago when she taught me that. A lot of these rules felt stupid and pointless, but every time I complained to the team about that, they laughed at me.

“Anyways,” I said, choosing to interpret Isseret’s words as validation, “I’ve been trying to follow your lessons while in public. I wasn’t sure about how to act in this one situation, though.”

Part of her expression softened at that. I guess it was harder to disapprove of me when I was actively trying to learn. I’d have her in my corner eventually.

“Such questions are within my duty as your tutor, Lady Ajarel,” she said. “The formal request wasn’t necessary.”

“Aw,” I said.

She threw me a bone. “You organized it correctly. I did notice.”

I smiled. “So about this situation. I’ve got this, uh, friend? I think? Uh, Alceoi Voranetes. She sat with Roel and me at my first Renathion here, but now she won’t talk to me. Or, like, make eye contact. I’m not sure what I did, because she wasn’t upset with me before I—before, uh—”

My mouth kinda just ground to a halt.

“Before you were attacked?” she replied, taking pity on me.

“That,” I said, looking away.

“You are of grace,” Isseret snapped. “Self-control is your first duty. Look at me.”

I refused for a moment, clenching my jaw. Then I turned back and glared at her.

“If that decorum is what you showed the ladies at the Renathion, she might have wished to avoid embarrassing herself by association.”

If this were any other situation I’d have started unloading on her about what an ass she was being, but we were supposed to be using the top level of formality rules for these sessions. I didn’t say anything.

“That wasn’t an issue the first time,” I said. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that it was something on her end. What do I do? I’m worried she’s throwing in with the Jeneretti to act against Thala and me.”

“Perfect your behavior,” Isseret said instantly. “Grace reflects the nature of the goddesses. If you embody it more fully, others will seek you out.”

“That can’t be all, can it?” I asked. “Like, they’ll seek me out more if I’m more wealthy.”

Isseret stared at me. “Wealth reflects the grace of rulership.”

Dammit. Okay, play it cool. “Oh, right. Okay, so, graces. How do I get those?”

“That is what we have been doing for two thessim.”

I chuckled guiltily. Isseret continued not to be impressed.

“Can we focus on, uh, connection? I’m going to need it. What’s my angle with the Jeneretti?”

“You’re in no position to be asking such questions,” she said. “I suppose Salaphi was too small to practice. First, recite the Wisdom of the City.”

I hadn’t memorized that particular litany—Gamalite, right? Yeah, sounds right—but I did have access to our theology archives.

“A city is composed of Houses,” I read from my comm stream. “A House of families; a family of women; a woman of body parts. Each has their faculties, their organs of perception, their limbs to accomplish their will. Therefore, as a woman’s heart is the seat of her will, so does the city have a leader to direct its action. As she has a tongue, so does the city have emissaries. As she has hands, so does it have laborers.”

Isseret’s brow furrowed slightly, as it often did when I was supposed to be quoting something in Estheni. I’d primed her to think the problem was my accent. The probability that she figured it out was minimal, even if she obsessed over the problem: comm translations act on preconscious cognition, so by the time her brain presented the experience to her soul, it was too late to catch the etheric sleight of hand.

“Good,” she said after too long of a pause. “What do you think you should do about the Jeneritti?”

“I guess they’re supposed to be the heart of the city,” I said. “That’s not right, though. The Vitares family should be the heart.”

“Is that an attitude that would endear you to the Jeneretti?”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I gotta be a different body part. Like what, the liver?”

My tutor leaned back in her chair, rubbing a cheekbone with her thumb. “How you’ve managed to read so much without grasping any of it is beyond me. It’s a metaphor, Lady Ajarel.”

“The quote was very specific!”

“Toubos wasn’t arguing that you can learn statecraft by studying anatomy,” said Isseret. “The point is that we are all part of a body. To understand the function of a part, you need to understand its place in the whole. For the Jeneretti and for you.”

“But I don’t have a function in this city.”

Isseret looked at me.

“Ah,” I said.

Isseret looked at me.

“Fine! I’ll find something to do!”

*

I thought about it while we set up for Markus’s rendezvous with Cades.

The process was methodical. We’d had Markus take an indirect route to the op site, giving Lirian a chance to follow. I gossipped with him until we got the signal.

“I bet Lirian goes invisible whenever she tells a joke and no one laughs.”

“I bet Lirian’s never won a conduct award from the Cult of Silence because no one remembers what she did.”

“I bet Lirian’s mission actually ended a year ago and no one remembered to tell her.”

“I, uh… shoot, I lost it. I had a great joke.”

“A joke about Lirian?”

“Uh… can you repeat that?”

“Hey team, we’ve got contact!”

The signal, of course, was Markus losing his train of thought. By gathering information so predictably, Lirian had allowed us to control her location. Markus’s orders were to wander around the city and avoid the meeting point. That gave Val and Abby space to leave the ship without leading her back to it, allowing them to deploy MDOs.

They would be onsite, in disguise. Lirian had likely seen their faces when they came to rescue me. It probably wouldn’t mean much in the end. Reviewing the footage of my, uh, attack, Lirian had claimed to be able to feel people’s secrets, and all of us were probably carrying more secret knowledge than the rest of the city combined. But it would be stupid not to take an easy precaution because our enemy had possibly countered it.

In terms of equipment, we’d decided to leave the disruptor weapons home tonight to prevent the risk of Lirian stealing one. You can shield against a pulser, but if you take a disruptor shot, that’s it, you’re done. They both had knives, though. Local make, nothing from the armory that might raise questions about advanced manufacturing techniques. We’d used a resonator to etherically paint them with slowness and ineptitude. If it came to a knife fight, Lirian would hopefully underestimate how urgently she needed to dodge.

Then they were done, and it was just a matter of getting Markus over to the op site. Which meant I had time to do some fake career counseling.

“So about me picking a vocation in Vitareas.”

“Everyone was happy to court your favor when you looked like you were going to advance,” said Abby. “It seems we missed the window to take advantage of it. Lirian’s assassination attempt might also have had a chilling effect.”

“With the translation engines at full capacity, we can start faking coinage,” said Val. “You could reasonably compete in any industry here. As long as you appear successful, you could gain support for Markus.”

“I don’t know how bribes work here,” I said. “I could ask Isseret.”

Abby pinged dissent over the comm. “Worship of Varas emphasizes exchange of values. The Jeneretti will be mindful of that. This will have to be presented as an investment.”

“Maybe I could go back to Lady Obol and offer her something. I have no idea what. But, you know, something.”

“I can inquire after her interests.”

“The secretary job would really be the best,” I said. “That way I’m elevating the Vitares family at the same time. You know, demonstrating loyalty for the connection grace. Shame we’re backed into a corner with the literacy stuff.”

“Commander, what’s your risk tolerance on either of us attending the sebekos?” asked Val, using the local name for the temple of Lorana.

“Lirian’s already poking around the primary exit,” said Abby. “We cannot risk the ship.”

I shivered. “Yeah, okay, no. Markus is almost there, let’s finish this later.”

Lirian boarding the Ragnar would be catastrophically bad for numerous reasons, but the most important one was that we had to assume there were no more godslayer ships on this planet. If Veles lost contact with all of them, Theria’s threat level would be escalated to Severe.

That is not just a bureaucratic category. It is Eifni Organization’s best guess as to whether a pantheon is capable of producing a triphase god and ending us all. The risk of an omnipotent divinity overflowing its universe and overwriting reality with its essence cannot be tolerated.

They would burn Theria to glass.

I’d, uh, just have to go into carpentry or something.