The request, paged through from the airlock exterior panel, is not truly a surprise, although it makes Timni start. What peace will she ever be permitted to know again?
“Captain Timni,” the majordomo says smoothly, when she drags herself to the lock and cycles through it to open the hatch to him. He is carrying a small round tray, on which is a steaming teapot and two small cups, turned mouth down. “Permission to come aboard?”
She doesn’t know why he bothers with such a formality, not for the likes of her. The ship is a meagre asset of the Empress’, and Timni herself no less; and to the extent that they, too, these glittering nobility, are — they are nonetheless far above her, even their own instruments such as he.
“Of course,” she says wearily, waving him into the lock, and silently walks him to the galley, where she motions him to set the tray on the table, seats herself on one side, and accepts the cup he pours for her.
“My name is Lyrus,” he says, pouring himself the other cup and sitting opposite. “I am a retainer to Her Notability the March-Admiral.”
“Timni,” Timni says, too exhausted to even know whether she means it sarcastically or not: “light cargo scow owner-operator.”
He nods, very politely. They know that, of course; there is little to know about her, and no doubt the Empress has told them all of it, or their security has unearthed it. The cup is very small; no doubt there is some excruciatingly correct way to sip it, correlating precisely with the optimal time to steep, tiny sips to make it last long enough to appreciate in a proper, sophisticated way. She picks it up and throws it back like a shot of something nasty in a cheap bar, clacks the cup back down, looks him in the eye.
“If this were a historical court drama,” she says, very nearly levelly, “I’d be eloquent and stoic and say something about the scent of plums.”
It’s apocryphal, as far as she knows; but a popularly repeated historical factoid, and frequent plot point, that troublesome and disgraced courtiers were disposed of in an officially unofficial way by serving them tea with a particular plum-scented poison in it. Manners dictated, so the story goes, that they were unable to courteously decline the tea — obvious by its smell — from a social superior, and were forced to accept their doom with grace, poise, and gratitude on their faces.
He blinks at her.
“Oh, no, of course the tea is fine,” she says, shrugging. “I’d have another cup, if I’m allowed. I may not even be worth the cost of a gunshot to the back of the head, but there are airlocks—”
“Captain,” the majordomo says, pouring her more tea, “I’m not certain why you think—”
“Oh, don’t,” Timni says, tired to the bone, finally done. “I’m nobody; that’s why I’m here at all, all I ever was. She told someone who told someone who told someone to have a computer randomly pick a database record of convenient nobodies with ships. And I know too much.” She toasts him with the cup, forces herself to actually only sip it this time, hand shaking. “You people are the first of her supposed friends to actually return her calls, not for lack of trying; if her assassins are that afraid of her, I should think somebody’s whispered to them more concrete reason than just guilty conscience. I’m the weak link who knows for sure that she escaped, and when, and how, and I just stood in front of all of you and as good as said I should be disposed of. She has all this now—” and she gestures with a finger uncurled from around the cup; “why keep me.”
He watches her, and doesn’t say no, which is the first endearing thing anyone has done since the Empress first had her dragged into the palace. Instead, he silently offers to top up her cup again.
“You enjoy historical court dramas?” he says.
“I spent a time,” Timni says, accepting the fresh pour, “in a facility for the confinement of parentless burdens on society,” and sips it. “There were some number of us, and few wardens, and little to do with us. We were permitted improving media; it sometimes kept us occupied enough to not need correction.” She sips again, despite the tightening in her stomach. “Court dramas extol the virtues of etiquette, and hierarchy, and submission to one’s place. Proper veneration of the Empire and its head.”
“Surely,” he says, smiling a little, “most dramas are about mobility within hierarchy, and refusal of submission to it?”
“By unique outliers who are defined against the system, which their defiance, even in success, leaves unchanged,” Timni says, and finishes her tea again, putting the cup down. “Does that add sufficient personal colour to my background check?”
“You have a bleak outlook,” the majordomo says, and Timni laughs, a little crazed.
“I have looked upon life,” she says. “And every moment in the Empress’ service I have stared at death creeping up for me. And here you are.”
“Her Effulgence,” he says, in a measured and careful way, “asked that — if you are too proud to come aboard Her Notability’s yacht and take dinner — someone should ensure you were offered hospitality.”
“Proud,” Timni says, and covers her mouth as if it will hide the wretched spasm of noise that shakes its way out of her, some mangled ambiguity of sob and moan and outraged laugh. “Proud. The Empress. Calls me—”
“Her Effulgence,” the majordomo says, pretending kindly to ignore her shaking, “wishes you to be reminded that a half-brick of reconstituted noodles is not a meal.”
Timni peels the hand off her mouth like a bandage ripping stickily away from an open wound. “People would leave their children on the steps of the confinement-house with a note saying they were orphans,” she says. “Because a half-brick of noodles is more a meal than none, and none is what her Empire otherwise afforded them, while she had it and called it good.” She stands, unsteadily. “Get off my ship,” she says. “And come back to kill me, or not at all,” and wavers, and something like sheepishly adds, at less volume, “thank you for the tea.”
He very gravely stands, gathers the tray, and gives her a little bow. “If you would like,” he says, “I have a personal library containing a number of court dramas, which could be copied across to your ship.”
Timni sputters, tears on her cheeks. “Thank you,” she croaks. “Go away,” and he does.
